Rundown (11/06-11/12) My First Exposure to Trans Characters Was Family Compo
Wherein I discuss: Some deep Natalie lore. Some pretty boring acquisition stuff. And modern Americana politics.
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Rundown (7/10-7/16) Nats & Arts & Crafts!
Wherein I discuss my artistic inabilities, a pair of semi-pleasant acquisitions, Kirby’s cake rolls, and how games keep on dying.
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Rundown (2/20-2/26) The TSF Well Is Deep, Dank, and Viscous
Wherein I discuss how I wanna make more TSF stuff, a premature sequel, a sequel 25 years in the making, two collections of disproportionate quality, and how you can make super emulation machines if you are smart enough.
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Rundown (2/13-2/19) Natalie is Full and Content
Wherein I discuss acquisitions (get used to me saying that every week, folks), and Nintendo’s war on games preservation.
(more…)Rundown (2/06-2/12) Bluetooth Frustrations
Wherein I discuss Platinum’s painful pivot, another acquisition, a definitive failure’s grand success, and the oodles of delights from Nina Tendo’s happy time press release showcase!
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Natalie Rambles About Dragalia Lost: 2021 Remix – Ch 5: Petty Quibbles and Miscellaneous Desires
Because while I love this game, there are a litany of little things that have been chipping away at my very soul!
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Natalie Rambles About Dragalia Lost: 2021 Remix – Ch 2: Play and Progression
Because when you engage with a live service, extensive tutorialization and external information gathering is a necessity to ensure an even remotely optimal play experience.
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Rundown (6/16-6/19) Formatting Frustrations
Wherein I discuss an accepted mundanity, ample cash left on the table, the next generation in gacha tech, and a leak for a DOPE collection.
(more…)Rundown (5/02-5/08) Back 2 Da Office Lyfe
Wherein I discuss the legal revelation of a clash of industry titans, the continued consolidation, and a tool for the next generation of game devs.
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Rundown (12/06-12/12) Cyber Dump
Wherein I discuss the aesthetic failures of the hottest game of the moment, Nintendo being Nintendo, the return of the Metatron, and Mr. Keighley’s latest trailer festival.
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Natalie Rambles About Dragalia Lost – Chapter 5: Love, Loss, and Gripes
Because when you pour 1,000 hours into something, your thoughts on it become all kinda of mixed and muddled!
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Rundown (7/26-8/01) Leaks are Love; Leaks are Life
Wherein I discuss the God-tier gigaleak, a promise most befuddling, and cry like a bug about licensed gacha games.
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Rundown (4/26-5/02) Empty My Wallet For an SSR Waifu
Wherein I discuss my Gleo thirst, the most brutal of us, Viking assassins, and how Japanese work culture has been adversely affected by the global pandemic due to a separation between work and home.
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Rundown (1/26-2/01) The Questionable Box
Wherein I discuss the troubles plaguing Natalie’s precious Box, Okabe’s adaptation adventures, a new home for my 1,000 babies, the success of the Switch-makers, and another icy blunder.
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Rundown (9/08-9/14) I Stan My Stand
In my reviews of The World Ends With You Final Remix and Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee I mentioned the difficulties I encountered when trying to play both these titles in handheld mode, and how I sought to remedy this through the use of the Nintendo 3DS Stand that came bundled with Kid Icarus Uprising. It was something I was quite happy with, and cut forward about a year I am still using this stand regularly. Yet rather than playing oodles of Switch games, I’m instead using it to prop up my smartphone so that I can play games without needing to hold something for extended periods of time. Part of me feels that this is antithetical to the very idea of handhelds, since I am not holding them with my hands. Another part of me recognizes that I am enjoying games more by playing them my special way, so I’m going to keep doing that.
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Rundown (9/01-9/07) Natalie Must Remain Enigmatic
Something that might not be obvious from the deluge of personal information and historically hued anecdotes I offer throughout this jolly old website is the fact that ‘in real life’ I tend to be immensely reserved around others. As in, I like to give as few personal details as possible, and only share said details when prompted. This applies from co-workers to classmates to even my immediate family, and my justification stems from a deep fear of rejection or being misunderstood by others. I mean, I could tell them that I enjoy writing and video games, but those things could be wildly thrown out of proportions, and saying that I write novels and review games for a small website sounds a trifle bit bizarre to some people. So the way I view it, there is no winning and I ought to keep my mouth shut, lest I accidentally spew something problematic.
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Sushi Striker: Way of the Sushido Review
Sushi is life. Sushi is death. Sushi is love. Sushi is war. Sushi is hometown. Sushi is the reason you have never known love. Sushi is the reason you’ll die. And sushi is the only good thing in this dark world of wasabi and parasites.
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Rundown (6/11) E3 2019: Hyper Bursting!
Woo! E3 is mostly over, and the hype has undoubtedly causes every audience member to burst with powerhouse excitement, and things may have gotten more than a little messy in the process. Anyways, the main conferences are done, the actual E3 event, where people try to get work done in a loud, crowded, and smelly convention center, is underway, and the only press conferences of the day was Nintendo’s. So let’s cut all pretense and jump right into the gooey center of the E3 Claire eclair.
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Rundown (2/17-2/23) Tax Time Makes You Go Crazy!
So this past week I began another engagement with a CPA, wherein I aid him in various tax related activities while juggling my office job, grad school, personal time, and time spent making content for this quaint little site. It is a side job that pays well, and is rather pertinent to my interests as an accounting major, but it also represents yet another activity that impedes my ability to go through games or work on my own projects. It’s not ideal, and this week is a particularly hectic, since I am going into my part-time job today, on a Sunday, when the office is closed, because somebody thought it would be a nice treat if I went home early on Monday. I swear, I was mentally referencing last week’s header image for the past 5 days, stewing over how much I wish I had done everything sooner rather than later. Garf!
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Review
Super Smash Bros. Special Spirits Edition
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Rundown (2/10-2/16) Flowchart Nightmares Ahead 2: You Can (Not) Prepare
Last Friday the Student Transfer development team announced that Version 4 will be coming before the end of February, boasting that this version will contain roughly twice the content as Version 3. A surprising bit of news that I find to be simultaneously exciting and intimidating to me, as I have taken on the duty of creating the flowcharts for sprawling choose-your-own adventure style visual novels about TG, body swapping, and more. I very much want to enjoy the game and take my time with it, but Version 3 took me a good week to get through, so I am a bit concerned about getting a flowchart ready in a timely manner, especially with work and grad school keeping me so busy. As such, I decided to do my homework in advance and download what I can off of the public Student Transfer GitHub in order to get cracking on a rough flowchart for V4 at the risk of spoiling myself. Only to discover that with the way this game is developed, I would basically need to consolidate the builds available myself and… yeah, that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
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Rundown (1/27-2/02) The Saga Must Go On!
So, just a few days ago I released The Saga of Vincent Dawn, and while I am ultimately happy with the finished project, I am aware that some of the writing seen throughout the story is not up to my previous writing standards. The act of going through and summarizing a hundreds of pages of poorly written text is an arduous process, especially when it is very personal to you, and when it came time to edit it all once more, my patience grew slim, as I just wanted to be done with the project and get started on the next one. Though considering how I am still working on the outline, I really have no idea when it will be done. But it will get done, ‘cos I’ve got a story to tell and I’m gonna tell it no matter what, even if nobody actually reads it.
(more…)The End of 2018!
Well, it’s that time once again! The seasons have passed, the Earth has concluded another rotation around the sun, and a whole bunch of nonsense happened! It’s the end of 2018!
Rundown (11/25-12/01) Corporate Woes
Currently my school-based workload is diminishing, my mother is doing a lot better, and my mental state is in a more stable position, so reviews will resume on Wednesday, and a more structured format will hopefully be established in the following weeks. But in the meantime, the small assortments of stories I found noteworthy this past week all followed a corporate theme of sorts and, while ultimately positive, are difficult for me to not view in a cynical light. My reasoning from this universally stems from how much corporations get away with in these modern times, and how, well, following just about anything for years upon years causes people to become jaded.
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Super Mario Odyssey Review
A grand globe-trotting journey best only taken once.
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