It's hard to not talk about how rough this game was at launch. I was there day one on PC, fighting the graphics settings to try and get anything playable. Eventually I just fell off. The gameplay wasn't enough for me to keep going and I wasn't finding fun in the story. But now coming back after all of the fixes and post Edgerunners, my experience was a pretty good one.
The story is definitely the biggest stand out for me. All the philosophical subjects like the soul, legacies, loyalty, all coming together in a game where you get to have Keanu Reeves in your head 24/7. It's a shame to know all of these wonderful side quests were here from the start and the buggy launch dissuaded people like me from sticking with it. But I'm really glad I came back to finish what I'd started.

I'm pretty sure my No More Heroes 1 review also says "if aesthetics can carry a video game". That statement couldn't be more true for a game like this one. I'm gonna be totally blunt: there is very little fun to be had in this game. The combat isn't as bad as No More Heroes 2, but what's there just feels so monotonous. More often I'd leave a stage thinking "Well the next one will be better, right?" Let me tell you. In this game's six stages, only one of them is good. Everything else is either just there or is terrible.
That all being said, man I love this series for it's aesthetic. I think going into this series was a big test for me to see what aspects of a game I value more than others. If I can love this game and No More Heroes 1 despite how whatever the gameplay is, I think it speaks a lot to how much I can dig a game for it's vibe alone.
Except for No More Heroes 2. That game will always be the exception.

If you like Pokémon for the part where you go out and catch/battle Pokémon, this game is your wet dream. If you like Pokémon for systems like EV's, abilities, and multiplayer, this game is your nightmare.
But seriously, this game might be really ugly but it's just about everything I've personally wanted from Pokémon in a long time. I'd hope they can make the areas a bit more fun to explore if they keep this model going forward. But knowing Nintendo, this could very well be the most successful one off they never try and keep moving forward.

Resident Evil 4 might be one of the best video games ever made. The reality is that most people already know this, so I don't have to say a whole lot. This game excels so much in being just an incredible ride from start to finish. After I was thoroughly disappointed by Resident Evil Village, I booted this up just to wash out the bad after taste. It worked, and I was amazed that my ability to play the game on a DualShock 4 translated over perfectly from when I played it on GameCube and Nintendo Wii controllers. This game is incredible, but don't make the mistake in thinking that Resident Evil 4 is what Resident Evil as a series is all about. It's an absolute banger on an entry, but it took a risk in changing up the identity of the franchise up to that point. A risk that I think did pay off in the years to follow with similar formatted Resident Evil games (Resident Evil 5 and 6 are good and you should feel good about liking them).

Imagine everything that on the surface makes you think of Darkest Dungeon but none of the fun you'd get from actually playing it.
The combat is worse, the slow roguelite progression over every failed run feels bad, and the driving is actually terrible.
I'd rather not keep forcing myself to keep playing or hold out for when I finally have enough stuff to make the game fun.
Please stop making games like this that are only fun after you've sunk cost fallacy'd yourself into not being able to remember how much you had to grind to get there.
Darkest Dungeon 1 is a genuinely good and fun party/town management game with a great aesthetic. Darkest Dungeon 2 just feels like it's chasing the roguelite trend with systems that work against wanting to play multiple runs again and again.
Please just go play Darkest Dungeon, this ain't it chief.

Resident Evil Village is the "I wish I was playing Resident Evil 4" of Resident Evil games. This feeling was so strong throughout my entire first (and only) playthrough of this game that it almost feels like the developers intended it. The game shallowly tries to recreate the camp that made Resident Evil 4 an all time classic without ever really wearing it on it's sleeve the same way Resident Evil 4 does. It's a shame because some of the segments that go for a more action set piece can actually be really engaging in how you try and manage your ammo cache versus how many dudes you have to smoke. But the same magic just isn't there, yet you never lose that feeling like the game is genuinely trying. It's like watching someone do flips exclaiming that they're Spider-Man, but you can plainly see the price tag they forgot to take off their costume just as they face plant onto concrete. It's sad, and you just want to go home.

I don't care that this game isn't as robust as Animal Crossing: New Leaf, or even that the new QoL changes come with just as many backsteps that they still haven't changed in it's first year of being released. I was looking for a pink durag to go with my house cleaning outfit and Fauna just gave me one within 5 minutes of playing without me ever even saying it out loud. This game reads my mind harder than my phone listens for when I name drop products I'd buy. Giving it anything less than 5/5 stars could mean that I'll be killed in my sleep tonight. Stay safe everyone.

Katamari Damacy in recent years has become one of my favorite video games of all time. It's hard to find a game like it that lets you just have such a wonderful time just rolling everything up into a giant ball while listening to an incredible soundtrack. We Love Katamari is fascinating in that it's one of those meta sequels where I don't think anyone ever expected Damacy to take off quite like it did. In a sense, We Love Katamari is a sequel that was made for everyone that is literally saying "we love Katamari". That love is then expressed throughout the games narrative of fulfilling requests of fans that just think the Prince and the King of All Cosmos are just the coolest guys in the world.

That being said, I'm not sure I can rate We Love Katamari as high as Katamari Damacy just because it doesn't feel like it's doing a whole lot more that Damacy had already set the foundation for. It's a short game just like Damacy, and it does have it's very own original soundtrack and new stages, but otherwise it doesn't bring very much to the "rolling up a giant ball full of stuff" category of gameplay. That's not to say the game isn't fun, but the most I felt like it did new was have more gimmick stages where your clear conditions are to have a certain amount or types of items in your katamari.

I did still really enjoy my time with We Love Katamari, and I do think its goal as a sequel wasn't so much to reinvent the wheel, or in this case the katamari. More so I think this was just an excuse to give fans more of Katamari Damacy, as it feels more like an extension of Damacy rather than it's own game. I believe both games these days are probably best enjoyed when played back to back, and I'm very happy to have both of them easily attainable on multiple platforms for people to enjoy. There really aren't any other games like these and I still derive a great amount of joy just rolling up a big ball after a hard day at work. Recommended!

I won't rate this game but man was I bored within the first couple of hours. I could go on about what I didn't like but I think it boils down to it feeling like just another point you in this direction open world game. A lot of the UI that I can turn off in the options doesn't feel like they intended for you to ever turn any of it off, so having all the notifications and markers on my screen at all time was a big turn off. Maybe there's a fun game hidden in here somewhere, but I certainly will never know.

I'll preface by saying I'm not what I'd consider a Sonic fan. I never played any of the original 2D Sonic games and the only 3D ones I've played are Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog. I only mention this so that it can be clear I didn't have that high of expectations going into Frontiers since I've not followed Sonic for much of his journey into 3D.
That being said, I did have a lot of fun with Frontiers. This feels like what I would've wanted Sonic to be if games before hadn't already done something similar. Overworlds full of micro sized courses, the running around part feeling good, breaking open courses because you're running so fast that you circumvent an entire small course to get the reward early, rewarded exploration when really you were just running around, this is all great stuff.
I won't lie and say it was all good, though. Some 2 out of the 5 overworlds are fairly restrictive in letting you get around and 1 of the 5 is only there for a couple short minutes. The cyberspace courses are also pretty hit or miss, making them not too fun to replay to get all the missions cleared for key items you need.
These issues aside though, I did find myself feeling more positive about the game by the end than I felt while in the middle. This game's quality feels like a pretty perfect upside down bell curve, of which Sonic is perpetually running on with absolute head banging tier music playing as he goes.

Curse of the Moon is a game that I really like, but I get this feeling that the game doesn't like me. On one hand, I LOVE that you have multiple characters you can swap between in a party that you unlock as you play the game. My favorite character to play as is definitely Gebel in how simple his bat attack and transformation are, but for giving me that small feeling that I now get to play as Dracula. On the other hand, every time I lose a party member because I misjudged a jump over a death pit, I want to curl up into a ball and cry.

The game itself isn't very difficult on Veteran, but I'll be damned if I'm going through the level the long way AND going to miss any secrets because Gebel scraped his knee and died.

I'd probably like this game a lot more if I could make it more difficult without losing a character every time I die, but that also ties into the challenging aspect of the game that I don't think is replicated enough in a lot of modern games these days that try to go for a classic Castlevania style. I want to love you, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. I suspect in time, I will. I just wish you would love me, too.