if you think this game “plays weird” and don’t get the hype i beg you to play 5 other NES platformers then come back, relax, and feel the lushness of the first true strand type game.

super mario bros is not the primordially simple jumping game it is often introduced as. platformers had ages to mature in the hypercompetitive arena of the arcade throughout the 70’s and early 80’s. aside from its understatedly elegant aesthetic, the ambition in SMB is in the elevation of movement from merely a mode of traversal to a gymnastic, expressive activity.

megaman, simon belmont, and ryu hayabusa are all transparently simple state machines— the amount of possible actions they can take is finite and countable. super mario bros did not invent momentum in platforming, nor was it the first to leverage the additional complications that a more involved system of movement entails. the friction between the player avatar and the ground. the acceleration from a dead stop to a full run. the short moment after taking your finger off the jump button before the character truly starts to fall. all the little intricacies and details compound to make mario a much more expressive vessel for a player to inhabit. what sets SMB apart is that the movement is honed to the extent it becomes even more natural than the comparatively simple systems of the above games.

mario’s body doesn’t literally move like the human form does, but negotiating the balance of a jump in mid-air, trying to establish steady footing on unhelpful terrain, and wheelin and dealing with newton’s first law in general are central to the human experience. in super mario bros, nintendo squarely refocuses the platformer from a cabaret of obstacles to a celebration of acrobatic motivity

and so, it became the bedrock upon which their castle was built

I have put off re-reviewing this for months. Partly because I dont have the words to express the hold this game has over me, and partly because every time I start thinking about it I get too excited. I havent felt this way about something in a long time, likely since I was a girl in the height of my infatuation with Ace Attorney.

This game is just absolutely astounding, from all angles. There is nothing it does poorly and nothing I would change. I didnt really understand the draw of roleplaying till now, which was the downfall of my first experience, but it is absolutely incredible the things you can learn about yourself pretending to be someone else. Thats not something I can say about any other game, ever. And I can only feel just so grateful, because it's given me so much joy over the past 3 months. Its barely left my mind at all, which feels like an issue at times. I dont know if I'll have an experience like that ever again, after all I created the perfect character and ran through the campaign as him, twice. More or less doing the same thing because I just enjoyed what I had made so much. It grieves me that I kind of have to let go of it, its one of those games that was painful to finish because I just got so attached. It feels like mine, and its one of those autistic things where I cant stand it when anyone else brings it up cause you and I definitley dont see it the way, like a dog hyperaggressive over its food. Specifically dark urge, which feels like it was tailor made for me. Its all so special and I care about it very, very much.

Everyone who worked on bg3 is immensely talented. It's kind of staggering just how talented everyone is. There is not a single voice actor that preformed poorly or out of place, the text is immaculate, nearly every single decision one could make is neatly planned for and has a script. It is just perfect and I could marvel at it forever, cause it really is a feat of human accomplishment to me. The driving force behind my love for this game though is of course the cast. I adore absolutely everyone (minus you Minthara I will always kill you and take your clothes), there are so few games that manage to pull it off, that take you through a journey so long and so profound that you feel a sense of family. Withers' after party is the perfect amalgamation of all this, the joy I felt seeing everyone happy, finally grtting to live their lives was unmatched. Going through the letters of the people you met along the way and seeing that theyre all alright. Astarion specifically holds special meaning to me but I cant talk about that I get too protective. It never fails to make me tear up thinking about it and always makes me feel so grateful that this is in the world and that I got to experience it.

Immensely love all my friends and Scratch and Owlbear and that one weird ox I didnt get to see in act 3 because it glitched out. I will think about you all forever, an autistic girl's promise

The joy of destroying an upper classman's home, with zero of the consequences and all the benefits of being a small dog

Cute, short free game! The trainees who made this definitely show a lot of promise, solidly constructed with an adorable premise and a lot of heart to boot. I could see this concept being fleshed out more in a full release, but for what it is they definitely hit all the marks. A silly doggy mud demolition sim, cant go wrong. Bonus points for letting me wear hats.

As a note, it barely functions on the steamdeck and the sound did not work. I couldnt really enjoy it to the most of its potential, but I'm glad I checked it out regardless!

i hate the idea of the "perfect game."

it's true tetris is, mechanically, without meaningful blemish. especially accounting for rerelease after rerelease, it has been polished to a gleaming shine. but it's an unadventurous mindset that decides something's worth on how few flaws you can find with it.

there's a rock-solid elegance to the purity of tetris' easy to learn, hard to master gameflow. but i can't deny that many iterations on it have been even more hypnotizing, if a little more lopsided.

tetris is a beautiful, pristine pearl of gaming history. but i can't help but find more value in the chipped diamond, myself.

seventeen years later apollo justice is a capital CG Cursed Game. harbinger of a new age which never really came- the apollo justice trilogy as a complete package is plainly awkward in how it languidly, disinterestedly follows its namesake. of course you can’t blame apollo justice for the decisions the IP made after it came out but apollo’s role in the franchise absolutely colors how this game is played now. now the game is a thracia 776-like experience, a darker, more punishing, more inconsequential story in the face of a broader conflict, except the two generations of warriors that flanked thracia 776 are both replaced by the one and only Phoenix Wright™.

it’s honestly doubtful that AJ receives the sheer abuse that investigations 1 or dual destinies does online, but it feels like the only game in the series that has yet to find a strong niche. the old guard has always held it apart from their beloved trinity, but yamazaki’s growing base of defenders doesn’t want to claim it either. its fans are often colored as the most vapid, rabid fans in the fanbase, relishing an imagined dynamic between klavier and apollo.

and certainly it’s not a difficult game to poke holes in. the game’s infamously fraught middle cases, regardless of how you view them, just don’t click together. yeah yeah, there are a lot of cinemasins “ding!” issues, but the cases also fall limp dramatically. in court there are scenes and even whole witness interrogations that don’t materially contribute to the core narrative of the mystery, as takumi envelops the player in minutiae to fill space. while both cases are about noble thieves and rotten cops, the game seems to shy away from its own subject matter at key moments. klavier, the series’ most passive rival, completely disengages from the injustice at hand when the corruption of law enforcement is exposed, even when he has a personal connection with the people at stake. apollo’s unique “gimmick” mechanic is also very weak, a task of observation that doesn’t engage with puzzle-solving in relation to the case at all.

but the game’s most glaring sign of incompleteness is the complete epic fail of an ending. the game goes out on a long limb to ground the player lucidly in this entry’s grand, time-spanning mystery. and the gamble pays off! there’s a lot of momentum that gets built up, all for the most bafflingly anticlimactic final day in trial of the entire series. i do not actually have much objection to how phoenix intrudes on the case, it’s not really revolutionary to have the mentor set the stage and deliver a couple pieces of evidence that help you clench the case. but the game completely fizzles after this. it’s so bizarre. for a franchise with so many infamously persistent final bosses, it’s insane how trivial the proceedings of the final court segment of this game are. right after managing a perfect passing-of-the-torch moment in AA3, they completely bungle it here. somehow.

but it’s inaccurate to label apollo justice a failed experiment, the tone and ideas the game is going for are still deployed and in place, if not exactly intact. right out of the gate apollo justice asks the player to consider possibilities that would be considered downright heretical in the rest of the main series. in the original trilogy, the shounen-like, operatic approach to good and evil is striking, but it often drains the game of moral dimension. sure, the games often flirt with the idea that maybe the protagonist would have to make a moral sacrifice, or that an antagonist was a profound victim before lashing out, but you’re always able to manage a perfect victory, in the end. every antagonist unilaterally goes too far in their plotting, even if they were hurt by the world or the people around them.

apollo justice dares to challenge this. the perfect victories that define the original trilogy are nowhere to be found. your catharsis is impeded as each subsequent not guilty verdict represents a new threshold to which you’re forced to subvert the justice system in order to free your unjustly accused clients. for the first time, it seems that the rot in the justice system might not just be a few corrupt Bad Men led by Wrong Ideologies, but instead a set of systemic failings, that the mechanics of justice itself might be at fault. for all of the games that have been centered on the expansion of the wright anything agency as a found family, apollo justice is the only game to lucidly cope with legacy, and how values, practices, and patterns of behavior are passed down (or often, more interestingly, withheld from being passed down).

the game’s final decision feels almost insulting given the current state of the game’s ending but i applaud that the final action the player takes is rendering an explicit moral judgment on a character. it’s an empty choice, but it demonstrates the strength of even the most trivial and obvious decision a person can make. more importantly, it invites every player, even the lowly klavier-apollo shipper, to consider the ethics of what actually happened here, that they are a creator of justice and not just a subject to it.

this attitude pulsates through the entire game. miraculously, ace attorney’s signature attention to detail when it comes to staging and presentation adapts perfectly to a more grounded, desperate story. the soundtrack is much more subdued overall but constantly poised to summon that classic pursuit cornered momentum. the animation maintains its expressive power while respecting and communicating the humanity of its subjects. all in all, apollo justice acquires a unique electricity no other game in the series has. this electricity carries you through even as you’re arguing about the location of a trash can a witness threw a pair of panties into or whatever

i’d consider myself something of an ace attorney superfan. this series’ creative calculus has a way of wringing out pathos that draws my focus to the screen unlike any other franchise. but i can’t deny that after having loved the series for so many years, it can feel weary in how it tells its stories with the same cadence, with the same structure underlying every case. even on the fiftieth replay, apollo justice still feels untamed. never definitive but always suggestive, my heart pours out for ace attorney four.

Un spin off curioso, pero hasta ahí llega.

El mayor atractivo del juego es poder jugar con los jefes de los Shovel Knight, poco más para ofrecer tiene.

Es un Smash 2.0 con puntos de vida en vez de porcentajes, en mapas temáticos de varios niveles y con historias propias para cada personaje que complementan las historias de los plataformeros.

Lucas Pope revient avec un concept proche de Papers, Please mais finalement assez éloigné pour ne pas être juste une vague transposition. Loin de l'ambiance oppressante de son prédécesseur, Mars After Midnight installe un univers bon enfant, dénué de tout stress et qui stimule l'imagination.
L'écosystème limité que représente la Playdate est exploité comme peu de jeux l'ont fait jusqu'à maintenant, avec des animations soignées, des effets sonores qui claquent, des musiques super cool et une utilisation de la manivelle simple mais totalement raccord avec les actions exécutées à l'écran.
La boucle de gameplay, décomposée en une poignée d'étapes, devient vite familière et assez monotone dans son déroulé, mais sa force réside dans ses trouvailles : on prend plaisir à chaque fois à découvrir les tronches des Martiens (générées en partie de façon procédurale) qui viennent toquer à notre porte et quelles caractéristiques il va falloir observer ou déceler pour réussir notre mission. On s'amuse comme des enfants, finalement, et le jeu leur est tout autant destiné, le texte ayant une place minime au sein de l'aventure.
La narration est épurée, elle passe grandement par l'observation de l'environnement, par les saynètes qui ponctuent notre partie et par notre responsabilité en tant que gérant d'un centre communautaire. On devine et imagine certaines choses, et cela suffit amplement.
Une petite partie de 10 ou 15 minutes par jour, et on arrive au bout assez rapidement. Le challenge est totalement absent du jeu, il n'y a pas vraiment à gérer des ressources ou des évènements dangereux, Lucas Pope ayant tout misé sur le plaisir de la découverte, et à raison.