Chastizer

I remember loving this one as a kid. I played both Zero Mission and Super Metroid right before this and compared to both of those this one really just fell flat for me. Don't get me wrong, Fusion is still a phenomenal Metroid game, but compared to some of the other entries in the series it just feels like it's missing something, but when I categorize everything to try and find that missing link I can never quite put my finger on what that is. It seems to check all the boxes but is missing the X factor that the other games nail. I still love this game, atmospherically it is one of the best, but something about it leaves me yearning for more.

Short, sweet Metroid goodness. Zero Mission does a really good job of making sure you don't feel lost. Sure sometimes you have to do some screen searching, but once you have an idea of what the game wants you to look for you'll start knowing where to bomb or shoot to get where you need to go. Also helps that this game is pretty linear, you can always tell the few screens you should be searching on. Hell I haven't played this game in years, got hard stuck multiple times and still beat it in under 3 hours. Great atmosphere, great visual and audio design for the console it came out on. Overall just a good time, it's a classic for a reason.

One of my absolute favorite games of all time got remade. This is Super Goddamn Mario at his peak. A lot of the writing for this game was changed. Normally when this happens for a video game that is remade it is for the worse, however they really nailed it. The original left a couple of gaps in the narrative and the extra bit of effort to rewrite some things for this really pulled it together. Just like the Super Mario RPG remake, every aspect that was changed was a change that I enjoyed. TTYD was one of the first turn-based RPGs that I played that made me fall in love with the genre and honestly it holds up extremely well. The use of smaller numbers really makes it that much more impactful when you see double digits for the first time. One small complaint that I have about this game, and note that this is really only if you are going for 100% completion, is the amount of backtracking required. I should not have to go to Hooktail Castle more than three times. The remake did make travel a lot easier but even with that change I still have to go through nearly the entirety of that damned place 4 separate times. That said though that is small potatoes compared to the feast that is this game. A game I can recommend to nearly everyone.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Dead Island 2 was pretty fun for the first 7 or 8 hours. However it very quickly overstays it's welcome. The enemies do vary, you get new moves, you get new abilities. But unfortunately, in my opinion, the best way to kill nearly everything was to just parry it and beat it to death over and over. Even once you get guns you realize that even low level threats eat up nearly all of your fairly scarce ammo. A complaint I had about the first game as well. There is a pretty cool part in the last third of the game where you go through a dead zone of sorts. But they somehow couldn't follow that climax even at the conclusion of the game. Story is serviceable, characters have some funny quips sometimes, but otherwise just alright.

I've had Barony on my Steam wishlist for probably close to 7 years now. Picked it up over the summer for the sale and it has been an absolute joy. I will say however that this game is not for everyone. Barony is an intricate, unforgiving, immensly difficult roguelike with many different moving parts. Skipping the tutorial is asking to have a bad time. There are a plethora of different mechanics that the player will be required to engage with just to get past the first few levels alive, much less get an actual run going. TL:DR sometimes you just gotta eat the mouldy cheese.

Another Crab's Treasure was made by people that not only wanted to make a fun video game, but also have the know how to pull it off. I am a big movement guy in video games. **** is fun to move around in, I generally will like it. I have to give props to them somehow managing to implement that into a souls-like game and somehow not break the balance wide open. The combat is approachable, but rewarding even to me who has played every souls game. Bosses will put up a fight, some level of mastery will be required to beat this game. No area or idea overstays it's welcome. The story is simple but amusing and surprisingly human and relatable despite it's undersea cast. All in all a good time if you like a game that will challenge you. A real video game's video game.

Cavern of Dreams is an extremely inspired 3D platformer. While it's not necessarily treading on new ground, it does what few other games in the genre do in making you feel like you're playing a long lost N64 game. Filled to the brim with weird secrets and easter eggs that littered the games of that era. It truly captured what games felt like in that era and packaged it with cute visuals and fun and engaging movement. What Cavern of Dreams lacks in length it more than makes up for in depth, and for that I think anyone that enjoy 3D platformers from the N64/PS1 era should give it a shot.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I have fond memories of being a teenager playing this game, ironically enough, with my cousin whenever we would get together and just see how much mayhem we could cause. I remember playing through a bit of the story when I was younger, but what I do not remember is the grim depiction of Niko, the main character. Constantly having to deal with the **** hands the world constantly deals to him he becomes wracked with guilt, unsure of his own morals, and just seems extremely depressed by the end of the game. There is no happy ending, no matter the decisions you make, by the time the end credits are rolling Niko is just left in this miserable state. Quite honestly the game played better than I expected it to. It feels a little sluggish at times, and sometimes you get caught up in animation which will just leave you defenseless while getting shot. But once you get used to it you learn the limitations of your movement and can adjust accordingly. The story is pretty all over the place. Mostly due to the game's mission structure allowing you to have a lot of different things going on for different people at once. During the final portion of the game you start to see the ends tying up and how all of these people fit together but until then it's more or less just a means to an end for Niko's revenge plot. I think one thing in particular that I enjoyed that I wish were forced are the optional phone calls. After certain missions happen in the story you can call Roman and the two will speak about what happened and I think this is some of the best character building in the game, despite being optional. It really fleshes out both characters and their familial relationship. It made them feel much more humanizing and I don't think I would have been as invested in either of them had I not listened to them all. Overall great game. Glad I finally replayed it.

Jet Set Radio had a massive impact on my childhood. Irreversibly changing both my music tastes, and world view. Having also played Lethal League I always felt that if any studio were able to capture the same magic JSR had it would be Team Reptile. To say I was insanely excited for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to release is an understatement. I have played it to completion, and I'm happy to say that it scratched the JSR itch. The movement and trick system, while not insanely technical, was fun. Exploration was light, but always kept you looking out for areas to graffiti, collectables to obtain, and the little challenge high five guys. The music is, of course, phenomenal. Once again irreversibly changing my music tastes for the better. The visuals are exactly what you'd expect **** inspired by JSR, they scream Sega Dreamcast and I love it. I've seen a lot of people complain about "combat" but to be quite honest I never had an issue with it. There are very few instances in which you are forced to fight the boots on ground police and the other encounters with them in vehicles and such felt pretty fleshed out. I see and understand what people are saying but I'm under the impression that non-forced encounters with them were supposed to be an annoyance to avoid rather than confront. I do have a couple of gripes with the game. The first of which is the story. I really dig the concept but I wish a couple more of the characters were fleshed out, or more importantly, the relationships between these characters. Tryce and the main character have an unshakable bond by the end of the game, but you never really get to see how that bond was formed. Sure they're in a crew together with a common goal, but you never really get to see like a moment that they share. The other and biggest issue I had with the game was the bugs I encountered during cutscenes. The game just REALLY seems to hate cutscenes. During several different ones the screen would just turn black and I had to mash through the rest of the cutscene and look it up on the internet. This unfortunately happened during the final two cutscenes in the game, the latter of which the game crashed completely. I played on the Switch version so it could be a hardware issue. While this is something to be wary about at the time of this review, I anticipate this will be fixed eventually. Overall I think it's important to keep expectations in check when playing games like these. This isn't the new JSR game, it's a game developed by an indie studio inspired by JSR. If you go into this game with wild expectations hoping it surpasses what came before, I think you will be disappointed. If you are looking for a game that is a love letter to a beloved franchise, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Had I reviewed this game immediately after finishing the main campaign I probably would have given it a higher rating. However, we all know that the end of the campaign is where these types of games should just be beginning. To keep it brief I'm just gonna list out things I thought about while playing: -Cooldowns are way too long I'd much rather all my abilities be weaker but I could use them more often. -More abilities should interact with each other in interesting ways. Best example I can think of is druid bear charging into a crowd and using pulverize in a big group. -I wish at any given moment there was like 4 times the amount of enemies on screen -Enemies leveling up with you not only makes the game feel super repetitive, but also makes leveling up seem incredibly useless -Hard crowd control happens way too often and lasts way too long. There are no clear visible debuff icons telling you what you're afflicted with and for how long. -Hardcore characters dying when a disconnect from the server occurs is dumb as hell. Who cares if people abuse it? It's a PvE game. Also when you put a random **** you enemy in the game like the butcher then give people no escape from it. Making a hardcore character seems like a test of patience and luck rather than skill. -Modifiers being tied to legendary gear is cool, but when the amount of modifiers to your abilities in the skill tree is so low it makes it frustrating to grind out what you need just for your build to work. Abilities and skill tree in general needs a rework. -Servers are ****ed All that being said, I had fun with the game. But the second I hit the end game and realized how tedious it would be, how many problems were adding up, and how truly little endgame there was, I just decided it'd be better to move on. Hopefully some of this stuff gets fixed and they give me a reason to come back.

It may be a bit presumptuous of me to give this game a 10. However I think when you look at something critically it's important not to compare apples to oranges. When you read the title and see the key art for this game you know exactly what it's going to be, and A Short Hike delivers. Despite it's short playtime little games like these always make an impression on me. A Short Hike will be burned into my memory by somehow miniaturizing a collectathon. Lovely little game with fun mechanics, cute art, and an endearing story.

Knowing that the Unova sequels came from a time where the franchise reached a low point in popularity makes me yearn for another period of such. More and more the modern games expand on questionable features at the behest franchise staples to cater to the average consumer. Pokémon Black and White 2 are games that were made for the hardcore Pokémon fans during a time in which the franchises popularity had reached a low point before the 3D boom. As such a lot of the features, the story, and hell even the side content requires context you might not have if you haven't played all of the other games. If you are new to Pokémon skip this game and come back when you've played all the others, the time you put into the rest of the franchise only ripens this game further and makes it taste that much sweeter when you play through it. While there isn't an insane amount of new content compared to it's predecessor, there is still quite enough here to make the second romp around Unova feel fresh and interesting. From new locations to revamped old ones they tried to take what was there and twist it just enough that you don't feel like you're playing the same game. In short, this game gets better and better the more Pokémon games you have played prior.

Lil Gator Game is a game about the whimsy of childhood and how keeping those feelings of wonder into adulthood is important. The game is cute, fun, and knows exactly what it wants to be and exactly what it is paying homage to in it's gameplay. The story is simple, but still managed to make me yearn for the days of my childhood and I found myself reminiscing on my own days of exploration and adventure. I followed this game for over a year leading up to it's release, following it only because it looked cute. I knew it was not a game that was trying to be groundbreaking, but not every game has to be. This game was a fun time with a heartwarming story.

The generation 1 remakes on the GBA are spectacularly done, however, remaking Kanto means you are still playing a game in Kanto. I know a lot of people harbor a lot of nostalgia for this region, Red for the Game Boy was also my first Pokémon game. But this game is just pretty flawed, the story is serviceable, but the real problems begin to arise when you consider the Pokémon available and the lack of post game. The Pokémon you can collect are already pretty sparse, and I feel this is compounded by there being very clear "best in slot" Pokémon for certain types. This is something I really have only ever felt in the first generation, and while more options open up to you once you beat the game, since there is nearly no post game, there's not much reason to search them out once since you are already past the meat of the game's content. Kanto served as a great foundation when the franchise first started, and probably slotted in nicely during the GBA era but now just feels kinda hollow compared to the other Pokémon games I've been playing. I've played this game enough times to shake off the dust of nostalgia and I did not like what I saw underneath. All of that being said, I still think if you are a Pokémon fan it is worth playing through Kanto at least one time to see how far the franchise has come. While it may be at it's simplest here, it is still a serviceable Pokémon game.

With the 9th Generation of Pokémon we are finally beginning to see the foundation of what a truly next generation Pokémon game could be, however it is done with the presentation, graphical fidelity, and performance of an **** porn game. Compared to what a game of this caliber should be, this was a tech demo. I was truly ready to write this game completely off, until the very last leg of the game where it began to bare it's fangs. To be quite honest, the whole game should just be structured like that last portion. In fact, I feel like the game would have been better off for it. That doesn't mean that you couldn't have wide open areas to explore and find Pokémon. I feel like a true middle ground could be reached if in the next generation of Pokémon they went the route of Xenoblade Chronicles and had massive areas interconnected with one another instead of one giant map that must be loaded in at all times. The world of Xenoblade 1 manages to still feel massive and interconnected despite it's loading zones. Performance aside, there are a lot of problems I have as a long time Pokémon fan that I would like to see addressed. Not nearly enough post game, no difficulty options, missing features that we've literally had since the GBA, A lot of the Pokedex still missing to likely be sold back to us. While Area Zero was a blast to play through, after I was done with it I couldn't help but feel frustrated at how I had to sit through hours of mediocrity just to get to the good part. The whole game should be the good part. While I did have fun doing menial things prior to Area Zero. Looking back I can't help but wonder why there was such a clear difference in effort in these two parts of the game. I love Pokémon, the series is a jewel and I know everyone wants to see it shine. We keep telling them how to polish it, but for some reason the jewel keeps getting rubbed in the dirt. Area Zero was the feint glimmer of hope shining off the jewel, reminding me that with polishing, the highest grossing media franchise on the planet could release something they can be proud of.

Sometimes I believe that Terraria is the closest we will ever come to a perfect video game. It's deceptive simplicity, sense of adventure, diverse combat, and satisfying sense of progression make it a standout among not one; but multiple genres that this game falls into. Normally games that devote themselves to this many mechanics turn out sacrificing some elements of one mechanic in favor of others, or all being relatively average. However Terraria's concept and lengthy history of being supported by developers that so clearly love video games, and love what they are doing means that all of the different elements and mechanics of this game blend seamlessly. Terraria is an all time classic, and one that as time goes on only gets better. Play it and thank me later.

I have not played a lot of Overwatch 2, however considering the state that the game is in I don't believe I have to. Overwatch 2 is the first game with one less tank on each team, less shields and CC, and 3 new characters, a few new maps, and a new monetization scheme. That's really it. Don't get me wrong I like some of the changes that were made, but I really just don't think it's a big enough change to get me to play this game for a long period of time like I did on "the first game's" release. It's ok, nothing more, nothing less.

In terms of a JRPG with insanely fun combat and a massive world to explore, this was a good game. In terms of the story driven game with strong characters that I have come to expect from Xenoblade at this point, I'm going to be honest and say that this was kind of a let down. That's not to say that this game is completely devoid of deep characters or great moments between them. But when I find that half of the main 6 characters are just uninteresting and not compelling in any way, even after seeing through the entirety of their story, I have to say I am just underwhelmed. I think this chalks up to the fact that a lot of this game felt like it needed more time in the oven. Despite it's already massive size, it seems like bits and pieces are just missing sometimes. A lot of the side content kept me engaged, but if I were to charge straight through the story this would definitely be the shortest main story to date. I feel like that part of the game should definitely have been given more love. Especially at the beginning and towards the end. Definitely worth a play, but probably won't return to it.

Pokemon Emerald is the standard in which I believe all future Pokemon games should be judged by. Hoenn is a great region filled with secrets areas to be explored and neat mysteries to solve. Battle Frontier is by far the best single player post game any game in the series has had to date. Story is good, gyms are good, the mons themselves introduced in this gen are cult classics now. There is a lot to love about this game and despite the remakes being out, this game still holds strong and sets itself apart from them in 2022.

To put it in short, Xenoblade Chronicles is a beautiful game. However, It is riddled with a lot of very little problems that add up over the course of the game. The affinity system is a tad tedious to grind out, movement speed becomes dreadfully slow when you have to traverse areas over and over again for side quests, gem crafting is neat but leaves a little to be desired ect ect. That being said, DO NOT let these little problems stop you from playing this incredible game. The characters are phenomenal, the combat is a refreshing take on JRPG combat, the music is lovely in areas that are pretty and intense during moments of confrontation, the story will tug on your heartstrings by appealing to every human emotion you have. There are problems with this game sure, but upon completion this instantly became one of my favorite games of all time. Great game, please play it, Shulk is the rawest protagonist of all time.

I have 300 hours in this game and just completed my first of undoubtedly many Eclipse 8 runs. I've seen quite literally everything this game has to offer. Despite that, I will probably dump hundreds more hours into it. Difficulty options, co-op, and artifacts make it easy to play the game exactly how you want to play even if you're a casual player. Other artifacts and Eclipse modes give people like myself craving a challenge options to keep doing runs when difficulty options aren't enough. The concept is cool, the levels are well crafted, the music is so good it's on my main playlists, and the gameplay is tight and makes it a delight to play. I'm a big fan of many roguelike games and this has become my favorite by far.

Umurangi Generation is a short and sweet photography game that beautifully parallels the dystopia that plagues modern day society. Despite that, it also effortlessly showcases such small moments that keep us human throughout these great times of anguish and pain. While the gameplay itself isn't innovative, the incredible environmental storytelling and interesting atmosphere in the environments more than make up for that. Awesome video game.

It always seems like some of the greatest games I have ever played always sneak up on me. I've played all 3 Dark Souls games, and while I liked them, I never really considered myself a fan. I knew that this game was on the horizon for a while, but my excitement for it didn't begin until about a week before it dropped, and when it did it was like the worlds worst itch meeting a backscratcher. Elden Ring is functionally the same as any of the Dark Souls games, albeit with From Software's approach on an open world. I was curious going in how the very clever world and level design from previous games would be affected by this, and I'm happy to say they nailed it. The open parts of the map are filled with areas that naturally peak curiosity and reward it with interesting events, good environmental story telling, or sometimes even just a beautiful vista. Pair that with more sectioned off areas that have a more traditional From Software level design and you have what, in my opinion, is the best of both worlds. Combat, like the Dark Souls games is solid, and while it may seem difficult at first, this game is better than it's predecessors at easing you into it. Leveling up and character building is a little obtuse like the other games, with little to guide you aside from finding a weapon you think is neat, but I feel like figuring things out like that is a bit of the fun in these types of games. That being said, as great a game as it is, nothing is without criticism. However in the grand scheme of what this game has to offer, I would say this is more nitpicking than anything. First of all, as with all From Software game I have played thus far, the multiplayer still feels a little obtuse and at times confusing to use. Myself and a lot of my friends were at different points in the story at different times, and not knowing where and where they could not be summoned in a world as open and with as much stuff to do as this one was frustrating. I didn't realize until 60 hours in that you can't summon someone in an area that you have already defeated the boss in, why not? Second is more a personal gripe than it is anything, but I played an Int/Dex build (original I know). My other friends that played with Arcane and Wisdom builds were throwing fire from their hands, summoning dragon heads to breathe damaging elements at things, and summoning lighting to smite their enemies. Meanwhile with my intelligence build I had... 10 different types of the same glintstone shard to fire. I ended up liking my build don't get me wrong, but I wish that intelligence builds had the same variety. Lastly, I wish that the smaller dungeons that veered off in the open world sections had a little bit more variety. I liked the ones I did, but by the last bit of the game I just stopped doing them all together because by that point I had my fill of caves, mines, and crypts. All in all, Elden Ring is phenomenal. Easily one of the best action rpgs I have ever played.