Fun game with a lot of cool ideas and a great style. Swapping ninjas and using the powers is fun, so is wandering the open levels looking for shrines. Riding your hat down raging rivers, exploring snowy mountains, exploring temples and sneaking through the woods, there is a lot to like about this game. Unfortunately it does show it's age with some horrible boss fights, monster closets and some glitches. I could see a reboot making this game super good, it has a lot of good ideas and is worth checking out.

This is a great Mega Man inspired game I highly recommend. It doesn’t play exactly the same, instead of a blaster and weapons from masters you use close range combat combined with a slew of different abilities you can pick and choose from. This allows you to swap out your build on the fly which becomes very useful as you fight the 8 other main robots (like I said… Mega Man). There are also upgrades hidden in each stage to make things easier, which I definitely found useful as the final section of the game gets a bit tough (but never unfair). A great time if you are a fan of the 2D action platformer genre!

This is the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World by far. The gameplay feels super smooth and the design is amazing, the New Super Mario Bros. look, feel, and sounds are gone replaced by something much better in my opinion. The animations are charming and fun, and the stage designs are immensely creative even before you factor in the Wonder Seeds. There are tons of new enemy types and very creative level ideas, plus a badge system, badge challenge stages, KO arenas, and many more to shake it up.

The Wonder Seeds are the true game changer here, basically every standard stage has one to find and when you do the game gets weird (in a great way). The whole world warps and suddenly you could be in the middle of a musical, or space, or transformed into some sort of creature, or TONS more. This is really Nintendo showcases their creative muscles. There are also tons of stages spread across the multiple worlds, it really feels like you are on a grand adventure.

The game is also super fun to get 100% in. Finding the 3 hidden coins in the stages is never too hard but makes you explore more thoroughly and really appreciate each stage. Having to get all the standees was maybe a bit much but I didn't really have to go out of my way to be able to afford to do that so ultimately wasn't a huge issue.

If you are a platforming fan you owe it to yourself to try out this special game, you will not be disappointed.

Very light spoilers
I have been a Spider-Man fan my entire life and read more Spider-Man comics than I could even count, so to say I have a love for the character and his world is an understatement. I can safely say this is one of the best adaptions of the character and even surpasses the original Insomniac game in basically every single way. Plot wise this game really excels to me, it showcases both Peter and Miles giving them each a lot of character development and plot lines that really resonated with me. Their supporting casts are also done extremely well, Mary Jane, Harry, Rio, and Ganke are all wonderfully done, and original character Hailey steals the show multiple times. This game is also loaded with villains, I won’t spoil them all but seeing so many of this famous rogues gallery given time and care made me extremely happy. Kraven and Venom are both imposing, frightening figures that bring a lot of intensity to the story and creating amazing set pieces. The plot itself isn’t too crazy if you’ve seen the movies or read the comics but it is well done and very nicely intertwines multiple famous storylines together while adding a unique spin on it all.

The gameplay is somehow even better than before. The combat feels amazing and more streamlined, losing some of the gadgets might be sad to some but I didn’t miss bringing up a gadget wheel personally. Having powers and gadgets mapped to L1/R1 made it super fast to jump between all your different abilities, and the upgrades make you feel powerful which is half the fun. They somehow made movement even better which I didn’t think was possible, the web wings just fit in to the swinging and launching so seamlessly it honestly might be hard to go back to the games without it. The fast travel is lighting quick but swinging and gliding is so fun I hardly used it.

The side content also got a make upgrade in this game. I liked it in the original game but it got pretty repetitive, whereas this game has a ton of different types AND most importantly captures that Arkham feel by incorporating different villains not in the main story. This makes the whole world feel more fleshed out and I love it. There are even a few that really make you feel emotional. MJ stealth missions are also back but much improved and didn’t take away from the experience at all.

I could say a lot more but ultimately I can just say that this is my favorite Spider-Man game ever, one of my favorite versions of the world, and I look forward to seeing where they go next.

This is a very good 2D Sonic game, it feels right to play and it looks great. I played the main campaign as Sonic (but there are bonus stages were you have to play as Amy, Tails, or Knuckles so I tried them all) and he feels as good as ever. The main new gameplay addition is the emerald power mechanic, which I thought was a bit underutilized. At first I was just totally ignoring them but as I got further in the game I appreciated them, some are really just used to explore certain sections of levels but a few of them are multipurpose and enhanced the game for me by the end.

The stage design starts out solid, every world has it's own unique stage mechanics but the settings are pretty standard Sonic concepts like the forest, green hills, casino, etc. However, the back half of the game has some really amazingly designed stage mechanics and visual ideas that really elevated the game for me. Add in a lot of boss fights and you have a great campaign.

Note: I want to play as the other characters more + play the content that unlocks after you roll credits so I may update later. I also did not have a chance to try the multiplayer function so I can't speak to that at all.

This is easily one of Supermassive's best games, I am going back and forth in my mind if I liked this on balance more than Until Dawn or not. The camp setting is a huge draw to me because I have always been drawn to the woods setting in horror. The supernatural element to the game is quite good, maybe a little lesser than Until Dawn but I thought it was a solid, not overly complicated story which made it a blast to run through. Where the game is a big step up is characters, I enjoyed all the different playable characters in their own ways, with Dylan, Abi, Kaitlyn, and Emma being my favorites. Unlike Until Dawn I actually wanted them all to live and I was sad when I messed up and got one of them killed. The presentation is also really good, the characters feel very real and other than a few uncanny valley type scenarios and weaker lines I was very engrossed by a lot of the performances.

I hope they continue to make games like this, I look forward to whatever big project they do next (and will be ignoring the Dark Pictures until then).

This was a unique Metroidvania style game where there is 0 combat at all. You can't jump on enemies heads, no attacks, you don't even hit the bosses at all. It is a nice change of pace but it does feel a little dull over time, luckily it sprinkles in new moves pretty often and is full of collectables to find.

The game has a great style and the animation is fun, it reminds me of the newer Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts. The cutscenes are also cute if not just a little long. I think it would be a more fun time in coop though, the way the game looks with the pulled out camera and the large gaps in between platforming objects just would lend itself to coop.

I am a fan of the OG FF7 game but I have no nostalgia for it because I didn't play it until last year, so going into this game I wasn't totally sure how into it I would be. Turns out I was into it a lot even if I have some issues with it.

The combat system is amazing to me, I like the real time combat mixed with the ATB where you are juggling items, ATB moves, and materia all at once. Each of the four playable characters feel super unique and I honestly couldn't say which I enjoyed the most. I loved swapping between them all and mixing up the combat at a moment's notice, it keep things fresh and allowed for tons of viable strategies in each encounter. Also as a very light fan of RPGs I loved how this game didn't rely on grinding or leveling up almost at all, you could build your characters how you wanted and it kept things moving which I love.

I also enjoyed the plot, its a little slow at times and suffers from insanely slow pacing (it is mainly just the first few hours of the OG game so I expected that) but it turns that into a huge positive for the characters. Cloud, Aerith, Barret, and Tifa all have tons of great character moments and development throughout this game, and they even flesh out tons of side characters like Wedge, Jessie, and Biggs to make you really care about them. As cool and weird as the plot gets later in the game I think what I will remember most fondly about the game is these wonderful character moments.

The Yuffie DLC is a very good additional story, I was a big fan of Yuffie in the original games and she is done a great service. She is a really fun character, full of life and really made me laugh multiple times. The story is definitely light but it has some great character moments and I am excited to see Yuffie in the next game. Also Fort Condor is really fun.