Quirky

@DennyCrane heh, I didn't buy it in the end. Last thing I needed in my life was another Metroidvania game that I'd get stuck halfway on. I like the idea of them more than actually playing them most of the time.

I might finally get Animal Well then because it is rarely on offer. I recently bought Chants of Sennaar too, which was reduced for the first time in years. Also the Outer Wilds DLC is on sale and I still have to finish the base game (I'm almost there, but it gets quite tricky). So many great Switch games to play.

I have bought about 10 indie games in the past couple of years. But zero AAA titles since TOTK in 2023.

That Fungus dev is slightly deluded if they think massive numbers of people were going to buy their unknown game at $20. There are too many indie Metroidvania games already, the market is more than saturated so only something mythical like Silksong can make an impact. Make something in a different genre, the comparison wouldn't be there, and you could charge what you like.

@Flashlink99 Oh yeah! 😂 That one was quite well known, heh.

@Erigen Superfrog by Team17 in 1993 started the trend.

I recently rage-quit Mario Kart 8 single player, trying to get 3-stars on 150cc, because the CPU karts get red shells, blue shells, and lightning, whereas I only ever get bananas and coins. I can go for 3 races, all laps in 1st place, then on the last lap of the last course, they pull out lightning (losing my banana shield) followed by a blue shell me, then a red shell, and I finish 5th. 1-star trophy and another 15 minutes of my life wasted.

I only got 9. I need to replay OoT again.

The city courses need virtual arrow-barriers, rather than physical barriers, because cars on older laps need to be able to go through the arrows and see their own view of the lap they're on. If it was a big building suddenly in the way then the players on the old lap layout wouldn't be able to race the correct route.

FWIW I like the old style SNES courses that are pure racing. Something like the Donut Plains one, not part of the DLC, where they just added a touch of water, or the Mario Circuit 3 DLC one that was a straight port of the SNES track into MK8 with no fancy additions. Although I also appreciate the new Bowser Castle one as well, they really spruced it up. The GBA tracks are unrecognizable from their original appearance. I feel like I should go back and dig out the old SNES, GBA, DS and 3DS Kart games to see what the original tracks were like.

Just before the fight with on-the-ground Ganon, after the big "endless" minions battle, I was down quite a few hearts, out of sunny meals, and finally had to dive into my almost untouched collection of temporary cooking pots. I made a load of sunny stews down there in the depths.

One thing that is weird in the cut-scenes is when Ganon or Zelda eat the secret stones. Nom nom nom, gulp! Mmmm, tasty. It looks so silly.

Also, I'm glad they didn't go with a sad ending, having Zelda stuck as a permanent derp-faced dragon would have been awful.

The guy in one of the nearby stables mentioned the storm clouds so I assumed it was something I should investigate, and managed to get to a little spike sticking off the bottom of the biggest island by gliding off a time-reversed rock. From there Ascend into the shrine area and off to the main part of the quest. I had no idea what I was doing and didn't expect another Sage out of it. I spent hours investigating the jungle area with the snake/thunder statues, it was obvious something was there, but the game locks you out of it until the story advances. You can even enter the last alter room, but nothing you do has any effect without the rest of the items (and I didn't know about the zonai thing)

IMO this quest line the only part of TOTK that's slightly bad in terms of game flow. The way the game locks you out of the start of the quest in Kakariko village is suuuper clunky. Instead of "villagers say no" when you try to get to the ring, the game should allow you to get onto it if you are sufficiently sneaky. Besides, you'd still have to figure out what you need to do without the clue from the head research guy. If you manage to figure out that you need to take a photo of the tablet and show it to the researcher, he should say "fine, you weren't supposed to do that, but we should start investigating the next area" and head off to the tower in the south. That way the gating could be organic - you don't have the information to advance it - instead of the uniquely terrible way it's handled.

The apple autobuild trick is handy, but the best discovery was reverse time fallen rocks to get height. I heard it on a podcast and I don't know how I would have gotten anywhere without it.

I disagree 100% TOTK is like they took BOTW and removed stuff I didn't like, and added more fun stuff to do. The improvement to climbing alone makes it more fun to play. I rarely use fast travel in TOTK because there's so much to stumble upon when wandering around. In BOTW doing the same, I'd end up with a quick laser death from an off-screen robot octopus.

I'm more excited about Etrian Odyssey Remaster out on 1 June than maybe even the new Zelda haha. Digi only outside Japan though.

@Diogmites that's a low bar! What a waste that film was. They spent half the time showing humans fighting, and on the weird horror-gore insect cave part. I was fine with the idea of a "real human" sent to the MH realm to explain it to the audience, but it barely has any actual monster fights, the whole film is pretty much in that desert with the Narscyllas, and then they treat Rathalos as the toughest monster ever. Just when it gets going, and they enter a more lush realm, and the raining mountain area, they go back to a desert again, then the film ends. It's only worth seeing for the Palico cameo and about 2 minutes total of actual people vs monsters with big swords.

I hope the Deck does well so Nintendo feel a bit of pressure to make a better Switch. The OLED Switch is too low-effort.

I am pretty salty about Splatoon. Even though I liked the first game a lot, I didn't get Splatoon 2 on Switch after being burned by the end of the Splatfests on the Wii U. I even missed the last one because I was on vacation.

I can't believe Nintendo ended them so quickly this time round. It seemed like on the Switch version the Splatfests ended before the game even got going. Nintendo could just cycle through the old ones if creating new content was too much effort. As I say, I wasn't able to take part in all the original 'fests because I wasn't home every weekend to play them, so being able to take part later would be good, or maybe even try the other side of the argument. Or for people new to the game to try out the Splatfests they missed.

It is a bad way to support the game to have a handful of Splatfests and then nothing at all. Putting out new Splatfest ideas seems like a really cheap way to get publicity for the game long-term and keep sales going, surely? Not having them seems like a guaranteed way to make the game feel past it - "oh yeah, there used to be this extra thing, but now it's dead, don't bother..."

I've played a couple of these new Winter levels and they are fun though pretty tough! It adds new recipes like hot chocolate with cream and marshmellows, and Christmas puddings. The first stage has a big button that swaps the chopping boards/sink or hot plates/ingredients into view. It's a great moment when someone's hot chocolate is boiling over and you press the button because you need to wash some dishes, and they can't get to the pan in time. Haha.

I've played it on Android and gone round the world in way more than 80 days, and a few times in under (67 days is my best so far).

For those asking, the basic gameplay is that you start in a city and have 4 main choices: Visit the Market, Visit the Bank, Explore, and Depart. There is more complication to the Explore/Depart options, in that until you "discover" an onwards route you cannot depart the city, and the main way to discover routes is using the Explore option. Also, once you use Explore that option is no longer available and becomes Stay in a Hotel (lose a day waiting around, sometimes needed to wait for transport to become available).

Once you depart to a new location, it will take some time (maybe a day, maybe 2 weeks!) and will sap Mr Fogg's health more or less depending on the strenuousness of the mode of transport. Fogg can't die, but if he is low on health the game won't let you depart until he recovers by resting several days in the hotel. During an actual journey you have the choice to just wait, to talk to people, to help Fogg (which gets some of his health back), and on some key journeys there are special events that trigger leading to lots of conversation options. These events can unlock new routes or other "adventures" that are otherwise unavailable.

The main difficulty in the game is running out of money. If you run out of money to pay an onward trip, you have to visit the bank. This can take days and days to get money wired to you, wasting a lot of time, as well as lowering your final score. The way to overcome this money issue is by using the Market option. You can buy items in one city that sell for a fortune in another (the market handily tells you stuff like "X sells for £3000 in San Francisco" or "Y is valuable in Hong Kong"). The market items appear at random on a particular play through, but the same items are always valuable in the same places. If you decide to take a gamble buying low and want to sell high elsewhere then it can influence your choice of route, e.g. if you buy something that sells for a lot of money in Vienna, then you really do your best to get to Vienna, whereas otherwise you would have passed that city by.

Other items in the markets might help Fogg not lose so much health, or allow you to bring departing transport forward several days. For example, you start with the gentleman's outfit, which lets you negotiate to advance train journey departures forward.

The main gameplay here - where you have most freedom of choice - is choosing the route you take and choosing the items to buy and sell, then after that there's the multiple choice conversations and story elements. A lot of the story parts feel kind of on rails since in certain spots you don't have much choice of where to go (most of my trips seem to go through Yokohama, for example, and there are only a couple of routes from there). Some routes only open up after multiple play-throughs, like on the 4th play through a route opens up through X country that wasn't there before.

That's it. It's a good game, I definitely enjoyed it on mobile and got hooked again recently when news of the Switch version reminded me of it, but it is an acquired taste. I think it cost me about half the switch price several years ago, and it got a fairly chunky update a year or 2 back that I assume is in this Switch version too.

I was pretty disappointed with Mario Maker on the Wii U actually, so I'll probably skip the Switch version. I lacked the imagination to make anything decent - my one level that was OK got took down after a few days because nobody played it - and all the community levels were those "don't touch the controls" showcases of weirdness.

I'd buy a non-dockable Switch definitely. I still play the 3DS on my commute to work, but this year is going to be the end of that. If they went the PSP Go route and removed physical games, no way. Also if it had "built in" Joy Cons I'd reconsider it, because our house's main Switch Joy Cons are wearing out, and I've gone through 2 New 3DS consoles due to work out sticks and shoulder buttons from Monster Hunter. Being able to replace the Joy Cons as they wear out is a big improvement over the Wii U and 3DS.

The user-hostile online support for Splatoon, and partially Super Mario Maker, is the reason Nintendo are gradually losing me as a customer. It seems like all their new games are going down this route, and I don't want to take part any more.

The game itself was great fun, but the whole thing felt like an experiment in how far they could push their fans. Ending the Splatfests after less than a year, artificially trickling out DLC, endless connection issues, and now this. The servers will go by the end of the year for sure. So sad.

Nintendo has had droughts since forever. I doubt it'll change with the NX. On the NES and SNES it didn't matter much because of all the 3rd parties. But on the N64 I remember it being really dry, the Gamecube was in a similar spot. Game Boy Advance had loads of 1st party games though, and the DS was bolstered by 3rd parties. The 3DS has run aground lately, with weaker Nintendo 1st party games (like pay-to-win badge game) and only 1 New 3DS exclusive.

The Wii U has had few releases, but they have been great games. I'd rather have a few amazing games like Splatoon, Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, etc. I can't imagine Nintendo pumping out such high quality at a higher rate, the gameplay would suffer. I just hope that more games doesn't mean more non-games like Miitomo and other mobile-style shovelware.

Badge Arcade is so cynically done, it is impressive. I like the rabbit's "voice". The difficulty is a bit weird. It's too easy/random for a freebie, with multiple badges per run, but if I were paying then it'd be too annoyingly random.

I think the badges themselves are utterly pointless and are not even very good looking. I have a couple of MH4U themes, and the Splatoon or Animal Crossing badges are hard to see on that background. They have terrible contrast and look grainy. The Mario 8-bit badges are OK, but I'm a bit sick of seeing 8-bit Mario now. He's been done to death. The only good badges are the ones that replace a few program launchers. Either way, I rarely turn off Monster Hunter 4 to see the home screen, so it's all a bit pointless anyway for me

@MJKOP Tantatek took a hit actually - base damage down to 35 from 36. Still a 3-hit KO in most situations though.

This weekend's EU splatfest might have to be my fond farewell to the "OP" Luna Blaster after the blaster nerf that's coming. You don't see many blasters online, and now there'll be less reason to use one. Inkzooka's nerf is huge! It will fire at about half the rate if I understood the explanation. Double nerf for LB

Special Gauge charge for the leading team in Splatzone and the Tower controlling team is an interesting change. Seems like once you start dominating, it gets easier to win. Maybe.

@pherret022 B+ and level 39. Actually Ranked mode is not too bad, maybe a bit intense. Skill-wise it seems fairly even as long as I stick to something effective like the 96 gal. I dropped from B back to C trying out the sniper weapons, never again!

The worst is Turf War, it seems to have odd pooling/ranking. The games are often spawn-point lock-ins with 70-10 victories. Checking the recent inklings afterwards in the plaza they are frequently A+, S or S+ players. My theory is that all the Bs are playing Ranked to rank up, and a lot of A++ are playing Turf Wars to not lose their rank.

Anyway, I get too salty playing therefore I think I've kind of mentally banned myself from Splatoon for my own good

Huh, doesn't show much as I've not played Splatoon since I think the last EU splatfest. The reason? Everyone is too frickin' good nowadays! Only the real hard core inklings are still playing now and it's too frustrating to play against all these ace players.

I beat SK pretty much the week after the EU release, played the extra difficult new game+ until it became too much, and haven't played since. When Plague came out, it was unlocked right away as I'd got past the main game with Shovel but I've completely forgotten how to play the game. I struggled to get past even the first screen!

This is great! It's been a new thing every week since the start. I'm so glad I got the game not long after launch. Jumping in now would be an inkredibly daunting prospect.

Agree with the rotations, they need shaking up a bit. I haven't seen newer maps like Camp Triggerfish or Moray Towers in Turf Wars since the last Splatfest. They always seem to be on when I'm at work. I'm fed up of it always seeming to be Walleye Warehouse on the rotation.

For the disconnects, put your Wii U in the DMZ in your router. This solved all my issues, except when my 2 kids decide to watch YouTube at the same time and eat all the bandwidth!!

@errantrazor the new track with yeahs in it and chip tune bloops is awesome. The others are okay too, at least as good as the goth-rock style track IMO.

@CTMike I don't think you can send direct messages here. There's a space in the nintendolife profile for Nintendo Network ID and I've added mine there!

@grumblebuzzz I want the Splatoon content I don't care about the plastic figurines (I have no place to put 'em in my tiny flat anyway). I wish Nintendo would sell the unlocks as DLC. Or even better, I wish someone would hack the amiibo codes and sell rip-off reprogrammable fake-miibos (just the base-plate) that would unlock the in-game content.

Will the friends thing make it harder for forever-alones like me to get a random match up?

Nerfing the inkzooka seems like a good move, echolocator nerf seems harsh since that tends to be on worser weapons anyway, and the buff to megaphone laser wasn't needed (they're super annoying!!)

IARC on Android at least is shockingly easy to do as a developer. It seems strange that the Wii U/3DS would have one rating system while smartphones another. What's the difference exactly? The only thing that worries me is that the politicians get wind of IARC and clamp down on it, making devs there pay too. Remember that it is the job of these committees to perpetuate more bureaucracy, if everyone goes IARC they'll have to find another way to squeeze money out of the system.

Now this is the sort of DLC that I can support. More original content like this please Nintendo, with new levels and lots of new characters. Less of the micro-payments, pricey single-character DLCs (MewTwo), expensive outfits and amiibo-unlocks. Can't wait until the 23rd now

The worst thing this can do is to scare off third parties - "if not even Nintendo believes in their hardware, why should we make games for them?".

I play very little on smartphone games, they are so frustrating. Touch is a terrible input system for games, even the good ones.

Why now Nintendo? Why? Just when Amiibo was giving them a cash boost, the New 3DS, and some great new games recently.. Things were really looking up for dedicated portable gaming hardware. Then this bombshell ;_;

The MH4 demo is much better than the MH3 one. I know too much now after playing MH3, but all the n00b help at the start is far better than the 3 demo. That really threw you in at the deep end with no clue what to do. Starting with Jaggies is a good idea, because that's what the main MH3 game did anyway (well, you start picking mushrooms or something, but that would be a terrible demo!). I'm really glad I got MH3U despite the demo, so I hope 4 doesn't have the opposite pattern - great demo, bad game!

Stats in my house suggest that the 3DS is more robust than a tablet. Bought a Nexus 7 about 18 months ago, broke this week by running out of batteries (now will no longer turn on or charge!). Meanwhile, a 3DS from 3 years ago is still going strong.

Heh, I am in some ways glad it didn't happen - it has saved me some money!

Yeah, 60€ is pretty pricey for the download copy. I'm tempted because I'm sick of (little) fingerprints on CDs making them unreadable. But it's 10€ more than an online physical copy. I guess Nintendo do this to not annoy their retail partners - if you buy MK8 in a shop it'll be at least 55€, so a discounted dl version would mean shops may tell Nintendo to take a hike.

@Silent as a parent of 2 lads I use parental controls primarily for 2 things: to prevent 3D and to prevent accidental deletion of system data. 3D has always been declared as bad for kids under 7, and I always play myself in 2D anyway as I find 3D to require no reflections (darkness), a spotless screen as fingerprints and dirt really show up, and I can't really make it out at the best of times.

Back on the DSi, my eldest son deleted all the system data, which included photos, wifi settings, the browser and downloaded games. I had backups of the photos, and restoring the rest was easy, if a bit of a pain. On the 3DS there's even more stuff in there to restore after a wipe, so I'd rather be safe than sorry. On a related note, I wish game makers wouldn't make it so easy to wipe game saves. The Dempa Men, I am looking at you.

@3dcaleb the demo doesn't do a good job as it throws you in at the deep end with little idea what to do. I did not really like the demo too much, but got the full game anyway and after watching a few youtube beginners guides I think MH3U on the 3DS is my fave game ever. I hope MH4 is as good, meanwhile I might be still playing MH3U until 2015.

I'm pretty sure these are the same ones that were available from McDonald's in Spain about a year ago. At home we have the Yoshi, a Mario and a Luigi. They're surprisingly well made and have taken quite a beating.

@WillhamBoyGeniu I hate online too, but offline single player or offline local multiplayer is good. I've beaten most of MH3U solo and it is one of my all time fave games. I hope MH4U isn't entirely focused on multiplayer - a bit of balance when played solo would be good too (G Rank Jhen springs to mind, or some of the 4-hunter max arena quests)

Heh, just this weekend I dusted off my Nintendo Wifi USB Connector to get the DS's Pokémon Diamond online and try and get a few missing 'mons (last time I played it was in 2007 according to the in-game diary). Twitchplays got me in the mood

From a techincal POV, limiting the DS hardware to just WEP connectivity was a really bad idea. It was outdated back when the console came out. I bet most modem-routers from ISPs come preconfigured with WPA nowadays - mine did and I don't fancy downgrading the security to WEP just for the DS. Besides, I doubt many people still play DS games online.

Got mine 10:00 UTC 14th feb. It's a lot more difficult than I remember it being!

I loved the first couple of EOs on the DS, but couldn't get on with EO3 or EO4 - the external maps made it less focused I think. On EO4 the edge-teleport trick made it frustrating to create a nice map, and I stopped playing after getting to about floor 3 of the 2nd main dungeon. This game's an enhancement of the original EO, so hopefully it'll be more back-to-basics.

I guess this is UK only, right?

TVii in Europe in general is more or less impossible, as Nintendo would have to make dozens of deals with all the different channels. Then who'd do all the coding to get a channel up and running? Nintendo? Seems like a logistical nightmare.

@AlexSora89 I live in a major city in Spain, get the tube/train every day (with the 3DS on, obviously) and still have only finished a handful of puzzles. I see about 1-3 people per day. Plus my son at home most days, but he has even fewer pieces than me! It is a slog. I wish spending play coins didn't repeat pieces, it seems for every one I buy I get at least 2 dupes.