MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #11 - Hearth's Warming Eve

So after this season having our first episodes blatantly based off of real-life holidays, here we have our obligatory Christmas episode! Technically it's set up as decidedly ambiguous like the Halloween episode was earlier, so you could call it a "winter holiday" episode, but let's be honest: the episode's filled with decorated trees and wreaths and the like. It's a Christmas episode.

Although admittedly I would've liked to see a pony menorah. Menorahs are kiiiind of awesome.

Spoilers after the break!

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #10 - Secret of My Excess

If you're sick of episodes focusing on various ponies, you're in luck, because this week everyone's favorite dragon gets his own episode! The closest Spike's ever gotten to having an episode to himself was Owl's Well that Ends Well, and I don't think anyone really liked that episode much, so this promises to be something interesting at the very least!

And it also promises to have a more grown-up Spike for part of it, and thus promises to give the fanartists a ton of draconian inspiration. And that doesn't seem like a bad thing to me!

Spoilers after the break.

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #9 - Sweet and Elite

Rarity is just so awesome that she needs another episode to contain her awesomeness. Despite the title, she's starring in this one without her wacky little sister. Which... may or may not be a good thing, depending on which ponies you love most and least. Because you have to love all of them, you know. It's impossible.

Well, except Trixie. Nopony liked Trixie, no matter what certain people with their popular sites may have you believe.

Spoilers and warnings, spoilers and warnings.

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #8 - The Mysterious Mare Do Well

Rainbow Dash is just too awesome to have a single episode to herself, apparently, so here's another Rainbow Dash episode! And apparently even the introduction of a new pony, the titular Mare Do Well! The excitement is almost too much to take, hence my flagrant usage of exclamation marks!

Spoilers past the break, as if that wasn't relatively obvious by now.

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #7 - May the Best Pet Win

So My Little Pony is going to be taking a Rainbow Dash-centered twist for a few weeks, and first on our to-do list is to get that filly a pet! If the fandom's hypotheses hold true, she'll end up with either a turtle, a falcon, or Scootaloo. So let's get right to it and see what happens, shall we?

Here there be spoilers, fyi.

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #6 - The Cutie Pox

Y'know, I think the first four episodes of season two kind of spoiled me. I mean, we had a pretty awesome duo of episodes that, while rushed, introduced Discord and his amazingness, then we had the fantastic Lesson Zero, one of my favorite episodes ever, and then Luna. All these normal episodes just seem so... well, normal in comparison.

I just find it funny that the writers have managed to get Big Mac into every single episode in season two so far, excluding the very first episode. It's clearly because he is the BEST STALLION.

Blah blah blah, spoilers, etc. etc.

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #5 - Sisterhooves Social

So Rarity's absence in the last episode was such a big deal that she needed an episode for her (and Sweetie Belle) this week! I mean, she is the fourth-best-pony, so she needs to have the spotlight on her on a regular basis.

Thus, Sisterhooves Social, the new episode after the brief second hiatus after Luna Eclipsed. Again, I apologize for the late post - I didn't get to see the episode live and was busy most of Saturday.

Spoiler warning as per usual.

KRDL Ability Review - Water

Okay, so someone on the Kirby's Return to Dream Land GameFAQ board had the great idea of assigning members to review abilities in the game and post them. So, naturally, I signed up for a few abilities! The only thing is, when I was working on my first review, for the Water ability, I noticed two distinct things.

One, it was becoming really, really long. Like, it ended up needing three posts on GameFAQs just to hold it.

Two, it was really fun to write.

And so I first thought, "maybe I should put this somewhere where I can go on for longer without running out of space" and then I thought "would it maybe be fun if I did a review for every ability in the game instead of just the three I got here?"

And so I came to the conclusion that I would post any and all ability reviews I came up with on here, my blog where I post random silly things like reviews for abilities in Kirby. So without further adieu, here's the first of my Ability Reviews, Water Kirby!

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #4 - Luna Eclipsed

After over a year of waiting, and 28 episodes ever, we finally have our Luna episode! Woohoo! Will she be like the fans imagined, way better, or way worse? Will the MLP community shatter under the pressure of having a canon Luna finally?

Spoilers: they're actually doing pretty well from what I've seen. Let's get right to this! This'll contain spoilers and such, as per usual.

This time I'm gonna try to be less... plot-summary-y. I think I relied far too much on that in my last reviews, so hopefully this one will read more like a... well, more like an actual review!

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #3 - Lesson Zero

Hey everypony! After the two week hiatus, I'm back again to give you my thoughts on the newest episode of My Little Pony, Lesson Zero.

I'm going to be doing this review a liiittle differently. While the previous ones were strictly first-impressions, deliberately written after I watched the episode on TV, before watching it a second time via internet means. This time I'm going to go ahead and watch it the second time while writing this post. What does this mean? Well, it means I can think more about the content of the episode as a whole instead of just as a first impression, which I figure will be good. Is that good? I think it's good.

Watch this episode on YouTube here.

As usual, SPOILERS.

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #2 - The Return of Harmony (part 2)

Yes this is still happening; no one can be as surprised as I am. As before, be wary of SPOILERS!

MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #1 - The Return of Harmony (part 1)

So yeah, I've totally been into the new My Little Pony show for a while now. Season two just started up this morning, and I thought it would be fun to post little episode reviews on my blog as the episodes came out! After all, I got up at 7 AM to watch the darn episode live and I bought a new channel package from the TV provider just to watch the season, so let's make it into something fun!

Warning: these reviews are absolutely going to contain SPOILERS! I guess I could do spoiler-free reviews, but frankly I just think it'd be more fun if I didn't try to hold back. Not to mention with a show like this it's hard to establish what constitutes spoilers in the first place. So I highly recommend that you watch the series yourself, first. It's all on YouTube, after all!

Anyway, onto episode 1 of season two, The Return of Harmony (part 1)!

Because, Frankly, I Want to See More Remakes

YES I KNOW, REMAKES ARE AWFUL AND LAZY AND BLAH. But I was thinking about a certain game and I realized that this certain game, though one I am personally quite fond of, hasn't really stood up to the test of time. At all. So, anyway, let me get to my point.

Sonic Adventure 3DS.

No, not a third Sonic Adventure game. Sonic Adventure 1, for the 3DS. I want this. Let me elaborate:

Sonic Adventure (or, as I played it, Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut) is one of my favorite Sonic games for a number of reasons. For one, it has one of my favorite stories within the series, a great blend of serious and playful. It also introduced the very interesting backstory of Knuckles and even pulled from some of the coolest things in real life, like the Mayan pyramids. Overall, the story felt really heartfelt and the characters in it were really likeable and relatable, especially Tikal and Gamma. The only other Sonic game that got to SA1's height of storytelling was its sequel, but I personally prefer the former, and the latter is still very playable today.

The other thing SA1 really did right was its gameplay. While not nearly as refined as, say, Mario 64, it managed to be a very fun game and set a great standard that a grand total of one later Sonic game stood up to. It also managed to actually keep up the fast pace that Sonic was known for throughout: even though it has multiple playstyles, all of the characters, with the exception of Big, were built for speed and were rewarded for being quick. This is one thing that even SA2 stumbled on, as any levels outside of Sonic's and Shadow's were... well, really slow!

Unfortunately, SA1's presentation, while fine for the time, doesn't really hold up now. The models are... bad... and certain character animations (like talking) are utterly atrocious. It's kind of hard to appreciate a game's story when your protagonist has a bad habit of looking like some kind of evil puppet in most cutscenes!

So SA1 is a flawed gem; a great game that, with some modern-day polish, could really shine! And what game does that sound like? Here's a hint: it starts with "The Legend of Zelda", ends in "Time", and is being remade for the 3DS. So, naturally, I would love to see SA1 get a similar treatment!

Outside of fixing some of the awful animations, I would like to see the actual gameplay polished a tad. It's great as-is, but making things a little less slippery and more predictable, like maybe adding the modern-day reticule to Sonic's homing attack, would go a long way. Obviously, Big's gameplay should be changed, as it stands out now as a slow distraction from the point of Sonic. Of course, this could be difficult, as Big is naturally a bulky, slow character... perhaps his gameplay could be akin to the classic Sonic water levels? They could be slower and more puzzle-based, and since Sonic Adventure doesn't feature any true underwater levels, Big could fill that void.

If Sega is willing to go beyond a normal port, SA3DS would be phenomenal, and possibly even a good way for them to go back to the Adventure games and learn from their level design. The only huge issue I can see is if Sega can't get back into the "groove" and ends up hurting the original design rather than enhancing it, but Sega hasn't done too badly recently. I think that, if they tried, they could really bring out a bit more shine from SA. And that would be great!

...though, since this all seems pretty unlikely at this point, I'll just have to hope Sonic Generations has a Sonic Adventure level or two!