Haywired

Looks pretty awesome.

Might check this out. I like modern sports games, but I'll always take the more streamlined, arcadey, pick-up-and-play 90s ones over them. Nice that they still have a place.

The developers have also claimed that its very existence as a video game was inspired by Pong.

Not particularly keen on any of them, but I prefer the more vibrant colours of the American version.

Fine by me. One of the annoying things about fighting game franchises is how they keep accumulating more and more characters over time, to the point where the roster becomes an impenetrable bloated mess, where you only really have time to just skim everything (if you're a newcomer). People think they want more of everything (because they have the mentality of a child) but the more there is, the less value and meaning any of it has. There has to be a balance.

I've also heard people try and claim that if the next Smash Bros makes cuts to the roster from Ultimate it won't sell, which is pretty dumb. I mean, Mortal Kombat Armageddon had an absurdly bloated character roster. The next game pretty much reduced the roster by half and sold over twice as much. I don't think it really matters that much. I think the next Smash Bros will do fine regardless of roster size.

@thiswaynow
This was an old article that's been updated, so a lot of the earlier comments are referring to the old trailer from last year. It appears from the new trailer (at the top) that the VHS effect has gone (if it was ever intended to be in the game. It may have just been an effect for the trailer, I don't know).

@dux
I may be wrong, but "golazo" might be the Spanish or Italian spelling. In any case, funnily enough, British football fans (who grew up in the 90s) are very familiar with the word as there was a popular Italian football show in Britain (Football Italia) which featured the word "golazo" prominently in the title theme. Though at the time many people wrongly thought it was saying "Goal Lazio!" (as in the team).

Better title now.

I understand that people like Shovel Knight, but how is it getting all these amiibos? It now has more amiibos than a lot of Nintendo franchises. It's not even as if it's a franchise that's exclusive to Nintendo consoles. I don't really get it.

@Agramonte
That must be Photoshopped, the Pilates Ring has now gone down in history as a Nintendo innovation and once again everyone else copied them!

I really wanted to like this. I thought the story and setting was really intriguing, but yeah, I think 6/10 is pretty accurate. The gameplay is fairly dull and clunky (especially the combat). The monochrome look makes it very easy to miss key items needed to progress. Even the story and setting, which is what drew me in in the first place, is only really shocking in how derivative and predictable it feels.

The game seems to exist mainly to sell merchandise. I was shocked at the absurd amounts of Bendy and the Ink Machine merchandise that's out there. There's so much of it you'd think it was something on the level of The Avengers or Game of Thrones in terms of current cultural popularity/relevance, rather than a 6/10 indie game that I've never heard anyone ever talk about. I thought perhaps it was a case of putting the cart before the horse, but then, maybe it's one of those horror games that's really popular with fake-screaming YouTubers.

So, how is Mario Kart Tour's general gameplay different from a normal console Mario Kart? I thought Nintendo emphasized early on that its mobile strategy was to use its IP to entice mobile gamers to its consoles with unique mobile-specific experiences, and was definitely not about just putting the console experiences on mobile (which would kind of defeat the whole purpose). But maybe that's changed now?

I mean, things like Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run, AC Pocket Camp are unique, mobile-centric twists on the console games, dangling the carrot of the IP to mobile users, but certainly not giving them the traditional console experience or encroaching on the console's territory (in line with Nintendo's original mobile strategy). But this pretty much just looks like a normal Mario Kart game.

My top 10 (in alphabetical order): Animal Crossing, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Mario Power Tennis, Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Soulcalibur II, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Zelda: Wind Waker

Honorable Mentions: 1080 Avalanche, Eternal Darkness, Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, Resident Evil 4, Tales of Symphonia

As someone with OCD who loves sorting, tidying and organizing things, this looks amazing.

"In franchise's history"! So it had a bigger digital launch than the NES, SNES, GBA, GC, DS, Wii games? Who'd have thought it... I mean, to be fair, it's only competing with the 3DS games on that front, on a console with a greater digital focus, so it's kind of an inevitability.

@Kalmaro
I don't know how anyone could possibly think that's too short. That's insanely long for an FPS campaign. Most are around 10 hours (which is a perfect sweetspot imo). This isn't an RPG.

Having said that though, game developers (sadly enabled by gamers and game journalists in articles like this) always needlessly boast about game length (which you would never get in any other field of art/entertainment), so I'd imagine a normal non-100% completionist playthrough isn't actually this long (like how the Fire Emblem: Three Houses developer claimed that a normal playthrough on just one of the routes takes 80 hours to beat, when it's actually around half that - not that that's a bad thing, at all).

Japan as it's the only one that isn't ridiculous.

Only issues I've ever had are (having owned all Nintendo consoles since the NES days):

GameCube: Has a lot of trouble reading discs now. Often takes around 10-20 tries to get out of the initial GC logo screen and get the actual game disc running.

Wii: Seemingly no longer reads GameCube discs at all.

DS Lite: Top screen now has fuzzy jumpy white line along the bottom.

Hope this is getting a physical release in Europe too. They're Danish, so you'd assume so, but you can never be too sure these days.

Even though it's not eligible, my favourite is the North American Wii cover. Regarding the ones that are; even though the EU one is (from an artistic/graphic design perspective) beautiful and creepy, I do tend to prefer boxarts that have the characters on the cover, and even though the EU one isn't quite a "just the logo" cover (which I hate, and which RE has an annoying habit of on EU covers), I would still go for the North American GC one for that reason, even if it is slightly less cool looking.

If Nintendo and Microsoft are chummy these days it would be cool to get the original Gears of War trilogy on Switch.

Obviously not going to entirely agree with the list (I feel it's a bit RPG-heavy at the top and I think New Super Mario Bros. should be much higher), but these User Score lists certainly provide an interesting and often surprising alternative to the usual, obvious, basic: 1. Zelda, 2. Mario, etc. type lists. In fact, it's pretty funny how Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks didn't actually get in. This must be the only Nintendo list in history where a Zelda game doesn't even make the top 50... Which perhaps goes to show how much Zelda games get an easy ride from game critics, considering all the obligatory "10 out of 10 'cus Zelda" scores they got at the time.

Anyway, if nothing else, I'm interested to try out Ghost Trick now.

If you look closely the Barcelona players were actually playing on their Switches when Trent took that corner.

@MartyFlan
I remember a reviewer describing it as kind of like the last bastion of old-skool FPSs before Goldeneye would change the landscape shortly after.

People saying this is the worst one, and while I would tend to agree, for me, that was mainly because of the dodgy Wii controls. If this is coming to Switch and PS4 then they will almost certainly be re-jigging the controls, so that should take it up a notch.

Most Fire Emblem games are around 25-35 hours, which seems like a perfect length for a Fire Emblem game (just talking main campaign obviously). As seemingly one of the only gamers that doesn't fetishize excessive length for no reason, 80+ hours seems like an absolute slog. It's sad that developers still boast about this sort of thing as if it's a positive thing and it's still reported on and commented on as if it's a positive thing (which would not be the case in any other industry). "Yay, our game is going to be incredibly boring and padded and stretched out to breaking point, that most people don't have the time for!"

I don't get it why he's so obsessed with overhauling the controller for the sake of it (unless he's just old and bored now, but even so, I would have thought the Wii U debacle would have been a wake-up call in that regard). The video game controller is a masterpiece. It works beautifully, hence why it's been so hugely popular and successful and continues to be. Ultimately, that's how most people want to play video games. Relaxing, sitting on a nice comfortable couch, with a comfortable controller in their hands, pressing buttons, playing great games. What's the problem? The whole "Let's get moving! Let's get waggling and flailing!" can only fool people for so long. See: the Wii, Kinect, etc. It's all well and good touting "New ways to play!", but if I'm a gamer, then by definition, I liked the way we were already playing. Just as, I also enjoy reading and wouldn't be so keen if some wacky "innovator" said that all books will now have all the words backwards or every time you turn the page you have to get up and do a star jump. "It's a new way to read!" Err, yeah, maybe we'll just stick to what works thanks...

The traditional video game controller is amazing; pressing buttons is comfortable, relaxing, quick, responsive, reliable and tactile. Not to mention it's a perfect blank canvas to do anything you want. As opposed to say motion controls (which he seems to be insinuating here) which are generally slow, clunky, unresponsive, unreliable, unimmersive (because focusing on movements you're doing in the real world takes you out of the game world, which is where the immersion comes from, not the controls) and tiresome. Motion controls are a step backwards. Innovation in technology doesn't tend to be about making things slower, clunkier and requiring more effort. Going from button controls to motion controls is like having a computer keyboard and then saying that carving letters into stone with a chisel is more innovative. As Itakagi said (when criticizing motion controls) "The reason video games are fun is because you get a big output from a small input".

Of course, that's not to say that motion controls can't have a place and that they can even be successfully incorporated into a traditional controller as in the Switch Pro controller, where they can be used for aiming (ie. motion controls' one good thing). And if full-on virtual reality is the ultimate future, then I guess it's inevitable, but that's so far off that I can't say I'm too keen on any more clunky premature stop-gaps. All controls need to do is work and let you play the game, which is exactly what they currently do. Long may that continue I say.

People saying motion controls can ruin games for people with disabilities. Don't forget that they're also pretty good at ruining games for people without disabilities.

You should put Just Dance in the title or thumbnail because for a terrifying moment there I thought the Wii was making some sort of comeback...

I think the very fact that ARMS exists probably means that Punch-Out's dead. The Wii game flopped, and, considering how popular Wii Boxing was on the console, you'd think it would've been a home run. Plus, ARMS's out-there, fantastical approach is probably more Nintendo-y and more approachable and palatable to most people than Boxing is.

I always found it odd that Nintendo went to all the effort of manufacturing a specific peripheral to go with every copy of Kid Icarus Uprising, when surely it would have been cheaper and easier just to have gone "Hey Sakurai, we think the game's coming really nicely. Just one little thing though: could you maybe just fix the worst control scheme of all time!!"

I bought Banana Blitz on Wii's launch. I remember wading through those 50 mini games with clunky, broken motion controls. Talk about a sign of things to come... I sold it not long after. Shame, as I loved the Gamecube game.

Quite enjoyed this one back on Wii U. Pretty damn scary if I recall.

It's interesting, putting their games on mobile was obviously something of a knee-jerk reaction born out of the dire situation of the Wii U era, but I wonder if, had they held off the decision to see how the Switch would fare before making it, whether they would have still done so now.

I can only assume that whoever would give this 10/10 somehow got a copy that didn't include the tedious, drawn-out giant Bowser battles with unresponsive touch controls and [shudders] blowing into the microphone...

Regarding all the DLC-begging for something like Mario Odyssey, maybe (God forbid) the creators of Mario Odyssey released a complete game. Maybe the creators of Mario Odyssey actually still have respect for the art form and saw the game as a finished work of art, and don't just see all video games now as ever-expanding amorphous blobs of just "content".

I had thought that perhaps this DLC era had created a generation of whiny, entitled, ungrateful gamers who are never satisfied with anything, who are like children who think they can never have enough ice cream, but then I remember when the Octopath Traveler developers came out and said that the game would release in a complete form and that there would be no DLC, the comment section was huge and the comments were overwhelmingly in praise of them for this, so why do people still beg for DLC for everything? Even for games that have already had DLC...

I also can't understand, particularly in this age of packed release schedules, why anyone would want to be tied down forever to one game that doesn't bloody end, that just keeps bloating itself, instead of spending their time and money on new games and new experiences.

@Gs69
Mario Kart 8 DX already has the DLC (hence the DX). It already has more tracks than any other Mario Kart game. How many tracks do people need nowadays? I'd rather they saved them for Mario Kart 9, so it's not devoid of good ideas. Plus, people to this day still play Goldeneye or Smash Bros Melee, etc. The fact that they were never updated with new backgrounds doesn't matter to people's enjoyment of the game.

Thank you, but Persona 5 is in another castle.

If there was a match where everyone was playing as Joker, I wonder what Reyn from Xenoblade Chronicles would say about it...

@napabar
In the UK, Nintendo games pretty much always release on a Friday. The article doesn't mention it because then it would have to mention it every week, which would be weird. When all of Nintendo's big recent releases have been getting to number 1, it wouldn't really be necessary to add "and it came out on a Friday!" every time. It's kind of a given.

@nintendoPLAYROOM
An 8-10 hour campaign is a pretty standard length for any non-RPG single player game (platformer, shooter, beat 'em up, etc) throughout gaming history. If you can't force yourself to pay $30 for an 8-10 hour game, how have you managed to pay $60 for all the games that are that length? Your collection would basically only consist of RPGs if that were the case.

Awesome. Can't wait to try this series.

I don't think I ever used Miiverse to share or discover levels on SMM. I guess commenting was done via Miiverse, but that can be just done in-game.

@dew12333
If it did, that would certainly be an impressive achievement as I believe the last Labo kit (Vehicle) didn't actually get into the all formats top 40 (or even the Switch top 20). It will have its work cut out no doubt.

@sfb
"As you might know, this is also known as selection bias, or self-selection bias in this case." It's also known as "Using data to refute a ridiculous claim that both Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country take over 30 hours to beat."

@sketchturner
Though speaking of Donkey Kong Country and HLTB, I recently played Donkey Kong Land on the Game Boy (for the first time. I'd never played it before). According to HLTB, the average time it takes to beat the game is around 2.5 to 3 hours, and that's pretty much exactly how long it took me.

Plus, to link that back to my initial point, Donkey Kong Land must've retailed for around £25 back in the mid-90s, which would obviously be a fair bit more in today's money, thus, I would say a 4 to 5 hour game for £11 in 2019 is comparatively good value (if we are to judge a game's value on its length, which I don't).

@sketchturner @RetroOutcast
Just to clarify, in all my comments, I'm referring to the time taken to beat just the main game, not 100% completion (which obviously takes longer than 5-7 hours).

@Tibob
30+ hours to beat SMW or DKC...? That's RPG length. The average playtimes (not hardcore speedruns) to complete those games is nowhere near that. I think anyone who needs 30+ hours to complete just the main campaign for those games is doing something very wrong.

https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=9387
https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=2686

@Scottwood101
I think £11 for a 5 hour game is fine value. Most of the greatest 2D platform games of all time were/are around 5 to 7 hours long and retailed for £40 (in fact, the old classics were a lot more expensive than that if you take inflation into account).

Definite buy for me. Glad it turned out well.