SmaggTheSmug

@HugoGED Yes, really. Because back then parents didn't have options. Now they do. So of course they will choose the easier one.

Nintendo also announced Polish language support for Mario Kart World and DK Bananza. Thus slowly removing the biggest obstacle from parents buying the consoles for their kids. I've spoken to some and it was one of the main reasons they usually went with Sony, which had PL support for years now.

@Tyranexx There's nothing wrong with a game having difficulty options, but no developer should be obligated to include them. It's fine to ask for an Easy mode, but if the point of the game is to be fiendishly difficult then it's like asking for removing blood and gore from Mortal Kombat or guns from Red Dead Redemption: missing the point of the game. When the developer says they're not including an Easy mode because it compromises their art, this should be the end of discussion.
There's more games coming out every day than anyone could play in a lifetime. You don't need to play this specific one if it's not to your liking or ability.
The reason Doom/Animal Crossing memes took off as they did because the two games have really shown the breadth of video games as a medium. A brutal game about shooting demons and a cute game about building an animal village were considered equally big releases, despite being polar opposites in style and target audience. I don't remember people claiming that AC needs more blood and guns or Doom needing more interactions with cute animal people.
I may have come out a bit harsh because there are actual people who conflate difficulty and accessibility and argue for one whole hiding behind the other. One of them is Jim Sterling, and he still has quite a platform somehow. I may have been "triggered" when seeing the two terms together, no harsh feelings towards you specifically.

@T0mizawa Your assettion that the difficulty is supposed to be "fair for everyone" is the problem.
It's not for "everyone". It's at best for "anyone". But like extremely spicy food, it's a niche product for a niche audience. Making it for a "wider audience" just makes it for no one.
Don't complain that Uncle Carlos 1 Mil Scoville Tacos is not McDonald's, because it's not supposed to be McDonalds. Similarly Silksong is not supposed to be Mario.
And I haven't finished Hollow Knight myself (and not touching Silksong) because it was too hard for me. But I don't feel entitled to demand the difficulty will be lowered because I'm too old and reflex-impaired to finish it.

@Tyranexx I hate that "difficulty" and "accessibility" are thrown into the same bag. The two are completely different issues and all lumping them together does is make people who fear challenge accuse those who like it of ableism.
Sorry, but a blind mam and an armless man participate and win in fighting game tournaments. Being a game journalist is not a disability. Despite all appearances.

Lack of information about split screen multiplayer is worrying. This feature is make or break for me. I don't like racing games by myself, I only get them as a party fodder.

I remember when this was coming out people telling me that surely Nintendo would put the titles separately on the eshop after the "limited release" time has passed.
Well, where are they? Or Fire Emblem?
One of the most customer unfriendly things Nintendo has done. I stuck to my principles and didn't buy them, even though I really wanted to play the original Fire Emblem.

@ShieldHero It's not about forcing companies to keep the servers up forever. It's about having them release APIs so that the players can do it themselves, peer-2-peer, like it was done in the past for classic Starcraft, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or Unreal Tournament 2004. And guess what, all of these games are still playable online, despite no "support" from their developers. There probably are a few games you can play online made by companies that no longer exist.

@Ryu_Niiyama You know how long Anthem or Concord were in development? You just put the offline mode thing into your initial documentation and develop it before you publish the game. Especially when such things are often already in the code as devtools that are dummied out before publishing.
Of course releasing a complete, functional game is also an alien concept to game developers these days, but that's another story...

@Smithicus You can download and play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory right now. The game was always free and designed for online only (or more accurately the single player part was scrapped during development).
Hell, people still play the first Quake online.
That argument is invalid. The solution to this "problem" is literally decades old.

@BrintaPap The fact that Nintendo is pushing Cloud saves as a selling point for NSO while at the same not offering it for their first party games (with Pokemon being the biggest offender) is simply baffling. Why are they expecting other developers to use a service they don't? What's the point of paying for it if they don't seem to support it?

As I understand GameFreak's track record aside from Pokemon were 6/10 forgettable games. Pokemon was kind of a fluke for them. But doing something graphically impressive may improve their reputation.

@Yosher In some languages the Queen piece is male and given the name for a chancellor or military leader (iirc originally it was the Vizier and in Polish it's sometimes called Hetman). And I remember how in the first Harry Potter movie it was a hulking knight in full plate.
Link being in that role with Zelda as the King would make more sense. But because both pieces already exist it's a matter of a simple swap.

@Yosher Or Link should have been the Queen, because it's the strongest piece.

If I'm not mistaken Fast Racing Neo launched with 16 tracks? RMX was my first game in the series (and we recently played it as a group again after sidelining it for Mario Kart for a while; still holds up), but just 12 tracks seems a bit low. I don't think the devs could be blamed if they padded out the track number with a few returning ones from the previous games.

That's what the 18+ rating is for. Above a certain rating it should be "anything goes".

@OldGamer999 As I understand when this game runs well it's a rather dull, badly designed game, with direction decisions that just make little (if any) sense.

@Varkster Probably trying to recoup their losses on the license and development. Or are counting on Switch users not being aware of the game's performance and reputation.

@Ein It's not that people want this so badly that makes them complain about the price. It's that no one actually wants it, especially for that price. And that it's a stupid idea not to include it for free when it's basically a little tech demo for developers to know how to utilize Switch 2 features.

Asking money for this is such a stupid move. If the "game" came in pre-installed on every Switch 2 Nintendo could legitimately pressure third party developers to keep Switch 2 special features (like mouse) in mind, becaue the entire user base is already familiar with it!
Kind of like the TouchPad on PS4 controller failed.

I also remember some idea about making Pokemon into super-hero like figures. I distinctly remember the plan to make Pikachu "a tiger woman with big boobs". Because people memed pictures of Marvel's Tigra and labeling it "American Pikachu".

Forget Kirby Party or Monopoly knockoffs. A Kirby board game should be centered around switching out copy abilities in some way. At least for Kirby himself, if there's other characters available.

@gcunit It goes back to The New 52 and DC really, really trying to make Harely Quinn their own Deadpool (back around 2010s Deadpool was everywhere). Except she doesn't have as much charisma, is always tied up to one or another Batman villain, Suicide Squads come and go and even in the first movie Harley was kind of a mascot with little plot relevance while still being the character people recognize.
Harley Quinn just isn't as much of a wacky anti-hero material as DC and Warner would hope, and ironically her connection to the Joker (which I think DC is trying to reduce as much as possible, as it was an inherently abusive relationship) is the one thing interesting about her to majority of people. Doesn't help that she canonically killed a lot of random innocent people (including children) in the comics while Deadpool mostly deals with criminals or mercenaries.

Edit: I just remembered that on top of all that DC already does have their own Deadpool, but with a more heavy metal and cosmic schtick: Lobo! But I'm guessing he's too much of an edgy, toxic masculine character that would be right at home in the 90s but is a little dated now. I still want a Jason Momoa Lobo movie though.

I used to do video game QA for a while and I sometimes get the same feelings about some of the games I tested. Or at least some specific parts of them.
It's not a pleasant job.

@VHSGREMLIN Or maybe you are for not appreciating humour other than your home country's?
Please refrain from such nonsense accusations. Sense of humour is a subjective thing and in my experience German isn't my thing (I much prefer British).

@VHSGREMLIN My experience with German humour is that it's usually rather low-brow and primitive, with a lot of slapstick, sex jokes and toilet humour. E.g. compare the Monkey Island Series to the Deponia series: both are very good at puzzles and looks, but Deponia is much more crude and less witty in its jokes.

I love it! Sorry, but the Rare design is just clashing stylistically with the rest of Mario characters and looks a bit too "villainous", especially for a game in which DK is the hero. The new design seems to be based on the movie one, which neatly merged original Miyamoto rounder look and the Rare more angular look. Now DK looks like he belongs in a Mario game again.

I love that the decision to make Zelda the playable character in Echoes of Wisdom came from a gameplay perspective and not a "right a wrong" one. You can still see remnants of when this was a regular Link game (especially during boss fights), but the big change comes from a desire to make a good game, not an "important" one.

It's probably one of the few games that actually deserves a remake, to take the original concept and do it well this time.

I got excited as I am literally in Japan right now. And then I read it's next year.

@HeadPirate Money isn't the issue. Legal precedent is. You can talk all you want about how this is Nintendo desperately defending themselves from Sony, but they deserve to lose this one, for all of gaming sake.

@RamRem The bad faith actor in this case being Nintendo.

I'll check it out but probably will not use it because I don't listen to music very often at all.

So many bad games had similar presentation issues that it hurt this game, which supposedly was pretty good? But people stayed away from it on grounds of "pandering" and Ubisoft in general. And Ubisoft instead of giving the team a new Rayman project to gain back some goodwill disbands them.
Like Ross said, they should only surive long enough for The Crew issue to reach conclusion. Then they should die.

These are the ones with oddball game rules, as the TCG wasn't finalized yet, right?

@LadyCharlie Reminder that game testing isn't something you should pay for, but what you should be paid for.

@brandonbwii Necro-reply to this old comment because I have been looking for this game but I didn't know the name. But as soon as I saw magic referred to as "Gaia" I recognized it!

@TrueBlueYoshi And hopefully they will not repeat the mistakes of the last one.

@Cleefuzz If you played the demo that's out on Steam you'd realize you're very wrong for judging it on screenshots and similar pixelart alone. It's actually more like WarGroove with tanks than Advance Wars. And WarGroove didn't even have faction specific units, while this game does (the shoving tank is one of them, only available to the blue faction).

@RygelXVIII The broad definitions may be their downfall. In Japan you can countersue on this ground and get the patent stricken down entirely.

This is pretty bad actually. It basically enshrines in law that you don't own your games. I wouldn't be surprised if next time we see Ross Scott he's bald from tearing his hair out.

@Cleefuzz Would you call Halo a "Quake clone"? That's what you're doing here.

@8bit-Man Try the demo on Steam and you'll realize you're wrong in the "gameplay" department. It's more like WarGroove in practice, but with modern warfare (whereas Nintendo Wars are like a weird mix of WW2 and Cold War).
Or just watch the Mangs vid on it.

@Slowdive By that logic, is ReBoot Camp plagiarising Tiny Metal?

The Steam version has a demo available. I'll be checking that out and hope it doesn't disappoint.
If it does maybe I should finally learn how to use Gamemaker or Godot and make one myself.

And here I thought two extra suitcases for my trip to Japan would be enough.

Supposedly Nintendo filed those patents months after Palworld release, so it will likely not work. I really hope Nintendo loses this, because it's a stupid, evil action.

MSH vs SF is the one for me. The older games feel a bit less fluid while the later ones feel a bit confusing. And I love that intro narration. Kinda sad that the "Welcome to the adventure!" insert coin vocal is missing.

I didn't even realize it was a puzzle. I thought it was just a funny guy standing with sign thing.

I hope any NoE bigwig finally decides to add support for more languages. It's baffling that there are some games which have Polish language versions on other platforms but not Switch. Overcooked is one such example.