Yes, I'm very late again, but this time I have the good excuse of starting a part-time job again! I simply haven't had a lot of time to work on the blog, and there's a lot of stuff I want to get too, including the massive Kingdom Hearts news from over the weekend. But with that out of the way...

Welcome to another play log, where this week, I was a little all over the place. You can see for yourself by checking out the chart below:

• Ordered by first play of the week.
• All Switch/Switch 2 play data on my console is sourced from the Nintendo Store mobile app.
• All 3DS play data sourced from the 3DS Activity Log application.
• Play data marked with a * is estimated.

Geez. A good amount of variety, with a bunch of one offs that I only picked up a single time during the week, and only a handful of regularly played titles.

Splatoon Raiders has finally been dethroned as the most played title of the week after a three week reign going back to its release. This is also the first week since it came out where I didn't log at least 10 hours in it. I am still playing it, though, it's just fallen a few pegs down the priority totem pole.

There's a lot to cover, so I'm going to try and keep things more condensed this time. Without any further ado, let's get going.

WarioWare: Move It! (NS on NS2)

• Played on Monday for approx. ~2 hrs

Last Sunday, I revisited WarioWare Smooth Moves, and mentioned in that week's play log that it left me itching to also revisit Move It!, the 2023 Switch entry that, for all intents and purposes, is a sequel to Smooth Moves.

Well, the very next day, I did just that, and it's a blast! Move It is fun for the same reasons as Smooth Moves, except now you have TWO controllers at all times, adding another layer of complexity to the microgames. Smooth Moves experimented with this in a bonus stage where you used the Wii Remote and Nunchuck together for a special set of microgames, but with a split pair of Joy-Con, Move It allows the two controller setup to spread across an entire WarioWare game, and it's awesome.

There are so many cool ways that Move It uses the dual Joy-Con setup, and it means you're using your whole body much more often than in Smooth Moves. There's also a whole bunch of really novel gimmicks in this game, such as some microgames that have you drop a Joy-Con while wearing the wrist strap, so the controller dangles from your wrist. It's also one of the few non-casual Switch games to actually use the ill-fated IR camera, and it does so in some really cool ways, like having to lift up a certain number of fingers to indicate a numeric value. It's far from the most responsive and foolproof thing in the world, which is probably why the feature was never utilized and ultimately phased on with the Joy-Con 2, but it's neat to see a game that actually tried to do some cool stuff with the feature.

Oh yeah, also, now that I've played the Rhythm Heaven series, revisiting various WarioWare games is making me realize how often these franchises reference each other, with Move It featuring cameos from characters like the Chorus Kids and Barista in some cutscenes. I just think that's neat.

As for what I actually did in the game, I basically just replayed most of the stages in the game, stopping at the last two. I definitely want to play it some more at some point and do some high score chasing, especially in the post-game modes that mix all the microgames together. Those are my favorite modes to play in Smooth Moves, so it's surprising that I've barely touched them in Move It.

Rhythm Heaven Megamix (3DS)

• Played on Monday for 46 mins

Speaking of Rhythm Heaven, I'm still working through Megamix whenever I get the chance. On Monday, this was basically my wind down game I played while lying in bed before going to sleep.

Don't have much to say on this one, other than wanting to shoutout the Challenge Train as a cool mode that I really like. I've only played two of its stages, but I already really like how there's different kinds of challenges that shake things up in different ways. One was a simple 'get a certain score to win' challenge, but the other featured faster versions of a selection of rhythm games where you couldn't miss more than a few times or you failed. I really wish Groove had featured a mode like this, as it's a good way of getting more out of the content already in the game.

Splatoon Raiders (NS2)

• Played on Tues, Sat and Sun for an approx. total of ~3 hrs

As was mentioned in the preamble, this was the first week since Raiders released where it wasn't my most played game that week, as well as being the first week I didn't log 10+ hours into the game.

I can pretty easily explain that drop off, however. It comes down to the fact that I had played it a ton in the first three weeks, and I was starting to get a little bored. I'd reached a point in the post-game where things were starting to feel a bit repetitive, so I took a break from it for a few days and focused more on other games. When I came back to it, it felt fun again! Still a bit repetitive due to the nature of the game's post-game content, but those few days off really helped the game to feel somewhat fresh again when I picked it back up.

It also helped me realize that I was very wrong when I said that the difficulty had reached a point of 'diminishing returns' in last week's play log. It certainly felt that way for a bit, but as I played more, the difficulty did eventually start noticeably ramping up again. It's gotten to the point where stages are taking a lot of tries to get through. And, honestly? I love it. I feel like the skills I've built throughout the game are being truly put to the test without feeling unfair. It's caused me to put more thought into my loadout and the moves I'm making to improve it.

I think I'm getting close to the end of the game's post-game, so hopefully I should be able to get it done this week, barring the possibility of hitting a wall of difficulty that I end up really struggling to overcome.

F-Zero Climax (GBA: NC on NS2)

• Played on Tuesday for approx. ~10 mins

Well, this is a bit of a random one, but I promise there's a good reason. Basically, I learned somewhere, though I don't remember where, that F-Zero Climax had a track editor, and I was really interested in trying it out. So I spent about 10 minutes trying it out, then moved on with my life. That's it.

I do want to remark, though, that the controls felt strange. I was only actually doing the actual racing for maybe 3 or 4 minutes at max, so I didn't have a lot of time to get to grips with it. But, with this being a 'fake 3D' F-Zero game like the SNES original, I expected it to control like the SNES original, but, well, it doesn't. I'm not sure how to describe the controls, but I also didn't play the game long, so I don't think it's fair to judge based off such a limited impression. Perhaps someday I'll dedicate more time to it and the other 2 GBA F-Zero titles... which, man, anyone else find it wild that they put out 3 F-Zeros on the GBA? That's like, almost half of the franchise's entire output, ever. Interesting.

Metroid Fusion (GBA: NC on NS2)

• Played on Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun for an approx. total of ~6 hrs 5 mins

A new 'most played game of the week' has been crowned! As I've started shifting away from Raiders as the main game I'm currently playing, Fusion would slowly become my primary focus as the week went on.

I haven't beaten it yet, but I think I should be getting close. I like the game a lot and am really enjoying it, but there are some aspects of it that I'm finding I'm not the biggest on, and I'm finding it to be one of the weaker 2D Metroids, personally. Still great, but when you have a lineup of 5 great games (if we're looking at the remakes of 1 and 2 over the originals), some have to be weaker than the others.

First, the game's structure. In Fusion, the general gameplay loop generally boils down to: go to an area, get briefed by Adam in the Navigation Room at the start of the area on where to go and what to do, do the thing you were told to do, return to the Navigation Room, get told which area to go to next, rinse and repeat.

While there is still plenty of exploration to be done, this basic structure makes the game feel more like a guided tour compared to other Metroid games. It's not awful, this structure does work well for what Fusion is trying to do, and some of the game's most memorable moments so far have come from when it breaks the expectations of this cycle, but it undeniably makes the game feel more linear than other Metroid titles. I have a lot more to say on this, but I'll save it for a review so I'm not bloating this segment more than I need to.

Then there's the fact that some of the boss fights and set pieces I've encountered recently have been more frustrating than anything. During the sequence when the Central Power Core of the research ship the game takes place on is being overrun by plant roots, there were a couple things that I found more obnoxious than anything else. An SA-X encounter during this part of the game ended up being more annoying than scary for a few reasons, namely that I kept dying over and over, but there's more that fed into that. Namely, the fact I couldn't access any recharge rooms due to story reasons, forcing me to farm enemies to get my health up high enough since the SA-X hits like a truck. And even then, one time when I escaped from the SA-X, I had minimal health, only to die to a common enemy in the next room before I could save, forcing me to survive SA-X again.

There's also the fact that I had to take a short trek back to the encounter without taking damage every time I died, which, while not that big of a deal, did annoy me as the deaths added up. This is a minor complaint that extends to the boss fights as well. The boss fight at the end of the same section of the game I was just talking about deserves special mention for its watery-flower-pits-of-unescapable-doom. Maybe I'm just dumb, but whenever I fell into one, no matter how much I mashed literally every button on my controller, I couldn't get out, and just had to sit there and wait for Samus's energy to completely deplete. One of my attempts saw me fall into one of these pits as SOON as I entered the room, pretty much nullifying that attempt before it even got started.

And then there's 'the Nightmare', one of the more iconic boss design's from Fusion, and for good reason. It's an incredibly creepy design, and the buildup to it is nothing short of unnerving. As for the fight itself, the first two phases are perfectly fine, but the last phase is what annoys me. This is almost undoubtedly a skill issue, but I hate the way it just moves around borderline unpredictably. The room the fight takes place in is fairly small, especially compared to the Nightmare's giant sprite, and sometimes it moves around in such a way that I'm not sure how I'm supposed to avoid taking a hit or two. And as the fight drags on, those hits add up.

That fight is as far as I had gotten by the end of last week, so I'll withhold discussion of anything beyond it. Regardless, those are fairly minor complaints in the grand scheme of things. They more so serve as arguments for why I believe Fusion is overall weaker than some of the other games, but don't serve as major detractors from my enjoyment of the game. That is to say, I'm really enjoying Fusion, and it's produced some incredibly memorable moments.

Sequences like having to dart through a Sector to get a suit upgrade while avoiding blue, icy X parasites that would freeze Samus from the inside if she absorbs them without said suit upgrade, the main elevator shutting down due to a power outage while you are on it, leaving you to have to find an alternate path to your destination, or, my personal favorite, the ship's alarms blaring the message "EMERGENCY IN SECTOR 3" as you're leaving one sector, leading to a 6 minute countdown to sprint to Sector 3 and reach a certain area deep within it to stop the entire ship from exploding (or something to that effect, I don't remember the specific context). These sequences and set pieces are exciting and memorable, and keep you on your toes throughout the playthrough. It excels in atmosphere and tension building in a way I never would've anticipated from a GBA title.

I should be getting close to the end, so, hopefully by next week I should have another finished game to report on!

Super Mario Sunshine (GC: NC on NS2)

• Played on Wednesday and Thursday for an approx. total of ~2 hrs 15 mins

Ah, Mario Sunshine, what a weird game you are.

I'd consider Mario Sunshine to be the 'black sheep' of the 3D Mario lineage, not because it's bad, far from it. I say that because, when you look at every 3D Mario ever made to date, there's just something about Sunshine that makes it feel like an outlier.

Is it the weird, campy voice acting? The central gimmick of FLUDD being so much different from anything else in the series? The general lack of polish it has relative to most other Mario games? The large list of infamous, childhood trauma inducing levels within it, such as the Pachinko Machine, the Sand Bird, and the Lily Pad River?

I think it's a little bit of all of that which gives Sunshine its unique charm, but there's something else I think about a lot when I play it. That would be the simple fact that Sunshine was only the second 3D Mario game, and therefore the follow-up to Super Mario 64, arguably the most groundbreaking, revolutionary video game ever made. When I think about it from that perspective, it makes me find all the oddness of Sunshine seem exacerbated.

Like- Sunshine does evolve much of what 64 introduced, but it does so in ways that I don't think I would've anticipated. Sunshine feels like a game that would come out after the format was already well established and had a few titles under its belt, more so as a wacky, experimental offshoot, but no. It's the sequel to Mario 64, and the only other true sandbox 3D Mario game we'd get for a decade and a half before Odyssey arrived.

Am I making any sense, or did I just write the ramblings of a madman?

Regardless, with everything I've said so far, you might think I don't like Sunshine, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I think Sunshine is a great game, I just find its place in the Mario series kind of strange. That, and I feel like, while it is great, it can't quite escape the shadow of the other games in its lineage, juggernauts such as 64, the Galaxys, and Odyssey. There's a reason why I always used to joke about 3D All-Stars being 'a collection of two of the greatest games ever made and Mario Sunshine'.

There's a lot of reasons why I don't believe Sunshine quite measures up to its brethren, from the lack of variety in level themes, the controls that are nowhere near as tight as later 3D Mario games, being loose to the point of feeling like I'm fighting them at times, and just a general vibe that the game wasn't completely finished when it was released. It feels less polished than most other Mario games- and Nintendo games as a whole for that matter- and can be quite janky at times, a big reason why so many of its stages have become infamous among the Mario fandom. On top of that, you have all the Blue Coins, which are kind of fun to collect when you're first starting out, but feel like a replacement for more substantial content in order to get the shine total up to 120.

...aw man I just accidently wrote a mini review huh.

Again, it might sound like I hate this game, but I don't, and playing it for the second time now that it's finally on Nintendo Classics, I'm really enjoying it.

I do want to call attention to how cruddy and crusty the pre-rendered cutscenes look in this version, though I'm not sure if that's a symptom of the emulation, or if it was always that way. I've been spoiled by the remastered cutscenes in the 3D All-Stars version.

I swear I have positive things to say about this game, such as how much fun I do find the movement in the game despite the complaints about the controls. Sure, 3D Mario games wouldn't have their control really tightened up until Galaxy, but that doesn't make the controls in Sunshine bad, just a bit finicky at times. Overall, the game is really fun to play. Using FLUDD to slide across the ground, performing spin jumps, and utilizing FLUDD in tandem with Mario's moveset creatively to get around, are all incredibly satisfying. And while the levels lack thematic variety, they are still a ton of fun to explore.

I know I said I was gonna try to keep things condensed this week, but I had a lot I wanted to say about Sunshine. At the end of the day, though I find it one of the weaker 3D Marios, the fact that one of the franchise's weakest titles is still great says a lot about the standard of quality the Mario series has, and I'm having a great time playing it again on Nintendo Classics. I think I'm about 10 or so Shines in, and anticipate playing it some more in the near future.

DK Challenge (NS2)

• Played on Thursday and Friday for an estimated total of ~15 mins

After procrastinating for two and a half months, I was already planning on buckling down and trying to complete the DK Challenge over the next few weeks... and then Nintendo announced that you can win a physical card set featuring all 39 challenge cards for completing all the challenges. That gave me that much more motivation to complete the challenge, because dang it that is SUCH a cool reward and I want it incredibly badly.

So, yeah, after spending a small amount of time on it last week, I continued chipping away at the Nintendo Classics challenges, clearing all the Donkey Kong Land challenges and whittling the list down to list just the Bramble Blast challenge from DKC2 and the King K. Rool fight from DKC.

Though... I will admit, in the DKC challenges, if there was a checkpoint in a stage and I died after it, I just rewinded to the checkpoint rather than starting the whole challenge over, as that's where I would've started were I playing the actual game. Cheap? Sure, but I really want that card set, and I thought that was a fair compromise in order to not drive myself mad. Now I just need to come up with an excuse for rewind abusing the K. Rool fight... I mean what, you didn't see nothin'.

WarioWare Gold (3DS)

• Played on Friday for 1 hr 15 mins

Okay, so, unlike Smooth Moves and Move It, I didn't return to this one because I wanted to play the microgames. No, instead, I wanted to play with the feature that allows you to dub over the game's cutscenes.

I watched VineSauce's video on the feature one night last week, and let me tell you, I haven't laughed that hard in a while. So, I felt compelled to pop the game back in and try to create my own funny stuff. I think I did alright. I made myself laugh, so, that counts for something, right?

It was dumb stuff like Orbulon reciting Big Smoke's order from GTA San Andreas, Crygor and Mike discussing Freddy Fazbear from hit game Five Nights at Freddy's, and... well, I just played Steamed Hams into the 3DS microphone for one of them.

All that said, it is a really fun feature that I hope makes a comeback in the next WarioWare now that we have a microphone again on Switch 2.

Oh yeah, I also took some time to play some actual microgames, but it was mostly the dub feature I was messing around with.

Donkey Kong Bananza (NS2)

• Played on Friday and Sunday for an approx. total of ~2 hrs

With time running out on the DK Challenge, I made sure to take initiative while I had the time and tackle some of the challenges in Bananza, and man this was fun.

I was down to the time attack challenges and developer challenges, with everything else having been fairly straightforward. The time attack challenges weren't too bad, and it was fun figuring out the fastest way to beat the designated challenges.

The Developer Challenges are where things get really interesting, though. These are among some of the toughest challenges in the DK Challenge, and it all comes down to some of the techniques and strategies you have to use to beat them. For example, there's one challenge that tasks you with completing the Rambi Rumble on the Racing Layer in 55 seconds or less. This sounds impossible at first glance, until you watch the example video which shows the liftoff ore being used to cut across the center of the circuit and straight up skip most of the track. It looks like an unintended speedrun strategy, but it's being presented to me by the developers themselves as the method for clearing this challenge.

Then there's the challenge that tasks you with completing City Smash: Freestyle Bananza with 40 seconds or more left on the clock. Once again, looking to the video example shows the abuse of what seems to be a completely unintended strategy of using Elephant Bananza to destroy as much of the building as possible before even crossing the threshold to start the timer. Using this challenge, I was able to clear the challenge on my first attempt, but I never would've thought of it myself.

The challenge where you have to collect 6000 gold or more in a single bonus stage sounds incredibly difficult at first glance, until you remember Pauline has an outfit in the game that doubles collected gold. Equipping that and playing the 'Surfing for Gold' bonus stage makes this one pretty trivial.

Then there's the Boss Rush challenge, where you must complete a boss rush with no skills unlocked. You can go to any of the Elders to reset your skills, and, man, what makes this so challenging isn't the lack of advanced abilities, but rather the lack of health. You only have three hearts and one can of Apple Juice, and with how hard these bosses hit, if you're not careful, you WILL go through all of your health very quickly. The most difficult fights are definitely the Sinister Blusterwing and Muckity Muck, the 3rd and 4th fight of the rush respectively. Blusterwing is hard because there's so little safe ground to stand on, and falling into the water makes you susceptible to gradual damage via electrified water. Then Muckity Muck is just incredibly chaotic. The area you have to work with is fairly small, and will quickly become inundated by Muck and Muck spewing enemies. Trying to weave through all the chaos as you try to throw salt at Muckity Muck to gradually reveal its weak point is incredibly stressful, but by playing patiently and carefully, I managed to get through it on my first attempt to reach the fight. The 5th and final fight, Clompenstomper, is relatively free, so I was able to clear this challenge pretty quickly, but that doesn't change how challenging it is. Had things gone differently against Muckity Muck, I may have ended up stuck on this challenge for a while.

That leaves one more Developer Challenge, and it seems to be the most dastardly of them all: Clearing the Final Rehearsal (essentially Bananza's equivalent to a Grandmaster Galaxy/Champion's Road/Darker Side type final challenge level) with no skills unlocked. Holy geez.

I didn't have much trouble with Final Rehearsal the first time I played it, and I didn't even realize it was the game's final challenge until it was almost over. But that was with most skills unlocked. Doing it with no skills unlocked- meaning no Glide on Ostrich Bananza, no double Charge Jump on Snake Bananza, very limited Bananergy, only one can of apple juice and bananergy allowed, and, yes, only three hearts of health- sounds like a different beast all together. I won't know just how difficult this really is until I try it for myself, which should hopefully be sometime this weekend as I look to finish out the DK Challenge and secure that sweet, sweet physical card set. I'll aim to report on how it went next week!

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)

• Played on Saturday for 33 mins

Even though I've moved onto Fusion, I still intend to hop into Samus Returns every now and then and chip away at 100% item completion. I took another step closer this past weekend, spending about 30 minutes cleaning up Area 3 and proceeding to Area 4. Something funny I noticed is that, much like I had to fight my muscle memory from this game when I started Fusion, now that I've gotten used to Fusion's controls, I found myself fighting my Fusion muscle memory upon returning to this game. Funny how that works.

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I'm never promising to keep things short ever again because I am clearly physically incapable of doing so. I just start talking and don't know how to stop.

But, that's just how I get when I'm passionate about something!

This week doesn't have much going on, so it'll probably be more of the same. More Splatoon Raiders, more Metroid Fusion, more Mario Sunshine, and more of the DK Challenge. I'd like to squeeze in some Tears of the Kingdom and get that going again while we've got some down time in the release schedule, but we'll see if I'm able to make time for that.

Also, a quick life update. As I mentioned at the start I'm starting part-time work again, which will impact my ability to get stuff out in a timely manner (not that I was all that good at doing that beforehand). I'm still figuring out the workflow of content for this blog. It's a new thing to me, and I'm still trying to figure out exactly what works and what doesn't.

If there's even just a single person out there reading this, I'm grateful that you stopped by and read this far! Having an outlet for personal gaming content has been a dream of mine for a long time, and while it can be challenging, I'm also having a lot of fun putting my silly little thoughts into the world.

Before I end things off, I'd like to start something new here at the end of these play logs (as if they aren't bloated enough lmao).

To help keep me accountable as I try working through my backlog and the games I'm currently playing through, in each play log going forwards, I'm gonna set myself a set of goals for the week that I'll report back on in the next week's play log. I've got a couple in mind already for what little remains of this week, and they are, as follows:

• Finish Splatoon Raider's Post-Game
• Complete the DK Challenge
• Play More of Beatspell in Rhythm Heaven Groove
• Beat Metroid Fusion

That's a lot for what amounts to just the weekend remaining, but if I can get at least half of these done, I'll be satisfied.

Hopefully next week's log won't be as delayed (or bloated), but knowing my track record, I can't promise nothin'. I swear I'll figure it out someday...

Until then, happy gaming!