Fully Charged: Clair Obscur Expedition 33, Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble, Shantae and the Seven Sirens, Mario Kart World

Start of a new series!

Fully Charged is a series in which I go over games I have recently played. Each instalment will release when I have played 2-4 games, updates or demos. With less time for this blog now, I won't be doing many, if any, full reviews. This series will instead cover the games I have played critically, in a mini-review format.

Mario Kart World

https://store.nintendo.co.uk

This is the game everyone has been playing recently if they got a Switch 2. I want to start off by saying I quite like this game, it feels quite different from 8 in a good way. One of the biggest things I like about the games feel, is the control. Vehicles in this game do not feel as stiff. How could I not mention the wall driving and rail grinding too, those add a lot more depth to tracks and are very fun to do. The new knockout tour is a great addition to the series, I find myself playing these just as much as grand prix's. Free roam is quite fun, there are some cool challenges to do within it, but for me, its just nice to listen to the great music in the game while driving and exploring the fully connected world. The main issues I have with this game, though, are the character selection screen and the way you unlock skins/characters. Why are the skins not just under one character on the select screen? It's annoying having to scroll pages just to get to the character I want to play. This reminds me somewhat of the recent Zelda UI issue. Having the skins tied to tedious grinding if you want all of them is one thing, but tying the extra characters to complete rng is another. This really sucks. Also, why no Diddy Kong? That should be a crime! In all seriousness, though, while I have some gripes with the game, it's been very fun and I can see myself playing it for a while yet. Hoping they also update the game with more tracks and 200cc eventually as well but I am fine with the content currently. If I were to give this game a rating, I would rate it 8.5/10.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble

https://store.nintendo.co.uk

This game feels like a return to the older monkey ball games. It's a great addition to the series. The levels are all quite good, with a good difficultly curve going for them. The addition of cosmetics is nice, there are even quite a few options to choose from. The new main character Palette is cute, I played her most the game. Hopefully, she will be in future games too. Something else I really want to mention is that it's awesome how when you beat the game you get a second game basically with remixed harder levels, I was surprised about how much content there was here. I am still on the final world of the harder levels, hopefully I will be able to beat it soon but the current level I am on I have given quite a lot of tries already, with no success. I haven't played any of the multiplayer stuff really yet other than racing but I found it to be fun, though I do wish that billiards and or golf returned. One last thing I want to shout out is the music of this game. It's very good and much better than some of the replaced music in banana mania. If I were to give this game a rating I would rate it 8/10.

Shantae and the Seven Sirens

https://store.nintendo.co.uk

I picked up this game for around £2, which was a crazy deal. I have had my eye on the Shantae series, due to hearing its music, for a while so when I saw that I thought why not? I have become more of a Metroidvania fan over the years too, so I was quite looking forward to this. After completing it, I can definitely say it was more than worth the price and I enjoyed the experience quite a bit, enough to make me want to play more Shantae games in the future. Is it the best Metroidvania I have played? Maybe not, as I think that would be symphony of the night, but it is not that far off honestly. I liked the transformations the game offered and the cards you can collect offer helpful perks, not to mention the few different abilities you can use with magic that add more to combat encounters and exploration. The level design was just as good as what you would expect from a Castlevania game too. Then there is the music, wow, this was really good. Though again, this is something you can bet on for these types of games. I do miss the levelling up aspect of Castlevania though and I think that's one of the reasons why I like it more.as a whole. That said, I look forward to playing another Shantae game. Which one would that be? I am not sure yet. My rating for this would be 8/10.

Clair Obscur Expedition 33

https://www.playstation.com/

Game of the year. Enough said. This game was such an amazing experience. From the extremely deep and interesting story/characters, to the fun gameplay and wonderful visuals this game just hit all the boxes for me. It's one of those games you just get lost in and don't realise you just spent 5 hours playing it. I was looking forward to this game since I first heard about it and nearing its release I avoided all things about it and it was such a great decision. There were so many aspects I weren't aware of thanks to that. While a point can be made against its choice to give you painted power (removes dmg cap) before the final boss, somewhat trivialising it, I don't think its much of an issue at all. If you really want you can just turn it off. When the main issue with a game is something that can actively be solved in game then that says a lot about the quality of this game. It's so surprising how well this game turned out considering the smaller dev team and such. I also want to mention the soundtrack, because wow, its so good. I did listen to a few tracks before playing such as Gustave and Monoco, from these I could see we were in for a treat so stopped listening to the music after that, as I wanted to experience it in game. This game is the result of pure passion from the devs. I would easily rate this game a 9.5/10. I really hope there is DLC or a sequel for this.

So that's it for the first instalment of fully charged, please stay tuned for more of these in the future. I really enjoyed all the games I have played recently and look forward to what is to come in the not so distant future. As always, stay connected!