DemonKow

Tears of the Kingdom! Over 140 shrines and upgraded my armor to the point I'm nigh unkillable. I should probably finish up since im basically at the endgame and there isn't much new to see. It's been a great ride, and I loved beating challenges in ways the designers clearly didn't intend, but I don't need to get into finding every korok and such nonsense.

I'd be thrilled with Zelda, especially if they gave her completely different mechanics. Considering the new direction seems to be about the way you interact with the world, that seems like a really interesting prospect.

If it's just a gender swap, Link always seemed pretty neutral anyway, so Linkle seemed like a redundant concept.

Continued exploration in Tears of the Kingdom, plinking off individual shrines still hanging out there. Decided to pull the trigger on This Way Madness Lies, something about a short magical girl RPG based on Shakespeare feels ridiculous enough to give a chance, especially on sale.

@mudkipfan217 CrisTales is absolutely gorgeous and has a rather charming plot in a short run time (if you're used to 60+ hours from many games, it's almost refreshing). It's not flawless (load time performance drags) but I'm really excited to see more from that studio. I hope you enjoy it.

Getting through Tears of the Kingdom. Two temples down, ~120 shrines, and more caves than I can count. I am feeling a bit of fatigue and may just go ahead and finish it next week or so. Going back to school next semester so it may be a good idea to tie things up 😁

Also Mario Kart with the kids when not out touching some grass. Reviews of the last wave are middling but Wii Rainbow Road was one of my favorite tracks so I'm happy with it

As great as this looks, I may have hit the saturation point of what I can reasonably play in 2023, and my SNES Mini, which is an almost perfect collection of games of the era, already has it.

@The-Chosen-one it shows your shrines, light roots, and other such info on the loading screen when you fast travel

Probably keep the original for travel, I don't think I'll complete my Switch backlog before I die, so I can reserve some for that. I imagine some growth in the transition period too.

Playing Tears of the Kingdom this weekend. I'm about 100 shrines in and dealt with the regional phenomena in Hebra. Still having a blast, although very easily distracted.

Also started Octopath Traveler II while on business travel, turn based is usually easier for me undocked. Really enjoying that so far too.

And final Mario Kart 8 booster pass!!!

I had hope hearing about Embracer buying IPs/studios years ago with the expectation that games would be made again, naively forgetting that equity groups exist to strip things for any value that can be extracted and write the rest off. There was never any credible intent to produce anything.

Of course I could say a lot of corporate folks in the video game industry seem to want to be doing anything but be involved with games, so it's hard to say that there was much to gain otherwise.

@russell-marlow i would piledrive a shark if they announced a new Final Fight

Still playing Tears of the Kingdom and still haven't gotten to any of the Regional Phenomena. I went looking for an upgrade ingredient while starting one and got distracted and found a dozen shrines on the way (I'm up to 3 of noted plant ingredient). I might get back to the real quest two hearts and a stamina vessel up 😅

@LadyCharlie right? This isn't even a $70 game if you actually wanted the content released on day 1.

I mean if you're a physical only kinda person who only resisted Annapurna because they're mostly digital this is good, right?! There are a lot of fantastic games on this cart.

...which are usually on sale at a steep discount and don't take a lot of SD card space...

@Teksetter I feel you on the kid rut. Aside from Mariokart, it's been hard to keep them together when the weather isn't good enough to go out. My oldest came up with Boomerang Fu and an occasional other B Tier game that you can get on the cheap for quick plays, sometimes it helps to know what the kids are streaming 😀

Further on my Tears of the Kingdom exploration and having a grand time. I've done virtually nothing asked of me on the main quest aside from the Tears themselves (I don't know how to do the spoiler mask, hopefully that's innocuous) and somehow just came up with the Master Sword.

@fenlix it is kinda a win, but Kotick is without a doubt departing with a nine-figure sum and no real accountability for what happened on his watch (or directly by his own hand). We'll see if Microsoft guts their entire C-suite for cause, but I don't hold a lot of hope.

Some more Tears of the Kingdom, altho probably not a lot. I haven't put that much time into it but my wife claims she will be starting a Zelda Widows support group.

Also some Boomerang Fu with the kids. I hadn't heard of it before my daughter and her friends wanted to download it. It's a charming little party game..

A shout out to the person playing the SNES Addams Family. Fantastic little game forgotten from its time.

It took me a couple tries to get into it, but What Remains of Edith Finch is a fantastic story to experience, although there is no way you come away from it feeling great.

My son had an absolute blast with Donut County

I would think if Switch 2 Successor TBD is only recently being privately demoed to developers, we likely don't see any substantive third party support until at least the back half of 2025 unless it's just crossgen/backwards compatible. I agree the announcement of Switch support isn't anything we didn't already know, but it's good they're saying it.

Second week on the Tears of the Kingdom quest, realizing the game is worth every bit of hype it gets. I'm bouncing around from things over the next hill, in that next chasm, taking quests, and just getting lost in an ADHD kid's playground.

Side pitch, my daughter just got thru Harvestella, which got mixed reviews but if you're into farm Sims and ARPGs (which she very much is) it delivers on exactly what it says it is.

I (unwisely) favor RPGs, so I'm usually working a 60+ hour game. I do like to break up with short indies that end up in my backlog due to sales, like Gris, What Remains of Edith Finch, Inscryption, or something similar. It really breaks up the time commitments and keeps gaming from feeling like a job 😅

100% agree. You get to oversaturation and iyour hobby feels like a job just to make it thru, and you drop a game.

Altho I did just start it and am really enjoying it disconnected from everything. All I know about it is a large contingent of folks thirsting for Purah and/or Ganondorf and you can basically get anywhere without necessarily having the expected solution (a few examples I stumbled on before getting off Time Island). Makes it fun to just get lost without expectations or pacing.

It looked interesting, I pretty much expected a cross between He-Man and OG Gauntlet, which paired with Iron Maiden and Mountain Dew would effectively create my earliest fondest memories of the 80s as a wee lad.

The performance is a bummer and given cutbacks at the studio, I don't expect it will ever be good, so I guess I'll just have to accept that those days are very long gone. Saw Iron Maiden last year tho, they still got it 😁

Only 3 more games to get through before next Summer and then I can understand what the hell is going on in this one 😅

Planning to finally finish Chained Echoes this weekend.

Overall enjoyed the game, but the Sky Armor battles are wearing thin. It just seems like there are way fewer directions combat can take and it's become a slog, especially banging my head on spoiler and spoiler

LET ZELDA DRIVE YOU COWARDS.

Still super stoked.

You could say the same about the mafia 😉

Seriously though, I've done hiring in a technical field, and even if Japan is different, those numbers are absurd. These people, are employable elsewhere, so that speaks to a level of job satisfaction that is unheard of.

More than fine, my backlog is so filled with 40+ hour games that it's rare that I get to something on release day. I'm more than supportive of taking a few more months to make it right and let your developers get a little sleep. We'll still be here.

One of few games I'm not waiting for a sale for. I am the target audience and a sucker for everything they're selling. And I'm very happy with that.

I really dug him geeking out over the mechanics, there's something about you realizing there are ways you interact with the world that fundamentally change the "feel" of the game. I think it shows an understanding of game design and how you get introduced to those mechanics and how you build (reference SMB level 1-1 for perhaps the best example of in the industry). If you can do that, you can design the puzzles that interact with the world that don't pull you out of the story.

A second order of that would be Chrono Trigger cause and effect that's pretty much baked into the core concept of the game. Sea of Stars won't have to (and probably shouldnt) lean into the same mechanics, but can still use the same understanding to create something unique out of it.

Have I mentioned I'm super into the hype on this one??? 😁

I love DekuDeals as much as anyone here, but it takes a fair amount of curating to not be a flood of garbage games on perpetual sale.

Bringing back the Seal of Quality would help, even if not required to list a game. We could at least filter them out if someone didn't get Big N to vouch that it's a real game. You're always free to play a garbage game, but it shouldn't drown all the little and niche games made in good faith by indies.

Chained Echoes! A couple hours in and enjoying it a lot so far, waiting to get completely blindsided like every RPG when I finally figure out the systems and realize I've been doing it wrong the whole time.

Plus some Smash Ultimate and Mario Kart with the kids.

Late comment here because I rage quit due to frustration with the controls. To be very direct, the gameplay borders on awful at times. However this almost made me miss one of the most fantastic stories I've seen in a game.

It is dark, and you don't come away feeling good about a lot of the stories. But it's heartfelt and strange and in some cases, presented in a very unique and interesting way. There may be complaints for short runtime, but it will stay with you after the credits roll.

I loved the mood this game set and remember it fondly, but I have to agree the gameplay didn't age all that well. The cool down, charging, and leveling are tedious, especially after playing the Trials remake.

Also the music in that cave leading to the dwarf village really reminds me of Opeth's "Hours of Wealth." It's strange how some things can stick with you.

@CharlieGirl Serious Sam is a fantastic series that I don't think ever got the love it deserves. It's so fantastically nonsensical and over the top and its something the rest of the gaming world needed to take note of, especially in the early oughts.

Aside from Doom and Wolfenstein in the 90s I never really got much into FPS games, they frequently seem so joyless (as opposed to mowing down mutant nazis).

@Definitely-Not-Leon it can definitely be called out of hand when a sequel comes out for a game in your backlog that you've had since it came out.

It is really out of hand when the remake comes out 😅

Expecting to Triangle Strategy this weekend. Maybe onto Chained Echoes?

I also got Three Hopes on deep discount, so some stupid fun there too.

@Dm9982 they did one about Subzero under the Mortal Kombat Mythologies spinoff title. It was a lovely idea but it was... inconsistently executed, to be very kind.

Made it to chapter 14 in my rerun of Triangle Strategy. Fantastically dense plot and politics and gameplay is so much fun, but damned if Team Asano can't name a game to save their lives.

At the time I really liked the remake - but with most forays into more "advanced" rendered graphics from the late 90s/early oughts, I don't think that they aged well and they're kind of distracting now. I thought the story additions were nice tho (the original was breathtaking in its day but it does show its age in its simplicity).

The eShop has some QC issues (which is well documented), although I consider the worst offenders to be akin to Amazon book scam artists who game the search results - there are even YouTube channels for instruction to people who give zero effs about anything but getting a busy uninformed parent and/or child to mistakenly hand over some residual profit, and the bar for entry is getting lower with ChatGPT.

I don't know if the old Nintendo Seal of Quality(TM) would be too cost prohibitive just to filter out the dregs, maybe still give everyone ability to list but consumers would be able to filter for the Seal? If someone wants to part with a fiver for The Last of Call of Modern Ghost of Warfare Horizon 2 - GOTY Edition, they still can, but they know they're getting something that will likely only be for laughs.

Im playing Triangle Strategy again, restarting after I forgot all the drama up to this point. Having more fun now that I understand how to properly use some of the units (and just flat out ignore others, you can't level everyone).

Also, my kids are wasting me in MK.

I like the look of the SNES version but there's something about the squirelliness of the original NES versions I love, especially on 3. Problem is NES hardware failed so quickly it wasn't a great way to keep playing.

Lost Levels felt like someone's lackluster showoff Mario Maker levels. They were difficult but just not any fun, I'm glad we got Doki Doki Panic reskinned instead. The idea that Mario can get reinvented went well with the series.

I think especially given the modest beginnings, the first game was a wonderful, compact ghost story, with a bit of teenage angst that didn't seem too over the top. It had an excellent vibe, I'm glad they went in a new narrative direction but with just a bit more polish. I'm definitely in on this.

It's a mixed bag on the tracks for me, I think I liked the previous wave better.

Having Kamek and Petey Piranha makes it worth it tho, my kids are stoked (especially after getting Birdo)

It's a lot easier to speak the truth now that NFTs have crashed and investors aren't convinced this is easy money anymore. I don't know that anyone made a credible claim that blockchain applications added anything that would be called "fun."

I like the world building and tie ins - Trails games are fantastic at this and the Crossbell duology is almost built on it as the prime mission of the SSS. If you meet a guy who says in passing he has a brother in Erebonia, you're likely to run into him sometime later, even in a later game. It makes the world feel more alive, like it's going on with or without your intervention, even if you can have an impact on it.

And sweet quest loot. I love that too.

Might be fun to look at this one altho it's different from way back when I didn't have money for new games so I might as well have patience 😅. I'd probably get halfway through the third level and rage quit in favor of my extensive backlog, so this might not be a full price purchase.

@Ralizah I've got a reasonably high threshold for anime/Manga tropes but it would be really cool if low grade assault wasn't a standard tactic for romantic or comedic effect. But then again, hot men would never commit a unwanted and likely criminal act, so maybe it's a presentation issue 🤔.