This is a BIG step in the right direction for 2D Mario games!

2D Mario games are some of the first video games I’ve played with Nintendo and they have a special place in my heart. That being said I actually wasn’t very excited to play this game. Yeah I was interested and knew I was going to enjoy this game before even playing but wow, Nintendo executed a lot of cool ideas perfectly with this new entry to the franchise. To start I just love that you can play as anyone with a decent amount of playable characters. I played as Princess Peach the entire game and it was worth it. It really doesn’t make much of a difference on who you play unless you play as any of the Yoshis or play as Nabbit which I personally don’t recommend playing as them just because it really wasn’t that fun to play as them. Like any Mario game there were new power-ups. My favorite is the bubble flower since it’s very essential to use if you know how to use it properly. We have the Elephant power-up which transforms you to be a really strong elephant that can carry water to use in certain situations and you have the Drill power-up which was my least favorite power-up in the game since I felt like Nintendo didn’t really find many reasons to use them. And of course we have the good old classic Fire Plant that works well with certain enemies as usual. While there aren’t many power-ups in this game there’s a good reason for that. In this game, you instead can use badges which give you a unique ability to use for ANY level and for different situations. This was handled very well since there were times I struggled to get a purple coin and switching badges can be a real game changer. Not to mention it was fun to experiment with these badges if you care enough to do so. In each level you’ll find a Wonder Flower which basically turns the level into a crazy and trippy challenge to collect a Wonder Seed and that’s only if you want to. This added so much random and unexpected fun and really feels so nice, relaxing and cheerful. Throughout the game you go through your levels where you collect 3 purple coins and 1-3 Wonder Seeds and then you’ll have all kinds of dynamic challenges that make you use different badges to earn a Wonder Seed. While I did like most of them, some were pretty frustrating to take on and I ABSOLUTELY didn’t like the KO Arena ones. Every world the moment I got to a KO Arena I honestly didn’t feel like playing anymore and I even wanted to skip them but since I was going for 100% I went ahead did them. I also started another playthrough just to play with 2 other friends and we all had a blast. We messed around and just generally played for fun and it was worth it. Also this some of the best art for any 2D Mario game. I was actually very fascinated by the art style.

Not much to say about the story other than it’s a nice and simple story where Bowser is up to no good. The usual plot for 2D Mario games. It’s a nice story and all but I wasn’t all that impressed by it and really only played to enjoy the gameplay.

Overall, Super Mario Bros Wonder is a solid 4 stars. But because I got to play this with friends and did make this game A LOT more fun I’ll give this one 4.5 stars. Not only is this is some of the most fun I had playing videos games this year but this will definitely be a memorable game that I remember in the future and I absolutely appreciate the new ideas Nintendo tried out for this game.

While I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for, it’s damn nice to play another Persona game.

I’m a relatively new fan to persona, Persona 5 was the first game I played in the franchise. As a high schooler at the time my mind was blown by that game and P5R went beyond my expectations and blew me away again. I never played the original P3 so have nothing to say about this game being a Remake and for the sake of this review I will do my VERY best not to compare this to P5R since I want to look at P3R as it’s own game. With that being said, Persona 3 Reload is an interesting game that does take inspiration from P5R. As always I LOVE the art direction for Persona. You go through the daily life of a high school student to hang with friends and study for school. You can join clubs which I thought was really cool. You also get to open up new social links to build bonds in these clubs. You can do all sorts of activities that can gain you new items or accessories or increase your social stats that can benefit you on the combat side of the game during the Dark Hour. There’s many mechanics for you to use to better yourself, your gear or your team. You can also explore and find Twilight Fragments around town which are very useful to open locked chests within Tartarus. Which brings us to combat side of things. Combat is so slick and fun. You’ll pretty much go dungeon crawling in Tartarus for a big chunk of the game where you fight shadows and get loot. Sometimes after a battle you’ll get Shuffle Time which is a system that allows you to choose a reward. These rewards can be anything from money or bonuses to collect or personas and buffs for your run through Tartarus. I really like the visuals and layout for Tartarus which the art direction does great on. I also do appreciate that different sections of Tartarus which would eventually change up the layout and halls for the floors you go through so that you don’t go through same hallways. It’s also good that more things open up in Tartarus so that you don’t always just do the same thing. Eventually you’ll have to rescue people that have wondered into Tartarus and you will eventually start to encounter Monad Doors which lead into a Red Area where you can fight formidable shadows for great rewards. You can also take on requests for Elizabeth where you have to do quests for her in daytime and during the Dark Hour. And with Elizabeth there’s indeed a Velvet Room to fuse your personas. While I did like Tartarus, I did get pretty bored sometimes since it got repetitive unless I had a challenging fight. And that’s an issue I had with Personal 5, Mementos felt like a slog and Tartarus did begin to feel like slog later on in the story. Also the soundtrack is AMAZING. Like in P5R, I loved to just randomly hang out just to listen to the music because it was so good. Atlus doesn’t miss with their OSTs.

Story wise, it was pretty good but I wasn’t all that impressed. The story was okay for the first 40 hours as we have a goal we’re set on but doesn’t do much with that goal other than having to go up Tartarus to find out more and recruit new members to help in our fight during the Dark Hour. After that, the story started to pick up for me, specifically when we started to learn more about the Dark Hour and started encountering the antagonists of the story. The social links in the game were hit or miss. Some will be “meh”, some will at least be interesting, and a few I loved. I didn’t really like Nozomi’s or Hidetoshi’s social links since they were either uninteresting or just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them. And then we have SEES, our team that fights to find out the secrets of the Dark Hour. The characters are well written and well voiced acted. Junpei is the only character I had a love hate relationship with. He can be funny but cringe most of the time for trying too hard to be funny. I also loved characters like Yukari because of her deeper connection to the story. I also love Akihiko for his cool and upstanding attitude. Or even Aigis for looking for her way of life which is interesting to see. And of course I can’t forget Mitsuru because, one I think she’s totally gorgeous, and two I really liked her social link. Besides all that, it’s really nice how you can just hang out with any of your crew members at the dorm, sadly this doesn’t increase your bond with them but you can still increase your social stats or get items like food or drinks from it. The remaining hours of the story were great and my goodness the ending hit me hard on the heart.

Honestly, I really couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for. Not sure if it’s because the story didn’t get to me as much due to pacing issues or if I felt like something was missing from the game. Nonetheless, I definitely recommend Persona 3 Reload as it’s a great game. There’s a lot to keep you busy and a lot to take advantage of.

This review will be my final thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077, and I’m a proud gamer to say that I LOVE the living hell out of this game.

It feels like it was only yesterday when Cyberpunk 2077 first released. If you’re like me who has played from day 1 then you’ll know exactly how far Cyberpunk 2077 has come. In this review I will talk about everything I loved within this game and my perspective on how this game has changed over the years, and ultimately why I had such a deep connection to this game to the point that I consider Cyberpunk 2077 to be my favorite video game.

Now of course Cyberpunk 2077 had a super rough launch. When I first played back in 2020 I encountered a bug after just playing 2 mins. Little did I know I was in for a very messy game. Everyone has had their own experiences playing this game, everything from having a few bugs to having game braking bugs to people who have had corrupted save game files. This game had so many problems that took a long time to fix. And it’s sad to say the least because underneath all those bugs was a truly incredible game that I did in fact get enjoyment out of. But for this review I’ll focus more on what on 2.0 or later while somewhat bringing up things before the 2.0 patch. To start things I LOVE vehicle combat. I honestly didn’t mind very much that there wasn’t vehicle combat before but then I didn’t realize just how much I needed it because I LOVE that you can use your own weapons or even use built in weapons like machine guns or rockets launchers which are SUPER effective. Use can also use throwing knives and blades while riding motorcycles which is also a nice touch for those that want to go for a blades only build. I also love this new aspect to the game simply because it adds more immersion. I LOVE the feeling of getting attacked out of nowhere because I maybe screwed over a gang of goons by stealing something from them or for killing a high ranking leader to their gang. It brings up consequences to your actions I loved that a lot. I also love the new skill tree system. Before 2.0, yes the skill tree was a mess but it was still doable to go for a build you want. I usually do netrunner builds or a mix of netrunning and gunner. In my most recent playthrough I did a blades only build and I have to say it was definitely one of my favorite builds I ever tried for Cyberpunk 2077. I LOVE the feeling of being able to block or deflect every bullet coming my way and being fast enough to zero my enemies and throwing knives brought stealth to a whole new level. Cyberpsycho gigs were also great because you can duel some of these cyberpsychos and they can offer a decent challenge depending on how powerful you make V. As for my netrunner builds I absolutely love to experiment with what I can do. You can use quickhacks like ping which show the locations of all you enemies in a building or use quickhacks like suicide or system collapse to kill off troublesome foes with little effort. Or you can even have electrical damage quickhacks to easily take down robots or any mechanical enemies you will encounter. Or perhaps you’re facing an enemy with a sandevistan that is too fast for you to shoot them, in that case you can use the cyberware glitch quickhack to disable their cyberware long enough for you to kill them. My point being, there’s so MANY quickhacks to use for many different situations and that’s why I love messing around with netrunner builds but that’s just me. The graphics are beautiful and stunning and that’s not to mention that I LOVE the level of detail through the visuals we can see. The world is a story within itself by showing us these dirty and ghetto streets full of neon light and advertisements everywhere with crime and poverty around every corner. You can even find that the more rich areas are a lot cleaner and more well maintained not because it’s a safe place to be. The sound design is also VERY underrated. I remember going to Pacifica and hearing the speaker system that played ads being all messed up and glitchy showing us a nice small detail that Night City doesn’t really take care of their districts that they hardly have much control of because either gangs took it over or a big homeless encampments took over. The sound effects for guns sound solid and crisp and that’s great since some guns can have their own unique sounds. Something I definitely liked a lot was being able to collect iconic weapons which either belonged to an important character or just simply have unique buffs or features. Something that I didn’t like that the 2.0 patch did was remove the feature where you can change the scope for the snipers you can use. I HATE that this feature was removed because now you have to get used to whatever scope you get built into whatever sniper you use. And this bothered me because sometimes the built in scope sucks and it was better when you could use whichever scope you wanted. That aside you can still use any scope you want for most weapons and even add a silencer if you’re interested enough. And one of the best parts of the gameplay is easily the cyberware. Honestly I’m 50/50 with how cyberware works now after 2.0. On one hand I still love that you can use cyberware like double jumps or monowire or have an invisibility implant which helps a lot through your adventure through Night City. What I don’t like is how this is tied to your armor. Depending what kind of cyberware you want or need, your armor will depend on that I honestly preferred it more when armor was tied to the outfit you wore. Nonetheless, it’s not a big deal and is tolerable. There’s also a cyberpsychosis system where if you have too much cyberware you begin to have debuffs to make you struggle more in combat and honestly it barely made a difference to me since my V was still a powerhouse regardless. I loved exploring Night City finding secrets and really just enjoying the gorgeous views. 2.0 added a new fast travel system where you can now use the subway system. I personally only used that system once just to enjoy the scenery and I never really used it again since I’d much rather prefer to drive with my own free will. I always like to drive to my next objective just for the fun of it. And the soundtrack is GODLY in this game. The music always hits at the right moments and I love the radio music so much. I had many times where I just didn’t want to get out of my car just because I was listening to one of my favorite songs. In 2.0 there’s a portable radio where you can listen to the radio while walking on foot which I personally didn’t like at all. I like being able to listen to the world around me instead and I didn’t like how I had to turn off the radio every time I got out of a vehicle, so I ended up turning off the portable radio in the settings of the game.

And the story for Cyberpunk 2077 is something truly special. You start off by choosing one of 3 life paths which will change dialogue options based V’s views on the world, these can either benefit you in some way or just simply be there for the story. Anyway, the story revolves around V, a solo mercenary and a professional one at that who aims high to make it to the major leagues and be the best legend Night City has ever scene. But, things don’t always go your way and V is put in a horrifying situation where V will do anything to survive. The story had so many twists and turns and yes, some of those twists will depend on your choices. Your choices won’t necessarily affect the main story at least not to a certain extent but there will be different outcomes and some things will happen to certain characters. Yes, you will hurt people, but is it in your best interest? Or is because you want to do what’s right based on your morals. The reason I bring this up is because there may be choices you have to make and sometimes it’s tough to make these choices because you don’t know what comes nexts. There’s many characters you’ll interact with and I love most of them. Johnny and Jackie are easily the most hilarious characters. There will also be characters that you don’t get to know much about like Mama Welles or Evelyn but you’ll feel sympathetic for them because of what they go through. You’ll even meet characters you’ll hate and be willing to screw them over just because you hate them. There are side storylines for characters you can romance if you’d like and I loved it a lot because it really did add more for the story. Something else I loved are the MANY computer messages you can read. If you want to know more about some characters you can find out even more about them you would never guessed about them. And honestly, props to CDPR for EVERY last data shard in the game. If you have the dedication, please take the time to read as many data shards as you can because you’ll learn a lot about the history and lore of Cyberpunk 2077. I can go on and on about what loved about the story but what I will say for this review is that is among one of the best stories I’ve ever seen for it’s exceptional writing in a dystopian dark future.

At the end of the day, I’ve realized why I loved Cyberpunk 2077 so damn much. It isn’t just because I loved the story or loved the immersion. The reason I loved Cyberpunk 2077 is because it helped me rediscover what it means to have fun in a video game. And to have fun, you simply just got to enjoy what you got. And of course I’m not saying you have to enjoy what you got, I’m saying as long you’re getting enjoyment out of it then that’s what matters most and what I got from Cyberpunk 2077 is true happiness. This is a video game I will always remember from the bottom of my heart as a reminder to have fun. I really do want to thank CDPR for not only making a masterpiece but to thank them for giving me a video game that truly changed my perspective on gaming.

RIP Tango Gameworks.

Hi-Fi Rush стала для меня лучшей игрой 2023 года. Видимо, игра не окупилась. Xbox вообще охуенно поступила. Накупила кучу студий, а контролировать их забыла. Redfall почему-то нахуй не заморозили и решили выпустить, Hi-fi rush, судя по всему, рекламировать вообще не нужно было. На очереди, скорее всего, Ninja Theory. Бедняги уже лет 5 делают одиночную игру на 6 часов, которая в первый же день выходит в геймпасс. Маркетинг нулевой, бля, игра будет охуенной, получит пару наград на TGA за охуенную актерскую игру, но провалится к хуям. Потом студию закроют, и все мы будем плакать.

Hi-Fi Rush - игра, которая открыла для меня геймпасс. Ради этого сервиса я готов мириться с уебанским лончером для ПК, который местами хуже говноутилиты от Эпиков. А теперь оказывается, что я плачу деньги за подписку, чтоб мои любимые студии умирали. Охуенно, спасибо. Видимо, я виноват, что не купил 20 копий HFR, вот я гандон же а бля выюадывжбд АДЫВЖБ пжбдв апрджбарж

Это ад. Это зловонное дерьмо. Это Кейн и Линч 2.
Сколько раз до этого я жаловался на затянутость игр IO Interactive, но я и представить не мог, что их самая короткая игра (прохождение заняло у меня чуть меньше пяти часов) окажется одной из худших, что уже само по себе достижение, ведь речь идёт о сортах говна. Здесь можно привести аналогию с фильмом Интерстеллар, где на одной планете 1 час времени был равен 7 годам времени земного. Каждая минута игры становится всё мучительней в геометрической прогрессии. И констатируется это даже главными героями, через чьи уста IOI озвучивают самоосознанность собственной садистской сущности.
Визуально здесь плохо абсолютно всё, просто всё. При чём намеренно плохо. Смехотворная претензия на артхаус выливается в зрительное непотребство с постоянными потоками всевозможных выделений в объектив, трясущейся тошнотворной камерой, световыми бликами и прочими артефактами, а часто и вовсе понижением битрейта, словно смотришь прохождение игры на ютубе с отдалённым деревенским интернетом.
Геймплей же, в свою очередь, пробил очередное дно, ведь предо мной предстал худший представитель тира с укрытиями, после которого даже прошлая часть серии кажется манной небесной. Я искренне не понимаю, кому может нравится здешний садомазохистский Duck Hunt в 3D пространстве с перебежкой от одного укрытия к другому, при этом находясь под непрерывным огнём. Это крайне мерзкое и отталкивающее ощущение, не предоставляющее геймеру ни вызова, ни развлечения - только неподдельную агрессию на издёвку датских извергов.
Это Кейн и Линч 2.
А 2 означает 2/10

Узнал об этом проекте совершенно случайным образом, обнаружив его добавление в вишлист одним из друзей в стиме. Как оказалось, бум популярности пришёлся на СНГ от совсем недавнего русскоязычного ролика на ютубе, поведавшем о существовании Sanabi на игровых просторах.
Первое, что приходит в голову, рассматривая изображения - Katana ZERO. Далеко не постыдная ассоциация, а вполне эффективный крючок на ценителей нечто подобного, коим я сам и являюсь. Но оправдала ли себя схожесть? Не совсем. Если Катана представляла из себя очень ёмкое, лаконичное произведение, не отнимающее у геймера больше 5-6 часов на прохождение, словно погружая в живой игрофильм, то Санаби же прибегает ко всему тому, что Катана умело избегала. Опыт прохождения выглядит примерно подобным образом: пробегаешь геймплейную секцию минут за 5-10, после лицезреешь постановку болтающих текстовыми облачками пиксельных спрайтов, что занимает если не столько же, то словно вдвое больше времени. По крайней мере ощущается это именно так. И не сказать, что это оправдано, ведь тут далеко не тарантиновские диалоги, и не кинематографичная постановка. Нужно очень постараться, чтобы удержать взгляд человека у монитора, взамен предоставляя немое кино мало прорисованных и мало анимированных 16-битных спрайтов. Авторам явно далеко до устоявшегося выражения "Краткость - сестра таланта". Кстати, ни за что не проходите игру в русском переводе. Он машинный, и он отвратителен.
Буквально каждая "катсцена" представляет из себя межгеймплейную интермиссию в виде текстовой болтовни двух человечков, и не сказать что без этого нельзя было раскрыть историю и лор. Можно всё, если уметь. Никто не отменял сюжетные детали в окружении, повествование между строк, киноязык и т.д. Не надо недооценивать умственную полноценность игрока. Вспомните хотя бы тот же Hotline Miami. Кстати, одним из основных крючков сарафанного радио является якобы слёзовыжимательная концовка. И я конечно всё понимаю, основополагающим фактором эмоциональных моментов является контекст, но и про подачу не стоит забывать. А какова подача? PNG-шка с обменом текста двух персонажей на протяжении пары минут. Без комментариев.
Ну а что до геймплея? Тут всё просто. Если вам интересно опробовать в платформере механику раскачивающегося и притягивающегося крюка, то добро пожаловать. Ничего особо, но на разок пойдёт.
В целом, Sanabi посредственный представитель современной инди сцены, но негатива не вызывает. Проект на любителя, но каким-то чудом любители и правда нашлись.