If you’re a gamer/In the Know you probably heard that FromSoftware recently released a new DLC for Elden Ring. Other companies may have handled the DLC by giving you a few more weapons to play with and the option to put Ranni in a swimsuit. I might’ve been okay with that, but FromSoftware decided to basically give us a whole new game instead. Shadow of the Erdtree’s map isn’t quite as big as the base game, but it’s still quite massive. So much so that it took me three months to complete it. I wouldn’t call my playtime entirely representative, but the point remains that the DLC turned out bigger than most expected. I poured a lot of time into Shadow of the Erdtree. So now I’m going to use this blog post to share my thoughts on it. The short version is that I mostly liked it. The long version? Well…
Read the long version hereWelcome to the Archives, hope you find something you’re interested in.
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Hoi folks! Spartan here with yet another review for the time honored Game Trade, where Mr. Cosmia gives me something to play/review and vice versa. Let’s see what we’ve got today, really hoping it isn’t a FromSoft game…….
Oh, Night in the Woods, perfect! I live to see another day without having to put up with Dark Souls level difficulty of combat. I remember reading about this in a GameInformer magazine once and how it tackles a college dropout returning to a small town where not much goes on. I didn’t drop out of college but I live in a small town so this will be a refreshing perspective to me.
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If I were to create a tier list of animals cats and harp seals would go straight to S tier. Incidentally I’d probably put walruses in the A or B tier, they’re cool too. Just my luck that this iteration of the Game Trade gives some of my favorite animals the spotlight. Welcome or welcome back to the Game Trade Reviews, where a certain Spartan and I each play a video game the other likes and then writes a whole ass blog post about it. This time around I’m doing something a bit different. Some time ago before we conducted these reviews in blog form I took on A Hat in Time, an indie platformer full of quirks. I am not here to rehash my thoughts on the full game. It’s a good game, would recommend. There. Instead, I am simply here to comment on the additional chapters provided by DLC: Seal the Deal and Nyakuza Metro.
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Do you ever experience something that lives rent free in your head weeks after it happened? Something that you feel will stick with you for life? Months later I can still say ef: a fairy tale of the two fits the bill for me. This visual novel, over a decade old, came into my life at the right time. It will have a special place in my heart as I move forward with my life. I can say all of this unequivocally, but I cannot recommend it to everyone. It is most certainly problematic. If it was remotely popular online this year there’d be some vicious things said about it on social media. In some respects it would deserve that pushback. I still love it, but I can’t say I love every part of it. In this blog I will parse through my thoughts on the first half of the story, the first tale. If that sounds like it would be of any interest to you then feel free to join me.
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Hello folks, Spartan here.
As you’ll no doubt see before this one, Mr. Cosmia has reviewed Pikmin 2 at my request, which means I’ve got to make good on my word and review the game he sent me, I sure hope it isn’t a FromSoft game, because I REALLY hate those. and it is….
Oh, a Spike Chunsoft game eh? well Mr. Cosmia had me play Danganronpa and A.I Somnium files in the past and those games weren’t that bad (compared to Dark Souls III and Bloodborne at least). Well, time to review this bad boy. Also, spoilers will be mentioned, so read at your own risk. This is your last warning
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Welcome back to the Game Trade Reviews, where I post my in-depth takes on whatever random ass game my friend wanted me to play. This time around I’m taking a look at a game that got a rerelease pretty recently, Pikmin 2. I played Pikmin 3 on the Wii U almost as soon as it got released, and I adored it. For whatever reason I never went back to try the older games until this opportunity arose. I still haven’t played the first Pikmin game, and it’ll be some time before I finish Pikmin 4. As such, I won’t focus too much on comparing this game’s quality in the context of the series. Not to say I won’t bring up any comparisons at all, but I will do my best to evaluate this game on its own terms. I must also mention that this review will contain spoilers, though this is not exactly the kind of game where spoilers matter that much. With all that out of the way, let’s get into it.
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Hello,
Been a while since I’ve posted on Mr. Cosmia’s blog eh? guess it’s time to change that. It’s Spartan for those who don’t realize this yet. Gaming has been a large part of my identity and I can’t imagine my life without it. If I didn’t pick up that PS2 controller back in 2007 and stick with it as a hobby, who knows where I’d be? certainly not creating this post as gaming is what led me to meeting Mr. Cosmia in the first place. But even with the positive benefits of gaming, there are some certain, scummy aspects to it that have become more prevalent in recent years. And one of those is pay-to-win games.
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Hi I’m back, I’m done with grad school. Got a degree and shit. Pretty cool. Remember that Nintendo Direct where they announced Pikmin 4? Some of you might not have watched that at all. So Shigeru Miyamoto’s telling us he wants to tell us some stuff about Pikmin. That’s promising right? Yeah it was, Pikmin 4’s coming out this month. Good shit. But before there was Pikmin 4 there was an explanation of Pikmin Bloom. They gave us a mobile game before Pikmin 4. If it weren’t for the announcement afterwards I would have bitter feelings towards the game. I probably wouldn’t have tried it. Fortunately, I got my Pikmin 4, or the anticipation of it. I couldn’t resolve that anticipation with Pikmin 4. Instead I could give Pikmin Bloom a shot right away. I never got into Pokemon Go! yet I went for Pikmin Bloom. How did I get taken in so thoroughly? Let’s get into it.
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Hello readers of Cosmia’s blog, it’s me again, Spartan with another article that some of you might find fascinating. Since their creation back in the 80s, video games have come in various forms over the years, most being limited to arcades before gradually moving on to home consoles and making them readily available to the average household. But as the years pass, certain games fall into obscurity and are locked to their specific consoles as technology improves. Granted, there are some older games that have been salvaged through online stores on modern consoles (virtual console on the Nintendo Wii anyone?) but it’s not a guarantee that all games will be ported into the online stores. And that’s one of the main problems being a gamer in general: keeping up with the trends requires stronger hardware, and said stronger hardware isn’t going to come with all of the bells and whistles that the previous generation of consoles had.
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Once upon a time a friend of mine wanted me to play Persona 5, as it was apparently the best thing since sliced bread or something like that. I had heard of Persona 5 beforehand (If I recall, it was in the first ever copy of GameInformer that I ever received) but didn’t have much incentive to try it, as I already had quite a few things that I was busy doing. However, after much persistence from my friend I agreed on one condition: He complete the 3 main games in the Kingdom Hearts franchise (1, 2 and 3). Said games I also thought were pretty great as I grew up with them, and still have a fondness for them to this day. Following his completion of each game he gave a in depth review of them, including story, gameplay and area rankings (my personal favorite part) and I picked up on that following my completion of Persona 5. Thus, the game trade was born and over the years we’ve subjected each other to games we’d think the other one would like, or in my case, be subjected to some of the most frustrating games in existence that I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing. And that leads us to the most recent iteration, where I have to play Disco Elysium: The Final Cut.
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