WackerJr

Congrats to her. The abuse hurled has been ridiculous and it was a great sight to see the medalists all celebrating together on the podium. I don’t think “trans” has ever been officially used, yet people have made assumptions on it and are constantly talking about it. There’s so much unknown with the whole story. Not helped when even the official explanations are contradicting each other. What a Games overall though. Thankfully the actual sport has been fantastic. I’ll be sad to see it stop. So pleased for Bryony Page of Team GB for her gold and in being selected to be flag bearer (ok so I’m slightly biaised being involved in Trampolining and being friends with her coach), she is so humble and likeable. Even today the Bhutan athlete who finished 90mins behind the marathon winner, while setting a new PB. The crowds were behind her, and she still did it in a time I couldn’t imagine doing in my wildest dreams!

Great topic! For how much I love gaming, there are quite a few major/popular aspects that I’ve missed. Souls-likes: reading this thread I’m glad to see I’m not the only one out there! I do have Elden Ring in my backlog though, so one day I’ll get around to having my butt kicked over and over and over again! MMOs: I don’t have any close friends who play these either, and I’m more a fan of games with a definitive start and end, or that I can play in my own time. Fortnite: Played it once, I was dreadful, didn’t have any desire to keep playing. Call of Duty: FPS aren’t my favourite genres (I don’t completely discount them, Goldeneye & Perfect Dark remain some of my favourite games), but I’ve never tried a CoD game, nor really mustered the inventive to do so. I think I’ve got one free via the PS+ monthly games, but I fully expect it’ll remain in my library gathering (digital) cobwebs. 3D Final Fantasy: Ok here I do start my gaming regrets. I loved Final Fantasy VI, but I don’t know where to start with the 3D games. I’d like to play 7 at some point, but don’t know if I should play the original or FF7 Remake. Any advice anyone? I admittedly still have Chrono Trigger (DS), Golden Sun 3 (DS) and Xenoblade Chronicles (3DS) in my backlog yet to play and I know whatever RPG I start will be a big investment of time. Metal Gear: I had a conversation recently with a colleague who’s a huge MGS fan, as I have never played a game in the series. With the majority of the games now available to play on Switch (& I have V via PS+) I could finally experience the series, as it seems such a major one to have missed out on.

If it is something that isn’t too time-consuming then having it as a site feature sounds a good idea, and deserving with all the effort going into this! I’m no expert on it, but being on the main site means it has a better chance of reaching a wider audience too, is that right?

Recognition for that fantastic reference! 😂👏🏻

Andy Murray’s not last match Sunday, the mountain biking yesterday, Andy Murray’s not last match tonight at the same time as the gold-winning GB relay team, Ireland’s Olympic gold in the pool, the skateboarders bus getting stuck in Paris, so they simply skated the 2km to their event… and so much more! I love the Olympics! 😁

It’s an odd choice for me, but I’m ok with it as I’m a big proponent of as many sports getting recognition as possible. The query I have with it though is now that ‘dance’ genre, what does it mean for all the other forms? Having a sister who used to compete in Street Dance as well as others, does this mean they’ll be considered in future? I suppose it’s a little like gymnastics, where some types are in the Olympics (floor, trampoline, etc), whereas many others aren’t (TeamGym, Rhythmic). I’m not sure why they aren’t mind! I LOVE the Olympics. The actual sports so far have been fantastic, even ones I’ve had no interest in before. There’s so much I’m looking forward to (I’m heavily involved in Trampolining so slightly biaises towards that!).

Fair point 🤣

Having just read the rather confusing interview in Nintendolife I feel the developers are sending out a few mixed messages about the game. ”After announcing the game the other day, a lot of people have referred to this game as being heavily inspired by, or a heavily similar game to the Chibi-Robo series. But I think that’s just because they’re looking through these lenses that are tainted with their experience of having played Chibi-Robo. And actually, this is its own very different sort of game.” Surely part of the reason this is getting so much attention is because it’s being thought of as a spiritual follow-up? They’ve advertised it as being a little robot who traverses the house cleaning up mess, solving problems, meeting a kooky cast of characters and being careful because it has a limited battery life before needing to be recharged. Whereas Chibi-Robo was all about being a little robot helper who traverses the house/garden, cleaning up mess, solving problems to spread happiness to the humans and cast of kooky characters it meets, all the while being mindful that it has a limited battery life that needs to be regularly recharged…

I’d never played a baseball game before, but got quite excited that this was coming out (to this day I’m not really sure why!). HMV used to show me the release dates and when I went in to pick up this newly released title… well it has disappeared from the list and no-one had any idea when it had moved to. Months down the line I spotted it in the wild and I found a similar experience to you. It was alright, and while it could end up anywhere I was able to get bat on ball. The major issue I found, which I really should have known, was that it was still just baseball. Nothing more, nothing less. No bells and whistles, so while I played a decent enough game, matches weren’t quick and got repetitive quickly. I haven’t bought a baseball game since.

Ratchet & Clank (PS4) So the 2016 game is a game based on the movie based on the original PS2 game (think Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game methodology, only this game’s actually decent and the movie was much closer to the source material). I’m new to the series and what I found was a likeable 3D Sci-Fi platformer with more emphasis on the shooting aspect. Gameplay is really smooth, levels are fairly short, and the enemies are all well animated and are satisfying to take down with the huge arsenal of weapons collected. Some are more serious than others, ranging from your basic pistol to bombs to some of my favourites which cause enemies to stop and dance, making them easy pickings. Clank’s levels tend to be more puzzle-based and I would have liked a few more to be honest. I came away impressed and looking forward to seeing how the gameplay’s improved for Rift’s Apart, which I was gifted but is currently on my backlog. One-minute video review

I hope they keep the character in the other toys/people you encounter, as that was one of the charms of the original. If the campaign is successful and it looks to be progressing well I wonder if Nintendo will take it on and simply update the main character since nothing else needs changing for this to be a Chibi-Robo game! They’ve added flying too! It may be less of a chore now to cover long distances!

Maybe they’ll finally put the other FDC games on sale to help promote this? Hey, I can but hope. I’m keen to play them but my backlog is still so large I need a really good reason to justify buying them…

I got back to the UK by plane yesterday afternoon, so just in time it seems. I’ve seen some airports abroad using white board and pen and it’s working. Whatever did we do before? Hope everything’s ok with the wife and baby #2 @Will

Bastion (Switch) Virtually always on sale now, I found the 13-year old Bastion to be alright, but a little underwhelming considering the positive things I’d heard about it over the years. Lovely hand-drawn graphics hide what is distinctly ok gameplay. Run and battle through isometric levels where the land rises up and appears close to you as you move. Or it deliberately doesn’t and you learn to jump gaps or plummet to the abyss with, thankfully, no consequence. Prior to each level you can select two from your growing arsenal of firearms and melee weapons. They tend to grow in power so I tended to stick with the latest ones. Each weapon has a short graded challenge level too, which are all rather neat and serve as tutorials for each. The similarity of the weapons and levels means I found it got rather repetitive. The bosses were neat and overall it didn’t do anything really wrong, the game just didn’t grip me. One area that did raise the quality of the whole package was the wonderful narration by Logan Cunningham. His gravelly tone not only narrated the story, but throughout the game there were context-sensitive lines that he’d say to me as the player. He’d comment on the combination of weapons for instance, mock me when I fell off the edge, or where one particular enemy leapt at me but I dodged it and instead it dropped off the edge of the level he dryly remarked about their lack of intelligence. If it wasn’t for the entertaining narration this was forgettable for me. Link to my one-minute YouTube review.

I love this! Completely out of nowhere and it’s Nintendo genuinely teasing us with something we know nothing about. It all seems very un-Nintendo, which just makes it even more intriguing. If I were to guess I’d go with a new Fatal Frame title as opposed to a new franchise. Didn’t Nintendo and Koei Tecmo strike some of deal a few years ago? I really don’t know, but what a terrific surprise regardless!

Looks great, thanks!

Oh fantastic! Thanks! I’ve just been watching some of AGDQ 2024 recently and hadn’t realised SGDQ 2024 was so close. Will have to check the timetable to see what especially stands out this year.

I’m intrigued by the size of this exclusive mission is, and I like the inclusion of the speed running mode. Ultimately though I’m in the camp that @Julius mentioned, and from the sounds of it I would have wanted more. I’ve not played it since the GameCube and then subsequently the Xbox 360 HD version, and I love the game but wonder if it will feel just too familiar?

Return of the Obra Dinn (Switch) This proved to be one of the more creative games I’ve played. Difficult, clever and puzzling, although somewhat arduous later one, Return of the Obra Dinn to me was like a mash-up of What Became of Edith Finch, Moby Dick, Cluedo, and Sudoku. Played from a first-person viewpoint, you’re an investigator exploring the now empty ship The Obra Dinn, to try and determine what happened to its crew and passengers five years ago. It’s not long before you stumble across the remains of a corpse. This is the main premise of how to investigate what happened, as the game then prompts you to use a mysterious pocket watch to transport you back to a freeze frame scene showing the moment of their death. This is usually preceded by whatever the victim heard in the seconds prior to this. From there, you can walk around the scene looking for any clues that may help identify the people in the scene or learn what’s actually happening. These scenes are the main mechanic for trying to solve the mystery. You’re given a logbook at the start, which you need to complete. Initially all this contains is a list of the names of those on board, along with their nationality and a sketch of those on board. Whenever you find a scene, a new page is revealed in the logbook, which shows an image of a person or persons in the scene, and then leaves it for you to fill in the gaps for their name, what fate befell them, and if they killed then who was responsible for their death. Rarely are all three key bits of information revealed in one scene. Sometimes you may hear a name said, and usually you’ll be able to work out how the perished. The game is quick to tell you that inferring things is key, and won’t try and trick you. If someone’s acting like the surgeon say, they’ll be the surgeon, if they look of a certain nationality they will be that nationality. Often in a scene who will discover another dead body, and this will then transport you to another scene. The logbook carefully groups these into a set of events, which help reveal the story of what mysterious happenings occurred the vessel. As I was quick to discover, the game’s not afraid to throw into your face that a person is in the throngs of death. If they’re been shot you will see gussets of liquid shooting out of their body. Or at least I assumed it was. To this end I was glad at the design decision to make everything black and white and grainy. Often you’ll be able to tell what’s happened, but thankfully the graphics don’t reveal the gore in HD detail. On the flip side though, it caused some of the clues to be a little too subtle due to the lack of clarity. I thought I’d be able to brute force some of the details, and I could for a bit. The game only reveals you’ve got someone completely correct once every time you get three people and their fates right. I did find I would get to a stage where I was confident of two, then would go through guessing the options of a third person until the game told me it was right. To that end, most of the clues made me feel smart when I worked them out. It wasn’t easy though, and for many of the ones I brute forced I never found out what the clues were. It also got very arduous towards the end. Once I found all the scenes there was no quick option to go back to them. Instead, I’ve have to remember where a corpse was and find it, which considering some were contained within a scene contained within a scene within another scene, made things a little too tedious. I wish I had kept track of some clues with pen and paper and I’d often find myself meandering around not remembering where or if I’d spotted something. Finding a corpse and the surprise of not knowing what scene I was about to observe, and the mechanic of playing a tricky and dark game of Guess Who were enjoyable and fresh. It lost it’s freshness in the second half, but for the first initial hours this was a really fun sleuth-em-up.

I've had this on 3DS for a while and was planning to finally play it when I go on holiday in a couple of weeks... Suddenly I don't feel quite so excited about that! (Playing the game that is, not the holiday!)

Oh wow I completely agree. Even scoring in the 70s I thought I may get some enjoyment out of this, but boy was I wrong! I remember finding the later levels incredibly difficult too, and never could defeat the final boss. I’m hazy in the details but seem to recall getting there and needing a certain gun due to the lack of damage most of the others caused, but I had such little ammunition I could never defeat it and by that stage I’d been so drained of enthusiasm I quickly gave in.

Wow that surpassed my expectations! A solid Direct with plenty of surprises. Lots of ports and HD remakes, but a lot more than I was expecting. The Mario & Luigi series is usually good fun. Is this the first game since AlphaDream went bankrupt? Despite being one of the weaker entries, I really enjoyed the Edgeworth Investigations game that for released over here, so having both to play is great. Shame it’s not actually a new Danganronpa game, but I’m excited to see how The Hundred Line LDA turns out. New Zelda is always a reason to be cheerful, and it’s about time Zelda took the spotlight. I prefer the more direct approach so I’ll wait to be convinced by the duplication mechanic, as I worry it might give too many options, but it’s Zelda so I’ll remain happily optimistic it’ll work. Metroid 4. That I was not expecting! I wonder if this was rolled out to show people it really does exist. At this stage I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t become a Switch 2 game, to give the new console a big hitter early days. Making it a dual Switch & Switch 2 game to maximise sales is my hope. The new Mario Party boards and 20-player mechanic look interesting. It still makes me salty though that this will be the 3rd Party game considering the lack of depth especially in the previous one, when they could’ve made the others larger or offered DLC. MIO looked intriguing and those NSO titles are great additions too (Perfect Dark with save states means I might finally crack those multiplayer challenges). Surely Conker’s got to be coming soon? Finally, a point to the narrator who when the Funko Pop game was announced started saying “do you recognise who it is?” and ironically I immediately thought “no……”.

With Nintendo surely gearing up for Switch 2 I’m really tempering my expectation for this, although 40 minutes seems as if it may cover quite a bit. A few baseless predictions: • Mole Mania for NSO (I agree with you @Jonnas ). • No sign of Wind Waker / Twilight Princess (I’m fed up with predicting them & subsequently being disappointed) • A mass of indies & ports (inc Power Rangers and some sort of Fall Guys update). • A short multiplayer Zelda game (similar to the free limited DS download as opposed to a full Four Swords GC port). • Red Dead Redemption 2 port. • Finaly DLC for Mario Party Superstars! • I’d love Zelda Oracle remakes, but maybe that’ll be for Switch 2 instead? What the heck, a man can dream! 😄

Cool, thanks @Dcubed, that’s great & really helpful to know. 👍🏻

I haven’t looked into the Mega Man GB games before. Are they close approximations of the NES games (with reduced screen space) or are they standalone games?