Hey hey! It’s November…already. Did everyone have a happy Halloween? I know I did, even if I unfortunately didn’t manage to have a costume this year (I ordered a custom-made one, but did so too late, so I’m still waiting for it to arrive… there’s always next year).
Apologies that I once again failed to write a Halloween-centric top 5/10 list. I liked doing those back during the Dojo’s first two Halloweens. Hopefully next year I can go all out with the Halloween goodies. On the plus side, I did review the original Luigi’s Mansion to celebrate Halloween, so I didn’t leave the Dojo un-festive for the season. I would have liked to review Luigi’s Mansion 3, but Nintendo decided to release it on the day of Halloween. I guess I can understand what they were going for, but my beef is that Nintendo kept marketing Luigi’s Mansion 3’s release as being “just in time for Halloween.”
Releasing a game on Halloween is not “just in time” for Halloween. Releasing it any time in October before the 31st would be “just in time” for Halloween. Releasing it on Halloween is just that, releasing it on Halloween!
In short, I reviewed the first Luigi’s Mansion for Halloween due to the timing. Though I suppose now I’ve reviewed all the existing Luigi’s Mansion games so far (including the arcade title), so I guess now my review for Luigi’s Mansion 3 will feel all the more complete when it’s done.
Man, how many times have I already said “Halloween” and “Luigi’s Mansion” in this post?
Talking of Luigi’s Mansion (for the umpteenth time), I picked up my copy of Luigi’s Mansion 3 today. So I’ll do my best to review that in the near future, along with the following games that I’m ready to review…
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
And of course, another Wario title sometime this month, as has been my 2019 tradition for no particular reason whatsoever.
In addition, I hope to get around to finishing Sekiro, Astral Chain, Ni no Kuni Remastered, and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr’s Journey in the not-too-distant future.
The good news is now that I have Luigi’s Mansion 3, I only have two upcoming games on pre-order, the smallest amount of pre-ordered games I’ve had in years. And one of those games is Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which doesn’t come out until March. So it looks like I have a good window of opportunity to catch up on games and review them.
This of course brings me to another point. I mentioned in a post at the earlier part of this year that I’m planning on purchasing fewer games in the future. Certainly not because I’ve lost any love for them (technically speaking, they’re probably better on the whole now than they’ve ever been), but because they’re too damn long and too damn expensive. And I have other things I have/want to do with my time, and I don’t want to be reduced to eating cold beans with a stick. Plus, remembering how in my youth there would be a handful of games I would replay for years, I would kind of like to rekindle that quality over quantity approach. Getting games that I’ll want to play over and over, as opposed to ones that demand me to surrender entire days’ worth of time to them.
Although I kind of caved and bought more games this year than I initially intended, I did buy fewer games this year than the past few years. But next year, I’m really going to try and aim for like four or five full-priced retail games for all of 2020 (once again, there could be exceptions if a game I’d know I’d have to get – like a Super Mario Galaxy 3 or Bloodborne 2 – was announced for an imminent release after I’ve reached my self-imposed limit. But those are quite the exceptions).
As I’ve stated to the point of it becoming a running joke here on my site, I would like to further my studies of video game development, as to develop my own game(s) someday. And I would also like to do something video game related in video form at some point. So even though fewer new purchases would mean fewer reviews for contemporary games, I would still use this site to catalogue my game development progress, and post/link whatever videos I may make here as well.
Because video games have become such an investment and commitment, I have to limit myself if I want to seriously delve deeper into my creative outlets. But don’t worry, I still have plenty of retro games in my library I can review in-between reviews for 2020 releases (I also have a few games from a recent history that still need reviewing, key among them being Persona 5). And even though I may be reviewing less new games, I could always write other types of blogs about the ones I’m playing (again, if I play a game I can keep going back to, why not find new things to write about them?).
Basically, I’m writing this post to reiterate things I’ve written here before… This site ain’t going anywhere, but reviews for new video games will unfortunately have to slowdown. On the plus side, that will open up my time not just for game development and video shenanigans, but also more time for movie reviews and those long-promised, oft-delayed top 10 lists. Hopefully this also means I’ll write less filler posts like this one…
Speaking of movie reviews, I have a few of those planned for the near future as well. Though I have an extensive checklist of reviews I hope to get to at some point, for the rest of November and December I will prioritize movies I’ve seen in theaters, and older movies that relate to them (and by that I mean the entire Star Wars saga in preparation for The Rise of Skywalker). I really have no excuse why I haven’t reviewed Joker yet. And since I’ve seen It Chapter 2 and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, expect reviews for those movies and their predecessors as well. I also really want to review all four Mad Max movies, but I may just do the first one in the near future, then wait until after I’ve reviewed the aforementioned movies before I do the rest.
Also, Frozen II comes out in three weeks from today. Of course that’s one I’m going to review. But since I’ve already reviewed the original (which is one of my 10/10 reviews, by the way), I’ll review the short film/holiday special, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure before then (a short film which, generic title aside, was rather charming).
So yes, hopefully the remaining posts I write in 2019 will be these, and other, worthwhile posts. And hopefully this will be the last “here’s what I’m going to write” post for a while. 2020 may see some changes to what I write here at the Dojo to some degree, but hopefully you stick around and enjoy. And once again, happy belated Halloween.
Wizard Dojo 
I feel ya with not getting many full priced games per year, they’re probably not as expensive when you look at how pricey SNES cartridges could be (Yoshi’s Island release comes to mind), but 60 it’s still too high of a price to chew more than once per month, and in my case it doesn’t help I live in a 3rd world country (hopefully that’ll change someday). I got DMC5 as a gift and picked REmake 2 while they were on sale on Steam (which has significantly cheaper prices thanks to localization of currencies) and I got Bloodstained as a late backer, and I think those were all my pickups of the year. I’m also pretty picky and don’t feel convinced to pay full price for most stuff anyhow, I still regret so much wasting money to get Valkyria Chronicles 4 at 60 last year.
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