TheYeti
BACKER
2016
Fun, highly-customizable local multiplayer game with that even my golf-hating wife had a blast playing, but there’s not a lot to keep you coming back.
Party Golf is basically just a side-scrolling “race to the finish” golf game with more customizable game modes and settings than I could count. The game itself is pretty basic but it’s good for a few hours of fun with friends, though maybe not more beyond that.. I only wish it had online multiplayer.
+ Great, simple local multiplayer game
+ Tons of customizable game modes and settings
- Pretty exclusively a local multiplayer game. No online play and single players is nothing
- Not a lot to it and no real progress to be made.
Party Golf is basically just a side-scrolling “race to the finish” golf game with more customizable game modes and settings than I could count. The game itself is pretty basic but it’s good for a few hours of fun with friends, though maybe not more beyond that.. I only wish it had online multiplayer.
+ Great, simple local multiplayer game
+ Tons of customizable game modes and settings
- Pretty exclusively a local multiplayer game. No online play and single players is nothing
- Not a lot to it and no real progress to be made.
2020
Played a few matches just to check it out. The core gameplay is fun but I don't know how much depth or replayability there is. The visual style was great. A bummer it didn't last.
2019
I'll be honest I mostly played this because Pendleton Ward did the art and let me tell you the art is superb. Game itself didn't really hook me much so I dropped it.
Excellent foundation that is extremely light on modes, content, and meaningful reasons to keep replaying it.
You can probably experience everything Nintendo Switch Sports has to offer in about 45 minutes. Play a couple rounds of every sport and you've seen it all. There's no solo mode, there are no stats to build up, there are no Matts to challenge. The only carrot on the end of the stick is rotating random loot system which lets you earn points in matches to get cosmetics for your character. The cosmetics are honestly great, but it's a grind to get what you want and it only unlocks them for your character. Meaning guests cannot take advantage of the fun outfits you've worked hard to unlock.
The sports all feel pretty good. Volleyball and Badminton are honestly surprisingly fun additions. Soccer is fun but it's just slower Rocket League. Bowling, Tennis, and Chambara are the same things you've seen in the Wii Sports games. Great but nothing new. In fact, the Bowling mode in Switch Sports is arguably less feature-rich than what we saw in Wii Sports Resort. Your only option is to just "Play" and you might randomly get the Special mode sometimes. It kinda sucks.
The online generally works better than I would've expected from a Nintendo game. Forcing you to play online to actually get cosmetics ensures matchmaking never takes long, but I still wish I could play offline and earn unlocks.
The lack of a campaign, or really any sort of meaningful solo progress, as well as the lack of several key sports like Golf (which will be added later) and Boxing, are a huge bummer.
While this isn't a Wii Sports-level hit, the stuff that's in the game is actually pretty fun. I just wish there was more of it.
+ The Sports gameplay is solid
+ Sportsmates are great Fight me.
+ Great visual design
+ Catchy music
+ Fun cosmetics
- Dearth of features and modes
- Needs more sports
- Cosmetic unlock system is a grind
- You can only unlock cosmetics when playing online
You can probably experience everything Nintendo Switch Sports has to offer in about 45 minutes. Play a couple rounds of every sport and you've seen it all. There's no solo mode, there are no stats to build up, there are no Matts to challenge. The only carrot on the end of the stick is rotating random loot system which lets you earn points in matches to get cosmetics for your character. The cosmetics are honestly great, but it's a grind to get what you want and it only unlocks them for your character. Meaning guests cannot take advantage of the fun outfits you've worked hard to unlock.
The sports all feel pretty good. Volleyball and Badminton are honestly surprisingly fun additions. Soccer is fun but it's just slower Rocket League. Bowling, Tennis, and Chambara are the same things you've seen in the Wii Sports games. Great but nothing new. In fact, the Bowling mode in Switch Sports is arguably less feature-rich than what we saw in Wii Sports Resort. Your only option is to just "Play" and you might randomly get the Special mode sometimes. It kinda sucks.
The online generally works better than I would've expected from a Nintendo game. Forcing you to play online to actually get cosmetics ensures matchmaking never takes long, but I still wish I could play offline and earn unlocks.
The lack of a campaign, or really any sort of meaningful solo progress, as well as the lack of several key sports like Golf (which will be added later) and Boxing, are a huge bummer.
While this isn't a Wii Sports-level hit, the stuff that's in the game is actually pretty fun. I just wish there was more of it.
+ The Sports gameplay is solid
+ Sportsmates are great Fight me.
+ Great visual design
+ Catchy music
+ Fun cosmetics
- Dearth of features and modes
- Needs more sports
- Cosmetic unlock system is a grind
- You can only unlock cosmetics when playing online
2023
Every once in a while I download one of these clicker games because my little rat brain likes to see numbers go up and get big. This is one of the least satisfying ones I've tried. Doesn't scratch that same itch that so many other idle games have. The art''s fun, though.
2019
A disappointing, iterative sequel of one of my favorite games.
I sunk dozens and dozens of hours into Borderlands 2 between the base game and all the DLC. I adored that game. It's a game that got my wife and I into co-op gaming more. It's a game we used to keep in touch with friends from out of town.
The story was wacky and fun, the grind was satisfying.
Borderlands 3 is none of those things.
Borderlands 3 tries too hard.
Randy Pitchford walked into the writers room and cranked the "Borderlandz" nob up to 11. The story is boring, the jokes don't land, the villains are awful. Man I hated the story in this game.
One of the big differences between Borderlands 2 and 3 is the Borderlands 2 set the stage for looter shooters. It created a genre.
Games like Destiny came out and then perfected that genre. So for Borderlands 3 to come out and be a minor iteration on BL2 after games like Destiny is a wildly tone-deaf move. The game is boring, the shooting feels fine, the enemies are hard to see, the classes aren't interesting. The only saving grace of this game was how much fun we had playing it with our friends.... when the game worked.
We started playing the game at launch and it barely functioned. So we waited. We waited a year.
A year later, the game was still riddled with bugs and performance issues. They launched a next-gen version of the game that was still wildly buggy and had completely broken trophies.
I can't remember the last time I was this disappointed by a sequel to a beloved piece of media I love.
I sunk dozens and dozens of hours into Borderlands 2 between the base game and all the DLC. I adored that game. It's a game that got my wife and I into co-op gaming more. It's a game we used to keep in touch with friends from out of town.
The story was wacky and fun, the grind was satisfying.
Borderlands 3 is none of those things.
Borderlands 3 tries too hard.
Randy Pitchford walked into the writers room and cranked the "Borderlandz" nob up to 11. The story is boring, the jokes don't land, the villains are awful. Man I hated the story in this game.
One of the big differences between Borderlands 2 and 3 is the Borderlands 2 set the stage for looter shooters. It created a genre.
Games like Destiny came out and then perfected that genre. So for Borderlands 3 to come out and be a minor iteration on BL2 after games like Destiny is a wildly tone-deaf move. The game is boring, the shooting feels fine, the enemies are hard to see, the classes aren't interesting. The only saving grace of this game was how much fun we had playing it with our friends.... when the game worked.
We started playing the game at launch and it barely functioned. So we waited. We waited a year.
A year later, the game was still riddled with bugs and performance issues. They launched a next-gen version of the game that was still wildly buggy and had completely broken trophies.
I can't remember the last time I was this disappointed by a sequel to a beloved piece of media I love.
2012
A neat little coaster sim for phones back in the day even though it's more of a coaster building tool with some fun styling than a proper game.
2007
Best use of Ode to Joy in a video game.
This game was bad but in a kind of fun way. Pretty goofy.
2009
Like most folks, I bought this because it was bundled with a Wii MotionPlus dongle. I was delightfully surprised that the game itself was actually great. It's a crime that as Nintendo releases new Wii Sports successors (more recently - Nintendo Switch Sports), that they ignore most of the rad sports and fun mixes on existing sports that Resort added. BRING BACK DISC GOLF YOU COWARDS! JUSTICE FOR WII SPORTS RESORT!!
2008
I think this was one of the first proper tower defense games on the iPhone and I got pretty dang addicted to it. As simple as it was, I enjoyed it and it was a fun game to have in my pocket.
2020
A tiny game with a brilliant premise that got bigger than it could handle...
Fall Guys is an absolute damn delight of a game. It's a simple premise, but executed perfectly in an online multiplayer game that unfortunately was not built in a way to maintain its popularity. A good game that could be great if it had better variation and local multiplayer.
SUMMARY
+ Great, fresh game premise. It's fun and easy to just dive in over and over again.
+ Even after winning 40+ matches, winning is still a rush. Hard to capture that in a game.
+ Good presentation (art, music, etc.)
+/- Game launch was bigger than the small team was able to handle. They worked hard to fix the server errors. Even after a couple months, it's not super stable. Getting DC'd from a match results in 0 rewards, which is rough for a game based completely around said rewards.
- Lack of level variation. After playing the same the same stages over and over again, it can get a bit stale. They later added some randomized levels in the game but it was pretty minimal - just one or two minor changes. The game really needs fully random levels to mix it up. User-created content could also help keep the game fresh.
- Even after months of people complaining, bad game modes remain in the game that detract from overall enjoyment.
- Lack of local multiplayer and different game modes is a huge miss. This would be a perfect party game.
- Poor cosmetics shop that relies heavily on winning dozens of matches to be able to afford anything. Leads to hoarding crowns. Multiple colors of an outfit sold separately. Bizarre choices.
- Long, grindy season pass. Only way to progress is to just sink tons of hours into the game. Could do with some challenges or other ways to gain progress.
- Silly personal complaint, but having a trophy for winning 5 matches in a row in a game that's built to have some randomness and wacky unpredictable elements is frustrating. It's the only trophy I'm missing and I've resigned myself to never get it.
Fall Guys is an absolute damn delight of a game. It's a simple premise, but executed perfectly in an online multiplayer game that unfortunately was not built in a way to maintain its popularity. A good game that could be great if it had better variation and local multiplayer.
SUMMARY
+ Great, fresh game premise. It's fun and easy to just dive in over and over again.
+ Even after winning 40+ matches, winning is still a rush. Hard to capture that in a game.
+ Good presentation (art, music, etc.)
+/- Game launch was bigger than the small team was able to handle. They worked hard to fix the server errors. Even after a couple months, it's not super stable. Getting DC'd from a match results in 0 rewards, which is rough for a game based completely around said rewards.
- Lack of level variation. After playing the same the same stages over and over again, it can get a bit stale. They later added some randomized levels in the game but it was pretty minimal - just one or two minor changes. The game really needs fully random levels to mix it up. User-created content could also help keep the game fresh.
- Even after months of people complaining, bad game modes remain in the game that detract from overall enjoyment.
- Lack of local multiplayer and different game modes is a huge miss. This would be a perfect party game.
- Poor cosmetics shop that relies heavily on winning dozens of matches to be able to afford anything. Leads to hoarding crowns. Multiple colors of an outfit sold separately. Bizarre choices.
- Long, grindy season pass. Only way to progress is to just sink tons of hours into the game. Could do with some challenges or other ways to gain progress.
- Silly personal complaint, but having a trophy for winning 5 matches in a row in a game that's built to have some randomness and wacky unpredictable elements is frustrating. It's the only trophy I'm missing and I've resigned myself to never get it.
2018
The most visually beautiful game I've ever played...
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to play through a watercolor painting, this is as close as you're ever going to get. I cannot overstate how gorgeous the visuals and accompanying music is in Gris. It really is a piece of art worth experiencing.
That said, if you strip all that out, it's a pretty middling, slow-placed platformer. The game is incredibly soothing. A combination of how soothing it is and how kind of boring it is to play put me to sleep on two separate occasions. Normally I'd knock a game a lot harder for literally making me fall asleep while playing it but this game really did me in a complete state of peace.
Zero interest in ever returning to it to get all the collectibles but boy was it worth playing once.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to play through a watercolor painting, this is as close as you're ever going to get. I cannot overstate how gorgeous the visuals and accompanying music is in Gris. It really is a piece of art worth experiencing.
That said, if you strip all that out, it's a pretty middling, slow-placed platformer. The game is incredibly soothing. A combination of how soothing it is and how kind of boring it is to play put me to sleep on two separate occasions. Normally I'd knock a game a lot harder for literally making me fall asleep while playing it but this game really did me in a complete state of peace.
Zero interest in ever returning to it to get all the collectibles but boy was it worth playing once.
2007
This was my introduction to Carcassonne - a game I would end up playing many more hours of both digitally (across other app renditions of it) and physically. As someone who had never really played a lot of interesting board games before, I thought this was pretty neat.
2006
Maybe it's just because there were basically no games to play on the Wii back in the day but "offroad racing game with motion controls" was kind of fun.