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[kitchfit]

Year In Review: Viddy Game Pt 4 (Happy Mario Day!!!)

Oops! All Mario! To prepare for the release of Super Mario Wonder, I wanted to play through as many of the Mario games I never played before as I could. There are a few wayward titles I missed, but I’m sure I’ll end up playing those sometime in the distant year of 2024. Damn that sounds like a fake year. I hinted in earlier reviews that this was something of a nightmare to accomplish, but that was just me being silly. They’re Mario games! All of these were pretty fun.

Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga

I started out my Mariothon with the story-driven series I had never actually touched. I’ve played all the (good) Paper Mario games, but I’ve never touched the other side of the plumber’s rpgs. The combat was a refreshing change of pace after all those Final Fantasy games. It’s almost as much of a rhythm game as it is turn based, which makes it very engaging. I also like what it adds to the Mario World. Luigi has been characterized in several of the RPGs and his own spin off series, but having him along for the entire ride in this story driven game makes him somehow more endearing to me than he was before. I like to imagine this takes place right after Super Paper Mario, and Mario is making sure his best bro is safely right next to him after the shit he went through.

The Bean Bean Kingdom feels like a suitable alternative to the Mushroom one we’ve grown familiar with. A lot of the older games had introduced other Themed Kingdoms, like the Jewelry Kingdom in Yoshi’s Safari or Sarasaland in Mario Land, which is based on types of tea. And Mario Odyssey would assert the entire world being organized into these Kingdoms, so Bean Bean fits right in! It’s super fun to explore the fresh areas with a familiar aesthetic. I only wish these Bean characters would make more appearances outside of this game. I guess they show up in the other Mario and Luigis, but Reggie knows what I mean. Put Prince Peasley in Mario Kart, coward!

New Super Mario Bros

When this game released I had no idea that 2D Mario had been put on hold for ten whole years. From my perspective Super Mario World had only been released earlier that year in 2006, on Nintendo’s brand new console, the hand-me-down Game Boy Advance I got from my cousin. So when my friend showed me New Super Mario Bros. on his Fancy DS Lite in 2009, I wasn’t that impressed. This one didn’t even have the cape, or the Tanooki suit from Mario 3! I was not impressed. What it did have was a fun as hell competitive mode that I could play with my friend via DS download play (which is an awesome system they should bring back), so I never felt the need to seek out a copy.

Playing it now, the game is a lot more distinctive than I gave it credit for. While the world themes are based around the generic grass, ice, fire, etc. themes the Mario games always recycle in some way, the level designs give a good sense of cohesiveness, and the new power-ups: the tiny mushroom, Mega Mushroom, and Blue Shell significantly alter how you approach the level. When you’re tiny, you get a higher jump and can get into hidden paths, but touching Anything Will You, while Mega Mario can ignore everything and cause as much carnage as possible. The Blue Shell lets Mario continuously slide and kill anything in your path provided you keep whatever initial momentum you started with, making this game the singular moment the red plumber stole something from the blue hedgehog. The low-res 3D artstyle felt dated when I first saw this game, since I wasn’t enjoying the industry norm of changing every franchise to 3D. “Give me my pixels, damn you!” said 8-year-old Kitch. I now find it really charming, especially compared to the later entries in the “New” series. There are a lot of original enemies in this game that never show up again. I need everyone to look at the Snailicorn immediately.

Super Mario 64 DS

I was always told this was the inferior version of Mario 64 due to the limited control scheme. Instead of full 360 movement, you are now cut down to 8 directional movements cycled on the d-pad. However, I played this game on the 3DS, and the analogue stick made those 8 directions flow seamlessly. The other change is the addition of a Run Button, one that I was not aware of until futilely trying to race against Koopa the Quick. That’s right, for the entire fight against King Bob-omb, I had just assumed this game ran like shit, or that Yoshi was intentionally designed to be extremely slow until I happened to hold down the b-button as if this was some kind of. 2D MARIO GAME? In 3D??? It’s a sensible change, but one that is only communicated by experimenting with the controls, which someone who has already beaten the original game 3 times wouldn’t really think to try. And since there’s little need to ever Not Run, holding that button down for the ENTIRE GAME started to get annoying towards the end.

Otherwise, it was really nice returning to this classic. The calm atmosphere in exploring the Mushroom Castle and revealing its little secrets makes it genuinely unmatched as a hubworld, and the levels, while mostly generically themed, cram tons of personality into such small areas. Realizing how tiny levels like Cool, Cool Mountain and Big Boo’s Haunt are actually startled me, since I spent so much time as a kid exploring the nooks and crannies of those areas. There are also a lot of new stuff hidden across these levels that either unlock or are accessed by the new playable characters. Each of them have their own movement speeds and abilities, but none of them really play as well as the Mario Himself, so changing into them was mostly situational. I loved the new boss fights that unlocked them, though. Adding Goomboss from Paper Mario into the OG 3D Mario made me really happy. I’ve still never 100% this game, but if I go back, I might actually make sure it’s this version I complete.

Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

The awaited sequel to the GBA game, I hear absolute jackshit about this game when people talk about the Mario and Luigi series. I assumed it was the runt that came between the beloved classics of Superstar and Bowser’s Inside Story, but that isn’t true at all. In fact, I think I like this game more than Superstar. Since it’s on the DS, there’s a naturally higher fidelity with the pixel art, the premise is more interesting, and it adds a new layer to both the combat and overworld movement in the form of the BA-BIES. Since there are two new X and Y buttons, you get Baby Mario and Baby Luigi as additions to your playable characters, meaning at any one time you are juggling Four Whole Mario Bros. all for the price of One! The game is noticeably more difficult than Superstars, nothing too crazy, but I did die a lot more. Or I am just Bad At Games.

Like the previous entry, this game is oozing charm out of every bodily orifice it has. Mario and Luigi are characterized extremely well as they step up as babysitters. It warmed my heart everytime Luigi purposefully goofed up to make the babies laugh or whenever Mario shouted “BA-BIES” in concern whenever they were in trouble. It may be the most overt personality he’s ever really shown. The time travel mechanic isn’t super in-depth, the present time basically acts as a hub world, but we get some more of that Sweet Mario Lore as they explore the Days of Mushroom Past. Autocorrect wants me to say Pasta. We get to see Baby Peach and Younger Toadsworth at some point after Yoshi’s Island, an E Gad pre-ghost fascination, and also these alien freaks who look suspiciously like Fucked Up Toads. What does this mean for them? Are Toads themselves descended from aliens, or vice versa? Will we ever get to see “Toads In Space?!” Some kind of… “MARIO GALAXY???” Only the future can tell.

Super Mario 3D Land

Nintendo was able to put a 3D Mario on a handheld in the last generation, so I guess the new hurdle was an ORIGINAL 3D  Mario on the Three Dee Ess. This serves that purpose well. I could honestly end it there. The level design is well executed around the controls that are based on Galaxy, and it translates really well. They brought back the Highly Acclaimed Tanooki Suit that lends itself nicely to 3D platforming, and also seemed to be a selling point of the game? A lot of the Goombas and Koopas are now wearing the tanooki suit, and even Peach gets to show off the fit at the end of the game. You can’t play as her though, it’s just there to tease you. Luigi is an unlockable character with his own set of remixed levels, but that’s really it.

And that’s the thing, this game is fun, but it’s also kind of… Nothing? If you’ve played 3D Land, tell me: Where does it take place? The Mushroom Kingdom? That’s probably a good guess, but there’s nothing that really shows that, is there? There’s little to no cohesion between the levels. The level select is a linear screen with a multicolor background. You’ll be playing a water level immediately following some weird toy-themed level with absolutely zero context. Where are we? What’s happening? No one really looks for a story in a Super Mario game, but the lack of any real context makes this game super forgettable to me. It’s just a selection of random levels, and a Lot of the levels are repeated with slight differences. Why? TELL ME REGGIE. At the very least we get these cute letters from Peach showing her own adventure escaping Bowser. That would’ve been a fun to play, but this game won’t let you go Girl Mode. Oh well.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

This is one of those “underrated Mario gems.” Maybe the only one. Super Mario Land is pretty mediocre, so I’m not surprised its sequel fell by the wayside. It’s super creative for a GB game, and because of the power of Cool Internet People, I got to play this in color! Lucky me :) The whole game takes place in a magical theme park that was maybe created at the end of one of the Mario Parties. Did anyone else make that connection? I know one guy did. They go ham on the level designs: an area that makes you tiny so Mario is battling ants, a bubble ride that takes you into space to fight Pig Creatures, a mechanical Mario; at one point you go inside a whale. It’s wacky! The enemy design reflects this too, there’s a bunch of Weirdos, like the Pig Creature:

The goal is to find those 6 Golden Coins in each world to unlock the Mario Castle, with the caveat that Mario will lose all his coins upon a game over and have to track them down again. You only have to repeat the boss fights however, so it’s not a complete wipe. My Boy Wario is introduced in this game, and he really does come across as this supernatural, corrupted parody of our portly performer that the commercials for this game made him out to be. But the official word is he’s just Mario’s childhood rival that was upset they didn’t name a castle after him. Don’t worry, Wario! I’m sure you’ll get yours soon.

Super Mario 3D World pt 1

This one is just stellar all around. It makes 3D Land look like a tech demo in comparison. Every level showcases a degree of creativity on par with Galaxy while keeping 3D Land’s linear design. Every part of this experience is just so damn satisfying, the new power ups, targeting the tops of the flagpoles, riding on Yobbo the Swimming Yoshi, and you can go GIRL MODE. My biggest complaint about 3D land is that they teased a playable Princess Peach without actually ever giving it to you, and now I refuse to play this game as any other character. Except when the game makes me play as Mario or Toad to get all the Green Stars. Also the GREEN STARS.

The secondary collectables have never felt as necessary as it does in 3D World. They add an incentive to explore the levels or find an extra challenge that are actually Worth searching for. I don’t remember if they really gave you anything, but I still liked finding them. 

Also the MUSIC, the ost slaps so hard in this game. We’re moved to a new setting in 3D World, and the soundtrack and aesthetics match that vibe. It’s unique, it’s bOMBASTIC. There are two new power ups in the form of CAT and CHERRIES. The cat can run up walls, while the cherries can make a double of your character. The former is generally the best playstyle for most of the game a la the Tanooki suit, while the latter works as a fun challenge that gets really creative with its limits as you control two or three or six characters with one controller. There’s even a bonus mode at the end based on Galaxy where you can. Guess What? GO GIRL MODE EVEN HARDER. I haven’t done it yet but hey. I Am Going To.

Bowser’s Fury

This is one of the few I actually 100% completed. I was on a Dollywood trip with some friends and after the festivities ended at Guy Fieri’s Shitty Arcade and Ripley’s Wacky Wonderworks we stayed in the cabin and chilled out. I didn’t have a ton else to do while everyone was resting so I got really into Bowser’s Fury. Our first taste of what may be Open World Mario. It’s fun! Mario is stranded in the middle of a lake with wildly clashing aesthetics that somehow just works. Light blue dominates the eyes hampered by the slimy black of the magic ink polluting the water around you. There are small yellow islands dotting the lake and floating in the air. And when you get to these islands? Cats! They’re all cats! There are cats on the ground, cat ears on the goombas, Cat Koopas, Kitty Boombooms, everything is a cat!! Even the grass is cat fur! You have cat to be kitten me, right meow! It’s a place so suitably weird for the Mario universe, I could easily see Lake Lapcat being introduced in one of the earlier Paper Marios.

Gameplay wise this is just a big Mario Oddysey world with more… direction? The lack of a real swimming mechanic in Bowser’s Fury makes the ocean a fun place for movement and little else, though there are occasional challenges for Yobbo the Swimming Yoshi to run through. It makes Lapcat feel like a massive hubworld of sorts, with no divide between it and the level, It’s as if in Mario Galaxy you could walk straight from Rosalina’s Observatory directly onto a new planet without going through the Domes, if that makes sense. It’s short, but super fun for what it is. You get all the power ups from 3D World to play around in less linearly designed levels, and it lets you stock up on them through an inventory system. Bowser Jr. follows you around and acts cute! Mario and Bowser turn into Kaijus and you have a Godzilla vs King Kong style boss fight. I guess Mario would be King Kong in that analogy… Nintendo may need the help of John Kirby once more…

Super Mario Sunshine

I had never heard about this game’s existence until I was like 15. My friend told me it was one of her favorite Gamecube games growing up, and I did not believe her. Every description she gave about Super Mario Sunshine sounded like she was messing with me. “Oh yea it’s the game where Mario goes on vacation and he like, gets framed for vandalism? And you have a water gun and you clean paint.” Fuck off with that, you’re not getting me! I thought it was a running joke she had until I looked closely at Mario's trophy in Brawl that referenced the same name. Huh! 

Anyways this is my first time actually playing it on the 3D All-Stars collection. I started it when it was released, but I reached a point where I had no idea what I was supposed to do until my cousin who grew up with it told me I needed almost every shinesprite to beat the game. ALSO WEIRD. The other 3D Marios let you go at your own pace and pick and choose which levels you want, but here all but the last levels are required. I guess this is because Sunshine is more “narratively driven” and they want you to watch how each world changes through your actions. I can appreciate that! Mario 64 experimented with that a bit, like the tower appearing at the top of Whomp fortress in Star 2 or King Bo-bomb’s corpse appearing at the bottom of his battlefield after you coup de tated that fucker. Sunshine, however, has levels like Noki Bay where each level has Mario tackle the source of the pollution, or Gelato beach where you make sure a hotel is suitable for reopening and even get to celebrate at the end.

The controls on the other hand. My cousin described them as “lovably janky.” Mario no longer has the long jump, which startled me every time I tried to long jump, which was a lot cause I have the memory of a housefly. Wall jumping is harder to pull off as Mario does not automatically turn towards the wall like other Mario games, so you have to time it perfectly, and Mario’s overall movement is very awkward. I never felt like he jumps the exact distance I expect him to go. This is probably to make the player more reliant on Fludd, the aforementioned water gun that can let you hover as well as two other fun, but useless abilities. Fludd is very fun to use, but they take it away from you during the platform challenges and it reveals just how janky Mario is in this game. I guess it also makes them more satisfying to complete. Still, since these levels are required, I probably would have given up ever beating the game if I played it as a kid.

New Super Mario Bros 2

This is a similar case to 3D Land. It seems the goal of this entry was “put a 2D Mario on the 3DS,” which was a less impressive goal given the OG New Super Mario was already playable on the 3DS. It’s much prettier, I guess. The big name of this game is “Coins.” Coins are everywhere in this game. There’s a new power-up, the Golden Flower, that lets you turn blocks and enemies into coins. Another power-up that gives Mario a coin every step he makes. There are Golden Koopas that produce coins when thrown. There’s a counter on the home screen that shows how many total coins you’ve got, and the game notifies you every time you reach a “Coin milestone.”

Yea I’ve never cared about collecting coins in Mario games. It’s not like they unlock anything that matters in this one, they just congratulate you every three minutes and if you get One Million coins you get a new title screen. That’s kind of cool, but not something I would actually care to try and get. What I’m left with is the most standard 2D Mario game to exist. The Tanooki suit is here, but like 3D Land, you still can’t go Girl Mode. Unless you count Luigi. Genderfluïd King. Despite this, I do find myself coming back to this one quite a bit to carve out some of the bonus worlds. It’s slightly harder than the other games in the “New” series. Maybe if they leaned into that, like the OG Mario 2, it would be more memorable. Wait, this is the 3rd New Super Mario game. Why is it called 2? The hell?

New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe

As the final entry in the “New” series, it makes sense that this is the most polished version of that game style. The world designs are still based on the tried and exhausted Grass, Desert, Snow, etc. aesthetics, but here there are a lot more unique level designs or some that are SO COOL aesthetically, like the level based around a Van Gogh painting. I wish there were more levels like that, but in THE LEAST, this is the first New Super Mario game to introduce CONTEXTUALIZATION. This is something I’ve been complaining about with these new mario games. Super Mario World (the best one) has a beautiful map level-select. When you’re in Donut Plains on the map, the level reflects that design, taking place on a field, and when you go in a cave, THE LEVEL TAKES PLACE IN A CAVE. Imagine that. It’s such a simple thing that adds so much to the experience. You are actually traveling through a world, not just choosing random shit off a menu. U Deluxe’s map isn’t as cool as World’s, but it was still immensely fun to discover all its little secrets, and made me realize how much I missed World’s map design. Maybe I should play that game instead.

There is one unforgivable sin in Mario U specific to Deluxe. There’s an original playable female character in the form of Toadette! Girl Mode! Finally! And it SUCKS! It’s not actually that bad, but playing as Toadette gives you access to Peachette, whose existence replaces all power-ups in the game while playing as her. So Girl Mode is actively worse to play than any other mode, except funny rabbit mode. But that’s only if you want to be a funny rabbit. She’s meant to be “easy mode,” which is a bit demeaning given she’s the only female character, but I get the desire for an easier way for kids to play the game, I just wish it didn’t lock you out of all of the power-ups. Speaking of which, there are a Lot of power-ups in this game, but a lot of them are hidden for some reason, like the Propellor Hat and Penguin suit, which I found 1 and None of, respectively. Why are they in the game if I can’t use them? These aren’t collectors items, they’re funny little costumes that are supposed to be FUN. WE’RE ALL HAVING FUN HERE.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

FINALLY they’re letting Mario be WEIRD AGAIN. The artstyle of the New Super Mario Bros. games got heavily criticized after this one was announced for being “soulless” and “boring,” but I wouldn’t say that. Because I don’t think it’s true! They’re vibrant and colorful games with an obvious ton of talent and heart put into them. I would, however, describe them more as “corporate.” Homogenized and Marketable. Mario and Gang have been kept to their models in every game since the DS and everyone has clearly been exhausted by it. Wonder is breaking the trend, and Mario looks fucking Weird.

He’s so much rounder, his clothes have a different texture, and his eyes are bigger and brighter. His eyebrows are clipping through his hat! He looks like a plastic toy brought to life, which is not an insult. All of the characters are brilliantly animated to pull off this new look, and I refuse to try out embedding videos in Tumblr so you just have to trust me. It’s not that I want Mario to stay like this, but I DEFINITELY want them to Keep Being Weird Like This.

The weirdness doesn’t end at the artstyle. There are three new power-ups, the Elephant Apple, Bubble Flower, and the Drill Shroom, the last of which is carried over from Mario Galaxy 2’s Spin Drill in terms of gameplay. The Bubble Flower lets you capture things in Bubbles and lets you jump on them for extra air time, and the Elephant Flower turns you into a Fucking Ele Phant. Twice as big, can swipe things with your trunk, can carry WATER in your trunk. Truly the Mario experience we’ve been missing. There are also the most playable characters than there have ever been in a mainline Mario game. Peach, Toadette, AND Daisy in her first playable appearance. THREE FORMS OF GIRL MODE. Nintendo knew what my main Mario complaint was before I ever thought of it.

The main draw of this game, however, are the additions of the Wonder Flowers. There are no levels that stand out against the other, more standard levels like the New Super games, because literally every level in this game is FANTASTIC. The Wonder Flowers are an extra challenge midway through any level that changes it into something WEIRD AS HELL. Maybe the level speeds up and slows down rapidly, maybe you have to dodge walking Piranha Plants as they sing an acapella stage performance, maybe you turn into a Goomba yourself and have to avoid being eaten by a predator. It can be literally ANYTHING. Every level is exciting to go through because you want to see what NONSENSE those crazy bastards have come up with. 

Not to mention the world design. The Flower Kingdom is BEAUTIFUL and similar to the Beanbean Kingdom in terms of cohesion. There’s another country right next to the Mushroom Kingdom with a new botanical aesthetic we’ve never heard of before? That makes sense! It feels perfectly natural for it to be part of this universe. This is another of the three I went to the effort of 100% completing, and some of those last levels are HARD. I gave myself a migraine on the final badge challenge. Also BADGES. They’re cool. Some provide an extra movement option and others make movement actively worse as a way to challenge yourself. Some are just fun! It adds a neat level of replayability to the game as you experiment with them all.

You also get a fantastic reward for completing all the levels. It is. SO Stupid. Extremely dumb. And I have never been more satisfied with a completion reward in a Mario game.

Super Mario Galaxy

To end out my Mariothon, I celebrated with another playthrough of my favorite game featuring a space-faring plumber, Super Mario Galaxy. This was the game that made me fall in love with the series, and in my eyes, still has not been beaten by other Mario titles in terms of atmosphere (PUN). It is just so fun to exist in the levels in these games in a way I can’t say about other Mario titles, except maybe Odyssey and 64. I could follow the objective, climb on the honey walls as Bee Mario, or hop across apples and pears so large they’ve become planetoids and have a great time, fantastic even. But I could also walk around Honeyhive and Deep Dark and look around the scenery and play around with the controls, which are restrained, but refined compared to the previous 3D Marios. Most of the purple coin levels are designed to do exactly that. Galaxy is by no means a sandbox game, but it retains those elements from Sunshine and 64.

Maybe that feeling just comes out of nostalgia. This was at one point the only game I would play on my wii for months on end. It’s like comfort food to me. One time I heard a local cafe play the Galaxy main theme on the speaker as I was walking by and I just. Paused for a bit, leaned against the brick exterior and soaked in the vibes. Listening to that pristine orchestral track whilst watching people come home from a full day of work, or following the actions of a cat decided whether or not to eat a bug running for its life. There’s probably a copyright issue they were violating, but who cares, Fuck Nintendo.

There is one thing that I know isn’t just nostalgia. The older I get the more I appreciate the storybook section of Galaxy. Every few worlds you complete, you’ll get a notification that Rosalina has a story to tell you, and you’ll hear a chapter out of her children’s book detailing her past. It has a melancholy vibe and it’s a genuinely beautiful and heartfelt story with a gorgeous handpainted artstyle:

Supposedly, Koizumi (co-director on the game) snuck this feature in without Miyomoto’s knowledge, and he hated it. When he discovered it after the game was released, he was upset enough that to this day Nintendo has not let Koizumi direct a big release. Apparently, he thought it ruined the game’s tone. I don’t know if I believe that, and I don’t feel like fact checking that shit, but if so, I’m glad Koizumi got it past the guy. It elevates the game’s overall story to an absurd degree in my eyes, providing Galaxy with one of the best endings in any video game I have played.

My ONE criticism. MY singular gripe. Is the title itself. “Galaxy” has always bothered me. “Battlerock GALAXY?” “Loop de Loop GALAXY???” Miyomoto sir, those are SOLAR SYSTEMS. And tiny ass solar systems at best. Sometimes just singular planetoids. But obviously Super Mario System or Super Mario Tiny Ass Planet isn’t as Marketable as- What the fuck was that? Wait, hold on. Sorry guys. Computer, ENHANCE.

What the fuck is this? I’ve always noticed it there in the background, but… I’ve never considered… is this Earth??? The surface of the Mario Planet? Are you telling me all of these “galaxies” are simply a collection of stylized MOONS??? Do we ever actually leave the outer atmosphere? Well, maybe. Looking at the skyboxes of a few more worlds, it seems we do actually bounce around a few other planets, but they’re nearly always there, holding our bee-themed satellites in rotation of itself. That makes more cosmological sense, I suppose, but I’ll stand by that Super Mario Satellite wouldn’t have been too horrible of a name if Nintendo wanted some fucKING ACCURACY WITH THEIR TITLES. HAPPY MARIO DAY EVERYONE. The big MAR10. I totally planned for this to release exactly today, and it’s not just because I put this whole project on the backburner while I focused on my Real Life Job. Thank you to everyone who has been reading these (I see you). I’ve repeated before that these reviews are mostly for me, but the few people that have been leaving likes did motivate me to keep going. I’ll be posting more things on this blog in the future, but I’m not sure I’ll do the Year in Review thing in this manner again. Look forward to more of my ramblings! Or don’t! Skim them in mild interest! Don’t read them at all! Either way, wahoo! Yippee! Yahaha! And Have A Blessed Mario Day.

#mario #mario day #mar10 #okay here we go #super mario 64 #mario & luigi #mario and luigi #superstar saga #partners in time #new super mario bros #ds #wii #new super mario bros 2 #super mario wonder #super mario 3d land #super mario land 2 #super mario 3d world #bowsers fury #super mario sunshine #my post #video game #reviews #year in review

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: TV Shows

¡Feliz Dia de los Reyes! And Happy New Year! And also happy belated Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, Bodhi, Kwanzaa and Diso, probably some other holidays. BOXING DAY. You all get a gift! And it's the same thing you ask for every year that I know you love so so much: Unwarranted opinions about tv shows from a stranger on the internet! I am truly generous.

Shadow and Bone s1-2

Confession: I grew up with these books. It’s one of the only book series I snatched up as soon as they were released, and to this day I will read anything Leigh Bardugo slaps my face with, so I was ecstatic to discover they were making a Netflix adaptation. And damn one thing I cannot critique is the casting for this series. Jessie Mei Li pulls off the classic orphan chosen one YA protagonist so well without being cliche, which is also something Bardugo was able to do in the books. And Freddy Carter and Kit Young have just become Kaz and Jesper in my head, replacing whatever image I had of those characters originally. Also evil Prince Caspian is hot!

Season one is genuinely a fantastic adaptation. They seamlessly combine the storylines of Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows. The gaps in pacing from the first book have had their slack picked up by these lovable criminals playing out a similar storyline to their first book, with Alina taking the place of the Grisha scientist as their object of kidnapping. Everything plays out so fluidly that I was enamored with my first and second watch through.

Season two on the other hand is messy as all hell. They try to adapt multiple books into one storyline like season one, but none of them blend in well together. The bastardized Crooked Kingdom plot (which was my favorite in the series) is completely disconnected from Alina’s story to the point it felt confusing and exhausting each time they went back to it, while the Siege and Storm and the Rise and Ruin plotlines are so rushed I could barely follow what was supposed to be happening. Plus they added their own ending, which is fine conceptually, I get them wanting to do their own thing, but I wish they either just adapted the books, or committed to making something original, instead of this clustered amalgamation.

The Owl House s3

Everyone knows this is a show that deserves MINIMUM six seasons and a movie. The world is incredibly fun and versatile, and the characters are fascinating and enjoyable to watch. But Disney is homophobic and lame and Oh My Shit is that Steamboat Willy making out with Oswald the Rabbit?? Holy Shit. I can’t believe that’s canon now! Thank you Bob Igor. 

That being said the writers and animators did a fantastic job on tight storytelling in these last two seasons. A lot of shows that aren’t given enough space to tell their story will cut out “filler” content to shove all the dramatic moments they want in your face (looking at you Voltron), but Owl House strikes a nice balance between slice of life character episodes and the more plot focused episodes in the short time they have. There’s so many background details and one off lines that create an intricate backstory that adds both to the lore and the motivations of our deadly Puritan villain. It also delivers on a fantastic ending that works both as a definitive end to the series or the jumpstart to a sequel if it ever gets graced with a renewal.

Merlin s1-5

Back in the day this show was grouped in among the other popular BBC shows at the time + Supernatural, and thus it gets a similar reputation nowadays as a queer-baity overrated show that goes on for too long. I don’t think that’s wholly undeserved, but Merlin is leagues better than either Supernatural or Sherlock and is much more consistent in delivering quality episodes than even New Who, though that last one is higher quality overall imo.

The cast all give a fantastic performance as their characters go through some genuinely well written character arcs, especially Anthony Head as Uther who blends goofy freak with hateable bigot so well that his antagonism commands the flow of the entire first three seasons. Like what’s his fucking problem? After he gets out of the picture however the pacing does tank as the plot forces out about three near identical Morgana takes over Camelot conflicts.

This show is also campy as all hell, and blends together lighthearted comedic episodes alongside extremely well written dramatic plots pretty well, though it occasionally stoops to some tonally dissonant melodrama. Uther falls in love with a farting witch like two episodes before Morgause nearly kills Arthur. I do think the will-they-won’t-they between Merlin and Arthur was written intentionally, and while their friendship is enjoyable to watch develop, the answer is obviously Won’t, because gay people don’t exist in Camelot times. Also Guinevere’s characterization fucking tanks in the last season for no reason at all, but it does have a good ending overall.

Dragon Ball Z Kai s1-4

Every year I make my dad watch a shonen anime all the way through. In 2020 it was Jojo’s, 2021 it was Hunter X Hunter, last year it was Naruto (Ocean Cut), and this year it was Dragon Ball Z Kai. So far there’s been no losers, he’s loved all of them (though he got burnt out on Part 5 of Jojo’s). It took a bit for him to get into Dragon Ball; the Saiyan saga did not hold his interest until the Vegeta fight, but he was thoroughly engaged through the Frieza saga and ESPECIALLY the Cell saga. He told me Cell is the most evil villain in all of the anime I forced this 49 year old to watch. I myself had never watched all of Dragon Ball Z in order before this year, and I’m happy to say most of it holds up, at least in Kai.

Season one is overall hard to rewatch from the beginning, since after Goku’s death we get several episodes of mindless training and running on Snake Way that we already know won’t pay off, but damn the cinematography and choreography in that first Vegeta fight is genuinely stunning and I can probably rewatch that anytime. Season two on Namek pulls off writing without Goku much better. There’s a strong sense of tension as all of these different conflicts barely miss each other: Frieza’s army killing off the already small population of Namekians as Vegeta, Gohan, and Krillin are searching for the Dragon Balls. Writing Vegeta as a secondary protagonist in this arc despite still being a violent jackass is genius and this whole section is thoroughly engaging. Pacing grinds to a crawl when the Ginyu Force show up, and I’m sad to say this continues into the Frieza fight. It’s a good fight, but after the Supper Saying shows up they could have ended things pretty quickly, but the fight draws on and on until even Goku gets bored. 

The Cell saga is easily peak Dragon Ball. This is the season Saturday morning cartoons would replay over and over again, so it's the one I’m most familiar with, and damn it I see why they did that. It’s a fun, messy time travel story that focuses on the development of our two biggest protagonists. Goku and Krillin? Nah fuck them I mean Gohan and Vegeta. We get conclusions to their character arcs that are so bombastically enjoyable that Toriyama NEARLY approaches good writing.

Season 4 on the other hand can’t decide whether it wants to be a continuation or its own thing and it shows in the pacing. The Buu saga is way too fucking long for no reason, the stakes rise to an absurd extreme and towards the end none of the characters seem to take any real notice. Goku lets his own son die to save a dog and an old man and then laughs it off as a brain fart. I like Majin Vegeta and regular Buu but everything afterwards overstays its welcome.

Castlevania s1-2

It’s kind of insane to me how good this show is. It takes the plot of an NES game with minimal dialogue and cool set pieces and transforms it into an epic ensemble story where every character has a fascinating arc to explore, not to mention animated BEAUTIFULLY. The show does NOT hold back on gore, but at the same time pulls it off with elegance so the blood and guts don’t feel gratuitous. Castlevania 3 was also my favorite as a kid despite never having finished it so it was personally very satisfying to see this one adapted. 

The relationship between Trevor, Alucard, and Sypha is also adorable and one of my mainstays when I think of fictional Polyamorous couples. Their dynamics are further developed in the latter seasons, but the Dracula fight is so stellar that I was satisfied with ending it there for now, I still need to watch the Rondo of Blood anime.

My Adventures With Superman s1

This show was so cute! And also very vindicating after Snyder’s Superman changed every depiction of the character into a deconstruction on whether helping people is good or evil. Or maybe those were the only ones I saw after that. I was introduced to Superman through the Justice League cartoon and that will always be my primary understanding of the guy, so it’s nice to see Clark written in a similar light. 

However, it’s Lois Lane that really takes center stage in this show. I mean it’s her adventures after all. She is NOTHING like any previous Lois Lane and is an essential brand new character, and she plays off of Clark’s personality SUPER well and their romance is adorable to see develop. I saw a lot of comparisons of her character to Luz and honestly I see the resemblance, not only in design but in dialogue. Which is fine I like Luz, but it forces me to compare it to the Owl House. 

While this show also has very little time to tell its story, unlike TOH it’s paced like shit. Every episode that they put out is fantastic, but all of them feel like the conclusion to a grand story arc, rather than 10 episodes in succession of each other. They introduced multiverse shit in episode SEVEN. And while I love the new design of Mr. Mxldsjdnsk (especially considering I had just finished Dragon Ball Z), they did not earn that shit. This is obviously a production problem I can’t blame on the writers, but this is a show clearly designed as a slice of life with action thrown in, it needs cute fillery episodes, dammit. STOP RUSHING EVERYTHING.

King of the Hill s1

I don’t know if it's a controversial take to say King of the Hill is easily the best adult-oriented American cartoon, right? I think everyone should be on the same page on this. Like the Simpsons is way too long to be objectively good anymore. Maybe Futurama outclasses it but like. Family Guy? American Dad? BIG MOutH? None of those even have jokes. King of the Hill manages to not only be hilarious as all hell, but also tell a meaningful story.

As someone who has grown up in the relative south (Not Texas) I see it as both a satire, celebration, and deconstruction of the culture of rural America. Most episodes focus on Hank trying to give Bobby a meaningful childhood and teach him valuable lessons, but in the process realizing that the culture he grew up in kind of fucked him up a bit, and instead of digging his heels in and refusing to change, he alters his behavior and views for the sake of his son. Bobby himself is a lovable goofball who shows off the fun of growing up as some country hick. Watch this clip of Bobby playing spin the bottle right fucking now.

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake s1

ANOTHER PIECE OF MEDIA CAPITALIZING ON THE MULTIVERSE TREND LETS GO. I spoke before about the inherent metafiction in Multiverse narratives. I think Fionna and Cake understands that aspect well, which makes sense as in Adventure Time the Multiverse had already been an established fact. This sequel is more of an elaboration on previous world-building from the original, rather than following the trends of Marvel or whoever. It also makes me care about two characters I couldn’t give a shit about in the original, that being the title protagonists. They were cute in Adventure Time, but in my first watch through I really couldn’t be bothered with the watered down, gender-swapped variants of our main dudes, and in this show they basically discard all those episodes anyways! Cool!

Their arcs follow the existential nightmare of being people from a “noncanon, illegitimate” universe, and their quest to bring magic back to their world. It’s a compelling narrative and their differences and similarities with Finn and Jake are genuinely fun to compare and contrast while also being fun characters in their own right. I like the realization Fionna has midway through the series that the violent adventures she craved are actually kind of horrifying, and the simple quiet life she used to have was nice. I’m excited to see what the writers have in store for the both of them in the future.

But the real meat of this season comes in the deconstruction of the fan favorite character, Simon Ice King. Fionna and Cake was his fanfiction, after all, though that gets somewhat retconned. He was already a tragic figure in the original, and the final season gave him a bittersweet ending: his sanity returned but now eternally separated from his wife by her Eldritch transformation. This show gives his character the space and time to process exactly what the hell he’s supposed to do with his life now as well as understand the problems he and Betty had when they were in a relationship. I’m glad to see Simon finally get something far more resembling a happy ending than he ever got in the original.

Adventure Time s1-7

This is a show that I would describe as “high patience, high reward.” It’s not something I truly got into until college, as I was put off by what I saw as Lolz Random humor I was trying to distance myself from as a Cool Mature Teenager™. I still had a hard time getting through the first couple seasons in my first watch-through, but it was an easy show to put on in the background while doing research for papers. Eventually I was hooked and sped through all of it at blinding speeds. 

Fionna and Cake inspired me to revisit the show, and I’m happy to say I have a higher tolerance for the aspects of the show I found obnoxious the first time around. The wacky mathy-math lingo of the characters generally fades into the background and builds a distinct vocabulary of this goofy sci-fi fantasy world. It was also fun to see how aspects of the earlier episodes inspired later developments of the world, like the Zombie Businessmen establishing a possible dystopian setting for our goofball protagonists.

Unlike my first viewing, the pace breaker actually started around season five. Their are some fantastic episodes in this period of the show, but overall the world stops developing as fast and each episode acts more as an exploration of the characters. It’s nice to spend more time with all of these weirdos, but it’s made it tough to binge. That’s actually a positive now that I think about it. 

I like Finn a lot. I like that he’s flawed and he fails all the time, it makes it more enjoyable to see him mature as a person. If any episode encapsulates his personality the most, I think it’s the Hall of Egress, where Finn is trapped in a dungeon that resets every time he opens his eyes. It’s probably my favorite episode in the entire show, and plays to all of AT’s strengths: a great mix of comedy and introspection without ever being melodramatic

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

I was initially disappointed with this show when I realized it wasn’t a direct adaptation of the original comic. It plays this fact as a twist, playing out the first volume in its entirety until the very end, where SPOILERS Scott Fucking Dies. The “Takes Off” part was literal: that dude is Gone. The second episode even plays this for laughs as Envy Adams has a spontaneous concert over his funeral and no one besides Ramona seems to care that their friend exploded. It felt like a cruel joke making fun of fans of the original. 

I’m glad I pushed through, though, as all of this was a ploy to put Ramona in the center stage, changing the goalpost of Beat Up the Seven Evil Exes to Investigate the Seven Evil Exes for possible murder/kidnapping motives Columbo-style. In most of the adaptations, Ramona is always playing off of Scott’s dumbass behavior, and it takes a while to truly dig into her personality. Putting her center-stage gives the audience an immediate view into her character and she may be the most likable she’s ever been. 

This show works as a sequel to the original through some time-travel shenanigans, and brings back series creator Brian Lee O’Malley, as well as the cast from the movie. This whole deal, if the rumor is true, apparently came out of Michael Cera responding to a group email meme with the og cast a decade late with “That’s funny,” and got everyone talking again. With that in mind it changes my view on the show as a whole, it's not a cruel joke, it’s a love letter to everything that came before it. 

I do still have a couple complaints, mostly that a few characters are heavily flanderized, namely Wallace and Scott himself, but like. That’s fine. How many times have we seen these characters explored? Like what 5 times now? I’m fine with them taking a comedic back seat to explore the dynamics of the rest of the cast. It’s also really satisfying to see all the exes get meaningful character arcs, which they never really got in the other versions of SP including the original. It makes me want to see what else they might have in store, but there are no plans for a continuation. Probably because that cast listing was expensive as hell. Do you know how much Chris Evans voice acting costs??? $7.50/hour AT LEAST.

Bee and Puppycat s2

Damn this show is so comfy. Everything from the characters, the music, the voice acting, the animation style, the COLORS! Even when the show hits the dramatic button it never stops being such a delight. It’s also longer than I remember, and gives a lot of time for every plotline to unfold. There’s intrigue and mystery surrounding every inch of this Mario Galaxy-ass setting, and it never fully reveals its hand, but that never takes away from the simple, slice-of-life story about two roommates taking part time jobs to make ends meet.

There’s a heavy theme of responsibility and young adulthood with all of the characters, which is also super relatable to me rn. The most responsible character in this show is the six-year old landlord with WAY too much on his shoulders. I like the dynamics with the Wizard family, I feel they present very realistic sibling relationships overall.

I tried checking out season 1 on youtube. I’ve heard people call it a continuation, but season 2 really is just a reimagining of this short youtube series. It’s only an hour long but for some reason it failed to grasp me. It’s somewhat tonally different, and the romantic tension between Bee and Deckard is weird to me after watching season 2. I’m glad they abandoned that as a plotline.

And those are all the shows I watched this year. LAST YEAR. I did not finish this when I wanted to, so to speed things up I’m gonna skip over the final movie list. Long story short Coraline rules, Home Alone 2 is violent and funny, Love Actually Hugh Grant is hot, and Christmas Vacation SUCKS. Fuck National Lampoon all my homies Hate national lampoon. Next time I will be doing the final games list. Wahoo!

#my post #reviews #long post #adventure time #shadow and bone #fionna and cake #merlin bbs #toh #the owl house #dragon ball #king of the hill #bee and puppycat #scott pilgrim #scott pilgram takes off #castlevania #i think that's all of them #SUPERMAN #my adventures with superman

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Games Pt 3

My penultimate list of games contains a rather random grabbag of obsessions I bounced between over the summer and into the fall. And for this list I do mean obsession. Most of these titles took over my brain for at least a week until I was able to stave it off with something else.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Randomizer

I don't often think too much about the structure of traditional Zelda games when I look back on them. Recently, in an interview, Eiji Aonuma expressed a lack of interest to return to the traditional styled Zelda games, stating "Why do you want to go back to a type of game where you're more limited or more restricted in the types of things or ways you can play?" I understand that sentiment, but I believe the restrictive structure of older Zeldas actively curate the gameplay experience rather than hinder it. There's something to be said about how linearity in a game can be in service to a better story, but in Zelda, the linearity turns the entire map into something of a puzzlebox. There's a reason this franchise inspired Metroid.

These are the thoughts I had while figuring out exactly how Zelda randomizers worked and actually getting one to function properly. A Link to the Past, the game the solidified the Zelda formula. Compared to Zelda I, this game is considerably more linear, each mark of your progression hindered by a Key Item that progressively unlocks more of the world around you until you have free reign of the map. The OG makes this progression path relatively intuitive, but in a randomizer the path still exists, but its been altered. All of the keys are behind new locks, and the experience of finding those locks is almost like playing Alttp for the first time.

Familiar items from the beginning may be moved towards the end. I didn't even find the sword until around the halfway point, and had to get creative when dealing with bosses, but near the end, when I had everything, the game was identical to its original counterpart. In this way, the restrictive nature of the game made it more compelling than if I had free reign of the map from the get go. But I guess the Zelda team just isn't interested in that type of gameplay anymore.

Super Mario Odyssey

This is foreshadowing a much more psychotic stage of this review, which I'll save as the last update to this Year in Review project. The is my first time playing this! Can you believe! I'm apparently something of a "gamer," but one of the most beloved Mario games of modern times remained unplayed and alone... I had to rectify this. And damn, yea. This is the perfect advancement in 3D Mario since the time of Mario Galaxy. The controls are a perfect mix of freedom and control; I was never agitated with Mario's movement. The Moons allowing simple exploration and puzzle solving to be rewarded without booting the player out of the level. Finally, after all this time, Mario has reached the heights of the first Banjo Kazooie game.

This is a lot easier to qualify with hindsight, since well... You'll see! But during my time with the game, what I was most impressed with were the environments. You're exploring entire communities! New sections of the Mario world that we've never seen before that fit perfectly with everything we've seen before. Classic themes with a twist. The Sand Kingdom is a normal dessert level that has been frozen over with an icy curse. The Wooded Kingdom seems at first to be a standard grass theme, but is actually a defunct industrial zone upkept by robots who like to garden! Even New Donk City with its hyper realistic Business People, which seems a wild setting for a Mario game, hearkens back to the older games like Donkey Kong 94. For the first time in a long time, this game got me interested in the lore of the Mario universe, and that would have dire consequences...

Fire Emblem: Awakening

This is one of those franchises I have a lot of love for despite the fact almost every entry has something that makes me stretch my face into a comical frown, like Wile E. Coyote realizing he's been thoroughly duped by the funny bird that goes fast. The Fire Emblem games are already thoroughly difficult tactical rpgs, which are hard enough to invest yourself into without tearing your hair out. Awakening is the game that brought the franchise back from the brink of death, at least in the west, and part of that, I believe, was because of the reintroduction of a mechanic from FE4 I affectionately refer to as "the breeding mechanic."

By slamming your anime chess pieces against each other like action figures to make them kiss, they can get married and have a kid. That child can then be recruited into your army after some goofy time travel antics, and their stats, class options, and abilities are decided based on those of their parent units. This means breeding your units like livestock to create the best child units is the most effective way to play the game, which, I won't lie, is just simulated eugenics. This grossed me out as a teenager when I bought this game, and combined with how hard the game was for me at the time, I put the game down for an indefinite hiatus.

Returning to it after all these years, I am sad to say abusing the breeding mechanic is fun as all hell. Okay, maybe equating romance options in a video game to actual eugenics is a bit harsh. It's not like the game encourages playing like that, it really is just letting you ship your favorite characters together, which is present in every FE game these days. Pairing the units up based not only on chemistry but on available skills allowed me to have a nice time with a pretty fun cast and absolutely WRECK HOUSE through the chapters to the point that difficulty became something of a joke. There's also a story in this game. It's fine. Time travel is in it.

Fire Emblem: Binding Blade

This is lauded as one of the most difficult FE games to ever exist, but it isn't usually said with a happy face. Every map is a "seize map" meaning the primary objective is always to kill the boss and bring the Lord (in this case, Roy) to the place the boss was sitting. Roy stagnates at level 20 around the midpoint of the game, and will not promote until the second to last chapter, meaning he's basically useless in the latter half of the game but still required to use in every chapter. Reinforcements appear to a genuinely goofy degree, and will sometimes capsize your run without any warning. You cannot get the true ending of the game without keeping certain fragile ass characters alive (sometimes on the ENEMY TEAM) that unlock hidden chapters with even more bullshit difficulty. Full disclosure, I had to use a guide + a hack that removed fog to get through this game.

Despite ALL OF THIS, Binding Blade has been one of the most engaging and thought provoking Fire Emblem experiences I've ever had. The plot follows a World War esque scenario. On the relatively peaceful continent of Elibe, the country with the strongest military, Bern, has suddenly broke treaty and attempts to conquer all neighboring states. Roy, a 14 year old noble boy on a quest to deliver reinforcements, is suddenly thrust into the role of general after the commander of Lycia falls in battle against Bern troops. And THAT is why the game's difficulty feels so appropriate! It's an uphill climb from day one, Roy is in no way prepared for this, he's FOURTEEN. He should be playing Animal Crossing on his Nintendo 3DS, consarnit! There's also an interesting twist at the end that calls into question our celebration of history and responsibility of the past, which I might get into if I replay it. And I probably will! There's a very lovingly made hack that remakes all of Binding Blade in FE8 with qol features that made me excited to come back to it in the future.

Pikmin 4 pt 1

I'm still having a hard time believing this game exists. I feel like I'm taking it for granted. Just last year I remember cynically telling my friend this title would probably be in development hell for another half a decade at least. But it's here! And damn what a fantastic return. Similar to Pikmin 2, 4 foregoes time limits and resource management in favor of exploration and isolated challenges, without turning to the bullshit difficulty 2 would occasionally throw your way. There's just so much stuff in this game! Caves are back! Piklopedia is huge! Two new types of Pikmin! Like 6 enormous maps to explore!

I do have a few reservations on it. Instead of following the previously established continuity, Pikmin 4 reboots the series, repeating Pikmin 1's plot with the caveat that Olimar never made it off of PNF-404, and it's your job to save him. Along with sixty other tiny alien people that are apparently also prone to crash land in dangerous areas like Olimar before them. It's hilarious, really, the only reason your (custom made) character is in charge is because they're the only one who made it through the atmosphere without shitting themselves.

The caves overall have stronger themes than Pikmin 2 ever managed, and are extremely well designed in their layouts, and the plot and characters are super charming as well. Louie is back and bastardly as ever. He is such an asshole in this title, I love him so much. This is marked as part 1, not only because I'm excited to jump back into the extensive postgame content, but also because of the amount of detail put into the Piklopedia that I want to read EVERYTHING, but due to circumstances I wasn't able to at the time. I know these lists may come off as unemployed behavior, but astonishingly I do have a job that holds back my GAMING POWER just a little bit.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

I took a slight gaming break after Pikmin 4, but it wasn't long before the gaming urge enveloped me like a holy fire. I considered replaying Zero Mission, but if I start one Metroid game I will play through all of them into Dread, which I didn't want to start. And then I remembered there are like 10 Metroids that I've never played, and they have vampires in them! I guess, rather than a Metroid, you could call them a Vania. I've only really played Castlevania 1 and 3 on the NES before, but it's a series I hold pretty close to my heart, and this game works as a good introduction to the series, if you'd like.

The plot follows Juste Belmont, the fruity grandson of Simon who follows his boyfriend into Dracula's Castle to find their girlfriend. Juste has the typical whip finesse of a Belmont, but his direct lineage to Sypha Belnades from Dracula's Curse gives him skills in elemental magic that he slowly unlocks throughout the game. The element Juste is equipped with pairs with his secondary weapon that each unleash a different spell type, which are super fun to experiment with. Dracula's Castle is also split between to dimensions, like the Light and Dark world from alttp, and while it's always fun to explore old areas with new differences, I don't think it adds too much to the aesthetics. Both versions of the castle are nearly identical in terms of artstyle, with the "B Castle" taking on a slightly darker palette.

Juste also collects random shit he finds in the castle to decorate an empty room he found, which is tied to the true ending for some reason. I have a friend who picks up random trash off the streets and brings it back to his house as "trinkets" that he shows off to people when he has visitors, which I found myself reminded of when Juste picks up what must have been Alucard's childhood teddybear to hoard back in little nest.

Digimon Survive

This is a fascinating game. If you have any love for digimon as a series, or if you love visual novel horror games, this is a fantastic deal. From what I remember it faced some backlash when it was revealed it wasn't just a digimon tactical rpg, and even more criticism when players found out how involved the visual novel aspect was. For me, this game perfectly marries the two genres. Your choices in the visual novel structure and treatment of your units during these sections decide not only how your digimon evolve and grow, but which units Survive to the end of the game. There are also four branching paths the story can take that genuinely feel influenced by the choices you made, even though they mostly come down to a rather straightforward morality system.

The plot is similar to season one of the Digimon anime, but with a more mature feel. Eight kids at summer camp are whisked away to the digital world, where the laws of physics are altered, a vague facsimile of human culture can be found, and tons of wacky creatures show up to either aide or harm our protagonists. Except in this version some of them may actually die. I made it through the game with losing only two characters, but they're absence was felt all the way to the end of the game. You don't have to know anything about digimon to appreciate this, but it is a fun new way to enjoy these classic creatures, or be terrified of them, in a certain Bunny's case...

Final Fantasy VII

I don't mod a lot of games. I do look for fan games and improvement patches for older games, but I got a hankering to seek out some stuff a bit more high tech. On Nexus it turned out there were a lot of cool HD graphic mods for an rpg I hadn't picked up in eight years: FF7, baby! I originally got a quarter of the way through this game on steam and put it down for a bit, and then never picked it back up. I remembered being annoyed and confused at the plot and the setting, but going back to it now (with clearer visuals, lol) I enjoyed the hell out of this complicated mess of a story! Honestly, it's not as convoluted as people made it out to be, but maybe my brain has been fundamentally altered by Kingdom Hearts. There's a central mystery present around the six hour mark surrounding a memory Cloud has that doesn't make any sense, and the truth behind that memory slowly unveils itself in a fascinating way.

I was surprised how much I liked Cloud as a character. He never really impressed me in Smash or KH, but in his original game he's this goofy, anxious dork who tries too hard to be cool in front of pretty girls. I can relate to that. AND he has motion sickness. I can relate to that even more.

There are a lot of playable characters in this game, but only 3 of them are allowed in your party, who naturally will level up a lot faster than the benched boys. This is good for replayability, I guess, but if I go back to it anytime soon, I'll have a hard time not picking Barret, Aerith and Tifa as Cloud's best buddies. The other characters are cool (Yuffie is still more of a KH character to me), but I got so damn attached to those three. I also went to the effort of Chocobo breeding for the busted endgame materia, which was a surprisingly fun sidequest, despite its esoteric nature. I did this totally legitimately too! EVERYONE CONGRATULATE ME FOR BEING SO COOL!

Final Fantasy IX

I think this is the easiest Final Fantasy game to recommend to someone. All of the FF games I've played have this compelling found family aspect present, but it's executed in the best way in this one. The characters seem to have this genuine affection for each other that gets more and more real as the game progress and they develop as people. It's also hilarious in a very Shakespearean way. The main character, Zidane, was raised by theater kids, so the goofy, dramatic irony stage gags are very appropriate. All the characters were super compelling with great designs as well, and I had a hard time deciding which three would be in the final party. I settled on Vivi, Freya, and Dagger, but I used Quina and Steiner quite a bit.

The story pulled out tears from me towards the end. This is a tale about grief, identity, and the acceptance of death, and it handles those themes with depth and grace. Zidane and Vivi are unsure of who they are, where they come from. While Zidane looks normal enough, by FF9 standards, Vivi is forced to confront the fact he is probably not human almost immediately upon encountering his puppet brethren, and his reflective journey on accepting this and the fact he does not have long to live is the strongest emotional through-line of the game. But what moved me to tears was (SPOILERS FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH) Zidane's drive to reach Kuja before his unavoidable fate. To reach out to his brother and risk life and limb just so he could offer this man comfort in his last moments, to have the last emotion he felt be the tenderness he never got to feel during his long life. Idk it got to me.

(SPOILERS OVER) The Chocobo mission in this game is a lot more fun and intuitive than it was in 7. Instead of breeding, you play a hot and cold mini game that's frustrating as hell at first, but gradually gets faster and more fun. The games lore makes a lot of references to earlier titles, though I really only recognized the call backs to 7 and 4. This inspired me to make a Libre office spreadsheet of all Final Fantasy games lore, plot and recurring elements in an obsessive and ultimately futile attempt to tie the first nine games together in a neat timeline. I'm filling it out as I go through them, so I may never actually release my findings, but it's still been a fun project, similar to these Year in Reviews!

Final Fantasy

This is the GBA version. After 9, I wanted to go through all the FF games I hadn't played, starting of course with 1. According to Legend, the team that worked on this were about to go out of business went all out on one Final product to make or break the company, thus "Final" Fantasy. I think it may also be named so for the amount of cliche fantasy tropes played out through the story. There are elves who's prince has been put under a sleeping curse, dwarves that love to mine and forge, mermaids imprisoned by a sea monster, there's even a floating dead civilization inspired by Castle in the Sky complete with still functional robots. All of this makes for a pretty fun setting, and seeing where most of the recurring aspects of the FF series originated was delightful! A few of them even threw me for a loop; Bahamut lives underground and gives you a class upgrade, I didn't even expect him to be here!

The combat is simple. The gba version reduced the amount of random encounters, and the world design is relatively intuitive (except for the airship, which is hiding underneath a super esoteric sidequest the game barely tells you about), so the challenge was mostly limited to the boss encounters, who can be cheesed with elemental magic from a decent mage. I played with a Black Mage, a Monk, a Fighter, and a Red Mage, so my healing options were pretty limiting. I didn't realize until near the end of the game that monks are strongest without weapons, so at the last moment my little Monkey boy was FUCKING SHIT UP while he had been dragging his feet for most of the game. The final boss fucked me up in return, however, and I almost grinded (ground doesn't sound right) levels for the first time in this game before discovering the Titan Gloves.

The final boss is (spoilies) the first boss from the opening of the game, who has been transported 1,000 years into the past to manipulate the conflict of the game, including his own initial defeat. This means defeating him for the 2nd time breaks this loop, stops him from creating conflict in the first place and retcons the entire events of the game, allowing your actions to fall into obscure legend in the cultural consciousness. This provides a nice explanation for the main cast's lack of identity. This story is being told second hand as a legend. These people are only remembered for their actions in a myth and thus their true names have never been known...

Final Fantasy II: Dawn of Souls

Before playing this game I had it beaten into my head from video essayists and game journalists that this is the worst Final Fantasy with dogshit mechanics. Maybe that's true, I haven't played all of them yet. These mechanics were cool as hell to me, though. Your stats are decided by usage instead of building up through leveling up, meaning your magic stat is trained by using more magic, attack is trained by attacking, etc. In the og NES game, this also applied to HP, which was trained by getting hit, but that was changed to a more steady leveling curve in the GBA version, and thank God for that. There are also several weapon types like swords, axes, and spears you can train your party members with, though you're forced to specialize early on, lest you be under-leveled later in the game. I think this system is incredibly ahead of its time, inelegant as it may be, as it lets you customize your characters' stat builds in a way that's now standard for modern rpgs.

The story kind of rakes you across the coals. It follows a group of children who have joined a rebellion against an empire dead set on taking over the world. Almost every victory is met with an equal degree of tragedy. You might defeat the enemy commander only to be too late to prevent a city being wiped from the face of the earth, you might find one of the game's macguffins from a tough dungeon only for a party member to be brutally killed off at the last moment. Even defeating the emperor comes with a slap in the face, as his death only leads to a portal to ACTUAL HELL where the emperor has seized control of the afterlife. It makes the ending very satisfying in my eyes, though there are some story developments (like Leon) that feel pretty undercooked. There's also a bonus story featuring all the dead characters exploring hell! Cool! I didn't play this, since it drops everyone back at level one, but I may return to it as a separate game someday. I just gotta know what happened to all the dead guys! They died??? Oh shit!!

Fatum Betula

I discovered this game watching Any Austin talk about games you can get on the Switch for $2, and can you believe my luck? It was only $1 on sale packaged with Paratropics! After playing it, I think this game is worth more than $2, though it is pretty short. The opening of the game is unsettling. Through hints in the menu, you learn to stare out into an abyss until a face with too many teeth tells you to fill a vial with liquid to feed to a birch tree.

And that's all you need to do! Find several different liquids hidden in the beautifully rendered polygonal environments and give to the birch to change the fate of the world. I only figured this out through a lot of trial and error. There are several endings depending on which liquid you choose, around 9 in total if I remember right, including poison, blood, liquid bone. Some of them are received as rewards for exploration and experimentation, while the true ending is done through a series of bizarre tasks that I honestly had to use a guide for.

The endings have a good range of philosophical to comedic, my favorite one being liquid bone, which transforms everyone in the world into funny dancing skeletons. There are so many characters in this world that delight and intrigue, and the writing blows my mind at a few points. It's a game you want to dig into and dissect its many angles, while still hitting you with occasional dialogue that makes you laugh pretty hard.

AND DONE! This list is a bit longer than usual, since I wanted everything on the final Games list to be homogenized. Dang I played a lot of viddy games this year. Next time I will be covering Shows. I was going to do a comics list but I haven't finished enough comics this year to merit one, maybe at the end as a bonus!

#game #review #gaming #video games #zelda #a link to the past #randomizer #super mario odyssey #fire emblem #awakening #binding blade #pikmin 4 #castlevania #harmony of dissonance #digimon survive #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy ix #final fantasy 9 #final fantasy #final fantasy ii #final fantasy 2 #long post #my post #fatum betula #any austin #rom hacks

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Books Pt 2

Rounding out the rest of my reading list. It's a short list, overall. One of my new years resolutions is definitely to carve more time out for reading, which may cut into my future bildeo bame time. Oh well! That's probably a good thing.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I hesitate to criticize the content of an autobiography, especially one as open and honest as this one. I listened to this through the audio book narrated by McCurdy herself, and she gives a great performance through the line reading. Almost as if she was a classically trained actor! Still, I wonder if her reading may have compensated for the quality of some of the prose, and I might not have gotten through it if I were reading it myself.

The title sounds a bit callous to those who haven't experienced child abuse, like myself, but I understand it's a common enough sentiment from those who have, and you come to understand her perspective. It's not a statement made from a place of malice, but one of acceptance that her life has improved without her abuser present, no matter the complicated feelings. The book is also not wholly about her relationship with her mother, covering her experience with bulimia, anorexia, the toxic environments of Hollywood, though her mother is at the center of all of it. It's also not a complete bummer! McCurdy injects a lot of humor throughout the book and covers some of the fun moments she's had in her career. Which is expected in a memoir, I suppose.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

This book is as fantastic as it is ridiculous. The story opens on our protagonist, Arthur, protesting the bureaucratic destruction of his home for the construction of a highway through the area, before he is whisked away by a bisexual alien hitchhiker just in time for Earth itself to be demolished by bureaucratic aliens to build an intergalactic highway. Every plot development acts as both comedy and world building. They nearly survive execution by giving shitty criticism to alien poetry. The president of the universe got his position as a practical joke. A whale is created by a cosmic RNG manipulation machine, and has an inner monologue on the nature of its life just before it explodes and dies.

The outside universe is chaotic and incredulous, and the excitement of wanting to explore that universe through the lens of a hitchhiker almost overwrites Arthur's existential dread on the destruction of his home world. While the book can handle moments of genuine drama, it never goes long before that drama is overshadowed by a joke, or perhaps the drama is itself the joke. This might be annoying to some, but Adams' writing style is slow fluid you don't really have time to be annoyed. It's a short book, and I'm excited to read the next one in the series, if SOME people would return it to the LIBRARY ON TIME. They probably have by now.

The Storyteller by Dave Grohl

I only recently became a Foo Fighters fan, introduced to the album "In Your Honor" by a friend in early 2022, which I immediately listened to ad nauseum until my sister noticed and got me the CD for my car. Thank You Sister! I was sad to hear about the passing of Taylor Hawkins only a couple weeks after I learned who he was. I already knew Grohl had lost a lot of people in his life. But his book is not about grief, at least, not exclusively. Like the title suggests, this memoir is full of stories! And Dave Grohl is, indeed, a good Storyteller.

The book follows his life in a reasonably sequential order, though framed through the lens of a father looking back on his life as he raises his two daughters. It covers his musical influences, his time in Scream and Nirvana, the creation of Foo Fighters. If you like anything from that scene, this book is a good time. It does get a bit name-droppy towards the end. But like. This guy is friends with Paul McCartney! Composer and performer of the classic song "Temporary Secretary," and nothing else! Who wouldn't bring that up at every opportunity?

The book always flashes back to the "present," where his eldest, Violet Maye, is following in her father's footsteps as a musician, which I now realize I've never heard. Give a second.

...

She's alright! Sounds a bit like those "Foo Fighter" guys.

Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

This is something I had previously read for college, but the translation we read was focused on accuracy for the original text, and I felt it was a bit buried under flowery language that would tickle under the balls of an academic, but hard to parse for a casual reader. That's not to say that Headley isn't an academic, but her translation focuses largely on readability in a modern context rather than textual accuracy, and for the first time I actually enjoyed Beowulf rather than just understood it.

For the uninformed, Beowulf is what 9th century monks used to read since they didn't have Dragon Ball. It follows the title character Beowulf as he heroically challenges three monsters (some bitch named Grendal, Grendal's hot mom, and a dragon) for the safety of the Geats and his own people, but moreso for the glory and spoils of the win, and the love of fighting. The story is always told in past tense, and Headley goes the extra mile of telling it from the perspective of a dudebro who relays the tale to his other bros. I truly think this is the version that would most resonate with my generation, but it probably won't get shown off in college classrooms for using phrases like "dude, they were fucked," and "#Blessed."

The Two Towers by Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien

This is the second entry in my very slow read-through of Lord of the Rings. I have been called a fake nerd for not having read these books. And they were right for calling me that! I only have the distinguished and highly regarded appearance of a nerd, and that needs to be corrected! One book a year, apparently. I read Fellowship last year, and while I enjoyed the second half of that book a great deal, damn can Jolkien describe a hill. A significant portion of book one was dedicated to the hobbits journey to Rivendale and singing songs of old Middle Earth legends, which are probably more enjoyable on re-reads. Book two has much better pacing, imo.

Immediately, you are set into the action of a fractured narrative. Pipin and Merry are missing, Frodo and Sam left the fellowship to go on their own fruity adventure, Boromir is dead, and Aragorn, Gimli, and Orlando Bloom are left to figure out what exactly the fuck happened to everyone. I like how each storyline is told. From what I remember in the movies, everything is interspersed with each other, but in the book you have to follow everyone separately, creating a genuine sense of mystery that slowly unravels itself. Frodo isn't even in the book until halfway through!

Each storyline also introduces a new, fun element of Middle Earth that makes the world feel much more developed than in Fellowship or even the Hobbit. I fucking love Ents. And big spider... Frodo's relationship with Gollum is also fascinating; his desire to save this gross little freak working as a reflection of his feelings about himself. Will someone try to help me if I end up like that? Will my friends still love me? It's a very real possibility as he carries this curse, and by proxy makes me love Samwise that much more, since we know from his narrative perspective that yes, he will love and try to help Frodo no matter the circumstance. Even if the current little freak is getting on his last nerve.

The Shining by Stephen King

I've not read a ton of what I'd classify as "horror," outside of short form fiction, but apparently I love to write about it, so I wanted to take a look at the predominant Horror Guy from the 80s times. I love the movie that spawned from this, and knew that Stephen King hated it for some reason, and now I think I know why! The movie is definitely its own beast, and I think I may write a separate blurb for it if I ever rewatch it in the near future, so I'll refrain from too many comparisons.

The story follows a boy with psychic powers, and a haunted house that eats boys with psychic powers. The Torrances are a very loving family, or they would like to be, but their dynamic is plagued with generational trauma and the father's, Jack's, alcoholism. They are put in charge of the Overlook Hotel, which has to be maintained over the winter lest it be torn to pieces in the Colorado mountains. Why don't the owners hire more than one family to take care of this big ass hotel? They're a bunch of cheapskates!

I would love to make an entire deconstruction on Jack Torrance. He's a man who's been unbelievably shitty to his family and the people around him, saw the monstrousness in himself and desperately tried to back peddle. It is the Overlook, this entity that breaths within the hotel, that uses that darkness to carve him out from the inside and use him as a puppet to threaten his loved ones. It actually fails at first, Jack's love of his wife and son beating back the ugly thoughts the hotel plagues his mind with, and thus it had to get him drunk to make any real headway, force him to relapse into the man he wanted to overcome.

The mystery of the Overlook's origin is compelling. It clearly lures people with "the Shining" into itself to devour and maintain itself, but where does it's monstrosity come from? Was it always there? Or was it the violence and racism of its previous owners that left such a strong imprint that created such an entity? King's answer would probably be a mix of both, but that last interpretation makes the ending much more poignant to me. A monster that victimizes people who shine created by monsters who victimized women and people of color, ultimately overcome and destroyed by a black man with psychic powers, a housewife, and a little kid. Maybe that's too generous an interpretation for a book written by a white dude in the 70s, but I don't give a shit. Night of the living dead author and all that.

And that ends my reading list! I don't really expect too many to read any of this, let alone all of it, but if you did, thank you! This is not only to share what I've read this year, but also to go back and appreciate what it was I read, so it doesn't become a vague tear in the tapestry of memory. Wow that sounded pretentious as hell! I hope I made these books sound at least a bit interesting for you, because they're all genuinely good reads! And if you have a book you think I might like, please let me know! I'm always looking for new books to get halfway through and never finish.

#book reviews #reviews #i'm glad my mom died #jennette mccurdy #the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy #douglas adams #bookblr #the storyteller #dave grohl #foo fighters #violet maye grohl #beowulf #maria dahvana headley #the two towers #jrr tolkien #lotr #lord of the rings #the shining #stephen king #books #my post

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Movies Pt 2

No longer promising consistent posts. From now on, these come out "bi-weekly," which means whatever I want it to, and written by your weekly bi. I am the only person to have ever thought of that joke.

Robin Hood (2010)

This is the one with Russell Crowe. I honestly don't know how I finished this one. I guess because my dad wanted to watch it. This is supposed to be a gritty, realistic take on the classic Robin Hood story. Or at least, I think that's what they were going for, it feels like the director can't decide between gritty realism and the goofiness that comes with the concept of the Merry Men. They're constantly cracking off one-liners and stealing from rich people with goofy disguises that feel more like pranks, but there's also an entire bloody battle scene between "Robin of the Hood" and King Richard that I cannot for the life of me remember the context nor conclusion of. I guess you could say it has both elements wrapped in one neat package, but it doesn't do either of those aspects really well.

Two most memorable scenes for me involve a blind man kicking surprising amount of ass in a sword fight, though ultimately unsuccessfully, and Little John clarifying to the bee-keeping Friar Tuck that NO! He does NOT have a "Little John." (as in small penie). The cast is kind of stacked in this movie, (Cate Blanchett as Lady Marianne, Oscar Isaac as King Richard, the Crow-man as The Hood) and they all give great performances, if that's what you're after, but overall it's kind of forgettable.

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero

The rest of this entry's list follows a second movie marathon I had with some friends as we prepared for a showing of "Across the Spider-verse" we were watching the morning after. Why does that mean two anime movies and a classic Eddie Murphy comedy? I don't know! It was fun though. And that's all I can really say about this movie. It was fun! Nothing amazing. The plot follows the tertiary return of the Red Ribbon army, who are once again on that robot shit, and Piccolo trying to get his foster son, Gohan, to stop being a nerd (having a secure, well-paying career as an entomologist? Apparently?) and be a martial artist again. He does this by constantly putting his foster son's daughter (foster granddaughter?) in mortal peril to make Gohan snap and break stuff like he did in the old days. This is, hilariously, played as a uncritically good deed and that Piccolo was right to do this. I love Piccolo though, so he can do whatever he wants, Pan seems like she's having a great time being in peril.

The animation is fantastic, as per usual with high-budget anime movies these days. They opted for a 3D style that blends in nicely with the artstyle they've been using for Super. The fight scenes are choreographed in a way that reminds me of the Dragon Ball games they've put out in recent years, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Fighterz team worked on this. Oh wait, I have the power of the Internet in my Grasp.

...

WOW! Trying to find a comprehensive list of animators is hard as fuck! Cool! I ended up pausing through a video of the credits for both pieces of media. God I wish I could ctrl+f on a video. There may have been some overlapping names I overlooked, but I guess it wasn't largely the same people, oh well! If anyone knows a better way to find this information, please let me know!

Jujutsu Kaisen Zero

Our second anime movie of the night had a bit more depth to it. My watch through of Jujutsu Kaisen season one was bombastic, beautiful, and well-executed. It felt like a modern, more competent rewrite of the dynamics found in Naruto, though since I haven't read any of the manga that may be presumptuous of me. This movie didn't feel like Naruto. This movie felt more like Uzumaki (okay I haven't read Uzumaki yet, but I could resist the pun lol). A more straight-forward animated horror film that only leans into its shonen side towards the final act. You don't need to have read or watched any of Jujutsu Kaisen to appreciate this. In fact, I guess you could start with it, since it acts somewhat as a prequel.

The plot follows a boy possessed by the ghost of a woman he witnessed die in a car accident when he was a young kid. She was very close to him while he was alive, and in death she is an obsessive, over protective monster who maims anyone who might come close to her liege. It comes to light that her possession was actually (spoilers) the result of the boy's own psychic abilities, who brought her back from the grave on accident while distressing her death. It's an interesting statement on grief. An emotion can be so powerful as to tear open the fabric of the pale, and holding onto the negativity of that emotion for years only serving to hurt oneself and everyone around them. And then making peace with that grief so you can *checks notes* use your dead loved one to kick ass in a cool anime fight sequence. This movie NEEDS to be in schools./j

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

Modern media has been a bit over-saturated with Multiverse stories as of late. Its a pretty common story trope in science fiction, done to death in Star Trek, DC comics, the comic this movie was based on, the video-game that comic was inspidered by, among other things. Rick and Morty's entire premise is basically built on the back of that concept, but I think we can trace its recent burst in usage to the success of this movie.

I love Spider-Man. I love Peter Parker. I think his story has such a strong foundation that nearly every adaptation I've seen has been compelling in one way or another. I love most of the Avengers super-heroes, but I can't really say their characters are as relatable, funny, or impactful as our arachnid enhanced boy. There's a reason when Sony was offered the entire Marvel ensemble, they opted to just take the wall-crawler at a discounted price. This movie uses the Multiverse to deconstruct the Spider-Hero narrative and show exactly why this character premise is so compelling.

Miles Morales is not Peter Parker, but he is Petersimilar. A nerdy kid who loves science and wants to be liked and most imporantly: wants to help, no, needs to help others. Because great power + conscience = responsibility. The same is consistent with the rest of the cast. It's a cheesy formula at this point, maybe, which is why its so effective when they play it so straight-forward with all six members of the cast. Different backgrounds, different histories, different universes, but all have seen what their inaction can affect, and all of them have the heart to keep going, to help people even when it gets tough. Miles is a particularly effective introduction to this Super-Hero for younger kids, being relatively less known and thus a fresher narrative than Peter, not to mention more black representation in popular media. It makes me smile when I see kids excitedly bring a stack of Miles Morales easy readers to the check-out desk. He's definitely The Spider of the next generation.

The Nutty Professor

This movie is. Definitely something. Still not sure why we ended our marathon on it. For those unaware, this is an Eddie Murphy comedy about an obese biology professor who concocts A Serum that makes him not only thin for short periods of time, but extremely charismatic. The thin version of himself essentially acts as a second personality who's kind of an asshole, and his coworker ends up caught in a love triangle between Fat Murphy and Thin Murphy.

This, naturally, comes with an endless cavalcade of fatphobic jabs typical of the 90s, but ultimately has a somewhat half-hearted message about toxic masculinity and body positivity. A lot of the jokes that aren't aimed at "haha fat people" do land with relative frequency, because well, Eddie Murphy Is Kind Of A Funny Guy, but for the first time I noticed a structural similarity in his comedy and Adam Sandler's. Remember Chuck and Larry, where the writing is extremely homophobic for the majority of its runtime, and ends with Sandler saying, "Don't be a homophobe"? No? No one has thought of that movie in 10,000 years? Well, this movie feels like that but with fat people, to slightly less offensive degree. But a low effort Murphy movie is still better than a mid-effort Sandler flick, I guess.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse

I already ranted about how much I love Spider-Man earlier, and how the original deconstructs him as a concept, so I won't do that again, but I do want to draw attention to the inherent meta-fiction in Multiverse stories. It is, by its very nature, a story discussing storytelling. By showing different universes you are showing the audience how a story could have gone differently, how characterization can fundamentally alter a narrative. Multiverse stories that understand and recognize this principle tend to lead to a more cohesive and engaging plot. AtSV understand this principle, and follows more closely the original Edge of Spider-verse comic run, reintroducing Spider-Staples like Spider-Punk and Pavitr Prabhakar.

I like that Miguel O'Hara takes center-stage as the antagonist in this film, as he is largely left out of the Spider-verse stuff in the comics, and also I love Spider-Man 2099. One of my friends is obsessed with him. It is his recognition of the patterns in the Spider-Man narrative that drives the conflict in the second act, and it is him who decides those patterns are Fundamental to the Structure of All Things, which not only fits with his character, but provides a much better explanation for the existence of Spider-Society compared to the Spider Gods and Fate Totems from the comics. Miles is once again trapped in a typical Spider-Man conflict, but ironically has his status as Spider-Man called into question. All of existence is collapsing, a science experiment gone wrong turned a scientist into a monster, his dad is in peril, and all of it is getting in the way of asking out the girl of his dreams. Can none of the 100,000 Peter Parker's sympathize? Well yes, they can, but most still hold O'Hara's goal as the larger responsibility.

Speaking of the girl of his dreams, I adore Spider-Gwen. She is the comic book character I will follow to the ends of the earth, even though most of her comics lately suck ass. This film does a beautiful job bringing Robbie Rodriguez's artstyle to life in our brief time in Earth 65. The colors... THE COLORS!!! This animation team once again changed the landscape of animated films, but sadly this came at the cost of some pretty gross labor violations. This is extra damning as AtSV is apparently the fourth longest animated movie ever and doesn't even have a conclusion. All that abuse for an incomplete story? They clearly could have taken their time with this, and not every scene needed to make it to the final cut. This is why we have deleted scenes! So a studio doesn't lock a bunch of animators in a box and force them to work an unreasonable amount in record time. I hope the next movie has more union reps and give everyone as much time and space as they need to make something good. I want movies with people paid more to do less, dammit!

Okay, my soap box has been discarded. I've placed it neatly in the drawer with my toothpaste and hairbrush. I have one more list of movies to get through, but rn I'm moving onto the latter half of my reading list, since with my track record I probably won't finish anything else before the end of the year.

#my post #reviews #movie review #robin hood #dragon ball #dragon ball super #dragon ball super: super hero #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen zero #the nutty professor #spider-man #spider man #spiderman #itsv #into the spider verse #atsv #across the spider verse #long post #film

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Games pt 2

Back to Bildeo Bames! After finishing my big Kingdom Hearts binge, I told myself to cut back on gaming for a while until Tears of the Kingdom came out. That was a huge lie! I love deception and falsehoods :D

Psychonauts

The idea of going inside someone's head to discover an entire universe created from their thoughts and memories has always been a fascinating one for me. I spent a lot of time as a kid imagining what my own or my friends' brain-world would look like and how you might navigate it. So imagine my surprise when I found an entire 3D platformer based around that concept. And for $5 on sale, no less! This had been a cult classic for a long time, but the recent sequel I still need to play elevated it to a higher place in the social conscience.

You play as Raz, a young kid who crashed a training camp in order to become a Psychonaut, people who covertly enter other's minds to extract secrets for the government. At least that's the idea, Raz ends up using his training to help his mind-victims work through their insecurities and psychoses in order to improve their mental health, first focusing on people in his camp, and then on clients in the nearby insane asylum. This isn't just out of a heroic desire to help others, but the easiest way Raz has to save his new camp friends, whose brains have all been cartoonishly sucked out of their ears and placed into jars. This world is so goofy and fun and the premise allows for endless creativity with settings and like. You can write a whole essay on any one of these levels. Damn I need to play the sequel.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

I like Sonic quite a bit. The characters are so expressive and fun and the world is similarly wacky and cool. The lore is an odd mix of typical video-game nonsense and genuinely fascinating tragic backstories. I loved the Sonic X show and Sonic Underground but like. The games... Okay the games are fun, but there's always one thing that ends up giving me a huge headache. Usually the Chaos emeralds. Eventually I'll go back and play through the Origin games and meet the games on their terms, but in the meantime this is the perfect Sonic game for me.

It's just a three hour visual novel written in the style of a murder mystery! It's so cute! Sonic is dead! You spend most of the game as Barry the Quokka, who's name is actually Kitch, a dorky dude in charge of catering on the murder mystery train, thrust suddenly into Amy Rose's birthday party on a quest to figure out the culprit who fake murdered our best blue boy. The game is full of so many adorable designs, fun characterization, and goofy plot tangents that its clear Sega just gave a group of Sonic fans free reign to go crazy over an official project. If you get bored of the visual novel part, its interspersed with random isometric Sonic levels you can plow through pretty quickly. I had a pretty good time with all of it.

Sonic Adventure: DX

In fact I had such a good time with The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog that I jumped immediately into an actual Sonic game. This was Sonic's first real jump into 3D, and I was always led to believe that jump missed the platform and tumbled into badly rendered, inanimate water. This isn't true! The voice acting is pretty bad at times and the animation gets wonky in places, but like. I am a Kingdom Hearts fan. These are not negatives. It also splits a singular story into multiple perspectives, so you discover more context for what's happening the more characters you play as. That doesn't mean the story is amazing or anything, but the effort is commendable and I love when stories do this.

Each character sits in a different genre of game as well. Sonic himself translates his 2D gameplay pretty well into a 3D setting, which is what most people reference when talking about this game. Tails is more of a direct racing game where you can basically skip most of any level due to the fact he can fly. Knuckles is a treasure hunting game focused on exploration. Amy is a survival horror game where you beat the shit out of robotic pyramid head at the end, and Big the Cat is a fishing game that's pretty fun after you tear all of your hair out. The last story, Gamma, is a rail shooter about one of Eggman's robots developing a conscience after learning it is being powered by a small tormented bird, before going on a rampage against its robotic brethren and self-destructing, freeing them all from Eggman's control. It's surprisingly... pointiate? powniant? *checks watch* poignant dammit. I have an English degree. Anyways robot stories like this always get to me for some reason.

Pokemon Infinite Fusion

There are a few communities where the amount of effort that can go into amateur fan content astounds me. The Pokemon fanbase is one of those communities. Romhacks have been popular in this community for a long time, many of them matching or exceeding some of the professionally made mainline titles, in my opinion, at least. Pokemon Infinite Fusion approaches that line with just the shear volume of fan content present in this game.

Any Pokemon of any stage can be "fused" with another to create a new design. Their typing and stats depend on a fairly simple algorithm, but the designs themselves are created by hundreds of incredibly talented independent artists you can find credited in the Pokedex. You can even import your own design if you wish! Obviously, with the amount of possible combinations, not all of them are artist-created, most procedurally generated, but there are just so many that it boggles my mind. Here are a few of my favorites

[Image I.D. Fusion of Mawile and Electavire created by Sadfrog, it has jumper cables in place of its giant mouths]

[Image I.D. fusion of Cofagrigus and Weavile that resembles Midna from the Zelda series created by King Peggy]

[Image I.D. fusion of Charizard and Aerodactyl created by artist Beespoon]

The game itself is a decent remake of Firered and Leafgreen with a significant post game. I have a couple issues, such as the credits being kind of vague and buried, and the gameplay being glitchy in certain areas, but this game is still being updated, so I'm excited to see what else it will offer in the future.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Ocarina of Time is the quintessential Zelda game, Breath of the Wild reinvented the franchise, but this is my first and favorite Zelda game. When I think of Zelda I think of this Hyrule's landscape, this Link's journey. I can talk at length about the perfect structure of this game, the dungeon layouts, the visuals' mix of quirky and grimdark, the fun boss designs, but I can't deny its all washed in nostalgia.

The story is about two people with the rest of their life apparent ahead of them, both cursed and disfigured beyond their imagination and forced into a role they could have never predicted. People say Midna is the greatest "helper" in the franchise, but really she's the hero right alongside our main boy. This isn't Link's story, its both of theirs. And at the end, neither of them can truly return to what they used to be; the curse is dispelled, but the change remains. For Midna this means sacrificing her closest relationship for the good of her kingdom, and for Link this means leaving the town he knew as home. Maybe he's looking for a way to find Midna, maybe he's off on a new, dangerous adventure, maybe he wants to do motion-controlled sharpshooting on Nintendo's cool new console. Regardless of his goal, his adventure changed him in a way that he can no longer live comfortably in the life he grew up in. So he leaves.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

When this game came out, the biggest complaint about it were the broken motion-controls. Personally, they always worked fine for me, but I'm glad the switch remake added a new control scheme to make the experience more accessible. Now more people can complain about the actual game rather than the controls! Honestly never really understood why this game was so polarizing, the only big problem I had with the original was Fi's constant interruptions (which were toned down in this version), but Navi did that shit way more frequently and no one marked that as an abject flaw. It's a damn good 3D Zelda with excellent dungeons and a really compelling conflict.

This version of Link and Zelda are one of the only overtly romantic iterations of these characters. A classic childhood friends to lovers dynamic. Zelda is on her quest to restore the power of the goddess and Link is set on supporting her, no matter how painful it might be for him. A cool detail I love in this game is after Zelda seals herself up in the Orange Sap of Eternal Agony or whatever, the lines on Link's face notably lengthen and darken.

[Image I.D. Link at the beginning of Skyward Sword. The lines under his eyes are visible, but indistinct]

[Image I.D. Link towards the end of Skyward Sword, the lines under his eyes are deeper and more apparent.]

It's as if the trauma of his journey has physically aged him. Idk maybe its just a lighting thing I'm reading too far into. I'm glad this Link and Zelda get a happy ending. My only complaint nowadays is learning Nintendo almost made a "hero mode" style extra game where you play through Zelda's adventure! And they took it out! Cowards! You get glimpses of what it would be like in the end credits, like they're taunting you.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Breath of the Wild might be my favorite game to just exist in. Every inch of Hyrule is so thoroughly laid out; the environments are gorgeous, the movement is fun, there's always something in the distance worth checking out, and the towns are so heavily detailed. You can spend hours even after completing the game 100% just driving around the landscape or studying the textures and wall decor in Kakariko to find some hidden piece of storytelling. In that regard, excited to say the Tears of the Kingdom is the perfect sequel.

I was concerned when it was revealed we were exploring the same Hyrule's map, just a few years later, but they changed things up so thoroughly, exploring the same area doesn't feel like retreading old ground, but seeing how the area evolved. It's familiar, rather than identical. Not only that, but there are now two entirely new maps situated above and below the old one, each with a new, invigorating aesthetic that are so fun and exciting to travel through. Go to the Sky for some awesome Agoraphobia, or travel to the Depths for some cooky Claustrophobia. You will never know how badly I spelled claustrophobia at first.

The story is nowhere near as elegantly written as BotW, and that's fine, it's a sequel, it only needs to add on to the original, and it brought it me Tears (HAH) for entirely different reasons that BotW. The dragon's tears sidequest had genuinely shocked me with the order I collected them, and the endgame boss sequence was just so incredibly peak. On the lore side of things, and how it connects to the larger mythos, this game makes me want to strangle someone, but this is Zelda, I would not have it any other way. Mechanically, I'm never one to push a game to its absolute limit, but this game has so many tools intended for the player to do exactly that, and I'm excited to see what other people come up with.

Recently, as of writing this, the Youtuber Any Austin put out a video analyzing the woodworking of TotK and BotW, and it might sound goofy, but it got me pumped to return to it in the near future, to just exist in Hyrule for a while longer.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team Pt 1

This is the first title I'm granting the "pt 1" moniker. Some games have a definitive ending, and then a post-game epilogue that is an entirely new story that I might finish next year. This is a childhood favorite of mine I'm revisiting. The mystery dungeon games have this insane hold over my psyche and always wrench an emotion out of me like no other Pokemon games can. While that didn't change time around, I realized I had a great deal of nostalgia blindness over its story. It's not bad at all, but it plays into a lot of generic adventure story tropes while I remembered it being more unique. In truth, this game was actually my introduction to a lot of those tropes and archetypes, and it pulls them off very well. It occasionally moves into some insane territory, like your cute Pokemon guys are hunted down by a lynch mob at one point.

This game also established a lot of Pokemon identities in my head, and are the reason Mons like Ninetales and Gardevoir are some of my favorites. Its such a comfortable game to go back to, but it will always be outshined by its successor, in my opinion.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Skies Pt. 1

No, I didn't misspell that. This is a fanmade improvement hack that adds some quality of life adjustments, like shortcuts for all of your moves, and a bunch of new story sidequests. Most of the story elements are relegated to the post game, so my playthrough was more or less identical to the original. That being said, this is one of my favorite games of all time. The reason I remembered Red Rescue team as having a more in-depth story is because of this game. Upon my umpteenth playthrough of this I can confirm that it is not (just) nostalgia blindness, this is still one of the best video game stories I have ever experienced. You can withdraw all of the elements that make it a Pokemon game and you are still left with a really well written, emotionally driven science fiction story. Wigglytuff and Chatot aren't even Pokemon to me. They're just the chaotic gay couple from this game.

The gameplay is mostly unchanged from the first, with the addition of the lovable 4th generation freaks. The change of focus from rescuing Pokemon to exploring new areas and finding treasure always hooked me and spurred on my imagination as a kid, it captures the sense of wonder really well.

Link to hack: https://hacks.skytemple.org/h/skies

Pikmin

This is probably my most replayed game ever. It's a pretty short game, if you know what you're doing. There was a point where I had the map so consistently memorized I could do a playthrough in my head, lmao. Take that Miyamoto. I pirated your game through MY MIND. YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A MEMORY.

There's still something magical about the atmosphere in this game that I don't think any of the sequels quite matched. Something about music; the mystery; the sound design; the isolation. It's just one man forced to make friends with these adorable alien freaks to ensure both of their survival. Later entries would focus on the intrigue of exploring what seems to be the ruins of human society from an ants perspective, which has its own appeal, but this game feels most genuinely alien and hostile in the way nature can be, in a beautiful way. I also played this with gamecube controls for the first time in my life man fuck the gamecube controls.

Pikmin 2 pt 1

This game has come under fire in recent years, which I think is goofy as all hell. I heard people call it "the black sheep" of the Pikmin series back when there were only three sheep! And a pygmy goat on the 3DS, I guess. I understand a lot of the criticisms, but this was a dream come true when I first picked it up as a kid. Now you have an endless amount of time to explore the Pikmin Planet to your leisure! You have another dude (he sucks so much I love him)! More little freaks to follow you around! Even more big freaks who want to kill you! I love freaks. I don't know how much time I spent studying through the Piklopedia to understand the wider ecology of this viddy game. It solidified the character of Olimar in my head even moreso than the original.

People hate the caves, (or hated?) but I think that's just because it wasn't like Pikmin 1. There's something to be said about the generic aesthetics dulling down the personality of these dungeons, but it always felt like a suitable expansion of this world. They're bugs! Tons of bugs live underground! Of course that's where they're all hiding. Because of the endless time limit, they did ramp up the difficulty on some of these caves to the bullshit level, which made me want to move on once I paid off the debt. Sorry Louie! I know you like it down there anyways. With the other freaks.

Pikmin 3

I never owned a Wii U, so this game coming out at the peak of my Pikmin hyper fixation was agonizing. I staved off the insanity of not being able to play it by scrolling the fanwiki articles for every new creature it introduced and rewatching the trailer demo over and over again? Huh, I really did that. Finally being able to play it on the switch is fantastic, and I don't have to deal with that stupid gamepad. Sorry, really cool bulky controller with a tiny screen you can't see shit on.

This game is so beautiful. It almost retains the majesty of discovery that the original had. I understand why people often refer to it as the true sequel. It works to strike a balance between the tight survival gameplay of 1 and the explorative aspect of 2 by having your day count tied to the amount of resources you can gather within a day, which also allows the plot to manufacture genuine anxiety when a certain asshole steals all your shit. All that time you spent gathering a buffer against certain starvation for your dudes was worthless unless you can get it back. You can actually lose the game at this point if you aren't on top of things.

I like all the new dudes. They all fit within the pre-established universe very well and contrast nicely against the original trilogy of dudes by being nice and actually liking each other. You just feel bad that Olimar hasn't been living it up with these cool cats all this time, and is instead tormented by his asshole coworkers every waking moment of his life on PNF 404. All three of the coolcats also get original Piklopedia entries from different professional perspectives. All together we get an amateur biologist (Olimar), a cook (Louie), an engineer (Alph), a botanist (Brittany), and a tactician (Charlie). Most of Charlie's are just "can I take this bug in 1v1" and I love him for that.

Cutting this off here for now. Remember how I said I love deceptions? That also went for writing this in a timely fashion. Oh well, one person's Monday night is another's Friday morning. That's how timezones work, I think. Going back to movies next Monday. I don't watch a lot of movies overall, but I have a lot to go through.

#reviews #video games #psychonauts #sonic #the murder of sonic the hedgehog #pokemon #pokemon infinite fusion #sonic adventure #zelda #twilight princess #skyward sword #tears of the kingdom #breath of the wild #pokemon mystery dungeon #explorers of sky #red rescue team #romhacks #pikmin #pikmin 2 #pikmin 3 #my posts

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Movies Part 1

I don't have that great of an attention span. If its something I am invested in I can spend hours upon hours reading or playing through it until I get a headache telling me its time for bed, but if something doesn't hook me after around 30 minutes I'm probably turning it off or putting it down for a bit. It is for this reason I don't finish a lot of movies unless there is another reason to watch through it all. Usually that means watching it with other people. If there aren't friends to help me finish this movie it's probably going back in the case, which I think is true for all but one movie on this list.

Glass Onion

Knives Out is one of my favorite movies of all time. I've not read any of Agatha Christie's works which is who Benoit Blanc is largely parodying, but I do love other things inspired by her such as Columbo, and the first movie is a stellar deconstruction of that genre, while still providing an engaging mystery. I saw this movie's baby brother at the dawn of the New Year alongside my cousin, both fervently pushing out trope appropriate theories only to be completely wrong at the twist ending in plain sight.

This sequel is not anything as elegant as the first, but still seeks to deconstruct mystery tropes in a very similar fashion. The mastermind behind a series of murders or even one murder is a role often given to rich, suave, and intelligent people of high standing. It is this role that Edward Norton's character sees himself as, but while he is a rich dude of high standing, he is a more realistic rich dude than most murder mystery antagonists; that is, an arrogant dumbass who got where he is by manipulating and screwing over everyone he can. He wants to be complex while being transparently simple. Also he smells. LIKE AN ONION. WHOA. ONE MADE OUT OF GLASS. THANKS JOHN LEMON.

A Silent Voice

A good way to get me to watch a movie until the end is to make it animated, that way even if its boring as all hell I still get to look at some pretty art. That's not the case with this movie. I first watched this on a bus ride when I was sixteen with one earphone on while the girl next to me held it up on her phone. That was a good memory, but seeing the gorgeous animation on the big screen was a nice treat.

I love the dynamic between the two main characters. I wouldn't say this movie is a romance in any real sense of the term, but is about a relationship. Both of these kids spend most of their adolescence admonishing themselves for hurting the other, believing everyone hates them for what happened when they were 10. This is especially tragic for Shouko, the deaf girl who did literally nothing besides exist and try to make friends. The fact that she blames herself for her bully becoming ostracized is even played as a twist, but its a very realistic mindset anyone can fall into. The theme is forgiveness of the self after others have already forgiven you, which can be pretty tough to do, especially when you've done some genuinely shitty stuff.

I also showed this movie to my mom, an ASL instructor and translator, cause I thought it might be interesting for her, but she lost interest and fell asleep after she realized it was JSL and couldn't understand it.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

My friends were freaking out about this film, one of them going so far as to watch it like six separate times within the span of a couple weeks. This made me expect it to blow my mind, but it was just a very well written, beautifully animated movie about a cat coming to terms with its own death. I think the drought of movies with good writing from mainstream studios really elevated this one further than it would have normally. It was nice to return to this character, having grown up with the Shrek films, and doubly nice to see his character arc being used to discuss a serious topic in a healthy way.

The central conflict is the most compelling aspect of the story, the John Mulaney villain and Goldilocks subplot are funny and entertaining, but the effectiveness of Death as the main antagonist is genius. The Shrek universe has always been a conglomeration of fairytales and folktales brought to one setting, and who is most common death metaphor than the big bad wolf? Or I'm sorry. Not a metaphor. He's just Death. Straight up. You don't outrun death or win against it in any meaningful capacity, and the story could only end with Puss' acceptance that he will die. There's no Sisypussing his way out of this one. Pussyphusing? Pfft.

X-Men: First Class

My dad and I decided to watch through every X-Men movie earlier this year. We managed two of them. They're good movies, most of them at least, but marathoning all *looks at watch* eleven films just never came to fruition. This one might be in my top 3 for X-Men movies, though. Xavier and Magneto's relationship has always been the most interesting part of these films, and this movie puts it front and center. Xavier's focus on helping his friend make peace with his traumatic past is something so genuinely sweet that ultimately empowers his greatest enemy. It's this understanding they have with each other, established in this movie, that underlines every interaction they have in the future.

The rest of this movie is pretty standard origin story stuff for the ensemble cast. How the Beast Became Blue. How Mystique Stopped Pretending and Became Her True Blue Self. How the Guy Who's Power is To Never Die, Died. It's fun for what it is but overall pretty generic.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

This is also one of the better X-Men films, not sure if I'd put it in the top 3, but there's enough time travel nonsense in this movie to make me giddy. I love paradoxical bullshit. This movie works as both a direct sequel to First Class, while also working in the continuity of the first 7 or so films. It's the Apocalypse, baby! Okay, not that Apocalypse, I still haven't seen that one, but we are introduced to one of the more famous fascist genocidal hellscapes to come out of Marvel comics. The story starts at the very end of this murderous crusade, only a handful of mutants are still alive, grouped together as a unit in some abandoned... temple bunker? I'm sure this is explained somewhere in the movie, but it makes a cool setting to fight for your life in.

Most of the plot, however, takes place in the 70s. It was a big twist in the comics that the girl who can walk through space without hindrance can also walk through time the same way, but in this movie Kitty Pryde can only send other people into their past selves, meaning it's once again Wolverine's turn to take the spotlight, because Hugh Jackman is more expensive than Elliot Page. It makes less sense, but this movie still has a lot of fun jumping between the past and future versions of established characters. Angry, passionate Magneto in his 30s vs the wizened Sir Ian McKellen Magneto. At some point the X Man himself gets to talk directly to his depressed, 70s incarnation. Not to mention Quicksilver is there, which is always nice.

This was the "Rogue Cut," which adds cut content about Rogue infiltrating a sentry factory to blow it up. The new stuff doesn't add a lot, but I did like her character from earlier films, so it was cool to see her again.

Shrek

After the joy of obsessing over Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, one of my friends insisted that we all catch up on the deep lore of the franchise, and go through every Shrek movie in order. Unlike with X-Men, we succeeded in one marathon through them all. The dude who suggested this also made the assertion that PiB: Wish was the first Shrek film to feature blood and cursing. This is patently false and I took immense pleasure in proving him wrong. *whispers* Shrek says ass within the first twenty minutes, don't tell mom!

The first movie got memed on quite a bit, but I think most people have come around to enjoying it in a genuine sense. It's a cute love story with a good message and funny fard jokes. I don't think the gross-out humor really oversteps in bounds, and it would feel pretty bizarre in hindsight if a movie like Shrek ever toned that stuff down. There were a lot of movies with "fairytales come to life and their rude and goofy," as their premise, (think Hoodwinked, another fun movie) but I think the style of the Shrek world comes off in the most endearing way. Or maybe that's just nostalgia talking.

Shrek 2

I have the soundtrack of this movie embedded into my skull. I had the CD growing up and would make my mom play it in the car on the way to primary school ad nauseum. I also had the entire movie with incredibly compressed graphics on my GBA. This classic film is synonymous with my early childhood, and it holds up really well. It's shorter than I remembered, but I think that's just because it's so expertly paced.

It also introduces our favorite fearless hero, who blends effortlessly into the main cast. All of the character's play off of each other really well, actually. The gags of a royal knight planting catnip on Puss or Gingy yelling "IT'S A THONG" to get Pinocchio to lie still get me. Not to mention the perfect fight scene scored by "I Need a Hero." Every studio with rights to that song have been chasing that high ever since.

Shrek the Third

Some people hate this movie with genuine vile and malice in their hearts. Maybe that's harsh. It definitely doesn't match the highs of either of the first two, but I still enjoyed it a lot as a kid and had a good time with it now. My friend noted that the first half of this film has a lot of funny gags that peter out in the second half, where the focus is on Shrek's complicated feelings on fatherhood. There are moments in the movie where I can tell it can't decide whether to write a scene with appropriate drama or make a stupid joke, which is odd as the first one balanced those aspects pretty elegantly.

This movie does have a sequence where the classic fairytale princesses learn martial arts from Julie Andrews and kick the bark covered asses of the trees from Wizard of Oz, all to the beat of Barracuda. Disney could never. I also like that Prince Charming takes a more central role as antagonist in the story this time around, which feels very appropriate for the setting. Justin Timberlake is here too I guess. Damn, I forgot about him. Sorry Justin.

Shrek the Final Chapter

This movie came out when I believed myself toooo olllllllld and MATURE for silly animated movies with farting in them. I had grown, and was ready for stuff like *looks at movies that came out 2010* MEGAMIND, an even sillier animated movie with still probably several fart jokes. I had a bunch of reasons for disliking this one when it came out, but I don't really recall any of them. This movie is pretty wild upon revisiting. Shrek pulls a It's a Wonderful Life with Rumpelstiltskin and is pulled into an alternate universe fanfiction where he never existed, joins an Ogre resistance and tries to get his wife to fall in love with him again. It's such a goofy premise with some fairly well constructed dramatic moments. It's also very good 3D animation for its time, which might be consistent with the rest of the series.

There's a scene where Rumpelstiltskin jumps off a ledge and makes a weird noise that I cannot for the life of me find on youtube, but it sticks in my brain for some reason. He's a pretty fun villain, overall, all of his scenes made me laugh. I think we watched the other Puss in Boots movie after this, but I fell asleep. Sorry Justin.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

This franchise got reimagined with a new cast a few years ago, and for some reason became a controversial focus of American politics for several weeks. I mean not for some reason, it was really just sexism. Women? Fighting ghosts??? Only men fight ghosts in real life, everyone knows that. This movie, on the other hand, is a direct sequel to the original film and also didn't come out during an election year, so even though Girls do be Fighting Ghosts in this one, there was less outrage around it. It's a fun homage to the original, but doesn't acknowledge the original Ghostbusters 2 in the least, and that movie genuinely freaked me out as a kid with its pink slime that kills you.

The film focuses on the very autistic granddaughter of the late and famously autistic member of the original cast, Egon. She's a delightful protagonist throughout the story, working with the ghost of her grandfather to uncover the truth behind the natural disasters plaguing her Podunk town. There are also some fun new ghost designs our child heroes have to overcome. The supporting cast is serviceable, mostly focused around Finn Wolfhard and Paul Rudd's eternal struggle to get dates before the world is eaten by Gozer, or whoever. There's a lot of nostalgia bait in this movie. The OG Ghostbusters even make a Deus Ex Machina style cameo, saving Baby Egon at the last moment aside a CGI Harold Ramis that did get me to tear up a little. This whole movie was dedicated to him, which is sweet.

Kingdom Hearts: Back Cover

Remember when I said I was done talking about Kingdom Hearts for this year? No? You haven't been reading these? That's okay, I was lying anyway. As part of my full bodily integration into this series, I watched the entirety of the KH Union X Cutscenes interspersed with clips from the Back Cover movie in order of the proper timeline of events. This is probably the sanest way to experience this story. The original has you play a mobile game where you are updated on the plot every ten or so boring ass missions and then watch the movie as a companion piece. It's a pretty engaging narrative by KH standards, but its told in the most batshit way possible, which I guess is also up to KH standards. You can watch it here, if the embeds work:

The first part of this story focuses on a member of the Keyblade Guilds, who is slowly encroaching upon the reality that the organization they're apart of is tearing itself apart. All of the Guild Masters are in conflict over a potential traitor, and this suspicion eventually spirals into an entire war. The Master of these Masters, or MoM, is largely implied to have orchestrated the entire event. The second half focuses on the fallout from that war as the surviving Guild members try to escape the end of the world.

I got pretty attached to several of the characters and their ultimate fate, but I think this could have worked better as a TV show rather than a REALLY BORING MOBILE GAME. I guess you can watch it as a TV show, if you watch the video above in 30 minute chunks, and if you're okay with beautiful 3D animated cutscenes transitioning into kind of stale sprite art at random.

Alright ending this here. I didn't finish this on Friday as I had some other Things going on, so we're in for a double feature! Hopefully, I'll continue on the games list which will be out this evening. I'm writing these ahead of time so who knows???

#movies #film #review #glass onion #puss in boots #the last wish #a silent voice #x men #first class #days of future past #shrek #ghostbusters #afterlife #kingdom hearts #back cover #union x #my post #Youtube

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Books Pt 1

Tumblr deleted the entire first draft of this, which is cool and awesome. It was too long anyways. These aren't meant to be full on analytic reviews, just blurbs about my experience with the books and what I thought about them. I might move into more in depth stuff later on next year.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

He was pride. She was prejudice. Can I make it anymore obvious?

I started this on CD audiobook for the first half before driving my car off of a cliff. I was fine, but Elizabeth Bennet was a casualty of the accident, so I found the rest of the book on Libby with a different reader who had Very different vibes. It kind of fit how I felt about the book. Jane Austen is very good at regaling the audience from Elizabeth's point of view about how Darcy is the shittiest man alive, while turning at the halfway point to reveal he is actually the Only Good Victorian Man to exist.

I've seen this tale play out in both BBC and Keira Knightley formats, which are both fantastic in their own right, but I was significantly more invested in the characters this time around, especially the supporting cast. Elizabeth/Darcy romance was very cute, Jane and Bingley was adorable, Elizabeth's shitty cousin was hilarious. I like the glimpses of how she thinks about the rest of her family that you don't get in the movie. She hates how her dad views her mother as entertainment, she hates how her mother treats her children like products to be sold, she hates how her younger sisters make them all look silly. Damn she's really hateful, huh? Almost like she's preju-OHHHHHHHH.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Funny Cat, The Spider Mom, and the Weird Door

This was a book I was excited to get into. The movie freaked me out when I was little, as did it everyone else, and I'll get to that since I watched it immediately after this. Maybe this Friday. But it isn't anywhere near as vividly horrific as the OG Evil Narnia. In a fun way. There's an implication in this book that the Other World and Other Mother are just two of many possible little horrors that live under your bed or behind the door that shouldn't be there that want to hurt and/or eat you. Kind of like real life. That's okay though, you can get through it alive. And Coraline proves it.

I like her a lot as a character. She isn't near as naive as she is in the movie, and catches on to the nature of what's happening on the end of night one, thus Other Mother kidnapping her parents to serve as motivation to come back. That gives the book freedom to explore the Other World and its nature thoroughly, and watch as it all crumbles around Coraline. I like that everything is just a bunch of bugs stretched into the visage of pleasant things by a giant spider. I also love that spider's contrary motivation. She needs to feed, but there is also a genuine desire to love Coraline, to be a mother, whatever her bizarre conception of what that means. Evil hungry desire is more pressing though. Get in my web, girl.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Digimon season one for 1950s British kids.

At some point I decided to reread all of the Narnia books. I got through like, 4 of them in a weird order due to how Libby works. I promise I do read physical stuff its just hard to find the time to finish them. The first book the Narnia line up was originally written for my boy Clive's real life goddaughter Lucy Barfield , who was temporarily displaced as a child during WWII, as a children's story. He even dedicated the book and maybe the whole series to her. However, by the time he finished this one she was already an adult and "too old for fairytales." Classic blunder. I'll still read your stuff, Clive.

The whole of Narnia is a wintery wonderland turned on its head, its magic and majesty suffocating under a thick sheet of ice. Jadis is a very cool antagonist. She's not super complex, but she's a very strong character and extremely threatening villain, as we see throughout the series. The Pevinsies all have a sweet relationship. Edmond's an asshole in a very realistic sense, but they all care deeply for each other in an even more realistic way. The end of the book starts a pattern Mr. Lewis likes to repeat where a quick epilogue is hamfisted into the end that blows over large swaths of time in a hurry to resolve everything. I have problem's with that in later books, but it works best here, skipping to the famous reveal that time moves much faster in Narnia, and two decades or so only equals a few minutes in our world. A little fucked up. Go through puberty again, Pevinsies, this time in BRITISH SCHOOL.

Prince Caspian by Clive

Ocarina of Time for 1950s British kids.

The second book in the series gives more context to the world Narnia lives in, while also screwing with our perception of what Narnia is in first place. A previously unmentioned country to the east invades and colonizes Narnia, oppressing its people and removing magic wherever they can. Lewis can write about the complexities of colonization as he actually comes from a country familiar with this kind of shit, believe it or not. Who are they conquered by? A country of Minotaurs? Dragons? Wayward dwarves still allegiant to Jadis? Humans??? What the hell?

Turns out Narnia is the weird magic fairytale place even within its own universe. Everywhere else is inhabited by eternally 18th century European style society. It's also 1000 years later, but a year for our dudes, so the Pevinsies get to experience how Narnia has changed physically in all that time. Like Cair Paravel, that place two whole pages mention in the first book. I like that the age reversal thing is acknowledged in this book, and how that might have affected our heroes and their development. At the end of the book, the colonizing force gets sent to Earth, and Prince Caspian is crowned as King Caspian. Aslan (or maybe one of animals, idr) says outright that Narnia is better ruled by humans than its own people. Which is. An odd note to end on a book whose main conflict is colonization. Huh.

A Horse and His Boy by C. Staples L.

He was a horse. He was his boy. Can I make it anymore-okay shut up.

This is an interesting one. Five books into the Narnia series and we are introduced to brand new protagonist, with zero connections to previous characters, in a place that is not Narnia. He's a young boy who runs away with a talking horse in their desperate attempt to both escape slavery. They meet a spunky, ass-kicking princess who's also running away, this time from an arranged marriage. Narnia in this story is more of an ideal their working towards, rather than a physical place the story spends time in. The plot is very refreshing in this aspect, especially if its the fifth, or in my case, third Narnia book you've read in a row. It could likely stand on its own outside the rest of the series, though you do get a surprise cameo from the adult Pevinsies pre-wardrobe-return, which is fun.

I do have a couple issues with it though. I'd argue against the idea that all of Narnia is a direct analogue to Christianity. Aslan is definitely furry Jesus, and C. S.'s theological beliefs are an obvious intentional aspect of the storytelling, but most of the books have themes and lessons outside of that and pose a genuinely fun fantasy world to engage with. The religious metaphors in this book specifically are pretty heavy-handed though, and not very delicately woven in. The setting of the story also pulls allusions to several real-life Middle Eastern cultures, and if you think a white British dude in the 50s wrote about that respectfully? Sorry no. There's also a lot of mention of Boy (I straight up forgot that kids name) being Special and Different for having pale skin and blue eyes. :/. At the end is another rapid-fire epilogue that blazes through Boy's life as the new prince of wherever that I think the story could have gone without. Just let it end with dignified mystery, Clive.

The Magician's Nephew by Siwel S. C.

Honestly Clive the mulitverse trope has been done to death, bro

Last Narnia book on the list as of now. Luckily, its also the best one. This is a prequel to the whole of the Narnia continuity, which details the creation of Narnia and the origins of Jadis, but the actual plot revolves around two new Brit kids Digory and Polly. Digory is described as grubby at least sixteen times throughout the story. His mom is sick and his magic uncle sucks ass and he's scared and he has no friends. Polly decides to be that friend which ultimately burns her as he's also a bit of a selfish brat. Learning to get past that brattiness and mature enables Polly to forgive him and ultimately helps him save his mother.

The plot takes place in the Wood Between Worlds, which has still stuck in my head and spurned on my imagination years later. You move outside of Earth to find the grandness of the Milky Way, you escape the Milky Way to discover the imperceivable majesty of the universe, and you find the indeterminate edge of that universe and land yourself in an idyllic forest with trees so high you cannot see the sky, the forest's floor dotted with puddles leading to other worlds. Jadis' origin is also pretty fascinating. A queen so obsessed with ultimate power she destroyed her own empire rather than let her sister take it. Aslan roars the world into existence. The whole vibes on this book are pretty stellar, ngl.

The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath

You wouldn't be cool if it weren't for the lessons that you learnt in the BELL JAR, nah, nana nah nah.

And now for a weird fucking heel turn. And also the last book I'm doing for now. I'm going to be honest, my original interest in this book came from the song "I Cut Myself" by Talkshow Boy, who mentions the book in the above lyric. Also, my college roommate said she liked it a lot. I went in with zero expectations and was surprised at how hard it hit home. I've never been personally institutionalized, but I know people who have, and I can relate to the downward depression spiral Esther goes through in this book.

Its interesting to see the thought patterns and paradigms that Esther voices in her inner monologues that partially lead to her mental break. Little observations that reveal her hyper-awareness and implicit nihilism. They're good observations too. The vivid description of the horrific image of a woman giving birth compared to a dulled animal being hooked into a machine. You can see her perspective on a lot of subjects, probably even agree with much of it. It makes sense, as this is the author famous for vivid and introspective poetry more than anything. Looking at the historical context for this book made me sad, especially given how hopeful the ending was, at least how I read it.

Going to shift into movies at the end of the week. I'll need to start doing these at least bi-weekly if I want to finish before the end of the year. Also more bisexually.

#books #bookblr #thats a tag that exists #reviews #my post #pride and prejudice #narnia #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #prince caspian #a horse and his boy #the magician's nephew #the bell jar #silvia plath #cs lewis #jane austen

[kitchfit]

Year in Review: Games Part 1

This is a series I've been wanting to do for a while. Whenever I finish a piece of media (books, games, movies, comics, maybe art and music in the future) I jot in down in a doc so I can look back on them at the end of the year. I wanted to write my thoughts on them as I finished them, but since you have to start somewhere, I'll be writing simple reviews in retrospect. This is just for fun, but I welcome any feedback.

Pokemon Scarlet

This game released with some controversy. It was an unfinished glitchy mess with graphics still not up to the standards of the Nintendo Switch six years into its lifespan, but tbh this game was fun as hell to complete. I loved most of all the new designs and managed for the first time in my Pokemon career to actually complete the Dex. I usually get worn down on that pretty quick.

The characters were also much more engaging than the previous generation, especially my best boy Arven. The environments were super fun to explore and I got a new favorite little guy (Slither Wings my beloved). Here's hoping the next game has an actual sane development cycle and we get this amount of creativity in a higher degree of quality with better paid developers.

Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

If you thought I only played games that came out this year, sorry to disappoint. I don't manage to pick up even half of the blockbusters that pop up annually, and go after older games way more often. That being said, I see why AA fans hold this game up so high. I played the first and second Phoenix Wright games last year (which I won't review since that was too long ago now) and this is a nice cap to the original Trilogy.

You get Phoenix's background as a dorky bisexual art student, Mia's first case as a defense attorney, and an honestly heartbreaking quest for revenge through Godot while never stooping to melodrama. (I love his theme it sounds like the Mother 3 Magypsies). Also unlike the first two games, there were zero "filler" cases. Each one was thoroughly engaging and moved the plot forward in a meaningful way. Though, I don't begrudge the earlier cases that fuck around a lot more.

Pokemon White 2

When the OG Black and White came out, I was in the "everything new is lame" stage of adolescence, so when the sequels came out I didn't even bother. Turns out I was the lame one for doing so! In hindsight, Pokemon seemed to reach something of a peak with Gen 5 in terms of graphics and gameplay, and would seek to experiment with new artstyles and gimmicks for the next (looks at watch) 11 years damn.

With the first Black and White, it focused on remodeling classic Pokemon designs and gameplay into something new and modern, and these games add back in most of those classic Mons. The plot is also very action-packed and engaging, and gives a satisfying epilogue for a lot of the characters from the first games. You get to see how the region has changed after 3 years and even get to explore some new parts of Unova, similar to how the Gen 2 games handled Kanto. I hope Gamefreak does something like this again in the future.

Kingdom Hearts: Re:Coded

Prepare for a deluge of this series, and not in any conceivable order. Kingdom Hearts took over my heart, mind, and body Xehanort style for the better half of the year. This title is known for a fun variety of gameplay and an absolute dogshit story. I wouldn't really agree. The game switches up its playstyle pretty frequently, including side-scrolling platforming, railshooting, and turn-based combat but for the most part its classic hack-and-slash 3D platforming that feels kind of grindy, but there's multiple unlockable difficulty sliders that you can use to switch it up if you get bored.

Storywise, there's not a lot for newcomers and if you want to play through all the games as one overarching narrative, I wouldn't blame you for skipping this one. However, if you're already a fan of Sora and Riku's relationship, this has quite a bit for someone to dig their teeth into. The world's are all recycled from KH1, making this one of the two games where you can actually explore Destiny Islands, but they all feel pretty downgraded. The endgame gave me a headache.

Kingdom Hearts

Our best boy's first big boot step into adventure. I watched all of the KH cutscenes for all of the games during a particularly dry season of lockdown, so this was my first foray into the original. The story genuinely holds up to a surprising degree, leaning into the Disney elements more than its Squaresoft side for probably the last time in the series. Its really good groundwork for Sora's introduction as a hero, I especially love the assertion towards the end that it is Sora's choice to help others that makes him worthy of the Keyblade and not destiny. Its a theme that would be both muddied and compounded upon later in the series in a pretty interesting way.

I was almost astonished at how in-depth all of the worlds are, especially Traverse Town. There are a lot more little Disney references and sidequests, like the 101 Dalmation quest, that help the worlds all feel a bit more lively. Also NPCs, which later in the series would become a rare gift. I fucked up on the combat. Did not learn how to do spell shortcuts until midway through KH2. Despite that, it was still fun to wack Heartless with my keyblades six different ways, and it makes me excited to replay it at some point.

Kingdom Hearts II

This is the big boy that every KH fan loves to absolute death. Chain of Memories had already started the series tradition of experimental storytelling, but the mainline sequel takes it to an fascinating and well-executed degree. For the first three hours you are forced into playing a new protagonist with zero context and near zero Disney shit. Vivi is there though and we love him for that. Later on we would see this prologue as the tragic conclusion of another entry in the series, but its initial presence here is jarring in a way you have to piece together throughout the rest of the main game. It would also introduce many of the more headache-inducing plot aspects that are fun to dissect but a pain to explain, such as Nobodies. I see them as ghosts, and no one can tell me otherwise. I wrote a whole absurdist retelling about it.

The worlds are more quantity than quality, I'll be real. About half of them are made up of 4 or 5 flat maps with nothing to do except grind Heartless encounters, (e.g. Mulan.) The other half are a bit meatier but could have benefited from more sidequests and such. You revisit quite a few from KH1 to see how they changed and that's always fun. There's a theme to each of the Disney worlds that add to the narrative, in this title mainly being romance and identity. The identity aspect leans toward the relationship between Sora and Roxas, two separate people who are also one person, while the romance theme hints towards the relationship with Sora and Kairi. Oddly enough, both themes also seem to work towards Sora's quest for Riku, who is in the midst of his own identity crisis while Sora desperately tries to find him. Huh. Interesting.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

This is my favorite Kingdom Hearts game. This was one of the few I was able to play as a teenager and even after all these years I still adore this game to death. It works without knowing anything else about Kingdom Hearts. You don't need to know about Ansems or Nobodies or Time Travel; none of that shit. This is the story of three friends that get torn apart by their own ignorance and one bitter old man on his quest to change the world. Its one story split among three perspectives, and each character you play through the game with you understand the grander narrative. You understand why Aqua's best friend snapped at her, why Terra's little brother is so ready to die. You also get to hear Leonard Nemoy yell "KEYBLADE" in the same cutscene three different times.

I love this game so so much dammit. The combat has a fun collection system where you earn action commands and combine them to make better attacks and healing moves. The worlds in the latter half of the game are also really creative and fun to explore, though you get a limited area to move around in for each character. If you have played previous KH entries, there's a lot of references to make you point at the screen and go "THAS AXEL THAS MY BOY HE'S A LIL GUY HERE." Anyway I'll shut up. Play this game.

Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance

Never ask me to explain the plot of this game. They added Inception to Kingdom Hearts and also Time Travel. And the story is mostly told through unlockable backstory cutscenes including the premise. Yes, the introduction to this game's story is an unlockable. Despite this, the story is pretty effective. This is Riku's second time in the spotlight since Reverse/Rebirth, though the game is once again split between him and Sora. It dissects Riku's character arc in a similar way to Re:Coded, except uhh this one isn't a computer simulation, he is a Dream. Completely different. It asserts his desire to continue as Sora's protector, and realizing this it is him who ultimately triumph's over Angst Teen Xehanort, saves Sora and passes the Key Test. He's no longer on his Way to the Dawn. He's in the light. It's sweet.

The worlds in this game are based around vertical movement. There's a new Parkour mechanic that lets you wall-step-flip around basically everywhere, and to compensate this the worlds are Huge. Since they're dreams, that also means they're pretty empty of anything to really do or explore. They are pretty at least. There's also a pokemon mechanic where you collect lil guys. I did not realize this mechanic also determines Riku and Sora's stats until the final boss, which caught me off guard. I see why this is a lot of people's fave KH game of all time, but its a little too busy for me.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

This is an odd one. I first played this game two years ago at college alongside Oracle of Seasons in my spare time. Eventually my phone-I MEAN MY AUTHENTIC GAME BOY COLOR- broke and I thought I lost my save data for both. Turns out I did not and finished through the last few dungeons. This game makes solid use of the time travel mechanic, which is a mix of Ocarina's time travel and Alttp's world jumping. It's fun to jump sporadically between 1000s of years and see the world in different eras. That rock? Used to be slightly over to the left. Would you look at that.

The dungeons had a larger focus on puzzles in comparison with Season's love for combat, which is probably why this is the more beloved twin. Some of the dungeons had me waddling back and forth for too long until I figured out what to do. You can link these games up to get bonus items like the Biggoron's Sword which is fun to complete. After beating both games, you get an extra final boss against Ganon and a scene hinting towards the beginning of Link's Awakening, which is a nice touch. And then Nintendo declared them two separate Links, for some reason. Beh.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

Oh hey. One of the most beloved games of all time. I have played through this games more times than I know. Probably around like. 6 times I used to boot this game up and play all the way up to the Forest Temple and then restart for some reason, I don't know how many times I actually got to the end.

Its a game that eases you into its idyllic fantasy world before dropping you headfirst into the apocalypse you inadvertently caused in your quest to destroy evil. Its never a melodramatic game though. Its about the loss of innocence. Maturity. Learning that the evil was always there, before the King of Thieves took over the world, before you were even born. It even came from the place you are trying to protect. But there was always goodness too, there was always light. There are always friends to be found in dark places. The style and presentation are peak. The dungeons are rich in aesthetics and well made puzzles. The time travel mechanic is honestly a bit undercooked. But this game is fantastic. Quintessential Zelda.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure

I straight-up forgot I played this. Its fun though. Its a relatively short game, but compared to its predecessor, its a huge improvement. The game plays out in stages like the first Four Swords game, but usually in explorable environments, like towns and forests rather than generic volcano and cave themes. You control all Four Links at once, moving them into different formations to move rocks or put fires out. Or you can do it with friends controlling each Link. I did not. :(

I was mainly interested in this games story from a lore perspective. It features the return of Vaati, the Wind Creep who Lova Da Ladies, but with the addition of the Rise of Ganondorf. You are sent to stop him from a wise owl, Ganon allies himself with Deku Scrubs, attacks the Gorons, and is eventually turned into a monster by his own lust for power. It seems more and more like a retelling of Ocarina in a different light. Eh. Maybe I'll write about my Zelda timeline theories in a different post. Not here though

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

BACK TO KH BABY! This is a rhythm game, so I don't have too much to say. I've never really played any rhythm game before this, and I'm not sure if this one is on par with the more well-known rhythm titles out there, but I had a good time with it. Its great for people who like Kingdom Hearts music, lmao. You have a lot of unlockable character groups to play through the music with and level them up, but once I unlocked the Days trio I didn't really go for the others too much. Xion my beloved.

The story is hilariously shallow, almost insulted considering its Kairi's first solo outing, technically. She's on her quest to learn all the KH lore she missed out on, and eventually finds a repressed memory of a grown adult monologuing at a toddler for fifteen minutes. Also that her boyfriend is alive so that her boyfriend's boyfriend can go save him. Her boyfriend's boyfriend is also her boyfriend. Fight me.

Kingdom Hearts III

People were. So upset when this game came out. Acted like it was the biggest disappointment since the ill-fated economic crisis of '07. Sure, yea, that's a reference. Well this is the first time I've gone into it and I'm here to say this is probably among my favorite KH games of all time. Strong competitor with BBS. A lot of the criticisms of the story and gameplay weren't wrong per-say, but the issues with this game, such a goofy dialogue, bizarre pacing, and over complicated exposition dumps, are problems with the entire series that fans of the series, in my opinion, have come to see as endearing elements of Kingdom Hearts. Its funny to watch the big cloak guy point at Sora and say "Darkness Light Heart Darkness," and see Sora gasp in fear, while also realizing the importance of that dialogue to the story. It's a feature, not a bug.

The worlds in this game are its biggest asset. They are huge, heavily detailed, heavily explorable areas with tons to discover. Hell, the Pirates of the Caribbean world acts as a slightly smaller Wind Waker. The game adds in most of the mechanics from all the spin offs to give you a lot of toys to play with, such as parkour or sharpshooting, that are easy to forget but a treat to use when you actually remember them.

A central theme of each of the Disney worlds is happy endings. Hercules finally takes down Hades for good. Mike and Sully are able to visit Boo without risk to her safety. The dead Baymax from that one Disney movie gets a redemption arc. Frozen and Tangled play out exactly as their movie which is kind of boring. This correlates with the happy endings the rest of the supporting cast get to experience, including the initially tragedies of the BBS and Days trio in scenes that genuinely got tears out of me. But Sora doesn't get a happy ending. He sacrifices himself to strong-arm everyone else into their perfect circumstance. Literally breaks the rules of time and space to force the universe into saving his friends at the cost of his own life. And then Hell turns out to be Tokyo so its not all that bad. It makes you feel for the boy. This game also lets you play as Kairi in the DLC which makes me happy.

Alright ending this here. I've played way too many games this year this isn't even half. Also only including games I've finished, and games with definitive endings. I played Mario Kart 7 but that doesn't rlly end, ya know? Will try to write these weekly, even if no ones reading them. But if you do read them tell me what you think! Gonna switch over to books next week to even it out. I swear I don't just play games. This is the last Kingdom Hearts game on this list too I swear.

#kingdom hearts #zelda #pokemon #ace attorney #my post #reviews #scarlet #trials and tribulations #kh3 #kh2 #birth by sleep #melody of memory #long post #oracle of ages #ocarina of time #four swords adventures #white 2