Okay so $30 is an insane price for an amiibo. Amiibo up to this point had been like $15 or $16. I never was hugely into amiibo, but I have a little thing nowadays called “disposable income” and another little thing called a “spending addiction”, so of course light amiibo collecting has become a part of my life.
$30 is not insane for a figure of some kind. Very high quality ones can run you into the hundreds. Usually those are larger and extremely detailed. This guy, however, is quite small. But, it’s very very detailed.
This amiibo is genuinely of a much higher quality than earlier amiibos which, though always decent quality, were never of incredible quality. I’d say these little fuckers are reaching a higher quality here though.
The particular one I got is Yunobo, the goron from Tears of the Kingdom who becomes your buddy. I don’t know man, I kinda liked him so a figure of him sounded cool.
I can’t tell if this is a photo or a render, but either way, this is basically exactly what the figure looks like in real life. I can only inspect it so closely because my wife convinced me to leave in the blister pack, but from what I can tell it’s stunningly accurate to the 2D artwork and promotional material.
I still think amiibo as a concept are fun but very goofy and not actually all that interesting. No games really embraced them in a way that mattered. Like in Mario Odyssey you could use them to get some extra hearts, and then with Captain Toad it unlocked for me the Mario Odyssey DLC which was pretty cool. But for $16? I don’t know.
If you think of them not as toys or as these interactive toys-to-life but rather as simply high quality figures of characters from some of your favorite games, that $30 price actually doesn’t seem all that crazy. But again, to reiterate, this price point only makes sense when these are high quality. The Yunobo one definitely is, but I can’t speak to the others.
If the quality of these at all dips in future amiibo releases, kiss my light amiibo collecting days goodbye.
I try to beat every game I play, only giving up on the ones I’m truly not enjoying and see as a genuine waste of my time. I finished DQ Builders (barely), but just couldn’t do it on DQ Builders 2.
These games are an absolute chore to get through, and I mean that in the most literal sense. The gameplay is chore after chore after chore after chore. It’s monotonous. It’s repetitive. It makes the game feel like a task rather than fun.
Maybe I’m not the target demographic for the game, I’ll be the first to admit it. I mean Minecraft really is a kids game at the end of the day. Like any children’s media, though, that doesn’t mean an adult can’t enjoy it.
But I really struggle to imagine any adult with a full time job and responsibilities enjoying this. You’re busy with work, chores, etc etc and then in your down time you play a game that’s just assigning you more chores.
I think a kid could enjoy this, but also at the same time I wouldn’t really want to let a kid play this? Like it uses very light swear words (like damn) and also features slightly lewd content (at least in the second game with one of the main plot threads being getting one of the characters to dress in a bunny suit in order to get the miners to go and be more productive in the mine).
I’ll leave it up to you guys but I just don’t think I’d let a kid under 15 play this. But at the same time, I can’t imagine anyone 15 or up enjoying this, so who the hell are these games even for, man?
At first the gameplay loop seems like it might be kinda fun. You spend some time upgrading your village, the people get happier which attracts more people, you get to see your town come to life. But in practice, it doesn’t really play out that way.
The game is highly scripted. You build one house at the behest of an NPC, and great! They’re very happy. Then, they ask you to build another house. Great, awesome work!
This attracts another NPC, who then asks you to build a specific house. The NPC then asks for another house. This attracts new NPCs who then request new houses… And on and on.
Despite being a game that purports to be about building and about creativity, it adheres too strictly to the highly structured and story centric focus of RPGs. You don’t really build your own house in your own way unless you really feel like it, because it doesn’t advance you at all. There’s no reward for spending time doing extra upgrades to your village.
It also isn’t really fun doing any extra building because the controls kinda suck. I don’t know if this is necessarily the fault of the game though, I’ve always hated Minecraft with a controller, I just don’t think there’s a way to do it that matches the efficacy of using a mouse and keyboard. But still, it makes the game less enjoyable playing it on the Switch.
And speaking of, my GOD does the second game run like shit on the switch. It is truly pathetic. It takes 1000 years, millennia it feels like, for the game to even open which already dampens my mood to play any game. Then, once its finally opened up and I’ve plucked out the gray hairs that have sprouted, I head on in and what do I find? Lag lag lag, just terrible performance, frames dropping off the wazoo.
To summarize, the games run like shit, thanks to that they look like shit. They are not fun to control, and they are not fun to play. Is there a redeeming quality sprinkled in here at all?
2 that I can think of, actually.
For one, the story of the games are cool, especially the first one. The story takes place in an alternate world where the hero accepts the villain’s deal in the first Dragon Quest game rather than denying it and defeating the villain. Very fun idea, I really like that. I don’t think the premise of the second DQ Builders is as good, but I think the characters are much better in this one and the story itself is better.
My second compliment, the gameplay loop is genuinely fun at first. The first couple of loops are a good time. It just goes on wayyyyyyyyyyyy too long with way too much dialogue and wayyyy too many tasks, which very much ruins the fun.
I do not recommend these games at all, even if you’re a gigantic Dragon Quest fan.
We’ve recently been playing a bunch of Fortnite… and I mean me and my wife. I don’t know what happened, but some switch flipped in our brains and here we are.
I do actually know what happened, they added a Sabrina Carpenter skin. My wife is a massive fan of her and her music, so this was actually enough to get her to buy vbucks (force me to buy her vbucks) and purchase the skin. It was her first time spending money on Fortnite, a game which she’d only played a tiny bit of in the past… the few times I’ve forced her to play with me.
Buying the skin made her actually want to play Fortnite so she could play with her fancy new skin, and that’s when it happened… She started having fun.
This woman, who didn’t simply have no interest in Fortnite but rather negative interest in Fortnite, as in, she was repelled by it, has now been running solos while I’m working.
And of course she’s been forcing me to play with her, and I’m starting to see the appeal.
I think Fortnite was just a little bit after my time. When it came out and first got popular, it was mostly a game for kids in my mind, and in reality too. And I mean like 12 to 15 year olds when I say “kids”. The game came out in 2017, so I was 19 at that point and in college. I just remember thinking it was cringe and lame so I really never gave it a shot.
I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten less uptight and grand-standy. I’m allowing myself to enjoy things that in the past I would tell myself I’m not allowed to like because it’s made for [insert group here]. Fortnite was one of those things where I couldn’t possibly like it because it’s just a cringe kids game.
But damn dude, it’s a blast to play with friends.
I think what makes Fortnite stand out when compared to some of the other live service games is how it constantly finds ways to reinvent itself. The classic mode is still there, but they’ve got tons of different modes to try out as well, like a Lego mode, or my preference, the no building mode. That combined with the way they run their seasons makes it interesting and gives you a reason to jump back in after not playing for a while.
At the moment, they’re crossing over with Star Wars, so there’s all kinds of Star Wars related junk in the game from First Order bases to raid, TIE Fighters to yoink and fly around in, light sabers (which are dogshit, don’t even bother with them).
I get why kids like it!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m being summoned for a round of duos with my wife.
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