A poorly controlling game is frustrating at the best of times but for a genre where being mechanically proficient is so important it can be an almost impossible hurdle to jump and unfortunately SkateBIRD fails at even the most basic ollie.

While the dialogue is charming and the models of each individual bird are really quite nice, you're actively fighting the game to have anything close to a good time. The camera just doesn't listen to you when there's a wall even in the vaguest vicinity, as it swings around of its won accord - sometimes the adjustments are minor but other times it's so extreme as to wildly alternate from 0-180 degrees. This is compounded by actually trying to move your bird. I'm glad that the game has options to allow you to turn off balance bars and make it harder for you to bail but the game will still fight with you, where making an even slightly sharp turn results in your bird falling over around 50% of the time. Landing tricks is slightly better but it's still sometimes a lottery as to whether you'll bail or land.

Most of the levels feel empty and void of any character with large gaps of nothingness sitting between different areas. There's also no real logic to where and when missions appear nor any clear indication where you need to go to activate them - there were a couple of occasions where I was skating around a level for upwards of 10 minutes just looking for another bird to be able to progress. And then when you do eventually find them, you'd wish you hadn't as you receive yet another 'collect 5 of these' or 'skate in a straight line' quest.

There are parts that I liked but they were drowned out heavily by the feeling that I was wasting my time. A massive shame as I think the idea does have some legs but right now it's just a bit of a mess. A charming mess, but a smiley face on a bin bag can only go so far.

Despite having fun swatting away at shuttlecocks and trying to get just the right amount of spin on the ball as I try to send those ten smug pins into oblivion, I can't help but feel disappointed by what's actually on offer here. Calling it barebones feels harsh to skeletons.

As mentioned I've had a great time with Badminton and Bowling, and the basics of Chambara are pretty solid as well but the other three sports haven't really grabbed me - the route they've gone down with Soccer is fine but it all feels too slow, Volleyball ends up feeling a bit boring and Tennis just feels off, not mention the fact that it's locked to doubles-only.

I might have been okay with only really getting on with half the sports here if there was some depth to them but sadly the options available are severely lacking, and it's especially sad that there's not even a hint of local single player progression. I would have thought even following the basics of Wii Sports Resort would be the baseline but Nintendo have focused almost 100% on the online side. I can't blame them I suppose, it's just incredibly disappointing for anyone wanting just a tiny but more than playing a single game and moving on. Even something as small as adding stats (W/L records, time played in each sport or whatnot) would have been nice.

But then when it works, it really is fun. I mentioned it earlier, but Badminton really works and feels a lot different to the other net sports included, which I know was a worry for some. It's fast and frantic with a nice little tactical element when it comes to when and where you place your drop shots during the rally and on the court itself. I just wish I could do more with it than just play a 5 point game against people online of one of three set AIs ad infinitum.

Took me a while to get round to playing the game that stood out the most during the PS5 reveal conference but happy to say it was worth the wait.

The Snax are the highlight here - there are some inspired design decisions and even with the overall number being padded out by colour variations, relatively few of them felt cheaply done. It's genuinely amazing how much work a pair of googly eyes can do to make them look so appealing and fun. There are also very few words in the history of video games as fun to say as Scoopy Banoopy.

The cast of Grumpuses also stood out, along with their own specific anxieties and eccentricities. Each character has a set of side-missions which are okay (more on that in a second), but the reward of learning more about them, their personalities and relationships made what could be quite tedious at times worth the effort.

I do wish the act of actually interacting with and catching Bugsnax was a bit more interesting though. It starts off fine, with some simple puzzles to solve as to how to get them into the right position but it never really progresses much further than that. Once you receive a certain trap, most other become obsolete and you're barely challenged in how to catch any new creature you come across, barring a handful of exceptions - hopefully this is something that's tackled in the upcoming DLC.

But as I sit here and contemplate my playthrough, those frustrations barely register - the game became a meme during that initial reveal but it's anything but, with tender stories and explorations of interpersonal relationships hidden underneath those admittedly goofy looking googly eyes. Definitely worth a playthrough.

Positive note - the little cutscenes you get of Pikmin doing Pikmin things are cute and give those little flower creatures a lot of character that you don't see as much in the mainline games, and that charm did a lot of heavy lifting here.

It's a shame then those same cutscenes kill all momentum you might have in every level in an already glacial-speed platformer. I feel like there are nuggets of good ideas here which I think could have been turned into a decent puzzle platformer-squad management combination but it's something that's barely explored and most of your time devolves into slowly wading through a level and bashing the screen throwing your Pikmin from that stage (usually of just a single type) at any enemy that appears with no thought whatsoever. Some levels have two types of Pikmin (and maybe one has three!) but I only counted a single occasion where this change required any additional thought.

It takes 8 worlds (per world that's 5 stages, one boss encounter, one bonus level and four puzzle levels) for any semblance of challenge to appear and only then because of the risk of falling off a stage and being sent back to the very beginning.

At least it's better than Chibi-Robo Zip Lash.

Eastward is a slow game. I put that out there not as a criticism but as a fact, and if it doesn't click with you then that's 100% fine; poor pacing can completely drain interest in a game for some people (and has done so for me in the past).

But slow doesn't necessarily have to mean bad. Eastward is very deliberate in its slower structure and I think the game as a whole actually benefits from that. I believe that's partly due to how I played it - no more than 2 hours a day, partly sticking to the chapter structure of the game - but also as it allows the player to engross themselves in the (very beautifully animated) world and learn more about the characters dotted around each of the various locations you travel through.

I also quite liked how the overarching story itself is sometimes not super explicit in how it's told, instead relying on you to put pieces together from conversations with various townsfolk either in side missions or just from general dialogue. And let's talk about these characters a bit more as while this game is certainly one of those 'it's about the journey' kind of stories, 'the people you meet along the way' are just as important. They're well-written and their dialogue doesn't come across as forced or unnatural and most important of all I was interested in what they had to say.

As for the non-story sections, well the combat is simple but has a satisfying loop and some of the weapons you get are pretty fun to play with. There are also some decent puzzles in play as you explore these monster-addled areas with two characters who can split off and each have separate abilities to solve these conundrums. There's even a very basic 8-bit roguelite RPG included that is surprisingly fun to play through (and draws some parallels to the main game world).

Finally I'd like to touch upon the nature of endings in video games, and media in general. There is occasionally the idea out there that if a story isn't wrapped up neatly with a bow that explains everything then it hasn't done a good job but I think that's an uncharitable read on things. As long as a story reaches a conclusion that feels natural and feels thematically correct then I don't really see an issue in certain elements not being fully explained or elaborated upon. Eastward takes this route and as with the pacing issues I think some people will inevitably leave disappointed, but the ending in play felt natural for Sam and John and I'm very impressed with how everything in the game turned out.

Eastward probably doesn't quite reach the heights of being my favourite game of 2021, but it is one of my favourite game experiences and one I'd seriously recommend to anyone after a slow burn road trip adventure.

Truly wanted to love this but just didn't land. Didn't mind a chunk of the game being live-action cutscenes (it's still quite a fun concept that has potential) but the story wasn't interesting enough for me. The moment to moment gameplay during combat starts of quite fun and you can really see the origins of what Remedy went for with Control here - but because you get doled out abilities so quickly, it gets a little repetitive and doesn't really provide much challenge until the very end (at least on normal difficulty).

In fact the hardest part of Quantum Break is actually progressing through the game. Playing on Xbox Series S, the game crashed 4 separate times and required me to play through almost the entirety of Acts 2 and 3 not once, not twice but three times. And it was hard to maintain enthusiasm during that time, constantly thinking any non-in-universe stutter was a precursor to my own personal groundhog day.

The Pikmin platformer that Nintendo wishes they'd made.

That's a little unfair to Tinykin though, as it manages to stand out on its own merits - it's a genuinely good 3D collectathon platformer that looks and runs brilliantly and pulls you in with large, detailed but rarely overwhelming level design filled with interesting scenarios and some quite fun dialogue with the world's inhabitants. The game is also smart enough to realise that dealing with enemies can actually be a chore in this type of game and as such just does away with them which really helps the flow and allows for more exploration.

I'm a bit of a sucker for games where you play as a little guy in a large setting (especially a homestead) so I think this was always going to do well with me but it turned out to probably be my favourite game of the year so far.

Pretty good overall but at times it does feel like Jusant is having a bit of an identity crisis. I appreciate the wordless storytelling, finding pictograms along your way to punctuate the journey and give hints as to what's coming next, but then you're also given a ton of overlong text logs that really halt your flow. I think there was a great opportunity for environmental storytelling as you climb higher, focusing on your own journey but seeing how things used to be, but that feeling was undone my some of the essays you find along the way.

A similar issue exists with climbing itself. In general, it's actually quite good but the mechanics you're introduced to as you climb come and go just as quickly, leaving little to no time for them to be explored and certainly no chance to see how they could interact. There's also a couple of issues where you can get stuck on scenery, and it can be fiddly to be able to climb down specific ledges.

One of those games that showed a lot of promise but its just left wanting by some decisions to play things a bit too safe.