Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: March 2025

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Monster Hunter Wilds (PS5) – Very good Monster Hunter game. Maybe a little too easy, and there’s a pretty slim selection of monsters to fight. Also the post-game story just kind of petered out… no big finale like we’re used to. Oh well! It was still a bunch of fun all the way through and I look forward to grinding hundreds more hours out of it.

Scary Shadow Spot: Bitter Glass (PC) – This is probably the most unique-feeling Doesn’t Matter game, but is in need of a lot of polish. I even encountered a game-breaking bug that forced me to restart the game halfway through. It took less than 20 minutes to recover my progress, but still. Big oof.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (SNES) – This would be a much more frustrating game without NSO’s rewind feature. That’s all I want to say.

Continue reading Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: March 2025

TE Video: Coming Soon (April 2025)

If you weren’t already aware, I record most of my let’s plays pretty far in advance. Like, most videos that go up were recorded months before their air date. And so I’m really excited for April, because a couple of games that I really, really liked are finally getting their dues.

????? (PC) – April 1. I can’t spoil my April Fools video, now can I?

Ignited Entry (PC) – April 3. Another Jordan Lindgren game, and I believe the most recent of the bunch. It’s really quite good, with the exception of a frustrating chase sequence towards the end. Try to guess how many times I die before I make it!

Crystar (PC) – April 5/12/19/26. Had to follow up Mario & Luigi with another long RPG. This one’s a little more actiony, a lot more anime, and significantly more depressing. Like, we’re talking Nier levels of bleakness here. Big fan!

Newspaper Day (PC) – April 7. A bad indie horror game. So bad that I couldn’t be bothered to earn the good ending. At least I had fun making plenty of BJ jokes.

Dead or School (PC) – April 10/24. Parts 8 and 9 of a whopping 20. If you haven’t gotten into it by now, I don’t think it’s likely to ever happen.

Prison City (PC) – April 14/21/28. Side-scrolling action platformer that borrows a ton from classic NES games. I had a blast with it, and highly recommend watching it for the nostalgia along if you grew up in the NES era. Part 4 (the finale) airs in May.

The Final Pin (PC) – April 17. With this, I’ve played all of Jordan Lindgren’s games (to date). I really like this one, but it’s definitely more of a mystery/thriller than a horror game. Which isn’t a bad thing. I just want to set your expectations properly.

Nintendo Direct 3/27/2025

I would have liked to do a live reaction to this one, but I was conducting an interview when it aired, and that’s not just something one can put off for later. So here’s a recap of the things I found the most interesting. But only the things I find interesting! No “I don’t care about this” notes this time around.

Dragon Quest I & II HD Remake – Looks great! DQ1 is my very first RPG, so it has a soft spot in my heart. I’ll probably buy this out of nostalgia and forget to ever actually play it.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – I’m sure it’s “because Switch” but I like the more cartoony look! At least, slightly more cartoony than I’d expected. Gameplay looks bang-on with what I would expect from the series, so I’m obviously 100% on board. Very curious if it’s going to be a dual release on Switch and Switch 2.

Pokémon Legends Z-A – No joke, this is my most hype game of 2025, based mostly on the strength of Pokémon Legends Arceus (which is my fave Pokémon game). Last month’s overview trailer got me pretty pumped, and this one just added fuel to the fire. And there’s finally context for the weird subtitle now! Hooray!

Marvel Cosmic Invasion – Hmmmm… Looks like a 90’s arcade brawler… Made by the same team that did Shredder’s Revenge… Despite the fact that my interest in Marvel has atrophied greatly, I may have to play this.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Week One

There’s a new Monster Hunter game out now. You know what that means, right?

It means I probably won’t be playing much else this month.

Monster Hunter Wilds is the follow-up to 2018’s Monster Hunter World. It’s a slightly different experience than you’d get with the more Nintendo-y MH games; the MHW games are more focused on appealing to a wider audience to bring in new players and, being completely un-portable, only support online multiplayer. That’s already a knock in my book, because 50% of the fun of Monster Hunter is getting together with my brother to hunt locally.

That factor aside, I’ve had a lot of fun with Wilds over the first week. While not a single one of the pre-release trailers got me hyped in any way, I’m happy to report that the game is just as good as or better than any that came before it. Which is what you’d hope for from a sequel. It’s been a while since I’ve played either World or Rise, so I was a bit rusty at first, but I got back into the swing of things pretty quickly. At least as far as basic mechanics go.

Continue reading Monster Hunter Wilds: Week One

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: February 2025

~ Game Over ~

Wedding Witch (PC) – A horny Vampire Survivors clone that I bought and played for a joke, but then I ended up spending 10 hours 100%ing it. Whoops!

Silent Hill 2 (PC) – I’ve been itching to play the original since finishing the remake last year, and a co-worker recommended I try out the Enhanced Edition mod, so I did. It looks good for sure, and it was nice to revisit a classic. Really drove home how much bigger the remake is, too. Livestreamed the whole thing, too.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership (Switch) – Should have finished this months ago, but the whole let’s playing process really slowed me down. I liked the game a lot, but would have liked it even more if the dialog was cut down by 25-50% and it was like 10 hours shorter. That also describes how I feel about most M&L games that came after Superstar Saga.

Continue reading Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: February 2025

Deep Ryan Lore

A random thought pooped into my head today: it has been exactly 20 years since the first time I ever asked a girl on a date. Well, like, 20 years and a day? Or a week? I’m 98% sure it was on a Saturday, but whether it was the 19th or 26th, I haven’t got a clue. I can’t pinpoint these things that precisely.

Anyway, she turned me down. To make myself feel better, I bought a PlayStation 2. Oh, how different life might have been…

Coincidentally, it’s been 10 years (and a month) since my ex-wife walked out on me. Fortunately, there are currently no women in my life in that capacity, and thus my heart cannot possibly be broken this year. The cycle of pain ends! Hooray!

(Please note that I did notice the typo in the first paragraph and almost corrected it, but then I decided that it’s funnier as-is.)

TE Video: Coming Soon (March 2025)

Join me on YouTube and/or Rumble for at least three videos a week. Although I might give up on Rumble, since they recently changed their monetization requirements from “none” to “an absolute shit-ton” and I’ll never see a penny there now.

I’ve also been streaming on YouTube on Friday evenings pretty consistently lately, so consider dropping by to make chat slightly less empty.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership (Switch) – This one will continue to run every Saturday in March, as it has for the last three months. However, episode 20 is the finale! It’s finally coming to an end! What a bittersweet moment it was/will be.

9 Years of Shadows (PC) – This series ends with episodes 6 and 7 on March 3 and 10 respectively. While I obviously recommend checking out the game in general, the last episode isn’t one to miss if you want to see me completely lose my cool.

A Night on the Farm (Switch) – Airing March 6, this is a little indie horror adventure about a perfectly average night on a perfectly average farm. My playthrough clocks in a just under an hour and a half, showing off three of the five(?) possible endings. If that sounds like a letdown to you, just know that the endings aren’t all that different.

Dead or School (PC) – Parts 6 and 7 go live on March 13 and 27 respectively. I’ve forgotten most of what’s actually in these episodes, but there’s a fight against a tank boss on part 7! And I make at least one Metal Gear Solid reference!

Suite 776 (PC) – Goes live on March 17. I could swear I had played this one before, but honestly, I may have just played and watched too many indie horror games at this point, and they’re all just blending together in my mind. Anyway, I like it, and it’s got a pretty fun easter egg right near the end.

Spicy Candy (PC) – Airs on March 20. More of an interactive story than a game, really. You play as a little girl who gets locked out of the house by her neglectful mother on Halloween and sets off to collect candy. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS.

Broken Through (PC) – Goes live on March 24. I’ve played all of Jordan Lindgren’s games, and this one is my favourite by far. While the “haunted video game” theme is becoming a little too common, this game does it well and was, surprisingly, legitimately spooky. I was genuinely unsettled a couple times while playing it. Fun!

Unpacking (PC) – The last video for the month, going live on March 30. A wild departure from the kinds of games I normally play, this is a cute, cozy game about unpacking boxes and organizing your belongings. It also manages to tell a heartwarming story without any traditional narrative elements.

Pokémon Concierge

I can’t remember exactly when it was, but at some point Netflix released a short animated series called Pokémon Concierge. I sort of knew it existed, but never got around to watching it until recently, when all four episodes were made available on YouTube. After “binging” all four episodes yesterday, I have a few thoughts to share!

The first thing I need to remark on is how the show looks. It’s made using stop-motion animation with a little VFX to jazz it up, and it looks so good. Stop-motion is basically a lost art in this day and age, but I adore it, always have. The models and sets were clearly made with the utmost care too; there are so many little details crammed in all over the place and the pokémon are made out of different materials to make sure they look fluffy or fuzzy or sleek as required. The human characters look great too, having exaggerated features to make them recognizable, but no so much that they look overly cartoony. All in all, it’s simply a joy to look at.

Pokémon Concierge follows Haru, a tightly-would businesswoman who has had one too many bad weeks and has taken up a job at the Pokémon Resort to start fresh. When she arrives, she’s completely distraught at how laid back and cheerful everyone is, as opposed to the stressful urban lifestyle that she’s used to. Over the four episodes, the focus is mostly on how she learns to unwind, be happy, and connect with both people and pokémon. It’s a nice little story about appreciating the little things in life and not taking things too seriously. A message I can fully get behind.

That said, it’s obviously a very chill show meant for all ages to enjoy. Kids can enjoy the bright colours and slapstick humour. Adults can watch it and have pleasant daydreams of living such a carefree existence. Me, I appreciated both angles! But that means it never gets overly deep, and mostly just relies on cuteness and very high-level themes to entertain. That said, the fourth episode is so sickeningly sweet that I had a hard time holding myself together at the heartstring-tugging climax. Friggin’ Pikachu, man.

The Pokémon representation is wonderful, and even though Haru is really the focus of the show, a lot of pokémon get a chance to shine. They’re all so cuddly and adorable, and there isn’t a single battle throughout the series. The Psyduck that Haru befriends is the source of a lot of the show’s humour, and Pansear, Panpour, and Pansage get a ton of screentime to showcase their goofiness. Mudkip, Dragonite, Wingull, Graveler, Metagross, Pidgeot, Hoppip, Magikarp and (of course) Pikachu are kind of the “focus” where pokémon are concerned, but we get to see far more than that. What I thought was a little bit strange is that (with the exception of Dedenne) all the featured pokémon are from the first five generations. I guess maybe it’s a covert attempt to appeal to older fans’ nostalgia, but I think some newer ‘mons like Rockruff, Pawmi, and Sinistcha would have fit in perfectly at the Pokémon Resort.

Now obviously I’m not going to say that this is a show for everyone, but I genuinely enjoyed it. Watched the whole damn thing with a big, stupid grin on my face. Even giggled a couple of times. If you’ve got roughly an hour to kill, I’d absolutely recommend it. I’ll definitely be a little quicker on the draw when season 2 comes out.

A Howl of a Prowl

I don’t watch my own let’s play videos very often. Almost never, in fact. That said, I randomly watched my playthrough of Midnight Prowl the other night, and I had an absolute blast. I actually laughed hard and consistently enough that my side started to hurt, mostly due to the game’s poor translation, but also once or twice because Past Ryan made a joke that Present Ryan found genuinely funny.

So while I don’t really like to pat myself on the back, I do highly recommend watching this video. It’s relatively short -less than half an hour- and it’s pretty darn funny. Or at least, I think so.