A feat of gaming.
They programmed an entire solar system emulated by a pure physics engine? The worlds are unironically spheres? This is awesome.
They told you to go anywhere and somehow perfectly designed the worlds to keep you progressing at a constant pace?
The replaced traditional traversal 'upgrades' and 'keys' with learning and knowledge? How.
Mario will never do this. Mario would hate for you to learn. Mario spits on you when synapses fire.
This makes the game effectively playable only once in your entire lifetime, and that's a good thing.

This game has some set pieces and moments that are pretty astonishing.
I was hoping to take a little bit more from the story, but that's ok. I think this is a result when nearly every review says "This game changed my perspective on life! I literally never smiled until I played this game" Expectations can only be so high. I almost took a half star away for this reason.
But then I realized - name another game on this level as of 2024. There just isn't one that I'm aware of.
Breaking against the traditional game design norms can sometimes yield the most satisfying results.

A very pleasant surprise. I barely followed this game since it was announced, and its release came as a surprise to me, but after reading lots of reviews and user opinions I decided to give it a try, and man was it worth it.

It may seem a bit storeotypical at first glance, but as the story progresses it really finds it own personalty. I'm very fond of narrative-driven games and Life is Strange is definitely a very good one. The story is interesting, the characters (although typical at first) are well written, and the time reversal mechanic gives the game the defining feature it needed not to be another "Telltale-esque" wannabe. Also, all the decisions you make really seem to impact a lot of variables (way deeper than Mass Effect's Red-Blue system), I am really interested on seeing how it all develops in the future.

On a bad note, the puzzles are really straight-forward and easy, but I guess that will change as the next Episodes keep coming. For now, the plot holds well and has my interest.

As someone who enjoyed BotW, I couldn't bring myself to buy and play TotK. Part of it is me missing the classic Zelda formula from the other 3D titles, but mostly because TotK just appears to be more of the same as BotW. I'm not sure if I'm ready to purchase this 60-70€ game and dive into another massive world that feels way too familiar. Instead, I decided to revisit one of my favorite franchises of all time and go back to its roots. I'm excited to finally explore the 2D classics I never had a chance to play as a kid!

It's fascinating to see how far the franchise has come. It has shaped countless childhoods and left a lasting mark on the history of video games. And to think, it all started here.

Having grown up with the beloved 3D titles and knowing how Zelda games have evolved over the decades, I think it's understandable not to be particularly impressed with this one. However, I can still appreciate it for what it is. Personally, I have severe fatigue from the BotW formula and wish Nintendo would reinvent it once more, as they have so many times before. Because Zelda deserves more than being just another bloated open world experience that seems to plague most modern adventure games.

Jawdroppingly amazing, this was honestly such a pleasant surprise. I had already high hopes going into this because I adore Survival Horror, I was imagining it as a 7.5 maybe 8/10, but this game really just blew me out of the water. This is such an aesthetically pleasing game with extremely fun puzzles with tons of variety, a gorgeous aesthetic (which was only helped by the CRT mode that I used), an amazing story with on par lore, a good soundtrack, interesting characters, cool survival horror mechanics and just phenomenal gameplay. I adore this game so much, it’s probably one of my favorite games of all time even. If you have this game just rotting in your game library like I have for a year, just try this game already trust me.

9.5/10