Eribuster

It bears mentioning that last year's (2020) Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, a remaster/up-port of Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, also got a new and sizeable epilogue addition titled Future Connected that reworked some cut assets in to a new chunk of JRPG. It's not a port of a Wii U game, but it is a similar rare case of a new version of an old game getting a significant addition.

Compare and contrast this to the HD versions of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii U where again we saw minor additions along with the change in graphics.

Between Bowser's Fury and Future Connected, the only explanation I can think of why they exist is that Nintendo Tokyo and Monolith Soft felt like making it!

Bowser's Fury reminds me of Half-Life: Blue Shift, a stand-alone Half-Life expansion that gives you a side story with the security guard Barney as the protagonist. Blue Shift is shorter, tighter chunk of Half-Life that was released before Half-Life 2.

Thanks for the review!

This makes me wish Bowser's Fury was available separately as an eShop purchase. I already have Super Mario 3D World on Wii U (though I never put that much time in to it), and it sits uneasy with me to buy the game again at US$60.

Then again, I don't have my Wii U plugged in anymore, so the convenience of just getting the new Switch version is not without merit.

Soon, they will split the bombcast in two, with the short one being free and the long one being premium :p

(Actually, I guess that's what the new Hotspot sorta is.)

How I've understood it is that the UPFs, playdates, and such were always the premium offering as it was out side the current affairs of general video game-dom. Back when this site had news articles and quick-looking every other new thing.

And then video games got weird. And the news people left. And we went from 4 video producers to 3. And here we are in a historically barren part of the year.

As I look at the past videos, I understand where your criticism/observation is coming from. Hopefully, the staff will figure something out if they see that their free content is lacking in volume/variety. Personally, I didn't watch a whole bunch of the Lockdown stuff since I typically find solo videos kinda dull. But that was when there was a lot of free stuff uploaded on the site. Checking in on Giant Bomb Infinite, some of those old Quick Looks were a bit... obligatory, so to speak.

Strange times!

Switch RTX! (Nintendo would probably forgo real-time ray tracing and go for DLSS as the above poster proposed.)

Oh, and maybe fix/replace the Joy-Cons. However the Joy-Cons are made, their quality has been disappointing. I had to send mine in for replacement once I started using the Switch in handheld mode for Animal Crossing this year. What hurt the most is that before it was a pretty even split between Joy-Cons and the Switch Pro Controller, so ~3 years of 50/50 use was enough for mine to drift. It's technically marvelous that Nintendo was able to fit so much in to the tiny package of the Joy-Cons, but... probably in the top running for worst Nintendo controller in general? (Well, if a person despises motion controls, I guess that will always be the Wii remote + nunchuk.)

The Nvidia Tegra X1 chips in the Switch were 2-years-old when the Switch was released in 2017, and really disappointed/disillusioned the folks that were really hoping for some secret mobile top-performer hardware or Nvidia mobile chips that were based on the then-new Pascal architecture. So, a Switch successor with a new Nvidia solution powering it will be a good leap. When you see games like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity or Daemon X Machina chug on the Switch, it will be nice to have some more powerful hardware to smooth things out.

The trouble is what Nintendo will be thinking in terms of timing and forwards/backwards compatibility. Will they go with how Microsoft Xbox is doing? Or do they "believe in generations" as much as Sony PlayStation is? Or will they find a "Nintendo-like Solution" to muck everything up?

Also, it's a bit of coin-flip if Nintendo is even interested in only a straight-power bump. The last time that happened was from the NES to the SNES. For me, I'm kinda hoping for a straight power-bump for whatever hybrid system comes after the Switch. Also, I hope that is soon; Switch is starting to feel very rickety when I start looking in to the latest System-on-a-Chip solutions for the latest gamer smartphones or what Apple is doing with their ARM based Macbooks.

Have my Special Edition pre-ordered! I had to get the art book and the new after story. I love the original game too much not to.

Haunter wants to eat our dreams while Porygon is gathering out metrics for Big Blissey.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 version 1.3.0 details

No details on technical stuff, for those hoping for better Portable mode performance.

The additions and changes that are coming are really exciting, especially for me as I'm just only now entering the last few (I think) chapters of the game.

But I still don't see any inclusion of a pity rate for the core crystal system :(

I read ahead of who was in the Japanese voice cast for some of the Rare Blades. That sealed the deal for me to play in Japanese as there are a few voice actors and actresses that I'm fond of doing work in Xenoblade 2. Unlimited Anime time!

The English voice overs seem very rough at first, but what I've heard from a buddy playing the game is that they even out as the game goes along. Also, the use of different accents really adds a lot of weird and wonderful flavor to the English voice overs.

Uh... Xenoblade Chronicles X is a different, flawed beast to XC2. You might want to read up the forum topics on that game on this website to see how your fellows took to that one. I enjoyed it, but it was a disappointment after loving XC1.

The new patch is here and all the little improvements are very welcome. As far as I can tell, the Easy Mode in Tiger, Tiger! takes out the wall collision damage which makes playing the minigame so less nerve-wrecking.

I've only just finished Chapter 4, but I must say that I simply adore how consistently spectacular the chapter ends are so far. The strong story moments were few and sporadic in XC1 and XCX. They are so much better in every way in XC2. Granted, Monolith is cribbing heavy from anime, but they are doing it with a confidence and grace that echoes my good times with Asura's Wrath.

@westernwizard: Thanks for the tip! It makes sense that I would miss that button prompt on the bottom since I missed the Zoom In/Zoom Out on the Skip Travel menu.