Super charming with cute characters and awesome worldbuilding, full of clever puns and both ocean, pop culture, and soulslike game references. It's one of the only games in this genre that I've been able to fully engage with its story emotionally and understand, and that alone makes it pretty special to me. It also features a wonderful soundtrack that fits perfectly for this underwater adventure.

Mechanically the game is pretty solid, too. It can take a while to get used to the unique parry and I never really grew to love it, but it feels amazing when you do get it to work. The rest of the combat is okay. It's not quite as tight as you expect in a game like this. Difficulty was pretty well scaled, with some later bosses be a heavy challenge. I also really respect the game for having such robust accessibility settings that allows anyone to play this and essentially one-shot enemies if they choose. Play it your way and have fun!

I don't love challenging combat anyway, so it was the old school mascot platformer feel of the game that endeared me to it so much. Even though movement and traversal weren't fantastic, exploring the areas, unlocking secrets paths to find collectibles, a strong use of verticality throughout, and above all trying on the vast array of different adorable shells and experimenting with their powers was a joy.

Sadly, the game is pretty buggy with trophies that don't work (sigh) and some nasty lag at launch, but I do expect that'll get better quickly with patches that the devs have already said are coming very soon. I'm glad I went and played this now, though, because I can be recommending it to everyone for the rest of the year.

This is an incredibly unique rhythm game that creates the feeling that you're actively participating in a pop album audio-visual laser show of sorts. The gameplay itself is varied, creative, and it's a pleasure to navigate the auto-run courses with the gorgeous neon art and fantastic musical notes giving all sorts of sensual pleasure. There are some sections that reminded me of the great movement/sound experience in The Pathless, but this is certainly not a 1 for 1 comp to that game. As for the story, it seems to be about love, acceptance, and healing, but I wasn't really completely following it as it is definitely a little abstract. I'm not the kind of gamer to care about perfecting these levels or getting high scores, and in fact it frustrated me when I would crash and the music briefly got interrupted while the game reset me back into the level (even though to the credit of the devs this happens in a flash). It's a brief, very enjoyable experience that I'm glad I had, and I come away from it loving the music and wanting to listen to the soundtrack straight through as soon as I can get the chance.

"There's always a man, always a lighthouse, always a city."

Just a stone cold masterpiece of a game. Elizabeth is arguably the best companion in video game history, being both narratively important and mechanically useful while nearly ever-present. She's beautiful, too, which is a nice perk. But the storytelling here is just incredibly rich. The environments are so full of detail and paired with exceptional sound design. Gunplay and power mix is fun without ever being frustrating. And the game gets in, tells one of the most emotionally impactful multiversal stories ever, and gets out in less than 15 hours. So, so impressive!

Really special gameplay and storytelling through skill checks. As a lover of tabletop games with dice placement mechanics, this was right up my alley. I also adore the anime sci-fi aesthetic and both heady and emotional themes. I admit that some of the storylines got a little confusing but the grounded ones where my character was interacting with other humans and having to make challenging decisions were captivating to me. It's rare that after seeing the credits in a game, I still feel compelled to go back in and keep completing quests to experience every drop I can of the story. But Citizen Sleeper is one of those games, and I could not be more excited about continuing this journey in a sequel.

Gave this a go on a whim because I love top-down ARPGs and Greek mythology. Had a good amount of fun with it for a while, but I'm over 10 hours now and still have 40% of the game to go. It's become repetitive to the point of boredom. Not enough enemy variety or change in location interaction. The skill tree is pretty cool at first and I do like the way you unlock upgrades, but even that has run its course already and isn't making much of a difference. Doubt that I'll continue with this one, even though I'm not upset at all that I tried it out.

I was tempted to go the full five stars on this simply because I'm still flying high after that incredible finale. Everything from the start of moving toward Ganon in the depths until the end was memorable. That's how to end a game!

While this series (we can call it that now, right) will likely never surpass my favorite 2D Zeldas or Wind Waker for me, I have such respect for the design in general. Even with the things that don't work for me, I come away in awe. Overall, I like this a little better than Breath of the Wild. There are simply just too many positive improvements that outweigh my issues.

The best parts? Weapon fusion and being able to attach anything to an arrowhead. This and using the powers out in the world and to solve shrines in a multitude of different ways were the creative parts of the game that I really enjoyed. Building things with Zonaite stuff, not so much. I did enjoy using the tools they gave us within the context of whatever environmental challenge the game might be throwing at me, but I never ventured far beyond that to create something all my own. As I said earlier, though, I understand how cool this is for some people and choosing not to engage with it in a bigger way didn't hinder my own experience one bit.

The story of these games is never a strong suit for me because it's basically the same thing over and over again, but the presentation this time was jaw-dropping. The cinematics - my goodness. The way in which you obtain the Master Sword? I will never forget that. Hands down the best in the series. Also good was starting off with increased weapon slots (thank you!), the return of closer to traditional temples/dungeons, and the awesome spirit companions with their helpful powers. I also just love the concept of and exploring the three levels of sky, ground, and depths, even if this also is a bit of a negative.

The problem is that the world is TOO big. There's just too much repetition in the depths to make me want to clear it all out after just doing so for the map above ground, especially after beating Ganon already without needing to acquire the Depths armor to do it. Same with the Sky world. It's very cool and fun to poke around up there but is what you find really game-changing in any way or just more to check off the list? I find it to be the latter, and outside of the staged moments that took me up in the air for quests, I didn't find myself exploring that much. And the last big negative is that the combat just still doesn't feel good to me. It's serviceable, but the timing sucks and so I never really got into using the flurry rush or parry moves. In fact, I had to learn them specifically just to get by the Ganon fight and only that. The intricacy of the systems lends itself to fiddly switching between weapons and trying to attach things to arrows. I'd love for this to be further refined if they continue down this stylistic path. Give me rock solid action adventure combat that feels fun and encourages me to engage with enemies just to experience it more often, and the next one might finally be a 5/5 for me.

It's missing some depth in level and enemy variety, but the build synergy possibilities are vast and having so many unique stats that affect success and many, many different starting character traits provide a wealth of opportunity for fresh runs. I appreciate that a typical Wave 20 run can be completely knocked out in 30 minutes or less. Having a defined amount of time to plan around is fantastic for a filler game, but it's also quite easy to slip into hours straight of gameplay. It's just so much fun, and often hilarious. A great entry in the survivor auto-shooter craze.

It took me 15 hours to win my first match and yet after every single loss I was compelled, as the best roguelikes do, to immediately try again and again. The strategy seems so simple at first but the depth here is quite incredible and offers plenty of variety and challenge to hold attention for hours on end. I'm so impressed by this game and it comes at a perfect time, as the AAA game industry is in crisis due to their ballooning budgets and unsustainable investor expectations, reminding us that graphics and bells and whistles matter far less than addictive, tightly designed gameplay.

The atmosphere and music were fantastic, and the overall (HEAVY) theme of teenage suicide due to bullying was interesting and worth exploring even if the writing was way too on the nose and lacking any nuance. This didn't "feel" much like Silent Hill at all, but more of a horror adjacent walking simulator. The forced chase sequences were the only real gameplay at all and the final one was rage inducing with how it sends you off into a maze to collect items without giving you any signposting, all while you're being pursued by a monster than if it catches you throws you back into a loop to try it all over again. Not fun. I do see the bones of an intriguing psychological horror game here; I just think they need to rethink slapping the Silent Hill label on any old project or it's gonna become very diluted quickly.

What a delightful surprise to see this masterful platform game in the Mario 64 style. I was shocked at how perfect of a fit it is. it's so impressive how they copied it over into a new style with the same minimalist controls, just 3D. We had a blast playing through and collecting all 30 strawberries in around 2.5 hours. Some of the cassette tape platforming stages were a challenge, but we always figured them out pretty quickly and then it just came down to perfect execution. It's not the most absolutely precise and tight movement, and I completely forgive that since this was a fun project made in around a week. It's good enough and I would have loved to play a full length game in this style with different worlds to explore.