I finally wrapped up on Bowsers Inside Story (DS), initially the game was meant to last a week at most, but somehow its taken me a summer to complete, weirdly the play counter is almost exactly 17 hours whereas its felt a lot longer. Thats not a slight on the game though, i've had a great time with it, the humour is where the game really shines and thats consistent from start to finish. Every team of Bowsers minions I rescued offered respite in the form of humour, and it plays with the conventions of a traditional Mario game in some fun ways, whether that being what you expect, Bowsers a thug but his hearts in the right place, or some unexpected twists (who knew Monty Moles where such dicks?), and with Broque Monsieur and the fat toad mistakenly diagnosed with the blorbs illness, two of my favourite Mario characters have been added into the Mushroom Kingdom. Another thing which is consistent throughout the game is the introduction of new mechanics, even entering the last section of the game it added something new and never resorted to the Zelda trope of throwing everything you've learnt into the last dungeon. Some elements worked better than others, avoiding bombs on conveyer belts and moving a platform through tight spaces with a stylus where frustrating tasks made more so by the controls not being tight enough. Special attacks like Luigi's Snack box (or whatever its called) and using an army of Kameks where inventive and satisfying to use. The world was small enough to traverse quickly, which is good because I was finding that I'd forget my task between playing the game and wander aimlessly between the two castles. I found the section with the laid back surfer squid thing in space and learning a new attack to be the only bit of unnecessary padding in the game, which is impressive for the time I spent with it. The use of three protagonists in the game, and separating them at various points made returning to areas two or three times bearable because I was always finding new paths to explore with the individual characters abilities. It also helped keep enemies fresh throughout, where there wasn't a massive variation of things to fight, fighting a walking tree as Bowser rather than Mario and Luigi was tactically different and helped keep the game from feeling repetitive. Adding a skill layer to traditional RPG turn based combat was a great design choice, for me it felt like the evolution of Earthbounds rhythm based attacks (I don't play a ton of RPGs so this may be in other games) and instead of combat feeling like the roll of a dice I was working out a course of action to fight most enemies, even the frustrating star things which cloned themselves where beatable when I thought it through.
I don't know if I'd rush to play another Mario RPG, as much as I've loved my time with this game it was an investment of time made much more pleasant by the unique story (for a Mario game) the fact they now seem to make these titles exclusively for the handheld Nintendo systems puts me off a little bit too certainly I hope they iron out issues with save points a bit in future titles, a few times I'd have to give up on sections of the game because I needed to jump off a train. It's still one of the most unique, funny and enjoyable things I've played this year.
Just a quick disclaimer about all the nonsense I've written above about Blorbs, Monty Moles and Snack Boxes, if it doesn't make any sense I apologise.
I had to watch the credits in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4) one final time, the mission I did after the final mission (which sees one of the lead characters exit the game) was by far the best storytelling I've watched in the game (and probably any game) wrapped up in one of the most irritating missions i've played (in any game) I'm so glad I've done it though, as a few times after being killed by one hit off a tank I considered not returning to this mission, it was well worth struggling through the mission and it's lack of checkpoints to see where it goes.
Finally I put Splatoon (WiiU) on for the first time in months to see what the countless patches and additions have added to an already great game. Pleasingly its still a load of fun, although I managed to enter on a rotation of two levels which where in the original release and I stuck with my weapon loadout which has served me pretty well, so I can't say much about whats been added really. The playerbase is still really high, I never struggled to get into a match and even though everyone is now at a level pushing 40 (compared to my 17) I still felt useful to my team and like I wasn't underpowered, I want to jump back into it a few more times to see some more of the new content, or at least some of it!
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