Reggies Last Stand ?

Could we possibly have one more Nintendo Direct with Reggie at the helm ? It might be possible because early in the week there was a leak of a surprise Nintendo Direct. Based on how often Nintendo does these showcases, which is about once every 50-90 days with the last direct being February 14, 2019 it seemed like the timing was perfect.. The main rumour going around was that the direct was going to take place Thursday April 11th but that day came and went with no hint of anything Nintendo. It has been about 60 days since the last Nintendo Direct with close to another 60 days until E3 and you fully understand there will be a big Nintendo Direct around the conference. It would be extremely unlikely that they would wait until E3 for their next Direct as that would put the time between at around 120 days, which is well above the average. As we already knew from his announcement a few months ago Reggie is stepping down as President of Nintendo of America with Bowser taking over. It never gets old saying that. The interesting thing here is that Reggies last day is April 15th and you would imagine that it would be nice for Nintendo and for Reggie to have one last Nintendo Direct. There is still hope and one more day left that we get a Direct on Monday. I am also more than sure that there are probably a few passion projects that Reggie has pushing to get on the Switch. There are so many options to speculate about what would be showcased in the Direct. The possibility of SNES games or other systems even including N64 and GameCube would be amazing to have on the switch. Speaking of N64, now is around the time that Nintendo has announced their plans for mini consoles in the past. Could they possibly announce the N64 mini or the Gameboy mini. The recent Best Buy leak that we talked about last week could also come to fruition, as it would be great to hear what the plans are for Metroid Prime Trilogy and Link to the Past. There are still a bunch of major titles announced for this year that don’t have a date yet including Luigi’s Mansion 3, Animal Crossing, Links Awakening and Pokemon to name a few of the major titles. Even if Monday comes and goes without any Direct or any more announcements from Reggie, it is safe to assume that these rumblings of a direct we are hearing just mean one is closer than we think.

Nintendo VR

You know what else is closer than we think? The future! Nintendo finally decided to dip their toes into the VR market……for the second time in its illustrious career lest we forgot the Virtual Boy. It seems the first time, Nintendo was way to early to the VR party and this time possibly a little late. However, this week we saw the release of Nintendo LABO VR. Its unclear if this is the start of something much bigger from Nintendo or if this is as far as they plan to take the Virtual Nintendo World. One interesting thing is that if we get a more powerful Switch as the rumours would lead us to believe it might lead to changes in the VR as it would be the lowest powered VR on the console and PC market. However, one thing Nintendo is familiar with is how to make the most out of underpowered hardware. Nintendo has always found a way to take their weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Typically, Nintendo has always published underpowered consoles but have always figured out ways to make the most out of them whether that be motion controls or hybrid consoles success in a time of 4k and Teraflops. As user of PSVR you don’t need to have the best product to be the best. In a few weeks we will be able to get our hands on the Mario Odyssey experiences as well as walk the fields of Hyrule in Breath of the Wild. I am very interested to see how the Zelda Vr will work without lack of head strap. From what I have heard Nintendo has smarty designed most of the games and experiences with you sitting down and holding the VR to you face. We were able to get our hands on one of the starter sets to give the VR a try for ourselves. We have no interest in sticking our head up a birds behind but I am very interested to see just how good Nintendos take on VR is. We haven’t had a chance to open it up just yet but keep an eye out on our site and social media for our impressions on it.

PlayStation Elite Controller

The next story wouldn’t qualify as news but I got my hands on the brand new Astro C40. This is the PS4 pro controller. I just want to touch on it a little bit here as I went into a whole deep review on the controller on our website here https://www.vdgms.com/reviews/2019/4/8/astro-gaming-c40-ps4-controller-review

I have always liked Astro products and have always wanted Playstation to have an equivalent to the Microsoft Elite controller. I had very high hopes for this controller which is why it is a little shocking to me just how much I didn’t care for it. You instantly get a premium feel, from the packing itself to holding the controller. It feels well built with the use of top quality materials. It comes with a large setup map that will having you gaming in minutes which is great and will have you gaming in minutes. They have kept it clean looking using mostly black with some reds and whites. I applaud the minimilsitc aesthetic design they have went with.

One feature that I enjoy is the ability to modify the controller with the included screwdriver. It allows you to change the left joystick position to the standard parallel that Sony uses or swap to the offset that Microsoft uses. There are four screws on the front of the controller that will only take you about half a minute to adjust the joystick to the play style of your choice. There are two paddle buttons on the back of the controller and remapping them could not be easier. There is a small button on the back which you push, it vibrates to let you know that you are now in program mode, press the paddle button you want to change, then the button you want to be mapped to the paddle and then you’re done.

On the flip side this is a very big controller which feels closer to the Duke than it does to the Sony counterpart it is aiming for. This leads to a problem with the paddle buttons on the back because since its so large my hands have to rotate inwards to push up on the thumbstick to sprint in most games. This rotation forces the bottom of my hands to constantly push the paddle button, which lead to me having to turn off the left paddle and completely negating the point of having it there. Speaking about pushing on the joysticks, I am not sure what coating is put onto these joysticks but my thumb was constantly slipping off. I dont have this problem with any of the other controllers including the Nintendo Pro, DualShock4 or the Microsoft Elite. There are a few extra thumbtacks that the kit comes with but they are also made using the same slippery substance.

We live in what feels like the golden age of convenience. You are assuming that purchasing a $200 controller and you will get the best possible gaming experience. There are a lot of shortcomings with the C40 including that it can’t turn on your PS4. Instead you have to walk to your system every time to turn it on. I keep my PS4 Pro out in the open so that it can properly ventilate but a lot of people keep theirs in entertainment units. I still dont like that fact that if I am on the couch and so is my controller that I can’t turn on my PS4. There is a large reason why digital is surpassing physical in video game sales and that is because we want things to be simple and easy. People don’t want to have to get up, find and switch the discs. People just want to push a button and be done with it. Even worse you can’t turn off device in menu settings like you can with the DualShock 4. It also doesnt communicate properly with the PS4, which means that you can’t see your battery life and you dont ever have an idea when your controller will die.

Overall, I just can’t recommend this game for a few of the reasons listed above. If you want to read the full article head on over to our website

PSN ID

In other Playstation related news, this week gamers were finally treated to a long requested feature. This week Playstation announced that you would be able to change your PSN ID. The program for online ID change went into a beta back in October of last yet. The main issue Sony found with changing your ID was how it would affect games from older games. Most of the issues arose from games from the Vita and PS3 not supporting the change but they discovered that many current generation PS4 games also had issues. They have noted that almost all games published after April 1, 2018 were built using tools that supported the change. They posted games with known critical issues that could cause the player to lose in game currency or game progress causing trophies in those games to be affected. Games that had critical issues were limited to a handful of somewhat older titles with the only relevant title in my mind being Little Big Planet 3. They also released a list of games that had minor issues including game settings to be reverted to default, previous online ID to be visible or user accounts becoming unlinked from game accounts. Some of the more popular titles with these smaller issues included BloodBorne, Dark Souls 2&3, GTAV, Killzone:ShadowFall, Injustice 2, Nba2k19, The Last of Us, Titanfall 2, and Uncharted 4. With all the troublesome news out of the way, the bright side is that you are able to change your gamertag that you might have created over a decade ago. I tested the service and was impressed with just how easy it was. I felt it was time for a new gamertag that was created in December of 2006. In my case it wasn’t anything that I regretted but I just felt like a fresh ID was long overdue. The process of changing is simple, which you can either do on a web browser or more simply right from your PS4. You just go to settings, then profile, then online ID and that’s pretty much it. It warns you about those issues that are documented and informs you of the pricing. The first time is completely free but if you want to make additional changes it will cost you either 9.99 or 4.99 if youre a PSPLUS member. Once you agree to the change it logs you out of your system and app if you have that installed. You sign back in and thats it you are ready to game with your new ID. You have to option to display your previous ID so that its easier for your friends to figure out who you have become. This display option automatically expires after 30 days and only your new name will be displayed once your friends have had to the time to understand the change.

Jedi Fallen Order

Also in news this week we had the reveal of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. This is the next game from the team at Respawn. You have to imagine that the hopes are high on this game internally as EA would love to see a few more Star Wars games succeed. You could argue that Battlefront 1 & 2 were successes in their own. Im sure by the sales metric they did great but with the loot box problems and the fans wanting some type of single player component maybe Fallen Order will be the chosen one. The Respawn panel regarding the game happened Saturday and one of the first things Vince Zampella, head of Respawn, wanted to make clear was that it’s a single player game, no multiplayer and microtransactions. He This is very clear that Respawn and EA are in sync and want to make sure this game doesn’t get negative press. The Star Wars license that EA has is not in the best of shape as of late with the cancelled games and the negative backlash that Battlefront 2 received with its micro transactions. With very little surprise, Respawn brought a trailer to show the fans. The panel also made a light joke regarding the Borderlands 3 reveal and that you wouldn’t have to wait to the end of the panel to see the trailer. The trailer focused on story and featured all in game assets using unreal engine. The trailer didn’t give too much away other than you are a very young force user and his quest to become a master Jedi. The trailer did feature a little traversal which looked similar to the wall running we see in Titanfall. The other big news that came from the conference is that the game will be released on November 15th. Respawn will take another crack at the tough holiday release schedule again. I think this time will be much different because this game will be like nothing else released at that time and they have the powerful Star Wars license behind them. Lets not forget they are also riding the high of Apex Legends and did also announce they have something in the Titanfall universe coming later this year as well. The trailer looked great and hopefully we will get a full in depth look around E3 at the EA event that is happening a few days before the main conference.

NEW GAMES MAYBE

Similar to last weeks episode big news slows to a trickle with the impending E3 just around the corner. There also weren't many big new games this week to chat about and the same goes for next week. The biggest release of next week is arguably Cuphead for the Nintendo Switch which is just a port of the Xbox One smash hit. If you haven’t checked it out on Xbox I strongly urge you to pick it up. The style, art and gameplay are all top tier but be warned the game is very hard. One thing that I found help me complete the game was using the elixir that gave you an extra heart container. The other game that I am looking forward to this week is Katana Zero. This is a 2D action platform being published from Devolver Digital. The game looks to have a lot of style and the main feature of the game is that you have the ability to transcend time similar to how Max Payne used bullet time. That will be the game I am most looking forward to next week.