Seems like something that should have been released within the first year of the switches life. Anyone really in the market for something like this at this point in time?

There seem to be a lot of these beat’em ups coming out lately. Most of them don’t really seem to bring anything new to the table though. I’ll probably pass on this.

I guess I just don’t see the appeal. If I wanted to interact with an AI, I can do it right now without launching a game to do it. And pointless NPCs are already one of the most annoying parts of games for me. I don’t want to waste my time reading meaningless dialogue from 100 characters trying to find the 1 person who will actually let me advance and continue playing the game. It will be even worse when they are all taking an unlimited stream of shit instead of 1 or 2 canned responses, because it will just be even harder to know who is wasting your time.

When a bunch of RPGs start doing that, they are all just going to start feeling the same.

I played it for a few hundred hours before dropping off. The single player content can last you a good while, but it does start feeling a bit repetitive.

The online multiplayer is pretty good, but the net code is not great so it can often feel laggy. This was what I spent most of my time on though.

Looks kind of like NES Remix, but without the remix.

It’s interesting that they are bringing this f-zero stuff to switch now. They had f-zero 99 and now this. I wonder if it could be signaling a new f-zero game in the future.

Mario kart?

Love the puzzles and gameplay, but the games always have this boring and dreary feeling to them, in my opinion. Like the music and the colors just make me feel depressed just looking at it. Anyone else get that impression from the Layton games?

I feel like the issue could be largely resolved if developers would just make a lot of the downloads optional. For as long as I remember, installers for PC applications have given the user options for which parts of the applications they want to install. Yet for games these days, they just take an all or nothing approach. Let me skip the ultra textures, and all the extra choices in languages I don’t need. It seems like it should be such an easy thing to implement!

I don’t understand what you are asking. Do you mean you give it a picture of a cat and it speaks to you in a voice saying “this is a picture of a cat”?

It sounds like it will be a fun game, but I worry about replay value. When I was a kid, I played the heck out of all the Mario games. It was often out of necessity because it just took so much time to learn all of the courses to be able to progress. When I was older and the NSMB series came around, not only did they just feel kind of basic and lacking in new ideas, but I was able to complete most courses on the first try, and then never have much incentive to go back. The 3ds game was probably my favorite of those, actually, because the coin collecting mechanic actually gave a reason to keep playing.

I guess we will just have to see how this one works out.

But the bigger question is, how will this be abbreviated? SMW is already taken!

I’m not referring to Diablo in particular. I am just using “level” as the standard video game nomenclature to mean separate areas or content.

Because when you are in level 1, you don’t need all the assets from level 10, and it can just download what you need first.

There is an app called Object Detector which does this. It’s not particularly accurate and can’t recognize a lot of objects though. It does run on phones in realtime though.

Insightful post into fzero as always! I’ve definitely noticed that it does feel more and more difficult to place well as time goes on and the game becomes more populated with seasoned players. I’m currently A+ rank and have yet to get a win. I only play a few races per day usually, though. I got 2nd place in a grand prix yesterday, so maybe I’m not too far off from a win.

I started out playing as Blue Falcon, but I’ve switched to the wild goose, as it just feels easier to do well with it. I think the nature of the game having so many players, it’s beneficial to be able to freely attack them without much consequence. Especially in the Grand Prix, getting early KOs feels like a huge advantage.

Could you elaborate on why you think Blue Falcon is bad on Mute City?

Also any tips on when to use the skyway, other than maybe save it for the most difficult part of the track?

Mute City and Big Blue both feel challenging to me. I tend to do much better on all the other tracks. I think it’s more to do with the fact that these tracks are the most commonly selected and also the easiest, so most of the other players are able to do pretty decently, and everyone ends up bunched up together.

When Japan began interacting with China, Japan did not have a writing system. So Japan had to adopt Chinese characters and shoehorn it into their own language, in order to be able to trade with China and stuff. They later invented their own writing systems. But kanji kind of just continued to hang around. I imagine that part of it is just because kanji was already so ingrained that it became difficult to get rid of. It’s kind of like saying why don’t we fix English to get rid of all the weird letter combinations and make it more phonetic? It’s kind of a big undertaking.

Kanji is also very economical from a perspective of how compact it is and how quickly it can be read. You can fit a ton of information in a very small space, and you can understand the words at a glance.

There is a funny thing among Japanese learners. Ask a beginner their thoughts on kanji, and they will often complain about how difficult it is to learn, and how it doesn’t make sense to keep kanji around. Then take someone who has spent several years studying and become fairly proficient, and ask them to read a passage that is entirely in hiragana or katakana. That person will likely complain about how difficult it is to read, because they have to look at each individual character and sound out the words.

A lot of people don’t see what their parents had to deal with, because by the time we are old enough to notice those things, they have already had a chance to work their way upward. Not to say that certain things might not have been easier back then, because in some ways it certainly was. But I hear about how my grandparents worked in a factory or joined the military because it was their only option at the time, and then I hear about how my great grandmother had 8 children to take care of as a single parent, and she walked miles to get to work in her factory job. Things have always been difficult depending on circumstances.