nekunando

I would say it's similar.. perhaps maybe even a little easier..? Like the main game, I played through it all on Normal but I've never braved the Expert difficulty. Honestly..? I might some day. The game is too amazing not to use it as an excuse to return to it some day. You'd be crazy to skip the game just because people say it is difficult, @Glen-i. It is certainly challenging but in a satisfying way. You'll cry sometimes when you see the progress bar after a defeat and know you were within a bullet or 2 from success but you'll hit retry and be straight back in amongst it all again. It's wonderful 🙂

That short little period of time after 70 minutes when both Spain and Germany were being eliminated was a real WOW sort of moment for me and probably the first little spark I've really felt for this World Cup. Hopefully there's still some fun to come in the knockout stages

If you've been following the Gaming Diary thread, you'll perhaps be aware that I finished No More Heroes 3 in the early hours of this morning. You may also have noted that my enthusiasm dwindled with each tweet that I shared! I dipped my toe into the first hour last year expecting it to be one of my highlights of 2021 but I never got around to playing more of it until only a few weeks ago. Back at that time, it felt like it was gonna be as wild and crazy as expected and the return to form the franchise needed after only really excelling with the original on Wii. I was wrong Is the game wild and crazy? Absolutely yes, but not in a way that elevated the game beyond the sum of its highly questionable parts. The combat is largely satisfying but the scenarios in which you get to perform are so rigid and repetitive that I grew tired of the formula pretty quickly. Locate and fight a few designated battles in the embarrassingly poor 'open world', carry out a couple of random tasks to raise funds (which often wasn't even necessary) and then pay to enter the next ranking battle. Rinse and repeat. The original game had you feeling like you were really building up for each battle and, when you'd get there, you'd really have to concentrate to take down each assassin in an often long and intense fight knowing that one or two mistakes could see you in trouble. Here, I didn't really feel much of a sense of threat or triumph from the ranking battles and when those appear to be the main hook to keep your progressing, that's a big problem. Despite offering up several unique scenarios to take down the eclectic cast of aliens, the game rarely, if ever, knocked it out of the park. To have each episode punctuated with regular and increasingly grating credits sequences followed by watching irrelevant chatter on a mocked up CRT TV quickly became tiresome and this feeling was further emphasized by knowing that once you were back in Travis' apartment it was just going to be the same routine of going down the pole to enhance your abilities and then outside to find the next selection of designated battles marked on the map. Honestly, the game is such a disappointment and with all the insane tangents that Suda 51 seems to want to take you on, nothing ever really lands. It just feels crazy for the sake of it. Aw well.. at least the icon on the Switch menu is cool 😅

I could probably go into detail now but I'll wait until I've finished it before I share my overall thoughts. What I will say is that for a game that goes out of its way to be crazy and off the wall, I feel like I'm just going through the motions right now

I'll stop reading there. Maybe not a great idea to be throwing around spoilers when, like I said, I'm only a few hours in. Thankfully, I've already experienced that bit but I'm not risking the rest of your post!

Speaking of The Last of Us, I recently tried to resume my save file of Part II on PS4 (I think I'm around 7-8 hours in) and, not for the first time, I'm finding it very difficult to get back into it Even at this stage, I think I've managed to avoid any spoilers regarding the story but I'd still like to get the game done at some point before I inevitably stumble upon something! Maybe I'll try again after I clear No More Heroes 3 which is unfortunately becoming a bit of a repetitive slog itself. I really didn't expect that from it!

Following on from that, I'm now Rank #5 after playing some more of the game this evening. Honestly, it's becoming more and more difficult not to be disappointed with it..

I've already played the first world and I can tell it's gonna be a great game I'm not even sure why I own Star Allies but maybe the mood will strike eventually! As for Yoshi, his games have never been better and I'll absolutely be looking forward to the next one

I'd be happy with a port of Woolly World or even Shake Dimension at this point though I do wonder when the next 2D Mario game might make an appearance. I'd expect a big 3D Mario to release close to the film but which may delay that eventuality. Who knows..? 😅 I still have stuff to do in Tropical Freeze so I suspect I'll try to go back and get everything in that at some point soon but I have barely even started Forgotten World or Star Allies so dear only knows when I'll get around to playing any of them!

I honestly have no idea 😅 Over the last few weeks, Crafted World has just become my relaxing go-to game when I've been able to get minute or two late at night. I'm usually way too tired to try to play anything else, sadly! I never went back to do everything in Woolly World, despite really enjoying it, but since I picked it up on 3DS on sale in the last year or two, maybe I'll do that eventually.. though definitely not right now! Anyway, as great as Crafted World is, it definitely takes the cake a bit with just how many times you need to go back through each stage to find everything. It's highlighted further when you start to notice stuff that you know will be wanted by Sprout at some point but you can't just check it off there and then until he specifically asks for it. On the flip side, the game is great at helping you keep track of what you have collected throughout and also allows you to exit out of a stage as soon as you find what you were looking for! I got over 40 hours out of Crafted World in the end and I don't regret any of it I'm definitely looking forward to giving something different some attention now, though, as I feel like the list of games I want and need to play on Switch is a little out of control now!

I haven't even entered the unlockable final battle yet but I would assume there will be the requirement to take zero damage, a strict timit limit and specific challenge for that boss fight. They've all followed that pattern! Getting some of the fights done in the required time has been very challenging in earlier stages so I'm expecting plenty of pain at the end here! The Baby Bowser time limit is 4 minutes 30 seconds so I envisage some irritation in the likelihood of having to repeat that a large number of times with that sort of length!

I'm also closing in on the end of Yoshi's Crafted World with "just" the final two boss battles to go. I suspect it may take some time 😅

I'm not sure why you feel the need to apologize as if my stance on everything is 'Wave Race or Die' on everything (I mean.. it is, but only Blue Storm 😅) Wave Race 64 and Pilotwings 64 are both great games and I'm delighted they've made it to Switch this year! Much like you, I never experienced them when I was younger and only picked them up in the mid 2000s when I started university and set up an account on eBay! Even by that stage, I fell in love with both games 🙂 I've been picking up some random games for older consoles in recent weeks so my focus hasn't quite been on the Switch like it usually is but I'll definitely be back to the recently released N64 titles soon!

I can

Curious if anyone here has a different system?

I thought so too.. and now I'm not so sure 😅

I'm so glad I picked up most of my collection when I did a decade or more ago. The prices are eye-watering these days I'd be heartbroken if anything ever happened to my games!