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A Whole Lotta Kirby So, one of the things that made the Switch 2 so appealing to me was the size of the library available on it, not just the ports and remasters on the Switch itself but also the retro games available on NSO. One of the series I'd been meaning to dig into properly was Kirby. So I spent the month of July playing nothing but Kirby games. Kirby's Dream Land 1 and 2 (GB) They're simple and cute little Game Boy platformers. I kinda figured I'd try them for a few minutes and move on but I ended up playing them all the way through in one sitting. The second one in particular was pretty fun but it got kinda bullshit hard by the end and I don't think I would've bothered finishing it without save states. 7/10 Kirby's Adventure (NES) This one was actually impressive for an NES title. The art style is simple enough that they were able to push the graphics way past what the average NES game looked like. It doesn't quite feel a generation ahead of its time but almost. If you bumped up the graphics a bit, it would basically feel like a SNES game because it brought the gameplay to the level you'd expect out of a Kirby game. Basically, Sakurai was already cooking way back then. That being said, the emulator crashed in the middle of the final boss fight and my only save state was like 2 full worlds back so I watched the ending on youtube because I wasn't replaying all of that. 7.5/10 Kirby Super Star (SNES) This is the only game that I had played a little of back in the day. I think this one is considered the gold standard when it comes to 2D Kirby games and it's easy to see why. It's split up into multiple mini-campaigns and every single one is firing on all cylinders. Not much else to say other than it's a fantastic game. 9/10 Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SNES) I guess this is where they started the "Kirby but with a __ art style" gimmick. It has this watercolor painting art style that looks really beautiful. It might actually be the best looking SNES game I've seen. Unfortunately, it felt kinda sluggish to play. The gameplay was significantly slower than the previous games and the animal mounts didn't feel anywhere near as useful as in Dream Land 2. I had to force myself to finish it and I didn't get the true ending because it requires you to find a hidden collectible in every single level and I only found a handful of them organically. I wasn't going to replay most of the game just for this so I just watched the true ending on youtube. It's basically just an extra phase to the final boss. 5/10 Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards I was bracing myself for the worst with this one since games from that era haven't aged the best but I was pleasantly surprised. It immediately felt really good to play, especially after Dream Land 3. It also looked really good for an N64 game. I don't know if Nintendo's emulator is running games at a higher internal resolution of if the scanlines filter was just doing heavy lifting on the admittedly very simple graphics but the image looked incredibly sharp to me. There isn't that much to say about it beyond that. It's basically a glorified 2D platformer. I wouldn't even call it 2.5D, it's way too simple for that. You can combine two copy abilities to create a stronger ability, which was a pretty fun twist but you only end up relying on a few overpowered ones. I got most of the collectibles by playing the game normally and I was having a good time with it, so I went back and got the ones I was missing for the true ending. It also just added an extra phase to the final boss and then a little extra cutscene. 8/10 At this point I still had a GBA game and a couple of classic style games on Switch that I could play but I only had a week left before the physical release of Xenoblade Chronicles, which I was planning to play immediately, so I decided to skip ahead to: Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World This was the one I was most looking forward to playing, so I figured I'd use the limited time I had left to play it. It's basically to the old games what 3D World was to 2D Mario. It feels like a 2D platformer that was given a third-dimension without turning it into a full-blown 3D game. It's pretty great! I wouldn't say it was as good as Mario 3D World (or as challenging) but if you're in the mood for a cute and fun platformer, you could do much worse. It's definitely one of my favorite Switch games so far. I got all the collectibles for the base game and the DLC and completed most of the post-game stuff. The only things I have left to do are some of the harder mini-games that seem like they would be more frustrating than fun. I might come back to them to get 100% eventually but for now I think I'm good. 10/10 edit: Oh and I realized I never posted my friend code. Feel free to add me: SW-3747-9638-1387

Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (US) Felt like a step backwards in some respects, no more voiced briefings, mission end messages were super short and dry, bare bones story, the titular Electrosphere mission hurt my eyes, not a lot of positives lol. I did like the more sci-fi look of the planes though, that was neat. I had more to say, but then I got the JP version running with a translation patch... That one's a whole new game! So for this one, I'll just leave it with: Grade: C Palworld 1.0 1.0 Adds a ton of stuff, new areas, new pals, story stuff, more technology, etc. Many of the new pals made it to my list of favorites, including a main story one that is really cool, though kinda useless when assigned to a base lol. The end game grind was pretty bad but the devs released an update that improved things, increasing drop rates for some stuff as well as changing crafting requirements for some tech. I really liked this game before, like it even more now, my biggest issue, outside of some minor bugs and glitches, is the expedition station, that thing is huge, ugly and doesn't fit anywhere, wish there was an ancient tech version of it or something. Grade: A+

Halo: Campaign Evolved. It's been about what, 12/13 years since I last played through this campaign (when they last re-released it) and for the most part there's some nice improvements here. Obviously it looks very nice, and it plays well enough (it's a Halo game - point and shoot at its finest). but hot damn, this thing was not performing all that well on my Series X. I played in performance mode and I noticed some pretty rough slowdown when things got busy, most notibly when I was driving around in the tanks and flying dildo looking things in the mid game. For the most part that wasn't an issue however, as the majory of the game takes place in small, confined kill-rooms. Cutscene's were a different thing entirely though. Every single one had multle slowdowns and framedrops, and honestly I'm not sure why. Supposedly it runs better on the PS5, which is a great sign of where Xbox is right now.

Beyond Citadel This is one of the most unique FPS games I've played, although if you just look at gameplay footage you might not be able to tell. On the surface you're just playing as a hot anime girl in a biblical apocalypse shooting other hot anime girls with gratuitous amounts of gore (although you can turn off the gore and nudity if that's off-putting to you). What you can't see from watching someone else, however, is that this game might have the most immersive guns you can find outside of VR. In its intended gameplay mode, you're not just tapping R once to play a reload animation like every other shooter. You need to do almost all of it manually. While you have a backpack that automatically refills empty magazines for you, in order to reload your guns you need to pull out the magazine, refill it with the backpack, put the magazine back in, then cock the gun. All of these are separate button presses and chances are you'll screw it up a few times until you get the rhythm down, but once you do it feels really satisfying. While you technically can quick reload in a pinch by tossing aside the empty magazine and putting in a full one with a single button press, you have a finite amount of magazines on you and throwing one away risks breaking it so that you can't pick it up again. Revolvers and sniper rifles are reloaded one bullet at a time, but the upside is that it reloads as fast as you can tap the button for it. Guns also have durability and will jam when it gets low, requiring you to manually unjam them. Thankfully, guns don't degrade nearly as quickly as in Far Cry 2. You can also collect items to repair guns and, if all else fails, just buy a new one from a merchant. The complete control you have over the reloading process also allows you to do things like slam fire shotguns or fan the hammer on a revolver if you know how. All of this really keeps you on your toes and prevents the game from ever feeling totally mindless because you always have to be mindful of how you're handling your weapons. I honestly kind of wish more shooters had a system like this.

Palworld Finished the story with the 1.0 release version. Man, this game is addictive. I never really get into the whole survival/crafting/base building thing but somehow adding a bunch of collectible creatures into the mix just makes it so much more appealing to me, especially when they help run your base. The Pal designs are great, probably the best I've seen outside of Pokemon itself, and since the early access several of them have had redesigns to make them look less like Pokemon counterparts. They've got so much personality in their animations, too. Leafan is always doing kung-fu poses, Dupin juggles and does magic tricks, Sekhmet dances while idle, and more. It really goes a long way to make these creatures feel more like living things and not just numbers to plug into an optimization formula. There's a few more palette swaps in the roster than I would like but there's more than enough original designs to make up for it. The story is basically an afterthought. Go fight a bunch of tower bosses and then go to the world tree and fight the final boss. There's lore journals you can find but honestly nobody is playing this game for the story. It's just for the love of catching these creatures and using them to make yourself a kickass base and that loop is honestly plenty addicting enough. There's definitely some 1.0 jank in there and stuff like Pals clipping through walls but I wouldn't say anything is truly broken. It only crashed on me once or twice during my over 100 hour playthrough. I would complain about stuff like item durability and crafting speed but the thing is that you can just adjust that stuff in your world settings so there's really no reason you can't get the experience you want out of it, especially if you're modding it on PC with steam workshop. I suppose the only thing I can complain about is that certain endgame crafting materials (AI cores) take a very long time to get and endgame weapons, armor, and buildings always require a bunch of them. I'm sure there's a mod that'll just give them to you but I'm only modding for quality of life, not to straight up cheat. Even with that gripe, there's a very good chance this will be my personal game of the year unless something else comes out to blow me away and no, that's not gonna be GTA VI for me.

Beast Of Reincarnation The first chapter sucks. Everything you'd heard about the game is true. All of it. The second chapter soften things up a little, you get into a nice grove with the combat and you realise that whilst everything you'd previously heard about the game is true, there are caveats. The combat system whilst a little repetitive is actually really kind of fun. There's a constant feed of new moves and powers you can utilise to beat back the enemy. The once-jarringly emotionally empty cutscenes start to make more of a sense from a narrative point of view. I've just beaten chapter 3. And whilst the game is far from being the best game released this year, I can't help but feel it's being somewhat unfairly (or fairly, I guess, given the studio) judge for the fact that it isn't the best thing to come out since Elden Ring. It's limited in its scope. It's world feels empty and at times it feels like it's there for the sake of being there. The cut-scenes are overly long and at times utterly tedious to watch.....And yet, I can't stop ploughing 2+ hours a night into it. I'll finish this, and I'll probably look excitedly towards it's no doubt bigger and better sequel.

Man's gone on holiday during the summer recess. Time to call a GE.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/29/burnham-only-likes-devolution-when-power-is-devolved-to-him/ There we go... Normality restored. Time to search for a new Labour leader I guess?

I'd be in favour of them having to call a GE inside six months. As much as 'we don't vote for a PM', most people couldn't pick their local MP out of a lineup of two and the vast majority are voting to put their guy into number 10. Six months. I said that when the Tories were playing musical chairs and I hold to it now. I'm already seeing reports in the press about how things are improving. Gradually yes, but improving none the less. Starmer (for all his faults) has laid the groundwork for future success and I hope Burnham can continue that trend. It just seems a little silly that we waiting 15 year to get back into power, and then within 23 months we decided to ditch the guy who got us there because the media decided they needed to brew up this entire scenario.

I think one simple change that would have stopped the latest Labour psycho-drama is to put in place a rule that if you change PM you immediately call a general election. I reckon a lot of MPs would be a lot less keen on regime change if they had to put their own seat at risk. Yes, there are times when your PM is so disastrous, so corrupt, so unfit to serve that you simply have to get them out immediately, but chopping and changing just because they are down in the polls is fucking stupid. Especially when (in Burnham's case) you have a desire for power and see this as a quick route to get to the top. On Starmer, I think he is honest and competent, which are (for me) the two most important characteristics in a PM. I don't want a charismatic, exciting PM in the same way I don't want an exciting pilot when flying to the US. I want the flight to be as boring as possible, not some showman who chucks in the occasional barrel roll for funsies. The UK was clearly steadily improving on his watch. Economy was growing despite Trump's best efforts, NHS waiting lists were going down, immigration (if you happen to have replaced your entire personality with "genuine concern" over small boats) has dropped massively, and all the Tories could say in response was "We would have made all these numbers bigger/smaller." despite 14 years of evidence to the contrary. I reckon if Starmer had been left to serve out his term, we'd be in pretty good shape and looking at a return to a (probably slightly smaller) Labour majority in the next GE. As it is, Burnham will have maybe a month's grace before everyone is asking Magic Andy where their sunlit uplands are.