Dromosus

Probably not on the top of anybody's list, but the tactical zombie/cowboy shooter Hard West is 90% off at £1.79. Got 7/10 on this website.

Flipping Death is 75% off at £4.49 (9/10 NL).

The Flame in the Flood is 65% off at £5.24 (7/10 NL).

Starlink Standard Digital Edition is 82% off at £12.59

(I'll add some more game for skint people as I scroll through reams of shovelware).

I was holding out for Astral Chain, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Grid Autosport. Ah well. Some good deals for games I already have though, Witcher 3 is worth the money at full price in my opinion so is well worth picking up in this sale.

I'll probably end up buying Snooker 19. I don't know why but my collection on any particular console never feels complete until I have some kind of snooker game on it.

I’m finally playing Dead Cells after picking it up in a sale months ago and letting it sit there in my backlog purgatory. I decided to start after I admitted to myself that I had quickly become bored with Dragon’s Dogma.

Holy Moley, why didn’t everyone tell me how brilliant this game is? Oh, right, everybody did go on about how amazing this game was. I have no idea why I held off for so long. I reckon it’s already up there in my top three Switch games and I’m only about 8 hours in.

When I finally bought the standard digital edition I had great fun with the game. The problem was that the game was priced stupidly high on release because of the toys to life element and the basic digital edition was one of the most expensive games in the eshop. I'm guessing the digital pricing was so high because they didnt want to lose physical sales. I don't think it was too surprising that it failed in this respect, which is a pity as it was a fun game when I finally got round to playing it.

@Tasuki I bought it for a mere £8 on the last Xbox digital sale. Guess what? I haven’t played it. My life doesn’t allow me a lot of time to play games via a box connected to my TV.

I will be shelling out for this on Switch and I know I’ll sink a lot of my time into it. I will then look at the ratio of time spent playing the game against the money I spent on the game and the Switch version will prove itself of better value in that sense than the version I spent £8 on.

A £5 can of WD40 contact cleaner has served me well. It's a pain in the bum having to give the thing a spray every few months but less of a pain than being without the thing for weeks if I send it off.

Me right now: Yeah, I think I’ll pass on the Switch Lite. I’m sure it’ll be great for a certain niche. My OG Switch is enough for me.

Me in September: IS THE SWITCH LITE OUT YET?!?!? I NEED IT IN MY LIFE I NEED IT I NEED IT I NEEEEEEEED IIIIIITTTT!!!!!

Part of me really wants to impulse buy this game but the price is a little high for me too. Also, I've been holding off getting Dragon's Dogma but it is suddenly even more appealing because it's only a few quid more than this. So I will sate my impulse reflex with DD and then wait for this to go on sale. Haha!

*my wallet is crying

Many moons ago I woke up next to someone after a very drunken night that I shouldn’t have woken up with. I got out of bed quietly, got dressed and went out of the door without making a sound. I felt smug for a few moments before I realised I was outside my own flat.

WWE 2K19: YA BETTER BELIEVE THAT I’M THE WORST GAME ON THE SWITCH, BOTHER!!!

Ark Survival Evolved: RAAAAARRRRGHH!!!!

PixARK: Hold my cuboid beer.

@Ricube I bought the standard digital edition of Starlink last time it was on sale and completed it about a month ago. With the cheapest digital edition you get most of the ships, pilots and weapons, much more than the physical starter kit. I enjoyed the game. I get why many found it repetitive but I enjoyed the look and feel of it and got a good 35 hours of gameplay from it. I’ve no regrets about not getting the deluxe edition, especially when the difference can bag you a couple of really good games in the current sale.

Early reviews for PS4 and Xbox also say it has some frame rate issues which probably means it'll run like your Grandad's Datsun on Switch.

Yep, can’t remember the kids movie that he was meant to project but my projectionist buddy ended up screening Blade 2 instead. Lots of kids stuck around with their mums and dads as the blood bank scene played.

I just really want Fire Pro Wrestling on Switch. It’s the perfect console for it.

Planet Alpha is the only one I bought from that list, mainly on the strength of the visuals. I grew tired of the game itself pretty quickly, the visuals were breathtaking at first but it all became very familiar very quickly for me.

I reckon I'll get round to Ape Out soon though.

I don't know why, but this game looks like it is the closest a video game will ever get to a Ray Harryhausen film and that's enough for me to drop some good coin upon it.

@Dm9982 completing the main quests of Celeste and Hollow Knight is about my level of difficulty. I’m a mid-forties male with mild RSI and the reflexes of a heroin addicted sloth and life gets shorter every day.

I love Cuphead but can only play it in short bursts, my nerves can only take so much. This makes it a perfect game for Switch at the same time.

I counterbalance this with longer forays into Starlink which is a gorgeous grind in the same way that Cuphead is a gorgeous trial.

@NESlover85 yes, just started. Wonderful stuff so far.

I've stalled on Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate . I think it's because I feel like a monumental tool running round and killing these magnificent beasts. This could be because I've been watching the new David Attenborough doc. Before this I still suspected that the subtext of MH was the continued hunting of whales around Japan for "scientific" purposes.

Instead I delved into Night in the Woods which was a bit of a slog at first before the story and atmosphere roped me in. One moment I was losing patience with a bunch of mammalian hipsters and the next I was sorry to say goodbye to them at the story's culmination.

This week I've got Axiom Verge and Starlink in my crosshairs. Those should keep me busy until I can get my paws on my pre-purchased copy of Cuphead.

I ended up buying the standard digital edition from the e-shop when it was on sale for £21 and am yet to play it but am looking forward to doing so.

I would have bought a playable base version of this game for £40 -50 on release because I really liked the look of it but £70 for the standard edition from the eshop was taking the Miichael. I think a lot of people felt the same. The base playable version of a game shouldn't be any more than any similar game.

Hopefully nobody will try this kind of pricing model on release again.

It's great to see a few of my backlog titles on this list. It stops me looking ahead to my next purchase and helps me to realise that my unplayed games are to be savoured rather than "got through".

Okay Axiom Verge, it's time.

I really enjoyed this direct, especially the Cuphead reveal.

Interesting that there wasn’t much pixel art in these games. I can think of lots of pixel art games that looked underwhelming on a Nindie direct that I ended up falling in love with when I got round to playing them. I wonder if this was a deliberate decision by Nintendo, are they responding to Nindie pixel fatigue?

Did the milk spilling on the table signify a multitude of gamers wetting themselves a moment later?

@OorWullie Those were the Nindie Showcases on the UK channel which are different to the actual Nindie Directs that normally feature the American Nintendo guys. I know what you mean about her voice being a bit annoying, I'm a Londoner and it grated in me too. A bit too "Tally-ho, jolly good, hockey sticks, okay-yah" for my liking.

For me, Directs tend not to bring out the best of Indie games. 2D platformers and pixel art tend to look the same as each other when they're bundled together as part of a longer presentation. There are plenty of games that I ended up loving, or getting very excited about (Into the Breach comes to mind), because of reviews or online buzz that I felt indifferent about when I saw them on a Nindie direct.

So I'll watch with tempered expectations on Wednesday before I get properly excited when a game starts to gain momentum.

This looks the closest a video game has ever got to being a playable Ray Harryhausen movie. That's a buy for me on that alone.

Not much time for gaming this week so it's been a few brief stints of Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. I'm still tiptoeing through the tutorials, trying not to get swamped. I think this game has a lot of charm and that's enough to keep me going right now.

Otherwise, all the nostalgia for the two year anniversary has me thinking about taking another deep dive into Breath of the Wild. I keep getting little flashbacks of playing the game in the same way that I get flashbacks of going abroad. This is accompanied by the same caution I have for returning to a holiday location. Thoughts like, "Will the second experience be a pale imitation of the first? Will Hyrule be full of tourists now? Has Tarrey Town been gentrified?"

@rdrunner1178 That would be great but licensing would probably be a problem. I'd love some firepro on switch though.

An even more shocking story would have been "functional wrestling game discovered on Nintendo Switch"

After finishing the main story of Celeste (top three game for me!) I’ve embarked upon Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate , the lumbering leviathan of my watchlist.

It’s a bit overwhelming for a newb, so I’m easing myself in. I’m strangely enjoying the fetch quests, getting a feel for the world before I embark on a proper hunt. While others are grinding G-Rank I’m genuinely stumped over where to find some mushrooms.

I also finally picked up Starlink for £21 from the Eshop. I don’t need any more tat in my life so I’m glad I held off buying the physical starter kit when the price hit rock bottom. It’s a shame as I would have spent £40 on this game when it was released but £70 was really taking the proverbial.

Also , Ape Out is fluttering its eyelashes at me but I’ll probably hold off for a bit. An article in the Grauniad about Fitness Boxing has got me looking at my big belly and wondering if it might help. Fitness games tend to be pretty faddish though. I’ll probably try and cut down on beer and pizza and spend the saved money on a proper game instead.

@dugan Thanks! I just completed it tonight. What a wonderful game. I was happy to get to the top and leave it at that though, I spent a moment in the core and then thought, “Nah, I’ll play something else now.”

Still, I think it was my all time Switch #3 after BOTW and Stardew. Might check out all those extra bits again after I’ve had a little break.

Was hoping Reggie was buying everyone a real beer as a kind of goodbye gift.

@Balta666 Thanks for the feedback. Problem is, I'm not even going for the strawbs or b-sides. I'm just really bad at the actual game!

I am a forty three year old man with a two week wait for my first pair of reading glasses and the reflexes of a pregnant yak.

Once I get to the top of this bloody mountain I'm going to play something really, really easy...

Last week I posted how I was on the last chapter of Celeste and that I thought the game was almost perfect, especially its duration.

I have since spent the last week getting my behind handed to me by the summit. I have spent about an hour dying over and over again on flag thirteen.

Those strawberries can go to hell and those mix tapes are getting put in a box in the attic alongside the rest of my analogue media.

I'm not buying anything until I've played my entire backlog. I have quite the backlog, so this isn't as spartan as it seems. Right now I've finally got round to Celeste.

My goodness, it really is as wonderful as you lot say it is. A perfect balance between technical difficulty and emotional impact. The music, pixel art, storytelling, level design and responsive controls are a great example of how it should be done.

I also like the length, I'm on the final level after playing on and off for a week and am completely satisfied. I like my Indie games to be relatively short and impactful. If AAAs are like concept double-albums then I like a good Indie to resemble a classic single or EP (Probably giving away my age here...). Sure, Stardew is a notable exception but will I risk the torches and pitchforks if I say that I found Hollow Knight to be a smidgen too long?

@Beetoe I thought the same until I entered "throw a banana skin" into google and got loads of articles about racists throwing banana skins at black athletes and entertainers.

EDIT **After writing the post below I decided to check up on my own assertions and entered "throw a banana skin" into google. Half of the results I got back detailed incidents of racial abuse where people threw banana skins (as opposed to bananas) at black footballers as well as performers such as Dave Chappelle. While this is obviously influenced by my location and google profile, I think it still refutes the distinction I wrote about below. I now think that @riChchestM does indeed have a point. I think that it's fairly obvious that the writer didn't intend it in this sense but it might be worth an edit anyway.***

Late to the discussion but I think that there is a meaningful distinction between "throwing a banana" (as racist scum have and still do with regard to black football players) and "throwing a banana skin" which is a common term for causing misfortune for another person. It's a slight difference but a meaningful one in this case.

I have no problem with people making objections of this kind just as I have no problem with people treating them seriously even if they don't agree. I'm weird like that.

My prefrontal cortex whispers: Please treat these dates with scepticism because, as noted, Metroid Prime 4 will definitely not be released in 2019 even though it is listed as such.

The rest of my brain says: TOO LATE, THE HYPE TRAIN IS BOARDED AND READY TO LEAVE!!!! PLEASE MIND THE CLOSING DOORS!!! CHOOOOOOO-CHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

The standard phrase, "X on the go!" now has a different meaning since the Switch came out. The appeal of a phone version of a classic franchise has significantly diminished. Even the infamous phrase, "Haven't you guys got phones? " begs the retort, "We have Switches!"

That said, I'll keep calm until somone announces a delay to Daemon X Machina and then I'll throw a proper wobbly.

I love how the theme of the website changes from red to blue for this article.

I've changed my buying habits recently, as I have a huge backlog of games from sales that should keep me busy until springtime.

So, sales or no sales, I'm not buying any more games until I've got through those. I'll put all the money that I would have spent on sales to one side and then, once I've cleared my backlog, I'm going to buy myself a game that I really want to start playing right away. If it ends up being full price, fine.

Does anyone else do this? I'm hoping that I can stick with this regime.

It might highlight the popularity of the switch but it also highlights how shambolic the promotion and execution of the online service has been.

Finding a justification for buying this game's standard digital edition for £20 more than the full price of Breath of the Wild after a steady run of 7/10 reviews is also technically challenging.

That said, it's currently £35 on amazon for the starter's pack, hmmmm....

It'll be interesting to see how their sales were for the later part of the year, especially with the Starlink Starter's Pack being discounted across the board so early. I'm glad that the pricing strategy backfired (though the EU/UK pricing for the Standard Digital Edition is still extortionate seeing as you don't actually get any physical objects that cost money to make). I'm guessing the starter pack is discounted because it's the edition with the least content gameplay wise. They're probably hedging their bets on people buying it discounted and then spending more money on extra toys and/or DLC.

Ya better just enjoy playing Candy Crush ya flamin' galahs!

If I was more of a tinfoil titfer type I'd be saying that this game is one massive conspiracy to get players that normally buy cartridges shelling out for the digital version instead. This seems to be the general effect so far.

I am very torn on this game. As others have mentioned, the pricing is the first reason for caution. Especially when buying digital, it just feels like you're paying for added functionality that could have been included in the base version.

At the same time, I've been itching for another vast open world exploration/action game like Zelda or Xenoblade and this looks like it could scratch that itch. I'll be holding out on the reviews as well then.

@Yasume I read in another rumour (huge pinch of salt etc) that a Switch Pro would be more for 3rd party games and that all 1st parties would still run on both Switches. If this brings Monster Hunter World and other big AAA games to the Switch, I don't see this as a bad thing. If the switch wants to truly be seen as a hybrid then it has to get on better with big 3rd party AAA games otherwise it's more a 1st party, ports and Indie machine (which I personally am fine with!), or to put it another way, a really good portable with some standard console functionality on the side.

@TripleX Just to elaborate on what others have said, it costs about the same on mobile. The first chapter is free and then you can either pay for each subsequent chapter as you get to it or buy them all in one go.