SlowPokemon

Call me crazy, but although yes, Gen 5 and Gen 7 are better and more interesting, I actually love the Team Flare plot in XY. Maybe it’s that bizarre music theme that plays when you fight them, or the way they’re obsessed with their sunglasses.

The Switch has been the console for me to try out series I’d missed or passed over all through the Gamecube, DS, and Wii era, such as Fire Emblem, Pikmin, and, yes, Metroid. Metroid Dread was my first game in the series, and I fell in love with it, even played it to 100% completion. I’ve got a nice little backlog on Nintendo Switch Online if I decide to keep looking into the franchise.

Played a good bit of this on mobile about 5 years ago and really enjoyed it. But I just can’t finish games on my phone. Too distracting. Maybe I’ll pick it up on Switch.

Japan, mostly because of the cute surprised look on Link’s face. Zelda is way more about discovery and surprise for me than it is about combat, which the international covers focus on.

@Royalblues it is not possible—for what it’s worth, Iris’s ending is the worst in the game. I also got that first and was put off the game for a while. In Uchikoshi’s games, you always have to see every route to fully understand the story, but the Iris route was a weird misfire for him.

@Sonos It’s probably like trying to lead Dougie Jones around an insurance agency

Tabby and Jitters are legit my favorite villagers. LMAO and I love Jambette too!

@Tobiaku Mama is a drag queen and actually a positive representation of an LGBTQ character—Iris is like Uchikoshi jerking off and besides that she’s just really annoying (and her ending was so irrelevant that it’s like it existed just to give her an ending)

@Tobiaku She didn’t. And she alone made it impossible to recommend the game to anyone but weird otaku types. Outside of her, anyone could enjoy the game as a detective story

Do…people actually like Iris? Bringing her back makes me want to skip this game.

Paradise Killer is by far the best of the game options for next month (yes, I’ve played and enjoyed all of them). Highly recommended. GNOSIA is all right but kind of disappointing ultimately. Paradise Killer delivers on an open world murder mystery premise.

Just let me turn off the f***ing experience share.

All of this site’s articles speak about Paper Mario: The Origami King as if everyone is in agreement that the combat is terrible. I loved the combat. It felt very Paper Mario to me and the ring puzzles broke up the monotony of JRPG grinding.

Saw the headline and was like “definitely a Kate Gray article”

Loved Chaos;Child on Vita (even if the insane length had me playing for two months). I’ve always been super interested in playing the first game.

Such a nitpicky thing, but you used “travesty” when you meant “tragedy.” “Travesty” means something is being unfairly and falsely characterized or represented. Two words sounding similar don’t mean they have the same meaning. Edgeworth out.

Anyone else think it’s absurd that Kate didn’t finish Ace Attorney, a story-based game, before publishing a review on it? I get that it’s long, but come on. That’s shady journalism.

Loved the game. I agree music in this game was mostly annoying. I loved the horror score stuff in the second chapter and the cool jazz inspired music in the third chapter. The stuff in the romancey medieval parts was a little blah, especially the track based on the Beethoven C-sharp minor sonata. (The first chapter had a similarly out-of-place track nodding to the Debussy Clair de Lune, which was inappropriate for both the period setting and the tone.)

@KateGray Yeah, yeah, everyone loves Marshal but can you please give a shout-out to my favorite, Tabby, who is objectively terrifying but living her best life

From my own review of this game, in 2017:

The game as a whole has a surprisingly thoughtful theme that ultimately reveals itself as the most extreme social satire I’ve ever seen in a video game. The game’s finale may well be the most polarizing ending I’ve ever seen, coming as it does totally out of nowhere in the eleventh hour and slamming into the player with the force of a freight train; but regardless of whether you like the direction the narrative takes, it’s undoubtedly got a lot to say about society and the state of games in general without ever becoming too preachy--a quality that the game itself is proud of.

I am currently practicing Le tombeau de Couperin for a candidacy recital in the spring! It’s a great set. The original piano version also has two movements he didn’t orchestrate later, a fugue and a toccata.

I’m being 100% serious when I say that the original 8-bit Frog’s Song of Soul is one of the most musically hilarious things Nintendo has ever done. It’s a canon where the relationships between the keys are very nontraditional, but it’s absolutely a classical canon. They sort of sanitized it in the Switch version because of the more obvious frog sound effects, I like how the GB uses pitch alteration to imply that.

The menu noises in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (all those pops and clicks) are so satisfying! Also, the “backing out of the summary screen/party menu” sound specifically from HeartGold/SoulSilver is an amazing sound effect that they’ve never replicated.

@KateGray Not bad—dissonant!

@MatthewTaranto The more you know! I’ll have to take that up with my undergrad professors 🧐

I’m a doctoral student in piano. The reason Majora’s Theme and tracks such as the swamp, etc. are uncomfortable for your ears are because of an excess of the interval of a tritone, splitting an octave exactly halfway and creating a dissonant effect (such as C to F-sharp). This interval, transposed to a G to C-sharp, is also the namesake of Pokémon’s Ghetsis (Ghe = G, Cis = C#) and this is reflected in his battle theme, which is mainly timpani and choir banging out G/C#. The tritone was actually banned by the Catholic church in the Middle Ages because it was thought to be the devil’s interval.

The Elegy of Emptiness is so dissonant because it starts out with not only a tritone (B-flat to E) but also a MAJOR SEVENTH on top of that (A). The major seventh is the most dissonant interval possible next to the tritone. To have a video game piece start on this “chord” is absolutely incredible and inventive, and things like Majora’s Mask are really appreciated by musicians because of it.

Also, the Great Bay Temple is probably my favorite dungeon music in the series. Such a great ominous atmosphere.

“Battle! (Klara)” from Pokémon Sword. No idea why. I’m getting my doctorate in classical piano rn but this is somehow the track that does it for me.

Here’s some video game music opinion for you. Yoko Shimomura gets a lot of hype for Kingdom Hearts, but actually to me her best score is Mario & Luigi Dream Team. That’s some music to remind you why you like video game music in the first place.

It’s actually 15% off, for $18, not $21.

Yoshi’s Crafted World is about 100x more wholesome than Untitled Goose Game.

This sounds ridiculous, but as an owner of both systems, the main reason I don’t play much on my Lite is because I miss the HD rumble. It really does affect my immersion in games that support it.

Honestly this is not a great dub. I’ve been debating switching back to Japanese, but the voice lines are infrequent enough that I haven’t bothered

I’m a pretty thorough Ace Attorney player, but the achievements for playing Ace Attorney on mobile/PS4 actually got me to do some things I wouldn’t have tried before, like making mistakes in court to see all the different lunch box designs Angel Starr offered in Rise from the Ashes. It’s been amusing and a little gratifying to see the little achievements pop up in TGAAC for going out of my way to examine.

I love how asking if we like Mario Kart implies someone at Capcom has considered Ace Attorney Kart

Tbh the fireworks shows are my favorite events of the year besides Halloween. They make me feel like crying, every time, because summer’s almost over and it’s just nice to see fireworks with my villagers and hear the magical music. I’m fine with nothing substantially new for now.

First case of the second Ace Attorney game, most likely. If that counts as a “stage.” It’s just delightfully bonkers and I love to revisit it.

I was not even remotely interested in this game until I found out from this article that I can play as Slowbro, Crustle, and Cramorant

Neckbeards like to complain about Majora’s Mask 3D, but I found it a hell of a lot more fun than the original. Emphasis on hell, because that game is a strange nightmare.

The mention of Hotel Dusk just makes me sad that studio is gone now

No. I wish I had been able to select multiple reasons. It looks bad AND I don’t like MOBA games AND I hate free to play. Pokémon has really sucked lately in their business practices.

Link’s Awakening — Link and Marin on the beach. Oddly touching.

Skyward Sword — The ship dungeon, the first time you lift a timeshift stone and carry it along with you. Holy crap that was exciting.

Majora’s Mask — flipping the Stone Tower Temple upside down. I played this game for the first time on 3DS without a guide, and when I realized what was happening here, my jaw dropped open and I had a smile plastered on my face for about ten minutes.

Ocarina of Time — Ruto’s father (I can’t remember his name) scooting out of the way in that cutscene that went on for a crazy long time. Just hilarious. The little skinny fish legs wobbling uselessly make it even better.

This is a really surprising announcement! I enjoyed the first one a lot even though the plot was over-telegraphed and some characters sucked (Iris, ugh). It’s a fantastic sign that they’re making the next one about Mizuki!

@KateGray Ha! Probably would have gotten that if I was British. I played the fan translation of this game and he was called something different in the original.

Can someone please tell me what Iyesa Nosa is a pun of

@Amin_Parker it’s been on PlayStation for over two years and steam for over five years haha

@HeadPirate your comment 100% doesn’t warrant a “woooosh” lmao

@Tandy255 This discussion has nothing to do with pricing, it’s about the content Nintendo is producing

Re: your point about Gamecube getting Metroid Prime and GBA getting Metroid Fusion: Aren’t we still seeing this happen? Switch got both Breath of the Wild and Link’s Awakening, the latter of which would almost certainly have been delegated to a 3DS, not Wii U, release had it come out a few years prior. Strange little things like Good Job and Part Time UFO are still coming out of the company, as well as bigger titles like ARMS and Splatoon. New Pokémon Snap is a sequel to a home console game, while Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX is an entry in a series that has traditionally been only on handhelds (barring Virtual Console and WiiWare releases). That’s not to mention things like Miitopia, which originally launched for 3DS. I think the balance is still there.

Never played one of these, despite loving Animal Crossing. This article is the first that’s actually made me want to play one.