Y'all ready to get funky??

Few games make me able to physically feel the neruons in my brain bouncing around with glee but Pizza Tower successfully manages to do it every time I have to make the run back to the exit and the music accompanying the mad dash kicks in. This tickles the sadist 2D platforming goblin that lives in my head in a way that makes it very happy. The art style, music and ease with which you can control Peppino even at the furious speeds he can reach all culminate in one fantastic experience that may have me coming back, hungry for more.

I'm so mad I didn't play this until now.

The best Sonic has been since Sonic Mania. Almost manages to one-up Mania by being made out of totally new stages and not re-tread any old ground (no Green Hill Zone) and the soundtrack is particularly good. The side stuff just isn't as entertaining or varied here however and the final boss goes on just slightly too long. Definitely inferior to Mania though I had a great time with it, if you're looking for an official 2D Sonic that isn't the original games or Mania, you could do a lot worse than Superstars.

I've now run through this game twice and I think my second run has really cemented my opinion of this game: a great concept with a pretty flawed execution. Starting out both times I thought to myself "this isn't as bad as I remembered" but it's the back half of this game that is the real bastard. The twin stick control, while odd, isn't the problem. The problem is the challenge modifiers, that's where, to use a British phrase here, the game really starts to take the piss. An example is a room where the game is asking me to find a key hidden in the room, another key guarded by an enemy and to not kill any skeletons. The problem arises where the key is guarded by a vampire who hides in her coffin and can't be damaged until she opens the lid but just refuses to do so. My solution then was to find and kill the skeleton, prompting the game to spawn the one hit kill Grim Reaper as it always does when a challenge is failed, and kite him to the vampire, killing her and releasing the key. There are many such instances in this game and rather than being fun challenges to keep things fresh they just become annoyances that turn the game into a slog. Telling the player what to do but then hindering their means of doing it isn't my idea of fun. This is, in my opinion, another instance of Rare coming up with a fun conciet but absolutely fumbling just about everything else.

The enemy design is fun at least?

A brilliant follow up to a brilliant pair of games, really taking what made them great and just adding more options and freedom for the player. I very much enjoyed essentially playing through a less clumsy version of the story from Spider-Man 3 though do hope that the next game is maybe a little more focused allowing for more character development. Not that characters felt flat here but there is definitely room to do more. As always the star of the show is traversal and the new options for getting around New York are an absolute blast to play with. I very much look forward to seeing Peter and Miles again in the future.

After 13 years of wondering whether a sequel to the original would ever materialise, nothing makes me happier than saying that this game is fantastic. Alan Wake 2 is Remedy absolutely swinging for the fences as hard as possible and nailing it. Taking notes from it's survival horror contemporaries, the game creates an incredibly tense and eery atmosphere that is actually frightening, unlike it's mostly campy and only mildly creepy predecessor. Artistically striking and visually impressive, use of FMV gives the game even more of its own character and also brings levity into the otherwise very dark story. Soundtrack also absolutely stellar, playing quite a central part to the plot, and further elevates the already incredible work on display. No game is perfect but, for me, this is damn close.

Like everyone else, I wrote this off as a hilariously buggy mess, a cautionary tale of mismanagement and promising more than you know how to deliver. So imagine my surprise when, 3 years later I start to hear a murmur that this game is actually now worth playing. And honestly that was not inaccurate, essentially a first person, futuristic dystopian GTA with RPG elements, I did very much get invested in the stories I encountered as well as my characters journey to be rid of Johnny Silverhand.Visually it's very pretty and the core gameplay loop absolutely grabbed me, Ultimately though this doesn't get more points from me because it isn't really doing anything you can't get eslewhere: you drive from point to point and shoot bad guys to advance the story. There are some pretty effective plot beats, acting and writing here, but it does also throw in random YouTuber cameos and... Portal references?? And despite playing the 2.0 version, I still encountered some truly inexplicable bugs (a car began floating away during a cutscene!!) one which nearly locked me out of making progress in the story. This combined with outdated Gamer References and YouTuber cameos leave the game feeling a lot like Night City itself, its spectacle draws you in, but ultimately leaves you wanting once you leave.

You can really feel the makings of a truly great Sonic game bubbling under the surface here, and much like the recent games that came before Frontiers, the main thing that majorly needs addressing is the way Sonic controls, too may times I will be speeding my way along one of the games many open world obstacle courses when I'm suddenly flung off course through seemingly not fault of my own. Also, unsure if I maybe wasn't paying attention but very unsure about what was happening in the story here, had to read a plot synopsis after I finished and feel like I missed a plot beat somewhere?? Either way Frontiers is a great step in the right direction, a solid groundwork to build something truly amazing. Also miles better than Forces, though it doesn't have to try too hard at that.

Excellently captures the look and feel of a classic 90s FPS game with some absolutely stellar sound design that really helps to put you in the big stompy shoes of a Boltgun weilding Space Marine. I would honestly love to give this a higher score but unfortunately it is held back by the lack of a map, the Sorcerer boss fight in the arena that is just way too small, and enemies just not dropping enough items when they are downed/a way to get more health/armor ala Doom 2016's glory kills. Despite all this it was a joy to play and is one of my favouirte games I've played this year.