Before starting colours I heard a LOT of mixed responses to the game, I was hearing a lot of really great praise and then I was hearing people saying it is the worst thing ever. After playing through it I feel as though I lean more towards the latter, sonic colours just feels like the most soulless generic sonic game. It has a bland story with only 5 characters 2 of which are those annoying ass robots that are the bane of my existence, this isn't aided by the low quality cutscenes due to this originally being a wii game. The level design in this game isn't super bad but it's not anything memorable or noteworthy. The game really gets saved by the last 2 worlds, as the others are pretty bare bones. The boss fights in this game are also nothing spectacular but they can still be fun at times. Sonic colours is definitely not a game that everyone will like but it has some qualities that make it worth a play if you are EXTREMELY desperate for a sonic game

compliment-sandwich time. this is one of the most creative & fun games i've ever played. they really took the usual 2d mario formula and said let's go CRAZY with it. every level is so unique, and every power-up is adorable.

but it is frankly inexcusable in the year 2023 for this game to not have accessibility options. specifically, needing to hold down the y button to run fucking blowsss. it took me like 5 months to finish this game cause i had to play in 10 minute bursts. after spending the last several hours playing the final special world mission (which rocks btw) my wrist is practically throbbinggg. needing to hold down a button for an entire level to do something as important as running is so outdated!!!

yet, despite this game actively PHYSICALLY hurting me to play, i 100%'d it. and i NEVER 100% games. that should be a testament to just how much i enjoyed this game. i'm already thinking about how i want to replay it again a few months from now, as toadette this time (literally closed my eyes while unlocking her standees cause i wanna be surprised hehe).

truly, so so fun. big recommend. i'm gonna go put my hand in ice or something now lol <3

One of my earliest gaming-related memories is of me playing this game some years before I got a GameCube, so before 2005, probably between 2002 and 2003. I loved visiting this site and Mario Party 5's site all the time. I don't recall very well the gameplay, but it was a very charming flash game, with even some minigames besides the board gameplay! The Mario Party 5 site didn't have boards, but it had this whole political campaign gimmick where you could support your candidate (ie. Mario for President, Wario for treasurer, Luigi for vice-president, etc) by playing some simple minigames and earning coins, which then iirc you could use to get some wallpapers for your desktop. The nostalgia that's consuming me while writing this is so strong it's almost making me cry... I miss those flash sites, man...

A Metroidvania Kirby exists?? And no one told me about this?? Well it it's a metroidvania in principle but it doesn't feel like it fully commits to being a fully fledged metroidvania.

At it's very core, this is another mainline Kirby game where you'll be doing the same exact things you do in other mainline Kirby games. You go through levels, you suck and copy enemies, you fight bosses rinse and repeat till you get to the end. What the big twist is here is how the game is structured. Yes it is structured like a metroidvania, but I wouldn't exactly consider it a metroidvania. The word "structure" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as you are presented with an open world with branching paths, a map system and the ability to unlock more of the map screen by exploring and finding pages in treasure chests. You can also find health upgrades in some of those chests. But that is the extent of metroidvania this game gets as there isn't as much reward in exploring.

You don't unlock new areas of the world by exploring and finding new upgrades or tools to further help you through previously blocked pathways. Everything is already open to you, so in that sense the real core what makes a metroidvania a metroidvania is not here.

It is more fair to compare this to a Mega Man game with an open world. Because in reality the name of the game is to get to a boss in a certain section of the world, kill the boss, and move one step closer to the final boss. What makes it more Mega Man-ie is the fact that you can do these boss fights in any order. This is pretty cool for a Kirby game because I don't think there is another mainline Kirby that has this sort of structure. If you wanna tackle the "hardest" part of the map first, you can go do that. Unfortunately, and again what takes away from this being a true metroidvania, is the fact that there's no benefit to the order you do it in. Killing bosses don't reward with a cool extra move that is only tired to killing that boss. The only reward you get is an extra key (or mirror shard) that brings you one step closer to the final boss. So unlike a Mega Man game (or even Breath of the Wild) where choosing a boss order is a type of strategy, in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror there is no absolutely no strategy.

In a sense, if you are a metroidvania fan and come into this expecting a metroidvania, you will be severely disappointed. However if your expectations are set to "Kirby's Adventure, but non-linear" you will really enjoy this game. This is still a very good Kirby title that wish fully did commit to being a full fledged metroidvania as the potential is there as we've seen in Milky Way Wishes from Kirby Super Star.

I mean this is me just rambling but could you imagine if this game gave you the reward of unlocking permanent copy abilities by exploring and defeating optional bosses around the map? Honestly could have been one of the best Kirby games of all time.

Such a weird little game. I'm not sure who thought steampunk American literary heroes vs literal lovecraftian monsters was a good idea, but it kind of worked. Its hard to figure out who the target audience was and the markets didn't help. What percentage of people who play video games even know Randolph Carter is Lovecraft's alter ego he wrote into a few of his short stories? The gameplay was pretty solid. Standard XCOM fair, but you line up weak point shots instead of rolling the dice, which heavily favors aggressive play. The game did a good job constantly introducing new characters and maps, but ran out of enemies to pull from halfway through the game and started to throw multiple previously plot-important bosses at you all at once. The soundtrack, however, was fantastic. While the enemy music could unfortunately stumble into dubstep, the player phase music was a glorious combination of metal and strings , somehow giving songs that were both fully metal and 18th century america. Despite my enjoyment, it doesn't get my recommendation as there's simply better games you could play instead. Its not like this will ever get a sequel with how poorly it performed anyway.....