Tag: Nintendo Switch

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – ★★★★★

Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

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

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💿 Buy Tears of the Kingdom for Switch

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Golden Axe – ★★½

Golden Axe for Genesis

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.

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💿 Buy a Nintendo Switch Online membership

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Kirby and the Forgotten Land – ★★★★

Kirby and the Forgotten Land for Nintendo Switch

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.

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Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins – ★★★★

Super Mario Land 2 screenshot and game box

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.

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💿 Buy a Nintendo Switch Online membership

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Kirby’s Dream Land – ★★★½

Kirby's Dream Land for Game Boy

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

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MLB The Show 22 – ★★★★

MLB The Show 22

Got into Diamond Dynasty and building my card collection this year for the first time. Enjoyed that thoroughly without spending any money on it at all (which I know can be a problem for some folks) and without playing almost any online multiplayer modes. I was just building the collection for the sake of enjoying building the collection. Definitely activated the part of my brain that loved collecting IRL baseball cards my whole childhood.

I played it all summer long on Xbox while exercising and got into it enough I bought it for the Switch as well. I managed to put 200 hours into the game just according to the Xbox stats.

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💿 Buy MLB The Show 22 for Xbox