Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce PS3 [REVIEW]| #musoumay

As most Warriors fans know, once a main numbered entry in the Dynasty or Samurai series is released, Koei and Omega Force don’t follow up them up with another numbered either, no siree, but basically squeeze the foundations and assets of the newly made entry for many spin-offs, alongside the expected Xtreme Legends and Empires versions.

And Dynasty Warriors 6 was no exception (thought the poor reception had a lot less derivative titles spun from it, not even a proper XL expansion), so back in 2009 they made another one, Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (Multi Raid in its japanese release) to also ride on the “online co op” frenzy the industry was pushing wish during the PS3/360 era…. on the PSP, initially.

Then HD ports on consoles that touched up the graphics, added full in game voice acting for battles and non-battle events. Though worry not, most of the cutscenes are outright recycled from DW 6, with just a slightly different hue overlaid to disguise the fact it’s stock footage.

The story is basically the same as always, there’s really not much to discuss, aside that this time magic, mystical beasts and the such plays a lot more into it, leading to some alternate or new events alongside the classic confrontations like Chi Bi, Wu Zhang Plain, Xia Pi, etc.

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12 Hours Into The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

I expected many things, but i wasn’t quite ready to get the sequel to Breath Of The Wild and see that the development team actually “pulled a Nuts & Bolts”, but actually do it in a way that doesn’t leave disappoiment and bewildered fans.

Mostly because Tears Of The Kingdom doesn’t completely goes away with almost everything from the previous movies (and its open worlds/spaces have actual shit to do in it, instead of meaningless wandering for few collectables in oversized dromes), retaining pretty much the same basic gameplay seen in Breath Of The Wild, from attacking, the stamina management for climbing, running, flying, item collecting, having to deal with freezing cold or scorching hot enviroments, Sacraries acting as both mini-dungeons and fast-travel locations where to collect orbs in order to power up life or stamina, tower that need to be actived to scan the area you’re in, etc.

And of course the weapons are made of biscuit crumbs, which is both worse and better, as now there’s is a real, honest-to-god story justification for Hyrule’s metal weapons having becoming corroded (which is fuckin hilarious in a way)… BUT at least now you can find more resistent variant of the weapons, the last strike that would seen the weapon break always deals a critical hit damage, and one of the new abilities is also there to help, as it lets you combine weapons with items to strenghten them or create weird ass weaponry.

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Arslan: The Warriors Of Legend PS4 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

One of these musou anime crossovers/collaborations that i feel it’s kinda underrated or overlooked, as it does tackle a historical setting that actually does fit perfectly with the Warriors style and formula: ancient Persia. Sure it’s all doubly filtered by being based on an the anime series, based on a manga by Hiromu Harakawa (of Full Metal Alchemist and Silver Spoon fame), itself being a modern adaptation of a light novel series, The Heroic Legend Of Arslan…and that in turn being loosely based on the Persian epic Amir Arsalan.

Still, it’s nice to see a Persian/middle-east setting in a musou game, even if it’s an anime licensed game and an incredible example of transformative iteration of historical epics.

And you will be remembered of this being based on the anime series more than the Hiromu Harukawa manga because, akin to the Berserk Musou, this uses clips from the anime’s first season to cheap out in making more cutscenes with the in-game engine, though this time it’s less the recyclefest (comparatively the Berserk musou had almost an hour – or a ridiculous amount either way – of footage from the Golden Age film trilogy they made some years prior).

And fittingly the game covers the story of the first anime season, starting when the king of Pars, Andragoras III, is betrayed in battle by one of his generals in cohoots with the Lusitatians, obsessed with their religious cult and the extermination of the infidels. Having followed the father in battle, the young, naive and unprepared prince Arslan is forced to flee with his vassal Daryun, grow up fast so to form a new band of warriors to drive back the invaders (led by a mysterious man with a mask) bent on conquering the capital, Ectabana, and reclaim his crown as the 19^th king of Pars.

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Earth Defense Force AKA Monster Attack PS2 [REVIEW] | Thus The EDF Fought

As we wait for the western release date of EDF 6 (which came out in Japan last August), let’s go all the way back to the beginning, with the original Earth Defense Force on PS2.

Unlike EDF 2 which got an enhanced port on PS Vita, the original Earth Defense Force still remains a PS2 only game, one that americans didn’t get, as the first EDF was only localized in PAL territories as Monster Attack and distributed by Agetec in… lets say limited numbers, since today finding an original copy can be fairly pricey, if you find a PAL copy to begin with, instead of the many cheaper japanese PS2 copies floating around the net.

I did manage to get a used PAL copy under 30 bucks, but one could suggest it’s better to just emulate the thing, if you’re really curious to see how EDF started as a fan of the series, otherwise there’s really no point to simply recommend you play EDF 4.1 or 5 nowadays.

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Shogun’s Blade PS2 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

Ah yes, one of the very first istances of “we have Dynasty Warriors at home”.

Obviously done on a budget and part of the Simple Series (this one titled simply The Kessen Sekigahara, quite to the point as these games’ titles often are), hence once could just assume this was developed by one of D3’s regulars, and if you guessed Tamsoft get yourself a big pint of beer, you know your stuff indeed.

Of course if there’s a cheap hack n slash from D3 the chances of being handled by Tamsoft are pretty high, which in hindsight makes it extra funny to me they went from Onechanbara, then Senran Kagura, to being given the reins of a Bandai Namco published Captain Tsubasa game.

But we’re getting off track, again.

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Touken Ranbu Warriors NSWITCH [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As i previously said while discussing the demo for it, i eventually did get the pricey ass retail North American version, since i wasn’t paying full price for digital, or 100 bucks for the game and one of the most desperate and worthless example of season pass content ever devised by a publisher.

Due to import taxes i paid the same anyway, but we’ll talk about that later in the review.

FIY the game is also available worlwide digitally on Steam.

Touken Ranbu Warriors story is set in 2205, about a group of Touken Danshi sent back in the Sengoku period in order to avoid timeline alterations by the History Retrograde Army.

What are Touken Danshi? But beatiful boys with the souls of legendary japanese swords (often as iconic and famed as their possessors/wielders) bestowed upon them, because nothing else aside “bishounen sword boys” would strike fear in those dastardly time travelling history revisionists.

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Musou May and the State Of Musou as of May 2023?

As per what is now tradition, this year too we’ll have Musoy May, with a picked review of a musou/Warriors game every sunday of May.

Here’s where i usually make a general ramble about the state of the genre as of late, but…. there isn’t really much to say or even get unreasonably hyped about, as we neither got any new contender/challenger from some small or medium sized developer & publisher nor does TK really revealed, teased or announced anything.

Samurai Warriors 5 came out in 2021, but aside from a Season Pass TK didn’t either put out a XL or Empires version, Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires needed a lot of shit to be added or patched in, but again, aside a tepid Season Pass that wasn’t really worth paying (for the most part), there was no post-launch support, and since how barebones the modes on offering were… it would have needed.

Touken Ranbu Warriors was also released, but for whatever reason TK decided to launch it digital only on both Switch and PC (via Steam), and i’m gonna save the lamentations about that for its review.

Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes was almost perfect but was curiously devoid of expansion content (which is fine since it’s an already massive offering to begin with), so that’s odd.

All we got since June 2022 was simply a teaser trailer for Fate Samurai/Remnant that should release sometime this year, no actual gameplay footage or any real info aside from what could be seen in that short teaser trailer. Surprised it took them this long and actually Marvelous already did developed 2 Fate musou games, but still, it has been months devoid of any news about it or anything else Warriors or Warriors related.

Maybe TK is holding out for what was “E3 time” or for the TGS to drop the existence of Dynasty Warriors 10 (which they teased in interviews before), but at this point there’s just nothing to talk about of substance, and this behaviour kinda speaks volume for how Koei considers his musou output.

I mean, when the best news is them re-releasing WO3 Ultimate in a definitive edition package…. you can tell there’s a drought and no signs of the main gardener being interested in watering the cacti.

I mean, unless they do a 180 ° with Dynasty Warriors 10, Koei shouldn’t complain of losing even more customers, after DW 9 they deserve every critique and negativity coming their way.

Dead Island: Retro Revenge PSN [REVIEW] #deadislandretrospective

So, we finally arrive at the last entry of the Dead Island retrospective, just in time for Dead Island 2 to finally release in stores, tomorrow actually, which sounds still kinda crazy to me after that memorable first teaser trailer with Pigeon John’s Da Bomb, but we’re almost there, for real this time.

The only game left is Dead Island Retro Revenge, which was originally released as a bonus game to entice people in buying the Dead Island Definitive Collection, with the main serving of that being the remastered/definitive edition versions of Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide, but can also be simply bought on Steam, PSN and X-Box Live for 5 bucks, and it’s actually well worth it.

Which is surprising, because while i do enjoy the Dead Island mainline games, i also fully understand why people hated them (i initially did too), but oddly Retro Revenge i’d say its the unexpected better one of the lot, as it keeps the series tradition of copying someone else’s shtick, but this time they chose One Finger Death Punch as the blueprint, and didn’t overcomplicate it.

But first, the plot, or the tiny narrative that exists to justify the game.

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Popeye PSN [REVIEW] | …. For An Asset Burger Today

Catching up on last year’s output of radioactive trash videogame releases, i saw this on sale for 2 bucks on PSN, so i bought it, downloaded it on my PS4 (game is also available on Switch, digital only as well), and in a matter of minutes i wondered if this wasn’t somehow one of those asset flips that somehow isn’t (or wasn’t) on Steam but managed to land digitally on other platforms.

And yes, i was correct, it’s not on Steam, most likely a calculated move as it would have been singled out immediatly and bombarded with negative reviews, for Steam’s userbase had many experiences with awful cobbled together rushjobs by hacks that smosh pre-made Unity assets together with minimal extra work, even more as this is a licensed game.

One that was released without nary a beep, so that already clues you in that they wanted to release a stinker and hope nobody noticed that they wanted 15 bucks for this turd by Sabec Limited, better known for having the gall to sell Calculator (and many overly simple games and stuff like Pet Rock) on Switch, as in literally a calculator app that they sell for 10 bucks.

Given how surprisingly important is Popeye as a franchise for videogames, aside from wondering how the hell Sabec Limited was able to license the almost centenary comic strip series from King Features Syndicate, it’s kinda fitting that this 2021 release pretty much boils down to a remake of the 1982 arcade game (also simply called “Popeye”), the one that inspired Nintendo to make the original arcade Donkey Kong.

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[EXPRESSO] Super Mario Bros The Movie (2023) | Fungine Fun

Anteprima in una nuova scheda

So the new Super Mario Bros movie, the new animated one, is here, and i gotta say i’m pleasantly surprised, since it’s still handled by Illumination, which is… a prolific studio, let’s put it like that.

The plot is what about you’d expect and combines elements from both the previous film iterations of the Mario franchise, so you have Mario and Luigi as unsuccessful plumbers in Brooklyn that one day, while trying to fix a flood, get transported into the Mushroom Kingdom, where Princess Peach is preparing a plan to fight Bowser, as he got hold of the magical Super Star and is bent on world domination… after he pops the question to Peach, that is.

Yeah, there is the isekai element but the world isn’t the weird Blade Runner-looking dino society of the 1993 live action film, instead the one most audiences remember from the videogames, and i say “the videogames” because basically every popular iteration of Mario is represented, there’s even the karts and the Kongs play a not small role in it, as the movie crams a lot of action, varied setpieces and fuckton of references in every scene, making for a pleasing 90 minutes romp where there’s no downtime nor faffing about random shit to pad out the runtime.

Animation is top notch and the script (which is still very “Illumination”) it’s also a lot funnier than one would wager, so older audiences will get more laughs out of it than expected, instead of groaning their way through most of it.

If i went to see it when i was 12, i would have lost my shit, but even disregarding that, The Super Mario Bros animated film stands as a good kids movie, very fun indeed.

It’s better than the Sonic live-action films, i’d say.