(Gonna spew some shit from my mind; sorry if its kind of Doomer-y)

An Audio/Visual masterpiece. I want to get sucked into this realm; a forever realm of lost 90's vibes. Yeah, what the fuck ever I'm one of those "yearning for a time I never even experienced" knowing full damn and well it probably wasn't any better than My Now. This is my beautiful utopia escapism. I want to walk in nature to these beautiful music. I want to feel the childlike joy of Hot Wheel tracks filling my home. I want that imagined feeling of being a Mallrat.

I might be going boomer because I am rapidly thinking more and more that today is just getting worse. I am legit thinking corporations are just sucking the soul out of us all. I kind of refuse to believe that corp market research has found that the most boring minimalist UI and shit is what people want. Who wants fucking modern Xbox UI compared to the first Xbox or Blades? Websites keep updating to look worse AND be insanely worse at providing you the information you need.

Anyways theres my little rant about shit.

I knew nothing of Shadow Man except for some screenshots and an extremely basic theming of Voodoo. I knew it had to be cool though, and that hard headed thought I formed helped me get through the beginning of this game. It starts really slow and aimless. You don't get a map so being dropped in the Deadside feels way more confusing than it actually is, and combined with you don't get any new powers for an hour or two, I felt like I would quit any other game; but I KNEW this had to be cool, and I'm glad I thought that.

Shadow Man's ties to voodoo and industry almost make it feel very Oddword, but instead of the humour, its way more sinister (one might even say edgy). The deadside levels are either these outside areas with tribal like buildings and temples, or inside a huge sprawling, maze-like industrial hell built to create an army. You do get to go to Liveside (living world) in 6 places, and they each have their own setting (prison, florida swamps, bayou).

The gameplay definitely feels like a mixture of Zelda dungeons, Tomb Raider platforming, and boomer shooter weapon variety (but not exactly boomer shooter gunplay). The Tomb Raider-ness made me go "Oh a game thats like old Tomb Raider that I can actually stand to play!" The weapons are neat, even if I didn't use most of them combat, but its fine because they also do puzzle stuff. The gunplay for me mostly consisted of holding the left mouse to charge pistol, and just doing that over and over. You can hold a voodoo weapon in your other hand and use that at the same time, but I found most of them not worth it to use except for one that just shot fire orbs, maybe the magic machine gun skull.

You collect Dark Souls to upgrade your pistol damage, and how much you can charge it. Basically once you start collecting these is when my brain clicked into "I gotta collect it all" mode and I started having fun exploring the levels. There are also Cadeaux, which is your less important collectable. They are used for upgrading your max health, and you need all 666 of them, and 120 Dark Souls, to get the super power-up. (Too bad the game has a bug that can just not count when you collect a Cadeaux and totally fuck up your collect-a-thoning. I ended up with 664/666, had to console command my way to the upgrade.)

The main character also feels completely unique, such a interesting guy.

Oh and let me talk about the fucking music, its so crazy. The music in levels will just be like an ambience, a backing track, and the music man will just put a bunch of sound effects into the track. The Playrooms will have children crying, drills drilling, and squeak toys going off. The Prison/Haunted Apartment levels will have the boss taunt you all throughout the level, but its apart of the music track. I really like it, it makes the game feel so dream-like and hypnotic, with the constant looping of these noises.

Overall this game wormed its way into my brain with its collect-a-thoning, its fun to explore levels, and its charming/fresh style.

Also the entire time I kept going "DAMN? This was on the N64?? I know this is a remastered that has content that wasn't in the N64 version, but even without that shit its super fucking impressive with how big these levels are.

WARNING. SPOILERS OF THIS, AND MAIN ONE PIECE WILL BE SAID. WATCH OUT. (I tried not to say anything too egregious, but still, would rather warn.)

One Piece Odyssey is pretty good I guess. Only really saying that because I love One Piece and I like hanging around with the Strawhats, even if this game has a whatever story and has almost pointless retellings of some of the best arcs. I like Lim, but I bet for damn sure I would be more connected to her in real arc, or maybe even a movie.

I can't decide whether I like the combat or its just serviceable. I like the zones and the skills, its all a very good interpretation of One Piece into a JRPG format. The badges or whatever you equip and the fusing system is fun because I just pumped Luffy full of Attack stat boosts and 2 shoot one of the end game bosses. It can get annoying if you want to worry about fusing all of your party and not 3 of them like I did. If I compared the Strawhats to another JRPG party, I feel like the party dynamic mechanics wise is super lacking however. They all feel very similar, and its because they are all attackers for the most part. Status effects don't really matter in this game, the only thing that really matters it the rock, paper, scissors system they have. Chopper is the only one who super feels different because he is the healer. Other than that, you either have ranged damage dealers, or close range. Like I said though, it is serviceable and I did like it for like 40 hours of game time.

Starting off with Alabasta kind of sucks because 1.) I don't think deserts are very fun areas to walk around because they are fucking huge and empty, and you do A LOT of walking (and backtracking!) in this place, it is the longest memory chapter in the game. 2.) I've already been fouled by another bad retelling of Alabasta, and of course this wasn't gonna be as good as the original, but still, its a useless retelling. No Water Luffy, No From New World when Luffy fights Crocodile. Only bad guys are Smoker, Crocodile, and Bon Clay so most of Baroque Works are just MIA.

Water 7 is fine, pretty standard retelling, its also missing characters but I don't really care as much. CP9 kind of whatever but they had Kaku and Lucci so its fine. I like that Robin is there this time.

Marineford is just a 8-10 fight gauntlet, makes sense, don't really have an issue with that. Stuff with Ace is kind of blegh. You can come to this memory afterwards and you get a small area to explore and you can find an Ace memory cube and its a sweet moment.

Dressrosa absolutely kills it for some reason. Its the funnest memory to do because they actually use a lot of the characters from the arc, and it actually plays around with the fuzzy details of memory way more. I like Traffy interacting with Lim and being weary of her strange power. I like when it changes that iconic moment when Doffy tries to stomp Traffy, THAT SHIT IS SO RAW AND WHAT THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING WITH MEMORIES THIS WHOLE TIME.

The end of the real world story is kind of weird regarding Audio, he kind of just leaves and I was like "okay?, like I get he is kind of redeemed(BIG FUCKING QUESTION MARK ON THAT) but we really gonna let him leave with an ancient weapon?" I did really like that this may be the first look at what an ancient weapon might look like, and its fucking cool. It moves like its an alive fish, I wonder if Pluton and stuff will be like that, I hope so.

Overall, if you love One Piece and the Strawhats, yeah it'll be a cool time.

trying to come up with the most fucked up review to get all the Mario fans pissed off at me

"Uh Mario is lame and a loser"

the crowd flies into rage as I'm drowned in my own blood, but the fellow Mario haters quietly nod their heads in approval