themightyant

I love good metroidvania, but there's been a rampant surge of average, or worse, ones of late.

First view this 'looks' to fall into that camp, but will wait for reviews.

This could absolutely be a CPU or Network card issue. Less likely to be GPU.

The Switch CPU is based on the 2014 A57 which was relatively weak at release, it’s massively behind current smartphones, particularly Apple’s. MiHoYo, the game’s developer, have proved to be not great at optimisation, PS4 & Pro and to a lesser extent PS5 all struggle with this game.

Genshin Impact also requires an always on Internet connection and again the Switch Network hardware is not great.

@TheFullAndy It is a scumbag move.

Treat us with respect and we will treat you with respect and vice-versa

Hence just bought a set of NFC cards.

Well that's decided then - just purchased a set of NFC Tags. FU Nintendo with your greedy practices. The paywall was £60 on a pretty basic remaster, not another £20 just to unlock QoL improvement that should be in the base game.
Treat us with respect and we will treat you the same and vice versa.

@theflowergarden Well said! This isn't the normal case of "developer announces a game too early". Hornet was promised as DLC as part of the Kickstarter. At some point this merged into a whole new game, Silksong, so they had to let backers know.

Moreover they said that all backers of Hollow Knight, who already got FAR more game than expected with all the first games DLC, will now ALSO be getting Silksong for free when it releases.

On the flip side: when it was on the cover of EDGE this January I hoped it was coming very soon. Seems not. But they should take as long as they need.

And you didn't even touch "Immersive sims".

@nessisonett The article seems to suggest the license would be free, but the website suggests otherwise "If you are a game publisher and wish to license mGBA for commercial usage, please email xxx for more information."

Regardless it's an unacceptable scummy move nonetheless.

Interesting! Though I no longer have a Wii U to try this out.
Somehow I sold it for more than I bought it for, as I had the Zelda Collectors Edition. I don't regret buying it, though it is closest to that in all the consoles I have purchased over the years, but I also definitely don't regret selling it. Whereas I still have most of the others going back to the Master System.

@Scrubicius I'm intrigued why you think "Business wise it’s the wrong time for a new Mario Kart". While MK8 continues to sell well, it has still slowed considerably, whereas the 35 million odd MK8 owners on switch would all likely be interested in MK9.
What am I missing?

That opening cutscene though is still bad-ass! And the promise of a "An actual game where you played as Dracula, in the style of Lords of Shadow"... is still mouth watering... only making the failure all the worse.

I never actually played the 2 LoS DLC or the LoS2 (SPOILERS for a 7 year old game) draculA (backwards) DLC, so wouldn't be wholly against a Switch trilogy.

The first Lords of Shadow was a wonderful game, if a little long, and I was happy with it as a separate Castlevania game/timeline IF the 2D series still continued.

Mirror of Fate was OK by comparison, Good for a mobile title, but no where near the scope of LoS.

Lords of Shadow 2 was a huge backstep. A few good ideas, combined with several bad ones. It felt rushed and rudderless, not sticking the landing in many areas. It's amazing to me that it was the same studio, everything from the gameplay, aesthetic, sound, story and voice acting were worse than the first game. It's not terrible, but I expected much much more after such a great opening.

@Da_Debbil "I don't see any real value in this."

Neither do I. But value is based on what others perceive it to be. If there enough people willing to say something is worth a certain amount then it simply is, whether this be art, trading cards, NFT's or those numbers in your bank account.

I'm sure there's enough people who want in to make this valuable.

Has anyone compared the shelf to the last to see what has changed? 😂

A lot of people forget, or were unaware, that Monolithsoft were integral to making BotW's world. Anyone who's played any of the Xenoblade's recognised many of the same traits.

That combined with that old Nintendo magic made BotWs Hyrule a joy to explore. Glad to hear they are still involved!

Monoliftsoft (Xenoblade) assisted Nintendo in the world building and landscapes, this is a classic example of the sort of reveals and visual exploration they excel at. E.g. come over a rise and what do you see, what draws you. It’s a masterclass that fuels the wonderful feeling of exploration in this game.

One of the best games ever, hampered by a slow and slightly irritating beginning. (Especially in earlier versions when you couldn't skip or speed up the text.)

Has anyone played World of Demons on iOS, the spiritual successor? Worth subbing to Apple Arcade for a month or two?

Stunning art style but when I played the demo on Xbox I literally fell asleep... twice. Hopefully the final game is a little more engaging!

It was engaging while it lasted, and the best 'fitness' game I have played yet... but I fell off pretty soon too. Ultimately you'd often be better just working out but it's a good gateway to that.

This meme is far passed over flogged...
Yet this was a brilliant read. Bravo 👏

It’s not just the art style, many of those assets look ripped right out of Okami. Not complaining it is one of my favourite games of all time. Timeless art

Great game and soundtrack. Deserves all the praise it gets.

@jump You make valid points but I still like E3.

The majority of gamers don't tune into the daily, or weekly gaming news and E3 is very useful for them. It's still one of the focal points of the gaming year to concentrate on and tune in for.

@Deliesh You raise an interesting point. I've struggled with a lot of tactical RPG's because almost ALL of them are slow and ponderous to start with while they teach you the mechanics (often for over 10-20 hours). Each one after that, once you know the basic mechanics, seems even slower as they go over ground you already know. It's a very frustrating problem i've found with the genre. (I had the same thing with FFT A2, Tactics Ogre LoCT, Mario Rabbids battle etc.)

I know that doesn't answer your question but what I would say is if you persevere beyond this, there is a wonderfully rich story with intrigue and great characters, i've played it through 3 or 4 times over the years and it still hits me.

For my part I should try A2 again which, for exactly your reasons, I couldn't get on with.

TOP 12

1. FF6
2. FF7
3. FF Tactics (yes i'm cheating, but if it makes one person play it...)
4. FF9
5. FF8
6. FF12
7. FF5
8. FF4
9. FF10
10. FF15
11. FF13
12. X-2

Never played: XI, XIII-2, LR: FF XIII or XIV

Top Characters:

• All the cast of FF6 (Terra, Celes, Edgar, Sabin, Locke etc.)
• Vivi
• Auron
• Delita & Ramza
• Aeris

This sounds amazing.

Was about to download it...

... it's only available on Android for now 😢

Oddly I never have an issue with Playstation X prompts but XBox -> Switch literally swapping button positions realyl gets me in QTE's or eqivlents.

I couldn't disagree more. Played them at the time of their release and fell off both games. I never finished either till years later, the first time that had happened since Zelda II. These have a few good ideas interspersed with tedium. But each to their own.

The design on that is DOPE! 100x better than the usual uninspired official designs

Just a shame it's WIRED!

@riChchestM I agree, most of these are NOT good discounts comparted to most games. However they are about in line with what Square always does.

@Ventilator 100% agree, so many half thought out ideas... the use of proprietary Memmory cards, and their cost, was heinous. The clunky proprietary charger was another, it took for the near end of life Slim model to just use USB. Considering how quickly the battery drained carrying it about was a must, but with it it didn't feel very portable!

BUT... when it was used just to play games it was glorious and that OLED screen, still wow! Once the games ran out I ended up jailbreaking mine and it is an almost perfect emu system. If it had a proper R2 and L2 I would still use it more today.

@Ventilator Nice link. One can only dream.
Remind me how much I loved the Vita. Shame it was never fully supported.

"Love letter"? Ha! That is just about the most flagrant clone I have seen yet down to the typography, icon design and... well everything.

Not that i'm complaining with Psygnosis/SCE Studio Liverpool defunct and Sony seemingly uninterested someone needs to pick up the baton on this seminal series.

Hopefully this is more Streets of Rage 4 than Starfox

@ModdedInkling "It wouldn't make sense for Nvidia to cease production ENTIRELY if the Switch is doing incredibly well."

Unless Nvidia knows something we don't... Plenty have suggested the Switch Pro may not be the super upgrade some want and more of a revision that just replaces the current model.

@Abweegee Well aware SNES didn't have an online store, they still made it a limited run. The price of Mario All-stars at the time was artificially inflated on the second hand market as a result due to forced scarcity.

Wii was less lucky, as a digital only release, you simply couldn't buy it any more. Yes the NES versions were there, but by that rationale why do we ever need remasters?

I’m responsible for at least 5 sales.
Knowing it was limited I gave it to all my nieces and nephews and a couple of friends for Christmas. Didn’t want them to miss out.

@Abweegee I’d love to believe there is a twist to this and it will very soon be back on the store. But Sadly Nintendo have history here. The original 2D Mario All Stars only had a limited run on SNES. It didn’t reappear for 16 years before another limited run on Wii!!!

@My_ultimate_is_ready Thanks. But yours moves (and is badass!) 😂

Big fan of Phil. He is always trying to lessen or remove the barriers between the big companies.

He's been an open advocate of cross-play between systems, vocal about the problem of exclusives and more complimentary of the 'competition' than any other head.

When Sony or Nintendo wins an award he often congratulates them personally online. And he's a real gamer. What's not to like. Stay classy Phil.

@blockfight "I think nostalgia plays a huge part in how a lot of these remakes are received."

I generally agree, but nostalgia doesn't always work.

I played, and loved, Links Awakening when it launched on GameBoy. And again on GBC. Then I bought it and played in on Switch. While I did make it to the end, I didn't really enjoy it. To me the gameplay hadn't aged well even if the graphics were new and shiny.

On the flip side I've been playing both Crash and Spyro for the first time and really enjoying both. Though they too have their old school mechanics moments of frustration too.

This is cool. I have a friend who is a bespoke cabinet maker, well out of my price range for now, but we have discussed one day making a display cabinet for all my old controllers and consoles dating back to the 80s.

One day... until then this is awesome and I can dream.

@sikthvash Sadly I think you are right. It's clear to anyone who played the Ultimate Ninja Storm games that CyberConnect2 cared - felt like a series of games by fans for fans.

Sadly this isn't the case with many of Bandai Namco's releases which feel far more like "least effort possible" licenced cash grabs.

Played but never finished Bravely Default. Enjoyed it at first but it got boring to me fast. The story was too slowly drip fed between long grindy sections and never quite hit home.

Always meant to go back, but never did.

I replayed Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess quite recently and thought Skyward Sword, like Wind Waker before it, had really stood the test of time and was even better than I remembered.

Twilight Princess on the other hand was a (relative) disappointment.

I'll be intrigued to see how people get on with the Skyward Sword Remaster and if they feel the same.

@KateGray " With just over 2 million sales worldwide since its 2017 release - take Breath of the Wild's 23 million sales as a comparison"... let's not do this please.

2 million is a GREAT number for a niche title like this, that should be celebrated, not compared to larger titles.

Regardless, thanks for the interesting article, might have finally tempted me to dip back in and get Torna!

@AnnoyingFrenzy “Economics 101: Price a product not at what it's worth, but at what people are willing to pay for it.”

But isn’t what people will pay for it exactly what it’s ‘worth’?

Money is a made up concept attributing a value, or worth, of one made up item (special paper, metal in a certain shape or numbers in a bank) to a product or service. If most people are willing to pay a certain value for it, then that is what it is ‘worth’.

Regardless of the semantics - for me, and many others it seems, the entertainment this will bring is well worth £50/$60 and exceptionally good value for the number of hours of joy it will bring.

I generally never pre-order but this is a known quantiy, plus Nintendo games hardly go down in price, and can be had for less if you shop around (£42.95 at Shopto.)

Well that has me hyped. Now to breathe and come back to reality.

As others have said, It's called a DEMO Reggie, remember those?
Do it by download or by game streaming.

@jamesthemagi Just to add to @Kyloctopus excellent point.

Retirement often doesn't mean no work. A part of retirement, if you are in a fortunate position like Reggie, is also getting out of the daily grind having worked hard for many years. Instead doing work as and you want or need. In Reggie's case it's mostly getting called into do the fun social events without having to put in the daily grind in between.

I thought this would be awful. I was dead wrong.
Too funny 😂

Fantastic game. Far more than the sum of it's parts.

@RasandeRose Hmmm. Did you actually read my post? I wasn't uplifting Stadia, quite the opposite in fact, I gave the reasons why it's failing.

What I did say is STREAMING has a future, but not the way Stadia currently does it.