So, Plague of Shadows seems to be a pretty mixed bag overall. I'm not familiar with what the fanbase thinks of this one, but I felt that, although this DLC is still really good, it has more cracks in it than the base game. Perhaps that is to be expected; Plague of Shadows was the first DLC campaign and got released only a year after the base game. Still, I enjoyed my time with this one and I don't want to make it seem like I didn't.

The best way I can describe Plague of Shadows is that its a sort of "dark mirror" for Shovel of Hope. It has some original stuff, mainly through the bonus levels, but you will quickly notice that the level layout is mostly the same here as it was in Shovel of Hope. I especially noticed this in the latter half of the game, since Tinker Knight, Polar Knight, and Treasure Knight's stages felt virtually unchanged outside of small and infrequent additional segments, even though I found all the secrets in them. Both Tower of Fate levels are exactly the same as in Shovel of Hope, except for two extra bosses at the very end. On the other hand, the Explodatorium was considerably different and was easily the longest stage in my opinion, which...well, considering that it is Plague Knight's home turf from Shovel of Hope, perhaps that's to be expected. I think this mode still manages to stand out despite its similarities due to just how different Plague Knight feels to play. He has a weak jump, so to do most of the game's platforming you'll need to get into the groove of using a charge burst (hold B then release B) to propel yourself at an upward angle. It sounds frustrating, which it sometimes is, but you get used to it and it even starts to feel good to use once you do. Trust me, I hated this when I first started playing, and I distinctly remember Plague of Shadows was the only DLC I didn't beat (before King of Cards came around) because of it. Playing it now, though, Plague Knight feels refreshingly different, and I got so into the groove of playing him that I might have liked playing him more than I did Shovel Knight himself. Plague Knight being so slow and floaty is offset by him being a ranged fighter, chucking bombs to blow up his foes. As you can imagine, this makes melee enemies more annoying, but it's balanced since you can also blitz them down before they even touch you. Generally, Plague Knight's play style being so weird encouraged me to slow down, in contrast to my playthrough with Shovel Knight where I was complaining that he didn't have a run button and felt rather sluggish. Plague Knight also has a more expansive and considerably more interesting repertoire of tools for fights or even for help in platforming. There's a cool system involving modifications you can purchase for your bombs in which you can adjust the throwing arc, the powder (affects how many you can throw and the effects of the explosion), and your charge burst in various ways. Make yourself float gracefully whenever you charge burst, make your bombs prioritize going straight up instead of straight down, make the fuse shorter or longer, and SO much more. There's a startling amount of options that spices gameplay up if you swap between 'em. Plague Knight also doesn't use the Relics that Shovel Knight used, instead quite literally trashing them in favor of Arcana. The Arcana are pretty much the same idea as Relics, except they use a rechargeable meter instead of a limited resource; it seems Yacht Club didn't want another repeat of the Phase Locket, so you can actually experiment with different ones now that there is no one obvious best Arcana. Overall, I grew to really love playing Plague Knight, but the initial curve in learning how to play him is really rough, and I wish that this campaign didn't feel mostly like a copy-paste job of the original.

I think I got more to talk about with the story and characters here than I did with Shovel of Hope. The story for Plague of Shadows almost gives off a kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain vibe, with your own evil lair and your own entourage of evil minions to serve you. I thought it was really amusing how it flips certain aspects of Shovel of Hope's story on its head: Shovel Knight goes to the village and is not perceived as a threat, while Plague Knight has the aforementioned evil lair he gets into by blowing up some poor guy's house and traveling through the sewers. You get to really feel like a villain, with my favorite examples being Plague Knight destroying the Hall of Champions and defeating any guard in his path as well as the time Plague Knight raids the armorer village with his goons to conquer it for himself. There's also a running gag I found amusing that Plague Knight never truly defeats Shovel Knight; he will win a fight and then Shovel Knight breaks out of the stun and wreck Plague Knight. Its almost like Shovel Knight has some kind of plot armor because he can't canonically lose, or at least that's how I interpreted it. As for the main plot, Plague Knight is a member of the Order of No Quarter - the group of antagonist knights led by the Enchantress - but he decides to betray them because he wants to create a potion using the essence of each knight. This potion is said to contain the ultimate power. Its natural to assume that he's just doing it to take over the world in some generic, but still potentially fun, villainous plot, but, as the story goes on, his motives go into an unexpected route. While he is still a mischievous little miscreant who likes blowing stuff up and causing chaos, Plague Knight is actually trying to get this potion of ultimate power purely because he feels he needs it for fellow alchemist Mona to love him. She is his partner in crime that helps him throughout the game. The game's story makes it rather obvious they both have feelings for each other but are too awkward to confess, which is a rather cliché but still pretty cute dynamic. They even throw in some relationship drama, since the Magician (the same woman who gave you mana upgrades in Shovel of Hope) is also in love with Plague Knight and thinks he's trying to impress her. Mona leaves him after thinking he's gotten with the Magician, but Mona comes back at the very end once Black Knight explains to her that Plague Knight is actually not in a relationship with the Magician. Its too late, though, and Plague Knight has already made the potion. One boss battle after a freak accident later, and now that both Mona and Plague Knight know they love each other, Plague Knight decides to use the potion to blow up the Tower of Fate, claiming he doesn't need unlimited power anymore because he now has all he ever wanted. A sweet little ending, in which Plague Knight's villainous group becomes recognized as heroes and an adorable end credits scene of the two dancing the night away at the laboratory plays. I really liked this game's story; although its nothing special, its carried by the fun characters and that signature fun writing Shovel of Hope also had (though I'd argue its even better here). Who would've thought this silly villain just wanted the love of a tall goth girlfriend?

Overall, Plague of Shadows is great, but unfortunately does have some issues that Shovel of Hope didn't have. I'm especially disappointed that the levels are mostly the same, and, in some cases, almost (or quite literally) the exact same. Plague Knight's move set surely could have inspired more totally unique level design. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my time a lot with this one, and I suppose the fact that I had more to talk about with this one is worth something. A very solid 4.5 stars from me.

Shovel Knight is probably the best indie platformer imo and it consistently is among my favorite platformers. Shovel of Hope is back when it was just called Shovel Knight, before the DLC campaigns (as great as they are). I have memories of grabbing the original Shovel Knight on the 3DS one night in 2014 after hearing ravings from gaming YouTubers and a close friend of mine about it. It was just as great as they hyped it up to be, at least in my opinion. Nonetheless, it's been a while since I actually sat and played through all of Shovel Knight, and I have yet to even beat King of Cards, so I've decided I'll start playing through all the campaigns one-by-one. Where better to start than here at the beginning? Also, please note that, for some reason, the 3DS is not listed as a viable platform here on Backloggd; I have no idea why because I can clearly still play it through Shovel Knight Treasure Trove and it was one of the consoles the game originally made its debut on, but oh well. I suppose it isn't entirely inaccurate by technicality to label it as Nintendo Switch since I have played and beat Shovel of Hope on that platform, too.

The best part of Shovel Knight is, of course, the gameplay. Its a good old fashioned 2D platformer that takes the great design beats from classic NES games like Mega Man (levels always ending with a boss and you have some freedom in picking which level + boss you want to beat first), DuckTales (mainly in some of Shovel Knight's moves with the most obvious example being his pogo-stick-like descent), and Super Mario Bros. 3 (overworld map and events that pop up on it), yet still has its own identity with some really cool level design that stands out. I will say it might take some getting used to how the game feels; don't get me wrong, the game has excellent controls in my opinion, but the movement is a bit on the slower side and there's no run button so you might feel sluggish. You could argue that's only reasonable for a guy clad in full armor, though. The game is nice and simple, but don't mistake simple for easy. I still died plenty of times and I'm a relatively experienced 2D platforming fan who's already played this game several times before, as long ago as that might have been. Death never feels cheap and it also doesn't feel frustrating because the game is pretty generous with checkpoints and the only thing you lose for dying is a bit of progress and some gold. Stuff like the relics that have special effects for a mana cost and the different upgrades give you plenty to do with all that gold you're gathering up, although honestly the only relic you need is the Phase Locket which kinda breaks this game in two with how overpowered straight up invincibility can be. Once you get all the mana upgrades, boss fights become a big game of "spam the Phase Locket". I think there should've been some kind of catch to overusing this thing, like a high mana cost, because it trivializes boss fights as is. It's a shame since these bosses are all rather unique in their own ways and are fun to fight, plus you get awesome guest boss fights against the Battletoads if you have an Xbox/PC or an infamously canon fight against Kratos on PlayStation consoles. As far as I remember, all the DLC campaigns seem to have taken the criticisms against the Phase Locket to heart and have not introduced something with a similarly crazy invincibility effect. Nonetheless, despite these very minor complaints, Shovel Knight knocks it out of the park in gameplay.

The story...I suppose there is a little, so it might be worth talking about. Basically, Shovel Knight and Shield Knight were an inseparable famous duo of heroes fighting together until they find a cursed artifact in the Tower of Fate, which corrupts Shield Knight into the Enchantress and makes Shovel Knight think she's dead. That's all you really get as far as immediate story, but you get some somewhat interesting little bits of lore shown here, like how Polar Knight has a history with Shovel Knight (bit of a shame he didn't get his own DLC campaign to expand upon that a little). Black Knight plays an antagonistic role but he stresses that he's not serving the Enchantress but instead chasing his own goals, whatever those might be. Black Knight does save Shovel Knight after he's highly injured from freeing Shield Knight and facing the true form of The Enchantress, which was cool. Yea, the story starts off very basic here, but it made for a good starting point for the DLC campaigns to expand upon it a little. I recall Specter of Torment in particular has a pretty good story, but I'll get to that when I get to it. Also, Shovel of Hope (and really anything Shovel Knight) has a really fun, charming writing style. It feels whimsical and silly, with all the knights having some kind of fun over-the-top personality and even mundane villagers having some amusing things to say.

Overall, Shovel Knight is a very solid platformer imo. I feel there isn't a ton I can say about it in comparison to other games I've reviewed, I really don't have much at all to complain about and the game has been reviewed to death already. Its just a damn good game. 5 stars from me

I know everyone is saying this, but genuinely I cannot believe this remake exists. With the sheer reliance on Square Enix for legal rights, Nintendo's utter disinterest in reusing the characters or locations from this game, and the relative lack of rereleases...it felt like a pipe dream. The day this remake was revealed in the 2023 June Direct, I nearly cried tears of joy. I'm kind of a sensitive guy, but that's not something I can say for a lot of games; that them just existing made me so unbelievably happy. When I look back at my review of the SNES game from last year, which started with essentially a plea for Nintendo and Square Enix to do anything with these characters (specifically Geno) and personal speculation that, in a perfect world, now would be the perfect time to do a remake, I feel so happy to say that that wish was fulfilled. Something about everything regarding this remake just feels like it was made with a palpable love for the original, even though I know nothing about this development team. All the animated cutscenes that bring big moments to life were so beautiful to see, especially those last few at the game's ending...lemme tell you, seeing Mallow still holding onto Geno's doll even after the star spirit possessing the doll had long left wounded me. Its so cute and also so sad at the same time, like Geno is still there at the party the ending takes place in in spirit but not in person.

That being said, as glad as I am that this remake exists, I've already reviewed the original Super Mario RPG. This Switch remake admittedly doesn't change much, so I will try not to repeat myself by recapping the story or going too in-depth on gameplay. Instead, this review will focus more on how this is as a remake, and comparing my old review to my thoughts now. Does this deserve a five star? If I'm trying my best to be "objective" (although that's pretty much impossible with something as subjective as a game review), probably not. Frankly, this remake brought me so much joy that I feel like I'd be lying to myself not to rate it five stars. It's also my Game of the Year for the same reason.

One thing I can say I absolutely overlooked in my original review is just how much I've always really loved this game. When I reread through it, I never realized how much it looked like I didn't have much passion for the game. This isn't intended, nor is it true. Super Mario RPG has a ton of charm, from the characters to the witty writing. This remake faithfully preserves all of it, and even adds to in some cases. Seeing moments like Mallow getting his frog coin stolen by Croco or the star spirit possessing Geno as fully animated cutscenes nearly brought a tear to my eye, it was so amazing to see and I can't help but wish there were more of 'em. Every change this remake has made, as small as they are, are all benefits: excellent quality of life features like ! icons to help with timing, actually giving you a way to see an enemy's elemental weaknesses (tbh I don't get why that wasn't a thing in the original), an autosave, a map to essentially fast travel (although since you can't go to places you haven't been to before I didn't get a TON of use out of it), the option to switch a dead party member out on the fly, immediately telling you when an attack can or can't be defended against with timed defense (another thing sorely lacking in the original)...the game is the same at its core, but these features do add a lot. There's also some neat little side stuff for extra flavor, like an actual post-game (although admittedly its just fighting hard versions of the bosses you already beat), a Scrapbook that has unique comments from the characters in the party for every event that happens in the story, as well as some really amusing or genuinely kinda interesting biographies for each enemy through the Bestiary menu. Did you know the reason Dodo is so loyal to Valentina is because he imprinted on her as a hatchling, making him think she's his mother? Well, that lore bit wasn't anywhere else before, but now we know, and its a pretty neat detail.

If I had to complain about anything, I do have some nitpicks. To get the most insignificant one out of the way: I wish there was more to do with coins. They pile up very easily and, by the end of the game, you're left with several thousand coins and nothing to spend it on. As for a much more significant complaint, I think the game was already easy enough and the active push to make it even easier is just odd to me. Granted, the bosses do have rematches that are souped-up versions of the original fights, and I'm sure I'll enjoy doing those. Also, I'm not referring to any of the great quality of life changes I mentioned in the earlier paragraph when I say they made it easier. Stuff like having a much easier to notice indicator of whether your timed hits were perfect or when exactly to time them don't make the game much easier, they just help you play the game right. The ! icons to help with timing go away when you get it right enough times and reappear if you keep fudging the timing. When I complain about unnecessary attempts to make the game easier, I am referring more to stuff like the team supers that melt the HP of bosses like a marshmallow or the splash damage whenever you get a perfect timed hit. Yes, you can just not use them, but its crazy to me just how much these two things break the game in half. I was at least somewhat at risk of dying in the SNES game and bosses took longer than 5 seconds to beat, lmao. Smithy and Jinx were the only bosses I had any sort of a hard time with because Smithy's second form has ridiculously high HP and I did the third Jinx fight without the team supers. I do also think making frog coins so easy to get was pretty unnecessary. There's an OP accessory you can get with Frog Coins that halves the FP cost of one party member's spells, it's crazy good. Again, I could just not use it, but why wouldn't I? Another annoying issue is the long loading times. I'm not sure why this happens and its ultimately not a big deal but you can be waiting for quite a while just for the game to load in the area you're at.

Brief shoutout to the glow-up the visuals and soundtrack got. One of the big things everyone worried about with this is that they'd take a modern Paper Mario approach and try too hard to modernize or sanitize the utterly bizarre character designs in this game, but they didn't do that at all (outside of a few enemies based on Mario series foes that got hit with the modern stick) and its just so awesome to see all of that in high quality. Some of the songs took a little getting used to for me because I'm so accustomed to the SNES soundtrack. This Switch remake has an all-new sound while still preserving the original idea, but overall the remixes are amazing. "And My Name's Booster", "Rose Town", "Slope", "Hello, Happy Kingdom"...lots of really great songs imo that now sound so clear. The visuals are also just so damn cool to see, they preserve the original intent so well while also upgrading the areas to look very nice. One of the strangest (and not the fun quirky kind of strange) visual quirks the original Super Mario RPG had was that every area was bordered by a blue or black void of nothingness, but this remake does away with that entirely and I never realized just how much cleaner the game looks without 'em. I also never thought I would be able to see places like Nimbus Land or Weapons Factory ever again, much less see them look as amazing as they look here.

Seems like opinions are pretty split for this one. Folks either love it or hate it. As someone who admittedly doesn't read Spider-Man comics, I was always really excited for this game since I love Venom and the black suit arc in the Spider-Man media I engage with (Animated Series, Raimi Spider-Man even if SM3 wasn't exactly good, etc.). I really enjoyed both the first game and Miles Morales's own game, too, and I think this game is ultimately better than both, at least when it comes to core gameplay. It does seem to be missing some small stuff, like no New Game+ (doesn't affect me at all since I never play NG+ modes in games anyway), but its still a good package overall imo.

The gameplay is fun. Spider-Man 2 is one of those sequels that just takes what the previous game established and expands upon it a little. You get a new little wheel of cooldown moves that you gradually unlock new ones for over the course of the story, so now you have both those and gadgets from the first game. As a result, combat felt a little more mashy to me in this game, since a lot of the time I found myself relying a LOT on the little gadgets and stuff whereas I felt like I was actually using the core combat more in the previous games. They try their best to make the boss fights epic and cinematic, in which they succeed, but the actual fights always felt kinda underwhelming in comparison outside of the really cool cutscenes integrated into the gameplay. Some of them drag on too long in my opinion, which can get annoying if one is opening a can of whoop-ass on you, lol. Dialogue repeats every time, which I sorta understand since I never want to miss it, but it does make dying to the same boss a lot extra aggravating. The fight against Scream was particularly annoying in my opinion since it feels very gimmicky and not in a fun way, and you have to beat her down like four different times. That being said, I'm genuinely enamored by the smoothness of PS5 games, where there are basically no load times at all and everything just feels so seamless. This game takes advantage of it big time for an awesome movie feel, which seems to be something Sony games in particular have practically made part of their brand. Call me easily impressed but I really was so surprised by how they did this. Overall, combat is far from the greatest, but was still pretty fun imo. My favorite part was by far that one bit where you get to play as Venom; after having to play as an agile guy that dies pretty quickly, its satisfying playing a big brute smashing through everything. And...I mean, its Venom, who wouldn't love playing as him?

The story seems to be the main selling point here, and I did quite enjoy it. I don't think it got really good until closer to the end since I felt there's just a little too much unnecessary side stuff thrown in there. Not that every part of a story needs to be related to the direct plot, of course, just that these diversions were a bit much to me. Exploring the new science building Harry made with Peter, going to Coney Island with Harry and MJ, going back to Peter and Harry's old school and suddenly playing through a flashback of their time escaping from the school, having MJ and Peter talk to each other in the house...doesn't help that they do this annoying movie game thing I've talked about before where they make segments where nothing happens into interactive walking simulators for the sake of being more "immersive" when it would've been much better off as a cutscene in my opinion. Characters are talkative and actions you make can completely interrupt their dialogue, especially in boss fights, which is like the one thing I really dislike about the presentation of these cinematic games. Also, they tend to come with dumb little minigames, like shooting basketballs or playing a rhythm game. I know these smaller moments are there to make you feel more attached to the characters (and frankly I'd have to be a miserable soul to not enjoy these characters going to an amusement park) and I understand why they're here, but I couldn't help but feel like a lot of it was filler. There's still great moments in the early game, though, like the introduction to Kraven or when Peter and Harry work together to free Tombstone. Speaking of him, Kraven was a pretty good villain in my opinion. I don't get why he considers himself such a master hunter when it feels like his lackeys do most of the work to bring them to him, but he serves as an intimidating presence for the story and it was cool to hear how exactly he killed off some of the villains from the first game. I really liked seeing that a few villains actually had successful redemptions until Kraven came along and killed them (or tried to in some cases). The last few parts of the game are all about the symbiotes and I was loving that; very cool to see Venom make these symbiote nests and try to infect the world in his twisted idea of "healing the world". I tend to prefer my Venoms on the goofier side but I do still like how they handled Harry as Venom here. At first, he's a good guy trying to help out Peter, and his design reflects this since he looks exactly like Agent Venom (which really surprised me) in the comics. But as the symbiote becomes more corrupted after latching onto Peter and feeding on his negative energy, once it eventually goes back to Harry he becomes the Venom we all know and love. I was pretty unsure about black suit Peter at first, he acts barely any different from regular Peter until he eventually goes nuts after enduring a lot of stress from having to fight a bunch of villains. I like the idea of that, but before he gets the suit taken off he spouts a lot of stuff that just felt kinda uncharacteristic for this version of Peter. Dude develops a huge ego about being the hero of this story and his behavior in this state is pretty much the reason Harry becomes Venom in the first place. I have a bunch of other stuff I could describe or nitpick about the story but I'd be here a long time if I were to do that and, frankly, my typical reviews are long enough.

Overall I think Spider-Man 2 is pretty good. Despite all my nitpicks, I do think the game has a lot of great stuff in it and feels like an overall improvement over its predecessors. I'm going to revisit the game to do all the side content (probably not gonna go for the Platinum trophy though), but I figured I'd review it now since I just beat the main story. Pretty good, earns a solid 4 stars out of me.

I'm kinda shocked by how good this game is. Granted, I don't think its the best 2D platformer (my personal bias will probably never let a game surpass the Donkey Kong Country classic trilogy for me), but MAN this was such a fun time and I loved every minute of it. Great breath of fresh air after everyone got tired of the NSMB games. Those were still fine mechanically, but this game just blows it out of the water in terms of creativity and fun factor in my personal opinion. I was one of those people that thought new 2D Mario games couldn't beat the really smart player creations in Super Mario Maker 2 and this game made me feel stupid for even thinking that with the sheer amount of variety stuffed into the vast majority of levels here. I truly believe the dev interviews where they talk about how they really thought outside the box for this one; while there's nothing groundbreaking or genre-redefining (tbh with how long platformers have been around I dunno if there can be any), there's a lot of amazing and pretty creative ideas all put into this game.

The gameplay just feels really nice. I'm hearing some people say this has the same physics as the NSMB games, but, if it does, I must have been fooled into thinking it was entirely unique because I thought this felt much smoother than NSMBU Deluxe. That might be because of the Badge system, which I think played a good part in freshening up this game mechanically. At the end of the day, you're still doing the same things you've been doing in 2D Mario since forever, but the various changes to your repertoire of moves that the Badges offer is really neat. Apparently a lot of folks just stick to Parachute, which is the first one you get, and say the others aren't worth messing with, but I found myself swapping through a few different Badges and still found 'em pretty useful in their own ways. I used Floating High Jump the most since getting extra jump height inherently is just great to have, plus the little float you do is like a weak version of Yoshi's flutter jump. Grappling Vine was also pretty good for challenges where you need to get dangerously close to poison or lava to get a collectible. Dolphin Kick is basically a necessity for water levels. Other Badges are much more niche or just enhance you sorta like a powerup, having different effects like magnetically attracting coins to you or letting you get one free jump to save yourself after falling into lava/acid. I also really love the sheer amount of playable characters in Super Mario Bros Wonder: you get to play as Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, the Toads (blue and yellow), Toadette, as well as four different Yoshis and Nabbit. Yoshi and Nabbit are this game's easy mode where you don't take any damage from enemies but you can still die from falling off pits or touching certain hazards, although honestly there's no reason to play Nabbit over the Yoshis unless you REALLY like Nabbit...which, admittedly, I do, so sometimes I played him over the Yoshis. The reason is because the Yoshis and Nabbit are both immune to enemies, but Yoshis can also flutter jump and eat enemies whereas Nabbit can't, making them straight up better than him. I already praised the hell out of this but the level design in this game is just so cool. The vast majority of levels always have at least one thing fun and unique to throw at you, helped by the Wonder Flower gimmicks being so wacky and varied. Also, I really liked all the powerups in the game, although admittedly I didn't really have much fun using the Bubble Flower as I did the other two. Drill Mushroom was pretty gimmicky but also really useful at times and the Elephant is just so goofy that I adore it. I looked forward to trying every character just to see how goofy they look as an elephant. Helps that its a pretty useful powerup, too.

This paragraph is gonna serve as a section dedicated to sharing a few nitpicks I have about the game. I have no huge complaints about the game, though; these are all just little issues I can easily overlook. Biggest one for me is the lack of use for any extra Wonder Seeds, which are the collectibles you get at least two of - one hidden and one guaranteed at the end - in each level. Most worlds have WAY more levels than you'll ever need to bust open Bowser and Bowser Jr.'s castles, and, as far as I could tell, there's no incentive for going the extra mile there. As soon as I noticed this, I felt much less motivation to get every seed in each level, especially after hearing 100% completion nets you basically nothing (though to be fair this is just hearsay and I haven't seen it myself). Part of this is on me, though, since I have an irrational hatred for continually getting stuff I have no use for, like in my Sonic Frontiers review when I complained about the fact Skill Points keep building up even though you complete the skill tree pretty early in the game. Another pretty big complaint from me is the bosses. The final boss is amazing imo, easily the best Bowser fight yet...but every other boss is just Bowser Jr. Now, to give credit where credit is due, they did find unique ways to have the Wonder Flower turn each fight around enough to be entertaining, but its still just Bowser Jr. and he does the same attacks every time so the only thing changing is the area around him. I also think the difficulty curve in this game is pretty strange, mainly regarding any level that isn't ranked five stars in difficulty. The five star levels are hard as hell but I rarely struggled with most levels that were four stars in difficulty, though there were a few exceptions like some of the levels in the final area leading up to the Bowser fight. I think my last nitpick of note is that there are zero consequences to using the invincible easy mode characters, so, if you really wanted to, you could beat the whole game with them alone. I know they can't cheese platforming challenges so you still have to beat those fair and square, but being completely immune to enemy damage is a little much to just be letting you do imo, especially in a game that's already pretty easy (but will still give you a decent amount of deaths if you're like me especially if you're looking for secret Wonder Seeds). Still, though, most of this game's challenge comes from platforming stuff imo, so I can ultimately understand why they wouldn't penalize you from playing Yoshis or Nabbit.

Gonna dedicate this semi-final paragraph to the fluff stuff here I really enjoyed, mainly visuals and voice acting. After the blandness that was NSMB's art style...well, I don't mean to keep hating on those games, but its very relevant here. Super Mario Bros Wonder was a MUCH needed visual overhaul in my opinion. So much personality and charm is put into nearly every animation in this game and its just so wonderful (pun fully intended) to see. Even the little details like Goombas preparing to bite as soon as you get too close or the characters putting on a determined face if you hold the Y button by standing still are here and accounted for. This game is so damn colorful and cute and I can't get over it. Unfortunately, this game does mark the beginning of character recasts for Mario games since...I think the GameCube era if I'm remembering that correctly. I will always miss the iconic voices of Charles Martinet (Mario and Luigi) and Deanna Mustard (Daisy), but the new voice actors are still doing good work. The new actor for Mario and Luigi - Kevin Afghani - was a portrayal I actually really liked since the voice he put on for them both remind me a lot of Martinet's more youthful Mario and Luigi voices from back in the day. Before the recast, Martinet's performances for his Mario characters were very noticeably getting deeper, especially Luigi and Wario. That wasn't a bad thing, but I find it interesting that Kevin's acting is sort of hearkening back to the days before that change. Also, this game has a flower that has something to say at least once in every level and it somehow never managed to get annoying. Big achievement if you ask me, big props to his voice actor Mick Wingert.

Overall I think this game is excellent. Top contender for the best 2D Mario imo, next to Super Mario World, Super Mario Land 2, and Super Mario All-Stars (though that's cheating a little since that's a combo of all three classic NES Mario games remade for SNES). Gains a great 4.5 stars from me, SO close to a 5 star but my nitpicks do knock it down a tiny peg. If I could rank this one it'd be like the closest to a 5 star that could be possible from a 4.5 star.

This game...man, its really something else in my opinion. I was unsure if I should get it since its Early Access, but, if it wasn't for the big "Act III is still in development" notification (as well as some of the gear not being programmed in yet), I wouldn't be able to tell. I'm not some speedrunner moving at 5,000 miles per second like some of the people this game seems built for but it still felt really rewarding to take down those tough bosses and kill any enemy standing in my way. I did have to take a few days worth of breaks a few times, like after I had such a hard time beating the final boss of Act I, but nonetheless I did really enjoy this game. For reference, I only ever play on Normal difficulty in games, so that's what I played here. By the end of it I felt my skill improving as my times on bosses slowly got better (still took at least 30 minutes and a lot of deaths for each one but I always felt like I was getting better).

ULTRAKILL is a cool spin on the FPS genre. I don't play a ton of FPS games but I will say that the core gameplay mechanics here remind me a bit of DOOM Eternal if I had to compare it to any other game. It sorta combines light platforming elements with the shooting, which I think works well aside from air movement being so slow and floaty. Biggest new things ULTRAKILL introduces are healing from the blood of your enemies and a combo system you're graded on after the level sorta like a DMC or Bayonetta game (just without the actual combo attacks those games have), which encourages a really aggressive play style. I'm pretty sure the highest "Style" rank I ever got was a C since I'm just not adept enough at these kinda games to get much higher, but man the pace of the game is so exhilaratingly speedy because of these two design decisions. The guns are also a ton of fun to use, with my favorites being the nailgun (kinda like DOOM's chaingun but you can also shoot magnets or use a heat system to blitz your foes) and the shotgun in its pump charge modification. I think this game has the most enjoyable shotgun to use out of any other FPS I've played, it just works perfectly with how much this game encourages close-quarters action. I also really loved the basic pistol, surprisingly enough; it gets a modification that lets you toss coins, which are free shots that are actually really strong if you can consistently shoot the coins in midair. I cheesed the first boss of the game with it. I already briefly mentioned the bosses, but, despite being a real challenge for me, they were still a blast to fight against. My favorites were probably King Minos's Corpse and the first Gabriel fight, despite being the two hardest bosses in the whole game for me. I really felt myself getting better at the game, to the point where I was really surprised that the second Gabriel fight took an hour and ten minutes less to beat than his first fight.

From what I can tell, the game doesn't have much of a plot, but you do get a cool narrative from each Act's ending, mainly involving Gabriel. What other game lets you beat the archangel Gabriel himself twice, making him question his faith in God to the point where he decides to kill the angels he once served? The game's story has some pretty interesting Abrahamic motifs like this, which tbh I wasn't expecting at all. There ain't much here, but what is here is awesome.

Overall, ULTRAKILL is a very solid FPS imo. Lots of fun to play and gives you so many tools to mess around with. I do hear there's some secret bosses from finding secrets in the game, but I also hear those have ridiculously high rank requirements, and...yea no thanks, most scores I got in this game were D ranks lmao. Still, I thought this game was great and I am looking forward to whenever Act III releases. Earns a 4.5 stars, not quite a 5 star for me but still high up since I genuinely can't think of any problems I had with the game.

Banjo-Kazooie's one of those games I've always heard really good things about, but I never got to play it. Never owned it on N64 (although I did own Tooie). I had a playthrough going on my Xbox One a few years back, but I stopped right at Gobi's Valley for reasons I don't remember. Now here I am to finally finish the job, and it was quite fun actually. I think this is still a game of its time and it definitely had some issues, but overall this was a solid experience. It's a cool 3D platformer and a classic Rare collectathon (right before they went crazy with putting hundreds of different kinds of collectables in these games like in DK64). Ended with all Notes and Jiggies in every world, but was just shy of finding everything since there was some unlockable Jiggies in Grunty's Lair that I never found. 97 out of 100 Jiggies.

Platforming and exploring these worlds feels great, especially with all the moves Banjo and Kazooie get along the way. Only issues I had with movement were from my slight stick drift. My main complaints about the moves is that some of them - like shooting eggs or flying (and Beak Buster) - feel pretty finnicky, but part of that is due to me using a Switch Pro Controller. There's four different special actions tied to using the C buttons, one of which is shooting eggs, and that makes it a bit awkward on Switch since its mapped to the right stick there. The flying is at least miles better than Super Mario 64 in my opinion, but getting the hang of it was annoying for me. As for the world design itself, its also quite fun; each one has some kind of unique gimmick and thematic to set itself apart. Even the water worlds weren't too painful, which is certainly rare. The main goal of the game is to find enough Jiggies and Notes to open up the next world until you reach and beat Grunty's Furnace Fun - which is kinda like a deadly board game mixed with a game show - to then gain access to fighting Grunty herself. Apparently a lot of people don't like Grunty's Furnace Fun, but I really enjoyed my time with it. The whole idea of the final level of Banjo-Kazooie being a game show with Gruntilda making you answer trivia questions or else you die was pretty cool, though I agree with the common criticism that its dumb that you have to go find Grunty's sister Brentilda in every location she can be at in the hub world and remember all the stuff she tells you. Those time challenges with stuff like playing a memory game or redoing past minigames are also unnecessarily difficult, but its not too bad since you can land on Joker card spaces and win yourself some free skips. Nonetheless, I went ahead and found all of the Notes and Jiggies for each world. Usually I was able to get about 5 or 6 before needing to resort to guides for the rest, since they can be pretty cleverly hidden. Sadly that wasn't quite enough to get 100% completion since there's some Jiggies that you unlock in the hub world by finding and smashing Grunty portraits in each world, some of which I found and others I didn't. Also, I agree with the common consensus that the two worst worlds are unfortunately the last two: Rusty Bucket Bay and Click Clock Wood. The former has a lot of annoying hazards (any Banjo fan will tell you how horrifying that Engine Room is) and it has a few doors to enter that suck at telling you they're doors since they blend into the background. The latter has a gimmick of essentially having four different variants of the same level based on seasons, which is a really cool idea in theory but a pain in the ass in execution since it means Jiggies and Notes are arbitrarily divided between seasons, leaving you wondering just how many each one gets. My favorites were probably Gobi's Valley and Mad Monster Mansion, both lots of fun and had really cool themes (although the latter is a little confusing to navigate at first).

This somewhat small paragraph here will be complaining about some issues I felt this game has. For one, the fact that it doesn't save the Notes and Jinjos (the little guys you need to find 5 of in each world to get a Jiggie) you found in the world after dying is incredibly annoying and it singlehandedly made me abuse save states. I swear that I wanted to go into this not using save states at all but this problem ruined it for me. It also makes you play some minigames in typical Rare fashion (I love Rare games for the record but this is a trend they do a lot) to earn your Jiggies, some of which are fine but others are pretty damn hard for no reason. Doesn't help that, when you lose them, typically you take damage, which doesn't exactly encourage you to try again and instead encouraged me to use save states (this is why a minigame like the Boggy racing is one I was fine with accepting my losses on but something like the stupid crocodile eating minigame is one I abused save states on). I kinda understand why they did this since, in all honesty, the game would not be challenging at all without these two design decisions. I just can't help but feel it isn't making things tough and is instead making things more tedious.

I also just want to highlight that this game has a lot of personality and charm. I love things like the banter between Kazooie and Bottles constantly coming up with goofy insults for each other and the little idle animation where Kazooie bonks Banjo in the head because she's just a gremlin like that. The fact that each character has their own way of "speaking" (as in a constantly repeating noise at different pitches) has become a pretty iconic symbol of Banjo-Kazooie. This game has wonderfully cartoony visuals and character designs that sorta defined what Rare's N64 platformers would look like, with games like Donkey Kong 64 and Conker's Bad Fur Day having definitely took inspiration from Banjo-Kazooie visually. The music is also very cartoony and catchy. I dunno, I just feel like this game has a lot of charm and I loved seeing all the new sights and sounds it threw at me despite being an N64 game.

Overall, this game's definitely got its fair share of issues and I don't think I would ever play this without save states. However, I still think it was a really fun package overall, and its one of the best 3D platformers I've played (though I've also not played a lot of 3D platformers). I can see why people love this one so much. I am very interested in seeing if this series will get a revival somehow, whether that be a remake or totally new game. Earns 4 stars from me.

So, the first part of the Pokemon Violet DLC is here. Its been out for a while and I've had it since release, but hadn't really gotten to it until now. I actually hadn't done some of the post game stuff in the base game so I went and did that yesterday before getting through this DLC campaign. I really wanted to love this considering that I did really like the base game despite its problems, but I think this DLC was pretty mid overall; it doesn't feel like much of an expansion considering how small the new region, Kitakami, can be. I suppose they did it this way because its a two-parter, but it's still a tad disappointing.

I don't need to have a gameplay section since this is basically just more content added to Scarlet/Violet, so I'm just going to do a summary of the game in one of my trademark longwinded paragraphs. I could talk about the weird performance stuff or the fact that the game's environments look horrible, but either I'm getting too used to seeing modern Pokémon bug out or I just don't care anymore since The Pokémon Company doesn't seem to care either. Aside from some slowdown spikes, though, the game ran well for me, so I suppose that counts for something. Also, the level curve here is a little strange to me: maybe I overleveled my team but I entered here with mid-70s and got out with early Level 80s and I was way higher level than everything here, even the legendaries. Anyway, even for Pokémon standards, this story felt very short and simple. Granted, I never played the Sword/Shield DLC, so maybe The Teal Mask is comparable to how long The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra were, but man this felt like it was over quick even when doing my best to explore all of Kitakami and catch every Pokemon I saw. There's only six new Pokémon in this game, four of which are legendaries you can only catch after finishing the story and one of which is a new evolution to an old Pokémon. The rest are just old 'mons sold back to you through DLC (not a fan of how the games do this now). On the plus side, I did like the new characters introduced: you got the legendary Ogerpon and the rival sister/brother duo of Carmine and Kieran. There's some other very minor characters but they really don't do much of anything for the plot, the real meat of it is with the duo of Carmine and Kieran. They're getting their own paragraph since I found them really interesting to talk about.

Basically, the story of this game is that you're going to Kitakami as part of a field trip and, while you're there, your mission is to go find and read signposts about the city's folklore. Real exciting, I know. Things do amp up a bit once you meet Kieran and Carmine, though. As it turns out, the legend of Ogerpon, otherwise known as simply "the ogre", as the myths have it is wrong. It paints the ogre as a violent Pokémon that destroyed a village, when, in reality, it was an outcast shunned by the village. Think Frankenstein, but the monster is really cute and doesn't actually pose a threat. The "Loyal Three" are portrayed in the myths as heroes chasing off the ogre, but in reality they're basically a bunch of cowardly thugs ganging up on the ogre for...seemingly no reason? You never get their perspective on why they're doing this, although they can't speak so its not like they can just tell you. The idea of false myths being passed along generations and people needing to reconcile with the truth once its shown to them would be awesome if this wasn't a Pokémon story, where this stuff never gets explored in any kind of depth. The villagers just accept Ogerpon back with little resistance once Kieran tells them the truth, though I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself here. Basically, the main goals of this story are having the characters discover the truth behind Ogerpon, go beat up the Loyal Three after we accidentally freed them since they stole Ogerpon's masks, and then find a way to reintegrate Ogerpon into the village...and, yes, find all three folklore signs, which, funnily enough, you don't do until after you've already done almost all of the important story stuff first. I suppose this story works fine, but it felt rather middling and unimpactful, and it also squanders any chance it had to be emotionally compelling.

I'm conflicted on what to think about Carmine and Kieran, a sister and brother duo that are the closest thing to this game's rivals. I like how Carmine is very cocky, two-faced, and easy to anger, since we could always use some more mean rivals in Pokémon. She does mellow out considerably later in the story, but even after she's still got an inflated ego and sees herself as the leader. You understand more about her once she reveals at the very end that she was worried that her homeland was being turned into a tourist hotspot for idiots before you proved her wrong, so it sorta makes sense why she was so dismissive of you and arrogant in the beginning. Kieran, though...I really am part of the Kieran defense squad, even if towards the end he's pretty irrationally spiteful. I was surprised to see that I really resonated with his character, even felt like I'd be a little similar to him as a kid if my life circumstances were similar to his. My biggest point against Carmine is that she's a jerk to Kieran, who is already a pretty shy timid kid and obviously has low self esteem. To give her some credit, she does treat him better later in the story and shows concern for his rapidly deteriorating self worth, but I still don't like how she treated him before. It's hinted that the kid is a shut-in and has little to no friends; the grandparents raising him are happy he made a new friend (the player), implying its a rare occasion for him, and of course Carmine teases him about it. At a certain point in the story, you all have to keep a secret from Kieran eventually, but this originally spawns from her not wanting him to know just because she thinks he'd be annoying about it. To clarify, this refers to the whole subplot of you and Carmine encountering Ogerpon briefly, and she wants you not to tell Kieran because he's absolutely obsessed with all things Ogerpon. She completely fails to understand why he would be upset that he's being lied to despite saying she's just trying to protect him, blaming it on teenage angst. Yea, part of that is angst (he gets really upset constantly losing battles to you and bottles up that anger), but another part of it is also that he is very much in the know he's being lied to. It takes until Kieran freaks out in rage for Carmine to realize her mistake...except Kieran is the one to apologize and she only apologizes to him after he already did. Early on, she is incredibly bossy to him and she likes to chastise him for "talking back". I know that siblings tend to be jerks to each other, so I get why they'd portray her this way, but Kieran didn't do anything to deserve this treatment and you can't call her out on her behavior. However, I think the thing about Kieran's character that will divide some people is that he gets very insecure about Ogerpon liking you more than him. It's not anyone's fault, but he grows spiteful towards you and Carmine for it. The way I personally understood this is that its like Ogerpon was an autistic special interest (I have autism so I can accurately compare) for Kieran, and since he seems to have basically nothing else going good for him in life, it kinda makes sense to me that he's so bitter about this. He saw the ogre as a hero even when everyone else didn't and he seems to have projected a lot of himself onto Ogerpon. His sister either doesn't care for or doesn't let him express his special interest and even mocks him for it before she ends up getting wrapped up in the quest to prove Ogerpon's innocence. Of course he also has basically no self esteem (he's shy, often degrades himself, puts others before himself, and assumes you're mocking him when you have to keep the secret about Ogerpon from him) and it doesn't help that he now sees one of his only friends - the player character - as someone that's better than him in every way. Really it makes sense to me why he snaps near the end of the story, although I wish that teaser at the end didn't tease him being in the next DLC expansion like a damn MCU supervillain. Needless to say, I liked this duo a lot, especially Kieran. They kind of singlehandedly carry this DLC; it'd be very boring without them imo.

Overall, "Pokemon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero - Part 1: The Teal Mask" (I'm sorry I really wanted an opportunity to use this long title lol) is ultimately just very middle-of-the-road, even for Pokémon standards. Not good, but not bad either. By far the most interesting thing about it imo is Carmine and Kieran as characters, which isn't really something to carry a whole DLC on. Unfortunately I gotta give this three stars, a whole star lower than my review of the base game.

So, Mortal Kombat 1. Usually I'm not the biggest fighting game guy, but MK has a way of getting me hyped to play one, especially since this game just looked like such a cool way of reinventing the series. A reboot in the most literal sense of the word, taking place in a new timeline written by the god Liu Kang. I'll save the rest of that for the story section, though. Took me about 8 hours or so to finish the Story Mode, the rest (approximately 11 more hours) were spent playing matches with my bro online and a bit of the Invasions mode. I'll try to cover everything in the gameplay section, like I usually do.

I'll make this a brief paragraph to describe my issues with the game. Particularly, this is related to performance and the like. I have no idea if this is more my computer's fault or the game's, since I think I might be reaching the point where my PC isn't strong enough to reliably play new games, but, whatever the reason is, I do know that this game takes quite a while to load stuff in. Whether its characters, screens, or cutscenes in the story mode, the game is just real slow for me. Again, no idea how much of this is the game's fault or my PC's, but I figured I'd mention this anyway.

This game just feels great. Its very fast and fluid. Its perhaps a little too speedy for an FGC noob like me, but man does it feel nice to start the very limited kombos I know how to do. The Kameos really add to this, there's so many possibilities that are added just through their inclusion alone. Its a new system that's sorta like tag-team assists in games like Marvel VS Capcom or Dragon Ball FighterZ, but they're not full fledged characters you can play as, so you don't need to learn two different characters to play the game (thankfully). I haven't really found one that synergizes with me the best yet, though. Also, the roster in this game is great in my opinion: there's no new faces, but every veteran is completely reinvented in some way that makes them feel unique to play from previous iterations. Some are more drastically changed than others, but I loved that they brought back so many characters - some of which haven't been seen in a Mortal Kombat game in a very long time - and totally changed them around like this. I consider myself a Reptile main and I've been most excited for him since his reveal, but there are other characters I'm interested in seeing. I think the only jarring omissions are some of the Special Forces characters like Jax and Sonya, but that's because they straight up do not exist in this new timeline so I can understand why they aren't playable. There's also Quan Chi and Ermac, who are being added as DLC but are two really odd cases in my opinion since they're prominent in story mode and they even have a full move set pretty much already made for them. I have no idea why they're being saved for DLC, but I am interested in being able to play as Quan Chi once the Kombat Pack releases. This game has a pretty decent amount of content, too: aside from the typical Story Mode, Versus, Online, and Klassic Towers, there's also a new mode called Invasions which adds RPG elements to the mix (things like leveling up, allocating stat points to your characters, and type weaknesses/strengths). I found that one to be really fun.

The story...well, it is a fighting game story, so things can feel rather rushed or awkwardly paced. I don't know why the NetherRealm Studios Mortal Kombat games all do this, but the game is divided into character based chapters, so the story kinda has to revolve around whoever you're playing at the time. Sometimes this works pretty well, other times it leads to weird scenarios where characters win fights that it doesn't feel like they should've been able to win, and it pretty much always results in some characters feeling super underutilized. It has a pretty good chunk of characters in it, though, so I suppose its only natural some of them go underused. As far as the characters go, though, the game makes some much needed touchups on long established veterans. In my opinion, Liu Kang is far more interesting as a god trying to keep the peace of this new world he's created than any other role he's had in the other Mortal Kombat games. I've never really cared that much about Shang Tsung aside from stuff like the first Mortal Kombat movie, but MK1 Shang is an absolutely amazing villain in my opinion; I loved his snide little expressions, smug voice, and great villainous presence in the story. I was also very happy to see Reptile and Baraka actually have plot relevance and things to do here instead of just being mindless grunts of Shao Kahn (now General Shao) since I've always been a fan of these two characters. Baraka in particular gets a big glow-up here in terms of personality, though I suppose that's not much of an achievement since he didn't have much of one before. The actual story itself...I think it starts excellent, focusing around Liu Kang trying to have this timeline's events go as intended only for Shang Tsung (and later Quan Chi) to be skulking around in the background ruining everything. There's a bit of a mystery for the characters trying to unravel everything that's going on, like the conflict in Outworld sparked by Shang Tsung feeding them lies about Earthrealmers. However, once the bombshell gets dropped that Shang Tsung got his powers back from a past version of Shang Tsung that came from the Mortal Kombat 11 universe, it just devolves into a bunch of multiverse shenanigans real quick. Admittedly, some of this was badass. I mean, I'd be a pretty joyless guy to not love this game's ending being a huge homage to Mortal Kombat Armageddon (a big game of my childhood and my first MK game), for example. Still, though, I can't help but feel some of that cool stuff from before got muddled with timey-wimey wibbly wobbly stuff and suddenly all hell breaks loose. Also it kinda bugs me that they didn't bring back Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa to play the MK11 Shang Tsung since that's literally who played him in the last game, but I also love the new Shang Tsung's face and voice a lot so its not too big of a deal. They seemed really inconsistent on which characters got the proper actor back and which ones didn't. Nonetheless, I do still think this was a really cool story and a nice clever way to reinvent the Mortal Kombat universe. Also, that ending bit teasing Havik as a Titan looks to be leading to an interesting sequel. I almost think Havik made the roster just for that teaser considering how he only shows up in the story like three times.

Overall, I really like this game. I will likely be trying to play the multiplayer stuff or Invasions more since I just like this game that much, but I doubt I will really try to be a pro at it or anything. Just never been how I've rolled with fighting games. Still, though, its a fun time and a great way to reinvent Mortal Kombat (I know I keep saying that but I really do think the way they pulled this off was so cool). Earns 4 stars from me.