E3/ Summer Games 2021 general discussion

video games
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Formalities aside here’s my first opinion from today’s Nintendo direct:

METROID V alright! Well, it looks just like the Metroid 2 remake on 3DS, which, imho is not ideal but is still worth celebration. I hate the melee mechanics and cheap looking 3D graphics. But still could be a blast. RIP R&D1 though. Sorry I’m gonna be tough on Metroid V because it’s got a lot to live up to!

New wario looks trash.

That’s all I have to say for now! Anyone wanna recap? It’s not over yet, aonuma just came on after the hyrule warriors trailer. There has been other interesting stuff so far but nothing I need to expand on personally.

Zelda Game & Watch doesn’t include “Zelda” Game & Watch, SMDH

BotW 2 gone be tight.

Nothing mind blowing and no real surprises aside for Metroid V, and nothing about it was anything but what I’d expect them to do with it, but at least it was a decent presentation!

Japan only Nintendo Direct News: Cave shooters epsagaluda and more coming to switch.

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Logged on just to see if anyone posted about Metroid yet. One of the few long-running series I still feel invested in for some reason, but have to agree that the MercurySteam look doesn't excite me. And this is probably just for marketing, but I have to wonder about resurrecting the title they were developing back on the original DS: is it Nintendo or Sakamoto himself who is reluctant to think more outside the box they constructed 20 years ago for this series?

Why is Metroid tied to a narrative canon? I enjoyed the story in Fusion, but as you said R&D1 is gone and bringing back this old title seems… inauthentic, I guess. What does this new team think about what Metroid can be? Following this train of thought to its logical conclusion begs the question, why make another Metroid game at all? I guess I hope the team behind this is passionate about it and isn‘t just being forced to work on a brand that Nintendo frankly hasn’t been interested in marketing for a decade.

EDIT OK it is in fact MercurySteam, so I guess the studio politics are different and they‘re not being forced by Nintendo to make anything, but I still hope they’re allowed to be creative and take advantage of their own unique talents.

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That BOTW2 trailer hit me harder than I expected…I really have no words for it, just incredible

Agree completely re: Metroid Dread. I love that they resurrected that name, if only to finally close a long-dangling loop. It has a bit of a low-budget feel about it and I really wish they did anything interesting with the aesthetic (slap a dang film grain filter on there even…) but I did like the look of the new power armor. At the end of the day I really can't be too harsh, as it is a real actual new 2D Metroid after all.

edit: read your comments @captain and I totally agree…I‘m trying to be optimistic, but a new MercurySteam developed metroid with really bland assets is not terribly exciting. It’s made even worse by the zoomed out look of it all, so that any interesting details are pretty much lost. It's a bit depressing to look at the huge variety of amazing looking and playing metroidvanias (sorry everyone, I happen to like the term!) that the franchise has inspired and then consider what the standard bearer has now become…

The advance wars remasters were a nice little surprise! The aesthetic was just a bit off to me (the 3D models were nice, but something about the animated characters didn't feel right) but, again, happy to se Nintendo doing something with that property!

Might pick up the Zelda G+W just to play through link's awakening in the true original pea-green, just as the creators intended. I lent someone my copy of the switch remake, so I haven't even gotten around to that one.

SMTV looked pretty rad!

But...wow...BOTW2.....

edit 2: don't really care about Kazuya in smash, but the volcano gag totally worked for me lol

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I wish Atlus would only publish other people‘s games, because they haven’t had an original idea since P3 and are still coasting on their reputation from the nineties while their current games rehash the same concepts but with more misogyny homophobia and transphobia.

also I didn't know they had devil triggers in Tekken

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Laughed at the apologetic assurance that Metroid Prime 4 is DEFINITELY REAL and is being worked on SO SO HARD, immediately followed by the on-screen METROID 5 caption. As someone with no real affection towards or deep knowledge of the series the brief confusion was amusing.

Game itself looks more like _Space Castlevania_ than Metroid. That might sound stupid but _I_ know what I mean.

Happy for more WarioWare.

Lots of remakes.

Looking forward to playing BOTW 2 in 2023.

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I understand (begrudgingly) that sprite art is, for some reason, no longer marketable for high-profile publisher “tent pole” series like this, but I wish all sidescrollers would at least adopt the recent ArcSys approach to animating 3D characters. Snappy animation would go a long way toward making this new look more palatable, I think.

Another step in the right direction would be publishers having a little more confidence in good-looking art and making some Streets of Rage 4-style character art. Or something. I don‘t have the vocabulary to describe what I’m getting at.

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If you wanna play the original Link’s Awakening the way the creators intended, do it on actual gameboy hardware! Super gameboy also counts: it has a custom palette for the b&w version.

Couldn’t agree more re Metroid. One thing though is the resurrection of project Dread doesn’t have me skeptical. Nintendo (and let’s be honest, most companies) have huge binders of projects and ideas from 20-50 years ago that they pull from *all the time* without saying anything.

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I own Fatal Frame Maiden of the Black Water for Wii U and am very glad it will get a second life. Though I am curious as to how it will play without the gimmick.

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I'm a little disappointed this seemingly confirms we will not be playing as Zelda in BotW2.

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@fridgeboy Yeah, but they probably won't let us play as Link in the upcoming Zelda's Fashion Designer: Catwalk Queen either.

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I'm happy for all the big Zelda fans, but for someone that has no reverence for BotW (I tried twice and bounced off hard each time) that trailer fell real flat for me.

I'll no doubt play Elden Ring, but I just don't feel any hype. I think this is more about me than the game or the trailer.

Pupperazzi looked real cool and I just wanna chill out and take some photos of some nice dogs.

Forza Horizon 5 looked totally bonkers, but I do not own a Series X and I'm not sure if my PC will keep up with it.

I don't know if I can even remember much else of what I have seen. That probably speaks volumes on its own.

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@captain Yeah, I similarly lack the technical vocabulary for this, but the metroidvania genre in particular has seen some of the most impressive aesthetic experimentation in recent years. I haven't played a ton, but to wit:

  • Hollow Knight looked ok in stills (gave me a flash vibe at first) but after finally playing it and becoming entirely engrossed last year, I realize that it is one of the most beautiful games I've played in terms of visual tone and execution.
  • Axiom Verge aped the og metroid look and managed to make it work in a modern context.
  • I haven‘t played the Ori games, but wow, they’re somethin'!
  • Guacamelee had a wonderful bounciness and snappiness to all of the animation, not to mention a unique cohesive aesthetic
  • Bloodstained still didn't look amazing to me (unlike pretty much every 2D Castlevania) but they did a heck of a job sprucing it up after the lukewarm reception it had at its first reveal

There are way more examples I'm sure (and plenty I'm not even aware of). Furthermore, Nintendo has shown that they can do it! They manage to reinvent Link's look in almost every game, not to mention their yarncraft/papercraft experiments. (I'm using a collective "they" for Nintendo knowing full well that we are talking about many entities under the same brand, but you get my point).

@treefroggy Yah, I originally played it on my super game boy back in the day. I was just listening to an old IC in which Tim insisted that the correct way to play it is on an OG chunky game boy in authentic pea-green in the back of a van on a long road trip lol

@robinhoodie Still have never played a fatal frame game, but this has me interested!

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@rejj Horizon 5 looks cool and I‘m looking forward to the next-gen shiny coupled with a more exotic map than 4, but I hope ’real‘ Forza isn’t too far behind.

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I just tuned in in time to see some Treehouse demo footage of Metroid and seriously thought it was another remake lmao. It sure does look… competent. And like another Metroid. And, like others have noted, very aesthetically bland. Considering what happened the last time Yoshio Sakamoto and MercurySteam respectively decided to “shake up” and “reinvent” long-running series, I guess we ought to count our blessings.

I feel like even Nintendo have totally forgotten about the WarioWare Gamecube port that had a bunch of wacky couch multiplayer modes, including - my favorite - one that envouraged you to physically distract your competitors to win. What’s keeping them from bringing that back?? The co-op gimmick could be fun but the brief trailer wasn’t all that inspiring.

Advance Wars remake’s 3D aesthetic looks kinda ugly, but I somehow missed out on that series the first time around so maybe I’ll give it a shot.

Really, really hope there’s more to SMTV’s story than just some isekai shit. Was a little annoyed that the trailer just explains the SMT 101 basic mechanics but I guess they know the Nintendo Direct audience lol.

I have Life is Strange for Xbox and for years it’s been one of those “Yeah I’ll probably get around to that… one of these days…” kinda games. imo Switch is the ideal platform for Telltale-style narrative-adventurey stuff so I might double dip someday when it’s on sale and actually play it. Maybe.

Am I missing something with BotW 2? I didn’t see much of anything that blew my mind in the 90-second trailer. Sky continents now, I guess? Some sort of water-related transformation/teleportation power. Moblin towers on top of those stone guy minibosses? Neat. I’m sure it’ll be more impressive to actually play hands-on than to see. Oh, and Link has longer hair now - I’m sure a lot of players complained that his BotW design was just too macho.

Strange days when Nintendo lets a character into Smash Bros. whose special move is that he gets possessed by the devil.

I guess it’s nice they’re porting that Wii U Fatal Frame game no one really cared about, but sucks that Americans still can’t play the Wii entries (the FF2 remake and the Suda 51 one) that I’ve heard are actually good.

So yeah, pretty conservative presentation from Nintendo this year but I guess that shouldn’t be so surprising. Next year we’ll hopefully get some more exciting stuff like a Switch upgrade/sequel, whatever Monolith Soft has been working on, and idk, anything genuinely surprising.

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@kory Agreed. I haven‘t played Guacamelee but it is a good example of what I mean–tight animation following principles established in cel-animated movies, and its own sense of style. Splitting hairs here but I thought Bloodstained was hideous even after its facelift, and is an example of what I would call a misguided attempt to capture audience attention by leaning into 3D graphical tricks in a genre which doesn’t benefit too much from them (though the spiral stair effects in that did actually influence level design, which I commend).

EDIT Not saying all games should slavishly imitate techniques developed for another medium, but I mean animation is animation–a set of visual tricks iterated on and experimented with for almost a hundred years. It‘s odd to me that a game as expensive as Bloodstained (and the many, many other 3D/2D games like it) didn’t at least do things by the book if they didn't want to/have the resources to be experimental in that department.

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A AAA game I did work on in 2018 got a trailer that actually showed some of the stuff I worked on, so that was a nice trip down memory lane and I remembered how hard all that was to get right.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm this year, as in other years, has been very tempered, I cannot get excited about anything. I am perhaps closer to getting an Xbox Series X Tall Boy because it seems like a good value proposition and the games coming to gamepass generally seem to have a better variety.

Elden Ring news falls flat for me, as I couldn't get into Bloodborne or any other souls-like games. I still don't own a Switch, so the Metroid and Zelda news equally fall flat. Selfishly, I still yearn for an F-Zero game, if only for the righteous speed metal soundtrack that the N64 version had.

I also selfishly want a "real" Ridge Racer on any system, but that's probably not in the cards. I think the Wipeout well is long dry. We are left with the very excellent Forza Horizion and the very polished NFS series now, probably indefinitely.

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@hellojed Oh man I have been ranting in the new games thread about the consequences of saying you don’t enjoy Souls games in the presence of Gamers. SPOILERS: Don’t do it unless you’re ready for drama.

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@fridgeboy am I the only one who wants to play as Ganondorf someday?

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https://twitter.com/b0tster/status/1404864372153884672

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Okay after watching the dev video I’m a little more upbeat on Metroid Dread; it’s not gonna be a masterpiece or anything but I think Sakamoto just going and making the Metroid Fusion sequel he had in mind since the DS era like no time passed at all because now the technology permits it (???) is pretty funny/wack. Art direction is still limp as hell though.

Curious to know whether Sakamoto’s series “canon” will conveniently avoid bringing up _Other M_ or whether he’ll double down on it. On a related note: will this dare to have voice acting??