Philip_J_Reed

Philip_J_Reed

The silence speaks the scene.

Comments 2,098

Re: Satoru Iwata Announces 'Nintendo Figurine Platform' to Utilise NFC for Wii U and 3DS

Philip_J_Reed

@secondserving
Yeah, I'd be very curious to see how that plays out. It's easy for you and me (and most folks who would visit a site called Nintendo Life!) to assume the Mario toys would be immediately more popular. But there's a whole generation of gamers now that is growing up on Skylanders, and to them Mario might seem like a lesser imposter.

There's no way to know until it's out, but I really do wonder.

Re: Review: Mega Man Xtreme (3DS eShop / Game Boy Color)

Philip_J_Reed

But lets be fair, the other Mega Man game boy games were remixed from games that were completely different beasts than MMX and its sequel

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. The classic series Game Boy games built experiences that suited the platform. This game just takes experiences that suited a different platform and hacked things off until it fit.

The classic series and the first two X games aren't all that different anyway. The main difference that X brought (admittedly a big one) was the item collection. So when the GBC version doesn't bother to so much as change the locations of those items, that's a problem, and that's why Xtreme doesn't amount to much more than a less impressive retread of the originals. The classic series Game Boy games (some great, some meh) all took the initiative to carve out identities of their own.

Re: Review: Mega Man Xtreme (3DS eShop / Game Boy Color)

Philip_J_Reed

I’m glad you’re enjoying it too! As a reminder, a 5 is not a negative score. It’s average. And for a game that offers decent fun but not much that isn’t already available in a vastly superior form, I think that’s pretty fair.

Regarding Xtreme 2, I’m looking forward to that one a lot. I’ve played it, but it’s been years, and I’m not sure I finished it. I’ve played through this one multiple times and know it pretty thoroughly, but I haven’t spent nearly as much time with the sequel. I do remember thinking it was a nice improvement, and I’ve read some very positive things about it, so I’m definitely looking forward to giving it a go.

Re: Nintendo Download: 1st May (North America)

Philip_J_Reed

@Karakato Yes! That's me on the MMNetwork! The next article is coming. I know it's taking a while, but that's only because I'm a really bad person.

@Giygas_95 Battle Network is super fun. In my opinion, anyway. If you have any interest in a Mega Man RPG, you'll enjoy it. It's by no means the most in-depth experience or anything, and it's not a patch on the platformers, but it's still lots of fun.

If you prefer a more "serious" take on the Mega Man RPG idea, skip to Starforce.

Re: Review: Sea Battle (DSiWare)

Philip_J_Reed

@deadaccount said:
Personal note to the head of this site: You should take care to keep the quality of this site. Recently some reviews are just bad. Same on BitBoy Arcade aso

Hate to burst your bubble, but I've been begging Nintendo Life to fire me for years. They won't do it.

Re: Review: Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

No worries, and I'm glad you're enjoying the game. As I mentioned in one of the comments above, it's the sort of thing I'd encourage people to take the plunge on if it goes on sale. It's a love it or hate it kind of title (not my own opinion; I think it's fair to say that based on the comments this review has received!), so at a lower price point it may be worth flipping that coin.

EDIT: I re-read my last comment and I want to apologize if it came across as snarky in any way. I wrote it in a bit of a haste because I didn't want to forget to reply. Not that your reply suggests that you took it the wrong way or anything, but I'd still like to apologize for any such potential.

Re: Review: Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

Thanks for reading and for the kind words. I'm happy to reply.

One thing that concerns me is your calling the gameplay "broken". I can understand why you didn't enjoy it, but I feel a statement like that is uncalled for. Objectively can you really think of a single thing is this game that could be classified as broken by any reasonable definition or measure?

A timer that doesn't stop counting when the thing it's counting down to has passed is broken. Whether it affects gameplay or not is beside the point; it is functionally not serving its purpose.

Additionally the parchment pages (or whatever they were called) are glitchy enough that at one point I had something like 90 out of 14 of them, according to the in-game counter.

I can't really elaborate on the teleporter because there's nothing else to say. It didn't work. It was supposed to exit me from the level, but it didn't, and I had to restart. It happened several times, one of which I posted on MiiVerse. Beyond that, in all honesty, there's nothing else I can say about it. It was broken.

I'm also not sure that any of my criticisms were based on the high level of challenge. Remember, this is the guy who loves Mega Man.

Re: Review: Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

I think you're reading into some things, and artfully choosing not to read into some others, so I can't imagine it's worth pursuing the conversation much longer, especially if it comes down to defining words for you.

I will say, however:
Reviews are for know is a game is good or not, to know about the new features it has to offer, mostly when it affects the way you play...

This is exactly right. Reviews are for explaining what the reviewer thinks of the game, and for discussing the features — or issues — that shaped that opinion. No, the Quick Start feature did not shape my opinion, nor did I really see a point in it. If you like it — and your glowing review makes it clear that you do — then that's great, and it's exactly why we recommend our readers take a look at many reviews before making a purchase. In my case, however, it was one of several hundred trillion possible things that didn't quite warrant a mention. spr sry

Re: Review: Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

Oh, and...

The type of walls you can be climb are all square pits in the middle of the levels

This isn't true. Not trying to snipe, just want to point out the actual problem. Some square pits you can't climb into, and sometimes you can cling to the sides of arches and the level itself. Other times you cannot. And there's no indication of when you can and when you can't.

Re: Review: Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

No worries, bud.

They are clearly there to show you which direction they are facing but you didn't notice that.

Yes, I could have been more clear about this. It's not that they have no distinguishing marks, it's that the marks are red and purple, which are difficult to tell apart when the enemy is so small and the margin for error so narrow. Again, though, if you're not having the issues I am, I'm glad.

As I mentioned above in response to another commenter, it's not a horrible game, and for the right sale price I encouraged him to take the plunge. There's no hate involved; it's just a review, and I've got to be honest in it.

Re: Review: Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

Well, let's get this over with...

You can change the camera.

This is discussed in the review. You can't change it enough.

Well, for me it's easy.Looks it's legs and arms, it has more colors on the front but not in the back.

It wasn't clear enough to me to tell the front from the back. If it was for you, though, I am glad.

What about moving with ABXY only and moving the camera with the Circle Pad?

This was discussed in the review. You need both sets of directional controls to run.

Explained on the game what types of walls you can do it... Mostly on squares on the inside the level.

The fact that you needed the word "mostly" there is exactly the problem.

The time limit isn't for the level. It's for the points you win when you save a Cube or destroy an enemy.

I didn't say or imply that it was a time limit for the level. I just said it keeps counting down during the victory celebration, which is odd.

What about the Quick Start feature for example...

No review is going to contain a complete and exhaustive list of features; that's not what reviews are for. There were a lot of things I couldn't mention or didn't have much to say about, so I focused on the main positive and main negative aspects.

There are a lot of problems with the review, such as all the false information. I also have never ran into any glitches.

I have run into glitches (and posted at least one of them to MiiVerse), so of course I feel obligated to mention them. If you haven't, that's fantastic. As far as false information goes, we're all ears. Do let us know what we've got wrong.

I'm sorry but this review almost SOUNDS like it's trying so hard to call this a terrible game.

It can't be trying that hard, since I had an awful lot of good to say about it!

Philip I think you also told the developer how much you were enjoying the game... you liked their page and posts.

I don't remember telling the developer how much I was enjoying the game; I have no idea where that comes from. I did post some impressions on MiiVerse and he replied, and those are all there for the public to see. I have genuinely no idea why supporting small developers by liking Facebook posts would call into the question the validity of a review.

Are you still running that unfunny bit on hating on Bplus games?

Sorry, but, in all honesty: did you read the review? What hate is there? Genuine question, because, personally, I felt I was very fair.

There are many other people on the Miiverse community for this game that think this review is overly harsh.

Really? That's really weird. It's almost like people form their own opinions of things. I'll have to look into this phenomenon some more.

Re: Review: Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

I thought this would be a 5 or higher because it was mentioned twice that ARCADE!! is superior to Bit Boy! Wiiware.

I figured that would come up, so keep in mind that was a different reviewer. I don't hesitate in saying that this is the superior game (in absolutely every way), but, as always, that's the problem with review scores, and another reason the text above them is much more important.

For some reason after reading the review I am more interested in it than before. Probably get it on sale and I bet I have bought worse.

The game absolutely has its positive qualities, and depending upon the sale price, it may well be worth taking the gamble.

For reasons of accurate portrayal, perhaps?

mindblown

Re: Review: Rusty's Real Deal Baseball (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

@bizcuthammer said...
the truth is that you're really just getting the real worth of the games.
...and then said...
its very easy to see that in reality we're getting ripped off a bit.

...which leads me to conclude he's working from a very interesting interpretation of the phrase "ripped off."

Re: Two Brothers Still on the Way to the Wii U eShop, Third-Party Developer Handling Port

Philip_J_Reed

Games can now be patched so bad games can occasionally become good.

Bad games getting better is nice. But releasing bad games with the intention of making them better later is another matter entirely, and nothing I can imagine supporting.

If you're asking for my money, I expect that you're selling me a product. Not a shell of a product, not a proof of concept...but a product. If you release a patch later to add multiplayer, or solve an obscure glitch that affected a small amount of players and was clearly difficult to detect pre-release, that's fine.

Two Brothers simply didn't work. That's a big difference, and I won't be giving the developers any more of my money after that. I'm happy to support an indie. I'm not happy to support a company that knowingly releases games that are shoddy to the point of being unplayable.

I hope for the sake of everyone who buys it now or in the future that it's a wonderful game. But I invested money and time into something that emphatically was not, and I can't imagine investing any more when there are better games and companies out there that actually deserve my money and time.

...and this is coming from a guy that played through Gummy Bear Magical Medallion. So you know I mean business.

Re: Two Brothers Still on the Way to the Wii U eShop, Third-Party Developer Handling Port

Philip_J_Reed

Yeah, it was. I was very unhappy with it, to the point that it became a chore to even play.

Maybe it's better now, but I have trouble wanting to revisit a game that was knowingly released in a barely playable state. They asked money for a hunk of garbage, and there's no reason that should ever happen.

As much as I like the immediacy of downloads, I don't like this, "Eh, we'll fix it later..." attitude that's developed along with it.

Re: Review: Inazuma Eleven (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

Morgan, this review encouraged me to take a risk on it. And my goodness I'm in love with this game.

You're absolutely right that it can be frustrating before it clicks. I must have lost that first "real" game three or four times, and each time it felt tremendously unfair. But then I figured out the controls a bit better, and started to understand some soccer terminology, and now I can't believe how great the game is.

Love it.

Re: Two Tribes Shoots Down the Possibility of Toki Tori 3

Philip_J_Reed

Their tweets do read as a bit snotty. I'm not saying that was their intention, or anything, but it's really bizarre to see something like that coming from them. I would have expected, "Thanks to everyone who supported Toki Tori! Unfortunately it hasn't sold enough to justify another title..." or something like that.

Because, y'know, lots of folks did support them. And it's a bit dismissive to say "nope, never, nothing will change."

Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Re: Review: Cube Tactics (3DS eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

Very good review. I haven't played it online yet (to be honest I didn't even know you could!) but I'm enjoying the game so far. My only complaint is that the game seems to get into "stalemate" situations, forcing a restart. That's not a problem on its own, but it can take a long time to realize you're in a stalemate, and that neither side is making progress at all, as opposed to making it very slowly.

Very minor complaint though. I'm enjoying this quite a lot!

Re: Review: Galaga (3DS eShop / NES)

Philip_J_Reed

Dimensions is definitely worth buying, imho. It also has Pacman CE, which is my all time favorite variation on that game. Great little package, and I think you can pick it up very inexpensively now.

Re: Review: Evofish (Wii U eShop)

Philip_J_Reed

This reminds me of an old Windows game. Does anyone remember that? Lots of fish customization options...but nothing to do apart from click on things and eat them. I wish I could remember the name.

Re: Talking Point: Steel Diver: Sub Wars Proves That Nintendo Can Make Free-To-Play Work

Philip_J_Reed

@unrandomsam
I dunno whether it was a great model - prior to the internet I don't think I ever was able to buy any of them other than when they were released at Retail. (Which I did when I could).

That may have been your experience, but the fact that it kept a large number of major companies afloat, with minimal to no advertising costs, and fostered talents that are still working in the industry today...I'd say that's the sign of a pretty tight model.

Sure, for kids without a credit card it made it difficult to buy the full games. But for what it was the model worked, and it was self-sustaining. Credit where it's due.

Re: Talking Point: Steel Diver: Sub Wars Proves That Nintendo Can Make Free-To-Play Work

Philip_J_Reed

While I don't object to the terminology, if anything this makes me feel like Nintendo has discovered Shareware. Get the first set of levels (or "episode" as they used to call them) for free. Tell your friends, have a blast, enjoy it to your little heart's content.

Then, if you'd like more, we'd be happy to sell it to you.

It was a great model until the internet and easier piracy rendered the whole thing moot...or so I thought. This is a great way for that spirit to live on, and I really do hope we see more of it.