MH4

This has been a phenomenal comics year in general. If you aren’t reading Absolute Martian Manhunter, do yourself a massive stinkin’ favor and pick up the paperback!!! And issue 7 next week lol.

I’m glad this game is good!! Def need to give it a whirl at some point.

Still not budging on getting a Switch 2, but this is the game I will be watching jealously from the sidelines. Looks super fun and fresh.

I don’t really care about the Simpsons but you can tell when the Epic Games dev team cares about a collab. The Springfield Island map is super fun.

"Fire Emblem social deduction game" is one of the funniest phrases I've heard in a while lol

Cosmic Ghost Rider is a crazy pick!!

For context, Cosmic Ghost Rider is the Punisher (Frank Castle) if he got the powers of both Ghost Rider and the Silver Surfer. At one point he tries to stop baby Thanos from becoming a tyrant by going back in time and raising him.

Pretty cool obscure-ish character pick!

Much like with Mario Kart and the Switch 2 as a whole, I was very excited until the prices got revealed. Very much justifying my decision to sit this out…

Without this game I doubt I’d be a musician today. Undertale means a lot to me.

(Also it was very entertaining on the site trying to doodle myself as an Undertale talk sprite haha)

I got “bullied” into getting the full release by some friends. I didn’t care for the initial demo chapters all that much, but I figured I’d give it a shot anyways.

It finally clicked for me. The content in Ch3 and Ch4 retroactively make the setup in Ch1 and Ch2 a lot more impactful. Very excited for the complete experience.

@Bengals76 Sounds good bro! ARMS NICE forever!

@Bengals76 I’ve also played since 2017, got the game on launch day, I just didn’t have internet at home growing up so my online play sessions were very limited haha. I imagine today only the most serious of players are still online

@Bengals76 I always used “MH4” on Switch! I didn’t play online much but I don’t doubt we fought at some point. I main the brown Lola Pop alt!

Unironically an ARMS sequel would be the one thing that gets me to cave and buy a Switch 2. The original game is one of my most favorite games of all time.

@Supervideoman22 Came here to say exactly that LOL. People WILL find a way, just not the way the big companies want them to find…

I went through an obsessive Cookie Clicker phase last year. Do not tempt me with another.

Oh that’s a relief to hear it’s a loyalty points reward. I’d been saving mine for something really good and I think I’ll go ahead with this!

@sanderev Fair point, but it’s easier for me to go out and grab a $10-20 LEGO set compared to Nintendo games.

Not to dismiss all the fantastic and similarly priced indie games, but I think my original point still stands. I should’ve also mentioned that part of why I’m gaming less is because these new hobbies can get super expensive - especially music production lol.

Even before the pricing debacles started, I was already starting to get into new hobbies. LEGO and comic books, specifically, as well as going harder on music production.

The price bumps really kicked me in the pants and jolted me further away from gaming as a whole. I don’t want to sacrifice all my new fun hobbies for something that costs more and I want to do less.

@JohnnyMind I’ve only read issue 1 so far but it’s surprisingly good! If you don’t want individual issues, there is a paperback version launching later this year that’ll have all 5 issues.

I’ve been seriously thinking about it and because of a combination of shifting tastes and raising prices, I don’t know if I’d call myself a “gamer” anymore.

I love these worlds and characters and histories, but it’s just too much now - especially as I’m getting older and beginning to pay for things myself.

It kinda sucks, but it is what it is.

Seeing a Baldi related headline on NL was a jumpscare in and of itself LOL

Still not getting a Switch 2 at launch, but it's a relief to see the most important aspects - the console and games - aren't getting price hiked. Makes me less hopeful that they'll slash prices later though (not that I was actually holding out hope for it, to be fair).

The “RICHEST” Mario Kart experience, he says? Richest for who? lol

I just hope the prices don’t get even higher because of this. It’s not completely out of the question, I think…which scares me.

Wait this is by Jared Hess?? How did I miss that?? LOL now I’m a little excited.

I think all the covers are a bit messy - to be fair, Tomodachi Life is a difficult game to describe - but I voted North America because I like the tagline and the “YOUR MII HERE” to help communicate quickly and boldly that this is a game about your Miis’ lives. I also like the NA logo the best, but that may just be nostalgia.

I rated a 7. Not too bad in my book! Especially with Tomodachi Life and Rhythm Heaven. I’m also excited to check out Patapon.

Took em long enough. They better not fumble this game!!!!!!

My first two packs this morning and I pulled that full art Tatsugiri, and a 3 star full art Giratina. Not a bad way to start the day

That Hungrybox anecdote is especially heart wrenching. Absolutely tragic. Rest in peace to Hax.

Okay, sure, whatever LOL. 30 minutes of news is awesome. Makes you wonder how many games they’ll show in next week’s show.

@LastFootnote You’re right, that ISN’T constructive. I love the Mario sets we get (built the ? Block last week and I adore it), but I also love Minifigs and want them of the Nintendo characters I like.

No need to be so rude to people you don’t know online. Good grief.

Makes plenty of sense to me, given how chummy Nintendo and LEGO have gotten recently.

Can’t wait for another LEGO Mario situation where we get everything but Minifigure scale stuff, though, lol.

The dev behind Monopoly GO, one of the most aggressively monetized mobile games I’ve ever played?? Very curious to see how this goes lol

I feel like these are the prices those last four games should have launched at, lol.

Black was my first Pokémon game ever, and Tepig was my first starter. I am under legal obligation to choose him!!

Gen 5 remake! It’s the game I grew up with and I am very heavily biased!!!

As others have noted, this is about $0.142 per piece, which is a bit pricey. But I suppose that markup is for the Nintendo brand name…

I’ll probably end up grabbing it at some point, just because I like the Game Boy lol

I started seriously reading comics this year and I love me a goofy crossover - this has been perfectly timed lol. Very excited to see if this ends up being any good.

Looks fun enough! I’ll keep an eye on it; hopefully it turns out great and not just good.

Didn’t have this one on my radar but I’ll have to check it out eventually. Sounds like a lot of love went into it.

Really glad this is being rereleased since it’s an awesome figure.

Really mad this is being rereleased because now I’m tempted to buy it.

My hope is that it launches at $350 USD and they lower the prices of the three original Switch models. Kinda have a late-life 3DS situation going on where you have the cheap version for casuals and kids (Switch Lite) and a range of higher end versions for everyone else (OLED, 2, etc).

Realistically though it’ll probably be closer to $400 USD.

They look so charming!! Love this style. Very excited for it!

Glad to know I can skip out on this lol, I was considering it.

Also I’m a little surprised y’all aren’t covering Miku in Fortnite Festival. I’d think she’d appeal to Nintendo users a pretty decent amount, at least enough to report on.

@gcunit In short, yes haha!

There are tools other than generative AI that can speed up processes. In that sense, it's unneeded.

I've actually been watching all morning a stream vod of an animator - PhantomArcade, who is the director and lead animator of indie hit Friday Night Funkin' - working on a smoke / explosion effect animation for a single results screen found in his game's most recent update. Being able to watch this animation process in action has even further solidified in my mind that human-made artwork is superior to AI-generated artwork solely because of how human it is. The nuances of his art style, the mistakes that add extra flair. The process is what makes the final product so good, the ability to break down every single decision and say "here's why I did this," and I think you lose that ability with AI.

Similarly, in Sakurai's video (bringing it back on topic, wahoo!), the nuances of what he wanted out of Sora's details are something that human interpretation (IMO) does so much better than AI. Having that eye for detail is what makes human artwork so cool.

I can see that your original post was not advocating for completely replacing artists with AI. However, I think that even beyond the potential benefits to speed, the ethical grey area that generative AI falls into (with concepts such as training data sourcing and wasteful energy consumption) makes it hard to stomach as a tool. And like others have said, there will be others who use it as a medium rather than a tool in an attempt to abuse that tool and truly replace real artists.

As both a consumer and a creative person myself, I would rather have something handmade and human rather than something computer generated. That arduous process is what makes the result worth it in the end.

We typically only see the destination as consumers, but the journey that artists go through to get there is what makes their art actually art. That's the long and short of it!

[EDIT: should add that I'm not advocating for crunch or longer working hours - I'd rather a game take longer to come out and the artists have more time to breathe and do good work than use generative AI to churn out a game faster]

@gcunit Is that really your takeaway from this LOL???? I feel like many artists enjoy putting in the work like that - that level of dedication is what makes the art worthwhile.

If Sakurai's team had just autogenerated the details for Sora, nobody would care. If I as a music producer could just autogenerate little details, it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as going microsecond by microsecond to make sure all my sample chops are just perfectly placed.

The effort is what makes it worthwhile. It wouldn't be work without it. Hot take I guess, but working is good and I think AI is for lazy people [shrug]

Sorry to write so much lol, I just think your takeaway being "we need AI to generate details for us" from this feels a bit silly. Those details wouldn't be anywhere near as special and fun and cool if they could just come to us easily.

Got my Off the Hook preorder shipping, found Squid Sisters in GameStop yesterday

This looks really bad, but in a way that kinda makes me want to watch it lol

@silver-crescent To be fair, I'd rather an acknowledgement like this instead of radio silence. It's nice to get a "sorry it's taking so long" every now and then with releases like this, lol

Got my first win of the season this morning and it's very fun so far! The new Marvel weapons are really cool - especially Cap's Shield and the War Machine arsenal - and I really enjoy the majority of this Battle Pass.

I wish WB would get off their rear ends and do more outside collabs because I do wish we'd kept getting DC characters in addition to the Marvel ones. I like Marvel characters, but variety is the spice of life, y'know?