November Media Post
Sonic Rumble
I'm kinda surprised this game's getting some sizable backlash. I don't particularly like the gameplay, I doubt I'd play it if it didn't feature an IP that I liked, but I think it plays fine. As for the monetization, yeah I don't like it, but it doesn't seem like it's pushing the envelope.
I don't think the game is very interesting to play. Movement is simple, and the levels aren't very demanding, both of which are especially noticable when playing through levels alone. Playing with other people doesn't help much though because there also aren't a lot of impactful ways to interact with other players. The main thing you can do to other players is homing attack them, but doing so requires an item you have to pick up first, and there isn't much to do against homing attacks aside from using your own to counter attack, or picking up a shield to passively block one.
There's some gameplay related stuff locked behind unlocks which can be paid for, but the skills are pretty unimpactful from what I've seen, and the characters only matter because a bunch of skills are character exclusive, so I feel like they don't feed a ton into Pay To Win design. I probably have bias though since I happened to unlock Blaze, the one character I wanted to play, incredibly early on. I'll note that the pop-up ads feel scummy.
I've seen some of the complaining for this game point towards its unexpectedly prolonged beta period. It seems like in recent years people have been turning more and more against early access and betas in general, I'm not sure if a general trend in public favor is the main problem though. Beta events have been receiving reruns now that the game has properly launched, and I feel like it's pretty respectable that the events weren't delayed or gatekept, but I've seen people upset at the event rerunning as well. I don't specifically know why the game was delayed (I could see the lack of clarification being a large part of why people are upset), but I for one am satisfied that the game doesn't feel barebones or buggy on launch.
I'm kinda surprised this game has so many Sonic Lost World stages. My guess as to why is because of the artstyle, perhaps the devs felt Sonic Lost World stuff best fit this game's toylike theming. I like that this game brought back Sonic Forces Avatars, I think they're funny. It seems like a very obviously missed opportunity to not have a properly customizable Avatar, so much so that I'd guess such a thing was planned then scrapped throughout the game's development.
Mario Kart World
I have similar issues with this game as seemingly a lotta people, judging by months of YouTube recommendations I've been getting. I just don't care much for the open world, and I don't like how laps are often replaced by the process of driving to tracks, because the process of driving to tracks is relatively dull. I think I'm particularly not a fan of exploring this game's world because karts don't travel its verticality very well. I for one am not losing my mind about the open world stuff though, I feel like lacking open worlds have been incredibly on par feature for Nintendo ever since Breath Of The Wild turned out to be "one of the greatest games of all time" (for the record, I don't dislike BOTW, I just didn't love it). As for the lack of proper choice to bypass the in-between tracks, I think lacking options is even more of a Nintendo staple.
I don't mind the player count being upped to 24, it's not too chaotic for me to tolerate. I've yet to really get much out of the parkour system yet. Outside of some rails that you can just drive onto, it seems like you need some familiarity with the tracks to get use out of the parkour, and I don't have much familiarity as of typing this. I'm kinda shocked that the rewind feature isn't available in local multiplayer, that was like one of 2 things revealed throughout the very superfluous* feeling Mario Kart World Direct (*from a viewer end it felt superfluous. Trying to think from the perspective of people working at Nintendo, it kept people's eyes on the game, which is good for the sake of advertising). I really dislike how turning is significantly hampered while on water.
This game's battle modes are disappointing to me. Shine Thief and Renegade Roundup added a ton of variety to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, so it sucks to see they're absent, without even anything new in their place. Bob-omb Blast getting cut seems silly considering how especially simple of a modification the game mode is of Ballon Burst. It's odd that Ballon Burst reintroduced elimination when victory is still based around points and a timer.
I like this game's character roster, I'm a fan of playing as random extraneous characters. Unfortunately the character unlock process is wack. I'm fine with kart customization no longer being present, I never cared much for it in the first place.
Nintendo Switch 2
This ain't exactly a piece of media, but I figure it's worth mentioning here anyways since I don't feel like making a whole blog post dedicated to these thoughts. The Nintendo Switch 2 is very disappointingly samey to the original. Nintendo even updated the original Switch's UI before the Switch 2 released, so that it could look more like the Switch 2 UI. They didn't make the UI fun and whimsical like people have been asking for years, it's mostly just a little bit more colorful.
I still use a 1080p 60hz TV, which is actually worse than the Switch 2's screen, so I haven't exactly been impressed by any graphical fidelity. I'm not the type to care much about graphical fidelity, or even framerate anyways, but even if I was, I've already played games on PlayStation 5 before, the Switch 2 never really had a chance to impress me with graphics.
I really dislike the physical texture of the Switch 2 and its "Joy-Con 2's". Touching the thing at all just bothers me, so I haven't played anything in handheld mode. Snapping the Joy-Cons on and off is satisfying at least. It's somewhat surprising that stick drift is still supposedly a problem (I haven't personally seen it on Joy-Con 2's yet). For some reason the back-piece of the dock is completely removable rather than openable, and it's really annoying to put back on. I've noticed there's a bit of a trick to reattaching the back-piecs, all the corners seem more likely to attach if you start with the bottom ones, but even with that knowledge I still screwed up and feel like I might break the thing.
Z.A.T.O. // I Love The World And Everything In It
Upon seeing a trailer for this game, I subconsciously hyped myself up over it since I thought it looked really stylistically cool. I figure that was a bit of a shallow reason to get excited, but I actually ended up really loving this game. It's the kind of experience that's just rattling around in my brain, leaving me internally gushing about it over and over. This might be one of my favorite stories I've ever read.
I often forget how impactful it can be to actually relate to a character, because I very rarely do. I felt a really strong connection to this game's main character, Asya. I particularly related to her passive nature, self deprecating thoughts, her loneliness, and the ways in which she copes with her loneliness; Asya obsesses over every positive social interaction, and fantasizes about having chance encounters with the people she likes. I for one do not "Love The World And Everything In It", but I relate in significant enough ways that I got incredibly invested in the story's conflict, and I overall just really likes Asya. I quite liked the 3 other most prominent characters as well, Ira, Marina, and Vadim. While I'd definitely agree he's unpleasant as a person, I found Vadim to be a particularly interesting character due to how much his personality shifts between different scenarios.
As for the overall narrative, I loved it as well. There are some incredibly striking, uncomforting moments as the mystery unravels, as well some surprisingly sweet moments that happen around the unraveling.
Spoilers:
Dress-Up With Helene: Deluxe!
This game's cute and cozy. It's also free. Here's an outfit I put together when I tried to make something genuinely nice, in addition to one I put together to intentionally be silly.
There's some comics, a bunch of artwork, and an autorunner minigame to check out as well. This game ain't totally wholesome, there's some crude humor (that I enjoy), and sexualizing outfits.
Claire A La Mode
After so thoroughly enjoying Curse Crackers earlier this year, I decided to check out what else Colorgrave has developed. I was most intrigued by this game since it was also a platformer, and seemingly a narrative follow-up to Curse Crackers. It wasn't out when I discovered it though, but it had a Kickstarter, so I put some money into it, and got my name in the credits!
I went in knowing though that this game ain't quite the same as Curse Crackers. In short, this game feels more arcadey than Curse Crackers. Despite the arcadey feeling of this game, the points system is remarkably flawed, particularly due to enemies infinitely respawning, and always giving points upon death. I'm also not a big fan of how a bunch of collectables don't give any points, completely disincentivizing you from engaging with a ton of side challenges throughout levels. Not rewarding collectables with points does keep character balance a little more fair I guess (since some collectables are only obtainable with certain characters), but I don't think that was a huge issue. I guess it's also nice to not be incentivized to replay minigames, but I think the issue there is that the minigames in this game are especially shallow. The points system isn't irredeemably all bad though. I like the general balance between the Medals. I appreciate score resets every time you exit the game (or at least exit to the main menu), I really don't like when games with save systems just have a perpetually cumulative score, although it's a bit of an inconvenient way to reset score (lives also get reset which I'm not a fan of). It's also not super unreasonable to not exploit enemy respawning.
The core gameplay is solid. I like being able to pick up and throw stuff at enemies, although this game isn't super focused on that sort of thing. The levels have somewhat interesting and memorable designs, although I think they struggle to take advantage of the wide variety of playable characters. The differing playable characters fall into the trap I think a lot of platformers have in which their abilities feel like they break the level design rather than enhancing it, yet you're still required to use them sometimes so you can't completely ignore them. There's a ton of overlap between abilities also, I think some characters are functionally identical. It's still fun having so many different characters though.
This game's story does follow up on Curse Crackers in some satisfying ways, but it similarly leaves some incredibly loose threads that leave me not quite satisfied. If you didn't play Curse Crackers, I imagine you could be a little confused with how scatterbrained this game's story can be, although I think the main plot is straightforward enough. It's moreso the worldbuilding that might be hard to follow. The character writing shines, I especially love the banter between Bonnie and Elinore, I'm glad they had so much to say to each other.
My time with this game was pretty drastically warped by the experience I had writing a guide and hunting for secrets with the Colorgrave Discord server. I made a separate blog post about that experience.
The Gmod Stream
I remember seeing this video in my YouTube recommendations back around the time it released, but I passed up on it because I figured it was just a regular livestream vod from a channel I didn't know, and I wouldn't watch that. If I had clicked on it fully blind, I think I would've enjoyed it more.
🚩 Spoilers 🚩
(I can't get the button working right now)
As is usually the case when I watch livestreams that contain multiple people I don't know, I had a very hard time telling who was who. I didn't quite get what happened, the comments are surprising to read. I think it was an interesting format to tell a horror story with though, and I respect that it authenticity felt like a livestream. I think there were some pretty effective moments of tension. I'm particularly impressed that I actually felt intimidated by the bitrate dropping
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