Five minutes into the game, I'm talking to a guy in the opening area base camp, he's guarding a door or something, then BAM we're in combat

One of my team is immediately killed, then I'm bombarded with tutorial popups (whose text formatting is all fucked up because I set text size to "very large" in a vain attempt to make it easier on the eye)

Another team member goes down, a few more popups, I half wonder if this is a scripted thing so I play along, the remaining two team members die

GAME OVER

Aye, agreed

I remember seeing screenshots of this, reading it was Japan-exclusive, grumbling for a week, then forgetting all about it. When it arrived in Europe nearly a year later, it felt like a dream. Constant state of "How is this allowed? How is it possible?" while playing, laughing the whole time.

I feel very lucky it came at just the right period for me to get an hour of 4-player every day. I never got tired of it. Thinking about Fisher carrying someone off the edge and screaming "KONG SUICIDE" in their face makes me chuckle to this day.

Here's one of those games I saw everybody raving about but didn't really feel the punch of OH WOW THIS IS GREAT

And yet I've bought it at least twice, played through to the early ending, and then again (dropping it shortly before the end cos it kicked my ass). There's something about it that wouldn't leave me be, so I had another go just after Christmas, and there it is. Finished just now and loved every minute.

I like when a game can establish its own little world without battering you over the head with it. You press start, stuff is happening, you're already in the middle of something big, it's not even about you, just do your best to understand and help if you can.

I've immediately started it again so I can save Curly Brace x

I know I played this at launch, there's a completed file in slot 1 under the name "Luigi", but I'm genuinely shocked at how much of this I'd forgotten. Big jump high-fiving myself for picking this as my Christmas playthrough instead of the usual OoT, it was like having a whole new Zelda as an extra surprise gift.

I love it when the little guy is fun to move around, and the full analog feel is so good here. Particularly liked running around in circles after chatting with each sage, mind racing with the possibilities of this style without a fixed perspective.

The whole structure, both overworld and dungeons, had me exploring and backtracking and testing my limits (especially as I foolishly went Hero Mode). Made for a much more thoughtful and intricate adventure, really ingrained the map in my head, which I'm thankful for. After your first visit, a Hyrule ought to be a place you can come back to for a holiday.

Beautiful, perfect, lovely.

I'm on my 3rd 3DS, but this one's seen two MonHuns, so the hours the slide pad has been though must be in four figures by now, and yet it still feels smooth and responsive and okay yeah maybe a little slippery on the thumb sometimes but that's mostly my fault. Bang these on a joycon someone please.

I mentally started writing this while I was waiting for a monkey bar to move very slowly into the right position for me to progress. I started watching it move. How is it moving? A hovering rock. Why is it moving? Because halfway through development somebody wrote "friction" on a whiteboard and it accidentally got into everybody's heads that this was a huge fuckin priority.

Everything about this game, apart from the combat itself, is a barrier to enjoyment. It's like they held a company-wide focus group and implemented every single idea. It's all menus and tutorials and virtual collectables and skins and seasons and XP and poses and please just shut up I want to shoot the monsters.

And it's so patronising. Look at the map! Here's where you'll be having a fight! Oh just wait up a moment, I know you've not even seen this enemy yet, but here's a little video of exactly how to defeat it optimally! Off you pop! Don't worry about missing secrets, we've put big yellow question marks up, and you can zip back to them any time! Have fun!

Like others have said, all the lore guff feels like a big misstep too. Mind in 2016 where someone tried to explain the plot and Doomguy just ripped the comms panel off the wall and went towards the nearest demon? Good times. Here you spend the first half hour fighting to get to a meeting, you listen to what they're saying and let them escape, then the next job is to track them down and kill them? THEY WERE RIGHT THERE!

When I went to play today, I noticed that the icon on the console dashboard said "Doom Eternal Battlemode". I thought maybe I could remove the battlemode bit, save some drive space, but no that's the eighty gig main game. The campaign is a ten gig add-on that can be deleted. The focus here was always live service shite with a mobile game style interface. Obnoxious.

Combat's real good though eh

Picked this up for the boy for Xmas. Seems pretty soulless, but the golfing itself looks solid, and that's all he really cares about.

He's bafflingly obsessed with golf. NES Golf, Golf Story, Wii Sports golf, 51 Worldwide Games golf...slowly realising that one day I'll have to to explain the evil of IRL golf. Parenting is hard.

I had a go and immediately got a hole in one, so I'm retiring as ultimate champion.