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!

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.

So I’ve been a One Piece fan for the better part of 20 years. I started watching it in late high school/early college, as the anime was going through the Skypeia arc. I kept following the anime since, though at some point (maybe Impel Down? I don’t exactly remember) I switched from anime to manga. So yeah, I’ve been in this shit for a while.

When this was announced, I figured it was probably one of the worst candidates for a live action reimagining. And, having seen previous Netflix attempts (namely Death Note and Cowboy Bebop), it was clear they were very competent at completely fucking up anime adaptations. But I love One Piece, and figured I’d go against my better judgement and give it a chance anyways, even as trailers came out and it didn’t look good (legitimately the trailers were not solid).

So let’s go and see if I was right, or if, for once, an american live action adaptation that’s actually good actually happened.

At one point, the PS5 had 2 games that were nowhere else, and that were basically the only real reasons to own a PS5, since a PS4 or PC got you basically everything it got. Well, this changed earlier this year when Returnal had a solid PC port, and that changed further last week when Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart also got a PC port. Now the PS5 only has… FFXVI, which will come out to PC later (it was announced for PC first) and Spider-Man 2 (coming later this year), which will come out to PC later (as evidenced by the previous games coming to PC later). So basically the PS5 has nothing.

I was pretty happy to see this get a PC port, because I didn’t want to get a PS5 just to play this one game. And I certainly have things to say about this game… So yeah let’s do that.

Let’s go!

Pikmin is one of the really interesting Nintendo series that, even though it doesn’t get THAT much love, it still gets some. It’s not like StarTropics, you know. Nintendo clearly still cares about Pikmin. And, after years of having told us Pikmin 4 was coming soon, it came out. It looked really interesting in the trailers.

So let’s see if it’s good! I think I’ll keep this simple.

So this was a bit of a surprise announcement. The Atelier series is pretty popular nowadays but that wasn’t always the case. In fact the first 5 games in the series never made it outside of Japan (more if you want to count side games). Atelier Marie is the first game in the series and it took until now to finally get a western release.

So I grabbed it, to see where the series started. Let’s see if it’s good!

I’ve been playing this. I’m 19 hours into it, and I’m kinda feeling like not playing any more of it.

So I figured I wanted to talk about it a little bit because there’s some fuck going on in this one.

So let’s just go!

When this movie was rumored and eventually properly announced, my excitement was basically at zero. We already had a perfect Mario movie back in the 90s that is unironically really fun even though it’s only a Mario movie in name, and this was being made by Illumination… who didn’t make very good things in my limited exposure to them (I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the Despicable Me movies, and those weren’t… very convincing).

But trailers happened and they were weirdly solid, the movie came out in theaters and the reception was wildly positive… so I picked it up when it came out on Blu-Ray.

So let’s see if it’s good why don’t we!