Efteling

De Efteling is historically one of the oldest theme parks in the world and also the largest one to be found in The Netherlands. Combining the powers of a filmmaker, artist and illustrator, It sprouted into business in the year of 1952.

As a kid, I have been here several times, looking in awe at attractions such as Droomvlucht, Fata Morgana and the Fairy Tale Forest, which consists of a compilation of well known fairy tales such as Snow White, The Six Servants, Hansel and Gretel and Rapunzel.

It's main theme really is about fairy tales, but myths, legends, fables and folklores are also present. One attraction I always found interesting is called Villa Volta, a madhouse where the visitors get the illusion that either the building, the visitors themselves or both are turned upside down.

The theme park is both suitable for children and adults, as romantic and nostalgic themes are also in attendance during your visit. Iconic features include Hollow Bulging Gijs or Holle Bolle Gijs, in which paper can be thrown in, or the park's overall appearance.

Another famous attraction is Carnival Festival, a dark ride where a host will guide you through 9 different cultural regions full of figures. I was once told by someone that these animatronic figures were made of chocolate and are/were edible.

For 2015, me and longtime friends also revisited the theme park during the winter period. And although the day was of course very much enjoyable, in a twist of turns, I overcame my fear of experiencing rollercoasters, especially scary ones.

With the perfect timing of introducing an intimidating new divecoaster called Baron 1898 for this year, I went into all rides, basically told myself "Fuck It" and my fear dissappeared. Of course, that doesn't mean that feeling nauseous would go away, which did happen at one point.

I'm looking forward towards using this same approach when I will find love in my own life, hah! Baron, Joris & the Dragon, Python, all rollercoasters were very much enjoyable and of course the thrills were still felt, but afterwards it's great to share your experience with your friends and family.

De Efteling is Holland's proud achievement of a great theme park, and I would love to revisit it again in the future.

The Martian

An astronaut is accidentally left alone on planet Mars while his crew leaves during a natural disaster. He learns to manage on his own as a botanist for hundreds of days, while eventually he is able to communicate back home using older technology from the 90’s.

Sometimes being humorous, sometimes dramatic, The Martian explores the theme of survival on planet almost extinct of useful natural resources, while dealing with loneliness, sanity and the craving for hope. Matt Damon's performance will make you care for what happens to him.

In the last act, his crew performs a stunning rescue operation, and they are able to complete it successfully. The Martian is by all means a scientific survival story set on a foreign planet, is intelligent with dialogue, humor and camera shots, and it has not only motivating tunes, but older disco tunes as well.

Directed by Ridley Scott, a veteran regarding sci-fi’s, The Martian is the Interstellar(2014) or the Gravity(2013) for this year. Unless you are craving for a more fantasy based science fiction, which I will review very soon.

 Rating: 8.0

Downloadable Content: Bloodborne: The Old Hunters

Are you ready to delve into the Hunter's Nightmare and beyond, discovering the origin that created this whole mess and the conflicts that spawned out of it? The Old Hunters is the proper way to expand upon length, lore, challenge and gameplay.

Featuring three new area's to venture into, each one only got better the further I got. With plenty of new creative weapons to experiment with, new enemies, new mystery NPC's, lore which made the overall plot even more complicated with or without interpretations and many ways to die, it's another great expansion from From Software.

The highlights are easily the new bosses to fight, as only 1 out of the 5 can be considered easy, and 3 of them are in my opinion some of the most creative and hardest fights in all of of the Souls games. And I am referring to Ludwig, Lady Maria and Orphan of Kos then.

With the exception of a lazy rehash fight reminiscent of Asylum Demon in Dark Souls, The Old Hunters is a must have and essential addition towards Bloodborne, finally making it's game length just as long as the other Souls games.

Super Mario Maker

Indeed, creating Super Mario courses has been available before, but technically only illegally. Through hacking ROM's of Mario's best 2D platformers including Super Mario Bros.3 and Super Mario World, you would be able to customize and modify courses as well as other tweaks.

Lunar Magic was the tool I used several times perhaps about a decade ago, where I would edit the normal courses from the SNES adventure and make my own challenging creations, but I was never dedicated or really passionate about it.

Now, with Super Mario Maker being officially endorsed and licensed by Nintendo, millions around the world are able to create, edit, upload and play courses of their own, or from others, allowing for endless amounts of different content to be available.

I believe that official statistics regarding uploading these courses has already easily and swiftly reached the 1 million mark, meaning that in a way, gamers and fans will never get tired or bored with no new 2D Mario courses being available.

This glorified level editor with inspirations from the influential Mario Paint on the SNES and tons of cameos from other Nintendo franchises in the form of playable skins lets you be able to switch between 4 kinds of Mario styles(and the associating physics and mechanics with each of them).

This means that in the blink of an eye, by pressing a single button, all of your created levels can be switched to for instance Super Mario Bros. or New Super Mario Bros. based courses, making migration and availability in regards to creative input efficient.

However, not every kind of object, mechanic or feature has been transferred over from the 4 Mario styles into Super Mario Maker. Examples such as slopes and certain enemies are still missing in action, but fortunately, DLC and patches have already been done, and important changes such as adding checkpoints means that Nintendo will listen to what the audience demands. Well, for the most part then.

So this Wii U game/level editor basically has 2 functions; you either create your own levels(or edit those from others), or you start playing the courses from others. There are also special Event courses hosted with themes and usually you are able to unlock a certain 8-bit based character then.

Rating a product like this is difficult for the moment because it mostly depends on the input from users plus it also doesn't feel entirely complete yet, similar to Splatoon(which I will talk more about next year). And because I like to play and beat other games throughout, I have not really taken my full attention with this yet.

But I can definitely recommend this as a no-brainer for anyone who is a Super Mario fan, who grew up with these legendary platformer games, who like to play and judge the creations from others and/or who want to attempt to be creative and inspiring with level design in general.

It's definitely a very user-friendly Nintendo product.

Rating: 7.6

Undertale

 

After the reviews skyrocketed for this indie RPG developed by 1 guy using Game Maker, I was unable to ignore it.

Beating and seeing the Neutral ending, one of three possible outcomes, I can easily say that the hype surrounding it was exaggerated, and that I prefer Lisa the Painful, another recent and admired indie RPG.

Undertale lets you play as a child of ambiguous ethnicity and gender in a world or underworld of monsters who are locked away by humanity because of a barrier. With a recognizable and likable OST, and a simple mood resembling Earthbound, it was easy to get drawn into it.

There are two notable features to mention. First is the way how you are able to avoid enemy attacks. This is done in a Touhou like kind of way, and if you don't know what Touhou is, it's basically a brand at this point which are so called bullet hell shooters where you are required to dodge many bullets in order to survive.

The same can be said is happening over here in Undertale as well, except that it is now implemented inside an RPG system. The other notable feature is the ability to play through the whole game by being a pacifist, instead of using violence or killing enemies.

By using the mercy button, you are able to spare enemies and let them flee. This was featured most of all because the developer felt that all RPG's which feature soul less attacking and the defeat of monsters made it feel tedious and void. While I certainly do not agree entirely on his point by generalizing, I can appreciate what he did here as an alternative.

Aside from these 2 features, the graphics are especially noteworthy, when you see how enemies are portrayed, and the NPC's all have their own unique appearance as well, sometimes in the forms of animals, sometimes in plain quirky ways.

For most of the game, it's a standard RPG adventure, and it's not until the very end with the final boss that Undertale really starts to do some 4th wall breaking, by ending the application itself and upon restarting it, even attempting to erase your save file at one point. Other than the final boss battle and the 2 notable features, there's not much else which really impressed me.

I am aware that the Genocidal and Pacifist runs feature different boss battles and more story dialogue, but for now, I can conclude that I cannot explain the large hype surrounding Undertale, and yet I was satisfied with what I found.

Coined as the "Holy Trinity of Indie RPG's" of recent years, it is alongside Lisa the Painful and OFF, a French indie RPG, part of that statement, and should definitely be checked out by those craving a twist on traditional role playing.

Rating: 7.4

The Witcher Trilogy

Polish video game based on famous Polish novels, The Witcher is an RPG with dialogue options which were the highlights of it back in 2007, but having started on this series anno 2015, I’m really trying to keep holding attention. 

The combat is repetitive and simplistic, the inventory and loot system are clunky and time consuming, there are many loading scenes (also when you gather items each time) I really disliked the day/night system in order to trigger certain events, the order of doing the quests was convoluted and I lost interest in the middle of chapter III. 

Perhaps the first Witcher really feels too outdated for me. And I played the Enhanced Version.

Rating: 5.5

Now this is much more appealing. Also having played the Enhanced Version, The Witcher 2 is an improvement in pretty much everything, with a warm and moody atmosphere such as the royal forest, better dialogue, combat, story, music, sex and more.

It just so happens to be apparently the shortest in game length out of the three. Assassins of Kings delivers good, looks rich in the environments and establishes a memorable cast of characters while have a much better polished presentation.

I also liked the new mini games.

Rating: 7.5

Without a doubt the strongest of the trilogy, Wild Hunt concludes Geralt of Rivia’s story, as he searches for his adopted daughter Ciri, with help from longtime friends such as Triss, Yennefer and Vesemir.

The Witcher 3 is a large open world medieval RPG made by Polish hands, with breathtaking scenery, music and impressive dialogue. There’s a ridiculous amount of quests to do, the combat, controls and interfaces are more polished than ever and I applaud CD Projekt Red for developing this ambitious project.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a very good RPG, not really Western or Japanese, but rather Eastern European. For many people, this will be one of the contenders for the Game of the Year title. I myself am still deciding between two other games, and a third one coming out soon might change everything.

Rating: 8.4