Anachronism

You can make a great game without a great story, but my favorite Zelda is also the one with my favorite story. The quality of character development in Skyward Sword is leagues ahead of the rest of the series, with pretty much all the major characters and a ton of minor ones showing changes or hidden aspects to their personalities over the course of the game. Link's Awakening would probably be my next favorite story thanks to the unexpectedly melancholy undertone it manages to gradually build up beneath its absurd cartoon world setting. For the rest of the series, it really depends on what you count as part of the story. If they didn't bother throwing in little tidbits of cool lore here and there, replaced all the characters with wooden signs that just told you where to go next, or reused the same assets all over the map cough (like Breath of the Wild) cough rather than creating a variety of truly unique environments, then I don't think most of the games would be nearly as beloved as they are.

This seems like one of those games you could sink a couple years into and still not be fully caught up. I'm tempted to give it a go, but I'm honestly buried way too deep in other games I really should have played already. On the other hand, what's one more on the pile?

The list of interesting titles I could buy for peanuts continues to grow while my backlog continues to stubbornly resist shrinking. I'm starting to think I enjoy making wishlists and deal hunting more than actually playing most games. Though it might just be that the anticipation of playing a cool looking game often outshines the actual experience of pushing through its slower or more flawed sections.

@StorminNorman You know, I actually did have that in there, but since I was already getting a bit rambly and weakening my own argument with it, along with not knowing whether anyone will actually make the thing and knowing that if they do it might cost more than the console itself, I just decided it wasn't worth getting into it.

@jsty3105 I'm not going to pretend I'm a legal expert, but I've seen enough back and forth on it over the years and enough people blatantly playing ROMs despite Nintendo's reputation that I know it's not as open and shut as that. And assuming Nintendo doesn't go full on evil, I'll never have to learn enough about it to be able to give you an actual well thought out argument. But companies are made of people and it's impossible for a company's culture to stay the same as the people change. Nintendo's made a lot of changes over the last decade and especially the last year that I really disagree with, so I'd rather the things I do still like about them right now not be under threat from whoever they might become later.

@Dman10 I've never pirated any games either, but as game companies often like to point out, when you buy a game, you don't legally buy ownership of the game, just a license to play it. That means that if you've previously payed for the game, playing an unofficial copy of it is actually sort of legal. That's why Nintendo often deals with piracy groups by bankrupting them with lengthy legal battles rather than actually getting them sent to jail. If they for some reason bricked my console and deleted my account tomorrow, I wouldn't feel any guilt pirating the couple hundred games I've payed for over the years.

@Dman10 You can hook up more storage than most people could ever use with a PC. And even if you don't keep your games downloaded and somehow lose the ability to redownload them legitimately, it's usually easy to pirate them. The Switch 2 has a maximum storage size of ~1.2 TB unless you want to carry around and swap out multiple tiny, fragile microSDs. Just the current list of key cards might be able to fill that space, so physical games are our only hope of making it through the generation with full access to our libraries.

My only complaint so far is the stick sensitivity. Have to use the buttons because otherwise it always thinks I'm pressing two directions at once.

And...there goes all my interest. I've played through Dark Souls 1 probably 5-10 times between the 360 and Switch versions, always hoping the rest of Fromsoft's games would eventually end up on my platform of choice, but I guess they just don't want me as a customer. I'm not burning 60 GB I could use on the same number of great indies just for one oversized AAA game. An $80 release that ran on last gen hardware and is guaranteed to sell huge numbers has no excuse not to use proper physical cards.

A live service game not having every feature players want on the first day? That's completely unheard of.

Joking aside, from my perspective as someone who's spent his whole life playing Pokemon but never dove into the competitive scene, having limited options actually makes the game much more approachable. Jumping in with a bunch of cool pokemon and being immediately curb stomped by someone using one of the top 100 out of 50 billion possible team compositions never felt good. The content rollout will likely get the game to a respectable level of completion eventually, so anyone who's not happy playing in a more restricted format can just come back later.

Do Twilight Princess again. The Wii U version was kind of a half-baked mess, and with its less cartoonish art style and the Gamecube's graphical limitations, I think it's the entry most in need of a visual overhaul. For the 2D games, I'd take anything if they do it in a hand drawn style. The toylike visuals are fine, but I don't think they're the best fit for the series. If they don't want to figure out how to do it themselves, there are probably a dozen capable indie teams who would jump at the opportunity.

Played for a bit and it's at least pretty generous at the beginning. You get some decent pokemon to build your first team and plenty of points to customize them or grab a few more. I think you can probably collect a solid selection of top tier pokemon even with the limited space you're stuck with as a free-to-play player. The question is whether or not you'll continue to get enough points to swap out and retrain your pokemon once the starter rewards run out.

This is one of very few indies I went and bought at full price after I found myself repeatedly playing through the demo. It's also one of the Switch games I keep permanently loaded on my Switch 2. I still jump back in and play a few songs from time to time.

I love Pikmin maybe almost a tenth as much as Miyamoto does, and am happy to see them in any context where they're not casually dying constantly.

If this wasn't $50 by itself, I honestly might go see the movie just to get one.

There was fan speculation about that? I didn't care enough about the Galaxy games to keep up with online discourse, but design-wise I thought they did a pretty good job making them about as different as two blond-haired, blue-eyed fairytale princesses can be. Also, I don't know about the movie version, but game Rosalina is immortal and at least centuries old, right? Lots of weird implications for the rest of the cast there.

I'll watch it whenever it makes it's way to streaming, probably in another language so I don't get the corny dialogue and do get the corny italian accent.

I played the Switch version a few months back, and while it might be my favorite 3D Sonic since the Adventure games, the limits of what they could manage on that hardware were pretty obvious. Just implementing a proper LoD system rather than having everything pop in 10 feet away would completely transform the game's environments.

I've always played most of my games docked, and I'm not as sensitive to changes in frame rate/resolution as I am for other graphical cutbacks, so the number of games this will impact for me is probably pretty limited. Though I have been going back and replaying some of my favorite Switch 1 games in handheld, so maybe I'll manage to get some benefit from the boost even if I don't consciously notice it.

I'm not deluding myself into thinking this is a win for true physical, because they probably did just underestimate the game's success and sell out fast. Though it's really weird how many people are becoming antagonistic towards physical fans just for wanting to maintain something that's been a vital part of our hobby for fifty years. I get that seeing people obsess over something you've already decided not to care about can be annoying, especially when there are other things you'd prefer to be the main topic of conversation. But this is something critically important to us, and it's a lot more reasonable to ask a company to reevaluate their new business strategy than to ask a person to abandon the preferences and expectations they've had for their entire life.

@LastFootnote There are a few specific areas where performance tanked enough to really get in the way, but no, I'd say the difficulty mainly comes from the enemies being both brutally strong and mechanically challenging and every one of the hundreds of hints, secrets, shortcuts, etc. in the game being very easy to miss.

@LastFootnote PS5 and Series X both struggle to hit 60, so I don't think it was ever in the cards for Switch 2. Heck, Dark Souls 1 could drop down to 10 fps and had plenty of other jank besides. It's still one of the best action rpgs ever made, but I think it's fair to say most Fromsoft fans have never expected silky smooth performance from them.

The play-by-appointment one is interesting. Would that apply to things you can get around by messing with the system clock? Would Animal Crossing be PEGI 12 because of the cockroaches and weeds?

Aside from a smaller marketing push and the protests of however many of us staunchly refuse to buy key cards, I can't think of any reason Pokopia wouldn't do crazy numbers. They combined Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft. The only way they could have made a more mainstream game is by somehow shoving Mario Kart and GTA in there.

I changed their language option to french almost immediately in Wonder. Being talked to like a child is much more tolerable with a silly accent.

@Gs69 If they don't change course, then they can go on making bad decisions and bleeding customers and I can focus on other hobbies. I've loved Nintendo since I was a kid, but ultimately the relationship still comes down to trading money for a quality product. If they're going to abandon the standards they've lived up to until now, then they're no longer the company I cared about.

@Gs69 The logic is pretty simple. You don't have to hate all download-only games to hate the idea of all games being download-only. I might be willing to buy a random spinoff game with a relatively small file size digitally, but I absolutely will not buy a game that's important to me or one with a larger file size unless it's physical. There are going to be boxes for Pokemon Winds and Waves on store shelves in a couple years, and if key card sales on Pokopia are poor, then those boxes have much better odds of containing a physical game. If there's any chance people like me can make our stance clear now so we don't have to choose between our hobby and our standards later, then we'll take it.

I think I have to put this one in the "wait and see" category. I rarely buy things at launch to begin with, and while the game itself seems great, there's just too much about the way it's being sold that rubs me the wrong way. I doubt it'll ever get a proper physical release, but if I happen to have a gift card during an eshop sale a few years from now, maybe I'll convince myself to pick it up.

Darn, that makes the Mario Day Direct I was hoping for a lot less likely. Guess we'll have to wait a bit longer to see the rest of this year's lineup.

Hopefully they'll throw in some other game modes, too. I've gone back to finish mirror mode in 8 Deluxe recently, and even though I like a lot of World's mechanics, I still really prefer the old track format. If not that, then 200cc would at least make driving in a straight line a bit more interesting.

@LinktotheFuture I very much want to play the game. I've played every mainline Pokemon game and tons of the spinoffs and put hundreds of hours into Animal Crossing and Minecraft. By all rights this should be one of my favorite games this year. But it's also a digital-only game, and a $70 game, and now a game with permanently missable content, so I'm starting to feel like a frog in a pot wondering how much warmer the water is going to get. Between my conflicting emotions and a backlog of other games that never seems to run out, I'd normally just take my time to make up my mind, but in this case one of the things making me hesitate to buy the game is also the thing trying to force me to buy it right away, so it's even more frustrating.

@CoOokie I can swap out "electronics" for "internet" if you'd like, though I'm sure there are still some exceptions. The point is that they were exceptions rather than the norm. And there's no justification for creating something new to require tossing out the old. Entertainment products don't have an expiration date or require regular upkeep, so any limits on preservation are purely for the benefit of the people selling them.

@LinktotheFuture Well for one thing, I haven't bought the game yet because I'm running low on storage space and can't justify the 1 TB microsd that even then wouldn't even be big enough to fit my full library. And now I know that if I do buy the game, I'll be getting an inferior product just because I don't want to schedule my life around a company's marketing strategy.

Neat. Nintendo consoles tend to miss out on a lot of these more "cinematic" games at launch, so it's nice to see them eventually finding their way over to us.

@CoOokie Limited time content is an issue for the same reason as key cards; they limit a customer's control over something they rightfully own. Until the internet came along, pretty much every regular purchase was a one time interaction with no strings attached, where you knew exactly what you were paying for. Now more and more things come with all these hooks meant to keep you in a company's "ecosystem" and cutbacks that benefit the company's profits at the cost of their products' long term value. Those of us who were very happy with just being able to buy a thing and have it stay exactly how we wanted it for as long as we wanted it absolutely hate this.

Huh, didn't realize that was a limited time offer. I was hoping to get it in a few years at a discount steep enough to justify the ~70 GB they take up. Horror's not my favorite genre, so while these games' reputations are impressive enough to make me want to try them, I doubt I'll ever buy more than one without the bundle.

I'd like to give Unity or Syndicate a go, but I think I've had my fill of this one. The land areas were too small, the notoriety system was too lenient, and while the sailing and sea shanties were fun, the actual ship combat was too slow and clunky for my taste.

Think that's a you problem. I usually make my whole team out of new pokemon, and even made separate teams for each of Scarlet's DLC sections. I do always keep my starters at the front for the base game, but with mandatory exp. share, wild battles being easily avoided, and trainers actually being hard to find, they don't get as overpowered as they used to.

I had plenty of problems in school, but vocabulary was never one of them. During one of the many assessments intended to figure out what was wrong with me, I remember being rated at a 12th grade reading level as an elementary schooler. I attribute that completely to all the flowery and technical language that fantasy/sci-fi stories use to help sell their settings, and considering I was already playing Red version while learning to write my own name, I'm sure Pokemon was a major contributor.

I'd say this was one of their best indie presentations. Most of the games looked awesome. Even the ones I'm not interested in had some really unique art styles. The Japan-only ones are interesting too, so hopefully they all get localized.

@justin233 I always wanted the game boy adapter for my gamecube so I could play pokemon on the big screen, but never got one. $20 for a childhood dream is totally worth it.

@HammerKirby I think the redesigned Sonic does a slightly better job than the Mario characters. He narrowly avoided the uncanny valley that they all fall into with their overly detailed faces. I'd also give him a bit more slack for diverging from the video game designs since he has to fit into a live-action setting. In purely cgi films, the more realistic aspects don't offer any particular benefit. I'd rather Nintendo just hand a movie budget to Next Level's animation team and let them go nuts.

When they recruited that guy who drew a bunch of mildly creepy pokemon to work on Detective Pikachu, I thought it was a weird choice, but decided it was an interesting novelty we'd likely never see again. Then they tried something similar with Sonic's design and got pushed back so hard I was sure no one would ever do it again. Now there's these guys, and I'm starting to wonder if Hollywood is just getting some petty revenge on video games for eating up a giant chunk of the entertainment industry.

There are a ton of first generation pokemon that stand out as special to me, but they knew what they were doing setting up your starter as a lifelong friend. I've got to go with my best boy Squirtle and his family for my favorites.

Another entry on the list of stupidly expensive things I will definitely buy if I ever become fabulously wealthy.

Looks great. Just have to wrap up Afterimage, play through Blasphemous 2 and Ender Lilies, get back to Monster Sanctuary at some point, maybe check out Silksong's upcoming update, and try to resist buying any other metroidvanias in the multiple waves of sales that will surely be coming along, and then I'll be all ready for it.

Nintendo likes to save big games, including third party ones, for their main Directs, so I wasn't surprised to see these skip the partner showcase. I'm pretty sure those things are consistently underwhelming for that exact reason. Anyway, they usually won't announce release dates more than six months out, and unless my math is off, we've got a few more than that left in the year, so I'd say it's not worth worrying about quite yet.

I don't think there's a single series I'd rather have a retro collection for, but I doubt that'll ever happen. If they put them on Nintendo Online, I might end up playing through all of them, whereas I might skip a few if they were all sold separately. Of course that also means they'd all be tied to a subscription, so I might still prefer buying them individually if a collection or bundle isn't on the table.

Looks like the most interesting spinoff in a while. Shame I won't be playing it any time soon.

Definitely Hollow Knight. I get the feeling Silksong never properly shook off its roots as DLC. Most of Hollow Knight's most brutal challenges were added in post-launch, but the main story path does a pretty good job of starting you off weak and making you feel stronger as you progress. Silksong starts you off even weaker and never really lets you feel strong. Hornet seems more like a mosquito than a demigod, with even basic enemies still feeling on par with her in raw health and damage numbers by the end of the game. Also, having to hold up/down plus another button to use items is just bad control design. A game with such small margins for error shouldn't ask you to sacrifice control over your mobility for even half a second.

Lucky me. I put some time into the first game a few months ago, but decided to put it on the back burner for a bit just in case it got an update. Did the same with Ark come to think of it, so I guess I'm two for two. Now if only those much requested Xenoblade upgrades would materialize.

I just played the demo earlier, and it's pretty neat. The controls feel a little heavy and clunky, but that's okay for an average guy in an exosuit. I wish they could do a bit better with the girl's hair since that's one of the most obvious visual showcases on other platforms, but other than that, I think the visuals hold up very well.