Tamazoid

Cheers Londragon. Might give a few of them a whirl since they are on sale.

Has anyone played any of those Circle Entertainment games? Are any of them actually decent?

It's interesting, what started out as a cross-over seems to have transformed into its own unique IP which utilises characters and themes from both Fire Emblem and SMT. I'd really love to know what the original pitch for this game was. Nonetheless I am looking forward to this. Feedback from Japan has seemed very good. No doubt it will sell poorly, but I get the feeling that it will go down as a Wii U classic. Discounting the eShop/virtual console, I never thought a console would manage to have less RPGs than the Gamecube...

Apparently the bit about building 'the Career and Championship Modes UI' has been deleted. So I guess the options are F-Zero, Excite and Waverace if we are talking games that could have 'career and championship' modes. Unless it's a new IP.

Hopefully Sega Europe picks up the slack. (They did publish Project Mirai DX afterall). Otherwise we are in a lot of trouble.

I enjoyed it a lot whilst playing it with 3 friends whilst we had a Discord voice chat up. It is 'so bad that it's good'. There's something strangely compelling about Lost Reavers that wants me to continue playing, despite the monotonous combat and poorly designed levels, not to mention pretty terrible controls. I finally hit level 15 tonight, so I will be trying out the boss fight with a few mates. We'll see how it goes. I think it's quite telling that we came to the consensus that Devil's Third is a better game. (I personally have a soft spot for Devil's Third, that game is B-tier goodness, whereas Lost Reavers is probably bordering C-Tier mediocrity).

That's my main concern: Will enough people actually play this online? Devil's Third online was strangely a blast, I even convinced four other people to purchase it just to play online with them. A colleague on the site I write for lives in Japan and has played the beta. He says that he has had a lot of fun with it, though it looks like a Xbox 360 game.

Depends on what exclusive online multiplayer titles the NX has. If it has more games like Splatoon then I probably would shell out for an online subscription to be able to play games like those online. If it's just primarily multiplatform games that are utilising online/worth playing online multiplayer with I'll just stick to PC for those.

'Great' probably is a little too optimistic on my part. It was a stronger Christmas worldwide than 2014 though. Japan was extremely strong, the drop off is natural, since Nintendo consoles always sell the strongest at Christmas.

Star Fox being pushed back to NX wouldn't make sense at all. If it's ready by its revised release date it makes perfect business sense to publish it then on the Wii U. The Wii U is on life support, it is not completely dead yet. The great Christmas it just had worldwide thanks to Splatoon and Mario Maker is a testament to that. Zelda probably makes sense as a dual release depending on what the NX actually is. It would be a waste of resources for Nintendo to retool Star Fox Zero for a NX release, especially since it does heavily utilise the gamepad (which no doubt will be dropped for NX).

My gaming time in 2016 so far has been utterly consumed with Crusader Kings 2. It's quite scary how quickly the day disappears whilst playing it. I really need to disavow myself from open ended games like Crusader Kings, as I inevitably become hooked and pour numerous hours in with not much to show for my efforts. I guess that's an interesting aspect in regards to linear vs non-linear game experiences in terms of games without a perceived end goal.

Been listening to the Quarter to Three games podcast with Tom Chick lately. He does some great interviews and discussions of recent games. One of his recent ones was discussing Xenoblade Chronicles X with a games writer from TIME magazine. Was great to listen to, Chick provides interesting insights to most games he discusses. I've seen the light on RFN again. You probably can go back in this thread and read my criticism, which with hindsight was harsh. I've been enjoying it a lot since James took over as host, he's a much better host than he was a participant in my opinion.

My observation on the 27k figure would be that I only noticed the various statistic bars (that show my ranking regarding time completing each cup) only after I played a few online matches. I may be wrong with my assumption, but perhaps the game only connects to the internet to gather your time data after you play the online mode.

Shin'en games are always generally discounted in eShop sales. I know quite a few people who are either waiting till after Christmas or for the first sale to grab it. I've had a dabble with Hero Mode. I don't think I'll ever be able to conquer this mode. On each course, you have to finish first (It's in hypersonic speed) whilst your boost metre also doubles as a shield. If you crash out/empty the metre you automatically lose the race. I really haven't played a game this challenging for quite a while. It is refreshing.

Hyper sonic is crazy. I'm definitely struggling trying to get through it. Had a couple of attempts trying to get through the first cup and I'm having trouble finishing any higher than 5th place. I'm almost afraid to know what 'Hero Mode' fully entails. I'm sure I'll find out eventually though.