Rooty

How is Japan winning this? That NA cover is iconic.

Assassins Creed Odyssey, as I have been the past two weeks straight. I'm still struggling to get my head around just how legitimately, stupidly, big this game is. It's alternately a dazzling testament to one company's boundless ambition and a truly terrifying glimpse into a world that perpetuates crunch culture at the same time. Truly mindboggling stuff.

19/24. Beefing it on the Mask of Scents is shameful ._.

Never played the Ridge Racer series outside of a brief handful of times in the arcades and maybe once on the original Playstation back in the day as I've never really considered racing games my 'thing', but having just played a quick mode race of this I'm shocked at how good this version is. I totally understand why folks might not be excited about it dropping, but this is a legitimately fun arcade racer that looks stellar on the Switch OLED to boot. Super drifty without being punishing with it, I now want to go on and see how many of the cars I can unlock. I just wish they'd given the Pac-Man themed car better stats so I could justify using it in races :I

Country's DK was designed to fit a whole different aesthetic in the first place, and while they've made a few tweaks here and there over the years here and there to fit him in with the rest of the Mario crew (The Mario vs Donkey Kong series' version was excellently done, if you ask me) the entire Mario franchise seems to be shifting more than ever towards a cartoonesque style these days. Not changing Donkey Kong to fit in with that might have just left the big ape exiled from the Mushroom Kingdom entirely, which you could argue might be a worthwhile trade but I think most people still associate DK with Mario and would like to see him cropping up in Mario-related games. It also brings him way more in line with Illumination's take on the character in the movie which is probably how most new Nintendo fans are going to get to know him in the coming years.

@nhSnork I understood maybe twenty percent of that. Your Captain America image though?

'I understood that reference!'

Ubisoft really are pinning their hopes on a reputation revival with Nintendo, aren't they? Pull up the drawbridge guys >.>

All of this stuff looks great. Except that DK T-Shirt, which is an honest-to-goodness eyesore xD

What I want to know is how long has Diddy's design been changed so he looks like he's on the run from a Youtube parody animation?

Good to see they've taken the breakup with the Sony and Microsoft fanbases well and are keen to move on with their lives at Ubisoft HQ.

EU and America are both awful. Japan on the other hand is hilariously awful and wins on that count alone.

Next you'll be telling us they've somehow miraculously made this new Switch 'more powerful' than the old Switch or something equally implausible :I

Donkey Kong Country 3 doesn't have a bad soundtrack persay. It just has a soundtrack that was tasked with following up Donkey Kong Country 2, which for most people is GOATed (and with good reason.). Booting up DKC3 and hearing that awesome fanfare at the start you're expecting something on that level and instead you get this almost experimental ambient soundscape behind you the whole time. That said I am really looking forward to revisiting it as a listening experience, so thanks uncle Ninty

Meanwhile, it ends up on Yahtzee's 'worst games of the year' list. Go figure.

@JSC016 Take it from someone who waited years to finally play Chrono Trigger because of it's hugely venerated status. There can be a thing as 'too much' hype for a game :I

It's fascinating how the comments section seems to skew towards Japan this week but the actual vote is leaning heavily the other way. I voted for EU/US because I'm in the camp that old-school Link looks goofy as. It's a fine cartoon for the instruction manual, less so for selling your product to the masses.

Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine or we riot D:<

If Nintendo are allowed to put themselves in the position of deciding what does and doesn't constitute a 'good' game, rather than just a 'playable' one on their platforms is that really a road we want to start down? Sounds great in principle until they use that power to deny competitors a fair slice of the pie. I fully agree the eshop is in desperate need of an overhaul and the company should probably be doing more to confront this sort of thing given their current reputation but I don't think it's as simple as Nintendo just being able to tell these clowns to naff off with their scamware.

Technically the Japanese one might be superior, but I'd be lying if I said that blue EU background wasn't dreamy. Genuinely tough call.

I can't imagine it's relevant to those who defend to the death things like the Steam Deck but honestly why must all these things look so dull? Say what you will about the Switch it's at least eyecatching with its colour scheme.

I know the kind of the whole point of the Nintendo Directs was so Nintendo could stage manage every facet of their own appearance to the public, but Satoru never seemed like anything less than absolutely genuine in his humanity whenever he was on. He was the best of the company, and the best of the wider industry. We were so lucky to have him.

I don't know much about the series but aren't the Splatoon tracks usually recorded by vocal artists? Maybe it's a licensing issue they've yet to iron out.

Does this mean that soon we'll be seeing dozens of children playing with their Wankos at the dinner table?

Write to your local MP today, citizens!

I like video games. They're fun and easy to play

The colour scheme of the Japanese box art alone is so much more everything than the generic fantasy schtick of EU/America.

For the love of God nobody tell them about the Sea of Thieves subreddit.

This reminded me Cadence of Hyrule is one of the precious few physical Switch games I own, and because of that I've never actually inserted it into the Switch. I should go do that :I

I love Pokemon Gold and Silver I swear, but these two weren't a patch on the OG Legendary birds in my estimation. The amount of love Lugia gets in particular is mind-boggling for something that looks that derpy. Is it because of the film or am I genuinely missing something?

I just imagined I had every card for a few seconds and then went and played something else. That was more than enough of an expenditure for me.

Managed to beat this on the OG Gameboy as a kid, somehow. The city levels were brutal I recall, and it really was trying to do a wee bit too much for the hardware but with the benefit of full-screen support and save states I can see this being way more enjoyable these days.

1.Ace Attorney (The series as a whole can go here, otherwise the list would just be these and Ghost Trick :I)
2.Ghost Trick
3.Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors.
4.Advance Wars Dual Strike
5.ELITE! BEAT! AGENTS! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

My DS is next to my bed, even though I hardly ever pick it up any more. It's comforting to know it's there, that gateway to a thousand fantastical worlds only a fraction of which I ever actually got around to exploring. One day I'll go back and actually finish you, Spirit Tracks. One day...

@the_beaver Maybe it's because both sequels feel 'smaller' in a sense compared to the originals? Echoes and Majora's Mask both display their creativity through expanding the game mechanics rather than the game worlds and that's going to hit differently for different people.

That or maybe you're just super, super cheerful as a human being xD

Anyone who rates Echoes as the weakest entry in the trilogy is drinking crazy juice. It's the Majora's Mask to Prime's Ocarina.

All I'm taking away from this is never to trust Science Team to implement your multiplayer. They have vapor for brains.

I check in every day for new cards, but honestly in a week I've probably had less than a half dozen actual battles (even including the solo stuff) There's just not enough strategy in the game, doubly so now they've halved the points you need to win and limited the energy options.

Vampire Survivors is basically what every mobile game for the past fifteen years has wanted to be. And the mad lads went and put it on console instead.

While the game itself comes with all the inevitable pitfalls of a TCG with a hyper-competitive scene (ie: you either keep up with the meta or get your for-funsies homebrew deck steamrolled eighty percent of the time) I'm here for the gorgeous art all day long.

@OctoCallie20 ...I hope you can at least see the irony in your screaming at other participants for behaving like children in a made-up battle between ninjas, knights and wizards.

@SBandy1 I think you may be ever so slightly overestimating the appetite of the general public at large for wonky late nineties 3D games there. The Nintendo 64 was my childhood but even I have to admit looking back it had probably one of Nintendo's weakest libraries of games, if not the weakest outside the Virtual Boy.

Honestly, in most museums/galleries the no-photo rule is predominantly to stop exhibits getting bogged down with crowds of non-moving amateur photographers than anything else, so I wouldn't be surprised if in the grand scheme of things this rule was more of a basic courtesy to other museum goers.

I'd say it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest Tooie is an 8/10 compared to the original's 9/10 (or higher) , even these days. I certainly didn't feel compelled to 100% it when I played it over a decade ago but I'm really looking forward to having my mind changed on its virtues this time round. It almost feels like the difference between Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine with these games in that the first feels leaner and tighter while the sequel sometimes gets bogged down by the avalanche of new mechanics and collectibles. The worlds are wonderfully designed though (excepting perhaps the baffling mess that is Cloud Cuckooland :I ) and it's a proper epic of a 3D platformer. Throw in some actually decent bosses and Rare's trademark British silliness and you still have yourself one of the N64's best achievements, even if I do think it still sits at the bottom of Rare's golden trilogy of this, Kazooie and DK64.

Well, I guess this is one way to ensure Nintendo never bring their boring old museum over to the West.

Great job as usual, team

The Yakuza series is a bit like the Warriors series from Koei. Loads of people find them fine but mediocre games for the most part but there's a solid seam of people who are absolutely rabid about the games and the world. Under those conditions any review score is likely to be divisive.

I played the holy heckins' out of Yakuza 0 and went into this hoping to be similarly enamoured but...honestly it's just the same game, but I care less about the story and characters this time round. The repetition is maddening and half the side activities feel you need a spreadsheet to understand them. I want to love this franchise but it's an uphill battle.

I played one of these games, once. Whatever one it was that released on the Gamecube back in the day. I remember a few vague fleeting images of having to mash a button to drain enemies' blood or lifeforce or whatever and that's literally it. Pretty sure I finished it, but ironically soul was probably the one thing the game lacked for me.

Isn't this the game with Plo Kloon in it and his ridiculous pallet-swapped force lighting which Wookiepedia was then forced to try and make into an actual thing in canon? If that's not a reason to pre-order now I don't know what is.

I hope whoever performed this vital and wholly needed supplementary maintenance to this hip and current game was paid well for their endeavour.

Though let's be real we all know this was Sakurai bored at home one evening.

@DiggleDog Inexpensive? Probably so. But easy? I think that's likely to be the biggest speedbump on the road to Ace Attorney VII. It's must be darned tricky planning and writing multiple cases of compelling interactive detective fiction in a world whose lore only gets more and more convoluted with each fresh entry in the saga.

You better be penalised for stepping on the grass in Duloc for maximum authenticity.