Nintendo released more information about their online service recently, and... it's still really bad, just like it was before, except now you will have to spend $20 a year to continue using their unforgivably horribly thought through cellphone-required online gaming network. Thanks. Nintendo saw the dollar signs from Sony and Microsoft's paid online services and are copying them but with a worse network and less reward for paying. At least the price is lower, and that is nice, but I'd rather get better services than a low price for something no good, so that's not worth too much.
That said, the big announcement here is perhaps that with your subscription you get access to 20 NES games on the Switch. However, a full Virtual Console service is not coming, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Seriously, I thought Nintendo likes making money! A VC service, where people pay for games, would probably be more profitable than this online network will be, particularly when you could just do both, like how Sony and MS give you 'free' games which you need to continue subscribing to play, or you can pay for access to the game as long as the consoles' internet network stays up. But no, the Switch will continue to have no classic Nintendo console games available for purchase, only arcade and Neo-Geo games. I know Nintendo has choices to make here -- should they go harder in on a subscription service for access to their old games, with different payment tiers for access to different consoles and such as some people have suggested online, or should they bring back a traditional paid classic-games shop like Virtual Console? But the problem is, the Switch released over a year ago, and we still have no answers to what Nintendo's answer to that decision is; it's still 'no VC or full subscription service for you, enjoy our new games and classic arcade games!'. That's okay, but it's throwing away all kinds of money, given how many people surely would buy their favorite Nintendo classics yet again if Nintendo offered them for sale!
Seriously, still not seeming to have made a decision, this far into the Switch's life, for what to do with their potentially valuable classic library is really strange. Nintendo is usually good at making good financial decisions...
Otherwise though, so long as this online service mostly requires a cellphone it's awful and needs to go, so not much else has changed.
I've been thinking of making a thread like this again for a while, and I've finally gotten around to it. The idea here is to have a thread for posts about games I've just tried or played and want to say something about, but don't think deserve a thread yet. I know that there have been threads like this before, but not for a while.
I'm going to start by saying a little about the Vita. My most important impression about the system got a thread already, that it has very few games that aren't available elsewhere, and really the main reason to get it is to play games you already have on PC (or maybe console) portably. It does have some exclusives though, and a few games that are only on PS4 and Vita which I'll play here since I don't have a PS4 or plan to get one anytime soon. Most notably in that latter category I really want Summon Night 6, though I don't have it yet.
As for games I do have though:
TxK - This is Jeff Minter's Vita-exclusive shooter. This game pretty much just is straight Tempest 2000 with a few names changed, so I can see why it got Jeff Minter in more trouble with 'Atari' than Space Giraffe did; that game is of course also Tempest-inspired, but it has some new ideas which changes the gameplay in noticeable ways. This game doesn't do that. So, Atari went after him and while this game is still available, his attame to the PC have been sadly blocked, making this a Vita exclusive. For a big Tempest 2000 fan like me, this game is a definite must-play and yes, it's great! It's classic Tempest 2000, but with nice graphics and new levels. It's awesome and a lot of fun, and at only $10 it's well worth it. The game is tiny too, so even though it's download only and a Vita game the size is not much of a problem.
Exist Archive - I don't think I had heard of this game before, but it's a game from Tri-Ace with gameplay inspired by Valkyrie Profile, and a somewhat isekai-ish anime story about people who seem to have died in the real world and been pulled into a fantasy land. The plot is decent and fortunately isn't really isekai (which is a genre full of really terrible mangas/animes), but the gameplay and exploration ar the main draws here for sure. Dungeons are side-scrolling, but they have multiple layers and are fun to explore. The battle system's good too, though the difficulty level is unfortunately low. The game looks nice and plays well, though, so I like it so far.
Mod Nation Road Trip - While probably better than the PSP game, this kart racer is, lie its predecessors, quite average. Sure I've only done a couple of races, but I didn't see much here to keep me going. There is plenty of content and customization, but the controls and gameplay are quite generic.
Operation Abyss - This game is a decent-to-good first-person dungeon crawler. It's no Etrian Odyssey, but it seems fun. I'll definitely play more.
Ridge Racer - This game has good graphics and standard (ie, decent but I have issues with the drifting) Ridge Racer handling, but is brought down with its total absence of real single player content. Basically, this game only has two modes: single race, or online. There is no campaign, unlike the PSP Ridge Racer games. There's nothing to unlock ingame, all unlockables are things you have to purchase separately. It comes with only a couple of tracks built in, and you have to buy the rest as DLC. While some games can get away with this heavy multiplayer focus, this game definitely is not among them; I'm sure it never had the kind of online community that would be required to make the design make any sense at all.
I'm sure I will say a bit more about more Vita games soon. That last one reminds me of another game I want to mention though...
Micro Machines World Tour (Xbox One, also available for PC and PS4) - This game brought back the Micro Machines franchise after over a decade, and as a fan of the series since the first one I had to get it despite the bad reviews the game got. And playing it,. I'm torn. On the one hand, the graphics here are fantastic! The cars in this game look much more like real Micro Machines vehicles than anything I've seen in a videogame before. The controls aren't the best and take some getting used to, but they're fine once you adjust. The other gameplay issue of note I want to mention is that the game has a weapon system now, making races more chaotic than ever before. It's mostly fun, but it gets frustrating when you repeatedly get hit right before the finish line. Still, it's mostly a good game, ignoring the serious flaws in the second paragraph below. I like playing Micro Machines World Tour for sure. There are a good number of tracks in this game too. If they had only included a single player game, I'd definitely be praising it here!
Unfortunately though, this is yet another game that has no single player campaign. Instead, this game has randomized races in a couple of game modes, Overwatch style but with overhead car racing, and loot boxes as a "progression " system. Yes, it's Micro Machines with lootboxes at the core of the experience, and that's not good. Sure, you're just unlocking cosmetic stuff with these loot boxes, but it's still a bad, exploitative system. Unlike Overwatch, however, nobody is playing this game online because it didn't sell, so the exclusive focus on online multiplayer wrecks the game. There are bots to race against, so you can play the game at least, but there are NO options beyond choosing a mode -- standard race, classic Micro Machines battle, arena battle with weapons, and such. You can't choose your track, that's random. And while there are a bunch of tracks, the randomizer mostly seems to pick the same few over and over. You can't choose the difficulty of your AI opponents, either, and the one difficulty level they have is fairly high, so this game will be frustrating and you'll be hit out of the lead a lot.
So overall, most people just passed on this game and called it not good, but I'm honestly kind of sad for this game. It's so close to being a great return to form for a classic series I like a lot... but because of some very bad game design choices, it's not. I still don't regret getting it, but only serious Micro Machine fans should even consider it.
The upcoming generation is most likely to view us as "that angry judgmental generation that killed off all our favorite Youtube shows". They're still kids, when you get right down to it, and they aren't really going to fully understand what was wrong with what Logan's Paul or Cutiepie did, and why their favorite show had to die for it.
Heck, I'm still getting used to the idea that maybe, just maybe, my parents were onto something when they thought I shouldn't be playing Mortal Kombat.
My point is, that generation is not going to take the lesson we're trying to teach them for decades, if ever.
So, this is something I've been thinking about, and have mentioned sometimes, for a while now, but I want to make a thread for it again anyway. Basically, here's the point -- excepting Nintendo and Sony first-party software, there isn't much of a reason to buy any consoles anymore, is there, if you have a PC. It used to be that a lot of third party games were console-only and the handful that got PC ports sometimes had badly compromised ports, but today most non-mobile games that aren't from Sony or Nintendo themselves get released on the PC, and the ports are often either good or get fixed by the fans. It feels like consoles today have less value than ever as a result of this. If you have a PC you can play almost everything.
And even better, with devices like the Steam Link, it's easier than ever to play PC games on your television, too! Most modern games that should have it have controller support, and with Steam Big Picture Mode there's even a good interface for using PC games on a television. too. I don't use my Steam Link as often as I should, but for me it works great and is a really nice thing to have. The "comfy couch" argument isn't as strong as it used to be.
Now, on the other hand, I can think of two counter-arguments to this. First, PC hardware prices right now are crazy high, while consoles are affordable. And second, while the Steam Link is great, it has a 1080p resolution limit, so if you have a 4K TV, if you want to play games at 4K you either need a console (Xbox One X or PS4 Pro) or some other way of hooking your PC up to a television. And last, the PS Vita (and its library of ports of indie games and such, if you have a hacked system or actually have functioning large Vita memory cards) and Switch have value because they are portable, to play these games that are also available on the PC away from home. These three are all good reasons to get a console. How good they are compared to the basic argument of "how many games do you want to buy on multiple platforms that are better on PC" is tough, though.
Now, I will admit that I'm surely thinking about this more these days since the last two major systems I got are the Xbox One and Vita, the two newest systems with the smallest libraries of exclusive games, but even on the Switch and PS4 you have this same issue with their third-party libraries. PCs have always been the best gaming platform, but there used to be a whole lot of games you needed consoles to play. That is much, much less true now.
This video is from someone I regularly watch to get insights on soldering. It does a very good job explaining why right to repair not only matters, but why libertarian "free market" types should support it.
Perhaps the biggest thing in gaming over the past year, except maybe for the Switch, is the massive popularity of battle royale games. The first one to hit a huge audience was, of course, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, but there are also others that have copied it, most notably the also extremely successful Fortnite: Battle Royale, as well as others like Radical Heights and H1Z1 (though that last one predates PUBG, but anyway).
Has anyone here tried any of them? I've watched a lot of PUBG on Youtube, but never have bought the game and still don't own it. I'm sure I'd be terrible at it, and random groups or single player probably are not nearly as interesting as voice-chat squads look like they are. So yeah, I'd watched quite a bit but not played any.
Yesterday, though, I decided to finally change that, and since have tried Fortnite and Radical Heights, because they are both free. I played both in single-player mode only, and did try Fortnite on X1 as well as PC. And... I can see the appeal of the games and will probably play them a bit here and there, but as solo titles I don't think I'll be playing a lot of these games. They're fine, but the pacing is kind of weird, which is something always commented on about these games -- you land, maybe have an encounter there, then... maybe, like, spend a long time not seeing anyone, if you aren't in a populated area. Even in Fortnite, which is apparently the fastest-paced one of these games, it's still very slow compared to other kinds of games. I know that's the idea and, combined with the no-respawns design, the thing that sets battle royale games apart, but while they're fun, I was starting to get bored after a little while.
Then eventually, someone shoots be from behind and that's it, I lose. That's really fun. I've never exactly been good at first or third person shooters, so getting only one life instead of respawns has always seemed to me to be something that would probably go badly, and yeah, I was probably right. Even so though, there is something here. Between the two games, Radical Heights' map feels smaller and maybe a bit more action-packed. I only played a few matches, but actually managed some kills, including one where I got a punch kill of a guy with a shotgun! In open areas I'm hopeless of course because I'm bad at hitting moving targets in first or third person shooters (and always have been), but ah well. As for Fortnite, its main differentiating factor is that you can collect resources and build walls or stairs with those resources. The mechanic works well and makes the game different, but that alone isn't enough to make me want to play a lot of the game. If I had friends playing too I could see playing more of it, though, sure (and the same goes for PUBG).
As for themes, PUBG is 'realistic modern day' stuff, which definitely isn't my thing at all. Fortnite has a nice cartoonish style which works well. Radical Heights is sort of in between, as it has a neon 1980s gameshow theme, so it's far from realistic... but it does have real weapons and more realistic gun physics than Fortnite, apparently. And then there's H1Z1, which is the most simmish of the bunch I believe, and does not sound like much fun, but I haven't tried it.
Anyway, these games are huge and I get why, but I don't know that I find them as much fun to play as they are to watch... and I definitely don't plan on spending lots of time to get better. Still, they're alright and I'm sure I'll play one here and there. Anyone else here try any?
