Hey on the same day as the Nintendo Direct how about that!

Well I didn’t notice any “leaks” for this one that aren’t entirely stupid… So my expectation is simply that this will be shit. Like every State of Play. These things are always awful. My expectations? Shitty games that won’t be exclusive to PS5, making this whole presentation pointless and stupid.

My general expectation for every State of Play is the same: even the best ones don’t have anything interesting, so no, matter how good this may end up being, it will still have been a shitty waste of time.

So yeah, let’s go I guess. Again, like the Nintendo Direct, this is a live reaction.

Well I am actually writing this intro before a Direct was even announced (today is September 10). Because it’s pretty clear we’ll get a Direct this month at the same kind of time as every September in the last 8 years, and I assume 13 or 14 for the date of the Direct (*Edit: okay it was 14, let me update the title*).

There are rumors going for this one from Pyoro, one of the only “leakers” that has actually been somewhat trustworthy so far. Namely a DK game that SEEMS to be Mario vs DK-related… hopefully it’s not one of the Minis games and actually a return to the original MvD, which was a take on Donkey Kong 94. Then one for an F-Zero game, which he is heavily hinting at being F-Zero 99 (please no). And one that seems to be hinting at a remaster of the 2 Trace Memory games (the Wii one never came out in America), or at least a Wii game and a DS game that are linked somehow. And there’s no other leaker saying anything credible. Would be funny if this Direct was the one where Pyoro lost his credibility.

My true expectation is, of course, that even a bad Direct has one or two cool things, so in the end I’ll probably have some thing to be happy about here.

Well, let’s go and watch this Direct! These are live reactions as I’m watching the Direct.

There’s the usual February Nintendo Direct. I am gonna react to it. Whoa! So yes I am writing this intro before actually watching the Direct. It could be the most hype Direct ever, it could… not be. I have no idea, and I have no real expectations.

The rumor mill was a bit dry, but got a bit better… 2 hours before the Direct. There’s the Advance Wars rumors which are kinda dumb (the SKU changed on the eshop so people think that means it’s coming out right away, the other is a random wal-mart employee saying he saw a standee with a February 10 release date for it but provided no proof)… possible, but not likely based on why Nintendo indefinitely delayed the game. There was a bit of an “oof” rumor from Exputer saying they saw video evidence of a remake of Baten Kaitos, though this rumor is weirdly contradicted by this image just popping out a bit before the Direct showing a remaster collection of Baten Kaitos 1 and 2 rather than a remake of the first (could be faked of course). So either way, that’s possible. And that’s about it as far as anything interesting and new. There’s a Syluxhunter thing from last year about some F-Zero related thing, though no timing or details were given for that so… eh. Oh and there’s the whole TotK 70$ price and Metroid Prime 4 appearing/disappearing from online stores kinda randomly, I don’t think that’s particularly useful info as far as content… but it WOULD be bullshit if Nintendo upped the price of their games.

As far as expectations, I’m expecting Tears of the Kingdom to be shown very briefly, I feel it will be a bit more of a tease, leading to a separate Direct just for that game closer to release. I’m expecting something about Pikmin. I’m expecting to not see Metroid Prime 4. And I’m expecting DLC stuff for Fire Emblem, Mario Kart and maybe Splatoon. So that’s a good 5-8 minutes of the 40 that was announced accounted for, which means there’s a lot of time which could just be anything. And also Samba de Amigo since that popped up just a bit before the Direct started, no excitement for that.

So as usual, I’ll be giving short comments about everything in the presentation, and finish it off with my overall thoughts.

Let’s go!

Well yesterday we got the announcement of both a new Nintendo Direct (the first big one since early February) and, a bit later, a new State of Play. Because both are on the same day, I figure… let’s make them fight.

So here I’m going to do my usual for gaming presentations. I’ll give a bit of an intro, then for each I will post my LIVE reactions with my overall thoughts afterwards… and then we’ll make them fight, see which one was better.

I’m writing this intro and the next segment before the Nintendo Direct starts, that way I currently have no idea how well either of them did.

So let’s go!
Skip to Nintendo Direct
Skip to State of Play

Okay well I did say in the not-E3 posts that I would post a reaction for the Direct Nintendo would put out. I ignored the Xenoblade one because it’s dumb to spoil yourself too much on a game, but this is a bit closer to a normal Direct so… there you go.

Nintendo isn’t saving E3 this year, but hey, this might have… stuff.

I expect Dragon Quest Treasures to be shown (to what extent, who knows) since that is meant to get new info this month and there’s only a few days left, Mario + Rabbids 2 needs a release date (which got leaked by Ubisoft yesterday lol), and Bayonetta 3 has been very quiet since the trailer last year and it’s meant to be out this year still… That’s my only real predictions. The rumor mill has been going, but it always does, and it’s always wrong (even when it’s right, it’s just lucky guesses).

AS PER USUAL I am writing this intro before watching the Direct, and my reactions are written live as I’m watching it.

Let’s go I guess.

I’m super happy E3 was not a thing this year. The ESA sucks and E3 has been very pointless for a while, providing nothing good for the consumer. With the internet being a thing for a long time now, we should have evolved beyond E3 LOOOOOOOOOOONG ago. Nintendo, with their Directs, set the stage to how game announcements should happen. Sony badly copied Nintendo with their State of Play presentations (there’s been only ONE of them that has been any good so far (the March 2022 one)), but went a step further by dissociating from E3 pre-pandemic. That’s good. All companies need to dissociate from E3.

With E3 gone in 2022, people thought there’d be nothing, because people are idiots who thing the gaming industry revolves around E3 for some reason. But the presentations came just the same. Of course they would, game companies don’t just… stop announcing games because there isn’t an expo for journalists.

So let’s talk about this year’s not-E3 and see if any of the presentations were any good! Hint: no.

Well, so far not-E3 2022 has been pretty terrible. Very few highlights, very boring, games kinda melting into each other because everything is so similar to other things that are also being shown. I hope Microsoft can finally break us out of this funk. I am writing this short intro before the show, so my current expectations? Basically nothing. Lots going around about Goldeneye, but that’s about it. I’m sure we’ll see another new Forza too because it’s Xbox and apparently we need one same-y car game every year from them.

I don’t know if I’ll post this, but either way, I will have an overall not-E3 post once all this shit is done. I am waiting a bit to post that until we see when/if Nintendo does something.

Well, the countdown is about to be done.

I probably won’t post this. Sony’s State of Play presentations are always a bit lame. The last State of Play actually had several interesting announcements, with the problem on Sony’s side being that there was nothing exclusive, so all the cool announcements were PC and Switch games. Good job Sony.

So if I feel like this will probably also sucks, but I could be surprised. Maybe a PC game or two will pop up!

One of the first few posts in this blog, after terminating my old blog The Save Points and starting JOBOCAN Game Reviews, was a reaction to the February Direct last year… So I figure… why not do it again? I’ve actually reacted to most “main” Nintendo Directs even though I wasn’t planning to, so I might as well keep it going. I haven’t been doing this for much else outside of E3 since the competition isn’t announcing or releasing anything, or doing fun events like this (and, when they do, they’re awful… Hi Playstation), but hey, at least Nintendo tries to be somewhat interesting.

I am writing this intro the day before the Direct, as I always do. I have no real predictions here. There are some weird rumors like a 1-2 Switch sequel, and TWO different Metroid Prime rumors that have been going on for years without anything happening (Prime Trilogy rumors being around since 2017, and those have transitioned into Prime 1 Remaster rumors more recently… pick a side, shitty fake leakers), but I’d say there’s nothing really good to latch on to that’s even slightly believable except the Batman one… which is extremely minor so who cares.

I don’t know what to expect beyond probably a bit of Splatoon 3 stuff since that’s probably coming out around E3 season, but otherwise, it could be anything. I am 99% sure Metroid Prime 4 won’t be there because it’s only been 3 years since it started development, so it’s not like it’s in hell status or anything, and I don’t think the BotW sequel will be there either as that will likely get a big E3-season blowout. So… Yeah, could be fun, might not be, I have no idea. There’s plenty it could be, but Nintendo is largely unpredictable. Like, last February’s Direct had 4-6 new first-party game announcements depending on how you count that. So there’s reason to believe they might do that again… but it’s Nintendo, they don’t do patterns, so they might not.

No idea if I’m actually gonna post this, we’ll see if I click the publish button after writing it. If I do post it… let’s go and watch this Direct!

2021. It was 2020 again, but weirder. On my side, I’ve been stuck in my house, working from home, since March 2020, I’m fine with that. Just working, working out, watching an unhealthy amount of vtubers and playing an unhealthy amount of video games. I had cataracts all of 2020 and early 2021 so I could barely see for a while, I got those fixed this year so that’s nice. I don’t really have much else to say on the non-gaming side of things, no big health emergencies in the family this year so that’s good. Not much activity overall. That said there was SOMETHING new… this website. I talked about this in the first post I made here, but I had a different site before this (called The Save Points, which originally was a group project but became a solo project fairly quickly), but ran into some DNS issues and decided to abandon the site I had built for the last 13 years. Switched how I did a few things, but yeah, having fun with this new site now. Definitely want to improve things a bit, I want to post more than I do.

As far as gaming, 2021 was actually pretty solid. I don’t know how it happened, but I constantly had something to play. Every month had at least 2 great games (plus a bunch of smaller decent games) which is not something that happens in most years. I didn’t even play all the games I was interested in this year, it was too busy. I didn’t even play too many stinkers, pretty much just Outriders, Axiom Verge 2 and NEO TWEWY.

So I have my own way of doing things for the GotY. Instead of being lame and choosing one winner, or being even lamer and doing a bunch of weird meaningless categories that have a ton of shitty nominations (made by people who hate video games), I just choose, like, 7 winners. I do put one winner on top of everyone else for maximum subjectivity, but yeah, 7 winners, the 7 best games of the year, let’s fucking go.

Since this IS an end-of-year post about the top games of the year, I do want to take the time to look back on some things, so I’ll rant about the console manufacturers a bit and whatever else catches my fancy, then select the 7 GotY winners. I also list a bunch of honorable mentions because I’m just a nice guy like that.

Oh hey I conveniently linked to the relevant sections if you want to skip my inane rantings. You’re welcome.

• Rant (seriously skip this part if you just want to see the winners)
• Games of the Year Winners
• Games of the Year Super Winner
• Honorable mentions

I will note before this that there are in fact games I haven’t played. So if a game you liked isn’t on the list, know that it’s either that I didn’t play it, or it sucked balls. It’s okay, you’re allowed to like bad games. Also I didn’t get a PS5 this year (for reasons I might rant about), so the one good exclusive on it is also a game I didn’t play. I’m sure Ratchet is great (impressions are basically all positive), I just didn’t want to buy a PS5 just to play that one game. I didn’t play Village (though I did analyze the gameplay from watching Gura playing it, it needs some help). I hear great things about Inscryption, I didn’t buy it. And there’s other games I’m interested in I didn’t play like Cruisn’ Blast, Super Robot Wars 30, Eastward and probably some others. I also literally just got a few other 2021 games that I will review later, maybe they’re good too.

Without further ado, let’s do this thing. 2021 Games of the Year let’s fucking go!