It does not matter how many times I play this game, after all this time it still feels fresh and there are always new things to discover and find out about. I roam the realm of Hyrule for hours upon hours yet my curiosity for this world never valleys. This game is truly a breath of fresh air, not only in terms of the Zelda foundation but also in its influence on games made throughout the generation. This game gives me hope that despite the sad state of the gaming world, there's still hope. Art will prevail and prosper.

~ 3DS Homebrew Journey - Game 1 ~

I finally decided to homebrew my 3DS. MK7 was the first 3DS game on my mind that I haven’t gotten to play yet. So I let it be the first game to be (legally) downloaded. As a MK connoisseur I find it weird that I never bought this game despite always having a 3DS.

Anyhow, this MK does everything you’d expect a MK game to be and never really goes out of its comfort-zone. Sure, it adds gliding, but I felt like it didn’t add too much. It has some really good tracks and some really bad ones as well. That snow mountain can go to hell. That dino track was really nice, I liked that one. I hope it gets added to the MK 8 Deluxe DLC. I found it a little odd but fun that they added the queen bee from Super Mario Galaxy. Wiggler, carried the otherwise average character-roster.

As I’m writing this I have a massive cramp in my right hand due to the awkward distance between the gas and drift button. What I like about MK8 is that you have the option to turn on auto acceleration which may sound silly and unnecessary but is in actuality quite amazing. It gives room to actually use the brake which is crucial in 200cc but also useful in 150cc if going really fast. There’s also no reason to stop accelerating so I don’t see how it hasn’t been implemented earlier such as in MK7.

MK7 is mediocre in most ways. What I take with me though is that it does a really good job of making use of the 3D effect. I’m not much for sitting straight and having to bother with flickering, half-functional 3D effects, but here they really nailed it, giving MK7 immersion I haven’t experienced in any other MK game before. It’s ultimately a worthy experience for any who has an appreciation for Mario Kart.

~ 3DS Homebrew Journey - Game 2 ~

Right before playing A Link Between Worlds (2013), I gave A Link to the Past (1991) a shot, which gave some good first impressions. I will most certainly complete that game too in the time coming. What surprised me when I played this game though was how similar everything felt. Same overworld and a similar opening. Whilst I learned it was in fact "something of a sequel", it still felt kinda cheap re-using the exact same map. It being an old 2D map shows in a few ways. It's a little awkward at times to navigate through the world because many places feel cramped. I really have nothing against them re-using the map since it's a sequel, but I think the overall atmosphere could've been improved if the developers took some liberties in changing a few things up.

The controls feel smooth and snappy and it helps a lot that it runs in a much-appreciated 60fps, though with minor stuttering. One-on-one encounters with the overworld enemies feel quite bad unless you have any Ravio items since you just spam sword attacks in hopes of landing a hit. The main gimmick of this game with Link being able to go into walls is brilliant and works great in both discovering hidden items and collectibles. I only wish it had a bigger impact on dungeon puzzle-solving instead of Ravio items.

In terms of story, this game hit me in the feels. A predictable story isn't always a bad one and it's shown here. I can't say how good the 3D effect was during gameplay but during cutscenes, the 3D effect looked amazing. It almost felt like I got sucked into the screen.

Dungeons were overall great but I ended up with the two darkest ones at the end. I kinda despise dark environments in games. I think it's cool that you can tackle the dungeons in any order you want (if you have the equipment needed that is). I felt like I picked quite a bad order since I felt underpowered most of the time. I got more powerful by the end and could handle the later dungeons with zero hardship.

At this point, I can't expect to be disappointed by any Zelda game. Nintendo nails both 2D and 3D Zelda, not maybe to the same extent, but still. I can't wait to see how it compares with A Link to the Past whenever I get around to completing that game!

Yooooo Madotsuki be like me fr, only sleeps and plays videogames.

In my Mario & Luigi: Dream Team review I lamented the fact the game didn't really do anything crazy in its dream sections aside from Luigi's gimmicks in puzzles and combat, but I feel like I didn't elaborated that much on that point; the concept of translating dreams into media has indescribable potential, but I do recognize the difficulty of doing such a task. Dreams are something more than ''movies in our heads'', a movie has structure and a meaning, a dream, for the most part, does not. Defining a dream is almost impossible 'cause there's no such thing as a dream, they are disconnected passages that our brain forms through the ideas and experiences that we have while we are awake: they are meaningless, yet they can say so much. I know that even this as a definition is barebones at best and I do apologize for the lecture, but I need to say this in order for you to understand how difficult adapting such a thing can be, and how Yume Nikki, a game made by only one person in RPG Maker, succeeds where so many others would fail and gives us what is possibly the closest thing to a playable dream we will ever get.

The landscapes of the dreams of Madotsuki go from the perturbation of reality to the absolute wildness of the impossible: haunted forest with passages that don't make sense, areas that circle around each other and have no end, enigmatic creatures with impossible forms on a path of white footsteps, lifeless concrete structures that surround a bed, ... The different sections almost never have a clear end, not even a beginning, as you could end up in one zone without knowing why, or traversing the maze that connects all the different dreams and ending up in a completely new place. After a while, what shouldn't make sense starts making sense, and what shouldn't scare you starts to give you goosebumps and chill you to the bones. It's a game that the rewards usually it's not a new ability or progression, but rather the sensation of discovering something that no one else could and the fact that experience sticks with you. It's almost baffling how well everything connects to form this surreal experience: the constantly changing visuals, the design of the zones and the music flow in a manner that makes you go from a apocalypse feeling wasteland to an upbeat space party without feeling jarring... but sadly, with such immaculate work on the dream-like aspects of the game, it was inevitable that as it progressed, some cracks would start to show up, two, to be exact.

The game has no gameplay aside of walking and interacting, which it's more than enough for the purpose of the game, as the lack of action, even if it can make the game's zones and creatures feel a bit static, it's perfect for the purpose of sinking you in this strange world. Rather, my problem comes in a more technical aspect; much of the game is designed on a perspective more akin to Earthbound, which makes the areas feel expansive, but the character only moves in the four directions of the axis, which makes going up or down in these zones, which are a lot, a total headache and can pull you out of the experience while you are trying to make your way out fighting the controls. However, my biggest problem with the game is something that pains to qualify as a negative, as it's a byproduct of how Yume Nikki manages to pull out everything else: to achieve the ending of the game, you must recollect the 24 different ''effect'' scattered across the dreams, and when a game asks you to find 24 specific things in a map that feels gigantic, with bast spaces with nothing that have the thing or passage you need in a very specific point, and the possibility of you skipping something in a zone and having to go back for it, is destined to hinder the experience in one way or another. I honestly don't know how else a natural progression could have been implemented without making the dreams feel too linear and a one note and done, but this wasn't also the correct way in doing it, as returning to a zone that when you first discovered feel magical, that special moment can lose its magic... And yet, despite these flaws, the game manages to pull you back in.

After collecting my last effect and saying out loud a tired ''Finally!'', I saw a passage I didn't see before, and so I took it. It led me to a black and white world, populated by creatures that seemed to be born from the earth itself, plunging outwards in agony, yet they remained still. They watched me, creatures bigger than life itself stared at me while the sounds of a seemingly broken world covered my ears, and after one of those creatures, it's jaw contorting and massive, blocked my pass, I need to wake up. And so, I did. And so, this game managed to enamored me again, even though I thought I'd seen everything I needed to see and, and the game proved me wrong.

Once I reach the finale, I couldn't help but to just try to grasp what exactly had I just played: it was a flawed game as a whole, it lost part of this magic as it went along, and it certainly can be tiresome to reach the finish. It's not one of my favorites, and yet, it still captivated me like so other few games have, it reaches what it strived to be tenfold, and some of its individual moments, those spaces within a bigger dream, I'll be thinking about them for a long time.

It's not for everyone, god no, even I struggled to keep going sometimes, but the experience is more than worthy: it's not one of those games that tries to say a lot and ends up falling short; it's meaningless, yet it says so much.

Just like a dream.

I am in love with SotN, i think that the most strong point of this game is the aesthetic, the graphics are pleasant to see and the music is glorious, i have michiru yamane as one of my favourite composers because of this game. I dont think the story is a strong point, honestly whoever tries to play a castlevania for its story, its just not looking in a good game for that. The gameplay is smooth, Alucard is easy to use once you get on it and there are some weapons that are so overpowered in the end that being skilled at this game loses relevancy at that point