Ready and waiting. Now have to work and sit in meetings for next 8 hours while Zelda:TotK stares at me.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is here
TMNT Splintered Fate for Apple Arcade looks great
Great looking TMNT rogue-lite with multiplayer called TMNT Splintered Fate (“splintered”, get it get it?) hit Apple Arcade today (as well as some other good looking stuff) and it looks great. No clue if it’s actually any good but most of the Ninja Turtle stuff (games and otherwise) has been pretty high quality and so is a lot of Apple Arcade releases so fingers crossed. At the very least it’s not free to play.
Need to go find my 8BitDo controller and try it out on my iPad.
The Pudding: Where in the USA is this?
Fun daily photo location game: https://pudding.cool/games/where/
Today’s location took me 5 guesses to get 176 miles a way (despite having a decent first guess), partially because I totally borked how far 800 miles is on a map. 🤦🏻♂️
(via kottke.org)
Golden Axe – ★★½
I played so much of this (and Sunset Riders) at the arcade at Schlitterbahn and it was so fun with other people while wet and smelling like chlorine and 6th grade. Crazy all those times playing it and I probably never made it more than like 10 minutes/2 quarters in.
Played through this in one quick sitting via Switch Online and turns out playing it at home alone with save states doesn’t quite recreate that experience.
I don’t know if it’s the Genesis version or what but I never figured out exactly what the hit boxes of characters was and/or there’s just hardly any feedback from the game when you’re connecting and the bad guys in Arcade mode are just damage sponges. Either way, doesn’t hold up very well especially compared to the recent Game Boy games I caught up with but maybe I’ll rope my kids into trying it with me sometime and have more fun that way.
🎮 View GameTrack review
💿 Buy a Nintendo Switch Online membership
Kirby and the Forgotten Land – ★★★★
Bought this soon after it was released in 2022 but finally got around to playing it now after enjoying Kirby’s Dream Land on Nintendo Switch Online. Beat the main story and most all of the Treasure Road stages in about 15 hours and enjoyed pretty much every moment of it. With those and Kirby: Star Allies, I’ve now played my first three Kirby games in last couple years and the 3D Forgotten Land is easily my fave.
The graphics are absolutely gorgeous. Everything is vibrant and colorful with an incredible amount of detail. It’s impressive what Nintendo can do on Switch hardware with the right art style, even with packed and relatively open levels.
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins – ★★★★
Super Mario Land 2 was next up in my first time exploration of the Game Boy.
I have played and bounced off the first Super Mario Land before (including on my TI85 calculator in high school) so was surprised how fun and unique 6 Golden Coins was. The level design and enemy design variety is fun and there are so many weird ones that never show up in other Mario games. Maybe we can get a Super Mario Movie post credits scene featuring Skeleton Bee. Lol.
Not super hard (especially thanks to cheesing with save states) and the actual gameplay wasn’t too varied, but still a blast to quickly (3 hours?) play through to see everything including the delightfully ugly tiny pixel Wario.
🎮 View my GameTrack review
💿 Buy a Nintendo Switch Online membership
MLB The Show 23 gets me back on the ellipitcal
I’ve been in a fitness rut since losing momentum during spring break vacation, but I knocked out a 951 calorie workout over lunch thanks mostly to the yesterday’s release of MLB The Show 23.
I spent about 200 hours playing The Show 22 last year, almost all while also exercising on the elliptical. Maybe I can leverage the addictive (& predatory?) nature of Diamond Dynasty to get back on track. 😝💪🏼
(45 minutes of this was also while on a work status call, I’m not that big of a slacker midday. I swear.)
Kirby’s Dream Land – ★★★½
Sat and put in three 15-20 minute sessions to beat this now that’s available on the Switch. This is the first OG Game Boy game I have ever finished as I never owned a Game Boy growing up. 12 year old Brian would be so jealous.
Nice, very quick and very simple playthrough to see the origins of Kirby. My kids delighted at seeing the green Game Boy graphics but not enough to want to play themselves it looked “too old”.
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💿 Buy the new Kirby’s Return to Dream Land remaster for Switch
Murder by Numbers – ★★★½
Fun story. Mostly good writing. Surprisingly good characters. Plus Picross! Considering they’ve been acquired by Epic and Mediatonic will likely eternally be on Fall Guys and/or Fortnite content development, it’s disappointing that we likely won’t get any more stories like this from them.
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💿 Buy Murder by Numbers for Nintendo Switch
Immortals Fenyx Rising – ★★★★
Great, often mindless, fun. Open world collect-a-thon Breath of the Wild-like that I put on the easy difficulty and played almost 60 hours of while on the elliptical. Great traversal, okay combat that I almost exclusively button mashed my way through despite the potential depth there.
🎮 View GameTrack review
💿 Buy Immortals Fenyx Rising for Xbox