Deihnyx

The new smash characters are looking good!
Sorry Rex fans

Ugh. Which one to buy now... the XB3 collector or the Trinity one...
Torna doesn't have a physical release so...

I wasn't impressed to be honest. Sure, it's gonna please the minecraft fans out there, but that's not why I play a Zelda game personally.
In the meantime they showed nothing of what makes a Zelda game, which was probably the weakest part of BotW too. Bad dungeons, very little in terms of quests, music is meh (i'm aware that it's conscious decision, still don't like it when compared to the rest of the franchise) and the weapon breakability is just frustrating.
Elden Ring was able to add new stuff while keeping the core of the formula intact with its quests and core dungeons, I hope TLoZ can too, but I'm not optimistic.

Gave it 5/10.
Regardless of its qualities the polishing of a game matters, even more so for Nintendo who for decades was synonym of quality in that department.
It would have been another IP without the Pokemon name it would not have gotten that high a score from the medias. And that's the problem. We all love Pokemon, but when comes the time to review a game this has little to do with it.
It is a cyberpunk situation. Nintendo, TPC and GF need to take the L, apologize and communicate about their plan to fix it. Do what better companies do in that case.

Does this game have a free mode though? Like the likes of FE:W and HW where all characters are available?

I've been collecting soundtracks from Nintendo (and other companies) for a while and I now have a pretty big collection but even then I agree that they're not doing much. Their major release tend to get soundtracks (Odyssey, Skyward Sword, Kirby, AC, Splatoon, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Xenoblade...) but it's a lot of hit and miss, and entire generations also went by with barely any soundtrack release. Looking at you, gamecube.
It's still possible to get the old stuff, but like, F-Zero or F-Zero are over $500, more for their arrange version. There's a fantastic arrange of Mario Land made by the Mario Freak Orchestra but barely anyone heard of it because it was from 89 and now cost over $800. A ton of games are also in between, things like Stadium, Mario Party, Mario Tennis, heck, Golden Sun only seem to be available through weird promos. Funny that the article mentions Xenoblade DE, where is that soundtrack? We only have access to the sound selection, and it's missing some important tracks.
Even more recent games don't have game soundtrack release. I would love nothing more but to own a Hyrule Warriors soundtrack, or Cadence of Hyrule, but nope. Smash Bros has some great opportunity for soundtrack too (but at least for that one I understand potential copyright nightmares...). The article mentions Pokemon... There still isn't an OST release for Sword or Shield, and all the DLCs have dropped now.

Like the article said, all major companies release soundtracks. Activision and Ubisoft tend to be digital only, which sucks but at least it's there. SE goes above and beyond, SEGA/Atlus also (and they finally released the full opening of P5 Royale recently <3), Capcom is decent, heck even Konami...

It's really just Nintendo being Nintendo as always, and it's painful as a collector.

You remember when games like Unreal Tournament had thousands upon thousands of UGC skins, maps, etc?
Hmm, I wonder why that all disappeared in recent generations of games. Could that be because these companies don't let you create your own servers anymore...
NFT won't change jack *****, it's a solution in search of a problem. The problem was never there in the first place. Only destructive politics from these companies.

@JasmineDragon when games get delayed the players are the first one to complain

This model is shady at best and should not be supported.

Interesting. I collect physical but I see this new practice as dangerous.
It's pushing artificial scarcity to new levels and most people don't seem to see how problematic that is.
Remember how fishing work? One of the first red flags is when a email is sending you a request with a sense of urgency, well here you go.
You think DLCs are a predatory practice? This is worse. Remember Mario 3D Collection? This is worse. This is purposely telling people they will never get to experience a game if they don't buy within the first few months. This is not for the players, and there shouldn't be a single media outlet praising this initiative.

@anoyonmus Square Enix is doing fine on its own though.
I've yet to see Microsoft buy something and do anything good with it.

I really hate this trend. Stop f**** buying everything.
And Microsoft, you have IPs that people crave to see resurrected, why don't you use them.

Pokemon Warriors. do iiiiiit

There, here's some money Nintendo.
Now you can add our dear Kass ~

Maybe they're gonna pull a Doctor Who and save freeze the Champions in time and travel back in time during BotW2 to save them!
Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey

Please be it Timesplitters Remaster Collection.

"But games and console are too expensive"
At least that's what so many players will tell you on a daily basis.
Well, I'm all for games and consoles being more expensive, what about you?

And here I was hoping for a big finish with an actual adventure mode xD. Something like what Splatoon 2 got with its DLC.
Characters or stages is really not what's lacking.
Oh well, maybe they'll just port & keep improving the game forever again, like a -lot- of the current very successful games do. There was nothing wrong with it being a 4.5 in the first place, GaaS can be a really good thing for Smash.

Not to say that Sakurai isn't working hard. But by now their process and framework for getting new characters/stages must be pretty solid. I don't think it necessarily brings him too much stress. And I think it shows in his latest videos.
That is, unless they're preparing something really new (smash run comeback, adventure mode etc)

@NotoriousWhiz
For the Roku it's probably because when playing pokemon it activates local wireless in the game. (the wireless icon with the little L)

@JasmineDragon I mean, I don't disagree. But you can still make a game for kids and get it right.
Luigi's Mansion 3 is a good example. It's not hard especially with the golden bones, but you have the option not to use them. Overall the game can be attractive to both older players and younger players.

Pokemon Red/Blue which some of us started with wasn't really hard either, but if you were taking Charmander, you still couldn't rush into the first gym without a little bit of prep. The final league (forgot their name) wasn't exactly press A to win either, even though you could still win with minimum preparation. Kids today aren't more dumb than we were back then. They could still finish Mario 64 or Sunshine if it was released today. I don't get trying to dumb down everything to an extreme.

Yes there are specific self imposed challenges you can do in Pokemon, but it severely affects the overall experience if you wanna do it in your first play-through.

And here's the thing. Difficulty modes is not hard to implement. It doesn't even affect the meta down the line.

I couldn't care less about the model/animation issues. While it's not amazing, it does the job.

My problem is really silly. It's way too easy and Hop is annoying as HELL. I know it's typical to JRPG to add cutscenes every few steps but come on... let me skip these if I don't want them.
Both issues could be easily fixed. Disable shared XP, bump up some pokemon levels, and make sure important fight have 6 pokemon ready to fight against you.
I know it won't happen, but damn, it's like they forget that the first generation of pokemon players is over 30 now...

I'm used to my phones magically having issues past their warranty expiration date. I wonder why it becomes such a big deal when it's Nintendo.

I mean, yes, it's annoying and it shouldn't happen, but why is Nintendo getting it so much harder than every other company that makes handhelds?

But Rogue Squadron

@JellyPop Not waiting to see drama. I'm more ready to see it end.
I'm so tired of the few content creators or people of influence creating such hive-minded outrage over everything.
It's time people stop seeing evil in every single company every time they don't get everything exactly as they want.

@Arehexes It's not open world, but it's a step in the right direction imho.
And I really don't think the old fanbase that calls themselves "the fans" are asking for a lot of change. If you read up this thread there's even people complaining about random encounters, even though it was one of the few changes of let's go that was actually welcome. The dex outrage is another one of these "let's keep it how it's always been" even though having too many pokemon doesn't allow for much flexibility in the first place. A more ballsy move would be to move from releasing a game every 2-3 years to a game as a service game with constant support (which would effectively allow enough time to get the whole dex + good animations that the fans want) but I'm pretty sure "the fans" would be outraged by that as well.
They can't change more stuff up because they are walking on a minefield constantly, where one wrong move ends up being blown up way out of proportion and become PR disaster (people comparing Gamefreak to EA, really???), so doing things progressively is still the solution that makes the most sense.

@Arehexes I don't know, when I saw the open world aspect of Sh/Sw I got excited. Hey there's something fresh coming to this franchise! Finally we're getting closer to a Pokemon MMO!

But then the internet (understand: a few influencing figures) got upset that the dex wasn't complete and it went from there all the way to "lazy" and now there won't be a single piece of news about Pokemon that won't been seen negatively.

Good stuff is coming to mobile and for a reason, its audience is fresh and isn't stuck to same old formula. Makes you wonder if it really is Gamefreak that's out of touch, or the "older" fanbase. The answer at the end of the year.

As a reminder, nobody ever asked nor was expecting Breath of the Wild. Fanbases don't always know what's good for them.
And I guess reminder 2: A lot of "old fans" were crying over FF7 remake not being turn based, and then they showed the E3 footage.

People, give the devs a chance to surprise you positively.

I mean, I will not blame them for being careful with such a community. Many changes would be necessary to truly refresh the formula, but typically moving from turn based to real time would get some backlash, backlash that would be amplified by the internet and its hive-minded negativity.
This type of outrage may bring """the fans""" what they want back, but it certainly won't convince Gamefreak to take more risks and develop the next BotW.
Instead there's a perfectly profitable market that is mobile gaming that may sound even more tempting to them.

@Tantani If these fans are happy with a stagnant franchise it's good for them, but I'm personally choosing to see the glass half full. We skip some unimportant pokemon but we get actual new features. Open world, raids, all of that paving the way to a potential real MMO in the future, with more spin off such as Snap, Stadium integrated within the core game.
That to me as a fan of the first generation game is so much more important than getting a new gen every X year and the same copy pasted game.

@Tantani twice as many people != twice as fast.
Adding more and more people on a development team has diminishing returns. It's a basic concept of management (that bad managers tend to ignore)

@Tantani I'm a sr software engineer with quite a few years of experience and I don't agree with that.
I feel like a lot of people here are comparing what can be done as a freelance/small time to call gamefreak "lazy". It's not because you have all the resources of the world (which they don't) and many more people that a project will run X times as fast. General cohesion and consistency matters in a large team, and that can be time consuming.
It does not matter that it's the biggest franchise ever if they're not given the proper budget and proper deadline, Game Freak does not decide of that. Blame the right people.

Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Conker and Perfect Dark.
And one can dream: Goldeneye 007 on switch.
<3

I get everything digitally so I don't mind. What I'd love ideally would be to have something like we have for movies: Physical AND digital. Then I would probably go back to physical.
But the convenience of digital is way better to me.
Also yeah... we gotta start thinking about environment a little more.

It's not just the video game industry. But IT in general.
We just don't get the same public exposure

The base price of games hasn't increased for over a decade. This is the result of it.

3D ruins everything ~
oh well, can't be worse than saint seiya netflix.

I don't think Nintendo appearance on another console is that impossible. Maybe not whole games, but cameos? Why not.

And none of the rumors say that Halo/GoW/Forza are actually "physically" coming to switch either. It could just be a cloud service. It could also be an app that allows remote access to your Xbox One.
But there are some smaller games like cuphead and Ori that have everything to gain at being temporary xbox exclusive, then opening up to other platforms. For Rare Replay, I don't think Microsoft is losing much if they ever decide to port it, on the contrary, it's a win win.

Just mod the sound database and add more FF music, problem solved

Meanwhile Banjo Kazooie could have 20+ songs and instead we're getting the template character <3

I just wish there was a "normal" mode, because the easy mode is a little boring at time.
But that's how it goes with modern games...

@koekiemonster Yeah apparently THQ bought it recently

Nice, bit surprised they aren't announcing Timesplitters but oh well!

@NovaCam Nobody does because Mr. Sakurai always adds one "retro" character in every new iteration.

@JazzyPone Given all the details associated with this leak, I hope you have good teeth

I mean Sakurai needs more vilains for Smash... right?

This game is a gem, glad it's on the switch.

All those defending that... let's turn the problem the other way around. Why is this necessary in the first place, why not a check on expiration date like other competitors do?
Assuming this is an legit system, you can totally have an internal date that can't be modified and base your certificate on that. If it's a hacked system then nobody cares about cause they can already access all these games.

You're trying to sell a "oh it's not that bad" narrative when it could in fact be much more convenient with next than no additional work from Nintendo. This is a corporate, arbitrary, extremely dumb decision.
Does it really matter? Of course not, but it gives a terrible image of a company that still not quite live in the modern age.

Steam didn't almost eradicate piracy by adding a video at the beginning of their games to remind players that stealing is bad, they did it by offering CONVENIENCE to players. Social features, integration to services, cloud, achievements.
Sony and XBOX have similar features, where if you choose to cheat/pirate, you're actually missing on a lot of cool stuff.

Nintendo? Nah, let's put that anti-piracy nagging bit for legit players.
It's ridiculous, nobody should be defending that.

That makes sense since the joycons have features the pro controllers don't have.

Risk of Rain ~

Can Risk of Rain be one of them... please