Saw somewhere (didn't think to save the link) that Sega had recently made a trademark for something called "Humankind" so that's probably whatever this is.

I kinda needed something to cleanse my palette after that attempt at playing Sonic R I went on a rant about earlier, so I decided it was finally time to just pick up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe already. Had it back on the Wii U and enjoyed it, and it's still just as great on the Switch. Only real complaint (outside of the dumb Smart Steering thing, but that can be turned off pretty easily) is that playing it in handheld isn't as comfortable as holding the Wii U's gamepad but that's true of anything on the Switch really.

I wanna get three things out of the way:

1. I love me some Sonic
2. I think I have a pretty decent tolerance to jank
3. Even when I'm playing something bad, I still try to find the positives

So I decided to boot up Sonic R again today. There's a lot I actually like about it. There's only a few stages but I think they're neat enough that I'm willing to overlook that, especially Radiant Emerald which is genuinely beautiful by Saturn standards. The game has a great soundtrack even if it is pretty cheesy (though you can always turn off the vocals if that isn't your thing.) I like how the roster tried some cool things like creating metal knuckles or that weird-ass tails doll. The stage layouts have so many weird turns and shortcuts that it makes discovering the optimal path feel like a cool challenge on its own. On the surface it's kind of obviously a rushed out title so the Saturn could have something, literally anything Sonic related for the holiday season, but in spite of that it's kinda neat right?

There's just one liiiiiiiiiitle problem though. The controls feel like you're permanently just losing control on an oil slick. It doesn't matter who you're playing as either. I think its the worst with Sonic but I don't care enough to double check. And that's a pretty big issue since he outclasses everyone else in the base roster so hard. You either fly into walls as sonic and hope all that acceleration loss doesn't screw you over, or you play as Tails or Knuckles and pray to whatever deity you believe in that the AI just has a mental breakdown. Don't even bother trying Robotnik or Amy because you are going to lose if you do.

It probably doesn't help that I was trying to bumble through everything while collecting the chaos emeralds. You gotta find out where they are, go off the beaten path to collect them (which usually requires slowing to a standstill just to pick it up since again, slippery mess) and then still get first place or else you just wasted three minutes on that stage. I wouldn't say you have to play as Sonic to get them and still win the race, but it sure felt like it while I was playing. The Sonic coins that you have to pick up to unlock the various robot versions are a bit more lenient (you only need to get third or better) but since they're all over the place it's going to be a much bigger undertaking to find out where everything else and even when you do you still have to beat the characters to unlock them. The easiest way to pick up all these coins is to play as Knuckles or Tails since they handle better but considering the robots are at least on par with Sonic, I mean I sure hope you memorized every shortcut on the map.

To be fair this isn't a huge issue if you're ignoring all the collectibles around the stage but I mean, that's half the game there. It's really barebones if you don't bother unlocking everything and even if you do, in spite of how hard it can be to control, you're gonna be done in less than an afternoon. I don't like thinking about the people that paid full price for this back in '97. I'm sure it's still a bitter christmas memory for a few people.

I think Sonic R is one of those rare instances where I genuinely hate a game. Which is a shame, since I wanted to like it in spite of how janky I knew it would be going in. Not like it's the first time I played it or anything. I actually really enjoyed this game back in middle school when I had that one gamecube collection it was on. I'm not sure if I was just really stupid back then (well I was, but I mean even by middle schooler standards) or if for some reason that port of a port was better than the original.

Listened to The Fall. Had been putting it off since I heard it was just some dumb thing crapped out of an ipad but I liked it a lot. I'd say it's a bit better than The Now Now probably. Favorite songs were Little Pink Plastic Bags, The Parish of Space Dust and Bobby in Phoenix.

Omega Labyrinth Life, still.

I got to a point where there's character specific dungeons that are a lot harder than the normal ones (mostly because you enter with nothing and have to scrape by with whatever gear you find) and promise some good character-specific loot if you beat them. Finished one and I got... underwear (which is basically armor in this game) with worse stats than what I already had equipped just from bumbling through the dungeon, nevermind what I had been using before entering it, and with a really dumb gimmicky special ability (made all the seeds you find for the garden in the hubworld into one specific type) instead of something useful like stat boosts.

I'm gonna try one more of these to see if that was just a bad decision for that one character but if this one also gives such useless armor I'm gonna just go back to the story dungeons.

Report: Take-Two Interactive Sends Private Investigators to YouTuber to Stop Borderlands 3 Leaks

I just finished part 7 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Steel Ball Run, and boy do I have some opinions on that ending.

I honestly get the impression Araki wrapped up everything he wanted to do and then realized "shit, I still gotta deal with the corpse/the end of the race." I really, really don't like how a Diego from an alternate world that oh so coincidentally happened to have The World instead of Scary Monsters for a stand ended up being the final boss. The way Lucy finished him was pretty good, and I'm actually okay with the fact that Johnny lost his fight with him, but then he got saved by a total asspull so he wasn't stuck in his own infinite rotation. I'm no writer so I don't wanna say "this is how it shoulda ended" but I feel like if they gave Steel some other way to access the vault (or just some other way to hide away the corpse in general) and let the end of the race be an epilogue since it was never about winning to Johnny so much as learning the spin/gathering the corpse parts (say he was so busy with all the Valentine stuff he was ruled out of commission for the final stretch or something) it would have worked out better.

Overall while I think it has the best story of any part (outside of 8, still need to read that obviously) I still prefer Diamond is Unbreakable at the end of the day. Even outside of my earlier complaints there's still the fact that a lot of the stands are pretty lackluster with only two or three exceptions (I really liked Scary Monsters for example.) The stands in DiU were just some of the best in my opinion with only Stone Ocean being as good or possibly better (though, its story is a bit of a mess.)

@el-shmiablo Your periodical reminder that digital is the future.

I feel like in a best case scenario someone's getting fired and worst case scenario someone's getting sued on that one.