My potentially-irrational problem with the movie is that the Robin is obviously Carrie but they insist on calling her Dick Grayson for some reason...

It's good! The remake adds a tonne of quality-of-life features, improves the presentation, and generally modernizes the game in loads of ways, but the core gameplay loop is retained from the DS game.

I find the weekly bazaar a REALLY good motivator to keep playing - it's a super engrossing gimmick.

Seconded! I don't if it's a must-play for people who don't generally enjoy the genre, but it's certainly my most-played game of the year and possibly the best SoS game to date... I really enjoyed the DS game, but this remake really improved it in every way imaginable imho.

Ayyyyyyyyyy! I haven't gotten an invite yet, but I'm hoping I do - and I'll be looking forward to your coverage either way!

Je suis d'accord! Je trouve intéressant que Zelda soit la seule à avoir une arme sur les premières photos - interesting in a good way, to be clear.

Bayleigh is very good at what she does!

This has the same vibes as the Emmy’s for animated shows - it’s more about name recognition then it is, like, quality of the material.

I think looking slightly different every time we see her is kind of core to Nico's brand at this point - and you do a lovely take on her!

All three of those are excellent games! I'm glad Absolum is getting more love, as I was worried it'd be overshadowed - it's both an excellent roguelike and a really fun beat-em-up... and it lets me do Doom's MvC divekick, so y'know. I can't complain about a game that lets me spam that.

I somehow never realized Galaxy's city was named after Ozma; that's a nice little reference.

Thank you for fixing it! The NDA part wasn’t working for me.

I also sometimes wonder if people are literally drafting parts of reviews in advance of getting hands-on time with the game in order to save time, as there’s been times I’ve seen inaccurate information in reviews because they assumed the game worked just like older games in the franchise or genre.

Thank you for saying that! That is very validating; this has been my main complaint for years now. Too often reviews aren’t actually about the media they are reviewing, but how the media fits into the larger media ecosystem… which is not helpful when I am looking for critique.

And then we have the saving throws for a few more games that provided me with some of my favourite gaming experiences, but failed to make it on previous lists.

This is pretty unquestionably the hardest list to put together for me. I have been trying to vote on these lists with my honest opinions, not metagaming about what does/doesn’t have a chance to get in the top ten, and that’s harder to do here.

First though, we got some newcomers: VR and fan games!

They're standard in Canada, but also I never know which of our cultural traditions are shared with the UK and which are shared with the USA (and which are shared with both/neither).

Even knowing the specifics of the game's age rating in advance, I was still shocked to see a lot of those themes/ideas in a first-party Nintendo game. They did NOT pull their punches.