danielpholt

The Artful Escape The game is at its best when it lets you stand still and play music. Unfortunately those moments don't come as often as I would have liked and instead you're left with this Alto's Adventure styled gameplay mechanic which is fine in short doses, but feels a bit sort of.....meh by comparison. Still, it's on Gamepass and for that alone I think its worth a look.

Ted Lasso gets an awful lot of crap for how utterly..... saccharine it is but you know what, I don't feel the need to defend it because I adore the show for that. I don't know that a TV show has ever been a more perfect antidote to how my brain is working right now.

This just landed on Switch and it's a day one pick up for me.

Apex has a fair bit of 'down-time' too, given that a large part of battle royal is just sort of walking around looting, it gives players a chance to be absolute dicks to one another.

Splatoon? I don't know, I think the game being at its core being a squad based FPS means that those community issues are pushed to the fore in a way that you don't see in other shooters. I've had squad mates go out of their way to drop me off maps, fly me through insta-death beams on drop and decide they just didn't want to deal with a solo-random and then quit out on me the second they get downed. It might only be a little micro-aggression here and there but when you're playing with others each and every time in a squad setting, it adds up to a hell load of blurgh.

There's not been a significant content drop for a year now, and the updates they are doing tweak along the edges rather than bring anything substantial to the game. I don't think people want radically new ideas or anything...just new shit to unlock and use around the island. It's not helped by the fact that many of the series core features were stripped away for New Horizons. It all feels a bit bare bones.

Biggest shock of 2020 wasn't the global pandemic. No. It was that I fell head first into a sudden and shocking love of US Presidential history. So yeah. I'm treating myself to one white dude a night (kinky).

Apex Legends I found myself taking a second look at this a few months back and it's still as good as I remember at launch.....it's still got all those annoying bugs and an awful community too, which takes the shine off of it in many ways. That being said I find myself ignoring the very obvious negative aspects of this game and its community because the cycle and shooting is just so damn good. Super Mario Maker 2 Turns out Mario Maker 2 is extremely my shit. Again. Nintendo did this game dirty. It should be something they support going forward, but it would appear that they've all but finished with it and whilst the basic game itself is in a decent place, it's community is itching for new styles, gameplay tools and interesting new features, Nintendo said no. Rocket League I think this might be my favourite game of all time. I've put thousands of hours into it and even now, over 6 years later I'm still playing it almost daily.

I think we've got a combined 1000+ hours in Animal Crossing in my house, but even now, over a year into this thing I think Danielle has finally lost interest in running her little island community. It's a real shame because I know for a fact that she wants to keep going back to that well, unfortunately Nintendo just isn't providing the updates the game needs to sustain itself long term. Real shame because if they supported this thing in the same way they supported something like Smash they'd have a game that people would happily play (and spend money on) going forward for years.

TOEM It's a short little 'puzzle' game that asks you to trundle around with your little character and take photos of things. Super chill, with a nice soundtrack and all-around relaxing vibes. Didn't take me too long to 'beat' 100% and I found it really helped me wind down in the evening. I didn't mind paying £16 for it on Switch but I think it'd be an absolute steal on sale.

Gamepass just added EA Play if you're interest in erm....year old sports games, a few middling NFS games or maybe Anthe..............Ha what Am I saying. No one's interested in Anthem. But seriously. Gamepass is awesome.

The Solitaire Conspiracy Fairly low effort take on Solitaire. The plot is cheesy as fuck and about as interesting as a slap to your genitals, but it looks pretty and the solitaire-esque card game it's all built around is fun enough. Hades Fucking 2020 Game of the Year right here boys and girls. I don't usually go for this type of game but damn if it didn't offer everything a game needed to offer in order to get me hooked. Also Danielle absolutely hated watching me play it, so that's an added bonus.

I can see that. I've unlocked all the weapons, and I'm basically an all-powerful son of a bitch thanks to my mirror, but trying to get over the top of proving rather difficult. Especially given that you only earn the good stuff after you've beaten the game on normal. I want to unlock other things, but those don't come in until you've beaten the final boss. And the final boss is at the end of a run with 4 other bosses who are all insanely difficult to beat on their own. In short: I gotta git gud.

Insulting Tearaway. How dare you sir.

Hades I'm not usually one for the hyper-difficult, run based games that seem to dominate the release calendar nowadays, but Hades is a little bit different. 15 hours or so in, and I'm finding that whilst the progression is slow, its super satisfying. I wish the game was a tiny bit more willing to dish out gear after a good run (seriously, I feel like 40 minutes of absolutely bossing it should be worth more than 1 item that goes towards something else that makes your build slightly better), but aside from that very minor thing I'm still having so much fun with it. Warzone Season 6. I shoot people. I have fun whilst doing so. Yeah, I said that. Super Mario Bros 35 Started this one today. It's basically Tetris99 but built around a Mario Bros level. You compete against 34 other players. It's less about 'winning' and more about 'surviving' each Mario Bros stage as they're presented to you. You're on a timer, so you do eventually have to finish the level, but that doesn't become a factor until you get down to the final few players. Those players are also working against the clock (and other players) to get through their levels. Each time you complete a level you add time to your own run, each time you dispatch an enemy on that run it's sent over to an opponents screen. So yeah, it's Mario Bros but competitive. And best of all, it's absolutely free if you're a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber.

I actually own this game twice now; on Switch and PC. Grabbed the PC version first, and I enjoyed the first few hours so much that I figured I'd bite the bullet and buy it on a platform that's a little more easily accessible to me.

Worked my way through another reading of Animal Farm. It's still great. Then I grabbed Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here which is a decidedly more difficult thing to read when you're absolutely fucking exhausted from working, and parenting a pissed off toddler who has absolutely no chill whatsoever. That being said, I've got 10 night off work so I'm hoping to be able to give the book some time. The original chapters grabbed me, and with everything going on at the moment, I think it might be essential reading so, yeah.

Source

Seeing reports of a Series V, which would be the X minus the disk-drive. Not sure on price yet. As for the consoles we know about. I'd saved up to buy myself one of the new consoles at launch, however paying £30 or whatever it is per month with Gamepass Ultimate included is too good an offer to turn down. Thinking I'll likely grab the X on finance on day one....

I'm still a little disappointing by the 3D-All Star offering, but given that I'm a mindless husk of a human, I can't wait to hand over £50 for the privilege of replaying those games. Nostalgia is a drug that I'm far too weak to say no too. I was holding out some hope that we'd get a bumper 3D World/Land release (seriously 3D Land is the Mario game that people think 3D World is.....???) but obviously that's not on the cards. As for this Battle Royale thing, Okay I guess? I was hoping we'd get some sort of Mario meets Nidhogg thing with loads of players on screen at once, but once again, I think I was expecting more than Nintendo was ever going to offer.

Whatever hater.

Interested to see where you land on this, given that you hated the last big paper-based-video-game release..... Tearaway will be watching closely.