Insanely close to a horror masterpiece but fumbles the audio design and writing just enough to keep it from being particularly scary. The surreal artwork and slow pace establish an exceptional oppressive atmosphere that falters due to the music, sounds, and dialogue lightening things up a little too much. But I still love what the dev(s?) accomplished with this fan game regardless! Those boss designs are god tier and the X ending rocks! Would 100% recommend this to all 20 of my fellow Simon's Quest lovers.

Fanservice Sensory Overload

In the light of Sonic x Shadow Generations' release later this year, there's a good chance the original Generations would get delisted from Steam, so I went ahead and grabbed it as long as I still could, but waited until finishing Origins, as I wanted to see as many references as possible - wise choice!

As I've already mentioned in the opener, Sonic Generations is fanservice incarnate. Every stage present here is a reimagining of an already existing one and you're going through them in release order. Each level has two acts, with the first one always being 2D and the second one being a mixture of 3D and 2.5D - although I think it would have been better if Modern Sonic's stages were just 3D, since the 2D sections take out the speed from the levels they were built around, but also because there are cases like Planet Wisp's Act 2, where the 2D segments end up being a lot longer than the 3D ones, despite the latter being the main draw of Modern Sonic's levels. However, Classic Sonic is not all sunshine and rainbows either, as his physics feel a bit off compared to the original games, but I can turn a blind eye to this, as Generations runs on an entirely different engine. It's also worth noting that the 2D level structure generally feels a bit strange and half-baked at times, City Escape Act 1 stands out especially in that regard to me. YMMV.

In terms of presentation, Generations still looks fantastic 13 years later and is the prettiest Sonic game I've played so far. It's the type of game to leave a smile on your face as you rush through those familiar levels with newly composed remixes and experience them from a different perspective - 2D zones in 3D and the other way around. Seeing Speed Highway for the first time on the hub world gave me joy, the same can also be said for the revamped Shadow chase (good lord, that fight was messy in SA2) and the second boss in Generations. But I've already said enough, some of those surprises are just better if you see them with your own eyes.

Despite being rather short compared to the Adventure duology, Sonic Generations doesn't overstay its welcome with the main story and still has enough side content for those who want to play it a bit more. As an anniversary game, it completed its task successfully - celebrating 20 years of Sonic with a really fun time.

Just meh. I can count the things I liked in this game on one hand - Water Palace, the return of a certain SA2 boss and Emerald Coast Act 1.

Generations 3DS is a strange game, the first three Act 1s all have the level design stolen 1:1 from their original counterparts, Classic Sonic has a homing attack and Modern Sonic isn't even 3D. That's right, no 3D levels on a 3DS. This leads to Classic Sonic just feeling like a worse Modern Sonic here, as the spindash is a worse boost and they both share the rest of their moveset anyways. It's genuinely such a baffling design choice to me, why even include two different characters if they play the same? The switching between Classic and Modern was a huge part of Generations' identity, and it's completely lost in this version.

If the level design atleast made up for it, it would have been fine, but it doesn't. Radical Highway and Tropical Resort are both some of the most unfun levels I've seen in a Sonic game (I've seriously considered dropping the game because of Tropical Resort), and those are already two out of eight levels total. The rest of the levels are fine, nothing particularly stood out to me except Water Palace, but I somewhat liked Act 1 of Emerald Coast too. The bosses are hit or miss, you have some interesting remade ones like Big Arms from Sonic 3 and a late boss from SA2, or boring 2D races against bosses like Silver, who is in Tropical Resort for some reason! There is nothing "special" about the Special Stages either, you run through the same glass pipe seven different times, similar to the ones in Sonic 2, would have been cool if they were atleast designed to fit the design of their respective levels.

In the end, there's not really a good reason to play the 3DS port of Sonic Generations, but I suppose it's a decent way to kill some time if you're looking to scratch that Sonic itch on a 3DS specifically.

It's pretty disappointing.

While the combat flows better than similar games, a lot of Wuthering Waves still feels half-baked, ranging from technical performance to the UI and worldbuilding. The characters' voicelines repeat themselves anytime you open a menu, there are huge lag spikes and I experienced a random crash too. Like I said, it's just disappointing, considering the game already had two beta tests and it still came out like this on release.

As for the story, I didn't find it particularly engaging from what I've played. After a cool intro cinematic, you're subject to an one-hour exposition dump, which could have just easily been explained as "there's dissonance in this world, so these monsters have appeared; you can also absorb their powers", but instead you get to hear increasingly verbose explanations about everything and their cool names. (Tacet Discord? There's a lot of things you could name monsters, but why would you name them Tacet Discords?)

I'm trying to not end this review on a negative note, there's still some enjoyment to be had in Wuthering Waves - the character designs look good, the first city you visit is pretty, the combat feels smooth and the animations flow well, so if you're a fan of Kuro's previous game, Punishing Gray Raven, this might interest you. As for me, I can't really see myself getting hooked on this world because of the established reasons, so I'll continue playing my gacha of choice about some train in space. Some kind of star rail.

bro we could have had a cute witch girl as the taito mascot before she got replaced by two doofy-looking dinosaurs?!?!? I love bub and bob as much as the next guy but we've been robbed here

The game itself is a charming lil single-screen arcade game. Definitely more puzzle-platformy than the action-platformy type beats that bubble bobble would go on to have. Instead of directly attacking enemies, you turn them into cakes and can only defeat enemies by either pushing their cake form off an edge or by blasting them several times while they are still in cake form. The latter half of the game gets especially difficult as there are tons of trick levels where if you go about blasting things willy-nilly you can and WILL get yourself stuck until the hurry-up-or-you-die enemy shows up and kills you, and that's a way worse way to go than just dying outright. The game likes to play with its own very strange-yet-consistent hitboxes and jump arcs so you can definitely take advantage of cheesing levels by shooting through walls and floors you probably aren't supposed to. There are 101 stages which makes the game kind of an endurance test, and the game DOES pull some bullshit by letting you continue on any level except the last 3 so if you want to actually clear this either get ready to memorize the proper way to clear each level or just use save states like the rest of our sane modern society. The level design is pretty hit-or-miss but dangit i liked the vibes so I can't say it was all bad. bring ptolemy back taito you COWARDS

Demon Slayer is an anime I mildly like but not super ultra crazy about. Skipped the arena fighter cause it looked basic and I have arena fighters for anime I care about more. A board game though? Not many anime try having actually unique games like this and that's what made this appealing to me. I love games like Mario Party and Itadaki Street so this was a fun surprise. This isn't as good as Mario Party Superstars but I do think I like this more than Super Mario Party. Considering this is a first attempt for a series going up against one of the big OGs of the genre I think that's pretty impressive actually. I do think requiring the Joycons to play holds it back though. That's a similar problem Super Mario Party had.

Eternal Punishment exhibits a sublimely mature, dense, and compelling narrative that pairs flawlessly with it's cast of incredibly well-fleshed out characters that each carry their own near-insurmountable amount of baggage. The chemistry between these characters was engrossing and grounded in a way that very few works in this medium have achieved (at least in my experience) and I found myself completely absorbed as a result. In terms of gameplay, just about everything I enjoyed in Innocent Sin has been escalated and improved upon, while nearly all of the issues I had (primarily the speed of combat and the lack of difficulty) have been addressed and finely tuned with the only notable outlier being that I still find the demon negotiation and method of acquiring personas a bit too cumbersome and tedious. That being said, the only real letdown for me was Maya's transition to a silent protagonist as her uplifting sincerity in Innocent Sin was consistently a highlight of that experience. I can appreciate that the torch was passed to Tatsuya so he could become more thoroughly defined as a character this time around (which is certainly the case) but I couldn't help but yearn for a world in which these two fantastic characters can have genuine conversations with one another, even if it would require me to take more of a backseat as a player in the process.