Tag: Collection

The Paradise Weekly Gazette 3: 23 to 29 November

Konichi-week’s up again!  Bing Bong! So it is time to recapture our week of blogging.  I got an amazing article written about me… and I got the wish of every anime character ever.. Senpai Noticed me.. so after this week alone I can already die happy! It’s also been a week of mixed anime results and the one where I answered by besties Summers Questions.. so let’s put it all in a summary and see how I did personally shall we! This is the Paradise Weekly Gazette Issue three. As we cover Paradise adventures from the 23rd till the 29th of November!

The Animinis

The week started off pretty shitty! While the episode was not very bad.. an episode of Digimon got under my skin and messed with my brain. Feeling.. very down for some reason I did not know what to do.. given that we would get yet another fairly depressing episode to follow it and a plain bad episode my first hour of anime really rubbed me wrong. However the four episodes that came after became truly amazing as I had to say goodbye to one of my now all time favourite anime ever.

Digimon Episode 12: Lillymon Blooms

Samurai Flamenco Episode  19: The Quiet Life

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 18: Evil Creeps Closer

Flip Flappers Episode 13: Pure Audio

Hikaru no Go Episode 23:  The Room of Yuugen

Natsume Book of Friends Episode 3: The Mysterious Person of the Eight Fields

Cowboy Bebop Episode 3: Honkey Tonk Woman

Pinkie’s Other Posts

The Staff is taking a bit of a break still, but Kuro has told me they are working on a new bit so expect that soon! Sunny was trying to breed a Starfish with a Goldfish so we could get a Golden-Starfish-fish which of course in cartoon form would be yellow! Indigo is struggling playing Ace Combat 7 so might not land for a good while? I am not sure!  But I did a lot of fun stuff this week!

I played a Pokémon Mystery game involving Looker set in a Gen II Bullet Train

I answered Summer’s Questions for some Sunshine and I changed the rules of a post!.. As well as a commenters comment!

I got treated to  a VERY bad movie for my birthday.. even though I love the orginal

I played a VERY good game I bought with the help of my Kofi Supporters.. as a Birthday gift .. to me! As well as provide the website with some content!

Camp Coconut Updates


It’s not the right season for coconuts! I have a lot of Coconut Milk saved from all the love they have gotten me earlier and thanks to King Coconut, The Shy Coconut and fairly recently the Buddy Coconut I have had a very nice birthday in terms of gifts.  The  Playful Coconut gifted me two games for my birthday, so thank you Holy Mailman, Ospreyshire,  MikeKelly666 and the Multifaceted Ocelot, you all contributed to me having a great  gaming week! I think the Coconuts might be holding a winter sleep though so I am not sure if they will ever reply!

Posts that Impressed Pinkie

So .. I  planned to find some very niche and new bloggers here this week to show off to you.. there were plenty of interesting reads.  A post on the Later Levels Twitter Inspired me.. how do we make people new in the community feel welcome.  Then I clicked on her blog and saw Kim tackle this challenge.. Pick five games that you would play if you can only play those five for a year. I really like these types of scenario things so it quickly became one of my favourites posts this week. The images are the links! If I could not find an image.. or wanted to have some fun .. I dabbled a bit!

Now these in the first two installments of the Gazette I have picked up at least one article that is more or less..  something that works as an announcement within the community! Like  Ospreyshire writing his 400th post for Iridium Eye and Irina looking for Guest Bloggers. So when your Blogging Bestie (.. or since  recently, ONE of MY blogging besties… I now have Three.. four cause I kinda count Geek Girl Joy as well)   announces she is changing how her content works.. you share! Summer is going to bring us some Woo-Woo. And No I don’t refer to the Woohoo cocktail after a few drinks.. no more mystical stuff! That will be SUPER interesting. You all should really give her blog a follow so you don’t miss out!  She will also talk a lot about some anime/cartoons she is watching so geek content a plenty.

I guess I have Five Blogging Besties because Raistlin.. Also would count as one.. Though I kind of feel he is a bestie in the way a good dog is your bestie.. Not that I think he is a dog.. but he is just sweet and kind to everyone..Only he gives the headpats instead of the other way around.. Inverse Dog Raistlin  must make him God Raistlin.. Anyway.. As a 34 year old I do love the 80’s and 90’s.. You might wonder “But if you’re from 1986, you can’t remember the 80’s” .. and that is kinda true… but back in the 90’s a lot of 80’s stuff of america first aired on tv here.. OR went in reruns because it was cheap and it would help sell toys!  And about those toys Raistlin made a blog! I do remember my childhood toys.. I destroyed so many of them! …. So this shot of Nostalgia was one of the greatest euphoria trips I got this week. The new bloggers did not make me feel this great. I might have tweaked the image with an iversed dog god Raistlin! I hope that doesn’t insult you Raisty! I truely love how supportive you are to us all!

So I only had one slot available.. as I tend to do these in fours.. Why four? I originally wanted to do 7.. and tie them to the Dragon Balls.. or something.. but then I wanted a few custom images and I have to make 7 each week.. alongside all the other stuff.. I’ll need to do a LOT!
Distracted again! .. Kind of like Senpai.. who started to work on the Blog Tag The Kore Wa Watashi Award. In this Blog Tag you tell us about yourself.. through anime.. but Senpai got distracted and stuck… and then she made the award even better and more beautiful. She made it about someone else.. and that person was me.. she made the award explaining how she sees me.. through anime characters and she was pretty darn close… do I not like being called a mom!  I might be old.. but I don’t want children!  I do like to talk in the community though!  I also worry about all your safety… so she wasn’t that wrong with the word…
But yes SENPAI NOTICED ME! … AND I HAVE PROOF! HOW CAN I NOT PUT IN MY POST TOP FOUR! *SQUEEEEEEE* She noticed me! Senpai Noticed me!…..

I was gonna edit in a god Irina.. but I could not touch her work I was too touched she did this for me!

Pinkie Away from Keyboard

On a personal front not a whole lot of interesting things happen to me, yet at the same time they did!  I had my online tabletop on monday and it was fun to see the group encounter their new ordeal.. or course I had to force them to hurry up because everyone was stalling.. and we are SO behind schedule already!  So when I say.. you Literally have two options, you attack or you let the bad guy win.. but take no damage yourself.. just to others around you.. they tried to find the hidden third path.. as DM I kept insisting.. “You have two options.. these are the rules for your next encounter.. or you can abandon that encounter”.. they were like.. What if we do this instead. “No that has been explained.. that would not work” .. It’s like a dm saying there is a fork in the path one path goes past a lake the other through the dark woods.. Instead of choosing a path the group ended up checking all the bushes for a secret path.  No matter how many perception checks told them there were only two paths.. frustrating but fun.

Obviously.. we build a third road and by helping a random town we hope they will help us.. in case we might need bridges.
Yes

Tuesday I had a big day.. I got a phone call I had been expecting for a LONG time.. I can not explain too much detail.. a few of you may know what it is about as I shared this with a few of you..  but I finally began a long awaited Medical project in February.. the first investigation will start in February first. It will lead into a series of treatments that (hopefully)  will improve my quality of life by a lot. It will be an ordeal that will take a while.. but we are heading in the right direction.. and perhaps I then can finally look at the mirror with some confidence that I will make it through the day. 

Wednesday and Thursday I had a bit of anxiety.. but I went out for a few walks. On Friday my Neighbors apartment kept beeping..  No idea what it was but it kind of annoyed me!  You know like someone is playing Operation in their apartment in dead silence but all i could hear is that buzzer sound. I also paid my rent, got myself some new flowers that smell super good and nearly cut  three fingers off.. Luckily I do this stuff a lot so my reactions came in time and by letting me sink through my own legs.. I managed to fall myself out of harm’s way.. I just mopped so I got a nice whiff of citrus scent to boot! Yesterday my normie friends came over which was kinda awkward but fun nonetheless.  I nearly fed them bad tomatoes.. well they were past their date but looked fine so I figured they are fine.. but I decided to eat them myself later.. they were not fine.. Doesn’t matter though I had a fun day.. though one of the girls kept bringing up super depressing topics.. so I drank a bit to much wine to keep the spirits up.. both literally and figuratively.

Plans

We are moving into December on Tuesday so that means we will start Steam Punk Month. For the first time ever I will play Dishonored.. but since I probably will not have that game finished by the end of the week I will most likely start with a rave about my favourite Final Fantasy Game.. one that is very Steam Punk.. Final Fantasy VI. I also play to play a sky shooty game on Sega Genesis and either a Diablo Clone or a Point and Click Adventure depending on how the mood strikes me. 

I will watch Laputa Castle in the Sky for the first time.. as well as Steam Boy the anime and movie department.. but since so many of you like me to watch bad movies as well.. I will watch .. hilariously terrible.. Wild Wild West again as well. City of Ember also is on my interest list of movies as well.

There will be stories, there will be gadgets.. andI will probably need to stretch the concept of steampunk to fit it all into this month! But heck! I surely will have great fun! I also fully intend to write a guest article for Irinia’s blog next week.. but first.. outside Steam Punk Month there is a special Pokémon Post I have to make..  since someone was super kind to me I have a favor to repay.. so unless I am REALLY hungover today.. which Saturday Evening Pinkie really doubts..  Tomorrow you will see Irina Reimagined as A Pokémon.. and Imagined as A Pokémon Trainer! Of course these are all plans so who knows what might change!

Crafting Bliss: Yoshi’s Crafted World

Sometimes a game looks so adorable and appealing we lose all sense of reason. Even with mediocre reviews across the board I opted to start playing Yoshi’s crafted world. Through the help of my Ko-Fi supports MikeKelly666 , LaughingReaper and whom I believe to be Iridium Eye..  we got to be able to purchase the game and finally play it. Was it worth it?

Scotch Tape

This question is not as simple to answer as it may seem. For after playing through the biggest part of this game I found all the negative aspects to be very true. This game forces you to go through each stage three to four times. More if you are unlucky and that all has to do with the format that it has chosen that I will admit is fairly poor. Like in most Yoshi games it’s all about collecting Daisy flowers. These work as an unlocking currency and as a completion criteria.  If you want to complete a stage, you are making several passes through that same stage and I will admit, the stages aren’t THAT interesting to justify that. The pacing feels impractical.. like as if you are walking across scotch tape .. your feet sticking making advancing way more difficult than it needs to be.

Ironically the low difficulty of this game kind of amplifies this flaw. There is not a lot of challenge in these stages. One of the main unlockables is a costume that can tank 2 to 4 hits for you depending on its rarity. While I all wore them for their cuteness I rarely broke the 2 hit costumes and I mostly damaged them from pits. If your costume breaks you still have about a 5 hit life bar left. So it is not hard to feel like this game is rather unengaging. It is to easy and 80% of the gameplay is set in replaying levels you have done and seen before. On my first encounter with the game.. I got fed up with this soon enough and burned out on it.. now I realise I have been playing this game wrong.

The Arts of Crafts

One can’t deny the visual appeal of this title. Just by looking at this game you cannot help but smile and feel cheered up even if things seem super dark. This game is so sweet, adorable and cutesy it might as well just be honey or maple syrup that was in the box. Or a hand full of sugar for that matter. This game is not meant to challenge you, nor to send you off on some epic journey… no this game was made to make you go SQUEEEE. It will reveal the weeaboos in the room as we all go Kawaii when the pink Yoshi decides to wear a coffee milk cup as armor or if the yellow yoshi puts  a coloured paper ribbon snail on his side. This game is not meant to be played like Super Mario Odyssey or Shovel Knight. This game is meant to help you relax and lose the frustration of those. It is a relaxy game… much  like the same role Animal Crossing has in gaming.. yet more casual and finite.

Eager as I was I started completing stages on my very first pass of them, acing all the rankings replaying them several times because a lot of collectables are missable.  I had so much money by the time I entered the fourth world I could instantly buy all their cute costumes. It only got worse… while I love how happy the world looks when you complete it.. this is not a game to bite into harshly.. no this is a game you play a stage or two for whenever you feel a bit blue. See the wholesome happy Yoshi world unfold in front of your very eyes.  Which is reflected in the way stages are designed. Everything is so detailed. Everything is craftable. With the write items you could make these stages yourself in real life.. minus the enemies and the sentient felt-like yoshi’s themselves of course.. but you can build their world. Which is amazing, everything more or less feels like it actually works, from the way some pathways unroll to hiding secrets behind background elements because they COULD be knocked down.. this game is all about atmosphere.

Compare it to a warm bath with some etherical oils sprinkled inside… sure it’s kinda boring to sit in the tub.. but after you come out of it you feel all tingly and buzzing, aglow with happiness. That is almost EXACTLY what a bathtime worth of Yoshi’s crafted world can do for you. Also equal to a bath.. that warm fuzzy feeling doesn’t linger infinitely.. that bath will cool. Soak to long and you notice that since your fingers went wrinkly not a lot changed after that. The wholesomeness is finite. For me the ideal pace is like 2 or 3 stages each time I feel a bit tense. Just put it on and let the world these dinosaurs live in wash away your grievances of the moment. In pokémon terms.. a normal video game is an ether, it restores power points… a mana potion for just about everyone else.  Yoshi’s Crafted World.. is like A Full Heal.. it restores any bad conditions, a Esuna or status removing potion. It is carefully constructed .. yet somewhat awkwardly formatted.

Forwards and Backwards

The format that was chosen is a 2d Collectathon  and this doesn’t always work out in this games favor. First of all we have to acquire all the daisy flowers per stage, finish a stage with max health and find all the red coins to complete a stage (you can finish it without any of these things) after which a backwards mode will unlock, in which you collect three Poochy pups within a time limit to get more daisies. After that is done several treasure hunts will unlock for stages which either take place on the front side or the backside of a stage. However treasure hunting usually means revisiting both sides at least once. On it’s own this already feels a bit like an awkward idea because of the fact that it is only 2.5d there is not THAT much to explore unlike in 3d collectathons.. so to make your journey feel expansive.. they locked it in tiers.. you can’t hunt the second treasure before you found the first.  Even if they are on the same route.

It feels as if this game mixes genres and elements that should not be mixed at the cost of pacing and our gamer instincts do the rest. It is easy to get sucked up into trying to complete a stage from the get go. and get everything and as for the daisies and red coins you really should try to get these on your first attempt ..because with these flowers you can already easily advance the game, no need to break your back on the treasure hunts and not even on the backwards stages.  You can just do that the next time, when the stage seems a bit fresh again. It goes a bit against gamer instinct but if you just move forward and revisit from time to time when you feel like it you can certainly have blast even in the backward stages.

Speaking off the Backward stages, they are absolutely adorable once more. While  on your journey forward you can see the beautiful and cute world of Yoshi, on backwards mode the camera now shows the undecorated side of the crafts. That house  you needed to jump over you now see.. was a pack of cookies, that cow is now invisible.. it is a cardboard backside with a little peg. That big house in the background? Cereal box! ..  And so the crafted world unfolds before you, by breaking the magic they actual validate this world so much. I squeed and forgot all about my neck pains.  This world is so vibrant and so alive.. in a very clean way.  I loved the addition of backward stages. Yet again more in an artsy appreciative way than enjoying it for it’s gameplay. Which is a weird thing to say about a game.  So I can see how wonderful it is but also how badly it fails as a game.. at least the general perception of what a game should be.

Bathtubs and Cookies

Whether or not you will like this game will really depend on your mindset, are you a bath person? Can you just enjoy nothingness and soak up atmosphere? If yes than this game is among the most unique games I have played and I deeply appreciate it. If you want a game where you actually want to be invested in the gameplay , there are probably better choices. Crafted World is not a bad game, it’s graphical style is amazing, it’s world building sublime and the controls are quite tight. It is completely held back by the reason what we want when we play games. It doesn’t cater to completionist nor does it cater to those who want to rush through.  It caters to someone in between.  With people’s thinking going more black and white each minute that kinda means this game isn’t for anybody?!

Should I judge this game equally as other games, I’d probably rank it 5/10  but I can’t shake the feeling that this is not the purpose of this game. If I rank it like I would a hot bath I’d probably rank this a 9/10.  In reality it’s probably something in between. Something like the opposite side of tetris. Where short bursts of gameplay are so enjoyable you do not need fancy visuals. This is the oposite , nothing more and nothing less. Visual interactive entertainment where the graphics and world building.. and sometimes even the puzzles themselves are so cute you do not mind the lackluster gameplay.

It’s like one of those highly frosted cookies. When you see it you absolute want it.. and because it looked so cute you do not mind it mostly just tastes like sugar.  However you don’t go in for a second cookie, yet the next day you can not help yourself to another one of those delicious looking cookies.. it is fine yet again after one you had enough.  Eventually you will finish the pack.  Half of us would buy it again.. the other would not it all depends on your mindset. To me this game is absolutely amazing, SINCE learning to take it slowly it made me smile so much. Yet it isn’t something I can easily recommend to everyone simply because not everyone can game casually.
So no review score for this one.. instead I want you to take apart the pieces of this review that are important to you and craft your own verdict!

Thanks again to my Ko-Fi supporters for making this review possible
Thanks to:
Laughing Reaper
MikeKelly666
TsubakiKuro
Donator I cant find back anymore but assume to be Iridium Eye
(Initials CB)

So we got death.. the devil, something black and something metal… So Edgy.. but that gives me an idea! I love you all

XO
Pinkie