whitemage

@johnedwin I was wondering what comment you were responding to then realized it was someone on my ignore list. Feeling good about that choice right now.

The shock at people getting refunds certainly seems like the oddest reaction here, because whether the issue is overblown becomes beside the point there; platforms like Steam have easy refund mechanics that anyone can use for any reason. You should be able to get a refund without contacting Nintendo due to any kind of buyer's remorse, as long as it hasn't been that long and you haven't played that much of it. I hope Nintendo catches up in that customer-friendliness area someday.

I agree, the demo definitely did its job. After playing it, I'm intrigued. I'm not a for-sure yet, but if the final game ends up with an interesting story and takes sufficient advantage of its conceits with varied enemies and set pieces, I would be game for it, and I don't usually go for third person action games. Really hoping this is something special.

I chose NA by a hair, but they're both reasonable.

I've always had a fondness for bomberman. I even made a bomberman Halloween costume one year as a kid. The only unfortunate reality to the fun, chaotic multiplayer that I mostly discovered in college was that it can be discouraging for new players, especially if an experienced one is in the mix, as those who don't know what they're doing will quickly get eliminated, either by someone who does, or by themselves.

@Tyranexx Oh dear. Why does it feel like that little omission changes the meaning in unintended ways...

@batmanbud2 That's true for Meta but not necessarily true for VR in general; Valve is coming out guns blazing on VR with a big Quest competitor early this year, which could really shake things up. And Valve is a better company than Meta ever will be, so while I hate that so many good devs had Meta turn its back on them, I hope this lets Valve reshape the VR industry into something better.

One of my favorite games of all time. I do have the original disc but being able to play on TV or handheld and without any special setup will probably draw me into another play of it.

@Qwiff Not their first game - their first Nintendo game (as in the first game presented as being made by Nintendo).

16 points. I honestly didn't know there was a ducktales 2 somehow. A couple i just second guessed myself out of the answer. Missed tecmo vs super tecmo. A couple i just never saw the art for.

@Serpenterror That is interesting, I didn't know that about the series origins!

@Truegamer79 Human Revolution was the third game. Do you mean Mankind Divided? It was reasonably received but not as much so as HR for sure. But that wasn't why they stopped making them. They were making another, but it got tanked thanks to the blight upon gaming that is Embracer Group: https://kotaku.com/embracer-group-deus-ex-cancelled-eidos-montreal-layoffs-1851205890

One of my favorite games in the world (another is FFT - loving all the story for my favs!). Notably complex/clunky controls though - I wonder how well they'll translate to a controller. Gotta be able to manage both items and augs quickly in battle.

@nkarafo Ahh yeah GNT 3 and 4 were two of the three imports from that era (or any later era) I ever owned, my group also had many very fun times with those games. The third import was Mario DDR.

Auto accel allows my partner with bad joints and fingers to play for more than a few minutes at a time, so that's a big win.

Oh nice - I thought I had read earlier that the faux-Shakespeare War of the Lions script was what we were getting, which seemed very over-wrought to me.

It's happening!!

@NintendoWife That's exactly where I'm at. I'm surprised I don't notice that feeling voiced more often. To me, the decoupling of the halves of the controller is one of my favorite aspects of the switch.

@Deerock69 I've heard sacrificing anything to daemons is a great idea.

The article title was a rush job, I see. Two typos.

Every day. It's like the anti-doom-scroll: short, and guaranteed not to contain stressful news or commentary. Just a few fun little tidbits about things I love.

@TheBigK Same

@tobsesta99 Yeah.. i got mine from Target because the other sites weren't working well for me, telling myself they were selling out no matter what so they'd get the same amount of money either way, but i still don't feel great about it.

Oh yeah, Best Buy finally got their act together, everyone go go go!

@AussieMcBucket Nice, high five! I must've gotten lucky with Target.

@derickw69 If you keep trying with Target, it might work. I had to try to progress it at least 15 times before it all finally went through.

Ah hah, finally went through! BTW Target's lied about availability until I was signed in, said they were sold out but they weren't.

I can hear Target's servers creaking under the load. It's in the cart, I'm at checkout, just can't place the order due to "service unavailable" errors.

Interesting disparity between the opinions of the majority of commenter's and the opinions of the majority of folks who answered the poll. I'm not sure what my favorite is, but I tend to notice most people seem to have console launch amnesia, hollering that the most recent thing has the most terrible launch lineup, when almost no consoles have an amazing launch lineup that do something for everybody.

NA for me. Japan was reasonable, but I think NA's title looks great and Europe's looks like only a couple notches above comic sans on a yellow splotch that looked okay enough for Japan but for Europe gives it a weird Nickolodeon look.

@MirrorFate2 One more clarification on the explanation you got - in addition to the use case of avoiding certain enemy attacks, in ffiv there exist dungeons with paths that damage you if you walk over them, and it's practically necessary to have your party floating to make it through. So everyone who plays the game runs into this map- transition float re-apply problem.

@GameOtaku I didn't personally mind the slow attacks (but I get it), and while I adore all the Xenoblade games I absolutely agree that there are too many systems in place, it makes it tough for any individual system to feel impactful enough that I know how to work it to make a meaningful difference in my combat prowess, especially in X.

@GameOtaku The combat system is similar to XC1, but a little more complex and frenetic in my experience, so this one may not be for you.

@Mrkittyhead I'm going to be the annoying pedant and note that they teeeeeechnically don't have the same names (GB Megaman games are enumerated I - V as opposed to 1 - 5). Not that that does much to clear the obvious confusion with the titles, so your point stands.

@neufel hah, yeah those two were instantly recognizable to me for that reason as well! Good episodes, too.

@GooseLoose1 Heh, goodness! I hope this had a chance to afford some semblance of self-reflection to them.

@Carlore_Preventis Maybe it's the constant insults you're throwing around? To the ignore bin with ye!

I got a kick out of the article, but: Dude. Rice balls (onigiri) are not sushi.

@AstroTheGamosian I wasn't really paying attention to that space so I appreciate the context here! Sounds like a cool person who deserves the win.

@TruthisRare just... Just stop. Don't start here, this is not a political rant space. (An ignore means I won't see your response)

@AnVold While the game (FfXVI) itself is currently low on my to-play list (I get this feeling of grimdark, game-of-thrones-y mood to it, probably because almost every review i read compared the two, and I personally find that style a bit exhausting, but that's just me), but I'm a big fan of game music and, based on its win and your comment, my interest in the soundtrack is officially piqued.

That aside, Big congrats to BG3, it may not be perfect or for everyone, but it had it in it to become a phenomenon in the best way and is the result of an unbelievable amount of work and love of the craft.

@HenryKibble As someone in the tech industry I'll take a shot, though ultimately the answer is gonna be vague and boring. Versioning is done in myriad ways for myriad purposes; marketing is one of them, but not the only one. A product can tout a new version with big new features or reimagined interface and they'll probably want to use a whole number version for that and advertise it that way. But in many cases, like this, where nobody is trying to market or advertise these releases, version can take on a different meaning that is useful to the development process or to external services relying on its APIs, not so much the end user. For instance, Semantic Versioning is brought up a lot, which chooses which number to increment based on backwards compatibility (though this can be over-referenced since it is specifically intended for software with APIs, nothing else). The takeaways I think one can get from these notices are:

1. Nintendo has a reason for the way they version (it may be good or bad, may have changed over time, etc etc)
2. They won't tell us what it is
3. It's none of our business since it clearly isn't linked to user-facing feature set

@EaglyBird Good advice, I just did just that.

From the demo I was happy with the combat, satisfied enough with the exploration and music, and very impressed by the art and animation, but underwhelmed by the slice of narrative they showed. At least one other review basically applied my demo impressions to the whole of the game, considering the story and characters a weak spot, which for my personal experience would be a very important piece of the pie. This review certainly doesn't seem to agree, but also has a light touch on those aspects. Maybe I'll wait for more reviews, though I'm pretty busy with other games for the moment myself.

For what it's worth I hope the other review was overly harsh, and it makes me happy to see that this game is giving folks that warm sense of nostalgia and joy, I can certainly see why!

My favorite marble games are Kororinpa: Marble Mania (Wii) and the all-time classic Marble Madness (NES, Arcade). Maybe I should take a look at this, but I think I'm not in a period of my life where a marble game is what I'm looking for. I wish it luck, though.

@Runex2121 Oh hey, I hummed it to my baby daughter to help her get to sleep too! The main theme specifically.

Totally agree about feeling like home. I will never forget the art and music of this game. I also remember that, at the time, it was the only game I played that my mother, who doesn't touch games, commented on noticing how pretty those aspects were, just by what she saw walking past it.

@Penlab Thanks for the info. It's always so tempting to fight to help folks understand empathy (real empathy, not "must respect every online opinion" empathy) and stakes in forums like this but I'm not convinced it helps, so I'll just stack up a few ignores and carry on. Just know that there are plenty of us who are affected by and take these issues seriously. Whether it influences my take on Sea of Stars, well it depends (I'm currently unsure of whether I grab it - the demo had a lot of impressive aspects but didn't fully grip me, though that may just have been due to the limited format of the demo); as you said it's unclear whether there will be direct influence, I'm guessing that'll ultimately come out in impressions, reviews, and internet forums.

@DwaynesGames Thanks, I'm very glad my reply came across as I intended! You make a good point about Samus Returns.

@DwaynesGames You're absolutely right about all of that.. but I think the others' point is that no matter how good a remaster is, the amount of cost to create is night-and-day lower than the cost to produce a remake, and that cost is a big indicator of price. The other being perceived value by the folks who buy it, which I believe was to an extent your point, which is valid, but I believe this is a "no really it costs way more to recreate everything from scratch than to hd-ify existing assets, do some exemplary UI/UX/control work, and add a few loving finishing touches." And that isn't to minimize how much work went into MP remaster, of course.