cedarhyped

@Vivianeat 25 years ago they were just called expansion packs (e.g. "Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne"). We download them now. That's the difference. Companies are definitely bolder about release extra content shortly after release now though. That said, it's easier to develop and release content than it ever was before.

"Nintendo locked great content behind paywall"

I'm a little torn on that one. I mean I can see how it's arguably fun to associate some in-game exclusive item with a real-life trinket, that's kinda cool, sort of a "secret", but in practice it has a lot of obvious downsides too.

"There's no other way to get these ... in the game, so you'll have to scan a relevant amiibo if you want in."

A little disappointing. I guess they did the same thing in Metroid 4, right? The radio or something.

I guess I could get an NFC emulator.

I mean if it's a "secret" should you really spoil it right in the headline?

@Rice What was your experience like playing on both?

@-wc- They briefly and accidentally put it on sale for $18 back in December. I saw the price and thought, "Wow, I'll definitely grab that." A few hours later I thought, "This might be a mistake, so I'd better buy it now," and sure enough, it was pulled about 24 hours later.

The theory was that they mixed it up with the Witcher 3 sale. Apparently they could have reversed the purchase, since there are protections for companies when obvious pricing mistakes happen too, but they let it slide.

In any case, the days of huge price gaps between console and PC are mostly over. The main thing now is that PC versions often come out first, so they get a couple years' head start on deeper sale pricing. By the time the Switch 2 version arrives, the PC version has already been discounted a bunch of times.

This is cool.

For my use, though, if I'm taking the Switch somewhere to plug it into a TV, I'll still need the power adapter, an HDMI cable, and probably an extra controller or two. At that point, I think I'd rather just use one of those bigger carrying cases that holds everything.

The mini dock is useful, but once the cables and controllers are coming too, and Switch, obviously, having one box for the whole setup makes more sense.

@DiamondJim Not that I blame you or anyone else given the discourse, but that's just the toxic online take. The game still got 8/10 from critics (150 reviews) and user reviews (~2500 users).

Sony and Sony publishers optimizing their games to work on handheld feels like it would be a monumental shift in the development pipeline. Nintendo and its publishers have been operating with these constraints for 10 years or easily arguably longer. The PSP required dedicated support: it's why games like Persona 3 portable exist.

That said we should all welcome the competition, as in the long-term it's better for everyone. Shame what's happened to Xbox.

@KoopaTheGamer Yes, agreed. "Soulslike" will never have a perfect definition, but it needs more than just "hard game" or "game where you die a lot." To me, the core is losing a meaningful amount of progress or resources on death, having a chance to recover them, and pushing through an interconnected world full of enemies and bosses that often require repeated attempts. Without that risk-and-recovery loop, the term gets so broad that Mario, Metroid, and every roguelike suddenly become soulslikes too.

@JohnnyMind That's kind of my point.

AdHoc gets to publish whatever explanation they want on their blog, and some people treat it as the definitive account, despite the fact that they didn't disclose the censorship up front and only came out with the "we were surprised by the requirement" explanation SIX MONTHS LATER. Then they remove 80% of the censorship but pinky promise that the remaining 20% is totally Nintendo's fault and you can trust us because we swear in our posts.

Meanwhile Nintendo, a company famous for saying almost nothing publicly, gets all the blame because they're not in the habit of posting lengthy emotional rebuttals every time someone points a finger at them.

Maybe AdHoc's explanation is completely accurate. I just don't understand why it's being treated as unquestionable fact given their shoddy track record and ignoring tough questions like the SKU one.

@JohnnyMind I'd say you're making this out to be way more clear-cut than it is.

The timeline is still: AdHoc released Dispatch without telling people it would be fully censored, blamed Nintendo, then six months later restored most of the censorship through region-specific DLC while continuing to blame the remaining censorship on Nintendo.

Meanwhile obvious questions, like why they didn't release separate SKUs like other games have done, remain unanswered. Instead we get DLC for a global version with no idea how that might impact ratings.

Maybe Nintendo is responsible for all of it. Maybe they aren't. There's no reason to interpret gaps in AdHoc's storytelling favorably though when they've already been pretty deceitful about the whole thing.

@larryisaman so you could have given me ten points all this time and chose not to!? 🤯

@summer235 he said something kinda dumb tho

@larryisaman my theory, and I have zero evidence to support this, is that they chose to work on other things.

@Bizzyb for some reason the differences seem both dramatic and subtle, lol

“These don't come cheap – in fact, they're around twice the price of the official Nintendo Joy-Con”

That’s practically a euphemistic way of saying 200 USD lol. I’m just gonna go ahead and call these grossly overpriced.

I don’t think it bodes well for overall performance that they’re not confident they can get their side scrolling 2d rhythm game running on Switch.

@ottoecamn that’s like 2 already tame CG scenes in a game that has maybe 600 scenes.

Some people have replaced enjoyment with evaluation. They say we should enjoy things like children, but when confronted with something kids actually enjoy, they trip over themselves to judge it.

It’s wild how some of you treat every price change like an emotional battleground. Nintendo raises prices and they’re “greedy.” They lower prices and suddenly it’s “they’re desperate” or “the product must be failing.” There’s no scenario where it’s just normal business.

A good craftsman doesn’t blame his tools.

I don’t particularly care about the TMR technology. None of my controllers ever developed stick drift for the Switch 1, not even the cheap ones. I can see how if you are worried about that aspect this controller is worth considering, but for me my next pick up will still be the Pro Controller 2 for proper C button and more premium feel. I’ll consider this for the NEXT pick-up, if needed.

@PessitheMystic You’re calling it “bad” and asking for a “pragmatic” evaluation, but pragmatic relative to what?

It was a commercial failure. That’s settled history. There was nothing “pragmatic” about rereleasing it. This review isn’t grading it as a competitive platform. It’s assessing whether the rerelease makes sense for the niche audience it’s actually aimed at.

@PessitheMystic It’s goofy watching you and others complain about a review score for a device they’re not the target audience for and clearly don’t understand.

The Virtual Boy is being rereleased because it’s strange and historically interesting, not because Nintendo is trying to compete with modern hardware. The game library is small because it bombed. That’s not a flaw of the rerelease: that’s literally the history.

No one expected Mario Odyssey 2 on a red-and-black 90s novelty headset.

This review is asking: “Should someone in 2026 buy this for what it is?” If you’re grading it for “pragmatism,” you’ve already missed the point.

@NPC411 You’re circling the point without noticing it. If you need specific regions and cherry-picked time windows to argue that a record-breaking, fastest-selling console with tens of millions of units sold is “actually not doing well,” the argument has already collapsed.

I hope the load times aren’t long. I enjoyed playing Doom on the Switch 1, but I ended up lowering the difficulty just to avoid what felt like 30-60 second load screens, particularly on the optional challenges.

Today we all learned physical only fanatics can’t read.

Saying you prefer Hollow Knight feels a little contrarian at this point.
Silksong keeps the same core design and just pushes everything further. Faster movement, deeper combat, bigger world, more variety.

If someone prefers the gentler difficulty or the mood of the original, fair enough.
But on pure game design terms, Silksong is basically Hollow Knight with the ceiling raised.

@DashKappei “Mental gymnastics”? You mean like the kind required to play any video game without first running a criminal background check on everyone in the credits?

Does anyone having any Switch 2 comments for the original? Is it a “blurry mess” in handheld?

I wouldn’t normally care about these things, but I was recently really unimpressed with Clubhouse Games.

Oh no guys. Nintendo is doomed.

@OwenGamer22 Dispatch sold over a million copies on 10 days. Skull Girls took five years on Steam.

@PtM Disagree. If it were that simple, they just wouldn’t have responded at all. They clearly didn’t like they way AdHoc worded it, so they felt they need to address it, but the only way they can is with corporate speak.

@NintonicGamer Agreed, but I think the fact that Nintendo felt the need to respond at all shows they’re not impressed with AdHoc trying to throw them under the bus, which seems like solid evidence that AdHoc absolutely shares more of the blame than they’d like us to believe.

Fortunately uncensored Dispatch is “unbelievably affordable” on the PC if AdHoc wants to be lazy and play games on Switch.

@MTMike87 this exactly. What are we even doing here?

@jwfurness true, you can hardly walk down the street without tripping over used $30 copies of Nintendo switch first party games.

Why is Nintendo Life and the community even trying to review what’s basically a five dollar DLC? Clicks I guess

@SirLink I’m thrilled there’s a lawyer in the comments: you can help me get my kids back.

@GoldenSunRM You’d be wrong in Italy too, at least as far as your 100% certainly goes:

https://www.wired.com/story/mediaworld-accidentally-sold-ipads-for-euro15-then-it-asked-for-them-back/

“… Article 1428 of the Italian Civil Code allows a contract to be voided if the error is fundamental and recognizable …”

@sportvater @PhillyG411 Yeah, they could have taken it back. Business laws protect consumers AND businesses.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8d4fce33-a7a0-47de-a797-3d4e7c8b26ae

I’m surprised too TBH.

ALERT: Cyberpunk is currently experiencing what’s likely a pricing error in the US and CAD sale. 75% off digital, so like $17. Probably intended to be the Witcher 3 discount.

@PikminMarioKirby You are massively delusional, objectively speaking. The Switch 2 is the fastest selling console of all time. The PS5 beat it in one country, in one month, and those two aren’t even exclusively competitors since the libraries don’t overlap and many of us own both. But yeah, I’m sure Nintendo has “learned a lesson”, just not the one you’re hoping for.

@nessisonett Yes, we can only pray that Fire Emblem shall reach the dizzying heights it had once attained, and that this stain on its peerless legacy can be, if not washed cleaned, blurred by the gentle passage of time.

@nessisonett From “This sort of stinker is indicative of the general reputation of Fire Emblem these days” to “this niche series is in a lull because the last one I declare ‘had an impact’ was released 6 years ago.” Thanks for your insightful, non-controversial takes.

@MamaSymphonia I too think that people should work hard to give me free stuff if I decide it’s “old”.

I’m amazed so many of you have such a thorough understanding of the game before release. It’s honestly impressive. Have you considered running a YouTube channel?

The commentary around these departures is way too dramatic. People leave companies. People join companies. When someone quits, it gets treated like a death omen for the studio, but when new talent arrives, nobody says a word. Then those “unknowns” make great games, stick around for a decade, and eventually leave too. The cycle repeats, and nothing about it is unusual.

I’ve tried going back to the older Animal Crossing games after New Horizons, and it’s surprisingly hard. Once you get used to things like crafting, outdoor furniture, terraforming, moving buildings, swimming, and all the QoL updates, the older ones feel like they’re missing half the game.

@CammyUnofficial I heartily agree that would be ideal. I bet you can load the file on a Miyoo Mini or similar device.