Man, what the hell happened here?

I know the full release of this game just started today, but I've played a decent amount of the beta, and I think after playing the new update I can confidently talk about this because I've got some stuff to whine about. Get ready for another Shem review that I write on an impulse where I just tear into something with no structure

I'm going to say now that I'm not interested in playing fighting games competitively by any means; I usually only play fighters just to screw around. Unlike a lot of other people, I thought Multiversus had the potential to be really good from the beta, so someone please explain to me why they took down the game for a full year only to re-release the exact same thing, but it feels way worse to play?

Every character’s movement and attacks have been slowed way the hell down, so every fight just goes at a snail’s pace now. Even characters who are supposed to be faster, like Finn and Shaggy, just don’t feel satisfying at all. I don’t understand why this change was even made, because one of the big criticisms of the beta nearly two years ago was that the game was too slow and floaty, so why double down on that? Fucking Brawl Ganondorf could DANCE on these characters! That’s not good! It got so slow for me that it almost single-handedly killed the experience.

The only other really big addition to the game is Rift mode, the PvE mode, which basically just boils down to playing a bunch of matches against bots with a few minigames thrown in there. Those minigames are lame as hell, by the way. You could find them in a bootleg Wii Sports-like shovelware game back in 2009. Who played the beta for this and thought, “You know what was missing? A minigame where you control a tank and shoot slow-moving drones to protect a magic crystal, and the character does not change direction at the same time as the tank when you move, so it looks jank AF”. At least they don't really last that long at all, but it all feels so stupid. How they got away with shutting the servers down to focus on "new modes" when this was all they did baffles me.

Outside of a few new characters and stages, everything else is basically the same. The same microtransactions, the same perk system, the same battle pass—the same stuff that I already don’t like about “Live Service” games. What I’m left with is a game that is somehow even more confused than it was in the beta. It just makes me wonder what the hell the point of shutting the game down even was, if they were just going to keep everything the same but make it less interesting to play.

It’s a shame, really. I don’t want to just shit all over Multiversus in another overly drawn out rant, because there are still things to appreciate about it. The actual movesets for each character are really creative and unique. They all behave exactly as I would expect those characters to play in a platform fighter, and I really enjoy the unique character dialogue that happens in certain matchups. They nail the fanservice aspect of this game. Most of what I complained about could still be fixed, but my main point here is that I just don’t care anymore after THIS long of a wait. You can tell these developers really do care about the characters and franchises they’re representing. But considering the time we live in, where crossovers are essentially just being done to shill for dying movie series, Multiversus is just more of that.

played this game today after its relaunch, having put ~100 hours into the beta (absurd, i know) and i gave up on it after less than 2 hours of playing.
this game is bland style-wise, which is a shock because i don't know how it got worse than how the beta looked. the gameplay somehow feels WORSE, with controls feeling floatier than before and endlag taking years to end. nothing new added feels positive, with coins being broken up into 3 different currencies that you mostly earn through fortnite missions and an unbearable rifts mode, where cheesy lines preceed the most basic fights imaginable. i have a strong feeling i'm gonna end up TRYING to replay this game in the future before realizing that there's NOTHING valuable to it. the only reason it has 1 star is because of the character diversity and interesting movesets, on top of the developers seeming like kind-hearted people. for a game with so much potential, it's horrible to see it just be another one of warner bros. attempts to siphon all the money out of its consumers. at least modern mortal kombat can be fun

They came back after over a year and made the game

-More buggy
-More grindy and greedy
-Slower
-Less fun
-More ugly
-Impossible to play with all the characters in local/training mode
-Have less accessibility options
-Have cut online features
-Have a worse camera
-Even less fun to play 1v1

And they didn’t fix any of the issues of it being a mash fest, the weird theme park music, and poorly executed sound design and voices.

And they STILL don’t have Paul Atreides

Any Nintendo fan, if you were to bring up the topic, would most likely talk your ear off about how great or bad Nintendo’s lineup of consoles has been from the NES all the way up to now, with the possibility that you may even get some people who will go out of their way to defend some of their more apparent blunders like the Wii U (it’s me, I’m one of those people). However, if there is one universal fact that most fans of Nintendo can agree on is that, out of all their consoles, the Virtual Boy was the absolute worst one of the bunch. For those that somehow don’t know, this was the placeholder console that was released in-between the SNES and the N64 around the mid-90s, and as you could probably tell by the name, this was meant to be a… ahem, REVOLUTIONARY system! It was gonna implement 3D and VR technology into console games, bringing capabilities that consoles like the SNES and Genesis could only DREAM of pulling off……………. or at least, it was, if it didn’t immediately crash and burn right out the starting gate.

Most of the games that were released for the thing barely took advantage of these capabilities whatsoever, which makes one question why you would even play these games in the first place, and given the fact that every single one of these games could only be played with this garbage red and black color scheme that would do a real number on your eyes, it becomes all too clear as to why this thing only lasted a year before being thrown away by Nintendo themselves. But hey, I will give the system credit, as not everything that it did was completely awful. For one thing, it gave everybody a clear idea on not how to make a video game system, and we did end up getting one or two decent games from the machine, such as with what I would consider the best game ever to be released on the platform, Virtual Boy Wario Land.

It only made sense that we were gonna be seeing more Wario Land games soon after the original game, considering how successful it was, but I never would’ve guessed that the next game in the series would be made exclusively for the Virtual Boy. Granted, that doesn’t make me wanna play it any less, but it definitely makes it hard to recommend to anyone given that fact alone, hence why I never played the game for the longest time until earlier this year when I decided to check it out. It wasn’t that hard for me to get into it, but HOO BOY, you think that staring at the red and black graphics were bad, then you should try what I did, and stare at a bunch of purple, blue, and red graphics that clash horribly with each other for hours at a time, so that was a lot of fun to go through. But anyway, obvious flaws aside, I actually ended up having a lot of fun with the game, and I would say it is really good. I wouldn’t say it is better then the original Wario Land, nor anywhere near as good as future games in the series, but it still manages to be a pretty solid platformer, and definitely the best game that was ever released on the Virtual Boy.

The story is pretty basic for a Mario spin-off like this, where while Wario is chilling inside of a cave in the Awazon region (yes, you read that correctly), he is disturbed by a gang of evil baddies who go on and take all of the treasure of the land for themselves, with Wario giving chase towards them, only to end up getting thrown down through the floor, so it is up to him to fight his way back up, get many treasures along the way, and maybe take down some bad guys as well. Again, pretty standard stuff going on here, but it is still charming and simple enough to where you can easily get invested in Wario’s plight, because not only can most of us relate to wanting to get millions of dollars through any means necessary, but you do wanna see him beat the fuck out of these creatures as well.

The graphics are… well, take a wild guess how they are, but even if we ignore the obvious elephant in the room, we got some really great sprite work going on here, with all the different levels, characters, enemies and so on looking pretty damn great, which makes the game that little more appealing to look at, the music is really good, having plenty of great tracks to hear in there such as this one, but I dunno, something about it doesn’t quite come close to what we had in the original game for me, and the gameplay/control is pretty standard for a Wario game, having everything that you would expect, with a few more bells and whistles attached as well, making for a pretty entertaining time all throughout.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Wario once again, go through a set of fourteen different levels that’ll lead you all the way up through this tower, defeat plenty of enemies using your natural brute strength or whatever tools you have at your disposal, gather several different powerups, rare treasures, and LOTS of coins throughout your journey to get as rich as ever and for extra bonuses, and take on several bosses that can actually prove to be quite a challenge, not just because some of their gimmicks can take some time to getting used to, but you will also need to fight to see whatever is happening because of the goddamn screen. Once again, we have all heard this song and dance before, usually without any graphical nonsense holding it back, but it manages to make up for it in plenty of different ways, such as its overall tight design, its infectious energy, and having plenty of genuinely fun platforming challenges to see throughout.

If you had played the original Wario Land, then you pretty much know almost everything to expect out of this game: you run around, you bash these tiny fuckers around to take their money, you find MANY riches hiding around every corner, and you even find plenty of secret treasures along the way, which can change up the type of ending you get. That is pretty cool and all, with all of these elements blending together in beautiful, red-painted harmony, being very fun to play through, exploring around to get all of the treasures, solving the puzzles, finding these different hats that can help you out, even to the point of completely cheesing levels at some points, and even playing the minigames for the chance of getting more coins and extra lives. Most of it sticks pretty closely to the original game, but there is one thing that definitely does set it apart from that other game: the 3D aspect.

Given how this game was released on Virtual Boy, it definitely needed some sort of 3D or “VR” gimmick to make it stand out, and the way that this game does this is by introducing backgrounds, which you can jump to and from whenever you please using these arrow pads that you will find throughout many of the levels. It’s a very simple idea by today’s standards, but it is fun to explore both parts of each level to see what each might be hiding, encouraging even more exploration to see how you can go to and from that background, along with finding all of those hidden goodies. Not only that, but the game does also make sure to challenge you with this gimmick as well, with there being plenty of obstacles that can either sway to and from the background, or even send you to and from it as well whenever you aren’t quick on your feet. Hell, there are even plenty of enemies and bosses that take full advantage of this, leading you to pay close attention to who is gonna do what next, and what you should do from there, making for some somewhat tricky, yet still fun enemy encounters.

Unfortunately though, despite all of the good that is being done with this game, there are definitely some things that hold it back from being as good as the original Wario Land. For one thing, like I mentioned earlier, this game sticks WAY too closely to its roots, not introducing that many new gameplay mechanics, gimmicks, or enhancements on previous formulas whatsoever, with the only exception to this being with the 3D aspect, which can only really get you so far at the end of the day. Not to mention, the game is also pretty short, even shorter than the original game, where four of the 14 stages that I previously mentioned are just boss fights, and it doesn’t take too much time to clear out the other stages either, making the journey over much sooner then you would hope it would be.

And finally, the one last issue I have with it that probably triumphs over everything else…….. the fact that it was released on Virtual Boy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the game is any worse for being exclusive to the VB even to this day, but for a system that primarily advertised itself on being a 3D VR headset in the 90s, having a 2D platformer on it with VERY SLIGHT 3D elements just seems very… out of place. You could’ve probably made this game for the SNES, changed up the 3D element in some way, and ended up with a much more successful and widely beloved product at the end of the day, and yet, here we are. Not to mention, again, given how the game is always constantly black, red, or whatever color your emulator decides to be, it makes me never want to go back to play this again, and instead just watch it on YouTube instead, which is a huge shame, especially considering how wonderful this game really is beyond all that.

Overall, despite a lack of major change, its short length, and the platform it was released on, VB Wario Land is definitely a hidden gem from Nintendo’s library, and a pretty good followup to the original Wario Land as a whole, having very tight and fun platforming challenges to take on, lots of money for you to find in many different places with the powerups, and fun fights all throughout that, when you beat them, makes you feel like you really conquered something……. even if the something in question is the VB’s graphics. I would definitely recommend it for those who are big fans of the Wario Land games, as well as those who are just THAT curious enough to see what kind of titles the Virtual Boy has to offer, because, in my own personal opinion, there is no better option you can choose from other then this one. Not really sure what kind of joke I could end on with this review, so rather then trying to make one, I’m just gonna show you all what the final boss is like here, because he is absolutely terrifying. I would say that he probably scared a lot of kids back in the day, but in order to do that, that would imply that people actually bought this game and a Virtual Boy back in the day, and uh, ha ha………….. that didn’t happen.

Game #588

Every journey has a beginning. Whether it be a monumental journey that tells of some great hero setting out to accomplish some goal or to defeat a big bad guy, or rather it be something as simple as how one decided to go to the post office that day, there is always a beginning to every story, and that definitely rings true when it comes to video games. Some of us may have played thousands of games at this point in our lives, while others are merely starting to get into the hobby, but one thing that remains consistent between all of us is that we all had a first video game, the one that would introduce us to this vast, creative and limitless medium, one that either fully enraptured us to the point of seeking out what else you could find, or leaving a simple, yet enjoyable enough impression to where you wouldn’t mind trying anything else out in the future. So, I figured, for the 600th review that I am making on this website (I might be slightly insane), I figured it was about time that I covered the very first video game I ever played in my life, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.

I don’t remember the exact, precise details of how I ended up with this as the first game I would ever play, but I do have a bit of a brief summary based on what I do remember, which will do a good enough job at painting a picture. Back in 2003-2004, when I was around 3-4 years old as well, I was a dumbass little kid, not knowing what a video game even was, and most likely doing the things that most toddlers were doing back then, such as running around, yelling, eating weird stuff off the floor, and receiving plenty of injuries. One day, my Mom and Dad came home one day with a little present for me, which just so happened to be a gray Game Boy Advance SP, one that I still own even to this day, and one that I share a lot of fond memories with throughout my life. With this, I also managed to get two games, those being Pokemon Blue and Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi’s Island, and with all of these things in hand, I had… absolutely zero clue as to what I was supposed to do with it. After messing around with the things for a bit, most likely opening and closing them, chewing on the sides of them, and so on, I then found out I can shove that weird gray rectangle thing into the big gray brick, while also finding a power switch on the system, leading to it turning on, and from that moment on, I was never the same.

So yeah, obviously, I have a lot of nostalgia towards this game, and while those early experiences were with the GBA port of the game rather than the original, it was still pretty accurate to that of the original game, to the point where I fondly remember several memories of me playing it as a kid, including one instance where I got so angry when I lost to the second phase of the Baby Bowser fight. It was my first instance of rage… you love to see it. But anyways, you all obviously didn’t come here to listen to me babble on about the past. You all came here to hear my opinion of this game, and if you couldn’t tell already at this point, I do still hold a soft place for it in my heart, and I love it tremendously. I can’t say it is perfect by any means,as it does have problems I will get into, but it was still fantastic all the way through, not only as one of the first proper Yoshi games ever made that wasn’t a puzzle game or whatever else, but also as the game that would drag me into the world of video games as a whole.

The story is very simple, yet very charming at the same time, where one night, while a stork is delivering two baby brothers by the name of Mario and Luigi to their parents, he is attacked by an evil sorcerer named Kamek, who kidnaps Baby Luigi and causes Baby Mario to fall down into the depths of the island below. Down on said island, a green Yoshi is taking a nice, leisurely stroll, until he then finds Baby Mario falling right on his back, while also dropping the map that the stork was using to deliver the kids. After gathering with several other Yoshis on the island, they then deduce (somehow) what happened to Baby Luigi, so they all then set out, with Baby Mario alongside them, to go and rescue Baby Luigi from Kamek’s evil clutches, while he and his lackeys plot to take Baby Mario as well to succeed in their ultimate goal. It is somewhat of an odd story, considering how it de-ages the Mario bros. and shifts the focus onto the Yoshis, but it is one that you can easily get behind and want to see through, as you don’t wanna see Baby Luigi get hurt by Kamek……… he can hurt Baby Mario instead, considering how much you have to put up with him in this game.

The graphics are still absolutely amazing even to this day, being one of the best looking games from the SNES library, let alone the best looking platformer on the system, having a very unique art style and plenty of vibrant colors, wonderful character, enemy, and boss designs, as well as plenty of vibrant environments that you will travel through for your whole journey, the music is fantastic, having incredibly up-beat and iconic tunes like this one that will play throughout the game, mixed in with some more “menacing” tunes like this one, most of them being a joy to listen to even after all this time, and the gameplay/control is mostly stuff that we have seen before from the Mario franchise, but not only does it remain really fun to play, but there are several different gimmicks that are present in the game that you wouldn’t typically find in other games.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of one of many different colored Yoshis at a time, go through plenty different levels across many different standout locations amongst Yoshi’s Island, take out plenty of enemies either by jumping on them, swallowing them whole, or throwing others’ dead remains at them to drive the point home, protect Baby Mario at all times to not only prevent Kamek’s cronies from taking him, but also to make sure you won’t be listening to this sound for too long, gather plenty of different eggs to help you defend yourself, solve puzzles, and take down foes, while also gathering plenty of collectibles along the way, and take on some goofy, yet at-times threatening bosses, which range from being big, intimidating foes that can definitely give you a run for your money to……. this guy, who you defeat by just simply holding right…….. fucking flawless. Much of it is your standard platforming affair, even for those who are very familiar with Mario and his past adventures, but rest assured, despite the fact that it carries the name “Super Mario World” in its title, Yoshi’s Island manages to have plenty of unique elements that distinguish itself from Mario quite a bit, both in terms of its presentation and gameplay.

A lot of elements in this game have been done to death over and over again in many other games, such as going from left to right to the end of the level, defeating enemies, getting coins, and so on, but one of the ways that makes this feel much different than that of a typical Mario game is how you are playing as Yoshi the entire time. Naturally, he does not go about his business the same way Mario does, being able to swallow enemies and throw them around as eggs, and as such, this changes up how the game expects you to approach many situations, and it is great because of it. There are many instances in this game that can’t be cleared through just by running and jumping, but instead, you may need to figure out a different way to defeat an enemy or solve a puzzle using your flutter jump or your eggs, and while some of it can get tedious at times, most of it is incredibly solid, still feeling natural and just as fun even after all of these years.

Not to mention, there are plenty of things that this game has that expands upon elements seen in previous Mario games, all to its benefit. There are many different bonus games that can be accessed throughout the game, each granting you the chance of getting a GARGANTUAN amount of lives to use for the future, right alongside several items as well, which you can use at any time while in a level. Most of these items aren’t really all that useful, just being a means of helping you get to 100%, and the bonus games themselves aren’t anything too useful after beating them once or twice, but they can still be pretty helpful whenever you get the chance to participate in any of them, and in some instances, they can definitely get you out of a bind that you are in. Aside from that though, there are also the powerups in this game, which, rather than being the traditional ones we see all the time in typical Mario games, are instead a bunch of different transformations that Yoshi can take on for a brief period of time. You can become a helicopter, a submarine, a robot mole, and there’s even a powerup that allows you to play as Baby Mario by himself, running around and going up walls, because who gives a fuck about logic! Granted, not all of these powerups are fun to use, with some like that robot mole I mentioned earlier having some pretty awkward handling at times, but they are a nice change of pace whenever they pop up, and it is always really neat seeing just what kinds of things that they are willing to transform Yoshi into next.

So yeah, the game does have a lot going for it in the gameplay department, being very fun even all the way to now, but a lot of the reason why this game does hold up also has something to do with its presentation. The game was made with the Super FX chip, one that was able to do a whole lot more then what games like Star Fox could, and when you play the game for yourself, you can really see it working perfectly in harmony. Sprites will frequently change sizes to fit the situations, enemies will jump from the background to the foreground, there are 3D objects that can be interacted with, and the way that some enemies and sprites move around looks much more impressive then any other game from the SNES at that point. Hell, even just by watching the intro sequence, you can see just what kind of stuff this game was capable of, and while it does look a little rough nowadays, I can imagine this kind of thing blowing peoples’ minds back in the day, and it has aged pretty wonderfully overtime. Not to mention, the general art style of the game is perfect in every way, making everything look so vibrant, lively, and adorable, to the point where I want to live on this island and never come back to civilization.

However, with all of that out of the way, I can’t let my nostalgia goggles blind me for too long, because I am well aware that this game is not perfect, despite it being very, VERY close to that point. While most of the game is extremely fun to play, great to look at/listen to, and has plenty of charming elements that makes it a must-play for any Nintendo fan, there has always been one element of the game that I never really liked, and that is going for 100%. For those that aren’t aware, in order to 100% Yoshi’s Island, you have to collect plenty of items in every single level, such as 30 stars to max out your life, all of the red coins, and the five smiley flowers for the chance at a bonus game at the end of the level. That doesn’t sound that bad, but trust me, completing these tasks is MUCH easier said than done, not only because of how hard it can be in plenty of places, but also because of how tedious it is. Getting a lot of these collectibles can be quite a gamble, especially in plenty of areas where you have to have perfect precision when it comes to throwing your eggs, or even in life-or-death situations where you can’t screw up, or else you would have to die or start the level over again.

That’s not even bringing up the fact that, once you do 100% the main levels in a world, you then unlock an extra stage to play for that world, and these stages can be quite the pain in the dino-ass if you aren’t prepared for them. This can be seen even as early as the first world’s extra stage, where for most of the stage, you are riding along the back of Poochy, Yoshi’s dog companion who is also be goodest good boy of them all, while going across a lot of precarious lava and tight jumps, while also having a very small platform to go back to every time you land. All of this and more awaits you when you decide to go for 100%, and while I myself usually tend to 100% the games that I play, I just simply don’t like doing that with Yoshi games. I dunno, maybe it’s because of how it was a series I grew up with, and is near and dear to my heart, but I have always found this games to be a “chill” series, one that I could just play, run straight through a lot of the time, not having to worry about much else, and I don’t think I will ever change my mind on that stance. To be fair though, I am not saying that going for 100% in this game is a bad thing at all, because it is still perfectly doable, and quite the challenge, if you so wish to go for it, but it is just something I don’t think I will ever be likely to do that much whenever I go back to one of these games. Not to mention, the last time I did 100% percent a Yoshi game was with Crafted World, and, ah hah……………… NEVER AGAIN.

Overall, despite me not really getting into the whole idea of 100% this game at many given times, I am eternally grateful that this managed to be the first video game I ever played in my life, as not only is it a wonderful place to start for anybody, but it is also a fantastic game in many ways, having a wonderful art style, fantastic music, addicting and satisfying gameplay, and a sense of identity that the series would carry on its shoulders all the way to this day, which is all for the best in my opinion. I would definitely recommend it for those who have never played any Yoshi game before, as well as those who are just big fans of Yoshi in general, because if you somehow haven’t gotten the chance to play this for yourself, then you are clearly missing out, because it truly is one of the finest platformers from the 16-bit era. happy sigh..... man, it feels great to finally get to this game, after I had been planning it for so long. Although, now that I am done with all my gushing, I don’t have any funny gag to end the review on. Uh… obligatory Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy reference. There ya go, is that good enough? Have I won the Yoshi’s Island internet prize, and will people like me now?

Game #578