Don't Revive Your Friends

Have you ever played Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Genshin Impact, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and (well, you get the picture) and thought "Give me more!" ?? Well, I have and Eternal Strands sort of delivers on this. I say sort of because while it does carry over some puzzle mechanics and the ever so frustrating stamina systems, it doesn't quite feel like those games. I mean this in the sense that the world is not open and instead replaced by zones that you'll come to explore time and time again. While I'm okay with a more linear approach, it does take its toll after about 20 or so hours of visiting the same places or finding the same enemies with no true rewards other than a few collectibles here and there.  The storyline of Eternal Strands is deep but left me overall not fully invested. You follow Brynn, a fellow Weaver (magic user, essentially) and her friends and comrades who have been cast aside by the world and are now looking for redemption for an e...

I like the Nintendo Switch. I would like it a lot more with achievements (I need to feed my ego, leave me alone) but that is a topic for another day. The feeling of knowing I can take my console with me at any time and get a solid The Legend Of Zelda experience is weirdly comforting. Even if I never touch the thing while out, it becomes my safety net.  What I do not like is how games that aren't Nintendo look and feel on it. Heck, even some Nintendo games (looking at you, Pokemon) are a drag to get going. This feeling impairs my safety net as now, if it's not a pixel art game like Stardew Valley or a first party Mario game, I am not wanting to boot it up. Now, I fully understand that the Switch was never intended to be a 4K powerhouse. That makes sense to me. What I don't get is what Nintendo expected the shelf life of the console to be. They know by now how fast technology moves and how fast things become obsolete. So it's strange to me that the Switch was not built wi...

Ubisoft announced that XDefiant will be shut down in June 2025. XDefiant is a free-to-play FPS  that boasted a small install size (compared to behemoths such as Call Of Duty), frantic gameplay, and a roster of Ubisoft universe characters.  After a successful beta and a pretty good first season, XDefiant started losing players fast. It's a shame, too because it's a pretty good shooter. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. Free-to-play games typically have the same issue though. If your gameplay isn't tweaked to perfection at launch, players will leave. They have nothing to lose since the game itself was free. Unfortunately, that was the case here. Players found that the gameplay loop largely remained the same with no game-changing updates or big reasons to return after a season.  If you downloaded XDefiant you will still be able to launch the game until servers close in June. If you purchased a Founder's Pack OR made any purchases in the last 30 days (up until Decem...