Super unique 2D skateboarding game with some seriously satisfying gameplay. Pulling off tricks feels so good, especially when you really get a flow going. Starts off pretty chill, then gets surprisingly challenging towards the end, even just for finishing levels without doing the bonus objectives. I adore precision platforming type games though, so this felt right up my alley.

The style is really beautiful and is a great atmosphere to bring to the game - one that’s gorgeously colorful and brings a more chill tone instead of something really intense and hardcore. It works. Some people could become very, very good at this game but that would take hours of hard work. If you’re someone who likes honing skills to climb a leaderboard, you will feel very at home here too.

Really happy I saw this one through to the end, felt like a good accomplishment with how very fun and reaction based those last levels can be. Worth checking out for sure.

Strikes a good balance between classic Mega Man gameplay with modern touches to bring that style to the current age. Additions like the Double Gear system and the ability to trade in currency for permanent upgrades are the kind of fresh new features this series needed.

It feels like Capcom did a fantastic job finding just the right way to handle this so it could be played by seasoned veterans, casual Mega Man fans, and those who are entirely new to the series. The difficulty options feel pretty well thought out and gives players the chance to pick out whichever experience feels best for them. I think this is definitely the best introductory point for getting someone into the mainline games.

It isn't perfect, however. I think anything surrounding the presentation feels pretty lacking.The art style isn't really my cup of tea and I can't remember many of the environments or designs really "wow"ing me. I wasn't too crazy about the story and voice acting either. I know it's "just" a Mega Man game so the story isn't really what you're here for - but most of the presentation and audio felt just standard to me.

The game definitely shines with it's tough-as-nails gameplay, the fun variety of weapons, and the tight controls. In some ways, I think Mega Man's very basic gameplay style and formulaic loop has been starting to overstay it's welcome, but this entry is a good way to spice it up and there really isn't anyone else doing it quite as well as this. Plus, Mega Man is a timeless mascot who I am happy to see receive new games.

It feels like an impossible task to try and create a game that lets you really experience being in the world of Harry Potter. But I have to say that, as a first attempt at the kind of game meant to deliver the day-to-day feeling of being a student attending Hogwarts, this game does a very good job and any one who is a fan of this universe should check it out.

With that being said, I can’t help but feel like I was disappointed with several parts of this game. There’s tons of stuff to do, but none of it gets much further than being “good.” Some of the best parts include the combat, which is pretty fun and feels satisfying, but never more than some basic combos. The main story and a few of the side quests are pretty decent as well - I would argue that a side quest including a Slytherin classmate named Sebastian is even better than the main story itself - but the main story is a standard affair of good vs evil. Above everything else though is Hogwarts itself. The school is incredibly recreated, it’s amazing to be able to walk around the entirety of the castle. It’s really breathtaking and so much can be done with it in a world filled with magic. It makes for a great environment with lots of interesting places and secrets.

However, this changes when you finally step out of the school and into the open world. The map in this game is HUGE, and the content in that open world is dreadfully uninspired and tedious. So much boring, slow, simple busy work that’s there to do nothing else but pad play time. Side quests in general can also be skipped, I found them largely boring outside of ones involving your main companions. I flat out skipped most of them and can’t say I regret it. The dialogue options within those quests feel superfluous almost every time too. What you decide matters only in a very few select moments. I would have much preferred a tighter, better quality experience that was confined within the school - a smaller open world would have really benefitted here and the capabilities of what can be done within a place like Hogwarts could have been all they needed. A more compact open world like in the Yakuza series would have been great. They could even include key areas like the Forbidden Forest or Hogsmeade as their own explorable locations, but the massive, boring open world we were given felt like a waste of resources that could have been put towards something like better facial movements or more cinematic cutscenes.

Ultimately, I understand what they were trying to do here: They wanted to hit a lot of the key beats people were looking to recreate when playing a game like this - the sorting ceremony, going into Gringott’s, casting spells, attending class, flying on a broom, customizing your own living area…there’s plenty here and everyone is bound to find something they enjoy. But none of these things feel like they go incredibly deep. It’s possible this could have been done to appeal to Harry Potter fans who don’t usually play video games, but it feels like a missed opportunity in some ways.

Trying to give a player the chance to live the life of a Hogwarts student is a huge undertaking and I applaud the developers for what they were able to pull off. But this boils down to just being a decent open world game with a, admittedly very shiny, coat of Harry Potter paint on it. Bigger isn’t always better and this game would have absolutely benefited from a smaller scale and more concentrated focus.

Incredibly fun, super stylish, and may have helped me better understand the love for the back and slash genre. Combos feel satisfying to pull off even without being super complicated. Most of the challenge comes from performing the combos on beat to the music, which always feels amazing to do.

The writing and plot feels very much like a cartoon bumped up a bit for a slightly older audience by the including of a few more swear words than you might expect. It never reaches anything deep, and the humor was fairly hit-or-miss for me. But I liked the cast of characters, and the dialogue was always enjoyable to listen to.

Things near the end head in a heavy handed direction that I wasn’t a super big fan of, but that’s alright. This was still a really fun time, with a fantastic soundtrack that deserves to be played. I can see why some consider this to be their GOTY even if it probably isn’t mine. Absolutely worth playing.

This is a very polished open world game that feels like it does the smoothest and prettiest versions of plenty of things that we've seen before, but does very little that is actually new. A game does not necessarily need to be filled with tons of new things in order to prove it's validity, but there are some things that were added here that can feel unneeded if anything.

Ghost of Tsushima tackles the Assassin's Creed type formula of giving players a large map with tons of points of interests to check out. These can lead to the typical side quest or enemy camp, or it could also lead to something like a fox den or a shrine. These activities can be fun for a while, but there are so many scattered throughout the map(s) that it can begin to feel like a slog to do the same tasks again and again. Thankfully, these tasks are largely optional and the game will let you know upfront what your rewards will be for tackling them - GoT is a game that feels like it respects your time.

The combat is very satisfying. The impact of the swords feels heavy, and some of the attacks you can pull off are devastating. There is not much challenge here, the game walks in the area of giving players a power trip to experience. This can be very fun for a while, especially when combined with different abilities and items, but there are ultimately just four or five enemy types and these can all largely be faced with the same tactic. The only thing is that changing your stance is practically required to cause a dent to any enemy, and each enemy has just one stance they are weak against. This essentially boils down to just remembering to set a specific stance when facing a type of enemy. To me, it felt like a false way of adding depth to the shallow combat.
Stealth was similar - there is little to account for outside of crouching in tall grass and reaching an enemy from behind. Felt very satisfying, but was not incredibly built upon.

The writing was good enough, I felt. The main story, and the most important side quests, hovered around the idea of honor a lot. Which makes sense, it is a core idea behind many of the things that occur in this game, but it can make several of the missions seems samey. Objectives were the same many times as well. I really enjoy Jin as a character, I like his "take no BS," attitude. He immediately takes against anyone who wrongs him, and that was pretty refreshing to see when many characters are wise cracking and blindly optimistic.

The world is very beautiful, there's a fantastic use of color, and many of the settings have such a gorgeous blend of nature and wonderful architecture. You can tell the look of the world was a big thing for them, since there are many moments where there will be no UI on the screen at all.

I feel that Ghost of Tsushima has some issues - mainly that the gameplay can get tedious after a while, there is an overabundance of things to do for completionists, and the writing could have been better. But all of this is supplemented by a gorgeous world, satisfying albeit simple combat, and a buttery smooth way of connecting everything together. I only began to feel bored towards the very tail end of my lengthy playthrough. This is a great game for living out your Samurai fantasies and an easy recommendation, though I feel it falls just short of being something truly great.

A great 2D Zelda game that feels like it hits the mark on nearly all fronts. The pixel art is gorgeous, and some of the best that the GBA has to offer. The soundtrack features a lot of familiar favorites and feels like it takes full advantage of GBA sound hardware. Plenty of staple items and newcomers exist here as well, not to mention solid dungeon designs coming together to form a fundamentally very solid Zelda experience.

I don't think that everything with this game is perfect. However, my issues are mostly on the smaller side. Things like having to regularly pause in order to change the item you were using could get a little tedious. I also personally did not care for the kinstone side quest, and felt that the figurine collecting side quest was also not particularly interesting. But that's alright because the main content is always very good. The story is also on the lighter side, even for a game in this series, which isn't bad but can feel a little lacking.

This is textbook The Legend of Zelda. An adventure with plenty of puzzles to solve, secrets to uncover, and enemies to defeat. It's very fun and absolutely beautiful to look at. I think this is ultimately a must-play for any fan of the franchise, and a great starting point for anyone who wants to get into it.

A wonderful game that improves on nearly every aspect from the first game. Combat is expanded with additional abilities, traversal is further improved with even faster swinging and the addition of the incredibly fun web wings, and the side content feels much more varied and better integrated into the story. This game also really shows off the power of the PS5 in some really spectacular ways - I never experienced sudden loading while swinging around the city, the fast travel system needs to be seen to be believed, and various story moments make good use of this quick loading tech for some really stunning set pieces.

This is not to say that everything is perfect. I actually felt that the story was a bit of a downgrade this time. There are some really amazing moments, but it felt like the next big thing was always happening right after the last one finished. Crucial story beats didn't get as much time to settle in as I think they should have. I also experienced a surprising amount of glitches; nothing game-breaking but several instances of dialogue suddenly being muted, mission objectives not appearing, and clipping through buildings. These were quickly resolved by just returning to the main menu and loading my game again, but I definitely experienced more issues with this game than I have with most modern game releases.

Insomniac's Spider-Man games have been a fresh, new take on a long running series and are an absolute blast to play. All fans of the first two games owe it to themselves to experience this one too. Even if a lot of it feels familiar, it's bigger, better, and some of the best Spider-Man content out there.

Ghostrunner is a tough-as-nails hack and slash/platformer that has you sprinting through levels completing precision based parkour sections and rooms filled with scattered enemy placement where killing them all will be required before progressing.

This game shines when you've entered a flow state and accomplish a wall run to kill an enemy, followed by grappling up to a different ledge to continue moving and get the flank on a different enemy. Pulling off consecutive maneuvers feels fantastic, especially when you're fueled by the pumping synth soundtrack. The setting is an awesome post-apocalyptic cuberpunk city, which feels more like video game levels than a lived-in city admittedly, but is still beautiful to admire.

Lots of trial-and-error will be needed in order to reach the ending of this game. Any error, be it falling into a pit or taking even one shot of damage, will immediately result in a game over. This means that the game will of course not be everyone's cup of tea. As someone who loves gruelingly difficult platformers, this was mostly right up my alley. There was something causing me a lot of problems along the way however..

The glitches and inconsistencies in this game are far too common. The wall running detection is finicky - there were many moments where I had no interest in running on a wall but the game would stick me to it anyways, and other situations where I would deliberately make contact, only to not run on it at all and fall to my death. Enemies would also begin their attack animation, only to suddenly quit it entirely. This is a problem when some enemies can only be defeated via parrying, and you're being attacked from multiple angles. I like to think that I can have a lot of patience for a game when failing is caused by my own poor decision making or lack of skill, and while many of my deaths in this game occurred because of that, far too many of them were caused by errors from the game's behalf, and that's something that can be difficult to forgive when the game expects you to play perfectly in order to win.

Ghostrunner lets you experience a sort of cyborg ninja power trip, so long as you can manage to pull off the split-second decisions needed along the way. It can be equally thrilling as it can be frustrating. It won't be for everyone, but some people will absolutely love this. I thought it was pretty good, but absolutely has room for major improvement. Notice how I haven't even talked about the story at all, it was incredibly thin and very little actually happens (much of the voice acting was also pretty weak)

It's short and sweet, I was able to finish the story in roughly 4 hours. I would love to see them polish the gameplay and get a better writing team on board for the sequel, but as it stands, Ghostrunner is a solid game and worth checking out if you're looking for a challenge.

An open world game with a lot of the expected trimmings, for better or worse. I came around to really enjoy the world and lore of Horizon Zero Dawn, and I always felt happy to continue if it meant uncovering more of the mysteries behind how the state of the world in this game came to be. I love Aloy as a protagonist, I feel that she has her own personality that I love to see fit into this heavily tradition-based world.

Much of the side content in the game is pure filler, and realistically has little reason to exist outside of drip feeding bits of lore or just to pad game time. I went out of my way to Platinum the game and although I enjoyed all my time with it, the side content just isn't worth doing most of the time.

The combat is fun and feels satisfying when it clicks. Switching your weapons to better suit a battle feels great, as does taking advantage of enemy weak spots to turn the tide drastically in your favor. It's Monster Hunter-like and I had a good fun with it, although the capabilities of melee fighting could use an overhaul.

The world is beautiful, the lore is interesting, and the moment-to-moment gameplay felt relaxing. I can understand how a game like this is not everybody's cup of tea, and there's absolutely an argument to be made that it can feel like an uninspired in a sea of open world games, but winding down with Horizon Zero Dawn at the end of a long day felt like I was relaxing with a good book and it partially got me to pick up hiking as a more regular hobby which is nice.

A very tightly put together, and delightfully polished 2D platformer. The updates and ideas in this are just the injection that the side-scrolling Mario games have been needing for a while. Movement feels fun, the animations and art style are stunning, and the soundtrack was stellar.

The Wonder Flower is a fun addition that spices up a level part way through. This can bring about changes that someone would never expect - turning into a rhythm based level, changing the perspective, messing with the speed of the game. The inclusion of Badges is awesome too, these are abilities you can swap out that can drastically impact your gameplay. This helps keep things fresh and lets the player choose how they want to experience the game.

The main downside I have with this game is that, because there are so many ideas being thrown (many of which are awesome and tons of fun) it can still feel like what we're given is compartmentalized. I think I just wish more time were spent with some of the new power-ups, and that some level ideas could have been expanded upon a bit more. I guess being left wanting more is not such a bad thing.

With a fresh new aesthetic, plenty of refreshing ideas and innovations, a now frustation-free multiplayer, the addition of a very social online mode, and the confidence to include more challenging levels, Super Mario Wonder is exactly what the side-scrolling half of the plumber's main games needed. I'm so happy we got this seemingly out of nowhere, and I hope we get more like it!

Short and sweet game that is very fun and totally unique even to this day. I appreciate how much this game really leaned into the weirdness of everything and hardly felt the need to ease off of any of it.

The gameplay loop of rolling a tiny ball into a bigger ball, so you can then roll it into even bigger things is fantastic and I was always surprised by how the scope of the level changes drastically as your katamari gets bigger and bigger. What starts as a level in a park that has you smaller than people and dogs will eventually have you growing large enough to roll up sentai characters, islands, and even forces of nature like tornados. The concept is realized so well and the length of the game keeps it from getting stale.

My main issue with the game is how everything is tied together. I can get behind the idea of this massive King sending his Prince to gather items from Earth, but the quirky nonsensical dialogue didn't do much for me - especially since the writing before each level was nearly identical. Hit detection and the controls for the game could also be a bit finnicky, but the silly nature of the game and the extremely lenient progression requirements keep it from getting too frustrating.

Katamari Damacy is a staple in the history of gaming and for good reason. It's cheerful, fun, ridiculous, very chill, and has an incredible soundtrack that should be considered mandatory listening. I'm glad I finally got around to this title and I can finally understand the love it has received over so many years.

An incredibly solid Metroidvania with fluid, fast-paced platforming and plenty of fun ideas to spice up traversal. I admittedly wasn’t very impressed with this game at the very start of it, but I continued on from all the positive press it was receiving and I’m so glad I did. The game truly begins to shine once you have a few more abilities under your belt.

Mount Qaf is a fun map to explore, there are tons of secrets scattered everywhere, and many precision based platforming challenges that are extremely satisfying to pull off. Enemies are of course walking around as well, and the combat can feel deceptively simple. What begins as basic three-hit combos can turn into long stretches of juggling the enemy into the air and dishing out serious damage. The true example of the combat are the bosses, which are fantastic and ask you to utilize everything in your arsenal. There are some truly unique ideas here in how the abilities you are given become crucial to platforming puzzles and for avoiding boss attacks.

The main issues I have with this game is that the story is pretty weak. Thankfully, not much time is dedicated to the story and you’re given control for the vast majority of the time but it still needs to be mentioned. The graphical style is bright and is absolutely serviceable, but it’s far from a high fidelity showcase - but the environment is always easy to read with your eyes, and enemy attack queues make sense and can be read, so it ultimately works for gameplay purposes. My game also crashed/froze up on me on three different occasions. I haven’t seen anyone else mention this, and it didn’t ruin my time with the game as saves had happened recently but it’s important to note. This was on PS5, and I feel confident the devs will patch these issues.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was a pleasant surprise to kick off 2024. I think anyone who has recently enjoyed games like Hollow Knight or Metroid Dread, and wants more of something like that, would be missing out by not playing this game. It’s absolutely worth the time for lovers of the Metroidvania genre, but also a fantastic and fluid place for newcomers to start. Surprised by how much I ended up loving this at the end of the day.