My wife and I are constantly thinking of this sort of this, strangely enough. She's a veteran coupon-clicker/rewards-website-user, so we end up cutting all of these little corners, saving a dollar here and there. Consequently, when we have to think about a serious purchase, we tend to look at the little differences in…

I've never been more simultaneously proud and ashamed as when I completed that stupid lightning-dodging quest back when FFX originally came out on PS2. It goes without saying that I had managed to fail within ten strikes of 100 twice before finally completing it successfully.

It never gets too challenging, though a few late-game bosses keep you on your toes. One important thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn't worry that much about inventory management. Folks get bogged down worrying about using this card or that card, and keeping good ones for later, but the game is much more…

ARMS is a top notch game to play with beer, if you haven't done so already.

I'm exactly the same way. It's uncanny, but I guess much of our life as economic actors is wrapped up in underlying, complex psychology.

That's a good point to raise with regard to player base and ARMS vs. Spla2n. I did notice when I hopped on ARMS last Friday that the numbers of people in my lobby were lower than usual, but they were back to normal this week. Neither game is the kind of thing that people (well, that I) play for marathon stretches, so…

That's good to hear - I always get a little bogged down by the accompanying stuff in Fates when I'd really like to just be out mixing it up in combat.

Even in a purely aesthetic context, I thought the move from random to on-screen enemy encounters was a dramatic improvement in RPG design; while 2D game maps tended to be tightly designed enough to mitigate against this, 3D game maps tended to feel barren and empty without enemies roaming them.

I turned my original Splatoon avatar into the preppiest-looking guy I could, like some kind of '80s high-school movie snob. He looked delightfully obnoxious.

You just learned me a new acronym!

If you haven't encountered it, this seems like a cool way to play the game: https://vgoutpost.com/fallo…

Oh my goodness, Paper Mario: Color Splash is so good! I put it in my Top 3 of the year in 2016's retrospective here at Gameological, as it kept me smiling from start to finish. I even 100%'d the game, gathering all the cards and paint coverage. Plus that soundtrack. I'm mildly jealous of you getting to play it for the…

I made the pitch for the last day of the month being a Gameological Spla2n night, but probably shouldn't be the one to organize it yet, on account of not actually owning the game. When I pick it up, I'll be down to splat with you good folks.

Not sure if you've already noted it here, but how do you like Echoes compared to the other 3DS games? Those are my favorite in the series, though I also enjoyed the GBA entries, but I was hesitant to pick up Echoes for some reason. I think the third dungeon crawling and first person town stuff threw me off.

This made me laugh out loud in my cubicle. Thank you.

It's strange that the Switch would be kind of middling at it while the 3DS would be so effective. I wonder why they went with the design they picked? Perhaps Switch carts are more fragile (as they have much more stuff on them), so it's better to have them protected by a hinge? I'm likely overthinking this.

It's funny how much of a difference being able to swap games without exchanging carts/discs is, isn't it? The Switch is the first time I've had a carrying case for a console, so I usually have all of my carts to hand, but it's somehow still mentally easier to just swap between digital games rather than plug in a new…

I think you're absolutely right about the resale value. Even ARMS will have a greater potential for resale simply due to the potential for splitscreen local mutiplayer; lacking that, Spla2n is necessarily a short-term game I guess. It is more likely to have a long shelf life than the original, as it offers 8-person…

Thanks for the thoughts - I sprung for Puyo Puyo Tetris as a digital buy, though that was easier given the discount. You really wish that digital was regularly at a discount, don't you? It just doesn't really make any sense otherwise - physical confers the benefits of resale and sharing with friends, while digital…

Some bad news from me too - I've given up on Final Fantasy XIV. The BSOD crashes just became too much, and it seems especially irresponsible to play a multiplayer game never knowing when you'll just *poof* out of the world. I reinstalled the video card drivers, resintalled the game, tinkered with settings, ran tests…