It may be a lil game, but it has a lot of heart. Maybe best described as “My First Open World” or "Breath of the Wild Jr" and this is not as much of an insult as it may sound.

Two points I know I like to know when hearing about a game I can tick off almost instantly in this review are the questions “is it any good?” and “how long is it?” by simply telling you that I finished the game in one sitting that took around three hours and the only thing that stopped me immediately cleaning up everything the game had to offer was it was time to feed the dog.

Once that had been done and I ate dinner myself I spent around another hour doing the rest.
So yes it’s good, and roughly 3-4 hours in length to do everything.

This may not be enough information to satisfy your interest so I will elaborate.
Lil Gator Game is a small open-world game mostly based on movement, some simple platforming, swimming, climbing, floating about and more thanks to a range of interesting items your hero picks up along the way.

Structure wise you are free to roam in whatever direction you like once you’ve completed the quests on the small, BOTW-like, tutorial island, in which you pick up the key three ingredients a hero needs - a sword, a shield and a hat.
About the island are many NPCs that you are aiming to befriend to create a town hub for everyone and impress your Big Sis, but more on that later.
Each of these would-be friends will have small quests for you, some range from clearing out nearby enemies, to classics such as fetch-quests or multi-part adventures where you’re needing to help separate folk to get the attention of one specific pal.
There are weapons, your sword of many varieties and later some ranged tools but the enemies… well they are cardboard cutouts so they don’t put up much (any) resistance.
“Combat” is really just a way of collecting things in the vein of coins, rings, rupees or whatever.

As mentioned earlier Lil Gator Game is more about movement. You can climb anything and, again like BOTW, have a stamina gauge that can be upgraded. Your shield has no need for defense as you can’t be attacked so instead you can use it like a sled, but as the first example of many, just sliding, is not all that the shield does movement wise and this shows the surprising depth Lil Gator Game has with its mechanics.
Different shields can slide in different ways, on top of this jumping while on the shield at the right point can bounce you further and this even includes some quite satisfying skimming along water.
None of these techniques are essential, you’re under no stress, you don’t need to go anywhere in a particular order or under a time-limit but the freedom of fun and discovery is there.
As you collect more items these movement abilities you have expand in the ways you would you expect, like better climbing, gliding and more, but also expand in a couple of fun ways you may not expect such as, minor spoiler, collecting a ninja headband that makes you Naruto run - which is faster.

Lil Gator Game doesn’t have every element or the sheer scale of a Breath of the Wild but it condenses a lot of what the joy of that game is into a tight package which has a cute, child-like aesthetic.

The aesthetic of big blocky colours, speech bubbles, googly eyes and cardboard cut-outs really work as a pleasant vibe that reflects its narrative.
You Big Sis as mentioned earlier, is back on a break from college and you want her attention. You see, as the game reveals from the start, you and her used to play and she was great at making rules for fun games and you were both heavily inspired by (for legal reasons not)The Legend of Zelda.
Sadly for our protagonist, time has passed, you’ve both aged and your Big Sis is busy with assignments and doesn’t seem to have time to play.
Your quest, to get her to remember the fun you had and grab her attention.

Lil Gator Game does a magically wonderful job of capturing a lot of what being a child feels like, and does a good job of giving you a view of this world through a child’s eyes.
The dialogue is fun, it isn’t minimised to monosyllabic words or baby sounding pronunciations though, if anything I wonder if a failing Lil Gator Game might have is that it presents itself for kids but is more for adults with nostalgia when considering how much dialogue there is throughout.
The ending especially, I will not describe the feeling as to not spoil, but it did make me a little glassy-eyed, an effect I don’t imagine it would have on a child but perhaps their parents.

Lil Gator Game is exactly as described in my opening sentence and it does it very well but this does leave stages feeling a little too simple and potentially repetitive.
I will take a moment to applaud the post-game as “cleaning up” in open-world games is a task for the sick honestly, but “gamer brain” does mean that an 87% for example, must become 100% or I can’t sleep and this title makes it as easy as possible.
It isn’t quite doing it all for you but it gives as much a helping hand that if anymore would mean you could just put the pad down and line, they manage to hit perfectly and give you a small reward for your time which feels as sweet as the rest of the experience.

For all of its child-like fun and wonder in design and aesthetic, Lil Gator Game is maturely put together, well-crafted and feels truly sincere. If you need a short game for a palette cleanser, but you still want a sense of play and not just story - you can’t go too wrong with grabbing this title or playing it for “free” via GamePass.

It's not Dark Souls. It's not Bloodborne. It's a pretty cool action RPG in which you play as a chunky beardy fella smashin' fuck out of stuff with big hammers.

Also, it only lasts about 22 hours so it's not bloody Elden Ring either.

He’s got a W on his hat because, this lad is a winner!

Wario Land 4 absolutely slaps, the art is great, the music is weird and wonderful and the mixture of excitement and exploration that make good platformers great is all on display here.

Coming off the back of its GameBoy Colour predecessor (available on Nintendo Switch Online) Wario looks better, sounds better, feels a little smoother and is just as funny and inventive.
Where 4 may shed 3’s metroidvania aspects it still retains the unique “powers” for what were for me more satisfying puzzles and platforming challenges.
You lack a feeling of progression from Wario getting more powers but in the same hand it allows you to just do everything you expect of the big man and not have to find and unlock it.

Returning to levels isn’t needed but what is allowed is hopping between different stages so if a particular theme is starting to bore or frustrate you can swap and each zone's boss is a fun time and just feels more relevant than the mid-bosses you had in 3.
Again, returning to levels isn’t something you need to do unless you missed treasure or just fancy getting a better score. What is something you do need to do is one of the elements Wario land games are best known for and that retreading back through to the start with your treasure and within a time limit.
If you’re reading this and know a little about Wario it’s maybe a waste of my time to explain, but for those unaware.
At the “end” of the level Wario sets off a gadget that starts a timer as he yells “Hurry Up!” and it’s your job to go back to the start, through the portal that brought you here with a key and all the treasure you’ve gathered along the way.
In itself that is quite clever and fun but on top of the added excitement and anxiety of the ticking clock is that the gadget which set the timer off normally adds or clears some blocks which change the route a little - causing you to not only use your memory of your journey to this point to help but your wits to figure out how to navigate the new things in front of you.
It’s brilliant.
This is a gimmick that never gets old and always makes a level more interesting.

I can’t post this without my very minor complaints. The first is really the throwing and also some of the climbing, maybe it’s the controls, maybe it’s the device but I found both a little fiddly at times and although that awkwardness did add some extra tension to some of the bosses I was a little disappointed as the rest of Wario’s movement felt just that little bit smoother here than usual, almost perfect. Otherwise the only reason I’m not scoring this higher is simply that whilst a lot of the music and visuals are great there are a few bits that are just “good”, which by definition isn’t bad but holds it back a little for me.

Overall Wario is great and this is peak Wario.
I may make a lot of folk completely discard my opinion for saying this but I think that Wario is more fun than Mario in similar 2D spaces.
Is “fun” the same as “better”. That’s for you to decide.

Give this game a go. Hopefully it too will find its way from the 3DS Ambassador program on to NSO much like similar GBA greats Metroid Fusion and TLOZ: Minish Cap have.

Simple, but efficient.

The graphics and style of this game is mesmerizing for an NES game. Sakurai and his team really went all out to make this game as appealing as possible to a crowd already turning their heads towards the newer SNES.

Kirby's controls are incredibly simple, but the diverse amount of Copy Abilities at your hands means that every playthrough of this game is a different experience. Yes, the game is easily, but you can't tell me you didn't have a lot of fun mixing up your gameplay throughout your journey through Dream Land.


Overall, Kirby's Adventure is quite literally one of the cutest yet subtly dark games to exist. But every time I boot it up the opening makes me smile.

For the first time maybe since playing Red on my GameBoy Pocket I can say that I "caught 'em all".

This was helped by the fact the roster in this game isn't the full 1000+ but also because the act of catching is much more fun.
Sneaking through the tall grass in a reverse of roles or running in and chucking something to stun the poor little creature and many other routes mean that the ability to catch is more varied and therefor interesting.
Also the added danger that you as the trainer can be attacked is much more interested than blacking out because your 'mon have.

Even the legendary Pokémon have a variety of tasks to get them and it's not still the same case of Battle - Get to low health and sleep/paralyze - throw tons of balls and cross your fingers.

These new changes to approach are definitely a good way forward for a series that I was not personally tired of but definitely did need a shake up.
I miss having as many trainer battles as the mainline games and I found that due to that and the introduction of mini tasks to 'complete' pokedex entries made me not have a "main squad" as much as I would and not particularly feel like building towards one either.

The world is varied enough with a mix of areas you'd expect in any video game and they truly come to life with the dynamic weather and seeing the Pokémon within their natural environment.
The issue the world has though is at times it looks decent but GameFreak haven't done enough to keep this as a constant.
You've all seen screenshots of PS2 style textures, grass loading in as you walk and mountains terraforming into view but on top of that the game loves and invisible wall or to create extreme fog to block you going over a mountain even if you can get the other side by other means.

The comparison before the game was even out, as is the way right now, was to Breath of the Wild and it's quite embarrassing how much better that game looks than this considering it came out on the Wii U.
Really though the comparisons get worse when you look at the Switch Xenoblade games or even Monster Hunter Rise from last year.
Each of these bring a slightly different aesthetic and none go for deep realism but Pokémon's anime look is not what's holding it back.

During the post game I found the invisible walls, fog and lacking parts of level design really came through as I was being made to more thoroughly look at it and whilst I still enjoyed roaming around for the most part it was sad to have the game fight with me trying to play it.

This isn't the first place the game does this though and the friction between trying to just play and some strange to bad design decisions is why I can't confidently say "this is the best Pokémon, 5 stars".

First simple gripe, the controls.
For the most part they are fine but there are some confusing choices and the silliest of all is that whilst every mount that can go faster does so by pressing B on foot it's clicking in the left stick.
B on foot doing the opposite and making you crouch.

Inventory can be annoying, limited spaces is not the worst but it's feels like too much with the variety of what can be picked up.
Your bag can be made larger, however only by a single slot at a time that costs increasingly more money the more you want.
Playing this I yearned for ye olde Pokémon bags systems with different sections as that could have different sizes and maybe alleviate some of this.

From the minor to the more major, mission tracking is awkward. Markers only appear if there is something new or for the one mission you're tracking.
Within Legends Arceus though heading back to Jubilife (the game's hub) there are usually many townsfolk who want to be spoken to but you won't know which do without either speaking to all of them or looking at each request and hoping it can give you a marker.
That or have an incredible memory of what the mostly barely memorable townsfolk NPCs names are.

There are probably more minor roadblocks this game likes to make but those are just the main offenders.

Regarding NPCs whilst not everyone you do requests for are interesting the game does have a bunch of cool characters and a lot of look-a-likes/possible ancestors of previous Pokémon NPCs which adds a layer of intrigue and everyone's favourite Leo DiCaprio meme moments.

The story is good, not the deepest as you would imagine but an interesting change of pace and one that goes in some slightly surprising directions.

Overall I enjoyed the 50+ hours I've spent with this game catching all the pocket monsters (especially with more cool Ghost ones).
I like most additions, whilst I miss some things from the main series (which I doubt is going anywhere).

Pokémon Legends: Arceus at points gets very close to being a 4 - 4.5 star game if it were not for some poor technical and performance issues and some awkward design choices.