[blog] Dorobo's Series Completion Journey

Post 38 - October 20th, 2024
Completion: Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC, 2008)

I decided to not play Tomb Raider Anniversary since I've done the same for remakes in previous series, and I also just don't really feel like playing it. I'm also very thankful for Steam cloud saves now since my PC bricked itself 2 days ago and I had to reinstall my entire OS and everything on my boot drive, and my save file was completely recovered!

Getting started in Tomb Raider: Underworld, I couldn't get started because the game crashed on the first cut-scene 2 minutes into the game. Turns out the game has compatibility issues with AMD graphics, so after turning off the fancy GPU features it ran perfectly fine. When I was actually able to get started, I noticed that Underworld is much more refined than Tomb Raider Legend, the graphics look really nice, the platforming quality and controls when they work feel much improved. There is also really nice controller support in this game, something that TR: Legend lacked, I typically like to use keyboard and mouse but I think Tomb Raider games are a little nicer with controller, so I'm happy to see some good support for it. The animation and cut-scene quality is noticeably much better than Legend, there's actually decent facial animations in the game. Auto saving was finally added to the game which was also really handy, while I didn't like the checkpoint system of Legend it's actually really useful in this game. The game also doesn't play like an action movie like Legend does which is a solid improvement. So other than the brief compatibility issues, my initial impressions of the game were really good, it was looking like it'd be a really great experience. And that impression lasted through much of the first level as well.

The first level of the game surprised me as it's underwater at least for the start of it, but the water controls are pretty good. I did get stuck on the very first puzzle as I didn't realize one of the pieces needed would be hidden so far from the puzzle itself, but that was fine. The big octopus dude is kind of cool, but this puzzle is where I got my first taste of some of the problems with the game.The platforming is mostly the same as Legend's with just a few additions like grappling and wall jumping. So the platforming in Underworld is good, when it works, which it often doesn't. The platforming is just really buggy and inconsistent, sometimes Lara just won't grab a ledge for some reason, sometimes she jumps in completely the wrong direction, and whenever she needs to jump backward off a wall, the camera just doesn't turn that direction so it's a leap of faith. The platforming was noticeably problematic like this for much of my play-through, but it got worse later on. The Thailand level was overall pretty average, it's nothing special, but the same platforming problems are of course still present. I also had some pretty horrible frame rate drops early on, but they weren't a problem after the first 2 levels so it was fine overall. The platforming problems are made even worse in the Mayan ruins level, the platforming design is just terrible in that level, and that same terrible quality is still present in Jan Mayen. But it got yet even worse, but I'll cover that in a moment.

One other major aspect of Underworld is the puzzles, which similar to all the previous Tomb Raider games are very hit or miss. Some of the puzzles are kind of cool and fun, but a lot of them are just boring or annoying, the overall puzzles quality is really nothing to write home about. The block puzzles have a major issue though. On modern hardware running at a high refresh rate, the block physics make the block puzzles almost undo-able, attempting to move any block at all made them fly across the entire room. The issue turned out to be V-sync which I usually have turned off, which needed to be turned on the make the block physics not terrible, so after doing that it was fine.

Sadly horrible combat makes a return in this entry, and I'm talking close to Tomb Raider 2 levels of terrible combat. The combat like many other things is similar to Legend's which I actually enjoyed, but the difference is that enemies are way too tanky, and enemy spawns are just spammed at way too many points in the game. And add on top of those combat issues the fact that the camera has a massive stroke in many of the combat encounters making the game nearly unviewable during them. I thought Crystal Dynamics had the combat figured out with Legend, but that sadly isn't the case with this entry. I'd like to note that while I do have a lot of bad things to say about the game, when the puzzles were good and the platforming worked well, the game is really fun and I got a good amount of enjoyment out of it, these are the issues that just drag down that experience. It just seems like the majority of deaths that I had were really cheap, probably a good 90% of them were due to unintuitive or inconsistent controls, annoying combat, terrible camera angles, and Lara's random incapability to grab ledges. It seems like they put a ton of effort into the game presenting like a next gen AAA game, but not into the game actually playing like one.

The combat in the end game was much more bearable, and actually pretty fun with Mjolnir, so it isn't completely bad. I also found it pretty goofy how the wetsuit is a clothing option for the final level, I guess Lara is just built different and can't be frozen to death. But the platforming is at its absolute worst in the final platforming sequence, first of all it's a really annoying puzzle to solve, and Lara would just randomly teleport 3 feet away during some of the intense platforming sections. I died at least 3 times to Lara being randomly teleported off of the rotating platforms, the final sequence is absolutely horrible, there's not even a cool bossfight with Lara wielding Mjolnir either. So overall the best way I can describe Tomb Raider: Underworld is that it has really good presentation, there was a ton of effort into making the game seem like a great AAA experience, but there wasn't enough effort put into the actual gameplay for it to feel anything like that. Every aspect of the actual gameplay is a step down from Tomb Raider Legend. When the platforming worked, it was a fantastic experience, but there are only a few sections in the game where the platforming actually does feel like that and isn't bugging out. My experience of Underworld was just barely on the positive side I'd say, it just has too many issues for me to give a it decent score.

Rating: 6.5/10
Completion: Main story
Time: 9 hours, 6 minutes
Next game in the series: Tomb Raider (2013, PC)
Series progress: 5/11

Other Games
I finally decided to go for a 100% completion in Stardew Valley. I've gotten to probably 90-95% completion in Stardew at least 3 times, so I'm going to try and actually go for it now. It'll be pretty long so It'll probably be my only major single player game for a while, but it is one of my favorite games of all time so I don't mind that. I also finished both of the games of the month I was planning on playing, Death's Door and Inside, both of which are alright, neither of them were exceptional though. I also played Mario Party Jamboree yesterday and I absolutely love it, I almost want to get it myself but I'm not sure if I can blow 60 clams on a game right now. And that's pretty much all I've been playing outside of Tomb Raider.

Other Notes
The Tomb Raider series is going a lot quicker than I thought it would. It's looking like there will be a decent gap from when I finish Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and when Tomb Raider IV-VI releases so I'll probably start another series during that, or maybe even before I'm done with Shadow since I have a very good idea of what I'm starting next and it's a very casual series. I'm excited to start the modern reboot trilogy though, as much as I can appreciate the older titles sometimes the convenience of modern games is so much nicer, that's a part of why Metroid Dread is my favorite 2D Metroid game. That's about it, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 39 - October 25th, 2024
Completion: Tomb Raider (PC, 2013)

The Tomb Raider reboot is a massive change in direction for the series, at its essence it is still Tomb Raider, but the shift to another engine, and shift in gameplay style make this a completely different experience.

I initially was planning on playing this on keyboard and mouse, since it was supposed to be pretty good for combat, but apparently quick-time events are nearly impossible with KB+M, it seems like a good chunk of keyboard inputs were just dropped during quick-time events. And so I ended up switching to controller 3 minutes into the game, but I'm pretty well accustomed to using controller in these games so I didn't mind it at all. The first thing I noticed was the massive improvement in graphical and gameplay quality over Tomb Raider Underworld. Almost everything from the platforming, to the combat, and the movement are extremely well polished. I honestly had trouble believing this game released in 2013 for a little while, it looks gorgeous on max settings running at 120 FPS, and the gameplay feels extremely smooth. The scripting and the cinematic moments are really well done, the voice acting was a little off at times, but the overall cinematic experience was great regardless. Another stark change from the original Tomb Raider games is that Lara is portrayed as more of a (relatively) fragile character compared to the badass Lara in the classic games. Looking through Reddit threads and other forums, modern Lara is actually a pretty polarizing character. So I'll just throw in my 2 cents, reboot Lara isn't particularly well written as a character, but this character shift was a step in the right direction. I want to get into it more, but I think this topic is better saved for the series review so I'll leave it at that for now.

The introduction into the somewhat open world is really well done. Lara initially has few resources at her disposal, but over time as she finds more useful tools and whatnot she gains more mobility. There are a lot of different movement items and items required to progress through different environments, but the game does present all of these in a slower and completely digestible way. By the time I find the next major item, I've already grown accustomed to the one I found before. The environments themselves are really fun to explore, first of all because the movement and platforming feels fantastic, and because the rewards for exploration makes it feel worth doing in the first place. Scrap which is required to upgrade weapons, interesting documents or artifacts, and experience for skill points make the exploration very fulfilling. The puzzle quality is overall decent as well, most of them feel somewhat challenging, while not being overly cryptic or completely progression halting. There are a few puzzles that are pretty annoying, but for the most part they are pretty well designed. Pretty much all interactions with the in game world are great, the platforming feels great, the exploration feels worth doing, and the puzzles are pretty decent. The only complaint I have are the quick time events, they just aren't very fun.

My worst nemesis in Tomb Raider games, combat, is of course in this game. And surprisingly the combat is pretty good in Tomb Raider. I'm not usually a fan of stealth, but using the bow to silently take out enemies was pretty fun. The upgrades that can be unlocked for weapons using scrap really help it out as well, I had my bow almost completely upgraded by the end of my playthrough and I was having a blast using it. Pretty much all of the weapons in this game are viable, while the other 3 weapons are guns the bow is still really fun and effective. The enemies themselves are fine, the only slightly annoying thing about them is that there are a few enemies that have armor, and that armor takes an extra shot to get through. So a lot of the time in the late game completely clean stealth headshots just don't even work, because I guess they just have really good head armor. Though I will admit that the destructive armor system is really good, I can't name hardly any games that have destructive enemy armor, especially not any that released back in 2013 (this game really was ahead of its time). The small boss fights are pretty cool, but I didn't really enjoy the quick time events that all of them have. And there are a few enemy sections where they are just completely overwhelming, it turns into a bullet hell which just doesn't work very well for this game. But overall, my experience with the combat in Tomb Raider was quite good.

The upgrade systems are pretty good too. Again the scrap system is really nice, most of the weapon upgrades are really handy. There's also the experience and attribute point system which is similarly useful. I love how abilities like scrambling and the ice pick became more viable with the attribute points, unlocking the ice pick for melee combat was super cool and genuinely became pretty useful. And the scramble, punish counter-like move was also really great for close range enemies and bosses. I didn't love how many of the upgrades were locked behind Lara's level or whether she had found the right weapon parts, but they were common enough that it never became a huge issue.

The story is pretty decent too. It's nothing too special or spectacular, but it was good enough to keep me at least somewhat interested in it throughout the game. A lot of the time I didn't even know where I was going, all I knew is that I need to go towards the objective marker, but that could just be a product of me not paying enough attention to the story. The main story objectives also have a lot of special scripted events around them, things like a bridge collapsing beneath Lara. I don't know what it is, but it seems like whenever Lara exists in a place, that place is bound to start falling apart within seconds. There are a ridiculous amount of quick-time events of platforms and ledges just crumbling apart beneath Lara. It was kind of goofy seeing how much destruction was caused by Lara's existence in a place, but at the same time it got kind of annoying. Lara gets beat up a lot in this game, the fact that she's able to recover from getting impaled and stepping in a bear trap within a matter of hours is very impressive, but kind of odd. These issues didn't affect my experience too negatively since a well written story isn't something I was looking for from this game, it just has a few problems.

As polished as it is, the game isn't bug-free either. In fact there were 2 game breaking bugs tied to refresh rate and exclusive fullscreen. Both of them are just 1 time bugs at points in the story so it was fine, just a little inconvenient. I also accidentally clipped through a progression door in the final sequence which I thought was pretty funny. I realize that I've been writing a bunch of negative things about the game so I'll finish this review positively, the thing is that these issues are very non-intrusive and infrequent so I'm not weighing them very heavily in my rating. About 90% of the experience in Tomb Raider is just fantastic platforming, fun combat, and good exploration, so these issues are very minor. I overall had a fantastic time with this game, this is the first Tomb Raider game so far that I wasn't able to stop playing, it is just incredibly well made. If this game released today I would still think that it's a good, modern experience, it's very rare to come by this level of polish in a game from 2013, it is just incredible. I'm not usually a fan of action games but Tomb Raider kept me hooked the whole way through. Apparently many even consider Rise of the Tomb Raider to be even better, so I am very much looking forward to it. Tomb Raider 2013 is by far the strongest entry in the Tomb Raider series up until this point.

Rating: 9/10
Completion: Main + sides
Time: 9 hours, 53 minutes
Next game in the series: Rise of the Tomb Raider (PC, 2016)
Series progress: 6/11

Other Games
I'm making relatively slow progress in my Stardew 100% run, but I'll get there, I'm close to finishing Spring of year 1. I'm having just as much fun with it even though this is probably my 10th new playthrough. Hogwarts Legacy is also at it's lowest sale price ever on Steam, and I've been wanting to play it so I picked it up. I'll probably start playing it pretty soon. But other than that there's nothing too new or interesting.

Other Notes
The reboot games are a nice change of pace from the OG games, I typically start to get burnout at later entries in series but the 2013 reboot is a nice breath of fresh air. I still have to play TR IV-VI once the remaster releases though. The reboots are looking like they'll be a much more solid experience than the originals so I'm looking forward to playing them. Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 40 - October 31st, 2024
Completion: Rise of the Tomb Raider (PC, 2016)

I was planning on doing a round of endurance mode before writing this, but I ran short on time so I'm just going to call it good.

The jump in graphics and gameplay between Tomb Raider Underworld, Tomb Raider 2013, and Rise of the Tomb Raider is remarkable. First of all Rise of the Tomb Raider is absolutely gorgeous. It's not often I'm able to crank up a game to max settings without my CPU burning to a crisp, but being a game from 2016 the graphics are less intensive and pretty well optimized. That being said, for an 8 year old game it is breathtaking, they really tried to capture the realism style and it was done extremely well. I have to say though, like many modern games there are way too many camera filters and effects, the game looked significantly better after turning off everything except for bloom. Another big thing I noticed coming from TR2013 is that the animations are fantastic, and there are actual facial animations in this as well. It seems like some really good mocap was used, and all of the animations are very natural and much more immersive than they were in 2013. The cinematics are also improved from previous titles, the cutscenes are really high quality as well as the voice acting, and the story seems decently well coordinated. That being said, the story is fine, it's nothing award winning but it's interesting enough to keep me captivated with it. Overall, Rise of the Tomb Raider is an improvement over Tomb Raider 2013 in nearly every way, which is saying a lot.

The platforming feels fantastic, it feels very natural and the platforming design is well done. I never minded having to travel anywhere because of how fun jumping and climbing around the environment is, in fact I avoided fast travel for most of my playthrough. There are a ton of different climbing mechanics in this title, from rock/ice climbing, to rope sliding and climbing, grappling to swing and grab ledges, climbing arrows, there's a lot. But every single climbing mechanic is incredibly fun to use, there's enough of them to even allow for multiple different platforming and puzzle solutions in a few places, which is a first for this series. One thing that was expanded on in this title was the survival mechanics, more accurately crafting with survival themes. Being able to craft arrows and healing on the fly is really nice, it really incentivizes exploration. There's also the weapon and equipment upgrades, as well as the skill tree. There are also many weapons in Rise of the Tomb Raider, many different swappable variants of pistol, bow, etc. This freedom to choose different styles of weapons, as well as the upgrades for them and the skill tree upgrades allows for a really nice amount of different play styles. Of course there is combat in this game like all the others, but it feels very refined in this, in fact I had a ton of fun with a lot of the combat sections in the early-mid game. The late game combat got a little annoying, but it was still decent. All of the upgrades and skill points, on top of the fun combat makes for a really great combination.

I would say the overall game quality does drop off a bit later in the story, but that could also just be the magic of it being lost a little bit. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy the late game. I played through the Baba-Yaga content near the end of the game. I can tell that Baba-yaga did not have nearly as large of a budget as the base game, but it was still decently well done. Some of the psychedelic and horror elements were pretty interesting and fun, as short as the it was. The final few platforming sequences, after Lara goes underground are magnificent. The very final sequence of climbing up the tower was extremely fun, having all of the platforming tools at her disposal at this point, the platforming was just incredibly diverse and interesting at this point in the game. I didn't enjoy fighting the undying and the large amount of trinity soldiers near the end, but it was overall fine, I did appreciate the armor piercing arrows at the end of the game though. The beginning of the game, especially being thrown into the Siberian wilderness and having to survive was incredibly fun. The end game lost of bit of that magic that I was experiencing in the beginning, but made up for it with all of the really fun platforming options, and overall design. The larger side objectives are also fantastic. The side missions are pretty neat, but the optional tombs are really great. The visual design of the optional tombs is really cool, and the puzzles are for the most part fun and interesting. And the reward for getting through these tombs makes it very worth it in the end anyways, the permanent upgrades that are granted are extremely nice, and made the time is took to solve each puzzle feel very well spent.

The post game content is decent. The whole card and currency system is neat, I do like how it unlocks some new outfits and weapons in the campaign. Putting knight armor on Lara is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I also played through blood ties, which is pretty neat. It's more like an escape room with some pretty cryptic puzzles, I wouldn't say it's my cup of tea, but it was enjoyable. And there's also endurance mode which I've heard some great things about, but I ran out of time to play it today and I just want to wrap this up. Overall, almost every single aspect of Rise of the Tomb Raider is perfect, there are a few blemishes with the combat and a few of the puzzles so it's not an absolutely perfect experience, but it is by far the best experience in the entire Tomb Raider series up until this point. It's honestly pretty close to breaking my top 10 favorite games of all time. I think it just barely squeezes into a 10/10 game for me, I have almost nothing but praise for it. Anyway, I need to keep this review relatively short since I need sleep, so I'll end it here.

Rating: 10/10
Completion: Main + sides
Time: 14 hours, 22 minutes
Days taken: 3
Next game in the series: Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PC, 2018)
Series progress: 7/11
^ Added a days taken because of the cool start day feature added to the site :)

Other Games
There's really not much new on this front, I've just been playing the usual online games, and I've been working on my Stardew 100% some more. I made it close to the end of Summer year 1, and I'm on track to finish the community center early in year 2. Cooking all of the recipes and crafting everything is going to be a really big grind though, but I've been saving up some spare crops and fish for cooking so I should be able to handle it pretty easily.

Other Notes
I'll be starting Shadow of the Tomb Raider right around Dia de los Muertos which is really neat timing. Speaking of, it just hit 12 AM as I've been writing this, so happy Halloween! So it's looking like I'll be finishing Shadow of the Tomb Raider within the next week or two, which means that there will be a whopping 3 month gap between finishing it, and waiting for the TR IV-VI remaster to release in February. So I will be starting and maybe even finishing a new series within that gap. I've heard less good things about Shadow of the Tomb Raider, so I'm hoping that I'll at least decently enjoy it. Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 41 - November 4th, 2024
Completion: Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PC, 2018)

I continue to surprise myself with how quickly I'm completing these, I thought I had a lot more to play when I started my session today. Also I'm going to be experimenting with review writing formats and structures so my next few reviews may be just slightly different than how I have typically been writing.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the final game in the survivor reboot trilogy, and the most recent Tomb Raider game as of writing this. It improved upon many aspects of Tomb Raider 2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, but it also fell short in many other ways. The story is decently written but not very well told, the platforming and climbing is actually improved upon and is extremely fun, the combat has many of the same strengths and flaws as the previous entries, and visually Shadow of the Tomb Raider is absolutely stunning, it is one of the prettiest games that I have every played. Overall there are many ups and downs with this game, at least comparing it to its predecessors.

I'll start with the story, it is an interesting continuation of Rise of the Tomb Raider, it really held a lot of potential and I thought it was pretty decent throughout a portion of the game. The theming around the Peruvian jungle is really cool, and the story is themed around it very well with the Incas and the Mayans. The main thing that brought the story down was the storytelling. There are a lot of cut scenes in this game and not all of them are the best quality. The facial animations and everything in the major cut scenes were fine, but a lot of the smaller cut scenes it seems like they skipped out on motion capture, so they just didn't look nearly as good even compared to the cut scenes and animations in Rise. Of course its not just the cut scenes contributing to it, some of the running escape sequences just seem to be awkwardly scripted. It really feels like the game just jolts you into a completely different direction in the story as well to the point where they just didn't seem connected, like when Lara gets taken to the forgotten city or when Lara and Jonah get attacked on the boat. To be honest I'm forgetting what even happened in half the story. But the Tomb Raider games are necessarily known for their story so the story aspect is more of a minor concern. The thing I'll be most heavily weighting here is the gameplay and visuals.

The gameplay is mostly good, it's based off of the same system as 2013 and Rise which is fine. And there's absolutely some improvements made to it in many areas, the platforming and climbing feels extremely refined like it's the culmination of all the platforming in the entire series. The platform/environment design could be better, but it's still very good. The platforming just feels like a nearly perfect evolution of the rest of the series, it is extremely well done. The tombs themselves are pretty good as well, there's the great platforming in them, some decent puzzles, and most of all they feel like actual tombs. They actually feel like the dangerous stereotypical tombs that are all trapped with secrets all over, with a big emphasis on the traps since those were lacking pretty heavily in previous games. The puzzles are fine, a few of them are really good and enjoyable, and there are a few that are annoying and frustrating. I wouldn't say the puzzles are anything special, when it came to the tombs I found the platforming more enjoyable than anything. My only major complaint about the tombs is that there isn't enough of them, of course I did skip a lot of the optional ones but in the main story alone there could be a few more of them. Another major aspect of the gameplay is the combat, which does feel slightly refined, but all of the same issues persist. The weapons have stats on them, damage, fire rate, etc. It does not feel like the damage of weapons does anything for the combat, no matter how much damage Lara's bow does, all it essentially comes down to is that unarmored enemies take 1 headshot, and armored enemies take 2 headshots. The combat would have been significantly more enjoyable if the armored enemies weren't designed to take no damage on the first hit, it makes the major gimmick of the combat which is stealth almost completely worthless at any sort of range. An easy solution would just be to give high damage output weapons armor penetration or something. The combat leaves a lot to be desired, because I really do like the base system, the flaws of it just make it very tedious.

The perk and leveling system are also still in place, and I have pretty much the same thoughts about them. The perks are really handy and I do think it works really well as a leveling system, the only thing is that it feels like many of the perks are just kind of worthless, there's a lot of throwaway perks. The equipment upgrading is actually a little worse, there were a lot of different materials added to the game, and just a few hard to acquire materials were just a massive bottleneck for upgrading gear. Something new that was added was more clothing options including clothing crafting. I like the new clothing system since it allows for upper and lower body options with different effects, one thing that really brought it down though was needing to repair or craft clothing after unlocking it, working through a crypt and unlocking clothing, only to find out I can't even use it because it needs to be crafted is really annoying. There were a lot of great clothing options from the DLCs though, including some retro Lara clothing and some with cool effects. So the new clothing system is cool, just a little annoying.

Now that story and gameplay are out of the way, I'll get to the more technical stuff. Visually, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the prettiest games that I've ever played. The amount of detail in the textures and geometry is absolutely ridiculous, I'm pretty sure there's some sort of witchcraft that allows this game run so well with how remarkably detailed the environments are. The amount of effort put into performance optimization in Shadow is very respectable. The graphics are almost comparable to Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring, both of which released a number of years after Shadow of the Tomb Raider and even then Shadow still performs much better than those two ever have. The graphical and visual fidelity of Shadow of the Tomb Raider is extremely impressive. There's one other thing that really drove the immersion of Shadow even higher, which is the sound design. The audio quality is of course good, but what stood out to me the most is how the audio reflects the environments so well. Any noises made in caves or enclosed areas echo very believably, and when near roaring rivers the noise that Lara makes is actually overpowered and muffled. They went well above and beyond just 'walking on grass makes grass footstep noise'. Both the graphics and the sound design are outstanding in Shadow, and create the best sensory experience in the series.

Of course my playthrough wasn't without technical problems. Pretty early on I started getting frequent crashes, and after investigating apparently my exact model of GPU, the 6700xt has major crashing issues with this particular title. Thankfully turning the graphics from DX12 to DX11 did fix the crashing and I didn't have another one, but DX11 is outdated at this point, so I had about a 50% performance drop and frequent stuttering throughout my entire playthrough which was frustrating.

In terms of content Shadow is little lacking, it doesn't have the endurance mode or any sort of arcade mode that Rise has. There are some challenge tombs that I didn't really bother with but that's about the extent of the content outside of the main campaign. The open world did also feel pretty cramped, it isn't nearly as open as Rise was so the world felt pretty linear to traverse, but I don't think that was too detrimental to the experience for me. Overall though, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a pretty fun experience, it offers some of the best platforming in the series and it shares many of the fun same elements from the rest of the trilogy. There are just a few flaws with it that drag it down, while I love the theming around the Peruvian jungle, all of the ancient temples and the foliage are completely stunning, the gameplay just lacks the same soul that the previous titles have. To be completely fair to it, Tomb Raider 2013 and Rise are absolute masterpieces so comparing Shadow to those is almost unfair, which is why my score of it is still pretty high, because by the average standard it is still a great game.

Rating: 8.5/10
Completion: Main story
Time: 11 hours, 26 minutes
Days Taken: 4
Next game in the series: Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered (PC, 2025)
Series progress: 8/11

Other Games
The only other games I've played in the last 4 days are Stardew Valley which will be going on for quite a while, as well as the few same multiplayer games that I'm always playing. In terms of Stardew I have made it to Fall of year 1, and I'm still on good track to finish all of the bundles in early year 2. I might change this section to 'other media' at some point, because I likely won't always have something interesting to say about the other games I'm playing, especially when I'm completing a game every 4 days.

Other Notes
I did not think I would get to the final game nearly this quickly, I played through the last 5 games in less than 4 weeks. I thought I wouldn't finish Shadow until like December lol. What this means is that there is going to be a gap over 3 months long waiting for the remastered collection until I can even start the final 3 games, which means I won't be finished with the Tomb Raider series until next March most likely. Tomb Raider is also the only series I've been playing, so I am going to start another series very soon to fill in the gap. Each game in this new series is fairly short, especially the first entry so I'll probably be making another post within 4 or 5 days. Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 42 - November 6th, 2024
Series Start: Mario Kart
A reminder that my playthrough of the Tomb Raider series is now on hiatus until Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered releases, which will be on February 14th, 2025.

The mainline Mario Kart series consists of 8 games:
-Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992)
-Mario Kart 64 (N64, 1996)
-Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA, 2001)
-Mario Kart: Double Dash (GC, 2003)
-Mario Kart DS (DS, 2005)
-Mario Kart Wii (Wii, 2008)
-Mario Kart 7 (3DS, 2011)
-Mario kart 8 Deluxe (Switch, 2014/2017)

I grew up on Mario Kart Wii, and Mario Kart 8 is one of my favorite racing games so I'm really excited to play through this series. There will be a few rough spots, like Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit which are generally disliked. But all of the other games are some of my favorites so I'll have a good time overall. I'm going to aim for 100% completion of each game, the only exceptions being ones that I'm having a really bad time with, like I did with Super Mario Kart, and like I probably will have with Super Circuit. The later games in the series can be a little long, but they are so fun and casual that I don't think I'll have a hard time with it.

Completion: Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992)

Super Mario Kart has not aged well. This is a short game, so it'll be a short review.

Super Mario Kart is what jump-started both an incredible series, and a whole genre of kart racing games. It's also fun seeing 3D games on the SNES, it's surprising to see how well it runs and how decently playable it is. Jumping into my first race, the first cup on 50cc, it was very odd getting used to the physics and some of the controls, and especially the visuals. The physics are not good in this game, turning at all throws you to the side, the drifting mechanic is almost completely unusable because of how tight it is, and bumping into any other player or a wall can get you into a stun-lock. Bumping into any of the CPUs in this game is devastating in this game, because the CPUs are hardly, if not at all affected by being bumped, so turning back to recover from a bump just bumps you straight into them again. The CPUs also don't follow the same turning logic as the player, so they can just completely sidestep into the player. One of the most limiting factors of Super Mario Kart is the visuals, the entire map is flat, with 2D pngs of players and some track hazards. The SNES can not display enough pixels for that to be comfortably viewable. It's incredibly easy to accidentally bump into a wall because they can be so difficult to see, and it is extremely difficult to judge depth and distance of faraway players and obstacles at times.

All of those issues are primarily with the hardware limitations of the SNES, as well as understandable oversights for a company that has never made a racing game before. There is one thing that makes this game nearly unplayable for me, the CPUs. All of the CPU players blatantly cheat, they get free speed boosts as long as they are behind you, and they get an infinite supply of items that they will throw with perfect precision at you, which are often almost completely unavoidable. This alone makes Super Mario Kart one of the most unenjoyable games that I have ever played. Literally every single race that I played, Bowser was tailgating right behind me, throwing an endless supply of fireballs at me with perfect precision. No matter how well I played, the free speed boost that the other CPUs get meant that they were always right behind me and spamming items, and inevitably passing me after making 1 tiny mistake like bumping into a wall. I do have to note that this is mostly bad in 100cc and above, it was still annoying in 50cc, but it was at least somewhat enjoyable. I had to force myself through all of the 100cc races, it was insufferable.

The only saving grace of this game is 50cc, which was actually mostly enjoyable for me, trying to do any other difficulty is absolutely horrible.

Rating: 5/10
Completion: Main Story
Time: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Days taken: 2
Next game in the series: Mario Kart 64 (N64, 1996)
Series progress: 1/8

Other Games
I have not had a chance to play Stardew in the past few days, I'll probably try and play some tonight. Now that I'm playing more of a casual series, I hope to start playing Hogwarts Legacy soon as well. But yeah there's really not much I've been playing.

Other Notes
Okay so Mario Kart is off to a rough start with this first game, but it only gets better from here. Also I decided it would be good to add a series start section for these posts when I'm starting a series, just to give an overview as well as a forecast for what's to come. Mario Kart 64 will also likely be a short completion, these first couple games in the Mario Kart series will likely only take me a few days. I would've liked to write more but my brain is absolutely fried today, so I'll just keep it short here. Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 43 - November 7th, 2024
Completion: Mario Kart 64 (N64, 1996)

This was another rough one. Again, this is a pretty short game so I don't have too much to write about it. I did skip 100% completion on this game, I got gold on most of the cups, just on the higher cc's I gave up on going for gold.

Coming from Super Mario Kart, this was definitely a breath of fresh air. The drifting is actually usable, there's more items and they feel much more useful than they were in Super MK. The controls are pretty good as well, though they did feel a little too slippery and made slight adjustments really annoying to make. Probably my favorite part of Mario Kart 64 is the tracks, they are absolutely iconic. The tracks are pretty diverse and there's a decent amount of them, a few of them were too long like Rainbow Road, but for the most part the tracks designs are great. Many of the track hazards are a little too brutal, falling into any ravine has a really long respawn time, Bowser's Castle probably has the worst of it. The sort of 'tumbling' mechanic is odd, the amount that the player gets flung from getting hit by a projectile or a hazard just seems inconsistent, sometimes they will send you flying into the air, and other times they barely slow you down. Overall, all of these mechanics make for a decent game, it was fairly enjoyable for a bit, at least at 50cc.

Anything past 50cc, the rubber banding CPU balancing absolutely ruins the game. Hitting an opponent with a banana or a shell literally does not do anything, they will be right behind you again 3 seconds later. It's the same thing with mushrooms and golden mushrooms, after using an entire golden mushroom, the opponents just rubber band up to you in a few seconds, it is absolutely abysmal. Similar to Super Mario Kart, this game is only enjoyable on 50cc because the CPUs are reasonably difficult, but anything past that is almost luck based. Overall most of the base mechanics in Mario Kart 64 are pretty good, I really enjoyed all of the races at 50cc, but everything past that the rubber banding just really made it a horrible experience. But it is a large improvement over Super Mario Kart, it is a mostly coherent racing game. In terms of the Mario Kart series this entry was generally a good step forward.

Rating: 5.5/10
Completion: Main Story
Time: 4 hours, 15 minutes
Days taken: 1
Next game in the series: Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA, 2001)
Series progress: 2/8

Other Games
I started Hogwarts Legacy yesterday and I'm really enjoying it so far, the combat is pretty enjoyable and I'm loving the world environments. I can see myself putting a good amount of hours into it. Stardew progress is still really slow right now, I want to get 100% within a reasonable amount of time, but time I haven't had much of recently. But yeah again there's not too much.

Other Notes
It's looking like the Mario Kart games are going to get better with each entry for the most part. I don't care for the older ones too much. From Double Dash onwards I am extremely fond of all the games, excluding Mario Kart 7 because that's the only other one I haven't played, but it seems really good too. I've heard some bad things about Super Circuit, but I've also heard that it's better than Super MK and MK 64 so it should be a better experience. Hopefully I'll be able to write more for the later games, a combination of these games being short, and me not knowing how to review racing games make it tough for me to write much. The later games are longer though and I should start to get into a groove with it so the coming reviews should be a little better. Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 44 - November 10th, 2024
Completion: Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA, 2001)

Time for my 3rd, and hopefully final post of complaining about rubber banding. I was close to getting all of the gold trophies on the base tracks, but 150cc Rainbow Road broke me so I'm missing one unfortunately.

Starting in 50cc I had a ton of fun in Mario Kart Super Circuit, the controls feel nice although a little slippery, the item selection pretty good, the track designs are good, and the soundtrack is great. Being on the GBA, the limited resolution makes the game pretty hard to view, it's pretty tough to make things out sometimes but I ended up getting used to it. It was also nice to see that drifting is pretty usable in this entry. While the items are nice the item balancing is pretty bad, it's possible to get a star in 2nd place which is pretty annoying. One big thing I did appreciate though is the track length, the tracks are decently short without feeling too short, and most of them are around the same length. There aren't any tracks that feel way too long which is nice. Most of the tracks were pretty unique too aside from all the boo and Bowser's Castle levels, they all have unique soundtracks and visuals which is pretty cool. Apparently all of the SNES tracks are in the game too, and they aren't too tough to unlock. I ended up doing that for 50cc and it was really enjoyable, a couple of the SNES tracks were too narrow and weren't translated over too well, and despite all of them having 5 laps they were pretty short, but they were really fun to see and play through on 50cc.

100cc is a really nice sweet spot, because the races are challenging with the speed and the CPUs, but not unfairly challenging most of the time. I do want to take a moment here to discuss one of the major flaws with the game, the points system. Each Grand Prix has 2 point systems, which are the cup placement, and the point placement. The point placement doesn't matter quite as much since it doesn't affect any of the unlocks, but I just want to talk about how horribly made it is. So points are earned and lost through little things, like coins and item use. For whatever reason, simple little things like the character that you use, the items that you use, if you go off road or touch the brake button whatsoever, can lose you a significant amount of points. Going for 3 stars in a grand prix is a complete joke, the amount of tiny things that can just remove points is ridiculous. I opted to just ignore the points since they don't really matter anyway, but I feel horrible for anyone wanting 100% completion in this game. As I played more, especially when I needed more fine precise control to make turns, I noticed that the steering wheel occasionally can completely stick for half a second which caused me a lot of frustration. Most of the 100cc races were fine, but a few of the races just don't seemed designed for anything above even 50cc.

The 150cc races are terrible. On top of the speed and racing being more challenging, the CPUs become more skilled, are able to use more items. The CPUs on higher CCs are able to play completely flawlessly, which on 150cc when your bumping into a ton of walls and having trouble controlling the kart, is just a complete mess. And the boost pads in 150cc, and especially Rainbow Road just straight up shove you off the track unless you have godlike control of your kart.

Genuinely though I had a ton of fun with the 50cc races, and some of the 100cc races, just the 150cc races were completely terrible. The base game is really good and there's a lot of potential here, but it's again ruined by some bad track design, and some pretty poorly designed CPUs.

EDIT: I modified this review a little because there actually isn't rubber banding in this game apparently, when I originally thought there was. I think the CPUs are just capable of playing flawlessly at times, which on higher CCs just seems ridiculously fast. So I'm still going to keep my initial rating of it, because the CPUs still don't really play fair regardless.

Score: 6.5/10
Completion: Main + sides
Time: 5 hours, 15 minutes
Days taken: 2
Next game in the series: Mario Kart: Double Dash (GC, 2003)
Series progress: 3/8

Other Games
I've made great progress in Stardew recently, I just finished the Stardew Valley fair and got 1st place in the grange display. I'm also really close to finishing all the bundles, I just need some of the more rare items like the rabbit's foot. I played some more Hogwarts Legacy as well and I've still been really liking it. So yeah other games are just business as usual.

Other Notes
I would've spent a little more time on Super Circuit, maybe doing unlocking the SNES tracks for all CCs or something, but I ordered Mario Kart DS off of Ebay and it delivered much sooner than expected, and I am really looking forward to it so I'm moving on. I think I'm starting to get into the reviewing groove for this series now, I was able to write a bit more this time and I feel pretty good about it. I have once again stayed up way too late writing one of these so I'll cut off my lingering thoughts here, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 45 - November 11th, 2024
Completion: Mario Kart: Double Dash

I was hoping to get full 100% completion in this game, but I was having a really hard time even getting gold on 150cc, let alone mirror mode. So I ended up getting gold on all GPs on all CCs except mirror mode, which is still pretty good to be fair.

Mario Kart: Double Dash is a massive jump for the Mario Kart series, the series went from a couple of games with clunky controls and PNG graphics, to a full fledged AAA Nintendo game. First the controls aren't slippery at all which feels great, it's overall pretty tight. Visually it looks pretty nice, and the character and kart selections really add lot to the experience. The main gimmick of Double Dash is having 2 riders per kart, one who manages the items, and one who drives. And the 2 characters can swap whenever, and can even hold individual items which is super nice. Generally the item system is good, there's a good amount of strategy with swapping drivers and managing items, I found that aspect of it to be really good. One slightly disappointing thing is that you can't hold items behind you like the other games in this entry, so sometimes blocking red shells could be annoying. The controls were also a little odd to get used to with the dual characters, but I ended up getting pretty used to it. While I'm disappointed that there's no hopping in this game, the drifting system is actually really good. The double joystick wiggle to get a drift boost is actually a great way of making them useful and giving boosts.

The track designs are great, baby park makes its debut in this title which is fantastic. And pretty much all of the tracks, and the soundtracks in them are iconic. There are a few tracks that don't have unique theme songs and just have generic music sadly, but they are all still pretty great. The kart and special unlocks for completing courses is really great too, getting another kart or a new battle map was fun. All of the Grand Prix on 50cc and 100cc are really fun, 50cc could actually get pretty uneventful and boring, but 100cc was a perfect balance with tougher CPUs, but still a reasonable difficulty. And just as all of the earlier games in the series, 150cc just sucks. Most of the tracks actually seem pretty well designed for 150cc apart from a few, but the difficulty is pretty bad. Rubber banding of course exists in this game, not only that the item balancing is terrible, falling into a lower place is almost unrecoverable sometimes because it's possible to get useless green shells and bananas in any place. And the amount of items that are thrown at the player in 1st place is utterly ridiculous, there were a couple instances where the moment I entered 1st place, multiple red shells and a blue shell immediately started chasing after me. Just the number of items in general is horrible, being in the cluster of racers in the middle placements, there is such a stupid number of items being thrown around.

On some of the tracks in 150cc the kart bumping got remarkably annoying, I lost way too many grand prix attempts simply because a heavier character, like Bowser or Donkey Kong are able to shove me completely off the track. This is especially true for mid-air collisions which send you completely flying and give no hope of recovery. While 150cc is a struggle, it was mostly fine for me. The final 2 cups, and especially the special cup is a really bad offender of all of these problems, I just wasn't able to have any fun in the last couple races there. So overall, Double Dash has a really great base, 50cc and 100cc are both really fun, just anything beyond that is pretty unenjoyable. But compared to the games that came before it is a pretty strong entry to the series.

Rating: 7.5/10
Completion: Main story
Time: 3 hours, 26 minutes
Days taken: 1
Next game in the series: Mario Kart DS (DS, 2005)
Series progress: 4/8

Other Notes
You may notice that I completed Double Dash ridiculously quick, I'll just give some background here. I actually used to do pretty heavy time trials for Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8 and even got into some speedrunning. So when it comes to the modern Mario Kart games I'm just slightly cracked, so it may seem like I'm completing a few of these very quickly. Anyway, I am very excited for these next few games, since I played MK DS growing up, one of my earliest memories is playing MK Wii and I've put hundred of hours into it, MK 7 is the only one that I haven't played, and MK 8 is my favorite of the series. MK DS will probably take me longer since I'm actually going for 100% from now on and it's just a longer game. I should hopefully have more to write both in the review, and in the more games section next time. But thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 46, November 16th, 2024
Completion: Mario Kart DS (DS, 2005)

I'm kind of struggling with this series, not because of the games, but because I'm having trouble deciding what I consider completion to be. Of course 100% completion is mostly clear, but I'm mostly just going for the main story and a few extras, but what is the main story in Mario Kart games? Generally I'm going to consider a playthrough of every grand prix from 50cc-150cc to be main story completion, and any side modes such as battle, missions, 200cc and Mirror mode, as well as going for gold cups to be extras. I just don't want to grind 100% completion for all of these games and end up getting extreme burnout because of it (pun intended). These games are all pretty similar so I just don't want to get sick of them within a few games.

That being said, here's the review. Mario Kart DS is a very clean and refined game compared to all of the previous entries. There's a good selection of karts, all of which have a wide range of unique stats. There's a good number of characters, and the unlockables are really fun to get. The controls are really tight and feel very polished, they don't feel too slippery at all and the only poor handling in the game comes from kart stats. The wiggle drift system is really good, there's a lot of timing involved with it so it adds a great layer of strategy to taking corners and light turns. It's also really great being able to hold items behind the kart, as well as being able to grab another items while doing so. And the custom emblem that can be drawn and put onto the player kart is really fun, I ended up drawing NES Samus for mine and it was really fun having it on my kart in every race. The bottom DS screen is also utilized really well, the map is very helpful for keeping track of other opponents and makes green shells actually able to be dodged from behind.

The items are mostly good. I do find it annoying how red shells are able to hit from the side, and how they sometimes just completely fail to navigate around a corner. Even when holding a banana or something behind you red shells can still hit you from the side which got irritating. But all of the other items seem pretty well designed. The item balancing on the other hand just isn't good. CPU's are able to get red shells in first place, there is no cool-down on blue shells so it wasn't uncommon to see a few blue shells within a single lap. One of the major problems with it is the 'item' stat on karts, each kart has a stat that effects the quality of items they're able to get, which just completely breaks the regular balancing of items. The item stat on karts just shouldn't exist, it just way over-complicates the balancing and makes the game horrible at times. There are a few other problems with the game, like the star and letter ranking system which doesn't seem to be based in any logic. Bumping into walls kills momentum too aggressively, and the player could use a few more i-frames after getting hit by items.

The track selection is pretty good though, this is the first entry with 32 tracks and it's a good amount of content. The retro tracks are also really fun, it's cool to see some of them overhauled. Honestly a good number of tracks just feel basic and boring, they're pretty uncreative, but there's enough good tracks in the game for it to still be very enjoyable. A lot of the retro tracks are very good, and a few of the original ones are great too, there's just quite a few forgettable ones in there. I do wish that kart and character unlocks were better distributed across grand prix milestones, a good majority of the unlocks are just 150cc milestones, there are hardly any in 100cc and 50cc. And sadly this entry has some of the worst and blatant rubber banding in the entire series, the bottom screen map makes it possible to see the CPU's accelerating and traveling at ridiculous speeds just to catch up to you. It's not just off screen though, opponents will not hesitate to go twice as fast as the player on screen just to pass the player. Rubber banding even applies to opponents in front of you, many times when I was in 3rd or 4th place I would see the opponent in 2nd speed up ridiculously fast just to catch up with the opponent in 1st, so the rubber banding isn't even focused around the player which makes it way worse.

It is possible to outpace the rubber banding by doing a technique called snaking, which is just aggressive drifting which can be done in straight lines in certain karts, and after using it I did have a lot better of a time. That honestly doesn't excuse it though, you shouldn't have to utilize a meta just for the game to be fair and fun, the rubber banding is horrible. Even with the rubber banding though, Mario Kart DS did grow on me over time, at a certain point you just learn to live with all of the problems and it becomes more enjoyable. At the end of the day this is really the best entry into the series up until this point, it's a very fine game. The missions are a new addition, they are what you'd expect, just some unique challenges like collecting a certain number of coins or defeating enemies with items, and even bossfights. It's a cool feature, it just didn't do too much for me, a few of them were pretty fun though. Considering Mario Kart DS is on a limiting handheld it's impressive that it manages to be one of the better games of the series. Despite the poor item balancing and pretty terrible rubber banding it's still a very good time, back when I was younger I would play this with family in the wireless play and I had a ton of fun with it. Mario Kart DS is a great game that is unfortunately riddled by a few problems that can make it a little frustrating.

Rating: 8/10
Completion: Main + extras
Time: 5 hours, 45 minutes
Days taken: 5
Next game in the series: Mario Kart Wii (Wii, 2008)
Series progress: 5/8

Other Games
I've actually been playing some other games recently. I've still been playing Hogwarts Legacy and Stardew Valley, in fact I've made great progress in Stardew, I'm at 25% completion with the community center being practically done in winter of year 1. I also picked up the Sid Meier's Humble Bundle as a birthday present for myself, mostly so I could have all the DLCs for Civ 6. Despite the DLCs being so poorly rated, they add a ton to the game and I've been liking it a lot. I also convinced some friends to get it too so I'll be having a good time with that. I also got Golf With Your Friends since it's on sale for so cheap on Steam, and it's also just a really good time. I feel like I'm getting a little distracted from my secondary backlog which is Stardew and Hogwarts Legacy, but it's been a good time.

Other Notes
I now own the rest of the Mario Kart games, the only one I was missing was MK 7 which I was gifted for my birthday, so I won't have to worry about Ebay or shipping times for the rest of the series. There's a series that I didn't even have in my backlog that I am pushing to the front of the queue, Luigi's Mansion. This is entirely because I also had Luigi's Mansion 3 gifted to me, and I don't want to push it to the very back of my backlog and have it sit on my TV stand for 5 years while I finish everything else. So the next series I'll play will be Luigi's Mansion, which I will also probably be able to start before TR IV-VI Remastered releases. Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 47 - November 21st, 2024
Completion: Mario Kart Wii (Wii, 2008)

Mario Kart Wii holds a special place in my heart, it is one of the first video games I remember playing in my childhood, and it is in fact the very first video game release that I can remember experiencing, quite vividly surprisingly. It is also one of the first (and only) games that I ever tried to speedrun and I was pleasantly surprised to find I had a lot of the same muscle memory of it from all those years ago. And so it's going to be tough to write this review, because the game is not as good as I remember it being. It'll also be tough because I forgot to write notes while playing this.

Mario Kart Wii, from it's tracks, to its soundtracks, its character roster, and items, is absolutely iconic. Most of the tracks in this game are incredibly high quality, the most notable for me being Coconut Mall, Koopa Cape, Mushroom Gorge, and of course Rainbow Road. And the OST for all of them are great. The character roster is also pretty large, and includes some loved characters like Rosalina, Diddy Kong, and Funky Kong. This is also one of the first Mario Kart games to give major overhauls to some of the retro tracks, with the SNES/GBA tracks being put into 3D, and updated textures for everything other than the GBC tracks. There's also an online mode which isn't really around anymore, but I remember having fun with it back in the day. The battle mode always gets a lot of hate, but I personally always really enjoyed it. In terms of roster and tracks Mario Kart Wii is an incredibly strong entry to the series. And I do appreciate that motion controls aren't mandatory in this game, it was very enjoyable with a nunchuk. Though I still had to use motion for tricks and wheelies which got a little annoying.

The races themselves are a little bit of a different story. The kart physics are just okay, when regularly racing it feels pretty decent, and there's good variability in the feeling of every kart and bike. The collision physics on the other hand are pretty bad, bumping into any wall will completely stop you. And speed and character weight make way too much of a difference with kart-kart collision, they will often just send you flying halfway across the track. This is the first game in the series to offer bikes as a vehicle, which is really cool. I don't understand why 50cc is kart only and 100cc is bike only, at least the first time around, it's such an unnecessary restriction. The bikes are a little overpowered as well, there is almost no benefit to using a kart, bikes are just straight up better in almost every way. Wheelies are fun but not a very balanced mechanic, and inside drifting dominates most of the tracks in the game. So overall the physics and kart/bike mechanics are pretty mediocre. There are also a few tracks that don't seem well balanced for the game speed, on 150cc a few of the tracks just have horrible turns.

The biggest issue with Mario Kart Wii is the item balancing. I'm convinced that Nintendo put no effort into making sure the items balanced the gameplay. There is absolutely no cooldown on blue shells, and lightning and POW blocks are also way too frequent. And on top of that every one of these items completely stops you in your tracks bringing you way behind, and have no i-frames. There were many races where it felt like I had absolutely zero control in the outcome of the race, because 3 blue shells would get thrown at me in a single lap, or maybe there are 2 or 3 lightning strikes. And more often than it should happen, multiple of these items will hit within a very short time period. Crap like a blue shell, pow block, and a red shell hitting you within the span of 3 seconds. There is such a ridiculous dependence on luck in every single race. And add on top of it some pretty egregious rubber banding, it is literally impossible to gain any large lead on the player behind you, which also means that when you inevitably get hit by 1 or 2 blue shells they will pass you. Powerful items are way too frequent in this game, and all of the items are just generally way too powerful. And there's everyone's favorite item, the thundercloud which actively handicaps the player, which you get right around 6th place. The thundercloud is straight up a curse, it is always a bad thing when you get one making it easily the worst item in the entire series.

Sometimes the chaos is fun, but it isn't when you're actually trying to go for a grand prix. Mario Kart Wii has all the potential to be a very strong addition to the series, but much of my enjoyment of it is ruined by the terrible item balancing and pretty bad kart collisions. At the end of the day it still is a fun game, there's a great amount of optimization that can be made to racing strategy and time trials which is great, and there's a lot of variability in all the characters, karts, and bikes. I just had a really hard time getting through 150cc, it got remarkably frustrating because it felt like a majority of my lost races were due to bad item luck.

Rating: 7.5/10
Completion: Main + sides
Time: 6 hours, 30 minutes
Days taken: 5
Next game in the series: Mario Kart 7 (3DS, 2011)
Series progress: 6/8

Other Games
I've made some pretty big progress in Stardew, I've been doing a lot of skull cavern runs and I'm closing to unlocking Ginger Island. I'm also getting my ancient fruit wine production ramped up so I'll be making bank pretty soon. I've been making gradual progress in Hogwarts Legacy, I don't play it a ton but I'm getting through it, and I'm enjoying it a fair amount. I've also been managing my Civ 6 addiction pretty well, I've been balancing out my free time between all of these games pretty good.

Other Notes
Mario Kart 7 is the only MK game I've never played so I'm excited to try it out. I should be able to get through a lot more for the next month or so since the holidays are coming up and my school semester is coming to a close soon. The Luigi's Mansion games are pretty short so I'm hoping to finish it by the end of December, after which I will start a new series! As always, thanks for reading, and until next time!

As someone who has been playing a lot of Mario Kart recently for my own blog, I can say that It's a series that really deserves more... y'now, critical looks! It can be such a well designed series. Wii was my childhood Mario Kart, so I was really interested to see your thoughts. And I 100% agree. The chaos can be a bit much. But that makes sitting down with some friends to have a truly stupid time all the more fun! The one thing I don't like are the retro tracks. I'm really not a fan of them. Like, at all. They look so washed out and dull a lot of the time, if that makes sense. But Sherbet Land has penguins and I like penguins.

7 is one I've spent a lot of time with, so i'm interested in your opinions on it. Keep up the good work!

As someone who has been playing a lot of Mario Kart recently for my own blog, I can say that It's a series that really deserves more... y'now, critical looks! It can be such a well designed series. Wii was my childhood Mario Kart, so I was really interested to see your thoughts. And I 100% agree. The chaos can be a bit much. But that makes sitting down with some friends to have a truly stupid time all the more fun! The one thing I don't like are the retro tracks. I'm really not a fan of them. Like, at all. They look so washed out and dull a lot of the time, if that makes sense. But Sherbet Land has penguins and I like penguins.

7 is one I've spent a lot of time with, so i'm interested in your opinions on it. Keep up the good work!

I love the series, it's just a majority of the games share the same issues. Wii will always be one of my favorites though just because of the nostalgia value, and I'll always be able to have a lot of fun with it playing with siblings. I can agree with the retro tracks, they definitely did not get the same amount of attention as the new tracks, and the track selections aren't the best either. I do think the series is in a really good spot with Mario Kart 8 right now though despite the fact that it's the only entry in the past 10 years. Thanks! and I'll be sure to check out your thoughts on the series when you get around to it on your blog.

Post 48 - November 26th, 2024
Completion: Mario Kart 7 (3DS, 2011)

Turns out the 3DS and DS consoles still hurt my hands to use.

Mario Kart 7 released at the start of Nintendo's Dark age, where a lot of what they released was mediocre at best, and this game definitely shows that a little. Mario Kart 7 is just kind of basic and boring, there's nothing too memorable about it at all. But when considering the issues that previous Mario Kart entries have had, boring and basic isn't completely a bad thing. The racing physics are perfectly fine, the drifting is pretty good, and the item balancing is pretty well done. So as boring as it is, it's nice to have a Mario Kart game that doesn't have very quirky physics or item balancing. Mario Kart 7 does introduce a few mechanic though, the glider is a really great addition and I love how it's implemented into the retro tracks. And the new underwater sections also add a lot and I enjoy how it was also put into some of the retro tracks. It also introduced deeper kart customization, with options for wheels, body, and glider. All of these things returned in Mario Kart 8, so Mario Kart 7 really did have a large impact on the series, as forgettable as it is.

The track selection is decent. Many of the tracks are believe it or not, pretty boring, but there are a couple of great ones like Rainbow Road and Music Park. The soundtrack is pretty much the same deal, it is very boring. Another thing that Mario Kart 7 introduced is the longer, non-lap based tracks that are sort of like a 1 lap track which are also a great addition. The selection of retro tracks is great, pretty much every single retro track added is a banger, and again I love how they implemented the new glider and water mechanics into them. One complaint I do have is that the trick timing off of ramps feels pretty bad and inconsistent, but the tricks themselves are improved over Mario Kart Wii since they actually make you go faster in this. The item balancing is also pretty good, there still are some annoying moments and blue shells can seem a little too frequent, but for the most part the items balancing is actually good in this entry. I'm also very glad that the star ranking system for grand prixs are actually coherent for once, requiring 1st place for all 4 races is a pretty fair requirement for 3 stars.

Mario Kart 7 isn't all good though, it does have its fair share of problems. One of those is the kart 'ragdoll' physics after getting hit by an item, in addition to stopping the player, items physically move the player to the side and can send you off a cliff. And getting hit by an item on any kind of slope will send you sliding down it for some reason, so the ragdoll physics are pretty bad a lot of the time. And it wouldn't be a true Mario Kart game without rubber banding, the rubber banding in this entry is similar to how it works in Mario Kart 64 but just a little less bad. How it works is that in every GP there are 2 random CPUs that are just significantly more skilled than all the others. To be fair the rubber banding is only noticeably horrible in 150cc, 50cc and 100cc were pretty enjoyable. So pretty much every single 150cc race plays out the exact same way, there are 2 CPUs that are constantly tailgating you in 1st, and if one manages to pull ahead into first, they pull WAY ahead and become almost unreachabley far, and it turns into a game of just trying to catch up with them. The 150cc races were just incredibly annoying being every single one just played out in that exact same way. Waluigi Pinball really highlights the issue, there is a cannon at the very beginning of the race which should shoot all the players at the same speed, and yet you can see the CPUs just jolting ahead faster than the player. It is very noticeably bad.

Mario Kart 7 is one of the better entries in the series, while it's pretty forgettable many of the features that it introduced are great. A lot of the balancing problems in the series are absent in this, the item balancing is quite good, and even stuff like the kart stats are very well designed, there are multiple valid kart builds focused around different stats. Mario Kart 7 also features probably the best retro track selection up until this point. So while it isn't my favorite I do have a lot of respect for it.

Rating: 7/10
Completion: Main story
Time: 7 hours, 30 minutes
Days taken: 4
Next game in the series: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch, 2014/2017)
Series progress: 7/8

Other Games
I've been playing a lot of Stardew and Hogwarts Legacy as usual, I've been making very large strides towards Stardew 100% though, I made it to spring of year 2 and I finally have some truffles going. I'm also very close to catching all of the fish, I just caught the final legendary fish yesterday. Hogwarts Legacy is also just doing fine, I'm making decent progress in it and I'm still enjoying it. The Steam fall sale starts tomorrow so I'll probably grab a few games, most of which will probably just be side-backlog games or non series games.

Other Notes
I'm not doing so great with writing all of these Mario Kart reviews, a lot of them are just so similar so it feels like I'm writing different renditions of the same review. I am looking forward to being able to write some different reviews pretty soon. I have completed a lot of Mario Kart 8 already, including 3 stars on most of the regular and DLC cups. So my Mario Kart 8 completion will be more of a cleanup of my already existing save file, so it'll probably be pretty quick. Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

Post 49 - November 30th, 2024
Completion: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2014/2017)

This is still my favorite Mario Kart game.

While Mario Kart 8 is 10 years old now, Nintendo's dedication to improving it over the years, things like overhauling game mechanics and doubling the amount of tracks in the game makes it the best entry in the series. The racing physics feel great, drifting is extremely well done, the item balancing is pretty decent, and the amount of content in the game is insane. It brings back the great mechanics from Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart Wii, the glider, underwater sections, and half pipes which all work extremely well. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the definitive Mario Kart game, it is just about the best experience you can have from the series. A majority of the tracks are retro tracks which are all pretty well done. The new tracks are also good too, MK8 rainbow road is very underrated, Big Blue is probably my favorite MK track, the long tracks like mt. Wario are great, and the random generation of excite bike arena is great and I hope to see it again in the next game. Most of the mechanics are implemented extremely well, almost everything about it is better than every entry before it.

Most of the new and retro tracks are great. There are a few lame ones, I have never liked the desert tracks for example. But the anti-gravity is used really well in all of the tracks, they got extremely creative with it especially on electrodrome and similar tracks. The anti-gravity mechanic alone adds a ton of potential to this game and future games, it opens up a ton of possibilities for creative track designs. I love how overhauled many of the retro tracks are, especially the SNES and GBA tracks many of which are completely changed with new mechanics added, and some depth added to them. The base game retro track selection is alright, but with the booster pass the selection is perfect. There are a few too many tour tracks, but honestly I'm glad they're being preserved and used in some way, because the concept of courses changing every lap is really cool, and I hope that gimmick sticks around. 96 tracks is an insane amount of tracks, it is extremely difficult to get bored of this game and I can see myself playing it and having fun with it for many more years.

I actually have experience with the original Wii U version too, I played it back in 2015 and 2016, and I had a lot of fun with it even then in its unpolished, content lacking state. Deluxe improves on it in every way though, the item system is better, the graphics are better, the battle mode is actually good, and of course the track selection is fantastic. The character roster is really good too, there are too many filler characters in my opinion with all of the koopas, metal character variants, and baby characters, but it's still a very solid roster, though I just stuck with Rosalina as I do in every game. I have seen people complain about the non-Mario characters like Isabelle, villager, and Link which I have to disagree with, just purely Mario characters is a little boring, especially if the pickings are so slim that they have to put all of the boring koopa characters in the game. Overall the amount of content in the game, as well as the quality of the content is very good.

The racing mechanics are very well polished, drifting is really well done, and the vehicle customization is pretty large and diverse. I like how bikes were added back in after their absence in MK7. Unlike MK7 though, there is a very clear meta in this game which just gets a little boring, I did ignore it a little bit by choosing my own character outside of the meta, but at the end of the day it was very convenient to just use a meta kart combo to get through 150cc, mirror, and 200cc. This game is skill based enough that you can make most character kart combinations work pretty well though, but it's pretty clear how good the meta is which I always find to be not very fun. So that kart physics are almost perfect, the kart and character balancing is overall pretty good with a few outliers.

And again, it wouldn't be a real Mario Kart game if there weren't some terrible mechanics. There is rubber banding in this game of course, but honestly it's not nearly as bad as previous entries, it only ever gets annoying at times in some 150cc races. The CPUs are really annoying in 200cc though as they have abnormal turning radii, and are able to make the 200cc turns much better than the player can which is irritating. Probably the most annoying part about the CPUs is that they target the player, and are also capable of sniping with green shells way too well. It's not just that they're good at sniping, green shells actually bounce off of walls directly towards the nearest player, so green shells practically have homing which is really bad. The amount of times that I had to restart 200cc cups because I got hit by multiple greens shells is abysmal. The implementation of a few of the items could be way better, like the green shell and piranha plant.

Mario Kart 8 is the best entry in the series, the amount of content is incredible, the racing mechanics are extremely good, and the item balancing is overall pretty good. The amount of updates the game has gotten, even since deluxe released have benefited the game really well. It does share a lot of flaws with previous entries, but overall it is a fantastic game.

Rating: 9.5/10
Completion: Main + sides
Time: I have no idea, I probably have a few hundred hours in this game, many of which were spent in multiplayer. I can't give a solid answer.
Days taken: Again, no idea
Next game in the series: That's it!
Series progress: 8/8

Other Games
I've been getting on the fighting game binge again. I got Guilty Gear Strive in the Steam sale and it's pretty fun. Street Fighter 6 is still my favorite, but Strive is a decent alternative. I caved into the micro-transactions in SF6 and got the Juri pajamas, and Cammy's outfit 3, considering they are my mains I think it's fine. I've mostly been playing ranked online in SF6, and I've spent a lot of time in training mode. I've played a decent amount of Stardew and Hogwarts Legacy as usual, both of which are still making slow but sure progress.

Other Notes
I do not enjoy writing Mario Kart reviews anymore, so I'm glad it's almost over. I think the whole series review will be fun to write, just as an overview of the series, but it's tough to write reviews for these games specifically, especially all in sequence. It's okay though, I still had fun with it. I'll try to write the series review today possibly within a few hours, but if not it'll be tomorrow. It feels good to be wrapping up another series, thanks for reading, I'll have the series review up soon!

Post 50 - December 1st, 2024
Series Completion: Mario Kart

As of writing this, the mainline Mario Kart series consists of 8 games:

-Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992)
-Mario Kart 64 (N64, 1996)
-Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA, 2001)
-Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GCN, 2003)
-Mario Kart DS (DS, 2005)
-Mario Kart Wii (Wii, 2008)
-Mario Kart 7 (3DS, 2011)
-Mario Kart 8 (Wii U/Nintendo Switch, 2014/2017)

Just to clear up a few terms in case anyone isn't familiar, I'm sure not everyone is into Mario Kart or racing in general. Mario Kart games gauge completion off of Grand Prix's, which are collections of 4 tracks each that the player must race through, and get points depending on their placement. After the 4th race the player's final placement is determined by the total number of points based on placements in the races, and the same goes for all of the CPUs racing, so the player's final placement depends on the player's and the CPUs overall performance throughout all of the races. Then gold/silver/bronze rewards are given accordingly. And then CCs are the racing speeds, typically there's 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc, and in a few games 200cc. Every Grand Prix must be done on each of these CCs for completion. The first game in the Mario Kart series was Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo. It was somewhat revolutionary for the time, the SNES is a pretty limited system and to have a 3D kart racer running on it is pretty impressive, even with all the corners that had to be cut to make it happen. As revolutionary as it was for the time, it isn't a very enjoyable game. Because the first game introduced a mechanic that sticks around for every entry into the series, but it's probably the worst in this one, rubber banding. Rubber banding is a common technique used into racing games put in by the developer to slingshot or 'rubber band' racers in lower places faster in order to catch up with the player in 1st. This rubber banding ends up making the game completely unenjoyable, in every single race there's a CPU immediately behind you throwing an infinite supply of items, and sadly this trend sticks throughout much of the series, although thankfully more mild than it is in this first entry.

Mario Kart 64 for the Nintendo 64 is the 2nd entry. The racing mechanics are much improved over Super Mario Kart, and the tracks aren't 2D PNGs in this game, they're fully modeled. These things alone make Mario Kart 64 a much more competent entry and it's still fairly enjoyable today, it's aged much better than Super. But the rubber banding is still pretty bad in this entry, not quite as bad as the first game, but still pretty bad. It has the exact same story of having 1 or 2 CPUs constantly immediately behind the player, no matter how well you play the game. As much as an improvement it is over the 1st, my enjoyment was still pretty shattered from the egregious rubber banding. And unfortunately this is a trend that will be present in every single one of these game paragraphs. The 3rd entry into the series is Mario Kart: Super Circuit for the Game Boy Advance. At first glance Super Circuit looks a lot like Super Mario Kart, with the 2D PNG tracks and low resolution, the gameplay is much better though. The racing mechanics are once again improved over the previous, Mario Kart 64. Drifting is actually pretty usable starting from this entry, and the amount of content is impressive for its time. All of the SNES courses are available to unlock in this entry, unlocking them does take extra time as it requires playing through every grand prix at every CC twice, getting at least 50 coins the 2nd time around. Super Circuit also introduces the ranking system on top of the placement system, ranging from C-A letter grades, and 1-3 stars for the higher grades. This ranking system does stick around through all but one of the later entries, and it's only done in a coherent way in two of them. The ranking system sucks in this game, and is sadly required for 100% completion. Ranking points depend on what item rolls you get, if you get struck by lightning, if you go off-road at all, if you bump into any walls. It is almost entirely luck dependent on higher CCs. This game actually has the least atrocious rubber banding in the entire series, but the very high game difficulty still makes it annoying. But overall, Super Circuit is a pretty solid addition to the series.

The next entry Mario Kart: Double Dash really defined modern Mario Kart, and oddly enough is the most gimmicky game in the series. Double Dash sticks 2 characters/players onto a single kart, one in charge of driving, and one in charge of items and swiping at other karts, and they can both swap at any time. The gimmick isn't actually important at all in single player mode, it just plays like a normal Mario Kart game. The double gimmick is really fun with 2 players though, I've had some good times with it. Drifting is actually extremely well done in this game, it introduces the 'wiggle drift' which is in one other game. In fact this is the first game to give speed boosts to drifting to my knowledge, or at the very least the first one where it's actually usable. And again, rubber banding plagues this entry. Overall Double Dash is a really fun entry, it's just a little too luck dependent. Mario Kart DS is considered by many people to be the best entry in the series, which is quite understandable. Mario Kart DS is probably the first well balanced game in the Mario Kart series. The racing and drifting feel fantastic, the item balancing is good, and there's a good amount of content in it, from the character roster to the kart selection. There's also a good amount of tracks in this game, half of which are retro tracks from previous entries which ends up being a trend for all of the future games in the series. Once again, there's some annoying rubber banding in this entry which hurt my enjoyment of 150cc. But overall, Mario Kart DS is a very strong entry into the series, and a very good improvement over all of the games before it.

I have a ton of nostalgia for Mario Kart Wii, but it isn't as good as I remember it being. The racing physics are fine, but they can be very unforgiving and clunky at times. The new tracks are great, but the retro track selection could have been better. Mario Kart Wii introduced bikes which are a big part of the series now, but the bikes are too good and unbalanced in this game. The amount of content is overall pretty good at least. The worst part about MK Wii is the item balancing, there are a lot of very powerful items in this game, all of which occur way too frequently. Sometimes MK Wii just seems like a complete joke with the amount of items constantly hitting you. And worst of all on top of that there is rubber banding in this entry as well! Mario Kart 7 is the next entry, which is one of the more forgettable from the series. The racing mechanics are pretty good in this entry, with good drifting, and good item balancing. The track selection is mostly forgettable and boring, except for the retro tracks which are actually very good in this entry. Mario Kart 7 did introduce the glider, and underwater tracks which are a staple in Mario Kart 8 now. So while MK7 is kind of boring, and has the same old rubber banding, it did contribute a lot to the series.

The most recent entry in the series (which is now over 10 years old) is Mario Kart 8. MK8 is the strongest in the entire series, but that's partly because it's had by far more post launch updates and support than any other Mario Kart game. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had 48 new tracks added within the past 2-3 years, doubling what it had before. The new track DLC those are included in also introduced new characters to the roster, and even re-balanced a lot of the game, and added things like custom item VS races. The racing physics are nearly perfect in this game, the combination of the glider, underwater sections, and half pipes/tricks is a holy trinity. And the amount of content is absurd, I have hundreds of hours in MK8 and I still feel like I can sit down and have fun with it for a few hours. Rubber banding still is present in this entry, and there are some issues with a few of the items, but overall this is the definitive Mario Kart game, it's really as good as it gets.

While I do love the Mario Kart series, there is one major issue present in every single entry, and I have no idea why. Rubber banding is a terrible mechanic. Mario Kart has natural rubber banding completely solved with the item system, items are an honestly genius way to add fair rubber banding. And yet for whatever reason, Nintendo still feels the need to implement regular old rubber banding into every single game, and it completely ruins the experience for a lot of them. While these issues are in every game, I have to say the games are extremely enjoyable in multiplayer, where rubber banding isn't nearly as present, just the single player can be really annoying. I hope to see these issues fixed in the next game, but honestly I don't really see rubber banding ever going away sadly, I just hope it becomes more manageable.

Stats
These are personal stats based on my completion times and review scores. Note that Mario Kart 8 is not included for the time and day stats since I do not have enough info to include it, so average time to beat, total time to beat, and total days taken are just games 1-7.
Total games: 8
Best game: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Worst game: Super Mario Kart
Completion: Main + sides
Average time to beat: 4 hours, 59 minutes
Total time to beat: 34 hours, 53 minutes
Total days taken: 25 days
Average review rating: 7.1/10
Series completed: 7

This is the first series to deviate this far from the 8/10 average rating trend. It's actually the Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 ratings that really drag it down, both being at around 5/10. Even with the outliers though, 7.1/10 is still a little close to 8/10. I suppose this trend does make sense, I feel like I tend to rate games in a series relative to each-other, so it makes sense for them to average out to around 8/10 in most series.

What's Next?
Luigi's Mansion! This got pushed to the front of my backlog recently since I received Luigi's Mansion 3 for my birthday. It should be a pretty quick series since there are only 3 games, all of which are mildly short. Again my school semester ends soon so I may end up started even another series in a few weeks, it's been a minute since I've attempted playing 2 at once, but I think I can handle it. It'll probably end up being Halo. I conveniently already own a copy of Halo 5, so I shouldn't have any troubles with accessing the Halo games and it should be pretty chill. Thanks for reading or even just glancing through this post (it's a long one), until next time!

*EDIT: It's comical how often I have to edit the dates on these posts because I stay up past 12 AM writing them

Looking forward to your Halo writeups.

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