Clod

...uh, sorry, but none of that really sounds like something I'd remotely want from a Pokemon game? Beyond that you've already HAD close-enough things like island tending in Sun/Moon and job applications in Sword/Shield, they were also neither fun nor interesting and likewise shelved. And what you have against Paldea in favor of an unexplored wilderness for you to manifest your destiny are two wildly different ideologies as to why you're in those game worlds. Paldea is, you know, modernly inhabited and the "reason" is to see the people and culture and established places, the latter is a game of Civilization. You could argue Paldea should be BETTER at showing off it's world building, but hunting Pokemon to set up little personal anarchist communes on the highways might be a bit out of character.

Plus I thought since, like, Tomb Raider 2013 we've been trying to get away from needless, tiring, derivative survival mechanics. Like how much things like the Hunger mechanic does nothing but hurt games like Minecraft. I've yet to see a crafting mechanic that actually made me want to bore my brains out to explore since, I dunno....discovering The Cow Level in Diablo II?

@Supaguy I have a few different things to say in response but first off immediately, that final sentence I think is going to be a key factor. One, ironically, I would find Switch Zelda to be "mediocre plot that goes on forever" by virtue of the open world dragging out progressing it rather than the actual plot taking a lot of screentime. Two though....nah? A bad game is still a more bad game than one that's just long if unmemorable. The gaming world will NOT forget Metroid: Other M. It moved on from every Bubsy game within a week of their launch.

As for the meat of the argument, yeah, a game doesn't need immediate replayability. Since I used it as an example, I'm replaying Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Trilogy currently. Have not touched either of the three since within a month of their initial releases, but fond memories of each stayed and it's been long enough to warrant a replay to see if their still good (Side note: Ezio the character good, Ezio and Leonardo golden interactions, gameplay kinda stale). But Switch Zelda never got those highs in any regard. I never think about it's soundtrack like one would Kingdom Hearts. I never relish it's puzzles like Metal Gear or too many point-and-clicks. And their story will never live up to Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask or Twilight Princess's. So...why replay it at all? The main draw is seeing different way Moblins die.

The argument against lore reminds me of how too often western comics want to drop everything ever established for some new blood, when all we needed was Superman to get his red trunks back. And in the process making things more convoluted down the line in their attempt to deescalate their complexity. No, sorry. They didn't even get "the basics" right. Freaking Smash Bros. is still showing off Switch Link's Triforce he no longer has. These games are so divorced it truly feels like they would have been better suited as a new IP. A minor fixable continuity error here or there is preferable to "Forget everything you know".

That all said, no negativity to you of course, thanks for the discourse. Enjoy it if and how you see fit.

I missed the party to get my words in edge-wise when this first dropped but eh, my two cents anyways because why not?

Playing through BotW and TotK, I noticed on both accounts that going through them felt more like an obligation to acknowledge the world and gameplay over the story being told. They're the best 6.5 to 7/10s out there I can recommend that'll eat up all your time initially to see that open world, but also they offer little desire to replay because the interactions and reactions are so basic to accommodate for how you can approach near anything from anywhere. This especially frustrated me once I got the magic up arrow hand power in TotK because its entire purpose of being was to shortcut the exploration of the game. And anyone who's played video games long enough knows how built-in the habit is to optimize gameplay habits, ask Pokemon fans who want something above brain dead challenge when Nuzlock exists.

So this drastic change in gameplay, still faltering, came at the expense of....mostly all of Zelda's identity since 1998? It baffles me how much people point to the NES original as a BotW contemporary and it reminds me of Zach Snyder fans pointing to three issues of Batman gunning people down in the 40's and claim that's the only canon that matters. Like, geez, where's Link's trademark hat? He's the Hero in Green. By my understanding not only is TotK not a real sequel to BotW as it follows a different canon, both aren't even tied to Hyrule Historia? Where's the freaking Triforce, Zelda? To say nothing of all these lore and trademarks missing is also the plot themselves of both being....meh at best? Above Zelda II I guess?

There's things to like about Ghibli Assassin's Creed and it's follow-up Nuts & Bolts. But BOY do they not remotely remind me of Zelda. I guess other than the Koroks and Beedle. They're fun.

I'm not the target audience. I guess I was the right age range when CoD4 came out in competition to Halo 3, but I gave the series its due diligence, beat it on their hardest mode, and never went back as it nor its multiplayer never gelled with me.

So that said, in the most professional way possible....dude, get over it, people have different tastes, many seemingly contradictory. On Nintendo's end alone my mind immediately jumps to Animal Crossing and Nu Doom fans crossing over and falling in love with each other just over their shared release date. There is no golden rule that liking one genre bans you from liking others, and the more available the game is to more hands the more folks can figure out for themselves if it's a fit for them or not. It's not going to affect either Nintendo or Xbox's brand recognition in the slightest. Because if it was, it was going to way back when I bought the BioShock collection again on Switch years ago.

The problem with Mega Evolution is it's made perfectly to fit into the Pokemon world's anime "My Friends Are My Power" narrative and feels like the logical evolution of the Pokemon brand as a whole, and should have continued essentially to ALL species lines. It's a fantastic bit of world building. But gameplay-wise it's at odds with the competitive even playing field mentality. It's MEANT to be your Ultima Weapon, the culmination of you and your monster's journey, it's an emotional bond Super Saiyan power boost hard baked into THE series known worldwide about making connections with your favorite monster, but some monsters are just made better than others to use when given this buff. Even if every single species of Pokemon out there got its own unique Mega Evolution right now, Mega Rayquaza would still tower over all of them. Because of course it would, the plot was literally written that it should and thus its stats reflect so. It's what Arceus was supposed to be.

Z-Moves went a whole other direction of being a super-limited regional culture thing lore-wise and just gave each playing a free kill button on one of the opponent's team. It's overall just....fine? But after that Game Freak seemed to have taken all the wrong notes casual plot-wise with gen 8 and dumped all their time into making it work the best for fighting fairness. So not only did they make it lore-wise super limited in available scope again to ever see outside Galar, they also gave it the most boring of backstory reasonings to happen at all and least interesting physical change possible.

So....yeah, Mega Evolution is obviously the best choice for the Pokemon brand as a whole. Duh. But it's incomplete and as-is abandoned like so many other Game Freak threads. So others have replaced its gameplay use and improved on the moment-to-moment gameplay but striped out the meaningfullness.

Picked up the DLC and I'm surprised that they got the cartoon's aesthetic to work in 3D. MLAATR's art being based on two super specific shows that have designs super NOT built for 3D, being itself a Nick copy of CN's Powerpuff Girls and their own inspiration from Astro Boy, them each having realized they have really awkward attempts at figuring out how their nonsensically-shaped bodies work in 3D, I thought for sure XJ-9's weird geometric "chin" always stabbing out like how Mickey Mouse's ears are always in profile would either looks like she has a jagged polygon on her face or else they would compromise with giving her some serious lockjaw.

But....the model looks really good in action. Huh. Well done Ludocity. This might actually be their best 2000's character rep in the game so far. Poor Aang and Danny just look weird.

@BulbasaurusRex It really, truly, absolutely does not align with Fusion's characterization, rather it flanderizes the little that was there, but off the top of my head, because I REALLY don't want to deep dive into Other M, like, at all again, the whole infamous number of encounters/deaths of Ridley junk. The whole backbone of the argument in Other M's favor of Samus' reaction to seeing his clone baby is tied to the implied fact that apparently half the number of encounters with the dragon were non-canon and thus you weren't supposed to consider her leaving him for dead in Primes 1 and 3 so as Other M's story can reach its conclusion that only Metroid 1 and Super Metroid ever happened.

Which....god, I hope I don't have to spell out how stupid retconning half your series titles, the most recent and popular ones of the time to boot is. Not this many years into the discussion about this game. Which it seems Nintendo was in agreement with as Samus Returns for the 3DS went out of its way to solidify the canonisty of the Prime titles.

I make no attempt to hide that I abhore both this game to even play and what it did to rewrite Metroid's history and future, but Reggie's more than a little off the mark here. I mean, I GUESS you can say the tutorial to beginning hours were indeed wrong, but not necessarily just because there was dialogue being exchanged. It was very evidently what said dialogue WAS and how it went against previous entries in the series, but not it being there conceptually was the issue.

If Metroid Prime 2 had a back-and-forth between Samus and U-Mos, well, it would tonally set the game in a different direction, admittingly, but it would not be a negative in and of itself as a concept. Especially since I can't imagine off the top of my head from that point specifically how they could manage to trip over their own continuity and characterization.

Not to continue the trend of being the downer in a SwSh thread, but another side to this; isn't this rather redundant by this point? The game has been out for years now, anyone and everyone intent on getting the thing has done so already and it can be found rather simply in the regular game as is. There isn't much special about this one other than I'm going to assume it's in one of those Cherish Balls, if you are such a hardcore collector to care about those.

They got a new generation coming literally this year. Seems a little late to be pushing for SwSh content NOW is all I'm saying. Especially some tournament mon from two years ago that will relatively shortly be out of style in the new game(s).

@Truegamer79 I won't lie, I simply don't recall that being an option because the game was too frustrating to continue playing after that first level and it's been years since last touching it or giving it a second thought. But I do recall the general first-person perspective of the gamepad screen, and surely you see how that alone won't suffice to play with when flying around in 3D space, yeah? You don't play Ace Combat and stick to first-person, you want that 3rd-person camera.

While all various games have their individual value being in here, I'd say the most useful GBA games they could get on here would be picking up where the 3DS dropped off and get the gen 3 Pokemon games up on here. Which of course are not the Pokemon games on the list. Oh well. They got as far as gen 2 with Crystal on the 3DS before, which while appreciated are now going away themselves. Which in Game Freak's rare defense, is not on them this time.

If for no other reason other than the typical game preservation reasoning, to give those Battle Frontier fans that have been pining for it since Pokemon Emerald, to get it back in some form. Because we're not realistically expecting it in gen 9 if it hasn't been a thing thus far. That and hey, if everything Kanto-related as far as Pokemon merch is involved is FireRed/LeafGreen based, might as well have it be playable on something more recent than a device from 2004, you know?

Cute idea to entertain for a minute, but there's not enough there in a number of places to make a movie out of and too many details in others to properly represent the properties being used. To say nothing of the general idea here if Nintendo would even want to pursue this with more films is essentially what the DCEU infamously tried/is trying to do with their major event film more-or-less kicking off their connecting film universe. It, uh, didn't go down smoothly.

It frankly sounds more like the guy just wants to do a Super Mario versus Sonic flick. Which hey, is a lot more concise and straight-forward to pull off and the characters play off each other magnitudes better than trying to make something out of Smash Bros. which is why they've already done a number of crossover games between them. And the Olympics for reasons I never understood but whatever, the last ones in Japan were "hosted" by Goku, Sailor Moon and Luffy so eh.

That all said, if you made it like the Lego Movie being all meta and junk representing the first Smash Bros. just being some kid playing with his Nintendo toys out of his toy chest, I guess you can hobble something out of that.

Celeste is, like, one of the handful genuine games of the decade of the 2010s, certainly to me at least. And hell, I didn't even connect with the apparent trans story message running in the background. I had run through the whole game 100% and the Farewell DLC before I connected the dots and had a legitimate "knocked off your feat and go "Oh"" moment of realization on what I overlooked. Hell I thought Madeline was climbing the mountain as a sort of self-repentance over some petty crime she holds herself dearly responsible over, because I am the big dumb.

It is just such a wonderfully done platformer with the perfect level of challenge, level design, atmosphere and an unfairly godly soundtrack. So it's great to see fan games like this with this much time and devotion put into them.

@NEStalgia Thank you for that, that gave me a good chuckle. Then a reminder that schadenfreude is based on favorited series neglecting their potential over profits. Ah well.

You know, it's funny bringing up that comparison because it is likewise hard to remain upset with 343 over individual stumbles because they too keep swapping around their staff per title. Some new blood shows up with a grand plan going off in some new sharp turn direction and each new head has to course correct going forward. It's easier to be upset with their stumbling over literally every endeavor since their inception as a whole, but it's not exactly fair when it's not the same people directing each game.

I do wonder sometimes how Pokemon would have turned out if it just....accepted its monumental popularity growth spurt, and stuck to being like they wanted originally and put in their manga? Or hell, conceptually even before that, and it's more akin to bug capturing but Jurassic Park. You don't see much of Nidokings trying to gore humans or straight-up murdering the opponent's monsters to get their trainer to stop since gen 1, huh? I think there's a T.V. Tropes page on series losing their edges quickly as popularity spikes.

Evidently, I don't know what this "Dead by Daylight" thing is. My first thoughts while watching the trailer was "Oh, so this is just a knock-off of Evolve, that failed concept by the Left 4 Dead folks".

Seeing this ties into Xenoverse 2, I'm surprised they didn't just make this an additional mode to that game. Like when they added the whole Yu-Gi-Oh card game thing to it. It's my understanding they're still making a large profit off Xenoverse 2 and this looks pretty asset reusing anyways.

@I-U Other M has been dissected, organized and thoroughly analyzed, for better or worse. The other two...just don't have much to offer to talk about? There's more to Federation Force than Hunters, but it mostly serves as a lead-in to the next game following that plot beat, which we now know to be the never-updated Prime 4. Otherwise it's about as essential to know as....I dunno, Kingdom Hearts Coded was to the KH series. The flip phone game that was delisted and just redone in a watchable cutscene mode on consoles only to be summarized ever more concisely in the 3DS title.

All you really need to know out of them is Hunters lets you know Samus isn't the only bounter hunter in the universe, which isn't really a surprise. And Federation Force implies Sylux from Hunters has more to deliver in the plot going forward. Which will likely be summarized in Prime 4 for all the people who didn't get FF on the 3DS.

I guess you can say FF added how much the Metroid universe loves soccer...?

@SalvorHardin Ok, bait or not, I've seen this kind of post go around on the YouTube side of Other M Defenders as of late a few times and it befuddles me so I'll bite out of annoyance.

WHY are we assuming Sakamoto would never want another 2D Metroid? The guy helped make the genre he loves. The whole point of Other M was to get his movie fetish out of his system with gameplay more skewed to being done by someone else who could do something in 3D space that he does not have experience in nor has shown to want to, example being him keeping his distance from the Prime series.

If you were vouching for him to make more Metroid Melodramas, then that I get, that's the thorn in everyone's side about Sakamoto that makes sense because that's explicitly what he won't back down from. How 100% right he is about Other M and nothing at all in any regard was done wrong about his story or could be outperformed. But all that he cared for gameplay-wise was he wanted to replicate his NES feelings. If anything, I'd imagine he's want to scrap 2.5 Metroidvanias in lieu of straight 2D pixel art games. Where he excels at.

@Diogmites You seem unnecessarily pent up. I mean no aggression to you and you're jumping for the jugular. Respectfully? Chillax. Because saying it's just your opinion was more than enough. Jumping at Turbo's confusion or attempting to insult over my clarification is silly.

As you wish though, the matter is "gotten over". Just rein it in a bit, yeah?

@Diogmites Those are some unusual grievances to have. Especially as Super and Fusion had cutscenes, no more constant than Samus Returns or Dread, Fusion had different camera angles during them, and I guess you could argue Metroid II had cutscenes if you stretch the definition. Also 2.5 graphics are an odd thing to be against. Unless you have poor eyesight where they get too blurry in which case certainly no offense intended.

I enjoy seeing the link to the previous article where I likewise said at the top "Can't just let a dead horse lie in its grave, huh?". Because ditto.

This really is a stretch. You're going for how the fact Other M had a story, thus because Dread had an unrelated story, one that actually relates to the whole Chozo thing that Other M went out of its way to ignore, never mind the quality differences.....they're one and same. The "lore soaked narrative" is liked because it's picking up on the actual lore people care about that Other M tarnished. Giving Other M credit for boss fights just outright ignores, like, the whole rest of the series. Hell the camera angles are from freaking Super Smash Bros.

@Dr_Lugae That take is a bit disingenuous. The sales lean a lot more on the Switch's much more booming popularity to the general mainstream than the more niche previous handhelds. Let's not pretend that while previous Nintendo handhelds do sell wonderfully to their demographic, the Switch shares the same "kid's handheld" stigma nearly as bad. The Switch's Pokemon title can and has been marketed to reach people new to Nintendo consoles, those who have been away from Pokemon since much earlier titles, and THEN to those who have followed the series more faithfully.

Removed from the whole of how good or bad SwSh was going to be, it was bound to sell more than expected out of the Game Boy to 3DS console range because they are putting themselves out to a larger market of people.

It's particularly hard to sympathize when the company takes every opportunity to trip themselves. When you reach the internet age and people can more readily comb through your homework and see your mistakes and shortcuts, a shrug doesn't quite settle for an answer. We still never got a follow-up on the freaking excuse WHY the monsters are missing from the game being shown to be an outright lie. Even a simple admission of it being too much to check for porting errors over the number of them, but that's not what they gave and stuck to.

And just to touch on the "sophisticated" and "grown-up" aspect, if they're implying the brain dead story beats they got now....maybe don't willingly actively aim to replicate the Red/Blue settup? You handed off the series twice for two Gamecube experimental titles and they completely floored the rest of the series' story simply because they tried something new. Hell, Coliseum has you as one of the bad guys going rogue while still doing bad deeds in a Robin Hood sort of way.

It's funny to see what a bit of a rise in popularity does since Samus Returns. Sakamoto got a similar question sent his way a few years ago on the then-new Castlevania anime on Netflix and its surge in popularity, and his answer paraphrased as "I'm not the right guy in the right mindset to have that be a thing". But now I guess he's on board for Other M 2 in the format he really seems to have wanted it to be from the get-go. Another M if you will.

I don't have any strong feelings on a movie possibility until there's actual concrete details, but I personally find it a MUCH better fit for Metroid's style to be an episodic show in the vein of Samurai Jack. Animated, of course, but that show also largely keeps its star 90% silent and kept in isolated atmospheric locations, showing its story more often than telling it.

A movie's....fine, I guess? Would be forced to be a bit more arthouse if they want to retell a main game's story.

The only real problem that arises, if still a big one to consider, is one the Metroid series has seen a number of times; its dwindling cast of stable reoccurring faces and enemies. Now, its managed this twice in a row now with both Fusion and Dread managing to drastically alter our main star and throwing in new bizarre enemies. But the former had the backing support of Prime and Dread had a heaping amount of fanbase desperation after an ungodly amount of time between titles and Samus Returns showing the company's competency in making a new Metroid title.

Minor spoilers, but to keep it as brief as possible, going forward from Metroid Dread, there's nothing else really left to be had of stay threads to explore going forward in the timeline at this point. Previous established main enemies are dead. Other M even flirted with the idea of bringing back Main Antagonist #1 and it wasn't taken the best to put it mildly. Even the series namesake is gone. I would not be surprised if going forward the series would have to rebrand as just "Samus: Game Title" simply because the titular creatures are gone and would only be referenced by Samus' relationship with them and gene splicing oddity background altering her. But there would be no more of the little green space jellyfish without undermining the stories of Super, Fusion and Dread.

Metroid is often unfairly compared to Halo due to their corresponding heights of popularity, but it kinda reminds me of their deal when they finished their trilogy and were forced to continue past the ending. You can probably squeeze a Metroid prequel reinventing the manga a la Halo did with their Reach novels, would probably scratch Sakamoto's Metal Gear-sized story itch he had to violently scratch with Other M, but going past that leaves me.....hesitant, if nothing else.

Everyone else has already made the same point by now, but yeah, I'll echo, what's there to spoil but potential benefits? There is no story to spoil, this is intentionally the same story as before without adjustments, it has been their whole advertising cycle for this thing. Oh no, Darth Vader is Luke's dad. Shock and awe.

What would be good to spoiled about is gameplay mechanics in what the company is restricting and/or upholding to their prior words. They said in the whole SwSh debacle that no future game will have Pokemon returning. Then they threw DLC at that game returning the majority. Do these remakes strictly adhere to just gen 4's pokedex? Do they have everyone returning postgame? If no and they're scattershotting their choices again, is there anyone between SwSh and BDSP that is wholly impossible to use in Generation 8?

And so-on and so-forth. This is just info that would want to be known up front.

While the whole nature theming makes complete sense, it still strikes me as odd to essentially be making Pikmin pets out of the many you'll be obtaining, seeing the source material is a survival RTS making use of them as expendable wave after wave of meat to throw at a problem. The fact they're considering Bulborbs but halting at the idea of killing off Pikmin rings weird in a Pikmin fan's ears when the food chain is a driving force of the games.

I'm just imagining them adding Bulbmin, but in a workaround manner away from the Pikmin 2 lore of them being parasites commanding Bulborb and their children to their deaths. Though....that'd be much cooler, add Bulborb raid bosses, beat them, take them over as Bulbmin and add them to your team as this game's version of Legendary Pokemon as Pokemon Go uses them.

It occurs to me, though this is a broad issue all hypothetical characters would have no matter where they originated from, a Smash clone roster like this that does contribute cartoon character would NEED voices if anyone else has them. And notably, cartoon characters ARE their voices, soundalikes usually don't quite fit the bill.

Take for example they throw in Steven Universe characters into this mix. That has a notable voicing cast. Well, they can probably manage DeeDee for Pearl I'm guessing, but the rest of the major cast? Estelle is probably going to be pretty hard to rope in outside an official Sugar-produced outing. Plus its main lead Steven, voiced by Zach Callison, has outgrown the voice as I recall.

And that's just a single show example that springs to mind, you're going to have that amongst the majority of the cast. Like....ok, another random example, sticking to Cartoon Network, Powerpuff Girls. Well, they had a reboot some years ago. The company explicitly excluded the original voices in favor of bringing in some new talent. But it pretty much bombed as I recall. Do you try to get the old cast back who've been burned by the company? Stick to the new ones that didn't take off?

Not to mention, simple sad fact on how old a number of these series are, a number of their voice talents are dead.

Mildly surprised that out of Cartoon Network's entire catalogue of megahits, you went with Johnny Bravo.

I'm not even digging on Johnny Bravo, enjoyed it plenty as a kid alongside the likes of Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls and Space Ghost. But, like.....it's just Johnny Bravo. The one that ended on a Bollywood movie because people were forgetting about it. Come on now.

Anyways, ironically a WB Smash clone can probably work a lot better HEAVILY leaning into the cartoon-physics aspect of your classic cartoons like Tom & Jerry than the recent Nick title, who couldn't go full-on goofy when they had to represent Avatar characters as well. That said, as soon as you throw in anything D.C. Comics taking itself at all remotely more serious than Adam West the whole idea goes out the window, so eh.

I don't particularly pay much attention to this award show, so fill me in because I'm a little bit confused. "Still Playing Award"? What exactly is the criteria here?

Because if it's ongoing online community, then shouldn't it go to, like, World of Warcraft or Runescape or something like that? Because they have Counter-Strike up on there, that's not at all a new game if that's the criteria.

@GrannyWhiskey You're trying to pidgeonhole essentially what you're both saying being the same thing, but you're trying to tie it to a specifically female attribute. A)That whole concept falls apart immediately at the fact Samus kills, like, billions of babies, within-the-minute newborns at that through various games. Monsters are monsters, it's a video game with enemies and they're the small variants.

But B) The baby metroid was saved for its practical purposes. This is directly referred to in the Super Metroid opening. You can expand that some parental sentimentality formed after the infant died, seeing that's the hard left turn Other M is hyper-focused on so that appears to be Sakamoto's intent in the end, but the whole of Super Metroid had nothing to do with motherly instincts.

Also not for nothing, if we were to follow Sakamoto's logic and Samus was genderswapt, he'd have the same post-mortem parental issues Other M placed on Samus. It's a general "parent sad over dead child", it's not strictly maternal.

@Crono1973 I don't mind posting my opinion of the title, because over a decade of it causing the decline of one of my favorite series out there, I have many opinions on the matter.

But we'd all be the better for it if we stopped trying to revive interest in the title that explicitly put the series on life support for years and seemingly straight-up killed it outright for reasons the head views specifically as its positives.

@Crono1973 Yeah, it's strange how questions proposed work like that. You have an open forum, people discuss it? Questions pending answers? Crazy.

I sure got egg on my face for writing this article and posting it, that I sure do. Again, crazy, man.

Don't act coy. The fact that it's a nuisance that this topic won't stay dead for frankly the better of the franchise by this point doesn't mean one stay's quiet when someone tries to propose that the collective opinions people have on something is wrong. Especially over contradicting actual hard info.

@Joeynator3000 See, what you're not seeing why people are getting bent out of shape over is specifically related to where you think this game takes place.

Other M takes place almost at the end of the series. Until Dread, it was the filler mold between Super and Fusion, ultimately there in that timezone to fill in why Ridley's body gets to Fusion at all. And, of course, said reasoning is the most flimsy handwave-y excuse any one of us could chuck at a wall and see if it sticks.

Her relation with Adam is both pretty much made up on the spot while also telling us to just believe he's been a big deal, whilst also undermining her to elevate him. When, frankly, who CARES about Adam?

And the Ridley deal, if nothing else, requires you to recontextualize every single time you beat him prior in the series entire, Samus off-screen apparently was curling up into a little ball weeping at his return. Insert Morph Ball joke here.

@moodycat Samus Returns was a rough testbed for what Dread became so yes, its combat over-reliance on the counter was annoying and they hadn't gotten bosses quite figured out yet, but the music remixes are....kinda of some of the best the series has gotten as a whole?

Unless you're a super-purist and ignore remixes altogether, you would be missing out skipping over Samus Returns' soundtrack.

Can't speak much on the Castlevania front much, but it seems a bit much to title them the ruiners of Castlevania when they did work on an already from the bat spin-off non-canon reboot universe....that Konami all the while wanted dead because it wasn't a casino game. Castlevania would have taken its series hibernation LoS or not simply because that's what Konami are these days.

@MegaVel91 The localization story you're talking about is the video that has been circulated somewhat recently within the Metroid fanbase, the past year-ish, called "The Other M That Never Was" or something like that as I recall without looking it up again. Haven't seen it in a while but I know what you're talking about.

The issue with that is that video is a fandubbing of his own reinterpretation to his own preference. Changes he makes are also not one-for-one with the Japanese version. To say nothing of this all in the end, the final redubbing is STILL NOT GOOD. Plus, as we know first-hand Sakamoto made changes for the English version to better fit his vision, all of this ultimately doesn't matter, because what the Japanese version says doesn't matter, it's not what he wanted. Even though what he wanted was clearly a foolish errand, dubbing the game himself in a language he does not understand.

The difference in Samus in official Other M English as Sakamoto dictated as the way he wants it being subservient to her new daddy father-figure forgetting the Chozo upbringing to the retranslated version of Samus being so in awe of Adam's presence she needed to prove to him she can kill herself in his name....is NOT a pleasant visage of a character upgrade.

Can't just let a dead horse lie in its grave, huh?

Other M offers nothing. The intended story does not align with the prior story beats. Samus really hasn't shown to care about the freaking baby metroid in the regard Other M REALLY wants to drill into your brain she does. She's the one who ditched the thing like the lost child it was, as per the character's freaking very words. The version of Adam as a live human offered nothing to help the A.I. one we already knew prior in Fusion, it just tried really hard to want to make us demonize him. Samus doesn't grow at all from this, and the receding that took place DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Forcing Other M to work like its narrative wants it to is akin to forcing Star Wars to accept the Holiday Special and Muppets crossovers as important canon for no real particular reason.

Gameplay if nothing else can be more open to one's own opinion on how much they like the rigidity of its 3D Ninja Gaiden transplanted onto 2D Ninja Gaiden. Both, of course, NOT being Metroid games so one would also likely be against it at a fundamental level as well, but whatever. That's a lot more easier to case an argument over liking or not than the story that wants nothing else to be canon towards it other than half the manga and handwaving why Ridley's body is in Fusion.

It's frankly disappointing to see this beast of a topic rise again. I thought we were past this. Even the Dread pre-release content made fun of Adam's authorization hubbub.

No, the early Pokemon games weren't exactly "difficult", we after all got through them all ourselves. What we remember being difficult was the surprise of a harder trainer challenge when unprepared and typically half-dead from battle and status aliments already.

Cynthia in her villa or Blue after Mt. Moon are not some insurmountable challenge when you're going around the second time through, but the first time is essentially finding the Ruby Weapon from FFVII in a random encounter.

Newer games have however considerably cut back on the wear-and-tear JRPG-ness of random encounters going from town to town drilled into the genre's very DNA since Dragon Quest. Poison doesn't actually poison you while traveling the world for example. And healing items/money are so plentiful you can drown in them compared to gens 1 and 2 especially.

Oi vey. This again?

It's extraordinarily simple. A yes/no option. Like you had it set before. No bells. No whistles. Nothing fancy. Just a gameplay option. One of many that used to be a option as before.

It's not even anger at this point. It's just befuddlement at removing work done already for individual player enjoyment.

Oh and yeah, TMs, sure, whatever.

Fairly simple. I use the Switch most actively where there's no internet. No internet, no cloud. No cloud, no buy.

Also ditto the "Not needing to buy it four times" folks. I wouldn't mind if they were playable offline as I can run through KH1 countless times and KH2 when I feel like speedrunning at least through the Roxas roadblock. But if I need to do it at home with a stable internet connection to begin with, I'd just boot up my PS4 or Xbox versions.

Or PS2 if I really want to glitch out with the form mode changing, heh.

Real shame, too. These are some of the greatest action RPG games out there, bar none.

@roy130390 Huh, I didn't get a notification you tagged me. Oh well, just as well I checked the thread anyways.

I personally find it hard to back up the opinion that it being a side game with a co-op focus should give it carte blanche to deviate from Metroid's established tone. Legend of Zelda had no qualms with Four Sword Adventure. As per its gameplay, sure, it was more or less Metroid Prime again. But a dumbed down version, and in the act of retooling it to be co-op focused reminded me more of Republic Commando's squad-based mechanics than the mainline Prime game's combat. All in all it was FINE, but wouldn't be even worth remembering if it were not for its ties to a major Nintendo franchise.

That all said, I'm not much for one to parrot critics. I rather hold my own opinions and play the stupid thing myself if it is in my circle of interest. Sometimes you get a Shantae or Celeste, sometimes you get a Halo 5 or an Other M. Federation Force isn't nearly that black a stain on the series, but I do personally find its arguably less interesting than freaking Prime Hunters in all regards outside literally just the post-credits set-up for a future game.

It was suggested in another comment that it should take another chance with another approach, and be more like Halo 3: ODST (And ironically Republic Commando) and frankly? Sure, go ahead Nintendo heads. But when the time for a spin-off is appropriate. And being a LOT more story and mystery driven like ODST and to an extent Republic Commando is going to require a lot more retooling that just a straight-up sequel to Federation Force.

Especially because for whatever reason they REALLY wanted to sell us all on the idea that space soccer with shooting the ball with guns is a big thing in Metroid. Evidently someone in charge was really into Grifball and Rocket League at the same time.

It always surprises me to see Federation Force has fans. Not in the "This is an atrocious affront to the Metroid name and sullies the very namesake!" kind of fanboy-ism, but in how much of a blank wet boring blanket the game is. There are three main things I can recall from my playthrough of the game.

One, it released alongside No Man's Sky and streamer Vinesauce's confusing but amusing attempt to play both simultaneously. Two, the art style and direction it went never actually sold me on these mechs being gargantuan in size like the ones out of Doom Eternal because literally every enemy you meet just so happens to be juiced up on some sci-fi technobabble to be the same size as you, so it was pretty much rendered moot. And three, it was kinda insulting that the first thing to try to reinvigorate the Metroid series after Other M's scarring damage was to make Samus the final boss. (Ok, maybe a LITTLE fanboy-ism. The series history sucks since Other M, m'kay?)

The story and general Metroid atmosphere was not anything to write home about and the general gameplay was just lifted from Republic Commando but less as good. It never struck me as even worth the outrage.

@KiraMoonvalley I'm not one of those diehard BotW fans that will die on the hill that it's the greatest game ever or anything, it's a mid-tier Zelda title, but of all the complaints held against it, "casualization" is not one I see often if at all that I can recall. It's as casual as a run through Ocarina of Time or Link to the Past was, and if nothing else Master Mode certainly was a good deal harder on the player.

Can't speak on FFXV, gave up on it way early on but not for any fault of the game, just busy with life at the time. Skyrim I can't argue against. It is casual, if albeit still fun.

Anyways, on topic, the main takeaway I get from this is they specify the dogs are to be redeemed only in SwSh. There hasn't been any hard confirmation on BDSP's pokedex being restricted just to gens 1-4 like the originals were, it was just the ongoing assumption. Hopeful thinking was Game Freak was going to continue the trend of each prior remake and expand the region's pokedex to cover later gens than their original counterparts, but if nothing else this generation, Game Freak have made it abundantly clear they want to kill that tradition. Oh well.

@Dafirelive Yes. The kid series with the direct implication in gen 4 that people mate with their Pokemon, where we get a whole city murdered off in gen 5 and is wholly based around the economy of dog fighting rings.

I'm not asking them to direct a freaking Elfen Lied episode of Pokemon. I'm just asking them when they present the idea themselves and tease further story to be had there, to commit to the story branch they presented. Nor am I asking them to visually directly depict Guzma getting his teeth kicked in by his dad. But getting kids media to lightly approach the topic of discussion at all in a manner they can digest is not a negative. It's Disney. It's Pixar. It's Steven Universe.

Which I'm sure some smart guy reading already has a snide remark on those being in fact negatives but shush you.

I find the most interesting bit here is that they diverged from the Pokemon art aesthetic that they've attached themselves to since gen 3's FireRed/LeafGreen where Sugamori really started to change his personal art preferences and it hasn't evolved much since. Which had always disappointed me personally, as his watercolor artwork still remains the best Pokemon has ever looked. Leon here now just looks like he's from the wrong anime.

Overall idea I'm on board for, but again, personal grievance is the gen 7 episode is freaking Ultra nonsense. Game Freak, I don't CARE about Necrosma and the Ultra titles. You had the superior story in base Sun and Moon, you had interesting lore nuggets of Guzma being physically abused by his father beating him with his golf clubs or the whole thing about Lillie being forced into the parental role reversal taking care of her mentally ill likewise-abusive mother, seeking medical treatment in Kanto that we never got to see. All the Ultra games contributed was to keep the gen 7 tedium and cut out all the interesting stuff and replaced it with aliens doing their own alien god disaster that we see every other gen on Earth anyways.

Eh. Oh well. What's done is done. I would have just preferred otherwise.

My gut feeling is "This is outright bad", but the more I think of it, the more I think it's just a weird choice due to their history? I tried TTG once or twice years ago, it simply is not a comedic show outside the pre-teen age range when its just doing what it initially set out to do, which is fine being just that, but TTG has a history it has willingly written about being very....petty, I suppose is the best term. It's very give-and-take with its online fandom hate-dom from what I've seen, but it has many multiple episodes of outright attacking its audience and even those not intending to watch the show, just taking random offensive potshots at people because....reasons?

That doesn't sound like something I imagine Nintendo wants out of their Mario film. The TTG people filling it with random throwaway bits of "Ooh, look, here's us aborting a Sonic easter egg to make a new SHINY Sonic. See, it's like what Hollywood did with THEIR Sonic film. GET IT!?!? Abortion's a funny word!"

....Or something idiotic like that. Look, I don't write the show, but that's typically how their nonsense goes from what I've seen of them randomly insulting Young Justice or ThunderCat fans out of the blue. I still don't get why they made fun of Panthro's voice actor's death.

And no, I have no opinion on the TTG movie's quality one way or the other because I have not seen it or have any intention to. Evidently the crew stepped up their game to some measurable degree for it though, so that's nice I guess.

@BloodNinja Your edits keep making me need to completely rewrite my response because they keep jumping to different extremes. Reel it in a bit, this isn't on the level of gratitude over fighting homelessness versus annoyance over misrepresenting a high-level employee's deeds.

Look, I'm not going to change your worldview that's a bit too extreme I'd say, but you do you, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But the guy did nothing wrong, or at the very least nothing wrong in this context, so maybe don't go after him over the wrong details?

Or do, what the hell. For the third time, it's not that big a deal and he will certainly get over it. I just find it impolite and in poor character.

@BloodNinja It has nothing to do with debts to be owed. Just simple basic humanity. Unless that's too much to expect?

You are not wrong on it being an expectation that comes with the position, but it falls on each and every one of us if we want to personally pursue that negative endeavor of slighting another just because they can.

Either way, do as you will. As I said as we all well know, it's not that big a deal. Logging off Twitter is also a plus, I never use the blasted thing.

@BloodNinja Not to speak on their behalf, but just to interject on my own take; so what?

Last year, we had people dogging on Junichi Masuda over him enjoying his own birthday, how dare he, and it wasn't cool then either. And what he did the year prior was I'd say a bigger deal than Sakurai's discomfort at his personal image's misuse by complete strangers. Or freaking playing the game his friend made and enjoying it, what a weird angle to attack him at? And I'm no fan of Masuda being a straight-up lier to Pokemon fans either. Heck I don't really follow much of Sakurai here either. Wish he would stop trying to get people to play Fire Emblem but it's hard to hate the guy over liking something and wishing to share his joy of it as well.

This isn't that big a deal in the long run, but some base level sympathy isn't that hard to share.

Man, this turned into a weird thread of reactions. Majority intentionally ignoring the point he was making and a handful demonizing the guy for being human. Yikes.

Guy simply said he doesn't like his face being used to push messages unrelated to him, for comedic effect or not. You'd figure that'd be a rational expectation.

@CheekyZelda Because they adopted the look to get more children to be interested in their shooter game, something of a genre typically more mature-oriented than at least SFII. Yet they still need to near copypaste Disney's likewise alteration to Cammy to have her show at all because the leotard's a-ok in a fighting game for kids but not the dumbed-down shooter.

Boy I can't wait for this Capcom collaboration to expand and to see Capcom's resident crossover queens and ONLY-crossover-material-because-new-games-are-not-allowed Morrigan and Felicia. Please do teach the kids all about Japan's first learning of the succubus and immediate application to pop culture.