The game being as flabbergasted at the fact 18-Volt is a nine year old as much as I was probably one of the most hilarious part of a game that quite literally made me smile and laugh every single moment I was playing it.

When making a game which its main premise is that it re-uses content from past entries, developers are faced when simple yet ever-present question: ''How in the all living hell do we make this worth it?''. Nostalgia and getting to re-experience past games or parts of them in brand new systems can be cool incentives, but I'd be hard-pressed to say they are strong ones; the content by itself it's nothing new, so why would we, as players, be interested on not only re-experiencing content that we have already played, but also pay for it?... Well, turns out WarioWare Gold found an answer, a trick...


The trick of haVING JIMMY T. ON THE GAME WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LET'S-A FUCKING GOO, GETTIN' FIT AND FUNKY BABY!

The decision of playing the rest of the series beforehand was one of the best I could have ever made, because what would still be a fantastic game into an even more impressive one; even if a majority of WarioWare Gold is stuff we have already seen, it manages to make it feel new thanks to a collection of elements that span the entirety of the series plus a new barrage of brand-new content. Gold is the best celebration the series could have ever hoped for: 316 micro-games are nothing scoff at, overpassing even Twisted and its almost 230 fast paced minigames, but as I said before, most of these are micro-games already seen in previous entries, including twisted, so what makes this number shouldn't be so special... but then you see the selection, and then realize this is pure FIRE. Because there was so much to choose from, they picked the best and ONLY the best minigames on the entire series; in the past, with maybe the exception of Twisted there were a few amount of stinkers that were clearly lacking in quality compared to others, and even tho they only lasted a few seconds, in a game so fast paced as WarioWare that still leaves a huge impression. Not anymore: every single one if the crème de la crème, even the new ones, and so everyone may not be here, but that doesn't matter 'cause the best sure are. It even has a Rhythm Heaven minigame thrown in there, you can't make this up! That isn't even going into the Challenges, where we find the expected but always welcomed micro-game towers, plus some new stuff like the fantastic Wario Interrupts, but most of all, the return of Wario Watch and Sneaky Gamer, the former my favorite mode in ANY of the previous games and the latter being the best part of Game & Wario, and after playing, I completely understand why. Now that I think about it, the only games that might not get any kind of representation are Snapped and D.I.Y, which makes sense, one is a departure from the series focused on creating the games, and the other one is... well, is WarioWare Snapped. The rest tho? All gameplay styles come back, even the microphone, and the one game you expect to not see, Smooth Moves actually has a ton of representation, with a couple of minigames being adapted to be controlled in the twisted section; if you think about a thing of the series which there is a way it could be implemented here, then it is implemented here, and that effort for consistency is commendable.

Now, I know I said at the beginning that Gold was more than a simple collection… to then proceed to list things that are returning, but as I also said, is how it manages that returning stuff plus the never seen content what makes it so special, and regarding that new content… Am I the only one that loves how this game handles humor? Like, I adored how past games handled story and humor: as the gameplay itself, it’s pure chaos, incredibly light of dialogue and centered around the bat-shit insanity that plagues everyone. Gold takes a different approach, not only having a pretty more involved story, but actual dialogue, like, REALLY good dialogue; the jokes and on point, and even when some cut-scenes are longer than in previous games, it truly doesn’t feel like it like it did in Touched; it’s still fast-paced and entertaining, only now with sublime voiceovers (in fact the Spanish translation and dubbing is also pretty phenomenal) and mini-stories that are as crazy as ever, only now they connect to the Wario and Lulu cinematics, which, I know that Wario is loved by everyone, including me, but here, his mannerism, his voice-over, his interactions with Lulu and the cast, the way he simply IS, this is by far the best iteration of the character in not only the WarioWare series, but in the entirety of the Mario series as a whole, I love this greedy bastard to death and love him to see him be as dastardly as much to see him fail, they just nailed him here. And that sentiment goes for everyone else, character shine like never before and whereas in the past I only really care about Jimmy T. and maybe Orbulon, I now adore this group of weirdos in a way I didn’t really see coming, like, this game made me like Fronk and fucking Joe, how do you even accomplish that?! This, with the more non linear game you can tackle the different leagues and how Diamond City is shown, makes it one of the most different WarioWare games by far, but every change introduced makes sense and it’s welcomed, and other new additions, like the missions and the store, on top of ALL the other stuff, like small side content like the extra minigames (which includes a Pyoro one and I for one I’m the happiest person on earth right now) and the ability to dub the cutscenes… yeah, this might just be the biggest package in the entirety of the series while also being the most fun by a landslide.

I knew I was gonna have fun, but MAN did this game make me happy; it made me feel rewarded for investing my time into this already amazing series, a love letter that even if released 1 year after the switch launched and doesn’t have a 3D option, I kind of really like that it’s on the 3DS? It still feels right a home, and hey, having two screens makes it possible to play Sneaky Gamer, so on that alone makes it worth it.

To me, Gold is the single best experience in the franchise, Twisted is to this day the best out the full-blown original games, but Gold fills me with such joy, is so fun, so consistently fucking amazing in almost every way, that I cannot for the life of me say it’s not my preferred game. I’m so glad I got to play this series in its entirety, and I’m so happy this is the send-off, or at least until Move It! releases, but until then, we found Wario peak…


…and you know, I could finish this review off with yet another Wario-related joke, but you know what? Nah, I’m good. For once, let the final note be how unironically great Wario is, and how this silly greedy garlic enjoyer, his crew and his dumb ass minigames can be so fantastic… holy hell, what a great franchise…

Where have I been for the past month you ask? Aww, thanks for asking, but I have been ruining my brain by achieving a platinum save on Picross 3D: Round 2; and after having gotten the highest rank on all 301 puzzles within this game, I belive I am qualified to provide my take on it. A take wherein I am bias, Picross games are my favorite puzzles games out of the bunch, and this one is certaintly one of the greats. With amazing puzzles, fun challenge books every once and a while, and a long selection of unlockables and puzzles. All together making Picross 3D: Round 2 one of the greatest in its class. Made me feel like Phidias carefully sculpting away the Statue of Zeus in every puzzle.

i have hallucinations of seeing blue and orange numbers everywhere

just when you think you're finally done the game goes "just kidding fucker. you fuckign idiot. here's like 20 more stages"

this is the best video game i think

major props to hal lab for avoiding cashing in on yearly picross 3d releases like in the 2d series; round 2 is a complete overhaul of the original concept. the original picross 3d struggled with integrating its 3d nature into the actual puzzle solving, as the game's loop involved slicing its three-dimensional voxel sculptures into two-dimensional slices, where row hints pointing towards the player had next-to-no bearing on the solution of any given slice. round 2 instantly solves that by transforming the game's mechanics into an adaptation of color picross from the main series, where instead of chiseling out a monochrome image, you instead have to deal with multiple colors on each line. hints perpendicular to a slice now show the possible colors for that particular block, and thus the loop now involves checking hints on all three axes instead of just the slice's primary two. switching to colors also vastly increases the potential number of hint arrangements. as in the first game, each hint may indicate an unbroken string of blocks, two separate strings of blocks, or three+ strings of blocks, but now each of the two colors can have its own variable number of strings per row. the amount of different idioms that arise from this far surpass the original game.

what makes this particular interesting is that the coloration of the blocks is not random or chosen purely mechanically: it actually reflects the construction of each puzzle. the voxels of the original game are now marked blue, and new, variably shaped, curved blocks are marked orange. this addition adds substantial context to the chiseling process: compared to the rectangular jumble of the original, you can now clearly make out the structure of what you're building over time. while aesthetically pleasing in its own right, this also assists with the mental leg work, as educated guesses can be made much more easily with a rough idea of the puzzle's shape and edges. this creates some pseudo-idioms in its own right as well: for example, edges with a taper at either end generally appear as a single blue string and then two one-block orange strings. the game can get quite inscrutable at times without some real brute forcing of all the different possibilities, so the organic natures of the game's mechanical structures eases some of the tedium and allows for some guesswork.

I played a couple more rounds of the original just to feel it out, and honestly playing this has dampened my enthusiasm for that entry. so many QoL additions here, from the ability to swipe across the screen to break/paint a bunch of blocks in one go to finally being able to isolate the edge-most slice from any direction. the structure here has been changed from tiered assortments of puzzles from easy to hard to thematically driven "books" of puzzles, with the easy/normal/hard selection individualized for each puzzle. goes a long way in making the on-ramp smooth coming out of the original; no need to slog through the piss-easy stuff if you already have some experience with the concept. the ranking system is also much more granular, with your amount of misses (now including incorrect painting, unlike the first title) and time taken now converted to a numeric score, which gets multiplied against the chosen difficulty of the puzzle to get your final score and rank. also a testament to how difficult this game can get: later puzzles can have top "rainbow" ranks allow for 25-30 minutes on a single puzzle with up to three or four misses. the very final puzzle in the game took me over 45 min!

I went into this game mostly blind and it was a very fun ride.
I had heard very little about this game besides it not having a huge reception at launch, so I didn't much pay attention until it recently came to PS+

I had fun with mutliple aspects of it, the visuals are very creative and the world and it's set pieces very memorable and unique, the story is goofy more often than not with a looot of "Marvel" writing bits, but actually original plot twists and world rules.
The combat is fun albeit a tad repetitive but in the run time of the game it never starts to feel like a bother, plus the clear inspirations from Doctor Strange type magic leads to a very fun fantasy combat loop.

It is worth a try, but the biggest down point is the full price, the game shines the most when you feel like you only paid for a AA experience.

I can’t believe that we’re in 2024 and Ubisoft actually made a great videogame. Just kidding (or am I?)
The game is fun. I know that doesn’t sound like a great deal. But I mean is really, really fun to play. The combat is good, there is a decent variety of enemies, which make it fun to fight them. The character is amazing to control. Specially once you learn the main abilities (like double jump, the slide though the air, etc). The scenarios are full of secrets, chests, coins, etc. I’ll be honest, I didn’t care at all about the lore and texts about collectibles. I just picked them up and kept playing.
Visually, the game looks very well made. I played in on the Nintendo Switch and the graphics and textures can look a bit odd from time to time. For what I saw, on PC, Xbox and Playstation, the game looks a lot better. Apart from the graphics, the general style of the game is cool. Maybe not very original, but it looks good. Although I didn’t like the UI and menu elements.
The game has a few options to personalize the difficulty of different aspects, which is great if you are the kind of player that, sometimes, want a lower challenge. I won’t lie, sometimes I do. And I did use some of those settings in moments where I just wanted to move forward and I didn’t wanna spend another 20 tries on the same boss.
I liked the music in some key moments of the game. The general audio effects are very good, specially the background noises in the different environments. The voice acting is okay, nothing to complain or stand out about it.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t care at all about the story. It’s not bad, but I just didn’t care. I don’t think the story is the strongest point of the game: for me, it was just an excuse to play this really fun game and go from one side of the map to the other, fighting everything that moves in the middle. And that’s perfectly fine to me.
I don’t know if this is an issue only present on the Switch, but I found a but annoying having so many loading screens. I don’t know if the PC/Xbox/Playstation versions also have so many black screens. It’s not a deal breaker, but after a while, it can be annoying. Specially considering that the game has a fast gameplay (which is great) that makes you want to keep playing it fluidly.
I think this game doesn’t invent anything new for the genre, but it takes what works for this type of games and combines it all very well.
I don’t know if I will play this game again in the future, but maybe I’ll keep playing it a few more hours just to complete parts of the map that I didn’t go to during my playtrough.

Superhot VR is proof that VR is good for more than just porn. Its a must play and definitely the most fun I've had with the system so far.

The main game was fun, and to this date is the rarest and possibly hardest platinum I have. But after playing this, I can't imagine ever wanting to go back. It translates so well to VR its incredible. Dodging bullets in slow mo is both the coolest thing ever and also a great workout. Your enjoyment with this is probably gonna vary a lot with how much space you have and how active you are. You can beat this game stationary pretty fine, but it is at its absolute most fun when you are diving behind cover yourself or dropping to the floor like wannabe Max Payne.

The game is a bit short and can be beaten under two hours, but for an early VR game thats not really a big deal. Any longer might have overstayed its welcome. Plus if you want more out of it, completing the main missions unlocks quite a few modes, namely endless and alternate takes on the main campaign with harder challenges like one life or headshots only - so theres quite a lot to get out of this.

The game can be quite hard, and having to restart a level completely if you die can be frustrating. You'll be moving around a lot in this and might find yourself having to recenter when you jump to a new section a lot which led to a handful of deaths but ultimately is the only real negative I have about this. I do wish they added more campaigns or levels but as is I can't recommend it enough

Nancymeter - 90/100
Game Completion #110 of 2022
August Completion #30

New Release Review:
Hi-Fi Rush was a wonderful surprise and probably the most unique game I’ve played in a long time. I played and finished the game in 8 hours because I was so focused on Hi-Fi Rush’s rhythm-based combat. To explain the combat, I’ll do a quick explanation of its story which is something that feels like a cartoon show that would be played on a Saturday morning. Not only does it act like a cartoon, but the art of Hi-Fi Rush also takes inspiration from other art styles such as comic books and anime during specific segments. In Hi-Fi Rush you play an inspiring rockstar, Chai, who goes through a cybernetic surgery that accidentally merges his music player to his heart. With his heart now being the music player, everything in the world around him goes to the beat of his music and because of this, he is now labeled as a defect by the corporation responsible for his surgery. With the power of friendship, Chai and the friends that he gains along the way must defeat this evil corporation to the beat of the music.
Now with the world going along to the beat of the music, that means Chai and the player must defeat enemies and time combos to the beat of whatever song is playing. While this might sound difficult, the combat and timing are quite easy and fun. Even if you manage to not hit enemies on the beat, it is still balanced so that you can still do damage and is still fun. Of course, you can level up your abilities so that certain abilities do even more damage on and off the beat. If you’re like me and are tone deaf you might have a hard time hearing the beat, but thankfully not only is there a bar in the UI to help you find the beat, but the world around you literally goes to the beat. Enemies walk and swing on the beat, lights, and doors go to the beat, and so on. At one point you might learn the rhythm and will find yourself tapping your foot or nodding your head causing you to get better level by level.
While I did have fun, there were 2 issues I had during my 8 hours. The game can get very repetitive, and this is because of the level's very formulaic design. When going through each level, you mainly do 2 things, which are platforming and fighting. While there are some minor puzzles and some collectibles it doesn't help change the formula. This might start to affect a player but only near the 3rd quarter of the game, which is either good or bad because it might stop someone from actually finishing it. If we ever see a second game I hope they change up the level formulas so that it stays interesting all the way through, but thankfully for such a unique game, it might not affect a player.
Hi-Fi Rush may have a formulaic level design which causes it to get a little repetitive, the game's cheesy Saturday morning cartoon art style help give life to a game that could've easily failed if not done correctly. Being able to fight enemies to the literal beat of the game's amazing soundtrack, the player can feel like a rockstar, which brings something new to the rhythm-based genre. If a second game does ever gets announced, I will be excited about what Tango Gameworks will bring to the table and hope they give us the show of a lifetime. In the end, I’d give Hi-Fi Rush an 8/10.