Nancyboy

@CharlieGirl Thirded. My favorite feature about the early sports games was that they allowed player creation so you could make a ridiculously stacked team. The most fun I had with a Madden game was making a bloated team and naming them after jazz musicians, then wrecking house on everyone. Make it fun, not General Manager stressful.

Love it. You can tell from the end of the trailer that at least one of the devs has a cat. One of ours likes the Control key and space bar. As I type this, it strikes me how appropriate that is.

My wife fused a dragon shard on a sword and wrecked a silver Bokoblin. I have a tendency to hoard resources and get cheesed off at stronger enemies when they mess me up. I shoulda done that way earlier.

"ZL" you say? Damn...

Wind Waker, the most interesting as a character by a long shot. Really the only time he wasn’t a one-noter.

What is it with Nintendo and palm eyeballs, anyway?

NA is nice and goofy - dig the crossing arms, and what is she eating? Europe, if I didn’t see the title, I’d think he was a Realtor. NA it is.

I may have to buy this if only because its existence will p!ss off so many people.

"Leave politics out of games" means "Every game should be what I want it to be."

The world is full of people who are not you.

Spoilery:

But there is a special item required to beat each dungeon in TotK - the extra character avatar (at least, for the ones I’m through so far). N can and will do as they see fit, but it is not remotely irreconcilable to have a more classic dungeon that can be taken on at any time, with a necessary avatar ability analogous to the Spinner or what have you. They’ve tailored the story progression such that a specific ability is required to advance, whether you go fire or water or air first.

I don’t think this means they have to be structured the same as OoT or any other, but they have sacrificed variety when it wasn’t necessary.

Love me some Zelda, have for decades, but TotK isn't hitting all the notes for me that BotW did. Great game, my wife and I are putting a lot of hours into it and will continue to do so, but there are too many sections and design choices that are tedious and just not fun. Waiting for rain to let up (again), slogging through certain sections (I'm looking at you, Wind Temple setup), and, I'm sorry, breaking weapons that you have to go out of your way to find is a real drag. We just got the (SPOILER?) Biggoron Sword unexpectedly, my fave weapon from OoT. My first thought was "Cool!" My immediate second thought was "Great, I can't use this because I don't want it to break. There goes a weapon slot."

Giving it an 8 for now.

Gotta admit, it’s Zelda so I’ll play it for hundreds, but it hasn’t grabbed me quite yet. Hope it does, slow-burn like. A question of comparative excellence, I guess, that a Zelda game is a great game almost by default (not discounting the effort and care that go into them by any stretch), but it doesn’t have its hooks in. Maybe I’m not being imaginative enough.

When the Song of Storms started, my mind immediately went to Dave Brubeck. Dig it.

@tektite_captain It's really a short-sleeved V-neck. "Long sleeved t-shirt" is a euphemism.

King Bob-omb or K. Rool. Went with Bob-omb, largely because his death/explosion is one of my favorite sound effects.

@GrailUK You goof. Love it.

The Japanese cover reminds me of Smell the Glove.

Glad I waited to start this bad boy.

Real life bowling. First time in 35 years.

I may have to avoid NL for the next month. I already know more than I wanted just from the article pics. Not that that’s NL’s fault, of course.

I’ve played it through three times, 180+ hours each time.

Korok seeds. No way, not happening.
Champion’s Ballad, got two Blights left and the last dungeon thingy.
Trial of the Sword. I’m not good enough or patient enough to do that one.

I did do all the shrines all three times. And I have all the duds.

Holy Moldorm.

Looks supes nifty.

Leaks and legality of this issue aside, I'm continually disappointed by the comments here, on PushSquare, and PureXbox when it comes to defense of corporations. I like the sites themselves, but there's a pervasive voyeuristic glee of "Get 'em! Get 'em! Get 'em!" when business considerations are broached. Nintendo's extreme aggression and short-sightedness in going after everyone who says "Miyamoto" out loud without written permission. Sony acolytes reveling in the company's condescension. And, God help us, anyone defending Microsoft for anything (blech). It's the whole "My dad can beat up your dad" thing that is troubling to me. Corporations don't care about you. At all. Any enabling of them beyond "Here's some money for a product I want our transaction is now concluded" is a bad idea.

That's a lot of takedown orders. Nintendo needs to get busy.

Sounds perfectly and solidly bleah.

I wouldn't expect Bill Shakes, but movies don't have to wallow in shallowness, either. I'm assuming such is the case, of course, from the above.

@HandheldHaunter Love it.

@Cashews PS5. (...shhh...)

Zelder fer me. Squee indeed. A dignified squee, of course.

And likely time to nab an OLED, which I’ve been eyeing for months. Underwhelmed by the Zelda model, so white it is. I have a yuge backlog that will benefit from that nifty screen.

I like your style, Gavin.

@Ryu_Niiyama Well, crud, sorry to hear that. I hope your precautions have mitigated it, but that’s impossible to measure. Best wishes for a full recovery and no lasting effects. We’ve been lucky - not as much as a cold in the last three years. We’ve been cautious, of course, but obviously caution isn’t a guarantee. Take care of yourself and keep the faith. I always appreciate seeing you here.

@Ryu_Niiyama Pssh, way to go, Ryu.

How’s it going, by the way?

Two. My red 3DSXL (‘cause red is sexy) and my wife’s blue 2DSXL. Wait, my wife isn’t me. At least, not in the literal sense. So, one. I think.

@Bobb Probably lets her hair down and Zap!

Been wondering about these. Thanks.

However, to go from that sterling sub-header to “which games is best”? Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. (Kidding, of course.)

NA/Europe is compositionally awkward. Japan's conveys the transition from light world to twilight world better, and is visually more cohesive. That diagonal line in NA/Europe's, with wolfie-boy looking straight down, always bugged me a little.

Japan for me, which means it's going to get crushed.

Great list. Ah, Pong and Combat. They made me happy.

The art looks like a trip. Dig it.

@Uncle_Franklin “You b*stards!”

Always different, anything but Link. Frequently something childish. "Zippy," "Clarence," "Hugh Janis," etc. I named him Obi Wan in OoT once just so I could linger over the text box where Saria says, "I've been waiting for you, Obi Wan."

Epona
Midna
Navi (like it pr not, Navi was a watershed moment in game design)
King of the Red Lions
Ezlo
Tatl
etc.

And I don’t normally make this kind of comment, but holy spoilers.

Ten bucks says there’s a required download with the physical purchase.

@Uncle_Franklin He’s all deluxed.

@FishyS And Mario. It’s been rehashed many times by more interesting people, but Mario is a pretty randomly murderous dude. In the Galaxy games, he has a penchant for killing newborns minding their own business.

Good list. I got a mess of these. Being the bad guy is way more fun.

And thanks for saying that about sharks.

@WallyWest I like them all as well. The writers are a hoot and their articles are enjoyable and informative. You can tell that the site administrators and contributors care about what they're doing. But yeah, the users can be pretty naive. Again, most are cool, but a high percentage are pretty delusional about their brand of choice, or brands in general.

@Snatcher I heard that.

@Herna That's probably true. We in the U.S. have been inured to corporate abuse through decades of political propaganda and Randian supply-side poison. Worse than that, indoctrinated. It's almost like Stockholm Syndrome.

Dramatic, no?

I’m continually disappointed by the comments on gaming sites, coming to the defense of enormous multinational companies who push out inferior products and expect consumers to just shut up and like it. And end-user agreements are designed to unfairly shield the companies from justified complaints when their product goes bad. Nintendo has known about this for a long time, and had to have known before rolling out the units to begin with. They simply don’t care. And apologies are insulting, they mean nothing. “Thanks for your money, sorry about that.”

“They repair them for free.” So they break again later? And have to be repaired again? Like they’re doing us a favor. How many thousands of pairs of redundant joycon have they sold because people don’t want to be inconvenienced by shipping their known defective product, probably repeatedly, to Nintendo to fix?

I have enjoyed gaming for longer than most of you have been alive. But none of them - Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft - give a flying fig about any of us beyond our wallets. I’ve never understood defending corporations beyond voyeuristic association.

Keep Link silent, for the love of God.

You bet your green tights I would.