Super Mario 64 DS review

I just finished Mario 64 DS as of like 1 hour ago and I felt super inspired to write about it right away :)

Seems doubtful that people DONT know this game, but I'll do a little synopsis anyway.

Super Mario 64 DS is a port of the N64 game Super Mario 64, in which the evil Bowser has trapped the princess and citizens of the mushroom kingdom inside of living painting worlds using power stars! Collect these powerstars throughout the levels to unlock new rooms in the castle, get even more stars, and eventually overcome Bowser to win the game!

This is the first "collectathon" game I've played, which was a pretty popular genre at the time of mario 64s release (thinking banjo kazooie, Spiro, Croc, and more recently: a hat in time and Yooka). The core concept if you've never played, is to enter levels and amass a collection of stars, puzzle pieces, or whatever else the maguffin of the game is. The loop was fun and pretty short! on average stars took about 2 - 10 minutes to collect, and were usually straight forward, though there was the occasional level I ended up having to look up a walkthrough for. I enjoyed it! I played the whole game over the course of about a week, though there is no in game timer I suspect I beat it in about 10-12 hours. 

One notable difference I did not know about this game till I started was the fact that you dont just play as mario in this game as in the original M64. Instead you you start as yoshi and must unlock the other characters over time. While this concept is interesting, it is often more of an annoyance in my opinion. Because stars wont tell you if you need a specific character to get, you will occasionally wander throughout a level before realizing you likely need to be Wario or Luigi to progress, then need to leave the level and walk to the character select. The other problem is that Mario has the best moveset by far. So you often just play as Mario 99% of the time while switching very occasionally to the other two, its more a gimmick than a good game aspect is I guess what I'm saying. 

Speaking to the moveset, wow.. this game is hard to get used too. Part of this is the limitations of the DS. The DS only has 8 directions of movement as opposed to the 16 that an N64 would have which makes accidentally walking off cliffs very very easy. The camera controls are also pretty tough, the ground is solid, even to your camera, so you are bound by the perspectives you can look at by the walls of the level. This can lead to the need to take blind jumps or frustrating damage. THAT BEING SAID, once you start getting used to Mario's moveset, you start feeling like a damn god. You can traverse levels very very fast if you can master the longjump and backwards backflip jump. 

There are 13 primary levels and I think 6-8 secret levels over the course of the game, the 13 primary levels each have 7 stars with 1 100 coin star, while the secret levels only have 2 (typically red coin and a switch/normal star). I really enjoyed this setup, and because you unlock more levels the more stars you have, you arent ever dwelling on levels for too long which I thought was great! My personal favorite level was hazy cave maze since it, in my opinion, made the best use of the new DS game only mechanics. Figuring out stars was very rewarding with each being its own short puzzle.

Between big unlocks (20 - 60 and 80 stars) you fight Bowser, and I cannot lie, these fights suck. The grab hitbox is janky and you'll often hit yourself trying,. Then to damage him you have to throw him into bombs that ALSO have janky hitboxes, so that part wasn't my favorite. But that was like the low point so nbd I suppose. (did have the best music in the game though so)

After beating the final level you get a cute cutscene and a THE END screen, which was great :)! This was a fun game that I am unlikely to revisit, but none-the less I had fun and would recommend this game if you're at all interested in trying it.

Pokemon heartgold review

okemon Heartgold, what a game... Growing up with Platinum, I remember being jealous of kids with Heartgold since their Pokemon could follow them around as they walked which I always thought was so cool, now, having owned and played both..... I’m glad I had platinum. But we will get into that later.

I’ll start by saying that I did not “complete” this game yet, as I still have the entirety of the Kanto region to explore, but considering after the elite four you get a “the end” screen, I think I am good to write a review. Though I may return to this game and playthrough the rest later. Additionally, although I will try not to compare this game to Platinum too often there will be points where I think it will be relevant, especially since these are both Gen 4 games. With that out of the way:

“Jeez, that took me longer than I thought it would” were the first words out of my mouth upon finishing this game, with a time of over 30 hours this is maybe the longest game thus far that I have reviewed. I had honestly forgotten how long Pokémon games could be since my last playthrough of one back in highschool, they are in fact jRPGs after all. But I think that this length adds to a core feeling of adventuring with your new Pokemon friends. Perhaps Tonberry on the RetroGameTalk Forums said it best: “Pokémon is still the only game that scratches the "kid on summer holiday going on a safari adventure" itch” and I agree, there really isn’t anything like starting up a new game and setting off to learn, grow, battle, and befriend in this wonderful Pokémon world. Unfortunately, I believe this is also why I didn’t resonate with this game nearly as much as I did when I was 12.

My final team? Ho-oh, Feraligatr, Parasect, Ampharos, Donphan, and Magmar.

Gameplay:

Pokémon’s gameplay is very simple, you walk around, catch Pokémon, and battle them against other trainers. As you do so you level them up just like in any other RPG. As they grow they gain new moves, new forms, and generally just get a lot cooler. The team you start with in Pokémon and the team you end with can be completely different, even if you kept the same Pokémon the whole game through. Heartgold does this well enough, I mean it is truly a classic experience when it comes to these games and to my understanding a faithful adaptation of Gold from back in the day. It’s honestly hard to make any insightful comments on the feeling of playing due to how ubiquitous it is in nature to gamers everywhere.

The formula of Pokémon games in general works best when you care deeply about the Pokémon you have, and HeartGold leans heavily into this idea. Features like allowing Pokémon to walk behind you added a lot to my experience because it helped me bond with my caught critters, even if it didn’t add anything practical to the gameplay. Looking back, HeartGold is all in on this theme of “friendship,” with nearly every gym emphasizing how important it is to like your Pokémon and befriend them, even over simply winning battles or progressing which I honestly appreciated. Because of this, it is particularly important gameplay-wise that players are given a wide variety of Pokémon to catch, allowing them to form an ideal team they are genuinely excited to train and adventure with. Which is why its so unfortunate that Heartgold fails at this so so badly.

               Throughout most of the game I noticed a lack of interesting Pokémon to catch pretty much throughout the whole game. You encounter a lot of the same Pokémon up until the end, with really only one or two notable examples of epic mon’s. I think I recall like 2 fire Pokémon (Growlith and Magmar) Until catching Ho-oh right before the elite four, and given I chose tondadile as my starter it meant I was really suffering against some of the fights! Ultimately this resulted in me not really caring for anyone outside of my best 3 Pokémon, until the veeeerrrrry end when I cobbled together something I liked.

Gonna rattle off a couple of other things here in rapid fire order here: The gyms were boring compared to platinum, no real puzzles or anything. The plot literally didn’t come up most of the time, compared to team galactic, safari zone is convoluted as hell, the pokeathon is pretty cool and a good comparison to beauty competitions. Fuck that card game points thing, the rival was boring and the “best friend” wasn’t even my best friend.

               I Tried, I really tried to like this game outside of platinum, but honestly I couldn’t, Pokémon battling is my least favorite part of Pokémon, so any improvements there fell on deaf ears. Exploring, seeing new mons, checking out the gimmick of the new gym, uncovering the next bit of story, that’s what I like, that’s why I play RPGS.  When I look back on Heartgold it is just so weak in comparison. I would rather just be playing platinum.

Music:

               In comparison to the gameplay, I have no complaints about the music, starting up with that hometown music was so amazing. Pokemon music is always awesome but the chiptune sounds coming out of my DSI speakers absolutely reignited something in me from my childhood, I love the music from these games. In fact I’m listening to the OST right now while writing this. I think part of why it resonates with me so intensely is that feeling of a childhood adventure come to life (thanks again wizboy). In particular the team rocket hideout and azalea town tracks stood out and inspired and fun.

Characters:

               While I don’t have a ton to say about the characters, I will say that the phone aspect was pretty neat! I liked when past battlers called me up for a rematch, or told me about their fucking stupid ass rattata for the 200th time lol. What can I really say, the professors were serviceable, the rival was serviceable to teach you about friendship, the gym leaders were whatever. I mean it was whatever yknow?

Conclusion:

Heartgold is a classic pokemon experience for classic pokemon fans, and at that it does its damn best. The pokewalker and the pokemon walking alongside some other changes mean that befriending your pokemon has never been easier. It is a game I wish I had played before platinum because I feel like if it were my first pokemon game I would have adored it, and then playing platinum on top woulda blown my little mind. But alas, twas not to be.

Thanks for reading, Pokepals

Metal Gear Solid review

Metal Gear Solid, probably up there with some of the most famous games of all time, and yet, I had once again never played any of its entries, and though I cant speak to the later games I gotta say I really enjoyed this one.

First thing's first, what a fucking intro. Upon loading up the main menu, the main theme greets you with grandiose and mystery, I felt like I was watching the beginning to a mission impossible movie, which is actually something that held throughout this game. The opening score, composed by Tappi Iwase is a grand and adventurous piece, and I wish they did more music for the game. That being said, I hear they worked on the Suikoden OSTS, which is also on my to play list. Though none of the other music really stuck with me as much as the main theme did, I dont remember disliking any of it.

After getting through the main theme I was greeted with a mission briefing in the form of a cutscene. From this second on it was clear that Hideo Kojma had based this film on the 1980's 1990's action spree of the time. Even the camera, coming up from the floor with the sets around the agents, it something I was very unprepared for. I am much more used to very bland head shots/ practical shots from a lot of other games I have played. Another thing that shocked me in the intro is that they were talking as if events had occurred BEFORE this game which led me to realize that, in fact, this is the second game of the series. Metal Gear is the original, though its a top down pixel game instead, but they did a good job not relying the player knowing anything beforehand. 

Coming into gameplay the first levels of the game, all the camera angles are fixed.This again adds to the "movie-ness" of the game, which I found extremely novel and enjoyable. With the docks providing a great introduction to the controls, naturally letting me die once to see what NOT to do, I quickly got above ground to see the compound. As I stealthily avoided lights and choked out guards I realized that this was some of the most fun I had ever had playing a video game. This movie-ness was so appealing and to be honest, the entire game felt like I was playing a movie, if that makes sense. The stealth, the boss battles, the setting and the plot all made me feel like I was in a spy movie of my very own which is something not a lot of other games have made me feel. I believe this was in part due to not "leveling up" in the traditional sense, you get stronger by finding new equipment or when killing a boss, but you never have to grind enemies or anything. The whole feel of the game is just very very well put together. 

Something I found super nice was the fact that the camera wasn't locked as well, even though the shots were setup for that movie feel, you could always click a button to look around in first person to make informed decisions on how to proceed. I liked the controls for the most part, and enjoyed defeating the enemies in creative ways (particularly laying traps)

As the levels progressed I remained excited to see more but I did slowly burn out a little on the action. Unfortunately this game's fighting is very very clunky and when I got to the first boss, ocelot, it really started to show. This sort of leads me naturally into my statement about the bosses. Thematically I love em but fighting in game against them? awful, genuinely awful experience. Every single one of them was clunky, frustrating, and grindy feeling 20% longer than they should. 

The plot itself is.. insane, there is so much happening AND YET unlike some other games I have covered it is done well. The entire game took me about 12 hours to beat and throughout that time I was consistently excited to see what comes next. Mr. Snake himself is just so Action Movie Hero you cant help but love em, a gruff badass who is good with women, cant think of anything more 90's than that. Other characters were also surprisingly enjoyable, with a whole side plot about double agents happening on the other end of your receiver. Otacon made me actually laugh out loud, he was for sure a favorite of mine. Additionally, whenever you're in a new area, if you call in through your receiver, each character will usually have new things to say which adds a lot of charm.


Overall, this game was a blast, I felt like I was in a movie, and even the parts that sucked were satisfying to beat at the very least. Thanks for reading.

Robots! Review

Robots, animated in 2005 by bluesky back when 3D animation was still novel and bluesky was still the hollywood CGI animation king (ice age, EPIC, rio), is one of my favorite childhood movies. It was one of the few films I hhad on CD and I watched it over and over and over again in m mom's minivan at every time we road tripped to my grandparents. Given this I was suprised at how  little I actually remembered the film, pleasently so since I still found it to be so enjoyable all these years later.


A quick overview for those who havent seen it (spoiler free, or at least only stuff from the first 20 minutes)

Robots is about, well, robots! Specifically, Rodney Copperbottom, son to a poor dishwasher robot and his wife, set up to always be getting hand-me-down parts for growing up. This poor upbringing leads to an interest in the robot "bigweld" a famous inventor dedicated to making robots lives better everywhere, Rodney becomes enamored with the world of invention and aspires to one day be "just like bigweld". This leads to Rodney becoming a young adult, where he decides to move to the big city to fufill his dreams. only to find himself idiologically oposed to the new city management...

Okay, onto the review. Honestly, for how much I watched this film as a kid I couldn't believe how much I had forgotten about it, and how insanely dark it is. I doubt this will be the first time this opinion has been put onto the internet, but the comedy in this film is doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to making it upbeat.

Characters:

Rodney, our hero, is pretty generic but well voiced and charasmatic enough to be easily watchable. I dont have a lot of opinions on him but I think he makes a good ideallic young adult. Fender (*red robot) on the otherhand is extremely interesting, and absolutely the highlight character of the film for me. He's super funny, brings a lot of the world together, and acts as a strong motivator to Rodney, being poor and broken down, needing repairs. Honestly what was best about him was that his jokes were ACTUALLY funny, consistantly! Which is something I dont see in a lot of bluesky movies. Other than those two, the only characters with enough screentime to warrent mentioning are the main villian (Ratchet) and his mom (Gasket). These characters were also pretty funny, I think generally most of the jokes in this film land well honestly. But aside from the comedy, what is crazy is their motivations, which is GENUINE MASS MURDER. Though we will get into this later. The rest of the cast is fine, Mostly just Fenders friends n whatnot, Rodney's parents, they exist pretty much just to push the plot along rather than to be engaging on their own. Though personal opinoin Piper shoulda ended up with Rodney instead of the buisness woman who literally I dont even remember her name because she does nothing.


Music:

Was fine, genuinely dont really remember it but I think it was servicable. EXCEPTION being the NUMEROUS, like more than 4 pop music references that were perhaps the ONLY jokes that fell so flat it hurt the film. Genuinely.

 
Plot (spoilers):

This was the crazy part tbh. The Robots movie under the hood is about a pyschopathic maniac trying to kill all poor people by removing their access to spare parts so they cant repair themselves and get swept into an underground furnace to make parts for richer bots. This shit is INSANE and is basically a 1:1 metaphore for healthcare in America. The film is essentially about the lower class rising up to defeat the rich and take back robot city to reimplement universal healthcare and make the city livable again. my mouth was literally agape from this, and it was crazy that it was so on the nose. I didn't this movie being so dark! The movie is also kind of weird in that at the end of the film the LITERAL fat buisnessman bigweld gets to be in charge again, despite abandoning everyone in the first place. IDK, this movie is just so wildly abrupt in its social commentary of the united states, and I'm suprised it was made in the first place.

Conclusion:

This movie was really funny and if you take it without reading into it even an inch, a very casual watch. If you want to dig in more you will find a never-more-relevant story about the wealth dynamics in the United States and how the rich are intentionally destroying the lives of those they deem lesser. Hell of a thing to make a kids movie on, parasite eat your heart out.

Thanks for reading :) I can pretty easily reccomend this one to anyone who wants to watch it. I thinkfor the comedy alone its worth checking out.

MAY movies/books/shows!

Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust:

This movie has been pretty popular lately, especially around short form content, which seems to be the new way things enters the cultural zeitgheist. Anyway it convinced me to watch it, and it was just as good as I had hoped!
For a synopsis, the movie is about D, a dampeir (half vampire half human), who wanders the earth in search of his father, dracula. Though I suppose that would be better described as the metaplot. Within the movie, this is about D, but rather just one of his many adventures across a techno-mystic world. In this case, hunting a vampire who has fallen in love with a human and seeks to escape to "night city" in space with her. D seeks to "save" the girl and return her to her father and brother, competing against time both with the vampire who seeks to escape and a rival bounty hunter group.

I thought this movie was really good! Though I will say that although the storyis fine and for sure enjoyable, it is defenately a bit style over substance. The characters are also just alright, its really focused on D and this girl from the opposing bounty hunter group against the vampire they were hunting, which was fine but it didn't make me care about the rest of the bounty group very much, making their scenes less impactful. On the upside, the absolutely stunning art does a lot for this film, I mean every frame could be a wallpaper, its genuinely up there with ghibli and the like. The character DESIGN is also wonderful and all in all a servicable plot with ok characters is absolutely worth watching for insane artwork. While I was watching the movie, something I thought about was the fact that it seemed like the plot was missing a lot of details, or rather, that the setting would work better as a book than a movie. Funny enough when I was researching afterwards I found out that yeah! it would wwork better as a book! Because thats what it was originally written as, and in fact, its actually a large series of books comprising over 50 novels vampire hunter D bloodlust is just one of those novels! So, final thoughts on the movie is that I liked this movie - but I'm even more excited to try reading the books :).

Mario Kart DS:

I don't think that mario kart really needs an introduction, but I guess on the off chance you've never played, its exactly what it sounds like. Go Kart Racing with Mario!

Given that this is mario kart, there isnt much of a story to cover. Essentially you are dropped into the main menu with a few options, single player, multiplayer, and options. In single player you can play grand prix, time trials and battles. mutliplayer only has grand prix and battles, though time trials does present the option to send a ghost to a friend to race their time which is cool. Launching into grand prix you first choose your speed (50, 100, or 150 cc) then your character, then your kart, and then the set of tracks you want to play. At the start you'll have about 8 characters each with 2 karts and only 4 grand prix out of the 8 unlocked. What I like about single player is that you are given a reason to play it, which is that as you achieve first in each grand prix you unlock karts and racers, by the end you have double the number of characters and like triple the number of karts. The AI is suprisingly fun to play against as well, they are very competent and present real challenge. There were several times I had to try a level 3 or more times to get first. While the AI are adaptive for a DS game, there are still some quirks. Something I noticed while playing was that the AI also seemed to gravitate to a position during each race. It seems that when you start a grand prix each character is given a "position" (eg 1st, 2nd, 3rd) and will attempt to end each race in this position. So if Mario is set to first place, then he will most likely win 1st in each of the tracks for that grand prix if the player does not participate. Additionally, the AI tend to, when not hit or set off track, stick to one set path during each track, with a little bit of variation for each racer. What this means is that if you learn that track, you can set traps laps in advance to get an edge. Even with the quirks though, Grand prix was a lot of fun. Personally my main was Waluigi in the excavator.

I'm going to gloss over time trials, which are just basically "finish the race in x amount of time" and move onto the battle mode. Battle mode is something I have a lot of memories with. In balloon battle, which is a mode where you used items to pop opponents balloons, which were like lives. This mode was almost exclusively what me and my sibling played when we were kids. We seriously spent hours playing balloon battles and playing it again today I really have no idea why, its not even that good a game mode! But it does have like 7 unique tracks only for battle mode which is cool. There was also shine rush, but I again dont have much to say on that mode.
 

Hot take but I genuinely believe that this is the best mario kart bar none. Above the switch, above 8, above gamecube. This version is, in my eyes, the ideal version of Mario Kart. The karts are super unique, the character roster features Rob, Waluigi, Dry bones, and other rarely seen characters in a Mario era mostly filled with the main cast. And most of all, the multiplayer was extremely socially friendly. The average time to finish a 150 cc race is between 5 and 10 minutes, perfect for a handheld designed to fill short gaps or in the lull of a party. On top of all of that, it also contained my favorite feature fo the DS era, which was download play. As long as one person owned the game, up to 8 people could connect using their own DS and play. Granted, if you used download play, your guests could only use shy guy in a standard kart, but for the ability to play with up to 7 of your friends with only one game kart I think it was a small price to pay.

So yeah, Mario Kart DS is awesome, and with the the DS being 50 dollars or less, and the Picocart for the ds now being less than 15 dollars, theres really no reason you cant try it for yourself with your friends.

Samurai Jack Review:

I can finally remove "currently watching: Samurai Jack" from my page as I finally finished all 5 seasons. Although this isn't my first time watching the show, it IS my first time watching it from start to finish. I started it back in April, but I think I made good time of the 58 episodes at 20 minutes per. So what did I think? it was pretty alright!!!

For some reason, when I was like 13 - 14 and first started watching more mature or involved shows like those on cartoon network, I really had strong opinions on psuedo-linear shows such as adventure time, regular show, and yeah Samurai Jack, and while I enjoyed them I had this bizzaare vendetta against shows that were half n half, I always prefered liniar shows like hunter x hunter or totally episodic ones like Gumball. Due to that pointless vendetta I didn't really like samurai jack at the time. Recently however I've come to enjoy shows that have a throughpoint without the need to remember a comlpicated story, and so I decided to give it another try, particularly since season 5 has since been released.

Basic story is this: Aku, the master of darkness, has awoken and now threates the world, Jack must defeat him, but aku sends him to the future where aku has already taken over everything, and now jack must get back to the past *omhacha* and undo the future that is aku...................

Seasons 1 - 4 are truly episodic, with each episode centered around jack trying to find a time portal to get back to the past and finally defeat Aku. Each episode having a new challenge to solve, often being one he needs to solve with his magic samurai sword (the only one that can hurt Aku mind you). The episodes are totally self enclosed and now, as an adult, fun to watch! The overarching story is engaging with Aku being a fantasitc villian. He was easily my favorite character, to the point I often wanted him to win. The scottsman episodes also stood out as he one of the few reoccuring characters. The sense of exploration with Jack is pretty awesome as well - seeing the different cultures in this new world is interesting and sets each episode apart. I mean honestly in general I just really like the world building of Samurai Jack. I will say thought that as fun as they are to watch, and you can jump in at any time, I wouldn't call it a great binge show. The episodes while fun are very same-y in actual episode structure, which can leave it feeling a bit stale over time (with some significant standouts of course).

Season 5 on the other hand is a considerable jump to something much more serialized, it takes place 50 years after season 4 in a much more grounded and bloody world. This is partially due to the shift from cartoon network to Adult Swim. The season is 10 episodes long and for the most part each episode takes place right after the one before it, so unlike before these arent self contained adventures and you'll need to have watched the episodes prior to make sense of it. I have a lot of mixed thoughts on this season. On the one hand, the much more serious tone of the show and continuity makes binging a lot more enjoyable. On the other, I thought the characters were much less engaging and aku appears a lot less, which is suprising for a finale. I do like Jack's arc of self reflection, it fleshed him out a lot as a character and made him feel less 1 dimentional. Was not a huge fan of Ashi, though, and never really came to care for her, which made the ending less impactful. I wont go into too much detail on the ending but I mostly felt it was rushed, and was rather dissapointed with it. Overall I would say the season is good with a very mediocre ending.

I liked this show, I think its best watched in short bursts, it has so much creative talent behind it and the creatures and world that was built is both visually appealing and interesting to explore, I would reccomend Samurai Jack, even if I think you'll find the Journey to be more exciting than the destination.

The Maxx:

At some point I intend to do a more significant review of this series, particularly after I read the comic/book series, since the show only covers editions 1-12. But for now I should at least get down my initial thoughts.

Often people tell me that a piece of media "means a lot to them". I typically understand this as some deep connection to the characters, story or themes, that go beyond just enjoyent. But until The Maxx, I'd never actually felt that way myself. This series spoke to me and in a way it felt almost fated that I would watch this show at this point in my life. I will be skipping the synopsis because honestly, I think it'd be very hard to make one for this show. Its about a man dressed in a superhero costume who is mentally ill, and his social worker/only friend Juliee and their uh. battle? against Mr. Gone, trust me you'll see why I am hesitant to say any more than that if you watch it.

The world of Maxx is somewhat irrelvant, but thats okay due to its heavy focus on characters. All of which are written marvalously. These are some of the most "real" characters I've ever watched, and we get a serious look into their head, pulling you into their existance despite seeing very little of it. What you do see is enough. I guess I'd say Mr. Gone is a bit of a weakpoint, but only because it felt like a side quest to Maxx and Julies journey. But this is a very minor nitpick and I am very biased to wanting to see more of The Maxx himself. The artstyle is awesomely stylisitic and reminds me a lot of 90's comics. The character designs are so prominant you can figure out by sillouete alone, and each design tells you so much about the character themselves just by looking. The storytelling and the plot is almost pyschedelic - in a good way - and it expects you to be paying full attention at all times to pick up on whats acutally happening. Figuring out whats real or fake is part of the adventure and pulling apart the symbolism in the imagery is also key to a full experience. 

Maxx's struggle with reality, shifting in between a fantasy and reality is something that I relate too heavily. While I am not experiencing full on hallucinations, I do have an intricate inner world that I escape too when I'm stressed or overwhelmed. Like Maxx, its a world where I am a hero, or, in other words, in control.I imagine many of you reading this have similar worlds. But what makes this difficult for me is my sleep. I have nightmares almost every night, and I rarely wake up feeling rested due to this, these nightmares are very vivid and often pull from my inner fantasies. When it gets bad, like it is recently. I find myself slipping into my fantasy world uncontrollably. It hits my memory hard, I often forget things or mix up what was fantasy and what was real. The fractured reality I experience was mirrored in Maxxs own struggles. Again, I want to write a much deeper review on this at some point, but... yeah.

So yeah, heavily heavily reccomend, its genuinely a work of art how much they managed to fit into 13 episodes. The series length also gives it bonus points, as short 13-25 episode shows are my favorite genre of media.

Contact - DS

Contact is a cult classic DS game made by grasshopper entertainment back in 2006, primarily for a japanese audience. Unlike a lot of the games I've reviewed thus far, this one is pretty unknown, so I was interested to go in blind and be able to form an entirely uninformed opinion about the game. Honestly, although there is fan walkthrough available, information is kinda scarce online for this game overall, so there was little chance to be spoiled even if I wanted to be.

For a brief synopsis, this game is about you, the player (like in a meta sense actually you, playing the DS) helping a space faring scientist reclaim his gemstone like powercells from the Cosmo-NOTS, a set of 4 space pirates, by controlling a boy named zach. The core loop is pretty simple, you travel to an island on the world the cells landed on, fight your way through monsters then kill a boss, seal the cell and send it back to the ship, then you're off to the next island. Your controls are just walking around and pressing Y to trigger attack mode and swipe at the nearest baddie, occasionally throwing out a special attack. Its psuedo action-RPG as there are no turns to combat, almost diablo like, which  can actually end up with you getting stunlocked by enemies as your attack gets interrupted if you are  hit during the animation. These basic controls remain the same throughout the game with little variation other than a few bosses where you use the touch screen.

When I booted up the game, I was immediately hooked by the artstyle, the professor has this sort of flat GBA style while zach and the rest of the world has this gorgous pixel-painterly style, its a really really pretty game. The second thing I noticed was the translations, they were... weak. You can understand whats happening generally, but it borderline, and it was clearly done through google translate which means I likely lost a lot of the humor or clever writing in translation. This sort of corner cutting was a trend throughout the game, which I'll talk about in a bit.

The art throughout is fantastic, it feels like a hand crafted world with visually distinct islands that are undeniably fun to see for the first time. The enemies are well sprited and thematic, and the music is servicable though you might get tired of the battle theme.

When you start the game you get introduced to some of the basics like combat and special abilities, you have a stick you use to fight things and walk around killing catapillars as you make your way deeper into the first island's caves where the professor sensed the first cell. As you progress, you get introduced to the stats system and the decal system. The stats in this game are incredibly confusing and it isnt really clear what each one does or how it will impact you without a guide, it doesnt help either that you have like 30 different stats to keep track up, taking up both the bottom and top screen when you go to the stats menu. Its pretty overwhelming and truthfully I ignored them most of the game, I never seemed to need to keep track of em. The second thing that I got introduced too was the decal system, which is a bizaare form of both active abilities AND passive buffs. You have two sets of decals, one you unlock each island that is an active power you can use one time before having to reload them at the ship, and then those that you collect randomly when killing an enemy. This second type of decal provides minor buffs to some stats based on the name of the decal. You have have up to 4 passive decals at a time, and when you open a fifth, you must either replace one you have or throw it in the trash. This was another system that I only interacted with like 3 or 4 times, rarely replacing decals or even bothering to check what they were, I simply never seemed to need too. After you get the first cell, you head to a new island where you find your next sort of customization - the costumes. Throughout the game you will find 8 costumes, each on has a unique special, impact on skill levels, and sometimes an ability. The first costume you get is the chef outfit, which introduced yet ANOTHER system - cooking. There is a kitchen on the ship and also scattered around the islands where you are able to cook food you buy or find into better food for buffs and to restore health at the cost of becoming "full" as you eat, needing to wait for cooldown before eating again. But again, ONLY if you're wearing the chef outfit, otherwise these stations are useless to you. This system was also completely outclassed by an item that you find on the 3rd island, potions. Potions are cheap, only costing about 80 coins each, heal 80 health (by the final boss I onlyhad 300 hp total) and critically these items do not "fill you up" and thus you can drink as many as you want without downside.

It was here on the 3rd island, after cooking was rendered pointless, that I realized how little fun I was having with this game, there is so much to find and explore in this game, so many interlocking systems, many of which I am yet to mention, and yet no reason to inteact with them whatsoever. Its as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle. The game never gets challenging enough to require me to check my decals and replace them or buff myself with food. I never meet an enemy that requires a certain outfit or special nor one that requires a specific weapon.I basically just used the molesuit, which is the only one you need to progress in the game by digging, and simply used whatever was the best sword at that particular moment since money was never an issue, spamming potions whenever I got low. It makes the game a slog, because despite all the cool locations and interesting gimmicks (such as the arcade island where you get sucked into video games), none of them are well designed enough to feel significantly different from the last. Because the dialogue was so poorly translated its hard to feel engaged in the story either, I never really came to care about zach or the cosmo-NOTs or even the professor. but WORST OF ALL, they have the meta aspect of YOU being a direct entity impacting the story, and yet you only do anything with that twice. You are almost always controlling zach as he walks around, thats it.

I could honestly go on about all of the poorly designed features or cryptic puzzles that require a guide but I think that this sums it up well. Although the locations are interesting, the enemies at least visually varied, the gameplay remains the same throughout. And at the end of it all there is a note from the developers essentially apologizing that they released the game in such an unfinished state. I really really wanted to enjoy this game, because the premise is so interesting, and it has a concept of a good game buried beneath jank... but it just needed more time to cook.

Overall, I'm sad to say I cannot reccomend this game even though its only 15 hours long. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the game reccomendation, even if I didn't love the game, I am glad to receive such reccomendations for review :).


Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy review:

Watched this move with my dad while drunk and it was pretty good! And funny.

Its about a man who is thrust into space after the earth is destroyed by, well, burocracy aliens? who want to build a space freeway through our star system. He and an alien friend are picked up by the galaxy's president who also has along with him a girl our main character met at a party once. Antics ensew and *SPOILER* at the end the girl gets with our protag (despite his... horrid ability to talk to women) and the earth is restored.

You probably know this film as the "the meaning of life is 42" bit, but honestly what that meme leaves out is that this movie/book is actually about figuring out what the QUESTION to that answer is, thus being the ultimate question that would answer everything and decipher why 42 is the answer. I would by no means call this a perfect movie, it falls into the trope of making 90% of alien races just humans, other than the burocracy aliens which actually had a fantastic design. it has a bit of a rushed ending with things feeling compressed near the end, and it can feel a bit jumpy from plot point to plot point. HOWEVER, it *is* funny and entertaining, it tells a good story in an engaging way and it did the most important job a movie based on a book can do, it made me want to read the book.

Some things I enjoyed about it in no particular order: the comedy overall was funny and I did LOL multiple times. The supercomputer design was banger and I really liked them as a character, I wish they had more screentime. The depressed robot was a good bit and they used him sparingly enough to not get old. There were a few really creative scenes when the improbability drive was used, like the yarn scene.

I know this is a horribly short review of a movie but its just a good time if you turn your brain off a bit, I reccomend it.

thanks all for reading, let me know if you like this format because I'm realising now that i'ts really long... I hope you alll had a good month as well :)