Another quiet month as far as games played. Still focused a bunch on Mahjong Soul, slowly getting closer to Jade Room. I did play a few games, and went back to Balatro a bit because it’s so fucking good. And I tried a fun little thing that I’ll quickly comment on.

Big focus this month will be on all the presentations that happened… I’ll just talk about 3 of them because nothing else was worth talking about. In fact one of the 3 is also not worth talking about, but dunking on Lizardman is worth.

So let’s go!

May sure was a big nothing month in gaming… Other than finally people are catching up to the fact that the industry is crashing… you’re over 10 years late on that realization but better late than never. Now if only game companies also noticed this. Yeah everyone seems to suck right now, good games are rarer than ever, all sequels/remasters/remakes are noticeably worse than the original game (with the only real advantage being that they’re actually available on modern platforms).

As far as games I played in May… Mahjong Soul, Pokemon TVG Live, and Eiyuden Chronicle. That’s it. I did get Skald: Against the Black Priory, but that’s going into next month’s update. So I don’t really have much to put in an update… Maybe I should put my notes about the State of Play here? I’ll think about it. Next month’s update will have not much again, with some notes on all the “E3” presentations.

So yeah… here’s stuff.

Oh I’m late.

I wish  had a whole lot of games to talk about that I played in April, but I took it real easy on new games… and don’t have a PS5 to play Stellar Blade (fuck Sony). Most of my gaming time has been put into being good at Mahjong Soul (literally had ~25 matches with no 4th places… the game is taking its revenge right now though). There is one game I got from Kickstarter, Eiyuden, yjsy I haven’t played  yet (and am kinda dreading it based on how shit the localization is). I will play it soon probably. Not much else is planned for May since there’s just nothing coming out…. And that kinda goes for the rest of the year… Man I chose the wrong year to do monthly update posts 😀

I do have a few things I played in April, not much of huge note but there’s a few things here… And May ain’t  shaping up great either.

So anyways here’s a few things!

Oh hey it’s the end of March. So I should actually be writing about all the shit I played this month. And by shit, and I mean SHIT. A bit of a meh month as far as games, unfortunately.

Several games I was at least a bit excited about, and they ended up being somewhat disappointing in various ways.

So let’s go through the month of disappointment!

This might be the meta. Me commenting about upcoming releases, and simpler posts where I don’t have to struggle to find things to say in reviews anymore. The new era of low-effort content! I enjoy doing it, it’s just the reviews have been hard to write because at this point, even playing a newer game, I struggle to find anything to say about them.

So for March 2024 I am highlighting: 14 multiplats, 2 Switch games, 2 PC games and 2 PS5 games. While there’s one big game here, March is mostly filled with smaller niche games and a few mid-level things.

Oh and another fun thing, near the end of the month, is that the Pokemon TCG finally rotating, so a bunch of cards are going out of the standard game mode. Finally I can take Spiritomb out of my decks which is just there to counter Mew Vmax decks.

So let’s go!

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. This is not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. Of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

You know what? Since I’m so slow at posting reviews nowadays, why not simplify shit around this website? Instead of not putting out content at all, let’s just do possibly-monthly stuff. I’ll still do reviews for some of the more interesting shit if I manage to write them in a timely manner. But, if I don’t, I’ll just make posts like this. That way I don’t have an empty blog with nothing happening all the time.

So the plan is to just… talk about the games I’ve been playing. Say what’s been good, what’s been not good, and give a couple paragraphs about each.

Because it’s my first time doing this, I’ll include stuff from january and february. The included games this month are: Dungeons of Aether, 9 Years of Shadow, Mameda no Bakeru, Chained Echoes, Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Palworld, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Penny’s Big Breakaway, Pocket Card Jockey Ride On and Balatro.

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.

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!

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!