Came for the twins, stayed for the Kingdom of Elgado!

Monster Hunter Rise is often compared to its very popular predecessor MH World and I don't think a comparison between those two games is fair, as it's really just a case of apples and oranges. For the sake of explaining it, I'll give a rundown of the differences between the two entries though.

First of all, this game was designed for the Nintendo Switch in mind. Given the portable nature of this hybrid console, Rise streamlined the gameplay loop a fair bit in order to make it more accessible to a pick-up-and-play gamestyle. This includes faster hunts, monsters being instantly shown on the minimap, increased traversal options with the Palamutes and the ability to pause the game anytime when you're not playing with others - a very nice feature to have (which was missing in World)! As a tradeoff, it doesn't have the expansive ecosystem or the tracking of monster footprints from World, so it's less immersive in that regard. But those gameplay changes aren't necessarily bad, they're just different. I for one appreciate the fast-paced and direct nature of Rise; it's a welcome change after spending hundreds of hours with the slower gameplay of World. Rise's combat specialises in the usage of the wirebugs, they serve as a mechanic to either perform special skills (similar to the ones in Generations) or can be used for easy movement as a grappling hook. Getting used to these little fellas can feel weird at first, but once you know your way around them they're just a ton of fun to use and can totally change the way you approach certain monsters. As an example, the flagship monster Magnamalo inflicts a special debuff that can only be cleansed through wirebug usage, so you need to keep the bar in mind and use the dash whenever you want to cure the ailment. Alongside Magnamalo, most of the other newcomers in Rise are great to fight aswell! Goss Harag is probably my favorite new addition, love his Yeti-inspired design and the fight in general. Looking forward to many great fights in Sunbreak too!

The Village quests ease you fairly well into the game, even though the first set of ranks were quite boring for someone acquainted with the franchise. Still a good introduction for new hunters and even allows you to skip the entire Low Rank of the Hub quests. Speaking of the Gathering Hub, it's rather... desolate these days on the PC port. Atleast there's the Better Matchmaking mod, which removes the Region Lock and helps you find matches a bit faster, but having to rely on a mod for something as basic as worldwide play is quite a bummer. Note that this is not an issue with the original version of the game on Switch and was only added to the PC port for some strange reason, so the game itself can't really be blamed for this. Another cool mod I can recommend is RiseTweaks for removing the framerate cap on cutscenes - another thing that should have been in the PC port from the start! Anyways, finding multiplayer matches over join requests isn't that hard for key quests (good luck finding a partner for event quests on PC though) and you should be able to reach Master Rank in no time. I can't really comment on the Master Rank content yet, as I just started Sunbreak yesterday, but it's pretty amazing so far!

My final thoughts? Rise is another wonderful Monster Hunter game and I had a great time with the base game on PC despite the aforementioned strange issues with the port. Liked it so much that I got the Sunbreak bundle on Switch as well, so make of that what you will. I think you'll get a great experience on any platform, just pick between the eye candy version (PC) or the one with the thriving playerbase (Switch). Can't go wrong here!

After getting my Switch on launch along with Breath of the Wild, I was excited to see what games the console would have in the future. I bought Master Blaster Zero and eventually The Binding of Isaac for the third time, but a month and a half later Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out. Now look, this may be a rerelease and all but it was for a portable console. Mario Kart 8 was great but I could only play it at home and with a game like Mario Kart, its more fun to play it on the go with friends. When this came out, I was nearing the end of my Junior year in High School. Let me tell you, me and my friends played this all the time during the span of the rest of my high school experience. We played it in lunch, we played it in study hall, we even played it in class whether it was sneaking it or just when we had free time. This was THE Switch game to play when it came to my friend group alongside Jackbox Party Pack 3. It's just a ton of fun and while I said it was a rerelease, it's not just a lazy port. They not only included the DLC tracks, but they also added some new characters and revamped the battle mode.

I said the character selection was a bit lacking in the original game but the ones they added here are all good. Bowser Jr, King Boo and Dry Bones are all good additions that were in past games. The completely brand-new addition tho is Inkling Girl/Boy. Now, I was a huge Splatoon 1 fan before this so I was hyped when they were added. I mained them a lot when I first played and honestly, they're a perfect crossover addition just cuz Splatoon was originally supposed to be a Mario game which I found funny. This isn't even getting into the characters they added from the booster course pass. Most of those are also great, tho I haven't used them myself since I don't own the booster courses. If you do though, easily the best roster in the series.

The other thing they fixed of course is the battle mode. Easily the worst part of the original game and the worst battle mode I've played, it's really good here. Not as good as Mario Kart DS since there's still no option to have it be elimination rules, however you're not forced into teams like Wii and there's a whopping 5 modes this time around. Balloon battle and coin runners are classics of course. Shine thief makes a return and it's also pretty fun here. Bob-omb blast apparently originated from Double Dash and that's also fun tho definitely the most chaotic of the bunch. The brand new mode this time around is renegade roundup and its basically cops and robbers. Pretty fun mode as well but the real reason these are all actually fun is they gave us battle courses again THANK GOD. The old courses are great and some of the new courses are awesome too like Urchin Underpass. Love to see a little Splatoon representation since it didn't get a race track.

So there you go, the character selection was expanded and while not my favorite battle mode, the battle mode was made actually fun again. The only other thing they added, and they added it 5 years after deluxe came out, are the booster courses. Now I don't own them but my good friend Quent has the expansion pass so along with him and my friend wheatie, we played a bunch of online races for this review and I was able to play pretty much all the courses I wanted to. I didn't play them all but I can see the course quality varies greatly. You have some really half assed tracks and then you have really great ones like Yoshi's Island or SNES Bowser's Castle. A lot of the returning ones are Wii courses which is a plus too. Obviously most of these are just straight up ported from Tour and the visuals on a lot of them are pretty unacceptable compared to the base game but, if you don't care about then then the value of 48 tracks for $25 is great. That's basically 50 cents a track plus the added characters. Not only that but they added the ability to choose custom items, plus a music player in the main menu.

With the slightly better character roster and the MUCH better battle mode, I can say this is definitely THE definite Mario Kart. Though I may end up liking Wii a tad bit more now due to it's wacky physics. Either way, definitely a must have as a Switch owner and as a Mario Kart fan.

Well, that's the end of the Mario Kart marathon everyone unless I end up actually playing Tour lol. Been playing Persona 3 FES this whole time alongside these games and I'm in December now so I think I'm nearing the end of it, stay tuned for that review!

My first exposure to Bayonetta, as I'm sure is the case with many others, was through her addition to Super Smash Bros. on 3DS/Wii U. I was lucky enough to find a 360 copy of the game at GameStop very shortly after the fact, and I picked it up excitedly. Keep in mind, this was back in... 2016? I was a dumb little kid back then, with absolutely zero experience in the genre of hack n' slash. Yet I loved it! I absolutely loved the game back then, as awful as I was at it. Unfortunately, that love could only get me so far. Dumb child wheatie made it all the way up to Chapter XIV, before reaching an absolute barricade. I could not, for the life of me, manage to beat Jeanne that final time. A couple years later, I wound up selling that Xbox 360, to be replaced by a PS2 due to my growing interest in its absolutely stellar library.

It wouldn't be for another few years that I'd even learn the first Bayonetta was on PS4, and even then I was little skeptical after hearing the horror stories of the PS3 release. After some research, a bit of convincing, and the necessary funds to buy the game on sale in its 10 year anniversary bundle with Vanquish, I was once again in possession of Bayonetta... and then I put it off for another 2 years.

But hey! I finally did it! I managed to make my way through its entire campaign over half a decade later, and I'm glad to say I still enjoy it just as much as I did back then. Potential new record for the longest it's ever taken me to finish a game, if you don't count Wall-E for the DS.

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Bayonetta follow a very simple philosophy. If you don't get it, you will get fucked. Similar to the Devil May Cry series, it heavily encourages replay value not only through unlockable difficulties, but through absolutely brutal encounters, whether it be with regular enemies or actual boss fights. As weird as it sounds, I really like stuff like this. It might be the fighting gamer in me, but I love the feeling of improvement a substantial amount, and that's what games like Bayonetta want. What might seem like an impossible task thrust upon you in your weakest moments, can be turned into a remarkable turn of the tables with proper knowledge and adequate experience. Bayonetta achieves this fantastically, and knows how to make it feel even better.

yhea here she goes again Accompanied through each and every battle is some of—and I mean this—some of the greatest songs of any video game I've ever listened to. To the point where I cannot begin to describe it in any more words than beautiful. Even outside of battle, it holds one of my favorite tracks (combined with one of my favorite settings in general) in Rodin's otherworldly bar, The Gates of Hell. One of the few games I can happily include in my regular playlist, I just wish I could include more of it (i lub u fly me to the moon).

I do wish, more than anything though, that I could've gotten more into the boss fights. A very large majority of them tended to boil down to waiting for the big Angel Monster to throw down their hand, dodge, wail on them for a few seconds while they're slowed down until they pull back to repeat the process. It's why I can say I enjoyed all the Jeanne fights the most, since they were some of the only ones where I felt involved and active all the way through. To add to this, frankly too many times does Bayonetta include a short little cutscene in the middle of its boss fights, that are abruptly interrupted by a Quick Time Event that will 95% of the time catch you completely off guard, and kill you in an instant. While I did praise the game earlier for incentivising replays and improvement, it can still get a bit frustrating taking such a hit to your ranking not due to being bested in your fight, but simply by not having the split second reaction time that is asked of you so often.

It's still peak though. God, it's so peak. It was so fun playing those first 14 chapters again, reminiscing on everything I could still so vividly remember, even after all these years. While I wasn't the biggest fan of everything what came after, I still enjoyed every minute of this game at least a decent amount. If I wasn't already looking forward to its sequel, I would love to just do it all again in hard mode while it's still fresh on the mind. What a cool game. One of the greatest of its kind, and I've heard even better of the second.

I picked this up thinking it might scratch that Legend of Mana itch -- action RPG combat with lots of systems to play with. I should have looked into it a bit more, since it's not really that. It's a fairly straightforward Secret of Mana-style action RPG with a rather normal skill tree. There is a pet system, which is why I got my hopes up for something Legend of Mana-esque, but they just function as passive bonuses. Totally my fault for not doing enough research on that end. Still, I like action RPGs, so I didn't let that deter me.

Unfortunately, I really don't enjoy the writing. It has that very referential late 2000s internet humor that simply doesn't work for me. I find it to be a bit grating regularly, and it only made me laugh in a couple of spots.

This could all still be saved for me if the gameplay was excellent, but it was just alright. Certainly not bad, but the movement felt a bit stiff and I found most of the special abilities to be awkward to use or just not that exciting. I respecced a number of times, but just couldn't find a build that excited me.

The collectathon aspect of it is enjoyable and well done, if a bit grindy (as the games name alludes to). If I liked the combat a bit more, I could see hunting down all of the loot motivating me to complete the game.

All in all, it's not a terrible game, and I can see how some people may really enjoy it. I'm just having an 'ok' time at best, so after ~7 hours, I think I'll just move on.

The Secret of Varonis is a spiritual successor to the original Gameboy SaGa trilogy (aka Final Fantasy Legend), having originally grown out of a fan game. The mechanics are essentially a combination of the first two SaGa games, with a decent amount of modern quality of life thrown in. The story is very similar to the first couple of games, seeing you climb a tower, visit worlds, and fight gods, though it's more focused and fleshed out than what you'd expect from a SaGa game. I actually rather enjoyed it by the end. While there's nothing particularly new here, everything is just a bit bigger, better, and smoother to play than the old games, creating an experience that I think even modern JRPG fans without nostalgia would have a great time with.

With the atmosphere and presentation of Signalis, I was sure I would fall in love with this game. In the first few hours, the gameplay was interesting and fun, motivating me to solve the puzzles laid before me through its mechanics that very much reminded me of the classic survival horror genre.
Unfortunately, the horror aspect of Signalis isn't very appealing and while everything is stunning to look at and play through, there's never a feeling of tension and that's a huge miss.
Nearing the end, those mechanics that I found so engaging towards the start, started to dwindle and became monotonous with countless times feeling burdened with whatever comes next.
I stopped caring and I dropped it.

Back in the day, I was a huge fan of the Wii U. I got one for Christmas a month after it came out and for a long while, I would get every single big release. Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, some great titles released early on into the consoles life cycle so I was always looking forward to the next big Wii U game. Fast forward to May of 2014, I got my hands on Mario Kart 8 the day it came out. I loved 7 back in the day and was absolutely ecstatic for 8's release. Once I finally was able to play it, I knew it would be THE game I'd be playing with friends for a long while. Though honestly in retrospect, while I still played it a decent amount with my buds, I ended up playing Smash 4 and even it's better version Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a lot more. Still, even if there's no reason to go back to this one when Deluxe is a thing, it's still great in its own right.

The initial aspect I noticed all those years ago was just how damn amazing this game looks. And yeah, it still looks amazing to this day. Idk what Nintendo was cooking but this was easily the best-looking Wii U game like ever, with Pikmin 3 coming right behind it. Not only are the new tracks all so vibrant and just super clean looking with its more realistic shading and texture work, all the retro courses got this treatment too and they're simply wonderful to look at. Like I said, this game still looks beautiful to this day, and it's almost 10 years old at this point! It's crazy really.

A big reason this game's tracks look so good visually is due to the game's new gimmick. While underwater driving and gliding are still in the game, Mario Kart 8 also added zero gravity. This leads to some amazing looking and feeling track design with how the track can curve all around any which way. It gives new tracks so much character and retro tracks are better than ever because of it. Like for example GBA Mario Circuit. Very boring track outside of 8 but 8's anti gravity section has a section of the track totally elevated off the ground and just makes an otherwise unmemorable track, super memorable. Same thing happens with Toad's Turnpike where you can literally drive on the walls, passing a lot of traffic if you choose to do so, and this wall driving happens in several other courses too. Underwater driving is meh, gliding is cool but anti-gravity as a gimmick is just so awesome and I'm glad it's used so well and so often in 8.

Going into more depth on the track selection, it's actually really great overall. While I still think Wii easily wins in the original track selection department, 8 just uses the anti-gravity mechanic so well it's hard not to like 8's selection too. Cloudtop Cruise was always my favorite but you have some other really good tracks like Mario Circuit, Mount Wario, Thwomp Ruins, Sunshine Airport and Toad Harbor. My favorites from Wii's selection definitely trump most of these but this is still one of the better selections of original tracks in the series. Now with the retro tracks, I know I said 7 has the best selection but thinking on it, 8 probably has the best in the series. The anti-gravity additions to many of the tracks just adds so much and the glide pads also added to a lot of them was nice too. It would've been cool if every retro stage had anti-gravity added to them but they added it to a good chunk of them so I can't complain. All this plus these retro tracks just look absolutely gorgeous.

However, there weren't just 8 cups this time around. If you got the DLC, which I did, you were able to race on 12 cups in total. It was $12 for both DLC packs and it added 4 cups, 6 new characters and 8 new vehicles. The 4 new cups have some alright tracks, some solid ones and some absolute bangers like Wario's Gold Mine, SNES Rainbow Road and Ribbon Road. It also added an excite bike course, an Animal Crossing course, a Zelda course and two F Zero Courses. It was basically a crossover pack since with the characters, it also added Link and the villagers. While it is a bit weird seeing non-Mario characters in the game, it's still really cool and is also really amazing value wise. Also with this DLC came a free update which gave players the option to race on 200cc. This is a cool addition, and more content is always nice, tho it was never my preferred way to play since it can just be so awkward going that fast on these courses. Still, it can be fun just seeing your friends rage when they fall off the track going that fast. At this point, this was the most amount of characters and courses in any Mario Kart game so you'd think it'd be hard to not call it the ultimate Mario Kart game. Well, sadly there's a couple issues I have outside of the stuff I mentioned.

The biggest issue people have and yeah, it's a pretty big one for me too, is the bad battle mode. Instead of having battle mode specific courses, they decided to pick a handful of race courses for you to play on instead and it just doesn't work. More enclosed and smaller maps works well for battle mode since players will always be in the action. But with normal race courses, a lot of the time it's hard to find players unless you deliberately stay on each other's asses the whole time. Bottom line is, it just doesn't work really and there's a reason people shat on it when the game came out.

Another, smaller issue I had, was the character selection. It's better than 8's but not only did they add another baby in baby Rosalina (which makes no sense if you know her back story), they added all 7 koopalings as separate characters and something as dumb as pink gold peach. Having something like pink gold peach but not diddy kong or birdo or boswer jr.?
Just disappointing on the new character selections even if I mained Ludwig back in the day. Still, at least this game has Waluigi and the DLC at least added Dry Bowser back as well the crossover characters.

Even with the less than great character roster and possibly the worst battle mode in the series, the other things this game does so well, it elevates it to still being great in my eyes. There may be absolutely no reason to play this version of 8 when deluxe is a thing, but I can't deny this game's immense quality when it comes to the racing. Though honestly I do think Wii is the best in the series up to this point, we'll see how Deluxe stacks up when I get to that next. So look forward to that one as it will be the finale of this Mario Kart marathon!

why do vanillaware titles always cause so much melties LMAOOOOOOO, notice how none of the review bombers have actually talked about the gameplay.

anyways, this shit is really good (so far - only 11hrs in), so if you're on the fence about picking up a cool srpg - i'd strongly say go for this.

also i carnally need berengaria so bad

Oh boy...
So it seems this has become a cult classic. I deeply wish I could recommend this game but too many things get in its way.

The presentation is fairly superb, but the visuals make it near impossible to gauge jumps while platforming.

The seamless gameplay helps keep you engaged, but the lack of menus and UI make some aspects of the game obtuse to interact with, I'm also fairly sure it caused a lot of my crashes.

The storytelling is unique and the characters interesting, but the story itself is bizarre to understand.

The list goes on and on.
There were moments I loved playing this game, scenes that were a treat to traverse, The gameplay never suspends during load times, what there was to the plot kept me going, and the bossfights while repetitive were fun.

BUT
The gameplay is endlessly repetitive, the platforming is awful, a number of mechanics fully broke, a bunch of scenes completely dragged on, the combat lacked variety, enemies are way too spongey, the games absolute refusal to give on screen info makes a number of encounters feel awful...

oh boy,
This game has a lot going on, but a lot feels unfinished or worse, intentionally bad ideas.

When I weigh it all up... I honestly find it shocking I even finished this game. Yet, some part of me kept going, kept defending it.
Something about this game is unique, some of it ideas could have been worth something, too many incomplete and poorly designed ideas stand between the player and the good stuff.

I don't recommend playing El Shaddai, watch a playthrough on youtube, you'll get the good stuff without having to suffer through actually playing it.

An extremely visually unique game with a beautiful soundtrack and some cool designs, but a little bit jank on the gameplay side. Kind of the textbook "presentation over gameplay" game; while the gameplay is present here more than like a walking sim or something it's extremely bare bones. While the death recovery mechanic is cool (and plays into frustrated button mashing), it's so easy to pull off it does make it hard to actually die which conversely seems like the fights had to be more tedious and prolonged. There is a pattern to follow, but to me fights took way longer than they should have and it eventually became more annoying than fun. Would be a great game to own the artbook for and the soundtrack, but only get the game on sale if ever.

Pretty fucking good.

It's basically Bioshock except set in the Batman universe, which makes it more greater than it needs to be.

The graphics hold up amazing well, barring some of the more jittery rendered cut-scenes that play. The atmosphere in this game is just perfect, and I feel like it won't ever get topped. Of course, the game-play feels as fluid and dynamic as it could ever get.

The only stuff I have a problem with has to do with the boss fights, which the developers REALLY struggle to make engaging. Since it's just the same boss with the exact same way to beat them. Except for the Poison Ivy boss fight, which is a highlight.

Also I felt the game really needed more of Batman's classic rogues than just, like, six? Some of them are barely in it, and it makes it feel less "alive" than it should I think.

Oh yeah, the additional content for this version of the game is whatever.

Currently my GOTY. The gameplay is incredibly smooth. Could use some better settings like being able to make subtilties bigger and a different color, same with the hud. The story was cool but i think i like some of the previous entries' stories a bit more

Coming back to add to this review now that I have completed NG++, got the true ending, completed the entire arena and all the missions. The game continues to be impressive in game-feel at every moment. Its so addicting to play and so easy to just boot up missions and have a blast with them. Even going back to the drawing board with builds in the lab is fun. There are a few stinker missions like Depths 1 which i despise and wish i didn't have to play through 3 times.

--Spoilers--

The story actually got even weaker for me now that i've seen everything. The Flames of the Raven ending feels like the one that got the most attention and is the only one i really liked. The other two felt both a little short with the narrative and gameplay. Final boss of the Liberator ending doesn't have a phase 2 for some reason? The true ending final boss was fun but its set piece was not nearly as memorable as some of the others moments earlier in the game which is kinda disappointing given how much you have to do to get here. I wish the story stayed more in the horrors of corporate proxy wars for resources like it was in the opening hours. The most memorable story moment for me is the mission where you go and kill a test pilot who sounds like he's just a kid getting caught up in all of this. I wanted more of those harrowing moments like this found in the earlier games