Glen-i

Yes, and I didn't like it then, either. EDIT: About the Game Pass comparison, worth noting that non-Microsoft titles get removed from the service eventually. I found that out the hard way when I was playing through Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.

So what, you'd prefer that half the screen has nothing on it? It's a menu, the font size isn't blocking any other information, so there's no real problem here. If anything, I'd make the missiles and health in the middle larger. Must be nice to have a gigantic TV... Mine is as wide as 2 WiiU gamepads side-by-side. So I really notice it when something is too small. Big font is nothing but a benefit to those who might have small TV's or sight problems.

I don't like that implication. I don't see how Mega Drive games as a whole can be considered less valuable then N64 ones in this day and age.

This is true. I still hate that I have to pay to play Smash and so on online. But I'm gonna have to correct you there. It's 23 games. Mega Drive is there as well.

I'm still not seeing the issue here. Are you saying it's too big? Not enough games have big UI's. The game has to be legible in handheld mode as well. The amount of times I've seen a game have far too small HUD features is annoying. This menu looks fine to me.

What does this even mean? Like, you're talking specifically about the UI. I could throw 2 darts at my shelf, hit 2 3DS games, and I'm almost certain the UI's they have will be completely different.

Oh, you are kidding!?

So, @Dcubed took the plunge on Nickelodeon All Stars Brawl. And we had a 2 hour-ish session on it. It's solid, but not without its flaws. The Good The most important aspect, the characters, are really fun to play as. All 20 of them are unique (even the 2 ninja turtles) and it all seems to be balanced quite well. No character seems to be obviously better then everyone else (Although we both agree that Michelangelo is definitely one of our better characters). I feel like any character can be decent with some practice. Kudos! The animation work and models are pretty good. It's snappy and chock full of references to the shows. Ludosity definitely did their homework in that regard. I know I made this point before this was released, but this roster is amazing! You've got obvious mainstays like SpongeBob and the Avatar crew, but you've also got some deep cuts like Powdered Toast Man, unexpected choices like Helga, and some genius ways of avoiding having to beat up babies by having Reptar as the Rugrats rep. It's not perfect, so to speak. I can't help but notice a blatant Rocko and Fairly Odd Parents shaped hole here, but there is DLC planned, so there's still time to fix that. But it's a very good base roster! The 20 stages are a great mix of simple stages with more competitive layouts and crazy stages with cool gimmicks to keep you on your toes. I wouldn't say there was a single dud here. While this game certainly doesn't try to hide it's Smashing inspiration, there's a few little touches that help to make Nick feel not quite as blatant. There's no universal dodging maneuver. (Nigel Thornberry can do it though with his side special though. Very Smashing!) Successful dash attacks can immediately be followed up with another attack, etc. Small little tweaks to what you'd expect, but nothing that's too complicated to get your head around. The Bad You don't want to buy this unless you have friends to play with or plan on playing online. You've got a pretty basic arcade mode, playing against CPU's, and Training mode. And that's about it. It is not a good single player experience. The loading times are noticeably lengthy. It's not dreadful, but it's defo longer then Smash Ultimate. I'm not sure why, but there doesn't seem to be alternate colours for the characters. So if 2 people choose the same character, it's gonna get very confusing. Like, I'm not gonna demand different elaborate costumes, but I'd expect to be able to have a blue Reptar if need be. Sadly, there's no voice acting (other then the announcer, who does a good job). It's an unfortunate effect of Ludosity having a shoestring budget. They defo made the right choice prioritising the gameplay, but even knowing the budget issues, I can't help but feel that these Nick characters aren't as crazy as they could be. SpongeBob isn't irritating me with his voice and that just feels wrong. It's an unfortunate pity, thanks to how voice actors for these TV based characters demand more money then most video games, but Ludosity have stated that they would like to add them if the game sells well enough to warrant the cost. Of course, Nick should just pay up, but what can you do? Now this next one really bugs me. You can remap the buttons, which is great, but there seems to be no way to save a setup to each player (Like how Smash lets you create a profile and choose the button mapping to correspond with it). What's even more irritating is that after each match, the game seems to randomly choose a player's button mapping and apply it to everyone! So you're constantly having to bring up the button binding menu (Thankfully, it can be accessed on the character select) and making sure it's the setup you prefer. I can deal with the other issues, but this one desperately needs a patch. @Dcubed, get on to Ludosity's Twitter and politely point it out. It's very annoying! But all in all, it's a great alternative to Smash Ultimate. Now obviously it's nowhere as amazing, so keep your expectations in check, but if you've got some willing people to play with, it's a fun time!

This is something that Other M started and I'm glad they're still carrying on with that idea with the Mercury Steam titles. Samus Returns does it a lot too, and it's really cool. More games need to do this. Funnily enough, I'm playing Final Fantasy XIII for the first time and this does a similar thing as well. Normally with bosses when they do their menacing pose/roar and the camera slowly pans towards the 3 characters you're using and the HUD just slides in from off-screen as gameplay resumes. Makes me smile every time.

My favourite part is still Robin wayyyyyy in the other corner, trying to get in some light reading, despite the chaos. You can just imagine Chrom above him trying to gently warn about the utter destruction that's gonna occur behind him with the way he's pointing.

Decent quality version of the super horizontal image with every character including Sora. Only just noticed that they added Min Min's Dragon Arm to the things lunging at Wario.

Huh, well, this is an interesting development. Consider me changed from "Absolute nope" to "ehhh, maybe" Still looks too empty and boring to me. But if it's Monster Hunter style structure, maybe I won't have to spend hours running through loads of nothing to actually do something for a minute.

I already have the first Zarude. Thanks anyway. And yeah, I need Zarude with Cape. Because capes are cool.

So it seems that everyone apart from me got a code? Well, that's just bloody typical! Sent a complaint, let's see what happens.

Ah, so I'd need to go to customer services on the Pokémon site first, then? Man, I really wish they would ditch this rubbish newsletter method of distribution and just stick with Mystery Gift. That works perfectly fine, and Sword/Shield knows if you've got Trainer club account anyway.

Nope, not on my end. What's this support ticket you're referring to? Might have to do some whining.

Oh, trust me. I'm fully aware. Next landmark steps tend to be more impressive then the previous step. So it seems fitting to me. Not being able to play GTA has always been a weight holding down Ninty consoles. I imagine Nintendo are very chuffed with this development.

I mean, after Final Fantasy 7 was finally put on a cartridge, it was the next logical step, really.

The checkpoint system was quite generous in Samus Returns as well. I still absolutely despised that Diggernaut chase. Absolutely awful section. Instant death in games with some kind of health bar is a cardinal sin as far as I'm concerned.

Pretty much what I expected from the Treehouse demonstration, then. I don't know, the heavy focus on stealth and the harsh punishment for getting caught is just making me very apathetic towards this game.

Without going into too much detail on the actual game. How many times would you say you've been killed by them? The constant instant death looming over you is making me not want to boot this up. Just can't get the motivation up.

I don't have the photoshop chops to take that Simpsons scene and edit it to fit this situation, so I'm just gonna give my answer in a boring manner. No.

"Sweet! A free Switch OLED!"

So, neat little detail I just learnt. The Dive to the Heart section in Sora's stage seems to have obviously edited out Donald and Goofy for... well... obvious reasons. But it turns out this isn't the Smash team editing something to avoid Disney, no, it's Square themselves who did that. 5 years ago. So what I thought was Smash editing an image turned out to be a convenient deep cut! Neat! Yeah, I'm stupid hype for October 18th, it's so far away!

OK, Dream Drop Distance called. It says that plot was stupid!