This is a pretty solid Zelda game all things considered, I like the visual style as much as it tries to emulate Wind Waker in 2D. There is a lot of recycled music (mostly from OoT weirdly enough) which is a little bit disappointing, but doesn't really bother me enough to dock any points. I generally enjoyed myself throughout.

My biggest gripe would be how completely cryptic some of the "puzzles" are at points - there's at least 3 different visual clues (if you could even call them that) used to tell me I'm supposed to bomb a non-obvious wall. I had to retreat to Zelda Dungeon multiple times because I was either completely stumped and it was something that I don't think anyone could have noticed just playing the game normally, or I knew what I had to do but it was just ridiculously tricky for one little puzzle. The little cannon things in Dark Hyrule Castle were unbelievably frustrating and it took me countless tries to get them all to hit at once, god-willing one of them didn't decide to just bounce off in a completely different direction. Both of these things encapsulate what annoyed me the most about this game - there is so, so much tedium.

The final showdown with Vaati was one of the most frustrating boss fights I think I've ever had to beat in a videogame - absolutely no clues on what I was supposed to do were left for me. In the first phase, it was simple enough, I didn't realise until later on I could use the Gust Jar to suck up the dark stuff on his eyeballs, but this was by far the easiest and most straightforward part of the fight. His second phase drove me a little crazy at first, I have no idea why only the bow works on his little eyeballs, and as usual the four sword stuff was infuriating and it took me about ten tries to get him where I could actually damage him with my sword after you flip the eyeballs and everything. The third phase was ridiculously hard to understand - there is absolutely no way I was going to figure out that I could flip his arms after they came up. I think if they added the little golden sparkle that the Cane of Pacci uses maybe I would have put two and two together and realised I could flip them, but there is literally zero indication that that's what I needed to do at all. It should not be expected for the player to shuffle through all of their items mid boss fight just to figure out which one happens to be what they need to use.

There is a serious lack of any sort of consistent visual language that hints at which item you can use in puzzles or annoying bosses. Despite all of this, I still think this is a very solid game. It's fun, I felt accomplished when I beat a lot of the puzzles, and the puzzles in later dungeons are definitely a lot less opaque than a good deal of the earlier stuff. Overall, definitely not my favourite 2D Zelda game I've played so far (Link's Awakening trumps easily) but enjoyable enough that I can start to ignore some of the littler frustrations I had, but the Vaati fight is definitely not one of them.

Light 8

Pikmin is arguably the best game on the GameCube, tied only with Luigi's Mansion in my mind, but very difficult to explain to someone why without sounding crazy. This game is filled to the brim with charm - you can tell there was an immense amount of care put into filling every inch of this post-apocalyptic earth with entertaining and unique critters. No space is wasted in any of the areas, every nook and cranny acts piece in a larger puzzle, laid on top of the gorgeous landscapes and set to beautiful music.

Something about commanding a hundred little guys to destroy various gigantic bugs and making them collect the spoils of your battles back to base camp is indescribably satisfying, the core gameplay loop in Pikmin has been so carefully crafted, down to a T. Everything about this game is just wonderful, it's short, sweet, and packed with charm. The only problem with this game is how ridiculously stupid the Pikmin's AI can be all the time. They constantly get trapped on gaps or fall into water going over bridges. They randomly trip over and you have to go back for them. They are unbelievably easily distracted. The list is expansive, and while some of these are funny little quirks, they get more annoying than cute when time is of the essence and you have to go back for one random pikmin that decided to fall over 10 seconds before sunset. This is improved on immensely in future games, but is definitely at it's most annoying here.

Despite these annoyances with the pikmin and their behaviour at times, Pikmin is just so goddamn fun. The short length and easy-to-learn hard-to-master gameplay makes it a game you can replay over and over and over again. There aren't nearly as many secrets and easter eggs in this first entry as there are in others, but additions like the Smoky Progg definitely help to make the world seem more secretive than it appears, and to make it more rewarding to master your Pikmin wrangling skills to become as efficient as possible.

Pikmin is a must-play for the GameCube, ridiculously fun and satisfying, and cute as all hell.

Strong 8

This is my favourite game of all time. I love this game more than I love my parents. There are so many things that make this game special that I could honestly sit here for hours on end gushing about. The atmosphere is just unmatched in anything else, the grandiose and abstract environments, the fully orchestrated beautiful soundtrack, an actual serious story in a Mario game. I've been playing Super Mario Galaxy my entire life, in the morning before school on a shitty CRT, or on my PC in Dolphin, or on my switch most recently, it's just ridiculously fun. The controls are definitely less tight than 64 & Sunshine, but the sort of floaty quality they have is perfect for the level design. Every single star, every galaxy, every enemy in this game is so incredibly memorable I could honestly describe to someone the entire game without needing to stop to think even for a second. While Galaxy 2 might have the tighter level design, the vibes and the atmosphere created in Galaxy is just impossible to recreate or top, the overpowering loneliness of space is something I think has only been truly depicted perfectly in Super Mario Galaxy.

Despite this being my favourite game ever, it definitely has its shortcomings. I think it's really clear now, with Odyssey in perspective, how much the big mission, one star, no collectibles sort of level design Galaxy have can make it feel a little bogged down. It can feel like a chore to have to do a whole star to get to the Bowser level, while in Odyssey you just breeze through and do lots of little chunks of perfected mini-levels. I don't think this makes the type of Mario game Galaxy is worse by any means, but it definitely slows it down a lot. It took me a week to beat this recently (granted I did do literally every star I could before beating the Bowser level) but it definitely takes a lot longer to go through. The post-game content in Galaxy is pretty underwhelming, the purple coin missions are fun, and Luigi does give a nice challenge for a second playthrough, most people just are not going to want to play through an entire game again after they just got every single star just for a little extra challenge with a character that has slightly different attributes. Galaxy 2's green stars are definitely a step up, but I don't think the post-game content that isn't just getting stars you didn't is really crazy fun or anything.

Strong 10

Simple and fun traversal, easy to learn but hard to master and rewarding combat, very compelling story with countless villains and references from the comics woven into it - this game is just incredibly fun. There are countless activities and missions to do outside of the main story, which can get a little tedious and exhausting sometimes but you can easily stop and jump back into the main story. Yuri Lowenthal gives an amazing performance that had me choked up in multiple key scenes, but the new model for Peter definitely softens him in comparison to the original, like he's always stuck smirking at all times for some reason.

Very good game.
Light 9

Definitely lived up to my expectations. The traversal is greatly improved upon, I feel a million times faster. Although they removed most of the web gadgets from the first game, the more ability focused combat is very fun, and the new gadgets are decent even though I just spam all of them instead of making a specific decision. The UI is different, again, which isn't really a weakness but it does feel a little harder to understand from being less boxy and more thin.

The gameplay is overall much more focused, which I think is definitely an improvement over the tedium that could arise from the map activities from the first game, but it was never anything more than slightly annoying and easily avoidable. I like how all the side-missions and activities have some kind of narrative payoff, like The Flame and the Bird data things. Lots of heartfelt FNSM requests, Howard's was definitely the most touching. Also the inclusion of more gay characters and people of colour making lots of people really pissed off is very funny.

The story is just as compelling as the previous game, albeit with a lot less going on it does feel less like a culmination of events and more like an obvious progression. All of the boss fights were amazing and I feel done better than the previous game, especially with the crush attacks and the ability to parry. The final boss fight with Venom was much, much better than in the first game, giving as much emotional release as Peter defeating Doc Ock but with a more elaborate and tough fight.

Very, very good game. A little moreso than the original.
Decent 9

Super Mario Wonder is by miles the best 2D Mario game. It takes the best parts of 3D World, breaks the boring mold created by New Soup, and makes something actually unique for the first time in over a decade.

The progression gating with wonder seeds, akin to the other 3D games and especially reminiscent of 3D world. The free-roam map mixed with dotted-line paths. The crazy fun wonder flower abilities. This game is different, and that's all it needed to do for a lot of people, but it goes above and beyond. The level design is impeccable, there are new enemies and items everywhere. There are ACTUAL WORLDS instead of just boring biome templates! Each world actually feels like a place in the Flower Kingdom, not just a bridge between the carousel of levels. My personal favourite was definitely the beautiful Shining Falls. The map is riddled with secrets, ones you actually search for rather than secret exits that just give a slightly faster path to the castle.

My only complaint about this game is the complete letdown the bosses were. Literally just Bowser Jr. over and over with slightly different affects. Really disappointing, but the castles weren't really a crazy big part of the game. The design of Bowser's whole new aesthetic was interesting and cool to see something different, but it just kind of feels like they made him green and called it a day. The whole "world concert" thing was a little reminiscent of 3D world's Bowser, but they didn't really explore it much, although the final boss was actually very fun. The final special world levels being this lacklustre theme was also a little disappointing, but it didn't really matter much.

I absolutely loved my time with this game and it was practically begging me to come back after finishing the main story - this is the type of game you have to keep going with and 100% because it's just addicting. I got literally everything in every stage. So fun.

Hopefully a new standard for future 2D Mario outings.
Strong 9

My second favourite Pikmin game so far, next to Pikmin 3. A massive wealth of content that was a joy to experience all the way through to the end.

Pikmin 4 is definitely less challenging than the other games (yes, even 3), but I don't think it cheapens the experience much. I would have liked to have seen a harder difficulty mode or some sort of way to play the game through again with a new challenge but the way Pikmin 4 is laid out it's sort of allergic to repeated playthroughs to achieve perfect dandori. Definitely more a one-and-done after you do everything rather than play 3 times in a row to beat your best time kind of game.

I was very disappointed with the actual final boss - not insanely easy, and I enjoyed the cave gauntlet leading up to it, but very lacklustre. Coming after the masterpiece that was the Plasm Wraith in 3, it's a little sad that all we got was what could have been just a long normal boss in any of the previous games, but I still enjoyed myself heaps.

The environments in this game are absolutely STUNNING and they run beautiful on the Switch, although I slightly prefer the aesthetics of 3. The level design is tight and immaculate, every area feels like it's been paid the upmost attention to by the very small developer team. A lot of the music doesn't stand out to me too much, definitely not as memorable as the previous games, but there are a lot of bangers, and the title music is beautiful.

Oatchi is definitely a welcome addition, combining the multiple captains from 2 and 3 with a lot of very cool new abilities that add a sort of platforming aspect to the environments. Being able to carry all of your Pikmin together is incredibly useful and I don't think it really makes too much of a difference in difficulty.

There are so many quality of life improvements in this entry, more than I could possibly count, the Pikmin are a joy to send to do your bidding. Looking back at how far they've come since 1 it is insane how much more intuitive they are, controlling my little army is easier than ever.

The return of treasures is definitely a 1-UP on Pikmin 3, I read literally every single one of the entries, and getting them from multiple characters as you progress is so fun and cute. The characters are so alive in Pikmin 4, it's so lovely to see more worldbuilding and insightful little nuggets of information about each character through all their interactions.

Definitely one of my favourites. Hopefully the next one won't take a decade.
Strong 9

Pikmin 2 is a janky and broken piece of shit of a game and takes a completely different approach to the micromanaging gameplay than Pikmin 1 does, and it still manages to be goddamn amazing.

The issues with the Pikmin and their awkward pathing has been improved upon greatly, but it still shits the bed in a lot of places. I found my guys getting stuck on edges or falling off bridges still occasionally, especially when they trail behind more, but generally you don't experience a mass extinction event from your entire squad falling off a bridge anymore.

I fell in love with Pikmin 2's amazing soundtrack - it especially shines through the cave music being assembled piece-by-piece like a jigsaw puzzle, and retains the masterful transitions and mood changes utilised when what you're doing in the game changes. This is some of the best music I have ever heard in a videogame and it will be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

Despite there only being one actually new full-size area in this game, the refreshed versions of the Pikmin 1 areas still manage to fill different enough to keep the joy of exploration that was so integral to the first game. The real meat of the gameplay is in the caves - little collectathon gauntlets where the game really tests your Pikmin chops. A lot of people say too much time is spent in the caves, and while I must agree I think more unique settings and themes would have made them more visually appealing, I never got bored of spending the majority of my time underground.

Pikmin 2 is definitely my pick for the hardest game in the series, with the caves providing tightly designed resource management mixed with a lot of the pressure the original game enforced but through rationing exits and breaks, but also because of how ridiculously stupid it is. I can't count on my hands the amount of times I got nuked by a volatile dweevil or a boulder ran over my entire squad. The purple Pikmin are obscenely powerful and broken and yellows continue to be basically useless. This game is rushed and unbalanced to its core - but I think that's a huge part of what makes it so fun. It's a stupid piece of shit and I raged so many times when a cannon beetle threw all of my purples off the side of the map or an anode beetle vaporised my entire squad, but this almost unintended unforgivingness makes it so fun.

Playing this after Pikmin 4, I can see how heavily it laid the groundwork for it, and how 4 improves upon 2 in so many ways, but something about how broken this game is really brings me joy. The characters and the lore are greatly expanded on, fueling my love-hate relationship with Louie even more, and the letters from home are lovely.

The Titan Dweevil is probably my second-favourite boss in the entire series next to the Plasm Wraith. A huge step-up from Emperor Bulblax, actually required skill, and the music was amazing as usual.

This game is so stupid and almost perfect.
Decent 9

Pikmin 3 was my first and I'll never forget it. But playing it again, there are a lot of problems I never saw when I was a babe (13 years old) and I had no other Pikmin experience. The environments are beautiful, the music is amazing, but this is a short experience.

Despite being roughly the same length as the first game, the linear storyline structure of the main game and the much greater presence of an actual story in general makes it feel more like you're on a theme park ride than playing a videogame at times. Do this thing, go to this area next, fight this boss. It's not like you're restricted from visiting the other areas but apart from gathering fruit there isn't much incentive for exploration and completion until you finish the story.

On that, the more 'official' bosses compared to the plonk them down somewhere and let the player find it strategy of 1 + 2 is quite nice, and as usual the local fauna are so impeccably designed and brought to life, but due to the very low difficulty of the entire game they don't really pose much of a threat or a challenge. Something 3 absolutely does right here is being able to haul back every single one of the big bosses' corpses to base after you slew them.

I replayed this game on the hard difficulty (which is actually just the normal version of the Wii U game in deluxe) but still managed to beat it 10 days shorter than I did the first time round. There are a lot of things removed and brushed up on in 3 that actually added a lot of strategy and satisfaction in combat from 1 + 2 - auto-lock (not toggleable) is intrusive and can get frustrating during a tense situation when you're trying to aim at a specific enemy and you end up cycling through his friend's corpses a hundred times before you throw a single Pikmin. This whole ordeal which happened to me an unimaginable amount of times during my playthrough was very annoying considering I'd just come from 2 where the strategy is just aiming it yourself and spamming A. Another thing I noticed related to that is that the amount of spamming you can do is greatly reduced which was also very annoying.

These features are meant to sort of 'refine' the combat experience for newer players but all they did for me was get in my way, especially when there is literally no possible reason I can fathom for limiting the rate of Pikmin able to be thrown in a row. Both of these things make it harder to play a little more cautiously, holding back with your squad and taking out a bulborb with a single red Pikmin, and make it stressful in combat situations when you have to press B to try and back out of auto-lock (still not toggleable) just to be able to aim yourself at an enemy. It's annoying.

One thing I think Pikmin 3 absolutely excels at more than any other game in the serious is the atmosphere - coming from the low-fidelity smooth bulblax in the previous games to the beautiful and ridiculously high-polygon beasties and environments in Pikmin 3 is staggering. Everything in this game is absolutely stunning, and it's why I fell in love with Pikmin in the first place.

Another is the final boss fight - the Plasm Wraith. Probably in my top 3 favourite final bosses ever, absolutely terrifying and a testament to the tightly designed gameplay which is especially present in 3. Like the Water Wraith on steroids, it takes that concept and makes the Wraith following you much more of an active threat, through an interconnected labyrinth with multiple routes and shortcuts, with the actual fight at the end making you utilise all of the Pikmin types just like the Titan Dweevil. This is the best fight in the entire series, and I wish 4 took a similar route rather than making the Ancient Sirehound a watered down version of the Titan Dweevil.

I love this game, but it sucks a little.
Strong 8

This is probably the best written videogame story I've ever experienced. Despite the mythical setting, everything feels so incredibly real - managing to craft this beautiful story with such poignancy and no wasted moments takes an immense amount of talent. There are so many little things I noticed in each scene, especially during a replay, the attention to detail is ridiculous. The combat is insanely fun, the post-game content feels like a DLC almost there's so much to do, I have had a blast 100%-ing this game.

My only complaints - puzzles can be a bit frustrating and clunky at times, have sat there raging for like a good five minutes on multiple occasions. Traversal is a bit sloggish and can be a pain when you're trying to bounce around the map to do stuff in post-game.

Absolutely beautiful. I almost cried during the ending.
Decent 9

Despite a less focused goal, Ragnarok manages to weave a sprawling web of story threads across the nine realms that all come to an amazingly coordinated conclusion by the end of the game, with the performances being just as outstanding and the characters fleshed out with well organised personal arcs.

The combat is tighter and less messy, managing Kratos' build is less confusing, the UI overall has seen an incredible improvement over the tiny hard to read text and cramped inventory screen in GOW4. The activities across the map feel much less tedious - Odin's ravens are far easier to spot and actually give you a reward. The post-game is practically oozing with actually fun things to do that don't just feel like chores to get your platinum trophy. All of this content is also a lot more spread out, not all shoved into Midgard and the lake of nine, the other realms don't just act as the setting for a story mission with like 3 things for you to come back and do including some lore marker you can't find for the life of you in some secret area you didn't spot the first time.

Everything in this game is even more amazing than GOW4 and I am extremely excited to see how they can possibly improve on this in the next game.

Strong 9