I've always been a huge Bayonetta fan - in fact, I'd probably say Bayonetta 2 is probably on my top 10 games of all time list somewhere. I've always loved how these games exude style while providing lightning fast and fluid action.

Having said that, I was worried about Bayo 3 for a number of reasons - the long dev cycle (apprently due to the original pitch for the game being open world), the focus on the slow, lumbering beast summons, and Platinum's not stellar track record over the past few years.

Now having beaten it, I'm stuck with two major feelings on it. 1) It's definitely the worst in the trilogy, and 2) Having said that, I was pleasantly surprised by how ambitious it felt and I did enjoy the new mechanics even if the game never quite came together the same way the other two did.

The beast summoning isn't nearly as annoying as I'd feared, largely due to the ability to continue fighting while summon attacks are queued. The new mobility options that come with each new weapon are fantastic and easily the best new feature.

I do wish that there were smaller fights - the beast summoning being so core to the game means most of the fights are in huge arenas with tankier enemies. The performance isn't as bad as some people claim to be (I think people forget Bayo 2 on Wii U had framerate issues too) but it does noticeably chug at times. I liked Viola a lot in theory but the timing for counters was definitely too tiny at release (apparently they've fixed this, one of these days I'll try it out of curiosity).

Also, just to get this out of the way - yes, the plot is bad. The ending sucks. I'm just going to be honest and say the story has never been the reason I've played these games so I mostly just ignored it.

Overall, a solid character-action game that I do think lives up to the Bayonetta pedigree even if it never hits the highs of Bayo 1 or 2.

NOTE: I did not play the multiplayer because I had zero interest in it. These comments/my score are only in reference to the first SP campaign, Operation Catalyst.

I was actually one of the few people interested in this game for a couple reasons - I love Remedy, and I have a soft spot for CoD style campaigns (minus the blatant pro-American-military propaganda CoD has become more and more of over time).

My brother and I played this at around the same time and came to literally the same conclusion - I don't think this is a 3/10 like IGN said (and I think their views of the campaign were colored by their very negative MP experience). But it's not very good either. It's just kinda...there.

What I played of the campaign follows a pretty standard CoD-esque formula - lots of ambushes, dramatic slo-mo, some character swapping for specific moments. The game looks fine, but the weirdest thing is that the controls and shooting feel like they all suffer from a half second of input delay. I was eventually able to adjust to it but it feels weirdly clunky compared to Control. The story is generic and sadly doesn't have anywhere near the amount of Remedy Weirdness (TM) that the trailers teased.

I don't think this game is an offensive blemish on Remedy's gameography like it's being made out to be but it's also not anything special and feels like mercenary work the team did to fund more Control and Alan Wake games. Unless you're really in the mood for some CoD style shooting, it's a safe skip.

When I played OlliOlli 2 years ago, my main takeaway was that the game had incredibly fun mechanics but was just brutally difficult.

Years later, playing OlliOlli World, my feelings on it are...well, it has incredibly fun mechanics but it's brutally difficult. But!

I do want to mention a few things - I love the new Adventure Timey visuals that give the game a much stronger visual identity than the minimalist nature of the first two, and I do think the game does a much better job of presenting a gradual difficulty curve that gets the player comfortable before really stepping on the gas. It's also very cool to see the game take advantage of the shift to 3D by having levels with multiple paths that often intersect and loop around each other.

I will never, ever be good enough at OlliOlli World to do some of the later challenges and high scores, but it still felt cool as hell when my emo skater avatar blitzed through an entire level with a full combo. Few things are as exhilarating, which balances out the screaming at my TV when I bailed at the last obstacle before the finish line.

As someone who generally avoids taking huge risks and will never, ever skydive, people are generally surprised when I tell them I love roller coasters. As long as there are proper safety measures and obvious direction, I enjoy being scared senseless and riding that endorphin high every once in a while (By the way, Jurassic World VelociCoaster? It’s dope!). Resident Evil Village feels like the video game equivalent of an excellent roller coaster. More than that, it feels like a well-designed amusement park.

Each part of the game feels like it caters to a specific kind of excitement — you have your classic thrill rides, the spooky haunted house, the unpredictable water rapids, etc. Each section lasts just long enough to not outstay its welcome, and while it stays linear the entire time, it didn’t bother me one bit because I felt like I was going through an intense hand-crafted experience with plenty of jumps and twists. The game certainly isn’t always scary, but its always tense, and I was always excited to see what curveball it was going to throw at me next. And the biggest complaint I had about RE 7 — the janky shooting — is at least somewhat remedied by having a tremendously satisfying shotgun.

Also, like any good amusement park, it’s one I’ll want to revisit — albeit maybe not until they add another ride in the form of DLC

(Bet you didn't think I was gonna keep that analogy going for the entire review, huh)

It’s easy to forget just how ubiquitous Halo was a decade ago. If you owned an Xbox 360, there was about a 90% chance you also owned Halo 3. The game’s release was truly an event. Every single friend I know who played games had it. And…I liked it! But, outside of the excellent campaign of Halo Reach (which is still the best single player Halo, and no I will not be taking questions at this time), I never quite adored the series as much as others did.

And then time passed, and Halo just…kind of vanished into the periphery. 343’s installments being so polarizing meant I wasn’t as enthused to try them, and none of my friends were playing the multiplayer either. So, with Infinite being poised as the grand return to the Halo people remember, I was interested but skeptical.

But the second I played the first multiplayer beta, it felt like riding a bike. There is something strangely calming about the Halo combat flowchart — throw a grenade, shoot down the opponent with the assault rifle, switch to pistol if needed, rinse and repeat. It’s reliable, it feels good, and is easy to pick up. Unlike with 4 and 5, 343 didn’t try to fix anything that wasn’t broken, and the stuff they did add, such as the grappling hook, enhances what’s already there instead of feeling like it overshadows the core mechanics.

I feel similarly about the campaign — forgettable story aside, Infinite’s single player is exactly what I imagined an open world Halo to look and feel like. The firefights are tense and engaging enough that I actively seek out outposts to claim, and many of the campaign missions being in constrained indoor complexes balances out the open-ended mountainsides of ̶r̶u̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶W̶a̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶t̶o̶n̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ Zeta Halo. If this came out immediately after Reach I might have been too tired by the formula to get into it, but since its been such a long time since I’ve played one of these games, it’s nice to remember why I enjoyed the series to begin with.

This is one of those games that completely snuck up on me but immediately fell in love with. Beyond the zen-like satisfaction of properly organizing a living space, it also has some of the best storytelling of any game I played this year.

While I never met the main character in Unpacking, I learned so much about her life and her interests through each scene, from her first bedroom to her first house. I deeply sympathized when it was clear she went through a messy (but necessary) breakup and cheered her on when she resolved to move into a new apartment and get a fresh start (even if she couldn’t afford a couch and used bean bags instead). Also, true to life, I could never figure out where to put the fucking colander.

Unpacking is one of those games I love watching other people play because while the game itself is relatively short (4 to 5 hours), it is also remarkably dense with how many details and Easter eggs are laid out throughout, and it’s unlikely you’ll see everything in a single playthrough. The game’s achievements encourage you to explore and experiment with various placements to see all the possible options. It’s a game where you can just tell how much passion was put into it because of its intricacies, and I think that’s far more valuable to me than any complaint I might have about the length.

Undertale is a game that is easily one of my favorite games ever, but when I played the first chapter of the companion piece/follow-up (but not a sequel) Deltarune a few years ago, I thought it was…fine. I certainly enjoyed the characters and Toby’s trademark humor, but I didn’t quite understand why this game needed to exist separate from Undertale. But now, with Chapter 2, I finally get it. And I’m incredibly fascinated to see where things go from here.

Part of what made Undertale work so well is that it defied genre conventions by having you, as the player, truly influence every aspect of the story in a way that most games didn’t even try to attempt. One would assume that a sequel or follow up would follow suit, but instead, Deltarune actively does not want the player to make choices for the main character, Kris (and in some cases, tries to prevent you from doing so). Deltarune is Kris’s story, not yours. This reversal succeeds in making the player feel helpless at times, and provides the other side of the coin to Undertale’s themes — while there are many times in life where your choices have consequences, there’s also times where you can’t change much of anything, and those moments matter too.

Having said all that, this is only chapter 2 of 7 (????), so maybe later chapters will be different. But every aspect of Deltarune’s design feels made to tell the player that they’re not in charge this time. And that’s an inspired decision that now makes me glad this game isn’t Undertale 2.

Also, Queen and Spamton are two of the funniest video game characters in years and it amazes me how constantly Toby Fox can leave me cackling like a doofus through constant uses of stock explosion and splat sounds.

Going into Horizon 5, I had a bit of a concern that this would be the game where I finally get tired of the Forza Horizon formula. I’ve already put 80+ hours each into FH3 and 4, and while I knew Playground Games was more than capable of creating another…uh… playground to futz around in, I was afraid that I just simply had my fill of this sort of game. At some point I’d have to get bored of open world driving, right?

However, after an hour of Forza Horizon, 5, I already had my answer: haha, nope! This series still fucking rules!

I adore arcade-style racers but could never get into sims, and to this day I think the Horizon series is the only racing series I’ve played that somehow found the mythical “middle-ground” between arcade mechanics and sim racers that truly feels accessible to everyone regardless of their particular taste in racing games. Also, FH5’s Mexico is possibly the best designed open world of the three Horizon’s I’ve played, providing tons of variety from city streets to steep mountains to rugged dirt terrain. It's also just exploding at the brims with content - I've already put at least a couple dozen hours in and it feels like I haven't scratched the surface.

I often play games as a way to get my mind off of things, but rarely can I find a game that genuinely just makes me relax and vibe with the world the same way a Forza Horizon game does. Something about the game’s beautiful vistas and rock-solid controls just come together in a way that I can drive in a straight line at 150 mph for 20 minutes straight and not get bored of it. Also, there is just something inherently funny about being able to drive my dad’s old Volvo station wagon around an active volcano.

There are a couple of moments in Chicory that I’ll probably remember the rest of my life, and I feel the need to discuss what they are below. This includes some light story spoilers for the first half of the game (no major plot twists or anything, though), so if you already know you’re going to play this game, you might want to skip to the end of the Minor Spoiler Zone below.

MINOR SPOILER ZONE

Relatively earlier in the game, your character, Pizza, asks her idol, legendary painter Chicory, to draw her portrait. Chicory obliges but says she’ll only do it if you draw her first. At this point, you’re prompted to draw Chicory. I’ve certainly never been great at drawing, but I genuinely tried my best. And my best looked like a bunch of childish scribbles.

Regardless of what you draw, Chicory is impressed, and then draws you, and what she draws is…well, excellent. Far better than anything the player could’ve done. And that moment hit me like a dagger to the heart. Because I’ve had this feeling before. This feeling that I’m just trash at what I do, and I’ll never measure up to others. That I made it as far as I have in my field through luck and a nice smile. That feeling that my friends and family clearly think I’m more clever and more talented than I actually am, because it’s not like I’m particularly good at anything.

And then I realized that was the point of this entire segment. It’s obvious that Greg Lobanov, the creator of Chicory, has had the same feeling. And so have literally millions of other people.

Later on, you find the portrait you drew hung in Chicory’s room. Ultimately, it doesn’t quite matter how you felt about it, because it’s obvious Chicory loved it regardless.

OKAY IT’S SAFE NOW

If I can describe 2021 in a single word, it would be exhausting. Not always bad, and not always good, but always exhausting. Having spent too much time in isolation and repetition, it’s been too easy for me to get lost in my own thoughts. Particularly the ones where I start to wonder if I can keep up whatever façade I’ve built to make people like me.

Then I played Chicory, and realized what should have been obvious to me all along. These feelings were never just mine.

Chicory is a game about how everyone has struggles that they deal with in private, even those who seem to be basically perfect. And while it’s natural to want to keep your pain to yourself and hide it, there’s more people than you think who understand and truly want to help. And they have their own struggles, too.

While Chicory’s adorable aesthetic, whimsical music, and clever Zelda-style puzzle solving are all strong points in its favor, what really made it so memorable for me was the writing. Sometimes you play the right game at the right time and then it’s all you can think about. For me, that was Chicory.

Also the game encourages you to name Pizza after your favorite food. So for me, she’ll always be Dumplings.

I went into this fairly blind, having only played very little of the Genesis SoR games, but hey - this is pretty dang fun!

Beat-em-ups have a reputation of being shallow and boring, but this game gets around that by having a combo-heavy combat system that encourages finding a rhythm, not unlike a character action game. And the the characters are extremely varied, ranging from pure rushdown (Cherry) to being more methodical (Floyd).

The difficulty can get a bit uneven, and it loses a little steam near the end, but overall definitely recommended.

Shit, now I wanna play Guardian Heroes again.

I love Animal Crossing. And this is more Animal Crossing!

More importantly, the quality of life changes this game made from New Leaf are extremely welcome - you can move around houses! You can actually mail letters and gifts from your airport! You can terraform your island! Setting up sidewalks isn't a nightmare anymore!

Having said that, there's still a few things I miss, like the minigame island, or Roost's cafe, or some of the special villagers like Blanca and Katie. Hopefully that stuff gets added in updates.