Goron_3

This actually looks amazing. The 30FPS didn't bother me too much until I played Dark Souls Remastered, at which point I was immediately spoiled by 60 FPS.

My aim for this year was complete 52 games. In hindsight, I should have waited before starting Sekiro because this game is about to be a LONG ride. Thankfully I've got Raging Loop on Switch as a second game to play. Regarding Sekiro....I honestly wouldn't have guessed this was a Miyazaki game at all. It plays nothing like Bloodborne or Dark Souls, and the world design is much more linear with less emphasis on shortcuts. The combat is interesting - frankly I think the overworld areas have the right level of difficulty (including the mini-bosses) but damn, the main bosses are extremely difficult. Whereas in Dark Souls and Bloodborne you could afford to be patient, your only option in Sekiro is to learn each of the bosses moves, learn when to parry them and then fully commit to attacking for the duration of the fight. It's absolutely brutal. I've just got to what is considered the first big 'skill check' in the game and whilst I'm committed to beating this boss, the pressure of nailing 20-30 deflects in a row just to get rid of one health bar is nuts. Add to that, two or three hits from most strong enemies leads to death and, well, yeah. It's brutal. I can't help but feel that whilst I'm going to keep playing, I'm not going to have much fun during the boss encounters. General exploration and combat with weaker enemies is superb though, but currently it's not near the level of Bloodborne or Dark Souls. I feel like Miyazaki wanted to make a combat system that didn't just involve the player spamming the roll button. It certainly works to a degree, but the emphasis on deflecting attacks is tough. Very tough.

Excellent work! O&S signal the end of the first half of the game. Now you've just got to find the final four bosses and you're all set. And then you can move on to Bloodborne

Without derailing the thread too much, you should have around +3/4 on your Estus flask right now. If not, spend some time topping them up (there's an easy one to get in New Londo Ruins) and kindle the bonfire nearest O&S so that you're getting 10 EF refills for the fight. Delighted to say that I can contribute another game to this thread....*drum roll* Donkey Kong Country (SNES, via Switch Online) I played this game briefly as a kid and remember it made quite an impact on me but I've never played it since. Right off the bat, I've got to say that I think this game controls wonderfully - there's a real sense of momentum to DK / Diddy and I actually think this game feels better to play than games like Super Mario World. Graphically it's also excellent but I did find that DK's sprite is just way too large. Generally speaking I much preferred just playing as my main man Diddy (I'm guessing the sprite size is part of the reason why Diddy is the main character in 2?). I wish the game had more minecart levels but hey, no one's perfect. I must confess that I abused the rewind function to get rid of most of my deaths. I'm half tempted to play the game and play it properly. It's not that the game is necessarily hard but I have a tendency to just sprint and jump, maintaining momentum and never really taking my time. There were a few levels late on in the game where I probably should have just changed my approach instead of relying on the rewind, but hey ho. Overall it's a solid 9/10. I've heard the sequel is considered better so I'm looking forward to checking it out.

I found it super easy to grind and level up in those areas because a shield-parry against the armoured knights became second nature, and they give around 1000 experience each. I'd usually gain 30K exp every 10 minutes. interesting to see you're playing on PS3 - the 60 FPS remasters were a god send. Good luck!

For what it's worth, Orstein and Smough is, hands down, the hardest boss in the entire franchise. I hit a brick wall and ended up grinding from level 47 to 61 just for that fight (as well as levelling up my pyromancy and Estus flask). I'd highly recommend getting back into the franchise. Dark Souls 3 and BB are superb. The only let down is DS2 which isn't worth your time imo.

It's kind of crazy that Miyazaki has now made three very distinct games with the same overarching philosophy. I can't wait for Eldin Ring.

Excellent sales. By the end of the year, the Switch will overtake 3DS and Wii U combined sales too. Coupled with excellent software sales, Nintendo's stock must be higher than ever, espeially as this strategy is sustainable. Bloomberg also doubled down on the Switch 2 / Pro / whatever you want to call it story today, again referencing 4K (as mentioned previously, it'll likely be through DLSS). The great thing about using mobile hardware is that, as Iwata said, Nintendo can aim to actually have more systems within the same family without a new system 'replacing' the previous one. I'm confident that we'll see a much more powerful variant later this year, with the OG Switch getting support for the next 3-4 years or so, at which point the revised model becomes the 'lower end' option in the family and there's a Switch 3 or whatever on the market.

After completing Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 in recent weeks / months (as well as Bloodborne for the second time back in March), I decided to take a break from the Soulsbourne experience and replay BOTW. At least, I tried to. About two hours in and I just had no motivation to jump back in. I adored the game the first time round but frankly it just felt a bit boring. I think that's okay? I dunno. I'll give it another go at one point. And with that, the Soulsbourne break barely lasted because I immediately popped in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I'm about two hours in and holy moly, this game is BRUTAL. I think the main issue here is that I'm playing it completely wrong. The muscle memory from Dark Souls (ROLL AWAY) is making combat more difficult that it needs to be. From my understanding, the best way to approach combat is to treat it as a dance between attack and defence. I'm getting there, but yeah, it's tough. It is absolutely gorgeous though <3

Yes, it's scheduled for XBO and PS4.

The new Apple M1's are absolutely incredible judging from reviews and benchmarks. You'll be getting double the performance of a Windows equivalent with 15-20 hours battery life. Grab yourself a Pro.

Great write up, @Nicktendo. A modest bump in the GPU (depending on what chip they have available to them) means that they can actually get close to XBO levels of raw GPU performance, but with DLSS available we could most games running at 1080p or higher. Zelda would be a terrific title to launch alongside this console. The base Switch could run it at 900p docked / 720p handheld and at 30 FPS, whereas a New Switch / Switch Pro / Switch 2 or whatever you call it could deliver a 4K experience using DLSS (or indeed, just focus on outputting a 1080p image, and use the overhead to make the graphical effects much better)., and perhaps go up to 60 FPS (or just deliver consistent 30). The big winners would be games like Doom and Xenoblade, which are too ambitious for the hardware but would see huge improvements across the board. It's worth pointing out that Sony and Microsoft can't offer this, because AMD don't have an equivalent solution yet. It's a great way for Nintendo to put out a new system whilst not alienating those that have already purchased a Switch.

Dark Souls 3. I'm going to leave a more detailed breakdown in here later on, but posting this now as a reminder to myself. (It's a solid 9/10 imo, but Bloodborne and DS1 are slightly better). Edit. Right here we go. First and foremost, my experience of the Souls games actually starts with Bloodborne, which after initially hating soon became one of my favourite games of all time. Towards the tail end of last year I picked up Dark Souls and absolutely loved it (a much harder game than BB, imo) and it made sense to try and play another game in the series. I deliberately opted against Dark Souls 2 because I've watched a lot of critiques of the games and they've all put me off it. I therefore decided to jump into DS3. First things first, this games looks absolutely gorgeous. After a bit of research, it looks as though this game came out after Bloodborne and launched on PS4 / XBO, and it certainly benefitted from that 'next gen' upgrade. The environments in the game massively benefit from this, and there were a couple of areas late on in the game that made my jaw drop, both in terms of their scale and also the visuals. Whilst I wish the game had more varied areas, overall it's probably the best looking game the team have made. The combat was as tough as ever but generally I think if you've played BB or Dark Souls before then it's not actually as difficult you might think. I guess the big change in this game compared to the previous Souls games is that the combat is much faster. In terms of enemy attack patterns and boss fights having second phases, it felt like I was playing Bloodborne again. I originally enjoyed this however a few areas into the game, I began to realise that the game almost seemed to lack a solid identity. It either felt too much like Dark Souls in certain areas, or too much like Bloodborne. I wasn't able to get rid of those feelings by the end of the game, unfortunately. That said, here I am 80 hours later having completed the game and honestly, it's just bloody terrific. The gameplay loop of all the games in this franchise was just so finely tuned by the time DS3 came out that it was destined to be a winner, and it's certainly one I'd recommend. The game ran at a flawless 60 FPS too.

For what it's worth, they can likely make just as much, if not more profit, from a revised more powerful Switch than they do off of the current one, as they will be able to produce the chips on a much smaller fabrication process (8nm, 12nm etc). My understanding of the current chip inside the latest Switch (Mariko), is that it's still using a fairly outdated fabrication process (16nm). Yes, the chip is old, but there comes a point where it's just cheaper to switch (excuse the pun) to a more efficient process. For mobile technology, that transition period occurs much quicker than the say, the technology inside a PS5. Either way, let's wait and see. But I'll be shocked if they don't launch a fairly decent console upgrade alongside Zelda.

A more powerful Switch might be more expensive but it wouldn't directly replace the current Switch (or the Switch Lite). It's simply an opportunity for them to help extend the Switch family of systems. Regarding DLSS - Nintendo could genuinely only target 540p / 720p as docked resolutions if the console had this feature built in (and still output at 1090p / 4K), meaning that they'd save a tonne of GPU overheard for graphical effects and not just waste that on resolution. Of course, this means they could also give the system a nice CPU update too.

There have been plenty of rumours about a more powerful Switch coming later this year. Today, a very reliable Apple leaker (who has connections at Foxconn, the Chinese production company) has tweeted about it, suggesting that it's now entered production: I'm really excited about this, because a recent Nvidia hiring post confirmed they were looking at someone with DLSS experience. For those unaware, DLSS can allow a console to output a 4K image without all the required GPU power. In fact, I've seen footage of Death Stranding run at very low resolutions (360p) and look near identical to a 1080p PS4 image. This could be a real game changer for Nintendo, as Sony and Microsoft can't use DLSS as it's not something AMD offer. A new Switch can offer a decent CPU boost, DLSS and perhaps have more memory without 'replacing' the current Switch.

Sony do this very well with the playstation. Usually the previous console still sells reasonably well for a couple of years at a low price. Back on topic - Assuming Retro are still a couple of years away from releasing Metroid Prime 4, I'm interested to see if they end up releasing anything this year, even if it's a smaller project. A 2D Metroid would be excellent but I still find it weird that in the past decade they've basically released two 2D Donkey Kong games and nothing else. Also, I completely forgot that it's also a big Pokemon anniversary this year. Hopefully we'll see more of Pokemon Snap.

You're right. BRING ON THE VIRTUAL BOY GAMES.

The issue with launching a successor in four years time is that the sales of the OG Switch will have really fallen by then. Ideally they'd want to release a successor as Switch sales are still relatively strong as the newer console will target early adopters and not mass market at launch. I think in two years or so time makes most sense given the current pipeline for the chipsets available to them. Whilst they might not care about 'power', it's worth remembering that the Switch is pretty much the most powerful it could have been (they could have opted for weaker, cheaper hardware but they went for more power + higher price). I imagine the inevitable successor will be fully backwards compatible too, so in the short-term, the successor may not immediately replace the current Switch, but it just becomes the futureproof model. Agree with your other points in general though.

I honestly doubt we're getting SMO2, because getting a new, next gen Mario ready for 2023 (or whenever) for the next Switch will likely be a priority. BOTW2 will definitely release on Switch but even Prime 4 will probably end up as a cross-generation game. We're still a while away from it. Switching to Switch 2 development in 2-3 years time is too late, because it takes several years to develop software (as in, shifting development in 2022/23 will get you software for 2024/25). I imagine most internal teams that start new projects by the end of the year will be focused on launching on Switch 2, with the option of launching across generational devices.

After seeing the direction they've got with Bowser's Fury, I'm fairly confident that we aren't getting a Super Mario Odyssey sequel and instead they've used this as an experimental way of creating a more open Mario game, where instead of having separate levels / worlds, everything is just connected in a Souls / Metroid kind of way. I also expect that this more open game will be the sequel on an inevitable Switch successor - it would be the logical next step for Mario. Really excited to see how this works out.

A few things... A new Switch is definitely on the way, especially as there's evidence to show that the current Tegra chip Nintendo are using has reached the end of its production line. I imagine it will release alongside BOTW2 - hopefully it provides a decent bump in specs (consistent 1080p and solid framerates would be a great start) The online subscription is lacking games. NES and SNES software is fine but I really hope they add in GBA and GBC games sooner rather than later I'd love to know what the Xenoblade team are working on. A small team worked on the XC1 remaster and XC2 release in 2017 - surely it must be time for them to show off something new? Metroid. Even if Prime 4 is a way off, then a 2D title and the Prime Trilogy would be excellent It's the Zelda anniversary this year. As well as the obvious ports, I'd love a HD remaster of Four Sword Adventures. It's an underrated gem and I'd love to play it again. F-Zero.

You know what's funny? People were disappointed that 3D World didn't have online on Wii U and @Serebii kept repeating that it's because the game featured 'precise platforming' that wouldn't work online. I love how poorly that aged because we all knew it was BS. Good on Nintendo for adding online this time round - I'm definitely interested in some 4P chaos.

After rewatching, the physics engine for BF looks different to the 3DW engine. Mario doesn't look as rigid (as in, tied to 8 directional movement). This looks excellent, you know. The package will feel like a single player Mario adventure with an additional multiplayer component. I feel like if this was the original experience on Wii U, it would have been more a system seller off the back of NSMBU. Perhaps this is what the SMO team have been working on?

Looks like a mix of SMO and 3DW. Open ended levels is always good in my book, and it did look as though Mario had better movement than he originally did in 3DW. Bowser Jr suggests it supports co-op but not 4P. That's cool, but I do hope for a few more multiplayer levels. @Zell Check out the music when Bowser shows up.