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@FishyS I'm the same way about first person games. Can't play first person shooters for long without getting motion sick. I played all the way through Portal though and don't remember it making me sick. This was a long time ago, but I think like @Jey887 says, it's slow paced enough that it didn't cause problems.

@IronMan30 I'd argue that not only is it not ridiculous, but the part of the review describing how the game performs on the Switch is the most important part of the review. As the reviewer says, many potential buyers will already have played the games on other platforms. Even for people who haven't already played them, any review aggregator site will already have dozens of reviews of the games from when they were originally released. The main thing I want from a review of the Switch port of the games is a description of how good the port is: how does it perform, and how well did they adapt it to the Switch controls.

Also, while I agree that any game which ran fine on Xbox 360/PS3 should be able to run fine on a Switch, it's not a given that it will. I can't remember which games off the top of my head, but I definitely recall some other last gen console ports to Switch that didn't perform well on Switch. Any time you're porting code to a different hardware platform, it's possible to mess it up and end up decreasing performance.

@sgarcia-dev This suggestion makes sense, though I'd point out that the screen sizes that people are viewing the site on can vary greatly - anything from a phone screen to large external monitor is possible. Unless there's some way to make the screenshots scale differently depending on the physical size of the screen the site is being viewed on, then it might not be practical to implement your suggestion.

@BenAV Sure, if they knew in advance that they'd lose then they shouldn't have appealed. Presumably though they thought there was a chance the appeal would succeed.

@sixrings Regarding average scores, I didn't interpret @PJOreilly's comment the same way you did. When a reviewer says a 5 means it's an average game, that could be interpreted in two ways.

One way would be that he's saying it's the mathematical average of all the scores that reviewer has given out. That seems to be the way you interpreted the comment.

I interpreted the comment as meaning a score of 5 indicates it's an average quality game out of all similar games, not just games the reviewer has personally reviewed. The fact that this reviewer's average review score is higher than 5 may just mean that he skews toward reviewing games that are better than average, at least in his opinion if not yours.

@Tandy255 I share your feeling in that it wasn't worth $60 to me to get the Link's Awakening remake. That's not based on having played it, but just based on the fact that I can get essentially the same game with original graphics for $7 on my 3DS. However I don't agree that the reviewers needed to say that, or dock the score for that, since all the info needed for me to reach my conclusion was already right there in the reviews. I have friends who had all the same factual information as me, and had no problem with buying it for $60, and are very happy with their purchase, and I've seen plenty more people on this site saying the same thing. So I wouldn't say Link's Awakening counts as egregiously overpriced. To warrant that, I would say it would need to be the case that the vast majority of people would consider it way overpriced if they actually played it.

@Tandy255 "Agree or disagree, the price should be discussed in the review."

I disagree for the most part. Whether a game is worth its price is so subjective that I don't see much point in the reviewer discussing it. If the review gives enough information about the game, and also mentions the price, then readers have enough information to make their own decision about whether to buy it.

The only exception is when there is a really egregious mismatch between the price and what you're getting, like for example a $60 game that can be played through in an hour, or is far below the technical quality that's usual for a $60 game. Or the reverse, where a game seems much better than you'd normally expect for its price. In cases like that I'd appreciate the reviewer discussing the price.

I'll second @nessisonett, this is a great game, if you like choose-your-own-adventure games. I played the mobile version on an iPhone and iPad, and it works fine on even smaller screens. You can see in the screenshots in this review that they don't try to cram too much text one screen, so I'm sure it'll be fine even on the Switch Lite.

That said, this isn't a game which benefits in any way from physical controls, so if you have a smart phone or tablet, it may make sense to get it for cheaper there.

@Lordplops Is there really that big a difference between the Switch and Switch Lite screen sizes that it needs special mention in reviews? Edit: just looked it up and it's 5.5 inches vs 6.2 inches. That's a pretty significant change.

I'm fine with most of the missing features, except for possibly motion controls. Using motion for aiming in games like Breath of the Wild is extremely helpful, and I'd miss that.

@skulltulips It's basically a choose-your-own-adventure type game. It's been out for several years on other platforms, so you'll find plenty of longer reviews online. Also, it's available on mobile, and given the type of game it is, I'd say the ideal device to play it on might actually be a decent size tablet rather than a Switch.

@JAPBOO I'm not sure I understand your objection to the reviewer's comment then. It seems like you agree that the Switch is somewhere between the 360/PS3 and XB1/PS4 in terms of performance. It may be an open question exactly where the Switch lies between the two, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether the reviewer's comment makes sense. As long as we agree that the Switch is at least as performant as a 360/PS3, and less performant than a XB1/PS4, then it's reasonable to assume that 360/PS3 games can be ported to the Switch without performance compromises, whereas XB1/PS4 games may be compromised. That's all the reviewer was saying.

@JAPBOO The Switch does seem to be roughly similar in computing power to the Xbox 360 and PS3. I'm sure if you compare specs the Switch might come out ahead, but judged by how well games run on it, it is true that ports of last-gen Xbox/PS games tend to run as well on the Switch as on their original consoles, whereas ports of Xbox One or PS4 games tend to run worse or need to be downgraded in some ways to run on the Switch. So I think it's reasonable to use the fact that this game was originally developed for last-gen Xbox/PS consoles as way to predict that it will run well on the Switch.

@ThatNyteDaez Actually this affects people who already own the game also, since they can't re-download it. This could come up for someone buys a new Switch, has deleted the game to free up space, or has the "Quick Archive" feature enabled, which allows the Switch to automatically uninstall games that haven't been played recently to free up space for new games.

@diablo2 You said "A lot of people praise Nintendo for "not being evil" with microtransactions and whatnot....

But what most people don't realize is that Nintendo is still sucking you dry through other means — mainly by rarely dropping their prices, and by overpricing everything to begin with."

The thing is people do realize that, and that's exactly the point. There's nothing deceptive or manipulative about charging a lot up front for something. You see the price tag, and decide if it’s worth that price to you or not. For example Porsche charges a lot for their cars, more than I would want to pay for a car, but there’s nothing deceptive about it. They’re not trying to make me believe I’m getting a cheap or free car, and then once I’ve gotten attached to it then trying to nickel and dime me to keep using it. I see Nintendo games like that. Not everyone will think they’re worth the price, but you’re getting what it says on the tin for the advertised price.

The thing about free-to-play games or even many non-free games with micro-transactions, is that they try to trick or manipulate people into spending much more than they were planning to, using tactics similar to casinos to prey on people’s psychological weaknesses. It’s a totally different thing than just charging a lot up front for something.

@diablo2 They did mention the price though. It's in the little "Game Profile" red box to the right of the review. I don't see any reason to discuss it more than that, since whether it's worth the price or not is pretty subjective. The combination of a thorough review providing more than enough info for me to get sense of what the game is like, combined with a price tag, is enough for me to decide whether it's worth the price to me. I don't see any reason for the reviewer to weigh in on whether it's worth the price, unless a game is egregiously out of line with similarly priced games in terms of quality or scope.

@dres Thanks! I figured it was something like that, but didn't know how frequently it needed to go online.

@rdm22 To answer your other question, it's not like a rental service for specific games, more like a subscription to the whole library of games. As long as your Nintendo Online subscription is active, you have access to all the NES and SNES titles at any time.

@rdm22 They work fine offline once you've dowloaded the app. I just played on the way to work this morning on the train.

Since access to the games is part of the Nintendo Online service, I assume there is some way of tying access to whether your NO subscription is active. Maybe it periodically does connect to check that your subscription is active.

@Darknyht Regardless of the version history or thoughts of the developers when they were making the game, I can't think of anything about the games themselves that makes the single player portion of Torchlight 2 have any more of an "offline approach" than the single player portion of console Diablo 3. I'd be curious to know what you’re thinking of in this regard.

Now, I do think the online features of Diablo 3 are a bit more developed than Torchlight 2, and that’s what I think the developer quotes that you mentioned point to. The Diablo developers’ goal of making online play be very fun resulted in a very mature online feature set, in addition to the well developed offline campaign. However the offline mode definitely does not feel like an afterthought, and in fact is at least as substantial as the Torchlight games.

@Darknyht Not sure what you mean about Diablo 3's "online first" approach. It's true that the PC version of Diablo 3 does (did?) require an online connection, but the console versions of the game never did, nor is there anything about the design of the offline campaign that makes it seem biased toward online. In fact if anything I'd say Torchlight II is more online biased, given that it only supports online multiplayer, whereas Diablo 3 supports local coop on one device.

@iN5OMANiAC I'm just talking about my experience of playing the game, as opposed to "on paper" differences. The framerate is completely smooth, and the controls feel very responsive, so in my experience the framerate difference only makes a minor difference in the actual feel of playing the game. I have to actually try to notice the difference to even tell. The only major difference I experience compared to playing on the Xbox is having to use the right stick instead of the trigger if I want analog throttle control. I'll concede though that for people who are very sensitive to the difference between 30 fps vs 60 fps, this is a notable difference. To me it's well worth it to have a portable version of the game.

@hitherehello I played MANY hours of Trials HD and Trials Evolution on Xbox 360, and have this game on Switch. I would say this port is great. The only disadvantage I see with it compared to Trials on other platforms is the lack of analog triggers, though it allows using the right stick for analog throttle control, which I got used to a lot faster than expected. So as far as I'm concerned, any claims that this game, or the Switch port, is bad compared to other Trials versions are just based on exaggerating minor differences.

@GameOtaku "It's a bullet hell game, since when could you really make out what's actually going on in one?" I don't agree with this statement. I've played dozens of bullet hell games. In most of the good ones it's not hard to distinguish the bullets from the background. It may be hard to tell what's happening because of the speed and complexity of the bullet patterns themselves, but that's a separate issue from not being able to distinguish the bullets from the backgrounds. The latter is what the reviewer is talking about, and I agree that's a flaw. I haven't played this game, but I've played some other shooter that have that issue, and I consider it a mistake when I encounter that. I want the challenge to come from the speed and complexity of the game, not from challenging my eyesight.

@MagnaRoader I'd echo others and say lucky as well. I'm careful with my controllers, and never had a problem with other console controllers, but my left Joy-Con started having drift after a few months. It's very annoying trying to play Breath of the Wild when Link keeps wandering away when I'm not giving any left stick input.

I also own a second pair of Joy-Cons, plus a Pro Controller, and none of the others have the issue, so it's apparently not a consistent problem. That's the way a lot of quality control issues manifest though.

@60frames-please Bullet hell games are a type of shump. What distinguishes them from other shmups is that they have a much higher density of bullets on the screen than other shumps, often in complex patterns. A lot of the enjoyment in them is in spotting the patterns and quickly plotting a route through the bullets.

I love bullet hell games, but at the same time I don't have the reaction times necessary to play them well. A lot of more recent ones, and even ports of arcade bullet hell games, have optional easy difficulty settings which allow me to enjoy them in spite of my slow reaction times. From the review it sounds like I could enjoy this one. If you're curious, watch some gameplay videos on youtube. Don't be scared off by the gameplay videos though. Most of them show experts playing on the hard difficulty level, so it might look impossible, but it'll probably be much more manageable on the easy setting.

@Bondi_Surfer The reviewer is saying that the art style of the tracks is memorable, and differs from track to track. However the gameplay of each track does not differ very much. He says the different tracks seem to be made up of similar turns and loops and jumps, just rearranged in different order. In other words, the differences between the tracks is mostly skin deep.

@60frames-please I don’t know, but this isn’t the kind of game where that would matter. I played it a few years ago, but I don’t remember there being any fast paced parts. The challenges come from the puzzles, and coordination required to control both brothers simultaneously, not from testing your reaction time.

@nhSnork I found those two sentences a bit contradictory as well. I've played the game on Xbox already, and agree that it would lose something when being played co-op. However the sentence:

"but the decision to include a more traditional co-op experience does take away some of the game's original appeal"

doesn't make sense, since it seems to imply that merely including the option to play coop takes away some of the game's appeal. As long as the original single player option exists, then none of the original appeal is missing, although it's true that some people may miss out if they don't realize the game is better solo.

@Sunanootoko I think playing it coop would lose some of the intended challenge, and emotional impact of the story. This isn't your typical platformer where the story is just a setup for the gameplay, the story is actually a major part of the experience. To get full impact of the game I'd recommend playing it through for the first time the way it was originally intended, with one player controlling both characters.

@Bomberman64 I thought the same of that sentence! The writer doesn't seem to get the concept of taking something on its own merits.

I agree with @thegametb. I like this game a lot more than the reviewer did. I don't think the reviewer got anything factually wrong, but the things he points out as flaws seemed like minor quibbles to me compared to all there is to like about the game. It's beautiful to look at, charming, has a great soundtrack, controls great, and I found the spell customization to be very fun to play with and use. If I were to pick out any flaws that bothered me, they'd be:

1. There is no confirmation before leaving one area to enter another; you just walk past a certain point and then you're in the loading screen. This is annoying if you didn't mean to go to the next area, because the load times are somewhat long, plus when you go back to the previous area any enemies you killed probably re-spawned.

2. No list of uncompleted side quests.

Otherwise it's a delightful and polished game. I'd definitely recommend not ruling the game out just on the basis of this review. If you were looking forward to it, read some other reviews or watch some gameplay on youtube before deciding.

@TheFongz @ThanosReXXX Thanks. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Guess I was thinking of games like Dirt 3, which I've played on Xbox, where throttle control is a big part of the gameplay. I know you can make fun driving games without analog throttle control, it just seemed like a game like this one would benefit from it more than some.

What is the throttle control mapped to in the Switch version? I think in a game like this that's trying to realistically simulate driving in very low traction conditions, throttle control would be a big part of the challenge. I'm curious, did they map throttle to one of the triggers, or to an analog stick?

@KingdomHeartsFan I apologize for my snarky comment. Somehow I missed that you were talking about all consoles, not just the Switch. Plus there was no need for me to be snarky like that anyways. I shouldn’t post while half asleep.

@KingdomHeartsFan "You don't need to pay a fee to go online with any other devices."

There are these other slightly popular devices called Xbox and Playstation that also require paid subscriptions to play online. Their subscription services are actually more expensive than Nintendo's.

@OorWullie I think it's a big improvement in terms of discoverability, since I'm guessing many people never found the advanced search options. However it's actually less functionally useful, since you can't combine filters, for example to search for all racing games under $20. Thankfully the old Search Filters page is still there too.

Edit: Actually I just tried it, and once you select one of the top-level searches like "Genre", it just takes you to the old search interface page, but with the Genre field already filled in, so you can still add in the other filters. So definitely an improvement in terms of discoverability.

@link3710 Exactly. I don't know why the author of this article didn't mention that these options were all already available. It is an improvement to make them front and center like this, since I bet lots of people didn't realize selecting "More options" brings up filters, but still, this isn't new functionality.

@Atariboy "Yep, the genie is long out of the bottle. It's a pointless waste of resources and poor publicity for Nintendo in a war that they'll never be able to win."

I disagree that it's a waste of resources on Nintendo's part, and I also don't think they are under the delusion that they can eliminate piracy by doing this. Nintendo doesn't need to completely eliminate piracy in order for this to be useful to them. Actions like this discourage large sharing sites from existing, thereby driving piracy more underground. This has the double effect of making pirated games less accessible to the average technically unsophisticated person, and sends a clear message that getting software this way is not considered legitimate.

As far as your point about it being poor publicity, I disagree and think it's a net win for Nintendo. Sure, there are people who will hold this against Nintendo, but I don't think those are people whose opinion Nintendo should value, for similar reasons to why a shopkeeper shouldn't worry about how calling the police on a shoplifter will affect the shoplifter's opinion of the shop.

@Nemodius Sorry if I came off as sounding personally bothered, but I certainly wasn't insulted by you posting your opinion. I do disagree with the factual part of your statement, but I have no issue whatsoever with you posting it, and just saw this as a back and forth factual discussion. I simply disagree that most games wouldn't be negatively affected by a 1 second audio lag. I agree some games wouldn't, specifically games where there is no expectation of audio being in sync with user inputs or on screen action, but I don't think that applies to most Switch games.

@Nemodius 1-1.5 seconds audio lag is a huge deal in any action game. It doesn't need to have voiceover to be a problem. It feels very disconcerting when you're shooting or hitting something, or basically anything where audio is supposed to sync with your control inputs, and the audio is out of sync. Even 0.5 seconds lag feels really bad. The reviewer of this device claims the lag was barely noticeable. Obviously what's noticeable differs by person, but I'm going to guess that for most people, "barely noticeable audio lag" equates to at most 10s of milliseconds.

@Retupmocnin "The point of the game is looting, the fighting is just obstacle to overcome."

To each their own, but for me, the fighting in D3 is more fun than loot gathering. The thing is you can make the fighting interesting or boring depending on how you think of the game. If you decide that looting is the main point, you'll tend to choose your builds and difficulty level based on maximizing looting efficiency, which does tend to turn the game into a grind. If you focus on making the fighting as fun as possible, you'll choose difficulty levels and builds that maximize the challenge and variety of fighting techniques and combos, to make the combat as engaging as possible. I play the game the second way, and find it very fun as a hack and slash game.

@bingbong As you can see from the comments here, many people find it extremely fun, so obviously to them it’s more fun than it looks to you. That doesn’t mean you’ll find it fun though. If you’re really on the fence, and you own another console, the PS and Xbox versions are available much cheaper than the Switch version.

@brendon987 Online connection is not required, except for multiplayer. The PC version requires an online connection even for single player, but none of the console versions do.

@JayJ Yup. It also seems a bit backward to me to be more concerned about nudity than violence, which is the case for many Americans. I'm the father of a six year old, and if I had to choose, I'd be much more concerned about her seeing an image of someone impaled on a spear than seeing someone naked. However many Americans would feel the opposite, and you see this reflected in movie and game ratings as well.

@rjejr "Man there's always bare breasts aren't there? It's like a woman can't be an evil monster without baring her bosom. I remember that from Titan Quest way back when my kids were little, I just kinda moved on. I wonder if countries with more topless beaches care about topless monsters?"

I'd point out that many male monsters and heroes are bare-chested as well. We're just so used to seeing that as normal that it doesn't stand out to us the way a bare-chested female does. I would assume that in societies where females going topless is more normalized, people would be less likely find topless females in games to be noteworthy.

@Sondheimist I've only ever played it single player. It's not one of those multiplayer games with a tacked on single player campaign; it really is great as a single player game.

@DonSerrot I doubt Blizzard would implement cross play between the PC and console versions, because there are too many differences between the PC and console versions. However the different console versions are all essentially the same gameplay-wise, so it makes sense to support cross play among console versions.

EDIT: Just realized MountainMan and others already said this.

Analog triggers would be my most desired upgrade, because racing games are one of my favorite genres, and not having analog throttle and braking prevents more realistic racing gaming on the Switch.

Otherwise I'm very happy with the Switch. More computing power and builtin storage would be nice to have, but not essential.

The fact that 8 years later, even with the attendant age-related degradation in reaction times, he can still repeatedly get close to his previous record, makes me think he's the real deal.

@Yorumi Hi, of course I agree with the statement "the majority doesn't get to decide truth", when it relates to objective facts. For instance, the the truth of the statement "the earth isn't flat" is independent of what the majority of people think. However a lot of things are inherently subjective. For instance the statement "strawberry ice cream tastes good" has a different truth value for different people. The only way you could say it's objectively true that something tastes good or bad would be to show that there is near unanimous agreement on that. I think a lot of the design choices you used as examples of bad design are more like the ice cream taste example than the earth shape example.

I would say there are a couple of ways you could define an objectively bad design choice:

1. If the effects of a design choice undermine some of the developer's own goals, and there was another choice they could have made that wouldn't have done so, that would count as an objectively bad design choice, independent of whether people happened to like the game. For example, if a developer made a fighting game with a roster of characters, and players were supposed to be able to choose any character, but one of the characters was clearly overpowered compared to the others in a way the developer didn't intend, that would be objectively poor design. I would say this was true even if some players happened to like the result for reasons the developer didn't intend.

2. The other is more like the taste example. Even if a design choice had exactly the effects a designer intended, if there is near unanimous agreement that a different choice would have made the game more enjoyable, I would accept that that counts as an objectively bad design choice. I think your example of reinforcements spawning behind your battle lines in FE:Awakening would be a candidate for this category. I don't think it was an accidental choice on the developer's part, but I could be convinced it was an objectively bad choice if I learned that most people would like the gameplay better without that. Personally I never found that part of the game as unfair as it seems to you, so it's not obvious to me that it was a bad choice, but I suppose if I found out that I was in a tiny minority in that regard, I might still accept it as bad design.

I don't think any of the reviewer's criticisms of this game fit into the first category above. The question would be whether they fit into the second category. I.e. is there near universal dislike of far apart checkpoints, invisible spike pits, or whatever other things the reviewer didn't like. I don't think there is, so I'd agree with you that these don't count as objectively bad design, just maybe unpopular design choices nowadays.