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!

I was pretty excited about this game. It looked really cool. It’s pretty okay, but by the end, I was just tired of playing it. I have 92% of the game done now and I’m not feeling like finishing it.  I don’t really have a whole review’s worth of things to say about it. So I’ll keep it quick, and vague, and I will not even have a real “read more” link.

The game is kinda fun with the deliberately slow movement/attacks (which makes sense, to simulate the kind of stuff you see in Kaiju movies… it’s not a complaint I’m actually completely fine with this) and an okay amount of okay attack options, but every level is the same thing with the same combat scenarios over and over, there’s barely any level design, and not much going on other than the fact that it’s a super cool concept that’s executed okay-ish. I like what it’s doing, but I wish it did it a bit better.

I’d recommend this one at a good discount only, as there are lots of much better recent beat ’em ups like Streets of Rage 4 or River City Girls or the Kunio-kun + Double Dragon collection. Get those before getting this one.

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!

There’s a couple games that I recently played at least a bit of, but that I don’t think I’ll fully finish or get to the end of, at least yet. Some of those came from my recent subscription to PC Game Pass using the absolutely awful Xbox app on PC, some I got on Switch.

The 6 games I’ll be quickly “review” here are Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon, Prinny Presents NIS Classics Volume 1: Phantom Brave / Soul Nomad, Dodgeball Academia, Astria Ascending, Dark Alliance: Dungeons & Dragons and Forza Horizon 5.

So there you go, before I go into my GotY posts, here’s a couple games I’m not likely to post full reviews for.

Let’s go!

Another one I dunno if I’ll post, we’ll see after the thing ends, see if I have any particularly big reactions or not. Or something to rant about like with the Playstation thingy where Sony had nothing to show. I will note I am writing this intro hours before the Direct starts.

There are rumors, but they’re very solid, because they literally come from Nintendo’s japanese website. Bayonetta 3 finally getting SOME real info would be solid, and I’m really curious about that Kirby game (Kirby Discovery of the Stars, I think that title is probably wrong). Outside of that leak, there’s lots of rumors for a new Xenoblade, I’m not putting a lot of stock into that one. And there’s some stuff like new systems added to NSO which… who cares, paying for online on a console is a scam.

I do have fairly low expectations overall for this Direct, but September directs always have some kind of big announcement. There’s definitely gonna be a bunch of stuff we already know about for some of the games coming out this year as well as some of the early-next-year stuff, the possibility of a Smash character reveal (though I could see that being later). We definitely won’t see Metroid Prime 4.

So it’s starting in a minute, let’s see if there’s something here, and after we’ll see if I’m even posting this. Let’s go!

I don’t even know if I’m gonna post this. I’m writing this intro literally 2 minutes before this presentation is going live. We’ll see after the presentation if I do end up posting it, I only will if there’s something to actually talk about here. And I will look things up before I post too.

The PS5 has been a massive disappointment so far, and I certainly hope that they’ll try to reverse course here and actually announce games. That’s all I want, for the console to have something that makes it worth buying.

So let’s go, it’s starting in a few seconds, let’s hope it’s good.

So this thing was announced yesterday. People are really excited. I was excited too, but, being me, I actually did something called “thinking” and “researching”, and… yeah, this thing… I’m not excited anymore.

So I’m gonna rant a bit about this thing. Because dammit, I don’t rant enough.