Comments 617

Re: Nintendo Reveals The Next Wave Of Salmon Run For Splatoon 3

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I don't get the complaints that Splatoon 1, 2 and 3 are too similar. Yes, other games would add new enemies or entire game modes in a free update. But those games also want you come back again and again so you keep buying their cosmetics for 5, 10, 20€ a piece.

Nintendo only asks for a one time payment and then you get a year or two of content and events at no additional cost. So it's only fair that they come out with a new game every few years.

Re: Mini Review: Horrid Henry's Krazy Karts - One For The Kids

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An interesting thought on the "you can beat it in 90 minutes but it should be OK for kids" line. A friend of mine has an 8 year old and he recently bought an Xbox One and let's her play the occasional kids game on it. But she has beaten every game he gave her so far in a day or two, because all she ever does when having some time alone is watch Let's Plays on YouTube.

At least a racing game can technically be played forever.

Re: Random: Logan Paul Got Scammed To The Tune Of $3.5 Million On Fake Pokémon Trading Cards

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I can totally get behind someone paying a few hundred dollars for something rare they are nostalgic for or have some other emotional connection with. I can even get behind paying a lot more money for some piece of art that has historic significance.

But paying ungodly amounts of money for something, where they literally produced millions of copies and the only value comes from "oh, it is still in the original packaging" or "the box it comes in has a red stripe instead of a black one and was only sold this way for 3 months" and on top of that buying it not to simply own it but in the hope of selling it to another idiot for even more money down the line gets no sympathy from me.

Re: Hands On: Could This $1,300 Switch 'Rival' Hold The Answer To Joy-Con Drift?

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I was intrigued until...
"The design is a lot larger than the small sticks seen on the Switch and the Neo Pro, a probable consequence of the fact that the Hall Effect sensor is a much larger component".

The whole reason for the joy con drift is that the joysticks need to be smaller, so they are forced to use inferior tech. If they could use the regular sticks from the Pro Controller (and pretty much any other controller out there) it wouldn't solve drift issues completely but at least massivly reduce them. A solution that solves the issue 100% in theory but in practice makes the sticks even lager doesn't really help.

Re: Random: Did You Know About This Amazing Water Effect In The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild?

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Breath of the Wild is my favorite open world game because of little details like this. But as a Zelda game it is a bit lacking. The best part of a Zelda game for me are the dungeons and you don't really have those here. The Devine Beasts are fun but way too short and the same is true for the shrines.

But imagine what they can do with BotW 2 now that they have the first game as a baseline and can fully concentrate on the level design!

Re: Nintendo Switch System Update 13.2.0 Is Now Live, Here Are The Full Patch Notes

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@Jeronan Nobody was asking for the expansion pack specifically, but a lot of people were waiting for N64 games.

While I look back fondly on the 3DS/WiiU era with all the cute Mii stuff, Miiverse, themes and customization options, if I actually use those systems now, I sometimes want to throw them out the window. The WiiU takes almost two minutes just to boot up and at least another minute to start most games. I'd rather keep the basic but super fast OS of the Switch over that.

Re: Nintendo Takes More Risks With Prototypes, Says Metroid Prime Developer

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@AstroTheGamosian Ubisoft is often criticized for their general business practices (micro transactions in full price games, confusing amounts of different editions for their games etc.) and for essentially making the same open world game with a different coat of paint over and over again.

They also had their own sexual harassment scandal. It wasn't as bad as ActivisionBlizzard, but several high ranking employees had to leave.

Re: Apple Made More Profit From Games In 2019 Than Nintendo, Sony And Microsoft Combined

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It would have been nice if the article had mentioned how much profit the other companies have made for comparison. Nintendo alone made a profit of $3,5 billion in 2019 according to the numbers I found. And that is profit full stop and not "operative profit" which isn't the same thing.

Of course that is the profit of the whole company, but as the margins on consoles are usually small, I would guess that it mostly comes from game sales.

Re: Video: Nintendo Drops A New Metroid Dread Commercial

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@Specter_of-the_OLED to be honest, I wasn't totally on board with Samus Returns, so I was initially sceptical of them making Dread as well. But it looks like all my issues with the last game have been addressed (mainly the muddy graphics that also made it hard to tell which weapon was required to break a certain block, the overall structure of Metroid 2 and the over reliance on the melee counter).

Re: Hand-Drawn Game Guide Kickstarter Taken Down Following "Legal Trouble"

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@jsty3105 yeah, I was just about to write something similar. There are probably hundreds of companies making officially licensed Nintendo merchandise. And Nintendo doesn't seem to be picky at all. I've seen everything from Kinder eggs to toys in cereal boxes to "buy three products from this candy brand and get a Mario figure for free".

Even the official strategy guides back in the day weren't made by Nintendo themselves.

Re: Random: The Nintendo DS Browser Is On Sale, So Now You Can Use The Internet Wherever You Are

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Reminds me of the Flash Card I had. You couldn't use it to run pirated DS games, but there was some great homebrew. Playing old point and click adventures with the stylus via ScummVM worked really well. You could even run Linux, even though it was command line only and I never figured out what to do with it, besides using a command line player to listen to MP3s.

But what completely blew my mind was the fact that there also was a homebrew video player. You could watch videos (!) in bed!!!

Re: Review: Axiom Verge 2 - A Fantastic Follow-Up To A Classic Metroidvania

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@Einherjar does setting the colors to inverted or greyscale in the Switch system settings help in any way? I just tried it and I felt like the contrast was a bit better in greyscale and it made it look like a pretty rad Gameboy game

@Dualmask I haven't played the frist game in a long time, but I think the graphics in this game are a bit more detailed. Basically the first one reminded me of an NES game and this one looks more like SNES.

Re: The "Foam Pads" In The Zelda Joy-Con Controllers Aren't New

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@Kang81 Do be fair the NES and SNES controllers were effectivly just a buch of buttons (even the d-pad is just four buttons with a fancier piece of plastic on top). I don't think I ever had issues with any worn out buttons regardless of the controller. And I only remember one instance of a faulty d-pad: My New 3DS sometimes doesn't register when I press left on it. For some reason it is super noticeable in the home menu but not really an issue when playing games.

Re: The "Foam Pads" In The Zelda Joy-Con Controllers Aren't New

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My take on this: while it looks like the wear on the graphite pads doesn't cause the drift issues, it will at some point, because that's how normal controllers start to drift.

Increasing the pressure by adding a piece of cardboard might fix a joystick that already has issues but adding it on a factory new one will increase wear which shortens the lifespan of the joystick. The foam pads are probably a compromise that doesn't really work out.

A few made up numbers to make it more clear:
Switch Pro Controller: starts to drift because of wear after 5 years of heavy use.

Joycon: starts to drift because of the discovered issue after 1 year, is fixed and continues to work for another 2 years, then starts to drift because of wear.

Joycon where the fix was applied when it was new: starts to drift because of wear after 2,5 years, effectively cutting lifespan in half compared to the pro controller.

TLDR: the fix is a great way to increase the lifespan of your Joycon if it already has drift but is not an optimal fix for Nintendo.

Re: Nintendo Removing Credit Card Support From 3DS And Wii U eShop In Japan

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Hehe, all the doom and gloom about "killing the eShop". I wouldn't read too much into this. My guess is that the eShop app on the WiiU and 3DS simply don't support necessarily security features. In Europe, you are now required to use two factor authentication, which means, at least in my case with a Mastercard, that a separate website opens where you have to answer a security question and enter a TAN you received via SMS.

In fact even on the Switch (and on Steam) I had issues with this in the last few months and had to use the website to pay.

My guess is that Japan will introduce similar rules in 2022.

Re: Review: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD - A Remaster That Truly Soars

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@BloodNinja You control the sword with the right stick because you can swipe it in several different directions (horizontal, vertical, diagonal and you can also stab instead of swipe) and most enemies will block certain attacks. For example there are piranha plant like enemies that can open their mouth both horizontally and vertically and you have to match your strike accordingly or it won't do damage.

IIRC For Honor (that Ubisoft sword fighting multiplayer game) has similar controls and those work pretty well.

Re: The First Review For The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD Is Now In

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@jrt87 Skyward Sword is my favorite Zelda game, but I can still recognize its many flaws. It is definitely not a 10/10 game. But sometimes reviewers get caught in the general hype. They also often don't fully recognize the more tedious aspects of a game because they have to rush through it in a few days to finish the review in time.

My goto example for this is Bioshock Infinite, which had a great introduction, but after that was just terribly disappointing for me. But it got 10/10s everywhere. Only some time after its release more and more articles were showing up that discussed its flaws and shortcomings.

Re: The First Review For The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD Is Now In

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@Clyde_Radcliffe my hope is that they had so much work with creating the engine with all its interconnected systems and the big open world that they simply ran out of time and couldn't make proper dungeons for BotW. So with the sequel they now can focus fully on level design and create a big open world And big, complex dungeons, so we get the best of both worlds.

Re: Someone Thinks They've Resolved Nintendo's Joy-Con Drift Problem With An Incredibly Simple Fix

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@PoundShopOrwell Luckily Nintendo is pretty lenient with this kind of stuff. I bricked my 3DS when I tried to install custom firmware and even included a note saying "Sorry, I tinkered with my console and it doesn't start anymore, what would it cost to repair it?" and they fixed it for free.

In another thread someone said they tried to fix their drifting Joycon and failed. They didn't even put it back together and instead just send all the parts to Nintendo and still got a new one for free.

Re: Nintendo FAQ Confirms That Switch OLED Joy-Cons Are The Same As Existing Controllers

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Nintendo could of course handle the dirft issue better, but for fixing the root cause I think Nintendo's supplier simply can't figure out a solution. All "normal" joysticks in pretty much every controller out there use the exact same mechanism just with different plastic caps on top so to me that looks like there aren't many different companies that have the know-how to make something like this. Maybe it is even just one company that supplies everybody. That means Nintendo can't go to a different supplier to try to fix the issue, eather.

So they are pretty much f*cked. The only thing they could do is make bigger "Joy Con Pro" that use regular sticks.

EDIT: to clarify: I meant that all controllers use the same mechanism, except the Joy Con, but that tells me that the same company probably also makes the mechanism used in the Joy Con because there simply aren't many companies that make parts like this.

Re: Random: Internet Goes Wild Over One Incredibly Small Detail In Metroid Dread

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@DrJoson I'm not @moodycat but I also didn't really like Samus Returns. I didn't hate it or think they "ruined" the game, but it just never "clicked" with me and I didn't finish it.

I had two major issues with it. First, the graphics were kind of dull and uninspired and the little icons that tell you which weapon you need to destroy a block were hard to see and unintuitive. Second, it relied too much on the melee counter attack, which made the gameplay a bit repetitive.

From what I've seen from Dread they fixed both of these issues so I'm still exited for it.

Re: Metroid Games You Need To Play Before Metroid Dread

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@LinktotheFuture Maybe I'm remembering it wrong but I think wall jumping was completely optional in Super Metroid. You need it to get some hard to reach items, but it's not needed to finish the game. I think once you are in the room with the little creatures teaching you how to do it you are stuck, but you could just go back to the last save room.

Re: The E3 2021 Awards Winners Are In, But Nintendo Lost Out

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Microsoft had the best presentation in my opinion. Nintendo had a lot of really cool games, but the presentation itself was kind of anti climactic. Even the Metroid 5 reveal left me cold at first, but now that I have watched the trailer a few times I'm hyped.

As for the best game, both presentations had a lot of good stuff, but nothing stood out, except for Metroid and Zelda. As the Zelda trailer was pretty short and we still don't have a concrete release date, I'd go with Metroid 5.

Re: Metroid 5 Is Coming To Switch As Metroid Dread, And It's 2D

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It's done by Mercury Stream, right? I didn't love Samus Returns, so I'm not 100% on board, yet. But it looks a lot better than that game already.

Oh and when I read "There are probably people reading this right now that came out after the last Metroid..." I knew this was a @KateGray article