I don't know if i read this somewhere, or decided to craft this narrative myself, but isn't the idea that they're just throwing out little games to show that they're able to deliver in a short time frame on a limited budget to build up their portfolio and get some investors behind them to eventually build the full burnout game that they want to make?
The Digital Foundry video on this game is super interesting. It outlines how Three Fields Entertainment are using each of their titles to slowly build the tech, finances and expertise in order to construct a fully-fledged Burnout successor.
It's part of the reason why the studio is so prolific, and why their games have a bare bones quality to them.
That's great for them, but they should be really careful about burning their audience too many times. Danger Zone was almost embarrassingly bad and while Danger Zone 2 looks better, it still looks like it has barely any content. I'd like to see another Burnout, but I'm not going to fund their studio by buying bad to mediocre games to make it happen.
I'm torn between Xbox One X for 4K or Switch for portability. The Switch also has the negative of having a terrible d-pad which would be important for this game. Oh, and it's more expensive on the Switch, because of course it is. But, man it would be nice to play Lumines on a portable system again.
Nothing about the Switch's d-pad is bad for how this game plays. I feel like most people don;t understand why certain d-pads are bad for certain games. And it's not more expensive on Switch.
If I remember correctly, pressing down is important in this game, and the pro controller has problems with accidental down inputs when pressing left and right. The joy cons might be fine, but that's not how I like to play when the Switch is docked.
Like most games, Nintendo's eshop prices in Canada are higher for the same game than they are on the Xbox store. It's 18.89 on Switch and 14.99 on Xbox. It's not a huge difference, but there's no reason for it, so I hate paying it.
I'm torn between Xbox One X for 4K or Switch for portability. The Switch also has the negative of having a terrible d-pad which would be important for this game. Oh, and it's more expensive on the Switch, because of course it is. But, man it would be nice to play Lumines on a portable system again.
Hollow Knight, Paladins, Fortnite, and DBZ have been out for months on other platforms. I guess it's neat they are coming to Switch, but there are better places to play them, especially the online games.
Fire Emblem was cool and I'm glad they showed a bit of it. Mario Party games are terrible and always have been.
Dude, if something being out in another platform detracts from your enjoyment of it on the Switch you and I aren't using the Switch the same way.
I just played half a dozen matches of Fortnite on my Switch right now, and I *hate* Fortnite. Plus, at this point I just wait for stuff like Hollow Knight, that will look identical on Switch, to get it with the portability, so stuff like that or Dead Cells are a "finally" moment for me.
As for Mario Party, whatever, the joke is the joke and it's a fun joke... but let me be real here, a normal size Mario Party match is fun at a party and it fuelled many a college night up (along with a healthy contact high, not gonna lie). I'm particularly down with a portable one that doesn't have the weird control limitations of the DS spinoffs.
But hey, whatever, this stuff is gonna work differently for different people. I guarantee there are guys out there that just had a blast sitting down and hearing people talk and play Smash for an hour.
It's more that I've already played those games months ago, and anyone who wanted to could have as well. I'm not going to buy them again on the Switch to get versions that often look and run worse. It also doesn't help that Switch games tend to cost more than they do on other platforms (at least here in Canada). Dead Cells is $22 on PC and has been on sale for less, while it's $42 on Switch. Hollow Knight is the same price at least, but again, that's already been 50% off on PC.
I can certainly see waiting and paying extra for the portability if I had a daily commute, but I don't. I only use the Switch as a portable around the house occasionally, or the few times a year I have to fly somewhere.
My problem with Mario Party is that they've always seemed so half-assed. Most of the mini-games are bullshit, and the rubber banding is atrocious. I think Nintendo could make a good Mario Party, they just haven't. Wario Ware is the far superior Nintendo party game.
Like you say, I'm just not the target market for this stuff. I love Mario and Zelda, and I don't really care about most of Nintendo's other stuff.
@ayopch: That was a TON of Smash, but if you take a second to think about it, Hollow Knight, Paladins and goddamn Fortnite are all out today. They confirmed DBFZ (this is Important news) and they showed a ton of Fire Emblem. Plus, you know, a new Mario Party (this is Massive news).
They could have milked the announcements they did make a ton more, but... this had things in it I'm excited for.
Hollow Knight, Paladins, Fortnite, and DBZ have been out for months on other platforms. I guess it's neat they are coming to Switch, but there are better places to play them, especially the online games.
Fire Emblem was cool and I'm glad they showed a bit of it. Mario Party games are terrible and always have been.
While I understand the sentiment and will agree with it in my actions, it still strikes me as a bit depressing how strongly some commenters here and elsewhere are balking at a US$50 for a puzzle-action game. In the game's defense, it sounds like there's a lot of stuff to do in it, like a ~10-hour story mode that the Gamespot review says becomes a bit tired as it goes on.
My first petty reaction to the sentiment was, "well, I hope you don't complain about loot boxes and microtransactions!"
But thinking on it, it's just a really hard ask when just on the Switch ten more dollars can get you gargantuan epics such as Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade Chronicles 2. And for thirty dollars less, you can get the current indie darling, Yoku's Island Express.
Puzzle games have been almost exclusively made by small indie teams for almost a decade now. They are firmly established as downloadable games (in the XBLA sense) and priced accordingly. Even something as ambitious as The Witness was only $40 CDN when it came out. There are exceptions, like that Mario Puzzles and Dragons game, but that had two major franchises attached to it. I think a game based on sushi is going to have trouble commanding the same appeal.
I like indie games a lot, and I play a bunch of them, but it's awfully hard to argue that most of them should cost as much as a AAA game. The content and polish usually just aren't there. Your point about Breath of the Wild being $10 more is spot on. That's a value comparison most games are going to lose, but it's hard to even make a case for this game.
This is the worst of Nintendo trying to make a console game with Mobile game mechanics, this shouldn't be a $65 CND game, it should have been $40 or $35 tops.
Wow, I just assumed it was a $15-$20 game. Good luck selling an indie puzzle game with no license for almost full retail price. I don't think I'd pay $65 for a new Picross 3D and that's my favorite puzzle game ever.
My French isn't great, but I read a few of the articles in La Monde including the interview that forum post references. It sounds like the publisher basically just pays small developers to make bad niche sports games. The interview is almost refreshingly frank. The CEO says fans should never expect a rugby game to be as good as FIFA because that would cost about $15,000,000 and they could never make that much from the ten countries who care about rugby. Presumably similar reasoning applies to tennis. While I expect tennis has a wider appeal than rugby, it's certainly not big in North America or Japan.
It still sucks that Tennis World Tour is bad, but hearing the developers basically had no publisher support makes me hopeful they could do something better in the future.
This game bums me out so much. I played way too much Top Spin 4 and no one has tried to make a serious tennis game since. I had hope when I saw some of the developers of this game worked on Top Spin, but this looks like a half-finished mess. As much as I enjoy Mario Tennis, it's about as close to a tennis sim as Mario Kart is to a racing sim.
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