AWKWARD ZOMBIE

It was delayed in the US to allow shipping from the port strikes to catch back up and make sure there was sufficient stock of the bundles and Amiibo at launch.


The issue is that it's a pendulum swing between EU and America that's been happening since the late 90's. Games are hurried out for the US to make it to shelves in time for the holidays whereas they just come out in January or spring because there's not as hot a market in the EU area during the holiday season. Or games come out earlier in Europe because the game is completed but it's not quite a hot time to launch the game in the US and there's no need to halt the game for other markets because of it. This has been going on since the gamecube days. Europe started getting significant delays around 2004 onwards because of PEGI and the other various national review boards needing to have time to review the games in depth, and NOE having to make changes in the games in order to ensure they pass for the desired rating (or are even allowed into the countries to begin with in regards to things like gambling). This is where a lot of the delays came from because NOE wasn't used to dealing with these issues, the EU review boards were very bogged down and slow at the time, and NOJ didn't generally think about the outside markets as much when making games, figuring that the localizing groups would just deal with it (which causes delays). Now that the focus has shifted to more simultaneous releases, the games go through review much sooner than previously done before, less editing is done to the games to make them marketable outside of translating, and overall the process is much smoother. The problem now ends up being that we're returning to form where the EU releases don't matter in timing because games just sell. Games in the US though are purposefully held up for ideal release dates which can end up being a bit absurd considering some games end up launching on the same day just because it's an ideal day for a game launch (Pokemon ORAS and Smash Wii U last year). Add to this the outrage people have felt about NOE suddenly giving pre-order bonuses to just about every game while sales have not increased due to doing so, and the fact that these bonuses have made NA consumers jealous (and rustled that most of the bonuses end up being Nintendo World Store exclusive, like Link's Scarf and the MK8 Blue Shell), the still bad communication of intent from Nintendo and NOA, things like how Club Nintendo was managed, and supposed slumping pre-order sales for games in NA, and you get why people think that NOA hates the consumers of the largest market Nintendo operates in.

While it's certainly not true that Nintendo hates North America (we get between 40-60% of Amiibo production supplied to us even though that's still not enough to saturate our shelves compared to the loaded shelves of Europe and Australia), the important thing to business is that the consumers don't FEEL like they're being overlooked or slighted, which working on setting synchronous global release dates (barring that at least synchronous Eastern and Western market releases) and treating all regions the same in regards to pre-order bonuses and such would go a long way to fix.

Yoshi's Wooly World is super cute and fun, I love the music especially. Poochy is the best.

I'm pretty sure we can all agree that Poochy ain't stupid.

Walking Dead is a pretty good game.

Something interesting I noticed in Tales of Zestiria.
If you go long enough without resting at an Inn the characters will have different end battle quotes involving being tired and needing to rest. This keeps up until you rest at an Inn.

It's a nice subtle notification since inns do have more importance than just healing.

I bought Ace Attorney: Justice for All and Ace Attorney Investigations a couple days ago, and I'm enjoying both of them.

My thoughts on Justice for All:

Case 1: Meh, whatever. Opening case, really easy, you know who the culprit is from the beginning, yadda yadda yadda. Amnesia is kind of a cute plot point for why Phoenix needs to learn the basics again though.

Case 2: This case was getting really good and then the last big reveal COMPLETELY FUCKED IT ALL UP. It's not terrible, but come on, tricking surgeons into giving you facial reconstruction surgery to look like your dead sister? That's pretty fucking stupid. How would that even work? The investigators couldn't even figure it was a British car, which would have completely destroyed Mimi's plan? How dumb are the police in this universe?

Case 3: OHHHHHHHHHHHHH GOD THIS CASE BLOWS. Just.....no. "If the clown tells another joke in court, you get a penalty." No. "I saw the defendant fly away but because I'm too stupid to realize that's physically impossible, I'm going to go off my assumptions it was him because he's a magician." No! "I'm a sixteen year old girl and a bunch of adult men want to marry me." GOD NO! "Is Acro going to still try and get revenge on me?" NO YOU IDIOT HE'S GOING TO JAIL.

Case 4: This one was actually pretty interesting! The only bad thing is the return of Oldbag but she wasn't too prevalent. I like that getting the bad ending means you get to act as stupid as you can. I chose to show Celeste Inpax the article about the scandal. MADAM. MADAM WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS EVIDENCE. OPEN YOUR EYES AND ANSWER ME OR I'LL HOLD YOU IN CONTEMPT OF COURT.

Overall I think this game is better than the first one though, gameplay-wise. I especially like that investigations are made more engaging by continually revealing more facts about the case, rather than just being an evidence collect-a-thon and figure out what it all means in court like the first game. Also the Magatama is great and keeps you thinking instead of pressing A at all the right places. Franziska is mostly fine as a new rival, but the constant foolishly foolish fool talk got a little grating. Also I noticed there was a lot more presenting evidence and profiles during investigations. More than once I got stuck and threw every piece of evidence at everyone until someone said something new.

And I'm at the last case of Ace Attorney Investigations, so I'll share my thoughts on that one once I finish it.

Oh boy you're gonna have so much fun

you know, that's one thing i really hate about phoenix wright, them showing oyu who the killer is before you even start investigating. It kinda ruins the idea of you trying to solve the crime along with the game.

Although, i'll admit, maybe that changes, i haven't gotten particularly far in any of them. First 2 cases of 3, first 2 cases of one and i think about three quarters through the steel samurai one.

I'm counting the tutorial as cases there, by the way, just in case that's not normal and it might confuse you.

They only do that for tutorial cases yeah.

ah.

well, they let you know about redd white in case 2 of 1, at least, but...yeah.

admittedly it's been a long time since i played case 3 oranything from trials and tribulations. My save for 1 got deleted, so i've played back up to case 2, at least, but haven't beaten it yet.

Well, Redd White is only like, a third through the case I believe? But yeah they still do make it obvious, then again that's the second case in the entire series. They're better about it in most other cases though.

The only other cases that really spoil the killer are less about finding out who did it, but rather HOW they did it, which are usually fun since there's still plenty of leaps of logic and the culprit is usually a major asshole.

Like a certain SOMEONE from Dual Destinies.

I dunno about you but I liked Ted Tonate more, L'Belle's plan was way too convoluted for me. I liked the twist in that case though, and the way Apollo delivered it was fucking radical.

I can tell you that my favorite part of Ace Attorney Investigations so far is there's a victim named Deid Mann. They just completely gave up and that's hilarious.

Hurry and finish the game so we can talk about it, jeez you're killing me it's too utterly ridiculous not to discuss