Secondary Favourites
Link Between Worlds, Hollow Knight, HLD, Celeste, and Mario Kart 8 are all generally excellent, but fall just short of my primary favourites in terms of overall impact on me.
Link Between Worlds I have no real gripes with. Incredibly fun; there just isn't anything there to make it go above and beyond. Nothing to make me connect with it as strongly as I do with, say, with my darling Minish Cap (in this case, due to nostalgia as my, like, second ever game).
Ditto for Mario Kart 8. Very polished game, great fun, but it just isn't what I played in the bus during school excursions back in Elementary School (that would be MKDS).
Hollow Knight's atmosphere is probably unparalleled at its peak. The simple and cute hand-drawn artstyle / design sense, the beautiful backgrounds, the colourwork, the compositing / effectswork... The visuals are right down my alley, as is the phenomenal music, as well as the combined tones/aesthetics of a ruined kingdom; a massive underground ecosystem; a coherent-yet-varied and alive-feeling interconnected world; fantastical journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth-like locations and creatures; and fragments of civilisation scattered throughout a generally perilous, wondrous land. These components work so well with each other, and combined give rise to an immaculate mood; sombre, yet comfy; bleak, yet lush; inviting of an adventure with melancholic undertones. Controls are tight as fuck too, the combat mechanics are my cup of tea, and the difficulty strikes a good sweetspot of satisfyingly challenging. And yet... I don't know. There's something missing. Or maybe something went wrong somewhere? I wasn't fully gripped all of the time, whereas I feel like I should've been. Truthfully, I can't recall my single playthrough from 2018 in much detail, but I do know that my overall impression of this game has been slightly soured by something.
HLD: Super tasty pixel art portraying a beautiful world, lovely ambient soundtrack to match, rock-solid combat and exploration, charming and intriguing visual and environmental storytelling, basic yet effective narrative. Should replay.
Celeste: Nice visuals / world design / atmosphere, cute characters, good music, good controls and gameplay, good fucking game. Didn't connect with the story an awful lot, perhaps for the better. Granny DLC pending; too much to handle. I will forever remember the coloured bird puzzle.
Breath of the Wild's openness and freedom proved a double-edged sword for me, allowing for aimlessness, indecision, rushing, dawdling, and underutilisation of its mechanics. Still a damn beautiful and enthralling game at its best.
Smash 4 I've played a shit ton, occasionally getting really into it (also started diving deeper into and appreciating Smash's mechanics with this entry, discovering MySmashCorner on YouTube and such), but I also kept getting sick of it and having prolonged periods of time where I went without touching it. I was able to capitalise on and maintain my interest in competitive far better with Ultimate, for various reasons. Obviously, lots of fun to be had with local multiplayer here.
Brawl is my first Smash experience, and is in a similar boat to Smash 4's. Compared to it, it's held back by its physics and Subspace Emissary's subpar level design (not that 4 had any adventure mode to speak of whatsoever), but those cutscenes tho. Subspace draws out the crossover appeal of Smash Bros. big time.
Link Between Worlds I have no real gripes with. Incredibly fun; there just isn't anything there to make it go above and beyond. Nothing to make me connect with it as strongly as I do with, say, with my darling Minish Cap (in this case, due to nostalgia as my, like, second ever game).
Ditto for Mario Kart 8. Very polished game, great fun, but it just isn't what I played in the bus during school excursions back in Elementary School (that would be MKDS).
Hollow Knight's atmosphere is probably unparalleled at its peak. The simple and cute hand-drawn artstyle / design sense, the beautiful backgrounds, the colourwork, the compositing / effectswork... The visuals are right down my alley, as is the phenomenal music, as well as the combined tones/aesthetics of a ruined kingdom; a massive underground ecosystem; a coherent-yet-varied and alive-feeling interconnected world; fantastical journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth-like locations and creatures; and fragments of civilisation scattered throughout a generally perilous, wondrous land. These components work so well with each other, and combined give rise to an immaculate mood; sombre, yet comfy; bleak, yet lush; inviting of an adventure with melancholic undertones. Controls are tight as fuck too, the combat mechanics are my cup of tea, and the difficulty strikes a good sweetspot of satisfyingly challenging. And yet... I don't know. There's something missing. Or maybe something went wrong somewhere? I wasn't fully gripped all of the time, whereas I feel like I should've been. Truthfully, I can't recall my single playthrough from 2018 in much detail, but I do know that my overall impression of this game has been slightly soured by something.
HLD: Super tasty pixel art portraying a beautiful world, lovely ambient soundtrack to match, rock-solid combat and exploration, charming and intriguing visual and environmental storytelling, basic yet effective narrative. Should replay.
Celeste: Nice visuals / world design / atmosphere, cute characters, good music, good controls and gameplay, good fucking game. Didn't connect with the story an awful lot, perhaps for the better. Granny DLC pending; too much to handle. I will forever remember the coloured bird puzzle.
Breath of the Wild's openness and freedom proved a double-edged sword for me, allowing for aimlessness, indecision, rushing, dawdling, and underutilisation of its mechanics. Still a damn beautiful and enthralling game at its best.
Smash 4 I've played a shit ton, occasionally getting really into it (also started diving deeper into and appreciating Smash's mechanics with this entry, discovering MySmashCorner on YouTube and such), but I also kept getting sick of it and having prolonged periods of time where I went without touching it. I was able to capitalise on and maintain my interest in competitive far better with Ultimate, for various reasons. Obviously, lots of fun to be had with local multiplayer here.
Brawl is my first Smash experience, and is in a similar boat to Smash 4's. Compared to it, it's held back by its physics and Subspace Emissary's subpar level design (not that 4 had any adventure mode to speak of whatsoever), but those cutscenes tho. Subspace draws out the crossover appeal of Smash Bros. big time.
