I love everything about this game. The art, the music, the story, and oh my goodness the 90’s everything. Though I was not actually born in the 90’s, I was always surrounded by 90’s stuff for whatever reason. My primary source of entertainment as a child was an old CRT (the only TV my parents had) alongside my collection of Hand-me-down VHS tapes from family. The one crappy Canadian TV channel I had access to had no good original shows, and so it would mostly rerun 90’s nickelodeon cartoons. For a period of my life I even lived in a neighbourhood in Toronto that had been largely built up in the 90’s, and remained visually pretty much unchanged since then. All this is to say that I felt an immense attachment to everything in this game and exploring its world was genuinely amazing. Even the story was pretty charming for only being around 3-4 hours long. If I were to have ONE complaint it's that one of the main characters that accompanies you just DISAPPEARS before the end of the game and NEVER GETS A CONCLUSION TO HIS STORY. Otherwise though this game is seriously amazing and incredible and perfect and amazing and incredible and perfect and also amazing and incredible and oh, also perfect and fabulous and the best video game ever.

Sonic 2 without the 2?

This one is quite a mixed bag. Definitely a One Step Forward Three Steps Back kinda deal when you compare it to the games that came out before.

Can’t believe they had the balls to put Tails on the Title Screen even though he is effectively nowhere to be seen. You even made these cute little pictures of the two buddies together before every zone and you don’t even get to play as him at all! I did get all the chaos emeralds and I was just met with the most awkward stare down from both of the characters at the end. Talk about unsatisfying, although at least the end credits were kinda nice.

Unfortunately the overworld map is gone so we don’t see how we get from place to place. To be honest the zone structure feels really off in general. Green Hills Zone (yes, Hills, not Hill) is the fourth level for some reason?? It is by far the easiest level so I don’t know why. The first level is underground with lava pits and some very cheery music. I’ve got no problem with trying to go against platformer tropes but this just doesn’t feel like an adventure; some very stock feeling level themes just kinda slapped together.

Speaking of the music, not only do I not really care for any of the tracks (Green Hills being the exception), but they mostly feel like they could be swapped around between each zone and no one would bat an eye. Tracks don’t convey any sense of the environment you’re in (unless the environment is you sitting down staring at an 8-bit game), and hence again, remove any feeling of adventure. This might sound like a harsh criticism but I can’t really forgive it since the previous entry actually did this very well.

Playing the Game Gear version immediately allows you a free pass to use save states wherever you please because when one of the chaos emeralds is quite literally off of the screen it becomes very clear that very little testing was done for this version. And you will be punished for it, because compared to 8-Bit Sonic 1, the challenge has definitely increased. Some of the levels feel a bit more open now with multiple routes. Unfortunately the quality just isn’t quite there…

To go into detail on some of the levels, as I said, mixed bag.
Green Hills has some nice fast sections, but act 3 has horrible blind spring jumps that took me way too many tries than was fun.
Gimmick Mountain (AWFUL NAME) actually uses those spinny things from 16-Bit Scrap Brain and implements them into the level pretty well! It has some challenging platforming sections with conveyors as well. This would probably be the best zone if the Game Gear screen wasn’t cucking me every single jump.
Turns out Aqua Lake (I instinctively typed Labyrinth for a second) was actually the first Zone to introduce putting Sonic inside a bubble and moving him around in a water based stage. I think this is a fun gimmick! Unfortunately the rest of the stage is hot garbage, and I like Labyrinth Zone, both 16-bit and 8-bit. Oh no I don’t like it in Sonic 4 who tf do you think I am you sicko. Anyway it’s a very boring water level outside of the bubbles, and it also looks really ugly.
Scrambled Egg Zone has to be my new least favourite Classic Sonic Zone, it’s just pick a path. Fuck you.
Crystal Egg Zone has to be my SECOND least favourite Classic Sonic Zone! It’s not difficult or bullshit but it’s horrendously ugly and completely nonsensical gameplay wise. This is what I grabbed the emeralds for?
Other gimmicks like the minecarts and hang gliders were alright. Couldn’t figure out the hang gliders really and they seemed pointless. The minecarts were fun to try and jump out at the right time, but this was only done like, two or three times.

Bosses! Again! Mixed. Bag. A couple fun ones and a couple really god awful shit ones! Silver Sonic was by far the best and Eggman was AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WTF who tf why why why it's so bad. Starts off a little confusing and potentially challenging, but once you figure out how it works it just becomes a boring as heck waiting game. It’s also the only boss you’re likely to hear the smoke alarm segment of the boss theme. (I know this probably wasn’t made with headphones in mind but my goodness was that unpleasant to hear.)

To conclude, it’ssssss okay.. leaning towards bad really. Some good gimmicks, some underwhelming. Some good level design, some horrible. Some pretty levels, some ugly. Some fun bosses, some stupid bosses!
A mediocre time but it has its highlights... kinda.

Alright fellas we got the whole Twitter starter pack squad over there. The MC's strongest soldier, the guy who's inexplicably racist at times, asshole who just insults everybody equally, the dog pfp who's just as bad as the rest but gets zero traction... they really burying the stars... actually that really is the plot they couldn't be more blatant about it. Bury me like one of your french girls! To be honest, I thought collapsing buildings would be a bigger part of my life as a kid.

Our scooby-gang kpop edition, by a stroke of luck that one of these Twitter folks would probably come up with in a fanfic, are the only ones to make the cut after a terrible accident on set. Too busy singing their hearts out they couldnt escape on time, and being addicted to drama they immediately go at it within the ruins of the studio, checking twitter at times and being reminded why they want to die everyday. In that regard the game displays things accurately, as much as the minimalist (= amateur) translation can portray. Sometimes you get rapport events where everytime the character gets a flashback cg they look unrecognizable. These guys have alt accounts irl frfr.

Due to said translation, it can feel as if you're a contestant in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire once you're hit with any type of choices. You want to comfort someone and suddenly you're badmouthing their mother. I know Do-yoon really feeling like the betrayer when that happens +_+ he doesn't have that masters degree in rizzology!

Characters ordered by who I'd bark for: Inha, Juyong, Do-yoon Gyu-hyuk, Hyesung, Seil. I should have been buried with them ong

I'm not sure what to say about NMH 3 I just find it the middle ground of the first 2 and that's fine. I enjoyed my time with this game but It has it's flaws. For example I found the line up of bosses to be the weakest in the franchise (Except FU he was the highlight of the game) and to me they were extremely easy and at times I felt like the regular enemies were stronger than them. I felt like the open world was fine (a lot better than the first) but it wasn't really something I enjoyed. The job system returns (and is similar to the one in NMH 1) but this time it was less grindy than the first game and I only ever found my self doing a job like 3 times. Overall I enjoyed my time with the NMH series but it'll probably be a while before I replay them.

Obviously still early, but I'm really loving this so far. Combat feels great and the expansions to your base abilities help to break up the flow from the first title and give you more varied tools to control groups and armored enemies. The snare in particular feels like an incredibly powerful piece of your arsenal to manage higher-threat mobs.

And of course, the music, art, and voice acting is all exactly as great as you'd expect from a Supergiant game. No surprises there.

It's still Early Access but this feels like a super easy recommendation to jump right in and get back into Hades

This is my first Metroid game.

Samus movements are a bit clunky. First, I never became truly comfortable with the Spin Jump. I couldn't get used to the momentum of this move, and often ended up slipping off platforms.
Figuring out how to use the Wall Jump wasn't obvious at all. I had to train on a wall for a few minutes to get a good grip of it.
And worst of all, the Space Jump: Underwater, I was able to perform this move without any issue, but outside of that, I was never able to chain them consistently. The timing is just so weird and unintuitive, and that's the reason I had such a bad time in the last area, Ridley's Lair. You need to fly across rising lava as quickly as possible using this move, and that was terrible.

Also, this isn't the game's fault, but I don't vibe with the sci-fi/alien/futuristic setting... Different strokes, right?

There are some items that are fun to use. I liked being able to freeze the enemies to use them as platforms, thanks to the Ice Beam. Swinging myself around with the grapple beam was also kinda fun.

I didn't like the abundance of hidden paths. Having to stop constantly to use the X-Ray kinda ruins the pace of exploration. It's the biggest issue in the game for me.

I enjoyed the boss fights for the most part. They aren't too easy nor too hard. I do want to note that I was using save states. So whenever I died against a Boss, I could respawn in front of it and retry immediatly.
Crocomire was pretty cool, the fact that you need to push him into the lava rather than reducing his HP to 0. And the way he comes back as a skeleton to scare you one last time was neat.
Draygon was my favorite Boss in the game, and I also had a good time with Golden Torizo.

Using the Power Bomb in Maridia to break the glass tunnel was such an Eureka moment for me. I was stuck for so long, and it felt very satisfying to finally figure this out!

As I said earlier, I kind of had enough once I reached Ridley's Lair. I got stuck at the 2 Ridley's Guards.
I didn't have enough ammo to deal with them, and I was really fed up with this area, so I didn't have the courage to backtrack to gather HP & ammo. The lack of teleporters is definitely a deal-breaker.
So I stopped here and watched the rest of the game on YouTube.

Honestly, I had a good time in the first half of the game. Before I reached the last quarter of the game, I thought about giving it 3.5 stars, or even 4 stars. But it became really tedious near the end, hence my final rating.
I'm still happy I played such an iconic game, it was about time I played this series! I feel like I would have more fun with Metroid Dread tho?

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on May 5th & stopped on May 7th 2024]
Playtime: 18 hours
I stopped at the 2 Ridley's Guards.

"Ugggh that Giygas' Lair ahh labyrinth in DL3 sucks!!!" dw, we got you covered hands you sterile Kirby game in slow motion. That is not the nicest thing to say to Super Star, though it rings kinda true sometimes. It does more right than wrong ultimately, and that's what (Dark) matters. Did you know that one bird in Meta Knight's story? His name in german, it's Käpt'n Geyer, this one is funny idk why every german word sounds like somebody cursing my bloodline tho. He really left the ship in one (1) nanosecond! Too ashamed to appear again. I gotta admit, I forgot him from when I played Super Star Ultra all those years ago. I can understand why ahah.

Super Star truly is a fun pak, indeed there's a remake of Dream's Land with abilities (KINO??) a new adventure with Dream's Land vibes and design (SOUL??), an entire gamemode for le epic Meta Knight (PEAK??), a collectibles hunting game where you find goofy shit and come back whenever you want once you've reached the end of the roaaaaad (BANGER??), Marx taking a shit in space and creating a black hole (HOLY BASED??) a racing short story where you eat unhealthy food (SLOP??!). Then the... Arena. And minigames. I feel like this section is entirely useless if you've played the game before, but yeah Milky Way Wishes is the peak and Gourmet Race is the bottom. The variety of content is setting my gyatt on fire although what I said about "better than the sum of its parts" for Dream Course applies here... less positvely.

Definitely, the best part about Super Star is a lot of abilities most having their own movesets. Quantity over quality... stfu i'm getting both!! It's no wonder Yo-Yo disappeared for a while although there must be personal beef if it took Star Allies to get this banger ability back. I also love Ninja you can go off-screen without action replay cheating... spark is so cool you can spark up and booom you release! What's also great is opening the pause menu and Kirby smiles at you and yells in caps "YOU SHOULD KILL YOURSELF...NOW!!" oh thankfully he didn't do that, he doesn't warn you that bosses are gonna be bangers though so that's definitely the 2nd best part since Kirby games don't have a good track record in their first decade in the gamingsphere.

It sounds like I'm describing a game with a higher rating and clicked on a completely different game's logs, when I am in fact just not feeling it. I've played co-op, cool time with bestie but I might just be struggling to feel anything after being used to the DS one. I don't remember the control scheme being this wacky for starters. The graphics are kinda yucky compared to like, every other Kirby game that ever Kirby'd ngl. He looks like he's on the bus home from Harvard. He no pursu higher education bcuz time for studying = less time for eating ppl ! !