Matt_Barber

@FishyS Never trust the results of an open poll on the internet, I suppose.

Just give it a year or so and it'll go on sale for 75% off. That's the usual rule of thumb with Ubisoft.

As for how they'd make it fit in with the modern series, I'd guess that they wouldn't. The older games are still a part of the canon, even if the story rarely ventures anywhere near them any more.

I'd just think the rating boils down to how many games interested you. If you've got your nose to the ground with the indie scene, this was a good one, with many long-anticipated games coming to Switch 2.

If you rarely dip your toes outside AAA gaming though, you've probably only heard of Blue Prince and think it's a bit weird. There are various shades in between.

As for the Japanese games, the Switch is region free and it's very easy to set up an eShop account there. A few games, especially visual novels, may present a language barrier, however.

@MattmanForever I can understand if people aren't that bothered by it. We've all got different tastes and priorities.

I'm just surprised when people can't see it at all. It really is that obvious to me.

If you're wondering what's up with handheld mode, try wandering around NLA, looking at one of the characters faces. It might take a few goes but you should eventually be presented with a blurry mess that you cannot unsee.

You'll then probably find it happening all over the place. The upscaling, sadly, just isn't up to the job. If you still genuinely can't see any of it, lucky you, although maybe consider getting an eye test.

As someone who has noticed it, it's not something that'll make the game unplayably bad and maybe some frame rate purists will consider it a worthwhile trade in order to get 60fps. I'd prefer it if they'd leaned a bit more toward visual quality, though.

Yeah, it's still basically the same game that it was on the Wii U with a few graphical overhauls bolted on top.

I don't think that Monolith got a huge budget for either the Definitive Edition or this Switch 2 port. Indeed, there was big question mark for several years whether it would get the green light at all.

For a contemporary of The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4, it's still holding up quite well though.

@robotreptile You can also repurpose a Labo VR set if you've still got one. It's not officially supported, but it works well enough if you want to give it a quick try. Honestly, that's about all that most of these games are worth, too.

I'm glad that Wario Land is in the launch lineup though, as that's the one Virtual Boy game that deserves spending some serious time with. It'd probably have been a minor hit had it come out on the SNES, but it's quite a good indicator at what the VB could have done, had it caught on.

Looks like they put an extra "F" in the name by mistake.

It's good for quantity if not necessarily quality.

There are only a handful of games that interest me - Pragmata, Orbitals, Granblue, and the updates to Hollow Knight and Dreamlight Valley are welcome - but it's good to see so many games.

I think people are just getting a bit hung up on particular titles that they expected to see but are still in the pipeline. We'll probably be getting a lot more Directs like this throughout the year though, so don't give up hope just yet; just try to keep expectations realistic.

The more complex games will need extra optimization work, after all, and the Switch 2 isn't so powerful that games that push the PS5 will be easy ports.

To cut AdHoc some slack, this is their first game.

A lot of their staff have prior experience working at the likes of Telltale and Ubisoft but they've generally had other people at their publishers to handle content guidelines and localization issues.

Here's hoping that they can eventually work out something that's satisfactory, at least in the regions that would allow it.

I'd think that the point with the "Hentai" games is that they're invariably of terrible quality, and shouldn't be allowed on the eShop for that reason along with other games of a similarly low standard, not that they're particularly raunchy or anything.

The problem with Dispatch is that we know that changes were made specifically for the Switch and Switch 2 versions of the game, so it's hard not to point the finger at Nintendo for that.

There may have been a certain amount of input from the developers too, perhaps because they want to make a single version of the game that'll get a suitable rating in all markets, rather than make use of the extra waggle room that PEGI in particular would usually give.

Anyway, there's an important principle at stake here, so even if the visual changes are minor and the gameplay is untouched, we're surely allowed to be at least a little bit disappointed by this.

I don't see why we can't have remakes and the original version on NSO for at least some of these games.

That's already something that they've done for Link's Awakening, after all, and they could do it for others too.

For what it's worth, the producer role in video games is generally a management one who handles things like budgets, scheduling, staff appointments, and so on.

They generally don't have a huge input in game design decisions. However, as someone who worked his way up through the ranks, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a bit more than usual.

Still, I'd think it incorrect to place the blame for failings in such matters at his door, because it really wasn't his job. That was to ship games, preferably on time and under budget (and you can have a go at him over MP4 for that) but mainly complete and finished to a high standard.

@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.