A Glimpse Into What Summer Will Look Like This Year...

A in-depth look into the history of James Bond's Nintendo 64 debut, a cyberpunk thriller, and a Metroidvania that takes place in the sky— Taken with an iPhone 8

Sunday won again, but that was more or less me getting distracted by Tears of the Kingdom, which has been a beautiful experience that can sometimes be a little overwhelming. I'm not going to spoil anything here, but I did write a small thread on Mastodon with my initial thoughts on the game. The individual posts are all behind sensitive content filters, but the first one is spoiler-free and provides a window into my foray back into Hyrule. That, and it also highlights the way I played through Breath of the Wild along with how I approach open-world games.

I'll end up writing a few more posts on the game there as I play it, but for the next game review, we'll be going to a different set of sky islands!

Earlier into the year, I decided to sign up for the Super Rare Club, which is a service from Super Rare Games that more or less allows you to pre-order games earlier than the general public alongside a few other perks like exclusive merch. They are a company that specializes in physical games—like Strictly Limited and Limited Run—but solely focus on indie developers who might otherwise be overlooked. I've been a fan since I stumbled upon Project Warlock, which was Jakub Cislo's take on Doom that added role-playing game elements into the mix (plus magic spells). Some of my favorite Switch games are straight from Super Rare Games's physical releases—The Lion's Song and The Flower Collectors from Mi'Pu'Mi Games, Horace, Deponia (eventually in its entirety), and Dicey Dungeons to name a few. 

So when they announced Islets alongside the featured trailer, I thought that it would be right up my alley between the genre and an art style that fits itself gracefully between Hollow Knight and Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. 

My plan is to do a run on easy mode first to get the full narrative experience while getting a feel for the exploration and gameplay mechanics. Then, I'll do a playthrough on normal to see how difficult the bosses and combat become to provide a (more) proper review. 

I'm aiming for late-June to write and publish the review—possibly July if I'm sidetracked by more Tears of the Kingdom shenanigans. (Although, I feel like I've made enough progress to take a little break.)  

As for the books...

There was a tie in the results between Cory Doctorow's Red Team Blues and Alyse Knorr's Goldeneye 007: The Making of an N64 Classic. I though that, instead of doing a tiebreaker poll, I would read and review both books starting with Red Team Blues and then doing Goldeneye 007 with the review for the former being slated for June. I'm aiming for July for the latter...

...and I'll also be doing a review of The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane in August—or July if I finish reading it before then. 

Thank you to everyone who voted in the polls! I think this will be an excellent summer for blogging! 

Link to: A Slight Break for the Kingdom (And More Importantly Myself)     

Note: It goes without saying, that I'm already reading through both Goldeneye 007 and The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane as noted by Goodreads. Also, I briefly talked about the latter in an earlier post.