swoose

I don't know what's worse - Kirby's skin forming a function-tight membrane around all those sticks, buttons, screw holes and battery cover, or Kirby's skin having cutouts in it so all those things can work.

I couldn't get into their story because I reached the first couple gym leaders and had my team of 6 pokemon all 1-2 levels higher than their aces without even trying to.

That is also part of a game's storytelling. That's telling the player "the gym leaders in this region are all pushovers and your pokemon get stronger whether or not you even train them"

A point where modern Pokemon really lost me was in ORAS, where the game gives the player a Latios or Latias, as a story event, from the champion, after 5 gym badges. Five! Barely halfway through the game!

Legendaries should feel special and hard to obtain. I also didn't care for Scarlet/Violet making the box legendaries glorified bicycles who won't battle for you, but will be ridden like a horse for some reason.

It will be stages on floating platforms against Octarian enemies.

If you said to me "[Animation] has been kidnapped by a bunch of hoodlums", the first people to come to mind would be Illumination.

My expectations for anything TPC does with the trading card game are through the floor. We're never getting anything as cool as the two Game Boy RPGs again.

Always liked their designs as they didn't make the Pokemon branding super obvious. But yea, never bought one given the price.

Friendly request for NintendoLife to bump this article on like August 8th so I actually remember to tune in

Gave this a chance a while ago but if they were passionate about games, it sure wasn't coming across on the podcast. Very buttoned up and PR heavy. Tough to compete with various fan and journalist podcasts where hosts can actually speak their minds.

They never released a model as affordable and playable as the DS Lite. The Switch Lite is $200 USD to this day (compared to the $130 DSLite launch) and showing its age, and disappointing from the start due to drifting sticks and lack of a simple HDMI out function.

I really wish they went in the exact opposite direction of the OLED. That's a niche premium upgrade that's even less essential than the New 3DS line, since its internals stayed the same. I'd point to there as failing the Switch's sales momentum.

What comes to mind for me is all the RPGs and tactics games whose trailers are 100% cinematics. Even Fire Emblem has been guilty of this.

The cinematics are pretty and all, but I'm buying it to play a rpg/tactics game! Don't hide the grids and menus!

If it were a 1-1 copy the commanders would look like they had any personality at all. I can't understand all these indie games with very competent pixel art but absolutely dead-eyed generic character designs. Just look at good character designs, reference them, you're already referencing everything else.

The fact you can shoot them prematurely to make some of them (or all?) detonate right away is interesting. I'm reminded of the Bubble Blower as much as the Tenta Missiles.

I wished for a decoy balloon you could place down in a firefight as you scamper away, but as a sub weapon. Oh well

@steely_pete Yeah the whole FE fandom has been making this complaint. Most of what we know about this game has come from videos and character profiles that haven't been localized for some reason. Fan translators are having to do NoA's job for them. But that doesn't have much reach and is no substitute for actual marketing.

One mistake I've seen on this very site is thinking it's an all-stars type game relying on older characters in the series. When in fact it's a new mainline game with an all-new cast of characters that haven't been marketed anywhere. 12 older characters have cameos as literal accessories. There's clever changes made to all the on-foot classes to make them as viable as mounted and flying classes finally, but you won't find much info about that in English.

Not to sound like a weeb but clearly Japan is just a more enlightened land. In politeness, in transit infrastructure, and in preferring Nintendo handhelds

Funny, I thought this was one of the more faithful depictions of a female lord in the game so far. Maybe she doesn't look exactly like her Kozaki portrait in Awakening, but at least they let her keep a stern expression. Micaiah and Eirika just look vacant.

I'd say the free update model works for games like Splatoon or Animal Crossing that people want to play regularly anyway. Not a sports spinoff that launches with less content than its Gamecube version

Friction-free is the problem. I get an automatically leveled up team just from basic exploration and all my Pokemon are the same lvl as the gym leader's ace. On top of it they removed Set battle style for some reason. The game's battles could be played by a drinking bird toy tapping the A button.

Old school Pokemon made you actually gasp send your Pokemon into battle to train them. All that friction, I wonder how it became a successful series among kids.

It looks like Advance Wars but with character portraits sourced from a pre-teen artist they paid in exposure

Imagine that, a gritty SRPG that was actually allowed to use nice colors. Much easier on the eyes than all the Square Enix "HD-2D" games imo

The character is obviously poking fun at streamer/Vtuber culture, note the fat Greedents in the background as she talks about her viewer count going up. She's supposed to be annoying.

My only complaint is that she shows up physically in game, instead of conducting her gym battle from a screen. You mean to tell me in the reality of the Pokemon world, this girl's teeth are filed into points? Or she talks through fake teeth all the time? And yeah, I normally don't mind the lack of VA in games, but it really sticks out when someone's very characteristic way of speaking is missing. And hoo boy are the colours in that gameplay washed out compared to her "streams".

So if games sold in Japan in September were the Earth's surface, all other games would be the land and Splatoon 3 would be the ocean.

I've mostly stopped playing my Switch handheld, not because I don't love handheld gaming, but because it's simply not a very good handheld experience. Too heavy, too rickety, screen needlessly big, poor battery life, not comfortable in the hand. Granted I have the base model and not the Switch Lite.

My DS Lite backlog is my go-to for gaming lying down. Now that was a nearly perfect handheld. I wish Nintendo hardware could progress to a point where the next console is both more powerful AND lighter than the Switch and OLED.

I wish the whole game could look like that pre-rendered Marth cutscene, he looks absolutely gorgeous. And I'm not usually a Marth fan. But we're not quite there yet I guess.

I've been against the idea of GBA remakes in 3D because I think those games already had the perfect style. But I see what people are saying that this is carrying on that spirit. And I feel bad for anyone finding this "too colorful". Go look at a dusty field on an overcast day to cleanse your palate I guess.

It's such a perfect series, my question has been: why ISN'T Splatoon so popular in the West? Japan gets it, my friends in the fandom and I get it, the Switch install base is gargantuan, so what's missing?

This article answered it partially with the focus on marketing and merchandising. It's just not pushed as much here. Marketing in the West is expensive and dominated by mobile/F2P games, or outright legalized gambling in NA.

I don't think aesthetics or culture are a big barrier. Fortnite and Among Us are colorful and stylized. We know what anime and squids are. The basically $80 entry cost could be a factor though.

I'm triggered by how this is called a ranking of each region's pokedexes, when it's actually a ranking of new pokemon introduced each gen. Those aren't at all the same thing.

Zero complaints with the demo performance, it's a competently designed game where you get hit if it looks like you got hit and hit the opponent if it looks like you hit them. 16 updates a second is more than enough for the game to interpolate movement and shot time.

If you're going to be angry at something, be angry that most of the Western world is lagging behind Korea and Japan in internet infrastructure to a pathetic degree. It took 5 apartments in my adult life until I lived in one where a wired connection was even possible. And even then our regional telecom monopolies in NA are a joke.

The single player being a tutorial mode on floaty platforms with the same enemies again - that is a disappointment. But the brief words here on the multiplayer changes are underselling it, and you don't have to be a hardcore fan to understand them.

New movement options, new weapon types, and new stages are huge for Splatoon. Unlike some shooters, Splatoon weapons actually play very differently from each other. There are long-ranged and melee weapons balanced against each other. The squid surge, respawn launcher and invulnerable dodge roll look to make rushdown better. The special weapons are mostly new and appear less toxic.

Splatoon's multiplayer is so accessible in the genre because you can care about kill/deaths, or you can avoid danger and paint the stage to contribute. It's the core of the series and why I suspect they don't want to invest in lengthy, one-off single player set pieces.

@claypool 9 years? It been not quite 7 years since Tri Force Heroes.

I unironically had a blast with it playing online with randos, so it's your loss if you don't consider that a new top-down Zelda. It's hard to replicate that experience nowadays though.

Agree with most of the list. Though I would move up Sword and Shield and put Sun and Moon much, much lower. USUM is the only main series game I had to put down without finishing, the pacing was just so terrible. Not that I play Pokemon for the "plot" but in this case the frequency of cutscenes actually turned me off the game.

I liked Sword and Shield not so much for Chairman Rose but moreso for the gym challenge and the sports anime-ness of it all. The gym battles felt meaningful with the great scene-setting, music, and everyone using dynamax. Bede, Marnie, and Leon were memorable. And I liked the final Eternatus raid-style fight with the box legendaries on your side.

@Moistnado Well there are definitely no reliable regulatory bodies. It's America.

What a rip-off, obviously they should have added NPLN-only matchmaking features and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 as a free update to Splatoon 2. It's easy

Every one of the sober "there's always a war somewhere" comments here, while correct, would have gotten blasted, downvoted, moderated, and possibly banned if it was made in February of 2022. Tension was very high in all realms of commerce and media in that moment, even if it was performative or self-serving. Politicians in my area managed to get vodka pulled from the shelves of liquor stores to punish Russia. Vodka!!

So Nintendo read the room, is what I'm saying. Now it's a tricky matter of fitting the game into a release schedule somewhere such that they still maximize its sales. I won't pretend to know what the best time for it is.

Personally I'm glad when Kaga games get covered on Nintendo sites, so I can appreciate how much better off the Fire Emblem series is without him. This looks like an indie studio's first attempt at map design.

All of these have felt impermanent from the jump. Even the regional forms. I love Alolan Sandshrew, but when is Alolan Sandshrew going to be in a regional dex again? Never, because "Alolan" is right in the name.

Mega Evos were especially infuriating because half the pokemon who got them sorely needed REGULAR evolutions, and the mega designs would have been perfect for those - Mawile, Banette, most of the gen 3 ones really. But of course they also had to give megas to pokemon that were already OP, so no sweeping change to make permanent mega evos is possible.

Good pokemon games aren't complicated. Make new pokemon that can appear in other regions. Make lots of them, like Gens 1, 3, and 5. Make them able to EVOLVE. And if a new mechanic is needed, make it something that will also improve future games.

The only thing that looks disruptive about this is the item menu pausing both players. The BotW engine was built around that, but probably some non-pause menuing would have to be implemented if it was going to be multiplayer.

Actually the series that most came to my mind while watching this is the Warriors games. After googling it, apparently Age of Calamity and Fire Emblem: Three Hopes have split screen multiplayer like this? But you have to progress in the game to unlock it, and I've never once seen it advertised for any musou game. That formula, arcade-y hack n' slash button mashing, seems like a good successor to the beat-em-up genre and could really do with better multiplayer integration.

I don't have any nostalgia for this era and I generally feel N64 games have aged like milk. But this looks great. It makes a big difference to keep all the colours bright, the framerate high, and hopefully the controls smooth and responsive.

If there is a Shovel Knight-ification of low poly graphics, i.e. making them look better than they were rather than authentic, it's a welcome trend in games' visual designs.

As a big Splatoon fan, the only thing I don't like about this is the paint splatter graphic they slap everywhere. Splatoon has some great stickers, graphics, and fake brands, and they're all so clean. Covering them up with the Nickelodeon style blots is a waste and SO much physical Splatoon merch is like this.

The joycon are the best looking part of this bundle because they were spared.

It's going to feel wild learning new stages in Splatoon again. It's been 4+ years since the ones in Splatoon 2 were new.

@Flint Maybe you should elaborate on how people in fandoms are "basing one's personality almost exclusively around the products they purchase" and how it relates to this article. Because otherwise I agree with Gorlokk that it sounds like you're making baseless assumptions. How the hell do you know the breadth of someone's personality outside of their visible fan engagement?

@blindsquarel Not sure if you're being sarcastic or hyperbolic or what, but they've revealed new movement options, a new weapon type, a new single player campaign, new stages, and new Salmon Run bosses/events, which I'd rank all ahead of customization features.

Anyone who plays WarioWare: Twisted! with a GBA player by tilting their GameCube around is all right in my books

The 1st episode is in a western 1940s style. The other 7 are very much not so. And as @Fizza said, some of them are among the best animated Pokemon content I've seen. The Nidoran and Slugma shorts in particular are almost Ghibli-esque in their pacing and sense of place.

I'm glad they're getting an English dub, but they're already very watchable without it. The originals have English captions and aren't heavy on dialogue.

This does indeed sound fanservicey. But maybe there's a more tasteful way to pull off crossover summons than what we've seen in Heroes and Fates. The characters from the past actually reacting to the game's world and having a reason to be there would be a start, in terms of feeling like part of the game. I am tired of the protagonist being descended from gods or dragons and having superpowers though.

A release before holidays '22 would nice since there's no Zelda this year.

I hope these come to North America too. And that cabbie list shirt would be great in a unisex size, it looks awesome.

@Yosher Ugh, I hadn't fully thought about the limitations the gear system places on the character roster. Mario has so many characters with different body types, number of limbs, etc. I guess I won't wait for Chain Chomp to be playable either.

@LordPieFace If all you want is a news aggregator of announcement trailers filtered by: on Nintendo Switch, I don't know why you're reading a blog. The author made it clear what the connection to Nintendo is.

Very curious to see how the synchronized multiplayer works. Can you battle the same wild pokemon? Who gets to catch it? What about NPC battles? I hope this game doesn't continue to de-emphasize NPC battles like Legends Arceus did.

I could see things like battles, events, and spawns being locally instanced, and then you just see your friends running around the overworld after. That would probably feel underwhelming.

I'm liking the new legendaries, they remind me of Reshiram and Zekrom but more colourful and lizardlike.

Goodness gracious, do some of you need more sunlight or something? Are you watching this video in a darkened room with the windows blacked out? It looks gorgeous. I much prefer this to a screen full of black like in Triangle Strategy. That game puts me to sleep.

This is EXACTLY what I'd want from a Pokemon remake - actually adhering to an art style. If Legend Arceus with all its empty space had gone with the painterly style of its reveal video, including plenty of white space, it would have done wonders for that game.

"The best option by far, though, is to link your Nintendo Account to the old Nintendo Network ID; that way all funds added to your Switch account will also be available on the Wii U and 3DS eShop."

This really should be signal boosted more. Everyone who had a 3DS/Wii U should also link those consoles to their Nintendo account. I've been sharing funds between platforms this whole generation without even thinking about it - whenever I add funds to buy a Switch game they're also available on my 3DS.

That's not to excuse Nintendo for shutting the storefronts down. But the workaround (for now) is really easy.