Andee

What? This is an outrage — Nintendo should give us the dock for free.

@westman98 came here to say exactly this

They really nailed the look of that creepy vacant early-90s CG character design

Close Encounters of Every Kind

Nice

which has definitely put a bit of an asterisk on what should be a celebration.

Even nicer.

But yeah, the QoL options introduced in Bravely Default (primarily the encounter rate and the battle speed) make going back to traditional JRPGs an absolute slog at times.

Will this essentially be an enhanced version of PPT2? I really don't fancy double dipping on a game that already felt a bit superfluous after the first game, but if there's a cheap upgrade option I'll be all over it.

@Princess_Lilly yeah, nice to see the publishers actually acknowledging a genuine demand for the game rather than creating artificial scarcity/Fomo

Had no problem ordering mine (UK)

@Chocobo_Shepherd yeah — I didn't know the game was designed using traditional tank controls and changed to analogue at the last minute, but it absolutely shows.

@nessisonett soon, hopefully — gonna be all over that.

I don't know if it'll be compatible

@N00BiSH so good isn't it? It was one of the first games I played on PS4 and it holds up fantastically

Knowing that these games are a spiritual precursor to Grandia really bumped them up in my priority list — i'll almost certainly be picking them up sooner rather than later.

Got mine yesterday early afternoon and mulled it over for at least a minute before pulling the trigger — figured I'm gonna do it sooner or later anyway and I might as well get the Switch 1 trade in credit early on.

@IronMan30 It's a lot of fun, you can finish it pretty comfortably in around ten hours.

@MatoFilipovic I imagine it's people with too much money and/or too little sense. Wealthy parents with who don't know any better who just want to shut their spoilt kid up is one thing, but anyone paying over the odds for a PS5 for themselves back when there was scarcity needs a reality check. Of course the scalpers who are creating the situation in the first place need to get straight in the smelliest recess of the bin.

How did you come up with the name?

I wouldn't trust GAME to pre-order a can of sardines that was already pre-ordered.

@BaldB3lper78 yep, but in the confirmation email, it says "the payment will take place starting from seven days prior the official release date."

I'm quite surprised to see just how many commenters share my indifference towards Achievements. So many times I've seen articles about Trophies not being included in PlayStation re-releases and it being a dealbreaker in peoples' decision in picking the game up.

Got my direct Nintendo invite earlier this afternoon — I deliberated at least a good minute or so before pulling the trigger

The Switch OLED honestly didn't seem that massive an improvement to me — like someone had just cranked the contrast up (and I tend to play games in handheld with the contrast turned down anyway)

Yeah, when I first read the article that's what I feared it might be — hopefully it's not the case - otherwise what's even the point?

I really could never see the appeal of Napolean Dynamite — and Nacho Libre just felt like a pretty middling Jack Black-at-the-height-of-his-power vehicle

@StewdaMegaManNerd Oh I've not actually tried with speakers (the ones I have go via TV use an optical cable so there's no issue), but with earbuds (i've tried two different sets) it's comically bad.

@TbobB Yeah, Bluetooth audio on Switch is utterly unworkable — you're talking half a second of lag at least.

Cripes, don't give them ideas!

Yeah, to echo a lot of the feelings here, I'd love to see a straight remake more in the style of Resident Evil 4 than FFVII Remake/Rebirth

@littlegreenbob I've played two Animal Crossing games (the other being New Leaf), and I eventually burned out on both pretty rapidly, as there isn't really an awful lot to do once you just get into the daily grind, and then it just feels little more than a mobile clicker game.

@konicstar yeah, as much as I loved KatFL, the low frame rate for far away models became quite immersion-denting as it happened so frequently

@The-Chosen-one it's interesting that this is the reverse of how 8/16/32-Bit era games used to be — towards the end of their lives, devs were already well-acquainted with the hardware and would manage to get almost next-generation-level performances out of ageing consoles (although I imagine having bigger ROM size carts helped that...)

I can't imagine they're high priority games, but ones I would love to see get a performance boost would be Rune Factory 5 and Chess Ultra. The latter runs absolutely terribly (like 4-6 frames per second when a piece moves), and RF5 has some nausea-inducing frame stuttering when moving the camera around. And as far as I'm aware it's only on Switch and PC, so I would imagine the potential for it to run better must be baked into the code...

I think being first party Nintendo games (and insanely popular ones at that), BotW and TotK would be top of the priority list of getting an upgrade.

Also, the load times for Ori and Blind Forest were shockingly bad — although I found that they improved massively after moving them to internal storage...

I'll buy a beer.

Oh, unified inventory every time, please! Unless you have a really good design/narrative reason for it, individual inventories in RPGs are an absolute faff.

Genuinely curious, is there still no official line on the current/future status of Tenacious D? Or are they 100% over?

Yeah, January 2022.

@480frames-please That's a real shame — is that on the Switch then or across all platforms? If it's only the former, then hopefully the Switch 2 will have a better time running it

Has anyone encountered any screen/input lag when playing these (i'm on Switch)? I and II were okay as I recall, but with III I immediately noticed stuttering whilst sprinting across towns, and some really noticeable lag when inputting commands during battle.

This is the minorest of nitpicks, but I really miss the guitar neck-slide sound from the town theme in the PS1 version of FFI, but yeah across the board (well, so far at least — I'm just about to start IV), they look and sound awesome.

Working my way through the pixel remasters, and finished FFIII just days before they added the JP boost — ah well, still managed to beat it, but that final dungeon... yikes! How did anyone ever manage that back on the NES?

The whole trading system is broken beyond belief — you basically put out one of your cards, to one person, and hope beyond hope that they offer you one you haven't got in return? I'd much prefer it if I could just jettison all my dozens of duplicates for the currency that lets you just purchase cards outright.

I really do want to play this, but I'm happy to wait til Switch 2 comes out before I commit to a platform. The portability really goes a long way in crafting RPGs like Atelier.

Just a straight port (no NSO, let people buy the thing), please. Knowing how these things go it'll be a range of Funko Pops or something.

@BodkinDQ yeah, THUG1 was peak Tony Hawk, for me

@Anachronism 3 does, but 4 lets you roam around at your own pace, although contextual timers do kick in when you begin a mission

Absolutely — as Switch 2 is b/c there's literally no reason for me to keep it. I'll trade it in and get a couple of games with the credit.

@Whirlwound I find better and more interesting gaming deals in charity shops compared to GAME

I'm an analyst, here on analysiness.

Yeah, a simple hide/block filter would be handy. Although it puts the onus on the user to do it, and I fear Nintendo wouldn't go for it, as they'd ultimately see it as something that would lead to fewer sales if there are fewer games visible, but surely users would be more inclined to buy something decent if they didn't have to wade through hundreds of pages of garbage to get to it.

Yeah it's a slightly annoying paradox. It's like with comics - you should "support your artists and writers" by committing to expensive and fiddly single issues, because only then will they have enough resources to release a far more user-friendly trade volume. And the kicker is if you DON'T buy every issue, it'll get cancelled (or in the case of videogames, the physical edition will never come to be).

Yes please! I was well chuffed with the first collection so I'd snap this one up in a heartbeat. Very keen to revisit Angel of Darkness

Motion controls for the brush? Inspired. Waggle controls for attacking/running, though? Get right in the bin