Your 2025 Gaming Diary

[Dcubed]

KBB is great! Very fun little score attack game (and a game that clearly laid the groundwork for Kirby & The Forgotten Land).

Would love a sequel!

[nekunando]

I've taken care of a couple more missions since taking this picture last night so I'd assume I'll be close to finishing it by the end of the week!

I'm glad I waited until I was in the mood for it rather than just playing it for the sake of it on another occasion 🙂

I do find myself travelling directly to waypoints and skipping to destination whenever possible as there's no desire to spend 10 minutes riding across the country just to reach the next bit of gameplay.

The dialogue is generally well done but I don't necessarily need to hear all the chatter between locations 😅

Like I say in the post above, I'd consider Red Dead Redemption 2 if it ever comes to a Nintendo platform. The thing is, I own it on PS4 so could easily just play it there if I really wanted to!

My experience kinda makes me wonder if I need to give LA Noire another try, though it never drops below the £22.49 sale price every few weeks.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

This was released last year but the game recently got an update that gave it trophies, which meant to had to be played. 😛

The last time I played this was back on the 360. I had a great time on it back then but sadly that hasn't been the case here.

I enjoy the early Lego games due to their lack of open world stuff but this was still a slog to get 100%. You have to playthrough the Story mode, then through Freeplay mode, then through Super Story mode (six levels back to back x 3 times) and finally the Blue Minikit hunt. You are essentially going though each of the levels 4 times. It's very tedious.

With this being one of the first licensed Lego games they still hadn't got the balance right with the stud multipliers. It takes an insane amount to buy the first couple, by which time you have pretty much finished the game. This means you have to essentially farm studs at the end of the game, instead of doing it as you play through the levels.

One thing I was happy not to see return from the 360 version was the achievement for completing the Battle of Endor without the Falcon being destroyed once. This took me so long to do and so was thrilled that they left it out of this version.

Yeah, not as good as I remember it being but I do love the Platinum trophy image. 

[Glen-i]

@Jonnas, @Nolan, the two of you are on notice...

If I don't like these games, I'm siccing that Koraidon on you.
You'll never be able to enjoy a sandwich ever again.

Edited Saturday at 03:51 PM by Glen-i

[Nolan]

@Glen-i

Worth it even if you don’t enjoy the game (I think at least the story you shall).

I am actually unbelievably happy someone is playing it after my random gushing about the game. For so long I had no one to talk to about it until I gifted it to my nephew on Steam after forcibly having him try the game on my steamdeck. I literally put in the gift message I was guilting him into playing lol. 

I really like the damn game. And the music (like a ton, like listen to it out of game). Hope you enjoy the game and also start harping on people to play a criminally overlooked game

[Glen-i]

1 hour ago, Nolan said:

I am actually unbelievably happy someone is playing it after my random gushing about the game. For so long I had no one to talk to about it until I gifted it to my nephew on Steam after forcibly having him try the game on my steamdeck. I literally put in the gift message I was guilting him into playing lol.

It's the second main reason I like these Gaming Diary threads. There's been more then a few games I've only tried because someone here sold me with a glowing post about it. The stars just happened to align, both of those games are now on sale on the eShop, and I had left over funds there from Christmas.

But yeah, Cuphead, Gravity Circuit, and Suikoden are all examples of games I've discovered and enjoyed because of someone here randomly gushing about them. Still finishing up Suikoden II, so won't be jumping into these straight away. But I'll be sure to give you a heads up once I do.

Edited Sunday at 06:57 AM by Glen-i

[Jonnas]

On 3/30/2025 at 7:56 AM, Glen-i said:

It's the second main reason I like these Gaming Diary threads. There's been more then a few games I've only tried because someone here sold me with a glowing post about it. The stars just happened to align, both of those games are now on sale on the eShop, and I had left over funds there from Christmas.

But yeah, Cuphead, Gravity Circuit, and Suikoden are all examples of games I've discovered and enjoyed because of someone here randomly gushing about them. Still finishing up Suikoden II, so won't be jumping into these straight away. But I'll be sure to give you a heads up once I do.

True that. The posts from this thread have a way of sticking in our minds. I swear, I still remember your old SMT IV post every time I look at my pledge.

Thanks, Isabeau.

On 3/29/2025 at 3:50 PM, Glen-i said:

If I don't like these games, I'm siccing that Koraidon on you.
You'll never be able to enjoy a sandwich ever again.

I have enjoyed every sandwich I've eaten ever since you made this post.

[Glen-i]

17 hours ago, Jonnas said:

I have enjoyed every sandwich I've eaten ever since you made this post.

That's because I haven't started it yet. So my like of it is still "To be determined".

Continue to enjoy your sandwiches... for now.

[WackerJr]

I’m so confused by the sandwich talk… 😂

Storyteller (Mobile)

I found this to be a charming little puzzler that feels a good fit in mobile (the caveat being the need for a Netflix account), but sadly stops just as it starts finding its stride.

If you don’t know it, you’re tasked with filling in pages of a storybook by creating short ‘story mountains’ to correctly represent the story given by the brief title of the page.

Each page has between 3 and 8 blank panels.  You’re given a selection of 2-3 different scenes (e.g., “Wedding”,  “Death”, “Cliff”, “Kidnap”) that you can drag into the blank panels and add to them a few characters from a small selection.

The order of scenes and characters dictates how they react, and most pages were about figuring out how to create the right motives.  For instance, the “Kidnap” scene has a cage and lever, so adding one character by the lever and another in the cage naturally causes one to become the ‘villain’ and raise the cage trapping the other.  To rescue them you’d add the same panel again, but include your ‘hero’, who will now lower the cage, causing both characters to also be angry at the ‘villain’.  The story may end there if the title just wanted you to show a rescue, but if the page hinted that you needed a story focused on revenge then adding an “Execution” panel would give a darkly different ending!  Of course you could skip the rescue and simply add the “Throne” scene to see the ‘villain’ smugly get the crown instead!

The stories are mostly familiar tales, with scenarios based on the likes of Snow White, Shakespeare and Adam & Eve. This helped with identifying what I needed to do (the Evil Queen, or “Witch” in this case, was naturally intent on ridding herself of Snow White “Snowy”).

It had plenty of chucklesome moments, often seeing characters react to situations even if they weren’t the right answer, and the game rewards you for doing this by having an achievement system for creating those moments, although there’s no other reward other than sniggering at the various predicaments you’ve created.

The whole thing is very short, I finished the main game within a couple of hours.  Sometimes the solutions weren’t obvious, but I found it easy enough to ‘trial & error’ my way through the limited number of possible combinations.  There is some short post-game content, plus finding all the stamps/ achievements took another couple of hours, mainly because the game doesn’t tell you what levels the non-solution scenarios are found in.

(Spoiler of an early-game solution)

Spoiler

It was a little repetitive by its nature, but each puzzle being so short meant I could spend a few minutes here and there at a time, and I enjoyed the whole concept.  It’s just a shame that there are only a few puzzles more than 6 panels long and it abruptly stops just as it gets more challenging.  I hope that they expand on it in future, as I was rather charmed by it.

Here’s my 70 seconds-long video review: https://youtu.be/3fnqBEKeC5Q?si=_uTFY-SHZy7EwKF2