[Manco]

I dismiss the whole notion of "you can't judge a remake on its own without comparisons to the original". I find it really dumb. Let's say someone makes his OC Coldsteel The Hedgeheg artwork which is a traced over Sonic artwork, do you judge it as it's own thing, or what they did with it? Assuming the former, if you praise the elements of the new art like the character proportions or the pose... are you really praising the new art? The sole reason those are there is because he traced over the original art the author didn't make.

Putting aside the really weird tracing strawman... A remake can absolutely be compared to the original material it's based on, but that's not the only criteria for it to be judged by. If a remake isn't better than the original work, that doesn't make it an outright failure. That's really the core of the point I'm trying to get across here.

Oh no no, don't get me wrong. I do think New N Tasty isn't a good game, not just a not good enough of a remake. It's a bugged mess with glitchy animations, audio problems and tone/atmosphere issues.

Look, I can't convince you that you should enjoy a game you didn't like. Most of the issues you have with NNT are issues that I have with it as well; I think you may be overstating some of them because of your preference for AO, because some of the problems you highlight feel like minor flaws to me. In particular:

On the downside the throwables have no weight to them now. And no, there's still as much guesswork. And no, in AO the trajectory of the grenades is always the same and predictable, and if you say that you need to throw them once to know it, it's as much of a guesswork as the NnT/SS throwing lines.

This doesn't line up with my experience. Thrown items still have weight to them - you just have finer control over aiming them. The trajectory in AO never feels intuitive to me outside of throwing at very close targets, because the D-pad/arrow keys map to fixed arcs that feel arbitrary. NNT gives you a solid indication of your item's trajectory, and a hint as to the arc, which feels so much easier to predict.

Except it didn't really have much tedium to begin with (especially if it's the first time you're playing it), as it had 3 times fewer mudokons, as opposed to the copy pasted 200... Plus sometimes there was sometimes a puzzle reason to do so, e.g. first stockyards escape secret area that required you to do a few routes in a dangerous scrab territory

There's never a good puzzle reason to do so though. Every puzzle that requires you to lead multiple mudokons past the same hazard is tedious in AO, because the game is designed to force you to repeat the same navigation multiple times. It never feels good, because it's just challenge by repetition. NNT makes it so you only have to navigate the challenge once - much less tedious.

I thought you were listing positives... I hate the concept of quick saving (or saving anywhere) in a game like that with passion.

If you don't like it, you can always use the checkpoints, just like the original. But Quicksave is a quality of life feature that makes life so much easier for us mere mortals, and it's a major reason why AE feels so much more approachable than AO despite arguably having many more difficult puzzles to navigate.

Oh yeah, I chose hard and the UXBs and meatsaws became completely unpredictable (even though I played it after they patched the saws so they are no longer longer to CPU cycles). Nice "challenge". Not to mention UXBs are no longer synced to the beeps.

There are certainly some meat saws in the same that are downright bullshit, but the UXBs are absolutely predictable. The timing differs from the original, but it's not random.

Though if you got a good one and want to get the bad one you need to do the whole game again afaik./

Yeah, but I think there's probably a lot less people who a) get the good ending first time, and b) choose to go back to get the bad ending instead of just watching the cutscene on Youtube or something.

Sorry, I don't agree about the doing things well part.

Well frankly you're wrong. The game might not meet your expectations and it certainly has problems, but it's simply unfair to say it does nothing well.

I won't like NnT more just because of a threat of the art getting worse if I don't!

It's not meant to be a threat, but a reminder that there are far worse games than NNT out there. It seems silly to me to dislike NNT so much when it's clear that it's nowhere near as bad as many, many other games out there.

I am of a different opinion. While the original renders bear the marks of the game's era, I wouldn't pick - as far as the aethetics alone go - Scrabanian Temple from NnT over AO, due to the overambundance of bloom and overexposed light (and oversaturation).

This I just don't get. Maybe in Rupturefarms, but the Scrabanian Temple is the one part of the game where bloom and overexposed light works perfectly - it's a dark temple, in the middle of a desert, with the light from the setting sun outside streaming in through the windows. It's the one place in the game where the dynamic lighting really, really works.

I beat NnT three times, I think. With a couple-years-long break between the last attempts, and with as open mind as I could have on the last attempt. Sadly, my perception of it didn't change.

Yeah frankly I'm with STM on this one. I think it either says a lot about NNT or about you that you completed it and then came back to it two more times. Perhaps you don't hate it all that much after all...


Regardless, I can't convince you that a game you didn't like is Good Actually, but I at least hope that people can give NNT a bit more of a chance than "is it better than AO or completely irredeemable trash". It does a disservice to the game to write it off for its flaws, because I think there's still a lot there to enjoy, and there's a lot that can be learned from NNT about how the series could have progressed. I think one of the saddest things about Soulstorm is that it completely failed to learn from any of the lessons NNT had to teach.