Expi Feliton's Corner

That was… a year alright. Last year, I didn’t just do a year in review for 2019 - in fact, I did an entire decade in review as I looked back on each year of the 2010’s and determined my best and worst years of the decade. I mentioned that 2019 itself was a bad year for me, one of the worst in my life just on the basis of my father passing away at the start. There were some good things that happened during that year - mostly me graduating and getting a Switch, but that one thing that happened just had an incredibly negative effect on the rest of the year. But as we turned into the next decade, the 2020’s, I did have high hopes for this year. Despite what happened at the beginning of the year, I was hoping that 2020 would at least be an improvement and that maybe my life would start looking up. I pretty much experienced the worst thing that could happen to me, so… maybe the only way was up. And I mean… I guess that wasn’t entirely untrue but this year wasn’t exactly what I hoped for eith...

 Earlier this year (oddly enough, around the time I was writing my review of the original DS, Nintendo announced that the 3DS would be discontinued - meaning no more production of any 3DS model. This didn’t exactly come as a huge surprise - after the Switch released many were wondering how long it would be before the 3DS got the axe. But… in a way, it’s kind of sad to me. I grew up with Nintendo’s handhelds - starting with my brother’s hand me down Game Boy Advance and later getting a DS Lite - and the 3DS wasn’t an exception - I got the system for Christmas in 2014 and it pretty much served as my main handheld and non-PC platform during my teenage years. In a way, it still feels kind of new to me - despite being 9 years old, I still remember seeing advertisements and stuff when the 3DS released. I think it’s safe to say too that it’s very likely the 3DS will be Nintendo’s last traditional handheld. With the Switch and it’s concept of a hybrid console doing extremely well it’s safe...

 2015 was, quite frankly, one of the best and most interesting years of my life. This was the year where I got really into reviewing games, cartoons and well, episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - something that started in 2014 but was really in full swing by the following year. It was also the year where I took a road trip with my dad, went to Arizona and got to see family, the year where I first grew interest in Linux, and also a really good year for many of the fandoms I was in. But 2015 was also the year where I’d say I got into PC gaming. I had made a Steam account the year prior, and after being unsure whether PC gaming was for me, by 2015 I was buying a ton of Steam games and putting a lot of hours into playing them, having new experiences that I had never really had before, especially with games like Freedom Planet, Terraria, Blockland, Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures, Team Fortress 2 and Portal 1 and 2. In December, me and my brother began building my own PC, ...

  NOTE: This review is part of a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective Yes, I am still doing this. Background and History Like the first Sonic Advance game, Sonic Advance 2 was developed by Dimps over a period of eight months. With this game came updates to the Sonic Advance engine that, along with the game’s level design, allowed for a greater emphasis on speed and a faster pace for the game in general. Cream was also added to the game - originally planned to be introduced for Heroes but was added to make the game easier for newer players. And that’s about it, I… really don’t have much to say regarding the game’s background and history. Personal Experiences Like the first Advance, I don’t have too many personal experiences with this game to share. Along with the other Advance games, this was just one I wanted to play but never really got around to it until ...

 Last time, I did the first part of my eighth console generation retrospective on the systems themselves - or, at least, the major home consoles. But… what about the games? What games did I really like from this generation? What games did I not like so much? On that note, what about the companies developing the games - what practices have come into play that have resulted in some level of controversy? I think before I start, I should detail what I consider to be an “eighth generation” game. The eighth generation technically started in 2012 with the Wii U (or 2011 with the 3DS if you want to count that), but didn’t really get into full swing until a year later when the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One was launched, plus the Wii U was getting a strong library of games, but even then the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were still going pretty strong too - both systems were still officially being manufactured until about 2016 and 2017, as well as some minor releases for them through 2018. And the...