sleepercar

With this and their Walking Dead game, Activision seem to be aiming at becoming the LJN of this generation. I think we got enough of that the first time around.

This show is fantastic, and a real treat for Nintendo fans especially. Most of the episodes have been translated by now, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try.

He's working with some very flawed information there.

1) Xbox BC on the 360 was always flaky at best, and they dropped any kind of support or updates for it shortly after release. If you weren't specifically looking for it these days, you'd be hard pressed to even know it was a feature

2) The original Xbox didn't have the best library to choose from to begin with, so there's not really going to be that big of a demand anyway. I had one, and only really missed OutRun 2 and Kotor really.

and lastly 3) After the 360 launched the original xbox preowned market sank like a stone. You couldn't give games away after the 360's release, and it wasn't long until shops stopped selling xbox preowned entirely. Even if you wanted to play older titles, you'd have had to track them down online. Compared to other systems, where they still sold them years after the fact.

It all adds up to no great surprise that they'd get the results they did. It doesn't make them in any way conclusive, however.

Besides the whole tastelessness of it, does Revelations even have any zombies in it?

Looks like my Irish amazon order didn't make it in time and I'll be waiting until Monday for my fix. Aw well, still looking forward to it. Gotta say it's nice to have so much stuff to look forward to on the system for a change now things are finally picking up.

MH4 is not going to happen, it'd be suicide for MH3U's sales to announce it so soon. I wouldn't say no to a new Dead Rising though,.

I'd agree with others here that the most we're likely to get is a quiet download-only no-fuss release on the eShop.

At this point though, I'd be genuinely surprised if we got even that.

No great loss either way.

Excellent news, glad they finally saw sense on that one.

@HawkeyeWii I don't think it really means anything in that respect. Gearbox are probably going to lose money on the 360/PS3 versions already, it would make little sense for them to sink more development time and money into finishing another port that won't make back its investment and lose them even more money.

Yeah, it sucks being a Wii U owner at the moment, but it's not the end times, just a fallow patch. Nothing all that new for recently released systems, it just goes with the territory.

@krunchykhaos it's expensive whatever way you look at it. I don't think anyone's arguing here that it's too expensive for what it is, but it's going to take a considerable chunk out of most people's xmas budget.

Also your argument that it could've been worse doesn't hold up as well when us folks in europe paid around £300 for the deluxe, which is more like $480.

Not that surprising really. It's competing with systems that have been out for years with massively higher install bases during one of the craziest times of the year for game sales. I don't think we need to start sounding alarm bells yet.

Price has got to be a big factor. After I got my Wii U I just didn't have the cash to spare for any extra titles, there's the family xmas pressies to sort out after all. I'll be getting a couple more after my next payday later this week, I imagine I'm not the only one in that situation.

People complain a lot about the system not having that initial 'wow' factor to pull in casuals that the wii had, but I can see it being more of a sleeper hit.

Kind of like it was with the original DS. People didn't really see the point when it launched, everyone said the more powerful upcoming PSP was going to slaughter it, but it gradually built up some decent support and eventually got distinctive games that played to the system's strengths and broke it into the mainstream in a massive way. Maybe it won't happen to quite that extent, but I wouldn't be surprised if we got something similar.

If you want to filter out the noise on there, just start following the good posters and artists and use your personal feed more, I find that works well. It can also help to hang out more in the quieter communities. Nintendo Land's a madhouse at the moment.

I'll have to go with the crowd here and sing MiiVerse's praises.

It's genuinely refreshing to find such a fun, helpful community in the online gaming space. I got sick of multiplayer some time ago on the other systems, even if you mute everyone there's still that feeling in the back of your mind that you're wasting time with jerks you'd cross the street to avoid in real life, and my schedule's too much of a mess to play with friends. Nintendo's community just feels so much more welcoming, it's like the anti-Xbox Live. You go on MiiVerse and you just want to draw silly pictures and give people yeahs. And a nicer community leads to nicer players. It's turning out to have much more of an effect than I thought it would.

There's still issues to be worked out, of course. I agree that menu loading could be a bit snappier, wii integration could be a lot better and we could really use a native VC as soon as possible, but hopefully those aspects will improve over time. As it is, it's still a great start.

@Chunky_Droid yeah, that's fair enough. I'm sorry if the tone sounded a little contentious, reading it back it sounds a little snarkier than I meant it to be. It's undoubtedly a hassle for developers, but I think there must be some real net benefit for them seeing as mainstream games seem to be getting more violent when mainstream movies seem to be playing much safer.

I'd certainly agree that parents should shoulder more responsibility, and that playing the blame game doesn't really benefit anyone.

@Chunky_Droid my counterpoint is that it's not just franchise momentum that keeps these games selling, controversy plays its part too, and is much more of a positive force for them than a negative one.

Games cost more to develop than ever, with devs playing it as safe and broad as they can in gameplay terms, yet last year's E3 featured some of the most violent content across the broadest range of games we've seen yet. If lawsuits and negative media profile were really such an issue, we wouldn't be seeing that. Note that some of the strongest examples were for new series that didn't have franchise support to lean on.

We hear lots of scare stories about lawsuits in the games industry, but few of them really go anywhere (feel free to provide evidence otherwise of your 'hundreds of cases'), and the major publishers have full legal departments on hand to deal with this. It's not costing them much to contest those, as they're merely utilising assets on the payroll, and any costs incurred are clearly rendered insignificant next to the money they make from selling controversial content. If they weren't, we wouldn't have so many controversial games. Publishers aren't really in the business of taking risks they don't have to.

@Chunky_Droid those games weren't always big franchises. If you do a little research into GTA, you'll find out they hired an extremely expensive high-profile publicist for the express purpose of drumming up controversy for the first GTA release, which had a hugely positive impact on sales and helped raise the series' international profile. And they're far from the only example of games stirring up controversy to boost sales.

@SheldonRandoms I knew the character roster except for the secret xmas day character every reviewer went out of their way to avoid mentioning the actual name of. It's no biggie, but it would've been a nice surprise.

@Shining-Void @ bofis pretty sure you can take all 5 players online (4 on the splitscreen, 1 on the gamepad).

@ThomasBW84 I'm not saying you won't be able to continue downloading after those hours, I mean that I'd be asleep before the download's done when I can't even start it until 11, which is why I prefer to buy big retail downloads earlier in the day.

"If a mature title is arriving on the eShop at midnight on launch day and you've decided to go the download route, you can't pop onto your system during normal hours on launch day to download your eagerly anticipated gem, but rather you must wait for a four hour window when you might rather be in bed. "
To expand on that a little, that also means with a 6gig+ file and Ninty's patchy download speeds it all but rules out being able to buy a mature-rated title and play it on the same day, which is one of the major draws of downloads for me as opposed to just ordering online.

It all just seems so arbitrary. They have these restrictions on the eShop when anyone could find much more offensive material at any time of day with just a quick search on the built-in web browser. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Another funny thing that just occurred to me - Nintendo didn't have a problem streaming this week's 18-rated EU edition of Nintendo Direct at 5 in the afternoon. Make up your mind guys!

@Klinny as a European, I know the majority of countries don't have any kind of restrictions like that in place for any of the other major download services. Even among the minor players, I can't think of a single other service that limits viewing that way.

Seemingly what's happened is that they've had to do this to comply with laws in one of the more censorious countries (Germany maybe? I don't think even they do that), but have decided to apply those restrictions to the entirely of Europe when they have no need to do so. Restrictions like that certainly should not apply to Europe as a whole.

@SheldonRandoms spoilers, man!

Absolute madness. The system already has perfectly good parental control facilities in place, this adds nothing except irritating a lot of potential customers. The sooner they get rid of this, the better.

Definitely my next purchase for sure. The first one was my favourite kart racer yet when I played it on 360, and this looks even better.

I find Sumo's racers tend to be much more skill-focused and less down to random chance than the recent Mario Karts, making for a much more satisfying solo experience in particular. It's a lot more of a closer-run thing as far as multiplayer goes, but I think it still just about edges it for me.

@Chunky_Droid I don't get that either. I swear copyright cases are decided by pulling random verdicts out of a big bin on a case-by-case basis.

Good review there by the way, surprised to see this one score so high. Nice to see a TV tie-in put in at least some effort for a change.

Nice to see him joining in the fun and just playing along, makes a refreshing change from the usual "pretending competitor's stuff is rubbish/doesn't exist".

Note also how he didn't resort to badmouthing the competition. Let's not let the side down here with fanboy nonsense.

Maybe an answer to the fruit thing at last?

I'd have to concur with those saying it would've been a better fit as an eShop title and should've had online. I'll probably still grab it when it's a teeny bit cheaper, it does look like a decent bit of fun, My Kong mode in particular is inspired.

Not sure I'm equipped to handle the sheer funkiness on display here. Not sure anyone can ever be.

The reviews for this one on other formats have been shocking. Doesn't bode well...

Harley Quinn? Sold.

Really hope they bring over some of the singleplayer fun from their last Mortal Kombat game. It wasn't the best fighter ever, but the SP put the competition to shame.

Agreed with everyone saying this should have been SEGA.

Trust Activision to take a love letter to videogames and turn it into a quick cash in. "I'm gonna WRECK IT!" Yep.

@kenb glad to see it wasn't just me thinking that, heh.

@9th_Sage I could definitely go for a quality air hockey game as a cheap eShop title. Maybe Ubisoft could dig into the same archives they dragged Zombi out from and give us a HD reboot of Shufflepuck Cafe.

I'm glad you gave this one the kicking it deserved and didn't just fob it off with a 5/10 or something. The more publishers get the message that this kind of thing Isn't Good Enough Anymore, the better. Minigame collections can be fantastic when done right, but there's little worse than a lazy cash-grab.

The arcade machines in the background are a strange touch. "Hey, remember Joust? Pretty great game, huh? Well that's just a background prop, enjoy these terrible attempts at physical skill games."

They really seem to have learned their lesson with the eshop this time around. If they can just do something about accounts being locked to one console I can see myself going on quite a few spending sprees there in future. They're really raising their game online, and it's great to see it.

I really hoped they'd have fixed this by now. It doesn't seem like a big issue until you have to deal with it yourself.

The piracy argument doesn't really fly anymore either. MS, Sony and Apple have all offered fairly painless methods of re-downloading purchases to new systems for years now, and they seem to do okay. Any serious pirates are much more interested in modding/hacking the system, and that's an issue these kinds of measures do nothing to protect against.

@waxxyone "The Microsoft system works by requiring you to log in to another console and then download the games, which then become disabled when another user is logged in. Nintendo wants all games on the console to work for any user playing it."

The MS system only works that way if you still have the licences active on your original system. Anything you buy is playable from any account on the licensed system, and you can permanently transfer those licences to another system any time you like. This is exactly the kind of thing Nintendo should be doing.

Any chance of including the download sizes for these in your round-ups or at least in the reviews themselves? It'd be handy to have that kind of info available at a glance, especially for anyone with the basic model.

Sounds like a cut-and-dried case of Activision Strikes Again. No doubt they'd have delivered something better if they weren't so reliant on those bean counters. I really can't stand what those guys are doing to the industry these days.

Some people could stand to be a little less defensive on here. This isn't some Nintendo witch hunt. The digital foundry section at Eurogamer didn't pick on this port just to be jerks, they make these kinds of detailed comparison videos for every major AAA release.

Arkham City may have its problems, but in their comparison of Mass Effect 3 it scored significantly better than the PS3 version on almost all fronts. On top of that they post side-by-side comparison videos so you can see for yourself and make up your own minds as to whether any performance differences are a deal-breaker or not.

For most people it isn't going to make that much of a difference, but it's DF's whole remit to go into detail explicitly stating any performance differences there are for people who care about that kind of thing. They can over-state their case a bit, but it happens in any instance there's a notable difference and not just those related to Nintendo. Plenty of 360 and PS3 games have received similar kickings in the past.

But yes, at the end of the day, the differences aren't really going to matter that much for most gamers. Even the absolute worst cases so far are a million times better than the framerate problems we've had to endure with some of the more taxing third-party wii games. If you've got a couple of systems and want to know which one to go for, that's the only case where it really makes a difference. Otherwise you'll probably be quite happy with what you've got.

This is great news. I'm honestly surprised Nintendo have made such a step from the (allegedly) nightmarish conditions WiiWare developers had to work under, but couldn't be happier they did so.

More and more of my favourite titles in recent years have come from indies, yet they keep getting the short end of the stick from the big three when trying to get their work on their systems. Seeing Ninty take a more flexible approach is a real breath of fresh air.

If Wii U becomes the go-to for quality indie games I can easily see it becoming my console of choice for the foreseeable future.

I think this is a smart move that could help out everyone involved. I'm sure Ninty and the 3rd parties are quite aware the Wii had significantly weaker multiplayer support than their competitors last gen, and any steps they can make to grow and develop a strong player base as soon as possible will be a real help going forward.

I can imagine passes eventually becoming a thing down the line, but it'd make little sense at the moment unless the developers were intending to cripple the service at birth.