Julius

Don't think this has been mentioned in this thread yet, but Tears of the Kingdom will have the largest file size of any first party Nintendo Switch game to date, at 18.2 GB. Still think it's pretty incredible just how much Nintendo optimise their games and squeeze the file size down, can't begin to imagine the unholy 60 GB mess this game would be if made by someone like Ubisoft Also, I wonder if this is part of the reason for the price increase to $70 over in the US? We've had games larger than 16 GB before on the Switch, sure, but as Nintendo's first game over that size, maybe having to mass produce larger cards on a scale no-one has really had to for the Switch so far could be part of the reason for the price increase? Especially considering that they've already stated that this isn't a sign of things to come – so could be down to something like file size/card capacity?

Almost two years to the day I last bumped this thread and well... ...and have actually started tackling Bloodborne. And it. IS. AWESOME. Been having a weird time these past few weeks, a bunch of ups and downs, but rather than do what I typically do in such a time - play FIFA or GT7 mindlessly - I wanted something which could be all-consuming in the way it grabs me, and obviously a From Software game would fit that billing perfectly. And, well, Bloodborne seemed to be the one calling to me most - just a massive shake-up in terms of appearance after I've played three dark fantasy From titles (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Elden Ring) and a new type of combat to learn. Anyways, from the top - the character creator in this game kind of blows took me a good 40 minutes or so to come up with something I'd be okay spending more than 5 minutes at a time with! The opening to this game is very ambiguous, and very attention-grabbing as a result. Sprinted by the wolf beast guy chilling out in the other room where I woke up after realising I didn't have a weapon to hand, sprinted through to th lamp, and went to the Hunter's Dream. Grabbed the Saw Cleaver and Blunderbuss - because those are the cool looking weapons on the cover, right? - and then returned to Central Yharnam. I've seen clips here and there of Bloodborne over the years, and my main takeaways were how much faster it looked compared to Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, as well as the parry/visceral system, which I thought was fascinating and looked anime as hell. So, naturally, first guy I actually fight in the game I get a shot parry/visceral off on Also did the same the first time I faced this horizontally challenged fella: The shot parry and visceral feel SO DAMN GOOD! Give me monkey lizard brain all that dopamine please love how aggressive this game invites you to play, losing health but being able to gain some of it back just slicing and dicing dudes with a vengeance has clicked really quickly for me (thankfully!), I love the speed of fights, the dodging...I'm a bit over two hours in so far, but if this is any sign of things to come, I think this is going to have my favourite combat in any From Soft game I've played. Sorry Elden Ring I died a couple of times in this area to the bunch of dudes walking the streets, so in the end adopted the age-old approach I first adopted in these games at New Londo at sprinted through after taking out my fair share of the guys here, and haven't died since. Basically felt like I was constantly circling downwards, found some cool Hunter attire which I've since donned down in the sewers, came out to a bridge at a point but then just kept going down, ended up surrounded by gravestones after not diving deeper into the sewers (was starting to get hit hard!)...and felt like I'd gone maybe a bit too far down and like the bridge was probably the true way forwards, so headed back on up and crossed the bridge where I faced the Cleric Beast. For whatever reason the fight didn't click for me until about halfway through when I realised I could tank a few of his sweeping attacks, and so long as I didn't grabbed (which I did once, and it almost killed me getting bounced off the ground!), I could tank these hits while I was dealing damage and just get a bunch of health back; so long as I kept an eye on it, things would be alright. Tried to shot parry but it never paid off, unfortunately, but did get a visceral after bonking the hairy guy on the head at one point left him reeling! And the fight ended pretty shortly after that After that, with the door behind the beast locked, I wasn't too sure where to go, so just decided to risk it and go deeper and deeper into the sewers after a bit of levelling up, and thankfully this paid off with working my way around a bridge some guys were playing catch on...with a huge flaming boulder? took care of the remaining folks and headed up to another boss fight, against Father Gascoigne. This one got hairy at points, especially seeing as he kept hitting me through gravestones while I kept getting stuck trying dodge around them, and similar to my fight against the Cleric Beast, it didn't really click until the end of his second (awesome) phase that I should probably have been trying to shot parry/visceral the whole time! D'oh! Finished him off with two consecutive parry/viscerals once I remembered those were a thing! Anyways, Gascoigne was taken care of first try too, and that capped off my first Bloodborne session. Picked up the Saw Spear to try out tomorrow - looks like it scales with Skill, and I think that's the direction I might go in if I'm right in thinking that that stat's responsible for my visceral attack damage? Besides the combat being awesome, the exploration so far feels like Dark Souls on crack, in large part thanks to how vertically designed this part of the game has been: ladders galore, hidden elevators, and plenty of shortcuts looping around to! Combine that with the awesomely exhilarating combat, and well, the game's sound and visual design... ...and, while only two hours in, yeah, I can sense that this game is going to be very special - even by From's own stupidly high standards. Shame about the framerate though, definitely been a couple of times where it's noticeably nosedived, including during the boss fights I've encountered so far. It's actually the first From game I'm playing targeting anything but 60 fps, so I'm pleasantly surprised by how quickly it all clicked despite that! Really wish I could tell Gehrman to cool it, though... Anyways, that's it for now! Don't think I'll go crazy in-depth in here during my playthrough, but I'll be back for boss fight thoughts for sure, as well as anything interesting otherwise Oh, and to update my Death Tally vs Bosses counter! It's something I toyed with in my notebook while I played Elden Ring and is really fun to look back on, so figure I'll slip it in here to give you an idea of just how bad and good I can be at video games ...really feel like I'm jinxing that third boss fight, huh?

Right, while I still want to catch up on last year's diary in some form or another, figured it was a good idea to start off with what's fresh in my mind and kick off my 2023 diary. But before I dive into that - while probably a month or so late to ask! - does anyone else have any 2023 gaming resolutions? I think I've narrowed mine down to three core resolutions. 1. To buy fewer games at launch by being more purposeful with my purchases. I have a stupidly long backlog of games, an ungodly number of them taking up space on my shelves, and barely enough time to truly make a dent in those...and the pile of games in my backlog continues to grow when I pick up games at launch that I have every intent to play, but ultimately end up steering away from, for one reason or another. There's an edge of guilt to some of these purchases as a result, but perhaps worse than that, it's probably one of the few corners of my spending where I would stand to save quite a bit if I was either more patient about picking these games up or avoided picking them up for the sake of doing so altogether. So, my general rule of thumb for buying at launch in 2023 is that if I buy a game at launch, I am committing to playing that game next. 2. To make a reasonable dent in my backlog. I spent about an hour a few weeks ago going through all of the physical games on my shelf I have yet to start (or, in one or two cases, complete), and not wanting to plan my own demise by committing to getting through 50+ games on my shelf this year, my aim is going to be to put as much of a dent as I can in what I am considering my "priority backlog" - 26 games I want to get through most this year, which on average would mean completing a game every other week if I did get through all of them (...if I started in Jan, starting in Feb kind of mucks the numbers up a bit, but you get the idea). Now, to be very clear for my future self here: the aim is not to get through all 26 of these games in 2023, nor does it mean I can't pick up new games I desire enough to play at launch (as outlined above) or that I can't play other games I own physically if I'm in the mood for them (feel like this could apply to sequels of games in the list in particular), and this is only a collection of physical games - there are no doubt games I own digitally that I'll want to check out at some point this year too; no, the aim is simply to come back to this "priority backlog" and put as much of a dent in it as I can. To help visualise this - and potential spoilers for what I plan to play this year, in a way? - here are the 26 games I have in my priority backlog: 3. To post in the Gaming Diary thread more frequently. Look, I love writing about and talking about games, and while last year was a bit of a wild one for me personally where I needed to take a break, my aim this year is to provide frequent updates in this thread about what I've been playing. How frequent? No clue! And no doubt there'll be asymmetrical gaps between posts depending on game length, what I'm busy with in my personal life (or not, in some cases - I'm actually going on holiday this year!), and I'm sure plenty of other unknowns too, but this is my aim. This is a place I love to post, and games are a passion and interest of mine, so I'm going to try my damned best to stick at it. Thinking back to earlier posts I've made in previous threads and I think I set a high bar for myself with some of my favourite write-ups (namely Chrono Trigger, Metal Gear Solid 2, Suikoden, and Suikoden II), and I think I somehow internalised some pressure over this and felt a need to take excessive notes when playing, planning to write War and Peace for every game I played, when sometimes the flow to my writing isn't there, or sometimes there simply isn't that much to say, which resulted in procrastinating, which meant burdening myself with totally unnecessary stress and in a lot of cases just not posting in here - in recognising that it's okay to not write my magnum opus each time, while I'm sure there'll be a handful of games this year I truly want to dive deep into when talking about them in this thread, I'm also not going to hold myself to any real standard other than being honest and purposeful with what I have to say about the games I play this year. And now, with that all out of the way - and hopefully inviting some people to talk about their own 2023 gaming resolutions, or come up with ones to commit to if they haven't already! - it's time to dive into talking about the first game I completed in 2023. Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss | 2012 So, while I completed Dark Souls for the first time back in 2021 - a gruelling but awesome second dive into a modern From Software title, after playing through Demon's Souls in 2020 - I was more than done with my playthrough by the time I was ready to face off against the game's final boss and roll credits. I kept a manual save of my character - a pretty standard sword-and-board, STR/VIT-focused melee build fella - resting at Firelink Shrine prior to the final fight, with my intention to come back to complete the game's DLC as and when I pleased. Diving back in, I walked around a bit before heading over to the start of the DLC - with items I'd gathered and interactions I'd already triggered during my playthrough, thankfully, because boy is accessing this DLC anything but straightforward! - and quickly found that I was very much overlevelled and over-equipped for the DLC. What level did I think I was? Late 60s, maybe early 70s. What level was I actually? 91 that, combined with me having a Black Knight Halberd+5 to hand (a notoriously strong weapon in the game which requires a bit of RNG good fortune and is normally what you'll see in the game's fastest speedruns) meant that the DLC was, both fortunately and unfortunately, a relative breeze: I could tank pretty much any attack thrown my way, and hit back much harder. That's not to say it was easy, mind, as I died a few times to standard enemies out in the world. For those wondering how I fared with the bosses? Sanctuary Guardian I beat on my first try; the titular Artorias I beat on my fourth try; Kalameet I beat on my first try; and Manus I beat on my sixth try. Now, despite this being a relative stepdown in challenge from what I expected going in and compared with my experience of a solid chunk of the main game, Artorias of the Abyss is a fantastic piece of DLC. All four of the boss fights feel so unique when contrasted with the boss fights in the main game, and the titular Artorias is, in my opinion, the standout, with a frantic and almost savage-like moveset which sees him wailing on you again and again, flipping and leaping around you, a massive change-up from the main game considering that after going back to this game following my time with Elden Ring last year...Dark Souls is SLOW, and Artorias is anything but. His music throughout the boss fight, the way he's introduced - both hinted at in the main game but also his introductory cutscene ahead of his boss fight here - and the way the game pays off besting this legendary knight really made it a fight that's hard to forget. Further yet, exploring Oolacile, a land being swallowed by the darkness emanating from Manus below, is just brilliant. In terms of size and structure, this DLC felt like a much larger and enhanced take on the Painted World of Ariamis, in both how it is separate from the main game, but also just how much it brilliantly builds its own atmosphere and lore, as well as feeling like something of a soft reset in terms of what you should expect from this game. The level design is brilliant here, because while it's maybe not as vast, twisting and far-reaching as it is in the main game, there are plenty of shortcuts, hidden characters and experiences, and great enemy compositions to face here. My greatest bit of praise for this DLC is that I regret not playing it alongside the main game in 2021; if you haven't played Dark Souls yet - well, firstly, what are you doing?! - this DLC is must-play as far as I'm concerned, just as much as the main game itself.

A heads-up to those like myself looking out for the physical version, it looks like it's starting to crop up on sites that aren't the Nintendo Store, so keep your eyes peeled. So far I've spotted it for £42.85 at Hit (the recently rebranded Base), where I'm sure it will come down closer to the £35 RRP in the next few days, but I've gone and put my pre-order in with ShopTo, where it's only £29.85! Hard to imagine you'll be able to find it for much less than that anytime soon EDIT: also, as if we needed anymore confirmation of Metroid truly being back at the fore for Nintendo, there's now a dedicated Metroid portal on their official site!

Here we go again: a slew of new indie announcements and updates incoming. Update #1 @ 16:00 GMT - PixelJunk Scrappers Deluxe arrives later this year. Update #2 @ 16:15 - a new look at the awesome looking Animal Well. Update #3 @ 16:30 - an update on Eternights (can love on a battl– I mean, uh, bloom after the apocalypse?), coming this summer. Update #4 @ 16:45 - an update on Pacific Drive, coming later this year.

Trailer is finally up on an official channel, so I've added it to the OP. There's also an official Bandai Namco site for it with a few more details.

What better way to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the Switch and Breath of the Wild, amirite?

Went to check the UK Nintendo Store in case Prime Remastered was already up for pre-order physically, and the site has crashed from a high volume of users. Seems about right, between a delayed physical release of Metroid Prime Remastered and the Tears of the Kingdom CE

Where's @Grazza when you need him, huh?

Today's trailer: UK Collector's Edition: And new amiibo, as well as the mention that old Zelda amiibo can offer you some unique looks for your glider...

I've mentioned it before but that Malice and Link's arm really is just Princess Mononoke huh? And no delay! And a Collector's Edition! And amiibo! LET'S GOOOOOOOO

Oh thank goodness we are getting some Zelda that had me nervous EDIT: can already tell this is more what I wanted from this trailer from the lingering shots we're getting

WHY PUT THIS INTO THE UNIVERSE

Wasn't there news a few weeks back that they were finally returning West? Would make sense that they'd do so with a bang I guess and have things in store ready to get prospective new staff interested!

So uh Animal Crossing with Laputa robot? Anyways, wow, Prime Remastered and Baten Kaitos I&II is nuts. So much for saving money on games this year...

All the broken clocks are right today! Coming Summer 2023.

F I N A L L Y !!! What a shadow-drop!

Oh they just going all in huh

As GBA will be included in the Expansion Pack, I'll add the details in here. Looks like a great collection of games, and they drop today?!

Well, it's about time! And a shadow-drop! Just announced in today's Direct, will update later with games and more details

ADVANCE WARS LIVESSSSSS oh dear haha "a couple of months away" okay you know April isn't too bad

Someone get @Grazza Etrian Odyssey's back!

Damn, Sea of Stars seems so close yet so far releasing at the end of August A demo is always good, though

Gotta love a shadow-drop (even if it just FE DLC)