Sheikah

Ventured into the game last night. I have to say, for nearly the same price the black armour edition is really nice. Also ShopTo threw in an iPhone case which I don't need, but it's free... Was surprised at how relatively obscured the level up person and estus flask was, having to talk multiple times. Can imagine people not doing that. Generally loving getting back Souls, will be investing a good deal of time into this. I want some bleeding pyromancy!

Attunement can be good to get more spells/pyromancy. Loading my game up now so not sure if pyromancy still kicks major ass yet.

It's just a term to describe someone who is to most people seen as much more attractive than the other person in question. And such people do date. Not everyone who is attractive necessarily only goes out with other similarly attractive people. At least, that's what I meant by it.

It was really hard for melee users too, since you could just run around while unleashing pyromancy on the other guy from a reasonable difference. It was pretty hard to hit people (as opposed to enemies) consistently without targeting.

For me, I'm mostly interested in just MK and very much X. Hyrule Warriors I might look into, but its likely use of the DW template has set my level of excitement pretty low. So even if they did that, I'd mostly just want 2 of the games...

Oh I remember in Dark Souls 1, before they patched it, the Ring of Fog gave you the ability to be untargetable as well as be hard to see like that. The thing was damn FUCKED. Made PvP more than a little ridiculous, really. I must confess, I used it a few times in duels while in the dragon covenant before the final boss for the lulz. I got a few PSN messages from the fallen afterwards with some rather flavourful language. Needless to say, they nerfed that pretty quick.

The problem is that the Wii U has a terrible lack of third party support, so the first party releases seem too far between. In actuality, they're probably not being released much slower than they normally are.

I'm not contesting that given time, a franchise will become part of the Nintendo identity (hell, DK got invited into the 'Mario family' and was well known to be involved with Mario from the arcade days). All I'm saying is that at the point at which Xenoblade arrived, given not much had likely changed since acquisition, it didn't feel like Nintendo actually had anything to do with it other than funding. Which there's totally nothing wrong with. I was just saying that Nintendo themselves only really had a hand in actually making one of the games I really liked on the Wii, whereas they did more in the past. This wasn't supposed to be a full blown argument over what constitutes a first party game, just an observation. Maybe developer acquisition is the way forward for them given other console manufacturers do this so successfully.

I don't believe I said Sony brought them, not that it really matters. I feel this has been blown out of proportion now.

They may have contributed something, and Nintendo SPD is credited to them on their Wiki page, but I'm finding any information on it difficult to come by. What I do know is that the director was there before acquisition, and it was his idea, and the staff roster is formed mostly of the previous Squaresoft employees. You seem to have contracted Zechs's 'making stuff up' disease. When did I say that Sony made those games?

But a lot of those series have been developed on by Nintendo at some point, and often it's a case of Nintendo telling the studio "We want another game in this series, here is what we'd (roughly) like". That's not true with Xenoblade. It was Monolith's entire thing and they brought it to the table. I don't doubt Monolith will become an integral cog in the Nintendo machine. Just at the stage at which they came in, with the Xeno series already to their name, I have a hard time crediting Nintendo with much of the development of that particular game. Like I said, it wasn't a big point I was making, just that out of the only 2 games that majorly impressed me on the Wii, only one of them had any real development credit going to Nintendo.

Like the previous 2 games...I shall smelt platinum ingots and pour them over my saves.

Why not? Don't play yourself down dude. Maybe she likes you for your personality?

You're kidding, right? So if a woman who was incredibly out of your league in terms of hotness turned up in casual clothes, you'd be like 'see ya!' Who are you, Gok Wan?

The Xeno series and its development team existed long before Nintendo even sniffed in the direction of Monolith; Xenoblade is the product of the brilliant Tetsuya Takahashi (yeah, I realise it's set in a new world, but it's still his baby). That's why I have a tough time believing we can really credit its development or conception to Nintendo in any meaningful way, other than the brilliant moneyhat-ing they did. Which was, indeed, a brilliant moneyhat.

No one is saying they should stop making the games they do, they are saying they should make more Western style games on top of that / buy more Western studios. That way everyone wins. Also, saying that difference must be good is misleading. Difference in terms of variety, especially when franchise fatigue has been actively occurring for a while now, should be positively embraced.

It's all about variety at the end of the day. If the console has mostly Japanese games then certain audiences and developers will be put off. I can't see how there can be an argument that having mostly Japanese games is a good thing. Mix it up to expand your audience.

I have in my bag...Dark Souls 2. Something came up which meant I wouldn't have been able to play it over the weekend anyway. Tonight...yes.

I'm just not sure how it could be proven, in terms of them getting their money back, other than there being some sort of check that the digital game had never been launched (and I don't even know if that's possible to check).

Yeah same, somehow got a silver discount and ordered it before when it was cheaper (no idea how I got silver, I'm sure the purchase requirements used to be higher).

I'm finding the pacing in this series a bit slow. Really hoping it picks up soon.

What, you mean Metroid and DK games, which are already Nintendo property? :p To me, it feels like Nintendo were quite heavily there from the off! From what I can find out, Monolith did nearly all of it, and I wasn't making a huge point anyway. Just that whatever Nintendo themselves were doing in the past, they're mostly doing sequels now.

I know that they bought them. But Nintendo themselves didn't make it. Which was the point I was getting at - Nintendo themselves made some awesome new IP back in the day, but now seem to be more of a sequel maker. I know they do, but it was an already formed studio prior to its acquisition. To me, it's the same as saying that Pixar films are actually Disney films because Disney acquired them. If they replaced staff with existing Nintendo employees (which in time, I guess does happen), and showed them how to make games to a 'Nintendo feel' then I could totally get behind that. To me though, it feels like a company doing what they do already but under Nintendo's banner.

Eh, I'd say that his criteria artificially padded the latter list while probably doing nothing at all for the earlier list. Who has ignored it? Who has worn the My Little Pony T-shirt? It's as if you're inventing people in order to have an argument. Xenoblade is without doubt a fine game, easily one of the best of the last generation. But it was one game; they needed more of that calibre, really. Last Story and Pandora's Tower were probably their best runner up IP, but they weren't even close to awesome. Xenoblade and Mario Galaxy are the two 'new and awesome' games of the Wii for me, which is really not enough when I look at past/other consoles. And of those, technically only one was actually made by Nintendo. The majority of Monolith's staff actually derive from Squaresoft.

Had mine on preorder for a while. ShopTo seem to have raised the price since I ordered as well.