Henry Stickmin is the kind of thing that can often be imitatated, but never replicated. Every game encapsulates such a beautiful time in internet history in a wonderful way. It even shows how the creator grew up over time. The first 4 games being so gorgeously and lovingly remastered is so wonderful. Granted, I do miss the more explicit cameos and references to games and movies, but that's something you just learn to live without over time. Completing the Mission is, being honest, a bit of a mixed bag in comparison to the prior games. It's very ambitious and acts as a wonderful finale to every single plot thread the games could've left behind. It's also I feel limited by this and allows for much less interesting experimentation. Still, it's wonderful and campy and stupid in all the same wonderful games the rest of the series is. With ridiculous voice acting mostly done by one guy, genuinely stellar music, beautiful hand-made animation and just being a way to replay and enjoy all these wonderful titles, I wouldn't change this collection for the world. I'm glad it exists and I can rejoice of the nostalgia of my old Newgrounds days at any time.

Iron Lung genuinely surprised and terrified me for all the right reasons. It feels so meticulously crafted to immerse you into this terrifying expanse and constantly makes it known that you ARE gonna die in this place. You just never know how.

Probably the biggest strengths this game has are related to the ambience. Graphically speaking it is impressive in how opressive it manages to make its low poly, pixel texture artstyle. I do not suffer from claustrophobia IRL, but it FEELS claustrophobic as hell, and I actually started hyperventilating a bit by the end. This is aided by tremendously strong audio design. Iron Lung doesn't really have much of a soundtrack, but every audio queue you hear is built meticulously to immerse you fully and, again, feels tremendously opressive. Just the random noises made by the sub or the creaking of the metal are enough to fully make you paranoid.

The gameplay style is very simple, but effective. You navigate a sub while completely blind to what's outside it with the goal of photographing a few areas of interest. You have a few tools at your disposal to accomplish your mission, primarily a map and the camera sensor at the front of your sub, as well as the controls for the sub itself which are simple buttons that allow rotation and movement forward and backward. The front of the sub also includes a radar that indicates how close you are to hitting something in the four cardinal directions (which means it intuitively works as somewhat of compass rose) and numbered indicators for your location coordinates in terms of X,Y and the angle at which your sub is facing. While confusing at first, I ended up really enjoying the navigation with the sub like this. Once I grasped the basics, it lead to a very intuitive experience where I was constantly checking the map to calculate roughly where I was and what adjustments I needed to do to get to my objective. It was not hard to adapt at all and the game is fairly generous in how it handles movement.

There's not much in terms of story content on the surface with the game, you get told a quick blurb to explain your situation at the beginning and end of the game and if you just wanna get from point A to point B, that is pretty much all you're gonna get. There is a computer terminal in your sub though and by asking it about some of the common terms you hear in the blurbs of text, it gives you a bit more context into what I was shocked to see is a decently bigger world than what the small sub would lead you to believe. There still isn't much, but it does bring this sort of existential dread to the story that helps out. However, the story is very much the weakest point in the game simply for how out of the way it is. I hope that the movie gets to expand upon that exponentially.

To finalize everything, Iron Lung is a tremendous experience. It's short and wonderful and made me enjoy every second of it. I technically haven't completed it as I am still missing one achievement, but I will be coming back to finish that up soon. I just need a bit of time to decompress after that.

This review is based on the Demo for the game and will be getting updated as I get through more of it. I will not be giving a star rating until the full game comes out.

Rollin' Rascal is a game that is filled with promise and genuinely super fun thus far. The movement mechanics feel like a super fun combo of Sonic Adventure and Pac-Man World 2 in the best of ways, and the level that is currently available is super open ended with a ton of routes to go through. I have had a lot of fun with it! As of this initial writing, I haven't toyed around with neither the Time Trial nor Multiplayer mode, but I will update as and if I play those modes. So far, incredible first opinion and I heavily recommend supporting Curiomatic's Kickstarter campaign for the game!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/curiomatic/rollin-rascal/description

Mon Amour is a shocking little gem from Onion Games that I had no expectations of. During the pre-release period, I had only seen screenshots of it and thought it was shoot'em up of some kind, it was only a few days prior to release that I learned that this was effectively a spiritual successor to the moon RPG minigame "Xingiskhan". And, while Xinghiskhan was not the worst part from moon, I was still not the biggest fan of it. Still, the charming visuals carried through for me and I bought the game.

And then I couldn't stop playing it.

And then I 100%'ed it in like a day.

Oddly enough, this game works so much better than Xinghiskhan on a base level. Between the supremely loveable presentation (including a wonderfully unique soundtrack from Thelonious Monkees' hands) and MUCH tighter level design/concept, it makes the still difficult and at times frustrating gameplay much more tolerable.

It's not for the faint of heart, but if you want a challenge and a laugh, this game will handle both of those for you without an issue.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth commits the biggest sin any game, let alone an Ace Attorney game, can commit: Being Boring.

The excellent characterization of Edgeworth, Gumshoe and Kay is the only light at the end of this miserable tunnel, with completely mediocre stories, a shockingly forgettable soundtrack by Ace Attorney standards that basically just asks the question "What if Great Revival was the only leitmotif we used for an entire goddamn soundtrack?" and gameplay that only stays fresh for a single case before ending up just being repetitive and mindless.

I usually like all the Ace Attorney games on some level. Even some of the more disliked entries like Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice particularly I found plenty of enjoyment with, even if I disagreed with several storytelling elements present within them. I was unable to find any joy playing this game. I dredged through until the oppening cutscene for the last case, at which point I gave up and spoiled myself on the content of the final case through a StrategyWiki guide for the game so I could end my suffering as quickly as possible.

If you have respect for your time, don't play this game.

WarioWare: Move It! is a very interesting beast for the Switch, both acting as a wonderful party game and a delightful, albeit short, single player endeavor.

I played Move It! alongside my much younger cousins over the holidays, and then went back to complete the game about 2 weeks into the year. And this provided a very unclouded experience for both aspects of the game.

With my cousins, I got to play the fun and challenging party game side, with the added side of cooperation between two young children being challenging and one of them not being able to make many of the moves. It was fun seeing them adapt and overcome the challenge!

On my own, I got to experience the many microgames of the game and laugh out loud at many of the ridiculous and hilarious visuals in the game, while enjoying myself thoroughly. The one problem with all WarioWare games is that they're dreadfully short because of the length of the content itself, but this is one of the most enjoyable in terms of a story since it really feels the most like Gold's excellent approach at individual character storytelling.

The game does have a significant shortcoming that ultimately affected not only my enjoyment, but also my cousins', and it's not even necesarily its own fault. The spotty motion detection of the Joy-Cons at times and relliance on the IR camera for some microgames ultimately meant that often times despite doing exactly what the game asked, we failed because the controls did not properly detect what we were doing. It's a true shame and something that keeps this from dethroining Gold as the absolute best in the series. However, the game is still stellar and one I can see myself returning to whenever I have friends or family over.

Re-Pac is a wonderful remake of a PS1 classic, but one that still suffers from the misgivings of the original unfortunately. While it does a lot to improve upon the flow of the game, sadly there's still some foundational issues that simply were not gonna be able to be fixed.

The structure of 100% is one of the main issues overall, but not the only one. Several level design decissions lead to a lot of annoyance, and instead of altering the design, the devs just made it more certain that you'd never game over by throwing an over abundance of lives to you.

The music is another major misgiving, where they used VERY low quality rips of the original music instead of doing brand new mixes or just using the raw files from the original game, which is a huge shame as it does impact the experience severely.

That being said, the game is visually wonderful and Pac-Man controls fantastically. Plus, the game feels like it has much higher highs than the original, and keeping a playable version of the original Pac-Man was a nice, unnecessary touch that is very appreciated in an age where that is not common.

I still remember that Christmas morning 10 years ago when I opened my presents under the tree and found a collector's edition of the game wrapped in beautiful paper. Right then and there, I knew it was truly love at first sight.

It comes without saying, but Epic Mickey is a very special game to me. It was the game that taught me what it truly was to LOVE a game. It gave me a true, deep appreciation for American Cartoons and Rubberhose animation. It introduced to me what would eventually become my favorite character in all media with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's reintroduction. It's a beautiful game that deserves all the praise that it can get.

While I would never dare say that it's a perfect game, particularly considering how much its camera system hinders the experience and a lot of the troubled stories of its development leading to some enormous expectations that it simply could not fill in for obvious reasons.

What I will say is that it's a game that deserves all the credit for how unique and bold it was, even back then. And so much of it still holds up incredibly well. The story, while relatively simple, tells a wondrous story with memorable lines and characters that stick in your mind for years to come. The visuals are still varied and unique, with a really interesting artstyle that carries the graphical fidelity that was able to be achieved on the Wii to become timeless. The soundtrack is filled to the brim with incredible, memorable tunes that leverage the iconic soundtracks of Disney's back catalogue of Mickey Mouse shorts while also weaving in brand new music that fills every moment with so much atmosphere. The gameplay is unique and fun, with a gimmick that makes the game stand out on its own in a way that few, if any, have managed to get right (including this game's sequels).

I can't not admit that I will always look at Epic Mickey with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. Every time I go back to this game, I can't help but smile with the same love and appreciation that I had for this game 12 years ago. But, to its credit, it would be hard for anyone to not smile with this game thanks to how timeless and charming it is.