[Played on Easy because it was a lazy Sunday] This game is really funny. It starts because your ship is under attack by some aliens, then you go to fuck them up for a bit and find out you landed on a giant weapon. So you go to find out more about the weapon and a floating robot teleports you around for a bit before you find out the weapon is actually going to kill the entire galaxy so the zombies can't spread. And the game ends with you not blowing up the galaxy or something. Shooting is fun, the pistol is great, the Flood are a scary enemy to face, and the enemy sounds are goofy. Looking forward to playing Halo 2 and the rest.

DMC1 is - I think - the first character action game I've ever played. Hitting stuff in this game feels soooo good. The combo meter is a little wonky since it doesn't disappear or give indication the combo is over, so I kept thinking I could extend the combo only to have it reset to Dull. Combat is fun and I really enjoyed navigating the castle. This game rules! And then it hits Mission 15 or 16, and it really feels like they wanted to focus on the bad parts of the game. Navigation outside of the castle was very confusing for me. The map is extremely unhelpful and for some reason has completely inverted controls. Mission objectives are often very unclear. For some reason they decided to give boss rooms like 15 different semi-fixed camera angles in a game where a good amount of actions are tied to how you point your stick in relation to Dante's body (which also moves automatically if you're holding R1, which you have to do for some of these actions). There's a lot here, especially in the second half, that feels clunky and strange. I'm not sure who playtested the second half and thought "Yes, this is what we should do." That said, some of the bosses are super fun. The combat and hammy cutscenes carry this game to insane heights, but it falls flat by focusing very hard on its weaknesses.

A very solid platformer. The cutscenes have a really nice style to them. The characters are charming and funny. The gameplay is really fun. Every time I learned a new skill it was really enjoyable to use and felt very smooth. Nothing in this game felt out of place. The mini-hubs in each area were pretty fun to traverse and puzzle out where to go next. The bosses were probably the weakest part of the game, although they each brought something unique to the table so kudos to that. I've heard Sly 2 is incredible so I'm excited to see how that improves upon this already stellar base.

My favorite 2D Zelda so far. It's reasonably short and straight forward, which some people may dislike coming from entries like Link to the Past. However, I think the linearity of the game lends to its biggest strength: the dungeons. Because the game is very linear, the dungeons take into account what items you will have at that point and design puzzles and bosses and enemies around using specific items that you've gathered up to that point, rather than just focusing on whatever the dungeon item is. Between dungeons, you'll usually get an item or two as well, and this allows the dungeons to incorporate a wide array of items prior to even getting the dungeon item. The story is roughly the same as other entries: Zelda is in a bad way, go beat up an evil sorcerer to save her.

I vastly prefer the combat in this game to ALttP, even if I tend to think Zelda has fairly barebones and boring combat. The semi-circle swing as opposed to the quarter-circle swing feels much more natural to me, although I will admit this was the first Zelda I ever beat so that may be why I feel that way. From early on the game you're introduced to multiple enemies that you have to disarm using the wind sucker thing, or some you just can't fight yet because you don't have the boomerang or bow. I'm a big fan of these types of enemies because it makes the combat feel like a bit of a puzzle, however trivial, instead of just "Mash Sword For X Hits."

The minish gimmick is fine. It isn't intrusive and adds a layer of challenge to traversing dungeons, specifically the earth dungeon where you have to go through parts you've already explored, but tiny. The overworld parts of being tiny kinda sucked, but it was still fun to explore the world within the world provided.

The kinstone pieces are...definitely in the game. They serve as a way to elongate the game and remind me of the treasure charts in Wind Waker, except in Wind Waker sailing around could actually be fun sometimes. Walking around Hyrule was pretty boring for me, so I very rarely went back to actually locate whatever my kinstone reward was unless I was trying to figure out how to progress and stumbled across it. I've heard mixed opinions on kinstones in the past, but they didn't really make my experience any better or worse since I didn't engage with them in "100%ing Minish Cap" kind of way.

Overall, pretty solid game that I can see myself returning to in another few years. Ezlo is cool.

It's short and sweet, with plenty of little extras to find that can extend the playtime if you're willing. The minigames in the hub areas are fun, and exploring those to find the next level is a good treat. I'm not particularly fond of how 2D Sonic controls in conjunction with the stop and go level design that tends to creep up at least half the time, but this one was pretty enjoyable all things considered. Being able to play different characters opens up even more paths, and having a partner that gives you an addition to your moveset adds a lot of replayability. Very possibly my favorite 2D Sonic, although I'll admit I've played few.

It is absolutely a Mario sports game. It's fun to learn how the game works, but kinda frustrating until you get there. The cast is alright, but I remember it being expanded pretty well in the sequel. If playing this game did anything, it made me interested in playing the sequel again. The story mode is short and sweet, although scouting is a little meh in this game due to mostly being RNG on if you'll even get the opportunity. At least the games are short so you aren't wasting a ton of time if you happen to not get Yoshi when you wanted to.

Gameplay-wise, this game is really fun. Space missions especially feel awesome. Flying around, shooting down other ships and taking down turrets into boarding an enemy carrier and taking it down from the inside is such a great feeling that I haven't heard of another game capturing, not that I've played the new Battlefronts or anything similar. The normal levels are also pretty fun. Something about capturing the command point is super satisfying. I love watching the little bar deplete then fill up. I just finished the campaign, and it was honestly pretty fun until the final two levels. Yavin 4 and Hoth both kinda suck. Playing the entire thing through the clone perspective is a really unique take, as if this game came out today they would've just had you switch to the rebels after Order 66. This game is really fun, but gets held back by some of the campaign sucking. Luckily, if you actually want to play this game you'll probably spend most of your time doing multiplayer or Galactic Conquest or something instead of playing the campaign over and over.

With a few changes this game would be like twice as good. The lives system is archaic and shitty, especially with how long some levels can be. The game is split into 7 worlds with like 8 missions each. The first two are required to unlock the next world, and the rest are sort of optional. Or, they seem that way. Then you get to the 6th world and they tell you that you actually need to have beaten 25 missions to unlock the final world. So then you have to go back and do all those. The first two missions of each world are downright obnoxious. By the time I found out I had to basically double the amount of levels I'd finished, I was really annoyed with this game. Then I did a bunch of the "optional" levels and actually had a great time. Going into the final level, my opinion on this game had completely turned around. I was having a blast. Then I played the final level and had to deal with all the boredom therein. The final boss is tedious and slow.

This game's weakest part is the combat, but holy hell does this game want to put you in combat. The platforming is actually pretty fun once you get used to the movement, although it could very clearly do with some improvements. The music (mostly) rules, with few duds in the soundtrack. Final opinion on this game is that it took away 8 hours of my life that could've been lowered to 5 or 6 if it didn't suck so much. There's a lot of potential here, but being made by Sonic Team and in 2003 really makes it hard to love. It'd be cool to see a spiritual successor by someone who sees what this game could be if it were made Not Shit.

I'm not sure what's up with White and me. I bought it on release, and never really got hooked. The bridges were always my favorite parts of the game. Just seeing how the camera swiveled around something like in Pokemon game blew my mind as a kid. After beating White, I'm not sure that opinion has changed.

White is nearly identical to the previous Pokemon games in terms of mechanics. This generation didn't go hard on the gimmicks like 6+. The closest it got was triple and rotation battles, but I only encountered one triple battle and zero rotation battles the entire time, and even then that's as much a gimmick as double battles. Graphically, the White is supposed to look better than previous games. Something about it never quite meshed with me, and it gives me a similar feeling to something like Owlboy, where I look at it and think "I should like how this looks." It clearly has a lot of time and effort and care put into every bit, but it just doesn't hit me the way I feel like it should. I feel like I'm missing out on something when everyone raves about the art in this game. The overworld character sprites looks weird and long to me. Of course, the animated Pokemon all look great and it's a shame we only got one gen/four games of them before being sentenced to 3D hell. No comments on the music. I mostly played this during work, so I didn't have the sound on for like 90% of my playtime, although I'm sure it sounds at least serviceable. The difficulty curve seemed fine? It definitely didn't have any steep issues like Johto can, and wasn't a cakewalk like Kalos. I grinded a little bit pre-Elite Four, but I also skipped a lot of trainers and optional content throughout the game, so I can't really hold that against the game. I don't think I'm a fan of choosing the Elite Four order. Set order felt like a hierarchy of the trainers, whereas in White each member has three level 48s and one level 50. Then, you fight N instead of Alder, which is a big shame because Alder was set up very well throughout the game to be a wise and strong trainer that I would have felt good beating. Instead, you fight N and Ghetsis after doing some chosen one shit and the credits roll. It felt anti-climatic. At least in Sword you get to fight the Champion after being completely derailed by legendary Pokemon bullshit.

I'm sort of rambling at this point, but I want to be clear that I'm not totally sure why I'm giving White the score I am. I spent 21 hours on this run and still couldn't figure out what I disliked about this game so much more than the previous games and even some of the later games. I can't believe that it's just some kind of nostalgia for the other games that I lack with this one because I played this one when it came out and I was still like 12. I've lost my train of thought because my friend put on Donnie Darko, so I'm just gonna end the review here.

In the battle between Game Dev Story and Game Dev Tycoon, I think GDT comes out on top. They're fairly similar and both very simple. However, GDT's absurd amount of topics to choose from when making a game really helps it feel like your choice matters there, and the use of sliders over choosing an individual employee for each stage of production aids in making you feel more like a studio of workers and less like you're just picking the guys with the best stats every time (even though you still kind of do? I didn't and was successful, but my friend did and he beat my score by 20 million points so...).

There are some areas where the game falls flat. Only six genres feels a little lacking, although you do eventually gain the ability to double-up on genres which opens for a bit more experimentation. Not having a yearly Game Awards to judge how you're doing against other developers was a bit disappointing, as gunning for GOTY in GDS was always my favorite part. GDS also created a more filled out world, as silly as it sounds. Having news reports of crazy characters to hire like a pro wrestler or a bear was really fun. GDT has none of that, and the only pop-ups you get are for new consoles or for Game Hero to tell you your game was ass when everyone else gave it 10s.

Game Dev Tycoon is definitely a step in the right direction for a game dev simulator, but I'd be lying if I said anything other than "5/10. Looking forward to the sequel!"

It's a very basic game that I played as a kid on iOS. Bought it recently and had as much fun as I remember having then, although that fun waned hard after about an hour. Maybe get this if it's on sale ever? Parts of it are better than Game Dev Tycoon (which came out 3 years later. Not sure why Backloggd says this game came out in 1996 when it directly references the Wii.), but some parts are less enjoyable. I'd like to see a second iteration of either game that borrows from the other, as I think a good Game Dev Simulator is still yet to be released.