gcunit

It sure does look purdy. I'm down.

Blows that someone's bothered to make sure the voicework and music is good but the game let's it all down.

Maybe it's all a front and we're going to find out in 20 years that Layton is at the heart of a trafficking ring spanning time and space.

@Jiggies A paradox if ever there was one 😄

For your sake I'll look forward to Layton taking on some good old fashioned womanising in a game soon.

At first I was like, "Dude needs to pedal harder if he expects me to play that game, I ain't rollin' round at those speeds". But then...

I have some reservations about how well this executes what it's going for, but I feel the effort and vibe is worthy of my support.

@dartmonkey Does the publisher provide a pre-written walk-through, or do you guys DIY it? I've not looked at any NL walk-throughs, but they must take a chunk of time to knock out.

Played 45 minutes unpatched. If anyone has problems with fps so far then I pity you.

Game starts really nicely. The tutorial aspects are light-touch and you can get active from the get-go.

@Rambler @Swoose I'd be interested to find out which game took the most man hours to develop.

@batmanbud2 Good luck, I've got my fingers crossed for you!

Aww man, I won't be getting the game today, but look what has just arrived, to rub my face in it:

Metro.co.uk's review suggests the fps issues are not as significant as in the Link's Awakening remake, in case anyone is concerned.

Update 11am 26/09/24:

Wahoo!

Just dipped in and out of this review as I don't want the details right now, but it sounds great.

Was hoping to get my copy a day early, but I took the cheaper route and will have to wait 'til tomorrow.

Edit: Doh! Totally thought it was Thursday already, but it's still Wednesday, so really had no cause to expect delivery today. So fingers crossed for tomorrow, cos it's been dispatched!

This comments section is bound to see an onslaught of "We needs Switch 2 already!", but just remember that it's the devs who've chosen to accept any minor fps issues - they could have programed the game to run more smoothly, but they've not, and if they're happy with it, I suspect I will be too. And it's not like it won't get a performance boost on Switch Successor, is it Nintendo?

@MSaturn I think we need to amend that saying to "A delayed game is... probably a Level-5 game".

Why don't they just, like, make one game at a time? This five-at-once approach is kinda whack.

So no Inazuma Eleven in like... a gajillion years, and then two in the space of about a year? Level-5 be smokin' somethin' fwuiteee...

Nevertheless, looking forward to it. Victory Road was a tasty teaser to a hopefully great game.

Deca-scuse me?!

That's my first Switch 2026 pencilled-in game I think.

A specific date wasn't given

What's that ringing sound I can hear?

Fingers crossed everyone!

Seriously, where are all these games coming from? What do these people want from me? There's only so much one can give. Where do I buy?

@Sonicka Word-of-mouth from players has been much more variable. I've seen some who loved it, but you can take shardcart's comment above as an example of how it went down with others. I've picked up on quite a lot of that kind of player feedback. I've not written it off and am still open to getting it some day, but in the meantime I listen out to what others made of it. What specifically about it delivered for you?

Sea of Stars has had a really mixed reception. I played a bit of the demo and wasn't sold. The screenshots for this game look good, but not getting too excited for now.

@WhiteTrashGuy This could be an accessory for the Switch Successor Lite. Surely, if this is destined for the next console, the Switch Successor dock will have such tech built in, and this thing is the equivalent of the og 3DS amiibo sensor.

Darn it, there goes my kid's Christmas present.

Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition - Nintendo Switch

It's been 23 years since I first played GTA3. It blew me away then and it still blows me away now in terms of how good it is as a 2001 game. The first 10 hours are just endless fun and it's still so playable (albeit in its Remastered form) today.

As I go further into the game and the playable area of Liberty City expands, I am sorely reminded of how the game starts to drag, missions get longer but rarely any more sophisticated, and the lack of mid-mission check points leaves me cursing the time I'm spending on in-mission driving. But that doesn't mean I no longer think it's brilliant. Regardless of how much time I spend reattempting missions, the way those cop cars fling themselves into every nook and cranny never seems to get less hilarious.

It has been the only thing I've played this last week, so I am starting to want a break from it, but I cannot immediately think of what I should fall back on to balance the insane fun I've been having. Playing it on Switch is an absolute dream.

Peace, love, pixels and kamikaze cop cars to you all!

Totally 'whaaaaat'ed when I saw my post got removed. Anyone who interpreted it as anti-animator or anti-artist misread it. My point was, there's a lot of almost-great looking games out there that are let down by overly-simplistic animation, probably because they're indie-developed and there wasn't the budget to produce the painstaking work required to make the difference.

While I'm fairly naive about AI, I'd have thought it could really help animators. I'd reckon it could be used as a cheap replacement for motion capture work: get some footage of the desired movements, then get the AI to apply those movements to the character model being animated.

Surely modern animators use tweening at times. What's the difference between that and using AI? @Ramen756 as you say, get AI to put down the bulk of what's needed, but then tweak it manually if desired. And why would you map everything to the same model? Obviously that's going to produce boring results.

@Snatcher I enjoy drawing too and I get what you're saying. But if you are a small indie developer trying to animate your low budget game's characters, you've not got the time to work through those kinds of issues, so you'd have to make compromises. I think AI could help those creators bridge the gap to bigger budget animation. Not too dissimilar to how Switch Successor will supposedly use DLSS to bridge the gap to more powerful hardware.

@Arkay @MH4 So if you're an animator, working on a game with a deadline and teeny budget, you just work stupid hours to produce animation because you love doing it? There's no part of you that thinks, 'Hey, if I could find a way to speed up this part of the process, it would free up more resource so I can add these extra touches I've not had the resource to contemplate before'?

Sound design is important to me, so it's a bummer that this seems to be a bit undercooked. Does "You're The Best" by Joe Esposito get used at all? If it does then I can pretty much forgive anything else, but if it doesn't then this will probably get filed under 'Wait for £2 on eshop'. Would be a pity, cos it looks nice, and I like the source material.

The longer this promotion goes on, the more I question the decision to have that image of Zelda stretching with her staff/wandy thing plastered over everything. I just don't find it aesthetically pleasing. All the fantastic art that exists within the Zelda development, and they think that image is doing it all justice? It's worse than the Link looking up over his shoulder that we got in Europe for Breath of the Wild.

Totally implausible. Preposterous.

Oh wait, hang on...

'Reduced lad in Battle Mode'

Don't think I've tried Battle Mode yet. So how big was this lad before, and how big is he now? How did he feel about his reduction? Is this a nerfing?

Anywho, I appreciate news of these updates, thanks, as I don't tend to use Twitter any more. I love SMB and was thoroughly enjoying my time with Banana Rumble until a tonne of other games sidetracked me. I'll have to find time this week to get back at it and check out how the Reduced lad performs.

I've got the Vita version. Be interesting to see how this remaster gets on. I could be persuaded.

I like the look of that.

Did you hear that guys!?!

PlatformS!

Yesssssss!

The Nintendo Three Pillars live on! The Quality of Life device is finally coming! Praise Iwata!

On balance, compelled to pick a poll option, I had to go for regular Direct. I just take too much enjoyment from seeing people squirming for a Switch Successor reveal.

That, and I'm waiting on some Metroid Prime and Zelda remasters. And yes, of course, a Kirby game is obligatory.

Soundtrack is so important for a 2D platformer.

Talking

Does anyone know how to get the trousers to fall down in IK+ without a keyboard?

I'd read an article earlier in the day reporting a 'leaker' suggesting the top price was going to be £589, which was already firmly in my 'nope' range. But £699?

Has Putin got his claws in Sony now as well?

@Glasso Oh boy, I was skimming this review, my main takeaway being, "This review mentions hacking; I'm so done with hacking requirements in games" and now you're telling me it's repetitive too. That could be a spanner in the works.

@World I've admittedly not seen much of the 8-bit graphics, but the fact the HD graphics bear a strong resemblance to the visuals in the cartoon is quite a draw for me.

OMG!

They totally groomed Nintendo.

I feel violated.

As an example for the people that maybe don't relate to those of us who mostly float from one game to another at whim (rather than playing one game solidly until finished with it), the other day I picked up on some references to Pinball FX in the 'Latest purchase' thread. This led me to installing Pinball FX, which I've barely played. This led me to realising that I'd bought the Crypt of the NecroDancer pinball DLC, which has inevitably led to me getting back into... Crypt of the NecroDancer, which is a game I really like but have never got very far with. So I'm on a CotND kick today.

Beyond that, a few physical purchases have been delivered this week, so I'm going to break a few of the seals, particularly on the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, and Emio: The Smiling Man, which I'd like to maintain some momentum with.

What else? Only the Byte Gods can know, but its gonna be fun.

Peace, love & pixels to all 😘

Switch hardware sales... it's so nice to see.

Congrats to Xbox on outselling the PS4.

@Serpenterror I can agree with you, but I'm also wondering, presumably the game will get a Switch Successor release at some point (maybe a definitive edition... with co-op...?), so perhaps they never expected it to perform too well initially, but might market a definitive edition more heavily.

Gimme gimme. I'm a sucker for Mario Kart toys. I've got so many MK Hot Wheels. MK4Life.

With PlayStation and Xbox kinda struggling with PR etc a bit recently, it would be great if Nintendo capitalised on their positive position by going all out with making the Switch successor as consumer-friendly as possible rather than nickel and diming us. Give us BC, give us performance boosts for existing Switch titles, win.

Dear SNK, please stop shoving NEO Turf Masters down my throat.

These more addictive games tend to turn me off. The loop is too overt, too concentrated. If I can taste the addictiveness, I'm old enough and boring enough to steer clear.

But who am I kidding? It's set in feudal Japan, which equals insta-buy for those wannabe Samurai/couch-surfers like me.

Did I hear this is getting a physical release further down the line?

Never played but it's been hyped enough by general word-of-mouth and Mitch's beautiful review to convince me it's worth getting. Though, I'm the kinda loser that let's the fact the game has score chaining put me off a bit. That feeling that the game knows there are people out there better at it than me... unless of course it turns out I'm an absolute demon at this game, in which case I'll be in y'all faces with my scores before you know it.

With the lull in Pokemon releases, this summer would have been the next perfect time to get Yo-kai Watch 4 onto western Switches. Seems crazy that they have a solid game just waiting for localisation all this time. Could have sold decent numbers over the life of the Switch if they hadn't shelved it.

Fresh off getting my physical collection reasonably accurately catalogued last week, I'm working on my digital collection this morning. It's a big job. I'm finding games that I would swear I've never even heard of e.g. Geki Yabber Runner Anniversary Edition - wtf? Gonna have to play that now just to see wtf it is like.

Who knows what else this task is going to throw up and force me to play. But I've also been adding to the collection this morning. Gotta give Serious Sam Collection a spin, surely. Dis gon be a long weekend...

Peace, love & pixels to all.

Valfaris is the sort of game that my Switch-collecting self laps up when it hits the £15-20 mark for a physical. Seeing how short this sequel is, here's hoping this one doesn't take too long to be similarly available. Sounds great.