Fath

Sure, it's a 2D Metroid, but it's a remake, farmed out to a third-party, built on uninspired low-res 3D models, and riddled with amiibos and their requisite pseudo-DLC in some form.

From the gameplay in the trailer, that counter-slap could be interesting, but the dramatic slo-mo camera-panning combos/finishers seem un-Metroidy and frankly, trying too hard to be cool.

All that could add up to "Underwhelming, but who am I to judge."
That Nintendo heavy-handedly axed a well-received labor of love from the fans in order to milk us on this product of indeterminate quality, though, pushes it over the line into vaguely insulting.

I'm sure it'll be an ok game, but I doubt I'll be singing its praises from the rooftops.

@invictus4000 Do it. It's really, really good.

That's actually a really interesting screenshot - the map screams Metroidvania, but open-air locations like that forest present special challenges in a genre that demand some degree of verticality.

On top of that, the movie tie-in demands a sizable degree of narrative progression and venue shifts, which complicates the necessities of exploration and backtracking to make a Metroidvania work.

Finally, while a semi-limited ammo system is hardly provocative, the choice of a weapon as responsive and impressive as a machine gun for the fallback infinite-ammo weapon is at least interesting. I'll be curious to see what arms are worth using limited ammo on, though I guess if nothing else they could just do missles like Metroid itself and call it a day.

Compare http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/radianthistoria/images/2/2d/RH_20101210_03_zpsa3b44a05.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140425053354 to the babyface in the center of this article's art. Those are supposed to be the same main character. Yeeeah.

I should be hyped for this, since I always meant to get around to playing the original, but with how recklessly they're changing up the character design, I'm leaning towards giving this a pass. Really unfortunate.

Any diehard completionists should take warning from the beta/demo for this game on PS4: while the base game is a nice enough romp, the devs went out of their way to pack in ridiculously difficult secrets as well, requiring damn-near frame perfect semiblind jumps (on a system with unavoidable wireless controller lag, mind you), using a multilayered hidden mechanic intentionally designed to feel like it's crossing over into bug territory rather than feature, and featuring a brutal battle that pushes the player's reaction time to the breaking point.

Basically, the devs have a sadistic streak a mile wide, and they're not afraid to sneak it into the game as a "bonus."

This focus on the rabbids, repulsive little things that they are, is burying the lede. Mario with an arm cannon here is the real story, and not a good one.

In a gaming world that's always been ga-ga over guns, the lack of traditional firearms in Mario games has been a foundational pillar of not only the Mario franchise, but the entire offbeat spirit of Nintendo as a whole. The good side of the maligned "kiddy image," if you will.

There've been projectile weapons in the series before, of course (fire flowers literally give Mario a "fire arm"), but these feel... different. They're actual guns, and that means a lot.

No, Reggie, you absolutely do NOT get to bemoan the lack of a SKU in-between the 2DS and the New 3DS XL, not after shrugging and saying "Nah, we don't want your money" when the New 3DS was sitting there for over a year waiting for a release in your market, and only your market, that would never properly come.

You can take this New 2DS XL, Reggie, and shove it, if that's your reasoning.

@StooBush That's fair, and it is of course your prerogative on how to raise your kids. You make a good point about 3D-caused carsickness as well; that was enough of a problem back in the days of dead-tree books, so I can only imagine how bad it would be with the 3DS.

@Kid_Sickarus Aaand, I'd be wrong:
http://www.siliconera.com/postgallery/?p_gal=629798|3

Figures the first ever (?) three-dimensional cover design for the 3DS family would be for the model that abandons the entire idea of 3D.

@Kid_Sickarus Given that it's featured on a 2DS instead of a 3DS, I have to presume it's flat as a pancake.

@StooBush You should know that no studies or reports have ever demonstrated any negative effects or danger to children from viewing 3D content, and Nintendo's warning against children using it is just Nintendo being a megacorp and covering their butts against any lawsuits even remotely possible. But don't take it from me, take it from Consumer Reports quoting the American Optometric Association: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2011/06/3d-is-ok-for-most-kids-says-the-american-optometric-association/index.htm (edit: Just noticed my link is from 2011. Take that as you will. A cursory Googling shows a few European boards recommending against children viewing 3D images since then, but they seem to be based on an overabundance of caution rather than any data whatsoever.)

Or if you want approval from society at large, look at all of the big-budget 3D movies marketed to kids - if there was any plausible risk that they could do damage, Disney et al. wouldn't be going near those with a 50-foot pole.

In my humble personal opinion, you should be more concerned about your kids' eyes being glued to our society's ubiquitous 2D screens than 3D stuff - 2D images are far, far more unnatural than 3D ones, completely shutting down the brain's natural binocular vision mechanisms.

Disappointed by the review scores, as accurate or not, they'll undoubtedly hurt sales of a game that the zeitgeist has been looking for a reason to hate.

Don't regret backing it in the slightest, though, and I'm still sure it'll be a blast when I eventually get to play it.

@Jeronan Disagree that "loading from cartidge is always going to be slow." Carts and SD storage are fundamentally similar technologies when it comes to the raw operation of reading data. Whichever edges out the other is going to come down to interface and system bottlenecks that aren't easy for us as consumers to see.

One or the other may win in practice on the Switch, but a blanket judgment of carts always being slower than SD is misguided.

Some of the commenters here need to try calling up a few old buddies of their own and putting a game of this caliber together from scratch, targetting release on three consoles and PC, then having one of the three consoles discontinued in mid-development and having to shift to a completely new one with a unique architecture that's tough to get dev kits for. Let's see how long they have to delay.

These are good people and skilled artists who love Nintendo as much as we do, and are working as hard as they can under indie constraints to see their game standing strong on Nintendo's flagship console, just like in the good ol' days. I know we all have a persecution complex as Nintendo fans, but anyone who's souring themselves on this is doing themselves, Playtonic, and all of us a disservice for a grievance that's entirely in their own head.

Anyway, for the sake of commenting on the news itself, the game's looking brilliant as ever, and I look forward to hearing further updates ASAP as they're able to tame the beast with two Joy-Cons and get this thing out there. Time lost is money lost, and I do so want both Playtonic and the Switch itself to get as good a start as they can.

This guy has some outstanding artistic sensibilities. I really need to remember to pick up Gunman Clive someday =/

With the vibrantly otherworldly world Playtonic's set out to create, it seems their biggest mistake was letting the messy real world sink its hooks in by giving an internet celeb a cameo in the first place.

Gonna shrug my shoulders at this and make a mental note never to make irrelevant pop culture references in any work of art I might create in the future. The real classics are timeless anyway.

@Masurao I was about to say much the same thing. I'm heartened to see sombody beat me to it.

Kickstarter is not a store, and you have to go into it fully expecting to never see a return on your money.

You're not giving them money to preorder a product, you're giving them money because you want to live in a world where their dreams exist, and dreams are never a sure thing. I know I still want to live in a world where Koji Igarashi is still making metroidvanias (just like I still want to live in a world where the ol' Rare veterans are still making collectathons), and it's nothing short of awesome that Kickstarter exists to transmute our money into even a chance at that reality.

I'm all over LE's that catch my interest, but after losing out on the Fates special edition - which mattered more than most, with the split-game system - Fire Emblem LE's just aren't getting my blood pumping anymore.

Pass.

@speedracer216 Put yourself in the company's shoes. You have this fan translation offered to you. Do you just put it on a cart and ship it, without looking?

Of course not - you're not going to put your name on the line for a manuscript you know nothing about. You're still going to have to extract and comb through every line to make sure no f-bombs snuck in. You're still going to have to cross-check every item and story point to the original Japanese to make sure the translation's accurate. You're still going to have to put it through your own testing to make sure there aren't any textbox overflows or weird corner-case crashes.

You can see where this is going: if it's nearly as much work to validate a translation as it would be to make your own, you might as well take full control.

Just put a couple of googly eyes on it. Problem solved.

Honestly, docks ordered this way coming in barebones packaging with no accessory cables is not news. This is Nintendo's very low-profile parts and replacements storefront, not a retail store. They can provide good prices on some tricky-to-find items, but it's squarely in their Support domain, not their bells-and-whistles Retail domain. When you order like this, you get exactly what you pay for, no more, no less.

Seriously, try to find their parts store (not their games store) navigating solely by links from www.nintendo.com. Saying they don't go out of their way to promote it would be an understatement.

All that is no excuse for defective parts, nor for insufficient packaging to avoid damage. Let this be a lesson, though, that when you order a part from Nintendo's part store, you're ordering a part, not a glossy logo'd box.

@Mogster I see a comments section full of people above you saying they've never had problems, so this is obviously something that's going to vary from person to person.

Besides which, the article you're referencing does explicitly acknowledge a full half-dozen complaints about the system as valid, and you even undersell their acknowledgement of this one, which they currently give a rating of 'Valid/Fair-ish' instead of your claim that they only rate it fair-ish.

It really isn't my place to condemn your condemnation of N Life's unprofessionality, since I was in a similar position just a few days ago over on their sister site Push Square, but I'll be darned if it doesn't seem like you have a massive axe to grind.

@Galactus_33 Pretty much all phones these days use Gorilla Glass (or some like variant), a special high-hardness glass that's specifically designed to be rugged enough for pocket use. You could actually put all the keys and change you want in your pocket with them, and it wouldn't leave a mark.

The Switch reportedly uses a plastic screen, right?

Ugh, Nintendo.

Just, like, a week ago, I was chewing someone out in one of these comments sections for suggesting that the dock was reportedly scratching the screen. The ability to use glass screens instead of cheap plastic is practically the entire reason such a low-accuracy technology as capacitive touch, which the Switch has moved to over the resistive touch in the DS/3DS, was ever invented, so by my reasoning it was a no-brainer that Nintendo would use an infinitely-superior glass screen for the Switch. WRONG!

Seriously, Nintendo, did you learn nothing from how the iPhone transformed PDA's from a dismal niche curiosity into the most successful and ubiquitous electronic device of all time? Sure, it wasn't just because it was the first device to use a Gorilla Glass touchscreen, but it's a hell of a lot more influential a factor than most people realize.

Between using capacitive touch with a plastic screen, and using Bluetooth without headphone support, I swear, Nintendo must have an entire department dedicated to entirely missing the point of any technology they implement.

Two steps forward, ten years back.

Wait, so does this game compliment the Switch or complement the Switch? The review says both in the span of the last three paragraphs.

Having money problems sucks.

@FatAlbert1 Huh. As someone who was assuring people that listing Bluetooth support would invariably lead to headphone support, that's truly baffling. You really can always count on Nintendo to go out of their way to make poor choices, I guess.

Seriously, though, if BT headsets can't be used, what other BT devices would the Switch even use? Listing support for an open protocol, but not allowing any devices on that protocol to be used, is misleading to the point of false advertising. I know the dedicated controllers use it, but that doesn't count - you never would've considered saying the SNES supports serial devices just because their controllers used that protocol (if it did).

@eeyore Smells like BS. The use of capacitive touch tech instead of resistive in the Switch means that Nintendo can finally use a Gorilla Glass screen (I assume) like the rest of the world instead of the plastic on the 3DS and Wii U, and Gorilla Glass is specifically designed to be so hard that it just. won't. scratch.

As an aside, phone cases are such a gimmick; you couldn't scratch a phone's screen with a set of car keys if you tried.

Unless the stand is made of razor blades and you can tangibly feel the Switch grinding as you apply force to push it in, there's nothing to be worried about.

DLC isn't something that should ever really be pushed onto consumers "when they're at the store buying the game," especially not on day 1.

@Einherjar Sure, then to be clear, I'm taking issue with preorder*ing* DLC, particulary before or at the game's launch.

Not a fan of preorder DLC either, of course, but that's a different beast, and I can be thankful that Nintendo's at least not going there this time.

I wouldn't likely buy Gamecube VC games, since I still have the originals by and large, but no analog triggers is a missed opportunity for modern development.

Adding them in later, to a Joy-con+, if you will, is a nonstarter from this perspective. History has shown time and again that the crushing majority of devs don't develop for a split userbase when it comes to control schemes.

@Einherjar Honestly not seeing how you're justifying that this isn't a case of being asked to preorder DLC. If you're claiming it by the items available immediately, that's the tail wagging the dog. That junk could quite reasonably be described as being nothing more than a preorder bonus for the DLC we're being asked to preorder.

Asking people to preorder DLC before they even have the base game in hand is a vile and abusive practice. If you want to pitch an expansion a few months down the line when you have an actual product to show people, fine. But right now? Whether you're calling it a "season pass" or "expansion pass..."

I'll just pass.

I'm so done with being asked to preorder DLC. If games need to be $80, just make them the damned $80 and be honest about it. Oh, and stop actually offering $80+++ editions that sell out weeks before you announce "Oh yeah, and we're going to want you to pony up extra for DLC when you buy the game too."

"Season pass," "expansion pass..."

I'll just pass.

@audiobrainiac I believe the line of reasoning is that while a dev can easily sign up now, leaks such as this could force Nintendo to view the low barrier to entry they've set for devs as a liability in the future.

If Nintendo were to start imposing burdensome requirements in order to get dev specs - say, if a dev has to have a proven history of games, or must submit a working prototype of their game, or just if the price tag of the dev program were jacked up - it may weed out jokers who don't take the program seriously enough to keep NDA documents private, but it makes life harder on serious devs as well.

@JohnGrey Regarding history repeating itself - this isn't a matter of worry right now, it's a matter of fight. Consoles are built on a virtuous cycle of consumer confidence - hype generates sales, sales generate third-party investment, investment generates hype. System specs, in the end, aren't terribly important to sales except as a means to jumpstart this cycle.

Every prediction made in public about the Nintendo Switch is, on some small level, a self-fulfilling prophecy to the extent that it'll either boost or dampen hype. So yeah, as a Nintendo fan, when I see an unwarranted prediction going against the Switch, I'm going to try to push back against it, and as I explained, yours claimed more confidence than was warranted.

@JohnGrey I'm all for interesting observations of search trends, and I do appreciate the ones you've posted for what they are, but you are biased, with your kneejerk reaction being to dismiss search trends as "meaningless" until you could come up with your own set that told the story you wanted to see.

I was probably being overly harsh on you, since the presentation of a comment thread like this tends to exacerbate bad impressions, and I fall for it sometimes. Sorry. Kneejerk reactions provoke kneejerk reactions and such.

Still, though, it seems like you're willfully only seeing what you want to see in the trends. Seeing what you want to see is natural, but to discredit data that doesn't fit your narrative inserts bias, and inflates the confidence of your own conclusions above what they - or any drawn on this data set - deserve.

@KirbyTheVampire OK, we're cool then

@KirbyTheVampire [in response to your first comment] You be trollin' some complete hogwash there.

Much like Konami in making this game.

@JohnGrey You seem very upset over the prospect of giving the Switch any positive buzz. Why is that?

Do you genuinely want it to fail, or can you just not stand to take the risk of showing favor to a product that all the cool kids on the internet might end up pointing and laughing at?

Lol, this "3DS" junk can't even keep up with a three-year-old console, it's totally dead in the water. Just wait, I'll bet the 3DS version won't even get any DLC, and they'll have the gall to charge full price for it at release.

Eh, the gold standard of mobile/gatcha is perpetual weekly content drops, not biweekly. Gotta keep you on the habit; can't have you stop playing for a few days and remembering what life is supposed to be like.

Speaking as someone deeply addicted right now to a different gatcha, I'm not even joking. These things aren't games. They're monetization farms, and you're just a cow with suction tubes hooked to your... wallet.

I love Nintendo, but if you're not hooked to this "game" yet, get out while you still can, and if you haven't tried it (as I thankfully have had the sense not to), don't start.

SNES? Day 1 buy. Make it happen, Square Enix!

@NEStalgia The good news about Bluetooth headphones is that given the technical specifications quoted, there won't be any hardware barriers to them.

Bluetooth radios aren't really modular from the hardware side beyond their specification revision, and audio streaming was a pretty well settled matter by revision 4.1 (the focus of subsequent revisions has been on very-low-energy and internet-of-things applications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Bluetooth_4.1). What a Bluetooth device can or can't do is determined by the modular protocols and profiles it supports in its software stack, so headphone support is just a matter of ensuring the right code chunks are in place, and hooking it into their OS.

Audio is such a common application of Bluetooth that Nintendo would practically have to go out of their way to not support it. But if they did pull such a brain-dead stunt at launch (they are Nintendo, after all), it should be entirely possible to patch the feature in.

Hmm, whipping out the ol' ruler, that's pretty much spot-on the thickness of my iPad mini 2 in a case (about twice as thick as caseless). I can live with that, not that it's super comparable due to how different from a tablet it'll be to hold with the joycons.

Please do not play your Switch in a public or shared restroom. There are people waiting to use the facilities.

Seriously, we've gotta GO.

@DarkKirby Kids these days... back in the monochrome era, we would've given an entire pog collection to see all the Pokemon rendered in full-color 3D figures.

No respect, I tells ya!

@Rei So much this. 3rd parties don't ask for much, just a carbon-copy architecture so they can port everything to everything.

Either that, or EA's saying "Nintendo's finally come to their senses and modernized their microtransaction backend," but that's just a pet theory.

@Siskan Also, if we're talking about staying true to the director's vision, then if mixing subtitles were so trivial, Aonuma-san's conscious decision to leave them out speaks volumes. The director's vision is clearly for all players, regardless of nationality (addressing this with a Portugese audience, of all people!), to connect with an immersive experience playing the game in their native language.

I should think as well, since Mr. Aonuma's no slouch, that each localization has been approached with no small degree of care to ensure that this vision was met.

@Siskan And if you discovered that the lead scriptwriter for the game was, say, a moonlighting Bill Trinen, would that change your view? What about if the lead VA coordinator happened to be bilingual?

I'm sure there are plenty of reasons to prefer one dub over another. Most of them are petty. That's fine, people are entitled to their preferences, but there's an important difference between "would've been nice" and "compromises the game's integrity."

Some games are designed to be experienced though the lens of Japanese culture and language. Zelda, I would argue, never has been, and adding voice acting - for multiple languages in tandem -doesn't change that.

That said, if there are VA'd Tingle or Beedle characters, then I'd probably retract my assertions. Those guys are stereotypically Japanese as ****.