I just had so much fuckin’ fun goofing around with stupid mechanics experiments and the game so frequently rewarded those experiments with humor, wonky success, and reactivity. Perhaps it helped that my wife was frequently playing next to me. This game is great with an audience!

Also cool that this game is so polarizing among people I respect. Feels, for better or worse, like the torch has truly been passed to a new generation of creative at Nintendo with different sensibilities than the people who founded these franchises.

Tbh I liked the focused combat and density of Sekiro better than the sprawl of this but the true feeling of otherworldliness I got soaking in the Lands Between for over a hundred hours is second-to-none. I love the matter-of-fact way the characters in FromSoft games take for granted the intensely odd, often grotesque specifics of their universe, that unfamiliarity married to self-seriousness feels like religion in a unique way, i.e. “of course you eat the body of the Son of the Father on Sundays”.

Stumbling on some of the discoveries was invigorating, and the flexibility of play styles offered made it super fun to talk about with other people - even if i did miss the way BOTW would force you to change things up all the time instead of encouraging you marry yourself to your build and the weapons you’ve painstakingly invested in.

Also, the shardbearer boss designs might be my favorite as a set of… any game ever?

V. good but went from “favorite game of all time!!!!” to “i’m pretty exhausted by this” by the end. Could’ve used some cutting down and editing of optional tombs and such, or conversely I could use some editing of my personality to be less OCD.

Actually think the combat is pretty great on replaying, refreshing in that the free-aim of Wiimote controls felt stifled when stapled onto the first two games that never required it by virtue of their original GameCube-controller-based design.

Elysia is peak, and continue to love the detailed eerie environmental design Retro kicks butt at. Centering the game around the idea of your ship being movable/upgrade able is a fun way of making this one distinct, though the heavy militaristic “federation” presence throughout really takes away from the sense of isolation and… Samus being a subversive element in a cutthroat world that I love about the other games. SPOILERS I kept waiting for the federation to be corrupt or to double cross her or something as a crux of the plot but it never got very interesting like that.

Also am not sure the push and pull of “hyper mode” works as well as they want. Feels a bit more confusing whether I’m making a good call to sacrifice the health to use it or not instead of being something where I feel like I’m making smart decisions.

Worst of the Prime trilogy imo but still a blast. Retro rocks.

Totally respect and understand the 2⭐️ reviews on here tbh, but I had a great time with the intentionally repetitive, oddly meditative-amidst-the-onslaught nature of this thing. A two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance, eking out little extra bits of skill and muscle memory every couple runs to do better enough to give yourself another bit of edge on the next level and so on…. some things could have been better explained and I think you ought to somehow elegantly be able to choose which run gets solidified if you tie your existing age floor at the end of a level, but those are nitpicks.

And voice acting aside, I found the loving homage pastel ink brush pastiche of the world and the confident minimalism of the story pretty beautiful.

Playing this as a launch title must have been revelatory, so much of the full-fledged SotN experience playable hanging out under some fruit trees in a backyard somewhere with enough light to see the screen. Amazing.

Playing it for the first time now, though, it felt a bit by the numbers seeing it through. The sharp pixel art, bangin’ soundtrack, and great mid-game boss battles were highlights, and I did enjoy the schtick of starting out dumped into the basement then working your way up and around the castle, the sections were linked at interesting points…

But a fair bit of tedium navigating back and forth within each section with same-y rooms. Getting more of the magic cards to play around with the effects of along the way would have helped me make my own variety across these sections but by the end I only had 5 or 6 of them and not a very enticing prospect to figure out how to farm them after all the exploration has already been dispensed with.

The Camilla fight’s great old-school gaming operatic soundtrack jumpin-n-slashing vibes earn this a half-star more than I was gonna give it.

It PAINS me to give this anything less than a full 5🌟 rating. 😭

The ambition and wonder and intricate assemblage of this is in many ways the original Outer Wilds in microcosm, and once I was into it I was totally engrossed in the painstaking but emotionally rewarding process of pulling this new thing apart to get at its “core” in the same way I had the original. I loooove the way the game starts feeling like almost nothing has changed in the universe before it dawns on you what the experience will even be. I love the ambiguous malice that tinges the experience in a way that makes it feel unique from the original, and the bevy of new storytelling and mechanical ideas that don’t retread nearly anything from the original and thematically link to one another yet again. The music is again transcendent.

I can’t believe they pulled off this emotional/mechanical magic trick twice and yet…. one new mechanic is so frustrating and rough-edged when combined with the time-punishing nature of the loop it pulled me out of the experience entirely for a couple of hours, which was a supreme bummer. Stuck with it, though, and the highs are so high I’ll still carry it with me the way I do the original as something truly special.

Prolly shoulda done a spoiler-y review cuz attempting not to has had me talking in vague circles. 😜🦉

Haven't fallen this in love with an ace attorney game since the original trilogy. 💖

Which is funny, because on-paper, a lot of things didn't work for me (the drawn-out sentimentality of the epilogue, some of how the concept of "criminality" was framed, a number of logistical loose-ends tied-up both too-neatly & too-at-length)

But damn if it isn't thrilling & heartwarming to hang out with these broad, earnest characters as they unpack a complicated world. Resonated hard.

Also the final "logic & reasoning spectacular" made me so happy 🕺 :-)

Telltale really did always do their licenses justice, imo.

There's something incredibly cozy and escapist to me about this series in particular, which is a different tone than the animated shorts strike but fits well for the length of these little puzzlers.

Also, I was a focus tester on this game. Good times! How has it been 13 years... 😭

One of the more fascinating games I’ve played in some time, really don’t think it’d hit right on anything but phone - made me uncomfortable and nervous and confused and weary and hopeful, that melange of shitty dating scene feelings punctuated by intermittent adrenaline. The writing was all good and distinct between different potential partners, could’ve been really easy to break the spell of the thing if not. So few games cover this ground with any subtlety, was a breath of fresh air I didn’t know I needed.

Also I accidentally ended the game not realizing that’s what I was doing by getting into a relationship, but you know what that’s pretty true-to-life. 🙃

Wait so this game actually owns? Never tried it back in its own era because the marketing suggested something a lot more derivative and less confident than what this actually is. A flawed gem to be sure, and the combat did get long in the tooth about halfway through. But still… damn! There’s not much else out there I can think of doing what Remedy is doing with this sort of mindfuck lynchian horror.

And some of the sensory overwhelm they accomplish here with light and shadows tumbling over each other spasmodically is just supremely cool. Watched a bit of play through after finishing on YouTube and feels like the remaster actually took a step back in this regard vs. the original that I played?

With this and Control, Remedy has made a real fan out of me. Can’t wait to play the sequel.

I am totally drawn in, won over and charmed by the world of the ace attorney games, I’ve loved every one even if the last one I played (Dual Destinies) was missing some of the crackling dialogue and cohesive world-building of the previous entries.

This one was a delightful return to form, though, and doing a period piece ace attorney was a great way to inject some novelty into the theming, characters, and casework. It’s biggest strength and weakness is the pretty slow-building way the rapport between the characters and the protagonist’s place in society grows throughout the game, it’s great and earnest and touching by the end because of that slow build but it makes it harder to crack into than the earlier trilogy. But that makes me really excited for the sequel now that our fish-out-of-water lead is more established, especially with the tantalizing loose ends this one dangles at the player at the end.

Also SPOILER WARNING??? as lovingly done as the hd remaster is I really wish I could have played this on the 3ds for nostalgia’s sake and also because the investigation phases have diorama style backgrounds (like Holme’s residence) clearly designed to pop in 3d as you look around, and especially because the last case really explicitly dofs its hat to the 3ds’ unique functionality in a way they seem to do a clever job working around in 2d but still… would’ve been cool to feel the original design’s platform synergy in that case.