Ready to fight! Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is now available
The wait is over! Fans both new and pro can now clash in the ultimate brawl between gaming legends. Get ready to play the biggest game in the Super Smash Bros.™ series ever—anytime, anywhere.
In the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game, newcomers like Inkling, Simon Belmont, King K. Rool, Ridley, Incineroar, and Isabelle join every fighter from past Super Smash Bros. games. A total of 74 fighters from over 30 games series are here to battle it out.
Features:
All past Super Smash Bros. fighters have joined the battle. Everyone is here!
More than 100 stages. The new Stage Morph option even transforms one stage into another while battling.
Play in a variety of ways. Go 1-on-1 with a friend, hold a 4-player* free-for-all, kick it up to 8-player* battles and more. Whether you’re throwing a party or a tournament, a wide range of modes and options await you.
New items, Assist Trophies, and Pokémon spice up battles with special abilities and unpredictable results.
Unleash the power of Spirits. Collect characters from a wide range of video game worlds to power up your fighters in different ways. Test out tons of combinations!
Explore the single-player Adventure Mode, World of Light. Fighters and spirits will have to team up to stop the mysterious fiend known as Galeem.
More than 800 music tracks can be listened to with the in-game music player (even when the system’s screen is off!).
Play with a wide variety of control options, including GameCube™ Controllers.
Buy early, get Piranha Plant for free!
And finally, here’s one more thing to chomp on. Register the game by Jan. 31 and Piranha Plant will join the battle! There are two ways to get this toothy fighter:
1) Buy the digital version of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate before 11:59 PM PT on Jan. 31, 2019. (The game will automatically be registered to your account.)
OR
2) Buy the retail version and register the game card with My Nintendo before 11:59 PM PT on Jan. 31, 2019.
A download code for the Piranha Plant character will be sent by email to the email address associated with your Nintendo Account. You’ll receive the new fighter when it becomes available in early 2019. **
* Additional accessories may be required for multiplayer mode; sold separately.
** A software update may be required to receive the downloadable content. Download code expires 6/30/2019 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Full version of game required to use DLC.
Katamari Damacy REROLL is ready to roll. Also, try before you buy with a demo!
Don’t worry, do your best…
The stop-at-nothing pushing prince is back and ready to reroll! When the King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys all the stars in the sky, he orders you, his pint-sized princely son, to put the twinkle back in the heavens above. Join the King and Prince of Cosmos on their wacky adventure to restore the stars at home or on the go – now in full HD!
The beloved roll-em-up game returns with fully updated graphics, completely recreated cutscenes, and controls exclusive for the Nintendo Switch!
Players can use the Joy-Con™ controllers to control the katamari using gyro controls. Also, play with a friend by using one pair of Joy-Con controllers on the same Nintendo Switch!
Crossovers happen all the time in games, films, TV shows and just about every other form of media out there, but none of them can really be compared to Super Smash Bros.; no, not even that film that you’re thinking of. So it’s beyond a bold move to name the latest entry in a series ‘Ultimate’, thus raising expectations to dizzying levels, so can Super Smash Bros. Ultimatereally live up to its name? That’s what we’re here to discuss, because this is a review of it.
The core idea of Smash hasn’t changed at all really; you’re still setting up characters from the world of Nintendo (and from other developers, too) to beat the living snot out of each other until one of them is so badly damaged or poorly controlled that they fly or fall out of the intangible boundaries that Sakurai and his team have imposed upon one of the 104 included stages. Special moves, items, supremely fanatical hardcore community – it’s all largely the same as it was. It’s chaotic, high-octane and an incredibly replayable lump of fun. However the devil, appropriately, is in the detail.
The most notable inclusion here is the new Adventure Mode dubbed World of Light, and by extension the new Spirits mechanic. A strange entity known as Galeem is systematically destroying the world in which all the fighter characters reside, and picks them off one by one in order to create a newer, more perfect world; a World of Light. Being the director’s personal baby, the pink and orb-like Kirby is the only one left unaffected, and in a mysterious pop of colourful stars is transported to a strange new land living in the shadow of the supposedly evil Galeem – or at least the shadow it would have if it wasn’t kicking out its own light like a sun.
You traverse the land through paths on a beautiful watercolour backdrop battling the souls of other characters that aren’t necessarily fighters – such as Joan the turnip seller from Animal Crossing – that have inhabited empty copies of Mario, Link, King Dedede and the rest of the whopping 74 characters you can play as. They’re not without their own perks though, and each Spirit brings with it one or two things that mix up the way a fight plays out. For example, they might be giant, tiny, like to taunt constantly, or even favour one specific move above all others to name just a handful. The stages can also be affected by things such as electric floors, strong winds and reduced gravity.
The variety in these fights is staggering, and practically all of them are insanely good fun and a novel way to breathe additional life into battles without having to code and create 1,297 unique fighters – yep, that’s the total number of Spirits in the game at the time of writing, with more being added in the future. Not every battle is an absolute winner however, and some even spell it out for you in the fight description, simply calling it a ‘no-frills’ battle. This is a slight disappointment, but these truly are extremely few and far between, and given the colossal scale that the team were working with, we can happily accept that not every one of over a thousand Spirit encounters can be as memorable as others.
But once you’ve battled a Spirit, things don’t end there. You’ll acquire each Spirit you defeat in World of Light and the more straightforward Spirit Board, which is essentially a randomised rotating gallery of Spirits you can choose to battle without delving into World of Light. You can assign one primary Spirit and up to three support Spirits to help boost your fighter’s power and make the often one-sided battles in World of Light much more equal. You can freely overpower yourself making many contests a complete breeze, but this will result in fewer bonuses for your trouble – and if you intentionally underpower yourself, you’ll be raking in rewards like nobody’s business. It’s a system that essentially self-regulates itself, and the addition of a Skill Tree that boosts your power as well as pre-determined difficulty levels provides a staggering amount of flexibility in how you approach this particular mode.
The world itself is also absolutely massive, and what you initially see isn’t all you get, as there are a good number of hidden areas that house extra lovely stuff. Throughout it all you’ll be unlocking new fighters to play as, new Spirits to assign and beating seven shades out of special boss fights that we don’t want to spoil, but can confirm are absolutely fantastic, and manage to outdo even the finest bosses from Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s Subspace Emissary.
Other single-player offerings include the appropriately-named Classic Mode, which has had a bit of a re-think and is all the better for it. Now each fighter has their own string of fights to best one after another, all fitting within a named theme. R.O.B., for example, tackles all the most human-looking players in a manner that feels worryingly like a robotic overthrow of humanity, Young Link smashes his way through Hyrule’s elite, and Sonic is forced to tackle numerous references to his past, including the meme-worthy battle of a blue, yellow, and red Kirby team set to the main theme from Sonic Heroes. It’s not a revolutionary way to handle Classic Mode, but it’s absolutely the most fun we’ve had with the mode in the series’ history, and it manages to inject a real charm and self-awareness that has been distinctly lacking in previous entries.
There’s also a plethora of other things to do, such as listening to the phenomenal soundtrack and watching replays of past matches (which can now also be encoded into a video file to prevent future updates from breaking them), but the real meat of the experience – and no doubt what so many of you are here specifically to read about – is the multiplayer.
As previously stated, the bulk of the experience is the same as it’s always been in Smash, which is to be expected, but the number of small tweaks and subtle changes that permeate the game are practically innumerable. Whilst someone unfamiliar with the series might see little to differentiate Ultimate from the previous entries on 3DS and Wii U, if you’ve played the previous games an unhealthy amount like we have, the feel of how it all works has been drastically ramped up and re-worked to a spectacular degree.
We’re not going to go into major specifics about landing lag and active frames, but we’ll give you the broad strokes. The game feels faster, more responsive and tighter than before, although perhaps not as fast and unpredictable as Melee. Character movesets have been upgraded and nerfed in a manner that feels very balanced, although the real proof of this will naturally be once the game is out in the wild and people are playing each other all over the world.
New modes such as Squad Strike – which allows a 3v3 or 5v5 mini tournament – and Special Smash help to mix things up nicely, but the real star of the show is the new Tournament system. It’s nothing out of this world as far as tournament systems go, but everything about it is robust, reliable and extremely flexible. If you plan on having or partaking in a tournament, you’d be mad not to use this mode.
But the flexibility doesn’t stop there either, you can now change more settings and rules than ever before, and what’s evenmore wonderful is these can all be saved as custom rulesets, allowing you to quickly set up the exact game you want without having to go through and change each little setting every time. You can even go into the main settings menu and adjust an individual fighter character (not player) to have more or less power depending on how you feel the balance lies. Naturally, this is open to abuse, but you have the option to actively nerf or buff characters without the need of an officially-mandated patch. This is probably the feature that best sums up Ultimate; insane levels of customisation and flexibility. You’re encouraged to play the game however you want to, and adjust even the most trivial features to your heart’s content. You can even turn off Tap Jump as standard, which is basically the best thing we could ever have hoped for.
Few totally new fighters that have been introduced here, but considering the fact that every single fighter from all the previous games has returned, we can’t say we’re at all disappointed. Every newcomer feels unique and ambitious, but without verging into Brawl-levels of experimentation. With 74 characters to play as and a starting roster of only 8, you might be forgiven for thinking that you’re going to be spending half your life unlocking them, but that’s not the case. The game is quite generous with how frequently you unlock new fighters, but not so generous that it fails to be an exciting event.
How about looks? Looks-wise, the game is frankly gorgeous, as no doubt you’ve seen in the countless videos that Nintendo itself has already published. But none of this would be worth it if the game didn’t run well, but as you might expect for a first party game with such a prestigious pedigree, it all runs smoother than liquid butter. Try as we might, we couldn’t get the game to slow down at all, or show any signs of struggling. The music is also utterly fantastic, boasting some storming arrangments of classic tunes from the past few decades of video game history. While we’re on the topic of general presentation, this game is so polished you can almost see your face in it.
Online performance is another matter however, as at the time of writing the functionality simply isn’t active. From what Nintendo has said it all seems promising, but you can be sure we’ll be updating this review whichever way it swings when it’s finally available.
Previously expected to arrive in “fall 2018”, Crystal Crisis now has a new Switch release date of 23rd April 2019.
If you’ve missed the news on this one, Crystal Crisis is a colour-matching combat game featuring fan favourite characters from the likes of Cave Story, The Binding of Isaac, and Tezuka Productions (although “many other surprise entrants” have also been teased). The game is presented as a traditional fighting game, but instead of pressing buttons to kick and punch, competitors arrange falling crystals into matching colours to clear them from the screen.
Doing so will inflict attacks on your opponents, and those opponents will be made up of a star-studded cast of 19 different playable characters from the games mentioned above and more. You can see some of these stars in the game’s opening cinematic below.
Have you been looking forward to this one? Will you be grabbing a copy when it arrives on Switch next year? Let us know with a comment below.
Adelaide-based indie developer Juicy Cupcake has revealed that its upcoming “butt ’em up” game Brief Battles will be heading to Nintendo Switch in 2019.
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign and financial backing from Epic Games, Brief Battles is gearing up to bring “goofy underwear-fueled party game action” to consoles. Players will be grabbing their luckiest pair of underpants before heading into battle to squish their opponents; you’ll need to scramble around the playing field to grab super-powered underpants, hoping to gain an underwear-fueled edge over your friends. Just a typical Saturday night, then.
Obtainable abilities include ‘Toxic Tighty-Whities’, ‘Buns of Steel’, and ‘Flaming Hot Pants’, allowing players to leap and jiggle their way through 50 treacherous 2.5D arenas. Locales like the Dusty Desert and Crystal Caverns are packed with distinctive hazards including ice-slicked floors, unstoppable creatures, and tricky platforms.
You can play with up to three friends and choose from a variety of modes including Classic Battle, Hold The Gold, and Underpants Collector. Solo players needn’t worry, though, as solo challenges are also offered with plenty of rewards to unlock. Andrew Freeth, co-founder of Juicy Cupcake, has said the following:
“Brief Battles is a party game for competitive gamers, newcomers to the genre and anyone in between, with accessibility options opening up possibilities for all ages. Bringing Brief Battles to more couches and consoles at launch, puts a heap of game modes, challenges and arenas in front of everyone ready to embrace the power of the butt.”
The game is scheduled to launch on PS4, PC and Xbox One in Q2 2019, with the Switch version coming sometime after.
Do you like the sound of this one? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Sometimes a publisher takes a punt on developing a new IP in the hope it might spawn an exciting new franchise. Sometimes it works out, but more often than not they can be met with tumbleweeds, as seems to be the case with Ubisoft’s Starlink: Battle for Atlas.
It’s a crying shame, as we really liked it in our review, awarding a mighty 9/10. The game feels like a more accessible and ultimately enjoyable version of No Man’s Sky’s gameplay mechanics and Mass Effect’s original vision, you’re getting one of the best dogfighting/space exploration games you can buy outside of Elite: Dangerous. And it’s got Star Fox in it on the Switch! What more could Ubisoft do?
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and yet Ubisoft is slashing the price of the lovely Starlink Starter Edition, which comes with a big Arwing model. You can now pick it up for £29.99 in the UK (was £69.99) and $39.88 in the US (was $74.99). You can’t say fairer than that!
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Now might be a good time to pick up Starlink if you haven’t already. Let us know if you’re doing a barrel roll for these low prices with a comment below.
We’re pretty sure you don’t need us to tell you this, but Super Smash Bros. Ultimate arrives on Nintendo Switch tomorrow. The hype and excitement around the game’s release have been phenomenal to witness (so much so that we can’t help but feel for those who aren’t particularly into the game), but the agonising wait is almost over.
Over the last few days, Nintendo has been counting down to the big day by sharing artwork from various development studios. These pieces have been created exclusively as celebrations for the upcoming game, and a pleasing range of developers responsible for some of our favourite characters have taken part. We’ve gathered them all for you below so scroll through, enjoy the art, and get lost in the excitement.
Happy Smash Bros. eve!
10 – Super Mario (27th November)
Who better to kick things off than Mario, huh? Not content with just having a still piece of art, Mario takes things a step further by jumping onto the scene in a Super Mario Odyssey-inspired video. In fairness, he’s representing a large portion of the roster, with the likes of Luigi, Peach, Bowser and more all coming from his glorious world.
9 – Monster Hunter / Castlevania (28th November)
Mario actually managed to sneak his way into the second entry, too, finding himself in battle with Monster Hunter‘s Rathalos. Joining Rathalos is Simon and Richter Belmont from Castlevania, two exciting newcomers that are sure to mix things up on the battlefield.
8 – Animal Crossing / Pac-Man (29th November)
With eight days to go, it was the turn of Isabelle and Villager from Animal Crossing and Pac-Man. We’re still not entirely sure that we feel ready to punch poor Isabelle in the face, but we imagine that will all go out the window come tomorrow.
7 – Bomberman / Kirby (30th November)
Next up was Bomberman, who actually appears as an Assist Trophy in the game rather than as a traditional fighter, and Kirby, who has kindly swallowed up some of the new characters so that we can admire his marvellous new headgear.
6 – Xenoblade Chronicles / Sonic (1st December)
Despite Shulk being the one to star in the game, Xenoblade Chronicles 2‘s Zeke – or “The Zekenator” – has opted to go for a typically flamboyant image for the ‘six days to go’ entry. Joining him is the super-speedy Sonic who looks incredibly happy to have just kicked someone into oblivion.
5 – Pokémon (2nd December)
Next up is Pokémon, with just a handful of the franchise’s enormous character roster turning up for the photo shoot. The playable stars of the show feature at the front, including newcomer and all-round cuddly furball Incineroar.
4 – The Legend of Zelda (3rd December)
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate features more Links than you can shake a Master Sword at, so much so that his various incarnations take up half of the Legend of Zelda‘s entry. We particularly like how Breath of the Wild Link is patronisingly shoving his little self out of the way like any big brother should.
3 – Bayonetta / Fire Emblem (4th December)
With three days to go, it seems that the development teams got a little over-excited, actually releasing three pieces of artwork rather than the usual two. Joining the feisty Bayonetta was Fire Emblem, which not only received a standard Smash character image, but also had a Fire Emblem Heroes-inspired piece alongside it. To be fair, it is pretty adorable so we’ll let this one slide.
2 – Metal Gear / Kid Icarus (5th December)
With just two days to go, things were getting serious and Metal Gear‘s Snake joined in the fun with a determined, “you’re going down” type of stare. It’s all okay, though, because Pit was on hand to destroy all of Snake’s hard work by pulling a cheesy pose for the camera. This day also brought with it a previously-unpublished Kid Icarus: Uprising AR card.
1 – Splatoon / Mega Man (6th December)
And finally, today sees a lovely Splatoon piece (which soon led to the announcement of a Smash Ultimate-themed Splatfest) and the one and only Mega Man. It’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally made it.
Lots of lovely artwork, lots of great characters, and only one day left to wait. Which piece is your favourite, and who are you most looking forward to playing as in the game? Make sure to let us know in the comments below and check out our Smash Ultimate review if you haven’t already!
Nintendo Switch has played host to some truly remarkable ports during its second year. From the remarkably smooth performance of Paladins and Fortnite down to the sheer technical alchemy that went into Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Warframe, it’s clear that when the right game is in the right hands, wondrous things can happen on the semi-handheld console that could. But sometimes a game is just too big in both scale and technical demands to really work on a console that has some real hardware limitations.
War Drum Studios and Snail Games have done their best to get something as vast in scope as Ark: Survival Evolved running on Switch, and run it does run – well, it’s more of a limping walk – resulting in an experience that’s marred by consistent technical flaws. The frame rate attempts to hit 30fps but it rarely maintains that pace for long. And with foliage to load, roaming dinosaurs, other survivors and more, you can hardly blame it. There some PCs out there to that struggle to keep up with the level of detail on display and even other console versions have been known to chug when things are particularly busy on-screen.
Despite this, Ark has never been a pretty game, either – even on a high-end PC it’s always been a bit of an eyesore – but for some, that’s become part of its charm. However, when you’re consistently locked in a perpetual state of texture loading and pop-in, the same can’t be said for this version on Switch. It’s an issue which is worst when playing in handheld mode, with dinosaur skins taking an age to fully render, while trees and foliage sometimes never load at all. Some assets simply stay as blobs of unloaded content as the game struggles to prioritise the objects closest to you. It effectively makes Ark close to unplayable in handheld mode, at least in its current state.
Things are a little more stable when playing docked. The lighting model is more dynamic overall and even the water looks noticeably less plastic and artificial. The frame rate never maintains a solid 30fps in docked mode either, but it runs a lot closer to that marker than in its portable configuration. There’s still pop-in, but dinosaurs and other survivors are rendered much faster. It’s much closer to the Ark experience that was originally intended, but if you’re resigned to only playing in docked mode, there’s very little reason to invest in this version over ones available on other platforms.
Beyond its technical problems, you’re still getting the ‘full’ Ark experience on Nintendo hardware. It’s a survival game, first and foremost, where you start out with nothing but a loincloth to your name and the desire to survive for more than five minutes. But you will die – a lot. Especially during your first few hours as you get to grips with the deep crafting mechanics and the way your body reacts to the changing environment around you. If the local wildlife doesn’t kill you and eat you – and believe us, it will – you’ll die of exposure to the cold, keel over from exhaustion or expire from the heat.
Ark is a game that wants you to survive, but it expects you to earn that survival. There’s a ‘Survival Guide’ of sorts in the main menu, but apart from that there’s no in-game tutorial or assistance. But push through, and you can see why Ark has built such a dedicated following. XP is doled out pretty generously, with even exploring the tropical island on which you wake levelling you up. Doing so unlocks new skill traits and engrams (blueprints for building new tools, weapons and structures). Even when your character perishes, these upgrades remain – you’ll just need to regather resources and recraft items.
There’s a powerful sense of accomplishment to be found when you’ve collected your first stones from the beach, punched your first tree into oblivion and built your first stone pickaxe. Then, after harvesting plants to get fibre, you can craft a cloth shirt and trousers. You’ll attack less predatory animals such as dodos for meat, before building a base away from the beach that you gradually upgrade and refine. Servers on Switch can host up to 64 players, and when you do link up with other players and form a tribe, the game takes on a far less tense and more enjoyable tempo.
Ark could be described as a mix between Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition and Dark Souls: Remastered. You can play on both PvP and PvE servers, so the resource gathering, base-building and looting aspects help Ark suit the current trend for Battle Royale games. The fact you can respawn and eventually track down your old base (or encounter those belonging to long-dead fellow players or tribes who are currently away on a hunt) creates some brilliant systemic moments where a T-Rex comes crashing into a group of aggressive players and causes all manner of chaos.
Conclusion
Ark: Survival Evolved, in its current state, is not the best port to grace Nintendo Switch. It is, however, a proper MMORPG survival game with a deep and rewarding crafting system and the potential for some brilliant online cooperation with your fellow survivors. There’s a palpable thrill to moving from simple stone tools to more advanced weaponry as you begin to master the crafting cycle, an experience no other game on Switch can offer right now. But its myriad technical problems – ranging from texture pop-in to substantial performance slowdown – mean you really are better off playing Ark on a different platform for the time being. Patches could solve some of these problems over time, but we can’t help but feel this ambitious title will never run at an acceptable level on Nintendo’s hybrid platform.
Today sees the launch of Season 7 in Fortnite (downtime for the update is taking place at the time of writing) and, as usual, there are lots of changes and additions taking place to keep things fresh.
One of the first things you’ll notice if you’re a keen player of the game is the new set of locations available on the map; expect to stumble across Frosty Flights, Polar Peak, and more as you aim for your Victory Royales. As you can see from the chilling trailer above, a wintery theme has struck the island with all of the usual colourful chaos present.
Naturally, a new season also brings with it a new Battle Pass (which has also received its own new trailer). As always, the Battle Pass contains 100 levels for you to work towards with more than 100 cosmetic rewards available for doing so, and costs 950 V-Bucks. One particularly interesting feature this time around is the addition of Wraps, which can be used to decorate your weapons and vehicles once earned.
If you just watched the trailer above, you’ll also have spotted the new X-4 Stormwing plane and a mention of an all-new Creative mode. This new mode lets you create, play, and save anything you can imagine on private islands, opening up opportunities for you to design your very own minigames from scratch. It’s an interesting concept, and could well add a huge chunk of fun to proceedings – make sure to check that one out when it arrives later today.
Will you be dropping in for another season of Fortnite? Do this season’s offerings look like good additions to you? Let us know your thoughts down below.
Nintendo has revealed that a gameplay livestream will be taking place today to celebrate tomorrow’s launch of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and the competitors taking part are rather special indeed.
Hosted by Nintendo UK, this livestream will feature representatives from Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, and Sega as they battle it out to see who comes out on top. The wording of this tweet below suggests that each team will be using a character from their own studio.
If you want to catch the event, here are all the times (and that all important link) you’ll need:
