By all accounts, this game should not work nearly as well as it does. The graphics are some of the worst I've seen in a modern triple-A title, the music is unmemorable and repetitive, the story and characters are flat and uninteresting even by this franchise's standards, the open world is pretty empty, the tutorial is nightmarishly long, and running out of space in your bag and needing to grind menial tasks to rank up your Pokedex are a constant annoyance. And yet, in the end the sum turns out to be greater than its parts, and Legends Arceus winds up as a surprisingly fun time.

I think this game's greatest strength is just the novelty of a real-time Pokemon experience. While it's still not quite the open world dream we've always had, it's a welcome step in the right direction. Catching Pokemon just by walking up and throwing a ball at it without the need for a random encounter battle never stopped being fun. There's a great selection here too, lots of fan favourites are present. It's always fun stumbling upon something you haven't seen before and trying to figure out how to best go about catching it. The best are the rare alpha Pokemon, defined by their giant size and dark red auras. These guys will ruin your day when you first encounter them if you aren't careful, but coming back later when you're stronger to take them on and capture them makes you feel downright unstoppable. I do wish there were some more new Pokemon available beyond a couple of new evolutions, but I guess they're saving that for Gen 9 later this year. Battling has been streamlined to be faster than ever as well, there's no lengthy intro or end screen and most battles are decided in just one or two moves. Personally I never minded the constant stop-and-start of the classic Pokemon games, but I don't know if I'll ever really be able to go back to them after playing through Arceus. Overall a lot of QoL stuff has been improved, whoever decided to eliminate the need for Move Tutors or Name Changers by letting you do that whenever you want as well as have Pokemon wait to evolve until you let them once they hit the criteria is a genius. The guardian boss Pokemon fights were a fun surprise too, though I question why they didn't include a health bar for your player character in these encounters. Arceus wears its Breath of the Wild inspirations on it's sleeve, and while the game's negatives hold it back from ever truly reaching those heights, it's still able to recapture a bit of the magic.

But yeah, if you're looking for problems with this game, there's a lot wrong with it. You do get used to the crusty visuals after a while but overall I don't know what they were thinking with the art direction of this game. Everything looks way too bright and washed out, and there's tons of pop-in and low-poly textures. The story does pick up a bit towards the end but you won't remember it a week after playing, there's a lot of dialogue in this game but it never really seems to say anything. I will say though as someone who was a kid that was super into Pokemon during the D/P/Pt era I did get a kick out of seeing some Sinnoh history stuff brought to life. The tutorial at the beginning of the game is brutal as well, it's extremely sluggish, filled with exposition, and worst of all it traps you in a super small area with only a few species of Pokemon for like an hour. Thankfully the game picks up as soon as you're done with it but I wouldn't blame anyone who dropped it early because the tutorial is just so miserable. And oh my god, I don't think I've ever struggled with inventory management in an open world game as much as I did with this one, you never seem to have enough space and you can only upgrade your bag one slot at a time for an increasingly expensive fee. It's downright outrageous.

It's weird because when you really think about it Legends Arceus is kind of a mess, but I had a great time with it despite everything. It feels like Game Freak is inching their way towards realizing everyone's hopes and making that epic Pokemon adventure of our wildest dreams, and this is a big step in the right direction. I'm definitely more excited to see what Scarlet/Violet is gonna be like now.

I left this game feeling pretty underwhelmed, even as someone who expects that sorta thing from Kirby games. The franchise really hasn't evolved once ever since they discovered a winning formula with Super Star (26 years ago), and I was hoping that the pink puffball finally making his long delayed jump to 3D would be the push HAL needed to finally give Kirby the shot in the arm he needed. Instead, the Forgotten Land is still a good game, but it can't escape a strong feeling of missed potential permeating the entire experience.

Unlike Mario 3D World, which constantly one-ups itself with creative new ideas every single level so things don't get boring, Kirby more or less throws everything it has at you in the first world or so and then just kinda coasts for the rest of its playtime. None of the levels, enemies or bosses are memorable at all, the music is a complete nothingburger (except Roar of Dedede, now that's how you do a boss remix), and the interesting post-apocalyptic setting quickly devolves into the generic "beach world, snow world, lava world" archetypes that befall so many Nintendo platformers. There isn't even a cute little story like there is with some other Kirby games, hell I'd even accept the classic "bad guys steal Kirby's lunch" plot over the literally nothing we got here. In the end Forgotten Land has nothing to say, and ultimately just feels like HAL looking at what Mario's been doing for the last decade and trying to copy it without understanding what makes those games great. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good game and you'll probably have fun with it, but there really is no reason to play it when Mario 3D World is right there.

Still one of the all-time best 2D platformers and my favourite SNES game. I know a lot of people prefer DKC2 for a lot of reasons but I've always been a bigger fan of the original myself.

I love how Donkey Kong Country games have always built their levels to feel like a living, breathing world that still exists even after you turn off the game, and the freshman installment is no different. Watching the last flickers of a sunset disappear over a treetop horizon or exploring deep underwater caves all while listening to David Wise create musical masterpieces and making it sound easy never stops feeling incredible no matter how old this game gets (it's gonna be 30 soon!?), it really is fascinating what Rare was able to pull off here with such limited hardware.

how anyone is able to beat this game without rewind and not lose their marbles is beyond me

Oh brother you'd better have some friends around to play with for this one because otherwise you just bought yourself a $60 coaster.

It sucks because there's a great game buried in here! The classic death metal grungy Strikers aesthetic has been toned down a bit to match Nintendo's modern, more generalized approach to the Mario series but it's still there in spades, plus Next Level Games has brought their amazing and personality-filled animation style from Luigi's Mansion 3 over here too. The chaotic anything goes approach to soccer still works so well, and I thought switching from 1 captain character and 3 teammate characters to just 4 captain characters was a great idea that makes it feel less like you need to get the ball to one specific character and more like you can change things up on the fly. The mashup courts are a fun idea, although they all feel kind of samey and I do miss more unique courses like the mud pit and windy island from Charged.

But of course, it doesn't take long before Battle League's problems rear their ugly head. Only 10 characters at launch for a game like this is just pathetic and reeks of this game getting forced out the door so Nintendo could have a June release. Series favourites like Daisy, Boo, and Diddy Kong are absent right now, and you can feel their absence when you find yourself seeing Luigi on seemingly every team in the tournament mode. Part of the fun of the game is mashing characters together and see how they combo on a team but with such a limited roster you'll find a team that works for you so quickly that there's really no reason to try anyone else. There are also only 5 possible options to choose from for the mashup courts, which is very disappointing considering they're just backgrounds. Tournament mode is fun if only because it lets you play the game but the AI is laughably easy to beat and it really amounts to nothing, aside from giving you coins that allow you to buy minor upgrades for the characters.

Most disappointing of all is the online mode, which forces you to join an online team to even play it. Most I could see were invite only so that was a wash.

Maybe I'll come back in a year and find Battle League is the best Strikers game ever, but right now outside of local multiplayer there really isn't any reason to check this out, and that's very unfortunate.

It's really funny that Rare got the whole 3D platformer collectathon thing so perfect here on their first try that every time they went back to the genre for another attempt they could never get it quite as good again.

This is one of those games where you can tell the entire dev team was passionate about having their product be the best one on the shelf. They stuffed everything they possibly could into this game, and yet you never feel lost or overwhelmed. Sure some of it hasn't aged great (the camera, Rusty Bucket Bay, and pretty much everything about the ending to name a few things) but in the face of everything Banjo-Kazooie gets right these are relatively small annoyances.

I'm a sucker for atmospheric storytelling in games so of course I was gonna love this. This could've so easily been "ha ha funny cat game, press O to meow" but instead the developers went the extra mile and created a very entertaining puzzle adventure with excellent ambience and very lovable characters. The moody lighting and dark synth soundtrack do wonders to create a gloomy, almost oppressive world, but despite that this is one of the most relaxing and charming games I've played in a long time. There are so many fun little details hidden in this game, like the paper bags that invert your controls after your cat puts them on its head, or the fact that you can trip people walking down stairs if you walk in front of them at just the right moment. The small sandbox like areas are fun to explore, the writing is great, it looks gorgeous, everything really is firing on all cylinders here. I guess if I could complain about anything it's that I wish there was a waypoint system to make it a little easier to find where you need to go next, but the game is not worse for lacking one. This is going to be one of the sleeper hits of 2022, mark my words.

It's nice the whole genre of roguelike dungeon crawlers got to end on a high note, because I don't think there's any continuing after this.

Cult of the Lamb is an absolute paragon of its genre, leaving all others completely in the dust. After playing so many "it's like 2D Zelda, but with a twist!" it's so unbelievably refreshing to finally have a game where the twist isn't just "it's also Dark Souls!" Cult of the Lamb is the perfect marriage of Animal Crossing and Binding of Isaac, two games you wouldn't think go together but are paired beautifully with a wonderfully creepy aesthetic.

Speaking of that aesthetic, let's talk about it. On paper it'd be so easy for this to be yet another tired "ooh it looks cutesy on the outside but it's actually really dark and spooky!" games that feel like they only exist to have fan theory YouTube channels make videos on them, but that couldn't be further from the case here. From it's opening moments, Cult of the Lamb is very clear about what it's intentions are, and that's how much fun it is to see adorable little animals go up against eldrich abominations and then chill out and eat some cauliflower and pray to their lamb god in their off time. The balance is pitch-perfect, with enough dark moments that things don't start to feel like an Animal Crossing ripoff, and enough levity that the old god stuff doesn't become overpoweringly dismal.

While Cult of the Lamb is definitely a roguelike dungeon crawler at its core, really the heart and soul of the game is the cult management and town building. Your cult is your main hub, and how it looks, how it's built, who lives where and how it's run is entirely up to you. On your quests you'll find various adorable critters to rescue and indoctrinate into your cult, and after bringing them in they'll go about their lives, helping you farm, mine and all that good stuff. Keeping a strong balance between your adventures and your town life are crucial to thriving in Cult of the Lamb, as the developers geniusly tie the cult into the main cruscades together. The more you build your town and raise your cult, the stronger you'll become in your cruscades, so you can get further and improve your cult even further. For once, you actually have something to lose in a Roguelike, as if you fall in combat your cultists will be disappointed and lose faith in you, and if their faith drops too far they'll eventually dissent and cause a ruckus or steal some money and book it. You can't just throw yourself into the dungeons and hope for the best here, instead planning carefully on when to cruscade next.

The cruscades are an absolute blast. I typically lose interest in 2D Zeldas and their copycats about halfway through, but not here. Your main weapon and special move are randomly chosen for you each time you enter, making each cruscade a different experience. There's also little to no usual roguelike bullshit here, where the devs just give up on creating a normal difficulty curve and just throw random nonsense at you and hope you react. Cult of the Lamb's difficulty curve is perfection. Every time you clear a dungeon you'll find a new enemy or concept on the next one, and understanding them is often key to figuring out how to beat the boss waiting for you at the end. Everything moves at a breakneck pace, but it's never so fast that you feel like it's unfair. Every loss feels more like a lesson learned, and as fun as the cult stuff can be you're always itching to get back into the dungeons for just one more go.

The only things I will say didn't really work for me are the music and the story/lore. I found the music to be pretty uninspired and unmemorable, and the lore got a little interesting towards the end but it's all super predictable and in a weird way the game kinda spoils itself. I won't say exactly how but if you look at how many main dungeons there you'll probably figure it out. I also did encounter a few bugs on my journey, but I expect them to be patched out in later updates.

Cult of the Lamb defies all expectations in the best way. The life sim and roguelike aspects are so eloquently balanced in a way that they work hand in hand with each other, the tone and visual design are great, building and designing your dream cult is an absolute blast, and the dungeon crawling is an absolute blast that trades the typical genre bullshit in for exhilirating combat and fun exploration. I look forward to coming back to this game again and again as the devs fix the bugs and add the promised free updates, because I genuinely can't wait to see it get even better.