15/05/2024
Helo!
The number 15 is here, you know what that means!
Time for the regularly scheduled Pudding Blog Update!
In this blog update you will find: Crashed Club updates, Mario Journey, Helldivers 2 and Honkai: Star Rail!
Without further ado, let's begin!
WEBSITE UPDATES
I haven't done much, work break and all, but I have been thinking more about the project I mentioned in my last blog update. I thought of naming it: Crashed Club!
It's still a temporary name, I'll see what sticks, but I have been thinking and conceptualizing this story best I can. I might use a system like this one Hi, I'm text test explanation box! to explain things, just because of how Rimworld is, but it's going to be fun!
Here's something I maid for Crashed Club:
”Hey, maybe these costumes are not so bad after all.”
Oh yeah, I received the sketch for the Phoenix Club chapter 2 panel and it looks lovely! It made me sob of how good it was! Can't show it though, forgot to ask permission to show on this blog update, whoops!
That's about it for what I wanted to talk about for this segment.
ONE-SHOT OF THE DAY
No one-shot today, sorry!
I might change this segment to appear only at the end of the month, just because I'm not really finding personally interesting things to read lately…
We will see.
LIFE UPDATES
Couple of big things happened in the last 10 days, but I'll leave the biggest one for last. Let's start this segment with the usual Mario Journey!
Following up last time, we have New Super Luigi. U!
I was at first not going to include this game at the list because, to me, it felt little more than a level pack for Mario U. But after some hyping up from my good friend Miya, I decided to include it. (Later on, they told me that they never played the game, and only hyped it up because everyone else did…)
Unrelated cool hidden Luigi.
Luigi U sure is… a tough level pack alright. All levels were altered to be more tough and shorter, and you now have a time limit of 100 seconds to beat said levels. Luigi also controls differently, having his iconic slippery movement and high jump.
Let's get this out of the way first: this package is miles better than Mario U, I found myself having way more fun with this one.
Another unrelated even more hidden Luigi.
Luigi U is the best this “New” series games has to offer, but it's still a “New" series of games, if that makes any sense.
Final thoughts: This is the best the “New” series of games has to offer.
Above average sized Bowser.
We are finally out of “New” hell, it sure was an experience of all time, the next game on the list is: Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury!
This is a two games in one scenario, similar to Mario U and Luigi U, but I'll be only talking about the first half (Super Mario 3D World), because that's the only one I played so far.
A quite unfortunate prison…
I really enjoyed 3D Land, so reason dictates I would enjoy 3D World too… right?
YES, RIGHT!
I really enjoyed my time with this game, so much so, I decided early on that I would do 100%*!
This game is basically 3D Land if it was released on a console instead of a portable. Everything is bigger and better than ever and we have multiplayer where each character has their own abilities to make each unique!
EVEN THE ENEMIES CAN BE UNIQUE!
The new power-ups were fun and really creative. Who would even think of Mario being turned to a cat or a duplication berry? (The cat costume makes everyone walk on all fours, and it's so cursed because, when they enter a pipe, they just stand up…)
The levels were super fun and had a few unique themes, collecting green stars felt good because they weren't too out of way to get. The character specific buttons for stamps were a bit dumb, but most stamps were cute and fun to collect!
The OST was straight up iconic and just so good to listen to, graphics were great.
This game is so well made and fun, it skyrocketed to the top of my most fun list, up there with Galaxy!
Being chased by those things while the level falls apart behind you was quite cool!
Talking about Galaxy, Rosalina is actually playable in this game! She has the Galaxy spin for her move set and feels so overpowered in this game. She can cheese a lot of the combat with just a spin LOL!
This was a pleasant surprise for me. I like Rosalina, because she's y'k, the only character with an actual backstory, so I was really happy that we could play as her!
This boss rush was fun and funny!
What I was not happy about was the requirements for the actual 100%. You need to collect all stamps & green stars which is fair, but you also need to reach the top of the flagpole with all characters INCLUDING the post game Rosalina character??? That's just baffling dumb. You would need to play the game twice at minimum with 4-player co-op, or play it multiple times solo to get 100% and I believe that's really stupid. So, I collected all the stars, stamps, reached the top of the flagpole of all available levels and called it 100%.
A fairyful ending!
Final thoughts: One of the most fun Mario games on the list, I really enjoyed this game a lot!
That's all the progress done for the Mario Journey this time around, I'm glad to be out of the “New” games hell!
Here's how the list looks right now:
Gold means beaten since last blog update.
Blue means currently playing.
Art made by Miya.
I have one smaller topic before the huge one. I wanted to talk about the Explosive and Fun Gameplay of Helldivers 2!
I decided to pick this game because most of my friends were hyping it up to play and after I saw some of the funny comments made by the CEO of Arrowhead (Game's Developers) about the whole Sony PSN debacle. They have a good sense of humor and passion about their game, considering the cards Sony forced upon them.
Okay, what's the game about? It's a life service third-person extraction shooter, but what makes it different from the rest on the market is: you can play with really powerful bombs and explosives that can easily kill you and your friends if you're not careful enough!
Paired with how chaotic things get, hp being really fragile and how good the movement feels, it makes for one of the most frenetic and fun gameplay I experienced this year so far.
Nothing beats throwing a massive bomb, realizing it didn't go where you wanted and it lands right in-front of you and you begin to run as a massive explosion happens behind.
My eyes burn at the sight of such big explosions!
+ Points for the graphics being really good and OST being great too, I can see now why this game is so highly regarded. You should definitely pick this one and play it, it's a blast!
And now, for the biggest topic of today's blog update: Honkai: Star Rail 2.2 Story!
Short story: It was great!
Long story:
The Penacony story has been great so far, and this patch was no exception! This patch's story content is really long, I saw playthroughs that lasted 8 - 10 hours, mine's lasted over 11 hours! The story was great, but one critique I have is that it had a little bit too much dialogue and felt like it was dragging in some points. I see why there were people complaining about it, it's fair. But aside from that, it was great!
Not delving into too many spoilers, there were many reveals and resolutions to mysteries we saw in 2.0 - 2.1 and the fantastic finale of this patch was amazing!
IT'S HIM, HE'S HERE!
Now, click below for my full spoilers thoughts!
Spoilers!
I loved some particulars scenes such as:
Mikhail's whole scene where we get Misha's memories back, his scene growing up on the express and eventually leaving to stay on Penacony, and the Trailblazer inheriting his legacy.
Farewell Watchmaker!
This was such a good highlight and told in a fantastic way! It reminded me a lot of how I felt in One Piece, discovering with Luffy's crew what his incredible predecessors were up to and how Luffy's his crew will fill their shoes. Amazing all around!
Your legacy will not be forgotten.
The fake ending was really interesting, I was really disappointed how rushed it felt and Iwas wondering why did the devs say the story would go up to 2.6 or smth. Turns out it was mostly a dream, and Black Swan was here to get the express crew back on their feet before they lost the final battle. If there's something I would like to see from this fake ending is: Black Swan and Boothill coming with us in the express, that would be so cool!
I have wondered about the idea of Misha being not real, but this was always shut down by this flaw. I never would've guessed that this was intentional!
and the final highlight, of course, being the final battle against Sunday. I need to applaud all the ENG VAs for putting on an incredible performance and delivering such amazing lines. Sunday's VA specifically did an amazing job portraying an antagonist character that is too far deep in his own path to stop, but still having that bit of regret when someone tries to stop him.
This image just goes so hard.
The scene of Robin arriving on stage to convince him to stop, summoning the Astral Express to aid the Trailblazers, the final phase where the OST lyrics kick in. It really made me tear up.
THIS IS EVEN COOLER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE???
I need to mention Dan Heng's line during the battle: “You have a noble soul… Don't be shackled by the past!” just hits so deep considering he's speaking from his own experiences. That paired with the VA's delivery really made me tear up a lot.
I almost didn't break his bar in time!
Thanks to everyone who made Penacony happen, even if it's a little rough around the edges, it was a dreamy-like amazing I'll remember forever!
And that concludes everything I wanted to talk about in this segment!
SONG OF THE DAY
You know, Star Rail's 2.2 climatic ending was very powerful for me, for those who have seen it, you know what songs deserve this spot today.
The Song of the Day is Hope is the Thing With Feathers by Robin (HOYO-MiX)! You may know this already, but music really touches my soul and it tends to help me remember things. This song has touched me and will make me remember this story for years to come.
Spoilers!
I'll never forget the feeling I felt when the Astral Express was summoned to the battle or when the vocals came in on the third phase of the final boss.
Video games really are an amazing form of art.
Also, Hoyoverse is not beating the “A music company that makes games for their music.” allegations with these OSTs LMAO!
That's everything I wanted to talk about! My work vacation is coming to an end unfortunately, so expect writing related things to come in full swing by the next blog update!
And that's everything for this blog update!
Very big one for good reason.
See you next time!
Have a nice day Traveler!
05/05/2024
Helo!
It's been a while hasn't it?
Last update was really a real nothing burger, mostly because I barely did anything the past few days and I was feeling a bit lazy, so this one will make up for that one!
That means more and even more words!
So many words!
…
Maybe too many words!
This blog update will contain: New Pudds, Birthday log, Mario Journey.
Something else to note is that I'm currently on work vacation, so I’m extra lazy!
With that said, let's begin.
WEBSITE UPDATES
Wake Up Babe, New Pudds Just Dropped!
That's right, almost every page has a new Pudd drawing made by my good friend Miya as a birthday gift! (please make sure to visit their website by clicking their name!) In case you didn't know, most main page Pudd drawings are randomized, so don't worry, you're not going crazy, there are multiple Pudds. Also, these new art pieces are not replacements for the previous ones, you can still see the previous ones when refreshing the page. It's a 20% chance to see them! Gamble your luck away for the funny Pudd folks!
”I was cake all this time!”
And that's about it for website changes.
As for what to expect this month, I'm probably going to begin writing chapter 3 for Phoenix Club in the second half of the month and I have some fun Rimworld things coming! Stay tuned!
But before ending this segment, I would like to share this puzzling art piece made by Miya:
I don’t know how to feel about this!
ONE-SHOT OF THE DAY
Kimi wa Zombie Girl
You are a Zombie Girl
One-shot made by Ruu1mm.
Synopsis: A big fan of the occult meets a real life zombie girl by chance! What will she do, and what will she learn from this encounter? You can only know by reading!
Art and presentation: The art is pretty good and presented well, it’s your typical cutesy (moe-like, blessed, scrunkly type of art style… look, I don’t know the name of the art style, if it has one, sorry ;_;). However, this is a story about zombies, so it has some pretty impressive gore that doesn’t really feel out of place. The author made something that’s usually upsetting, not feel too out of place in a cutesy style, and I think that’s pretty impressive and worthy of praise!
Why you should read it: You know, I was completely caught off guard going into this One-shot, I was expecting something silly and fun, which it was, but I was never expecting it to deliver an important message so well. In an age where many suffer from being uncomfortable and resentful of their current appearance, this little one-shot tells a really important message about striving for your ideal self. There will be those who don’t know/ don’t understand, but that’s okay, because you are your ideal self! And that’s a beautiful & unique message to portray in a zombie themed one-shot.
Score: 5/5! It’s a really good read with a touching moment!
LIFE UPDATES
We got a stacked life updated section, so let's begin right away!
The first thing I want to talk about is: My Birthday!
A date I have been looking for a long time! I managed to get my work vacation a few days before it too, I was free to do whatever! But the thing I looked forward the most to eat was the chocolate cake I planned to buy just for myself.
So the fateful day arrived, I left a nothing burger of a blog update and started my day. My day started in a pretty rough way… due to some… family matters, that I rather remain private, my day took off in a pretty bad way that left me a little tired. So I took a little nap and after getting up, I went directly to buy my cake! See the cake below:
A very tasty chocolate cake!
The presents and good wishes I got from my friends did make that first half of the day feel better than it originally would've been. I know I may struggle sometimes to show appreciation, but know that I'm glad to have y'all as friends, life is much more fun with all of you around!
The second half of the day was much better than the first. I planned to do a little “IRL waking during night time on a busy street stream” on Discord for my friends, y'know, combining two things I like: walking and talking to my friends. That ended up way better than I originally thought. I thought the internet would be an issue, battery would instantly die and so on, but I was fortunate to have a great time and we all had a lot of fun talking and laughing.
The day came to a close when I got home, sat down, and finally ate my delicious chocolate cake I was so looking forward to eating. Despite the rough start, I had a pretty unforgettable day, once again, thanks everyone for your wishes and presents. You folks are the people that make life worth living!
Oh yeah, in case you were wondering about my pulls in Honkai: Star Rail, I managed to save up 145 pulls for Aventurine, and spent all of them on my Birthday to min-max luck! I managed to win my 50/50 and got Aventurine, but lost the Light cone banner 50/50, getting Himeko's light cone instead. Which I'm fine with, my Serval will become an even stronger queen with it! Later on in the day, I did manage to get his light cone, which made for a good ending. He's a great addition to my follow-up attack team, and has made my life a lot easier. Who knew having a 5-star sustain unit would feel this good?
Check out my powerful Aventurine!
I’m going to break the canon timeline a bit and talk about all the progress for the Mario Journey, to feel more cohesive and easier for me. If I don’t do that, I’m going to jump around like a madman through topics lol.
The game after NSMB. Wii is: Super Mario Galaxy 2!
I liked the original galaxy a lot when I played, so it’s expected of me to like this game just as much… right? It’s just more galaxy content… right?
Unrelated lorge Bowser.
To make a long story short, this game is kind of worse than Galaxy 1 in many ways. But first, here’s a fun fact, since Nintendo decided to exclude Galaxy 2 from the 3D collection, I had to play this game on Dolphin with a controller, which made for a worse experience that, not gonna lie, made my opinion sour a little bit.
Alright, time for the game. The game is basically Galaxy 1, but the fundamental change this time around is: They turned the game from a Collect-a-Thon, to a more standard level base game similar to Super Mario 3D World, and I feel this was a bad change. What made Galaxy 1 so fun was exploring those wacky and nonsensical worlds in each stage, finding secrets and stuff. Here in Galaxy 2, you rarely get that opportunity, your path is so much more linear and strict. The addition of Yoshi and many more power ups did make the game feel more fun however, despite Yoshi needing motion controls to work properly…
This was very cool though, the level falling down like paper was very cool and hurt my brain.
and that’s all I have to say funny enough, the game is more of Galaxy, which was a fantastic game, but falls a little short to capture the magic of the first. This really reminded me of the “New” series of games, the first game was good, and the sequels just felt uninspired and samey.
Oh yeah, Rosalina didn’t appear until the very end, this did knock the game down a few more points.
Final Thoughts: More Galaxy, but the package is not as good as the original.
And that concludes the interstellar adventure.
Here's something that was actually really: Super Mario 3D Land!
This game is basically the 2D mario games, but the levels are now 3D and you have many more options to go about the level, and this was such a breath of fresh air!
I got jumpscared by this new power-up while hitting the block.
The game's are mostly designed well, looked good, and are fun to go through, there's some cool usages of the 3D environment for platforming and puzzles, the controls feel really smooth and responsive.
Pretty cool camera angle!
One thing I must absolutely praise is the final boss fight, the music and the cool factor were cranked up to eleven! They did not need to go this hard on a funny bowser fight, but yet they did and it was awesome!
Bowser is also so massive compared to Mario. LMAO
I really enjoyed my experience with this one and I can't wait to play the successor: 3D World!
Final Thoughts: A great and really well made Mario game!
Pretty cute ending photo!
Next is… well, the next 2 games are the final “New” titles left, the first one is: New Super Mario Bros. 2.
I have… very little to talk about at this point.
You know the drill, it's a “New” game, you know what to expect.
I feel sand sick from so much desert…
The gimmick this time around is that the game showers you with coins, and encourages you to collect as many coins as possible. I got to say, this game turned an otherwise really boring game into a more enjoyable experience.
Collecting coins on a ride!
Also, when people complain about music in the “New” series of games, I think they specifically talk about this title. For god knows what reason, they decided to make the “Bah!”s the whole song, meaning, the song is most of the sang via Bahs and it freaking sucks.
Another thing they missed this time around was the graphics weirdly enough. 3D Land came out before this game, but it feels like this is a DS title and not a 3DS title. There's very few 3D models, and all the textures were so blurry and terrible, it has no excuse to be this bad when 3D Land showed earlier how great a 3DS game could look like.
Just look at this!
Again, putting those 2 criticisms aside, the coin gimmick is fun, but not enough for this game, levels have very few gimmicks too… it's just another “New” game that blends with the rest…
Final Thoughts: it sure is another “New” game hahahaha… but it ranks a few steps higher for the coin gimmicks.
Kinda boring ending screen…
And now, for the last game I played during this period: New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.
I would like to not repeat myself too much here, so to make it short: this is for sure the worst one in the series.
Icy time in the castle.
For what reasons? It's the most unoriginal and boring of the bunch. The first game was the first of the series, the Wii was the first console release and had 4 player multiplayer, 2 had the whole coin gimmick, what does U have to separate it from the others? Very little…
We have a new power-up that doesn't bring a very unique gimmick, baby Yoshis that are cool, but rarely used and levels that sometimes have something unique but are too far apart. I fully see why this series was very looked down upon.
What didn't help was this game being almost twice as long as the others.
There are a few things I liked about this game, but the package as whole was mostly boring and felt like a chore…
This is the most memorable level of the bunch.
I would like to clarify that all this relates to the base game, NOT the New Super Luigi U content. Luigi U is the next one in the list. According to my good friend Miya, it's much better than U, so we will see about that.
Final Thoughts: The longest and worst of the “New” series of games, not because of bad gameplay, but because it lacks a self-identity and is boring.
Another boring ending screen… :(
And that's all the progress made for the Mario Journey, quite a lot isn't it?
To be fair, it was 20 days instead of the regular 10, so it makes sense. Here's the list right now:
Gold means beaten since last blog update.
Blue means currently playing.
Lovely art piece made by Miya when they hijacked my spreadsheet to put some other journeys that I… very kindly put on the back of my mind… yeah, let's go with that.
With all that out of the way, I also played a few more things that I would like to talk about, so let's get into that!
First is Noising it Up With Pizza Tower!
I finally played the noise update for Pizza Tower, and I think Noise was a pretty great addition to the game. He controls very differently than Peppino, but still similar enough that it doesn't feel weird, and the amount of completely insane and chaotic movement options at his disposal makes it super unique and fun.
I did a few P ranks with him and it felt really good and cool to get them, but I most likely won't P rank the entire game again with Noise. My skill decay with this game is really bad and I don't really feel like grinding it again… but this was an absolutely amazing update that I was happy to play! The new music was amazing too!!
The forest was gnomed!
Second is, Gods’ Club in Rimworld What???
I have been playing a lot of Rimworld, as you may have expected at this point, but I decided to drop my previous save file with the whole Ideology DLC. Why? Well, the save file was pretty bugged, since I started in the transition between the 1.4 and 1.5 updates of the game, the requirements for the ending just bugged out and don't work anymore. For those who don't know, you need to reach a certain amount of wealth and start from the beginning again, but you gain a piece for the ending puzzle. But my save file was bugged and was only giving me the first puzzle and never the second… so I decided to give up on that save file.
So I moved on to the next DLC, which is Biotech!
As the name implies, this DLC adds a lot of Bio and Tech stuff to the game, but I'm still a bit far to experiment with the new content. But from what I saw so far, it seems to add genes and even new species of humans! The DLC also expands on the ideology content by introducing religions that hate other species!
…
Don't worry, the factions that hold those beliefs are mostly villains/ raiders, but the option to make one yourself is there.
This time I have a more themed colony as well. I decided to borrow the OCs from Miya's series called Gods’ Club. And to make it more fun, I decided to chronicle the hijinks on this colony on a day by day basis. This is something I planned on doing in the Anomaly DLC, which I will still do, but I wanted to try out first with this DLC. So far, I have chronicled about 80~ days of the colony, when it reaches 100 days, I'll put it on the website!
Gods’ Club in Rimworld real!
Check out this drawing I made for that chronicle:
Miya presents a Lyla's sculpture.
And this out of context photoshop piece I needed to make for it:
This art piece is called: “Hika's Circloid”.
I can't wait to put it on the website!
And that covers pretty much everything I wanted to talk about in this section. Not as extensive as I thought to be honest, but I had fun all the way through!
As for what to expect for this month, I think you can expect the end of the Mario Journey. There's very few games left, and I think I can finish them by the end of the month! Maybe! I do plan to spend a long time with Odyssey and Wonder, so we will see how it goes.
SONG OF THE DAY
Continuing with the double everything theme, we have two songs for this segment!
First is my pick for the birthday “Song of the Day” segment, I decided to allow myself to cheat and repeat a song, so:
The Song of the Day is Meltdown by Iroha(sasaki), one of my most favorite ever Vocaloid songs that pulls absolutely no punches in the emotional department! I absolutely love this song!
The Second Song of the Day is Yababaina by Satapan P, another song that is the absolute embodiment of the chaos of Vocaloid.
The two sides of the Vocaloid sphere in one blog update!
And that's everything for this blog update!
Very big one for good reason.
See you next time Traveler!
Have a nice day!
