This was a game I had on my actual NES as a kid and for years could never beat. Finally beat it without save states, and it surprised me how actually well thought out and ingenious the design of this game is for the time of release. A lot of levels that were excruciatingly hard actually had solutions built into the item drops and level design that took me a while to figure out, which made it a lot more satisfying to complete. In my opinion, its better than any of the classic NES MegaMan games including MegaMan 2.

"The most PS2 game of all time that is NOT on the PS2."

Blew me the fuck away. I was honestly going to skip this game, as I have no prior experience with mecha games or Armored Core, but I ended up caving and buying it anyways.

Completely fell in love with this game. The gameplay was absolutely top notch, with a highlight of bossfights that are some of FromSoft's absolute best (ICE Worm is From's best setpiece fight ever). You know you have a good game on your hand when the actual act of just moving around and shooting feels so good.

The story was also a massive shock to me, as I was honestly expecting something a lot more barebones and basic. But I ended up falling in love with almost all of the characters, and it made a lot of the choices in the game have a lot more impact on me than I expected.

The only real complaint I have with it is that some missions were a real drag, and I feel could have been cut for an overall tighter experience. But honestly....the forced stealth sections and other jank missions add to the PS2 esque charm that this game has.

It's a game with a lot of soul poured into it, and the result is FromSoftware at its absolute best.

ZORTCH HEADS STAY WINNING

I was absolutely not expecting to like this game as much as I did. I heard through word of mouth that Zortch was a surprisingly excellent little Boomer Shooter, but looking at how crude it looked, I honestly expected it to be overhyped. I was wrong.

Zortch is a classic FPS that takes a lot of inspiration from Half-Life, Quake, and most surprisingly Turok. The art style is very low-poly, almost looking like it came right off of the N64, but it works really well. The crude nature of some of the art also really adds to the alien atmosphere of the entire game. The atmosphere in general is fantastic, with the soundtrack honestly being one of the high points of the game for me due to how alien and atmospheric it was.

However, what stole the show for me was the enemy variety. There are like 30 different enemy types in this game, and they are almost all unique. It really adds to the entire experience, and makes the entire 4 hours feel consistently fresh as they keep adding more enemies to deal with. The shooting feels great too.

My only real major downside is that I found the level design to be amateurish at times. Its the area that really struggles, with a lot of levels feeling samey and uninteresting. The lack of a map feature and landmarks also makes navigating some of them an absolute nightmare, but thankfully most levels are still pretty short. It's not the worst issue in the world.

Zortch was a surprisingly really fun and unique shooter in a genre that is beginning to sadly grow oversaturated and stale in the past few years. I honest to god hope for a Zortch sequel because I think this developer has the potential to make something even better.....or at least even weirder.

Just fantastic from start to finish. There is really not that much to say outside of that.

This DLC adds to it with cut content I missed (Gondala my beloved), and also all new boss fights and areas that are all fantastic. I also honestly felt that this version of the Saddler fight was my favorite out of both the original and the remake's Saddler fight. The added story and character moments were all great, and cements this version of Luis as one of my new favorite RE characters.

I do think Ada's vocal performance is still not amazing, but it is definitely not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. I actually think she has a couple comedic moments where her delivery shines, and this DLC made me appreciate her in the base game a lot more.

It is more Resident Evil 4 Remake, which is now one of my favorite games of all time, right next to the original.

There is honestly a lot to love about this game, and it really does have some excellent pacing and level design. The art is also absolutely phenomenal and is a real standout for the genre. My issues mainly boil down to a lack of polish in certain areas, and a very tedious and unintuitive mess when going for 100%, which I ultimately abandoned.

I'm still glad I played it, but I just wish I loved it is as much as other people. I guess I am just not the biggest fan of how Souls inspired games handle their sidequests in design, which is honestly what held it back for me.

"An absolute achievement of 2D platforming."

This was a game that I had incredibly high hopes for, as I have been yearning for another 2D Mario game that brings me the same joy that Super Mario World did when I played it as a child. I am happy to say that Super Mario Wonder delivers on those hopes and then some.

This is easily the best looking 2.5D game I have ever seen. It is not really an art style I am very fond of, as I mainly prefer pixel art for 2D, but this is one of the few games that really pulled it off for me. Everything is so expressive and enjoyable to look at, with so much love and care put into everything.

However, the level design and control is really where this game shines for me. Every level feels truly unique from the last, and the addition of the Wonder flower mechanic brings a lot of life to the game. So many levels had me smiling so hard, and it really added so much to my overall enjoyment. I also believe that one of the most important parts of a game is how good it feels to control, and the movement in this game is probably the best in the entire series. Just jumping around as Mario has never felt so good.

There are really only 2 reasons that this isnt a 10/10 for me. Even though I adored the final Bowser fight, the lack of unique bosses in this game really brought it down. The fact that multiple worlds ended without any true boss to cap it off, really left a sour taste in my mouth. However, I honestly found needing to grind for purple coins to get 100% to be the most egregious part of the game. You need to collect all the standees to get 100%, and there is not really an easy way to get purple coins once you've completed every level. I ended up looking up a guide on the best level to grind the coins in, and spent my last 40 minutes of the game playing 1 level over and over again to get enough coins for the standees. Just a weird oversight and something that I feel they could easily fix in the sequel.

Overall, this feels like the start of a return to greatness for the 2D Mario platformer. Nintendo would be absolutely crazy to not make another game in this style, and I can only hope its just as good if not better.

An absolute classic for a reason. Has a few issues with awful platforming and some obtuse side puzzles, but other than that its pure bliss from beginning to end. The combat is exceptional, and continues to make me wish more games used the "minigame" style of turn based battles that the Mario RPGs use. The Culex fight was also exceptionally good, and maybe one of my new favorite secret bosses in the JRPG genre. Outside of the combat, the standout element of the game was the writing and characters. Almost every new character is a slam dunk, and the fact that we have not seen more Mallow and Geno is downright criminal. The writing mixed with Yoko Shimomura's phenomenal music, just makes this game the purest form of joy condensed down into a game.

The ending legit made me tear up.

How the hell is this small little 5 hour long children's horror game one of the best survival horror games I've played in years?

Oh my god I absolutely adored this game from start to finish. This game is classic RE survival horror from beginning to end, and it absolutely nails it. Classic RE is almost like a pseudo-adventure game, with you needing to constantly solve environmental puzzles to advance, while also dealing with managing your resources (ammo, inventory, health). MFN completely understands that, with a gameplay loop that is both incredibly fun, while also at times tense.

I wouldn't say this game ever scared me, but that is absolutely not what this is going for. It is looking to be a modern day Gremlins, where it is an introduction for younger children to get into the horror genre. This just takes it one step further, and also is introducing children into the world of classic survival horror, and it absolutely nails that aspect. Atmosphere was top notch, and the music was great as well.

The puppets are mainly the star of the show here. I loved them. I thought they were all incredibly charming, and there were many points where I stopped to listen to them complete their dialogue because it was so funny. The added puzzle mechanic of being able to help the boss enemies was incredibly charming, and made me smile every time.

The only real issue I had with the game was in difficulty. There was never really a point in the game where I had to worry about my health or ammo, and I was playing this on the highest difficulty available to me (Veteran). I understand that this is a gateway survival horror game, but I did wish that I struggled a bit more. If the higher difficulties were unlocked at the beginning, I would have absolutely jumped on those.

Overall, I absolutely adore this game, and it is a crime it is not more popular. Both Szymanski brothers have yet to miss for me.

As someone who has been slowly going through the entirety of the Resident Evil franchise, I can say that this is definitely up there are one of the best games.

The setting of this game was easily one of the best parts of this game. I loved everything from the enemy design, to the absolute gorgeous environments this game has you go through. The art department for this game went above and beyond, and the only thing that would have made it better would have been if they actually went with that Plague Doctor Ada design that they teased.

Gameplay wise, I have a lot to say. Going in, I heard a lot of people compare this game to Resident Evil 4, but I did not realize just how much this game would take from 4. This game is not really survival horror, but is more so action horror. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it copies a lot of RE4's excellent gameplay loop of shooting a ton of enemies, exploring, and then upgrading your weapons at the shop.

This all leads to a very satisfying game to play, however it doesnt handle everything perfect. I personally believe that the upgrades to the weapons are dished out way too slowly, which led to a lot of times that I had so much money that I straight up could not spend until much later. I also thought the grid inventory was half baked, as there was never a SINGLE moment in the game where I actually worried about running out of inventory space. An absolute missed potential their. I also believe that the game relies a bit too much on retreading what RE4 has already done, mainly due to certain areas and setpieces being almost 1-1 how they are in RE4.

Where this game excels for me though, is through its characters and story. Ethan Winters has somehow climbed his way to being one of my favorite Resident Evil main characters, and I thought the way the story explored him as a character was really interesting. It is the first time I have ever truly cared about a Resident Evil story, and the third act of this game genuinely got me a little emotional.

Overall, it is not a perfect game by any means, but the stuff it does well, it does REALLY well. As someone who thought that Resident Evil 7 felt like a very middling and uninspired entry in the franchise, I am so glad that they went above and beyond for this game.

Talk about aiming for the fucking moon in scope. After the uninspired, generic, and frankly aimless first mod, I honestly did not expect to have such an amazing time as I did with its sequel.

This HL2 mod is one of the most ambitious that I've seen since Black Mesa, and its a delight from start to finish. Everything from the combat, music, and visuals is an absolute treat and is a triumph of the modding community. However, the main element that really hooked me was the story and characters. Never have I ever been as attached to the characters in any mod before as I was in this one, and the narrative was a really fun fanfiction of a post Episode 2 world.

My only issues is that the middle of the mod drags a bit with the final Mossman chase, and I feel the Wilson plotline at times felt like it could have been expanded on a bit more. Also, some of the voice acting and jokes can be pretty distracting (the rebel on the radio's voice.....), but Im willing to be a bit more lenient about that stuff since its by such a small development team. Either way, I would die for Wilson and the true ending post scene made me almost cry.

This was actually one of my childhood GBA games growing up, and I remember never being able to get past the third world. I decided to boot this game up on a whim since I recently modded an original GBA, and sort of accidentally ran into 100%ing this game.

For the most part I will be talking about this game as if it was the NES original, but I will add that the added graphical tweaks are all fantastic, and easily makes this the definitive version of Mario 3 in my eyes.

Super Mario 3 surprised me in a lot of ways with just how large and intracate its world is, especially for something that released on the NES. The game has over 90 levels, which is unheard of for that system, with an entire map system that has still yet to be matched by a newer Super Mario game. This game is a technical marvel that has no reason to be as quality as it is, and for that reason I can understand why so many people call this one of the best games of all time.

For myself personally thought, I think that the level design is where this game takes a bit of a nosedive. Around 2/3rd of the levels in this game are either perfectly fine, or some of Mario's best. However, around 1/3rd of the levels are either frustratingly designed, puzzle levels that are a slog to get through, or some of the worst water levels in Mario history. World 3 is the worst in that regard, as it is made up of almost entirely of water levels, and they are all just absolutely terrible.

With that said, this game is still a technical marvel, and easily one of the best 2D Mario games out there. The jump from Mario 1 to this is staggering, and that can not be understated.

.....Super Mario World is way better tho.