Cromulent_JohnyCakes

@thiz even if the game is good?

A quote from one of the reviews
"No More Heroes 3 is certainly gorgeous, but the growing obsession with 4K, ultra-detailed, 60 frames-per-second visuals can be limiting to creative expression and at times even detrimental to artistic vision, especially when game devs court negativity by deliberately eschewing these sacrosanct demands."

I find the discourse surrounding video game performance odd. A film/tv critic might allow poor special effects to influence their review if the film itself is bad but would probably not bat an eye if the product was good..

Take season 3 of twin peaks. The special effects are laughably bad at points but the quality of the series as a whole is so high that it gets ignored.

With certain games I can understand the sharp focus on performance and visuals. If I am playing a competitive shooter or fighting game then poor optimization is going to impact my ability to play the game. With NMH3 combat is very smooth; most of the poor performance seems to land in the open world segments which doesn't demand much from the player beyond moving travis around. Audio glitches almost always get fixed so I don't even see that as a bad thing.

If a game is good a game is good. Give me a flawed personal experience than another overly polished AAA product with no soul.

@thiz have you checked out recent footage or the stuff they've been showing over the last month? Performance has been greatly improved. Combat is basically 60 and while the open world does have some rough patches it seems to get around 30.

Reviews are all over the place... which is just how I like my Suda games. Some will love it, others will hate it. Ben over at easy allies claims this is one of the best games he's played all year... something I didn't expect to hear from any review outlet. Excited to see for myself tomorrow!

@AtlanteanMan I get the feeling switch will still dominate holiday 2021, but it may be its last. Their offering this year, while not as good as previous years, still contains a mario party, a pokemon game, and a new model. Factor in sony literally having nothing to show this fall should help too. Surprisingly, it's Microsoft that has a few heavy hitters this year. When's the last time that happened?

Bayo 3 could be vaporware... or not. Most people were screaming that SMT 5 was scrapped after four years or radio silence, but then last September it popped up and now is moments away from release.

@johnvboy Any positivity on the internet would be a welcome change.

To the nay-sayers credit, gamefreak has been slipping lately so I get the frustration but I do think this looks like a big step in the right direction.

Genuinely shocked by the negativity in this thread. Admittedly, gamefreak has done a lot to lose respect with its customers but this does look promising. Also, To all the people claiming this looks like an n64 game, show me footage of one... literally one open-world n64 game, or hell, even an open-world ps2 game that looks better than this running on native hardware.

As for pokemon textures, why are some people comparing this to the movie and pokken? While pikachu looked great most pokemon looked awful in the movie with more texturing. And expecting a game to have the same graphical fidelity as models in a fighting game is absurd. Even on cutting edge tech character models in fighting games will always be better than models in literally all other genres.

Better late than never. Sadly, 3 isn't as good as the others. 2 and genesis (with a friend) are the highlights of this series.

@luxoricious It certainly doesn't deserve all the hate it gets. Most of the vitriol comes from people's knee-jerk reaction to motion controls in general. However, it does have some flaws that prevent it from truly soaring mostly involving the ridiculous backtrack quests in the second half of the game.

Shortly before the original launch I remember seeing some japanese promotional material and the katakana was "fai" so that's what I use.

@JaxonH Agreed. This year has been good to me. Admittedly, if you're the type of person who only plays the big AAA first party releases I can understand the disappointment with 2021. But as someone who likes variety in gaming and apparently shares the same enthusiasm as you do for monster hunter, NMH, metroid, and SMT this year sits along 2017 and 2019 as an absolute beast.

@Yoshilapin People who comment online are a niche group. If they weren't pokemon SwSh would have bombed and metroid would be a 10+ million seller. Face it, we are only a small drop in the bucket.

Hopefully an indie showcase for August and a direct for september

Selling 20k pre orders isn't that impressive. This reminds me of all the articles and YouTube videos that went up when japanese xbox series x pre orders sold out within minutes. There was a lot of speculation that Microsoft learned their lesson and that Sony would need to be concerned. It was later discovered they sold out quickly because there weren't many units available for pre order.

Never played GU. Played the original series and felt like I had been fleeced by the time the credits rolled on the fourth game.

We're in the eye of the storm. Still recovering from July but once NMH3 hits its just a never ending assault of game releases until December. Oh, also diablo 2 resurrected is missing from this list.

Compared to the original snap this game was loaded with content. Getting a substantial update out of the blue is just delightful. Bonus points for having one of the new stages being a "honey I shrunk the kids" scenario.

MHR

Been a good year so far for me. See a lot of bellyaching in the comments about ports and I suppose that's true if you only care about 1st party but with bravely default 2, monster rise and stories 2, pokemon snap, game builder, disgaea 6, and all the great multiplat releases like persona 5 strikers, ys 9, ace attorney, and neo id say 2021 shaping up to be a fantastic year.

Never liked the empty janky open world of the original but I guess it's back because nostalgia. Luckily, the combat footage looks good so between that and the Suda writing it should still be worth the price of admission.

@sportvater In those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say.

@VoidofLight I highly doubt that. If it was made for PC in mind they would have done more with with graphics and would have settled for a ps4/5 port instead of switch. Also, nintendo has handled the bulk of the pre game advertisement and even tied in amiibo. The fact it launched closely to Rise also suggests this was a 1-2 punch to put monster hunter on switch with two high profile titles... oh, also, the original was a 3ds title before it was ported to other platforms. Yeah, gonna say this was made for switch first and PC second.

Edit: just checked a few websites that track steam sales and it looks like estimates put it somewhere between 50k -100k with one site pinning it on 72k. Considering they just announced they shipped 1mil and the physical sales in japan alone over the launch weekend were over 100k I'm gonna guess this was primarily thought of as a switch game.

Got the 512 steam deck pre ordered, but to anyone thinking this is going to threaten the switch is living inside an internet echo chamber. People like to talk a big game about how open the platform is and all the amazing emulation that this thing can do... which it probably CAN, but do people really think the average person knows how to do this?

Look, I understand that for PC players installing a new OS or going online to download an emulator and some ROMs is no big deal, but for the vast majority of gamers who are not interested in PC gaming none of that is a reality. What your average consumer is going to experience with the steam deck is the promise of running AAA games only to discover that not all work well unless you fiddle with settings or realizing that some games play best with mouse and keyboard or require mapping out a controller.

The steam deck is great for PC players that want to play a handheld which I imagine is a decent number but there's also a lot of steam users that would never be caught dead playing anything other than a top of the line desktop. This will sell millions and will most definitely be successful but the switch isn't going anywhere.

This old song and dance? Until it materializes I refuse to believe it.

Glad to see articles like this. Theres been a lot of talk recently on the internet that "classic quirky nintendo" died with the switch era, and yet when I look at Nintendo's output over the last four years I still see the goofball publisher that we all know and love.

This goes beyond wacky gimmicks too, even when it comes to new IP and collaborations I'd say Nintendo is still burning strong. Arms, Astral chain, miitopia, snipperclips, cadence of hyrule, mario and rabbids, etc Nintendo still cares about new IP and new partnerships to bring different experiences to its platform. Not everything sticks, obviously, but I always appreciate the effort.

Don't really need those joy con... but damn, do I need those joy con. Easily the prettiest ones they've released in the past 4.5 years.

@Ralizah LOL, beat me to it by seconds!

Ugh, this visually looks like DreamWorks circa 2005...

@BloodNinja 1080p would be nice, but as you said, 720 is perfectly fine for a handheld. Games that actually hit that resolution on the switch still look gorgeous and while 1080 might look marginally better it's simply not worth it if they have to double the price tag.

Looks cool. I'll be picking one up for sure... buuuut, not gonna lie, it looks uncomfortable as hell and Valves previous efforts with hardware ergonomics don't instill much confidence.

Not for me, but I do appreciate that they actually put effort into these switch ports. They should be commended for that I suppose.

@Clyde_Radcliffe I'm thinking you are right on the money. Honestly, even I didn't think this game would sell as well as it did or have the legs that it's showing. Sure, it's not a blockbuster, but it's doing very well. Nintendo is probably also kicking themselves right now for not charging a full $60.

About what I was expecting for MHS2 based on thr first games sales. Not sure why this series isn't more popular in japan. Monster hunter? Check. Jrpg? Check. Monster collecting game? Check. What isn't to like?

This game is gorgeous. Seriously, this is like Luigi mansion 3/astral chain levels of what is possible on the switch. As a hard-core smt fanatic I could not be happier knowing that this game will be in my hands in four months!

So what's the problems exactly? I don't see any problem with what Nintendo is doing.

Hey, I have a great example of bad behavior!
Remember how journalists and news outlets continually report on bad behavior by industry leaders like Activision, EA, and Naughty Dog enforcing crunch culture but then praising the products of crunch and showering them with trophies come award season? Yeah, Nintendo is the real bad guy in this industry...

Side note: there are two cats in that anniversary image... I approve.

Hmm, I still don't quite understand how this game managed to be more popular than the entirety of the bravely default games. I'm guessing it owes its success to nostalgia but there are so many bad design decisions in the original octopath that just ignored the more interesting/fun/player forward thinking that is present in all three BD games.

Oh well, I'll definitely play the sequel and I'll probably enjoy it but it's disheartening to think that the BD series is probably done after the performance of 2 and is ostensibly being replaced by a series that seems very regressive in nearly all design aspects aside from its cool visual identity.

@Victorstk There is a WD electronic contact cleaner.

@RCGamer Yupper. My launch day joy cons eventually drifted and some simple electronic contact cleaner fixes em right up. I've also recommended this to three other friends over the past four years and guess what? Worked for every single person. Cheap simple solution!

@EVIL-C Me too. I first spent time there in high school studying abroad for three months then lived there for about a year post college. Good times.

@KiryuJ They did and still are handling it better than most countries. See my previous post. Japan declared a state of emergency when they hit 7000 daily cases, that's nothing compared to other countries, especially given their size.

You know what I love about japan? They take things seriously. Here's some fun stats: (Note, this is from the perspective of an american)

Japan has a population that's about 1/3 of the US population. Size-wise, japan is about the size of the state of California. However, due to the presence of mountains the amount of liveable space is around the size of Rhode island. In other words, japanese people live like sardines.

Why do I bring these numbers up? Well, covid arrived in Japan around January or February of 2020, and yet they didn't have a state of emergency until January of 2021... with 7000 daily cases.... for reference, America hasn't had under 7000 daily cases since March of 2020, at its worse American cases were around a quarter mill.

I love that japan is willing to shut things down and do what is right for the sake of its people and those visiting for the Olympics, even when they see a marginal increase in covid cases. Admittedly, I'm half japanese so I do take pride in things like this, but any time I hear some idiot here in the states argue that masks and other preventative measures don't work, I look at a country like japan and wish I lived in a more rational society.

@AtlanteanMan Wow someone speaking sensibly for a change. I've been saying the same thing for a long time. I can guarantee you that there's a lot of bleed over between the people who threatened to boycott pokemon but still bought Sw/Sh anyway and the people who have been begging for more metroid love but will refuse to buy dread because its $60.

@Ghost_of_Hasashi Maybe I'm confused but I thought it was the other way around. With Midway gone doesn't Nintendo own the IP and they license it out to Raw Thrills to make the games?

My vita never had it, my Samsung phone doesn't have it, nor does my OLED TV. Also, hasn't burn in been a thing since... forever? I mean that's the reason screen savers exist. Why are we suddenly concerned with OLED? I've never had any product get burn in. I'm not saying burn in doesn't exist but I think burn in is the result of users leaving their devices on a static image for excessive amounts of time; in other words, unless you are really irresponsible with your electronics you shouldn't worry.

Wait, where did DQXI come from? Was there a sale or something for the series anniversary?

@Dman10 my mistake; one, THREE, and four are Nintendo. Oh no, how embarrassing... doesn't change the fact that the last three games nintendo released occupy three of the top four. Mario golf would have been number one if it had launched earlier in the month with game builder at two. Miitopia is niche and a month old and still managed to secure #4, but ok. Also, complaining about minecraft at this point is ridiculous, that's like complaining about GTA 5. Are first party Sony games bad because they continually get beat by a ten year old game? No, it's just that minecraft and GTA are monstrous evergreens.

@Dman10 I see we're ignoring that spots one, two and four are all new first party switch games that released in the last month? How has nintendo not offered anything great lately?

Wow, that's a lot of amiibo... and posters to boot! Not a bad prize. I have all six amiibo but I'm one of those "crazy people" who actually uses their amiibo so if I got my hands on these they'd be my first set that remain mint-in-box.

Unlike the ps5 and series x I imagine these things will be readily available at retail. I hope these scalpers eat the cost on this one.

@nessisonett Mario: confirmed Nazi sympathizer.