Back in 2018 the Bumblebee movie had possibly the one thing that fans of the '80s version of The Transformers went a bit nuts about: a battle scene at Cybertron with characters styled more akin to their cartoon versions, rather than the bundles of scrap metal as featured in the Michael Bay films.

While I mainly evaded all designs from those movies, the Bumblebee Prime design was actually a good blend of the old and new. This year, they finally made that an actual object as the Optimus Prime from that scene, got his modern-day action figure toy equivalent.

Which is now adorning my work-from-home spot. As it should be.

Obviously Lies of P wants to jump into the gaping hole left by Bloodborne. It's almost a bit too similar to its inspiration. Creepy dolls seem to fit though and considering you're playing Pinocchio it's fine. Yet, I'm not 100% convinced by the trailer. It starts off well, but then - for inexplicable reasons - seems to wade into "burning justice" anime-glow territory, instantly ruining whatever Souslborne vibes the trailer earned.

That'll all be forgotten if this plays well, but that's the rub with all these Soulsborne wannabees of course: can they nail From Software's mechanics? We'll find out somewhere in 2023 apparently.

Not necessarily a good vibe, but a great vibe nonetheless.

Love to come here and drink some brought along tea. Nice and tranquil.

It’s the odd one out. The red-headed stepchild so to speak. Harmony of Dissonance came along at a very curious time. Konami wanted to redefine Castlevania as a series. It dropped 悪魔城ドラキュラ (Demon Castle Dracula) as its Japanese title in favour of the western 'Castlevania' and designed a new logo stanza to go along with it.

It also meant hammering down what people liked about it. Which could be summed up as Symphony of the Night. In terms of audiovisuals, Harmony tries it best to be the true portable Symphony. Something its predecessor Circle of the Moon didn’t quite nail, despite it being very good regardless.

So did Harmony of Dissonance get it right? Well, no. It’s a good copy though. Even if it does go overboard with some of the spices.

First of all the game fixes the one glaring issue of Circle of the Moon: this game is most certainly developed with that dark unlit Game Boy Advance screen at top of mind. Everything is bright as can be, with colours approaching saturation levels best described as garish.

It’s fine on a GBA screen, but writ large on a backlit television, it’s too much of a good thing. Castlevania Advance Collection doesn’t have screen filters, which is better than enforcing them, but honestly, this could’ve done with a GBA screen emulation of some sort. A trip to your TV's colour settings might actually be a good idea.

It makes up for it in animation. Clearly in an attempt to mimic Symphony of the Night this game’s enemies move, attack, and die in multiple glorious frames with sumptuous graphical effects to accentuate their demise. Sure, they’re compressed, even cut short at times, but unless you’re playing both games back to back it feels like the real deal.

The same cannot be said for the audio.

In an effort to boost graphics, less cartridge capacity was left for the audio and boy is it noticeable. To me the 8-bit bleeps sound almost nostalgic as they remind me of a Commodore 64, but I can’t imagine anyone being ecstatic about it. The compositions themselves are fine, but the sound banks used for instrumentation can be dreadful. The boss theme especially sounds like something badly copied from a Neo Geo Pocket title.

It’s a real let-down, especially after Circle of the Moon’s stellar greatest hits soundtrack. No recognition is available here to help as the soundtrack is mostly new work.

With the presentation being a hit and a miss, the game’s structure suffers a similar split. In a bid to stay true to Symphony of the Night, the game serves up a environmental twist similar to its predecessor. Sadly, the way it has been implemented means that for a more for half of the game, its structure is akin to a large corridor. Need to go back to an earlier area? Better start backtracking.

Normally this problem is countered by warp rooms but Harmony is exceptionally stingy with them and once the option is unlocked, hides one of its crucial features from the player: you can both press up or down in such a room to activate different warps. Sure the game tells you eventually if you manage to find the relevant hint card, but by that time the damage has been done.

It renders one of its most impressive features down to an annoying design decision. The game still remains fun but its shine has dulled a bit.

In terms of handling and gameplay this is Symphony of the Night reborn. Juste handles like Alucard with a whip, having that slightly floaty feel to his jumps and weapon attacks having a slow but determined reach.

The main gimmick this time around is combining the well known of the series with elemental spell books, allowing for different attacks and features. It’s a nice system in theory, but again the game hides its shortcuts to quickly switching between spell books as well as turning them on and off in-game.

The difficulty had also been toned a bit from Circle of the Moon. Nothing is too difficult and sneaking in an extra level or two of grinding while spamming some spell book combos will take care of most bosses. A double edged sword once more as it makes the game accessible but also robs it of its teeth.

And that’s the bottom line really. This is indeed a game true to its name. A harmony of familiar and unfamiliar elements. Good and bad. Give and take. Here’s a game bot trying to reinvent itself but trying to find a proper footing after the first one misjudged its target platform. The result is overcompensation, and at the same time an enticing prospect for the future of the series as its next instalment would prove.

It’s comforting to return to Circle of the Moon and find it to be more than capable to hold its own in a time where Metroidvanias are a dime a dozen.

Here’s the first Castlevania to follow in Symphony of the Night’s footsteps. On less capable hardware no less and it basically gets the core right. That makes it really similar to Metroid II: it simplifies some matters and expands the formula at the same time.

The main issue with the game is probably how it looks. It manages to hit all the beats of Castlevania, from skeletons to man-eaters to the various armours. But, they all lack the gothic flamboyance of the previous games, Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night in particular. It's like they're all functional facsimiles of someone describing the various monsters from those games. The animations are a bit stilted, the details a bit sparse.

Maybe it's intended, for its setting does a similar thing. Gone are the Belmont clan, instead here is a couple of characters that don't seem to fit into the series' lore, but still involves the Vampire Killer and Dracula. It feels like a soft reboot. Or at the very least a careful attempt at branching out, being able to wallpaper over the mess in case everything went horribly wrong.

You could say the mechanics warranted some caution. Jumping and whipping is good, blending the agility of Alucard with the reach of Richter, and yet the game never feels completely smooth. A huge factor here is speed. Your default walk speed is horribly slow and the game make you suffer it for a good ten minutes before relenting and giving you a run option by double tapping a direction on the d-pad.

But why? After acquiring it, you'll find yourself incorporating the double-tap into every movement you make, reducing the action to a nuisance at best and an expletive at the moments it doesn't register properly.

The whip's precision is also annoying at times, with its reach being offset by its thinness, making hitting specific targets rather frustrating. At least it doesn't require a multi-button input.

The true glory of Circle of the Moon lies with the DSS, or Dual Set-up System. Action and attribute cards are dropped by specific enemies at random, and combining one with the other will produce an effect for your character. From elemental attacks to stats boosts to deadly summons, it's a joy to discover all effects and determine when and how to deploy them during the game. So good in fact, that this type of customisation would become a bit of a staple for the Metroidvania-branch of the series, culminating in the soul collecting of both Aria of Sorrow and ultimately Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

Unfortunately, the drop-rate for these DSS cards can be tremendously low. In the original GBA game, it would be quite common for someone to have completed the game without collecting all the cards, let alone know which enemies could drop them.

The Advance Collection version fixes this by implementing an optional gadget that produces a pop-up whenever you hit an enemy able to drop a card. If you already have the card it'll tell you so as well. It's very crudely implemented — hit an enemy five times and you'll see five pop-ups in quick succession — but it alleviates the hunt for cards.

It also highlights that some particular cards are dropped by multiple different enemies, making it clear that even the developers knew about the horrible drop rates and they hoped adding more chance would fix this. It doesn't. Unless you defeat every enemy type multiple times for 30 to 60 minutes straight, it's impossible to tell in the original who will drop what. A guide (or that gadget) is pretty much a musthave. Even though it won't remove the time needed to grind for those cards.

Another sin that's sticking out like a sore thumb, is the balancing. For about the first 80% of the game, it's rather well-balanced making enemies grow along with your skill and card set. The final 20% is immensely brutal. The gauntlet up to the penultimate boss is gruelling, with multiple fast and hard hitting armour enemies, attack disabling flying monstrosities, and petrifying pillar attacks. Dracula itself is also difficult, with him sporting a dash attack that can wipe off 50% of your health total, no problem.

It's a bit of a shame then that at that point grinding for experiencing points and levels is made nigh impossible, as most enemies will not reward enough experience points to make it worthwhile. Likewise, the battle arena area which could alleviate that issue, is set up to not allow MP and the DSS cards. Here's an area where you would be able to go wild in testing your abilities, and it's reduced to jumping and whipping about like the rest of the game never happened. Thank god the Advance Collection allows save states and rewinding gameplay.

The one thing the Advance Collection makes abundantly clear though, is that Circle of the Moon was never designed for a Game Boy Advance screen. Its graphics might be sparse and stilted, its use of colour and contrast is absolutely not. It looks gorgeous on a TV whereas on the GBA the game was primarily known for its dark graphics making it nigh impossible to see what was going on because of the hardware's unlit screen. It redeems the game a fair bit, as a quick comparison with its stablemates in the Advance Collection, makes shows those titles are rather garishly coloured in comparison.

In the end though, this is a very good Metroidvania and a better Castlevania than people give it credit for. It is a bit rough, sure. Looking back on it, it's been instrumental in pushing the formula forward and hit home that Symphony of the Night wasn't just lightning in a bottle.

That all of the issues were probably down to a non-Castlevania development team creating this title under pressure, just proves how strong the formula was and still is.

One of the more problematic periods in my education was attempting a bachelor degree after graduation. Up until that time, I kind of coasted along, not really needing to pay much attention to school while still getting pretty great grades. That's not meant as a boast as it turned out it would bite me in the behind pretty quickly. My highest grades were in chemistry and so I logically moved into studying chemistry for a degree and BAM!

I ran into the wall/issue of never having learned how to learn. It sounds silly, but it was a disheartening realisation making me question my ability and intelligence. Eventually I switched gears to studying media technology, took a better look at what learning actually entailed, and all was well again. Sort of.

Bumping into the Coursera course Learning how to learn made all these feelings well up again. To some, it's a comical name and maybe even nonsensical. To me, it's basically the one thing that should actually be taught and the one that current curricula (in the Netherlands at least) pay little attention to.

Funny that.