@WhiteKnight: Having played through both games I've come to the conclusion that the combat and dungeon-crawling is very Zelda-esque, while the art and violence is very God of War like. It's kind of like a Zelda-GoW lovechild.
To add to the Zelda aspect involves finding chests where if you get 4 of something you get an extra piece of health, much like pieces of heart, that much at least seems ripped straight from Zelda
Seems odd that they can't have different services available for different regions? Nintendo of Australia probably won't have these restrictions once our R18+ rating comes on, and most of our services are run by Nintendo of Europe.
@farfromsleep: No problem, I encourage this kind of conversation, I guess it's what they mean by "talking point"
@tbd: In all honesty, I can see a possible reason why Nintendo might be doing it, law or otherwise. I do however think they could be more open about it, and even have a better implementation of what they're trying to achieve. As Sean said, it's ridiculous that his daughter can't play a 12+ game (if I remember correctly) but can view a 16+ video?
It needs to be better implemented.
While the eShop is something that parents can't control, I hope they have this system as a placeholder for parental controls for the eShop. Unfortunately there are thousands of parents out there who are ill informed by mainstream media (particularly current affairs television) and don't care what their kids play (the amount of times I see parents forking over money for the latest 15+ game for their primary school times is ridiculous).
I personally don't think Nintendo should need to implement this, but there's obviously a reason behind it.
@farfromsleep: I get your point, it's an unnecessary part of making any controversial game. Of course they're going to have legal teams to battle these cases, and while I'm not going to dig through every country's court records, if there's less than hundreds of cases over the years, high or low profile, I'd be incredibly surprised. As you said yourself, there's "lots" of scare stories, and while I don't know how big you consider "lots", I'd imagine it's more than a hundred.
My point is that I wish it never had to go to this, I'm not saying it's sending these companies bankrupt, but it is wasting their time. It's up to parents to stop playing the blame game, and that's the point I'm trying to make.
@Dambuster: And that's exactly what myself and my son did. This didn't stop him from having nightmares though. This kind of stuff is undpredictable in a child's mind, I'm doing a Bachelor of Early Childhood and Primary Education, and have just completed my sociology and psychology parts of my degree, so this kind of stuff is fresh in my mind . I'm not a psychologist by any means but I have talked in depth with professors about this subject as it interests me greatly, and I want to be able to better educate parents about such things as a teacher.
Also, you obviously misunderstood me, as I never said CoD caused anyone to shoot anybody, I actually said it's not likely to happen, and I'm an avid campaigner and voice of reason when it comes to parents blaming video games for such things.
A game such as CoD, Bioshock or Dark Souls is no more a cartoon than Schindler's List, Nightmare on Elm St, Saving Private Ryan or Scream. To a child it's all very realistic.
@farfromsleep: I can honestly say I didn't even need to look that up about GTA to know this as I was around when it first came out and the wave of controversy swept my high school! No franchise starts off as behemoth, I'm talking about the impact on the media these kinds of games have today, and the fact that they still sell, because there's an audience. I'm not sure what your counterpoint to what I said is though?
@Dambuster: There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, while hardly any kids are going to go out and massacre because they played CoD, stuff like this can affect their mental state.
I know my cousin let me watch a Freddy Krueger movie when I was around 8 years old and I wouldn't go to sleep for about a week, for instance. It's not the kind of stuff people need to expose kids to, it's why I stopped playing Bioshock, my son came out in the middle of the night while I was playing and saw me getting attacked by a Big Daddy, he promptly had nightmares about it. It's not cool.
@edhe: WhiteKnight hasn't said encouraging a wide range of games to be sold on the eShop ISN'T important. His entire point is Nintendo protecting themselves from parents who will complain that Call of Duty, ZombiU etc is damaging to little Jimmy's mental health.
Hell, it's those kinds of parents that inspired Matt Stone and Trey Parker to write the story to the South Park movie, and that was over ten years ago, still happens now.
@anster1983: Only idiots might buy the Sun, but its those idiots that get the biggest voice.
@madgear: Of course they are top selling games, they are big franchises guaranteed to sell. This hasn't stopped Rockstar, Midway and iD from copping hundreds of different unnecessary lawsuits over the years due to bad publicity, costing these companies millions of dollars, guilty or not.
@GameLord: You have good points, and I know a lot of ignorant parents out there unfortunately.
My parenting alone only works with my kids, not because I care more than other parents, it's because I grew up with and still use the kind of technology that my kids can access, and have dealt with it appropriately. They have absolutely no chance of playing any content I won't let them play on their 3DS or Wii U.
It comes down to parents needing to be better educated on this kind of thing too. If it wasn't for the ones who blame everything else but themselves, we wouldn't be in the situation we find ourselves in now, as WhiteKnight says.
As you said, if you know all the workarounds in the world then this isn't going to stop you either, your parents need to be more diligent. If your parents are ok with you playing ZombiU, then its fine, no need to worry.
If they're not ok with you playing games like ZombiU, then they'd have their reasons, which they've probably explained to you. Is it a case of you not caring what your parents think, a rebellious thing? I'm not poking fun at you or critisizing you, as a parent myself I'm interested to hear your thoughts. I personally played Mortal Kombat games before I was 15, I felt like I could handle it, and I did, perfectly fine, but my parents didn't care what I played, they let me listen to racist parody music while I grew up too.
It's seriously not up to Nintendo to provide this kind of "service". Like @theblackdragon said, they should have at least warned Europeans of this earlier.
As I said in the other one: I think it's relevant also to this discussion, just my thoughts.
This is borderline ridiculous.
It's up to parents to decide what kids can download. My kids have a 3DS each and both have parental locks, both my kids have an account on the eShop and they both have parental locks and they work like a charm (tested playing Darksiders II under their accounts to make sure it works).
The two other reasons this is ridiculous:
PEGI vs OFLC (not called this anymore but just for arguments sake) ZombiU is rated 18+ in Europe, we don't have an 18+ rating so it's rated 15+ here. Not sure if this affects us at all but my second point is that Australia is generally run by Nintendo of Europe and it's letting me access all the ZombiU content with no problems whatsoever.
It's up to parents to decide what kids can download. My kids have a 3DS each and both have parental locks, both my kids have an account on the eShop and they both have parental locks and they work like a charm (tested playing Darksiders II under their accounts to make sure it works).
The two other reasons this is ridiculous:
PEGI vs OFLC (not called this anymore but just for arguments sake) ZombiU is rated 18+ in Europe, we don't have an 18+ rating so it's rated 15+ here. Not sure if this affects us at all but my second point is that Australia is generally run by Nintendo of Europe and it's letting me access all the ZombiU content with no problems whatsoever.
I'm seriously baffled that they can still call the game Wipeout (I know it's the name of the TV show) while the Wipeout racing games exist, but Microsoft can't renew the Killer Instinct copyright because some TV show in America from 2005 had the same name?
@WhiteKnight: As I said, I haven't played a game that uses an online pass, Nintendo seems to have a greater deal with leniency, even so far as to saying that publishers can do what they want with their online model as far as gaming and DLC is concerned. By that regard I figured that companies such as EA and Ubisoft have forgone it for now, I could be completely wrong too but Nintendo just seems to be more lenient with things like this these days.
@WhiteKnight: Surely though it's up to the 3rd parties to supply their own online passes? I assumed EA didn't have the time to come up with the goods on launch titles, and possibly held them back for FIFA and ME3 since they were already available elsewhere and would have driven sales of the Wii U versions at least a little. I'd expect them to start putting online passes in their games once they come out at the same time as the PS3/360 versions. Though I could be wrong, I've never used an on-line pass so I'm basing it on my limited knowledge here.
@turtlelink, yes, for established consoles that have been on the market for 6 years.
Figures for a CoD on launch day one that coincides with the launch of the console that it is on, competing with the likes of Mario and ZombiU, then factor in that Black Ops II was available I believe 12 days prior to the Wii U launch on the other established consoles means that the Wii U version wasn't going to have strong figures on day one, and that it's unreasonable to expect it to.
As @AlmightyDerek pointed out the figure is growing every day.
@Damo: Fair enough, it's like some other site I saw once that said CODBLOPSII was doomed on the Wii U because only 50 or so people were playing it online at one time worldwide. This was on day one of the American release, so yeah, as if anyone'd be playing it on a launch title online at that point in time, plus the fact that they used worldwide figures when only America actually had the console.
I don't understand the 4 people playing CODBLOPSII? I haven't played it so is it like only 4 people can play online at once, or is he just being a bit of a douche about it?
The thing is, you don't even have to wait around for it, you can hit the cancel button, and it will download in the background while you play Nintendo Land or whatever!
I'm Australian, and I still don't understand the Britishness of this sentence
I can only guess that the team that made this game had last year's to work with and spent the entire time on the touch controls, rather than the new game modes, I'd imagine the next FIFA will be much better.
I had the... erm... pleasure... of playing this at the EB Expo and I can't believe it forced me to repeatedly throw a gridiron football into a whole for 5 MINUTES STRAIGHT, ARGH
@grayadamson: Yeah, apparently the update itself can cause freezing, some people can't even boot up their copy of Nintendo Land. There is supposed to be yet another patch for this soon though.
Though I'm more than happy without achievements, Nintendo really need to think that sometimes it's good to have something that's the same as an already existing console service.
From what I hear, though, sounds like they're doing a good job on the eShop, I'll find out in just over 3 hours!
Comments 1,760
Re: Review: Darksiders II (Wii U)
@WhiteKnight: Having played through both games I've come to the conclusion that the combat and dungeon-crawling is very Zelda-esque, while the art and violence is very God of War like. It's kind of like a Zelda-GoW lovechild.
To add to the Zelda aspect involves finding chests where if you get 4 of something you get an extra piece of health, much like pieces of heart, that much at least seems ripped straight from Zelda
Re: Annoyed About Age Restrictions On The Euro Wii U eShop? Blame Germany
Well there you go.
Seems odd that they can't have different services available for different regions? Nintendo of Australia probably won't have these restrictions once our R18+ rating comes on, and most of our services are run by Nintendo of Europe.
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@Raylax: I wish there was a like button here, I'd click it on your comment
Re: Mass Effect Trilogy Could Yet Come To Wii U
I might hold out on getting the trilogy on PS3 if it were to come out on Wii U. I have plenty to tide me over until such news may arrive.
Still not sure why they just didn't go for this with Straight Right to begin with, would have made more sense.
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@farfromsleep: No problem, I encourage this kind of conversation, I guess it's what they mean by "talking point"
@tbd: In all honesty, I can see a possible reason why Nintendo might be doing it, law or otherwise. I do however think they could be more open about it, and even have a better implementation of what they're trying to achieve. As Sean said, it's ridiculous that his daughter can't play a 12+ game (if I remember correctly) but can view a 16+ video?
It needs to be better implemented.
While the eShop is something that parents can't control, I hope they have this system as a placeholder for parental controls for the eShop. Unfortunately there are thousands of parents out there who are ill informed by mainstream media (particularly current affairs television) and don't care what their kids play (the amount of times I see parents forking over money for the latest 15+ game for their primary school times is ridiculous).
I personally don't think Nintendo should need to implement this, but there's obviously a reason behind it.
Can Tom get an interview with James over this?
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@farfromsleep: I get your point, it's an unnecessary part of making any controversial game. Of course they're going to have legal teams to battle these cases, and while I'm not going to dig through every country's court records, if there's less than hundreds of cases over the years, high or low profile, I'd be incredibly surprised. As you said yourself, there's "lots" of scare stories, and while I don't know how big you consider "lots", I'd imagine it's more than a hundred.
My point is that I wish it never had to go to this, I'm not saying it's sending these companies bankrupt, but it is wasting their time. It's up to parents to stop playing the blame game, and that's the point I'm trying to make.
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@Dambuster: And that's exactly what myself and my son did. This didn't stop him from having nightmares though. This kind of stuff is undpredictable in a child's mind, I'm doing a Bachelor of Early Childhood and Primary Education, and have just completed my sociology and psychology parts of my degree, so this kind of stuff is fresh in my mind . I'm not a psychologist by any means but I have talked in depth with professors about this subject as it interests me greatly, and I want to be able to better educate parents about such things as a teacher.
Also, you obviously misunderstood me, as I never said CoD caused anyone to shoot anybody, I actually said it's not likely to happen, and I'm an avid campaigner and voice of reason when it comes to parents blaming video games for such things.
A game such as CoD, Bioshock or Dark Souls is no more a cartoon than Schindler's List, Nightmare on Elm St, Saving Private Ryan or Scream. To a child it's all very realistic.
@farfromsleep: I can honestly say I didn't even need to look that up about GTA to know this as I was around when it first came out and the wave of controversy swept my high school! No franchise starts off as behemoth, I'm talking about the impact on the media these kinds of games have today, and the fact that they still sell, because there's an audience. I'm not sure what your counterpoint to what I said is though?
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
Of course I'd like to see what a Mr James Newton thinks about this policy
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@Dambuster: There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, while hardly any kids are going to go out and massacre because they played CoD, stuff like this can affect their mental state.
I know my cousin let me watch a Freddy Krueger movie when I was around 8 years old and I wouldn't go to sleep for about a week, for instance. It's not the kind of stuff people need to expose kids to, it's why I stopped playing Bioshock, my son came out in the middle of the night while I was playing and saw me getting attacked by a Big Daddy, he promptly had nightmares about it. It's not cool.
Re: Review: Christmas Wonderland 2 (DSiWare)
Ha, I thought the last line said "Don't bother unwrapping this one, just go take a dump"
Probably would be more fun.
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@edhe: WhiteKnight hasn't said encouraging a wide range of games to be sold on the eShop ISN'T important. His entire point is Nintendo protecting themselves from parents who will complain that Call of Duty, ZombiU etc is damaging to little Jimmy's mental health.
Hell, it's those kinds of parents that inspired Matt Stone and Trey Parker to write the story to the South Park movie, and that was over ten years ago, still happens now.
@anster1983: Only idiots might buy the Sun, but its those idiots that get the biggest voice.
@madgear: Of course they are top selling games, they are big franchises guaranteed to sell. This hasn't stopped Rockstar, Midway and iD from copping hundreds of different unnecessary lawsuits over the years due to bad publicity, costing these companies millions of dollars, guilty or not.
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@GameLord: You have good points, and I know a lot of ignorant parents out there unfortunately.
My parenting alone only works with my kids, not because I care more than other parents, it's because I grew up with and still use the kind of technology that my kids can access, and have dealt with it appropriately. They have absolutely no chance of playing any content I won't let them play on their 3DS or Wii U.
It comes down to parents needing to be better educated on this kind of thing too. If it wasn't for the ones who blame everything else but themselves, we wouldn't be in the situation we find ourselves in now, as WhiteKnight says.
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@GameLord08
As you said, if you know all the workarounds in the world then this isn't going to stop you either, your parents need to be more diligent. If your parents are ok with you playing ZombiU, then its fine, no need to worry.
If they're not ok with you playing games like ZombiU, then they'd have their reasons, which they've probably explained to you. Is it a case of you not caring what your parents think, a rebellious thing? I'm not poking fun at you or critisizing you, as a parent myself I'm interested to hear your thoughts. I personally played Mortal Kombat games before I was 15, I felt like I could handle it, and I did, perfectly fine, but my parents didn't care what I played, they let me listen to racist parody music while I grew up too.
It's seriously not up to Nintendo to provide this kind of "service". Like @theblackdragon said, they should have at least warned Europeans of this earlier.
Re: 18-Rated Content on Wii U eShop Only Accessible for Four Hours a Day
Just a thought
Europeans can set their console to be "Australian" upon initial setup right? Wouldn't that be a work around?
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
@mudjo: Not for games, there isn't. Not until next year.
Re: Talking Point: Time for Wii U to Treat Us Like Adults
As I said in the other one: I think it's relevant also to this discussion, just my thoughts.
This is borderline ridiculous.
It's up to parents to decide what kids can download. My kids have a 3DS each and both have parental locks, both my kids have an account on the eShop and they both have parental locks and they work like a charm (tested playing Darksiders II under their accounts to make sure it works).
The two other reasons this is ridiculous:
PEGI vs OFLC (not called this anymore but just for arguments sake)
ZombiU is rated 18+ in Europe, we don't have an 18+ rating so it's rated 15+ here. Not sure if this affects us at all but my second point is that Australia is generally run by Nintendo of Europe and it's letting me access all the ZombiU content with no problems whatsoever.
Re: 18-Rated Content on Wii U eShop Only Accessible for Four Hours a Day
This is borderline ridiculous.
It's up to parents to decide what kids can download. My kids have a 3DS each and both have parental locks, both my kids have an account on the eShop and they both have parental locks and they work like a charm (tested playing Darksiders II under their accounts to make sure it works).
The two other reasons this is ridiculous:
PEGI vs OFLC (not called this anymore but just for arguments sake)
ZombiU is rated 18+ in Europe, we don't have an 18+ rating so it's rated 15+ here. Not sure if this affects us at all but my second point is that Australia is generally run by Nintendo of Europe and it's letting me access all the ZombiU content with no problems whatsoever.
Re: Here's How PlayStation Boss Shuhei Yoshida Lovingly Trolled Nintendo
Now watch all the Nintendo Life users go and comment on it
Re: Here's How PlayStation Boss Shuhei Yoshida Lovingly Trolled Nintendo
Now let's go and troll the 16 people that still use PlayStation Home! (I'm not serious by the way).
This is pretty funny, actually. looks up Sony boss on Miiverse
Re: Review: Wipeout 3 (Wii U)
I'm seriously baffled that they can still call the game Wipeout (I know it's the name of the TV show) while the Wipeout racing games exist, but Microsoft can't renew the Killer Instinct copyright because some TV show in America from 2005 had the same name?
Re: Nintendo Enjoys Bumper North American Hardware Sales In November
Wow that's quite a lot of units overall
Re: Pachter: "I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant"
@Pierceton: Seriously, get an avatar, it's how we recognise people around here, lol.
Re: Pachter: "I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant"
@Pierceton: Probably
Re: Pachter: "I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant"
@WhiteKnight: As I said, I haven't played a game that uses an online pass, Nintendo seems to have a greater deal with leniency, even so far as to saying that publishers can do what they want with their online model as far as gaming and DLC is concerned. By that regard I figured that companies such as EA and Ubisoft have forgone it for now, I could be completely wrong too but Nintendo just seems to be more lenient with things like this these days.
Re: Pachter: "I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant"
@WhiteKnight: Surely though it's up to the 3rd parties to supply their own online passes? I assumed EA didn't have the time to come up with the goods on launch titles, and possibly held them back for FIFA and ME3 since they were already available elsewhere and would have driven sales of the Wii U versions at least a little. I'd expect them to start putting online passes in their games once they come out at the same time as the PS3/360 versions. Though I could be wrong, I've never used an on-line pass so I'm basing it on my limited knowledge here.
Re: Pachter: "I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant"
@turtlelink, yes, for established consoles that have been on the market for 6 years.
Figures for a CoD on launch day one that coincides with the launch of the console that it is on, competing with the likes of Mario and ZombiU, then factor in that Black Ops II was available I believe 12 days prior to the Wii U launch on the other established consoles means that the Wii U version wasn't going to have strong figures on day one, and that it's unreasonable to expect it to.
As @AlmightyDerek pointed out the figure is growing every day.
Re: Pachter: "I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant"
@Damo: Fair enough, it's like some other site I saw once that said CODBLOPSII was doomed on the Wii U because only 50 or so people were playing it online at one time worldwide. This was on day one of the American release, so yeah, as if anyone'd be playing it on a launch title online at that point in time, plus the fact that they used worldwide figures when only America actually had the console.
Re: Pachter: "I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant"
I don't understand the 4 people playing CODBLOPSII? I haven't played it so is it like only 4 people can play online at once, or is he just being a bit of a douche about it?
Re: Trine 2: Director's Cut on Wii U Outperforms Rival Consoles
They need to stop comparing games that were made for other consoles long ago and simply ported to the Wii U.
Now when a game comes out next year and has been built from the ground up for all three consoles I'd like to see a comparison then.
Re: What's On Your Game Boy Camera?
I just have a bunch of pictures of myself with googly eyes on mine, and I never owned the printer
Re: Reggie Fils-Aime Focused on Customer Feedback, Not Industry Critics
Yeah, the gaming industry hasn't exactly been kind to the Wii U.
There should be more sites like Nintendo Life, Aussie-Gamer, Vooks and D.Downloaded that aim to give their readers as much truth as possible.
I'm still seeing fresh reports that the day one update is 5 gigabytes.
Re: Wii U Update Will Be Available Out Of The Box Next Year
The thing is, you don't even have to wait around for it, you can hit the cancel button, and it will download in the background while you play Nintendo Land or whatever!
Re: Feature: Taking Off to the Miiverse
I love Miiverse
I just think they need a Wii U community, where you can talk about the console itself.
Re: You Can Use PlayStation 2 Pads On Your Wii U, Should You Want To
Eh, I'm actually happy with my Classic Controller Pro to be honest
I'll leave my PS controllers with my PS3
Re: Review: FIFA 13 (Wii U)
"That really isn't cricket"
I'm Australian, and I still don't understand the Britishness of this sentence
I can only guess that the team that made this game had last year's to work with and spent the entire time on the touch controls, rather than the new game modes, I'd imagine the next FIFA will be much better.
Re: uPlay App Now Available on Wii U eShop
I've only got Just Dance 4 but it offers alternate versions of the songs, that's cool. Only problem is uPlay seems down half the time.
I didn't even know it was on PS3, I should go take a look, I can't remember if I have any Ubisoft games on it.
Re: Review: Game Party Champions (Wii U)
@MrWalkieTalkie it will, oh trust me it will
Re: Review: Bloons TD 4 (DSiWare)
My son raves about the PC version of this he plays at school, too bad this sounds god awful
Re: Review: Game Party Champions (Wii U)
I had the... erm... pleasure... of playing this at the EB Expo and I can't believe it forced me to repeatedly throw a gridiron football into a whole for 5 MINUTES STRAIGHT, ARGH
Re: Review: Nintendo Land (Wii U)
Yeah it only took me just on an hour, the media blew the update thing WAY out of proportion unnecessarily
Re: Hardware Review: Wii U
@Mike1 yes it does
Re: Review: Nintendo Land (Wii U)
Managed to play it with the family for a solid 3 hours today with no crashing
Re: Your Wii U GamePad May Be More Responsive Than Your HDTV
i've had 3 different HDTVs (and seen plenty more) and I seriously can't see the latency in any of them.
Is this generally regarded as a #firstworldproblem?
Re: Review: Nintendo Land (Wii U)
@grayadamson: Yeah, apparently the update itself can cause freezing, some people can't even boot up their copy of Nintendo Land. There is supposed to be yet another patch for this soon though.
Re: Review: Nintendo Land (Wii U)
Oh my god this is the most in depth review I've read so far.
This is like 12 reviews in one!
Unfortunately my copy keeps freezing on Mario Chase, but I think nintendo's supposed to be working on a patch, it seems to be a common problem
Re: Iwata Explains Where The Name HAL Laboratory Came From
It's the same reason HAL was named in 2001: A Space Oddyssey
Re: Wii U Version Of 007 Legends Canned In Australia
I think it's a bit ridiculous that they just shove Daniel Craig over everything, ruins the whole Bond experience for me.
Re: Some Euro Wii U Buyers Reporting A Distinct Lack Of Nintendo Land In Their Premium Bundle
All known Wii Us from EB in Australia are fine thus far.
Re: Review: New Super Mario Bros. U (Wii U)
I always knew it'd be really 'Old' Super Mario Bros. U. But I have to say that's not a bad thing in my books.
I don't see Halo, COD or Elder Scrolls really changing the genre either
Re: Iwata: We Don't Want To Emulate Xbox Live and PSN
Though I'm more than happy without achievements, Nintendo really need to think that sometimes it's good to have something that's the same as an already existing console service.
From what I hear, though, sounds like they're doing a good job on the eShop, I'll find out in just over 3 hours!