Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review

I watched the original Beetlejuice for the first time in like 30 years to prepare for the sequel. My takeaway is that the original still holds up really well, and the sequel does a pretty good job of matching the same energy. It’s not super schmaltzy, nor is it a beat-for-beat retelling of the same story. Though I am disappointed that the sequel ends with Beetlejuice once again trying to marry Lydia, and once again a sand worm appears to eat the villain(s). Note that I didn’t say it eats Beetlejuice, because this time around, Beetlejuice really isn’t the antagonist. He’s basically become a good guy and helps the heroes more than he hinders them. Which is fine, I guess. I vaguely remember the Beetlejuice cartoon being the same way. So maybe it helps to view this as a sequel to the cartoon, since the protagonists from the first movie, the Maitlands, are nowhere to be found.

I’m okay with the Maitlands not being in the sequel, whether that’s for artistic reasons or that they couldn’t get Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis to return. I also understand why Jeffrey Jones isn’t back (spoiler: he’s a pervert). But it is strange how much his face is still featured. Like, it’s funny that his character gets bitten in half by a shark, so you never see his head, but pictures of his face still show up everywhere else. Removing those wouldn’t have had any effect on the story. That’s also how I feel about the ex-wife character. She adds nothing to the story, and her motivation makes no sense. This is a movie that’s a little too overstuffed, and the first half especially could have benefited from some trimming. Still, the costumes and practical effects are great, and Catherine O’Hara is a delight, as always. If you’re at all interested in the movie, then she and Michael Keaton will make it worth your time.

Patch Quest Review

I normally don’t enjoy roguelike games, because you quickly reach a point where progress feels extremely slow. That hasn’t been the case with Patch Quest. I’m about 15 hours into the game and still feel like each run has accomplished something. It helps that the map layout isn’t randomized, only what happens in each tile. The map is also quite large and takes a long time to fully uncover, but you can unlock many permanent shortcuts along the way. You also have a few sub-goals to work towards in the form of clearing mini dungeons, collecting plants, and finding new animal friends to send home as pets.

The animals represent Patch Quest’s main gimmick. Your character is pretty helpless on their own, but you can lasso a wild, Pokemon-like animal to control. Once in your control, you inherit that animal’s abilities/attacks. You can’t just ride your favorite animal all the way through, though, because they’ll tire out, forcing you to lasso a new one. It’s a fun mechanic that requires you to be familiar with a good variety of animals and gets you looking forward to your favorite types popping up again. Heck, 15 hours in, I’m still discovering new species!

The only criticism I have against Patch Quest is that, yes, it’s still a roguelike, and it still feels like it’ll take forever to actually beat the game. This largely depends on how generous any given run is, too. Like, if you don’t start with the power-up that immediately increases your maximum health (and increases how much health pick-ups give you), then you are far less likely to succeed that round. But even a round that gets off to a bad start can still miraculously turn around, and suddenly you’ve been playing a single run for over an hour. But you can also save and quit mid-run, so yeah, they thought of everything.

Moving Out 2 Review

I must have liked the first Moving Out game, because I added it to my list of recommended busywork games. But after playing Moving Out 2, I’m not so sure anymore. To be fair, the more normal levels in this sequel aren’t bad. As a sequel, though, it tries to be so much bigger and leans into very gimmicky territory. Within the first few levels, you’re introduced to “Moving In” levels, which sound novel on paper but don’t work nearly as well as the game’s core “moving out / destroy everything on the way out” mechanic. The worst offenders with these new ideas are the Score Attack levels and the farming levels where you have to “move out” animals. Not surprisingly, the animals run away from you and jump out of their pens. It is very frustrating and annoying.

After the farming levels, the game explodes into other dimensions, where each dimension brings its own gimmicks. The candy world has a wrecking ball you have to roll around, the city world has drones and pollution, and the magic world has trains and portals. Honestly, though, I really liked the magic world levels. The trains are fun to operate, and the portals can turn a regular Moving Out level into a puzzle of sorts. Alas, the magic world has the least amount of levels in it, and you constantly have to play the other two (lesser fun) worlds to increase your rank before more levels in the magic world open up. They should have just gone all in on the magic angle and called this Moving Out 2: Moving with Magic. But it seems like they ran out of magic ideas pretty quickly, so I dunno if an all-magic game would have made a difference…

The Boys – Season 4 Review

Well, that was the worst season of The Boys by far. I know a lot of people are saying that, because they feel the show has become “too woke,” but The Boys has always been critical of right-wing propaganda. It’s just been far more on the nose and topical this season. And that’s not even why I think the season is bad. Season 4 is just… messy and meandering. Like, plot points and characters from the spin-off show, Gen V, are now integral parts of the main show, which makes the spin-off required viewing to fully understand what’s going on. And yeah, I watched Gen V and thought it was fine, but molding the two together just reeks of the Marvel shtick that this show thought it was lampooning.

This season also spends a lot of time on side stories that ultimately don’t go anywhere, and in some cases kind of came out of nowhere, too. You have Kimiko and Frenchie both dealing with people from their past, and then Hughie’s dad getting sick. The latter thread, Hughie’s dad, at least packs some emotional weight, but it’s undercut by gross-out gore as his dad accidentally kills several people in the hospital. I know you gotta expect a certain level of shock value from The Boys, but Season 4 has no restraint anymore. There’s even half an episode dedicated to sexually assaulting Hughie, which is played for laughs in the moment and then quickly forgotten by the next episode.

There are other poor character decisions this season, too. Annie spends much of the season hiding in an office and moping over what people on TV said about her. Each season continues to make Butcher less and less likeable, and here he finally goes full supervillain. It’s not entertaining to watch him hallucinate on his death bed for so many episodes. The new supe, Sage, is interesting, but in-universe, she is supposed to be the “smartest person in the world,” and it just highlights how bad the writing has gotten. The writers aren’t clever enough to show us how smart she is, so it boils down to her being snarky and manipulative and saying at the end, “Everything that happened? Yeah, I planned it that way.” Sorry, The Boys, but you gotta try harder than that.

Everdream Valley Review

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why developers continue to insist on implementing stamina bars to prevent you from running too much. This stamina restriction absolutely kills the pacing in Everdream Valley for me, because, if you aren’t running, your character is soooooooo slow. Seriously, they should have made the run speed the walk speed and then increased the run speed even more. Or just gotten rid of the stamina bar. It sucks trying to trek across the map but having to continually stop and wait for your stamina to refill. The map isn’t even that large, but it feels large due to how long it takes to get anywhere. I would have enjoyed this game so much more if I didn’t have to monitor my stamina to the degree that is required. Oh, and if you get hurt, your stamina permanently decreases! Yay!

At its core, though, Everdream Valley is still a decent farming game. You have a lot of freedom in how you want to set up your farm, and I do like that you can just go out and find stray animals to bring back and claim as your own. The game’s main gimmick revolves around having dreams about these animals, where you play as the animals, and on paper that sounds pretty cool. In actuality, the dreams are nothing more than clunky minigames that each have their own wonky controls and rules. However, you have to be able to beat some of these minigames to unlock certain features, like a saddle for your horse. Riding a horse would probably fix a lot of my grievances with the game’s speed, but alas, the horse minigame was too difficult to beat on my first try. You can’t control which dreams you have until the end of the game, either, so I was stuck playing most of the game on foot and not liking it very much.

Togges Review

Togges is not your typical 3D platformer, and I love it for that. I can’t even remember the last time I played a platformer that had such a unique set of rules. Maybe calling this a platformer isn’t even correct, though it still feels like one. While you directly control a little vacuum-like robot that can freely move and jump around the entire level, you can only interact with things if you build a chain of blocks to the item or switch at hand. These blocks have a lot of restrictions on how they can be placed, though, and each color of block behaves slightly differently. Yellow, for instance, conducts electricity and stacks higher than other colors but also uses up twice as many “build points.” Thus, a big part of the game is seeing a collectible in plain sight and then figuring out how you can lead the blocks to it to pick it up.

In that sense, you could characterize Togges as more of an environmental puzzle game. And these environments are jam-packed with stuff to do. There are only seven levels/worlds in the game, but I’ve already put 15 hours in just getting to World 6, and I wasn’t even trying to do everything. Each level is its own, mini open world with three bonus sub-levels and a whole bunch of fruit and seeds to collect. And the fruit locations aren’t always obvious, either, as you sometimes need to complete a challenge to reveal them. If I have anything bad to say about Togges, it’s that some of these challenges are a little too vague. 15 hours in, and I still have no idea what to do with the “ghost fruits.” But if you like games that don’t hold your hand and games that let you explore at your own pace and games that aren’t afraid to be different, then you need to check this one out. It deserves so much more attention than it’s getting.