I'm super biased because I adored these games when they first came out on the Dreamcast, but my god I love these two games!

The controls are clunky, the voice acting is a bit wooden, there's no quality of life features that are commonplace these days, but it just works. Go back to when these games originally came out and it's a miracle what the developers were able to achieve. Games that have come out since have arguably done this better, but they're standing on the shoulders of Shenmue.

At times the pace is glacial. But the whole point is to take each day as it comes and make the most of your time. Shenmue is a living, breathing world and its inhabitants all have their schedules to keep to. Need to ask at an antique shop about the old scroll you found in your basement? You can only do it when the shop is open. It can feel frustrating from a 2024 perspective that you can't just do whatever you want whenever you wish, but again, that's the point of Shenmue. The sequel does add a 'wait' feature if need to be at a certain place at a specific time you can whiz the clock forward. It's a handy implementation but does take away some of the fun of filling your day.

If you've not played these before, it's difficult to recommend them because they are showing their age now. If you're level-headed enough to appreciate that they are old games, you might be surprised at how much enjoyment you'll get out of them.

Again, I'm biased, but these are two of the best games of all time.

Also I just noticed that I finished my last play-through on 6th May and finished this time on 5th May! Spooky!

I wasn't expecting Pokemon Snap to have as much depth as it does! I always imagined this just to be a generic on-rails shooter under the guise of a family friendly cash in.

On the surface, that's exactly what it is. But where Pokemon Snap differs is that there are extra objectives to achieve other than just taking as many pictures of Pokemon as you can in each level. Sometimes the game will require you to take a certain number of photos of different species before progressing. Other times you will need to trigger a certain event to open a different pathway.

Snap doesn't do a brilliant job of signposting exactly what it is you have to do to open these pathways. Bear in mind that this game comes from a pre-googling-the-answer era. This creates a bit of a fork in the road for my lasting impression.

On the one hand, the game is incredibly brief and despite enjoying myself, I don't think there's much replay value unless I really wanted to snap every 'Mon that I could. On the other hand, viewed through a 1999 lens, I wouldn't have been able to google how to progress to the next level and therefore the game's lifespan would've increased.

As I've played this via NSO, I land more on the side of it being too brief although any longer and it would run the risk of being too repetitive. Definitely worth checking out even if you've only got a slight curiosity in Pikachu and pals.

Some good clean fun.

Played as part of the Switch N64 collection of games. Despite its age, it doesn't look half bad. The enemies are mostly indistinguishable but that's more of an "of it's time" kind of thing.

I was a Sega kid through and through growing up, but I did manage to play tiny bits of this at a friend's house. It's great to play it in full and experience the complete game. The mechanics are simple to pick up but there's definitely a degree of skill involved with mastering them to get through the hard route.

There's a lot of replay value thanks to the short length and the increasingly difficult routes. It's just not enough to keep me coming back. At least for a while anyway.

I'm not big on Roguelikes in general but I had a really good time with Hades. Playing on Switch allowed me to get in a good run attempt during my commute to/from work and it lends itself perfectly to a 30-45 minute burst of play.

Hades looks fantastic. It runs super smooth even on Switch. The colours of each environment pop off the screen and it's always a delight to look at. The voice acting is top notch as is the score.

Depending on how you feel about this genre, Hades can be an incredibly frustrating game. It's hard on purpose, but you're able to get stronger on each attempt to escape from the Underworld, helping you get that little bit further each time. You’ll unlock different weapons to use where you will inevitably find favourites or ones you tend to perform better with. The further you get on escape attempts, the more resources you’ll have to upgrade the weapons and your abilities, and therefore helping you get that little bit further next time.

Very minor spoilers here: After I managed to escape the Underworld, I expected a bit of an epilogue and the credits. But after the narrative plays out you’re returned to the starting point. A quick google told me that to get the ending you need to escape 10 times in total. Initially I thought “challenge accepted” but after 5 successful attempts I feel that I’ve gotten all I can get out of Hades. As I said, this isn’t my genre of choice, so despite having a blast with the game, I’m not going to get any more enjoyment out of it by persevering for the sake of it.

Definitely check Hades out if you’re curious about Roguelikes, but seeing the credits is only for dedicated fans of the genre.

"Fun" isn't the right word, but I had a good time with this. It's a good creepy story but it doesn't quite live up to its potential.

It's difficult to explain but the gameplay loop is very repetitive and verges on becoming boring though somehow, it's still an enjoyable experience.

It obviously doesn't look the best being a remaster from the 7th generation although that's not to say it looks bad. The remaster team have done a great job and it's only in the cutscenes where the game shows it's age.

I don't want to say too much about this because I think you should go in as blind as you can. I'm sure you can pick this up cheap in a sale right now and there's plenty worse ways to spend 12ish hours.

All the way through this game I couldn't decide whether to stick to the story or invest loads of my time into it. I think I landed more on the latter side and that's where Ni No Kuni 2 shines brightest.

Overall I think it's a slight step back from the previous game. The world didn't seem as whimsical or endearing. Ni No Kuni 2 deals with slightly more mature themes (it's still pretty childish) so I guess whimsy had to make way for this to work. There's plenty of other changes from the previous game too. Gone is the Pokemon-lite creature mechanics and combat is now more action orientated. You can switch to other party members at the press of a button but frankly, you rarely need to. I pretty much completed the game using just Evan and giving everyone the best weapons and equipment.

Traditional RPG-wise, there's nothing new here. The main story is a bit rinse and repeat as you travel to different countries in the world with the aim of unifying them. Arrive, the leader's corrupt, sort it out, fight with a monster, move on. Despite the repetitiveness, the game still manages to be enjoyable but mainly through the extra curricular activities.

The part of Ni No Kuni 2 that sucked me in the most was upgrading my kingdom. It's essentially like Simpsons Tapped Out and other similar games except you're not getting ads in your face or being asked to fork over more money. I think I spent the most amount of my time tracking down new citizens to populate my kingdom, setting up research tasks (these grant you extra skills/rewards for the rest of the game like better weapons etc) and developing new buildings. It was seriously addictive.

At times the game looks like one of the best on the Switch. It runs super smooth and really is gorgeous. Not being a frame rate buff I couldn't tell you what it runs at, but sometimes it looks fantastic. Unfortunately when the screen starts to get a bit busy it will stutter from time to time but what can you do?

Top it all off with a score by Joe Hisaishi and you've got a great RPG if you pick it up in a sale.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have give up on Sable.

From the first moment I saw a trailer for this game, with a cloaked figure riding a hoverbike across sand dunes in cell-shaded graphics and a synth soundtrack I was 100% sold. This was supposed to be my jam.

I'm not a framerate snob at all. Far from it. Higher framerates definitely make games look better, but it's near the bottom of my priorities when buying a game. However Sable has such an inconsistent framerate even I couldn't carry on.

It doesn't help that there's been (I assume) an artistic choice to restrict the frames of animation on the main character, Sable. As for the environments, they will either look fantastic or will splutter and flicker. Add in the character movement animations and it's either super jarring or headache inducing.

It's a real shame because there's definitely a good game underneath this. The freedom to explore the world in whatever order you like, the fantastic dialogue and (taken in little snapshots) it really is beautiful.

From what I've read, it's just a two-person development team so I don't mean any ill-will or maliciousness to them and can only imagine how hard it must be to actually make a game. I hope there's patch at some point so I can revisit.

Incomplete so no score.

A not-too-distant-future, dystopian death sport heavily influenced by films like Rollerball and The Running Man.

Rollerdrome has an awesome 70s/80s future vibe to it complete with a synth-heavy soundtrack that oozes cool. I'm hesitant to use such a reductive statement, but in basic terms the game plays like Tony Hawk with guns. The way Kara (who you play as) moves around the arenas, up halfpipes and along rails is exactly like the Neversoft classics, but there are enough modifications and additions to the gameplay to give Rollerdrome its own identity.

Rollerdrome's core loop has you eliminating a set amount of enemies from an arena with your guns as you skate around performing tricks in order to reload. As you can imagine, there are several enemy types each with their own attacks you need to learn how to avoid and weaknesses to exploit. There are a handful of guns at your disposal (these unlock as you progress through the game) with different properties that work better/worse against the various enemies. Rollerdrome isn't exactly rewriting the rulebook, but it's certainly putting its own stamp on it.

There is a loose narrative you can choose to explore or ignore but doing so certainly adds weight to your actions in the game. Essentially, Rollerdrome is the world's most popular sport, you play as a rookie and work your way through the preliminaries to the grand finals while dystopian corruption happens around you. The game inserts first-person sections between levels every now and again allowing you to explore backstage of the arenas or in-transit to your next match that provide objects to interact with and absorb the lore.

I had a great time with Rollerdrome and now I've completed the main chunk of levels I fully intend to go back and complete the additional challenges I couldn't quite get on my first time through. It won't take you long to finish but these additional challenges plus an extra hard mode that unlocks on after the credits will keep completionists/masochists busy for a while.

Hitman 2 is essentially a glorified score attack game loosely tied together by a vague plot. But that is by no means a bad thing.

What you have is a handful of scenarios, each in a wildly different setting from the last, with a new target or targets to kill and linked together by a threadbare plot about uncovering Agent 47's past. Feel free to ignore any and all plot points (although there's no judgement from me if you indulge in them) and fully sink your teeth into each scenario treating them as standalone missions. You can see how this was developed with an episodic nature in mind before Warner Bros pivoted to releasing the game in full from it's disjointed flow from mission to mission.

The missions themselves offer you a multitude of ways to off your targets and the game kindly provides you with 'story missions' to follow, which are recommended for a first pass of the level. They give the player a handy checklist of events that culminate in a specific demise for a target. You can then replay the level and try a different 'story mission' for a different outcome or completely freestyle it and take them down as you see fit.

The game scores and ranks you on your efficiency for completing the mission and there's dozens of challenges to conquer to further unlock tools to use in the mission, boosting the game's replay factor.

The NPCs within each mission seem overly jumpy and get suspicious of you at a moment's notice, but then again, I'd be suspicious if a guy walked around town with my erratic playstyle. This means you really have to be patient at times to wait for a perfectly clear route so you can proceed without alerting anyone. So if you're more of an 'all-guns-blazing' type of player, this might not be for you.

This was a lot of fun but made me swear probably more than any other game ever!

It's a great evolution of the series from the original trilogy (especially following up from the remasters) by keeping the fundamentals of what makes Crash 'Crash', but also adding new mechanics that freshen things up without detracting from that core essence.

There's some insanely tricky platforming on offer here (hence the aforementioned swearing) that is immensely rewarding once you've pulled it off but some of it requires extremely high skill levels to do so.

There's not a hell of a lot to say really, it's a Crash game. If you love the originals or the remasters you'll love this. If not, I'd still recommend giving it a try but don't expect too much.

I desperately wanted this to be one of those 'change your life' kind of games. The same way people talk about Shadow of the Colossus. Alas...

Firstly, and most importantly, this thing handles like playing snooker with a rope. Moving the main character around on the ground is fine, but try and get them hanging off ledges or climbing (especially on Trico) and you might as well point in a direction and hope for the best.

Speaking of Trico, they are by far the most frustrating thing in this game. So much of the The Last Guardian revolves around having Trico carry you places. This should be achieved by issuing commands but whether Trico listens to these is an entirely separate thing. I'm assuming the artistic choice here is that it's meant to be akin to training a real life animal. As the owner of two cats I can confidently say I have enough of that in real life and don't need that level of needless frustration from my games thanks very much.

The environments look amazing and Trico does most of the time too. I think the artistic choices on the character models was a misstep as they can look flat and out of place when the world is so detailed.

Finally, the story is very non-existent for the most part. It's not until later into the game that we get a cutscene that fills in most of the blanks you've spent a good chunk of your time pondering over. The details we do get are interesting and I wish they could have been expanded upon further and sprinkled throughout the game more widely. It all just feels sort of empty.

That said, when the game shines, it really does shine. There are some great set-pieces to hit the story beats and the game has a lot of interesting mechanics that are a lot of fun when they work. The ending ties everything together nicely and almost makes you forget every time you sighed "oh ffs" over the previous 11ish hours. Almost, but not quite.

I should preface this by saying that I am a huge Sonic fan. The first game on the Mega Drive is what got me into video games and all of those main Mega Drive titles are still firm favourites to this day.

Superstars does indeed emulate those original MD games incredibly well. The feeling of turning momentum into speed is the essence of 2D Sonic games and it’s perfectly on display here. Unfortunately, once you get past the first zone or two, there are badniks and obstacles everywhere preventing you from keeping that momentum and all important speed. This means that just as soon as you get that old-school feeling, you hit something and all the wind falls out of your sails.

Maybe it’s a case of muscle memory. I know the old games so well that I flow through them almost therapeutically. If I was able to spend the same amount of time with Superstars then would I be able to do the same? I don’t recall having this issue with Sonic Mania so I’m not sure if that’s the case or not. However, once you’ve cleared the game and have access to all the Emerald Powers (more on them later) and more importantly your Super form, playing through the game again lets you easily flow through the zones and acts.

As mentioned, the gimmick for this game is the Emerald Powers. The classic big gold rings can be found throughout each act transporting you to the special stage with your chance to grab a Chaos Emerald. The special stages are… fine? They’re an all new idea rather than retreading stages from previous games and have you swinging from spheres in the air to catch up to the Emerald. They’re not bad, just not very memorable. Once you have an Emerald though, you gain access to its power. I won’t list them all but the first allows you to generate an army of clones that run across the screen destroying all enemies along the way. They’re pretty useful but entirely optional and you’ll likely forget that they’re actually there. At least until you get all of them and unlock your Super form.

One last negative before I move onto the positives is the boss fights. There are some really interesting ideas on show here, they’re just not always executed very well. Rather than just having to give each boss around 8 hits while avoiding their attack pattern, most of the fights are more like set-pieces. There’ll be set-up animations, a slow as sludge attack pattern, your brief window of opportunity, a follow up attack from the boss and then start the process again. You only get to attack once when the boss is vulnerable rather than being able to get two or maybe even three sneaky hits in. Most boss fights have multiple phases as well, especially the later ones which can really test your patience. The final bosses (yes, plural) had me swearing in frustration more than any Cuphead fight.

That’s enough negatives though! Despite everything I’ve just said, this is still an excellent continuation of the old Mega Drive games. As mentioned above, the “feeling” is exactly right and I’ll keep coming back to the game and keep trying to get better at it. Being able to play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy is very welcome, with each character bringing their own skills and ability to access other areas of the zones. The zones themselves could easily sit alongside the ones from the original games if given a 16-bit coat of paint but don’t feel stuck in the past either. The lack of dialogue doesn’t stop the story from being enjoyable and easy to follow (except for the very last part, no spoilers) and it’s great to see Fang back! Ideally, I’d love to see them back as the lead villain in the next game and bring The Hooligans along too so that Robotnik can have a bit of a rest.

Phew! That’s the longest I’ve written a review for on here so far. I guess that’s a good thing that the game has given me so much to say. I know I’ve dwelled on the negatives more than the positives but the good definitely outweighs the bad. If you’re a fan of old-school Sonic, this is definitely for you.

(I’ve not tried any of the multiplayer yet so cannot comment on that!)

The opening 30 minutes were enough to give this 5 stars.

The sequel takes everything the first game and the Miles Morales sub-sequel did and improves on it. As always, traversing the map as Spider-Man is one of the most fun things you can do in any game. The implementation of the web wings and the wind tunnels to help you pick up speed is very satisfying.

There are some pacing issues with the story which I won't go into too much for spoiler reasons, but I felt that I reached certain story beats quicker than I should have. Other than that, I had a great time with the story and it gave a refreshing take on some familiar, and dare I say 'overdone' characters.

Side quests! I'm a sucker for cleaning up icons on a map ala early Assassin's Creed. Gone are the somewhat tedious Doc Ock experiments from the first game. There are some scientific tasks to do (Peter's a big ol' nerd lest we forget) but they're simple to complete and there's so few of them you might even wish there were more. Each optional side quest makes you feel like you're doing something rather than just completing a to-do list to unlock skills or upgrade gadgets etc.

There are a couple of flaws here and there but this really is a top-tier game. Is it pushing the medium forward? No. Is it one of the most fun experiences you can have in a game? Absolutely.