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.

Super Mario Land 2 is one of those highly praised Mario games I hadn't played until now. Just like the other Game Boy Mario game I visited (Donkey Kong '94), I found myself enjoying my time with this game. It's short, but honestly sometimes I'm just looking for something short to blow through while still having fun. I find that the Game Boy is a great source for these kinds of games, perhaps because developers tended to want to emphasize the "Take it on the go" aspect of the Game Boy.

Admittedly, I haven't played the first Super Mario Land for more than a minute or two through a friend's copy, so I won't be mentioning that game more than a few times when talking about its sequel here. I think the core gameplay of Super Mario Land 2 is good, maybe even great. The physics are a little odd to get used to at first, mainly just because Mario's jumping feels slower and floatier than in most Mario games I've played, but once you get the hang of it Mario feels good to control. This game has a very basic platformer move-set, but hey this is classic Mario so I'm not gonna complain about that. One thing I will say is that the game does experience some occasional slowdown and screen crunch, but frankly those two quirks feel pretty much inevitable to pop up at some point with the Game Boy (although I'm no Game Boy connoisseur so take that with a pile of salt) and it was never the cause of any deaths for me. If you're really worried about it, just keep a steady slow pace and always be on the lookout for incoming enemies. Something I really like about the gameplay of Super Mario Land 2 is the way its structured. As soon as you make a save file, you get the choice of which world you want to go to in a hub area that's a bit similar to Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World. With the exception of the final area, everything's available to you right out the gate, so you can finish the worlds in any order you want. Might not matter to some, but that freedom of choice is pretty nice for others. Also, the difficulty curve manages to feel pretty natural for the most part even despite the freedom to pick any world as your first. The final level definitely beat me up a few times and gave me my first (and second) game over, but I expect the final level of a game to give me a tough time and its not some kind of tough as nails platformer.

Something I want to give props to is the visual design of this game. It looks really nice for a Game Boy game, although unfortunately I wasn't able to play it in color because the 3DS never got an option to use GBC colors on GB games and I will never understand why they didn't do it. The sprites are a bit big, unfortunately, so that adds to some extra screen crunch than what would've happened if things got scaled down (kinda like what happened with Donkey Kong Land but not anywhere near as terrible). Not too big of an issue, though. I love how the worlds are so strange and goofy, there's no way we would get a Halloween themed world or a level made up of bricks that look like LEGOs in a modern 2D Mario game. One of the enemies in that Halloween world just straight up has a Jason Voorhees style hockey mask and that was so weird to see in a Mario game. Yea, some levels have more generic themes than others, but there's also some pretty creative and fun visuals here. Space Land is pretty cool, although I don't get why Mario needed to wear an astronaut suit when he can indefinitely swim underwater with no need to breathe. That world also sees the return of Tatanga, the boss of Super Mario Land...which, as far as I know, is basically the only thing that ties this game to the first Super Mario Land. Overall, some pretty memorable and cool level designs here.

Unfortunately the music is less interesting than Super Mario Land to me. The fact that pretty much every song in Land 2 is a remix of the main theme or incorporates it into the melody in some way (I'm not a music guy I don't know what they call that) is rather disappointing, especially after Land had a great soundtrack of all original tunes. They're good and serve their purpose but I can't help but feel a bit disappointed with it.

Overall, pretty good game and definitely one of the greats out of the Game Boy games I've played. I rate it a solid 4 stars.

Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe is one of those quirky 3DS Kirby spin-off games that not a lot of people seem to care about. Seems to be pretty similar to the likes of Kirby Fighters, Kirby's Blowout Blast, and Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, except two of those got Switch versions (and even a sequel in the case of Kirby Fighters) while Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe has been left to rot as an exclusive to the 3DS eShop. It's a real shame honestly, this game feels pretty unique and I don't think it deserves to just officially die out in a month from now when the shop closes. I mean, emulators will always keep it alive, but I think Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe could make for a nice port for HAL to put on the Switch. It doesn't rely on any 3DS features that the Switch doesn't also have (aside from the whole gimmick of Dedede's jumps making him go up to the top screen at times but that definitely isn't necessary to keep).

Also, just as a disclaimer: I have always been pretty terrible at rhythm games, so this is coming from the perspective of a total rhythm idiot. I tried my hardest to get the platinum medal on every course, which I managed to do for all of them...EXCEPT the final level. I don't think I can ever do that one without spending a ton of time attempting to master it, so I figured I'd just take the basic gold medal and leave it at that.

For those who don't know, Dedede's Drum Dash was a side-game in Kirby Triple Deluxe. This game essentially is just an expansion with more levels and some small extras like masks you can slap on Dedede's magnificent mug and viewable trophies you get for reaching milestone scores in the game. I imagine the trophies were included partly as a Miiverse boasting thing, but...well, yea that's long since been shut down. Anyway, I remember Drum Dash was by far my favorite side game in Kirby's Triple Deluxe at the time it came out but I barely remembered anything about it, so this expanded version was a nice memory jogger. Its sort of a rhythm game and an obstacle course type of game, where the terrain is a bunch of drums you jump off of and you have to avoid hazards along the way. The rhythm part is in how the levels are structured, which tends to go along to the beat of the music, as well as a backbeat you need to keep track of if you're looking to get the platinum medals. Press A at a certain timing in Dedede's jump arcs to do the backbeat. Seems simple, but it gets really hard to keep up in the more difficult levels, at least for me. Keeping up a good sense of flow is important; if you just barely graze a drum or land on the far side of it, Dedede will be sent into the air flailing which ruins your backbeat combo. You get a score after beating each level that will get bonuses added to it with each special criteria you fulfill. The criteria includes: Time Bonus, No Damage, All Notes (there are note coins to grab in each level), and Backbeat Perfect.

I have to say, this game has made it to where if I ever hear C-R-O-W-N-E-D again I will immediately think of the pain I felt trying to beat both of the levels with this theme in it. I'm not kidding when I say that I spent two hours late at night to try perfecting the first C-R-O-W-N-E-D level and I still had to try again the next day. Ironically enough, it only took me four tries the next day, so maybe I just really didn't click with it until then. Certainly taught me that I'm still not any good at rhythm games, that's for sure. The other levels also took me anywhere from just a few tries to several attempts to get the platinum for. The other big spot of misery for me was Level 6 of the second set of levels, which was just so difficult to get right for me but did feel satisfying once I finally got the platinum for it after god knows how many attempts. As I mentioned earlier I just completely gave up even trying to get the platinum for the last level, I had a hard time just beating that level normally so I figured I shouldn't go for the platinum or I'd go insane. The thing about Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe is that, if you just want to finish levels normally, there's pretty much nothing to worry about. So long as you're fulfilling like two of the criteria for getting extra points, you can get up to a gold medal pretty easily and call it a day there. However, if you really want that platinum, well you're going to have to work for it. The problem is that getting in the rhythm of jumping at the right time to get all the notes, getting a Perfect Backbeat, and avoiding obstacles all in one run is ludicrously difficult for me at times. The backbeat especially was the direct cause of so many fails for me, the amount of times I accidentally moved slightly too far and sent Dedede flailing to regain his balance or the times I missed just one beat and had to restart was countless. Some levels were more forgiving than others with the Platinum medals, but for the most part if you mess up once you're not getting it. This isn't too bad because obviously the levels aren't long (aside from the final level which felt like it dragged on for forever), but man when you're as bad at this whole perfect rhythm thing as I can be it's so painful. I did enjoy my time with the game, though; it's a pretty fun rhythm game. I don't want my salty rant for a Kirby game of all things (and one I haven't seen anyone else complain about) to take up the brunt of a review. I like the base idea a lot and there's a surprising amount of content here.

Despite my previous rant, yea I really think this is a solid little game. It's never gonna blow your mind, but it does what it sets out to do well and its charming. I could see this being a gateway for more people to get into a rhythm game since it's Kirby and it stars our beloved king of Pop Star. I'm a little sad I couldn't finish the job in getting the final platinum medal, but I really think I'm better off not doing it. Definitely not gonna lose any sleep over it.

So, Hades...this is the game that got hyped up to holy hell (heh) by everyone who played it. I've seen people that call it the best indie game, some even call it the best GAME ever. I wouldn't go anywhere near that far, but, after playing through the game, I can see why it got praised so much. It's far from my favorite games list, although its solid overall and I thought it had a lot of cool stuff about it. For context, this is the first roguelike (or is it a roguelite?) that I've played and actually tried to get through. I never liked the idea behind the genre; a gauntlet of randomly generated rooms that makes you go lose everything and start from square one every time you die sounded like torture to play through for me. Before this, I had only played through a bit of Enter the Gungeon with a friend and thought it was very "meh" (not to insinuate that game is bad or anything). Hades was much more interesting to me. Admittedly, I died a LOT in this game. It was frustrating when it was the same enemy or boss over and over (I died a lot to Megaera and the Asterius-Theseus tag team boss), but the way the game is structured makes it to where death isn't quite as frustrating as I thought it would be without losing out on that sense of brutal challenge the genre seems to be known for. I ended the game with only one successful escape attempt; I know its intended for you to keep going, and part of me is curious to see where the story goes from here, but quite frankly I didn't feel like playing through the same levels again no matter how randomly generated they were. Not sure if labeling this as a "Completed" playthrough is entirely accurate because of this endless aspect of the game, so I'm not going to do that. This game is going to get a specialized Note in my 2023 List stating that I didn't technically finish it but I also feel I've seen what it has to offer.

Alright, I'll start with the visuals. Normally not the first thing I talk about, but this game surprised me with how much of a distinct and cool style it has. When you look closely, you can still see the cracks (the models of the characters that aren't the enemies or bosses look a bit weird to me), but this is easy to ignore when there's such a neat art style to the whole game. The colors are very vibrant yet suitably dark when it needs to be. Each character you can talk to has a portrait that's drawn in this cool style that I'm not really sure how to even describe. It's just great, but not much else to say about it there.

The gameplay is definitely the main attraction of Hades. The combat has a frantic high speed energy to it that just feels excellent to play through. Everything goes so quick, but never so speedy that you can't tell what the hell is going on. Things do get pretty crazy once you get to rooms chockful of enemies to take down, but this is balanced out by the enemies all spawning in waves (new enemies will mostly only spawn after taking out the wave you're currently fighting with a few exceptions). Whenever you're in trouble, you can always dash up to 2 times by default, which gives you invincibility frames and can be upgraded with Boons (more on Boons later). The dash is probably one of the most important tools in your arsenal because of that, but it never feels like it cheapens the game's difficulty and instead feels like it enhances the sense of speed in it. There's a pretty good variety of enemies to fight, so it doesn't feel like you're always fighting the same guys. I imagine that's very important if you're a Roguelike fiend that tries to play all these games several times over, but I'm not that kinda guy. Rooms tend to have traps that you can use to your advantage if you're clever enough, like spike traps and pressure plates that make statues shoot out projectiles. I just wanted to keep pumping out damage and dashing around, so it was more convenient to just ignore the traps for me. I found that the boss fights are particularly amazing. They are hard and can be especially frustrating if you don't know what you're doing, but once you figure it out they're a lot of fun. The only one I hated was the Asterius + Theseus tag team, but by the time I got to Styx for the first time I was able to eliminate Asterius + Theseus much easier after having understood the pattern. The final boss fight against Hades himself was easily the most pressure I felt in a fight in a while, frantically trying to avoid all his attacks while still pumping enough damage to get him before he got me. I didn't end up dying to him once, but that was a stressful final boss and I felt so accomplished when I beat him while I was just barely at death's door.

One aspect of the game's combat that I feel makes it so interesting is the sense of customizability it has. Took me a bit to wrap my head around, but it was neat to experiment with. There are a bunch of weapons - or Infernal Arms, as they're called in game - that you can choose between once you unlock them all. You start with Stygius, but, once you get enough Chthonic Keys, you can unlock the other five weapons: Coronacht, Varatha, Aegis, Twin Fists of Malphon, and Exagryph. These weapons are a bow, forked spear, shield, gauntlets, and a railgun respectively. Each have some attributes unique to them, like Aegis has a charge move that also blocks any attacks thrown in its way or the spin attack that Varatha has that feels ripped straight out of The Legend of Zelda. Every weapon has a basic attack on X (I was using Xbox inputs so these buttons might not apply to your controller) and a special attack unique to that weapon on Y, which will make up the wide majority of your attack options aside from the occasional Cast (which is like a ranged projectile shot by pressing B that all weapons have). I found that all the weapons were pretty fun to use and none of them felt useless to me, although Stygius was the only one I genuinely didn't like using. I'd say the Twin Fists were the most fun to use, but Coronacht ended up being my best weapon so I kept using that instead. You can upgrade your weapons once you unlock them all, which lets you use that Titan's Blood that was likely sitting in your inventory from beating the first boss (unless you're unfortunate enough to have never beat her before you got all the weapons). Since I experimented with all the weapons enough to at least beat the first boss with them, I got a Titan's Blood from each one, which was enough to upgrade one weapon a few times. I made the mistake of using my first Titan's Blood on upgrading Varatha, since I thought I would like that weapon the most, but I ended up liking Coronacht more and felt like I wasted the blood. You can get pretty in-depth with builds in this game, honestly; each weapon has four different aspects that each add different perks or effects to the weapon, but unfortunately you don't get anywhere near enough Titan's Blood to efficiently try them out when you're on the way to finish your first escape run. On my playthrough, I just looked up a guide for Coronacht builds online and found that people say the Aspect of Chiron path for upgrades is really good, so I went with that and it worked well for me. Upgrading weapons is cool, but there's also the perks you get from the mirror in your room. You exchange your Darkness (the little purple orbs you get from clearing certain rooms or killing bosses you already killed before) for these permanent perks. One of these - Death Defiance - is pretty expensive, especially if you want to get all three upgrades for it, but its basically a necessity because it essentially gives you an extra life that you wouldn't normally have. Unless you're some kind of pro gamer that never dies to anything, you're gonna need Death Defiance, and if you're like me you'll need to have two of those to get your first escape attempt. A big feature of customizability for the combat is Boons, which are specific buffs you get from the Olympian Gods that last as long as you can last in a particular run. So, if you get the lightning bolt, Zeus shows up and gives you some options for buffing yourself up that last until the whole run. You're not stuck with the same Boon for the whole thing, since you can sell them in some rooms or replace it with a different Boon if you see one you like better from another god. However, the kind of gods you get on your run is randomized unless you have a Keepsake (equipped items that grant special effects for a run) that increases your chances of coming across a specific god. I found that it was very crucial to familiarize yourself with the kinds of Boons you'll usually get from the different gods. They tend to have specific gimmicks to most of their Boons that fit the kind of thing that god is known for, like how a lot of Ares's Boons focus on a status effect called Doom that deals damage after a small delay, and he has some other great Boons like Urge to Kill (increases your damage with all your attacks) and Battle Rage (makes you deal more damage after you have just killed an enemy). Dionysus has a similar status effect gimmick with his Boons, except his is called Hangover, which is kinda like the typical JRPG poison effect but it builds up to stacks of 5. Every god has a Boon that will buff either your regular attack, special attack, cast, or dash, as well as some more specialized stuff unique to each god like the ones I mentioned for Ares when I used him as an example. You have a bunch of slots for miscellaneous Boons, but the ones that buff your attack, special, cast, or dash occupy a specific slot that will have to be removed or replaced if you want to change it. As far as I know, the Boons from Hermes and Daedalic Hammers (basically Hephaestus although you unfortunately never get to see him in the game) are the only exceptions, since all of their Boons count as miscellaneous ones. Athena has some really nice defensive options, like Last Stand (increases the health you get after Death Defiance) and a useful deflection ability that most of her Boons come prepackaged with. Dionysus also has great defensive Boons, mainly Positive Outlook which reduces damage taken when you reach 40% health or below, and some Boons that boost health restoration. Apparently there are also some Boons that you get from comboing Boons from specific gods together but I never got any of these in my playthrough. I found that finding a good loadout of Boons that work best for your play style was very important.

Something I love about this game is how death almost seems encouraged. Of course, you never want to die since you'll have to start your run from the beginning again, but whenever you die there's always something you can do back in the home world to make it not feel like a wasted effort. You can spend that Darkness you got to upgrade your abilities. Later in the game, you get Contracts, which gives you a use for your gems to do stuff like make minor cosmetic changes, build a small pot of water in your bedchambers that reveals how many times you died or how many enemies you've slain, and upgrades that change the layout of the Underworld for your benefit (like adding urns that drop gold when destroyed or fountain rooms you may come across that give you the option to restore health). There's this weird social system that seemed rather pointless to me, but was kind of a cool addition, especially since Zagreus is thankfully not a silent protagonist. He's a pretty chill guy with a heart of gold and a bit of a mouth on him; he has some entertaining dialogue I enjoyed. When you interact with some items in the environment - indicated by a glowing yellow dot - there's a narrator that explains stuff to you, and, amusingly enough, Zagreus breaks the fourth wall and knows he exists. The thing about the social system that I thought was weird is that, the more you talk to characters, the more it fills up a codec that Achilles gives you that has some lore and background information about the characters written in there. Don't get me wrong, I think this is cool. I'm no Greek mythology expert, so it was nice to see some information written about all these gods, demigods, and other mythological figures you meet along the way, but I really don't know why it's all locked behind having to interact with the characters enough times. Strangest of all to me, there's also the option to date specific characters, which I genuinely had no idea was even a thing and it can only be done for three characters. There's Thanatos for a gay romance option, Megaera for a straight romance, and honestly Dusa barely even counts since Zagreus admits he has feelings for her but they both calmly settle for just being friends since Dusa tells him she isn't ready for a relationship. From what I watched in a YouTube video, the Dusa "romance" was handled surprisingly maturely and I was glad to see it wasn't super cheesy. I never really saw the point in this whole system, much less the shipping, but hey maybe some people really like that and it'd be wrong of me to stomp on their fun.

Okay I usually don't take THIS long in the review to get to the story, but part of this is because...well, I can't definitively say how it ends since I really don't want to have to play through the same few worlds however many times it takes to see it all. As far as I understood, the story is that Zagreus wants to leave the Underworld, no matter how much of a brutal struggle it will be. His adoptive mother, Nyx, helps him out with that (she's the one that put the darkness mirror in his room). Eventually after you die enough times, you get a big story reveal scene where Zagreus sneaks up on Hades' desk to read the scrolls there. Little Zaggy boy finds out he's actually the son of Persephone, not Nyx. That only fuels him even more on his journey to escape the Underworld, which he eventually manages to do after defeating Hades in the snowy Greek mountains. Once his dad's out of the picture, Zagreus makes it to Persephone, making for a pretty emotional reunion. It doesn't last long, however, since eventually Zagreus finds out he truly is doomed by fate to be stuck in the Underworld forever. He gets pulled back down there, and decides to trek back up there again even if he only has a few more minutes to see Persephone again. I'm thinking its structured like this to make the whole endless roguelike aspect of this game make sense in the story, I have no idea what happens if you go back up there again unfortunately.

So, my overall thoughts...I don't think Hades is going to make me a roguelike fiend, but I do think it was a great time with plenty of positive aspects to it. I can see why people love the game so much, even if I don't think it was necessarily 5 star worthy or something I'd want to play again and again.

So, Stray is pretty different from the kind of game I usually play. Typically, my preferences are for games that focus almost entirely on fun gameplay loops, whether that be the fun and simple (simple doesn't mean easy) style of platformers, the satisfaction of making clever decisions in turn based RPGs, the adrenaline-fueled combat of hack-'n-slash and certain first person shooter games, or the competitive spirit of constantly improving in fighting games. Of course, there are plenty more examples, like the sheer sense of fulfillment in finding secrets and filling up the entire map in a Metroidvania. However, Stray is different from these games; by all means, the gameplay is pretty uninteresting. You spend most of your time walking, running, and jumping through a dark torn-up dystopian city, sometimes needing to solve puzzles or go through a scripted sequence along the way. Rinse and repeat for 12 chapters. Normally I would say that the gameplay being uninteresting is a detriment to any game, but I feel it works for what Stray is going for. The mundane nature of the gameplay is meant to really immerse you into the setting and role you're playing. Everything about the way your cat moves and interacts with the world feels so accurate to how a cat is that it got a grin out of me a few times just seeing the little guy in action. Sometimes you just get to do silly little cat things, like walking all over a keyboard to type complete nonsense or knocking down paint cans purely because you felt like it. It's adorable. I often don't really care about immersion in stories but, as someone with a huge bias for cats, I truly do love everything about this setup even if the gameplay itself ends up not being the most fun thing ever. The fact that there is a dedicated meow button is amusing to me, but the best part about it is that they found some actual uses for meowing so it isn't just a quirky addition. Unfortunately I have to admit that, near the end of this game, I just kept playing because I wanted to beat it and not because I found it all that engaging. The last few chapters really up the stakes of the story, but, by the point I got to it, I felt pretty tapped out mentally and I was tired of the snoozefest gameplay.

The story of the game starts simple but gets more involved as you progress. You start the game out with your cat buddies living together. You get to interact with them a little before they all go to sleep. You wake up with your cat colony and start exploring the world, following them around. This serves as the tutorial of the game and it works as a pretty natural one in my opinion. After a bit of venturing with your fuzzy compadres, something goes horribly wrong; the pipe your cat jumps on breaks, and unfortunately the cat can't hold on. It ends up falling into the deep abyss. Next thing it knows, the cat lands on puddles of water, left in the middle of a dark lonely tunnel with trash littered everywhere. It tries to move, but falls down and goes to sleep. Once it wakes up, it's about time to start exploring, finding out where it is, and hopefully reuniting with its friends (spoiler: that doesn't happen sadly). From here, this is where the game really starts. You get a bunch of mysterious hints from the technology of the city, such as the lights and television screens you find in abandoned buildings, telling you to go somewhere, which you then follow. There's a part where you get chased by a bunch of weird little headcrab-like critters that try to gang up on you which sets up some stuff that's elaborated on later in the story (these are called Zurks and the robots are afraid of them). Once you finally follow the hints all the way, you enter a cozy old home with a computer room that has a bunch of technology. After some light puzzle solving, you awaken a drone that speaks to you and thanks you. The drone was the reason behind all those hints you saw; it was shocked to see a cat roaming the area, since its connected to the electronic network of the city. The drone has little memory of who it is or what its purpose is, but it does remember that it was the creation of a scientist. The drone tells you to just call it B/12, like the symbol engraved on its body. Also, this is where you first find out the city is called Dead City...fittingly grim name. B/12 has you put on a sort of futuristic looking backpack, where the drone can recharge itself. This leads to a pretty funny scene where the cat falls over since its not used to wearing something like this and you have to keep moving forward. Small disclaimer, I didn't bother collecting the majority of the B/12 memories so I'm going to skip over describing what those add to the story or lore. After meeting B/12, he tells you to go further into the city; this is when Chapter 4: The Slums starts. After another encounter with those strange headcrab looking creatures, you get to meet the robots of this city. They are absolutely terrified of you, running into their homes while you roam the streets. Thankfully you meet a bot in robes and a hat that accepts you "so long as you don't try to eat anyone". Turns out he's the village guardian and he opens up the city again after you meet him. B/12 serves as your negotiator and translator for dealing with the robots and there's a good amount of them to talk to. Once you're done screwing around for a bit now that the linearity starts to open up a little, you can continue the story by finding Momo. He is a robot that had a deep connection with humans and pines for leaving Dead City, but lost all hope due to his friends failing to make it out alive. Once you meet him, he tells you he gave up on trying to leave, and says if you really want to go you can take the first of four notebooks he wrote. The book reveals that four different people signed an agreement that they were going to get to the Outside no matter what: Clementine, Zbaltazar, Doc, and Momo. To continue the story you need to find three notebooks - Clementine 4/4, Zbaltazar 2/4, and Doc 3/4. After finding them all, Momo has renewed hope and makes a plan to restore the transreceiver. He has you jump out the window, which starts Chapter 5. Okay I know I already got this far into the synopsis, but I really don't want to just explain the whole story, so I'll give a rundown of what happens from here: you go to Zurk territory to stick the transreceiver into the slot that lets Momo get his message out to Zbaltazar, you go back to the Slums so you can talk to the son of one of the Outsiders you're looking for, find clues in that guy's house with him to figure out the riddle Doc left for him so you can progress, then you go on a trek with Momo to the sewers, from there it takes you to Antvillage which then takes you to Midtown, in Midtown you do a bunch of stuff to get to Clementine, she has you go find this spy cohort so you can sneak into the Neco Corporation facility to get a battery, once you leave the whole city goes on lockdown, Clementine was kidnapped so you have to go find her, you go back to the home she was hiding at which gives you hints that tell you you need to go to the Nightclub, when you go to the Nightclub you find her but you also find the spy guy who turns out to be a double agent that sells you out, you and Clementine get put in jail, cue a big jail breakout mission, Clementine distracts the Sentinels for you so you can get to the bottom of all this, you find a subway train that takes you to a station, in the station you find the Control Room, in the Control Room B/12 sacrifices himself to turn the security system off, this also opens up the entire city which you get to watch happen after the cat mourns the loss of its drone buddy, then you go to the big red doors...it opens, and bam that's the end of the game. Enjoy a short cutscene of the cat touching grass after having been stuck in this desolate city for so long, and then the game just ends. The story wasn't all that interesting to me, but it served its purpose well and I'm not ashamed to admit that the drone's sacrifice had me feeling emotional. The cat is back to being all alone at the end of the game, still having not found its family. Maybe we will get a family reunion if we get a Stray sequel. "Stray 2: Clawed Encounters of the Furred Kind" or some shit, lol. The ending isn't too much of a downer, though, since you did ultimately escape the city (or at least that's what I think the ending implied but it was vague on whether you actually left Dead City or just found yourself back in it) and you just opened up the top of the big metal dome encasing the entirety of Dead City. These robots get to see sunlight for the first time in an eternity.

The visuals and setting of this game seem to be a major focus, which helps add to the immersive nature of Stray. I really dig how cold and desolate the place looks, you get a good sense of how uncaring the vibe is from all the trash strewn about and random objects like wooden planks just kinda being placed wherever. There are only remnants of the touch of humans present within the scenery, with things like postcards that you sometimes find and corporate billboards. It appears to always be night time (but its actually because the entire city is encased and walled in by a huge dome), which, combined with the fact that you'll be seeing a whole lot of drab blue, green, grey, and brown everywhere you go, gives things a very dreary feeling. It's a dystopian world with no living organism in sight except for the orange cat you control. Even the plants are synthetic, as hinted at through some dialogue and a company billboard you can find. Humans are gone and robots inherited this place that the humans used to call home. The robots have personalities of their own, though, and they've inhabited behaviors of humans like drinking alcohol or dancing at clubs. Despite the sad circumstances of this city, it doesn't look all bad, though. The parts that the robots call home are illuminated by neon lights that light up the streets. There are a few other locations you go to in the game, too; the sewers, the Antvillage, the jail, and Midtown. Midtown is more of the same sort of aesthetic you saw in Dead City, but its generally cleaner looking and its home to the upper crust robots so you see more extravagant buildings. There's also a whole authoritarian police city vibe with how, once you enter Midtown, they're searching for a certain suspect for the crime of wanting to get to the Outside. You even get to do some spy stuff, gleefully breaking the rules of this totalitarian state. What a cat thing to do, am I right? The sewers is basically the home of the Zurks, its full of the alien biological tech stuff that you saw them crowding around in Dead City. The heart of the sewers feels almost alive with all the eyes in the fleshy walls watching you, pretty strange visuals that I honestly wasn't expecting to see in the game. In contrast, the Antvillage was a pretty nice looking area...well, as nice looking as this dystopian world can get. It's pretty much one big spiraling building made of wood and piping placed next to a tree. So, overall, the way the world looks is great. However, the cats themselves look off unfortunately. It's mainly the face for me, which feels close to how a real cat looks but is just odd enough to annoy me. If you don't want to see footage of the game yourself, you can just look at the official artwork, which really showcases how strange the cats look in the face. I'm not sure if its a stylization thing or a graphical limitation. It certainly doesn't ruin the game's interesting visuals, though, since I'm not a stickler for realistic graphics and I know this is an indie game. The only thing about the visuals that I can say was pretty distracting for me is the seemingly random lag and frame drops. The sewer especially was full of slowdown, and there was one puzzle that made the game chug like a train once you complete it for some reason which had me worried my game was gonna crash or something. My PC is a good gaming PC so I don't think it was that, and considering the fact that this game has AI that sometimes just doesn't do what it's supposed to do makes me think this is more on the game. Again these aren't major issues, but they are pretty odd and worth pointing out in my opinion.

Overall I think Stray was great for what it was going for, but I felt a little bored near the end of it. I really appreciate what it was going for, though. I'll always be an advocate for games where you get to play as a funny little critter; Stray embraces this aspect of being "the silly cat game" while still having a decent story and an honestly great sense of atmosphere. Gameplay is very mid but everything else about it really made it worth seeing through to the end, I enjoyed it. Gets a solid 3.5 stars out of me.

So I'm not the biggest DOOM fan out there, but I do really enjoy what I've played of the series. Never beat DOOM (1993) and DOOM 2, but I highly respect them and have played through most of the levels in those games. I find the core formula a lot of fun, but certain annoying parts of DOOM 2 and DOOM (1993) prevented me from taking the time to beat them. DOOM 64 is one game I have been curious about for a while, so over the past few days I went ahead and actually beat it. I have been playing through the whole series after finishing DOOM (2016) a while back before I had a Backloggd account, but now 64 is the only classic DOOM I have actually beat. I may revisit the other two to finally finish them, but I imagine I will not review them here when I do since I feel like I would have nothing of real interest to say about them.

When I was playing through this game, one of the first things I noticed was that the tone is quite different from DOOM and DOOM 2. Visually, it carries a lot of that similar energy to the original duology, with the sprites having been recreated to fit the N64 while still being very faithful to the original designs. I really enjoy how everything looks, it feels like a natural evolution aside from how ludicrously dark it can get (good thing this version of the game has a brightness scroller). However, this time around, the atmosphere feels more horror focused. Not to imply DOOM (1993) and DOOM 2 didn't have horror elements, of course, but 64 seems to lean in a lot more on those elements with specific parts of the game, mainly the music. DOOM and DOOM 2 had a wide variety of music with a good variety of feelings they're meant to convey, from the catchy metal tunes of "At Doom's Gate" (E1M1) and "Kitchen Ace & Takin' Names" (E1M4), the almost orchestral sound of "Suspense" (E1M5), the atmospheric electronic vibe of "Demons on the Prey" (E1M7) and "Dark Halls" (E1M3), the masterful combination of hopelessness and disappointment found in "Sign of Evil" (ending theme of E1)...all of those were purely in the first episode of the first DOOM, its not even counting the more strange music DOOM 2 had in store, like the almost groovy sound of "The Healer Stalks" and the borderline silly vibe of "Between Levels". 64's music is overwhelmingly focused on a dark ambience intended to carry a persistent feeling of dread, with every single song in the OST being designed to carry this feeling. Spooky low-tone instruments playing in the background and a whole lot of distracting sound effects are what you'll hear if you have the music turned on in your playthrough. I respect that this game wanted to do something different, but I can't help but feel the soundtrack sucks away the personality this one could have had if it just kept doing what DOOM and DOOM 2 were already doing so well. Honestly a lot of it just blends in with each other.

The gameplay of DOOM 64 is pretty much the same as its predecessors. You don't need to reinvent the wheel when DOOM was the game that popularized the genre to begin with, so I got no complaints about that. All the same weapons from DOOM and DOOM 2 return: Pistol, Shotgun, Chainsaw, Super Shotgun, Chaingun, Plasma Gun, Rocket Launcher, and the always iconic BFG9000. This game does introduce one new weapon, though, and that's the Unmaker. Amusingly, the Unmaker didn't get an actual name until Eternal. When you get it in DOOM 64, you get some flavor text that reads: "What the !@#%* is this!" The Unmaker makes for a cool addition to the classic DOOM arsenal, but I didn't really use it a ton. One interesting thing about it is that it can actually be upgraded to be stronger. As far as core level design goes, it does feel like more of the same classic DOOM stuff with big rooms and exploration to do. I did notice some differences, though. For some reason this game absolutely loves Hell Knights and Barons of Hell, it throws them at you all the time and its a bit odd since I remember them not being all that common in DOOM's episodes (aside from Thy Flesh Consumed which I never beat) and most of what I played of DOOM 2 (never beat that game either tbh). I guess it's to make up for the game lacking three of the enemies from DOOM and DOOM 2: the Archvile, Chaingunner, and Revenant. Also, some enemies seem to be a bit stronger here than they were in the classic DOOM games. Biggest example is the Lost Souls, which were more of a minor annoyance before but are an absolute pain in the ass here. I could just be seeing differences where there are none but I do know that Lost Souls are much more irritating in DOOM 64. The change makes Pain Elementals one of the most annoying DOOM enemies I've ever encountered, and fighting a room full of them is a nightmare. This game does have one new regular enemy and a new boss. The Nightmare Imp is just an indigo imp visually but it attacks faster and runs quicker, and the Mother Demon is the final boss of the game. There's nothing really nightmarish about the Nightmare Imp and the Mother Demon is a tough boss fight. Another thing I noticed that's different here is that DOOM 64 is quite fond of just spawning enemies in once you interact with something, which can be irritating. They fade into the world out of nowhere. If you don't know where and when they spawn ahead of time, you can easily accidentally end up in arm's distance of a demon or just get destroyed. On the plus side, I noticed I actually used the Chainsaw this time around. I hardly ever used it in the first two games, but here it was a great tool for taking out Mancubus so long as there aren't too many ranged enemies around for you to mow 'em down. That's still a pretty niche use case, though. Unfortunately other enemies with a melee attack make it very tricky to use the Chainsaw without getting smacked for a chunk of your health in return. It's possible to kill plenty of stuff with the chainsaw, especially since it seems to have been given a damage boost, but its too difficult to be worth doing over just blasting demons unless you're out of ammo. Also, another quirk about the game is that sometimes enemies can just shoot you through the walls, which I noticed mostly in a specific segment of Spawned Fear (Map 18). Not a big deal, but its weird. You know what is a big deal? That final level. Apparently the only way to make it not insanely hard is to find all the secret levels, since you need keys from those levels to be able to shut down the portals. The secret levels are also the only way you can upgrade your Unmaker, which helps a lot in the fight. Honestly, that's just not fair to players like me that don't want to go out of their way to search every nook and cranny of a level and I've never had to find secrets in an FPS to make the levels not torture to play through, but hey it is still possible without the keys. I actually didn't die quite as much as I thought I would but it still sucked. I felt no guilt taking advantage of an exploit on Mother Demon because that fight is so dumb.

Overall, I feel like DOOM 64 is just "more DOOM", but the core formula of the series is so good that I see no real issue in that. I have a bunch of nitpicks about this game - nearly all of which I already mentioned here - and only a few genuine problems with it, but I feel it is great nonetheless and I did have fun with it. DOOM 64 gets a rock solid four stars from me.

So...Sonic Frontiers was quite the interesting experience. I'm someone that has always had a passing interest in Sonic, but haven't really took the time to sit down and play through the games to completion. Nonetheless, I do know a lot about this series through the fact that I used to be obsessed with it as a kid (can't count how many wiki articles I've read through and fan discussion I've seen of stuff like the IDW comics which I've been meaning to read through). I've always loved the Adventure games and I have at least tried many Sonic games. The Genesis era games, Heroes, Sonic 06, Shadow the Hedgehog, Generations, even Sonic Chronicles...these are all games I've played over the years from my childhood love of the blue blur, but none have interested me enough to go through the effort of beating them. That wasn't the case with Frontiers, which interested me enough to take the time to fully complete. From what I can tell, this game is supposed to be a "return to form" from the strangely comedy focused and watered down direction that Colors and Boom took the series in. Personally, I think this one tries a little too hard and overcorrects at times, but that's a complaint I'll detail later in this review.

When I played through Sonic Frontiers, I sought to do everything I could. There's no shortage of activities to do in this game, so I figured: "Why not do it all?" Thankfully the Platinum trophy was pretty easy to get, it will be yours so long as you do most of the stuff the game throws your way (aside from one specific trophy that's annoying to get unless you exploit an enemy's design). I wanted to fully complete everything I possibly could in the game, so I went through the trouble of doing a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually count towards the Platinum. Needless to say, I saw everything the game has to offer...except for the secret final boss only accessible through playing Hard difficulty, but honestly its just one extra boss fight and doesn't change the ending at all so I'm still counting my playthrough as 100%. I found that Sonic Frontiers is a game with some great stuff I love and some weird stuff that made me scratch my head at best or actively annoyed me at worst. I will detail all my thoughts in the later paragraphs of this review; you know, organization and all that jazz. I'm fairly confident in saying that I did overall enjoy my time with the game, though.

The story...eh, it has it's ups and downs. I didn't find it all that remarkable in total, but I appreciated the more serious tone it has in comparison to other more recent Sonic games and it does have interesting additions to the lore for the whole series assuming this game is canon. Essentially, the story's premise is that Sonic's friends get trapped in the same dimension Cyber Space is in and Sonic is sent to a strange new world. Sonic has to explore through the four islands of this world to find his friends and help them. Whenever he finds them, they're trapped in cages that he must get rid of, but this causes corruption to his body every time he does it. This becomes important later as Sonic gets more and more corrupted, but strangely this doesn't impact gameplay at all which I feel was a bit of a missed opportunity. He also must find the Chaos Emeralds in each island so he can turn into Super Sonic to defeat the four Titans; one Titan per island. Sonic Frontiers introduces the Ancients, a new species that is very important to the plot. The Ancients are the big new super important historical civilization that built a ton of the stuff Sonic interacts with on the islands. Specifically, they are aliens with highly advanced tech that moved to the world that this game takes place in after their home world was destroyed. The Ancients share some key similarities to the Echidnas: both are closely tied to the Chaos Emeralds and nearly got completely wiped out. Even Knuckles notices the similarities. Also, as a somewhat interesting side detail, the Ancients bare a noticeable resemblance to Chaos from Sonic Adventure, which I doubt was merely coincidental considering that Chaos also has a close connection to the Chaos Emeralds (and the Echidnas). All of these connections admittedly makes me hope and pray they haven't forgotten about the Chao since I love them and I desperately want a new Chao Garden feature in a game, but I digress. As the story progresses, Sonic learns more about who the Ancients are and what the purpose behind their elaborate machinery is. You'll find things like cranes, cannons, towers, large obelisk-like structures, and more, all identified by a distinct style of architecture almost similar to something you'd see in Breath of the Wild. The Challenges, Guardians, Titans, and Cyber Space are also all invented by them...yea, they built both the enemies and things that help you. The lore reason for this is because the Titans were built to take down a big bad that you only see at the very end of the game. So, naturally, the Ancients are a huge deal to Sonic lore; SEGA went as far as to make a canonical origin story to the Chaos Emeralds (as far as I know that hasn't been done before) tied directly to the Ancients. Apparently, their old home world is now where the Chaos Emeralds were originally native to before finding their way in Sonic's world. I'm not sure if I think that was a good addition or not, but it sure is something that happened. You know what was also something that happened? The ending. Everyone talks about how disappointing it was and unfortunately I have to echo that sentiment. Overall, this game definitely focuses on story quite a lot, but things still feel a bit half-baked and that ending just reeks of disappointment.

Alright, let's talk characters and writing. The main new character introduced in this game is Sage, some kind of cyber girl that was created to serve Eggman. She is a case of being intentionally meant to leave a bad first impression since she starts out pretty unlikeable and strange, being antagonistic to Sonic and utterly refusing to explain anything about where he is. She slowly opens up to him more and her reasons are revealed later (her data says Sonic will die and she's already programmed by Eggman so she's naturally antagonistic to him at first). I think she blossomed into a neat character and I can see why the fandom seems to like her so much. Not a fan of the fake out death they did with her, felt it was just done for a cheap attempt at emotional manipulation especially since we learn in this game that Eggman is going to bring her back anyway. Nonetheless, I would like to see her show up again sometime, maybe even become a staple character as one of Eggman's assistants alongside Cubot and Orbot. As far as the characters in general are, I think they were all handled pretty decently. With the way the story is put together, each major character essentially has their own island to themselves with a bunch of conversations to unlock. I liked most of the characterization and moments of interaction, like how Sonic helps Tails through his insecurities and that moment when Sage starts to cry after she realizes just how strong Tails and Sonic's bond is. However, I do have some gripes with the writing itself. There's two major things this game's writing does that I don't like: parts that feel like very on the nose responses to criticism - like the infamous scene where Tails calls himself inconsistent (which seems to be a direct nod from the writers on how much fans hate that one scene of Tails cowering in Forces) - and parts that reference facets of Sonic lore or obscure Sonic facts seemingly just to flex the fact that the writers do indeed know that. I know the latter point is criticized a lot, which I think has become way overblown since its not like it ruins the game's storytelling, but nonetheless I did find it odd when the characters randomly bring up something from the past that hasn't been relevant in several years. At one point, Tails says that the big bad must be way stronger than Dark Gaia. You know, the main boss from Sonic Unleashed, a game that came out 14 years ago and has never been directly ported to modern consoles (aside from Xbox backwards compatibility)? I don't think Dark Gaia has even shown up in anything since Unleashed. In one part of the story, Sonic tells Amy he'll be back "before she can even do a Tarot card reading"...for those who were understandably confused by that line, Amy is sometimes associated with tarot cards and I'm pretty sure it's not something she has done in the actual games in decades (and it's not like she does anything with it in Frontiers either so it's just here for a giga brain reference). Don't get me wrong, I like me some deep cut references every now and then, but these feel like such random inclusions whenever they show up and they're shoved in a little too much for my liking. Also, the game has two instances of random flashbacks to previous games through a screenshot ripped from the games and slapped on the screen for a few seconds. One of these moments didn't even really make sense in the context of what was happening and I just thought this was weird and unnecessary. At the very least, they clearly had fun here with the tons of references and I can see the merit in it. I just think it's too prevalent in this game.

Okay, with all that story stuff out of the way, time to finally actually talk about the gameplay. I felt it was pretty fun and satisfying overall, but it has some weird jankiness at times that makes precision difficult. In the open world, the game has segments of 2D platforming indicated by a spring, boost pad, or something of the like just sitting out there for you to interact with. I've seen a lot of people complain about it and I can definitely see why, its the jankiest part of the game in my opinion. Most of the time, it works fine, but the 2D perspective will shift back to a 3D one whenever you fall or when you accidentally leave the scripted 2D area. If you're just running through the world and accidentally touch a spring or something, the game is going to instantly snap into 2D mode and make you go through the area. These segments also have dedicated walls for you to climb, and I swear these are absolutely the jankiest part of the game bar none. You'd think the slow climb would give you more precision, but Sonic would move straight down or up when I was clearly holding a different direction. The wall-run sometimes just refuses to work and has you zoom away from the wall. This was very annoying and made the 2D parts of the game's open world irritating. On the plus side, things feel pretty solid overall in the open world. Once you get the massive speed boost from filling up your ring counter to 400 (or increasing your speed stat to Level 99), it feels exhilarating just darting through the world. Open world games are so much more fun when you have a crazy method of travel, like how Spider-Man has his web-swinging, and Sonic's high speed works great with that, although you'll need to max out your Speed stat if you want to stay super quick indefinitely. Speaking of which, not really a fan of this game's stat system. I think it was done to try and inspire a curve of progression, but it doesn't really feel all that natural. There are so many levels for your Attack, Defense, Speed, and Ring stats that it just feels excessive.

So, the combat. Sonic Frontiers definitely puts more of a focus on it here than I think any other mainline Sonic game has done before. I feel that it had a lot of potential, but ended up pretty middling. You get some new moves from the skill tree (since I guess every game needs to have that nowadays) and they are decently fun to use, but realistically you'll only be using a few of them. The Sonic Boom is probably the most fun one to use in my opinion since its a speedy barrage of projectiles that keep shooting out the longer you hold down the button. Combat is unfortunately another area of Sonic Frontiers that is affected by jank. A big example is how the game is supposed to automatically target enemies, but sometimes it just doesn't work as intended. Moves like the Sonic Boom and Cross Slash (no not the FFVII kind) suffer majorly from this issue since a dynamic camera angle happens every time you use those moves, which can really screw up the auto-targeting. Also, sometimes the game just doesn't recognize that you did a combo move. Some combo moves require you to press two buttons together, but those buttons are also tied to other features, so the game may prioritize the regular move over the combo move. The Boost button (R2 on PS4) has a few combo moves, and these were especially janky since the game tends to prioritize Boosting over the combo moves. It is very irritating, but, when the combat isn't refusing to work, its a lot of fun. One thing I will praise about the combat is the awesome Titan fights, those were always a blast even if they weren't all that challenging. The only problem with them is that there's so much happening in them and Sonic moves so fast that its very easy to just break the camera. The Titan fights also tend to suffer from the problems with auto-targeting perhaps the most out of any other fights.

One thing I will say about this game's structure is that I think it feels a little bloated. There are a ton of collectibles, each with their own intended purposes, and it does feel like a bit much. The Seeds of Power and Seeds of Defense raise those stats, the Kocos are collected to be used for increasing your Speed and Ring stats, the Vault Keys open the Chaos Emerald Vaults, the Gears are used to open up Cyber Space levels, purple coins let you go fishing with Big the Cat, fishing tokens are used to buy stuff from Big, gold cards are also used to buy stuff from Big, the Memory Tokens are different for each island and are used to gatekeep story progress (as well as let you talk to the characters for Side Stories)...it's just a whole lot of stuff and I can't help but feel like half of it could've been trimmed out. Also, the game likes to just insert random mini games you have to play through. It's not a bad idea to break things up a little so it doesn't get monotonous, but I really don't think this game needed several Koco herding mini games, three Space Invaders style mini games (four if you count the secret final boss that uses this style of play for some reason), and a single pinball area just shoved in there. As much as I love the fishing, it also felt pretty unnecessary and honestly kind of breaks the progression balance since you can just buy nearly everything you need from Big if you're good at fishing...and the Purple Coins aren't hard to come by at all if you got lucky like I did with the Starfall. Whenever that event happens, it brings back the enemies you took down, but it also activates a limited time slot roulette that can give you a shit ton of purple coins if you know how to play it. I got the Starfall at least once on every island and it made it to where I was at 999 purple coins for a long time, so naturally I had plenty of money to fish with Big and buy just about anything I needed. Once I was on the last island, I was rolling in fishing tokens, so I could just buy all the Koco and Seeds I needed to max out those stats with a ton of tokens still left over. It's kind of busted and makes me feel like all of these collectibles and extra systems weren't needed at the end of the day.

I'll dedicate this paragraph to some nitpicks I have with Sonic Frontiers. I previously discussed my major grievances with the game, so I will just talk about minor problems here. Biggest one of these nitpicks for me is that it's VERY tedious to level up your Speed and Ring stats; for whatever reason, you have to manually level it up one by one until you run out of Kocos or you reach Level 99. They literally already have leveling in bulk with Hermit Koco, since he just takes every seed you have on your person to instantly increase your Power and Defense to the appropriate levels, why is there no option to buy Speed and Ring upgrades in bulk? If they're worried about players regretting the choice of one over the other, there already is a way to swap Speed stat gains with Ring stat and vice versa (which you also can't do in bulk for some reason). The game just expects you to patiently spam to get through Elder Koco's dialogue each time as you sluggishly level up and it makes no sense to me. Another notable nitpick of mine is that there's no way to change the in-game time of day...which is a problem when every island has some Challenges that can only be attempted when it's night time. You either have to go do something else while you wait on it to be night time or do some other activity in the game and remember to come back once the moon comes up. I'm no developer, but I don't see any reason why there is no option to immediately skip time unless it's meant to be some kind of immersion thing (which would be silly imo considering this world has random springs, speed bumps, rails, walls, and loop-de-loops that just unnaturally lead to each other when Sonic does platforming there). Probably my least significant nitpick is that I don't like how you can continue to get collectibles even if you've long since used them for what they're meant to be used for. It's just a personal gripe that bothers me, I don't like to keep getting useless things and have it tally up in the map. For example, I finished the skill tree pretty early in the game and it drove me mad that my skill points just kept building up to nearly 200 by the end of the game when I had no use for it anymore.

The last topic I'll talk about here is the visual design. I think everything looks pretty good graphically aside from the distractingly common pop-in and the fact that the fishing area's water is buggy as all hell for some reason. However, my big problem is that the islands themselves aren't that interesting. Kronos Island is pretty much just a big grassland, same with Rhea Island and Ouranos Island (those areas also noticeably reuse a lot of stuff from Kronos Island). Ares Island is the most generic desert area you'll ever see. Chaos Island is a big volcanic wasteland. The Cyber Space levels are somehow even more generic since all of them just repackage the same aesthetics of previous stages in the Sonic series. I got tired of seeing the same Chemical Plant Zone, Green Hill Zone, and City Escape aesthetic that a ton of the Cyber Space levels share. I know this is done for a lore reason - they're built on Sonic's memories - but I really feel these could have been so much more creative than they actually were.

Phew, that review was ludicrously long, wouldn't you say? I have a bad tendency of rambling. I'll just end this with a short conclusion. Sonic Frontiers gets a decent 3.5 stars from me; it had potential to be truly amazing, but all the little problems really add up. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed my time with it, and I look forward to seeing what SEGA does with the extended campaign coming out as free DLC later.

So, I've finally finished what we currently have of the Half-Life saga (except for Half-Life Alyx but I've never been a VR guy so I probably won't play that). It's been a great journey overall, I find these games aren't THAT special looking at it from a modern eye but they're still very solid games and I can see how they've become so revolutionary to the gaming industry. Half-Life 2 Episode 2 makes for an interesting conclusion to the series that's almost very satisfactory...well, until they just had to throw in yet ANOTHER sequel bait ending. I've complained about this in pretty much all my Half-Life reviews but I really hate that they keep doing that, especially since this game came out in 2007 and there's no follow-up in sight.

The story of Half-Life 2 Episode 2 is the main point of its existence in my opinion. This game serves as a culmination of everything in the series so far. You start out pretty much right where Episode 1 left off, since you're in the train that got wrecked during the very end of that episode. Presumably this was another case where you survived because of G-Man's mysterious plans. From there, your mission is to get to the Resistance's main base in one piece so Alyx can hand over the USB with a recording of Dr. Mossman to the good folks at the Resistance. Plenty of diversions and setbacks happen in your long trek to the base. I prattle on long enough in these reviews so I might as well keep the story synopsis short; basically, once you actually get to the base in the beginning of Chapter 6, the Resistance has one last plan up their sleeves to send the Combine packing. Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Magnusson (he's new to this game) have a rocket they're building that the Resistance plans to shoot straight into the massive field of energy the Citadel's dark energy generator created that has been active since Episode 1 and was activated at the very end of Half-Life 2. Huzzah, it works out. Some details I really like about this story is that we finally get to learn more about the G-Man rather than him just being the guy that always shows up at the end to tease sequels. It was cool seeing that cutscene where you can actually get a view of his office, for example, rather than the empty void dimension he always seems to take the player into. He seems to have direct control of Alyx and Gordon, which is finally shown in a clear cut way in this game that shows it is unmistakably true (in the previous games they treat it with a lot of mystique and vagueness but here its for sure his influence) when he shows up on a screen in Chapter 6 to make Alyx say "Prepare for unforeseen circumstances." Of course, this is a classic phrase to the Half-Life series that Eli elaborates more on the significance of to Gordon. Its rather interesting how Eli is the only one that seems to be aware of G-Man's true power - that same moment in Chapter 6 shows the extent of his knowledge - and he's also the only character to die. I believe its meant to be assumed that its on purpose that he got killed since he knows too much; he says to Gordon that he thinks the G-Man has something to do with the Borealis (although we don't get to see evidence of that in this game, it also doesn't really offer a counter explanation). Unfortunately the game's ending is incredibly lame, and now that I've seen it I can see why so many people clamor for an Episode 3 or a straight up Half-Life 3. Everything seems all well and good, you're about to take off on a chopper...then aliens come out of nowhere to kill Eli. Alyx and Gordon get knocked away, he's too stunned to move, and Alyx has to watch her dad die. Then the game literally just ends right at that moment. At this point, sequel bait endings are just to be expected for every Half-Life game, but man this one especially sucks. I was almost tempted to rate the game 3.5 stars instead of the usual 4 stars just because of this, but I don't think that's fair to how solid this is overall.

Some other more minor stuff I liked about the story include the fact that the Vortigaunt lore is expanded upon further. We get to see more of the Vortessence and see more of how the alien species functions. Of course, I already established before how much I really like the Vortigaunts, so I was glad to see that. Gordon and Alyx even get their life essence tied together with the help of the Vortigaunts to save Alyx's life (of course no one believed for a second that she was actually dead when the game had only just begun). Also, Uriah is a Vortigaunt with a lab coat, and I love that. Probably the final thing of note about this game's story to me is that there's one new character called Dr. Magnusson, who I mentioned before. He's an uptight cranky scientist working with Dr. Kleiner who spends most of the game being stressed out of his mind. I could be wrong but I don't recall him being in Half-Life, Half Life 2, or Episode 1. He's a nice new addition, being the typical "stern old man" type of character that I can get some amusement out of. Dr. Magnusson and Dr. Kleiner make for a fun duo since they're both so different in personality, which seems to have been part of the intention. His cynical edge helps round out the more positive attitudes every other major character of the game has and he's the one character that doesn't worship the ground you stand on. Also, there's a part of this game where Aperture Science from the Portal series is directly talked about...it kinda came out of nowhere, to be honest. I didn't know Portal is canon to Half-Life so I might have missed out by skipping playing those games first, I had no idea what the Borealis even was so I didn't know its importance when it was brought up.

Oh yea, I should mention the gameplay. This paragraph isn't going to be very long because I don't want to just be repeating my previous reviews. Half-Life 2 Episode 2's gameplay is really good, but it changed basically nothing from Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2 Episode 1. The only core gameplay thing I can think of that it changed is the fact that the flashlight now drains its own dedicated power source rather than using up your regular energy source (used for things like sprinting and breathing underwater), which is nice but makes me wonder why that wasn't a thing in the previous games. There is also one more new enemy, the Hunter, which is a Combine machine that kinda looks like a mini Strider made up of the same kind of tech the regular Combine troops are made of. It's a tough enemy to take down for sure and makes for a good addition to the Half-Life "rogue's gallery", if you will.

Overall, this game's ending was a rather disappointing end to the Half-Life saga, but I think its just as solid as Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life 2 Episode 1. We'll see if I end up playing Half-Life Alyx, although I really don't think I will. This game gets 4 stars from me, which is the same score I gave the other Half-Life games.

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 is pretty much just more Half-Life 2, so I won't have as much to say about it than other games I've been reviewing recently. It was a solid time, though, and I'm kinda glad it was on the short side.

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 takes place right after Half-Life 2 ended. Gordon and Alyx are saved by some form of mysterious miracle; you see a bunch of purple Vortigaunts appear as well as the G-Man, then next thing you know you wake up covered in rubble and debris. In Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the duo focus on getting back into the Citadel to contain the huge energy core. When they try to escape via Combine train, an accident happens that makes the train crash. Once he saves Alyx and continues on, this starts Chapter 3, which sees them going through a very dark subway area to reach City 17. In Chapter 4, they leave the subway and make their way through City 17 (which is a very big place honestly), which then leads into Chapter 5 where Gordon, Alyx, and Barney work together to escort the remaining Resistance troops to a train that the group plans on escaping in. Chapter 5 ends with the Citadel making a massive explosion as you drive on the train and you get caught up in a mysterious blue light...roll credits. The way I describe it makes the story seem very boring, but it is still pretty engaging. I liked that there were some entertaining character moments here, they had good opportunities to talk and show their personality a little more. Alyx is present with you throughout almost the entire game with only a few sections where she isn't there, so naturally she gets a spotlight. Dr. Kleiner has a big speech that plays all throughout City 17 during Chapter 4 and you get to see more of how much of a socially awkward silly guy he is. Barney's as much of a wisecrack as ever. D0G is a cute little robot that almost seems sentient, though unfortunately Alyx had to leave him behind in Chapter 1 and he isn't seen again even at the end of the game. Overall, I don't think the story of Half-Life 2 Episode One is all that special, but it serves as a good companion piece to Half-Life 2 despite being so short. I would prefer if it didn't get yet another sequel bait ending, but I suppose that's par for the course with this series. I'm curious to see if they do that yet again with Episode Two when I get to it considering how many people have been clamoring for Half-Life 3.

Gameplay wise, Episode One is exactly the same as Half-Life 2. Hey, no need to reinvent the wheel, I'm completely fine with that. However, this game does still manage to stand out through a few ways. For one, the way the game is structured feels more contained, with little room for exploration and a whole bunch of scripted sequences. The Chapters generally feel more streamlined and linear, but in my opinion this is actually pretty nice since it makes for a brisk game flow. The fact that I barely had to use guides here in comparison to my Half-Life and Half-Life 2 playthroughs should go to show how straightforward Episode One is in comparison. The game does introduce you to one new enemy type - the Zombine, as Alyx jokingly calls it - which is a nice little touch to give it some more individuality.

I think this game is pretty alright overall, but doesn't add or improve on enough for me to rank it any higher than Half-Life 2. Gets a solid 4 stars from me.

So, not terribly long after beating Half-Life, I decided to play through its sequel. Half-Life 2 was a pretty interesting game, if I do say so myself. I love how it expands the universe of this series more and it has some awesome concepts. I think Vortigaunts are probably among my favorite fictional alien races now. Great designs and funny voices...I'd buy a plushie or figure of one!

Something I found interesting about the shift from Half-Life to Half-Life 2 is the general change in atmosphere. In the first Half-Life, I felt most of its levels had you going through dark abandoned areas as you traverse through worn down laboratories, military bases, and eventually the strange alien planet of Xen. There were a few levels that had some actual sunlight and let you see the outside world (honestly some levels felt brighter than they probably should have been in my opinion), but I feel that the essence of Half-Life is defined by all its dreary and dirty environments whereas Half-Life 2 generally feels more bright and clean in comparison. There are definitely areas in Half-Life 2 that carry that same dark ugly vibe as the levels in Half-Life, but not quite as much in my opinion. In Half-Life, you rarely saw friendly NPCs around, and when they do pop up they tend to either die or just be used to progress and move on (plus they often commented on the dire situation adding to some suspense and dread). In Half-Life 2, there are more friends around this time to help you out, like the Resistance members you meet along the way that tell you where to go or give you goodies (supplies, the airboat for Chapter 4, the firearm upgrade to that airboat, the scout car, etc.). Alyx, Dr. Kleiner, Eli, and Barney are all companions of yours that are present at various parts of Half-Life 2, while Half-Life did not have any consistent companions. The Vortigaunts that you slaughtered in droves in Half-Life are friendly to you in this game, too, although you may have gathered from my introduction paragraph that I love the change (and it makes sense in the lore). Also, this is a minor detail, but I don't think you can kill any of the friendly NPCs in Half-Life 2, whereas in the first Half-Life you could kill all your allies if you really wanted to. Even in Ravenholm, which is probably the creepiest place in the game, you have Father Grigori helping you out at certain parts of the chapter. It kind of destroys that feeling of lonely dread I felt the first game pulled off so well, but I will say I still like what Half-Life 2 does with its atmosphere. The world you live in is an Orwellian dystopia from the beginning of the game to the end. You are chased down by the Combine sort of like how the Marines were a constant threat in Half-Life. The story often shows just how fascist the Combine are through showing you the propaganda they use and the way they brutalize and interrogate anyone they perceive as being against them. Their leader, Dr. Breen, often shows his nefarious face on screens to spout out anti-freedom or anti-intellectual propaganda. He was a pretty interesting villain honestly, you get to hear a few different speeches from him in the game. I think this game really nails that feeling of enemies being around every corner; Gordon is basically an enemy of the state and you really feel that after Chapter 1. There's a full on war going on in Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 which was really cool to fight your way through. All of this is to say that, although Half-Life 2's atmosphere feels quite different from Half-Life, I think it still does a great job with what it is going for. For instance, striving for a grander narrative with this game in comparison to Half-Life made a lot of sense in my opinion.

The story and characters of Half-Life 2 seem to be given much more focus than in Half-Life. The most you got in the previous game was hints at the wider world of this series through talking with the few NPCs you find and there were no real characters to speak of. There are interesting theories crafted using the cool bits of lore given in Half-Life, like how the strange dialogue of the Nihilanth is still being dissected by fans to this day, but I never got the sense of a big story to connect everything together. That kinda shows with how this game retcons some things, but they are pretty minor at the end of the day. It's just details like Eli and Barney acting all chummy with you, talking about their personal history with Gordon even though they weren't even there in Half-Life. I do hear that was expanded upon a little with Barney being playable in one of the Half-Life expansions, but I didn't play those so I don't know what their stories were. I find that Half-Life 2 has more explicit exposition, with a narrative that has actual characters with names that you get to see talk a lot and do things in the story. Gordon Freeman is still very obviously the most important guy in the room despite not saying a word - don't worry, you'll hear nothing but praise from every character in the game that isn't a villain - but he is no longer the only person that matters. As for the general story itself, I thought it was pretty good. Basically, when you first start the game, your goal is to get off the train into City 17, where you then leave to begin your journey to take down the Combine. You go on a trek to various Resistance bases, then through the Combine's strongholds like Nova Prospekt, then you go back to City 17 to fight an intense battle with your comrades to get to the Capital, and finally the game ends with you getting into the Capital through an underground passageway to confront Dr. Wallace Breen. You meet Eli Vance, Alyx Vance, Dr. Isaac Kleiner, and Judith Mossman - four important figureheads of the Resistance that help you out - in Chapter 5, which is a short Chapter that is almost entirely focused on exposition. Alyx is the most important character outside of Gordon and a good amount of the story focuses on her whenever Gordon isn't the (Free)man of the hour. Alyx saves Gordon in Chapter 5 when the Resistance base gets wrecked, Gordon and Alyx work together to invade Nova Prospekt in Chapter 9a, Alyx is there to learn the truth of Judith actually working with the Combine (honestly wasn't really expecting that twist myself) in Chapter 9a as well as being the one to interrogate Judith (in that same chapter Alyx is also the one to get the teleporter working to take her and Gordon to Dr. Kleiner), Alyx and Gordon get through parts of the hectic warzone at City 17 with the help of Resistance soldiers and she goes off on her own while Gordon goes to fight with Barney and his troops, and Alyx is used as a bargaining chip by Dr. Breen in the final Chapter in his attempt to convince Eli to make the Resistance surrender. Speaking of which, that part was really good; having a direct confrontation with the man himself after only having seen him on TV screens prattling on with constant platitudes was cool. Dr. Breen is a compelling villain: his goals are somewhat understandable when taken at face value, since he works with the Combine to prevent them from destroying the planet, but he is still clearly a villain. Dr. Breen wants to silence differing opinions so that he can continue to prosper in his position as a frontman of a totalitarian faction of aliens. The only reason he is the leader of the Combine is because he sucks up to the alien forces. He is a very "the ends justify the means" kind of villain, except he also has no good intentions. Overall I think both the story and characters of Half-Life 2 are good, although some are obviously better and more important than others. Eli had little to no screen-time, but he also got kidnapped for the whole game after Chapter 5 so I can excuse that. Dr. Kleiner only appeared two times, but he was also only ever needed those two times so I can understand it. Barney is another character you meet in Chapter 5 and don't see again until way later in the game. The focal characters of this story are Gordon, Alyx, and Dr. Breen, and that's fine. The last thing I want to say about this game's story and characters is...pretty much everything about the G-Man. I feel like he's only present in these games to Deus Ex Machina us out of a bind and be blatant sequel bait. For context, this game ends with G-Man stopping time right when an explosion happens after Gordon destroys the machine Dr. Breen is using to teleport to another universe. The G-Man transports you to a universe of nothingness, monologues about having plans in store for you, then a white space in the dimension of darkness opens and he leaves. This isn't too much different from Half-Life's ending, where the G-Man transports you all throughout Xen to explain to you his plan and offer you a job with his "employers" (whoever they may be). Hopefully Episode One and Episode Two reveals more about The G-Man and who exactly the "Benefactors" that Dr. Breen referred to are; in this game's ending he mentions something about being used as a host, so that'll be interesting to see.

The core gameplay of Half-Life 2 is very similar to Half-Life, which was already solid to begin with so I have no complaints there. Go through some pretty well-designed linear chapters, each with their own dedicated level areas, and figure out the ways to progress. Sometimes you gotta use your brain to think of how to get past some kind of obstacle to progress, sometimes you have a bunch of enemies to obliterate, sometimes you just have to follow NPCs and listen to them talk in scripted sequences. There's also some very minor platforming you can do in some chapters, typically just to find some extra goodies. As you progress, you naturally find new weapons to add to your arsenal of artillery. Most of your weapons in Half-Life 2 return from the first Half-Life: you got your standard crowbar, pistol, SMG, Magnum, shotgun, crossbow, and RPG. The weapons from Half-Life that don't return in Half-Life 2 are the Gluon Gun, Hivehand, Snarks, satchel bombs, and claymores. The Tau Cannon is technically still in the game but it is not usable as a solo weapon anymore since it's attached to a vehicle instead. There's a decent amount of weapons that were taken away, but this sequel helps make up for it by giving you some new tools to play around with. Perhaps the most notable one is the Gravity Gun, which has become one of the most iconic weapons of the series and is quite fun to mess around with. The Gravity Gun makes it to where you can use the debris and objects in your area to your advantage, which is very useful for conserving ammo. It isn't exactly the most reliable weapon in my opinion, since I find that its pretty easy to run out of items to toss at enemies or make the mistake of overshooting which would force you to go run past enemies to pick the object up again. The Gravity Gun can make for some amusing kills since you can kill Combine officers and zombies with some random cardboard boxes you found lying around. It's a creative weapon for sure and I'm glad its here, even if I tend to prefer just blasting away my foes the old fashioned way. Aside from the Gravity Gun, Half-Life 2 also introduces the Plasma Rifle and Bugbait. The Bugbait in particular is a pretty fun new tool you get that lets you have a personal army of infinitely respawning Antlions (basically human-sized insect monsters) to kill enemies for you, but you only get to use it in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9. Suffice to say, all of this artillery is pretty nice to have, and the game is fair with ammo so you won't need to worry about running out of firepower. Also, the feeling of shooting and gunplay itself is amazing, with my only real complaint being how awkward it can be to control the RPG rockets. When you fight gunships and Striders, you have to use the RPG rockets, and, although the battles against these vehicle bosses are cool, the awkwardness of having to move the rockets in a way where the ships don't shoot it down while still having enough precision to actually land the shot is unfortunately a big blemish on the experience for me. Also, the vehicle controls in this game felt pretty off to me, but I've never been good at driving in video games anyway so that's probably the reason why. As for the level design itself, I think its great. I already admitted to using guides a lot in a previous paragraph, but I don't think that's a point against this game; its more so just me not being good at figuring out how to progress (and I've stated this before in a few other reviews I made). At the end of the day, Half-Life 2's gameplay isn't the greatest of its craft in my opinion, but it is solid and I think its the best aspect of the game.

Overall, I think Half-Life 2 is a good game and a good step-up from the first game as far as presentation and story goes. I think that both games have plenty of merit and its definitely worthwhile to play both of them, but if I had to pick which one I think is better, I'd go with Half-Life 2. It gets a solid 4 stars from me. Here's hoping I like Episode One and Episode Two once I get to them. As far as I know, Lost Coast isn't necessary, so I'm skipping that.