An interesting revival of Giana Sisters though the primary interesting factor is just the source material of choice. Like, we're bringing back Giana Sisters? The Giana Sisters?? Well, okay! (Yes, I suppose the DS game is the actual revival, but this seemed to garner way more attention in its day?)

Anyways, it's totally okay! There's a fairly deep move set and once you reach the second world the platforming gains a more puzzley nature that demands more thoughtfully timed changes between the dream states. It does harken back to the "challenge of retro era platforming" (especially if you're aiming to 100% levels) while never being quite as bullshit as the og game. But, the levels and the dream states are bland. They aren't interesting or fun to be exploring. Going from one dream state to the other just means going from one ho-hum asset pack to the other. They aren't even drastically different in a clever or charming way. It's going from purple acid to green acid without any meaningful change to the levels other than this platform is visible and this one isn't or this one platform has spikes on it and this one doesn't.

The blandness wasn't an issue when I was able to move at a decent clip through the levels, but after the 20th attempt to get my timing just right for a series of upward dashes while dodging ghosts I realized I didn't care about getting through the level anymore. I just wanted to never see this boring castle again in my life.

Just a lil robot wearing silly costumes and floating around a planet, ain't life great! Well I suppose life would be better if MOM wasn't in pieces, but then we wouldn't have the premise for the game.

Seriously though, Grow Up is a fun, medium sized open world platformer that has a lot of creativity when it comes to its world building and sense of exploration. The controls and movement feel appropriate for a little robot in space, though, as a result, they aren't quite precise enough for me to get fully hooked and locked in to 100% everything. My only real complaint is having to grow the star plants, it's a great concept but in practice it's their too unwieldy and platforming on the plant itself is too rough for it to be fun when it can't quite reach your intended target and then you have to turn around and find the next growth spot to try again (and probably again and again and again.)

Really excellent puzzle platformer! There's one or two jumps that feel a little absurd in terms of the timing, but the bigger issue is the push and pull between it wanting players to crack the puzzley nature of the levels with moments demanding quick reaction times that feel out of step with the core of the game. This makes it so that sometimes the only way forward is to lose a bunch of lives to figure out the correct path or order of operations, but, hey, it's a lot of fun. Especially with doing the bonus areas and beating the top time attack scores. Ended up totally surprised how much fun I had with this.

There are very few late 90s/early 00s 3D platformers that I genuinely enjoy and Pac-Man World 2 forced me to really look inward and accept that lol.

As a whole, it's fairly inoffensive and it's so short that it really can't overstay its welcome. Except for the submarine sections; fuck the submarine sections. Don't include a "targeting" system for your torpedoes if it doesn't mean anything like what are we doing here!

The platforming is ~fine~ throughout, but I found myself fighting with the camera every few minutes which can make the moment to moment really feel like a slog. There's a few skating and rolling segments, that seem to be widely reviled, but these were probably some of my favorite sections? These were some of the few times where I felt like I entered a sort of flow state with the game even if the run would end abruptly in death.

The look of Pac-Man running around in his little hat, taking quick breaks, and trying to get home to his family again and again is so endearing that it's shame the rest of the game was so bad that I came to despise our friendly protagonist.

It's not that the game doesn't have any regard for players, there's infinite continues and fairly generous checkpoints, but literally every other decision made feels like its in the spirit of thwarting fun. The physics feel taken right out of the worst ice worlds of the era, but with the spirited decision to have every level be an ice level (except, dear reader, there isn't actually any ice to be seen; the world is just like that.) Precision jumps are usually conquered not through trial and error or by getting better, but through dying and a checkpoint that puts you on the side of the jump upon respawn. But, perhaps most damning, the power pellets in Pac-Land are typically found at the end of the level so you'd have to run back through the level if you want to actually use them!

It's more Control! I'm glad I had waited a few months after beating the main game to start the DLCs; otherwise, I think my tolerance for "more Control" would've been too low to make it through. The story here is interesting, both in terms of Jesse adapting to her new role in the Bureau and the Bureau's history, but it's a pretty slow drip feed until, almost suddenly, it's over. There are consequences for wherever the sequel picks up, but nothing so monumental that makes this a must play.

Honestly, my biggest grip is that despite there being two new powers, all the combat encounters still play out exactly the same as they did in the core game. Floating and dashing around while throwing objects at enemies is fun, but after all this time in the universe it lacks any real sense of tension and grows old.

First time playing any version of picross and this was an okay place to start? Solidified my interest in the genre and I'll certainly be playing more but the difficulty ramp is actually insane. Setting aside that I'm not ready to not be told if made a mistake (especially when it's really easy to misclick in this version), it's bizarre to include two puzzles that are straight up illogical by the rules of the game. Love the Pokémon puzzles tho, even if Togepi drove me up a wall.

(illogical puzzles: https://imgur.com/a/Grt36c7 )

Played on hard mode for the first time which is, in theory, harder because there's more enemies throughout levels and they introduce later world enemies earlier on. But, the real reason it's hard is because of the frequent slow downs from the game struggling to handle all the enemies on screen and their various animations along with Mario's and, while it's not an ideal source of difficulty, it did make it more challenging. I really just love this game. I think it offers some really unique spins on the series canon even if it's a touch too easy.