The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was already my most anticipated video game of 2023 by a very wide margin. Then Nintendo went and released the trailer embedded below and I… I don’t think I can wait another month!
Zeltik already has an incredibly thorough analysis video up (nearly an hour long!), but rest assured that I’m going to be obsessively watching him, BanditGames, MonsterMaze, NintendoBlackCrisis and other Zelda-focused YouTube channels as I soak in as much discussion of this footage as I possibly can until the game proper launches in May.
Uh, so this happened over a week ago. I watched it on my work laptop, to take advantage of the second screen, but I also can’t access WordPress from said laptop. So I wrote down all these notes while watching and only now have gotten around to publishing them.
Pikmin 4 – I like the music. New onion design? Ice pikmin… cool. Ooh! A pupper pal! Dungeons are back? Overall, it looks like another Pikmin, which is good since we haven’t had one in 10 years.
Here is a big ol’ list of all the video games that I spent a significant amount of time playing in 2022. It’s not a comprehensive list, as I left off a few little indie games that were more “experiences”, games that I gave up on after a single session, and games that aren’t really games (like Rocksmith and Fitness Boxing). If you’d like to know how I felt about any of them, I included the month in which I started playing each one, so you can conveniently look up the appropriate Month End Round-Up post.
Of note is that of the 75 games listed below, 53 were eligible for my “Top X of 2022” list. I’ve narrowed it down to the ones I liked best, and I was left with fifteen finalists. Now I have the unenviable task of deciding if I want my GOTY list to just be 15 games, or if I want to try to figure out which five to cut to make it a nice, round Top Ten. Or, should I add seven more games to make it the Top 22 of ’22? Find out in… I don’t know, like a week or two, maybe? I’m going to try to get it done before February, anyway.
I played every main game in The Legend of Zelda series last year, and recorded those playthroughs for YouTube content. This is old news. But in the highly unlikely scenario where this is someone’s very first TE post, that sentence provides important context.
What’s news to everyone, though, is that I’ve kept all of those videos on my hard drive all this time because I wanted to look at some of the technical stats of that whole situation, and just haven’t gotten around to it. But I need to reclaim some of that hard drive space, so now is the time! Firstly, I want to look at how long each game took to play:
Yep, it’s that time again. Time to read my knee-jerk reactions to all the games that appear in Nintendo’s newest hype commercial. Let’s-a go!
Fire Emblem Engage – I like the trailer, and it looks amazing, but I just don’t really care about Fire Emblem that much. However, there’s only room for Square-Enix TRPGs in my life.
It Takes Two – Released on every other platform last year, it was a big hit, but I just can’t be bothered. It’s a co-op game, after all, and I have no co with whom to op.
Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse: One day, I’ll get into the Fatal Frame series. I’ve always been very interested, but never made the time. Probably won’t happen in 2022, though. Fun Fact: My ex-wife who wasn’t really into video games had played more Fatal Frames than I have.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC – A new Hero character, challenge battle mode, and… swimsuits… of course. Dammit, Japan. *smh*
Following yesterday’s remembrances of the Nintendo 3DS, I decided to open up the records app and take a good, long look at all of the games I played on the system throughout its lifetime. I definitely could transcribe the entire list of 254 games, but I settled on just listing any game or app that I used for over ten hours. That’s still 74 different pieces of software!
For each year that passes, I become more and baffled that this website still exists. Like, I have immense difficulty focusing on anything for more than about 10 minutes at a time, and a list of unfinished projects that could wrap around the Earth. How am I still doing this???
I don’t have an answer to that question. But Nintendo recently asked themselves a similar question, in relation to keeping the ol’ 3DS family of systems relevant. Their response was “We’re not.” and earlier this week, it was announced that the 3DS eShop will be shutting down in March of next year. To be more specific, you’ll no longer be able to make purchases at that point. Presumably, the shop will still exist so that people can still download all the games they’ve paid for. Presumably.
“But Ryan!” you shout, incredulously “Where was Part 3??”
I’ll tell you where Part 3 is. It’s here. I just didn’t add it to the post title, because I didn’t want to. There you go. There’s no lost chapter or anything. Just me being silly and inconsistent.
Anyway, just for kicks, here is the list of video games that I had considered for my 2021 Top 10 list, but didn’t quite make the cut. I think that these are all great games, but they just didn’t affect me the same way that the winners did. I would absolutely recommend any game from this list.
Downfall (PC)
Ys Origin (Switch)
Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen (PC)
Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ The Final Chapter (PC)
Well, my friends, I’ve done it. Throughout the course of 2021, I played every “core” Legend of Zelda video game (and one spin-off). It was a fun “project”, and I finally played/finished the few titles that I’d never gotten around to before.
What everyone is dying to know, I’m sure, is where Breath of the Wild is going to fit on my ranking list. And I’m finding it incredibly difficult to place it! Honestly, BotW is such a radical departure from the typical Zelda formula that it feels like comparing a papaya to oranges. So I think that finding a place for it will require me to stop and really consider why I’ve placed each game as I have.
I like that Nintendo sends out little summaries of your gaming statistics at the end of each year now. Well, I don’t like seeing the actual figure of hours I’ve wasted on video games, but I’m a big fan of data! Unfortunately, their 2021 website is a little less printscreen-friendly than it was in 2020, so you only get to see the highlights:
Keeping in mind that this is only effective as of December 14, so we can probably add another 10 hours of Breath of the Wild on there (nice).
Otherwise… shocking revelations! 48 hours of Fitness Boxing 2 is fine, but it should have been double that, in my opinion. I’ve really been slacking off as far as exercise goes, but it’s just so hard to care, you know? 47 hours in Monster Hunter Rise is nigh unbelievable to me. I typically log between 200-300 hours in any given MH game, and for my money, Rise is the most fun game in the series to date. So what gives? Probably too much Zelda.
The January spike would have been due mostly to Picross S4. March was when Monster Hunter hit, but I also spent what felt like forever playing Pixel Puzzle Makeout League. April was all about Ys Origin and Picross S5. August saw high numbers thanks to the plodding The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I spent a lot of time in October playing all of the games in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, and it’s safe to say that November and December were split between Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Shining Pearl.
How many of those would I have remembered if not for my handy-dandy month end posts? Fewer than you might think!