DiggleDog

The mariachi mosh pit that is Smash Ultimate’s cover of Gangplank Galleon

The Switch’s power is becoming an issue but it remains an excellent low cost alternative to the other consoles, especially in a cost of living crisis. Xbox Series S comes close but the Switch rules the roost.

Ubisoft is stuck in a sludgy tar pit of chasing money making trends without imbuing their titles without any sort of actual passion to make them distinct from the competition. Or rather, what start out as passion driven projects get bogged down by company mandates to make them as safe and derivative as possible. At least that’s how I see it. Anything halfway inspired like Fenyx Rising or Mario + Rabbids seems doomed for not pulling in Calling of Duty numbers. Whatever happened to that gorgeous Ubiart engine they made for Rayman and Valiant Hearts? At any rate, the culture there seems deeply troubling and I wish nothing but the best for the devs in the trenches.

So surprised they didn’t do this sooner

Three Houses absolutely consumed me but I'm really not buzzed about this one. I'll probably pick it up during one of Nintendo's "generous" sales.

The concept is still extremely fresh and novel to me but on a technical front, yes.

Kirby is such an easily marketable character for merch and the like. Makes total sense to see him rise to become one of Nintendo’s tentpole properties. I feel he’s become the go to for the weird, experimental games Wario used to star in.

5: Tunic
4: Klonoa
3: Sunbreak
2: Triangle Strategy
1: Kirby

@smithyo I think if they give it an actual art style and iron out the performance issues for a potential sequel, they’ll have a real winner

I picked up Sonic in the sale. It’s hideous, broken and just generally incompetent on a technical level, but damn is it fun.

Ah that’s a shame. Feel bad for the dev but also, good luck getting another publisher to sign you.

Actually gutted for the dev. Obviously very passionate and despondent this has happened. Game looks charming and I’ll probably pick it up down the line.

My assumption is that the Kongs are native to one of the worlds Bowser is trying to conquer, akin to the penguins in the first trailer, so they form an alliance with Peach and Mario to take down the bigger bad. At this point, there's no redeeming Pratt's performance but in all other areas this movie is exceeding my expectations.

@fenlix I think Luigi being behind enemy lines will be the film’s way of giving him his classic scaredy cat to hero arc.

Hopefully we get to hear the rest of the cast and finally get off Mr. Miyamoto’s wild ride.

Nemesis was a pioneer of the persistent stalker enemy in horror games so seeing him so badly nerfed in the remake (especially when 2 Remake’s Mr. X was a solid foundation) is just wrong.

I wasn’t ready for the MK8 band to cover Maple Treeway!

The onus shouldn’t be on the people supporting and enjoying the games for the companies making them to enact proper quality control.

I had a good time with my Wii U but the main reason I suspect so many people look back fondly on that era is because it was the dawn of the Nintendo Direct and the company could leverage Iwata and Reggie to be the goofy, charming faces of the brand. Doesn’t hurt as a fan that Nintendo is at their most generous when the chips are down. Easily the most robust retro collection and first party games that actually depreciated in price.

Is there no expansion category for Cuphead and Monster Hunter. Spent all summer on those lovely DLCs.

Mixed opinion is better than universally panned

A battered, wounded and beleaguered people gather on their last ounce of strength to see if the new Sonic will be an above average game.

@Steelhead this is my thought on the matter. Considering non-Japanese markets were a volatile thing after the 1983 crash, it doesn’t surprise me if NES/SNES era Nintendo didn’t invest as much in the UK compared to the US, costing them potential momentum.

You can’t fool me. I know grass when I see it.

The chimera lab segment of Mother 3 is genuinely messed up if you take the time to read all the flavour text that alludes to the inhumane experiments being conducted on the animals. Really captures the horror that gets hidden behind bureaucracy. Then, of course, there’s the Ultimate Chimera.

The game and its siblings are currently on sale on Playstation (and presumably other platforms) for Halloween. It'd be madness paying a premium for a hamstrung version.

In Victorian slang, to have the morbs is to be overcome by gloom and melancholy. Make of that what you will.

If I had a penny for every time I’ve died in Ghosts ‘n Goblins, I could afford it.

I think it’s worth it if you’re a dedicated Nintendo fan since it’s primarily Nintendo’s own content that’s going to be used to incentivise people. However, piling random DLC onto it just isn’t attractive to me. Do you still need to make initial full priced purchase of the base game to even run it? Why not make a big Nintendo or third party game free for a month?

@Cia let’s not kid ourselves. We’re five years into a console that Mario, Zelda, Splatoon, Xenoblade and more were all able to optimise within the first year. There’s no excuse for the 5th crack at a Pokémon game on Switch to run and look the way it does.

Super sketchy. The sad part was that the wheels were turning for a serious look at how the industry values voice actors.

At least they saw enough sense to yank Kamiya off the mic. Dude’s a walking PR disaster.

"M-M-M-Maria?" - Luigi

Oh wow, based on the comments, it sounds like Nintendo has done an absolutely abysmal job.

Charles is a professional actor and absolutely has the range to do a more movie appropriate Mario. I think it’s nuts that Mario, one of the most recognisable characters on the planet, needs star power to sell cinema tickets.

My man Chris isn’t even trying to do a voice but the rest all looked very promising

Game came out of nowhere only to become one of the defining experiences on my PS4. Enjoy, guys. Wish I could experience it for the first time again.

I think it looks great. We’ve seen how bad these things can go with Sonic so to me, Illumination has done wonders.

Oh wow, they've nailed the visuals anyhow.

It certainly is a bit vague. I’m hoping by video content, they mean movies and series, not the scatty bits and pieces they put on that 3DS video app from back in the day. I also wonder what this means for Nintendo’s presence of platforms like YouTube. Would they move all their content there to their wholly owned site?

I hated this game. It just didn’t click with me at all. That said, I’m glad it made the jump to Switch in one piece.

Really enjoyed the first one on a gameplay level but the storytelling was dull as dishwater.

Considering the emphasis on vertical mobility, they should have called it Tiers of the Kingdom

I feel like the Direct’s presentation and pacing was a bit off for me. Pikmin 4 is huge news to me but just dropping a logo as part of one of Miyamoto’s asides kind of dulled its impact. Zelda similarly wasn’t the knockout trailer I was expecting.

Rayman platformers are some of the most dazzling, spellbinding and joyful games money can buy. Unfortunately that doesn’t mesh with Ubisoft’s model for churning out formulaic cash cows. Hopefully he’ll find a more permanent home with the Milan team.

It’s been almost a decade since Legends. I was about ready to give up hope. Thank you, Rabbids team!

@RobynAlecksys to be brutally harsh, it's probably more about real estate in the news cycle. The Queen of England passing away is an unprecedented occurence for several generations and it's going to dominate social media for a while I should think.

Three Houses has some ghastly trees too. I think they’re just a common offender when it comes to skimming on details.

I remember uncovering this on my copy of Crash Bandicoot N-Tranced and thinking I’d stumbled into the Bermuda Triangle. Never expected to see it surface again lol.

I’ll buy Wind Waker HD again. It and Twilight Princess are the past obvious Wii U ports that are yet to occur.