KoopaTheGamer

Yes, I'm extremely bothered by it.

My highlights of the year are Hollow Knight Silksong, Absolum, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance and Ball x Pit (+Blue Prince and Lumines Arise that are not available for Switch/Switch 2). I also enjoyed Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders. Metroid Prime 4 and Donkey Kong Bananza were kind of disappointing, though. But overall a very good year for gaming.

I would be more or less fine with 30fps in such a slow paced game. But I can't stand input lag and this seems pretty much unplayable to me.

@JaxonH Funny how you mentioned Trials Rising, because the developer of the Trials series (RedLynx) also worked on the Switch 2 port of Star Wars Outlaws.

Fast Fusion would otherwise belong to this list but the image quality is awful. Honestly, Fast RMX kind of looks better because of the image quality even though the models, textures, lighting etc are worse.

That's pretty cool, even if the game was just ok in my experience (played it for a few hours through GamePass). Reasonable price too!

@Stormkyleis Based on the Directs, this was the plan the whole time. Sakurai said that the game was finished at launch and wouldn't be getting any DLC.

@CurryPowderKeg79 Pretty bad as a cash grab since a lot of people will get it for free...

Well, at least it looks a lot better. 60fps would have been great but better resolution, better textures, improved lighting and better draw distance for foliage are very nice things anyway.

Haven't beat it yet, but I've played close to 5 hours. It's a good game, but not great. The first few areas are fairly linear and the desert area is pretty boring and doesn't really fit a Metroid game. That said, visually it's stunning and runs great. Atmosphere is also pretty strong. Love the bosses as well, they're well designed.

Maybe a 7/10 then.

I will carefully asses whether I'll be buying Sega games in the future then. If they want my money, they should stay away from AI.

@larryisaman I played it when it was new, and I remember being super disappointed. It was great on a technical level, but gameplay was not what I was looking for. That said, I wouldn't mind a multiplayer/deathmatch mode as a DLC for Metroid Prime 4. Or even a standalone game.

How on earth is Metroid Prime 4 below Metroid Prime Hunters? That makes absolutely no sense. Don't get me wrong, Hunters did some things right. The controls work amazingly well, it has multiplayer, and it's visually among the best DS offers. But as a singleplayer experience, it's extremely mediocre. No proper upgrades (only weapons), only two different boss types etc make it one of the worst games in the series.

Edit: I disagree with the list in other ways as well. I much prefer 2D Metroids over Prime series.

@Elitepatriot I would be extremely concerned if it was 40h, that would be way too long for a Metroid game.

@Jeronan I think the point of that message is to be a friendly reminder to digital buyers who bought Switch 1 version without the upgrade pack yet are playing on Switch 2. As far as I know, the physical version has Switch 2 upgrade on the game card and doesn't require a download, except this patch (which I'd imagine is completely optional and not particularly important).

@OldGamer999 I believe all of the UI elements/HUD are true 4K, so it's actually a pretty significant part of the screen. But yeah, it is a bit misleading, even if it doesn't really matter. 1440p with good antialiasing is more than good enough.

@FrenchVaniIIuxe The peak shown by Steam charts is concurrent players, not total players. Not sure how accurate the estimates are, but both of them are estimated to have sold at least 20k copies on Steam. And I'd assume a good chunk of sales happened on Switch. Pocket Dungeon was also available on mobile through Netflix for some time, so I'm sure they got a decent amount of money through that deal as well.

It's not her fault whatsoever. She's an actor, and obviously she needs to work to pay the bills.

@ibis_87 Well, Shadows runs on Steam Deck as well. In my experience handheld mode Switch 2 outperforms Steam Deck in some games and Steam Deck outperforms Switch 2 in others (mostly games that are heavy on CPU). I personally enjoy using both systems a lot. That said, Steam Deck released in 2022 so I can see why some people would be slightly disappointed that Switch 2 isn't a big leap over Steam Deck, in handheld mode anyway.

@Munchlax I think it's easily worth the price. There's plenty of stuff to do in this game, with Air Ride, Top Ride, City Trials and Road Trip all being super enjoyable. Because you need to unlock the characters, rides and tracks, you're constantly getting something new (even if it may only be less important stuff like decals for vehicle customization, new titles or character colors etc).

@batmanbud2 Better resolution means better scaling. As a simple example, you can't have proper integer scaling with 1080p resolution when the content is in 240p (because 1080/240=4,5), unless you use letterboxing. However, you can have proper integer scaling with 2160p image. The CRT filters etc will also benefit greatly from better resolution.

Don't get me wrong, the NES/SNES/GB games already looked quite nice on NSO. But I appreciate when they make them even better.

I'm waiting until they eventually start getting cheaper.

That's a shame. I've been having a lot of fun with it, so I hope it does well.

@Joe11 I know well that the mathematical average of 1 and 10 is 5.5. But I don't recall any sites that use 1-10 scale with half points as well. Anyway, if you go check NintendoLife's own scoring system, 5 is called "average"

@JohnnyMind Remember, when the scale goes from 1-10, 5 is average. I agree that fully functional games shouldn't get 1/10 or even 2/10 if they have some artistic merit, but 4/10 is completely fair.

I find it believable that people who don't really understand AI and its consequences don't care about it being used. One more reason to be vocal about it. If a game uses AI, I will not support it.

Still wishing this was animated, but whatever. They both look fine.

No, I never have had any issues with it, and I use wired connection most of the time.

@ShadLink What about NeXT Computer, launched in 1988?

It's a fantastic game, highly recommend it. But I already have it for PC, so...

@ThatOneLevel There has always been and always will be bugs even on the most polished games. With DS games they just either didn't get fixed or fixed them silently with reprints of the cartridges. I did enjoy the DS (well, DSiWare to be specific) version of PvZ and don't remember it having any major issues, but you can find plenty of reports of glitches if you google it.

Seems like they've addressed pretty much all the major criticisms that I've read (lack of dynamic audio, clunky mouse mode/touch screen inputs etc). I may actually get it now.

Looks quite different to me, but you never know I suppose.

I think I'll stick with Streets of Rage 4, Shredder's Revenge and Absolum. Excited to see how Marvel Cosmic Invasion turns out, though.

I don't personally think Bananza is GOTY material. It's good, but not great.

Anyway, I think this year has been great indie year. Blue Prince, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Absolum... So many amazing indies. Haven't even played Hades 2 yet, and Mina the Hollower hasn't been released yet.

@kevinm360 In my experience things that go viral don't stay viral for long unless they do something right. There's more to it than just being lucky. They found a very strong concept that appeals to both young and old people. It's just a bummer that they don't put more time and effort into their games these days. The quality has certainly gone down after the main series transitioned to proper 3D.

I think it lost the magic after DS generation.

@dennabeht Replanted is 20€, and Plants vs Zombies was originally a PC game that was later ported to mobile.

I heard of multiple of these issues when checking out reviews, so I'm glad that they fixed these quickly. Sure, a lot of these shouldn't've been an issue to begin with, but at least they care enough to fix them.

I heard the mouse controls on Switch 2 version are a bit clunky, so hopefully they'll improve those next.

Disgusting, nothing else to say.

There is going to be a point in the somewhat near future when I've played all the tracks in the game multiple times and I wish they would make more.

@Metaphor1987 They haven't announced any pricing information yet, as far as I know, so they may charge a premium price to include the full game on cart. Something similar happened with Yooka-Replaylee. The physical version is $20 more expensive than the digital version which is a big difference.

@N00BiSH I think Air Riders looks wildly different from Mario Kart, so I wouldn't be comfortable comparing them, let alone suggest that Air Riders would "dethrone" Mario Kart. I personally really enjoy both Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, and I will definitely buy Kirby Air Riders as well. But I don't think any one of them is going to replace the others. All of them are worth playing.

Looks a bit rough on the images, but still, I'm sure a lot of people will welcome this port.

If Series S is doing 1440p, then there is no way that Switch 2 is doing native 4K. It may reach those numbers with DLSS but internally it has to be running at a lower resolution.

@neil9000 The amount of code doesn't correlate with the performance of the code. Less code could in fact cause performance issues if they used algorithms that are short but inefficient.

But the amount of code barely matters for the filesize anyway. It's the graphics and audio files that make the biggest difference, especially pre-rendered videos. My guess is that they removed some higher quality LOD models or higher res textures that aren't being used but were left in the files. Could be better compression as well, who knows?

I've been playing Ball X Pit on PC and I've been quite enjoying it. Very addictive game. I'd actually recommend PC version because it supports mouse controls which I find preferable over gamepad controls in this game.

Absolum is probably the best roguelite I've ever played, and one of the best beat 'em ups as well. Fantastic game!

@Liam_Doolan Might want to update the article with this alternative take:
https://bsky.app/profile/ninpatentswatch.bsky.social/post/3m3ebyvjpo22k

@dr-gorgo Some of the DS games are already quite expensive, so having them available on NSO would be nice (although I would prefer if they were available as separate purchases on eShop).