It's a thread! (Games discussion, etc.)

[Moge]

Haven't played much of Ninjala outside of the training dojo in the demo. Game isn't as deep as Splatoon, but it has a fantastic presentation that makes me want to revisit the game. Well, i should since the main game is free.

Nintendo's been far too quiet when it comes to first party announcements, but the company is trucking along nicely with news sprinkled here and there. The next Paper Mario looks interesting the usual Paper Mario. I haven't been honestly interested in that series since the Thousand Year Door. At the moment i'm salivating to play Deadly Premoniton 2. It's very bizarre a cult classic like DP is getting a sequel, and from Nintendo of all companies. That's usually Sony's wheelhouse in reviving obscure IP.

[JG]

Thousand Year Door is almost universally regarded as the best of the series.  First one isn't bad either.  But they lost a lot of luster with Super Paper Mario - just not very fun though the second half of the game.

But the wheels really came off with Sticker Star.  The whole sticker based fighting mechanic is awful. If you're smart, you're going to save your powerful stickers for bosses and late game, making these much easier than developers intended, and if you aren't smart about their use, you end up with bosses and late game that are really hard. Terrible game balance but I guess story was fair.  Color Splash repeated this mechanic (against the advice of reviews for Sticker Star) and that's why you haven't heard of it since or any rumors of a Deluxe port of it for the Switch. But Color Splash is also way to long. I put maybe 50-60 hours into it and only got to about the halfway point. The Ghost House is the last area I remember. (mariowiki confirms this is just shy of midway.)  Its the only one I've not finished because its too much Sticker Star but 3 to 4 times as lengthy.

I'm happy to see them drop the stickers and go with a new battle mechanic for Origami King, but can't say if its better or worse than the early games until its played. I cant imagine it being worse than the sticker gimmick.

Paper Mario shows up Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam where he acts more like the early games.  RPG battles, occasional 2D mode super attacks, and ability to use 2D tricks to solve story puzzles.

My autumn concern is that nobody's announced much of anything.  After Origami King, I don't think there's any game on my desire list until Halo 6 in November/December. (Yes I know Last of Us 2 is imminent as well, but not interested in it right now. Maybe Black Friday.)

I've picked up Witcher III Complete Edition when it was on ridiculous Deal of the Day sale at Best Buy a couple weeks back ($11.99 I think it was.)  It's gotten good word for last few years, but I didn't really take it seriously until it finished second to Breath of the Wild in Gamefaqs Game of the Decade poll, and several of the games it knocked off on its way to #2 were very impressive: Mass Effect 3, Super Mario Galaxy 2, the new God of War (which I felt horribly overrated), Persona 5, and Skyrim. I haven't played all these games but thought each of them likely to beat Witcher III. Witcher III defeating them tells me it really is something special.

Oh, and the Cinderella of that Gamefaqs poll?  Xenoblade Chronicles.  Seven of the eight 1 seeds won their division, while Xenoblade Chronicles was a lowly 3 seed. (XC beat 2 seed Fire Emblem Three Houses before 4 seed Persona 4 Golden, which itself had just upset 1 seed Grand Theft Auto V. Super Smash Bros Ultimate knocked it off in the quarterfinal round.)  You guys really should get the Definitive Edition for Switch if you've never played it before.

[JG]

Looks like a new Nintendo Direct is not forthcoming.  Nintendo's released a Closer Look video for Origami King instead. Its the same 5-6 minute video you'd have in a Direct, or what we probably would have seen during E3 presentation, but not baked into a bigger package to cover other upcoming news (like Minmin for Smash Bros, or what's coming in the fall/winter)

Origami King looks solid - appears to be bringing back buddies, including bad guys like Kamek and Bowser Jr. A wider array of game modes and puzzles should keep interest up. I'm a little concerned about pace of battles though. 30 seconds to do the line up at start of battle worries me that progress is slow if there's as many battles as previous games. Battles are already too long in the series due to Mario attacking slowly, and enemies having to give off their 'tell' before making their move and Mario having to dodge at least once before next attack. (Only the very early battles, or when you use a super item, do they end in the first attack turn.) I don't know if there's a term for it, but "turn turnaround" is very long in the Paper Mario and M&L series compared to RPGs from folks like SquareEnix.

[Moge]

DLSS might just be the single most significant advancement in graphics in the last few years. Basically AI is used to reconstruct whatever you're playing in low res and blows it up to a much higher resolution while consuming far less processing power than normal means. Seeing as how this is an Nvidia exclusive tech at the moment, i foresee the Switch 2 being built around this technology if and when it does happen (i predict in two more years). Sony and Microsoft launching their next system without this technology is a pretty huge loss, considering it would help reduce the overhead with raytracing.

Playing Deadly Premonition 2 at the moment. When you're not indoor and are outdoors, the framerate of the game is very, very rough; it dips below 10 fps quite often. Thankfully i can overclock the system and get a nice boost in fps on my hacked Switch, but i feel sorry for all the DP fans who absolutely aren't getting the ideal DP experience that i'm getting.

[JG]

Today's long-overdue Nintendo Direct Mini was quite underwhelming.  Why wait until the first business day after Origami King launched?  Could have made a larger one a week ago with a Paper Mario segment.

Instead we see a remake, physical edition and DLC for an existing e-game, and three new games that aren't exactly going to win the holiday season for Nintendo. If Cadence of Hyrule is Nintendo's biggest game to end of year then that's worrisome.

On the other hand, Origami King is soooo much better than Sticker Star and Color Splash.  Some time back I said Paper Mario series should die Mario & Luigi live on, but Origami King is rescuing it.  Its still not Thousand Year Door quality, but the ring battle system adds some more thinking elements to the game and does away with the ridiculous "battle economy" system. Love the classic Mario themes that keep cropping up, like the trees with eyes or a cafe with hedges shaped like the hills and bushes in the background of NES Super Mario Bros.

[JG]

Thoughts on today's Xbox Game Showcase?

Only Psychonauts 2 wowed me. That game looks funky and bizarre. Not sure I'd buy it, but its the only preview that moved me from "indifference" to "interested."  Everything else was kind of what I expected, or merely meh. The Outer Worlds add-on looked interesting but if I want odd humor, I'll stick with pinning my hopes on Paranoia.

Somewhat surprised by what wasn't shown though. Battletoads in particular. For a game announced June 2019 at E3 for launch in Fall 2019, to not even be on the radar for 2020 indicates something is very wrong at Rare. Combined with the very rocky start Sea of Thieves got off to, I'd be very reluctant to go all-in on Everwild just yet. Especially since they didn't show a single second of gameplay.

Elden Ring and Spiritfarer as Xbox/PC exclusives from E3 2019 also missing in action, but I don't think they were as near completion as Battletoads was touted to be.

I don't like that apparently there's more Halo history happening between the games that isn't be described in games again. This was major complaint between 3 and 4 and again between 4 and 5, and plot elements only made sense to people that had read the novels and backstory shorts. The Halo Infinite preview seemed to just throw Master Chief and his rescuer into a Covenant stronghold with no explanation of why.  But I appreciate the more open-world design - it seems to be taking cues on how Gears 5 handled the gigantic desert and tundra areas with several well distanced hot spots, requiring vehicle travel between them. Some of the Bungie-era Halos touched on it, with smaller distances due to hardware limitations, but 4 and 5 were much too linear as I recall.

Missed opportunity to show off something family members can play together.  Surely some of the games are multiplayer (PSO2) or have multiplayer components (Halo, Forza) but not one of the games showcased looked like something two family members could sit on the coach and play together on the same console and same TV.  Even their video of gamers sitting down to play an Xbox game were all singletons.  Maybe that's their market focus, but when you don't compete against the likes of Mario Party, then you certainly don't win against the likes of Mario Party either. Maybe Forza has splitscreen mode, but wasn't shown in video. Didn't even have a fighting game (Killer Instinct?) which are always at least two player head-to-head. Battletoads would have fit in nicely here - not just for multiplayer, but a sidescreen scroller, sort-of fighting, and another non-drama or non-shooter, genres which dominated the showcase (as they've dominated Xbox for years)

No word on the rumored Perfect Dark reboot either.

The "One More Thing" closer came as a surprise to no one. Microsoft didn't keep the lid on the Fable reboot as well as Nintendo did with Zelda last year.

No price details or launch date provided. But given the repeated promise that most of these games would be on PC and all of them on Game Pass, I think Sony needs to just move forward and announce whatever price they have planned for PS5, even if it is $599. Even if Series X comes in at $499, Microsoft has given zero reason that its a 'must have' (and actually, some good reasons why its a merely 'nice to have'.) Sure the games will look better, but do I want to spend $500-plus for slightly better graphics or framerates? That kind of money warrants true exclusives and Microsoft didn't supply any.

On the other hand, most people can still play Halo Infinite on Xbox One without needing to upgrade to Series X right away, which is almost certainly what I'll be doing. This echoes an article I read yesterday that the console wars are over and all three companies won. Sony wins with their powerful must-have device and exclusive games for it. Microsoft wins for providing their community a range of engagement tiers ranging from low-end Xbox One to mid-tier PC (and rumored Series S) to high-end Series X. And Nintendo wins the mobile frontier, strong first party games, and IP spreading to other market segments (like cell phones and Lego toys).  Nintendo stopped competing for the same turf as the other two years ago, but it'll be nice to see Microsoft and Sony approach things differently now, too.

[JG]

Microsoft's repeated claims about how games will look so much better on Series X seems to have backfired with the underwhelming Halo Infinite gameplay video. People are comparing the graphics of the weapons and Covenant troops and finding them to be higher quality in the prior-prior system's Halo: Reach than in Infinite. Environment looks better, but the moving objects don't.  I thought the enemies looked kind of basic myself but thought maybe that was just me - and I didn't notice the guns being lower quality in the video, but I'm not an avid Halo player like a lot of folks.

This could be a real problem for Microsoft. There's the potential they launch their flagship game of 2020 with inferior graphics to previous titles, or they delay the game to 2021, launching Series X without Halo Infinite as a launch title. This is shaping up to be a lose-lose scenario.

The world will need to know in the next 2-3 weeks which its going to be. Xbox One preorders started June 2013, but that was obviously way too early because Sony killed them with a mid-August 2013 announcement of a much cheaper unit. Presumably mid-August is when they both need to settle a date and price for retailers. They can't play chicken forever.

Also saw a rumor that this week or next we'll get an announcement from Nintendo about Super Mario Sunshine Deluxe for an early December release. There's been rumors of Galaxy and maybe 3D World getting remake treatment, too, but with the year past half over I'm doubting they'll push out too many more Mario games by end of year. You just cant flood the market with too many at once. Had they put one of them out back in the spring, Origami King a week ago, and another one or two to come, maybe, but not not three or four games in a four to five month span, regardless of their desire to push big on Mario's 35th anniversary year. Unless they're rebranding it as an July 2020 to June 2021 timeframe.

[Moge]

The Xbox Showcase was so-so. Out of all the games shown, The Medium impressed me the most. Really love the visual style and the adventure style gameplay. Halo Infinite looks like more Halo for better or worse. The story premise just doesn't pack the same punch as the Bungie Halos.

Disappointed the they didn't show off more of the hardware.

[JG]

Rumor that the Dualshock 5's battery life is only 4-5 hours better than DualShock 4 is not encouraging.  Jumping from 7 to 11-12 hours of battery life doesn't impress me much when Xbox One and Switch Pro Controller are both in the 30 hour range. Sony isn't even competing in the same league here. Very nice to see they are finally addressing the bad-since-1994 ergonomics, but the battery life still seems like the Achilles' heel.

[Moge]

That's Wii U gamepad battery life bad if true. Seems plausible given the amount of fancy tech being crammed into that controller. It's disappointing battery tech hasn't improved for who knows how many decades.

 

[JG]

And now the other shoe drops.

Halo Infinite will not launch with the Series X, bringing an already worrisome launch head to head with the PS5 into a surrender before shots are even fired. Analysts were already predicting PS5 to outsell Series X 2-to-1 this holiday season, and now the gap will widen considerably. And with Series S on the horizon (and PC play), more casual gamers will ask why buy the X at all? This is a complete disaster. And sadly, it seems like there's a disaster for Xbox once or twice a year - whether delays, cancellations, or highly publicized games falling short of expectations. Its time to #FirePhilSpencer. Except for GamePass, his tenure has been one misstep after another. Sony and Nintendo are both benefiting by his horrific management of the Xbox brand. Xbox entered this generation in first place thanks to the strength of the 360 (and weakness/price of PS3), but has fallen into a way distant third with the Xbox One, and appears that it will be stuck there with the Series X.

[Moge]

At this point they're just asking for Sony to steamroll them this holiday season. I do feel the system will be worthwhile in the end thanks to game pass, backwards compatibility, and game streaming to non-Xbox devices, but having too few exclusives to drum up hype is not a good look.

With E3 gone, it's surprising Nintendo hasn't done a first-party Direct in a very long while, especially in the wake of Sony and Microsoft's Directs.

[JG]

With E3 gone, it's surprising Nintendo hasn't done a first-party Direct in a very long while, especially in the wake of Sony and Microsoft's Directs.

Not a first-party, but another Partner Showcase mini-Direct today. Three music-and-rhythm games (a genre I care nothing about) to start it off, none of which are exclusives, and one is from SquareEnix, taking the slot originally expected for Bravely Default 2 in November. A World of Tanks port, a boxing game with some Rocky series tie-ins that has nice cameos but looks very unpolished, the Final Fantasy Legend Gameboy games (but not remastered), the next Just Dance (that's four music-and-rhythm games now), a new Puyo Puyo Tetris, the Minecraft Dungeons Creeping Winter DLC, and the JumpForce anime fighter game. The Captain Tsubasa soccer game actually doesn't look bad, but I'm not sure if its soccer or anime, or some kind of weird action-story-sport mix. Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, which is remastered, arrives in August also displaces Bravely Default 2 but it arguably looks better and the only one presented that piques any interest in me.

Overall, not much of interest to me, and two more Square-Enix games given release dates while Bravely Default 2 is still MIA. Its almost certainly been knocked to 2021 now and leaves the Switch with zero new games of consequence arriving in the holiday period. Sony might as well price PS5 at $600 because there doesn't seem to be anything else worth buying. Microsoft and Nintendo not stepping forward to claim a $60 piece of the pie in December is extra money for PS5 piggybanks.

https://www.nintendo.com/nintendo-direct/08-26-2020/

[JG]

Good news is that the rumored Super Mario 3D All-Stars has not been significantly delayed by COVID-19.

The bad news.. why the hell couldn't Nintendo have told us this a month or two ago?


New Nintendo first-party Direct today finally revealed some of the things leaked over last few months @ mario.nintendo.com

Super Mario 3D All-Stars with Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy arrives end of next week - Friday, September 18. I'm disappointed it doesn't have a port of Super Mario 3D Land though. Some people reported it would have Galaxy 2 included as well but it doesn't. It is a little hard to call it a complete set with only 3 of the 5 games. And Super Mario 64 doesn't look as refined as I anticipated. It's higher resolution but still looks too blocky. Honestly, I'd think it would have been a better idea to put the superior looking 3D Land in the set, and push Mario 64 to the e-shop. Unless SM64 gives us some new things like that Luigi model people found in the code leak a few months back.

Super Mario 3D World is coming with a new side-story titled Bowser's Fury. They didn't show much, but I really like the cat-ear shaped trees and portals in the video. Sadly it doesn't arrive until February 12. Will need to see more before buying. Surely we get another direct before then right?

Mario Kart Live Home Circuit may be the neatest video game toy to come along in many years. It one-ups (pun intended) the Nintendo Labo stuff by a wide margin. Using the Mario Kart 8 game code, and combining it with toy karts with a camera that senses gates and remembers a predriven course is the modern day RC car phenomenon. This is going to be a hot toy at Christmas, and finally Nintendo has something to blunt the impact of the PS5's arrival.

With all the Mario 35th anniversary announcements, I am disappointed a Mario vs Rabbids 2 wasn't announced. Perfect timing for what's been a surprise game for Ubisoft and the Switch. It's STILL the highest selling game for the Switch not fully published by Nintendo or The Pokemon Company. That alone warrants a sequel.

And though they didn't announce it, since last week's Direct they've pegged a date for Pikmin 3 Deluxe as well: October 30. (Though I personally find it to be the worst of the four games.)

So they've actually got (at least) two games for the holiday lineup: 3D All-Stars and Pikmin 3, plus a sort-of game in the Home Circuit set. Still no word on Bravely Default 2.

[Moge]

All my hype for 3D All-Star Collection has been deflated. When i think of All-Stars, i think of Nintendo going above and beyond in remastering, but here they're doing the absolute bare minimum. Obviously the games in 3D All-Stars are an order of magnitude much larger than anything in og All-Stars, but recent remasters like the Crash and Spyro collections gave me faint hope Nintendo would pursue something similar. Disappointingly, that's not the case. Not having a fourth game is equally disappointing, but i guess that's supposed to be 3D World. It's nice to see 3D World receive some substantial updates, like faster running speed, new content, and online play. I'll probably end up purchasing that game at the very least.

I'm pretty positive on the other upcoming Mario games. The Mario 1 Game & Watch, AR Mario Kart, and the Mario 1 battle royale are all very cool and surprisingly. Really dig the very high poly Mario in AR Mario Kart. A glimpse into not too distant future of what Nintendo will do with more powerful hardware (potentially next year if rumors are right).

[JG]

Yeah the Mario Battle Royale thing is kind of neat. Its applying the same thing they did with Tetris 99 to Mario.

One thing I don't fully understand from a financial standpoint is Nintendo's reasoning (backed up by gaming site news) that they will only allow sales of the All-Stars for 6 months, then they are reclaiming any unsold stock from retailers in March. Seems like an artificial method to create demand and ensure they can charge full price for them individually after March.  Seems like a repeat of the NES and SNES Classic - make less than demand calls for so it ramps up the price and ensures your e-shop gets purchases by people who can't find the physical version.

One of the articles I read today on my tablet said that a true All-Stars shouldn't have been three platformer games, but games of different genres.  They proposed one platformer (New Super Mario Bros U), one of the older Mario Karts as a racing game (they proposed Double Dash for which I am 100% in agreement), Dr Mario for a puzzle game, Mario Paint for sandbox, an older Mario Party for family fun, Thousand Year Door as RPG, and either Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, or Super Mario Strikers for sports, and maybe throwing in some other Mario-related games like Donkey Kong or Wario World. It certainly would make for a more wide-ranging collection akin to Rare Replay and most likely present at least one game most buyers haven't already played before. Even the original All-Stars gave us Lost Levels - this one gives no new content unless there's something they aren't telling us like extra worlds. After reading the article I really wish Nintendo had gone this route as well because there's a lot of the side-games I've not played.

I guess DLC or a version 1.1 could add some extra content (like Luigi for Mario 64) but I'm not expecting entirely new games to be added in any updates.

[Munemune]

I was hoping for a Hyrule Warriors 2 but I guess I'll take a prequel to Breath of the Wild musou game instead.

[JG]

I'm stoked. Loved Hyrule Warriors - much better than Dragon Quest Heroes which followed it though I suspect Age of Calamity will be more like DQH than the first Hyrule Warriors.

Link, Zelda, and the four champions doesn't seem like a large enough roster though. They're going to need some more characters. Please tell me Robbie is one of them. I can picture him toting Cherry around, making her transform into weird weapons and then doing his electric guitar strum pose. That's got to be worth $59.99.

Also, we now know the big holiday season game from Nintendo. 6 days ago we didn't know if they'd have anything for Christmas, now they've got both a Mario game AND a Zelda game.

[JG]

In case you missed it, PS5 launches November 12 and is now available for preorder at a lot of retailers (including Best Buy). $499 for disc, $399 for digital.

(So now the Series X arrives 2 weeks later, for the same price, and without its key game. Another banner year for Microsoft gaming where Sony has completely outmaneuvered them on all aspects of the new console releases.)

Tempted to pre-order myself, but I think I'll wait until it gets a game packaged with it or an exclusive like Miles Morales drops to half price. Or some game I just can't live without comes along, which is usually what makes me buy a console.

[JG]

So that's three Nintendo Direct Mini Partner Showcase directs with now two SquareEnix games that aren't named Bravely Default 2, and a third game in the PS5 preview. Yet Bravely Default 2 is still on schedule for a 2020 release? Dubious.

On the other hand I'm liking this Nintendo Direct Mini thing every 3-4 weeks. I don't need a big Direct if they keep popping these little ones out. In fact, I prefer it.