Nanaki

@Visor this feels like how you could ‘poke’ someone on Facebook and randomly get one every few years.

You’re it!

(Let’s hope Ant doesn’t go all Zuckerberg on us!)

Personally, I’d give VIII an 11/10 and then allow the poll to control the rest

I’m 35 hours into this at the moment and enjoying it a lot. It doesn’t take itself seriously and offers enough different from BOTW to make this worth playing.

Starting to feel a bit samey, but I am trying to get near 100% and probably could have wrapped things up by now if I wanted.

After reading DLC reviews I think I won’t bother with the DLC and just do the core game.

@ThomasBW84 welcome back! I think you can rightfully claim the email address permanently now ^^’

Regards, the old Thomas

@Kirbyfan yeah I stumbled across @antdickens first site (and IRC channel... which now lives on as a WhatsApp group) in 2001/2

If I’d have set up the site then it would look distinctly like a nineties site XD. I created lots of initial reviews and articles back in the day (the stats tell me 42 reviews) before the site got to its amazing strength it is now. I think for that trade I spent about three years asking Ant for help on the web scripting modules of my degree.

Pretty cool to have a group of people I met before and during the life of this site that I am still in regular contact with — some from 20 years ago (and now I feel old). Roll on the next 20 years

Sexy Brutale was such a great game. Just a shame it ran so badly on Switch (still highly recommend it; just wished they got the frame rate sorted in places)

Shockingly late to playing the series but I’ve just done Dig, followed hot on the heels by Dig 2. Now I’ve started Heist and loving it. Always great to see when a series innovates and develops. Quest is already downloaded and waiting for me after this.

Def loving what @imageform do — and a huge bonus of being late to the party is that I can binge on these games!

They really should have added Nanaki ^^’

While I haven’t played it I did just get The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Goblin Scourge Edition! as it is £1.99 right now (90% off). That looks to be a cool tabletop video game

That was a great lunchtime read! Thank you @dartmonkey

Huge fan of the BK series (and Rare!) — I think the BK games were the first games I reviewed when we launched a ‘retro’ review section on NintendoLife.

I’m currently on yet another playthrough of the series right now on my Xbox. Love all three games for what they bring — the first I think is flawless, and the other two are near flawless (this article makes me realise that by doing something different than a copy and paste sequel is refreshing - Rare trying to innovate and evolve is so important). After just going into Mario 64 it cements my view that BK was the best platformer on the 64). 22 years on and I am just loving the original and have completed it well into the double digits.

I actually got my fingers tattooed the other day with a feather, jiggy, note and honeycomb in homage to these amazing games.

Originally I planned to get this post-Christmas, as Ubisoft always put their games on sale fairly soon after launch.

Then I decided to get it launch day.

Now the DLC prospect has flipped me back to post-Christmas.

Well @antdickens it’s just phenomenal to see how much the site has changed since the first days. (You’ve even changed your username!)

I remember when the site had a handful of reviews and I’m pretty sure @reinstall and I both reviewed Starfox Adventures. When we got the first ever review copies of games that was one of the coolest moments. Then when I got to go and play Rabbids at the Nintendo flats (nostalgic link: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2007/11/rayman_raving_rabbids_2_community_event). And when Wikipedia editors stoped editing us out of articles that’s when I knew it had made it.

Made friends with and met some truly great people through the site. Such a blast to be part of it!

It’s awesome to see NL continue to thrive. And amazing that we’re actually all still in touch from the grandfather GC-UK site and IRC channel from 2002(?) where my NLife journey took the first steps. @visor still fuels and encourages my constant purchasing of Nintendo games!

Will always be my most clicked site — thanks for the 15 years, bossman! Shame it couldn’t be celebrated in a bit more style! (My vote for the post-lockdown party: karaoke live-streamed on the YouTube channel )

Abercrombie mixed with FE has me sold. Backed it.

You’d have thunk my answer to be obvious, but I actually split my vote across VI and VII. X gets a good shout in too.

So much love for their entire N64 collection!

@antdickens thank goodness you employed people better than you at puns! That was a good Switch to make

@HotGoomba what page of the news did you get to in order to reach this one!?

I never really notice slowdown in games, so maybe I am lucky. I’ve played this for a little bit so far and I can’t say I really notice / get bothered by slowdown. It’s such a busy game — you’re flooded by so much on the screen that is happening — that I never really observe too much. Maybe it’s just me not being that good at the game, but I’m so perplexed by what the heck is going on that I see everything through my periphery vision so am not noticing the slowdown.

I’d def love for all games to be polished when they land — the era of patches has really ushered in a trend of games hitting the market earlier than they would, with companies knowing they can patch in the performance issue fixes later.

Interesting tidbit: this site’s first article had a Paper Mario image on it. It reminded me I really need to play one of those games at some point in time... Fifteen years later it’s about to happen!

Blathers talks about only accepting bugs, fish and fossils right now which to me implies they are going to add this in at some point

This has sat near the top of my Switch port wish list for a while, but I’m unsure if there is enough love out there for Viewtiful Joe.

It would be interesting if more games went to Kickstarter to see if the ports would be financially viable — seems a fairly decent way to sound out whether a game will at least break even.

Backed it — hoping it can deliver something decent and will become a platform for more

TemTempted to give this a go - for me the difficulty level will be key. The main Pokemon games are far too easy and I wish they presented more of a challenge / battles against type matches weren’t all 1-hit KOs. A new challenger to the monster-catching genre should make things better all-around.

Yea, it’s insanely close to Pokemon but maybe that’s the right thing to do: find a winning formula and tweak it slightly to see if some magic can be restored.

Oh and the other big draw for me: it doesn’t have too many monsters. People complained about Dexit but realistically there are so many Pokemon that are just not that good to battle with - I really wish they balanced Pokemon a lot more instead of flood it with an insane amount of Pokemon where it ends up with just 10% being squad-worthy.

Okami was decent but not spectacular for me — mostly because I found no challenge to it. The story was cool and the art style is lovely, but at no point of the game did feel challenging. Surprised it beat Twlight Princess to GOTY

Stuck with it to the end but wouldn’t go back to it.

Saw on the video yesterday - had no idea about it, but am going to get now

October, November, December and January have been dominated by the Witcher for me. Exploring every square inch of that marvellous game

Now this is a game I’d love to see ported. Had so much fun with the original when it came out.

@kenyowa I’ve sunk 130 hours into that game and don’t find it anywhere near as memorable as Cadence — the remastered Zelda tracks were cool and appealed to my nostalgia.

The Witcher has a strong soundtrack and would be #2 for me

Hard to form an opinion on GOTY for me as I have essentially played four games this year that took ages to get through (Fire Emblem, Switcher, Xenoblade and FFX). I’ve got a queue of games from this year to play through. Loved both Zelda releases this year (Cadence had balancing issues once you got to later on (too easy))

Glad the list seems to be focused on new games only, as porting AAA games is too easy to clog up a top 10 list.

I think Untitled Goose May actually be my GOTY — charming and refreshing.

Going to get Sayonara Wild Hearts at the recommendation of this thread.

This is high up on my Switch port wish list (because why play new games when I can re-live my childhood in HD)

Now that it’s back on Nintendo I can admit to having not played quite a few of the iconic Final Fantasy games. VIII is still left, after having just done IX and VI

It irks me that the DLC seems to slot into the existing four story arcs.

I love the game but will I replay a route I’ve alreasy taken for the benefit of a single playable character and extra side-quests.

I would have preferred an isolated story or a telling of events from a certain perspective that could be played agnostic to which route you took.

Great they are filling in parts of the story, but I’ve invested 120 hours getting through 1.6 playthroughs; I’d rather play out the two remaining routes than pick up a character for a few extra chats.

Maybe they will give some kind of fast track mode for people who have already completed the arc once...

3/10 on PushSquare makes me really dubious over how much of an improvment this is

Honestly I’m surprised @antdickens didn’t hard-code the site to give this an 11/10

On the fence. I hate horror games, but adore these open-ended, minimalistic dialogue games, so trying to decide whether it to get or not. Might wish list for now and get in a sale

Been waiting for this for a while on Switch. Excited to see what all the hype is about.

And now begins my mad rush to complete Fire Emblem before this consumes all my free time!

@StormtheFrontier it competes but not as a blow-for-blow copy.

CTR always took huge inspiration from MK — most the power ups are variants of MK, and the power slide functionality is there (albeit harder to nail in CTR)

For me the main multiplayer appeal of MK is the races with other people. It’s the same with CTR — both games allow for the same amount of players and both are very similar in concept there (I.e. CTR is a MK clone with slight differences). MK is by far more accessible but CTR is trickier and the races against skilled opponents are always close.

In terms of single player I always thought CTR offered more — it was like Diddy Kong Racing, which from a single player perspective was always bette than MK in my eyes. Time trials and challenges are a great feature of the game, so it has a different appeal than MK.

I’ll probbaly end up splitting my time between them equally, just like I was doing with MK on my 64 and CTR on the PSX

Crash and Mario Kart so I can decide which one I love more

Crash has more complex mechanics but the loading times are not good. Mario is pick up and play and so polished. Gut tells me that MK will win out

Loving it so far. A little too easy but that’s better than the brutally-hard necrodancer. Ace game and glad I got it Day one

Instant buy for me. Such an amazing series. DQVIII on 3DS is my all-time favourite game

I remember trying to get into this - my friends and all got Gameboy SPs and we piled around the TV, but then realised someone had to be on chalice duty and carry it around everywhere. It was such a irritating mechanic that stopped us playing further. Hopefully they’ve changed that part (or maybe I’ve conpletly misremembered and am doing the game an injustice)

I enjoyed I Am Setsuna but wasn’t blown away by it. I did like how it was an RPG that didn’t require weeks of investment to complete. I’ll probably get it, but after FFVIII and FFXII (who needs new IPs when you can replay games as ports!)

Looking forward to this; I dropped out on disc 2 when it first launched — I’ll finally be able to complete it!

Well, MS is pitching the next gem as cloud-based and playing on the device that suits you.

Nintendo is increasing carving out a unique position in the market for the Switch, so the consoles can coexist with each other without really taking sales away from the other. E.g. people like me whose gaming is 90% on the go.

Gamepass, or even more sharing of previously-exclusive IPs could work to the benefit of both companies and might even give the Xbox brand some chance of credibility in Japan.

I would love it if they agree to share Rare — I just want to replay those golden age 64 games on the move

As much as I love knowing news about Nintendo games, I really really dislike leakers. Nintendo works in its own way: and when it comes to creating games Nintendo does things its way, and the results are AAA titles.

All leakers seem to do is detract from the experience. If I’ve worked hard on something and have the grand reveal spoiled by someone I would be equally irritated.

Speculation is great; leaking non-public information is rubbish.

E3 genuinely keeps me excited like Christmas did as a kid. There are so many awesome potential games. I would love to see the Witcher as I’ve been itching to play that, and there are so many first-party Nintendo titles.

I’m buying two Switch vouchers a month in anticipation for the wave of must-have games!

Twoka Laylee

The Switcher is my most hoped-for port. Please be true!

Bizarrely the more I hear about the game, the less it appeals to me. I love the series but the prospects of it becoming a life sim bother me — I like story-driven narrative that moves on at a decent pace. I don’t want to tend to gardens as part of the story (sure, give me the option to do this on the side, but don’t make it mandatory). Hoping I have misjudged it, but the game has gone from an instant pre-order to one that I’ll wait till the reviews are out.

Sounds like the review itself is the only decent assination here