Zaruboggan

I do want to experience the graphics and soundtrack in their natural state...but it sounds like a game that isn't for me. I like strategizing for fights as much as the next guy, but this sounds a bit much.

@Samalik I work with ESRB. There's no change. I'm not privy to what went down with this one for obvious reasons, but they probably submitted for E or T, got rejected, and decided it wasn't worth re-submitting.
Perhaps they misunderstood the rejection for their desired rating as rejection of the game entirely.

Wow. Who picks the player choice nominees, and why didn't they play some of this year's best games?
Like 33% of these games didn't even come out this year. What bizarro world are we living in?
UFO50, Unicorn Overlord, GBF Relink, Animal Well, Prince of Persia, about a trillion indie darlings on Steam...the list of 2024 bangers not represented here is astounding.

@JoakimZ They're not connected so it doesn't really matter. Maybe by release date?
Symphonia->Abyss->Vesperia->Graces f->Arise

Bring back multiplayer and we'll talk!
I'd also appreciate if they dragged the series out of mediocrity while they're at it.
I can only hope the days of such heights as Symphonia, Abyss, and Vesperia return.

I will probably be doing a lot of staring at my wishlist today and trying to decide if I want to get anything on my Switch.
I bought Kunitsu-gami earlier in the week for PS5 (not on sale), and am about 4 hours in so far. Really satisfying game. Was working out how to cut down on my boss times last night.
My brother built himself a very powerful new computer, so I bought him Technocide off the Steam sale. We played about a half hour of it while waiting for dinner to come out of the oven. It's a vertical shmup for one or two players with roguelike business going on. Easy recommendation at the price, and definitely doesn't require the specs of my brother's computer.
Still working my way through Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Closer to twenty hours in and still love exploring and fighting. Still giving me an itch to go back to Origins and Inquisition, but neither is on sale right now...
More UFO50, just playing one game at a time. More Element TD 2 with family. Axon TD: Uprising hit 1.0 a couple months ago and made the campaign playable in co-op, so some of us might fire that up, too.
Oh, and I got Trash of the Titans on Steam for myself. Might try that today.

I loved street pass, but if it does come back, I'd like them to have a little pokewalker-style dongle. The switch is a little too big for me to bring everywhere, so a smaller tagalong would be appreciated.
Also, yes to Miiverse. I know moderation would be a nightmare, but man, I loved it so much.

TBH I'm probably giving Nintendo more of a pass than I normally would because 1 OST a week is WAY better than I expected.
And I'm with some of the other commentators in that I LOVE that they're going with some out-there picks, and not just the most expected.
It helps that I have brand-new, expensive earbuds to get the most out of these tunes. There are entire instruments I had no idea were in the background...

I enjoy listening to the newly added OSTs while I work, and one a week is honestly about as many as I have time for.

Trailer looked great way back when. Maybe I'll pick it up! I could do with some good humor.

Yes, please.
Gonna need a bigger bookshelf.

I guess my swan song game would be Chibi-Robo, since it IS dead. So dead the creators are making their own spiritual successor. But I don't want a spiritual successor. I want the chibi man in another household fraught with a broken marriage and insane characters.

@nebzila Yes please to both of these games!! Just did a few rounds of frolf with friends last year when we fired up the GameCube.

@Not_Soos Checked out the SpongeBob stage video. I was not ready for the spot-on impressions!
You've got an easy candor on screen. I hope more people recognize it and your channel takes off!

More Windblown in co-op, more Neva (starting up Winter) with just my tears, and more Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
I'm hoping to get some of the games I missed this year (Kunitsu-gami) after wrapping up Neva, but we'll see. The holiday season is always a busy one!

Hard to look at a video game company planning to double in size and not think about all the layoffs.

@Zeebor15 Gotta spin for investors

I ended up dropping it about 5 hours in. Charming game, but I just didn't enjoy the battle and leveling systems or something.
Lol it's been a while so I forget.

13/19
Only really missed the silly trivia, a fact I will use to bolster my ego.

Absolute gem. I've got to get back to it at some point.

Reading through all of these picks is a reminder that this console ****ing rocked.
Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Brain Age, Castlevania, Pokemon, Hotel Dusk, Anima Crossing: Wild World, etc etc.
I'll try to highlight five games not yet mentioned (unless I missed em) that I loved very much:
Bleach Blade of Fates/Dark Souls
Treasure's fantastic fighting games
Etrian Odyssey 1-3
The start to an excellent series.
Star Fox Command
Still one of the best games in the franchise.
Electroplankton
One of many bizarre experiments.
Magical Starsign
A cozy RPG from Brownie Brown.

Not to mention the excellent Naruto: Path of Ninja games, the swift and tactical Luminous Arcs, the one-of-a-kind LostMagic, the not-as-bad-as-it-scored Tenchu DS, the multiplayer fun of Puzzle de Harvest Moon, and the miracle port of Disgaea DS. And of course all the other games everyone already pointed out. Maybe I oughta bust the bad boy back out...

Looks like a good week to peruse the sales.

The game with gacha elements I enjoyed most was Mass Effect Andromeda's multiplayer. Good rate, no money required, and gave you fun new tools to play with different from what showed up in your friend's file.
I like that feeling of personalized playing that comes with getting everything at random, but of course it's typically tied to aggravatingly aggressive greed. And in the end, the greed always gets worse.

Please don't be a pain in the ass to buy...
PS5 wasn't in stock locally or easy to get online for TWO years here.

I hope you do actually spin to a dizzying degree. It'd be disappointing if it was just a standard FP view, without the constant rolling.

Seriously, what are they buying?

This year's nominees are, as usual, a reminder that rewards shows that combine the highest possible number of judges return the most boring possible nominees.
The GOTY category picks are mostly fine, but, as usual, Art Direction and OST look like they were only allowed to pick from the smallest subset of game releases.
Because when you have the whole industry combine their opinions, that's all you can really get.

I look forward to reading everyone's individual lists, personal nominees, and lasting favorites in the weeks and months to come, because those are the only lists that have any actual value.

My friend used to draw his own stages for Donkey Kong Country in his notebook.
Some kid noticed and told him that Nintendo was going to sue him and that he was breaking copyright law.
Good times.

Didn't remakes, ports, and remasters already get awards? Or am I totally off base?
Eldin Ring's expansion was fantastic, but this year had Metaphor, Granblue Fantasy Relink, the Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Astro Bot, Unicorn Overlord, Dragon's Dogma 2, UFO50, and more.
If a season of anything gets nominated for GOTY, I'd scream lol
I mean not actually because whatever, it's the Game Awards. But you know what I mean.

I DID manage to close out Metaphor last weekend. Loved it. I'd be very much tempted to run it back in New Game Plus if I didn't have Dragon Age: The Veilguard to start. I'm only a few hours in so far, and I'm enjoying the combat, but I wish they had the courage to actually make the Dread Wolf the antagonist, and not what he is. Maybe that'll change as I get further.
Since I'm only playing that when my brother is around (and he's spending the weekend studying for his master's), I'll need to figure out something else to do. Maybe Neva. Probably some Windblown.
Otherwise, we'll be catching Ghost Cat Anzu in theaters tonight and then taking a nice trip to the bookstore!

I loved the heck out of MP2. We actually got it before MP1 growing up, since it had multiplayer. Loved blasting around Sidehopper Station and tumbling around Spider Complex.

I hope that the game both gets the MP1 treatment when/if it comes over to the Switch, and that its multiplayer is entirely in-tact. I'd love to revisit both.

Kind of enjoyed this back in the day, but while its quirks made it memorable, I think they also prevented me from ever finishing.
Love the developer, though.

Just like authors can start from plot, characters, themes, twists, or world building, games can start from gameplay or story.
When gameplay and story are married together, we get something that can't be done anywhere else.
TOTK's storytelling was needlessly repetitive for no good reason. Even when starting with gameplay, the Zelda team can do (and has done) better.
Also, the idea that if you want a good story you should read books is silly. Good stories can happen anywhere and in any way. Even just a photograph can tell a good story. A musical piece can tell a good story. A combination of gameplay, writing, image, and audio can absolutely tell a good story. And trust me: I read a lot of books.

I don't need everything in life to be connected. I just want XCX 2.

Used to play so much of this with my cousins. Space pirates hanging onto the walls would have been crazy in the spider ball level. Or whatever they called that.
Can't say it felt like it needed them, though.
I know it's unlikely to have it, but I'd be a very happy camper if Prime 4 had some local multiplayer.

Man, I miss Chibi-Robo.

The entire family is back in the area for our grandfather's funeral, so we'll probably honor his memory with a long-standing tradition: playing a butt ton of Super Smash Bros.
If I'm not too busy visiting with them for the next few days, I'll be finishing Metaphor.

@Anachronism Ooh, thanks for clarifying.

I'm glad the emblems are kinda ugly, since I won't have to throw myself at 45+ battles.
Who on earth would pick one of those over slowpoke, a felt electrode, or any of the other emblems I've seen?

I think society would be healthier as a whole if we stopped calling people geniuses.
That said, he's clearly an intelligent, creative individual who has had a hand in a lot of my favorite games.

Just finished listening to the Mario Wonder OST while working this morning. Started the Scarlet/Violet OSTs next.

@RiasGremory That final boss was definitely a jump! I squeaked by on my second try once I woke up to the fact that attention was required, but I had been emotionally preparing myself for a third. Maybe fourth. I was strapped in for the long haul!

Fun game. As good as I remembered it. Balance the exploration of the new games with the world building and character design of TTYD, plus it's more traditional RPG battle system, and we'll have a real winner.

Lovely little game. Loved collecting kinstones for the picori.
I voted that it was a top 5 Zelda game, but now that I think about it, there are a LOT of Zelda games. It was definitely a top 5 Zelda game back when it came out, but since then we've had ALBW, EOW, BOTW, TOTK, TP, SS, two DS games, and more.
It's no mid game, but maybe it is in the middle of the Zelda pack?
Not that I'd change my vote

Seeing as the two-week free period is still here for the yearly pass (which costs an insane $120/year)...this has to be whales.
It's always the whales.
But who else could it be, when it costs $23 bucks for a digital skin set?

Metaphor. Dragon Age is waiting in the wings, but I expect I have a couple more weekends of Metaphor to get through.
That's probably it. I will be opening packs in Pokemon TCG, though.

I want...I want a lot of these. Mario & Luigi, Fantasian, LEGO Horizon...
But when a month is rich in releases, I am typically poor in both time and finances.

Maybe it's because I never wrote it down, but Farmagia's release date came out of nowhere! I was surprised to see the reviews were already here.

I had some fun with Zero in co-op, but it wasn't exactly something to write home about. I agree with the sentiment of making a new game. My favorites are still Assault (still holds up!) and Command, so I'm hoping that when more Starfox does come, it doesn't just follow the 64 mold to the point of near tedium.
(Not to say 64 was tedious; just that I want some evolution and invention in the franchise.)

@burninmylight Starting to sound like Chibi Robo Zip Lash lol

Uhhh that was sooner than expected. Guess I know what I'm listening to tomorrow morning. Should be fun--I haven't heard the OST outside of the game yet!

Pretty happy with it, since the UI is a lot cleaner than, say, Pokemon Unite. I'll just be opening a couple packs a day and that'll be it. I like that the daily missions don't actually require playing. I'm kinda tired of games having daily missions, tbh.
The art's nice, I enjoy a simplified take on the TCG, and the shop prices are so insane that I never have to feel tempted to shell out money.
$120/yr for an extra pack of digital cards a day is hilarious.

@Yalloo Like 225 currently

They've already got a Pokemon OST, Rare OST, DLC songs, and more of the things I figured they'd skimp on. I'm pretty thrilled about this app!
I think they've got to get the OSTs that are available on other services (Spotify, etc.) as quickly as possible. No way Nintendo can't be the best, most comprehensive place to listen to their own music.