BLD

Overwatch's April Fools is great. The new patch seems to be teasing upcoming PVE abilities, which are a lot of fun. And they also recorded several new joke voice lines for everyone's ultimates- laughing at them mid-match has gotten me killed a few times.

I'd sort of be OK with just the raid limit, but increasing their prices too sure is a convenient way to limit how many people play them, with no other motivation whatsoever, huh Niantic?

It's too early to say for sure, but I'm loving the Engage DLC so far. The meat of it will probably be the upcoming "Fell Xenologue" DLC, but the Emblems added by the current DLC are already very fun additions to the already broad array of strategies available in the base game. Each one has got me considering their implications and possible uses in a way that previous FE DLC simply never did.

Hopefully it ends as strongly as it's started.

Wait, didn't everyone used to get the 1up this way? I thought it was pretty obvious when I was a kid.

@Axecon

How does an NFT help anyone own anything?

@YoshiF2

So TPC is actively hostile towards players who get their game later, then? If you don't buy Pokemon games at launch, you're playing an inferior version where you have to live with the temptation of possibly choosing to import your old Pokemon?

And instead of solving this by forcing players to beat the game first or even complete the Pokedex first, they do this by... time-gating the feature. And, incidentally, the last several Pokemon games have been incomplete at launch. But that's unrelated to Home's delay, which is totally an artistic game dev decision that nobody but you understands, right?

@LEGEND_MARIOID @Sarkos @carlos82

I'd just like to say, something I feel goes overlooked in this review is you can turn on motion controls WITH dual stick mode. It's the "Camera" option under the dual stick control style. You can of course tune the gyro and stick sensitivities separately. I use the stick for turning Samus, and the gyro to adjust my aim at things already on screen. It works great with my pro controller, surpassing even Splatoon for me (which doesn't let you look up/down with the stick for some reason).

So yeah, motion controls on their own probably aren't the best option, but if you enjoy dual stick/gyro combos you're in luck.

@nessisonett

Please explain the lore of LEGO Bastion.

@sinndec

The story is definitely simpler and I never said otherwise.

It's also at least complete, and doesn't entirely contradict itself. Claude's route in Three Hopes has the most consistently godawful writing in the entire franchise, and yes that includes Fates.

The characters are every bit as complex, on the whole.

@Kirgo

Crimson flower literally ends several chapters early and never sees you actually fight the villains they built up the whole time.

2 of the other routes are literally like, the same route, but with one unexplained final boss replacing another.

And then Azure Moon is maybe 80% the same as those 2 routes, the main difference being it just has a couple less maps than either and never even pretends to explain the Slitherers.

All 3 routes of 3 Hopes are literally unfinished, by design, by admission in interviews.

They should've just left Engage unfinished. They did that for 3 Houses AND 3 Hopes, and it's tricked people into arguing for years that it's actually like, super deep and intentionally vague.

The characters in Engage are largely great too, but most people see one or two conversations about tea from a character like Celine and then write them off entirely.

"We want depth!" The community cries, but what they really want is someone to trauma dump their sad backstory on the first conversation so that they can feel like they're playing a "mature" game.

I mean, if you don't count the S ranks in Engage, I don't know you can say 3 Houses really had Marriage either.

@Ocaz

Lmao, good luck with that.

@Wexter

I agree with you entirely on this, although i do think Fates in particular had a pretty awful translation. A lot of stuff was really just changed "because they could".

Like, Harold- Sorry, Arthur - has a big H on his belt - that's his name, H for Harold. Named after Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, who was known for being very unlucky. So why change his name to Arthur?

Or Saizo and Beruka's C support, which went from a conversation about their lives as assassins for rival nations, to just "...". Literally removed the conversation and replaced it with Ellipses.

Or Effie's entire character being changed. She was a soft-spoken girl with a surprising appetite and hidden strength. Not a muscle-headed jock. You can certainly prefer one to the other, but it's not as if Western audiences wouldn't "get" Effie, she was never a complicated character.

Then there's Hisama's dub-induced pickle fetish, and just, ok enough.

At the time people who brought it up were ignored because "it's just Fates", but it's funny how many more people care now that Three Houses has been found to have significant issues in the English script that didn't exist in Japanese...

Fates is robbed, as usual, although I'm not sure if including all 3 in one helps it or not. Conquest's campaign is unrivaled for its gameplay, combining difficulty, variety, player agency, and fairness in a way every other FE has struggled with. For me, that's more than enough, and anyone complaining about the story can tell me what the heck Awakening is doing in first then (that and a few others, but that's a deeper discussion, Echoes...)

But then, Birthright is just "pretty good", IMO - interesting map designs for a new player, but a lack of difficulty makes the game a boring steamroll once you understand it. And Revelation has garbage maps.

But I mean, it's not like anyone is forcing you to play those, any more than you're forced to grind for hours to play Awakening's Apotheosis.

But it's all moot in the end, because the cowards at NintendoLife didn't even put the best FE game on this list. Where is Code Name S.T.E.A.M.???

@LillySantos

"It's right cause it was based on stolen information. You can't make "journalism" with classified material"

Found the politician.

Good guess, but none of those characters are gym leaders, actually.

I'm not convinced Microsoft even wants to make things exclusive. Has everyone forgotten how many games (like Minecraft) Microsoft has on other consoles? They seem more concerned with software and PC sales. The xbox is just like another model of PC to them, focused on games. They want it to sell, of course, but if their games will sell millions on other consoles, then why be stingy? It only hurts them to make their games exclusive by putting a separate $500+ price tag in front of them.

Maybe that a changes once they acquire AB and suddenly own half of the games ever made. Maybe at some critical mass point Microsoft closes its doors and forces you to buy their consoles or a PC. But I don't see this as a given in the slightest.

The journalistic use of "we" in this article is kind of distracting in an article about food tbh.

"We" bit in

"We" don't like Japanese mayo.

Did the entire NL crew fly to Japan and huddle around, sharing bites of each onigiri?

@westman98

Not in the wild area it didn't, especially not online. Granted, that wasn't most of the game, but SwSh's technical issues (poor graphics, time-stopping ladders) were memed on for a reason.

Hey now, Bottle Caps are actually valuable in Pokemon.

Can't wait until the people who blame this on Superhero movies google who Liam Hemsworth is

"Three Houses would never!" they say, while awkwardly shoving Manuela, Shamir, Judith, Cornelia and Kronya out of sight.

This is the reason Nintendo doesn't put out detailed patch notes. Because when a company actually does and is honest about how complex the game is and how many things could go wrong in weird edge cases, you get the peanut gallery in the comments section.

FWIW I've put about 20 hours into the game and haven't experienced any of these issues even though I know I've done most of the actions in question. I don't recall the reviews mentioning many bugs either?

So good on the devs for making so many fixes already, and good on them for being so transparent as to what exactly was fixed.

The virgin Pokenon vs the chad Rabbids XCOM game

I'm not "Boycotting" the game - I'm simply not interested in a Bayonetta game that replaces the leading role.

I'm not boycotting the game - I'm just not interested. How you gonna make a character action game, named after the character, and then randomly change their voice after 2 games? When I buy Bayonetta, I want Bayonetta. There are plenty of other action games out there that aren't Bayonetta, and this has just become one of those to me.

I should've recommended Code Name STEAM, but I doubt it'd have been selected anyway.

It's full of bangers tho

https://youtu.be/Oq0AcgCtwoY

3 guides and the first one doesn't even sound remotely complete?

This crap is why nobody buys these things lol

Eyyo, maybe Celica will finally be in a good game?

@spottedleaf

Huh? If we're accounting for voices that don't appear in game, doesn't that put Iono after the entire cast of the anime?

@a_brave_new_geek

Everything carries over, I'm still rocking Jazzy to this day.

@Keveseunie

It's going to fail because... it does the same thing every other f2p game does, but more generous?

Man, Valorant, Apex and COD sure have failed am I right?

Even Splatoon locks weapon loadouts behind a grind.

Got some games in last night with the bois, despite everything. Game is still fun as heck, as it was in the betas. Kiriko is a lot of fun, definitely difficult to use well but in a fun challenge sort of way.

Speaking of challenges, the Battle Pass fears have been drastically overblown. I'm already level 9 after a single short night of play - my brother was level 12. You could literally play a single couple-hour session of Overwatch per week and still unlock the new hero in half the duration of the battle pass. And people seem to be forgetting you can still get new heroes for free after the BP as well.

As for anyone wishing for this game to fail or saying the DDOS is deserved because it's Blizzard - tell me what anyone on Team 4 (The OW team) did to warrant your disgusting comments.

@Silly_G

Bad take.

The original game wouldn't exist without EVERYONE involved. Not just the level designers and "creatives" . The original artists who made the old designs (even if a remaster revamps them) the original programmers that built the engine (even if a remaster uses a new engine). They all deserve credit. The remaster being made now would not exist without the original game.

The only exception would be if perhaps it's an entire ground-up remake or retelling. Like Starfox to Starfox 64 or Zero (btw, what the heck, Starfox?). But that isn't the case here.

@Olkris

"Nintendo doesn't need to listen to hardcore players that clamor for higher tick rates. What's in their best interest is to make sure the game works reliably for people who can't afford better internet than McDonald's tier Wi-Fi."

You can do both. Referring back to Overwatch again, that game actually has adaptive tick rate per player that lowers if need be to suit someone's internet. Iirc in case of conflict the game favors the higher tick rate though,so you won't get shot by something you should have dodged because the shooter's tick rate was bad.

Idk what the actual effective tick rate for OW on Switch is. I can't find anything that says it isn't 60, but I imagine the adaptive system they use allows it to dip lower for people on McDonald's WiFi.

Anyway, while it's a joke to pay $60 for a game and a yearly sub for online for 16hz, in Splatoon's defense, the slow projectile spray nature of most weapons usually makes the crappy tick less noticeable.

But then, there are also times where to get hit by an inkstrike or something, and it's plain to see you should have been safe because your death marker is clearly outside the enemy ink circle.

@gcunit

Higher tick rate means more updates are shared between the players and the server. Things like your position, your health, where you're aiming, etc.

A loose way to put it might be, consider it the '"frame rate" of the server.

That's an absolute joke if so, but it explains a lot of deaths that shouldn't have happened.

For reference, Overwatch has about 4 times that tick rate at 63, and that's often considered low compared to games like Valorant with 128.

Mew is maaaaybe a support, but otherwise looks like no new supports or defenders. Maaaaybe Dodrio is a speedster, though?

Did you know?

Kirby inhales his enemies, and makes it later in the day.

@Takoda

I don't think it's lacking verticality compared to those games? Compared to 1, sure, but that's kinda inherent to 1'e design, there isn't much topping that.

That said, I was blown away when I decided to jump down from upper Aetia at one point. The whole dang map below is actually still loaded, meaning you seamlessly plummet all the way down. Really nice detail for how pointless it mostly is.

All Xenoblades are great and I'll throw hands with anyone who says otherwise.

@Dizzymario

Tell me you didn't play Triangle Strategy without telling me you didn't play Triangle Strategy.

The inciting incident of the game is literally the snowy northern nation attacking its southern neighbors. That country, Aesfrost, has peopled named things like "Svarog" and has people dressed like this:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/project-triangle-strategy/images/8/8a/Sycras_Transparent.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20220211002035

Idk how I feel about this.

It's cute and makes the final section a bit zig-zaggy, which I guess ultimately was the point.

But I'd argue the original pattern was something you could parse at a glance. It was always kinda a gamble, like "OK I just rounded the corner and I see the cars moving that way, do I have time to sneak past or do I take the slow but safe way around?"

Now it looks as if the car sometimes goes from a standstill to suddenly doing donuts. Still an effective hazard but not one you can predict as well.

I mean I do appreciate that this was certainly more time to animate than just cars going linearly back and forth, and that they listened to the fans... sort of. It's just not as good as the original pattern IMO.

It's like getting a very expensive Christmas gift you know immediately you'll never use.

@Browny

As well as one of the best, and one pretty decent one.

As a web dev, sites can absolutely take months to work on- but you don't normally take it down for weeks while you work on it?

I suspect it's security concerns, given recent news from other companies.

"Has a good d-pad"???

Which pro controller are you guys using, and can I have it?

Performance in this game really doesn't bother me the way it does in AoC. Yes, it should be locked, but like, AoC fluctuated just as much, but averaged a solid 10-15 fps lower and was no stranger to single-digit numbers.