Comments 367

Re: Thunderful Games Teasing New SteamWorld Announcement

valcoholic

Dig2 felt like an actually Nintendo developed Metroidvania. It was so polished, well designed and they put so much love into it. Wonderful playthrough!
Although I love roundbased stuff like Heist, I didn't really dig (!) it that much. It also was crafted with love which kept me goig, but somehow it felt like it would never end which is never a great sign. Yet at least I finished it but I gues I wouldn't play another game.

Re: Deals: Nintendo Offers Up To 86% Discounts In Critically Acclaimed Partner Sale (US)

valcoholic

Hollow sh*t!
some deals are like insults.
People who never played Celeste and still don't buy it for 5 bucks obviously hate gaming, mankind and pizza.

Hollow Knight and Hades also almost hurt. And the fact that all of them together will cost you just 25 bucks is just a cry for attention from those devs bleeding hearts. How can gamers just be so cruel and let this slip? I wish I'd live in the states. I wish I wouldn't already own these gems.

Re: Microsoft Enters "10-Year Commitment To Bring Call Of Duty To Nintendo"

valcoholic

This is absolutely crazy news.
It's already crazy when CoD is tried out to be released on the Switch with one game. But a ten year commitment is maybe among the biggest steps of Nintendo breaking into the PSXBOX Mainstream space ever.

Not saying I'm gonna play a single second but I can imagine that MS might see the Switch and its logical successors as the portable expansion of the XBox as they don't have intentions to create something on their own. So after they already tested the waters with games like Ori and Minecraft, they might be there to stay. And sure, it might be a great alliance against Sony. Spencer already dreamed about Gamepass on Switch one or two years ago, so we can only be curious about the things to come next.

Re: Reggie Fils-Aimé Returns To The Game Awards As A Presenter

valcoholic

@johnvboy sure, but at least at, say, the golden globes, he wouldn't feel as misplaced. In this case its more like Geoff yelling "WE GOT DANIEL CRAIG" and some producer whispering to his coworker "yes...but WHY"

But then again I can at least appreciate Keighley's efforts to open videogames up to audiences who wouldn't be interested and might just raise their eyebrows. Still, in the end its a bit unnecessary ... but same could be said about the whole game awards from a core gamer perspective.

Re: New 'Mythical Wishes' Season Announced For Pokémon GO

valcoholic

This trailer feels like some kid took a bunch of stockvideos of people holding smartphones, editing pokemon into the scene and, most of all, adding some inspirational epic stock-music that couldn't sound more generic. As if they would make fun of these kinds of videos. And maybe its because I haven't played Pokemon Go ever since its first wave of adaptors like me shelved it, but after watching this I got no clue what's new about it.

Re: Best Wii U Games

valcoholic

Just came to check if Affordable Space Adventures is among these. its among the most original games on that console that really makes use of the concept in the best possible way.

To this day, the WiiU is mainly a machine to play Nintendoland. Its amazing how underrated this game is. There is barely anything out there, offering such a great asynchronous multiplayer experience. Like one player runs with a sword on one screen and the other one is shooting bows on the other. Everything with motion controls and superaccessible. My kids really love that. And we haven't even made it far yet although we play this for years but its really more like an arcade where we would just play the forst levels over and over. It has really become one of the greatest games inour household, at least for the family. It also offers so damn many cool experiences, like that DK-cart-thing. Its so much fun to just let one play and see how far they'll gonna get.

Re: Mini Review: Windosill - A Cult Classic Puzzler Gets A Dreamy Switch Port

valcoholic

I bought this game on iOS a few weeks ago, after I saw it mentioned ... I believe from the creator of the absolutely amazing Switch game Galaxy Noir. Didn't know Windowsill but it seems to have made some impact in the motiondesign-community as it did some things that were quite fresh back then. I mean it still is.
Haven't finished it yet, but it feels as if it might be very short. I guess it might still be a game that feels more at home on a smartphone, but of course it might be a good thing to have on a Switch too.

Re: Warp Drive Brings F-Zero-Style Racing With Cel Shaded Visuals To Switch Next Month

valcoholic

@KayFiOS yeah; I have FAST on the WiiU and always put it in the Extreme-G drawer. It doesn't really have gadgets, but I'm wondering why noone ever tried to do a future-racer with 30 vehicles. The sense of speed is just greatly emphasized when being in this crowd of vehicles, doing crazy jumps and slides. It really is a shame they don't do a new one, on the one hand, GX is barely necessary to improve on (butthen do an HD remake goddammit) but then again, advanced physics, new tech and something like an online championship could really do something good here. And with the Switchs install base it would easily sell a million copies. I mean Metroid Dread sold what ... 4-5 Million?

Re: Warp Drive Brings F-Zero-Style Racing With Cel Shaded Visuals To Switch Next Month

valcoholic

Can people please stop comparing every future racer with F-Zero?
There are futureracers like WipeOut, Redout, Extreme-G and what not which basically are Mario Kart style games in future and more mature settings. And there is F-Zero, a concept that noone ever tried ... or DARED to copy. The feeling of racing against 29 opponents and the only tool you got is your skill combined with airplane-fast speeds that let most futureracers look pretty slow in comparison (which is OK for most, WipeOut doesn't need to be faster than F-Zero)

This again, really looks more like Mario Kart than FZero.

Re: Critically Acclaimed 'Inscryption' Draws December Release Date On Switch

valcoholic

@NintendoLife:
SORRY, but you can't do "Card'nt wait". My inner mouth just broke. I do understand that you need to do a pun, but jesus, you put our vocal health at risk.

About Inscryption: I'm not into cardgames at all but when an indie game is just hyped by all the right folks out there I feel like I just have to buy it and expect it to just be great. I wasn't into top down roguelikes but just bought Hades following these ... voices. And of course its now among my favorite games of the past decade. So I guess at some point I'll just gonna get this.

Re: UK Charts: Mario Kart Speeds Back Into Third Place In A Strong Week For Nintendo

valcoholic

Honestly its a shame that No Man's Sky isn't among these games. Sure, it might be a port but its maybe the best port I've seen on the Switch and I do own Witcher 3 as well as XCom 2.
Its hard to describe how much value NMS offers these days. It is often very grindy which is OK as an Animal Crossing player, but it also keeps surprising me how much great content there is to be found and how cool some of the things are, that were never a base thing of the game when it came out in 2016. Like dogfights with pirate ships are serious fun, the complexity of what you can do in terms of base building, the exploration aspect, the alien races and your standing, the ways to upgrade your ship, you can have pet-animals and even build a soundsequencing machine and can stream your edited tracks into your boardcomputer to play while flying .... jesus. I'm nearly 30 hours in and still feel like I start to understand certain things in this game. I just wish it sells well enough on the switch so Hello Games wouldn't drop the support.
I'm really surprised how this grows to become my personal game of the year. And the tech side ... I mean Nintendo Life got invited early to test it prelaunch and they were completely blown away how great this runs. And it does.
It makes exactly the cuts it needs while looking like it should. Of course stuff pops in but all in all, it never goes slow, it always delivers a very consistent visual experience and most of the time manages to outshine most Switch games to a point where you're on certain spacestations doublechecking if that really isn't a PS4 game.

Only grain of salt: you can't map the controls and they happen to be optimized .... for anything but a Switch controller, but after a while thats OK. Go and get No Man's Sky. So I get my future Updates. Thank you.
[edit] OK saw its multiplatform, so no wonder a game like NMS ain't there when even B3 dropped out. Still: Get NMS on Switch. Its great.

Re: Talking Point: Which Scary Video Game Moments Gave You Nightmares As A Kid?

valcoholic

Played Resident EVil 4 with a friend with lights out, we were exploring some cellar-dungeon sort of environment and at some point heard something breathing weird close by but I didn't spend too much attention until I turned around and there stands a Regenerador like an armlength away with his mouth wide open, preparing to bite. We both yelled as loud as we could and I hysterically tried to escape when of course that meelee-QTE already was triggered.
After we somehow got away (or died, can't remember) we laughed our asses off and to this day, like 18 years or so later, we would think back of that scene. I wouldn't even say that I usually think RE is what I understand under actual scary horror, but that moment was just priceless. [Edit] haha just scrolled through the comments to find out I'm not alone with that experience

Re: The Nintendo 64 Platformer Glover Is Coming Soon To Switch

valcoholic

Its not on NSO because devs don't just decide to throw stuff on NSO. Nintendo is preparing each and every entry there themselves. Nintendo doesn't have an infrastructure like Netflix where they would let studios do their thing and put it on NSO. That would surely be nice, but for that, NSO would have to be a more serious, bigger project that would also cost more.

Re: Talking Point: The Mummy Demastered - Has A Better Game Ever Come From A Worse Movie?

valcoholic

really interesting thing. Imean how really cae this to be. Was this studio just somehow getting that license and thinking they're gonna put everything on that card no matter what, ending up just being shocked about how bad the movie was received and later ending up being shocked about how well their own game was received and maybe even reading this article .... shocked ...?
I mean thats how I'd feel haha

Re: Bayonetta's OG Voice Actor Responds To Online Backlash In Ongoing Dispute

valcoholic

I personally do agree that they still underpay this. I understand some people think its still a lot of money, but Bayonetta just really has the scale of a mid Hollywood production and the Voice Actor of such a charismatic character is just very comparable to an Actor. On the one hand, an actor still contriutes more to a movie but on the other hand, a videogame might end up having more hours of spoken dialogue.

And even if you take some factors into account, her salary could easily have 6 zeroes which would still be a fracture of what an actual actor would get in HW productions.
There are some things that just went plain wrong here. Her way of handling this, PG's way of response and of course the community who just are happy if they can tear apart something.

Bottom line: I believe this is the very first time I observed salary negotiations happening over twitter through a crowd of thousands and thousands of fans resulting in them actually offering more cash in the end.

Re: New Bayonetta 3 Footage Shines A Light On Demon Masquerade, Viola, And More

valcoholic

@Arkay whats weird to me is that other racers never really tried to copy FZero. Other future racers usually always go the same path as WipeOut. More obstacles, tracks that feel more like playing an action level, enemies with weapons, less speed and less racers. I mean for one or two franchises thats fine, but even new entries like FAST Racing or Redout are just no real replacement for the crazy dynamic of bolting along with 29 other racers. It is crazy how unique it feels to just play FZero X on NSO, like 25 years after launch. What a crazy achievement in gamedesign!

Re: New Bayonetta 3 Footage Shines A Light On Demon Masquerade, Viola, And More

valcoholic

@Arkay Two problems with FZero: 1 Nintendo argues that they would have to come up with something that lets it stand out of the past entries. 2 FZero and Future Racers in general aren't selling so great.

I personally believe that even if they don't sell well, among those 100 Mio switch players out there are enough to at least justify an HD remake of GX.
But on the other hand, GX and X both aged pretty well and are still a lot of fun today. Its not like other IPs where its better to play just a newer game as their formula has been improved over the years. FZero remains FZero.

Re: Feature: Nintendo eShop Selects - September 2022

valcoholic

@GrowingWings as someone who only knows the old games so far, I do understand how they work and who they are for.
Basically Monkey Island is a series for fans of ... exactly this, Monkey Island. I would assume, that if someone likes stuff like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Terry Pratchett or Monty Pythons, then Monkey Island could be a nice franchise for him/her.
Back in the days this was a pretty big game, today, point and click adventures have become quite a niche. Not the smallest one, but still. In any case, the remakes of the old games can be purchased fairly cheap and could just be solved with a walkthrough, they aren't that long but that would be an ok way to catch up. A lets play might be a bit boring.

Re: Feature: Nintendo eShop Selects - September 2022

valcoholic

way too much going on this fall.
Tunic (although due to its performance i might wait)
Monkey Island
Nier Automata
No Man's Sky
Mario + Rabbits 2
they all would be amazing for me and I haven't even time to play Metroid Dread.

I remember the Gamecube era, when we were dreaming of a time, when Nintendo would finally get "there". I wasn't so much about beating all the competition, just making some console that is actually relevant beyond casuals, really being an option for the mainstream. Now after 5 1/2 years with the Switch, playing mostly ports of games like XCom 2, Disco Elysium, Subnautica, Skyrim, the Witcher 3 and so on, the Switch really got em there and won't go anywhere soon. So appreciating this development, especially knowing that above all, it has been 5 years since the last mainline Mario game came out and nobody is talking about this. I do expect them to drop a sequel xmas next year even if they don't even need to.

Re: Talking Point: Which Zelda Game Should You Play First?

valcoholic

from a production standpoint it felt like Nintendo soft-rebooted some things with the SNES as games back then were a bit different in concept and it was OK to just do the same thing again with better visuals and better tech (and back then a hardware gen would really make a difference).
Thats why I am pretty happy that my 1st Zelda game was A Link to the Past followed by Link's Awakening and I wouldn't change this. But that might also be because I was 12/13 at that time which is a very immersive time to be a gamer.
But ALTTP also ages gracefully in every way and is just still so much fun to play while also setting some paradigms in stone that would be repeated over and over again until Skyward Sword.

From today's gamer standpoint I am not sure if I would recommend playing Ocarina of Time if you don't feel nostalgic about it. I played it on NSO and its aged horribly and as Nintendo used that gamestructure so often over again, there really are enough games in that series that deliver a lot of things that made OoT still a great game while also looking and controlling better.
But then again I would absolutely recommend Majora's Mask even if it is just as clunky as it is still one of the most outstanding games ever made. And knowing OoT sort of helps.

I didn't really love Wind Waker when it came out. Not ecause of the Chibi look which really polarized like Apple VS Android back in the days. But I did really like that look and especially what they did with it. In some ways it was the most stylish game Nintendo ever did up to that point. But it was rushed and incomplete which was an absolute sin in my Zelda-fanboy eyes. Thats why I absolutely highly recommend playing the HD version on WiiU. The infamous rushed ending doesn't get fixed, but it feels a bit less broken and all in all that HD version is really good.

Everything else is not so important to play again. I felt like Nintendo tried to do a very Playstationy game with Twilight Princess which wasn't always a bad thing and ended up in having some pretty cool scenes but it also never felt as original and especially in early hours the wolf thing can be superboring and tedious. But is it nice to play through? Sure.
Skyward Sword, i absolutely adored this game when it came out. a few years later, I tried to play it again and boy, did motion controls age bad. They totally had their time and some things like aiming in Metroid Prime 3 is still cool. But SS is sadly not that much fun anymore. Still in terms of getting some Zelda Lore, SS is quite a huge title connecting some loose threads. And maybe I'm alone but I did like Nintendo's attempts to offer some new and different villains in that game as I was, especially after TP, supertired of playing the exact same thing again as TP is basically a softreboot of Ocarina of Time which is at least in some ways a soft reboot of the 2D Zeldas, always fighting against Ganon. SS at times felt a bit like it wanted to step out of these shadows, sometimes it seemed a bit too desperate, but for the most part it did its thing.

Re: Video: 14 Exciting New Games Coming To Nintendo Switch In September 2022

valcoholic

@ferryb001 yeah both come out pretty much in the same window around October so I'm not sure but I guess (depending of the reviews) I'm gonna get NMS and later around christmas NIER.

It just felt weird to see these two, huge and hyped games missing on this list. yes, yes, ports, but jesus, Nier is one celebrated game. NMS maybe not so much but the idea of having this endlessly wide universe inside that tiny console is just amazing.

Re: Every Nintendo Switch Online N64 Game Ranked

valcoholic

I mean this is a very basic N64 Top 18 list in general, its not like its hfull of surprises.
I personally do think that, desite me not buying this game at lanch as I thought it looked so clunky and empty and not N64 enough, today I believe F-Zero 64 is the one game that aged absolutely the best of all due to its superdynamic controls, 60 fps and 30 racers which is an experience you still don't see too often with modern games. 99% of the other N64 games have been built on by dozens of similar games ever since. FZero X just got GX which is arguably my favorite but as long as theres no chance to play it on any of the current consoles, X is still pretty unique.

Re: Embracer Group Acquires Limited Run Games, Lord Of The Rings IP & More

valcoholic

@Ventilator I always thought Tencent would have shares of Embracer but googling it seems like they're pretty much their own thing and steered from .. Sweden? For an old european patriot like me thats actually very interesting indeed. Its not happening too often that european comanies play with the big fish even if Embracer might still be far away from juggernauts like MS.
Still, one entity swallowing studios is always a sorta weird thing to observe but maybe thats how it has to be these days

Re: Nintendo Has Updated Its Switch Online App To Version 2.2.0, See What's Included

valcoholic

the only reason for me to get NSO+ is really just the gameslibrary.
Especially with the expansion pack they could really have offered more incentive for online play. But thanks god I'm no Online MP person otherwise I'd be another raging voice in this comment section.
I mean, basically the only reason to get NSO is because they sorta force you doing it through some games like MM2 just not really making any sense without paying extra. Which would be fine if the actual service would also be OK, but paying for a bad Online experience is sorta ridiculous.
There are companies that are actually dedicated in delivering the best they can to make people not think about quitting their subscription. Nintendo chooses to make a service so bad, you're conctantly on the fence of quitting it but get dragged back in eventually by some cheap incentives. Its really not the best customer care.

Re: Rumour: Down Time For 'My Nintendo Store' Could Point To A Direct Next Week

valcoholic

@Axecon hmmm i don't believe its such a big dealfor them to actually afffect stocks in a big way as the whole E3 situation this year was pretty mediocre throughout the whole industry. I mean MS did quite OK but I had the general feeling that people weren't blown away by this season although in hindsight if you would sum all the little directs and big summer game fests together it might end up in even more announcements than we got with physical E3s.
Anyways that of course still doesn't help that Nintendo is doing an actively bad job and knows it. Then again, part of me is kinda happy that all of this has to mean that they still have an actually big direct in store for us to drop at some random point in history. I just do hope they ain't be waiting until september.