Missy's Game Shelf

  • Pokemon Miragea’s Traveler Fan Game

    I know I don’t usually review things till they are complete and this game isn’t, but there are exceptions to those rules in the fact that I made the rules I can break them. Further, this game is actually good and surprisingly better than it was a few months ago. I first played this game a little over a year ago and while I found the environments and Pokemon selection amazing it did have a problem with difficulty. Pokemon and trainers often had items that the player just didn’t have access to yet or trainers often switching fortunately this has been changed with the addition of difficulty modes.

    The games strongest point is its characters often fan games release with tons of characters that really don’t stand out and some feel the same or copied from another character in that same game. That isn’t the case here each major character has been written with care so far. Although this game has tons of characters they have different goals, personalities, and actually go through their own arcs of development rather than being bland.

    Other good things include how you traverse each area. The Union acts as a hub and rather than have you travel through routes to get to new towns you go down a path and a selection of areas comes up. The first time through you need to walk to each town and unlock fast travel to that area. The overworld is absolutely beautiful and the addition of overworld Pokemon and some story content available here makes these places seem more alive.

    Next progression and mission structure. Unlike most games no quest here feels like filler there are a few early on, but those are more to help get rare items and levels for the next boss. Characters you help in the past often reappear and assist you. Rather than the get eight gym badges and fight the Champion this game sets out to tell a story set in the Pokemon world which I love.

    Lastly gameplay this game utilizes a lot of more modern mechanics in pokemon affection can lead to Pokemon surviving on 1 hp, boosted exp, and higher critical hit chances as well as exp all. Even if you don’t like any of that you can turn them off. The game excludes as much grinding as possible by giving access to a cave full of high exp Pokemon early on and the Pokemon in there scale with areas unlocked so long as they are visited at least once.

    What I also enjoy about this game are its well implemented fake mon. They don’t overstay their welcome and there are enough familiar Pokemon that I don’t mind using them too much further there are tweaks to existing Pokemon so you can still use your favorites and try these new ones.

    After all of that you would think there must be an entire group of people behind this game. Not really the game is mostly by one person who clearly put a lot of love and care in this game. Yes they do have a credits page for people who helped out and do encourage messaging if anyone was missed, but for the most part they made the game on their own.

    Score: 8/10 (An actually positive review someone will think the apocalypse is on us)

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  • Spyro 4 The Realm Beyond Trailer Opinion

    I’m still going through the recent Nintendo Direct and writing my thoughts on that. So while watching that and realizing that there would be little news that would excite me aside from maybe the Zelda Ocarina of Time Remaster. I was looking at other announcements and that is how this happened.

    Now, Spyro 4 is a game that has been anticipated since Crash 4 It’s About Time. Much like Crash it is likely they will acknowledge the games that came after the trilogy through easter eggs and come after the first three games. This is because after leaving the original developers Spyro got confusing. There was A Hero’s Tale, Enter the Dragonfly, Orange, Season of Flame, Season of Ice, Ryhnoc Rampage, the Legend Trilogy, and Skylanders.

    The only thing I am afraid of is repeating mistakes from Crash 4. Now don’t get me wrong Crash 4 has some of the best platforming, most rewarding gameplay, and is overall amazing. Unless you go for 100%. I loved the hidden gem addition and the wumpa fruit gems, but found the inverted levels and death gems annoying and needless. I didn’t mind time trials since they have been there since the original Crash 3 Warped, but the whole game is just padding. There is so much needless padding you could use it to cushion a room.

    Toys for Bob is not a bad company even their more mediocre titles have some fun and charm to them. I have confidence they learned their lesson from Crash and will pour everything into Spyro and who knows maybe Vicarious Visons (the team behind the amazing N Sane Trilogy Remaster and some new levels) can help after all we don’t know what they have been up to since Microsoft bought out Activision.

  • Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Review

    Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a game with no stakes, no difficult gameplay, and no challenge. I know the Yoshi and Kirby games are not exactly hard, but there is a difference between not hard and too easy. First, there is no repercussions for taking tons of damage Yoshi cries in pain, but that’s it. Yoshi’s Story had you lose lives and the Yoshi’s Island series had you lose star points that help your timer and both Crafted and Wooly Worlds have a health system. Here I actually stood in a swarm of bees and nothing happened.

    Now, Yoshi games are Explorative Platformers you explore entire levels grabbing all collectibles available to you. The game has two collectibles: Stars and Smiley Flowers. Stars are collected when you make discoveries about the creatures and at first this is a sort of interesting concept, but the levels are short and several discoveries require you to make other discoveries about other creatures which sounds nice until you realize the creatures rarely interact and what is there is minor. Smiley Flowers are the main collectible there are 3-5 in each level they aren’t so much hidden as you simply need to figure out how to get them. While not that changed from before without stakes it can be rather tedious to do anything.

    Also the whole game seems to take place in a book more than being a level select. You are seemingly looking for Bowser Jr. and Kamek and helping a book discover creatures. The worlds not at stake, yoshi’s island will be in one piece regardless, and there is no reason to do anything other than the game wants you to care and I just didn’t. Why am I making discoveries on creatures when this knowledge means nothing? Why should I save Bowser Jr if Kamek seems to be taking care of it? Why do I need to replay the same level over and over if there are no changes except minor ones?

    I understand wanting to expand Yoshi’s World of games more Mario has his own platformers and RPGs that have built the world around him, the Pokemon games all have a Pokedex to tell you about the creatures, and the legend of Zelda has companions and characters such as the Figures and Navi that tell you information about the world. I understand wanting the same for Yoshi, but there needs to be a fun game around it.

    Score: 2/10

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  • Mixtape: A Conversation No One Wanted

    Mixtape is a “game” published by Annapurna Interactive. Game is to generous a term prolonged quick time event? Movie? Piece of software that we are better off without? Now I will be upfront I have not played Mixtape nor do I plan to. So how did this game get released and published? Annapurna Interactive is a game studio that honestly, I thought went debunked a year ago when all of its developers and workers walked out in protest (explains this games lack of gameplay). The studio is run by Megan Ellison, the daughter of Larry Ellison (quite possibly one of the richest people on the planet). Kind of taking away the struggling Indie studio, but remember Annapurna published the game Beethoven and Dinosaur developed it. Is it possible that Annapurna simply bought the rights? This isn’t uncommon after all Tiny Build, Krafton, and Tencent do the same to promising games, but that doesn’t seem the case either. One this game has 28 tracks that are all licensed music and I mean some of these songs were paid for an amount that would make the average indie developer cry. If Beethoven and Dinosaur were truly indie they never would even consider these tracks. Second the games writing seems like what someone thinks people act and fight about without actually understanding it. Finally, take away gameplay which barely exists, music written by someone else, and graphics and writing that I believe were created by AI (even if they weren’t is so poor it may as well have been) and what is this game: a nothing burger. No creativity in gameplay or art. though I will now make a short list on how to get a 10/10 to gaming websites or media.

    1. All the characters are either boring or a minority and that is their entire personallity.
    2. Short uninteresting bland story and characters can’t review a deep story if it barely exists.
    3. No Gameplay can’t review what isn’t there and reviewers can’t fail a tutorial or read gameplay prompts if they don’t exist.

  • Krafton, Subnautica, Legal Threats, And Chat GPT

    Full disclaimer I am not a lawyer nor have I ever had any past in legal stuff, but to be fair could probably do better than Chat GPT. So that is a title, one situation that has burned trust, money, and if AI’s reputation wasn’t already on fire it has now been thrown to the core of the earth burning even worse than before.

    So I would understand if this situation was hard to follow and while I will be providing a gist of the situation Bellara News and Mujin have put together more comprehensive videos on the subject and I would recommend watching them before trying to decipher what this is. This starts with the release of Subnautica a marine exploration game that managed to break 1 million in sales really good for an indie game.

    Now, this is where Krafton came in but who are they? Where did this company come from? Krafton is a South Korean publisher that often buys smaller development studios and Indie game studios. They are known for publishing PUBG and INZOI. Krafton saw the potential in Subnautica and the potential sequel and thus posed a deal: buying 100% of the company that made the game and if certain milestones were hit during Subnautica 2’s development they get a substantial amount of money. So an estimated $750,000 was paid to acquire the studio, but Krafton didn’t want to pay the additional $250,000 that was part of the deal if Subnuatica 2 was ready for early access in 2025.

    The CEO tried delaying the game as much as possible, firing three of the games leads, breaking many clauses in their agreement, and worse taking advice from Chat GPT even over his own legal team and after it said that getting out of paying was difficult and possibly illegal. Krafton’s CEO asked the Chat bot for ways to avoid paying including attempting to destroy the devs reputations, a failed take over of the company, and delaying to 2026. All of this led to a lawsuit and Krafton’s once okay reputation (honestly, they really never had a good reputation) in the dirt. Now I was planning to cover this situation when it first started, but honestly everything I just told you happened within three weeks and every time I wrote something about it something else equally insane would happen which led to a loop of writing something then scraping it to update then scraping it again as more information came out.

    It seems Krafton will have to pay the Subnautica devs far more than originally planned and after Krafton got sued again by the same people after they put a release date for the full game without asking. The trust is gone, money is going to legal fees, and I would not be surprised if the devs found a new publisher and distanced themselves only doing what is left in the contract then leaving. Now Krafton has to pay the original amount, legal fees, lost the IP, damages, and who knows what else, and possibly back pay to the original leads.

    Bellular News. “Krafton’s CEO Got What He Deserved: The Judge Went Hard. Youtube, uploaded by Bellular News, March 26 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StOG9ZiLXw4&t=43s.

    Mujin. “How to Lose a Fortune by Trusting ChatGPT as your Lawyer – The Krafton VS Subnautica 2 Disaster.” Youtube, uploaded by Mujin, May 3, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGaUWKyNkag.

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  • IGN: A Slow Downward Spiral

    IGN is a name that rarely needs introduction as one of the largest gaming news and review websites it has had ups and downs though the newest controversy is hardly surprising anymore. This doesn’t even start recently IGN has been going downhill for years and you barely even hear much from them unless their reviewers do something so outrageously stupid the rest of us can only laugh at them to the point they are just the biggest laughingstock now, but how can one website do this.

    They really have no idea what they review anymore. Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby were given 7/10 for too much water. In a game halfway covered in water in which you surf over it a total of 3-5 times short distances. They gave Mouse PI a 6/10 for not being a puzzle game and not being great at the LA Noir style, but anyone looking at the marketing will tell you it is a FPS with a cartoon mouse asthetic similar to old Micky Mouse or Felix the Cat. If that wasn’t bad enough they gave Highguard and Concord, games that were so bad and buggy they were removed higher scores.

    I don’t think we need to share the same opinion on games in fact I think it is helpful if people don’t, but I don’t see how someone looked at Mouse PI as well as its marketing and thought a complex story, LA Noir, and puzzle game. I will be upfront here I don’t like shooters so I will not play or review Mouse PI as interesting and fun as it looks I know it isn’t something I will enjoy, but that also makes me wonder why IGN would ask someone who clearly wouldn’t enjoy this to review it. As big as they are not one reviewer who enjoyed FPS games played this? Could they pay someone who knows about shooting games to do this and outsource the review? Was this just an attempt to get views back on that site or something and they believed even if the review was bad the game was small so no one should care? It is precisely because this is a small indie game that people care and at the moment people on Steam and Metacritic are giving the game proper credit and reviewing it properly. Maybe all this will force IGN to start reviewing things properly again though I doubt it.

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  • Pokepia First Impressions

    The thing about Cozy Games is they are absolutely dominating the gaming industry right now. I have talked about the oversaturation in gaming, but this is the one genre where I thought people wouldn’t care. So what is this game it basically is Animal Crossing meets Pokemon with Minecraft mechanics. I wouldn’t mind this so much, but the Pokemon fail to stand out. Rather than making the Pokemon interesting NPCs it is more they seem to cycle through pointless dialouge.

    This game is in competition with multiple cozy games too and it fails. It doesn’t focus on towns and NPCs like Grand Bazaar, it may remove the destruction of your tools, but the Animal Crossing games somehow feel better, I wouldn’t mind some combat like Rune Factory or Harvestella rather than none. Another problem is spin off Pokemon games give a lot of attention to Pokemon in their natural environments such as Pokemon Snap and its sequel or focus on the Pokedex and their interactions with other Pokemon like the Mystery Dungeon series.

    The Pokemon habitats don’t feel unique or interesting putting them together is mostly easy, but these also act as the residents homes and unlike Animal Crossing or Story Of Seasons it seems the same even different habitats. This is actually the worst part in Cozy Games one of the first things most do is explore the town and see where the townspeople live and work most characters have decor that matches what the like or pertaining to their jobs while I understand this really wouldn’t be the case for Pokemon it makes them more bland than anything.

  • Indonesia Law Backfires Insanely

    This is something that has been a mix of weird, bad, and absolutely hilarious for all the wrong reasons. So Indonesia recently passed a law that requires all games to go through a rating system. Sort of like the USA’s ESRB or Europe’s PEGI rating. They decided to adopt a version of PEGI which means rather than a letter system like ESRB’s E for Everyone or M for Mature, they chose the age range 3+ is the lowest to 18+ as the highest. Unfortunately, rather than manually grade the games based on content they may have just asked an AI or worse took one look at titles or cover art. This means more family friendly games with no violence like Story Of Seasons were slapped with a 18+ and games targeted towards adults were given 3+. Now depending on where you live this can mean a game was completely unavailable to you. In several countries they won’t put up games of a certain rating. In the US this is equivalent to something rated AO an older possibly retired rating simply due to people no longer holding that kind of game. I would assume any rating above 18+ would not be held so wouldn’t even be put up on the storefront. They claimed this was to protect kids, but how are people going to protect kids if the system put in place to do that harms them because from this situation alone many games rated for their violence and themes were recommended to 3 year olds.

  • Worst Starter Pokemon

    We are looking at the Starter Pokemon today specifically which one is the worst per generation. Now this is not a list on which is good competitively Blaziken, Greninja, and Meowscarada would dominate this list, but which Starter is worst for the base single player game.

    Gen 1 Charmander

    Charmander is a fire type and while an okay Starter it really suffers in the first generation. Unlike Squitle and Bulbasuar Charmander lacks any real advantage against the Gym Leaders and bosses. Further, Squirtle has coverage through tm and learnset and Bulbasuar has good status moves.

    Gen 2 Chikorita

    Chikorita has difficulty with multiple gyms the first one is flying type and it doesn’t get much better after bug, steel, Ice, and dragon are all there added to the Kanto gyms poison and fire. That isn’t everything. It struggles a lot throughout the game Sprout Tower and Ice Path are filled with Pokemon that give it a hard time while Totodile’s coverage through movepool and a high physical help it handle anything. Cyndaquil doesn’t have coverage, but type advantage through a majority of gyms and challenges makes it better.

    Gen 3 Treeko

    Treeko isn’t a bad starter for Gen 3, but what makes it the worst is the lack of a useful dual type. There are only the flying and fire gyms to give him some trouble, but Mudkip either resists or is strong against everything as grass is its only weakness so you only need to worry about the rival battles and Torchic’s stats and moveset overpowers most of the challenges.

    Gen 4 Piplup

    Fans of the Anime don’t worry I’m not talking about Dawn’s Piplup, but the one you get in the games. Piplup is an okay starter for early to mid game, but suffers late game while the other two get more useful dual typing. Turtwig adds ground and a heavy amount of defensive stats and Chimchar adds fighting as well as being one of two fire types before post game. Unlike the other two Piplup can’t really learn any useful steel type moves out side of tms and learns basically nothing outside of water type moves. It also lacks the defensive stats that make the steel typing so useful.

    Gen 5 Snivy

    Snivy is one of the more overlooked starters and it suffers from the same thing Piplup did mixed in with the same thing Treecko did. Tepig was the starter of choice because it was the only one with a dual typing, but aside from the more physical attacking and making good use of weight based moves wasn’t as good as Blaziken or Infernape. Oshawott has a decent physical and special attack and can make full use of a more varied movepool. Snivy is monotyped and unlike Oshawott doesn’t really have a lot of coverage even tms don’t help it.

    Gen 6 Chespin

    Now both Chespin and Fennikin are flawed and not great for anything in this generation, but I found Chespin worse. It gets fighting later on, but unlike previous starters with Fighting this Pokemon is relatively slow meaning unless it can take the first hit of any Pokemon it won’t really help. Next, this was the game that introduced Fairy Types and those are strong against fighting. The whole game is an uphill battle with Chespin. Though, with proper support it actually isn’t a bad Pokemon. It does have the worst design wise though.

    Gen 7 I guess Rowlet

    The problem with Gen 7 is that there is no bad Starter Popplio and Litten have both seen multiple VGC tournaments and Rowlet is no slouch either. This leads to a problem all three are actually really good and have advantages and disadvantages during the game. Rowlet makes this list, but in reality it isn’t a bad choice the ghost typing it has just isn’t as useful as Litten’s Dark and Popplio’s Fairy. Rowlet is a good starter though.

    Gen 8 Grookey

    All three starters are monotyped, but Grookey got the worst starter because it really doesn’t have any kind of advantage. Galar’s gyms are set up in a way that depends on your version and while it is decent in Sword, Shield has Ice type gyms and the other two starters not to mention Sword and Shield have a large amount of bug, ice, poison, and flying types so even smaller challenges pose some difficulty.

    Gen 9 All three

    This is my least favorite group of Starters and unless you get one with their hidden ability they aren’t exactly helpful Moxie on Quaxly, Protean on Spirgato, and Unaware on Feucoco the three best abilities in the game seems wasted. Moxie is an attack boost for every Pokemon you knock out this requires Quaxly to be more of a glass cannon, Protean is a type change but seems wasted here since Terastalization already does that, and unaware would be helpful if any of the games bosses ever actually posed a threat. The strange part is since the three storylines seem catered to the different starters. Feucoco is great during gym battles, Sprigato is at an advantage due to move set against a majority of the Titans, and Quaxley has type advantage and move set against most of Team Star. Alternatively, during both DLC packs they really don’t have anything that makes them standout and since the Starters from previous generations reappear nothing stops you from replacing them.

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  • AIs destroying Video Games And Preservation

    It should come as no surprise I hate AI and everything about it, but how is this going to help people? Is boosting the cost for graphics cards, ram, and other essential parts supposed to help people? And what are they even doing with all that it has been proven that AI bots like Chat GPT are getting dumber and have just become money pits?

    So for over a decade a project has been in place: Myrient. This little known site has been in place to preserve games, magazines, advertisements, and pretty much everything gaming related, but it came out a few days ago that due to AI the server costs are much higher than before, added to that people who used the site (which is completely free btw) tried to profit off it, then people tried to get past the donation pop up or have it removed entirely, and finally, the creator really didn’t want forced adds on the site (with good reason as many would have seen that as profiting off someone else’s work and Nintendo would come with a ban hammer and legal threats).

    People are now scrambling to download over 300 GB of gaming history just to preserve it and archive everything, but this is just another example of gaming being negatively affected by an effectively useless product that stated it would help only to hurt. Anything an AI can do, humans have been doing for years and better than it. I trust AI with grammar and spelling, but hate that people are too lazy to be creative and that has eventually led to this situation: A money pit with nothing to gain.

    Scourse:

    JustSaySteven. “AI is Affecting Video Game Preservation Now.” YouTube, uploaded by JustSaySteven, 01, March, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aJW8_OYe4Ek