Advancedcaveman

@Ryu_Niiyama so you'd be in favor of me using aI to streamline the process of getting your social security number and bank account info, good to know.

@axelhander Yea it is, you are saying AI shouldn't be restricted in any way. Since they are shoving it into cyber security now and all of these models get leaked constantly its only a matter of time before it can be used for identity theft purposes. Since you are in favor of doing literally nothing to restrict it you are in favor of it being used to steal your money, get your physical address ect.

@axelhander So you'd be in favor of it if I used AI to get your social security number and bank account info, good to know!

Lol what is delaying it going to do? This game literally looks like they just dropped a Sonic model into Fantasy Star Online. Its this highly stylized, nearly cubist character design running around in a generic, muddy realistic environment; total mismatch (and its not even the first time they've done that)

What on earth makes people think Sonic Team is even capable of making anything at all good ever? They've been working on this game for at least 4 years and what they have to show is a mess with exactly the same movement and animation problems they always have, plus it literally looks like a unity asset flip. They couldn't make any game good with any amount of development time; they need to be shut down and the IP needs to be sold to Nintendo or something.

For me the Steam Deck is just flat out more comfortable to use than the switch in handheld mode: the the analog sticks both sit in a spot where your thumbs naturally go when your hands are in a completely neutral posture where you're not using your muscles to move your thumbs into any particular position (something that no other handheld has ever done). The deck is huge but that means there's so much grip space at the bottom that it fills your hand like a regular gamepad. Its just a far more ergonomic device than the Switch, you have to bigger Joy Con alternatives like the Split Pad pro to equal this on the Switch.

Any Switch game that uses the right stick is unbearable to play in handheld mode because you have to crane your thumb down into an uncomfortable claw position (plus there's a lack of grip space at the bottom). If the buttons and D-pad had been set below the sticks on the Steam Deck they'd be in that same claw hand position, but instead they're up top where you don't have to strain your thumb. The touch pads are lower, but those don't require constant pressure to use and less thumb movement overall. So they designed the layout very smartly, placing everything at the best possible place within a limited amount of space.

Any FPS or 3rd person 3d game is just flat out more comfortable to play on the deck vs the Switch. The touchpads and grip buttons make any 1st or 3rd person shooter easier to play, and they make any type of point and click game more enjoyable than moving a cursor around with the stick (or awkwardly holding the device in one hand and pecking at the touch screen with your other hand)

A lot of indie games don't run well on the switch either; a lot of 3d indie games I own run at such low internal resolutions it's actually hard to see details: like everything is so pixelated you can barely enjoy the visuals. They also tend to run at 30 FPS instead of 60, this goes for some 2D games! And beyond all that there are simply some indie games that are not on consoles at all, they are only on PC. Plus there are old PC games that have never been on any portable system that will run on the deck and will be easy to control due to the smartly designed physical controls and the super easy to use remapping software.

So with all those actual specifics in mind the deck IS competition whether people like it or not. Not everyone really cares about triple a games because they're almost all miserable, depressing nightmares with disgustingly ugly mudhole graphics. A lot of people only care about Nintendo and indies at this point because they prefer stylized, appealing graphics, and a handheld that runs more indie games and runs them better does in fact have an edge over the switch.

I don't think it affects Nintendo at all. Nintendo has and will continue to chug along because they're the only large game company that still makes appealing stylized games with likable characters that feel like actual fun video games instead of miserable, depressing nightmares. More and more people are pretty much ignoring everything other than Nintendo and indies because all Sony and MS ever do is churn out dudebro games that are either desperately trying to look like the most boring movies ever or are grossly exploitative with micro-transactions or some mix of the two.

Like what is MS going to do with all these studio purchases? I'm going to laugh so hard when Starfield, this big exclusive game people are so excited about, turns out to be a blatant No Mans Sky clone designed around MTX and everyone hates it and it turns into a gigantic joke like Fallout 76. These companies are all trash, Microsoft is basically just hoovering up garbage and becoming a gigantic dump. Why would Nintendo even care? They have a captive audience with nowhere else to go. The only thing that actually "competes" with Nintendo is indies and the PC, and that's barely a competition so much as friendly coexistence.

Well that's probably what he should be doing since every one of his games is oversimplified down to the most arbitrarily minimal control scheme possible. He seems to want to make hyper simplistic arcade games where you only can perform a single action and have some kind of strange movement limitations. So phone games are a better fit.

All of Naka's games have the same or similar problems to Balan Wonderworld. They all have weird, bad controls, they are all weirdly oversimplified to the point where they feel like they're supposed to be coin op arcade games (or bite sized cell phone games for that matter) rather than console games with a long story mode you're supposed to spend several hours playing through. They are all EXTREMELY unpolished and janky but they always have really good music and really appealing character design that tricks people into thinking the game itself is good when its actually a complete mess.

@Lapses 3D is not easier nor more flexible; it is actually limited in a number of ways compared to 2d art; 2d art can get away with implied detail that just doesn't work in 3d without major trickery. 3d is also far less forgiving than 2d, which is why this game is actually decisive; its super janky looking 3d with a lot of really bad animation and not enough done to match the 2D concept art one to one. The 2d target art here is also just not as good as some of the original 2d promo/concept art for MW4, henceforth the 3d versions are worse because they're targeting worse 2d art. 3D is maybe cheaper but only because of that perception that its less valuable; I'm guessing they hired desperate 3d artists who where willing to work for less because 3d artists in general have their labor devalued and declared less worthy than 2d artists, ergo they are exploited more often. A lot of people, especially older people like the game's director, have unreasonable expectations for turnover rates on 3d art; they like you think its "easier" so it must take less time when the opposite is true: a 2d artist can just draw a background like the castle sequence in this game. But since its 3d every prop and character is its own project that takes as much time if not more than an entire illustration.

The reality here is that the game could have looked a lot better in 3d, it is possible to have character models that match the l old concept art for the Genesis game almost one to one and to use nicer rendering techniques and more skilled animators to create a game that wouldn't look janky and disappointing like this. The director is an old guy who doesn't understand 3d, thinks its less valuable and he's likely mismanaging the project.

This frankly doesn't look very good. The actual playable space is a few TINY little islands. They're really REALLY bland, sterile, empty environments, much like the rest of 3D World itself.

3D World was such a massive disappointment when they revealed it in 2013 that it single highhandedly caused me to never buy a Wii U. I see that game continues to be a huge source of disappointment: it really looks like this may have started as an expansion to Odyssey but they grinded it down it in order to bring it in line with the nondescript feel of 3D World.

It doesn't matter because Nintendo just doesn't do much anymore. Even before the pandemic they barely put out any games that are actually exciting. If you don't care about Fire Emblem or characters from Fire Emblem being put in Smash then Nintendo just isn't a very exciting developer anymore.

I think Nintendo would be better off without him the same way ID is doing a lot better now that John Carmack left. Now ID is making really amazing games instead of making tech demos that fulfill Carmack's random, arbitrary programing obsessions.

Miamoto just ruins games and makes junk projects at this point: he ruined Paper Mario by telling them to strip out all the elements that make Paper Mario good. He ruined Dinosaur Planet by making them slap the star fox license on it and I'm sure there where other original projects that would have been awesome but he either made them get tossed out for stupid nonsense reasons or made them slap an existing Nintendo IP on. He headed dumpster fire garbage games like Star Fox Zero and Wii Music.

Who knows when the last time he actually did anything good was, my guess is any recent good things he's been attributed to are actually him being given credit for someone else's ideas or work. He's MASSIVELY overrated: very much the Japanese equivalent of George Lucas, or John Carmack at the very least.

Uuuggh, they said it's an action adventure and then of course it's yet anther roguelike. I was going to buy this but nope.

There needs to be some kind of indie game fund where they support developers who are making games that aren't rogue-likes, souls-likes, metroidvanias, walking simulators or survival/crafting/farming things.

@hatch Those other funding options typically involve producers who want to make a bunch of changes to the project. I worked with an animation director who ended up going through kickstarter because he kept dealing with producers who wanted the main character in the movie changed from a girl to a guy.

Yes, a lot of people may have said no to this idea... because the people they went to wanted the characters to be changed from mice to some random thing; garden gnomes, dung beetles, animate Christmas trees, whatever random, arbitrary thing some producer wants. A lot of people likely go to kickstarter because its an alternative to having their project ruined by producers.

If I where in charge of Nintendo I would do this just to shut people up. Make some janky endless runner with mario sprites, charge 5 dollars for it, and load it up with microtransactions. If anyone complains, just say "This is what's popular on the ipad and you people kept telling us to do it."

Just have an intern cobble it together in an afternoon, and put the profits into a pub fund style thing to support independent developers who are trying to make high quality, full featured platformers for the eShop.

None of these are any good other than monkey island (and why is this being thrown in with mobile games? Its a remake of a PC game that's been ported to other platforms). Shadowgun is a pile of trash; its a generic, weedy clone of all the crappy cover hugging shooters they make nowadays and the rest of these are just like web browser games I remember playing 10 years ago.

Rune Radiers is one of the only native phone games I can think of off the top of my head that's really worth playing or being ported to a console. Maybe Horn, Lili & Mage Gauntlet if they where completely re-made to be less shallow and more controller oriented. Maybe Spider: The Secret of Bryce Mannor, but again they'd have to completely re-make it and turn it into some kind of actual game with things in it. You know, like actual gameplay variation where you're not just performing a single hyper simplistic action over and over again?

I personally don't think that changing the color of the Wii U would make a difference in this mass confusion situation. Calling it "Wii HD" or "Super Wii" wouldn't change the situation either.

Remember that retail map pack for Halo 2 that came out back in like 2004? I remember seing someone in a gamestop pick up the box, shout out loud (at the top of his lungs) that that it was Halo 3. The box said "Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack" in huge blue letters on the front. That's what people are like.

Well, Renegade Kid put their game on iOS where piracy is so bad it's forced developers to pull their games. You don't need any special parts or modifications to jailbreak a iOS device, and I'll often hear about games with 98% piracy rate.

A game called "Battle Dungeon" was recently pulled because the sheer amount of pirated copies was overwhelming the developers servers; so people can pirate iPhone games and still use the online functions.

I got really concerned when I tried this game in a store. For about 2 or 3 minutes it was great; just like Rayman Origins but with more vibrant graphics and a cool new character. But then it basically turned into an iphone game. The character starts autoscrolling and you're relegated to pecking at the touch screen and turning the controller to move platforms. I don't want this cellphone minigame BS; I want to play a platformer.

All iI know is Wind Waker looks better to me than basically everything on the PS3 & 360. I care about good graphics, not more graphics.

@Cranky Achievements are bad because they're causing a decline in the use of cheats, easter eggs and other unlockable secret things that actually have an affect on gameplay (because allowing that stuff would make it easier to get achievements).

Achievements and gamerscore are completely meaningless; they're just little jpeg thumbnails and numbers that go on the main menu of your console. A lot of people get games just to get this crap, and its leading to the overall degeneration of gameplay mechanics. Everything is becoming more and more about addiction rather than engaging the player on any gameplay or storytelling level.

Because games are increasingly focusing on being "addictive" rather than engaging, you're getting more and more microtransactions and "freemium" games which are structured entirely around trying to get you to spend money (not buy things, just spend money) rather than being interesting to play in any way.

Hey Nintendo, please make some awful stuff for idiots!

I think he's saying this because he feels like he has to appeal to the internet hivemind. I got Angry Birds back in 2009 the day it came out. Within a week I kind of just forgot about it. About a year and a half later the whole world goes ape for it for no reason, and it all seems so fake.

I don't believe people actually like Angry Birds; people are just so addicted to constantly using the internet that they end up in a sort of collective hivemind where they just automatically like whatever the largest number of other people like.

I have independent thoughts, and that can screw up the whole angry birds fanaticism thing. I've played Worms so the basic artillery mechanic in angry birds feels like a very limited trial and error thing. I've played all kinds of adventure games and platformers with great characters so the newgrounds looking characters and art in angry birds just aren't special in any way.

But the borg collective of society has arbitrarily decided it likes angry birds, it so we keep going on like a broken record. Here's another public figure namedropping it in the hopes that people don't say mean things on twitter.

I am so sick of shooters. I played craploads of them from the late 90s to about the mid 2000s, and at this point everything I used to like about them has been bred out. They all have the same exact mechanics and settings at this point with absolutely no variation in gameplay, graphics, or theme.

Every single shooter released is a military themed, gritty realistic CoD or GoW clone that literally plays like an FMV game. Shooters are so linear and driven by context sensitive hand holding at this point that it seems like all the actual gameplay is completely gone. The levels are just hallways cluttered with chest high walls and exploding barrels, with a bunch of showy in engine cutscenes playing in the skybox outside the level. There are quick time events and context sensitive "stand here and press the use button to finish a mission object or traverse over this obstacle" spots.

There is no strategy or dynamism or choice at all anymore. Regenerating health is said to increase the strategy, but all it does is reduce all the strategy in the entire game to one solitary action you repeat over and over again: hide behind a wall while the game pushes the reset button. Theres no persistence or contrast in the way you survive. Ammo isn't even a gameplay element anymore because now games are starting to feature unlimited ammo regenerating crates every 5 feet.

Modern shooters really do just feel like FMV games at this point. You're basically just shooting at objects moving over a static background and performing random button prompts. The only real difference is the ugly full motion video has been replaced with ugly gritty-realistic polygonal graphics.

Looks like this would make a really good platformer, too bad its a stretched out quick time event.

Nintendo can't make the 3DS download only because there are a lot of people who don't have internet access at home. A lot of them don't have it at all, some just can't afford a fast connection, some people don't have access to decent internet connections at all in their area. A lot of people also cannot afford smartphones and/or they don't have access to the right provider coverage. That lack of access does not exclude people from wanting to play games.

Get over it. The game buying populace of the world is not exclusive to LA and Tokyo. I'm amazed by the fact that game journalists don't seem to understand that. Go drive around small towns in the Midwest and then ask why the 3DS isn't download only.

And instead we got Nuts and Bolts, a vehicle based minigame collection.

"Disposable" is the perfect descriptor for most iOS games. I've done the whole "replace your DS/PSP with an iPod touch" deal for little over a year now and I have to agree with the sentiment that a lot of these games are actually over-priced at 1 dollar. Probably at least 70% of iOS games are literally smaller than an Atari 2600 (not to dis that system). They're just tiny little games where you only have one input (EG: here's a game where all you do is touch little icons, here's a game where all you do is tilt to dodge things). There's also a lot of problems with hardware/software fragmentation; games get broken by firmware upgrades and more and more games now require latter iPod/iPhone models. Some games that crash after you upgrade the firmware never get patched, and some of them just get pulled and re-released as new apps that you'd have to purchase again. So games are disposable in a very literal sense because they can easily be rendered unusable by hardware and OS version transitions.

There's no level design, progression, or depth of any kind. That's not to say all iOS games are like that, but it seems like the majority of the most popular, highest selling games are. The true best iOS games tend to be forgotten; they under sale to the point that a few of them have been permanently pulled from the app store as the developers have gone bankrupt. 99 cent price points are a risk because the is always going to rise to the top. I think (at least I really hope) that more people will have a similar experience to me: after a few hundred iOS games over the course of about a year they go back to the DS/PSP, and realize how utterly empty the grand majority of their app store purchases really are. After going back to the DS the magic of the app store has really worn away and I've realized its kind of a money sink game platform, save for a certain set of really good indy games that most people ignore.

I bought Shantae: Risky's Revenge and realized this one 12 dollar game is worth more than countless hundreds of iPhone games put together. If Angry Birds is the all consuming future of portable gaming then I'm not playing portable games any more. I got that game when it first came out in December 09, and promptly lost interest because its nothing but a microcosm of the mechanics in Worms. Now people won't shut up about it, and I don't understand what everyone is smoking (well, actually I do; its the old follow the leader situation where people convince themselves something is good because it's popular). My purchase of Angry Birds is basically how the app store works; you keep buying game because they only cost a dollar and then when they start adding up you step back and realize they add up to a lot in cost but very little in terms of content. Unfortunately people don't even seem to care about quality anymore. They just consume anything readily available.

There's an iPhone game exactly like this.

Achievements are little JPEG thumbnails; they are literally one of the most meaningless affects added to any medium ever created. I really can't fathom the level of psychosis that drives some people to pursue the act of trying to unlock achievements.

If you were unlocking cheat codes or secrets or other forms of tangible content that can actually affect the game then I could see the point. Achievements however are just little pictures accompanied by some on screen numbers. They don't do anything other than record the fact that you are playing a video game.

If you try to perform extremely difficult tasks in games to earn achievements, if you really really spend hours working at unlocking little JPEG images, I think you actually experiencing a clinical psychotic reaction.

This service is completely lame until they add GBA games.

What's the 3rd version of this game going to be? Pokemon Grey? Pokemon Crosshatch? Pokemon Halftone Pattern? Pokemon Dithering? Pokemon Error Diffusion?

This looks pretty neat but I would really rather play it on the Wii. Games where you have to juggle holding the device and holding the stylus to control the camera or an aiming reticule like this are a drag to play. Therein lies a ultimately a fundamental problem I have with the 3DS in general; I only really want to play simpler 2d games on handhelds.

Anything complicated and full 3d where you're dealing with camera control/aiming in edition to movement is better on a TV with a proper controller rather than being crammed onto a small slab shaped device with a tiny screen. Its just unerganomic and unnecessary.

I bet its another port of Rayman 2. That's fine; Rayman 2 is one of the greatest games ever made, but I wish they'd make a new one instead of all these Rabbids minigame collections. Make the damn 3d platformer Raving Rabbids was originally supposed to be...

Mario Galaxy has extremely linear levels and a fixed camera. There are only a few places where you are running around an open field where you have any camera control. The game frequently goes into a side scrolling mode for that matter. My understanding is that Epic Mickey has you running through more of those open fields where you frequently have multiple routes and separate areas to go to rather than going through a linear course. If the game’s levels are going to have a lot of these hub like sections then it needs a floating camera. There really isn’t a familiar way to control a floating camera if you go with a Wii remote and nunchuck scheme because you don’t have a second analogue stick.

Mario Galaxy and Epic Mickey have fundamentally different methods of level design so it’s not really a fair comparison. Mario Galaxy didn’t “get the camera right,” the truth game is so linear that it doesn’t need camera control roughly 90% of the time, so the camera is a non issue. There isn’t really a camera system in Mario Galaxy at all, just a series of pre framed shots and rare occasions where you’re in a more open location and thus you have a pseudo floating camera. The majority of modern video games also aren't "getting the camera right" either; Most games nowadays are hyper linear. You're not going through designed levels; you're basically on a mine kart witnessing canned cinematics and pre planed gameplay activities where you're input is virtually meaningless. Therefore they can use pre scripted cameras.

They could have gone with the classic controller for Epic Mickey, but part of the point of the game is that it’s inherently satisfying to aim the Wii remote pointer around the screen and spray paint that way. It’s a more fun system than having to hold down a button and go into a stationary aiming mode like Mario Sunshine. You can either have a fixed camera game with linear levels and no camera control or a more open game with direct camera control, and compromises have to be made when you’re working with a controller that lacks certain input layers. I don’t know why they didn’t bother to put in a lock-on system or make better concessions about controlling the camera but that’s basically the deal. There’s going to be issues like this as long as these 2 piece motion controllers lack that second analogue layer, or they don’t provide any way to lock the pointer in the center of the screen and “turn it off” like when you lift a mouse up.

I wish Warren Specter would simply explain himself clearly like that instead of spewing out a stream of nonsensical vagaries like: “Oh we have a hard time with the camera because our game is a fusion of role playing adventure elements in which you make moral choice role playing choices in this decision making role playing adventure story hybrid game of adventure role playing adventure and the camera is different in role playing adventure hybrid adventure role playing.” Or,

Just make a port of the virtual boy Warioland game (in color in everything) and call it a day. Don't emulate anything, don't sell the games, just make a 3DS specific port of that one game. Done.

So it's yet another Canabalt style running game. Not interested; make an actual platformer.

This is a really good game. I've played the iPhone version; it's basically a cross between lemmings a side scrolling character puzzle game.