Dufniall

It's been about a month since my last post so time for an update! I haven’t completed any games since my last post, but I have been putting some more time in a bunch of titles and I started something new. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PC) After making quite a bit of story progress, I decided to do a couple of the DLC side quests first. On the one hand I want to finish the game, but on the other hand I’m still enjoying it too much to just blast through it. I know I probably won’t go back anytime soon if I finish it so I’d better just go for a higher completion percentage before ending it. I finished The Pillar DLC and I’m now somewhere in The Forge DLC. I think those are the two I have access to now, and the rest requires me to progress through the story further. It's nice to have some extra tombs and graphically they are quite impressive. I love that my PC can now run this game on QHD with everything on ultra. So nice. For the main story Paladins I picked up the Battle Pass for this as I accumulated enough in-game currency to get it. I’ve played the game almost every day, doing the daily missions for extra XP and trying to get as many Battle Pass missions done as well. I think that clocks to about half an hour to an hour daily. There are about 10 days left and I reached level 40 with that amount of playtime, of the 80 levels needed to complete it and to get enough in-game currency to be able to get the next Battle Pass for “free”. Having the Battle Pass is fun, as you are constantly unlocking little cosmetic upgrades. The missions make you play some different characters and take on a different approach which mixes it up nicely. But the grind to level 80 is just too much and I can’t see myself picking it up again. It is too much of a burden of having to play to at least get a decent amount of progress in it. You can still gain in-game currency through the free path as well. But I can see how all these Passes in games can be addicting, the constant stream of small rewards pushes you to keep playing. Pokémon Sword Not much to say about my progress in Sword. I’ve been slowly filling my Pokédex and dabbled a bit with the connectivity between this, Let’s Go and Home. Maybe first thing I should do is go after my legendary as I still haven’t caught Sword Dog! Okami HD Speaking about weaponized dogs, I’m about 10-12 hours into Okami HD and so far I’m still enjoying it. There are some small niggles, such as combat becoming repetitive and the fact that it is not always clear where to go. The bug is still annoying as hell. But the quirky humour, the feudal Japan setting, the realistic drawings of bosses you encounter, and the visual style are enough for me to keep going. I heard how long the game is and that it drags on towards the end, but I haven’t felt bored in the first 1/3rd of the game so I can see me finishing this somewhere in March I guess. One thing I should do is play this game on the TV with detached Joy-Cons. I’ve only played it in handheld mode and while using the Brush with touch controls works well I usually just use button input. I’m curious to see how it would work with motion controls though. WarGroove I planned on finishing Valkyria Chronicles first before starting a new strategy game. But Double Trouble came out and I thought that was the perfect time to start WarGroove. Loving it. Take away the setting and it is essentially Advance Wars which is by no means a bad thing. The fantasy setting works well though, and having a commander on the field as a playable character adds a nice dynamic. He/she is pretty powerful so can cut through enemies quite easily, but losing him/her means losing the battle so playing too aggressive is tricky. I finished the first two acts of the main campaign, and it is such an easy game to pick up for one or two missions. Add to that the Double Trouble campaign plus all the user created ones, and I think this game will get quite some playtime. In the future I really want to do a co-op or vs. game with someone from here, so by then I will call out to you in the WarGroove thread! The only negative I have are the graphics. Or more specifically, how the artwork does not match with the in-game sprites. I dig the sprites (I still prefer the GBA/DS Fire Emblem style over the 3D style) but the character pictures are cartoony/undetailed and don’t match with the cover art. What’s also funny is that people are dying on the battlefield, but the commanders don’t seem to care. Hell, one side mission was a friendly match between me and another commander, but that friendly match involved killing troops and getting troops killed. Very friendly indeed. Kirby’s Dream Land 3 I know I have to play the game this week for the PodPals, and I played it for about half an hour last week after I started it a while ago. But I’m just not feeling it. I’ll see if I can plow through it, but I can’t guarantee I will finish it. And that’s strange because usually I love Kirby games.

I've decided to back the Kickstarter, just the basic pledge for the physical edition without extras. I've been enjoying a lot of Platinum's work lately (Astral Chain, Bayonetta 1 and 2 and Nier:Automata is on my Steam wishlist). What I've seen and read about The W101 looks very likeable. I also never backed something before, so I'm quite interested in the process and this is a fairly safe one to back as it is basically just a pre-order.

It looks like there is quite a number of animal friends that can wind up on your island:

Apparently this got an age rating in Korea, so it may be pretty close to launch. Guess they'll tell us the exact date in next week's Direct

@viceview51I think we need to start planning our battle! Do you have any particular times you're available? I can generally play every weeknight between 7PM-9PM. And in the weekends I also have some time during the day.

A physical release for Cat Quest I and II is coming: Which reminds me I need to pick up CQ1 in the sale, I think it's quite heavily discounted on the eshop.

I booted up the game yesterday, and tried all three levels. My focus wasn't there though, so I finished Glen's level with the easy route, but gave up on DCubed and Sméagol's level. So I'm not going to vote, but just wanted to say thanks for putting these levels together! I'll give them a go another time and see if I can finish them all!

Are there any (gaming) forums out there that still have in-depth discussions about games? My general feeling is that people just don't talk at length anymore on forums. I have been active on a couple of forums (this one, plus two music forums) and they all suffered from the same. The reason why I think is a combination of factors. We grew up with online forums but now have a fulltime job, less gaming time in general let alone time to put whole epistles on forums. The new generation is all about short and snappy, use other media and in general have a much shorter attention span so online forums don't do it for them (hence the lack of new members). They prefer bitesize video content, or a few short lines on Twitter or a Facebook group that hopefully give confirmation to their opinion. Those who do want to talk about their passion (in this case gaming) shift to a different format. For me it is writing a review or a special for the main site. Others record a podcast, or make a playthrough video for YouTube. For this forum personally, I also feel like I don't always have much to contribute. If I play a game a lot it is probably for a review, otherwise I tend to play slow and forum discussion will have moved on and I feel like saying "oh yeah, I also finally finished the game and I liked this and this" just adds nothing to the discussion anymore. Plus there are too many games out and not enough active users to get a discussion going as people are busy playing something else. Finally, seeing topics end up in personal feuds sometimes just makes me think, why bother?

If you want to reference the site maybe the best way is just to mention our Twitter account @N_Europe and for the rest use the #NEsomething format. Of course, if you have a good suggestion shoot!

Splatoon 3, although they could save that for E3 as well.

That's a good question, never really thought about that. For the Mario Kart League we usually use #NELeague (so without the dash). Seeing that #NEurope is indeed politically loaded, I would say use #N-E or #N-Europe. Is there any particular scenario you need the hashtag for? I'm guessing it's for Mario Maker, so we can also agree on different ones like #NEMaker. We already have #NELeague, can easily expand on that. #NEMaker, #NEPodPals, #NESmash, #NETokyoMirageSessionsSharpFEEncore...

That went fast and smooth. Cheers!

@Glen-i I'm already available for trading if you are as well.

This is a very good one. I have about 12 euros in my Play account and I don't know what to do with it (got it through enquiries). So this may be interesting to get it for a month and transfer stuff from X/Ultra Moon. @Glen-i well that bites, was indeed almost to good to be true. So let's trade in Sword/Shield then. I'm not available during the day but can do tonight from around 7PM UK time.

It's Valentine's Day, so maybe I should send a Luvdisc her way

Was just checking my Pokémon Go, unfortunately I don't have a Meltan (really thought I had one!). May ask for that on the GTS.

Let me know if you are ready for phone trading, I can do that all day. By the way, for phone trading I don't know if you have to both be on at the same time or that it is asynchronous like the GTS. Guess we'll find out.

You can! It's limited though to 1 GTS trade and 3 Wonder Box trades simultaneously. The premium plan can do more. Friend trades should work in the free plan as well.

Cool, you don't have Home installed yet, right? I have them in Home but I'll transfer them to Sword tonight. What times are you available this weekend? I can do tonight or Sunday whole day.

I booted up Let's Go yesterday, and I have available: 6x Alolan Diglett 4x regular Ponyta 3x Alolan Raichu 2x regular Mr. Mime (although that can be obtained in Sword/Shield) 1x Bulbasaur What I would like: Scorbunny Solosis Drampa Lotad Vullaby Galarian Corsola Lunatone Croagunk Sableye Spritzee Oranguru Eiscue Still have a long way to go in my Pokédex haha. I'll try to get some more 'mon over in the weekend from Let's Go (regular Weezing, Alolan Persian), so if you have any requests let me know.

I enjoyed my time with Dark Dawn, despite it not being as good as 1 and 2. Just as I enjoyed Metroid Prime Corruption, while it wasn't as good as 1 and 2. I see a trend here, with MP4 coming by power of logic this means GS4 is also coming. Hype!

I'm expecting a lot of Series X games for Microsoft, but also think they'll show another version of the console, probably the cheaper version. I'm curious to see if they can clearly communicate how they think the Xbox platform is going to work, with streaming and one or more consoles in the mix. Communication hasn't been their strongest point in the past. And talking about brands that don't communicate well: Yeah I think Nintendo showing more of BOTW2 is a given. Metroid Prime 4 is long overdue but I don't think it will be more than a teaser still. Would be nice to see some Bayonetta 3 and hopefully a release indication for that. Also there almost has to be something Mario in there (maybe a new Paper Mario although I think that is too small a franchise to be the main star game). And is it too early for Splatoon 3? As for those long-lost franchises I agree. We can sum up the wishlist again but I know better by now haha. All right, just one then: Golden Sun 3!

Yeah, this is going to be an interesting year. Sony is of course the big one staying home, and now this decision from Geoff. Maybe what he knows of the show is that they will host a commercial-filled awards show and he doesn't want to do 2 of those. Anyway, confirmed so far are: Xbox, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Bethesda, SEGA, Capcom, Square Enix, Take-Two, Bandai Namco, Warner Bros, Limited Run, Activision, Amazon games, Epic, THQ and XSEED, plus some smaller ones. Xbox will no doubt go all out, and I'm really curious what Nintendo will show. But my anticipation for E3 has been going down in the past few years, and will be just an interesting week, just as the weeks of PAX and Gamescom are interesting as well.

Oh god, that reminds me I have to reinstall Pokémon Go to transfer a Meltan to evolve it to transfer it to Sword... Will look tonight if I can come up with a list of what I'm missing!

I may be going back to Let's Go Pikachu to get some of the Alolan and original forms (like regular Ponyta and Alolan Raichu) if you are interested in these. I'm still working on filling my regular Sw/Sh dex so I could use some Shield exclusives or Gigantamax forms I missed.