#i haven't spent too much time on the DLC yet

[alixero]

Hey Tumbler, what the fuck?

this character has been in the wild for 2 months and Y'all've said NOTHING?!

[nelvana]

A couple months ago now I was fortunate enough to buy a used switch lite from my friend, and even luckier to obtain a copy of Pokemon Scarlet at the local pawn shop at a very reduced price (plus a couple other things but that's not the point rn). So, we go right from the earliest generation of pokemon to the newest back to back, with possibly just as many bugs and glitches, to my gen 9 team!

Team stats and general gameplay info under the cut:

"Nila", Meowscarada, ♀, U-Turn - Play Rough - Flower Trick - Night Slash

"Quaord", Clodsire, ♂, Poison Jab - Earthquake - Liquidation - Megahorn

"Guache", Grafaiai, ♂, Slash - Knock Off - Poison Jab - U-Turn

"Stella", Luxray☆, ♀, Volt Switch - Spark - Crunch - Ice Fang

"Étoile", Pyroar☆, ♀, Flamethrower - Hyper Voice - Swift - Crunch

"Pharle", Farigiraf, ♂, Crunch - Shadow Ball - Twin Beam - Tera Blast

General Playthrough Notes:

Okay look I need to level with you all right off the bat, I don't like the vast majority of the pokemon introduced in gen 9. They feel like such first drafts to me. I normally go into these games with a team plan but this time I literally had two slots missing going in, I just could not think of what to put in there. And I already planned on using two poison-types and two normal-types! Normally I avoid doubling up on types as much as possible! After a bit I used the codes to get a bug-tera mew and a cetitan and was just thinking "I guess they'll be mainstays??"... then I immediately ran into a shiny shinx. Then a shiny litleo. They happened to slot right into the team and I've never been fortunate enough to use shinies in a playthrough (except my soulsilver randomized apocalocke but shhhhh we aren't there yet), so I put them on. But if they hadn't shown up and essentially saved my ass I would have been hard pressed to fill up a team of six (look I literally just used a mew I'm not in a hurry to use it again, at least it's been a couple years since I used luxray in a playthrough).

Anyways, despite all that, I had fun! I knew going in it wouldn't be too difficult and would have its lion's share of glitches, so I was just along for the ride. I like the friend group you form in this game! I like vibing with koraidon as an honorary team member! It's just a pleasant time.

Back to shinies for a moment, overworld shinies without any sound effects to indicate them is evil. I spent so much time staring at groups of pokemon trying to tell if one of them was off-palette. Thankfully, I never ran into any shinies other than the ones I caught.

The raids are neat, though since I don't have Nintendo Online and no frequent enough local players it isn't super interesting with just the npcs. Caught a few neat fellas though, including a steel-tera breloom and a fighting-tera azumarill.

Speaking of, when I first started playing those mewtwo raids were going on and I wanted to participate in them so bad. I barely missed my window, though from what I've heard I wouldn't have stood much of a chance anyway, haha.

I wish there was more post-game other than the raids. I've redone the tournament like half a dozen times now; I wish there was a battle frontier or something. To be fair, I haven't caught all those ruin legends yet; though the one I have caught I managed to get in the first ball, lol.

Do I have the dlc yet? No! I can't just throw around that kind of money willy-nilly. Maybe someday though.

Picnics are really cute though I wish I could pet my pokemon instead of just wash them. Also why can't I sit down on the chairs that are set up around the picnic table??? Still don't really get the sandwich hype, I might mess around with it a bit though, I want to give it a fair shot.

"Hey Nel, why haven't you talked about the Elite Four? You usually start these notes with them?" The E4 is very unremarkable, sorry. I won't bore you by being the billionth person to rag on how Geeta is objectively the worst champion. Also when I rematched all the gym leaders I didn't have to terastilize or heal my pokemon. They were a bit more impressive the first time around tbh. The gym puzzles were neat though!! Except for Tulip's. Fuck her.

Oh yeah, terastilizing is a thing. Mega evolution is still better.

I wanna hang out with my friiiieeeennnds more, both my irl friends and Nemona, Penny, and Arven. It would be so fun to do raids with them or something like that.

Cold take but the uniforms suck I wanna customize my outfit like Nemona, Penny, Arven and Team Star do

(Normally this is where I'd show a screenshot of me finishing the game, but I'm one of the few weirdos who can't use captchas and haven't found another way to transfer files from my switch to other devices. Have a picture of my cat instead; his name is Prince.)

[gaymer-hag-stan]

A Tekken 8 Review That Nobody Asked for From a Longtime Fan Who Has Been Playing for Ages But Is Not a Pro - That Title Is Too Long

Having spent a little over 24 hours playing the game on my PS5, I feel like it's an appropriate amount of time to share my first thoughts on it. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum so just skip the "Story" section and you should be fine.

General Thoughts

A pretty healthy roster, overall happy with who we got. I do wish Anna and Christie were here, and I also miss Lucky Chloe. With Eddy already announced and Azucena taking over the "cooky dance-y character" I unfortunately don't see Christie or Chloe returning, but Anna better fucking do!

They all look great, even the ugly ones, they look satisfyingly ugly, if that makes any sense. The girls still suffer from the Madame Tussaud's wax figure syndrome that plagued the entirety of Tekken 7's roster, but, maybe I'm gaslighting myself, I do feel like they look a bit less plasticky than some of the initial teasers? Most of the redesigns are great, the hair (Lili's hair has never looked better), water and dirt physics all finally WORK and I love how all the clothing animates with the wind effect, the Fallen Destiny stage is a great one to illustrate all of the above. We can see Yoshimitsu's fingers after three decades! I'd love to know the thought process behind this redesign lmao

I love that they finally, after so many years of other fighting games having it but being inexplicably absent from Tekken, they finally added Player vs CPU matches! FINALLY! Finally I can pick my character and my opponent of choice, pick their costumes and set a stage for them to battle. I'm so happy for this even though it might not make any sense to anyone.

Combo Challenges! We finally have combo challenge in Tekken! Another common fighting game feature inexplicably missing up until now.

Gameplay feels a lot of fun. I wasn't sure about the heat mechanic but it's actually a lot more fun than I initially thought! I tried out all of the cast and am slowly completing both their story episodes and an Arcade run for good measure. I am obviously still maining Nina. They have decided to simplify a lot of her combo throws and I am having fun terrorizing people online with them by breaking their bones! I'm also using Arcade Quest to learn how to play as Lili and Azucena, some basic moves and combos and whatnot. I wanna also do Zafina, Jun, Jin, Hwoarang and Xiaoyu as well eventually. I think these eight will be my main squad for the time being. As a side note, King and Steve feel extremely fun to play, I haven't picked either in ages, but with King I was really close!

The netcode is, surprisingly functional??? We did recently switch to an optic fiber connection type, but I'm still on WiFi and I am having zero problems!

Jukebox is thankfully back again! I literally spent an hour or more before playing the game at all to decide which song goes where lol

Something that scares me regarding upcoming DLC, is that I do not see a season pass being sold anywhere except the Deluxe Edition bundle that costs 40€... I'm sorry but I don't give a fuck about owning 32 identical gold costumes or Tetsujin or whoever the fuck as my Arcade Quest avatar... I only want Eddy and the other three (one of them better be Anna!) thank you very much!

Story

"The Dark Awakens"

Believe it or not I haven't even finished the main story yet as I'm trying to pace myself through all the modes and enjoy them, savouring every moment. At the moment of typing this I am almost halfway through and I must say, even though I am still firmly in the "Drop the cinematic NRS style story modes" camp, and I would much rather have had either arcade mode with proper, canon endings back, or a revival and repurposing of the Tekken Force mode, in an SF6 World Tour mode type of way, out of all of Bandai Namco's attempts at a cinematic story mode, from SCV to Tekken 8, this has been the most satisfying attempt so far. I love that they are fully embracing the overdramatic nature of Tekken along with its campy side and it's present from the very beginning, with Jin throwing his bike at Kazuya's helicopter! "A Fate Decided by Fists" were we actually get to choose which fighters advance through the first round was the biggest highlight so far! I did not expect to fight Azazel again in 2024! I miss his Tekken 6 design though, he no longer glows according to his remaining health or has his limbs crumble away into scarabs according to which parts of him you're hitting. Also, I do understand why they felt the need to overemphasize how "Jin was a good guy all along and he's not like Kazuya" to redeem him and attempt to portray him as a more traditional hero, but I think they went way too far. Literally every single cast member, characters who've never met him before especially, makes a point of how good a person Jin is. Also, I do understand that there were a lot of people complaining that most of the cast were ignored in Tekken 7's story mode and I appreciate that they tried to include more of them this time, but it's so half assed and superficial. Like, Lili, Asuka, Hwoarang, Leo (who finds their missing father, a forgotten plot point from Tekken 6 of screen without a single explanation) Xiaoyu, PANDA offer absolutely nothing to the story so far other than to just be there and tell Jin what a good guy he is. And I say all that as someone who is firmly on Jin's side and despises Kazuya.

Character Episodes

Thank god they have more than one single fight this time! I would have liked it if they found a way to make each of them be canon. Like, I think every single one of the Arcade mode endings of SF6 is canon, if I'm not mistaken, and most of them seem to take place before the events of the main story, as a way to give us a clearer understanding of why each fighter fights. I think Guilty Gear does exactly that too. Nevertheless, I do appreciate that each fighter has fights specifically tailored to them, with specific opponents. It's not clear to me yet if they're completely non-canon or not, as in Nina's she seems to have been hired by Lee to sabotage G Corporation and Kazuya, I pray to God this is true and she's not actually, willingly working for that asshole, like, I'm still in complete denial that they threw her entire character development from Tekken 4 to Tekken 7 to the trash can just to go "NInA WiLl WoRK FoR WhOmEvEr"... She's also suspiciously missing from the actual story like, she simply just appeared in ONE scene so far and then left without doing literally anything. She also seems to only have special interactions with Steve and Lee so far when others get a lot more. Her handling story wise in this installment is insulting, considering she's the most popular female fighter in the series and one of the most popular in the genre...

Offline Modes

Arcade Quest

It's cute... It's certainly a cool way to mask your tutorial and the avatars are kinda cool, but they're nowhere near as good as what Capcom did with SF6 and World Tour. I must say I prefer Tag 2's Tekken Lab over this.

Super Ghost Battle

Ghost battle, after five attempts is finally fun! Tekken 7's was by far the worst attempt as the game would automatically pick opponents for you, matching you with much harder ones if you were winning too much and much lower ones if you were losing too much so that you wouldn't climb the ranks as fast and it would artificially increase playtime. Now that Tekken has actual single player modes other that the story there's no need for that, and they made it work. You simply choose from a list, and the ones that contain unlockable (useless) customisation options for specific characters are actually marked so that you can attempt to get the item you want.

Arcade Battle

I love that they still included a traditional eight battle long Arcade mode, even though they could have just had the character episodes and call it a day. My slight nitpick, again, is that they're still doing this thing that they've been doing since Tekken 5 or 6 where the first few battles are characters in their default costumes and then a horde of Namco's customized monstrosities attack your eyes... This is a huge pet peeve of mine, I understand it in the context of Ghost Battle, and Arcade Quest, but I do not want to see goofy customs in other, "serious" modes. On top of that, the ghosts you get seem to be from the Super Ghost Battle's catalogue of freaks, and are therefore higher difficulty than most, which in turn makes them actively harder than the mode's final boss which I think is kinda hilarious!

Tekken Ball

I will admit, I only played a single match and never touched it again. It is actually challenging, I'll give it that, but I don't see the appeal. I'd much rather have Tekken Bowl again back instead tbh. Also I wish that stage was playable in normal modes too.

Customization

Avatar customization is kinda whatever, but it works well enough for Arcade Quest and I don't really visit the Tekken Fight Lounge.

Character Customization however is where I have an issue. While I've seen lots of cool customs of various characters from other games and IPs, including Shimbori himself dressing up Super Battle ghosts as DOA characters!, I don't really care for the customization options? My only real use for Character Customization in Tekken so far was to recreate past / alternate outfits. Like, in Tekken 6 I would buy the schoolgirl outfit parts for all the teen girlies, in Tekken 7 I recreated Nina's 2P outfit from Tekken 4 using her Blood Vengeance catsuit as a base, stuff like that. In Tekken 8 all I'm getting is a huge catalogue of Zara's apparel... And all the unlockable outfits are either their default look with less clothes on, or weird cosplays of other characters. Why? Tekken Character Customization peaked in Tekken 6, where every single one of the 40 (41 if you count Panda, who I think had some different options from Kuma) characters had his own personal selection of outfits and items, matching their personality and look. I don't want to play as Nina dressed up as Ada Wong or in a business casual for a 9-5 desk job. They made everything way too generic and bland and, on top of that, we don't even have trademark pieces like Nina's purple catsuit, her ponytail, Hwoarang's taekwondo garb, Xiaoyu's Tekken 6 battle costume. The Tekken 5 veterans should have had their Tekken 5/6/TTT2 costumes and hairstyles on top of their Tekken 7 ones.

Overall, I am very very happy with this game! It seemingly does almost everything right and I am glad to see it improving on, literally, every single thing over Tekken 7.

Score: 9 / 10

[radellama]

Games I played 2023 - Part 1

As yet another year closes, I have been looking back at the games I’ve played over the year, and spent about a month trying to write them up. I feel like I got the system down for this, as it’s a fun tradition I’m glad my friends have encouraged. With refinement of my note-taking, and being heavily opinionated, comes very lengthy retrospectives/reviews. So elongated, in fact, that I need to split this year’s goty list into two parts. It didn’t feel like I played many more games than I have in previous years, but I certainly have a lot to say. Also, I skipped my Resi breakdowns last year for reasons you can read about when I post it, but it’s back this year >:)

I’m still not sure what to call these, but I lean more towards retrospective- so be warned! Spoilers of varying degree and strong opinions moving forward.

~~~

Hitman: World of Assassination Trilogy, PS4

In the elusive target mode, you're given a brief with a target to kill, dropped into the map, and you have to find and kill the target with no further assistance. It was pretty fun, but they are tied to real time- in that there is something like a 3 day window to take on the elusive target, and once it's over you can't retry. If you die, you're locked out from attempting again. It's a one and done kinda thing. I appreciate that- it makes the stakes much higher and places a huge focus on the stealth and recon aspects in particular; especially due to the fact that you cannot use your hitman senses to highlight the target in this mode. However, getting only one chance is a little sad, as the first few times I played last year felt a little discouraging when I’d made a simple mistake (or even had my controller give up on me) and I’d be locked out from trying until the next mission drops. And while I appreciate the ‘real time’ sense of these missions… Man, it just sucks if you’re an adult who gets busy between work and life and just don’t have an hour or two to sit and dedicate to figuring out these targets within the allotted time. They’re really fun challenges and it just seems like a bit of a shame that the accessibility I’m whining about goes directly against the point of these missions in the first place lmao. There is still a gallery where you can replay old elusive targets, but I haven't played that much... Cause what I have been addicted to, is the freelancer mode.

So... IOI did a complete overhaul of the Hitman trilogy, renaming it the World of Assassination trilogy, and streamlining all purchases to two primary options - base game and DLC. No more complicated bullshit! (Also their patch notes were some of the most entertaining I have ever read lmao)

One thing that came with this massive overhaul was that everyone who has the base game can now access a few things - for free - that you couldn't before. Mainly, the freelancer mode. With this mode, we have access to 3 of the DLC maps and get to play a campaign that's a kind of mix between the story campaign and elusive target mode. Elusive Target missions are ones I didn’t really cover in last year’s review, and that’s because I didn’t play them enough to feel I should speak on them lmao.

Compared to the story mode, in freelancer mode, you don’t have any story missions to help guide you into setting up a kill. And, just like the elusive targets, the stakes are higher and more self driven – you need to take down syndicate members in various levels leading up to a ‘boss’ level, where you’re required to pick out the syndicate leader based on limited intel and kill them.

It’s fantastic.

As I’ve played through the year, I’ve seriously levelled up the way that I play and approach kills. At the start of the year when this mode just dropped and I was utterly addicted to it, I sucked so bad and often had to restart campaigns after fumbling too badly – and I didn’t care! It was still super fun and it felt like I was learning more about the way the game worked so that I’d be more prepared for next time.

The targets aren't the same as the main story campaign the elusive targets; in the missions leading up to the syndicate leader, your targets are just randomly selected NPCs. When you do get to the leaders, they're more similar to the story targets, but due to there being so many (with the intent to confuse you and make you more observant while you identify the correct person) and them not being as basic as an NPC, there's still that free-er feeling as you play. It's honestly up to your creativity with tools/items/weapons and your knowledge of the levels to be able to pull these off. Some levels I’d be able to speed through in under 10min, others would take over an hour, or anywhere in between. Levels that I really enjoy, and therefore know pretty well by now, are SUPER fun to play because I already know the floorplan, I just need to figure out how to get to my target and how I'm going to kill them. It's completely up to you if you wanna try and get through it without getting caught, or try and make a mad dash after making some VERY public executions. While freelancer mode is very free-form, there are also mission objectives that reward bonus xp and currency for completing. Each level will have three objectives based on the type of syndicate you’re fighting, and a special objective you choose before each level. These are all optional, but in hard mode, the special objective becomes compulsory. I quite enjoy this, and I’ll often pick campaigns based on what maps and objectives I’ll be tasked with and strategise around that.

The other massive thing within freelancer is that you have a hub. A really nice hub. Its a big swanky house in the middle of nowhere, and the more you progress and gain xp, the more you get to play interior decorator. The focus of the place is the weapons storage area, which is where you’ll also be selecting and setting up your missions. Any weapons and items with rarity that you find or buy while out on missions will be taken back home and stored for later, and as you unlock and dress up other areas of your house, some tools and items will be lying around for you to take with you too. These are things like gardening tools, a stethoscope to be used as a fibre wire or a banana to help create distractions and accidents. It was really fun to work hard and bring home a bunch of awesome weapons, and it really hurt when I failed and lost all of my favourite gear.

I believe this is my first time playing a rougue-like style game, and once I got a grasp on how it generated targets, it was incredibly addicting. I also found it quite fun to play through the handful of DLC levels that are freely available here, as I haven’t bought the DLC and played through their missions yet myself. One of my favourite maps to play was the Bank in New York, and I quickly found a little exploit that I loved using. You usually spawned in the underground parking garage near the security room and the vault, and on the wall next to the security room was a locked cabinet with a bottle of chloroform. You could start every level by gassing all the security guards in the room by pouring chloroform in their air conditioning filter, pinch the vault keycards and unlock it, and then treat yourself to a nice handful of the in-game currency. Like, you could pick up 3 coins that were worth a couple hundred dollars each, and then pull the server and wire a couple thousand to yourself, and all before you actually started killing anyone. Unfortunately, about halfway through the year, this was ‘corrected’ by devs and there’s no longer chloroform near the security, and no more coins. I don’t know if its just misremembering, but I swear that it’s a little harder to get into the vault now too. I get it, sanctity of the game and whatever but… this is a completely single player mode. There was a patch added to change the wording of the stock market thing you unlock in your personal vault at home to make it clearer that you’re essentially playing a coin toss where you could lose most the money you’ve accumulated, but thats another element that has the potential to give you heaps of money if you’re lucky. This isn’t a huge and genuine complaint, but it is annoying and I miss starting off my bank missions by looting the vault. I still loot it almost every time I play, but it doesn’t hit the same anymore…

Anyway, all this to say that the new freelancer mode is awesome and that I’ve been having fun playing it all through the year. I’ve also been slowly chipping away at hidden objectives and such during the story campaign, which has been interesting. There’s so many ways to set up kills for all of the targets, and there’s heaps of funny easter eggs to unlock too. I also wanna mention how much I appreciate the sound design of the game, the game actually does a great job at communicating info with the audio cues – so much so, that when trying to play the game muted while I’m on the phone with a friend, I fail miserably because I’m missing important cues without that audio.

Overall, this has been a game that I’ve been playing a lot over the past two years now, and I enjoy heaps. It’d definitely crept up towards the top of my personal favourites, and I can’t wait to keep playing more.

Freelancer Safe house Theme

Safe house Outdoors

~~~

Mario’s Super Picross, SNES

I mostly played this around the Christmas and New Years period last year, struggling and losing my mind in the summer heat! (It reached 40°!! I don’t have air conditioning in my apartment it was hell!!! And we can expect similar this year!!!! I hate summer!!!!!)

I really like picross as a concept, it’s like if sudoku had a baby with colour by number puzzles. It’s simple! And it allows for some pretty challenging puzzles, especially when you get to bigger canvases.

Mario Picross was fun enough, and the unlockable Wario Picross was certainly a challenge! I just felt a bit disappointed by the fact that all the puzzles were just random things, and nothing related to or even resembling anything Mario. Like?? I dunno, it think it would’ve been fun to have the puzzles be the sprites of various items and characters from Mario games, and even recreating scenes from certain Mario levels in the larger puzzles. The only Mario element here is that the man himself congratulates you at the completion of every level, which is nice, but man. I really wish I could’ve been filling out a mushroom or a power star or something, that would’ve been fun.

The general UI and controls were fine, but I still like the Twilight Princess Picross the most out of all. Also the music was kind of annoying, so I barely played with volume. I’d just have my switch on the couch and play muted while I watched video essays or Bob’s Burgers lol. The exception is Wario Puzzle 1, CERTIFIED BANGER!

There’s not much more I can really say. If you’ve played Picross, you know what to expect. It’s a good brain teaser, I wish it was Mario themed instead of random general stuff, but it was fine. I played it and enjoyed it for the most part.

Wario Puzzle 1

~~~

Nonograms Prophecy, Switch

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, IT IS A SCAM. IT IS ACTIVELY HOSTILE TO PICROSS PLAYERS AND CONTAINED PUZZLES THAT WERE UNSOLVABLE.

I initially bought this as a cheeky little impulse buy for my birthday. I like picross, what can I say? It was on sale on the switch store and I took it as a sign – unfortunately, it was a bad one.

At first glance it is a pretty simple, if bland, Greek God aesthetic in a black and gold cut out style. I’ve never really been particularly interested in the mythos, and never more than a passing interest- but this is literally just using the aesthetic for a game that has absolutely nothing to do with Greece or it’s religious historical culture.

Same goes with the soundtrack, a nice and simple acoustic guitar, but it is the ONLY song in the entire game.

Onto gameplay; due to the limited colours, it was incredibly difficult to see which square I was hovering over to mark, and when the numbers are greyed out they are practically invisible due to the value being almost the same as the background colour it is on top of. To make matters worse, the numbers grey out arbitrarily, which fucks up the literal point of playing the game. How are you supposed to play the puzzle if you can’t see the number of squares you’re supposed to fill out?

There’s also little things that should be standard on all modern digital versions of picross that are absent or poorly implemented here. You can’t press and hold to fill in multiple tiles, you cant x out a square you’ve coloured and instead have to clear it first and then x it out (and vice versa, why add that extra step in?) and the coloured puzzles have multiple of the exact same colour, with the only difference being inside the code and not visible to the player. How am I supposed to know which of the THREE SEPERATE BUT IDENTICAL SHADES OF PINK I’ve placed in the wrong pink zone?

There are some things that were interesting qol, like when filling out a chain of squares, a number would appear to show you how many you have filled. This would be an interesting and helpful addition to gameplay IF IT WORKED CORRECTLY. There was also an option to fill out an entire row with the L+R buttons, if it was one that had to be completely filled. That’s about the only thing in here that worked and was appreciated.

I gave up when getting past the piss easy early levels, and then realising that the puzzles were fundamentally broken and showing an incorrect number of tiles to fill. It was so shit, and this was noticed on my second or third day of playing, so I contacted Nintendo for a refund. I don’t usually ask for refunds, but this time I did.

Fuck this game, put effort into making a real picross before putting it on the eshop, fuckers.

~~~

Zelda Picross, 3DS

I’m pretty sure this is a fangame, and considering that – it’s pretty nice! Though, I am of the opinion this would be better on PC, as there were times where I could barely see the details of the puzzle, despite playing on a 3DS XL.

The whole game looks like a mix between the SNES and GameBoy Zelda aesthetics, with covers of various songs across the series in a similar sound. It definitely feels like a passion project, and for that, I can only commend it.

Now, onto the meat of it. This is actually a solid Picross, and a great taste to wash my mouth out with after the shit I had to get refunded. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it was good fun and I enjoyed my time with it, which is all that matters, right?

To play each level, there is an over world where you select and unlock levels to progress further. And, surprise surprise, the puzzles you fill out are all generally related to the Legend of Zelda! This traversal made it kind of feel like a massive Zelda dungeon, which was really fun! Another charming aspect is that you have hearts- except instead of enemies attacking you, you lose a heart every time you hit an incorrect square. I actually really liked this, as it feels so linked to Zelda, but also feels appropriate here. As you progress, you can unlock more hearts too, which is helpful for the boss levels. They entail two large back-to-back puzzles- which means if you use up most your hearts fumbling in the first boss puzzle, you better be extra sure you know what you’re doing in the second. To get to the bosses and unlock more paths, you’ll often have to travel through the over world maps and collect items. To unlock them, you’ll need to solve a picross puzzle depicting the item you’ll be getting. THAT’S ALL I WANT BABBBEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!!

Apart from it getting a little cramped and hard to read in later levels, my only other criticisms are that the colour palettes are pretty muted and a bit bland looking, which can be detrimental in some levels. Each of the puzzles have a different theming based on where you are, which is a great touch- but on levels like the ones in Death Mountain, there’s not enough visual change to tell the difference between filled and unfilled squares. Some are worse than others, but I think forgoing some of the fancy details here for readabilities sake would’ve worked in their favour. There’s nothing wrong with having cute details and art in the borders and background, but I think it ended up being too cluttered as it is currently. Another part that got a little frustrating, particularly near the end, what that the cursor doesn’t stand out enough and I get lost! I can’t see it most of the time, there’s not enough contrast for it to stand out, and even with the rows and columns highlighted, I’d still fudge choices cause I’m one square off!

Overall, considering my main issues with this game are that it’s visually not polished enough for my tastes, I’d say this was a pretty great game. I had a lot of fun playing, and it reignited my old ideas to make a pircoss fan game of my own someday… I’d honestly recommend playing just for the interesting way they’ve presented adventure mode, it was really good!

~~~

My Nintendo Picross - The Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess, 3DS

Ahhh… My favourite picross game…

There is just a certain polish to this game that makes it stand out above the rest for me. I don’t feel like I even have to say much- you just read my other reviews. You know what I’ve complained about, and the kind of things I value in a picross game. I’m sure you can assume this one is pretty good.

I don’t really care for the second mode here where the numbers are semi obscured by covering two rows and columns, instead of each set of numbers being their own. It’s playable, but not my favourite, I vastly prefer the classic picross experience. That said, I would’ve loved more than just one level of the massive level, as it was quite fun to zoom in onto chunks and solve a picross that is just one square of a larger one.

Controls handle well and feel intuitive, the puzzles are fun and fit the theme. I like this game a lot.

Tutorial / Inside a House

Hyrule Field Main Theme

Ganondorf Main Theme

~~~

Castlevania, NES

This has got to be the most fun I’ve had with an NES game… like, ever. I thoroughly enjoyed so much about it, and in a way I feel that it reinvigorated my love for video games.

Despite not knowing what to do for the first few hours that I was playing, and not realising I could save within the collection I’ve been playing on to pause and pick up later, I didn’t care that I kept starting over every time I jumped back into the game. It’s a classic 80’s game, after all. How else are you supposed to play if you don’t continually replay the early levels as you try to push forward a few more screens?

However, I am glad for modern conventions like state saves and the like, as although I was loving it, I do have sensitive eyes and was struggling to play for my usual extended gaming sessions. Towards the end of my playthrough, I took advantage of save states and a few cheeky walkthroughs to get the best experience, as the game IS filled with a bunch of 80s bullshit, too.

The plot is VERY simple, and that’s something I enjoyed- as though there wasn’t much text (or subtext, for that matter) it was easy enough to follow along with. Dracula is the big bad, and we gotta storm his castle and take him and his monsters out! The visuals of the game are more detailed than I expected them to be, filled with a charming mix of monster movie and early gothic horror styles. While simple, the sprites for both Simon Belmont and the various enemies and bosses you encounter are filled with character, and with backgrounds that were filled with details- I only wish I could’ve played this on a CRT to experience the full depth! I find the CRT filters on LCD TV’s never truly mimic the way the pixels would bend and blur on those old screens, and simply opt for simple scan-line overlays that barely cut it.

As expected for a controller that consisted of basically a d-pad and two action buttons, the controls for this game are stupidly simple. This didn’t stop it from having an interesting weapons system, one that was surprisingly more complex than I initially understood it to be! Your main attack is your trusty whip, which can be upgraded a few times to have a longer reach, which is SUPREMELY helpful, and definitely felt when it’s taken away as you get hurt. The other method of attacking is via the subweapon system, which drop at various points from enemies or interactable elements of the levels. Along the way, you can collect hearts that are dropped- but these are not health. This took me a bit to figure out, as I kept dying and wondering why my health was so whack if I had been collecting so many hearts! Turns out, the hearts are more of an ammo counter for your subweapons. Once I figured this out, it really changed the way I approached the combat, and soon figured out which subweapons I enjoyed the most. I really liked the range of throwing the crosses like boomerangs across the screen, and throwing holy water to stun enemies while I whipped the hell out of them. There’s a bunch of other subweapons, those were just what I used most often, but it leaves room to experiment with what you want to keep on you, or where you want to swap out as you come across more subweapons. The more I played, the more I began to build strategies around what kinds of subweapons I had, and found that this system is actually a lot more nuanced than I assumed it to be in my early hours of play! Btw, if you want health, instead of hearts, you need to find a delicious roast leg in secret compartments in the wall. Mmmmmmm wall meat~

While the combat makes up the ‘action’ part of this game, the other part of it is platforming. Now, I really liked it once I got a feel for the controls, but it IS filled with a good dose of 80’s jank that is hard to get used to with modern gaming fingers. However, maybe it’s just because I am a cranky gamer, or because I grew up playing stuff of this era from my dad’s hand-me-downs… I loved the platforming here! I wanna reiterate just how detail filled the locations are, as it’s just dripping with character and creates a fun atmosphere to platform across. Although some stages had areas that were difficult to figure out what exactly was part of the platform I could walk across, you start to pick up cues and understand the visual language the devs are talking in. The platforming was a genuine challenge, there were times where I felt that 80s jank getting in my way, but there were also plenty of times where I felt I was so close, and that I just messed up what I was supposed to do. It helped that I could change the window boxed borders around the game, and had the gorgeous illustrated game cover to the side. It was me and Belmont’s mini skirt against the world!

And, it would be remiss of me to go this whole review without mentioning the music. IT’S GORGEOUS. I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HARD IT WAS TO JUST CHOOSE 3 SONGS TO LINK AT THE END, THERE’S SO MANY INTERESTING TRACKS!! Considering the limitations of the 8-bit era, there is such a depth and masterful composition to these songs that it was a genuine treat to listen to. Of course I’ll be linking the classic Vampire Killer, but for such a small OST, there are so many bangers! It was so nice hearing familiar motifs across various songs, and honestly just fun hearing what I consider to be amongst the best of NES’ sound. I feel like I could listen to some of these tracks for hours, but I already have with how much I spent in some levels!

Maybe this earlier era of gaming is just something easier for me to connect with quickly, but I can confidently say that I have no nostalgia clouding my vision, as I never got the chance to play this growing up. It’s something that I always wanted to play, and it’s a series that has come to mean a lot to me the more I play and learn about it- but seriously. What a game. It’s difficult, but not in a way that makes it impossible to just pick up and start playing. If you want a challenge, and haven’t already, I cannot recommend this game enough.

Stage 01 Vampire Killer

Stage 13 Heart of Fire

Stage 16 Out of Time

~~~

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, NES

This game fucking sucks. I love it.

In a similar style to Zelda II being a strange semi-rpg side scroller, Simon’s Quest is a bit of a departure from the simple action platformer it’s predecessor was. Though, I’d argue that this strange shake up feels more at home here than it did in Zelda II, as Castlevania was already a side scrolling game. Expanding it to exploring a whole world instead of exclusively Dracula's Castle is an interesting step, and despite the fumbling that is mainly down to poor translation and console limitations – this game was a surprising hit for me.

We continue on from the last game, following Simon as he deals with a curse placed upon him in the previous game when he defeated Dracula. To lift the curse, we must travel across the lands and retrieve Dracula’s body parts in the hopes that reassembling and defeating him once and for all will cure Simon. To do this, we must travel the land and find helpful hints and items within the various villages scattered about, and fight our way through the castles of Dracula’s loyal followers, who guard his body parts from people like Simon. The clearest way that the curse shows itself in this game through the day/night cycle, where enemies are twice as strong (or Belmont’s twice as weak), zombie-like creatures invade the villages, and all the villagers lock themselves away. I find this so fascinating because the sheer ambition of this narrative style is really pushing the limits of the NES – whether or not it was successful is to be elaborated on, but they tried and I love that.

This leads me to the perfect place to start discussing the gameplay itself, which is… ehhh… a bit of a mixed bag. As I just mentioned, the transitions from day to night are ambitious- but not great in practice. The cycle lasts about 3 minutes real time, which is far too frequent and actively destroys any and all pacing or momentum you have going. It also feels disproportionate for a cycle, the nights drag on FOREVER and the days barely last. It especially sucked when I was trying to get to a specific town with the express purpose of trying to talk with someone or buy something, only for it to turn to night just as I’d arrived. It’s just so poorly implemented due to the hardware limitations, and regardless how interesting or narratively involved it is, I’d estimate a good third of my playthrough was spent sitting in a village corner away from beasties and writing notes for this very write-up. This is THE biggest roadblock that turns people off this game, followed closely by the piss poor translation – which is a shame, because if you’re willing to trudge through all it’s failings, I actually think this is an awesome game.

There were definitely moments where I really got into this game, and even spent time thinking about it when I wasn’t playing. The enemy sprites are so cool and expressive for 8-bit, the music is even more banging (who doesn’t love bloody tears!) and there are occasional clever things to do that make it easier to progress, like throwing holy water to see where the false floors are. I also appreciated ‘quests’ like the crystal exchange, it was easy enough to follow despite the weird translation, and it was very clear that I was supposed to buy and trade them once I came across villagers who adamantly DIDN’T want to trade with my lame ass crystal. Even things as simple as coming across the house where you find the morning star merchant was really fun – I never played this as a kid, but that moment felt like a shot of pure nostalgia.

As I mentioned earlier, the translation fucking sucks here; which sucks even more because this has a few rpg elements thrown in, so it is important to actually talk to villagers and see what they have to say. One of the most well known things about this game is the botched translation regarding the red crystal; where, in the Japanese text it was clearer that to activate it and progress, you need to equip it and hold down in the right place. In English, it’s utter nonsense, and I only knew what to do as I had knowledge of this exact scenario. I wish it was translated clearer, as I had already figured out that pressing down was a good way to use the shield, and would bounce back fireballs if I stood still. It already had set up an understanding of the kind of button inputs to use with items, so it’s a shame that the instructions on what to was botched. There were some characters that had funny things to say through the strange choice in words, and I found it particularly amusing going through the village where everyone hates you. I keep repeating it, but I just need to keep saying it, I WISH THE TRANSLATION WAS BETTER. I’d recommend looking up fan translations/translation notes, as there’s a fascinating discrepancy between the two, and the JP version was more successful at setting up a certain tone and vibe amongst the villagers that helped get it just that much closer to successfully pulling off their ambitious ideas.

I can say for certain that the music helped tremendously, and this maaaaayyyyyy be my favourite soundtrack out of the trilogy. Let me replay it a thousand more times and I’ll get back to you. There’s such a bombastic feeling to the tracks when you’re walking around during the day, and at night it feels a little more subdued, but still in a kind of action-oriented way, if that makes sense. It’s dangerous for Simon to be out at night with his curse, but it’s still dangerous for the enemies at the other end of his morning star whip. I also liked the kind of eerie and adventurous vibes the castle themes have- I linked castle 1 cause its a banger, but if you’d be so inclined to check out castle 2, highly recommend.

Platforming in the game is pretty much the same as in Castlevania I, though there were more sections that felt like classic 80s bullshit. I even got stuck in a really weird spot and I found it quite amusing. It sucks a bit that water is an insta death, especially when there are some precarious platforms to jump across, but it wasn’t so bad. With regards to dying, I’m not sure I fully understand it, as you seemingly get three chances before you’re given a game over with the choice to continue. Continuing respawns you where you died, which is great, and the L is that your hearts are reset as punishment for sucking. That’s fine with me, as you’ll quickly rack up the hearts you need again when killing enemies, especially when you have the morning star, as there’s not much else to do during the night.

Before I get into the endgame stuff, I should talk about the rpg shit that’s here. When you kill enemies, you get hearts and experience points. You can level up in every castle, and doing so will expand your health and defence. There are also merchants in most towns, and a strange hooded person selling something special in each castle. Hearts aren’t just weapons ammo here, they are also currency, so there’s definitely an incentive to kill enemies instead of trying to outrun them. It was interesting to see such a basic NES system, but it worked, so I can’t complain. I’d be curious to see a modern take on this game, not only to get a chance for the original intent and ambitions to shine- as well as a more accurate translation for those of us overseas -but also to see if this rpg system should be expanded upon, or left the same. I’m not sure if I have a preference, but it is something I thought about a few times while playing (despite not generally being one for needless remakes and reimaginings lmao)

As the whole deal of this game is to collect pieces of Dracula, reassemble him, and then kick his ass for good, I found it quite interesting that you can actually equip pieces of Dracula! Using his claw and eye were particularly cool when thinking about them in-universe, not to mention they were just practical. Once you’ve collected all the pieces and make your way to Drac’s castle, I thought the set up was awesome. See, the village nearby was completely empty, save for one old lady who says “let’s live here together.” If I’m not mistaken, the town where everyone hates you is also en route to the castle, so it makes sense that they’d recognise and blame their supernatural troubles on the Belmont. By the time you get to the titular Castlevania, you’ll find that it’s completely empty.

How eerie.

I loved this, it was so unnerving, and at this point in the game, you will have battled many enemies and gotten used to keeping an eye out for them – so to enter the final castle and have it be completely devoid of life was something that stood out to me. All you have to do is find your way to the final chamber, and reassemble Dracula. His fight is piss easy, but going with the narrative in-universe, I’m fine with that! Overall, I think what made me connect with this game was how compelling the tid bits of narrative were. Not because it was outrageously complex and ground breaking – but because it gave a fitting, if tragic, context and justification to go on this journey. With the success of the Netflix Castlevania series, and the generally positive reception towards it’s spin off- Castlevania: Nocturne, I’d be incredibly interested in seeing the tale of Simon adapted and elaborated upon. Whether this is through a modern remake or animated adaptation, either would scratch that curious itch for me- but I may just have to write my own fan adaptation in the meantime, ahaha!

Near the end of the game, I did find myself getting lost as I struggled to orient myself. The ‘open’ exploration being horizontal in nature is the main reason for this, but despite this, I found it quite cool how large they were able to make this world feel for a 2D sidescroller. What sucks balls though, is that your ending will change depending on how long you take to gather up Dracula and kill him again – and most players will go through multiple day/night cycles while they play, locking themselves in for the ‘bad’ ending. That’s the one I got, though the way the text was worded didn’t seem all that bad to me. It was a positive, if tragic, outcome, all things considered. Thankfully, in the age of the internet, it’s really easy to look up the other endings – but a few years down the line when I get ACTUAL nostalgia for this game, and not just the feeling that I should've had nostalgia for this as I would've adored it as a kid; I’m certain I’ll be attempting to get the good ending for myself.

It’s clear that despite it’s many flaws, I loved this game, and consider it to be a misunderstood gem. I’d highly encourage putting in the effort to look past it’s shortcomings, find a good walkthrough for backup, and give it a try. It didn’t quite hit all of it’s lofty ambitions due to limitations in hardware, and was also undercut further in the west with the poor translation, but I truly felt the passion the team put into this, and enjoyed it all the same.

Stage Theme Bloody Tears

Castle Theme 01 Dwellings of Doom

Day Time The Silence of Daylight

~~~

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, NES

The opening ‘cinematic’ of this game says everything you need to know about this game: Castlevania is back, and better than ever.

I found it quite charming that the intro had an old film look, with the visuals of the tape rolling to make it feel all the more grand. By this point, the devs knew what they wanted to make- confident in creating the gothic horror imagery they want to portray, and succeeding! I said it eariler, and I’ll say it again – I am so surprised and excited to see just how much detail they managed to put into an 8-bit NES game, and Dracula's Curse is a step up once again.

The gameplay is a return to the familiar style of the first game- though, the second hasn’t been completely forgotten, as at the completion of areas, you have to choice on which path to take as you continue your journey. It’s interesting, and though it doesn’t feel as open as Simon’s Quest, the world here still feels very large.

This is also helped by the fact that there are so many innovations on the gameplay to keep it feeling fresh. There are new gimmicks to certain levels, like swamp water acting like quicksand, water rising levels, and more complexity to boss fights. There are also some quality of life changes I noticed: in Castle II, I often died when platforming as my jumps would be compromised by hitting my head on a block above me and falling directly into water below. Here in Castle III, I noticed that when you jump under some platform bricks, you can jump through your full arc instead of hitting your head on them. Clearly, I died enough this way in II that it was noticed and appreciated here.

The main new thing to this game, however, is the buddy system going on. While you journey, you have the option to come across some friends who will join you. There’s Grant Danasty; a pirate guy who can climb walls and ceilings, and uses a short dagger to attack- Sypha Belnades; a powerful magic user who is weak at everything else- and Alucard, the son of Dracula and bearer of PENIS BLAST!!!!

Okay… He can turn into a bat and fly around the level, and use magic fireballs, it just looks like he’s throwing it from his penis. Out of the three recruitable characters, Sypha is the only one who doesn’t have a boss fight. Grant was turned into a monster by Dracula, so you have to fight and knock some sense into him- after which, he joins you. And Alucard challenges you to a battle, of which he’s using as a gauge to see if you are strong enough to help him with his patricidal agenda. Trevor Belmont is the guy you start with, and who is always available to switch back to, though he’s exactly what you’d expect from a Belmont. This character switching system is quite fun, though I don’t think it’s any secret that I love Alucard and therefore mainly played as him or Trevor for most the game. I did start a replay to make sure I recruited everyone and try out their move sets- everyone has a special ability that uses the hearts as ammo, and has different strengths and weaknesses compared to Trevor’s more well-roundedness (especially when you’ve upgraded his whip!)

The music here is absolutely stunning, people love the Castlevania soundtracks for a reason, and it’s due to the masterful composition of this trilogy. There’s even a familiar deja vu to enjoy amongst all the new tracks.

I honestly don’t have much more to say on this game, I just enjoyed playing it and didn’t feel the need to take many notes, as it’s a solid step up and refinement for the series. My only real criticisms are that some of the sprites readability isn’t very good, and detracts from the detail filled world. The background blended in with intractable objects and resulted in times where I couldn’t clearly see where the stairs and platforms I’m supposed to be using actually were. I found this the worst in 9-01, and struggled with eye strain the most in this game. As I’m playing on a modern tv, I do wonder if playing on a CRT would’ve made this critique a moot point, but I’ll just have to chalk that up to the sacrifice of detailed pixel art in the 8-bit era.

Oh, and I guess I should mention the fight with Death, as it was definitely a challenge- one I found harder than the Dracula fight. So hard, in fact, that my only note on it was: DEATH ON 8-03 WAS INSANELY HARD! SAVE STATE FUDGE FOR DESSERT!

This was just a great time, and I’m tied between recommending this or Castle I as the definitive experience for new players wanting to try the og stuff. I’d say just play the whole trilogy, but I had such a great time with all of these games, and it was super fun playing the game that the Netflix Animated series was mostly based on.

I love Castlevania.

Beginning [Level 1]

Mad Forest

Riddle

~~~

Super Mario Odyssey, Switch

The first time a friend got me to try Odyssey was in late 2019. It was his favourite game at the time, and he really wanted me to play it. I gave it a good 40 min or so, but I really wasn’t enjoying it. I commented that I felt that it was trying too hard to recapture the style of Mario Galaxy and failing, and that I’d rather play galaxy instead. Obviously, 40 min isn’t enough time to truly understand WHY I didn’t click with it, but now, after 25+ hours, I can tell you exactly why.

It’s shit.

I was selling old switch games I never played and was able to take advantage of a deal to get Odyssey relatively cheap, and it was the only switch game in stock at the time that seemed somewhat interesting. I thought I may as well give The Mario Title for the switch a go- and give it a fair go at that. I played through every world until I finished the game, exploring and collecting as much as I could, but there was no way I was going to attempt 100% completion.

The basic rundown of the game is the base Mario formula you’d expect. Peach is kidnapped, it’s Bowser’s fault, go save the Princess. The companion character, your hat, joins you as his sister has been kidnapped with Peach; so you both have a common goal. There’s other details to it, but I really couldn’t get invested and I often found myself very lost plot-wise. In 3D Mario fashion, every new instalment seems to stray further into that vague open-ended, pseudo open world style of gameplay. Having such a loosely connected plot and not much more of it connected to the main goal of collecting power moons lacked the clear motivations I needed to get through the game. Like, what am I doing? Am I just collecting power moons? To upgrade my ship and travel to a new kingdom? To do what…? Collect more power moons?

There wasn’t any charm here for me, and I constantly felt as though the game were hollow and devoid of the Mario characteristics I’d expected as a bare minimum. Perhaps thats a failing on my part, but I DO enjoy games where there’s not strictly a reason why the game is happening, just that it is – but you see… those games are usually mechanically interesting, or just plain fun enough that it outweighs my need for plot to help suck me in. This game was not fun, I don’t think I enjoyed myself at all, maybe save for moments where I was desperately trying to look for positives and begrudgingly noting that one area isn’t that bad… I guess. It just feels shit, and I had a similar problem with BOTW. It may be something as simple as outgrowing the target audience, or being a nostalgiaphille who prefers the games from decades ago ‘just cause;’ but I really feel that there is a disconnect in this era of Nintendo and I’m struggling to enjoy any of it, despite generally wanting to enjoy them.

The main gimmick of this game is your hat friend (who’s name is Cappy, despite being a top hat?), and their ability to possess creatures all over the various Kingdoms and utilise their unique skills to complete platforming puzzles across the levels.

I HATE THIS.

All the possessions are functionally the same thing. The fucking onion that I hate. The octopus with a butthole. The fire thing. THEY JUST JUMP. YOU KNOW WHO ELSE CAN JUMP? MARIO. GIVE HIM A FUCKING IRON CAP OR FIRE FLOWER TO CROSS THE DOMAIN AND LET ME JUST JUMP AND DO ACTUAL PLATFORMING. Some of the possessions are really stupid too. I can be a slab of meat, or a manhole, but I can’t be a spiny? There’s hammer bros, AND FIRE HAMMER BROS, BUT MARIO CAN’T JUST BE MARIO BUT WITH A FIRE FLOWER?? I CAN BE A PIRAHA PLANT IN THE LUNCH LAND, BUT NOT IN DONKEY KONG CITY??? WHAT IS GOING ON!?

I remember complaining about the arbitrary and limiting nature of the possessions to my friend, and he said, “If these were flowers you ran into to absorb their powers the same way you do in Galaxy you wouldn't be bitching.” Yeah, cause then I wouldn’t be some big stone guy with glasses to use bad version of the lens of truth, or some fucking onion. I don't want to be an ONION I want to be MARIO. Power ups in Mario are ADDITIONAL powers using MARIO as a base. These possessions are REMOVING Mario and ONLY letting me use the new power. THAT’S SHIT! I would rather deal with power ups like in Mario Galaxy where it’s an addition to the Mario abilities, or a strategic gain one lose another (like the bee mushroom, you can fly and walk/climb on honey, which Mario cannot, but if you touch water you’ll lose the power, unlike Mario who can swim) Said friend brought up the spring mushroom in galaxy, but I hated that power up for the exact same reasons I hate these possessions! They’re dumb gimmicks that don’t do anything!! Most the possessions are various forms of limited jumping, and if it’s not that, it’s some dumb one (maybe two) trick gimmick thing that controls poorly!! Whoop dee doo!!!

To top it off, the base Mario controls suck too. They felt terrible and really weird for me. The depth perception is the worst I’ve experienced in a 3D Mario; I’d often try to jump off things and be flung in a direction no where near where I directed it, and I couldn’t get the hang of the motion controls. The motion controls on the switch are the worst I’ve ever played; and I asked friends and went through various forums trying to make sure my joycons were calibrated properly, but I can only conclude that the controls just suck. They suck badly. I was never able to perform the cap jumps with any consistency, so I avoided using them and had to get creative in other ways (or just give up on trying to get to particularly difficult-to-reach areas). One thing that WOULD’VE HELPED would be if you were still able to access those particular moves with button controls, HOWEVER you’re fucked if you wanna play handheld only, or just can’t seem to figure out the motion controls. This is yet another reason why I will never understand the switch lite (or the fact that the switch is touted as a hybrid console to play docked or handheld, but it’s clearly meant to be docked with game design that actively fucks over players in handheld modes or are just otherwise unwilling or unable to use motion!), but to not even have a toggleable option to play with button only or motion controls is baffling. WHY IS ONE OF THE MAIN DRAWS OF THE GAME LOCKED BEHIND MOTION CONTROLS!? I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND.

The camera was also incredibly frustrating. It was locked onto some kind of predetermined path (one that felt specifically designed to yank away from where I was TRYING to position it) which made exploring even more frustrating. Half the moons of each level that you need to collect are hidden in corners and strange areas that you’re intended to find through exploration, which you do in part with the camera controls. If I’m constantly in a battle with the camera, despite it being one I can supposedly control, what the hell am I supposed to do!? Even when I’d position it where I wanted, as soon as I started walking, it’d reposition itself, but never in ways where I could leave the camera and just trust that it would generally point to where I wanted. What’s the point.

And, not that boss fights are anything stand-out to me in a Mario game, but all the fights FUCKING SUCKED. I hate the controls and I hate these ugly rabbids looking fuckers! I don’t even like the extended Bowser clown kid lineup, but that’s preferable to random ass rabbit characters. GROSS. What’s wrong with Bowser and Bowser Jr? The lack of Bowser’s presence felt sucky to me as well, I missed him and feeling the looming threat and consequences of his actions if we don’t step up and punch his dick. It’s just a wedding. Oh no. A wedding that Peach doesn’t consent to and even though Bowser is evil and pushy, he still has some minimal form of respect to leave Peach alone when she walks out. (Also, did anyone else feel a bit weird when Mario joined in on trying to propose as an alternate option for Peach? Just me?) When we finally got to Bowser’s dick-punching… THAT SUCKED TOO! Shitty icing on the shitty cake. Fart_Reverb.mp3

While I’m complaining about game mechanics, I want to talk about the main collectables – coins and moons. Theres… not really a difference between them, to be honest. Moons are the same deal as the power stars from Galaxy… but dumb. They’re just hanging out in the levels, free for the taking the same way coins are. Even if there were little mini game things to complete before getting a moon, they felt more like an obligation on the game dev’s part to ‘spice it up’ with ‘varied methods of collection.’ Some moons are more special than others for reasons I cannot see- why are some moons given a cutscene when you collect them, but others aren’t? Why is the ‘grand star’ of moons just three moons at once, which feels even more un-special. I also don’t like that there’s no intrinsic stakes to collecting the moons, it’s the exact same value to find a moon by simply walking up to it, or doing a simple ground pound, to something more complicated that actually requires platforming or some other kind of challenge. Some of these moons are easier to find than coins, which is why they feel as devalued as them. I vastly prefer the way this was handled in Galaxy, where there are different tiers of stars to make it feel proportionate to the effort you put in to collecting them. There’s the power stars themselves, which are usually the main goal of any mission and require some traversal and platforming or puzzle solving of some kind to find and unlock. There’s the power stars that are broken up into bits, where the challenge is much easier but spread out so you have to collect all the bits before unlocking the star, and there’s the grand power stars that were usually locked behind a boss fight. There were easily understood stakes with that system, but here in Odyssey, there’s not a single difference between finding a single moon or a cluster of three, other than the physical number. It’s dumb, and it feels lazy and almost insulting that they’d strip it down to something so basic. Kids could understand Galaxy, why do you feel the need to make it even more basic and like a participation trophy?

The thing with the moons being the same value as coins, is that the coins don’t matter either. Coins are the health currency of the game, but also the economic currency. If you die, coins are deducted and you respawn. If you die with no coins… nothing happens. Your health isn’t even restored when you collect coins, which breaks any connection between coins and health to me. If they’re taken away as punishment, shouldn’t they also reward health when collected? There’s not even the classic 100 coins = 1up here. (Did you also notice that there’s not a single mushroom item in the game? Way to go on skipping more Mario iconography!) Coins being as perfunctory as they are, and in some cases even rarer to come across compared to moons, completely deflated any value either of them have to me. Why am I collecting either? Sure, I can unlock more levels if I collect enough moons, and I can buy stuff with my coins, but every level has a seperate local currency that you have to collect to spend within that world anyway! WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANY OF IT!!

Lastly, I want to touch on the visual and audio vibes of the game, of which I feel disappointed in both. Visually, yeah, there’s a lot of detail and it’s pretty and whatever… but it all felt very bland and hollow to me. So many levels are surrounded by a sprawling abyss of nothing, which felt really uninspired and made me miss when efforts were put into skyboxes and distant parallaxed background elements to make it feel dense and detailed without overwhelming the player or the system. A particular example for me is Bowser’s Weeb Ass Castle – for the end goal of the game, it REALLY felt like something you could slap together in Unity (derogatory). Where’s the spectacle, the theatrics? I can’t even recall anything feeling particularly Bowser about it, it’s just a Japanese inspired level…

I couldn’t even enjoy levels that were technically fuller and more detailed, due to recognising characteristics of other bland levels that come before and after. It felt like an illusion, that the levels had so much shit there, yet there was barely anything to do. Gripes with previous 3D Mario entries, warranted gripes, are ‘fixed’ by… doing the same thing. It’s just that it looks prettier with modern graphics, so it’s technically better enough for the devs to say, “nuh-uh! We fixed it!”

Take for example, a big issue many people have had with all 3D Mario games since Mario 64, is how the pacing feels choppy with continually getting spat out at the end of a level when you collect a star. That’s something frustrating that stayed all the way until Galaxy, where even when you could reasonably collect two or more power stars within the one level, you’re forced to exit the level and re-enter it fro each individual star. I can say similar things about botw, and them taking on the criticism of “there’s too much text!! We want voice acting!!” to become a game that had poorly voice acted cutscenes, ALONG WITH WALLS OF TEXT TO READ ANYWAY. In Odyssey, there are STILL issues with the pacing of collecting stars and still being forced to come to a halt while you watch a cutscene or need to re-enter a level, but because it’s not the same explicit getting-spat-out-of-a-level as previous games, it’s somehow the ‘fix’ players have been asking for. Do you see how that’s a non-solution dressed up as the fix made in response to criticism, without the devs actually addressing or even understanding WHY complaints were made about it in the first place? But cause it’s been ‘fixed’ in a weird way, its not only ‘innovative’ for the newest era of 3D Mario, but its alllll better.

So much of this game felt like a very empty identity crisis, barely resembling Mario or the Nintendo polish I’ve come to expect. Mario has always been a weird series with things that really push what it means to BE a Mario game – but I feel for most previous entries in both his 2D and 3D adventures, there’s always been enough recognisably Mario within the game that it’s easier to roll with whatever whacky thing they’re introducing. Galaxy was already pushing it as a ‘recognisably Mario’ kind of game, but at least it was charming with some solid NPCs and a decent, if simple, plot to follow and tie everything together. I’m more than willing to admit that rose-tinted nostalgia glasses may be fuelling the way I’m digging my heels in on this during comparisons to Galaxy, but I feel that Galaxy was the furthest I can appreciate the pushed boundaries of what makes a Mario game, and where I draw the line in no longer being able to connect with and appreciate it.

Apart from looking bland, the game often sounded bland too. The first couple of worlds have very ambient and minimalistic music, which sucked in my opinion – and although there are some great tracks later on, it just made me feel even more like this game lacked the Mario charm I’d been told to expect. The top 3 tracks I’ve linked at the end are all really nice songs, though they sound like they’re from completely different games, and none of them a Mario one. I felt saddened by the fact that I had to play through 5 worlds before I came across a track that I enjoyed, and even then, it was just enjoyable in a general sense, and not in a way that felt like it belonged in a Mario game. When I listen to the tracks I don’t even know WHICH LEVEL they belonged to for most of them, they don’t sound like the music that should be playing when you’re playing, and more like I just muted the game and put on a playlist of other music.

There’s a lot of elements in Mario soundtracks across the games that can be drawn on to further refine and evolve for a new game, but again, I can only describe the soundtrack as an identity crisis. While there are some of the classic tracks we all know and love rearranged for the game, it was so few and far between that it actually felt jarring to hear Mario music in what is supposedly a Mario game. One of the last worlds you unlock is a massive reinterpretation of the outside of Peach’s Castle from Mario 64, and thats the main area that you hear anything that sounds like traditional Mario in this game. It was disappointing, and I found myself too burnt out and cynical to enjoy something that felt like too much like nostalgia bait instead of loving homage. Overall, while listening to the soundtrack again as I write this, it is genuinely and objectively a nice collection of songs.; it just lacks a certain je ne sais quoi and the specific Mario-flavoured cohesion to tie it all together in my opinion.

One thing that I did enjoy- for the most part -were the 2D platformer sections present in every world. In these sections, you go through a pipe and get turned into an 8-bit Mario to platform across an area and get a power moon. In the early hours of my playthrough, I considered this the highlight of my playthrough… but the more I played, feeling frustrated with the intended platforming and level progression of the game, the more I felt jaded towards these sections. They’re genuinely nice, a short section that’s a return to form for cranky old gamers like myself, and accompanying them is an 8-bit remix of the level’s theme, and Mario will be wearing pixel interpretations of whatever outfit you had on. It’s fun! I want to love it more than I do, but towards the end of my playthough, it began to feel like pandering in order to secure old fans as part of the target audience, while also capturing kids and new fans that are more easily excited by putting a hat on a dinosaur and being able to run into things with bad controls.

They’re spreading themselves thin, in a way that feels non-committal in a way that’s overly safe. I would’ve rathered they put more effort into buckling down and making the possession concept a lot stronger, or whatever other weird direction they wanted to go in, and just believe in it. They’ve already built games around the concept of ‘Mario but he has a water gun,’ and ‘Mario but there’s weird gravity;’ but where those games felt more successful is that they felt like they put more effort into exploring that concept in multiple ways – whereas I feel that theres not really anything fun, interesting or innovative about the possessions in this game. For a game that’s only defence against most of my critiques being, “but it’s for kids! And people new to Mario!!” I want to ask, what exactly is this promising for the future of 3D Mario? The whole game wasn’t that memorable, and that mechanic felt so all-over-the-place that it didn’t get a chance to really shine. I can’t really visualise any levels or gaming moments when I hear the soundtrack or think of this game, and I’m a more visual thinker- that should be easy for me! It’s a glorified tech demo, and even that is a generous description in my eyes. It’s just so epic to play a Mario game where you’re encouraged to not play as Mario for most of it! (But it’s all still Mario, because you have his hat and moustache! Duh!)

I feel like I have so much more to say, but it would be getting even more nitpicky and whingy than it already is. I’ve cut back a lot of what I wrote down when playing, this is the SHORT version!

Well, ok it’s the shorter-but-still-a-classic-Rads-review-slash-retrospective. I’m not really sure what to call these, retrospective feels the most appropriate, but yeah. That’s all I’ll say about Mario Odyssey for now. My copy has found a much better home being regifted to my younger cousins who got a family switch last Christmas. They enjoy it very much, and I fucking hated it and what it represents.

Fuck you, Mario Odyssey!

Steam Gardens

Bubblaine

Bowser's Castle 2

[devilsfoolcake]

Hey, it's Aubby again. Would you be comfortable sharing more about Mars'/your relationship with Sun and Moon? Do you have a storyline in mind for how they met?

Hii Aubby!! And I don't mind sharing about it at all, tho I haven't been thinking on it often so this is gonna be a little long as I remember stuff n put them together gdjdhd

I think their first meetings would be pretty similar to most sun/moon x reader fics- ofc a little different from them but starts the same way (putting the rest under the cut)

Basically Mars was searching for a good paying job that doesn't require alot of social interaction and they find a job for working behind the desk in the Pizzaplex's Daycare, along with cleaning the Daycare and the Daycare Attendant themself. they take it since there wouldn't be too much interaction besides kids or the parents coming to pick up those kids, how bad could it be?

Only a little bad since Moon is the first one they meet when they come in for their first shift (not properly warned about by Vanessa 🙄)

But Their first meeting goes... well, even if it was mostly Moon watching them from a distance- they do see him eventually though, softly saying they think he looks cool and that they love the sun/moon look they have going on :) (since they never saw them before) which made him curious about them but they never interacted more than that for a bit (besides the following them around and being creepy thing)

Their first meeting with Sun was the complete opposite, the moment they arrived for their shift the next day he was already excited and ready to show them around the daycare. Basically dragging them around by their hand lmao, which they found cute :3 they spent a good while getting to know eachother- as much as they could since Mars was still pretty shy around him, but he got them out of their shell for a little bit (that charisma of his.... man)

And Mars does the usual Y/N "Oh yeah I met the other daycare attendant! He seems nice" thing and Sun shuts that down immediately- saying "You shouldnt be in the Daycare when the lights are off!! It's dangerous!!" And other things since he and Moon currently do not have a good relationship with eachother yet (Mars helps them through that) which confuses them but they'll find out why he's nervous about that later :3

I'd say they start getting closer when the DLC takes place- during that they find out what the virus is and why Sun said it's so dangerous to be there when the lights are off yaaay fun. (Sun also develops feelings for them around that time yaaaaaaay while Moon gets closer to them slowly.. with some incidents :) "what makes you so special?" and ofc lighthearted bullying yaaay yay)

But that's all I got right now I think :3

[a-pale-azure-moon]

I've barely scratched the surface of TotK and I can feel my brain wanting to disappear down the Zelda rabbit hole. I am desperately trying to keep at least half of it in my writing brainspace but damn is it hard. There's so much temptation to just plop down with my Switch for the next eight hours and forget about everything else.

Anyway, I'm still very early in but I'll put my ramblings under the cut just in case.

-I know the popular joke was that TotK is just "$70 DLC." Obviously it is not with all of the new content, but it genuinely feels like I'm playing BotW again, only with new tools and new places to discover. And I don't consider that a bad thing! I spent almost 300 hours playing BotW and still wished there was more I could do (aside from hunting down all the Koroks because screw that), so I'm happy to be revisiting this world and exploring it all over again. Though I won't lie that I miss having all the gear and upgrades I had by the end of BotW. I'd forgotten how easy it is to die in stupid ways early on.

-Holy hell is there so much to explore. Maybe too much. Even with the nudges the game gives you, it's really hard to know where to even begin once you leave the Great Sky Island. I haven't even done any of the main dungeons yet; I've just been wandering around looking for shrines and seeing what's changed. It's even more daunting knowing there's stuff in the sky and in the depths to explore as well.

-The Depths freak me out. I've only been in there once and I'm not eager to go back until I'm stronger. Never been a fan of dark places in video games; you never can know what's lurking there, waiting to ambush you.

-It's nice to see all the familiar NPCs. Bumping into Purah and Robbie right away made me smile.

-It's also nice to see that Hyrule's been rebuilding since the end of BotW, but that evidence of the Calamity still exists (Castle Town especially). It makes the world feel that much more organic and real.

-That opening sequence was choice. Like, the approach to Ganon's lair, with the increasing gloom and the ominous music, literally sent shivers down my spine. Good shit.

-Ultrahand is amazing and I've only just begun to really play with its powers.

-To whomever at Nintendo designed the Gloom Spawn/Grabby hands/Nightmare Fuel, I hate you. May all your bacon burn for the rest of your life.

-I miss the Bomb runes SO MUCH.

-What happened to all the Sheikah technology anyway? I totally get dismantling all the Guardians considering they were the scourge of Hyrule for a long time, but did the towers and the Slate just...stop working?

-I'm fascinated by Rauru (and no, it's not just because he has Dimitri's voice, though I won't lie that it makes him that much more appealing, lol). So, we know that's his right arm that Link is "borrowing," and all of Link's new powers specifically come from that arm. And that same arm was keeping Ganon sealed away for....some length of time I'm not aware of yet, but I'm guessing it was awhile. And the new shrines are implied to contain fragments of Rauru's power as well. Just how powerful is this guy? Also, the reveal that he's the first King of Hyrule too (and married to a Hylian woman!) just makes things more interesting.

Also, also, look how adorable he is! I want to pet his ears and brush his hair! But I also want see him go ham at some point because the game sure as hell implies that he's god-like and I'm here for it.

...But it'll probably also make me sad because he's well, dead now and it's likely because sealing Ganon away cost him his life. =(

(I'm still reeling that Rauru's voiced by Chris Hackney, and it's even more wild with Matt Mercer being the voice of Ganon. How is it that the VAs of both of my FE husbands wound up in this game? Thanks for making sure the brainrot never ends, Nintendo!)

[shivunin]

DID I SEND CHARACTERS ALREADY? I can’t remember but I’m gonna do it (again)

Leliana, Bethany, and Josie??

Nope, but good picks! c: And thank you for asking, Zen!

(Character Ask thing)

Leliana:

First impression: I started Inquisition first, so: ooh badass spy lady, I'm into it

Impression now: The same, but I love the dimension that playing Origins gives her character (+ Leliana's song). To see her go from this devil-may-care character to a woman who is trying her best to be virtuous, then the Left Hand of the Divine to her ending in Inquisition (hardened/unhardened, Divine/not Divine) is all so fascinating. We get so much scope in her character and I think it's fantastic.

Favorite moment: I think my favorite line for her is the bit about shoes in the Winter Palace, where she talks about everything she can sort of interpret based on the woman's buckles. It's such an interesting insight into her thought process

Idea for a story: I have a half-written scene with her and Salshira in the Josie/Salshira universe where she helps arrange passage to the duel with Lord Otranto and I think it's really fun!

Unpopular opinion: I know people generally think it's not canon/ridiculous, but I think Fade Ghost Leliana is so goddamn funny. She came back from the ether to work a 9 to 5 for the church. Like what?? She fought her friend to the death over a jar of ashes and dragon's blood and then she was like, well, okay, but what if there was an epilogue?? It's so funny. So so funny.

Favorite relationship: Leliana and Shmooples. I want more Leliana and Shmooples content. She loves that little fella so much and I want to know what their day to day is like. (but I am also interested in how Josie and Leliana became friends; she is so protective of Josie in a way she isn't toward anyone else and it is really really interesting to me)

Favorite headcanon: Leliana and Zev are buddies and stay in touch. I saw a comic a while ago of him leaving gifts/notes for the other companions and I find the headcanon so delightful. I like to imagine he's how Leliana actually tracked down the Hero of Ferelden.

Bethany:

*I want to preface this by saying that I have not even once played 2 with a non-mage, so I haven't spent a ton of time around Bethany.

First impression: Oh, cool, you get siblings in this one!

Impression now: Let Bethany say fuck. For the love of God, let Bethany say fuck

Favorite moment: I am so sorry, I can't think of anything specific T.T I do think her dialogue with a romanced Sebastian in the Legacy DLC is funny.

Idea for a story: In my magician AU, Bethany is in a coma. I have loosely plotted a part in this AU where she wakes up and is able to express some of that anger about the role she had in her family.

Unpopular opinion: Idk if this qualifies, but I would like to have the option to choose which sibling dies in the intro sequence (no hate to Carver) so I can have my cake and eat it, too (be a mage and also hang out w Bethany)

Favorite relationship: Isabela sending Bethany naughty books in the Circle cracks me up, so those two.

Favorite headcanon: I like to imagine she and Wen hang out if she is a Warden (and have some version of a "don't you ever just want to lose it?" conversation)

Josephine: (light of my life!!!)

First impression: Oh my goodness she is so pretty 🥺

Impression now: Same. But also, if there is one individual person I would not piss off from Inquisition, it's Josie. Everyone else will just kill you---maybe take a bit doing it, but ultimately they would kill you. Josie?? Josie could wipe your family history off the map if she wanted. She could ruin everyone who ever helped you. And yet! she also goes out of her way to be kind to the Inquisitor even if un-romanced. I love that she stays herself throughout the events of the game.

Favorite moment: The Otranto duel. Oh my goodness. The drama! The romance! Josie not wanting the Inquisitor in harm's way, but also so relieved to be with them openly! My little romantic's heart can't take it.

Idea for a story: The uh. The Otranto duel with her and Salshira. Salshira having no idea how to fight with a sword but learning as much as she can on the boat over. Going in knowing she can't win and knowing she's going to do it anyway because Josie (clever, beloved Josie, who is home to her even though she wasn't looking for one) is worth it to her. She is worth being loud and vulnerable about her affection and she is worth fighting for. The relief of getting to hold Josie in public, with everyone watching, and swing her around in happiness---just like their dance at the Winter Palace, but a thousand times more joyful (I totally haven't thought about this at all...)

Unpopular opinion: Josie has never done anything wrong ever. I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion or not, but that's just facts.

Favorite relationship: Josie and Bull---like what is going on there, Josie???

Favorite headcanon: Josie sharing her doll collection with her love <3 (this isn't even a headcanon, I just realized as I wrote it, it's just like. a fic idea. ah well.)

[chaosintheavenue]

A random guide to which of my various Fallout OCs have completed various quests, DLCs etc, since I know my storyline has become pretty convoluted in places!

-

New Vegas:

Who's the Courier?

That's Six!

Picrew link

He got shot by Benny, woke up in Goodsprings, and did all the things a Courier does along the Yes Man route up to the point of having all factions allied and prepared for Hoover Dam. But… he never made it back to Yes Man to announce that he was ready to kick things off.

Where is he now?

He's, um… in the Sierra Madre vault. RIP buddy.

So what happens with Hoover Dam?

Charlie takes over the NV quests from there!

Picrew link

She has Complicated Lore, so for the sake of this quick post, you can consider her to be reluctantly Legion-aligned and operating in a role roughly equivalent to that of a frumentarius. She still never gets involved with the Dam, but she does convince more factions to aid the Legion when the time comes, and happen to meet all of the NV companions along the way.

She also usually has another OC as a companion with her- Chel, Red and Brutus in that chronological order- but they tend to take less of an active role in the quests.

What about Old World Blues?

That was Violet!

She originated as a Van Buren OC and has played a few narrative roles in my overarching OC storyline, one of which was ending up in Big MT thanks to her constant misfortune.

She doesn't talk about what happened during her unintended excursion. Mobius is probably still alive, at least… I think?

And Lonesome Road?

That- very recently, in fact- was Vari!

(please ignore the fact that he's in the Villa here lol)

I haven't sat down and intentionally written up much of his lore yet, but he's a Cipher, and my brain is currently so gripped by them that I can all but guarantee he'll get more content soon lol.

Throughout the DLC, he had no idea what in general was going on or who Ulysses was (I've roughly decided that Vari somehow received Six's old Pip-Boy from Elijah, who must have removed it pre-vault sealing for some reason or other, but that'll require plenty more lore-bending I haven't gotten around to) and did end up being unable to pacify him.

Dead Money?

Well, that was Six, up to a point. Several other OCs have visited or passed near to the Sierra Madre, and Elijah no longer seems to be holed up there. Kinda just leaving him out there as a vague rogue element in the OCverse for now.

And Honest Hearts?

Does not take place as depicted in game, but a few characters have passed through the Zion Canyon area.

-

Fallout 76:

Who's the Resident?

That's Lara!

They're the character I briefly played as at initial launch, and suffice to say, they didn't get a whole lot done. I do have a vague story outline for their post-gameplay life which involves them getting involved with Raiders, but quest-wise they spent their days terrified of the new world around them and did very little aside from creating the Scorch vaccine.

Where are they now?

Frankly, I don't know exactly what became of them in lore. But they were active in 2102, and it's now 2298, so… it's not looking too good for them :/

So who's in Appalachia now?

That's Trin!

You've probably already seen her around these parts. Backstory-wise, she has partial Cipher ancestry, but is also reluctantly tied in with the BoS, and is somewhat Scorched thanks to drinking the Nuka-Cola vaccine a little too late (AKA, Complicated Lore). She's done most of the main questline (got stuck at Fort Defiance for hardware reasons, so she'll most likely never enter a silo or launch for herself) and the entirety of Wastelanders and Steel Dawn/Reign. Has both Beckett and Sofia staying at her CAMP (plus various OC companions, of course).

[meraxes-of-new-albion]

18, 22, 30?

I ramble so I'm gonna answer this under a readmore lmao

Thank you for the ask!!!!! :D

18. Do you like reading? If yes what's your favourite book?

I read a lot when I was younger - my mom's joke was that I was 13 going on 30, she handed me A Game Of Thrones before the TV show came out lol... interesting parenting choice looking back but I really enjoyed reading them. My favorite book is probably Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson; tws apply but they're spoiler-y so I won't get into them here. It's got a really dry gallows sense of humor through the whole book that resonates with me to this day, and I've gone back and reread it a couple times, which I can't think of another book I've done that with.

(Actually, I can, it's Brave New World by Adlous Huxley. IMO it's the best of the older era of dystopian novels insofar as it's actually fun to read. Sorry, Fahrenheit 451, I find your narrative less immediately compelling, although you're probably more important.)

22. Best memory you could think of?

When i was a wee baby intern, I was shadowing an education keeper at a small zoo 5 days a week for the whole summer. A month or so before I started, that zoo had gotten a Harris hawk from another zoo. I spent the first two months of that internship watching my supervisor build a relationship with that bird, helping clean, and train, and desensitizing her to all sorts of things.

Then one day, said supervisor handed me the glove, and told me "go get Maya". And there is something deeply, instinctually, absolutely incredible about having three pounds of apex predator standing on your fist, understanding that you're both trusting each other across whole taxonomic clades and without sharing anything more than time and the fact you're both vertebrates.

It's been four years and I miss that bird every day of my life. She was magnificent.

30. What are your hobbies?

Anything to do with fibercrafts, I dabble in (or intend to... i have a lot of embroidery supplies I haven't dug into yet...). I'm really big on trying to use everything you can, so I have a huge box of fabric scraps I like to make into things - I made myself a Switch case, I'm trying to make a stuffed animal leopard gecko, I'm halfway through a t shirt quilt for my mom, kind of thing. I'm trying to learn how to knit - I'd like to make myself a Doctor Who scarf someday, but I want to make sure I'm putting out consistent quality before I start in on 12 feet of scarf I'll be keeping for the rest of my life. We go through a lot of hay at work, so I've been saving the twine from that and I'm trying to make rugs. They're turning out better than I expected, although the stuff is killer on my fingers, so I can't do too much at once.

On the other side of things, hi I'm a massive nerd, so I play a lot of video games - mostly narrative RPGs, I love Mass Effect, the Half Life franchise, I'm planning on playing the Metro games next after I finish my replay of the Mass Effect trilogy - but I also like my roguelites, I've been getting back into Loop Hero, but Rogue Legacy is always solid, as is FTL. I really loved Subnautica and at some point I need to pick up the DLC for it. Recently I also got into Warhammer 40k, so I've been building an army of Tyranids, and I've been finding that really satisfying; building the minis is methodical, painting is definitely one of those things where the skill floor is pretty low and the skill ceiling is really high, and I've won more games than I've lost; nobody expects you to charge in and eat their face and so it's been a ton of fun doing that >:3

Thanks for the ask!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

[nukaberries]

(tw: violence) Sole's in really bad shape. They're limping, bruised all over, bleeding through their clothes, probably need medical attention, and they're seem really shaken up. How do companions react? Can we get some good hurt/comfort fluff with all the Fallout 4 companions pls

Hey!! Thank you so much for your ask!! <33 I just went with the base game companions for this since I haven't gotten around to playing much of the DLCs yet, so I don't think I could do them much justice, I hope that's okay!! (I have no idea how I've bought all the DLCs on Xbox and PC but haven't completed any of them on either, it's a mystery)

//

Companions React to an Injured Sole

(Includes: Cait, Codsworth, Curie, Danse, Deacon, Hancock, MacCready, Nick, Piper, Preston, Strong and X6-88)

Cait

Once she realises this isn't something you can just walk off, Cait's panicking. She doesn't let it show, instead her mind going to who did this to you and who she needs to kill, if you didn't do that yourself first. She offers you a beer in hopes that it'll calm your nerves - and her own, as she takes a swig herself. Living in the Combat Zone and having to look out for herself for so long, Cait knows how to deal with injuries like this, but she's a lot more stressed out by you being the one that needs medical attention. As much as she tries, she isn't exactly gentle, especially when it comes to giving you stitches and you find yourself biting down on the inside of your mouth quite often to avoid letting out any noises of pain. All throughout, Cait makes a point to add in comments of how "It's barely even a scratch" or "I bet the other bastard looks worse" She does it more so in an attempt to see you smile weakly. She'll stay up all throughout the night to keep an eye on you afterwards, but if you notice and ask her what she's doing still up, she'll brush it off without any real respond and grumble that you should go back to sleep because you need the rest. She cares, more than she'd like to admit, and seeing you in pain was genuinely terrifying for her.

Codsworth

There isn't too much Codsworth can do to help you himself - what with him being a robot. He immediately rushes to go find a doctor nearby that can, but he makes sure to stay with you the whole time. He tries to take your mind off of the pain with old memories of Shaun as a baby, but when that seems to only upset you further, he gently asks if you'd feel better talking about what happened. He won't panic you, but he does worry what might happen when you don't pull through, the two centuries he'd spent without you had been awful enough, he could handle being that lonely forever. While you're still recovering, Codsworth will make the effort to wash your blood-soaked clothes you'd stumbled in with, waiting for the day that you get better so he can give them back to you.

Curie

A doctor herself, Curie is the best person you could come to with your injuries. She's very calm, despite how shaken up you are, and is able to immediately tell you how exactly you're injured and what she can do to solve it. She's extremely caring, warning you softly if she's going to do something that might hurt and reassuring you that she's going to make you feel better. Curie will be hesitant, worried that you might snap at her and tell her to mind her own business, but she'll ask you what happened to cause such injuries. She'll feel terribly guilty that she wasn't there to protect you when you needed her most, but she's more relieved that you were able to find her afterwards and didn't succumb to your injuries then and there.

Paladin Danse

Danse has some medical training, from when he first joined the Brotherhood of Steel, not really anything more than what your average wastelander would know, but he's all too grateful for that training when he finds you bloody and bruised, hardly able to walk. His first instinct is to pick you up and carry you to a bed, to make sure you don't have to put any weight on your injured leg. For someone so professional - even in some of your most intimate moments - Danse is surprisingly caring as he speaks to you, insisting that he'll make sure you get better. (He still refers to you as "soldier" here and there, but that's just Danse being Danse) Although he wants to be as close to you as possible, he won't share the bed with you, wanting you to have as much space as you can whilst you recover. Instead, he'll set up a chair at your bedside, one that he won't leave, even to go to sleep. Danse doesn't shrug off his responsibilities to the Brotherhood for just anyone, but he doesn't want to leave you alone until he knows that you're completely better, no matter how long it takes.

Deacon

Deacon being Deacon, he wants to crack a joke at first, something that you might roll your eyes at initially, but a few days later, you'll find yourself chuckling to yourself about it. It's only when he notices how severely injured you are that all the jokes and teasing are thrown away completely. If anything, you've never seen Deacon look so worried before, as though he was the one covered in a pool of his own blood. If he's able to, he'll take you straight to Doc Carrington, wanting you to get the best medical attention possible - despite Carrington's attitude, he's one of the best medics that Deacon knows, and the one least likely to accidentally kill you. He doesn't ask you what happened, he wouldn't have wanted anyone to ask him if the situation had been reversed, instead letting you tell him if you feel comfortable enough to - if you didn't trust him, he wouldn't blame you. If you approach him afterwards to thank him for helping you, he'll shrug off his role in your recovery, instead insisting that it was all thanks to Carrington, but he will add on how glad he is that you're better.

Hancock

There isn't a doctor in Goodneighbor, or anyone Hancock could really trust to take care of you when you come helplessly stumbling into the Old State House, barely able to hold yourself up. As the Mayor of a town like Goodneighbor and just growing up in the Commonwealth in general, Hancock is used to losing his own people and he's used to dealing with the guilt of it now. He can't lose you though, he'd rather lay down and die himself first. Without thinking, he rushes you to the place he can think of with a doctor - Diamond City. He doesn't hesitate to swallow his pride, although he can imagine his own brother already gloating at him for coming crawling back. He might not be able to follow you in, but he doesn't care as long as you're okay. He might threaten some of the security guards to make sure they get you to the clinic, but it's worth it. After a few days, if you haven't returned back to Goodneighbor, he'll ask Fahrenheit to go to Diamond City and ask around for you - he feels awful that he can't go himself, but he knows he made the right decision by getting you to a good doctor.

MacCready

For someone with a young son who was ill, MacCready's bedside manner is surprisingly horrible. He tries to put on a brave face and act like he isn't worried for your safety, but as he stitches up your wounds and injects you with a dose of Med-X to help with the pain, you notice him wince and grimace at your injuries. Once he catches onto you noticing him, he'll apologise profusely and assure you that you're going to be fine, although he realises that his reactions may not be very comforting. He might even quietly swear to himself if he's worried enough, but he'll feel terrible about breaking his promise to Duncan almost instantly. When you eventually get better, he tries to play it off like he wasn't worried about you, which only earns the rest of the companions teasing him in complete disagreement - it turns out you'd told them all about how he'd reacted. He does try to sulk about it, but he figures he can't complain too much, at least you're still here to make fun of him.

Nick Valentine

Due to his line of work, Nick's had to deal with his own fair share of injuries, even if not his own. He's used to blood, bruises and broken bones, but seeing them on you creates a whole different kind of fear within him. Similar to Hancock, he figures his best bet is to take you to the Diamond City clinic. He's with you the entire time, reassuring you that he's not going anywhere and letting you squeeze his hand if you need to while Doctor Sun does your stitches. He'll also completely harass Sun with questions of what medicine is best for you to take or how long your recovery will be so he can bring you back home. Nick wants to make as much effort as he can to make sure you get better as soon as possible, he won't rush you though. Once he knows you're better, he'll ask you who caused your injuries - if anyone did - and if they're still alive, he'll be happy to go after you with them.

Piper Wright

Piper tends to worry about the people she cares about as it is, perhaps a trait caused by having to take care of Nat from such a young age. Sure, she'd dealt with her fair share of Nat's injuries, but those were colds she caught from school and scraped knees after getting into tussles with other kids her own age - but this wasn't a grazed elbow from a schoolyard fight. She knows she's completely out of her depth and doesn't trust herself to take care of your wounds, thankfully, she lives not even two minutes away from the clinic. In typical Piper fashion, she's asking Sun every question she can possibly think of. "Are the tools you're using sterile?", "Have you done a procedure like this before?", "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" It's to the point where she almost gets asked to wait outside - in a far less polite manner, considering how thin Sun's patience was growing. She's upset with herself that she wasn't able to take care of you from home, instead having to drag you out to the clinic. Afterwards, she convinces an irritated Sun to take part in an interview about the basics of first aid, an article she publishes a week after your recovery. She doesn't want to feel so helpless when you need her the most again.

Preston Garvey

A part of being recruited for the Minutemen when Preston was younger involved medical training, similar to that of Danse's. Of course, even before the faction fell apart, their technology and medical supplies still left something to be desired, especially when compared to the Brotherhood of Steel. When Preston finds you, his first instinct is to just hug you, realising how shaken up you actually seem. But he won't hesitate after to rush you to the nearest doctor and if nobody is nearby, then he'll help you himself. Minus Curie, he might be one of the most helpful companions when it comes to taking care of you, excluding the lack of confidence you notice he seems to have in himself. Once he's patched you up as best as he can, he'll ask if you want to see a more qualified doctor, just to check up on you and make sure you actually are okay, but if you refuse, then he'll respect your wishes - as long as you're okay.

Strong

Let's be real, Strong is the last person you want to ask for help if you truly are injured. Super mutants are far more durable than your average human, so Strong assumes that you'll be fine and doesn't bother trying to get you any help. You're fine once you manage to get yourself to a doctor, which Strong insists is unnecessary. Afterwards, if you mention that someone had hurt you, he'll happily go out of his way to bring as much pain to them, if they're still alive.

X6-88

He teleports you to the Institute without hesitation, knowing that you'll get better care there than anywhere else in the Commonwealth. Unlike the others, who are mostly putting on a brave face for you, X6-88 is completely confident in you making a speedy recovery and is more than happy to tell you so - besides, he'd tell you if he thought you wouldn't pull through too. If you're close enough with X6, then he will admit that he's relieved you're better now. With everything going on lately, he wouldn't want to lose the future leader of the Institute, especially now he's grown to respect and perhaps even start to enjoy your company.

[missarchivistdoodles]

Happy birthday! As a gift here’s a free pass to recommend everyone that one book/movie/game/whatever you’re dying to talk about lol

POKEMON LEGENDS ARCEUS.

I have not had this much fun with a Pokémon game in YEARS OH MY GOD.

LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT HIM GO! HE GIVES NO FUCKS!

This is the BEST DAMN POKEMON GAME. I have spent over 30 hours in it so far (in two different game files - rushed through to finish the story, then restarted to actually take my time and enjoy it), and it is SO MUCH FUN. I hope there is DLC (paid or unpaid, doesn't matter to me), and that more games are made in this vein because oh my god, it's fantastic.

Also for any HORROR FANS out there, I'm reading The Last House on Needless Street and good god is it FANTASTIC. I highly recommend you check it out! Archive 81 on Netflix is really good too, haven't finished it yet so no spoilers, but I plan on watching the last few episodes this weekend/next week sometime.

And thank you for the birthday gift, @cormorantcolors!

[stained-glass-shatters]

Info-dump then, man! /pos

Okay- okay okay, this is probably going to be really long and I'm gonna start with DOOM (yes, both of them, both 2016 and Eternal and the DLCS for Eternal), and then move onto the entire Splatoon series (but focusing more heavily on 2 and its DLC since that one just... Got me man)

Warnings below for definite spoilers for DOOM 2016, DOOM Eternal, The Ancient Gods Part 1, The Ancient Gods Part 2, Splatoon 2, Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion

Okay so... With DOOM, just the everything? I hate gore and blood and all that nasty stuff usually but with DOOM it's... Different I guess? All the different weapons you get, and the fact you never have to reload?? I adore that so fucking much. Like and how it goes level by level, slowly giving you things while also feeling like everything's speeding past you, it's the perfect pace. And oh my gods, the soundtrack for them both goes so fucking hard, though I do personally prefer Eternals soundtrack they're both amazing. And the story it tells? How it goes beyond just The Slayer and saving Earth and all that? How every single demon is completely different from the last and how it consistently throws new mechanics at you? I love love love that.

I'm also going to touch on Eternal more here because I love the collectables and the secrets? How you get music that you can play and also all the toys? The Slayers room? It gives him so much more than just huge guts kill maim murder man because he got fucked over. The comics, the books, how it displays your weapons in your room? The broken mech that hangs in the station? Just the entire scenery is... It's incredible, it's so detailed and being able to see just how far it's come from when it first came out to now is... It blows my mind when I think about it too long.

And the DLCs for Eternal? The plot twist? The fact that everything led up to this if you go back and play it and all the little hints they left along the way that didn't mean anything if you haven't played the DLC yet I just... Wow. Wow man wow. Also just saying getting to finally fucking deck Samur? Oh I was thrilled to do that, absolutely delighted I love getting to bash his stupid fucking Seraphim head in over and over. And part 2? Where everyone just showed up to literally help you I had to put the controller down. In a good way because just... Oh it was the perfect ending, just everything about these DLCs was perfect. The very end of the game where they seal you back up? Man... Gets to me every fucking time without fail for a game that's on the surface funny haha kill game

Now for Splatoon... I didn't get a chance to play the first one unfortunately, though I've probably spent a good couple hours digging into it, though I don't know as much about it as I do Splatoon 2. For starters, the square? It's so detailed and thorough. How the TV's move with things on them, how there's players just chilling? I love all that. And that all the characters, at least NPCs all look different, and have such different backstories and personalities on top of all that.

I love the differences in Pearl and Marina. Looks, their personalities, their histories and backstories just all of it? I mean Marina was a fucking child soldier for the Octarian Army if I'm not mistaken. And Pearls dad is so fucking rich, and yes she's spoiled, but she's kind at the same time. They did a really good job balancing her out and I adore her color pallet. And it's the other little things around the game that really make it for me.

For a game with really simple and repetitive mechanics, it keeps you interested. Because it's not just turf wars. That not your thing? Go do salmon runs, or play one of their ranked battles! Personally I love splat zones. Or you just wanna be here for the story? Play hero mode! That too hard and you want a different branch of the story? Get the DLC.

The mem cakes, the fact that you could skip levels if they were too hard and still get the rewards from them, the fact that the train consistently refreshed with new passengers on it? Oh and dont forget the chat logs you got to see giving you even more story, alongside the fact that once you beat it you can actually play as an Octoling? And OH MY GODS THAT END FIGHT. The music, the setting, the everything got me so hard. I won't even lie I cried a little at it.

It's not just a game where you shoot either, all of the incredibly creative weapons, and how if you don't like the bomb or the special on that one weapon, you can find the same weapon, but with a different bomb and/or special? I love that so much. I also love how it's locked behind leveling, it makes leveling seem actually important and not just... Do it for bragging rights, which yes it's also that once you stop getting weapons at level 30 I believe, but you get what I'm getting at. And all of the clothes and the shoes and the hats you can put onto your little guy! Oh sometimes I just go in to mess around with that.

There's just so much to them both and I love them both dearly.

[saturniandragon]

Finished ESO High Isle in a day, wow.

I want to give my thoughts while also trying to not spoil it for those who haven't played.

Before this I heard people say it's the worst DLC yet. I personally disagree. While it's not Elsweyr-level type of amazing, I think I'd place it in the same level as Blackwood.

For reference, here's my personal ranking for ESO DLCs, from best to worst:

Elsweyr

Summerset

Morrowind

Blackwood, High Isle

Greymoor

Yeah I wasn't digging Greymoor storyline that much despite having spent some 1000+ hours in TESV Skyrim. Felt the end of the questline was a bit of a cliffhanger, but I suspect that's just Zenimax's strategy to lure players into buying Harrowstorm DLC.

But honestly, I don't really like to critique stories. Each DLC has its own merits and setbacks. I personally like the bard in the tavern who plays a violin-type of instrument of some sort, really gives different atmosphere, after the common plucked string instruments found nearly in every zone it's a really nice change. Now I wonder if pianos are canon in Elder Scrolls world.

With High Isle they haven't veered too far away from the typical "the world is ending and you're the only one who can save it" type of story, but hey, that's the fantasy that a good portion of people want to live in. Me included, so I personally enjoyed High Isle in terms of story. Not bad at all.

And to be fair, all Elder Scrolls have been like that. Nerevarine, Hero of Kvatch, Dragonborn, the player is bound to be a hero character in some way. I wish I can say I have played Morrowind and Oblivion, but right now I'm just waiting for Skywind and Skyblivion to release. Not to be entitled, but gods know I deserve faces that don't look like crushed bubble gum or ostrich eggs.

But I digress, back to High Isle.

If your character isn't really the hero-type or you're not the type to enjoy a "heroic" story, and I know one of my ESO friend is, like a thief, a pirate, a vampire, a werewolf and whatnot, this DLC likely won't satisfy you.

Environment design is good, it really gives me "Summerset, but for Bretons" vibe. My favorite feature so far is the huge sunflower field in one of the spots on the archipelago. The background music that plays as you travel is pretty good.

The final boss fight is really cool, even though I did die about 3 times before I could actually finish the boss. I advise you have an ability, whether stam-based or mag-based, that can serve as a self heal. My character is an archer, so I used the Draining Shot morph in bow skill line that can damage the enemy as well as healing the player.

It'll probably be a while until a new DLC can steal Elsweyr's crown as best DLC, and Zenimax is running out of places in Tamriel to build a DLC upon. Central Skyrim (Whiterun, Falkreath, Dawnstar), Telvanni Peninsula (east part of Morrowind), some parts of Hammerfell and Argonia, to name a few parts of mainland Tamriel that are still untouched. I want to see what Zenimax can do with those areas, if they will do it eventually. I want to see 2E Whiterun just for memories from Skyrim.

Honestly, High Isle in only good because the existence of Ember as a companion that you can obtain. She's got personality, alright.

[keptin-indy]

Indy plays Legends: Arceus

I haven't played Diamond/Pearl for a lot of years, but it's possibly my favorite game of the bunch. I've watched my roommate play some of the remake, and I hate the art style and also that you can't meaningfully decorate your base anymore. All this to say that I'm sure there are D/P references that I'm not going to get because it's been so long.

I have spent an ungodly amount of time playing the DLCs for Sword/Shield lately. I put more time into them than the base game itself. So I am very excited about an entire open world game.

Everything specific below the cut

It is sending me that Arceus speaks like the King James Bible

The fact that it speaks at all, like many legendaries and psychic types, once more drives home how much of a dick Calryrex in the Isle of Armor is for hijacking an entire human without their consent or knowledge just because he couldn't be arsed to do his own talking

I really hate the "modern kid wakes up in a fantasy setting" trope, but I'm interested in the wrinkle that a direct visitation from god means this kid is kind of a prophet. I did not expect to contact god via my cell phone, I must say.

The professor's hat looks so stupid. It would be fine if it didn't go all the way under his chin, but just hung open like a winter hat. Also why Laventon instead of Lavender? At least it'd be a plant, if not a tree.

I'm pretty sure that if all pokemon could shrink this would have come up A LOT before now. I can only assume that either a) this is a side game like Mystery Dungeon and therefore things work differently and are dubiously canon, or the much funnier b) the study of pokemon is new and Laventon believes all pokemon can shrink because the alternative - that one particular species of nut is just wild - is too out there for his modern science yet.

This looks to my uneducated eye like the fantasy Meiji Era and I am running around in basically my underwear by those standards. Professor, would it kill you to give me some clothes before teaching me how to imprison the wildlife?

I'm so glad the villagers are as wigged out by my clothes as they should be

I see a Galarian Weezing-shaped thing. Could it be that the British-sounding people really are Galarian rather than Galar being relatively newly connected to the rest of the world? I just want to know all about the history of this world and its regions.

Wow, I hate Beni's awful green mustache/chinstrap and grey beard combo

15! Not the tiniest of children! Hurray! Unfortunately, this qualifies me for indentured servitude. If I knew I was going to be a prophet pressed into a foreign power's service, I'd've named myself Joseph.

"Hey 15 year old, if you fuck up we are explicitly booting you out to die in the wilderness and get eaten by pokemon."

I want to eat a potato mochi. I had no idea these existed until I googled it just now, but I want them in my face.

I want to decorate my quarters but I don't think you can.

You people are sending a child out in the wilderness in basically underwear.

Putting so much emphasis on how you can and probably will die alone in the wild is hilarious for a series that is normally marketed for kids. I feel like they know the people most excited about this specific game in the series are the ones who've been hoping for open world pokemon since the late 90s/early 00s.

Laventon's camera is absurdly small for this time period expy. Cowards, not going for the huge tripod-mounted ones. It doesn't even have a big ol' flash!

Like in A Knight's Tale, the key to excelling in this story is to be too stupid to know when you're in mortal peril.

Finally someone has clothed me! And it's the person who's repeatedly said she'd leave me to die in the wilderness!

Not that I'm complaining, but why did you specially give me a hat, ma'am?

PLEASE DON'T SUPPLEX ME, SIR

The tutorial for this game lasts forever. I know there are a bunch of new things to learn, but I want to run around the wilds like a gremlin already.

WHEN YOU'RE IN YOUR HOUSE YOUR SHOES AUTOMATICALLY DISAPPEAR, THAT'S SO CUTE

I know I said I wanted to wander around outside but now I have to explore every single door in this town. And there are many.

A very serious young trainer and, unfortunately, his pokemon.

I will exclusively take pictures with the old timey lens.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: You DO take falling damage and you CAN drown.

I have learned how to roll and now I will Link my way across this entire landscape

Oh no, inventory management

I am very bad about keeping track of which buttons do what in any video game, but I'm mad that they arbitrarily changed the controls from what they were for doing the exact same things in the Wild Areas in Sword/Shield. Now I have to retrain my muscle memory for no good reason.

I am also very bad at keeping track of whether I'm throwing a pokeball or a pokemon. And I keep pressing LR instead of ZLZR because I'm really a PC gamer and not used to two whole sets of triggers back there.