FishyS

Shantae is definitely my favorite of the month. Great game; one of my favorites in the series.

Drag x Drive was fun but the demo was enough for me. I'll likely get Gradius Origins and UFO 50 eventually.

I considered getting UFO 50 immediately but my mind went 'but I haven't played all the NSO games yet' 😆

Miis would be kind of bizarre in that game tbh, but more colorful characters and environments and more mini games and single player challenges would improve things.

Happy weekend and gaming everyone. This week I have been playing:

• Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Really enjoying the new DLC levels, although I wish there were more. Some of the new mouthful mode transformation are pretty fun.
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds - Playing the open network test. It's quite fun; good combination of simple controls but slightly chaotic racing. I'm probably not buying it because there are too many racing games this year, but I'm glad I got to try it.
• Super Mario Maker 2 - Played through a whole fun Super World made by someone on this site (0DV-9NP-WXG @Robot99). Sometimes it's just relaxing to play a really well made normal difficulty traditional mario game.
• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - I've finally started on the flower quests which require permanent visitors. The fact that the game hid so many flower plots all over the island is kind of impressive.
• Picross LogiartGrimoire - Back to Picross. The second DLC has a lot of good puzzles.
• Tetris 99 - Playing the event. There are no new themes, but it's a good excuse to play a little anyways.

Edit: I enjoy the fact that Mario Maker 2 is ranked high in the poll this week, 6 years in. Maybe the upcoming anniversary is giving people Mario fever. I notice Odyssey and some other old Mario games surprisingly high in the rankings as well.

I'm glad they're slowly adding the button remap ability to more consoles. Hopefully they'll add it to all of them.

I'm maybe a third in and really enjoying it so far. I have all the Shantae games and so far this one rates near the top. The lack of map is odd but hasn't caused any problems for me so far even though my sense of direction sucks - the game does a good job at plopping you back where you need to be most of the time.

Glad it's looking good. This is a port I have been waiting for for years.

I already own the game, but I encourage people who don't to try the demo/trial. Fun game.

Happy weekend and gaming everyone. This week I have been playing:

• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - Kind of in a waiting period for main quests so I am mostly trying to lure lots of vistors to move in permanenty.
• Donkey Kong Bananza - Didn't play all week but I'm hoping to have a long session this weekend and knock out another layer or two.
• Picross LogiartGrimoire - After a Picross break, back on the horse. Starting the second DLC.
• Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution - Haven't started yet but I can never resist Shantae so I snagged this on day 1. Now I can use the power of Switch 2 to play a new GBA game 😆
• Neva - Can never resist petting the dog/ mystical wolf spirit puppy.

@Morsel Welcome back to the Hello Kitty club. I'm looking forward to the big DLC in September.

Glad to see the positive reactions so far. I didn't get Mario Kart World so I'm excited to get a more unique Switch 2 racer.

Release date waiting for September Direct maybe?

It took me about 3 minutes to hate the default and change button mappings. Dig down is not a button I use that much but having jump and attack be far from each other was awful.

I wonder how many playtesters complained before they added the easy to find button remapping.

Thank you for adding Infinity Nikki; that's my number one wish.

I would definitely get Baldur's Gate 3.

I'm a little surprised Stellar Blade didn't make the list

Happy weekend and gaming everyone. This week I have been playing:

• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - Well over 100 hours in and I have somehow gotten increasingly addicted. My current goal is to decorate a bunch of visitor cabins.
• Donkey Kong Bananza - Pacing myself with this game, but I have fun in each session.
• Super Mario Maker 2 - Some levels have been shared recently in the Nintendo Life forums which I've been playing.
• Woodle Tree 2: Deluxe - Super silly 3D platformer collectathon I grabbed off my backlog.
• Cassette Beasts - Bought on a good sale recently for a few bucks. It's a very interesting variant of monster collection since you yourself are sort of the monster.

Not sure about this game... I'm not a huge fan of urban environments in games and I'm very unsure about the combat - it doesn't sound great but it's hard to tell without trying it. Also not a big fan of Mega Evolution. I adored Arceus but Z-A sounds different on almost all fronts.

On the other hand... I have a Switch 1 voucher which will expire soon so I will likely buy Z-A just because I need to buy something. Hopefully it will be better than it sounds.

I definitely want Shantae but haven't decided if I will buy it immediately or wait.

This makes me more tempted to finally sub to expansion pack.

@ShieldHero copywrite is it's own issues, but is it really good for consumer choice to allow games which are actively trying to deceive the consumer?

There are a zillion vampire survival clones on the eShop and that is ok — no one is going to mix up cat survivors with vampire survivors and most of them are quite honest about what they are. Palland though? The name was chosen only to trick people into thinking this is palworld. It won't trick you as an avid follower of game news, but you're not the target. It's like having a game called Mareo Cart World and then letting some non gamer grandparents on the eShop. On top of that, games which use fake screen shots not indicative of the actual game are simply lying to the consumer. Note that this is against Nintendo's eShop rules (similar rules apply to non-game-related products sold in normal stores) but it seems to be policed very poorly. A grocery store is not allowed to sell a chicken breast as a chicken breast which is secretly just chicken skin stuffed with cabbage.

That said, if the game was not deceptively named and had an honest description and screen shots, I would have no issue with it. It would also inevitably sell less which is kind of the point.

The demo event was fun but I feel like I got what I needed out it and have no real urge to buy the full game.

I suspect the 'use two mouses at once' gimmick will be used extremely rarely on Switch 2 so I'm glad I got to try it and although it works better than I anticipated, it's also not something I would enjoy doing for a significant amount of time.

I want this but not for the price, especially since I own several of the games separately. I'm hoping for a good sale down the line.

Happy weekend and gaming everyone. This week I have been playing:

• Donkey Kong Bananza - Hundreds of bananas collected, hundreds more to collect. It is very easy to get distracted from the actual plotline in this game.
• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - Stuck on some long quests so grinding a bit each day.
• Mina The Hollower (demo) - The demo is super cute and fun. Definitely getting the full game eventually.
• Drag x Drive (demo) - Planning to try this game out during the weekend demo event.
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons - According to my villagers, it has been over 3 years since I last booted up this game 👀 575 hours playtime. It has been nice to visit and remember everything but I don't think I will play much unless I eventually get expansion pack/ACNH DLC. After playing so much Hello Kitty, I was briefly confused when I couldn't jump.

@Automated_Unit_4937 I would guess either because they are waiting to do a Switch 2 update as part of the Mario 40th celebrations in September or because Mario Maker 3 is far enough along they aren't bothering with mario maker 2.

I keep forgetting to try out mouse mode in this game.

I'm really hoping all the attention means there is a sequel in the works. Great maker game concept but it's a bit limited and they decided to go for zero in-game stage discoverability for some reason. A sequel could improve things both technically if it were a Switch 2 game and community-wise.

Not expecting anything big in this one, but always fun to see the new indies.

Switch 2 games and backlog has been controlling me so I haven't played any of these, but I definitely plan to get Dear me, I was... eventually.

Still no Klonoa fixed sadly

Happy weekend and gaming everyone. This week I have been playing:

• Donkey Kong Bananza - Must... Destroy... Everything. I've been pacing myself how much I play, but loving the game still.
• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - Finally got to 15 best friends and opened up a ton of new quests. This game has a serious amount of lore.
• The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales (demo) - Looking forward to trying this out after watching the direct.
• Tetris 99 - Loving the music in the new Donkey Kong theme.
• Donkey Kong '94 (NSO) - My current NSO game. Getting some retro DK along with modern DK

Definitely grabbing the Kirby and the Forgotten Land DLC.

@OctolingKing13 I'm thinking August Prime 4 direct and September release.

When a game Nintendo Life gave a 4/10 is the highlight game, probably not the top week for the eshop.

Dear me, I was... really intrigues me though. I may get it.

The firewood game's existence amuses me but I'm not buying it.

Has anyone here bought any of the EGGCONSOLE games? I'm always curious about those.

I guess I am in the minority for not getting Mario Kart 😝

6 million Switch 2s and only 3 million non-mario-kart software sales is interesting. So 1 and a half games per person, where the half is spread across Switch 2 editions of BotW/TotK, Welcome Tour, and various 3rd party games.

It's interesting they're going out of their way not to specify whether Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is 2025 or 2026. I assume 2026 at this point.

@Lenzo New Super Mario Bros U was the only mainline 2D Mario game on Switch for a long long time so of course it sold well (I'm not counting Mario maker since it's a semi spinoff).

6/10 for me. I'm pretty excited by Monster Hunter Stories 3. The Elliot game looked potentially interesting as well. Most of the rest I already either knew about (Warriors, Shinobi) or wasn't too excited about. Decent but it only partially filled the direct void in my heart.

This was the most exciting announcement of the direct for me. I really Enjoyed stories 2.

Fall Guys was actually one of the first games I played on Switch 2 a few weeks ago. Performance of the game never bothered me even on Switch 1 but I'll definitely try the update.

I was expecting an update to the other recent app.

Pokemon Friends: Death Match

It would be nice to have this for every NSO app.

And for every game for that matter.

This theme looks great. Plus I have every other Tetris 99 theme so I would grab this one regardless 😅 I'm glad the Tetris 99 events are still coming

Some of the Torees are better than others (I still think the first was the best) but they're cheap and all at least fairly good so I'll definitely pick up this game too.

@JJtheTexan I feel like Panic Pack is the weakest of the Toree games. I would suggest playing the first (Toree 3D) before trying the new game. The first game is superb.

I have a very similar game to this on Mobile with most of the same puzzle types plus a few more. The puzzles are more challenging, you can play quite a lot ad free each day, and you can play even more either with an ad or a 1 time $1.99 fee to make the game ad free. I think you can also pay $2 for skins if you want. And there are online rankings and daily prizes etc.

Pokemon Friends is essentially a 10x markup of this type of mobile game for less content. But you get Pokemon. Pokemon art certainly deserves a markup but maybe not that much for such a simple game.

@Waluigi451 The review score certainly wouldn't be better if it was a $30 game. The main difference is fewer people would have tried it to give an informed opinion.

I played the free mobile version for a few days and it's.. pretty bad. There are a few different types of puzzles and they quickly repeat with very small variations. The puzzle difficulty is insanely low... so low that it makes me wonder what the age target is since there is reasonably complex text to read in the game but some of the puzzles seem targeted at 5 year olds who presumably can't read all the text.

The Pokemon aspect is cute but there are a lot of apps with very similar puzzles that do them better. The 'friends' part of it is another layer but not a very interesting one.

Both the remove-liability warning at the beginning about kids asking their parents to use money and the front and center 'spend money' button makes this whole thing feel like a low effort way to trick very young kids into wasting money.

Maybe it gets better later on? The free pace of one puzzle a day made it so I never saw a difficulty raise if there was one. So perhaps I'm being unfair. But my personal experience for 5 days was bad enough I deleted the app.

Edit : One of the comments below mentioned being a parent playing with their 5 year old. If that's the exact target audience.. it's probably decent for that target. At least for playing for awhile.

Happy weekend and gaming everyone. I haven't had a ton of game time this week but what I've had has been taken up by two addictions:

• Donkey Kong Bananza - Huge fun game. There are so many bananas to get and things to destroy 😆 Having a ton of fun so far.
• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - 70 hours in and and there somehow keeps being more and more lore and plotlines. Surprisingly deep for a game centered around bribing friends to like you.

I have the Switch 1 version and am not upgrading. The little I've tried mouse mode on Switch 2 hasn't interested me and I'm not getting a camera. And it's weird they didn't update the original part of the game and instead separated it. I think the original game is great, but the upgrade just doesn't seem appealing.

The Wrecking Crew soundtrack in honour of Donkey Kong Bananza.

@Buizel Regarding the 5% saying it is unplayable in the survey, it should be noted that there are almost 60 comments and not a single one of them said they purchased the game and had to permanently stop playing.

One would think anyone in that situation who wasted $70 bucks on a game might be angry and would comment in the comment section.

However, there are several comments of people who had to change the camera settings, one who had to medicate to deal with the motion sickness, and a couple who said they have just suffered through it, maybe with breaks.

So I assume those 5% may include people 'rounding up' because the survey options aren't very complete rather than literally not being able to play.

There may also be people who saw some footage, played a 2-minute in-store demo, or just saw that it sometimes flips to first person and just assumed the game would have issues for them so didn't buy it.

I saw a survey on a different website claiming 17% of people have serious motion sickness from FPS (or more generally first person) games. It wasn't a scientific survey, but I'm personally in that camp and have met a lot of others who are too so I could believe that the 17% number isn't crazy. Most of us self regulate by not buying games which might make us sick. I'm not buying metroid prime 4 because of this reason but if I end up getting queasy watching some YouTube footage and then see a survey like this I'll have to decide if I want to choose the unplayable option or just not vote.

In this game I was briefly worried I would get permanently motion sick but I quickly learned to tame the camera and now only occasionally get a little sick.

I occasionally get a little motion sick playing, but it was mostly in the first area before I learned to tame the camera. Definitely not nearly as bad as an actual first person game.

It's good they fixed Endless Ocean, although that game could use a full Switch 2 edition.

Toadette is always automatically number 1.

That said, some of these were super creative like Rainbow road.

Happy weekend and gaming everyone. This week I am playing:

• Donkey Kong Bananza - Absolutely loving it. 44 bananas so far. It's chaotic but somehow still works really well even with collectibles hidden in the most absurd places. I hope everyone else playing is also enjoying.
• YOHANE THE PARHELION -BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE - Sometimes you just want to throw a huge wolf at some monsters.
• Hello Kitty Island Adventure - I finally started getting visitors to move in permanently.
• Picross LogiartGrimoire - Working through the first DLC.

I'll definitely try it out. It's nice that they're giving a trial even though the game is cheap.

@Oldstalk The Switch 2 eShop has been getting around 70 new releases a week, so lack of dev kits certainly isn't slowing the slop down. Sure, they aren't Switch 2 exclusive but they're tagged with Nintendo's official 'works on Switch 2'.

I suspect as soon as they do have dev kits, these scammy publishers will just release the same games as Switch 2 editions as a way to try to double their eShop presence.