MamaSymphonia

@LastFootnote Hollow Knight made hundreds of millions of dollars, yet Silksong was pretty similar in terms of visuals and gameplay. Do you think Team Cherry just made a lazy choice?

We could ask the same question about Eric Barone's upcoming Haunted Chocolatier. It's another pixel-based, top down life sim coming on the heels of Stardew Valley, which is coming up on 50 million copies sold (more than ANY Pokemon game). Do we get out our pitchforks because his next game isn't a highly polished AAA RPG?

@Bats1234 TOTALLY agree. The discourse around Pokemon lately has been so toxic I wonder if any reviewer who engaged with it could possibly form objective opinions about the game. Like you said, when you go in with the attitude of "pokemon lazy and bad," it is going to affect your enjoyment of the game regardless of its actual quality.

@FrenchVaniIIuxe I mean, it's utterly massive compared to any city they've previously attempted. Everything's relative!

@Notsoavid Same lol. As the sub-headline indicates, what one reviewer may not think is brilliant, a certain type of player might love. And I just have the sneaking suspicion that I will love this game. The remixed gen 6 music alone has me salivating.

@LazyDaisy As a 3rd grade teacher, it super sucks to hear people say stuff like this. When I was a kid, Pokemon games were the reason I learned reading and math (because I sure wasn't putting serious effort in at school). Now everyone wants everything read to them, and people wonder why literacy is declining.

Cool, excited to pick this one up!

@ROMhaiku That was probably exactly the reason. They had X budget for the base game and Y budget for DLC, and planned from the beginning to sell them separately. Games have done that since the beginning of DLC though, so while it's certainly not magnanimous of them, I don't really see why it's suddenly bad.

@Sonicka All good points, I guess I just don't understand why people can't buy the DLC they think is worth it, not buy DLC they think is a rip-off, and go on with their lives. For example, I haven't pre-ordered Mega Dimension and I won't until I see what it is. If it's worth it to me, I'll buy, and if it's not, I won't. And I don't feel like it's something to throw a fit over.

Sooo... can someone explain to me how this isn't worse than what Pokemon Z-A is doing? Yes, both announced DLC before launch, but this was almost certainly complete and ready to go before the game came out, meaning they COULD have included it for free. The Pokemon DLC isn't out for 6 months, so they could conceivably still be working on it.

For the record, I do prefer pacifier

@HalBailman Yup. Personally, I consider Mario Galaxy 2 a serious contender for the title of "best game ever made," and while I cringed a little paying $40 for it, it's kind of worth it to be able to replay an officially remastered version of the GOAT.

I'm in the (I guess) minority that thinks Mario Kart World is actually a great game. It's not like other Mario Karts, but that doesn't automatically make it bad to me. The audiovisual production value of that game is still mind blowing to me, and the open world has its own kind of uncanny charm that I think makes free roam a really unique experience.

I dunno, call me shallow.

I think this honestly looks awesome. The music in the trailer blew me away. Very excited for it.

@Segakid It doesn't look lifeless to me. Especially compared to the cities in Scarlet and Violet. We're definitely moving in the right direction!

EDIT: Frankly, I don't even think this looks graphically bad. I think it's been a trope to hate on Pokemon's visuals (deservedly) for the last two generations that now people do it by habit. I think some of these environments and especially the indoor sets look great. Grass, water and ground textures are a HUGE step up from Scar/Vi.

It looks fun, but I have to say just while watching let's plays, the music became incredibly repetitive. For all their talk, I think they've failed to produce a product that comes close to Mario Kart in terms of polish and presentation. The dimension jumping gimmick is neat at least, but I'm not really as interested in this game as I was when it was being hyped up.

@BrokenCiv It's not "day one DLC," the main story content comes out February 2026, stop getting mad over nothing.

I 100%'d the base game but have no interest in this. Sad to say, because I absolutely loved DKB.

@SalvorHardin To be fair, you can sum and dismiss every game by its face-value parts. Mario Galaxy is just jumping a million times in space like, what's the big deal? Final Fantasy is just, like, walking around and choosing menu options, I don't get it? Why do so many people play Zelda, it's just swinging a sword around and climbing on rocks? Booooring.

The point I'm trying to make is that Borderlands IS what you say: RPG elements, bullet sponge enemies, and fantastical weapons. On paper it doesn't sound like much but the gameplay loop is hella satisfying. Experimenting with different builds is made even more fun by the open world design, because you're never short of dungeons and bandit outposts to test your new skills on.

@AgentMantis None of the Borderlands games (including the best one, 2) have particularly complex or memorable stories. Seems like an odd criticism when narrative has never and likely will never be the draw; it's like complaining Pokemon doesn't have enough story.

My friends and I have been enjoying the heck out of this one on PS5. I bought all the previous games on Switch and would be willing to double dip if it's a good port, but... let's just say it isn't the best looking OR best running game on PS5.

Similar situation to Monster Hunter Wilds where I'm like "okay it really doesn't look that good... why is it running so poorly?" Hopefully the port works out well and can hit 30 fps consistently.

So I know that the odds of that sub-headline being a reference to ZackScottGames' playthrough of Cult of the Lamb are unimaginably low, but it is startlingly close to a verbatim quote.

I can't say, because I haven't played it, but I know it's so hard that I will never buy and play it without an easier difficulty option. So there's that.

@N64-ROX Switch 1 was mostly getting ports of games from the previous generation like Skyrim, so it was no wonder they ran decently. The Witcher 3 and Doom 2016 were the first "current gen" ports, and they ran acceptably because the porting team was cracked, not because the Switch was super powerful.

Switch 2 is just unfortunately getting several dog**** ports by studios who couldn't give a ****. They just want to get their games on more platforms, regardless of quality. If they took their time, the product would be better.

It's strange how I can be over here, playing my Switch 2 every day and panicking about how big my backlog is ALREADY with so many new games coming out in the next few months

And others are over there whining about how there's "nothing" to play on Switch 2

@SpaceboyScreams Also, I don't think most gamers have a problem with repetition if the things you're repeating are fun. DKB is "repetitive" but never in a way I wasn't enjoying.

(Also, my most played games ever, Elite Dangerous and Final Fantasy XIV, both north of 2k hours, are two of the most repetitive games ever freaking made)

It's wild how some people want MKW to fail so badly, they want everyone to hate it and for sales to tank so their opinion can be validated, and yet it's one of the top selling games of the year and is winning awards.

They're SO CLOSE to waking up and realizing their opinion has been completely fabricated for them by the YouTube hatemongering machine, and that it's not as bad of a game as they say. So close.

@Johnny44 They're counting sales, not revenue. You might argue that that's not as accurate, but that's what they're counting and accurately reporting.

@Johnny44 It's not "misleading" in any sense. The bundle includes the game at a discount, but it's not a free pack in, so sales of the bundle SHOULD count as game sales as well as console sales. It's not like the game comes free with the console like Wii Sports did.

"Raise a child up in the way he should go, and even when he is old he shall not depart from it."

-Mario

@Spider-Kev I had a DSi and a 3DS and don't remember any games where you could use the camera features in public lobbies? That seems like a huge security risk when you're dealing with children lol.

@Spider-Kev Just checked, there's no reality in the entire multiverse where Nintendo lets random users video chat with each other like Omegle.

I put about 80 hours into this one. Really enjoyed myself; my main issue is that I found the marriage candidates a little vanilla. But otherwise it was incredibly charming and just a nice, chill time with a fun story.

"Can it beat Mario Odyssey?"

Man everything's a competition between these two! :3

@OorWullie The main problem with that idea is that the vast, VAST majority of the purchasing public would have no idea what the difference was. I swear even if the Game Key Card warning took up half of the box, sales would probably be 50-50 if you put them next to each other.

@jsty3105 Interesting, it might be different where I live. Where I live, the base Switch game costs $70, the upgrade pack costs $10, and the Switch 2 version costs $80, so you don't save any money by purchasing the base Switch version (unless you get it used I guess).

@TenEighty I could be wrong, but I believe this chart only counts boxed copy sales, so the digital copies sold alongside the bundle would be in addition to this.

Interesting to see the base Switch versions of BotW and TotK outsold the Switch 2 versions this week. I wonder if that's just people with NSO who don't need to buy the upgrade.

@AllBLK So happy I can enjoy both this and Mario Kart (and a whole bunch of Switch 2 editions). I've been playing Switch 2 nonstop since launch and the amount of content feels overwhelming tbh

@mariomaster96 540p upscaled to 1080p through a linear process looks like crap, but AI upscaling is straight up magic.

The solution is for resell stores to do a quick check to see if the system can access online, and if it can't, refuse to take it off the seller's hands. Crazy that people are blaming Nintendo for this and not the actual criminals breaking the TOS.

@dePaige22 We'd return it to the store then. Unless you're saying we bought it from some rando on Facebook, in which case, that's money lost and hopefully we'd both learn a lesson not to do that again.

@Slideaway1983 Ah ok, I have no idea how it works in the UK haha.

@FunGuy That's all they are doing, is blocking online access. You can still play offline games.

@dePaige22 If my sibling was using a MIG, I'd say they deserved what happened and hope they learned a lesson from it.

@Slideaway1983 If you're in the US, you can't "legitimately" play back ups without the express consent of the copyright holder. You're allowed to MAKE back ups for archival purposes, but you technically aren't protected if you use / distribute them without permission.

@dePaige22 I'd ban their console AND prosecute them personally, if I had the resources. In my opinion, Nintendo's not bringing down the hammer hard enough.

I don't want to be in the position where I'm defending a giant company, but I'd rather do that than have to do a moral / pseudo-legal tap dance while defending actual criminals.

@Jayenkai Obviously, lay people are using the terms "compression" and "optimization" interchangeably. Not a big deal if you can tell what they mean, take a chill pill

Here are some of mine

@JohnnyMind I'm so glad Rune Factory is doing relatively well. I feel like this new entry was a bit of a risk, and it seems to be paying off!

@Darthmoogle I could be wrong, but I think the 8/10 refers to the update, not the game as a whole. Obviously BotW will always be a GOAT.