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.

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.

I don't know where to start with this. It's both very of its era and simultaneously ahead of its time.

I'm not too familiar with RPGs from the 16 bit gen, but from what I'm aware, this seems fairly typical on the surface. But once it gets going it becomes so meta and self aware it really feels like it could have come out today.

It's tough going in the begining until your get your first party member. If you can make it to that part you're in for a treat. It does seem to plateau difficulty-wise until the very end game so make sure you do a bit of grinding and choose your items wisely.

Unfortunately the game doesn't do a great job of telling you what items do until you've bought them and checked. So it's a bit of curiosity and trial and error.

It's got great Goonies/Stranger Things/Americana vibes. Check it out if you can.

Fantastic remake of a fantastic game.

Makes enough changes to keep things fresh while maintaining what made the original so perfect.

Now to go again on new game plus! And probably again after that.

I thought I'd come back to this ahead of Tears of the Kingdom and go through it again.

It's still a really great game but it's got a few too many bits and pieces that annoy me for me to give it a full 5. Weapon degradation, the stamina system, not being able to climb in the rain, these are just a few of the features that stop me fully enjoying myself. I do understand why they're there and they add to the experience. It's worth mentioning they didn't bother me as much on a 2nd playthrough.

The shrines are a highlight; providing various degrees of difficulty and teaching you how to use your abilities at the same time. The cooking element is nice but it would be good if the game provided Link a journal to keep track of certain recipes so you can easily recreate what works and suits your playstyle.

It's odd that this game includes the infamous "climb a tower to unfog the map" feature that many an Ubisoft game is scorned for, but seems to get a free pass here for some reason.

Enough about the negative though, this game is truly fantastic and will go down as one of the greatest of all time. Despite my niggles with it, everything does just work and works really well. My 2nd playthrough was quite rushed in order to finish it in time for TotK, but you can spend forever in this game, completing side quests, collecting everything, playing with the ingenious physics and much more. Highly recommended.

An incredibly charming platformer with gorgeous visuals and aesthetics.

The controls sharp but are a little floaty, although it suits the character. The game itself doesn't do a great job of encouraging you to return to previous parts of the map once you've obtained new skills to explore previously unreachable areas. Be it the lack of warp points to reduce traversal or that there is a bit of a grind to gain ability points, I couldn't bring myself to fully explore the map and max out Ori's skillset.

The story is a little on the basic side of things but it still draws you in with some touching moments throughout.

Definitely recommended, just maybe when it's on sale.

This game runs rings around GTA III in pretty much every aspect. The story is better, especially having the protagonist being able to speak (the late, great Ray Liotta no less), the city itself feels more alive than Liberty did, the music is fantastic and there's a much better selection of vehicles. They handle way better too.

The only problem here is that it doesn't perform great. The Definitive Collection as a whole left a lot of people disappointed. GTA III was able to hide a lot of the flaws behind it's murky, dank presentation. But Vice City is much more bright and vibrant so you can see the tape holding it all together.

It's still a fun experience if you can get past that. The controls are clunky and outdated but that doesn't get in the way of the fun too much.

A fun game with a decent enough story to keep you engrossed.
Some of the choices are a bit odd, like when you apprehend one of the villains and transport them back to the police station you have to manually walk back out rather than a cutscene taking care of this.
The Batmobile features very heavily which is both good and bad. It helps navigate the map quickly (I don't think Fast Travel is in this game) but the sections it features in are a tad repetitive.
Definitely worth checking out, especially if you're a fan of Batman and/or the Arkham series.

What a huge missed opportunity this game is.

The story is quite a nice "Marvel" affair. The opening sequence and the last 30/60 minutes are a lot of fun but everything in between is a bit of a chore. Manually walking around the main hub and navigating to your next mission felt like a slog when I'd have rather had this resolved with a cutscene instead.

The missions themselves are too repetitive as is the combat. Go here, defeat them, smash that, repeat. You can't help but feel that if this was handled more like an Uncharted or Tomb Raider it would have flowed much better. Instead you're bombarded with collecting "gear" and upgrading it with "resources" when in reality, it doesn't affect all that much.

I haven't played the online multiplayer aspect of this because frankly, I couldn't be bothered once I was done with the story. It's such a shame because there is an all-star cast of voice actors here and they put in fantastic performances. It's just not enough to save the game.

Glad I picked it up for a tenner.

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.

Played again ahead of the upcoming remake.

Absolutely perfect game. Fantastic fun from top to bottom. Doesn't have the "scares" of other entries in the series but more than makes up for it everywhere else.

I hear a lot of complaints about the controls being bad when people revisit this game and I couldn't disagree more. Sure, they're a little outdated compared to modern standards but they are far from bad.

I hope the remake lives up to this one!

"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.

A nice little expansion to the main game. I didn't feel like I could get as involved with the mechanics like levelling up weapons and materia etc as I could with the main game, but as an extra story that runs concurrent with the main one it's great.
Yuffie is a fun character to learn and play as and having the option to issue commands to Sonon in battle rather than switching to them felt more natural.
There's not a lot to say, if you enjoyed FFVII: Remake and spot this on sale then I'd strongly recommend you pick it up. Probably not for full price though.

Ok, so graphically and performance-wise, this isn't the best. But if you can get past that, there's a fun Pokémon adventure to be had here.

It's Pokémon, so you probably know what you're getting. But the open-world style encourages more exploration that previous entries in the series. There are three main "goals" that you can tackle in any order as and when you like, however I was often wandering off to see what I could find over that hill or round that corner or in that cave and easily got distracted from the main "story".

If you play this game, I'd really encourage you to do it at a leisurely pace. There's nothing wrong with blasting through the gyms etc, but if you take your time and explore the world, you'll get the most out of the game.