Matt_Barber

@SuppressorSteve No Man's Sky doesn't use generative AI.

It uses the similarly sounding procedural generation. This isn't a model that's trained on a vast data set of other people's works, that consumes a vast amount of resources to operate and whoe inner workings are opaque but a custom algorithm that's designed to produce a huge variety of outputs from essentially random data.

This is why we've got to be precise with our terminology here, because there are a heck of a lot of things that fall under the general banner of "AI" that aren't in the least bit problematic.

Hades II.

It's a better game (IMO of course) than anything else on this list and the Switch 2 version is giving far less away in terms of performance to the PC version too.

@Picola-Wicola It's an excellent choice for a first CRPG.

Just pick the lowest difficulty level (explorer) and take the tutorial nice and slow, to get a handle on the basic mechanics.

It's only at the higher difficulty levels that you really need to optimize your builds, so don't get too alarmed when people talk of running spreadsheets for it.

MindsEye was made by an ex-GTA guy who presumably thought that he could spin up his own studio and recreate the magic. It failed spectacularly and a lot of the people who worked on it came forward to say just how badly it was mismanaged.

Shadows, in contrast, is just a free-to-play spinoff that didn't need to exist.

I've been playing the game on PC and it runs fine on my 6 year old laptop with integrated graphics.

It really isn't a demanding game, just a very complex one with a lot of interlocking systems that's probably a QA nightmare.

Maybe give it another look in a year or so and see if they've fixed the bugs and gotten some better performance out of it. If you want to play it now though, get the PC version.

That looks like it'd make one hell of a crossover to me.

Mine reminded me that data collection is turned off, which is always a good thing.

Ubisoft managed to somehow ship Outlaws in a playable state earlier in the year, but it seems like they're back to their old tricks.

I'd definitely wait for the patch and the accompanying deep discount with this one.

If an irritating sidekick was enough to ruin a game, Resident Evil 4 would be the worst game on the planet.

This whole article feels like a plea to get people to re-rate the games so that they can change the order.

That's just how much Switch 2 cartridges cost, unfortunately, and also why almost all the third party games come as key cards.

When LRG finally starts making them, I wouldn't expect much more than indie games at AAA prices either.

I agree with the top two.

I'd have Three Houses and the Xenoblade games a lot higher though.

Had you heard of Shiver, SPD and Mobiclip before Nintendo bought them? Have you heard of them even now?

Even Brownie Brown, Monolith and Retro were all relatively obscure before Nintendo's acquisition. Again, if you know them, it's probably on account of projects they did for Nintendo.

Those are the kind of studios that they'll be looking to acquire. You can pretty much rule out anyone who you've heard of, at least outside of that context.

I was lucky enough to get it on the technical test last April and it's felt like a long seventeen months. Still, you're getting a game that's been well and truly honed to perfection in the meantime.

Time will tell as to how its GOTY credentials stand up but, between it and Silksong, good luck to anyone else in the Indie category.

@OrtadragoonX The closest I can think of would be Hades 2.

Mind you, even that came after nowhere near as long a wait, and I'd think that the drawn out development of Silksong has only added to the anticipation for it.

Will the added stability prevent the dock from falling forwards?

@sixrings Zelda notes is the new content. You might not find it particularly exciting or interesting, but it's not in the original game.

@sixrings Yeah, that's the rub.

The rule seems to be free performance updates if there's no new content, but you pay if there is.

I don't think it sells itself entirely on the new content. You aren't getting a huge amount of new levels, and they include a fair few reused locations with new elements.

Rather, it's the performance improvements to the base game that make this worth having. If you're tempted to replay the entire game at the slicker frame rate, it's well worth the price of entry.

Randy can charge what he wants but I'll still be waiting until it comes to the Epic Store for free before playing, based on what happened with the earlier games.

The only scenario in which I see myself buying them is if they're being sold at a bigger discount than the equivalent game can be bought for on the eShop,

I've done that a few times with Switch games that aren't complete on the cartridge, but I've never paid more than thirty bucks for one.

Great.

Now all we need is a "hide shovelware" checkbox for the eShop.

I've put around 200 hours into the game, so it's definitely been the F-Zero game I needed, if not the one I'd have asked for.

The player count does get a bit thin at times, though. It's not uncommon to be racing against a mere handful of fellow humans and 90-odd bots.

If you get the second upgrade on the glider set in Tears of the Kingdom, you won't take fall damage.

Props to Nintendo for anticipating this article and providing a solution.

@jowy_sw Yeah, I'm a big fan of Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade X, which were my twin highlights of the Wii U.

I'd think that Switch 2 editions of the Monolith games should eventually arrive, but the game that needs one most is surely Xenoblade 2. That looks particularly rough in handheld mode, with both significant frame rate and resolution drops at times.

I'd give it to the Wii U. It often gets criticized for not having that killer app - in Wii Sports, Breath of the Wild, Mario 64 vein - but there's such a good across the board selection there.

If you wanted to pick up half a dozen games with your new console rather than just the one, you were better served by it.

XBox is all about Game Pass these days and you can get that on any PC; you don't need an Xbox branded one for it.

I enjoyed the first Citizen Sleeper enough to play through multiple times to get all the endings, and there were some real tear-jerkers. It getting a larger and more ambitious sequel is an easy sell for me.

Balatro is a comfortable win for the best game of last year, although I'd give an honorable mention to Neva for its fantastic visuals and storytelling.

@bobrocks95 That not "my" definition, its the one you'd find in pretty much any reference material about interlaced video. You're the one inventing your own here.

Also, if you replay the original TTYD, I'd strongly recommend doing so on a progressive display as it'll look far better and you'll actually get a proper 60FPS out of it.

@bobrocks95 That's the thing though, the F in FPS is for frames and 2 fields = 1 frame. Alternatively, you can think of it in terms of how often individual pixels change per frame. Since that only happens on alternate fields, it's just 30 times.

Anyway, having played the remake, it's great. Passing over it for the sake of frame rate snobbery is your loss.

I'm giving it to Unicorn Overlord. I've been a fan of Vanillaware's work since Muramasa on the Wii but they've surpassed themselves here, and it really fits the vibe of the game too.

Never mind all the characters, backgrounds and functional stuff, just look at the food!

I suppose it has to be said that there aren't any particularly realistic looking games in the list. Still, maybe this time next year, with the Switch 2 presumably having arrived, that'll change.

Full marks for me.

Does this mean I've been terminally online or just that I know my Nintendo stuff?

@BinaryMessiah Seriously, just read the settlement.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68284505/10/nintendo-of-america-inc-v-tropic-haze-llc/

None of the individuals are named and held responsible for the money, only Tropic Haze LLC. Anything still owed to Nintendo after the company was dissolved will just have been written off. I doubt they're even concerned about the money; it was all about getting control of Yuzu itself.

This is different from the Gary Bowser case where he was personally liable for the settlement.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298468/gov.uscourts.wawd.298468.23.1.pdf

Also, nice necropost there.

I can remember from a while back that there was a case of a dog swallowing a DS cartridge, which had to be surgically removed.

With Switch cartridges being even smaller, adding the bitter coating seems like a very sensible precaution.

They're all stand alone games, and it's a great series.

You just have to like cats, RPG mechanics, and dad-jokes.

For those wondering, it's been in the Humble Bundle three times and I bought all of them, albeit mostly for the other games in the latter two cases.

Can I vote for filters, filters and more filters?

Most of my game searches for the purpose of discovering new games are done on other sites, like Metacritic and Deku Deals, precisely because they've got better filtering.

One the one hand you can argue that Shovel Knight isn't retro, because it isn't that old.

On the other, you could argue that it always was. Even on the day it launched, it was evoking the style of an earlier period.

The word gets used both ways, so it's probably best to deal with that rather than attempt to gatekeep one way or the other.

@Ooyah Yeah, it's right up there with The Last Hope: Dead Zone Survival.

I wonder if it'll see a similar fate.

Lego Star Wars is still the best Star Wars game, and you won't get mugged by time-limited microtransactions when you play it.

I'm a PC gamer who regularly plays games at 120fps where appropriate and who generally avoids buying twitchy games for the Switch, where it can't deliver that. I've got no problem buying 30fps RPGs on Switch though, because they don't need that level of performance.

At the end of the day, we're talking about hardware that's based around a mobile SoC from 2015. If you want 60fps for everything that's going to require visual trade-offs for games where it makes no sense at all.

And sure, the original TTYD ran at 60fps, but this is not that game. It's a ground-up remake of it, with a radically enhanced visual style.

@bobrocks95 It's exactly how it works. It takes two fields to make a frame, so 60 fields per second means 30 frames per second.

If you want to get 60fps out of a 480i TV set, the only way you're doing it is by rendering it at 240p, which some older consoles do, but not the GameCube.

Edit: There's obviously nothing to stop a game from rendering at 60FPS, but the TV set just doesn't have the bandwidth to display that many full frames.

If you played it on GameCube back in the day, the chances are that it wasn't 60fps.

You'd have needed either a digital TV (very rare) or the component cable (not that much more common), otherwise it ran at 30fps with an interlaced display.

I suppose a lot of people will have played it on the Wii or with an emulator these days, however.

It's a great Direct for cat lovers.

I always thought that FF6 was the best game in the series. I didn't know it was the best three though.

I suppose it has to be said that, from 7 onward, the games aren't at their best on Nintendo platforms, when available at all.

The master reaches his final form.

It's a sad day for sure, but what an incredible legacy he's left behind him.

@BinaryMessiah In this case, the $2.4 million will not be borne by the individual developers as the judgement was against a limited liability company, that will be liquidated as part of the settlement.

@the_beaver Citra just got caught in the crossfire. It's not mentioned at all in the lawsuit and obviously was neither here nor there when it came to the piracy of TotK. Most likely, they had to sign a blanket agreement not to work on any Nintendo emulators.

It is, however, an open source project with other branches under active development by completely unrelated teams, so one of those might keep the project alive.

We might have to wait for the dust to settle first though, because I don't think anyone's going to be inclined to stick their head up right now.

@Arawn93 Ryujinx still takes money on Patreon and facilitates the dumping of encryption keys, however.

They're probably going to have to clean up their act and keep a low profile if they want to remain active.

@Dm9982 Steam is unaffected because it doesn't require games to be rated.

All console platforms require a rating though, so they're required to remove the game immediately if the rating is changed or revoked.

Also, I'd bear in mind that PEGI ratings are sometimes used for other regions via the International Age Rating Coalition, so knock-on effects may cause the game to be removed from sale there too.