First of all I'd like to thank my buddy Mokey for generously gifting me this game so I could finally play it. Truth be told I HAD tried around an hour of this on game pass, when it first came out, but it wasn't hitting at that time, so I decided to shelve and I am glad I came back and got a chance to complete this really interesting unique game.

First of all, if we're scoring on vibes this game is a 10/10. Just wonderful vibes, insanely spooky feeling, some great tension and atmosphere, and a killer soundtrack (I love me some classical music, and this game filled that love for me hard.)

I think the story is very interesting, and I won't fully to pretend to understand it (even after looking some stuff up). It's not my favorite, but I really do appreciate them not spoon feeding you everything and letting you kind of discover things for yourself here and make your own assumptions.

I have a couple of pretty big complaints about the game. I think the gameplay itself is just fine at best, and really annoying at others. Aiming just never seemed to consistently go where I wanted it too, where in a survival horror game you really need to make every shot count.

I also really hate the incredibly limited inventory system. I'm not wanting 20 slots or anything to make it trival, but an upgrade to go from 6 to 8 would have gone a LONG way at some point in this game (I'm fine making tough choices, but there's a lot of time that the game just became me entering a room, picking up items, running back to a save room and then progressing).

Finally, there's a section later in the game that is downright rage inducing, making it difficult to travel around, and some rooms that are just filled with an insane amount of enemies. There's already enough tension in the game, this pulled it to far.

I do wish they game had a bit of a bigger budget, I think there's a really special idea here, that if a bit more money could have been put into this you could have ended up with something TRULY special. That being said, I still really enjoyed my time with it overall, and it's cool to see some unique fresh survival horror out there. Definitely check it out if that seems appealing.

Shout out to my buddy Parrott for gifting me this game. This game became kind of a meme in our community, like what the hell is spark the electric jester, and who the hell is playing this game. I had zero interest in this game (I'm not a big sonic fan) but to be honest, I walked out of this one pleasantly surprised and had more fun then I was expecting.

99% of this game was just balls to the wall super fun, keep running action. It felt like Sonic but a bit dumbed down which I appreciated, and a cross between kirby and megaman as well. Where the game really kinda fell off a bit for me was right at the end. I think the last stage just grinds everything to a hault, not only with its difficulty but with the precision platforming you're required to do (which was not working on the steam deck, unfortunately, this game runs awful on deck).

I think it was cute that they tried to have a story here, but it just made me cringe more than anything else. Hey though, game was far better than I was expecting. Will I ever play the sequels? Doubtful. But I had a good time.

Super Mario Wonder crosses to me at an interesting point in my gaming life. On the one hand, I think this game is really great, and does a lot of fantastic stuff, and is clearly a step up from the 2D Mario we've been getting the last dozen or so years. On the other hand, I also think this is still a far cry from the peak Mario 2D platformers in Mario World and Mario 3, and on an even further hand, I feel like this just isn't my type of game anymore and that's feeding into it as well.

Full stop, NIntendo games aren't my usual cup of tea anymore. Metroid is always an exception, and I feel like I still do love 3D Mario, but it's been a long time since I've been into platformers as a general rule,.

Right away this game charms you with it's incredible art style (seriously how does this game so look good on a switch?). The levels are all quite short and 99% of them quite easy (even going for 100% like I did) Which I think is acceptable considering the compromise of the wonder seeds, which is a really cool mechanic and makes you wonder what's coming for each level. Some of them are better than others, but they're all mostly fun.

One of my big complaints about this game, and something I'm confused I haven't read about anywhere else is the boss variety. It is sorely sorely lacking here, the mini bosses all worlds are basically cut and poose koopa kid with a slight variation each time and that is it until the final boss (which is fantastic). It's a huge disappointment for me in this game, and one that really holds it back in my opinion.

I get why this game has been getting a lot of praise, and I do think it's really well made, and if you're a platformer nut there's a good chance this is going to be one of your favorites of the year. For myself personally, it's a good game, with lots of charm and worth playing, but not one I'd ever go back too.

Yes I no-lifed this game. Don't judge me.

Shoutout once again to the always wonderful Poot for gifting me this game!!! So, I finished GDQ, I had finished Curse of Monkey Island, and I thought to myself, perfect, I have a nice few day break now until Infinite Wealth comes out. However, me being a big moron decided to start this, and once I got a couple hours in, I realize dropping this wouldn't be a good idea, as I had no idea if I really would come back to it. So we no life, we finished and....yeah? It's good?

I mean, this game gets a lot of hate from what I've seen, and is the "black sheep" of the final fantasy series, and I have some major issues with it, but it does a lot of things good. It takes the non existent story and characters of FF1, and actually tries to do something here, and it's mostly solid. There's a bit too many deaths here (which if you know me, it's funny to hear me say that) but it's a well done simplistic story and cool to see something like that this early on.

The leveling system......ehhhhhhhhh. Great idea, just flawed execution. I never fully knew what I needed to do to level certain things, and it just didn't feel natural. It works, but not as well as it should, and I am glad Final Fantasy didn't really go back to this sort of thing.

The music here is pretty good, especially that finally track (total BANGER).

Overall, definitely not one I'd ever revisit, and the worst of the pixel remasters so far, but hey, not as bad as I was overall expecting, so that counts for something.

So after finishing Inscyprtion, and not really wanting to start anything major until Final Fantasy Rebirth comes out, I figured this would be a nice little follow up game. Something I've had on my backlog forever, and with the freshness of how fantastic Inscrpytion was in my mind, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to play this.

What followed a pretty uneven experience, but definitely something that would lay the ground work for the brilliance that would be ahead.

First of all, lets start at the top. I finished this game on Steam Deck, and this was NOT an ideal place to play it. The game controls really poorly on that, which really isn't on the game, and it even warns you to not be stupid and attempt to do that. Some better control options would have been appreciated though.

The game itself is interesting. The puzzle segments were okay, though overused, and the arcade bits were fun. I wish there was a bit more playing around on the desktop, and using creative stuff like that in the game to do cool stuff t here.

The ending is pretty great, which I won't go into detail, suffice to say, I think Daniel's strength might be ending his games on a high point after two now.

Overall this was fun in spurts, frustrating in others, but the ending makes me overall positive on it. Cool to experience, once is good enough though.

So after being totally depressed with dropping BG3 after 20 hours, and swearing off long games for exactly three hours, I decided to give this game a spin. My buddy Parrott suggested it and thought this might help bounce me back a little.

Style over substance here for the most part and I can dig it. The game is very moody, got some nice creep to it. It reminds me a lot of Limbo, which really, that style of game isn't my favorite, but I at least enjoyed the vibe of this one a lot more.

It's a nice short and sweet game with some puzzles. I wish the boss "fights" were a little more creative and they did more with that. But overall a solid time, and I can't complain about the price (free through PS Plus!)

So this is a game that I honestly had no intentions in playing. I'm not a giant pewdiepie fan by any means, but when you go with the gutless tact of copy right striking a youtuberr for no good reason, I do not want to support your game or studio. Eight years later however, with Studio Campos long gone, and this game on gamepass I decided to finally bite the bullet and give it a shot, since I've been told by a few people that this would be my kind of game.

And yeah it really was.

The game overall had a really intriguing narrative, with really two stories going on, the main character trying to escape his horribly depressing reality, and a mystery that's unfolding around you and getting lost in that, which I think kind of relates back to the first part. It's a fairly simple solution, something you should have seen all along, but you as the character really just wanted to dive head first, come up with giant conspiricies, and ignore the brutal reality of why you are there in the first place.

It's a somber ending too, one that's very thoughtful and I enjoyed. The gameplay isn't anything to write home about obviously as a "walking sim" but it keeps you engaged the entire time. I had a lot of little technical bugs and quirks, I'd get stuck often which broke the immersion for me, but nothing too awful overall.

Overall I really enjoyed this game. Thought it was great. I'll be deducting a half point for the developers being little babies, though.

So a 4/5, BUT 3.5/5 will be the final score. Be better folks.

Yo why the hell hadn't I played this game before? As a huge Monkey Island fan this was always a gaping hole for me, but this game was so much fun, hilarious, and one of the best monkey island games I've played!!! First out, huge shout out to Ed for gifting me this one so I could finally stop being lazy and playing this.

This one has some of the best music in the series, some of the best puzzles (that don't feel too crazy obtuse for the most part) it's fully and very well voice acted, and a funny story to continue on Guybrush's crazy adventures.

I think my only complaint here (like a lot of these games) is I really do wish it was a little longer. Only five hours for me to complete here, of course, if you're not good with these types of games that might take longer.

I think overall I still slightly prefer Monkey Island 2, but a genuinely fantastic game, and one of the best monkey islands!!!

If anyone knows me, I'm the king of trying to champion a game that the "gamers" shit on, that's actually not that bad. Forspoken was one of my favorite games last year and was a blast, and early into Gotham Knights I thought this might be another one. Unfortunately, as you get further into the game, you realize that it really is half baked, was clearly planned to be live service, and the talent just wasn't there to make this the game it needed to be.

This game poses a lot of problems for playing it SP. The story doesn't feel as effective, you get really no time with the other characters (unless you switch yourself). Playing it co-op would;d probably be no fun, but this certainly wasn't designed to be a SP first game.

The story has its moments, and some fun boss fights (probably the highlight of the game for me) but the ending is really dumb, and there's a lot of stupid stuff along the way.

The combat is a clear step down from the Arkham trilogy (along with the visuals, and well, a lot of things from that trilogy). I think if this game existed in a timeline without those games, we might look a little bit more positive upon this game. Unfortunately as it is, it's quite mid, and will be forgotten about by next week.

I still have hope for Suicide Squad (perhaps stupidly) but if that's a miss too, WB will have totally lost my trust with anything DC related.

So this was a game that for a while was on my "world famous" spite list, but thanks to my buddy Poot for gifting me Sea of Stars (which I loved) and motivation to listen to the episode on his wonderful podcast (Why You Should Play, check it out people) I decided to finally give this a shot, and for the most part, I'm certainly glad I did. While I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Sea of Stars, there was a lot to like about this game.

First of all, without delving into spoilers, let me say the first half of this game is definitely stronger in my opinion. If I was to rate this game, the first half would be a rock solid 4/5, while the back half would be a 3/5. It's certainly not bad, but I really like the vibes, and how simple but fun the opening half of this game is. It really does feel like an old school Ninja Gaiden throwback and it's a joy to play.

Some of the mechanics in the second half bother me, which I'll save talking about cause I find it a spoiler, but overall, you do get a pretty satisfying conclusion.

The writing in the game is great, it's very funny, and well written. The music is great too, a nice retro throwback that's hard not to jam out too.

Overall glad I played it. Really cool to see this studio make (three) really totally different type of games. Wonder what they will do next.

Great game, marred by a bad final act and a horrendous final boss fight.

edit

Okay now that I've calmed down let's talk about this game a little.

Dragon Quest XI is a really Stellar game most of the way. While the story isn't incredible it tells a solid story with good characters. It's charm and atmosphere is delightful and has some of the best combat I've ever played in a JRPG. Seriously it made grinding fun for me.

Where this games loses the plot is act 3 for me. I don't like the story choices, and the final boss, for my taste, was incredibly difficult and unfair unless you do bunch of grinding to get specific weapons/powers and pep, which, already 60 hours into a game is a gigantic ass (and one too much for me).

It's not enough to spoil my time with this game, I'm considering it finished after act 2. I like the story that told more anyways. Great game.