Dufniall

I've played this a bit yesterday and it's pretty fun! Good to see a Battle Royale with some new ideas; magic instead of weapons. Runs solid and looks okay enough for a Battle Royale game. I've played about 4 games and I've won 2, so I was quite happy with that haha. The magic system is actually pretty fun to use. Basically you can have 2 gauntlets; the one on your right arm is fixed and you can choose which element it is before a match. Your left arm one you can pick up on the map from chests or people you've killed. There are a number of different elements: Fire, ice, earth, wind, lighting, poison; I think about 8 or so. Each element has 2 attacks, a rapid-fire and an area spell (like a firewall, or a whirlwind). The cool thing is that you can combine those. So for example say I cast a whirlwind and then shoot it with fire it's a fiery whirlwind. Not everything combines though. I can throw up a firewall but shooting it with ice nullifies it. Next to that you have a movement spell for the A button (short teleport, dash, jump, stuff like that). B is jumping and you can also hover a bit as well. For the rest it is your typical Battle Royale, with equipment to be picked up, health and armour potions, the works. Would be cool to get some squads going with this! For an impression, @Londragon made some Let's Play vids:

Apparently the embargo for reviews of the new NVIDIA series is September 14th, so I guess we'll be seeing a lot of news about them next week.

And don't forget Lady Link:

The bundle we've all been waiting for, I mean who needs a Super Mario 35 Switch when you can have this? BATTLE ANYTIME, ANYWHERE WITH THE NINTENDO SWITCH FORTNITE SPECIAL EDITION CONSOLE BUNDLE, HITTING EUROPE ON 30TH OCTOBER Limited bundle includes exclusive blue and yellow Joy-Con controllers, special console and Nintendo Switch dock designs, and more 10th September, 2020 – It’s time to board the Battle Bus and dive into a 100-player Battle Royale anytime, anywhere, with the Nintendo Switch Fortnite Special Edition bundle, launching in Europe on 30th October. This special bundle includes: Nintendo Switch console with a unique Fortnite design on the back Exclusive yellow Joy-Con (L) and blue Joy-Con (R) Nintendo Switch dock with a unique Fortnite design Fortnite pre-installed Wildcat Bundle download code, giving access to the Wildcat Outfit and two additional styles, a Sleek Strike Back Bling and two additional styles, and 2000 V-Bucks Since its launch on Nintendo Switch in June 2018, Fortnite has become the most downloaded game* ever launched on Nintendo hardware in Europe, with millions of players battling it out on the TV or in handheld mode every week. The Nintendo Switch Fortnite Special Edition bundle, with a unique Fortnite design and exclusive yellow and blue Joy-Con, hits Europe on 30th October.

COVID-19 has also pushed NMH3 back to 2021:

1. What games are people playing on their Switch at the moment Currently playing Bomb Chicken, Horizon Chase Turbo and I recently finished Super Castlevania IV in the Castlevania Collection. 2. What’s the next game release you’re looking forward to? 3D All Stars will be fun to play in between. I've still got The Wonderful 101 and Final Fantasy X and X-II remaster unplayed and I want to start these as well. But the one I'm looking forward to the most is Hyrule Warriors! 3. How many people are actually picking up Super Mario 3D All-Stars on day one? How many people? Probably a couple of million if those pre-order stats from Amazon are anything to go by. I'm one of them. 4. Which game are you looking forward to playing first? I'm looking forward to playing both Sunshine and Galaxy again, but I'll just start with 64.

Yeah the game looks good, I got the press kit so I uploaded all the screenshots from it on the main site as well: https://www.n-europe.com/games/hyrule-warriors-age-of-calamity/screenshots

I'm guessing they'll do a storyline with the 6 main characters, and put in a free-for-all or highscore mode where you can unlock some more silly ones. I'm really curious to see if they go for anything outside of BOTW, or just characters from that game. I never played the first one but I did enjoy Fire Emblem Warriors, so this is bound to be good.

This... looks pretty interesting! Story-driven, based on the BOTW engine and I think a lot closer to a real Zelda title than any other spin-off. I guess it'll miss the quirkiness from Hyrule Warriors but I'm excited. Probably means that BOTW2 isn't happening soon though.

I'm not sure when, but we will probably see reviews pop up quite soon. I usually use a Dutch website who posted the line up of the brands without pricing: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/171676/fabrikanten-kondigen-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3000-videokaarten-aan.html I think this English site usually is also quite up to date with news, might be worth checking that from time to time: https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090-rtx-3080-and-rtx-3070-custom-model-pricing-in-uk

Basically what happens is Nvidia brings out the reference card, and says alright this is the new graphics card. Usually it is not the best performing/most quiet model. Other brands then get the PCB/chip and make their own versions. Some choose to put on quiet fans, others go for higher clock speed, or put out mini versions or water cooled versions of the card. I personally would never get the Nvidia reference model but go for a 3rd party one from for example Asus or MSI, as they are usually clocked faster and cooled better.

The more I think about this one the weirder I find it. I mean, it's Mario's anniversary, but why choose the Game & Watch as a form factor for this game? Why only throw in SMB and the Lost Levels, but not SMB2 or SMB3? Why not make a mini Game Boy with the Mario titles? Why make the juggle game black and white while the original Mario the Juggler was in colour? And what about other G&W games Mario starred in? Are they one of the 35 surprises? And the clock mixing 8 bit Mario with 16 bit Yoshi also feels wrong. So many questions.

Hey, don't forget Good Job!, 51 Worldwide games and Jump Rope Challenge! Who is saying Nintendo isn't publishing?

Interesting they are coming up with their own Mario Royale after a fan-made one was taken down. I wonder if they were planning this already, or if they kind of went with the idea of the fan-made one. Anyway, looks more fun than Tetris 99, but the limited availability is weird.

I'm desperate to play it, but on PC it's an Epic Store exclusive so that's a no-no. Here's hoping a Switch version is indeed coming, or that the game will also hit Steam in a couple of months.

And here is the september video: Not much new there, so I think I'll just leave my town as is for now but when the october/Halloween update comes I may jump back in.

Cool topic. It's hard to put a finger on what really makes a game fair or frustrating games. Plus, there are games that are frustrating that I love and games that are fair that I hate. So it's not only this aspect that makes or breaks a game for me. To start with some frustrations. Bad camera has already been mentioned and is one of the worst things in games. Not making a jump because you can't see where you are going is just unforgiveable. Somebody also mentioned it in another topic, but unexpected reinforcements in strategy games. Valkryia Chronicles does this, as well as for example Wargroove. In your first playthrough you have no clue they are coming and where they are coming, so you cannot anticipate. This really feels unfair. Weird controls or mechanics. I'm currently playing Super Castlevania IV in the Castlevania Collection and there are just some weird mechanics. Like stairs, if you fall or jump on one you'll fall through, unless you press down. Bad hitboxes is another point of frustration, especially in platformers. As are blind falls. Not knowing if something is an insta-kill or not (again Castlevania: some spikes kill you in 1 hit while others don't). What does feel fair? Basically the opposite of what I've said above. Games like Hollow Knight control great and have perfect hitboxes, so every death there feels fair. Monster Hunter is also a franchise I love because you need to learn the behaviour of the monsters, and in time you will always be able to take one down. Despite the frustrations I love Wargroove and Valkyria Chronicles, so that's an example of games that do something wrong but still are great. I'm mixed about Castlevania IV, I have a feeling this series started to get good from the GBA on onwards.

No clue here! Even with one song having lyrics you would think it would be easy to recognize it, but it doesn't ring a bell so I guess it is something I haven't played.

And if you don't feel up to building yourself, I believe @RedShell bought a pre-built system quite recently so he may have some good pointers there!

For the Mini graphics cards: I think the maximum you can get is a 2060 Super, maybe there are 2070 Super cards. They should perform about the same as the bigger counterparts, only cooling may be less so the fans may be louder. If you are aiming at 4K high settings I wouldn't go under a 2070 Super. There are a lot of tiny builds to be found online so you can find inspiration there. m.2 is indeed a very good one, but it is almost becoming the standard now so I thought that was a given haha. For the rest: Get dual channel RAM (e.g. 2x8 or 2x16 compared to 1x16 or 1x32. Helps a little bit in performance as well. And of course a quality power supply is adviced, don't go for the cheapest one out there but I have a feeling you will not. And indeed:

Some things to consider: Do you want to build yourself or a ready-made system? At what resolution are you planning to play? Getting super high settings with 60FPS is easier on Full HD then on 4K. Like @Happenstance said, the new NVIDIA generation is inbound (expected somewhere in October I think?) so may be worth waiting on that to either get the newest series or the rest drops in price. Although availability is often bad when it comes to new NVIDIA cards. But in all honesty with that budget you should be safe and you can probably get anything you want. I'm not sure what the "biggest" size of graphics cards are that fit into a tiny case, but I think in a mini tower you can already fit a 2080 Super. Edit: AMD is a very valid option, especially for the processor. For graphics cards I still have a slight bias for NVIDIA as most games are optimized for NVIDIA cards. But the AMD graphics cards have improved miles.

No worries, I'm off in a second so that should work out better with bottom 2. Fun to play again though, it's been a while!