darksnowman

At last. Out of the blue. Right on time. Like clockwork. Certainly feels like E3 with the forum slowness. Realistically, ports galore: Excitebots. Ever Oasis. Star Fox 64 3D. Nintendo Pocket Football Club. Harmoknight. DK Returns. Switch Music. NSMB 2. Wario Land: Shake Dimension. FF:CC: Crystal Bearers. Link's Sheikah Slate School. Capcom x WayForward: DuckTales RemDem (Remastered Demastered). It's time for Skies of Arcadia to join ToS and BK on Switch. Rare: It's KI Gold, Jerry! Looking forward to anything new (Captain Syrup's Showtime, a Mario & Luigi game like Rita's Replay!) and what third parties have, i.e. new to me. Otogi Katsugeki Mameda no Bakeru: Oracle Saitarou no Sainan!! comes west. Noooo. Don't succumb to the penguins! Here's hoping it's not going out with too much of a whimper. It's had a tremendous run.

Nice rundown. Was hoping to give them a try over the weekend but didn't get around to it. Definitely want a look at V based on what you've said. The wiki's going to need updating because under Gameboy --> MM you're only down for Mole Mania.

https://kotaku.com/horizon-lego-adventures-hands-on-ps5-nintendo-switch-1851535713 Next Smash Bros. confirmed.

I'm approaching twenty hours now in Origins. A recent development was that we've accepted to go and save the world. It's a strange game. I'm liking it well enough but I'm not fully in tune with the flow of it. I go around and check everything and there's still been about half a dozen times it's taken me a few laps of a place to find the trigger point to progress. It could be a person. It could be a table. It could be a guard that's fallen asleep so you can take a new exit. It could be talk to everyone in town then try to leave and the next thing will happen. Just lately I thought it was about to happen again then someone (from the first game!) said "sleep on it" so I checked the bed and that did the trick. Then came an investigation to identify the Mourning Mistral—kept reading it as the Morning Minstrel—which gave me the run around too, talking to people and going back to talk to them again, and again. Always feel like I'm missing something in these parts (as well as the finer points of the battle system). It's light on action. In a way that's fine because, similar to BK 1, you get a few screens here and there with enemies and since battles can take 2-3 minutes each, it's not so bad because you know it won't be a massive slog until the next bit of downtime breaks it up. And like I mentioned before, you get healed up after every encounter so you're always good to go again. Just seems like the balance is weighted massively in favour of towns and talking. There's a coliseum which was nice to rattle off some battling—to a good tune, might I add—but it won't let me progress up the ranks so it seems I'm already done with it for now. It's a pity because I want a good run of battling as I feel like I'm still getting to grips with the system—I'm so fixated on quickly picking cards I rarely glance at the action itself. I have sixteen blank magnus now. One of them contains... a mobile phone. Receiving an extra eight got a little irl fist pump out of me. I'm at the Lava Caves where I couldn't get past the first normal encounter so I copied my deck to a new slot and made some tweaks to include all the ice and water cards I have. Also put an ice aura on everyone. Made it manageable but the auras have run out and I've lost to the boss five or six times at least. Don't know if that's down to my levels, deck composition or a glaring lack of expertise with the battle system. Maybe if I keep retrying I'll get a run of cards that let me do damage quicker than I take it. Party levels are 15/16 so I'm averaging less than one an hour. Origins is praised for its battle system so it'd be nice if it let me get to it. I'm just not "seeing the Matrix" with these cards yet. So, kind of just waiting for it to hit its stride. Feels like I'm still really early on despite the hour count. Think I had some dealings with Lyude's old man. I suppose my twenty hours could be someone else's five or six.

Early adopters shafted again: a map has been added and will be coming soon to the Switch version.

But of course Claudia would have you contracted to say exactly this.

Just now @ 12:16.

So you're saying the Three Lion's defence is impenetrable. The hubris begins!

Giving myself a pat on the back for not highlighting dynamic. Shuffling the handcrafted sectors (rooms in levels) was the correlation that came to me. I suppose when you play a roguelike long enough you start to recognise what segments are being stitched together to make up each floor. Sounds like they're being upfront about it so, fingers crossed, they deliver something with good replayability that still feels properly made and isn't as jarring as the Dampé's level maker association I made. Finding out if Metal Slug can make the jump to Advance Wars has got everyone curious. Could be just something they came up with to get people talking about it.

Longer vid with voice over.

Have not enjoyed this series at all and I've little doubt the resolution next week will be tripe but at least—at least!—we got a decent showing this week. My only hope for the finale is it draws a line under everything that's been going on this year and we move on from all this rot. Thankfully, with Doctor Who you can have that hope.

We will be keeping an eye to see if your posting frequency drops off soon for the series 3 recording.

I just wanted a mid-afternoon natter about some gamezzz. Uh oh. Pavement may well have been touched. It's always the time to talk about Chrono Trigger from any angle.

Seems to be in its death throes right now. Taking ages to get anywhere. Time to go outside.

If anyone can, Olly Emre...

Heard Mario Krischel on the radio the other day. When asked about Germany's chances, he mentioned four key players. Havertz was one of them. Bodes well for Germany if they rate him and can get a tune out of him.

As long as they keep these snippets coming we can bone up in the meantime until we're boning up in-game.

Played a few hours by way of the Game Trial. Certainly looks the part and has a distinctive atmosphere (at least as far as my next-to-nothing metroidvania experience goes). However, to the surprise of no one, HK didn't move the needle for me—this is a game I would have to make a conscious decision and effort to enjoy. Like, when it told me the shop was open, since I was trying Hollow Knight I was going to try it, I embraced the backtracking and went back up. Couldn't afford anything. Headed back down and pressed onwards only to get locked in a small room and killed. Sent back to the last bench. Got back and pressed onwards in a different direction. Locked in a bigger room and killed. Rinse and repeat. Takes the wind out of my sails. I got as far as dying to Hornet on the final evening of the Game Trial. One of those cases where playing for ten minutes feels like I've been on it for ages. Maybe I'll develop an appetite for this kind of thing one day. Warping between benches would help immensely with getting around, even this early on. I'd like to think I was a good quarter into it, but the two things I know about Hollow Knight are it's long and hard so I'm under no illusions about what I'd be getting into if I buy it. Still, a gentler opening or signposted "beginner's path" would have been nice to tackle things in ascending order of difficulty until you get your bearings and become comfortable with the gameplay. I started seeing the character as an emo teenager. The apathetic way he flaffs his weapon. The melodramatic woe-is-me slo-mo every time you take a hit (it would be enough to signal you're down to your last alien head of health). Most unexpected is the way the screen flashes when you land a hit, I'm not sensitive to that kind of thing, but here it was making me feel uneasy/ slightly nauseous. Weird one indeed. Nevertheless, glad to have had the opportunity to try it. Sometimes a metroidvania will instantly click with me (Axiom Verge!), just not this time. I've a replay of Aria of Sorrow queued up for October and I'm looking forward to that.

Googled it for you and apparently June 18th. The timing used to be aligned with E3, as you'll well remember, but since Stink the Place Out Fest came along, they've been putting it up later.

Would you say you gave this game your full and undivided attention when you were playing it?

https://jff.jpf.go.jp/watch/jffonline2024/uk

Sounds something like the Dampé's level maker stuff in the Switch version of Link's Awakening.

I spotted a Howard the Duck x Yoshi's Island mashup which I hope I can remember about to find out if it's any good when it comes out.

There's a little demo for On Your Tail (has been shown in some previous Directs/Showcases). In it, you're tasked with two things: look into a robbery and a go for a walk/ tour with another character. I also played marbles with him. It wasn't massively exciting but apparently you'll be doing similar activities with other characters in the full thing. You're always amassing a stash of cards on characters and everything which you can rotate to check the info on the back of each. The way the investigation part worked is pretty cool—you use your chronomer (?) to look around and find out what changed during the crime—like a hat knocked to the ground—then when you've got all the clues, you're presented with a top-down miniature of the scene and you have to put the clues/events in order to solve what went down. Kinda nifty. Seems like fun. You can pick up a fishing rod and go fishing too by pressing right on the d-pad. If you try to nosey around too much, it comments on there being invisible walls as it is only a demo. Lacks a touch of optimisation with loading (on Switch, anyway) as a new area will appear then disappear into the void before it fully loads back in. Otherwise, it looks pretty swish and like some care has gone into it. Something to point you in the direction of your chosen objective might be handy too.