PixlBit

Games Beaten

-Earth Defense Force: World Brothers (Switch)

EDF is a long-running series that I have spent little time with (EDF 2025) and this game seems to be a sort of celebration of the series. With it pulling content from many different games, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the game feels kind of unfocused. Plus it seems to retain the series problem of needing to play through the easier difficulties before your characters are able to survive the harder difficulty settings. That said, I do love the change to giving you a squad of characters instead of a single one. Having the maneuverability of a Wing Diver when you can easily switch to something with more fire power is great. Good fun with friends.

-Donkey Kong Bonanza (Switch 2)

There is much to love in DK Bonanza. The game looks and sounds great. The voice acting for Pauline, in particular, is very good and I love the chemistry between her and Donkey Kong. The story is, well, it's there. It's about what you'd expect from a game like this. The developers tried really hard to add as much variety as they could with the different layers and bonanza powers but ultimately the game suffers from DK being OP. The fun in DK Bonanza is immediate but shallow. Smashing stuff—smashing everything—is super fun but it wears thin before too long. So while I loved exploring the first couple of layers, the longer the game went on, the less I explored each new layer. Where the game really shined for me was the challenge rooms. Limiting either DK's powers or the context in which you could use them forced me to play with greater skill or cleverness and that was a lot of fun. But the biggest casualty of DK being so OP was the bosses. There were a few great ones but mostly they boiled down to running up to the boss and simply punching it till it died. Not real engaging but I recognize that the bosses are not this game's focus. Much like Mario Odyssey (this team's previous game), Bonanza has lots of extra stuff to find for enthusiastic explorers...but that's not me. I enjoyed my time with the game but I'm happy to be moving onto something else.

Games Bought

I did not buy any games in May but I did get some PS+ games. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (PS5) is a Soulslike game—a genre I traditionally never get around to playing—that has an interesting Chinese look and feel. Nine Sols (PS5), as I understand it, is also Souls-ish but is a 2D action game focused on parrying. I don't know if I'd enjoy that but I hear that the people who click with this game really love it.

Games Being Played

-Destiny 2 (PS5)

I was surprised to hear that Destiny 2 will be ceasing active development after its update this month. There are no plans to take it down (Destiny 1 is still running, after all) but maybe this will lead to us playing some other games as well.

-Piczel Cross: Rune Factory (Switch)

Been playing a fair bit of this lately.

-Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince (Switch)

Been playing this with two of my kids and they've really gotten into it.