ArxadeBugQueen

Joyless is the word I would use to describe Tokyo Xtreme Racer, a game I got back in early access with the idea of it just being a simply fun arcade racing experience. Sadly, while the "arcade" and "racing" parts were definitely there, it seems like they completely forgot the "fun" part. I wasn't able to get much time in this game before I simply put it down for good out of sheer boredom. In that time, I was able to engage with a bunch of races and a boss or two, and every single race felt like it was over before it even started. Maybe this game gets better after the first few hours, but if your game can't even keep the player engaged for the first few hours then you have a serious problem.

I've tried to write a review on this game for a while now, but trying to write a longer review continues to fail me, so I will be brief. The gameplay is perfect, the visuals are stunning, the music is phenomenal and the story is beautiful. I loved playing through SANABI, and while it had a couple of small issues, it's a fantastic game that deserves more love.

Perhaps I have been too critical of Nintendo's games this year, or perhaps a flurry of great games coming out in 2023 has made me reassess how good Nintendo is. While I do enjoy some of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, I find a lot of its content just misses what makes Mario platforming enjoyable. The wonder flowers are an interesting idea, but in practice just take away from the core platforming. The wonder seeds are so easy to acquire that they make collectibles in games feel boring. I spent most of my playthrough in multiplayer, and some optional side levels are broken in multiplayer, such as in one where you must search an open level for tokens, but one is hidden down a pit. My partner jumped in the pit and died. It wasn't until 10 minutes later that we searched up the solution and found out that we were right, but the game didn't like it because the wrong player jumped down the pit. Perhaps its just the multiplayer, or perhaps the entire game isn't that good, but Super Mario Bros. Wonder for me was a thoroughly middling and joyless experience.

Following the multiple controversies surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, I decided not to purchase it at launch. The game's seemingly incomplete state and the actions of the developers CDPR left a lot to be desired. Now, many years later, the game has finally reached version 2.0, and so it was that I reluctantly gave this game a shot. Ultimately my conclusion was that Cyberpunk 2077 is pretty middle of the road. It's still glitchy, and it's not that satisfying to play, but it's functional and has good visual and sound design. If you were to ask me to recommend an open world FPS RPG, I wouldn't pick this. I'd pick Fallout New Vegas.

I enjoyed Tanuki Sunset, but I can't recommend it. The visuals are appealing, the music is good, and the gameplay has a calm flow. In contrast, the game has very few stages, the lack of checkpoints is frustrating, and despite my best efforts to do as much side content and extra stuff as possible, I beat the game in less than 2 hours, meaning I was still eligible for Steam's refund policy (I didn't refund the game, but that's just a bit too fast for my liking). I think Tanuki Sunset needed a bit more content at the end of the day.

I'm lost as to what precisely the draw of Peglin is meant to be. For a **** machine it's unsatisfying and uninteresting, for a roguelite it's repetitive and dull, and for a deck builder it's restrictive and lacks variety. At least a small amount of charm and heart shines through, but I think one run is enough to tell you if you will enjoy this game or not.

If one thing is consistent about Sonic the Hedgehog, it's that his games are inconsistent. I find it's pretty fitting then that Sonic's first game feels quite mixed to me. There's never anything that really wows me, but equally nothing feels excruciatingly painful to play. The music is mostly just fine, as are the visuals. I'm not a fan of the speed sections, as they tend to start and stop quite immediately and therefore become a bit of a pace breaker to the general platforming. I know that's quite against what Sonic the Hedgehog is aiming for, but I simply don't find the speed in Sonic games very fun. Either way, Sonic's first outing is one that I do feel at least edges out a slightly positive score, even through its inconsistencies.

PalmRide is quite the terrible game. The gameplay is exactly what you expect, driving a car at high speed down a road that curves and bends slightly, and that's about it. PalmRide's big issue is the visuals, not that they look bad, but that they make playing the game almost impossible. Resolution is intentionally low, which wouldn't be too bad if it didn't make trying to determine what is a pickup or an obstacle difficult, and didn't also hide some smaller obstacles from view until they're already in your face. To top that off, certain sections of the game feature extremely bright flashing lights that fill the screen to the point of not even being able to see anything. You have a gun to shoot oncoming obstacles, but sometimes the bullets just decide they don't want to hit your target, and phase right through them. You can grab power ups to fly, but they mostly just prevent you from grabbing more helpful power ups like lives. Poor design and visuals that genuinely hurt to look at make this game a terrible time.

There's something I find magical about Steam's discovery queue. You could be just aimlessly browsing, then suddenly you're hit with a game that will become your one night obsession. That's how I came across Skator Gator 3D, and then spent the rest of my night completing it. While Skator Gator 3D is a short game, it takes advantage of that to the fullest. The controls are smooth and satisfying, the art style is cartoony and pleasant to look at, and the game just oozes charm. Levels focus on two modes of play, 3D platforming and skateboarding on rails, with levels transitioning between them seamlessly. Each gameplay style feels developed enough to be decently challenging and enjoyable, while also flowing into one another naturally through the world design. Despite the short length, I was very pleasantly surprised with Skator Gator 3D. It's one of those titles I could see myself coming back to time and time again.

Oh this hurts. An interesting idea and great visual style isn't enough to make something great, and sadly that's all I think there is to Them's Fightin' Herds. The cast are very forgettable and simply feel like worse versions of characters from a certain TV show, and nothing feels satisfying. If you're making a fighting game, make hitting an opponent feel good. I'd honestly say that if you're looking for a good fighting game, this ain't it, and that is truly disappointing.

Fun but frustratingly unfair, Wildfrost is currently my favourite deckbuilder roguelite, swimming in a sea of deckbuilder games that just don't work. While I find the entire idea of deckbuilders to be highly flawed, I think Wildfrost does its best with very little, and manages to be an enjoyable time even if it sometimes ends up feeling like you're just throwing your cards at a brick wall.

Confusing and unsatisfying, Luck Be A Landlord manages to take dreadfully dull gameplay and mix it with an extremely poor concept to concoct an experience in which I felt no positive emotion from the start of my multiple play sessions to the end of them.

Mode 7 is an interesting beast. Made for the purpose of creating 3D artificially with 2D sprites, its one of those things that have been left behind by the games industry. Of all the genres that utilised Mode 7, I feel the one that aged the worst of any is racing games; their lack of true 3D seems to hinder them far more than any other genre out there. Perhaps that is why I found F-Zero GP Legend so surprising, in that it doesn't feel dated. In fact, I would argue that this was as close to perfection as a Mode 7 game ever got. When one thinks about F-Zero, one thinks about blazing speed. No other series quite managed to provide that raw, unparalleled adrenaline quite like F-Zero. Despite that, I always felt that was an area that the 3D games did better than their Mode 7 counterparts, but GP Legend challenges that idea, proving that a Mode 7 racer can reach fantastic speeds. The core racing from the SNES F-Zero and Maximum Velocity is upgraded through improvements from the 3D games: boosting is tied to your health, you can attack other racers, there are tons of machines with different statistics, and visuals and sound design are as close to perfect as the GBA can handle. What really shines here though is the course design, which is actually surprisingly interesting. Courses might base themselves on shapes making for unique designs, or have complex split tracks, or even have absurdly difficult but satisfying shortcuts to pull off. The courses are genuinely spectacular, feeling unique and requiring some genuine thought for certain difficult tracks or sections. Match this with the best controls and gameplay feel of any of the Mode 7 F-Zero games, and you get a brilliant racing game that seriously deserved to sell better than it did. I feel that a good way to end this is to compare it to its sequel, F-Zero Climax, the final game before the series' grand and painful nearly 2 decade hiatus. While Climax offers more tracks and a course editor, it really had no interesting ideas to put in its courses, and I feel that is the strength of GP Legend, not only that controlling your vehicle was realised so well, but that the courses were extremely fun to race on. That's why I think F-Zero GP Legend managed to be the best amongst its Mode 7 peers.

180 hours. That's how long it took me to go from the start of this game to beating the final boss, and while the start of this game is slow and difficult to get into at first, once you're deep into the game's greater content it becomes an extremely satisfying loop. I wouldn't call this game perfect, and I do find some monsters more tedious than fun to fight, but at the same time some monsters force a new approach or strategy on the fly. Overcoming the challenges this game provides you with is extremely satisfying, especially toward the end when you start fighting the toughest challenges the game has to offer.

Roguelikes are, in some ways, comparable to shuffling a deck of cards: all the parts are there, they just need to be rearranged to make a random order. You would think, in this way, that a roguelite with the central gimmick of a deck of cards used for almost every action would be a match made in heaven, but Slay The Spire needed only one swing at it to prove to me that the idea should have stayed nought more than a concept for all of time. It's problem is, simply put, that it isn't an enjoyable system, and adding the two ideas together only makes for double the number of ways that you can be unfairly executed. Along with this, I just personally don't like the sense of "you will eventually just have to take damage", because it feels like if I get damaged or not is entirely out of control. Commit to dealing damage, or allow me to influence it directly. To sit in the middle just feels like poor design, and forcing that to then rely on RNG? That just makes no sense to me.

Variety in a racing game is a must. Courses need to feel unique, and maintain a steady difficulty curve throughout the game. F-Zero: Maximum Velocity seems to be aware of this in full, but chooses to ignore it at points. Some courses in this game feel unique, standing out in a sea of other courses that blend together. There's certainly a good game here, and I'd recommend giving it a go if you're into F-Zero. However, I would stress that later entries in the series such as F-Zero GP Legend manage to do a far superior job on the same original console, and this game feels a little more dated than perhaps it should, especially when comparing these games side by side.

Imagine waiting 19 years for a new game in a series you love, and then getting a single-mode, shallow, 7 course long bag of recycled content. I love the F-Zero series, and I'm aware that people will not like my opinion here, but the reasons that I love the F-Zero series don't translate into a battle royale format, and I'm already very much not a fan of battle royale games. New mechanics needed to be implemented to fit the formula better, and the course design still being made for far fewer than 99 players just ends up causing chaos. Since the game is free, I'd say give it a try at least.

Surpassed only by its Gamecube sequel, F-Zero X may very well have been the greatest racing game ever made at the time of its release. Now, 25 years later, it certainly has been succeeded by many, including the likes of the Fast Racing and Redout series, but I would say that it was only ever truly surpassed by F-Zero GX. There's something about F-Zero X and GX that no other games seem to be capable of matching: the speed, the sharp turns, the memorable and well designed tracks, the music, the unforgiving difficulty, complimented by the complete lack of any gimmicks or aids to your driving; its just you, the course, and 29 other racers out to grab the gold.

I don't think I could call this game bad. I'd simply say that the gameplay isn't a style I enjoy. Where everything felt like it had so much thought put into it, and so many details to start, as I went through it only felt like stuff repeated for me, and the game's systems gradually gave way to their design flaws. Perhaps my experience was the exception and not the rule, but I can only go off what I experienced.

Nothing in The Backrooms: Survival feels particularly great, but nothing feels bad either. Everything here, for a backrooms game, is pretty middling overall. It feels like there's not a lot more I can say. If you want to play this game but better, play Enter the Backrooms.

If you were to ask me if you should give this game a go, the answer would be yes. It's a free game, and a somewhat nostalgic look back at when the concept of the Backrooms first made its rounds on the internet. Only the bare bones exist in this game: an infinite maze of yellow walls, the maddening sound of the lights above you buzzing, and a need to check your watch each 30 seconds to remember who you are, a piece of old Backrooms lore that has been seemingly lost to time. Beyond that, your objective is to escape. It's a simple free horror game, and it can be beaten quickly, but as a game that came out just after the original short story first surfaced, it's impossible to get angry at this all things considered.

Initially releasing as a promising take on the backrooms, this game has taken a swift dive in the developer's attention, going from a major overhaul within the first week, to nothing for months on end, and then the game's development being cancelled and rebooted. I do somewhat feel bad for the developer, as numerous circumstances out of their hands lead to a very rocky situation, but at the end of the day, I still feel that this game has, despite some good moments, left me feeling a bit... "bleh" on it all. Do I think this developer could make a really good game some day? Definitely! Do I think that with some heavy work this could be a good backrooms game? Certainly! But as it stands right now, there's a long way to go before the game's content is anything interesting, and the world doesn't deconstruct itself when you find a corner of the map.

Oh boy, I sure do love horror games that make me run around a tiny bland map while two uninspired screaming blobs chase me but then give up if I enter a specific room because their AI is awful. Yeah, avoid this game, it's just bad. That above statement is essentially the entire game.

Metacritic refuses to allow me to put a decimal, and if I could I would give this game a 6.5 instead. Hammerwatch is a decently enjoyable retro dungeon crawler, with a simple yet effective premise and cast of characters. The gameplay is quite shallow and repetitive, but it doesn't take long to go through a full campaign so it doesn't quite have the time to get dull. That being said, some design decisions in this game really bring it down, most egregious for me being the strange planks. While I won't spoil it for people that don't know, I feel this system ruins the main campaign for me. Hammerwatch is fun, and definitely a good time with friends, but I feel little desire to go back to it often when Heroes of Hammerwatch is a far better game in every regard.

Obviously there's some amount of effort in Dauntless, but I simply did not feel like the game had much feedback at all. Weapons felt like they went straight through monsters, as if my character was trying to slap a beast with a fist full of air. There's really no impact. When your creature hunting game fails to make the hunting part responsive, everything falls to bits.

Not everything here is terrible, but what lies at the core falls flat. Brawlhalla is a 2D platform fighter, similar to Rivals of Aether or, more popularly, Super Smash Bros. Unlike those games, Brawlhalla adopts an interesting kit concept: characters don't have individual kits, but rather they have combinations of weapons which have their own kits. You might share one weapon type with an opponent, but not the other. While this is interesting as a concept, it's... not actually that fun, and ends up making most of the game around it feel very flat. I don't think Brawlhalla is a completely worthless product, but it feels like it's a considerably worse version of many other games out on the market.

Often I find myself trying to look for as much good in a game as I can. I think you have to be a pretty spectacularly bad game to get a 0 from me, so I suppose congratulations to Electro Ride: The Neon Racing, which is apparently so graphically intense that it struggles to run a pre-rendered 2d cutscene at the intended framerate. The driving feels like the road is made of butter, the courses are uninteresting, the gimmick of changing colour both means nothing and is done far better in other games, and overall I just feel like I wasted my money. Don't buy this trash, for your own sake.

I'd like to start this review by saying if you're a fan of puzzle games, I would highly recommend this game. Its difficult, but the puzzles in it are genuinely very good and I believe one could get a significant amount more mileage out of this game than I did. That being said, I simply didn't enjoy the slow pace and inconsistent difficulty of this game. Puzzles left me feeling like I would either solve it instantly, or make no progress for an hour. Simply put, Baba Is You is a good game that is not to my taste.

Comparing this game to Wii Sports might seem like a stretch at first, but Astro's Playroom ultimately serves the same function. Both games were made to be free tech demos for demonstrating the capabilities of a new console, with Astro's Playroom focusing on the PlayStation 5 controller, and features such as rumble, adaptive triggers and gyroscope controls all getting a considerable amount of attention. Half cute 3D collectathon platformer, half celebration of PlayStation's sprawling and vast history, Astro's Playroom is an adorable and impressive look at what the PS5 can do in the right hands. While it's gameplay is simple, it manages to remain interesting through a combination of obstacles and puzzles that seek to not only show off what this new console can do, but also why such things can make the play experience more immersive. In this regard its extremely successful, with some sections having tiny changes that can be massively enjoyable. Along with this, scattered around the levels are collectibles and references galore, paying homage to some of PlayStation's most famous, memorable and beloved characters and games. If you grew up experiencing PlayStation's history, you can make a game out of finding and figuring each reference out, but there will most likely be a few references in this game you'll point and shout gleefully at. Despite its short length, Astro's Playroom is a very enjoyable time, and perhaps the thing that might move it up for me would simply be more content. I get this is a tech demo, but were tthere full game like this, I'd happily get it.

Low effort games like this one are truly something to behold. Their terribleness flows through every single part of their being, to where no aspect can escape the insatiable gravitational pull of how little the developers cared. In some regards, this is why I personally adore this game: its dreadful to the point of hilarity, and playing in a room with your friends is fun since it can become a chaotic mess of laughing at every awful thing that happens.

While I know that hating on mobile games is an obvious and tired idea, I feel that Pokemon Cafe Mix is a simple case of no effort, and an entire reliance on characters from an established series. I put this game down very quickly, and if your gameplay which aims to be addictive is managing to run out in less than an hour, you've truly messed it up.

Time and time again I have tried to give this game my attention, but despite at least a couple dozen attempts to go through this game, I just don't find it interesting enough to dedicate the time. It's a shame, as I can tell it is well made, but it simply feels too slow and lifeless for my liking.

Creating a sequel to a cult classic 3D platformer is no easy task, and where Psychonauts 2 doesn't reach the absolute height of some of its predecessor's more experimental and memorable levels, it refined the formula to a point that almost every level is extremely fun, memorable, and feels exactly like a sequel to Psychonauts should.

While first impressions can be everything, I feel that Sorry, We're Open suffered the most for me during my first play session. Were you to give up following a brutally demoralising first session, I wouldn't blame you; I found myself naturally gravitating to the RPG segment of this game first, but that's not exactly where the meat of this game lies, or how the game is meant to really be played. Sorry, We're Open is an exploration horror game with a small scale roguelike RPG system on the side. There are no jumpscares to speak of, so the game relies on its rich atmosphere and delicately crafted imagery and writing to leave the player unsettled. Where I feel that games such as Within the Backrooms and Interior Worlds were able to sell their horror better despite similarly having no jumpscares to speak of, it would be folly to suggest that Sorry, We're Open fails to create a similarly unnerving setting. Regardless of limitations set upon it, the game does an impressive job at translating liminal spaces to a 2D perspective, one that you can easily imagine what it would be like in 3D. The fantastic sound and world design really sell the environment to you. Certain moments in Sorry, We're Open truly filled me with dread. Encounters would usually mimic 90s VHS company safety tapes and the like, complete with a deafening silence and a small quote that only becomes more uncomfortable the longer it sits on the screen. That being said, those quotes could be used to create absurdly effective moments. From my personal experience, the best way to play this game is with all the extra filters on. That being said, this is an extremely enjoyable little horror game either way. Even if my first 40 odd minutes were disappointing, that which followed was an extremely well put together and enjoyable experience.

When I think about the Pikmin series, I'm left perplexed. No other series quite manages to make me feel simultaneously stressed beyond belief and bored to tears. For me, this game was my first experience of the Pikmin series, and I never did care enough to push through the last couple of levels; there was simply too much risk and not enough reward for me to justify trying to reach the end. Experiencing later Pikmin games has let me come to the conclusion that what I ultimately dislike about these games most is the gameplay. Nothing in these games leaves me feeling satisfied, and most everything feels like its more there to waste time in a game that has only a limited amount. Games such as Outer Wilds and Majora's Mask got around this issue by having limited time, but letting the player experience time looping, meaning the threat of the end was ever present, but never destroyed the player's curiosity and interest in the world. Conversely, Pikmin goes for a longer time that doesn't give the player a second chance, meaning if you aren't playing optimally, you're playing wrong. These are simply my takeaways from my experience of Pikmin. I'm aware this series has its fans, and I'm glad they enjoy it. However, try as I might, I simply can't find much fun in this game or the series as a whole.

Defying definition and expectations is something Psychonauts loves to do, and while I feel the game doesn't land every bullseye, I think that some of its most fantastic elements and moments are going to be things I talk about for a long time. Where the game is a 3D platformer at heart, it loves to stretch that idea about as far as it can, and isn't afraid to just be absurd. I found myself adoring many aspects, and even though one or two levels did tire me out, it's evident that Psychonauts is a fantastic game that can't be described to someone who hasn't played it before. Its a truly one of a kind game.

Nightmare Reaper is a fun albeit unspectacular game. While I find that every aspect is good, or at least serviceable, once I close it I pretty much forget about the game existing at all.

The TLDR for this review is simply this: the more I play Tears of the Kingdom, the less I enjoy it. Truth be told, my experience with TotK has been hugely disappointing. While every aspect is technically proficient, it seems that very little has been considered regarding the Zelda series' history; from criticisms that ran near universal in Breath of the Wild, to the sky feeling just as empty as Skyward Sword's, to quests that amount to nothing more than going back and forth over and over. There are even new issues such as the world not being designed for the layout of important landmarks, or the new abilities having a surprisingly high skill floor, making the accessibility that was available in previous titles less applicable here. It's not like any one thing breaks the game in its entirety, but a slew of gradual issues slowly wears away at what would be an otherwise excellent experience. Contrasting the above list of issues I have with this game, I do feel some improvements have been made, specifically over BotW, that make some areas of the adventure feel more fulfilling. Enemy variety has been increased, making for more interesting encounters. Dungeons and bosses have been changed up, resembling the aesthetics, and in some ways the mechanics, of classic Zelda titles. A new area known as The Depths is perhaps my favourite addition to this game, a terrifying world of darkness and danger that, in my opinion, far surpasses anything the overworld or sky can offer. Despite the amount of time I have spent being bored or uninterested in something in this game, I have found some stuff of worth. Never did I want to give a new Zelda game a score as low as this. Previously, I had given this game an 8/10, but that was before I put another 30 hours into it. That was before I found dungeons and quests that I simply abhorred. That was before I experienced more of what the game had to offer. Sufficed to say, Tears of the Kingdom is a good game, but when I am done, I feel I will simply return to other Zelda games, such as Breath of the Wild or Majora's Mask, and never consider picking up TotK again.

You know that feeling of everyone is having fun except me? I feel that way about the whole Borderlands series. I'm choosing Borderlands 2 for this review, as it's the game in the series I have played the most. I don't believe that these games are bad, however while some parts can be fun with friends, other parts can be tiresome and repetitive, with little satisfaction to speak of. The randomised loot is a lot of fun, and is easily the best part of the series, making every player's experience somewhat unique. Since I can only rate these games on my experience, I feel its worth saying others may get more from the Borderlands series, but as it stands I would say if you've played a bit of one, you have basically played all that the series has to offer.

When Panzer Dragoon was originally announced, I was pretty interested in this game. Being a fan of other similar on-rails shooters such as Space Harrier, Star Fox and Panorama Cotton, I figured I would give the game a shot, and livestream it to some friends. What followed was a pretty disastrous display of disappointment. I feel that a long explanation is unnecessary. While I did find the visuals to be fine, everything else just didn't sit right with me. Sadly, the area that felt least enjoyable to me was the gameplay, which in a game where all that you're doing is gameplay, is a pretty big error. Needless to say I won't be excited to replay this any time soon.

Simple, fun, but not without frustrations. Now that the 3DS has been retired, its online systems discontinued, I felt it was time to take a look at a few of the victims of this tragic event. Harmoknight is a simple rhythm game that is honestly charming and fun, though it does have a couple of flaws. I felt the timing on some of the button presses was a little off, perhaps a result of the game being a little too lenient. I also felt that the game had a couple of frustrating moments toward the end that put a bit of a damp mood on my playthrough. Nevertheless, I think Harmoknight was a fun game. Maybe some day it will see the light of day again.

Truthfully I wish I could rate this game higher, but it just doesn't deserve it. While the art style is striking and gorgeous, almost everything else falls flat. The controls are simple but feel messy, the music is uninteresting, and everything just feels very unsatisfying. Each level comes with a bunch of "challenges", but they're all so easy that they might as well not exist; for most of them, I spent more time restarting the level than I did actually trying to complete them. I just found Rollerdrome empty, hollow, and sad. What a shame.

Horror is still used in Metroidvanias to great effect, but I think many games in the genre reduce their horror to specific areas: Hollow Knight, Ori WotW and even Metroid Dread do this. However, I think that Metroid Fusion is a bit of an exception, managing to make it feel like a threat could strike at any moment. The terrors that lay in wait within the game's main setting, the BSL, are always magnified by their teases or appearances beforehand. You might be informed of a boss, only to reach its abode and find nothing but bones; a moment of relief, **** suddenly by the realisation of its meaning. This isn't to say that Metroid Fusion is perfect. There are moments where the game expects the player to perform the classic Metroid manoeuvre of bombing each individual tile on the map until you find the path forward. In some regards it works well, as the game acts like you have accessed areas you shouldn't have, which works well for the narrative, but fails for the gameplay. If the route you expect the player to take is so well hidden that it feels like the player is performing multiple sequence breaks, then it might be a little bit too obscured for its own good. Despite this, I feel the core game makes up for the few shortcomings that are present.

Having now put well over a hundred hours into this game, I'm ready to say that I think Splatoon 3 is easily the weakest game in the series. Yes, there are improvements from Splatoon 1 and 2, but the improvements aren't enough to carry what feels like a stagnating formula. Many aspects of the game feel like they have been reduced in quality, especially from Splatoon 2, and it has made it difficult for me to understand why this was a new release. While I do think the new movement options have added a healthy amount of new depth to the game, I think its important to address the horrendous balance in the game right now, specifically with the obvious bias towards shooter weapons: as of the time of writing, there are a total of 19 standard shooter kits in the game, compared to the umbrellas and brushes which each have only 3 kits each, and the splatanas and bows only having 2 kits each. This has left the game in an abhorently unhealthy state, and means most players are using the same class, leading to most matches just feeling the same.

Experimenting with a long established formula can be a tricky balancing act, especially when you're looking to apply the mechanics of one game genre to another. Metroid Prime Pinball is a bit of a strange case, since it knew exactly how far to go to make an entirely unique pinball game, sprinkling in numerous gameplay mechanics and a couple of minigames acting as bonus stages that replicate concepts right from the Metroid series (like a shooting segment), while also primarily remaining a pinball game at its core. Unlike most other pinball games, Metroid Prime Pinball has stage progression, power ups and bosses. Each stage distinct, with their own enemy types and some stage layouts are genuinely great, such as Phendrana Drifts acting more like two mini tables, one for each screen. I think this game isn't the hardest pinball game, and I would say that is to the games benefit, as you can loop around multiple times for gradually harder gameplay, and the game definitely is all about chasing high scores. I wouldn't say the game is perfect; the multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired, and one boss in particular feels a little frustrating since if you fail it you're booted back to the other levels rather than losing a life, but I find myself coming back to this game a lot. Its a unique pinball experience that is a ton of fun.

I am aware that this review might be hated by some, but I can only review the game based on my experience. Before now, I've only played one game in the Prime trilogy, that being Corruption, and that was a very long time ago. With the release of this remaster, I saw a perfect opportunity to dive in and really see this first game in the series for what it is. Metroid Prime Remastered is good. Its not fantastic, and most of the reason for that is because it's still Metroid Prime. I had no experience with the original, but I trust the long time fans when they say that it looks beautiful compared to the original, and yes it does look great either way. While I find it difficult to directly criticise the movement, I believe that it is at fault not because it's bad, but because the world feels like it is designed to be as purposefully obstructive and tedious as possible. Many parts of Prime confuse me: many doors require specific weapons to unlock which is just time wasted, many essential items are located stupidly far away from any travel points meaning you have to go through a lot of already completed area to reach them, and the game is excessively terrible when it comes to backtracking for upgrades. Numerous times in my playthrough I reached an area, had no idea what to do, and eventually got told to go to the other end of the world to collect 1 item so I could progress just that little bit further... only to have the exact same thing happen to me again 20 minutes later. The wonder and magic of the world drained out of me, as I was travelling through these areas dozens of times just to get a random upgrade that let me then get stuck a little later. It's as if the placement of these absolutely necessary to beat the game upgrades was just chosen at complete random, with no thought as to how the player might figure it out. Combat feels extremely awkward to me, since I feel that the two best examples of the games combat are the first couple of hours of the game, and the game's final boss. Outside of that, combat became little more than an irritating practice of tedium rather than something I had to care about. Maybe the only real exception to that would be a couple of the other bosses, but after the first couple of hours of gameplay I just found myself not caring for the combat, and simply walking through as many rooms as fast as I could because the combat wasn't worth it and didn't provide me any extra benefit. Enemies that require specific visors or beams aren't harder, but just more tedious because you have to press extra buttons to kill them. I really felt like the final boss was the only thing to get the idea of different beams in combat right, and then it **** it up with the visors shortly thereafter. This review might seem absurdly negative, so I want to end off talking about stuff I do like: the start of the game is brilliant. Between the frigate tutorial and the first 3 or so areas, everything works fantastically, and truly shows the potential of Metroid Prime. It is unfortunate then that the game did away with exploring new environments or places you felt like you shouldn't be like in Metroid Fusion, for simply going through the same areas a dozen times over. The parts that make up Metroid Prime are all fantastic, but it takes more than raw ingredients to bake a cake.

Born from the viral sensation of liminal spaces, Interior Worlds is a short semi-horror exploration photography game. When I say semi-horror, I mean it's not exactly your typical horror game: there are no threats, there are no proper jumpscares, but it is drenched in an atmosphere so deep and unsettling that the game can persuade you that a jumpscare might be coming, even if you've been explicitly told that it won't. Your objective in each level is simply to photograph marked locations and make your way to the exit, but this is obviously not the way the game was designed to be played. The maps in this game are designed in a way that begs for the player to take every opportunity to set up and snap an effective photo. Some zones are cramped and dirty, with graffiti and garbage scattered everywhere, where others like the airport are uncomfortably sterile. The adaptation of real world settings to abandoned locations works wonderfully, and creates a strange horror of a world now lost, long abandoned by those that shaped it. I believe that if you don't care for liminal space this game won't do a lot for you, but if you love liminal space this game was made for you.

Congratulations to Antigravity Racing. You have successfully made me break a rule I set for myself when I first started writing reviews on this site: I vowed that I would never score any game a 0 on metacritic, as making games is difficult, and every game has at least something of value to offer... or so I thought. Today I shatter that vow, today I retract the idea that every game must have something of value. Antigravity Racing is one of the single most joyless, soulless pieces of media I've ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on; a truly vapid experience that hopes to advertise itself as a call back to games like Wipeout 2097 and F-Zero X, but has so little to offer that I'm left genuinely questioning how this sort of thing managed to end up smearing it's disgustingly putrid scent across both Nintendo's and Playstation's online storefronts. There is no charm here. The menus kick you right in, no title screen, to a car select and upgrades menu. This menu doesn't work with the D-Pad. The D-Pad does nothing. Controlling it with the thumbstick makes no sense, as you'll press down from your current position, and you'll now be hovering over a selection on the far opposite side of the screen rather than what's directly below you. When the menu doesn't work as you'd expect, you know this is gonna be one heck of an experience. Moving on to the actual gameplay, it's... there. It's utterly appalling, most of the buttons have no reason to exist, and the weapons you can pick up are about as useful as a unicycle with no wheel. When you start a race, the AI will simply shoot off ahead of you. You'll never see first, second, third or fourth ever again. The highest position I was able to achieve, after grinding for coins and racing time and time again, and perfecting the tracks in their entirety, was 6th out of 8. I'm not a stranger to racing games, even difficult ones. One of my favourite games ever is F-Zero GX, and that game managed to be unreasonably hard while still feeling like you can at least catch up with others on the track. While I'm thinking about other fast racing games, you know Fast RMX? You know Redout? You know Wipeout and F-Zero? They all managed to make you feel like you were going hundreds of miles per hour on the track. Antigravity Racing feels extremely slow, slower than like 100CC on Mario Kart. For a game that wants you to believe you're traveling at over 200 metres per second, it feels like you're moving at about 2 miles per hour. Along with this, you can climb up the walls and ceilings of the track. I don't know if this is intended. None of the AI seem to do it. It seems to be a result of terrible coding, and while I'm thinking about how this game was probably coded in 2 minutes, sometimes you will simply slow down. You didn't stop accelerating, you didn't press to brake, your car just suddenly decided it wanted to stop, entirely, and build all that speed back up from square 1. Honestly, most everything else in this game is barely worth mentioning, but to list everything so that it's out of the way: the visuals ****, people are 2 squares, the music is completely forgettable, and there's only 10 courses in the game when a game like Fast RMX has 30 courses and is an infinitely better and higher quality game in absolutely every regard. If you've come here wondering if you should pick up this game, NO. Do not purchase this malign waste of money. Don't even look at it ever again. I really want to stress that this may genuinely be the worst video game I've ever played. At least Mario is Missing was unintentionally funny, but Antigravity Racing is just abysmally dreadful in every single regard.

Dead Cells is fun. I don't particularly think it's anything miraculous, but it doesn't need to be. The core gameplay and progression is enjoyable, and the game looks lovely. Perhaps I simply played it for long enough that it started to grow somewhat mundane, but it's worth a good playthrough if you're interested in a decent platforming roguelite.

Starting as a promising early access title, 20XX gradually turned into a relatively mediocre title, worthy of a passing glance but not much more. While the core gameplay of 20XX starts out pretty fun, it grows dull fast. Game balance can be a bit tiresome, and level design can quickly get dull. I do have to praise the music and general controls for being brilliant, and it can be fun for at least a little while, but this is a game I'm not gonna remember much.