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Man, there are just way too many games to play! I loved
Valiant Hearts, but didn't even know they made a sequel. I'm definately playing this when it comes to Switch.

I find all the complaints about too many articles about Palworld very funny. If you click on it and then complain about it in the comments, you tell Nintendolife "articles about Palworld create a lot of engagement, we should write more!". If you want them to go away, just ignore them!

I think the number of articles is justified. It doesn't happen often that an early access game by an unknown developer sells millions of copies in a week.

I don't know the original game on DS but I have played the demo. It's definitely not a 10/10 game. The graphics are nice enough but everything feels a bit outdated. The camera controls are stiff. The dialog scenes are slow paced and why do I have to "choose" the next dialog option if there is only one available? With the handful of puzzles that are in the demo I could tell that they were originally designed for the DS, but I think they adapted them well for the Switch controls.

The characters and story however were interesting enough that I will probably pick the game up when it comes out. For anyone who thinks about trying the demo it is just the beginning of the first game and you can transfer your save to the full version.

According to my Switch my most played "game" is YouTube, so definitely yes

I use streaming apps almost exclusively in docked mode. The Switch boots much faster and runs better than my FireTV stick. I also like using a controller better than the remote. For other streaming services not on the Switch I use a Chromecast. That works well, too, but it's the version without a remote so I need to use my phone which can be a bit annoying sometimes.

Not surprising. I'm pretty sure I have read somewhere that you can just download any game from the official eShop servers if you have the original Switch model with the unpatchable hardware exploit. Nintendo also probably uploads new games to the servers a few days in advance.

Looks like they sold the rights to Sky around here

Can't rent it on other platforms, either. I guess I have to wait a bit more before I can watch it.

I don't use Twitch but I use YouTube and Crunchyroll a lot on the Switch in docked mode. It starts faster than a FireTV stick and using the controller as a remote is more convenient than using my phone with a Chromecast.

I find it weird that we never got apps for all the other streaming services and I hope that changes for the Switch 2.

I love this game and support from the devs has been excellent! On PC they added new songs every few weeks since launch. I wonder how long they will keep it up, but it looks like it will continue for a while as they have mentioned that they want expand the story, too.

That's a shame! I really liked it and it is the only AAA Ubisoft game I have bought in the last decade. I always loved their smaller more creative games more (Rayman, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts etc.) and Fenyx Rising felt like those but with a big budget.

@KevinP You should play it for the tons of funny mythology in-jokes alone

Two interesting things I noticed.
1. She looks a bit younger than usual, but maybe that's just because of the art style.
2. She doesn't wear a crown.

So, Peach origin story?

@Link-Hero I hope so, but it wouldn't be the first time that trailer music doesn't even appear in the game.

@Link-Hero to be fair, Sands of Time, and Warrior Within even more, did the same thing with the music. It's just early 2000s NuMetal instead of rap.

@Ironcore You can't bring something back, if it was never gone in the first place. I was pretty horrified when I learned that Japan still has the death penalty. That hanging is their preferred method of doing it didn't really help, either.

@Arawn93 I don't really care about The Little Mermaid or Disney's live action remakes in general, but how can you call it a flop? It has been out for a week and has already made 200 million $ world-wide.

@Dijita They are well liked for their Point-and-Click Adventure games, but they have never done a 3rd person action adventure type game before and it looks like they bit off more than they could chew.

@antisumo creating a box is cheap and allows you sell your game to people that don't buy on the eShop. Cartridges are expensive, especially compared to Playstation/Xbox discs.

@Atariboy to be fair, while the Wiimote is definitely better than a Joycon at emulating a light gun, you still need an on-screen crosshair. The Wiimote only sees the sensor bar so it doesn't know how big your TV is. Because the average TV is a lot bigger now than in 2006, your aim will drift very quickly as soon as you point it away from the center of the screen.

Another small thing they didn't talk about in the Direct is that Link's Awakening DX is also available in German and French, which is nice, because most NSO NES and SNES games have been English only, even if official translations exist.

On why they haven't shown any new first party titles: I think they will focus their marketing on Tears of the Kingdom and reveal new games only after it has been out for a month or two.

@RickRau5 I thought it was pretty good. Gameboy games are a nice surprise and I might even have to get the expansion pass once Metroid Fusion is out. Pikmin 4 looks cool, Advance Wars finally has a new release date, Ghost Trick HD is awesome, because the only way to play it right now is on iOS and I've heard it has issues on current devices and/or iOS versions (or get the original version used and dust off your DS). Professor Layton was just a teaser but it's good to know the series isn't dead.

Third party supporter seems to be pretty strong in Japan but a bit lacking with western companies.

Guybrush Threepwood (from the Monkey Island games) claims he can hold his breath for 10 minutes. At some point in Monkey Island 1 he gets tied to a heavy object and thrown into the sea. If you wait 10 minutes he actually dies!

@Tom-Massey I'm very confused why so many people call you a hater of the show just because you used the word "garbage". I guess it is a bit too harsh for the point you are making. I would have probably used schlock or trash instead. But that sentence started with "The magical appeal of Cobra Kai". I don't get how anyone can read those words and think you hate the show!?

@PoeTheLizard Themes and Music still add complexity to the launcher, even if they are optional. In the early days of the Switch some data miners theorized that the system is booting so fast because the launcher application has a size of just 200 KBytes.

I loved the menus on the WiiU and 3DS, but what I didn't love is that they took between 30 sec and 1:30 min to boot.

@Rainz I'm also interested in the games performance and resolution, because I haven't decided on what platform I'm going to play it, yet.

If I want to watch a movie and my only option is a DVD, that's totally fine. But if I can choose between a Blu-Ray and a DVD, why would I pick the DVD?

In this case, the "Blu-ray option" (playing the game on PC) doesn't even cost more. For this game the resolution doesn't matter that much to be sure, because it has pixelated retro graphics anyway, but if it had performance issues on Switch I would definitely pick the PC version, even if the issues didn't make it unplayable on Switch.

@LEGEND_MARIOID Signalis seems to be great, haven't seen an "Essential" rating on Eurogamer for a while and it got 8/10, 9/10 or 10/10 everywhere else, too. I'm still looking for reviews of the Switch version to make sure it runs well, but with its retro low poly visuals it should be fine.

@Dr_Corndog New'n'Tasty is a 1:1 remake of Abe's Oddysee. The graphics and sound are new but the levels and gameplay are identical.

Soulstorm is based on the story of Abe's Exoddus, but is a completely new game.

Abe's Exoddus is one of my all time favorites, so I bought Soulstorm on PC on day one. It isn't bad, but I couldn't really get into it. From a nostalgic fan's perspective, it takes too long to get to the interesting parts. I played it for two hours and didn't even get to the beginning of the original game! The journey to Necrum, that happens in five minutes during the intro in the original, is extended into several levels that were a bit boring after a while. I also didn't really like the crafting mechanics they added.

@Beaucine also the reviewer on The Verge had similar issues. Quote: "The game was a thoroughly enjoyable, worthy successor for its first three quarters, only to faceplant so hard in the final fourth that I’m ready to write off the entire game’s existence".

Most reviews mention the strict embargo instructions, so it will be interesting to see if more people are voicing their disappointment with the ending when the game is actually out.

An adapttion has to change things around, or there is no point in doing it, IMHO. If I want the exact same story as the game, I can just play the game again. Not to mention that it would be kind of hard to translate a game that has 26 different endings directly into a linear anime.

@scottishwildcat the game has an integrated to-do list and hint system so you always know what you have to do and can ask for hints on how to do it. If you still can't solve a puzzle the hints will get more and more specific until it eventually just tells you the solution.

I think we have gotten used to hearing about the war in Ukraine so much we have forgotten how big of a shock it was when it started. I think Nintendo did the right thing when they delayed it. But now they are in a tight spot. Should they wait until the conflict is over? That could be in a few months or in two years. Do they wait until public interest in the war has slowed down a bit? That seemed to happen in the last 4-6 weeks, but then Ukraine started its counter offensive and now everybody is talking about the war again.

@Joeynator3000 I thought so, too. But I haven't heard of it before, so with new controls and graphics its basically a new game for me.

My guess is that if we ever get Half Life 3, it will be a fusion of Half Life and Portal game mechanics and will make a Portal 3 obsolete. They could even have GlaDOS. Maybe she added a copy of herself to the Borealis.

I'll probably dust off the WiiU instead, especially if they are full price. I'd love to play Windwaker again, but not Twilight Princess. I have beaten that game three times now and I think that's enough. The only reason for me to play it again after the first time was Midna. The best companion stuck in one of the worst Zelda games.

@AnorakJimi my TV is 10 years old, so all the SmartTV stuff has stopped working years ago. I had a FireTV stick that was annoyingly slow and often crashed. The Chromecast I use now is a bit better but requires a smartphone to work.

The Switch on the other hand boots up very fast and the existing apps work pretty well. So it's my main way to watch YouTube and Crunchyroll on the TV. If it also had Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon I wouldn't need the Chromecast at all.

@Aventurier Thank you! I was wondering what that error message was supposed to mean. I have never seen a Netflix disc for the Wii before.

@Rykdrew I don't really know what you are getting at? There haven't been content updates for Splatoon 2 in a long time. The last Splatfest was in 2019. But I am 100% sure they will not shut down the servers anytime soon. So they are not forcing you to do anything.

"Regardless of your opinion on them, live service games like Fortnite and Apex Legends have proven that it's perhaps more beneficial to launch what is effectively a "platform" that developers can build upon for the foreseeable future."

The difference here is pretty obvious. Those are free to play games. As long as people still play the game and they release new stuff, they will make money on micro transactions.

After Nintendo has sold you Splatoon they don't make any additional money, so as soon as new players stop coming to the game, continuing to support it doesn't make sense. They can try to sell DLC, but if that includes multi-player content (aside from cosmetics) they run the risk of fracturing the player base, because not everyone will buy the DLC at launch (or at all).

I have 136 icons in the list, but I'm pretty sure I have downloaded everything I own, so that should be close to all of them. I just checked Steam as well and was surprised that I have only a little over 300 games on there, even though my account is 18 years old.

They tried to do "same game but based on different mythologies" with the DLC already and it didn't really work for me. It felt like I was playing a fan mod or cheap reskin. One reason for that might be that most of your abilities are already unlocked, so if they make a full game instead of a 5-10 hour DLC it might work better.

@Dizavid Yes! Overall the humor was hit and miss, but the Greek mythology in-jokes were awesome. Most of them were genuine laugh-out-loud moments.
Also I found the Greek accents of the English narrators a bit grating, so I switched to the German dub and it was mutch better! So if anyone finds the narration annoying and speaks another language besides English I encourage you to try a different dub.

@MichaelP it might also be useful for streamers. Twitch and YouTube aren't too keen on nudity. Bayonetta 3 likely doesn't include any actual full frontal nudity, but some might want to play it safe to avoid getting banned or demonetized.

@marktornits I know this is the internet where everything is either a 10/10 or a 0/10, but if something gets mostly 0s from users, that's definitely review bombing. I have no intention to watch this show, but from what I have read it is competently made from a filmmaking perspective and has at least a few memorable sences and performances, so it's a 4/10 or 5/10 at worst, realistically.

Speaking of Suda51, have y'all seen the Devolver Digital thing? I was really impressed by his acting.

With at least two big first party releases in June and July I don't expect any big announcements, because they don't want to take the spotlight away from those games. Maybe we'll get something in August, but I wouldn't be surprised if they wait unitil Splatoon 3 has come out in September.

@duffmmann Most people named Adolf in Germany were born before 1945, after that it dropped in popularity significantly for some reason

But it still kind of sucks if you want to play Switch sports with your grandfather.

I'm glad that they didn't go with pixel art and I agree with Ron Gilbert that it wasn't a stylistic choice for Monkey 1 and 2 but a technical limitation. To support that, as far as I know Monkey Island 2 was the first LucasArts adventure were they scanned hand drawn backgrounds instead of drawing the pixels directly.

But I'm not 100% happy with the new art style. I always thought that the art of the first two games was pretty realistic, closer to the Indiana Jones games (which tried to emulate the look of the movies) than the more wacky Day of the Tentacle.

It also reminds me a bit to much of the Special Editions, which always looked a bit cheap to me. But all this doesn't really lessen my excitement for the game.

I couldn't care less about their main games (Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy's Whatever), but I usually love their "side games". The best ones were Child of Light and Valiant Hearts, but Immortals Fenyx Rising gave me similar "indie vibes". Prince of Persia has been one of my favorite series since the very first one (but Sands of Time is in my top 10 games of all time as well), so I'm looking forward to that, too.

@Smoose my Switch runs on Solar Power

@Smoose don't be silly. According to Nintendo the Switch has a power consumption of 6W for "active gaming" in TV mode (they don't provide handheld numbers, unfortunately). In handheld mode the CPU and GPU use less to increase battery life, but the screen uses additional power. So let's assume 10W as a worst case scenario.

3600h * 10W = 36 kWh

That's the equivalent of burning 3 liters of gas! I hope you took the bike to the grocery store instead of the car or we would have to put you in jail instead of him

@RR529 my guess is that Funimation is only available in North America, but Crunchyroll is worldwide, so it makes sense to retire Funimation.

Even if we assume that the leak is real (which seems likely), it doesn't really tell us anything. Work on the next system usually starts immediately after the release of the current one. The SoC of the Switch was two years old on launch so even if they use this chip it the next system could be released in 6 months or 2 years. But they also could just use it for a prototype, decide they aren't happy with its performance and use something different in the final product.

And "Nintendo will release new hardware at some point" is as much a prediction as "there will be a sunrise in the next 24 hours".

@Bobb A Virtual Boy Collection on 3DS would have been great.