RadioHedgeFund

I can’t work this out. The game still looks like a PS3 game for the most part, owning to its origins. It runs fine on a PS4 which is a lot less powerful than a Switch 2. It shouldn’t be a problem on a console that is easy to develop for.

At the same time Square Enix are wizards at squeezing technical prowess from consoles. FFXIII still looks like a modern game for the most part despite being 15 years old and you don’t see other devs doing the insane boss battles from XVI.

So what gives?! My guess is the PS3 origins.

IMO they shouldn’t have bothered porting it at all but just built a portal. As an online-only title there is no reason XIV shouldn’t be a streaming-only game. Heck, on the Xbox it’s by far the best way to play it as you don’t need to ever install huge patches and you can automatically stream it as it requires Xbox Live.

@NX-3318 I wouldn’t bother at all. It’s one of the worst games I’ve ever played. STW throws dozens upon dozens of different resources at you and then asks you to craft everything from bullets down to your slippers before fighting waves of ponderous enemies. Rinse and repeat. It mistakes complexity for depth.

Where Wreck-It Ralph succeeded was the bookend the movie with the nods and references but wisely tell its middle story within its own IP, free from the need to nod and wink. In there the crossovers serve to add depth to the world, to make it seem like the game had always existed. Those first 10 minutes always fill me with a sense of pride that the creators just get gaming as a hobby.

It looks like Age of Ultron and stuffed with too many characters.

Does that include the crazy Italia 90 mascot?!

@Rooty Id call it realistic. Xenoblade 2 is like the Vanille and Sahz sections of FFXIII stretched to a whole game.

Xenoblade 2? Not likely.

It undid so much of the progress the first game added to the JRPG genre from not having to backtrack in quests to nudging out c-list US animation actors in favour of the British stage. None of the music was particularly memorable.

And don’t get me started on Pyra and Mythra. Sharla and Melia were two of the strongest female protagonists I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The sequel sent things back to 2001 with anime fan service and the subservient maid/obnoxious brat tropes.

At least Alrest had some character which is more than I can say about the endlessly generic world of the 3rd game.

I feel Miyamoto has nothing to prove. The entire modern games industry is built on top of two late-1990s innovations: the Sega Dreamcast and Ocarina of Time. The first one is more about hardware but every single 3rd person video game released since 1998 is on some level derivative of Ocarina. In many ways they are inferior because Ocarina did not rely on a player-controlled camera. Most modern devs don’t even bother which I put down to a lack of skill and effort. This includes Nintendo themselves.

If you invented the wheel, what else would you have to prove?

@Game_n_Watch_it_pal I am kind of being sarcastic.

But it does bug the heck out of me that Hollywood seem to think the rest of the world is ok with the Americanisation of the calendar.

Its not 'March TwentyTwo'; Its 'The twentysecond of March'.

It’s not Mario Day. Only the USA and its obtuse dating system has it that way around. The majority of the worlds population use DDMMYY.

There is a reason Fortnite had to pivot to Battle Royale to even be popular. Save the World is objectively a terrible game. The game just throws a bazillion different resources at you and is the perfect example of how not to implement crafting in a game.

But it's not MAR10 day in the UK because we use the proper DDMMYY international calendar standard.

@Filthy The lack of cheesy American cartoon actors in the first game was the best bit. Give me some British stage actors any day!

A remaster of Xenoblade 2 with all the anime nonsense toned down and no quest backtracking would be a dream.

A neat side effect of the 'Rainfall trilogy' being released in Europe first was NOE paying for the English translation, getting British stage actors in on the job as they went which turned what could have been very grating battle banter (had they used b-grade US voice actors) into a loveable meme.

I recall some of the cast of Ashes to Ashes being in The Last Story

There surely can’t be anybody left who cares about the Method timeline?!?

They want to drive innovation but remain committed to the annual release schedule?!?

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.”