darksnowman

*uses nasty medicine on thread* Picked this up recently and flew through it in 22h on the dot. A very good game with spades of charm that I barely scratched the surface of over the course of the main game. There's tons left to do in the form of yo-kai collecting (I got about 40 of over 200), quests (I maybe did a dozen...) and a postgame that, realistically, I don't see myself getting around to. For about 18 of those 22 hours, it lured me into a false sense of security as I hardly resorted to using items and equips were little more than an afterthought. In the early running, I stopped off a few times to do some levelling (mainly to get to grips with the flow of battles) and those gains stood me in good stead for quite some time. Until what was the final run of three bosses, actually. That's when it spiked for me. I ended up using all my exp orbs and had to put in some time levelling on top of that to see it out. The last battle of the three took the fewest retries, and after changing out some equips, I was able to get it over the line. I have some gripes that would likely be footnotes and distant memories if I was sticking with it for the long haul of the postgame. I would have liked fast travel sooner, fast battling sooner, a more zoomed-out camera because those streets were all so samey. I see what they were going for with making you expose bosses' weak points, but it needs some streamlining, imo. And as brisk a game as it is, there were quite a few times when it ground to a halt to send me off on fetch quests—main offender here was every time it forced me to rank up the watch! Bosses took more and more time as the game went on but that could have been down to me not being clued up on item usage and not swapping in high-rank yo-kai as I got em (or even trying to seek any out). Generally speaking in battle, I just watched to make sure I was healing quicker than I was being damaged and unleashed soultimate attacks as they became available. Notwithstanding any of that, I've had an overall positive time with Yo-kai Watch. By and large, it was right up my alley. Had I got it a time when I was going to put in the hours, I could see it stretching out beyond the credits now and becoming a game I think back on very fondly indeed. Shall try not to leave it too long before I get into the second. Looking forward to seeing how they fine-tuned it.

Nice to read this is still seeing updates as I just picked it up at the weekend.

Not a film for the ages—it felt like a sting of cutscenes that was missing in between progress bits, but I thought it was solid enough for Godzilla fans like us who enjoy a good old Mario romp with stuff in the background to nerd out over while nice renditions of series music play. The blue Luma for best newcomer? (Provided it is a newcomer and they didn't yoink it from something I haven't played/ don't remember...?) Final confrontation seemed reminiscent of the finale of the Sonic movie...?

Nintendo UK vid (not private). Haha, yes I had that with Majora's Mask at the start. I can do okay with things like Mario Tennis but overall the N64 controller is better than the pro controller imo because of the stick. F-Zero X with the pro controller is too responsive.

Saw this among the trailer reel at the cinema. Definitely one for the small screen...

It's as easy as that to summon you??

Yeah, looks like Switch must have had it for the FY. DQ III will receive a blow-out and imminent release as soon as I get the current III off the eShop. I could easily have been through it and be fresh again for the remake by now. Ooh, I'll take it!

Figured it'd be announced this summer, after a year on Switch. Anything coming the other direction...? Be sure to let us know what you think. Thought I'd be up for a replay after letting the dust settle on it but it still feels too soon.

Looks like I have enough gold coins for Chrono Cross but I think I'll leave it for another sale as I wouldn't be playing it immediately if I get it now. Still toying with getting it off play-asia sometime. Perhaps with EO? Not going to bombard you with a list, but if you haven't played it, DQ XI is up there with the best of them. If nothing else, check out the demo and see what you think! FF VII is also well worth a look on Switch if it's new to you as it has some added benefits like speed up and full heal at any time so you can rip through it at ease.

I put the demo on for about 45 mins. Could see this being a decent enough game, but man is it a bad demo. Because it's the first 10% of the game (trusting @Glen-i on this), it means the demo is the opening of the full game which doesn't exactly throw you into the thick of things. It wasn't long until I was hammering through text and dialogue because I just wanted to get to gameplay—I'd care about story if I was digging into the entire game, from a demo I just want a taste of what's on offer. The glimpse I got of the two-character gameplay seemed cool. I can imagine there being some solid puzzling as the game goes on. If I ever want to get into Bayonetta I'd definitely consider starting here.

That'll be provided through bunny hood amiibo.

Gave it a watch. Yep, that looks like the sequel to BotW. Hopefully, the ascend ability has ALOT of use cases to cut down on time spent climbing. Potentially quicker to do that, then slide down hillsides to points of interest. Fingers crossed. Trying to keep an open mind on the fusing (and game in general) but I fear it'll just add busy work. At least it's quicker than collecting things and going off to craft them. Best thing I can think of is perhaps the sky islands can be approached as their own self-contained things. Not feeling any anticipation for this at all. Oh they're in all right. You just have to gum them together yourself. Use the rewind ability to undo. I reckon reviewers will love it. Can see it equalling or surpassing BotWs scores. Chances of it scoring significantly lower are extremely slim, imo. @Ronnie pre-emptively rubbished that in the post directly above yours.

So is that the ruleset you want to enforce in Smash.

Finally got around to watching the first episode of Andor at the weekend. Initial impressions are that it seems okay, especially after Obi-Wan. Should be able to get through it in the next week or two.

If you wouldn't mind just sitting in the one spot instead of going around the stages...

Went out with a whimper, didn't it. Hard to believe it's gone. I wasn't really thinking much of it until this morning and I can feel the weight of everything that's just not available any more. The dual screens, the 3D, the gimmicks. It's harder to get my head around than I expected. I'm already wondering if one day I'll get a dingy secondhand 3DS to jailbreak and have access to everything that can no longer be bought. Feel like there's a gap in my gaming options now. Yeah, that's right. The updates I was getting were in UTC so shoppers across the globe had to adjust accordingly. Pretty sure Doug had nothing to do with it. Looks like you got sorted anyway. --------------------- I'd been following the weekly sales and held off until the last minute in the hopes of a final clearance that never materialised. Got: Kid Tripp (free) Digger Dan DX (free) Then on Sunday this dozen from what was still on sale: Go! Go! Kokopolo 3D The Legend of Kusakari Fairune 80's Overdrive 4x Japanese Rail Sim 3D () Retro City Rampage DX Stella Glow Mighty Switch Force 1 + 2 Severed was off sale by this time. Sorry @Jonnas. And with that, they stopped accepting my card for payment! So I added a gift card. DKC Trilogy Mario Maker (because it has 100 built-in levels with objectives... but isn't 3D.) Luigi's Mansion 2 Lylat Wars 3D Mole Mania (You're welcome, @Jonnas!) 3D Classics TwinBee (worthy of the classic moniker!) Gurumin 3D: A Monster Adventure — I'd earmarked this as it had been £3 in March but was back to full price by the time I was buying. I got it anyway because unlike Severed, it's not on Switch. Attack of the Friday Monsters! Left me with £1.10 balance which I'll spend on the Switch eShop sometime. Hopefully, they'll start accepting my card again by the time Sea of Stars comes out...? There was still plenty I wanted and while I considered adding another gift card last night, ultimately I put it out of my head. Perhaps eventually they'll release a family of "3DS minis" (but not miniature!) with various selections of games built-in, like a 3D Classics machine, etc? Or the successor to Switch will flip open when undocked? Or something. With Level-5 making a comeback I'm at least somewhat hopeful of a Guild compilation seeing the light of day. Surely the VC stuff will end up on NSO. If they don't and this is where it ends, I'm going to miss the 3D effect. Got a bunch of demos as well then picked up some physical games from the bargain bin today too: Yo-Kai Watch 1 + 2 New Style Boutique 1 + 2 Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers The boxes need a clean. There are some free themes available! If you open your system the themes icon will have the dot to draw your attention.

RPG Maker Fes - £3.99 Culdecept Revolt - £7.99 Etrian Odyssey Untold - £3.59 Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold - £3.49 Etrian Odyssey IV - £3.59 Persona Q - £3.59 Soul Hackers - £3.59 Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker - £3.49 Stella Glow - £3.49 Runbow Pocket - £2.19

There's amiibo x Labo VR potential in that. Nintendo is at its best when they aren't doing what people want. Are bells and whistles new Shiekah slate abilities? When prices dropped during the GameCube era I didn't expect them to edge back up. Maybe those discs had their benefits after all!

We're all penning our notice so we're freed up for six weeks...

Legit looking forward to Prodigy: Supernova getting its turn here as if it isn't outright terrible I wouldn't mind giving it a go. That's right! The two-parter where they repackaged the pilot episode. His motivation/reasoning was sound as ever.

From a recent interview. And it seems like they are indeed good friends because...

Thanks for the insight, Doug. Since there've been plenty of "incredibly full, deeply immersive" Nintendo games until now that weren't $70, I'm gonna take it that you want me to believe there's added value here based on how many hectares TotK is stretched out over, especially now it spans from the depths up to the heavens. If that's really how you price these things, and you aren't just trying to wring every last dollar you can out of the fanbase, then I'm looking forward to a Zelda in the $5-10 range. Insider Q&A-Nintendo’s Bowser

Averages usually around an hour and a half. Can feel like hours depending on how long they waste on United.

Been on a free trial week of NSO. It got me online for the Splatoon 3 Big Run last weekend but doesn't give access to the Expansion Pack stuff, so Majora's Mask has had to take a back seat. Still needing that Zelda fix, I started a new file in A Link to the Past. First full replay since the 35th Anniversary year—it's still great; one of the best there is. One thing I noticed was, on the first boss, I quickly burned through my arrows and it seemed to take more hits in general to finish off. This went on to become a bit of a theme, as it seemed like some screens had more enemies than normal and all but about three bosses appeared to take longer to put down than I anticipated. I was never far from using a fairy until I reached the back third. I was online a few times to check and recheck if naming your file "Zelda" ups the difficulty. I was 99.9% sure it doesn't but still... For whatever reason, my instincts were off this time around. Couldn't figure out why I was often running low on magic and/or hearts, which lead to just scraping through against bosses I would have otherwise expected to see to in a matter of seconds. Not bigging myself up here, just always saw the bosses as a chance to go to town with your latest items rather than as a test. Maybe I've gone soft. At least with the eyeball boss I could just stand on the spot I entered the room, slash away with the sword, shoot arrows, and win through, only losing about four hearts. Similar thing with the Ice Palace boss except I went in low on magic for that one, so was lucky to melt the ice and get the fight going—tried various items, bombs didn't help, I'd just enough magic to get bombos off. Next option was to use the magic mirror to warp out and restock! (Realised much later I had a green potion.) The evening I loaded up my save between those levels, I noticed on the file select screen I'd no shield! Sloppy. My own negligence aside, going between the Light and Dark Worlds and feeling things click into place still makes for a great time. When you have an idea about what LttP contains, there's something fun about opting to go direct from one level to the next at certain points, or leaving yourself pickups for later that you might have got then or earlier in a previous file. Simple things like stopping to pull out the magic mirror and flip back to Light World in a suspicious spot is always worth the reward. Felt especially satisfying this time to mow down the first three bosses when I re-encountered them in Ganon's Tower. A QoL update to allow quick donation at the Pond of Happiness is needed. And the Master Sword sleeps again... forever! Five deaths. From one of the GOATs, to one of my GOATs. Had a very merry time going through DKC 3 again. There've always been individual aspects of this one that I can take or leave, but the overall package is so much more than the sum of its parts. The Northern Kremisphere, the Brothers Bear, the little trading sequence, the ideas on show in each and every level, the, imo, unparalleled flow, rhythm and instinctive readibility of the DKC trilogy platforming was perfected here (despite not always being hold right + Y to steamroll to victory). I think it's absolutely fantastic—one of my all-time faves. And yes, the music fits perfectly well. There were some levels (from K3 onwards) that I played through several times to sniff out the bonus rooms. Koin on Krevice Kreepers always takes me a while to figure out. I've already forgotten how to do that one for next time. In particular, I had to comb through Barrel Drop Bounce and Floodlit Fish more times than should've been necessary. I appreciate that the majority of times you check a corner you'll uncover invisible bananas or bear coins—curiosity is encouraged, and there's things to spend those bear coins on. Levels where you're finding the first bonus room between the O and N letters always have me questioning how thorough I was. Then there's the lost world. It builds to a tough but fair crescendo in Swoopy Salvo before tapering off with Rocket Rush. Outside of Krematoa, I think Poisonous Pipeline gave me the most trouble from a difficulty standpoint this time. Though the customary bad bonks on Koindozer Klamber ran it close. Between DKC 1-3, DK '94 and the DKL trilogy, I don't think we realised how good we had it! Looking back, I certainly took the DKL games for granted. Won't be surprised if I have a newfound appreciation for them when they're inevitably added to NSO. 105%. Bust a move, gotta groove. --------------------- Having got my value from the free trial, I'll stump up for another year (+ Expansion Pack) now. Need to finish off that MM file!

Was checking last night for any footy and thought it was hilarious there was a minute-by-minute for this unfolding instead. The list of BBC double-standards that Skysports person reeled off was quality. The clip should be included in this: I see Rishi is saying this Linekar thing is a matter for the BBC, not the government. Come onnnn. Yes, I agree. Though it's not like they depend on the beeb since they all present/do punditry/co-commentate for other channels. Wonder how the Bargain Hunt ratings today were. Liverpool will have been glad they had one less media outlet to explain themselves to. Idiots.