Dufniall

Was expecting it a bit earlier as well! Ah well, luckily a lot of new music keeps coming out in the meantime. We have a new RAMMSTEIN record coming this april, and right now I'm just playing the new Ghost album Impera on repeat. For a band that leans very heavy on their occult gimmick, they do write catchy songs! And to be honest I love the whole "lore" behind them.

GameXplain already has a comparison video up. Looks like a nice and decent visual upgrade for the Tour tracks. And needless to say the older tracks all got a very thick lick of paint (plus lay-out changes):

A new sale is live on the eShop, focussing on Indie Gems. That's probably the reason they have named it the Indie Gems Sale: Hades -35%, Bastion -79%, Streets of Rage 4 -40%, just to name a few.

Yes, Mario Kart Tour is an absolutely horrible product that should have NEVER seen the light of day!! Still love playing it every day though.

If I'm correct Sunbreak will be priced at €40/£35. I'm guessing we have only seen a little bit of the new content, and there will be a lot more new monsters (or at least variations like Silver Rathalos etc). So on the one hand that is quite an expensive pack of DLC, but on the other hand €40 instead of having to buy Monster Hunter Rise Ultimate for €60 seems fair.

Yeah I finished season 4 recently as well and it was a great series in all. I especially enjoyed episode 9 of season 4, that was a lot like a Castlevania game including boss battles haha. To be honest I wasn't that big a fan of the branching out of the stories in Season 3, it felt a bit as if they were searching which way to go and somehow decided to tie it all up in Season 4.

What am I missing here? Traditions people! Anyway, in for this Friday!

And the Lego x Mario onslaught continues: My brother has two kids, a boy and a girl. The boy is still wild about Lego Mario and recently got Luigi, but the girl kind of stopped having interest. I'm guessing this will draw her right back in, smart move from Nintendo to get Peach involved!

I think the SRP is 40 which is quite hefty, but on the other hand this has more games in it compared to other collections. Still, being a Konami collection means it will hit 50-75% off pretty soon anyway. Still, great collection! I loved Turtles In Time on the SNES, never owned it but I rented it a couple of times. I played Tournament Fighters on an emulator, and I can recall me playing one of the Game Boy games as well although I don't know which one. Having online for a bunch of titles is great as well, will probably pick it up down the line in a sale just for online Turtles In Time.

True, specs-wise Xiaomi has amazing bang for buck. I have the Mi 9T (the one with the pop-up camera) and the specs are great for the price I paid for it. However, it is quite a bloated software version of Android with a lot of extra apps I don't use or need, and my latest security patch is August 2021, so more than half a year old. I think it depends on the user if you want security or better specs in this price range.

Nokia is indeed pretty good again these days. Clean android without much extra software, fairly long update policy. Two new models just released, the G11 (€149) and G21 (€199), both get at least 36 months of security updates. Plus is they have a 90hz screen so that's a bit more smooth to look at. Samsung launched the A13 today, a phone with a higher resolution than usual in this price range for €189. Has the usual extra Samsung software and I'm unsure what their update policy is. They promise up to 5 years "on upcoming A series models" but not sure if these really cheap ones fall under that policy. Chinese brands often have better specs for the low price, but often have bad track records with updating their devices. If you just want to use them for 2 years they are fine, but bas choice for longevity. I think most phones nowadays support 5Ghz WiFi already.

It's the one thing that I've been really missing since 4 Ultimate, these behemoth multistage fights. Would be great if they would make a comeback.

Got the itch.io bundle for Ukraine. Great initiative, and an insane amount of content for a minimum of $10 (gave a little more myself). Also: no client needed, you just download the installation files from the website.

Yes, curious to hear more about Sunbreak! Mostly interested to see how extensive it is, and what price they are going to ask for it.

Curious to see how many hours everyone has on the clock when you finally complete the Dex! I'll try to write up a final thoughts post somewhere coming week.

Seeing as you guys are skipping the demo I'll throw my first impressions in spoiler tags just in case: Edit: just finished the demo (it's actually 2 levels and a boss fight). There is replay value in the demo as well.

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.