To call God of War Ragnarok a flawless masterpiece is overselling things a touch. Hell, I'd even say it falls short of it's predecessor. It does little to shake up the formula established by God of War 2018, at times feeling like Santa Monica is too afraid of failure to mess with their award-winning success. The story is also far more grand and expansive than the previous game's, but at the same time loses that simple character-driven excellence and perfectly paced storyline that made 2018's the best in gaming.

However, if you can look past these flaws (and make it through a horrifically slow first third), you'll find that Ragnarok is a truly excellent game, one well worth your time. The excellent combat from the first game returns, this time with a much richer enemy variety for you to sink your blades into. Plus, although there are plenty of issues with the story, the epic finale to the Norse tale that began four years ago is ultimately very satisfying, bolstered by an incredibly stellar voice cast and giving many moments that will give fans plenty to laugh and cry over. In the end, I think this is a game that will only improve when revisited, as the things that shine brightest will continue to be loved, while the game's problems may fade into the background.

As it is right now, this Early Access version is a very promising playable teaser for the game Slime Rancher 2 is gonna become someday. Unfortunately that also means that right now it's little more than a big patch for the first game. 2 boasts some pretty new graphics, a new map and some fun new slimes to play with but it's otherwise very much lacking an identity that separates it from it's predecessor. The gameplay loop is the exact same: go out, find slimes, bring them home, feed them so they make plorts you can sell, go back out, sometimes feed the giant ones so they open up new areas for you, rinse and repeat. The whole time I was playing through I was feeling serious deja vu, and I hope that once the game is finished it becomes a little more than "Slime Rancher, but again!"

Please add a compass and waypoint tokens we can place on the map

About as perfect as the current Splatoon concept can reasonably be. Everything here has been polished until it absolutely shines, from the extremely balanced multiplayer modes to the enhanced Salmon Run to the story mode that combines the best parts of the traditional campaings with the advancements Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion brought. The already incredible world of Splatoon has never felt more alive, both in terms of visuals and sound design, and you can tell in every single pixel that the developers of this game had the best time ever working on it. As far as multiplayer shooters go, it doesn't get much better than this.

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.

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 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.

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.

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