An arkanoid clone where the ball's reflections feel deterministic. Not a good time. A lack of music outside of bonus levels doesn't help it.

Insanely boring. Sorry, Kaze.

Major stinker with tons of collision issues.

Starts off strong, but the later levels (2nd floor especially) can be kind of awful to play, since you're running through the exact same annoying geometry over and over again, but I liked this romhack enough to finish it all the same. Wasn't a fan of the F-Zero stages.

Not built to SM64's strengths. I dislike the structure of the game's worlds, which feel more like hub and spoke designs than proper 3d levels with multiple routes through them. About 3/5 stars are decent to good, but the remaining 2/5 are rough. Super Mario 64 is at its worst with tight turns and small platforms.

Finally beat this game for the first time today. Honestly? It's pretty good, even if the second to last obstacle got my goat. The one song on the soundtrack and its variant for the title and ending screens are great and keep you motivated throughout.

Went into this blind. Very funny. Great time.

Surprisingly very charming. I would have loved this game as a child. The soundtrack in particular is really good, and the characters and art are generally cute. Very strong contender for a young child's first point and click adventure game.

Cute novelty, but controls are very rough, even on NSO.

Echoes of the Eye tells a beautiful story and its first and last impressions are its strongest, but I felt a deep sense of disappointment throughout much of my playtime. While The Stranger is a breathtaking environment and its ring shape is an excellent tool to inform the player of what is hidden within its winding canyons, you will regularly find yourself railroaded from waking up to an all-out bum rush toward The Stranger to the nearest artifact you're aware of to the Secret World's nearest access point, which leaves the actual structure of the game feeling rote and repetitive in a way that the base game didn't.

The ideas on display, especially when it comes to the Secret World as a Matrix allegory (and, by extension, an allegory for Plato's Allegory of the Cave) and the ways that the inhabitants of The Stranger serve as a Yang to the Nomai's Yin, both in regards to the Eye and the Protagonist are fascinating and certainly warranted the time given to them by the DLC. Furthermore, the Protagonist's conversation with The Prisoner is a beautiful vindication for someone who gave up everything in an attempt to help those who would come next, and I once again found myself misty eyed at the end of the game.

I stumbled upon the secret chambers to enter the Secret World very early on, and quickly determined how to enter the matrix without seeing all of the exposition slides due to the lanterns held by the inhabitants, which threw my progression through the DLC into disarray. While such sequence breaks could occur in the base game, they necessarily didn't shunt you too far off the intended path due to the fact that every branch of the game generally narrows as it goes (perhaps with exception to Ember Twin) and ties back into the others, whereas the shape of progression in Echoes of the Eye is that of a barbell. In contrast, the introduction of the DLC is very open but quickly narrows down to the bottleneck of figuring out how to enter the Secret World, before widening back out once you enter it. I owe a lot of my wasted time in the DLC and my overall negative reception of its pacing to that structure, though it was further reinforced by the limited interactivity with both The Stranger at large and the Secret World.

One of the best mechanics in Outer Wilds is the jetpack because of all of the ways with which you are able to use it to smoothen your interaction with the world. Intelligent use of your thrusters allows you to utilize the curvature of the planet you're currently on to accelerate beyond your normal walking clip (essentially entering into a very low-altitude orbit once you go fast enough) or to overcome cliffs as a a player-made shortcut. Both of these are much rarer occurrences in The Stranger and downright impossible within the The Secret World, with the most desirable skip within The Stranger, to hop from a tree near the dam up to the top of the tallest cliffs, seemingly being impossible. Combined with fast movement in The Stranger being more-or-less limited to the use of the rafts, my aforementioned problem with the limited use of our spaceship, and the moment to moment gameplay within The Secret World boiling down to observe -> position properly, Echoes of the Eye felt less interactive than base Outer Wilds, which just left me bored a lot more often than I want from a game.

And yet, I do still have a lot of love for it. It's not as good as base Outer Wilds, but then very little is.

Charming little point and click adventure game for kids. Lots of dead ends, which could potentially frustrate.

Would be a 3.5 if not for the performance problems on switch. The game started to lag like crazy once I got to the temple, which was also the part of the game that I cared the least for. The dioramas rock, but they're a lot more endearing in modern human settlements and facilities. Puzzles are decent, but the story is not good. Overall a mixed bag that's carried by its cool art. Play it on PC- maybe it performs better there.

We're all doomed. But we can make things better for those who come next. And if we're lucky, we may live on in their memories and in their actions.

Simply a masterpiece.