User blog:ZeoSpark/Farewell 2018, Hello 2019

Well it's finally that time again where we say good bye to a year and welcome another! Was 2018 good for gaming specifically Nintendo? Well, it wasn't as good as 2017 where the Switch made it's debut and proved to be one of the greatest systems Nintendo has ever made and put it back into the competition after the rather failure of the Wii U. Let's look at some highs and lows!

Obviously, Nintendo's biggest success of 2018 was the announcement and release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. After what I would later refer to as the "Year of Ports and Indies", SSBU is arguably the shining light in an overall dim year. The trailers leading up to it was awesome and kept fans hyped before it's eventual release. There were other great things as well and sorry for not listing them but I want to go over just the bigger ones.

Arguably what goes in between good and bad are the release of ports and indy games. 2018 didn't have much versatility in games and most are just ports of Wii U games. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is the biggest offender as it was also released for the 3DS for some reason as I heard it worked rather poorly on that system. I've played the Wii U version and it was fun at first but got real boring afterwards. However, there are three games I wanna discuss real fast: Mario Tennis Aces, Super Mario Party, and Kirby Star Allies. Mario Tennis Aces was hyped up a lot during mid 2018 and it is definitely a step up from Mario Tennis Ultra Smash with a good story mode. However, it's fairly short and the tennis matches with CPUs can get boring real quick. Now, SMP is by no means a bad game but I wished they could've done more with it. Like only 4 boards that are very short and offering up to a max of 20 turns doesn't really make for a lengthily game (though most do prefer shorter games) but it's unique gimmicks and removal of that dreaded car more than make up for it. Kirby Star Allies...oh boy...this game isn't bad but it is so short and easy it's not worth the $60. I know I may get some negativity from this but a game like KSA selling for the same price as other games like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey is just not worth to buy especially since those two games give you way more to do.

Finally, the most obvious bad thing of 2018 was Nintendo Switch Online. A rather poor service that was once free but we know have to pay money. The good news, it's very cheap. The bad news, it's still not worth it. The online service doesn't even work with most of the games even Nintendo's biggest online game: Splatoon 2. The NES games method is a rather poor addition as well. The biggest problem with that is that you can't even play the NES games without being online which means the NES games takes away the main selling point of the Switch: Of being able to take and play the system whereever you go. And don't get me started on the Cloud saves. Like with the online mode, it doesn't work with every game because Nintendo wants to prevent cheating. That's a poor excuse for something you can't admit to not wanting to do. I'm not trying to bash Nintendo as I love their company and love their games. However, forcing us to pay for an extremely poor service is just tasteless.

What I Hope for 2019

 * The Animal Crossing game hopefully being like the last of the main series games. The recent AC games were rather disappointing spinoffs so I'm really hoping a step back in the right direction. It's probably gonna be Nintendo's big game of 2019 so hopefully it'll get release at a sooner date.
 * Luigi's Mansion 3 being a true adventure game. Dark Moon's mission-based mode was a rather huge take-away from the game but hopefully 3 will expand upon that.
 * More Smash DLC reveals. Of course this is obvious lol.
 * Nintendo Switch Online either gets fixed or become free. This service is bad and Nintendo knows it. Hopefully they're working to make it a service that's even worth spending a penny on or just be free altogether.
 * The Unnamed Goose Game's release date. Because you get to play as a goose messing with people! 'Nuff said.
 * More info on Metroid Prime 4. Nintendo has been real in the dark about this ever since they teased it's release awhile back. Hopefully we can get more info on it's release date.

What to Expect From Me in 2019
Good news is that I've been real into older games and other stuff lately and i hope to become a lot more active in editing again. Expect to see me a lot more making edits and expanding on things. Hopefully I can get a gaming laptop to start uploading playthroughs! I'm also making 2019 the year of Pokemon so I'll be only using Pokemon-related avatars throughout the year. I want to make the most of 2019 as I still plan on being here for a lot longer! Anyway, this is all I have to say! Hope everyone has had a good year and hope 2019 will go by even better!