MarcelSOLDIER
127 Reviews liked by MarcelSOLDIER
yeah the PC ports suck but they got Mori Calliope to do a song for this that's way worse
Great game with some weird anime shit that makes me not like it. Villains suck so bad and I don't like the cast as much as XB1. Combat slaps and the music is phenomical though. Fuck the stupid blade with the polar bear, that was the worst side quest in all of gaming
Sonic Mania
2017
Hmmm.... this game is OK, but I think it would be a lot better with cheap looking 3D graphics and a shitty fake genesis soundfont for half the soundtrack
Halo 3
2007
easily the best fps campaign i've ever played
awesome game and rip to the boss designer who i guess mustve died midway through development or something
Super charming and cute game it was a treat to play through it was so lively the whole time HOWEVER I wish it did a bit more to differentiate from the previous 2D marios. Medals are a cool thing and wonder seeds are usually cool in every level if not kinda become samey near the end but besides those it's just your next 2D mario which is fair, i personally set my expectations too high but i was hoping for something new after 12 years without a new 2D mario. Minor nitpicks are just I also wish the soundtrack was better? more memorable? idk besides a few songs it didn't do it for me, multiplayer could also be heavily improved. Last nitpick I swear but besides the final boss the bosses are so lame it's all the same pretty much the koopalings were more imaginative. idk why player collision was removed. All that nitpicking aside this game is definitely worth playing it's fun time all around I'm glad the future of the series is headed in this direction and the future is exciting. Mario Odyssey 2 on the Switch 2 2025!
The developers could have hidden a new Star Fox game on the Game Over screen, and nobody would ever find out.
Doom
2016
Fast-paced shooter which very much hearkens back to its predecessors.
Pikmin 2
2023
yea ok I didn't technically beat this game cuz I didn't get the ending but I beat the final boss and I don't have all the time in the world so I'm not collecting all treasure as of now
anyways this game is pretty good I thought it was almost better than pikmin 1 but it just has some neurotic things in the game and it can get annoying sometimes and it doesnt help purple pikmin kind of power creep the whole game
I think I prefer pikmins 1 time limit over debt collection? Debt collection isn't bad but once you collect it all it expects you to get all 200+ treasures and lol screw that
idk good game can't wait to play 3
anyways this game is pretty good I thought it was almost better than pikmin 1 but it just has some neurotic things in the game and it can get annoying sometimes and it doesnt help purple pikmin kind of power creep the whole game
I think I prefer pikmins 1 time limit over debt collection? Debt collection isn't bad but once you collect it all it expects you to get all 200+ treasures and lol screw that
idk good game can't wait to play 3
The fact that you have to send over wii-mails to your friends just to unlock the cooler additional stuff has aged very poorly
Pikmin 4
2023
This review contains spoilers
Wish I could say I liked this more after the decade long wait.
Pikmin has always been a unique series. Put on the gamecube, a console known for its creative choices, Pikmin was a cutesy RTS game with AI that was too bad to ever be dependable. It was a weird game, that was deceptively unforgiving in its difficulty. Pikmin 2 came out on the same console with several new decisions made, and overall being a significantly more difficult game. A lot of time passed before Pikmin 3 came out, but it was perfect when it did. Each of these games felt unique from each other, like they were all trying to both build off of each other while still adding its own things, and always having a certain feeling to their gameplay that made it feel like they were only designed for people who actually enjoyed doing difficult, on the fly strategy under a timer.
Pikmin 4 attempts to be a love letter to the series, in that it constantly brings in elements from all of the other games in a way that makes it feel like some sort of anniversary game or victory lap. However, Pikmin 4 also makes a lot of choices that felt antithetical to Pikmin's unique feeling as a series. Frankly, it streamlined everything. It sanded off all the edges. I barely had any deaths in the course of a full playthrough. Oatchi trivializes combat, features like Idler's Alert minimize the amount of effort you have to put into Pikmin management, and the in-game time rewind mechanic takes almost all of the danger out of the atmosphere. I hate to use buzzwords, but they took out the soul and try to appeal to nostalgia to make you fill in the gaps. As an example of this, after the initial shock of seeing the Water Wraith appear, I was disappointed after it failed to actually kill a single one of my Pikmin. Not to say that it doesn't provide any new content, I found the night missions mildly entertaining if nothing else, but it doesn't feel like much.
The game also feels very handholdy in general. You can't go a single day without having some NPC give you a text alert for something that Pikmin 2 would've just let you suffer through. You have a quest log and a skill tree, for some reason. You can purchase upgrades for yourself, some of which are completely game changing and all of which would've just been available from the start if it were any other game in the series. It feels like pointless padding, pointless extra menuing because for some reason Nintendo felt like they needed to add additional rewards to encourage you to actually engage with the game's optional content. A lot of the game's design decisions feel very corporate, where originally the series felt anything but.
To sum things up: this is the first time I've chosen not to 100% a Pikmin game out of sheer boredom.
Pikmin has always been a unique series. Put on the gamecube, a console known for its creative choices, Pikmin was a cutesy RTS game with AI that was too bad to ever be dependable. It was a weird game, that was deceptively unforgiving in its difficulty. Pikmin 2 came out on the same console with several new decisions made, and overall being a significantly more difficult game. A lot of time passed before Pikmin 3 came out, but it was perfect when it did. Each of these games felt unique from each other, like they were all trying to both build off of each other while still adding its own things, and always having a certain feeling to their gameplay that made it feel like they were only designed for people who actually enjoyed doing difficult, on the fly strategy under a timer.
Pikmin 4 attempts to be a love letter to the series, in that it constantly brings in elements from all of the other games in a way that makes it feel like some sort of anniversary game or victory lap. However, Pikmin 4 also makes a lot of choices that felt antithetical to Pikmin's unique feeling as a series. Frankly, it streamlined everything. It sanded off all the edges. I barely had any deaths in the course of a full playthrough. Oatchi trivializes combat, features like Idler's Alert minimize the amount of effort you have to put into Pikmin management, and the in-game time rewind mechanic takes almost all of the danger out of the atmosphere. I hate to use buzzwords, but they took out the soul and try to appeal to nostalgia to make you fill in the gaps. As an example of this, after the initial shock of seeing the Water Wraith appear, I was disappointed after it failed to actually kill a single one of my Pikmin. Not to say that it doesn't provide any new content, I found the night missions mildly entertaining if nothing else, but it doesn't feel like much.
The game also feels very handholdy in general. You can't go a single day without having some NPC give you a text alert for something that Pikmin 2 would've just let you suffer through. You have a quest log and a skill tree, for some reason. You can purchase upgrades for yourself, some of which are completely game changing and all of which would've just been available from the start if it were any other game in the series. It feels like pointless padding, pointless extra menuing because for some reason Nintendo felt like they needed to add additional rewards to encourage you to actually engage with the game's optional content. A lot of the game's design decisions feel very corporate, where originally the series felt anything but.
To sum things up: this is the first time I've chosen not to 100% a Pikmin game out of sheer boredom.
i want to fuck edelgard
Pikmin 4
2023
will bump up to 5 stars if they patch in the ability to make colin shut the fuck up
Pikmin 4
2023
auto lock on makes me want to KILL MYSELF
i don't know if it's just bias talking since it's been 10 YEARS since the last full game, but i REALLY really could not get super into this game like i could with the previous three. the dog (and ice pikmin) completely annihilate every challenge the game could possibly try and set up for you. the previous games offered a challenge of higher squad = higher risk of death due to having to manage a million babies, but higher power. in pikmin 4, you can just make them all board the designated tiny hitbox and then hold x at a boss until it dies.
i think the characters in this game are the weakest. i was already turned away by the custom character creation, since one of the main appeals of pikmin is how you were playing as people with actual lives and actual personalities. i don't WANT to play as myself, i WANT TO PLAY AS A 40 YEAR OLD MAN WITH A WIFE AND CHILDREN
ok minor complaints time. the music is MEDIOCRE! the fact that the story is [REDACTED] is MEDIOCRE! the rewind feature makes it feel like there's no real sense of FAILURE! and really? they really did that to MY alph? MY brittany? MY charlie? i will KILL YOU
also somehow they managed to make pikmin with gyro control bad.
i don't know if it's just bias talking since it's been 10 YEARS since the last full game, but i REALLY really could not get super into this game like i could with the previous three. the dog (and ice pikmin) completely annihilate every challenge the game could possibly try and set up for you. the previous games offered a challenge of higher squad = higher risk of death due to having to manage a million babies, but higher power. in pikmin 4, you can just make them all board the designated tiny hitbox and then hold x at a boss until it dies.
i think the characters in this game are the weakest. i was already turned away by the custom character creation, since one of the main appeals of pikmin is how you were playing as people with actual lives and actual personalities. i don't WANT to play as myself, i WANT TO PLAY AS A 40 YEAR OLD MAN WITH A WIFE AND CHILDREN
ok minor complaints time. the music is MEDIOCRE! the fact that the story is [REDACTED] is MEDIOCRE! the rewind feature makes it feel like there's no real sense of FAILURE! and really? they really did that to MY alph? MY brittany? MY charlie? i will KILL YOU
also somehow they managed to make pikmin with gyro control bad.
Super Metroid
1994
After a revisit due to Dread hype, yeah, this game still kicks ass. This is probably the oldest game I enjoy and for good reason. The control scheme may be iffy due to modern controllers, and one or two bosses might be boring in comparison to future bosses, but everything else about this game is wonderfully designed. This is a game with POWER - not because of an emotional winding well-written story, not because of some fancy cinematics and graphics, but because it feels FUCKING AMAZING. The player feedback is immaculate. You feel like a badass. Always.