nhSnork

Video games blossomed when they became interactive fiction. There will always be a place for paddle movers, ball bouncers and sudoku packs as well, but even the latter kinds tend to see story-driven incarnations - because it's simply (even) more fun than just racking up hi-scores. Having a story isn't about being a literal "kinetic visual novel" or having every NPC respond with paragraphs of text with key words for eliciting further paragraphs; Super Mario Bros, for all of its creator's ironic lack of interest in narrative aspects, was revolutionary because it mainstreamed the sense of a tangible chronicled adventure, part of a fictional world's history. Ditto with the first Zelda whose story bits make BotW's supposedly "subtle" plot delivery read like War and Peace in comparison - but even that much was enough to transport you into a realm and, ahem, a legend of its own more potently than the entirety of modern "VR" can ever hope to. And then the "interactive" part makes learning more about the story and the world (whether by persevering through the main trail's challenges or straying off the beaten path) part of the whole adventure, too. It's an added perk to any kind and capacity of gameplay. So yes, I play Zelda games (and other applicable games) for the story. Always have, always will.

One of the most tangible hobby time streaks of the year lies ahead, and the backlog appetites run proportionally rampant. The hybrid queen still naturally reigns over it all, from whole go-to series simultaneously installed (Xenoblade, Atelier, Rune Factory, SMT/Persona/TMS, My Time, Castlevania, Zelda, Tales and Final Fantasy) to selectively accomodated or still selectively ported franchise representatives (Skyrim, RE0, Saints Row 4, Bioshock 2, Borderlands 2, Minstrel Song, Fuga, Death end re;Quest, Dying Light, Mary Skelter 2, MHRise, First Departure, Assassin's Creed 2, Valkyria Chronicles, Danganronpa, Fantasy Life i, SteamWorld Build and TWEWY) to the "standalones" old and new (Balatro and Ball x Pit, Lia: Hacking Destiny and Nuclear Throne, Freedom Wars and Biomutant, Vampire Hunters and Airborne Kingdom, Powerwash and Besiege, Unicorn Overlord and Ghost Trick, Kingdoms of Amalur and Immortals, Barbarous and Hogwarts, Caravan Sandwitch and Undermine)... all of that on top of emulated journeys (Zelda II, Yoshi's Island, Zero Mission) and nextgen/crossgen stuff like Cyberpunk and NMS.

Since the list above totally wouldn't take a couple months to go through, I keep my eyes on the non-hybrid platforms as well. Far Cry's subtitles mod doesn't seem to work, but the game itself was probably the first time I dared to poke around the system-level gyro settings to decent results which means I might just chance a few other topical titles like Horizon, Fallout 3, Dishonored and Watch Dogs while likely also tending to more installed stuff like FFXIII/XV, Nights of Azure, NFS Payback, Xenosaga, True Crime, Greedfall and Starbound. The handheld consoles may see more progress in playthroughs like Valentia, Endless Frontier, EOU, Luigi's Mansion, Fantasy Life, Final Fantasy Explorers, Eternia/Innocence, Gravity Rush, Neptunia and God of War; even PS4 has good odds of elbowing in with Avengers, Saints Row '22, Crew 2, Star Ocean IaF, Uncharted, Lies of P, New Order and MotorStorm Apocalypse. Maybe even a taste of Sand Land while it's still in the roster.

@AlanShore later in life? For all the praised zen factor of the gameplay, it has always come with its share of risked tedium - but motion controls mitigate the latter to the degree where I couldn't even imagine the first game releasing without them (again, especially since I first experienced the stuff on PS4 where barely anyone seems to remember what tech the controllers feature). And even after eventually striking gold on that front, the sequel still evolved backwards? Go figure.

Most likely, although the filesize and my available storage may dictate the playthrough's realistic timeframe. The subscription is another factor to consider (especially since my own free trial was also initiated elsewhere), but if there's anywhere I'd humour it, it's a platform with full portable access like NS2. And how long I will actually last depends on how much of the content the game allows to gradually do solo - that was one of the main aspects that hooked me on Elder Scrolls Online, for instance.

If we get it, neat; if we don't, oh well. Black Flag has been sufficiently portable on Switch for years. The reported handful of extra side quests and characters does elevate the new version's value above mundane "remasters", "Switch 2 editions" and whatnot, but whether they're compelling enough to tempt tripling the 19 Gb of Gen 9's entire portable Rebel Collection (which, I assume, can also be installed somewhat more incrementally akin to the Ezio trilogy) is another matter. If I'm to spend 65 Gb of NS2 internal storage or prospective external memory on an AC game, I'd rather load Shadows or yet-unported franchise binge item like Unity or Syndicate. Or even Odyssey - lest we forget, the latter also got a "cloud" treatment on Switch.

@McGuildicuff the fanbloid breed of critics, on printed and digital platforms alike, doesn't champion any fiction industry - they only parasite on it. So Miyamoto's take is odd indeed, but hardly for the reasons you suggest.

A Nintendo game, offering entertainment value besides pretty visuals? Inconceivable.

Remember the reluctance to abuse OLED's internal memory that I admitted last week? It was commendable while it lasted.💀 And we're talking enough internal memory that I've shelved the already moved Tales of Symphonia (figuring that, between the ongoing Eternia and the gradually impending patch for Destiny 2, even this gluttonously multithread franchise binge has the "older end" kept busy enough for now) and set out to fill the total space with a quad shot of Freedom Wars, F.I.S.T., Biomutant and Ashen. Might as well make "nhSnorkism" a word by now.😅 The splurge involving the aforelisted items has also secured me the incumbent World Cup table for Pinball FX (currently on sale for "tree fiddy" until its scheduled departure on the 30th) while Horizon Chase Turbo, while still full-priced, partly dispelled a similar concern after I found myself mixing up the deadlines - it's the end of May when we're losing the game. Which would be better news if not soured by a related Delisted Games Calendar checkback and the subsequent discovery of Super Nanaru's delisting THIS VERY WEDNESDAY. And generously announced on the same day, so even those catching the news (I can't blame NL for not being among them) had literal hours to get in gear.

Sigh, let's get back to more uplifting stuff like unrealistic weekend backlog appetites. Maybe not even quite unrealistic this time overall as I'm facing a couple days of more allocatable backlog time ahead, and then twice as much starting next weekend. Shall we, then?😆 Besides the aforementioned items, Switch has proportional odds of engaging the familiar RPG army (Xenoblade and Tales, RF and Portia/Sandrock, Atelier and Fantasy Life, SMT/TMS/Persona and Castlevania, DerQ and Fuga, Final Final Fantasy and Mary Skelter) alongside plentiful other possibilities from Undermine, Saints Row 4, Timespinner, Borderlands 2 and Silent Sector to Farmagia, Peglin, Murder by Numbers, Hogwarts and CrossCode. Freedom Wars may also send my whims on a trail of similar experiences across the very same Switch (MHR), Vita (God Eater) and 3DS (Final Fantasy Explorers); I don't think I have applicable genre representatives installed on Deck, but the latter is likely to see its own share of action anyway, maybe even finally trying the once laptop-based playthrough of OG Far Cry on the handheld PC, especially if it also proves to coexist with the subtitles mod I've just dug up. And then such streaks of estimated free time do turn one's head in PS4's direction - be it for the installed stuff like New Order, Avengers and Star Ocean IaF now or the upcoming Catalogue additions like The Crew Motorfest next week.

So that's the spinoff - my brain has had enough time to start conflating it with Vampire Hunters which also draws the inspiration and channels it into different gameplay.😄 Between all this stuff and the upcoming new Castlevania, not a good year to be a video game vampire.

Yeah, by now it seems to be Tuesday in Japanese pop culture. I'm not confident I heard it right, but IIRC the trend started back with some LN-publishing website that wouldn't allow lengthy descriptions which led many authors to abuse the title field instead. The rest is history (and Japanese audiences appear accustomed, simply picking a couple syllables to shorten the whole thing to), although cases like Mon-Yu remain relatively exceptional and usually meant to parody the approach. And if we're being pedantic, can the west honestly complain?😜

Feels like a monkey paw response to my displeasure over Mario & Sonic's unannounced departure - this time there IS a heads-up which had one job as a heads-up. The window could very well overlap with the next fortnight which will be simultaneously tasking my hobby funds with the incumbent Horizon Chase Turbo and Pinball FX's World Cup table ($30+ total unless a discount happens, and even more unless eShop's support-mystifying payment system gets off my case before May) alongside a PS+ payment. Gotta love scrambling to update such plans, FWP as the experience is.

@TAndvig delistings normally don't affect established retail licenses (although I hear Amazon Luna was recently inspired to become an outlier, and then there was The Crew's SNAFU earlier😏). And the buzz is not about encouraging digital media as much as it is about encouraging basic PR which, however, can come to defy its simplicity for a variety of reasons. Heck, IIRC there was a silently delisted indie whose dev claimed they "didn't want to earn money on the FOMO hype around such an advance announcement" or something like that. Their call, sure, but my reaction to the report was still among my most heartfelt "BRUH" moments.

On an offtopic note, it can feel like Hookshot has received a small update as well.😆 Or was it just on my end for the last couple days?

Speedstorm shelved for now (latest grind loop adjustments and returning connection hijinks affecting the motivation to tend to the usual routines), but the vacant storage was promptly used to toss Haven back from the internal memory (which, despite OLED's surplus, I remain ironically cautious to rely on lest I should regain consciousness with barely over 2.5 Gb left like on NS2😅), so the overall weekend plans are back to chipping away at the already installed backlog - Saints Row 4, Undermine, Little Noah, XCX, Yumia, Xillia, Fantasy Life i, Persona 4, Quest of Dungeons, MHRise, Kingdoms of Amalur, the more recent stuff from Farmagia, Sagres and Queen's Quest 3 to Airborne Kingdom, EcoGnomix and Dawnfolk... as well as NS2's Cyberpunk and some retro playthroughs spanning both hybrids like Zelda II, Yoshi's Island and Sin & Punishment. Unsure about the rest of the arsenal; PS4 certainly doesn't look like it will get hooked back until a somewhat longer streak of free time around next weekend, but the handhelds do still beckon with a variety of stuff like God Eater, Endless Frontier, Luigi's Mansion, Ever Oasis, Xenosaga, Watch Dogs and FFXV.

@Logicfire damn worthwhile in its own right, last [flagship] FF to boast werewolves IIRC and the JRPG that truly hooked me on JRPG grind. Press F for the final boss in my playthrough:

We'll get there when we get there. But if Decapolice has changed platforms instead of adding more, it requires an announcement rather than a pauseframe-hunted logo adjustment. Barring an eleventh hour decision to add some mindblowing and proportionally CPU/RAM-devouring extra content, there would be nothing but frixel and filesize deadweight to expect from a nextgen iteration of a game that started development as a Switch exclusive.

Not on eShop, it won't. And being a Bamco release, it won't be $80 for long either, although writing the umpteenth case of "x-year-old game" is always a choice anyway. Skyrim was 6 years old when I paid $60 for it; Cyberpunk, 5 years old when I paid $70. After many hours apiece, I'm still nowhere near exhausting even the first respective playthroughs. And unless you're the kind to proudly wear pots on your head, Elden Ring may well last you a whole generation, too.

Truly, PS5 needed just one good hardware release to start consistently competing with Switch in Japan. If not exactly a PlayStation hardware release.

"If we can even call it gameplay"

"or play a handful of small games with it"

@Yosti profile pic checks out.

Well, if three Namco classics on Switch in one batch don't confirm an impending Project X Zone 3, I don't know what does.😎😄 And there's even a Game Freak deep cut among them as well!

@Serpenterror a big part of Sega's NSO presence overlaps with Genesis/MD Collection as well (delisted by now but that wasn't the case yet when the library launched), so hey.

@Vyacheslav333 those games may remain a licensing maze to navigate after many years and/or kept in a respective IP owner's vault in case a retail compilation project materializes (like the Disney Afternoon Collection which somehow took the whole generation and a different publisher to even show up on Switch, although at least it got a couple more games in the meantime).

Probably whatever is an estimated bigger hassle to play portably otherwise, like Crossbow Training or somesuch.

@SpaceboyScreams say what?😳 The first Powerwash was one of the seeming few dozen (if that many) to support gyro even on PS4. Don't tell me we have an actual dev under the impression of everyone and their amiibo sticking to mousecons this gen.😅

Unless there's another headturner character in Season 5 "content updates", the patch notes don't sound like something to worry about, let alone prioritize a more home-chained version for. If an upgrade does come by, I may humour it (seeing as tangible new content is typically the only thing I find worth humouring in "NS2 editions"), but otherwise I'll keep targeting the Switch port regardless of ASW's evaluations.

@Notsoavid a community is not a selling point for everyone. I tend to stick to campaigns and, if available, occasional couch multiplayer in fighters; in SSBU, I literally haven't touched online battles in over six years of owning and playing the game, and same goes for the first Guilty Gear's port (where I have my hands full trying to beat Justice in single player as it is). This is the series that sold me on fighting games back in the day, but the cast and the animations are what did the latter trick in the first place.

Tabletop mode players are eating good this gen.😄

Updating...

Testing...

Nope. Oh well.

There are console makers buying studios left and right only to fail to benefit from them regardless of the staff's talents. And then there's Nintendo with a rare buyout case in their portfolio (reportedly quite gradual at that) - and would you watch that buyout go.

@Baker1000 Ralph Fiennes so he can have a warlock with a nose among his roles as well.

Fine, then, I'll humour the setup for that handful of icons...

...neeeeeever mind. The setup includes phone number verification, and guess which European country is missing from the obligatory code selection list. Let it not be said I didn't try.😏

Latest Switch splurge ended up costly in terms of volume AND retail top-up overpay (eShop's payment hijinks look like they're here to stay for another fortnight or two after all, popping up the same "try later or contact the [sincerely clueless] support" error even upon any attempt to change/delete the card this time🤬), but the haul is fairly proportional - Tchia and Demon Turf, EcoGnomix and Airborne Kingdom, Nuclear Throne and Vampire Hunters, Farmagia and Dark Deity, Cotton Reboot (finally caught a discount for the entry I can start the series binge with!) and Pepper Grinder, 60 Seconds and Titi Drop, Magic Rune Stone and Nuclear Throne (edit: story of my life, but pretend there was Demon Turf: Neon Splash here all this time instead - the whole bundle joined the ranks, after all😆)... technically, I would be able to cram almost all of them into the remaining internal memory, but it still encourages to try and plan the weekend's hybrid sessions with some prospectively visible playthrough ends in sight, like Saints Row 4 (yeah, right, because I definitely haven't been stuck on a Telekinesis Rift for a couple months now) or Sudoku Relax (steady attendance and progress as of late but a glorious 97 Mb promised for archiving at the finish line).🤔😅 And I won't even pretend I'm not still gravitating towards the established time sinks from XCX, Skyrim, Balatro, Ball x Pit, Yumia and Xillia to Puzzle Quest, Undermine, Disgaea, Kingdoms of Amalur, Persona 4 and Truck Driver. Oh, and I did get the JP classic collection in time (last August still having remained its last sale) but haven't even considered installing it, kinda dumbfounded by seven 8/16 bit titles taking up a reported total of 2.6 Gb. Those "new in-game maps, and various quality-of-life fixes"© better wow when the time comes.😆

Between revisiting old hybrid stuff and greedily trying to accommodate the new hybrid stuff without shelving [too much of] the other old hybrid stuff, the rest of my hardware arsenal might just end up sitting this one out altogether... but I wouldn't be me if I didn't at least consider some potential sessions from Greedfall, FFXV, True Crime and Eternal Sonata to Pokemon Gold, Diablo, Luigi's Mansion and Neptunia. Time will tell.

A lower projected number of sales with a 155 million userbase than with a circa-20 million one? I think I'm too humanitarian to wrap my head around that one. Granted, it's a more original argument than the notion of Switch hardware being too "outdated" to accommodate the gameplay recipe of PSP origin (the progenitor in question incidentally long present on eShop in itself) and I can keep the game on my wishlist as an NS2 owner anyway, but @MysteriousMudkip has a point - imagine backing a Kickstarter project with a promised port on a machine you own and then needing some $450 more to play the game instead. Bloodstained was in a similar boat, but by mid-2019 at least its respective "projected sales" logic checked out.

Good, it leaves a Roll outfit for Diana (complete with the ponytail) to announce outside April 1, then.

In the end, the prank of the day arguably goes to Nintendo eShop for unearthing the bank card fund-adding errors that plagued my Switch backlog investments last November. The messages do acknowledge the possibility of eShop hiccups this time, but tech support on both ends of the attempted transactions is scratching their heads again. All in all, though, it's clearly just April 1st stuff, due to end by the weekend rather than gift me another month of paying extra for local retail's eShop cards, right?

Monolith Soft: "No problem, but we'll be naming all of the Pikmin you have us include"

Miyamoto: "...as NPCs akin to Nopons, right?"

Welp, a month of heads-up for Jurassic Park collection and Horizon Chase Turbo was clearly generous enough to necessitate some cosmic balancing. I suppose I've got the first delisted Switch item to actually seek and stash for my Deck's Yuzu or the to-be-chipped-someday Mariko since a game with Mario therein certainly won't have a native PC port to prioritize on the former instead.😆

Seriously, though, makes you wonder if the industry's SMMs are getting laid off left snd right as well.

I don't imagine any company is thrilled to have data leaks, so more news at 6? Doesn't add credibility or worth to the "leaks" themselves either.

Considering the sources behind Belarusian screenings' distribution these days, I'm waiting for a "streaming service release".

EDIT: a duplicate comment while "currently unable to post comments"? Don't tell me Hookshot is turning into Reddit.

Subverting the trend of fresh Switch purchases to immediately bench, Warframe's new update (another memetic case of "easier to redownload it all" that ultimately rewards you with more storage space via asset optimization sorcery) has equipped the weekend's hybrid plans with a few previous purchases to actually [consider] install[ing], from Lia: Hacking Destiny fancied last week to even earlier backlog additions like Source of Madness, Penko Park and Necrosmith. Accompanying these ambitions is the familiar potpourri of tales, blades, factories, lives, personas and castles plus variable doses of FFXII (possibly accompanied by Crisis Core on board and the two later flagships over on Deck), Hogwarts, Balatro, Sagres, Earth Wars, Powerwash, Sakuna, Undermine and Saints Row 4... all of that on top of the retro salad of Yoshi's Island, Zero Mission and Zelda 2 besides NS2-provided Cyberpunk and Chibi Robo. Deck may well see some retro action across Xenosaga, Tail Concerto, NGC Burnout (I refuse to comply with the official hardware abbreviation) and Eternal Sonata plus more Fallout 3, Greedfall, Horizon (definitely not the same set of trials I've been stuck doing for months now👀), Morrowind and Watch Dogs - while the handheld consoles face a range of options from more Tales and Castlevanias to Valentia, MK7, Neptunia and OG Mr Driller. Maybe even some New Order if I actually get around to hooking the PS4 up.

Dead Aim certainly rings a bell, although pretty much everything I know about it came from Namco x Capcom.😅

Press F for F-Zero fans bereft of new game rumours because it wasn't Captain Falcon confirmed for SMG movie this week.

I grabbed the game with Alopex so this edition doesn't sound like an enticing deal by now (with only two other DLC pieces left to mop up in due time), but a free content update for now? Don't mind if I do!

Another farming sim! I can't wait to have the MC meet and befriend the commu-

"Don't talk to strangers"

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Jokes aside, though, NIS is an expert at mixing the cute and the creepy, and their take on the subgenre, complete with Yomawari visuals and a spoonful of The Village (best Shyamalan movie to this day, don't @ me) in the premise, has all the odds of becoming one of its most peculiar representatives since Graveyard Keeper.

On the sole upside, the heads-up is decent and the game's 10 bucks less than next week's incumbent Jurassic Park Collection (or 6.6 less if you grab the package with the DLC). The latter all the more topical for last stretch purchases because both aforesaid options have maintained the full price since September 2023.😅 Mind that there's apparently a freebie among the DLC items as well.

Thank goodness! In the age practically defined by communication networks, new players used to consistently feel alone without awkward human mimicry from glorified search engine offshoots.

There's a lot I've yet to catch up with even after my share of consumed spoilers, but I've played (and, on the latter end, consumed) enough to lean towards a possibly left-field candidate - Bindi Bergara who, AFAIK, doesn't even feature in the games. Heck, she's arguably a rare RE villain who actually achieved at least some of her end goals.

Lisa Trevor is absolutely nothing to "debate for days", an innocent and contextually uninvolved child whom the actual indisputable villains robbed of everything from family to sanity. She's a threat where she appears, but never a villain. Heck, to the extent of my (possibly incomplete) knowledge, even Mr X and Nemesis could be ultimately grouped with her, and even their very own primary targets, for all the justified evoked anger and escalating retaliation, had other people in mind to blame for the respective troubles first and foremost.

The Switch backlog grows bigger yet, but the bulk of the batch (Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds, Crowalt and Hob) has yet to make it into the console storage proper whose external portion was just practically capped with Queen's Quest 3... although Lia: Hacking Destiny admittedly tempts me to give it a run in the internal memory for now. Then again, this weekend's hybrid sessions - the ones not dedicated to the NMS expedition, anyway - have all the odds of a roguelite overdose as it is, from RemiLore, Vampire Survivors, Undermine, Sword of the Necromancer and Zengeon to Dawnfolk, Skul, Doomsday Hunters, Splintered Fate and Xenon Valkyrie+. Other stuff, from franchise-wide possibilities like Ateliers, Tales, Xenoblades, Personas and Rune Factories to Assassin's Creed 2, Saints Row 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Dying Light and First Departure (yeah, nice to see all of it back on board at last😆) is also among the fair chances.

Meanwhile, Deck storage has got almost 70 Gb lighter after the environment's hijinks claimed Nioh as their latest victim (Heroic has not only stopped launching the game out of the blue but also specifically refused to open its page and settings, then crowning it all with silently ignored reinstall commands), and after browsing the PC stash with a sore chin, I decided to use almost half that space to restore a bunch of previously shelved roms - Eternal Sonata, Sin & Punishment 2, Burnout, PS2's True Crime, Drakengard, Disaster Report and Project Zero... one, some or all of them might get some action alongside native PC items like FFXIII/XV, Greedfall and Watch Dogs. Not to mention the also defiantly remaining possibilities of other platforms - Wolfenstein New Order, Endless Frontier, Neptunia, Luigi's Mansion... you name it.

I barely ever play (synchronously) with other people online, let alone feel inclined to talk to them while at it.

I'm gonna parrot many a comment here - definitely welcome news but would be even nicer if followed by the previous two games. Especially since Deck still officially lists them as "unsupported" (outdatedly, perhaps, but 12 Gb don't make for the swiftest installation to test by oneself).

Not much use for me (I'm not keen on NS2's screen size/resolution increase overall, but nothing I've offloaded from Switch so far has had its visuals impaired) and effectively how I envisioned such a blanket feature in response to those clamouring for it in the past - a token frixel bump at the cost of battery life and certain features, with select titles from TWEWY and Little Inferno (both forcing motion controls when docked) to Severed and the whole VB app (both refusing to work in TV mode at all) rendered variably unplayable. Thanks, but no thanks.

Icons still get hidden over the officially nonexistent limit (the latter's status being why I recurrently put my hopes into the memetic "stability improvements" rather than separate bullet points) - better luck next update, I suppose.😆

The end of another comparatively backlog-prolific week seeing me part ways with Bleed 2, Mario Kart 64 (three 100cc cups skipped after realizing that the tracks remain the same) and Little Inferno (whose finally procured and wrapped-up DLC was implemented complexly enough to necessitate another full playthrough today... but ultimately worth it😄). What lies ahead? As usual, mostly hybrid stuff, especially with the terabyte card finally filled back up on OLED and beckoning with various stuff from long ongoing journeys (XC2, RE0, Sakuna, Fantasy Life I, Haven, MHRise) to various recent additions (Splintered Fate, SteamWorld Build, Sagres, Doomsday Hunters, Aegis Defenders and, this time, the correct version of Balatro... one time sink to catalogue as the mobile collection tracker's roughly estimated 2121st Switch title). NSO's Zelda II and Yoshi's Island alongside NS2's Cyberpunk and NMS are fairly likely as well while the joint handheld scene might see more action across Horizon, Greedfall, Fallout 3, Luigi's Mansion, VLR and Mario Kart 7. Wrapping up the latter should prospectively leave the subfranchise binge in question with only Double Dash (a tangible NSO possibility) and MKWii (probably one to emulate on Deck, but at least the latter should be doable with standard controls - glancing at you here, Emergency Heroes...🫣) before I can finally consider MK8DX on Switch.

...and still end up buying MKW fir- gets dogpiled

@burndive pop quiz: how do mobile gachas get their respective wiki galleries?

"18+ Lego Mario Kart Set" is a product name the fandom will absolutely not have a field day with.