Probably the easiest 10/10 I’ve ever given.

After playing Persona 4 for the first time a few months back I really wanted to try out Persona 5. I initially went into it thinking that it was going to be fun, but heavily overrated and found myself thinking 4 was the better game.

This absolutely changed after about 10 hours into it. 5 absolutely nails everything that 4 nailed, but expands in terms of gameplay outside of combat tenfold. Characters are more expressive, their dialogue incredibly better written and the overall themes of the game just hits better than 4 did.

Changing from the murder-mystery of 4, to rebelling against injustice in society from the larger ‘palaces’ of the game where its a central or prominent figure committing some kind of injustice, to the large, winding and ever-changing ‘public consciousness’ of mementos where you enact justice on smaller scales, helping out as many people in life as you can.

I managed to complete the game in about 79 hours, but not once did I ever feel it was being dragged out. There was always something happening - whether it be in terms of main plot or side stories, developing bonds with a whole host of people or building up characters stats it never got dull.

The traditional animated cutscenes were also a beautiful touch - and made it that much more exciting when the grand ‘calling card’ was sent out - it made me feel genuinely pumped and excited to face off against the boss.

There’s so much I want to say about this game, and there’s next to nothing in these thoughts that’s negative.

The only let down was that the final boss was actually probably one of the easier bosses of the game, the lead-up minibosses were harder.

Now excuse me whilst I go try to avoid an immediate new game + playthrough…

Olli Olli World made me realise that as much as I love the arcade-skateboarding type games, I'm absolutely terrible at them.

My playthrough was a lot of trying to remember which button did what and that I needed to press _ to help string a combo together oh and don't forget to grab- oh wait it's too late, i've smashed into a wall.

It has incredibly chill audio and a very beautiful art-style, but, most importantly, has the complete replayability factor you want from these games.

Potion Permit, as a Crafting/Life Sim does so much right, but annoyingly does a lot 'Wrong'.

It's surprisingly polished for an indie title, a lot more than I expected when I first bought it. From animations, art style to dialogue and gameplay.

However, as soon as I hit the 15 hour mark it soon became more of a chore than something overtly enjoyable. There reaches a point in the game where everything just becomes the same thing day after day. The absolute worst part of it is - while you're playing as a chemist, with your own clinic, you don't actually get all that many patients. It's usually one every few days and then a sudden burst of 5 at once (and this was a rare occurrence) .

On top of this, it's "plagued" with mini-games, which, I wouldn't have minded if it wasn't for just how... kinda dull they are? and how often you have to do them when trying to cure patients.

The game does have its redeeming qualities though - the characters and their stories are as interesting as, say, stardew valley - and also you get a pet dog.

It just for some reason, doesn't hit that exact sweet spot that games like this really need to to keep you engaged for the full 100% length.

A Fumble In The Dark steps up from its predecessor in most all aspects.

The cases are now longer and (slightly) more challenging whilst retaining the loveable callback-to-lucas arts point and click-humour that made the first so appealing.

While it does slightly feel like the length of the cases outstay their welcome (especially in the final two) it’s helped that there’s only 6 (with 3 additional bonus cases that are much shorter).

The characters and dialogue are very well written and help to bring alive the absolute stupidity of the world they’re in. I hope this isn’t the last we see of Dooley and McQueen.

Dynasty Warriors-esque games aren’t usually my type of thing but being sold on the premise of a sequel to breath of the wild I knew I had to play it.

From the initial cutscenes I was sold and the gameplay felt good - however, I have issues.
The switch really isn’t the best console for these types of games, there were a lot of frame rate drops while playing which wouldnt be bad if it wasnt for it already being at a low frame rate due to the hardware.

Secondly, as to be expected, the gameplay did become a bit annoyingly repetitive - but only on later levels where you’re basically just fighting the same enemies over and over.

My last issue - which, I get what they were doing was with the plot of it, which, I won’t go into as to avoid spoilers.

However, it was overall enjoyable and good to experience these characters again.

Bear & Breakfast is a charming Bed&Breakfast sim, only you're a loveable and dopey bear who just wants to spread happiness.

The aim is quite simple - rebuild a once thriving town back up from rubble by fixing up 5 different 'Resorts' across the map. Each comes with its own quirk and new mechanic starting at simply learning to manage guests by building basic bedrooms, to adding in cooking mechanics, hygiene meters, decor expectations, warmth etc.

There's a lot to it - and I was quite surprised at how much building / crafting was involved. What I didn't expect however, was the fact that you can't sell any unwanted items? you basically have to throw it all away, leading the only source of income being from the Bed + Breakfasts themselves, which, after a long time of having an inventory at the brink of fullness due to multiple piles of 99x pine wood becomes quite infuriating.

It also, for some unknown reason, has a story that kinda just goes completely into out of nowhere territory and then just suddenly 'ends' (in terms of story, not the game itself).

There's also quite the imbalance in terms of hiring staff (which, is a nice addition) it seems to cost an ungodly amount to have staff doing the things that take up 90% of your time and when you have 5 'Resorts' to look after you'll want to have the staff - but you never seem to make enough from holiday-goers to quite cover having a full roster.

Even though it has these issues, it's still a beautifully crafted indie title and I cannot wait to see what the developers do with it going forward (if they do anything at all...)

Destroy All Humans 2: Re-Probed is pretty much exactly as i remember it being from my childhood - which is both a good and bad thing.

If you’re wanting a mindless game with a mediocre story and some on-the-fence accents with decent gameplay then look no further.

The major issue is, it keeps faithful to the ps2 classic by retaining the mission structure, which, 99% of the time is just: go here, scan brains to find next location, go there, scan brains again to find your target, kill you target.

Like I said, great for mindless entertainment.

played as part of Mario 3D All-Stars on Switch

Super Mario Sunshine passed me by as a kid, which is crazy seeing as everyone I know has played it.
However, because of that, I had no attachment to the game going in… meaning that the flaws were all glaringly obvious.
The platforming is some of the worst in Mario’s history - only made easy by FLUDD and the levels without him jesus christ are they infuriating.
I’ve no idea if this was a quirk from being ported to the switch but the way mario just runs at the slightest touch of the analogue stick is crazy.

The location was cute and the idea of the more shines you get, the wider the range of sunshine becomes, gradually lighting up the island - and i appreciated that all of the ‘worlds’ were cohesive to the main island you’re on.
Besides that - the story is nothing major, peach is kidnapped you have to save her etc.

It’s fine but it’s absolutely aged the worst out of the mario series.

This is my first time experiencing a Xenoblade game and i’m glad I started with this one. I’ve wanted to play it for a while, as it’s my partner’s favourite game of all time and after 59 hours I can see why.

There is two things that bug me about the game:
First - the combat system - it’s always jarring adapting to an ‘active’ battle system that requires shuffling through abilities while having an auto-attack by default and I found it clunky at times to get to the right one, this, coupled with cerain abilities requiring you to position yourself beside or behind an enemy to get the maximum damage from an attack were at times frustrating.
Secondly - the last third of the game is such a steep difficulty curve that if you didnt do absolutely everything in the game prior you’ll end up like me having to grind (in a game that really isn’t built for grinding) to get to the level you need to be.

Moaning aside, the story, the characters and the world are superbly detailed and developed to the point beyond most other rpgs i’ve experienced - with such detail that there’s an ‘affinity’ system not only a bond between your party but a vast majority of the NPC’s and locales in the game couple that with a whole town-building side questline it makes it hard to believe this was originally a title for the wii.

Lastly, the landscapes and score are worth playing to experience alone so damn beautifully crafted i can understand fully how this game became such a loved title - so much so that it got a ‘definitive edition’

Persona 4 is incredible in every single way.
There is so much depth and heart to each of the characters in the story and while, it can be jarring to see just how much the female characters can be sexualised at times, they, luckily have plenty of deep and meaningful scenes where they discuss their past and hopes for their future.

It’s gameplay is split into the somewhat standard JRPG turn-based battling with the addition of ‘Personas’ which act in a way similar to that of Pokémon (only in terms of giving you skills - magic, buffs, higher damaging physical attacks - outside of your normal ‘attack’ command. It also is part ‘life-sim’ in that you spend a year going to school, making friends, sitting exams, studying for said exams, working part-time jobs all while uncovering the mystery of the story.

Now, the best part of the game is indeed the story. Persona 4 is a very story heavy game, featuring probably more dialogue than actual gameplay or combat but that really helps it build up this ‘murder mystery’ as people of the town of Inaba start to disappear on rainy nights (I’m reluctant to dive into more of the story incase of spoiling anything, yes, even for this old game).

I did find a few things that annoyed me though. The final few ‘months’ of the game felt far too dragged out with little to nothing to do (unless you did certain things to unlock content that would fill this time up).

The somewhat ‘forced’ romantic aspects also didn’t mesh well with me, especially when there were absolutely no non-heterosexual options (I’m aware this was a late 00’s japanese game, but still!!!) oh and the creepy ass predatory nurse (whose social link i ignored after a while because it made me uncomfortable).

This was my first experience of a Persona game and it absolutely made me want to go and try out 5 next just to see how the series evolved…

Adrift (or ADR1FT) is an okay experience, having not known the background of the game going into it I found myself enjoying it for what it was - a game where the protagonist finds themselves amidst a catastrophe in space and must try to escape back to earth by repairing what she can of the main station to fuel an escape pod.

However, with it being such a short game I found it being rather repetitive and honestly, a little too slow. More often than not you’re slowly drifting to the next area to try not to exhaust your oxygen supplies and there’s little more to it than go to the next place, get this somewhat handy but not-really-an-improvement upgrade for your suit and repair key needed x4.

I also really didn’t like the text-to-speech dialogue that plagued the game - it heavily took me out of the experience along with the irritating background music (I ended up putting my tv’s sound near right the way down).

It’s a shame because the concept and idea of the game was actually interesting.

I went into Cult of the Lamb knowing nothing about it besides you are an “evil” lamb creating your own cult. To which, as someone who loves the kinda “town builder” type games I was all in.

Then I played it and realised “oh, it’s part town builder part rogue-like” and that’s when I got worried, because I’m absolutely awful at Rogue-likes…

However, Cult of the Lamb with its charming art style managed to win me back in with just how in depth the cult-managing part is (for an indie game that is split into two in terms of gameplay)

You have to make food for your cult, build farms, make them beds, upgrade said beds, make sure they dont get sick, preach to them daily to gain yourself devotion to unlock new buildings and weapon drops on your dungeon runs.

Speaking of the dungeon runs… I started out on “Medium” difficulty, until I hit the third main boss. In which the difficulty felt more like hard mode even with me having unlocked most of the upgrades etc. so I switched to easy and suddenly it was … boring how easy it was? There was no perfect middle ground and that really kinda ruined the experience for me.

Cult of the Lamb is definitely one I’ll be carrying on with until I have unlocked absolutely everything.

Wattam is a short, simple, cute, weird but somehow completely wholesome experience that I can't describe even if I wanted to.

Keita Takahashi yet again throwing concepts into a game that were formed using a word soup and somehow making something so, and for a lack of a better word, wholesome.

Wattam is a simple 'puzzle' game, in which you have to "recreate" the world which has been broken by "recalling" the characters (which, by the way, are mostly inanimate objects, shapes, numbers, poop, etc.) that make it up.

Now while this is a very charming game, sometimes the controls would absolutely mess with me. Most of the game is about holding hands with other characters, to either 'circle dance' (which was an a b s o l u t e pain might I add) or to take them somewhere and 9 times out of 10 either you or the other character would end up messed up from the stretching of the arms.

Apart from that little issue, the game was clearly made for kids so any difficulty or length issues I have with the game matter not. It was a fun time and I'd happily play another entry.

Watch Dogs 2 manages, somehow, to be both better than the first and Legion.

It has, unlike both others, a strong cast of characters that help to carry the ‘just-okay’ plotline.

I’m slightly disappointed about the lack of use of the ‘main’ antagonist, limited to just a few (maybe 3 at the max) cutscenes spread throughout the game which left the finale feeling quite underwhelming.

I also took issue with the combat. I kinda expected as a hacker to be able to take multiple routes to complete a mission, rather than 9/10 ending up having to go in guns blazing or knocking out enemies - let me use my remote gadgets / camera hacking to do the work damn it!

The driving, also, isn’t the best experience ever. Ubisoft have yet to impress me with any kind of driving experience in their games.

I will say though, the rest of the game makes up, somewhat, for these faults and if they do make a fourth I hope to god it’s like this one.

(Also, bring back Marcus as he, along with Wrench, are the best characters this series has to offer)

(At time of review, I've one starred all campuses)

Two Point Campus takes every part of Hospital's foundation and ramps it up. It makes you actually look after your students - provide them with dorms to stay in, make sure they have places to eat, entertain them between classes and Two Point Studios have done an incredible job with it.

Is it perfect? absolutely not. It's not the most immersive sim/management game out there, but I don't want it to be. It's got it's own style to the genre.

The usual and genuinely well done comedic announcements return in Campus, but I found them to be a lot less varied than Hospital. (I'm also disappointed that the soundtrack wasn't as mentally invasive as Hospital's was)

Gameplay wise, if you played Hospital, it's pretty much the same - you move between 'levels' each with it's quirk - this time being a campus that focuses on making money from archeology students and what they dig up, or, from students having the best parties possible whilst also not failing their classes.

There's something about the Two Point games that just hook me right in and honestly, I'm ready for the onslaught of DLC.