Week: End Game: On 05.26.2012

With E3 a little over a week away, the staff are hard at work preparing for the inevitable deluge of news and reveals that is sure to be unleashed upon the world. While it’s certainly an exciting time for Nintendo fans everywhere, the unfortunate consequence of this is that it doesn’t leave us much in the way of free time to indulge in the very hobby that we’re writing about. Alas, such is the cruel irony of being a games journalist.

That being said, there wouldn’t be much sense in letting an entire weekend go to waste, which is why a few of us have taken the time out of our busy schedules to let you know what we’ve been playing recently. I know, the sacrifices we make for you guys are great.

Bradly Hale

So now that the novelty has worn thin and I’ve punched Diablo in the face more times than I care to publicly admit, it’s back to my regular gaming routine. Thus, I’m thinking this weekend will see a lot of Mario Tennis Open, which you’ll be able to read all about in my review that’ll be going up sometime in the near future. Of course you can rest easy knowing I’ll be servin’ up a slice of that Peach cobbler – see what I did there – on my sexy Midnight Purple 3DS, which by the way is beautiful. Noah, stop waiting on a redesign announcement and just buy one already!

I also plan on fitting in some time for Skylanders. Due to the release of Diablo, I sort of put my gaming life on hold. Now that I’ve freed myself from that addiction, I think it’s high time I give the game the attention it rightfully deserves. As a result, I suspect I’ll take a little trip to GameStop tonight and spend an unreasonable amount of money on some figurines. Hell, maybe I’ll even find myself a Gold Flameslinger that I can use to extort unlawful sums of cash from poorly informed moms who, in an effort to achieve Mother of the Year status, will unquestionably shell out the cash to appease their sniveling child.

…Anyhow, aside from all that, and much like all my previous weekends, Sunday will be spent on yet another session of Dungeons & Dragons. The campaign I’m DM’ing has really taken off in the last few weeks, so I’m excited to see where the story goes from here.

Kevin Knezevic

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to pick up Mario Tennis Open this past weekend, so for now I’ll just have to content myself with playing the games I already own. I’ll likely dive into Xenoblade Chronicles again (provided I’m able to make the time for it), continuing my journey to the Bionis’ head. When last I played, I had just arrived at the Nopon’s home village in the heart of Makna Forest and met Riki, the race’s chosen hero (and my first Nopon companion). It’s clear that I still have quite a ways to go before I complete my adventure (it certainly doesn’t help that I’m easily distracted and spend most of my play time doing quests rather than progressing through the storyline), but I’m loving every single minute of it thus far. I can see now why Katharine has been raving about it for so long!

I may also try to sneak in a few sessions of Kid Icarus: Uprising as well. Now that I’ve cleared the game’s story, I spend most of my time with it playing Light vs. Dark mode (typically against the hilariously-named bots), but I may go back and retry a few of the earlier chapters on higher intensities, if only to see what new treasures they’ll provide. Being able to fuse weapons together and pass on their properties has turned me into quite the lootwhore!

Katharine Byrne

I’ll be playing a bit more Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon this weekend. I started it earlier in the week having managed to finally finish New Play Control! Pikmin, and I think I’m nearly at the end. It’s been an…interesting game, to say the least. The controls are ever so wonky, and half the time your main objectives are wandering round various closed in environments searching for something, but there’s still a certain charm about it. It’s perhaps not enough to forgive the game entirely– the combat’s pretty shocking, you get stuck on even the smallest pixels of furniture, and the flashlight isn’t particularly helpful half the time– but I think the real drawback of the game is that you spend so much time underground or indoors. The few glimpses you get of the outside world are hauntingly beautiful, and had the game given us more environments to explore under the stars, I think I would be enjoying it a lot more. Instead, I’m poking around a broken down hotel or underground shopping mall in the dark, and I just feel like there’s something missing. I quite like the idea of all the little memory items you find knocking about though– they remind me of the letters I enjoyed so much in Pandora’s Tower— but I still don’t really know much about what happened in the game’s past to result in the way the world is now. I want to know a bit more about why there are so few “survivors” and why everything’s been abandoned, even if it’s only hinted at very slightly. I’m hoping I’ll find out a bit more by the end of the game, but for now I’ll be enjoying yet another trip down a long underground passage.

Adam Sorice

Normally my gaming time is super limited due to things like school work, pretending to have a social life and, most importanty, making sure Nintendojo keeps ticking over. With all the many perks of being a video game journalist (Casual Fridays are every damn day!) one drawback is that it can very easily kill your desire to actually play games. I know that after ten hours of copy editing, endless emails and content management the last one I want to do is be taunted by the “Continue?” death march of Mario and co. Sometimes you just need to power down and go do anything else.

However, while that may be my usual mode of gaming-reluctance, the last week or so have seen me diving back into Pokémon Black faster than a Choice Scarf Jolteon using Extremespeed. After enjoying the game initially to some degree (I defeated N and then padded around a bit, there was no initial desire to catch ’em all and rechallenge the league) the buzz emanating from Black 2 and White 2 had me back in the grassy scenery of Unova to get caught up to speed in time for the release of the sequels in autumn. While my former completionist attitude towards Pokémon games began to wane after Ruby and Sapphire (a generation that required so many different games in order to complete the damn Pokédex that you needed to remortgage all your worldly crap) I’ve slipped right back into my gotta-catch-’em-all mentality of late as I casually stormed through all of Black and White‘s legendary Pokémon and furiously began completing my shamefully empty Pokédex.

That was about a week ago? Now I’ve only 25ish Pokémon left to complete the Unova Dex (I may have to reset the calendar on my DS to catch a Cryogonal, I’m not waiting ’til August) and I can see a summer ahead of me that involves tracking down the likes of Heatran, Giratina, Regigigas and restarting HeartGold to experience it all over again. My only concern is that I’ll delete my Notch-Eared Pikachu.

The fact that this is troubling me suggests that even though I’ve been out of the Pokéloop for a while, it might not have been such a bad thing that I left in the first place…

PS – Can anyone let me borrow their Thundurus? Pleeaaaaaaasssseeee.

Now we turn the question unto you, dear reader. What’s on your agenda this weekend? Have you also picked up Mario Tennis Open, or will you be looking elsewhere for your gaming fix? Let us know in the comments section!