Kirby's always been like the little sibling to Mario - Kirby games are fun and cute but they never have any challenge or depth to them; they're just simple fun. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the first Kirby game that feels like it's really trying to go toe-to-toe with Mario. I still don't think it fully measures up to most of the 3D Marios, and doesn't come anywhere close to Mario Odyssey, but this is still a real standout 3D platformer and easily Kirby's best outing.

Mouthful mode is not only hilarious, but it introduces a great new mechanic that opens the game up to some fun puzzles and action sections of the game. The boss fights are surprisingly fun, and occasionally even challenging. This game has a dodge roll that I thought was silly at first but you actually kind of have to use it for some of the end-game challenges. This game goes harder than any Kirby game has any right to go and it's really a fantastic time.

Spider-Man 2 is easily my favorite superhero video game of all time. It takes everything I loved about the previous two entries, tosses out a lot of what I didn’t like, and builds on what’s left in meaningful ways. The story hits, the combat feels great, and open-world traversal has never felt this good.

Fast travel in Spider-Man 2 on the PS5 rules. You select a spot on the map, and the camera dynamically zooms into that position, instantly giving you control of Spider-Man swinging through the city. It’s incredible. Yet, despite that, I rarely ever used it because getting around the city is so damn fun and quick that I never wanted to stop. I didn’t think it would be possible but somehow Insomniac took the already fun swinging in Spider-man and Miles Morales and brought it to another level in Spider-man 2 with the addition of the web wings and other traversal mechanics.

Just like the traversal, the combat in the game gets a nice facelift with a slew of new fun abilities. The combat is not anything that dramatically different from the previous games but it still feels so damn good. It was only occasionally frustrating when enemies would have move priority over my big powerful attacks and ended up somehow canceling me out.

I’m not necessarily a big comic reader, but between the three live-action Spider-men, Spider-Verse, and all the random Spider-man cartoons, we’ve had no shortage of variations on Spider-man’s story. So it’s rad that Insomniac is perfectly comfortable breaking canon to tell its own story, and what a blast that story is. Even though a lot of the twists aren’t all that surprising, it’s still a really fun story and the voice-acting is fantastic.

My biggest complaint in the game is all the random minigames that distract from the fun shit you would rather be doing. I get that sometimes it’s fun to break up the gameplay so it doesn’t get repetitive, but bike racing, genome splicing, molecule identifying, and bee drone combat ain’t it gang. It’s baffling to me that Insomniac can make the best-feeling traversal in video game history and then also have the worst-feeling bike riding. I do appreciate that there are far fewer MJ stealth sections this time around, but there are still a few and while they’re a lot better, they still aren’t really that fun.

Aside from some annoying side activities, Spider-man 2 is an absolute blast to play. The traversal, combat, and story come together perfectly to create what is easily the new bar for superhero video games.

+ Somehow made Spider-man’s mobily even better, faster, and more fun than it already was
+ Combat feels fantastic with rad new abilities
+ Fantastic story that has no qualms breaking canon and forging its own path
+ Great audio design, music, and voice acting
+ Beautiful world design both graphically and in terms of making the city feel alive and lived in
+ Just an absolute blast

- Character models look dated
- Bad minigames that distract from the fun stuff you’d rather be doing
- Combat move priority occasionally annoying
- Some bugs that need to be worked out

I'm sure in 1993 this game was a masterpiece, but after 30 years of gameplay advancements, it's difficult for me to get past how clunky this feels compared to modern games in this style like Ori, Dead Cells, Katana Zero, or Shovel Knight. Aside from the terrible Dracula X, this is the first classic-style Castlevania game I've played, and honestly I much prefer the Metroidvania ones.

If you like extremely difficult old games, I'm sure this will be your speed. But I'd rather play a modern spin on this genre than this actual old game any day of the week.

+ The opening cinematics kick ass
+ Music rips

- Gameplay feels bad in the year 2023.
- Extremely difficult

If you had told me back in October 2018 that some of the most fun I would have in a few years time would be playing the embarrassingly broken Fallout 76 with my friends, I would have laughed.


Fallout 76 has come a long way from the messy state that it launched in. For one, it actually has a lot of content now in the form of tons of quests, actual NPCs, public events, daily activities, seasonal events, and just generally so many things you can do either by yourself or with friends. Over the past 6 months, I’ve logged about 300 hours in Fallout 76. Most of that has been with my wife and some friends, often in a group of 2 or 4, but I’ve also done plenty of content solo. Additionally, I’ve met and made friends in the game as the community is generally quite good. When we were new, we’d often stumble across high level players who would give us stimpacks, outfits, crafting plans, and a variety of other useful items to help us get started. Eventually, when we were higher level, we started hanging around the starting area and doing the same for other players. It’s a fun community.

The other notable thing that has improved since Fallout 76’s launch is general bugs and game stability; however, this one comes with a bit of a caveat. While the game certainly performs better than it did at launch, this is by no means the stable bug-free experience you’d expect from an online game that’s been running for 4 years. It’s still very much a Bethesda game. The goofy bugs like enemies clipping through floors or standing with their back to you while having a conversation are fine, but the real issue are the bugs that halt progress or interrupt your gameplay. While disconnects are infrequent, they still happen and it’s annoying when they do. I’ve also run into quests that I’ve had to reset multiple times because NPCs fail to trigger correctly, walk the correct paths, or even show up in the location they’re supposed to be in. I’ve Google’d issues before to find that some quests have been barely functional for 2 years but Bethesda does nothing to fix it. Despite its massive improvements, the game is still pretty janky.

The other technical issues of the game come down to game limitations and general performance problems. The load times, for instance, are pretty awful. My wife is playing on PS4 and she’d have to wait for several minutes when fast-traveling. Even on PS5, because they never released a native PS5 version, the load times are pretty rough. The camp building portion of the game also suffers from the technical limitations. The game places a limit on the amount of objects you can have in your home but it often feels arbitrary and is not communicated particularly well. A small flat wall-mounted poster takes up the same amount of budget in your camp as a lush, potted plant. I’m no game designer, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

The CAMP-building portion of the game is ripped right out of Fallout 4. For our first couple dozen hours with Fallout 76, we completely ignored the base-building. I genuinely did not care about making some cool camp. But the more I played, the more I came across rad player camps and found more plans of my own, that eventually I wanted to make something cool. Once we started actually making our camps, that became the number one draw of the game. Everything we did in the game from that point on was with one goal in mind - how can we get more plans to build more cool shit at our camps? Your camp isn’t just a place to go home and store your gear, your camp is your trophy shelf to show off all the cool rare things you’ve found in your time exploring Appalachia. Having another player roll into your camp, run around and check everything out, and then run up to you and do the “Cool CAMP!” emote was always immensely satisfying. I was proud of the home I built for myself, so much so that saying goodbye to it was the saddest part about finally quitting the game.

The ongoing support for Fallout 76 has been pretty impressive. Every few months they launch a new season with a new theme, and with that season they’ll add new content to the game that’s free for all players. Sometimes that comes in the form of an incredibly beefy update like the Wastelanders DLC, which added new quest lines, NPCs, new locations, and way more. Other times, it comes in the form of something smaller like the Nuka World On Tour DLC which added a new Nuka World location, some fun carnival games, and a bunch of Nuka World-themed public events you could participate in to earn unique weapons. The best part about all of this content is it’s not timed, so joining the game years into its run meant we had a ton of bonus content to enjoy.

As with any ongoing game like this, there are microtransactions that help fund continued development of the game. The microtransactions in this game come in the form of cosmetic items (armor paint, gun skins, and outfits), fun items for your camp (toys, decorations, furniture, etc), and their Fallout 1st monthly membership. The problem is, they kind of make it so that not joining their monthly program makes your gameplay noticeably more of a pain. You have an extremely finite amount of storage in the game, and with a survival game like this where you’re constantly looting and hoarding materials for crafting, it ends up being a pain in the ass. However, for just $10 a month this can all be solved by joining Fallout 1st which unlocks a junk box (with unlimited storage for crafting materials), and an ammo box (with unlimited storage for ammo). I relied on these so much that when it came time to cancel or renew my 1 month trial of Fallout 1st, I kept it because not having those would’ve made my gameplay experience noticeably worse. I don’t love having something like that locked behind a monthly membership. Sure it’s not necessary and you can play without it, but boy does it make your life a lot easier to have it.

All-in-all, I genuinely loved the few months I spent with Fallout 76. It was a great multiplayer experience that I looked forward to playing with friends several times a week. The quests and all the other content they’ve added to the game over the years is surprisingly good - it actually feels like a true Fallout game. I loved my time in Appalachia even with the problems the game still has.

+ Great multiplayer experience
+ Fun world to explore
+ CAMP building is surprisingly enjoyable
+ Solid quests with good voice acting and good writing
+ Good progression system

- Still plenty of bugs, even if they aren’t game-breaking
- Performance issues and limitations
- Some predatory microtransactions
- Solo quest instances even when playing with friends

"Maybe you find a barcode laying around and then you put it down and it turns into a forest!"
"Ah cool. And what does the forest do? Do you solve a puzzle with it?"
"No. But it's cool!!"
- Viewfinder's entire vibe.

The very first moment you place a 2D photo in the world and see it come alive in 3D is genuinely rad. And the game is full of those kind of "wow neat" moments. Sadly, the game as a whole never really amounts to more than a series of cool moments in a mostly pretty easy puzzle game.

The idea for this game was so good. The core mechanic of taking and using photos to manipulate the world around you to solve puzzles is dope! But it almost feels like the devs didn't fully know what to do with the idea after they thought of it so they made a bunch of puzzles and then decided to tell a pretty random story I did not care about with some bad voice-over I wish I could've skipped.

+ Really cool and unique game mechanic
+ Some neat moments that had me go "Oooo cool"
+ Some decent puzzle-solving

- Story's uninteresting and voice acting is not great
- The 2D to 3D translation can feel a bit unpredictable and finicky sometimes.
- Puzzles are generally pretty easy
- Lots of random cool things around the world to showcase the mechanics but are rarely actually used in puzzles
- Last level in the game is randomly timed!!? Why??

A neat puzzle game that takes too long to get interesting.

At the time of me playing the game, there are currently 15 levels in the game. (Lisbon is the most recent level to come out). But levels 1-10 may as well be the same level. Every level is a different city of the world that will slowly populate with randomly generated houses and destinations you need to build roads between. What's the difference between the randomly generated houses in Los Angeles and the randomly generated houses in Tokyo? No idea. Couldn't tell you. Except that Tokyo has its one river in a different place than the one river in LA.

Honestly I was bored out of my mind and almost quit until I got to like level 11 where the maps finally started differentiating themselves a bit more with more rivers, mountains, and other obstacles you need to build around. I only wish every level felt as unique as the last handful.

+ Fun concept
+ Great visuals
+ Final few levels were interesting

- First 10 levels are basically identical
- Extremely repetitive gameplay

Gangbeasts meets multiplayer puzzle platformer that had my friends and me laughing every time we played it, even on the weaker levels.

The first time I tried Human Fall Flat it was little more than a tech demo. It was fun but it didn't hook me. But revisiting it now with my wife and two of our friends, we had an absolute blast slowly playing through the base game and all the free DLC levels over the period of a few months.

Honestly I really would've expected the noodly Gangbeasts physics to get stale but the level variety make it so you constantly have to find new ways to throw your bodies around to solve puzzles, often to hilarious results. What's more is that the puzzles often have different solutions. In fact, some of the most fun we had was trying to figure out how we could "break" the game or do a puzzle unconventionally. But even when it feels like you've done some exploit, all of that is intentional and part of the game's design.

The shenanigans of the game honestly never got old - grabbing onto a spinning wheel to fling yourself across the level, seeing how far you could launch yourself off some catapult, throwing your friend off the level, etc. The only times this game got boring was in some of the weaker level designs, but even in those, we still had fun just messing around.

+ Great multiplayer fun
+ Fantastic level variety
+ Fun puzzles that take advantage of the wacky physics

- Some weaker levels that overstay their welcome
- Occasionally annoying puzzles that rely too heavily on imprecise physics