Bolt_Strike

Glad to see that the NPCs aren't as annoying as they looked, that was my biggest concern. The open world might still not be great, but I love open world games so I might be willing to overlook this.

Pokemon Red and Blue when?

@Ralek85 Yeah. I did want an open world Mario Kart, but I feel like it would've been best as a subseries of Mario Kart instead of a new direction for the main series because I felt there might be a conflict with people who like traditional karting with carefully designed tracks for competitive players and more casual players that might want to cruise around the city and explore. Going forward that might still be the best option, have 2 Mario Karts per gen and trade off between a traditional linear Mario Kart in the vein of 8 and an open world Mario Kart World entry.

Why does no one involved in this game seem to understand the appeal of Metroid? It just boggles the mind how this game seems to be so aggressively anti-Metroid as possible. This isn't how you expand the audience of a niche IP.

@ShadLink Uhh no? It has a lot of lore with the scan logs, but you don't see much in the way of actual story events or dialogue.

I don't want every single ability spoiled, but they should show more than this. It's basically the same old Power Beam, Missiles, Morph Ball, etc. with a sprinkling of the bike and psychic abilities. That's not quite enough to drive a new game, show something else off and some later game staples (What about Super Missiles, Power Bombs, Boost Ball, Spider Ball, etc.?).

@AlonditeFE The demos have been mainly the tutorial and early game segments. Not the bike which is where the controversy is. Nintendo hasn't convinced the fanbase of the bike mechanics yet, hell look at this comment section and you don't really see positive comments in the vein of "the bike looks awesome and I'm excited to play it", it's more cautious optimism of "the rest of the game is still probably going to be great and the bike won't hurt it as much as we think". And I'm not saying for sure that the game is going to be bad and I hope I'm wrong, but if there's this much confusion and copium about it at this point in the pre-release cycle that's a potential red flag that sales and/or reception are probably not going to be good.

@Kraven And you guarantee this how? Like, it's a reasonable expectation that it should be more Metroidvania with the bike section being a Hyrule Field-esque location but how can you tell me with absolute, 100% certainty that this is more Metroidvania focused? Nintendo, not random fans, are the ones that need to be assuring us of this, and they're not doing a good job of it.

@N00BiSH It... kind of feels like they aren't with how hush-hush they're being on the game and refusing to show anything but small snippets of gameplay.

@ShadLink If this is a story based game Nintendo's truly failed to understand Metroid. Story is generally not the highlight of the game, the highlight is atmosphere, exploration, and the use of cool abilities to navigate the overworld. A Direct is needed to clarify the gameplay loop for this game. We have open world bike sections but we have no idea how they fit into the Metroidvania gameplay (and they could even conflict since both open world and Metroidvania have completely contrary design philosophies). We need a deep dive on the bike and what kind of role it plays in the game to show how it complements and enhances, rather than overwrites and conflicts with, the Metroidvania gameplay. Additionally, revealing whatever new upgrades there are in the game would be great.

@UltimateOtaku91 That's a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can't improve sales if you're not willing to market what you have. This is just guaranteeing that Metroid stays in the basement instead of growing it into an IP like the ones they favor.

@AlonditeFE Thing is it's not doing this game and the franchise any favors to make the core fans hesitate to want this. That can hurt sales, hesitating means less preorders and if you wait for the review and it does in fact turn out bad, then it's just less sales in general. And the overarching problem is that this series cannot afford a failure. It's a niche IP and it took 18 years to get this entry, if all that waiting results in a dud like this, what does that say for Metroid Prime 5? Is Metroid Prime going to go right back to the backburner? There's reasons to be concerned here.

@OmnitronVariant I doubt they're simply enjoying it. I think they just don't know they can do better and simply take whatever's front of mind.

There's also been theories proposed that parents are buying these as gifts and the children aren't specifically asking for it. I can definitely see this for the likes of Pokemon and Mario. Parents that aren't into gaming probably don't know what a good or bad game is like and aren't going to be inclined to do the research into whether or not the kid will like it. I suspect this is at least a factor if not the entire truth.

This was a dumb claim anyway. They should be suing Palworld for copyright infringement over the monster designs looking like A.I. generated amalgamations of Pokemon, not for overly-controlling patents over vague mechanics that a lot of other games already do.

@OmnitronVariant No, there's other examples outside of Pokemon of consumers making less than reasonable purchasing decisions. The NSMB games all sold 10+ million copies (except for U because the Wii U sold so poorly) despite being lazy rehashes. Same with CoD games. And then there's the gacha market which makes millions despite being far less bang for far more buck. Unfortunately there does seem to be a segment of the gaming industry, and a fairly significant one at that, that just mindlessly buys based on brand recognition and flashy marketing and doesn't pay attention in the slightest into how good the game actually is.

@somnambulance Ehh, I was around for Gen 4 and there wasn't nearly as much criticism for that game as other generations. There was some criticism about the overabundance of cross-gen evos and the lack of Fire types in DP, but it wasn't as toxic as it's been recently.

Additionally, I have not seen much complaints about Gen 7 shaking things up too much. I saw praise for that in fact (more for Ride Pokemon than Trials really, Ride Pokemon addressed the long held complaint towards needing HMs in your party, Trials didn't really move the needle much in terms of what people were getting sick of with gyms). The criticisms towards Gen 7 were more around the games focusing too much on story and not enough on map design, what people were irritated with was the entire game was basically a long guided tour where you proceed down a linear path and get stopped every few steps for the NPCs to yap at you, which is not really "shaking up the formula" and more a specific design philosophy that people hated (and it wasn't even a new one as BW and XY had similar issues, just to a lesser degree).

@charliecarrot Admittedly I haven't played Z-A, I'm going to buy it used when used copies start popping up because I don't believe this experience is worth a full $60/$70. However there is one main issue inherent to Z-A itself that's worthy of criticism and that's being restricted to Lumiose City. Lumiose City simply doesn't seem comparable in size, scope, or variety to full sized regions in other games and considering that we're paying the same amount of money, it makes Z-A look like a chintzy cash grab for a glorified beta test for real time battling. Like yes, I am very interested in real time battling mechanics, but I would want to use said mechanics in a full-fledged, AAA Pokemon adventure, not a singular city that's closer in size to $30 DLC areas than $60/$70 full regions. That's not an issue of criticisms of other games bleeding into other games, I don't have this criticism of other games because Game Freak has never done this before. It's a symptom of a larger problem of the games not being ambitious enough to justify being the $60-70 AAA console game the Switch Pokemon games are making themselves out to be.

@nukatha People actually liked the C-Gear? I found it a massive step down from the Poketch in DPPt. There was basically nothing to do with it unless you had a friend to play with, whereas the Poketch had multiple QoL apps that were dropped completely in BW and never really returned aside from remakes.

@BrazillianCara What would "more ambition" look like?

1. More side content, with similar quantities and types of side content to what we had in games like Platinum, HGSS, and BW2. They had entire side modes like Contests, the Pokeathlon, Pokestar Studios that disappeared in the 3DS games. There were also multiple battle facilities with unique styles of battling whereas nowadays we're lucky to even get a generic Battle Tower-esque facility. The games feel much emptier and more repetitive with that kind of content stripped away.
2. Greater interaction with the world and Pokemon. Make the world feel more alive than just a generic stretch of land with Pokemon wandering around doing almost nothing in it. Let us use our Pokemon to interact with the environment more instead of scripted interactions, a Pokemon game with a physics engine similar to BotW/TotK would be really fun and ambitious.
3. Greater graphical/technical polish. No trees with low-res textures that feel like something out of a GC game. No glitches that break the game or make it feel like a Sonic 06-esque mess.

@N00BiSH Nah, that's not the issue. Pokemon's experimented with new mechanics quite frequently throughout its history. Sun/Moon in fact was one of the more experimental entries in the franchise, it had Trials instead of Gym and replaced HMs with Ride Pokemon. There's been other entries like that as well. BW2, rather than being essentially a director's cut re-release with a handful of new content like the likes of Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum, was a full-fledged sequel that had a different story and tons of new areas and new content. Legends Arceus did a prequel set in the ancient past with more survival and crafting elements. Scarlet/Violet went open world. And now we have Z-A experimenting with real time battling. There's been multiple games' worth of experiments to the point where Switch Pokemon games feel like a COMPLETELY different experience to the original RBY. Lack of experimentation and original mechanics isn't the issue.

Pokemon's actual issue is a lack of ambition and resources. The recent games always feel like they're cutting corners in some way and Game Freak/TPC doesn't seem to want to devote the amount of time, money, and/or manpower needed to make the kind of AAA experience a full priced Switch/Switch 2 game deserves.

Yeah no, XY was the beginning of all of this (I would also argue BW, but not for reasons relevant to this discussion and at least BW2 was an ambitious followup, XY is the true origin of Pokemon's current problems). You could definitely see the cracks start to emerge then, content was starting to get cut, map designs were starting to get simplified, and corners felt like they were getting cut. The Switch generation only accelerated this.

What the issue is I think is that handhelds have dramatically increased in power and Pokemon has not scaled up its ambitions to match it. As recently as 2012 they were still making 2D sprite based games that would feel more at home on the SNES than the Wii and then on the 3DS they went 3D and then on the Switch they developed on console for the first time which was capable of large, open environments. Both leaps in technology that are notorious for causing headaches with developers needing to put more time, money, and manpower into the game to maximize what the hardware is capable of. TPC has largely avoided this and keeps trying to develop a 2025 Switch/Switch 2 game like a 1996 GB game and of course that's just not going to work. They need to get over themselves and put the effort and resources in. I'm not entirely sure which part of TPC is responsible (it's definitely not Nintendo because they do not operate like this. My guess is Creatures because they're far less involved in games than the other two and far more involved in merchandise, so they'd be more likely to want quick, cheap games pushed out the door to sell more merch junk, but it's hard to say), but whoever it is they need to get with the times. If not, I think Nintendo needs to rethink this arrangement because it's hurting the brand.

Yes, that's called monopolization. Where tf is antitrust enforcement?

@Stormkyleis Turned randomly, yes, moved around no. Trainers didn't have actual movement cycles until Gen 3, they just stood in one place and sometimes turned in a different direction (sometimes it was random, sometimes it was a consistent cycle).

New content is what was needed, not new cutscenes.

Yeah, this is not a good one for music, the hardware is way too archaic for the melodies to shine. Way too many screechy beeps and boops that assault my ears.

@Dom_31 I said "competitive" specifically. Online mystery gifts and such are one thing, but competitive is a completely different animal because it's not just FOMO but you're also adding a skill floor to obtain the reward.

@Dom_31 I don't recall another game that locked a specific Pokemon/form behind competitive, and certainly not a NEW Pokemon/form. That is a first for sure.

Yeah, this is exactly what I was afraid of. Nothing inherently wrong with putting emphasis on battling over exploration, but when this is a $70 game with DLC on the way, feeling like you've seen all there is to see from the game in a few hours makes it feel not worth it. Maybe I'll buy it used later on, but this game definitely doesn't seem to be worth the high price tag.

@Wewewi Yup, that's capitalism in a nutshell. You must be new here.

@BigBluePanda Not as thrilled as he'd be if they actually freaking put RBY on NSO.

@JohnnyOutOfHisMind So survival isn't a right? So by that logic I suppose murder is perfectly acceptable since it's a privilege to even live? Good luck running a functioning society like this.

Get real. This "nothing is handed to you" sort of attitude is wholly cruel and unnecessary. We can end world hunger in 5 years, but we choose not to because we (meaning the wealthy running our businesses and politics) have decided that short term profits for corporate executives are the first and only priority. In this case, this is absolutely Nintendo wanting cheaper customer service workers to give their NoJ executives another bonus. There's no need for these customer service workers to lose their jobs and potentially starve for that, it's just bottomless, unchecked greed.

I'd only want to return to Unova if it's more BW2 than BW1. BW1 is horribly overrated, it was the true beginning of the philosophy shift people hated from the 3DS games, it shoved new Pokemon down your throat yet made many of them Kanto expies, and was generally a step backwards for the series in every way except story (and even then the only thing REALLY good about the story is that it didn't end the same way as past game, there's still some issues with the story). Get that trash out of my sight, I never want to play it again. If I ever get the mood to go through Unova again, it'll be through a far more expansive take on Unova like BW2 which has far more Pokemon to catch, areas to explore, and sidequests to complete.

@NinjaWaddleDee Because it'd be tricky if not downright impossible to make an open world Metroidvania, unlike a regular old action adventure like Zelda. A key part of the Metroidvania formula is that you explore to obtain upgrades that open up new areas of the map. How can you both do that and let the player go in any direction and explore wherever they want? It's very difficult to imagine Metroid going open world without it losing its gameplay identity.

@Coalescence While older Metroid games do have a handful of open areas, the majority of the game was still linear. I notice Metroid games often seem to follow a bit of a hub-and-spoke map design, where there's several central, larger rooms with smaller, corridor rooms that branch off to various points of interests. And because Metroidvanias are built on finding new upgrades to open new areas, you're usually exploring the areas in a set order. An open world is a very different ballgame despite Metroid toying with some larger, open areas in the past, full open world games allow you to explore in any order. So it's not an open world if you have a large area to explore, but you have to explore a particular area first to get the Missiles, then explore a particular area to get the Morph Ball, etc. The two gameplay styles have opposing design philosophies and it's difficult to imagine both of them coexisting (and may be downright impossible for them to work together in a well-designed, polished manner). This is why there's a lot of concern about this reveal.

It's a very questionable direction for Metroid, but we haven't seen enough to make a judgment. We really need a Prime 4 Direct to explain the gameplay loop here.

@BrianJL That's kind of meaningless because you're already in end game while most of the game is linear. And even the end game isn't open world because there are distinct walls in the game. You can't just walk in any random direction and go anywhere you want, you're still following paths. If you don't have that, it's not an open world.

I am skeptical this will work. Metroidvanias aren't exactly compatible with open world because they have entirely contradictory progression systems. And yeah, it looks barren and empty. I'm definitely on the fence about this. We need a Prime 4 Direct to better explain how the game works.

Very sloppy guide-writing on Moonlight Canyon Labyrinth here guys, you neglected some key details that are necessary to find some of these. First of all, you should make note that the the large crystal is to the right of the first Starry, because you don't indicate where to actually find it.

Secondly, you don't indicate where to find Crash in the level and some people might have trouble finding it because it's pretty well-hidden. For those that don't know where Crash is, when you first head back outside go up the ladder and to where the green Star Coin is. There is a hidden passage to the left that wraps around to a hidden area with a pile of Star Coins and a Bomber on top of a cactus. Swallow the Bomber as it falls to get the Crash ability.

Wait so there's only 12 levels in this expansion? Ugggghhhh, that's much less value than I expected out of this expansion. I'd ask for a refund but I bought the upgrade pack and that's non-refundable.

Yeah I noticed, that, the direction you punch corresponds to where the face buttons are. B = down because it's on the bottom, Y = horizontally because it's on the left, and X = up because it's on the top. Really intuitive, helped me get used to the controls once I figured it out. Clever button mapping.

@Krisi I mean "disappointing" is a strong word, I would say more "meh", but this is a second racer when we just got Mario Kart World 2 months ago, and one that was a niche game that sold good but not great in its first entry and seems to be propped up by a vocal minority. They're really going to need to show something special for this game to grab the attention of more than just the handful of dedicated fans that want this, otherwise there are games that have much more to offer for the Switch 2.

@datamonkey Same. Other than Prime 4 I have nothing I'm particularly excited for after S2E Kirby and the Forgotten Land (maybe Z-A, but that's questionable). It's weird that they don't have any heavy hitters for the holiday season (the Switch 2's first holiday season at that) and are relying on niche games like Hyrule Warriors and Kirby Air Ride for that role, feels like they blew their load with Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza and now they have next to nothing.

@Bentleyma We have no confirmed release date for Prime 4. They've just been saying "2025" for a while and they're honestly running out of time to schedule it. Honestly I think if we don't get an update on Prime 4 soon (and even now I think there's a good chance this is true regardless at this point), the game's probably being delayed to 2026.

Meh. Kirby Air Ride is one I never really got into, although a friend did insist on playing it with me. It was okay but not quite hype. Short of something big this isn't the game I'm waiting for. Give me Prime 4 Direct, Mario 40th Anniversary Direct, or a general and then we'll talk.

Meh, Captain Toad was a great game, but I didn't find its music to be anything special.

Sounds like something they could make for a Labo or Ring Fit type of game, I could see this becoming real.

I enjoyed Forgotten Land and $20 for an entire second campaign feels like a reasonable ask, so yeah.

@JasonLee99 This. The lack of output has been very weird all this time.

They still haven't announced the Switch 2 version have they? Last I heard it was coming to "Nintendo" without specifying which Nintendo platform but it's painfully obvious it's Switch 2. They've been very quite for what's just a remaster.

Glad I skipped this, nothing for me here like every other Partner Showcase. Lacking games pretty much across the board so far this gen and it's very disappointing (not unexpected but still disappointing).

I most want to see Baldur's Gate 3, Yooka-Replaylee, and Genshin Impact.