After playing Dread, Zero Mission, and AM2R, this game definitely feels like a downgrade, but that's not really Super Metroid's fault. It is obviously a genre-defining classic that gets a lot of things right. Crateria is a great starting area and exploration is fun for the most part. The bosses and mini-bosses are fun and challenging to fight. Brinstar jungle theme is a banger, and the final boss sequence and ending is sick.

However, there are also a lot of annoying things about this game especially after being spoiled by much better metroidvanias. The controls are a bit frustrating to use. You have to cycle through like five different missile/bomb/scanner settings which is just messy when you are in high-stakes combat. The shinespark movement is also a bit more difficult to get a hang of in this one. Navigation and finding collectibles is not nearly as fun as it is in most metroidvanias. Although I appreciate that the game marks collectibles with dots on the map, it does not denote whether you got a collectible or not which makes slogging back to get things much more cumbersome. Not to mention the fact that this game has some of the most random spots for holes in the wall or bombable blocks which are not even marked on the map which made the prospect of 100% not very appetizing, and I just gave up and ended up with a item rate of 83. It is also sooo much easier to get lost in this game than in Zero Mission and AM2R. There were so many times in this game where I just did not know where to go and the game telegraphs basically nothing. You're just on you're own to realize where you could have used a power-up you just got on something that happened like an hour ago, and to make matters worse its very possible to just miss some of these powers ups and then you are mongo screwed. I had this experience when I passed by the spazer beam. There also are way more dogshit rooms in this game that just feel like enemy spam, damage boost through hell which is never fun.

Ghost Trick is a sprawling narrative that finds a way to interconnect its many storylines in a unique and meaningful way. It did a great job of setting up its world and narrative while still keeping the experience enjoyable, and, when it was time to execute its twists, it did not hold back at all. It has a great mix of events that I was able to predict with events that came out of nowhere and blew me away. The ending is impactful, complex, and digestible with great ending scenes to cement the experience for me.

The story is great all by itself, but this game has the intangibles out of the wazoo. Firstly, the art style is beautiful, and I absolutely love it. The pixel art is stunning and the cutscenes are extremely well done which is all the better when you realize the gameplay is hugely linked to breaking down the events in those cutscenes. Not to mention the character portraits which are great in their own right. The puzzles are fun and engaging and fit the identity of the game extremely well. The soundtrack is extremely Ace Attorney-esque but just saying that is not giving it enough credit. The songs and character themes especially go so hard in this game which adds even more identity and flare to an already great lineup of characters.

It is an absolutely stellar experience from a game that I was not entirely sure what to expect.

In the games industry, it's common to be inspired to create by other great games, but it is another thing entirely to go beyond that inspiration in a creative and unique way that capitlizes and improves on the shortcomings of its inspiration.

The Case of the Golden Idol undoubtedly resembles The Return of the Obra Dinn as their puzzles both rely on deduction and the connection of clues. They have carved out a new niche that I am very excited about because I found the gameplay in both of these titles to be extremely satisfying.

With that being said, I came in expecting a game that is similar to Obra Dinn, but, ultimately, I was not expecting something so soon to rise above a game as special as the Obra Dinn. However, there are so many things that The Case of the Golden Idol does even better than its inspiration. I believe that this game takes the puzzle solving of the Obra Dinn to the next level. The way they offer more than just fates to solve spruces up the gameplay significantly and guides the player in a satisfying way to uncovering what occurred in each scene. In fact, some of the supporting puzzles are even better than the main scenario puzzles. The game also does a great job of iterating on each puzzle with information that will help you as the game goes on, whether it be a characters name, appearance, or personality.

I also believe this game has a much more exciting and compelling overarching story than the Obra Dinn which was likely my biggest complaint with that game. I really like the way this game tells its story through each scene, and its exciting, funny, and, most of all, really fun to interact with and think about as you play. The characters are sick and learning about them more and more as they appear in scenes is really cool. Another thing I really like about this game is its personality. It's easy to see that this game has a unique artstyle that I really dig. It looks like a game I could be playing on an old school computer, but in a way that doesn't feel distracting or dated. The character designs are imaginative and creative, and the game has a flare to it which gives it a lot appeal.

Overall, this game finds a way to harness inspiration in an extremely fun and creative package, and I cannot recommend it any harder if you enjoyed The Obra Dinn or are just looking for a unique experience that has some really satisfying puzzles.

I don't tend to explore much when I play games, but something about Outer Wilds made exploration very compelling and satisfying. Wandering about was rewarded with knowledge rather than an item, and learning bits and pieces of information that seems pointless at first but later seeing how it becomes useful was quite satisfying. Wandering into a planet only to get eaten by an angler fish was terrifying, but later finding out how to avoid them was great. The whole game was basically like this, constantly learning new things and finding new leads which was very fun to do. My one major complaint is that within the game's loop, there are some events that require quite a lot of waiting. That got dull when I needed to wait on sand to drain away a few times. Other than that, this game's pretty darn great.

Super Paper Mario is a little bit of a disgrace to what made the first two games in the series great, and it's not just the lack of RPG elements that make it such a disappointment. The gameplay is largely unimaginative and repetitive. The puzzles mostly boil down to switching to 3D or typing in a code of some sort. The bosses, at their best, are just okay and at their worst a waste of time. I really am not a fan of the visuals of the game, they are either way too dull or way too simple with not a lot that excited me. The partners are just shapes that fly around which is an obvious disappointment. The character designs as a whole fell flat for the most part, I really don't like the geometric style they were going for. The game plays very sluggishly as you spend so much time opening doors, waiting in elevators, changing dimensions, and switching characters, not to mention the times when the game goes out of its way to waste your time. Lastly, it really bugs me how often this game made corny SMB1 callbacks, please move on guys.

On the plus side, the game has a neat story that I felt fulfilled by in the end. They took it in a unique direction which was fresh to see for a Mario game. I also liked the narratives at play in a few of the chapters but they were often bogged down by pacing and the gameplay. Dimentio, Tippi, and, Count Bleck made for an interesting and fun cast of characters, and the soundtrack goes off especially towards the end of the game.