Despite being a huge Metroidvania fan this was my first Castlevania. It was cool! I really enjoyed all the different monster sprites, especially the bosses. Top notch GBA art direction. My only main gripe is that by the time i finished the game i had guessed there was a secret ending but decided not to get it because i had become bored with navigating the castle. Movement is not particularly fun or interesting so it got tedious running back and forth. A late game item to warp to a warp room from anywhere would have helped a ton with map cleanup though in fairness this is a common problem in the genre. Otherwise p cool game might check out some more castlevania soon.

This game has an unfortunate tension in its design. Every world is a set of levels that must be completed to face a boss and clear the world. once the boss is defeated you unlock a new set of remix levels to clear in that same world. The remix levels are the best the game has to offer and the platforming really shines, but unfortunately the standard levels to get to those remix levels are much less engaging and ultimately lost my interest.

Game Highlight: The Soundtrack is excellent. Also the jumps feel pretty good.

Spotted this while browsing [VERY LEGAL OFFLINE GAME STORE] and was immediately taken by the visuals. The backgrounds have a hyper compressed pre rendered look that i find extremely engaging. The character sprites meanwhile have a similar look to old mortal kombats roto/fmv style. Over detailed in a way that could only come from a non hand drawn process. The same studio was responsible for the home console version of the game and the two versions have remarkably similar combat mechanics and movement abilities. This leads me to suspect the GBA sprites are super low res renders of the home console 3d models either rotoscoped or just touched up by a pixel artist. Its an extremely cool look that i would love to try emulating someday.

Game Highlight: seeing an enemy shoot an ice ball at me, experiencing intense deja vu about that specific ice ball sprite, then realizing that the same studio later made the Bionicle GBA game my brother had in which im pretty sure they re-used the ice ball sprite.

I was going to be snarky and say this isnt as good as Holocure but having put a solid few hours in now i do actually prefer Holocure. Its very likely this comes down to play context, i mostly play holocure on my couch where i only play VS on my phone while commuting. Mainly i just think 30 minutes is too long. Its rare that i make it to 20 and then fail to make it to 30 and those last 10 minutes feel like the game is holding me hostage. It was a great commute game when i regularly died earlier in my runs but now im further in that rarely happens. I get why this blew up though. The loop is definitely satisfying. I just prefer the version with an anime coat of paint and a fishing minigame.

I was bored with Tales of Arise, then i was having a ton of fun, then i was bored again. There are only like five enemy types in this game and the combat gets stale once you stop gaining new party members to change things up. I generally liked the characters, but the story was pretty much nothing so it failed to keep my attention. Not sure if i dont have the patience for these long character RPGs or if i just keep playing the wrong ones.

Game highlight: gorgeous environment art, i was always excited to see a new area.

I love fallout theoretically. Fallout 3 was extremely formative and for that reason it remains one of my favorite games of all time. Since then i have enjoyed every subsequent fallout less than the prior. Is this because of nostalgia or have the games actually been getting worse? I suspect its both.

Wha surprised me about revisiting 76 after years of updates (i played at launch but tech issues and an empty lifeless world put me off very quickly) is that 76 might be the first since 3 that i enjoy more than its predecessor. Many of my annoyances with 4 are also present here. Crafting is tedious and over emphasized, the guns still feel largely terrible to shoot, and there are very few if any memorable questlines. I spend way too much of my time collecting, sorting, and hauling my junk back and forth to my campsite. Yet somehow im finding myself feeling much more forgiving of these flaws.

It could be that while fallout 4 came with a shock of “wait no this isnt what i wanted” 76 is now establishing this is the new status quo and im becoming resigned. It could also be that watching the game bomb so spectacularly at launch and then spend years carefully improving makes it feel like a scrappy underdog. Truthfully its both. Fallout 76 is both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure because the scars of its troubled lifecycle are deeply obvious to even the most casual observer. It’s obvious when you find a quest from the base game versus a newer addition. The former almost always comes from a robot you find in a strange location and generally involve gathering items and reading notes from dead people. You will also frequently find locations that are fascinating and well realized while also being completely devoid of human life, reminding you that oh right there used to be no characters in this rpg. Its odd and messy but its clear that the people behind the game know this, and are playing with these contrasts as they continue to expand its world.

In 76 you leave the vault with the express goal of rebuilding the wasteland using your scrappy know how and the base building interface that i expect we will see in every bethesda game for the rest of time. Many updates post launch, and this narrative theming actually meshes mechanically with the games mechanics and world design in a way bethesda games hardly ever do. The wasteland was empty when you emerged to rebuild. Now its not, because npcs returned and began to rebuild alongside you. There is a tangible sense that what happened in the games narrative mirrors both what happened in the narrative of the games development and my personal experience of the game as a player who has dipped in and out over the years.

This is getting very long, and im hungry, so tldr game is kinda good now. It is probably better than 4 in my estimate if only because the narrative if 4 was so terrible. Its not revolutionary, but its fun enough. And yes, i Bandwaggoned because the show was good fight me about it.

Ill probably keep playing this off an on for a bit, but it hasnt really gripped me the way i wanted it to. Its a fun enough golf game but im finding it hard to find an understanding of its ball physics and how your shot distance relates to the power meter. Also where in mario golf mistiming the bottom of your swing means the ball slices right or left here it seems a mistiming means your ball arbitrarily magnetizes towards the nearest hazard. Is this intentional or is this just part of how golf courses are designed? No idea. Minus one star because apparently the japanese version of the game has Kiryu in it but i have the US version and its rude that i cant have him.

Game highlight: i like how animals roam around the courses. They dont seem to interfere theyre just hanging out.

This is a pretty bad pinball game. The game clearly wants you to learn to actually play pinball, which is cool, but it wants you to control the ball pretty precisely from screen one. This ends up being a big ask in part because the ball physics feel off. Youll spend alot of time trying to hit a specific button to open the path to the next screen, losing your ball on that screen, then dropping you back to that previous screen to try and hit that button again. Its tedious and not particularly fun.

Game highlight: the visuals are charming and the opening cutscene is very funny.

I had a great time with Strange Horticulture. Solving all the puzzles was satisfying and It was just the right length to not overstay its welcome. I loved finding all the new weird plants and organizing them on my shelves. I do think it had some misteps though. Some of the puzzles felt a little bit too vague and making me wait to refill my exploration meter was a bit tedious. I see how it was done to help the pace of the game but also sometimes the only thing i had left in a day was to solve a map puzzle and waiting was tedious. The elixir mechanic also felt underutilized.

Game Highlight: the mood was absolutely on point. I loved the cozy greenhouse and dark color palate they chose. Also it was very funny when being bad at my retail job caused my mind to shatter.

This game is a mess. Its tonally inconsistent in a way that feels arbitrary rather than considered, and its systems are nonsensical. Does it actually matter if i pee regularly? Why do i have to eat when i can go several chapters on “very hungry” with no consequences? Why are we tracking morality points when they dont have any bearing on the ending? Why is it sometimes immoral to fleece people for cash and other times its fine? Why is it moral to recruit people into a shady cult but immoral to save yourself from human traffickers ? Its fully nonsense in a way that is tiring instead of engaging.

The moment to moment gameplay is also unfortunately tedious. I played almost the whole game with a guide open because it was so incredibly unclear how i was meant to progress at all times. The game constantly wants you to speak to specific unmarked npcs in a specific order with no clear logic as to who you need to speak to next. Its peak bad adventure game design, pixel hunting for dialogue often in levels that are tedious to navigate. The flooded apartments are a notable low point for this and are the core reason i abandoned the idea of a second play through.

The game is simply at odds with itself whiplashing between real human tragedy and wacky sideplots worthy of a Yakuza substory. Unfortunately it lacks the compelling core narrative and endearing characters that define that other much more successful franchise.

Ultimately though, i did finish the game. The premise and setting were compelling and unique. Navigating the immediate aftermath of a large scale earthquake is something i havent experienced in a game before. While the game eventually collapses under the weight of its own disjointed ideas, the first hour or two was enough to get its hooks in me. I think id hesitate to recommend the game to most people, but ill be waiting for the announcement of Disaster Report 5 with some small amount of anticipation.

Game Highlight: i really enjoyed how delightfully low budget this was. This is a prime example of whater mean by shorter games by people who are paid more etc etc.

Listen, im probably one of the biggest Homestar Runner guys you're liable to meet, but this game is mostly bad. This is a collection of three "roomisodes" set entirely in Strong Bads self invented crooked cop/noir/action movie franchise, "Dangeresque". A "roomisode" is just a clever way of saying these are point and click adventure games that are each limited to one room, making them quick bite sized experiences that are mostly designed to deliver gags. The first of the 3 was originally released as a flash game some 15 ish years ago, the second was started around the same time but never finished, and the third was made brand new for this collection. Unfortunately this means that while the third roomisode is the most fun, funny, and polished of the three, the first plays like a flash game from some 15ish years ago. The second is somewhere in the middle. It seems odd to say when mechanically they are all identical, but the Brothers Chaps have grown as artists in the past 15 years and it shows! Part three is more clever, less grating, and has better gags than the other two parts. Im glad i decided to finish it (i considered dropping the game after part 2), but as a package it might be a hard sell even for the most die hard of die hard Homestar fans.

Game Highlight: i actually thought the 3d cutscenes were pretty neat. I liked the pixelated 3d render look. Also the third roomisode had a fun premise and twist.