In my deep dive into classic Nintendo games, there has been one particularly crucial discovery I have made: I do not care for the NES catalog. I think the reason for this is that a lot of the games (FOR ME) seem to be a cross between the more fleshed out games that Nintendo would make in the next generation and the more arcadey games that were commonplace in the 80s. I don't really like any of the more fleshed-out games as much as Nintendo's SNES catalog and I think Namco had much much stronger arcade titles personally.

This game, on the other hand, I got the hype here. The first Super Mario (which I've played most of) is good but a very bare-bones platformer. Lost Levels is basically that game but funny due to how rage-inducing it is. And then Mario 2 is just.... not good lol. Mario 3 has a lot of really sticks out for the Mario franchise as distinctly Mario and just generally more surprising/challenging (Lost Levels excluded).

They can say the first Mario game started it all, but this feels like the game that gave us the Mario we know now. Probably not my favorite 2D Mario, but one I had a great time with and one that I respect very much as an NES game I actually felt like completing.

Gran Turismo 1 walked so others can drive.


Compared to many of the popular racing games that existed before its time, such as Ridge Racer and Super Mario Kart, Gran Turismo would be one of the first games that offered a more realistic take on driving. Arcade-style drifting, speed boosts, and softer crashes were eschewed in favour of learning proper racing lines and managing your tires. Like the rest of the games in the series, this game's focus emulating real-world racing; whilst still retaining the easy-to-pick-up playability that the aforementioned Mario Kart series had.

There are about 140 cars in Gran Turismo 1; an obscenely large amount compared to the likes of other racers at the time like the Need For Speed games. As expected from a Japanese developer, the majority of the manufacturers originate from Japan, with many of the well-known brands like Mitsubishi, Toyota and Nissan being appearing in GT1 as well. Unlike future entries in the Gran Turismo series, there are very few "foreign" manufacturers; with only two British manufacturers (Aston Martin and TVR) and three American manufacturers (Chevrolet, Chrysler/Dodge (depending on the region you're playing it in) and, in the US version, Acura). The absence of many manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Ford may be startling to players who have played any of the other games in the franchise - especially to players who may only know German, French or Italian.


There are two main modes of play in GT1. Arcade Mode is very simple to explain; you pick a car and track and race against others. Winning more races unlocks more cars and more tracks, going from smaller, easier tracks like High Speed Ring, a track mostly filled with gentle turns, to more complex tracks like the infamous Special Stage Route 11, a highly technical track in the city set at night, with many 90 degree turns. All well and good, but where the game truly shines, however, is in the other mode; Simulation Mode.


In Simulation Mode, players start off with a mere 10,000 dollars, with not a car to their name. With all of the shiny new cars being outside of the player's budget, most players will have to brave the deadly frontiers known as the Used Car Dealership. Instead of players being able to start off with all the shiny NSX's and Skylines they could dream of (or play in Arcade Mode), players are instead forced to settile for old, unattractive cars from the 80s and early 90s, progressively getting newer, flashier, faster cars in the process.

After getting used to their car in Spot Races, to progress any further, players will have to obtain a racing license to be able to race in any of the other events. There are three different tiers of racing licenses - a B License, A License, and an IA License; with each license having 8 tests attached to it. Each separate license is more difficult than the last - B Licenses teaches the players simple driving techniques like cornering and braking, A License teaches the players advanced driving skills such as taking multiple corners, and IA License has the player complete multiple 1-lap time trials across the GT1 tracks.

Each license test has three different levels of completion - a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal, depending on how fast a player completes a particular license test. Gold is the best, while bronze just means you passed (barely sometimes) Unlike in later games, only the time requirement of getting Bronze is listed, making getting Gold Medal runs particularly difficult and annoying. By completing all 8 tests of a particular license successfully, the player will obtain that particular license, not only unlocking the next license for players to attempt to succeed, but also opens up new events for the players to race in. Just getting bronze on each test is good enough to obtain a license, however, if a player gets all golds on a particular license, they obtain a high-powered free car to use. These can be used to breeze through many of the lower-tier races in the game due to the prize cars having high power, whilst saving money that can be used to upgrade or buy cars later on, though obtaining all gold medals on a license can be extremely tough to do.


Outside of 2-lap time trials and no-license spot races, there are two categories of events a player can enter - the GT League and the Special Events. With the exception of the three Endurance Races, each event consists of multiple races at different tracks, with racers obtaining more points the better their finishing position is. Like many real-world race events like the F1 and NASCAR, the driver with the most points after all the races in an event have been completed wins. Fucking up on a corner and coming in third in one race won't matter in the grand scheme of things as long as you win the rest of the races. With the exception of the GT World Cup, finishing first in each event obtains the player a new car for free; these can be used in future races, or sold for money for additional cars and/or upgrades. Each prize car is either a new car you cannot buy normally from a dealership, or a car you could buy with a unique paint-job applied to it. Each individual race offers a monetary prize reward as well for all positions. The higher the position, the higher the money - there is an incentive to finishing first in every race as you get more money, though finishing last still gives you some money as well in case the cars you have are all slow as shit.

In GT League, players race in four different events; the Sunday Cup, Clubman Cup, GT Cup and GT World Cup. As players progress through each of the four cups, the tracks get more complex and the opponents get faster; whereas the Sunday Cup has the player race against low-powered cars like Honda Civics, the GT World Cup requires players to get into a race car to stand a chance against their opponent's own race cars.

In Special Events, players often race in events where there are limitations on what cars can be picked, ranging from what drivetrain a car has, to what country a car is from, with one of the most difficult events in the series requiring players to drive fully stock cars. Special Events also plays home to three different endurance races - races that can last up to two hours, for all gamers that had bladders of steel and/or a savestate function. Endurance races not only last very long, but also feature "tire wear", requiring players to pit in multiple times per race, lest they deal with their car becoming slowly undrivable over time.


One feature GT1 innovated was the ability to provide upgrades to cars. Car upgrades generally required some thought put into them - upgrading your car by putting the fastest turbo inside it would often leave the car undrivable in many of the races. Upgrades ranged from easy for anyone to add - such as better tires and larger turbos, to stuff catered to the hardcore racers - like being able to manually adjust each individual gear ratio's of a car. In addition, this was one of the few games, alongside GT2 (and, to a significantly lesser extent, GT5), to enable players to give their cars flashy paint jobs that often emulated many real world racing cars of the time (such as the Subaru Impreza Rally Car and the legendary TOM's Castrol Supra GT that was the cover car of GT3).


All of these features are very commonplace now in the racing genre - from progressively buying better and better cars to upgrading existing cars to giving cars flashy paint-jobs, but Gran Turismo 1 was arguably the first to incorporate what would now become very commonplace features there. For this, it's a very impressive game, and certainly worth a look at. However, the actual game itself has largely been done better since then, and there's largely very few reasons to play GT1 by itself now (primarily for the original Special Stage Route 11 layout). If you're looking for a PS1 racing game, I'd be more prone to recommend a few different games over this, like Gran Turismo 2.

I feel insane for writing this but I actually think this is the worst RaC game on the PS2. The game is pretty clearly rushed due to a 1 year dev cycle and Sony forcing a multiplayer mode into the game despite Insomniac having zero experience with anything like that.
Enemy variety goes down DRASTICALLY compared to the previous games, with 3 different colors of the 4 Tyhrranoid enemy types covering most of the game. A lot of somewhat awkwardly recycled multiplayer maps are thrown in as entire planets. Planets are also much more linear with most planets not even having branching paths at all. Music is also partially recycled from the previous games.
The weapons in this game however are the strongest in the whole PS2 era, despite having a slightly smaller arsenal compared to R&C 2, with each weapon feeling quite well balanced and most of them retaining their usefulness later in the game. I honestly feel like I would rate this game higher if I never found out about all the amount of content that had to be cut, but knowing all that just feels so freaking sad

I've always said that in order to reach new audiences videogame developers needed to be bold and make changes.

And let's be honest here, FromSoftware games were in dire need of some changes.

However by making these changes there's a possibility that some members of the core audience might be alienated.

This is a necessary step of progress.

Unfortunatley for me, I'm part of that alienated core audience.

I think this is a good game, great at times even.
But I'm 15 hours in and I just can't lie to myself any longer.

It's not for me. I've seldom been this bored while playing a videogame.

Hope everyone else on here has a great time with the game though.

I do think that changing things up like this was a good step for FromSoftware and I can't wait for their next project.

Bloodborne doesn't really need my endorsement to be known as one of the greatest games of all time. Still, I'm happy to add my voice to the choir. A truly stunning achievement, Bloodborne is both accessible and tough managing to train players so that each obstacle overcome feels like a true achievement. If someone is kicking your ass you either have to get better or think smarter (in terms of either levelling up or fighting). Ooozing lovecraftian atmosphere meets Victorian horror, Bloodborne's aeshetic is iconic and a (creepy) pleasure to spend time with. The lore is just right with more you can dig into online if you like, or slowly piece together the chilling story of Yarnham. Most importantly, this game makes you feel like a true hard badass. Very few games I go back and replay but I could easily see my self going back to Bloodborne, I sunk 50 hours into this in the end and I loved mostly every minute.

If you own a PS4 you must play this game. Don't worry about the difficulty, you'll get through it. A true hunter is never alone.

Sucker Punch outclasses Ubisoft's 12(!) Assassin's Creed games by focusing on telling one good story instead of two boring simultaneous stories. Ghost of Tsushima is the superior historical swashbuckler game in every way. The combat is consistently engaging and fun, particularly the one-on-one duels. The visuals are fantastic; I'm not usually one to touch photo mode but I found myself coming back to it again and again. The main story is very effective thanks to a lot of sharp, character-focused writing, and the ending packs a supreme emotional punch. It's great!

...

That said, the fatal flaw is the structure. The open-world format is not conducive to this kind of storytelling, and even though there are some great rewards for exploration as well as some pretty neat side stories, the experience of tracking down every last fox den, haiku spot, hot spring, and bamboo strike quickly becomes a dull slog through a checklist of content. At a certain point I started to forget why I was still playing. But then I'd come back to the main story and be like "oh right, this is actually really good when it wants to be." I think the lesson here is that every developer except the Zelda team needs to stop making open-world games for a while. Because all you do by making a game like this open-world is ensure that the pacing suffers tremendously under the weight of the all-consuming Content.

Lost Frontier is both a 3D platformer and a surprisingly fleshed out flight game, with multiple aircraft. You can explore the maps in your plane looking for collectibles, and launch Daxter at enemy planes to loot them for upgrades. Unfortunately the main platforming is only decent and is overshadowed by the flight, although I kind of have to give the game credit for that because decent flight experiences are exceptionally rare. On top of that, I found Daxter's chatter throughout the game to be hilarious, even as someone who isn't a fan of the franchise.

I basically do not remember anything from this game besides two things: one, Haytham's stylish outfit, which is very stylish, and two, the fun I've had with its naval combat feature.

I'm not, by the way, trying to be facetious or anything - I honestly, truly have forgotten basically 90% of this game. I have flashes of moments of gameplay, sometimes jumping through a forest, sometimes throwing a tomahawk... and also memories of being disappointed by its ending. And... yeah, I think that's it? If I don't remember about a game, then it was probably not worth playing.

This game is fucked up.

I only ever played Rayman 2 & 3, and I thought "Hey, why not play the whole trilogy." Rayman 1 looks real cute.
Nope, get fucked idiot. You just started playing a game that doesn't care about your feelings.

Let's get the visual and audio stuff out of the way first. The game looks and sounds amazing, especially considering it's 1995 release date. Some of the tracks send you on an out of body experience, if you won't play it listen to the OST, you won't regret it.

Gameplay is slick. You can shmoove in this game and you will have to. Oh you will have to my friend.

This game might be one of the hardest commercial releases I have ever played. This is coming from a person who played and finished a good chunk of the NES and SNES library. There are some MAJOR difficulty spikes in this game. At times I was questioning whether or not I was playing a romhack.
This is all paired with a brutal lifes and continue system.

There is nothing frame perfect in this game but some stuff felt too damn close.

This all being said I loved it all the way through up until the final boss which was underwhelming to say the least.

Definitley worth your time.

This is the worst kind of game for me personally.

It gets so much stuff right, there's honestly cool shit and good ideas in here. Sadly this is the kind of game which is worth less than the sum of it's parts.

Let's get the most obvious and glaring stuff out of the way first.
Shadow of the Colossus is a game which came out in 2005 and is generally regarded as a classic. Laser focused design, no compromise whatsoever.

Praey for the Gods is a game that came out in 2021 and is born of conflicted priorities and also apeing Shadow of the Colossus.
I really hate to do this but if anyone would claim that the comparison is not invited I'd probably advise that person to visit a doctor of some kind.

This game, for better and for worse, mimics everything Shadow of the Colossus did. And I mean everything.
Open world, boss encounter focused gameplay, a deity which help you on your quest, the protags motivation, the climbing and sword stab mechanics to damage bosses and basically everything else.

Honestly there's nothing wrong with this in my opinion. The problem is that the developers took everything from Shadow whole cloth without contemplating if this is healthy for their game or not. This becomes painfully obvious once the mechanics of the other big inspiration for this game kick in. Zelda: Breath of the fucking wild. This game also has survival mechanics. Upgradeable gear, hunger management, temperature management, another meter which I didn't understand or care about (I beat this game lol), breakable weapons, stamina and health upgrades after collecting a certain number of something, crafting and of course a glider or a sailcloth in this instance.

These 2 sets of gameplay mechanics are at constant odds with each other, with the exception of the sailcloth. They basically don't even intertwine at all. The survival and crafting mechanics are only really relevant during the traversal to the next boss location. Once arrived the game switches into shadow mode and the kinda puzzle like boss fight begins, ignoring everything which came before. For example you do not need any form of weapon to beat these bosses. Every boss conveniently has boss kill switches etched into it's body. These switches work exactly like the stab mechanics in shadow by the way.

This is turning into a bit of a ramble but it's just so glaringly obvious that the game tried to do waaaay to much than was good for it. There are really well designed pretty looking normal enemies scattered throughout the open world. But killing these enemies is straight up useless. Killing these guys doesn't help you in any way shape or form. The ones I killed didn't even drop anything. No joke, after realising this I ran past every single enemy without any form of consequence whatsoever. Fighting them isn't fun either, they have too much health and drain your resources, mainly health, so why bother.

All of these problems are summed up before even starting the game. On the difficulty select screen you are able to just straight up disable most of the survival aspects of the game. I have never seen so little confidence in their own ideas and vision which this team of developers has displayed here. So scared to put their foot down and say: "This is not just a Shadow game, it's also a survival game.". No no you can disable it all and have your inferior little Shadow of the Colossus clone.

That's sad, almost depressing honestly. Especially if you consider that some of the bosses in this game are fucking awesome. The 4th boss is straight up better than some bosses in Shadow. The visuals are great, I really liked some of the animations and the sound design is commendable for an indie title. Really great art direction here too. I would say I love everything about the visuals but that's not quite true I'll get to that in a bit.

There is some jank throughout but considering the budget and experience of the team I'd say they did great here. Amazing work put in all the wrong places.

Okay last thing and this is a bit of a personal point. They setup this world right, a post apocalyptic frozen wasteland. Humanity is done basically. All hope is lost, yaddah yaddah yaddah. So for their main character model they go with a absolutley pristine looking person, which by all accounts could've just washed ashore from a cosplay convention. She's wearing makeup, doesn't have a single wound or scar, she has rosy cheeks, her clothes look fashionable and the model doesn't change throughout in anyway shape or form. Not even blue lips when she's about to freeze to death. The model honestly looks fresh out of the new SFM porn collection on pornhub. You set up this desolate world with almost no hope left and the model looks like it was made by Mattel. Why skimp out there? Just thinking about the Wander's model and how it changes to look sickly, almost undead like as the game goes on makes this look embarassing. Again Shadow came out in 2005. As of the time of writing that was 17 years ago.

This game could've been amazing and I honestly think the team working on it learned alot from this. I'm interested to see their next project.
Can't recommend playing this one though.