This is a solid game, with a few major issues that unfortunately hold it back. Compared to wario land 4, it really feels like it lacks the snappiness that game had. It just generally feels slower, but the requirement to stop and shake every moneybag you come across just slows things down more. The escape sequences aren't nearly as exciting either, as they all give you ample time and don't have much exciting going on. Motion controls just don't feel needed here, and slow things down more. There's also autoscroller submarine stages that are really boring. However, most of the regular level design is pretty good, but the shortness of levels often left me feeling like there should have been more to it. The game just felt too short overall. Normally I don't mind a condensed, short game, but it seemed lacking here. The music is a mixed bag, there's some great tracks, and some generic tracks and ones with pretty poor soundfonting. It's very inconsistent. The visuals are great, with no caveats. The animation is fluid and full of personality, and I'd love to see another attempt at hand-animation for this series.

To summarize, Wario Land: Shake It is a fun platformer with great visuals, but suffers from being too short and very inconsistent while lacking the series's trademark sense of speed.

This was pretty solid, but I had a few issues here and there. To start with the great, the atmosphere and combat are very well executed. It plays it's horror well, preferring to signal danger with quiet breathing, distant footsteps, or rubble clattering. It feels way more (I hate using this word but it applies) immersive when scares are signaled in a realistic way rather than some horror stinger. The sound design is very well done and adds to it a lot well. The combat is somewhat clunky, but in a way that adds to the tension. It's all about reading enemies as they try to fake you out, and playing aggressive is generally the only way through. Combat can be trivialized in many instances by spamming the taser, which is kinda lame. The guns are worked well into the gameplay well too, considering how limited they are. The story is okay. It feels very unfocused and doesn't fully execute it's concepts well. Environments are varied and decrepit, which works out quite well for upping the atmosphere. Exploring is fun and tense, although the 'detective' mechanics feel pretty undercooked and repetitive to actually use. The pace is pretty solid too. I will say, the game didn't scare me all too much, but it was certainly tense. Some parts feel somewhat tedious, and it can get a bit repetitive. Generally, the game's pretty cool. I wish it had some more variety and clever uses of the game's mechanics, but it's still a solid time.

Viewtiful Joe is a constant balancing act. It's mostly a fun, creative beat em up. The mechanics of slowing and speeding up time are unique and well executed for combat and platforming. Add this on top of creative presentation, and the first three stages are a tightly paced and fun time. But unfortunately, a lot of the game's tough-but-fair gameplay can get dragged down by some obnoxious design choices that really start to crop up the further into the game you get. Sometimes enemies will hit you from off screen. Sometimes you need to make blind jumps. Sometimes you have to fight the same enemy with way too much health over and over. Sometimes the boss you're fighting has an annoying pattern that they use over and over. Not to mention the completely needless boss rush stage, which is capped off by a pretty terrible fight. It's unfortunate, because it takes what could have been a fantastic game down to just a good one.

It was a fun, if somewhat underwhelming experience. There were many times that the game would do something unexpected that would surprise me, or get a laugh or two. However, the gameplay feels pretty underutilized for such a good concept. Many times the puzzles would be very confusing or poorly telegraphed, with solutions that don't feel particularly satisfying to solve. Plus, many of the solutions feel very samey. Game's still cool, but I'd recommend getting it on sale or with gamepass. The price is a bit steep for the length and gameplay you're getting out of it.

This game's pretty fun, but it's got a few major flaws that hold it back. First off, the HD version makes some very good quality of life changes that smoothen out the experience. I like how it looks, but I still prefer the shading of the original in many areas. Now for the game. The dungeons are mostly pretty fun, but can be occasionally tedious. Exploring the ocean is cool, with a lot of fun stuff to find. It sometimes gets tedious. But the peak of tedium is the triforce quest, which takes forever and is extremely dull. Don't get me wrong, I like the game quite a bit. It's issues stack up way too much for me to put it above something like Twilight Princess.

This game blows. I had expected it to be a somewhat forgettable, but otherwise fine ratchet and clank game. What I got was so, so much worse. Let's start with controls. They're fine. A bit limited thanks to the psp, but fine. Visually it's also fine. Nothing special, but FINE. The problems pop up in terms of combat. This game's weapons are easily the worst roster the series has ever seen. Size Matter's shotgun might be the worst shotgun in any game. It does basically no damage, even at point blank range. It stinks. The rest of the weapons are better, but still have very little damage output and just don't feel fun or good to use. This is on top of enemies that are extremely annoying and have a ton of health. There's also the nothing level design, obnoxious minigames with terrible controls, and the boring, unfunny, annoying story. Nothing works here. Well, the soundtrack's not bad. Almost nothing.

A pretty fun arcade experience that's really fun to get good at. The soundtrack that changes with the customization of your plane is a nice touch, and the mission structure helps give purpose to the action. Figuring out the best plane part combo to solve a particular mission can be pretty fun. The only major letdown is in some of the game's luck elements. Some missions require you to get good combos or defeat specific rare enemy types, which can be really hard to do if they just refuse to spawn. Overall pretty good.

It's got excellent art direction, some solid dungeon design, and an enjoyable story, but it's let down by it's dated controls and occasionally obnoxious structure. It took me a bit of time to adjust to the controls, but I liked them fine. However, several bosses near the end of the game expect way more of the player than the controls really allow. That made the last hour or so pretty annoying. Some of the dungeons are fun, but some want you to backtrack needlessly. I did also like a lot of the characters, even if the dialogue felt clunky at times. The first half was pretty fun overall, with some good exploration and some light puzzle solving. An uneven experience, that I liked fine.

This was pretty fun, but I can't help but feel the incredibly cool concept this game has could have been more fleshed out. The game has a pretty stellar opening handful of hours. The concept is fun, and trying to build up an arsenal with the stuff you find and gathering currency to save up between runs is pretty cool. The customizable arsenal on top of the game's freedom to play it as a stealth or action game also helps this element. The beginning is this fun loop of killing of targets, gathering intel, building up the arsenal. However, after a few targets were down, I had a pretty good set of abilities and weapons, and gathering stuff for future runs didn't feel too valuable anymore. It doesn't help that a few of the missions I did at this point got pretty tedious, asking you to run back and forth several times over. However, it picks up again at the end where you need to kill all the targets within a single loop. It's tense and feels satisfying to put everything you've done together. I wish it had a proper final boss, because it felt a tad underwhelming. Now for some general stuff. The presentation is pretty good all around. I like a lot of the character designs, especially for Colt and Julianna. The music and environments are great, with a 70's sort of aesthetic that is really well done. Sometimes enemies blended into the environment a bit, and lighting was a bit bland in places. The animated cutscenes look great, and I wish that style bled into the actual gameplay more. The gunplay feels good, and the open-ended levels lend themselves well to figuring out a route and executing on it. The bosses are pretty underwhelming, Julianna included. She's supposed to be an intimidating hunter, but you can just step on her head in about 4 seconds to win instantly. She's a lot more intimidating if you turn on online so that random players could be Julianna, but that could make things absurdly hard for very little benefit. Stealth was mostly fun, but sometimes it seemed like I would get spotted out of nowhere.

In summation: Pretty fun, glad I played it. Starts great, middle is okay, endgame was good. Solid presentation (music especially), fun and inventive mechanics that could have been taken a lot further. I'd say give it a shot, especially now that it's on gamepass.

I really did not enjoy this game. I couldn't care less that it's dissimilar to the RPG's. But it's just not a great adventure platformer. Let me start with the positives. While I don't think it was anything crazy, I enjoyed the story fine enough. Most of the writing was at least entertaining, but it has a weird amount of drama that feels half-baked. The music was pretty good, and there was a lot of creativity to the visuals. So here's where the problems start. The game is just REALLY boring. The game gives you MANY mechanics to work with but they are rarely used in an interesting way. Pretty much every puzzle is just "Swap into 3d" or "change into a different character/pixl." The game doesn't combine or telegraph these abilities very well. There were MANY occasions where the solution was to switch to 3d, and the only telegraph was that you were stuck. But often, you wouldn't even realize you WERE stuck until you reached a locked door, and then you have to backtrack randomly trying the 3d ability. Even if you figure it out, it's not satisfying to realize that the solution to the "puzzle" is just to change your ability. On top of that, the pacing is all over the place and extremely bloated. Every chapter is interrupted by a drawn-out bit where you go wander into a different part of town to unlock the next chapter. They aren't fun or creative, they just waste time. Bosses are also extremely easy or monotonous. The quality can vary by chapter to chapter.
Chapter 1: It's fun enough, mostly just a tutorial.
Chapter 2: This one sucks. it's tedious and FULL of places where the solution is not telegraphed at all.
Chapter 3: A decent chapter. Has a good amount of variety to it, and was more entertaining than I expected.
Chapter 4: Actually fun. It has many of the same issues as before, but there's a decent schmup segment and the platforming is generally more enjoyable here.
Chapter 5: Tedious and drawn out.
Chapter 6: Terrible. It's really just fighting the same few enemies over and over and then walking in a long hallway for a few minutes.
Chapter 7: Also pretty bad. It has many bits where it just wastes your time for no reason, and has a bit where you need to navigate through several near-identical cloud areas to find specific items. Very tedious.
Chapter 8: Very long and drawn out, exemplifying every issue the game has. It feels padded, it has simple and unintuitive puzzles, the bosses are boring, everything.

In short, this game is not fun. I'm not the biggest fan of TTYD, but boy does that game blow this out of the water.