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It’s time for another installment of Week: End Game: On! What titles are the Nintendojo staffers playing this weekend? Read on to find out!
Jon Stevens
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a great game, and the HD remake is a good way to bring it to a new generation… but I don’t have the HD remake of it yet. Instead then, I decided to go back to The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD this weekend! It’s been said so many times before, but the game’s timeless art style really does mean that it holds up particularly well to this day and the remake is just beautiful. It’s an aspect of Twilight Princess HD that (from what I have seen) isn’t quite handled as well, partly due to the original art style of the game. The gameplay is where these games really shine, though, as shown by the fact that I can still go back and play Wind Waker a fourth or fifth time through and still love it.
Elsewhere, I’ve been enjoying giving witty and intelligent answers to my friends’ questions in Miitomo (cough) and have been playing Super Mario World on the Wii U Virtual Console while getting through my backlog of Netflix TV shows– another example of a game that continues to stand the test of time!
Marc Deschamps
Pokkén Tournament and Pokémon Red are still taking up the majority of my gaming time lately, but I decide to crack the shrink-wrap on one of the games that’s been sitting on my shelf for a few months now: Shovel Knight! I have to say, Yacht Club Games’ first title is a total blast. My thumb is kind of aching after an hour and a half, but I’m really impressed with how fun this game is. They really nailed the old-school aesthetic! I’m pretty happy for the music download, too. This game has some very catchy music!
Silly as it might sound, I also really love Shovel Knight’s instruction manual. A few years back, I touched on my love for the old days of instruction manuals, and this one really hearkens back to the days when publishers took some time to make them a worthwhile read. It’s a shame what a rarity this has become.
I also made a very exciting video game-related purchase this weekend: Dark Horse’s Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Link statue! GameStop had this gorgeous piece on clearance and I just couldn’t pass it up. Finding a place that’s toddler-proof enough for it is going to be a bit of a challenge, but it’ll be absolutely worth it!
Kevin Knezevic
Now that I’ve become Pokémon League Champion and captured Mewtwo, my time with Pokémon Blue is winding down, so I’ve decided to revisit Twilight Princess HD this weekend. It’s been a couple of weeks since I last played the title, but I found myself immediately drawn back into it. Despite its age, I’m continually impressed with the quality and detail of the game’s dungeons; I’ve just completed the Arbiter’s Grounds, and it remains one of my favorite temples in the entire series. While it’s not as overtly macabre as the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time, I’ve always felt the Arbiter’s Grounds exuded an almost Eternal Darkness-like atmosphere, thanks to the implements of torture and the mysterious statuary that decorate its sandswept ruins– and the fact that it culminates in one of the greatest boss fights in Zelda history reinforces just how much I love the dungeon. I’m hoping to complete the Snowpeak Ruins and add a second Mirror of Twilight fragment to my collection before the weekend is up!
On the handheld front, I’ve been making modest progress in Yo-kai Watch. I’m really enjoying the way the main quest is segmented into episodes, almost like the animated series it spun off, but I can’t say the same about the sidequests, most of which have you running back and forth between the different districts of Springdale (which is a fairly large city). I wish more RPGs handled sidequests the same way as the two Xenoblade Chronicles games, which automatically reward you after completing an objective, rather than forcing you to report back to the questgiver to collect your reward. Oh, well, that seems to be the trend in Level-5’s role-playing titles. Going forward, I’ll likely ignore any more sidequests I see so I can finally finish up the main story and move on to a different title. Maybe it’s about time I finally finish Oracle of Ages?
What games are you playing this weekend? Tell us below in the comments!
