larryisaman

@OpheliaDynamight I’m also not worrying about being able to play my games in the distant future, with you on that. In the here and now though the only benefit of digital is convenience- I’d much rather own even a game key card over a download because above everything else it still has monetary value. It’s going to absolutely suck when even that option is gone and we’re all beholden to the prices that publishers set on digital storefronts because that’s our only choice.

I’m honestly shocked that this game doesn’t have a ton of DLC already. I’m sure it’ll happen but I was anticipating a steady stream of content pretty early on that wouldn’t slow down until later in the Switch 2’s life.

@Suketoudara It was a cartridge at launch in UK, I got it. Later prints were just download codes though

Even before all these massive spikes in tech prices I would have shuddered to think of how much a handheld version of a next gen Playstation would cost.

Also is that even anything people want from a Playstation? If I were buying the home version I’d be annoyed that games wouldn’t be taking full advantage of the hardware because devs need to ensure they run well on the handheld version. You could level that argument with the Switch but that’s the entire point of that platform- Sony doing it with two SKUs would be different.

It being around £40 at many places will have done wonders for it I’m sure.

On that note it’s sad that £40 is now considered a budget price…I remember in the Wii days when £40 was as expensive as games would get and £20 games were released regularly (and from Nintendo too).

Requiem. Pragmata is very close though.

Codes in a box should simply not be allowed at all purely for the waste of plastic that they are- and I mean legally. They should be sold on a card or sell them directly online; this kind of thing is a joke.

@UltimateOtaku91 This is why I’ve come around to them. You know for a fact if the only options were code in a box or pay for a proper cartridge third parties would opt for a code 9 times out of 10. Or they’d just do as they’ve been doing with Switch games and go for the cheapest cartridge available, have a portion of the game on it and then require a download for the rest. Not much different to GKCs when it comes down to it. At least you’re still getting something you can sell or lend for the foreseeable future with a key card.

@GoldenSunRM They are a strange breed.

Actually can’t believe there hasn’t been a single Tekken game yet on either Switch until now

What a bizarre way of dropping this especially with no upgrade path.

On that note what the hell is up with the lack of cohesion in third party Switch 2 releases? No upgrade path for this but they did one for Racing Crossworlds? Key Card for this but Racing is a proper cartridge? Why!

Frontiers was just a weird game. I got every achievement for it on Steam so it was compelling enough but I also just remember little about it. Some good ideas but it just sort of felt cobbled together especially with the webs of rails just floating around. Never felt like playing it again, not even to try the DLC.

I’d hoped Penny’s Big Breakaway would be the 3D Sonic I’d been wanting for ages and while it got that 90’s weirdness down in its art I never really gelled with the gameplay. Sad that SEGA never followed up with a Mania 2 when that first game was far and away the best Sonic game in decades.

@progx I don’t know, I think Prime 5 could still be on the cards. Nintendo put a lot of money and time into putting together a team at Retro that could actually make a new Prime game. I imagine they would want to give it another go before pivoting entirely now they have the experience and aren’t saddled with a concept that wasn’t Retro’s to begin with. Prime 4’s failures are a clear reflection of the troubles it went through to get made and I have to imagine Nintendo are aware of that. Dread proved there’s a decent audience for Metroid, it’s just Prime 4 didn’t hit the mark. A game that has Retro’s hand in it from the beginning has the potential to reach the esteem of the rest of the franchise and thus potentially able to sell a lot more.

At any rate, Metroid never does particularly well anyway but Nintendo keeps making them because of their acclaim and to bolster their image as a company that provides experiences for all kinds of people (as per Bryan Walker’s comments in an interview). Prime 4 obviously ballooned way past whatever cost Nintendo initially envisioned but that’s not a fault of the game or franchise but the general management of the title. Prime 5 would hopefully sidestep all of that.

@Axecon I don’t really know that there was any saving Prime 4 even with better marketing. I think the previews really did a number on it and the hyperbole from Metroid fans calling it a disaster won’t have helped either. Plus, I don’t think calling it Prime 4 was a good call especially without the rest of the trilogy being readily available- I have no doubt that many people will have skipped it because they never played the rest of the trilogy despite it not being important to the story of 4 at all. They should have just called it Prime Beyond and had that be the subtitle for the new series.

Either way that game deserved better on all fronts. Far from perfect but still a good game overall.

@BentIeyma I honestly think there is a decent chance GTA VI could happen on Switch 2. It’d be a seriously pared back version but if they’re making it for Series S then it wouldn’t be impossible. I could even see a situation where Nintendo themselves foot the bill for the port and that GTA VI was partly the reason for them acquiring Shiver. Then again I don’t know if Rockstar would let an external studio work on it with how tight they are on security around their games but still, I think there’s a chance either way.

While I’ve come around to game key cards in general it is becoming frustrating to see bigger publishers continue to use them for absolutely everything when even smaller indie games are getting proper cartridges and without huge markups to boot. I’m guessing smaller sizes have been introduced so it’s annoying to see games like this be on one.

@ParasolStars It’s seriously been fascinating to watch Microsoft handle Xbox over the years. Just a company that has so much money they can afford to throw crap at the wall endlessly to see what sticks. Nothing really ever does but they still keep doing it.

Honestly they completely screwed it once they messed up the Xbone reveal. Not something you can easily come back from at such a pivotal generation where digital games really took off. Maybe they could have had a chance to bounce back if they came up with a bounty of exclusives that people would actually buy a console for but here we are.

Please can we just stop saying “sunset” when it comes to closing studios. Call it what it is instead of playing along with the industry’s attempts at making closures sound less insidious than they are.

@beartown General consensus has been that the eShop was so slow because it was using what little memory was left available after games/OS were in use, not because the system was never capable doing it quicker. Never doubted it could do it but seemed a conscious effort to focus on getting the most out of the system in other places. Just baffling that after all this time and after the successor has launched Nintendo have gone in to optimize it instead of when it was in its prime. Better late than never but still.

@cedarhyped 10 points for you 🎉🎉

@MarioBrickLayer Aspyr have been good about releasing things physically, I think most of what they put out on Switch got a physical release in one way or another (some through Limited Run and the rest by themselves).

Whether it’s a key card is another thing but I’d bet that’s what they end up going especially if it’s the trilogy

@spiderman0616 Because I posted a quick comment on a Nintendo site? OK. All the best mate 🤝

@spiderman0616 Right but it’s been busted for almost a decade.

So they could have fixed it all this time and chose not to? Brilliant

While it’s great that both available parts of FF7 launched so close together I do wonder if that’s had a negative effect on Rebirth’s sales. I never stuck through with Remake as it just wasn’t really my thing but I know if I had I would have waited a while to play the sequel; they’re pretty lengthy games and I would have needed a decent break of more than a few months in between them. I wonder if there are many people who feel the same, in which case it’ll hopefully have a long tail as people make their way to it.

@Dogorilla “Between this and Star Fox, Nintendo's focus on remakes (of remakes, since both have 3DS versions as well) so early into the Switch 2 generation doesn't do a great job of making the console stand out as a destination for exciting new exclusives in my opinion“

I agree but hopefully this is a case of having 2 new teams (assuming this is a new team and not internal/Grezzo) cutting their teeth on a franchise with a remake to then be given the keys to completely new entries. Especially in Zelda’s case it’d be great to have 3 teams on the go with how long the mainline games take to make nowadays- one making the big new proper open world game, one top down (Grezzo) and another making more traditional 3D games like OoT and Twilight Princess.

MK World is the game to get day one. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a travesty of a Mario Kart game given the way some people go on about it but it is excellent. Genuinely shocked that they haven’t updated it with new tracks yet though, I thought a regular roll out of new content would have started ages ago.

@Anguspuss Oftentimes people who are against generative AI aren’t inherently opposed to all uses of AI. Upscaling isn’t really a problematic use of the tech (Switch 2 uses AI itself to reach higher resolutions) but using it to actually generate art has far more negative implications.

@ottoecamn Most (all?) of the old staffers who are commenting on these designs no longer work for Nintendo so there’s no reason for them to do damage control on their behalf. No damage control to do anyway, majority of people seem to like the new looks or are at least fine with them.

@arekdougy Can’t even imagine 4 being added since they’re selling the HD version on the eShop. Plus they’re more than likely going to bring the 4 remake over at some point so they’d rather people just buy and play that

@Aneira I can’t remember where I heard this but somebody asked that and Capcom said they dropped “Code” to keep it in line with the 1 word subtitle trend for the mainline games (Village, Requiem, Nemesis etc.). Odd change but it is what it is.

I’m surprised how many people thought that Direct was a poor showing. I thought it was great. The leaks totally sucked the life out of the OoT announcement though, easy to beg for more since we were sure it was coming anyway but that teaser would have been major if it hadn’t leaked beforehand.

Though why they didn’t save Starfox for the Direct I don’t know. Announcement, demo drop and a release within a few weeks would have been incredible.

@TheExile285 Yeah sometimes it’s a much better look for Nintendo when the logo is just there at the reveal. Was awesome to see the Code Veronica remake confirmed at the same time as everything else instead of keeping fans guessing, plus it makes it clear that publishers are treating the console seriously and not as an afterthought.

Then again I can see why Nintendo like having fans asking “will they won’t they” with some announcements, gives them a second wind of hype when they finally confirm a game is making its way over. There’ll probably be people watching just to see if they announce them which exposes them to the rest of their reveals.

They did this exact thing with 3/4/5. Announced them coming to Xbox in their showcase and then Nintendo showed them in their Direct some time after. I won’t be surprised at all to see them show up tomorrow.

@HubbaHunt Nintendo saving them to announce in a Direct surely. They did the same with P3P/4/5 where it was baffling to see them coming to Xbox only for them to show up in a Direct a few days later

Zero real complaints. It’s exactly what I wanted and I’ve been more than happy with the game lineup so far, both first and third party.

If I have one issue it’s purely that the UI is nigh on identical to the original Switch. Not a big problem at all but was hoping they’d have done more to make the jump to a new console seem more substantial. Also frustrating how slow they’ve been to update the GameCube app but other than that I love the console.

@GrailUK Do you think difficulty settings should exist in any game?

@AlanShore “Imagine if every movie or every album tried to appeal to everyone too“

We’re not talking about appeal, we’re talking about accessibility. There’s no inherent skill requirement for listening to an album or watching a film. There is for video games. An easy mode for one person might still offer the same amount of challenge as a normal or hard mode does for somebody else. That’s why difficulty options exist in the first place, to scale the challenge for all types of people.

At any rate, the intended experience is still there for those that want it regardless of any options available. Persona 5 has an intended experience with its combat. Great- I don’t like it. I love the story and world and characters though and that’s what I got out of it. Thankfully there was a casual mode that let me enjoy the things I actually wanted to invest my time into. Should I have been excluded from the joy I got from that game just because I didn’t like the combat? Did it hurt anybody else’s experience because I chose not to put my time into an aspect of a game I didn’t enjoy? I don’t think it did.

@AussieMcBucket I gave it a fair shake on Xbox and had a miserable time. Was really loving the world and wanted to explore everything but getting killed every few minutes just sucked. I don’t have the time nowadays to be hitting my head against a wall just to make a bit of progress here and there.

For the record I’m not opposed to hard games- I beat both Hollow Knight and Silksong but I have a much better aptitude for 2D games than 3D ones. Combat in Elden Ring just didn’t engage me enough to want to get better at it; wish there was a difficulty setting because there’s so much of it I wanted to experience but the combat just got in the way. For many people it’s all about the combat but not for me.

@BaldB3lper78 I agree completely and I don’t care what elitists say. Nothing stops people who want to experience a game as intended from doing so when there are options to decrease difficulty. It’s frankly ignorant to the fact that not everybody is the same and for some people just getting through a game on an easier difficulty setting is a challenge in and of itself. Honestly it sucks that people who would otherwise find a lot to enjoy in games like Silksong or Elden Ring won’t get to experience them because the difficulty is such a barrier.

I will never stop singing Yacht Club’s praises after the slew of difficulty options they included in Mina the Hollower. Finally a developer who made a soulslike that recognizes the importance of accessibility options and isn’t too proud or egotistical to force a punishing difficulty on every player (I imagine they aren’t the first to do so but as far as high profile ones I’m struggling to think of anything else outside of the Star Wars Jedi games).

I always loved the Europe one for the weirdness of a fully yellow cover that extended to the banner. If you’re going to make a boxart that doesn’t follow the regular conventions then WarioWare is the game for it I guess

Still chipping away at Pragmata. It’s a surprisingly good game to play in short bursts- I typically play until I get to the next tram stop, put it down and come back later.

Also picked up Mina the Hollower. Really cool so far and I especially love that it’s filled with options to tweak the difficulty, though I’m going to do my best to get through it as intended before I mess with any of them. I’ve always hated how developers of souls like games often treat the intended difficulty like it’s sacred so it’s great to see Yacht Club give options in their game.

@daftmagician Rumour is a Legends remake (not a remaster) is getting announced alongside this 🤷‍♂️

I just don’t think the disposable nature of mobile games does Nintendo any favours when it comes to games like this. I’m happy to pay £20+ for a WarioWare game on a console but balk at the idea of paying anything more than £5 for an iPhone game which is all I’d be willing to pay for this in its entirety. I know that’s a warped way of looking at things but that’s how years of free apps and games that cost less than a quid have shaped the way I value games on phones, even if the quality is there.

@BaldB3lper78 They said this at the time:

"Microsoft and Nintendo have now negotiated and signed a binding 10-year legal agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo players - the same day as Xbox, with full features and content parity - so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty."

That’s always sounded like the plan was to bring the new games over day and date. And really that makes sense- if you were Nintendo why would you roll over and say we’ll accept just Warzone or mobile or whatever? They’d surely want the proper games to be promised or decline the contract because it doesn’t benefit them to have such a massive franchise potentially locked to one platform.

@BaldB3lper78 I’m not sure they’d have got away with just putting mobile on Switch 2, they’d be in trouble if so. IIRC Microsoft committed to bringing the proper games over for at least 10 years on Nintendo platforms to help make their acquisition of Activision less troublesome.

@Sylamp Probably the most inaccurate use of the word “vague” of all time. It literally is WarioWare without Wario.

Actually baffled as to why they didn’t just make it a WarioWare game, could have brought new fans in who might then buy the console games in the future.

@IronMan30 There’s no chance this isn’t coming to Switch 2. I’d bet it’ll be on PC and Xbox on day one too.

Square Enix can do one if there’s no upgrade path. I’d even be willing to pay a little more (£10/£15) for it considering the new content but whatever.

Shame Switch 2 isn’t getting it day one but hopefully that means it gets a solid port when it’s ready.

That said I hope we start to see these delays/cancellations of Switch 2 versions die off as developers factor in the console from day one. I can understand games like this getting pushed back since they probably didn’t get dev kits until they were already deep into development but it’s not a trend I want to see continue for long.

@outsider83 It’s just a new company puppeteering the corpse of Acclaim. I don’t think anyone involved ever had anything to do with original publisher.

But hey, that’s fine. It looks like they’re putting out some cool games and if the name helps to bring some attention to them then fair play.