When I first started this, my naïve first impressions were, "Wait... is all you do in this game just walk around the island and take pictures of the wildlife?" and, while the answer to that is yes, it's far more compelling than you may realise.

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is set on the fictional Spanish island town of Secarral, where the titular character is staying on vacation to visit her grandparents. While she's there, the town mayor and a shady businessman make the announcement that the town's beloved nature reserve is getting torn down to make way for a five-star luxury hotel. Now it's up to Alba and her best friend, Inés, to form a Wildlife Rescue League and save the island with petitions and photographs.

It's a short, sweet and incredibly cute adventure that is very confident in its messaging and presentation and conveys that through simple, cozy gameplay as you catalogue all of the island's adorable animals (none of which you can pet, unfortunately.) The locals and locales of the island are all really charming as well, which helps sell its chill summer vibes and relaxing atmosphere.

My only complaints with the game are its animal variety and smaller things like not being able to move around while you have your phone out to take a picture. These two go hand-in-hand since the vast majority of the animals you encounter on the island are birds and many of them you're only able to catalogue by photographing them as they're flying. Since they never really stop or fly slowly enough, it can be quite tedious as you try to line up the shot and zoom perfectly.

But I digress. Despite this, Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is a truly wonderful game with a powerful message that is conveyed sincerely and naturally through the exploration and joy of its environment, helped by the oh-so-charming sights, sounds, and vibes of the island and its people.

9.5/10

stopped by for what i thought would be a quick and breezy non-judgemental nostalgia trip but left with a bit more to chew on than expected. while i didn’t return a contrarian loser i did wonder if my disgusting grubby inner child was gaslighting my current self, at least just a bit.

i don’t wanna go hater mode so i’ll get the gripes done quickly: ttyd still rocks in a whole bunch of ways, but just as you obviously buy penthouse for the fat titties you also obviously play jrpgs for their writing, characters, art, music, and so on. beyond that, playing with fresh eyes did reveal a few interlopers: the padding, fetch quests, and battle corridor level design all worked in tandem to burst just a few bubbles re: my goodfunhappytime memories.

this isn’t really a huge admonishment and i never found anything so offensive as to sour my overall view, mostly it was just a good reminder that despite its unique traits and my own nostalgia, ttyd is still a regular console jrpg that does regular console jrpg shit. whatever, it’s fine. i’m happy to take the good with the dull. good vibes only from here.

same thing everyone says, i know, yet absolutely nothing but praise for the script. it’s all so consistently clean and sharp and funny and just generally excellent conventional writing with cross-generational appeal. lots of particular beats and cadences that evoked the wit, style and efficiency of so many classic no-frills good-feel works—things like the simpsons, golden boy, toy story—that made me long for a time when media writing wasn’t tainted by referential self-conscious joss whedon ass affectations. just straight up good shit.

not much to say about combat that hasn’t been said by a million others. simple but just about as crisp as i remembered, and the series’ use of small integers has always felt refreshing. it’s surely slower and easier overall but whatever, i’m indifferent, not gonna grind an axe about it.

art upgrade obviously gets a few dozen thumbs up all around for better fulfilling the papercraft vibe that the gc version could never quite manage so convincingly. one of the few aesthetics where i’d actually crave high fidelity, enough so to go digital foundry mode and start soyfacing for a full fat 4k paper mario experience.

i assume the updated soundtrack is a bit more contentious but i mostly liked it tbh, the new compositions didn’t always hit but in isolation were largely fun and very lush to boot, even if they’re not nearly as tight and clean as the original mixes. per-area battle music was probably the best addition, having the one battle theme play at all points in the original really did contribute to some whiplash given the tonal shifts between each area.

i wouldn’t say ttyd is bigger than the sum of its parts or anything, but considering how moment-to-moment gameplay slightly drags the overall experience i’m still chuffed to see something otherwise very well-rounded. good lil memory lane type beat, nice to relive the period where intelligent systems could actually push some ip boundaries and weren’t so constrained by demands to up the toad quota thousandfold, no doubt due to woke.

I was originally going to write a joke review this game that it was basically just lesbian papas pizzeria (I still go by that though) but the more I played it a got a really cool and interesting game to go with it. You play in the pov of a girl named Jill, who lives in the futuristic cyberpunk world as you see her be a bartender as meets different people she talks about and helps with their problems while Jill has an underlying issue herself. The game has no stakes or anything in that matter and that's a good thing since this was very comfortable to play through as it was a slice of life vn as we go through Jill's "normal" life in what seems to be a dystopian world. The characters backstories give you a better idea of how this dystopia is like and gives you more lore about glitch city. A very relaxing and fun vn about a very interesting premise with a cool protagonist and an interesting message to go with it

One of my best friends has this as his favorite piece of media.... and I highly respect that taste.

Hollow Knight is an incredible game, and indie from a small team that deserves all the praises it got over the years.
It's artstyle is beautiful, with an atmosphere and music that is able to fit every moment of your journey.
The world and characters create and incredible lore that can go toe to toe with titles like Dark souls, who uses a similar style of storytelling.
Every enemy and boss adds so much to the experience, other that creating some of the most thrilling fights I have ever experienced in a metroidvania.

SOmetimes the map feels dispersive and you see yourself wandering around over and over again into the same area.... but this adds so much to the experience, as you feel lost into this desolate land or hollow crickets and depserate souls.

There is a reason the sequel to this game have been a highly anticipated titles. One of the best indie games you can find. Definitely a masterpiece that everyone should try.

Only on paper, Dead Cells main formula feel like a certain slam dunk: a combination of the maze like levels of metroidvanias with the rouge-likes mechanics of titles like Spelunky or Hades.
It cn be hard to combine these two aspects in a balanced and fun experience... good thing that the devs knew what they were doing.

Dead Cells is an extremely well put together title: hard at times like a lot of rogue likes, but extremely good in terms of gameplay, variety and replayability. The really creative level variety and simple but solid platforming merges perfectly with and incredible presentation and soundtrack.

To this you add an incredible set of crossovers that adds gameplay formulas reminiscent to Hollowknight, Castlevania, Shovel Knight and many other beloved games.

I will admit that I feel like the game is not an automatic 10/10. Some of the biomes like the Rampants create levels maybe too linear, and the fact that most of the opened routes like the Dilapidated Arboretum being locked behind DLC can feel like the base game is much smaller than it actually is.

But aside from these weird design decision, Ded cells is incredible: one of the best Indie rogue-likes on the market.

I’m very much a stranger to dating sims. I went into this one attracted mostly by my fascination upon hearing that the characters were actually good, and that some dating sims are weirdly complex.

Love Plus isn’t really complex, but the first chunk of the game presents you with just enough mechanically; for better or worse, it won’t turn your brain into mush. And the characters are indeed quite well-developed, especially for something that could be interpreted as bait for desperate nerds.

I actually enjoyed that ‘first half’ of the game. Building your stats by planning out your day, and divvying up your time with each girl to learn more about them was a lot of fun. Once you finally do start dating one of the girls, however, I quickly lost interest, primarily because the game no longer gave me a clear goal to work towards—I like at least a little bit of railroading in more laid-back games like this.

This opinion may lead to some worrying implications about how I behave in relationships, but I swear I don’t feel this way in real life. You have to believe me.

Neat game. Not really for me. I may return to it someday. Who knows?

I'm not really into arena PVP or hero shooter games but it's free and I like Star Wars (in theory) so I tried it out on Switch. I expected to play a couple rounds and uninstall but surprisingly I enjoyed it and played for a couple hours. Matches are short and character abilities are simple, in a good way. These two factors allows you to easily jump into another game and give a low barrier to entry. My assumption is that this simplicity will get boring over time but perhaps the progressive unlocking of characters will make that better. Currently there are only 13 characters but I'm sure they'll add more. You start with 2 unlocked and can unlock more by playing (or paying money of course). In the 2 hours that I played I unlocked two additional characters.

I might pick it up again sometime when I don't have the time to commit to a full gaming session of the other "legit" games I'm currently in the middle of. I doubt I'll play it again for any extended duration like I did the first time.
It's a fun time for as long as it keeps your attention but, unfortunately for the devs, it's not really worth spending money on.

This is an amazing DLC campaign.

It's not quite as good as the main Halo trilogy, but it is solid. And stands alone with its unique identity.

That being said this is really short, some of the level design is just blatant copy paste, on a much larger scale than even Combat Evolved. And it was sold at full price initially, which it does not deserve. It also has no multiplayer component of its own, which while I don't play, is something I'll consider.

Nowadays its fine, its included in MCC or 10$ for a physical 360 copy, but remains that since this is something that should be considered. Still solid Halo, as always.