Nicktendo

I liked a lot of the stuff in that direct. But I won’t spoil it here... Listen to the podcast on Thursday to find out [emoji6]

Yeah, I've seen this game on sale loads of times @drahkon. I got it on Steam for less than a euro, but would definitely pick it up again on Switch for that lovely portable-ness.

This seemingly happened to a lot of people!

I picked it up as well as the original Halo is one of my favourite games of all time. Can’t wait for the remaster of Combat Evolved. Outside of that I’ve only played the multiplayer of 2. I’m Enjoying Reach. Apart from the sound issues, it’s seems to be a nice remaster. Runs at a butter smooth 60FPS in 4K. I’ll be up for some MP when I get used to the game again 😅

The e-shop is a mess. And all the good sales finished a few days ago, there’s nothing decent on sale at the moment unfortunately. Welcome to the club. [emoji106]

Two years ago it was mega. I might be busy this new year, but I’ll certainly try and be present for some games.

When I lived in Russia they switched to an OTT streaming service for the PL a couple of years ago. It is amazing when you can sit and choose any match you want to watch from all the 3pm kick-offs. They had next to no analysis, but it was so easy to pick a game to watch it in TV-like quality and then stick on the highlights of the others when you had the time. It is absolutely the future, and the Premier League should think seriously about adopting this model and just cutting the middle-man out. It looks like F1 is slowly going down this road as well and while Sky's PL coverage is generally good, it is vastly overpriced.

Yep, I got it as well. And another into the backlog, see you in 20... 20....1.

Changed my region back to Europe and ACCEPTED.

You're all banned from Resetera. Edit: Okay. DRAGON QUEST XI SS: Echoes of an Elusive Age.

I can't speak for your gaming taste but we've had Cuphead and Ori and the Blind Forest from Microsoft (And Minecraft...). Both solid additions to the Switch Library and great for handheld gaming. If you haven't played Hollow Knight yet, what are you doing? If you have, also nice to have on the go. I put way more time into Stardew Valley on Switch over Steam because handheld. I'd generally say avoid multi-plat indies that are 3D and graphics heavy (like Rocket League, for example) because they generally look awful on the Switch. I'm personally wanting all the PS1 Final Fantasy games because again, handheld as an option is mega for longer games. There are barely any exclusive indies but Golf Story was a lot of fun and Tetris 99 is worth it for the online sub alone. I have a few indie games on both Switch and Steam and the Switch always wins out because it's just way more convenient. Be prepared to pay for that convenience though. As for non-indie exclusives, there are plenty. Mario and Rabbids was surprisingly fun. Xenoblade 2 is amazing. Octopath Traveller is a nice throwback to 16-bit RPGs. Splatoon 2 is still going strong and now is not a bad time to jump in. ARMS was cool but the online is probably dead now. Have a look at a list of exclusives and see what grabs your fancy. There's plenty of stuff similar to MK and Smash from Nintendo and second parties.

As I get older, I'm definitely in favour of short games that cut down on a lot of the excess and just get down to the nitty gritty. I absolutely adored Hollow Knight which took me around 25-30 hours to finish. There is post game stuff, but I will go back to that later. Link's Awakening is another compact game that I finished in <15 hours. Perfect. However, when a long game really grabs me, I do tend to get sucked in. This doesn't happen often but BOTW took me 120 hours to do the final boss, and I enjoyed every second. On the 4th March I put in 12 hours I think I was done by May, so a couple of months after release, but it was literally all I played. Xenoblade 2 is currently sitting at 100+ hours and I still have two chapters to go. I have dipped in and out of this a lot, and I'm coming up to the two year mark since I started. When it clicks, I can sit and play for 4-5 hours at a time, but this is pretty rare. The game has a lot of busy work, which is great for those who want it, but for me it can be irritating when I'm pretty under-levelled and just want to progress the story. The fact you need to constantly need to dip in and out of menus is annoying. Overall, I absolutely adore the game, I just can't dedicated the time it demands. Since the Switch launched I've dropped a couple of longer games. FFVII, Octopath and Skyrim immediately jump to mind. I think it's better to have one long game on the go at a time and then just play a few indies or online games when the mood isn't quite there for a long session. Overall though, I'm definitely in favour of 15-30 hour experiences. Something that tells a good story from start to finish with tight gameplay that keeps busy work to a minimum. There's a time and place for a long RPG (I'm gonna pick up DQXI over Xmas), but I'd definitely recommend only having one on your plate at a time. If it doesn't grab you, play something else and pick it back up when you've beaten a few shorter games.

Great review @Hero-of-Time, thanks. I honestly can't wait to play this game, I think I'll love it too. A long wait until it drops on Steam though...

Gotta be Poch

1) Mercury Steam. The backlash is real for Super Metroid. 2) Luigi's Mansion was EAD / Miyamoto. Passing the buck. Just like they did with the original F-Zero, Pilotwings, 1080, WaveRace and the others that have disappered / been handed down to other studios and subsequently been on indefinite hiatus. Though I haven't played LM3, by all accounts it's an amazing game. Kudos to Next Level. However... 3) Yoshi's Crafted World and Link's Awakening had horrible framerate issues. This wouldn't have happened in-house. Seal of quality? Nah. Quoting myself because you obviously missed it: Second Party is a risk. My speculation is that this EAD studio are stuck on mobile games until the end of time. 85% output. It's the future, baby.

Please don't assume my gender, bigot. Am I doing gaming forums right? Wrong, the last two years. Since Jan 2018. Please read my posts with greater care. Ronnie, I wrote what I though above. It's all very clearly laid out. Made concessions, accepted I could be wrong about things. I've said my piece. You chose to make personal attacks instead of discussing what I'd said specifically regarding Nintendo's first party output. We can go round in circles with you trying to one up me, or we can accept the point that Nintendo's FIRST PARTY output over the past couple of years has been weak compared to the past. Wrong or right: They are dedicating more time now to mobile development than they did three years ago to the detriment of their switch output? I'd argue, yes. Yes, the second party studios have done a great job, something I did actually mention in my previous post. See: The Switch is my favourite console of all time. One out of seven studios is still just under 15% of their internal output. Quite a chunk. Mario Kart 9 would be nice. Or some more DLC for 8. Switch output of internal studios is at 85% of what the Wii U was = at the detriment. But nope, we get the absolutely scummy trashfest that is Mario Kart Tour. Care to disagree? Nothing you say will convince me otherwise regarding their poor output, especially when it's written in black and white in both D-Cubed's post and yours. You seem to care a lot more about words people use than the actual content of what they're saying. Re-read my previous post regarding first / second party output and let me know what you think about it because your petty insults are tiresome. Also, feel free to educate me some more. You could probably sit down and masturbate a bit afterwards so you REALLY start to feel good about yourself. Monolith is owned by Nintendo, they worked on Zelda BOTW. Are they their own company or an "external R&D" part of Nintendo? If they're fully integrated into Nintendo, why do they still have the Monolith Soft monkier and have four studios? My knowledge of Japanese is non-existent, but at a guess (we know you love to do that), I'd say they still have a certain degree of independence. Surely they should be sat next to Iwata's desk in Kyoto if they are first party? Can you tell us how much Nintendo paid them for their contribution to BOTW? How much input did Nintendo have in Xenoblade 2, because I'm going through it now and it seems to me there is a distinct lack of Nintendo's hand in that game. For the better. TELL ME RONNIE, I NEED TO KNOW. HOW FIRST PARTY ARE THEY?

You are just too much He's right. Mario and Zelda. Quelle surprise. A lot of your posts seem to contain that. My opinion is just as valid as yours, and in my opinion, you love talking out of your arse and thinking you are right about everything. I'll go back to being a, what was it, "entitled, never-happy internet gamer."

January 2018 - March 2020. Yeah, definitely healthy.... @Dcubed was right the first time. For a company of Nintendo's standards, I think that is pathetic, especially for the second and third year of a major console release. Three ports, two casual games and two sequels. The games they got out in the first nine months were superb. I thoroughly enjoyed my first year with the Switch. I've loved the last two years too, and it has quickly become my favourite console of all time, but something is seriously wrong if they went from (sometimes single-handedly) supporting a handheld and home console system simultaneously over the past 25-30 years to THAT. Content wise, I expected them to maintain the level of the first nine months over the course of the next three to four years. Honestly, at this point, I actually welcome them farming stuff out more often to second party. I think letting other devs tackle their franchises and Nintendo sort of taking on the Daddy role of watching over them will likely lead to more variation and maybe even stuff that people actually want, given their apparent reluctance to do it themselves. If that's what they're doing, great. But when many people (including myself) have a vested interest in the vastly talented FIRST PARTY (read: internal R&D) developers at Nintendo and primarily bought the console for their games and their innovation, the info above simply doesn't make pleasant reading. Something is changing at Nintendo and I'm fairly sceptical it'll work out well in the long run. That's my opinion though. I could very easily be wrong. If you like Sushi Striker and Brain Age, I'm happy for you. That's not what I'm after for my Switch, and I hope they have good stuff cooking behind the scenes. Second party development, it seems to me, is a bigger risk, regardless of how close the collaboration is. I've already seen people hoping the potential Super Metroid remake isn't going to Mercury Steam. I also definitely wouldn't want to see them making any ports in-house. Saying "what are you talking about?", criticising other people's choice of words to form their own opinion and replying with one word answers to those opinions is not the way to win people over to your way of thinking. I can play that game if that's what you want though. You'll be needing this when you join the Nintendo Defence Force. You have my axe, as well, brave warrior.

Wow.

Xenoblade 2 is Monolith Soft, we are talking about FIRST PARTY software. They have a console on the market (one, not two) and have done almost nothing for two years. Sickening (the laughing smiley face surely gave it away... 🙄), shocking, pathetic. Read it again. Hyperbole, maybe. Opinion, yes. Compared to FIRST PARTY output over the years, it is all of those things. “Fine” was a reference to the OUTPUT, not the quality. They have countless studios. They could and should do more to support their hardware instead of this braindead mobile guff.

I knew Nintendo had been pretty quiet over the past couple of years (Switch year one was fine) but I had absolutely no idea it was on that scale. Seeing what they’ve done in the past two years alone is absolutely sickening 😂 I really hope they’ve got a lot coming next year. Thank god the second parties have been around to pick up the slack. No wonder Q1 and Q2 were so quiet. Shocking.

More than half of those games are second party, not in-house.

Congrats to Game Freak. Saw this on Twitter the other day. Excellent meming.

Admittedly I do enjoy their banter, especially John. He is a funny man. I don't think I've even heard Gui speak about a game this year, always skip his bit. Just find him dry and uninteresting, and yes you're right, he rarely plays anything new. With John I don't mind that so much, his piece on Columns last week was gold. I like the chemistry he and James have.

I haven't watched NVC in a few months, but did tune in for this absolute car crash... "Am I being gaslit?" is the most 2019 response to any criticism, valid or no. Amazing to witness how far IGN has fallen. Jose, Brian and Peer had great chemistry and always put on a great show, even if there was nothing of value to really discuss. I don't even know how these four got jobs. Clueless. I thought Zach went to work for Ubisoft? That was a quick return...