themightyant

It’s a very safe list, but have they played some of those recently? They haven’t all aged well.

Totally agree with the top 2, they scratch slightly different itches. For a trancendental single player experience it’s hard to beat Tetris Effect, a perfect harmony of gameplay music and visuals. Pure synathesia. However once the campaign is done and you’ve hit euphoria it doesn’t quite have the addictive “just one more run” feeling on Gameboy Tetris which 35 years later is still video game crack

@WaveBoy @PluckyRicky Animal Well is a masterpiece. As is Return of the Obra Dinn. Two games that really stick with you. Both highly recommend.

@Bex_Tries That's amazing! And congratulations on the upcoming wedding. It's a lovely track....i'm listening to it now and am welling up... it will be perfect to walk down the aisle to. So heartfelt, and it has a few motifs, whether intentional or not, that evoke XC1's music. Absolutely adore it.

I'm like you, super slow and have to explore EVERYWHERE, it;s the only way to play. lol. I spent FAR too long grinding for everything to try and get all the blades, but failed. Maybe on that replay... but as you said too many games not enough time... but sometimes we want that comfort blanket game, and for me that's Xenoblade. NG+ speeds it up. It will happen one day. Best wishes for the wedding.

@Bex_Tries 100% I grew up on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest but Xenoblade has taken the #1 spot. Exploring these worlds and characters is incredible. And the music! Chefs kiss.

You put in 334 hours in XC2 did you get all the blades? I didn’t even after lots of grinding and eventually gave up after around 275 hours. It still irks a bit!

But other than that… I’m really feeling it!
Enjoy Torna, XC3 & X.

Just 14 games, 255 hours this year. Most played were:

• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 128 hours
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Torna) - 48 hours
• Metroid Prime Remastered - 29 hours.

But I only really played the Switch in 3 months of the year.

@Bex_Tries Xenoblade amazing isn’t it! I’ve put over 1,000 hours in on Wii, Wii U and now Switch. I still have Future Redeemed to play but then I’ve finished all the games, which makes me a little sad. (Might have to start again, just in time for X 😜)

I tried Deltarune 1&2 and was a bit underwhelmed. Might have to give it another shot before this surfaces

Not played many 2024 releases on Switch. It just finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and that was magical!

@Erigen Square-Enix have said several times that these HD-2D games are far more costly to make than people think.

Obviously still cheaper than FF7 Rebirth, but they aren’t low budget games, they still need to sell more than some think.

@Arawn93 Several people have told you it was not that easy for them, DESPITE doing all this, and yet you seem to be saying "I got it therefore it's easy" that's not how odds work. It was a pain for many, perhaps not for you, as you got her and other Blades, but perhaps consider many of us didn't. I am precisely aware of how to increase the odds and STILL didn't get her or a couple of other rare blades.

I never finished this. I can’t remember why I dropped it, it just got a bit repetitive before it (apparently) got really good. I always meant to go back but didn’t.

Loved my DS but Nintendo’s “most important console”? Not even close. NES and Gameboy sent more shockwaves through the industry and laid the groundwork for what home consoles and handhelds could achieve. N64 revolutionised 3D gaming and SNES library was hard to match until the Switch which has combined handheld and home console for the first time. I’d put the Nintendo DS’s importance behind all those.

Meanwhile almost all the features of the DS are now considered passé gimmicks that others, even Nintendo don’t integrate into their consoles. Dual screen? Gimmick. Stylus? Unnecessary. They even got the original design so wrong they had to replace it within a year and a half with the DS Lite which also had hardware issues with the hinge breaking.

The only reason to consider it is how much it sold, that’s it’s most important metric. At the end of the day the DS is still a great console but “most important”? Not even close

@Arawn93 That 60% requires 200 legendary cores, 999 luck and a some other stipulations which is a LOT of grinding. Moreover it's still just over a 1 in 2 chance. 40% you WON'T get her, or others and without those steps it's just a 0.4% chance which is right into gacha territory.

@Arawn93 I agree with most of your points that XC2 is gacha mechanics but without the worst part, MTX. But you clearly got incredible lucky with Kosmos and some other rare blades. Like @babybilly I spent over 250 hours in XC2 and still didn’t get Kosmos or two other rare blades it certainly didn’t take “5 minutes” even after reading guides and doing everything right. I spent dozens of additional hours grinding and still nothing, I eventually gave up. At that point I would have rather had the CHOICE to pay a small amount of money than waste more time. But In reality the RNG gacha mechanics are just bad and unnecessary in a game like this.

@Enigk Nice to hear some of you have had more success.

Mine’s drifted at least 4 times, after getting it fixed by Nintendo twice, I ended up just buying a repair kit and have repaired many of my friends and families too. It’s one of my biggest hopes for Swirch 2 that they fix the drifting sticks.

I’m honestly surprised drift is as low as 53%, even if that’s high, because I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had drift on at least one set of joy cons, most on multiple.

@HeadPirate that’s a well written post and I suspect that you may believe what you are stating is true, but even the most basic amount of research would prove it’s untrue.

The etymology of the word “Incel” (involuntary celibate) is from the late 1990s, it’s a new term, “far-right” was first used to refer to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, whereas “self-censorship” was first used in 1845 and has been used throughout history since. I’m not trying to give you a hard time either, but doubling down and saying you can trace the etymology of self-censorship to incels and the far-right is just utter nonsense. Do the research yourself. It’s 100% not true.

Its origins have little to do with the far right or anything you stated other than the fact they, or and any other fringe groups / movements, left or right, LGBTQ+ or anyone else perceived to be different or practising taboo may have to use self-censorship to protect themselves from complaints, persecution or hatred.

As do writers, artists, corporations and anyone else who is putting out creative works to prevent push back that can potentially overwhelm the discourse or lead to financial failure. This is something people and companies have had to deal with for almost two centuries. Incels just the last few decades.

This is a gaming forum, I come here to talk about games, but nonsense is nonsense. I have no time for BS and will call it out if I see it. I won’t be writing again here on this. All I ask you is to do your OWN research and check your own bias.

Everyone was mad that IGN gives most games a 7

Everyone now mad that IGN didn’t give this game a 7

@HeadPirate Self-censorship is LITERALLY a word in the dictionary and has got nothing to do with incels, sorry that's just nonsense. It is linked to 'censorship' except you are doing it to your own work.

I didn't mention why the developers removed it for the West, to my knowledge they haven't told us specifically. (Though in the case of sexualising a 13 year old it's pretty clear, and correct, imo)

Regardless I'm excited for Xenoblade Chronicles X I put in 250+ hours on the Wii U and will do it again, boob slider or not.

@HeadPirate good post on the whole but you are wrong that this isn’t censorship. Censorship doesn’t have to be from a government or pressure group, here this is what is called self censorship.

Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own content. This is done out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities or preferences (actual or perceived) of others and without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority.

For this game specifically I don’t care as the two main changes were removing a skimpy bikini “armour” from a 13 years old girl, and removal of a boob slider, neither changed the quality of the game at all, Meanwhile the western release had added content, it’s the fuller version.

Need to take another stab at Chapter 1&2 some time, struggled to get into those.

@xenobladexfan I thought my 250+ hours was excessive but 400+ damn! Will also be putting in a lot more. Love this world.

@xenobladexfan Username checks out!

Looking forward to this!

@Twilite9 Ounce is also abbreviated to Oz which is related to the Wizard of…. Which means Switch 2 is going to be called the Nintendo Wizard 😂

@AstroTheGamosian As @RR529 said it’s very odd to compare current mid-life PS5 sales with other end of life PlayStation sales numbers. PS5 is tracking just behind PS4 sales when launch aligned (which sold 117+ million units) mostly due to early supply issues. It’s actually selling more per month on average now than PS4 was at the same time. That said PS4 Pro gave PS4 a small spike, so it will be Interesting to see if the long rumoured PS5 Pro does the same. Either way it’s easily tracking at well over 100 million lifetimes sales which is a massive success story for any home console.

@SillyG it’s pretty simple. DVDs still outsell Blu-Rays. Other than enthusiasts most people don’t have a Blu-Ray player, as digital/streaming took over, or THINK they don’t have one (not realising consoles might double up as one)

Ironic that is would break Google’s policies but they are perfectly happy harvesting all our data themselves.

I mean I still have a backlog on the NES but I am happy we moved on. I have plenty of games to play on EVERY console I own but I still want the next gen (and BOTW + TOTK at 60fps... any other upgrades are a bonus)

He’s dead Jim! (I’m fine with this.)

Choice is almost always good. But a good game is better.

First game was great. Thought i'd just "give it a go" on game pass due to good reviews and ended up going down the rabbit hole.

@RobotReptile wants even more maddening is that Roll7 only had around 60 employees, as of late last year, at a burn rate of about £10,000 - £15,000 per employee per month that means they only needed around £600,000 - £900,000 a month to keep the doors open. £7.2 - £10.8million per year. And meanwhile the top two increased their own salaries by around $29 million ($36m USD). It’s sickening. Roll7 never made a mid game.

Bloody shameful. Even more so when you hear CEO Strauss Zelnik and the chairman doubled their salaries last year and doom home $72.3 million in 2023. Scumbags

I played this back in the day but can only imagine it has aged like milk

Absolutely depends on the game. Some are more about the journey and gameplay. Others are more about the story and destination.

Depends on the game. There are those you finish and are done with, I’ll sell those and someone else can enjoy them instead of just sitting there gathering dust. But others I want to keep forever.

Occasionally I will sell a game I enjoyed shortly after launch if the price is still high and rebuy a few years down the line, often digitally in a sale. But that’s more on other platforms, Nintendo doesn’t do large discounts on their games.

The demo itself was good, but a bit slow. However there was enough in the demo to show that the game could be very special.

@aaronsullivan @Solomon_Rambling @HeftyLaces It is funny to look back, but I don’t think it was JUST that people felt salty because of the Wii U. You have to remember third party support was at an all time low for Nintendo on Wii U. Many large publishers weren’t making or porting their games to Nintendo at that time and even smaller devs seemed to be focusing on PC, Xbox & PlayStation.

That all changed with Switch, not only did major publishers start making unique games for Switch, they also started porting their games over. Playing things like Minecraft, Skyrim, Witcher on the go was a game changer.

Add to that it became the de facto place indies would publish on console often releasing before other platforms (e.g. Hollow Knight, Hades etc).

It always comes back to games, and developers supported the switch in great numbers.

I’m not ashamed to say I got this so wrong. Having been burned on the WiiU I didn’t see the full potential of the Switch at first. While I thought it would do better than WiiU I didn’t think it would be the juggernaut it was.

To be fair part of that was based on third party support which was truly awful on WiiU, I thought Nintendo had burned their bridges there. But in the first year of Switch devs supported it massively. It become THE place where indies published, often first on console. (E.g. Hollow Knight, Hades) and third parties like Ubisoft were making exclusive games for it. Quite the turnaround.

Additionally the first Switch trailer featured silly things that seemed like a stretch, like taking the console to a rooftop party, detaching the joycons to play coop several feet away from the tiny screen. Who has ever done that? lol

@sanderev true windows runs slow off a micro SD but that is a niche case. A few games too, but most are within touching distance of internal SSD. It isn’t the massive advantage many thought it would be.

@sanderev MicroSD is only a little slower than NVME on Steam Deck when playing games as the APU bottle necks the lanes. The nvme runs much slower in reality than on spec sheets.

The only times it has a really noticeable advantage (i.e. without using a stop watch) is when transferring files across or in a few specific games. In most game load times are within around 20% of each other.

@Serpenterror the only problem with using full SSD is if games are designed around that speed then additional storage gets expensive if you need a 2230 m.2 nvme.

Unless they deliberately run it slower (/bottle neck) like in Steam Deck so high speed Micro SD cards can compete. UHS is up to 624MB/s

EDIT e.g. According to Valve, “the 64GB eMMC loads games 12.5% slower compared to the 512GB NVMe SSD*. For boot speeds, the former is 25% slower than the latter”. Third party testing shows Micro SD is somewhere in the middle and the difference is usually negligible

@MeloMan Standard rule of storage buying is find the largest capacity you want to pay for/think you will need and at least double it. Time will thank you!

@sanderev m.2 SSD would make it much larger and more expensive to upgrade than Micro SD. And the m.2 on the Steam Deck is virtually the same speed as the Micro SD slot. Granted it's faster on things like ROG ally.

Depends on the system resolution and how much storage a game takes up. Even TotK was only around 19GB and that was large. But around 128/256gb minimum + a micro SD slot.

You can buy a high quality 256GB Micro SD for £15.

Personally I liked it, FAR better than the usual ignoring of luminaries long service. Seems they can’t win

Sounds right up my alley. But I have to get to Case of the Golden Idol first.

Honestly I expected this to be more... Considering P5 has been released across 3 console generations on almost every platform available, with a handful of spin-offs, and across around 20+ separate releases. Still great numbers, just thought it might be higher.

What a year it has been for Nintendo! New games for Zelda, Mario, Pikmin, Fire Emblem, Bayonetta, etc. Remasters/remakes for Metroid, Mario RPG and Advance Wars. DLC for Pokemon, Mario Kart, Xenoblade Chronicles and Splatoon. Plus the Mario movie breaking records. Console sales continuning to compete with next-gen despite it's age/power, and hitting 130+ million units. Incredible.

EDIT: As for most played... TotK with a staggering 305 hours.

@Rykdrew Yes our side matters. But I'd argue that a strong Nintendo IS good for us gamers. I'm not sure Game Pass will help them. Short term maybe it's good for Nintendo only players, but is it good long term? I'm not so sure.

Choice is generally good. But I don't think having Game Pass on Switch will do Nintendo any favours, i'd expect it to cannibalise some sales. Despite all the grief it seems to be getting above it's a good service, that will likely only get better with all their recent acquisitions regardless of whether you like it or not.