Anachronism

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.

I don't have a ton of experience with Dragon Quest, but I've got to say I don't think I understand the point of the modern games. I played 11 a while back and quickly realized you can win pretty much every fight regardless of what attacks you pick, so you can more or less get through the entire game just auto battling and walking along the most obvious path.

Then I played Dragon Quest 1 and had a pretty good time with it. You actually have to manage your HP/MP and explore a bit to make progress. Since this new one was a remake, I thought it might have some more of that retro difficulty, even bumping the demo up to hard mode for good measure. But it was right back to the same problems from 11. Are the new entries just dead set on being the most accessible rpg series to the point where any interesting gameplay has been streamlined out?

@fenlix Yeah, I do love that series, and I guess it's the closest thing that's presumably still active, though it's more chibi character models on actual 2D backgrounds in towns and more generic ones elsewhere. Baten Kaitos was a step closer with more normally proportioned character models while Xenoblade 1 and the other project rainfall games, along with a couple Final Fantasies from around that time, got that color pallet just about perfect in a fully 3D environment, but the limited polygon counts mean none of them hold up great.

Are there any modern anime games that actually try to use that storybook art style for their 3D elements rather than just the menus/cutscenes? We got a decent number around the GameCube/Wii era, but I feel like most things since then have trended more towards the extremes of cartoonishness or pseudorealism.

The one silver lining of all the fake physical games is that it's making it really easy to pare down my Switch 2 wishlist.
Is it physical? That's a yes then.
Is it a 30+ GB download? That'll probably be a no.

There are still more Switch 1 games than I can ever hope to get through, so while I'll regret missing out on a few titles, I'll never have to worry about a shortage of things to play.

I almost want them to release a bundle that includes the trilogy and a microsd large enough to hold them all. Otherwise, I don't think I'll ever be able to play them. Maybe if there are enough reused assets between games, they could actually cut them down enough to squeeze into a 256 GB card.

Their 20th anniversary Super Bowl commercial was fun, but also announced nothing and wasn't even clearly about Pokemon for the first 40 seconds. I'm just gonna use that to set my expectations here.

The most exciting thing for me would be seeing some more companies really jumping on the Switch 2 bandwagon. Microsoft's the obvious one just due to the sheer quantity of stuff they own now, but there are plenty of other studios whose games would fit quite comfortably on the hardware. Aside from that, I just want more physical releases, because my gaming budget still doesn't have room for multiple terabytes of storage.

This would be a lot more exciting if it came 2-3 months after the last full Direct rather than 5 months. Considering they usually schedule full Directs for about a week after a big game release, but before they run out of release dates, that would predict a proper one either mid-February (which seems a bit too close to this one now) or early April.

Though with March 10th being Mario Day and the 40th anniversary this year, maybe we'll get some big announcements then instead.

Do they not tell voice actors what they're signing when they hand them an NDA? I feel like this happens way too often.

Anyway, I'm still working my way through Baten Kaitos Origins, and have been hoping to get some Switch 2 upgrades before starting X DE or 3's NG+. They can take their time on the next game as far as I'm concerned.

Is it weird to say a pixel art game doesn't look like pixel art even though I can clearly see all the pixels in the art? Maybe it's just that every sprite isn't locked to the same pixel grid or something like that, but whatever the disconnect is, it always makes for a sort of uncanny valley effect.

Anyway, I'm always up for another Zelda-like and I was glad to hear Jon's voice again (even if the actual wording of the narration could have used another round or two of editing) so I'll be sure to stick it on my wishlist.

Alright, now we just have to wait a couple days for a youtuber to tell us how the game has been completely changed and all the world records are now either unbeatable or already broken.

If they just want to load us up with all the AAA third person action games that didn't make it to the Switch, that'd be great. Some of the more ambitious indie games we missed would be nice, too.

I just wrapped up Bananza yesterday, but I think I'll pass on the DLC. The game just couldn't offer any challenges I was happy with. The only things that gave me a decently hard time were a few postgame sections, and having to slog through the easy parts of the gauntlets over and over again just to practice the harder ones was a pain. Given I'm still burned out from that repetition, an arcade/roguelike mode already wasn't going to do much for me, so throwing in limited time content on top of that kills whatever interest I had left.

Weird timing for me. I watched someone speedrun this game yesterday and otherwise haven't thought much about it in over a decade.

I listened through the whole thing, and aside from the recurring melodies from other games, Linebeck's theme is probably my favorite.

It's about what you'd expect from a canned speech for a smaller event. Though her tone and body language felt pretty casual, which is a nice change from the stilted, corporate vibe you get from most of NoA's presentations. A lot of those feel like the people on screen have been given very specific guidelines and are trying very hard to stick to them.

I think this one deserves some bonus points for the fact that they absolutely could have taken everything from the free update and thrown it in here, raising the price and making all of it Switch 2 exclusive. It'll be a real shame if the criticism for this cancels out some of the good will they've rightly earned for adding all that content.

Looking at just the titles in the average week of eshop shovelware, I'd say Nintendo's not doing a great job. Aside from that, I wish they'd let us filter games by the specific reasons for their age ratings rather than just the ratings themselves, though that can go in the bucket with the dozens of other filtering/sorting options I wish they had.

Doesn't work for me, but I'm pretty sure my most played Switch 2 games would be Mario Kart World, Silksong, and DK Bananza. All three have some great ideas, but are held back by frustrating flaws.

World's trick mechanics are really cool, but I feel like all the courses having to fit into the same map limits their creativity. The most visually interesting areas are ones like Rainbow Road and Boo Cinema because they're the only ones not surrounded by generic landscape and that pretty but annoyingly static skybox. I don't like most of the intermission tracks either, and really don't like that there's no good way to avoid them. Plus, the lightning ruins the fun of the item system's randomness and of just trying to drive fast in a racing game by showing up at the end of nearly every race. Its odds of spawning should be even thoughout the race, and the chances of it showing up at all should be a lot lower.

Silksong would be a great successor to Hollow Knight...if every enemy wasn't a damage sponge. I can't guess how many extra deaths I racked up due to zoning out from boredom while trying to execute the same handful of precisely identical dodges and attacks over and over again.

Bananza should be a 10/10 game for me, but it has the opposite problem from Silksong. What might have been interesting challenges are skipped over entirely because I just happened to wander through a wall into the finish line, while most boss fights are practically over before they've started. I've had the same problem with the recent Zelda games. Being able to tackle a challenge in a few different ways is fun. Being able to consistently negate or circumvent challenges, sometimes even by accident, is not fun. Its visuals (along with Mario Kart's) also have that awful plasticky look that so many modern games suffer from, though I feel like that might be more an issue with the actual engines aiming for more realistic lighting and material properties. I think flatter lighting and solid, non-reflective materials just work better for a lot of art styles.

Game Freak's side projects are usually pretty cool, though I still find it odd that some of them haven't launched on Nintendo platforms. Of course, all of those have had more indie-sized ambitions, whereas this looks more like what you'd expect of a AAA game than anything from Pokemon has. Unless they've brought on some better programmers, I'm not confident in their ability to get it running well.

You've found a much more positive way of looking at it than mine. When the Switch eshop first got to a size where it was becoming difficult to look through everything, I took the time to do it anyway and added all the games that remotely interested me to my wishlist. For most of the time since then, I've gone through the week's new releases every Thursday, which for some reason was always the main indie game release day.

When I reached the eshop wishlist's original cap several years ago, I finally did the same as many others here and started using deku deals, but that didn't mean I completely abandoned my eshop wishlist. I transferred all the retail games, popular indies, and anything else I had a stronger desire to play to the new list, while I started thinking of the old one as my personal ark for interesting games, keeping them from being lost beneath the endless tides of shovelware flooding the modern eshop.

Every now and then I'll hit the eshop wishlist's cap again (though I can never remember the exact number aside from being frustratingly just short of four hundred) and take some time to transfer another hundred games to deku deals. Last I checked, that list has ballooned to somewhere around five hundred entries, eclipsing the eshop one. Both have become difficult to look through in their own right, only becoming useful again after applying all available filtering and sorting options.

Like you, I've given up the expectation of ever playing all of them, though I find that more frustrating than liberating. I'd like to give all these games the time I feel they've earned just by managing to catch my eye, but considering the backlog I've already built up picking only the best games and best deals off those lists, it's become clear there just isn't enough time in the world to get through them all. The lists have become a reminder of the constraints on my time, money, and energy, and have even made it more difficult to enjoy the games I am playing. There are always hundreds more waiting for me, and unless I manage to become fully absorbed in the current one, I can't help thinking there might be countless other games I'd enjoy more if only I'd chosen them instead.

Best of luck Felix. I've been critical of you more than once since you started here, but I do think you've shown some good progress in that time. Hope you can carry at least part of that experience forward to wherever you're going next.

My understanding is that this game is absurdly power hungry, often for no discernable reason. It sounds like it should have a lot of room for optimization if Capcom throws enough money and programmers at it, and given it's the biggest black mark on what's mostly been a stellar few years for them, maybe they'll actually put in the effort to fix it.

That said, I will be very surprised if they manage to get a Switch 2 version running with decent visuals and anything approaching a stable frame rate.

I've only become more convinced my Switch is going nowhere. If anything, I regret not buying a bigger microsd for it before those prices exploded.

I'll likely even grab a few more Switch 1 games over their digital-only Switch 2 versions just to save whatever storage space I can for indies.

Looking back at the launch lineup half a year out, it's a list of really impressive games that all had one or two drawbacks preventing me from either buying or fully enjoying them. Hopefully once I clear out my Switch 1 backlog a bit, I'll have more motivation to dig into those and other Switch 2 releases I've put off.

@ShadLink Wait a second. The starting price for FFVII Remake is $40, so assuming a bulk order of carts lets you get them a good bit cheaper per unit than an equivalent microsd express, they actually might be able to sell a proper physical version for $70...if that cart size was available. Though even then, I'm not sure the average consumer cares enough for the benefits of a fully physical game to outweigh that $30 price bump when it comes to sales numbers.

@Serpenterror I hate to be the bearer of bad news on this one, but it really is impossible to properly release FFVII Remake physically. It takes up ~90 GB, so even with the biggest Switch 2 cart, you'd still have to download a third of the game.

I was looking forward to it after the demo, but I doubt I'll ever have enough storage to sacrifice that much for one game.

Narrowing down my wishlist using the rules I made up to keep myself from spending too much money on too many games still leaves ~100 games costing ~$500 that fit the criteria. I don't think the system is working...

Luckily I have the backup contingency of staring at my backlog until I feel too guilty to buy anything.

My only question is why Nintendo would put their foot down on this with all the other degenerate garbage on the eshop. Maybe they just ignore shovelware and only police the games that are likely to grab a decent amount of attention?

Anyway, I think it's probably reasonable to not want people showing that much skin on a platform accessible to millions of kids. Tons of parents are either awful at putting up effective boundaries and safeguards for their children or just don't care.

Well now I've got the Wii soundscape AND Vengabus playing on loop in my head. Thanks for that.

Right now, all AI is buggy and poorly understood. Once it actually is competent enough to mimic professional work down to the smallest detail, that opens up a whole can of worms on the value of human labor in general, but for the moment it's an inferior substitute. I don't mind it being used internally by say a non-artistic game designer to generate concept art for an actual artist to work off of, but none of that should make it into the final product.

I still want to play most of these, though I can't say when I'll manage it. My gaming wishlist is slowly creeping towards a thousand entries. I wonder if the number of hours it would take to finish them all has already exceeded the total remaining time I'll spend on gaming.

@Dr_Awkward When I buy something, I usually want to actually keep it in my possession. If I didn't plan on keeping my games longer than it takes to finish them, I'd be better off just getting them through a subscription.

Please. I don't want to choose between skipping games because I don't have the space for them or spending more on storage than on the console over the next decade.

I feel like most free merch is just an excuse to turn customers into walking billboards. I guess you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but the opportunity to wear or carry around the name of a company or product in big bold letters is never going to motivate me to buy that product.

I watched someone play through it recently. The animation is pretty cool, but it feels like the story was written specifically for teenagers. It has its moments, but watching a bunch of dysfunctional people repeatedly screw up their relationships while jumping on every possible opportunity to make a dirty joke gets old pretty quick.

@AussieMcBucket I think stability usually has to do with preventing crashes, glitches, etc. Basically the difference is between improving something that's functional but inefficient and fixing something that's flat out broken.