I only really started this game as a joke with a friend and told myself I didn't see myself playing this one because I really fucking hated Dark Souls 1. I heard this game was a bit different but I figured if people that loved Dark Souls 1 even often say this game is terrible there was no chance I'd like it! I was surprised to find out it was completely fine! Didn't love it or anything, the world was much less connected and interesting as a world than Dark Souls 1, it makes up for it, to me at least, by being much less obnoxious and designed to make you miserable. I heard problems with I frames and stuff being a stat, which is kind of stupid don't get me wrong, but I was surprised at much I didn't care about this. This game gives you levels like candy so I just got my stat to the average Dark Souls I frame level and moved on. I also found this game to to be like really fucking easy compared to the others though, you do so much damage and bosses are so bad at understanding if you're behind them. The Pursuer was pretty cool though, I generally liked the more Duel esque fights, like the Dragonrider or the Old Dragonslayer. Most of the big monsters were too slow/stupid to really be interesting or fun though unfortunately. They did do another shitty gargoyle fight and fights with 2 or more bosses are still as poorly designed and unfun as always but even the dumber bosses like that were just so much easier to handle and felt much less stupid and overwhelming compared to DS1.

To be fair, there's a very solid chance I'm just much more used to the bullshit of this series so I had a bit of a tolerance here but I do think DS1 is still by far the most frustrating and annoyingly designed of all the Fromsoft games I've played. I understand finding a charm in that, I like plenty of insane bullshit, I'm a Sonic fan! I just think every other soulsbourne (not counting demon souls which I haven't beaten) does everything so much better and doesn't make me miserable the entire way through. That being said I'm glad this game surprised me like it did, and after playing all of these games I have a much larger appreciation for what these games are. I'm still not as in love with them as a lot of people are, and a lot of that is an unwillingness to care about the lore of it all and get as invested in the world and I just wanna play silly game and kill big bosses, but I've evolved from thinking Souls games were dogshit 5 years ago to thinking only Dark Souls 1 is dogshit and the rest are actually pretty fun worthwhile experiences! Yay for growth!

i don't really want to give this game a star rating quite yet because I feel like there is genuinely an absurd amount of potential here.

unfortunately, this game just doesn't live up to that potential right now. i was so excited to see the trailer for this game, it had a lot of promise but man the issues show themselves instantly. the tutorial is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour long and it is an absolute overload of information. i think there's a ton wrong with this tutorial, it's way too long, throws way too many things at you, and it's all just presented in such an overwhelming and confusing way man. there's so many text boxes while you're in the process of racing/learning the mechanics and it's so hard to take in most of the information. even if the tutorial itself was better and conveyed the information clearly, unfortunately, I just think there is WAY too much for a kart racer. there are so many mechanics and they can feel so overwhelming. that combined with the fact that this game weirdly locks online and addons/mods behind single-player grinding for some reason. it makes for such a terrible and overwhelming first time experience, especially for newcomers to sonic robo kart or even just people that aren't such big nerds about sonic and kart racers. i play with a little consistent group of friends in srb2k and it was already a bit of a hassle getting that setup with everyone, pushing them to do an hour long tutorial + single player grand prix content just to get into a game with an infinitely higher skill ceiling that won't be as fun to play because of a larger skill gap is a pretty fuckin tough ask.

i don't know man, this game has so much potential like I said at the start of this and it's clear SO much love and effort went into it. i was really excited for the single player content at the very least but even that feels a bit stilted because of too many unnecessary and overwhelming mechanics. i really hope in a year this becomes this beautiful 5 star game that i boot up with my friends here and there and have a great time with but for now it just feels like it should be great, but it's a pretty huge let down.

So much of your enjoyment of this game is if you're willing to ignore how (to its credit, intentionally) disgusting it is. It's very Ren and Stimpy gross-out humor in, at least my opinion, a bad way. I was pretty willing to ignore it, even if it's very in your face at times but if you can't it will really weigh your experience down. Which is a shame, because everything else here is pretty great! Really fun movement, solid level design, and inoffensive combat that's pretty fun to demolish any enemy in your way. The movement is insanely freeing and gives you a TON of options, especially by the end of the game when you max out the skill tree. The little cherub you get "Nugget" lets you use him as a grapple hook and you can get up to 4 grapples + things like grappling straight up to gain height on top of various horns (think Hat in Time hats) that give you new abilities like gliding and sprinting. You can truly do almost anything you want if you think of it, and it's very fun to gain a ton of height or sequence break with well-timed grapples and such. The movement being as free as it is does kinda trivialize a lot of the platforming and level design though which can be seen as a negative, but it's really up to you how much you let that affect you. I found it pretty fun to create my own little objectives or limit myself to do things how they were intended to be done similar to like a Mario Odyssey. However, it's a lot more breakable and cheesable here and the intended solutions aren't quite as fun but that's also a pretty unfair standard to compare it to. I also wish there was some item that made collectables a bit more easier to find. Maybe after you beat the main game the horns that show you where teleporters and whatnot general locations are showed you the last few main collectables would have gone a long way. That or like a Spyro esque tracker where Nugget shows you the general direction of a main collectable. By the time I finished the game I was missing like less than 10 of each collectable but it just didn't feel worth following a guide to track down which exact ones I was missing.

I could see this being one of my all-time favorite Indie platformers if there were a bit more exciting and challenging platforming challenges. Even without skipping everything, it's just pretty simple (probably because they realized you can skip everything lol) and I would have loved some more interesting platforming gimmicks. There are murals you can eventually light up that give you small platforming challenge rooms, and these are pretty fun! There are just not a lot of them, and they're pretty quick. The biggest thing holding it back for me though is the general art style/humor. I think there's a select few people that this will connect with really heavily and more power to them, but for me I just actively disliked it most of the time. I never found it particularly funny and I just dreaded getting an ingredient and seeing the gross art for it. Still really fun, and I was generally having enough fun to be able to overlook that aspect but I'd be lying if it didn't hold it back for me a little bit.

wow is this game insanely charming. feels solid to run around in, the dive especially is pretty fun. it looks insanely good, I'm a huge fan of the art style and all the various character designs. the characters are fun and have lots of sweet little interactions, I really liked the credits just catching up with all of my friends from throughout the game!

it's a very chill and easy experience filled to the brim with charm and joy. i could see someone finding $25 a bit steep for what you get so maybe wait for a sale, but regardless a very fun game worth your time if you love cute and cozy platformers!

I never had a bad time with this game, but I also feel like it never truly took off. I liked most of the gimmicks and the level design was solid, but it's a pretty short time and I never feel like it got as intense and fun as it could have. The last world was a bit of a letdown, it felt like instead of going in on platforming challenges it just kinda became a shoot em up for some reason. The first two bosses were kinda lame but I liked the last two a good bit at least, the final boss especially was pretty cool.

Charming art style, great music, and still really solid gameplay though, would recommend it for sure I guess I just expected a little bit more for whatever reason.

i had a pretty awful time here. i was surprised at how barebones and boring the combat was considering this was a platinum game. boring ass levels do not help the lame combat, there's like 10 stages but only like 4 maps they reuse. they're not particularly interesting to explore and have the same like 3 or so missions throughout. they all end in a boss fight which unfortunately also kinda suck! pretty boring patterns, and way too much health. the items and health mechanics are all weird and feel pointless as well. it looks okay though, the environments and character models are pretty cool but I don't love the turtle models, I do like that they get white eyes in combat that was a cute touch. i liked the voices the turtles had, but the lines weren't particularly good. raph does literally say "Well that's a thing that just happened." at one point to give a vibe of the writing.

maybe it'd be okay co-op and utilizing that aspect but single player it was just not very fun at all. expected and hoped for a lot more from a platinum games ninja turtles game and this unfortunately was a massive let down.

it's fine! i'm just not a huge fps guy. gunplay is pretty average, you get some wackier things near the very end at least but it's kinda too little too late for me. movement is a source game so it's obviously fun to run around in but precision platforming still feels a bit silly and awkward. looks pretty great for the time though, and it also has some iconic sound effects and music.

this feels like something everyone who is interested in the behemoths of video game history and especially FPS history should absolutely play. it's obviously very ahead of its time and influential to the genre as a whole, it's just a genre that even at it's peak isn't all that special to me, especially in single player campaigns.

This is about exactly what you'd expect from a Good Feel game, which is to say an easy game that is mostly style over substance. It's a very charming game and a lot of that is just the fact that it's the second Princess Peach solo game ever, and the first that isn't a wee bit sexist. Seeing her in so many wacky situations and not with Mario or any other major Mario character (aside from Toad shortly) is pretty neat, all the new designs and silly situations are just pretty cool to see especially for Peach.

The game is simple and doesn't feel like stand out amazing but pretty much every power-up is fun. A few of them are very similar ideas but are so bite-sized that you don't really feel it. The only power-up I dreaded seeing again was the detective power-up. The whole game is very easy but you really feel it with the detective power-up because the puzzles are so nothing and simple you don't get much satisfaction from them (says the 23-year-old man playing the game made for 5-year-olds) and they're also just extremely slow compared to the rest of the power-ups. I only really have like 2 major negatives overall. One negative is the performance has very weird hitches, it's not a huge issue because the actual levels are pretty much entirely smooth but very oddly so many starts of cutscenes and especially the loading screens fucking TANK and are at like 3 fps the entire time it's very bizarre. The other negative and the one that actually matters is how the game handles collectibles. It's very anti-QoL in this regard, very similar to older Kirby games in that if you miss a collectible or goal at a specific part of the level or if you fail the little goal or even get pushed into the next screen by accidentally doing the main goal before the bonus goal (which happened to me a lot) you just cannot retry or go back to get that collectible. You also can't just go back to a level, grab the one you missed, and then leave the level to keep it. It's very frustrating getting caught off guard by a new mechanic for an ability and missing out on a gem and just not being able to try and get it again without redoing the entire level and being forced to finish it again. This is totally the kind of game where I'd very much want to 100% each level and get all of the things but I'd pretty consistently miss a single collectible on most levels and I don't have a drive to basically replay the entire game.

Collectible frustrations aside this doesn't feel like a very replayable game, a lot of the joy is that initial surprise and charm of each new level and experience and after that it's just a pretty average game overall. That's not a terrible thing, and like I mentioned at the start it's average Good Feel and just having Peach being the star over like a Yoshi or a Kirby helps it a lot and makes it feel more worthwhile in their catalogue in 2024 at least. Overall fine for a quick one time playthrough but also pretty hard to justify for $60.

I saw the demo for this game in a Steam demo fest, and I never got around to playing the demo but thought "I like Shmups! I'll wishlist this blindly!" and kinda forgot about it entirely. I then got an email for the release of this game a few days ago, watched the trailer more closely, and instantly thought "This is so sick, how have I never seen a game like this?" and booted up the demo. I was pretty instantly hooked, and bought the game the next day because I wanted to play more.

It's at the end of the day an extremely simple and solidly made shoot em' up mixed with Adventure Game/Metroidvania mechanics. I don't love saying "game but this!" but it is kinda just 2D Zelda as a shoot em' up. I've always loved shoot em' ups and have played a few of them, but never found one that was also an adventure game and it works incredibly well. The ship feels good to control, and the upgrades feel substantial and exciting to get. The bosses are really solid bullet hells, my only complaint being that there aren't a ton of them so the difficulty doesn't ramp up much til the very end and I would have liked a few more tough boss fights. The post game arena helps with this a bit but it is ultimately just refights of the old bosses that are a bit harder. The map is fun to explore and filled with lots of secrets and hidden paths and shortcuts that connect various parts of the map. If you like metroidvania progression it has a lot of that satisfying feeling once you unlock new abilities. Visually it's pretty simple but at least to me very clean and appealing! The music wasn't super notable for me though, but I did have it a bit low and played a lot while talking to friends in a discord call so I don't wanna judge it too hard.

I said it at the start, but the concept for this game so instantly excited me and again I'm surprised I haven't seen any other game do this concept. If the elevator pitch of "2D Zelda but as a shmup" sounds as sick to you as it did to me, I'm very glad to say it lived up to the concept and is well worth the $15!

sadly this is probably the best modern monkey ball game not that it's saying a lot. physics feel okay, but with the vita's smaller and more awkward control stick it's hard to get that pinpoint precision required in the harder levels. mandatory touch controls for menuing and shit is lame and intrusive. has the same look/vibe issues I have with most modern monkey ball. level design is okay sometimes but the difficult levels don't have that same excitement to them, they feel more frustrating and poorly designed to me. idk, newer monkey ball just kinda bums me out. i was so obsessed with the first 2 games as a kid and it's sad how often they've tried and just not even come a little close to those.

there's just not much to this game for me. it controls pretty weirdly, the missions are at their best okay and at their worst really tedious and unfun. it doesn't help that it's all we got from metroid after a pretty hefty hiatus but I don't agree with the "if it was a new IP/not metroid it would be regarded better!" sentiment I've seen because I think it's just a straight up boring and not very good fps game. not the worst thing in the world and most games are fine with friends but absolutely nothing to write home about.