Anachronism

This was one of the coolest moments of the show. I feel like it might be even more incredibly niche than the original Virtual Boy, but I'm still happy it exists.

I remember being a kid and deciding I didn't want these games because they didn't look like Mario Sunshine. I've since played rereleases of both and unfortunately I've still got to agree with mini me. Aside from 3D Land, linear 3D Marios are just not my thing.

To me, Metroidvania/Zelda map design has the perfect level of openness. You can get lost wandering for hours, but you know that every path you take will lead somewhere worth going. Maybe my favorite part is how each area transitions from a cycle of hesitant crawling forward and frantic fight or flight on first entry to a comfortably familiar stroll around the neighborhood by the time it's been fully explored. Out of all the games I've played, that level of personal progress augmented by the in-game progression and power-ups offers the most satisfying sense of growth and achievement.

That one was pretty funny. I think I noticed and barely managed to dodge, though the fights right above and below it gave me some trouble. It's definitely a mean trap, but given that there are traps EVERYWHERE in that area, I don't think it's truly unfair.

That sounds like an insane way to run a project. I can't even imagine the amount of bloat and feature creep you'd get from letting people implement anything they think is cool, or the amount of cutting back and polishing you'd have to do to get a functional game out of it. I'm sure there's a bit more structure to their strategy than just letting people do whatever they want, but however they manage it, the results speak for themselves.

Can't wait to see Hollow Knight's pre-prequel, Hollow Knight: The Hollow Knight. If we just keep going back, all these decaying ruins will have to be in good condition at some point.

That aside, I'm up for pretty much anything. We've got a generation's worth of flagship first party games ahead of us and proof that all but the most demanding third party games can run surprisingly well on Switch 2, so there are really too many possibilities to bother expecting anything specific.

Silksong is hard. It very much feels like its origin as DLC has boosted its expectations for player skill. I thought I might have missed a damage upgrade somewhere with how many hits most enemies take. All that said, I'm still having a great time with it. Those complaining about difficulty need to accept that games have no obligation to let them win. They are challenges first and foremost, and if you find the difficulty more frustrating than fun, that just means it's not your kind of game.

If I do have one complaint, it's that you can't fully remap the special attacks. Trying to press up or down on a stick while dodging attacks is more likely to damage me than the enemies and I tend to find moving with d-pads too uncomfortable and finicky, so I'd rather change those to a bumper/trigger+A/X/Y or just relegate some non-combat buttons to the d-pad/clicking sticks to free up dedicated buttons for each tool.

Those are possibly the most charming patch notes I've ever seen. Given Weta Workshop's reputation for quality outside of gaming, I hope they keep putting in the effort to turn this into something worthy of having their name on it.

Well I'm glad they didn't actually have the audacity to release an $80 key card, not that a $70 one is much better. It's cool that these big AAA releases are making it to Switch 2 at all (I'm really curious how it's going to handle that airport scene) but that just means my concerns are shifting from whether it's possible to whether it's sustainable. I'm not buying any of these key cards, and if I ever want to justify a good Switch 2 microsd, I can't afford to buy the digital versions for anywhere near full price either. Unless there's a much bigger demographic of rich <50-year-olds than I've been led to believe, I don't know who's going to pay for all these games.

I was trying to count frames in what looked like the more demanding sections, and though I can't say I'm particularly good at it, I didn't notice any major fps drops even picking through it at 1/4 speed. If there are any larger cities, jungles, or other good stress tests, I'd like to see how it manages in those areas, but overall I'm impressed with how well the game is holding up so far.

@Solid_Python That's honestly a lot better than I was expecting. Side-by-side comparisons make the downgrades much more obvious, but I could still easily overlook them while playing. Shame there's no physical version, but maybe I can pick it up 75% off in a few years.

Usually my backlog's too hefty and my wallet's too light to bother buying things at full price. But a game like Silksong at $20 is likely to be an exception.

Being able to put whoever you want in a wheelchair would invite a lot of...let's say "creative" uses that Nintendo likely wants nothing to do with. Plenty of important people these days are senior citizens, after all.

@Arawn93 I think technically they were in the lead for a bit with the Wii U, though if anything that just further proves your point. I still can't fathom why they were launching systems without a single flagship exclusive back then.

I remember thinking Child of Eden looked incredible back when it released. I wish I'd bought it and gotten some more use out of my Kinect, but I must have been too busy or too short on money at the time.

So you're saying I have an excuse to replay Mario's Super Picross? Now that's some great news!

That's an insane amount of effort. I've never really understood the internet's obsession with combining Zelda and Studio Ghibli, but this is an extremely impressive take on it.

@Smithicus I've had a hard time connecting with the genre's namesakes for the most part. With Metroid I have different issues depending on the entry, though I did enjoy Fusion. And Castlevania I somehow missed entirely and decided to start from the beginning, which is a bit of a slog. With the rest you basically managed to write out my to do list. Well, besides Curse of the Moon, which I played but couldn't enjoy too much because I really look for exploration and side activities in my metroidvanias. The others just haven't hit the discount threshold I use to keep my backlog in check.

My favorites aside from Hollow Knight are probably Steamworld Dig 2 and Blasphemous followed by Iconoclasts, Ori 2, and Astalon.

@Smithicus At this point it's not even about how good Hollow Knight is, and by the way, I'd gladly take a list of better metroidvanias because I've tried and failed to find them. Silksong's wave of hype has grown so high that even if it's a disaster, it'll still be the only thing people are talking about. Indies spread by word of mouth, and it's hard to get a word in edgewise in a crowd of people shouting through megaphones.

I can understand Nintendo wanting some secrecy before the console's reveal, but you'd think they could have just had a warehouse full of the things waiting to ship out once that had passed. I don't know if they really need much third party support at the moment, but I also don't see what they gain by delaying it.

@Lord I'm legitimately not sure it would be easier to get Wilds running well on Switch 2 than it would be to just make a new game. It could be a case like Cyberpunk where the original release was so poorly optimized that a good port would actually compare pretty favorably, but the years of work CD Projekt Red put into fixing their mess is nowhere near normal. World would probably be a lot easier, and I'd certainly like to give it a try. However, I don't see much point in trying to reunify the series when the next console generation is going to open a gap between Switch 2 and everything else just as wide as the one between Switch and PS5/Series X.

@Lord Do you really want to see Wilds running worse than the Series S version? Capcom's been happy to put out Monster Hunter games custom made for Nintendo's hardware for the last couple generations. I wouldn't be surprised if they skip ports entirely and just give us another new one.

@Truegamer79 I won't be buying any key cards, but I can at least tolerate buying digitally at a steep enough discount. My only other hope is that someone like Limited Run can work out how to get the rights and make a profit printing proper physical editions of all these games.

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.