darksnowman

Some texture to it this week. Life's a beach, eh. Seems they were watching Outlander before they stepped onto Kastarion 3.

For The Kart The Bell Tolled, this week. Kept thinking I was doing all right holding a top ten position... but this isn't Mario Kart 99.

Rereleased thereafter. Haha, I'm reminded of the end of Buffy episodes.

Thanks for the races.

Wouldn't even have needed polished up before you sent it on. 'Twas very much a kid in a sweet shop approach you took to blowing through your Christmas bonus—few would have been able to stick it through all the hours of gaming you'd enlisted yourself for.

I left the door open for World 2 but to each their own.

£37.29 @ Amazon + a paper plane.

It's never a bad time for FF VI but you gotta go where your gaming heart takes you. Have you polished off all those Switch games you treated yourself to six months ago?

Mario Land 3 is a pretty weird Mario game. Hope that link doesn't spoil the end credits music for Helmsley before he gets to bask in it in-game.

VAR itself is not a problem. Technology is used in other sports. The thing is how inept they've been at integrating it in footy. That and some sort of a clash of egos between the people doing it and the protocol they've bound themselves with. You'd think after five years of on the job learning they'd have figured it out a lot better by now. Like that Luis Diaz decision couldn't be rectified because the game had kicked off again? Give me a break. Apparently 96% of VAR decisions have been correct (up from 82% pre-VAR) but so many teams have been screwed over by that 4%. Still, I would be surprised if 7 clubs don't vote to keep it. Especially when you remember it was no better before. Did they even get letters of apology back then? Automated offsides is a step in the right direction. Hope it doesn't take another five years to improve the rest.

Yeah, chests are already a foregone conclusion the way it automatically gives you a chest count in each area and puts them on the map for you. Same for graffiti. Love how upfront it is about this stuff. I've now pretty much got all the petals in each area so far (plus chests and graffiti) and even found a little secret area in the slums when I went back through it with Third Eye on. Oh, nice. I'll come back to this after I hear all the music in the game first. I have the Pact Edition which came with a code to download some tracks. Every year's been the year of JRPGs for me since the GBA/Gamecube era. Thought you were mining your memories of a long-ago playthrough to provide tips; wasn't aware you were playing in tandem otherwise I'd have... nah, I doubt I'd have wrapped it up any sooner. Reckon I'm about 20 hours in (at the Entertainment District) so I'm sure it'll be another while yet before I get finished. Recently did a segment in the prison that was a bit annoying with one-hit kills. Yes, another game with this: I welcomed Lucien into the hideout since he wants what we want. Nice to read you had an overall decent time with it. Where it excels for me is it's just fun to play. The way it doesn't seem to hide missables is a massive plus point too. So I'm more inclined to do as much as possible (not that I'm going for achievements) when it's all laid out for you, and with it being plain old fun, I'm happy enough to just look around or do a side quest rather than beeline the story. It's just a good time. Ys VIII is more of the same in a different setting, minus the Gifts. I don't mind feeling around for where these games will allow me to reach so invisible walls didn't bother me in the slightest. Depending on how strongly you're put off by the fencing you've described in IX, you could feel pretty hemmed in at times in VIII. Yup, Hawk checks out with your personality. All the characters are fun to use but I'm not really liking the look of any of them, which doesn't make me particularly lean towards White Cat and Hawk as I would normally favour the early joiners too. I've dropped Hawk and I'll drop the White Cat too, even though from a story perspective she's sort of set up as your sidekick. I'd prefer to choose from the likes of Dogi, Carla, Parks, Saradhi. It was similar in Ys VIII where I would rather have rolled out with some of the castaways than the party members I was saddled with—but again, they were fun to play as so I saw past it.

Wonder if they considered titling it Switch Edition or 2024 Edition.

Launch with: Mario (fleshing out the Bowser's Fury blueprint without the slumbering boss in the middle). Few months later: Mario Kart (not open-world. Bring back missions. Run periodic events or something at a similar rate to Tetris 99 to go easy on the FOMO. No micro-transactions). Later in the first year: Mario Maker 3. Don't front-load it. Spread the rest out over the next nine years. Quality, not quantity.

I like that song too. The Super Ball (with music) is in Mario Maker 2. I'm surprised this is a blind spot for you, though it's cool to have some fresh perspective on it! There's a hard mode if you play it again after completing it—but it won't be much harder with all these years of platforming under your belt. Mario Land and Tetris were the Gameboy combo to start off with. I played ML at home, in the back of the car and on the go repeatedly back on Gameboy and tons more on 3DS.

Looking forward to seeing what these will be. I'm drawing a blank beyond Mario Tennis and the Michael Chang one.

UK Ingo --> Zelda film has English accents. U King Hippo --> Little Mac talking smack in New! Punch-Out (99).

Looked to me like VAR was going to chalk it off. So many times the VAR decisions aren't what it looks like onscreen. This could end up 5-4 to Villa.

Gakkers could flourish when Arne Slot's in.

Indeed. Last of the Time Lords, TARDIS stands for... getting those boxes ticked for the newcomers. The Doctor is adopted is news for newbies and myself alike, apparently. Susan and the Rani namechecked to acknowledge people in online comment sections. On the balance of things, I thought the specials were all right. Now it's started, I feel it lacks substance...? It's watchable, at least. Following the Bad Wolf, Cracks of Time template. I am the one who waits for a decent twist-twist whenever this all comes to a head. "Why does everything about you connect to Christmas?" Answer: it's panto. SPACE! babies.

Didn't know Jadzia does voice work!

1-0 in a minute. Looks like I'm watching this one and the next even though they're dead rubbers. 180 mins and I'm done... until pre-season.

Same. Never thought I'd see the day but it came and I've made my peace with it because I know if I bought TotK, I wouldn't "get" it and, ultimately, I'd just regret it massively as I should have known better. The building and swimming up-through-ground mechanics look like they could be fun in a smaller, more restrained game. Make it a third of the size of BotW and I'll take a punt on it. It'd still be humungous. Because I know I can enjoy smaller, more organised open-world games from having played the likes of Immortals: Fenyx Rising, Burnout Paradise and Lego City Undercover this past year or so. I'd like to eventually go back on BotW after looking up some pointers to actually direct me to something to do in that game. If I ever get around to that and successfully come away enjoying it, I could consider moving on to TotK at some time way beyond that. For the time being though, Zelda has sadly joined a list of Nintendo games I'm just not into.

Got some more quality time on this today. Bought a few pieces of equipment (haven't reached a point where I'm overflowing with gold yet) so reading this, I'll stick with purchasing and let the upgrade materials accumulate in the background. Then use them to bolster the raid arena. I wasn't sure about getting all the petals but thanks to Anemona's Third Eye Gift, I've collected them all in at least two areas now and can conceivably see myself hunting down the rest. I enjoy putting her in the lead—which isn't necessary to use her Gift—purely because of the way she skates when you're dashing. It was nice to get outside city walls, the stuff with the doppelganger group was a good laugh (reminded me of Ozzy in Chrono Trigger when they pulled the lever...!) and it was fun to later hack and slash up Mount El Dore for exp aplenty and a nice view from the top. Then a sidequest took me back there so I was happy to lay waste to a portion of it again. Currently, I have a pair of sidequests on the list then before I push it forward again, I'll have a look for more petals and speak again to some characters as I go around just on the off chance it triggers anything. Pretty sure it won't, but just in case. As for Hawk. There are some signs he might be coming around but, like, I don't actually want him to do a miraculous u-turn and lose his attitude because it is funny the way he gets on. I just want to know he's definitely part of the team and he can be a cheeky sod all he wants. Minor quibble: I'd like to set the map so it's always oriented north. Every time I open it, I'm immediately pressing X to get it pointing N. And sometimes I'm in and out of the map screen pretty frequently!

That's the league over now for the Pool. Things severely went off the boil after they all pulled together and performed beyond their limits over the winter months. Amanda would love him in as player-manager. I'm sure they'd rename the club after him, put his face on the kit and whatever else he wants.

Sent the demo to the Switch after @MindFreak mentioned it and only just gave it a try. After you agree to who knows what in the Ts & Cs, you get three levels: first gives you your moves, then it's onto two proper levels. It's a fun game with good movement. Glad there's a demo to be able to get a bit of a feel for it. Some niggles are that you get caught on edges you wouldn't expect to, when you change direction you start from walking pace again, and every time I fell off the level, it felt like a Nintendo platformer would have known I wanted to target an enemy or destructible object or grab the yo-yo swing point rather than speed boost myself into oblivion. Just things that would be smoothed out in a Mario or Kirby. Still, it's fun when you start to get a bit of read on the levels and begin to get some flow going. I'm sure you'd get used to those aforementioned quirks over the course of the full game. I was thinking it might translate well to 2D. Those penguins though. Get them off me!