aquova's 2024 video game rankings

The time has once again come for the most exciting event of the year -- the reviews of all the games I played in 2024. This year, I finished 80 (!!) games, beating my previous record of 76 last year. This year's total was inflated somewhat by purchasing a Playdate, a handheld Game Boy-ish system that comes with 24 free games over the course of several months. Still, I did finish them, and wrote reviews for each one.

These reviews are the same as what I've been posting on my Backloggd account, but aggregated together for the whole year. If you like this sort of thing, I tend to leave my reviews there pretty quickly after I play a game, along with some user made lists and other items.

For my rating system, a 3/5 or 3.5/5 are what I would consider to be "average games", with a 3.5/5 being an average game I liked, and a 3/5 being one I didn't. From there, a 4/5 is a good game, a 4.5/5 is excellent, and 5/5 is among my favorite games of all time. Likewise, 2.5/5 is bad, 2/5 is awful, and 1.5/5 is among my least favorite games. I have yet to actually award any games anything lower than a 1.5/5, mainly because if a game is that awful I won't actually finish it.

1.5 / 5

Battleship Godios (PD)

This is another Playdate game that probably looked interesting on paper, but really doesn't work in practice. Battleship Godios is a horizontal Shmup, in the same vein as Gradius or R-Type. The game is broken up into short levels featuring only a handful of enemies, where you must expose and destroy their cores to finish the stage. The game's main gimmick is that you only have a finite number of bullets, which fire at 45 degrees and bounce around the stage. They're finite in the sense that you must recollect the bullets as they bounce around before they can be fired again, and if any escape beyond the edges of the screen, they're gone forever. You only start out with two or so, but can find optional upgrades to increase your number. However, if you fail to recapture all of your bullets, you can no longer fire and are effectively screwed. The game does have a rewind mechanic to prevent you from being completely softlocked, but you lose any progress you made when you roll back. As a shmup, the game requires a certain level of dexterity to avoid enemies, but neither the control scheme nor the Playdate's mediocre D-pad are really up to the challenge. As an indie platform, many of the Playdate's games do sometimes feel like quick demos, but none so much as this. Even the artwork, which is usually excellent even on the least noteworthy of Playdate games, is really amateurish here. I think this is probably the first title I've been really disappointed with from the first season, and easily my least favorite Playdate game thus far.

Echoic Memory (PD)

I always do my best to finish the games I review, and while there are some that I may have taken the easy way out, very few are entries that I have given up on. Echoic Memory is not one of those games. I really wanted to finish this game, as it's a somewhat interesting concept for a game and the visuals are genuinely really well done. However, this game is an absolute slog to play. It's an auditory matching game. The game plays a several second-long audio clip, and you need to identify which of the four to sixteen samples matches it. Many of these tracks only vary slightly from each other, making the choice difficult. If the game had stopped there, this would've been an enjoyable, if routine game. What makes this game awful is that the audio tracks are all... shifted? corrupted? altered? in some way. By turning the crank, these changes are undone and you can try and "tune into" the actual audio. This mechanic simply does not work. It's very unclear, at least to a musical layperson, what turning the crank is actually doing, so I have no idea how far or which way the crank should actually be turned to restore the audio to its clean state. There are some entire levels that no matter what I did, I didn't end up with anywhere close to the clean audio tracks, which makes distinguishing the differences between them an exercise in futility. The game only gives you three mistakes per level and, even worse, there's a time limit. I really strove to finish this one, but got to the point where I was dreading playing it so much that I was avoiding my Playdate altogether. In fairness to the other games then, I will throw in the towel on this one and move on with my life. It's a shame too, this is one of the better looking Playdate games, and there's a fairly interesting story about a new worker attempting to fix these machines who are clearly growing in sentience. My guess is that there's ghosts in the shell, but I guess I'll never find out.

Questy Chess (PD)

The Playdate has not been kind to me lately, as the last three games I've played have by far been my three least favorite on the system. Enter Questy Chess, a 2D puzzle game where you move a chess piece through a maze, gathering items and defeating enemy pieces along the way. It's design is meant to invoke old computer games from the 1970s, complete with audio effects. It's a neat aesthetic, and the idea of using the movement of chess pieces is an interesting one. The problem with this game lies entirely with its puzzle design. I honestly believe its designers don't view the world in remotely the same way I do. As I said, you pick up items while moving through the levels, with some of these being missable, but required for progression. Not progression for that level mind you, but required to progress several levels later. This means you can get to the end of a set of levels, find you're missing the boss key, and have to replay all the levels, making sure to grab all the items until you find the arbitrary, unmarked right one. It might not surprise you that this game is really easy to softlock in levels. There's various ways this can happen -- you can run out of consumables while in a position where you'll take too much damage to escape, the limited screen size can result in you walking into dead end areas without the ability to move backwards, there's a duplication item where if you move the wrong duplicate you'll be unable to position your cursor where it needs to go, and my favorite, you'll enter a level as the wrong chess piece and the game will immediately kill you, forcing you to replay an old level just so you can finish with the correct piece to start the next one. It's just a mess of bizarre design choices that takes an interesting game idea and turns it into a complete slog to finish.

2 / 5

Silent Hill: The Short Message (PS5)

Konami has remembered that they're supposed to be a video game company and thus have greenlit a bunch of new Silent Hill games, including this short free release, The Short Message. Being free is this game's greatest attribute and only saving grace. On paper there are some interesting ideas here. They attempt to tackle themes of teenage isolation, social media, mental health, but do so with the grace and subtlety of a sledgehammer. I think the game's biggest issue is that they try to tackle too much at once, without really saying anything at all. The game is mostly a walking simulator through a rundown apartment(?) with some horrible monster chase sequences thrown in. Your character is tormented initially by feelings of insecurity, which turns into themes of self-harm and suicide, then she's to blame (according to her) for the death of her friend, then her own mother neglects her, and then they introduce the idea of a witch's curse for good measure. It's just incoherent. It doesn't help that the player character is incredibly grating. It's a bit harsh to say that given the personal struggles she's going through, but I found her to be completely unlikeable and unsympathetic. If anything, I think I'm being too kind on this game. The only reason it's not lower is due to it being free and less than two hours long. This game has nothing to offer and I cannot recommend it at all.

Boogie Loops (PD)

If you're the developer of Boogie Loops and you're reading this, I don't want you to feel discouraged. This title has not gotten great reviews (including from me) but I don't want you to think that you did a bad job. You made a solid and somewhat intriguing music tracker, complete with fun animations and graphics. It's a solid piece of software. I use the words "software" and "title" though, because it's not a game, and I think there lies the problem. This is one of the first four games given away to all Playdate owners and thus is destined to be picked up, tried out, and within five minutes put down again by 99% of players. I frankly don't really know what I'd do with a music tracker. They seem neat enough, but playing around making beats isn't really something I'm interested in, especially on a platform like this. For some people though, they'll get a kick out of this, and I think those people will enjoy what you've made. For me personally though, it didn't leave much of an impression. Also you should've used the crank somehow.

Executive Golf DX (PD)

The weekly Playdate releases are an interesting bunch of games. Many of them are trying some really unique twists on typical ideas, but while some of those ideas work really well, others... not so much. Executive Golf DX is one of the ones that unfortunately fall into the latter category. It's a golf game, but instead of hitting a ball across a field, you are trying to ascend or descend an office building, complete with desks, chairs, bookshevles, etc. as obstacles. This sounds like a great idea on paper, but the combination of fighting gravity along with trying to navigate through gaps in furniture makes this a tedious affair. It doesn't help that this game has no tutorial of any sort. It took me quite a long time to figure out how the power gauge worked, and I still don't think it's a good system. The entire game is very short, only eight levels taking me about 30 minutes, but I don't think I beat any level in less than several dozen hits. Even trying to align the ball with the elevator at the end of the stage often took several tries, due to the lack of precision you have. While it's not my least favorite Playdate game, I do think it's well made with good graphics and some good ideas, the core concept just isn't a strong one.

Trials of the Blood Dragon (PS5)

Trials of the Blood Dragon is a crossover between a Far Cry 3 DLC and the Trials series, neither of which I've played, and after this neither of which I will. The game tries to embrace every 1980s film stereotype including overly macho characters, film homages, massive explosions, aliens, giant monsters, Communists threats, a Miami Vice colorscheme, you name it. This was a bit of a fad when this game came out, but they do it here with little subtlety, it's just thrown in your face in a vague attempt to be funny. Combine this with some awful voice acting and contrived storylines, and it makes the cutscene plot, which is a significant amount of the runtime, a complete waste of time. This is a motorcycle game however, we're not here for the plot, and unfortunately that's just as bad. Firstly, there's more than just motorcycle levels, as they also introduce mechanics like dual-stick shooting and a grappling hook, which are incredibly frustrating to use, not to mention straight platforming levels. Perhaps a third of the levels are just platforming with no vehicle riding, and the physics are very wonky. My issues with the physics extend to the actual vehicle levels as well though. You'll ride a bike or motorcycle depending on the level, and they are awful to control. You have very little fine control over controlling them, once they gain angular momentum, it's a waste of time to try and straighten out again, and they have so much torque -- particularly the bike -- that you'll often just flip over trying to climb hills. This is probably a more fun game to watch than to play, and I'll admit the music is pretty good, but everything about it is just grating and frustrating. Finally, I know they're doing a 1980s parody, but singling out the Vietnamese as the villains of the game, complete with ahem stereotypical dialogue, is just abhorrent.

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (GBC)

I know very little about the Alone in the Dark series, but I did hear that the GBC game was recently added to the Nintendo Switch subscription, passing over admittedly more well-known titles. I decided to try it out and see if this is a hidden gem I was unaware of. This game's big claim to fame is its visuals. It utilizes pre-rendered backgrounds for the character to navigate through, a technique that was very popular on the PS1 at the time, but seldom seen on handheld devices. A heavy amount of dithering was needed to give the visual fidelity required to convey a 3D space, which worked for the most part, but did occasionally leave certain screens a confusing mess. The small resolution of the Game Boy also requires smaller backgrounds that switch more often, which can be very jarring, but they used some clever tricks like sprite scaling to help maximize the available space. Overall, its a game that earns its reputation as one of the most visually interesting on the system. Note however, that it does not have the reputation of being a good game overall. While it might be interesting technically, the game is not very fun at all. The previously mentioned rapid switching of environments yields a confusing experience. The narrative is serviceable but with the game clocking in at only an hour or so, is very skin deep. The game breaks up its exploration with some 2D gun combat sections, which are really rough, and I hear can cause you to softlock a save as the game kills you outright if you have no ammunition. The audio effects are pretty awful as well, and to top it all off, they used a very annoying font throughout the game. It's a curiosity of a game saved only by its short length, but I think it was added to the Switch subscription to promote another Alone in the Dark title, not because this one was any good.

2.5 / 5

Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memories (NS)

While I enjoyed both Trace Memory and its Another Code remake, I've never played the original Wii sequel, as it wasn't originally released in North America. Now it too has been remade as part of the Another Code Collection and I'm afraid to say I don't think it's nearly as good as its predecessor. Trace Memory was a quaint, if somewhat basic, game, but it had some interesting locations and plot elements. The sequel attempts to go bigger with its story and setting, but it mainly comes off as a bit rambling and unfocused. Most of the game has protagonist Ashley meeting townspeople and helping them with their problems, all while conspicuously ignoring her own plot. It isn't until the very end where everything has to kick into high gear to compensate, focusing on characters and plot threads that had barely been touched upon. To be fair, these last chapters are actually fairly engaging, and the setting is interesting as well, but it's a little too late. Ashley herself is a bit improved over the first game though, as she is less naive and has greater agency. The game also shines a bit of spotlight on her deadbeat dad and questions the first game's too-perfect ending. In the end, it's fine. I'm not sure I can recommend the Collection as a whole given the first game feels like the series has room to grow, but the sequel doesn't really reach that potential. Perhaps if the original studio hadn't closed down we would've gotten an interesting third title, but as it is, they're a pair of middle of the road Switch remakes.

Crankin's Time Travel Adventure (PD)

The second batch of free Playdate games came quicker than I was expecting, and among them was one of the best regarded titles Crankin's Time Travel Adventure. It's a clever and well made game where you use the crank to move a robot forward and backwards along his path, avoiding obstacles so that he gets to his date as quickly as possible (but never on time). As part of his movement, the robot will automatically perform actions like bending over to smell flowers and climbing over tables, which you can utilize to avoid moving enemies. If any of them overlap even a pixel, the level restarts. It's a very cute game and utilizes the crank the best of any games I've played so far, but the game has a fatal flaw in that it's incredibly difficult. The crank controls are pretty precise, but I found figuring out how to pose the robot to avoid the enemies to be surprisingly precise. It's a game that I admire in its technique and ambition, but I actually hated playing. I'll admit that I only finished the first 20 levels, which I found frustrating by themselves, only to learn that there's 30 more even harder levels. This one definitely boils down to personal taste, but I personally found it more frustrating than rewarding.

Lost Your Marbles (PD)

The first Playdate season has done a good job of giving out a wide variety of different genres, with this week's title being a visual novel -- Lost Your Marbles. It's a short story about a girl traveling around an eccentric town looking for her dog. Dialogue choices are made by playing a pseudo-pinball minigame, which uses the crank to tilt a stage, allowing the player to direct a ball into one of three dialogue options. It has some clever writing and some cute characters, but I'll admit I didn't care much for this game. The plot is goofy to the point of not mattering, and the dialogue minigame, while cute, is difficult to control and none of the dialogue choices feel all that impactful. This game does claim to have 10 different endings though, so if you really enjoy it, you can subjugate yourself to trying to hit the needed targets. However, this was one of the weaker Playdate titles for me.

Sonic Rush Adventure (DS)

When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with Sonic. Any game I could get my hands on I played over and over again - Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, even Shadow the Hedgehog. Another game I had around that time was the first Sonic Rush, and I think the fact I barely remember playing it says a lot about my opinions of it. Decades later though, I've decided to try out its sequel, Sonic Rush Adventure. This game, for lack of a better word, is mid. Everything about it is just mediocre. The earlier levels do allow you to maintain your sense of speed, but at the cost of having some very bland level design. The later levels overcompensate for this, and are a classic example of awful Dimps design. Bullshit death bits, finicky platforming sections, all while not being really interesting at all. The best part of this game might be the short sailing minigames, as there is a world map for you to explore (although there's not much there for you to find). The game does require a little bit of grind to progress at a few places, but I never had to replay anything other than the first two levels, so I might have gotten lucky. The plot as well is pretty worthless. Blaze returns, but doesn't have her own campaign, unlike the original Sonic Rush, and newcomer Marine is kinda fun, but constantly disrespected by the rest of the party. All-in-all, I can finally say that I've played through this game, but I think I was right in not picking it up back when it was new.

Penny's Big Breakaway (PC)

Penny's Big Breakaway is the debut title from Evening Star, a new studio formed from several developers who worked on Sonic Mania. I was a big fan of Mania, and was excited to see what a talented team could do without the constraints of the Sonic franchise. The game is a 3D platformer where you control Penny and her magic yo-yo as you progress through as series of levels. The control scheme reminds me slightly of Super Mario Odyssey, where the character uses an object to gain extra platforming moves, in this case riding on a wheel, performing a swinging move, and dashing forward. I've seen some complaints about the control scheme, but I actually found it pretty fluid and easy to grasp, although there were some moments where some moves just didn't seem to want to fire correctly -- the dash move in particular. Sadly, while I enjoyed the controls I don't have much positivity for the rest of the game. It's not a bad game by any means, but I found it very bland. Pretty much every level is exactly the same, and they all blend together. They reuse the same level design ideas over and over again, and there's no single level that really stood out to me. The levels do have some optional tasks for you to complete, but I'm not sure why anyone would actually do them. They're just tedious enough to not be fun, and the only reward is some extra points. That's true of a lot of this game, completing extra objectives gives points, finding secrets gives points, landing on the best goal position gives more points. However the points don't actually do anything -- there's no extra lives to gain -- and if you die you're guaranteed to lose almost all you've gained that level. It was a lot of effort put into a system that has no real incentive for the player to engage in, so I ended up just playing all levels the same and racing to the end. The enemy design is also pretty weak, there are only hoards of penguins which attempt to grab onto you. If too many grab on, you die, but there's no way to actually defeat them. Your only option is to run away and try to engage with them as little as possible. The bosses as well are pretty uninteresting, most of them being trivial to beat, with the exception of one that just seemed very poorly designed and a bit buggy. Penny herself is... fine. I didn't engage with the plot at all, and they made the odd decision that while all the characters just speak in speech bubbles (which is a good choice), Penny herself is a silent protagonist. It's really weird that everyone else has dialogue while Penny just... stands there. As I said, I didn't dislike this game, but I also didn't really have any positive experiences with it. I hope it does well enough for Evening Star to continue forward, as the talent is clearly there, but I don't think I would be interested in a Penny sequel.

Snak (PD)

Snak is Snake for the Playdate. There really isn't too much else to say than that. It has some interesting modifications on the theme, like the targets actually move around and latch onto your body if they collide with you, and that you can jump over yourself, but other than that it's just Snake. It is a little strange that you start so long at the start, and I wish there were some modes where you would wrap around the stage, but other than that, it's a fine clone.

Zipper (PD)

One of the highest profile developers to work on the Playdate, Zipper comes from the mind of Bennett Foddy, the creator of QWOP and Getting Over It. In it, you play as a lone samurai infiltrating a castle, requiring you to cut down all enemies that lie before you. You do this my signaling where you want your character to move on an isometric 2D grid. The samurai can move anywhere in a straight line, and if he comes to rest in front of an enemy, or "zips" past them, they are cut down. Once you move though, the enemies get their turn, so you must ensure your player ends up in a position where they are not vulnerable to the remaining enemies' attacks. It's a great game visually, perhaps one of the best on the whole system, with an art style that really fits the monochrome screen of the Playdate. There are vivid background and great looking blood effects, which can even be utilized to blind your enemies under certain situations. Unfortunately, while I really wanted to like this game, it has a number of core faults that prevented me from enjoying it. Firstly is that the movement patterns of the enemies, even the simple ones, don't obey the same rules as you do. They are not limited to the single direction that your player is, and often surprised me with where they were able to reach. For a game that's entirely strategy, it makes the strategic elements somewhat futile when there's no way to predict where the enemy is going to end up. The game does have a way to combat this though. By turning the crank after positioning your character, the game will tell you if you're going to die by making that move. This may sound useful, but it actually swings the difficulty of the game the complete other way. Now, there's no strategy at all, you just need to keep guessing and checking positions without any risk of dying. With the only options being unclear enemy rules or a lack of difficulty, this game failed to really hold my interest. The other big issue is the death penalty. This is a Bennett Foddy game after all, a developer infamous for his... tedious game elements. In this case, when you die you have to start the game completely over. If you make a strategic mistake against an enemy, you'll have to replay the entire game up until that point to face them again. I know that's his style, but where that tediousness was a charming factor towards his previous titles, here it just adds to a conflicting gameplay style. It's a shame too, as I think the potential is here to make this one of the best games on the system, but in the end it falls into the middle of the pack.

Melvor Idle (PC)

I think Melvor Idle is easily the game that has consumed the most real world time on just its main campaign, at well into the triple digit hours and the better part of the year. At its core, this is an idle game based off of Runescape. Now when I say based off, I don't mean "heavily inspired by", I mean this is a direct conversion of the mechanics of Runescape from an MMO to an idle game. Every leveling mechanic is here, from crafting and smithing to combat and magic casting. It is such a close adaptation that Runescape developer Jagex officially works with the developers of this title. As someone who played Runescape in its heyday in the mid-2000s, this starts out as a great deal of fun. Gone is the trudging back and forth between locations to level yourself, instead everything is accessible via a simple and rather attractive menu system. You select what you want your character to work on, and off they go, you don't have to march back to town every 5 minutes to drop off an inventory of stuff. The initial leveling aspect of the game is great fun, but it doesn't last forever. I'll admit I didn't get nearly this far in Runescape itself, so I don't know what its later content looks like. However in Melvor you eventually begin to surpass the normal leveling tiers, maxing out your character's levels one by one and requiring other motivations to continue. This is primarily through the various dungeons available to the player. Combat is largely automated, and after auto-fighting the various waves of enemies, you are given a reward for finishing the dungeon, usually in the form of a chest to open for loot. Lower dungeon rewards are often needed for higher dungeons or to craft better gear -- pretty standard stuff. However, at some point (the God dungeons if you ask me), the level of RNG and grinding and complete slog the game requires you to go through to move forward become unbearable. This game thankfully has an offline mode, where you will still gain up to 24 hours of simulated experience even if the game wasn't running at the time. This is completely necessary at some point, and the gameplay devolves into firing up the game, setting up what the character needs to grind next, then exiting out -- repeat this process within 24 hours for maximum level gain. Even with this small amount of actual gameplay, I spent all that time in game and literal months grinding my character to the point needed to progress, and at some point the rewards just stopped being interesting. I ran out of levels to improve, out of new mechanics to see, the game only existed to grind for more obscure items to beat more obscure dungeons. If you happen to miscalculate and die during those dungeons (which, with little in-game calculation tools is easier than it sounds), you could lose months of effort if single item the game takes from you upon death happened to be a particularly grindy one. I'll admit to you I didn't actually get to the end of the final dungeon, and didn't even consider trying the DLCs. I finished the four God dungeons, started to work towards the last stretch and realized I just didn't want to turn the game on anymore. Do I feel bad that I put in all that effort but didn't actually get to the end? A bit. Do I feel like I actually am missing out on anything? Not in the slightest. I do hesitantly recommend the beginning of the game, but if you're feeling mediocre about it once you start hitting the harder dungeons, there's no where to go but down.

Echoes of the Emergent (PD)

Echoes of the Emergent is a visual novel for the Playdate starring Ayumi, a young Japanese woman who is one of the sole survivors of a world-ending catastrophe, despite having zero survival skills. The game grabbed my attention mainly for its visual style, which is easily its strongest aspect. As the game progresses, landscape shots of Ayumi's locations are shown, with an interesting parallax side-to-side shift. I'm not sure it would be that impressive on a modern console, but on a monochrome Playdate display, it's an interesting effect. With almost no other characters besides herself, the game is mostly presented as Ayumi's internal monologue interspersed with the occasional flashback. I found this game rather lacking mainly due to Ayumi's characterization. She has seemingly been the sole survivor in a large Japanese metropolis for some time, but has developed no skills at all. She spends all day barely finding enough food to eat, is constantly lost, and never actually learned what caused the end of civilization until the events of the game. This catastrophe, a meteor, also really isn't consistent with the world that was shown. There are no corpses anywhere and the only structural damage is due to decay over time. There is no sign of damage from the inferno that is mentioned in her flashbacks. This might seem like a minor criticism of a fictional story, but when a major part of the game is piecing together what happened, being shown an unrealistic world is frustrating. I think the game also skipped a few minutes of dialogue in the end climax, so I missed a lot of context, but her final decision is also a bizarre one, and further portrays her as not having any forward thinking. Overall, I really wanted to like this title, but it's make or break by how much you enjoy Ayumi, a character I didn't like at all.

Catherine Classic (PC)

I was really looking forward to Catherine. I enjoyed playing through Persona 5 Royal earlier this year, and the idea of a puzzled-focused game with more adult themes and characters from the same developers really intrigued me. I regret then to say that I really didn't like this game very much at all. The game is broken up into two different play styles -- a visual novel section where you watch protagonist Vincent bumble his way through having an affair, and nighttime puzzle sections, where you climb a mountain of moveable blocks to reach the goal at the top. The puzzles, to their credit, are quite a clever and unique design. It's a surprisingly deep mechanic, but one that I find to be more tedious than rewarding to play. There's too many annoyances with it, from trick blocks you can't predict, to enemies that only serve to bump you around, to a control scheme that is just finicky enough to occasionally ruin your day. It's also surprisingly difficult, on more than one occasion I found myself shocked at what the eventual solution was. So not the best gameplay, but not the worst either -- how does the visual novel fare? Unfortunately in my opinion, even worse. The plot centers mainly around three characters. The aforementioned Vincent, a stereotypical "guy" who lives in a crappy apartment and half-asses his job, his girlfriend Katherine, an actual functioning adult, but one who comes off rather cold and surprisingly absent from the story, and his new fling Catherine, a completely aloof and unlikable character whose true true nature is blatantly obvious to everyone except Vincent. I really couldn't get into any of these characters. The voice acting and animation is rather good, but all of them fall into my common complaint about anime-esque media where I end up thinking "no human being would act this way". In the case of one of the characters, that's justified, but Vincent often sits there with a vacant look on his face while his whole life is collapsing around him. He'll go into a meeting with his girlfriend with a mission, then just sit there blankly as his life implodes around him. Other aspects of the game didn't wow me either. Talking to the patrons at the bar was interesting enough, but felt more like going through the motions, the social aspect is pretty shallow. Overall, I found this game to be quite a let down. It's a shame too, as I really like the ideas on paper, but the execution left me frustrated and glad to be done.

Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SNES)

Kirby's Dream Land 3 in many ways feels like a forgotten game in the series. It's often overshadowed by its SNES kin, Kirby Super Star, and is mainly known either as the continuation of the very first Kirby games on Game Boy or as having really excellent spritework. That aspect of the game is by far its greatest strength. KDL3 utilizes pastel colors and a somewhat painterly aesthetic to create the appearance of a hand drawn game. An obvious comparison is to Yoshi's Island, also on the Super Nintendo, which strives for a similar effect, although I think that game is slightly more appealing. As for its connection to other games, this title is obviously a follow up to the first game Kirby games on the Game Boy, but I was rather surprised to realize that this is a predecessor to Kirby 64, a game I extensively played in my youth. That game owes a great deal to KDL3 -- its UI style, companion animals, selection of abilities, even the bonus minigame at the end all originate here. Unfortunately, while I have fond feelings towards Kirby 64, the same cannot be said about KDL3, which I found rather underwhelming. My foremost complaint is about the physics. Something about how Kirby controls or how the momentum functions I found to be incredibly unsatisfying to control. Kirby often felt sluggish or tethered in a way that isn't the case in other contemporary titles in the series. The level design here also leaves a lot to be desired. Kirby level design is never that spectacular, but I found it particularly uninspired here. Lots of rather lengthy levels of mostly linear corridors. The Dream Land sub-series has also heavily featured Kirby's animal companions, which include creatures like a fish, cat, jellyfish... thing, among others. These creature's abilities also combine with Kirby's normal copy abilities to create quite a lot of variety in attacks. I'll admit I praised this sort of mixing and matching gameplay when I reviewed Circle of the Moon, but I didn't really enjoy it here. I think it's mainly because I don't like controlling the animal companions. Some of them aren't too bad, but they tend to be harder to control and less versatile than plain Kirby. The copy abilities present in the game are also the usual fare, meaning I stuck to the two or three I knew I preferred to use. Still, I enjoyed seeing the connection to Kirby 64 (after all these years, I finally know why its final boss is called "02"), and while it's not the best game in the series by any means, it's an artistically interesting one.

3 / 5

Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS5)

All media requires a certain level of abandonment of your sense of disbelief. These are fictional stories featuring fictional characters, and their adventures often strain the rules of reality. Some strain it a little, and some games, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, incredibly strain belief. It's the continuing adventures of Lara Croft, daughter of an English lord who somehow turns into a one-woman killing machine in her search for a relic to grant immortality. I'm sure I'm not the first to make this joke, but it's odd how she's searching for the gift of immortality when she is constantly surviving things that would kill the average person. Falls from great heights, bullet wounds, freezing rivers, and bears are just some of the exciting things that Lara gets hit with and walks off. This series often gets compared to the Uncharted franchise, but typically with less fanfare. I think the reason here is that there's less a sense of adventure than those games. Uncharted has a team of adventurers globetrotting across the world to discover the next piece to the puzzle. Rise of the Tomb Raider spends almost its entire time in a frozen Siberian Soviet base. I know many people criticized the previous games for having little tomb raiding, and while they tried to insert it more here, it's mostly optional side quests. This isn't to say that I completely disliked this game. I actually find Lara surprisingly relatable, given that she has the powers of a Terminator. At least the other characters acknowledge this fact, and stand aside while she goes off to massacre hundreds of soldiers. I think the relic and the lore around it was surprisingly interesting, as opposed to the villain and evil conspiracy which really wasn't. It's been probably a decade since I played the first of the new Tomb Raider games, and while neither wowed me, I think someday I'll get around to playing the third as well.

Rollerdrome (PS5)

Rollerdrome is a really mixed bag of a game, where the core gameplay is incredibly smooth and fun, but is brought down by all the decisions made around it. You play as Kara Hassan, a rookie participant in the sport of "Rollerdrome" where entrants on roller skates move around an arena, defeating all opponents. There are elements of the Tony Hawk games here, where tricks earn you both ammo refills and additional points. You can flip, spin, grind, slow down time, and shoot one of four weapons. Actually controlling the player is really fun and smooth, and when you get into a flow, the game is exhilarating. Unfortunately, the game constantly feels like it has to, for lack of a better word, compensate for something. While some of the enemies are simple fodder that can be killed in one hit, others are incredibly tedious, where the enemies that have the most annoying weapons also are the most annoying to kill. Perhaps the worst is one that fires a long-lasting tracking laser across the entire arena, leaving fire in its wake, who teleports away when hit, and requires several shots to kill. They pack each level with too many enemies at once, and defeat often feels unfair. It doesn't help that I didn't like three of the four weapons, limiting combat further. Even once you do finish a set of levels, you'll find you can't progress unless you complete X number of "optional" challenges, which are arbitrary items on a checklist that again takes away playing the game the way you'd want. To their credit though, the game actually has the option to just turn that off, and allow you to just... progress in the campaign. I pretty quickly did just that, and didn't feel like I missed out on anything. It's a really fun game at its core, one that your Tony Hawk fan would enjoy, but one that gets in its own way too much.

Whitewater Wipeout (PD)

So I bought a Playdate, a small handheld console with only two buttons, a D-pad, a monochrome screen, and an analog crank. Yes that's right, a crank. As part of the purchase, the developers give two free games per week as part of the first "season" of content, with Whitewater Wipeout being one of the first two games. You play as a surfer with three attempts to get the best high score on each run. There's no other content than that; it's an arcade-esque experience with only one mode, making the game very short but sweet. To angle your surfer into the waves you use the aforementioned crank. I will admit the controls are a bit unintuitive at first, as its the angle of the crank that directly corresponds to your player angle, not the relative angle. Once you get the hang of it though, the game is quite fun. The graphics are really nice and I think it is a good choice to include as part of the first week's batch, as it showcases a unique idea that only this system can do. The A and B buttons aren't even used at all. However, it's a very short game, and if you aren't terribly interested in beating your high score then it won't hold your attention for very long.

Casual Birder (PD)

The second of the Playdate's first week of games, Casual Birder is a more traditional adventure game, set in a small town entirely comprised of incredibly passionate bird watchers. You travel around town with your camera phone, attempting to take pictures of all the available birds while going up against the local gang. The humor of this game is its high point, as it embraces slightly absurd situations in mundane environments, giving it strong EarthBound vibes. The writing is pretty witty, and there are a few legitimate laugh out loud moments. It did take a little bit before it gained my attention though, and I think the biggest fault with the game is the photography aspect itself. You use the D-pad to move the viewfinder across the screen and the crank to focus, but it always felt a bit clunky to me, and there are a number of birds that move quickly across the screen, which makes capturing their image an exercise in frustration. Unlike Whitewater Wipeout, there's an hour or two of content here, as well as an actual ending, although it's definitely a lot less exciting from moment to moment. Together though, these two pair well as the first two giveaway games, and I'm eager to try out more.

Pick Pack Pup (PD)

Another week another Playdate game, with the first of week three's entries being Pick Pack Pup, a match-3 game where you package items in a modern warehouse setting. The game uses the crank to scroll through its story, with the D-pad and A buttons used for the actual gameplay. The story is pretty cute. It has some fun criticisms of corporate greed while keeping a light hearted tone. The match-3 gameplay is nothing to write home about, and it's actually much easier than most as many levels don't have any way to lose. You simply need to match enough objects to move on to the next level. There are a few that buck this trend and have more puzzle or time limit constraints, but it's still never difficult. If anything, some of the point quotas are high enough to become tedious, as there's never any risk of failure, but it still takes a while to complete the stage. This is made worse by a mechanic where the bottom row of objects will be destroyed on a timer, subtracting from your point score. This only serves to draw out the level even longer, and while there is a mechanic to try and minimize this effect, I found it a bit finicky to pull off. All that aside, I like the gameplay and I like the presentation; so much so that this is probably my favorite Playdate title thus far.

Demon Quest '85 (PD)

Demon Quest '85 is a Playdate visual novel where you gather a group of your schoolmates and together summon demons to try to solve your problems. It's a short but sweet affair, where most of the gameplay entails trying to match which people, music, and items the given demon is likely to appear before, and then asking them a series of questions. These questions both reveal how to summon the subsequent demons, as well as play into an overarching story about a beyond-the-scenes war for Hell itself. The artwork is the game's strongest aspect, although I did also quite enjoy the writing. Your character can be fairly flippant about the situation they find themselves in, which I found charming. It can be a bit frustrating trying to figure out what element you got wrong when trying to summon, especially since that's basically the only gameplay, but there's enough hints to allow you to figure it out in the end.

Spellcorked (PD)

Spellcorked is a cooking game where you play as a young witch opening up her own potion shop. You receive orders, choose the right ingredients, and perform mini-games to prepare the potion. This is easily the best looking Playdate game I've tried to date. The animations are large, vibrant, and fluid. The game also utilizes the full strength of the Playdate to a higher degree than any others. The ingredient preparation mini-games use the crank in very clever ways, and this is actually the first game to use the accelerometer in any fashion. It's a very ambitious game, and the developers clearly had a good sense of how they wanted to realize utilize the unique platform. There is of course a downside to the game though, and it is really repetitive. There's around a dozen different ingredients to choose from, but only three different preparation mini-games in total, so each round quickly loses any individuality. The UI is also largely really well designed, except for the recipe book. It uses symbols to convey the information you've learned thus far, but I had a hard time remembering which symbol was which, especially once you start getting a large assortment of ingredients. If they had come up with two or three more mini-games, I think this really could've been excellent, but even still it pushes the Playdate to a level most of the other games don't.

Sasquatchers (PD)

Have you ever wanted a game based off of a Ghost Hunters type concept for Playdate? Well have I got a game for you. Sasquatchers is a strategy game where you control one of three characters as they attempt to capture footage of mythological creatures ("cryptics") in the woods. These include old standbys like bigfoot, mothman, chupacabra, etc. You move your characters on a 2D grid ala Advance Wars through the dark map to find monsters to photograph. When taking a picture, the camera angle changes to show the camera viewfinder around the player, with the crank rotating the camera. You get more likes and followers the better pictures you take, which leads to more money via rewards and ad revenue. It's a really clever concept for a game, and one that plays pretty well. There are a few characters to choose from for your party, each with their own abilities both in capturing footage as well as interacting with the environment. The goals for each level are pretty well thought out, but the monsters themselves don't really pose much of a threat, they're more of a nuisance. The game is rather short though, and aside from the different monster types, the game doesn't vary much from level to level. Still, it's a clever idea and clever execution. I do have to mention though, that this was the first Playdate game where I had technical troubles. I got to the second to last level and my save corrupted -- attempting to load it crashes the whole console. That's the first time I've run into any troubles, but it's not exactly a good look.

Forrest Byrnes: Up in Smoke (PD)

Somewhat surprisingly, Forrest Byrnes is the first platformer I've played on the Playdate. I was initially skeptical of this, as I'm not a big fan of the Playdate's D-pad, but I ended up rather enjoying this game. It shares a number of similarities with Shovel Knight, not only in its platforming, but even having shovel attacks, digs, and a pogo-stick move. As a forest fire rages behind you, you must traverse a level rescuing other rangers and collecting items while trying to reach the helicopter at the end. The game controls well and has some nice visuals, but is completely let down by the fact that there is just one randomly generated level. While there are a number of different platforming chunks that can appear, you'll quickly see them all. It's pretty jarring that once you complete the level, you're just dumped back at the main menu. Those items and park rangers you rescue yield a grade at the end, but since there's just one level there's zero reason to rescue them -- in fact I don't think your level scores are saved anywhere. The only item that does matter are the puzzle pieces you can find, which do unlock some comical park posters if you collect enough. These pieces are the only reason to repeatedly play the game. It's a shame, I really enjoyed this game, and if they had crafted even just 10 or so levels rather than choosing a randomly generated route, I think it would've been a more enjoyable experience. Still, it's cute and clever and falls right into the middle of the Playdate pack.

b360 (PD)

b360 is from Panic, the creators of the Playdate themselves, and it is their alternative to Arkanoid. The crank moves the paddle, there's a ball bouncing around, and you try to destroy all the obstacles. Unlike most versions of the game though, all of the obstacles are in the center of the screen, and the paddle moves in an arc around the exterior. This works well with a radial crank control, but it does require a surprisingly high amount of concentration to play the game. The aesthetics are really well done as well, the music is catchy but not too obtrusive, and there are some visual flairs that add to the experience, such as a starfield in the center of the screen that rotates with the crank movement. Aside from that, yeah it's Arkanoid. There's a high number of different level layouts, but once you've seen a few you've seen them all really. It's a well made game, and no system would be complete without one, but isn't destined to be one of the standout titles.

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers (PC)

(For this review, I tried doing something different and posting a much longer review. This didn't really work out as well as I'd hoped, so I went back to single paragraph reviews later, leaving this one sticking out.)

I have such mixed feelings about this game. To explain, first know that there was once a Sonic fangame made in the Doom engine called Sonic Robo Blast 2. It's still technically under development, but has been completely playable for many years now. This proved quite popular, so other fans spun that game off into Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, an appropriately titled kart racer. Now, I love SRB2K. It's a fun and fluid game with some great levels and visuals, a vibrant modding scene, and music just plain stolen from other pieces of media, so it's entirely made up of bangers. The one thing it was missing though, was a single player mode. It had time trials and multiplayer, but no Grand Prix campaign. The developers promised this by the end of 2020, and since it's a fan project made by volunteers, they blew right past that. Not entirely unexpected, but as the years went by, they began showcasing a lot of new mechanics what few reveals they had, so many new mechanics that they decided to completely spin the game off into a new title entirely, now called Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers. A much catchier title, and finally after years of development, the game shadow dropped last month. From what I understand, they've been releasing pretty substantial balancing patches for the game, and for reference I played on v2.3. Overall, this game feels like two steps forward over SRB2K, and about three steps back.

Let's get the elephant out of the room -- this game has the absolute worst tutorial I have ever seen. Upon starting the game, a visual novel-esque discussion between Tails and Eggman begins where they spout some flavor text then proceed to go into excruciating details about how the video settings works. This cannot be skipped (this isn't entirely true, there is a "password entry", which if you know it will let you skip it, but the password must be dug up online). This lasts for several minutes before they finally give you control of your kart, and begin explaining either incredibly obvious mechanics, such as how to drive, or complex mechanics that never come up again, like how to activate nearby switches when your ring count is below zero. Vital mechanics, like the new F-Zero GX-esque ring system, aren't addressed. The game is set up to be played on keyboard, but it's a bizarre layout, and all the in-game signage is for a controller, which I would highly recommend using. The driving section of the tutorial can be skipped after a point -- if you manage to finish a difficult CPU race -- but if you fail you don't get another chance and must finish the tutorial. Apparently this was even longer in previous patches, but has been scaled back. It's incredibly confusing, pointless, and invasive, and honestly the review really could end right here. I wanted to play this with some friends, but I cannot in good faith recommend anyone actually sit through this. I honestly hope the developers simply scrap the entire idea, as while kinda cute, it isn't needed at all and directly hurts the game.

Getting past that, you're met with a newly designed main menu and can begin playing. The new Grand Prix mode is there, and jumping in my opinions remain mixed. I've used this analogy in other reviews, but I feel like the developers got too good at their own game, and started targeting a more hardcore audience. This feeling purveys my entire experience with the game. The level geometry is dramatically more complex than SRB2K, with every level having constant slopes, half pipes, banked curves, you name it. The kart doesn't handle great going around around these uneven edges, and you're meant to utilize the new unexplained ring mechanic to assist. This is actually an interesting idea, you can "spend" your rings to get a small speed boost, and this is expected of you as the levels are flush with rings. I grew to like this mechanic, but it still has its faults. For example, spending rings is bound to the same button as using an item. Because spending rings is actually such a vital feature, I ended up trying to avoid items altogether, or throwing them as quickly as I could if I ended up with one. There are a number of returning stages from SRB2K here, all completely redesigned. On each and every one of them, I prefer the original, more simplistic designs. The art style has also been improved, with a lot less flat colors in DRRR than its predecessor. This has largely been positively received, and while I do largely like it, it does add to the visual complexity of levels, so it can be difficult to see which way the course is turning. The developers did anticipate this, so every level is blazoned with large arrows pointing the way. One would think that at that point, your stages might be too complex, but as I said, I think they got too used to their own game.

This brings me to the CPU AI, which seems to be the most criticized element of this game. This game heavily utilizes rubber banding, to the point that it's actually a mechanic pointed out in their manual (by the way, there's a manual and it's much better than the in-game tutorial). Enemies can be far behind the player only to surpass you out of nowhere due to the advantages they get. One CPU in each Grand Prix cup -- usually the one in second place -- is designated the "rival", and they get even greater advantages than the others. Combine this with the rather lengthy Grand Prix duration, and the game can be quite a slog. Each cup has not only five stages, but also two special stages, in the vein of traditional Sonic games. I have no idea what the special stages are for. I've completed them successfully, while getting all A ranks and gold medals, and nothing has happened. Instead, they just take up a few extra minutes each Grand Prix cup. I think this is supposed to give you Chaos Emeralds (whatever those do), but I haven't had anything happen to me yet. One positive is that this game utilizes an unlock achievement system similar to Kirby Air Ride, which I've always liked for its increased replayability. There's also a huge number of stages. Upon beating the initial seven cups, another seven appeared on the menu. I've heard that there's something like 250 stages in total -- a monumental feat for a volunteer group.

Finally, after all my criticisms... I ended up actually having a bit of fun. The problem here is that everything I enjoyed were mechanics from SRB2K years ago, and everything new they've added I find largely to be a baffling choice. I didn't even mention bizarre ideas like how players can rumble with each other for a few seconds before the stage actually begins, or how I thought the swinging laser mechanic was an overly used stage hazard, because I couldn't fathom that they'd give an invasive 20-second long hazard as an item. I think buried here is a game I would like, and the more I play it, the more I do find myself enjoying it. However, for me to truly enjoy myself would require a return to design sensibilities that they've moved past. The developers have even said, understandably, that they're only going to be continuing development on DRRR going forward. As it is, I want to like it, and if they make the tutorial optional I might even recommend it. Until then though, it's stuck in a weird limbo state for me where patches might improve the experience, but I don't think I'll ever prefer the new level designs or mechanics. At least the stolen music is still great.

Sonic and the Fallen Star (PC)

There are many quality Sonic fan games in this day and age, and one that recently caught my attention is Sonic and the Fallen Star, a 2D adventure somewhat in the vein of the old Genesis titles. Unlike most fan games though, this does not attempt to resemble any official titles, but instead features all original spritework, both in its level assets as well as character art. This artwork is very well done, and is the game's greatest strength and claim to fame. The color scheme of the levels in particular really grabbed my attention, as they're both vibrant but also well integrated. The closest official title it reminds me of is Knuckles' Chaotix, which too utilized an excellent palette. The physics, which often make or break a fan game, are very well done as well. While not visually resembling the Genesis games, the game does play like one, which is a great positive in my opinion. Unfortunately, while the fundamentals are here, the rest of the game didn't really impress me. It's not a bad title by any means -- I would be beside myself with joy if I had created it -- but it falls rather flat in some places. The level design, for example, is very barebones. It's hard to quantify what makes an engaging Sonic level, but whatever it is, this game doesn't really have it. Levels are largely "hold right to win" affairs, with very little deviation in interesting landmarks or enemies. The bosses too are pretty unmarkable, and I think are easily the weakest part of the game. While Sonic's physics might be well done, there's something about the hit detection of the bosses that doesn't feel quite right, and makes the bosses confusing and uninteresting to fight. Overall, not the worst Sonic game I've played, but I think it was largely overshadowed by the excellent Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit, which released around the same time. It's a great game to look at, and a fairly easy experience to get into, but one that doesn't quite make the most of its potential.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (SNES)

Back in the day, some Japanese developers held contempt for their worldwide audiences. For much of the NES and SNES days, it was often viewed that their non-Japanese audiences didn't care for the difficulties of their Japanese counterparts, and would often lessen game difficulties or even prevent worldwide release of games that were viewed to be too hard. This policy sometimes worked in our favor, as we would receive fun games like Super Mario Bros. 2, while Japanese audiences would be subjected to the nonsense of Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels. It didn't help that RPGs often didn't sell as well worldwide as they did in Japan, although both trends eventually went away by the late 1990s. This didn't prevent Squaresoft from making a Final Fantasy game for babies: Mystic Quest. Mystic Quest was designed to be an introduction to turn-based RPGs, preparing players for the more meatier options like Final Fantasy II (aka IV). There's an overworld, but the player only selects different locales ala Super Mario World. There's only a max of two party members at any given time, and the second party member can be optionally controlled by the CPU. There are armor upgrades, but they are always beneficial so the player doesn't have to worry about speccing themselves out. It has the essence of an early-90s RPG, but with a lot of the customization elements filed down. This actually removes some of the tedium, so I rather enjoyed my time with Mystic Quest. I don't think it quite compares to its other SNES siblings, but it was a solid, if somewhat basic RPG -- with the music in particular standing out. My one complaint about the game is that while most enemy encounters tend to be rather simplistic (if you die, you can just restart from the beginning of the fight), there is an element of unfair RNG at play. Since the game is fairly barebones, you don't have as many tools to mitigate some enemy attacks, meaning an unfortunate roll of the RNG can softlock or kill you without any defense against it. As I said though, you can just restart those battles if that happens, so it's more of a curiosity than a frustration. Mystic Quest has a bit of a bad reputation for its dumbed-down mechanics, but I actually think I would recommend the game, even if it doesn't hold a candle to most of the other titles in the series.

The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link (N64)

Despite how popular they seem to be, I rarely play mods or romhacks. I'm not against them, but it's rare that I find a mod engaging enough for me to try it. I'd rather play a game the developer worked on, then move on to the next thing in my backlog. On occasion I do try some out, as I played a romhack of Ocarina of Time entitled The Missing Link. A clever double entendre, the game serves as a connection between the events of Ocarina of Time and the start of its sequel Majora's Mask. In it, Link must search a new region of the Lost Woods to find Navi, who has gone missing. Overall, this mod is alright. There are a few new towns and areas, and a new dungeon. They do well getting the atmosphere right, doubling down on the spookier elements of Majora's Mask. I'm somewhat torn on how I feel about the mod as a whole, as while it's an impressive endeavour -- adding unique level geometry and zones -- it really highlights that Nintendo are masters in level design. The new areas here all feel a bit cramped in a way, and there are a number of graphical glitches on the new items, such as wall hangings clipping through walls or dialogue often glitching out (this could be an issue with the emulator, but since it was exclusively on new assets, I somewhat doubt it). The plot itself is also nothing to write home about. It's very barebones and has an air of "spooky romhack" to it. However, I will say that the music is superb. There is quite a lot of new music for this mod and all of it is high quality enough to easily have been in Ocarina of Time itself, I cannot sing its praises enough. Would I recommend this mod? Probably not, unless you're absolutely desperate for more content in the Zelda 64 engine. It was pleasant having new levels to play through with that gameplay, but overall it didn't leave too much of an impression.

Final Fantasy III (PC)

I've been on a Final Fantasy kick lately, which is good for my long-standing goal of completing all of the main games in the series. One of the few I've had remaining was Final Fantasy III, in many ways a black sheep of the series. While the other "classic" entries had been remade and ported to many systems over the years, this game has only had two worldwide releases -- the 3D remake for DS and PSP, and the recent Pixel Remaster version. I played the latter, and overall found this game incredibly average. The gameplay system definitely feels like a midpoint between the very rigid system of Final Fantasy I and the incredibly robust system of FFV. Here, you are given four generic party members and can mix and match their assigned jobs as you wish, with more unlocking at various stages of the plot. By the end, there's a good amount of jobs to choose from, but I didn't find myself engaging with the system very strongly. Experimenting with the jobs mainly boils down to which weapons and spells they have equipped, which sounds obvious, but it's a far sight from the system in FFV which encouraged synergy with different jobs and pairing them with specific members of your party. There is a job leveling system -- distinct from your character's level -- but it mainly is used to determine a damage multiplier to your attack. I think "generic" is also a good term to describe the plot. The crystals are in danger, you travel the world to stop it, but there aren't any overarcing or character depth throughout the story. To be fair, this is something it shared with both FFI and FFV, but the plot feels like the characters are only reacting to events, rarely acting. To be honest, this game was about as good as I expected though. I enjoyed it for what it was, but I think it's near the bottom of my personal Final Fantasy ranking to be sure, not for anything it did but for the things it doesn't do.

The Typing of the Dead: Overkill (PC)

The spookiest month demands spooky games, and while browsing a recent Steam sale, this game caught my eye. Like many people my age, I played a few typing games while in school to gain experience and speed, and given that I'm a much better typist now, I figured this would be an interesting jaunt. All typing games are essentially the same -- this game really could function just as well with no background assets at all, just the words to type appearing on the screen. In that sense, the game is pretty good. It's a typing game where the characters move through a variety of Left 4 Dead-esque levels, shooting zombies mutants with each letter you type. There's a rather large dictionary of words, so while there were some repeats, for the most part it was largely unique phrases. The phrases themselves also attempted to be witty or relevant to the characters you were shooting. Mechanically, it's quite well done. Where this game fails is its story. The flavor around the game is a combination of a horror B-movie plot with overly machismo buddy cop elements. This is cute and entertaining for the first few levels, but the writing for this game proved to be pretty dreadful. The characters are grating and the writers clearly just wanted to be as edgy as they could be, throwing out vulgarities and cringy plot elements as quickly as they can. I don't think I'm a prude, but this really wore down on my patience. I think if they played it a bit more straight or had a wider variety of protagonists it would've been fine, but you largely stick with the same four dreadful characters. To their credit though, the plot does have some twists to it, if you care about the plot of your typing game. Overall, it's hard to recommend. It's fun enough and well made, but with each level I disliked the game more and more due to its dialogue.

Kingdom Hearts: Re:Coded (DS)

In the run up to the release of Kingdom Hearts III, I became obsessed with the Kingdom Hearts series. I achieved the platinum trophies on every game released on the PS4, I bought the manga adaptations, I even actually understood the plot of the games. However, one game I never got around to playing is the second DS game in the series -- Re:Coded. This game is often considered skippable due to the lack of impact of its story, which takes place almost entirely inside a virtual recreation of the worlds from the previous games, in particular from the KH1. That means that the events of the game doesn't really have any impact towards the story at large, in fact Sora himself is not even present in the game. Instead you play as a recreation of KH1 Sora as he runs around trying to "debug" the datascape. Re:Coded is actually a remake of a pre-smartphone mobile game no one remembers, which I think is why they were inclined to create a story that would have very little impact to the overall series. To be fair to this game though, the combat actually isn't half bad. It utilizes a version of the command deck system from Birth By Sleep, which I think works well with the system's limited control scheme. It honestly probably plays better than the other DS game, 358/2 Days, although I like that game's leveling system better than this one. It's the story though that I found uninteresting. As I said, Sora doesn't appear, instead you bond with a fake Sora in a fake world (although the real Goofy, Donald, and Mickey Mouse are present). It was hard for me to really care about anything that happened as these aren't the real characters and their interactions won't really impact anything. It doesn't help that the Disney plots are written as Sora meeting these characters for the first time, which is the third time they've done that sort of plot, after KH1 and Chain of Memories. The ending of the game feels particularly repetitive as not only are they reusing these worlds for the third game or more, but they have you go through segments of them three different times. This leads to a conclusion with a character interaction that again doesn't really matter because neither of these characters are their real selves. I've been ragging on the game, but I'll admit it wasn't as bad as its reputation led me to believe. My frustration is more how the series and its themes went a different direction after KH2 than I would've liked, and I don't think I'm alone in thinking that. It doesn't help that this was an era of the series that was really dragging its feet on moving the plot forward. So, I would recommend the game only to players who really like DS games or the Kingdom Hearts series, but there are other games in both categories I would recommend you try first. I also think I've managed to namecheck every game in the series except for Dream Drop Distance, so here, there's that game mentioned too.

Mario Kart: Double Dash (GC)

I've played a lot of Mario Kart in my day, but the one I never played through was Double Dash. There was never a deliberate reason for this, I just never had a copy as a kid. I know Double Dash has its fans, mainly due to the dual-racer mechanic, but having now played the game I must admit I was very underwhelmed by it. My primary issue with the game is the physics. In more recent titles they really nailed the kart racing down, but I found this game to be a slippery mess. Making small adjustments to your trajectory often shifts your kart sideways more than you'd desire, their drifting mechanic is less intuitive to use, and the dual kart mechanic, while kinda fun, really only serves to allow you to store items. There's a solid collection of tracks here -- although most of them I'd already played in later installments -- but I was surprised how small the selection was. There are only four cups total, half of what the handheld Mario Kart DS would include a few years later (although to be fair, half of those are from previous titles). I just found this to be a very underwhelming experience, especially when compared to some of its contemporaries like Mario Kart DS and F-Zero GX. Those games just feel tighter, have more content, and overall I found to be a better experience. They did try some ideas here, I'll give them that, but unfortunately none of them really resonated with me.

3.5 / 5

Portal Revolution (PC)

Portal Revolution is a full-length mod campaign for Portal 2, meant to take place between the two games. It has a surprisingly large number of puzzles, it's own plot and voice acting, and a few unique mechanics. It's solidly "okay". The new puzzles are good, but nothing to write home about. The new mechanics are interesting, but show up too late into the campaign and aren't used all that much. The voice acting is fine, perhaps a little grating, but the plot is almost exactly the same as Portal 2 with the serial numbers filed off. It's impressive for a fan effort though, and Portal is such a fun mechanic that any new content is enjoyable, and you can't beat free. I think part of the reason I'm a little let down is that a few years ago I played a different Portal fan game -- Portal Reloaded -- which was fantastic. That game introduced an ingenious mechanic that is good enough to have been Portal 3. This game is a very solid mod, but doesn't push the envelope too much. It's a bit awkwardly paced as well. I don't mind the more exploratory sections, but there's not really anything new to discover that isn't retreading Portal 2's ground. They spend an annoyingly long time before giving you the second portal as well, and overall don't really use some of the mechanics to their full advantage. If you're dying for more Portal content, and who isn't, I recommend giving it a try. But I would also highly recommend giving Portal Reloaded a try first.

Another Code: Two Memories (NS)

About a year and a half ago I played Trace Memory, a DS point-and-click from the developers of Hotel Dusk. I thought it was a quaint relic of its time, a somewhat uninteresting but charming DS title. Now, Trace Memory (and its Wii sequel) have been remade on Switch in full 3D. I have many of the same opinions about this game as I did its original. The main character is interesting enough and the two plots, dealing with her family and the family of a ghost boy she meets named "D", are engaging as well. The game is somewhat dark when it comes to D's story, but given he's clearly dead it perhaps shouldn't be much of a shock. The puzzles are nice enough, but I don't think anyone is going to be having any difficulty at all with them. If anything, I recall being somewhat stuck on some puzzles in the DS original, but I never had any issue here. It is one of those games where the player will realize puzzle solutions and plot beats far earlier than the characters do, and you'll have to grind your teeth waiting for them to come to the same realization. I think if you remember Trace Memory fondly, you'll enjoy this game, although I'm not sure if I can recommend it to anyone else, it just doesn't stand out enough. This version does come bundled with the remake for the Wii sequel (which was never released in North America), so we'll see if that game makes the collection worth the time.

20 Small Mazes (PC)

This is a free game on Steam that does exactly what it says on the tin. There are 20 short-ish mazes to complete, each with their own clever gimmick. These can range from rotating the maze so the ball falls with gravity, having to find a secret password hidden in the level, having to follow a pirate treasure map, and more. It's cute and clever, if not terribly long or challenging. It's hard not to recommend a free game, and this one has enough ingenuity to make it worth your while, and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Flipper Lifter (PD)

Another short and sweet Playdate game utilizing only the crank, Flipper Lifter puts you in control of an elevator system utilized by a colony of penguins. The elevator moves up or down by turning the crank, and you need to get the penguins to their desired floor before they get frustrated and storm off. There's no progression to this game, it's an arcade-style system where you try to move as many penguins as possible before time elapses. The difficulty comes as the number of possible floors increases over time. It's a pretty elegant system, and reminds me a lot of Mini Metro. It does lack the strategy of these sorts of games though, as there's not much else to it besides trying to group like-minded penguins together. However, it's a fun time and has good visuals and music, along with some clever touches, such as elevators being harder to move upwards the more full they are. Of the Playdate Season 1 games, this is probably my favorite thus far.

Hyper Meteor (PD)

Finally someone has answered the age old question -- what if I could play Asteroids with a crank? Enter Hyper Meteor, an arcade-esque game where you steer a ship around a small arena, attempting to destroy obstacles by ramming into their vulnerable sections. It's a quick and simple game, with the only goal being to get the highest score. It reminds me a bit of Whitewater Wipeout in that way, although I think this genre personally appeals more to me. The controls feel good, it's fun to get into, but the nature of the game prevents it from really being any higher on my list. It apparently has Switch and PC ports, but I can't imagine those would be too entertaining without the novelty (and free giveaway) of the Playdate version.

Star Sled (PD)

Star Sled is a Playdate space game where you control a spaceship and attempt to encircle all the targets while avoiding obstacles. I'm beginning to realize that the Playdate games I enjoy the most are the ones with discrete levels and an obtainable objective, rather than just arcade style. Star Sled is a good example of this, featuring 30 or so levels where your ship steadily gains new abilities as the game progresses. It has a very clear and well done art style, and is simple to pick up and understand. My one criticism is the controls. This game uses the crank to steer the ship, with two optional settings -- "absolute" mode where the ship always points in the same direction as the crank, or "relative" mode, where the ship turns as a multiple of how much the crank has been turned. Having this option is nice, but neither one really jelled well for me. Since the goal of the game is to constantly encircle things, the turning radius never felt as precise as I would like, but I think that's less a criticism of the game and more a criticism of using a crank as a control scheme. Still, even with somewhat loose controls I quite enjoyed this game and think it's one of the stronger Playdate titles to date.

Donut County (PC)

A short and sweet experience, I can't help but compare Donut County to Katamari Damacy... but in reverse. Rather than roll an entire city into a ball, Donut County has you play as a movable hole, growing with every item that falls into it, as you completely consume a scene. It's more of a puzzle game than anything, as the only challenge to this game is recognizing which items can fit in the current size of your hole. Unlike Katamari though, there's no freeform aspect to the game at all. Replaying any of the levels would more or less play out the exact same way. This greatly reduces replayablility, which could be a problem in a game that I was able to finish in one sitting, but I think the gameplay is therapeutic enough to still be fun even in the future. The plot of this game is surprisingly well-written. It has a lot of "Gen Z" humor in the character's motivations and responses to each other, but I found this to be a really fresh and humorous experience. Overall, it's a fun game that executes its premise well. Sure, it's on the shorter side, but I'm not sure there's too much more they could really go with the concept, unless they wanted to really increase the scope.

LEGO Lord of the Rings (PC)

While they seemed to have slowed down now, there was a time where LEGO games based on popular IPs were all the rage. Despite being a fan of the films they were based on, the only one I ever really got into was the LEGO Star Wars series, of which I've played quite a few of their titles. I decided to remedy this by playing LEGO Lord of the Rings, based off of the popular film trilogy. Given that this tile is about a decade newer than the LEGO Star Wars games I was familiar with, it has a number of improvements over that title. The story levels each have a sizable party of characters to switch between depending on the scene, always at least two but sometimes up to nine. Each character typically has an ability that only they can perform, and thus the level design is typically based around a single character moving ahead with their skill, then filling in the path behind them for the others. It's a good enough system, although some of the characters have a lot more utility than others. Samwise and LEGOlas in particular felt much more useful than the rest of the Fellowship. There is also a large open world to join the levels together, with optional secrets and sidequests to perform. I was quite impressed with this at the beginning of the game, as areas like the Shire and Bree are pretty fleshed out. However, not all areas get the same treatment. Minas Tirith and Rohan are surprisingly devoid of interesting landmarks. Being a LEGO game, the gameplay itself is very easy. There are no lives or game overs, the only penalty for death is the loss of currency. If you don't care about this (and I can't say that I did) it can feel like you're just going through the motions. The levels themselves are pretty well thought out, if abridged, versions of what is shown in the films. I didn't care for the boss fights though. Most of them require you to just stand around waiting for the boss to make themselves vulnerable, without any indication of when or where that might be. Pretty much all of them fell flat for me. Overall though, an enjoyable game. I liked the humor and the use of voice clips from the film to provide extra gravitas to the game, although I'm not sure it's unique enough to make me want to jump to another LEGO game soon.

Selaco (PC)

Selaco made a bit of a splash in the boomer shooter world when it released a few weeks ago, but I've actually been following its development for some time. Early reveals showed a great atmospheric world, excellent character animations, and maps where nearly everything was interactable. Upon release, I'm pleased to say it lived up to my expectations in those regards. Even multi-million dollar AAA games do not have the immersion that this game has. Nearly everything can be interacted with, from your typical items that can be shot and damaged, to novel ideas like picking up and throwing stacks of paper causes papers to fly everywhere. The maps are not barren either, there are objects strewn about like they would be in the real world. The maps also cover a variety of different spaces from multi-level shopping malls to subterranean experimental labs to power plants. There is so much thought and care put into this game, and it is a joy to see the meticulous attention to detail. All of these reasons makes it even more painful that I rather disliked actually playing the game. The biggest complaint about the game I've seen is that while the detailed maps are great on paper, they often are incredibly confusing to actually navigate. The game doesn't do a good job conveying what the current goal is or what you're looking for, so you will be spending a great deal of time retracing your steps throughout these office building maps looking for a single switch that opens the way forward. Rather than redo the entire map design, I think the developers can remedy this by making the in-game map more aggressive at logging points of interest. As it stands, the map does autofill as you play, and will note down locked doors and such, but you practically need to interact with the door for it to register on the map. If you missed seeing it in real time yourself, the map likely did as well. If they made the map pick up things more readily, lost players could consult it if needed. The game does use green lights as a subtle indicator to the player for which way to go, but this isn't something I figured out until several hours in, and in some labyrinthine levels this strategy doesn't apply. My other personal issue with the game is I just don't like the feel of the game. Now, I've been on record saying I don't like most FPS games -- so take this with a grain of salt -- but I found that enemies were much too spongy for my liking, and most of them fire standard, unavoidable bullets, so your health quickly melts away. Later levels actually were a bit more enjoyable as they had more melee enemies which I found more preferable to fight. As I said though, this feeling is not unique for me, but I was somewhat disappointed I didn't like this game more, as it checks so many boxes. Despite being listed as Early Access, this game is also rather substantial, with additional levels coming. So while I personally didn't care all that much for it, I would still strongly recommend it to those who are interested.

Ys II Chronicles (PC)

I played the first Ys game a few months ago and rather enjoyed myself. It's a bit dated, but I enjoyed the combat style and the visuals of the remake. The first two games often come bundled together it seems, so I decided to try the sequel as well. I can see now why they're sold together, as aside from a few new mechanics, Ys II is extraordinarily similar to the first game. Same visual style, same combat, same menu system. The only new substantial mechanic is a magic system, where protagonist Adol can utilize a number of different spells. There are only five in total, and only one offensive spell, so it's not a terribly robust mechanic. Overall my enthusiasm for the second game is a lot weaker than the first. To be honest its mechanics just got a bit tiring. I still do enjoy the combat, but the labyrinthine world design is just a slog to navigate through. In Ys I I was at least able to complete a few dungeons before consulting a map, in Ys II there is no chance at all, it's incredibly confusing. I'll also admit that I really wasn't able to follow the plot at all. There are a number of supporting characters in your adventure, but none of them really stand out at all, to the point where I couldn't tell any of them apart when they all gathered together. Still, the more I played of the game the more I liked it, and I'm still curious to see how the series evolved after the first two titles, as I hear there is a big divergence in style. Both games get a solid recommendation from me, but expect to be glued to a map the whole time.

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail (PC)

After playing catch up with Final Fantasy XIV for the past two years, I'm finally present and ready for the latest expansion, Dawntrail. Our intrepid heroes travel to the New World(tm) to embark on a new adventure with grand political implication. Or so the marketing would tell you. This expansion has been receiving mixed reviews with some frustrated with the character and plot development, while others saying this is the exciting start of a new era. For context, the prior expansion, Endwalker, wrapped up the major arc that had been going since the game's beginning. While some elements remain open, this expansion could not rely on what had been built before, and instead had to usher in the next era of the game. To that end, I found Dawntrail to be very... mediocre. From the beginning to end, in just about everything it did, I found it rather mid. The game's plot is split roughly into two halves. In the first, you and some of your party are recruited by newcomer Wuk Lamat to assist her in an Amazing Race-esque competition to be chosen as the next Dawnservant, the leader of their nation. Also competing are her two elder brothers -- one secretive and militaristic, the other a reserved technophile -- and a boisterous strongman character, who I guess won a contest or something in order to be allowed to compete. This competition wraps up by the halfway point, so the second half instead deals more with the established mythos of the game thus far, and deals with the aftermath of an attack from an otherworldly realm.

If you've followed criticism of the game, Wuk Lamat is very much at the center of it. I actually rather like her character, but it does seem like the writers were excited to have a new toy to play with and made her overwhelmingly the focus. To the point where anytime your party would briefly split up, you would always be paired off to go with Wuk Lamat, leading to an overexposure of her and a lack of development with anyone else. The entire adventure is reminiscent of Final Fantasy X in a way, but her character development doesn't seem as well done as other attempts. She starts out as a naive, idealistic pacifist wanting to continue the current Dawnservant's ways, and by the end of the game she's a slightly less naive, idealistic pacifist wanting to continue the current Dawnservant's ways. She has a bit of growth, but never really has to earn it or have any struggles of her own. Every time there's a conflict, she gives a speech about working together, and that typically does the trick. Contrast this with Alphinaud's arc in A Realm Reborn into Heavensward, where this naive idealistic kid gets a taste of the real world and has to re-evaluate himself after. Wuk Lamat undergoes none of this conflict, so while I did like her spunk and what the writers had planned for her, I can't say it stuck the landing.

The latter half of the game introduces a few new twists and some more concrete villains. Again, these figures worked well for me on paper, but in practice I found them a bit flat. I don't wish to spoil too much, but a lot of the logistical aspects of this new region doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, and I think the writers knew that. There were several moments where I was yelling at the screen, hoping the characters would ask very logical, basic questions about the world they found themselves in. Instead, they just went along for the ride and sure enough these elements ended up having a nefarious purpose later in the story. This happens a few times and really started to sour me on the storyline. Sadly, the gameplay isn't without scrutiny either. This has been a long time coming I think, but the quest design really needs to be spiced up. Someone compared this game to becoming more and more of a visual novel, and it's honestly true. You will spend very little time actually playing the game, and mostly just walking to a quest, completing three uninteresting subtasks, then finishing the quest. Repeat ad nauseum. The pacing is pretty rough too, they have you performing tedious tasks literally right up to the final boss, which emotionally and structurally didn't work for me. I think they really need to rework how quests are delivered to the players. This system of dialogue dump followed by walking to various subtasks for some uninteresting reason is really dragging the series down. This has honestly been a problem for many years now, but the lack of an engaging plot has really brought it to the forefront.

I have a lot of minor thoughts about various events, but overall this is my general takeaway of the game. It's not the worst expansion thus far -- the early roughness of A Realm Reborn and the wild inconsistency of Stormblood puts this above them for me -- but it definitely didn't excite me. It doesn't have very low lows, but it also doesn't have very high highs. I enjoyed my time with it, but I think the developers are going to need to retool some things for the next expansion another two years from now.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (PSV)

This is the first title in the Danganronpa series, and aside from vaguely recognizing a few characters, I didn't know much about it. A surprisingly accurate description of the game is that it is a combination of Zero Escape and Ace Attorney. It has the crime scene investigation followed with logical deduction aspects from Ace Attorney, mixed with the plot of everyone trapped in a facility trying to figure out which one of their fellow prisoners is trying to kill them all. Sadly though, I don't think this game is as good as either of those series, although I did end up liking this title more than I would've expected. It's strongest suit is the visuals. While the characters typically only have a few pieces of keyart, the animations, transitions between rooms, and occasional cutscenes are rather flashy and serve to distinguish the game. The music is also pretty solid as well. The characters themselves are... a mixed bag. I did enjoy the player character as well as a majority of the others. Each has their own over-exaggerated quirk, and for most characters this ranges from "stoic but capable" to "surprising junk food addict". There are a handful though that are just terrible, and I was surprised how over-used they remained to be. However, a game like this is made entirely by its plot which for the most part is pretty compelling. 15 students wake up to find themselves barricaded in their high school, with a mechanical stuffed animal telling them they need to get away with murder to escape. It's a fun premise in a well thought out setting, but I again kept negatively comparing it to Zero Escape. I think that game is just much more streamlined. No lull in the drama to do slice of life stuff, no awful anime-esque innuendos every few minutes. It had a sense of anxiety throughout that Danganronpa doesn't. Perhaps worst of all, I found the ending here to be completely awful. They had hinted quite a bit at the over-arcing mystery going on behind the scenes, but it's one that I didn't like the entire build up, and ended up hating in the end. I won't reveal too much, but it just adds an element to the story that I think is meant to be bittersweet, but ends up both comical and somewhat ruining the impact of the game. They also fall into a trap somewhat common in Japanese games where they overload a basic concept and try and give it some grandiose meaning -- think how often someone says "darkness" in Kingdom Hearts for example. Overall, I would lightly recommend the game, but I'm not going to run out and play the sequels either.

Metroid Prime 3 (Wii)

The early days of the Wii were a wild time, with game developers trying some really aggressive ideas of how to utilize the Wiimote, a controller more button-limited than most, but with motion and pointer support that hadn't really been seen in the industry. Within a few years, developers came to the conclusion that requiring players to precisely hold their hands in the same, pointed position for hours on end was a bad thing, but in the beginning, this was uncharted territory. On a totally unrelated note, I have finally finished Metroid Prime 3, an early Wii game which utilizes the Wiimote to more accurately aim Samus's shots. I was always under the impression that Metroid Prime 2 was the lackluster one in the trilogy, but I have to admit, I think MP3 is probably the weakest of the three. Positives first though -- it's a Metroid Prime game. It inherits the great environmental and atmospheric elements from its predecessors and attempts to build upon them. Here, I think elements of Halo snuck in and they wanted to be a bit more cinematic than in previous entries. There's interactable human characters with voice lines, your ship is now a gameplay mechanic, and other bounty hunters even make an appearance. The addition of the ship -- typically an interesting gameplay addition -- does segment the map a lot more than the previous games. Since Samus can now fly/fast travel between different regions, there is no need for the map to be a single, continuous region. Instead, Samus visits different planets in this game, which is a positive from an atmospheric aspect, but somewhat ruins the flow of the game. I was relying on the voice-over "scans" to tell me where I needed to go next, as the map didn't really encourage exploration or backtracking nearly as well as others in the series. The Phazon-induced hypermode abilities I found to be a bit hit or miss -- they take away your health to fire, making their use a net negative to use -- but I really liked how the eponymous "corruption" affected Samus. Aside from the prologue, you only have the single suit throughout the game, but as she becomes steeped deeper and deeper into corruption, it takes on a different appearance. A well-known touch in the first Metroid Prime game is you can see Samus's face reflected in the HUD on occasion. There, it was a neat piece of flair, but in this game Samus's face can been to have increased veins and disfigurement as the game plays on. Finally, as I alluded to, this game physically hurt my hand to play for more than an hour at a time. They really took advantage of the precise pointing aspects of the controller, which really is neat for a lot of the game, but just clunky enough that I never felt physically comfortable playing it. While I never played it, I always assumed the Metroid Prime Trilogy release was the best way to play all three games. I no longer feel that way, and hope someday MP3 gets a Remaster release as well.

4 / 5

Portal (1986) (Amiga)

Portal (no, not that one) is an early visual novel written for a number of early personal computer platforms, including the Atari ST, MS-DOS, Apple II and Mac, and the platform I played it on, Commodore Amiga. The premise of the game reminds me of Her Story, where your character's role is barely defined, instead the player more or less is the player character as you solve a mystery by interacting with a computer terminal. In this case, the game takes place in the early 22nd century, and the framing device is that you are an astronaut returned to Earth after 100 years, only to find the planet completely deserted. You come in contact with the various subsystems of "Worldnet", the global computer system that monitored humanity. Worldnet is broken up into twelve categories, with the gameplay requiring you to periodically check each of these systems to see if new logs have appeared, which adds to the story. These categories range from History, Scitech, Psitech (as in psychic), Geography, and more, with the most notable of them being "Homer", a storytelling AI which is your main point of contact, constructing the narrative of what happened to humanity. The writing feels very much like a classic sci-fi novel, and presents a speculative future examining privacy, utopias, world surveillance, and ESP and psychic abilities, because it's a 1980s sci-fi, so of course it does. I was surprised at the level of detail in the writing, and how the various subsystems were incorporated into the world building. Without getting too into it, it's revealed that humanity all vanished in an event known as the "Migration", instigated by one Peter Devore, a young man who somewhat unintentionally was given access to classified psychic research. He uses this knowledge to come into psychic contact with a woman named Wanda, who is in cryogenic sleep on her way to the star Vega. Peter and his followers build upon these principles, often opposing the establishment who fears what may become of their experiments. It's an interesting and unique narrative, if sometimes a bit poorly paced. The biggest issue with the game (aside from actually getting it to run these days) is the UX. You're not notified when some new log is added, so you have to one by one check each of the twelve subsystems to see if anything is new so that you can progress (although four of the subsystems is just flavor and don't need to be checked). It seems the authors agreed with the clunkiness of actually playing the game, as the story was adapted into a traditional novel later, although I haven't read it. It's an interesting story in the end, one written with different sensibilities and focal points than you find these days. It's difficult to say whether you'd lose anything by just reading the novel. Most of the game is just text or monochrome images (the Amiga version does have color, but it's not well utilized. The Mac port doesn't even have color at all), and combined with the tedium of actually getting access to the next entry, I'm not sure it adds much. However, I can see how this would be quite impactful when released in 1986, and I think there are some people who have very fond memories of this title to this day.

Omaze (PD)

Omaze is a Playdate maze game heavily centered around circles. You are a circle and by turning the crank you move around the perimeter of larger circles, in an attempt to navigate across to the final circle. Each circle along your path features one or more clever obstacles, such as auto-rotation, enemies that chase you, or walls that disappear when the crank is docked, among others. It's a short but really clever puzzle game. I will admit that it can be a bit finicky to control, as some of the levels require using the crank and hitting the A and B buttons in quick succession, which makes getting a comfortable grip on the device difficult. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and I think it's the best Playdate game I've tried so far by a wide margin.

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (PS5)

This game was one of my most anticipated of the year, and I ended up with a lot of mixed feelings about it. On paper, every aspect of this game is really well done. I think that Final Fantasy VII has one of the best stories and characters in the series, and this game really utilizes them well, something some of the other previous spin-offs struggled with. The combat is similar to the previous Remake entry, which I enjoyed when it was released. The graphics, some initial blurry issues aside, are top notch. All that being said, there are some games that I think are better than the sum of their parts, but my big takeaway from this title is that I found it weaker than the sum of its parts. A lot of this is due to the pacing of the game. The first half of the game has a lot of minigames, many of them adapted from the original FF7. This isn't a bad thing on their own, but I honestly think in the first 10 hours of the game, you'll be playing more mandatory minigames than core gameplay. It really highlights the fact that this isn't a complete story, but the middle section of Final Fantasy VII, expanded so that it has its own beginning, middle, and end. This expansion goes better than one would expect, but does lead to some unique issues. The game sets up some mysteries, and it's a little frustrating to know they won't be resolved until a third game years in the future (and even worse for some things established in Remake). I think the second half of the game is a lot tighter focused, as it leaves the distractions and campiness behind. The new aspects to Rebirth, as opposed to Remake, are the large open world areas, and some changes to the gameplay. The open world is.. fine. It feels like a bog standard modern open world, complete with towers to visit to reveal new points of interest. They're easy enough to avoid if you don't find them interesting, and I found them mainly to be a checklist to complete. I do want to highlight the changes they're making to the story across this new trilogy. There are some players who seem opposed to the idea of any changes at all. I personally view that remaking a game gives the chance to tweak not just the visuals and gameplay, but potentially the story as well. The impression I got from Remake was that this was potentially a secret sequel to Final Fantasy VII, and that could be an interesting change. With two thirds of the new story behind us, I'm afraid to say I'm not crazy about the approach they're taking. I don't want to reveal too much, but despite Zack Fair being on the cover, he served very little purpose. His inclusion I could overlook (so long as they don't add any of the awful Crisis Core villains), but I think the changes they made to the ending segments are pretty awful. Not only does it take away from the impact of Sephiroth as the overall villain -- the same mistake they made in Remake, in my opinion -- but it also somewhat muddies what is this game's most famous legacy. There is a vision here, and a desire to keep audiences in suspense, but in the end I was just left with confusion. This review might sound a bit negative, but I do want to express that I did enjoy myself. It's rare these days that I find myself playing through a game for hours on end, but often when I went to save I would be surprised that an hour had gone by. It's because I had such high hopes for this game -- and the high reviews from others -- that I found it a bit lackluster. If I'm being honest, I didn't like it as much as Remake, I didn't like it as much as the original FF7, and what I'm sure is going to be somewhat controversial, I didn't like it as much as Final Fantasy XVI.

Inventory Hero (PD)

Another game among the upper echelon of Playdate titles, Inventory Hero is a fun and fast paced game where you simply maintain the inventory of a hero on his quest. You can watch said hero fight waves of enemies on the top of the screen, but your job is to either use or discard the items that are automatically gathered. You have six possibly inventory slots, which can be filled with armor and weapons to equip, food and potions to drink, or just straight junk that must be discarded. It's a really cute game and I really enjoy the premise and the gameplay. It doesn't have a huge amount of replayability, especially since you'll hit the end of any additional content pretty quickly in a run, but I still think it's more replayable than the majority of Playdate titles. The artwork is really well done and the music isn't half bad either. Definitely one of my favorite Playdate games thus far.

Cat Quest (PC)

Cat Quest is a cute action RPG where you play as a young cat adventurer trying to rescue his lost sister. The game is interesting stylistically, as it's portrayed as if you're walking around a traditional overworld map, with labels and icons displayed on the ground below you. The combat is simple but straight-forward, with only attack, dodge, and some magic spells made available to you. The game doesn't feature any deep mechanics or plot, but it's also not trying to be. It wants to be a light hearted adventure game where you solve silly quests and make cat puns, and it does that with flying colors. The structure of the game can be a bit uneven though, but it doesn't overstay it's welcome. I'm not sure if there's enough here to justify two sequels, so I suspect they expand upon the gameplay quite a bit, but what is here is an enjoyable if brief experience.

Doom Eternal (PC)

I've said in a number of reviews that I'm not a big fan of FPS games, but really I've quietly come to the conclusion that I do like "boomer shooters". Fast, crazy high paced gameplay where you're expected to run around strafing the enemies and collecting health, not hiding behind cover for most of the fights. The recent Doom game revivals embody this philosophy very well, and I've really taken a liking to both their new games. Doom Eternal exemplifies this gameplay very well, featuring about a dozen enemy types you learn how to combat and avoid, eight weapons with various powerups and alternate modes, and a level design meant to invoke a sense of fighting in an arena. It's a really fun and action packed game and is right up my alley. I had actually heard some negative rumblings about this game compared to the 2016 Doom title, but I thought it was on par with that game. I didn't mind the platforming sections, as they never overstayed their welcome and were a nice break from the action. I do have two complaints about this game though. Firstly, the game is balanced around having a full arsenal of weapons. You actually run through your ammunition pretty quickly, but the game gives mechanics making almost all weapons viable, and for replenishing your supplies at once. However, in the first level or two you only have two weapons, meaning you're going to be running out of ammo constantly. Once they give you your third or so weapon, the balance begins to work out, but that first level or two does not give a good first impression. My other issue is the length. Not so much the length of the overall game, although it did just start to drag a bit, but the lengths of the individual levels. I would often play for a bit before dinner or during lunch breaks, and I don't think I ever finished a level in one sitting. It doesn't matter too much, as they're pretty generous with checkpoints and you can quit and resume right back at your most recent checkpoint, but playing through the same level without any indication of when it's going to end gets a bit tiring. There's also more of a plot in this one, but it doesn't really matter and I didn't follow anything that was happening in it. Overall, a strong recommendation for Doom Eternal for me, and I think I need to start re-evaluating which FPS games I should invest in playing.

Binairo (PD)

Now that I'm (mostly) done with the first season of Playdate games, it's time to branch out and see what the rest of the platform has on offer. First up is Binairo, a Sudoku-esque game that isn't available from the Playdate catalog, it instead must be downloaded from Itch.io and sideloaded. Similar to Sudoku, you have either a 6x6 or 8x8 grid of cells that must be filled. These can only be filled with a 0 or a 1, and there are a few simple rules to govern how these can be positioned. This includes things like not having three in a row of any symbol, all rows and columns must be unique, and there must be a matching number of 0s and 1s in every row and column. The game auto-populates enough cells to make the puzzle solvable and off you go. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but I found myself really addicted to this game. There are only a few modes -- easy or hard on either 6x6 or 8x8 sizes -- but it was enough diversity to keep me coming back, even though all the levels are randomly generated. It's a game that is suited very well for the Playdate, and this version is very well implemented. I was particularly impressed with the hint system, which is intelligent enough to always provide the next cell to fill, as well as an explanation as to why that was the next correct move. It's a great implementation of a system that really helps the player get better at the game. There are a few visual bugs, and not all randomly generated puzzle is equal in difficulty, but these are minor complaints for what I think is one of the best puzzle games I've played on the platform to date. It's marginally more annoying to install over downloading a catalog title, but I would recommend this to all Playdate owners, you can't beat free.

Metal Gear Solid (GBC)

Despite sharing a name, this isn't a Game Boy Color version of its more famous PS1 cousin. It's actually a non-canonical sequel to the original Metal Gear where Solid Snake is dragged out of his cozy Alaskan retirement to once again stop a Metal Gear from running amok at Outer Heaven. There's no Shadow Moses Island here, although some familiar MGS personnel do appear, like Colonel Campbell and Mei Ling. While playing much like the original Metal Gear titles, this game does have some improvements over those. For one, the animations are really great in this. Snake has buttery smooth animations, and the enemies have a large number of turning and looking around animations that expertly convey their intentions, even when their faces are literally a single pixel. In typical Metal Gear fashion, it also does a good job incorporating the items you find into your environments, such as using boxes to hide and solve puzzles, equipment to see in the dark, and an arsenal of weaponry to utilize. Also in typical Metal Gear fashion, this game manages to pack in a detailed narrative featuring quite a bit of dialogue about the nature of war, global conspiracies for world power, and just some awkward conversations about love and revenge. There is quite a lot of content here, and I think it's safe to say that this is easily one of the best games on the Game Boy. The levels do become a bit labyrinthine at times, and the final boss is a horrible spike in difficulty, but aside from that, it's a really well made and well crafted entry to the series. Strange how it was non-canonical even when it was released though, I suppose it's Japanese title of Metal Gear: Ghost Babel really would've fit better.

Ys I Chronicles (PC)

Playing a JRPG from the 1980s is always a bit of a gamble. Some of them have interesting mechanics, but often include some crazy level design or tedious elements. I was a bit surprised to find out that I really like Ys I. A lot of this is due to its "bump mechanic" combat system. Rather than a traditional turn-based or action RPG system, your character will auto attack whenever you bump into an enemy. This is apparently a controversial mechanic, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some turn-based RPGs allow you to automatically win a fight if you're a high enough level by just touching an enemy. There, it's meant to be a great reward that you get to avoid a tedious fight against an underleveled opponent. Here, that's the entire game! I had a great time just bulldozing enemies and racking up XP. The music has clearly been remixed for this release, and I found the OST to be really well done. Atmospheric when it needs to be, but high octane during combat areas. The plot isn't the best in the world, it's about what you'd expect for a game from the 1980s. A lot of traditional fantasy tropes, but it's serviceable and kept my attention. There are some downsides to this game though. Firstly, the game is very short. I think if you know what you're doing you could probably finish it in less than an hour. There's only three towns to visit, three or four dungeons, and some overworld areas. The game does utilize these well though, and had a good sense of progression, even though you only max out at level 10. The biggest criticism is easily the dungeons though. Some of the earlier ones aren't bad, but the last one in particular is incredibly long and convoluted. Lots of branching paths and confusing similar rooms. I honestly didn't realize I was making progress at first, as they reuse the same room design for the external areas of the dungeon, so I thought I was endlessly looping. They also pull the horrible stunt of requiring a previously unmentioned item to access the final boss, requiring you to backtrack 2/3 of the final dungeon to find the one room where it's located, and of course they don't tell you what you're looking for. The final mark against this game are the bosses. These boss designs are shockingly poor, especially the earlier ones. They're a masterclass in how not to design a boss fight, but fortunately none of them are particularly long, so failure doesn't result in too much time lost. Overall, I quite enjoyed this game. In most collections these days, including the one I got, it comes bundled with Ys II. I'll be playing that one soon, and I'm eager to see how the story continues and if the original developers learned anything from their experience making the first game.

Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

The game that I personally have owned the longest is the first Harry Potter game for Game Boy Color. I got it new when it released, and at the time I thought it was a spectacular glimpse into the world. You could explore Hogwarts castle and the grounds, learn and cast spells, and recreate events from the book. Things have changed over the past 20 years, and part of me is awestruck at the level of detail Hogwarts Legacy manages to accomplish. The vibes are immaculate, as they say. You get to customize your character, choose your house, and live the life like those in the books. The castle itself is different than portrayed in the films, but manages to be exactly as you would hope, feeling lively and mysterious at the same time. The game does fall into some AAA trappings though, as while they created Hogwarts and Hogsmeade as you'd expect, the developers also included the entire region around the castle. This includes several valleys, dungeons, and hamlets in the surrounding areas. It's not a bad addition per say, but it does feel a bit unnecessary. There were moments as I walked through the exterior areas where it dawned on me that they had tried to create their own Witcher game, but without the elements that made that game stand out. Instead, the exterior areas quickly dominate both the main and side quests, and as the game goes on, you'll find yourself spending less and less time inside the castle itself. I think this is quite the shame. The appeal of Harry Potter wasn't really the plot for me, it was the idea of living in a magical school. This game has managed to create that setting well, but you seldom interact with that setting. I think you only actually attend one lesson for each class, and you never meet your fellow housemates of your age (a side effect of having all four houses playable). This compounds the fact that the plot frankly isn't very good. There's an evil goblin threat running around, and an ancient mystery to uncover, but the trials you go through as the game goes on are just that -- trials governed by magical portraits who force you to prove yourself. This felt a bit arbitrary and the secret they were hiding wasn't that interesting from a story perspective. Still, the combat was fun enough and fleshed out, the world was just as you would hope, so I could see why this game sold as well as it did. I hope the inevitable sequel focuses things a bit tighter. As a final note, locking the final cutscene of the game behind a level barrier several levels higher than what is required to fight the final boss is a really annoying choice.

Lumines Remastered (PC)

I'm really bad at Tetris, like shockingly bad. I have just enough brain power to figure out where the piece should go in the tiny amount of time allotted, let alone planning for pieces in the future. Due to that, I've never really been a fan of falling block games, although Lumines really made me change my mind. Perhaps more similar to Puyo Puyo than Tetris, Lumines has you stacking up 2x2 bicolored blocks in an attempt to create rectangles of like-colored regions. Blocks don't break until a cyclical vertical line passes over their region, allowing for some interesting delayed mechanics. It's just what I like in a puzzle game, quick to understand but difficult to master, and honestly I think this is one of the best examples in the genre. Combine the fun mechanics with some great music and visuals and this game lives up to its reputation. The Remaster version of the game also has quite a selection of extra modes, including things like puzzles and challenges. One thing I do dislike is how progression is handled. As gameplay continues, the game will cycle through different "skins". These not only change the visuals and background music, but also the speed of the gameplay. The longer you survive, the more skins you'll see and unlock in other modes. However, in the main mode the skins always occur in the same order, meaning you'll become very familiar with the first few and likely never encounter the last. Add to this the fact that each Lumines run is surprisingly long. I think my best runs made it around 40%-50% through all the skins and they took around 45 minutes. To make it through a full run and unlock every skin would thus take somewhere close to 2 hours, which is a bit much for a falling block game. That being said, if the worst complaint I have about the game is "there's too much content", perhaps that's not a bad thing.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

I've always gotten the impression that Circle of the Moon is the black sheep of the Castlevania series. Compared to the other GBA or DS titles, I've not heard many good things about it, to the point where I wasn't sure if it was a Metroidvania going in. This is to say that I wasn't expecting much out of this game, but to my surprise I actually really enjoyed CotM. It's no Aria of Sorrow, don't get me wrong, but it's a solid entry in the series with its own interesting mechanics. The highlight of the game is the "DSS" system, where the player can collect different cards that grant new abilities. In some ways, it feels like a prototype of the system Aria would later use. Unlike in Aria though, not every enemy can drop an ability, it's only a select few. To make up for this though, there are two types of cards, one based on Roman gods and the other on mythical creatures. The player can choose one of each so that their abilities mix, creating interesting combinations. For example, the Mercury card always modifies your whip, and Salamander gives fire abilities, so when both are equipped you gain a fire whip. There's 10 of each type in total, yielding 100 different combinations. At the end of the day, this might be functionally similar to how Aria does it, but I have always loved this sort of mechanic. It's only done in a few other games I've played -- such as Kirby 64 or Gunstar Heroes -- but I really like the feeling of mixing two abilities and seeing the result. It adds a level of intrigue that I really enjoy, more so than if they just had 100 different abilities for you to find. It's the one area I think this game shines over the others in the series. As for the rest, it's not bad. The level and enemy design will be familiar to anyone who has played the other games in the series, although they hadn't figured out the idea of putting a save room right before a boss, or healing you after you defeat one (a strange omission, given they did this back in the original Castlevania). The game has a lot of unlockable modes as well, although for a first run you're limited to only using the whip. Some enemies do have some weird hitboxes with the whip, which is probably the game's biggest fault. They hadn't quite gotten the physics gotten down yet, both in how your character attacks and moves. You move very slowly -- at least until you get the dash move -- yet jump really high. I can kinda see why some people wouldn't like this game, but it ticked a lot of my boxes. This was the last GBA/DS Castlevania game I had yet to beat, and it's probably in my top half. I might just have weird opinions though, I hated Order of Ecclesia when I played it last year, yet that one is cited by many as their favorite.

Tony Hawk's Underground (GC)

Future historians will study the time when the world briefly transitioned into a skateboard-based economy with great interest. Set during this great age is Tony Hawk's Underground, I game I was convinced to play for "Hawktober", a good a reason as any. I actually never got into the Tony Hawk games as a kid, as I always found them surprisingly tricky to play. I would say that was somewhat the case here as well, but I was pleased that I eventually got the hang of the gameplay and enjoyed myself much more than I thought I would. I can't help but make comparisons to other games I've played, and in this case The Simpson's: Hit and Run is probably the closest to this style of game, although I suspect that game was directly inspired by the Tony Hawk formula. This game features a series of sandbox maps with missions you must complete to progress to the next story beat. Throughout your journey you'll make a name for yourself, meet a collection of apparently famous skateboarders from the 2000s, and constantly get put down by your piece of shit friend. Honestly, it's a dated game, but a really fun one. For a semi-physics based game though, it's a bit twitchier than I would've liked, and I think it overstays its welcome ever so slightly at the end, but given that I had no interest in the series at all, I must say I finally understand what all the hype was about 20 years ago.

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania (PC)

Vampire Survivors is a game that is a thinly-veiled Castlevania reference, pretty directly ripping off its weapons, enemies, and character types from the older series. It seems that Konami didn't mind though, as the two companies have joined together to bring real licensed Castlevania content to the game. This crossover is actually quite extensive. It's only a single stage, but that stage is one of the most elaborate in the game, featuring familiar locales and bosses from games across the series. Speaking of extensive, pretty much every single Castlevania protagonist is here. From Leon to Simon to Richter to Julius Belmont, as well as a number of supporting characters. It's funny to me that there haven't been Castlevania games in several years now, and the most recent ones were weird reboot titles. If I have my math right, there hasn't been a mainline Castlevania game since Order of Ecclesia back on the DS. Yet this game embraces that history and really lets in shine in away that Konami hasn't done in nearly two decades. Even with a bajillion characters, Vampire Survivors does a great job giving each character their own unique weapon to use -- although there are a lot of whip variations now. Castlevania is famous for its music, and this game has some of the best remixes I've heard, including some lesser known bangers. It's clearly a love letter to the franchise, and a really good time. However, I do have a fairly major complaint, and that is the progression system. In order to see the credits of the expansion, and they do exist, you have to unlock nearly all the Castlevania characters. That's obviously the point of this DLC, but where this game fails a bit is how the unlock mechanics for the vast majority of the characters is either "last X number of minutes" or "fully evolve up their item". This means you're going to be doing a lot of runs where the only difference is which item you need to consciously focus on. The Castlevania stage is neat and all, but I was able to make my way through it after only a few runs, leaving the next dozen+ runs as repetitive grinding sessions. I think they could've come up with more unique ideas than they did, even without changing the gameplay at all, that would've made me more excited to try out new characters. Instead, by the end I was quite literally filling out a checklist. Still, a bit of tedium aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this DLC and my return to the game, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

UFO 50 (PC)

I've been rather surprised by the reception for this game. I'll admit that I hadn't heard of this prior to its release. However, it's quickly gained a positive word-of-mouth reputation, with many acclaiming it as one of the best indie games of the year. UFO 50 is a collection of 50 retro-styled games, with the in-universe explanation that they're the works of a fictional studio throughout the late 1980s. I'm not surprised that there are people out there who would love the idea of this, but I am surprised how many people have been drawn to this collection. I would've assumed that this game would've attracted only a niche audience, those that are into the NES or Master System style, but I've been proven wrong. As for me, I'll admit I found this to be literally a mixed bag. On the surface, the presentation is excellent. You are given a menu with each of the 50 games which you are free to choose between. They range from a wide variety of genres -- shmups, sports, point and click, platformers, driving, and more. Each not only has a defined ending, but additional optional objectives (which the game refers to as "cherries"). It's a very ambitious and impressive assortment. "Later" games make occasional references to earlier ones, as a real world developer would do, and some of the titles are very imaginative. However, as I played through them, I favorited the ones I found particularly enjoyable or unique, and ended up with 15 out of the 50, of which I finished two and cherried one. This relatively low rate betrays my biggest issue with the collection -- many of the games I just didn't particularly enjoy. That isn't to say they're all bad, in fact as a whole they're all very well made. There's just a lot of items I found more tedious than fun. After the 10th title with an in-game store they all begin to run together. It's a collection I think I'll dip into when I have some spare time, but I imagine trying to complete every objective would be an exercise in RNG and harsh controls. I do want to highlight some I found particularly enjoyable. Night Manor is a horror point-and-click title, and in my opinion far and away the best game of the 50. It helps that it's genre is very different than the others, but it's really the only game I felt I would've been happy to purchase on its own, and it single-handedly raised the rating I gave the whole collection. Appropriately, it's the only game I achieved the cherry ending. Hyper Contender was the other one I beat, a platforming combat game. I put quite a bit of time into Warptank as well, although its campaign is surprisingly long, so I haven't completed it yet. As a final thought, I would like to encourage anyone who found UFO 50 engaging to explore the wide assortment of Pico-8 titles out there. It's perhaps my fondness for them that has somewhat spoiled me -- I would say a collection of the top 50 Pico-8 titles would surpass the games here in creativity and uniqueness -- although they have the advantage of being developed by a broad range of creators.

4.5 / 5

Persona 5 Royal (PC)

I'm typically of the opinion that "less is more" when it comes to games, and that a longer playtime does not equal a better experience. I honestly resisted playing this game for quite a while simply because I knew how much of a time sink it was, despite its positive reviews. Well, now that it's all said and done, it was both as long as I expected, and as good as I had heard. In Persona 5 Royal, you play as a Japanese high school student with the codename of "Joker", as he is forced to transfer schools following an assault charge he was framed for (a setup that always felt a bit flimsy. Where are his parents??). The game is half Japanese high school social simulator, as you make friends with other students and people around town to boost your stats, and half turn-based RPG as Joker and his party travel into the subconscious of ne'er-do-wells to compulse them into having a "change of heart". These subconscious "palaces" serve as the game's dungeons, with the day-to-day activities providing much of the plot. First and foremost, I want to stress how stylish this game is. From its animations to designs to especially its UI, this game just oozes flair and is probably a major contributor to its success. The characters are all really likeable, with your party members in particular being very memorable and interesting with their own unique quirks. I do want to give a special shoutout to the voice acting in this game. If you took a look at it, you would assume it would have pretty "anime" acting, a style I'm not really a fan of, but the acting in this game is superb and really elevates the characters across the board. That isn't to say there aren't some unlikeable allies, and the ability to romance any of the female "confidants" leads to some... unfortunate pairings, such as a doctor, a middle schooler, and your high school teacher moonlighting as a French maid. The villains are all pretty compelling too, with their evil ways well exposed to the player so that they feel both a threat and deserving of having their deeds exposed. The extra Royal villain in particular is really interesting, and much less black and white than the others. That being said, I was wary of a long game losing my attention, and near the end it does begin to drag on. It's not too bad for the original Persona 5 content, but the extra Royal chapter, interesting as it was, feels a bit tacked on, and I had to force myself to continue doing the day to day social stuff once more. If I had to give any other criticism, I never really jelled with the combat system. It's similar to Pokemon in a number of ways, such as capturing enemy "personas" for your team and exploiting enemy type weaknesses, but I found the fusing system a bit confusing and ended up just creating a team with a variety of types, rather than focusing on any one persona. This is a minor criticism though, as it easily held my attention, and I'm very interested in playing the other Persona titles... after a break.

The Talos Principle II (PC)

Set centuries after the original Talos Principle, its sequel centers on the civilization created by the protagonist of the first game (retroactively named "Athena") after they escaped into the real world. You play as the 1000th android "born" into this civilization, named 1k (everyone else got to pick their names except you I guess). The 1000th android was a targeted milestone in their culture, and your arrival sparks debate of tradition versus progress. Much like the first game, TP2 deals heavily with concepts of philosophy, although I think it's done much better in this game. I found the philosophy in the first game to be a lot of words without much meaning that had little to do with the plot. Here, by creating actual situations and characters, there is some weight behind the concepts they want to convey... even if I'm not sure they quite stuck the landing with the ending. While all this debate about the future of robot-kind goes on, you and a few others explore a series of mysterious structures seemingly created by Athena, now gone missing. These are the puzzles of the game, which I feel are superbly done. I'm a big fan of pure puzzle games which require you to sit back and think for a few moments. These expertly use the concepts and objects to create interesting and unique scenarios. While its predecessor also excelled in this regard, I think the sequel is a tad bit better, although I think some of its backdrops aren't quite as interesting. They add new objects and puzzle types that are interesting, and remove the ones that didn't work in the original (like those proximity bombs). There's a wide gambit of mandatory and optional puzzles, which I enjoyed enough to complete, earning the player a slightly different ending. While androids obsessed with philosophy is a bit of a tired trope, this game does it well, and overall it's one of the best puzzle games I've played in a while.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (NS)

Unlike most of the modern Prince of Persia games, which are 3D affairs, The Lost Crown is a metroidvania. It confusingly doesn't star the Prince of Persia, but one of his elite soldiers, Sargon, as he faces a conspiracy within his own ranks to rescue the Prince. Despite not starring the Prince, a character associated with time powers, Sargon too gains reality bending abilities as he travels throughout a mysterious mountain temple. The highlight of this game is its movement system. Sargon is incredibly nimble to control, and actions such as wall jumping or combo attacks are fun to learn but nuanced to master. As far as metroidvanias go, it probably has some of the best controls of any I've played. The game does a good job balancing combat encounters with environmental platform challenges, and I never felt the game was being unfair, but it also actually expected you to utilize your movement to its fullest potential. Any negatives I have towards the game are honestly minor nitpicks. The environments, while varied, aren't necessarily all that interesting, although there are some standout examples. I also never really got the hang of using the parry system, but I think that's becoming a trend with me in multiple games. This game goes a lot harder than it needed to, but I think it resulted in one of the best games this year.

Mass Effect (PS5)

I originally beat the first Mass Effect game about a decade ago, and to be honest I don't think I really appreciated it then. My poor laptop wasn't well suited to running the game, and my inexperience with shooters made for a cumbersome experience. Returning to it now, via the Legendary Edition remasters, my greatest impression is how good the world building is. You play as Cmd. Shepard, the first human soldier to join an elite arm of the galactic special services. You find yourself embroiled in a plot to continue a cyclical pattern of galactic genocide taking place over the course of millennia, and you have to make allies of various unique and interesting species to stop the threat. It's a game where your choices really do matter, both in how other characters treat you, but even towards who lives and dies and how the ending plays out. These choices can directly carry over to the sequel titles, giving a level of storytelling that even now hasn't really been surpassed. I really enjoyed the look of the future presented in this game, not just with the technology and alien races, but even things like how human fashion will evolve. It's a well thought out and cohesive vision. There are a variety of different combat methods, but those are somewhat locked depending on what class you choose at the beginning of the game, which is a bit of a shame. I ended up going pure third person shooter, which is rather enjoyable, if not terribly original. Any complaint I have towards this game is pretty minor. It's surprisingly shorter than I recall for one. I did nearly all the side quests available to me, but I think there's only five or six stages in the main campaign. The side quests have interest premises, but all take place in one of two copy pasted enemy bases, which can feel a bit silly. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable replay, and I'm looking forward to continuing on to the rest of the series, which I never got around to finishing back in the day.

Saturday Edition (PD)

I've enjoyed my time with the Playdate up until now, but while there are games I would say I enjoyed, there's always been the caveat that I enjoyed them as small indie games on a monochrome display. Saturday Edition is the first Playdate game that I would say is legitimately good, even if it weren't released on the Playdate. You play as John Kornfield, a man who claims to have been abducted by aliens, returned to Earth, resumed his normal life, and is increasingly involved in a series of mysterious disappearances in his city. It's a point-and-click style game, although there's not much actual pointing or clicking. You move between several points in the city, talking to NPCs and finding items which further the story. The UI is stylish and well done, with John only moving left or right, allowing the top of the screen to be used for notifying the player of an interactable. I really enjoyed the writing, you gain access to John's inner monologue as he begrudgingly deals with the situations he finds himself in, and both he and the overall story are charming and well written. I really sympathized with his character, and it's an approach to this type of story that isn't the most common. I think that statement applies to the entire plot. There are hints as to what is really happening sprinkled throughout, but the game still managed to subvert what I initially assumed was happening, while still remaining rewarding and organic. The game is admittedly a bit slow though, there's a lot of going back and forth between areas searching for what is new, and it might not seem like there's much happening in the middle chapters, but overall this is easily my favorite Playdate game to date.

Mass Effect 2 (PS5)

Continuing with my replay of the Mass Effect series comes everyone's favorite -- Mass Effect 2. It's been many years since I played it, so I was a bit surprised of the notable differences between it and the first title, both in how the game is structured and played. I was expecting to greatly prefer ME2, but I actually found the two about equal. I really prefer Mass Effect's more traditional RPG stat system and its heat-based weapons, versus ME2's approach to upgrades and limited ammunition. Mass Effect 2 I felt was much more character focused than the first title, with most of the "mandatory" missions being the recruitment and then loyalty missions for each character. It's a bit of a different story dynamic than I was expecting, but I grew to really enjoy this approach. I didn't do enough of the optional ME1 missions back in the day to really appreciate who they were setting Cerberus to be, and while I understand Shepard's reasoning for working with them better now, I do think they whitewashed them a bit in this -- they were injecting acid into POWs in the first game just to see what would happen after all. They could've followed the same basic story beats as the first Mass Effect, but instead they took their characters and story to a place that is less expected, but it paid off greatly for them in the end. Also I'll say it, I liked the Mako in ME1 and missed it.

Mass Effect 3 (PS5)

Unlike the first two Mass Effect games, I never played Mass Effect 3 back in the day. The only thing I really knew about it was that it has an awful ending. Turns out, ME3 is an excellent entry that lives up to the rest of the series... with an awful ending. I think between the three, this game might just slightly have my favorite combat, but just slightly the worst plot. The combat takes the system introduced in ME2 and modifies it just enough to make it a more dynamic system. The weapon system and its modifications are more versatile than the rigid options each class has in ME2. The plot, meanwhile, is a bit weaker. It does have a balance between the more plot-driven ME1 and the more character-driven ME2, but has to deal with the fallout of being the third game in the series. Since nearly every character could've died in ME2, the game has to be generic enough to swap out any character who may not be present, which causes all the interactions to be a bit less personal. The present reaper threat does push the plot forward, but aside from a few setpieces, doesn't seem all that threatening. All of these are pretty minor complaints though, as I did enjoy the trilogy as a whole. Granted, the game does end with a whimper. There's no boss fight, no big mission, it just kinda ends with a few binary choices. I did know this was coming, so it wasn't much of a surprise, but I can see how players at release were frustrated. Overall, Mass Effect is easily the premiere sci-fi video game, and pushed the medium forwards in ways that still hasn't been repeated. No other series has carried forward saves across a trilogy to this extent to this very day.

F-Zero GX (GC)

I'm going to be honest, I've had this game sitting on my shelf for at least a decade. I've always heard it was an excellent title, but a very difficult one. I'd played it a bit here and there, but had never really given it the time. Recently though, I've been modding a used Gamecube I picked up and figured this would be a great game to really break it in. I'm pleased to report that the rumors were true -- this is an excellent game, and a rather difficult one at that. Not as much as I had feared though, but still enough to really put me through my paces. F-Zero GX is a futuristic racing game, one that will seem strangely familiar to those who have played Mario Kart 8. Unlike that game though, F-Zero boasts incredibly high speeds as you defy gravity and balance boosting versus maintaining your stamina. I keep comparing it to Mario Kart mentally, and in many ways this game comes out on top. 30 racers may seem hectic at times, but they also feel more balanced. In Mario Kart Grand Prix, I feel like I'm going through the motions, really only competing against the second place CPU driver who always gets second place behind me. Here, you could easily miss the top three in the courses and still come out on top, there was such a variety in the finishing order, which I found very refreshing. There are no items or gimmicks either, each race is three laps with the first lap being a simple loop to familiarize yourself with the course. Laps two and three though enable boosting. This is the game's main mechanic -- you can boost for a short time, but at the cost of some of your car's stamina. There are recharge panels littered throughout the stages, so the later laps often are an exercise in maintaining this balance. It has a very early-2000s unlocking system which I greatly enjoy as well. You don't get the fourth cup until completing the other three on standard difficulty, the hardest difficulty until beating the next hardest, and you don't get the final cup (featuring crossover courses from the F-Zero AX arcade game) until you beat everything else on the hardest difficulty. This final "Master" difficulty does start to reveal some warts though, as you're forced to constantly boost to maintain victory, showing that many of the racers aren't that viable in the end. Level geometry gets pretty suspect here as well. There are points on many courses were I learned not to boost anywhere near to, as doing so would guarantee you are just flung wildly off the course. There's no Lakitu cloud to bring you back either, if you die you have to start the course over again, and the final difficulty only gives you one screw up. Finally, there's the Story mode. It has some (poorly acted and poorly directed) cutscenes, but it's really more of a mission mode than a proper story. And boy do some of those missions suck. I think this is really where the game gets its difficulty stigma more than anything, these missions are a complete slog to play. Overall though, it's one of the finest games on the system. I never understood why people have begged for decades for a sequel to this title, but my eyes have finally been opened.

Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (NS)

Echoes of Wisdom, or as it should have been called, The Legend of Link, is the latest entry in the Zelda series, most notable for being the first where the main character is actually Zelda herself. The game is done in the same style as the Switch remake of Link's Awakening, but rather than simply base a new game off of that style, Nintendo made the more interesting decision to feature a different protagonist with her own gameplay style (sorry Oracle fans). This is achieved via the "echoes" system where enemies and select objects can be scanned by Zelda then cloned at will. You only have a set number of clones allowed at once, but these copies are essential for progressing in the game. This not only includes solving puzzles but combat as well. Aside from throwing the occasional rock, Zelda has no offensive capabilities, she must rely entirely on converted enemies. Well, this isn't strictly true. You quickly unlock a "Swordfighter" mode where Zelda takes on a more Link-like control scheme, so long as your bar remains filled. This is well appreciated during boss fights, but does feel like the developers were a bit concerned with players having issues relying on just enemy AI during tricky fights. Overall though, the echoes are a neat system. By finding and beating harder and harder enemies, you gain a repertoire of powerful forces to use. It's also really cool seeing familiar enemies that Link has faced off against for decades now serve you. The world is vaguely Link to the Past in design, but it features species common to the more recent games, such as the Deku or Gerudo, which I enjoyed. The art style is also excellent, everyone gives off the appearance of almost being a porcelain toy. Special shout out goes to some of the animals, such as the cows, which are adorable. The game does run easy, which I think was a wise choice on the developer's part, given the control mechanics. They also take a somewhat free approach to dungeon order. On several occasions you're given a pool to choose from, which also means they have to fall to the lowest common difficulty. I enjoyed the game considerably though, and while it's probably not in my top 5 Zelda games, I don't really have anything but good things to say about it. I'm curious if they do make a sequel in this style though, as I could see it overstaying its welcome pretty quickly. For a single game though, this has been a very successful experiment in my eyes.

Sonic X Shadow Generations (PS5)

In the modern world of remakes and sequels, Sega has finally done something that I've been wishing the industry would do for years. I don't really want a remake of my favorite games, or even a sequel with elements changed around, I just want more of that game. It's why modding is so popular, you take the game you like so much and add even more content into it. I would kill for Sega to come out and just add a collection of new stages to Sonic Adventure 2. We do not yet live in that world, but we might live in the next best one, as Sonic Generations is back. To be clear, Sonic X Shadow Generations is a collection of two games. The first is a remaster of Sonic Generations with a few extra elements, such as a new control scheme (which I immediately changed) and chao hidden in each stage a la SA2. That game is as good as it ever was, but this review is going to focus on the entirely new campaign -- Shadow Generations. Set in parallel to the events of Sonic Generations, this game focuses on what Shadow was up to, as he relives his own past. This game features remade levels from SA2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic 06 and newcomers Sonic Forces and Sonic Frontiers. Interesting choices, as these titles are set later than the events of this game -- a potential plot element I was a little frustrated to see wasn't even mentioned at all. Interesting as well is the omission of any level from Shadow the Hedgehog, although it does provide a boss fight. Given that Shadow isn't even in Frontiers, it's weird to include that over a level from his own game, especially when there aren't any Shadow levels in the original Generations either. The gameplay is more or less what you'd expect. The boost formula is back again (again), although Shadow has abilities Sonic does not. At the start of the game, those are limited to recurring abilities such as teleporting homing attack (which Sonic 06 called the Chaos Snap, a name I've always liked) and Chaos Spears. Soon though, you'll gain new Black Doom-inspired abilities, such as the ability to surf, glide, and even turn into a Splatoon-esque squid, among others. I've always liked Generations, and these new abilities mesh into the gameplay well. You can also tell there's been a technical improvement over the original game, as these levels are often more... kaleidoscopic than the original entries. The overworld has been vastly expanded into an actual hub world as well. In Generations, it was just a glorified level select screen, here it's a proper explorable area. Unlockable goodies are found here, such as extra background music and concept art, although I suspect trying to get all of these might prove tedious to track down, I'll let you know. Shadow Generations doesn't use the same Red Ring system as its older sibling, instead each level holds three keys to unlock these hidden items. Lastly, there's the plot. I would personally say it's the weakest part of the game -- something it shares with Sonic Generations -- but where that game's plot was very light and fluffy, this one at least tries to tie things back into the older titles. You can tell it shares a writer with Frontiers, and although I like what they're doing on paper, I still felt this story was rather superficial. The villain doesn't really have any purpose in the story, elements like future levels being shown goes completely unmentioned, and even Shadow's reunion with Gerald and Maria feels half hearted. Shadow's entire arc for 20 years has been about these two, but he barely even interacts with them, and doesn't try and warn them about their fate or anything. There's some interesting ideas here, but it's very skin deep. Still, I suspect many people aren't going to care too much about the story for what is effectively a sequel to Shadow the Hedgehog, so it's a minor complaint. Is this title better than Sonic Generations? Well, it's bundled with it, so I would say by default it is. Its short length is a bit of a problem -- only about 2/3 as many levels as Generations has -- but there's a lot to like here. I can easily say it's my favorite 3D Sonic game to have come out since Generations did over a decade ago, easily.

Silent Hill 2 (2024) (PS5)

A year or two ago I wrote a review for The Medium, the previous game developed by the studio Bloober Team. In it, I discussed both my dislike of that title, but also how I felt that the strengths and weaknesses of The Medium might serve them well as they worked on the then-announced Silent Hill 2 remake. Having now played the game, I think I was proven correct in many ways. The Medium, I felt, has a strong sense of atmosphere and graphic fidelity, but was largely let down by poor character development, plotting, and puzzle design. Fortunately for them, they were given a project where the character development, plotting, and to some extent the puzzle design was already done for them. Bloober Team has done an excellent job of translating the critically acclaimed SH2 into the modern day while still keeping intact all the elements that made that game what it was. James's journey through avoiding therapy remains just as eerie and thoughtful as it did back on the PS2. I honestly have nothing bad to say about the product they've produced here (except for constant dialogue audio issues during cutscenes). I may not be the biggest fan of the combat of this game, but that was always the point and remains in line with the original. In fact, my main complaints with the game are essentially the same complaints when I played the original SH2. I still find James a perplexing individual whose actions are completely unpredictable. Any chance he gets to stick his entire arm down some godforsaken hole, he will do so, even when completely unprompted. His journey through both his own trauma and through Silent Hill ends on a poignant and interesting note, but does meander quite a bit. I still don't know why he fucks around in the apartments, but that's part of the healing journey I guess. Still, if you've never played Silent Hill 2, I think this can safely be your entrance into the game and the series, and it proves their choice to remake the game was a wise one.

Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket (iOS)

This isn't really a game that one can "finish", but after playing the latest Pokemon TCG video game for quite a few hours, I grasped enough of the game and its content to jot down my opinions. I've played some Pokemon TCG games in the past, like the two excellent GBC entries, and this game is similar to some respects to those, but adjusted for a more bite-sized mobile app experience. Half of the game is about opening card packs. As a modern app, a lot of these elements are based on cooldown timers -- you are allowed to open a pack of five every 12 hours or randomly "wonder trade" one possible card out of five every few hours (depending on how rare the cards are). Naturally, you can use your parent's credit card to speed up this process, but the game is rather generous at handing out items to reduce these times. These items are gained by just logging in and completing quests, or more commonly by playing the other half of the game, battling. Aside from the aforementioned GBC entries, which are over 20 years old now, I haven't played the actual TCG, so I'm unaware if new mechanics have dramatically changed the game I knew, a la Yu-Gi-Oh. The rules here are pretty much identical to that game though, with a few notable exceptions. Here, you only play until a player has three defeats, not six. Your deck now only has 20 cards rather than 60, and gone are energy cards -- instead you are always supplied with a single energy every turn. I'm not sure if there are the competition rules, but they're a good ruleset for quick matches befitting a mobile game. Another addition are "EX" cards, which are rather powerful (and frankly somewhat busted) Pokemon cards which as a balance count as two defeats when knocked out. There are a large number of potential cards to collect. Definitely not the full gambit of 25+ years of Pokemon prints, but a respectable number in the hundreds, including some rarer editions with excellent artwork. I honestly really like this game. I'm always a bit wary of "gacha"-style mobile games, and number of different currency types does make my eyes glaze over, but I don't feel that the pay-to-win aspect is here at all, you can fully enjoy this game as a free player, at least for now. I've always lamented there wasn't a modern update to the GBC TCG games, and this definitely scratches that itch.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (NS)

I'm always lamenting the fact that there aren't more sci-fi RPGs in the world. While there are some out there, they seem to be few and far between. One of the most prevalent modern examples though, and perhaps one you wouldn't guess just by looking at the box, is the Xenoblade Chronicles series. I played the first game and its Switch epilogue a few years ago, and then proceeded to skip over the second game entirely to jump to the third. For the most part this was a fine decision, as XC3 takes place in a new world where groups of child soldiers fight an eternal war, with the only thing to look forward to is dying once they reach 10 years of age. It's a pretty unique setting, and one that allows the game to cover many different avenues of themes and motifs. You play as a party of six characters, three from each army, who together gain extraordinary abilities and try to fight The System. Even by the end of XC1, I only ever tolerated the combat system, I never grew to like it, but I can say here that I actually enjoy the combat, or I grew to by the end. The two systems aren't dissimilar, but they've gone a long way to streamlining both the gameplay and the UI to improve it. It's not a perfect system tho, the game heavily relies on "Chain Attacks" in anything with a medium level of health, which stops the real-time combat to present the player with a stylized menu to choose which character to attack. By strategically choosing characters with appropriate stats, you can get several rounds of free hits in, building up to very high damage multipliers. It's a neat mechanic, if very poorly explained in-game, but the high amount of damage they do means that combat essentially devolves into just waiting for your Chain Attack bar to fill up. The Chain Attack process is also incredibly slow, so even though there are EXP benefits to doing them, I found myself not bothering on most basic enemies. I really enjoyed the characters, particularly the two main leads, as they have an interesting connection to each other and to the story of the world at large. The villain I do think is rather weak, and he falls down the familiar rabbit hole of "nonsense JRPG philosophy" which doesn't hold up to any scrutiny, but it fortunately doesn't take up much screentime. Overall, I was rather impressed with this game. I enjoyed XC1 in the end, but went through cycles of putting it down for a few weeks before picking it back up. XC3 kept me much more engaged, and I'm now inclined to go back and play through XC2 and XCX as well as approaching its DLC someday.

5 / 5

Balatro (PC)

I've never really cared much for card building games, and I've recently come to the realization that I hate roguelikes. I have nothing against card builders, I just have yet to find one with rules that I enjoy. Similarly, I've played a number of roguelikes, but I'm almost always left with the feeling that I would've preferred the game if it was a more traditional style. Dead Cells for example, was a fun and fluid game, but I would've vastly preferred if it were a standard Metroidvania. All that being said, once in a very rare while, a game comes along that feels like it must be a roguelike. That it perfectly blends simplicity and complexity, where replaying the game over and over is a joy in experimentation. Balatro is, to put it simply, a poker game. You are dealt a hand and can select up to five cards to create the best poker hand. Each hand earns points, and if you pass a score threshold for the level within your allotted attempts, you get to progress. It is a dead simple system that even people unfamiliar with poker can quickly pick it up. Where it shines is the customizability of your runs. You can obtain "planet" cards which increases the point value of a given type of poker hand. There are tarot cards which have a variety of functions, including imparting special modifiers to your deck. There are spectral cards, rarer than the other types, but with even more exotic effects. Then finally there are the Jokers. You can obtain five in total which give a wide variety of extra bonuses, typically towards your chip rewards or multipliers based on some criteria. The Joker system is really where the game shines, and finding a collection of Jokers that synergize well is the key to a successful run. All this is combined with the unlockable deck types, modified "boss" encounters, shop mechanics, and more. There are so many games where some mechanics feel unnecessary or tacked on, but everything with Balatro meshes together perfectly. I honestly believe it's not a good game, not a great game, but perhaps a perfect game.

Astro Bot (PS5)

I have no notes at all. Astro Bot is a fantastic and vibrant game packed full of inventive mechanics and engaging levels. I loved Astro's Playroom -- the prior game in the series that comes bundled with all PS5 -- and was thus really looking forward to this title when it was announced. Within a few levels of playing it, it was clear that this was going to easily surpass that game and become one of the great games on the system. The bar here to clear is the Mario games, and while Astro's movement is not nearly as fluid or deep as Mario's, I think in all other regards this game stands proudly alongside the best in the genre. The one aspect I was concerned about is I have a pretty low tolerance for "meta" content, and this game expands upon Astro's Playroom's mechanic of showcasing past PlayStation hardware and characters. Finding hidden bots functions similarly to Banjo-Kazooie's jiggies -- hidden within each level and required in enough number to progress at points. Here, probably 30% or so of the hidden bots are dressed like characters with a history on Sony platforms. I didn't find that these distracted from the game at all, instead it was a cute bonus to recognize the character you had just rescued. Somewhat rarely for me, upon completing the final boss I immediately went back and 100% completed the game, and thoroughly enjoyed doing so. If you have a PS5 you should first go play Astro's Playroom, and then once you finish up doing that, go out and play Astro Bot, it's a great time.