MindFreak

Denmark has now been closed down. Schools are closing for 14 days from Friday (they couldn't do it earlier than that) and the public sector has been completely shut down, people are being sent home to work and if they can't work, they just get the time off (paid). It's a drastic move but I think it's the right one. Over the past week, things have been growing more and more intense. Today at work, noone really got anything off their hands. The private sector has been recommended to make employees work from home - so I'll be doing that the coming weeks. However, as my wife is a doctor she has to work so I'll be home with my son (2.6 years old) so I'll probably not be able to work very efficiently. I just hope there isn't any panic where people just run amok in the grocery stores. That would make this thing terrible. If we can just go about without feeling it much more than we have to maintain a bit of a distance to people, it will be fine, albeit a bit boring to work from home for such a long period of time.

Interesting tidbit about the Direct there.

I'd love to see a battleship, Bowser's Castle and Peach's Castle as Lego. That would be interesting. Getting bricks to make your own levels would be cool but not something you'd display for long.

Speculation from my part. I don't care about AC - at all. I know, that's on me, but still, they should announce something that could release between now and August. And as Helmsly says: I don't think announcing games that come out after AC will hurt the sales of AC.

News from Nintendo have been really slow the past month. Next to nothing has been announced and communication on their Twitter is just meaningless. It seems like a Direct has been planned but scrapped and instead of announcing stuff from it, they just keep it to themselves. I remember back when Iwata died, there also was a news drought and suddenly, a few games were announced out of the blue - it was probably a Direct that had been cancelled. Why hasn't that been the case now, then? And if the Direct is not cancelled, why don't they publish it? Occam's razor implies that it's probably because they haven't got enough content and games to announce to warrant a Direct (the simplest solution) but I certainly hope that isn't the case. What about the Direct Mini that suddenly released out of nowhere two years ago? I didn't like the surprise format they went with there but at least there were news.

Somehow that confirms my hunch that the game isn't doing too well anymore. Recently, I've found that getting a good position in the leagues has become easier so I suspect that people are putting the game down now, and I don't think multiplayer will make them come back.

Looks good!

Play-Asia has a cover for Journey to the Savage Planet for Switch. It has received some ratings over the past months so could very well be on the way.

Oh, I actually thought that the legendaries in GBL was permanent and in all regions. Damn, I want them but I don't raid. I hate that they have changed the Research Breakthrough rewards to useless Pokémon (actually, Ferroseed's evolution is alright in GBL with the right moves...).

@Grazza Oh FFS, just two more seconds of playtime and all would have been good. TWO SECONDS!

Once again, I feared moving onto the new league - this time Master League with no upper CP limit but again I've been enjoying it and have managed to win about 70 % of my matches, I think. I'm going with a team that beats most of the very popular Pokémon types - a Mamoswine with Avalance and Bulldoze, a Machamp with Dynamic Punch and a Togekiss which has some bulk and can take on the dragons. But now I'm simply getting too many TMs and Rare Candy and no Pokémon to give it too. I only need the ones that are trade evolutions (no way in hell that I want to gather 250 Candy to evolve Timburr and Roggenrola and also a no to 200 Candy for both Karrablast and Shelmet as they are useless) and the fossil bird Archeops by now. I hope they release new Pokémon soon.

I've always found 5-6 to be the best number of reps as the trade-offs feel more balanced. At the higher reps, it takes ages and the progress is minimal. At lower reps, it's just more breaks than exercise and it gets more dangerous as the weight gets heavier, and then you can't really transfer that strength into other things as you don't have the stamina. It feels great to lift a high weight a couple of times, though.

I'm regularly running while at work - there is a decent 4-5 km route without stops that go around a small lake so it's quite a nice run. In the beginning, I took the 4 km route and was fine but a part of that has been overflooded by water so I'm now turning around a little over halfway through and get to 5 km instead. I feel that those 5 km are really hard, even though I'm used to running that distance by now, and have been looking at it - it's mainly uphill the entire way back home and the wind usually comes from that direction. This means that I'm running at a pace about 4:10 min/km which is fine but slower than what I want - I'm aiming for 4:00. Today, I went for a run starting from my home and hitting a ~6 km route withiout any breaks. Was surprised to see a time of 23:53 minutes - 4:01 min/km. I think those harder 5 km are making my normal route easier for me, and I think I could have hit the 4:00 today since I had to slow down at a point because I was passing two pairs of persons that where passing each other.

New Pokémon, Zarude, revealed (as promised). Rogue Monkey Pokémon, Dark/Grass, Ability: Leaf Guard. No word about how to obtain it, though.

Pocket Dungeon actually looks pretty fun. Going to keep an eye out for that.

Not going to watch it as I don't care for the game. Would rather have had a general Direct - if you are not getting Animal Crossing, there is not really much to look forward to this year. Luckily, I have Witcher 3 to keep myself entertained - and after that The Outer Worlds and whatever should come, so it doesn't bother me that much.

I watched Sonic the Hedgehog last night. It was better than I expected, Jim Carrey and Sonic carried the movie though. As a video game based movie, I think it was quite good - I think they pretty much got Sonic right (yeah, he talked a lot and was like that hyperactive kid but it made sense in the movie given he had been alone for ten years), and there were some references to the games. I would have wanted some more of the music from the games hidden here and there, that would have been awesome. As a movie in itself, it wasn't good. The acting apart from Jim Carrey was rather poor and the plot had giant holes in it. But the humour was good (though it catered to the pre-teens a lot sometimes) and the overall feel of the movie was good enough for me. 6/10 - enjoyable for what it is and it's great to see Sonic "in real life".

Online F2P FPS Warface from Crytek (Crysis-games) has been released without warning on the eShop.

Catherine is an awesome puzzler.

My wife got to pick the movie for yesterday and picked Marriage Story (I voted for Shazaam but lost). She ended up falling asleep after the first hour but I finished it. It was quite spectacular and in particular the fight scene was excellent. I have never seen anything that seemed so real in movies before. It was really good. Generally, the movie itself was fascinating and well-acted and -written. I only have one gripe with it: But an excellent movie all in all.

Teaser for Season 4 is out: I must admit that I didn't recall why this teaser was so surprising until I read about the end of season 3.

Of course 33 % is a fine but not a big discount. However, given that the games* are 2+ years old they should have reached at least 50 % off by now. I'm not saying the games are not good, not that they don't deserve to be sold at a decent price, and that gamers are spoiled by app and free games and thus want games dirt cheap now. I'm just saying that historically, sales on Nintendo's own games are disappointing compared to other publishers' sales. 33 % on Fire Emblem: Three Houses is nice and to be expected. *BotW, Odyssey, Super Mario Party, MK8DX, ...

Yeah, no. Probably up to 33 % off on most titles and then one odd title with 75 % off - as @drahkonsuggested.

Hmm? Many games support one save per user on the console. Hence you have to pick the user when starting the software. I feel that should have been easy enough for them to utilize on AC. What's up with the 6.2 GB for the physical version? Is that the save game that takes up so much space in itself?

Saw on Reddit that it's been more than 156 days which was the previous record between two general Directs. So yeah, it's been a while.