Hero-of-Time

I'm hoping the console/UI has a little personality to it. The Switch, for all the success it had, was stupidly bland. No themes, folders, music, boring homescreen design....the list goes on. The Wii U at least had that going for it. All the consoles now are pretty boring in this regard and it would be nice if Nintendo recapture some of that past magic with the Switch 2.

Yeah, I was reading on Era the other day about this. Games, dvds and even some blurays are starting to suffer from this. Some examples were even kept in correct conditions but still ended up suffering from rot. It's nice to have a physical collection but both discs and consoles seem to be ticking time bombs.

I wonder which 3rd party games will be shown? Gotta imagine Nintendo will want highlight some big hitters and show that the device will be getting a good amount of support. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth would be a good showpiece. Now with added door textures. Personally, I want the Kingdom Hearts games on the thing. None of this streaming garbage. Give me them all on a cart. Resident Evil 2 Remake is another. In fact, getting Resident Evil 7, 8, along with 2 and 3 remakes, would be amazing. If Microsoft don't have Rare Replay on the thing then they are just leaving money on the table.

Earlier today, I had a bit of a panic. I was going through my Gamecube games and noticed Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Mario Tennis weren't in their boxes. I've never lost a game before and so found it hard to believe that I would lose 3 in one go. I remembered I had a little Gamecube disc holder and so popped up the attic and had a look. They were in there, as well as a 251 memory card that I didn't realise I was missing. Success! Around 10 years ago I had a games night for the youth at my church. I took my Gamecube and set up a retro corner for them and the missing games were the ones I took. I must have put them in the disc case so that I didn't have to take the game boxes. Crazy that they've been sat there all this time. Crisis averted.

I don't even know what to expect. Surely it's time for a new 3D Mario game to be shown. Outside of that? I've no idea.

It's great that no software has leaked (so far) for this Direct. Me and my mate are gonna go into work early so that we can finish and get back in time to watch the event live.

Yeah, you'd love it. Did the original game come over here on the Switch or was that left in Japan as well?

I was looking to tackle one of my next pledge games and after jumping back and forth between a few of them, I settled on this. I've put about 6 hours into the game so far and I'm disappointed in myself that it's taken me so long to get a round to playing it, especially as I loved the first game. So far I've unlocked Terry, Carver, Maribel, Torneko and Ruff. My team consists of the 2 main characters, Ceaser and Desdemona. Apparently Carver and Angelo are pretty OP and so I imagine I will switch to those at some point. The gameplay is stupidly fun. The original game is still the best Warriors type game that I have played and this is certainly shaping up to match or even exceed it. It's not just hack and slash gameplay that is fun but also the monster summon/medal mechanic. It's great saving a bunch of the stringer ones and unleashing them during a boss fight. I've been enjoying going around the wild areas and just grinding exp between missions, as well as doing the side quests that pop up in town. During my exp grinding I came across this fella... Needless to say I got a large amount of exp. Sadly, I've not see one since. The story is about 20 hours long but the platinum tales around 200. I'm in for the long haul with this one.

Sounding good to me.

Amazing.

This was released last year but the game recently got an update that gave it trophies, which meant to had to be played. 😛 The last time I played this was back on the 360. I had a great time on it back then but sadly that hasn't been the case here. I enjoy the early Lego games due to their lack of open world stuff but this was still a slog to get 100%. You have to playthrough the Story mode, then through Freeplay mode, then through Super Story mode (six levels back to back x 3 times) and finally the Blue Minikit hunt. You are essentially going though each of the levels 4 times. It's very tedious. With this being one of the first licensed Lego games they still hadn't got the balance right with the stud multipliers. It takes an insane amount to buy the first couple, by which time you have pretty much finished the game. This means you have to essentially farm studs at the end of the game, instead of doing it as you play through the levels. One thing I was happy not to see return from the 360 version was the achievement for completing the Battle of Endor without the Falcon being destroyed once. This took me so long to do and so was thrilled that they left it out of this version. Yeah, not as good as I remember it being but I do love the Platinum trophy image.

Digital Foundry video is up.

You're not allowed to play it.

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/32773-croc-legend-of-the-gobbos No platinum, no physical release from standard retailers and it apparently is launching at a very high price. I'll be waiting for a very deep sale on this one.

Sat and watched it again this morning. It was such a weird Direct. It felt a little desperate. Things such as the Virtual Carts and new app (can't believe they ended the show with this) could have just been a quick youtube video or blog post. Rhythm Paradise and the Tomadachi game showing up but not releasing until 2026 felt something more suited to a Microsoft/Sony event. Nintendo have been great in recent years in showing and delivering games in a short space of time. I'm not sure what their thinking was here. The show really lacked any killer blow. I get it, the Switch is on its way out but it seems to gone out with a whimper and not a bang. Dunno if it was Nate or Grubb but one of them said there are 3 Nintendo games that they know of that didn't show up in the Direct for some reason. Gotta imagine Kirby and FE were these. If so, I've no idea why they would hold them back any further. One thing about these shows (Directs and SoP) now is that all of them lack exclusives. Most of the games shown are now on all platforms and while that's great for consumers, the shows themselves feel less special to me. Meh/10.

This was pretty much my experience. Downloaded it, faffed on a bit and deleted it. I'll continue to get my news from the likes of Era. I'm not really sure what this brings to the table to people who already follow gaming news elsewhere.

Earlier in the week, I fired up the 3DS and decided to play Kirby Blowout Blast. I played it back in 2017 but never finished it. I changed that today. The game is very satisfying to play. You play as Kirby (obviously) and go through stages that are only a couple of minutes long. You have to suck up enemies and strategically fire them at other enemies in order to create chains and rack up a big score. No abilities to be had here. Trying to earn the highest rank takes a lot of trial, error and planning. This is where the main meat of the game is. You can see the first set of credits pretty quickly but in order to see the true end you will need to get at least a gold rank on every stage to unlock the Secret Path level. This is a gauntlet that pits you with completing 5 challenging stages with bosses at the end of each of them and you have to play them all in a single run. The key to high scores are the awards that you get at the end of each stage. There are several to earn and they require you to do tasks such as finish the level quickly, do not get hit and kill every enemy. Because the stages are so short, I didnt really mind having to repeat stages in order to meet these requirements and obtain a better score. It's another fine example of Kirby being a chameleon and being able to fit into any genre he gets thrown at. Loved it.

Yeah, they are pretty much done. Such as shame because they have some great IP under their belts but they have squandered them over the past 10 years or so. Saying that, the consumer is to blame as well. The recent Prince of Persia game was fantastic and very reminiscent of the old Ubisoft but sadly nobody bought the thing.

Let's just hope it's better than today's Direct.

Wow. No Fire Emblem or ports of Zelda, Kirby or Kid Icarus. Very surprised by that.

All in for Marvel Cosmic Invasion.

First Patapon, now this. It's crazy.

It took them 8 years to sort this out.

Rhythm Paradise. Many called/wished it and they've got what they wanted.