Incredibly cool atmosphere for the time wasted on that awful platforming. I was really excited to see what this edgy ass Genesis game had in store for me. You watch the opening crawl, realize you have a double jump and can slash in any direction, and read the introductory text to the levels thinking this shit is about to be so cool. Then you experience having to use the double jump to make it to platforms. Trudging through the water level makes it hard to believe this game was ever playtested. I love this game's aesthetic so its low quality in practice just breaks my heart.

I don’t know what’s with Game Boy platformers having random shoot ‘em up sections but I’m all for it, nothing like seeing my favorite plumber commit aerial manslaughter against some octopuses and a literal cloud!

It’s pretty interesting how despite the Mario series being pretty off the wall setting wise when you really think about it, Super Mario Land sticks out by being even weirder somehow, and I mean that as the biggest compliment it can be. A result that could only come from the combination of the lack of the series prominent director and the Game Boy’s own particularities, this game kinda fascinates simply because of the fact it exists at it is, and that no game would really rival it in that regard ever since… maybe Mario Land 2 and Odyssey but I digress.

Sarasaland has the madness of the Mario world and mixes it with UFOs and aliens, the aforementioned shoot ‘em up sections in the sky and underwater, Koopas that explode and Zombies that cannot be killed, and worlds that, instead of being based around a theme like forest or ice, are just the Easter Island or Chinese bamboo forests. The insanity of the new concepts that it brings and the spin it puts into older ones and how fast the adventure goes by makes this what’s probably the most surreal game in the series; a game that makes of the incositencies its greatest strength, and makes for some memorable moments, and I’m pretty fond of it for that reason alone honestly…

…BUT aside from that, this isn’t that great, sadly…

It has some other amazing elements, like the music which is kinda fire, the Underground/Temple theme is probably one of my favorite songs in the series and the Overworld and Muda Kingdom ones aren’t that far behind, but aside from that and the whole creativeness of these four worlds… this is kind of whatever. It has some cool ideas like the upper final door in each level that leads to the bonus game and the fireball changing into the superball —which is a pretty funny name change in all seruiousness—, but both have things like that irk me, like how the former only plays into action on repeated playthrough and some can be a pain in the ass to reach, and the latter being a pretty obvious downgrade when you really consider it; I understand the change was probably made for performance reasons, but being able to shoot only one ball this imprecise in levels this maze-like… isn’t great or satisfying, to put it nicely.

And when it comes to the levels themselves…. They sure are levels! As I said, I like some moments and sections, but in general terms, this is pretty middling at best; some parts of levels repeat not in other levels of the same world, but within the same level, and while creating multiple possible paths to traverse is a great way to compensate to being unable to create genuinely interesting obstacles in paper, they never do anything cool with it aside of finding the fastest way to beat it.

The movement isn’t the best and can be frustrating at times, the bosses sure do exist… aside of the excellent ideas and originality at display, this isn’t anything more than a serviceable, kinda clunky portable Mario game… which hey, not bad for its first go!

It’s fine, it’s decent, I can see why some people love it, I can see why some others dislike it; it’s a pretty impressive feat and a showing of how different creative visions and hardware can loead to extremely interesting results, and has a ton of historic value, but aside from that, I had a decent time with it and that’s about it.

This being the first appearance of Daisy and Tatanga is pretty rad tho, sad that the little guy didn’t show up in more games than he did, he was pretty cool me thinks…

Unbelievably hard and manic game, but it has infinite continues and an easy password system so you can surely see every level if you're dedicated enough. The level 20 boss rush was as much as I could handle. I really admire how this game has an absurd amount of moves for a 16-bit action game. If you're a hardcore fan of run and gun games then this is probably a masterpiece. This is also a pretty excellent display of the Genesis's visual prowess, with lots of fast, smooth animation and a lot of stuff onscreen for a game that's virtually lag free.

Glad to finally have my hands on this childhood classic of mine and it has aged more brilliantly than I'd hoped for. A grounded, atmospheric, and even sometimes terrifying survival game. The default settings are HUD-less, not even a crosshair. You use every resource available to you, mostly bone spears, to navigate the hostile Skull Island. Fight dinosaurs, giant centipedes, primordial gators, you name it. All of these monsters eat each other as well. Kill one and use it as bait to make your escape. Stick a big bug on a spear and throw it into thorny bramble to lure them in then set the bramble on fire to burn them all to death. It's filled with these little emergent moments. Then suddenly you play as Kong in a big monster brawler, climbing vines and breaking V-Rex jaws. Easily the gold standard for movie tie-ins, a genuinely great survival game on its own. The best game Ubisoft have touched.

Played a TON of this at release and climbed the ranks using the ultimate badass: Crustle. If your team doesn't have that nasty motherfucker you might as well surrender.

Look, they'll kill me for saying it, but I fucking love this doofy ass game. I love a MOBA that doesn't require hiring private tutors to grasp (DOTA 2) or a MOBA that doesn't require you be on the sex-offender registry (League of Legends) to play.

What I think I like about it in comparison to other MOBAs is that the cast hasn't been infested with Anime Badass Action Heroes. Because it can't. Because it's Pokemon. All the Pokemon are so visually distinct that you always know who you are up against and what to look out for, instead of every League character becoming a variation of "Shonen Hero" who has 12 different abilities and can't die and also his ultimate is always off cooldown.

Hey, speaking of that. Is there a character better designed than Blastoise? Like, visually, how did they nail that? The original designer probably was nervous to show it to his boss because he was certain that Blastoise had already been thought up, I mean, he HAD to have been. I fucking love Blastoise.

Basically, if I can play as Blastoise I will play your game.

i am so fucking tired of every game being sekiro. please god can one acton game come out where you do something besides read animations and deflect on the right key frames. can one historical game about the tokugawa shogunate have some personality to it and not be more boring than reading a book about the actual events. can one open world game come out and have shit to do in it thats fun and beneficial for more than just clearing icons and getting bigger numbers. anyway, Like a Dragon: Ishin! is available now on digital storefronts everywhere

Zenozoik looks more alive now thanks to UE3, but I can't help but miss what Source brought to it. Narratively this is the more impressive game, peeling back layers of this world I hadn't foreseen. My initial pull to Zenozoik was thinking about it's place in time, whether it was of Earth or a distant planet. These secrets are (partially) revealed in a way that makes you question the order of this world. Are the Zenos worthy of existing in a world of order? Can they even respond to order? The Corwid are seen to the inhabitants of Halstedom the same way the Zenos on the whole are likely seen by the world outside, if that world even still exists. They are a people without history or the means to live in a world devoid of chaos.

Anyways, mechanically this is more complex, but I feel a bit like I miss the simplicity of the first. The introduction of combos is welcome, but there are 2 combos taught at the end of the tutorial that will carry you right through without error. The ally system is cool, but also sort of needless. You're pretty capable of taking on most enemies in the game on your own, even in groups, and the healing time on allies can mean you won't even be able to summon them when you most need them. You can level up now, but I wish this was a little more fleshed out and that maybe the XP was tied to enemies encountered rather than tokens found in the world but it does reward exploration and I was all too ready to explore.

This all may sound a tad underwhelming, but I can't speak more highly of the atmosphere these games offer. The design and mystery of Zenozoik make me want to see every corner, better understand the lives of these chimera. The score in this one is evocative of a time and place beyond ours, it's so good. A fantastic game and sequel and I'm looking forward to Clash. I'm late to the ACE party, but I'm eager to play more of their games.

Shadows of Valentia is such an interesting case where it's almost a perfect game. The presentation, voice acting, narrative, and music are all so goddamn perfect that it carries that really repetitive and mediocre gameplay that this game has. It's clear that Intelligent Systems wanted this game to be pretty faithful to the original Gaiden in terms of gameplay, but I feel that is what really brings it down for me. Especially in the last quarter of the game where the dungeons become a lot longer and the map design is either nonexistent or really bad.

I do really love this game, but replaying it after 4 years from my last replay has made me realized the game's highs and lows pretty clearly.

Really loved this, even as short as it is. It took roughly 3 or so hours to finish and I was fully immersed the whole time. This world has such a unique atmosphere and mystique, brought to life in Source. It looks just phenomenal, the animations and design of the world and its inhabitants feel so raw and bizarre but also impressive and inspiring. The combat loop is just complex enough, brawling and blocking, dodging and punishing, even shooting. It's enough to give you a good amount of control in how you play, with a decent skill ceiling that I never got a chance to master by the time the credits rolled. I'm glad I have Zeno Clash II and Clash: Artifacts of Chaos to look forward to.

Dragon's Dogma II is beautifully idiosyncratic, if not lacking somewhat in enemy/location variety, but makes up for that in it's open-ended approach to design. Changing your class whenever you like adds so much to this game that is lacking in most other fantasy RPGs. Grounding the way you traverse its world makes you put thought into how you navigate it. Creating your own skillset allows you to build weird and wonderful characters, a very fun way to experiment with how you will approach combat. The way it doesn't hold your hand, making you pay attention to the inhabitants of the world or even becoming obtuse and confounding separate this from your typical game. Overall it's almost like they turned Monster Hunter into an open world RPG, it's really something. I never played the first, something I'll likely rectify, but I really enjoyed my time with this and will probably return for a quicker second run.

I wrote out a short review a couple days ago because I'd believed I had finished the game when I sat on the thrown, becoming the Sovran. I was mistaken, Dragon's Dogma II had just begun. A gorgeously textured "epic" fantasy that became a deconstruction of the hero's journey. The submission of your pawn and the other pawns you encounter is turned into a mirror where you are faced with your own lack of will in the grand scheme of this world. That this was all designed exactly for the Arisen's journey. You don't take on quests, they are mandated by the game's creators just as the Arisen's path is to carry these quests out in a facsimile of will. A game greater than the sum of its parts, and there are some very strong parts.

These later NES games are where it's at. I love the dark, action-packed cyberpunk style of this game, which was already enrapturing and cool before I learned the Japanese version was based on a pre-existing TV show. I also love how there are multiple combinations of powerups you can put together for different assistance drones. The graphics and sound are also among the best on the system. The game can be a bit overly difficult with some truly durable bosses, but that's the nature of the NES. No passwords, but it's relatively short and has infinite continues.

The praise this game gets confuses me. Breath of the Wild itself was nothing particularly earthshattering, and this game is just Breath of the Wild again. The problem is that what made BOTW novel is not anymore. We've seen this type of expansive open world before. It's not impressive anymore.

Of course, more land was added, but what was added is half as much of what was worth exploring in BOTW. The skylands mostly exist for dungeons and chests, nothing more or less. There isn't enough landmass up there aside from the tutorial zone for it to feel like a whole new second map. The underground zone too is stagnant, introducing an annoying gimmick with an intense difficulty spike that makes exploring it a pain.

I understand that the new building system is technically impressive. I'm a game designer, I see this. However, just because something is impressive does not make it good. The fusing system itself does allow for a bunch of interesting puzzles, but it's the same gimmick reused for every single puzzle. Eventually, this mechanic too has its novelty wear off, and unless you have a degree in engineering or loved Banjo Kazooie Nuts 'n' Bolts too much, you won't be getting a lot out of it. Yes, it is impressive what it can do and that it functions at all, and the possibilities available to players is commendable. It is a feat in design that a lot of these puzzles have more than one solution. Yet the game does not force you to create anything super outside the box. While I said most puzzles have more than one solution, it is made very clear that there is 1 "right" way and every other solution is a player either a: intentionally breaking the game or b: not understanding the signs. Nowhere are you challenged to make an army of inter-continental strike drones. You can, and those who know how will, but this will never cross the mind of the average player. Had this game pushed the bounds of what this system could do perhaps I could find more praise for it. But they don't, it exists as simply a gimmick to justify the long development time and to show off a shiny new tech thing.

With this games announcement we were promised a much heavier story focus. We got slightly more story than BOTW. What we got was quite decent honestly, but it was the same egghunt from before to find all these things. This time, you just couldn't skip the intro story segment. What they gave us simply didn't carry the weight it should.

The intense amount of continuity errors are annoying too. The game hints to why this may be, but it simply does not make sense. This game likes the idea of being a direct sequel while also being too caught up in trying to rewrite it's own history. Where are the Divine Beasts? Where are the Guardians? Where is the fucking Shrine of Resurrection? Things vital to BOTW have vanished without a trace and the game refuses to explain itself. It should have, anyone who played BOTW would have noticed all of this immediately. There needs to be a reason for the sudden disappearance, and I sure would have liked to see it totally explained than just hoping I will take "time travel shenanigans" as an answer.

Tears of the Kingdom looks at what Breath of the Wild did well and misunderstands why it did well. The open world was good because it was so vast and nothing like any game had had before. Now, we have the same open world with minor variance, causing less desire to explore, and the marvel of such a vast world is now lost since it was done before. Of course, following up something like BOTW would prove to be a monolithic task regardless. Instead of improving the things BOTW did wrong, like the dungeons and puzzles, to try and succeed it's predecessor, it simply creates new things that solve nothing. Tears of the Kingdom prays its rehashed world with new zones will be enough to entice the player for the same hundreds of hours we all dumped into BOTW.

This game will forever be shadowed by it's predecessor. Not because the task was too big, but because they did not focus on the right things. Perhaps if Breath of the Wild never released, this game would be far better. Instead, it is a expansion in disguise as a $70 videogame. Shameless.

Just like Polyphia, just because something is hard to do does not immediately justify a perfect score. In a vacuum, the new system is very good, but the game simply does not allow for it to be as good as it can be, and in an attempt to perfect this feat in physics engineering and simulation, Nintendo seemingly forgot about the other aspects that make a Zelda game a Zelda game.

Scorn is an uneven balance of Riven-like alien techno-puzzling and atmospheric existential horror akin to SOMA. The art is a perfect amalgamation of Giger & Beksiński, fleshy organic architecture amassed across the surface of a dying world. The first two-thirds present particularly engaging core puzzles, as you slowly unpick the purpose of the machines you are revving up, often leading to some sort of sacrifice of an innocent(?) being (ranging from tiny weird guys to enormous weird guys) in this abject world. The wordless communication of the narrative through exploration, the environment & your ritualistic puzzling is refreshing (in a time where many games won't. shut. up).

The alien life wandering the flesh-corridors are alluring at first, with some interesting behaviours ambivalent to, & decentering, the player. But their placement and the very awkward feeling combat generates annoyance rather than tension, a very clumsy implementation of what was probably envisioned as a ‘living’ world but grew smaller in scope as they struggled to bring this to release. This is most evident in the very dull final chapter where a (puzzle) boss and most puzzles are solved with blunt-force explosives. Despite my final impressions, Ebb has a really strong foundation here and I look forward to seeing how they grow.