I went into this expecting it to be a pretty bite-sized game, but I did not expect it to be as short as it is. There's only three stages. Honestly, it could have been even shorter for me if I didn't have to retry a few levels due to losing. I suppose that isn't necessarily a bad thing, just rather surprising to me. Cat Girl Without Salad is one of those April Fools games, released as a sort of "joke game" where the game announcement seems like a joke but its actually a real game. As a result, these games tend to be rather small scale and aren't meant to be taken seriously at all. With the context in mind, Cat Girl Without Salad is good at serving its purpose as a one-off gag, but you're not getting a game with much substance here. I'm kinda shocked that it has only had one other review, considering the Switch version of this game is 5 years old (8 years old for the original PC release) as of writing this review and it was made by WayForward, a decently well-known developer. I guess the novelty of being an April Fools joke didn't really give this game any more time in the spotlight.

With the way this game was marketed, you might think its some sort of genre mashup game. I know I initially thought that, anyway. The truth is, it's not; it's actually a very straightforward arcade style side scrolling shoot-'em-up. The main thing that distinguishes Cat Girl Without Salad is that the powerups are parodies of game genres, which is where the whole gimmick of it being a genre mashup comes from. You have the default Pea Shooter, then all the other powerups are parodies of the following game genres: Platformer, Puzzle, Sports, RPG, Maze (Pac-Man clone), and Rhythm. All of them were pretty fun to use except for the Rhythm powerup, which just felt counterintuitive to the game design since its difficult to focus on dodging enemy fire when you also need to follow a rhythm to be able to shoot at all. Unfortunately its pretty easy to get hit, and you lose your currently earned ability after only taking one hit with no way to get it back until the powerup pops up again after an enemy death. Considering these are pretty much the main selling point of this game, the sheer ease of losing it and having to rely on the mindless Pea Shooter was a little odd to me. Otherwise, yea, this is a standard arcade shooter, and its a little hard to screw that up.

There's no real story, so I'll just cover the characters and art style. The main character, Kebako, seems to be a goofy self-aware parody of the typical oblivious hyperactive girl you'd expect to see in an anime or something. Her design alone would probably clue you into that with how much of a purposeful mismatched mess it is, full of bright oversaturated colors and contrasting ideas. She has the memory of a goldfish, she likes food and loves to remind you of that, she is a terrible problem solver, etcetera. I have to admit, I found her character to be pretty charmingly moronic. Her assistant essentially plays the straight man to her absurdity, just trying to steer her the right way. Every other character pretty much feels like a loving parody of anime and RPG tropes, some more goofy and others more self-serious. The villains love to monologue at Kebako about their tragic past or how she ruined their lives, but she is utterly baffled by it all and barely even remembers these weirdos. I could see the jokes falling flat for a lot of people, especially considering how tiringly cliché some of it feels, but I had my brain turned off the whole time playing the game so I thought it was fine. It's just delightfully absurd.

Overall, Cat Girl Without Salad is way too barebones to justify really playing much in my opinion, but that seems to be the intention. It's a one-off gag game you play once, chuckle at a little, then probably never touch again. Still, though, its not a bad game by any means, and it serves its intended purpose well. I give this a three stars, not bad in my book but pretty unremarkable and way too short even in the context of what kind of game its meant to be (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog for instance is another April Fools joke game that had way more content to it than this does).

Going into this one, I had a bit higher expectations than I did the original Wario Land games. I mean, its a big jump from the Game Boy to the Game Boy Advance, and this is also the game I've been hearing is the best one since way before I've started my little Wario Land marathon here. I think I'd ultimately say that, out of the ones I've played (don't currently have Shake It but I will get it shortly and I never played the Virtual Boy game), this is probably the best one. Just a lot of fun. Obligatory disclaimer: I played this on Wii U. Thankfully I did not need to use Restore Points at all, unlike my playthrough of the Game Boy games, so I played this as if it was on the GBA. This one was actually shorter than the other games for me, only taking 16 hours whereas its predecessors all took at least 20 hours.

Jumping straight into gameplay here, Wario Land 4 carries what seems to be series tradition of taking the base formula and changing things around to make it feel like a different beast from the others. For one, Wario isn't immortal anymore, which I have mixed feelings on. I think I do ultimately prefer the heart system this game introduces, but I'm not sure why they changed it considering immortality worked well in the previous two games. Its not a big deal, though. I think that, when it comes to overall design, Wario Land 4 is definitely the best. In my opinion, it sort of has the best of both worlds, taking some strengths from 2 and 3 while introducing its own ideas into the mix. WL3 had that Metroidvania nonlinear style of finding four different treasures in every level that are gated by progression through powerups you gradually get, and this is echoed in a much less time consuming way through the gem shards you can find in a level. You need to get the four shards in each level to be able to enter the boss room for each world, but its nowhere near as obtrusive as it was in WL3 since you have your full move set from the get-go and nothing is gated off. Similarly, WL3 had a focus on nonlinearity, which is present here in WL4 since each world is available right after you complete the tutorial level. The elements of WL2 are mostly just because that game established the groundwork that made this series truly unique. What makes Wario Land 4 so much more fun than the other games to me are a few different factors: great level design, great core gameplay loop, boss fights that are actually fun and don't feel like a chore, fluid fun movement, collectibles that are smartly placed but don't feel too difficult to find...there's just a lot of things this game does right in my opinion. I love the dash move they gave Wario, it makes a lot of sense both for Wario to be doing in general and for complimenting the game design. I think its part of how this game seems to be promoting a considerably faster pace than the other Wario Land games; for one, each level only ends when you jump on the blue frog thing, which activates a time bomb that you have to run back to the portal you entered the level from to escape. It made me think more about the great level design, since, of course, I'd need to plan my escape route or at least just know where I'm going. Sometimes even more secrets open up only after you activate the bomb and you have to race against the (admittedly quite forgiving) clock to be able to get everything. Genuinely, this feels like the peak of the series gameplay to me so far, but I'll see if going through Shake It makes me change my mind. No, I'm not playing the Virtual Boy game.

To no one's surprise, there's no real story here, so I'm skipping that yet again to talk about visuals. Wow, this game looks really nice. It's very colorful and fun with a ton of personality; feels like a natural progression of the Wario Land series while still being very unique in its own right. If I'm not mistaken, some of these visuals were either inspired by or taken from WarioWare, which, if I'm right about that, is a really nice way to sort of tie Land and Ware together more. The levels themselves are pretty creative. For every standard grassland, jungle, swamp, and volcano level, there's also a level based on a hotel, a fridge, Arabian Nights, and a glorious golden palace. In particular, the levels in the Topaz Passage stand out a lot for their charming vibrant arts-and-crafts theme, like how the first level is based on toys and toy blocks. The bosses...well, for one, they're actually fun to fight now whereas in every other older Wario Land game they're either very unfun or mediocre, but that's besides the point. Design wise, the bosses stand out so much for how cartoonishly grotesque they look, almost like some of them came out of a '90s gross-out cartoon. The bosses have probably the most exaggerated expressiveness out of any character in the game aside from maybe Wario himself, though that's not to discount the sheer amount of zany goofy expressions pretty much everything with a face in this game has. It's just delightful.

Overall, I think Wario Land 4 is easily the best game in the series that I've played so far. Big improvement over the others, with its own charm and personality to boot. It was a blast to play through, earns a spectacular 4 stars from me. I was very close to putting it at 4.5 stars, but I don't think it was quite THAT good.

So, Wario Land 3. I went into this one expecting just more of the same, like a Wario Land 2 deluxe of sorts, but ended up being quite surprised. This does build off the same sort of base as its predecessor, but it manages to stand out in some pretty cool ways. This one only took me about as much time as the other Wario Land games did, so nearly 21 hours, but hey that's nothing to scoff at for a Game Boy platformer. As per usual for my reviews, small disclaimer: I played this game on the Nintendo Switch Online service and I did use some of its emulation features like rewinding and save states. I did my best to clear everything legitimately, but this game was particularly frustrating and tempting to use the rewinding/save states on considering that Wario's immortality makes it to where the only way the game can really punish you is through annoying you. For instance, the status effects that Wario has when touching certain enemies or certain projectiles - like when the bear enemies shoot snowflakes that freeze you or when you touch a torch - will often make him nearly uncontrollably run around until the duration ends; as you can imagine, this gets real annoying real fast. These tend to make the game quite tedious so I did just rewind to correct mistakes so I don't get hit by them sometimes. It also helps out a lot with boss fights since, like in Wario Land 2, they blow you away whenever you get hit and you have to backtrack back to the boss door again to rematch (in the case of the final boss you have to watch his cutscene again if you get hit by him and yea I wasn't about to do that every time). Nonetheless I still beat almost every boss without using the save states or rewinds to cheat, I merely used them to avoid having to walk all the way back to the boss.

The gameplay of Wario Land 3 is pretty cool. It feels like a slightly more refined Wario Land 2 as far as controls go. Wario has all the same moves, but the kicker is that you don't start off with them. This game's pretty much a Metroidvania, so Wario has to gradually unlock his abilities with the treasure chests he finds. Each level has five chests - a grey, red, green, and blue chest - that you have to find the matching color key for. Of course, the chests have treasures, some of which are powerups and others unlock other levels or entire sections of levels you've already been in to allow you to open more chests. Other treasures seem to just be pointless vanity stuff, same with those music coins since I couldn't figure out what they're used for. Usually you're only able to get the grey chest your first time on a level, but, as you get your powers and grab those treasures that essentially "fill in" new parts of levels, soon enough you'll be able to get any treasure in any level. I thought this was pretty neat overall; the level design works well with this style and I thought it was cool seeing more and more of an old level open up the more I progressed through the game. It helps that the levels are very short and hard to get lost in. I could definitely see it get tiring to some people, since you will need to revisit levels a few times for progression, but I didn't think this was a bad thing and I liked seeing whatever was new with a level whenever the game notified me what the treasure I found has unlocked. I will say that the boss fights are pretty lame, though. I might just be dumb but I swear I've had to look up how you're supposed to damage the bosses more than a few times. Also, there's a day-night cycle gimmick that I swear barely gets any use and any time it did get used was irritating. All you have to do to progress day to night is to go to a level and quit, so its not a hassle, but its so underutilized and nothing really indicates when a level needs to be night or day to get certain treasures so I tended to feel like I was wasting my time even looking there. While I'm busy complaining, might as well mention one more small nitpick: the golf minigame is lame. Granted, there's only a few times you need to play it to progress and its also literally the only thing you can spend coins on, but I have never understood golf and the way this game handles what I'm just going to call a power gauge was a bit odd. I couldn't really tell where exactly I needed to land on the gauge to punt the ball the farthest I could. I will say its not nearly as annoying as the Wario Land 2 minigames, but I was still not a fan of this one. Overall, though, Wario Land 3 was pretty fun. I appreciate what it was going for with the Metroidvania style approach, it felt surprisingly ambitious to me even though it probably shouldn't.

Just like the other games in this series, there basically is no story to speak of. One day, Wario was flying his plane. Then, the plane gets shot down. Wario stumbles upon a small cave with a music box he tries to take as treasure. He gets trapped inside the music box and makes a deal with a mysterious figure claiming to be the fallen god of this world. Specifically, the deal is that Wario must find five music boxes and he will be transported back to his home land. So, off Wario goes on his adventure. By the end, turns out the mysterious figure is actually a huge clown and he immediately turns on Wario after being brought the music boxes. The character is never named in the game, but his canon name is Rudy the Clown. Wario eventually beats Rudy, saving the enemies since apparently Rudy cursed them into that form before his powers got sealed away. Wario gets to keep his treasures and leaves safely, the end. So, yea, very basic with a somewhat obvious twist villain, but I know better than to expect some grand sweeping narrative in a 2D platformer, especially of the retro Nintendo variety (and that's not a jab because I'm far from a story snob).

Overall, Wario Land 3 was a good time with some surprising strengths. My nitpicks do hold it back quite a bit in my opinion, especially since a few of these are also criticisms of Wario Land 2 which I feel should've been fixed in this one. Nonetheless I did enjoy this one, and, now that I've played all three Game Boy Wario Land games, I can see why people like this series so much. Here's hoping Wario Land 4 is something I can call a truly great game, I do have some expectations considering how everyone parades that one around as an amazing game and the best Wario Land. Going to be dusting off the old Wii U for that one.

I have to say, this was genuinely a huge improvement over the first Wario Land in my opinion. It fixed pretty much all my major issues with it and it feels like a much more distinct game worthy of being a side series. As per usual with my reviews, here's some small disclaimers for my playthrough: for some reason I can't mark my playthrough as being on the 3DS, but that was the platform I used to play it on. I limited my use of Restore Points to make my playthrough as fair as possible, more so just utilizing it as a way to reduce tedium a little (mainly preventing constant backtracking to the boss whenever you get hit) rather than cheating the game. Took me 9 hours to beat this one, just an hour short of my time with the first game.

So, part of the reason this one feels like such a big improvement to me is the way the gameplay got shifted around. Wario's base move set is pretty much the same aside from a situational rolling move he now has, but WOW he controls so much more smoothly here that it isn't even funny. It does still feel a little off sometimes, particularly with how little freedom you have with aiming your throws which can lead to awkward situations when you need to throw an enemy to break certain blocks, but the physics and controls are pretty good overall and I can't stress enough how much better they are here. The base goal of the game is also the same as the first Wario Land, but they changed a lot here that just makes it feel like a different game. You're still getting to the end of each level and hunting for any coins you can find, but the level design encourages exploration much more and its just overall more interesting to me rather than just feeling like a Diet Coke Mario Land like the first game did. There are some cool new tools to play around with, like how they decided to make Wario immortal here. I'm really not sure if I prefer that over being able to die. In some ways, its really nice, since you can just focus on exploring the levels at your leisure (especially helps that there's no time limit anymore) and you won't need to worry about having your whole coin count slashed for getting a game over. The most enemies can do is make you lose a few coins, so they're more so a nuisance than anything else. I think the immortality was partly done to focus entirely on the coin collecting and exploration side of the game, as well as the new feature where certain enemy attacks affect Wario in different ways that can either benefit or hinder him. For example, when you get stung by a bee, Wario's head gets huge and he starts floating like a balloon, which is great for reaching new places but is also an absolute annoyance whenever you can't go anywhere worth going with it. I think these are sort of like a replacement for powerups from the first game. Unfortunately they're a bit of a missed opportunity in my opinion since there aren't really a lot of creative things you can do with them and some are purely there to annoy you, like when the penguins throw orbs at Wario that make him dizzy or when the snowmen freeze him with their breath. I like the idea behind it though and I hope Wario Land 3 expands on it when I get to it.

So this game tries a little more to have a story than the first Wario Land, but there's still not much to it. Basically, Wario's castle (I guess the castle ending from the first game was the canon ending) gets ransacked by Captain Syrup's goons and they toss an alarm clock in there to wake up Wario. That's about it. From there, he's just going all around the land to hunt treasure and find those guys that took his riches. I just figured I would at least mention it, since this game does have some cutscenes. The story is more so a backdrop for this game's wackiness, which feels like a natural evolution from the first game. Wario Land II has a lot of personality to it that I like, from the fact that a piece of paper with some kind of witty title pops up before each mission to the whole design of the game. It really leans into the zaniness that first game had and its just fun to see.

Going to make a dedicated complaint section here since, while I did mostly enjoy my time with Wario Land II, there are some pretty annoying things here that I didn't really understand. There's two minigames you need to play to get various goodies, whenever you're looking to get Treasures or fill out a map thing that I think unlocks more parts of the game, and both are not very good or fun. For the Treasures, you need to play a minigame that I swear would be impossible for me if there was no easy option and even then I don't always get it. Its one of those "pick the right card" games, where you have one card you're looking for in a deck of cards that only flip around to show what they are for like a millisecond if you're on Hard difficulty. I dunno, maybe my pattern recognition and short term memory are just bad (very likely); these were manageable in Easy difficulty but if I didn't have that option I would've just not been able to get any Treasures. They're an optional thing anyway, but I felt it was a big feature of the game. The other minigame is a panel board that you can spend money to reveal one of, with the goal being to guess what number it is. In my experience you pretty much have to spend the money for three or four panel reveals since a few of the numbers look real similar to each other. From what I can tell, you have to win it after every level to be able to finish the map, so I just said "Yea I'm not doing that" and skipped the option every time I beat a level. Last major complaint of mine has to do with bosses. I don't think they're as boring or annoying as the first game but I really don't understand why they made you have to backtrack any time you get hit by one of their main attacks. In some cases it wasn't too bad, sometimes you even need to lose to the boss once to find a bunch of coins. In other fights, though, it got on my nerves so much that I just used Restore Points at the very beginning of a boss fight so I wouldn't need to bother with walking all the way back every time.

Overall, Wario Land II is a game I have some gripes with, but was very enjoyable for me and a HUGE step up from the first Wario Land. Here's hoping Wario Land 3 is better once I get to that one. This game gets a pretty solid 3.5 stars from me, fun time.

After seeing the recent surge in Wario Land inspired indies - mainly Pizza Tower (which I'm interested in playing sometime soon) and ANTONBLAST - I had a newfound intrigue in playing through these games. I've long heard about how fun and charming they are, but I didn't care much for checking them out until hearing the explosion of praise they're getting as of recent. Of course, I typically try to start from the very beginning when I start a new series, so naturally I began with this one. Thankfully, I was able to snag the whole quadrilogy before the 3DS + Wii U eShop died. Took me some time to beat this one, but its a Game Boy platformer so its not very long. I tried to use as few Restore Points as I could: I beat every level without it, but frankly the last few boss fights were pretty irritating so I used them just to save me the headache. Sorry if that makes me a fake gamer to you, I guess.

I'll jump straight into the gameplay. Wario Land feels like a pretty good successor to the Mario Land series, having the same basic structure as SML2 but shaking things up in a neat way through some of Wario's unique characteristics and a different gameplay focus. Wario has his signature shoulder bash, which has him running forward and knocking out whatever enemy he hits unless they have a weapon in front of them. You get a coin whenever you defeat an enemy with the shoulder bash. He can also pick up enemies and toss them around; if you really want to, you can just throw them around forever and they won't recover, but they only die if you toss them into a hazard (lava, bottomless pit, spikes, etc.) or if you...lodge them into blocks? Yea sometimes when you throw an enemy they just get stuck inside blocks and die that way. The goal in Wario Land is a little different from Mario Land. You're still getting to the end of each level, but, rather than that being the only real focus, Wario Land has you slow down a tad to focus on getting as many coins as you can. There's a bit more of a focus on exploration, with a bunch of treasures you can find (treasure hunting is far from my strong suit though so I only found two of them) and a coin counter that builds up as you gain more wealth. In replacement of the coins usual function of giving you lives, there are hearts you grab that give you a 1-Up when you get 100 of them. I think the focus change is a neat idea and it fits very well with Wario's character, but ultimately didn't feel too impactful or purposeful until literally the very end when your wealth determines what house the Genie gives to Wario. I got the birdhouse - the worst option - because of course I did. I died a lot, and lemme tell you, it's hard to make any bread when you're dying. If I had something to complain about with the gameplay, its that something about it just feels awkward. I'm not sure how to really describe exactly what it is, so instead I'll mention specific complaints. Wario's jumps are very floaty, but there were many times I thought I could go far enough to cross a gap and just couldn't. Usually, you have your dash to help you with going farther, but, when you don't, there are certain sections of the game where you pretty much just have to die and start again since Wario can't dash when he's small and you need to dash at certain parts. This also makes that dragon powerup feel like something you would never actually want because it replaces your dash with the fire breath. Grabbing enemies felt pretty janky to me, there's a few times where Wario just stopped in his tracks and didn't move when I was moving. There's this ghost enemy that functions like a Boo in that it only moves when you turn around, but you can jump on it too and I swear that was so awkward to finagle with. Especially annoying because there's a ghost boss where you need to jump on those ghosts to beat the boss. Any boss where you had to grab something and throw it at them was awful because of how janky the throwing feels. The physics are also just really odd and it can make taking out any enemy that moves around in the air an absolute pain in the neck. Overall I think this set a good precedent for the other Wario Land games, assuming they build off of what this one made, but it does feel pretty clumsy and odd. Surprisingly pretty difficult, too.

There's basically no story at all, so I'm completely skipping the section I'd usually dedicate to that and instead going to aesthetics. Wario Land seems to be very much going for a zany weird style. The Mario Land games were already pretty goofy, so, in my opinion, it only made sense to make the next game in the series make use of one of the Mario series most wacky characters. Wario was even invented by the Mario Land series, so its fitting to have him take the reigns. The music especially goes for a silly goofy sound, with none of it sounding particularly great on its own and rather just existing to elevate the mood. The worlds all have some kind of food related puns in the name (Rice Beach, Mt. Teapot, etc.) and the level design itself usually includes some weird looking enemies that have very expressive cartoony death animations. I think this is pretty neat.

Overall, I don't think Wario Land is all that spectacular, but it has some fun ideas despite its jankiness. It was decently fun to play through and it does have a good amount of content (about 40 levels and 5 bosses if I remember correctly). You might enjoy it more if you're all about finding secret collectibles; I'm not really a treasure hunting fiend myself so I don't mind being stuck with the silly "bad ending". Wario Land gets an alright 3 stars out of me, the game is far from bad but its absolutely carried by the great silly vibes it has and it has some weird issues that sets it back from being a 3.5 stars to me.

"Against all odds, you must run. Run. Run...and survive. You must run till you uncover the truth."

The original Blue Rescue Team game (never had Red Rescue Team) is one that I have very fond memories of. I have some strong childhood memories of my many times playing it, from bawling my head off during the ending to more personal amusing moments such as how I had a bad habit of erasing my save file thinking I could beat the game by myself after having just had one of my older brothers beat the game for me (I would inevitably ask one of them to beat it for me again). I still have a save file from around 2012 or so when I beat the game with an Action Replay to make all my Pokémon Level 100 and have all items in the storage. When I heard this game was getting a remake in 2020, I was cautiously optimistic. I was not really a fan of the art style at the time and I just felt like nothing could replace the original for me. For a long time, I kinda just forgot this remake even happened until I got it as a Christmas present in 2022. After having finally played this game I hadn't beaten since I was a preteen, I came out just a little disappointed. It isn't the deep emotional rollercoaster I remember it as, although it was still a tearjerker at times from me. It isn't anywhere near as difficult as I remember it being, although I imagine a large part of that is probably because of either remake differences or because I am an adult playing this game. Nonetheless, I did still enjoy my time with this one and I would recommend it to anyone. Its just a bit unfortunate to have my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles taken off like this.

I'll start with the story, since its always what stood out in my mind whenever I think of any of the Mystery Dungeon games. I used to think this was really gripping, deep, and immersive as a kid, but I can see beyond the childlike amazement now and I see a story that has a lot of heart to it but doesn't have much substance. As far as I can tell, Rescue Team DX's story is exactly the same as the games its remaking, since I don't recall a single plot point here not being present in the original. Basically, the big hook of this one (and pretty much all the other Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games) is that you're a human who got transformed into a Pokémon and you're trying to figure out why. From the very beginning, you stumble upon your soon-to-be best friend, who's the partner you choose at the beginning of the game. I like goofy names in games, so I named my character Dude and my partner Bro. I'm just going to use those names here so I'm not constantly saying "the partner" or "you". Dude and Bro go into their first dungeon - Tiny Woods - to save a Butterfree's child and they inevitably succeed. From here, they decide to form a Rescue Team (hence the name of the game), which is...well, a team of Pokémon that make it their job to rescue those unfortunate souls that got lost in dungeons. I am very unfunny and uncreative, so I named mine Team Gigachads. As a newly formed team, the only members are Dude and Bro, although it gets bigger later. From here, the story mostly consists of a good amount of rescue missions with their own motivations behind it, like how you go to Silent Chasm to save a Jumpluff because another greedy Rescue Team got persuaded into doing it and nearly died trying. Sometimes you also just go through dungeons for your own sake, like how Dude goes to Great Canyon to talk to the mystical Xatu in hopes of seeing if Xatu knows why he became a Pokémon. You also have these dream sequences where, slowly but surely, Dude starts to piece together why he was placed into the world of Pokémon. In my opinion, the story doesn't really start getting interesting until the part where Gengar - the leader of Team Meanies (yea that's genuinely what they're called) that has a bone to pick with you - finds out you're a human through spying on your conversation with Xatu. He immediately tries to sabotage the goodwill you've been building up with the townsfolk and other Rescue Teams. Dude has been telling them that he's a human since he first got here, but they either never take him seriously or don't know what a human even is. Alakazam's team - the big team that everyone loves but was never given an official name - are the only ones with suspicions about Dude being evil, with Alakazam specifically being the one to suspect it. Gengar takes advantage of everyone's lack of knowledge about humans to spin a narrative that the reason why all the natural disasters happening in the world lately (you get hints of this through conversation with the legendaries you fight since they talk about the balance of the specific part of the world they govern being out of wack) is tied to Dude becoming a Pokémon. There's a legend that a Ninetales tried to curse a human for pulling its tail, but a Gardevoir with a deep bond protected that human, and the human selfishly ran away. This tale is used as "evidence" by Gengar to convince others to join the mob. They kinda just immediately believe him, even the big hotshot Rescue Team that Dude and Bro admire so much. Said Rescue Team breaks the news by threatening to kill you if you don't turn back, and even then they are going to send a bunch of the best Rescue Teams to hunt you down tomorrow so you better start running real fast. I remember something like this was genuinely really shocking to see in a Pokémon game for me as a kid and you start to really care for the characters after seeing how far these two little unevolved Pokémon have to push themselves to escape the elite Rescue Teams that want them dead. In my opinion, its the real emotional core of the game, and it does last a good while. For a while, you're just going through a bunch of dungeons with the goal of getting as far away from your pursuers as you can. It only ends once Gengar gets proven wrong, I thought it was a little anticlimactic that you're kinda just accepted back at the drop of a hat but Gengar being chased out of town was pretty satisfying. There's a decent chunk of the game still left, where you go to take down a group of Mankey to help Wobbuffet and Wynaut, Groudon to save Alakazam's team, and finally Rayquaza once you find out that there's a huge meteor that will destroy the world if you can't convince Rayquaza to stop it. As it turns out, Dude was not the human in the Ninetales legend, but instead he was sent to the Pokémon world with the specific goal of saving it from disaster. This leads to the pretty touching ending, where, when the day's finally saved, Dude disappears to return back to the human world, making Bro and the townsfolk break down into tears. I honestly felt this would have been more impactful if they actually committed to it, but Dude soon returns because he wished hard enough. Congrats, you're in the post game; enjoy the good chunk of extra content after the main story. This whole story took a long time to summarize, but, despite how text heavy this game is and how it seems cool on paper, the execution felt a bit off to me. I appreciate what it was going for but I don't think it leans enough into it, if that makes sense.

Gameplay's next to bat. I have to agree with the consensus here that it is pretty basic, but it is fun and feels very different from mainline Pokémon games despite having all the same creatures and a lot of the same moves (though there's also a lot that are different from the main series). The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are turn-based grid-based dungeon crawlers where you explore a bunch of floors with randomly generated layouts to find goodies or fight enemies. There's also some invisible traps that can bamboozle you. The goal is to find the stairs on each floor to keep going up until you reach the top floor. Of course, the top floor is different for each dungeon: for example, Tiny Woods ends at 4F and Sky Tower ends at 33F. Either the dungeon just ends entirely once you reach the top floor or you have a boss to fight. There's also requests that you take where you must fill certain criteria in the dungeons, which is almost always going to be finding a special Pokémon on a specific floor. You're either rescuing it, giving it a specific item, or having a Pokémon you've been escorting throughout the whole dungeon reunite with it. This sort of ties into one of the main complaints I've seen about these games; you're going to need to go through the same dungeons at least once since you need to grind for levels to catch up with the harder dungeons or to stock up on important items (although I found this game was very generous with items if you're doing a decent amount of requests), especially if you're trying to have a varied team that isn't just you and your partner. I didn't mind it, though; the fact that you also often have requests to do while you're in that dungeon makes it feel like you're at least accomplishing something rather than just going through the same thing again. Sometimes a dungeon you're revisiting will temporarily become full of loot and boost any gains from finding money, which was pretty satisfying to go through whenever it happened. The dungeons aren't super difficult, but I did die to the last dungeon once and once to the penultimate dungeon. Something relatively frustrating is that your experience can be completely different based at least partly on luck because of the way the floors are generated. Sometimes you come across a Monster House, which is when a whole cavalcade of Pokémon come out of nowhere and you're pretty much guaranteed to die at least once in my experience. Sometimes a Pokémon has a move that can shoot you from across the map or smack an entire room with massive damage (like how Bubble travels a long way and Earthquake destroys anything unfortunate enough to be in the same room), which can leave you feeling rather helpless if you don't also have one of those kinds of moves. Multi-hit moves are absolutely broken in this game and can easily melt you or your enemies if so much as two hits are achieved. Each hit of a multi-hit move does pretty much the same damage as a regular attack and I don't know who decided this was okay. I guess it's supposed to be balanced by the accuracy rate, but I found that, more often than not, you'll get at least two hits from the multi-hit moves, and its not that much of a problem when the game gives you items to raise your stats which includes accuracy of specific moves. Its ridiculous, but at least you can also take advantage of this too. It was hilarious seeing how Rock Blast is a move I never use in the main series games, but, as soon as I had it on my Geodude, I made the Rayquaza fight a complete joke. Another odd quirk about the Mystery Dungeon combat in comparison to mainline is that type coverage really isn't that important. It's always smart to have moves that are Super Effective just in case and there are types that are immune to the moves of another type, but, for some reason, moves that are not very effective can still hit like a truck. Also helps that moves get upgraded to hit harder the more you use them, and, if they're upgraded enough, you have the chance to attack twice in the same turn without using up any extra PP. This makes multi-hit attacks even more insane because you could potentially hit a Pokémon four times - which is already crazy enough - and then smack them around FOUR MORE TIMES for absolutely massive damage.

As a remake, I think this was pretty much a direct improvement over the original as far as quality of life and mechanics goes. There are some very nice QoL changes, like how you can now swap over control to any Pokémon in your party from the very beginning whereas it used to be that you could only control the main character until you beat the game (unfortunately this came at the cost of no longer letting you use any Pokémon to wander around town with but that was such a minor thing anyway). When you first start the game, you do a personality quiz that determines what Pokémon you get; it used to be mandatory that you accept whichever Pokémon you got from the quiz, but this remake lets you pick who you want if you're not satisfied with the quiz result, which was a great change imo. Personally I just stuck with what the quiz gave me, I feel that was really charming in the original but there's nothing wrong with giving people more options and I'll always commend that. It also removes the gender restrictions that were in place in the original, so boys can now pick Skitty and girls can pick Machop for example. A very specific nuisance that got fixed is how, if you wanted to go to Sky Tower again after beating the game, you needed to have the Fly TM in the original. This got removed in the remake and for good reason. I wouldn't be surprised if this also happened to the dungeons that you needed the Dive TM to enter in the original games, but those are in the post game and I only just beat the main story so I can't confirm for sure. Unfortunately, I do feel the changes in presentation resulted in a loss of personality from the original. Maybe its just my rose tinted glasses still being there but I think the sprites were just more expressive and charming. The Friend Areas (the places the Pokémon you recruit into your team go to) are also just a bunch of menus now when they used to be full-on...well, areas. You could walk around the areas - which I often did just to admire the neat DS sprite visuals - and each Pokémon had a certain spot they would often hang out at. Was just a cool touch that got removed. On the plus side, I found myself really loving the watercolor-like art style and I'd be happy to see more games that look like this.

Overall, I think playing through this game again has sort of ruined that childhood magic its always had for me, but I'm also glad I did it so I could form a more concrete opinion. Its still a lot of fun imo and had plenty of heart to it. If you're into dungeon crawlers and Pokémon, I would definitely recommend this one to you. It gets a solid 3.5 stars from me.

Well, this was certainly an interesting experience. As someone that hardly ever plays visual novels, much less mystery focused ones, I was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying this game. In my opinion, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog just oozes charm. I love that it feels like it wasn't just made as an April Fools joke; If they really wanted to, they could have made this a completely nonsensical joke game and that still would have been really funny. Instead, they've gone and somehow made a genuinely amusing, witty, silly, and visually stunning game for free. It's very shocking that this was easily one of the most enjoyable Sonic games out there for me, although it is very much not all that replayable since its short and doesn't have any major narrative changes based on dialogue choices as far as I can tell.

I think the actual plot is relatively barebones, but it didn't really need to be anything all that special anyway. The premise is that you're an average fellow (I hear the main character's name is canonically Barry) who's been working as an attendant of a train for a long while now. Sonic and a whole cavalcade of friends - Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge, Vector, Espio, and Blaze - have planned a birthday party for Amy here in the form of a staged murder mystery event, where someone must be the "murderer". Everyone has their own character to play, having been assigned lore cards by Amy. As you can imagine, this makes for some very amusing moments with how some characters struggle to fit in the roles and others wear it like a belt. However, as it turns out, this event wasn't all entirely under control. You see hints that something's gone wrong early on, when the train makes a rough stop, causing Barry, Tails, and Amy to get trapped in the room they were hiding in. Once you go on to investigate, interrogate the others, and try to piece together the mystery throughout the rest of the game, you get some good old fashioned detective stuff which Tails naturally seems to be a master at. He's mainly the one solving things here, you just look around to find evidence that could be used for interrogations. This can be something as minor as the Locksmith's (that's the character Shadow is playing) keyring to something as obviously suspicious as an arcade machine with broken glass. I'm just gonna say it right here; I'm a total idiot when it comes to puzzle solving and even I knew Espio was the culprit by the end of the game. His alibi was the weakest of the group, as Tails notes, and there's a good amount of dialogue exchanges that just make it pretty obvious he's guilty. Nonetheless, after Espio is found out, the true manipulator that caused all the weird things is found out: the train itself. Yea, apparently the train is some kind of AI Badnik this whole time and somehow the conductor had no idea of this. The train was one of several built by Eggman in the nondescript city this game takes place in, although it seems to be the only one that has gone rogue. What I like about this is how it subverts the typical "Eggman was behind it all" type thing; there's been plenty of games before that do this sort of thing, but I thought it was neat how Eggman basically had no involvement in this at all and was more so just amusing himself with the Badnik capturing Sonic and the gang. Only thing is, I'm not convinced that Sonic's friends weren't powerful enough to destroy this train, but that's a minor gripe. Overall I think this was pretty neat, not anything groundbreaking but cool nonetheless. Something of note before I end this paragraph is that this game seems to have ties to Frontiers: Sage shows up for a second at the end and Sonic mentions reaching a high speed after filling up a ring counter in his previous adventure, for example. There's also a surprising amount of references to Sonic Unleashed, with Spagonia being mentioned a few times and Professor Pickle being namedropped by Tails once. The developers and SEGA themselves did joke around with this game by bringing up that old "Everything is canon" tweet, so I think they just used that as an excuse to reference some of the deeper cuts in Sonic's catalogue, but unlike Frontiers (sorry not sorry) I feel all the references here were great and made sense. It didn't just constantly reference things for the sake of referencing them.

The characters and writing are absolutely the best part about this game. The humor all hit pretty well with me; most of it wasn't quite laugh out loud funny for me but it was very charming overall. Might've just been my dialogue choices, but Barry is portrayed to be an absolute dweeb and I love them. A good amount of the humor actually comes from this character's interactions with others and it worked great because they're so socially awkward yet still bounce off the other characters well. The gag with Barry constantly trying to search the trash cans - claiming "There's always something in the trash!" - only to find nothing there each time except for once was pretty amusing to me. That bit with Rouge, Blaze, Tails, and Barry coming up with a goofy plan to steal the Chao Faberge Egg, only to get it and hear it start ticking like a bomb was probably the most funny moment to me. They give you a ton of downright stupid solutions to stop the bomb, which I got some laughs out of picking. Of course, it turns out it wasn't actually a bomb and was instead opening up to reveal Chao themed jewelry. Overall, the game just seems to have a lot of personality that I loved seeing. I think its great to see a Sonic game that focuses more on some low-stakes (at first) joviality with the characters themselves and they all really get to shine here. Shadow in particular has probably the best characterization in The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog; the fact that I can say this is the best he's been since Sonic Adventure 2 without it even being a joke is just mind-blowing. It also singlehandedly made me actually care about Espio; I feel like, for most of his appearances, he's just been a boring stoic guy who's only personality is "I'm a ninja", but he has so much personality here that it really caught me off-guard. There are a few characters I love that I wish we could've seen, like Silver, Cream, or even Big, but I can see why they wouldn't want to bloat the already large cast of returning characters here and I was genuinely surprised to see some of the choices here. Blaze and Espio were not characters I was expecting to see become part of the main narrative in a Sonic game again, that's for sure. Also, it's a bit odd to bring this up here, but I really loved the bit with Metal Sonic and Sage wearing "#1 Dad" shirts. It was oddly heartwarming and its nice to see SEGA officially acknowledge the love people have for this fan concept of the "Egg Family".

So, gameplay. When I was first playing this game, I didn't think I would even have a section on this. I mean, its a visual novel with very light point-and-click game elements, what would there be to talk about? The big thing this game does, though, is shove in random 2D auto-runner sections. Press spacebar to jump, use the arrow keys or WASD to move Sonic around. The goal is to collect a certain amount of rings. Whenever you're interrogating someone and the player needs to think, you get one of these segments. They're alright, I guess, but they felt pretty unnecessary to me. I don't see why The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog couldn't have just been purely visual novel + point-and-click, as tempted as I am to make a joke about SEGA shoving in 2D segments in Sonic games when it would've been better without. I have to say that something about the way they look and move was genuinely nauseating to play for a while. Not to the point where it would literally make me feel negative effects, but it gave me a feeling of discomfort that made me wonder if this is anywhere near how it feels to be motion sick, especially after constantly failing that boss level against the train (which happens to be insanely bright with a fast moving background and tons of obstacles to dodge). If anything, I'm taking a point or so off for these segments; they were mid at best and uncomfortable at worst.

Going to dedicate a small paragraph here praising the art style. This is a very pretty game, plain and simple. I adore how much the art pops out of the screen with how colorful it is, it's so cozy and nice. It has a sort of crosshatching (I don't remember if its actually called that) that almost reminds me of vintage comic books, which adds an extra bit of visual flair. The character portraits themselves are also very expressive and were an absolute treat to see. Amy getting comically angry, Tails blushing all the time, Espio getting way too into his role of being a poet...its just all so NICE! I loved it.

Overall, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is a very pleasant surprise of a Sonic game with tons of charm and character. I enjoyed it a lot, but the nature of the game unfortunately makes it to where I really don't think its worth revisiting at all, and that's a shame considering how short it is. It's one of those games that feels like it shouldn't exist, making it a perfect fit for the April Fools game its meant to be, yet the developers made something really enjoyable out of it that still makes sense. Gets a solid 3.5 stars out of me, its got issues that tear it down a little but it was still such a pleasant surprise.

So, I've never considered myself much of a Zelda fan. I've attempted to play through this game many times and it just wasn't gripping me at all, same with Wind Waker (although I think that game's art style is gorgeous and its characters are very charming), A Link Between Worlds, and Breath of the Wild. However, after playing through a whole lot of Hyrule Warriors, it inspired me to try giving these Zelda games a chance again. I figured I'd start with this one since its the only old game in the TLoZ series I've played before aside from Link's Awakening and its one of the most acclaimed games in the series. I find that I respect this game a lot for its important contributions to the series and its strong legacy, but I just really was not super into this one. By the end, I felt like I was just completing it to get it done so I could move on to other things. I think I've learned that 2D Zelda is really not super up-my-alley, but it is fun to play every now and then.

This game really surprised me in a lot of ways. For one, I actually died a ton here. I could just chalk that up to my relative unfamiliarity with 2D Zelda but I was really terrible at this game for a good while and cherished every Piece of Heart and Fairy I got. I also tend to suck at exploration in games, quite frankly, so there were plenty of times I had to look up where to find the item needed to progress so I wasn't aimlessly searching every corner. Thankfully I was able to complete most dungeons with minimal use of guides, and I only ever used Restore Points near the end since I was just annoyed and wanted to finish the game already. The biggest thing that shocked me is how long the game is; I'm not sure why I was expecting it to be short but it took me nearly 30 hours to beat. There's a lot of content here and I was not expecting that to be the case.

As far as gameplay goes, yea its pretty standard 2D Zelda stuff, although that was probably pretty innovative at the time this game came out. Aside from some annoying enemies and secrets that I would have been running around like a headless chicken trying to find by myself, I think this was solid overall. You swing your sword or use magic items you find to take out your enemies. If you're feeling a little spicy you can also kill enemies by clocking them in the head with the throwable objects you find. Some enemies require specific weapons to die, like the goblin looking enemies that copy your movement in mirrored directions or some of the bosses. You can also stand still to block stuff with your shield; I'm used to having a dedicated block button in my games, but this works. It's usually more reliable to just avoid things though since its not always obvious what you can block, like the lasers from those statues with the rotating eyes (I think they're called Beamos) are unblockable but you can block the lasers from the eye symbols on walls or doors that you find in later dungeons once you get the Mirror Shield...except some of the eye lasers inexplicably just can't be blocked for some reason. Of course, as you'd expect, each dungeon has a lot of puzzles and they're pretty nifty. Thankfully, any secret areas that you have to bomb or dash into with the Pegasus Boots to open up are indicated visually, so there'll be an obvious crack in the wall or something to clue you in (although some of these don't actually lead to anything and are just there to trick you).

The story...uh, its there, I guess? I feel most, if not all, of the story is just window dressing for the barebones plot of "Go through these dungeons so you can save the seven sages and beat Ganon". There's a good bit of lore here but there's not much real story. Basically, Link is a kid who is part of the royal knight family. Zelda sends him a message through telekinesis. Your uncle goes out on a mission and he tells Link not to leave the house. Of course Link completely disregards that and he goes to the castle to save Zelda from the royal dungeon. Doesn't take long to meet up with his uncle, who got badly damaged in his quest to go fight the corruption taking over Hyrule Castle. He decides to give his sword and shield, telling Link he must go save Zelda. I guess she also told him that Link was going to rescue her. After saving Zelda, she stays with a priest at Sanctuary and tells you to go fight the evil wizard Agahnim for the good of Hyrule. Basically, Agahnim is an alter-ego of Ganon who usurped the kingdom, which he did so he could kidnap the descendants of the ancient seven wise men and dispel the seal that their ancestors put on the Golden Land for so long. I don't think it was really explained what this Golden Land is even meant to be, but it is undeniably connected to the Triforce. From here, Link needs to go to three dungeons that each award one magic pendant, which he needs all three of to pull out the Master Sword in the Lost Woods. Eventually you also have to go through the Dark World - an alternate version of the Light World created by Ganon - and do all seven dungeons there. After that, Link has the final showdown with Ganon, wins the Triforce, and the day is saved. So, the story is overall very basic, but I don't really expect amazing stories out of these games anyway so that wasn't much of a bummer to me.

I think this game was pretty good overall. I have some minor nitpicks like the ones I mentioned earlier and some ones I hadn't mentioned yet, like how it was driving me nuts that I had maxed out Rupees for a good portion of the game with basically nothing to spend them on. ALttP earns a good 4 stars out of me; I respect this game for its legacy, but its honestly not something I would ever want to go beat again, and I did end up getting quite bored of it my last few play sessions before completion.

So, this was quite the interesting experience. I did not expect all the twists and turns this game would put me through (one of the rare cases I go through a popular game completely unspoiled) and they were intriguing indeed.

SUPERHOT's gameplay is definitely the main appeal of the game and for good reason. The idea of having time move only when you move (it isn't entirely true since time does still move its just incredibly slow when you're standing still) really sort of flips the way an FPS is usually played on its head. I have never played an FPS game where moving slowly is optimal and trying to move fast is punished, but that's exactly what SUPERHOT does. You are encouraged to move slowly so that you can properly deal with enemies, otherwise you will likely either get shot by very fast bullets or you will get ganged up on to the point where you might as well just restart. Admittedly it could get very frustrating - I died countless times to the last section of the final level - but the concept is intriguing and it felt satisfying once I got it right. The levels are basically short gauntlets where you need to defeat every enemy to progress to the next level. Enemies can be hiding anywhere in the map, so it can get pretty tricky in the bigger areas. You either use your fists, throwable items like bottles or garbage bags, full fledged weapons like baseball bats or swords, and guns (which you will always want to use over anything else). There's three kinds of guns: pistols, shotguns, and rifles. The pistol is the most straightforward one and is probably the best in my opinion. I found that the rifle's rapid fire is awkward in SUPERHOT's whole gimmick of time being incredibly slow when you're not moving, but there were some levels I got good use out of it in. The shotgun is your standard FPS shotgun in that its usually only all that good in close combat; the spread is large but concentrated, so its harder to hit enemies from far away. Overall I think this was great.

The story...if it weren't for the gameplay being so great, I'd think this was intended to be the real meat and potatoes of the game. That's not to imply its some masterpiece, but it was genuinely compelling in my opinion. Essentially, you have received access to a VR game called...well, SUPERHOT. The game's main menu mimics a PC menu (but a very simple and retro feeling one) to show how the player logs into superhot.exe and that sort of thing, it has a meta aspect in that way. You play the game as normal, but, as you keep playing, a glitch happens claiming you have unauthorized access and the game (in the story not the actual game) kicks you out. You get messages from an unknown friend of the player who seems to have sent the game to you in the first place and he informs you that there's a new version of the game that fixes the glitches. Again, the game plays as normal for a while, but that same error message eventually pops up again. The friend tells you there's a new set of levels but they're password-protected. Thankfully you don't have to find or memorize a password anywhere since the automatic typing sections of SUPERHOT do it for you. Another session of levels later and you get met with an ominous screen detecting a breach location, where the game then claims it knows where you live, showing a depiction of the player with a VR headset on. The game glitches and kicks you out again. Basically, to not overexplain the story, things get more and more strange from here as you continue to play levels. The gist of this, as I understood it, is that the game is made by some sort of malicious AI program that wants to suck people into it. Near the end of the game its implied that the program gave the player a concussion (there's a level where you have to attack the game's depiction of the player with a VR headset on and there's a text section where the program talks to you and says you're suffering from brain trauma). It constantly warns to leave while you still can but the player continues playing, and eventually the player's brain gets downloaded into the program where you essentially become a slave to it. This is also when the infamous meme spammed everywhere about this game happens: the program tells you to get other people into the game by saying "Superhot is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!" I'm usually not a huge fan of the whole sentient game concept - I really don't care for how Doki Doki Literature Club did it for example - but it wasn't done in a pretentious way here and it was pretty unexpected. I like the game's story.

I'll take this last paragraph before the conclusion to briefly shout out how much I like the art style of SUPERHOT. I don't know what they call this style but I really love how vibrant and polygonal it is, its simple but pleasing to the eye and very cool looking in my opinion. The enemies and the player especially just look so nice here. The PC sections also have an interesting style that almost reminds me of the Five Nights at Freddy's games for some reason.

SUPERHOT isn't going to completely blow your mind in my opinion and I don't really think its super replayable (then again not many games are in my opinion), but I think it was a great experience overall. I would recommend it, gets a solid 4 stars out of me.

It's probably unsurprising for anyone to hear this is the best game in the "Greek myth trilogy" (I am not playing Ascension or the PSP games sorry), but yea I really think it is. Took me 21 hours to beat - about the same length as the other games - and it was also the first game I chose to beat on my brand new PS5. Admittedly I don't think it was the best idea to play all three original God of War games for the first time back to back since it made this one really feel like more of the same for the most part, but that didn't damper my experience with it. I think God of War III still manages to feel pretty unique in its own ways and it also is such a huge graphical upgrade over the original two games that it almost felt disorienting. I know this is a remaster, but I always forget just how much more of an advancement the PS3 felt from the PS2. So, overall, I don't think this game did a whole lot to change the gameplay, but sometimes its good to not break what isn't broken. Helps that the new stuff that was added here is all pretty great.

I'll start this review with the story. This game starts literally right where God of War II ended since we see Kratos riding on the back of Gaia with his own personal Titan army to destroy Olympus, giving us an appropriately action-packed beginning to the game. Hermes, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon watch the carnage unfold and look to put a stop to it, but Poseidon is the only one to actually go and fight Kratos. Naturally, he is the first unfortunate godly soul to get killed in a brutal over-the-top fashion by Kratos. Kratos reaches Zeus, swearing revenge, but Zeus puts a stop to the fight entirely by knocking Kratos out the building and striking Gaia with lightning. Turns out the Titans have no loyalty to Kratos since Gaia lets Kratos fall to save herself and she even directly calls him a pawn in their plan. Also, small side-note: I never really understood how powerful Zeus is supposed to be. He constantly talks about how he keeps letting Kratos off easy or that he held back in their previous fights, which is believable from the sheer destructive power he has in the cutscenes, but it seems like whenever you actually get to fight him when you're all powered up in 2 and 3 he just does not seem as overwhelmingly strong as he usually is. Seems I'm getting ahead of myself though. After Gaia lets Kratos fall, he finds his way in the River Styx, where he gets all his health, magic, and weapon upgrades from the previous game sapped away due to the ghosts. That's one thing I always thought was pretty cool about these games; God of War II and III both have clear story reasons as to why you start off back at square one every game and I think it'd be nice if more games did that. From here, Kratos starts his journey to kill all the Greek gods and anyone else standing in his way in the most brutal ways he can possibly think of, while taking their equipment for his own gain. Pretty typical God of War things. Of course, since you start out in the River Styx, your next target is Hades. I have to say that it was really cool to finally see him after his existence being alluded to a lot in the first game and only a few glimpses of his appearance being shown in the second game, and it was really satisfying killing him. You also meet Hephaestus in the Underworld, who is a reluctant ally for a good portion of the game. To be honest, I think its unfortunate that he was just another god to be killed just like all the others, but I suppose that's the way the cookie crumbles. From here on out you're pretty much just traveling all throughout Greece and various mythological locations to look for more enemies to fight and more gods to slay. There is some noteworthy story stuff, though, like how some lore on Kratos is expanded upon a little. Maybe this was shown in the PSP games, but apparently he killed Persephone and that was not in either PS2 game so I was confused when Hades mentioned that. Hercules is also his brother, which I had no idea about but makes sense considering he's a son of Zeus and Hera. Anyway, Kratos manages to kill every major Greek god (the only exceptions are ones that don't even show up in the games like Demeter although Artemis was in the first game and just never appears in this one so that was a strange omission), including Zeus by the very end of the game. With each god he brutalizes, the world gets more and more destroyed without the respective god to control natural forces. With Helios's death and beheading, the sun practically disappears, for example. Another big example is how the Underworld is completely out of control without Hades. Plant life also dies out once Kratos snaps the neck of Hera. Honestly, Kratos is probably the most violent and bloodthirsty here than he's ever been before, although that really isn't new for this series from what I've played of it. This ties into one big problem I have with this game's story: I don't really get what it was trying to do with Kratos's character. I will detail this in another paragraph since I went on a long tangent there.

To explain my issue with Kratos here...by the end of the game, he finds this girl named Pandora who was part of the titular Pandora's Box. When he opened up Pandora's Box in the events of the first game, it released all the evils in the world that were sealed away, but it also released hope in the form of Pandora. Initially he pushes away Pandora, but he grows to like her more in the story, to the point where, when its time for her to sacrifice herself and literally do her job (as she herself put it), he tries to stop her. In a way, I sorta get it, since she's the only one that really believed in him the whole time in pretty much any of the games and she is likeable. Kratos always had a tragic side to him and this does fit that well. On the other hand, he is also an absolute killing machine that has only ever shown remorse for his victims when they're his daughter and wife. There are moments in this very game where Kratos casually kills innocent people without a care in the world, all in the name of his quest to kill Zeus even if they did nothing wrong to him or weren't even affiliated with Zeus. He has absolutely no issue telling Daedalus that his son - Icarus - is dead and he took his nice pair of wings, even though Daedalus has spent his entire life with Zeus breathing down his neck building an incredibly elaborate labyrinth he doesn't even fully understand in the vain hope his son will be spared. Kratos knows that and doesn't care at all. There's a man trapped in the Underworld who offers to help Kratos and he's far too weak to even attempt to be a turncoat, but he still gets incinerated with no reaction from the Spartan warrior. Perhaps the most despicable of all these cases is the surviving woman servant of Poseidon who's heavily implied to be a sexual assault victim. He just treats her as a nuisance at first, but eventually he literally uses her as a doorstopper and her entire body gets crunched into the wheel holding the door open. She was still alive screaming in horror the whole time until you hear a loud crunch indicating she got crushed (the developers also once thought it'd be funny to make a joke about this scene in the old trophy name you used to get and that does not help the case here lol). I know senseless violence and over-the-top dark humor has pretty much always been a thing in the God of War games - this isn't even mentioning the other cases through the series of Kratos killing innocents or cases it was played for laughs - and I have no problem with this sort of edginess normally, but the attempt at redeeming Kratos is something I don't understand at all. As far as I've concerned, you've already basically made the man completely irredeemable, which is fine when they embrace it...which the story was doing well until this sudden shift. I'll see if my opinion changes by the time I beat the 2018 God of War reboot since I hear he's pretty much like a brand new clean man there, but that won't be for a while since I'm taking a break from these games for a bit.

Story rants aside, yea the gameplay is a lot of fun as always. You explore a linear space, solve puzzles, do some platforming, and beat up a whole bunch of enemies and bosses to progress. I did notice that there seems to be less platforming here than usual, but it is still present and I actually think that's good in some ways. I was glad to see I didn't have to tightrope walk over beams again, that's for sure. Also, not sure if its just me, but I felt that the collectibles that give you Magic and Health upgrades were easier to find in this game. This, combined with the fact that you only need three this time to get an upgrade whereas you needed six in the original two games, lead me to a big surprise when I actually managed to find most of the Gorgon Eyes and all the Phoenix Feathers almost entirely without a guide. Unfortunately the new weapons were disappointing in my opinion. Aside from the Nemean Cestus, they all kinda just feel like the Blades of Chaos again but with some new gimmicks. The Blades of Exile are literally just a copy paste of the Blades of Chaos, the Claws of Hades have more range and a fun soul summoning gimmick but don't really feel that much different from the Blades of Exile, and I never even used the Nemesis Whip outside of the parts where it was necessary because it also just felt like more swords on chains. On the plus side, I liked using the Claws of Hades for a while and the Nemean Cestus has become my favorite weapon of any God of War game for its sheer brute power (and it doesn't even sacrifice too much speed in the process). In my opinion the biggest new change for combat here is the slight revamp to the magic system in the other two games. In those, you got a select few spells you could freely cycle through, but in this game each weapon has a specific spell assigned to it. They're all a bit boring to me, but they were effective in taking down enemies. I think they limited the amount of spells to make up for the new item system in place here. Over the course of the game you get three items - Bow of Apollo, Head of Helios (his literal head that you rip off), and Boots of Hermes - that can be used for various purposes. The Boots of Hermes has designated areas with footprints that let you know you can use the ability to go up walls, the Bow of Apollo ignites red brambles to get rid of them, and the Head of Helios illuminates wherever you point it at. The head also reveals secrets if you keep pointing it at a suspicious warped looking spot. They do have some combat uses but they're not very reliable aside from boss fight gimmicks where you have to use them at the right time to proceed, like the Bow of Apollo can be used as a good poking tool from far range in combat but its also very weak so good luck taking any strong enemy down with it. Okay, last point I want to make about the gameplay is the Quick-Time-Events. I think these are probably the most responsive and forgiving they've ever been, which I really appreciate considering I struggled so much on one of the bosses in the first game just because the QTE timing was absurd. However, I really don't like how the prompts show up on seemingly random parts of the screen. Sometimes its to the left, sometimes its to the right, sometimes its on the bottom, sometimes its on top. This is pretty disorienting and makes it hard to react quickly, which is kind of the whole point behind a QTE. Again its not too bad because the windows for timing are pretty forgiving, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Overall, I do have my gripes with the gameplay in God of War III and I wasn't a big fan of the ending, but I still really enjoyed my time with it and I think its an excellent conclusion to the Greek myth side of the series. It gets a good 4 stars, the same score I gave the other God of War games. I am curious to see how the reboot continues Kratos's story.

So, from what I hear, God of War Ascension is technically the first game in the timeline, but I figured I would start my first time journeying through this beloved series with the one that started it all. I've found that the original God of War is not without its frustrating or annoying bits, but it was still plenty of fun for me overall. Took me around 9 hours to beat the game over the course of a few days; I had a break from playing so I could focus on doing college work, so there's a noticeable gap in my playtime.

The combat of the original God of War isn't super deep, but it is a lot of fun. You get a surprising amount of moves that I didn't mess with the entirety of. I found that there were only a few I consistently used, though maybe there are people that like to use every move the game gives you. I was a little disappointed to see that you only get two weapons - the Blades of Chaos and Blade of Artemis - but they are pretty well implemented since each comes with its own play style that can be helpful for certain fights. The Blades of Chaos is your default weapon and the only one you have for a good portion of the game. Attacking with it almost feels like masterfully swinging around stretchy and nimble whips, if that makes sense. They have good range and they are speedy, but they are a little on the weaker side. Meanwhile, the Blade of Artemis is pretty much the complete opposite. Its a huge broadsword that is naturally slower than the Blades of Chaos but packs a lot of power. I liked using the second weapon just a little more than the first, but I still alternated between the two relatively often. You also get some cool spells over the course of your journey, gifted to you by the gods. These abilities are Poseidon's Rage, Medusa's Gaze, Zeus' Fury, and Army of Hades. I found that Poseidon's Rage was easily my most used one, its a big cone of lightning next to you that nukes enemies. Unfortunately I rarely ever used Medusa's Gaze and honestly I'm not sure why; its not like it isn't useful since you can turn enemies to stone and shatter them in just a few hits. I didn't use Zeus' Fury much, but there are segments in the game with archer enemies far away from you where it becomes really handy and even necessary in some situations. Army of Hades was a really handy boss killer and clears rooms with ease since, as the name implies, you summon a bunch of souls to just kill things for you. It takes a lot of your magic bar to use Army of Hades but its almost always useful whenever you do. Honestly I think all the special god powers you get are really useful in their own ways, but if I had to pick one that I just didn't think was all that worth using most of the time it'd be Zeus' Fury. Funny how the lord of the gods has the least interesting ability. Of course, there's also the famous quick-time-events that this game popularized. Most of the time, I think these added a valuably fun bit of flavor, but they could be really frustrating in certain situations. There's only three bosses in the game, but they all have phases that you need to win QTEs to advance in, and if you're having a hard time with them you just can't continue until you eventually get it right. The minotaur boss was an absolute pain in the ass for me with his QTEs since they have a very unforgiving time window and they involve moving the stick one at a time in different specific rotations. It's a lot more complicated for me to quickly react to "make a quarter circle clockwise" rather than "press Square", you know? I think the last real thing of note with the combat is that you have a special move-set for segments when you're climbing up walls/fishnets or precariously moving forward on ropes, but the basics are mostly the same as land combat. Overall, my only real complaints with the combat are that it can feel a little button-mashy at times and its annoying just how much of damage sponges the enemies can be, but I still enjoyed my time with it overall. It certainly isn't mindless and the game can put you on your toes easily by just sending hordes of monsters at you.

So, how about the level structure? I was a bit surprised by how this game has a good amount of platforming and puzzles. I think both were decently fun, I felt pretty accomplished at the harder parts. To be honest, I died way more in the platforming segments than I did at the actual combat. These parts can be very brutal, and I especially hated those parts that I can only call "tightrope walking", where you had to keep your balance walking on thin beams or pillars and you die if you fall. These returned quite a few times, usually deadlier and deadlier each time. Needless to say, I died in these segments probably more than any other time, and part of me kinda hopes there's less of them in God of War II once I get to playing that. As for the level design itself...frankly, there was a bit too much backtracking here for my liking. You have to go to the Rings of Pandora like four times at different points in the game and that was a bit overkill to me, although there is always a logical reason why you're going back to this area and you usually understand as soon as you see the familiar halls again. You can sometimes stumble upon areas you aren't able to access yet, which could be annoying in some cases but I did find it decently satisfying when I figured out the purpose at some point later in progression. As for the puzzles, there were a few times I had to look up the answer since I'm not the brightest at puzzle solving in games, but most of them were very doable for me and that was cool. My favorite puzzle was probably that one with the blocks in the Cliffs of Madness. You had to arrange the blocks in a way that covers the whole wall and I felt clever when I figured that one out. Overall, I liked this game's sense of progression, and both the platforming and puzzles were pretty fun. Made for nice pace breakers from the combat.

The story in God of War was really cool honestly. You get great narration and engaging animation in the cutscenes that look a bit dated but still look alright nowadays. Usually these cutscenes either show what's currently happening or give flashbacks into the backstory of Kratos. Basically, Kratos was a Spartan warrior who fought in many wars. In his battle with the barbarian king, he nearly died until he made the fatal mistake of calling upon Ares for help. Ares made Kratos serve him as his personal killing machine. This eventually led to Kratos being forced to kill his own family per Ares' order. As a reminder of this grievous act, his skin was turned white with the literal ashes of his family. This is sort of what sets him on the whole journey that this game starts with. Sometime after killing his family, he became a seafarer to help out the other gods of Olympus for 10 years. Kratos receives intervention from Athena when he demands her to tell him when the nightmares he suffers from will end. She tells him she has one final task for him: go to Athens to kill Ares. She promises Kratos that his sins will be forgiven, and so his arduous quest begins. Eventually Kratos overcomes every challenge thrown his way and kills Ares. He is forgiven, as promised, but he is still haunted by visions of the past that have never gone away. He goes to a cliff of Athens and jumps, planning on dying then and there, but the gods keep him alive. Seemingly left with no other purpose in life, Kratos goes to Mount Olympus and takes the former throne of Ares, becoming the new god of war (hence the title of the game). This is a brief summary of the story, there is more stuff that happens but this is the basic gist of the whole thing. I think this game's story actually sort of feels complete without a sequel, but I am speaking as someone who has not even touched God of War II yet. Maybe that game expands on this one in a satisfying way.

At the end of the day, God of War was plenty of fun for me. I know I keep saying that but I truly did enjoy my time with it, and that's mostly what I look for in a game so I'm satisfied. I will say that there were some frustrating parts and I think there could've been some fat trimmed out of the game. Sounds like a good candidate for a 4 star from me, eh? That's exactly what I'm giving it.

So, ever since I beat Age of Calamity in early 2021, I've been eyeing this game for grabbing and hunting for it to go on sale. Unfortunately, Nintendo games rarely ever get discounts, so I was waiting a long time for this, but it did eventually happen. Was playing it a lot but then I took a long break from playing the game honestly since, as per usual for my standards, I juggled around with a lot of games and lost track of which ones I'm playing. Kind of boring to detail this in the review, I know, but I like to give context of my playthroughs on these reviews. So, despite taking an extended break, I will say I really enjoyed playing this game. As far as I know, its one of the first (popular) Musou games made with another IP and that's awesome, I love that they've had so many opportunities to make these games with other IPs. As far as I'm concerned, the more Musou, the better. I remember my mind being blown when I first found out Koei Tecmo was able to make a Musou game with a Nintendo IP of all things and the fact that I'm so late to playing this one is almost a shame to me, though to be fair I didn't get a Wii U until after it died and I was not about to get the 3DS version of this game so I do have some kind of excuse.

I'll start with that gameplay. Yea, its pretty much the same as any other Musou, but man this game was just a lot of fun. I've said in a few of my other reviews how the Musou formula is seemingly infinitely fun to me and I rarely ever tire of it, so its unsurprising that I found this so enjoyable. I didn't even get to unlock all characters since I only went through Legend Mode (basically this game's story mode) and I haven't even touched the Adventure Mode, yet I still had a lot of fun experimenting with the characters and seeing which ones I liked the best. Something about the move sets feels pretty unique; every character shares a similar design philosophy but they still manage to make everyone feel pretty unique. I found my favorite characters to play were Tetra, Ganondorf, and Wizzro, but there's also characters I think I would love that I haven't played yet. Rest assured that I'm definitely going to at least give that Adventure Mode thing a try, I think that's where the rest of the characters are unlocked. This game's roster is crazy, I haven't even played more than five minutes of most of the games referenced in Hyrule Warriors and I can still tell the developers had a lot of love for each corner of the TLoZ series represented. An absolute barrel of fun overall.

There's a surprising amount of focus on the story in Legend Mode. I expected it to just be an afterthought but, while it won't blow your mind or anything, it was pretty alright. This game seems to take place in its own unique version of Hyrule, with the same characters we know and love but different. Impa's got a big ass sword, Zelda has a rapier and can actually fight, Link is...well, he's a Link alright, but he does get a fairy that speaks for him in combat which I thought was pretty amusing. As far as the plot goes, the unproven hero Link starts his hero's journey when he has to save Hyrule Castle from an attack by the main OC villains of this game: Cia, Wizzro, and Volga. Cia is part of a magician sister duo with Lana, and they are supposed to be like guardians of the Triforce, but they split apart when Cia goes rogue because she went a little too crazy for Link. Add in a little coercion from none other than Ganondorf and Cia becomes the main villain of the game, though she does get some redemption later when Lana talks some sense to her and Ganondorf inevitably betrays her. You don't know any of that in the first few levels of Legend Mode, though, since in those you're just traveling through this original interpretation of Hyrule to find new allies. Eventually, Cia succeeds in her plans to take over Hyrule, but the heroes have one last trick up their sleeves. Lana opens up portals to different universes based on other TLoZ games, including Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker. A Link Between Worlds, Link's Awakening, and Spirit Tracks do get one character each in Adventure Mode, but, again, I didn't play that mode, so I don't know how they're integrated. This part of the story involving going to each universe to get more allies and help out the heroes with their problems is the part where fan service is really on display. I imagine people that really love the games those plots were based on were huge fans of this inclusion, but I don't have much experience with any of those games so this was kinda new stuff to me aside from some of the plot twists I've already had spoiled to me god knows how long ago. Oh, this game also has different story paths, as well. We have Linkle's path, where you play as a new heroine that dresses like Link and says she's the legendary hero when she isn't actually a Link (she is a very silly character and I love her). Then there's Cia's path, where you see how she amassed her dark army. Finally, there's Ganondorf's path, where you get to play as him and destroy everyone in your way. In the last two missions that give you the original ending of the story, all these different paths actually intersect and give context to the whole story. Like, in Ganondorf's path's ending, he gets all three pieces of the Triforce and shrouds Hyrule in darkness, which is then followed up by the regular story path where Zelda organizes one last attempt to save the world from Ganon and liberate the Triforce from him. Cia's path shows how she got the big army she did in the regular story missions. Linkle's path is the only one that's just fun fluff, but hey there's nothing wrong with some fun fluff every now and then. One thing the story surprised me with is that Cia did feel like more of an involved character than what I initially thought she'd be. She's not super deep or anything, but, when she gets wrecked by Ganondorf and realizes what Lana has been trying to tell her the whole time, she straightens up and acts more like her real self again and not the aggressive bloodthirsty villainess she was before. The way I structured this whole paragraph is pretty messy, but I'm also typing a review of a video game at 7:00 AM so I guess that's only natural. Nonetheless, I thought this story wasn't all that great but was more than I thought it'd be for sure. It was actually much longer than I expected, as well, with a lot of missions to play through and extra goodies to find in each mission. From what I hear, Adventure Mode is massive, so I'm looking forward to trying that one out and getting the characters I haven't got yet. For now I'm just considering this finished since the game gave me a credits roll and Legends Mode seemed like the main meat of the game.

Overall, Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition gets a solid 4 stars from me. Not a masterpiece or anything - there are some things I actually like better in the sequel, Age of Calamity - but I think this was by far the best result we could have ever gotten out of a Zelda Musou game. There is something to be appreciated with how much this game celebrates the history of this huge series and includes all these awesome characters that have never been and will likely never be playable in any other game. I kinda wish I played it earlier, but, at the same time, this Switch version is so much better than the original from what I've heard since its comes with all DLC included and the extra content from the 3DS version. I probably shouldn't even have to say how playing a Musou game on a 3DS sounds like an awful experience.

Pokémon Black/White has probably become the most widely praised duology of the entire series lately. I was rather skeptical of that reputation; I remember when everyone whined about these games back in the day, nowadays people say its the peak of the series and that just came off as odd to me. Truth be told, I never much cared for White (the one I always owned while my bro had Black) as a kid. I remember being actively annoyed this duo got special treatment with the full blown sequels, which is something we would never see again in Pokémon. Closest thing to it was Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, but, as far as I know (those are the only two mainline games I skipped entirely), they didn't feel like nearly as much of true sequels as Black 2 and White 2 did. So, this month, I decided to finally give Pokémon White a fair shake. I had been starting playthroughs again and again throughout the years, but I never took the time to truly go through it all and beat it until now. Is it the masterpiece people claim it is? Well, no. However, I do think it was a really solid experience and I finally understand why people praise this one so much nowadays.

Pokémon White's core gameplay is just like any other Pokémon game post Gen 4, though it did add some new gimmicks and tricks up its sleeve. I have never seen anyone give a single shit about Triple Battles and I do not care for it either. Seasons are kinda cool in that they change the way the world can be interacted with, but it mostly felt like fluff to me. One nice change that started with Black/White and carried on to most other games after is the fact that TMs are now infinite use, good quality of life addition in my opinion. It's also worth noting that HMs feel so much less obtrusive in this game's design than it does in the ones that came before it; I only had to use Cut once and the rest was Surf and Fly (and you technically don't even need Fly if you don't mind walking everywhere on foot). HMs get very annoying in the past games with how many there are and how they are necessary for progression, with it probably being the worst in Diamond/Pearl, so its great to see that they way scaled back on the importance of HMs in Black/White. Unfortunately this game also has some unique features that can no longer be accessed because time is a cruel mistress. The entire bottom screen gets filled up with this thing called a C-Gear, made for things you can do on this hot new thing the DS had called Wi-Fi connection. Yea uh none of that works now obviously aside from local connection stuff. There's also the whole Dream World thing, which let you stick your Pokémon on your computer through the Pokémon website for you to interact with and explore a dream world together. This service also got shut down, although I do remember actually getting the chance to mess around with it as a kid back when it was relevant and that was fun. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it was sort of like a point-and-click adventure game with static sprites. Really minor thing that I doubt anyone would play today if it still existed, but it was a cool novelty at the time that has been lost.

The region design of Pokémon Black/White is alright. The design is almost painfully linear since progression is literally going around in a circle on the map, but frankly I don't see linearity as a bad thing in Pokémon of all series so long as there are some interestingly designed places. And there...kinda are, I guess? There's no equivalent to the dungeons or caves in old games that you actually had a chance of getting lost in, but the scenery is very nice and you can tell there was extra focus put in there. Actually this game is a little too ambitious with the scenery, it kinda makes the game look like shit sometimes in all honesty. There are a few areas that zoom the camera way out whenever you're there to really make it feel big, but, while this is cool in concept, it just makes everything look like an ugly pixelated mess. That's a bit of an exaggeration on my part since its not like its garbage, but it really does look pretty awful in my opinion and you can tell DS Pokémon games weren't meant for that sort of dynamic camera angle. Well, regardless, I thought this new (at the time) region of Unova was pretty good and I liked what it had to offer. Main problem? The availability of Pokémon. Now, I don't mind this much myself since I like the new creatures Unova has to offer, but those that are looking for literally any opportunity to get the old Pokémon you know and love will be sorely disappointed. In that way, this game almost feels like a reboot of the series, with a good chunk of Pokémon designs in Unova that are meant to emulate the Pokémon of Red/Blue/Yellow like how Woobat is an obvious Zubat expy and Trubbish seems to take a similar design role as Grimer. Your mileage may vary wildly on whether you loathe, love, or just don't mind this design decision, but regardless I felt it was worth bringing up. I think this was a major reason why old fans generally felt so turned off by Black/White.

The story and characters are actually something really unique about this game for the time in my opinion. Old Pokémon games did have story and characters obviously, but I felt like they weren't nearly as much of a focus here as they were in Black/White. At most, you'd get one or two characters important to the narrative that get some development, like how your rival in Gold/Silver has a neat character arc of going from a delinquent crook to someone that's actually respectable or Ruby/Sapphire throwing the inexperienced fledgling trainer Wally at you and then suddenly remembering he exists near the end of the game so he can fight you at Victory Road (okay that's hyperbole again on my part). In Black/White, it feels like the characters are given more focus and development. You get two rivals - Cheren and Bianca - and I was surprised by how charming and fleshed out (by Pokémon standards) they are. Nowadays people tend to regard "friendly rivals" with bitterness, but these two pull it off very well in my opinion. Bianca is the happy-go-lucky clumsy girl that wants to go on an adventure for fun and to find herself, while Cheren is a smug know-it-all nerd that went on his adventure purely to become a strong trainer. Both have their moments to shine in the narrative outside of just constantly pestering you for battles, since Cheren is often there for or shows up after important fights and Bianca has an arc of her own where she slowly realizes that she isn't quite cut out for becoming a full fledged Pokémon master and has to find another path in life (she later becomes the assistant to Professor Juniper in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 which was a great way to take her character in my opinion). I would have liked if Bianca's whole deal with her dad was explored more; this is the only time an adult has ever actually questioned why every young child needs to go capture dangerous monsters to use in fights against other dangerous monsters and its never given a straight answer. He's an overprotective helicopter father, sure, and he's probably the entire reason why Bianca is such a sheltered awkward girl, but when she goes out on an adventure on her own without his permission you can sort of understand why he'd be worried about that. He shows up to her, tries to get her to come back home, and then the Electric gym leader Elesa shows up out of nowhere to tell him to let her make her own decision. He just says "Oh, yea I was wrong the whole time, go do what your heart desires" and leaves. Real quick to change his mind there, but alright. Also, speaking of Elesa, one thing I really like about this game's story is that gym leaders actually do things. They feel like authority figures now since they often help fight Team Plasma grunts, whereas in previous games they're kinda just there to give you a badge and never be seen again. It was a nice touch that made the story more engaging.

I'm going to dedicate a paragraph to Team Plasma because they are really interesting and were by far the most complex evil team at the time (and maybe even still in the current day), but, at the same time, I feel there was plenty of missed potential there. They're sort of like a religious cult, wearing dumb costumes themed after knights and constantly preaching about "Pokémon liberation". They even have a few sages that they treat like divine leaders. Also, Pokémon liberation is their idea that all captured Pokémon should be stolen by trainers because battling is wrong. In my opinion, that's the really intriguing thing about Team Plasma. After years of it just being a commonly accepted thing that Pokémon battles are all fine and dandy despite certain questions being raised about how ethical it is in real life discussions and speculation, Team Plasma comes into the picture and we actually get an in-universe questioning of the morality of Pokémon battling. This could be really interesting, with a wide range of possible moral justifications or criticisms...but the main disappointing thing about Team Plasma to me is how this is not really explored. None of the characters (that aren't part of Plasma obviously) even consider this alternate perspective and they instantly jump to it being nonsense. I really don't like that the story completely validates this immediate distrust of Plasma when there could have been an interesting clash of ideals shown here, which the game even has as a central theme considering that Zekrom and Reshiram are the legendary Pokémon associated with ideals and truth respectively. Team Plasma are shown to be obviously evil from early on, with that scene of the grunts attacking a Munna to harvest its energy in particular really standing out. Of course there's also plenty more scenes of Team Plasma grunts being just as much of obviously evil doofuses as the other evil teams in Pokémon. I think the idea behind this was to show how groups with seemingly good purposes can be secretly insidious and hypocritical, which I can appreciate, but I still think it would have been nice for there to be at least some moral conflict in our characters about what Team Plasma is proposing. N (the man with a full name so silly that even he just wants to be called N) is literally the only person in the entire team that genuinely believes in their ideology and he is probably the most interesting character in all of Pokémon partially because of that. He is a bit of a strange guy, since characters remark on how he speaks too fast and he claims to be able to talk to Pokémon (I don't think it was ever actually confirmed in the story but it is treated as a real power of his). Even though N genuinely believes in his goal, he kind of comes off as crazy to the other characters since literally no one else thinks he's right. Probably doesn't help his case of preaching against Pokémon being captured and used for battling when he...well, battles you with Pokémon he caught for fighting. Nonetheless, I do think he was a neat character and I see why people like him so much. While N is the "king" of Team Plasma, Ghetsis is the real leader, and he is probably the most evil bastard in all of Pokémon. You see, N has been in Ghetsis' control since he was a child, and Ghetsis was actually grooming N to be his twisted heir the whole time, feeding N misinformation to use as a tool for spreading his regime. I think it was implied that Ghetsis abuses him, especially since, when N inevitably loses to you, Ghetsis essentially calls N a worthless freak that could never have a social life. So, yea, overall I wish Team Plasma had more moral greyness and complexity to them, but this is still one of the most interesting teams in Pokémon history so I gotta give it props for that. This was right after Mr. "I'm miserable and I want to destroy the universe" in Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum and the two absolute morons in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald arguing over flooding the world VS making everyone die of heatstroke as if either were a rational outcome at all.

Overall, Pokémon White gets 4 stars out of me. Solid Pokémon game that I really like the ideas of, but I think the execution was just a little disappointing in some areas. Definitely felt like the most ambitious of its time in my opinion, which deserves props for a series as formulaic as Pokémon. I didn't mention this in the review, but I also enjoy a lot of the new creatures added in this game; Vanillite (and its evolutions) and Golurk are genuinely some of my favorite Pokémon and there are plenty of great designs overall.

As a longtime fan of the Punch-Out series, I'm a little ashamed to say that this is the first time I've actually completed the Wii game. I've played it hundreds of times before, but always stopped either after beating Contender Mode or hitting a roadblock fight in Title Defense that I didn't have the patience to master. I've always loved everything about this game to death, so frankly I'm surprised it took me this long to try beating it, but I'm so glad I did. It's given me even more appreciation for the game. I vote with full bias giving this a 5 star but I really don't care, there is literally nothing I would change about this game.

Punch-Out Wii takes all the best aspects of its predecessors and puts them together, yet it still feels like its own distinct package. It takes the most inspiration from the NES Punch-Out, but it adds in fighters from both Super Punch-Outs (confusing, I know, but there's one on arcade and one on SNES). The way they translated the NES fighters for the regular fights is just so awesome; there are people out there that have articulated this better than I can, but they somehow managed to make it feel just like the original, from the charmingly goofy animations to the sound effects. Punch-Out Wii is absolute perfection of the series formula, if you ask me. Each fighter's pattern feels very satisfying to master - even the easy ones - and it just feels so fun to dodge, block, counter, and beat up your foes. Landing a Star Punch is very satisfying, too. In the later (harder) fights, you REALLY value your stars. That's partially because there's a great sense of risk and reward with stars: typically, the game encourages you to dodge then attack, but if you can intercept an enemy's attack with the right kind of punch at the right time you can get a star. So, whenever you're fighting, you have to decide whether you want to risk trying for a star or playing it safe to just dodge for the guaranteed damage. From what I found, each fighter has at least 4 unique ways to earn stars, and that's just really cool. Another cool thing about the game in my opinion is that each fighter has unique quirks that can add so much flavor to a fight, from the fact that Aran Ryan's punches need to be interrupted for you to be able to hurt him at all to Glass Joe taking a second to praise France. Some fighters also have cool exploits for ending a fight quick, typically in the form of one hit KOs, like how you can Star Punch ol' Glass Joe in the previously mentioned taunt he does for an instant KO. I found out the instant KO trick for the Great Tiger fight in Title Defense by complete accident and felt so accomplished when I did, especially since he was giving me a hard time. Punch-Out Wii is an excellent case of easy to learn but hard to master; aside from a few standout fights, chances are Contender Mode won't be too hard for you, but Title Defense makes even the easiest fighters from Contender a decent challenge. Some people might say that reusing the same boxers is a little lazy, and I can kind of see where they're coming from, but I think it was a great idea to make a new and much more difficult spin on the same fighters. They feel like evolutions of the previous fights while still adding at least one new trick up their sleeve. I noticed that a big theme with Title Defense fighters is attempting to throw off your sense of timing by alternating between speedy attacks and slow ones, which really messed with me many times, but the pattern is far from random so it never feels impossible to predict. The whole World Circuit and some of the Major Circuit fights in Title Defense mode are very tough, but that made it feel all the more satisfying once I figured it out and beat them.

Punch-Out Wii doesn't really have much of a story to speak of, so I'll make this paragraph for both story and characters. Basically, Little Mac is a young up-and-coming boxer coached by the lovable Doc Louis. Mac wants to rise up to the top of the WVBA boxing food chain, going from the Minor Circuit to the World Circuit. As his name implies, Mac is very short in comparison to the other boxers, which adds an extra layer of logic with the way the game is played (dodging is encouraged so heavily because you're so small to these hulking beasts). Once Mac braves through adversity and becomes the champ, Title Defense is unlocked. All the previous boxers come back for revenge and Mac has to beat them all to keep his title. Finally, once you do that, Mac's Last Stand is unlocked. Mac decides that he's going to go out with a bang, engaging in a gauntlet of fights against the same opponents yet again (aside from the surprise guest character Donkey Kong) that will only stop once he loses three times. By the end, we see Doc Louis standing in a museum with a photo of Little Mac training with him in honor of Mac's retirement, making for a bittersweet ending. So, yea, it's a very simple story, but is effective and honestly I wouldn't ask for anything more. Plus, there are some cool lore bits you learn through dialogue in the game, like how Doc Louis invented the Star Punch (learned through the "Doc Louis's Punch-Out" download only game which I really wish I owned). For the most part, though, that synopsis I gave is all you get for story. The characters are the real meat of the game if you ask me, they are so charming and goofy. Unfortunately they come with uncomfortable implications since they are all based on cultural or racial stereotypes, but I can't really say anything about that as someone who isn't part of any of the groups that might be impacted by this. I will say that I think its awesome that they all speak the main language of their home country, I've never seen a character speak Hindi or Turkish until I played this game and that's gotta mean at least something. Overall, though, they're a bunch of silly weirdos and I love them very much. Biggest standouts in my opinion are Doc Louis's unabashed positivity and goofiness, Disco Kid's flamboyant cheerful dancing, pretty much everything about King Hippo, Don Flamenco's infectious confidence (and arrogance), and Super Macho Man's amusing surfer dude lingo combined with his arrogance that reeks of Hollywood star, but frankly I think all of them are just so charming in their own ways. Mr. Sandman is a genuine badass and he's intimidating as hell, just as another example. Everyone's got some kind of unique personality that's interesting to see in action.

Here's a brief shoutout to the visual design of everything in the game. It's a pretty standard cel-shaded cartoony style from what I can tell, but man every character is just brimming with personality from how exaggerated their movement and facial expressions are. The game also just looks really good in my opinion, which is especially impressive to me considering that this is a Wii game and those aren't all known for looking great nowadays. Unfortunately there seems to be a strange issue with the characters eyes, where sometimes black lines will thicken to strange degrees, but I don't really notice that on original hardware (its mostly visible in those Punch-Out Wii HD videos I watch that are footage from an emulator).

So, yea, needless to say this is one of my favorite games and I love everything about it. I will say that I don't love it quite as much as Super Punch-Out (SNES), since I feel that game is just a lot more infinitely replayable to me and I have a lot of nostalgia bias for it. Nonetheless, I think Punch-Out Wii is just such a wonderful experience. I've been begging for it to get a port or remaster on Switch for what feels like such a long time by now, hoping that happens at some point but it might never happen.