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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 A videogame masterpiece. 5/5.

Yeah if you know where you saw it, I'd pick it up again next time it's on sale!

Nightreign is either the easiest or the hardest Soulsborne game to platinum lol. If you have friends who play and can consistently play with a proper team, or even if you can solo some bosses, it's one of the easiest, the one exception, depending on your playstyle, is defeating the last boss with every Nightfarer, some of them, like Recluse are really hard to play properly if you're used to the Unga Bunga playstyle. Playing with randoms can make this one of the hardest plats ever lol, from failed runs to people who ignore (or just don't know how they work) the shifting earth stuff, some bosses are also way harder with multiple people since it makes it super hard to keep track of their attacks. Thankfully you don't need to beat any of the Everdark bosses, those are a huge pain.

Rift Riff Little tactics game that is sort of perfect for what I want from that genre; quick, easy to pick up and put down and not overly taxing. It looks super cute too and as ever, runs great on my deck. I can see this inching into my favourite games of the year list, it's wonderful. 4/5 - A gem of a game. Suit for Hire This seemed so cool for the first twenty or so minutes, but then it rather quickly becomes a little boring. It's not that Max-Payning your way around this level's isn't fun, it's just that without a story, or any real progression it all feels a little flat. 2/4 - Fine, I guess. Without A Dawn Without A Dawn is a striking horror visual novel with a focus on a young women's struggle with her mental health. It's about an hour of gameplay from front to back. Given it's a VN it's relatively light on mechanics but there's some light puzzling that you could probably brute force with the right combination of button presses. Where the game really shines is with it's use of its stunning ascii-art. It's almost breath-taking in it's beauty. 3/5 - Good Drop Duchy Another 'puzzle' game. Drop Duchy is erm ' ...... a unique roguelike puzzle game that combines Tetris-style block placement with strategic deck building. You'll build your duchy by strategically placing territory blocks, managing resources, and battling enemies through card-based mechanics.' I think it's probably a better game than I'm capable of experiencing, given that I suck at it. Looks and sounds real nice though. 3/5 - Good. I've been away for a week so I spent a lot of down time whilst the kids were in bed playing on the ol' Deck and reading. Which is how I managed to clear two games and start two more. Now I'm home I'm hoping to get back to Clair Obscur and wrap that wonderful web right up.

For what it's worth I've read on Reddit that there's a mod available that makes it run at a solid 45FPS (medium settings IIRC) on the Deck. I haven't used it myself, but the SD Sub was very positive on it. I could find the link if you're interested?

3D World and Bowser's Fury is so good!

Super Mario RPG Outside of Zelda, I basically stopped playing games on my Switch in the past few years, in preparation for the inevitable Switch 2, which I was reasonably sure would contain a performance boost for games and maybe even be more comfortable to hold. Lo and behold, it did! Admittedly, not that Super Mario RPG needed a performance boost. Truthfully, I might have just been not very excited to play this. Which was dumb because this game is as charming as it is fun, which is to say it is both very charming and a lot of fun. Probably shouldn't have waited nearly 30 years to play this game. Super Mario 3D World At least I consider it beaten. I rolled credits last night but it unlocked a secret bonus world. I also need to go back and get all the green stars. But I think I'm done playing it as my main game for now. The game didn't make a great first impression, I started it and played the first world or two on Wii U back in the day. I also played it when it first came out on Switch and got about the same length in. But that was a year or two after Odyssey which I felt like was a much more inspired game. Not to mention the early levels are easy and kind of boring. Simply put: 3D World is the New Super Mario Bros of 3D Mario platformers. By that I mean it's a really great game that doesn't really try to push the boundaries of the genre. It plays it safe. When I played Odyssey, Galaxy 1+2, even 3D Land, I could constantly feel the inspiration from the developers but nowhere near as often in SM3DW. Of course there's still some levels that are amongst the best in the series, and that's when the game really shines. A lot of those levels are locked behind green star gates, so make sure you seek them out. EDIT: Also, a few levels into the special world now, and these levels are all fantastic. Ultimately, it feels like they took what worked so well for 3D Land and transitioned it to console. But everything fantastic that 3D Land did, it did as a 3DS game, in 2011. 3D World was released as a HD console game in the 'modern era'. Yes, everything is bigger and looks nicer, but it's iterative. Wait a second. Did 3D World initially come out 12 fucking years ago? Jesus Christ. My eagerness to play games on the Switch 2, got me to pick this game up over the past few nights and finish it off and I'm glad I did, there is some really good level design in here. Just don't go in expecting to see the majesty of Galaxy or Odyssey. But the game still is a ton of fun. Bowser's Fury Now this, is an inspired 3D Mario platformer! Boss fights between Super Sayan Cat Mario and Kaiju Bowser are as ridiculous as they sound and I love it. The various islands instead of cut off worlds works well and is an approach I'd like to see a full length Mario game do in the future... open world Mario platforming, let's go. The controllable camera definitely makes it feel more like Odyssey than 3D World which I appreciate.

I bought Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but then I realized it runs like hot trash on the Deck. Fortunately Valve makes it really easy to request and receive a refund. It's believe it's time for a Steam Deck 2.

Yeah, I've been wanting to play it for a while since it seems like something I'd really enjoy. It's one of those games that I fully expect I'll be kicking myself for not playing sooner.

It really is.

Signalis is a fantastic little game.

Electric car bros!

Super Mario Odyssey At least, I consider it beaten. I rolled credits about a week ago and then I kept playing until the Odyssey stopped telling me it needed more moons to unlock new destinations. I did the final gauntlet on Darker Side and everything. I'll probably keep playing here and there to get all the moons but I think I'm done playing it as my main game for now. The game didn't make a great first impression, especially coming right from 3D World which is more of a pure platformer. The first few worlds in Odyssey were way too easy and boring. But as I kept playing I saw what the game was going for and started appreciating it for what it was. Especially as the difficulty ramped up to at least a level that wasn't completely braindead. I was shocked by how short the story mode is, though. My profile said I had played "10 hours or more" at that point but it honestly felt more like 6 hours to me. It's been over 20 years but I feel like 64 and Sunshine took me way longer to beat back in the day. As an aside, the playtime log on the Switch kinda sucks, uh? What happened to the super detailed activity log from the 3DS?! Anyway, yeah this game was a ton of fun. I think I enjoyed 3D World more overall but Odyssey was just different enough that playing it back-to-back with 3D World wasn't an issue. Metroid: Zero Mission Holy crap, why did I wait so long to play this game?! I guess it being a remake of the original NES Metroid made me lowkey expect a frustrating experience but this was anything but. It was like playing a mini-version of Super Metroid and it ruled. I especially loved how the game gives you a vague destination to reach without telling you outright how to get there. It doesn't ruin the feeling of exploring an alien world but it also keeps you from needlessly wasting your time looking in all the wrong places. Also, I was surprised by the last section of the game. Somehow in all these years, I had never been spoiled on the fact that this version added an extra zone. At first I thought it was pretty cool but this zone can be kinda frustrating. At one point near the very end I actually thought I got soft-locked because no matter where I went, I kept running into a roadblock but I eventually found a hidden room with the power bombs I was missing and was able to finish the game. Also, not exactly platform-accurate but playing it on the SNES controller was neat. I'm definitely looking forward to playing more classics with the retro controllers.

I'm still very much in the honeymoon phase with my Switch 2, so idk why I spent so much in the Steam sale nor when I'll get around to playing any of these but here's what I got: Best part is I just know I'll blink a couple times and the Atelier series will have somehow released another half dozen games before I manage to play a single one of these.

Got myself a new whip... a VW ID5 in "Costa Azul" Blue. It's so pretty.

Been using them for a few weeks and I'm so glad I got them. I've gone from lifting 5kg to 11kg already, and I feel pretty confident that they're going to last me a good while. If I had the space I'd invest in a bench, but until then these are going to serve me very well indeed.

Went over some railroad tracks a little too fast, scraped the ground a little bit from the bounce and broke the undercarriage splash guard/air deflector...

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD Holy shit, I figured this one would be solid but I wasn't prepared for how much I was going to love it. I've always enjoyed Mario games but the DKC trilogy is the one that I played the shit out of as a kid. So when I first started this game and that familiar music started playing, the nostalgia hit me pretty hard. This game does a fantastic job of feeling and playing exactly how I remember the DKC games. Except for one thing. Maybe this is just another sign that I'm becoming an old man but I found this game challenging as fuck. It was always fun and rarely got frustrating but I don't remember the SNES trilogy being this hard. A part of me really wants to keep playing and go for 101% completion or however much it is this time but I've got way too many games to play lol. Maybe I'll come back to it at some point. I'm also really looking forward to trying out Tropical Freeze as that seems to be the one everyone is constantly giving high praise to. I'm not sure what to expect as DKCR already made such a strong impression (and I kinda want to say is now in my top favorite games of all-time), so I don't want to set my expectations too high for the sequel. Anyway, the last couple weeks have been pretty great. Being able to binge 3D World and this (and put close to 50 hours into Breath of the Wild) was a real treat. I was already planning to take some time off from work in the early summer but timing it with the Switch 2 release was the best move I could've made. Getting back to work on Monday, though, so I won't be able to keep going through these games as quickly anymore.

One of the things that made me want a Switch was how all the classic titles are now part of NSO instead of having to purchase them individually. Having access to all these classic titles at all times means I can go through some series I've barely touched before. I'll probably do Kirby at some point but the main one I'm looking forward to doing is Metroid before playing Metroid Dread. Excluding the Prime games, I should be able to play everything except Other M, which it doesn't sound like I'll be missing much. Anyway, the point is I decided I didn't wanna do the Game Boy version of Metroid 2, so I hunted down a copy of the 3DS remake on ebay. And while we're on the subject of classic games available on NSO. I simply couldn't resist the nostalgia of playing these games with their original controllers, so... I'll probably get the NES ones as well at some point to complete the set but those are actually Joy-Cons, so I'll need a charging stand or something to actually be able to use them.

Me and my brothers have been looking for something to play when Rocket League is down, and we think this may be it. And I snagged this on Steam because we're going away for a week with the kids and if we have 7 days of solid rain and don't have a way to keep them busy I may top myself.