ROMhaiku

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.

@Madao Agree. I feel confused every time I hear the replies on this issue considering the minimum 64gb limitation and high cost of the cartridge is an obvious bottleneck that we all know about.

Do I like it? Nah it sucks, but it seems there's no clear solution that doesn't mean paying $20 more for a physical copy of the full game on a cartridge. Developers aren't going to eat those costs for our benefit.

Totally personal opinion alert but I'll happily pick up Mario Galaxy as they look like super ports but I have no interest in the rest. I could pick up Wonder on Switch 1 for £35 if I wanted to. It's the kind of game that looks nice enough already. I've never liked the 2D Yoshi games but I know a lot of people here do so I won't be mean about them. Finally, Nintendo need to do A LOT to convince me that Fever is worth picking up after how terrible the Switch sports titles were. No interest in the movie either but maybe if I have kids one day I'll stick it on.

Those were my opinions - thanks for listening and have a great weekend

The accessory should come with a subscription to reward anybody who is foolish enough to buy it.

But I say that thinking it would be a very cool accessory to sit on the side.

Huge news - definitely the highlight for me

Yeah it's too much. It''s sometimes painful doing boss fights in handheld mode considering the intensity of combat. If my hand is hurting then I've gotta say they've made a few missteps. The original wasn't this much outside of that intentionally hard DLC.

Honestly like the look of this but I can't readily buy a controller that doesn't wake the console as crazy and first-world conundrum as that sounds. I've got the original pro and it's still good so I'd only want to upgrade for that functionality. 8BitDo take note please

@The_Trooper49 That's an interesting post! I never play schmups so I had no idea how they do it but I really like the idea of those 3 granular difficulty options. I personally really like when games are up front about 'original' difficulty. It may not be necessary to say but when I see wording like 'this is how the developer intended the experience to be' it makes me want to try that mode first.

@Max_the_German Yeah honestly I was mainly sharing as your comment made me remember. I more side with your take that games should do what their creators want. In this case, it's fine for me that Team Cherry want it to be hard. I suppose that's also the beauty of being a game by an indie developer not beholden to other pressures.

@Max_the_German It’s not really about self-reflection. For my sins I did my master’s thesis years ago on difficulty preference in games (and gamified apps), and what I found was a pretty even split with some people motivated by mastery or 'hard work', while others are driven by the satisfaction of completion, just getting from A to B because of an internal push to finish.

These groups overlap but I did see that not everyone is motivated by overcoming challenge alone. Older people for example were far less represented on that front than younger people, probably in large part due to time constraints.

I think that’s why bigger studios often bring in people to advise on this. It’s not just about maximising sales, but also about making sure players can connect with the many strengths a game offers. Hollow Knight has this in spades with its visuals, animation and music. It's not all about the difficulty.

PS I like the difficulty.

Come on dudes, the NA one is rubbish

The Unbeatable dev is being unkind to himself. The art style of their game will immediately make people assume it's worth £25. It's a unique style that will go very far in the indie space. Imo that's the market to tap if you want to justify higher costs.

May I be the first to say this has been a silky launch

@JumpingJackson Don't joke. If you saved all those pennies up, in a couple of millenia time you'd have enough for a house deposit.

It's £16.75 on Steam btw

It's also crashed Steam. This is hilarious

@H3X3NH4MM3R haha awesome!

If I buy the Switch 2 edition but launch the Switch version will I be able to play with the upgrade on my Sega Game Gear?

Surprising but awesome news. I said earlier on the other review that this didn't run very well and had long load times which put me off. Maybe it's time to give it another crack.

@Duncanballs Ah makes sense. I don't blame you for disliking that as it sucked. The PS3 games were way better imo.

@Jack_Goetz Yeah lol I've definitely read this before

@Reg Different devs I believe. Clap Hanz, who made ECEG, no longer work with Bandai Namco and ECEG was their own spinoff of the Everybody's Golf formula (hence the name change).

@Duncanballs Gonna have to ask dawg, what games are you referring to? I'm sure it was only the latest iteration of the game on PS4 that added the needless off-course content (which yes was crap).

To my knowledge, all the other games on PS2, PSP, Vita + PS3 were extremely simple and the same pick up and play style as Mario Golf.

Ah it's very annoying to hear about performance issues. Easy Come Easy Golf, the game by former devs Clap Hanz, had similar issues that made it very annoying to play. I was really hopeful of this as the series is extremely fun and used to be my go-to game to play while listening to audiobooks (it didn't take up much brain power).

@Ulysses That's a very fair comment to make. I did think this was the usual Squenix stakeholder pep talk on reading the headline but this is a dawg who clearly cares (and probably knows he needs sales to convince the stakeholder overlords for future projects).

@the_beaver I'm sure this is an earnest question but Hollow Knight blew up because of the Switch release so I'm sure it was in their thinking to wait until Switch 2 launched for similar reasons.

£20/25 seems about right. That's the going rate for hyped indie games atm judging by something like Hades 2 (a similar benchmark in terms of hype and interest in the developer's previous title).

To be honest I feel like you could easily extend the bloated description to 100 Line but I accept it has exceptional highs that probably meant people didn't want to be too harsh on it. I'll assume the mention of it here means this one isn't quite as unmissable.

Don't worry, them padded out side quests are still going to look great at 30 fps.

Not my kind of thing but it looks real snazzy

Looks like a decent option for kids or people only using gamechat infrequently.

Interesting to see them announce a sequel and release it so quickly

Just found this as part of a digital subscription service (at a very reasonable £25, including several other Nintendo classic games) and I, like many of you here, am absolutely loving it. I'd heard about it for awhile but never really understood the point nor its charms... but once you press the button that opens the game in and start to play (if on the Switch 2, preferably with a Pro Controller 2) the shiny little guy gets his metallic hooks in you and won't let go. Three words that encapsulate this game, and Nintendo: Spread the Happiness. Skip (the developer) is full of wacky geniuses if you ask me.

I'm not too familiar with the series - is this a remake of the Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky that came out on PSP originally?

Assuming yes, is it also the whole game, or are they separating it like the FF7 remakes?

@Ulysses Good comparison. I loved Halo 3 because it was bombastic and very fun in co-op but 2 was always my favourite and remains the best game to replay on occasions

(ps MCC on Switch when?)

Maybe it's in and not mentioned but they need to start utilising the HD Rumble for these sorts of games to mimic the arcade feeling. Imagine a jet ski game that simulates the sensation of water bobbing as you're riding. That would be pretty gnarly.

I’m definitely looking forward to it, but my biggest concern is that it’ll end up being too long. There’s this trend now where developers feel a sequel has to be bigger, longer, and more drawn-out to match the hype, but often it’s the tighter, perfectly paced games — like the original — that appeal more to me (as a time-poor moany adult).

@Kazman2007 "On top of that, you're gonna cut into Mario Kart's online player base and split the online community".

Don't worry, we'll be back when Nintendo makes it as good as MK8.

I like the box

Just catching up now - this looks like a lot of fun