TheRedComet

@Spiders

I prefer voice acting as long as it’s done properly with good actors.

The Last of Us Part 2 or Horizon Zero Dawn would feel really weird without their voice acting and facial capture tech.

By comparison, the voice work in Final Fantasy X was mediocre at best. I’d have rather just read the entire time.

@Thesharkfromjaws

I played the game a ton and I can verify that the framerate on Chrono Cross was pretty bad.

And it was weird too. Most of Square’s RPGs had decent frame rates. I mean Vangrant Story didn’t but it was also a far more ambitious game than Cross visually; it was fully rendered in real time with polygons.

But Cross? It’s all over the place from a performance standpoint.

@anoyonmus

That’s a real beauty. When it came out it was state of the art. SOTN and Megaman X4 did a great job integrating 3D objects into a 2D playfield.

In all honesty, I wish more PS1 games had went that route. It would have aged a lot better.

That said, there are some absolutely banging 3D PS1 games, and I personally think it aged better than the N64.

@anoyonmus

3D PS1 games aged pretty poorly.

Thankfully, the 2D games aged gracefully. I want a remaster of Saga Frontier 2. The water color backgrounds were jaw dropping back in the day.

I’ve had it preordered since last years. And I’m excited as hell!!!

@kalosn

The events of Trigger play a HUGE role in Cross’s story. You don’t see it at first, but by the end all of the game it all makes sense… Well I will say the actual ending doesn’t make much sense but trust me, it’s a wild fun ride.

@BlackenedHalo

Wait Europe never got Cross????

Christ I never realized how lucky I am to be an American. I still have my original black label PS1 copy.

I don’t care how it looks. I already have it preordered.

It’s my favorite game from Square’s Golden Age on the PS1.

I’m ready to play through it again.

@Browny

I had front mission 4 on PS2. I absolutely adored the game, despite it having the most mixed reception with the series fan base.

That’s the only one I’ve ever played. So I’m down to pick up the remake of the Super Famicom original.

@rjejr

I dunno about 2’s difficulty, but play the 1st one on hard.

It was a challenge. But a fair one. You will die quite a bit but it’s never the game’s mechanics at fault.

I played the first game WAY back on Xbox 360. It was actually one of my two final games I played through on my 360 before I traded it for a PS3.

I’ve never played the second one. Never had a Wii U.

I would love to play the Switch version but my God it never goes on sale. I’m not paying 60 bucks for it.

@Travisemo007

It’s not, but other developers have made much more visually impressive games on the Switch’s limited hardware.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Shin Megami Tensei V come to mind. I will admit that SMT V runs like ass sometimes, but I’m glad they went for so many visual flourishes and so much environmental detail.

@HeadPirate

Honestly I think they should have went for higher LOD and minimized pop-in, even if it resorted to reading directly from the flash memory and increased the load burden. The game does a semi transition to a battle scenario. They could have incorporated a simple flourish to mask the load times for the Pokémon models and high detail textures. This would have allowed them to keep RAM filled with environmental objects and minimize pop-in.

Ultimately, I blame Nintendo’s hardware design more so than GameFreak. The Switch needed more RAM. They should have ate the cost with higher frequency memory and giving it 6 gigs of game memory. 3 gigs really limits what one can do with the Switch. Most developers can’t even really hit the limits of what the Tegra X1 offers because they are constantly hitting memory bottlenecks.

I don’t own Arceus yet, but I did play my friend’s copy for an hour or so.

From a technical standpoint, I only have two problems with it. Big ones nonetheless, but only two.

1. The pop-in is really, REALLY bad. I’m currently playing Shin Megami Tensei V. It has pretty bad pop-in and is my main issue with its presentation; it’s a beautiful game otherwise. But it feels like Arceus has worse pop-in than SMT V, despite using graphical settings and options that should make it easier to render consistent object display.

SMT V is a far more ambitious game than Arceus visually, using UE4 to the limits of what the engine can do on the Switch’s hardware. The texture detail and geometric complexity is pushing limits on Switch for an RPG. Arceus, by comparison, is using an engine that was designed from the ground up for the Wii U and was heavily modified to run natively on the Switch. I was expecting less pop-in than SMT V. Yet Arceus has more pop in at shorter distances.

2. LOD is a big issue. You pretty much have to be right on top of something to see the higher resolution baked textures. Shadows suffer really bad from the poor distance LOD.

Ultimately though, I think the game’s visual presentation is acceptable for a Pokemon game. I think a lot of the issues is the Switch’s hardware itself, especially its very slow and limited amount of RAM. A lot of games hit memory bottlenecks on Switch.

Looking back, I think Nintendo would have been better served going with 6 gigs of higher frequency game memory and 1 gig of slow memory for the OS. 4 gigs isn’t enough, especially when a gig of that is reserved for the OS.

My predictions.

1. Release Date and actual subtitle for BOTW 2.

That’s the only one I’ve got lol.

@Bon_Kurei

Best bet is to either emulate them (it’s not feasible to emulate Metal Gear Solid V, but I digress) or pickup the HD collection for PS3 or 360.

If you have an Xbox One or Series console, the HD collection is backwards compatible.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is the odd man. It’s basically stuck on the PS3. You can emulate it, but it requires beefy hardware to run acceptably. In all honesty, PS3 Slims are pretty cheap. So the best bet with that one is to just buy a used PS3 and a copy of MGS 4.

@roy130390

I’d rather them not even try to make a new installment. They would screw it up.

Instead I would rather them license the IP out to a good developer to make a full from the ground up remake of Metal Gear Solid in Unreal Engine 5 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

For the Switch, I would love to see a remake of Ghost Babel. With the isometric camera of the original MGS. That would more easily fit the Switch’s hardware.

@EveryGameBeLike

Sonic Mania is fantastic.

Granted that wasn’t Sega who made it. But it’s a damn good game.

@NintendoPete

Knight is a very solid game. I played it back on release on PS4.

That said, out of the Rocksteady Arkham trilogy, it has the weakest story. And the Bat Tank sections, while cool at first, will eventually work on your nerves.

I still enjoyed the hell out of it though.

You can call me Knuckles, unlike Sonic I don’t chuckle. I’d rather flex my muscles.

Ya know as dumb as Sonic Adventure and SA2 were, my God they had wonderful soundtracks.

@Wexter I understand why it’s so popular. A friend of mine is a huge Pokémon fan and we are both 32. He’s got 1500 hours in Sword, 500 hours in Shining Pearl, and already hit 60 hours in Legends Arceus. Dude is super competitive too, always playing online tournaments.

As for me, the one Pokémon like game that’s got me hooked right now is Shin Megami Tensei V. It feels like Pokémon in many ways (SMT originated the collect creature genre back in the early 90s in Japan) but with a huge emphasis on the story and characters. I’m really digging it so far.

I don’t hate Shield. It was the first Pokémon game I bought since Diamond way back on the DS.

But I will say that I grew tired of it quickly. I don’t think it’s a bad game. I just think Pokemon doesn’t click with me anymore.

I was a big fan in Gen 1 and Gen 2. Especially Gen 2.

@TurboTEF

I’ve always been an nVidia guy.

AMD makes good cards, though. And on the CPU front AMD is killing it on x86-64. Intel is still the best value for money for mid range builds but above that (and below that, weirdly enough) AMD is dominant.

@Joeynator3000

Even with the current graphics card market, I’d say upgrade your GPU if you’ve already got a fairly decent CPU over a Steamdeck. Unless your on a laptop which in that case that isn’t really an option.

But if you’re on a desktop, a GTX 2060 is a huge upgrade over the GTX 1050. Even a GTX 1070 would be a good jump. The 1050 was a very underpowered card, even at the time of its release.

If you can find a good used price, the GTX 1080Ti is a fantastic card. It’ll outperform all of the non Ti RTX 2000 cards (with the exception of the original 2080) with Ray tracing turned off and no DLSS options. The card was hella expensive back when it came out, but the people that bought them are getting their money’s worth on them in this crazed GPU market availability. There’s no game available that it can’t handle at 1440P Ultra.

And this thing is absolutely enormous.

Don’t get me wrong, the hardware inside of it is impressive. But I consider the Switch too big for true handheld gaming. So this thing is on a different level.

@Joeynator3000

Its all about optimizing those settings friend.

Turn down the stuff that isn’t critical to the visual presentation. Most game’s auto settings are terrible. Got to play around with them.

A GTX 1050 should have no problem playing most games from two years ago or older on PS4 equivalent settings, with a higher framerate than the PS4 could ever hope to achieve.

@Broosh

It’s a weird version of the game. It has a good bit more content. But the visual changes Konami made are super weird, although not entirely their fault. The Saturn was a weird beast and to make a PlayStation perfect port would have required far more money and effort than Konami was willing to put in.

So like most conversions, all of the true transparencies are replaced with mesh and all of the background tile maps are weirdly stretched due to them not redoing the artwork to compensate for the different resolution the Saturn used. It’s most noticeable when you’re going up and down stairs.

It’s also weird in that the framerate is very inconsistent compared to the PlayStation version. It has a lot of slowdown in scenes with a lot of sprites or effects on screen. More than I expected. At first I thought it was just the emulator but doing some research it turns out that the game always ran like that, even on native Saturn hardware.

Also it’s a difficult game to play without knowledge of Japanese. I was fumbling around A LOT in menus. Thankfully I still knew alot about the game having played the PlayStation version to death back when I was a kid.

My issue with NFT is this. What is the benefit?

Every scheme I’ve seen postulated so far does nothing for society. Blockchain itself does have some interesting uses, but so far it used for people to just make assloads of money on the back of the planet’s ecosystem through insane power usage.

I mean if all of our power was generated by clean efficient nuclear fission, that part wouldn’t be as bad of an issue. But even then, it’s such a huge waste.

Not only that, and yes I know this is a first world problem, but blockchain has indirectly destroyed the PC graphics card market. Thanks to all the damn crypto miners.

Ya know for some reason I thought one of the Dragon Quests was the best selling game in Japan ever. Not SMB.

Congrats to Animal Crossing on crossing the barrier.

@cleveland124

I mostly buy Nintendo’s 1st party line up, AAA RPGs on Switch, and every classic game collection I can get my hands on.

The largest game in my collection is Shin Megami Tensei V. With the Japanese vocal track installed it’s about 16 gigs. Second would be Breath of the Wild. Then Dragon Quest XI S.

Big AAA multiplatform games I buy for PS5 (or the PS4 version if there is no PS5 version). The only exception to that rule are turn based RPGs, since I actually prefer to play those handheld.

I know the graphics and framerate would take a big hit, but I wish Sega would give a go at porting Yakuza Like a Dragon to the Switch.

@Crockin

I feel like I have more space on my Switch with a 256 gig SD card than I do with my PS5’s 667 gigs of free space.

Most Switch titles are a fraction of the size of the other console’s games. I consider Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart to be a fairly small PS5 game relative to its art assets (which are stellar quality) and it still clocks in at 48 gigs of space.

By comparison, Metroid Dread is like 4 gigs of space.

I have my entire Switch collection of 35 games on my SD card. And I still have 70 gigs left. I could shave off a few gigs by deleting the Japanese voice track for Shin Megami Tensei V. On my PS5? More like 7-10 AAA games at the most. And that is avoiding games like Call of Duty. When I had Black Ops Cold War installed that sucked up 190 gigs of space alone.

It’s pretty strange to me honestly, considering the Switch is where an all digital library makes the most sense. It’s a portable system first and foremost. I own one physical game for it. The rest of my relatively small collection (about 35 titles total) is stored on my SD card. When I go somewhere with the Switch, I have my entire collection with me. It makes the most sense to me. It allows me to run a small case without having to take a bunch of physical games out of their cases.

By comparison, with my PS5, I primarily buy physical if the game is single player only. Multiplayer games I buy digitally.

It’s interesting how lopsided digital sales are compared to physical on Switch. Because to me, as a platform, the Switch makes the most sense for a primarily digital library. Whereas on my PlayStation, I prefer physical when possible since I don’t tote the thing with me (for those who don’t have one, the PS5 is enormous; you could easily fit three Switch OLEDs inside of it with space to spare).

@Krull

I think that’s mainly because Virtua Fighter never caught on in Europe and the US like it did in Japan.

Westerners were obsessed with Tekken when it came to 3D fighters.

@Paraka

I definitely agree. Positioning your opponent is key in Smash. Every character has sweet spots and sour spots for their normals. For me, I just can’t get the movement down. And not for a lack of trying lol.

By the way, were you a Fox, Puff, or Marth main on Melee? I seem to remember the game kind of coming down to those three characters since they dominated the rest of the cast.

Sort of MvC2 in a lot of ways. Magneto, Cable, Storm, and Sentinel dominate that game’s point characters. Hell Sentinel dominates all other assists, too. Drones even make Ryu, who is otherwise trash, good. Best character in the game bar none. Sentinel is a nightmare.

I’m really glad people are starting to play ratio online tournaments on MvC2. Thanks mainly to Justin Wong really pushing it. It’s nice seeing teams that don’t have Magneto or Storm in them. A lot of A and B tier characters are putting in work on the online scene thanks to ratio.

I love all fighting game archetypes. They all offer something drastically different from one another.

@Bunkerneath

It’s actually a far more technical fighting game today.

They rewrote the gameplay of the series with MK9. X and 11 built on top of that foundation.

Before that, MK was always considered the “flash and pomp” of the fighting game world. It was significantly more shallow than competing titles. It did get more complex with the move to 3D gameplay in 4 and Deadly Alliance.

But MK9 was a revelation for the franchise. It went back to 2D, rewrote its fighting engine from scratch, and it became an extremely deep and technical fighter.

@Yosher

Street Fighter went on a downhill slope in terms of console commercial success in the late 90s till the launch of SFIV. It started with Alpha 3 having lower console sales than Alpha 2. And then continued with the Street Fighter III sub series.

SFIII Third Strike (which in my opinion is the best fighting game ever made and the one I’ve sunk the most playtime into) sold poorly despite being released on nearly every console under the sun, from Dreamcast to Xbox 360/PS3. It had a very dedicated hardcore community back in its hey day on CPS III and the initial Dreamcast release (both were used for tournaments; small tournaments usually used Dreamcast while CPS3 boards were used for big tournaments like EVO) but by that point the fighting game genre was sort of splintering.

2D play was dominated by Marvel vs Capcom 2 (people really forget just how big MvC2 was; it was the biggest 2D sensation in the early 00s and knocked everything else off the charts) and the rest dominated by 3D fighters. On the casual side, 3D fighters dominated the market. Especially Tekken and Soul Calibur. Mortal Kombat made the move to 3D gameplay and those installments sold like hotcakes.

@Paraka

To me Smash is way harder in execution than most Street Fighter titles. And I’m a traditional fighting game fanatic who actually knows what frame traps are.

I think a lot of that, for me at least, comes down to analog versus digital inputs. In Street Fighter, movement is based around 8 way digital inputs. This goes all the way back to Street Fighter II. The timing is usually more strict than a game like Smash, but combining movement and attacks feels much easier because you only have 8 way inputs for the arcade stick or d-pad.

Smash is built around analog control. Which is by its nature more “sloppy” than digital control and far less accurate. When I play Smash, I feel like I’m fighting the analog controls because I am first and foremost a classic 2D fighting player. I grew up on Street Fighter Alpha, Super Turbo, the King of Fighters, and Fatal Fury. All of which have punishing input execution. But even then I find them to be easier to play than Smash.

Smash Pro players are a cut above almost anyone else. Because they are able to fully master the more sloppy analog input. For me, someone who grew up on digital input, it’s very difficult for me to comprehend the advanced movement Smash player pull off.

I love watching Smash tournaments. Because it’s crazy knowing exactly what’s going on, but being unable to replicate it. Those guys are the masters of analog sticks.

@IronMan30

Lol yes he is.

Balan Wonderworld is bearing down on him like a Lion fixing to strike an Impala.

Frankly Nintendo doesn’t need to buy any 3rd party publishers. Because Nintendo’s own IP is so overwhelmingly powerful that development studios will jump over corpses to have a chance to develop a Nintendo IP for a Nintendo platform. It’s guaranteed to sell millions.

So Nintendo isn’t in the same position as Sony or Microsoft. Both of those companies have strong IPs (especially Sony) but they aren’t on the identification level of Mario or Zelda. Nintendo could survive off of just its IP. Making their own internal games and then licensing the IP out to developers to assist with titles. Their IP is that powerful.

Only Disney and Marvel (which is owned by Disney) has IP as powerful as the House of Mario.

@BloodNinja

Alto and Baritone sax. Alto most of the time.

@BloodNinja

I remember me and my friends doing that with Starcraft.

Fun times.

I also remember in high school, on the last day of the year, the teachers allowing us to have a Halo Combat Evolved Lan Party. We’d pack up our Xboxes and use the schools TVs and extra network switches they had in storage. 16 player madness in the band hall lol.

@FX102A

There’s nothing wrong with using it as a PS4.

It’s the best PS4 ever released.

I went back and caught up on late Sony PS4 titles and was pleasantly surprised to see so many updated to run at locked 60FPS.

It’s the best way to play PS4 games. Now the load times on backwards compatible titles isn’t a huge upgrade (by comparison, native PS5 software is insanely fast to load; it’s almost old school ROM cartridge fast in Sony published games and most third parties take less than 10 seconds for cold boot) but it’s noticeable. I replayed Horizon last year. I remember on my PS4 the game taking almost a minute on a cold boot to load. On PS5, it’s knocked down to 25 seconds or so.

@JakedaArbok

There’s hardly any PS5 stock to go around.

The thing sells out immediately the second it’s available.

It’s anything but a flop.

@abdias

Returnal and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart would like to have a word. Both were fantastic games. Especially Returnal.

In addition, it’s the best way to play PS4 titles. Many titles have updates that support locked 60 FPS. And while I have some issues with the pricing Sony chose for the rereleased Director’s Cut games, they are the definitive versions of those games.

Ghost of Tsushima had some nice graphical upgrades combined with a locked 60FPS at 4K and the quickest fast travel and cold boot load times I’ve ever seen in a game.

The PS5 has plenty of good games to play. Of course, many are cross gen titles, but they are huge upgrades over their PS4 versions solely due to locked 60FPS and stupidly fast load times.

Dude that’s friggin nuts.

As a big Toto fan this is wonderful.

@iLikeUrAttitude

People are overreacting.

I posted on PushSquare that Sony did this for 3 reasons.

1. Easy profit from Destiny 2 and the next Bungie title.

2. Access to Bungie’s experience in building live service multiplayer titles. Sony has a number of newer, smaller studios working on multiplayer titles. Bungie can assist them in building their GAAS model for those titles.

3. Access to Bungie’s proprietary game engine, which is designed from the ground up for shooters. This purchase lets Sony’s multiplayer studios get up and running without having to heavily modify one of Sony’s other engines, like the ND engine or Decima.

@westman98

I dunno. I think they’re going to primarily limit it to their multiplayer 1st party games they have in the works.

I don’t see Sony’s traditional big budget cinematic single player games going anywhere or riddled with microtransactions.

The name is dumb.

But this is sort of Square’s MO at this point. Really stupid names.

Like Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins. Or the crazy sub titles thrown at the Kingdom Hearts series.

Is mascot platforming coming back in style or something?

At this point Prime 4 is either going to be Ghost of Tsushima (which took 6 long years to make but it was worth every dime Sucker Punch and Sony spent) or it’s going to be Duke Nukem Forever.

Considering Retro’s pedigree, I’m expecting the former.