I've been looking forward to playing Outer Wilds ever since it came out, I heard pretty much everyone who played it say that it would change your life and I didn't exactly go in with those expectations, but I thought it would be my kind of thing! I have played a good few hours of it now and bounced off it eventually each time, it's probably just not for me! I am not rating the game however because my issues with it are more to do with me than the game. I wasn't interested in reading the Nomai transcripts, I didn't feel like I had a reason to care about what happened to them, nor did I want to find out why it happened. I liked the little puzzles and discovering new things, but the reward was always a little bit more Nomai dialogue. I realised at a certain point that the game was reminding me of my job as a Tech Support wanker. I worked in a job before where each problem we were dealing with we had to resolve in 20 minutes or we needed to escalate it to a different member of the team, so naturally I got quite good at gleaning the relevant information I needed from an email or phone call about an issue as quickly as i could, discarding whatever additional fluff there was and then trying out a few ideas as to what might solve this persons problem, hopefully fix it somehow and then move onto the next one. A lot of the time it was systems I was unfamililar with and I'd just have to try and work it out during this timeframe, basically throwing your head against this alien technology until you can just about get it to work. It got to the point where you don't really care what the problem is or what is going on, just how to make it stop or go away. The outer wilds has a lot more going on than just seeing an email from Wendy again saying that the software she uses isn't working properly and then trying to work out what's going on (puzzle), while basically filtering out any superfluous information that she gives (plot) but it made me feel like I was at work enough to really grind my gears. It's clearly a brilliantly designed thing, of the stuff I found in my few hours with it I really enjoyed the statue workshop and the caverns on the planet that was slowly being filled up with sand. Unfortunately no matter how hard I tried I couldn't help but feel like I was just doing my day job and you know what, fuck that

Going into Dread after fusion I was very pleased with how Samus felt to play, there is so much momentum in Dread and it got the game off to a great start. The slide? MMMM.

ANYWAY I was a little disappointed with how the game didn't seem to let you off the main path? Quite early I was like okay I'm going to look around a bit, as I do in metroidvania games and pretty quickly you're blocked off in Dread. I decided I'd let it take me where it wanted to and around about the halfway point it really started to click. I wasn't loving the combat but I'd accepted that it just wasn't for me, I'm more of a jump whip guy, but I preferred it to Fusion for sure, the counter system and those scripted moments are lovely and really help the game be more my bag. Anyway, I got to the final boss and suddenly I love the combat, it feels so awesome. They decided to put hollow knight bosses in metroid and yeah I goes off. Incredible final boss and an incredible game. Prince of Persia next!

Played this on Nintendo Switch Online :) I have been very unsure of 'menu' games for my entire life! I don't get them, I feel like it's just boring? Why would I want to press menu options to do my attacks instead of spamming buttons and rolling around and that. Anyway turns out when you make a menu game and plaster cute mario paper characters everywhere and also have charming and funny writing then I will be tricked into liking it :) I was drawn in by the action commands, since it added an extra element of interactivity and they were nice, but inconsistent. I liked the variety of inputs for them though. Shockingly I started to wish that the action commands weren't there and I instead could just, select my moves and let the battle play out without this extra element. I never hated them but yeah, Mario Paper drew me in and got me to like menu games. This game could could be 5 stars if they cut some stuff out I think. If it was maybe 6 chapters long, or even 5? The prologue was wonderful, Chapter 3 and 4 were great, and Chapter 7? Beautiful! Made me so happy, I had a smile on my face the whole way through basically. :) I liked choosing different badges and decided what one felt best. There were a couple of areas I became tired of but you know what? I was never sick of them, and while I was looking forward to the game being over I still had a good time with all of it and I'm excited to play TTYD :)

My first metroid game! I love me some castlevania and it was definitely time to try out some metroid of the catch all brain ear. It took me a long time to get on with the movement and rhythm of this game, now I've finished it I definitely think it works but coming from Castlevania which has a very deliberate pace to the movement, samus being so agile on the ground felt strange, especially when you jump, you lost all momentum! I really didn't like that, although I think it does work for this game. I don't want to spend too much time basically saying 'yeah I like castlevania more' but well... I do! hahaha. What I love about this game though, the vibe. the vibe is immaculate. It's so creepy and sinister and cheesy? I don't know if cheesy is the right word. I didn't care for the opening cutscene but running around this spooky space place and reading Samus' thoughts when she goes in lifts, fuck yeah. It ruled so much. Seeing Ridley in the ice, seeing the shadow of security robot, awesome. so many cool things happen here, I just don't personally love how it plays! But I'm really glad to have played this, and I'm very excited to play Metroid Dread!!!!!! and Prime oh my god¬!!!!

Rolled credits on this today and will be going for the other ending over the next few days. I'll 100% this for sure, it's going straight into my top 5 that I haven't made yet. xxx

For a long time this felt like playing a game that was made just for me, the way information is given to the player is such a joy, and truly tickled my fancy. The combat is snappy, but patient. The world is beautifully crafted, even without any of the shortcuts/looping paths it would make me happy, but any time I found a new shortcut, or was lead to one it made me do the atonio banderas laptop face. I know I will be playing this game over and over again and that makes me feel so happy, I think this is a masterpiece of game design. It feels like a combination of Zelda and Dark Souls in the best way, and I don't think that's a lazy comparison in this case, or maybe it is. I'm fucking lazy! Anyway, it takes great things from those games, nails them while making them their own. I may talk in more detail about this game at some point, I don't know, but this game is nostalgic in a way that felt very refreshing, and interesting. It is a difficult game, and the end of the game puzzle stuff is genuinely kind of crazy. I had heard about it being a brain teaser before playing it honestly felt quite smug while I played a lot of it for just, getting it. I was like, my brain is so fucking big man. then I got the golden path page and I'm like HUH. But I felt like such a genius whenever I solved any other kind of puzzle the game gave me, the game mechanics themselves are puzzles as well! Yes this game is great. YEAH, I'm thinking five stars