I actually think a more fitting IP for FromSoft to tackle would be Metroid. The dark fantasy setting they’re accustomed to I think could easily translate to a hostile alien world, and the way Metroid and their games establish lore is pretty similar. It’s also a franchise that Nintendo has been more than comfortable in handing off to outside studios, to mixed success.
@BloodNinja You may not have meant to, but don’t condescend to me. You’re extrapolating an awful lot more from what the person I replied to stated than what they actually said. Fine philosophy and all, but there is a place in this world for righteous indignation. If you don’t have it, that’s fine. No one says you have to; you do you, but don’t offer platitudes that border on sophistry to those who do instead. People can express their disdain for something without falling into some spiral of self-destructive hate. Although I will grant that some people are potentially more at risk of that, that hatred is a symptom, not a cause of their issues. My objection to this whole discourse is the implied notion that people who don’t “hate on” EA are somehow morally or intellectually superior to those that do, whether that is the intended message or not. That’s all. I don’t think anyone’s reaction to this story is inherently superior to anyone else’s, whether it be mine, yours, or any other poster on here. To be clear, I’m not decrying your stance on the issue, and I would much rather you maintain the good-hearted position you do than some alternatives.
@Chocobo_Shepherd Yeah man, I'm sure if we just showed EA some love, they'd change their ways.
Look, I appreciate the sentiment you've got; it seems like you've got a good heart, and I commend you for that, truly, but it's not just an opportunity for people to beat up on something they hate. That's a fringe benefit, I'm sure, but context and source are important. It's not just that EA said it, it's that it indicates a tone deafness that directly relates to things that company has done in the past, like shuttering companies that specialized in single-player experiences when their games couldn't be turned into hollowed out cash-grabs for the company. You're right to say people might laugh at that so-called meme if the source were different, but it isn't, and context matters. If the tweet were totally unrelated to EA's past handling of their subsidiaries and IPs, then you'd be completely right to call this out as just dogpiling. That's not the case though.
I feel like Koei Tecmo are missing an opportunity for what would certainly be the best Warriors game ever:
That's right, Gary Oldman Warriors. A game consisting exclusively of Gary Oldman characters. Think about it: Dracula taking on Lee Harvey Oswald. Winston Churchill teaming up with Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Sid Vicious exchanging blows with Sirius Black. It's right under their noses! C'mon guys!
Innocent until proven guilty is a court of law principle. It’s a pretty gross equivocation in my opinion to compare incarceration to not getting elected to a board of directors.
I mean, even putting aside the fact that Amano’s artwork on the JP version is incredible, it also features (one of) the main character(s) in Terra, as well as the iconic Magitek armor, while the NA version features….Mog. Now, I love slam-dancing moogles as much as the next fella, but c’mon. He’s an optional party member for crying out loud.
Answer me this: Are there people on here that vote Japan no matter what? Don’t get me wrong, often the Japanese cover is superior, and in this case I mulled over both, but I find the level of certainty in how some people have voiced their votes in this instance peculiar. I don’t think either is a no-brainer in this case.
Kinda shocked that the European version is winning at the time of this comment. Clearly inferior to the others to me. I attribute this this site's UK readership voting out of nostalgia and the similarity of the Japanese and NA versions causing a vote split. Even if you like the mech aesthetic, those designs are very underwhelming. Also, on a side note, "Return of the Evil Forces" is one of the dumbest subtitles I've ever heard. It's like self-parody.
I think most of you have hit on the simple fixes Nintendo can and should make happen. It doesn't need a complete overhaul per se, but three things would make a huge difference:
Those of you ardently defending GameFreak, please give me a listen. This isn't the first time a franchise has been at a critical point such as this. There are countless others that have stagnated and atrophied, and much of this is on us as gamers and how easily contented we are. You need only look and the bevy of franchises squandered or aborted by EA as proof. Just like with EA, the financial future of Pokemon isn't really in doubt, but their quality is. Franchises grow and improve when expectations are put upon them and criticisms are levied. You do the franchise no good by making yourselves the self-appointed defenders of questionable decisions and dismissing legitimate skepticism and criticism as whining privilege. This is how good franchises die: slow deaths as consumers settle for less and less. I encourage you to do your homework on this particular subject if you have not done so. The national dex controversy as well the recycled animations controversy are parts of a larger whole. There are contradictory statements now out of Game Freak, and it is known that staffing has been reallocated to Town. Masuda and other company figures have made concerning statements. This is not petulant fanboy whining. To act like it is is insulting and dishonest, if not outright ignorant. If you aren't willing to do this homework, I understand. Pokemon is certainly not a major priority for everyone, and indeed there are more important things, but kindly refrain from coming onto a message board and slandering those who have. Skepticism is healthy. Criticism is necessary. Those are fundamental statements, not just for Pokemon, but for just about anything. Thank you.
Point-and-Clicks or any game that attempts to mimic PC interface are never going to function relatively well on the Switch without at least implementing motion controls in docked mode, but those aren't exactly burning with popularity these days. Having said that, I'd appreciate to see some ports of some of the classic adventure games beyond just Grim Fandango, but with those franchises mostly split between Telltale, who's gone under, and Double Fine, who was just bought by Microsoft, that seems unlikely.
Fallout 3, New Vegas, or 4 would be great. Or Morrowind or Oblivion. Any of those five would get a buy from me. If it's Fallout 76, I'm not really interested in wasting money on two consoles. I know it's made some improvements, and Wastelanders could potentially put it over the edge, but I just won't be able to get excited over a 76 port.
But, in all likelihood, it's not even one of those. It's probably one of their peripheral franchises like Dishonored, Evil Within, or Prey.
I’ll reiterate what many have already said on here. This is an incredibly stupid move by Atlus/Sega. Apart from selling to a new install base, they would be reaping the benefits of Joker’s inclusion in Smash. That all seems pretty obvious. Why they remain so obstinate in refusing to port it over is beyond me.
Personally, I own P5 on PS4. I love it, and it ranks among my favorite games of the last few years easily. Having said that, I have no desire to buy the Royal version on PS4. Had it been released on the Switch, with the added benefit of being portable, I would have gladly double dipped. I don’t think I’m unique in that sentiment in any way.
While I feel that Grandia II is the superior Dreamcast RPG, Skies of Arcadia still holds a place in my heart.
One of the key differences that would make a port reasonable with SoA is that the game is hard to acquire on either piece of hardware: Both the Dreamcast version and the GameCube "director's cut" are expensive items, with both going from $60-80 typically.
Grandia II's DC and PS2 versions are much cheaper, and it's getting an HD remaster along with its predecessor. Furthermore, if there's a demand there, then why not do it? I would love to see the Sega Ages series extend to Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and Sega Dreamcast, and Skies of Arcadia would no doubt be among the most requested titles from that era.
I suspect it’s probably nothing, but if we’re speculating I’ll throw out Custom Robo. That would be a cool cultish franchise to see revived by Retro Studios.
I've always felt that Nintendo has done a good job of injecting a "hard-as-you-want-it-to-be" design into their games. Take Super Mario Odyssey for instance: Some of the moons are almost insultingly easy to obtain, while others are extremely challenging, with a spectrum of difficulty between them.
Yoshi games have also traditionally done this. The original Yoshi's Island (still the series pinnacle) had a moderate difficulty on its face, but offered the added challenge of collecting stars, red coins, and flowers throughout the levels and rewarded you with extra levels that were legitimately difficult (e.g. the infamous "Poochy Ain't Stupid" level). Woolly World aped this pretty closely. Yoshi's Story, the series low point on console, had the added challenge of collecting hearts to unlock levels as well as the more pointless 30-Melon Challenge.
Crafted World to me does a good job of this as well. If you play it straight up as an "A-to-B" platformer, it's very easy. However, if you treat it as more of a 2D collect-a-thon, its challenge level increases.
Personally, I love the way Nintendo games let the player curate the game's difficulty like that. It's much more interesting than just giving them them option of playing on Easy, Normal, or Hard, and I wish more developers would adopt that philosophy and expand on it.
Any time you try and compare a 2D game to a 3D game, it's apples and oranges. And Super Metroid v. Metroid Prime is perhaps the single hardest comparison to make within a franchise in that split. There's a strong case to be made for Metroid Prime being the best game of its generation, and I'd be inclined to agree. Super Metroid has a similar claim, but arguably tougher competition from the likes of Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Chrono Trigger. Metroid Prime is just so different from anything else that generation. It is dripping with effort and attention to detail, and it still holds up today despite the controls being a little wonky by modern standards. Super Metroid launched an entire sub-genre and remains one of the greatest platformers ever created. Both are not only great games, but important ones that had transformative impacts on the industry.
There's a lot of vitriol in these comments. Both are unquestionably masterpieces. I don't begrudge anyone who would name either the best, and ultimately it's a matter of personal preference and taste. It'd be a little foolish and arrogant even for anyone to definitively call one better than the other. I don't think FPS's are inherently inferior to 2D platformers, as some have espoused on here, which is an incredibly biased, baseless, and ignorant claim, despite me agreeing with Super Metroid being the better of the two.
I went into this list, as I'm sure everyone else did, assuming that either Super Metroid or Metroid Prime would be #1, and so long as it was one of those two, I knew I'd be reasonably satisfied. Lists just have these effects on people. When two games are so similar in quality, it becomes impossible to objectively compare them. We can all agree, if we are being unbiased, that Super Metroid > Metroid II and Metroid Prime > Other M. The gap in quality in those comparisons is objective, one being the product of hardware limitations and age, the other the product of a meandering and misguided game design.
The sentiment in the comments seems to be that Super Metroid should be #1. Take some solace in that if you agree. But it's stupid to argue that point. They're both equally deserving.
Comments 23
Re: Feature: 13 Studios That Should Take A Nintendo Series For A Genre Spin
I actually think a more fitting IP for FromSoft to tackle would be Metroid. The dark fantasy setting they’re accustomed to I think could easily translate to a hostile alien world, and the way Metroid and their games establish lore is pretty similar. It’s also a franchise that Nintendo has been more than comfortable in handing off to outside studios, to mixed success.
Re: Soapbox: Games Go Down Better When Paired With Books, Movies, And TV, Just Like Wine
@Enigk When I saw Laura Palmer in the thumbnail, I thought that's where they were going to go. There's tons of allusions to Twin Peaks in that game.
Re: Developers Don't Take Kindly To EA's Single-Player Gag On Twitter
@BloodNinja You may not have meant to, but don’t condescend to me. You’re extrapolating an awful lot more from what the person I replied to stated than what they actually said. Fine philosophy and all, but there is a place in this world for righteous indignation. If you don’t have it, that’s fine. No one says you have to; you do you, but don’t offer platitudes that border on sophistry to those who do instead. People can express their disdain for something without falling into some spiral of self-destructive hate. Although I will grant that some people are potentially more at risk of that, that hatred is a symptom, not a cause of their issues. My objection to this whole discourse is the implied notion that people who don’t “hate on” EA are somehow morally or intellectually superior to those that do, whether that is the intended message or not. That’s all. I don’t think anyone’s reaction to this story is inherently superior to anyone else’s, whether it be mine, yours, or any other poster on here. To be clear, I’m not decrying your stance on the issue, and I would much rather you maintain the good-hearted position you do than some alternatives.
Re: Developers Don't Take Kindly To EA's Single-Player Gag On Twitter
@Chocobo_Shepherd Yeah man, I'm sure if we just showed EA some love, they'd change their ways.
Look, I appreciate the sentiment you've got; it seems like you've got a good heart, and I commend you for that, truly, but it's not just an opportunity for people to beat up on something they hate. That's a fringe benefit, I'm sure, but context and source are important. It's not just that EA said it, it's that it indicates a tone deafness that directly relates to things that company has done in the past, like shuttering companies that specialized in single-player experiences when their games couldn't be turned into hollowed out cash-grabs for the company. You're right to say people might laugh at that so-called meme if the source were different, but it isn't, and context matters. If the tweet were totally unrelated to EA's past handling of their subsidiaries and IPs, then you'd be completely right to call this out as just dogpiling. That's not the case though.
Re: Best Nintendo Switch Warriors Games - Every Switch Musou Game Ranked
I feel like Koei Tecmo are missing an opportunity for what would certainly be the best Warriors game ever:
That's right, Gary Oldman Warriors. A game consisting exclusively of Gary Oldman characters. Think about it: Dracula taking on Lee Harvey Oswald. Winston Churchill teaming up with Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Sid Vicious exchanging blows with Sirius Black. It's right under their noses! C'mon guys!
Re: Bobby Kotick Has Been Re-Elected To Activision Blizzard's Board Of Directors
Innocent until proven guilty is a court of law principle. It’s a pretty gross equivocation in my opinion to compare incarceration to not getting elected to a board of directors.
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl: Duel #101 - Final Fantasy VI
I mean, even putting aside the fact that Amano’s artwork on the JP version is incredible, it also features (one of) the main character(s) in Terra, as well as the iconic Magitek armor, while the NA version features….Mog. Now, I love slam-dancing moogles as much as the next fella, but c’mon. He’s an optional party member for crying out loud.
Re: Random: Speedrunner Beats Zelda: Ocarina Of Time In Smash Bros. Brawl
@Murbs I looked at the comments just to see if anyone pointed this out lol
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl: Duel #87 - Metroid: Zero Mission
Answer me this: Are there people on here that vote Japan no matter what? Don’t get me wrong, often the Japanese cover is superior, and in this case I mulled over both, but I find the level of certainty in how some people have voiced their votes in this instance peculiar. I don’t think either is a no-brainer in this case.
Re: Feature: The 9 Strangest Choices For Licensed Karting Games
El Chavo Kart is a thing...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chavo_Kart
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl #44 - Super C / Probotector II
Kinda shocked that the European version is winning at the time of this comment. Clearly inferior to the others to me. I attribute this this site's UK readership voting out of nostalgia and the similarity of the Japanese and NA versions causing a vote split. Even if you like the mech aesthetic, those designs are very underwhelming. Also, on a side note, "Return of the Evil Forces" is one of the dumbest subtitles I've ever heard. It's like self-parody.
Re: Fire Emblem's Success Has Helped Intelligent Systems Grow In More Ways Than One
Came on here to comment on the need for new Paper Mario and/or Advance Wars games. Already covered I see.
Re: Feature: So, Who's Next For Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?
I'd like to see companies that haven't been represented yet get fighters, so...
Crash Bandicoot (Naughty Dog)
Doomguy/Vault Boy (Bethesda/ZeniMax)
Tracer/Diablo/The Lost Vikings (Activision Blizzard)
Spyro/Ratchet & Clank (Insomniac)
Geralt (CD Projekt)
Shantae (WayForward)
Shantae, Rayman, and Crash would probably be my top three from there.
As far as Nintendo's first party characters, I'd like Rex or Isaac.
Re: Hideki Kamiya Thinks The Switch Home Menu Is A "Piece Of Crap"
I think most of you have hit on the simple fixes Nintendo can and should make happen. It doesn't need a complete overhaul per se, but three things would make a huge difference:
Re: Feature: 20 Dreamcast Games We'd Love To See On Nintendo Switch
Best version of Rayman 2: The Great Escape
Re: Game Freak Isn't Reusing 3DS Models In Pokémon Sword and Shield
Those of you ardently defending GameFreak, please give me a listen. This isn't the first time a franchise has been at a critical point such as this. There are countless others that have stagnated and atrophied, and much of this is on us as gamers and how easily contented we are. You need only look and the bevy of franchises squandered or aborted by EA as proof. Just like with EA, the financial future of Pokemon isn't really in doubt, but their quality is. Franchises grow and improve when expectations are put upon them and criticisms are levied. You do the franchise no good by making yourselves the self-appointed defenders of questionable decisions and dismissing legitimate skepticism and criticism as whining privilege. This is how good franchises die: slow deaths as consumers settle for less and less. I encourage you to do your homework on this particular subject if you have not done so. The national dex controversy as well the recycled animations controversy are parts of a larger whole. There are contradictory statements now out of Game Freak, and it is known that staffing has been reallocated to Town. Masuda and other company figures have made concerning statements. This is not petulant fanboy whining. To act like it is is insulting and dishonest, if not outright ignorant. If you aren't willing to do this homework, I understand. Pokemon is certainly not a major priority for everyone, and indeed there are more important things, but kindly refrain from coming onto a message board and slandering those who have. Skepticism is healthy. Criticism is necessary. Those are fundamental statements, not just for Pokemon, but for just about anything. Thank you.
Re: Review: Mainlining - A Rare Example Of A Game That Doesn't Belong On Switch
Point-and-Clicks or any game that attempts to mimic PC interface are never going to function relatively well on the Switch without at least implementing motion controls in docked mode, but those aren't exactly burning with popularity these days. Having said that, I'd appreciate to see some ports of some of the classic adventure games beyond just Grim Fandango, but with those franchises mostly split between Telltale, who's gone under, and Double Fine, who was just bought by Microsoft, that seems unlikely.
Re: Bethesda Might Have More Surprises For Nintendo Switch Owners In The Future
Fallout 3, New Vegas, or 4 would be great. Or Morrowind or Oblivion. Any of those five would get a buy from me. If it's Fallout 76, I'm not really interested in wasting money on two consoles. I know it's made some improvements, and Wastelanders could potentially put it over the edge, but I just won't be able to get excited over a 76 port.
But, in all likelihood, it's not even one of those. It's probably one of their peripheral franchises like Dishonored, Evil Within, or Prey.
Re: There Is "No Plan" To Bring Persona 5 Royal To Other Consoles, Atlus Reiterates
I’ll reiterate what many have already said on here. This is an incredibly stupid move by Atlus/Sega. Apart from selling to a new install base, they would be reaping the benefits of Joker’s inclusion in Smash. That all seems pretty obvious. Why they remain so obstinate in refusing to port it over is beyond me.
Personally, I own P5 on PS4. I love it, and it ranks among my favorite games of the last few years easily. Having said that, I have no desire to buy the Royal version on PS4. Had it been released on the Switch, with the added benefit of being portable, I would have gladly double dipped. I don’t think I’m unique in that sentiment in any way.
Re: Don’t Expect A Skies Of Arcadia Port Or Sequel Anytime Soon
While I feel that Grandia II is the superior Dreamcast RPG, Skies of Arcadia still holds a place in my heart.
One of the key differences that would make a port reasonable with SoA is that the game is hard to acquire on either piece of hardware: Both the Dreamcast version and the GameCube "director's cut" are expensive items, with both going from $60-80 typically.
Grandia II's DC and PS2 versions are much cheaper, and it's getting an HD remaster along with its predecessor. Furthermore, if there's a demand there, then why not do it? I would love to see the Sega Ages series extend to Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and Sega Dreamcast, and Skies of Arcadia would no doubt be among the most requested titles from that era.
Re: Rumour: Did Reggie Just Give Us Our First Glimpse At A New Retro Studios Project?
I suspect it’s probably nothing, but if we’re speculating I’ll throw out Custom Robo. That would be a cool cultish franchise to see revived by Retro Studios.
Re: Yoshi's Crafted World Producer Discusses The Game's Difficulty
I've always felt that Nintendo has done a good job of injecting a "hard-as-you-want-it-to-be" design into their games. Take Super Mario Odyssey for instance: Some of the moons are almost insultingly easy to obtain, while others are extremely challenging, with a spectrum of difficulty between them.
Yoshi games have also traditionally done this. The original Yoshi's Island (still the series pinnacle) had a moderate difficulty on its face, but offered the added challenge of collecting stars, red coins, and flowers throughout the levels and rewarded you with extra levels that were legitimately difficult (e.g. the infamous "Poochy Ain't Stupid" level). Woolly World aped this pretty closely. Yoshi's Story, the series low point on console, had the added challenge of collecting hearts to unlock levels as well as the more pointless 30-Melon Challenge.
Crafted World to me does a good job of this as well. If you play it straight up as an "A-to-B" platformer, it's very easy. However, if you treat it as more of a 2D collect-a-thon, its challenge level increases.
Personally, I love the way Nintendo games let the player curate the game's difficulty like that. It's much more interesting than just giving them them option of playing on Easy, Normal, or Hard, and I wish more developers would adopt that philosophy and expand on it.
Re: Guide: The Best Metroid Games - Every Metroid Game Ranked
Any time you try and compare a 2D game to a 3D game, it's apples and oranges. And Super Metroid v. Metroid Prime is perhaps the single hardest comparison to make within a franchise in that split. There's a strong case to be made for Metroid Prime being the best game of its generation, and I'd be inclined to agree. Super Metroid has a similar claim, but arguably tougher competition from the likes of Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Chrono Trigger. Metroid Prime is just so different from anything else that generation. It is dripping with effort and attention to detail, and it still holds up today despite the controls being a little wonky by modern standards. Super Metroid launched an entire sub-genre and remains one of the greatest platformers ever created. Both are not only great games, but important ones that had transformative impacts on the industry.
There's a lot of vitriol in these comments. Both are unquestionably masterpieces. I don't begrudge anyone who would name either the best, and ultimately it's a matter of personal preference and taste. It'd be a little foolish and arrogant even for anyone to definitively call one better than the other. I don't think FPS's are inherently inferior to 2D platformers, as some have espoused on here, which is an incredibly biased, baseless, and ignorant claim, despite me agreeing with Super Metroid being the better of the two.
I went into this list, as I'm sure everyone else did, assuming that either Super Metroid or Metroid Prime would be #1, and so long as it was one of those two, I knew I'd be reasonably satisfied. Lists just have these effects on people. When two games are so similar in quality, it becomes impossible to objectively compare them. We can all agree, if we are being unbiased, that Super Metroid > Metroid II and Metroid Prime > Other M. The gap in quality in those comparisons is objective, one being the product of hardware limitations and age, the other the product of a meandering and misguided game design.
The sentiment in the comments seems to be that Super Metroid should be #1. Take some solace in that if you agree. But it's stupid to argue that point. They're both equally deserving.