Castle Magus

"It's up to Princess Zelda to save Hyrule in a brand-new The Legend of Zelda story."

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Damn it, Nintendo... stop giving me reasons to maybe possibly reconsider my stance of probably never bothering to buy a Switch at some point.

"If you think the Super Nintendo is vintage, we have bad news."

Glorious.
Digital.
Future.

God.
Dammit.
Fuck.

Yeah, this is ancient news by Internet standards at this point, I guess. Still, it's just a reminder that the glorious digital future is neither glorious nor the future.

This doesn't affect me directly, because I never had either a 3DS (released in 2011) or a Wii U (released in 2012), and at this point I never will. However, this does make my interest in possibly owning any other current or future Nintendo consoles at some point, such as the Switch, continue to greatly wane, because the Switch (released in 2017) itself will become similarly "vintage" by these standards in probably less than a decade, too.

Loaded up Vampire Survivors after the latest update just to see how well the new engine does, and... yeah, it does pretty well. I did a couple of runs with Queen Sigma in order to make a couple of the most busted, frame rate-killing builds I could think of. By the 30 minute mark on each of those, they were still chugging along at mostly the same speed as when I started, even on my almost decade-and-a-half old CPU. On the older versions of the game, it would have become practically a 2-3 frames per second slideshow by that point.

One other thing I noticed is that everything (graphics, screen size, etc.) just seems slightly smaller now, which is kind of weird. Almost as if the top-down "camera" had been pulled "upward" to a slightly higher "elevation," if that makes any sense. In other words, I guess, you can see a bit more, now, but it's all smaller. Larger field of view. Zoomed out. Whatever.

As for the rest of what was updated, I don't care about multiplayer co-op (local or Remote Play or otherwise). End of story. And I don't have a Switch, so the fact that it is now available for that is completely irrelevant to me (and would probably remain so even if I did have a Switch). And aside from that, there was nothing new added to the game, in an actual gameplay sense (i.e. no new characters, weapons, stages, etc.)

If I want to scratch my Vampire Survivors itch beyond this, I'll probably go back to HoloCure (in which I just unlocked the last of the [at least current] character roster via the in-game gacha thing, which is... a start, I guess?)

The contamination is getting ever worse.

Seriously, this is a real disincentive for me to ever want to buy a Switch now, just as it's a disincentive for me to want to buy any of the other consoles that are infected with this shitty malware.

(Consider this to be "part two" of the series of video game related posts I mentioned a few days ago.)

Spiritfarer. Available on Steam and GOG.com, as well as on Switch, PS4, and X-bone.

This is sort of a weird mix of platformer, adventure, city builder, and farming sim. You play as Stella (and her cat, Daffodil, if you do the local co-op thing, which I don't have the means to do) who becomes the new "Spiritfarer" at the start of the game. A psychopomp, in other words.

Soon after the game starts, you acquire a large boat, which is where you'll probably spend most of your time in the game. As you travel from island to island, you'll eventually meet several spirits who will join you on your ship (after you do a quest or two or ten for some of them). While on the ship, they'll give you additional specific tasks that they want you to do, such as building them a certain building, or giving them a certain meal, or bringing them a certain item, either one that you create yourself or one that you find somewhere in the world. You can build a bunch of different buildings and such on the ship, and after you build the right ones, you'll gain access to the ability to cook food, farm crops, raise livestock, smelt ore, weave fabric, and so on and so forth. There are also several different mini-games that you'll come across while traveling the world that will gain you unique items, such as literally catching lightning in a bottle as one example. And you'll need a lot of that stuff and all the other stuff you make or find in order to upgrade your boat, as there are some areas you can't get to until you have certain upgrades. Unfortunately, in particular the ones that let you reach new areas, some of these upgrades require "spirit flowers," which you only get after you take a spirit to the "Everdoor," which means it's not possible to have all the spirits on the boat at the same time. Also, throughout the course of the game, you will get Metroidvania-like personal upgrades, like double-jumping and gliding and such, which will allow you to get to areas of the platforming-stage-ish islands that you can visit that you otherwise would be unable to reach.

It's also a story-based game. Each spirit has their own tale, which you'll eventually learn as you get to know them. All of them are tied to Stella in some way or other, either by being a family member or someone she had worked with in the "real world." And, of course, the game being what it is, these stories are usually pretty sad in some way. The worst, or at least most hard-hitting for me, were the two that involved the spirit becoming stricken with dementia over the course of their stay on the boat (one was way worse than the other, and it reminded me too much of my own mother, as she was in the end). But all of them are pretty sad at the end, when you have to take each spirit to the Everdoor.

Honestly, for me, it was all about the day to day chores, like watering the crops or shearing the sheep or picking the fruit or milking the cow or cooking food for the passengers or whatever. There was just something relaxing about loading into the game and doing all of that stuff. Even after you upgrade your boat so that it doesn't move so slowly, you'll still usually have plenty of time to do stuff on the boat between moving from one place to the next, and that's even if you use the fast travel walrus, which I rarely did. And then, even when you arrive, nothing is forcing you to immediately leave the boat.

Mild spoilers after this point.

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( Mild spoilers behind cut )

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So yeah, I'd recommend Spiritfarer. I will say this, too: this is the only game, so far, for which I've separately and after the fact bought the digital artbook. (Any other game for which I may have gotten such a thing, I did so only because the version of the game I bought simply came with it already included, and I most likely would not have bought it separately otherwise.)

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I mean, sure, I could have just watched, you know, the actual thing, but this is fine, too.

For me, the big ones were probably Chrono Cross and Live A Live. If Mother 3 had been on there, which it was not, it would have been that, but I guess re-re-re-re-rereleasing EarthBound and Mother 1 again is okay, too. Some of the other stuff looked pretty good, too, but nothing was like "OMG I have to run out and buy a Switch right now today."

If I ever do get back into consoles at some point, though, I'll almost assuredly start with a Switch.

"Enjoy the finale of me playing my 3-year-old daughter's Mario Maker 2 stages!"

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Previous video here.

Sucks that this is the "finale," for whatever reason.

"Does Nintendo need fresh game IPs or are they good with their current roster of properties?"

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Their take, and I agree, is that Nintendo has plenty of IPs already with which they're not currently doing anything. I'm not against Nintendo coming up with something new, but as Ian said, their problem isn't necessarily that they need new IPs, it's that they need to better manage the many they already have. And yeah, all the gimmick shit is completely unnecessary.

As an aside, if they came out with an animated Legend of Zelda or Metroid show that was of the same quality as, say, the Netflix Castlevania series, I'd watch the hell out of that.

Just finished Lair of the Clockwork God. It's a sort of sequel to Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please!, though you don't really need to have played either of those two for this, as the story of Lair of the Clockwork God (which is full of British humor and heavy satire of modern video gaming and other current events) is stand-alone. The first two are still pretty cool though, so I'd recommend them, too.

So, instead of being a pure point-and-click style adventure game like the first two games, this one is a weird little hybrid platformer and adventure game. Dan has apparently moved on from his adventure game roots and is now a platform character, i.e. running, jumping, and, eventually, shooting. Ben, however, steadfastly refuses to get involved with all of that running and jumping claptrap and sticks to the old-school adventure game ethos of looking at everything, talking to everybody, stealing everything that isn't nailed down (and sometimes even if it is nailed down), and combining those things into other things and using them on everything else. Given that both of these guys exist in the same world, it makes for some fairly unique gameplay. Or, rather, two different styles of otherwise bog standard gameplay mixed and mashed together in a unique way. It's pretty cool. Some of the platforming is actually pretty tough, though I never bothered to try lowering the difficulty setting, and as such, I can say that the game isn't too awfully hard.

Oh, and there's a prequel game to this (and the other two, I suppose), in the form of a visual novel, called Devil's Kiss (which you get free if you buy Lair of the Clockwork God), that tells the tale of the first meeting of Dan and Ben and their first adventure together. At one point in Lair of the Clockwork God, a password is needed which can only be obtained by playing Devil's Kiss. Or, you know, by looking up the solution online, which I ended up having to do, despite having played through Devil's Kiss three times prior to starting Clockwork God, as I had no real desire to reinstall it and replay it a fourth time just for a password, even if it would've only taken maybe half an hour at most. The password was, in retrospect, stupidly simple (thatsthejoke.jpg). Basically, if you play Devil's Kiss, pay attention to Dan's dog's name, Dan's locker number, and Dan's mother's maiden name. In fact, honestly, I'd say it might be better to play Clockwork God up to the point where you need the password, then play Devil's Kiss, then go back to Clockwork God.

I just finished my playthrough of Subnautica. (Also on PS4, Switch, and X-bone.) It's pretty cool.

Basic gist, the starship you were on crashes on an alien world that is almost entirely ocean and you have only what's on your lifepod and what you can find on the planet itself in order to survive and, ultimately, escape. Lots of exploring, lots of crafting, some base-building, vehicles. There's a story line, which is mostly (but not entirely) through PDA logs you find, radio messages you receive, and scans you do of things as you play.

And, of course, almost the entire thing is underwater. I don't know what it is about video games that take place mostly underwater, but I just really like them. Any game that lets you do stuff in underwater environments, even if it's not necessarily the main focus of the game, is cool, in my book (e.g. Aquaria, Ecco, Minecraft, and such).

Now I'm just waiting for the sequel to come out of Early Access (and, of course, to hit a sale similar to the one I got for the original). (EDIT 2) And if you care, here's my post about the sequel, as well. (/EDIT 2)

Oh, and here's a Cuddlefish (with my base in the background), eggs for which you can find and hatch:

(EDIT) Image embed removed and replaced with a link, because Google Photos always shits the (em)bed. (/EDIT)