One-shot made by Ran Igarashi.

Synopsis: What if Little Red Hood was an assassin called Red Wolf, with the mission to kill grandma? What if they had an annoying novice sidekick for this crime? What do you mean this idea is stupid and silly?

Art and presentation: The art is surprisingly good and hilarious. This manga is very silly, and sometimes the art is so well made and cool, it really adds to the silly story being experienced.

Why you should read it: Have you read the synopsis? This story is not those types to be taken very seriously, and it's quite good at making you laugh at the silly concepts and the plot twists that happen.

Score: 4/5! Very silly and very fun to read!

LIFE UPDATES

We are starting this segment with the Mario Journey!

We are now exploring outside the boundaries of our planet in Super Mario Galaxy!

Firstly, I managed to fix the Super Mario 3D All-Star collection issues I was having. It turns out, I forgot to install an update and without it, everything broke! So that was fun.

My expectations were very worrying going into this game, I was expecting to get motion sickness all the time by its gimmick, and frustrated from the bad taste sunshine left with me. Can you guess what happened?

It was not only great, but, by far, my favorite of the 3D games so far! The second surprise of the journey!!

The main gimmick of planet hopping and the full 360° exploration was actually so fun, unbelievably creative and well made!

Mind Boggling!

Galaxy also gives Mario something he desperately needs in 3D Games: The Spin!

It's a good movement option to help you course correct and fix mistakes you might have made, or perfect to reach places you just barely could jumping normally. 3D games need this bail out tool, not everything the player does is perfect in the 3D environment and sometimes the camera can get in the way.

Anyways, levels are so fun to go through, and missions are really straight forward and not obtuse. The sheer variety in levels also puts Sunshine to shame.

Luigi even makes a cameo in one of them!

I had so much fun with this game that I accidently beat it in one day! But I did have some struggles with the motion controls. They were mostly solved by binding anything motion related to my mouse, So I would just need to take one hand of the controller sometimes to collect the star bits, it wasn't as bad as you think it is. The real issues were the tilt controls…

I had to download an app on my phone, connect it to my PC, and use the phone as my motion controls for the game! Very few segments required this but it was still a bit annoying. But, I felt really proud in beating Nintendo and their whole tilt controls gimmicks!

This felt weirdly cool!

I also must praise the story book thing you unlock while playing. Telling the bittersweet story of Rosalina and the Lumas. I was done so well and wished more Mario games included…

It’s sad, but still hopeful!

Final Thoughts: Amazing Game, and my personal favorite of the 3D games so far!

I really enjoyed this adventure!

Now, let's go to the Wii to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii!

The second game of the “New” series, yay…

It's the first console release and not a portable release, and to be honest, its a fine game.

Funny Ice power in funny desert level!

The scope is much bigger, big and spacious levels, 4 player coop, new power ups such as the ice flower, penguin costume (a better ice flower with a cool slide!) and by far the best one of this bunch, the propeller suit! It allows you to fly upwards and slowly fall down when doing… Motion controls…

Rant time! I'm not a big fan of motion controls. Not because I hate doing them, but because, most of the time they are built to get in the way of enjoyment, and not to accompany it. What I mean by this is: You often have to stop what you are doing to do a motion and then continue playing, it's similar to the touch screen in early DS games. They are meant to enhance game controls, not substitute them!

That being said, the motion controls were completely fine in this game. I just bound anything related to it into one trigger, so any time I needed something, I pressed it. Yes, that rant was a complete waste of time!

This game did become a little boring and lonely with how much empty space there was on all levels, so I decided to capture a friend, and force them to play the game with me, which made it more fun.

Two minds are better than one! In some cases!

Other things to note were: The music was fine, nothing really too annoying or that standout, Bahs not included.

The boss fights mostly sucked, the Koopalings, most of the time, died before doing anything. The final boss was really cool tho, a great twist for those who played the previous game!

Biggest Bowser yet!

Final Thoughts: A fine game, more fun with friends.

Bigger Castle…

More and more progress is being made, I'm on a good pace!

Here's how the list looks right now:

Gold means beaten since last blog update.

And now for the last topic, an expected one, RimWorld Addiction Continues!

My addiction continues, I have been playing this game and ONLY this game for the past 5 days…

The Ideology DLC is a pretty good addition to the formula, even if a little overwhelming sometimes.

The DLC adds religions to the game, this having the effect of heavily changing the colonists according to what they believe and not believe!

I picked a religion that focuses on individualism and technology, so my colonists are happier when they have bionic enhancements, technology around them and going beyond the human body capabilities. The absence of these elements, making them really sad.

Base Fulled by the power of the future!

There are MANY types of religions, each having their own focus, positives and negatives, you can even convert others to your religion! People in said religions can even have specific roles that allow them to have special abilities, with the drawback of having higher and higher expectations. What makes this DLC tough is managing these expectations and the mood of the colonists. It's a tough act to balance, made worse when you force them to do something they don't believe in.

Overall, it's another banger DLC that really complements both the Base game and the Royalty DLC!

Here’s another thing that happened, a massive war against robots!

But before ending this segment, I would like to share a story from this colony. See the image below:

Tragedy…

What is it about? Well, let's talk about it!

An event called “Toxic Fallout” happened to my colony. Basically, all plant life will be unable to grow, and any living being not under a roof, would build up toxicity that, if high enough, could develop into long term life deficiencies that can even lead to death. So the idea is to make all your colonists and animals stay inside their home.

That used to be the home for my 8 Yaks and 1 Boomalope. Of course, they started to become hungry, so I let them out to eat the remaining grass, and… forgot about them.

By the time I remembered about them and locked them up in their home, the boomalope had really high levels of toxicity. During that night, while everyone was sleeping inside, he developed a heart attack which killed him seconds after. Boomalopes are very well known to explode after dying, so you can guess what happened…

The explosion destroyed the animal house, and set all Yaks ablaze. The ones that survived this event, eventually died from the toxicity because I wasn't able to help, because it would risk my own colonists' lives. So I just helplessly watched as all the survivors perished one by one…

You see why I love this game so much now? This kind of thing is only possible in this game!

And that's everything for this blog update!

SONG OF THE DAY

RimWorld has an amazing soundtrack in case you don't know. Oh, you don't know? Well, you will now!

Song of the day is Moving On by the most talented Alistar Lindsay!

It's the perfect song after facing a great tragedy or a particularly intense fight in RimWorld. We all need some of those low moments sometimes to reflect on what happened, and be able to move on.

And that's everything for this blog update!

See you next time, Traveler!

Have a nice day!

05/04/2024

Helo!

April has arrived everyone!

I have a lot to talk about Phoenix Club, Honkai: Star Rail 2.1 story, and more progress in the Mario Journey.

April has just begun, and things are already a lot to compute!

Let 's begin!

WEBSITE UPDATES

Beginning with the website changes: The Intruder Has Been Banished Once Again!

Regardless, I have banished them once again and removed all the things she left. This also made me do some minor improvements in the backend of things, so it wasn't all bad.

”Hey guys, I just came back from my vacation! What did I miss?”

Next up, Phoenix Club Chapter 2 is Almost Here!

Mr. Editor has returned the revisited chapter, I made all the necessary corrections and changes needed to do. The final step is to put it on the website, which also takes a long time with the whole colored voicelines thing. Expect it to be released next week!

But that 's not it! I also commissioned Miya new art for the front page of the series!! I saw some snippets they made of the art and it's already lovely! They will also have actual properly designed uniforms as well, not just boring plain color shirts, skirts and pants. I personally think it's a pretty cool uniform set, I hope you do too when you see the final product!

Talking about Miya, they also made some fan art! Check it out:

The one and only Seiko! Featuring a, at the time, not yet final uniform!

Cute little sprite of Seiko in the gameboy style!

This yet unnamed character with a blue hat! I hope you remember them well, they are a very important piece for this series!

As always, if you have any fan art, send me an email/ send me a discord message and I'll definitely showcase it! Thank you Miya for all the art! You reader, make sure to see their website by clicking their name!

As for the future, I want to commission Scrimblo a panel for chapter 2 at the end of this month. It all depends on my money situation. The future for Phoenix Club is very bright!

ONE-SHOT OF THE DAY

I got nothing to show today!

Sorry!

Next time there will be one to showcase for sure!

LIFE UPDATES

Let's begin life updates with: Honkai: Star Rail 2.1 Story!

The grand follow up for the fantastic first act is finally here and… it's pretty good! Even if, at some points, a bit confusing for my little brain.

Basically, we got some explanations, context for events told to us such as the fall of Duke Inferno and even some more mysteries to delve further into. They even introduced a new mechanic of split storytelling, where you follow other characters POVs outside of the Trailblazer! It was very well implemented and the new scenarios this created were very cool too! The voice acting was phenomenal as usual too!

New scenes such as this: MASSIVE RATIO!

But the real, and quite unexpected, highlight of this story was Aventurine. That's right, the guy that kinda felt like comedic relief with how many failed alliances he tried to create in the first act. During 2.1 we learn more about his honestly depressing story, why he works at the IPC, and his role in all of this Penacony fiasco. I'm not gonna go into spoilers because I do think it's a pretty touching story, and I don't want to ruin it for those who haven't seen it yet. I can tell you this though, it was very well executed.

But that wasn't my favorite part of the story, my favorite part was the interaction between Welt and Acheron!

Welt is my favorite express crew member!

I'm not very educated in Honkai 3rd lore, no, what fascinated me was the questions and thoughts their conversation brought to my mind. Even if I was a little confused by the end…

As for my gacha plans for 2.1, I am stockpiling all my tickets to, in true gambler fashion, go all in on the Aventurine banner. I'm in heavy need of a 5 Star sustain unit for my follow up attack team and he seems to fit all those needs and more!

I have over 100 already!

I'm using all my pulls on my birthday (25th of this month!) for extra luck! Hope it goes well!

And that's everything for Star Rail!

Continuing where I left off last time in the Mario Journey: Final Thoughts on Completing Super Mario Sunshine!

Yes, I have finished Sunshine and I got some… thoughts about it. Let me just say that, my experience did progressively get worse as time went on…

Before I say anything, the game is good and very well put together, it's nothing like “unredeemable piece of garbage”, it has fun and soul built on it! But the mistakes and flaws this game has are… REALLY bad.

As bad as this level!

For some examples, F.L.U.D.D. is pretty much the best part of the game, controlling mario with his assistance really feels good, but yet, they decide to take it away from you during moments F.L.U.D.D. would shine the most.

The game has a lot of insta-kill and lives for a game that encourages exploration and platforming.

Even the F.L.U.D.D. upgrades you unlock are super fun to use, but they are limited to levels and you can't use them anywhere at any time…

Obtuse and required shines, bugs, the theme getting stale, the list can go on and on.

Final thoughts: Good game, but one that has really severe flaws that taints the experience.

I can't say that I would be visiting this again…

Next, another break from the Mario Journey! This time Playing RimWorld: Royalty DLC!

RimWorld is already fantastic at the core, so imagine if you added more and expanded said core, that's the Royalty DLC!

New missions, new mechanics with temporary or expendable colonists, new equipment and mind powers, everything! This DLC made an already addictive game even more so!

The main draw of this DLC is the new currency you can attribute to your colonists named “Honor”. The more honor the colonist has, the cooler and more powerful mind abilities and special perks they get! Of course, it comes at the cost of maintaining luxurious and “Royalty” throne rooms. I didn't use the mind powers a lot, but the times I did use them, they were super useful! Effects like briefly making your enemy lose their balance, stunning them or making your skin as tough as rock!

Even though the DLC didn't tried something super out there, it was still a very fun one.

My base briefly before ascending to royal status.

Ideology DLC is next!

Time for some Fooling Around in April Fools!

April fools gets a cool segment in this blog update because a lot of fun things happened that I want to talk about in the shotgun style!

(Briefly talk about them and move on!)

Honkai: Star Rail released a fake movie trailer the style of power rangers that i thought was pretty cute.

Project Sekai put out new april fools covers with randomized groups again, the character and song choices were impeccable! My favorite is definitely this one, it's too cute not to:

I also discovered a new way to bother people during this day, by sending a DM to a person calling them someone else and gaslighting pretending they are someone else. They would of course send questions and I would just reply:

Works like a charm! Never not funny!

Other smaller things were the neocities AI roasting my website code (which is honestly fair) and the prank Federifederi pulled on everyone.

April fools is always a fun day to see all the cool and out of the bag innovations people do to fool others. It's a very enjoyable day!

And for the final topic today, we get back to the Mario Journey to play the first of many games like it: New Super Mario Bros.

The first ever game of the “New” series of games… it's a pretty good game actually. Released to the DS, this is Mario's triumph come back to the 2D realm and it was a pretty good platformer all things considered.

Very goofy spiders.

The levels were pretty fun to go through and pretty much everything works, moves, and plays like they should. We have the standard mushroom, star and flower powers up back with some newcomers such as the mini mushroom, blue shell and the mega mushroom!

These are very cool and fun power-ups, even if they rarely appear normally in levels.

Very big wiggler was very fun!

There is one thing I think this game misses compared to its 2D predecessor. Like Yoshi's Island, this game introduces a new collectible called Star Coins. You can get by doing particularly hard portions of a level or finding secrets. So, why do I think they missed with these collectibles when in Yoshi's Island they were an excellent thing?

The reward and feeling of getting all of them. You can spend these coins to unlock paths on the sides of the main one in the world map, leading you to toad houses that give you a random power-up to store for a level, other houses that give you lives, and sometimes you can get to play some extra levels. But, with no inventory system and abundance of lives, most of these houses feel pointless to go in and the game doesn't give you any pad on the back for collecting them. So by world 2, I just stopped collecting the star coins, since there was no point…

I'll admit, it's kind of a nitpick, it doesn't really affect the quality of the game and I heard you do get more of a reward in the others games.

Final Thoughts: Very good, solid 2D mario game.

Princess saved once again.

Good progress this time on the journey, check out how the list is right now:

Gold means beaten since last blog update.

As for what you can expect this month, just more of the Mario Journey and whatever surprises April has to offer.

SONG OF THE DAY

The song of the day is the cover of It's Just Life by Nightcord at 25!

Look, I'm a big fan of MORE MORE JUMP!, but even I have to admit that the Nightcord at 25 group has the most talented and best vocals in all of Project Sekai. I picked this song from the album, not only because I think it's the best, but also because it has been helping me think and materialize some of the more melancolic moments of Phoenix Club. In case you don't know, music really helps me think and remember things. Music deeply touches me on a spiritual level!

You can click here to see the playlist with all the songs recommended in this segment during this year!

And that's everything!

Very busy start to April isn't it?

It will just get more and more busy!

I can't wait for my anniversary as well, I might not have too much money to spend but I'll make sure to buy a very good chocolate cake for myself!

See you next time, Traveler!

Have a nice day!