Dread. I wasn't sure if it could live up to the high expectations set for it, but they hit it out of the park. Hits all the highs of Super and Zero Mission, then goes on to outdo those games in terms of combat and boss fights. Had a blast going back to speedrun it again and again.
Interesting that in the title, stated in absolute terms in the text, and from the designers they interviewed, they cite getting lost as crucial for the genre. Personally, I disagree. Getting lost has tended to be why I didn’t care for certain games in this genre, like Axiom Verge, and it soured my otherwise higher opinion of...
while Castlevanias powerups focus almost entirely on combat.
Castlevania has always (edit: I mean since SotN) had a pretty heavy emphasis on movement abilities to access new areas. Looking at SotN, we have double jump, high jump, swimming, mist form, bat form, wolf form, as well as good ol' keys to literally unlock the environment.
This is why I consider Metroid Fusion, Other M, and Dread to be among the weaker Metroid titles. All three have an obvious, forced always on hand-holding mechanic that you don't find in other Metroid games.
I'll give you Fusion and Other M, but I'm going to have to disagree on Dread here. The game does sort of guide you along an intended first playthrough route, but so does Super! It's a delicate balance to give the player room for exploration while still ensuring they don't get stuck not knowing where to go. That balancing act should not be seen as disqualifying, or else we're throwing out the genre's foundational text too. If anything, the biggest difference between Dread and Super here is that Dread actually has more developer-intended sequence breaks. If you play Super as intended without utilizing any speedrunning tech, you almost always follow the same route in the end.
I suppose I should've been clearer there, I really just meant the Koji Igarashi-era games, not Classicvania. As the other comment mentions, the term Metroidvania was actually originally coined to separate the two eras of Castlevania, before the genre exploded in popularity and it became repurposed.
For me, anything 25 FPS or higher is 100% fine and I’ll be enjoying my time. I never play competitive online shooter games ever, though. All single player ones like GOW and the likes. I game on a 60 Hz 4k monitor. GPU is AMD RX 6600 alongside Ryzen 7 5700G and 32GB RAM. My games are set to meduim most of the time at 4k....
If it's a fast-paced action game, 60 is a must. If it's turn-based, or otherwise just slow enough to not matter, I'll sometimes accept a stable 30 - but only if it's truly stable, any dips below that are not okay.
Someone remaked Super Mario World in 3D in Unreal Engine 5 (no realistic graphics). The video explains what he did and its super interesting and entertaining to watch. However, there is nothing playable right now. And even if there was one, Nintendo would be fast to remove it. I hope he will publish a finished work as Open...
Splatoon. You could definitely come up with plenty of cool movement abilities to unlock. And in general I just want to see the IP explored in all kinds of directions. If the franchise had debuted a generation earlier, I keep imagining what kind of straight-to-handheld companion title it would've gotten.
Why do you say that? Lots of other old games get remakes that don't try to completely change genre. Just because a game is old doesn't mean no one would play a faithful remake, that reasoning doesn't make any sense.
Hell, SE themselves have done faithful remakes of games that are much older. Dragon Quest III HD just came out and I hear it's been selling pretty damn well.
Yes it was. Plenty of developers who didn't already have an established audience to rally votes from complained about how difficult it was to even get noticed. And it invited a lot of shady tactics as other developers gamed the system to bribe or even bot votes, because if you're not doing that then your game will be left behind as your competition gets Greenlit first. Many perfectly good games got stuck in "Greenlight Hell" for a very long time.
Greenlight era had a lot of problems, and these problems are well documented. Valve dropped it for a reason. Don't start with the revisionist history.
I played it in the “open beta” two years ago. Sad that it’s come to this, the game had a lot going for it but… having all characters locked on start then weirdly shutting the game down for an extended time then coming back with everything somehow worse… everyone saw this coming....
So the market and ecosystem would have to substantially change before these kinds of ports could ever become viable. I doubt any of that is likely to happen.
I wonder if that and/or Labo might be what they meant by the disclaimer that backwards compatibility might not support all titles. Since it's built around old Joy-Cons, might not work with new ones, unless the Switch 2 can just use original Joy-Cons.
Could also be an excuse for Ring Fit 2 built around new Joy-Cons.
Sort of, though Wii and Wii U are a bit more complicated than that so this somewhat of an oversimplification. The ELI5 answer is that some hardware components are directly upgraded and can run in a compatibility mode, other components are just the original hardware thrown in separately.
New3DS is the most recent and most notable exception. It's directly upgraded 3DS hardware, but the CPU downclocks to run at 3DS specs on all legacy titles (and there are almost no native New3DS games so this upgrade was pretty pointless). Softmodding can unlock the full clockspeed, and most games do work fine this way but there are a few rare bugs.
I expect Switch 2 will just be the same architecture upgraded, because that's a lot easier to do now, while the old style of true redundancy would inflate costs too much today. It's also worth noting that Switch titles already expect variable performance in order to support handheld and docked modes, so I doubt much would break if allowed to overclock. But I could also see Nintendo not even trying to support it if even one bug might exist somewhere.
You asked "has Nintendo even released a game?" and the answer to that question is "yes". They released 22 of them. I don't care where you wanna move the goalposts to, you can't say 22 games is "not really".
From Jason Schreier. “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’,” but this is some analysis from Schreier seemingly rooted in many anecdotes. The long and short of it is that development on AAA games tend to routinely hit bottlenecks where entire portions of a team are waiting for some other team to unblock them so that...
To me, what I dislike the most about the direction the industry is going is that consolidating more resources into fewer megagames means there's less room for experimental side projects and spinoffs. I especially miss all the kinds of B-games that used to go straight to handheld. Of course part of the reason they disappeared because we don't have handhelds to put them on, but I think that half the reason handhelds died was because publishers weren't going to make handheld games for much longer anyway.
Of course there's still a lot of cool stuff coming from indies, but there's a wide spectrum between indie with no budget and AAAA with $10 trillion budget. We're losing everything that was once in between.
Also, spinoffs. I do like seeing alternate takes on IPs and characters I like, but those are rare now because all the resources go into developing one main project. Like I've always wondered, if Splatoon had debuted a generation earlier, what kind of DS companion piece would have accompanied it?
I'm still holding onto the dream that we'll get SteamOS onto something small enough to fit in my pocket and run all my favorite 2D indie games. First manufacturer to do it gets all my money.
I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus a while back, purely an impulse buy for how cheap it was on sale, and ended up putting far more time into it than I ever did with my deck. This is the cozy form factor I need.
Play store is unusable tripe. I member back in the day there being websites and forums that actually gave honest insight into what was good and what was trash. Anything like that today? Where does one find the good android games nowadays while avoiding all the shovelware crap?
So, imagine a fight stick, but kinda big and it also has an soc in it to run games on itself and connect to a display. So it can be a controller for other systems or a self contained emulator box thing
Capcom released a comically ugly version of this a while back, shaped like a giant Capcom logo, with a very questionable selection of games. Only fighting games included were SF2 Hyper Fighting and Cyberbots. No Super Turbo, no Alpha, no 3rd Strike, no VSav...
Game & Watch Gallery 2: Holds a special place in my heart as the first game I ever owned. Has the best lineup out of all the collections, with 3 and 4 you can kinda tell they had used up all the heavy hitters.
Mario Tennis: An incredible tennis RPG. And Mario doesn't even show up until the postgame as a bonus boss, which I find hilarious. Has connectivity with the N64 version if you can get that running, lets you transfer your RPG mode character and unlock more content on both titles.
Panel de Pon GBC: Better known under a name of a different IP it got reskinned with, but I'm a stubborn snob who will only ever call it by the original title. It's a bit different from the console versions in order to compensate for the small screen, board is shrunk from 6x12 to 6x10, and the 1P Arcade mode is fake versus that gives opponents a health bar rather than their own board. I actually have a soft spot for this version, it's different enough to stand out and be worth enjoying on its own, even if Gamecube is still the GOAT.
GBA:
Boktai trilogy: Hideo Kojima's greatest masterpiece. First game's alright, second game is where it comes into its own. Note that you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you'd have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: It's Castlevania. It's good. Also check out Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance, but AoS was by far the best of the GBA entries.
Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: If you've played any of the other Mario RPGs, this one's great too. Has a 3DS remake but I haven't played that version so I can't tell you how it compares.
Metroid: Zero Mission: The original Metroid has aged rather poorly if you ask me, but this remake does a perfect job modernizing it into one of the best games in the series. Fusion is good too, but some fans have opinions on that one.
Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven't played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you've ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There's a third game that's JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it's been stuck in development hell for years...
I recently came across a colorization that turns the original black and white/green version of Pokémon Red for the GameBoy into a proper GameBoy Color title. This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, but the sheer number of hacks that have been made over the course of several decades is slightly overwhelming, so I’d love to...
Celeste Mario's Zap & Dash (NES): SMB1 turned into a Metroidvania with Celeste mechanics ported in. I think what impresses me the most is that they got 4-directional scrolling into this engine.
Super Metroid and A Link to the Past Crossover Randomizer (SNES): It's an absolutely incredible technical feat that this even works. SM and ALttP smashed together into a single ROM, with a few doors that take you from one game to the other, then the item pools are shuffled together so you have to go back and forth to find one game's items in the other. Unfortunately because ALttP is a much bigger game with a lot more items it kinda overshadows SM, you may not find this to be as replayable as the standalonerandos. But I recommend trying it once because it's just so cool the first time.
Unfortunately I can't find an up-to-date download link for this one, just a few Youtube videos with no link, but there's an ongoing Panel de Pon GBC Restoration Project based on a lot of unused assets buried in the ROM before it tragically got reskinned (again, this poor IP can't catch a break). I've got an older build of this on my hard drive I could upload somewhere if anyone wants it, but the version I have is far from complete.
UNI finally gets rollback, which means I finally gave the series a shot. The GRD system is a very unique concept that adds an additional layer of trying to win the advantage state, then pressing the advantage when you have it or respecting the opponent's advantage when they do. And Vatista is just a very fun character to play, I'm having a blast with her.
Celeste $4.99 -75% - A platformer with 8-way airdashes. I'm sure you've already heard enough about how amazing the base game is, so I just want to take a moment to shoutout the incredible modding scene for more content. My favorites are Spring 2020 Collab, Strawberry Jam, Glyph, Conqueror's Peak, and Into the Jungle.
CrossCode $9.33 -65% (for base game and DLC) - Phenomenal action RPG. Combat is fast and explosive, dungeons are very obviously Zelda inspired but with way more puzzles. Packed with tons and tons and tons of sidequests, many of which put unique twists on the combat system to keep you on your toes. Make sure to grab the epilogue DLC.
Crypt of the Necrodancer $11.21 (bundle with DLC) - Rhythm game/roguelike sounds like the strangest mashup ever. But what's even stranger is just how well it works. It's just a matter of keeping 4/4 time, but forcing a steady pace forces you to think fast and not make any mistakes. Every death is clearly your fault as every enemy is designed to be beatable using only a base dagger without getting hit (and indeed there's a challenge character that forces exactly this), but dealing with swarms is where it gets complicated. I especially recommend trying to speedrun, playing for speed really makes this game adrenaline-fueled as you have to pace yourself judging how much time you can afford to gather items if you want to make sub-15 or sub-10. Danny Baranowsky's soundtrack absolutely delivers. Get both the Amplified and Synchrony DLCs.
Mega Knockdown $7.99 -20% - A turn-based fighting game that's fun for complete beginners to pick up and play, while still offering a lot of depth. Use this to entice your non-fighting game friends in.
Skullgirls $2.49 -90% base game, $14.83 bundle with DLC - Still the best damn fighting game of all time. Almost never not on sale, hell you probably already own this by now and may not even realize it.
Slay the Spire $6.24 -75% - Roguelike deckbuilder, basic idea is that after each combat you get to add a card to your deck, plus collect relics from elites/events/shops/bosses which provide passive effects. There's a ton of depth in trying to assemble the perfect deck one card at a time, resource management gets very complicated balancing what you need in the short-term versus what you want to take to the endgame. Tons and tons of possibilities, you can pretty much expect to never build the same deck twice. Oh, and did I mention there's 20 levels of hard modes once you think you've gotten A0 down? Also has a very powerful mod API with Steam Workshop support, check out Packmaster and Adventurer for my favorite must-plays.
Them's Fightin' Herds $3.99 -80% - Another great fighting game, been waiting a long time for this port to bring us up to a grand total of two good fighting games on Linux. Has a lot of really cool features like a big story mode with overworld exploration, a cute lobby system with cosmetics to collect and treasure chests to fight for, a dynamic music system that reacts to the fight, and even a semi-cooperative dungeon crawler mode. Has crossplay with consoles as well. Full review.Word of warning: Baihe DLC is very busted and banned from tournament play. Long story about how the publisher fired the entire dev team and released her in an unfinished state. If you buy the DLC, just get the other three characters and skip her.
Anything by Zachtronics - A bunch of different engineering puzzle games where you have to write code or build a machine to solve problems. Once you've solved the puzzle, you can see a histogram comparing your solution to everyone else's on a few different metrics, encouraging you to go back and try to optimize it further. I recommend Opus Magnum as the best entry point.
[alt text: a text post by @coolrich.bsky.social. The text is entirely in quotation marks, as if it is being quoted from an article, and it says: “but the most chilling aspect of the so-called game, which is already being described by some as ‘a training program for CEO-killers’, is the presence of a weapon that exclusively...
A look at the downfall of turn based battle mechanics in the Final Fantasy series and through out the larger industry. Followed with new hopes in recent releases and upcoming ones like Expedition 33
It sounds like you've had bad experiences with games that just didn't make their systems engaging enough to not feel repetitive. That was true of some older titles, but modern turn-based RPGs have learned a lot since then.
Combat is supposed to be the core gameplay loop. If you feel like that's an unwanted interruption, I think there's a deeper problem where the game has left you feeling like you don't want to play its core loop.
Favourite Metroid game? angielski
My favourite Metroid game has got to be Zero Mission on the GBA....
Why We Love to Get Lost in Games: The Enduring Appeal of Metroidvanias (www.nytimes.com) angielski
Interesting that in the title, stated in absolute terms in the text, and from the designers they interviewed, they cite getting lost as crucial for the genre. Personally, I disagree. Getting lost has tended to be why I didn’t care for certain games in this genre, like Axiom Verge, and it soured my otherwise higher opinion of...
What's your "this is totally fine and I'm going to have a great time" FPS (refresh rate). ?
For me, anything 25 FPS or higher is 100% fine and I’ll be enjoying my time. I never play competitive online shooter games ever, though. All single player ones like GOW and the likes. I game on a 60 Hz 4k monitor. GPU is AMD RX 6600 alongside Ryzen 7 5700G and 32GB RAM. My games are set to meduim most of the time at 4k....
I Spent 1 YEAR Remaking Super Mario World In 3D! by Bobby Ivar (YouTube: 18:25 min) [Jan 30, 2025] (youtu.be) angielski
Someone remaked Super Mario World in 3D in Unreal Engine 5 (no realistic graphics). The video explains what he did and its super interesting and entertaining to watch. However, there is nothing playable right now. And even if there was one, Nintendo would be fast to remove it. I hope he will publish a finished work as Open...
Games franchises that need metroidvania spinoffs? angielski
My picks:...
Thoughts on Final Fantasy VII Remake angielski
I grew up playing Final Fantasy VII. I probably played it around 10-12 years old and again on ios a few years ago....
Why there are few native Linux games compared to Windows or even Mac? angielski
Does the existence of Wine compatibility layer discourages the creation of native Linux games?
Steam now warns about Early Access that have not been updated in months. (bsky.app) angielski
Excellent feature. One of the first things I check anyways when buying early access games is when the last news post was.
Multiversus ends updates, will close servers on May 30 (but will remain playable in Singleplayer) (multiversus.com) angielski
I played it in the “open beta” two years ago. Sad that it’s come to this, the game had a lot going for it but… having all characters locked on start then weirdly shutting the game down for an extended time then coming back with everything somehow worse… everyone saw this coming....
Resident Evil 2 remake has sold fewer than 10,000 copies on iOS, estimates suggest (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Video game publishers are starting to use "anti-DEI" as a marketing meme (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
Dragonsweeper: A nicely challenging Minesweeper/roguelike combo (danielben.itch.io) angielski
Some notes:...
Games Done Quick from home is a waste of time angielski
Nintendo Switch 2 finally officially revealed (venturebeat.com) angielski
A Direct is announced for April 2nd to cover the games.
deleted_by_author
Why So Many Video Games Cost So Much to Make (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
From Jason Schreier. “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’,” but this is some analysis from Schreier seemingly rooted in many anecdotes. The long and short of it is that development on AAA games tend to routinely hit bottlenecks where entire portions of a team are waiting for some other team to unblock them so that...
Nintendo Responds to Leaks: "Not Official" (smarfdurden.wordpress.com) angielski
SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck (store.steampowered.com) angielski
RetroArch 1.20.0 release (www.libretro.com) angielski
Changelog 1.20.0...
Notch says he will work on a spiritual successor to Minecraft (x.com) angielski
Android games angielski
Play store is unusable tripe. I member back in the day there being websites and forums that actually gave honest insight into what was good and what was trash. Anything like that today? Where does one find the good android games nowadays while avoiding all the shovelware crap?
idea for a controller that sounds good on paper and I wanna share
So, imagine a fight stick, but kinda big and it also has an soc in it to run games on itself and connect to a display. So it can be a controller for other systems or a self contained emulator box thing
Nintendo 64 vs PlayStation graphics (lemmy.world) angielski
favourite gameboy family games?
Looking for more games. Only requirements are following:...
What are your favorite ROM hacks? (beehaw.org)
I recently came across a colorization that turns the original black and white/green version of Pokémon Red for the GameBoy into a proper GameBoy Color title. This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, but the sheer number of hacks that have been made over the course of several decades is slightly overwhelming, so I’d love to...
What is your Game of the Year?
Steam Replay is out, so what game did you have the most fun experiencing this year?
Steam Winter Sale 2024 Has Begun! (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Post good deals in the comments
it's big with all the kids, they're calling it "Karting" (beehaw.org) angielski
[alt text: a text post by @coolrich.bsky.social. The text is entirely in quotation marks, as if it is being quoted from an article, and it says: “but the most chilling aspect of the so-called game, which is already being described by some as ‘a training program for CEO-killers’, is the presence of a weapon that exclusively...
Slay the Spire 2 - Official Gameplay Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
We need more turn-based RPGs (youtube.com) angielski
A look at the downfall of turn based battle mechanics in the Final Fantasy series and through out the larger industry. Followed with new hopes in recent releases and upcoming ones like Expedition 33
'Powered bv SteamOS' gaming handheld validation leaks in Valve documentation, Asus ROG Ally may be among first handhelds with official SteamOS support (www.notebookcheck.net) angielski