noboners

I love this franchise, and from reading your review, it sounds like you do as well. I picked it up on Switch last year and it works so well as a pick up and play game. The ego system works surprisingly well, and as you talked about, the customization options help you have fun however you want. I've made teams that focus solely on power to play against friends with teams that only focus on pitching fastballs. Just fun stuff. But I also found the way it handles franchise mode to be a bit of a letdown. I was really excited by that addition, and I think it does work well when not importing teams, but as you mentioned- losing players at the height of their career just doesn't make sense, and can be frustrating when you spent time to create them. Hopefully SMB4 can fix some of that stuff (or at least let me control it a bit more).

I need to preface all this with saying I haven't beaten the game yet, but feel far enough to still voice my opinions: I think this game started off really solid, and the combat was reminding me a little bit like Guacamelee (a series I love), but I found the bosses too difficult and the pacing felt a little off with longer moments of running through the town to know the setup before some kinda boring "dungeon" areas.

I found the combat to be really fun during normal encounters, but 2 of the 3 bosses I faced felt like tedious slogs. And the dungeons themselves felt a little boring with some bad feeling platforming sections. I dunno if it was just me, but I never got used to the jump in this game and especially never got used to the air dodge to get through hazards. At least the checkpointing was pretty generous.

All in all, I'd probably give this a 2/5 but would still recommend it to someone with gamepass who likes Metroid style games.

@bionicjoe: they haven't confirmed if the vouchers are something that will stay moving forward, but these vouchers are good for most 2023 purchases and I'd assume it would cover every first party game.

I think the vouchers are definitely worth it. It shouldn't be hard to find 2 full priced games to use it on, and with tears of the kingdom already costing $70, any other game over $30 means you're saving money.

But if you don't think you'll buy another switch game this year, don't bother. Just swallow the $70 pill (if willing).

1. I think it's finally time for Coffee Talk

2. Somerville

@bisonhero: it had a pretty big marketing push in the middle of January where most major video game publication (IGN, RPS, Gamespot, Digital Trends) ran a preview on the game after playing some hours of it. I watched several videos on it and this is just now the first I'm hearing about these ties to the Russian government.

I did originally think the gameplay looked fun, but this news is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Went back in and finished this last night. I, too, realized I did not pay attention to the story at all when you're introduced to that guy in the attic. This was just an easy collectible game for me, where everything I did gave me some sort of dopamine hit.

And I did almost everything in the game. Missed 3 tinykins on the kitchen level, and 13 on the kids bedroom at the end, but got everything else. Part of me wants to go find those final kin, but without an easy way to know where they would even be, I probably won't.

Thanks for sharing this information. I've been watching his Sunday shows recently to make up for the lack of Pit on the site and kept forgetting to ask the chat there if they knew anything.

Thanks for this write up. Honestly, the only thing keeping me from reinstalling is the massive file size. But with limited time to game nowadays, I have to ask, can you save and exit at all mid mission? Like, not to save scum but to just go do something else. I figure you can at least save when you're at the base between missions.

This is a huge bummer. Rumbleverse was one of the only Battle Royales that I could hold my own in, but also that I was never that upset about when I lost. It's also one of the only games that I've bothered saving clips from. I'm glad I'll have those memories, but the fact that it didn't even get a year to grow is just depressing.