Nehalem

I see person after person here excusing Nintendo on this. I’m sorry but this service was delayed a year and is as lackluster as could be imagined. I get that it is cheaper but it is still so underwhelming. You get a bunch of free current games with those other services, not the same value here.

I’m sorry but I guess I’m just too underwhelmed. I was personally never concerned about the price but thought that maybe Nintendo had a rabbit up their sleeve, especially with how long this was in development.

@Gold_Ranger while I hope people don’t “report” you because I’m tired of people trying to tell each other what they can or should say, let’s try and leave the left vs right stuff for other places. Political themed stuff is divisive and exhausting, and nothing turns me off a gaming site more quickly.

@Gold_Ranger Careful with those opinions. For many if us those were the best of for the series.

It is using a new engine according to some interview but mostly looks like the first to me (sounded like the new engine was not pushed or this title).

Why are Japanese games always cheesy with bad pauses? Is it just the process of translation or do they just go for cheesier story lines by western standards? (I’m guessing the pauses are almost completely due to translation since they don’t redo the speaking animation to fit English, which is always a bit off putting. I wonder if any big studios like Ubisoft change animations for other languages).

@HobbitGamer I don’t really care about this but your argument does not work for me. They have tied in VC to online. No one is complaining that they can’t play online without a connection. They are complaining about nes games that come with online. Don’t confuse the two and it wasn’t the complainers choice to tie in the two.

My biggest confusion with this online service is wondering what took them so long. There has been nothing particularly impressive anounced that wasn’t already part of splatoon 2. A bunch of nes games hardly qualifies. I think a lot of people, myself included, thought they would be doing something unique and catch up at the same time. It’s pretty disappointing overall.

@Katon I played through this when it first came out and still get confused with the reception it received (and apparently still does). There are a many games I don’t like that others do but the portrayal and praise of this game was so over the top (and I do prefer story based games so it’s not that).

Personally, I was left disappointed because it felt like it was going in much more interesting direction.

I got this. It was fun but man did it have some serious hitching issues that made it really bad at times. I still beat it but did they ever resolve these?

I wonder how they handle the controls. Never played the pc version but these games are generally tied to the mouse and keyboard quite heavily.

Also I remember reading a lot of hate when this first came out. I think around the ai and more. Did they resolve some of those initial issues?

@FarkyValentine when they are challenging it is in the last phase where they wipe you out and you just waisted 30 minutes of your life.

Also I really disliked the side quest system. I completed most side quests by accident.

I would prefer a tighter and more integrated story and less characters. Tri-path please.

I got pretty bored having to click through endless dialog for eight separate characters. There were kernels in there where I thought the story was going in a much more ambitious direction, but that just didn’t happen.

If they just came out with another that has eight new characters I would pass, even if I did enjoy quite a few parts of this one.

@Darlinfan the definition of a port is seriously being exaggerated these days.

@Dr_Corndog I hear what your saying, but I still would appreciate the delineation. Context matters and being upfront isn't a bad thing.

Keep scores, but categorize them well.

For example, put "Indy Score: 9/10", etc. I think one of the issues with scores is that they really have to be read in the context they are given. So an indie game score is not an apples to apples with a AAA score.

The other way works pretty well, but whatever.

@Dethmunk There is so much information missing there and a lot of TBA type language (games, deals, and more). Everyone gets the overall vision of it (and many people think that is bad enough with the app) but the details are what matters.

I think people thought that this might be the time Nintendo did online correctly, but many signs point to disappointment.

Really strange to see all the people defend Nintendo.

Yes people want to see how it all comes together and how you can play the new games, etc. people also hope that given the very long delay there might be something that will take this service closer to parity with the other services (or a unique twist). I mean before you put down money it might be nice to see it shown off. Here we are days away from launch and they have shown nothing. If it was any good, why not build some hype? People have reason to be skeptical as every effort Nintendo has made thus far has been terrible but free.

Why in the world are people taking Nintendo’s side on this....

Random generated levels... That's generally code for repetitive gameplay to me. I guess worth seeing what people think after it's out.

this just reminds me how much I loved rare. They were my favorite dev at the time (even though I was quite young). I remember being so bummed when Nintendo didn’t buy them. I still don’t know the full story but the switch is my first system from Nintendo since then. It’s tough to know if that special relationship could have continued (obviously they went south under ms) but Nintendo could use another major development house working just on their stuff.

@StuTwo I always figured the long term play is to have it cost whatever Is required to make it a viable multi per household console. I would think 2/3 would be getting there.

However, I’m not sure if Nintendo can even produce these at $200 yet. Portability doesn’t come cheap.

@NEStalgia interesting on what they did regarding the discount. Are you sure they always did with clothes? My wife and I sometimes returned clothes that didn’t fit right prior but we’ve noticed fairly recently they charge for that now.

@Orwellianson We have noticed that they also are making returns more costly. If there isn't a defect, you pay for it. It used to be that you could send anything back.

There is some good and some very confusing statements. Can we please just stop calling all developers lazy though? If you target a much more powerful system then it’s hard to port it back to the switch. There is a reason why 60 FPS games make the best candidates, it is because there is more headroom by reducing that.

The switch will need a lot of support specific to it, much like the 3ds. I think the best thing they could do is come out with a lower cost version. It’s still selling well but it needs to have a massive install base to get developers to dedicate some of their teams to it (think Square Enix with octo). It does seem quite possible that this could happen for Japanese developers as this is where it is selling the best.

Nintendo really needs more games too. It’s hard to create new franchises but they really need more stuff. Splatoon is a perfect example of the new types of stuff they need. Not easy (arms did nothing for me but I’d yiu liked it then great).

They should buy platinum games. That could likely be one release a year. Now I’m getting really sidetracked.

@NewAdvent this seems overstated. Yeah some places can suck but a lot of companies are good. The worst stories I’ve heard are always from the huge companies that people can fire other people several levels below them. In other words they are removed from things.

On another note I wonder how much of this is actually just using suppliers from China? China has locked up a lot of the resources in Africa with deals that go back some time. China itself doesn’t exactly have a great record.

I’m curious what slave labor means exactly. When reports go out like this they always use the strongest language possible and sometimes it is really misleading. You see the strongest possible language for almost any activism these days, hence why we see Nazi thrown around by everyone so much. I hate that is has made me question the sincerity of these reports but I just see too much of it.

I am not suggesting I support any of what is happening but I just want to know what exactly is happening. Are these people who work the mines truly owned property or is it more a comment on the conditions?

@ninty this is soooo silly. Are you really trying to compare Nintendo’s pricing to a human rights issue?

Nintendo may have the worst online service ever but it’s hardly a right that you get something better. Yes some people defend Nintendo no matter, they are called fanboys and are generally pretty harmless in the overall scheme of things.

If only you could add a Nazi reference your silliness would be complete.

@Cobalt the cost estimate for the switch was / is $257. A profit for sure but nothing crazy and surely more than a PS4, etc. they didn’t go cheap on it, but did go in a different direction, better or worse.

As for the down clocked processor, most mobile processors throttle, that isn’t an option for a console, so it makes sense. Obviously would have been great to have the more efficient x2 (while being used for cars, etc there is no reason it would not have worked here, it is the successor to the x2 that is specialized for ai, etc) or just a shrunken version of the current x1 to increase battery life or require less down clocking, but that probably presented a lot more challenges.

Looks pretty fun. Been burned by a lot of indies though that provided too shallow an experience.

@Prizm I don’t know if you know how development works but the publisher owns all ip, all work, etc. Some few cases might be different but this lawsuit says otherwise.

They will have all the game code in a repo that goes back to the first commit of code. Hard to fake that paper trail so this will be interesting if they can get access via the courts to that repo.

@Ryu_Niiyama people seem happy just to get a rise out of others. This is what happens when we lose personal connections to other people.

@Ralizah
I keep wondering how people think this will happen. FO4 would likely require a massive port effort (redoing the art to make the geometry less complex, etc). This would be quite hard to justify.

@sword_9mm
It will never get there though. Even if Nintendo broke the bank on the very latest tech (switch isn’t that far behind) it would still come up quite short in terms of raw power. That’s the price of portability. Personally it’s a price I’m willing to take but others might disagree.

They could do the do the dock with it’s own processing but that would probably make the performance too superior to portable and hard to make a game that works for both.

This has been one of my favorite games. They just announced that there next update will introduce zooming (single and co-op but the latter needs it the most). For all the terrible games they review on this site I cannot understand why they haven’t given this game some love.

I just got the first one. I missed every other release. So far I've been burnt many times with Indy games on the switch. I get them, they are just ok, and generally never finish them. So far this game has been far more engaging and impressive than most indies are.

Load times are good (something that appears to be commonly botched on switch ports, no doubt due to the slower bus speeds when coming from the PC and not caching assets in the ample ram, etc), very impressive animation, etc. Hope the story ends up being half decent as it appears to be fairly story driven.

If I end up liking this as much as I think I will then this next release is very welcome.

I just played it for the first time. It certainly lacks the polish of Nintendo level games but it still seems solid. I think this was somewhat expected as it was done quickly and with a smaller team.

On a bigger budget game you would see better assets used on cutscenes vs in-game assets, etc. I still think it looks like a solid game however.

With the dock issues it feels like they lead development docked and not handheld or something. Just seems surprising there is such a difference or that they didn’t cut back on other things before dropping g the resolution so low.

I’m sure most of this is simply a byproduct of a lower budget but I do hope we can expect a patch or two.

@JaxonH
Just a slight clarification. Only the gpu is throttled in handheld mode. Both the CPU and system ram remains at the same clock speed.