After getting my Switch on launch along with Breath of the Wild, I was excited to see what games the console would have in the future. I bought Master Blaster Zero and eventually The Binding of Isaac for the third time, but a month and a half later Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out. Now look, this may be a rerelease and all but it was for a portable console. Mario Kart 8 was great but I could only play it at home and with a game like Mario Kart, its more fun to play it on the go with friends. When this came out, I was nearing the end of my Junior year in High School. Let me tell you, me and my friends played this all the time during the span of the rest of my high school experience. We played it in lunch, we played it in study hall, we even played it in class whether it was sneaking it or just when we had free time. This was THE Switch game to play when it came to my friend group alongside Jackbox Party Pack 3. It's just a ton of fun and while I said it was a rerelease, it's not just a lazy port. They not only included the DLC tracks, but they also added some new characters and revamped the battle mode.

I said the character selection was a bit lacking in the original game but the ones they added here are all good. Bowser Jr, King Boo and Dry Bones are all good additions that were in past games. The completely brand-new addition tho is Inkling Girl/Boy. Now, I was a huge Splatoon 1 fan before this so I was hyped when they were added. I mained them a lot when I first played and honestly, they're a perfect crossover addition just cuz Splatoon was originally supposed to be a Mario game which I found funny. This isn't even getting into the characters they added from the booster course pass. Most of those are also great, tho I haven't used them myself since I don't own the booster courses. If you do though, easily the best roster in the series.

The other thing they fixed of course is the battle mode. Easily the worst part of the original game and the worst battle mode I've played, it's really good here. Not as good as Mario Kart DS since there's still no option to have it be elimination rules, however you're not forced into teams like Wii and there's a whopping 5 modes this time around. Balloon battle and coin runners are classics of course. Shine thief makes a return and it's also pretty fun here. Bob-omb blast apparently originated from Double Dash and that's also fun tho definitely the most chaotic of the bunch. The brand new mode this time around is renegade roundup and its basically cops and robbers. Pretty fun mode as well but the real reason these are all actually fun is they gave us battle courses again THANK GOD. The old courses are great and some of the new courses are awesome too like Urchin Underpass. Love to see a little Splatoon representation since it didn't get a race track.

So there you go, the character selection was expanded and while not my favorite battle mode, the battle mode was made actually fun again. The only other thing they added, and they added it 5 years after deluxe came out, are the booster courses. Now I don't own them but my good friend Quent has the expansion pass so along with him and my friend wheatie, we played a bunch of online races for this review and I was able to play pretty much all the courses I wanted to. I didn't play them all but I can see the course quality varies greatly. You have some really half assed tracks and then you have really great ones like Yoshi's Island or SNES Bowser's Castle. A lot of the returning ones are Wii courses which is a plus too. Obviously most of these are just straight up ported from Tour and the visuals on a lot of them are pretty unacceptable compared to the base game but, if you don't care about then then the value of 48 tracks for $25 is great. That's basically 50 cents a track plus the added characters. Not only that but they added the ability to choose custom items, plus a music player in the main menu.

With the slightly better character roster and the MUCH better battle mode, I can say this is definitely THE definite Mario Kart. Though I may end up liking Wii a tad bit more now due to it's wacky physics. Either way, definitely a must have as a Switch owner and as a Mario Kart fan.

Well, that's the end of the Mario Kart marathon everyone unless I end up actually playing Tour lol. Been playing Persona 3 FES this whole time alongside these games and I'm in December now so I think I'm nearing the end of it, stay tuned for that review!

Uma fofura. Se agarra à inocência e inventividade infantil e conta uma história que tenho certeza que toda criança espevitada já viveu em sua cabeça, explicitando tudo de estúpido e belo que torna a infância uma coisa tão linda. A estética de Tokyo rural e sua paixão pelo tokusatsu amarra tudo com um lacinho de nostalgia por parte dos criadores que completa a obra como um pacote simplesmente :)

Além disso, esse jogo ter tipo 10 modelos, 5 animações, 10 ilustrações e 15 minutos de música é o tipo de encorajamento logístico que me convence que posso sim fazer muito com pouca quantidade - me falta só a qualidade.

When you are making something that is supposed to fall under the horror category, what is the one primary goal that you want to accomplish with your idea? The answer might not be as crystal clear as you think. Of course, most would probably expect the product in question to try to scare you, or to make you feel some sort of uneasiness, which would make sense, as for every great horror movie, game, or whatever one could point out, they have some element that either makes you uncomfortable, nervous, or just straight up scares the fuck out of you, which leads to them having much more of a lasting impression on the audience. That’s not all that a piece of horror media could do though, as they could shift gears from focusing on scaring you to giving you an action-oriented spectacle, just generally being spooky, or even to make you laugh. But, what happens when something related to horror, specifically a franchise, starts out with the intention of scaring you, only to then start to go in a completely opposite direction? Well, in this possible scenario, you could end up with something like Alone in the Dark 2.

I had a curious mindset when it came to going into this particular game, because I wasn’t quite sure what they were going to do with it compared to the first game. Based on screenshots, it didn’t look like it was going to do anything too drastically different from the original game, and the game’s promotional tie-in, Jack in the Dark, may as well be completely unrelated to this, so I figured it was just gonna be more of the same with nothing else to really show for itself. For the most part, I was right in my assumptions, but at the same time, there was something very… different about the game that I couldn’t place a finger on for the longest time, but I knew for a fact that, whatever it was that this game was trying to do, it certainly wasn’t as effective as the original game. It is still a good game though, having all of the same “lovable” elements and quirks that the original game had, but also taking a massive shift in terms of its approach that I wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of.

The story is somewhat similar to that of the original game, which takes place three months after the original game, where a young girl named Grace Saunders is supposedly kidnapped and taken to a mansion by the name of Hell’s Kitchen (not that Hell’s Kitchen), and when a private eye named Ted Stryker goes to investigate, he mysteriously disappears as well, so it is up to Edward Carnby to go find out what happened to them and uncover the secrets hidden within the mansion, which is a simple enough set-up that you can get behind, only for it to go overboard (almost literally) in the second half of the game. The graphics are about the same as the original game and Jack in the Dark, and by that, I mean it looks like Elon Musk’s wet dream made into a game, but it does still have a certain charm about it that I can’t criticize too heavily, the music is good, even though it has that problem of being played over and over again once more, but at least the tracks themselves are good enough to where I don’t get completely sick of them, and the gameplay/controls are almost identical to the original, both to its benefit and detriment, but the approach to this style of gameplay and controls is… kinda messy.

The game is a survival “horror” game, where you take control of both Edward Carnby and Grace Saunders, alternating between the two throughout the game, go through plenty of locations, both outside and inside of the mansion, fight off against the many different zombie, ghosts and ghouls that you will find within the mansion using whatever tools you happen to find, find many different items and tools within the mansion that can help you out in numerous ways, such as healing you, giving you a means of defending yourself, or solving the game’s many puzzles, uncover the mystery behind what is going on here through many different logs you will find along the way, and try not to get scared along the way…. even though nobody would ever genuinely be scared of any of this. Any AITD veteran will know what they are getting into with this game, as it functions and plays identically to that of the previous two titles, making the game a good time for those who are adjusted to its quirks. However, the approach to all of this, like I have alluded to earlier, is slightly different to that of the original, which somewhat drags it down.

Despite the fact that the original game was not scary in the slightest, the game was at least TRYING to primarily be a horror game, with a foreboding atmosphere, a few enemies that are still deadly if you don’t know how to properly handle them, and a properly spooky environment, which is mixed with the awkward controls and camera angles to make a game that would scare whoever played it, or at the least, make them uneasy as they kept going… at least, it would’ve back in 1992. With this game, however, it shifts heavily from trying to be a horror game, and it more so focuses on the action elements of the game instead, with you now having to face against a group of pirate spirits, as well as the many other things that try to kill you in the game. This, if you ask me, was not the way that a game series like this should’ve been handled at all.

Now, I’m not saying that this ruins the game in terms of its atmosphere or presentation, because once again, these games aren’t scary, so there isn’t much to gain from that perspective either way, but what this change does ruin is how the player approaches the gameplay and the challenges it provides. From the very moment you take control of your character for the first time, you have to quickly kill an enemy that is right by you, and then you have to quickly move into a hedge maze located nearby, while fighting off whatever creatures you may encounter while doing so, or else you run the risk of dying immediately. They just throw you into the fire, without giving you any time to get adjusted to the controls or what’s going on, which may not be so bad for those who have played the previous games, but newcomers will pretty much be boned from the moment they press start.

This is, of course, paired with the fact that you have to deal with the controls used for attacking foes, and the same camera angles from the original game, and you have something that I wouldn’t necessarily call fair a lot of the time. But, with all that being said, none of this makes the game any worse. Fundamentally, it is still Alone in the Dark, which means you still run around, solve puzzles, find items, and defeat enemies in the same way, and it still manages to have that old-school charm that isn’t preferable compared to what other games since this have done, but it can still be fun to mess around with. Not to mention, in terms of the camera angles, they are handled much better off here, with there being none that are too difficult to manage, and none that are zoomed out way too far to where you look like a tiny little speck, so that’s good.

Really, aside from its shift towards action-oriented elements, I didn’t have too many problems with the game as a whole. It does kind of suck that it doesn’t really do anything to change up the gameplay whatsoever, making it feel kinda bland in comparison to the original, and if I had to give one complaint to the game overall, I would say that solving some of the puzzles can be pretty cryptic at times. Yes, I did use a walkthrough to get through this game, just like with the original, but there were still points where I got stuck because things aren’t properly conveyed to the player well enough at points. There is this one part in the game where you can’t proceed forward until you have done everything in the specific area that you are in, and I for the life of me could not figure out what I was doing wrong. I did everything the walkthrough said, I was looking around all over the place, and I had defeated all the enemies, so I was clueless as to what to do next. However, then I noticed that there was one item that I didn’t get before, and the item in question was not only incredibly tiny, but the color of said item made it practically blend into the floor, meaning that the game wouldn’t let me progress all because of this one tiny, miniscule item that nobody would be able to see without knowing it was there to begin with. Yeah, that’s my fault, apparently.

Overall, despite its shift towards action elements, some cryptic parts that can go fuck themselves, as well as… pirates being a thing, I would still say that AITD II is a good game, continuing the same basic gameplay that the original game established, while also branching out the story, environments, and enemies that you fight to where it does feel unique in comparison to its predecessor, even if it is lacking in innovation. I would recommend it for those who were fans of the two previous games, as well as those who don’t mind a little jank every now and then, because despite how jank it is, it still manages to be an interesting example of survival horror in its earliest stages. Although, now I’m wondering, since we now have ghost pirates in this game, how are they gonna top themselves with the next game in terms of the enemies? Are there gonna be ghost aliens? Ghost ninjas? Ghost cowboys?................................... please tell me it doesn’t actually use one of those things.

Game #524

My adventures in the D'avekkiverse continue. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is the studio's first game, but also sadly their weakest so far. It's notable for earning (and I think still holding) the Guinness World Record for the most amount of FMV footage in a game at just over 7 hours, so it's clear and commendable the amount of ambition D'avekki shows from the outset. It's just a shame it all falls a bit flat.

The premise of the game is that you are a therapist, a replacement for the titular Doctor Dekker. Dekker has been murdered, and one of his patients did it. It's your job to, over a number of sessions, question them all, get into their heads and see which one did it and why. You'll be questioning the patients, your assistant, and potentially... yourself. There are six possible killers, and one is chosen randomly at the beginning of the game for you to sniff out.

To talk to the patients, you have to type out your questions, and the game will pick up on any keywords or phrases you type and respond accordingly. You listen to their responses and use them to ask your next question. It's similar to Her Story's keyword system, but you can tell D'avekki was overly ambitious and wanted to take it to the next level. A lot of the information you can just gain from repeating certain words and phrases in the clips back to the characters - it eventually got to the point where I could hear Solid Snake's voice in my head whenever I quizzically repeated something the character had said. Some of the phrasing the game wants you to use can be frustratingly specific - there were more than a couple of moments where I couldn't understand why the character wasn't understanding a simple question, but I ended up changing the wording slightly and then they got it.

The overall premise of the story is pretty okay, but as it goes along things start to get a bit muddled and overly ambiguous. The patients you see claim to have certain... "powers", but it's never really clear whether any of them actually do have these powers, or if it's just a delusion brought about by their mental illnesses. There's also some neat Lovecraftian elements that begin to emerge as the story goes along, but I won't go into that too much. Doctor Dekker also claims to have horror themes, but it's not particularly scary save a couple of lame jumpscares - thanks, Jaya.

The acting is pretty strong from the entire cast. Aislinn De'ath puts in another fantastic performance as flower child Marianna - she's eccentric and charming, but also utterly chilling when she wants to be. It's clear to see why D'avekki keeps working with De'ath, and their projects are all the better for having her in them. The cast all sell their various levels of mania very well, and this is definitely one of the best-acted FMV games overall. Side note - it was nice to see John Guilor again in a small role after enjoying his performance in Contradiction. It's fun seeing the same actors pop up in different British FMV games.

I'll put my ending gripes in Rot13 since I think they're specific to the killer I got - TW: sexual violence (go to rot13.com to translate) Gurer'f n irel hapbzsbegnoyr cneg va Npg 5 jurer Znevnaan, bhg bs abjurer, npphfrf gur cynlre punenpgre bs encvat ure. Vs lbh qral vg, fur'yy tb vagb ntbavfvat qrgnvy nobhg gur CP "oraqvat bire ure" naq "ivbyngvat ure". Nyy lbh pna qb vf qral vg bapr zber naq gura lbh obgu frrzvatyl zbir ba yvxr abguvat unccrarq. Znlor V whfg trg jnl gbb vagb zl tnzrf ohg V ernyyl qba'g srry pbzsbegnoyr jvgu gur vqrn gung gur punenpgre V'z vaunovgvat jbhyq qb fbzrguvat yvxr gung, naq vg srryf ernyyl jebat gung guvf frrzf gb or gur pnfr urer.

Va zl raqvat, V pbeerpgyl thrffrq gung Znevnaan jnf gur xvyyre, naq va gur fprar nsgre fur fnlf gung fur vagraqf gb oynpxznvy zr nf jryy nf vzcylvat gung V tbg ure gb frqhpr Qrxxre fb V pbhyq zheqre uvz naq gnxr uvf wbo? Vg'f ernyyl abg pyrne jung'f gehr naq jung vfa'g va gur raq, naq vg ernyyl srryf yvxr gur tnzr yrnirf jnl gbb znal ybbfr raqf sbe vg gb or fngvfslvat. V ernyyl qvfyvxr tnzrf jurer lbh unir gb ercynl gurz zhygvcyr gvzrf gb trg gur "gehr" raqvat fb znlor gung'f jung'f unccravat jvgu guvf. Rvgure jnl, gur jubyr encr guvat ernyyl fbherq zr ba gur svany npg, naq V jbaqre vs gubfr fprarf unccra rira vs fur'f abg gur xvyyre.

Nyfb, vg'f abg irel jryy rkcynvarq va gur tnzr'f vageb ohg gelvat gb haybpx rirel fvatyr erfcbafr sbe rirel fvatyr punenpgre va gur tnzr vf npghnyyl abg nqivfrq, fvapr guvf vf n fher-sver jnl gb znk bhg lbhe vafnavgl cbvagf (juvpu nyfb nera'g rkcynvarq) naq trg gur jbefg raqvatf sbe gur cngvragf naq lbhefrys. Fbzrubj, V tbg gur "tbbq" raqvat sbe Oelpr naq gur "onq" raqvatf sbe rirelbar ryfr.

It's strange... I caught the killer, but I don't feel like I did...

In terms of non-spoilery issues, I feel the game is way too long. My first (and currently only) playthrough clocked in at 12 hours, and I really don't think the game's concept is designed to be that long. This is especially true when you consider that you're clearly intended to play this several times to experience all the different endings, but the game really drags towards the end. It definitely looks like D'avekki took this into consideration, when you see how much shorter their other games are, while keeping the replayability factor.

Doctor Dekker isn't really a bad game, I think it just falls under the weight of it's own ambition. There are problems here that I definitely think D'avekki fixed with The Shapeshifting Detective, but this is still worthy of a play or two if you're hankering for a spooky murder mystery.

There were quite a lot of pre-historic-themed games that were made back in the day, primarily platformers, and out of all of them, Joe & Mac/Caveman Ninja was arguably one of the best of the bunch. The game itself wasn’t really all that special, just being a typical arcade platformer themed around cavemen and dinosaurs, but it’s simple yet approachable gameplay, coupled with its cartoonish style, made it very appealing and a good time all around. The same can also be said for the game’s “sequel”, Congo’s Caper, which didn’t differ itself too much from the original, but managed to be just that more fun and challenging from the original to where I would say it is an improvement over the original. But then again, most people probably didn’t even know that game was related to Joe & Mac, because who the fuck is Congo, and why should we worry about his Caper? So, to remedy this, when making the next game, Data East would make the next game focus on the original duo once again, and it would be known as Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics.

Like with the original two games, I had first heard about this game from JonTron’s video that he made on Joe & Mac way back in the day, but I had never actually taken the time to play it myself until before typing this review. From what I had seen, it didn’t really seem like anything all too different or spectacular, just being another game in this series to keep the money rolling in, even if these games were making any money to begin with. So, it didn’t come as any surprise to me when I played the game, and it turned out to be nothing more then good. It is still a perfectly competent platformer, and the ideas it implements are… interesting to say the least, but if you have played the other games before this, you pretty much know almost exactly what to expect from this game.

The story is pretty similar to the other games, although instead of cave-babes being kidnapped this time around, a crown is stolen instead by the evil Gork, so it is up to Joe & Mac to set out to find the Rainbow Stones (definitely not ripping off something else) and get the crown back, which is about as basic as any 90s platformer can get for a story, but hey, at least they swapped out the damsel in distress for an object… in distress? I dunno. The graphics are good, having that same cartoony style, coupled with plenty of vibrant levels to go through, but it doesn’t look any better or worse then the other two games in the series, the music is good, having plenty of pre-historic tunes fitting for your caveman escapades, and the control/gameplay is pretty close to that of the other two titles, except with some changes that can be seen that make the game different, but not for the better.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Joe or Mac yet again, go through six different levels across grassy plains, caves, icy mountains and volcanos, defeat plenty of pre-historic enemies from cavemen to tiny little rodent freaks using whatever tool you have for the job, gather plenty of wheels and other items to give you an advantage along the way, and defeat plenty of bosses that are not only pretty easy to deal with, but also have no distinctions to make them stand out from previous bosses in the series. As is Data East tradition, you can pretty much tell here that they put no effort into actually trying anything too new or exciting for this title, but to their credit, they did try to change things up… but fell flat on their face.

For some reason, this game tries to have somewhat of an adventure game feel, where upon the start of the game, you can explore your home village, go into houses, talk to NPCs, and shit like that, as if the game was an RPG. Later after the first level, you are then given the chance to go to a town that has a shop, where you can buy plenty of items, as well as other locales that can take you to certain places or let you view parts of the map. And speaking of the map, you also have a miniature overworld you can run around as well, allowing you to choose to go through the six levels in any order you want, which is a nice change of pace. Not to mention, in one or two cases, there will be an instance where you will need to revisit a previous location, which adds to that sense of adventure that the game is trying to make.

Unfortunately though, that’s really all the benefits you do get from these unique changes, because as for everything else I have mentioned, it all feels so… underwhelming. None of it is really bad, mind you, but everything that this game tries to do in terms of new additions feels completely pointless, with you being able to ignore most of these new elements, and you will get the same experience as you would in any other Joe & Mac game. The only actual purpose that any of this serves is that you are able to buy flowers from the shop, which you can use to woo a cavewoman, who will eventually become your cave bride, and the mother of your future child in the best ending, but again, none of it feels like it has any impact on anything. It just feels like something to do for the sake of it, which is not how you wanna treat a new feature in your third game.

As for the main stages themselves, like with the previous two games, they are fun enough to play through, keeping the same basic run, jump, and attack formula that you know and love from the previous games, except now, there are a few new things added… and by that, I mean like only two real new additions. There are the animal buddies you can now find in this game, which do about what you think they would, and then there are the new types of power ups that you get in the levels, which are… not great, but I will get into that more later. These additions to the gameplay are pretty good and all, but again, like with the other shit I mentioned earlier, both of these just feel pretty underwhelming, like they were added in as a means to make the game more fun and exciting, but they end up either being inconsequential, or not all that useful.

In terms of the issues I have with this game, like I mentioned earlier, the new power ups that you get in this game kinda blow when compared to the original power ups. The boomerang, wheel, and axes from the original game are completely gone, and instead, we get a few melee weapons that can shoot short range projectiles, which are fun to use, but they definitely don’t do as much as you are hoping for. If you are wanting long-range projectiles once again, those come in the form of the various food and patches of water you find lying around, which you can then eat, and then spit back out to your advantage, which is a neat idea, but the projectiles themselves are pretty small, and they feel unreliable most of the time. Aside from that though, there is also an unneeded boss rush, accompanied by re-fights with the game’s main villain, which can only be seen as a means to drag the game’s playtime out even further.

If you haven’t already figured it out already, the main problem that this entire game suffers from is that it is extremely underwhelming. It feels like the people at Data East were looking around at all the other games coming out at the time, seeing what they were doing to enhance the platforming genre, so they decided to take those elements and put them in their own game, but they never quite figured out what made them as impactful or exciting as they did in other games. This also rings true for most of the entire game, where, if we ignore all of the new features and changes present, it is essentially just Joe & Mac again. You go through the same types of levels, fight the same type of enemies, the same type of bosses, all that shit, and none of it feels original enough for me to care anymore then I do. Granted, you could argue other franchises like Mario and Kirby also don’t get too creative with those elements either, but at least with those games, there is always a new visual style, pace, or energy to the games that makes you want to play them again and again, but with this game, it just feels like… nothing.

Overall, despite still keeping the core foundation of the game strong, and having plenty of elements that make it certainly ambitious, Joe & Mac 2 feels like a nothing sequel, one that has plenty of great ideas and a great foundation to build off of, but never quite figured out where to start, and just sorta places these elements along in the game for the sense of being there without any semblance of weight or importance. I would recommend it for those who are fans of the other two Joe & Mac games, as well as those who are fans of old-school platformers in general, but for everyone else, there are plenty of other platformers that you could be playing over this, and get a much more enjoyable experience out of. But I mean, hey, I guess if I had to give the game some credit, I would say that making an underwhelming sequel is a lot better then making a sequel that is just flat-out garbage. Looking at you, Rastan.

Game #522

It wasn’t quite as big of a jump in quality from the original like with another franchise that I name-drop way too often, but Thunder Force II was quite the improvement from the original Thunder Force in just about every way. Not only did it feel like a game that I actually wanted to play without needing to break my hand, but it managed to mix different types of space shooters together pretty well, while also making the gameplay simple, fun, and challenging, despite it not being all the creative, nor it reaching the same heights as other shmups at the time. Despite that though, it managed to get pretty positive reviews back in the day, and it did sell enough to where the series would not only be getting sequels for years to come, but also becoming a regular series for Sega that one would find on their Sega Genesis. So, only after one year since the previous game, we would get the follow-up to that game, Thunder Force III.

Going into this one, I was somewhat skeptical as to how it would turn out, because when compared to the other two games in this series at that point, it completely lost its own original identity. Those top-down stages from the previous two games are completely gone here, and instead, the side-scrolling shmup stages take up the whole game, playing more closely to any other traditional shmup than ever before. That in itself kinda sucks, considering how those top-down stages weren’t all too bad in the previous games, but thankfully, unlike with ActRaiser 2, these changes made to the formula ultimately benefit the game significantly. It may not do that much to innovate on the genre or change much up at all, but Thunder Force III managed to be an incredibly solid shmup, one that manages to create a short, yet fun enough experience when you blast through it in one sitting, and it is one of the best shmups that I have played for the system………. although, full disclosure here, I did end up playing Thunder Force AC over the original version, because that version is more accessible compared to the original, but they are pretty much the same game, so who cares.

The story takes place immediately after the events of the second one, where despite the Galaxy Federation being able to fend them off in the last game, the ORN Empire manages to conceal themselves using cloaking devices so that the federation cannot fire back, so they create a new spacecraft, known as the Fire LEO-03 Styx, to go infiltrate these bases and take down the ORN Empire once and for all, which is about as basic of a plot as you can get, but again, if you are playing a shmup for the story, you need to get your priorities straight. The graphics are pretty good, looking about how you would expect for a shmup on the Genesis, but still managing to be as bright, flashy, and bombastic all the while, so that’s all good in my book, the music is also good, having plenty sci-fi tracks that will accompany you throughout the game, even if none of the tracks stuck out to me personally, and the control/gameplay are pretty much the same as the original game, but there are some new features to help make this game stand out from its predecessor.

The game is a horizontal shmup, where you take control of the Fire LEO-03 Styx (yes, the name is in all-caps), go through eight different stages across plenty of planets across the galaxy, shoot down anything that comes your way from the front or the back using whatever tools are necessary for the job, get plenty of different powerups that you can use to not only deal much more damage, but also increase your range to stand a better chance against your foes, and take on plenty of bosses that are… actually pretty easy, but they can still be challenging for those of you who aren’t that much into shmups. What you see here is pretty much what you got from the horizontal segments of Thunder Force II, but not only are they much more fun to go through in this game, but they also manage to switch things up slightly so that it makes the game more interesting and accessible.

Remember how in the previous game where, whenever you got a bunch of different powerups, you were able to swap between them at any point? Well, not only does that return in this game, but you now only lose the weapon you have equipped whenever you die, which is extremely helpful in certain situations. But that’s not all, because not only can you change what weapon you are using during the game, but you can also adjust your speed as well, choosing to go from either being blindingly fast as you obliterate everything in your way, or being slow enough to where you can get through some tight obstacles. I had never played any other shump before this that allowed you to adjust your ship’s speed on the fly, so seeing that feature in this game was not only pretty interesting, but also made me realize that I’d kill to have this kind of feature in any shmup game ever.

That’s really it though when it comes to the new features in this game, which for the sake of this title isn’t a bad thing at all. Unlike with the previous game, there is a proper balance here when it comes to gameplay, as you are not constantly switching between two different gameplay styles. As such, since the devs only had to focus on one type of gameplay, they refined it to where it is the best of the series yet, being as fun, fast, and explosive as any shump should be. This feeling is backed up by the powerups that you get access to in the game, which not only have plenty of versatility for when the situation calls for it, but can also be extremely powerful, such as with the Hunter shot, which I used for pretty much the entire run whenever I could. What can I say, I like homing shots, especially ones as fast and powerful as that one is.

If you have been burnt out by shmups overtime though, then this one won’t do anything to help remedy that, as it is yet another generic shooter at the end of the day. It still manages to be pretty fun when you try it out for yourself, and the slight changes that are made to the gameplay do make it an interesting experience, but for the most part, you have seen what this game offers in plenty of other games before this. Also, I did some research, and I figured out that in the original Genesis version of this game, you are actually able to select what stages to tackle in your own order (at least for the first five stages), so that is pretty neat………… too bad the AC version doesn’t have that. That doesn’t make the game any worse, really, but it is just kinda strange. I’m pretty sure they could’ve found a way to include that in the AC version, but whatever, who cares about trying.

Overall, despite a lack of major innovation and some minor gripes here or there, Thunder Force III/AC/Spirits/WhateverMakesYouSleepAtNight is a pretty great shmup, definitely the best in the series so far, and one that any shmup fan would be able to jump into and have a good time with, even without those innovations I brought up earlier. I would recommend it for those who were fans of the previous Thunder Force games, as well as those who are big shmup fanatics in general, because while it doesn’t focus too much on changing things up, what it does focus on instead is refining the gameplay to the best it has ever been, and that’s all that matters at the end of the day. I’m now looking forward to playing that next game at some point in the near future. I sure hope it doesn’t do anything weird like, I dunno, have a pretty weird alternate title…. that also happens to be misspelled…. only for North America…………… that would be silly.

Game #521

I'm on a bit of an FMV kick at the moment, so I thought I'd dive straight into this. A prequel to The Shapeshifting Detective (which I reviewed here), Dark Nights with Poe & Munro is an episodic FMV point-and-click game starring the titular radio DJs/investigators/illicit lovers. Seriously though, I don't think I've ever seen a less believable couple in media - Ellis Munro must have some low standards.

Poe & Munro takes a wildly different turn from The Shapeshifting Detective - while the latter was a mostly grounded affair, the former instead decides to embrace the gleeful insanity of most other FMV titles. The results aren't so much as varying, but absolutely all over the place. The six-episode "series" features the two investigating a kidnapping, hosting a fundraiser in bed (which I think was just an excuse to get actress Leah Cunard into some nightwear), and dealing with the ghost of an evil little girl, among other hijinks. It's like someone tried to make a British X Files but took a load of acid while writing it.

Seriously, the pacing is all over the place - scenes and episodes either drag on for way too long or just end abruptly. The narratives are incredibly silly - Poe straight up murders a guy and buries his body in the garden in the first episode and it's never brought up again. On the other hand, there's an episode which is not only a neat callback to The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker (Da'vekki Studios' first game), but that also gives some very interesting insight into Munro's backstory. There's enough tonal whiplash to make your head spin, and it's really down to you whether you're the sort of person who will embrace the camp or reject it completely. Me? I dug it, for the most part.

The acting is pretty par for the course for an FMV game. Poe and Munro's "50s transatlantic schtick" annoyed me in The Shapeshifting Detective, but it seems that they've both toned it down a little here, and Leah Cunard carries the two of them performance-wise. Lara Lemon puts in a fun, if short, performance as a totally legitimate hypnotist. Aislinn De'ath steals the show in her brief return as The Shapeshifting Detective's Violet, having by far the best scene in the entire game. In fact, it's pretty amazing just how much more chemistry De'ath and Leah Cunard have in just one scene than Cunard and Klemens Koehring (Poe) have in the entire game.

As far as gameplay goes, this is about as simple as point-and-click gets. Icons will pop up when it's time to make a choice, and you simply choose and let it play out. It's slightly annoying that with some of the choices, it's not exactly clear what it is you're choosing - you'll have to click either Poe's face or Munro's face and just see what happens. It would have been nice to have even a little bit of inclination as to what would happen when I clicked each option. On a technical level this suffers most of the same problems as The Shapeshifting Detective did - namely, poor lighting and some camera focus issues. Some of the audio was pretty badly recorded too - I know, it's the annoying film student in me coming out again.

Overall, I didn't like this quite as much as The Shapeshifting Detective, but I still had a pretty good time. It's short, it's silly, it's even a little sexy in places. If you're willing to embrace the campy fun you'll get a lot out of this!

Now, time to start writing my pitch for The Violet & Munro Adventures... I mean, just look at them. Adorable, right!?

Back in the day, I was a huge fan of the Wii U. I got one for Christmas a month after it came out and for a long while, I would get every single big release. Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, some great titles released early on into the consoles life cycle so I was always looking forward to the next big Wii U game. Fast forward to May of 2014, I got my hands on Mario Kart 8 the day it came out. I loved 7 back in the day and was absolutely ecstatic for 8's release. Once I finally was able to play it, I knew it would be THE game I'd be playing with friends for a long while. Though honestly in retrospect, while I still played it a decent amount with my buds, I ended up playing Smash 4 and even it's better version Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a lot more. Still, even if there's no reason to go back to this one when Deluxe is a thing, it's still great in its own right.

The initial aspect I noticed all those years ago was just how damn amazing this game looks. And yeah, it still looks amazing to this day. Idk what Nintendo was cooking but this was easily the best-looking Wii U game like ever, with Pikmin 3 coming right behind it. Not only are the new tracks all so vibrant and just super clean looking with its more realistic shading and texture work, all the retro courses got this treatment too and they're simply wonderful to look at. Like I said, this game still looks beautiful to this day, and it's almost 10 years old at this point! It's crazy really.

A big reason this game's tracks look so good visually is due to the game's new gimmick. While underwater driving and gliding are still in the game, Mario Kart 8 also added zero gravity. This leads to some amazing looking and feeling track design with how the track can curve all around any which way. It gives new tracks so much character and retro tracks are better than ever because of it. Like for example GBA Mario Circuit. Very boring track outside of 8 but 8's anti gravity section has a section of the track totally elevated off the ground and just makes an otherwise unmemorable track, super memorable. Same thing happens with Toad's Turnpike where you can literally drive on the walls, passing a lot of traffic if you choose to do so, and this wall driving happens in several other courses too. Underwater driving is meh, gliding is cool but anti-gravity as a gimmick is just so awesome and I'm glad it's used so well and so often in 8.

Going into more depth on the track selection, it's actually really great overall. While I still think Wii easily wins in the original track selection department, 8 just uses the anti-gravity mechanic so well it's hard not to like 8's selection too. Cloudtop Cruise was always my favorite but you have some other really good tracks like Mario Circuit, Mount Wario, Thwomp Ruins, Sunshine Airport and Toad Harbor. My favorites from Wii's selection definitely trump most of these but this is still one of the better selections of original tracks in the series. Now with the retro tracks, I know I said 7 has the best selection but thinking on it, 8 probably has the best in the series. The anti-gravity additions to many of the tracks just adds so much and the glide pads also added to a lot of them was nice too. It would've been cool if every retro stage had anti-gravity added to them but they added it to a good chunk of them so I can't complain. All this plus these retro tracks just look absolutely gorgeous.

However, there weren't just 8 cups this time around. If you got the DLC, which I did, you were able to race on 12 cups in total. It was $12 for both DLC packs and it added 4 cups, 6 new characters and 8 new vehicles. The 4 new cups have some alright tracks, some solid ones and some absolute bangers like Wario's Gold Mine, SNES Rainbow Road and Ribbon Road. It also added an excite bike course, an Animal Crossing course, a Zelda course and two F Zero Courses. It was basically a crossover pack since with the characters, it also added Link and the villagers. While it is a bit weird seeing non-Mario characters in the game, it's still really cool and is also really amazing value wise. Also with this DLC came a free update which gave players the option to race on 200cc. This is a cool addition, and more content is always nice, tho it was never my preferred way to play since it can just be so awkward going that fast on these courses. Still, it can be fun just seeing your friends rage when they fall off the track going that fast. At this point, this was the most amount of characters and courses in any Mario Kart game so you'd think it'd be hard to not call it the ultimate Mario Kart game. Well, sadly there's a couple issues I have outside of the stuff I mentioned.

The biggest issue people have and yeah, it's a pretty big one for me too, is the bad battle mode. Instead of having battle mode specific courses, they decided to pick a handful of race courses for you to play on instead and it just doesn't work. More enclosed and smaller maps works well for battle mode since players will always be in the action. But with normal race courses, a lot of the time it's hard to find players unless you deliberately stay on each other's asses the whole time. Bottom line is, it just doesn't work really and there's a reason people shat on it when the game came out.

Another, smaller issue I had, was the character selection. It's better than 8's but not only did they add another baby in baby Rosalina (which makes no sense if you know her back story), they added all 7 koopalings as separate characters and something as dumb as pink gold peach. Having something like pink gold peach but not diddy kong or birdo or boswer jr.?
Just disappointing on the new character selections even if I mained Ludwig back in the day. Still, at least this game has Waluigi and the DLC at least added Dry Bowser back as well the crossover characters.

Even with the less than great character roster and possibly the worst battle mode in the series, the other things this game does so well, it elevates it to still being great in my eyes. There may be absolutely no reason to play this version of 8 when deluxe is a thing, but I can't deny this game's immense quality when it comes to the racing. Though honestly I do think Wii is the best in the series up to this point, we'll see how Deluxe stacks up when I get to that next. So look forward to that one as it will be the finale of this Mario Kart marathon!

Voltei a jogar videogame faz pouco tempo e um dos maiores responsáveis com certeza foi este joguinho, lembro que quando vi ele num anúncio de emulador pelo youtube acabei dando uma chance e parando de ter preguiça de mexer com emulação, até porque a pouco tempo havia ganhado um celular melhorzinho e com mais espaço pra esse tipo de coisa

Dragon Ball é algo que está comigo desde a infância e hoje em dia valorizo mais do que nunca tudo que a obra representa e me ensinou com o passar dos anos

Descanse em paz Akira Toriyama

An all but perfect console generation defining game. It feels like an ample celebration of Katamari's success, with the amount of tweaks and level variety being used to accelerate the game to incredible quality, but also as a declaration to fans as if to say "We're honored you love Katamari, and here's more, but mostly because we're having fun."

If you love Katamari, I genuinely believe it to be the crown jewel of the franchise, but even if you've been hesitant to try it, this particular entry is the game that may convince you of the series' charm.