Roderick

I get that it's also my perception of the thing: I wouldn't be as annoyed by Kotaku doing the same clickbait stuff, because my expectations are very different. Yet, the very reason it's so jarring for Polygon is ironically because I hold them to higher - their own - standards.

Okay, Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Well, the big disappoinment was of course no Metroid Prime HD trilogy, but apart from that... good show! Not everything looked as good (the Contra game and the Dark Crystal tie in both looked decidedly b-quality), but they showed ACTUAL GAMEPLAY of lots of games, had a great mix of sequels and new stuff, and about half of it were games I actually want to play. Luigi's Mansion 3 looks fantastic. Animal Crossing will surely be fun. The BotW2 teaser promised gloomy stuff, though whether it'll be the insane Majora's Mask-type remix that we all want is unknown of course. Trials of Mana looked fine and I'm very excited for Astral Chain.

Digital Foundry did a test last week where they tried to finagle a Switch environment and then get Withcer 3 working on it. The results were bad-to-passable, with lots of framerate problems. But I'm guessing this will be a really optimized version.

I am a little late to the party, but I had the Cut Down introductory episodes queued up and I finally got around to them during a drive yesterday! Good stuff! I love hearing the industry take on trailers. About the spoiler thing (and yes, I have found myself plugging my ears and shutting my eyes in theatres more than once)... I think it's a good thing to remember that ultimately, trailers are a marketing tool and they do not serve the viewer's best interest. They will and must do anything to get them into the theatre. That doesn't mean they're not made with tons of craft and creativity, and I certainly can appreciate that angle as well, but at the end of the day I must approach them with caution. And especially if I know beforehand that I'll see a film, there's no reason for me to see the trailer. Movies are often predictable enough as it is and I like to go in completely blind. The best experiences I've had are ones where I genuinely did not know what I was going to get. (Which is why I like visiting sneak previews so much.)

Getting a Switch on day one and going along for the ride with its releases (especially the amazing first year) has been one of my gaming highlights of the last ten years. Super fun. Have not been playing and gaming on it as much recently, waiting for that next must-play singleplayer experience. Elder Scrolls Blades was announced for Switch on E3 yesterday! (Switchblades.) Kind of good, though I would've liked playing the game on my brand new Samsung tablet right now. Unfortunately, it doesn't support it for no clear reason.

I wanted to catch this in theatres last year, but it was out before I got a chance. Persumably it badly flopped? Will see this at some later point, maybe on Nootflix.

I was kind of interested in this! The devs made pretty neat stuff before, and though I get the feeling Vampyr didn't really take off, it's still a title on my radar.

On a different note, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the new Aladdin movie. Though I will say the Prince Ali song made me laugh out loud, because at the start Will Smith wears a headdress so voluminous all I could think about was that underneath he had the same hair as Rudi van der Saniel.

As long as it doesn't have Gotham's MadLibs approach to writing ("In THIS episode, RIDDLER teams up with POISON IVY, who falls in love with JIM GORDON"), it's probably fine television. But I have to say that I'm also thinking of seriously pruning the amount of shows I follow. Not that GoT is very nearly done, I don't know if I need more stuff to fill that hole. The shows I currently follow: - GoT - Gotham - She-ra - Dix Pour Cent - Planet Earth - Brooklyn Nine-Nine - The Good Place - Star Trek Disco - TNG Plus some anime like Sarazanmai, Ace Attorney and Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I could do with a few less.

I kinda stopped watching Agents of Shield after the 3rd (?) season, which was the big Hydra/Ward blowout. The ending there felt satisfying and had tons of closure, and I never picked it up afterwards. I'm hesitant about it too. I'm not as much IN the MCU anymore, not like, say, four years ago.

If I got one thing from IIT, apart from Wax House, Baby, it's that listening to In Our Time, a Chris Remo Recommendation(TM), is a very good idea. I listen to it whenever I'm in my car for a drive, and it's been an excellent way of brushing up my general knowledge of the world.

To no one's surprise, Nintendo are releasing their E3 Direct on June 11th, 18:00 Dutch time (that's not a thing). There had better be a Metroid Prime HD Trilogy in there, closely followed by '...and it's available tomorrow in stores and online!'

Three episodes into Sarazanmai and I'm still loving it. It's so joyously envisioned, designed and animated, it's hard not to be impressed. For a weekly show, the sets look really detailed. And boy, do the stories move quickly - it's all fast-paced character development and you're not a moment left without something else to gawk at. Those kappa version of the main characters remain super cute. Right up until they extract orbs from water-spewing monster butts. (But still cute.)

Endgame

Polygon (which I currently can't visit or link to because they will undoubtedly have articles on Avengers Endgame) posted a Film Crit Hulk article recently that was quite critical of the game and mentioned lesser-discussed flaws about how the controls are messed up. Might be worth a read.

I'm sure I've had tons of these experiences, but nothing readily comes to mind. There are some genres that I just don't care for that much (brawlers, beat 'em ups, sports), where I understand something is quality but I simply don't like that gameplay. I think the biggest one of those is Smash Bros Ultimate. I enjoy playing it, but I will forever feel it's not really 'my' game, because I'm not good enough at it for any sort of real mastery. Hours in, I'm still just noodling away pressing buttons. I'll never get the hang of it, also because I won't invest enough time in it to git gud. As a result, I feel I'm only scratching the surface. Double feeling, since I do enjoy my time with it.

These thumbs are idler than ever!

It'll be fine. I'm incredibly surprised people are genuinely still upset about The Last Jedi. I'm at the same time very happy that they're taking a break for a while, but I bet it won't be long and there'll be another deluge of Star Wars content before long. Are we getting nostalic yet for the time when it took 20 years of waiting for another movie to come out?

Those were definitely things that happened in this Star Wars teaser!

As coincidence would have it, I just watched the premier ep of Sarazanmai. It was about what I expected coming hot off Yurikuma (which I loved, by the way, but as a caveat I'll state that it was also my first introduction to the creator - so what felt incredibly fresh to me might have been old hat to others). The same feeling permeated Sarazanmai: one that I was already familiar with all these elements. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it immensely: the great animation, the surprising interludes, the swift scripting...

Rumors abound that there's gonna be a Direct somewhere this week, and with that hopefully the Metroid Prime Trilogy HD will be announced!

Three times in a row?! I'm surprised you had the appetite for it. Surely the third time through a sense of repetition sets in? Rare is the game that I want to play again right away, and even rare when I actually do it. Usually I opt to wait a few years for the experience to digest, so I can start it with a fresh sense of wonder. Haven't finished it yet, but probably nearing the end of Spider-Man for the PS4. It's a pretty neat game on all fronts, but there's a weird thing going on with it that though I see how insanely detailed and good it is, I simply cannot stop comparing it unfavorably to Arkham City/Knight. It's probably the best clone there has ever been, but the closer it gets to that level of perfection, the more it screams at me that it's the same thing, only slightly less all around. I'll certainly finish it, of course, it's quite enjoyable.