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Japanese weekly sales figures: Switch – 221,210 (164,908) PlayStation 4 – 45,161 (40,524) New 2DS LL – 31,653 (27,074) New 3DS LL – 19,115 (15,059) PlayStation 4 Pro – 17,804 (45,163) PlayStation Vita – 9,049 (8,483) 2DS – 4,324 (3,192) Xbox One – 2,175 (406) New 3DS – 421 (248) Xbox One X – 132 (75) Wii U – 75 (70) PlayStation 3 – 44 (48) Absolutely insane number of Switch's to sell in a week!

Yes, it only has a second release on a dead handheld, not nearly enough people got to experience the extra content and it could do with a visual upgrade. I think the game made a name for itself with P4G that would've gained it sales if it was out on a current console.

Don't go blaming me if you don't like it.

We've done our whole Christmas meal and present giving already, as we're in Belgium visiting @Eenuh's family. This was one of the presents that I was given. I'm looking forward to utterly neglecting it until I get through the games that I was given last Christmas and when I decide to play something that isn't Overwatch.

I've been playing the game for a couple of hours and there are two main issues I see with the game. The first is that the grind for characters and stages seems a bit excessive. You use in game currency (awarded from playing matches and completing daily objectives) and spend it on pinatas but the issue is that you only get 1 item from each of these and from my play, character drop rates are low unless you use crystals for the top pinatas which are hard to come by. For levels, you only start with 3 unlocked and through playing the arcade tower mode you can play on the others. But to unlock the other maps you need to get characters to LVL 10 each so there's a substantial grind even to get 1 of them let alone the other 10 or so that are locked away from quick or online play. That needs to be addressed by Angry Mob Games but the biggest is how some characters seem unbalanced and can pretty much chain you in grapples or hits which you can't block, and the dodge mechanic doesn't seem to always take when trying to get out of these. Against the AI even on easy, characters like Paco will chain grapple and even throw you under the main platform on some maps making it impossible to get back up and so you lose stock. And just generally, some characters lend themselves to spam attacks to easily, such as Chief Feathers which is who you'll encounter a lot online. Those things need addressed but the devs say they're going to be updating the game regularly, with new characters every 2-3 months and such. It's still a solid game tho and a decent Smash clone. With regards to online, as I mentioned in the Indie Games thread it's peer to peer so the wonkiness of the online will depend on your connection and your opponents, nothing to do with server issues. It's been fine for me from what I've played of the online. And frame rate issues are really few and far between. They're more apparent when there's 4 characters fighting it out but even then you'll only have a quick momentary jump to catch up with the gameplay or the game only dropping minimal frames (single digits at most) so it' not such a big issue. As I say, it's a decent game that hopefully the devs will keep updating to iron things out.

New trailer: My wife saw the trailer and said "So... Lemmings with portals?" I was amazed - she was right. It looks awesome.

Just finished the campaign. One of the best CoD campaigns in a long time. It really was like Band of Brothers. Plenty of action, great story, fun set pieces and high stakes. Awesome. I loved the mission Epilogue. It was just a small thing but it was quite powerful in the way it was presented. Fantastic stuff. There were a couple of tricky parts on Veteran difficulty. On one section I had to destroy a tank by places charges on its back. I got a checkpoint as I placed the first one on it but when I done this I had very little health. It took me ages to get another charge on it due to my small amount of health and a massive wave of enemies that has spawned. The other section that was tough was near the end. I won't spoil it but I eventually got through it by spamming smoke grenades, charging in with a shotgun and then crawling my way to victory. Its great to see that Veteran is no longer just a grenade throwing, infinite enemy spawning mess that it once was. Those were some tough and dark days.

Got myself all the available Man of Steel collections from the Comixology sale. I've been in the mood to read some Byrne era Superman recently.

Always. You bloody city folk, with your horseless carriages and yer fancy words. I don't actually mind the commute too much. 40 minutes is a good amount to be able to listen to a podcast, but it's a bugger in petrol and wear and tear on the car (just had a £450 bill for brakes). Out of curiosity, how much does commuting in London cost? I was never entirely sure about the job, but I had just had enough of the previous one and figured it couldn't be any worse. I was wrong. Very wrong. On the upside, the new place seems pretty good. Mainly good reviews on Glassdoor, plus the perks make it seem like they actually care about employees. From memory, the perks include: a day off for your birthday, Perkbox, petrol paid for when I need to travel, £500 referral bonus if I refer someone to a job advertisement and they're successful and a few other things I forget about. Plus, I can submit training course requests on anything relevant to my role. None of the perks are groundbreaking, but it's way more than I've ever had before. Also, the biggest perk for me is working from home. It's not something I'm taking lightly, as I know it won't all be sitting around in my underwear, eating Doritos and slacking off. I'm actually a bit nervous about the idea, but the thought of no daily commute, being in to sign for parcels/let people in to fix stuff and having complete control over my "office" is a pretty big winner for me. I've already got my first referral lined up:

Behind-the-music video. The music in this game sounds great!

Nah, it's certainly more of a faff on than the original Zombies and the variations after. In the earlier versions there were no real missions. It was about fortifying your position and standing your ground. However, I didn't play Infinite Warfare or BO3 so I can't comment on how they played.

Urgh, so we're in for trouble with Sony and Nintendo going full retard next time

Persona Q is the best selling Persona spinoff in the series (267.172) easily outselling P4 Arena (191.748) and P4 Dancing All Night (124.334). At this point, Vita is deader than a squashed rodent after it has had a grenade chucked at it. There is no way on Metatron's earth that Catherine would sell more on Vita than Switch. No chance in hell. This move is about as baffling as making another EO game for 3DS instead of Switch... Oh wait...

Insane. What's even crazier is that there's no signs of it slowing down. Sony have shown they can drop the price if need be ( as seen during Black Friday ) and the lineup of games next year is just as strong, if not stronger, than this years. Ni No Kuni 2, Yakuza 6, God of War, Spider-Man, Detroit, Dragonball FighterZ, Monster Hunter World, Days Gone, Kingdom Hearts 3....I haven't even caught up with this years games yet!

What? again?

Had some credit at Grainger games. I swear I'll play Okami some day. Picked up a second copy of DQIX so I can replay it without deleting my original save.

I'm sure some of you will love this site. https://www.comedywildlifephoto.com/

For 16€. Can pick it up on Monday.

After 80 hours the adventure is over. It took a while to get to grips with the last boss and when I finally brought it down the game decided to crash on the final cutscene! I took it on again and managed to get a Full Burst ( first time I've achieved that in the game ) which took off over half of its health and finished it off. I'm kinda glad it did crash, so I got to experience that special move. Despite its flaws and technical issues, I absolutely loved the game, especially the story. You have a massive world to explore in and an amazing story that drives you forward. It's pretty much given me everything I wanted that Zelda failed to deliver on. The voice acting is ropey at times but there is so much character and charm in the delivery that you end up falling in love with it. I play a lot of JRPGs but it's been a while since a whole cast of characters have been this great. Usually you end up with one or two characters who aren't developed or are just there to make up the numbers. I found this not to be the case with XC2. Each one of them has a good back story and a role to play. The soundtrack for the game is simply outstanding. Some of the tunes are used at just the right times in cutscenes, either to get you hyped or bring out some other emotion. After the disaster of a soundtrack in XCX, this is a true return to form. I can kinda see where the DLC may take place. There are one or two things that could be explored in future content and I may have to pick up the season pass once the substantial stuff arrives. The credits may have rolled but this is a game I can see me dipping in and out of for a while. There's plenty of Blades to still unlock and side quests to complete but for now I think I'll move on to something else. This is probably my favourite Switch game. I love the little hybrid but it's lacked a game like this to truly get my teeth into. It's been great for smaller titles, or games that you can jump in and out of, so it's been refreshing to finally get a game that lasts a good 80 hours that I can enjoy. More JRPGs, please! The Switch started strong at launch and has ended the year on a high with this game. Well played Nintendo/Monolithsoft.

So I finally bit the bullet (as prices kept going up) and ordered our tickets to go to Italy over the Easter break! Planning to fly into Milan, stay there for two nights, then move on to Florence for a few days (possibly also visit Siena and Pisa) and then go to Rome! Now I just need to sort out all the hotels/rooms, train tickets, museum tickets, sightseeing tours etc. And learn some Italian. Fun! Looking forward to it though!