ROMhaiku

Super gaming experience. One of the very best of last gen!

@Metazoxan You make it sound so simple, which it is.

Still don't understand the problem. Just install what you're playing and uninstall what you aren't. It's a much bigger issue on the Series S given a lot of games routinely clock towards 80/100gb and there's only 512gb of storage on that thing. Switch 2 file sizes seem like paradise by comparison.

Did anybody else have a slight existential panic at the mention of the DS being 20 years old?

I like the NA one. Games shouldn't be fun and that one perfectly captures the blandness I like in my videogames.

No honestly it has to be Japan.

I think it'd look a lot nicer if all the liveries except the 55 was removed. The metallic effect and the red d-pad is enough.

@Gabe250 I was joking mate

Well this is interesting. Frankly I think if you ever get a single Nintendo game where people are even slightly on the fence then it's rarely a good sign. You usually have to tone down the enthusiasm to reach a more realistic perspective, not it shift up.

Had no idea this was a thing but StarSong was a nice experience so I'll keep an eye out when it does eventually release. Sounds like a good decision from the devs.

Should have put it on two cartridges like in the old days

Great series and very welcomed news because this is definitely how I'll be playing it. My first introduction to the series was the GBA port and yes I did go to Spain before Syria leading to that infamous game-breaking bug :/

Good news but this might be why the price hasn't gone down much for the other versions. I've been waiting on it to drop to £25/30 like 2k23 did 6 months after release for our game night rotation (more to convince my cheap friends tbh) and it's been stubborn.

I don't really care what they look like. I care if the story has any depth and is told well.

I hated the IGN other list you did the other day but I have to say this one is absolutely solid. I could nitpick because I don't like Wind Waker personally but it's beside the point as you guys totally know your stuff.

Surprised by top spot as in my opinion Tears of the Kingdom kinda sucks. It felt like a game that didn't know what it wanted to do except take what it's predecessor did and add more. But in doing so it lost the cohesive design that made BotW the marvel it was.

999 is also too low as that game is the pinnacle of its genre.

Great to see Tetris so high; it's superb.

/opinions.

Be interesting to see if it's respectful to the intricacies of mario lore. I know a lot of us play those games mostly for the story and it'd be a shame if they get it wrong.

This thing will sell out in minutes and given how expensive it'll be I'll count myself out but you guys have fun with it~

I imagine MS are testing the waters with Indiana Jones and Fallout 4 to see if Switch 2's userbase is hungry enough for their games. If they sell well I expect the floodgates to open (as long as Nintendo don't insist they need to bring them to Switch 1 too).

@LightSpirit Same thoughts here. I put the game down at Act 3 for a break and in the process realised I haven't got the will to continue.

So my probably controversial theory about this problem actually comes when publishers do publish new IPs because I often feel like it's done to fulfil a quota outside the big hitters and never quite feels like they're given the budget, scope or creative autonomy to become properly good. They always stay secondary titles and you can tell playing them just how many ideas weren't allowed to exist.

It's different because in the 90s and early 00s we were still in a position where most publishers didn't quite know what would be a hit, hence there wasn't such a big imbalance for the most part. They couldn't sit there and say, sure, FF will make us ALL the money so let's not bother thinking up new and good IPs in the meantime. They actually had to be innovative and try new things from time to time.

Occasionally something drops that does really stick out but it is rare. Not a few times a year anymore, more like once every few years.

Disclaimer - This is more of a broad generalisation than totally accurate but I think you can see in the indie space that the talent is there, just not being honed by big publishers as much anymore.

It's not incorrect to say Pokémon has always been more miss than hit if we're looking at it through an objective lens. I remember the mid-2000s and most reviews of Pokémon games back then were never strong. Fans loved them but a lot of reviewers who didn't said they weren't good games, which is likely the reason why the likes of Gale of Darkness and Colosseum are sitting at 60/70 on Metacritic respectively. Even Gen 3 was showing problems despite being pure nostalgia for many. I'd say the same about Stadium as well.

Basically you're looking at G+S (including remakes), B+W/2, and maybe Arceus as the ones that people thought were exceptional outside of your core demographic of Pokemon fans. Go too in terms of pure popularity but that's a different kettle of fish.

Happy for those who've never played it. It's a cracking game

Now we just need them to release a limited edition version of the Jigglypuff song

Completely forgot Device 6 was a thing. That was a really fun experience! Very reminiscent of the old TV Show, The Prisoner.

Let's be honest, the original games ran so the newer games could sit somewhere in the great big pile of random merch that TPC only seem to care about. Their approach to everything now is like throwing darts at a ditto and seeing what makes the most money.

Amiibo must have been going for about a decade and I'm still not entirely sure what they do. I assume unlock extra content in game?

@MamaSymphonia I think the biggest difference here is Microsoft want a cut. Not good but slightly more understandable.

Raging Loop deserves a spot

I still remember buying the first game on GBA and getting stuck because there was a game breaking bug if you went to Spain before Syria! Later bought it on PC and it was far superior - loved the series ever since. Reforged was a lot of fun so this is nice news.

Quite like this. I want more developers - and especially Nintendo - to stop focusing on Switch 1 to get the most out of Switch 2.

Always thought these soundtracks were pretty underrated

@The_Nintendo_Pedant Nothing interesting to add but appreciate the reply and yep I agree that makes sense re: popularity. I also hope your Wii is made of pure Nintendium and does last forever.

@The_Nintendo_Pedant Is that without repairs? The Wii was notorious for the disc drive failing and ine went at the tail-end of that generation. It's a very easy thing to fix admittedly.

Price seems irrelevant considering it's a package. I don't remember the same outrage over Metroid Prime Remastered or TTYD remake costing £50 (if we're going by Nintendo's eshop prices).

Appreciate you've taken time to address the camera angles but the big question for me is what's the field of vision like? I've had to skip numerous 1st person games on the Switch because a low field of vision gives me horrible motion sickness.

Real shame but probably due. Like many of us, I often sit in on senior management meetings at Nintendo of America, and Doug has failed to inspire the team. Hoping and expecting Devon to get the room flowing again with energetic ideas that streamline growth through efficient decisions, which maximize revenue to allow for greater synergy between the Japanese and American sides of the business.

Some nice updates here. Knockout Tour with friends may get me jumping back in as we haven't enjoyed traditional races half as much.

@Dualmask Indeed. Yesterday I was thinking that I'm surprised there's no item to retrieve a coccoon you've lost from afar. Then about 20 minutes later, I stumbled on that guy and was like OHHH.

Still, the reason for it wasn't great. I got into an area where I lost my cocoon on a platforming section that I'm fairly sure can only be done with double jump. It put my cocoon away from the point I actually died, beyond a lava flow that I simply couldn't reach. I'll accept those 250 rosary beads by check if you don't mind Team Cherry.

I've been outspoken about the difficulty but I'm at a point where I just spent ages exploring and wound up with a few tools that made things a lot easier. The beginning parts are still the hardest parts of the game for me. There's a real curve to get over.

Sucks but I had this same issue on Smackdown 2 recently. Popped the disc into my PS1 and the thing grew legs and started walking off never to be seen again. Sometimes we have to let these things go because we can't keep holding onto things forever

Appreciate these letters weren't sent in yesterday and that the pricing is genuinely all over the place, but I'm impressed that retailers are being competitive with pricing. MP4 can be had for £43, while SMG1+2 is £49.99. Much better than Nintendo's eshop price.

@Fazermint Honestly no worries at all mate. Sorry if I came across like I was being judgmental towards you too.

@SpaceboyScreams I'm fine getting criticised back but I have to ask - wouldn't that be the opposite of elitism?

@Fazermint Energy thief is a bit mean dude.

Also both please refer to my post after where I praised the game. Not everything needs to be black/white thinking, although I appreciate it often gives internet arguments their special flavour ✨

I can totally see where he's coming from as I've experienced finding tools to help me beat bosses but I don't agree wholly that they've managed to achieve the perfect balance.

There's a portion, fr example, towards the end of Act 1 where you have to choose between two paths and it's very much like, yeah you've done everything you can so you're going to have to grind through one of these two tough paths forward. There's nowhere left to explore as far as I could see at that point in the game.

In all honesty though, this is kinda what I expected would be the case before the game came out - that they'd be expanding on everything and things would get a lot more complicated to manage it. You can sense that from Ari's take on the relatively benign ant enemies being modelled after Hornet's (a boss!) movements from the first game.

Still, for the most part I think they've done a good job but there's some obvious compromises. I think they still lean too heavily into appeasing the git gud crowd at the expense of traditional metroidvania fans but I've made that point about 50 times now and I'm boring myself by saying it again. The game is terrific in lots of ways.

@Erigen No offence dude but that sounds pretty elitist. It's just a game at the end of the day

I'll be an old man but I remember renting this back in the day and thinking it was a sweet rental experience. 6-hour single-player game so it's perfect for that. Would never buy it in a million years.

@ImpromptuR I gather Alana finished it reading her review on here because she mentioned spending 60 hours playing it but you're right that a lot of other reviews didn't seem to actually finish before publishing.

The issue I have with the open world bike stuff we saw is that if it's not a good part of the game then just don't put it in. You don't need to shoe-in open world travel into everything and it doesn't make a game better in a lot of cases. It really didn't look any good from what we saw. Cutscene transitions from Place A to Place B weren't an issue for 20 years and still aren't now.

That said, I'm reserving judgement for the most part because the first trailer did look pretty good.

Sadly I'm not enjoying it as much as I expected. I was a huge fan of the original game's atmosphere, music and animation and thought it presented a tough but fair challenge but this one has gone so extreme and the difficulty is near sadistic at times. I find myself not wanting to play it, which I never expected a couple of weeks back.

Still, putting it in the company of Sekiro and the Souls games seems fair. I don't see it closely resembling the enjoyment I've had with certain metroidvanias, a genre that's typically a 'challenge' but usually doable with persistence. It's one for the people who actually enjoyed all the Pantheon additions that the Godfather DLC brought.

Also can we talk about how hard it is to play in handheld? My poor hands are hurting.

I didn't play it admittedly but I can't help think it's a nice thing he's willing to listen to fans for Okami 2. That was always a bit of a niche title propped up by its fanbase, so it makes sense to try and find out what they want from it.