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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 28, 2023 15:38:20 GMT -5
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 19, 2023 11:33:46 GMT -5
So, among the few games I hoped to see during the Indie World Showcase, they actually showed one!
Rift of the NecroDancer is officially announced for Switch, and coming sometime in 2023!
EDIT: Trailer.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 18, 2023 20:32:15 GMT -5
Here it is, Wave 4. Due out April 25.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed
This is a little sooner than I expected (especially dropping right before Tears of the Kingdom), but I guess it makes sense. Torna came out nine months after Xenoblade 2, and it's been nine months since Xenoblade 3.
Can't wait!
EDIT: OK, Nintendo and MonolithSoft are just dumping tons of info all at once for some reason.
Pyra and Mythra amiibo double pack coming on July 21. They unlock Aegis sword skins in-game. The skins are also unlockable without the amiibo.
Also...
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 18, 2023 8:22:12 GMT -5
New Indie World incoming.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 17, 2023 9:58:07 GMT -5
I've finished my playthrough of Fire Emblem Engage. I played on Normal/Casual, and finished all paralogues. My final save data clocks in at 87 hours, 48 minutes. I have not bought the DLC.
In the past, I've had a hard time deciding what my "favorite" Fire Emblem game is because there wasn't necessarily one that stood out to me as being head and shoulders above the rest. However, with Engage, I feel pretty confident in saying that it's my favorite so far.
It's kind of funny because my initial impression when the game was first revealed was not the most positive. But some of my initial misgivings, like the character designs and graphical style, ended up being some of my favorite things about it.
While I have not bought the DLC, I am considering it now, but I'll probably save it for when I do another playthrough. For now, I might try more of the online modes, but I think I'm going to take a break for a while.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 16, 2023 11:59:02 GMT -5
Saturday Night Live strikes again. This time, Funky Kong talks about being cut from the Mario movie.
The humor gets a little crude.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 14, 2023 10:55:28 GMT -5
In my thoughts on the final pre-release trailer for Tears of the Kingdom, I noted the absence of Teba, and the presence of his son, Tulin. Looking around social media, it turns out I'm not the only one who noticed. So, just for fun, I'm going to do a deeper dive on this because it carries slightly wider implications about the trailer as a whole. This will include spoilers for Breath of the Wild and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. So, in Breath of the Wild, Teba is the successor to Champion Revali, although their personalities couldn't be more different. Revali is arrogant and likes to show off, often while belittling others. Teba is usually serious and disciplined, but carries an undertone of warmth, like he sincerely believes in what he does and what he's fighting for. He's also a family man, having a wife, Saki, and son, Tulin. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity takes place 100 years before Breath of the Wild, but ultimately ends up being an alternate timeline, as the heroes are able to prevent the Calamity from happening in the first place. This includes the successors somehow traveling back through time, and meeting the Champions face to face. They all have fun, fan-servicey interactions with each other, except for Teba and Revali. Revali shows little interest in his successor, and Teba seems a bit taken aback by his attitude. The DLC, however, adds a vignette that allows them to interact a bit more meaningfully. Tulin also inexplicably ends up back in time, and Teba and Revali have to rescue him from some enemies. Afterwards, this scene plays out. There's been debate among fans as to whether Age of Calamity counts as canon. On one hand, it's an alternate timeline, so it doesn't really matter what happens in it. On the other hand, the successors eventually go back to the future of their own timeline (the events of Breath of the Wild), so there's still a chance for some amount of influence. The trailer for Tears of the Kingdom hints at the latter. In the above scene, Tulin says he wants to be like Revali, and also master the Great Eagle Bow. In the trailer for TotK, he seems to be carrying the Great Eagle Bow with him. (In BotW, Teba mentions that it's too heavy for most Rito to use.) It'll be interesting to see if "Tulin's Tornado" is something he can do in TotK, as well. Outside of that, in the scene where Link and Sidon are fighting side by side, Sidon is twirling his trident similarly to a move he does in Age of Calamity. Aside from Teba's absence, Daruk's successor, Yunobo, is also missing from the trailer. However, a few eagle-eyed viewers have seen the tip of Daruk's weapon, the Boulder Breaker, for just a few frames in the trailer. (About 3:18-19, just before Tulin appears.) This might suggest the presence of Yunobo, although in Age of Calamity, he fights with his bare hands. EDIT: Forgot to mention that official artwork as been revealed for Tulin, Riju and Sidon, but not for Teba or Yunobo so far. All that just makes Teba's absence more conspicuous, and Tulin is likely taking his father's place as a Champion successor. Tulin is still quite young, but seems to be at least a few years older than he was in BotW/AoC. Riju looks similarly older, so this suggests about how much time has passed between BotW and TotK. (Sidon looks the same, but Zora live for hundreds of years anyway.) I also mentioned his English voice actor, Cristina Vee Valenzuela. He sounds quite young in the Age of Calamity clip above, but you can hear him with a deeper voice in the TotK trailer at about 3:06. It's likely that Valenzuela still voiced him if you compare it with her voicework for Merrin in Fire Emblem Engage. Anyway, this is all just fun speculation. The game will be out in just four weeks from this post, anyway. As a fan of Teba, it'll be disappointing if he doesn't show up at all in TotK, but it'll still be interesting to see Tulin grow up into a Rito warrior, himself. |
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 13, 2023 9:18:50 GMT -5
My thoughts:
I went into this with low expectations. Given how secretive they've been up to this point, I thought they'd mainly reiterate what's been shown before, with a few new details thrown in. So, this trailer showed just a bit more than I expected, but still left out enough context to keep everything vague.
So... yeah, Ganondorf is back. Meh.
Two main things stood out to me:
1) Boss fights look much better, and more like classic Zelda-style bosses. (At least, I assume they were boss fights. This game seems to lean a little more on set pieces than Breath of the Wild did.)
2) NPCs have a more active role. We see them teaming up more with Link, engaging in combat (which they did in BotW, but not in a substantial way), and Link is even transporting them on a wagon at one point. I look forward to seeing more about this.
On this note, the Champions' successors are back, and also seem to be in a more active role (a la Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity). It makes me wonder if Link will ultimately assemble a more traditional RPG-style party.
More importantly, it means best birb Teba is back! [EDIT: Actually, now that I look at it, he doesn't actually appear in the trailer. But then, neither does Yunobo. Hmm...) Also, his son Tulin seems to appear again as well, as he shows up in a few scenes. Couldn't tell if it was his same voice actor from Age of Calamity, as Cristina Valenzuela voiced him then, and she often has a higher pitched voice. But she's certainly capable of speaking in a lower register. (I was shocked when I discovered she voices Merrin in Fire Emblem Engage, because her voice was much lower than I usually hear from her.)
But I digress.
So yeah, I think this trailer has done more to increase my excitement than anything else they've shown this far.
Now I'll watch a bunch of reaction videos to see what I didn't notice.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 12, 2023 13:44:16 GMT -5
The theme from Super Mario Bros has been chosen for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the US Library of Congress. It's the first time music from a video game has been chosen for inclusion. |
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 12, 2023 9:52:32 GMT -5
So, uh, final pre-launch trailer is imminent.
You can just feel Nintendo's marketing teams straining to work with what little they can.
Game is due out May 12, exactly one month from this post.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 11, 2023 8:43:35 GMT -5
Last year, Kit & Krysta talked about how the Nintendo Live event has been around for years, but no one ever talks about it, and most people don't even know what it is. Maybe NoA is deciding to put more weight behind it this year as a replacement for E3.
EDIT: Speaking of which...
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 5, 2023 14:07:08 GMT -5
As the title says, what games did you unexpectedly love? More specifically, they don't have to be games you thought you wouldn't like, but rather, just games you ended up enjoying and playing far more than you initially expected you would.
Here are six games that I unexpected loved. I've probably talked about most of these before, but they fit the category. Also, this is not a comprehensive list, so I may mention more in the future.
Gunstar Heroes
This was back in the mid '90s. Being mainly a Nintendo fan, my SNES got most of my attention. But I also had a Sega Genesis, and I decided to try exploring more of its games. I rented games regularly back then, and I came across Gunstar Heroes at the local rental store. I remembered seeing it in a couple of issues of Sega Visions magazine and I was curious about it, so I rented it on a whim. Almost immediately when I started playing it, I was blown away. I knew this game was something special.
I rented it at least a couple more times before I ended up just buying a used copy. It's still one of my favorite Genesis games.
Shenmue
Despite being a big fan of my Dreamcast, and knowing that Shenmue was a big deal for the console when it came out, I really wasn't too interested in it. It was about a year later after the Dreamcast had been discontinued and the games were selling for cheap that I decided to pick up a copy of Shenmue. Once I started playing, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I instantly decided that I was definitely going to get the sequel that was due out in about a month.
Imagine how upset I was when just two days later, the Dreamcast version of Shenmue II was canceled in North America. A year later, it finally came out on the original Xbox, but I never owned one, and so to this day, I still have never played Shenmue II (or Shenmue III, for that matter). But I considered the original Shenmue one of my favorite games for many years.
(Come to think of it, I could just get Shenmue I & II on Steam for very cheap.)
SSX 3
My enjoyment of this game wasn't a huge surprise because I was highly anticipating it before release. Originally I was looking forward to 1080 Avalanche on the GameCube, but my attention shifted to SSX 3 simply because it looked more fun and had a lot more content. (Also, you might remember how I was embracing third-party games back then.) I got SSX 3 as a birthday present, and while I enjoyed it every bit as much as I hoped I would, I didn't expect that I would continue playing almost daily for the next year. It's still one of my favorite GameCube games, and I get hooked on it all over again whenever I revisit it.
I did rent 1080 Avalanche at one point, and while it was also fun, it didn't compare to SSX 3. I went on to play other games in the series, but SSX 3 is still my favorite.
Hyrule Warriors
I had never played a Warriors/Musou game before, but being a fan of The Legend of Zelda, I was very interested in trying this game after it was announced. At the very least, I figured I would I would play it for about a month before moving on to the next game. That's just what happened, but after I was finished with that next game (Bayonetta 2), I came right back to Hyrule Warriors, and I continued to play it regularly over the next couple of years. I even bought every last bit of DLC, as well as the Smash Link amiibo just to unlock the spinner weapon. I finally got my fill of it a few months before Breath of the Wild came out, and I haven't gone back to it seriously since then. But it was easily my most played Wii U game up to that point.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
I've talked about this plenty of times before, so I won't go into detail again. But the tl;dr version is that this was basically intended to be more like a transitional game to ease me down from the high of Breath of the Wild. Instead, I ended up loving it in about equal measure, and it solidified me as a Xenoblade fan. It's still my favorite game in the series.
R-Type Final 2
I don't think I need to say too much about this one, either. Similar to Hyrule Warriors, I expected to play this a lot for about a month, and ended up playing it regularly for the next year and a half (as well as buying most of the DLC).
I'm still waiting for the free update to Final 3, even though the "Evolved" version is already out on PS5.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 1, 2023 10:03:58 GMT -5
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 1, 2023 9:00:16 GMT -5
So, apparently there's an interview with Intelligent Systems in the latest issue of Nintendo Dream magazine, and it confirms some rumors and other details about the development of Engage. This Reddit thread provides a rundown.* * Worth taking into account that this is an English translation of Japanese fan tweets that sum up the Japanese article in question, so there's a game of telephone going on. Interesting to note that Engage and Three Houses were developed around the same time, which I guess explains why Koei Tecmo was developing the latter. Not mentioned here is the rumor that a remake of Genealogy of the Holy War is also supposed to be ready for release. Three Houses' internal code name was "Iron17," whereas Engage is "Iron19," leading to speculation of a "missing" game. If there is, was it also developed around the same time as Engage and Three Houses? And if so, who worked it? TOSE? (Just letting my imagination run wild here.) |
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 1, 2023 8:32:48 GMT -5
In unexpected (and non-April Fools') news, SNK has announced The King of Fighters XIII Global Match for Switch and PS4.
This is pretty cool news, actually! Too bad I've given up fighting games. (And also still feel a little weird about buying stuff from SNK.)
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