Kirby and the Forgotten Land (2022) + Star-Crossed World DLC (2025)

(10/10) + (9/10)

I was right.

Ok, so getting to play Star Crossed World was a homecoming for me. In the Spring when this was announced I made a whole reaction essay, analysis, speculation, and hypothesis about the final boss. I was hearing those little speculations here and there that it would be Galacta Knight, and as someone who was actively burned the last time I tried to connect my fave to this game (and then AGAIN in RTDLDX), I had very strong opinions on why I believd it couldn't be the case. So strong in fact, that despite this sort of bet being held to me by no one, I swore to see the boss first with my own eyes to confirm that I Was Right.

This was hard given the Switch 2's price and my own being a broke college student, but I had some strategies. Namely, I bout the Switch 2 edition of the game before I had the console, hoping that at some point I may be able to find someone with a console willing to let me borrow it to play. This never came to fruition throughout the Fall and Spring, and eventually by Christmas I just opted to buy the console and play my DLC. But then I realized that, I hadn't played KATFL in a long time, and I wouldn't really be able to appreciate the game without a well-needed replay, so that came first.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is probably the best Kirby game hands down. It is amazing visually, mechanically, NARRATIVELY. Hands down the best story in the series, which I GUESS is surprising for some people to hear because the game doesn't have a lot of cutscenes like its predecessors of Robobot or KSA, but CHRIST the environmental design and the character of the world is immaculate, I remember crying at Wondaria when I first played the game overwhelmed by the message of it all. The message that our love of life and fun and joy as a species will live on beyond us. Even when everything we as a society was is reduced to ruins the fellow living creatures that succeed us will understand and continue to connect with it -- it is executed so quietly and simply, and GORGEOUSLY! Fuck.

My favorite stages are probably Alivel Mall (Staff Side) and the Burning, Churning Powerplant. The first is a majestic recontextualization of the earlier mall levels, which in themselves are beautiful little moment of seeing an entertainment and social space brought to life again. And seeing that energy still with the malls in even worse shape, and even starker image of how these relics will be consumed by time, is powerful. It will continue to be valued as long as it remains in any capacity. And then the powerplant is just a great throwback to other iconic mechanical stages in Kirby, a genre of level I shouted out in the Kirby Interest Hell. And that song was my favorite because of how well it works as a penultimate stage theme as you race to the end to save your little buddy.

And yes, I still loooooove Elfilin so much, he is such a little goober. Like how this game was misconstrued as "Le Dahkest Kirby GAEM!!!" because of its playing with dystopian themes despite its incredibly optimistic twist, Elflin was misunderstood upon first impressions. It was understood to well he would be some kind of twist villain, but the role he ended up playing in relationship to that boss is another simple but elegant story, that to me is about learning to accept different sides of yourself and grow past them. He's been a favorite of mine since because I love Kirby's cute but kind of fucked up characters, especially when they are deeply earnest like Elfilin. AS WELL AS ADORABLE LITTLE CREATURES OOO LA POOKIE!!

And that goes to the center of all of this: GOD AM I SO HAPPY THAT THE DLC BOSS WAS ABOUT ELFILIN AND NOT GALACTA KNIGHT! I. WAS. FUCKING. RIGHT!!! And my reasoning in that essay still stands, Kumazaki and the creative staff have new fish to fry, new ideas to explore, and they are FRESH. I still need to 100% the DLC campaign to get all the ideas together, but I really love the final boss and how it plays into the slight cosmic horror but also beauty that Kirby plays with constantly. I also like that Kumazaki in interviews has talked a lot about Neichel, the fictional singer of the world and her feelings as a native there. You can tell his passion is for everything new he makes and not JUST playing with old tropes over and over. Not that there aren't Kirby Lore-isms to look at, but its your choice to be an idiot and overlook the main narrative and themes just to obsess over that.

Overall, LOVE Kirby and the Forgotten Land -- always have, always will -- and I love this series and I'm happy my appreciation for it as it is payed off. I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth more into these details about the world of my favorite Kirby game specifically and for whatever stories and worlds they create next, God bless Hal Laboratories and NO one else!

Kingdom Hearts R-TFD: "Do No Harm" (2025)

(10/10)

Unlike Hazbin which I was able to wrap up real quick in December, this is something else coming over from 2025 I was watching with my friends on recommendation of them and not me, hence it actually being a great thing to share and not a trauma-bonding watch experience. I remember finishing the very first episode and being absolutely flabbergasted by how hysterical it was all because of the choice of Holly to voice Sora like Joe Pera whoever that is -- I don't even know but it is such an insane, almost visionary choice. I was regularly amazed by how much that choice specifically managed to make the fandub match and sometimes surpass the surreal beauty of Kingdom Hearts as well as really ground the chaos of everything else.

Being a real-time fandub there isn't actually much to talk about it terms of like significance of plot, but it is a feat that over the course of the behemoth they managed to keep running themes and jokes going such as Sora's obsession with cardiology which is such a stupid-funny way to make ANYTHING of the Kingdom "Hearts". But oh God, speaking of nonsensical beauty the theme songs! When I first heard them being hyped up by my friend I didn't really get it cause it just sounded like "Simple and Clean At Home", BUT SOMETIME'S MOM'S COOKING GOES HARD! I really love it, I think more than the original Simple and Clean just because it is so good yet so meaningless. The only real meaning in it being the favorite queer tropes of erotic vivisection, a classic.

I have not been keeping up obsessively with the fandubs, I only really showed up for the Sonic games (and still haven't watched Shadow), but to God this feels like such an elevated project, it is MAGICAL to behold, and having the theme songs it does is really the ribbon on top. It makes me want to play the original Kingdom Hearts not JUST because I want to know what the hell they were dubbing over, but because I kind of hope now the original can elicit anything like this (or more specifically, Do No Harm the theme song) does.

Vividlope (2024)

(10/10)

The original idea for this list in relation to games was to motivate myself to actually beat them. I played the majority of Vividlope in December over my Winter Break and just picked it up again now to try and beat it for the review, but by the late game I would be able to just glance at a level's intro and almost be brought to tears by the idea of playing it.

Vividlope is a BRILLIANT game, and also difficult! I was sold on it by an underrated indie game showcase that marketed it as a great love-letter to the Dreamcast flair with a similarly simple and elegant mechanical design which is super true. All I could think during the first couple of hours was "Fuck, now THIS is a video game!" Like those games of yore it is so arcade-y which each level being a such a unique and fun experience that is always building on itself with new ideas and twists. And at the same time, there is an aesthetic flow throughout everything that means that even if individual worlds and levels don't stand out it's never lacking for character.

And in that fashion its also a deeply frustrating game to play at time. The perspective is very odd, the controls can be very demanding despite this. Enemies are intimidating from the beginning for how they interrupt the puzzles' flow, and they only get bigger and more complex as things go along, on top of more stage hazards. I am serious that you get to a point where you can look at a level and tell it will be such a bad time, sometimes just from ruleset of the map (I hate the infinite color loop...) But it's all GREAT. It is a mother fucking VIDEO GAME! And I've always loved every moment with it -- highly recommend, super underrated.

Forrest Gump (1986)

(9/10)

Voted "Favorite Unfinished Media of 2025" by and for me, I finally got around to finishing the book motivated by the work on my Media Awards and general New Years spirit. I read some 90% of it maybe last year and finished another 7% during some adventures trekking to the nearest local library by bus in the snow and getting thrown outside cause no one can bother to be open past 5 on a Friday. I ended up reading about Gump turning back to his vagabond life just as I was loitering inside a building myself, and it made it feel very cozy to come back to. The ending made me pretty emotional thinking about my growing wish to live a simple life, and I was very happy I read this instead of watching whatever the movie was about?

So, I picked this book up in the summer of last year after watching an interesting video essay about the movie's covert conservative messaging from its attempts to be 'apolitical' Americana fantasy. WHat most interested me - (besides this just being an overall fascinating essay which also gave me another recommendation in "Candide", which I hope to finish this year too) - were the descriptions of the original book with Gump being far more of a well-realized character who swears and fucks and calls the Vietnam War a load of shit. The fact that this poster child movie for representing the mentally handicapped took all the life out of a character originally written with nuance to turn him into this symbol really ticked something in me off, so on that and a general aim to read the sources of media essays I find, I started reading it and it was a fucking BLAST.

This book is so fucking funny, and yes, you will fall in love with Forrest Gump written by Winston Groom. The book is great both in its stupid situational moments and because Forrest has such a well-realized and distinct style of narration. It's narrated from his perspective start to end and in his southern dialect, but it is so vivid and simple at the same time. Just that detail alone does so much to paint Forrest as a character a lot beyond his label as an idiot even if a lot of the book is the joke of situations he gets into, though usually about how people around him react to him.

Even like dumbass shit like this running joke of him saying "I gotta pee" at inopportune times actually comes back for a fucking knock-out by the end when he's running for goddamn office and says it and it becomes a slogan. It's so dumb, its so silly, but also biting in just the right way. And as Deschanel says in their essay, yeah he has opinions on shit! The book is almost always pointed at American culture whether through Gump's own words or the ridiculousness he's put through, and there is an elegance to how it talks about him grappling with his opinions on harder things like grief and regret. You can tell its a lot that he either cannot or doesn't want to put his feelings into words but still feels them deeply and its humanizing.

I really recommend it because its great but still light enough most of the time that its almost a popcorn read. When I started reading it my idea was to watch the movie after I finished it, but even just from what the essay described I never want this character to be ruined for me by a retelling that turns him into a symbol of keeping your head down American fantasy instead of just being this creative character and cultural exploration. The both copies I read have Tom Hank's name bigger than Winston Groom's on the cover pisses me off.

Bradbury's The Veldt (1950)

(10/10)

The Veldt is a story I literally thought about all month since I read it like in the first week. It is so good, it is so so good. I picked it up in an anthology of Ray Bradbury's work and read it and it was so entertaining I didn't even feel the need to read the rest of the stories. So, since I had read 451 last year I knew that I wanted to get into more of Bradbury's work because it just resonated a lot with me, and then a few weeks into 2026 you have a Jacob Geller video which brought up one that sounded super interesting. So after finishing Forrest Gump I picked it up and read it a few days later.

Something I love about Bradbury's dystopias is that they are very ungraceful and blunt in their commentary. Not stupid, but they felt very American to me because they are not very political but just stories about how some of the most common consumerist habits are clearly the root of all evil. Like the TV, blown up into giant wall-to-wall displays in his stories, are clearly satanic to him, and he is very disgusted by their purpose for providing a second world to step into. In 451 this is a tool of distraction from the outside world and even the connection two spouses should have with each other among a million other jabs at earbuds (before they were a thing?) and car culture. In The Veldt the mega-TV is the central demon and plays with the theme of when it comes TOO alive in literal and metaphorical senses.

I think what also makes it so fun is that it is also fundamentally a story about fear of children and losing children to technological advances. It is a story about spoiling your children with material things until those material things become more important to them than you, and they choose to bite the hand that feeds them because all they see is the food. Because you aren't feeding them by hand, you gave them a food dispenser and then threatened to take it away. I think my favorite part of thinking about this story over and over was realizing why the parents were finding their stuff lying around the room every time they went in. It's not a twist it's just clever foreshadowing that works to emphasize just how bad the tension was between the parents and the kids the whole time, and how stupidly oblivious the parents were.

I'm purposefully being vague not because the story is like a mystery or anything, but because you should read it its like 10 pages or something and I love it. I love how cynical it is, how bluntly Bradbury damns so many consumerist traps, and... imagining people getting eaten by lions.

Mario Kart Wii (2008)

(7/10)

Ever since Mario Kart World, and especially its soundtrack, had begun consuming my life I started looking back on older Mario Karts. I had done so with Super Mario Kart a while ago because it was supposed to be the inspiration for a game and didn't enjoy my time with it; I had Super Circuit for my GBA SP (The SPboy) but hated that as well; And I had put my hands on Mario Kart 64 because I also really adore its soundtrack, but it was still a hassle to play. I don't have access to Double Dash, but I had picked up a copy of Mario Kart Wii a while ago and... hated it then too, but decided to give it another chance cause its OST enraptured me too.

I guess first on its soundtrack... so the video "The Best Album of 2025 Isn't An Album" said pretty well how Mario Kart 8 and World are specific leaps in presentations for MK soundtracks not because past ones were bad or lazy, but just because they stepped into an unmissable sound and presence in the games' aesthetics. As someone who has kinda listened to all of these soundtracks now, I definitely think World is unquestionably on top, but I no longer see MK8 (my darling game) as its 2nd. Cause the MKWii soundtrack is AGGRESSIVELY Nintendo. The Wii was one of the last consoles to have its own soundfont which is used to its beautiful fullest in the OST and it gives it SO much character that it honestly in my mind puts MK8's big band approach to shame -- it's almost boring by comparison! Especially with World offering a more character-rich and eclectic take. This to say, I really love the MKWii OST, it kind of tops MK8 for me on sheer personality alone. My favorite tracks are probably Daisy Circuit, Koopa Cape, Grumble Volcano, and Moonview Highway.

Ok, but onto the game -- I hated playing it. This and MKW have chaotic balancing in common as I've heard and very much felt playing both, but what MKW has over Wii is grace. It has tact, it has kindness in its heart. Wii has none of this, and it turns the chaotic item rotation from a teasing joke to an insult. Like surely if you've played World after playing other MK's you've noted how many hazards no longer stop you in place but just through you off thanks to the amazing physics system, and that works wonderfully with the crazy hazards. Wii... if you get hit in Wii you will stop DEAD in your tracks at least and be thrown off for so long at worst. It is criminal when hitting walls, and ridiculous when getting hit by other players -- if you dare to play a small character you will be pinballed around like it's no one's business. And then hazards like bullets and stars that are NOT YOUR FAULT if you get hit by them are as punishing as shells or lightning, it just makes the whole experience unreasonably frustrating.

But I played on, inspired by my nostalgia and new-found appreciation for its aesthetics in context of where the series has gone. I also did come to enjoy it some bit as I realized skill did factor a fair bit into your playing; actually carefully controlling your kart and handling was far more important than it was in 8 or World. But those moments of joy and sense of accomplishment were quickly drowned in a sea of garbage physics moments and item punishment which made me very happy to set down the controller after I was done. I could imagine myself picking it back up once or twice more, but not the way I do World. A fun enough revisit.