So this is the Game of the Year. Spoilers!

Yeah, when this was announced, I knew it would rank highly as one of my favorite games this year, but I didn’t know exactly how much.

This is a series that us non-japanese people haven’t gotten any of in a long while. The last game in the series we got in the west is Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2, in 2010. We missed on the Pro version of Joker 2 (which is particularly stupid because the Pro version came out in Japan 6 months before the vanilla version came out in the west… where’s the logic?). We missed on Joker 3 and its “Pro” version. We missed on the 3D remakes of DQM1 and DQM2. We missed on all the mobile games (Wanted, Super Light, and the mobile port of the 3D remake of DQM1) except for Tact which barely counts. And we even somehow missed on Terry’s Wonderland Retro which is just a port of the Game Boy version of DQM1 with some extra UI added around the game screen (with stuff like monster stats and labyrinth info)… which is a really fucking stupid game not to port to the west considering an english translation literally already exists from 25 years ago… It IS a fantastic series, but Squeenix hates us.

But when this was announced for a worldwide release, the hype was off the charts. FINALLY we get a new one!

So let’s see exactly how good it is… or whatever it is I’ll write after this, I have no idea.

Every year, the VGAs remind us that they’re awful, boring and stupid. Why do people keep watching? I make sure to watch someone that is “reacting” to it just to be sure they don’t get my view. Fuck Geoff the Lizardman’s shitty show. It’s been a shitshow since when it started in 2003 on Spike TV, and it’s still shit despite the (barely) rebrand.

The nominees are decided by people who legitimately do not play games (Evidence: Alan Wake 2 was nominated in many categories… And Dave the Diver was nominated in the indie category even though it’s literally not indie), the winners are decided by people who legitimately do not play games (Evidence: Pizza Tower wasn’t in the indie category, and lost the one category it was nominated in… Also Alan Wake 2 won in multiple categories), and gamers have very little say on what goes on there. Not a single award given in any of these categories is worth taking seriously, because it’s all decided by people who have no idea what’s going on. Even if there’s audience voting, it actually doesn’t matter because the weight of the audience in the decision is minimal… and, as the Player’s Voice category showed, the people who vote in this stupid show are clearly not qualified to do so when a game from 2 years ago almost fucking wins.

Some people say they watch it for the World Premieres… Okay, watch the World Premieres when they’re uploaded on youtube a few minutes later. Not like they’re ever any good, of course. Or worth suffering through the VGAs to watch them. This year had the Visions of Mana trailer, and Monster Hunter Wilds being announced a year too early which is a waste of time, and that REALLY fucking weird Sega trailer where new games for Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Shinobi and Crazy Taxi (cool announcements, but why announce 5 games in the span of 40 seconds? Stupid trailer). You could’ve just seen these on youtube or twitter. No need for the VGAs to exist.

Fuck the VGAs.

…There’s automatically a Read More button but there’s nothing more to read.

Really didn’t have much to talk about this month. Didn’t really have a good reason to do reviews other than Mario RPG. Like, I finished Ghostrunner 2, that was okay. Almost finished Hardhat Wombat (newest game by some people who worked on Plants vs Zombies), that’s pretty fun. Played a whole lot of Mahjong Soul because I decided to be good at Mahjong and rank up (and I did). But there’s not much I really felt like posting about… Oh and I picked up Cyberpunk, maybe that’ll be okay, I’m not super sure about it yet.

So here I’m highlighting: 3 multiplats, 2 Switch releases and 1 PC release. There’s very little. One of the most hype games of the year… and that’s about it. There’s a few things I decided on purpose not to highlight, and a lot of stuff that didn’t manage to catch even a little bit of my attention…  Like, am I really supposed to highlight a shitty VR FNAF game? Fuck that, just watch the 50 videos MatPat will make out of it. Several other games I say that I don’t feel warrant the highlighting. Also Apple Arcade is not a real platform… Just a reminder.

Oh and Xbox is getting BG3, but I didn’t find a precise date so it’s not in here.

Let’s go and wonder why I bothered posting this!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

I think I need to be the singular voice of dissent towards this game. Not because it’s bad, far from it, but it’s a major symptom of a malady that has been turning the entire gaming industry to shit for many years.

While there was excitement for this game when it was announced, and it’s seemingly doing amazing (consistently staying above Super Mario Wonder on the eshop), it’s also something of a “why would you do this” kind of game.

So let’s talk about it!

I put out reviews this month! And didn’t put out other stuff I wanted to! Yay! Currently playing Ghostrunner 2 and Hardhat Wombat, not sure if I’ll fully review either yet, but they’re good.

So here I’m highlighting: 20 multiplats, 3 Switch games and 1 PC game. As far as anything I’m actually buying… There’s 2 I’m getting for sure, and, like, 1 or 2 maybes. No much there. Lots of interesting stuff that I just happen to not care about.

Let’s go I guess!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Okay so Sonic wasn’t good (see previous review), but Mario, unlike Sonic, has an extremely solid track record of quality up to now (as far as mainline 2D and 3D games go), and the trailers for this were pretty darn solid (I only watched the reveal trailer, but people were hyped for all the following ones too). These are 2 franchises on basically opposite ends of the quality spectrum, and it’s pretty interesting that these bitter rivals saw a release of similar styles of games in the same week.

So really this is just pure hype and, after release, very good critical reception as well, moreso than Sonic. I’ll try not to make too many comparisons in the review itself, but this whole point of reviewing both of these (especially when my review output has been low recently) is to compare them.

So let’s just go with it right now, not much else to say in the intro!

Last week both a new Sonic and a new Mario came out. While Mario Wonder was a pretty hyped game and looked good based on its trailers, Sonic Superstars had awful trailers and wasn’t getting too much hype. When it came out though, reviews were pretty positive. But I think you should always reduce your hype when it comes to Sonic, because his post-Genesis output has not been very good with only a few examples of games that were any good at all.

So today I’m releasing 2 reviews, one for Mario Wonder, one for Sonic Superstars. And I’m starting with the worse of the two.

Also kind of a mini-review, I don’t feel like going super in-depth with this one.

So yeah, let’s go with Sonic first!

Awawa?

Awawawawawawawawa!

Anyways, yeah, October games. September had a few posts because… stuff happened. But still haven’t gotten really any reviews out. I’ve been playing stuff, but I don’t feel like I have much to say about them. Maybe I’ll make a post of micro-reviews or something, I dunno.

So here I’m highlighting: 18 multiplats, 4 Switch games and 1 PS5 game that will come out to PC later. There’s just 1 “for sure” game for me this time, a few maybes though. I actually skipped on including a bunch of stuff because it was so obviously shitty (like that awful VR Ghostbusters game).

Let’s go I guess!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

So this was something I saw a bunch of trailers for and I thought it looked pretty cool. There was a demo that I didn’t play. It was getting pretty good comments. So I figured I’d check it out.

So anyway I just finished it yesterday evening, and here’s a quick mini-review!

Let’s go! There will be very minor spoilers.

Well I am actually writing this intro before a Direct was even announced (today is September 10). Because it’s pretty clear we’ll get a Direct this month at the same kind of time as every September in the last 8 years, and I assume 13 or 14 for the date of the Direct (*Edit: okay it was 14, let me update the title*).

There are rumors going for this one from Pyoro, one of the only “leakers” that has actually been somewhat trustworthy so far. Namely a DK game that SEEMS to be Mario vs DK-related… hopefully it’s not one of the Minis games and actually a return to the original MvD, which was a take on Donkey Kong 94. Then one for an F-Zero game, which he is heavily hinting at being F-Zero 99 (please no). And one that seems to be hinting at a remaster of the 2 Trace Memory games (the Wii one never came out in America), or at least a Wii game and a DS game that are linked somehow. And there’s no other leaker saying anything credible. Would be funny if this Direct was the one where Pyoro lost his credibility.

My true expectation is, of course, that even a bad Direct has one or two cool things, so in the end I’ll probably have some thing to be happy about here.

Well, let’s go and watch this Direct! These are live reactions as I’m watching the Direct.