This is partly the case for any game that receives significant updates as well. Your disc/cart contains 1.0, but is that the version you will want to play 50 years from now when you can't download updates anymore?
Given the swathes of posts about bad behavior from big companies, I figure we could counterbalance that with some positivity about stuff the smaller guys made that often costs us less too.
Skullgirls - Still the best damn fighting game ever made. I've been grinding for a full decade now, and I'll be entering Combo Breaker 2025 once again this year.
Slay the Spire - The game that ruined all other roguelikes for me. What I love about StS is that it never lets you get complacent, never lets you lean on just one good synergy that will carry you the entire run. You always have to keep adapting, and you have to have a well-rounded deck to deal with enemies that are designed to counter players who try to rely on only one thing. And when I eventually got to the point where I'd had my fill of vanilla, there's so much fun stuff from the modding community to play around with. Packmaster is incredible.
CrossCode - It's been years since I finished this RPG and its colorful cast still lives rent-free in my head. This is a game that is perfect in every way and adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Fantastic combat, tons of side content, endearing characters, emotionally powerful story, beautiful visuals, amazing soundtrack.
There are very few games I would spend $80 on. Actually, at this point I don't buy a lot of new games to begin with, I'm mostly just grinding the same old favorites now.
But for the games I really care about, I'm willing to spend on games I know will be worth it to me. I've waited 22 years for a sequel to Kirby Air Ride and if I have to pay $80 for it, I will pay $80 for it.
Measuring games by hours has become an increasing less useful metric to me because I already have my grinding games that I can endlessly replay. When buying new games, I'd rather get something I'll really enjoy for a short playthrough than a long epic JRPG I can't bring myself to actually set aside time for - even though I do really love JRPGs.
I thought Game Key Cards, while not something I would ever buy, weren't the end of the world if they were just meant to replace the existing practice of code-in-a-box for games that won't fit on a cart. It's actually less bad than that, so I didn't get out my pitchfork just yet.
But the sheer number of games being released in this format is alarming. Code-in-a-box was rare, this is looking like it's outnumbering proper physical games. And many of these games don't even make sense to be key cards, they can fit just fine on a cart. There are ports of Switch 1 games that already fit on Switch 1 carts in here!
Seems like a goldmine of content for them to work on for the next decade+. Plenty of people will never experience these worlds or stories due to the turn-based combat, so giving them the Remake treatment could be the only way an audience ever finds them....
Only if they DON'T drop the classic turn-based combat. I actually hate the idea of a 'remake' that changes genre entirely.
1-6 recently got the Pixel Remasters, and before that 3 and 4 had the DS remakes. I'd like to see proper remakes of 5 and 6 myself, but that's unlikely to happen since the Pixel Remasters exist.
7, personally I'd play a faithful remake, but it'd be silly to make one since they already have the non-faithful 'remake'.
8 is the one game that could benefit the most from a non-faithful remake. It's a game that's worth remaking because the original was such a mess. But I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for saying that right after complaining about FF7. What I'd do is still keep it turn-based, but completely overhaul Draw and level scaling.
9 would be the most likely candidate as a fan-favorite that could be kept faithful and still hold up well. And rumors have been swirling around for a while that one may be coming.
10 and 12 already have the HD Remasters, and those are excellent. So no need.
11 is the most in need of some way to preserve it for future generations, but I don't know how that would even work. Could it perhaps be adapted in some way like they did with Dragon Quest 10 Offline?
13 onward, too new to need remakes. (And also I have no interest in the direction the series has gone since then anyway)
I know there’s great love for Oblivion (I never played it when it was new), and of course Skyrim is the gold standard for new fans (I played the shit out of that and it was my first entry into the elder scrolls back when it came out 14 years ago…) but I really feel like this shadow drop of a half assed remake is just priming...
"Why is an old game good?" feels like an odd question. It would be silly to ask that of any other medium, wouldn't it? The most beloved classics being beloved isn't an indictment of modern stuff, especially when cherry-picking the greatest hits and ignoring how many flops existed back then too.
Every 100 years, the mysterious castle of Sudokuvania appears in the countryside. Legend has it that it contains the Secret of Sudoku. Gathering the last few given digits in the area, you solemnly approach the boxy fortress, determined to discover the secret and share it with your favorite people.
Yes, you do have to venture into the fog a bit sometimes. Not too far, if you click around to other grids you may uncover spoilers, but you can always interact with the grid you're currently on. Whenever you know you can put a digit somewhere, put that digit there, fog or not.
Was recommended this because I love Final Fantasy 5, but it was just a terrible experience. The quests felt like I was playing an mmo they were so boring and uninspired, and the classes and skills all sucked....
I loved the original and Second, but I played the demo for II and it did not click with me at all. I really disliked the change to how turn order worked, the original system dovetailed so much better with the titular Brave/Default mechanic.
Of course there's going to be one eventually, but if they're implying it's coming very soon that actually raises questions. Donkey Kong Bananza looks to have been developed by the team that did Odyssey, so if a 3D Mario was being developed in parallel, I'm curious who was on that project.
I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus two years ago and liked it so much I wish I'd bought a more expensive model with analog sticks. I keep looking at all the shiny new stuff on the market and feeling the temptation to upgrade, but holding off because something better is always around the corner.
Well, guess I no longer have to worry about temptation now.
Like can we make this a more vocal opinion that Triple-A studios/publishers are like legally required to offer a version… Or what is your take on that, especially if you have a similar opinion with a deviation in execution. let me know why if you dont agree too!...
Is this a law that specifically only applies to AAAs, or are we just shutting down literally all of indie gaming? If the former, how do you legally draw the line between who is and isn't allowed to release digital-only titles? Even just basing it on the size of the company would effectively mean that large publishers may only release large projects and never smaller budget titles.
Given the outcry over the price, I think they have no choice but to eat the loss. They can't drop the price, but they can't raise it either. They'll just have to hope that they can bring down manufacturing costs over time.
It really just seems to me like you want to argue, but I'm not sure why you chose me to argue with. All I said was that they can't raise or drop the price of the console, and I dunno why that set you off.
I may be stretching the definition of cancelled a bit because we don't know if it was ever in development to begin with, but I will forever have a chip on my shoulder about Puyo Puyo 30th Anniversary.
The three best games in the series were Puyo Puyo 15th Anniversary (2006), Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary (2011), and Puyo Puyo Chronicle (2016, this game is 25th in all but name). None of these games were released outside of Japan, but after Puyo Puyo Tetris's Switch port got localized in 2017 and sold really well, fans had high hopes that the pattern would continue and the next one of these would get localized too.
The pattern did not continue. Instead, Sega responded to PPT selling well by making Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. It's literally the exact same as the first game, only much buggier. It's a terrible game and I hate it.
To this day, we still have not gotten a proper mainline game. In fact, Sega just announced they're rereleasing Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S as a Switch 2 launch title. This is all the series will ever be from now on.
Valve is in the business of selling PC games. Moving into a new market wouldn't be trivial, and Google has put up a lot of barriers to make it especially difficult for a third-party app store to challenge their monopoly.
Why would you think that? Of course it would be difficult, it's a massive undertaking.
Amazon and Epic have both tried to launch their own Android storefronts. Neither one has been even remotely successful. Amazon will be shutting theirs down soon.
The average person has never had to install Windows or MacOS, they buy a computer with it pre-installed. And they buy phones with Google Play pre-installed.
That's very much not true then. Have you ever tried to set up a third party store like F-Droid?
Android requires you to dig into the settings before you can install third party APKs, and gives you several big scary warnings about it. If you download an APK from the web browser, it will then prevent you from directly opening it, claiming it's to protect you from malware. Instead you have to open the file browser and find it in your downloads folder, then you can install it from there. Finally, it will give you even more big scary warnings about letting any app that isn't Google Play have permissions to install its own APKs.
If I have to pay $80 for Kirby Air Ride 2, I will pay $80 for Kirby Air Ride 2. I have waited 22 years for this game, there's never been anything else like it.
I can't tell if you were intentionally trying to mislead, but you know that this discourse was never about CAD, right? You know that the article is discussing USD, right?
It's not nitpicking to say that you've been misleading, whether intentionally or not.
I have been avoiding multiplayer Valve games like Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, due to their in-game economies that have created an underage gambling gray market, which Valve has done little about. However, I am on Linux, and the choices for multiplayer shooters are few. Besides, my small boycott is not stopping...
I know that I'm one guy, and my purchasing decisions ain't gonna change nothin'. But I still try to vote with my wallet as much as I can in order to feel like I'm doing the right thing. I'm the guy old-fashioned enough to still only buy native Linux games because I don't like the idea of replacing official support with just hoping Proton happens to work, knowing full well that this replacement happened long ago and I am too late to turn back the clock. And I've got a whole list of publishers I will never buy from under any circumstances.
I will never ever ever spend money on gacha, because if I don't know what I'm buying then I'm not buying it. Even putting aside the ethical concerns, that's just a stupid purchase.
But I have a lot of nostalgia for TF2, and I don't know how to reconcile that. They kinda got away with sneaking in gacha before we realized how evil this is. I haven't touched the game in a long time anyway, but if the Heavy Update ever saw the light of day (it won't) or even if they just brought back rd_asteroid (even more not happening), I'd be very tempted and I dunno what I'd do.
There are two gacha games I still play, without spending any money on, while knowing what a hypocrite I am for playing them. Mahjong Soul and Riichi City. They're the two most populated Riichi Mahjong clients - it's either these or Tenhou, but Tenhou isn't in English, hasn't been updated in a long time, paywalls a number of features behind a subscription model, and is steadily losing players to its competitors. If a new client with an ethical business model took off I'd switch in heartbeat, but I can't imagine one would ever take off to a point where I could queue at any time of day and get high-ranking opponents at my level. So I'm kinda stuck with these.
It is still possible to redownloaded previously purchased 3DS and Wii U games, they haven't taken that down yet. You just can't buy anything anymore. They haven't said how long they'll keep that up for, their FAQ simply says "for the foreseeable future", but we know it can't be forever and ever and ever.
Wii downloads went fully offline in 2019, 13 years after the console's launch, or 7 years after the console's successor. I wouldn't try to extrapolate off a single data point though, Switch servers may potentially last longer based on both a longer console life-cycle and a desire to keep backwards compatibility going.
It is less bad than code-in-a-box. That's not a high bar, but it is less bad.
There are two main reasons to buy physical:
Ability to share, trade, and resell your games. These key cards still support this, whereas code-in-a-box did not. So, slightly better.
Then there's the peace of mind that your games will still work in the distant future. I think if you ask most people who primarily buy physical, myself included, we'll say this is the main appeal of physical games, and the big reason why key cards don't feel acceptable.
Some day when the servers eventually go offline, these key cards will become bricks. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We have no idea how long Nintendo will support them for, and they're not going to hard commit a timetable out loud for us. But we know it can't be forever.
But even for standard physical games, there is some uncertainty regarding their long-term future that I'm not sure people realize. When those servers eventually go online, your cartridge only has 1.0 on it, you won't be able to get patches. That's better than a brick, but for a lot of games that's probably not the version you want to play.
And then the even darker concern is bit rot. No form of physical media is permanent. Every disc and every cartridge will eventually degrade. Worse yet is that for many forms of media, we don't even know how long they're set to last for, we only find out once some of them start to fail. Cartridges are generally better than discs, but beyond that we truly have no idea how long Switch cartridges should be expected to last.
Switch 1 emulation on the Steam Deck already has much worse performance than a Switch, given the overhead of emulation. There is no possible way it can run Switch 2 games.
CD Projekt exec says "the right thing to do" is release a real Nintendo Switch 2 cartridge for Cyberpunk 2077, not a game-key card, in message to other studios: "Do not underestimate the physical edit (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Would you like to see a mainline Pokemon game created in the old style? angielski
I’m talking about a new game but made with old graphics and mechanics similar to Megaman 9 & 10....
What is your favorite indie game? angielski
Given the swathes of posts about bad behavior from big companies, I figure we could counterbalance that with some positivity about stuff the smaller guys made that often costs us less too.
Players Have Too Many Options to Spend $80 on a Video Game (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Chrono Trigger Remake Seemingly Confirmed By Yuji Horii (insider-gaming.com) angielski
Game preservationists say Switch 2 Game-Key Cards are ‘disheartening’ but inevitable (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
And why I continue to buy games and support sailing the seas.
Microsoft is raising prices on Xbox consoles, controllers, and games worldwide (www.theverge.com) angielski
Xbox first party titles expected to hit $80 USD this holiday; Game Pass pricing currently unchanged.
Do you think Square Enix should remake other Final Fantasy entries? angielski
Seems like a goldmine of content for them to work on for the next decade+. Plenty of people will never experience these worlds or stories due to the turn-based combat, so giving them the Remake treatment could be the only way an audience ever finds them....
Oblivion remake is... really making it apparent how outdated Bethesda is in its approach to making games angielski
I know there’s great love for Oblivion (I never played it when it was new), and of course Skyrim is the gold standard for new fans (I played the shit out of that and it was my first entry into the elder scrolls back when it came out 14 years ago…) but I really feel like this shadow drop of a half assed remake is just priming...
Sudokuvania: Digits of Despair (v1.1.0) (logic-masters.de) angielski
Every 100 years, the mysterious castle of Sudokuvania appears in the countryside. Legend has it that it contains the Secret of Sudoku. Gathering the last few given digits in the area, you solemnly approach the boxy fortress, determined to discover the secret and share it with your favorite people.
Ace Attorney became a hit IP only because Capcom pushed past the “failure” of first game, according to former dev (automaton-media.com) angielski
Well no “Objection!” here for Capcom taking a risk.
Does Bravely Default 2 Suck? angielski
Was recommended this because I love Final Fantasy 5, but it was just a terrible experience. The quests felt like I was playing an mmo they were so boring and uninspired, and the classes and skills all sucked....
New Mario on Switch 2? ‘Stay tuned,’ says Nintendo of America president (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
And I’m sure it’ll be hit with surge pricing.
Anbernic no longer shipping to the US angielski
I want a law for PC games to be offered in physical versions again angielski
Like can we make this a more vocal opinion that Triple-A studios/publishers are like legally required to offer a version… Or what is your take on that, especially if you have a similar opinion with a deviation in execution. let me know why if you dont agree too!...
Nintendo Maintains Nintendo Switch 2 Pricing, Retail Pre-Orders to Begin April 24 in U.S. (www.nintendo.com) angielski
Prices for accessories will be increasing to compensate for tariffs.
What's a cancelled game you really miss? angielski
Why doesn't Steam support Android? angielski
Steam revenue estimated 2024: $10.8B...
‘If it’s the only place to play Mario, you buy it’: Former PlayStation boss reacts to $80 Nintendo games (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Should we boycott games with loot boxes? angielski
I have been avoiding multiplayer Valve games like Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, due to their in-game economies that have created an underage gambling gray market, which Valve has done little about. However, I am on Linux, and the choices for multiplayer shooters are few. Besides, my small boycott is not stopping...
Switch 2 game-key cards won’t be account- or console-locked (www.polygon.com) angielski
Are PC handhelds like Steam Deck really competitors for Switch 2? (www.polygon.com) angielski