Burny

I disagree on not wanting them to experiment with motion controls, while I agree that music, characters, worlds and atmosphere resulting from that make half a Zelda game. The other half for me would be the puzzle and exploration based game mechanics. But the stories? Which ones? The ones where you are the chosen one (or eventually find out that you are) and have to puzzle your way through eight temples for strange artifacts, so you have the power to defeat the evil threatening the land? Or the ones where you land yourself in a different realm that is threatened by evil, so you set out to retrieve strange powerful artifacts from several temples - filled with puzzles, of course - so you can defeat said evil? Seriously, next to any Zelda (and pretty much most Nintendo games), your average blockbuster action movie has a sensible and well thought out story. Though you're absolutely right that the SS trailer is rather poor. Showing off your puzzle mechanics doesn't make for exciting scenes.

You didn't, Grazza did. :p What does that even mean? From what I know playing PS3 and PC games, "Next Gen" pretty much means "Same Gen" with more going on on the screen, larger levels and everything behaving physically more correct. Yes, I would like to see a Zelda with Uncharted 2 level graphics, too, but with a series, that relies on clever puzzle design, building up a quasi-open world to explore, with characters to interact with and that have you solve more puzzles being an important part, that wouldn't be enough. And in my eyes, it isn't even essential for Zelda as opposed to a playable 10-hour action movie, which would be rather underwhelming, if it wasn't as technically impressive. The only scenario I could come up with, where more advanced hardware would really benefit the Zelda series beyond eye candy, is when Nintendo decided to put Zelda into a completely open world (think Elder Scrolls). I doubt that's the way forward for the Zelda series, though. It'd probably only serve to contribute to what where my complaints with TP, the general lifelessness and emptiness of the overworld.

It didn't really "work" for OoT, because they never tried. Have a look at games of the era that tried to look realistic and at OoT. In OoT you have cartoony proportions everywhere. Overlarge heads, overly large eyes and typically exaggerated animations. It becomes even clearer if you have a look at the 3DS Remake, which is basically an idealized version of OoT with slightly sharper textures. It's just that in the N64 days, "realistic" looking games didn't look any more realistic, than cartoony looking games. TP itself was highly cartoony, too. You get the same large eyes, often exaggerated proportions and animations as in OoT. The real difference is, that TP tried to look "gritty" in as "everything gets more serious when it's brown and gray". People just completely confuse "realistic" and "gritty" graphics.

With even more brown than Twilight Princess?

It's Nintendo. They might be the ones who charge prices for their hardware that allow them to actually make money (Oh, the humility!), but when it comes to splitting player bases with compatibility, they handle all their software and hardware like raw eggs. As you said, they have practically no high profile game, that is DSi exclusive, although the DSi would have offered them a bit more hardware power. It's quite similar with a second analog slider. Design a game around having two analog sliders and it's practically impossible to find a layout that'll be able to replicate it when you take the second slider away. Won't happen.

Well, while I was a bit disappointed, I think the screen is fine. With their current hardware design philosophy, Nintendo is bound to make compromises whatever they do. Lower resolution means they can get away with a more low-end graphics chip while still producing graphics with an acceptable quality. Near Gamecube level graphics with a bit of advanced shaders is fine by me and I don't expect mobile games to deliver cinematic experiences. Otherwise I'd be totally drooling over the PSP2, which, as it stands, leaves me rather cold. The only thing that I'm really disappointed with in terms of the screen, is it's resolution in comparison to the DS' one. The resolution is larger, but less than 2 times the DS' one. That means DS games won't scale naturally, so the image quality will suffer.

Higher resolution / wider aspect ratio screen and second analog pad won't be among them though. Clashes too much with backwards compatibility. Tbh., from a mere technical point of view I was already slightly disappointed with the 3DS' hardware design back at E3 2010. I'm not missing the second analog pad, but with mobile phones having very large screens I thought the 3DS' top screen should at least fill the complete upper lit and have a substantially higher resolution. With having to render at twice the effective resolution for the 3D and everything, that might have been overkill for a device the size of the DSLite, but it'd be nice to have. I guess there's a reason the PSP2 has the size of a brick.

By "finished", do you mean you came back to the station to fetch a certain something after MB was killed? Because if you didn't, it IS cut off. That last bit after the "first" ending may be a bit on the fan-service heavy side, but it rounds the game out well. I'd say it belongs far to much into the story, as to call it a bonus.

That, what Rez said AND it would cost you a lot less nerves. What kind of base are you going to use? Some wooden diorama base like this? For the fire you might have a look at this duel scene. The fire itself should be pretty doable with GS. The rest is painting. (Edit: Just browsed a bit through the homepage of the duel scene's painter and didn't expect to find the Spanish Inquisition!)

Still daydreaming, are we? It's unlikely that Nintendo will make their next home console noticeably more powerful than the PS3 is now. They'll probably chose the cheapest hardware that lets them output an HD-signal, so they can sell the thing profitably, while Sony and MS will probably try to outdo themselves again in terms of graphical power. So the real "graphical grunt" might just not be available on a Nintendo platform again. Still, with Nintendo's general preference of stylized graphics over pseudo-realistic ones, with PS3 type hardware, they should be able to produce an absolutely stunning looking game. :3

If you consider this a sim, then yes, you have certainly not. You mean a bit more like this? I have a general weakness for anything that has to do with flying. But somehow arcade flying games hardly tickle me, unless they're in space or Star Wars (or both). I've also no idea about the ace combat series except for a brief try on a 360 demo stand, where I quickly crashed the plane I was in. Still, might have an eye on this.

These aren't Warhammer miniatures but they're among the last things I painted: Runebound 2nd Ed. miniatures: Still got tons of unpainted and / or half converted miniatures around. While I did "play" my Tyranid army was sort of constantly "WIP" and this hadn't changed by the time I stopped to actively pursue the hobby. :-/ One day...

Yay for a Warhammer thread! Although I'm completely out of the hobby, at least until the end of my studies. @EVILMURRAY Green stuff? I only see green color. o.O Anyway, some secrets about the green stuff: It likes your fingers and the tool you're using to shape it much better, than the miniature you want it on. So use a wet metal tool (some kind of modeling tool) for shaping so it won't stick and always keep a bit of water handy. Don't create shapes by adding GS to a still shapeable lump until you have the desired shape, but use a single lump, to "push" the desired shape out of it. If you've got to shape something from two opposite sides, always use a hard core (hardened GS or whatever)! If possible, avoid shaping something from two different sides in the same work session at all. It's far too likely that you'll end up destroying your efforts on the other side. @Rez Could you establish rules in the OP? Like hiding large images or groups of images in spoiler tags etc.?

No, fighting includes any press-up-up-left-down-do-rain-dance-to-kick-enemy-into-the-nutts-type of game, while sport is any annual shoot-ball-with-foot game and the likes. 3rd person games about killing stuff is more or less anything for me that's not an RPG, where you run around in a third person perspective and, well - kill stuff. God of War, Assassin's Creed, Brutal Legend (ok, this one's half strategy), Uncharted, you name it. As does everyone else for their large projects, which is my point. Even the few genuinely new large games like Assassin's Creed just take tried and tested formulas (open world) and add a couple of mechanics of their own. And when you boil it down to it's core: It's just a different game about killing stuff in another impressive open world environment. :p I also think that Nintendo could really start to shake up a couple of their game's formulas a bit (mostly Zelda), but I don't exactly see where comparable developers are more inventive (with the exception of LBP maybe). Unless we're talking indies, who are outdoing all the big ones in that regard. No, I'm absolutely serious about Wii Sports. Sport minigames where there before, but Wii Sports is a game build completely around the hardware, so you can't separate it. The pick up and play nature of Wii Sports for local multiplayer wasn't there before and it was revolutionary.

You mean the bias, that lets me play anything from the occasional simulation (Il2 Sturmovik), to RPGs (preferably western), the occasional shooter, some of the games you mention, up to Wii Sports? I'll admit that I don't like fighting or sports games much, my play time is far too limited to play everything I would like to and the only franchise I'm attached to is Zelda. Still, terribly biased, isn't it? :p Rhythm Heaven is a first party game, just fyi. And Wii Sports isn't an example of a shiny new mechanic that Nintendo was willing to explore? Nintendogs wasn't such an example either then? Not much gamer's games, but rather unparalleled. Sure this is about my bias towards Nintendo? Sure it wasn't you stopping to think in favor of a bit rage-typing?

The thing is, we can say that as well for practically any game. It's not necessarily a bad thing either. What great gaming innovations were there lately, other than mass market rhythm games, motion controlled games and trainers disguised as games controlled with bathroom scales? And remove Wii Sports from that list, it's actually a revolutionary game that brought gaming somewhere it hasn't been before. You mean they have done what? For the most part, they have taken games about shooting people from an ego perspective into different settings and added a couple of different weapons. Or they have taken games about killing stuff from a 3rd person perspective into open worlds placed in different ages. A lot of fun, but not much different from what they have done before.

I most certainly wouldn't. It'd screw with the 3D screen, when you chose to use it.

And nearly all of them rely on having a two analogue stick layout, powerful hardware and often enough on having a decent online system provided by the console manufacturer out of the box. With the Wii, Nintendo doesn't offer any of it, although from a control POV, the Wii can be superior for first person games. Nintendo might provide a decent online system on the 3DS, but in many dev's eyes they'll likely fail to provide the first two to a sufficient extend. So if you want large blockbuster games that are not from Nintendo, you're better off with any other console.

How did they manage to record the sound without any background noises? It seems suspiciously clear. If that's the sound output of the 3DSs speakers, I'm positive that games will sound a whole lot better than on the DS. Also: Link has the slingshot from the start and later finds it again? I suppose it's a "cheat" for the demo. It's been years since I touched OoT.

Nice. ^^ You really nailed that dusty Ork vehicle look. Especially like the rusty iron parts. Just with the color, wouldn't red have been fastaaa?! And by this point, wouldn't it be sensible to start your own general miniature thread, so all your pictures stay in the same place? The older threads are bound to get buried under the general chatter.

It's what they're not doing: Powerful hardware, good online stuff and two analog sticks.

Admittedly it's pretty close, but unless pixels will appear wider than they are high, it's still not 16:9, but 30:17. It's only 4 rows of pixels more than a 16:9 aspect ratio though, which makes me wonder why they chose such dimensions.

That and neither will have the next generation of Nintendo handheld games. As long as it's good enough that they want to turn it back on when their eyes have recovered, there should be a point.