#I did this without reference so it's kinda jank

[potatoleartblog]

Hinata lacks self awareness

[semi-sketchy]

I did it. I'm done with the Final Horizon.

The side stories...alright did anyone else run into issues where voice lines would randomly not play or was that just me? I had to keep reloading saves because it would glitch and be dead silent for like 10 seconds until the next audio file came up.

I heard lots of people didn't really like the writing in this update, but it really was just more of the same from Frontiers. Nothing scenes with poor character voice. Yeah, there were bad lines, but base game had those, too. The cyber corruption Sonic's friends go through is also just as meaningless here as it was in base game.

The biggest part I didn't like was how much this felt like an afterthought, which is because it WAS an afterthought. I didn't think the base ending was spectacular, but it also felt more in line with how the rest of the story was built.

Here, the first cutscene literally just tries to undo the Rhea island scene and everything is so tacked on. Sonic's friends face cyber corruption from interacting with cyberspace? But they're also TRAPPED in cyberspace, so why is this any different to what they've been doing? Weren't they technically helping Sonic get the Emeralds on the other islands, hence getting Emerald rewards for quests?

It's just a lot of fluff masking this basic "earn the respect of the Ancient's pilots to get a new super form that can deal with The End" and...alright. I've never been concerned over power scaling. You don't NEED to go bigger and better every time, all you have to do is make me care about the stakes and you have a good narrative. That final battle made regular Super Sonic look like a pussy so Hyper Sonic Super Sonic 2 could look so much more powerful. And I know why. This is the exact thing Ian Flynn said he wanted, only he skirted around the no Hyper decision by just changing Sonic's eye color.

But really, you have invincible Super Sonic here, WINCING and getting his hands YANKED AROUND by the cyber energy.

TWO ISLANDS AGO he was swinging a giant sword.

But now, he can't even DENT the boss without this power up. This either makes Super Sonic look weak or this stupidly easy titan tied to a rock mightier than a god.

The Sonic X reference though wasn't lost on me and I admit, I thought it was cool. Even if Super Sonic with blue eyes is a bit uncanny.

The fight itself though is...not very well choreographed. I lost my first attempt and still kinda fumbled around because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Seriously, when was quick cyloop EVER useful in one of these fights? And now I'm required to do it twice with the penalty of failing being forced to redo the Supreme fight AGAIN?

This is a case where Sonic's friends would've been helpful. I know, I know, I got sick of "THAT LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT" very quickly, but a little thing like "Sever that connection!" or "It's down! Get the gun!" would've helped.

Though, I liked the fight alright and it certainly had the spectacle Supreme lacked.

New music was good, though! The vocal theme for I'm With You is 10x better than Dear Father and I LOVED the I'm Here remix.

Overall, I'm...conflicted. I don't think I liked the update? Really I'm trying to recall having fun with it at any point. There were a few cool moments, the Cyclone having that fuck u laser from SA2 was definitely one, but there wasn't a high point, it was just baseline and lower.

It really upset me at a few points and I couldn't even get performatively angry, it broke me and I was just sad, though I kept going. I think I've grown numb to the bullshit. Really, this was just more of Frontiers with some added jank and difficulty.

The worst parts were challenges 2 and 5. Aside from that, there's not really difficulty as much as bullshit and cheap design. Even my brother came in and asked why they stuck this platform you have to glide to at an angle that causes you to slide off. I rage quit 4-H because they ask you to do PRECISE platforming on tiny angled boxes. With physics that make that near impossible. That's bullshit design and not a difficulty issue.

Also, who thought the rescuing animal objectives were a good idea? ESPECIALLY IN 4-H. There's a glitch where when Sonic gets the animal to safety, he stays stuck in carrying mode which means low jump, no boost, double jump, homing attack, you're basically dead in the water. It goes away at certain points, so maybe this was intentional, but also, seriously?

This was a FREE CONTENT UPDATE that they announced a month before it got pushed out, so why was it rushed so badly that the physics sliders don't even work properly for the extra characters?

At the end of the day though, replaying base Frontiers right before this and running into the EXACT same problems made me realize that it's just more of the same. Base Frontiers has some big faults and pretty BS design, it's just dialed up to 11 here.

I don't want to play Frontiers again, much less this update.

[canmom]

I will write more on these films tomorrow but briefly.

Night on the Galactic Railroad was very good, dreamlike in a good way, fantastic art direction and mood. Bit of a higher Christianity quotient than I expected, not quite sure what is up with that.

Budori Gusuko was... yeah that film was a total mess, my friend was right to warn me so. Like Railroad, the plot consists of a series of loosely connected vignettes, not unlike a picaresque; unlike Railroad, they don't seem to cohere into any clear thematic structure, with Budori just kind of meandering through the plot without motivation to speak of. I mentioned his sister getting kidnapped by a wizard, but... he doesn't actually We checked out some parts of the 1994 animated adaptation, which is much more straightforward, and some of the choices in Sugii's version are... strange, to say the least. I'll write more about it tomorrow.

One big aspect of both films that I missed when doing the writeup earlier is that Sugii is not responsible for the idea of adapting these stories with anthropomorphic cats - rather, there is an intermediate step in the adaptation chain, that being the manga of Hiroshi Masumara. Masumara seems like a fascinating character: his main work consists of stories about a utopian country of anthro cats and humans called Atagoul, which seems like a kind of lifelong passion project. Here's a sample of what it looks like (in Portugese, since those are the only scans I found):

Masumara is a huge fan of Kenji Miyazawa and adapted many of his stories to manga, naturally introducing the anthro cat element since that is kind of his whole thing. These anthro cat designs formed the basis for Railroad, and following the success of that film, led to two more adaptations of Masumara's manga adaptations of Miyazawa's stories.

The designs in Budori Gusuko are actually near-identical in many cases to designs in Railroad. Perhaps Masumara has a similar system to Tezuka's 'star system', where he reuses character designs in different stories? But perhaps they just wanted to visually reference the earlier film as much as possible. I am not familiar enough with Masumara's manga to be able to say which elements are due to Sugii, and which ones are established in the manga.

I'll discuss more specifics about the films soon; for now I must sleep. Thanks for tuning in if you did, I love digging up this kinda stuff and I hope everyone had a good time, even with the jank of Budori Gusuko!

Animation Night 188: Gisaburo Sugii and his cat films

Let me introduce you to a fellow.

Gisaburō Sugii, born 1940, is one of the oldest school animators still working in the industry. His early filmography is something like a history of anime, or at least MushiPro: he started on Hakujaden [AN149] (where he did inbetweens), but he was one of the leaders of the Toei exodus over the rubbish working conditions and union busting (Sugii's close friend Rintarō was among the first to follow him), especially when Tezuka appeared on the animation scene with a place to land.

So from the earliest days of Astro Boy/Tetsuwan Atom, Sugii was a core Tezuka guy. (Thanks as ever to Matteo Watzky for presenting such detailed histories in English!) He helped clean up Tezuka's rough animations in an early form of the layout system, moving to his own satellite studio, worked on all sorts of projects. In fact, we saw a number of them when we watched Tezuka's short fims on Animation Night 83. For example, Sugii animated the moth in Tales of a Street Corner.

Before too long, Astro Boy was wrapping up, and the time came for Sugii to direct his own series: this was Goku no Daibōken and in the words of Matteo Watzky, it represented "a complete and unconditional rejection of everything Mushi - or rather Tezuka - had done so far" - gags over story, extremely limited animation. Adapting Tezuka's manga version of Journey to the West, the project had some rather grand ambitions:

It was rather in the writing and direction. Sugii was extremely ambitious: not only did he want to do a complete break with what Mushi had done before, he wanted to broaden the general “animation culture” in Japan [14]. He therefore focused entirely on the gags, trying to make them all as absurd as possible and breaking all sense of narrative continuity. This was the reason he had chosen Boku no Songoku in the first place: the road trip structure made it possible to completely change the setting each episode and make things different each time [15]. He refused to compromise on anything and was an extremely harsh director: he himself admitted how many conflicts he had with scriptwriters and storyboarders, whose work he kept rejecting until it had lost any semblance of sense or continuity [16].

Goku no Daibōken's story touches on another major figure of anime history: Osamu Dezaki (AN95) appears here as an episode director, though you'd likely not recognise his work - he closely followed his mentor Sugii's wacky style. Unfortunately, the show did not really do much to broaden anything, and was pretty roundly rejected by audiences, and even Tezuka himself publicly said it was too avant-garde and needed to change and the show ended up a sore memory for everyone involved.

But Sugii did not quit, and continued to work with the increasingly ailing Mushi Pro up through Belladonna of Sadness (AN69). This last-ditch effort was not enough to save the troubled studio (a story told elsewhere, check Watzky's articles for a very detailed version) and MushiPro went under. So, coming into the 70s, Sugii left the anime industry to go travelling.

But not forever.

Now, let me introduce you to a book.

Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鉄道の夜, Ginga Tetsudō no Yoru) - written in 1927, and published posthumously in 1934 - is a classic Japanese fantasy novel by Kenji Miyazawa in which two boys go on a strange journey across the galaxy. It soon becomes apparent that the train that the boys ride on is kind of a psychopomp train. It has that fascinating blend of early science and odd religious overtones you often get in novels from the early 20th Century, with such themes as the difference between Buddhist and Christian ideas of heaven, as well as all sorts of odd adventures.

It does not star anthropomorphic cats. But then again, it doesn't say anywhere that its characters aren't anthropomorphic cats, right? If you're Gisaburō Sugii, that's enough!

In the early 80s, Sugii returned to Group TAC, a studio largely consisting of former MushiPro staff, full of memories of travel. He started out directing adaptations of the baseball manga Nine, but soon he ended up directing an cataptation of Night on the Galactic Railroad, which came out in 1985.

Jokes aside, the book is deliberately ambiguous about what its characters look like, so Sugii came up with the cat thing as a way to preserve Miyazawa's intent. His approach to direction heavily emphasises the landscape, embedding the characters in dark spaces that reflect their feelings and build the generally omnious mood as they journey into death. And it works! The result is a film widely regarded as a classic by those who've seen it.

One notable feature is the film's fascination with the constructed language Esperanto, among the earliest aspiring universal languages. The film features all kinds of Esperanto text and an esperanto subtitle track, and even has an alternative Esperanto title, Nokto de la Galaksia Fervojo. This was a fascination of Miyazawa's, though I don't believe it features in the novel particularly prominently, but Sugii evidently wanted that to be part of the tribute...

In the wake of that, Sugii... went back to directing sports anime, this time the series Touch about Tennis, as well as a number of other projects including a Street Fighter film in 1994. He didn't abandon literary subjects though, adapting the Genji Monogatari, a foundational work of Japanese lit, in 1987 - though I can find little more about this adaptation. He even directed a Lupin III film! But none of those films are about cats, so we're gonna skip right over them.

In 2012, Sugii - now 72! - returned to books and cats with The Life of Budori Gusuko, adapting another novel by Miyazawa - this time at MushiPro successor Tezuka Productions. The animation is certainly more elaborate...

The film follows abandoned child Budori Gusuko in a world frozen by strange storms. Left to fend for himself, Budori's problems mulitply as his sister his kidnapped, leading him on a journey into dreams as he tries to get to the bottom of all of it.

The story is notable for anticipating the idea of the greenhouse effect, albeit in a way that rings rather odd in the context of present climate change. It generally doesn't seem to be viewed quite as favourably as Galactic Railroad but it's too good a thematic pairing not to do, so tonight the plan is to watch both films! Elaborate old weird anime, we're so back. And not a boob in sight, so twitch should chill out.

All being well, Animation Night 188 will be starting at 22:00 UK time, which is about two hours from this post - we're back on twitch.tv/canmom, thankfully they didn't ban me for long. Hope to see you there!

[lasercrusader]

Titan A.E., an impromptu, short, and slightly agitated review

Sometimes I imagine “yo what if I did movie reviews on Youtube and incorporated a character doing the talking like those other Youtubers” but then I usually remember that I’m lazy and that sort of thing would be a lot of work, so...

ANYWAY, most people probably haven’t heard of this movie. Titan A.E. was an animated film made by Fox Animation that flopped so hard that it singlehandedly killed the entire studio. Well, that’s not the entire story, but it’s close enuff. XP

Just a warning, I don’t care for spoilers for this almost 22-year-old film and it’s a very long-winded review that may not be the most coherent or organized. Keep reading at yer own risk I suppose.

For the record, movies don’t always flop because they’re bad. Some movies made during the same-ish time period like Treasure Planet, Iron Giant, and Cats Don’t Dance were really good IMO and deserved to succeed, only flopping because their companies more-or-less purposely screwed them over. 

Is Titan A.E. one of those films?? Well, no, but it’s not terrible either. Here’s the shtick. It’s got a lot of going for it, and honestly it’s interesting enough that I’d want to watch it again sometime. But it’s flaws kinda prevent it from being an actually good film.

The film is, in short, an early 2000s 2D-3D hybrid animated sci-fi film, with Don Bluth and some other guy directing (with Don Bluth being known for a fair number of notable films, with Secret of NIMH and Land Before Time as some of my favorites). It involves humans and aliens and the entire earth being blown up by genocidal aliens, and an adventure through space. Honestly, with my love of sci-fi, animation, and nostalgia for the early 2000s, this film sounds just like the kind of thing I’d like.

So what’s it got going for it? Production value for one. The visuals are honestly impressive for the time (the CG hasn’t aged well but again, impressive for its time). Also potential. They really had a lot of good ideas in this film. There’s some interesting alien designs and settings, some pretty good action at times, etc. Also they apparently made a bunch of those early 2000s alt rock songs just for the movie, and that’s great.

But where did it fail? Story and pacing, big time. At times they literally had all the right ideas but just couldn’t put them together in a way that was well-paced or even cohesive. Other times it felt like the plot and character developments were only done to fill some sort of checkmark like “and the plot/character development has to do this”, without actually doing the work to get from point A to point B in a way that’s cohesive and makes sense. 

Like literally, this is exactly how the character development is in this film. The characters are hardly established in any meaningful way and end up changing their tune without us actually seeing them go through some sort of change. Plenty of moments in the film just feel kinda forced while others awkward.

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The awkward pacing also applies to the animation. There’s a fair amount of jank that just makes the characters and interactions come off as awkward. It’s either in the way they move or the timing of the way they move. Sometimes characters even come off as over-animated, like they shouldn’t be moving as much as they should be for their particular line or action.

This may come in part from the difference between the aliens and the human characters. The aliens tend to be animated a bit more... lively, like they have a bit more freedom to animate the aliens with more exaggeration. This would likely look just fine on its own, but the humans don’t really have that same degree of exaggeration, so you have this juxtaposition of aliens with exaggerated movement and expression, and the humans being more subdued in terms of movement and expression. This is probably because they used live-action reference for a ton of the humans’ actions and possibly stuck too close to it. 

If it was either one or the other in terms of how they animated their characters, there would probably be less awkwardness. But because they had both, very frequently in the same scenes as one another, it just came off as awkward. The humans either seemed too subtle in expression or the aliens too exaggerated.  

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Speaking of which, alien designs were pretty good, though a bit hit or miss in some places. I feel like there was an overemphasis on just, grungy, ugly aliens with no color. These kinds of aliens are fine, but when ALL of your aliens are like this, it almost makes them seem all the same despite their design variety. They’ve all got the same sort of “ugly” going on. 

Also, one of the main characters, Stith, has incredibly disproportionate legs that are always bent in an awkward position and its... awkward. I thought she was crouch-walking when she first showed up due to being like really tall or something, but no, that’s her normal default state at all times. I think they kinda sacrificed some appeal for the sake of uniqueness, when perhaps a better balance could have been struck. In either case, with legs like those you’d think you’d have her use them in combat to show that they serve some sort of purpose other than looking weird. Honestly, it might’ve worked out better if they gave her a torso more proportionate to her legs, and maybe not quite-so-humanlike because she literally has boobs so it resembles a human-torso even more so. NOTHING meshes together. 

(This be the broad in question. Honestly as a character she was alright, but suffered from the usual problem of literally none of these characters being given a lot of depth. This is especially true for her and Gune, as they’re both supporting characters and thus given even LESS attention).

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Speaking of alien designs, the Drej, the main antagonists, are horrible. They’re basically these weird robotic-looking 3D models that are ENTIRELY BLUE and GLOWING. This is BAD because I can barely tell what they look like, and not in the cool “oh no its some eldritch horror” kind of way, more in the “wow I literally can’t tell what’s going on” kind of way. 

(This is a still image. Most of these times the guys are moving around or there are quick scene cuts. That’s not to even mention that I watched this on VHS, where the details likely got even more smudged).

Speaking of the Drej, as a threat...? They’re pretty poorly established in the sense of... what exactly their place is in the universe. Are they an empire? Are they some eldritch beings who destroy other species that get too advanced? What are their relations with the other species that aren’t humans?? Literally none of these questions are answered in any remote way because they never ever decide to establish ANYTHING.

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On that note, the plot as a whole is barely coherent. Like, when you REALLY think critically about it and its various twists and turns, it makes no sense. Nothing that should be explained is ever explained. Nothing that should be established is ever established. Nothing that should be foreshadowed is ever foreshadowed. Things like that.

Basically, it seems that they’ve put all of their time, energy and focus into making the film look amazing and being different and edgy, without giving a hoot about the story. The story itself is kinda standard in terms of overall structure, being a hero’s journey with the protagonist having fatherly abandonment angst (though with no mention of his mother anywhere, like not even once). This kind of thing isn’t new, but that isn’t a problem. What is the problem is that they didn’t put the story together in a way that’s actually good. 

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And on yet another note, the worldbuilding is almost non-existent in terms of the larger context surrounding the setting. Like it’s still got smaller details, like the main character working a crappy scrap-collecting job with a bunch of other aliens... but anything detailing the larger, surrounding context that actually grounds the smaller things to some sort of foundation is completely absent. Like oh hey, the Drej exist, but in what relation to everyone else? Oh hey, humans and aliens coexist, but how and under what circumstances, and what were things like before vs after Earth went boom? Oh hey, there’s a slave trade, but how legal is that crap?? Oh hey, are there any governments or authorities at all??? Etc., etc., these things are completely absent. The setting is vague and thus there is no larger context in which to frame our characters’ actions, or anybody’s actions for that matter. It doesn’t matter if your characters are saving the world or just chilling, not having an actual context for their actions and activities takes away a lot of the weight from their actions.

Like the first Star Wars did a much better job of actually establishing its overall larger setting, both through the things that it showed and the things it established through character dialogue (quite naturally I might add). All the smaller details have a larger overarching foundation that ties it all together. With Titan A.E. you get literally NOTHING that establishes what the overall larger setting is like, AT ALL.

And you don’t even need to reveal everything at once, or even everything. As long as you reveal some things in ways that are natural, in ways that build and flesh out your world, in ways that establish context and establish stakes, then yer doing something right and doing a lot more than Titan A.E.

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Okay but, overall, the film isn’t terrible. Like this is something I could feasibly watch again. The films I consider really bad are the ones I can’t stand watching again and hate the fact that I ever watched in the first place. 

As for more detail on what I liked about the film... aside from the overall spectacle being great, there were a few sci-fi moments that were cool. For example, when two of the characters needed to break out of an escape pod to enter the vacuum of space in order to reach the ship, one of the characters told the other to exhale, which is an often overlooked detail in the vacuum of space that holding your breath is actually a bad thing to do due to pressure differences between your lungs and the vacuum. They also used a fire extinguisher for course correction and propulsion, which is cool.

(Unfortunately, it’s very obvious that the characters were animated taking a deep inhale and holding it in. The lip-sync for the second “exhale” even seems to match “inhale” better. It seems likely that they animated the scene first and then discovered that holding your breath in space is bad, then changed up the dialogue and altered some of the lip-sync in an attempt to fix it but didn’t have the time to reanimate the part and just hoped people wouldn’t catch it).

Some of the characters had fun moments. Stith had her violent tendencies, Gune his... gooniness, and Preed just overall charisma and wit. The main cast wasn’t that bad, they just weren’t fleshed out enough. With the exception of the human captain Joseph Korso, who goes from decent guy to dirty traitor out of nowhere with no foreshadowing, and is a heartless bastard by the end of the film but gets a predictable self-sacrifice redemption that also kinda just comes out of nowhere because just earlier he literally expressed the desire to kill Gune and Stith off and just randomly became remorseful when he was about to fall off a cliff and protagonist boi still wanted to save his arse because they had some bonding time even though his true self seems really nasty and just... THEY WROTE THIS GUY LIKE A FREAKING LIGHT SWITCH, OKAY?!?!

Oh yeah, the film has the tendency to just sorta... forget characters for a hot second at times. One glaring example being captain jerknugget sacrificing himself to help save the human race, and afterwards is never shown nor mentioned again, like the characters don’t even reflect on him at all at the ending. 

Goodness freaking gravy, I can’t talk about the good points without mentioning where they went wrong. That’s kind of the case with the entire film. For every good thing there’s something else holding it back.

Honestly, something tells me this film’s production wasn’t exactly a piece of cake lol. Just skimming over the Wikipedia article on it is enough to tell me that they didn’t exactly have the best conditions for making this film any better than they did. A lot of its faults are likely due to development troubles rather than sloppiness, but faults are faults and honestly, I think part of it was prioritizing the film’s visual appeal over its story as if the former would compensate for the latter. Though they did apparently do a lot of outsourcing so maybe they just didn’t have the time? I mean, the entire film was literally just dropped on the animation studio like “here, we wanted to make a sci-fi movie but it didn’t work out so you guys give it a shot”. Honestly that plus whatever time constraints they had probably did it. 

In some paradoxical way, I still like the film despite slamming my head over the terrible writing and pacing. Is it the good parts of it? The potential? Or maybe my biases towards the genre, medium and time-period of the movie as a whole? 

In any case, if you want a good animated sci-fi flick from the early 2000s with an actually well-written story about an angsty guy with father abandonment issues and a journey through space with some assorted alien characters, watch Treasure Planet. XP

BUT IF YOU WANT A TOTAL TRAINWRECK OF A FILM WHO’S EXISTENCE IS A RATHER CURIOUS THING BUT STILL PERHAPS INTERESTING TO WATCH, try Titan A.E. lol.

[fostersffff]

Can Xbox win next gen?

Thank you for asking me this anon, I’ve been dying for an excuse to talk about console war stuff.

With what we know right now? I don’t think there’s a fucking chance.

To begin, based on what I’ve seen, Sony genuinely internalized their lessons from the PS3′s wack ass cell architecture by talking with developers about what they want out of the system, which has led to people like Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney- a man who could not possibly have less of a reason to pick sides in a console war- praising the PS5 and talking about how incredible it is, whereas Microsoft has made A Very Strong Box... perhaps even History’s Strongest Box.

A Very Strong Box would be perfectly fine, but there’s a problem: because they have said and reconfirmed that the Series X isn’t going to have any first-party exclusives for at least the first few years, every game is going to have to run on an Xbox One, and Microsoft just discontinued the One X, meaning that games are going to have to run on the One S. This will result in one of two things happening: either they’re going to primarily develop for the Series X and downgrade games for the One S, which will almost certainly result in HILARIOUS jank like the PS3 version of Shadow of Mordor, or they’ll develop for the One S and just crank the hell out of the settings for the Series X, which will absolutely result in incredible resolutions and framerates, but model/texture work won’t be nearly as impressive as it could be. Compare the reception of Halo Infinite’s graphics versus the the big-budget stuff on the PS5 showcase like Ratchet & Clank and Miles Morales. Plus, in either situation, first-party games won’t be able to be developed around having a Solid State Drive, the benefits of which are immediately apparent if you go watch that Ratchet & Clank trailer- the only way they can get environmental swapping like that without loading screen is because of an SSD.

Speaking of SSD, there’s another problem: Microsoft has yet to formally announce the Lockhart, which according to leaks is a budget Series X, and we know it exists because there are references to Lockhart in the Windows 10 OS. There’s a possibility that one of the budget cuts Microsoft will make is using a standard optical hard drive instead of a SSD. This would cripple not just Microsoft but possibly the entire industry for the whole generation, because for as good as those PS5 games look now, they’re only going to look better down the line. A possible future is that third-party developers won’t take full advantage of SSDs since they’ll want to make sure their games will run well on everything, and as a result Sony’s first-party output will blow everything else out of the water because they know they always have an SSD. Even if the Lockhart does have an SSD and make cuts elsewhere like the PS5 with no disc drive, a lower spec Xbox Series console almost certainly means that developers are going to be required to make sure it runs on both, which will just cause more issues for them. I guess the positive side to both of these problems is that they are technically consumer friendly- making sure people who don’t want to upgrade to a Xbox Series console will still be able to play games like Halo Infinite, and making sure people are able to afford some kind of upgrade even if they can’t afford the Series X- but I don’t think most people are thinking of it like that, especially when the pomp and circumstance around a new console generation has always been about how much better the new hotness is.

On the subject of new hotness, Microsoft’s marketing strategy is very bad. Xbox has never had the best names, but this holiday Microsoft will have the Xbox One S, the Xbox Series X, and whatever they call the Lockhart, presumably the Xbox Series S or Series L. Maybe you and me can distinguish that with relative ease, but there’s going to be no shortage of tech illiterate parents and grandparents stumbling over themselves to remember what their kids wanted, or kids writing down and asking for the wrong thing, or even people buying for themselves trying to remember if it’s a One X or Series X or Series One or whatever. And we know this kind of thing is a problem because it 100% contributed to the Wii U’s abysmal sales. The other aspect of their marketing strategy is that they really... aren’t doing much to celebrate the Series X being new hotness. They’ve announced the Series X UI is going to be identical to the Xbox One, and just by looking at game boxes you’d have a hard time knowing if the Series X is a brand new console or just an enhancement the One X because of how identical it is:

Same banner, same smaller black banner advertising what console to use, little white text in the top right advertising graphical fidelity. It’s nearly identical. Compared with the reveal of what PS5 boxes will look like:

It’s still blue plastic, but check out what white banner and black text! No more “Only on Playstation” text so there’s less to distract from the box art! Even if you want to argue that no one but turbo nerds really care about the boxes- and you’d be correct to do so- there is something to having them look even slightly different to signal “THIS IS NEW!” Also, going back to marketing, Smart Delivery is a terrible name for Cross Buy/“you own it on the old thing and the new thing”, and they’re not even enforcing that name for consistency despite featuring it heavily in their advertising because EA is calling it “Dual Entitlement”, which is actually still a better name:

Also, the OPTIMIZED FOR SERIES X sticker. Madden 21’s box art is already fucking awful enough without also needing that big ol’ OPTIMIZED FOR SERIES X sticker making it an even bigger mess.

Then there’s all those studios they bought up: your tastes may differ, but the only studio in that bunch that I think can produce worthwhile games is Obsidian. Ninja Theory’s got Hellblade but not much else, Double Fine is going to be a fucking money pit because Tim Schaffer just revealed they were going to CUT ALL OF THE BOSS FIGHTS OUT OF PSYCHONAUTS 2 BECAUSE THEY SPENT ALL THEIR MONEY ON JACK BLACK until they got bought and funded by Microsoft, and the other studios they acquired like inXile and Compulsion are kinda just… fine. Even if they did have an absolute killer’s row of developers, I think about what Rare’s been doing since they were acquired (although people seem to like Sea of Thieves now that it’s had some updates, and I sincerely hope Everwild is as cool as it looks), and I think of this recent quote from the head of Xbox Game Studios:

“It’s kind-of a phased thing. Take Compulsion. They’re working on their next game and have spent the last year on early ideation. I try to keep us as far away from that as possible. And then, as it starts to get exposure within the organisation, feedback will come in and things will start to steer. But it’s important to leave them alone for as long as possible, until they’ve got something that can walk on its own. And then there’s no shortage of feedback within Xbox.” (emphasis mine)

… which makes me think about what happened with Platinum’s Scalebound, a game that somehow transformed from a single-player action RPG to an online multiplayer hunting(?) game and was cancelled because Platinum just couldn’t meet deadlines and am overwhelmed with dread.

The last thing is to think of that really just completely undercuts Microsoft is that fact that all of their Xbox games are also going to be playable on Windows 10. Obviously, gaming PCs are more expensive than consoles- even if both consoles wind up at a super high price point, getting comparable or better performance on a PC will cost just as much, or more- but it still cuts out a portion of people who might otherwise be persuaded to buy an Xbox if they wind up with a lot of good exclusives.

I think the only things Microsoft can claim as an inarguable advantage is the fact that the Series X is A Very Strong Box... perhaps even History’s Strongest Box, and that Xbox Game Pass is an insanely good deal (but again, Windows 10). Right now, they also have the Xbox One’s backwards compatibility baked-in, which is excellent, but Sony could potentially pull out the “PS5 can play PS1-4 games” card, which would nuke Microsoft’s “largest launch line-up in history” from orbit. Their only other possible advantage would be price, which is why despite the fact that we’re roughly four months out from launch, we know nothing about price of either console. I think they’re playing chicken to see who reveals their price first, and how low they can go before it would be suicide for the other company to go lower. And- this is wild, baseless speculation, but fuck it- Sony recently announced they’re increasing production of launch PS5’s up from 6m to 9m. It’s true that gaming sales have actually gone up despite/because of the current state of the world, but who knows what things are going to be like in four months, and either way the average person still probably can’t afford a huge purchase… which could mean that the PS5 isn’t such a huge purchase. I don’t know the cost of the PS5 components, but Sony might be willing to go absurdly low and sell at a loss for a while just to put Microsoft in that position, where they literally can not go lower than them (or they COULD, because Microsoft as a whole has theoretically infinite money, but I can’t imagine them wanting to accept that much of a loss).

tl;dr: Naw, man.

[dirtreally]

Bad things about girls band cry:

- nina and Da Band keep goijng on about "fuuuuck our band is too weird we need to exist outside the system!!!!!" And shit and then they play their fucking music and its extremely bkring ass j rock. Legitimately bocchi the rock has edgier sounding music and they did NOT make nearly as much noise about their band being Weird. Like for real i know this is cuz its made by toei but if you talk that much about how crazy and fucked up ur shit is you should be making some midori type shit. It also doesnt help that all their stage outfits when they start blowing up are basically just like streetwear-inspired-gacha-game versions of idol outfits which makes the whole Our Proud And Noble Indie Band Vs Their Despotic Idol Group conflict feel even more pointless

- the storyboards kind of suck ass. Whenever they want to Do Some Dope Shit Visually it almost always ends up being incredibly clumsy and jank in practice. The worst offender is the music video segment in i think either episode 10 or 11 where they just have all the characters looking sad while big ass painted text with words like OSTRACISED BULLIED OUTSIDER or wgatever show up on screen. The op is also a really bad example of this. Sometimes tghey Do A Thing and it actually does kinda work out (the first episodes music video thing with the rain freezing and then starting again once the song ends) but moooooore often than not it just comes out really muddled

- rupa. Rupa is the worst one for me cuz there is very obviously an intent with her character to be a thing about like. Being brown in japan (can confirm btw there are soooo many south asian retail workers and shit here) but like literally every decision made with her character just seems like one made to avoid writing about her or her background or anything about her as much as possible. Her main personality trait is being incredibly agreeable to her bitchy girlfriend. Everyone else in the band has like a kind of grounded backstory but rupa just straight up has an anime BOTH MY PARENTS RANDOMLY DIED thing going on. She never has any last name she calls herself by or is referred to by. We straight up dont know what ethnicity she is beyond being Ambiguously South Asian because every time she talks about her fathers country she refers to it as "my fathers country" and nothing else even though she has some lines in promo material and shit about wanting to go there some day. Just straight up the fact that shes the only one in the cast without her own dedicated episode. Idk it just seems extremely chickenshit that they put all this shit on the table w her character but then actively avoid engaging with anyyyyy of it. I do really like that they keep showing her having an insane amount of female fans who all desperatrly want to fuck her though so i am grateful that we got at least that much

girls band cry final review 5/10 because everything thats good about this show is a 10/10 and everything that sucks about this show is a 0/10 every single episode has like multiple parts where the good parts and the bad parts are waging protracted war against each other. i really liked it though its a 9/10 5/10 first time i enthusiastically kept up w a seasonal anime in ages

[vicsep7250]

And so, at the end of the base game of KH3, on Critical Mode, I have died and "lost my game" a total of -

104 times.

If you would like to see what caused the number to grow so big, check it out here.

If you would like to take a look at my thoughts of the game, as a game to play and as a story to experience, I'll put this under a "read more" when I'm on PC bc I'm probably gonna write a lot.

KH3 and Critical Mode as a game to play.

First things first, I want to mention and make clear I have not touched a console KH game in about 8~10 years - the last game I ever played without 100% completion or on Critical/Proud Mode being the original Kingdom Hearts 2. Obviously from what I'd played long ago pales in comparison towards 3 and the mechanics.

The floaty combat and system felt comfortable and right when I played the game, and in times where I died it never felt like it was bc Critical Mode was kicking my ass bc of the other games jank difficulty spikes. All of my failures and deaths were all bc of me making mistakes and not understanding the mechanics at those times, which is different from the other games in series (or so I've been told and made to understand). In comparison to how other games had arbitrary and ill-attempted "ultimate" difficulty settings, KH3 did it right with it being a test to the series veterans with muscle memory from prior games, and allowing new players (technically me in this scenario) a fair chance at a hard difficulty to start and test themselves if they so choose to.

I know I'm probably not stating anything new from other reviews and analysis of the game and Critical Mode, but I wanted to reiterate this point anyhow.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is a fun game that balances it's difficulty with the player's skills and understandings of its mechanics. It's a fun game to play if solely to just play a game, and that's great to me - it can allow players to just pick it up with no care to the story if the don't care about it and just invest themselves into the gameplay.

KH3 as a story to the audience.

The Kingdom Hearts series is well know for its outlandish and incredulous story of "hearts and light and darkness", one that has been nit-picked and over-analyzed to all of its faults, mainly the writing and ret-conning of the plot and characters and everything. That is still relevant here even in the finale, in the ending where everything about the story and characters and plots are meant to have properly developed and brought closure to the audience with everything in the series and/or franchise. Bc we can't have proper development and closure to KH now can we coughseasaltriocoughKairicoughXehanortsmotivationcough?

3 follows the lore and story telling method that Dream Drop Distance has with focusing on this games story and plot points, and having a Glossary and Spark Notes tab for the points that reference or are directly involved with the previous installments. This is still a good way to allow player new and old to pick up the game and play it when they either have little to no experience with the series, or if they have experience with the series (either recent to KH2.8 or in my case from the OG KH2).

While the characters were given the obvious tropes that they blatantly forced fed us with most cutscenes (Trinity Trio dissing on Sora [pls dont do this the boy could suffer serious damage and mental breakdowns in reality], Kairi and Lea being cool chums, etc [IcouldbemakingthisupIdunnoitfeltlikeit]) it also had potential for more Actual character development between the characters we followed and grew up with.

It also ruined any potential for Xehanort to have some redeeming qualities as a villain but naw, just the usual cliche "The world sucks and Im gonna fixit by killing it" motive.

Naw das cool, totally wasn't this loafty goal of finding the truth about the series Namesake that we all thought he was going for, or for shits and giggles and experimenting with what ifs and whatnot back in BBS. Nope. Just an old man yelling at clouds... honestly kinda ruined the mood for me.

All in all KH3 followed the same story telling pattern that DDD has, and how if it was the first game of the series you played you didn't really need to play the others like with 1 and 2. Still have some questions about the series but eh, ces la vi.

My Thoughts

Honestly as a whole, I loved the game. Sure there were moments where I needed to stop and keep my cool, but playing on Critical Mode made my week playing it. It was a challenging and fun experience to play through.

The whole retconning of Xemnas and the Seeker of Darkness still left me disappointed despite the new and little character development they had (making me believe SoD and Xemnas are weird homunculus of Terra and Xehanort as different people) and the Plot Device for the final fight just sucked as was bad, no sugar coating there, but I'll still keep this game and everything within close to my heart.

Growing up and living my life alongside this series, I'm glad I was able to experience it all the way through from start to finish.

I may not have played all of them (BBS and DDD) but I still learned and experienced the story and characters in however way I can, either with other playthroughs or through Everglow's videos and such, but my love for this series will never die. I hope everyone gets to have these same feelings and experiences with whatever games they play, to reach some level of closure and finality, and to have fun and enjoy their stories with all the good and bad.

If any of you were keeping tabs on me and my run, I'll be going on a New Game + Lvl 1 run so you can expect that in the future. If I can, I'll find a way to stream it, but if I cant then I'll just be doing live posts like my original run through.

Here's to the future and what it may hold, for Square, the franchise, and to all of us who waited so long for this story.

May our hearts be our guiding key, got it memorized?

[pinksweatergettingbetter]

aight

lets ends this

-

i love that he's still trying to cheer her up with her terrible crossover idea

phoenix is such a sweetie

-

“...so we may put this dead lawyer walking out of his misery”

hear hear 

just kill me already

-

“she's now slain two high level clergymen...”

one of which was a confirmed rebel but HEY whatever ITS NOT LIEK YOU KILL THEM IN GENERAL ANYWAY

who gives a fuck this trial is janked

-

“bahlgilpo’kon hell- the realm of eternal agony”

wow eternal agony is the bottom hell??? thats like the first hell in dante’s hells; youre soft as runny shit kooraheenism.

-

“there she will suffer the endless punishment of ja’gar by the galuun of Puhlmo’ten.”

SUBTITLES PLEASE 

-

he was killed during the rite but they only found his body like two days later?!?!

what the fuck!?

...and wait a fucking second, he wasnt there when we were fucking investigating BULLSHIT

BUUULLLLLSSSHHHIIIIIIT!!!

-

two consecutive murders constitutes a serial killer??

-

every time sadmad sighs and shakes his head i lose a year of my life

-

Rayfa’s voice is so fucking unfitting; she’s got the voice of a 30 year old woman and she’s supposed to be a whiny-ass 14 year old

do these people know anything about casting??

is it really that hard to get a 14 year old to say a few lines? i was voice acting (not professionally obvs) when i was 14. i sucked, but i was doing it, and there’ve been younger kids working on real shows.

anyway 

-

welp looks like this mcfuck is using a fake name

someone get on that

-

I'm sorry you’re surrounded by such incompetence, Rayfa. and i mean that. i like you now, youre kinda funny.

-

phoenix: plus, yesterday, someone told me how the divination seance used to work

phoenix fucking sucks at keeping secrets jesus christ holy fuck just SHUT UP ABOUT THE REBELS YOU MORON

-

if he says let it go and move on again I'm going to fucking scream

-

“haha! the police overlooked the clergy tattoo on the back of his neck!”

directly below the stab wound. the clergy tattoo. that has significance in their country.

Why do the Kooraheen Police suck so much ass? They can’t catch a running suspect, and apparently they’re all blind.

-

HOW DOES THE JUDGE NOT FUCKING KNOW A RELIGIOUS SYMBOL FROM HIS OWN FUCKING RELIGION?!?!?

-

[insert nahyuta eats (peach emoji)ass joke]

-

“aren't they utterly different shapes?”

...a... peach... and an upside down peach?!

nahyuta 

im gonna blow your mind

this is called a handstand, here, do it with me

-

lazy ass parents naming their kid “real name”

fuck this joke country

this is some ‘who's on first’ bullshit

-

RAYFA LUSTS FOR BLOOD

-

yeah it was freezing on that mountain, of course your estimate was wrong.

i knew this was coming...

-

hebLINDED HER WITH SCIENCE

BEEP BA BOO BA

-

“this article is small in size but huge in importance!”

just like my d––

-

How... did this work? They did a great job of hiding that wound...

also no blood at the “scene of the crime”

yeah not suspicious at all

-

once again the prosecution blames the detective for something they couldn’t have helped :/

GUARD YOUR ASSHOLE EMA, GUARD YOUR ASSHOLE

HOLY SHIT

INSERT REFERENCE TO ABOVE PEACH JOKE

-

loud ass clock inside a secret hideout? good one, rebels. super well done.

-

ahhhh

now that is clever. i like that

although, considering the length of that statue’s beak, he should’ve been impaled right through his body, so.....

you were close, SOJ

glad to see more clever twists though. 

-

game ruins everything with blatant hints

-

there are other cases where they can tell when two weapons have been used on the same wound

why cant they tell now?

-

stone sharp enough to cut skin??

-

your hideout is fucking death trap

good going rebels

-

youre using serial killer wrong... again

-

thats a lie, nobody likes swiss cheese

-

LAY OFF CHEESE YOU PIECE OF SHIT

ILL RIP YOUR ASS OUT

-

“what you said is total bullshit!! heres what happened; this, this this. and since I said it ,its true! without any proof!!! SO THERE”

-

phoenix: VALID POINT!

sadmad: bullshit excuse

judge: sounds legit, overruled!

-

“jeez just toss me an Axe if its that bad...”

-

“plotting your escapee from this sacred hall?”

yeah well just run out

-

“you would pin a crime upon the dead, who you know tell no tales?”

uh

did you just forget the whole

soul pool thing or

are you just stupid

-

aw baby here we go

-

stop saying 30% you dont know shit

-

oh my god

whoa whats he doing with the magatama

-

“wait... i think i saw something just now...”

what, phoenix

what did you see, hmm?

-

“the power of prayer! yes... it uh... helps you... install listening devices in your secrets base uuhhhhhh...ITS NOT WEIRD

-

“She has a way of putting me at ease...”

(weeps) my babies

-

(sigh) its the wife, get on with it

-

“long years of ascetic training have sharpened my ears”

god the training is more useful to Athena than it is Maya. this is depressing.

-

make like a mollusc and clam up??? who says that???????

-

boy you sure fuckin suck at this Mr. Inmee

-

judging by that KAAHHH Tahrust should have a deep voice, and DD had a deeper male voice blip... why aren't they using it? they've already implemented singing blips and tutting blips, did they forget about the extra deep blips?

or are those reserved for demons?

he is a ghost...

-

...how far along is behleeb anyway? either I'm blind or the sprite artist forgot to give her a baby bump.

hey yeah! she's barely pregnant! her character art shows that! so its not so much of a stretch that she could be running around killing rebels. Plus, she hasn’t been pregnant for two years...

...of course, its not her, it’s rUHEEL NAYMUH, but still. she’s not far along enough to be inconvenienced by her child. 

-

potato potahto tomahto egg salad!!

stop praying at me, nahyuta.

-

dont you fucking dare...

dont you even fucking dare

-

THEY DARED

I SWEAR TO FUCK

i swear to fuck 

so. youre gonna blame maya. for the actions. of YOUR OWN GODDESS. 

WHO’S GREAT AND POWERFUL AND MYSTICAL AND WISE AND PERFECT.... UNLESS SHE’S BEING CHANNELED BY A DIRTY FOREIGNER?

i just i cannot express how angry this makes me. it doesn’t make any fucking sense and it’s complete and utter hypocrisy. it’s even worse than before;  before they were suggesting that the person dressed as Lady Kee’ra was killing rebels in her name, if it wasn’t outright her. Now they’re suggesting it was LITERALLY HER, and remember, these people are UBER RELIGIOUS, and they still have a problem with THEIR IMMORTAL GODDESS IN THE FLESH exacting her divine punishment against people THAT ARE HARMING THEIR COMMUNITY ANYWAY???

yes, vigilantism is dangerous. but it gets a little more fucking complicated when you suggest that it’s the legit actions of an ACTUAL GODDESS.

and even if this is the corrupt government just trying to cover up deaths (which it is) why didn’t they just step in and go “Yeah, another Lady Kee’ra murder. All hail the marvellous goddesses. er diarrhoea kooraheen.”

it would be a lot easier and a lot less messy than taking a kid to court. why do they even want Maya out of the way, anyway? She didn’t know any of the rebels, and she posed no threat to their corrupt government. Yeah, Zealot’s dead, but they literally could have just hired another crazy assassin. 

Unless there’s a REAL GOOD FUCKIN REASON for all of this, I call bullshit, bullshit bULLSHIT

-

i think it’s time to let your head go and move on to another room sadmad

at the same time

-

...plus they legit just forgot their own lore.

maya can’t summon Kee’ra if she doesn’t know what she looks like.

that was so easy i didnt have to even press on statements; thats how easy that contradiction is. thats how easy it is to remember something stated five minutes ago, and how easy it is to remember how your own religion works. you fuckhats.

-

oh hey i just realized Tahrust really does call Behleeb his “lovely wife” 

aw. how nice. if only they didnt decide to scapegoat maya.

doesn't matter your intentions; you die if you scapegoat maya. you die by my blade.

-

you ok pal. is an alarm clock really the source of an evil laugh.

-

“indeed! we leave the alarm switched off at all times!”

why would you even have a clock with an alarm on it in a secret base anyway?? and how did phoenix manage to play it in the hideout if the alarm was switched off? 

-

“those distinctive taiko drums”

fuckin’ finally

ive been waiting for that stupid watch to come back for AAAGEES

of course there was a reason maya would mention traditional japanese instruments...

-

y’know it’s funny that he would even make that fuckup in the first place. if he’s a plumed punisher fan, he should know how the theme song goes. his wife was at least a big fan, meaning he’d probably have heard the opening enough times to know that Taiko drums weren’t part of it. Furthermore, if he was banking on the fact that the two themes sound similar to pass off the deception, then it was a huge mistake on his part to define the sound as Taiko drums; thats just a needless detail that could get him caught out, which it did. 

and if he just didn’t know, well... again, useless detail. always bad. always be vague if you wanna get away with shit.

-

ah... at least in death, Raheel Namer didn’t have to suffer the Plumed Punisher theme song.

-

i love that phoenix refers to the show by it’s full title. that’s adorable.

-

now what’s really confusing me is that that Photo of the fam is stated to have been taken during the Feast of whatever. Which is the same time-frame as Reely Real Name’s death. He’s alive in the photo, Behleeb is in the photo, and the Judge and his family are nowhere to be found. But all those things were huge parts of the case, and they couldn’t have eaten before or after because of the whole ‘you can only eat Ghingil for three hours on that one special day’.

am I missing something or going nuts??

that said I'm so glad i can finally present this photo. it’s been gnawing at me as much as the watch thing.

-

“trademark topknot”

-

OH PLEASE JUST LET IT END

ffjglk dlg ljlgkd   hey Tahrust do me a solid and just tell them how you died ok 

please i have a family

i have stomach ulcers

-

oh

off-brand logic 

i totally forgot that was in this game too

-

wow.

“hmm, there’s really nothing to suggest a murder other than the red water in the spring, which only Maya would see and probably not question (considering this isn’t her religion and she doesn’t fuckin know how that shit works) and said spring probably empties somewhere, since it would be swampy otherwise. let’s see... i can KILL MYSELF TO GIVE THE RED WATER A REASON FOR EXISTING or do literally anything else... WELP, BETTER FUCKIN KILL MYSELF. ALL HAIL THE REBELS!”

...well at least he saved maya from contracted a blood disease.

-

tahrust must be pissed that his death came to naught when his own rebel pals gave the secret key to a guy who sold them out in five seconds.

never gets to meet his child... never gets to see the revolution come to fruition... never gets to live happily with his family... all because he couldn’t think of any other solution to protecting that shitty hovel behind a rock.

kinda tragic.

wish i was less angry

-

“there was no weapon at the inner sanctum...”

did everyone just forget the giant bloody murder statue???

-

pohl’fuckya sadmad

-

babe... oh no... don’t give yourself up like this

thats sad

dont 

i feel the sad now

shit

-

“abbot inmee!! summon a physician at once!!’

HES DEAD

WAY TO RUIN THE MOMENT WITH UNINTENTIONAL COMEDY DUMBASS

-

“but murder sanctioned by the crown is still murder”

what’s murder sanctioned by a goddess? apparently you guys are ok with that one. oh unless it’s a goddess being channeled by a foreigner.

soerry im bitter about that one moving on now

-

he lunged at you from behind the stone slab?? nice trajectory moron

-

hang on a second he put reereenaymee’s body in the plaza before prayer time... with the dagger still in him??

HOW DID NOBODY NOTICE THE FUCKING DAGGER

-

“you need not frame the accused for your crime”

for once Sadmad says something smart

-

honestly... suicide really wasn’t the answer. even if it was to protect your wife there were,,,,, so many other options

for example, realname’s last moments, as we saw, made it look like he was killed in the Plaza of devotion. You could have so easily made it look like he was murdered there, by some rando, during the rite. The kooraheen police fucking suck at their job, so it wouldn’t matter. but no; you had to die, and blame Maya.... because she was foreign. A foreigner who came to you for guidance and shelter. 

-

STOP AGREEING WITH ME SADMAD, I DONT LIKE YOU

-

“You must use your law powers to make sure no more innocent people suffer under this shitty law!!

...like Maya did!! .......because of me!!

-

i love that the excuse is like “there’s no way she could prove it was self defence in this government...” to make it all tear-jerking and point out how horrible and corrupt their legal system is...

...and yet, if we remember Reunion and Turnabout, which also included channeling and self defence... It was EQUALLY impossible for Maya to be cleared of the crime on self-defence charges!!

pot calling the kettle black, japanifornia!

-

“lol sorry for almost getting you killed cause i couldn't think of a better plan than kill myself”

yea thanks tahrust, coo-al

-

“I ask that you look after my wife”

er she’s... going to jail... she’s... been outed as a rebel... you do get that right

-

fuck you Tahrust, you made her cry

-

“now you can watch over me from the world beyond”

he cant actually, since they retconned spirits being conscious in the afterlife. good going, capcom.

-

oh man that cutscene was goofy. except for the crying

fuck you Tahrust

-

Maya: :D hOW y'all doin?!

also according to maya Tahrust didnt leave any regrets behind which means that he totally gives no fucks that his dumbass plan endangered Maya’s life and made his wife cry. Dick.

He doesn't even regret missing the birth of his fuckin child. Ass.

-

Sadmad: I owe a debt to you, one that I will return––

Me: Eat a rotten egg.

Sadmad: Wha-–

Me: Go on, master of putrescence. Eat a whole rotten egg. Consume it shell and all. You heard me. Insert the egg into your mouth and chomp down. Times ticking, I’m waiting.

-

i forgot about the stupid butterflies

-

“So I was thinking, Nick, the legal system here is really stacked agains the defence! It’s really unfair!”

YA DONT SAY

-

listen to this happy music playing as everyone is forced to come to terms with all this sad ass shit. also it appears we just forgot about that tiny matter of the government literally putting hits out. Rayfas dad. is doing this. Nobody gonna address that?? No? Ok

-

Maya: QUIT BEINA LIL BITCH

wait what 

what is this new sprite

eurhg i dont like it put it away

thats not maya thats a husk of evil

-

wow. rayfa didnt even know why maya was here training. the bullshit continues to flow...

-

Maya: deciding what is true and what is false for your people...

the actual truth and lies, right? RIGHT? MAYA???

-

ergh this is so... corny? schlocky? it feels forced

-

“Sorry for almost getting you killed anyway VIVE LA REVOLUTION”

-

Yay! It’s vore man!! i kinda missed his stretchy face.

-

oh well that

thats just a really anticlimactic reveal of Dhurke

like tada! there he is! and he's gone! whatever; he's just been talked about in hushed whispers for the last case or w/e!

-

awww the bailiff thinks he can catch a running rebel!! so cute~

-

“The Steel Samurai vs Dhurke the Rebel!”

MAYA. THE LAST FIVE MINUTES WERE DEVOTED TO EXPLAINING THAT THE REBELS ARE THE GOOD GUYS. WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM???

-

i love that they keep hammering in that “maya has stayed maya”

see guys??? dont you just feel the magic of the trilogy??? ITS THERE GUYS WE SWEAR

-

Welp, thats it for that case. Now back to America, to visit Athena and BK, and hopefully to read a more enjoyable storyline...

[vmeemo]

Because I had nothing better to do, I have finished all three games that were part of the 3D All-Stars pack for Mario. You know the one that got a lot of its reasonable flack for?

Well in commemoration of me finishing the games, I am going to be doing a review of all of them, starting from right to left. So Galaxy, Sunshine, and 64.

For reference there is no set way I am doing this, so keep that in mind.

So with that out of the way, lets get to it!

Galaxy:

Easily everyone’s favourite of the Wii era, and one of the likely things people bought for since it’s the closest everyone is going to get of a port of the game.

Now, I may be a bit bias when I say this, but I say it really holds up well. The motion controls are basic, but then again you weren’t really doing anything extreme with them anyway. (Unlike Galaxy 2 where you had Yoshi and his grapple to deal with. It’s one of the theories outside of the anniversary/money that they wouldn’t want to port the game over)

The timed power ups are still a hassle but they exist for a reason. If there was anything I would say that’s a slight negative are the purple coin missions. Now if you’re like me, you likely did all of them after collecting every star in every dome. So all that’s left are the coins. It can get tedious that’s for sure.

There’s also the issue of the game being more linear compared to the freeroaming nature of Sunshine and 64. Probably since it’s the first mainline Mario on the Wii they wanted to play it safe, which I can get.

But really I don’t have much to say about Galaxy, it’s one of the easier Mario games out of the three that you can both play without getting a headache and 100% without any problems.

Next we move on to,

Sunshine:

I’m gonna be real with all of you: Despite me playing for the first time (McDonalds old demo things in their playpens notwithstanding) I don’t like Sunshine. I don’t like the movement of it, I don’t like the forced progression of needing to do every shadow Mario mission, and it was just a slog to go through.

But I’m at least going to state my reasons.

I don’t like the movement. Why? Because after playing both Galaxy and 64, I felt like my movement abilities have been cut in half. I don’t get a long jump, no backflip, nothing that would be in other Mario’s. FLUDD is supposed to make up for that but I feel like it doesn’t work all that well.

And then there’s like the FLUDDless levels which really show the extreme lack of mobility you have. Because of that, they made the side jump really tight in terms of being able to execute it. Almost to the point of overreliance in my mind.

I will at least say this though: It’s walljumping game is on point. Going diagonal with it is a piece of cake, likely to make up for the mobility issue. Though it goes right back to being bad again because you need a running start on it. And the side jump can’t put you into that motion, so you gotta put the work into it.

I also don’t like how long it takes to unlock the other nozzles. Just- Just give them to me in the level. Don’t make me chase shadow Mario around for it. It’s harmful to him anyway so why should he have it.

And don’t get me started on the damn watermelon and the chucksters...

I can see the nostalgia for it though, so if you like it, I’m not going to stop you. Just know that I am unlikely to play it again because of my issues with it.

And now we go to the final game of the three. The one that started it all:

Mario 64:

Now to be fair to this game, I (and likely many others) have played the DS version, the one with the fixes and whatever else they’ve done with the game. Now take all that out and you get Mario 64.

For the most part, minus the jank with hitboxes of things (fuck that snowman that blows wind at you), it’s a serviceable enough game. There are a few stars where you need to get the illusive caps, but for the most part it’s (mostly) fine to play. The movement is kinda slow and the timing for most of his jumps is a bit wonky, (especially the long jump. Not like future games where you could basically hit both the buttons at the same time) but again, product of it’s time.

What isn’t fine however is the camera. Out of everything about the game, the camera is the worst thing I have ever had to deal with. It got bad to the point where I got headaches because of how bad it got. And the primary issue was that there were times where I would like it one way, but the camera decides to say ‘fuck you’ and turn it anyway. This is especially bad when you want to make a good jump with the angle you had, but the game ‘corrects’ the camera so there is a chance of you missing the jump you wanted to make.

So other then say how most of the stars were difficult to get, I had a decent time with the game. Not perfect no possible way it could be. But at least it’s all over now.

So yeah, that was my time/review of all the Mario games as part of 3D All-Stars. Probably a few things you could argue against, but whatever. As long as you have fun in the end right?