Sno

I'm just hoping the PC version of this update is delivered as another content pack for the base game so they don't split the userbase. There's still enough people playing it right now that the online features work essentially as is intended, but you cut that userbase in half, things would fall apart pretty fast.

Oh man, but i really love that the 3DS goes through multiple stages of low battery warning. Both the DS and the PSP gave you virtually no advance warning, it sometimes was really hard to abort out of a game and get shit saved, especially on the PSP with those load times.

That's totally alright, because Nintendo probably doesn't either! They may or may not have nebulously defined possible interactions with games that may or may not support some or all of them! The only significant interaction as of right now is that you can train up a custom AI buddy to fight with or against you in Smash Wii U, which is saved on the figure itself. (Keep in mind, there's apparently only enough room on an NFC chip for one save*, so if you want to use that same figure in a theoretical future game that might also possibly want to save to the Amiibo, you will have to metaphorically Old Yeller your Smash Wii U AI buddy!) (* = Presumably, interactions of the variety that merely use the Amiibo to unlock things in the game, like what Mario Kart 8 and Hyrule Warriors currently have, will not overwrite the NFC save.)

Twenty hours of battery life didn't hurt it much either. Oh man, the 3DS' battery gets some shit, but it can still squeak out like 7 hours in optimal conditions. The PSP never really did much more than four or five. The person who thought it was a good idea to stick an optical, mechanical disc drive in a portable game console should seriously be kicked in the balls. Nevermind the impact it had on the battery life, those load times were horrible. You mention that the DS pioneered for Nintendo that dependable, intuitive sleep mode. The PSP's sleep mode in comparison only inconsistently worked, often causing games to glitch out or outright crash. There's also just how damn fragile that thing is, the PSP feels like it'd crack in two if you gripped it a little too hard, and i've seen them basically explode when dropped. You know, In retrospect, the PSP really didn't stand a chance, despite seeming like such a modern and powerful machine at the time. It speaks to the wisdom of that "lateral thinking with withered technology" philosophy that has guided so much of what Nintendo has done over the years. While the PSP was busy trying to be a measurably worse version of what you had at home, the DS was off its own little corner with cool things you couldn't get anywhere else, doing those things as well as it possibly could. Sony learned literally nothing of course, repeating the same mistakes with the Vita. (All this said, I do own a PSP and really love the thing, but it succeeded in spite of itself. Japanese developers were so damn insistent on supporting the thing that it ended up with a massive library full of great games despite its obvious failings as a platform.) That DS tho... Hey, Atlus games. Nobody's really mentioned many Atlus games. Atlus went wild with the DS, it often felt like they they were releasing handfuls of obscure JRPG's every other week. It was something i was always curious about, but realistically just couldn't keep up with. I've been told Radiant Historia and Strange Journey are particularly incredible.

Playing against friends on the 3DS game, I've had totally smooth matches with a full party. (We don't use items though.) Again, i suspect Nintendo's servers are probably just boned right now, the Wii U game just came out.

Wii U verison, just to be clear? If you're relying on a wi-fi connection, your Wii U might be getting a weak signal. Smash Wii U will definitely be a game that needs a clean signal or, ideally, a wired connection. I'd say, more likely, that Nintendo's servers are just boned right now. The 3DS game was all over the place for a few weeks when it came out, but match quality steadily improved over the subsequent weeks. (Edit: I have not played the Wii U game, also to be clear.)

I just bought a Villager. I feel like a dumbass. This is just going to keep happening. They're going to multiply.

That's odd, i've been finding it really very good lately. Like, legitimately good and playable. There might be a few frames of delay in there, but not enough that i feel like that is what is costing me matches. Playing games online via a wi-fi connection can be crazily variable though. (That said, i haven't played in the last few days. Maybe it's gotten bad again now that people are all rushing to the Wii U game.)

The Ace Attorney games are apparently being ported to the 3DS, yeah. I don't know if Ace Attorney Investigations will be brought over, however. I think it's just the main ones being ported. (There's also already two Ace Attorney games native to the 3DS.) Also, that Chrono Trigger port for the DS was pretty great. I remember having a bunch of really heated push battles online, that was a really great competitive interpretation of Tetris. There are seriously just tons of great puzzle games on the DS though, yeah. Magnetica is another really good one. (It's like Zuma, but from the guys PopCap ripped off!)

Moon wanted to be equal parts Metroid Prime and Halo, condensed down into a technical showpiece for the DS. It feels like the sort of thing that should be pretty remarkable, but the result was just such a plodding and dull thing. A lot of the perceived issues with Scurge could be laid at the fact that it doesn't have any mechanisms for dodging or strafing, but if you can get a handle on repositioning yourself between taking shots at your enemies and can just keep that going rhythmically in lieu of any systems to do it for you, it's completely manageable. I think that game actually plays incredibly well, but it is a pretty decent challenge. Speaking of Contact, it occurs to me that game had some kind of online functions as well, didn't it? I can't remember what it was for, it was something weird, and it obviously wouldn't work anymore. I don't think it did much, whatever it was.

FD ONLY.

Moving stages are definitely just loathed by most people i've played Smash with. Regarding Villager: You first plant the seed. When the seed is planted, you get a watering can. You can use the watering can to grow the tree, and the growing tree works like a smash attack. However, before expending the watering can on the tree, it can also have utility elsewhere since it generates a small push. You can use it to mess with people's stage recovery, for example. Once the tree is grown, you lose the watering can and gain an axe. The axe itself is an attack with a ton of knockback at high percentages, but knocking down the tree creates a huge hitbox with a long duration that is almost certainly a KO even at moderately low percentages. Then you have to go plant a new tree and start the process over. Villager has some other things, he can fly on the gyroids if you hold that side special, and his side smashes will fall straight down if released from edges. His side aerials are a useful fast-moving projectile, and hIs neutral special will also pocket anything the game regards as a unique physical object distinct from the player using it. (This includes a ton of special attacks in the game, it's even been shown that he can pocket certain final smashes.) Villager is a ton of fun.

I have that first Lost in Blue game, i completely forgot about that. You know, I'm just going to run through a bunch of other games i've played and still remember fondly, but haven't seen mentioned elsewhere in the thread*: *(TWEWY, 999, Ghost Trick, Meteos, Tetris DS, Planet Puzzle League, Advance Wars games, Cing games, Ace Attorney games, Kirby games, Castlevania games, Infinite Space, MPH, Sonic Rush, etc.) The DS had Okami-Den, which i never quite made up my mind about, i'm still not sure if it's actually a good game or not. It was charming though, it was trying very hard. Orcs & Elves, one of Id Software's weird first-person RPG's for mobile phones, it got ported to the DS and was actually really great to play there. Scurge: The Hive is an isometric metroidvania that i have a ton of love for. It plays great, it sounds great, it looks great. Lost Magic, an early DS strategy RPG with online play, real-time battles, and a crazily flexible rune-drawing magic system. That's still a pretty great game, though the online is obviously now non-functional. Aliens Infestation was a super cool late-cycle Metroidvania from Way Forward with permadeath and a lot of inventive control mechanics geared towards simulating a slower, survival-horror experience on a 2d plane. This is one of the best games to come out of that franchise. Metroid Prime Pinball... Every once in a while Nintendo releases some weird themed pinball game, but they've always been pretty good and this was no exception. It also shipped with the DS's awful and inexplicably broadly supported rumble pack. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a game that set out to emulate what people fondly remembered about the original top-down GTA games and in most respects actually ended up surpassing those games. Custom Robo: Arena. I will not justify this one. This one is for me. (It did have some pretty solidly implemented online play though.) Bangai-O Spirits is one of those random DS games that i find myself going back to more frequently than others. It's almost offensively janky, the DS cannot do what the game is asking it to do, but it's still such a fun toolbox of game mechanics to mess around with. Nanostray 2 is the best shoot em up on the DS. It looks great, it sounds great, it plays great. It even has a bunch of suprisingly fleshed out mini-games. Glory Days 2 - This was a game i picked up on a whim and ended up just adoring, it's a really fantastic linear action RTS. Build tanks that gradually push forward your front line, carry infantry to forward bases to capture them, bomb enemy units, and directly fight with the other player from your helicopter or jet fighter. Megaman ZX - I have mixed feelings about its overly bloated follow-up, but the first ZX is a pretty great latter-day Megaman game. Puzzle Quest was an awesome and fresh thing before they drove it into the ground with rapid-fire sequels. It's kind of remarkable how fast that came and went. Lunar Knights ditched the Boktai sunlight sensor gimmick, but is nevertheless a really great and fleshed-out action RPG, despite probably being the last entry in the beleagured Kojima series. Contact is a bizarre and almost indescribable Grasshopper-developed action RPG, but it's incredibly memorable and full of odd things to discover. Space Invaders Extreme is an amazing thing that people should play, it's an incredibly energentic and fun reimagining of Space Invaders. Electroplankton was Nintendo's weird art game/music toy, and it's... Really not a thing to recommend exactly, it's something you own mostly just to have in your collection. It's perhaps less weird today, but it was an incredibly bizarre thing to see NIntendo release in 2006. Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is largely an inoffensive and harmless Zelda-like adventure game, it definitely skews young and... WHAT ARE THESE TANK BATTLES? THIS IS AMAZING. I might end up adding more later, now that i'm thinking about the DS again.

The DS is also home to what i will assert is the only great Sonic game, Sonic Rush. (Featuring a bangin` soundtrack by Hideki Naganuma of Jet Set Radio fame.) So many cool things about that game, the way it used those two screens for a tall portrait perspective that reveals its stages as these enormous, layered, multi-pathed constructs, with sonic swinging back and forth between the two screens as you play through those stages, and how the game subdues any criticism of the game just being about you holding right by giving you a trick system to be actively engaged with, building boost so you can go even faster. (Why haven't subsequent Sonic games used that trick system? It was a great addition.)

Metroid Prime Hunters came out in 2006 and was a Nintendo game that let you add people that you played against in the normal matchmaking playlists as friends, and it even had voice chat in friend match lobbies. There were multiple playable characters, multiple gametypes, and tons of maps. It even has bots, smart bots that do a totally acceptable job playing the different gametypes. (With nintendo's WFC service shut down, those bots are also now the only particularly accessible way to experience that game's multiplayer.) It gave me so much hope for Nintendo's online future, but seemingly Nintendo is just now finding its way back there. MPH though, i love that game, played it tons with friends. It's always been pretty divisive for taking Metroid and sort of distilling it down into a fast-paced FPS that oddly echoes Quake, but all of its multiplayer action is still secondary to a solo campaign that is acceptably authentic to the Metroid series. (It's big and it's open-ended and it's still filled with puzzles, but it controls like an FPS.) That solo game just happens to also come alongside a frantic multiplayer FPS that had some really cool ambitions. (Though if i'm going to be completely honest, the public playlists eventually imploded. People found out-of-map exploits and used those to dominate matches with sniping weapons. It was the kind of thing that would have been patched if it was a system that could accept patches.) I'm still wishing for a sequel to this game. It will probably never happen. As an aside: Metroid Prime Hunters, two years earlier, was also the pack-in game for launch-day DS's, via a "First Hunt" version of the game that was very different and very much a tech demo. Even as a launch day game though, First Hunt and the eventual full retail release of the game are both some of the most technically impressive games on the hardware.

The ship to ship fights were superficially kind of a rock-paper-scissors thing that could be kind of offputting at first, but with a developed fleet of ships, they end up being quite involved. Boarding crew fights were kind of a mess though, much more explicitly based in chance.

Factory assembly errors are relatively common in figures with the price point Amiibos are selling at, though things as egregious as having two right arms usually don't slip through. (I've definitely seen similar things in other toy lines though.) I will say, i'm pleasantly surprised with them. They're certainly much nicer than their equivalents in the Skylanders and Disney Infinity toy lines. I mean, and these aren't articulated toys where there can be hard to spot issues with the joints, it's a static figure and you can totally just eyeball it in the store to check for any problems before you buy. (Look for the seams where the pieces are glued together, see that they're all aligned and attached properly, and look over the paint applications to see that they're not messy. Also look for any warping or breaks in the plastic.)

The DS also had some of the best Kirby games ever, like Canvas Curse and Mass Attack. Did anybody here ever play Infinite Space? That was a preposterously complex RPG, a really wild Platinum Games release.

Concerning Azure Striker Gunvolt, I like it a lot. It feels most akin to the Zero games, where you're juggling two modes of attack and there's lots of slightly counter-intuitive systems behind the action. It's not as great as i'd hope and wish for it to be, but it's a very solid game and probably something you should play if you have any fondness for the latter-day Megaman platformers. (If you're going to buy the japanese version though, keep in mind that there's a fairly important crafting system in there that will probably end up seeming incomprehensible because of the language barrier.) The bundled Mighty Gunvolt comes across as kind of a clunky, bad classic Megaman clone to me, but some people insist it's better than Azure Striker. I think those people are crazy, but to each their own. If either of those sound appealing though, they're both probably worth picking up before that bundle ends.

That might be one of the most effective pieces of video game marketing i've ever seen, it just sells the idea of Eve so hard. (Though I find it really amusing that the booming swell of music at the end is accompinied with frantic, rapid-fire images of spreadsheets and other UI elements.) I saw yesterday a few threads on Reddit about the video where persons who claimed to be the people featured in the video were showing up to talk down naysayers that were yelling about how no real players would ever be as organized as they seem in this video. According to the people who were allegedly featured in the video, the voice clips are apparently all pulled from real community videos and real voice chat channels during real in-game fights. (Though the fights themselves are obviously re-staged quite cinematically for the trailer.)

For me, it really depends on the game. I have to assume that many games are simply designed with the expectation that players will share notes, so to speak. There is no logical world in which a player would be expected to figure out Dota 2 on their own, and indeed, much of the fun i've had playing that game comes from taking the knowledge other players make available and building my own stategies from it. Fighting games are definitely in the same boat, as are probably most other competitive multiplayer games. Something like Dark Souls, on the other hand, is something where i find myself drawing a fairly neat line through the middle of it. Given the long-term investments of time and resources with regards to planning my character, i feel that information concerning the central mechanics in the game should be fair game, but with regards the the environments and the bosses, i want to have that experience of walking up to a corner and not knowing what lies just beyond. There are systems provided in the game to facilitate a player discovering those mysteries on their own, and i want to have that experience. That's probably my stance for most RPG's, i guess. You know, but there's also games like TES where even the core mechanics are just so creaky that reading literally almost anything about them would threaten to break the game. I don't want to know how i can level a skill from 1-100 in 15 minutes, i don't want to have that weird, broken experience.

Shadow of the Colossus and Ico are predominantly narratives implied through tone and environment. (Not unlike the Souls games.) ... Super Metroid? Super Metroid's kind of in the same boat as the above. You could extend that out to the Prime games as well. (With the exception of the third one, which is built to be very cinematic.) I want to say the Myst games fit in here too, because their environments are just oozing with subtle narrative details. In each of those games you will invariably at some point sit down and start reading dozens of pages of explicitly conveyed story, but the games are such that you will probably know most of the story just from seeing the places you go to.

Balance update is out, but no patch notes because Nintendo. If you look in the right places though, there's certainly a lot of people trying to figure out what's different, and it certainly seems to be quite a lot that has changed.

The wavebird used to get over a hundred hours on two AA's, didn't it? Nintendo can really stretch out battery life when they want to.

That is my understanding of the issue, yes.