The Friday letters page tries to guess what the Nintendo Switch 2 mice will be used for, as one reader struggles with the endless menus of Monster Hunter Wilds.
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Inflation issues
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how the various PC handhelds, including the Steam Deck, aren’t actually very successful and have sales that seem miniscule compared to the Nintendo Switch. There are lots of reasons for this but one of the most obvious is that they’re more expensive, at £500 or more.
There are other reasons too, like the fact that they need a lot of faff to get games running properly and the Steam Deck isn’t even sold properly in the UK. But at the end of the day their price and expensiveness basically makes them a niche product. And I agree that does seem an odd thing for Xbox to want to be involved in, although I suspect they’re just doing it so they can say they still make hardware.
So we’ve established all that but the obvious problem with the Switch 2 is that it’s going to be more expensive. It was £280 at launch eight years ago but that’s obviously going to increase based purely on inflation. We keep hearing rumours of the price being close to $400 and that is going to mean around £400 here.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t pay that, but that is going to put a lot of people off, especially in these uncertain times. Even £350 is a lot of money for parents worried about so many other things. I’m as excited about the Switch 2 as anyone but it’s not going to be the easy ride for Nintendo that some people seem to think.
Lefty
Always wait
Is it just me or is there no reason for Bethesda to be shadow-dropping the Oblivion remake? I’ve never understood why suddenly releasing something out of the blue is supposed to be a good thing, because personally I want to research my purchases a bit before I hand over any money; even if it’s just an indie game. And this isn’t, I assume it’s a full price game.
Obviously, it’s publishers tempting us into making an impulse purchase but the strange thing is I can’t think of any of these shadow drops that were actually bad and they were hiding something. I guess the idea just seems naturally suspicious to me, but I can’t think of any situation where it wasn’t always better to wait before buying a game, whether it’s to wait till the price lowers, till the game is fixed, or just until there’s a consensus on whether it’s any good or not.
Goolash
Anything but new
Even after you’ve explained it, I still can’t even begin to imagine why someone would make a sequel to Beyond The Ice Palace and expect anyone to care. It would make the jokes about bringing back Blinx: The Time Sweeper seem like legitimate ideas.
I guess your theory that the name was available and cheap to use makes some kind of sense, but while it might earn the game a few reviews, that it wouldn’t have got otherwise, I really can’t imagine it helping in term of sales. If you are old and nerdy enough to remember the original, then you’ll know it was a really bad game.
It really is the most extreme example of companies going out of their way to do anything but create a new franchise. The fact that it’s just a blatant Castlevania clone on top of that makes it even funnier. I now demand a sequel to BMX Ninja (remember that?) except it’s a flight sim.
Aerie
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I herd you like menus
I played and liked Monster Hunter: World on PlayStation 4 and Rise on the Switch, so I recently started Monster Hunter Wilds on the PlayStation 5, thinking I’ll be alright…
I’d forgotten how bewildering these games are at first. Menus within menus with other menus, if you press various buttons or D-pad directions.
It took me a google to invert the vertical camera axis.
It’s a great game, albeit a constant loop of ‘kill that to get better stuff to kill the next stronger that’ and the combat is very good, if slow (I like the hammers, very solid feel to them).
If anyone is thinking of buying it, who’ve never played any of the series before I can only say this: be prepared to be confused, it takes a while to work out.
Chevy Malibu (PSN ID)
Mild approval
Just watched the Borderlands movie on Amazon. It’s no Fallout or The Last Of us but it’s not that bad. I particularly liked Jack Black as the annoying android Claptrap.
They should make a Brütal Legend movie – it would have a great soundtrack. Think I will check out the Like A Dragon movie next.
Johnny Alpha SD
Currently playing: Doom Eternal and Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6.
Expect the unexpected
The thing I’m most interesting in learning about the Nintendo Switch 2 is what the mouse feature is going to be for. I cannot believe that Nintendo added such a strange thing just to make first person shooters or port over old real-time strategy games. They must have something else in mind, but I can’t fathom what it is.
I know that’s why they’re the mega successful game developer and I’m not but what is it for? I think probably that secret online game they’ve been playtesting is one reason, because it seemed kind of like a city builder type game and I got the feeling they might push it as a sort of Miiverse replacement.
Would they add mice for just that one game and just treat everything else as a bonus? I wouldn’t put it past them, after all the IR sensor barely got used in anything, but given the prominence of the mice in the reveal trailer it feel like there’s more to it than that.
As another reader has said, I like the fact that there are so many unknowns about the Switch 2 and that, hopefully, a lot of the announcements are going to be things we didn’t expect.
I imagine there’s a good chance that the inevitable new IP that Nintendo will announce will make extensive use of the mouse mode, as a way to show it off. I’ve no idea what that it is but that’s just the way I like it. It’s like the opposite of knowing there’ll be another Call Of Duty or EA Sports FC this year.
Josh
Serious music
Could you have a serious look at the comments section? I was trying to send the comment below on the Underbox, but it kept getting rejected despite there being nothing wrong with it:
My favourite original soundtracks are, in alphabetical order:
Lunar Knights
P.N.03
Puzzle League DS
Shinobi 3
Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Streets Of Rage
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
LeighDappa
GC: We have no control over the comments moderation, but we’ll see if we can have a word with those that do.
No more lists
An impassioned counterviewpoint to ChaosMR’s perception of the state of modern video game music, this is. I resolutely believe that in all actuality there have been a plethora of modern games that have had very memorable soundtracks released throughout the years.
Unless you have an unfortunate tendency to play mostly just Western triple-A games, that try desperately to look and sound like Hollywood films, and ignore the broad swath of Japanese, Nintendo, indie gaming et al., then I find it quite hard to believe that your criticism isn’t deliberately surface level, and perhaps a tad parochial.
Here are but some superbly ‘video-gamey’ examples of contemporary (and a few beautifully recomposed) soundtracks from just the past few years, other than the absolutely exquisite Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth scores, of course:
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom
Hi-Fi Rush
Stellar Blade
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess
Norco
Astro Bot
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Silent Hill 2
Sorry We’re Closed
Persona 3: Reloaded
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Tekken 8
Armored Core 6
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
Bayonetta 3
Final Fantasy 16
Pikmin 4
Dranius
Cocoon
Sonic Frontiers
Stray
Kirby And The Forgotten Land
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance
Elden Ring + Shadow Of The Erdtree
Lies Of P
Alan Wake 2 (for that enthralling musical stage alone!)
Galvanized Gamer
GC: Today has been an exception, but please don’t just send in lists of things without any commentary. It gets very boring, very quickly, and encourages everyone else to send in nothing but lists too.
Inbox also-rans
I would like to rent a PlayStation 5, how do I do this? Many thanks.
Adam
GC: You can do it from the PlayStation website here.
I love how nowadays a game getting a sudden annoucement, to take advantage of an unexpected success, still means we won’t see the sequel for five years. Nothing happens quickly in video games anymore.
Lipsis
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