This was an absolute joy to play, a "wonder" you could say. The levels were so creative and fun, with excellent visuals and music to go along with them. The physics were fantastic as well, taking everything that worked about the NSMB games and tuning the deceleration to give it a fairly snappy feel sort of between 3 and World. It's nice you can play as so many characters and I like that they don't have different physics so you have a uniform experience regardless of your preference (aside from the easy characters, that is).

The game is somewhat short but I think it's a perfect length given the variety of levels. It's a bit easier than a classic SMB which is to be expected, but the special world is definitely more challenging than the one in World which is very welcome. Bosses are mostly variations on one which is a bit of a disappointment, but the final boss is very imaginative and a great surprise. I'd say this game is on par with the best of the classics in its series, and better than most 3D Mario games.

As an aside, I actually liked the talking flowers and thought they were funny and charming most of the time.

Absolute garbage PC port that will go down in history as a modding community win. To be fair FromSoft did not have the resources and Bandai Namco did not have the brainpower to make this port what it needed to be. The resolution was fixed around 720p. The framerate was capped at 30. What ever could we have done?

But then, hours after the disaster, a beacon of hope arrived. The fabled dsfix, spoken of only in legends today, arrived with the simple goal of getting the render resolution to match the output resolution. The resulting fixes that got attached to this project were instrumental to the game's success in the eyes of an entire generation of PC gamers who would never have touched such a laggy Xbox 360 game.

Imagine a world where this never happened. Would Dark Souls 2 ever get the PC attention (and publisher insanity) that it did? Would Dark Souls 3 have ever come to PC? Would Souls at 60 FPS ever really have happened without dsfix?

tl;dr I often still play using this version instead of the Remaster.

For those who have yet to play or hear about this, I recommend one blind playthrough before you ever look anything up about this. Great stuff.

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This game is a masterclass in horror pacing. The house is a strange beast that changes the more you wander about, eventually giving way to many strange and interesting places one might expect to find in a horror game... but also some surprises as well. This is as good as it gets with this style of "walking simulator" adventure game, but as a completionist experience it leaves a bit to be desired for me.

There are multiple "points of no return" when it comes to locations to visit. For the most part I don't mind this but I've spent hours redoing the first half of this game over and over again trying to get the one artifact at the end of the bathhouse. "Git gud" me all you want but the amount you have to redo after a small slip up like that is a bit ridiculous in my opinion. Not a dealbreaker for the game itself but I am hard pressed to get the "true ending" in this one.

I played the earlier parts of this game many times throughout my life and found it to be fun but ultimately not worth playing through. But upon revisit on original hardware and a nice CRT, SMW's outstanding elements truly shined.

A stylish visual presentation isn't all this game has over Super Mario Bros 3; it has a completely new philosophy on exploration and secrets in a game that's still incredibly newcomer friendly and straightforward. Controls are less weighty and quicker, and the new and returning enemies perfectly compliment that new feel. I appreciated most that the game gave back however much detail I wanted to comb into the levels, to the point I found secrets in secrets in secrets... and so on.

I ended up getting 95 exits (thanks to the Forest of Illusion fortress being a one-time affair) and very much look forward to revisiting this in the future.

I never had Sonic Gems Collection as a kid so being able to play this for the first time was really cool back when it released. This was the official debut of the Retro Engine which went on to power Sonic Mania, as well as the Sonic 1 and 2 mobile ports. 16:9 and soundtrack swapping are great features, and playing as Tails is a cool bonus. Unfortunately they replaced the Japanese intro and credits music with instrumentals which is quite the travesty as I love both of those songs a LOT, definitely brings the experience down and I recommend modding them back in if you play on PC.

This game is absolutely sublime. Metal Gear before this was a fairly simple stealth action series but this game took the complexity and player expression to an entirely different level. Guard AI is the most interesting in the series by a long shot, the level design is superb with every room being its own interesting and memorable puzzle, there are loads of different ways to handle all sorts of different situations. The base game is somewhat lean on gameplay but the VR/alternative missions and Snake Tales additions in Substance more than make up for that.

Much has been said about this game's story, which I think overall is the strongest in the series. Though I don't think people talk enough about how engrossing Raiden is as a character. He tries so hard to just do his mission the best he can, while the situation is constantly getting worse through no fault of his own. I've heard people complain about Dead Cell but I think Vamp and Fortune are great characters, Fatman I understand the complaints with but he's really no different from most members of Cobra Unit aside from having a more fleshed out backstory.

The sound design and music here is just incredible. One of my favorite game soundtracks ever, with so many memorable songs that fit the atmosphere and mood so well. The sound mixing and every single sound effect is just so iconic. The voice acting as well stands out as really great even as the rest of the industry caught up with MGS1 (fake accents notwithstanding), with dramatic scenes having a real punch that games MGS4 and onwards were really missing.

Idk maybe I'm gushing a lot but this really is one of my favorite games ever and I'm always having a blast when I revisit it.

I was expecting a bit more from this one. Level design was good but not great by Half-Life standards, and I felt the environmental storytelling was much weaker than the original game. The new alien weapons were cool concepts but didn't add much to the overall experience. The difficulty curve of this game is quite intense, by the end I felt like I was getting spammed with enemies. Don't get me wrong, it was still a fun time with engaging gunplay and great design. I just went in expecting some grade-A Half Life and this felt more like a B-tier spin off.

Outstanding PS2/PSP remaster collection, one of the best of the generation. Each game has custom 2D assets made to replicate the original look at 16:9 at a much sharper resultion than the PS2 was capable of, and every game runs at a solid 60fps despite MGS3 and Peace Walker originally running much worse! If you have a PS3 or 360 still lying around this is almost certainly your best option to play these classics. Fortunately this is based on the latest versions of each game with most bonus content included, unfortunately doesn't come with any new material outside the games and a sleek menu. Also no skateboarding/Snake vs. Monkey 😞

This game is often compared to Super Metroid, and while the influence is obvious I think it deserves to be viewed as it's own work with how many ideas it brought into the metroidvania genre. The greater world design and item progression are key elements of that formula, and while SotN is pretty uneven in both areas, it greatly enhances the smaller scale experience with a plethora of weapons, items, and minor upgrades all throughout the game.

The titular castle is now more than set dressing for an action platformer, and features locations you both expect to and would be suprised to see in such a grand structure. And while action combat is fairly easy (especially for the series), the feel is incredibly strong and enemies are extremely varied and fun to fight. Visuals and music are of course some of the best imaginable, and the campy voice acting is iconic from the well known opening scene to hidden encounters many players never find.

Extremely solid collection for the time. The interface is sleek and Gamecube marketing-esque, with a nice remix of the series theme and artwork and a blurb to describe each game included. Emulation is good but not great, but N64 on Gamecube so shortly after those games were new is a sight to behold. Though it feels very strange to jump from Zelda II straight to Ocarina, as a kid I only later heard about aLttP (and I guess I didn't watch the series history video included on the disc)

All the cool kids with platinum DOL-001s grew up with this and spent an absurd amount of time in the Wind Waker timed demo. Shoutout to those who loaded the dungeon save and walked backwards to get 20 minutes of the Dragon Roost Island theme.

Great base game! But as far as the "remaster" changes go, they added foliage and animations to Firelink Shrine (nice!) and did some modern FromSoft tweaks like multiplayer passwords. Past that it's all the original game's assets run through an engine with botched material lighting. Metals are all dull, stone and living things look more wet than intended, and strangely enough they decided the bonfire looked too ethereal and abstract so they put normal fire there instead. The original Dark Souls didn't look like this! If you can manage, please try to get a hold of PtDE or use a fanmade texture overhaul mod.