The Skywalker Saga was, undoubtedly, the most anticipated game of my life upon its release. As you may have seen, I really, really enjoyed The Complete Saga, and having not played a new LEGO game in many years, I was very interested to see what a new LEGO Star Wars game would be like. While we’d obviously get to play the sequel trilogy for the first time, the first six movies were also getting completely remade from the ground up. There were also plenty of new characters from the sequels, as well as other characters that had still been left out, even from The Complete Saga.

The game was set to release in 2020, and I’m sure you can guess how that turned out. It was then delayed until sometime in the first half of 2021. It was delayed yet again, until sometime in early 2022, and a release date of April 5th was given in January of 2022.

Being in college at the time, I managed to have that Tuesday almost entirely free, with no classes and only one other engagement. Once I started playing, I was enamored. Unlike The Complete Saga, where the hub was more barebones, The Skywalker Saga had many hubs, as each planet with a level there served as a hub of sorts. There are plenty of Kyber Bricks, characters, and ships in each hub, either behind doing a quest first or just hidden somewhere for you to find.

There are 5 levels per film, down from 6 levels per film in The Complete Saga. Also reduced are the minikits per level, cut in half from 10 to 5 per level. On the flip side, there are now 3 tiers of True Jedi, up from just one. And most noticeable of all, the levels themselves are much shorter than before.

This brings up my biggest complaint with The Skywalker Saga, that the levels just feel way too short at times. However, with The Complete Saga, the levels were the entire game. Now in The Skywalker Saga, you have all these planets to run around in and collect stuff. The planets themselves are very fun, and there’s of course plenty to do. There are some puzzles you’ll encounter that require a certain character class, but once you unlock just 1 character in each class, you can complete basically any puzzle.

One last thing I’ll say about the game is that upon release, despite being delayed multiple times and reportedly going through intense crunch on the developers, there were still some nasty bugs present. The nastiest in particular I fell victim to, which completely prevented me from advancing through the story in Episode 7; the NPC I needed to speak with to proceed was just not there. I had to wait I believe 3 or 4 weeks for the bug to get fixed, which felt like a long time. During that waiting period I ended up making a brand new save file just to experience the story missions in the sequels in the meantime. Since this bug more or less forced me to play through parts of the game first, I would like to replay the game at some point where I go in whatever order I want, and where I can use some of the sequel characters and ships more.

Despite some drawbacks, The Skywalker Saga is a worthy follow up to The Complete Saga. I hope that there are more LEGO Star Wars games played, because there is plenty of Star Wars media to be adapted into LEGO form. The first season of the Clone Wars was turned into a game in 2011, and it’d be great if they turned the whole series into a game. There are also the shows on Disney+, notably The Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, and Kenobi. While I doubt all of them get their own game, it would be fun to play through them, perhaps with some slightly longer levels.

Two of my first video games were LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game and LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. I enjoyed them tremendously, so it was very exciting when The Complete Saga released.

In what is largely combining the levels from the first two games, there are many other improvements as well. The number of playable characters has increased, another level was added to Attack of the Clones to match the 6 from the other movies, and a challenge mode was added.

I first played it when I was probably 6 or 7 years old, when we owned it for the Wii. Eventually we got rid of that copy, and then I bought it again for the Wii, new in 2015 from a nearby Best Buy. I bought it yet again on Steam during a LEGO game sale.

I’ve played through this game so many times, even 100%ing it three or four times, easily more than any game I’ve played. This is one of the main games where nostalgia really hits hard. Despite the game now being supplanted by The Skywalker Saga, this one is still different enough and fun enough to go back to.

This game departs from the previous, and even future entries in the series by sticking two characters in one kart. This gives players the ability to hold two items at once, and swap the characters who are holding the items for another layer of strategy. Each pair of characters has their own special item; for example, Mario and Luigi have fireballs. What's great is that you can pair up any two characters, so you could have two different special items at your disposal. With the ability of having two items existing, there is also the addition of a double item box, which have designated spawning spaces in rows of item boxes, and can sometimes appear where single item boxes normally would. The 16 tracks provided, while few, are all pretty good. There are a lot of repeat songs used, but the soundtrack is good overall. All of these elements combine for quite possibly the craziest Mario Kart gameplay yet, while somehow managing to not be extremely frustrating despite the enormous amounts of items that will come your way. Despite this game being almost 20 years old, it's honestly aged really well.

Unfortunately, having only 16 tracks is a pretty big flaw; the previous entry, Super Circuit, had 40 tracks, and every game after this one had at least 32. This 16 track selection is probably the biggest reason why I can't give this game 5 stars, because it's pretty content-light despite it's amazing gameplay. The irony here though is that the game does contain 6 new battle stages, which remains unmatched by any newer entry in the series.

Overall, this game is a fantastic time, and is probably the Mario Kart that's most worth your time going back to if you've only played newer entries in the series. I really hope this mechanic returns as a mode or something similar in a future title, because it's too good not to.

Mario Kart DS was the second Mario Kart game I played. This one I've decided to rank higher than Mario Kart Wii, despite it being older.

Mario Kart DS has an incredibly good set of new tracks, with many fan favorites such as Waluigi Pinball, Airship Fortress, Wario Stadium, Tick-Tock Clock, and Delfino Square, to name a few. The retro tracks, while ordered oddly compared to future entries, aren't too bad either. The addition of a Mission mode is fantastic, with this game on a handheld, and it's honestly baffling how this mode never really returned until Mario Kart Tour, which isn't even a mainline entry in the series. This was also the first game with online play, though apparently you could only play a fraction of the tracks in the game, which is a bit odd.

One of the biggest things about this game was the meta, which involved chaining consecutive drifts along straightaways. This mechanic, called "snaking", had been in Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash, but was probably the easiest to pull off in Mario Kart DS, and makes for some pretty incredible world record viewing.

While being less accessible, and harder to play multiplayer, I think I prefer Mario Kart DS to Wii, due to the sheer amount of content you get from DS compared to Wii. Overall a great entry into the series, and definitely worth going back to even after playing newer entries in the series.

This was the first Mario Kart game I ever played. When I first started out, I played with the Wii Wheel on Automatic as most new players would. Eventually, I shifted to using the Nunchuk with Manual, and now use the Classic Controller. Anyway, I've put a lot of hours into this game playing with my family. The game has some really memorable courses, with fan favorites such as Coconut Mall, Maple Treeway, Koopa Cape, and more. The addition of bikes is exciting and adds for new gameplay options, as well as increasing mobility.

While a lot of people consider this their favorite Mario Kart game, I don't, for a few reasons. One of the more annoying things for me, as someone who played with family a lot, is that there is no way to play a multiplayer Grand Prix, which means you can't unlock any content without playing at least some singleplayer, unless you rack up a ridiculous number of races played. Another thing I don't like is just how overpowered the bikes really are. I enjoy the bikes a lot, as it offers an experience unique to Mario Kart Wii. However, they're so overpowered that trying to race with either an outside-drift bike or kart just feels like a waste of time, especially if racing online. Another thing I don't really like is the art style. In going from the GameCube to the Wii, Nintendo was basically forced to use a radically different art style in their new games due to the fact that they forgot to add HD to the console. As a result, Mario Kart Wii's art style is just weird, and doesn't fit in with the rest of the series much at all.

Something I have to mention is the incredible modding community this game has, which has extended its lifespan considerably. The fan-made online servers have now been online for longer than the Nintendo ones were, and you can play fan-made custom tracks, play a 200cc mode, and a few more exhilarating modes. However, it would be unfair to consider this when rating the game.

Frankly, without the modding community, there probably wouldn't be any reason to come back to Mario Kart Wii, unless you just love the bikes, and I don't necessarily (I still like them however).

This game I bought at launch in October 2018. While I initially had some fun with it, it really didn't take long for me to realize how it's one of the worst Mario Party games. Fortunately, NDCube returned to the original formula of Mario Party, allowing each players to move throughout the board freely instead of sticking everyone in a car. The price of the star has also been lowered to only 10 coins, instead of the usual 20.

While this game is fun at first, it really doesn't take long, maybe even less than a full game, to realize how unpolished and content-light it is. First of all, there are only 4 boards in the game. Four! And none of them are all that great to begin with. To my knowledge, every other Mario Party game has had more; no excuses here. Another flaw that really slows the gameplay unnecessarily are the animations. The amount of time it takes for Toadette to move the star is just ridiculous, and it's consistent with how far she has to move. So instead of taking a flat amount of time for example, it takes her longer if she has to move farther across the board. And you can't skip this animation either, or speed it up.

Also, after each mini-game, if all players swing their Joy Con to do a "high-five", everyone gets 3 extra coins. This, on top of the fact that all minigame participants get coins, makes the game less cutthroat then before, and honestly makes it too easy to get a star, especially since as mentioned before, the stars are only 10 coins. Last of all, there is no setting to remove the bonus stars awarded at the end of the game. Most previous games have had this option, yet for some reason it's gone here.

Beyond the main game, there is also a boat adventure mode, where you all ride on a boat and can take multiple paths down some river rapids with each character controlling an oar, interrupted occasionally by a minigame. This mode is fine, but probably not better than the main game. The minigames are actually fantastic. I've been pretty harsh on the game so far, but the minigames are by far the best aspect of the game.
While the game includes an online mode for the first time in the series, it's just a small selection of minigames, which is almost worse than nothing. Fans have called on Nintendo to add an online mode for the regular game mode, yet they've still failed to deliver.

Despite all these issues with the game, Nintendo neglected to update it whatsoever apart from a few bug fixes. No new maps, no extra options, nothing. This, paired with the fact that after 2.5 years of nothing, is concerning regarding the status of the series. If Nintendo had released a Super Mario Party 2 a year or so later with improvements, it would have been fine. But releasing only 1 Mario Party game for what could very well be their best selling console ever, stands as a huge mistake as of now. Overall, while Super Mario Party did the right thing in moving to the original formula, several issues hold it back from being an improvement, or even on par with previous entries.

Among Us is a simple yet fantastic game. The maps offered, while few, are interesting enough that mastering them can take many rounds of gameplay. There are a decent amount of tasks that, while simple, you can get good at as well. One unfortunate thing is that the game does not have a built-in voice chat system, while being almost necessary in my experience. However, players usually use Discord, and would probably continue to do so even if an in-game voice chat was provided. Overall a great game to play with friends, especially during the pandemic days of 2020 and 2021.

Despite getting this game 3 years after release, I felt like I got it at a perfect time. I was getting bored of Animal Crossing, and wanted another game to play. After watching the initial few episodes of a let's play, I realized I had to get the game ASAP. While I had started both LoZ NES and LTTP, I never got super into either, probably because of both games absolutely requiring a guide to be playable. Breath of the Wild is just fantastic, I can't think of how else to describe it. The shrines are great little puzzles that over time help you increase your health and stamina. The meal cooking system provides for extensive experimentation, even after you've discovered the Hearty Durians. The combat system is very fleshed out, and the enemies increase in difficulty over time based on how many enemies/bosses/Divine Beasts you complete. All the villages are rather unique, and offer something different from the rest. The Runes are great tools that can help you solve puzzles, or use cleverly in combat. I do have a few issues with the game, one of those being that if you get a weapon/bow/shield from a chest, and your inventory is full, the game tells you "Your inventory is full.", and doesn't provide an option to swap out an old item for the new one. However, this is pretty minor and I only started noticing it after probably 100 hours or so, and it's never annoyed me because the rest of the game is just that good. I've put 275 hours into this game, and can definitely see myself playing through the game multiple times more in the future.