I want to play it a little more before writing a full review. But the game is overall fun. Bit hard to get the hang of but I just had my friends explain it to me. The movement in the game feels a little weird, maybe intentionally. The sprint is pretty limited but I wish there was like an indicator of how much sprint you were using. Also when you die you just have to watch your team finish and that's not fun. Wish you could do something like leave behind clues or maybe summon some items? I had fun, but it wears off pretty quickly.

This ain't it.

Game performance is miserable for a 2D platformer. Many of the levels overstay their welcome. The bosses all range from mid to just horrendous. Actually some of the worst in the franchise.

Skip out on this one. I promise it ain't it.

(Note: I played the PC port, which adds a few bells and whistles like widescreen and 60FPS)

Super Mario 64 is one of the most influential games of all time. You don't need me to tell you that. I've been a Mario fan for almost my entire life, but this was an entry I missed out on. I grew up in the Wii/DS era and didn't have the DS port of the game to play as a kid. I wouldn't first experience this game until I got it on the Wii U Virtual Console. I think I played it for maybe an hour or two, and got frustrated by the controls. I could appreciate it for what it was, the foundation for some of my favorite games of all time. But nothing more, a foundation.

I wouldn't seriously attempt another playthrough of the game until 2020's Mario 3D All Stars. Where I got maybe halfway through the game, and gave up. Again not really grasping the controls, and getting frustrated with some aspects of the gameplay.

It would have ended there, were it not for my girlfriend Julie. Who loves this game to death. She kept urging me to play it and eventually I did. I was determined to beat the whole game on stream. Which I did.

Background out of the way, now time to actually talk about my experience with the game.

I think control wise, this is one of the best Mario games in that department, when it works. It's frustrating because I don't know how much of it is just the game being inconsistent or if I just haven't mastered the controls. Even by the end of the game, I still was accidentally diving instead of air kicking. In a modern mario control scheme, these two actions would be mapped to two seperate buttons. But the N64 controller just didn't allow for that at the time. (Unrelated but play this game on an N64 controller if you, either an original or the Switch one, you'll thank me later). This causes a lot of actions to be mapped to the same button. Another game from this era that suffers from this problem is Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. Having one "action button" for multiple abilities. The difference is that you have to stop and cycle through them. This isn't exactly feasible for a game like Mario 64, but it is something that crossed my mind. In a perfect world, the two actions would be mapped seperately. Then any action you perform would be deliberate. This was the cause of most of my blunders in the game. Accidentally doing x when I meant to do y. Is this the games fault or is it mine? I think the answer is a bit of both.

Another good example of this is simply turning around. Going from facing forward in this game to backwards Mario will either do a 180 on the spot, or like a arc sort of turn. It's kind of hard to explain in text but if you've played the game I think you know what I'm talking about. What's worse is that I don't know if it's actually something that's inconsistent, because then tricks like cannonless wouldn't be able to be pulled off as consistently as they are? I'd love it if someone more knowledgable than me could explain this one to me.

Last thing I didn't like, and that has to do with the levels themselves. When you die in Mario 64, 99% of the time you have to start that level over. I can only think of a small handful of levels that I came across that had checkpoints. This means that if you spend 10 minutes getting to a star, but mess up at the very end, you have to do all of that over again. Not a big deal in the games opening levels, where part of the games charm comes from getting to repeat areas faster and faster each time. Whether it be with shortcuts or by going in areas you aren't supposed to. But towards the end of the game, there's a level called "Rainbow Ride". A level where you do nothing but ride slow moving carpets over a bottomless pit. These are essentially autoscrollers in a 3D platformer. I know "carpetless" exists but I was playing through this for the first time and I wasn't going to look up a guide on how to do that.

However I did find my way around the levels quicker and quicker. And I'd say that's where this game shines. It's movement feels SO GOOD. And I think that's why people look past some of the jank. Once you master the way Mario controls, which isn't that hard to do by the way - just try some of the tricks and don't be afraid to mess up. It'll come eventually.

I haven't mentioned the camera, which is one of peoples biggest complaints about the game. Honestly, I didn't mind it. You just have to remember that it moves in "grids" is kind of how I think of it? Like there are only a set number of camera angles that Lakitu can view Mario at. Having Lakitu as the literal cameraman was honestly a genius way to teach this mechanic in 1996. I think the only time I can think of when the camera screwed me over was during the final Bowser boss fight. It automatically zooms out when you get further away from Bowser which is supposed to help you keep track of him, but in the final fight it makes it hard to see his attacks.

And what a final fight that was. I hate that this is the game that started the trend of "mario the bowser boss fight the same thing everytime but slightly harder" but at least this game ACTUALLY has the fights get harder and feel different each time. I know some of it's because of it being new to me, but Bowser fights 2 and 3 felt pretty intimidating the entire time.

The soundtrack is obviously awesome it's a Mario game. I guess I wish there were more songs but ya know it's an N64 game they could only do so much. Like Bob-Omb Battlefield is awesome but its also the theme of FOUR levels lol. But again 15 levels in an N64 game is pretty impressive. Even some of the smaller levels like Wet Dry World still have enough going on mechanically to be interesting.

And that's really all I have to say. I know I complained a lot but I really do like this game more a lot more than I dislike it. I'm going to go back and 100% it too. I'm really glad that I finally gave the game a second chance!

If you're wanting to play this game but are worried about stuff like the controls or the camera. Honestly I think you should give it a fair shot before you knock it. But if you really don't like it, then get the PC port and install a few mods. You can get some that fine tune the controls and the camera to your liking. Don't let other people gatekeep how you experience the game for the first time. Either way I think you should get the PC port anyway, the widescreen is nice and you shouldn't let nintendo gatekeep your save file behind an online subscription that's going to go away one day.

Fun game that has it's moments. The writing is good overall but has a couple lowpoints where it's just not fun to read. The main gameplay of the trials is fun overall but has a bit of jank that really bothers me. The rhythm game is bearable once you get used to it, but the timing on it is really wonky. So much so that I would use the visual cues to help me, until they would just take away those visual cues.

There's also a bit of PSP jank still left over in the even the PC version. Some of the visuals are a little bland and the overworld segments control like the battle pass. From what I've heard these aren't even fixed in the Switch release. So just be aware of that. Personally I recommend playing on PC and switching between a controller and mouse/keyboard. Which the game lets you seamlessly do.

Soundtrack is just okay. The songs aren't bad but mostly forgettable with a few exceptions.

But other than that, it was a fun game and I look forward to eventually playing the rest of the series. Fav characters: Mondo and Kyoko

I love Splatoon. I've been playing it since the Wii U days. So when they announced the third game was coming to Switch I was beyond excited. As great as Splatoon 2 was, I had a lot of issues with it. Things like matchmaking taking too long, there only being 4 ranked modes that were on rotation, and the map rotation system was still something I found annoying.

Now that the game's been out for almost a year. While I can say I enjoy the game, and it is an improvement upon it's sequel in many ways, I still have my issues..

Firstly is the games ranked mode, now referred to as "Anarchy Battles". These are still just as fun as in the previous games, even moreso now that you can finally team up with your friends. I think it's lame that it barely counts towards your actual rank progression, but that's fine because I never cared about that anyway. And this is a game I will very rarely play by myself to even bother with the games solo queue ranked mode.

Originally you couldn't switch your gear in between matches on ranked mode but that was only just RECENTLY fixed. I don't know why Nintendo continues to do dumb shit like that but at least it's in the game now.

Speaking of patches, the games rollout of new content feels a little less than desirable. The game has switched to a "season format" which I think actually works well for Splatoon. It's annoying that they lock the cosmetics behind the catalog and if you miss the season, then your only chance to get them is and RNG lotto machine.

The map selection in this game is.. okay. The returning maps are all pretty good. The Splatoon 2 maps are basically unchanged and the Splatoon 1 maps have the same layout but you can feel that a lot of time has progressed in them which I really like. However the new original maps are a bit too blocky. I get that every Splatoon map has to be symmetrical for fairness sakes but I just wish there was a little more variety. I know it's a common joke, but it really does feel like they built the new maps out of tetris blocks..

The music in the game is good as always. While I prefer 2s soundtrack, the music in 3 has a much more chaotic energy that reminds me of the first game a lot. And some of the tracks they've added post launch are really really good! I love the squid sisters and any song they're on.

Splatfests also don't feel as special now. I think doing them less often makes them feel less like an event? And we haven't gotten any Splat-o-ween or Holiday celebrations which sucks.

Other than that, my last complaint would have to be that we're still on the map/mode rotation system. This was okay during the Wii U days when there were less players so they had to force people into certain gamemodes. However now that the game is bigger than ever, I don't see why we can't pick from multiple ranked modes. And perhaps have the maps either be totally random, or picked from a pool a la Mario Kart. I get that people in ranked will play certain kits based on the map, but I think having a map voting system in at least turf war should be done. Or at the very least, have 3 maps in rotation at a time, that would make the problem less apparent.

I do like this game and will go back to it to play with friends or mess around in the singleplayer mode (which is very good btw) but it just doesn't have the same feeling as the previous entries. Hoping that changes over time though..