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Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





 Overread wrote:


And yeah gameboy and gameboy advanced games would be fantastic to see. Heck I'd love to be able to play Dragon Warrior Monsters again (they've apparently remastered it once or twice but only in Japan)



The Switch still hasn't got Gameboy games? Oh my word, thats embarrassing!

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

SamusDrake wrote:
 Overread wrote:


And yeah gameboy and gameboy advanced games would be fantastic to see. Heck I'd love to be able to play Dragon Warrior Monsters again (they've apparently remastered it once or twice but only in Japan)



The Switch still hasn't got Gameboy games? Oh my word, thats embarrassing!


Yeah and this time Nintendo can't complain that its not powerful enough or something like they did with the 3DS (even though it DID have several of them they were just released only in special units right at the start of its lifespan and never again).

Sometimes their choices and actions with regard to what they allow us to access from old systems does seem, strange. I also think there's a bias in what gets released in the home market and what gets a worldwide release.

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





 Overread wrote:


Yeah and this time Nintendo can't complain that its not powerful enough or something like they did with the 3DS (even though it DID have several of them they were just released only in special units right at the start of its lifespan and never again).

Sometimes their choices and actions with regard to what they allow us to access from old systems does seem, strange. I also think there's a bias in what gets released in the home market and what gets a worldwide release.


Agreed. I can understand the Gamecube onwards, but goodness gracious! Been enjoying the rest on emulators since the late 90s.

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in ca
Pustulating Plague Priest






SamusDrake wrote:
 Overread wrote:


Yeah and this time Nintendo can't complain that its not powerful enough or something like they did with the 3DS (even though it DID have several of them they were just released only in special units right at the start of its lifespan and never again).

Sometimes their choices and actions with regard to what they allow us to access from old systems does seem, strange. I also think there's a bias in what gets released in the home market and what gets a worldwide release.


Agreed. I can understand the Gamecube onwards, but goodness gracious! Been enjoying the rest on emulators since the late 90s.


Goodness yes! Wasn’t there that one time we got shafted a Fire Emblem game on the Online service for Picross?

The topic of GBA games is interesting to think about. Seems like that was the start of the shovelware era for Nintendo games, and a sizeable chunk of the library consisted of tie-ins or remakes of NES/SNES games. It would be curious to see how it’s handled, if at all.

Faithful... Enlightened... Ambitious... Brethren... WE NEED A NEW DRIVER! THIS ONE IS DEAD!  
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





The GBA just has a TON of games. Honestly, I think it might have one of the largest collections of top tier games ever without even considering the ports.
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

 LunarSol wrote:
The GBA just has a TON of games. Honestly, I think it might have one of the largest collections of top tier games ever without even considering the ports.


Agreed, it had a sweet spot of games. I think the DS and 3DS fell short simply because they introduced the duel screen and touch screen and then 3D - lots of nifty ideas for sure, but I think they turned a good many developers away for just being difficult/fiddly. Especially when they were more used to the Gameboy style of games.

I've a good many GBA games and I'd love to be able to play then on a modern console - I've kept my DS around just for them (and also because I can't play digimon world on the 3DS because its region locked)

A Blog in Miniature

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Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





I mean, clearly someone at Nintendo didn't get the memo that Metroid 5 is about to drop, and as far as I can tell not even Super Metroid is available to download...

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





SamusDrake wrote:
I mean, clearly someone at Nintendo didn't get the memo that Metroid 5 is about to drop, and as far as I can tell not even Super Metroid is available to download...


It's free with the online service subscription.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/29 20:59:00


 
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





 LunarSol wrote:
SamusDrake wrote:
I mean, clearly someone at Nintendo didn't get the memo that Metroid 5 is about to drop, and as far as I can tell not even Super Metroid is available to download...


It's free with the online service subscription.


Oh at least they've got that then. Any others?

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





SamusDrake wrote:
 LunarSol wrote:
SamusDrake wrote:
I mean, clearly someone at Nintendo didn't get the memo that Metroid 5 is about to drop, and as far as I can tell not even Super Metroid is available to download...


It's free with the online service subscription.


Oh at least they've got that then. Any others?


The original is on the online service as well. I don't think Return or Fusion would be on there; not sure if there's a Prime collection or something for sale. Return has the 3DS remake that I quite enjoyed.
   
Made in ca
Pustulating Plague Priest






 LunarSol wrote:
SamusDrake wrote:
 LunarSol wrote:
SamusDrake wrote:
I mean, clearly someone at Nintendo didn't get the memo that Metroid 5 is about to drop, and as far as I can tell not even Super Metroid is available to download...


It's free with the online service subscription.


Oh at least they've got that then. Any others?


The original is on the online service as well. I don't think Return or Fusion would be on there; not sure if there's a Prime collection or something for sale. Return has the 3DS remake that I quite enjoyed.


I think there were rumors about a Prime remake, but those were just small rumblings.

Faithful... Enlightened... Ambitious... Brethren... WE NEED A NEW DRIVER! THIS ONE IS DEAD!  
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





 LunarSol wrote:


The original is on the online service as well. I don't think Return or Fusion would be on there; not sure if there's a Prime collection or something for sale. Return has the 3DS remake that I quite enjoyed.


I see. Cheers for that.

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Well no news on the next season for Diablo 3, but I'm pleased that I made it far enough to get the dark wings reward for this season! Not interested in the familiar, which is a good thing as in my view a lot of the goals for the latter "half" of the season are more extreme/grindy to get too and sap the fun, esp as it all has to be done on one character.

Doubly so as this edition has featured a lot of those "super" weapons which tends to mean that I've played most of the campaign spamming the 1 ability the super-weapon gave me; which is dull. Indeed its strange they'd go for an ability system that basically ties you down to 1 or 2 abilities being the real powerplayers when they put effort into having such free form on the fly ability swapping. It's almost self defeating

A Blog in Miniature

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Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

I'm looking forward to Mario Party Superstars. I loved the hell out of Mario Party 2 and 3 as a kid, and the franchise hasn't really been as good for me ever since. I saw the promo materials for Superstars though and immediately recognized some classic maps I loved and some old minigames so I'm hoping the game brings back some of the older styles of N64 Mario Party.

   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Has anyone played Metroid Dread yet? How is it?
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Aash wrote:
Has anyone played Metroid Dread yet? How is it?


It's really good. Definitely from the same team that did Samus Returns remake on the 3DS with a lot of the same game mechanics and general feel. I will say, as someone who felt the melee counter stalled the pacing a bit in Returns, it can do the same here, but on the whole enemies are more aggressive and don't wait to attack so I think for the most part it actually improves the flow once you get it down.

The titular dread is pretty well done. The EMMI sections are frantic chases that hard flip the pacing of the game and make for regular bursts of excitement admits the quieter exploration. I will say I'm less fond of some of the gimmicks introduced. They get a little more stealth focused as the game progresses and some of the later EMMIs shut down your movement. I personally prefer the one's that are more of a chase and flight to safety. Last night I got grabbed RIGHT at the exit and successfully melee countering the insta kill to stun it and escape was beyond satisfying. I will say, what REALLY stands out are the boss encounters. They're hard in a way that games don't often do, but have really rewarding patterns to master and feel really epic to take down.

My one big complaint is the game can feel stingy with powerups. I'm pretty sure this is the longest the series has ever made you go without the Morph Ball and I don't feel like the game has enough secret items the first time through a section. It's mostly backtracking stuff that doesn't feel worth hunting down by the time you get the item you need. It doesn't help that like 90% of the "remember this for later" things you see are actually just shortcuts through the levels for later. It's not a huge deal and I'm sure some of it is a result of me just missing things because I'm focused on the main path, but I could use a few mroe diversions.

Overall though, yeah, its good. It still looms in the shadow of one of the single greatest games ever designed, but its likely going to be one of my top 2D games in the series. Really just need to see how it wraps up before I can think about it.
   
Made in ca
Pustulating Plague Priest






Interesting. Sounds a lot like the SA-X situations back in Metroid Fusion. Hope they kept that same atmosphere, since Fusion certainly seemed to nail the “creepy without horror” tone.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/12 19:18:43


Faithful... Enlightened... Ambitious... Brethren... WE NEED A NEW DRIVER! THIS ONE IS DEAD!  
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Definitely. The game is a direct sequel to Fusion and takes a lot of queues from it to the point where I wonder if it started as another remake. It feels a little more open though. Adam AI still gives you direction, but its a lot more vague and not a blinking dot on the map.

I personally like the EMMIs a lot more than SA-X. They've got more of a Xenomorph style of movement that lets them take shortcuts through small tunnels and along ceilings. The sequence for dealing with them has a bit too much asset reuse, but is also very tense as you swap to an over the shoulder view and have to stand your ground and shoot hoping they go down before they reach you.
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

Dread was originally announced way back in 2004, and I'd imagine it's story hasn't changed much since then. The game was quietly shelved to 'technical limitations' according to Wikipedia.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/12 20:35:30


   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Finished it last night. Excellent final boss fight. I just need to praise the bosses in general. One of those games where you go from not being able to beat the boss to beating it without taking a hit once you get the feel right.

It doesn't dethrone Super. Realistically nothing will. I'm playing through that now just for a fresh comparison. It's very good overall though. Maybe the second best of the 2D games? I'd have to replay Zero Mission to say for sure.

A few comments on the story:

Spoiler:
There's definitely a major event towards the end. I'm a little surprised mostly because it was billed as a conclusion but the end leaves things pretty similar to where they were after Fusion. I don't feel like it tied up anything in a more conclusive way, though it does a nice job of making the Chozo stuff more than things you might have read on a wiki.

I still don't really like the X. They're just kind of.... IDK. They spread so quick and look cartoony, but kind of horrific at the same time. They act intelligent but have no goals?
They feel very Flood inspired but the perfect mimic thing make them... IDK, not a fan. There's a few here that have a more corrupted feel that I'm much more fond of, but since they instantly infect EVERYTHING in the game when they appear, there's still a lot of totally normal looking enemies of the type that bugs me about the whole thing.

That aside, I reallyi liked it. Samus is portrayed consistently well, the gameplay is spot on, the boss fights are brutal but super satisfying and from what I've seen the game actually rewards sequence breaking for the speed runners. Really triumphant return for the series. I really want to see more.
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





The Metroid series has been very hit'n'miss with its difficulty, but Samus Returns took the biscuit and Dread looks like even more of the same.

Decided to pass for now and see what Prime 4 is going to be like..

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






Strap yourselves in boyos, McBogus is at the end of a fething BIG summer vidya binge.

So! Starting with the positives.
The GF, much to my shame, isn't much of a gamer. *dusts cheeto dust off fingers, scratches hairy 3rd chin, adjusts waifu pillow, craps pants, goes to reddit.com*
But! Because both of us have jobs that mean we needed to limit our contact with the outside world during Japan's 5th covid wave, we decided to try to get some more 2 player stuff on the Switch.
Human fall flat is an excellent couples game, it's really nicely animated, challenging enough, and, if you're in a bilingual relationship, spawns some very cute couples' phrases. Great fun.
Worms is on the switch store - luckily, though I've played enough worms to explain it, I'm also chronically bad at it, so that levels the playing field some, but c'mon man, it's worms? Great game.

Negatives.
The GF is a nurse, so she works spicy hours, and that leaves me with a lot of alone time ( not like that! Filthy boy!). Been kinda burned out at work lately, so I've been using the salve of video games to sooth my wounded soul.

Doom Eternal.
Spoiler:
So, full disclosure, unpopular opinion. The first time around I playing Doom 2016 on the Switch? I didn't get the hype. The Balancing of weapon and armor upgrades felt totally unbalanced, and the bosses were like the easiest part of the game. The hardest bits always came when you were swamped by like, mid-level goons, and it never really felt like it delivered on the whole power-fantasy thing. Like, I could always stomp the little guys. If there weren't many of them, the medium guys were no trouble. But then the bosses weren't hard, either.
Coming as someone who loves Dark Souls? Doom 2016 felt like a game where the difficulty mostly resided in "suddenly you're trapped in actually a very small area, surrounded by goons" in the most artificial difficulty-induced way I think I've ever played. When the game opens up, when you're flying down corridors, blasting, when you're in like actually quite open spaces? Great fun. The differences between most of the guns were a bit trivial, and the upgrades often weren't even pretending to be balanced, but it was alright. It felt a bit like, imo, they made a game that was too short, and too easy, and so they threw in roadblocks.
I re-visited the game a while back, and had a little more fun doing the challenges. Just enough, I guess, to see glowing reviews of Doom Eternal, to get into the promo material (damn the promo material is so good. I love that gak, I really do.) and decided to get the game.

God DAMN did they ever double down on the stuff I hate. The jumping puzzles are CONSTANT. I'm not a great fan of platformers anyway, but Eternal really leans into them. I definitely killed myself more than any demon. I would be much less salty about this if the game didn't make you rely so hard on the dash ability for these, which takes away a ton of precision, and makes every jump feel like a hail mary. Again, it came off to me like a speedbump thing. The jumps were never rewarding, it was just "you have to do this to shoot more dudes".
I want to give a special shoutout to the Marauder demon here. This guy is a really gakky speedbump and I hate it. They make him almost impossible to shoot, and it's just boring to fight him. just dodge a lot, take a potshot, get some health and ammo back from goons, rinse, repeat. The first time you fight him, in that control room? Excellent, it feels like a challenge, like this guy is a fallen slayer, and is a meaningful boss. You don't know his attack patterns and it's hard to put any distance between him and you. When they pop up fething EVERYWHERE after? It's just tedious. He takes too long to kill, the fething laser dog attack makes no sense and again just gets in the way, and when you do kill him after like 2 solid minutes of the exact same gameplay, your reward is? A bit of health? Some ammo? I actually wish you could skip fighting the Marauder because it's so slow and boring. At least for the longer fights in Dark Souls, like, the boss behavior changes, you can get crits off, there's some unpredictability and the weapon you're using makes a difference.

The glory kill mechanic is overrated, too. Earlier incarnations of the game really made you search for health. The glory kill thing takes that out, and like, the first maybe three or so times, it's pretty fun. But then you've seen all of the animations, and it gets fething tiresome. Adding a second, less rewarding glory kill mechanic with the chainsaw? Just straight up a bad call. The chainsaw in 2016 was a weapon you really kinda held back on, saving it for one of those moments where mid-level demons are ganking your gak. In this one? There's no reliable way to use it on them, it just sort of works, sort of doesn't, and you're left farming the scrubby low-level demons for ammo, which is totally dissatisfying. AND then, like right at the end they give you the sword and it's almost entirely a reskin of how the chainsaw worked in the first game???
Again, the bosses aren't difficult to beat, and most of the times I got killed it was in the same way as 2016 - I'm in a small room full of mid-level demons.
The weapons are unchanged, despite years between the two games, with the exception that I think they slowed down the machinegun's ROF, which honestly leaves it in a really awkward place. It's not a good sniper weapon, and there are precious few chances to snipe anyway, but it still cannibalizes the plasma gun's niche, albeit in a just straight-up inferior way, until I guess you give the MG the full rockets upgrade, but even then, it hits like a wet noodle. Likewise, the super shotgun, while cool, is just a worse combat shotgun. All of the guns with like, the exception of the BFG just feel like they're standing on top of each other. You're never far away enough from enemies to really worry about range, so it's just like, minor considerations about ROF and how much ammo you have (which, so long as you have fuel for the chainsaw (if you don't you're just screwed. This is a huge oversight and just unfun imo) you don't have to worry about). I really don't see what the hype about this game was, it has fun moments, but honestly it's overrated to hell and back. It feels like they ran out of ideas by the lategame in terms of gear and mechanics, it feels like they threw in jumping puzzles to stop you from progressing so fast that your realized beneath the stylish visuals, there's really very little game there at all, and it feels like they kind of just gave up on bosses altogether, and just gave us the cramped rumble arenas instead and again, it's just another artificial difficulty thing and not all that fun to play.


Pokemon Sword
Spoiler:
This is a game that I at once have so much time for, and yet...
...I'm very disappointed. Already posted in thread about Pokemon, so I'll just get right into it.

First off, the core game. Dang. I barely know where to go first.
I came into this thread talking about BOTW, and tbh, I feel like, while an excellent game, also really showcases what Nintendo does best, especially in an adventure RPG.
With that in mind, Sword falls flat at so many steps. The world feels sparse and empty. Areas like the Wild Area clash with how on-rails and confined the rest of the game is, NPCs say almost nothing of interest, and you're very rarely rewarded for exploring. The cooking minigame is fun, but it's also really not that interactive - it's not very risky unless you're trying to unlock stuff in your curry dex, and almost none of the recipes have that alluring "oh damn that actually looks tasty as hell, maybe I should give it a shot IRL" quality that BOTW had.
It's probably a bit of a tired thing, but none of the battles feel very hard. I think I barely lost at all, and certainly never worried about my rivals. The rivals also really fell flat imo. Hop is just annoying, his dialogue is like clearly written by an American in their 30s who guesses this is how kids in the UK talk, and as an actual brit, it's PAINFUL. The same is true of Marnie, who like, despite being the boss of all the not-rocket goons this time around, isn't actually evil, and is kind a tsundere, but it never feels like the writers ever commit to that enough for it to be entertaining. She feels like they had ideas for where to take the character, but just never committed to them, and in the end it's like? She was just sort of your friend the whole time? But also her goons spent like half the game trying to hobble you? Like so much of sword, it feels really REALLY unpolished for a pokemon game. The last rival is Bede. Again, I feel like there was a lot of potential in this character, and their team was one of the tougher ones, but like with Marnie, it's a complete skew team and like, a decent type-effective pokemon just SWEAPS them.
Talking of which, because of the Wild Area, there are, imo, too many chances to get type effective pokemon. Before you kinda had to compromise, think about effective team composition, and really chew over your takes. Because levelling was slower, it took more work, and just felt more strategic. Now you can choose from a really wide range of types really early on. Meanwhile, until you hit level 60, there are just rando high level pokemon kicking around that area. While it's fun to try and battle them, the fact that they're there, but cannot be caught is just frustrating. I love Onix, it's one of my fav pokemon, has been since I was a wee McBogus. First thing you see in the wild area is a big old Onix, stomping about. Naturally, I tried to catch it. A tough fight, and a lot of my dudes fainted, but I got it into that perfect lil sliver of health for catching and...

...you just can't throw a pokeball. It felt like a real feels-bad mechanic, and not one I expected from Pokemon. The weird group dynamax raids also are usually pretty feels bad, as you can just get unlucky with a team and that's it, especially if the big pokemon uses the sheild thingy.

The British theme is really weirdly handled, too. Like at times, the game is beautifully pretty, and has some lovely fairytail kind of stylings, or else actually quite faithfully takes notes from the real world UK. But then there's also?? random like central americaville???? I still don't get why they put that in at all, it feels really out of place. And then there's the football theme that runs throughout and it's just tiresome. I'd much rather they left it out, and went for something more conventional. As someone who grew up in the UK, football is everywhere, and like, no offense to footie fans but like soooo manyyyyy people in the UK base their whole personality off of it and it just isn't interesting to me in the slightest. Football is really a one dimensional sport, and it doesn't help the game at all, beyond being a vehicle for dynamax stuff.

But perhaps what stings even more??? The DLC is just miles better. The characters are much more fleshed out and feel like something from the anime, rather than "Here's Hop, he's your best friend. That's about his only personality trait. IDK why you've been friends so long, because he has all the charm of a 2-day old bowl of jellied eels."
The open world stuff is much better done - the caves feel like the caves in old pokemon games, where there are loads of foes and it's easy to get lost. There are plenty of areas to explore, and they're much larger that the little on-rails routes from the main game, and the missions? Actually pretty good, they're fun, challenging enough, and the new pokemon all over the place feel really good for the lategame. If the whole game had been more like this like, it would've been brilliant.
Hoping that the next installations coming up are a bit more robust.

   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Pokemon has always been a bit of an enigma in that its generated insane amounts of sales and profits and yet the actual games have always been pretty low skill. They've bulked up over the years with cute side games, but ultimately they've had the same formula for years and I get the feeling they've never really wanted to push to change that.

They've a formula and it works and its basically remained the same since Red and Blue.

If anything their attempts to make a more story heavy game (eg sun) can backfire because they add so much that it stifles the core gameplay (though no where near as badly as Digimon Cyber Sleuth manages). I think Sword and Shield kind of caught them up because until then they'd never really been challenged nor risen to the challenge of the advance of systems. Heck for being one of the post-child games of the company they didn't even use the 3D effect with the 3DS when almost every single other game did. Yes the 3D effect was often left turned off by most, but to me it showed that Riot weren't pushing that money they made back into building a higher skilled, better developed, more dynamic and modern development team. Either hiring new skills or investing in existing staff to skill them up.


I think Sword and Shield really gave them a hard hit there as the technology gains from the 3DS were significant for them. I think as a firm they've slowly stated to realise that perhaps they need to improve and that would explain why the DLC ends up all the better because it takes that embarrassing launch (for such a major player) and starts to actually put resources and change into where they should have been developing over the yeras.








That said pokemon is also in a strange position because its a game aimed at children and young teens at its core and yet its managed to retain a very large adult population. Two drastically different market groups before you even touch on the casual and competitive groups within both of those extreme age brackets.
I think there is, in part, an issue in making a game that's simple and easy enough for kids to get into; that can also present a mature and challenging engagement for adults.

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






For sure, I think to make a really good Pokemon game, there is a TON of balancing that designers need to do. I think that considering how gigantic the cult following the game has at this point, if they still want the game to be able to appeal to kids (that said, I feel like the early games didn't really kid-gloves it up much, and didn't suffer for it), then maybe they need to think about difficulty modes.
Alternately, with the whole Legends series being added as like, part of the core games (either with Legends being more nerdy, because of the history, and the core games staying a bit simpler and kid friendly, or the other way round with Legends being closer to the Go! series, and the main games getting a bit harder), I'm hoping we maybe see a divergence into stuff that is, for lack of a better word, gamier, and a bit more aimed at more mature fans of the series, without having to sacrifice too much that helps keeps kids interested in Pokemon. For all my whining, I am really enjoying the expansions, and I'm actually really optimistic for the upcoming releases - I loved Pearl as a tween, and the release date is pretty close to the old 誕生日, so it might end up being a pressie to myself (if work keeps sucking as hard as it has been hahaha)

I guess, for the most part, one thing that really disappointed me was knowing just how much of an extent to which the programming for red and blue was technically quite brilliant. The reason there are so many glitches is because they kept cramming coding on top of coding to make the game quite as sprawling as it was, and it was kind of at the bleeding edge of what a gameboy could be made to do. Part of me wants to give Sword a pass, because it's a new direction in quite a few ways, and very much new territory, but because Nintendo, because Gamefreak, because the Pokemon company are all so big, and clearly not short of talent, it feels maybe a bit too generous. Don't get me wrong, Sword is alright, but it feels like perhaps the weakest outing for the series. It's a game that for the most part, feels smaller that the handheld outings, and that just doesn't sit right for Pokemon. An interesting stage in the franchise's development, for sure.
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Pokemon has always been 2 games. The very by the numbers, almost brainless JRPG that follows a very simple formula where you encounter some fun creatures, curate your favorites, beat some bad guys, and win the championship. It's very kid friendly and not particularly satisfying.

The OTHER game is a tight strategy game of rock paper scissors where anticipating your opponent's next move often depends on anticipating what your opponent believes your next move will be. It's incredibly cutthroat, with the wrong move instantly costing someone a fighter and even the allocation of a point or two into stats determining the difference between a Pokemon being able to tank the hit needed to win or falling before they get the chance. The crowd around THIS game is as WAAC as they come and take things very very seriously.

At the root of it all is an engine buckling under the weight of its own mass of options. The code that made the game possible is based entirely on the simplicity of the interaction between Pokemon. It's a game of nearly infinite options but it also means that a lot of significant modern features people expect are infinitely more complicated than they probably should be. They really need to limit their scope for design, which was kind of the intent of Sword and Shield, but there's always someone out there throwing a fit because they really love Carbink or something.
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

 LunarSol wrote:
Pokemon has always been 2 games. The very by the numbers, almost brainless JRPG that follows a very simple formula where you encounter some fun creatures, curate your favorites, beat some bad guys, and win the championship. It's very kid friendly and not particularly satisfying.

The OTHER game is a tight strategy game of rock paper scissors where anticipating your opponent's next move often depends on anticipating what your opponent believes your next move will be. It's incredibly cutthroat, with the wrong move instantly costing someone a fighter and even the allocation of a point or two into stats determining the difference between a Pokemon being able to tank the hit needed to win or falling before they get the chance. The crowd around THIS game is as WAAC as they come and take things very very seriously.


Yeah, I was gonna say that on the surface level Pokemon is a very broad but shallow game. Go a level deeper though and it's one of the most brutal and hardcore skill-based games there is. The winner of a serious Pokemon tournament is almost always the person who out thinks the meta and their opponents, which requires a lot of knowledge and a lot of making the right choices at the right time.

At the root of it all is an engine buckling under the weight of its own mass of options.


I hadn't really thought of this, I think you're right in saying part of the motivation for limiting the Pokedex in newer games going forward was to push the metagame into something manageable. Even in the Smogon and Pokelab tier systems where the metagame has been broken up into easier-to-understand chunks, the sheer number of options is so staggering it was becoming incredibly hard to account for things and even know what options your opponent might play. XY presented serious complications with Mega-evolution providing another layer to an already bloated metagame. A lot of people were saying the game was breaking under its own weight because there were too many viable possibilities.

   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Recently I've been doing some accessory hunting and come across what I think I need - larger joycon grips for the switch! Ones that actually have handle space on them unlike the default ones, which are not painful to hold but just don't have any grip shape to them (something Nintendo clearly realised when they made the joy-holder as that has grips on it).


So far I've found two that seem to fit the bill

Hori Split Pad Pro - comes with loads of reviews and is in stock in the UK easily. Well built with turbo buttons and everything nice. Only downsides are that they lack any wireless functionality or motion controls. Motion control isn't a huge issue for me; wireless though would be nice to have (esp as then I'd have two wireless controllers with my current joycons).


BinBok Wireless RGB Joycon. From what I can tell they are a touch less well build than the Hori, not bad just not as high on the shelf, but perfectly good. They offer the same features, but also have gyro and wireless features. They've also got RGB rings around the sticks which is a nice touch.

Downside is that Binbok don't appear to trade in the UK or have issues with stock as I can't find any stores stocking them in the UK - even Amazon only has one dead store page and a half sketchy import page that shows the Binbok product picture but lists the wrong company details in the details tab (either a poor listing or its not the right product). Indeed it seems the only way to get one in the UK right now is importing from Amazon.com or from Binbok's own website.

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in ca
Hangin' with Gork & Mork






Had the Hori Split Pads for a bit and they are quite nice for non-child sized hands.

Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
 
   
 
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