#dont get me wrong. i am not defending the use of ai for making “art” or writing stuff for you but its INCREDIBLY frustrating-

[youredreamingofroo]

"ai is terrible and you should never use it" me when I forget that ai has been around forever and has been used for various disability features and generative ai can be good but is just heavily misused by abled people and stuff like AI voices and GenAI has been used to help disabled people with prosthetics (GenAI) and speaking (AI voices) and also AI is the core of almost every NPC in every game. Just thought I'd add that bit.

[tumblunni]

Gremp Review: Dr Herregods

Okay, today’s new grandpa that I adore!

I’ve been playing the remake of Sonny lately and TOTALLY having a nostalgia explosion! Its like a reboot of an old classic Flash game series I used to play a lot as a kid. The art, music, and everything has had a HUGE update, and they even added some new characters! Its a shame, however, that we lost the animated sprites and ability to see visual changes as you equip stuff. I’m guessing they just didnt have the budget to make it happen with the high res graphic update. Also some of the story changes are a bit weird, but an equally large amount of them are super good, so it all balances out. I just wish all the new characters didnt REPLACE the old characters, yknow?

At least Veraduz stuck around, and now he’s got a cool expanded backstory and reasons for joining your party. Its not just ‘we’re both zombies, lets stick together, i found a robot suit and somehow instantly knew how to use it’. Nah, instead now he’s a regular human who actually OWNS that robot suit, he starts off on the other side and joins you after seeing you’re sentient and deserve to live. Also he’s a disabled veteran whose robot suit is basically a mobility device to replace his lost legs. That’s instantly incredibly sympathetic and interesting! And still he’s our cool sassy giant buff healer dude and major BROTP with the protagonist. Woo~! ANYWAY, less rambling about loving that character, and more rambling about loving the new ones!

One of the best new changes to the plot was the addition of Dr Herregods, aka SUPER SCIENCE GRANDPA!

Further review below:

He’s actually the only new character who technically did exist in the original flash game, he used to be a tough bonus boss battle and got promoted to playable here. Obviously he took a huge power cut, but he’s actually still pretty damn strong! He starts off fragile but he gets A LOT of really good attacks. He can set up barriers and regen on his allies and DEAAAAR GOD am I happy that the ally AI is great in the remake, he’s saved me so many times! And his actual damage output isnt very good even if you buff him up, but he has Acid Element which bypasses defense buffs. Usually you have mr fragile grandpa dealing half as much as everyone else, and then when you face some overblown buffed up thing he’s suddenly the sole savior of the world! AND he can deal useful attack debuffs, so he frees up a move slot on your protagonist if you dont need to worry about those. Here I’ve got him very stacked up with defensive items at the expense of everything else, cos even if he’s buffed its not like he’s ever gonna be super fast or strong. Its best to just cover his fragility! Currently he’s actually one of the best defenders, I went with fragile speedster build for my other two party members Sonny and Kara. (Incidentally I love Kara! I wish Felicity didnt have to be replaced by her tho, is it some sort of rule that these games must only have one playable lady?) Tho the fragile build is fun to play in its own right! It just feels super in-character that he’d be like an overpowered useful buffer mage dude that you have to protect. The enemy still seems to try and take him out more often than not, even when he has enough extra defense to withstand it. LEAV GRANDPA ALON

Anyway, the Sonny games have never been super dialogue heavy or well written, tho the remake adds a lot of extra scene which has been nice. Its still kind of a crazy cliche storm, but its a sassy one with high production values and a SUPER well developed high difficulty battle system. The ways they make buffs and statuses and passives interact.. god, its beautiful! And in the remake you have a choice of way more elemental paths to customize, and can even ‘evolve’ moves mid battle. its like a limit break but you choose to turn one of your regular moves into a limit break and it stays that way for the rest of the battle! So you get advantages the longer the fight goes on, and the more damage you can take without dying. However the limit breaks are subject to the RNG so sometimes you get a bunch of buffs that arent actually useful for your selected move, and you basically waste your whole bar. Alas! ANYWAY LESS RAMBLING ABOUT HOW FUN THE GAME IS, YO

So yeah, nobody has a super developed personality or many scenes to show it off in. But still I LOVE NEW GRANDPA! He’s my favourite sort of thing: an evil grandpa that isnt evil. He’s your own personal mini evil! He’s got all the character traits of an evil scientist, apart from the bit where he’s on your side. And he gets to act as the comedic guy with all the vices, but still he remains loyal to you guys, and his whole moveset is supporting his friends, and i just LOVE HIM!!! *hug* I am a bit sad tho that he’s another different medic character, so you kinda have to choose between him and Veraduz. At least everyone still gets to appear in story scenes regardless of who’s in the party, so it doesnt really matter. Veraduz is still your super bff who gets the most screentime of everyone! OH, but actually ALSO a reason I love new grandpa!!! He becomes the guy who gets the second most scenes after Veraduz, and he’s like THE MOST IMPORTANT to the story! His introduction works REALLY well to make the early stages work a bit better. Before you were just journeying wildly with no real motive except ‘people are trying to kill me, keep running until this problem ceases to continue’. Now you meet a rogue scientist early on and he gives you a general goal and motive, you’re trying to find out what’s actually going on and he’s analyzing the different zombies you find along the way, showing you directions to find his laboratory eventually. He falls out of focus after he gives us this motive in the intro, but he still remains pretty useful in tutorialing how to use your new mutation specializations. And its justified that you get them cos he stuck a syringe of his latest crazy experiment into your neck. He’s helping!! In his own special way!! Seriously this is just WHY I LOVE HIM! He’s such a nice good hero man who 100% thinks like a sci fi villain, and the contrast makes for a lot of funny scenes. I legit thought he was gonna just be a temporary party member who backstabs you at the end of the chapter, i was SO GLAD that I was wrong! Ominous ambiguously evil man who never becomes evil ever is such a better trope! “Hey look that latest terrifying enemy is really damn cool, I’d love to cut it open. And genetically engineer a new and better zombie virus. And test it on you, specifically.” *does so* *and nothing but good things happen* *thanks grandpa*

FINAL GREMP RATING!

Personality - How much of a unique self this grandpa has, and how interesting. Stereotypical grandpa archetypes are still loveable, but it doesn’t exactly stand out above the rest!

Dr Herregods has the same sort of appeal as other fave characters of mine, like Charon. Except with even more appeal cos he actually does join the hero team! He’s a big eccentric that you wouldn’t usually expect for this kind of medic class gramps role! ‘Evil science man’ is kind of an archetype that’s often given to grandpas, but I mean you can’t say it lacks personality! I’m just... predictable!! I really love when the ‘mad scientist’ gets to turn good! ITS SUCH A GOOD PERSONALITY, DON’T LIMIT IT TO VILLAINS However Dr Herregods isn’t grumpy or sassy, he’s just more of a cheerful dude who really loves his job of making super zombies and is comedically oblivious to everyone else thinking its an evil hobby. That’s endearing in its own way! Nobody really gets a huge amount of dialogue or development in this game though, so take his rating with that in mind.

6/10

Design - How appealing does this grandpa look as a character? How endearing, how distinctive, how much does it suit him?

His design isn’t particularly new or interesting, he honestly just looks like the third stage of bugcatchers in pokemon.

However it’s still nice that he became a grandpa at all in this remake, when his original design was just this generic npc model.

3/10

Prominance - How big of a role this grandpa plays in the actual plot or gameplay.

This is actually where he excels! its so rare to find a good playable grandpa that isn’t like a super tiny plot role, or vice versa. And most of my faves are usually neither, and mad science grandpas especially tend to get the short end of the stick! I love him just cos he’s like if someone like Charon or Hojo got to be the hero of the story! Also he is REALLY USEFUL in a fight! Also DID I MENTION I LOVE THIS CHARACTER??

9/10

G R A N D P A -  Bunni’s very personal concept of what makes me want to adopt this grandpa. How well does he fill the void in the life of someone who had a shitty family devoid of loving guardian figures and projects way too much onto fictional characters?

OH MAN, I think if he was my actual grandpa we would have all sorts of crazy adventures together! And we totally have the same opinion on how monsters are HELLA AWESOME and it would be epic to gain super undead powers! Yo grandpa give me the super juice, I wanna shoot lightning from my zombie eyes!!! Also he’s just... like... GENUINELY GOOD! For once he’s not my guilty pleasure redemption fanfic dude who would never actually join the hero team in canon. This grandpa would legitimately be a caring friend! Even if he’s also a bit of an irresponsible space case. But seriously, DUDE, SAME! We’d be so bad if we became friends, nobody could stop us from making terrible life decisions to go poke giant monsters with sticks and chug mutagenic liquids

8/10  G R A N D P A

Literally the only reason he won’t get a 10 is the same as I mentioned above, nobody gets very much dialogue in this game so he’s just like a lil slice of perfection covered in a pile o headcanons.

Final Score: 26/40