MindFreak

Congrats! And same for me. At least we hope that a baby is coming, we have the first scan next week to confirm that there's something living in there. Due in August. Apart from that building a workshop and a (small, about 10 m^2) fitness room in our garage, along with some other projects in our home. We're also planning a vacation to Lego Land (in Denmark) and a party. So basically nothing too exciting planned.

I agree, normally I would expect carpenters and the like to start at 6 am. That would have been inconsiderate. But it must be bad if people tend to vandalism because of some work being done on a house. That's a crazy overreaction.

New year sale has started:

Got some money from my parents in law, and some DIY stuff from my children that they made in their daycare/kindergarten. My son got some Lego sets that I consider partly for me as I have to help him build them (though with the iPad builder app he can largely do it by himself now). The biggest one he got was the 3 in 1 Creator set with a viking ship. That's pretty cool but we haven't started it yet as it's pretty big.

I imagine Tears of the Kingdom will get a Switch 2 enhanced port when that console releases, but I fully expect that a new 3D Mario will launch with Switch 2 when it launches in 2024. Can't see anything else being a system seller.

First real trailer for Oppenheimer - Nolan's next movie: Not that impressed, to be honest. It's an interesting story but it feels a bit pretentious.

A demo has been released on the Japanese eShop and it's been announced that the demo will release globally soon enough. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/12/psa-you-can-download-a-free-sonic-frontiers-demo-from-japans-eshop

Many indie games are easy to complete within 5-8 hours. Some are even only a couple of hours long.

Here are mine: Nothing surprising but I can see that my son has got more playtime and is playing more stuff on my Switch now.

New trailer for Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse (pt. 1 I guess):

I picked this up and played a few levels with a friend. It hasn't really clicked for me and besides being awesome to look at and listen to, I haven't found it much fun to actually play, especially not on my own. Maybe I'm just not that into beat em ups.

You could take 10 or whatever out of those 100 and put aside for the Titanic set. I think that would be better business than paying the very high price for the set on Lego's official store.

Phil Spencer ellaborates on Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/12/06/call-duty-nintendo-microsoft-sony-xbox/

All gyms taken defeated, all Team Star bases dissolved, and all Titans calmed. Just need to defeat Elite 4 and the final-final boss of Team Star to be done with the game. It hasn't been bad but I must say that the gyms were simply too easy without any level scaling. I was far overlevelled when I finally challenged the Alfonada gym. I still haven't settled on the final member of my team: It seems that a lot of the new Pokémon are dark or ghost types so they don't fit into my team as I already have one of each (which is stupid, I know, but I like Ceruledge a lot and Meowscarada is a good grass type on my team).

Surprise!

It has? The one with Mushroom Kingdom, here we come?

When compared directly like that he does seem a bit more flat than the other versions but who knows, maybe that gives a more pleasant viewing over the course or 90 minutes or more.

Still digging it, looks solid. Surprised they left out Goombas, though. I would have expected them to include Goombas and make them like Minions.

Just took down 2 Gyms in an hour which leaves me with just 1 left. Really disappointed by this, they are piss easy and the Gym tests are absurd and just not any fun, except the double battle warm up which was basically just battles like it should be. It was still too easy, though. They really should have had some level scaling options. That said, Garchomp and Ceruledge are absolute beasts that can take down Nemona and Gyms by themselves. Still need one Titan and two Team Star bases. In general, the game is decent fun but everything is just made trivially easy since they have made the Pokémon too underlevelled to accommodate the open world structure. Only found 1 Pokémon I couldn't defeat, it was a level 75 Terrastelyzed Lucario in a cave but I was able to escape. The game is also stupidly slow. The battles drag out because every action is followed by a delay, and because walking about is just slow. Luckily the world isn't that big. Even though the game is a technical failure, I haven't actually encountered anything other than graphical glitches and a single sudden crash. That's at least something. I haven't even made my final team yet. Still dragging a Clodsire along but can't settle on which Pokémon I want.

Ouch. That's rough. Write-up here if you don't want to watch the video.

There is a move called False Swipe which will leave the Pokémon at 1 HP. That has been there for long. Seems like this is the shortest Pokémon game in ages. I can see the rest of my adventure being quite fast having a team of level 45. I now returned to the central city and went east this time and everything is just level 20 or below. :/

Two Titans and three Gyms down. My entire team is about level 40 now, I wonder how overpowered I'll end up being for the remaining Gyms.

This is pretty cool. Found in a datamine of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe:

Oh frick

Got a few laughs tonight. Took down my first Titan and Team Star Base today. Titan was Flying. Wasn't as epic as I had hoped and why didn't they show levels? Team Star Base - why am I limited to only three Pokémon here? I'm taking down an evil organisation but I can only bring three Pokémon (except for the boss which allows me to use all 6). But when I challenge Gyms, I can bring in a full team against a team of three. It's hard to understand why they don't add a bit more rules to the Gym challenge instead of adding stupid minigames. Speaking of: Oh, is there actually anything to do in the cities? I've visited two now and the only shops there are only sandwich shops and shops that sell clothes and gear. Does anyone have anything to actually say in these cities? No side quests?