Seacliff

I knew it would launch at over a million, but didn't think it would manage to inch out beating BDSP.

Really impressive. I'm curious to see how this influence future games in the franchise.

This is speculation at best. Persona 5 Strikers didn't indicate that the original P5 would be on Switch, so why should P4AU indicate anything?

If a Mario Kart 9 is in active development, they are best off saving it for the Switch's successor. Mario Kart is an evergreen title, it does its best when it's released early in a console's lifespan.

I don't expect to see anything this year.

Nintendo themselves stated in 2020 that the Switch was "Halfway through it's life", so that's not exactly a bold claim to make.

@StarPoint The majority of the environment, namely trees, aren't casting shadows when viewed from above. Defiantly gives an unnatural field.

I think the game will probably be fun, but there are aspects with the graphics where I really think they could have done much better.

Even if I went out of my way to make a list with the best games of 2021 that excluded Nintendo games, it would like quite different to this.

Psychonauts 2 would defiantly be on it though.

Zelda 2 is a perfectly competent game for the console it was released on, and aged better than most RPGs from the 80s.

Tri Force Heroes is a flawed multiplayer experience at best and a frustratingly tedious waste of time as a single player game.

The first game was flawed, but the second one was pretty good so it's not like the devs are bad.

I'd love to see how they improve upon the first game.

My head literally hurts that people don't understand that not wanting an RPG where you literally destroy encounters without effort instantly means you want to be 'grind'.

You never had to grind in the older games, they weren't that hard either, but they at least required something reassembling a cognitive process to finish.

As in, you don't need to be 10 levels above your opponent to win a fight. You don't even need to be at your opponent's level to stand a chance. I beat Pokemon Red with Pokemon 15 levels below the champion's Pokemon.

People who hate forced EXP share don't want to 'Grind', quite the opposite, they want to use decision making to determine the outcome of battles rather than RAW levels. The fact anyone thinks this isn't the case proves they aren't comfortable digging into the games mechanics any more than that, which is fine, but at least make that an option.

I'll sympathize with any devs who have been put through crunch and tried to make the best of what they could with the given time and budget.

But a lot of the criticism are things that would have obviously been criticized. This is the 25th time "Difficulty" has been mentioned in the comment section. The games don't have to be legitimately difficult, but they have failed to be engaging for anyone who knows the bare-bones of how the battle mechanics work. It feels like a Mario game letting you win because you learned how to jump in place and leaves it to the online competitive community to learn about wall jumping.

I'm pretty sure most people would have been fine with Dexit if there was something in return. Visuals aren't everything, but they aren't nothing either. I would take ass few as 300 Pokemon if it meant better visuals, better level design, and a more involved storyline.

It's not all for naught. Legends Arcues has been getting it's fair share of criticism, but not nearly to the extent of what Sw/Sh received the summer before it's launch. Even the most basic shake-ups and improvements will let people be more forgiving of the franchise's faults.

Sonic Triple Trouble is probably my favorite of the 8-bit Sonic Platformers. Shame it never got a(n) (official) master system port.

Sonic 1, 2, and Chaos are all good too. They play more like a traditional platformers compared to the momentum-driven gameplay of the Genesis/MegaDrive games, but are are still solid regardless.

I don't know what he's expecting at this point, there's so much evidence stacked against him he doesn't have a chance unless the court itself is rigged.

@M3AN1E I've seen David Jaffe rage over not being able to find breakable blocks, and I completely disagree with his rant.

I've seen plenty of players in let's play have absolutely little to no issue with the same segment he was frustrated about. The game tells you some terrain is destructible, and there's plenty of subtle ques on how to progress, such as having enemies on the destructible blocks so you'll accidently shoot them.

If he wants to play and design cinematic games with entire sequences that play themselves, that's fine, but that doesn't make everything outside of that genre bad or even archaic design.

@M3AN1E The game heavily modernizes the Metroid Formula.
The game world is smartly design to loop back around after getting a powerup to the point where you need to use it to progress. The game sends you right before a boss's door after death instead of sending you all the way back to the last save point. The game utilizes the Switch Hardware to fully load entire areas to make certain mechanics possible with the EMMI that weren't possible when the game was first canceled on the Nintendo DS.

If people are claiming they have buyers remorse, it's because they expected a different game compared to what they got. But I believe they made it very clear what the game is in it's marketing and it holds that promise throughout that campaign.

Really cool that sequence breaking is in the game, after it really not existing or being incredibly downplayed in Samus Returns or Fusion.

People have also found a trick (though it's really hard to pull off) that allows you to indefinitely wall jump to climb up a single wall.

Really can't wait to see the speedruns for this game.

@BlackenedHalo 100%ed the game on normal. Nothing optional outside of the typical Missile, Bomb, and Health Upgrades.

@SwitchVogel It's in an interview Toby had with Nintendo.

https://topics.nintendo.co.jp/article/0e438e10-2b35-11e9-b104-0a6d14145cb1

It's in Japanese, so I'll quote the part after it went through Google Translate. You can probably find a more accurate translation though.

"In 2011, when I was living away from home while I was in college, I had a flashy illness. I had a very vivid dream when I was sleeping with a high fever because I couldn't get any medicine.
It was a dream of the ending of the game, and since then I have been obsessed with the idea that I have to make that ending game.
So I tried to make it once in 2012. I really liked the artist Kannotynes ​​I found on Tumblr, and I used that person's character design, but at that time I ended up giving up development without completing a single room.

However, some of the songs I made at that time became the BGM of "UNDERTALE". For example, the song "Pain in the Heart" was originally titled "Joker Battle", and "Bonetrousle" was intended to be the main theme of the battle.
And when Kickstarter solicited investment in "UNDERTALE" (2013), if "UNDERTALE" could be completed, the next game would be a mix of "UNDERTALE" and that dream concept. I decided.
Anyway, I couldn't help but make a game of what I had dreamed of at that time ... I don't know if it's interesting, but I still thought I had to make it."

I really like the HM compromise. It seems like you'll need a Pokemon compatible with an HM, but it won't take an entire move slot.

While I appreciate the pass few attempts at removing HMs, it's not as fun riding a rental Pokémon as much as you're own, and from a mechanical standpoint they were just glorified keys.

@twztid13 PC exclusivity is literally the only exclusivity that can't possibly be 'shady'.

Each console has their own certification process, requires official publishing, requires an ERSB rating, etc. It takes a fair amount of resources to do, especially for a demo for a game that likely won't be finished until after our current game consoles become irrelevant.

PC you can just slap a download on your website and that's it.

@moodycat Yōdanji is an ok rougelike, but the rest aren't that good.

I expected it to outsell previous titles like how a lot of other switch entries have been, but I did not expect it to do THIS well.

For it's price, I rather have it be the best product it can be than rushed out. I'd rather they take their time.

Still looking forward to it.

Really hope this won't reflect the full release of Monkey Ball coming out next month, but at least that game is closer to a ground up remake than a port.

I bet the first five minutes will still be a montage of clips from every mainline Pokemon game and only the popular spinoffs again.

If Konami wants to make a Castlevania for mobile, fine, I can at least play it on PC via emulator.

But Gacha or subscription service? Keep that crap away from the franchise.

This hands-on gives me more confidence in my reservation. Valve is taking the best of the Steam Box and Steam Controlling and rolling into something nice. Really looking forward to getting this in 2022.

If he's voicing his own Audiobook, I'm totally getting that.

I'm not planning to get either, but I would defiantly get a Steam Deck before a Switch OLED.

@Damo It wouldn't make sense to compare 'dollars sales' anyways, as the PS5 and Series X are sold at a loss.

Underwhelmed. Even if there were absolutely no rumors of a Switch Pro, I would have been hopping for more than just a better screen.

Not terribly disappointing though, at the very least, it's a product where you know exactly what you are going to get.

I was beyond hyped when this was announced, but seeing how the golfing system has changed and the lack of features and modes that existed in older games makes me unsure about this game now, despite the generally positive critical reviews.

Six 18-hole Courses isn't the deal breaker. That's the same amount as 64, Toadstool Tour, and World Tour prior to DLC. Neither is the lack of 'fantastical' courses, if anything, these are much more 'fantastical' than most of the prior Mario Golf Courses.

I might still get it, but it's no longer the 'must have day-1' title for me.

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding why a 8-ish is considered low for Famitsu.

In 35 years of publishing, Famitsu has only given one single negative review for a game, it was a 48. They have an insanely, large, bloated curve. Getting a good review from Famitsu is a sign the sky is blue.

That said, I could care less if this is considered 'low' for them. They gave Donkey Kong Country 2 an even lower score than this, and that's a 10/10 game for me.

@anoyonmus The "Development History" follow up trailer shows scenes of what looks like a recap of the events of fusion.

Removing the grid is an interesting gameplay choice. Looking forward to this.

No. I do like motion controls, but I remember fighting against them all the time in Wii Sports Golf.

Mario Golf requires a lot of accuracy and precision that I don't believe is achievable with motion controls.

The biggest exception to this was We Love Golf on the Wii, but that game rubber-banded the issues so far in the other direction it was hard for me not to get a Birdie every hole.

@ShadJV Click "Show Me More" under "How to Play". Scroll down to the mode descriptions.
It's in the Red Box next to Standard Golf, Speed Golf, and Solo Golf.

@ShadJV I doubt they'll say in the website itself "6 unlockable courses" if there wasn't 6 unlockable courses.

The website shows the game has six 18 hole courses, and the battle course has 9 holes. To cap it off Adventure Mode clearly has a decent amount of content exclusive to it as well.

It looks like this game has a little bit more content compared to prior Mario Golf games (excluding DLC), that's a lot more than I can say about the prior two Mario Tennis entries.

I just really want to play Fantasian, guys.

@DreemWeever That's been the Treehouse logo for years now.

@UndoControl I disagree. The amount of year of development will impact on a game is dependent on more than just the scope of the game, the size of the team is also important.

Gamefreak is already noticeably smaller than even other "small" Japanese companies that develop JRPGs, such as Atlus or Level-5. Larger projects from those companies still take more than three years of development, and are still by no means "AAA Games". Also like those companies, Game Freak still splits their teams to works on multiple projects. There was clearly a different team working on this while another team worked on Sword/Shield's DLC, for example.

There are games further than a year away from release that looks closer to a final product than Legends does, such as Splatoon 3, or even the December 2014 showcase of BOTW compared to the final product. A year isn't that long in game development.

I'm waiting for further announcements regarding the game, but the current trailer doesn't sell me on the game.

Lonely Goomba is a fun youtuber, but I wouldn't call him a source of information worth an article, even for a rumor.

Would be awesome if this is true though.

@GrailUK Can't agree at all. Games like Stardew Valley took stagnant ideas and pushed them forward in ways that were obvious in retrospect.

And given this is being inspired by a franchise with... two games. It's not unreasonable to assume that even indie devs 20 years later can improve the formula in ways Sega could have already.

I'm okay with the layout, but the control stick itself is awkward to use.

I unironically much prefer the Saturn 3D controller.

I would say Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima are simply behind on the times and ignored how platformers evolved in the past twenty years, much like the issues with Suzuki stance on game design and Shenmue 3, but this game doesn't even hold a candle to Sonic Team's offerings in the mid-90s.

NiGHTS and Burning Rangers on the Sega Saturn, the two non-Sonic games this pair is probably most known for, are better games overall.

NiGHTS's gameplay isn't all that similar to Balan Wonderworld, despite the aesthetic similarities, but is the perfect example of minimalism design working well. Balan Wonderworld aims for minimalistic controls in a genre where it doesn't work.

Burning Rangers has certainly aged, but is a great experimental take on 3D platformers while the industry was still struggling to figure out how to make that genre work. Balan Wonderworld plays it way too safe in comparison.

If what Naka said was true, this was Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima only chance from Square Enix. This game is now a huge stain on their career and it's going to be even harder to get a game greenlit elsewhere. It's a shame, but they're probably going to get sent to the Final Fantasy XIV sweatshop.

Even Stardew Valley aside, there are RPG Maker games that recreates classic Harvest Moon games better than Natsume's Harvest Moon.

I liked this one, but it was very easy. If you were at least decent at Mario Gold, You'd have to go out of your way to not win a tournament by a large margin.

@Darknyht Every research to identify the average Pokemon player's age since last decade has been well above 12 years old. Club Ninteno ratings suggested ten years ago that there were about as many Black and White players between 1st and 6th grade as there were players between High School age to 24 years old.

And it only gotten higher since, the finical report in 2017 claimed that Pokemon players between 20-30 years old has been the highest to that point.

Regardless of what the target demographic is, it doesn't change the fact a very large portion of the player base are, in fact, teens and adults.

And, c'mon, you don't think the developers aren't aware of this with recent pandering, right? Diamond and Pearl are 15 years old, very few kids younger than high school age are going to care about a Remake or a Prequel. The target demographic for these games, are if anything, the players of the original release.

@Paraka Oh, I'm not complaining about myself. Have you considered that maybe,

just maybe,

There are people who have yet to own Switches who might want to buy the game once they get one?

"Sorry, but you should have bought the $300 console on top of the $60 game on top of the other $60 games you wanted when you had the chance,"