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Thought my Switch was toast earlier on! Had been playing Animal Crossing (it was in sleep mode inside the dock) went to resume the game and... nothing. Black screen of doom. Took the Switch out of the dock and noticed that it was insanely hot, turns out the vents at the back were quite dusty too. So yeah, gave it and the dock a good clean, let it cool down and then restarted it. It seems to be ok, although I lost a little bit of my “progress” in Animal Crossing. Switch + hot weather + obscured vents = not good. This also might have been responsible for the slow motion final smash malarkey last night. Anyway, have setup a little usb powered fan to help stop my Switch from melting now. Would suggest people check their systems out for dust/overheating!

Tell me about it. So many breakfasts where I accidentally bite the wrong thin- Oh, nevermind, then.

This is such an odd point to end on. People like games for a variety of reasons - they don't have to be the reason that you happen to play games. Equally, many people didn't get into MGSV for the reasons you state. The games that have really stuck with me over the years - Outer Wilds, Shadow of the Colossus, Edith Fitch, Inside, even something like Celeste, haven't done so solely because of the gameplay, but because of how the gameplay has supplemented a story or 'vibe' that has resonated with really me. People always talk about LoU's story because the gameplay is perfectly tailored around the story that it's telling, capturing the desperation of the characters. It's cool if you prefer games that just feel great to play, but that's your preference - it doesn't mean that other people are engaging with games for the wrong reasons. See the strong sales and critical acclaim of Life is Strange of early Telltale games. Again - I've read a lot of books - I did an English degree! But games can be unique in how they can tell stories - and it's a diservice to games to claim otherwise. As an example, in a weird way, no other medium has managed to capture the experience of losing a parent and the strange relationship between father and son afterward as God of War did for me. Lastly, there are some parallels to Last Jedi but in the case of that film, its failure was ultimately more about the execution of that film - a totally whack, poorly directed mess - than simply that it didn't show how they imagined their characters to end up. For Lou2's flaws, (from a few hours in) it feels like it's doing exactly what its creative leads are setting out for it to do. (Side note: totally see where @Goafer's coming from (not opened that spoiler mind). This game isn't for everyone - I can totally see why people wouldn't want to engage with this game - that's cool - again it just shows how games now are way more diverse than ten years ago, and that different games are for different people)

What saddo carries 2 watering cans!? Still, could be worse... He never fails to entertain.

Are you feelin' it, Shulk?

Oops Edit: to be fair, this entire list of games cost me just shy of 45 Euros. Most of it is stuff that has been sat on my Switch wish list for months. Borderlands GOTY was the most expensive at 10 Euros, the rest were between 50 cents and a fiver for the most part. Praise be to the man who invented regional pricing as way to combat pirates. Praise be to living in a "third world country" and praise not be to Nintendo who probably would have charged me 200 euros WITH discount for this exact list.

Went back to Gran Turismo 5 and recreated my IRL car. The game looks amazing for a PS3 game:

Thanks for the games @Glen-i @RedShell @BowserBasher and @L.J.G. (Yes, I'm mentioning you, even though you're not an active forum member) Those were some great matches I thought, I was surprised seeing my brother play better than I ever have with Dragon Quest's Hero. Whatever happened at the end of Red's Bayonetta stage was... unprecedented and amusing. Next week should be interesting.

Movie streaming is finally coming to Switch

I'm in.

Not a bad idea. But if I may hijack that plan a bit, may I suggest making the theme "Retro Game show"? I'd want you all to wear somewhat smart, but casual. The kind of stuff that wouldn't be embarrassing to be seen in on an old-school Game Show.

As long as they never put Waluigi in.

OK, @BowserBasher and I was discussing throwing a N-Europe PARTAY tomorrow at 8pm on his island. I've been dying to do one throughout my lockdown. Who here would be interested? Sure, me giving away money for the prizes isn't exactly as exciting as it was around the launch period, but bragging rights are always great! With me playing partay host and him providing the island, there would be room for 6 more people to join in. If 8pm is a bad time, perhaps we can work around it? Depending on if it's OK for other people. Guest List Glen-i (Partay host) BowserBasher (Island host / Island Name Kyoshi) RedShell Ronnie Tales

Min Min being the first spirit to get the playable fighter promotion is no doubt gonna get a lot of fans being more vocal. In other words... Dear lord, what have you done, Sakurai!?

Will open gates in 2 mins if anyone wants to visit for Marina's birthday. If I don't reply I'm AFK ha And if anyone has a blue tulip they really really don't want I would more than gladly take it off their hands

As a guy from the outside looking in, it does look baffling. The plot seems to be the main reason why people held the first game in such high regard. I mean, plot is all well and good, but it kinda sits in the middle of my list of things a game should have. (And that changes wildly depending on the type of game I'm playing)

BTW, appreciate the gift. It's perfect for my basement. Also, stay out of my basement.

Marina’s birthday today! I know she’s a resident on quite a few N-E islands, so it would be good if everyone who’s got her could open the gates at some point today for the birthday celebration Nook miles. Gonna open mine for a while now if anyone would like to bring her a prezzie.

Just who the hell is this 'Sid Meier' anyway, and why is he ruining my life?

0/10 if Reyn doesn't yell "MAN, WHAT A BUNCH OF JOKERS" when you win.

Started catching up on Season 4 of My Hero Academia on Tuesday now that the dub is finally complete, and just finished it tonight. Overall, ended up quite enjoying it, though I do feel it's probably the most inconsistent of the three longer seasons we've had since Season 1 in a number of ways. This was the first time I was watching a new season of an anime knowing full well what happened after reading the manga into what I assume would roughly be around halfway through Season 5 last year, and to be completely honest, that first cour I feel was kind of rough and poorly translated to the screen. The animation and art quality on the whole felt like a step down from Season 3, which itself felt like a step down from Season 2, but it certainly shows in some of the fight animations and choreography in the first half of the season, and there were a bunch of decisions made by the director which I think turned out very poorly. Medium shots and those positioned even further away just looked so poor in terms of quality, almost laughable at times to be honest considering this is one of the biggest anime at the moment, but that was always bound to happen considering that Toho has undeniably been stretching Bones on that front with having production on Heroes Rising running in parallel (thankfully there don't seem to be plans, at least for now, to continue churning out movies, so I have high hopes for a step up in quality in Season 5). As for the arcs themselves, as I alluded to before, I feel like the Shie Hassaikai arc just wasn't directed that well, especially when compared with the later episodes in the season. It was quite poorly paced until the last couple of episodes, and seemed to jump around with little rhyme or reason a lot of the time, and though one or two fights were handled quite well, I feel like a lot of key moments were handled as haphazardly as they could be. I'll dig into that a bit further and some of the other moments I want to talk about from this arc in the spoiler tag: The Remediation Course arc was a good laugh, but I was much more pleasantly surprised by just how well the U.A. Festival arc translated to the screen from what I thought was an interesting but weirdly paced arc in the manga. I loved it, from how Gentle Criminal and La Brava were handled to 1-A's concert and everything else. As @Jonnas mentioned previously, the animation, music, choreography, etc, were all excellent here. What an uplifting arc! Also, Eri is adorable and another character who I think translated really well to the anime and in the dub. Lastly, the Pro Hero arc. I knew from the manga that this would either end up capping off Season 4 or be our intro to Season 5, and I am so glad it was the former. Now to dive back into the spoiler tag. Lastly, the music. Not quite as varied as OST's from previous seasons, a lot of moments where they kind of cheaply go for the ethereal choir sound, but there was some good stuff in there. Namely, as mentioned previously, Might, as well as Eri, Kimi no Chikara, the jazzy stuff for the Shie Hassaikai, Overhaul's theme, and the remixes and rearrangements we heard throughout the season of All for One's theme. Overall, think my ranking of the seasons is now S2 > S3 > S4 >>> S1. Might pick up some copies of the manga and get caught up again Oh, and I also got caught up on the manga for Hunter x Hunter after picking up the volumes which follow the end of the anime and then finding the other chapters online. Loved it, honestly have a hankering to watch the show again soon. But anyways, now to start the long and painful wait for new chapters from Togashi...

Great games guys. Had a few great wins then that one win as Bowser, only cause @RedShell couldn’t get to me as I was stuck in that gap.

Somebody REALLY wants to make sure that Just Dance doesn’t get to commandeer the title of Last Ever Wii Game!

Gates are open for Marinas Birthday. Anyone would like to water flowers can please do so too.

So uh..

Tulips don't come in blue though.

Hopefully a few people will still be open later for Marina birthdays. I’ll open up this evening from around 7.

Luckily 8pm is good for me too. Or this would have gone down the pan lol. One of the games has prizes buried already so no need for just bells there. Otherwise should be fun. id like to suggest dress up again like last time I held the meteor shower party. Gets people to come up with some silly clothing.

Count me in!

Hellblade I've played both on PC and Switch now.. And I made the thread for the Stanley Parable all those years ago! Firewatch was on my Switch wishlist yes. Subnautica also popped up in some other videos I watched, could also be interesting. And sure, Bioshock.never played 2 or infi nite, but I should re-install the first one at some point. Never finished it.. The PC version has a nasty floaty mouse, which made playing it a bit awkward. I wonder of they fixed that in the remastered version.

Me! 8pm is good.

Ones that are not yet on your list but on my wishlist/library: Firewatch, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, The Stanley Parable, Bioshock Collection, Subnautica (more of a discovery game than a story-driven game though).

And me. I've not played it and I probably haven't been very positive about it. I don't hate the game and I'm sure it's a masterpiece. It's just not for me. I think enough time has passed. So I'll spoiler why.

Also, everytime Orville says "let me connect you to the ol' internet" I think, Nintendo in a nutshell.

Look one post below yours...

I can't give her Cranston's Poster, so what's the bloody point? I'll be around in a bit.

Started doing my daily Animal Crossing Sweep, saw K.K., and immediately panicked thinking that I missed an entire day.

It's a Cha-cha Azure coloured Fiat 500 Pop with a large dent in the driver's side door where I reversed into a pillar.

No fighters pass for me this time around, so guess I’ll just spectate in order to not ruin the shenanigans. Yeah, very strange indeed. Smash Bros. clearly doesn’t like the heat. Also, during the last match I played (on my Rhythm Epilation stage) the rumble motor inside my Gamecube controller would not stop! I took that as a sign it was time to stop playing. Anyway, thanks for the games everyone!

Leif is the equivalent of having no visitors at all. It's the worst day in the week. Isabelle doesn't mention anything of note. The only thing she'll mention is if there'sa camp visitor. Oh the one exception is that she'll also mention meteor showers, but no idea if she always does, I forgot. You need to manually check each day what visitor you have.. It's really simple. Redd you can immediately see by checking of your map. Then you head to the plaza to see if the least interesting visitors are visiting, Leif, Label, or Kicks. If not, you got a better visitor. Sahara comes every week, she might be wandering about. Flick or CJ, or Gulliver may be visiting, but they're unlikely to show up if you've had them last week. In fact, on average it usually takes several weeks before they show up again. Celeste and Wisp are different, in that they are the only visitors who ignore all the general rules. They can show up whenever they feel like it (but to be clear, only at night). Wisp will just be random (though I feel like he shows up once a week, but you need to find him obviously). Celeste can show up whene there's a meteor shower, which can be mentioned by Isabelle. Villagers will also mention if there's likely to be a meteor shower that night. However, Celeste can also show up when there's no meteor shower. There's just a clear night, and you'll have more shooting stars than normal, but not a full on meteor shower. In my experience she shows up a couple times a month. Then of course there's also the forum. Any visitors who are useful to other players will usually get mentioned here, so that's a good way to Celeste and Redd more often for example. They both get announced a lot here.

A certain change to Definitive Edition has inadvertently made Reyn, a pretty outclassed character originally, suddenly the best and most broken character in the game. (I've timestamped this in a way that shouldn't be spoileriffic, but just in case, skip to 13:38. Because there's pretty big Chapter 12-ish spoilers earlier in the video)

Well done and congratulations to Liverpool. Definitely the best team this season and they deserve it. Can't be any questions about that, regardless of allegiances.

Phyllis! Of course, I thought I'd got it wrong but Nelly was the only other name I can think of. In a way I think I prefer then rolling out content this way, means there should always be something different to look forward to. They just need to keep them coming regularly, with the game selling the way it is there's no reason why they can't continually invest in its development and let the game grow over time. Nintendo's trend for cutting off updates after a while definitely has me worried though, the way they advertised the final Mario Maker update and the final Splatfast and ARMS party crash leads me to believe they'll do similar with New Horizons. I suppose the lack of microtransactions in those games meant that profitability falls off a cliff after a while but neither of them have been as big of a hit as Animal Crossing so I think it's possible that they support it beyond the first 12 months.

Steam Summer Sale has just started. Not really planning on buying much myself this year.

Yep, same vibes except arguably much worse in my opinion because of the leaked cutscenes a few months back fuelling the fire well before the game had even released. Again, though, I think it's a very vocal minority, because simply put the majority won't have finished the game at this point. People have also had their minds made up for months about certain scenes as a result of the leaks, and context for certain scenes is extremely important when it comes to storytelling in any medium, so of course those scenes being viewed out of context doesn't help in the slightest. Also doesn't help that expectations were sky high based on the first game and Naughty Dog's history of critically acclaimed and successful games, people were expecting a 10/10 masterpiece, no questions asked, but that just was never going to happen. I read an interview with Druckmann the other day where I think he nailed it: the problem with something this big, in a setting like the one we see in TLOU2, just narrows it's storytelling options the more that the series goes on. There are absolutely some problems that I had with this game that I mentioned before, and I don't think it will be for everyone, let alone fans of the first game - like Square Enix with Final Fantasy VII Remake, I think Naughty Dog took a lot of risks here that they didn't necessarily need to, but it was warranted by the story they were telling. I think it's got some serious pacing issues, amongst other things, but this game has had an absolute grip on me since finishing it on Monday night. It's not flawless, but I'll be damned (and lying) if I said that it's not one of the most intense, brutal, and gripping experiences I've had with any form of entertainment. And again, that's not going to be for everyone. And that's absolutely fine. But I think that the majority of the backlash that I've seen from the vocal minority (you know, those review bombing, insulting others for liking the game, and so on) is excessive at best, and borderline disgusting at worst. Neil Druckmann and the folks over there at Naughty Dog are handling it incredibly well so far, all things considered.

Fantastic GIFs from Naughty Dog.

Fun times visiting @Glen-i’s island just now. Had a good laugh when you thought I was out of watering cans. I’m a reliable gardener.