Raylax

I'm not convinced that the Z moves will be particularly useful at all in the competitive scene unless they have some fantastic side effects. They currently appear to be just a powerful standard attack, but the cost for using one is really high - only useable once per battle, the type has to be decided pre-battle (equipping the relevant stone to the trainer's bracelet), and the Pokémon has to sacrifice its item slot for one attack it can use once. If they are just high powered standard attacks they're likely to be useless in multiplayer and not hugely useful in single player either.

I had some fun with the multiplayer on this with friends back in the day, but I never enjoyed the single player adventure even at the time. I'll pass on the VC re-release.

@BensonUii Ah, good to know, wasn't aware of that!

@BensonUii It kind of works. Unfortunately new Pokémon spawning nearby can make what you're tracking fall down the list, giving the false impression you're moving away from it. Also, when the Pokémon despawns it can take a good 5 minutes for that to be reflected in the nearby list unless you regularly restart the app to force it to update.

@BLPs Yeah, before Niantic stated the capture changes were a bug, many were assuming it was an intentional change to make captures harder, thereby forcing trainers to burn through Pokéballs much faster and need to purchase more from the store.

Again though, it's ultimately a communication thing. You of course can't warn people of bugs before you're aware of them yourself, but people were shouting about this one a day or two after the patch and Niantic remained silent on the matter until... yesterday I think? Two days ago at most. It probably is a bug but they let people believe it wasn't for far too long haha. Again, hoping Niantic has got on top of its comms now. I love playing Pokémon Go and I'd hate to see it sink just because of poor communication.

@BLPs Oh yeah, absolutely, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that the lowered rates are a bug, but it certainly seems a little suspect. There's another bug right now that means captured Pokémon sometimes transform into other species at the point of capture (reported in places as "rare Pokémon transforming into common Pokémon", which is bending the truth a little), so yeah there's definitely precedent for this to just be another thing that's popped up in the game of QA Whack-A-Mole, but I gotta admit the cynic in me raised an eyebrow haha

Niantic did some communication! That's headlines news in itself.

This post is great because it finally shows us the reason for the shut down of third party trackers and tangible evidence of the reason to do so. But this reasoning really should have been communicated much earlier - if they were ahead of the story and transparent with their audience from word go, rather than being silent for days before releasing a fairly vague statement, and being silent again until this new post; the huge backlash would have been much less severe. I hope that's a lesson learned for Niantic, and it's nice to see this notoriously tight lipped company finally open up a little. More of this, please.

In other news, Niantic are currently claiming that the lowered catch rates, increased flee rates, and lack of exp bonus for Nice/Great/Excellent captures is a bug. Honestly, I'm a little suspect on that, I'm more inclined to believe they did it intentionally but didn't expect the backlash, but it's good to see that they seem to be intending to reverse it anyway.

Would be interesting (and a little odd!) to see a Pokémon game on NX so soon after Sun & Moon release on 3DS. Although, if it's at the back end of that 6 month launch window, then it'll be almost a full year after, so perhaps that's the intention.

That, or some kind of spin-off. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

@Jeronan Yeah, I've had a few different stabs at it over the years with various weapons - Sword & Shield, Great Sword, Hammer, Lance, Switch Axe, Bow Gun, Dual Swords, etc. It's just never quite clicked with me, the furthest I've got with one is defeating Lagiacrus in MH3U, but I was getting tired of it by that point and stopped playing soon after.

A lot of my friends are hugely into the multiplayer, which again I can totally see the appeal of, but it requires a big time investment that I don't really have these days haha. I'd be able to play maybe 2 hours a day if I played literally nothing else and abandoned my other hobbies, whilst they regularly rack up 5+ (ah, to be a student again!).

Playing multiplayer "at my own pace" would mean playing with strangers online, which I've never really enjoyed doing in any game haha.

But yeah, I absolutely get why people love it. Personally though I don't find the gameplay loop particularly engaging for me and I don't have the time to invest in the multiplayer.

I've never managed to get into the MH games despite several attempts, although I can absolutely see what people love about it. MH Stories looks great though, so I'll probably end up giving it a shot

@MadAdam81 Neat, I might have to have a look at that. Thanks for letting me know!

Yeah, that's exactly why I used PokéVision. Something new/rare pops up on the nearby list, I'd check PV to see where it was. The ingame tracker didn't work, and the game has a nasty habit of keeping Pokémon on the nearby list long after they've despawned or you've walked a huge distance away for them. I've wasted time chasing shadows several times when PV would have confirmed that the Pokémon had already gone. Indeed, my most fun moment I've had with this app is seeing a Dewgong appear on the nearby list, checking PV to confirm its location about 5 streets away and two minutes from despawn, and running across the city for a chance of catching it. (I did manage to catch it too, if you're wondering!)

A numeric, real-time distance tracker is what the game needs now. I'm still enjoying playing it for the essentially random encounters and the egg hatches, but the core mechanic of actually hunting things down just isn't viable right now, which is a real shame.

A little transparency goes a long way, and the total lack of it with Niantic is more damaging to the reputation and success of the app than the updates, the bugs, the server issues and the takedowns themselves. I hope tracking returns in a close future update, but a lot of folks have already had enough, which is a shame to see.

You haven't heard the string of obscenities Princess Daisy lets fly when she stumbles in the gymnastics event.

Nice idea, good to see some eShop titles getting some extra exposure, especially as the Wii U winds down

I'm very willing to believe this latest batch of sources-say. They tie in with what previous rumours and patents have suggested, and it's a very Nintendo idea (particularly those controllers - it looks like it could be an evolution of the wiimote, and that certainly did well). Also, back when the Wii U was in its rumour mill stages (remember when it was Project Café?), I shrugged the rumours of a large screened controller as ridiculous. And then that happened, so

The GPU they're allegedly going with here is interesting. A Tegra X1 (apparently the type in the NX) can run games in 1080p60 on Android (such as Doom 3 BFE) that the PS3/360 could only do in 720p30. Given that that's on hardware not specially designed around Tegra X1, I think we can expect to see some pretty nice graphics coming out of NX, especially if they're using a customised X1 as they're likely to be. Probably not quite PS4/XBO but close enough for direct ports to be possible.

I understand the concern around this but personally I'm not too worried about Google etc tracking me. They're most likely only going to use it for what's useful to them - improving their services and algorithms, and selling bulk data or access to targeted data to people wanting to advertise. The former I'm all for, and the latter doesn't bother me. I don't see it being used for a greater evil cause at any time, and I don't really see any real concern for Google knowing where I am at a given time. That data point by itself isn't useful information to anyone but me.

Of course, each to their own and I totally understand people having (equally valid) concerns about this kind of thing, but for me it's not a big worry.

Picked Team Valor. Zero regrets. Candela is rad.

Excellent stuff. The three step glitch is the bane of my Go excursions at the moment, will be nice to see that stamped out. I currently just use PokéVision instead but hunting things down with the step counter is much more fun.

@Grumblevolcano Whilst I won't say it confirms it, it does make it highly likely. The difference there is the power and respective cost of development for each console. Developing for consoles with comparable spec to the PS2-era consoles (3DS, Wii) is pretty cheap by today's terms, so producing a second version of a game for that kind of system doesn't require a big budget and you're likely to see your money back from it.

It was the HD era when development costs really began to spike upwards. Producing a second version of a game targeted at consoles of that spec is much more cost-prohibitive, and you're much less likely to see a return. It's unlikely that SEGA would be producing a tailored version of the game specifically for the NX (if the NX matches Wii U in terms of power), and even less likely that Square Enix would be producing three versions of Dragon Quest XI (PS4/XBO, 3DS, and NX). The cost of doing so is too high and the likelihood of ever seeing a return of that is too low. It's much more likely that the NX is comparable to the PS4/XBO.

@IceClimbers As I understand it, they confirmed during a press conference that they were releasing it for NX, but at the time companies were not supposed to be revealing whether titles were coming to NX or not, so they did some hasty backpedalling and changed it to an "uh.. well.. maybe.. oops." I still take it as fairly solid confirmation that DQXI is NX-bound, Square-Enix just let it slip out too early.

After seeing SEGA unnecessarily reinvent Sonic gameplay from the ground up after every game or two, it's very encouraging to see them revealing two new games which both appear to re-use tried and tested gameplay styles from well-received past games. Maybe they've finally figured out that flinging the baby out with the bathwater every time is not a good long-term strategy.

@YouSeemFRAZZLED I'd say this and Dragon Quest XI both being confirmed for NX more or less cements the rumour that the NX will be at least in the same ballpark as PS4 and XBO.

@ThomasBW84 If it's the case it does highlight a wider problem that we're less than a year from release and NX dev kits are still completely out of the reach of non-massive developers, even when they're tied to massive publishers. I hope Nintendo reveals the thing and gets those dev kits out soon so we can see Mania (and a whole load of other smaller studios' titles) heading for NX

This looks pretty fun! Whitehead did a really solid job on the smartphone Sonic remakes, so I'm sure this is in really good hands. Looking forward to this a lot.

Since a lot of people are gonna be asking why this is on NX but Mania isn't, my guess is that SEGA & Sonic Team were able to secure NX development kits, but the various (and much smaller) studios involved in Sonic Mania were not.

It's unlikely that the licensing agreements for dev kits supplied to SEGA and Sonic Team would extend so far as to allow them to be passed on to Christian Whitehead / Headcannon / PagodaWest Games. I wouldn't be too surprised to see Mania ported to NX further down the line when dev kits become more ubiquitous.

As for Sonic '17, I'm digging it! Only a pre-rendered trailer to go on, but the suggestion of a continuation of the Colors / Generation gameplay line, with Modern & Classic Sonic back in tow. Big tick in my books.

A lot of people comparing Itagaki to John Romero.

I disagree.

I think Itagaki is John Romero.

"Takeda-san, currently co-leading the company on an interim basis with Satoru Iwata"

Think you meant Miyamoto there

Plot twist: It's actually everything else in the shop that's upside-down.

Doesn't really bother me - I don't play Time Trials competitively, and online I'm pretty middle-of-the-pack (generally finish between 3rd and 7th). The people making use of this are likely to be the ones who were gonna be ahead of me anyway, and you have to finish something like 9th or lower (when there's 12 players) to actually lose points, so I don't see it affecting me much. I'm not going for an uber-high online score anyway.

I'll be there from about 9pm. Work and family visit to get through first. Sigh, responsibilities

Number of the beast. Bowser must be in pole position.

_{Up 666%? Must mean they've sold another 666 Wii U's}

I'm now hitting the tracks!

Ugh.

Don't get me wrong. The telly ad is cool. The other promo material is cool. Crossover advertising, I can get behind that.

But the kart in the game, on the other hand. It's incredibly lazily detailed (completely flat textures, low detail model, the glass isn't even transparent) and sticks out jarringly with the rest of the pack. It's setting a frankly terrifying precedent that Nintendo is willing to inject third-party corporate brands directly into its major flagship IPs in this manner for the sake of a marketing gimmick. A clearly huge amount of work went into creating a high-quality, detailed and incredibly polished game. And yet the Merc kart just looks cheap. Tacky. Rushed. You can feel a thousand meddling hands from both sides making dozens of little compromises until the end product is devoid of all potential charm or character.

It's a massive advert. Not to the players, but to other corporations. "Hey, look at this!" says Nintendo. "Make deals with us, we can get you brand recognition in our games! Not just the smaller projects like Wave Race - but our absolute biggest, pivotal titles! We're willing to be flexible on how much it fits into the game universe! Call us!"

Free DLC? Cool. I can live with it. Probably won't be downloading this one myself, but fine. But I'm worried about what it means for future games.

Haha, beautiful

My Wii U expected delivery date is Saturday, dang it. Unless it lands early, gonna be missing this.

Ah well, not like there's not gonna be tons of racing happening after Friday.

_{@Yai wait for me D:}

Robin Williams in Brawl confirmed.

Dang, VSauce3 would be a lot easier to listen to if he didn't enunciate every single sentence like it were a mind-blowing revelation.

Good lord, I hope that demo is not representative of the finished project.

"Not upside down, sadly"

Depends how the race goes, really.

Miss Skimpy Impossibreasts and Impa's ridiculous blade kill off a lot of the appeal for me, but I'm still looking forward to this

@erv @ScorpionMG I think MK doesn't use it because of the raw graphical capacity that would be required, given how much MK8 pushes the hardware. Split-screen requires two scenes to be rendered (one per player viewpoint), but at only half the vertical resolution per scene. Moving one display to the gamepad would require rendering both scenes at maximum resolution, which would be much more intensive.
Game like Hyrule Warriors and this can render on gamepad and TV at the same time because they aren't pushing the hardware as much, so the actual rendering is much cheaper.

Duke Sadness Forever

@PrincessEevee9 I was riffing off the scene in the Team Ninja-developed Metroid: Other M, where when Ridley appears, Samus promptly morphs into a little girl and starts crying.

I can't wait to see Young Link suddenly appear and break down in tears when Ganondorf shows up.

@Damo "Polygon put on its best games journalism hat and delivered a remarkable piece of reportage". In an article about selectively picking out negativity from the internet about a hot new product (which is somewhat akin to selectively picking out crabs from a barrel full of crabs), in order to stir up some good old-fashioned community ire. Whilst also accusing a website of insinuating racism for pointing out a lack of skin color diversity in the character roster. Self-awareness, dude.

The first patent — listed as “Virtual Body Control Device” — involves tracking a person's body and movements in order to replicate such actions in a virtual environment.

Neither console does this, they track the controller (well, the controller tracks an IR emitter and gyroscopic motion)

The second patent — "User Interface System Based on Pointing Device" — describes a portable device that is in communication with a camera, with which another device can use to track movements.

The Wii doesn't have a camera, the Wii U does but it is not used as a motion-tracking device.

Good luck, Philips.

Well I was totally unprepared for that.

hardcore gamers stay away from "the evil that's outside"

Door-to-door GlomTom salesmen, mostly.