Surprise, surprise! A remake of one of the greatest video games of all time does in fact slap major ass! This remake is near-perfect in every conceivable way. From visuals to voice acting to quality-of-life gameplay changes to even the most granular detail in the world design. Holy fuck the architecture and art design of this game's environments man - jesus, what are they feeding those artists at Capcom? Crayons? But ones that make you good at art instead of being highly toxic?? Yeah I bet that's what they're doing!!

So if it's basically perfect, why isn't it 5 stars, you may ask?

Well, here's my thing. I gave the original RE4 a 5 star rating. When it comes down to it, making a good remake of an already brilliant game is not that impressive - nor that interesting. RE4 still holds up beautifully and is one of the best even by modern standards. So I don't mean to say that this game itself is not impressive, but making a remake of RE4 and it being good is not that huge an achievement! Like, congrats! You didn't fuck it up!

I dock points for remakes by virtue of them being remakes, especially remakes of already great games, which is what basically every remake is. If a remake of RE4 wants to be considered as good as the original RE4 is in context, that shit better suck my dick. It'd better blow my back out and give me some of the most delectable backshots imaginable for DAYS on end, you understand me?

This is what makes me far more interested in the potential Resident Evil 5 remake that's hinted at in the end cutscenes. Now there's an interesting proposition. A remake of a divisive, flawed game. That's the kinda shit I wanna see remakes do, touch up some of the messier games that clearly had potential to be great. I wanna see what they look like when you get to execute all your ideas! When you get to go back and give it some extra polish and time! RE4 is already a Top 10 Game Of All Time imo, it did not need a remake or even warrant one, as much as I am not opposed to its existence.

ALSO, they cut out a lot of my favourite parts. The minigun section in the castle, the Salazar statue chase - Salazar in particular feels quite toned down in this game, nowhere near as fun and cheeky. I get that they went for a darker, more straight-up horror vibe for this remake but I still think you could get that balance with Salazar giggling like a little cunt when I walk into the first room he's in or Luis calling Mendez "the big cheese".

Weirdly with this darker, more horror-focused tone I expected the Verdugo and especially the Regenerators to scare me quite a lot more in this version than they did in the original. Not so! You know what got me way more in this version? The fucking Garradors, man. That musical sting that plays when they spot you, the way they just go fucking ape with the flailing arms, the menacing expressions and stitched eyes, yeah man. They were the only thing to make me really uncomfortable here.

Anyway, I've said most of what I wanna say on RE4 in my previous review of the OG or on my video on the HARD DRIVE MAG YOUTUBE CHANNEL - not much more to say, game is incredibly goated. Banging inventory system, banging resource economy, banging upgrade and merchant mechanics. Banging. And the shooting range they added in this version is banging too. Fucking banging mate

After a whole-ass decade, the curse has been broken. Finally, someone has made a pure-blooded soulslike that's completely on par with FromSoftware. This is really bloody good. Just a super compelling world with probably the best fairytales-turned-horror premise I've seen in a while, weighty, tense combat that absolutely sings in big battles and a lineup of some truly unreal boss encounters. And this all comes from two relatively unknown studios with a background in mobile games. I dunno how this came about, but these devs just decided they were gonna start cookin', and by god, they cooked.

Like, yes. It's very clear what the influences were and, granted, it's blatantly mimicking Bloodborne and Sekiro to a point that can almost be comical at times. But it so obviously comes from a place of love and appreciation for Fromsoft's games rather than an attempt to make a quick buck off a trend. Lies of P just nails what makes a FromSoft game tick. The combat is so weighty and explosive, and the way that perfect blocks shatter enemy weapons gives it this visceral punch that makes learning timings and executing counterattacks feel so satisfying. The bosses are (largely) these spectacular encounters that, despite borrowing quite heavily from FromSoft's best showdowns, make for huge highlights that refine your skills and send adrenaline pumping into your soul. But the personal touch that makes this a step above other non-FromSoft Souslike attempts is the presentation. My god, Lies of P is sexy as hell, and this saucy boy knows how to set a scene to boot. Whether it's the Archbishop boss, the Laxasia bridge showdown or the secret final fight, it just knocks it out of the park when it comes to making battles feel grand and important.

It does have a difficulty problem though, and it's worth noting that it's not gonna be for everyone, even some Souls players. The problem with most third-party Soulslikes is that they can't quite finesse that line between firm but fair, and this really is no different. While nothing in here is quite as punishing as end-game Elden Ring or Bloodborne, there are some parts that are just ruthless because they can be.

My least favourite trend of bosses with a secret second health bar is to Lies of P what lens flares are to JJ Abrams. They jam that shit in like their life depends on it, but forget that the whole point is to make a first phase that's reliably pretty easy. At the end of the game, every fucker has two health bars, but the bastards will also just spend the first phase absolutely leathering you just to make a point. By the end of the game, I'd literally just assume that when I encountered a boss called Diddles the Baby Puppet that was wielding a little saucepan, he would don a gruff voice and be "YOU'RE TOUGH, LOOKS LIKE I'M GONNA HAVE TO UNLEASH MY FULL POWER" and then eviscerate me with a 96 hit combo in the first two seconds after the cutscene.

If there's some bullshit Souls thing you hate, it's probably here: status affects that one-hit you, infuriating delayed strikes, a precise parry window that makes me wanna cry, bosses spamming endless unblockable attacks, gank bosses, getting stun locked into oblivion, annoying boss run-ups. AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE STINKY FART SWAMPS. WHY!? WHY DO ALL THESE GAMES NEED A STINKY FART SWAMP WITH ENDLESS LAKES FULL OF POISON BUILD-UP WHICH ARE SWARMING WITH ENEMIES. Miyazaki's undying obsession with stinky fart swamps has been a plague on humanity, and that man better be goddamn happy with himself for creating this apparently essential area cause they are literally never fun and always suck.

BUT! This is a team finding their feet in the Soulslike genre, and while I think the difficulty could use a slight notch down in the early to mid-game segments, I'm happy to navigate through some frustration to experience one of the coolest Soulslikes out there right now. The ending of this very much implies we're getting a lot more Lies of P style games, and I'm so here for it. This is easily one of the best games of the year, and honestly, something I could see myself replaying a lot over time. It's such a cool take on a well-known story, but also a phenomenal RPG that has so much character and gnarly horror.

Who knew that Pinnochio was such a fucking killer man. When that dude stops whining about not being a real boy and his nose growing, he can throw absolute shapes.

Played with FallenGrace.

Dimension Shellshock sends you - and god willing, several other players - through various arenas based on other Turtles properties, like a Comix Zone inspired take on the Mirage comics or 8-bit zones that are clearly nods to Manhattan Project and the Game Boy games. For someone suffering from TMNT brain rot (like me!), there's probably enough here to justify buying it for eight or ten bucks. Addicts like to make excuses for what they're doing, it just a fun quirk of theirs.

For everyone else, I'm not sure it's really worth even the inconvenience of reinstalling Shredder's Revenge. Survival mode is serviceable, but feels a bit sloppy and underbaked. During our first few runs, Grace and I were not given power-up prompts and so were left scratching our heads as to what stuff like an evil laughing face meant versus a canister of ooze with Bebop's mug on it, but even when not glitching out, some features and mechanics are not particularly intuitive and resulted in us asking what something did a bit too often.

Newcomers Usagi Yojimbo and my wife Karai are excellent, and similar to Sonic Mania Encore, feel more valuable than the mode they're packed with. The sprite art for both of these characters is fantastic, even if someone on the development team clearly had a preoccupation with Karai's ass. I do appreciate that her defeat sprite leaves her in the Peter Griffin death pose until everyone moves on to the next round, at least. The additional color palettes are also good, I especially like the Game Boy and NES ones, and it doesn't take that much effort to unlock a character's full swatch, though the leveling system does mean you'll likely want to stick with one or two characters if you want to make real progress in the actual game mode.

I still had a good time with it, but I can't help but feel this pseudo-roguelike survival mode could've been dialed in a bit more, and I think I would've much preferred new campaign content, especially if it went with the same dimension-hopping motif.

Played this with Weatherby here from Backloggd. We'd played a decent amount of the Shredder's Revenge base game together so tried this DLC and it's more of a mixed experience overall.

For more hardcore Turtles fans than I will get a bit more out of it. Though I'd watched the 80's cartoons and original live action movies I haven't really kept up with the Turtles since then except through Nostalgia. Fortunately I had a Weatherby on hand to explain to me who the new character in Dimension Shellhock are. Usagi Yojimbo a Samurai Rabbit I recognized and Karai who I'd never seen before. These characters are really the highlight and the reason you'd want this DLC. Both have their own unique move sets and mix things up from the base game's original roster. They both play well fitting in perfectly with the established team. The way Karai poses with her ass out at the end of every round or even when dead on the floor like Black Widow in a marvel poster will never not be funny to me. Someone at Dotemu is thirsty for sure....

Unfortunately that's kind of where my enjoyment ends. The new survival mode is just tacked on extremely bare bones and poorly explained. I think it bugged out on us initially giving no explanations for any power ups or how the mode works which it did do on subsequent attempts. Essentially you travel through multiple worlds collecting crystal's either from enemy drops or round complete bonus's until you hit the amount to move to the next one. The worlds are pretty varied, there is an 8 bit retro world, a comic book one, an Edo period etc. There are a few new enemies which were more annoying than fun to deal with and a variety of power ups to help you through like leaching health, starting the round in rampage mode etc. The most amusing was morphing into Shredder, Rocksteady or Bebop with a mini health bar but having extremely barebones moves, there isn't even a proper jump attack, just the ground one in mid air. when you die and end of world crystals you get unlock new upgrades like more hp, extra lives etc. but only for that particular character you play as.

Overall the mode is fun enough to play in co-op but feels thrown together. It's neither got enough new content to make it interesting, not varied enough to hold my attention and the mechanics aren't deep enough to justify the rogue like, survival aspect. It just doesn't feel like meaningful content. I did enjoy the new characters, and in their defense it's fairly cheap but I'd rather have had a couple of proper stages specifically for those characters, maybe an epilogue to Shredder's Revenge story wise with a couple of brand new boss fights. It would have felt less like an afterthought that they ended up with here.

+ Usagi Yojimbo and Karai are great new characters with fun move sets and animations.
+ New tracks by Tee Lopes slam.

- Survival mode feels like a slapped together afterthought.
- Lack of new bosses or other content.

When I picked up Pikmin 4 I did so almost out of obligation. I told myself I wanted to - and was gonna play this game - I just wasn't really in the mood, largely because the demo I'd tried weeks earlier hugely me put me off! This game's tutorial (which is what the demo is) is easily the worst part of the game. A solid 90 minutes of walking in straight lines and then being stopped so characters can talk at you, it's incessant, and Nintendo's continued refusal to just put in a fuckin "I've played these games before I know what I'm doing" button irritates me to no end.

And yet, once Pikmin 4 finally lets go it didn't just become my favourite in the series - it retroactively made me like Pikmin 1 and 3 even more (I never played 2.) This may sound like a weird thing to say, but it's because Pikmin 4's design and gameplay loop is so laser-focused that it better illuminates exactly what the previous games were going for, where there may been some distractions obscuring that a little before. I really never thought I'd end up liking a Pikmin game more than I like Pikmin 3 because I really like that game and yet here we are, Pikmin 4.

That aforementioned laser focus is on organisation and efficiency (I'm not saying the word bc I fear this already sounds too much like an IGN review) and between the caves, D!ndori challenges and battles that compliment the overworld maps, everything you do in this game is geared towards making you feel like a competent and efficient organiser. That is not a feeling you think would be so satisfying to experience in a videogame, but it is! It's so satisfying! When you have a squad of Pikmin carrying one thing one way and then you look in the distance of the map and can see your other squad closing in on the base from a different direction? That shit is crack cocaine, it's like crystal meth for people like me with organisational difficulties.

Beyond its tutorial, Pikmin 4 is almost perfectly paced. The "main story" (as in, the part you have to beat to make the credits roll) only runs about 12 hours, but the "post-game" as it were is where the game really begins. The maps that unlock after the credits are the densest and most satisfying in the game because you have more Pikmin to juggle and more responsibilities to optimise. And the secret D!ndori challenges that unlock after you beat Olimar's mode? And OLIMAR'S MODE???

Bro.

Here are my few, very minor complaints that hold this game back from being 5 stars;

-Music. It's not bad, but forgettable and often a bit too understated. Nothing as memorable as Garden Of Hope or Forest Navel from Pikmin 1.

-I kinda miss when it was only hinted that Olimar and co were actually tiny creatures on a real Earth. Now that the presence of humanity is so overt, the game feels like it loses a fair amount of its "alienness" that I love so much about the 1st and in particular - 3rd game. I wish the locales got just a bit weirder! (Though the novelty of a map like Hero's Hideaway is not lost on me, even if I didn't love it personally.)

-Petty one, I really miss Olimar's journal entries with the little illustrations at the end of every day in Pikmin 1. The ones randomly generated based on things you did or encountered throughout that day? Ah, man, those were filled with so much personality. I miss those.

-Bro, we do not need the same cutscene every single time a Leafling is absorbed to the S.S. Beagle, every time we get one out of a cave, every time we administer medicine to one of them etc. - we have seen the same characters say effectively the same thing every time! Just give us a little ping in the corner of the screen like when we absorb treasure! Jeez!

-It's a bit too easy and too nice to you all the time. Being able to "rewind time" after just about any mistake feels like appeasement to an unnecessary degree. I lost a lot of Pikmin to disco ball spider guy and felt nothing bc I knew I'd just be able to reverse all the damage done in literal seconds. Give me some stakes!!

-The obnoxious tutorial, which I've already touched on.

Pikmin 4 fucking goes. Don't let anything I've mentioned turn you off, this game sucked hours out of me - I haven't 100%'ed a game for as long as I can remember! It is so satisfying, so compact, so dense without being overly long and so full of personality. I love it. I've always "liked" Pikmin before but with this I think I can officially call myself a fan.

A good reminder on why non linear series progression is a worthwhile practice for developers. While the injection of RPG elements rubbed the Pikmin veteran in me the wrong way, it justifies these by waving ideas elegantly with purposeful limitations and clever design choices.
Miyamoto himself spoke recently about the distinctions between Pikmin 1 & Pikmin 2 fans.
This game makes it clear that if Pikmin 1 & 3 styled games are concise & elegant (think SMB), Pikmin 2 & 4 are playful & obtuse (think SMB2 jp).
The magic of these games doesn’t end with nerdy obsessions about the world’s most renowned game designer/director turned hands on producer. These games weave these complex systems with involved design and a lovingly rendered world, reminding the player of the passionate beauty of nature’s smallest vistas.
By the end of the game I related a lot to Louie. I also want to live there, on this strange but beautiful earth.

BLOOMIN' PIKMIN COCKTAIL

If you're looking for a refreshing Summertime cocktail to cap off your night, look no further than a Bloomin' Pikmin. This decadent drink is perfect not just for sipping, but pairs well with roasted Breadbugs and has a kick that will make your hairs stand on-end.

But first, a bit of history for you mixologists out there: The Bloomin' Pikmin owes its creation to my uncle Louie, who first concocted the drink using Pikmin he personally distilled using parts from his captain's marooned ship. Surely this drink helped him through such a harrowing ordeal. I fondly remember the night of Uncle Louie's return. We held a private get-together where several family dishes were shared. Uncle Louie had a saying: "Good food and good company is all you need... And some Pikmin, too." He introduced everyone to the Bloomin' Pikmin that night, and suffice it to say, it was a hit.

Regrettably, uncle Louie passed away after a long battle with disease brought on by constant exposure to cosmic rays and an appetite for the undocumented plant life and fungi he found on distant worlds. He was nevertheless a culinary genius - some would even call him a visionary - and he passed all he knew onto me, though he was at the time capable only of communicating in grunts, which I had to decipher by carefully considering the tone and timbre of each guttural sound. I will always remember those nights spent with Louie, scribbling down recipes for Pikmin pie, Snootwhacker sandwiches, and Bulbmin Wellington into a notebook which has since become well-worn. Though Louie has been laid to rest, his spirit lives on in these dishes, which I often prepare for my family as he once did. Indulging in his accomplishments and reminiscing about his adventures has become a tradition that I now share with you.

Although the Weatherby family today continues to cultivate and harvest our own Pikmin - which we use in a wide variety of dishes and drinks - anyone with access to even store bought Pikmin can get the job done. The only thing you'll need outside of the ingredients is a second glass, because you'll definitely want seconds.

Ingredients

3 measures of White Pikmin spirits
1 measure of Red Pikmin spirits
1 cube of Flying Pikmin
2 teaspoons of Yellow Pikmin syrup
1 chilled Rock Pikmin
2 fully bloomed Purple Pikmin leaves


1. Start by adding a single cube of Flying Pikmin to a mixing glass, douse with Yellow Pikmin syrup and muddle until it is fully dissolved.

2. Fill the mixing glass with Ice Pikmin, add White and Red Pikmin spirits and stir vigorously with a bar spoon.

3. Strain into a rocks glass over a single chilled Rock Pikmin.

4. Express the oil of two fully bloomed Purple Pikmin leaves, twist over the glass, then add as garnish.

5. For some extra zest, add a few dashes of red nectar or a single spritz of Ultra-Spicy Spray.

6. Enjoy!

Although I was aware of Metroid: Other M being the one main entry in the franchise that people straight-up hate, I didn't know just how polarizing Metroid Fusion was within the fanbase until I beat Super Metroid last month. Because it didn't have the highly influential and acclaimed status of its predecessor, I got very curious to see what it was about Metroid Fusion that made a sort of black sheep within the series, and seeing people compare it to a horror game only made me more eager to give the game a go. Even with my somewhat positive expectations going into it, I really wasn't expecting to love Metroid Fusion as much as I did, and while it does deviate from the formula in a number of areas and even straight up misses the mark in others, I'd still consider this to be my favorite Metroid game by far. Whenever I'd see people criticize Metroid Fusion, there's a good chance that they'd throw the word "linearity" around a lot (even if you could argue that the other Metroid games were technically linear to begin with), and while it is easily the most straightforward game in the series so far, I'd say that this choice worked for what the game was trying to accomplish.

Metroid Fusion adopts an almost mission-based approach to its levels rather than having you explore an open-ended area at your own pace, but since this game also has a much stronger emphasis on its narrative, these two elements ended up meshing together in a very interesting way. The shift towards forcing Samus Aran to take orders not only works in having some of the plot's events feel more unsettling, but it also makes for an integral part of her character arc with how she tries to make sense of this enigmatic mission, and the game ends up having some genuinely compelling things to say about what it means to be human and our own relationship with technology. Samus herself felt the best to control here, as her movement speed felt significantly faster and snappier, and the levels themselves actually favored her vertical jumps over her horizontal ones, which made platforming significantly less frustrating here than it did in both the original Metroid and in Super Metroid. Even with the increased dialogue, character interactions, and cutscenes in the form of gorgeous sprite art, the sense of isolation and powerlessness was much more prevalent here in Metroid Fusion, as the enemies and environments got significantly creepier in both their designs and uses of environmental storytelling, and the lack of control that you have over your objectives and even what powerups you get access to made me feel genuinely anxious to see what new monstrosity will try to attack me whenever I got access to a new door or path. I also really liked the use of the X parasites in terms of both gameplay and narrative, as having them replace the usual random health and ammo pickups made refilling them much more consistent and reliable (as well as making for some interesting platforming challenges by having an X turn from one enemy into another), and having the game lean towards body horror by having these highly intelligent parasites not only take over the body of its host, but also alter its genetic makeup was both fascinating and unnerving. The integration of the SA-X was a stroke of genius to me, as the moments were you had to hide and run away from this overpowered killing machine were some of the most tense scenes in the entire series.

As much as I loved Metroid Fusion, I will not act like it's a perfect game, as it featured some questionable design choices while also retaining old ones that I wasn't a fan of to begin with. For some reason, you have to defeat a Core-X after every single boss fight, and while the fight itself isn't difficult (especially towards the late game), this gets old after the second boss and only feels more unnecessary as the game progresses. Speaking of which, I liked how much faster and more chaotic the boss fights were, but the bosses often had hitboxes that were almost as big as the rooms where the battles took place, and that made avoiding them and trying to get to their weak spot boil down to luck rather than strategic positioning, and it made the fights against Nightmare and Ridley especially annoying. Thankfully, Metroid Fusion has much less backtracking than the other Metroid games I've played, but it still retained a lot of the cryptic "blow up a random block" progression that felt outdated by the time Super Metroid came out, and the lack of an X-Ray Scope made that issue just that much more annoying to deal with. Even with these flaws, I still had an absolute blast with Metroid Fusion, and while I do want to play the other 2D Metroid games by eventually giving Metroid: Samus Returns and Metroid Dread a go, I want to play through the Metroid Prime trilogy first and see what they're all about.

A very solid 3D platformer overall, but not one I had any strong attachments or opinions on.

I think some of the levels with a large focus on supercharge jumps could get hella annoying, and the nature of this game's collectathon nature could lead to you missing a single gem somewhere in the level which leads to multiple minutes of scouring through it just to find out that Sparx just barely missed collecting one or something, which can lead to the game feeling like it has rather slow pacing at points.

But overall its a decently tightly designed collectathon with solid mechanics, and this remaster gives absolutely stunning visuals.

Satisfied with being a linear improvement to one of the most unique games of the past decade, which is sad. It's prequel felt like a brave leap forward into greatness, something that can't be replicated knowingly.
A mechanical improvement from Breath of the Wild, no matter how small, is still an excellent game. However, this is a reminder that game design history isn't a linear set of improvements and that even if future titles improve and iterate on older works something is always left behind.

There's no denying that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a game that had an absurd amount of hype built in the years leading up to its release. Honestly, the dev team had a task so difficult after the revolutionary Breath of the Wild that I'm relieved I'm not one of them, and they did it, I'm impressed, the game is very good overall. Nevertheless, this is my personal opinion and I didn't have that amazing, perfect experience I saw many other people talking about. Firstly, the game strongly advises you to go towards a certain dungeon at the beginning of the game, and this dungeon is one of the worst in Zelda history, seriously, I was deeply underwelmed by most of the dungeons and that's something I expected to be improved since they weren't so hot on the previous game either. And I really dig the whole "Divine Beast" aesthetic that BotW had, which is completely missing here. The sky is interesting but that's another let down for me, there are only a few islands and you do basically the same thing in all of them, even the ocean islands in Wind Waker were more varied than this. Sure, the new abilities, Ultra Hand, Ascend, Recall and Fuse are fantastic and better than any of those in the previous game, however I was not impressed at all by the way the game utilizes them and they get old fast, especially in the game's Shrines. And speaking of Shrines, let's talk about them, they are also worse than those in BotW, and most of them are something like: use Ascend once, over. Use Recall once, over. Bring this crystal here, over. It got boring very fast for me, and in the end I was just doing it for the thrill of exploring and finding the Shrines than for the puzzles inside them. And now the building mechanic: It's cool but I'm not very into free building games, and most of the time I built the same plane or car over and over without any hints of variety from the game itself, maybe the problem is me. And this is just something that happened with me, but it affected my experience playing the game and it's worth mentioning here: I did kind of a sequence break that skipped a whole interesting section of the game and I had to look up in the internet how to do that because the game just told me to go ahead and I hated that I had no guidance from the game, is it open, linear or what? Identity crisis. Before talking about what I liked I want to say that I felt like Tears of the Kingdom threw enemies a lot at me, more than usual, and the combat isn't stellar and some enemies don't have an interesting set of attacks and just repeat the same two or three. I didn't hate weapon durability in BotW but it bugged me here, but that's the least of the problems, I also hated when I was exploring and I found the exact pieces of armor that were in BotW, I didn't feel rewarded enough. Let's talk about what I like so that this review doesn't sound so negative. The caves and the Depths are awesome to explore, I loved lighting up the Depths and figuring out its connection to the surface geography. The story is better told and the memories are more interesting to find now. The Gleeoks aren't as cool as Guadians were in my opinion, but they fill the "menacing enemy" role very well, the battles with them are very good. The artstyle of the game is still beautiful, I love to just take in the landscapes! And I liked to see some of those characters again, Riju's new design rocks and Sidon is so likeable! Shoutout to Penn too, he's very nice! And let's talk about the ending, that's so much better than BotW's and it really impressed me, it's very special! And let's all admire how great Ganondorf is this game please? Ocarina of time is still my favorite Zelda game and I loved all the references with sages, Ganondorf and et cetera. To conclude, the game plays very well and it's extremely well made and polished, I don't want to sound too negative about the game, I was still very addicted and played for hundreds of hours. I just think Breath of the Wild is more remarkable and rounds up better than this one. Thank you if you read all my rambling until here!

Simultaneously an amazing, mind-boggling game, and one that falls a bit flat. I have no issue with the idea of an "iterative" sequel, i.e. one that just expands on what its predecessor did without trying to reinvent the wheel, but I think with 6+ years of dev time and a game that re-uses the same game world - you're hoping for a little more "new" than Tears Of The Kingdom offers. The Blood Moon still functions (and is still presented) the exact same, the dragons function the exact same, weapon durability and combat - if anything are actually made slightly more tedious and frustrating by virtue of the fact that you basically have to use Fuse every time you wanna get a half-decent weapon, so on and so forth.

For the first 10 or so hours of Tears Of The Kingdom, I think you get taken in by the excitement of diving off Sky Islands, going to The Depths and seeing how Hyrule has changed, but eventually the sameness of it all sets in at that midpoint and you realise how much actually hasn't changed. It's a weird one, because I love this interpretation of Hyrule, but I don't think any world no matter how charming could feel fresh across two full-length games of this size - and especially when you start to realise so many patterns and so much repeating content in The Depths and Sky Islands, Tears Of The Kingdom frequently flirts with feeling repetitive and rote - especially when the plot is as bad as it is, basically just a re-tread of BOTW with some different beats and absolutely fucking non-existent continuity.

Thankfully, Ultrahand and physics come in to save the day and stop this from being an overall disappointment. Single(ultra)handedly, the game's physics systems breathe constant fresh air (of the wild) into this game. The world might be largely be the same, but the way you traverse it and interact with it, the way you solve puzzles and progress through it is fundamentally changed in the most awe-inspiring ways. I rode from Tabantha Stable to Rito Village on a giant fucking unicycle! It's uniquely fun as a sandbox before it is an open world game because you've seen this world before - but playing around with Ultrahand and seeing all the crazy shit you can make happen with physics never gets old and I think it's gonna mean that this is a game you can go back to for a long time - and is likely gonna age pretty well! (Especially for content creators who are gonna be milking this shit for years to come.)

Tears Of The Kingdom is a really good game, but it barely scrapes by in getting that assessment from me. I assume a lot of the dev time went into Ultrahand and Recall and whatnot and making them work and thank god, what a worthwhile investment. All the other "new" stuff like Gleeoks, Caves, Wells, Crystal Shrines are cool the first few times - but their magic was always gonna fade after a while and I think this was a sequel doomed to be a disappointment if they couldn't find a way to shake things up like your abilities do. There's a lot of superficial stuff in Tears Of The Kingdom, and it wears on you more when the world is the same as Breath Of The Wild - as are a lot of the flaws. (Weapon durability, rain, weak story, etc.)

I had a good time! But I'm ready for something else from Zelda. Not gameplay-wise necessarily, but tonally. Let's get out of Hyrule for a bit, let's do something a little weirder and for the love of christ - let's sort out this fucking writing and voice acting lol

Fair warning: this game is Steam Deck verified but at present it shouldn't be. I had several crashes, the screen was extremely fuzzy half the time, and more then once the environments forgot to load, including part of the ending cutscene. Probably the most "memorable" glitch came from how I completed a quest that gave me a schematic for the ultimate weapon... except I didn't receive it yet the quest was still completed. I then learn how to load backup saves on the Steam Deck, so I guess I have that to show for this incident. I've heard using a actual PC is more then fine, so maybe avoid this on any "diet PC".
Then again I've played Skyrim on PS3 for over a hundred hours, this kind of unstable game is nothing new to me, nor is playing a game on the worst possible platform (Oh Hi Bloodstained Ritual of the Night on Switch).

Ratchet & Clank is a series I hold very near and dear. A childhood franchise that I played to Hell and back in the day when getting a new game was a rare and exciting time. I loved every game I played: 1, Going Commando, Up Your Arsenal, Deadlocked, Tools of Destruction, and A Crack In Time. I've played each of them at least four times. I distinctly remember being so upset that our Tools of Destruction disc got scratched, and it'd be a crap-shoot if the next planet loaded or not. Despite all of that, Crack in Time was the last new Ratchet game I played. I can't remember the exact reason, maybe I was really into another franchise at the time, or maybe even back then I recognized that the newer games didn't look too appealing. I was going to play Rift Apart whenever I got a PS5, which still hasn't happened.
As mentioned, the way I played this was completely unideal, but I still was able to stick with it. Was it nostalgia for the older games? I don't think so since the combat felt pretty different. It felt more restrictive with going into this "battle mode" where you can only shoot relative to the camera rather then your character's direction. That messed with me more times then I'd like to admit, but wasn't long before I was able to adjust. They also added their own invincible dodge, which I was mixed at first. It felt a little too forgiving with being able to dodge right through attacks with pretty generous timing. Bearing in mind that I stuck to the hardest difficulty through the whole game, I did find myself struggling a few times in some of the more hectic battles. The game still keeps the strafe flips from the older games and it then hit me why they did this. The phantom dash is invincible, but you can't shoot and are committed to a direction. Strafe jumping is much riskier but your offense is unimpeded and have more control in mid-flight. These games have never been masterful in combat encounters, but this little bit of decision making added a lot to the fun of these shoot-outs. Especially since enemies are surprisingly very aggressive at max difficulty. Some may even lead their shots, so sometimes I'd be punished by not thinking how I'm dodging attacks.
It helps that, apart from a few too many scripted sequences, I feel this is one of the better paced games in the series when it comes to action. I was never left feeling wanting before we were back to fighting, something the Future games struggle with I feel. There's not a ton of extra game modes to contend with, just some light dimensional puzzles and hacking shooting games. Neither go on for too long, though I personally wish the puzzles were a bit more challenging. Then again, it does bring up something that may be harder for me to contend with: I'm not the audience to these Ratchet games. Not anymore, that is. More then ever did I noticed all the dialogue the characters exchanged during gameplay that felt very forced. Pointing out the obvious repeatedly for the mission objectives, not really giving the player much to think about where to go or what to do. I have a map, but it's mostly used for collectable hunting (to be fair, I did get everything in this game which was pretty fun). Character's talk to themselves all the time almost like I was a kid, but they are not talking to me, but to the main audience. I watched a video on this game where it was laid pretty plainly that this series has many different audiences, with no way to please all of them. The scathing commentary on capitalism from the first four games (well, Up Your Arsenal wasn't as prominent with that commentary) is pushed aside for their own themes of self-doubt. To some of the older fans this feels like a series that has lost its edge. And frankly it has, because it changed. But what would be accomplished returning to those themes? What else does Ratchet & Clank have to say about this exploitative system that we are trapped in that it, or literally every other story about capitalism, hasn't covered yet? Hell it's not like those are completely absent from the modern games in this series, in this very game I overheard a NPC saying "Only 40 hours till my next break". Some of that theming is still there, but that's no longer their focus. Because the team is done with that kind of story. You can only do the same thing for so long before getting sick of it.
Huge tangent aside, even for a younger audience maybe you could have had a option to tone down the tutorialization on what to do. They have done a great job with all the accessibility features and options given. I especially like the option to skip the puzzles, which makes repeat playthroughs much more smoother, so adding more options to cut out some fluff would make the ride more enjoyable. But once I accepted that I'm playing a game intended for younger audiences, yet still at the capacity to be played by all ages, I appreciated the story and characters more. I think Rivet is a great addition. I like the subtle differences between her and Ratchet where one is more of a hot-headed newbie, while the other is veteran hero who feels he's been out of the limelight too long to be relevant. I've heard a few people were annoyed that the two share the same equipment with no meaningful gameplay differences, and to be blunt I really don't care. There is a in-game explanation but it doesn't explain everything, and I really don't need it to. It makes the game smoother without limiting the player. Obviously I won't talk about them in detail, but I thought the plot twists and reveals were handle well. One way they handle a particular reveal was damn clever, even when you were expecting something to happen.
I have no good way to transition to this... but the platforming is probably the best in the series. The phantom dash combined with the hoverboots that feel intentionally over-tuned as well as a more forgiving wall-jump had me doing things that felt like I was cheating. There were a lot of instances of "This probably won't wor- Wait it worked?!" And that is a incredibly gratifying feeling that I haven't felt playing this series before.

If things smooth out on the "Diet PC" end of things then I'll bump this to a four, potentially 4.5 if they resolve everything. Or perhaps I'll bite the bullet on a PS5 or a actually good PC. Either way, I said earlier that this franchise has lost its edge, but I feel its gain something else to fill that void.

And they really had to lock the Bouncer weapon to New Game Plus, huh?? I can't tell if that's insidious or brilliant, I'm leaning towards the former