Murder By Numbers (Switch)

 

Miss Teri and her flying computer!

If you got tired on Ace Attorney you can always pop in Murders by Numbers. Picked it up at some Christmas sale on the eshop when I went home back in 2020. Finished it in November 2021 so I dropped it between that, mostly due to not finding the story that good actually.  

Story is that Honor, an actress in a murder mystery show is dragged into a real murder that she has to solve with the help of a flying computer named SCOUT. That continues for 4 episodes where they go through the Hollywood elite of San Fransisco, the LBGTQ-community and a shady mercenary group that has ties to the military that backed the SCOUT-project. And Honor's shitty ex-husband who tries to sabotage her life. 

I don't know why the story doesn't meld with me, maybe that it feels so over the top of liberal west-coast elite values that it's a bit virtue show of.  Then again, it's made by a British team so what do I know? But beyond that, the gameplay is rather fun. It's basically a visual novel where you gotta solve sudoku puzzles (well, maybe the correct term is picross) to get clues to continue the story. And I solved all of them. But the picture they show afterwards is rather hard to grasp what I actually was doing so no help there. 

It can be the ex-husband story line that really grind my gears when I think about it. Which is probably good story telling since you are supposed to hate that smug manipulative bastard, but it makes me detest the story, especially since Honor's mother constantly brings him in her life and such. Music's good though, but when it was one of the composer for the Ace Attorney-series, can it be bad? And I even recognised one of the landmarks mentioned, it was the bowler hat place, you know, the one Willie the giant picks up looking for Mickey Mouse in Fun and Fancy Free?

Superman: The Animated Series

 

Da-da-daaa - da - da - da - da

The continuation of Batman the animated series, now with the man of steel... who isn't the superhero Steel that also shows up in this series. Was shown on channel 5 in Sweden I recall, right before we had to go to school so the ending was missed a lot of times. Amazing how they could pull so much depths and emotions into 22 minutes episodes that took 45 minutes for Star Trek episodes to do. A great show, but it clearly isn't as good as Batman. First off, the villains ain't that good. They try to make them in the same mold as the Batman villains with tragic back stories that put them on the road to villainy, but it doesn't work that well here. Bizzaro is probably the only one that you feel sorry for and maybe Metallo. 

Take Livewire, I don't feel she is justified in her evilness, she's just some random radio host that got electrocuted with Superman as a conduit and she got electrical powers. She just straight up abused her powers to dominate others. Same with Parasite, a lowly dock-worker that got entangled with villains due to debts and got showered in toxic waste. And what does he do? He uses his powers to get revenge on the world. It's not that the Batman rouges did that, they did it a lot, but their introduction episodes usually are about them getting revenge for one special thing that tipped them over to madness and then Batman becomes the target for their obsession. Only Toyman follows that formula. 

The good things though is that it feels like Superman pushes a continuous narrative through every episode. As with Steel, in one episode he gets fired from LexCorp for trying to stop the use of this Robocop suit and a couple of episodes later he built his own fighting Metallo that also references his latest appearance in the show (that of being caught below a volcano). Also I like that we time to time check in on Lex Luthor on non-Luthor stories. Take the Lobo story where his office get destroyed, twice due to the Main Man or the Livewire episode where he is seen agreeing with her as a radio host since he also dislike Superman. Also the introductions of other Superheroes, like Dr. Fate, Green Lantern (Kyle Raynar) and the Flash. Makes the world be more organic.

On the other hand, Darkseid is the best archenemy introduction and execution across DCAU. As stated, good, but there are things laking. For one, there wasn't any movie in the package (probably due to not having any canon movies for that series, but they could have thrown in some of the non-canon ones... or Death and Return of Superman) and secondly, only for commentaries on 54 episodes and a couple of documentaries. I would have liked something more substantial.

Star Trek: The Animated Series

They look a bit... 2D?

So, back to the original series, but in animated form. Not much to say really. The episodes are only 22 minutes so it's refreshingly short, and only 22 episodes total at that so it went past rather fast. Then again, I tuned out pretty much most of the time only watching as the reused animation is used over and over again. Nice with the same cast, but I wouldn't recommend it that much. A curiosity at best. But that could also be due to Star Trek-fatigue efter watching every Star Trek show on Netflix.

Star Trek: Discovery

 

Well, we already did time travel so it isn't much boldly go where they haven't gone before

Yet another Star Trek-series, and we are set before the original series, apparently before the war between Federation and Klingon Empire. Follows the First Officer Michael Burnham that is discharged and imprisoned for escalating the encounter between Federation and Klingon Empire and pretty much starting the war. Doesn't help that she knocked out her commanding captain in order to attack them. Apparently her real family was killed in a Klingon skirmish and she had to grew up on Vulcan together with Spock. 

After that incident she is released and taken to the starship Discovery, an experimental ship working on a new engine called the spore drive. It works in a way that it connects to some kind of space spore system and allows the ship to move in a matter of seconds across most of the quadrant. There is actually some real science behind that. I listened to someone speaking about fungus and I gather that they begin to believe that fungus are connected with the whole earth... or some kind like that, I ain't no biologist and it was some years since I heard that.

The captain is Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter, but it turns out that he is actually a mirror world version and in the end dies in the season 1 finale. And in season 2 captain Pike takes over while the Enterprise is being repaired. Pike being the original captain of the Enterprise as seen in the pilot episode of the original series. And then Spock shows up. And they apparently ends up in the future, some kind of 3 000 AD... I pretty much lost interest. The klingons looks awful (could be that hand-wave to explain how the makeup got better after the original series), you can't even tell (besides the ships) that it's a Star Trek show, wrong colours and such I feel. I saw some buzz from people complaining that it was "woke" with stated gay characters, several female crew members (and varying sizes) and people of colours... but I mean it's Star Trek, it's always been "progressive".  

No, the problem is that it isn't bright and optimistic... which probably isn't fair either since DS9 wasn't all optimistic either and I liked that. But that could be more that it began as "normal" and then spiralled to the warlike state to win the war, but that was build up and payoff, Here we go directly in to it. At least the title has some bars of the original theme in it, which makes it one of the better ones instantly. 

Also, I probably watched it in the last minute since after finishing it it was announced that it was moved over to Paramount +... or rather, it was gone from Netflix in wait for Paramount + to be released first quarter 2022. Well, good luck to them, they will probably need it when I looked at the reactions on Twitter... or maybe that is just the Americans, I still got the others shows on Netflix.

Star Trek: Enterprise

 

To boldly go where no man has gone before... again!

Another of the shows that was shown on Swedish Television back in the day. I think they only showed the first two seasons or so... or that could be what they showed on the Swedish Fox channel a couple of years later. Series take place 100 years before the original series and 100 years after mankind built their first warp-engine and first contact with the Vulcans. With their new starship Enterprise captain Jonathan Archer is piloting humanity into the final frontier.

On this journey there is the Vulcan science officer T'Pol, the Denubolan doctor Phlox, chief engineer Trip Tucker, security officer Malcom Reed, communication officer Hoshi Sato and helmsman Travis Mayweather. And Porthos the dog of course. First episode is just taking a Klingon that crash-landed on earth back to the Klingon Home-world... not that exciting really. Most of first season concerns the politics between earth and Vulcan as they try to postpone mankind from traveling space due to not being ready. Then we get the temporal cold war back-drop. Some 800-900 years into the future several races can travel through time so a temporal accord have been set up to ensure that no one dilutes the timeline or take advantage of it. Which is an interesting premise, but feels a bit like cheating when everything is caused by temporal agents. Third season introduces the Xindi, five races that developed from the same planet and have joined together to annihilate earth since they have been told that humans will destroy them. Told by one of the sides of the temporal war. 

So most of season three deals with that after the Xindi destroyed a big part of Florida with an experimental weapon. And after that we end up during the second world war where yet another fraction of the temporal war have hidden themselves and helped the nazis conquer America. All that is solved and nothing affects the timeline as it resets. And then they fill out the rest of season four with filler episodes and the very final episode has cameos from Riker, Troi, Data, Picard and Kirk... I guess it wasn't reviewed that well since it only got 4 season while the three earlier seasons had 7. I don't really complain since 176 episodes are a bit much to binge through after 3 such shows.

Overall I didn't have a problem with it. I found the uniforms decent enough, I like the song even though it isn't an orchestral piece... on the other hand pretty much only the Next Generation was any good. Then again, it was only good for season 1 and 2, less is more and they just add instruments later on. Some interesting plots... but I can't say that any episodes grabbed me like TNG. It feels like a distilled version of all prior series. First season with all the problems feels like the start of DS9 and getting the station to work. After that TNG and original series exploration feeling, and then it goes to emulating the continued story from Voyager with the temporal war that leads to Xindi and then the end of the temporal war (which echoes DS9 again).

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (Switch)

 

Falling to the Edge of the World!

A couple of years back I got Puyo Puyo Tetris after getting a recommendation from the local game store (that now doesn't exist any more, sadly) and had a bit of fun. And then a sequel was released back in 2020 and I finished it back in 2021... and then released this now in 2022. And I've come to the conclusion... again, that I really suck at puyo puyo.  And there is an adventure mode here as well.

And it's basically the same premise as the last game. Ringu is walking around when they when suddenly Tee appears and then it's trying to figure out what happened, find the responsible and stop him and her. I think I paid attention to the first two levels, then I just skimmed over the dialogue. Pretty much the same characters from the first game and same motivations. 

The multiplayer and such can probably be rather fun with more people and the normal tetris mode is always a fun distraction... but since I can't get the hang of puyo puyo there is a limited replay value... or even to actually finish adventure mode without skipping most levels. I mean, when I hardly get one line of tetris and my opponent send so much crap that I loose instantly. And I though the difficulty auto would adjust to my level, not put it into hypermode.... or am I just that bad?

Blaster Master Zero 3 (Switch)

 

Return of the Blaster Master

The third and final (?) part of this reboot trilogy of the classic Blaster Master-series. I've played the first game on 3DS and Switch and the second game on Switch. Began playing this just after Ys IX, which was kinda interesting since both games starts you just escaped from prison. Then I stopped like I usually do with these games and then finished it finally. 

Story is that you arrived at planet Sophia, but Jason and Eva was taken in by the military since they registered Eva being a mutant. So Jason breaks out thanks to Kane Gardner, the scientist behind Eva so you gotta track Eva down since she disappeared. On this journey you then got Leibniz from the second game to be your co-pilot. In the end it turns out that Eva have been affected by the mutants at the end of 2 which led to her becoming the Mutant Queen and the mutants becoming more aggressive to protect her. As Jason reach her she decides to leave this dimension behind. Now, during the cut-scene you can activate the system that allows you to enter different dimensions and see her through feelings. I only got it since I looked up how to defeat the "final boss", which I didn't have to do since I got it with the changing colours of the boss anyway. But I got the secret behind it and could get to Area ???.

Area ??? is some time after and apparently a rip through dimensions appeared and you have to find Eva and stop her. Basically you travel through areas from the first game (with the same music), fighting bosses from the second game. Which is hard since you hardly have any upgrades or weapons. But I did it! And the twist is that it isn't Jason, but Kane Gardner that was sent by the Sophia forces to investigate and eliminate the threat from the mutants. The final boss is Jason that joined with Eva in this other dimension. Or it's Kane Gardner depending on which one you choses at the end. First time I was Kane and got obliterated. Then I got some upgrades and by mistake got Jason, but I take it since it was easier to blow Kane up. You get to the ending and it turns out Eva and Jason have been birthing twin humans and intended to give them too Leibniz to raise them on earth since they themselves couldn't leave this dimension. The end.

The ending was worth it, but it was hard at times and a bit unfair I feel. Of all the games, I would rank the first game the best. Basically, that's the only game that hold up from beginning to end. Both sequels take me to a point where I get so irritated that I rage quit, and then a couple of months come back and go for the end. The only thing that works better in the sequels is getting the special endings since the first was 100 % get all items, but the others you get to reach certain conditions that don't get my OCD running.