darksnowman

May have seemed that way to begin with but now I've seen a bit more of it, all (or most of them, since I haven't got all 13 yet) are so they're all piquing my interest. And it's much more interwoven than I anticipated.

Played a round. Can we have the PAL version plz. You could do endless replays of shots if you're desperate to sicken peoples' happiness.

That's good to know. It's because of the way the (prologue) chapters conclude with a results screen numbering how many mystery files and event archives you've obtained that had me wondering what I could be missing. It's all the stranger because as far as I'm concerned, I've amassed none of either! Shades of Sonic and chilli dogs, haha. My only early inkling with it is that the characters' storylines are going to converge (knowingly or not) to change the kaiju futurescape that's being depicted. That's possibly as safe a prediction I could make, or it's going to pan out being so far off the mark it's unreal.

Good racing, fellas!

Rules 'n' regs?

Eeeh just because last week was dubbed portable night doesn't mean you'll be disqualified for hotspotting in tonight.

Are you confusing this with Animal Crossing!

Guilty as charged. It hadn't twigged with me until the other day that its release lined up with Easter weekend, so I made a deal with myself that if I saw it today, I'd get it. I wasn't sure how likely that'd be as I'm not used to games coming out on Thursdays? Well, there was one copy on the corner of the shelf so pick it up I did. I'm in the tutorial waves so very much in the early stages of seeing what's going on and how these characters' stories/lives connect and intersect. So far I think Dr. Space is my preferred. Previous to that, the guy with his yakisoba pan was amusing. The action sections seem pretty unlosable at the moment what with it being the tutorial but it's a nice change of pace. So yeah... intrigued. Not gonna pretend I know where it's going as I'm sure there are plenty of twists and turns on the way though I have a grasp on what's happened so far. BTW, I hadn't seen footage of this and it's blatantly from the Muramasa people as soon as you see it in motion. Any missables I should be concerned about? At the moment I'm compulsively checking around the screen for keywords (or items) just in case. So far it hasn't yielded anything so I dunno if I'm wasting my time with that or not.

This game is in the safest of hands.

This game looks good. We should all get it pre-loaded just in case...

So if Chelsea could have acquitted themselves better at home... ...looks like Roman was unable to buy them one last trophy! Poor Bayern. Didn't see that coming despite them not having much strength in depth these days. Someone (was it Don Hutchinson?) said it was 50-50 but I thought that was just to make it sound like the tie wasn't over because I certainly didn't give Villareal a chance. Funny old game. Liverpool and City need to do the biz tonight because if it's three Spanish sides + one Portuguese in the last four, we'll never hear the end of it from the Pokémon fans.

Nice! I've only been the once to one of those shows where they were pretty much all nobodies except Cena. It was a fun spectacle though--seeing them pull off those moves and slam each other around live is so much cooler than on telly.

Around this time last year, I replayed a bunch of Zeldas with Mario World thrown into the mix for good measure. Since I was loving those games (as always I do) and the NSO SNES stuff in general, I thought the time had come to give Super Metroid another whirl to see if I was coming around on the whole Mario X Zelda thing yet. As fate would have it, one thing lead to another, I didn't get around to it and then my NSO sub lapsed. Now here I am in 2022, fresh off Axiom Verge--a game that is much more Metroid than Metroidvania--so what better time to check in with Super Metroid to see if I love it yet. Tldr; still don't. On paper, I've always thought Metroid (and Metroidvanias) sound like great inventions. Then when I sit down with one, my world is rarely rocked. Where in Axiom Verge, the pure fundamentals of moving and blasting felt in tune with what I want and expect, Super Metroid falls short. The floatiness, the lack of precision (there's no pixel-perfect platforming, but sometimes you need to land on single-square blocks!), and even the lack of confidence with the midair arc of a jump all come together to create a game in which I've little to no faith in reliably positioning the main character where I want them. Thankfully there are very few high-pressure situations, so the game mostly gets away with its handling however in some boss rooms, for example, it can get hairy. Sometimes a jump will clear a projectile, other times you'll jump into something and best of luck if you want to consistently jump between hazards. As far as I can tell, the same controller inputs produce varying onscreen outcomes. 60% of the time it works 100% of the time. I just unload my missiles and hope I've enough health to see these encounters through. There is no real satisfaction in blasting things out of your way either, imo. It's hard to compare the areas in Super Metroid with Axiom Verge since AV was all-new to me and I already have a lingering familiarity with SM's layout and a rough idea of the major areas throughout the planet that need to be hit. Tbh, most of these things I'd like to forget but they remain burned in my memory from decades ago when I first persevered through, dead-end after dead-end after ever-suffering dead-end. Trekking back through the same rooms and corridors time and time again. If (more a case of when) you lose your grasp on the thread of progression, all the best picking up the trail again. Admittedly though, for a while, Super Metroid does a decent job of recycling you around so you emerge near something that's newly accessible after you score an upgrade. So props for that. Just try not to miss it and enjoy it while it lasts. As you can probably tell, my lack of faith in the movement saps the fun out of the discovery. For example, when you get the ice beam it isn't a HUGE distance up the shaft, freezing creatures to use as platforms. It's a few mins tops. Alas, a few mins that drag by. Which is how I feel about the game overall--it's not so much full of "ah-ha!" moments as "urgh, spose we'll head all the way back there... again." Now and again you come across a few rooms of nice self-contained forwards progression but in general, it's a slog despite areas being fairly compact and distinctive. I feel like I'm getting nowhere fast and I don't have the funnest of times traversing through it. Moment to moment, Super Metroid just isn't a pleasure. Plenty of people spout about what a seminal moment SM was. I appreciate that it served as the launching point for Castlevania to start the offshoot explorative Metroidvania genre (ultimately leading to things like Axiom Verge), but other than that I'm genuinely baffled that people still cite SM as something that stands the test of time. Well actually, it did signify something important for me, too. It made me realise that just because a game came from that lot that make Mario, Zelda, Pilotwings, F-Zero, et al, it didn't automatically mean I would like it. And that's okay. To each their own! Some snaps: Just... grab... the ledge. You go to the corner of the map and this is all you find. Almost died of boredom here. Barbos' Barrier is a better boss fight, and Belcha's Barn is better than the later boss it mimics, too. It's-a-me...troid? Sometimes an easy jump. Other times it takes so many tries. The water is like quicksand. So imagine what the quicksand is like. You can't see Samus because she's flickering her health away. Break glass in case of not knowing where to go next. Well hey there little guy. Brutal. She's pinballing around between those spikes, the enemy, the sarlacc pit plants, flickering like mad. These things are cool. Was into my last 99 health by the time I got out of this close encounter. Feather the jump button or risk being fried by those frayed cables. Plenty of time was spent doing this in various locations. Blending in. Blink and you'll miss it!! Yes, I did it this way. So what. The game knows full well how ropey its controls are otherwise you would never happen upon this room! This was therapeutic. Say arrrrrrrghhhhhhhh One of the most frustrating encounters in gaming. Not my first go on the Super Metroid rodeo and I still frequently lost my way. Tried to take it all in good spirits (really, I did!) and surrender myself to crisscrossing the map. Heading for the grapple beam took me a good while to figure out it was time to circle back for, for example. And plenty of other things besides. There is no way that time is correct by the way. Reckon it took me double that!! My protip is this: when you come across an upgrade, check nearby for further passages. I by no means have locations memorised but you'd be surprised how many times one leads directly to another!! They're the buses of the Metroid world. Towards the end, I was thinking the scales were balancing for me with this game and I'd reflect on it more favourably this time, however that trek back after Ridley drained any goodwill out of me. The uplifting credits music tried to influence me otherwise... and came close to succeeding. Likes - The above-ground music. - Opening doors and reeling in items with the grapple beam. - The firefly things that when you kill them, the room gets darker. - Sometimes I gave her a good yeet off a grappling point. I dreamt of Samus arcing across the night sky. Crashing into a building, then back into another then forward again into another. A wrecking ball. Still want Alien 3 on NSO so whatever. Fusion 4ever.

Dunno how the codes work exactly as I can only speak for how it is when you pre-purchase on the eShop, but the timing doesn't line up for me either. Afaik, old, pre-release versions of digital software isn't just left lying on your Switch (!!) for weeks waiting to be updated and ultimately unlocked at midnight on release day. You get a placeholder icon and then the full download follows closer to release. People would have cracked pre-loads sooner if that's how they work. But with the delay and everything, it's hard to definitively claim the stars didn't line up for this user. Whoever was covering the weekend was just giving an option (any option!) in the hopes of dragging it out so they could leave it for the Monday morning staff to deal with.

Danny Murphy thinks so!

Wasn't aware of that detail. It was already unacceptable and that just puts it in an even worse light. People will say "show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser" but Ronaldo takes it too far every time with these displays of discontent and lashing out. What happened to keeping it behind closed doors and coming back out in the next match to set it right on the pitch.

Think I've only pre-loaded a couple of Switch games from S-E and Nintendo. SaGa, Game Builder Garage, possibly Fire Emblem NES. You can imagine. However, I honestly cannot for the life of me remember how preloading works re: the download itself? I think at the time of pre-purchasing, it basically puts a small filesize icon on your Switch then downloads the fuller game closer to release when the Switch is in sleep mode...? So with that in mind, I think it's a strange one that a playable version of Advance Wars was pushed out onto consoles so far before the planned release. They postponed it far enough in advance (har har) that this shouldn't have happened... but then it is a unique situation so perhaps there was an oversight on Nintendo's part that allowed this one to slip through. I did a cursory Internet search and got some hits for Advance Wars 1+2 download so it could well be out there. Dunno. I won't be trying as it doesn't bother me too much either way, tbh.

He'll still be one of the first names on Southgate's call-up list. Everton are by no means out of the woods yet. Burnely could leapfrog them after a couple more matches. All the talk of them being too big to go down means... they are probably going. Did you see that. What a twit. If possible, he wants to invite the person to a match. Err yeah but what about replacing the phone??

Pre-loaders are freeloaders.

This is gonna be broodal.

This was under a fiver in a recent Switch eShop sale. The price to MB required value was too good for me to pass up. The visuals, the atmosphere, the music (the music!) and the character movement... unsurprising for me to report that it's all fantastic as Axiom Verge has been highly acclaimed for years. And that's the character movement from the word go. The weight and speed of the running and jumping clicked with me in a big way, then after some upgrades, you're zipping all over the screen. Could do with going back into it for a victory lap to see what else there is to uncover. Snippets of story are as appealing to dig up as powerups. Seeing that map in the post above, I kind of want to get my mitts on something like that to sit down and go through with a fine-tooth comb and learn as much as I can about what was created here. Very intriguing. The glitching, the code, the unexpectedly unconventional boss encounters... a lot of thought went into this game. And the post-credits scene. What's that all about! Not sure if I finished it early or not? It's highly doubtful I pulled off any sequence breaks but it was an utter fluke that I came across the final area and boss. Actually thought I was setting off on a mid-game jaunt with my latest upgrades when I came across it. Didn't even dawn on me I was that close to the end until it happened; if at some point I was told to collect however many doodahs then head there, it completely passed me by. Or maybe the game is so masterfully designed that I was funnelled through as intended. Better than ending up lost and frustrated, that much's for certain. It says I racked up less than 40 deaths which seems untrue. I was dying all over the shop. Save points were so frequent it seemed right to be gungho. Probably the wee bot hogged all the deaths as I sent it out a brave bit. Only things I can think it could have done with are warping between save rooms (could be something I didn't unlock?) and the option to have a map marker for where to go next for noobs. Took me in the region 10-15 hours which could have been cut down if I knew what was up, and no doubt seasoned Metroidvania-ers ripped through it in less than half that time. Good job the running and shooting was fun in itself or I likely would've quit long before the end. But never mind that. My trials and tribulations with this genre are well enough documented. Suffice it to say that Axiom Verge is up there as one of my favourites along with the non-linear Castlevania games. Might get the sequel sometime if it's heavily discounted too.

Mario will have to check her plumbing.

"Radical Nightmare." Not the best version of the game. Btw, new music is utilised for the attract screen before you start into the game. The footage of Cross looks totally fine to me (no, really) however they show it at one point side by side with the Playstation original and it doesn't compare favourably. It's a chugger. Though despite seeing it here with my own eyes, I still think the update looks fine as I don't remember 32-bit games looking anything other than wonky and barely holding together at the seams. Apparently, the preferred way to play could well be handheld on Switch. Fingers crossed that getting in and out of battle is snappy enough.

Go on the Toffees! You love to see it.