It is definitely weird to play a new Wii U game now in 2022. The Wii U itself was incredibly overhated (at least partly) because of the Gamepads features being misused and the developers of Captain U set out to change the public perception of the console and failed miserably.
Captain U at its core is a NES style 2d platformer. Unfortunately it feels incredibly bad to control. If I had to compare the controls to anything, it would be the first Metroid game. You can shoot a projectile, but you can only shoot it forwards or up; not down, but I will go into why when I talk about how badly it uses the Gamepad. I don't know how to describe this, but I will try. The character model is two units big, if you duck its 1 unit big. Now if you shoot a projectile over an obstacle that is one unit big, what do you do? Well you would probably answer just shoot out the projectile while not ducking, because you have common sense. But for some reason the devs made it so that the projectile would have been send out at 1.5 units and therefore collide with the obstacle. If you want to hit an enemy behind that 1 unit high obstacle you will have to press the jump-button for what can't be higher than 3 frames. If you don't press it for long enough it will still collide, if you press it for just a little too long you will overshoot the enemy. Amazingly this is not the only problem I have with the projectile. Shooting the projectile upwards will also send it forwards. I won't have to tell you why this is bad game-design.
But there are also problems with basic movement.
Captain Us jumps feel weird, but the basic ground movement is way worse.
Your horizontal velocity overall is painfully slow. This isn't a problem at first due to there only being 9 levels which are also not long, but remember this is a platformer in the style of a NES game.
There are random difficulty spikes, insta-kills etc. and if you die you will be send back to the beginning of the level. The game uses a life system. You start out with 100 health and there are random drops that will refill your healthbar. My problems with this system exist solely because of how the Gamepads features are implemented.
To activate the Gamepad you will have to come to a full stop and press the a button, but wait there is more. Usually things like the level timer, healthbar etc. are shown on the bottom screen, but they obviously had to implement the bottom screen somehow, so they gave it like 30 different things to do. If you want, or rather have to use the bottom screen, you will have to also have to press the R-button hiding all the useful information. They couldn't have just put this information on the top screen, because that would have meant the Gamepad is useless. Don't get me wrong, I like the Wii U way more than the Switch and there are games that used the Wii U Gamepad productively, but this just play into the hands of the people saying the Gamepad is useless. But let's take a look at the "great features" that are being enabled.
First you can break blocks (which I called obstacles previously). This is the reason you can't shoot down by the way; is it a good reason? No, but it sure is one. You can also move some, but not all, platforms, which is ok I guess. Unfortunate that you have to not move to do this because it could have been a really fun feature.
You can also place blocks, which can be used to block platforms or to jump on. The latter probably being a last minute decision, because it breaks some of the levels. Some level elements use the gyro. For example platforms or other platforms that one hit you. But the worst offender is the second auto scroller, which uses the gyro for movement and controls so bad that the devs implemented a text blurb saying that they are sorry.
But by far the worst time I had with the game was the level 5 boss. He can teleport to 4 platforms and shoot out poorly telegraphed projectiles. You can either damage him by moving one of these one hit platforms using the gyro or use your own bad projectiles, both of which are not fun to use. But every time the Boss does anything it will change the screen meaning that you won't see the projectiles, because you basically have to look at a different screen every 5 seconds. The boss also two hits you. If you die you will have to redo the level, which isn't the easiest itself and if you lose every life, which you won't see how many you have left, you will be send back to the beginning of the game and replay the entire game. I haven't mentioned this before but if you only ever had to replay the level you are in this would be 1.5/5, but sending you back to the beginning of the game is just outright annoying and believe me when I say that the rest of the game isn't that much better.
This isn't helped by you having to both move fast while using the Gamepad, which if you remember doesn't really work and of course later enemies just plain out one hitting you to artificially increase the difficulty.
All in all Captain U wasn't the swan song I was hoping for, but rather just a bad NES game using what would be waggle on the Wii to try to worsen the public perception of the Wii U.

I don't remember why I even bought this game. I didn't enjoy my time with the first Yo-Kai Watch and don't like RPG's that much, but I'm definitely not disappointed.
The combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 was always more an annoyance for me. Luckily this game doesn't have that combat system but an actually fun one. They didn't do away with three of your Yo-Kai being in battle at one time, but this time they are organized on a 3x3 grid and you can use any combination of Yo-Kai and put them anywhere you want on that grid. Some combinations are considered offensive some defensive making this system already more strategic than the old one. Some of the enemies attacks will also be telegraphed on the bottom screen making it so that you can actually avoid being hit instead of just tanking the hit.
The gameplay outside of the combat system was also really fun. This (for me) is one of those games I can play while doing something else, because this game isn't that hard. I had 2 E-Rank Yo-Kai in my team when I beat it, but I wouldn't consider that a bad thing.
The ost of this game is really good (just listen to the Rongo Swirll theme), the characters are fun and due to most of this game playing out in the USA there are lots of jokes about said country, which are always welcome. There were only a few minor gripes I had with this game.
1: While I don't really have that much of a problem with the key-quest system this game is built around, there were some that just didn't work for me. This could be because I can't update my game (for reasons I will get to later), or because of me having to play the german translation of the game.
2: There were a few occasions where you had to have befriended a certain kind of Yo-Kai to progress. There is a certain point where you are trapped in an enclosed space. The Yo-Kai you need are available there, but they could just not feel like befriending you. It took me around two hours until I could progress. There is an item that makes it so that Yo-Kai always befriend you, but do to the player character being trapped there you can not get that item.
3: You play most of the game as two characters at once. The problem I have with this comes when these characters stories inevitably collide. Until that point you should have two teams and two item bags. So what they do is that they just merge them together. The items being merged together isn't a problem, but you now have to decide between these two teams because the maximum team size isn't increased. Another implication of that is that there isn't really a reason to switch characters. They obviously make up excuses to make you switch characters, but some of them are just not good at all.
But as I said these are only minor gripes and didn't really destroy my enjoyment of the game and I would totally still recommend you to play this game, if you can get it.
The problem with buying this game is that it is one of the most expensive 3Ds games available. I got it digitally for 40€ but that came with it own problems.
This is a 27000 Block (Nintendo 3Ds storage unit) game. My New Nintendo 2Ds XL, with only one other game on it, barely had enough space to download this game, but I don't have enough space to download the update now.
But if you have 40€ worth of eshop gift cards and a basically unused 3Ds system I would totally recommend this game to you.

"Benjamin Blümchen" is one of those german kids TV characters hardly anyone outside of the german speaking countries knows. As you might have noticed by my broken english, my lack of sense of humor or even my username, I am one of these so called germans. Despite this I have only watched Benjamin Blümchen like once or twice in my life during my childhood and therefore do not feel nostalgic for it.
I found out about the existence of this game around two days ago when I wanted to log another german game and was weirdly intrigued for some reason, so I bought a complete in box copy of it.
This was not one of my best decisions. I think I should start talking about the game now.
The game is comprised of 6 levels wildly varying in quality.
The first level is a 2d platformer. It isn't the only 2d platforming level and these are the best in my opinion. The controls aren't the worst, but they have made it so you can only jump with the B button while the A button does nothing. I don't really get why but it works I guess. Benjamins jumps are really slow which can mess up your timing, but it is definitely not at all bad for a 2d platformer on the Game Boy.
The sprite work is also not bad at all and the soundtrack is actually better than expected.
The first level itself plays out in two sections, the first one being inside a house with a lot of health pickups and just a few enemies. The only reason why I mentioned that last part was because of the second section. It plays out in an ice cavern with ice physics almost no health pickups and not only more enemies, but also random ice spikes hanging from the ceiling which are really hard to avoid or even differentiate from those who don't deal damage.
another thing is the inclusion of platforms which you have to time jumping on because if you don't you will be send way back to the beginning of the level.
The second level is underwater which might sound bad at first but isn't actually that much worse. There isn't a lot to talk about other than some plant life being hard to differentiate from other plant life that damages you and that this level is a bit too long for my liking.
But the third level was one of the worst things I have ever experienced. It is an isometric platformer which in itself is not that fun for someone like me who doesn't really enjoy isometric platformers that much, but it gets even worse than that. This levels controls are absolutely atrocious. You can both move and jump in 8 directions, but the jump itself needs some time to charge up. There are three types of jumps.
If you only charge it up for a short or even no time you will get a short jump, which wont't be useful in any situation because you couldn't even jump too far with the second type of jump. The normal jump is the type of jump you will probably want to use the most out of the three. It basically outclasses the short jump in any category. The third and last type of jump is the long jump. This is incredibly niche and is only used around five times, but can be used for short cuts.
Now on to the problems I have with the third level.
1: The depth perception is really bad. This is in part because of this being a Game Boy Color game, but is in part a problem with the sometimes janky hitboxes of the lily pads. which also bring their own problems like.
2: Due to the hitboxes not at all matching with the actual sprite of the lily pads you sometimes don't make jumps you used the right jumps for. This will make it so that you will obviously use the long jump next time because the normal jump "obviously is the wrong one". But surprise you actually used the right jump but now you are at the beginning of the level again, which bring me to the last problem I will talk about. (there are way more)
3: This level is way too long. It took me around 30 minutes to beat, which might not sound that bad, but that is around half the game and means that you have to put up with the worst ever created for half an hour.
This is definitely the worst level in the game.
The fourth level isn't that great either. I can't really describe it but if I had too, it feels like if you played Mario Kart, but only with the map and only a small part of the map and if you run into a wall which you couldn't react to because of the small screen size you will loose one of your three lives but the invincibility lasts such a small amount of time that you might loose all your lives. This is exasperated by Benjamin Blümchen being a fat elephant and that you are being chased by a mouse because "haha funny big elephant running from small mouse" and you therefore not being able to stop running. You also can't change direction directly and will have to input another direction for around half a second if you actually want to change it. I should maybe also point out that you can use a boost with the help of the A button, incredible.
The only saving grace of this level is that it' incredibly short.
But the developers at KIDDINX thought the control scheme of the fourth level was so incredible that they reused it for the fifth level "the race".
The differences of the fourth and fifth level are very minor. 1: You are now not longer able to take damage, already making this the better level of the two.
And 2: you have to chose between 3 characters: the kangaroo, emu and the trollface Zebra. You can guess which one I used for my first playthrough. The characters themselves have minor differences like the emu being the fastest but not being the easiest to control. But as far as I know you don't need to win any of the three races to play the next level and this is therefore the easiest level by technicality.
The sixth level is another 2d platformer which as I already pointed out at the beginning of this review is the best play-style of the game. This time it's a bit worse as there are ladders you have to climb on, but actually climbing them is really finicky. The sixth level is still way better than the last few. After this the game just end abruptly and boots you back to the title screen.
Well all in all it isn't the best game I have ever played; I think I made that really obvious, but there is still fun to be had here. As already mentioned the ost is surprisingly not bad and I have blown some of the problems of the non-level-3-levels out of proportion to be fair and for something that could be categorized as german early 2000s TV show tie for the Game Boy Color this was a surprisingly fun short game.

ps. This games title, at the moment of me writing this, does not include the Umlaute (äöü) and sounds incredibly funny for german speakers.

Man the Trollhunters franchise doesn't stop releasing one disappointment after another lately.
The original show was great, when I first watched it I was around the age it trying to cater to and you know what? Rewatching it, it is still great. Well until Troll Jim shows up that is. Why did they do that I still don't know and I demand answers. I think I should also mention that there were two spin-off shows which were kind of meh. But through all that I always wanted a game for this series, preferably a 3d one as it would just fit better and I would have really liked exploring 3d environments in this universe, but guess what. This is a 2d platformer, which isn't a bad thing don't get me wrong, but it is a bad 2d platformer.
Jim is just really slow and clunky to control. There is a slide, which they don't tell you about if I remember correctly, but it has just an awkwardly long cool down making me not want to use it most of the time.
The levels are also riddled with enemies which, especially in the last few stages, can be hard to see as they sometimes have the same color as the background. Don't get me wrong they are not strong at all and you will rarely if ever loose a life because of them, but they can be hard to react to.
The game also faces button mapping issues. The A button (on the Xbox controller) can make you Jump, Slide, use the Horngazel (kind of an extra mission to give you coins) etc. The latter being especially annoying as you have to use them mostly on edges where jumping might be useful to not you know die, but if you wait a few seconds you are actually granted the ability to play the game again, so much fun.
The game also bombards you with new abilities and companions (which are more or less glorified abilities with names slapped on them). All of the abilities except for the projectile, which is actually useful to make the game even more easy but is overall pretty forgettable, have something holding it back like the glider being mapped to the A button and the dash being slower than if you simply walked as it also has an (even if it's not too bad) awkward cool down. But the companions are the worst offenders.
They are mapped to the triggers, both of them that is.
If you press one you switch out companions and if you press both you use their ability. Why? This input method is really slow and prone to mis-inputs. There are 4 of them and the controller has an unused D-Pad.
But that isn't even close to the worst thing about them. All of them have a cool down which is made incredibly long by design, to prevent you from spamming their overpowered abilities. This would have been great if they actually had abilities that would give you an edge in combat or something like that, but they are just there to break blocks or make you reach platform you wouldn't reach without them. A cool down just makes these passages really tedious and boring. The last companion is Douxie (who had a minor role in the series and had an entire spin-off where he is the protagonist) who just heals you as if the game wasn't already easy enough. This ability is taken from you like half a level later and is never given back until you beat the game.
The games story starts of in New Jersey (great start) after the events of the show, but after just a few minutes of playtime you encounter the bad guy who sends you back in time. From what I could gather this is before season 3 as you are not recognized by your friends, even tho you are literally wearing the Trollhunter armor and they do not question that, not even once and also Angor Roth is still a "big bad" at that time I guess. Only when you buy a mask that changes you into your human form (I forgot the name for it but it was in the show I think) do they recognize you. It also makes you invulnerable from sun light for some reason, which isn't really important but I just really wanted to point that out. The rest of the game just comes down to:"go there and do that." Just to have an excuse to send you to locations from the show. These don't even make sense sometimes.
You for instance go to the alien planet which at that time should be under siege and also the alien twins are there and somehow do not question you knowing that they are aliens. Now where I just thought about it, why do you even go there?
And so on and so forth. At the end of the game it is revealed that the random troll which could send you through time (the one from the beginning of the game) wasn't the bad guy but that Morgana (the big bad guy from the show) was behind it the whole time.
This is incredibly lazy and I don't think I have to tell you why that doesn't make any sense and how nonsensical her plan was. She also deletes all your friends from existence and Tobys last words are "I don't feel so good" make of that what you will. But she does make for a fun enough final boss from when you ignore all that and just look at it through a pure gameplay perspective.
The bosses are actually consistently the best part of the game in general. They are actually pretty solid.
So is the soundtrack, but it is mostly just taken from the show.
Well in the end they reset everything, but unlike that bad movie that released just this year, they do not destroy the entire plot doing so, so well done I guess?
There are so many more things I could point out that I do not want to go into detail for, like the bad graphics in conjunction with an unstable frame rate, but I don't think that these were even close to the worst things the game did.
Overall the Trollhunters platformer game was an incredibly disappointing adaption of the series.

This is the best way to play the original Angry Birds. This is the first Angry Birds game in which getting 3 stars in a level is consistently a challenge because of them (I think) changing the physics engine while not changing the points you need for 3 stars. This is not at all a bad thing as it is still possible to get all stars in every level and that change actually makes me feel as if I achieved something afterwards. Another positive change is that the game shows you the general direction of where the bird will go. Don't get me wrong I like the way the original handled it, but it is really outdated and this way of doing it is way more friendly to new players. It also doesn't show you the exact path but only gives you a hint of where the bird will go making it easier to come back to the game after a long time and making tighter shots.
The last thing they added is 3 worlds based on Angry Birds 2 (the movie), which are ok I guess, but nothing too impressive. They just changed the pigs sprites to eagles and added some new birds/pigs which are nothing too special. But I overall don't think that this was a bad inclusion as it doesn't take anything from the experience.