Really fun, loads of content, fast cars. It's just a great racing game all around. Very arcade-y. It's exactly what I want from a game like this honestly. I do have a few complaints though, aside from the game feeling a bit repetitive at a certain point.

Other people go into this a bit, but this game is very much "on rails." You start a drift and as long as you aren't steering in the opposite direction from where you're supposed to be turning, you'll probably be able to make any turn you want. It's fine and dandy as a mechanic, but some sections feel as if they require you to exploit the system to make the turn without hitting a wall. If I'm going over 200 mph and approaching a section of small, precise, punishing turns in alternating directions (like that one spot on Crimsonrock Pass), I'll often turn my car entirely sideways and let Jesus take the wheel. It works about 95% of the time and I hardly lose any speed lmao.

I had also planned on getting 100% in this game, that was until I unlocked the MAX tours. I played the first race maybe 30 times until I finally managed to get lucky enough to come out in first over the cheating AI with infinite boost, immovable cars, and instantly go 30+ mph faster than me when I pass them. It was ridiculous. I tried the next race a couple of times but eventually decided I was just gonna leave the game at that. It just wasn't fun at all. It didn't feel rewarding having to rely on the stars aligning to win, let alone for almost 30 races more. I don't even want to think about how long that would take either.

This was just a small portion of the game though, ~6 or 7 tours of almost 50 across the entire game. The races right before unlocking MAX were an amazing victory lap-feeling experience for the end of the game too, with a great balance of difficulty and straight-up fun. I especially loved the special angel and devil tours. Felt like a great way to end such a fun and fast game, just you and some fantastical cars on empty roads running through some beautiful maps with bright lights and tight turns. Loved this, even with the sour experience I had near the end. I wish every game made me feel as cool as Ridge Racer.

It's like Wacca but flat, and it fucking owns. The tracklist has so many bangers (with surprisingly deep cuts) that I regularly run out of time trying to choose which song to play. My only real complaint with the game itself is if you're playing on a machine with an internet connection, the game adds another ~2 minutes of downtime in between songs due to account progression stuff that I genuinely don't care enough about to give the time of day. At a certain point, it's just funny seeing this battle pass thing level up all the time and giving you countless anime women avatars with massive honkers, but it's like I already have Reimu, why would I need anyone else? Fun game though. Has a very high amount of depth and the skill ceiling seems endlessly high, but at its core, it's very simple and very easy to pick up. Highly recommend.

Shadow of the Colossus was a bit of a love-hate experience for me personally, but overall, I quite loved playing through it. Mostly some amazing boss fights, with innovative and great mechanics, and breathtaking setpieces. In terms of complaints though, some of the mechanics frustrated me to no end. Besides the inherent gameplay jank that comes with the game's age (I can excuse this), I disliked how little the game hardly conveyed information to you on the things you need to do.

I feel a bit ashamed to admit I needed to look up guides to a few of the bosses, but seriously, some of these mechanics I never would have guessed unless I was directly told of them. It made progression sometimes very frustrating. I'm not really talking about navigation and exploration either, those were some of my favorite parts of the game. Most of my complaints lie in the bosses, but besides those complaints, as I don't really feel like getting super specific, when the bosses mechanically clicked, coming out on top at the end of a fight really did feel incredible. It felt triumphant in a way I haven't gotten from a game in a hot minute.

On another note though, it's really cool to think about how influential this game went on to be in the years following its release. Much of said influence went into several of my favorite games ever. Breath of the Wild of course, but besides the obvious, climbing the colossi and following set-out mechanics to come out on top, I was even reminded of my time playing things like Destiny, fighting raid bosses through epic setpieces I still think about almost three years since quitting the game. The comparison may be a bit out there, but it's still a connection I think holds at least some merit.

To put my feelings about this game in more general terms, this is one of those touchstone-type games that people have and will continue to look back on as the start of so many exciting things in the medium. Now that I've played the game, I look at my catalog of everything I played and wonder how many of them wouldn't be there if it weren't for what this game did. Very happy I found a copy and got around to playing it. And that ending was spectacular.

Also posted on my blog :)

Sonic Rush was a childhood favorite of mine, one that I hadn't played since I was maybe 10 years old. In all honesty, it maybe should've stayed that way. For years, I had been hailing this as easily being the best Sonic game, with such a focus on pure speed, an engaging enough story, and the soundtrack people still bring up pretty regularly for how hard it bangs, it was the full package of what I thought a Sonic game should be.

With that, during my most recent winter break, I had finally gotten DS emulation running on my 3DS, and Sonic Rush was the first game I wanted to play, as I never did end up finishing it during my childhood (and I couldn't really think of any other DS games I wanted to play).

It was a smooth start, but as I played, some of the cracks (or holes, if you will) started to show, and I started to grow more and more frustrated with many of the design choices made throughout. Certain parts of this game had me feeling like I was playing some NES platformer due to how unfair things were. I felt like the AVGN as I was quite literally yelling out, "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??" in response to dying for the 10th time in a row to a bottomless pit that I had no chance of predicting or reacting to. It just really pissed me off. The dissonance of having "rush" in your game's title, then actively discouraging speeding through levels by placing so many instakills everywhere, I'm just left to wonder, why are the developers punishing you for following their own design philosophy?

And to follow that up, the frustrating thing is there are a handful of sections within the levels that have you running at Mach speeds for extended periods, combing endlessly through enemies with that super satisfying combo sound ringing in your ears, only to grind to a halt because they introduced a new stage-specific gimmick mechanic that kills you if you don't get it right instantly. Every time they'd pull this, it practically made me want to quit the game right then and there. It's again just a case of "What were they thinking?"

This isn't even mentioning the boss fights. Others have talked about it before and I don't really care enough to say what's already been said, so I won't. The exception is that final boss fight though. I seriously dropped the game for two months because of this shit man. I was honestly just tired of seeing Sonic Rush on my "currently playing" list so I decided to come back and downgrade the difficulty just so I could check it off the list. Didn't regret it in the slightest. I had no interest in trying to beat it legit, and it was either downgrade the difficulty or I drop the game entirely lmao. The true final boss wasn't any better, either. So glad I didn't have to deal with that thing on its normal difficulty. I'd honestly rather do ANYTHING else with my time.

All in all, I did come away from a childhood favorite with a bit of a sour taste, but I am in a way happy I came back and experienced it again with a more informed lens. I'm still glad the game exists and it still holds a special place in my heart for how much I loved it back then, but by god, I'm never playing it again.

Shameless plug, I also posted this review on my blog.

Really fun. Quite challenging at points, but it feels very rewarding once you finally learn the songs enough to pass the maps. A lot of the scenarios are genuinely super sweet and made me smile and/or laugh super hard (besides the one about turning the rich dude into an oil baron so he could further spoil his bitch wife, like wtf?). I love that the music selection is like a playlist of songs every 2000s American white kid has engrained in their DNA (saying this as one, I'm biased). Really fun ending section too. Music LIVES!

I know it probably sounds like a bit of hyperbole, but I'm being completely genuine when I say this, I can't remember the last time a game gave me such immense feelings of joy and wonder as I played through it.

The one-of-a-kind art direction, the unique gameplay and puzzle mechanics, the flawless inclusions of what I thought were just pointless Vita features, the fun cast of characters, the way player expression is encouraged and even rewarded, the charming story, and above all else, the commentary on life in general, it's all just amazing.

Everything is so perfectly dialed in, and as I sit here typing this up while the credits are still rolling, the tears are still drying up on my face from the final scene (fuck man lol), and my Vita sits idly on my desk in front of me, I can hardly find all the words to express what a genuinely amazing experience this game was from start to finish. I've never played anything like that before.

I fucking love video games man.

Pretty damn cool. When the game genuinely works, it feels like you're playing an art piece that should be displayed in a museum. However, when it doesn't exactly work, it feels more like one of those shitty brain teaser toys that your relatives sometimes give you for Christmas. You know, the ones that are usually made out of wood and tend to rely on a frustrating gimmick you'd never know about unless told of. I still did enjoy this game (especially its soundtrack, god), but some bugs and very apparent jank kinda muddied the overall experience for me.