#oneaday Day 678: Chillin' with my Tomodachi

On something of a whim — and after seeing a number of people whose opinions I generally trust enthusing about it — I decided to pick up the new Tomodachi Life game for Switch. I didn't really know much about it going into it, and I bounced hard off the two separate attempts I've made to get into Animal Crossing, so it's not a decision I took lightly. But I'm pleased to report after a brief play at lunchtime — and a much, much longer play this evening — I'm well and truly charmed.

This is Nintendo at its most "software toy" I think I've ever seen them — although I say this with the caveat that I never played the 3DS version of Tomodachi Life. It's a delight. It's like playing The Sims without having to do the boring and annoying bits. It's like playing a citybuilder without having to worry about complicated management things. It's what mobile and social games might have been if they had never been corrupted by greed and predatory monetisation strategies.

Above all, though, it's a medium through which you can express and play with your creativity and imagination, and I love that. While the first couple of hours or so are deliberately constrained to introduce you to the basic features of the game and its interface, it doesn't take long to get to a point where you've unlocked most of the main "mechanics", such as they are, and can start using them to play with your creations in the little world you gradually build for them.

It's possibly the best use of the "Miis" that Nintendo have had on their consoles since the Wii days, and the delightfully lo-fi synthesised speech they talk in — no AI-generated voices here — is a pleasant reminder of a more innocent age.

That can be said about the whole experience, really. It's a reminder of when we all had the capacity to play imaginatively, only now our imaginations can be supported by interactivity. No longer do you have to pretend your dolls are talking to one another, because now they actually do talk to one another — although you're not always privy to the details of all their conversations. (Rather charmingly, you can catch the odd word here and there, and most of these are things that you've previously entered into the game as subjects for them to talk about with one another, meaning my little collection of Miis likes talking about flatulence, eating sausages, cats and F-15 Strike Eagles.

I'll have some more to say about this delightful little game over on MoeGamer when I've spent a bit more time with it. But for now I can say confidently that I'm glad I decided to take a punt on this silly little game. The kind of silliness it offers is precisely what the world needs right now — much as Animal Crossing came along at the exact right time when the pandemic hit. (Even if I didn't get along with Animal Crossing personally, I at least appreciate what it represented.)

Anyway, I've peppered this article with a few screenshots from this evening's session. As I say, I'll have much more to say in the near future, but for now, I should probably go to bed rather than checking in on everyone one last time this evening…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 517: First impressions from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment arrived today and, keen to see quite how wrong that awful review from the other day was, I booted it up right after work and have been enjoying it since. I'm not very far in yet, and there seem to be a lot of mechanics and structural elements that are still locked, but I like what I see so far.

It's going to be interesting playing this alongside Tears of the Kingdom because, as anyone who has played the latter will know, a plot point in that is Zelda being sent back in time to the founding of Hyrule, and through a sidequest, Link can get occasional visions of key events during her time in the past. What Age of Imprisonment provides is a complete story from Zelda's perspective, from the moment she arrived in the past and was discovered by King Rauru and Queen Sophia, up until… well, I don't know, yet, but I assume some form of "imprisonment" will be involved, likely with Ganon(dorf) at the middle of it.

Thus far the game feels like it's taking some elements from previous Hyrule Warriors games (I say this with the caveat that I've not actually played Age of Calamity as yet) and combining them with some fun new(?) elements. Of particular note is a counterattack system, where major enemies do heavily telegraphed attacks, and you can use your characters' cooldown-based special abilities to interrupt them. This is never not satisfying, particularly when combined with the "weak point" mechanic introduced in the first Hyrule Warriors, where after certain attacks, some enemies reveal a weak spot and, if you batter this down enough, you get to perform a fancy cinematic attack on them.

There are also giant enemies, much like in the original Hyrule Warriors, and these have their own ways of being dealt with. They're not quite so rigid in their "solutions" as the original Hyrule Warriors, though, which is nice. You can, in many cases, jump on them and wail on their weak points while standing on top of them, though, which is always a delight to do in any game that allows you to do so.

The characters seem like fun, too. Particular highlight so far has been Mineru, sister of King Rauru, who is a Zonai scientist lady who commands constructs to do her bidding. Her "run" animation is her riding a motorised unicycle type thing, and most of her attacks involve summoning giant mechanical things, cannons and all manner of other fun stuff to cause chaos over a wide area. I think she's going to be enjoyable to play with, though I'm also intrigued to see what other characters are on offer and how the game incentivises you to play as them.

Mecha-Link has made an appearance, too, and he's predictably fun to play as, handling much as he did in the older Hyrule Warriors. He did conclude his first appearance by literally turning into a spaceship and flying off into the sunset, though, so I am looking forward to the first of his apparent Star Fox-esque sequences, whenever that might arise.

My concern with Age of Imprisonment (and indeed Age of Calamity, when I eventually get around to it) is that neither of them will live up to the original Hyrule Warriors in terms of Stuff To Do. For the unfamiliar, the original Hyrule Warriors, particularly in its Definitive Edition incarnation on Switch, not only had a lengthy story mode to play through (multiple times if you want to get all the rewards), but also had a brilliant mode called Adventure in which you gradually unlocked cells on pixel-art recreations of classic Zelda maps and took part in various battles in each space. Some of these were full-scale battles similar to what you do in the story mode, while others were battles that had some sort of special conditions or rules in place. The sheer amount of stuff to do in the Adventure mode, across a variety of different maps, meant that the original Hyrule Warriors had near-infinite replayability, and with the way Age of Imprisonment seems to be structured, I suspect it doesn't have anything like that.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. It means that Age of Imprisonment might actually be completable. And if and when I'm done with it, I can always return to the original for more of that sweet Adventure mode action.

In the meantime, I'm having a lot of fun with it, and learning today that its soundtrack is by MONACA, best known for their work on the Nier series, has made this game all the more interesting to me. And so I'm off for another battle or two before bed, I think…

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#oneaday Day 455: The Last Banana

I finished Donkey Kong Bananza this evening. I know I said I did that the other day, but I properly finished it this evening — all 777 collectible bananas and all the fossils (collecting all of which is, I was dismayed to discover very late, a prerequisite for getting all of the bananas) then completing the game's monstrously difficult final challenge in order to get… a slightly underwhelming "true" ending, to be honest, but I don't begrudge the game the additional time I spent with it. In fact, some of the game's best platforming challenges are found in the endgame sequence, so it's very much a case of "the journey is more important than the destination" here.

I mostly stuck to my desire to not use a guide for Donkey Kong Bananza, and I'm glad I did that, because dear Lord, a lot of the guides, even from "big" sites out there, are full of wrong information, or outright handwaving away the possibility of providing helpful information, largely because I suspect the author hadn't actually completed the game in some cases. I know this because the absolute final challenge in the postgame is something that could really do with a helpful walkthrough, and all one guide from a big site offered was a paragraph basically saying "use everything you've learned to clear these challenges" without going into any detail whatsoever. Good job!

Another guide even promised to "explain the ending", after there was some pre-release discussion on where this game might fit in "Nintendo canon", if such a thing even exists — then went on to post an entire article that basically shrugged its shoulders and went "I dunno, it's all speculation really". Clickbait at its absolute finest. No wonder the games press — and indeed the whole Internet — is dying.

But anyway. One of the nice things about Donkey Kong Bananza is that it has built-in hint functions. You have to pay the in-game price for them, but by the time you're doing the "cleaning up" required for the postgame, you will generally have plenty of the currency required to purchase these hints, along with a selection of powers that make 1) searching for hidden items and 2) acquiring more of said currency much easier. Consequently, on the few times I did peep at a guide, I found it didn't really help matters, and I inevitably found myself better off just exploring the game for myself and stumbling across things. The game is well-designed enough that you can just piss around and discover pretty much everything it has to offer, and that's testament to Nintendo's skills at making games like this — even with the added wrinkle of almost entirely destructible levels.

So, yeah. I really enjoyed Donkey Kong Bananza. I'm glad. I had a feeling it would be good, because I really enjoyed Super Mario Odyssey, and the same team worked on this. I had my misgivings, because I've never really had a lot of time for Donkey Kong as a character, but I must say, spending a considerable amount of time in his company has brought me around on him. Granted, he's almost as much of a blank slate as his stablemates Mario and Link in terms of characterisation — he has no dialogue whatsoever, despite the other "Kongs" you encounter being able to talk — but his goofy facial expressions and his interactions with Pauline are consistently delightful. Not only that, but they evolve over the course of the game as a whole; the eventual close relationship between Pauline and DK by the end of the game is rather heartwarming to see — even if in the "normal", pre-postgame ending, DK comes across as a bit of a selfish dickhead. It's at times like that you have to remember that he is, in fact, a gorilla.

Donkey Kong Bananza is a great addition to Nintendo's pretty flawless record of first-party games, then. It's definitely a good showcase of the Switch 2, even if other titles in this regard are a bit thin on the ground, and absolutely worth the money, time and effort to fully enjoy it. I'll remember this fondly for a very long time, I feel. But now I need to go to bed!

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#oneaday Day 450: Ooh, banana

I finished the main story of Donkey Kong Bananza last night, and I've been playing through the postgame today. I will do a proper full post about the game as a whole over on MoeGamer in the not-too-distant future, but suffice to say for now that I have had an absolutely lovely time with this game, and I'm very likely going to "100%" it. Or, at the very least, get all the collectible bananas; I haven't decided if I'm going to try and max out the skill tree (which requires a touch of grinding other collectibles to purchase even more bananas that aren't scattered throughout the game world) — probably not.

Donkey Kong Bananza is one of the best examples to date of how Nintendo still understands what makes video games a distinct medium all their own. It tells a story, sure, but that story is brief, to the point and never obtrusive. There is no point in Donkey Kong Bananza where more impatient types will find themselves mashing buttons to bypass dialogue; the emphasis is firmly on keeping you playing, exploring and having a good time.

And the very nature of Donkey Kong Bananza's mechanics means that it is more of a toybox than even the most recent Super Mario games. The fact that a significant portion of each level is completely destructible means there are a lot of challenges you can approach in very different, creative ways. There are obvious "intended" ways for you to solve things, but the game is open to you trying other things and experimenting. Even more so than Super Mario Odyssey, Donkey Kong Bananza rewards you for asking questions of it and going in search of answers. Almost everything you do will reward you somehow; curiosity and creativity are encouraged, and it's very difficult to get "stuck".

That's not to say it's easy. It strikes a good balance between accessibility and challenge factor. Blasting through the main story will probably be fairly breezy for most players, but each of the game's areas has numerous optional challenges that test all sorts of different skills. Donkey Kong is capable of quite a few different actions by the end of the game, but crucially, the game never overwhelms the player with options and obtuse button combinations. Instead, the control scheme is simple and straightforward, and new mechanics are introduced gradually, one at a time, with plenty of opportunity to practice them in a "safe" environment before having to contend with them under more challenging circumstances.

This is, of course, the same philosophy that modern Super Mario games are designed around, and there's a reason: it works. It gives the game a good sense of pace, means it never gets bogged down, but also keeps things constantly interesting. And, by the end of the game, having all these options available to you doesn't mean "pick the right one to succeed"; it instead, under most circumstances, means "pick the one you think will succeed, and you can probably make it happen".

It's a truly magnificent game, and absolutely a good reason to grab a Switch 2 — even if other reasons to have one are still a little thin on the ground right now. (That said, don't discount the Switch 2's improved performance on a significant number of Switch 1 games as a selling point; it really does make a difference, and is a worthwhile upgrade for that alone.)

I've got a week to finish the postgame before we go on holiday. Nothing bad will happen if I don't — and I will probably be taking the Switch 2 with me — but it would be nice to have it all wrapped up before then. I think I've done a lot of the hardest, most challenging/annoying (delete as applicable) postgame objectives already, so now it's just a case of working my way through and cleaning up the remaining objectives on my way to the grand finale. Easy, right…?

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#oneaday Day 426: Dear me, I was...

Having finished No Sleep for Kaname Date, which I will try and make some time to do a proper write-up of soon, I decided, this evening, to play through Dear me, I was… from Arc System Works, a Switch 2 wordless visual novel type thing that is less than an hour long, and which I was pretty certain was going to be an emotional gutpunch. Sometimes you need a good one of those, and Dear me, I was… certainly delivers on that front.

I shan't say too much about the details of the game because, as I say, it's very short, and it's the sort of thing best experienced for yourself — so long as you're open to the idea of what is basically a short animated film with occasional very minor (but nonetheless meaningful in the context of the story) interactions.

The concept is simple: the game follows the life of an unnamed woman, from her earliest childhood memories up to her old age. Each chapter represents a particular part of her life, with each opening with one of the few interactive sequences in the game: her eating breakfast. It's surprising quite how much meaning is layered into these simple sequences, whether it's the way her breakfast evolves as she ages, or little things like how her child self leaves the tomatoes on the side of her plate.

Dear me, I was… is one of those games that is probably going to mean different things to different people, but at its core it's a story about the protagonist's relationship with art, and how she uses it to help process her emotions, connect with other people and reflect on her past. A number of things happen to our leading lady over the course of her life, many of which are rather mundane, but nonetheless meaningful to her as an individual. Some things are left a little ambiguous and open to interpretation, which will doubtless help each individual player to connect with the complete work in their own way, and other things are obvious, indisputable truths, but aren't dwelled on.

I feel like part of the point of the game as a whole is to reflect on the idea that life passes you by before you know it; while, when you're young, you might feel like an eternity stretches ahead of you, as you get older, things definitely feel like they start to accelerate in some ways. Sometimes this makes difficult events from the past easier to let go of or at least reflect on; at others, it makes it all the harder to process things.

The game definitely got me feeling things, and absolutely tearing up at numerous points throughout. I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what was making me feel the various emotions I felt over the course of the game, but it's testament to the game's excellent use of visuals and music to tell its wordless story that I felt those things at all. Of particular note is its use of colour; events unfold in three distinct "styles" as a reflection of the emotion of what is happening at any given moment — or perhaps the protagonist's mental state and feelings — and it hits surprisingly hard when, say, the colour fades from the world, and everything starts to be represented in shades of grey, or even just line art. Likewise, it's almost a relief when you see the beautiful watercolours return; a reflection of how everyone's life is full of ups and downs, and the only person who can truly understand one's own feelings is oneself.

To say too much more would probably be getting into spoiler territory, so I'll leave that there for now. Suffice to say that if you're the slightest bit open to video games as a storytelling medium — don't expect any sort of "mechanics", puzzles or challenge here — this is an essential play. Absolutely one of the most beautiful things I've experienced for quite some time, and highly recommended to those who like this sort of thing.

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#oneaday Day 406: Kong for me

My copy of Donkey Kong Bananza arrived today, and I've spent most of the evening playing it. It's really good! As with most things video game-related, I'll likely do a full write-up on MoeGamer once I've beaten it, but for now I wanted to give a few immediate impressions based on a few hours' play this evening.

The first thing I'll note is that in exploratory games, I am almost certainly absolutely insufferable to watch, because I will never go straight for where I'm "supposed" to go. You drop me into a discrete level, the first thing I will do will be turn around and see if there's anything behind the starting point. I will deliberately run off in the opposite direction to any objective markers, and in many cases find myself running into obstacles well before the game considers that I'm "supposed" to encounter them, often resulting in me having to work out how to use controls that haven't been explained to me yet — or in some cases, finding creative exploits to overcome obstacles without the player's full toolset available.

The reason I note this is because Super Mario Odyssey, the spiritual precursor to Donkey Kong Bananza (they're by the same people), was absolutely built for me. At every point I went climbing around the levels into places I wasn't "supposed" to be going, I'd find a Moon waiting for me, rewarding my curiosity. It felt like the game's designers had anticipated players like me exploring the game to the fullest, and they had ensured that there were plenty of rewarding things available if you did choose to play that way.

Donkey Kong Bananza is, it will doubtless not surprise you to learn, exactly the same. Only this time, you have the option of pummelling a significant portion of the level geometry into oblivion while hunting for hidden secrets. While bashing a tunnel through a mountain often isn't the best way to get somewhere — and the game does have enough "indestructible" materials to mean you can't just dig your way around the whole map — it is often an option. If you have a general idea of where to go but are struggling to find the route you're "supposed" to take… just make your own. Nine times out of ten, you can do that.

Another Nintendo series that I'm very fond of due to it catering to my very worst, most obsessive tendencies in this regard, is Splatoon. While the various single-player campaigns in the Splatoon games and their DLC were all discrete, relatively small levels, they again rewarded player curiosity and willingness to diverge considerably from the critical path. There's some of that DNA in Donkey Kong Bananza, too, because as well as the large, quasi-open world "layers" you explore for the majority of the game, there are also a variety of special challenge missions that you access through special doorways and hatches around the place.

While the combat-centric challenges are usually pretty straightforward — and there's usually a "trick" to each one to complete it efficiently — the more "platformy" challenges typically have three Banandium Gems, the game's main doohickey, to find. Two of these will usually be straightforward: there's usually one at about the halfway point of the challenge and one at the end, the other one is typically concealed a little more deviously. You'll need to peer over the edge of levels, look under things and get creative with your exploration, just like tracking down the optional objectives in Splatoon campaign levels. And it's great.

So yeah. I'm having a lovely time so far. Down to the second "layer" now — didn't quite get all the bananas in the Lagoon layer, but I think I was only missing about four or five in total, so I'll go back for them at some point. That's my weekend sorted, I guess!

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#oneaday Day 401: Kountdown to Kong

I'm looking forward to playing Donkey Kong Bananza. I say this as someone who has always found Donkey Kong himself to be one of Nintendo's least appealing characters, and who has never played any Donkey Kong games past Donkey Kong 3. Yes, that's right; I am a bad enough person to have never played any Donkey Kong Country games, nor did I ever play Donkey Kong 64 back in the day — although there are, I'm sure, some who would say that, DK Rap notwithstanding, I dodged a bullet on that one.

But I'm finding a lot appealing about Donkey Kong Bananza. Chief among this is the fact that it's the Super Mario Odyssey team working on it, and Super Mario Odyssey was superb. Not only was it simply an excellent Super Mario game, but it also remains one of the most technically impressive, visually stunning Switch games. Given how good that game looked on the original Switch's underpowered hardware, I'm confident that Donkey Kong Bananza is going to be particularly pleasant to look at.

It also looks like it's going to be really fun. The super-destructive nature of the gameplay and the fact that you can seemingly smash the absolute shit out of each level is very appealing to me, but it seems like there's going to be plenty of depth and exploration, too. With the various special abilities and collectibles on offer, the game looks almost like it's going to hew closer to a Zelda than a Super Mario game — or perhaps it will be its own distinct thing, which I'm suspecting will be the most likely outcome.

The trailers so far have been pretty spectacular, too, and it sounds as if the music is going to be outstanding. Since the game features a teenage Pauline, whose song Jump Up Super Star! from Super Mario Odyssey was a real highlight of that game's soundtrack, I'm anticipating that there will be at least a few vocal numbers, and indeed the trailers would appear to back that up. In fact, and this feels like a very strange thing to say about Donkey Kong, it looks like this game might actually be quite emotionally engaging.

To be clear, Nintendo is absolutely capable of making a game that can grab you in the feels and make you cry. It's just the absolute last place I would expect to encounter such a game would be in the Donkey Kong series — but you watch the most recent trailers and listen to the soundtrack revealed so far and you tell me that there won't be at least a couple of tearjerker moments throughout.

On top of all that, if the Nintendo eShop is to be believed, the whole thing fits into just 10GB, which is dinky wee tiny by modern game standards, particularly on a 4K-capable console. (For context, Super Mario Odyssey is 5.7GB, so if Donkey Kong Bananza is a project on a similar scale, being roughly twice the file size would track considering the jump in hardware generations. For further comparison's sake, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is about 15GB, as is Xenoblade Chronicles X.)

Given modern triple-A games typically break the 70-100GB boundary these days — and even smaller-scale affairs such as the Tony Hawk remakes are pushing 40GB — it's impressive to see what Nintendo is apparently capable of with a fraction of that file size. Because I'm willing to bet that 10GB will have plenty of substance to it.

Having finished the Switch version of Link's Awakening today, I now have a few days to burn prior to Donkey Kong Bananza arriving. Perhaps it's high time I actually tried some of those older Kong games…?

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#oneaday Day 377: Course correction

A report came out today that suggested the third-party titles which launched alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 have been somewhat underperforming, and physical retailers in particular have noted, to no-one's surprise, that no-one wants to buy those dumbass Game Key Cards. If someone wants to buy a physical game, they want the actual game.

Now, there are likely multiple explanations for this situation, just one of which is the Game Key Card thing. The other is the fact that many of the third-party titles for the Switch 2 launch are games that are already at least several years old — things like Cyberpunk 2077, Bravely Default and Yakuza Zero being the main examples. Granted, each of those things have new features for their Switch 2 incarnations, but they're still games that are 5+ years old, and which have been widely available on other platforms since their launch. There's only really Bravely Default that isn't super-easy to get hold of any more, and even that's no more than £20 or so for a second-hand 3DS copy.

The optimist in me would like to think that both Nintendo and the third-party publishers who have been trying to push Game Key Cards will see the under-performance of these launch titles as a wake-up call, realise they fucked up and make an effort to reverse course. In an ideal world, I would love to see all the launch titles reissued on full, proper cartridges, no downloads required.

I also know that we do not live in an ideal world. In fact, some might say we live in one of the worst timelines imaginable, and as such I do not think it particularly unreasonable to think that one of two things will actually happen: 1) Nintendo and the third parties plug their ears, go "la la la" and hope that people will just suck up Game Key Cards given no other option, or 2) Nintendo and the third parties go "welp, that didn't work" and pull out of physical releases altogether.

Of the two, I think 1) is the most likely outcome, because Nintendo themselves appear mostly committed to doing actual proper cartridges for their own games. Mario Kart World comes on one, for example, and the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza does, too, as do the "Nintendo Switch 2 Version" rereleases of stuff like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and suchlike. We've also seen no indication that titles like Metroid Prime 4 will be coming on Game Key Cards.

The issue, I'm told, is that there are actually only two options for publishers to release games physically on Switch: 64GB "full" cartridges, and 1GB Game Key Cards. And the trouble with the 64GB ones is that they're expensive, so even if a game could easily fit on one of them — like Bravely Default — a lot of publishers are baulking at both the extra cost to them, and the consequent business need to pass that cost onto consumers via higher prices. We're already seeing some resistance to things like Mario Kart World costing £75 — quite right, too — and so it's understandable that publishers would hesitate to go down a path that would require them to charge a high price in order to make their money back. To the Game Key Cards' credit, any games released in this way are a bit cheaper — but you're still talking at least £30-35 for most.

No-one has really said exactly why the 64GB cards for Switch 2 are so expensive, but it's presumably to do with them being based on the high-speed access that SD Card Express offers. A 256GB SD Card Express is a lot more expensive than a regular old SD Card of the same capacity, and if the Switch 2 carts are based on the same tech — which one would assume they are, otherwise why would the system require SD Card Express for digital downloads? — then that means that faster flash memory is pricier in general.

There's also the capacity question: 64GB is probably not enough for some modern games, since file sizes for triple-A titles have been ballooning over the 100GB mark for quite some time now. That said, if Cyberpunk 2077 can fit on a 64GB card, I feel like most other things probably can, too. And if not, well, game developers should rediscover the incredible art of compression. The games industry in general used to be really good at that — look at the amazing stuff you could fit on a single floppy disk in the 16-bit era! — but it feels like it just hasn't been a priority for developers in more recent years. After all, if the capacity is there, might as well use it, right…? Maybe it's time to get out of that mindset.

There's not really an easy solution then, though I suspect people would be at least a bit more open to paying a little more for their games if they knew they were absolutely, definitely getting the full game, complete on cartridge. Of course, these days there are things like patches, content updates and DLC to consider also, with many physical releases from the previous generation already being of questionable archival value as a result, one might say this is something of a losing battle.

Not all hope is completely lost, however; several of the limited-print companies such as Strictly Limited Games and Lost In Cult have committed to releasing their stuff on full Switch 2 cartridges, and I have little doubt that others will follow. Given that a significant portion of my Switch 1 library consists of titles from publishers like this, that makes me feel a little better. It is, however, disappointing to see companies like NIS America announcing things like new entries in the Trails series as being on Game Key Cards. Given that there's a strong crossover between those who enjoy niche-interest stuff like Japanese role-playing games and those who buy a lot of physical games — as my own shelves will attest — this feels like an intensely foolish thing to do.

It's early days, so I'm not ready to write physical gaming's obituary just yet. But I hope the data we've seen today actually causes some people to sit up, take notice and ponder if they might not be just a little better off doing things slightly differently.

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#oneaday Day 373: Getting to grips with Cyberpunk

Played a bit more Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 today, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm starting to get to grips with how to play a bit more stealthily, and it's considerably more gratifying to play this way than going in all guns blazing. The fact you can go in all guns blazing is also gratifying, but after one of the "fixers" telling me I had done sloppy work because in the process of attempting to steal a bit of data, I had murdered everyone in the building, I figured I should learn how to do things a bit more appropriately. I've put all those points into Intelligence and Technical Ability, after all, so I might as well use them!

What's fun about playing stealthily is that it makes each mission feel a bit more varied. Rather than showing up, aggroing the first guard you see and then effectively playing a cover shooter for a bit, you generally have to explore the environment a bit more thoroughly to find suitable means of entry and exit. Canny use of Quickhacks can also allow you to "tag" important objectives, mechanisms and guard positions, so you can keep track of them even when they're not in direct line of sight. And if you take control of security cameras — something you can do with your starter Cyberdeck — you can use their perspective to hack things that aren't within protagonist V's direct line of sight.

I'm anticipating that long-term, you'll probably be able to get into a position where you can complete an entire mission without setting foot inside the building once. I'm not at that point yet, largely because I think I'm lacking some useful Quickhacks for achieving that, but I have reached a point where I can convincingly perform reconnaissance on the target area before attempting to breach it. What then follows is a bit of wandering around outside, usually to find a means of getting on top of the building, and then planning a means of attack that either allows me to avoid everyone, or perhaps perform some silent takedowns.

The silent non-lethal takedowns are immensely satisfying to perform. By sneaking up behind an unaware enemy, you can grab them and drag them into another room before either killing them or knocking them out; the latter option is usually encouraged. Once you have a body, you can then pick it up and move it somewhere, including stuffing it into dumpsters (fatal), the boot of a car (not fatal) or just an out-of-the-way location.

This sort of thing is what I was talking about when I said I hoped Cyberpunk 2077 was going to feel like an old-school PC game. I'm talking sort of Deus Ex and Thief: The Dark Project era. I can't remember the last time I picked up an unconscious body and stashed it somewhere out of sight in a video game. Perhaps that says something about the games I typically play, but it feels like something we don't do a whole lot of in games any more. And that's a shame, because well-implemented stealth sections are a lot of fun.

And there's the rub, I think: I reckon a lot of people, having experienced many bad stealth sections in games, have forgotten what well-implemented stealth is like, and at worst have conditioned themselves to think that stealth is automatically bad. But one thing Cyberpunk 2077 shows is that if you do stealth sections correctly — and by that I mean providing the player with plenty of tools to monitor the situation and strategically plan things out — they can be as fun as all-out gunplay.

Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't do anything especially out of the ordinary. You have a little minimap in the corner of the screen that acts a bit like the radar in Metal Gear games. Enemies can be unaware, cautious or alerted, and it takes a moment for them to "switch" between those states; if you can get out of sight before they fully reach the new state, you can escape their notice. Cameras and security devices can be hacked, manipulated and even turned against enemies. And various things you do — ranging from stumbling over discarded noisy debris to attempting to hack their mainframe — have the potential of giving you away.

Since I'm not very far in the game's main story, I haven't seen a lot of additional options to customise V's cyberware to hack in various different ways, but already I'm starting to see how all this works. My "Netrunner" skill stat is getting a nice workout, and it's satisfying to see that rise with use.

And thus far I've mostly been doing random-ish odd jobs rather than progressing the main story. None of these have felt throwaway, either; they all have narrative context, and feel just as important to the overall setting as the main missions. That's good; it's helping the setting to feel nicely immersive, and making the game a whole lot more enjoyable.

So yeah! I'm glad I picked it up. It looks and runs great on Switch 2 — and with no frame of reference for the PC or PlayStation versions I don't feel like I'm "missing out" on any graphical flourishes — and it's a lot of fun to play. So it may be five years old, but to me it's new, fresh, and exciting — and I'm looking forward to playing more.

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#oneaday Day 368: Punked

I decided to nab Cyberpunk 2077 from the Nintendo Switch 2's launch lineup. I haven't particularly followed the game since its original semi-disastrous launch several years back, but I figured the Switch 2 port would be a good way to jump in with zero expectations. I also wanted to support one of the few third-party developers releasing their game on an actual game card instead of a Game Key Card. Vote with your wallet, send a message and all that.

I'm pretty impressed so far. While the game doesn't run at 4K 60fps, I wasn't expecting it to; it does, however, run at what appears to be a perfectly stable 30fps in 1080p, and it also taught me that my TV apparently does have a 120Hz mode, because despite not actually running at 120fps, it switches to that mode when playing Cyberpunk.

I haven't played a lot of the game so far, but what I was hoping for was something with a similar sort of vibe to classic PC games like Deus Ex. While I don't think Cyberpunk 2077 goes quite as hard on the "immersive sim" side of things as some games like that, I've been enjoying what I've played so far. Playing a CD Projekt game from first-person is a fun novelty, and Night City seems like an interesting location to explore so far. They've also nailed that thing where they drop you into a setting and everyone is using what will initially be unfamiliar slang, but you soon pick up the lingo and feel like you're part of the world.

I haven't really decided what kind of character "my" V is going to be as yet. With games like this, I do often tend to gravitate towards stealthy and hacking-type abilities, but I appreciate there's a stat in this just called "cool", which involves doing cool things like taking down enemies using pistols and being street smart.

Thus far the combat seems to be all right. It's of the "point a gun at someone and numbers pop out of them" variety, but supposedly with the right combination of skills, weapons and good aim, you can do things like knock enemies down with a single headshot and suchlike. The close-up melee combat appears to be a bit cack, however, but no first-person game has ever really nailed this, and at least it's not quite Elder Scrolls levels of wafting blindly at an enemy right in front of you; there is at least a nominal sense of impact when your blows connect.

I think I'm out of what is essentially the tutorial missions now, so I'm going to spend a bit more time with it tonight and see how I get on. I still have several other games on the go so starting a brand new one is probably a terrible idea, but you know how it is. Shiny new toy, you want to try it out as much as you can. And, outside of Mario Kart World, this was probably the most interesting thing from the launch lineup.

So anyway. Cyberpunk 2077 thus far appears to be A Good. Further bulletins as events warrant.

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