Anachronism

I was expecting worse based on what I've heard the last few days. Obviously that clip alone isn't enough for a fair judgement, but the performance there looks maybe comparable to Breath of the Wild's original release with clearly more detailed asset quality than that game.

I've decided to set my Switch 2 expectations as average docked quality being slightly better than on a Steam Deck and portable being about the same or a little worse. Considering the Series S is the lesser version of what's already the least popular console, I don't have a lot of faith in the consistency of its port quality. But the Steam Deck can just run standard PC games at the level of a low-end computer. Of course it's still an inexact process, so I'm sure actual quality will vary wildly based on hardware requirements and the skill of the porting team, but since a Steam Deck can technically run things that you probably shouldn't even try to play on it, it might be a better indicator for whether it's even worth bringing something over to Switch 2.

This just makes me wish 3D TVs had caught on so we could get some full-featured 3DS remasters.

My rule is that any capital X not used as the roman numeral is pronounced as the letter in american english, while lowercase x is silent as established in the storied history of unoriginal account usernames. We already have & and + for "and" and the only context where I'll even consider "cross" is with a proper little floating ×.

I'm not sure whether to expect any more major updates for Switch releases, but I have been pushing X to the bottom of my backlog just in case. I played a ton of it back on Wii U, so I don't mind holding out a bit longer for a potential extra-definitive edition, at least until we see Molithsoft's next game.

I haven't retained much of anything from the bits of gameplay we've seen over the years, and I'm fully content with that. As you said, the game looks like more Hollow Knight, and that's all I need or even want to know before getting my hands on it.

@Suketoudara There sure are, and I've done most of them. I even found about a dozen more while doing my little sightseeing tour. But the whole point of my comment was that the tunnel vision required for driving stopped me from properly taking in anything that wasn't right in front of me. I was mainly talking about the game's visual design, but there's also a lot of fine detail in the music and even ambient sounds that can be hard to pick up over the engine noise and other sound effects that come with playing normally.

I've just discovered that my favorite way to explore this game is as a passenger. I wanted to hear more of the music and was as tired of driving around the open roads as everyone else, so I hitched a ride on a ramp truck facing sideways and just let it go while doing other things. Now after spending dozens of hours in World, I obviously knew it looked pretty good, but I didn't realize exactly how many tiny details and expansive vistas I was missing until I slowed down and stopped focusing on the road. I'm now convinced this game's visual design is on par with its amazing soundtrack. It's just a shame I can't properly enjoy it while...actually playing.

I won't mind if the whole game runs about that well docked, though since they haven't announced a release date, they can probably still make some improvements before launch. I doubt I'd ever want to play something as challenging as a FromSoft game in handheld anyway, but hopefully those who do won't suffer too badly for it.

I only just got the 3* Eevee. Think I'm forever doomed to be one set behind.

I think I'd be more interested if they just unapologetically stole the whole classic Disney aesthetic. It's not like the company's using it anymore, and while it was novel for a while, I'm getting pretty tired of all the dark, twisted versions of the things I grew up with. Forgotton Anne did a good job getting that tone right, though the animation style doesn't try to be quite as close to Disney's. I'm looking forward to playing the next game in that series whenever it makes its way onto the Switch.

Aside from a regular old physical edition, this seems to me like the best distribution option for Switch 2 games. You don't have to download the entire game just to play it, and you'll still have a playable version even if you somehow lose access to the upgrade. I hope more of the companies who refuse to pay up for Switch 2 carts choose this route instead.

@Johnny44 I reread the article looking to say "I couldn't find a single sentence I would be happy with until this part." Then I realized I was at the end. I'm tempted to rewrite the whole thing to prove a point, but considering that I've taken more than an hour just to write some of these comments, I think Gamescom would be over by the time I finished.

@BusterMove You're half right. I have plenty of room for improvement in every aspect I can think of. Your antagonism is misplaced though. You're trying to be supportive by saying Felix is good enough. I'm trying to be supportive by saying he has the potential to be better.

You might not care about good grammar, but for anyone with a career centered around speaking or writing, it's one of the most valuable skills you can have. Beyond that, life is only worth living as long as you have something to look forward to. If you see a goal someone might want to work toward, there's no reason not to point it out to them.

@BusterMove You can take it however you want, but I don't say things with the goal of insulting people. I intend to keep following Nintendo Life for the foreseeable future, so my options are to remain quietly frustrated with a large chunk of their video content until Felix improves naturally or leaves, or to speak up and have a slim chance of encouraging him to work on his own self-improvement now.

@Markatron84 I'd have to disagree. It's just as noticeable over on youtube. I try to watch all their videos, but unless the subject matter is particularly interesting, I have a hard time making it past the first couple minutes without Alex there to keep the conversation flowing smoothly.

I've just recently been dinged for "unconstructive" feedback, so I guess take my words with a grain of salt, but I would really recommend taking a course or two on grammar and sentence structure for your own professional development. I think your writing and videos do a pretty good job of covering all the important information (aside from the occasional digression into wild speculation) but your roundabout, redundant, and sometimes just awkward phrasing can make parsing out what you're trying to say a bit of a slog.

Anyway, I'm glad Air Riders is shaping up to be a proper successor to the original. I think this series almost has more in common wirh Mario Party than Mario Kart in that it's more about the fun and randomness of the moment to moment gameplay than actually trying to win.

So far, Air Riders looks to me like what Air Ride might have been if it was made today. I have little doubt it'll be a great game, though I would have liked to see a bit more innovation outside of just the visuals and quality of life features.

It's encouraging that visually demanding games like the Lucasfilm properties are making it to Switch 2, even if they are compromised compared to other platforms. It means anything that's not pushing the other consoles to their limits has a decent chance of being ported over mostly intact. If the average port gets away with just a 30 fps cap and DLSS to keep resolution in the HD range (and puts out a proper physical version) then I'll be more than content.

Listen, they're making up new words, not just randomly grabbing them from other languages the way english has traditionally done. They can either spell things phonetically or accept that people will pronounce them however they want.

@johnedwin And how many unpopular youtubers do you watch? Any of them managing 100k views a week are fully capable of making a living off their channel, especially if they have a patreon, sponsors, and merch on top of their regular ad revenue.

Even those who don't manage that are still superfans for even trying. People who spend their spare time talking about games on top of playing them rather than dedicating it to other entertainment or their social lives are already way more invested than the average player. Heck, even people like us who care enough to keep up with and comment on gaming news are a tiny minority of dedicated fans, and the people actually making content are a tiny minority within that tiny minority. The fact is they're just not a good barometer for the average person's gaming habits, so acting like most people have another console or gaming PC, or that most people would even notice the graphical differences without a direct comparison, is severely misguided.

@johnedwin That's not the point. Youtubers and streamers are the only people so obsessed with playing games that they managed to turn it into a job. They're the type of superfans who spend the most time and money on games, so obviously they're way more likely to have multiple consoles than some kid with a $5 allowance or regular adults who might not have time for even one game a month.

@johnedwin I feel like I really shouldn't have to explain this, but youtubers are not normal people. You might as well point at rock stars as proof that it's normal to own thousands of dollars of musical equipment.

@KITG_GROUP Most people don't own multiple gaming platforms. I stick with Nintendo for their exclusives, and if a port looks fun and has decent performance, I won't mind that the buttons on a character's shirt are hexagons instead of circles. Prices for ports usually drop to match other platforms pretty quickly too. The key cards are a whole other mess, but there's no need to throw out the proper physical games along with the bad ones.

@KayFiOS I'm a big fan of Air Ride, but I think they might have released that teaser more to announce Sakurai's return rather than the game itself.

@ImpromptuR Unless I'm missing something, right now it doesn't even have an official title in any language besides japanese, which they're probably not worried about most people outside of Japan reading. Maybe your local localisers will have you covered.

I do love some partical effects and some mysterious, mystical lands full of unknown wonders. That being said, I think the narration really does that trailer a disservice. Mysteries are a lot more exciting when there isn't someone actively telling you to go solve them, and the visuals and ambient sound would do a lot more to sell the game's atmosphere without someone talking over them.

I'm sure it's the usual "setting a legal precedent" kind of nonsense. It'd really be nice if the rest of us didn't have to tie ourselves in knots to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the rules.

Cool. While partner showcases usually feel like a collection of B and C tier games from bigger companies, indie worlds will often have a couple truly brilliant games from people we've never heard of before. Though hopefully we'll mostly get games from the more standard genres rather than the "interactive narrative experiences" and other artsy things these are sometimes flooded with.

@rvcolem1 If I had to guess, I'd say it's because A) Valve has built up a ton of good will and trust with their userbase, maybe more than Nintendo had even before all the Switch 2's controversies, B) they can always fall back on piracy without worrying about someone bricking their hardware, and C) they, like a lot of us, see key cards as a much worse option than even purely digital games.

I still haven't gotten to the first one after buying it a while back. It always seems to hang around fifth place on the list of rpgs I really should have played already. Hopefully by the time I finally finish it, this collection will be 75% off and I can consider whether or not it's worth the storage space.

Unless they passed it off to another team, we're probably a good ways away from a new 3D Mario, with big news for Mario Kart and Mario Party also probably out. That leaves 2D games, sports games, rpgs, remakes/remasters, and maybe some more side character spinoffs.

Though that gets me wondering which character will get their first game next. I don't think Bowser's ever been the true main character, but they might want to keep it that way. Beyond him, there's just the second or third fiddle characters like Daisy, Waluigi, Pauline, Rosalina, Bowser Jr, and Dixie Kong followed by the miscellanious enemies and NPCs.

@AllBLK People might use false hope to manipulate the optimists, but they also use false hopelessness to manipulate the pessimists. It's important to remember that things can always change, and they'll rarely do so in the way you want without some amount of effort.

@MasterGraveheart I feel like that quote is mixing up the argument of products vs art with the one of toys vs art, though honestly I think both are false dichotomies. Developers have to balance between making what they want to make, making things their audience wants to play, and making enough money to keep making things. Investors and businessmen often don't care about the first two and players don't care much about the first or last outside of dedicated fans, meanwhile developers sometimes get caught up in their own creative vision and end up disappointing everyone else. From his own actual quotes, and aside from what I assume is a decades long obsessive compulsion towards making Pikmin popular, I think Miyamoto generally tries to focus on the second one. More than trying to create something meaningful or profitable, he seems like he really just wants to make things fun.

My rule for regular Directs is to go in without expectations. My rule for Partner Directs is to go in expecting nothing. There have only been one or two of these that managed to do anything really exciting, so I'd rather be pleasantly surprised by one or two mildly interesting announcements than ensure my disappointment by even entertaining the possibility of these presentations containing something worth looking forward to.

@MasterGraveheart Oh no, is that going to be the new apocryphal Miyamoto quote? He's never said that, at least on record. Someone who previously worked with Miyamoto sort of said he thought that way (in japanese, where I'm not even sure the equivalent for the word product has the same connotation) and the article title about it on here paraphrased that quote in the most inflammatory way possible.

@Punisher67 My mostly physical/indie Switch 1 library so far takes up 1 TB. The Switch 2 still only supports up to 2 TB microsd express, which doesn't even exist yet and will likely cost half as much as the console. It might not even be possible to keep my entire Switch 2 library on hand by the end of the generation if there aren't proper physical options for most of these big third party games.

I'm not sure this has any effect on the tracks in online matchmaking. The VS and Wireless modes mentioned are only in private multiplayer or single player, and after running a few rounds online, I'm still not seeing a single traditional track.

It's a shame it came to this, but at least Atari isn't the worst company they could have gone with. Then again, I was saying the same thing about some of Microsoft's aquisitions a while back, so I guess we'll have to see if it works out for Thunderful.

That's pretty cool. My decade old tv doesn't even accept more than 1080p, so it'd be nice if every game worked that way.

That is some really judgemental language from both Dgb and the NL writer. From my perspective, I don't understand how you can care about something and not want guaranteed access to it. A large digital library, especially on the Switch/Switch 2, is expensive and inconvenient to maintain, and to be blunt, companies are flat out incapable of looking out for the best interests of all their customers, so deleting the games I've payed for and trusting Nintendo or anyone else to keep them available to me is an unacceptable risk. Playing any of the games from my childhood is as easy as picking them off a shelf, and I don't see a single good reason why that should be different for games coming out today or in the future.

Looking at the list of games they've worked on, it seems like they usually stick to five or less a year, but in 2023 they suddenly jumped up to fourteen before immediately dropping back down to three last year. The fact that they were even able to get enough people to handle that many projects is more surprising to me than their need to cut down on staff after returning to their usual pace.

I still can't believe how little actually leaked out from this. Even if they can't go up on youtube, I'm surprised there weren't a bunch of gameplay videos floating around the internet.

Darn. This game checks a lot of boxes for me, but it's just too blatantly degenerate to actually spend money on. Knock this down to a T rating and I'd be all over it.

I've been letting my points expire for a while, so I decided to burn them on this and a few other things. Now I've just got to decide when I'm actually going to pick up the game.

Glad they're being more strict about it. Hopefully they'll start working backwards and cut the Switch eshop down to 10000 or so games.

I really wish they'd add World's soundtrack, though maybe they specifically don't want to devalue the most entertaining part of their $80 sandbox.

@LastFootnote Well that might just be it then, though it'll be hard to tell exactly how big they are until someone does some in-depth testing. It's not like they're actually showing the raw voxel dimensions the way Minecraft does after all.

That would be completely unsurprising. With the theme park, the new game, and the character redesign, they're obviously putting a ton of effort into building up the DK brand lately. A movie is a logical next step. I'll be interested to see if they plan to do anything similar with the rest of their IP going forward.