Noelemahc

@dartmonkey the issue is that the caveats you describe do not justify giving a remake of a remake of one of the pillars of the genre an 5/10 just because an aspect of the combat system was not overhauled. 7/10 maybe, but not any less.
Y'all didn't give Dark Souls' Switch version a 5/10 for not being easier than its original release. It got a 9/10. The difficulties laid out in this review do not justify the difference in treatment, you see?

And here I thought the era of "if a game forces you got git gud, it sucks" was over. Yes, the SNES original was harsh, but it was never XCOM harsh with its misses. The DS remake kept the difficulty at exactly the same level and I have a suspicion so does this version given the volume of reverence contained in the music and visuals.
If you suck at TTRPGs, maybe you shouldn't be reviewing them as a job?

The survey is too darn long =(
It is also remarkably America-centered, I thought NintendoLife was UK-based?
(Also, the buying plans segment was moronic - I already have a modern grade gaming PC, so I put down "Own" on all the component buying questions and so will have probably every other person that built their own rig)
I am also surprused it didn't ask for car model & make or the number of kids or the kids' gaming habits (only if they gamed at all).
Like, inconsistently invasive XD

Devil Survivor, for all its being a GBA game stretched onto a DS (and then again onto a 3DS) was freaking perfect, so when you tell me someone is making a thing like it, but also close to the original Persona... Well, I can only get so hard, as the meme goes.
Writing this one down.

36 here, and my first console was a Famiclone too!

I've always been a proper Nintendo follower - oitside of PC gaming I went through the Wii, DS, 3DS, SNES, now Switch (yes, in that order) - promarily due to the stuff from other platforms being available on PC or not being enticing enough. But Nintendo consoles always have unique stuff others don't, by being unique consoles others aren't.

@JokerCK shockingly, that seems to be a universal opinion out there. Yeah, if you wanted a specific skin, that was tough, but why not add a Limited Skin Shop option and keep the boxes?

They need something to entice the free players or the whole point of going F2P is lost. If evrrything is too expensive, nobody will buy it.

From a non-Nintendo perspective, the earliest scarey scare I got was the original Alone in the Dark, because let's face it: the game did things with graphics and incidental interactive music what no other game has done before, and it did so very very effectively.

Much like the Syndicate Danger Music, the Alosne in the Dark Danger Music lives in my head rent free after all these years.

As for Nintendo platform games, I'm gonna go with... Silent Hill Shattered Memories. The Wii version was phenomenal for immersion, both in swinging the flashlight around and of course the fact that the in-game phone could speak through the WiiMote speaker, and hey, it was hands down the best (read: scariest) non-Japanese Silent Hill game. I will never be absle to hear "You Were Always On My Mind" without a shiver and goosebumps, whatever version it is.

The Western one fits how this particular scene is shown in the game, so that gets my vote.
It should be pointed out that that game is a prime example of metaknowledge being a boon: for people playing it as their first Silent Hill game, you will be creeped out, disgusted by Harry and the life Cheryl had, and unnerved by Dahlia.
If you played Silent Hill 1 you will also be majorly blindsided by how it sets up situations similar to but not exactly identical to the original game and then does wild plot twists with them because very few characters other than Cybil fulfil their original roles.

@NintendoWife the best Stephen King novels all rolled into the form of an interactive TV series with a heavy metanarrative.

Imagine if Misery and The Mist and Bag of Bones were happening concurrently and the writer from Misery was rewriting the narrative even as he was part of it.

Holy moly its not in the cloud like Control?!

@Tharsman given the inpouring of info that normally VAs get paid 2-3k for this much work, that Hale is the literal face of the movement to get fairer pay for VAs and chugs out voicework by the dozen per year (a lot of Taylor's speech sounded like she wanted this job to pay her enough for a year's worth of groceries while the rate at which Hale works looks like she prefers to get paid 2k 16 times instead of 4k zero times, and regularly does uncredited appearances which we don't even know are paid or not), it smells like Platinum didn't lie, they tried to save everyone's face, including Taylor's.

Because "we offered union rates to the VA and she told us to go screw ourselves" sounds way worse than "we couldn't make it work".

This actually makes you wonder: did they offer Jennifer Hale, who is a top-tier VA (as opposed to Taylor whose only notable role IS Bayonetta) the same money? Did she accept because it wasn't actually that much work or because she, too, is in financial dire straits and doesn't want to play the morality card, or because she does so many projects at once and it barely even registered on her radar?

I guess we may never know for sure.

Hey, it's My Little Pony: Fighting Is Mag-- er, I mean, Them's Fighting Herds, aka Skullgirls minus all the lewdness!
Definitely double dipping into that one, I must have all the fightening games on my Switch.

Alright now let's hear some excuses for why the frak Soul Hackers 2 isn't on Switch.

I probably wouldn't have been a metalhead if not for DooM, Duke Nukem ][ and Full Throttle. (One had licensed music, the other two obvious mockbusters to famous metal tracks)
The nineties were a fun time.

Jack Black being good at Bowser was expectable. Chris Pratt sounding like himself is deplorable after all that hyping up, but objectively? Tolerable. Still confused why it's him and not anybody else. Heck, Jack Black would have probably done a better job in terms of likeness.

It's an amazing experience on PC and I am mos def getting it on Switch for the portable fun factor.

@vicviper001 it's a deliberate nod to Duke Nukem Forever 2001, b/c Shelly originated as a character for it that got dumped during the transition of the IP to Gearbox, it's why when it turned out 3D Realms are legally prohibited from making new Duke Nukem games, they took the design from DNF and... Did things to it.
Bombshell the game itself is now largely forgotten, but Bombshell the character lives on - first in Ion Fury and now here.

Also, the crossover with SiN is an unexpected but fun surprise.

I am in the unfortunate position of loving Shattered Soldier which was a Sony exclusive that people seldom remember these days, but of the classics, it's Hard Corps and Super C all the way.

@TonyTyga90 it's okay. I have played the game to completion on EGS and Steam before and now am slowly making my way through the Switch Cloud version as I soak up the lore to do some fanfic writing. The stuttering is variable and is seldom related to graphic load, and yet it was actually the FIRST version of the game to support full raytracing!
So it looks pretty neat overall, especially with mClassic. I think my biggest foe is not the lag but the fact that I suck playing shooty games without a mouse and keyboard.

IT CAN RUN DOOM. 2016!!! Was probably the toppest of moments for me. The trailers looked too good to be true but the actual thing is unbelievable.
(Oh, and Shin Megami Tensei V, for all its flaws, is a jaw dropping experience too)

@undomiel the fun part is that the GameBoy Color version of Daikatana (which he had nothing to do with) is freakin amazing, like a cyberpunk Legend of Zelda with pretty awesome music.

Consider: Skul The Hero Slayer instead of Dead Cells (way funnier, identical gameplay loop)
THARSIS instead of Dicey Dungeons (similar dice based gameplay, but it's a timeloop space catastrophe like Gravity, Armageddon's space station segment and Ghosts of Mars all rolled into one.
Murder by Numbers instead (on top of) Picross S, because it has the same interface but tacks on an amazing Ace Attorney style story mode on top of the puzzles but also has a separate just-puzzles mode.

Wait, the Cuphead DLC is only in the US region for now?

Pretty sure its Windows version had music (not to mention that you don't mention the Windows version at all, even though that's the one most people this side of the Iron Curtain played), but I am still unsure what is so memorable about an old mecha game without that many distinguishing features.

Those Persona ports announced at the Xbox presentations better be happening to the Switch as well. The PSP and Vita were weaker than the Switch, there is no reason not to put their games here at least.

@Dr_Corndog it sounds like they took the mod (which was based on what could be datamined of the missing chapter) and polished it up.

Good on you for having Hellblade up there! More people should play it.

For my rec, I have to bring up The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island Of Lost Memories. It's gpt zany physics puzzles, an increasingly Jacob's Ladder-like atmosphere, and most of all: self-harm hyperviolence.

All the grotesque imagery eventually adds up to a chilling revelation that will have you reviewing everything you've seen in the game thus far and suffice to say I spent the last twenty or so minutes of the game bawling my eyes out, then angry as heck at the final boss, then bawling again.

It's a bit clunky in its visuals, but the storytelling is amazable. Too bad that you can't tell people it's about LGBT issues without spoiling one of the plot twists, but I will do so anyhow if the above didn't compel you. You know how most LGBT themed games are either VNs or porn? This one's neither, and is pretty good regardless.

Demon's Crest/Gargoyle Quest!

How do you have Celeste but not JJ Macfield and the Island Of Lost Memories which covers similar themes but in a much more excrutiating form? 🤔

World of Horror is phenomenal on PC and I imagine it would work decently well in portable, but for the life of me I can't imagine how ot would handle without a mouse interface due to its dependence on hidden clickable hotspots in allegedly static location art.

Actively excluding any game with any form of multiplayer severely limits what games I can try and recommend to add to this!

Loop Hero - for the amazing timesink and mindwarpy story

Sundered - a die-resurrect-die Metroidvania that is what you get if you take Dead Cells, remove the roguelike and fill the blank space with equal parts Lovecraft and Metroidvania that this site's staff keeps excluding from any rec lists for no discernible reason.

@Anti-Matter holy macaroni the eShop's discovery sucks because this is 200% a game I want to play and this is the first time I'm hearing about it.

Why THPS2 and not 3 which VASTLY improved the visuals without bogging down the quality or framerate?

I'd also add:
Max Payne, one of the most impossible ports ever as it takes almost 90% of the original game and crams it into a tiny cartridge WITH FULL VOICEOVERS. Phenomenal even before you realize it's still a fun game to play.

Super Robot Wars. I know OG1 is on the "testing" list of the emulator, but I imagine Bamco may not mind putting the unlocalized ones - particularly the fan-favorite J which revolutionized the series - onto the Japanese NSO. The longest running and most consoles-ever visiting turn based strategy this side of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the evil cousin of Fire Emblem, the most mecha anime game ever, it deserves to be shown to more people that only learned of the series' existence with the GBA installments.

CT Special Forces - originally a PS1 game that was pretty much a me-too of Metal Slug, it developed into its own thing by the third game and the same devs made kill.switch (you know, the inventor of the cover based shooter genre) and the fourth game was a k.s-like TPS with fun skydiving mechanics. But I digress. This is a trilogy of awesome sidescrolling shooters more people shpuld enjoy.
(Kill.switch itself also had a GBA port and is one of maybe three januwine TPS games on the platform? Another impossible port for sure)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - it's Final Fantasy × Harry Potter. Nuff said.

Fullmetal Alchemist had two games, fun RPG things with a neat alchemical fusion mechanic for combat and a loose adaptation of the original anime's plot (complete with 16-bit renderings of its songs!) for maximum funs.

Chu Chu Rocket! If you have to ask why, you need to have your gamer license revoked. It is absurd how a Dreamcast game became a GBA launch title but it is still an amazing bundle of joy.

I'm shocked and amazed to see Fire Emblem and SRW OG on that list. (Catslevania too, but that's in a Konami Collection, very unlikely it will get into this set unless it's gonna be part of the Expansiom too)

I know they ported the Wii version for the motion controls, but I still lament it isn't the PS3 one as it's an almost entirely different game (and I already own the PSP version which is equal to the Wii, plot-wise).

As an mClassic owner I have to it is a godsend for SD-output consoles, like my Wii, but it barely changes the Switch's visuals as it can't actually do a 4K@60 signal and only agrees to output 4K@30 if the input is 1080@30 which no home console puts out.
It DOES kinda sorta let you get FPS boosts by doing a roundabout DLSS equivalent: set your Switch to 720 to get faster rates, the mClassic uprates it to 1080p. But it mainly is useful because it does a better job of upsampling 720p native games to FullHD than the Switch does.

But this? I will wait until Digital Foundry crawls all over it.

You got me completely at Allister Brimble. His work on Descent was spectacular even before I learned of his console game endeavours.

This goes on the wishlist.

But... Hollow Knight's music is 93% morose ambient strings or sad piano plinking, most of whicj TVTropes claims is music from other games, just played very sadly.

Where is Bloodstained on your list for actual Metroidvania goodness?
If Super Mario 3D Collection qualifies, where is Tokyo Mirage Sessions with its zany arrangements of Fire Emblem tunes and tons of original songs?

Where the heck is SMT V?

Undertale is amazing, but it's OLD and on literally every platform under the sun! Why won't you focus on Switch exclusives?

@r0mer0 but, but it's awesome, in a heavy metal album cover way, particularly the uncropped original mural (which is vertical and which the SNES version rearranged awkwardly).

I looked it up so you don't have to: the manual says 15th March 2022 is the last date the PREVIOUS manual for the force the Doomguy is part of was REVISED, and it is only brought up because the (styled as a military binder) SNES game manual is a NEW manual that supercedes the old one.

So, "this manual replaces the old one, which was put into use on July 1st 2021 and last updated on March 15th 2022" is what it says.

Some doofuses saw A DATE on the cover and decided that is the date the game takes place on when in fact it could be seven or seventeen years ago from the character's perspective.

TBH I'd rather see Gyakuten Kenji 3 and an official Western release for it and GK2. It was a more novel direction for the series to take rather than "more of the same, but with new levels" seen in mainline GS games that seemingly tried to rival Call of Duty in recycledness (plus the one case in Dual Destinies that got copied from AAvsPL) by putting out new games that were mostly the same games (don't get me wrong, I loved the Poh'kemon gag and the final revelation of Apollo's origins, but AAvsPL did a lot more to shake up the formula).

Investigations, however, had a lot of new mechanics, new perspectives and yes, more von Karma goodness!

You're missing Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor on your list. The PAL version has a unique game-breaking bug that makes the game incompletable so the patch is a must.

@Splodge all of the Shantae games have been ported to the Switch and Steam at the very least.

@legend_of_zaleda Super Metroid is on the NSO. It is one of its redeeming features, along with Demon's Crest, the Donkey Kong games and Mario Picross you almost get your money's worth out of the gate.

@Spider-Kev for the 3DS it's a criminally easy solution with homebrew to move your defunct console's id (so long as you made a backup before it died) to a new one. From what I know of the WiiU it is also relatively easy there.
With a dead one, also solvable but requires soldering.

The story synopsis reads like it's a modern retelling of Shin Megami Tensei If. I'm sold, downloading the demo right now.

Sooner or later, every console arrives at the point where piracy is the only digital preservation available.

With download-only titles such as the Guild01 series (it only had a physical release in Japan), that is a big sad sadness.

It should be pointed out that Horizon Chase Turbo isn't merely "like" Top Gear, it also SOUNDS like Top Gear because it literally has the same music composer and several of Top Gear's music tracks in it.

Murder by Numbers is a fun thing because it starts out as a tribute/throwback to 90s quirky detective procedurals, both mocking and honoring them, and then goes hard into robotic free will, workplace misogyny, toxic relationships and various LGBTQ issues.

Put it up right next to JJ Macfield and the Island of Lost Dreams in the "I never thought a game with this description would ever be about sexual minorities, let alone so appreciative of them".