Topic: Where are all the good games?

Now if only I could find something to play on my Vita

In addition to the PSP lineup?

Disgaea 3
Gravity Rush
Dynasty Warriors
Katamari
BlazBlue
Hustle Kings
Pure Chess
Escape Plan
Rayman Origins

... and those are just the exceptional games that I've personally played. Many more to come.

The Vita's lineup is sorely underappreciated.

i honestly don`t understand how people overate kid icarus uprising and dead or alive dimensions so much.
the control scheme on kid icarus is horrible, it`s better suited for FPS games. it doesn`t work well in 3rd person view. plus the constant button mashing gets a bit tedious after a while.
dead or alive has no proper arcade mode to speak of, i don`t think naming time trials as arcade mode really applies tbh.
the story mode is just aweful, i just skipped through the cut scenes to get to the next fight. and one round matches in this mode seems a bit odd IMO.
if there had been a proper arcade mode on this, it would easily be better than street fighter 4, playing against an opponent is fun, the in match graphics are of a high standard. it`s just that it felt like they missed out on great game by not including a proper arcade mode, and that it`s filled with a bunch of secondary game modes.

So, what's the difference between and arcade mode and a time trial in a fighting game, exactly?

Thanks for the input- I had totally forgot about Kid Icarus but I am waiting until its price comes down. It does look wonderful.
I will not buy eshop games until Nintendo change their ridiculous policies about locking games to one system rather than the account- if they have done that then I'll have a look.
I still think that after a year there should be at least ten games that average 90 in reviews but there aren't from what I could see. I really do struggle to get excited about the games that are currently out there. However New Super Mario 2, Paper Mario and Luigi's Mansion 2 all look superb. More games like these should have been released regularly during the last 18 months.
To the idiots who think I'm just a parent who can't find out about games for myself then try again; I've been playing games for thirty years and have owned nearly every system there is from an Atari 2600 to a Neo Geo AES; from a PC Engine Turbo Duo to an original NES (which I still have!) and even had a Virtual Boy at one point! I simply wanted to know what the opinions about the current games were from people like you. Again- thanks for the advice from those of you who have replied politely.
No- I don't buy iPad games in a store-where did I say that! Nonker!

Did you buy anything on your DSi or on the Wii?

I was just saying that if you buy games for iPad you should know about the eShop, which I guess you do.

Unfortunately for you, that's where the real gems are especially if you or your son are into retro games.

I know this may sound crazy, but maybe the folks at Nintendo aren't completely ignorant and actually understand this, and the reason they haven't done anything is because they can't. They can't just produce games out of thin air. I'm sure the App store wasn't as popular as it is now in it's first years. Just give the 3DS some time and soon it will become a reliable platform with a great selection of games.

The eShop is never going to have as many games as iOS. That's just simple fact. iOS costs almost nothing to develop for compared to the 3DS

I haven't had a single problem.
The controls in Kid Icarus: Uprising couldn't work better in my opinion.
Maybe you're just doing something wrong.

On topic, I'm pretty happy with what the 3DS has to offer so far.
I already have a pretty nice collection of 17 games which range from decent to awesome, and that's not including eShop titles.

And I wouldn't have it any other way. You know how hard it is to find something decent on the App Store? Granted, the eShop can be tricky too, but it'd only be worse with a zillion games to sort through.

There are tons of iOS games but most of them are garbage and the same thing. I prefer having controls with my games the iOS games can be hard to play if you have large fingers.

Technically speaking, the same could be said about any platform. It only looks worse because there are so many games in general on the App Store.

[/div]

Nintendo will never change their eshop policy. That's the way they are (it kind of sucks, I know. Heck, New Super Mario Bros. 2 will be their first retail download, while Sony has been doing that with their PSP for over half a decade).
Sorry to hand it to ya, but no system in existence has had that kind of metacritic success in just a year. Not a one. The Xbox 360 is nearing 7 years and it only has 38 games over a 90% on gamerankings.com, and only 3 of those were within a year of the system's launch (Gears of War, GRAW, and Oblivion) Only over time do we get incredible games. Over 80 range is a much more reasonable place to look, since generally games with over a 75 average are well worth buying, at least buy reviewer standards. Games that get an 8.5 or higher on sites are generally seen as must-buys by many people. On that note, one thing to always look for is why a game could be given the reviews it's given. If a game is most commonly given lower scores because of the lack of content, then it becomes much more enticing to purchase at a lower price point. I remember that was the case with Resident Evil: The Mercenaries, where I know no-one in their sane mind that would buy it at $40, but at half that it is a much better investment.
Sorry if you thought I was an idiot for assuming you were a parent looking for a game for your child because in your original post you said you were a parent looking for a game for your child. I never infered you were an idiot in your post. Forums allow for an easy way to ask people about what your looking for without going through that hassle that would take hours of looking for an entire game system library's quality. You can post something, do something you need to, and check back for results and make a decision. Again, I never meant to make you appear like a lazy parent in my original post. I apologize if that was the case.

well that's what happens when you just try to recreate the success of your console's games by releasing sequels to PS3 games only slightly less uncreative than NSMB2 for your new handheld. I've said this for forever, but did anyone listen? Nooo.

(note: Vita's games are probably already at least an equal to 3DS' localized games so no Nintendo bias strawman for you)

This

Time Trials have those annoying Time pressures.

Moomoo- I wasn't actually having a go at you in my last post but thanks for your reply. I tend to go off reviews in Edge as I've read it for twenty years and tend to agree with their scores on the whole. I don't agree with platforms not having more than ten stellar games in the first year though. To me the DS did and so did the Wii- hell the SNES did in its first few months! back in the 90s you could easily find ten out of ten games being released for that and the Mega Drive on a monthly basis. The 3DS output has me looking back to the Cube, which I loved as a platform but found the amazing games few and far between.
To those who knock ios as a viable gaming platform then you really don't know what you are talking about. I bought hundreds of pounds worth of VC games Wii/DS ware games priced between 5-8 pounds to find out that they were locked to one machine. Yes, I realise that it's an oversight on my behalf but if Sony can manage not to do this then so can Nintendo. Ios has some utterly amazing games starting at 69p and yes there are thousands that are awful but I would rather search through them than go to Grainger Games and see very little for the 3DS.

This is the first time in years that I have gone against Nintendo but I feel happier with the PSP and the PS3 than any NIntendo product at the moment. Just look at any Wii charts and you still see Mario Kart in the top ten. Hopefully the WiiU will bring me back but I remain sceptical.

My son, who is 8, plays only on Mario Kart 7(although he has Mario and Bit Trip but is really fussy)- and keeps going back to the DSi to play his older games. I still feel that after 18 months there should be far more ten games. Again- the reason why I started this thread was to find out what gamers now were enjoying. Thank you again to all the positive and helpful replies.

By the way- the best games ever on any platform are- Donkey Kong , Tempest 2000 (Atari Jaguar), Red Dead Redemption (PS3), Super Mario World (SNES)

I currently own DS, DSi, 3DS, PSP, SNES, NES, N64, PS3, XBOX360, NEO GEO pocket colour, ATARI lynx, NEO GEO CD (although sadly smashed by youngets child), gameboy pocket, iPad, iPod touch- so I honestly do still know a bit about games even though I'm canny old!!

Sorry for typos!

I've found the answer!

arcade mode is normaly where you beat your opponent in a best of three rounds match. the rounds are timed, but it`s not a necessity to beat you opponent as quick as possible. although, if a time runs out while both charecters still have energy left, the charecter with the most energy wins the round.
arcade mode usually has a set amount of charecters to defeat, mostly to reach the final boss(es) charecter(s).
time trial mode has you fight against a set amount of charecters that you can pick from. e.g 10, 20, 50, 100.
the idea is to pick an amount an clear your way through that amount of fighters in as little time as possible.
the set you pick with the higher amounts of fighters tend to get proggresively harder to defeat the further you go.
most time trial modes are single round matches.
depending on the game, some dev`s make time trials harder by only partialy re-filling your energy bar after each defeat of an opponent. so you need to make sure your defence is pretty strong.