Joe11

Nonstretched, fullscreen would get a full-price buy from me. Otherwise, though, unofficial emulation options remain superior :/

I picked up Huntdown, Kamiko, and Chained Echoes this holiday sale.

Strongly recommend A Short Hike to anyone who hasn't played it! There are few games I'd recommend to literally everyone, but I do here.

Oh wow, I saw it in a Deku Deals email round up, but didn't notice the price! I thought, "nah, it will go on the backlog—wait until after FF7 Remake Intergrade." But I didn't look closely enough to see it was 75% off 😭

I'll get Demonschool for sure. I'll pick up Pipistrello if I get to a point where it won't languish in the backlog. Blade Chimera looks right up my alley too - hadn't heard of it!

Whoa, a tie!

The European covers never run these brawls 😅

Am I crazy for thinking Fast Fusion was the racing GotY? Perhaps it's because I only care about single player?

As an NES Jaws fan, I'll keep an eye on this and consider a digital purchase if it reviews well. But there's no chance in hell I'd squander my $$$ on a rip-off physical copy from Limited Run Games.

Counting down the unknown # days til we get a BG3 port 🤞🏻

@RiasGremory I can't think of a single instance tying the story of 4 to those of 1-3. Aside from the non sequitur cameo in the secret ending of 3. Fwiw, I just hit 100% on my second playthrough of 4.

There's some connection to Hunters and Federation Force via Sylux, but I can't think of anything related to the main trilogy.

@HotGoomba FYI, there is not a single thing in MP4 that ties in to the initial trilogy, so you definitely don't need to play them first.

Not of course, you should play them all at some point anyway, because they're fantastic!

I only have eyes for Samus 💕

Hades 2 was my favorite, easily. But a Zelda resolution upgrade will probably win this 😅

There goes HBO?

ZOMG NL you tease me with a phantom restock of the squishy! I've wanted it forever 😭

Then, it shall be docked! Can't wait to play this tomorrow!

This is kind of a lesson in diminishing returns in the modern era. It clearly looks better on Switch 2, but it also looks perfectly fine on the Switch. In my childhood, the generational upgrades from NES to SNES to N64 were just so extreme and amazing!

Don't get me wrong, though - I love the Switch 2! It's an obvious and significant upgrade in every way, and I play it all the time 😅

Tag sounds interesting enough to fire it up, but what I really wanted was new arena environments.

Unlike others here, I don't regret this purchase at all. It's a wholly unique game, with well implemented and fairly deep gameplay, and with a really reasonable price. It got me interested in wheelchair basketball as a sport, which I had never paid attention to before. I didn't play it longer than a week, but for the price of a night at the movies 👍🏻

Such an aesthetically beautiful... weird and boring game.

Saying that as a huge fan of Secret of Mana, Sword of Mana, Trials, Evermore, etc. Here's to hoping Visions makes it to Switch 2 soon!

Seeing if I can wrap up Shinobi: AoV this weekend (while still getting a big work project finished) before Metroid Prime 4 takes over my life.

I can't tell you how excited I am for Metroid--I live for this! I've been reviewing my plot notes from the older games. I keep a spreadsheet 😅

Battlettoads and NGII are top ten NES classics in my book, let's go! Battletoads benefits greatly from save states 😅

Most of the non-Nintendo games on that list are significantly less expensive, right?

Black Friday deals are here, and I already hit 100% on Age of Imprisonment, so this weekend it's:

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance $21
Downwell $2
Ape Out $2

All are proving excellent. Shinobi is soooooo my kind of game ☺️🥷

@Samick Have you found Switch 2 motion is more accurate than Switch 1? Just curious.

I also loved Skyward Sword on Switch when I played it years ago—I replayed it on hard mode immediately after beating it!

@timp29 I'd pick up a copy of MP3 for sure if they remaster it. I never had a Wii, so I've only ever played it emulated (and reconfigured for keyboard mouse controls, which was cool). I loved it, and I'd really like to try playing it with motion controls!

I think if MP4 is a success, it might get more people interested in playing 1-3.

@Trmn8r $50 is a good launch price for a GotY candidate, considered the best of its genre, offering 150+ hours of play. I appreciated the $20 discount on the digital version!

Digital is straightforwardly cheaper for them and worth less to us, do I don't get why we don't see this kind of price difference more often

@KoopaTheGamer 5 is not the average of a 1-10 scale. I think you mean midpoint, but even that would be 5.5, not 5. If I had to take a wild guess, my hunch is that the mean and median video game review scores are between 7-8.

A 5 is almost certainly below the 25th percentile in terms of the distribution of video game review scores.

And if my kid got a 50 in a class, I certainly wouldn't say, that's ok, it's average 😅

Don't people archive software after beating the game? Why would you spend big $$$ on SD cards? I'm certainly used to archiving from PC gaming.

@scoobdoo I didn't play the first FE Warriors, but I played 3 Hopes, and I definitely think AoI is a big step up. The combat is deeper and more satisfying. Also, it looks way better. 3 Hopes looked really muddy and unappealing to me. I liked how fast the main character played, though!

@Ravenmaster My experience of Age of Calamity was identical to yours. Oddly enough, though, Age of Imprisonment wound up being the opposite experience. The story is not worth your time, but the gameplay is way more fun. Basically everything aside from the combat is uninspired, but the combat has really improved - to the point that in tempted to keep playing even after 100%-ing it today. A number of mechanistic tweaks and additions have made it a great hack n slash.

I'll definitely get this, but I've already got some backlog to clear before Metroid arrives. To the wishlist with you!

30 hours in, I give it an 8. I really like it! The combat is the #1 highlight - it is refreshingly deep for a musou. Simply put, this has the best gameplay of any musou game. (I'm playing on very hard and strongly recommend at least setting the difficulty to hard.)

In contrast to Age of Calamity, however, the story is really weak so far. Everyone was excited that AoI is officially canon, but the result here is apparently too much caution. I know a lot of people complained about the direction of the story in AoC, but it was undeniably engaging, colorful, and expansive. In AoI, at least through Chapter 4, the story really hasn't added anything new to what we already knew from ToTK. It seems like there are huge missed opportunities to expand Zelda lore, like where the sky islands came from, what became of the Zonai, who succeeded Rauru and Sonia on the throne, etc. Most characters are surprisingly bland too, albeit very well voice acted. Again, this contrasts with AoC, which had delightfully zany characters in addition to the well fleshed out main cast.

As others have pointed out, the battlefield maps are uninspired and a step down from AoC.

The game is very polished! The graphics look better than the specs would suggest. I love how it looks in handheld on the big Switch 2 screen. No bugs or glitches to speak of.

I recommend it for anyone with a Switch 2 just looking for something good to play or for Zelda fanatics. But there are better games this year on Switch 2. Hades 2, Bananza, and Cyberpunk are top tier. AoI is a near miss.

I've only played 1-6 in their original formats. Based on others' ratings, I guess it's time to try DQXI!

Fiiiiiiiinally put down Hades 2 after 167 runs! Now it's Age of Imprisonment and Kirby Air Riders, both of which are surprising me in good ways.

AoI for the first ~5 hours worried me, because it seemed way too similar to AoC, but with a less compelling story & characters. But the seemingly small changes to gameplay actually make a world of difference in making the battles more fun!

I can't stress enough how important it is to play AoI on hard mode. It will force you engage with these new systems (especially the elemental effects). I'm convinced that some reviewers complaining about shallow gameplay lazily played this on normal difficulty.

I assumed it was higher res in docked, from playing it. Is upscaling magic how they're making it look so good on the big screen?

I might have to look for this on my next trip to the Tokyo Nintendo store! I kind of have too many amiibo already, but I've got a nephew who'd love this.

I expect this will be a high quality game, but I think if I want to race, I'm going to just fire up Fast Fusion again. It was really fantastic, and I'd even put it up there with some of my favorite classics, like OG F-Zero, Wave Race, and Out Run. It's the game I'll most associate with my Switch 2 launch experience.

Happy birthday, and thank you for fostering a community with more positivity than you'll find just about anywhere else in the gaming world 😅

Hoping for a Hyrule Warriors game in the top 20 to troll the anti-musou crowd 😈

@Kyloctopus Ring Fit is in there (!) Or at least in the running.

"Sexy sync strikes?"

I mean, they're definitely cool and all. Maybe I need to get further in the game to unlock the "sexy" ones.

skims article looking for acronym to be explained

@johnedwin1969 I saw that too. The score is dragged down by a few reviews with extreme low scores that read along the lines of, "I hate musou games, and they shouldn't exist."

I don't get that. Would they have reviewers cover sports games who don't like sports? Or swap "sports" with turn-based RPGs, fighters, sims, retro-style 2d games, etc.

@Ratmasterd21 I use the joycons, which I actually like. I think I'm in the minority 😅 I also have picked up some cheaper third party controllers for various systems over the years.

Metroid is the series that would best translate to the big screen. Space horror with action elements please! And for the love of god, make sure Samus is a badass hero and not a whimpering doormat like in Other M 🫤

Mario was fun, but the movie worked only as a parody, repeatedly poking fun at how the"plot" of Mario games is too thin and nonsensical for a movie!

I'm just counting down the days honestly. My partner will be out of town on business... I detect a Zelda binge coming!

Also, just a suggestion to those who find the genre too mindless—hard mode on HW: AoC & FE: 3 Hopes did require skill and learning.

This headline applies to the standard $90 Pro Controller. It looks nice, but that's like 50%+ what I'm willing to spend on a controller :/

Counting down the days to Thursday for Age of Imprisonment!

Less $$ than I would've expected!.

That's like the cost of a run-of-the-mill diagnostic medical procedure in the U.S.

This is amazing! I'm 150+ runs in, unveiled all the oath statues, and running out of tasks/unlocks. But I keep playing anyway because it's just the funnest frickin game! Happy to have new things to shoot for.

Hades 2 is up there for me with TotK and Persona 5 as one of the very best games of the modern era. 10/10 for sure.

"Added Cauldron incantation lets you return to an earlier point in the story in case you wish to re-experience key events, such as the True Ending." — hell yeah!

"Any excess Kudos you have already spent will be refunded." — hell yeah x2!

As long as humanity doesn't die out? Isn't the Super Mario theme the most recognized song in the world after the Birthday Song?