I love this silly little horse card game.

Played it on Switch basically every day since it came out. Yeah I know that's only since like January but that's a long time for me. Kinda gettin bored of it now, so it'll probably be a long time (like a week) before I pick it up again.

The economy of time in my life is an enigma.

A great time all around, this game really shines in letting you explore things at your own pace and solve puzzles in whatever way you like. Nearly entire dungeons can be skipped if that's how you want to play it, but materials and a clearer path are usually laid out in front of you if that's more what you're into.

Puzzle solving in Shrines is always a fun time, and there's an overwhelming amount of content to keep you busy. I feel like this game does a good job getting you to feel like you don't have to do all of it, just do whatever interests you. Dialogue was also charming, and plenty of the area look beautiful even with the Switch's aging visuals.

I have my own issues with the game, mainly relating to the story feeling a little underdone in my opinion. Abilities didn't seem to be created equal either. Ultrahand is nearly the entire purpose behind the game, meanwhile Recall feels more situational and Fuse felt like more of an inconvenience than a meaningful addition.

Still absolutely worth checking out though, it's very rare that a game promises you this much freedom and truly delivers.

A true sequel - meaning that just about everything that was an issue in the first game has been improved here. Combat feels better and comes with lots of different styles, exploration feels more rewarding with different prizes and way more customization options, worlds feel like they are built with tons of depth and have much more to do than the linear worlds of the previous game (the trade off is that there are less worlds). It feels like they made a bunch of fun new mechanics and gameplay abilities within the game itself too, for both combat and traversal.

My main issue with the game comes from the performance, of course. I didn’t ruin into any game-ending bugs or anything, heck the game didn’t even crash for me once, but there’s a lot of visual hiccups and a weird blurry-ness over a lot of the movement in the game. Some story moments towards the end also felt a little messier than the beats towards the beginning. Feels like some other things could use some polish, but this is a huge step up from the first game in that sense.

An easy recommendation for any Star Wars fan - it’s a story in that universe done very right and leaves me wanting a third game to wrap up plenty of interesting loose ends that were purposely set. Anyone who isn’t a Star Wars person should still check it out if it looks interesting to them. It’s got plenty of heart and some really loveable characters, and it should be played if only for that.

Kirby games are ultimately fairly similar to one another, and they're typically very easy. For those reasons, I feel like I don't have too much to say about this. It's a really solid platforming game where the defining "twist," is that you can copy the ability of many enemies that block your way.

Different abilities in the game feel unique and there's a decent blend of obscure powers, classic favorites, and new entries. The challenges in the game never feel particularly difficult, but I don't think they feel mind-numbingly easy either. It's a general audience and feels approachable to everything, including children. Co-Op is super easy to jumping in and out, and everyone is able to enjoy trying abilities as Kirby. This made it a really fun time to play with my girlfriend.

The extra content outside of the main game is plentiful, but not interesting enough to get me to interact with some of it. Namely the boss rush and the mirror mode, both of which are exactly what they sound like (bosses back-to-back and playing the game again but right-to-left instead of left-to-right) The minigames were very fun however, and I have to give really big props to the Magolor epilogue.

The epilogue chapter was plenty of fun and gives you control over a character with so many awesome abilities that you can further upgrade. The character goes from performing like a wet paper towel to becoming a crazy shooting, teleporting, back-hole opening god. It's a shame that the levels in this were so much shorter and that the campaign doesn't last for more time. By the end of this, I enjoyed the gameplay style more then the main campaign, but I should just play something other than a Kirby game if that's what I'm looking for.

Ultimately, it's a Kirby game. Far from the best one, but a very good one. It's relaxing, super cute, supports some really fun and un-intrusive co-op and is worth playing. An awesome way to introduce people to video games too.

Really solid platformer with an interesting world and fun puzzles! The game being in VR is very cool for being able to admire the beautiful environments, but there isn’t ultimately anything that makes this feel like it needed to be a VR game. The combat was also very barebones and there’s only about 3 enemy types.

The final boss encounter and the DLC were both particularly awesome. I hope they improve on the combat and try to experiment with the VR a bit more in the sequel, which I am very excited to play!

Had this originally logged as the base Sonic Origins game, I eventually updated to the Plus edition, so my thoughts will include the additions that came from that.

This collection should have been so easy to make at least "good," but I must admit that it's really just passable. This collection does not offer much that can't just be obtained via emulation or mods, and those have implemented them better.

The best part of this collection is the fact that these games are playable with widescreen as well as a more steady frame rate, and the newly added cutscenes are high quality and do a nice job tying the games together. The added Missions give long-time fans something new to do, though there are not tons of these and veterans of the series will be able to get through them quickly.

Apart from what is listed above, many of the other things advertised as being highlights of this package include island models (which are just animations that play on the menu), a gallery (which includes some nice things, but very little that was refreshingly new or has not been accessible online for a very long time), and now Amy as a playable character - which is admittedly nice to have but it does not feel like it is fully realized.

Game Gear games were also included later on down the line, but it really feels like this was done as a way of boasting that there are now a whopping 16 games here versus the original 4. But even then, these Game Gear additions host no improvements over just emulating them. Any slow down, issues, and glitches are fully present. This could have been a great opportunity to increase the amount that can be seen of screen, and to give these games a breath of fresh air with more consistent frame rates and consistent ruling to platform touch detection, but none of these things were done. Fans can revisit the original Game Gear games with no additional polish at all - for an extra cost.

Ultimately, as a long time Sonic fan, it's nice to see that these games will continue to be easily accessible for a future audience. But it is sad to see that there was really a golden opportunity to help these games take the next step - to improve and make these games even better - but instead it feels like just the bare minimum was done.

It's really just a collection of emulators, some mods, and it's missing some iconic music tracks. Fans have been able to basically play the series like this for years, and for free (or at least much cheaper) This is a hard sell for $40 to anyone, Sonic fan or not. That kind of money could get you so much more these days.

Spent a few good hours with this game, but I think it ultimately isn’t meshing with me. I’m feeling sad about that, because I deeply enjoyed Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid Dread but something about this just isn’t clicking.

This remaster is a good one, it looks and runs great. I absolutely still think this is worth checking out to anyone interested or anyone who loved this game in the past. Maybe at some point in the future, I’ll be in the right place for this. But, for now, I’m going to put this down. This is no negative reflection on the game itself, I just wasn’t feeling it.

I consider this one of Mario’s best and most fun adventures. I adored this game enough to have 100% completed it twice in my life. The style, the music, and the flow all feel so perfect and fun. It’s a blast to play with others or solo. 3D World is packed with so much great content and feels immensely rewarding to go the extra mile in. Short and sweet level design, a great selection of fun power ups including the new and very creative cat suit, and beautiful levels of polish on top of everything. A must play for Mario fans, I think.

Bowser’s Fury was also tons of fun and practically impossible for me to put down once I started. I would love to see this idea fleshed out more. Felt like a mix of 3D World’s level design with Odyssey’s collection method where it doesn’t pull you out of the action and there’s lots of objectives in one place. Things like the fury mechanics could use some work (waiting for Bowser to appear to destroy the Bowser blocks could be a little annoying as an example) but it’s a lovely proof of concept and I’m very excited to see them revisit something like this in the next 3D Mario game.

Putting this game down, and I think it’s largely because I burnt myself out. It’s a shame because I really enjoyed Yakuza 0 - enough to play through it twice. I made a couple mistakes with this entry, one of those being that I jumped into it directly after Yakuza 0. The games are so similar in nearly every way that it didn’t feel like a fresh new step, and in fact, it can easily be argued that many of the differences between this game and Yakuza 0 are a step down.

The other mistake I made is that I was intensely following a guide to do every substory because it is a staple of the franchise. But the substories here just aren’t that interesting and largely fall into the same type where Kiryu gets scammed, a fight occurs, rinse and repeat. These can be entertaining if experiencing them naturally during your playthrough, but I focused strongly on this and it was to my own detriment.

This all led to me feeling bored by this game, and it has been sitting on my “playing,” status in some level of limbo for close to two years. I’ve noticed that I hardly felt a drive to boot it up, and when I just recently did, I realized I would have had to redo approximately two hours of gameplay. Maybe I didn’t save, maybe my power went out, maybe my console updated in rest mode, I honestly can’t say. But I’ve had this hanging over my head as something I started but never finished, and I think I’m going to close this off by just dropping it.

I do want to continue the Yakuza series, so I’m going to watch the rest of this story on YouTube. I will come back to this series in the future, but I need to take some time away from it and move on from this specific entry. As someone who generally has trouble putting down games before finishing them, this is a big step for me and I feel better for it.