Digimon Marathon: Revenge of Diaboromon. You can never keep a good devil down

One thing of note about a lot of the Digimon movies, is that they aren't full movies length wise. So as a slightly longer episode, how does the sequel to Our War Game fair? Time to review Digimon: Revenge of Diaboromon.

(No cover as I can't find one that I can confirm to be the cover)

Digimon Marathon: Digimon the Movie: Look at how far we've come

Oh Fox, you truly know no limits when it comes to what you'll do for a quick buck... even when I'm certain it would have given you more money not to do what you did to these films. No that's not a typo, there are three movies spliced into one here... and it shows. Digimon fans hate this movie, and with valid reasons. But lets take a look at this blatant cash grab. Digimon the Movie...

Might I add, this is a crap promo poster. I thought we were past the days of bad box art...

Digimon Marathon: Digimon Adventures 02: "Why can't we send in the competent ones?"

Ah Zero Two. One of the most debatable seasons of the series out there. Both praised and hated by many. But as with Adventure, how well does it hold up now? Four new Digi-destined, new Digivolution (mechanics?) and more, Time to review Digimon Adventure 02.

Digimon Marathon: Digimon Adventure: Happy Birthday my two blogs, for your present: time to delve into the Digital World

Two days early? Yes, but still... Happy one year anniversary!!! This Wednesday will mark the launch of Blaster's Projects (pop quiz, who still remembers the original name of the site?) and one day later, the launch of Blaster's Reviews. Cue the dancers:

... Note to self, work on better theme integration...

So yes, almost one year on, I thought it would be fitting to have some sort of celebration, and what better way then to review something I talked about early in the sites life and a clear contrast to what my first review was: Digimon. Ah Digimon, the tabu of my Primary School. Everyone knew about it, but you either hated it as a Pokemon clone, or never looked at it due to several reasons (me being one of that second). I remember watching a few episodes randomly, Australian TV at the time wasn't known for its speedy and consistent arrivals. It wasn't until several years later where I'd sit down to watch them properly, thanks in part to vague memories and a friend of mine randomly mentioning it (good luck conducting the band for Violet by the way). As I mentioned last year, I prefer the Digimon Anime over the Pokemon one nowadays, but I think its about time to go into detail. From today, up until near the end of March, three posts a day, will be nothing but Digimon. I also want to stress that, aside from the last review due to lack of localization to my knowledge, I'll be covering the English Dubs as I can analyze them in greater detail. Time to delve into the past that was late 90's-early 2000's children's television and the generally accepted rival to Pokemon and how it has survived almost 16 years later (in two weeks, it'll have been 16 years since the original run). Time to start the Digimon Marathon, up first: Digimon Adventure.

Super Mario Galaxy & Super Mario Galaxy 2: From a castle, to an island, to space?

 He wasn't kidding when he said "Once in a lifetime"...

Mario Jumpman Mario. Appearing (in some form) in over 265 games at time of writing (including ports, remakes, compilations, but not virtual console and cameos), its hard to imagine a console generation without a Mario game, as Colonel Roy Campbell also spoke of: he's an icon that barely anyone in this world wouldn't recognize. 17 on that list were for the Wii, but there are two that people still talk about, still praise. Super Mario Galaxy and its direct sequel: Super Mario Galaxy 2. Regarded as two of the best games for the Nintendo Wii by many, but for me, its time to analyze, to critique them. This is my review of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Opinion Piece: The many faces of satire

This is something I probably should have done long before now, back when I was reviewing Kickassia, Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee. For those who have read them, you'll know that I praised the films (overall) as great comedies, but that could be my enjoyment of satire. But at face value, there may be a lingering belief, does this mean that I enjoy movies like the Movie movies, and to that I say no. But why? Why is there a difference between To Boldly Flee and something like Disaster Movie?

First off, its the references. With To Boldly Flee, yes its satirizing many different movies like Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator, Men in Black ect, the same as the Movie movies. But at the core, they're still satirizing themselves. Jesu Otaku being electrocuted and becoming Edward from Cowboy Bebop as a example. With something like Meet the Spartans, there's no smart self satire, just crude satire of anything thats popular and, in particular, current. In To Boldly Flee, every reference has something to do with either the genre or the characters, whereas with the Movie movies, the humor is aimed at anyone who has watched the mocked films, often resorting to "jokes" that to many people, aren't funny as it is just a reference. There were ridiculous amounts of "jokes" I've seen in some of those Movie movies that got nothing out of me other then "really?". Now granted, there have been cases where the films got a laugh out of me, like the road marker signs showing which path leads to safety, and the other leads to death. That was funny for me as it mocks one of tropes in Horror films. With the Movie movies, it comes off as a mockery of the original source, even if the source movie was still being worked on at the start of the production, with To Boldly Flee, the only obvious, at least for me, reference that wasn't anything to do with the producers and actors was the mockery of S.O.P.A, and that was because it was an issue during the production for them as Internet Critics. Every other reference is, at least to me, more of a homage to the source material. Yes it makes it look comedic, but in a more controlled way then the Movie movies. The use of Mario Kart's Blue shell as a example: its absolutely stupid to see it in To Boldly Flee, but it still has the weight of the shell in the games. The dread on their faces, the way the shell moves, the way it behaves is very similar to the way it works in the Mario Kart series. If you've ever had the shell float over you when you were in the lead, about to win, you know the feeling of dread when you see it, the feeling when you process "there goes my victory".

A big problem I personally have with the Movie movies is the budget, or lack there of, in the production. You can tell these movies were made as cheep as possible, and to me its insulting. But I hear you asking "But these movies were also done cheep, why are you praising them and hating the Movie movies?" And the reason why is because the Chanel Awesome anniversary movies were never at a cinema. I can't walk into a store or my local DVD rental shop and borrow them. The movie movies are. I remember first herd of the Movie movies when I saw the Epic Movie poster at one of the nearby cinema's here, same as Disaster Movie. So to see that these films were put into cinemas is a genuine insult for me. For the anniversary films, I can forgive the cheep budget, and they make do with what they can, producing some great films with what they had. The Movie movies scream "We did this so that we can make more profit". It looks intentionally cheep which is why I find it disgraceful. I give the Bayformers films a lot of hate, but at least they look like they deserve to be shown in cinemas... whether they do or not is subject to opinion. This is going to sound like another contradiction, so feel free to raise any Objections. But while I haven't seen the film yet, I also don't have that problem with Spaceballs because it adds to the comedy factor. To see the Millennium Falcon as a glorified RV, I think its hilarious, Darth Vader's costume being massively over sized and on someone as pathetic looking as Lord Dark Helmet (think, feel free to tell me I'm wrong if I am) I find hysterical.

So why am I defending Spaceballs and not the Movie movies? Because Spaceballs is, in concept, similar to Young Frankenstein. Both films take aspects of their source material and add comedic aspects to it. What if the blind made accidents? What if the denial of characters like Igor was to such a extent, they had no idea about parts of their bodies? It adds a comedic edge to the original source material. That's what people like about Young Frankenstein, Airplanes, Spaceballs, what I like about the Anniversary films and what the Movie movies lack. Its also one of the reasons why projects like Video Games Highschool took off and why spoof animations like Batman eating a Hotdog keep getting views to this day. Anyway, that's it for now, tomorrow: The Pikmin shorts

Pikmin Shorts: A day in the life of something smaller then an ant

There are a lot of franchises made by Nintendo that don't get a lot of the spotlight. F-Zero, Kid Icarus, Metroid, and one of the more recent franchises: Pikmin (though not as bad as some of the above). Three games have been made for the series... and at time of writing I have not played any of them. I'm curious about the series and I intend to play the newest one, Pikmin 3. Recently however, three short films have been posted to the WiiU and 3DS eshops. So, for the last post before the start of the marathon, time to take a look at the life of the Pikmin.

Sonic Colours: Time to Reach for the Stars

Since Blaster's Reviews started almost a year ago, 100 posts have been written, with this one making post 100 and the 43rd Review... No this doesn't have anything to do with today's review, just thought you'd like to know a few stats in the lead up to the Anniversary.

Ah Sonic, the turn of the millennium has not been kind to you has it? Fluctuating sales, SEGA cutting jobs and for the foreseeable future, your home is going to be on Mobile devices and PC downloads. Its sad to say that the last good console game Sonic will be in for now is Super Smash Brothers for WiiU. A lot of people say that Sonic hasn't had a good game between Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Generations, but as you could probably tell from my review of Sonic Unleashed, I disagree. Sonic had 6 games on the Wii with the last game being Sonic Colours. Now I want to make myself clear with this: Yes, I know that there is a DS version, I've played that version to death. But I'm sticking to the Wii Version with this review as I want to cover Colours DS when I eventually review the other Dimps Sonic games. Time to take off at the speed of sounds, with the bright lights and colours all around. Time to review, Sonic Colours.

Video Games High School: The ultimate training grounds

This was a wired bit of curiosity for me. I first saw this at a gaming event, gave it a look... one week later I was caught up waiting for the next episode of the second season (bypassing my old school's proxy in the process as it had some stupid limitations...). I don't usually watch High School Drama's as when I think of those words in the same sentence, bad memories of some of my sister's favorite shows and movies return... But unlike those, this does have some actual effort in it, especially considering it was just a small cast and crew working on it. But for now, with the final season completed, time to review Video Games High School.

Harmony of Heroes: "So this is Yoshi's B. This monkey wants to hug him"

Its of no surprise that I'm a fan of the Super Smash Brothers series. Smash 64, Brawl, Smash 3DS and currently Smash Wii U (will review later on) have brought me hours of joy that I wouldn't trade for anything, whether it was alone, with friends or in small tournaments I went to. And while I wait for Project M to get a PAL version (still waiting guys... yes I know I can mod my Wii, I don't want to risk that (not to mention its currently put away)), one fan project caught my eyes. I came across this while I was checking if Project M updated and gave it a listen... and seeing as where I'm posting this, it should give you an idea as to what I'm doing. To close out the (unintentional) "Week of Fan Projects", Harmony of Heroes and its expansion, Harmony of Heroes: Final Smash.

Playlist Fillers: The Library of Overclocked Remix

One of the things I love doing is listening to remixes, to see just what people can do while still replicating the theme of the original piece. There have been remixers who have gained jobs doing what they love doing and seeing the fruits of their labor can be absolutely beautiful. To open this new mini series, lets start off with one of the biggest remixing site online, Overclocked Remix. A site dedicated to getting the fruits of remixers work out to the public. It's not a place you go for money, almost everything on there is put up by the creators for free and all based on Video Game music. To say that the expression "for the love of the work" applies is a massive understatement. For this, I'll be using the official torrent on their site (yes there is such a thing as official torrents) from October 15th, everything here can be found both in that torrent and on the site itself. I also want to stress that these types of posts ARE NOT and WILL NOT be Top X Lists. These songs aren't ranked and these posts are meant to help support the artists. With that out of the way:

Turnabout Musical: This is what happens when you hang around with a group of friends who like Ace Attorney

Over the years, as one uses the internet more and more, you start to become less and less surprised at thing. More and more glitches in Sonic 06: meh. People discovering a way to transfer Gen I and II Pokemon into Gen VI: its only happening now? A musical based on the Ace Attorney games: ... what? This was one of the things I genuinely went "this can't be a thing", as you can probably guess, it is a thing. Now for the purposes of this, as I haven't been able to find all the songs at time of writing (27/1/2015) nor an actual viewing of the musical itself, I'll be reviewing the Highlights CD which includes a decent portion of the songs. I will however revisit this when/ if an actual performance is shown.

BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn. Bye Bye Babylon, hello... RomeIn the desert?

The quest for the Ignika, the longest plot in the BIONICLE Story line from the first Generation. 3 continents, two universes, 5 years of story with plans for it to go on longer... Who knew you could have so much of a plot revolving around a Mask of Life. Three years of the story revolves around the return of Mata Nui, not only showing the intent of the mask, to bring Mata Nui back to life, but to awaken him from the sleep Teridax put him in during the Metru Nui Arc. For the full story on just what happened, Links to the years are here (2006 2007 2008). I recommend you do this though if want to know what the heck is going on during the rest of the review... or at least the set up. With that though, 4 years after Web of Shadows, its time to go to a new universe entirely... kinda... Time to learn of Bara Magna's past, BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn.

Opinion piece: Why I don't care about a character's gender

Something extra that I didn't think I'd do, but might as well throw my opinion into the mix.

This is something I see crop up more and more over the years as each entertainment medium evolves, that being the diversity of the genders in (insert medium here). Now while my view is slightly different for music, my view for film, television, books and games is exactly the same. I don't care about the character's gender.

Bionicle 3: Web of Shadows. "So when the sun goes down"... I really need to fix this note mix up...

While it won't affect this review, going to bring it up now, I hate spiders, of any kind. Its actually for that reason that I remember not liking BIONICLE 3 as much as the first two (and is also one of the two reasons why I avoid re watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to this day... I see you laughing there, any day you want to stop).

One of the problems with a prequel sequel is that it can take away any sense of shock value. While it works for Legends of Metru Nui as, at the time, you could be forgiven for not making the connection that the Toa Metru are the Turaga from the Mata Nui Saga. However this becomes a problem for Web of Shadows as it serves as the bridge between Legends of Metru Nui, and the start of the Mata Nui Saga, Quest for the Masks. I've probably already spoiled it there but encase you want to know how it does so, time for the review of BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows.

Bionicle 2: The Legends of Metru Nui. Trust me, this one will hopefully make more sense... maybe...

So now we come to the sequel... thats a prequel, but is also a prequel to its own sequel... and because the last review got way to long for its own good (which in hindsight was to be expected as its the same review twice... I won't be bringing out the Matoran font again (unless you want it to return...). 2004 is described as one of the best years for the series. The play sets are still loved to this day by a lot of people, the collectables were fun and the story was engaging... speaking on which...

How to be a Game Designer Part 2: Mechanics and World Building

Mechanics for gameplay is one of the most important things in a game, not only can it affect how your players interact with the world, but it can also be woven into the story itself, helping tell your story through the gameplay, not just info dumps and cutscenes. However, it is something I see new developers fail to do which can be really infuriating. There's a lot to cover with mechanics but for now I'm just going to focus on its World Building potential, with Zeta as my example.


So what are the mechanics of Pokemon? For its combat alone...

• Turn based combat
• The priority of moves can affect who attacks first
• The Speed of the Pokemon can affect who attacks first
• Abilities can affect the battle depending on the specific ability
• The Status condition of the Pokemon can affect who attacks first
• Each Pokemon move is assigned a type, this type can either be strong against or weak against the defending Pokemon
• Moves have a chance of negative repocussions depending on the strength of the move (low hit rate, inflicting confusion, skip next turn ect)
• Each pokemon has an experience bar that can be filled to earn a new level, granting stronger stats
• The amount of experience can be affected by items (Lucky egg boosts, EXP Share (prior to gen VI) would split the XP by a varying degree)
• The higher the level and the stronger the Pokemon's species Base stats are, the more experience required to level up

That's just on the surface, I'm not going to cover EV's for this example. Why does this need to be known for World Building? Because of the implementation of Trainers. If done well, if you were making a game using similar mechanics, you can use the Trainers as a way to measure how the player is progressing through the game, this is where solid play testing comes into the development phase. With a strong play testing team, you can measure how long it takes for a player to get through the route, the AI level in comparison to the players and many more to judge the difficulty and level out difficulty spikes if needed.

Lets look at an example from Zeta, the Delta Temple Look here for official information. Based on what we know.

1. It is a late game dungeon, meant for Level Grinding before the final boss
2. If the player is going into it, chances are they have several, if not their entire team needing to be leveled up to the games new cap of Level 120 (which the final boss has a full team of Max Level Pokemon)
3. The Dungeon is split into types (Grass, Fire, Water, Psychic, and Steel) allowing for great level grinding potential for Flying, Poison, Bug, Ice, Fire, Ground, Rock, Water, Grass, Electric, Ghost, Dark, and Fighting
4. Thanks to the Wiki, we know Odin has a Jolteon, Divaevus, Shaymin, Salamence, Escavalier and Mega Gengar at level 120 each
   
   Their strongest weaknesses are
   Jolteon: Weak to Ground
   Divaevus: Weak to Fighting
   Shaymin: Weak to Fire
   Salamence: Weak to Ice
   Escavalier: Weak to Fire
   Mega Gengar: Weak to Dark

So the dungeon does indeed cover all the types, which is good. However, Odin's not the only fight you have. You've also got to deal with Cyrus, N and Red, meaning that there are Curve balls here. The Temple itself leads to several problems however.

1. Because almost all the trainers are mandatory to complete the dungeon, the player is going to have a large stockpile of money and as the expansion, items going into not only the Odin battle, but the Aroma Region
2. To conserve as much money as possible, players are going to use the nearby Pokemon Center to heal their pokemon, which it a tedious process to complete
3. As a designer, you DON'T want your player to look up guides unless they have to, its better to keep a surprise, as such you can't expect them to know what's ahead, which leads to
4. If the player has raised the wrong Pokemon, you're forcing them into a wall with these three trainer battles, meaning that they may need to raise a brand new team, which at that point in the game isn't a practical solution. You're building it up as the end of the game and if the player has to stop and Level Grind even more, they may go "I'm not playing this anymore" and stop completely.

This is just an example, you can decide if Delta Temple was well made or poorly made. But lets look at an example of an expanded mechanic now, Shadow Pokemon. For those who never played the Gamecube Pokemon Games, Shadow Pokemon are "corrupted Pokemon". They're only weakness is Shadow moves, which are Super Effective on all types, at random points, they will enter Hyper Mode and every turn, they will do damage to themselves. They do not Level Up or obtain EV's until they are purified. In Zeta, one thing I found was the closer the Pokemon got to purification, the weaker the Shadow moves became. So what could make this mechanic a problem?

1.  The percentage of Hyper Mode: In Zeta, the percentage of status conditions are drastically different (from personal experience) then the main games. Confusion, to me, felt like it was a 90% chance of hitting myself, Paralyzed triggered more often,  Sleep was longer ect. If my theory is correct, Hyper Mode in the code is also affected by those changes. There were several times where I had just gotten them out of Hyper Mode, only for them to return to it that same turn.
2. The requirements for Purification: There are a lot of trainers to battle before you can purify a Shadow Pokemon and with the nature of Shadow Pokemon in Zeta, it seems to be an impossible challenge to complete the Aroma Region with only Shadow Pokemon because again, they can't level up and the region feels like it was made with level grinding in mind so if you can't level grind, you're once again forcing the player into a brick wall

This is a (much more definitive) example of the mechanics trying to be built around the world. This doesn't work, no matter what way you look at it.

With that, look into other games, see how the Mechanics have been integrated into the world. Next time, difficulty and how to adjust for skill.