Yo-Kai Watch 4 may not have been localised for the Switch yet, but that doesn’t mean Level-5 hasn’t been busy on other projects. In September the Japanese company revealed it would be bringing the series to the PlayStation 4 and this followed with the announcement of Yo-Kai Watch 4++ in October.
If that wasn’t already enough for all of the Yo-Kai Watch fans out there, earlier this week, Level-5’S CEO Akihiro Hino announced a new title called Yo-Kai Academy Y, by sharing a screenshot of the game on his Twitter account.
According to Siliconera, this new game will “look and play differently” to the previous Yo-Kai Watch games. The screenshot above features Jinpei Jiba (a human version of the Yo-Kai Jibanyan) outside of Y-Academy.
Yo-Kai Watch Academy Y is a spin-off that started out as a movie earlier this month known as Yo-Kai Watch Jam the Movie: Yo-Kai Academy Y – Can a Cat be a Hero? (see video above) and an anime was released earlier this week – Yo-Kai Academy Y: Encounter with N – continuing the story. Yo-Kai Academy is focused on Jinpei and his friends, who are all human in this alternate Yo-Kai world and attend a supernatural school where they investigate mysteries requiring them to fuse with Yo-Kai.
At this point in time, no platforms have been announced for this new Yo-Kai Watch game. Given the series’ history, there’s a good chance the game will come to the Switch.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-30-2019, 07:55 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Witcher 3 Steam Current Players Spike Following Netflix Show Premiere
The Witcher series premiered on Netflix last week, and it appears to have put Steam users in a witching mood. The player count of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt spiked sharply, even overtaking the recently released Red Dead Redemption 2.
According to the Steam Stats page, The Witcher 3 is holding steady at roughly 46,000 players at the time of writing, to RDR2's 45,000. Red Dead 2 still overtook it at the peak for the day with 50,000, but it's still an impressive feat for a game that's nearly five years old to keep a dead heat with a more recent and very critically acclaimed game.
The Witcher 3 was GameSpot's Game of the Year in 2015, and one of the only games to have received a 10/10 score in the site's history. It also recently released as an included game on Xbox Game Pass for consoles, right alongside the Netflix premiere, so that may have helped it regain word-of-mouth as well.
Unfortunately for Netflix, the series is less than a smash-hit. It has received mixed reviews on GameSpot sister site Metacritic, and GameSpot's review gave it a 4/10. Editor Michael Rougeau said that while the acting and production values are on-point, the story is delivered in a way that's unnecessarily confusing.
"But in the end, Netflix's The Witcher is simply broken. Like the original stories, it begins in media res for Geralt of Rivia, so game fans hoping to learn more about the witcher himself won't find an origin story here," Rougeau wrote. "And by trying and utterly failing to cram new and remixed backstories for Yennefer and Ciri in without making any attempts to place each plotline within the larger story, The Witcher completely falls apart. Game fans who haven't read the books will be totally befuddled, and book readers will be scratching their heads just as frequently. If you're utterly devoted to the world of The Witcher, you'll certainly enjoy the familiar aesthetic and characters, but beyond that, this series is hard to recommend."
June 2019 in review: The Mac Pro arrives at WWDC, and Jony Ive departs
In June, Apple revealed the Mac Pro and announced iPadOS at its annual WWDC, and then admitted that Chief Design Officer Jony Ive was leaving the company.
June 2019 featured WWDC (left, the departure of Jony Ive (center), and the reveal of the Mac Pro (right)
More than any other month in 2019, it’s hard to know where to start with June. We were expecting WWDC to offer up some surprises, and it was certainly one of the most successful WorldWide Developer Conferences that Apple has done. We just never saw that Jony Ive would choose now to exit stage left, pursued by a freelance contract to keep advising Apple.
In between the surprises of WWDC and Jony Ive, though, there was one related yet rather sad moment. This month, it was revealed that Cupertino’s Flint Center was to close forever.
We all know what happened in that building. It was in the Flint Center that Steve Jobs unveiled the original Mac to shareholders. That was ahead of the grand public unveiling a week later, but he was back at the Flint Center for the public launch of the iMac.
Steve Jobs unveils the iMac at the Flint Center
It was at the Flint Center that Tim Cook stood on stage in 2014 to announce the Apple Watch. And to gift us all a U2 album.
The Flint Center is going to be turned into student accommodation now.
The event itself didn’t have surprises that came entirely out of left field. Just about everything was hinted at or leaked before, but the volume of detail on the day was impressive. There were revelations that seemed good at the event but are likely to be the ones we ultimately look back on as being huge.
As far as leaks go, easily the very last one to squeeze in before Tim Cook stepped out on stage was the news that we might get an iPadOS. We did.
Finally, that acre of space between every icon on the iPad screen is fixed —with the new iPadOS.
“It’s become a truly distinct experience,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said afterward. “It’s not an iPhone experience. It’s not a Mac experience. The name is a recognition of that.”
What Apple didn’t appear to recognize was just how much people would leap on one single facet of iPadOS. It’s only intended, so far, as an accessibility aid, but you can now connect a mouse or trackpad to your iPad.
Sidecar and macOS Catalina
The new macOS Catalina introduced Sidecar, the ability to use your iPad as a second display for your Mac, just as you’d been able to do for years with solutions from third-party developers.
We all had the same thought when Sidecar was revealed. “Sherlocked,” we said aloud. After the event, we talked with many developers who’d seen their apps gain a pretty massive new competitor in Apple’s macOS features.
A Mac (left) extends its screen onto an iPad (right) using Sidecar in macOS Catalina
Apple zoomed through the unveiling of macOS Catalina, packing in feature after feature that sometimes blurred the lines between its different OSes.
That included the way that macOS now followed iOS in having separate apps for Music, Podcasts, and TV. It was true, iTunes was gone —which sparked a lot of incendiary headlines making people think they were going to lose all the music they’d ever bought.
The truth was in here, though, with AppleInsider explaining what was actually happening and what would actually happen to your music.
While some users were off grumbling about what they thought was happening, Apple revealed update after update. CarPlay had its first-ever significant overhaul, for instance. “Sign in With Apple” got applause as the new equivalent to —but significantly safer and more user-friendly than —signing in with either Google or Facebook.
And then there was the continuing story of Project Catalyst. Introduced in 2018 as a multi-year process, 2019’s episode didn’t seem that groundbreaking. Apple’s Catalyst-based apps —Home, News and so on —were pretty much the same as they were last year, for instance.
Nonetheless, Craig Federighi talked up the project both during WWDC and afterward. He admitted to poor design decisions on Apple’s part for how Catalyst was received initially, but now it is a “no brainer” to use it to put iPad apps on the Mac.
Key to this, though, was a seemingly small announcement at WWDC. The whole week-long event is for developers, of course, but Apple does know the world is watching, so it tends to devote the opening keynote to telling that world what it wants them to hear. This is why you get product releases, why Apple talks up its features.
This time, though, Apple devoted a short spot in the keynote to something no user will ever be conscious of, and yet which every developer we spoke to afterward was most excited by.
SwiftUI is big.
SwiftUI lets developers create and test apps in the Swift language, taking away as much of the routine burden of development as possible so that they can concentrate on what makes their app unique.
“It just works,” said Federighi.
About iOS 13 and watchOS 6
During WWDC, iOS 13 sounded like the best thing since, well, iOS 12.
Where that would give our ears something to listen to, Apple Maps was set on helping our eyes. Alongside greater detail for maps that would be rolling out across the US this year and selected other countries in 2020, there was also Look Around.
Apple can call this what it likes. We just knew right away that it was Google Street View in all but name. Until we saw it in action, and now we know it is what Google’s feature should be. And, in all probability, it will be one day.
It’s only when you see it live in your hands that you really appreciate how good Look Around is in Apple Maps
We also knew right away, though, that this was a way to demolish your battery life. Except Apple also introduced smart battery optimization in iOS 13 to prevent battery ageing.
There was also a lot new in the watchOS 6 release, too. Alongside smaller features such as new watch faces, an updated calculator, audiobooks, and voice memos, there was also the App Store. As of watchOS 6, you can buy apps directly on the Apple Watch.
Right now, that isn’t quite the giant deal that it was when the App Store first came to iOS. But, the easier Apple makes it to sell your apps to Watch users, surely the more apps will come.
There was much more to say about Apple’s various OSes —including HomeKit getting the ability to store security camera video.
All through the iOS and iPadOS details, such as the new features for Apple Pencil, though, the emphasis was on how this helps pro users. But if you’re talking pro, you’re talking about the biggest hardware release Apple had done on stage all year.
Mac Pro is here, or very nearly
Tim Cook and head of hardware John Ternus showed us the new Mac Pro in detail. There was still much we wouldn’t know until its actual release, such as any pricing beyond the base cost, but there was a lot to say at WWDC.
The new 2019 Mac Pro would come with up to 28 cores and be able to handle up to 1.5TB of RAM. It was also as modular as Apple had previously hinted, and it was to be launched alongside the promised Pro Display XDR.
Tim Cook looking like he’s wondering if anyone will buy the new Mac Pro. They will.
You could also see for yourself. Even if you haven’t got the budget for the base $5,999 Mac Pro or $4,999 Pro Display XDR —and $999 for the stand —you could see how they would look on your desk. Visit the Apple site on an iOS device and you could use AR to see how they looked at life-size and from any angle.
It might be the closest most of us get to owning a Mac Pro, but Apple isn’t exactly aiming this at Mac mini users. Apple was aiming high, and right from the moment of this announcement, there was enough detail about the Mac Pro that AppleInsider was able to report on who would be buying it.
His exit date wasn’t specified beyond being later in 2019, but Apple was also keen to create a blur around the word “leaving.” Ive would reportedly continue work with Apple in some form from his new company, LoveFrom.
“While I will not be an [Apple] employee, I will still be very involved — I hope for many, many years to come,” Ive said in an interview. “This just seems like a natural and gentle time to make this change.”
Jony Ive (left) with Steve Jobs
“After nearly 30 years and countless projects, I am most proud of the lasting work we have done to create a design team, process and culture at Apple that is without peer. Today it is stronger, more vibrant and more talented than at any point in Apple’s history,” Ive continued.
“The team will certainly thrive under the excellent leadership of Evans, Alan and Jeff, who have been among my closest collaborators. I have the utmost confidence in my designer colleagues at Apple, who remain my closest friends, and I look forward to working with them for many years to come.”
It may have been a “natural and gentle time” to leave, but few outside Apple saw it coming. And the moment Ive’s departure was announced, there were two immediate and obvious reactions.
First, there was the inevitable internal email from Tim Cook praising Ive, and then there was the external furor over how this means Apple is doomed.
What was perhaps less predictable was that as soon as Ive’s departure was revealed, we started to get more details of his work at Apple —including some previously secret snippets.
So we finally learned that yes, Apple had actually made a TV set. Not the Apple TV set-top box, not the Apple TV+ service —which did of course get a mention or three at WWDC —but an actual television set.
We’ll never see it on sale. Whatever reasons stopped Apple releasing it before, Ive’s new firm is concentrating on health and wearable technology instead.
That would seem to fit with where Apple is heading these days —and it may well be time the company moves away from hardware releases given all the troubles it’s had with that this month.
Tariffs and China
June’s episode in the up and down story of Apple in China had a good part where we learned that number of users in the country has been increasing. According to Morgan Stanley, China had its fifth consecutive month of year-over-year user growth.
Then Tim Cook told CBS that Apple had not yet been affected by the US/China trade tensions. However, he also made it clear that the disputes and, in particular, tariffs would hit America.
“The truth is, the iPhone is made everywhere. It’s made everywhere,” he said. “And so — a tariff on the iPhone would hurt all of those countries, but the one that would be hurt the most is this one.”
Tim Cook visited the White House to lobby about tariffs.
Cook consequently met with President Trump to discuss the issues. He revealed little then of the meeting, but a week later Apple formally requested that the US not impose tariffs on its imported products.
“Apple’s products are used by American families, students, businesses, government agencies, schools, and hospitals,” Apple’s letter to the administration reads, “to communicate, teach, improve health outcomes, enhance creativity and enterprise.”
“The Chinese producers we compete with in global markets do not have a significant presence in the US market, and so would not be impacted by US tariffs. Neither would our other major non-US competitors,” continued. “A US tariff would, therefore, tilt the playing field in favor of our global competitors.”
New Labo VR Mini-Game Arrives On Switch News Channel In Japan
If you’ve been looking for a reason to dust off your Labo headset, Nintendo has just released its 15th free mini-game for Labo VR Kit on the Japanese Switch News Channel. This new game titled Omikuji – which translates to “Fortune” – requires players to shake the Joy-Con and then draw a fortune with the A or R button.
Here are the other games released so far on Japan’s Switch News Channel (thanks, Japanese Nintendo): Christmas, Osushiya-san, Getsumen Tanken, Multitasking Game, Bunbougu Mudazukai Senshuken, Shooting Game, Balloon Fight, Maguro Kart, Capsule Toy, Baseball Board, Kyodai Meiro, Sushi Board, Kaijuu Shooting, and Alien Tataki.
Do you still use your Labo VR on a regular basis? Leave a comment down below.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-30-2019, 12:10 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Gamasutra’s Best of 2019: Bryant Francis’ Top 10 Games
2019’s almost done! It’s the last year that the Xbox One and PS4 will be referred to as “current generation” hardware, leaving us with a year of studios shipping some really incredible games that get to stand out while some heavy hitters wait in the wings, prepping their biggest, most demanding games for next year.
As always the GDC Twitch channel gives me a chance to try out a lot of titles that would have otherwise escaped my notice, so when thinking about my top games this year, I also thought about my conversations with many of the developers who made them.
Though not all of these games were ones we streamed, they all stand out as incredible titles that define the trends we saw in 2019. Have a look!
Apex Legends is the free-flowing, fast-paced shooter that took aim right at my happy place this year. I did not know that I could love the battle royale format again after my time with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds ended, but Respawn Entertainment found everything that was good with PUBG and doubled down when making ApeLegs.
The game’s mix of champions with unique abilities and huge maps with ample room for high-velocity shootouts already help it stand out before you even start talking about the oh-so-finely-tuned firearms. It’s an incredible engine for player-driven encounters that leaves you with stories to tell even if you fail to claim victory. Fortnite may reign supreme, but I’m happy Apex Legends gets to live alongside it as a sci-fi battle royale spectacular.
Asobo Studio took a big gamble on an original game this year with the release of A Plague Tale: Innocence, a game that seemed as impossible to describe as it was compelling to play. It’s a teen adventure set during the ravages of a fictional medieval plague that manages to borrow all the right gameplay tools from Naughty Dog’s toolbox while building its own identity as a stealth-driven story. By the end of the game, its “rat logic” is so second-nature that when you finally get to turn the rats on the Inquisition, you feel you know these creatures as friends even though they’ve tried to kill you the whole game.
Blue Manchu’s Void Bastards is systemic chaos finely bottled in game form. The descending layers of system-driven shooter gameplay on display here are maddening to comprehend. It’s as if you were playing BioShock except as if you were in front of a slot machine, and every time a different level popped out you still felt you’d won. The traits that define the player character, the traits that design the ships, all interweave in a beautiful mess of randomness and Cockney gibberish to leave you giggling and compelled to crack open just one more ship.
Remedy’s Control isn’t just an incredible testament to the New Weird, it’s video game validation for lovers of the unknown, the haunting, and the unsettling images that hang out at the corner of your vision. “You were right,” Control tells you, “there were monsters under the bed. There is a conspiracy at work. All of it is real, and now it is your domain.” Control’s beautiful aesthetic and whip-snap-boom gameplay make you feel like an avenging angel cutting through a pencil-pushing beaurecratic world, pushed along by a well-crafted narrative that celebrates not only the horror of an otherworldy invasion but the delight of uncovering the cover-up of that invasion too.
Apple Arcade became the subscription-based game model that promised to restore order to an App Store overwhelmed by free-to-play timesinks. And it did! Sirvo Studio’s Guildlings is just one of the many weird experiments that would struggle to stand out if it weren’t for Apple’s work making a curated garden, and it stands out in particular for being such a great translation of the classic RPG format to a mobile device. Its battles are short and snappy, its modern-setting-meets-fantasy-world premise is delightful and relaxing, and it’s a perfect game to poke at while falling asleep. It’s only shipped its “first episode” but I absolutely can’t wait for what comes next from Sirvo.
Respawn Entertainment is here, again! After kicking off the year with a surprise announce-and-release for Apex Legends, they took more time to properly cook the best single-player Star Wars experience we’ve had in ages. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a surprisingly robust adventure that revisits the tragedy of Order 66, following a group of characters coping with the massacre of the Jedi and struggling to survive in a terrifying new world. Respawn shows their chops not only at strong level design but also their ability to carry the long-held tradition of reskinning Star Wars onto other game genres–in this case, a Dark Souls-like with a touch of Metroid influence that makes every nook and cranny worth exploring.
I can’t stop playing Fire Emblem Three Houses. After agonizing over which house I’d lead into battle and investing over 40 hours into one campaign, I immediately started a second run because this game is just so rewardingly playable. By tweaking its narrative formula to utilize a fictional academy setting and giving players a choice over which faction they’d like to align with, Intelligent Systems has made a blockbuster strategy game that constantly delivers new strategy scenarios for players to unpack. By the time I’m finally done playing Three Houses, they’ll probably have announced the next one.
Obsidian’s return to the world of first-person, choice-driven RPGs is a welcome one. Not only have they returned to the fold with a fantastically deep RPG with a clear point of view and setting that informs every single character you encounter and creates surprises around every turn, they’ve made a game that’s actually really funny! Every time the game rewards “player choice” it does so by leaning into the unexpected and the surprising at every turn. The characters are great, the worlds are beautiful, and it’s the right mix of cynicism and anarchy for a corporatized future that doesn’t feel too far from our own.
It’s one thing to reward player choice with unexpected outcomes, it’s another to effortlessly respond to player choices while teaching them an entire language. While most choice-driven games feel like choosing an alternate set of doors, inkle’s Heaven’s Vault feels like a trip down its own interplanetary river. It’s a fantastic experiment for what can be done with evolving narrative and deserves to be held up as a high-water mark for commercially released experimental work that will inspire developers for years to come.
Video games have been slow to touch the work of Shakespeare in part because it’s almost the opposite of what the target audience wants. But the team at Golden Glitch Studios went ahead anyway and not only adapted the tragedy of Hamlet into video game form with Elsinore, but broke it down, created a motivation-driven system for all of its principal characters, and created a Hamlet remix simulator that lets players take the Bard’s tragedy well off the rails and into the world of pirates, spies, and other fanciful tangents. The timeline feature is inspiring, re-centering Ophelia as the lead is an incredible choice, and even as its developers move on to other projects, the work they’ve done here should be celebrated experimenting with the edge cases of what can be done in games narrative.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-30-2019, 12:10 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Henry Cavill Got So Ripped For The Witcher That He Broke His Costumes
Superman actor Henry Cavill spent a lot of the time at the gym to prepare for his starring role as Geralt in Netflix's new Witcher TV show. It's now been reported that Cavill got so jacked that it caused a problem with the show's costume department. In short, he kept Hulk-ing through his outfits.
Polygon spoke with the show's costume designer, Tim Aslam, and the site reported: "Not only was the actor particular about his outfit, but that during shooting, his muscles wore down the leather at such an alarming rate that replacements were constantly produced to meet the production's needs."
Feature: The Best Hidden Gems And Underrated Switch Games Of 2019
It’s been a busy 20 months since Nintendo Switch first launched back in 2017 and Switch gamers have been spoiled for choice when it comes to great games to play. In stark contrast to the lean years of Nintendo’s previous console, it’s been hard to keep up with the excellent Switch titles coming from every direction, whether first-party classics, third-party ports or indie gem after indie gem.
With that in mind, we’ve put together the following list of 18 games that we feel fell through the cracks or got a little lost in the crowd – the best hidden gems on Switch from 2019. It’s a big mix of genres and styles, but for one reason or another we feel that they fell off the radar too quickly and deserve to be highlighted again before 2020 delivers another wave of games.
If any of these games are already part of your Switch library, congratulations! If, however, they passed you by, consider visiting the eShop and hunting down a few of these.
While certainly less of a head-turner than something like Cuphead (which released in close proximity to this), Mechstermination Force is a more approachable take on boss rush platforming, with less of an emphasis on twitch-based, pixel-perfect precision. The game is peppered with ingenious design and amusing writing and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with it. We’d recommend it as a more accessible alternative to (or appetiser for) Studio MDHR’s game. If you enjoyed Gunman Clive, this is a great expansion on the concept and well worth investigating.
Publisher: Playful Entertainment Inc. / Developer: Playful Entertainment Inc.
Release Date: 8th Nov 2019 (USA) / 8th Nov 2019 (UK/EU)
One of the surprise announcements this year alongside the other previously Xbox-exclusive games that have arrived on Switch, New Super Lucky’s Tale is a solid port of an underrated platformer with a greatly improved camera. It’s a little on the short side and may not provide much of a challenge to more hardened gamers – and if you already own it on Xbox One there really isn’t enough new here to warrant a second purchase – but what makes it worth a look is its uncanny ability to make you smile, and this is something that can’t be overlooked, especially in modern times. It’s exactly the sort of tonic we love and an excellent addition to Switch’s library of platformers.
Please note that some links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale which helps support the site. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Tarsier Studios
Release Date: 8th Nov 2019 (USA) / 8th Nov 2019 (UK/EU)
The Stretchers was an unexpected delight, perfectly timed to brighten up the long, dark winter days when it dropped on to the eShop without warning in November. Tarsier has taken all its experience working on the likes of Ragdoll Kung-Fu: Fists of Plastic and LittleBigPlanet and brought it together to deliver a ridiculously OTT ragdoll puzzle riot that works well in solo but is on another level when enjoyed with a friend in co-op. Missions are varied and lend themselves perfectly to moments of hilarious slapstick, and there’s a couple of real standout moments scattered across the course of proceedings that will have you laughing all the way to the end.
Its slightly generic look might mean it doesn’t stand out in the crowd, but Nintendo published this one and we’d recommend investigating it if you’re into your couch co-op Switch games.
Publisher: Devolver Digital / Developer: Doinksoft
Release Date: 30th May 2019 (USA) / 30th May 2019 (UK/EU)
With tight controls, retro-styled minimal art style and a superb sense of progression, Gato Roboto is the perfect Metroidvania to play whilst you’re waiting for an actualMetroid or appropriate Castlevania game. Only its difficulty leaves a bit to be desired at times – anybody with a lick of experience will likely breeze through it in no time, and its quality is such that you may end up wishing it lasted a little longer. Nevertheless, it’s chock full of meaningful upgrades, secrets and spectacular boss battles to keep you joyously busy for a few hours.
Publisher: Devolver Digital / Developer: Gabe Cuzzillo
Release Date: 28th Feb 2019 (USA) / 28th Feb 2019 (UK/EU)
You probably made a mental note to check out before getting distracted by something else. If that sounds familiar, do yourself a favour and hunt it down – the Nintendo eShop would be a considerably more exciting and interesting place if it were packed full of games like Ape Out. It’s a refreshingly original experience that more than deserves a place in any Switch owner’s library. Difficult, frenetic gameplay, a strong art direction, and an even stronger jazz drum soundtrack make this the sort of memorable game that you’ll likely keep coming back to over and over for another few runs in arcade mode. We’d give Ape Out a strong recommendation to anyone looking for a distinct and unforgettable game for their Switch collection; it’s a bit of an acquired taste, but well worth your time.
Publisher: Devolver Digital / Developer: Le Cartel Studio
Release Date: 29th Aug 2019 (USA) / 29th Aug 2019 (UK/EU)
Heave Ho doesn’t quite reach the lofty heights of Snipperclips, but it’s still one of the best couch co-op titles to hit the Switch. It encourages communication and careful planning, but remains utterly chaotic and achingly hilarious, with a fantastic selection of unique costumes to unlock as you progress. The fact that you’ll face the same stages whether you’re playing multiplayer or single player is a disappointment, but it’s great fun whatever way you decide to play it.
Blasphemous is a beautifully crafted Soulslike/Metroidvania action game set in a delightfully unhinged, deliriously gory world filled with well-designed enemies, satisfyingly meaty combat and some truly memorable and grotesque boss battles. Platforming sections are uniformly well-crafted and the whole thing comes together to create one of the most visually arresting and solidly enjoyable action titles currently available on Switch. Spanish developers The Game Kitchen have created a nightmare world in Cvstodia, one that will truly test your combat and platforming skills and leave you begging for more come that final bloody battle.
Publisher: ININ Games / Developer: ININ Games
Release Date: 15th Oct 2019 (USA) / 30th Aug 2019 (UK/EU)
They say you can never really go back – the game might still be there, but nostalgia mixes with memories and creates something more intoxicating in the mind than it really was. Go back to the SNES Ninja Warriors now and it’s still fun, but it’s stuck in the square box of a 4:3 screen, the animation doesn’t stand out like it did and one-player-only looks weak alongside the other Final Fight tribute acts of the day. But when you see The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors, it’s somehow exactly what you remember: huge, lush backdrops, silky animation, and tight, mob-levelling ninja moves. It makes you feel like being a kid again and, as such, this game stands as yet another essential Switch release you really should own.
It’s quite something when a game of this stature gets overlooked, but that’s arguably what happened when this port launched back in September. That’s a shame, because Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is an experience unlike any other on the Switch, expertly blending standard RPG tropes with a heartwarming story, innovative art style, and an immersive soundtrack composed by some of the best in the business. In more ways than one, this is a ‘dream project’ that’s very existence is a gift to fans of the genre the world over. Although it falls short of being an undisputed masterpiece, with pacing issues and shoddy AI dragging down an otherwise pitch perfect experience, this still proves to be lightyears ahead of many other RPGs. If you consider yourself a fan of the genre – or even if you’re just looking to get your feet wet – you owe it to yourself to give Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch a shot.
Google Stadia Now Has Achievements, But Mobile Users Need To Wait
Google Stadia has finally added achievements to its games. You can now earn achievements in Stadia titles, and they'll be retroactively awarded to players who have completed the tasks that achievements ask of them, meaning you won't need to restart games to earn them.
There's a catch, though--achievements are only live for users on Chrome browser or Chromecast. Mobile app users do not yet have access to achievements; they are coming in 2020, according to the latest Stadia Community round-up.
? Our achievement system is here and you will now receive notifications when playing on desktop, laptop, and TV. You can view your full achievement list on web, including all the ones you've earned since you began playing Stadia. pic.twitter.com/VX7cGg9K9k
Players with access to achievements can view their three most recently earned achievements for the last game played on their profiles, or can examine individual games for more detailed pages and descriptions of the achievements they've earned, or their progress towards earning them. You can also view other player's achievements if they have been made visible to you.
Not all games on Stadia are required to include achievements, and there are not associated points or values for each achievement as there are on Xbox. It's a system more akin to Steam's achievements.
Feature: Prepare To Meet The Light! Where Is Kid Icarus: Uprising On Switch?
Kid Icarus: Uprising on 3DS was one heck of a game. A bombastic shooter inspired by Greek mythology, the game still has a devoted fanbase. In fact, a good number of Nintendo heads have always been a bit miffed that such an ambitious, explosive game from one of the industry’s all-time greats (Smash Bros. boss Masahiro Sakurai) didn’t spawn a new franchise. But with the success of the Switch and now the Switch Lite, could Pit and Palutena be primed for a triumphant return?
Angel’s Advocate
2012’s Uprising was the third game in the Kid Icarus franchise, and was released a massive 21 years after the second. The game’s story revolves around Palutena (the Goddess of Light) sending Pit to thwart Medusa (the Goddess of Darkness) and her evil schemes. The gameplay essentially sees Palutena guide Pit through the skies in an on-rails shooter format, before the missions become ground-based and much more open. This was always Sakurai’s original concept: a game in which you must fly to where your mission takes place, before landing and tackling your main objective.
Utilising the 3DS stylus to control your weapon of choice (more on that later), you used charged shots as well as continuous fire to take down foes. Different classes of weapons offered different firepower and, back at the home screen, it was possible to customise your blades, bows and clubs. The overall result was a frenetic and immensely enjoyable handheld experience, and the care and love that Sakurai and his team put into the game was especially impressive given that so much of the beautifully rendered visuals flashed by in an instant. The game also featured some of the finest voice acting in a videogame, ever. There were frequent hilarious moments, knowing nods to the player and plenty of memorable quotes: “You’ve got to be upbeat, upbeat, upbeat! Or you’ll be dead meat, dead meat, dead meat!”
Hera One Day, Gone The Next
So, with strong reviews, good sales and even something of a cult following, why hasn’t there been more from Uprising and its world? Well, Uprising’s developer Project Sora (a company founded by Sakurai) shut down soon after the game’s release, with little reason given as to why. Since then Pit has only been seen as a playable fighter in Smash Bros, the franchise Sakurai returned to after completing Uprising. Even worse for those of us who’ve been holding out for a new game, Sakurai has, in the past, dismissed talk of a sequel or a modern Uprising port and even commented on how nightmarish the game was to develop – that doesn’t sound like a man keen to give Kid Icarus more of his time!
But *record scratch* some recent Nintendo news offers Uprising fans real hope. According to Takashi Mochizuki (Wall Street Journal), Shuntaro Furukawa (worldwide president of Nintendo) wants to bring more 3DS franchises to Switch after the huge 2019 success of the Switch Lite. With the 3DS at the very end of its lifecycle, and well-established 3DS franchises such as Pokémon and Brain Age already making the jump, it certainly seems like there is a real opening for Kid Icarus: Uprising to receive a remaster on Switch. This could even be used as a trial run to measure the desire for a fully-fledged sequel and a long-term continuation of the series!
Porting Pit-Falls
So just how would a Kid Icarus: Uprising remaster for Switch work given that the game was specifically developed with the 3DS in mind? Let’s start with the control scheme. The most divisive aspect of Uprising, the control scheme saw players using the left stick to control Pit and the stylus to aim on the 3DS’ touch screen, with the ‘L’ button firing. Some players just couldn’t get on board with this control method (even when using that weird plastic stand that shipped with game), but the Switch and its twin analogue sticks offer an obvious solution. Aiming the on-screen crosshair with the right Joy-Con’s analogue stick would probably be somewhat slower than sliding a stylus along a screen, but maybe the game’s weapons could be made a little more powerful to mitigate that lag.
There’s also the question of the game’s amazing dialogue, a near constant audio banter that comes accompanied with beautiful character graphics on the 3DS’s touch screen. The Switch obviously doesn’t have a second screen, and the Wii U and its Gamepad might seem like a more obvious fit for this dynamic, but that console’s time has long since past. No, the answer probably lies with other Switch-ported games like Fire Emblem Warriors that employ unintrusive dialogue boxes in the bottom corner of the screen, complete with a small anime character portrait. Fire Emblem Warriors is by no means the first game to take this approach, but it is a Switch title that proves in-game dialogue can be implemented without interfering with hectic on-screen action.
So, Should Nintendo Reopen Pandora’s Box?
The fact remains that Sakurai has never sounded eager about returning to Uprising. Things can change though, and, after Sakurai has finished working on DLC fighters for Smash Bros Ultimate (and hopefully taken a very long, relaxing holiday), he’ll no doubt be looking for a new project. And if he doesn’t want to do it, maybe someone else at Nintendo could take up the Kid Icarus mantle, perhaps with Sakurai on board as an executive producer?
Despite all the obvious obstacles, it’s probably fair to say that there is at least a realistic hope that Kid Icarus will get a continuation on Switch. An Uprising port seems like the most obvious place to start, essentially because the game always felt like a fully-fledged home console title crammed into a tiny 3DS cart anyway. But we wouldn’t say no to a brand-new Kid Icarus game either, no matter who’s working on it! Just don’t tell us there’s still another 21 years left to wait.
