Comments 367

Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs

valcoholic

The one thing, that is just always so, so wrong is that while 100 people lose their jobs abd are thrown into a sudden state of existential crisis, the ones responsible still go to work, won‘t be held responsible and in a few months this might only remain an uncomfortable afterthought.

I will never understand how we ever could make that happen.

Re: Poll: What's The Best Prince Of Persia Game? Rate Your Favourites For Our Upcoming Ranking

valcoholic

I liked the absolutely first one on a friends superold computer from 100years ago but back then, this felt absolutely thrilling, clever and fresh.
From all the Ubi Soft PoPs the only I liked was the first one, Sands of Time as it was pretty cool when it came out. But the fighting never clicked with me and felt like they forced it into the game to stop me from progressing through the nice leveldesigns. So when Warrior Within came out, it ended up being my last PoP game as it had way more focus on fighting and became pretty frustrating for me.

Re: Review: Blast Corps - An Absurd, Exhilarating, Explosive Gem From Rare's N64 Days

valcoholic

I bought the game in the 90ies for the N64 and played through it and today with Switch controls, better resolution and better framerate, its even better.
BUT I might still have counted one point away for the camera. Maybe some do like this but looking for RNUs and stuff when you can only look down from a very limited angle can be pretty tedious and frustrating and ends in crawling through empty landscapes ... like a lot. Especially when you search for stuff that you know is hidden somewhere.

Re: New SteamWorld Game Sales Fell "Slightly Short" Of Thunderful's Expectations

valcoholic

I felt ore intrigued to buy that one over Quest. And I don't believe Quest is a bad game, it just wasn't for me. I'm usually not a huge sim guy (thats why I haven't bought it yet) but in some rare cases like Popoplous 3, Evil Genius, Dungeon Keeper or the new infamous Sim City (ok not so new anymore) they can completely drag me in.
Like with most Steamworld Games, it might all be depending on when they're going on sale and if I'm liquid at that time.

Re: Review: Blast Corps - An Absurd, Exhilarating, Explosive Gem From Rare's N64 Days

valcoholic

Blast Corps is a throwback to a time, when even big releases didn't dare to try out really new stuff that would be too much of a risk today.

I mean then again, the bandwidth of studios and offerings is way bigger now and that ~10 person team at rare that created Blast Corps might not be comparable to today's AAA teams. Still or maybe exactly because of that it was a great time to be alive.

Re: Talking Point: If 'Switch 2' Isn't Coming Until 2025, What's Nintendo Got Up Its Sleeve This Year?

valcoholic

I wasn't a huge fan of Twilight Princess on the Wii, but I might play it again on my Switch after I skipped the remaster on WiiU and now sorta regret it.

Generally expect ports, ports, ports, because they cause no harm.
But ports on the Switch still have the advantage, that they aren't just better visuals but also portable which still is an incredibly great incentive with some like Metroid Prime.

Re: Dead Cells Lead Designer Isn't Happy With "Abrupt" Decision To End Development

valcoholic

of course a dev doesn't like that something he put all his heart in gets brought to bed, for busines' sake. Its the same controversity between sales people and content creators. But I understand that a company can't lean to heavily onto a single brand or a single iteration of a brand. This can be quite risky and I don't believe Dead Cells has huge momentum left to milk from.

Re: Embracer Group Lays Off 97 Staff, Axes Next Deus Ex Game

valcoholic

current developments in videogames are very pessimistic. bigger and bigger corps swallowing franchises and then killing them off for good while consoles are developing towards extinction.

I'm still sorta optimistic that its gonna work out in a way. Like Jeff Goldblum would say "Gaming erm ... finds a way".
I guess at some point the big corpos are gonna implode with the tendency of indies gaining a new audience on markets not lucrative enough for the big players. Then later big players might get back at the companys that rise from that indie-wave, but first, everything might have to escalate. Maybe Microsoft is gonna be in a good position with their subscriptionservice and swallowed companies. Maybe not. Who knows if they're actually turning Gamepass into profit. But right now consoles like the PS5 might not see more than two generations it seems.

I KNOW this has been said since the PS3 but right now we're finally at a turningpoint where I can't see classic consoles are recovering that fast.

Not sure though if this applys to the Switch as its truly a hybrid between classic console and something special.
And like always these apocalyptic prophecies always lean on a current state of the industry so just like 10 or 15 years ago I can't foresee all the developments that are gonna happen until the PS7 generation but as development for the PS5-gen is already way too elaborate while offering barely anything worth the hassle. And this is gonna explode with every future console generation again and again.

Re: Princess Peach: Showtime! Trailer Reveals Ninja Peach And Cowgirl Peach

valcoholic

The biggest takeaway here is:

This is what happens, when a Nintendoconsole is that successful. They have room for just throwing out weirdos like this.

On the WiiU, they also did some of these, but it always felt completely wrong as we were hoping they'd gonna show the world now what the WiiU was capable of and then they announced some weird little mini game (can't really remember them but I remember some directs where I felt exactly like this)
On the Switch, this is perfectly fine as there is so much stuff to chose from, I couldn't complain.

Re: Peach's Voice Actor Confirms She Is Still The Princess In New Switch Game

valcoholic

been with friends and their 6yr old boy to the Mario movie. He loves Bowser (like obsessed love) and when Peach tricked Bowser into marrying him to do her secret strike, he ran out of the cinema crying. How vile must someone be to play such an evil trick on someone who clearly loves you!!!

Not sure if he's ever gonna play this game to eventually come to terms with her, but I gotta say his argumentation surely had an impact on my view on Peach!

Re: Metroid Prime 4 Development Updates Seemingly Discovered

valcoholic

Now I'm really wondering what they're about to do.
With the Switch coming to an end of its lifecycle, they should announce this game right now otherwise it's gonna release after the S2 is already announced and people will have moved on at least in their mindset. But the user base couldn't be better for a Metroid game.
If they'd decide to bring it for the S2, they should wait at least another year until there is a user base of at least 10 Mio units as Metroid isn't such a great selling franchise and shouldn't be released in a console's early lifecycle.

One possible scenario could be that they bring it as a S2 launch game, but plan it as a new trilogy, calculating that people will later on keep buying this new one if the others are successful. This would be my dream scenario as it would mean they wouldn't have to care too much about the user base of the S2, it would mean it would be a pretty solid and obviously refined launch game and it would mean that there was already more in the works.

Well...
A MAN CAN DREAM.

Re: Review: Outer Wilds (Switch) - A Sublime Spacewalk That Stutters Can't Spoil

valcoholic

@Everyone:
Outer Wilds is very high ranked among the best games I've ever played. The biggest problem is, that every piece of information, people get about that, spoils something. When I got into that game, I just saw a few screenshots and understood theres something with a timeloop and nice visuals. But I didn't have any concept of how unbelievably great my time with this game could eventually turn out. If anyone ever missed exploration in any game, then OW delivers nothing but that. This game isn't great action, platforming or smart riddles. Its just what happens when you decide to push the sheer exploration aspect as high as possible. And what has to be done to provide that. Like creating a whole galaxy with believable dynamics within an actually working timeloop that comes with so many great things to explore. Not just on certain spots in space, but also in time. Kotaku ranked this on #1 of the most important games of the past decade (the then past decade a few years back) and I totally agree. This game is an absolute masterpiece. Many people won't like it as its just not everyone's cup of tea, but those who are into it, are gonna love it.

You might also hop over at backloggd.com as this game is just one of the most celebrated ones, sitting at 4.6 rating out of 5
https://backloggd.com/games/outer-wilds/

Re: F-Zero 99 Update (Version 1.1.0) Adding New "Classic Race" Mode This Week

valcoholic

most people play oit and bounce off pretty quickly. For me it was a bit like a slot machine, its too much going on. Remembered me of 20yrs ago playing Quake 3 Arena with the most wicked mods activated when people would just have 1hizt death and unlimited rocket launchers. This degree of madness can be entertaining and I guess some can really get into this bullethell-approach to racing games. But most won't spend too much time with it.

Re: Soapbox: 'Switch 2' Doesn't Really Need Backwards Compatibility

valcoholic

If S2 woudln't be backwards compatible, it might take way longer for me to upgrade as I still have enough stuff to do on my Switch and not that much budget to just buy a new console plus starting a whole new library just like that.
And I guess I'm not alone in this boat.

The "problem" is that the Switch is just like the greatest thing, my 40yr old console gamer heart has ever experienced and I remember jumping from PS3 to PS4 and not really feeling this crazy change of paradigms that I did with previous generation-leaps. Nintendo might have some other nice thigs added to the S2, there will be a camera now and so on, but in the end, most game will just play the same. Silksong might release for both generations in any case and we might all agree that it be the exactly same experience on both devices. So the only reason to upgrade will be bigger AAA titles but even those might take a while to build up a library worth upgrading to.

So please. Just please stick with the same architecture (don't see why they should change that. Switch is running on ARM and there is now sign of them switching to anything else.)
At some point S2 would end up being a tiny portable console with one of the biggest gaming libraries of all time.

Re: Review: F-Zero 99 - A Brilliant Battle-Royale Revival That Plays To The Series' Strengths

valcoholic

Negative:

  • I feel a bit like most races are pretty similar a wicked chaos of a zillion samey vehicles and in the end someone accidentally wins.
  • I would really have loved them to have a more sophisticated vehicle selection like F-Zero X/GX had to have a better variety among the racers. Playing against rivals doesn't really work when they all look the same. I wanna race and recognize that one enemy I have to defeat.
  • I played some races and each and every time people voted for Mute City. Maybe it was an insider joke to always do this but even the fact that its always a choice between Mute City and some random track was weird. In the end I know later tracks would be crazy hard with zillion opponents so I was always slightly relieved about Mute City but still never voted for it to see more of the game.

But of corse theres a lot of positive stuff to say about this, but I'll leave that to reviewers and comments

Re: Rumour: 'Switch 2' Gamescom Demo Supposedly Had Zelda: BOTW Running At 4K 60FPS

valcoholic

Not sure how anyone would doubt that a Switch successor would be able to run a game that uses an engine which was originally optimized for the WiiU (which launched in 2012 ...) and came out in 2017 on a system that didn't even have the newest chips at that time. I'd be freaking disappointed if S2 couldn't handle this.

I doubt Nintendo will invest more than necessary and get the newest processors and all that jazz. They surely will go for something that still has the best ROI for them but even a smartphone from 2019 should be able to accomplish that.

Gotta say I still don't need 4K and am absolutely happy about everything that just runs at steady 1080p, especially if 60fps. But then again if they would manage to really make everything run at 4K, it might be a nice incentive to sooner or later just get me a new TV one day. But right now I don't even hope for that as I'm pretty happy with my old one.

Re: Nintendo Reportedly Showed 'Switch 2' Demos To Developers At Gamescom

valcoholic

PLUS:
Studios took a year or so to gain enough trust in Nintendo to really jump on the Switch train.
If Nintendo would now really create a straight successor to the already working Switch concept, imagine how developers would be on bord from day 1. This would really be freaking crazy. Very exiting times, once again. I thought about getting a PS5 one day, but I don't really think I'll ever see a reason to really do so and the S2 might really shape that fate.

Re: Nintendo Reportedly Showed 'Switch 2' Demos To Developers At Gamescom

valcoholic

After the WiiU, I just love how Nintendo was able to really squeeze everything out of the Switch and Tears of the Kingdom proved that there might really be no limits if your devs are just really into optimizing the hell out of their game.
I never bought a console with so much ROI in entertainment for me. I LOVED every year they sticked with it although people were claiming like 3 years ago that Nintendo would be doomed if they wouldn't immediately bring out a S2 or Spro as the Switch couldn't handle ANYTHING anymore. Ever since I completely ignored my PS4 to just play Switch 95% of the time.

STILL.
Even I have to say, I'm ready to move on. Then again, I remember how underwhelming the move from PS3 to PS4 was and ask myself how Mario Kart would be any better on a new Switch as they just did freaking everything already in MK8. But still, we had an amazing time and the worst thing Nintendo could do would be not making it backwards compatible.

Re: Nintendo Doesn't Plan To Announce Mario's New Voice Actor Ahead Of Wonder's Release

valcoholic

Charles Martinet was an external guy who happened to voice a character, like many other people out there. In Martinet's case, his persona blew up more than Nintendo felt comfortable with and there is a risk with someone like him, doing stuff Nintendo can't control. Keeping the ball low with the new one is understandable from a company standpoint, but now acting like this, is still a bit of a weird decision, as the focus of the community is now absolutely laser-focused on Mario Wonders credits. If they would just let that actor sign a ton of NDAs and reveal his name, press would try their luck for a while and eventually let go after he said "I can't answer that question" for the 1000th time.
Now, Nintendo has opened a scavenger hunt, which again is not as controllable as complete disclosure or just a huge celebrated reveal.

Re: Nintendo Switch Is Not "Technically Capable" Of Running Call Of Duty Games, Says CMA

valcoholic

Whenever someone says the Switch isn't capable, they actually mean they just don't wanna invest in making it compatible.

There are some very great and complex games running on the Switch, quite a few ported from systems like PS4 and while they do make cuts in visuals and presentation, the games usually remain pretty fine. No Man's Sky for instance is just crazy on the Switch. But then again, people play NMS for the sheer experience of travelling from planet to planet and managing resources. Not for story-cutscenes, immersive scripted elements and realism. After these are key elements to COD players, its clear they can't just downgrade COD to be playable on a Switch.

I personally do ask myself, if a game needs certain hardware to be fun, what does this say about the game itself?

Re: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom "Hands On" Performance & Resolution Detailed

valcoholic

@sleepinglion they never will. It's their main business concept. They need to turn a profit with every console sold and I believe the WiiU was an exception here and look how that worked out for them. They will always stick to using cheaper hardware to gain profits. It's like saying "I wish they wouldn't do so many family games" which, again, is just one of their core principles that make them stand out. I am definitely happy that the Switch sold so well, that at least its among the main hubs for third parties. This was never so strong before and while others hoped for more adult games and better tech, I hoped for more third party integration.

Re: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Version 2.3.0) Character & Vehicle Performance Balance Changes Revealed

valcoholic

@MatoFilipovic
agree. All people waiting for MK9 shouldn't hold their breath. MK8 is just such an ongoing brilliant package. While the DLC-tracks mostly can't compete with the stock tracks, its still one hell of an amazing package, never seen before in any Nintendo franchise.
Smash might be close to this in some regards, but I believe new racing tracks a bigger game changes than new fighters.
And considering I bought MK8 originally for the WiiU in ay 2014, this will be nearly 10 years old once all tracks got released and I guess its gonna take another 3-5 years to really have a reason to develop a completely new game as the sales momentum won't deccrease enough for years and years to come.
What a legend!

Re: Random: Shigeru Miyamoto Comments On What Nintendo Will Be Like Without Him

valcoholic

Old designers VS young demands is always a talking point. I can imagine that some people prefer more modern approaches to games and while appreciating tha groundwork, Miyamoto did, want Nintendo to do more Splatoon-kind of steps more often.

Maybe bc I'm quite old myself, but I can still appreciate old designers holding things together when yound ones try to break as many conventions as possible. The healthiest thing there is would always be a harmonic mix of both. As someone who loved Mario's Odyssey (I know not all did) I believe its a good example of some Miyamoto conventions overseeing something that tries to break conventions wherever they can.

Until Skyward Sword it really felt like the Zelda franchise was stuck in a designlimbo but they too managed to completely reinvent the whole franchise.

Re: Best Star Fox Games Of All Time

valcoholic

@Stocksy
I never cared that much about the entire franchise, BUT as someone who remembers the hype of SF64 and the impact it had, I totally get why some people would love to see Nintendo putting such a focus on that franchise once again like they do with Mario and Zelda.
Ever since they most of the time came up with comparably mediocre, outsources projects. Playing No Man's Sky on the Switch, it still feels like there would be room to create something special here. And no I don't mean NMS with Star Fox, just saying that playing a spacegame on a portable system feels so awesome and today's engines allow you to fly from planets surface into space to another planet. Stuff like that must be interesting for a game like Starfox, right?

But well, I'm also to this day shocked that of all studios, Platinum didn't manage to create that one overkill Starfox game. But I'd love to try Zero out one day.

Re: Best Star Fox Games Of All Time

valcoholic

@romanista
Maybe its just a matter of getting used to it, i don't know. As that Lylat system isn't pointed out enough for me to have such a carrying role, it just feels weird. A bit like calling a Mainline Zelda game HYRULE WARS.
I can understand that Starfox 64 especially today feels way dumber, but back in the 90ies, having all those franchises with a 64 at the end felt like the consistent thing to do, at least in the console's first days.
Lylat just never sounded very elegant to me and you never have any relationship to that name. And knowing they just couldn't call it Starfox due to legal rights didn't help.

Re: Ubisoft Bringing Reboot Of Classic RTS 'The Settlers' To Switch Next Month

valcoholic

@NinjaNicky There have been a ton of attempts to move strategy over to consoles, some more, some less successful. The more complex and PC-like the interfece gets, the smaller the chances its gonna work, so its gonna have to do with that one aspect. One of the first interesting game to delve into this was Sacrifice from Shiny, which was basically a 3D actiongame but let you strategically control your units. Pikmin brought this onto a whole new level, Halo Wars was supposed to be pretty decent and is notoriously known for investing a ton of resources in making the best strategy experience possible on consoles. But of course there have been a lot of failures. I believe Command & Conquer on consoles never really took off in any way.