Expi Feliton's Corner

Note: This post contains spoilers of a heavily story-driven game. If you have not played this game and want to go into it without any knowledge of the story, it is recommended you stop reading now. Towards the end of last year, I wrote and published a review of Undertale and why it was my favorite game. In that review, I went over a lot of things I respected about the game - how the story was so well intertwined with the gameplay, the overall morality system that the game is themed after, the mini-bullet hell battle system, and just how well it provided somewhat of a commentary of RPG and video game tropes in general. But one thing I mentioned when talking about the story was that my favorite character in the game… was Dr. Alphys. And while talking about that I mentioned that, out of any of the major characters in the game, she was possibly the most divisive within the community - not necessarily a character that the majority of the fandom really “hates” or anything, but from my experi...

  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 I should mention first of all that I am sort of skipping over a game here - Sonic Battle. Truth be told I kind of forgot about it altogether until someone reminded me, but at the same time I had already started my Sonic Advance 3 playthrough. But honestly I should probably mention too that I’m not really that well-versed in fighting games so - I’ve played and enjoyed some but it’s never been a genre that I know very well and understand how to explain the mechanics and whatnot of, and Sonic Battle in particular is sort of a game I haven’t had a lot of experience with or really knew what to expect going into it, so… maybe I’ll get to it at some point. I didn’t review Sonic the Fighters either and I mean… I never promised to review every single Sonic game out there anyway so, whatever. Anyho...

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 It’s… been a little while since I continued my Sonic retrospective series, hasn’t it? Truth be told I’ve gotten caught up in so many other projects and stuff that I kind of just… forgot about doing this series. Regardless, here’s the next game to go over - Sonic Heroes. Background and History By 2003, Sega had been resorted to a third party company for two years at that point. The Dreamcast had failed and was discontinued, but that didn’t stop Sega from continuing the Sonic series. They had already made two Advance games, and now was their next console entry. During development, Iizuka decided against making a straight-up sequel to the Adventure games - I guess with the game being multiplatform he did want the series going forward to appeal to more people outside the core Sonic fanbase. With a ...

Well guys, I’m going to do something that I haven’t done in a long time. I’m going to review… a cartoon! Now, I have a slight confession to make, I… never really watched the original Animaniacs prior to the reboot coming out. And that is really just for one reason… the show ended in 1998, I was born in 2001, so obviously I didn’t really have the chance to “grow up” with this show or anything. The most I could’ve really been exposed to the show by was through DVD releases of the episodes, but my parents didn’t own any and frankly I didn’t even really know the show even was to buy it on DVD as a kid. And I don’t really remember any major channels showing reruns or anything so I just ended up missing out on it. Even when I got really into 90’s stuff in 2011 I didn’t even know anything about this show and I mostly just stuck to 90’s Nick shows so this one just sort of fell off my radar. And admittedly when I first did hear about it (around 2012 or 2013) my opinions of it were somewhat spoi...

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...