crispy4000

Xenoblade 2 is great if you can forgive its shortcomings and see it through. If you enjoyed the original, the final hours deliver some serious payoff.

Seriously. Had no buisness being this good. It’s going to color my expectations for their actual e3 showing.

I’m hopeful that it won’t be that bad. They’ve had a lot of time since Xenoblade 2 to work on their tech, and performance in their Switch games have improved since.

It made one of the worst parts of the first game (bad sidequests with no payoff) the crux of its progression. For that reason alone, I think it's the sort of game you can skip. But the world is definitely cool, and the tech is stellar for the platform.

In.

They’re also very long games, even by JRPG standards. Just get the first, see if you like it. It’ll keep you busy for a good while.

Xenoblade 3 coming (this year!) might get me to play Torna now for real. I’m stoked. Bonus points for dialing back the ‘fan service.’ I only wish the Switch Pro was a thing by now.

Yeah, I agree. It’s probably because the PSP did so well in Japan and people there thought the success would cary over. It probably would have if Monster Hunter stayed put.

To each his own. Most all of that screams easily dismissible to me. Shinobi was the one that you jogged my memory most on, but more as a novelty. (Just mentioning it reminds me I need to try that Strider metroidvania sometime) It’s odd to repeatedly say EA/Ubisoft/Activision did good stuff but not give a single example, when you have for others. I know the Ghost Recon TBS launch game is supposed to be good. What else?

Uh no. Those companies did even less of note for 3DS than they did on DS. Capcom and Square Enix did a good bit. Altus’ support for 3DS is still a step below what they’ve done on Switch. I can’t for the life of me remember what Sega and Namco put on 3DS beyond anime games and Sonic. I do think if the 3DS was the only portable in town, like Switch, it might have gotten more support. The mere existence of the Vita at the time divided developer attention in Japan.

3rd party support for the 3DS was pretty poor overall IMO, especially among major publishers. Some of the more exciting things from the big publishers actually came around launch. By the end of its lifecycle, you mostly had niche Japan stuff and the indies that could still run on the hardware. Most of what would have been otherwise coined as ‘portable game projects’ we’re being developed for tv screens. Even RE Revelations 2 skipped the portable. I’m not saying Nintendo will ever end up back there. Probably not to the same degree. But I could definitely see a scenario where we look back at the Switch and say Nintendo had it better then.

This is very true. The Wii U and early 3DS were an existential crisis of sorts. But now, they've proven their products can and will stick around in spite of trends elsewhere in the industry. So long as they don't totally bungle their hardware (price & marketing included), they'll stay relevant. Going by history, Nintendo is always in danger of losing 3rd party support in generational transitions. The Switch is Nintendo on an upswing with that. We have tons of 'impossible' ports to it. Who knows if publishers will care that much the next time. They didn't for the 3DS. If there's any place the Deck could have an inroad into the portable market, it's here. Nintendo also doesn't have a modern subscription devs can easily jump onto. Maybe that's their niche for outside publishers. Nintendo gives them a platform where customers will need to pay the premiums.

Nice gutcheck to the strawman.

I never felt all that lost in Hollow Knight, aside from the few places where it intentionally tries to be confusing/bewildering/blinding. Most areas are easy enough to manage on their own. The game's big exploration problem is the warp points aren't intuitively laid out. Some of them feel further away from where you're headed than you think.

Hollow Knight is a good counter-argument for exploration not needing to be "poor" in 2D. That's the modern Metroidvania I'd recommend that's less funneled than Dread. I also agree that 3D will always have more exploration potential. There's very few 3D Metroidvanias that make the grade though.

So are open worlds in UE4.

Bungie should make a new Killzone to complete the cycle.

MLB before Madden. lol EA still feeling sore from Wii era Nintendo.

Pathways into Darkness I agree that this is probably too steep. If Bungie kept the Halo IP this would have been worth that.

I'd be surprised if it was this soon anyways.

Nintendo makes hardware that goes against industry currents. The dedicated portable would have died without them. VR may not have been in the same place without Nintendo popularizing motion controls. Gyro aiming also gained popularity as a result of Nintendo's implementations. Historically, there's been a ton of benefits to Nintendo staying in the hardware market. Them leaving that market would be a loss. As for their current crop of software, I'd be happy to play it elsewhere. But that's with the Switch's controller interface being relatively benign. I'm still bummed there's no Sensor Bar support for it. In light of the rest of industry happenings, I don't think we see them go 3rd party like Sega did. We'd see a merger or acquisition, if anything.

The Switch gets a performance/graphical features boost in many games by playing docked. There’s never been another Nintendo handheld that’s done this when connected to power. Furthermore, you can only tap into this (typically) improved performance and fidelity mode by playing on a separate screen. Devs having to accommodate for those two different performance profiles strongly implies it’s better to think of it as a hybrid. I really hope Nintendo keeps with that feature for their next system. The Deck actually won’t do this apart from resolution, so I’d classify it more as a portable with optional TV output.

Royalties from lost game sales on their platform. It would have to be a very sweet deal / gun-to-the head threat for Sony to give that up. They’d rather have their own competing subscription if anything, where they set the terms. But this is Microsoft essentially buying out a huge chunk of the industry here.

Put Games Pass on your system or we'll keep CoD from you.

This might convince me to do another playthrough before FF7R part 2. FF8 and FF9 next please.