#but him not being in like... fighterZ did kinda make me sad finding that out long ago

[skeletalheartattack]

if you haven't heard it yet they made zarbon sound even fruitier than normal in sparking zero, he literally sounds like a catty queen on some drag show

truthfully, for the past month, i've been just looking through the youtube search results of "dbz sparking zero zarbon" to see and hear as much of him as i can, and as always i do enjoy hearing his voice.

i think that my personal favourite version of Zarbon's voice will always be the original ocean dub (or, similarly, his voice in Budokai 1), just something about how... serious, he sounds? i'm sadly not the person to be able to make analysis of a characters voice, but i always viewed Zarbon as a serious, calm, and collected character (up until after his first run in with Vegeta on Namek), and the way he's voiced I've always felt really nailed that aspect of him.

but even with my nostalgic bias, i do really like his fruitier inflections in Sparking Zero. i'm hoping to see a video that showcases his unique dialogue (or all his voicelines) at some point, but the game just came out, so i imagine it'll be a while.

[donut-secret-one]

Games: Of The Year

Hey, it’s me, your gamer friend “Parasite” Eve, here to talk about video games. I watched and played a few of those this year, so here’s some words about some of them, as a tumblr post, because I don’t know where else you can put a long writing thing.

GAMES ENJOYED BY WATCHING

Drakengard 3 and Ending E of Drakengard

I watched these in preparation for NieR: Automata, and it turns out I could have basically just read a summary and it would’ve been fine. I still think it’s impressive that I like the look of Drakengard 3 even though it seems like the gameplay sucks and I hate most of the characters.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard 7: Resident Evil

I think it’s neat that each “level” of this game is like a different horror genre. Scary house with a murder man, different scary house fulla bugs, a Saw thing, a scary little girl, a Resident Evil game... it’s a cool way to make the different parts of the game seem like, different, parts of the game.

NieR (Gestalt)

This seems like a really good video game, although the playthrough I watched cut out a lot from the extra routes, so maybe those parts are boring, who knows. The big plot twists are rad and the characters are good and it’s a videogame that made me cry.

Yakuza 0

I love Majima. Remember when all those people were looking at the statue guy and he was doing his dance and they were ignoring him? Remember when he had his band play battle music? Remember when, at the end, he can’t say anything to Makoto and he just walks away and you get sad at video games again? yeah...

Kiryu’s very good too. I can’t think of as much stuff to say about him. sorry.

Yo! Noid II: Enter the Void (https://dustinbragg.itch.io/yo-noid-was-ahead-of-its-time)

I probably could have played this but I had already seen a stream of the whole thing so I didn’t. The music and the look are rad. I think I want a whole game that plays how this game looks like it does, probably.

Tekken 7

There’s a part in the story mode where everyone sees Kazuya turn into the devil and shoot a big laser beam, and then a few days later everyone forgets it happened because something else happens.

GAMES ENJOYED BY PLAYING

Fire Emblem: Heroes

I started out liking this kind of a lot but not so much anymore, and I think I pretty much just want some aspects of this to be in a “real” FE game. It lets me only use the characters I like without missing out on anything, I get to be a silent protagonist instead of a boring generic loser, and they added a vague, abstracted version of the support system that lets you be a whole lot gayer. I think in my game Camilla is married to both me and Lucina. But yeah, it turns out I just want all that in a game that’s not a Mobile Game-ass Mobile Game.

Maybe I should learn more about game dev and make that game myself.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp doesn’t get its own section cause I basically have the same stuff to say about it. Just let me have a small house and let me make public spaces in a proper AC game. Actually I think they let you do that in Happy Home Designer. Maybe I should just play that.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Needs more cooking in it. Also, one time I saw a guardian shoot its laser at the ruins of an old wooden shack I was hiding behind, and it just stayed standing, and that seemed kinda weird.

For reasons this game is good, read anybody else’s GOTY list.

Team Kirby Clash Deluxe

I don’t have screenshots for all of these, okay?

So this game has free-to-play mechanics that force you to choose between “paying money” and “grinding, but only getting a certain amount of fights per day”. Apart from that though, It’s fun to try and speedrun Kirby bosses with that good kirby music.

NieR: Automata

I only finished Route A, oops.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow randomiser (https://github.com/abyssonym/aos_rando)

I played this about as much as any other game on this list & remembering it now makes me wanna play it more. I became good at skips in this game, and had a gun fight with Julius.

Splatoon 2

The game was pretty good I guess, but the music was even better than Splat1n. Everything by Marina and Pearl, the final boss songs, and the weird Salmon Run themes rule. I’m also real into the art of the fictional bands they make for this. Hey, nintendo, when are you makin a full rhythm game in the Splatooniverse?

Miitopia

This is a weird Mii RPG they put on 3DS. The gameplay is pretty, because it’s mostly just like, generating weird events and encounters based on the miis you’re using and the personalities you’ve assigned them? It’s pretty neat for a single playthrough but that’s about it. I kinda wanna see more games that do this kinda gimmick though. They probably exist and I’ve never heard of them.

Also I got to wear cute outfits and the relationship has that same vagueness that makes it seem gay as I talked about for FE:Heroes.

Sonic Mania

Sonic Mania is so good, it even has the bad parts of 2D Sonic. You still get crushed by dumb platforms and some of the bosses are awful. The middle section of Metal Sonic is garbage until you find out how you’re “supposed” to do it. Also why can’t Tails fight the true final boss.

After you get used to all that though, it’s a good video game. you can even go fast.

Metroid: Samus Returns

Hey, they (officially) made a new Metroid game, and it’s good. It sticks a little too closely to the original Metroid 2 in certain ways that kinda make the exploration part not as good, but they do a lotta cool combat stuff. The fights are tough but they give you checkpoints right before them so I’m fine with it at least, and even though the new final boss was a big obvious fanservicey thing, I was still way into it.

Dragonball Xenoverse 2 for Nintendo Switch

This game’s fine I guess.

Anyway I watched a bunch of Dragon Ball this year, mostly DBZ Kai. I’m just at the start of the Future Trunks arc of Super. Hey, did everyone know, Dragon Ball fuckin rules??

Super Mario Odyssey

i like when the mario does a jump.

Sonic Forces

Honestly, it’s just a sorta-worse-than-normal 3D Sonic, and that makes it a pretty fun video game. Sure, the 2D sections are bad, I wish the 3D ones played a little more like Generations, and I wish the plot was a little more entertaining, but, I got to dress up my cat and fist bump sonic and the song called “fist bump” played. It’s cool. I’d prefer the good version of this to the perfected version of Sonic Mania. probably.

Dragon Ball Fusions

Okay but -this- Dragon Ball game was actually really good. It’s a 3DS RPG where you collect Dragon Ball characters like pokemon, including like a hundred OCs made for this game that I sometimes like better than the real characters, and you fuse them together. The battles system, though, is one of the best parts. I haven’t seen much else like it. The basic idea is like a Chrono- Trigger-style thing where the attacks have an area of effect based on the position of the character using it and the target, but on top of that, attacks do knockback, and you can knock enemies into allies to do a combo attack, knock them into other enemies to bounce them off each other, or knock them out of bounds to delay them a few turns... and they can do that stuff to you as well? And so every fight is also kind of a pool game?? And it rules???

On top of that, there’s stuff around which direction you’re attacking in vs. which direction the target is blocking, using your ki blast moves to counter other people’s ki blast moves so you’re pushing back Frieza’s death ball with a galick gun, and using super moves to recruit enemy fighters... there’s all this stuff going on in the fights, and despite being a turn-based sort of tactical RPG, the fights still kinda feel like DBZ fights? I’m writing a lot about this one I think mostly because it’s the one I’ve been playing recently but also nobody talked about it whenever it came out. It’s a good RPG -and- you get to do Dragon Ball stuff. You can fuse Yamcha with Vegeta. You can fight Great Ape Broly. For some reason they replaced all the swords with sticks but people still talk about Hell and Frieza’s still all about killing children. That’s a weird one but I wanted to write a third thing that was in the game and that was the first thing I thought of.

Anyway yeah... my top games are probably Dragon Ball Fusions, Breath of the Wild, and, I dunno, Samus Returns? Sure, let’s go with that.

ANIME OF THE YEAR

Kemono Friends. I didn’t watch a lot of other anime this year... but I didn’t need to.

2018 STUFF

There’s a new Kirby game so that’ll probably be at least in my top 5 I guess. Dragon Ball Fighterz looks good but I don’t own anything that’ll be able to play it. what the hell else is coming out in 2018

“THE END OF THIS POST” OF THE YEAR

In conclusion, the games were pretty good. I think we should keep making them.

Have a nice next year!

-Eve “Good at Video Games”. No second name.

<3