Another Mario masterpiece. It released at a perfect time for me to binge and it was amazing. The combat, soundtrack, dialogue, and enemies blend so well together. It hardly feels like a Super Mario game because of how unique and diverse the areas/encounters can be. Extremely glad that my first genuine exposure to this game was this remake because they did an outstanding job. It glows on my OLED and I couldn’t be happier. Nothing about it feels outdated besides some action-command timing issues but it’s nothing that takes from the experience.

My biggest wish is for this game to exceed sales expectations and hopefully give us another title down the line.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a return to form for the Super Mario series, specifically the 2D games. As the name implies, it’s filled with the wonder and mystery you felt in the first Super Mario games. Your first time ever playing a Mario game, you probably thought to yourself “what happens when I hit this ? Block? Oh, a mushroom appeared! What happens if I touch it?” etc. etc. Wonder brings back that feeling of “What happens?” the Super Mario series has been solely lacking. Nintendo has made great Mario games these past few years, but they’re very predictable and all pretty much use the same formula. Wonder has Mario’s core, but ditches that tired and worn out formula for something completely new. It’s great, but they did decide to keep one part of the formula…

The only part they decided to keep was the boss fights. They’re really dull compared to the rest of the game. Bowser Jr. fights are all very similar, but the final boss was SUPER underwhelming. I’ve experienced MANY Bowser final bosses in my life and this one was honestly one of the worst ones. It’s just not that exciting, they had so many great new ideas throughout the game that they could’ve incorporated into this boss battle but they just don’t. The whole point of the story is to stop Bowser’s “grand wonder”, but when you finally see what it is it’s not so grand. In a game with so much creativity, bosses just feel off and dull compared to the rest of it.

Other than that one flaw, I do think the rest of the game is fantastic. It exudes charm on a level that hasn’t been seen in this series in ages. The talking flowers are actually pretty funny, the level design is fantastic, and in general it’s just a beautiful game to look at. Nintendo knows how to make colors absolutely pop in their games and Wonder is an excellent display of this. The animation and character designs for Mario & crew are great too. It’s clearly inspired by Yoichi Kotabe’s early Mario designs, and along with such fluid animation the cast of this game looks really good.

Out of all of that though, a key highlight for me is the music. Nintendo decided to ditch the idea of remixing the original SMB songs (like they had done for so many years with NSMB) and instead wrote brand new music for this game. It all sounds amazing, I don’t really know how to describe it besides the fact that it makes my ears feel good.

Another great thing about this game is the new voice actors. It had to happen eventually, Charles Martinet was going to leave his role someday whether we like it or not. Now we have Kevin Afghani as the new voice of Mario and Luigi. I can say that he absolutely KILLED IT! I love Martinet, I grew up on hearing his voice almost daily, but Afghani is an extremely good Mario/Luigi. This game being a reinvention of Mario is the perfect place to introduce a new voice actor and I’m very happy with Nintendo’s choice.

On the development side of things, this game is perfectly polished. It’s nice to see a truly complete game in a time where a lot of games release filled with bugs and glitches (looking at you, Spider-Man 2). Nintendo gave no deadline in the creation of this game and it really shows. I hope they continue to make games like this, I’d rather wait a bit longer and get video games on this level of quality rather than a game filled with bugs. Nintendo is definitely the king of gaming, their releases are always extremely polished on launch.

One more topic I’d like to touch on is this game’s references to other games. I think the game handles them well. They don’t shove in an expected 8-bit Mario as a reference and leave it at that. They reference games through short music stages, or a wonder effect here and there. I think it’s also neat that they reference games that they don’t usually do (spoiler: theres a whole lot of Sunshine and 64 references)

Aside from the asinine boss battles, I’d consider this game to be fantastic and one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had this whole year. The joy I felt playing this was well needed during a very stressful semester. The future looks bright, not only for Mario, but for Nintendo as a whole.

I loved my time with this game. Everything about the characters and side quests was so damn good. It reminded me once again that Bethesda understands its audience when given the backing and resources to do so. When the acquisition was announced I was skeptical about the future of BGS, but it’s clear to me now that this was the best-case scenario from all ends.

The storytelling was tremendous. Starting as a know-nothing miner on the verge of greatness was a unique perspective to begin from. The stakes built nice and slowly but when the pieces were finally linked together, it all made perfect sense. I don’t want to spoil the game in any way but the story was well done and very enjoyable. Being able to participate in questlines involving every single available faction was a blessing. Having the option to side with multiple groups throughout the Settled Systems was a blast because you would hear NPCs in all corners discussing your choices and spreading their opinion, and it gave much more freedom than being forced to choose one group over the others. Even in the final moments, the choices made during those quests were expanded on sufficiently. Each faction wraps up in the finale and I was glad to see that they were not forgotten.

Constellation is full of unique characters and I would have loved to journey with each and every member, but Sarah was the only companion that I utilized from start to finish. There have been very good things said about Sam and Andreja, but maybe I will hear their stories in future playthroughs.

Despite my enjoyment, there are some issues with the game. Space in general is such an expansive space but the traversal is abysmal. You spend very little time exploring space and are essentially spending time shuffling through menus rather than exploring. The concept is there and the mindset is there, but it seems they skipped a step in making the space-exploration aspect worthwhile. Most of the time outside of planetary ventures is spent boosting through the sky and fast traveling to the next destination. There is no real purpose for having an amazing vessel because it is utilized very infrequently. If not for choosing the bounty hunter perk, I feel as though there would be little to do in space once you’ve seen the views a couple of times. Yes, the storytelling, choices, and factions take centerstage, but it would’ve been much more interesting if there was more to do out there. Personally, this did not take away from my experience too much because I wasn’t expecting this to be a Star Wars adventure, however, if they can take this weakness and turn it around in the DLC for a future game, it would be the perfect package.

From a technical standpoint, the game ran atrociously on my Xbox Series S. Things looked beautiful and I never ran into as many bugs as I did playing Fallout 4, but the lack of overall optimization for this version was very noticeable. My game crashed way too often which forced me to restart segments on multiple occasions. At one point my save file would not load at all which forced me to load an older save file just to return to the game. Surprisingly there haven’t been any updates since launch which would have been greatly appreciated.

Here’s hoping the game is ironed out by the time the DLC expansions arrive because I would hate for anyone to experience the number of crashes that plagued my first run with the game.

I have very, mixed thoughts. Very overhated AND overrated game honestly 😭 i wish i had motivation to explore every planet and do every quest but i just don't. mainly cause the amount of loading screens and traveling and walking just gets so boring. The main story, combat, music, and choices matter aspect were all really dope though 🔥

I could go on about what else i liked and hated but i'm too lazy haha just check it out for yourself if you're real interested. it's technically only $10!

Will be coming back when the DLC drops. Also looking forward to the modding future of this game 😁‼️

Persona 4 Golden is the definitive edition of Persona 4, and the preluding game in the Persona franchise before Persona 5. As someone who played and absolutely adored everything about Persona 5 Royal, I was eager to jump into the also highly acclaimed Persona 3 and Persona 4 games. However I couldn't, until they released ports to all consoles and so I got my hands on Persona 4 Golden for the Nintendo Switch!

I started this game a while ago, it was at probably a bad time, I was busy. But I got back into this game a couple months later and really fell back into the Persona Experience. That ever-so-addictive balance of real life and dungeon crawling.

Persona 4 Golden's setting, characters and general premise for its story are all top tier. Putting our main character out into a small town called Inaba for the school year, the main character stays with his uncle and little cousin for the year. However, not long after his arrival a series of murders take place, which suddenly correlate with a weird TV channel that plays at midnight when it rains. Along with his new friend Yosuke, the main character and Yosuke enter the TV.

Inaba has immaculate small town vibes. Loved the bustling city of Tokyo from Persona 5 but the small scale homely vibes are simply unmatched here, gorgeous locations always.

As for characters, these were truly a group of friends. Like Christ, this group was so tight it's much better as a dynamic than Persona 5. That's helped by this game having a much lighter and funnier tone compared to at least Persona 5. So we get countless hilarious moments. Oh but don't worry, this game will also absolutely break you too, in the late game especially. It finds the perfect balance as you'll enjoy spending time and just vibing before the game moves into the next dungeon.

Of the cast, I'd say Yukiko, Kanji, Nanako, Dojima and Naoto were highlights. I was dating Yukiko, but I found her arc and personality to both work extremely well. Kanji and Naoto both bring so much flavour to the cast as well as having really interesting and unique arcs, also being staples in my party (along with Yukiko).

Nanako and Dojima are absolutely the emotional core of the story and man do they sell you on it. There's never been a cuter character than Nanako.

As for characters I wasn't too fond of. I like Yosuke but I also don't like Yosuke. He's great when he's not actively being homophobic or a pervert but unfortunately the writers don't really allow him to be neither many times and so it leaves me feeling like I can't really truly like him, but I guess the headcannon being that he's closeted helps. Teddie also suffers from being too much of a pervert and being kinda annoying but I actually liked his arc in the end, he has good moments. No problems with Chie but she doesn't do anything really.

As for the mystery, what a thrilling one. Unfortunately I did know who the killer was since before I played -- the memes are unavoidable -- but the impact of it was still absolutely felt. And while to get the true ending is sorta annoying since you need to do very specific and not obvious things to get it, it fits so well into the themes of the game that I loved the way the game explored its themes.

The themes of this game being accepting who you are and not accepting a false perception of life. Using TV and fog to represent this was actually so smart and just a perfect metaphor, I loved it. And the added Golden content with Marie fits so naturally I can't imagine playing Persona 4 and that arc or character not even being in it.

Persona 4 Golden strives in its slice of life and its incredible cast, and genuinely incredible story, but how about gameplay? Well the dungeons aren't really the best of the series. But I actually really enjoyed them in the end. They're not really designed they're just hallways with chests and enemies until you reach the top and fight a boss, but I will say I did find that dungeon crawling element almost more addictive than designed dungeons so it balances out (but designed dungeons are better don't get me wrong). The combat is also not as good as Persona 5 but it's still very fun regardless.

But it feels unfair to compare an older game to a newer game. They improved lots of P4G's issues with P5, but it aged so very well in my opinion it doesn't affect my enjoyment at all. I didn't want my journey to end. I just wish it wasn't so damn perverted and homophobic lmao.

The Nintendo 64 is home to some of the most iconic games of all time. That’s not an understatement. Not just first party titles but many third parties have gained legendary status from the console. Super Mario 64 was always that defining title for me. And finally after 20+ years, I have a much better game to link to the system.

Paper Mario 64 was the revolutionizer for Super Mario RPGs. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was. It took a simple turn based combat system equipped with tools open to the disposal of its players and yet forced nothing upon them. Despite appearing simplistic in nature, it goes much deeper beyond what appears on the outside. While it may be true that player’s could rush past enemies and learn to time their defensive button presses fairly quickly, there is so much more to be explored in the world of Paper Mario.

This toolset comes in the form of badges. These range from small adjustments like improving the number of hearts/flowers received after battle to immobilizing enemies by shrinking their attack and defense in ways which render them useless. There are a plethora of ways to explore the game’s combat system which opens possibilities for multiple players to experience the game completely differently. Not to mention items which can assist in battle and most importantly, partners.

The side characters in this game are all a joy to follow along with and each of them proves their worth in battle. Strategically selecting who to use depending on the situation while also keeping in mind how many flower points you have is incredibly satisfying. Having a much smaller party makes defeating larger groups of enemies truly feel like you’ve improved over the course of the adventure. It’s simple yet extremely effective in showcasing how you have learned and adapted new tricks after each battle. Despite partners being limited by their low health and inability to take damage, this improvement was ironed out in TTYD so it’s hard for me to complain at this stage.

The music and compositions are all wonderful. Each location looks and sounds amazing, and I loved exploring every nook and cranny (especially in Dry Dry Desert) as I uncovered various badges that I could add to my collection. As the first installment into my favorite series, it’s clear as day that Intelligent Systems needs to return to this formula and revitalize it for future generations. It’s a shame that this formula was dropped after two games and I hope this recent resurgence in games from this era convinces them to bring the series back to its prime.