countzero

I only played the one included with Nintendo Switch Online, but I didn't really like it. The controls were weird (why do I have to use up+Y for the special attack, when the game doesn't use all the buttons on the controller?) and levels felt empty and had a confusing layout. I liked the intro and animation of the main character but the gameplay was just kind of boring.

@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.

@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.

I need to finish Fatal Frame, Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE and Xenoblade Cronicles X at some point. Everything about the WiiU was so nice and pleasant, from the main menu to additional features like the web browser to Miiverse. If only the system itself wasn't so damn slow

If you take age into account, which I always try to do with games and movies, Super Metroid is the best game IMHO. But Fusion is my favorite. It loses a few points for being more linear but more than makes up for it with its story and atmosphere.

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.

@Bearzilla823 we, there is only one problem. Bob Hoskins died seven years ago.

I can't really picture Chris Pratt as Mario, but he has experience as a voice actor at least. I liked him in the Lego Movie.

But can the music box run backwards so I can listen to Zelda's Lullaby as well?

@ValZ @Ryu_Niiyama no need for importers or proxy services. I just ordered the Breath of the Wild soundtrack from amazon.co.jp a few months ago and they were shipping worldwide. Not sure if they will offer the Limited Edition.

@arenred The game rip was awesome. I think it was 20 hours long!

@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).

@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.

@Tacolatte
I think it was this one:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/datel-fun-n-games-cartridge-for-nintendo-ds/8241146.p?skuId=8241146&intl=nosplash

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!!!

@JackDeschain I can live without Metroid 2 (A Samus Returns port would be nice I guess). But a Fusion/Zero Mission double pack would be an instant buy for me!

@IronMan30 that are probably the same people that predicted the Switch wouldn't sell because Nintendo "missed the holiday sales".

@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.

@Casco I noticed the same with motion controls. Even though they are better than the controls on the Wii I still find it a bit hard to deliberately strike in a certain direction. Flailing around wildly on the other hand seems to work fine for most enemies.

In German her name is spelled "Phai" which is always pronounced like figh.

@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.

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.

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.

@BloodNinja I think Zelda looks fine and most of the other characters are so cartoonish and distorted that it works as well. But Link does look very strange and a bit off putting.

It's so weird to me that some complain that this is an unnecessary sequel after 5 years, when a lot of people seem to be more than happy to buy a new Battlefield or COD or Assassin's Creed at least every other year, if not more often.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@hbkay I think there are so many great new games you could play that it doesn't really make sense to buy an old game you have already finished unless you are 100% sure you want to play it again.

@TheFrenchiestFry that it snaps off easily is the only good thing about the old kickstand. It is designed to snap off so if it happens you can simply pop it back in, which makes it practically impossible to break it.

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.

@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.

@anoyonmus if you have Nintendo Switch Online you could play A Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo app. It's obviously a bit different than a modern 3D Zelda game but in terms of general structure, story etc. it's pretty similar and it is still considered one of the best games in the series.

@Karst If I remember correctly, the notification does not show up every time, just the first time you pick up an item in the current session. So if you want less notifications just finish the game in one sitting 😜

@Gamer_Griff the most recent Shantae games still have 2D sprites for characters and enemies, but use 3D graphics for the environments.

@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.

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.

Do we really have to go over this every time? How many times has Nintendo said they have "nothing to announce" and then revealed the exact thing they were asked about a few weeks or even days later?

I love how everybody is like "this is too similar to BotW/looks like DLC" judging from, at most, 30 seconds of gameplay. And despite the fact that in those 30 seconds they showed 3 or 4 abilities that weren't in the first game.

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

I was very confused when I saw this on Twitter. I have never heard of this game before, I only know the two 3D action games from way back. I have actually bought those on GOG a few years ago, still fun to play!

@elias84631 I don't think you can read into Apple Arcade's success from this. It just looks like most Apple Arcade exclusives are actually just timed exclusives and that time is now running out of a lot of games.

I don't know how many times I have played through Sayonara Wild Hearts on Switch, such an awesome game. And the fact that you can finish it in a bit over an hour is actually a plus for me. And if you want to 100% it you can play it A LOT longer

If we get more games like that and for a reasonable price I'm all for it.

I play The Sims a lot (currently 4, but its been the same for me for all games starting with the first one). Trying mods and making my own custom content, even though I suck at it
But mostly I play it as a comfort game, because it can be very relaxing and I don't have to think too hard while playing. If I want a challenge I can also make my own rules on how to play.

I also replay a few nostalgic games from my childhood at least once a year, mainly old LucasArts adventures and Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus. Plus some more modern games like Limbo and Inside. But for most other games if I think "That game was fun. I should play it again" I play it for maybe an hour and then put it away again.

I can't agree with the headline. This doesn't confirm anything. It's just Nintendo's typical "We have no additional information at the moment" response.

@Ralizah I think judging adventure games purely by play time is hard. Sometimes you get stuck on a puzzle for half an hour. Or you stop playing but still think about the game and have a "eureka moment" some time later.

On the other hand if you know what you have to do, because you have beaten it once already or because you use a guide, you can beat pretty much any adventure game from that era in 3-4 hours.

There have been cross overs with third party games in the past (e.g. Starlink, Skylanders) but they have been exclusive to Nintendo consoles even if the game itself was not. I can't really see Epic agreeing to that for Fortnite so I'm a bit sceptical that this will actually happen.

Regarding innovation I liked what the Hatsune Miku Picross game was doing, even if the execution was a bit lacking. For example if you finish a row or column it automatically fills in the missing Xs. The downside is that you can't turn off that the game checks if the squares you placed are correct so one misplaced square means you have to restart entire puzzle if you want a three star rating.

Similarly, unlocking new songs with the stars you earn from puzzles was cool, but the fact that you had to go to the settings menu to actually change the background music was annoying.

@earthinheritor "there would be no video game market now" That's a bit much. The video game crash mostly happened in the US, Europe was a lot more focused on games for home computers at the time and in Japan companies like Sega would still have tried to find a way to sell their arcade games to people for playing at home. But the video game market would probably look a lot different without Nintendo.

I'm happy to hear that they are satisfied with the game. It's my favorite so far this year. It just refreshing to have a relatively big budget game that is colorful and funny instead of the usual dark and edgy.

@dux the first DLC was a bit lacking. The gameplay was fine but the story and humor weren't as good as the main game. I didn't even know that the second DLC was already out. It's completely separate like the first one, right?

@Classic603 I think the main issue is how I played it. I first played the Wii version on the WiiU and then a few months later Twilight Princess HD came out and I played it again. I finished it twice in one year, which means it can't be that bad, but I definitely had less fun the second time.

@screechums I don't agree that the motion controls added nothing to the game. I think the idea of having different ways of attacking with the sword was great, only the execution wasn't great. I'm curious about how the non motion controls will work in the remaster and if the motion controls are any better with a Joy Con.

Edit: PS: Being the "worst" 3D Zelda is still better than most games

@Controller-Drift I disagree. Skyward Sword has the best soundtrack (first time a full orchestra was used and not as minimalistic as Breath of the Wild), some of the best characters and great dungeons. My least favorite 3D Zelda is Twilight Princess. It looks drab and gray most of the time and gets a bit tedious after a while. The only reason I finished it was Midna. Also Zelda has practically nothing to do in the story. In Skyward Sword on this other hand she is an active part of the narrative.

Gameplay wise I have only two complaints.
1. There is way to much hand holding
2. The motion controls. While I had no huge issues with them, they weren't ideal and I can totally understand if someone is turned off the game by them.