The people stating that this is better than Frontiers are on massive copium I'm sorry LOL.

Hardlight's newest mobile endeavor is indeed an ambitious title for a mobile game. A fully 3D platforming-focused Sonic game is something I'm kind of surprised hasn't already been attempted at this point...though considering most of Hardlight's other titles are more simple pick-up-and-play arcade-y high score-based affairs, it's easy to see why this hasn't been attempted before. I've seen a lot of backlash against this game being Apple Arcade exclusive, and while I do agree that offering the title to more people that can play it is a good thing to do, those asking for a legitimate console port...guys, c'mon...it's a mobile game.

Should start there before I talk about anything else I suppose. Sonic Dream Team is a mobile game at its core and it is fundamentally hindered by being an experience crafted for mobile. What do I mean by this you may ask? Imagine a typical 3D Boost game (the kind that's roughly similar to Frontiers, Colors, Gens, etc) except with a pathetically weak boost, no airboost, no stomp or slide, no wall jumping, and a free camera that fights against you most of the time. That's Sonic Dream Team. It's a boost game but worse. The only things it has going for it movement-wise are the ridiculous range on the homing attack and uh...slope jumping I guess. That's really about it. It's still kinda fun to play on a basic level but like, would I rather play this if I pitted it against any of the other boost games besides Unleashed and Forces? Absolutely not lmao. Seriously, the lack of a stomp really hurts this game more than it should. Precise platforming is a chore because you don't have an effective way to stop quickly enough. And I know they couldn't add these elements in because, again, it's a mobile game. Everything needs to be extremely simple otherwise your fingers would become a pretzel trying to chain all of these different actions together. I played on a controller during my playthrough, and while it is...marginally better than using the touch screen, it only further reminded me of how much lesser this game is than the other boost titles, but I digress. You can also play as multiple different characters but their unique attributes aren't anything to write home about. Amy and Sonic can lightspeed dash, Tails and Cream can fly with a clunky feeling stamina meter, and Knuckles and Rouge can glide (heavily nerfed and plummets like a rock) and climb walls. You can also swap characters on the fly once you've unlocked them but doing so requires you to come to a complete standstill halting the pace of the stage completely. What's worse is that this is even mandatory for specific acts to complete them.

Despite this, the main levels (I'm talking like, the first stage of the act with the red rings and the blue coins) can be pretty fun and well-designed, once you get the task of “collect 3 keys to progress” taken care of anyway. I particularly had a lot of fun with Ego City and the final couple of acts with Nightmare Maze. Scrambled Shores is...fine as a starting level, does what it needs to do. Dream Factory is...also fine. Aesthetically it looked too much like Sweet Mountain and the most interesting aspect it has to offer is rising and lowering platforms. Wooo. Much like Secret Rings (and because, again, it's a mobile game), Dream Team has multiple missions within each act offering various objectives, from time trials to checkpoint gate races. These wildly vary in terms of actual quality. The "get the dream orb" challenges are pretty good. They typically involve completing a satisfying platforming obstacle gauntlet challenge to get a single dream orb. Short, sweet, and to the point. The time trials and the checkpoint gate races are mainly just an excuse to play the same level again with a slightly different goal. The crystal hunt missions are just bad. I don't have anything positive to say about them. Imagine bumbling around a giant closed-off maze looking for a set number of trinkets. It's about as exhilarating as it sounds. The game at least looks pretty nice for a mobile game and the animated intro is fantastic. The animated cutscenes are surprisingly really REALLY impressive and invoke an expressive fluid style of animation we haven't seen since...geez, Rise of Lyric on the Wii U. The problem is that there are only like, 5 cutscenes in the game and the rest of the game's story presentation is in comic book slide show mode with voice over. Hearing Michelle Ruff as Cream again was kinda jarring but I guess it's mainly due to how long she's been from this character. Sadly I don't have much to say on the soundtrack aside from the main theme and the final boss theme. It's fine I guess, nothing terrible to listen to but it just feels like background noise a lot of the time.

Again, for a mobile game, it's pretty interesting and a good step for Hardlight to develop something truly special; but as is, I dunno if I'd ever want to go back to it instead of replaying the dozens of other Sonic games I already have a lot of fun with. Such is the mobile curse.

Insomniac come up with substantial extra content that isn’t just recycled tired busywork challenge: impossible.

Jeez man what a complete and utter waste of time. I will say this; if you liked the original game (and I mean, REALLY liked it), then you’ll like this DLC, as it’s just…more of the original game. It has the same production values as the base game with all the really high quality cutscenes and whatnot so you’re not being skimped on that department. However, as someone who didn’t like the base game, having to play more of it in the most repetitive and unimaginative way isn’t exactly what I’m frothing at the mouth for. None of the stories were interesting (in fact I outright hated the first part with Black Cat) and all of the content presented is more of the same copy pasted open world schlock that I already hated in the first game. More enemy base assaults, more bland collectables to find, more challenge arenas, it’s like they’ve learned absolutely nothing and just went full steam ahead by doubling down. And it’s like this for every single DLC. Sure there are the introductions of like, 1 new enemy type per DLC part but apart from the kinda annoying brutes with miniguns none of them are anything to write home about either. The Screwball challenges have a somewhat interesting spin on them compared to the Taskmaster challenges but I swear the scoring thresholds change on a whim whenever they feel like it. One combat challenge had me get a perfect rank by stringing together a long continuous combo and using photobomb areas whenever I could, but another in part 2 demanded that I only KO people in photobomb sections to maximize score and it didn’t care about combo strings at all, or even if I took damage. Not to mention Screwball as a character is about as endearing as doing a cannonball dive onto a cactus. I swear to god if I have to hear her utter the phrase “photobomb!!!!!!!” one more time, I am personally going to develop an EMP that deletes Twitch off of the internet permanently.

This DLC in general is just exhausting to complete. Nothing interesting or worthwhile happens throughout any of it. Not exactly the best sign when the highlights of this entire package are the off camera phone conversations between Peter and Miles. And I know what you’re gonna say, “well why did you go ahead and play/beat the DLC if you didn’t like it?”. You know what? That’s a great question. I guess maybe it’s just very rare for me to abandon games I don’t like. I usually end up finishing everything I play no matter what.

Hearing Keith Silverstein as Hammerhead was very funny though. It’s literally just his Torbjörn voice except without the Swedish accent.

Y'know, I think I finally figured out why I have this massive distaste for Fortnite and why I'll likely never truly get into it.

It starts by luring you with all these big events and crazy wacky crossovers. "WHOOA LOOK EVERYBODY, PETER GRIFFIN AND MIGUEL O'HARA ARE DOING THE CHUNGUS SHUFFLE, ISN'T THAT COOL AND WACKY?!?! COME AND JOIN THE PARTY!!!". You see all these characters from across various media coming together and doing silly dances. It's enticing, to say the least. Heck, The Weeknd got added in somehow, so I was already more tempted than ever to return...

...and then when you actually get to playing the game it's filled with some of the most splatty and unsatisfying gunplay I think I've ever seen in a multiplayer shooter and unlocking any cosmetics worth anything either takes an obscene amount of grinding or is locked by an actual paywall. Most of my victory royales came from hiding in remote corners and waiting for everyone else to finish killing each other before picking off the rest.

Can't say I'm not surprised I guess.

I used to own this on my GBA when I was 6-7. I don't think I ever got further than world 2. Now replaying this as an adult, I must say I'm shocked.

This is truly the most ambitious and groundbreaking game of its time. If there is any videogame which comes close in terms of impressive feats released before 1990-91, please tell me about it.

I've been puzzled for days: How is it possible this is 33 years old? I was already impressed when I played Super Mario Bros 3, but this is such a gigantical leap that it feels like if both games were released a decade apart. And this goes much, much further than slightly tighter and accurate controls or a bit better/more creative phase design.

At first, Super Mario World doesn't seem like much. There's the new, beautiful colors and sound design which immediately catch both your eye and ears if you come straight from 3. However, the first few levels, if anything, are deceiving. You play through them in a breeze and they look quite formulaic SM levels. But as you delve deeper into the game and see all the new content, you realise you were absolutely misguided by the apparent simplicity of the initial stages.

The ghost houses, besides its difference in tone with the rest of the levels, provide a new "puzzle-like" structure in which the correct path isn't simply going forward (this existed on previous Mario games, but it was usually much more restricted to very specific phases).

The difficulty is completely dynamic. The colored palaces let the player choose if they want an easier time. Checkpoints and save points (after castles, ghost houses or switch palaces) allow for a more flexible and player-friendly experience if desired. You can backtrack to farm lives or powerups if you wish, but you can also play the game in one sitting a la SMB3.

World 5 is a premier example of Super Mario World's forward-thinking design. The normal exits (as stated by the game itself) serve no purpose other than keeping the player on an infinite loop. The concept of a classic Super Mario level has changed: it's not about getting to the exit and collecting every coin if you are able to, it's about exploring the level as deeply as you can in order to be able to advance in the game.

Super Mario World expands the series boundaries. From a challenging but straight-forward gameplay, we now have a non-linear puzzle with different routes, secrets and even two alternate worlds which provide the most extreme levels in the game.
During development, they changed their idea of reproducing SMB3's world map and went ahead with one of the biggest feats in Super Mario's history. Now the world map is no longer an abstraction, but a tangible reality. Not a mere aesthetic layout but a location in which our actions are taking place. Not only that: The world map in SMW is an entity which reacts to the players' progress, changing its appereance, providing clues, interacting with gameplay.

These are, to me, some of the biggest key aspects from Super Mario World. We take this kind of design for granted nowadays, but it is MILES ahead of anything released prior to 1990.

As a closing remark, I have never been a big Super Mario fan, and I also haven't played many platformers. But this has opened my eyes, or made something click inside of me after many years of knowing this game existed. I can't even start imagining what it felt like to play this for the first time in its release. I would've probably stayed at home for months trying to get everything from this game figured out.

Society's opinion on music:
you a stupid hoe you a you a stupid hoe (Amazing)

sonic heroes sonic heroes bind you confine you defying your reign (Stupid, emo, gay)

Wtf has this world come to.....

Those who know me will recognize how much I admire innovative and unique ideas in a game. I mean heck, look at what my favorite horror game of all time is and you’ll see what I mean. However, I feel there comes a point where the innovation isn’t enough to sustain an otherwise lackluster game, and thus that brings us to the topic of Spirit Camera.

For the record, I haven’t played a single Fatal Frame game. I know that this game is a spin-off of that series but outside of this title, I know nothing about Fatal Frame as a series. This is all I have to go off it. I have a vague understanding of the premise: you use a special camera to take pictures of the supernatural and fight off ghosts, but that’s all I know. This game in particular is entirely controlled by the 3DS’s camera. You use button controls for contextual actions but by and large, the camera is the main way you interact with the game. This game also comes with a special booklet with surprisingly high-quality illustrations and creepy artwork, and this book is needed for the game to work. Without the book, you can’t play the game. The main premise is that you interact with the book by using the 3DS camera to project images models and events in the real world, similar to the AR games you screwed around with for 5 minutes before never touching them again. Turning that into a horror game is a super creative idea, using the camera to make different creepy events unfold, solve different puzzles, and view pages in the book differently or more interactively.

In terms of combat, I don’t know how well this game translates Fatal Frame’s combat to the 3DS, but from my experience, it was fun enough. Tracking ghosts to build up power and releasing that built-up power right as they attacked for a strong counter was decently enjoyable…if a little clumsy. The combat, of course, uses the 3DS camera as your weapon, and the Ghosts are projected into your house. You essentially need to play this game like you play the special stages in the 3DS version of Sonic Lost World: by tilting and moving the system up and down and all around. It worked for what it was and that’s all I can say about it in the end. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly say the same for the game itself.

While the premise is very creative, this is way too technologically demanding of a title for the poor 3DS to handle. Perhaps soon with VR or something I can see this concept coming to fruition, but for a 2012 3DS title, it just wasn’t feasible at all. Like, yeah, it “works” on a surface level but it’s way too jank to be considered immersive by any stretch of the imagination. The book needs to be placed in an extremely well-lit room to even work, already ruining the sense of atmosphere it might’ve been going for, but even then, I’ve documented countless times where the 3DS failed to read the book or it struggled to trigger events outright because I wasn’t viewing it in the exact angle it wanted. That boss encounter with the hands felt outright broken with how the game wanted me to keep rotating the book to face them as they rotated unnaturally, and again this is ON TOP of the book frequently not being read by the 3DS while this fight occurred. This is why the regular camera fights work a lot better as they don’t rely on the book to work, but they’re still plagued by the 3DS’s camera being as sluggish and as dim as it is, and the fact that fighting supernatural demons in my bedroom with Sonic the Hedgehog posters and my sweet gaming PC and Xbox Series X setups in the background don’t capture the immersive atmosphere I think they were hoping for. The puzzles aren’t much to write home about, the most you do with these is tilting the book in a specific direction for the solution to work. Other than that, you use different lenses to view puzzles differently but the game tells you when to use them so they aren’t used in any creative way either. The game also kinda runs like crap, a part of it is because of the 3DS's camera not being very good at all but playing it feels fairly sluggish all things considered.

The campaign is also pathetically short. I managed to beat the main story mode in a couple of hours, and the game doesn’t have much to offer outside of the main campaign. You do get a hard mode where Maya dresses in a different outfit and the ghosts you fight take and deal more damage. Still only takes around 1-2 hours to beat, and that’s IF you’re going for the optional collectibles the game pops up periodically. There are a couple of gimmicky photo filters where you can take a picture of your surroundings and it overlays a PNG of a creepy image. That’s about it. There are a couple of minigames to play with increasing difficulty modes but half of them are ripped straight out of the main campaign. There’s just not much content to keep you satisfied, and this is on top of the plethora of issues the main campaign already has. Again, cool idea and I love the effort that went into this little project so I’ll give it some brownie points for that, but was just too ambitious of an idea to be fully realized.

For what it is, it does its job well. A fun little arcadey experience with its repetitive missions, minor story, semi-reliable controls, but all carried by its fun and replayable level design. I mean, other than the fact that its locked behind apple arcade, this game really isn't worth keeping a subscription for. I think this game should've taken the Mario Run approach by charging you $10 for the whole experience since to me, this game is super short and having to pay $6 every month just to keep playing doesn't seem worth it.
If you do plan on playing it though, play on an ipad with a controller if you can, plus use up that free 1 month subscription while you're at it. Otherwise, you wont be missing out on much.

Also no this is not better than Sonic Frontiers.

I overall forgot how fun this game is. Does it innovate or provide any crazy revelations for the platforming genre? Not really no, but it succeeds in two key areas: it's fun to play and it's very well designed. Mario 3D World is essentially what I'm looking for when I'm playing a Mario game; great course design that never overstays its welcome, fun level gimmicks, fun powerups, fantastic music, and in the Switch version the movement speed is cranked up to 11. Perhaps one could argue that the original Wii U courses weren't designed well for this speed increase but that just makes it all the more fun to sequence break stages and whatnot. This game also has a ridiculous amount of content packed into it with a plethora of extra stages to play after finishing the game, and a secret final level that's actually challenging (looking at you Odyssey). I'm not willing to 100% the entire game just yet as getting top of the flagpole with every single character in every stage sounds extremely tedious and repetitious so all green stars and stamps are good enough for me I guess.

Who knew that my favorite entry in the Mario franchise would be the one where he turns into a cat

I'm gonna be real here, this game did not deserve to win Multiplayer game of the year 2022 at the Game Awards LOL.

Splatoon 3 is quite possibly the textbook definition of the term "going through the motions". A game purely content squeaking by doing the bare minimum, and somehow still fumbling even that. For those of you keeping score, we are currently on the third installment in the Splatoon franchise, and a particular installment that released on the lifespan of the exact same console that the second game did, and the multiplayer has not fundamentally changed or evolved in any meaningful way. Some of you might see this statement and retort "well what's the big deal? If it ain't broke, don't fix, right?", except no. There's a lot of aspects that Splatoon's multiplayer contained that ARE broke, and they aren't fixed at all from previous entries. Like, for instance, the map rotation system: only being allowed to play 2 maps every 2 hours. Not only is this mind numbingly repetitive, playing the same map (and for ranked gameplay, the same maps and modes) over and over and over again, but as I'll get into later on in the review, the maps themselves aren't even good to begin with. Even the Overwatch team ended up realizing that map pools are a bad idea and eventually did away with them altogether during Overwatch 2. Splatoon 3 currently has substantially less content in comparison and yet it still decides to...limit content at the same time? I genuinely don't get it. But that's not even the worst of it, no. The worst part of Splatoon 3's multiplayer is that it's so agonizingly SLOOOOOOOW. Not necessarily in terms of getting into and out of a match, these elements are fine. I'm talking purely progression, leveling up, getting new weapons, gear and clothing items. First off even if you've already played Splatoon 2 before (which the game does recognize if you have save data from that game or not and unlocks ranked mode early because of it), the game STILL insists on gatekeeping literally everything from you and pulls the "oh you need to be at least level 4 to get anything" garbage. Leveling up in any capacity, whether it be your player level or your catalogue level takes ages. If I need to play like 30+ matches back to back with a double XP buff activated from a snack ticket and I still haven't gotten from level 7 to 8 yet, that's a bit of a major problem. Progressing in any capacity in this game is a massive grind, an issue they still haven't really addressed since the first game. Even when you DO level up it doesn't really feel like you've accomplished anything, it feels like you've waded through a thick waist high swamp for about 3 hours, you get to the surface to grab a bit of candy as a reward, and afterwards you gotta do the whole wading game all over again. I wouldn't go so far as to label it as an endurance test, but man that's really what it feels like sometimes. 3 being a dated grind fest that barely feels any different than the other entries in any way shape or form would be one thing, but if you ask me it also managed to make multiplayer elements of the previous games even worse if you ask me. The matchmaking for instance is all types of borked. You either queue into matches were you absolutely stomp the enemy team, or you're the ones getting stomped. Those are the two extremes, no in between. It's basically been every single match. Turf war either feels too lethargic and easy or too sweaty and tryhard. On top of this, too many matches get canceled completely because someone disconnected last second immediately after a match started. I kid you not, 3 matches in a row were canceled because someone DC'd, further compounding the sluggish grindy progression system.

The worst offense out of all of what they changed, however, are the new maps. The map design in this game for whatever reason took a massive hit and pretty much 90% of them are the exact same in terms of design philosophy: linear hallways funneling everyone into the center where team fights typically break out. It's bad enough that the maps are all designed like straight shots with barely any room to add creative high ground opportunities or vertical structures (in fact half of the map areas are unable to be inked at all), but it's even worse that we're basically stuck with 2 of these maps at a time for 2 hours. I genuinely cannot think of a single aspect that Splatoon 3 added to improve the multiplayer experience outside of being able to practice your weapon in the lobby room. I legitimately was just not having fun with 3's incredibly lackluster multiplayer experience. Outside of multiplayer, Salmon Run is essentially unchanged, just with a few additional mini bosses. You do get an addition of a ton of new cosmetics to collect and equip, and the catalogue is the equivalent of a battle pass (though thankfully it's free with no option to pay for it). There's also a brand new card game that I must've played for a grand total of 5 times before never touching the thing again. Here's the thing: by the third game, you should have something that innovates and improves upon the previous products. Splatoon 3 doesn't really do anything to innovate and improve on what came before, instead content to cruise by not really doing much of anything. It's quite ironic, in fact, how much this game uses the term "fresh" despite nothing about this game containing anything of the sort. That is except for one thing of course: the campaign.

Yeah, I was as surprised as you were. The campaigns of the previous Splatoon games were a whole lot of nothing. Meandering excuses to give the games single player content and nothing else. It took until the Octo Expansion DLC for the single player to become something interesting. And wouldn't you know it, but the story mode of this game is a lot like Octo Expansion! I do like how it's a complete bait and switch too: it makes you think you're just playing a typical point A to point B level based campaign just like the previous 2 games, until after you face the first boss, the game completely pulls the rug out from under you and fully reveals the cards in its hand. It's a challenge based story mode with a variety of gimmicks and objectives for each stage, the hub worlds that hold these stages are filled with secret items and text logs for added lore, you even get a fully fledged skill tree! A lot of challenges were also crafted for a lot of the special weapons: for instance, that borderline useless Zipcaster special weapon in the multiplayer has challenges built around zipping from building to building in a snappy fashion, it's a lot of fun. The bosses could stand to be a bit better and the game kind of ends up lore dumping everything on you at the end when I felt it could've been more evenly spaced out, but I'm surprised at how much fun I had with Splatoon 3's campaign.

In a way, this is an interesting though unfortunate inverse of Splatoon 2; wheras that game had a mediocre forgettable single player campaign with a beefy and fun multiplayer, this game has a fun and inventive single player campaign with a sluggish dull overly grind-y multiplayer. Sucks that it had to leave the portion of Splatoon that by far has the most amount of content out for the wolves. Perhaps they'll finally start to improve and innovate the multiplayer when the inevitable 4th entry happens, because if they don't then I'll REALLY be in a state of utter dumbfounded shock. Or maybe I won't. Kind of hard to tell at this point.

Do not spend $60 on this game. I would hope they discounted it by now but I don't know.