Category: Games

My Thoughts on the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Nintendo Direct

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

Last week Nintendo released a direct all about the new Tomodachi Life Nintendo Switch game and I am super excited about it! I really enjoyed the 3DS version of the game when it came out, I had created all my Miis based on real-life people and it was interesting to see how their lives played out in this mini simulation. There was never a dull moment in my little Tomodachi Life and I even documented it on a Tumblr blog. Maybe I will revive it for the Switch game who knows?

So let’s get into what Nintendo have shared about the new Tomodachi Life because you know I have thoughts.

First off, when we create a Mii you can do it from scratch or you can use prompts. I am disappointed they did not show what the prompts were to create the Mii, I wonder if it is similar to the Sims where it asks questions and will set their personality based on the questions and randomise the appearance or if there are some questions which will help determine appearance? It will be interesting to see what they are.

One of the big new features in Mii creation is that we can now set the gender as non-binary. Some people may have issue with this but I think it is a huge move for Nintendo. You can also set dating preferences as well which is nice; it reminds me of when they added pronouns and relationship preferences in the Sims. It’s a small feature but allows for more realistic and inclusive gameplay which I am all for.

I assume we can also import Miis as we could for the 3DS, not sure how it would work here as the 3DS had a camera to scan QR codes but it could be similar to how you read QR codes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, by using the Nintendo app on your phone and linking to the game.

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The Grand Opening of Hotel Reverie! | Exploring the 3.0 Animal Crossing: New Horizons Update

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

Who would’ve thought I’d be back making Animal Crossing content in 2026? This is a LONG video but I wanted to do my best to showcase the new 3.0 features and see if there was anything else new that wasn’t mentioned in Nintendo’s trailer.

The real question is if this will bring me back to playing Animal Crossing, and truthfully it won’t. At least not full-time. Sure, I want to play to decorate all the hotel rooms but once that’s done I am not sure if there is much else worth of substance here for me. I have enjoyed this game a lot over the years but I think I have done all that I want to.

My main concern is that with the next instalment of the game, it is just going to be a decorating game. Which is fine but that to me is not what Animal Crossing is about. So we will see what the future has in store for the game, I am just hoping we don’t forget its roots.

An Animal Crossing: New Horizons Update in 2026?!

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

I was not planning to make so many YouTube video posts on this blog in a row…sorry but that’s just how I’ve been feeling making content recently so here is my latest video talking about the new Animal Crossing update coming next year!

I don’t think anyone was expecting this so it’s a nice surprise. I am looking forward to seeing what it is like but at the same time, don’t think any of the new content is super groundbreaking. Still, I think it’s nice to have something to tide us over until they announce a new Animal Crossing game. But based on this update I am wondering if we are still a few years off another main title game…

For now we will take what we can get.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure First Impressions!

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

I got Hello Kitty Island Adventure back in March and I have to say I was not that impressed. I even tried to make a blog post at the time but I felt it was just very negative and not accomplishing much, so I’ve decided to give it a second chance. i.e. I played the game a few times in March, wasn’t a fan and haven’t played it since. Until last night when I picked it up again and now I want to keep playing lol.

So I’m going to give it another shot at writing my first impressions. A lot of what I thought in March still stands but I’m now more intrigued to keep going compared to before.

The first thing to point out is I find the game overall a bit clunky. The way the character moves, the controls, the menu navigation. It’s not my fave, and it really put me off in the beginning. Like do I really want to be navigating through every single collection menu to clear the red dot everytime I pick up a new item? No. But I try my best to ignore it and try to clear a bunch of them in one go lol. The same goes with achievements. It’s just annoying to have to manually clear them otherwise the red dot does not go away.

I also think it’s hard to get used to new controls in general, like X to gift items, Y to use tools. These are not common controls for me on Nintendo Switch and so it’s taking some time to get used to. Also switching tools is not the best, but I think maybe it’s just something I need to adapt to.

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Why I Stopped Playing Infinity Nikki

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

In December, I decided to take a chance on Infinity Nikki because some people were posting about it on Bluesky and it was free to play. Since the first day I started, I was hooked. I even made a YouTube video on the second day I played because I was so obsessed. And I have been posting photos on Bluesky ever since. I don’t think I have been so captivated by a game since Disney Dreamlight Valley.

And now sadly I think my love of this game might have come to an end. At least for now. I suppose these things always happen, you fall in love with a game, play it non-stop and then you don’t touch it for ages. But this is not one of those things.

Infinity Nikki is an open-world gatcha game and has pretty regular updates so there is always new content to pull you in. And unlike Disney Dreamlight Valley, it is not going back on its promise to go free to play, it just is free. However due to the gatcha element, there are times when you are tempted to spend money. But the microtransactions are not what is putting me off either. It’s the 1.5 update.

So this is not a secret, so many people have been posting online about this and so I thought I’d put my two cents out there.

Continue reading “Why I Stopped Playing Infinity Nikki” →

My Nintendo Switch 2 Direct Thoughts

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

I completely forgot about the direct today but I have watched it now and thought I’d share my thoughts here. Also three blog posts in the space of a week? Crazy lol.

First of all, here are the bullet points I made while watching, I will put some final thoughts below but if you want a quick overview of what was going on in my mind at the time then please enjoy:

  • Starting out strong with Mario Kart – a classic.
  • Driving anywhere in the world is kind of crazy, I will definitely be taking some scenic drives.
  • 24 drivers?? Yikes. Can barely keep track of 12 half the time.
  • Knockout is a cool gameplay mode, I can’t wait to immediately lose since I am not good at Mario Kart lol.
Continue reading “My Nintendo Switch 2 Direct Thoughts” →

Games I’m Excited About From the Nintendo Direct

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

Jumping straight in with the blogging thing, I thought I’d talk about some of the games in the Nintendo Direct that caught my eye.

I haven’t really been playing my Switch recently due to having abandoned any game that isn’t Infinity Nikki. But I miss handheld gaming and I’m not ready to invest in a Steam deck so I think it’s worth seeing what Nintendo has in store for us. Especially with the Switch 2 right around the corner.

Most of the time, directs do not appeal to me because I play very few games lol. If it’s not Animal Crossing or the odd Pokémon game, Nintendo does not hold much for me. That being said as a child, I grew up exclusively on Nintendo and my DS was my best friend so maybe I need to give them more credit.

So here are the few games which caught my attention in the latest direct:

Because I am in the cosy gaming space, I have seen a lot of people on my timelines BEGGING for this game. I want to say I’m not one of them. But I am looking forward to it.

I had Tomodachi Life for DS and I thought it was fun and cute at the time. I even had a Tumblr blog dedicated to my Miis and everything.

That being said the downfall of the game is it got very repetitive very quickly. Which makes sense, given that the game could only be programmed to have a finite number of scenarios which your Miis went through etc. So I stopped playing once I thought I’d seen everything.

I worry the same thing will happen with this game. It’ll get repetitive too soon and it won’t be worth the cost. I think the concept might do well as a mobile game with constant updates but I guess we will see. I don’t think I want to get too committed to buying it until we have more information.

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There’s No Business Like Show Business… | The Sims 1

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

Some more Sims 1 content! I filmed these two parts back to back on the same day I booted up Sims 1 for the first time. I am not committing to any Let’s Plays at this time because I am unreliable but if I feel like chatting about my Sims gameplay, then a video you shall receive. Turns out the Sims 1 is NOT easy to play and I was struggling A LOT. But it’s a learning curve. One day I’ll master it for sure… but not right now, we’ve got lots of other games to be playing lol

Making Magic and Fires | Playing the Sims 1 For the First Time!

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

I have decided after almost 4 years to resurrect my Sims channel! I never abandoned it on purpose, I just stopped playing the Sims and so the Sims videos stopped. But I thought it would be fun to come back and play some Sims 1!

I’ve never played before so this was something new and I really enjoyed it! I will definitely be back with more. In fact, I already have two more videos edited and ready to go lol so look out for more Sims content soon.

My 2024 Wrapped!

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

Since Spotify Wrapped became a huge thing and companies realised that people like stats, I have quite a lot of year-end stats things and so I thought I would put them all here in one place! When I started physical journalling, I have also been printing these out and putting them in my journal to mark the end of the year, so I thought why not also put them on my blog? I shared them on Twitter and Bluesky too but I think it’s kind of nice to have them all in one place. So here its, my 2024 wrapped:

Spotify

Starting off with Spotify you can see my top artist is Taylor Swift. This is a surprise to no one because Taylor has been my top Spotify artist every year since 2018 lol. That being said she did have some competition this year from Sabrina Carpenter, I just love Taylor’s music. She is a constant go-to for me and I went to see the Eras tour this year so of course I was going to be listening to her non-stop.

Other top artists are usually a surprise to me because I don’t know anyone I listen to more than Taylor lol. Sabrina Carpenter kind of creeped up on me because I started listening to her heavily in the second half of the year. Don’t think she’ll take the top spot from Taylor though. But we’ll see how 2025 plays out.

As for top songs, I really thought Espresso would be there as it was for so many people but I suppose it didn’t grab me quite as much as I thought. I’m not surprised that 3 of the songs are Taylor’s because I’m obsessed. It seems I enjoy You’re On Your Own Kid as much as Taylor did on the Eras tour (she played it as a surprise song A LOT). And I really loved Not my Fault which was released as part of the Mean Girls movie soundtrack. When I first heard it in January I knew I’d be listening to it non-stop and there it is on the stats lol.

The only prediction I have for 2025 is Taylor will still be top and I will continue to listen to all the same artists, I always challenge myself to try to find new songs to listen to but I like my staples, which include Taylor, some KPop and usually the Glee or Nashville casts lol. Less so Glee over the years but I can’t deny the Gleek phase I had all those years ago.

Nintendo

Next up, we have Nintendo Switch! I never know with Nintendo what my stats are going to be because I feel like I don’t play my Switch that often. I mean I go through phases, which is what you can see from my hours played by months but I don’t consistently play it. If this was the pandemic, it was a different story lol but this year was very hit or miss.

I started the year playing a lot because I had gotten new games at Christmas, Fashion Dreamer and Super Mario Wonder. Though I have to admit I have not played Wonder since the first few months of the year, I think I felt like I was making too much progress so just stopped instead of slowing down lol. And then I have played Fashion Dreamer here and there, though the game doesn’t actually have much to it and initially I wasn’t sure I liked it, I have enjoyed occasionally playing and dressing up.

But overall, most of my time has been spent in Animal Crossing, I picked it up again towards the second half of the year and have been enjoying it. Animal Crossing will always be a staple for me when it comes to gaming. And even though I was experiencing some burnout from the game in recent years, I like to pick it up every now and then because there’s nothing more calming than walking around the island and doing daily tasks and having routine. That being said, I would love to see my island in the daytime every now and then, considering the only time I get to play is in the evening lol.

Predictions for 2025 include me just playing more Animal Crossing probably. Though I did get MySims at Christmas so could see that peeking up – moreso MySims Kingdom I think lol. Oh and the Hello Kitty Adventure game is coming to Switch which I absolutely will be getting as well. So maybe the Switch will have some interesting stats – we’ll see.

Steam

Most of the time my Steam recap is nothing to write home about because I don’t really PC game. But this year we actually had some interesting stats!

One of the other reasons why my Nintendo Switch gaming fell off after February was because Stardew Valley had a massive update on PC. I do own Stardew Valley on Switch as well, but the update did not get ported to Switch until like November or something so I was playing Stardew on PC. I hadn’t played in a couple years so I forgot how addicting it can be just to be on the farm. Plus, I remember work being very stressful during March/April time and Stardew Valley was a perfect escape lol.

Along with Stardew, I was playing Coral Island at the start of the year, it also got tossed to the side for Stardew because I like to only play one farming sim at a time. Though I would like to revisit Coral Island because it’s had a lot of updates this year so must check it out.

I know Two Point Campus is here but I do not remember playing it very much and then I had a short-lived PlateUp stint with my brother and niece. Even though I enjoy PlateUp it will not compete with Overcooked in my eyes. And Virtual Cottage was a game I downloaded in December to help me focus on tasks – which was cute but I only got it because I didn’t want to pay for Spirit City: Lofi Sessions. But then I got Spirit City in a humble bundle at the end of December so expect to be seeing that on my Steam replay next year for sure lol.

Not sure what my Steam replay will be next year to be honest, like I said I’m not really a PC gamer and Sims doesn’t count, because it’s on EA and EA do not do a year-end stats thing. Though I would love to know about how much I actually play the Sims throughout the year because I go through phases with it as I do with everything else haha.

StoryGraph

This year I had a goal of 35 books, which I thought would be doable because I read 35 books last year. What I did not account for was that last year I wasn’t driving, so I was always on public transport and reading then but when I’m driving I can’t read lol. And I know people listen to audiobooks when driving but I can’t do that, I need to focus on the road so yeah a lot of my reading time went out the window.

That being said I did make the goal, but only because I forced myself to really stay on-task and read 5 books in December. No easy feat but thanks to a couple of audiobooks I did reach the goal. That being said, I have said a smaller goal for 2025 lol. Reading isn’t supposed to be stressful so I need to reset my expectations.

Feel like there’s not a lot to say about my reading stats, if you’ve been following my blog then you know Cecily von Ziegesar is my top author because I was reading the It Girl series. And typically, when you read a book series that author is going to be the top lol.

My hope for 2025 is to clear out some more reads I picked from Amazon Prime monthly freebies because I have so many of them. But also just finding more books I enjoy in general. Also I think I need to remember to stop reading books if I don’t enjoy them, like did I really need to read the It Girl series to completion if I wasn’t enjoying it? Probably not. So yeah definitely don’t waste time reading something if I don’t like it, even if I am trying to reach a reading goal lol.

Serializd

This is a new one to add to the stats so I started tracking my TV shows on Serializd in 2024. I started tracking movies/TV shows on Trakt forever ago but they only do a recap if you pay for premium which I do not. But Serializd is more like Letterboxd just for TV shows and I enjoy it because it lets me leave reviews and see other people’s.

So this is interesting to me, it says Gossip Girl is my most watched show but I feel like I watched way more Below Deck than Gossip Girl. When I started logging Gossip Girl I was already halfway through my rewatch, so I’m not sure how they worked this out. Like you’re telling me the last 3 seasons of Gossip Girl has more episodes than all of Lucifer? Because I watched that whole series this year…

Yeah not sure how accurate the stats are with this, and if it counts episodes you’ve marked as watched vs ones you actually review or what. But the point is, I have watched a lot of TV this year lol.

Highlights of TV this year that I remember include: a lot of Below Deck and Below Deck: Med – it is very easy to binge so I enjoy it a lot. That being said I’m almost caught up on it so I’ll be sad when there’s nothing to binge. I also did try a Nashville rewatch but dropped it because it’s a lot more depressing than I remember and I couldn’t handle it with all the stress going on in my real life lol. I watched a lot of one-off random things as well which I think I will make a recently watched post about – if I remember.

Things I think I will be watching in 2025 – Gilmore Girls, I started a rewatch so I have to finish it lol. Probably will rewatch something else at some point because you know I love a rewatch of a comfort show. There’s nothing new on the horizon I think I’m that interested in but me and my fiance have picked up the Mentalist again (after watching 3 seasons in 2023 and stopping) so we will be finishing that in 2025 for sure. If I find anything noteworthy I’m sure I’ll post about it online haha.

And this concludes my 2024 wrapped! Obviously this is just a small portion of what my year amounted to. 2024 was an incredible year for me with a lot of highs so I will probably make a highlights post in the coming days as well. I usually always have some sort of recap of the year on my blog so of course this year will not be an exception.

I am also feeling very inspired as I often do at the start of the year, so I am going to try to blog more here on top of the 20 other things I want to accomplish this year lol. Whether it happens or not we will see but I am hoping to be around here more. Even if it’s just a little check-in I think it would be good to keep updated. After all, can’t really call myself a blogger if I don’t blog right? Anyway, that’s all for now. Will be back with more soon!