Not E3 2025

 

            Hello! It’s been a while but some things have happened! The Switch 2 came out, the not E3 season is… existing, so we can talk a little about that stuff.

            Mario Kart World is interesting. The courses being connected are kind of neat but I don’t think it needs to be in everything. I kind of feel like it’s fine for the Grand Prix cups because it’s the gimmick of the game and I feel like once people get gold in all the cups they move on and obviously it’s the big part of Knockout Tour. I think Knockout Tour is a really good addition; it’s just a nice, solid, competitive mode. The place I don’t enjoy the connecting tracks is in VS mode, especially when I pick “random” tracks. Even if you pick random, it will randomly select the first track but after that it will connect to the closest tracks. In Mario Kart 8, VS was my go to for quick fun. I have a family thing where my niece and nephew are present, I put on Mario Kart, go to VS, select random tracks and go. Don’t have to worry about anything. Going from track to track is fine normally but when it comes to VS I don’t want to have these long straightaway roads, I want to race on the track, for 3 or so laps. I think that’s the general consensus online as well. It’s a little annoying to finally get to a track and only see it for one lap. I’ll be driving along, see something interesting and think “I’ll check that out next lap” but I don’t get the chance because the race is over. I truly feel like these connected tracks are mostly for the inevitable 200cc release. I feel like in Mario Kart 8, 200cc was just too fast for some courses, which was part of the fun. You’d go careening off the course because you’re going so fast and can not make any corners, but it is a popular mode and I think Mario Kart World is tailor made for 200cc. I played a little bit online and more often then not I would get mushroom power ups. There was a time when we all went through the first boxes and all you saw was three mushrooms spinning around everyone’s karts. I know there are a few new power ups, probably some taken out as well, but I feel like the variety isn’t as high as previous games. Another thing I’ve noticed is they seem to have taken out the highlights reel at the end of races and instead put in a replay, not a big fan of that. I like the highlight thing because again, it’s simple and efficient. You click on it, see a few clips of things that happen, have a good laugh and move on. Having a full replay is an interesting choice.

            One thing that kind of annoys me is it is sometimes hard to tell what the current track you are on is and what is out of bounds. MK World does a great job blending everything together, it’s like each course has different setups. You have a three lap set up and a knockout tour set up but all the assets are there for both and depending which one you are playing will change the course layout. Going through Boo’s Cinema once I was flying towards a movie screen and there’s clearly two paths you can take but for this particular race the one I was going towards was out of bounds. It’s a little frustrating. I kind of wish they could make these tracks so nothing is exactly out of bounds and Lakitu doesn’t have to fish you out of places. Give the guy a season off huh? Something else I found a little odd was that Pauline only has one unlockable outfit. I saw someone bring it up on like, GameFAQs and a response was something similar to “What, a character that has barely been in the games has no material to build from? Crazy.” And it’s like what material do they need? What inspiration? Literally any costume would work. What’s the inspiration for Daisy in her Oasis outfit? To my understanding Pauline has several outfits in Tour, could’ve used some of those. I’m not upset at the lack of outfits for her, I’m more upset at the persons logic as to why she doesn’t have more. I am kind of disappointed with the roster a little. I miss the Koopalings, I’m really sad there’s no one from Odyssey, I’m hoping to see some in DLC. I like that more enemy units are playable but some of them are still strange or, I don’t know, almost stupid, I don’t know how else to say it. The dolphin just floats above it’s bike, you got a dry bones fish, the crab, like, ehhh. To each their own I guess. Along with the Koopalings missing, Boom Boom and Pom Pom still aren’t playable characters which is too bad. Boom Boom shows up on a track to spin spin spin and be a nuisance but I would love for the both of them to playable characters.

            I saw a video a while ago on either Good Vibes Gaming or Nintendo Life talking about Sonic Racing CrossWorlds and how they had a hands on preview and that it was really good. It was better than the other Sonic Racing games and just a good mascot racing game. During the PlayStation direct they showed some free DLC characters and Hatsune Miku is one of them. The last time Sega made a Sonic Racing game I commented on a social media post or YouTube like “If you put Miku in I’ll buy your game” and they never did but look-y now. So I might be getting this one. I saw an article recently saying something to the effect of “Sonic Racing is doing Smash Racing before Mario Kart” and like I’ve said before, I don’t want Mario Kart to become Smash Kart. The Mario universe has so many characters to pull from, they don’t NEED a Smash roster. At the bare minimum there is Donkey Kong characters they could pull from. I’m not invested in Sonic as I am in Mario so I don’t really care that they’re adding all sorts of different Sega characters into CrossWorlds. Like it makes sense with the title of “CrossWorlds” so yeah, they’ve said that there will be more Sega DLC characters so we’ll see who else comes.

            So hopefully CrossWorlds is good but I don’t like Sonic games as much as Mario games. Aside from 2D Sonics, Sonic Mania is amazing but Sonic Generations doesn’t do it for me. Someone I follow on socials who I guess really likes Sonic, had said that Sonic x Shadow Generations was better than Bowser’s Fury and I was like “whoa” you know, huge if true kind of thing and well, I don’t find it to be true at all. Bowser’s Fury I wanted to play, Shadow Generations doesn’t have that pull on me. I’ve been playing a game on my Steam Deck here and there called Haste. It’s like if a modern 3D Sonic game was good and it’s also the stuff of my nightmares. Waking up, flying through the air, fast, the grass, hills and trees just zipping by, my heart beats faster, it’s awful. When I die of a heart attack in my sleep it’s going to be because of this dream. But anyway, Haste is really good, I’m not very good at it but Sonic Team should really take some cues from this game. I could do without the world crumbling behind me though. I just want to run and jump and glide without worry. But I can really see a Sonic game in there. You can still have enemies you jump attack at but just keep the flow going. Thinking about it now I think I like the overworld of Shadow Generations but not the levels. The levels are linear but once my flow is interrupted it kind of kills it for me. I’m kind of feeling like a cross between Haste and Mario Kart World’s free roam/Bowser’s Fury would be good. Each zone you enter has multiple challenges to do then you have a boss fight and go to a new zone. Looks good in my head.

            The only other thing I’ve seen to be interesting this past week was the reveal of this new Marvel fighter from Arc System Works, Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls. The game itself looks interesting but everything else behind the scenes is what interests me more. The only Marvel fighter in recent years has been with Capcom so that’s done now? Taking a break? I’ve been saying for a while that I’d like to see Capcom collab with some other groups so maybe this is the start of it? 2D Monster Hunter fighter is still on my wish list but also I’ve been craving a Power Rangers cross over with Street Fighter. Street Fighter… just isn’t a game I’m really into. I’ve only played 4 because it “came” with my 3DS, because GameStop is a bunch of douchefucks, and Street Fighter X Tekken because of Tekken. SF has had a couple small collabs with Power Rangers already and they’re pretty cool! If Capcom put in some of the Power Rangers skins into SF6 I’d be more likely to buy it. I would love to see more SF characters in Power Ranger suits. I’d like to see Juri in a suit but I think with her hair buns the helmet would look more like it had cat ears. Other than that she already has a Rita Repulsa look to her. I can also see Capcom getting bored of doing the same games with the same characters and similar movesets again and again. People get annoyed when things change too much and annoyed when things aren’t changed enough, I get it, finding a good balance is hard and also there will be people that can point out all the little, minute differences from game to game. Happy for you, that’s not me. I think that’s why Arc System Works has so many fighting games they work on is just for something different to tackle. Obviously I don’t know the inner workings of these companies, they probably have separate teams for each game but I don’t know, I’m just saying. Maybe this will give Capcom a chance to do something else.

            Another interesting thing that came out of the blue as I was writing this is a new Splatoon spin-off game called Raiders. Not a whole lot of information right now but more Splatoon, so, yay!

            So. What do you think about Mario Kart World? What characters are you hoping to see in MKW or Sonic Racing CrossWorlds? What do you think Splatoon Raiders will be like? Anything catch your attention during these showcases? Let me know below and I’ll see you around! Bye-bye!

            @AztecSauce