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MangoBat
307 Reviews liked by MangoBat
Mom Hid My Game!
2016
SoulCalibur II
2003
Dead Space
2023
A while back, I was invited to visit some friends near our old college. While the chat was nice, I had mostly been looking forward to walking around campus again, seeing what had changed and sort of... exorcising the spirit of it from myself. Those were the worst four years of my life, and I was hoping that by revisiting it after years of cooling off, I could make up with that little chapter in history. Problem was, when I got there, it was just grass and buildings. I didn't get to comfort my younger self as I stressed out, I just saw the Computer Science building. I saw a lawn. It was surreal to watch students walk by as their life-chapter unfolded in a way I was failing to do for myself. I didn't realize I was falling into the same trap here. It originally took me about seven tries to beat this game because I was so scared, and now I feel nothing. I'm the same, but different. The place is the same, but different. I couldn't tell you if it's better or worse, it's just the same. But not the same you might wish it was.
Nitrome Must Die
2011
Pikmin 4
2023
This review contains spoilers
Wish I could say I liked this more after the decade long wait.
Pikmin has always been a unique series. Put on the gamecube, a console known for its creative choices, Pikmin was a cutesy RTS game with AI that was too bad to ever be dependable. It was a weird game, that was deceptively unforgiving in its difficulty. Pikmin 2 came out on the same console with several new decisions made, and overall being a significantly more difficult game. A lot of time passed before Pikmin 3 came out, but it was perfect when it did. Each of these games felt unique from each other, like they were all trying to both build off of each other while still adding its own things, and always having a certain feeling to their gameplay that made it feel like they were only designed for people who actually enjoyed doing difficult, on the fly strategy under a timer.
Pikmin 4 attempts to be a love letter to the series, in that it constantly brings in elements from all of the other games in a way that makes it feel like some sort of anniversary game or victory lap. However, Pikmin 4 also makes a lot of choices that felt antithetical to Pikmin's unique feeling as a series. Frankly, it streamlined everything. It sanded off all the edges. I barely had any deaths in the course of a full playthrough. Oatchi trivializes combat, features like Idler's Alert minimize the amount of effort you have to put into Pikmin management, and the in-game time rewind mechanic takes almost all of the danger out of the atmosphere. I hate to use buzzwords, but they took out the soul and try to appeal to nostalgia to make you fill in the gaps. As an example of this, after the initial shock of seeing the Water Wraith appear, I was disappointed after it failed to actually kill a single one of my Pikmin. Not to say that it doesn't provide any new content, I found the night missions mildly entertaining if nothing else, but it doesn't feel like much.
The game also feels very handholdy in general. You can't go a single day without having some NPC give you a text alert for something that Pikmin 2 would've just let you suffer through. You have a quest log and a skill tree, for some reason. You can purchase upgrades for yourself, some of which are completely game changing and all of which would've just been available from the start if it were any other game in the series. It feels like pointless padding, pointless extra menuing because for some reason Nintendo felt like they needed to add additional rewards to encourage you to actually engage with the game's optional content. A lot of the game's design decisions feel very corporate, where originally the series felt anything but.
To sum things up: this is the first time I've chosen not to 100% a Pikmin game out of sheer boredom.
Pikmin has always been a unique series. Put on the gamecube, a console known for its creative choices, Pikmin was a cutesy RTS game with AI that was too bad to ever be dependable. It was a weird game, that was deceptively unforgiving in its difficulty. Pikmin 2 came out on the same console with several new decisions made, and overall being a significantly more difficult game. A lot of time passed before Pikmin 3 came out, but it was perfect when it did. Each of these games felt unique from each other, like they were all trying to both build off of each other while still adding its own things, and always having a certain feeling to their gameplay that made it feel like they were only designed for people who actually enjoyed doing difficult, on the fly strategy under a timer.
Pikmin 4 attempts to be a love letter to the series, in that it constantly brings in elements from all of the other games in a way that makes it feel like some sort of anniversary game or victory lap. However, Pikmin 4 also makes a lot of choices that felt antithetical to Pikmin's unique feeling as a series. Frankly, it streamlined everything. It sanded off all the edges. I barely had any deaths in the course of a full playthrough. Oatchi trivializes combat, features like Idler's Alert minimize the amount of effort you have to put into Pikmin management, and the in-game time rewind mechanic takes almost all of the danger out of the atmosphere. I hate to use buzzwords, but they took out the soul and try to appeal to nostalgia to make you fill in the gaps. As an example of this, after the initial shock of seeing the Water Wraith appear, I was disappointed after it failed to actually kill a single one of my Pikmin. Not to say that it doesn't provide any new content, I found the night missions mildly entertaining if nothing else, but it doesn't feel like much.
The game also feels very handholdy in general. You can't go a single day without having some NPC give you a text alert for something that Pikmin 2 would've just let you suffer through. You have a quest log and a skill tree, for some reason. You can purchase upgrades for yourself, some of which are completely game changing and all of which would've just been available from the start if it were any other game in the series. It feels like pointless padding, pointless extra menuing because for some reason Nintendo felt like they needed to add additional rewards to encourage you to actually engage with the game's optional content. A lot of the game's design decisions feel very corporate, where originally the series felt anything but.
To sum things up: this is the first time I've chosen not to 100% a Pikmin game out of sheer boredom.
Disney's Toy Story
1995
When you pop in this game, the first thing you will notice is the poor edging on Woody, the character you control in the game. The Toy Story movie was done with Silicon Graphics computers and the instruction booklet says the game's graphics were created with the same 3D computer models that were used in the making of the blockbuster movie. We don't know, however if the game actually used Silicon Graphics computers.
Disney's Toy Story
1995
This game doesn't lie about being "an intensely 3D adventure". No other 16-bit game can deliver the sights and sounds of Toy Story the first movie the way the Genesis version of this game does. When Woody wins, you win. When Buzz gets stuck in a tire, you get stuck in a tire. When Woody gets his ass set on fire,
MultiVersus
2024
MultiVersus
2024
This review was written before the game released
I don't care that it's intended for 2v2, imposing designated RPG roles (tank, support, assassin, dickmongler etc.) onto fighting game characters is some of the most obnoxious and contrived shit I've seen in the genre. The monetization is heinous and all the music sounds like you're about to go on a family-friendly educational adventure with Mickey fucking Mouse. If this is "the future of free-to-play fighting games" I'd rather stay in the prehistoric age!!
A whole star for the genuinely creative movesets though. Every character's series is portrayed extremely well in their attacks - especially Tom&Jerry, a puppet character that fights itself during a match is a slam dunk of design. Could've gone without Shaggy being a reference to a 5-year-old meme but I guess it paid off for the marketing
A whole star for the genuinely creative movesets though. Every character's series is portrayed extremely well in their attacks - especially Tom&Jerry, a puppet character that fights itself during a match is a slam dunk of design. Could've gone without Shaggy being a reference to a 5-year-old meme but I guess it paid off for the marketing