Maryokutai

I also saw somewhere that it's around 130GB in size which made me think of GTA6 and how big that'll be. For disc-buying people like myself this is also not so good news because they'd have to press two discs for the PS5 version and three for Xbox and I can't really see Microsoft doing either of these things. So one month of Gamepass it is then. Good trailer though. Shows a lot, but not too much.

Meanwhile, this is the most difficult to play Overwatch character: He can swing around like Spidey though, so maybe there's a common link.

Make the most popular character hard to play, that'll end well. I don't quite see how playing a support would slow down the learning process though. If anything I feel like those roles usually emphasise positioning more because you have to keep enemies, your frontline and your backline sort-of in light of sight most of the time, while also having decent enough map awareness to not sit in a spot where flankers eat you for breakfast. Of course that could also be said about any other class, but those usually only have to respect one bar (enemy health), while you have to pay attention to all of them. Again, I haven't played this game yet, but when I look at how dumb a lot of damage dealers play in Overwatch because they're used to having a tank in front of them and a healing beam up their ass all the time I'd say both tank and support (vanguard and strategist in this game's lingo) are better picks to really understand the ins and outs early on.

Yeah, because it tries to just mimic other things but fails to replicate them in the same quality there's no real feature here that is worth visiting when it's on sale or even part of a subscription. The setting is cool, as is the soundtrack btw (never really mentioned that but there's some rather unique tracks in the latter game) but as an overall experience there's not much to take away from it unfortunately.

It does look a bit like characters are just flinging stuff at each other and cycle through cooldowns and hope something dies at the other end of the screen. But it's also important to note that nobody really knows what they're doing so far I'd say. I recently played the Overwatch Classic mode and with the knowledge and skillsets of today it was a completely different thing to what we all played on launch day. I did watch a video about Shark Doggo and he seems a bit different to the damage dealers at least. Saw some elements of Paladins, Splatoon and even Bleeding Edge in his kit. Spider-Man looks like a total nuisance though, nobody's going to land a hit on that guy on console.

The game has disappeared from the eShop for a bit, presumably because publishing rights are being wholly transferred from Nintendo to Square Enix (same thing happened with Octopath a while ago): https://x.com/SquareEnix/status/1863191577713381445 This probably means the game will become proper multiplat at some point next year. Meanwhile I still have my release copy unwrapped lying around.

I looked at the roster a bit but I have no idea who I want to play here. Conceptually Storm, Strange and Hulk seem cool, but they're archetypes I'm usually pretty bad at. I'll probably go with the Shark Doggo first, he seems to be a support class (which is severely underrepresented to the point where I wonder how impactful/useful they turn out to be).

Finished this today, unfortunately it never goes beyond what it shows you in the first 1-2 hours. In fact I think it regresses a bit, because not only does it force you into combat scenarios from time to time, it also has three boss fights which aren't fun at all. As I initially barely levelled combat skills I did end up beating the combat scenarios by going invisible and resetting the enemies' awareness to zero, but that felt more like abusing a wonky foundation than a genuine way to proceed, particularly as one of those moments has an NPC character operate machinery and you're supposed to protect them (they are invisible to enemies like in TLOU, which takes any kind of tension out of that encounter). I also found out after the very last stealth encounter that fully upgrading one branch of the kill tree unlocks a special ability. Had I known that earlier I would have focused on one aspect. But I don't think it would have mattered much, because even though you have a lot of cool skills, like the body control, you have to spend a ton of finite resources into maybe getting one or two kills that way. Just sneaking up behind an enemy for a silent takedown on the other hand costs absolutely nothing and instantly kills any enemy (after one specific upgrade). Unfortunately the storyline, while technically ticking all the boxes of a nice little globetrotting adventure, didn't really grab me either. I blame the character writing here, because there's maybe one or two NPCs that are somewhat likeable, but everyone else is just ... there, the protagonist included, and character arc feels forced and undeserved. It's a bit of a shame, because on paper this does really do anything you'd want of an action adventure type game, but it just shows that we're at a point now where you just can't do multi-featured projects like this on a budget anymore. The first thing they should have ditched are the realistic visuals I think, then maybe opt for an isometric perspective and make it stealth-focused, instead of having this layered approach. In previous generations this would have been a good first step to build upon (anyone remember how mediocre Uncharted 1 was?), but as we're now in a super unhealthy industry where that doesn't seem possible anymore – the first redundancy stories from the studio came out a week or two ago – this probably was it for this IP. They were planning more, as the incomplete Fellowship of the Ring-style ending suggests, but this will probably end as a one-off. I can't really recommend it either, but I would have liked to see a better execution of its ideas in a sequel.

Maybe this is widely known, but I just read the other day that the original Wipeout logo is written in a font where every letter is a cutout of the number '8'. Tiny mind blown moment.

I agree though that there's no real logic to your list, these games all came out this year and DQ3 is as much an overhaul as P3. Plus IIRC you mentioned you played Paper Mario on Gamecube, so you didn't 'discover' it this year either. Just my two cents, but I interpret the lists very differently.

Not sure if anyone remembers this, but it was one of the most technically impressive 3DS games at the time. It's less impressive on a system that could theoretically run its big inspiration easily, but still nice to see another game saved from the 3DS nirvana. Also nice to see the developer is still around, IIRC it was a two man team and one of them passed away a few years back. But they've always done visually super impressive stuff on Nintendo handhelds.

Two separated SKUs is off the table these days, I think when people talk about handhelds from Sony and MS they're thinking of devices like the Steam Deck or the Rog Ally that allow you to play the same kind of games you would on a console/PC on the go. Right now I don't really see the appeal, but maybe in the future when technical evolution becomes so incremental that there won't be a massive difference between console and handheld outside of maybe resolution, then yeah, for some people it might become a more interesting alternative than the big box under the TV. But that might also end up being more of a fan product than a true mainstream appealing success like the Switch, because you wouldn't be able to have the best of both worlds without buying two presumably rather expensive devices. Plus the aforementioned issue with the software lineup itself. Nintendo can release Mario Wonder and it will work as well on TV as it does as a handheld experience, but would someone want to play Last of Us 3 on a handheld? And would Sony shift to build more games specifically designed around that format? Press X for doubt, considering they already were trying super hard to get 'PS3 experiences' on the Vita. They've always fundamentally misunderstood the core idea of a handheld. It's an interesting evolution to watch though considering handhelds were looked at as some second class gaming devices for a certain period of time (those people have no idea what they missed).

So as I've been jumping in and out of Overwatch again these last months I'm actually kind of interested in checking this out now when it comes out. Beta feedback was somewhat positive, but regardless of that games like these are usually rather fun in the early days before everything turns into a toxic wasteland. They recently revealed Wolverine (obvious) and Squirrel Girl (not so much), so the roster looks pretty neat, too.

No need to tell us your potty schedule.

I can kind of see that. For me the first two games on my list hit all the right notes and the rest were really good, like you say, 8s, but there hasn't been a game I'd go on a pseudo marketing crusade for, like I did for Chorus and Dread in 2021. But there have been more interesting releases than I have time for still, so I can't complain.