Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is a game I should have nostalgia for, but the only part of it I look back positively on was the experience of collecting the toys rather than the game itself. I recall finding the experience boring and unfairly balanced in an effort to encourage purchasing additional toys, I could see through the blatant business strategy even as a child in the target audience.

I have brief memories of Giants and found it to be more enjoyable from the few levels I got to play in co-op, but my interest in actually playing the series and buying the games/toys declined from this point onwards, with me never purchasing Giants for myself and my interest in keeping up with news dropping off a cliff by Swap Force.

Revisiting the title then... it's a lot of fun! Nothing super special, but I enjoyed the brief time I spent with it. Co-op makes the experience a whole lot more enjoyable, as does turning the difficulty down to get around the still egregious "difficulty spikes" (enemies start doing absurd damage to make sure you have to buy more toys etc). The story and handholding is a little too infantile for me, but I was willing to put up with it for the fun gameplay. Looking forward to trying future games in the series, even if I know it's supposedly all downhill from here, but Giants is a great title to have peaked with for sure. You can do far worse in a brawler/exploration/platformer hybrid than this.

I really enjoyed my time with GT7. It's a fun game to switch off my brain to unwind after a long day while listening to my own playlist or choice of podcasts etc. As a decompressor, that's where it shines for me above all else. I could sit here and analyse how pretty the graphics are or how great the driving itself feels in its realism yet simplicity, but I'm no expert critic, so it'd be tough to stack that up against other contemporaries, so I'll just say it's a pretty example of what the PS5 is capable of going forward. (PS5 is the way to go here, PS4 is sufficient but the horrendously long loads do make it a big slog to sit through).

Couple of scummy aspects worth noting though which bump things down in my books though. Always online DRM, even for single player races... really? Also MTX and the absurd prices of cars in-game to doster FOMO marketed as realism... not great. Not tactics I fall for personally (although I don't mind buying a very cheap MTX if it'll make the experience better in my view) but worth noting for those who think they may be affected.

I'm not sure sims are close to being my first choice of racing genre, but GT7 fills a niche that I've wanted filled by a racer now for a good while, so that's a positive. Don't think it'll be replacing my love of the Forza Motorsport/Horizon series', but I'm certainly looking forward to dipping into previous entries when I can to see what else they have to offer.

I do not understand how this is the best one. It feels like it threw out almost everything that worked about Spyro 1 from my perspective and replaced it with a bloated and overly complicated stand-in. Progression is bogged down far too much, just general navigation, getting to and from levels etc is much slower. Levels are fine, but begin to fall into the trap of being frustrating just for the sake of it at the end, and bosses just take too many hits for how much BS they throw at you.

Collectables are unnecessary and at times badly explained. I had no idea I was meant to even be collecting Orbs and only find out when the game hints in the final world that you were supposed to be collecting them. At absolutely no point was this explained, only that I needed the Talismans. Since the Orbs were usually just slow fetchquests, I missed them and only had 15. The game requires 40 to beat, you can imagine how much fun that was. This really needed a better explanation.

Every defense of this game I've heard is that "I never had an issue with the padding as I was 100%ing anyway". Every positive angle comes from the completionist perspective, which leads to the question in my head that if beating the game is so unsatisfying on its own, why is it not 100% or nothing in the first place? The requirement to finish the game is honestly so close to 100% as is and any time I went through with a completionist mindset the stages became way more fun, but I shouldn't need to apply a mindset if that's not the only condition I can finish the game under.

Really disappointed honestly, and it only gets worse from here. Hoped for better, got about the standard bloated mess of a collectathon that the majority of new entries in the genre try to emulate rather than the cream of the crop.

I've never played, watched, engaged with FFVII so this pack's whole draw of "look FFVII references!" didn't click with me on as much as a level as it should have. Whereas other crossover packs have generally made up for it with interesting setpieces (the obstacle course in the Tomb Raider pack was a lot of fun for example), this pack was a little bit routine and/or drab in places as someone who has no prior connection to the games. I can get how amazing this would be to someone who has, but as I haven't this is just how I interacted with it personally.

Putting aside personal biases and nostalgia, this is easily the best Mario Kart game to date. Gorgeous visuals, great track design and a lot of balancing done so that (hopefully) the scales won't tip too favourably in one person's direction, but balanced less annoyingly than Wii and 7 in that regard.

Only issue I would note is the online system. It's mostly great, but only being able to vote for 3 pre-determined tracks in public lobbies lead to a lot of repetition, with the same tracks appearing in rotation a lot, and popular favourites such as Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road most likely to get picked when they appear. Matchmaking itself is great, but the game's emphasis on creating "exciting" matches is confusing (players can get hit with shells on your screen when they never did on their own as an example, this is not weird desyncs between Switches going on or anything, the game intentionally does things like this for whatever reason) and doesn't feel like it has a place in a Mario Kart game personally.


Getting 100% in this game was a walk in the park for me personally, but I accept that others may not find it as simple. Within 1 playthrough of each cup on 150CC, Mirror and 200CC, I had all of their respective unlockables, which only left all time trials and grinding coins. The game didn't put up a challenge for me at all, but I'm sure that other players with varying skill levels may have differing issues.

Still every bit as funny, punchy and gutwrenching as it was the first time around. Can't think of any other game/series where I'd wander around a decently empty town for an hour just to read EVERY piece of dialogue.

Also, yeah, this game kinda smashes through my distaste for turnbased. Leaves it simple, explains it thoroughly in an easy to understand way and provides a get-out-of-jail card if you REALLY don't wanna do it.

Looking forward to Chapter 2 and all the feels/tears that'll bring.

I really didn't think much of this remake playing initially on the Switch. The graphics were just too laughably cheap looking and the controls barely functioned in my eyes. Jumping over to the PC version then, I didn't think much would change except for a better control scheme, but I found myself really enjoying this remake as a result. Better FPS and resolution, plus the previously mentioned mouse aiming which feels like a hot knife through butter when you get the sensitivity just right. It's not without its issues, and it's definitely not worth £20 in the slightest, but I still liked it regardless. A little rough around the edges? Sure, but isn't that the charm of HotD?

I do enjoy this game a lot, but a couple of things hold it back for me. So many of the areas, bosses and camera angles are just absolutely stunning and such a great showcase of VR, and had my jaw on the floor the whole way through. Unfortunately to take away from this just ever so slightly, this game reuses stage themes a lot (i.e. cave levels, desert levels etc.) which makes it a little distracting as well as repetitive and overall leaves things feeling a little rushed. Gameplay is the same as the engine that I loved from Playroom, so no complaints with how everything handles and feels, and most stage design varies between "pretty good" and "top notch". The one issue I have with level design is that I wish the final world wasn't as frustrating as it can end up being. The game wants you to keep track of way too many things at once which overwhelms the player and leads to a lot of frustrating deaths. Calculating depth and what hurts you/doesn't can be a big test of patience, and the last 2 bosses wore that thin by hitting me when I swore I should've been safe, causing me to restart a few times (which on the final boss can be upwards of 5 minutes to get back to the point you died on) which soured the end of the game for me personally.

This is great framework for a fantastic VR experience, and of course it went on to power the stupendously grin inducing Astro's Playroom, but I hope a VR sequel comes along on PSVR 2 to fix this game's shortcomings and cornercutting. Still a very fun experience regardless of my gripes though.