Remember everyone saying Nintendo would put out
more games when they consolidated their portable & home consoles?
Voxel terrain and destruction and the size of the worlds and consistency of effects they have and the speed of transitions doesn’t seem like it’d work well or look good with 3 gigs of lpddr4 ram.
It couldn't be done exactly like it is on Switch 2, but I just don't see anything so special it needs Switch 2 hardware. Worst case scenario it'd be a Pokemon Violet shit show but I'd bet it could definitely work.
No, it isn't, not unless you count Drag x Drive. And that'd still be shitty anyway because launch alone should have at least have 2 new 1st party games, minimum.
has a full slate for the rest of the year.
I take it you're counting Switch 1 game updates and cross-gen releases to fluff that statement? Because afaik we know of just some boring shit like a Kirby racing spinoff. Not exactly "full slate" material...
And it still has more exclusives than the PS5.
More worthwhile exclusives, yes, but barely.
A wario world 2 would rule, but I think it would have a frenetic and sociopathic feel compared to the kind of charming way Donkey Kong is a big destructive gorilla in bananza
Wario is a little edgier than DK, but they could've tweaked the time and it'd work just fine.
Should DK always be a hard 2D platformer?
No, but it should always be a platformer of some variety first and foremost, and always feel like DK. I criticized Retro for veering from the time of Rareware's games, but after DKB their duology comparatively as sits nicely with the older DK games.
Still, considering the market rejection of Tropical Freeze, which is a beautiful amazing game that people are wrong for rejecting it.
Didn't it sell fine? And it was quite good but the weakest DKC entry.
It's good in a vacuum but inferior and wholly unnecessary; not a deal breaker but an obviously bad call. I can only hope it's temporary.
Distinctive proportions and a set of expressions let them do transformations and play scenes that probably wouldn't have worked with the old design, like naptime with the little girl. Only ever looking 'cool' feels like a limitation on what kind and quality of games you can sell starring him.
Old DK napping with Pauline would be fine, but while he was less expressive we really DON'T need this overly expressive Pixar shit to begin with. He was expressive enough, but I guess they wanted something cuter and less intimidating, as if that's what anybody asked for. Just theoretical marketing faggotry like you outlined.
2D platformers based off of style, well the genre has collapsed
Not at all, maybe outside of Nintendo but that's because they're all chasing BlackRock walking simulator bucks instead. The genre still has appeal, it sells and reviews well enough.
Well it's not like they were going to say anything committal like they're married, engaged, or dating since neither makes a lot of sense in the stories we see.
They don't have to say anything, what we see is enough. Or, what we
saw. Her outdated, problematic, sexist damsel-in-distress and love interest role is out, and her girlboss friend-zoning version is coming into play instead. How progressive!
They gotta market this shit to everyone in a way that cannot generate offense to anyone except people looking to get mad.
Which is what they were already doing. Sanitizing normalcy and replacing it with progressivism is going to, at best, not move the needle, but will actually probably repel some people.
They've shown screenshots of the switch build with pretty much every bit of detail, foliage, particle effects, etc stripped out, and it was apparently still chugging then
Genuinely interesting. Is there a development history blog somewhere or something? Sounds interesting. It's just that if they were able to get ToTK to run relatively well, a game many (including Digital Foundry) speculated was probably shown running on Switch 2 hardware initially, then how the hell can toning everything down not result in DKB being playable?
The only way to square this away seems to be that the team had higher standards for a released product than Game Freak does. It was probably playable but that wasn't sufficient for them.
So, it depends on your definition of "could have run on a switch". Is it running at 12fps in most areas, dropping down to 480p due to dynamic resolution, or lower, in most cases, and having to cut out multiple boss fights and entire areas "could have run on a switch"? Then sure, but at that point, MGS5 could have run on a ps2 as well.
Wouldn't be to first Nintendo game to drop below 480 and be sub-30 fps. I don't think anything would need to be cut if they dialed back the graphics and effects, it's again probably just a matter of not wanting it to seem unimpressive and lack spectacle, not that it'd be a 2fps tech demo taking place in black voids for locations if it released for Switch 1.
The very fact you mention this kinda provides evidence against your own point. Switch 2 is probably the beefiest hardware upgrade we've gotten since the transition to hd in 7th gen, and if even it's struggling with certain aspects of the terrain destruction and creation, how would a switch 1, which is barely on par with a ps3 at best, be expected to handle it just fine?
It just seems like a lack of optimization, so if anything this goes against
your point, being evidence they could've done it on S1 but they're shit as optimization. There's literally nothing so impressive that "the beefiest hardware upgrade we've gotten since the transition to hd in 7th gen" should struggle at all with an Xbox 360 graphics looking cartoon platformer. The fact it's not a rock-solid 60fps is being called out by everyone, and while I don't care much personally, it's objectively a testament to a lack of polish. You cannot both tell me they couldn't have done it
and stand by that praise for S2's power.
In fact, thinking about it now, this may invalidate my earlier excuse I made for them possibly having high standards as a reason for being unable to get it running on Switch 1.
My only guess is that Mario and Peach being friends is to place Mario as being just a nice heroic guy who helps anyone.
And to make change Peach's role and image too. She needs a snarky expression and to not be a helpless object of desire. I think we've seen the end of her being kidnapped, ditzy, and emotional.
TBF, even Wario would feel somewhat out of place in this new Pixar design philosophy. Nintendo really removed all the edge from the Mario IP after that film and DK seems to be suffering big time, but Wario wouldn't be much better in this direction.
Definitely true, I mean from a gameplay perspective it feels more Wario-like. Wario is harder to Pixar-ify, so he'll probably stay out of major adventures, unfortunately.
The feeling inside Nintendo was that DKCR was way too hard for kids, which is why the game was found used for so cheap compared to other "good" Wii games, and why Funky Mode became a thing in Tropical Freeze. Anecdotally that also scared some casuals off from Tropical Freeze.
DKCR was about par for the course in difficulty. TF was insanely difficult though, actually unfair. Funky saved the game. I have no idea why there was such a a difficulty spike.
