What are you excited for from the Nintendo Partner Direct and Elden Ring DLC trailer? | Team Talk

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Wednesday saw the biggest contrast in gaming announcements this year so far with the Nintendo Partner Direct and the release of the hotly anticipated Elden Ring DLC – Shadow of the Erdtree.

The Partners Nintendo brought to its show included SEGA, EA and Disney, as well as a slew of smaller-scale projects, while there’s nothing small scale about what Bandai Namco and FromSoftware had to share with us in the first expansion to Elden Ring.
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What are you looking forward to amongst these announcements? Let us know in our Discord.

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by Team PTC

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@pass_controller

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James Parry

I dived into Elden Ring two years ago with very little to go on, having not played a lot of FromSoftware games before. I managed a decent number of hours without really pushing the boundaries of what even the first area of the map had to offer, so the prospect of returning to that world was always a hard sell.

Not because it was bad or I didn’t enjoy it, but because a game like that is intimidating.

This new lease of life for The Lands Between looks just as epic in scale, with a terrifying rogues gallery of towering and twisted monsters ready to take you down.

While it was fun to explore, I don’t see myself revisiting it anytime soon.

Which brings us to Nintendo, where there were a few fun things to look forward to – and all in the first half of this calendar year, which is appreciated.

Firstly, the new Super Monkey Ball title, Banana Rumble, brings co-op to the monkey-loving party series, which might add a different dimension to its already clever puzzling fun.

Next, there’s Snufkin: The Melody of Moomin Valley, which I was lucky enough to try at EGX last year and found it charming and beautifully made, so certainly one to pick up.

And finally, there’s a release of some well-regarded gems from gaming’s past in the form of Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection. Not to be confused with the more recent entries, these games from the early 2000s passed me by, and any Star Wars game I haven’t tried out is always intriguing.

Chris Brand

As someone without any experience of the base game, the Elden Ring DLC just makes the prospect of picking it up even more daunting. The big, scary, world has been made bigger and scarier and it's still bereft of shotguns. Though I've heard it's more accessible than the typical FromSoftware titles, I'm aware that I have too little patience to spend the time required to reach an appropriate skill level.

What surprised me most from Nintendo Direct was the inclusion of Xbox first-party titles, Grounded and Pentiment (both games, along with two more, are releasing on PlayStation, too). With cross-platform play assumed to be a given in multiplayer games nowadays, console exclusives just mean a smaller player-base, so it makes sense for Microsoft to get their games into the hands of as many folks as possible. Pentiment, however, is single player, and the cynic in me suspects that this is Microsoft's way of showing various governmental agencies that they have no intention of creating a gaming monopoly by acquiring every third-party developer they can get their hands on. As they appear to be doing.

It feels wrong that my personal highlight from Nintendo's stream was the least Nintendo part, but this could be a turning point for gaming. I'm sure we all have a lot of questions already. Which other Xbox exclusives will be ported to rival systems? Will Nintendo and Sony follow suit? When can I play Mario Kart and God of War?

It's probably wise to assume that some exclusives will stay that way. I don't expect to ever see Joel from The Last of Us squaring up against Gears of War's Marcus Fenix in Super Smash Bros. but I do expect, nay demand, to play Mario Kart on my Xbox now, if not sooner.

Liam Andrews

I’ll be honest, I was not aware of any impending DLC reveal for Elden Ring until this week’s topic was announced, although having since watched the trailer I can say that it does look very impressive, if a little gloomy.

I’m not into souls type games but I know Elden Ring is supposed to be a great game in its own right. Perhaps I’ll pick it up one day, although like Chris I find the idea of jumping into an even bigger game a little intimidating.

The Xbox game reveals in the Nintendo partner showcase didn’t come as a surprise, however, as most people had guessed two of the games making the jump would be Grounded and Pentiment.

I’ve yet to play the latter but thought Grounded was excellent. I’m not sure how good it will look on Switch, but it’s still cool to see it arriving on other platforms and giving other players a chance to experience it.
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Away from the Xbox ports, the biggest reveal from the showcase was the original Battlefront games being rereleased on consoles with full online multiplayer support. While I thoroughly enjoyed the modern Battlefront iterations, I know the original titles are held in high regard so I’m looking forward to trying them out for the first time.