This weekend, my son and I played a ton of Splatoon.  We are currently at level 14.

Been playing lots of Xenoblade Chronicles X and some Call of Duty: Black Ops III.

I've been playing very little.  Just encountered my first alien intelligent lifeform in XCX, played very little Bravely Default and 2 cups in Fast Racing Neo

FRNeo is a hard game.  I'm on the easiest cup and already it's giving me a hard time just finishing in third.  On my second cup I only just came in second overall.  Also, the game shows your time in relation to that of everyone else who played in a nice and clean graph.  Very nice little touch.  Really liking this.  I don't find the presentation to be barebones at all, just clean contemporary design.  Unlike some other WiiU racer where the presentation was way below what was to be expected from such a franchise.  I'm looking at you, MK8.

travo said:

This weekend, my son and I played a ton of Splatoon.  We are currently at level 14.

I envy your playing of Splatoon.

gamingeek said:

I'm loving XCX, but whenever I'm playing something else there's a tinge of sadness and regret that I'm not playing Splatoon.

I second this.

gamingeek said:

SupremeAC said:

Digital Foundry vs Fast Racing Neo "Simply fantastic in motion"

To be fair, they do point out that the game actually only renders 640x720 per frame, which it then interlaces with the last frame to achieve a 1280x720 resolution.  so it's more 60i than 60p and apparently it causes some graphical issues, especially with special effects in play.

That's not really being "fair", they also had a ton of praise for it and said that the frame buffer was still 720p:

So while image quality may fall short of expectations, the rest of the package far exceeds them. Features such as motion blur, ambient occlusion, physically-based rendering, HDR lighting, and high quality shadows are all expected on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - but seeing each of these techniques in play on Wii U at 60fps is an impressive feat.




- Fast Racing Neo is one of the only examples of physically-based rendering in a shipping title on similarly powerful hardware so it's quite a treat to see here.




- We also see plenty of clever programming tricks throughout many facets of the game. For example, the sharp, non-repeating ground textures used throughout are actually generated on the fly using a specialised shader. The results look great and less space is required.




- When you put everything together the end results are simply fantastic in motion. It's an impressive looking racer here with a blistering frame-rate and beautiful visual design.




- Still, as incredible as it looks, the low resolution sticks out as a blemish on an otherwise great package. How much this impacts your experience is going to vary from person to person, but if you can look beyond that, there is a lot of impressive tech behind the scenes.




- Still, if you own a Wii U and are looking for a tech showpiece with superb playability...




- ...and one of the most visually unique, accomplished games on the platform to date.

Being fair is pointing towards a major shortcoming when all you said was that it looked "Simply fantastic in motion".  Being fair is not saying something positive and then laying on even more positive stuff.

I'm not saying it's impressive what Shin'en achieved on a technical level.  Stuff like physically based lighting isn't used in any other WiiU game I believe (perhaps NFS?), but you've got to add in some perspective by mentionning that the actual refresh rate per frame is only 1.5x SD, which adds up to an interlaced 1280x720.

Dvader said:

Do you guys want some cream sugar!

CoD ~ 4.8 million including bundles, slightly more on ps4.

Fallout 4  -2.38 mil, ps4 slightly more

SW – 1.7 mil, slightly more on ps4.

NFS – 390k

Tomb Raider – 200k, 170k on One

Splatoon – 240k with bundles (outsold tomb raider)

Mario Maker – 140k

yoshi – 97k

Animal crossing – 36k

With those numbers we know halo 5 was under 390k

Imagine how much better Tomb Raider would be selling if they didn't do the dumb timed exclusive crap. The game doesn't even really have any hype because of that, and from what I've heard its great. Still, it will have longer legs than most of these games because once it gets released to PC and PS4 it will take off.

What's that, Square Eidos?

"Today's announcement with Microsoft is one step to help us put Tomb Raider on top of action adventure gaming. Our friends at Microsoft have always seen huge potential in Tomb Raider and have believed in our vision since our first unveil with them on their stage at E3 2011. We know they will get behind this game more than any support we have had from them in the past - we believe this will be a step to really forging the Tomb Raider brand as one of the biggest in gaming, with the help, belief and backing of a major partner like Microsoft."

LMFAO oh...ok.

I'm liking the CoD BO3 campaign, what's wrong with me.

So I picked up a sweet little gadget the other day...something that I had to have for  Xenoblade 2 more than anything else. Its simply a USB charge cable for the Gamepad.

It plugs into the system instead of the wall as Nintendo's charger does, which comes in handy for people like me who have the charge dock all set up and don't want to unhook it all just to charge up in the middle of playing a game. This is just a standard charge cable that you'd have on other systems. 10 feet long, and is much thicker than Nintendo's cable. So basically, I can now play Wii U with the Gamepad plugged in at all times like a normal controller. For $9, its fucking outstanding.

Here it is if anyone is interested:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VAU1LBQ?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00