Brian Behrend’s microblog
Played through SNES Aladdin for first time today on my Anbernic. Started it many times but not sure I’d ever gotten past Stage 1 before.
How did anyone ever beat this before save states? Thank goodness for GarlicOS’s ability to save/load states without even pausing.
Great looking game, just ok everything else. Still fun to get all the way through finally.
Considering this Xbox news being as non earth shattering as it was, it seems like they really (yet again) fumbled the messaging on this by letting rumors run wild and even stirring them a bit by announcing a “business update” for a week later.
4 Xbox exclusives coming to PS5 and Nintendo Switch
The short-term future of Xbox means that at least four Xbox exclusives are coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch, Xbox leadership announced Thursday on the Official Xbox Podcast.
My favorite games of 2023 includes Zelda: TotK and… Fortnite? Well the Lego survival mode at least. Yeah, that surprised me too.
Is it just me or does Nathan Drake show up in the last 10 seconds of the GTA VI trailer?
Wrapped up my Zelda: Minish Cap playthrough on the Anbernic RG35xx. What a fun, great looking game reminiscent of LTTP & so many unique items and gameplay features. Loved the Minish size transformation and puzzles.
Had some emulator hiccups during the final dungeon that caused me to have to switch from the RG35xx’s stock firmware to GarlicOS and then go Internet save file hunting, but after a few extra days delay beat the final boss just in time for Super Mario Wonder.
Rating: 5 stars
? View my GameTrack review
Epic is laying off over 800 people and selling Bandcamp.
This is direct and predictable result of all the consolidation in games industry and in general. It’s not like Epic isn’t colossally profitable.
Why on earth does Epic needs over 8,000 employees and why do they own Bandcamp in the first place?
This is why the Microsoft/Activision merger deserved all the antitrust attention it got from regulators, if not more.
Well “ransomware-as-a-service” is certainly a dystopianly awful new evil tech bro phrase I’ve never heard before.
Link: A ransomware group claims to have breached ‘all Sony systems’
I preordered Uncharted 4 on January 12, 2016. Over 7.5 years later I finally finished the game streaming via Chiaki to my ROG Ally.
Played the first 4 hours or so back in 2016. Played the first 4 hours or so again when I got the Legacy of Thieves PS5 upgrade last year. Even with the drawbacks (mostly occasional audio and visual glitches in first 10 minutes of session), the advantages of playing anywhere in the house just makes it so much more likely I can find time for a game.
Really a tough game to pick up right after playing TotK (holy crap was the exploring and controls frustrating for the first couple hours). Uncharted 2 was my favorite game of that generation so I’m glad to have finally wrapped up the series.
Will give it a while but looking forward to picking up The Lost Legacy eventually.
The characters, Sadie in particular, just never seem to get more mature in their thoughts or their actions despite anything that happens in their lives. The constant reappearance of the toxic, abusive character with only cursory mentions of what is often literally sexual assault never really seems as introspective as it should. Of course, Sadie and Sam’s own relationship is equally toxic pretty much throughout.
Just incredibly immature thoughts on relationships, work, video games, and life in general.
Rating: 2.5 stars
? View my Goodreads review
? Buy Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow on Amazon
A truly remarkable achievement in ways that I’m not sure any of us could have guessed when Nintendo announced they were making a sequel to Breath of the Wild.
Tears of the Kingdom refined pretty much everything my former (spoiler) favorite game offered and added seemingly endless new ways to traverse, interact, and manipulate the vast world. And it also added an actually intriguing and touching story on top of it, though that story is still told in a slightly improved but still suboptimal non-linear fashion.
220+ hours, all 152 shrines, every single light root, and I barely scratched the surface of everything in this game. I finished the game at only at 61% complete and there are huge areas of the surface map I’ve literally never been to.
It may just be recency bias talking, but Tears of the Kingdom might just be my new favorite adventure/open world game of all time. Breath of the Wild was more of a breath of fresh air and I was still thinking about it months/years later, but I’ve never so obsessively consumed every bit of game the way I did with TotK over the last 2 months. I can’t wait to see what is next for the Zelda franchise and can’t imagine what Nintendo has in store for us next.
Rating: 5 stars
? View my GameTrack review
? Buy Tears of the Kingdom for Switch