Dufniall

It still looks rough around the edges (understatement of the century), but I did see some improvements over Arceus in the trailer. Mainly lighting effects and textures on Pokémon look to be a lot better. But it's a shame that the basic textures, pop-in etc are all still sub-par.

I saw a job offer for Nintendo Benelux today for e commerce marketing specialist for the My Nintendo Store. So that signals that they may start expanding here as well.

That was a pretty good Direct! A bunch of new announcements, a couple of restatements about what's coming, and not even the need for heavy hitters like Bayonetta 3 and BOTW2 to save the show. Definitely not everything is for me but I can see that it was a good mix of titles shown. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - I loved the first one that I reviewed for N-E, especially because of the mix of characters from different timelines. Not having played Three Houses, this did nothing for me. Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp - Looks solid, getting more used to the new graphics style. Won't be on my must-buy list though, I haven't even finished Wargroove! Super Mario Strikers: Battle League - Not big on Mario Sports titles (including Strikers), but I know a bunch of guys who are very happy with this! I like the idea of a 20 player online community team though. Splatoon 3 - This is a strange one. I loved 2 and can't wait for 3, but I haven't seen anything in the trailers that feels really fresh and new. What they've shown could all have been just DLC. Kirby and the Forgotten World - God, this keeps looking better and better. The mouthful transformations are funny as heck, and I like the ability upgrade path. Live A Live - Never heard of it before, but the trailer had me interested. Especially the 7 different storylines in different timelines (and if I have to guess they'll be connected somehow). May be my first 2D-HD title that I'm going to play. Plenty of Square Enix in this Direct by the way. Nintendo Switch Sports - Don't like the non-mii characters, don't necessarily like the selection of sports. Would have loved to see a couple more from Resort such as archery, table tennis and Wave Racing. I think the time of waggle control sports has sailed a bit for me. If anything I'll just boot up the Wii and get a very similar experience as far as I can judge now. Metroid Dread update - Nice modes for newcomers or people who enjoy S&M, but I'll wait for the boss rush mode. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Pass - Holy mother, 48 courses? Amazing, don't care if they are pilfered from Tour. Love that the city courses like Paris and Tokyo are coming as well. Hope they throw in a couple of characters in there as well. Fair price as well. Love how they show the Disney racer early on and then just annihilate it with this. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Great announcement, but at the speed I play RPGs (currently playing Xenoblade 1 HD and I'm at the same place where I stalled on Wii), I probably get around to playing this when they release the 4K remaster on the Switch 3. Some other good gets that I'm not that interested in like No Man's Sky, The Force Unleashed, Assassin's Creed Ezio Collection, Klonoa, Portal and the new Taiko. That Disney racer looked a bit ehm, dark or something? As in, not as cheery and cartoony as I would imagine a Disney kart racer. That Gundam game looked weird as well, did they make the giant Gundams into chibi characters? Chrono Cross looks severely outdated, and this is the remaster? Not too fussed about the rest except for the Cuphead DLC!

1) Yes 2) Sunday until Wednesday would work for me. Thursday I have band practice and Friday/Saturday I want to keep open for going out/TV night/movie night. So I think for me it ends here! But I'm just going to answer the other questions as well. 3) As someone who always dangled at the bottom when I was still participating, I didn't mind the keeping of scores. 4) Yes

I think we'll get a nice show of stuff that is already on the way like Advance Wars, Kirby, Splatoon 3. I'm hoping to get a date for Bayonetta 3, some new info on BOTW2 and Metroid Prime 4. To be honest I have plenty to play so I don't really need anything else haha. We might see something new Kirby anniversary related, the 1-2 Switch successor that's been rumoured for a while, and maybe successors to Xenoblade and Fire Emblem. Also, there is no new Mario announced so I guess he will make an appearance? Be it a new 2D, 3D or spin-off, surely Mario has to show.

Looks interesting, although they have borrowed quite some assets from the Zelda series. But indeed a weird move to put this on Kickstarter as well, especially as only the high $100 tier gives access to a physical copy. This and the december 2023 release date (surely with this kind of footage already this game is not 2 years away?) make me a bit hesitant about Yacht Club's business practice. Guess we will just wait (a while!) and see.

Back in that day you also had to actually solve caves and puzzles in Pokémon games instead of just walking straight through them. I agree with Ronnie and Julius, that it is a bit out fashion in this day and age to come up with no voice acting whatsoever. It just breaks the immersion, especially when the character is mouthing words and you just hear the bleep bleep bleep of you clicking through the text. Anyway, the bike courier is on its way at the moment (got to love living in the Netherlands and have stuff delivered by bike!) so it will be here soon! And then I can play it... tomorrow as my day and evening are full. Ah well.

In that regard Pokémon is a bit of a tricky franchise. On the one hand you have the kids and casual players who just enjoy the adventure, and don't care about competitive battling. On the other hand you have the hardcore userbase who battle competitive and have generations of well-trained Pokémon they want to keep on using. And with the franchise expanded to close to 900 Pokémon, plus new mechanics and movesets etc, I can see how they struggle to keep everyone happy and in balance. Catch them in Pokémon Go.

Same here! Wasn't really feeling it, but the positive reviews made me order it. Haven't read any reviews (but just glanced over the scores) to go in as fresh as possible. They could make a more expansive Pokémon Stadium/Colosseum kind of game, that focusses on training and battling, and leave the whole adventuring part for the "other" main game.

First post of the new year here, huzzah! The first two games I technically played mostly in 2021, but damn it, I'm going to post it all here and not split up the post. Let's a go! Sine Mora EX (Nintendo Switch) Another one from one of the end of the year sales, Sine Mora EX was heavily discounted and I bought this on a whim. I don’t play a lot of shoot-em-ups, but this looked good and reviews were positive as well. It is definitely one of the better shoot-em-ups I have played. First of all the game does look amazing, with plenty of cool visual effects and a lot of detail in the background. Maybe even a bit too detailed, as sometimes it is a bit tricky to make out enemies. Their bullets are highlighted, so that at least helps. The music hasn’t stuck with me, so that did not leave a lasting impression. It plays well too. It follows a couple of the standard shoot-em-up protocols, like upgrading your weapon from a single shot to a multi-hitting monster by collecting drops. Getting hit means your power-ups get scattered, and you have a couple of seconds to recollect them. In story mode you play a number of different characters, all with a different “ultimate attack” and slightly different primary fire. And then there is the skill to slow down time to make dodging a little bit easier, although this cannot be used limitlessly and you need to collect items to refill. Highlights are the number of bosses encountered; mostly screen-filling robots or creatures that need to be taken down in phases. One boss is a bit of a mess to navigate through, but the rest is fine. The game is difficult in parts but doesn’t feel overly unfair, something I often experience in shoot-em-ups and bullet hells. The only real downside? The story. It is a convoluted mess involving rape, genocide and time travel. Other than that a pretty great shoot-em-up for the couple of euros it cost me. The last shoot-em-up I played before was R-Type Dimensions EX and that cost more and was a lot less fun. Dark Souls Remastered (Nintendo Switch) New year’s day 2022, and since I didn’t have a wild party I was hangover-free, which meant I could finally deal with Dark Souls Remastered once and for all. And praise the sun, on the first day of this year the final boss fell by my pyromancy skills and Dark Souls Remastered was completed! This truly feels like my biggest gaming achievement yet, mostly because it took me several years and restarts to finish the game. Looking back it is an amazing adventure, but not without flaws (the game severely lacks guidance or explanation of mechanics at moments, and controls still are clunky from time to time). Those are all forgiven though thanks to the amazing world building, exceptional bosses and the constant risk vs reward cycle. Never have I been so tense during sessions, fearing what would come around the next corner and where in a moment of relaxation even two lower class enemies can kill you. I have to admit I have used a guide here and there to look up a mechanic, route or weapon upgrade path, because as said some things just aren’t apparent and I would have to rely on trial and error, grinding for drops etc. But the game is already long and I didn’t want to devote time to it. And on one boss I opened the online so I could get help from another player, which helped me take that behemoth down. For the rest I haven’t used online much (and this is also a part that is not really explained in detail), so I haven’t invaded others, and have been invaded myself only a couple of times. I think @Julius mentioned he has yet to play the DLC; I’d say go for it as it has one of the greatest bosses in the game. A lovely bit of more Dark Souls. I doubt we’ll ever get 2 and 3 on Switch, but I must say my appetite is still there. It is one of the few games where I feel it almost needs a second playthrough, as now knowing what I know, it could make a whole different game (plus I want to use other class weapons as well). I can rave on about the good and the bad but the conclusion is this is indeed a game like no others, and it has been one of the most impressive gaming experiences I have had in the last couple of years. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Google Stadia) Before talking about the game itself, some words on Google Stadia. Playing the game through Stadia has overall been a very pleasant experience. I never felt like I was playing a game in the cloud, loading times were good, graphically it looked impressive enough and I never experienced big dips in FPS. On two occasions the game froze up when I was quickly changing from one loadout to another, but I don’t know if this is a game problem or a Stadia problem. Anyway, onwards to Bloodstained! This truly is Castlevania DS in all but name. The Belmonts and Dracula are missing, but the rest is all there: Different weapons including whips, a giant castle to explore, different kinds of spells to equip that you get from enemy drops, and the classic MetroidVania structure. Throw in some extra stuff like crafting, being able to power up your spells and cooking recipes, and you have an awesome game. Instead of one of the Belmonts you now play as Miriam, a woman who has the gift (or curse?) to absorb shards that give her extra powers. These range from fireballs to chainsaws and from summoning bats to summoning massive dragons. You can also equip a passive spell (for example, increased recovery) and a familiar (a character that hovers around you and supports you in battle). I won’t go into the story, as it is a pretty standard story about someone opening the gates to hell and the church is involved and more like that. It is there but it is not why you play this game. You play it for the exploration of the castle, finding new routes after you learn a new skill and taking down bosses. The bosses aren’t as great as in the DS Castlevania games, but some of them are pretty impressive. There are also a couple of optional ones which are amazing, The music is top notch, and the game looks good as well. The only flaw I have is that the bosses could have been a bit more impressive, and on occasion it is not too clear what you have to do next. Other than that, one hell of a game. Dare I say I enjoyed this more than Metroid Dread? I think it’s mostly due to the bigger number of collectibles. Cuphead (Nintendo Switch) Pfew, this is a long post. But that is on me as I have played quite a couple of good games so enough to talk about! Next up is Cuphead, the 50s cartoon boss battler that got a surprise release on the Switch. To be honest, when I started this I thought it was a bit of a different game. I expected a much more traditional level structure, with run and gun platforming levels with a boss at the end. Instead, this game is actually mostly boss battles, with only a couple of run and gun levels. And to be fair I think I liked it this way! It means you can jump in to tackle a couple of bosses, and don’t need to get through a level first each time. Yes, you will die a lot but you can just restart your fight. The levels are mostly for collecting coins, which you can spend to buy weapons and power-ups. For the rest it is hopping from boss to boss, collecting their soul contracts for the Devil. Because that is what you do as a come-to-life cup with a gambling problem. Most bosses have various stages, and their moveset changes in each of them. What the game does well is that if you die, you see how far the boss was down, and the stages are marked with a line. So you know exactly how close you were to beating the boss, giving you plenty of incentive to keep going. And then it is all about learning the boss’s patterns, remembering what it does in which phase and keep dodging those attacks. Sometimes go out of the fight and get a different loadout and try again, until you make your way through all of the 4 worlds and defeat them all. The game is shorter than I would have expected, but it is actually a good length. The art style is sublime, hand-drawn graphics, with a crackle in it like you are watching an old tv show. Some of the boss designs are very creative, and all is supported with a jazzy soundtrack. Two things I didn’t enjoy that much: there is a parrying system where some (but not all) projectiles can be parried. These can be recognized because they are pink. However, sometimes there are purple objects which you think you can parry but cannot, and I found the mechanism for that a bit clunky. Second, loading times are relatively long. Especially since you die a lot (you can check in-game and I think I had something over 250 deaths?) and levels are short, the loading time in between feels too long. Other than that? Definitely recommended, and I am curious to see how the DLC is going to be.

Or the Lost Vikings! But yeah, quite a bold move seeing how Activision/Blizzard was under fire the last couple of months/years. I wonder what Microsoft expects here, to be the good Samaritan and clean the decks over at A/B? It seems a heavy investment, $70 billion but after that they probably have to restructure the company as well. Also interesting that A/B has quite a few PC franchises. Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm are all biggest or exclusive to PC. I also wonder if the delay of Overwatch 2 has anything to do with this. I'm not big on Call of Duty but if that goes exclusively to MS then that's a big loss for Sony. Like @killthenet says, almost too big. Same as having the Elder Scrolls 6 exclusive to MS.

More and more often I find myself reaching out to the good ol' internet to look up info about the game I'm playing. Whether it is for understanding a mechanism, where to go next, find a particular item or how to tackle a hard boss. Younger me would have detested this, but currently I'm noticing that I'm fairly okay with me doing this. Mostly it is an issue of time versus effort. I have quite a backlog of games I want to play, and limited gaming time available. If a game is interesting enough and has me in its grip, I don't mind putting in some extra time figuring things out, although even in that situation I now have limits as to how long I want to be stuck. For example, I'm currently playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and I knew I had to find a certain room. It would have meant going through the whole map again taking up maybe half an hour to an hour, but my urge to finish the game made me just look up the location of said room, saving me precious time. In that case I didn't really miss anything story-wise and it just saved me time. But sometimes it feels like it takes away a bit of the experience. It's a great feeling when you figure something out yourself, that AHA! moment. As opposed to looking it up and thinking, oh yeah, why didn't I think of this? There was this moment in Dark Souls Remastered where I was feeling pretty mixed. On the one hand I wish I figured it out myself, but on the other hand I know it would have led to quite some time loss and frustration. Another risk is, as you are googling stuff, you come across the occasional spoiler which you did not want to know. Someone mentioning the next boss or something similar. But all in all I take these things for granted, as being able to finish off more games in a shorter timespan outweighs these feelings of cheating or not getting everything out of your game. It also gives me a better closure, reading for example that I've found every optional boss in a game for me gives me the feeling I finished a game as far as I want so I don't have to replay it again (this can be a completely different discussion; are there games you would love to replay but don't because you don't have the time for it due to other games?). Again Dark Souls Remastered, some optional stuff in the game I would have missed completely on my play-through if I hadn't used a guide here and there, and now I feel like I got everything from the game. So, how do you feel about the use of internet help when playing games?

This was immediately the first thing that came to mind haha. It was a pesky rumour! There was also a rumour that if you sent your Pokémon Red/Blue game with a complete Pokédex to Nintendo, they would give you a real certificate and they could upload Mew to your game. Another rumour was that Golden Sun would have a lot of random elements in it; randomly generated dungeons and such. Don't think that ever made it into the game?

It's good that they at least showed a bit more this time around, as to get a general feel about what to do. I still don't know if I'm going to get this. On the one hand, it's good to see the series get a fresh take. On the other hand, I'm not sure it will be for me. The missions seem a bit too fetch-quest (show me a Shinx, show me a big Buizel). Seeing your reward is 3 potions also makes me think most of them don't really add to the story (like for me most of the BOTW sidequests also had underwhelming rewards). The balming of Noble Pokémon bit feels a bit out of place too, and I also fear for empty environments. Would have loved to see some caves for example which hide legendaries. Also curious if they really go into the lore. I mean, humans and Pokémon have not interacted until this point, and suddenly you can catch them and train them. Surely the Pokémon themselves may not be too happy about this domestication? Also having a "magical cellphone" feels a bit easy, could have gone completely old-school and just work around it with paper maps. I don't know, I'm just not feeling it. It's like a weird blend of Pokémon Let's Go, Sword and Shield's Wild Area with some BOTW stuff going on, but not having the best bit of all those games.

Da da da daaaah! So I'm not expecting that much from the Kirby anniversary either. Luckily, this game looks to be plenty of fun and for me is enough Kirby celebration. It looks a bit less apocalypse-y than the first trailer, but that doesn't matter.

So, there's a Foo Fighters horror comedy movie coming? Yes please! Got some serious Pick of Destiny vibes from this and it looks to be a laugh!

Thanks! Haha now I feel bad for the guy, I may put him in as an avatar to make up for it.

I kind of hope we will see Mario Kart 10 on the Switch. As much as I love 8 Deluxe, by now I have seen all the tracks. Who knows, Nintendo could go rinse and repeat again and bring us 10 this year, and 10 Deluxe when the Switch's successor launches. But yes, since 8 Deluxe is still selling buckets, I wonder if that may be the reason they are holding back. On the other hand, we have Splatoon 3 incoming as well, while they could have easily kept Splatoon 2 going (and that was also still in the top 20 of 2021). I think there are plenty of directions to go with the next Mario Kart. Like said above, add a gimmick like Double Dash had. Or a single player adventure. The Smash Ultimate route also sounds plausible. Characters from the Kirby universe for example would fit in well, although I hope they stay away from stuff like folding Ridley into a Kart. And while many are hating on Mario Kart Tour, there is plenty that can be taken from there. Seasonal tracks, different game modes, costumes, a score system more based on style instead of just finishing first. Just leave out the gacha bit and make sure you can unlock it with in-game play. But some of the costumes and new tracks in there are amazing.

This is the only online place where I use Vileplume2000 as a user name and I kind of hate it because it just screams 1999 MSN messenger era. Plus I'm not that big of a Pokémon fan anymore. So I would like to change my username to Dufniall, the online name I use on all my other gaming outlets. Is that something you can help with @Ashley?