Despite balling being defined most profoundly by this tweet, expressing how hard one's life will be and how factually one must tackle this inevitability, Mario Hoops 3-on-3 is the one Mario title thus to inherit balling true and crystal clear endeavour.

So huh, a Mario sports game not developed in the gaol currently holding Camelot. Sporting (heh) a wonderful soundtrack composed by none other than Soken, able to impress with his role in a recent small indie project and a great presentation thanks to its vast roster, 3D models and animations. I rocked the Ninja Luigi Cactuar team because I had to ball like that.

Hoops 3-on-3 deceptively keeps its deep and quite complex gameplay in the tutorial sections and honestly it's a shame because there's a lot to learn thanks to using both the dpad and the touchscreen, but you won't need as much mastery of the game to clear its most difficult hurdles. It's hard to explain because it's very specific, but it feels almost as playing The World Ends With You. Made by Square? Ahhhh that explains it.

Aside from that, if you don't play with friends after unlocking each character, there's not much else to do. Complex movements can end up not registered and that is very frustrating, yet when everything clicks the game is fun and especially slam dunking feels rewarding and engaging.

In conclusion, a BBall game on the DS sounds weird but it works surprisingly well, has a lot of fun potential and a steep learning curve. Won't keep you occupied long but it's got charm. So, I'd say, Fuck it we ball, worth checking out.

You know shit hit the fan when you unlocked the poop emoji.

buzzing sound of LAUGH sign echoing through the theather, a single cough is heard in the audience

I had a modicum amount of fun? playing this travesty back in 2016 when a friend of mine was unironically pumping hundreds of hours on this game, just to stop right as I started playing. Huhhh checks notes you could be playing worse, I guess.

frantically reads through the script Is that it?

paper noise

The objective like many .io games is to get as many collectibles avoiding your bigger opponents whom may just eat you alive the second they touch the flashing orb. So this is like Pacman, but playing with other players? turns over the piece of paper Look there's only an hint to make a poop joke here, I don't even know if you're actually playing with other people. This game came out just as emoji were starting to trend, but did they? I mean, unironically? I remember people howling when the emoji movie came out and it got mocked to death, but sigh at this point this farce of a review doesn't really make any sense. So yeah, emoj.io. Cool name throws away notes that's it, alright cool, see you next time at petro_sino sham reviews, where I'm your host, always a click away from a serotonine hit. Ciao ciao.

mic drop

APPLAUSE sign flickers

Final Fantasy IV is probably the title in the franchise with the most amount of ports, remakes and expansions only if we don't consider the seventh installment, which at this point might be a franchise on its own. Why is that?

Final Fantasy IV might be considered the first proper Final Fantasy in story beats, characters and presentation. I won't give you an history lesson but this game was kind of a big deal and cemented FF's position in JRPGs: if the 1st to the 3rd were considered experiments, 4th is THE Final Fantasy we default to when thinking about the series, like Metal Slug or King of Fighters with SNK and Trails in the Sky with Falcom.

This port is accessible, holds a lot of minigames and cute side content the original didn't have but most importantly fixes a lot of issues with the game's balance, since the IV on DS is much harder than the original. I remember reading guides to beat some bosses and it was standard to begin every battle with Slow and Haste, otherwise you'd easily be beaten. Not only, but the most important parts in the story are animated and rendered beautifully, with honest to God gorgeous voice acting and animation. The game presents itself wonderfully and the maps are alive and greatly represent its world.

Sore note: the battles are slower and despite being rendered in 3D they don't impress as much as they should thanks to its slow framerate. I played it on the original hardware, I have no clue if the framerate gets better on mobile or PC, but the DS port didn't really color me surprised. I'd add the GBA port has much more content that is exclusive to that version and it's sadly missing here. Not only that, but the story being very linear means you'll have some characters during certain story sections you might not really want and no job system means you'll have your tools handed to you without any real choice. Also really? Getting a Lv.1 character at Lv. 25 does suck a bit.

So, which version should you play? Remastered, SNES original, DS port or PSP? I have no clue honestly, each has its pros and cons and playing each version to see the differences is not something I'd recommend to everyone. You really have to like the characters and the mood of Final Fantasy IV and it's not for everybody. This port? It's fine enough to get you through the story with some cool New Game + elements, but it doesn't have the most amount of content and if you really don't want to replay a game just for the additional content, I would avoid this port. If you get the PSP version you'll also get access to The After Years, but I don't know if that's a plus or not, so really pick your poison.

Wow I hated this. I mean I loved how petty this DLC was designed and I wish to never play something as diabolical and evil again. I never felt as moronic as playing Hell Loop, maybe topped only by Baba is you.

Some challenges require you to be pixel precise with your controls, some require heavy amounts of backtracking, others require heavy micromanaging, most require all three to beat; at a certain point I was asking myself if I really wanted to put myself through it. Recommended only if you love this game and you really want to be tested.

Regina ... my beloved ...

Dino Crisis is a game that came out sandwiched between the Resident Evils of the PS1 era and it made a lot of money thanks to its marketing and its seamless introduction to the game's enemies: Dinosaurs! The first encounter is clearly meant to scare every Resident Evil fan of the time because in Dino Crisis enemies don't open doors BUT they stalk and follow the player. Unless you put up laser barriers around the facility of Ibis Island, the main and only setting of the game, you're always going to have company whenever you want it or not. It does help adding to the tension that the enemies are real sponges of bullets and it's simply not cost effective to shoot at the beasts, but at the same time it adds to the frustration I feel for this game.

The first Resident Evil is cleverly designed in order to lead the player through the mansion, with interesting puzzles and it has a way with making some rooms you've already visited not safe anymore thanks to the introduction of new enemies, but eventually you'll learn the layout and effortlessly move from door to door. Dino Crisis instead really likes its puzzles, which are sometimes quite hard, and really likes its corridors. You'll move from section to section and you'll notice something different, but not always. You'll be stalked, hunted, you'll look for resources but there'll always be the feeling that you're running around the empty buildings most of the time.

Short as it is, for a single playthrough not being longer than 5 hours, it doesn't feel repetitive and I think it's worth checking out thanks to its interesting premise, good chemistry between characters, great voice acting and different endings. It is frustrating, but if you love Regina like we all do, you'll look over some issues.

I'm not the fondest about the first Spyro, not because I think it's worse than its successors but simply because it's not as polished and fine tuned as those. I think it's a common thread with all platformers and collectathlons from this era, but to undermine and undercut what this game meant and still means would be unfair and unjustly cold.

Spyro the Dragon works fluidly and it's got great depth, both in design thinking and controls. It's honestly baffling seeing Spyro so well animated, respond so quickly to jumping, shooting fire and flying around. It is a technical wonder and considering how the game implements all sections of gameplay is simply astonishing.

There are some things I dislike, but it's not about age, nor design. I think this game wants to be unfair and unjust to people, like me of course, who don't want to leave any gem behind and it forces you to be completely through in order to get to the 100% line. Let me tell you, Tree Tops awaits me every single time and I waver. That damned jump haunts my dreams, hours lost like the rain. I am already being punished every day for being like this, game, goddammit! Stop hounding me.

Still I would recommend playing it, either in the original form or in the Trilogy which, compared to the N. Sane Trilogy, does respect the PS1 physics and revamps a little the ambience, but honestly? It still looks phenomenal. 98' was a lifetime ago and the Reignited Trilogy only irons some wrinkles here and there. I'd say for convenience's sake just get the Trilogy.

Perfectly serviceable Sonic game, it does its job and it looks and sounds incredible. I love Blaze's design and the stages have a lot of set pieces, some are more memorable than others; the boss battles are alright, not the best in the series. Compared to Advance, Sonic Rush plays a bit faster, with a bigger screen and a stronger level design.

It's not able to keep that momentum as I would've loved, but playing as Blaze or Sonic makes sure there's plenty to run through and the music is the little cherry on top. Thank you Naganuma please don't look up his Twitter.

I have a big SIF shaped hole in my heart and the recent news of SIF 2 being ported to global servers in March just for the service to be terminated in May really got to me. This was a part of life taken away from me. The events at 3 AM, the brutal rates, the simplicity of it all ...

In truth, Bushiroad really tried to milk this game for years. I don't think it was meant to be as successful as it was and by the time it hit the fifth anniversary, it was supposed to be over, yet it limped its way into the 2020s, when the idol mania had cooled off. For what it was, School Idol Festival had a good run, I saw the anime because of this game and I think idols in general got popular in the west because of this game, a first of sorts. First in gacha mechanics, first in monetization, some people forget this game came out in 2013. So, let's say goodbye to history, goodbye to my Umi Sonoda cards, but let's not forget what it was and what it brought to the table.

I got a sensory overstimulation whenever I was able to beat a very long level or I cleared that darn turtle jump on the bridge level, this is true now and it was true twenty (!!!) years ago. I don't think it's fair to say that games are outdated since they are children of their age, but in some cases, like with XCOM Enemy Unknown and Crash Bandicoot, playing the sequel is better in almost every category.

This game has charm, started a breakthrough in 3D platforming and despite having wonky mechanics and some backtracking, it's got real love poured in it and I feel that alone makes it worth checking out. I personally prefer playing the original over the trilogy version because for some reason Crash, whenever he lands from a jump, carries momentum; this was true in the PS1 second and third game and it was carried in the remake, despite the original first game not having this aspect. Crash needs to perform very precise jumps in the horizontal sections and it feels clunky to do, but the trilogy is much more accessible in general so you do you.

You may have a very different life from when you were younger, but from time to time you like to revisit old games, see how they hold up, don't you? Electricman 2 holds up, it's easy to get into and it accomplishes much with very little. I'm honestly still impressed by the animations, the depth of its moveset and the flow of the game, to the point where I revisit it every so often just because it's a blast to play through.

And, from time to time, it's like you never left 2012, and all you know playing this banger is that you can still have fun and suspend your disbelief.

With all due respect, pulling characters was already mind-numbingly tedious, but then they had to put natures like in Pokémon. Yeah, it's tedious in those games, but here it's probably worse. Some fun builds here and there and I could finally mix and match my teams, but it's grindy to a fault. Good set pieces aside, I don't love the story since it's always fallen into the "Oh no new enemy, we can't beat it, oh snap there's a fundamentally weak point we can exploit, we exploited it! Hooray!" category, which is too close for comfort to the Awakening experience. I am done.

Easily the ultimate (dare I say Deluxe) Mario Kart experience. Not all tracks are stellar, but with 96 (!!!) of them there's bound to be stinkers here and there, with the last patch we also have a perfectly viable online experience where playing the game is much more enjoyable than trying to get better items instead. The game is fun, battle mode is finally an actual battle mode and it has a decent map selection, there's a load of characters and karts to choose from.

What's the catch? I don't feel like the last tracks really have anything to do with the game itself, despite being the most popular Switch game. It's all an advertisement for Mario Kart Tour, with a good 20 or so tracks being ripped off from the mobile counterpart. It feels lazy, like they hadn't really planned to do anything with the game until they wanted the players to move on, yet they still stuck with it for years and so they had to do something about it.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe keeps selling, for good reasons. It would be extremely funny though if instead of developing a new title, they would port Deluxe the same way Todd has been selling Skyrim for over ten years.

Orna accomplishes a great deal in filling time, that is an accomplishment in and out of itself, yet a hobby should help fill time, not take over it. There is some variety of choice between equipment, spells, character customization and quests, I think it does the bare minimum at least but it requires a lot of grinding (or cash) to simply savor the fruits of it all. Played it on and off, with friends as well in a guild, for over a couple of years and I have no real memory or great experience to show it for. It is a game that exists, with some egregious monetization. Simple as.