RadioHedgeFund

Took everything great about the first game: 100% British stage actor cast, no backtracking for quests, strong female characters not beholden to genre cliches, endlessly meme-able banter and a soundtrack you’d be humming for years later and threw it all on a bonfire.

A shame because the world of Alrest was a heck of a lot more interesting than the bland fields of the third game.

@romando The issue is not down to the hardware but apathetic developers who seem to have forgotten the tricks of the trade that have been used for decades to get games to run on lesser hardware going back to Link’s Awakening stuffed into 512kb of Gameboy cart and the witchcraft they used to run Forbidden West on the PS4. It also doesn’t help that they don’t upscale assets.

I recall Larian delaying the Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 so they could optimise the Series S version properly. Had they built it for the Series S to start with and then upscale it to the Series X and PS5 they wouldn’t have had any problems.

@3Dburn Silly question but why does it need a digital preorder at all? It’s not like they’re going to run out of data!

I still think New Leaf nailed AC to a tee. Here’s hoping Nintendo remasters it for the Switch 2.

@Pillowpants with crossovers like Robocop, Terminator, Aliens and Friday the 13th they aim it at millennial parents as much as their kids

@Nintendo4Sonic The actual 5 best Zelda games:

1. The Adventures of Alundra
2. Okami
3. Story of Thor
4. Afterplace
5. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

@BrewsterTea We say ‘typical’ but there are actually more Metroid titles with chatty characters than not at this point!

Metroid Prime 3 was a little closer to Halo as well and didn’t suffer for it. Lest we forget Fusion had Adam chuntling away in the background.

@JohnnyMind They’re supposed to be doing a few sets at different price points. I’d be amazed if this didn’t get launched into a huge volume of sets. There is so much they could do. Fingers crossed for a King of Red Lions

Fantavision on the PS2!

@sportymariosonicmixx Smash Melee came out 2 weeks after the GameCube launched in the US and UK and wasn’t a launch-day title. I’m not having any of this modern ‘launch window’ nonsense. For a launch day game to be classed as such it has to be exclusively available with the new console on first day of purchase!

The top games would be:

Halo (Xbox)
Soulcalibur (Dreamcast)
WipEout Pure (PSP)
Wii Sports (Wii)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (Xbox 360)
Mario Kart World (Switch 2)

I don’t count Breath of the Wild or Twilight Princess because they were available cross-gen.

Slightly more worrying is that with this update it looks like a proper next gen version is years away.

Can we really call 5 tracks of actual music (none of which are the trailer theme) and 125 pieces of incidental piano plinky-plonky a ‘soundtrack’? 😉

I’d be amazed if there wasn’t some sort of non-canon way to unlock Link.

I fully accept that for most generations Nintendo has generally made the better console that its rivals but I will die on the hill that the Master System was better than the NES in every way. #Sega

Voice acting is long overdue, largely because they’ve been making voice acted Pokemon on TV for nearly 3 decades.

SRPGs are right at home on a touchscreen and it’s worth mentioning that this is only a fiver on iOS and Android, based on the PSP port.

Whilst I’m looking forward to Prime 4, I couldn’t help but think that the structure of Star Wars Outlaws, with its planetary fields and sub-orbital combat would have been the perfect fit for Metroid.

It’s nice to see Zelda finally getting her due. That’s two games in a row! Playing Tears I always thought it would have been cool to simultaneously play as Zelda in the past; this is a good way to do it.

*Nerd hat on *

Why is it though that no Link has been born to combat the rise of Ganon? Whilst I tend to ignore the Zelda timeline and see each series of games as being its own parallel universe re-telling of events, does the Zonai-era take place before even the Manga in the Zelda encyclopaedia and thus Skyward Sword?

This would mean that at some unspecified point in the future, “The Demon King” resurrects as Demise and the Goddess (who is actually Queen Sonia?) puts the Hylians back in the Sky to protect them, yes?

There is also no Triforce in this era as “The Demon King” has no idea it exists and instead wants the proxy Zonai power stone.

Thinking about it makes my head hurt.

Now do Locoroco

What a banana!

Doesnt mean they kept it. My local Cex is creaking under them. Must be at least 20.

It does kind of look like it's sat on the loo though

They need to start with getting rid of the dynamax locations currently crowding out the map and slowing the game to a crawl.

I really wish they'd remake the first game to give Altair his time in the sun (and not have him speak with Desmond's voice). You make that one the size of Origins with bloody Crusade battles and it would be brilliant.

I'd probably lump S3&K as one game at number one. Sonic 3 on its own is just far too short to be considered better than Sonic 2 as it's half a game. That said the music to Azure Lake might push it.....

I got mine a little after launch as well, with an import Wavebird from my local game store. This was during gap year and it quickly became a favourite during our post-pub gaming sessions.

When I went off to Uni I left my PS2 at home for my brother and took my GameCube halfway across the country instead. Turns out that portability was useful!

At first I regretted it because Christmas 2002 was pretty slim pickings. Eternal Darkness and Starfox were the highlights but were hardly classics, at least not compared to Halo 2 and Vice City that my flatmates were playing at the time.

2003 was another story. I just have spent a fortune on games that year. Off the top of my head I bought Resi 0, Metroid Prime, PSO (all 3 launched the same day!), Wind Waker, SSX3, 1080, Mario Kart, F-Zero, Soulcalibur 2, Majora's Mask disc, PN03, Viewtiful Joe and Twin Snakes. Probably the best year I can think of for games releases!

I hope they don't convince Sega to reopen the PSO servers and release it on Switch 2. I'd never go outside again.

If they convince Sega to restart the servers to PSO and release that I'm never going out again.

I see they still give you the most creative tools ever in a video game but then leave a convenient stack of wooden planks next to all the environmental puzzles.

This put me right off the original.

The original backlash was due to the Spaceworld demo. Cartoon Zelda wasn’t unwanted per se, just unexpected. Turns out we were all wrong and Wind Waker is ace!

For my money it has the best soundtrack in the series as well. As Nintendo won’t ever remake it I suggest tracking down the Marcus Hedges Trend Orchestra on your streaming platform of choice, find the Wind Waker Orchestrated album and listen to The Great Sea on repeat. You’re welcome.

Still the better of the two Switch ganes.

BOTW gave you a limited set of tools and said ‘use your ingenuity to solve problems’ and it’s glorious.

TOTK gives you an even better set of tools and said ‘use this conveniently placed pile of planks of wood to solve problems’. It ruined the entire experience for me.

Never had this on my bingo card!

@Bass_X0 “JOYCONS INFERIOR. SOUNDWAVE SUPERIOR.”

Whilst I appreciate it’s cheaper to close than down, publishers should instead spin off acquisitions back into independent developers and set them free.

If anything the heads of a studio should require this as an acquisition clause.

@fenlix Oh that’s why we’ve not had a mobile port!

The only thing I’m bothered about is if they’ve kept the in game internet!

One of the greatest fighting games of all time only really bettered by its prequel. The original Soulcalibur is still a fantastic game, with one of the best soundtracks ever put into a video game and properly regionalised voices.

2 has more content but it can get quite repetitive in the harder difficulties with opponents just parrying all the time. In 1 the CPU will kick your ass on Ultra Hard mode. The animation is much smoother and faster.

Still the greatest launch title of all time.

The next Animal Crossing should just be an HD port of New Leaf, with all the Welcome Amiibo features added and the ability to make paths on the landscape.

Perfection.

If we’re being honest here, bar the first title (which has the tightest 2-player battle mode) the long and winding road has been exactly the same, just with progressively better graphics.

World is the first Mario Kart to do anything different since the SNES.

What a topsy turvy world we live in when paying full price for digital software and essentially means you’ve purchased a lease that can be withdrawn at any time whereas buying software on a plastic donut or encrypted to a memory chip lets you do whatever the heck you want with it.

In the UK it is perfectly legal to make a backup of physical software for your own personal use: it’s yours because you own it. Buy a digital licence and you’ve purchased nothing and have no rights.

In an era of high prices, the cheapest priced games will sell the best.

I’ve relegated myself to collecting boxed retro titles and paying for game pass streaming. I can’t be arsed with these new prices.

I completely sympathise with the writers being out of work. It sucks to lose your job.

But this is also the internet. Whilst it won’t pay as much (if at all) those same writers could just set up an identical site of their own, name it something game-related (eg ‘Stick Drift’) and continue to write the same articles. Doesn’t cost much for some server space and a URL registration.

Promote it on socials and people would come read it.

Why does Nintendo overcomplicate digital purchase sharing in a family?! On iOS you just go to the list of a family member and click a button, no further action required.

Now Nintendo has the extra power how about a remake of Minish Cap with a real-time shrinking effect?

Is split screen menu only or can you free roam in it as well?

@kedireturns I'm not an expert but I still don't see how a raise in import tax when moving goods into the USA somehow makes it more expensive to sell a product in the UK. This is Sony offsetting against the weak Yen but also charging non-US buyers extra to make up the difference.

I'd be amazed if GTA6 didn't come to the Switch 2. GTA5 launched first on the Xbox 360 and looked great so they could do it. When there is launch parity with other platforms, Nintendo consoles seem to make up the lions share. Over 50% of Hogwarts players are on Switch.

Somebody at Sony forgot that when your biggest rival releases a new device you’re supposed to put your price down to spur competition, not up!

No Yuri Lowenthal, no dice.

Probably the Wii. I walked out the store with Wii Sports, Wii Play, Twilight Princess, Monkey Ball and Red Steel. I wouldn’t have bought this many games for any other console.

I wouldn’t list any Nintendo console as best launch lineup ever though. I still think the PSP takes it with WipEout Pure, Ridge Racer, Lumines, Metal Gear Ac!d, Mercury and Everybody’s Golf. That’s a very strong cross section of titles. The Xbox comes close with PGR, JSRF, Halo and Amped.