While Pikmin 3 Deluxe is outdone by other Pikmin games in specific areas, like 1's narrative, 2's sense of humor, or 4's level design, it remains my favorite in the series. There are a few reasons why, but more than anything I think it's easily the most fun to master.

Pikmin 3 is, in my opinion, the fully realized version of Pikmin 1's design ethos. It's an exercise in learning the mechanics, learning the levels, and finding out how to do everything as quickly and efficiently as possible. Every Pikmin type remains useful both when completing the main objectives and when revisiting areas for cleanup. The increased size of levels and variety of objectives gives the player plenty of room to figure out what to tackle and when (Tropical Wilds especially is really fun to optimize).

And of course, the introduction of the "Go Here" command is quite possibly the best thing to ever happen to the series, opening up a world of possibilities for multitasking. It allows for simultaneous completion of multiple objectives and management of special objectives requiring multiple captains. All this, on top of managing Pikmin counts and Spicy Spray, gives Pikmin 3 a feeling of "Dandori" its prequels couldn't match and its sequel ironically refused to. It's not perfect; the timer's very lax, the balance scale puzzle in Garden of Hope is a little annoying to speed through, and placing exactly two fruits underwater in Twilight River is a bit of a dick move. But I think it comes closer than any other game in the series.

On top of all that, it has some absolutely phenomenal extras. Mission Mode is a fantastic addition that pushes your time management skills to their absolute limits. Bingo Battle is a really fun multiplayer mode, though I haven't played much of it. The option to take photos is a neat extra, especially with a game this beautiful. And the stuff Deluxe adds is no slouch either. The Piklopedia's back, complete with Louie's cooking logs. Co-op in the main campaign is a blast to play with a buddy (and is such an obvious addition I question why it hasn't been a thing since Pikmin 2). And there are so many charming Easter Eggs and little bits of dialogue that add so much to the experience. It's really good! I don't know what else to say.

Amazing graphics and art style, with an engaging plot.
Good music and pretty cool voice acting, fitting of any 90's sci-fi movie.
But it feels like you are trying to find combinations of options to make the game realize you know what you need to do, instead of going directly to the solution. In some instances you feel like a detective, but a lot of times you are more like "lets see how to tell the game to advance by clicking on all the options available 'till it realizes where we need to go", which sometimes requires to press an option several times to make it work, becoming all the process even more unintuitive. Very often I had to look for a walkthrough just to realize I ignored an insignificant "LOOK" or "INVESTIGATE" at some point and thus, the game just won't let me go on.
Cool game from an artistic perspective, and also THAT opening. But gameplay can be tricky, making you doubt of what you already know.
Also Seed is a real dick. I rather be the little robot buddy than him.

Throughout history, suspicion has always bred conflict. The real conflict, though, resides in people's hearts. This conflict has just begun.

"KOJIMA IS GOD," I say as I pray on my hands and knees while The Man Who Sold The World (Midge Ure version) is played on repeat. This game is peak fiction and I mean it, like there is nothing bad about this game there was NOTHING that I loathed about Snatcher. The gameplay while barebones is still kind of engaging, the story is extremely kino, the art direction is stylish in the sense that it reminds me of 80's/90's anime movies, the music is phenomenal and and another example of how the Sega CD can produce such great sounds, the voice acting while not award-winning has charm to it which leads me to my next point, the characters all have such a pull to them that really makes me invested in the world around them and just them in general. I really wish konami or some other studio does something more with Snstcher like a sequel or remaster. So many clever things are in the game, but I hate doing long logs, so honestly, all I can say is "Play Snatcher".

I actually love this game. Now if you asked me what I thought while playing it, I would've said its the worst Mega Man I've ever played. But, after beating it, I feel so accomplished. Its like I overcame a huge challenge. Maybe I'm just a masochist, but man that was a lot of fun.
X and Zero both feel incredible to use. X's special weapons are all really good. They're really strong and are all useful one way or another. Rainy Turtloid, Infinity Majinion, and Bizz Wolfang's weapons are the only ones I didn't really use all that much. Commander Yamark's weapon is incredible. Using it for both Zero and X is wonderful. I really like the Blade and Shadow armor as sidegrades for X. Zero's techniques all kind of suck, aside from Commander Yamark's weapon, but its whatever. The animation and sound effects of his moves just make him feel so satisfying.
The stage design is psychotic. I'm a huge fan. I really like rescuable reploids and the upgrades they can provide. Nightmare viruses make them more interesting, but the viruses themselves can also be super annoying. The Nightmare system adds a twist to all the stages when its in full effect. I played Infinity Majinion's stage when it had all the Nightmare effects and it was insane. The best stages are Commander Yamark, Rainy Turtloid, and Blizz Wolfang's stages. I hate Deep Shark Player's stage since its so slow. The remaining stages all have interesting ideas, just done without any real polish. They are all really difficult and arduous to beat, but man, when I beat them, I felt like I was at the top of the world. Maybe I'm just a masochist. Infinity Majinion in particular felt like such an insane stage that when I beat it, I was just in awe. I had a great time. The Mavericks themselves are all really weak. Its a bit anticlimactic going through such hard stages only to fight such weak bosses.
I like how progression is handled. You only need to beat one Maverick to beat the game. The secret exits in the stages are really cool ideas. I like how that's how you unlock Zero and fight High Max. I wish you could do the Gate Stage 1 as X without the Shadow Armor, but that's whatever. The locations of some of the secrets, like Light Capsules and heart tanks are psychotic. Like one is just through a wall that you can just walk through. Its insane. I am a fan though. I like the chip system and the rescuable reploids. It makes exploring the stages feel more rewarding. The music in all the stages is also just drop-dead amazing.
The Gate stages are fun. They throw everything they have at you and you just have to beat them. It feels like a lot, but after I took it all a little bit at a time, I was able to beat it. It did take like a while, but man I felt so accomplished afterwards. The beginning of Gate Stage 2 as Zero in particular was quite the challenge.
I really like the story of this game. Gate and High Max are good villains. I like how Alia has a history with Gate. I don't like how Sigma comes in at the very end, he feels very unnecessary and forced. His fight is really fun though.
I really like this game. It feels like a great challenge to overcome. The game doesn't hold back. When I beat this game, I felt like I earned it. It feels like a first draft of something that could've been the best Mega Man game ever. We didn't get a more refined version, but I love what I played. Its definitely not for everyone, but it is for me.

The only notable thing about this game is the little trivia of "wow, Disney animators themselves worked on the sprites!" - and yeah, the sprites look pretty damn good. That's it though.

Comparing this to the Capcom-developed counterpart on the SNES is frankly an embarassment - Mega Drive Aladdin has worse backgrounds, worse music (compare the Genie level on both games, holy shit) and exponentially worse controls and gameplay. Having a sword instead of jumping on enemies sounds cooler in theory, but in practice, the sword just plain sucks. On top of that, platforming feels clunky, enemies have questionable placement, level design is just kinda strange...

It's just not a good time to me, and it's mind-boggling that this game has a better reputation than the SNES one. How.

I beat the Early Access iteration of Ex-Zodiac while sitting with my family, who were watching Food Network Star. The premise of the show is that a roster of chefs compete in various challenges head-to-head, and the last chef standing gets their own Food Network series. Interestingly, the contestant who went home on tonight's episode did so because they lacked a unique point of view which their hypothetical show could hinge on, despite being immensely skilled technically.

That's sort of how I feel about Ex-Zodiac. It's not a finished game, it's not a "Food Network Star" just yet. This pre-release, this competitor form (to stretch the metaphor further), is a technically successful Star Fox-like rail shooter. It plays quite well. But right now, to me, it mostly lacks a unique point of view.

Ex-Zodiac is obviously and clearly owed entirely to Star Fox (with the occasional straight-up Space Harrier mission thrown in). And given Star Fox 64 is my favorite game ever, really good indie Star Fox is a great thing. But I've not gotten sick of 64 to this point and I don't expect to - I'm happy to just endlessly return there.

So I need some original concept which takes the incredibly strong bones of Ex-Zodiac and fleshes them out (probably should stop mixing my cooking metaphors and my flesh metaphors). And I see it in fits and spurts. In the Radiant Silvergun, Treasure-styled bosses and their screen-filling 'WARNING' text. In the multi-target lock-on system. In the exceptional land vehicle stage, which is far more Akira than Star Fox Landmaster, which I really enjoyed.

Above all, I'm excited to see Ex-Zodiac grow, iron out its issues, and develop from a really solid Star Fox "clone" with excellent fundamentals into something that stands fully on its own two feet.

Before playing through Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, I was led to believe by years of watching videos and reading information about the game, that it was an unbearable broken mess that is one of the worst experiences in gaming. I am happy to report that it is, in fact, not that bad. At worst, it is a slightly glitchy, kind of annoying basic platformer; and at best it is a little distracting romp through an otherwise barebones Spyro game. Don’t get me wrong, the game still isn’t very good, it is littered with half baked ideas, technical glitches, and just some of the weirdest aesthetic choices I have ever seen in a game; and from what I can tell, a lot of these bad design choices are the result of a troubled development. But I think the overall experience is ultimately fine, definitely not as dreadful as most people make it out to be.

The big elephant in the room with the entirety of this game is its lack of anything interesting. Nothing stands out, it is all just standard Spyro structure really. The player goes through a linear stage, even more linear for this game's case, collect gems, gather the special items, here they are dragonflies, and the player is done. The Insomniac trilogy, for the most part, proved that this was a winning formula, but what made it so much fun was those slight deviations and changes to the status quo that shook up the players' train of thought. Think of obstacles like the egg thieves, or the entirety of Tree Tops, that recontextualized the environment and the players abilities and asks them to think outside of the box. Enter the Dragonfly does not do that, at all. It is a shallow, hollow imitation of what came before. The game tries to do this; Spyro has a handful of new elemental breath types in conjunction with his fire breath, but nothing is ever done with them. At the most, there will be a section that requires hitting certain objects with different breaths; put out the fire with the ice breath, burn the scarecrows with the fire breath, and electrocute the poles to turn on the power. These breath types would be so much more interesting if, lets say, the player could create platforms on water or lava with the ice breath, or melt metal doors/ice barriers with the fire breath, or maybe even have to electrocute watery areas in order to turn the power on in a level, thus creating a new hazard in the process. But no, the new abilities stop at very surface level challenges that require very little brain power. As well, if it was not clear with my description of what this game considered to be a puzzle, the stages themselves are severely lacking.

Something I really appreciated from the first Spyro game is the abstract sense of nostalgia its set of levels gave me, it was like a happier version of the whole liminal spaces phenomena, like I had been there long ago in a dream I had when I was younger. All of Enter the Dragonflies levels are the exact opposite of this feeling, I have never been to these places before and I would really like to leave. The range of aesthetics this game goes for are just boring as all be; there is a dojo, an island with a luau theme going on, two separate farm levels, a very basic ice level, and a jungle temple. These themes are extremely basic and uninteresting and offer no real intrigue beyond the initial concept; they are quite actually just linear straight shots from the beginning to the end of the level; no alternate paths, no secret hideaways, and barely any of the now standard mini game side missions. Although, I am rather grateful for that last part, but I want to cover that later. The only level that doesn’t follow this structure is the Thieves Hideout, a level where all the egg thieves in the dragon world hoard their treasure, and is themed after The Thousand and One Nights. Not only does it have probably the most interesting concept for a level in the whole game, maybe series (so far at least), but the Arabian theming makes it stand out amongst the much more boring levels in this game; and, of course, there are many winding pathways to traverse and secret areas to find in this level, because what kind of thieves hideout would this be if it didn’t have those. But sadly, this is the only level in the game of this caliber, everything else is just fine. Actually, they might be worse than fine because of just how buggy this game is. There is a decently high likelihood that whenever the player enters a stage, something is going to glitch the hell out; I think I can recall a moment from each of the game's nine levels where some glitch made itself apparent. In some of them, gems would just fall through the floor and be unobtainable unless the level is restarted, others had problems with collision, where some platforms Spyro would just fall right though like he was a ghost, and in one instance in Honey Marshes, the level just refused to load in, leaving me walking on invisible ground unsure of where to go because I couldn't see anything. So, on top of already being rather boring levels, there is a good chance the level is just going to be broken whenever the player hops into them. But, all of this aside, I do think there is some good that this game has, albeit very minimal.

During the games development, one of the bigger issues the developers faced was building the game from the ground up, as they did not have access to any of the original source code or assets from the original trilogy. It is unclear whether or not the publishers, Universal Interactive, had denied them access to those original files, or if they simply didn’t have them on record to use, but either way, this led to many of the games shortcomings. Specifically, the one I want to point out is the change to how Spyro controls, here he is much stiffer, or tighter, depending on your perspective. Spyro in the original trilogy was much more floaty and less precise, which helped those games achieve the more free and dreamlike atmosphere they were going for, but it didn’t work so well in the more critical platforming sections. Which is why I was very happy to find out that Spyro is much more predictable to control here, making the few difficult platforming sections present more palatable. Additionally, like I mentioned earlier, the side mini game missions that plagued the last two games have had their presence greatly reduced; as well, I think they are better designed too. There are now two special gates in every level that lead the player to their respective side mission, these missions vary from piloting vehicles like tanks and UFOs, to sliding down giant mountain sides toboggan style. I like this implementation better than how 2 and YOTD did it because there being two per level doesn’t take away from the level itself, and the new mini games are based on the player’s abilities rather than having their own independent rules and control schemes, allowing them to flow much better into the pacing of each level. On top of this, the bugs that I mentioned earlier aren’t as bad as I made them out to seem, a simple restart of the level will likely fix whatever problems arise, this leaves the levels to be their ok sleeves; they aren’t bad levels, just not all that interesting, distracting for a little while than anything, which I will take a million times over having to a stupid trolley minigame over and over again.

Truly, I don’t think this game is that bad, it has problems, no doubt, but the overall game is fine. I understand why people scream to the high heavens that this game is an abomination, but I just can’t get behind that sentiment, especially when I have played games far far worse than this.