ramu-chan

"one of the most stylish retro games". This game came out last year. That does not make it retro in any possible sense of the term. You could call it "retro inspired" because it runs at a low resolution, but that's it.

@Itachi2099 Well okay, fine. That's not remotely true but honesty I can't be arsed to argue with you.

@PoeTheLizard Perhaps so. But it's still pretty poor that the Switch version isn't even 720p in portable mode given that this is at its core PS3 game.

@Itachi2099 Goodness looks like I touched a nerve. P5 is 4K/60 on the Series X and PS5. If you're happy playing at 810p/30 then great for you. And it's even lower resolution in handheld mode.

Personally I've been playing it on PC where is it's 4K/120 supersampled from 8K.

@Itachi2099

It's on GamePass so if they're counting gamepass players as "sales" then Xbox/PC will be miles ahead. You can't argue with free.

Plus the Switch port is pretty awful by all accounts. Low frame rate, low resolution, and fuzzy textures. It's a poor way to play the game.

Not including the Master System Sonic is a bizarre choice, as that's pretty much its own unique game and a rather good one too.

And cutting some of the most iconic Sonic 3 music tracks defies belief. Pure stupidity.

It's a good effort visually, but the game itself is only so-so to play. The taunt is open to abuse and essentially makes the game absurdly easy (and even without taunt spamming it's still a walkover), the cool down period on some moves is long enough to make them useless, and it doesn't really flow as well the Konami originals did.

Then there's that soundtrack. What a missed opportunity. At best forgettable and at worst it's rap music. It's awful.

That sounds beyond awful. The music in the Konami Turtles games is iconic. It's catchy, clean, instantly likeable. This new track is truly terrible.

This is on Game Pass if anyone wants to try it for free. I did and deleted it after about 15 minutes.

I never really got the love for Sonic 3. Visually it's such a mess, with the backgrounds looking scrappy, dithered, and blocky. Compared to the beautiful Sonic 2, it just doesn't compare.

Then there's the music. Masato Nakamura defined the 16-bit Sonic sound, and whilst Sonic 3's music isn't awful, it's certainly a big, big step backwards.

At least it's better than Knuckle's Chaotix I guess.

@rmswriter

Not so much vibes as a very direct homage/copy.

Music games rely so heavily upon having a great soundtrack, and there can be no better example of this if you compare Ouendan with it's awful Western re-skin Elite Beat Agents.

They took away the great music and replaced it with forgettable blandness, and the game was ruined. It also didn't help that they took away the Ouendan squad themselves, which did rather ripp the heart and soul out of the game.

It's too bad Jake Kaufman wasn't available, as honestly the music in River City Girls was really forgettable and bland. Even better would have been for Way Forward to contact some of the original Kunio composers and see if they would like the work.

Please, lose the toxic "git gud" rubbish. It's one of most unappealing, least inclusive, and utterly repellant aspects of gaming.

@abdias Why are you lying? The PS5 got exclusives right from day one.

This on Game Pass btw.

Licensing is really the killer for a lot of older games. Anything with licensed music (such as Jet Set Radio Future) or cars (such as OutRun 2) just aren't going to happen unfortunately, at least not with a digital purchase option.

It's interesting though that Microsoft did add Ridge Racer 6 though, a game which is disc only.

@RantingThespian Pratt isn't a Trumper? Then explain this - https://www.tmz.com/2019/07/17/chris-pratt-dont-tread-on-me-gadsden-flag-shirt-debate-controversy/

Someone doesn't wear a shirt like that by accident. He chose to wear a far right slogan on his chest.

An important game and a real landmark, but a 10? For my money honestly I think modern "retro" style FPS games do it better. Prodeus for example takes this style of shooter and turns it up to 11, as does Amid Evil. And of course Ion Fury does the same with the Duke Nukem formula.

Nothing says let's explore a haunted mansion like donning a swimsuit.

I guess this stuff sells, at least to teenage boys who for some reason are unaware that Google exists.

I kind of liked the first one, but it was let down by the soundtrack. It was so bland and forgettable. Had they got Jake Kaufman to do it things would have been so different.

@WhiteUmbrella You know what, forget it. Move on. Find someone else to pick fights with.

@WhiteUmbrella

Misinformation? Such as? HDR and 4K are entirely unconnected. I have a 1000nit 1440p ultrawide on my PC, and my ancient iPhone X also has HDR and that's 1125p. In fact most high end phones have HDR now.

VRR, as Digital Foundry went to great length to talk about in the Steam Deck direct would have been massively useful to have. It allows weak GPUs to run at an even frame cadence under 60fps but above 30fps. Look at the footage of Jedi Fallen Order or Control on the Stream Deck. They're in the 40s, and they look absolutely terrible on a non VRR screen.

I have a Switch but I've barely touched it in over a year. I'm a PC gamer mostly, which is why this device makes no sense to me. I want to play PC games with the graphics on ultra, with HDR and with a frame rate well above 100. That's why I play on PC. I run a rig with a 3080 and a 5900X. No compromise.

And lose the condescending tone please.

I would say that people need to temper their expectations for the Stream Deck. It has a good CPU for sure, but its GPU is roughly on par with a PS4 Amateur. That means 30fps and low graphics settings for the most part.

Valve really look to missed a trick with the screen too. It isn't OLED, it doesn't support HDR, and it doesn't have FreeSync/VRR. The latter in particular would have been immensely useful on a device with such a weak GPU.

It's also twice as heavy as the Switch, which was already a very cumbersome and hefty device. Frankly I find the Analogue Pocket more appealing than both of them.

Plus you can add in the mess of so many different PC stores (the days when everything was on Steam see sadly long gone) and I just isn't that interesting.

Glad to hear that the game is on point but I'll wait for a Steam or Xbox port before pulling the trigger. I'm too used to 60fps (or on PC, much, much higher) to go back now.

The golden age was surely the late 80s to mid-90s, when Capcom, Konami, Sega and several others were are their creative peaks. Now if we want arcade style games which aren't retro we end up with indie devs and the quality is often less than great.

Very harsh and frankly unfair review. Why did the reviewer play through it On Easy mode first? And as for the length, arcade games of the era were short, and that's exactly what this game is a lover letter to. I've been playing the Xbox version and it's great, a really authentic feeling early 90s arcade game, just as Capcom and Konami made. Look at the other reviews out there, this is a real outlier.

@Evangeliman Phone games are absolutely massive in Japan, and they're not exactly niche in the West either.

It may well come to other platforms eventually, once Apple's deal has expired.

I just want that Crayon Shin Chan game.

Love the Capcom Arcade trailer as well, you can feel the love they have for all of those classic games.

@sanderev Your loss. A Way Out was an excellent and really unique co-op experience. But keep those blinders on, the outside world is scary.

Looking at the visuals it has that vibe of one of those mangled low-res Switch ports where the textures are super low res, it runs at 720p, the global illumination is turned off and it generally looks a bit broken.

I really hope they port this one to a more capable system.

Game Pass. Nice.

@Richnj Time moves on.

@electrolite77 Opinions are subjective obviously.

If you're happy with 360p, have fun. I'll stick to 2160p.

@Nerdtendo64

Maybe you should try watching John's video before you fall onto your keyboard again.

@BTB20 The SNES was 240p. Modern games run at 2160p, so yes, I think 360p really is pretty close to SNES levels of resolution.

No modern game should run at such a low resolution. It isn't acceptable.

360p is barely higher res than a SNES. If you really, really must play Doom on the toilet then have at it, but if you own a TV then please, play this on literally anything else.

@anoyonmus The combat in Monster Hunter is comically bad. Amazing that a game which is basically so broken can be so popular. The world building is nice of course, but they really need to fix how it plays.

@Chowdaire The difference between 30fps and 60fps is night and day. If you're on a VRR display then drops down into the low 50s can still look smooth, but if not, any drop below 60 hits hard.

Once you're into PC gaming even 60fps starts to look a little slow, hence the move to 144fps, 240fps, and even 300fps and above. That's certainly overkill territory, but 120fps is still a pretty nice upgrade over 60fps. It just feels so responsive and snappy, and of course buttery smooth.

@Northwind

Some people are more sensitive to lower frame rates. With the Series X and PS5 60fps or even 120fps is the standard now. Nintendo need to keep up.

Let's hope this gets a port to a modern system, and that rumoured Switch pro turns out to be true. There is no world in which 756p is acceptable on a modern 4K TV. It just isn't good enough. And the Switch doesn't even support HDR either.

Having been playing a lot of Series X lately I see 1440p at 60fps as the baseline now. That's it. The lowest end acceptable. Ideally I'm looking for 2160p at 60fps in HDR.

I'm quite partial to a bit of Night Trap, but this is genuinely terrible. It's a light gun shooter with laughably bad digitised enemies running towards you. They're wholly disconnected from the world (which is also a video stream) and even by 90s FMV standards, they just look awful.

And the game I guess might have kept you amused in an arcade for 5 minutes with a big plastic light gun, but now, with a crosshair? Nope.

"Low res graphics can look awkward on Switch" ? Really?!

Have you never played a Virtual Console game? Or for that matter, virtually every indie game in the past 10 years?

@MsJubilee Casuals have their games, thousands upon thousand of them. And most of them are "free" on the app store.

I want my games to be made for gamers. Not people who half look at something while they wait for a bus or talk to a friend.

@Agriculture
Call of Duty. Halo. Destiny. Doom.

I think dual stick controls are just about as mainstream as its possible to get. Try re-training the brains of millions to play console FPSs any other way and it won't end well.

That said, mouse/keys utterly destroys any console FPS control scheme.

@Toy_Link

Definitely. That Sega Model 3 pod racer game looks infinity better than this crusty old N64 effort. That the Dreamcast got a port of this N64 thing and not the arcade game was a stick joke.

@TG16_IS_BAE Cyberpunk has only ever been shown running on PC at 30fps on a 2080Ti. Squeezing it into an Xbox One/PS4 is not going to be easy. And as a Switch version, well, no, it will never happen.

It's not quite Cyberpunk 2077 quality..

On the indie front, The Last Night looks more interesting than this, although whether or not it will ever come out is a matter of debate. I suspect it sadly won't. The dev has been quiet for a long, long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pupdeq1MoVw