ariskany_evan

It's been 9 years since I've played a proper Mario Kart, so I am very psyched for tomorrow! Puyo Puyo just doesn't feel like a $30 purchase for me. I'd immediately do it for $15. I know that I'll only play it in short bursts. So curious to see how the physical copies costing more than the digital versions will play out. This has been talked about regarding the Sony and Microsoft online storefronts for ages. Sony and Microsoft save so much money not manufacturing and distributing to sellers, so the argument says that those savings should be passed on to consumers, but then obviously physical retailers can't compete on price so they stop selling them in stores. Here it seems like Nintendo is selling third party games at a normal cost online, and the physical version is $10 more expensive than it should be. You'd think that retailers would throw a fit, right? http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/27/15458804/puyo-puyo-tetris-costs-more-physical-nintendo-switch

If anyone lives in the LA area and is curious to try out the Oculus Rift, check out Joymode. It's a fairly new company that rents out "experiences". Kinda like a cool party rental company, I guess? They've got the Oculus Rift with touch controllers to rent (and comes with a gaming laptop) for $75 for four days. I rented it over the Easter weekend and they offered to let me keep it for another week for $25, so I've got it a bit longer! (and here I am shilling for them, so I suppose their goodwill worked!) It's been fun to show the system off to people, but I already feel the excitement winding down in me. Only game that's really grabbed me is Super Hot. I'm excited to play through that whole thing, but otherwise nothing else has made me want to play for more than 15 minutes. Still need to try out Eve Valkeryie, Chronos, Adr1ft (I get motion sick, so I prolly won't last long with Ad1ft), and Lucky's Tale. The thing came with about 6 pages worth of games/experiences, so I should do a quick metacritic scan for them all to see what else is worth checking out that isn't one of the big names.

New Switch owner here! Had a funny moment last night where I was sitting comfortably on the couch with the Switch in tablet mode and had it held up in such a way that my tv was in view, and realized that my 42" tv is the same size as the Switch screen when I sit on the couch. Given the option to play on basically the same size screen, I vastly prefer tablet mode. Happy to have the TV option for Mario Kart and multiplayer, but I know that I'll otherwise be using this thing in tablet mode. Curious to see how the battery lasts over a few years. Given that my phone battery seems to be functioning at half capacity after two years of heavy use, it'll be interesting to see how the Switch ages. I, too, am hopeful for smaller games on the system. I'd love a port of Invisible Inc. or anything turn-based like that since it's perfect for the pick-up-a-snoozed-system, puzzle-out-a-few-turns play. E3's just exactly two months away now, so hopefully that will bring a small handful of desirables.

I just picked up the Nintendo Switch (gray)! Local gamestop had a returned copy from someone who bought two (probably seeing which one came in the mail first). Have it covertly plugged in at work and have been downloading updates for the system and for Zelda. I'm realizing that I truly love downloading and installing updates. It's even more joyous to get a new computer and install a load of Steam games and my music production software and plugins. And then I generally don't feel as excited anymore. It's like I'm a drug addict who is tired of being high, but gets caught up in that "anticipatory moment". So playing games is fine and all, but installing them seems to instill a greater hit of dopamine. Just me, or anyone else get this?

There's a massive humble bundle live that supports the ACLU, Docs w/out borders and IRC. 100% goes to charity. It's a $30 minimum, but it's massive. featured games: Stardew Valley, The Witness, Subnautica, 2064, Thirty Flights, Stanley Parable, Invisible Inc., Octodad, Remastered DotT, plus a bunch more that I'm sure have been in every other humble bundle. 47 items in the bundle so far (some are ebooks), with apparently more to be added...! https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom

I've been enjoying this game in a manner I've not seen in another game before. I do a lot of auto-battling, like 75% of my battles are run by the AI. Some of the time I'm doing something else, like watching the golden age of tv, or working, or driving. Traffic is stopped often enough in LA that it's safe for me to select a training match and get the auto-battle going (with it mounted on my dash). Gives me a bizarre feeling of being entertained. Glancing over at the screen, "oh snap! look at my little mage, he's been getting wrecked recently, but this round he levelled up three times!" That said, in situations in which I'm free to actually play the game, let's say a bathroom break, I sometimes just run an auto-battle and feel perfectly entertained! It's weird! I do actually enjoy playing the game.... FE:H feels more like a clicker than anything else. Or like a clicker+. Numbers go up! The + part comes from having the option to play something resembling a game system. Maybe that's the new back-of-box feature. "Take me to the nearest collectable." "Fight monsters in the woods until I level up twice." Autopilot mode!

I agree about the Witcher 3. They had all sorts of UI on-off options, which I had high hopes for, but ultimately fell flat since navigating the world without all that help is a pain. Trying to move around the Skellige section and finding that, whoops, I needed to go around a mountain to get to the next town. I think some of that had to do with the map being illegible when it came to clarifying unnavigable terrain. There's something about the way that open world games double-dip on travelling that makes them exhausting. You load up the game and check out the minimap/map for something to do. You travel to the quest giver. Then more often than not, you travel to the part of the world that the quest giver asked. Just typing it out makes me tired. God forbid it's an eavesdrop mission or a mission that starts with you controlling a character in conversation that moves faster than the person you're conversing with. There's a lot of traversal that makes the openness of the world a pain. And fast-travelling to a mission from an icon on a map also feels terrible. I often am left wondering exactly what I'm signing up for. Hopefully this open world fatigue will lead to some true evolutions of the form, cos I agree it's pretty tired.

Complaints at the time of release were also pretty negative on the over-reliance on shooting to pad out the game. It was pretty, though! And not much else to play on the PS3 a year into the console's lifecycle. A lot of talk was that this was the first game to realize the potential of all those dang cores. Some people just really love tech demos.

This game has really gacha me. Not tempted to spend money, though. They've priced things in such a way that seems a bit absurd. $13 for five heroes? All of which could be 3-stars? No thanks. The mechanics of it are satisfying, and I love me a daily-login game. I'm in no hurry to get levelled up since I can't imagine the game is any different at the top tier than it is here at the bottom. Getting rich quick takes the meaning out of our entire capitalistic endeavor and generates emptiness and loneliness. I'm happy to play a few maps a day and progress gradually and get my login bonuses and be wrapped-up for the next few weeks. Also that freaking intro song is my favorite. That dude has vibrato for miles and miles.

I glanced through the Giant Bomb quicklook and saw that the front door can't be opened because there's somehow a contraption that locks the door if it's missing puzzle pieces? And talk on podcasts have mentioned that it's got more of that campy, puzzle-y stuff (which sounds like is typical of the series in general). I would worry that that would make the game feel less scary with what feels like arbitrary, 4th-wall-breaking video game puzzles blocking your way. Is that the case?

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Giant Bomb keeps talking about the fact that 3DS stock is really low atm. I was definitely considering picking up one for the holidays, but the $99 version sold out instantly and the rest never really went on sale. Just checked amazon and they're only available from other retailers for $200+. Damn Nintendo and their conservative inventory management!

Thanks for the notes! I had seen some of the groundswell of positive vibes for the game recently, too, and put it on my list since I enjoy third-person games, but that sounds like a lot of what I dislike. Saved me some time!

I agree with Dartmonkey on this one. Turned it off after 1-2-Switch. I'll go farther and say it was tedious. It didn't help that the entire live feed audio was turned way down so that the translators could speak over it. Figured I'd be more jazzed to get the reports from blogs the next day. Nothing about the launch window looks that exciting: new Zelda and Mario games look lonely as heck, something about their world designs makes them seem super artificial and dead. Taking those two off the list doesn't leave much else. Definitely a wait and see purchase for me. If they announce Wii-U and Wii virtual console, then I'll tilt more in their direction, since I skipped both of those consoles.