my first kirby game! was told it's a good place to start and man I just don't really get the appeal beyond really cute sprite work. obviously intended as a more casual experience for a younger demographic but this is literally just far, far too easy and not an especially rewarding experience, even as a de-stressor. any half decent power (sword or laser) and you can clear a way through just about anybody, if you're even bothering to fight them because it's just as easy to just... float past. it's nice! I did enjoy it, just not a bunch

somehow slipped my mind to log this one -- think it would be an easy slip for the best entry in the season one canon, and probably still is, for its excellent use of high and low stakes. it juggles and achieves a whole lot, the issue is it's just slightly too long; or paced a little too badly. all of the events are good, but there's maybe one too many. even then, what do you cut? it's maybe more symptomatic of the telltale formula, or the gameplay limitations. not quite as emotional as the first episode but I'm pretty sure this is the peak.

Still more or less pretty darn perfect, obviously not in the driving or colour palette or whatever else people like to critique the game for, but Niko's story is by far the greatest Rockstar have ever done, focussing on the endless and cyclical nature of violence and a man so desperate to escape. The sandbox isn't quite as fun or expansive as San Andreas or V's but there's a lot of personality in Liberty City, even in just the oppressiveness the central island's skyscrapers seem to present. Mission variety isn't spectacular but just as good as most Rockstar titles except they feel better considering the age. Regardless, it's the story in the cutscenes that precede the levels and phone calls after them that really elevates this -- I can't stress enough how much I love this story and the people in it; managing to inherit many crime (and crime family ala Sopranos) genre topes that serve as great influence but also knows how to make them original, working in the main work's favour. Crazy how memorable this whole thing is after something like a decade. Near every mission was one I could remember doing. One of the best !

reviewing the Legacy edition obviously; such a deep shame that this is so inherently frustrating in so many ways. simple menu navigation, pathfinding in places like the Citadel, codex entries, all made unnecessarily worse and overly complicated. dialogue options stripped to a two-answer good/bad binary that railroads Shepard into being obnoxiously evil asshole or galactic bootlicker in such extremes ruins both character exploration (for Shepard and the other party), worldbuilding, previous games' effort in building and shaping the player, all to generally decrease the quality of the dialogue and general writing for such little reward. also unfortunately the least benefitted by the remaster -- I played with and without (quality of life) mods and seemed to have an even number of strange bugs, crashes, frame rate issues, all on a pretty good PC where none of these issues have been present in the previous entries... it's also sadly not really given much of a graphical improvement either, somehow looking worse than the updated Mass Effect 1. Only Admiral Anderson seems to benefit from much of a makeover?
further on, I do think the quality of the missions drops in some capacity too and the squad selection is somehow the poorest among the three titles (you have literally 0 reason to pick James unless you're doing an insanity run) and the lack of incentive to talk to your crew between missions gives you little reason to care; made worse by the fact that you often literally CAN'T converse with your squad, just making acknowledgements towards one another.
It's a poorly balanced game with attention poorly divided.

and yet it's still pretty good when it wants to be.
some of these set pieces still rule, all three DLC runs are very solid (though the overly comedic Citadel winds up being not-very-funny imo), gunplay sounds terrific, score is a good runner up to 2, voice acting is pretty top notch -- it's all good to just shoot some guys too. it's still really hard to not get caught up in the excitement of "oh wow, this is huge" especially as the game progresses. it's still not quite the finale this series deserves but in itself it's capable of being a very good game, if overstuffed and too long. Mass Effect 3 is sort of inherently the most important title in the series and while not every thing you've done will feel totally paid off in the most satisfying way, it's great to see the effort and dedication this team went into to make sure even the smallest actions were acknowledged.