Stephen_H

After ~25 hours in (still early in Act 2) I think I'm ready to leave it as an 8/10 that could've been a 10 if it wasn't so punishingly hard. (Probably ~10 of those hours are just running back to a boss fight...)

For me the original HK hit that perfect balance of being hard but fair - I died a lot but it nearly always felt like it was my fault. Silksong just tips it too far into unfairness/frustration/luck.

If they ever add an easy mode or equivalent quality-of-life options (e.g. boss retries, single-point damage for running into a boss) I'd love to come back to it because there's an amazing game in there, but in the current state it's just not one I find fun a lot of the time.

Mixed first impressions after a couple of hours play, and coming to it as a big fan of the original. The core is still great - gorgeous world, tight controls, charming characters, but I'm finding the difficultly can tend more towards the frustrating than I remembered. Mainly some cheap hazards (spike traps, enemies in tight spaces, unavoidable projectiles) + enemies doing multi-points of damage when you still have the base health bar.

As others have mentioned the diagonal pogo-jump is also taking a while to get used to and I've already died multiple times from mis-timing.

I guess I'm mostly disappointed that they didn't add any quality of life options for the more divisive parts of the first game, e.g. having to grind to get the basic quill and compass, still no option for boss life bars, losing money after dying, difficulty options, etc. I know I probably shouldn't have expected changes there but, I'm very much in the camp that feels that these parts are unnecessary frustrations :-/

Assuming it would maintain PS4 compatibility this could actually be pretty good - that's a huge library of games which have never had dedicated handheld versions. In conjunction with a PS Plus subscription it could be a worthwhile alternative to Switch.

I'm skeptical about how plausible it is to have a handheld with that sort of spec at any kind of reasonable price in the next couple of years though.

Not a bad list but there's an odd gap of late 80s/early 90s games, e.g would've been nice to see things like STUN Runner, Badlands, Hard Drivin', Roadblasters, etc. Also missing the Atari ST though I don't know if there were many Atari-developed classics there that weren't just arcade ports.

@NESlover85 from my experience it depends on how many resource packs you have installed. For example my daughter's profile has had lots of packs downloaded from the marketplace over the years. It can take >2 minutes to load and frequently has pauses and stuttering on the menu screens as it loads her account and skin. Once she's in a world it's generally fine though.

On my profile with no resource packs it's typically <1 minute.

Once you're in the game performance isn't too bad, especially if you stick to the base game. There can be occasional glitches where it struggles to catch up with itself but to be honest it's not much worse than my experience with the PS4 version. Some of the resource packs can really tank it though e.g. the Sonic pack in particular.

@nocdaes this article shows Sony's game revenue broken down for Q1-Q3 2021. Based on this, over half their gaming revenue is from "add-on content", i.e. paid DLC. They take a 30% cut from any in-game purchase, so any micro-transactions from Fortnite/Apex/Fifa/etc. This likely explains the big gap with Nintendo since there doesn't seem to be as big a userbase for these sorts of games on Switch (arguably for the better?).

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/84432/playstation-4-billion-in-games-revenues-94-from-digital/index.html

In Human Fall Flat you fall through the credits. You can use the letters as platforms or grab them to drag them down with you.

Co-op mode in Human Fall Flat has been a big hit with my son (8). I thought the controls might be too fiddly but he actually picked them up really quickly. He also loves all the Sonic games, 2D and 3D (yes, even Forces...).

My daughter (11) likes a lot of puzzle games like Puyo Puyo Tetris, Sushi Striker, Lumines and Picross.

Other ones both have enjoyed and gone back to a lot:
Pikuniku
Donut County
Untitled Goose Game
Toree 3D / Toree 2
There is no Game (after watching a playthrough)
Katamari Damacy

@Friendly Minecraft has been a near constant presence in the digital top-10 lists since launch too. I don't think we've ever seen concrete numbers other the physical sales in Japan (~2.4M at in the last weekly chart) but I think it's fair to say it must be up there with the big 1st party titles in overall sales.

Not sure why it would suddenly jump up the charts this week though - it's very rare to see it discounted by more than a few quid. Maybe kids spending Christmas present money?

This has become my favourite game to play with my son (7). Definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a chilled family-friendly couch co-op game - no time limits, instant respawning, very funny, and lots of creative ways to skip puzzles. The controls take a bit of getting used to but once it clicks the platforming is really satisfying.

Only problem is the performance of some of the extra levels on Switch that have been added since launch. The base levels are all pretty solid 30FPS but the more recent ones like Factory and City can completely tank the frame rate, especially in co-op mode. Still playable but timing jumps can be painful. A real shame because they're probably the most creative levels in the game.

@ian_beale Agree - I really liked the actual combat missions but I was getting really impatient with the inter-level exploration and sliding-block puzzles by the end.

A Mario + Rabbids sequel would be nice but I'd also love to see Ubisoft do a dedicated Starfox followup to Starlink. Just take out all the actual Starlink characters and some of the tedious base-capturing repetition and you could have a perfect Starfox game.

Having Nintendo games on the epic store maybe isn’t too far fetched. They already have their mobile games on apple/google app stores and there was that random case of Mario galaxy coming out for nvidea shield in China. I can’t imagine they’d ever have big releases there but I could definitely see their mobile apps coming to pc e-stores or things like Pokemon home and the Pokemon tcg pc game.

@gaga64
> was the source code made “readily available” in a 100% legal manner, or was this just part of the mega leak?

A I understand it this project comes from a long-running and painstaking reverse engineering project to decompile the original binary from the rom and convert to readable C code: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/05/beyond-emulation-the-massive-effort-to-reverse-engineer-n64-source-code/

The legality is possibly a grey area but I believe decompiling a binary like this has been ruled as an legal form of clean-room reverse engineering in the past. One example is the Sony vs Connectix case where Connectix reverse-engineered the original PlayStation bios via decompilation.

@Munchlax I got it late last year and without any context of how it plays on other systems I absolutely loved it - probably my favourite game of last year. If you like metroidvanias, particularly the DS Castlevania entries, then I heartily recommend it. I can't comment on how different it is to launch state but I didn't hit any issues other than a couple of corridors with minor frame rate dips and one annoying vertical room transition with a long pause. Certainly nothing gameplay affecting and no noticeable input lag.

Not a big fan of classic mode though. It's nice that it exists but I just can't get the hang of the jump mechanics and whip speed. Circle of the Moon is a much better take on sold-skool castlevania IMO.

Pang Adventures is down to £3.69 - despite looking like a cheap mobile game it's really good arcadey fun, especially in 2-player coop. Great title theme music too.

@Clyde_Radcliffe Snakeybus is alright. £4 is about the right price for it - it feels like a cheap game in terms of presentation and general jankiness of the graphics and physics but it's good fun in small doses. There's a good sensation of speed and chaos and it has that just-one-more-go factor.

My main issue was the load times when switching levels. They're not horrendous, but long enough to be annoying for what should be a quick pickup-and-play game.

Picked this up at the weekend and been having a lot of fun playing it with my kids. For anyone looking for a family-friendly couch-co-op game this is a great choice. The controls are simple, you can take as long as you like at levels and messing things up just makes it more fun.

The fact that the levels don't require explicit cooperation in 2-player is also great if you're playing with younger kids since they can still have fun mucking around while you (or an older sibling) does the fiddly bits.

The "60 great years of SEGA history" has some questionable highlights. Nothing for classics like Outrun, After Burner, Golden Axe, etc but we get a dedicated slide for "1999:10 Began operation of race horse breeding simulation game ”Derby Owners Club" 🤪

Some eshop ones my kids (5&9) have had a lot of fun with:
Untitled Goose Game
Donut County
Pikuniku
Stardew Valley
Katamari Damacy

I'd be very happy if Nintendo let the Starlink team make a full-on Star Fox game. They already have a great game engine, just reduce the repetitive base capturing/collectathon bits, focus on a tight story campaign and it could be the perfect Star Fox game.

This article perfectly describes my own situation or "1st world gamer dad problems" as someone above put it I have a ps4 and a switch but generally always go with the Switch version of a game where possible since I can play it without hogging the TV.

Even when the TV is available I often prefer to multi-task and play in portable mode while watching something else in the background.

Not sure I understand the logic of bundling the Bioware RPGs in twos for the download releases as well as the physical releases. If they were £10-£15 per game on the eshop I'd grab Planescape Torment straight away but at £40 for two I'm definitely going to wait for a sale.

I'm conflicted, part of me would love to see Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and its Mysteries of the Sith expansion though I have a feeling they've probably aged terribly (Jedi Knight didn't even look that great at the time...). In my nostalgia-riddled head they're still two of the best FPS ever though

I'd be interested to know just how many copies Minecraft has sold at this point on switch. It's feels like it's been a constant top 10 presence in all regions digital and physical since it came out.

@Jeronan - have you tried the switch version since the recent 1.12.0 update?

There was a significant bug fix (MCPE-36976) which resolved a lot of the serious performance issues in the switch version if you had a profile with resource packs downloaded. It was a night-and-day difference in my case - my main profile with a lot of packs downloaded was practically unplayable before the update.

From personal experience I find the bedrock edition runs a bit faster now than the old switch-edition though maybe not as stable overall. There's still occasional lag spikes but thankfully they're pretty infrequent. The load times could still do with more work though.

According to wikipedia "In China, Rabbids Invasion is the most-watched children's television series, having gathered over a billion views" so this seems like a pretty safe bet for Ubisoft.

Would be nice if it got a wider release - my kids love the TV show too and it looks like a solid party game.

(link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbids_Invasion#Broadcast )

They should've brought back Travelers Tales to squeeze it down to a few hundred KB (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IehwV2K60r8 )

“Return of the SS Anne” - detective pikachu x return of the obra dinn

I wonder if those numbers include pack-in games? That might explain why Tomodachi life is unexpectedly high (there’s a 2ds bundle with it)

It would be nice to have the age rating listed with reviews, especially for eshop games where there's normally not a rating symbol on the cover art.