Sheikah

If they did all this but still made it 8 gyms, elite 4, choose your grass/water/fire starter and then have a rival who picks the advantageous one then I can still see the problems. It'd work initially I reckon and would wow people, but it'd still be a lot of the same old.

Nah, I probably can't. Shame though that they keep shovelling out the same shite because it sells. Mind you, I reckon if they did shake it up it would still sell. But I guess the point is - why waste money and time doing that if the same thing still sells?

It could work. But most probably, it would be just as boring as the rest of the games. For me, Pokemon represents Nintendo at its most fervently conservative.

For the love of God, I hope they don't. It's kinda fun watching you squirm over this.

Yeah, Ashley is like the Master Hand and has defeated the rest of us in battle already.

Party formation was not the only problem - I would also be told I could not do a quest until I did another. It was a bit tedious if I'm being honest. Put simply though, selecting missions this way is a poor way to progress this type of game. Assembling parties of specific characters and then selecting a mission at usually the same place is not a fun or involved way of advancing the story. It is basically what you do in an MMORPG. I like a game where you go through a world and the plot unravels naturally - perhaps you visit a new town and find a new party member, and you travel with them; then you end up being forced onto a plane and fly to new place, where you're attacked by the enemy and crash land somewhere new. No, you go back to the same place and select a new mission, which usually involves just going somewhere and killing someone/gathering some thing. After 20-25 hours and exploring a fair chunk of the world I was not left particularly excited. And that cool example I gave you, that happens in RPGs all the time. With a decent main character to boot. Maybe I sound too down on this game, but it followed up an excellent game with a game that is decent but nothing that wowed me.

The main game is the last bit (the boss), and you play as an adult in the real game. They have confirmed that the orb collecting and weather changing etc was just a demo and will not be like the real game.

Well, my two cents to go with those of others... I absolutely adored the original Xenoblade and completed it fully; one of my favourite games of the generation. I have put maybe 20-25 hours into Xenoblade X over Christmas and honestly don't have much inclination to go back. The whole game is so nuanced and just nowhere near as fun to play as the original. It can at times be pretty tiresome even initiating a quest (being told you must assemble a party in a particular way, then finding out you have to do another quest first, etc). The party setup system and quest initiation left me feeling like it was more of an MMORPG in that respect. It is structured in a way that makes it quite boring - you report back to the base for more missions. It's not like in the original where your party continuously explored the world and the story unfolds around you. The battle system and the quirks of it feel much less enjoyable, and even at times tedious. I don't like the extra complexity of gun mode and character progression - I think the relative simplicity of battling in the first game was perfect. There's a lot that could have been explained I think, that would have made certain parts less tedious (not that I like games that hold your hand, but this is too far the other extreme in places). The game can be fun in doses but honestly was a world apart from the original, for me. Also...I cannot overstate how much of a supermassive dick move it was for them to move away from story and a cool main character. It was one of the best things about the original, and story is a very important thing in RPGs. Total fuck up. Sorry. I have heard the game 'opens up' when you aquire a Skell; given that's quite a bit later, I'm somewhat far from getting there (if I get there). I'm a little dubious of this statement but we'll see. Many of my grievances I imagine are there for the long haul.

Apparently there's a hidden powerful weapon in the boss room on this demo. Might go back to look for this.

That's not usually what happens though - it's people with no experience of a particular feature (e.g. voice chat, mobile) saying it isn't good/necessary (in some games, like team FPS games, I'd say voice chat very much is). Then when a feature comes along for these players (e.g. mobile with miitomo), turns out people don't mind it. I suppose my point is that what people reckon and what people truly think when confronted with the feature are two different things. It's all fine and well stating your own thoughts but I would certainly defer to someone with experience of the thing. As I am doing with VR currently - as I have had no experience with VR as yet. I'm not going to trash talk VR until I've actually played it and seen if it's amazing or not.

Not to mention prior feelings of many members here to mobile gaming and microtransactions - if you take a look in the miitomo thread now you'd be forgiven for thinking that's the direction people wanted Nintendo to take all along!

Quite true. I think the problem about these parts though has been that even when people have no experience with a thing, they still try to chime in with an opinion rather than stay quiet about it due to not really knowing whether the thing is good/works or not.

Demo was top class, finished it earlier. Very much looking forward to the full game now.

It is actually pretty funny how people are jumping to the most extreme conclusions! The PS4 is one of the most successful consoles of all time, yet some people seem to think Sony are soon releasing a successor? K.

Yeahhhh. That demo is getting destroyed by me later. Also, can the people who are mentioning Wii U please pass the industrial grade marijuana, thx.

Well that's PC. The whole point about console is that it's not PC; its audience are not the kind who care as much about specs hence they console game. Console gaming has always been about optimising games to a particular set of hardware instead of making games function at multiple levels for different hardware. Even the N3DS doesn't have more enemies on screen or a higher resolution in games for the same retail games across both hardware revisions, so do we really expect this will? A total waste of time and resources to double up optimisation efforts. Unless it's something really simple like load times, but we have these benefits already if we are willing to pay (SSD). No, it's almost certainly not a successor or a revision that will receive proper PS4 games that the original console can't play (unlike the N3DS). I am actually a little amazed that some people think that could actually happen. It reckon be more like Kindle Fire TV 4K model versus the original. Except even less important, because gaming is the PS4's main focus. In this case, the 4K Fire TV model is a niche product that only a small proportion buy into; it's not the kind of thing to really hurt your average gamer who wants a PS4 to play games. As for the announcement/leak itself being a bad/stupid idea due to its effect on current sales...I really doubt this information will stop or even significantly slow the sale of PS4 systems within the next few months. Is that what you predict will happen? Because we can very easily see how 'stupid' Sony are for letting this slip by looking at sales the next few months.

Console games have enough bugs running to one set of specs. I very much doubt developers will want to waste time and resources making and testing their games to two sets of specifications.

Exactly. It'll most likely just be supporting 4K content or VR better; Sony know better than to fracture their audience. That's why nobody is annoyed by it. Also, the PS4 has not a chance in hell of running real games in 4K. This is a terrible example/comparison and actually makes me think your purpose here is more or less to annoy people by making very stupid comments like this. I've noticed recently that you seem to have a bit of an agenda on here in terms of trying to shit stir. If a Wii HD came out then it would obviously have been a successor console, as developers would have to develop HD games that would be completely at odds in terms of what the original Wii could play. But as mentioned, the complete pipe dream that is mainstream gaming at 4k for consoles means that if Sony planned to do this, it would not be an upgrade but a successor console.

A pretty standard day of strolling though Akihabara in Tokyo for me.

Did she want Digimon?

As soon as I saw the contrast in picture quality between my TV and the gamepad for Wind Waker I never touched it for off-TV play again. Gaming deserves better than that.

I will be getting this (avid Souls player with a plat for each game). Only thing is I'm currently in Japan, and this isn't available on Vita.

My following comments only apply if this turns out to be real, obviously... I think this is some kind of tragic joke, if this turns out to be their only/main controller. Like, really fucking silly. - Creating an alternative to traditional buttons, likely an even more expensive thing than buttons, that don't work as well with games...is ridiculous. Like, meddling with stuff that doesn't need to be meddled with. We all know that buttons feel better than touch buttons, even with things like vibration enabled. Even if they use that strange new tech somebody posted where the buttons pop out, they still look like the kind of clicky buttons you see on the side of domestic appliances rather than proper gaming buttons. - The shape of this thing looks totally unergonomic. No curved prongs to hold on to. This couldn't be more different from the most comfy ever controller, the gamecube's. The thing looks flat - while the edges are curved from one perspective, the thing is still a flat structure. - Screen on the controller. Why..? - Nubs. Freaking nubs. The bane of 3D games, particularly FPS games. No reason to have these over full size, large analogue sticks. Some other thoughts - - If there are more controllers (perhaps optional) to make up for the shortcomings of this one, then you have the same problems as they had with the Wii U, where there were several different controllers and the whole thing was a bit of a non-uniform mess. Not everyone had every controller and developers were left in a bit of a fix. - If you need to buy attachable pieces to slot onto the controller, or even faff about doing that, you can see that putting off third party devs e.g. EA seeing as this as another quirky and niche device. All in all I very much hope this is not true, or there is an alternative bundled in with the system.

Shiiiit yeaaaah. Was waiting for this one. Never played Yakuza so this being the first chronologically is perfect.

'You will say wow' Nah. I will say 'shit'.