Hello everyone!
So the morning of the direct I had no idea it was going on, I opened up twitter to see a really "believable" picture of Mario as an elephant... Confused, I immediately went over to YouTube to see that not only was there a direct today, it had already ended, so to avoid spoilers I started my morning with it, I usually tend to be up to date on this stuff and tend to have high expectations because of that but considering the surprise I didn't have any, which actually ended up working out pretty well.
It's very subjective but yeah I'm one of those people that think this is the best direct we've seen in a while, with me having a steam deck and a switch, I tend not to be excited for indies or third parties coming to switch anymore because I plan on playing those on better/more convenient hardware. As a result I only care for announcements only made for the switch whether that be virtual console or exclusive software since it's not my primary system anymore. So I'm very happy to say that despite all that I thoroughly enjoyed today's direct, enough to make a whole blog post for it. Lol
I'm happy to see another attempt at a 2d game since mania, although i have some worry due to the confusion around christian whitehead's involvement or rather the possible lack of involvement but its looks nice so far, I really dont think 2d sonic *needs* to have a gimmick attached to it, it was shown with mania that all we really need is good level design and music. I do personally wish we had a defined art style though, to make it more unique. Art styles to me make characters feel refreshing and new, and in this game sonic just kinda looks like generations sonic but smoother looking and better animations, but that's just me nitpicking as I don't see too much happening in these trailers to excite me.
I was in a car with friends when this and Persona 3 Reload were leaked and it helped that I was being driven by another huge Persona fan cause I needed someone to scream with me to these announcements. The past two years have made my love for the Persona franchise concrete with finally beating Persona 5 in november and Persona 4 golden completely finished in april, just 2 absolute time sinks that i was more than happy to put all my time into between work and school. I can make a whole blog posts for each game and why they're so important to me but for now i'll just say that I'm excited for Persona 5 tactics, i hope that there's more mechanics to make it feel more Persona other than fusing and "one more", I hope we get more dialogue between characters and make the relationships feel more close than base game (that was the first thing i noticed when i was playing Persona 4 by the way lol) and I really am curious to see if anything ends up as canon because with these spin off games it's always up in the air on what could be staple. I just found out recently that those Persona Q games are canon which I haven't played yet but considering that those are crossover games I'm so curious on how that works.
By the way speaking of those leaks I do find it funny that 3 Reload is not going to be on switch, reminder that, yes Persona 5 royal is on switch but the base game was on ps3 and runs almost the same on switch and with all the BEAUTIFUL and GORGEOUS new models of Reload, yeah i'm not surprised this isn't coming to switch. I've been rambling about Persona too much for a Nintendo Direct blog so for Reload I'll just say that I'm extremely hyped to play what is argued to be the best in the franchise, with the new look, I haven't been able to get over how nice this game looks and i seriously can't wait.
If nintendo is gonna keep it short i'll do the same, these splatfest options are like superrrrrr boring I'm picking vanilla because I don't like the other two, but seriously if you're going to make two options vanilla and strawberry, why did you make the third one mint chip? Like I don't like plain chocolate ice cream but that at least makes more sense than mint chip. By the way I really did enjoy all of splatoon 3's single player content so still not hearing anything about side order kinda sucks but oh well.
This was a game that just like Earthbound I always tell myself I'll get around to but never do, but unlike Earthbound, Mario RPG is back... for some reason, that's pretty hype. Everyone thought this game was practically blocked from nintendo's memory, seeing the reaction from old fans being super shocked, and modern nintendo fans being pleasantly surprised was fun to see. It seems this was a good announcement for all sorts of nintendo fans and other than the last announcement was the title i saw the most discussion about on social media which makes me very happy to see. Just hype all around!
~Princess Peach Game (they didn't have a logo or anything else for that matter)~
Just like with splatoon 3, They kept it short so I'll keep it short. I'm not so much surprised that Peach got another standalone game, as I am with the fact it's taken them so long. I mean it kinda makes sense that bowser never got his own game because it was always made to be that you aren't supposed to like him as a character (although having sections in other games that made him funny and likable). But Peach? They could definitely do more with her even if they do just make more casual puzzle-like games like with Luigi's mansion, anyways I'm glad to see they gave Peach another chance... 18 years later.
When I was a kid I was able to play Dark moon around its release because a friend of mine let me borrow it after she was done playing it, but other than that I know I enjoyed it as a kid but I have trouble remembering anything about it. Mind you I had no games other than steel diver on my 3ds because I didn't yet know about "soundhax" at the time and my parents couldn't afford any other games... and even I don't remember shit about Dark Moon, needless to say I wasn't excited for this announcement. It didn't help that the port looks awful, sorry if this is your favorite but to me nothing really compares to the original gamecube game's aesthetic.
This is one of those coincidence announcements that I love because before Pikmin 4 was announced I was already replaying Pikmin 2 for the third time, and now I'm starting Pikmin 3 for the first time just having fun with all the multitasking stuff you can do with the whole crew. Pikmin is one of those nintendo series that I forget how much I love it until I revisit it, and now that we have a new entry it's just like hype just hype I'm so ready for this game dude. Pikmin 2 caves seem to be back in some form, the night time mechanic seems like its just gonna be fun to manage what is basically a harder mode in this already stressful series, and despite Pikmin's idea of crash landing on dead planets, we're also getting modern looking homes in the new game as areas to explore and that's always a setting I love seeing in games "a house but big" it's the type of simplicity that benefits a lot from being mixed with something as unusual as Pikmin so this is a great addition, July 21st is so close.
I got my fill of Mario Kart 8 long before they announced that they would be doing the booster course pass so seeing these new stages in the Mario Kart I've been seeing for almost 10 years doesn't really interest me much. They're fun? Cool! They look good? Cool! But it doesn't make me want to buy a game that I only ever play at other people's house, and even those friends that I used to play it with, we moved on to different multiplayer games because none of us really wanted to cling onto something we've been playing for two console generations.
God I'm so excited for this, I never got around to playing smooth moves but this is really really pushing me to play it before Move It comes out just to get a taste of what this is gonna be, I really don't think WarioWare is a series where you have to sell it to people, just watch how those games play. Do you like this weird goofy shit? Good, get it, play it now! It's one of my favorite series, I was honestly so shocked to find that we're getting two WarioWares for this console, the fast paced nature of this series just ensures that there's never a dull moment. God I'm gonna to go get my Wii after writing this seriously so hyped!
After hearing every youtuber on earth talk about New Super Mario Bros. for the millionth time I just kinda assumed that Nintendo would probably take it pretty badly and just like never release a 2d game ever again and just stick to the maker games, like that's what I honestly would've pictured, I'm so unbelievably happy to tell you I am a fucking idiot.
On the day of this direct I watched the Super Mario Wonder trailer 15 times. It literally made me look back on the direct with a bigger appreciation for the things I liked about it, which in turn made me want to make a blog post. The first few times I watched the trailer I just kept talking and talking about "HOLY SHIT MARIO GETS TO BE WEIRD AGAIN" and "ELEOHEPHNT!!!", when Odyssey came out it was amazing for the time but we already had amazing 3D marios to put it up against, but for Wonder we haven't had a unique 2D installment in generations. At the beginning of the blog I complained about the visuals because it felt like even though I really wanted to be excited for a new sonic game there was nothing catching my eye, just 3D models running around. Wonder is the complete opposite everytime I watched the trailer I focused on a new scene that just had me so in awe, the new models, the new enemies and mechanics, the backgrounds...
Seriously the backgrounds are sooooooooo goooooooooooooooood, this game is a work of art compared to the last four 2D titles, and I've never seen a gameplay trailer so perfectly advertise a game to be just full of joy as much as this one, if I'm even half as happy with the actual game as I was with this trailer then I'm looking at my new favorite mario game, I'm telling y'all this right now.
For me personally despite all the announcements over recent years, it seems like for a while directs were focus on quantity which isn't necessarily an issue on its own but after seeing the 40th farming simulator and 200th goofy concept, no substance indie game, I start to wonder if these directs are even that enticing to watch all the way through anymore. It seems that despite having around 2-3 directs a year I'm only ever excited for 1 or 2 titles, which I guess isn't too crazy and again I should stress these are just my opinions, but today we had a direct that had 4 new sequels to games of completely different genres, substantial DLC to three different first party titles, and 2 new trailers to third party games that just got announced. To me that's what makes this direct so great, just the amount of unpredictability from start to finish, just the type of announcements that even if I weren't interested in the product I could see the value in showing as much of it, plus I think the editing plays a big part because they gave enough time to titles that deserved it, just enough to be interested but not enough to want to start skipping around. I hope to see more directs with this sort of pacing and this much surrounding hype again.
Stay hyped and take care everyone!