This one started off really strong but then I lost interest as it went on. The game is a strange mix of vibrant and kid friendly silliness mixed with adult issues and body horror. I'm not sure it meshes very well, but it's a very interesting game nonetheless.

You catch Bugsnax and basically talk to other vibrant muppet type characters (grumpus's I think it was?) and solve their issues. These issues have a wide range too. From anything like marriage woes to "OMG I want to get buff" to "I want to eat a Fryder, go get me one." It's kind of jarring going from solving relationship and communication issues between folks to then just grabbing a silly Bugsnak for them to eat.

Then on top of that, as you collect Bugsnax, you find out that it changes the way all these muppet people look. You can change their arms, hands, legs, feet, ears and eventually even their body. AND THEY LOOK HORRIFIC! Having a guy walk around with potato chip ears and a sushi body was just...ugh.

No spoilers but I feel like if I saw the final boss of this game when I was a kid, I would've had nightmares. It's like the cutest foody-hellraiser inspired enemy you'll ever see. YIKES!

Anyway, the reason it gets old after a while is because after a few hours, it feels like you're just going through the motions. Catch a Bugsnak, solve an issue, feed them, repeat.

Also, the dialog at times goes on and on and on and on and on. And it's not really clever, it just feels like talking for talkings sake some times.

Judging from the first couple of levels, you'd swear this game was another fun 2D sonic experience, but as you keep progressing, at least in solo mode, the fun quickly turns into frustration. This is not a fun solo experience or one I can recommend.

I am a 2D sonic fan, but I'm also a purest. The Genesis games are really the only ones I care about. Sonic Mania came out a few years ago and quite honestly, I think it might beat the Genesis games, because it's just such a great amalgam of 2D sonic on the Genesis. I saw Sonic Superstars coming out this year and thought, okay, if it goes on sale, I'll grab it. So at Black Friday, it went on sale and here we are... and I want my money back.

I had really only had 1 night of fun with Sonic Superstars. The first night I booted it up, I played through the first zone and I had a ball. This first level is what Sonic is, it's great!

The next night, I played a bit more and noticed that the quality of the level design drops off suddenly but it wasn't terrible or anything. Surely it would have a couple more banger levels, right?

As I came back to it and played through the rest of the zones, all the way to Cyber Station, something was apparent. This is not a game designed around Sonic and going fast. This is a game designed for another main character entirely, I'm not sure who?

I lost count of the amount of times I was running fast and something just came out of nowhere to hit me or kill me. That is not how Sonic design works! The whole idea is you're going fast and you want to stay going fast! WHY DO YOU KEEP PUTTING AN ENEMY RIGHT WHERE I AM RUNNING THAT I COULDN"T HAVE AVOIDED!?

And the main reason I can't avoid it is because the camera is zoomed in so damn close to Sonic! Why is it that in coop, the camera pans out and you can see a lot more of the level and actually prepare for upcoming situations, but in solo, you can only see like 10 feet in front of you? What is this, a game gear game?

And if I wasn't running into an enemy, it was a hole. Something would suddenly open up and you can't react quick enough and you fall in (more on that later). There are certain sections in the game that I died at repeatedly and didn't understand what I was doing wrong. Turns out I was just jumping incorrectly or in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to the game.

The difficulty is all over the place. One level will be short and laughably easy and the next will throw you a curve ball into a level with an absolutely unfun mechanic. There is a level that gives you a countdown and you have to progress and hit a switch before it gets too high or you'll die. You'd think this mechanic would be based on speed and maybe between checkpoints, they give so much time to hit a switch at the next checkpoint, almost like a time trial? But no. You have to mostly use Sonic's awkward platforming to reach the switches and some times look for them as they're out of view and some times you feel lucky you even found one. That level is terrible!

Speaking of platforming, there is entirely too much in this game. For every fun running part with sonic, there will be 2 awkward feeling platforming sections you have to deal with... also not fun!

But the worst part of the game are the bosses. You've probably read it several times from other reviews, but it's true. The bosses in this game are tedious and unfun. I'm not going to talk about the problems with them all, but ANY boss in this game that has dropping floors where you could potentially fall and die, these were the bane of my time with this game.

The boss of Cyber Station almost broke me. I spent one night playing this boss specifically and could not get him. What was I do wrong? The physics for sonic change on this boss. You're basically in a forced to run scenario and Sonic feels super heavy to control. Moving left or right or jump, Sonic might as well weigh 500 lbs. Despite all this, I kept getting to the 2nd phase and he would somehow keep opening the floor with the laser and I'd fall in from getting hit or unsure where he was opening it. I tried again the next night, I died several times and called it a night. Then the night I am writing this, after SO MANY tries, I finally downed him. FINALLY! Surely there would not be another boss like that?

The next couple levels, LAUGHABLY easy and then you get to eggman's level. This level is so terribly designed. It's more interested in you getting hit than you getting any kind of momentum or rhythm going. Who designs a platformer where you drop from ledges and there is always something down there that will hit you? Terrible.

I reached the final boss and just couldn't do it anymore. I got him to his 2nd phase after many tries and I hit him 3 times during this phase only to find out that I guess 3 isn't the magic number anymore and he kept going and killed me shortly there after. I honestly rage quit and uninstalled the game and will not be returning. And it is RARE that I rage quit games, so you know this was on my last nerve.

The worst part about the boss fights is they take so long! It'd be one thing if these battles I mentioned were just difficult but you could take them out quickly (like in a normal Sonic game) but they're difficult and also take 10-15 minutes! Some times you miss your opportunity to hit the boss and it just lengthens the boss fight where you have to wait and wait and wait. I can't keep doing that.

I can't recommend this game. People who really like it, maybe you had a ton of fun in coop? But in solo, it sucks. Only a couple acts are actually fun. I gave the game multiple chances to win me back but nope.

The team that made this game, I don't think they understand what made the original sonic games fun. Not that this is a new problem for sonic team, but damn, this could've been so much better with just a few differences. Such a shame.

I played this on Game Pass before it was removed and I have to say, this game is kind of all over the place. While there are some overall interesting situations in the game (like the larping scenario for example) too much of the game is either unbelievable or unrelatable from a character perspective.

Why would this person do that? Why does no one care about that? Why would this person react this way in that situation? I was asking these questions a lot through the game.

I can take the unbelievable sci-fi super power stuff but the characters and overall story needed more work...

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is an absolute joy to play. It's not perfect and it's not the best 2D Mario game, but it's damn good and it's a great place for new Mario fans to start!

Considering this was the first 2D Mario game in a while (New Super Mario Bros. Wii U released quite some time ago) Wonder is a game that Mario fans have been eagerly awaiting, even before it was announced earlier this year. Whatever the new 2D Mario game was, people wanted it! So here it is and it's quite amazing!

No longer are you in the mushroom kingdom but now you're in the flower kingdom! And no longer are you saving a princess but you're just saving the kingdom from Bowser. In fact, you can play as one of the Princess's if you like as the game offers you the ability to play as a huge amount of different characters that you can swap to play as whenever you feel like it! I love that feature.

In the flower kingdom, you will be working to get the wonder seeds back as you platform around. These magical seeds/flowers seem to be volatile or something as when put in the wrong hands, can be very dangerous and when you collect a wonder flower, everything in the level goes nuts! You almost find yourself in an "altered state" where the tubes may start to crawl all over, bulls may rampage throughout the level, piranha plants may sing to you, huge hippos may roll around and bounce you all over the place and these examples are just in the first world! To get out of these crazy places, you need to collect the wonder seed and find your way to the exit.

Because of these seeds/flowers, the variety of gameplay within the game is huge. There are a few times where the effects repeat between different levels, but for the most part, they're unique! The team behind this game really put a lot of time and love into this one, creating a unique experience in almost every level!

The enemy variety is immense as well. The game reuses the minor characters like goombas and koopas but throughout the game, most levels will feature completely unique enemies which is crazy to think about from a programming standpoint.

The new suits are interesting, but I'm not sure they're improving upon what we've already seen in a Mario game before. They become useful in certain situations just like in past games, I think the suit that is most fun is the elephant suit as you can splash water around and break bricks with your trunk. I was a little surprised that they didn't include the ability to fly or float around like we've seen in previous Mario games. Not that this has to be in here, but it's surprising.

To compliment the new suits, they've also added badges to the game which will give your character an added ability to use. These can range from an higher jump, to faster running, to a grappling hook! I didn't find that I really needed these badges much besides the sonar badge (is that the name of it?) as it helps to detect secrets in levels and I was trying to collect everything!

I was surprised to see that the game only really had 1 ghost house in it. I haven't finished the special world yet, but I only remember 1. In the past, the Mario games would have like 1 per world!

The music in the game is... fine. When you compare it to some of Mario's other games, I don't think it even compares and it's average at best.

The sound design for some of the game is not my cup of tea either. Most of it is fine and does the job but there are some annoying sounds, like the jump sounds for the toads and princesses for example.

I'm not usually one to complain about a game being too easy but honestly, this game is not challenging until you get into the latter part of the game or even to the special world levels. I think I may have died like 5 times during my play through and defeated Bowser with 65 lives to spare. For someone who grew up playing Mario, it's not a tough game.

As a dad, I must say that I am not happy that my 4 year old son can only pick between a Yoshi or Nabbit if he just wants to bounce around in a game with me and not worry about dying. He kept telling me he wanted to play as Mario or Luigi or even a Princess and it was a frustrating experience. He also wanted to become an elephant but Yoshi and Nabbit can't become the elephant for some odd reason. Why can't you select your character and just tell the game you want "kids mode" for that character? VERY odd design choice.

Most of these gripes are very small in the grand scheme of things as the gameplay is addicting and it's one of those games for me that I kept thinking about getting back to when I wasn't playing it and that is pretty rare for me these days.

Overall, I still think that Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros 3 are better games than this one, but this is a very close third for best 2D Mario games and that is a hell of a top 3!

Planet of Lana is a 2D platforming, stealth, puzzle game that has you play as a young boy whose village has been over taken by mysterious, scary robots. As the sole escapee from the robots, he ventures out into the wilderness to find other dangers as well. However, he is soon joined by a little cat-like creature named Mui who helps him in his adventure to find out what happened to his village.

🎮 In Planet of Lana, you’re traversing beautiful environments while being challenged by a plethora of 2d puzzles. Many of them will have you stealthing around to avoid the gaze of creatures and robots. The main boy you play as, as you might suspect, is much slower and weaker than these robots. So, you’ll be taking your time, surveying the area to make sure you don’t get spotted. Much of the success you have is thanks to your little buddy Mui, who uses his agility and mysterious alien powers to help.

🤫 I may be biased because I am a big 2D platforming fan, but this game is right down my alley. While I’m not the biggest fan of stealth-based games, this game features a very light version of the mechanic. Solving a puzzle while avoiding or even taking out a robot feels very satisfying. As a puzzle fan, the puzzles in this game were mainly pretty simple to figure out but I will say that in the latter part of the game, there were probably two that I was pretty stumped on. You’ll have to really think a bit creatively about the abilities you have at your disposal to solve some of them.

🌙 For those who are fans of Playdead games (Limbo and Inside) and you’re looking for a game in that vein, you will not be disappointed. Planet of Lana’s atmosphere might be cheerier than those games, but the concept of your village being taken by killer robots is pretty dark. Then further on in the game, it’s revealed that some of things happening to the wildlife and people of the planet is even darker.

🤔 With all that said, this game expects you to solve everything the way it wants you to. There really isn’t much room for interpretation or open thought. If you’re not a fan of solving puzzles and you get stumped a lot with this type of gameplay, you’re probably not going to feel much different about this game.

🎨 The game has a gorgeous art style. Much of it takes place during the day, out in the open. Which is interesting because when you think stealth, you think night and darkness. The game has a couple of dark environments but the majority of the game is pretty bright. Regardless of it being day or night or bright or dark, all of the environments in the game look beautiful. It has this storybook feel to it, which I really like. However, I know this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea as most are not expecting a golden book style presentation when your story is about killer robots taking your family.

🙊 I did notice that there were some sprites that stuck out like a sore thumb. You can tell in many areas of the game, the developer was clumping sprites together to form clusters of grass and bushes, so I did see instances where the edges of the sprites would stick out and look really out of place. Considering how nice the rest of the environment looks, this is unfortunate. Most may not even notice it, but it was distracting for me.

🌟 The clothes/design of the character, audio cues and his life here on this planet definitely harken back to the beginning of the Luke Skywalker saga in Star Wars. It really feels like they said “What if we had a younger Luke and he lived on a nicer planet.”

🌞 The game also seems to take place during summer and I love the summer feel of this game. Running through areas of field and grass, just jumping from rock to rock… it just feels like summer and hits really nice during this time of year. Even though there is already a bit of it, I kind of wish there was just a bit more running through fields and platforming without enemies because it’s just wholesome and enjoyable.

📖 While the story of the game was mainly about the boy finding out what happened to his village and where the robots took his people, I do wish we got a little more insight as to why it was happening. I guess it's just because the robots were evil? I don't know, but that's all we're really given as explanation.

🐈 One nit pick I have with the game is that there are times where the puzzles and platforming required Mui to jump a far distance and it was some times hard to judge if he could make that jump or not as some puzzles were based on you trying to get Mui closer to the exit when he couldn’t quite get there in the first place. It would’ve been nice to have some kind of visual indicator of the jumps he could make.

🏁 This is a great little 2D puzzle game that isn’t perfect and isn’t going to be for everyone. Some might want a darker tone with their games or perhaps less puzzle gameplay and more action. As it stands though, I thoroughly enjoyed this one and I could see myself playing through it again in the future.

The game is a love letter to Alice in wonderland. A girl gets sucked through a mirror and goes on a dangerous, action adventure through a wonderland inspired world with lots of boss fights and a cool art style. It’s a fun and quick game, good for newcomers or someone looking for a light game to playthrough.

🎮 For gameplay, you’re getting an action RPG of sorts where you hack and slash your way through enemies and earn XP and abilities along the way. Swinging your sword almost feels a little janky as you can stun lock most regular enemies just by spamming the attack button. I will say, despite this, it’s fun to have a game that feels old school in the sense that you aren’t animation locked when you attack. You can spam that sword as much as you want! You’ll also get a few abilities that you can use on your adventure and they’re actually pretty helpful… maybe too helpful?

🧀 There are lots of boss fights but most of them can be won the same cheesy way. You can run away from them, use your ice spell ability, maybe go in for a couple hits and repeat until done. Rarely are the boss fights configured any differently. There are a couple boss fights that add phases and change it up but not many. Run, ice spell, hit 2-3 times, repeat.

☝️ If you do find you’re having trouble, you could also grind out levels to easily destroy everything but it’s not really all that necessary as long as you remember to upgrade after boss fights and grabbing the heart emblems.

🎥 The worst part of the boss fights, and something grinding can’t help with, is you don’t have full control of the camera. You can swing it about 60% left and right but if most bosses get too close to the front of the stage where the camera is located, you can’t swing it around to see where the boss actually is. The boss basically disappears from view. Very Annoying! If you want to see the boss, you have to lure it away from the front and risk being hit because you can’t see where it is or what it’s doing. This was a very odd design decision.

🎨 The art style is unique as it’s a mix of voxel and regular 3d geometry. Most of the actual character models are voxel style but are plastered with vibrant colors and textures, giving the game a bright and fun feel. This might sound like a nitpick but the main girls face never seems to change and because of that, it’s a bit creepy. Also, she is wearing some jean shorts with pockets and the pockets stretch down as she runs and it looks very unnatural and strange. Because the camera is aimed behind her the whole time, this was hard to ignore.

😹 As far as characters go, the main girl is… a girl. The dialog from her is always so polite and milk toast that I found it unnecessary to read as there was no personality. Finn the white rabbit is really the closest you’ll get to a friend or a recurring character. There are a lot of strange and fun characters throughout the game but you don’t get to spend too much time with them, so it’s hard to form too much of a relationship with any of them. There’s also no voice acting, so it’s not like they’ll stand out with a unique voice either.

🏁 While there are a few annoyances within the game, I had a fun time with it. This game is really meant to just be a quick, throwback adventure that you don’t think too much about. If I had to guess, I probably spent 4-5 hours in it and I got all the achievements. I think if any longer though, then it might’ve overstayed it’s welcome.

A unique 3d platforming, climbing game that is worth the journey if you don't mind a little janky gameplay and spacy, ambiguous story telling.

Jusant is you, as a kid, climbing a mountain for your little blue creature friend that you keep in your backpack. I won't spoil it here, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what happens at the end, but you do help your little blue friend... I think?

Regardless, the climbing is a lot of fun when it's working correctly and the mountain is really interesting as it changes biomes between chapters. There are also an absolute ton of collectibles, so if you like looking for collectibles, you have a bit more meat on the bone of this game. If you don't care about collectibles, you can breeze through this pretty quickly.

The climbing portions do get creative and puzzly with you using all your abilities (climbing, jumping, taking a breath, swinging, etc...) to figure out how to get up to the next area safely. This is SUPER satisfying and feels great when you figure out a tough area. I loved looking down and seeing where I came from and thinking "Wow, I actually climbed pretty far!"

There are some other little janky issues with maneuvering around the environment where the movement just doesn't feel as seamless as it should. I think about wall climbing in something like an Assassin's Creed or Price of Persia and how that felt pretty intuitive and easy but this game doesn't really follow those lines.

This is a blessing and a curse because I see what they were going for. They want you to control each arm with the triggers on the controller and they want that because it feels more challenging like you're actually climbing. They want you to feel like you're the one doing it. I get it.

However, there are times where the environment just works against you in a not so fun way. Like, when I'm just trying to climb down from a ledge, it feels like there are ledges that will let you and some won't and I don't get why.

There are times where grabbing at ledges can be super strange. The kids arms will some times just not grab what you're trying to grab even though he's right next to the ledge! His arms will hilariously go all over the place looking for something to grab or just keep grabbing the wrong thing! This is especially frustrating when you're trying to grab things that are moving.

Other times, you think you've grabbed a ledge only to find that you totally didn't and you will drop down. This can be frustrating when you forgot to set another hook in the wall to start from along your climb and you have to start over from the last check point below.

Overall, I enjoyed Jusant but by the end I was kind of over it. I think the game is the perfect length to not over stay its welcome and by the end, I felt satisfied with the journey. I just wish some of the little janky issues were more ironed out. Perhaps in a sequel? We'll see!

In Maneater’s best moments, you’ll feel like the big bad shark that the game wants you to be. However, there are some things like repetitive quests, awkward controls and crashing that keep it from being the MEG it needs to be.

🦈 Maneater, on paper, is an amazing concept for a video game. I remember when this was revealed, I was ALL IN on it. You play as a shark that grows from baby to mega sized adult, all the while terrorizing humans and other ocean critters in an open world (ocean). What’s not to like?

📺 The game has a reality show/documentary style approach to the story where a guy named Scaly Pete, the shark hunter, is after you. Every time you finish a certain percentage of quests in an area, you get to see the newest episode where in Scaly Pete is trying to hunt you down. I thought this was a pretty fun approach to telling the story but I felt like it got old by the time we reached the end. Not so much because of the story beats, because some messed up stuff does happen on the show and I was into how deranged Scaly Pete seemed to be. It’s more the narrator of the show. The narrator was a funny joke for the documentary style at first but after a few hours, it gets old. AND it’s not because of his proper newscaster type voice on the show, it’s because he narrates almost everything you do in the game! The first time I hear him say something about me returning to my home, it's cute. After the 50th time, I’m over it. I ended up turning the volume down to 0 for that because luckily that was an option.

🃏 The developers really went all out on the jokes for this game, for better or for worse. There is a lot of humor in the reality show that I feel doesn’t hit. But the game itself is riddled with jokes all over. Everything from text puns like “Whale, there ya go!” or movie references to IT “We all float down here” or having a little Kaiju area -- it’s in here.

🪙 As I mentioned, this is an open world game and the first couple areas are very fun! But once you hit areas 3 and on, you realize the pattern of the quests and it’s the same thing every time. The quests and the collectibles are always the same. Luckily, the other creatures in the ocean do change from area to area, so that helps to keep some things fresh. Also, each area is a different environment from the last. The starting area is a swamp, then eventually you’ll make it over to more of a sea world theme park type area, which then eventually leads you out to the gulf.

🕹️ The gameplay itself is, again, super fun at first. And then towards the middle of the game, it gets better as you get bigger and more powerful with equipable evolution mods that change how badass your shark looks. Very cool! You end up fighting and eating fish, gators, turtles and even other sharks. And if you eat too many humans, you’ll bring out the hunters who want to take you out. This is a ton of fun for the first few hours but by the time you roll around to the last third of the game, predators and hunters become tougher and at times it feels like you’re really fighting the controls and camera instead of the enemies.

💧 The thing to keep in mind here is that this is an underwater game. Barely any games have controlled well underwater. Maneater gives you the ability to swim up and down, jump out of the water and even tail whip and ram into things. All of these things feel great at first but when things get more complicated as more tougher enemies are coming for you, you can easily lose track of the action. It was very common in the late part of the game to look around after attacking a boat, or after getting attacked by underwater hunters and not be able to see where it is to retaliate. Meanwhile, your health is dropping. Also, when you’re fighting boats, keep in mind as you rise in rank against them, your index finger will get tired biting over and over and over again. Mine did!

🫥 This might be more of a nitpick but searching for collectibles to 100% complete the map areas feels like a chore some times. In the first couple areas, collectibles are gated by the size of your shark. Like you can only break through when you’re big/strong enough. Those I don’t mind but some items are stowed in deep caves and it becomes a maze of looking for tiny open crevices to find certain items, which is not super fun. You do have the shark radar to help, but even that isn’t a big help for the really well-hidden items.
💬 Sometimes the UI text is misleading too. You’ll hit a certain level where you need to fight Scaly Pete to reach your next shark size. This annoying text/icon in the bottom right of the screen just says “Fight Scaly Pete” and doesn’t go away until you finally fight him. However, the game doesn’t tell you that you’ll be fighting once you have finished the quests in the area, so you might go looking for him right then (like I did) only to realize it’s not time yet.

😱 Oh, and the game crashed on me about 4 times during my sessions.

Despite all these things, I really liked the gameplay loop, no matter how samey it got. I had to see it through to the end and 100% it as well. I wanted to see the climactic ending with Scaly Pete and take out all the Apex Predators. And I may be biased because I really like giant monsters, so I have a soft spot for the shark. While I recognize the game has it’s flaws, I could overlook them for the fun I had and the fact that I got to play as a huge shark, eating everything in my path. I’m looking forward to checking out the DLC soon!

A quick little 3d adventure where you play as a bear that is also a lumberjack who is cutting down all of the local man made contraptions to reclaim his land. The game doesn't demand too much from you and has a "my first game" vibe to it but it does have a lot of personality. Sort of like a playable kids cartoon show, in a way.

The game is very cute and has a lot of personality. You destroy all the contraptions/buildings in a level with your axe and with the help of your woodland friends (like standing on a swimming turtle to reach certain objects, or escorting your porcupine friend through a structure as he knocks things down for you to destroy).

However, the gameplay itself is a bit limited. There are basically 2 kinds of levels. One where you destroy items around the environment, collect the debris and upgrade your axe that will help you destroy the bigger items.

The other type of level has you sporting a tennis racket and you use the physics in the world to bounce bombs around to destroy everything around you.

Both are a lot of fun at first but once you get through a couple levels, it feels very redundant. They do try to keep things fresh with new environments and new buildings/contraptions to destroy, but it would’ve been nice to have at least one more mechanic to spice things up a bit.

I think this will be a great first game for my son once he starts getting into gaming more. I think adults, especially if you're turned off by cutesy characters, will be looking for more than what this has to offer.

A Metroidvania/Metroid clone with an interesting art style in a creepy, grimy, abandoned planet atmosphere. Overall, I'm positive on the game but there are some things that need a bit more polish as I don't understand some of the design decisions.

Right off the bat, I'm not going to leave this one a star rating, as I did not even come close to finishing it (about 2 hours in). I'm more than likely not going to have time to finish this one before it leaves game pass. Shelving it for possible future purchase and playthrough. I'll update my review then.

Gameplay is very much Metroid but without the flashy feel. Every special collectible or upgrade seems to be a white glowy thing on the ground and there is absolutely no celebration in finding any of these. Remember in Metroid when you would collect an upgrade? That music? Yea, none of that.

Which is a shame because the game has cool, ambient music, but overall sound design is a bit strange. Some sounds rattled my speakers and others sounded muffled? I also didn't notice any boss music for bosses/named characters? Must've been on purpose? There aren't a lot of sound cues for things either.

There are NPCs with spoken dialog and your character talks now and then and I think the voice over is well done.

The game also has that whole, "die and you have to collect your stuff" mechanic thing going on. In this case, it's the points you collect from kills to upgrade your suit and buy stuff with. If you die, you have to find your way back to where it happened and get your points back.

I should also mention that upgrading your suit basically means leveling up. You need to find this decrepit statues to level up at, but when you do, you can level up as much as you like, as long as you have the points. You could potentially just grind out your levels and become super powerful and considering random, powerful, named characters just show up out of nowhere some times, that might be the way to go.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, I did not finish this one but I'd like to get it on sale in the future and jump back in.

I've been a huge fan of Ratchet and Clank since the first game came out on PS2, so I may be a bit biased in my review. I will say that I haven't played the first game since the PS2 days, so I have no memory on the original story beats and what could be different in this remake, but my memories of how fun the series is has always stuck with me. I also had the joy of playing this remake on a PS5 with the 60 FPS update, which is the way I would recommend playing it -- and I DO recommend playing it.

😃 The graphics are beautiful. It's hard to believe that this came out in 2016 as playing it on PS5, this game looks better than many of the games coming out today. Of course, it does have the :3D Platforming cutesy aesthetic: but considering the varied look of all the different worlds you visit and all of the beautiful colors and effects that are used, the game can be quite stunning.

😃 The gameplay is just as fun as it ever was! This was one of the first games to successfully combine platforming with guns and it still holds up all these years later. There are many different types of enemies and a good variety of guns to take them out with (more on that in a second). Levels are paced in a such a way that they never outstay their welcome and they offer a lot of secrets to find and variety in missions. From gunfights, to hover board races, to rail grinding, to puzzles, to Dog Fighting in your ship, there is a lot to do!

🦄 What makes R&C truly unique though is the weapon system. You collect weapons, you can upgrade weapons simply by using them. Then you can upgrade them again with a certain rare collectable as each weapon has its own hex grid chart where you can buy spots on the chart that improve your weapon. Then in challenge mode, if you've collected the right cards through the game, you can upgrade the guns again to another more powerful version. It sounds like a lot, but once you see the system in action, it fits so well in the game that it feels like second nature.

😐 The story and writing are probably where the game suffers most. It's not even that it's bad, but it can be corny at times, even if that is what they're going for. I can see this turning some players off. However, the pacing of the story is perfect.

🔥 I hope they also get to updating Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal. For now I plan to play through the rest of Challenge Mode and then jump to Rift Apart very soon!