Such a simple game, yet full of so many great levels and possibilities. Star Fox is one of my favorite Nintendo series that I feel has been totally mistreated over the years, the original while a classic feels pretty dated today and unfortunately looks like a mess with its 16-bit polygons. Add to that the "Newer" Star fox games failed to capture the magic and greatness that was found in this game, I won't get too into it but it's really sad to me that we just can't seem to get another great entry to this series, at least not one that's as good as this one. So let's get into it, this is a third (or first person if you prefer) on rails shooter game where you pilot one of the many vehicles of the StarFox world, mainly an Arwing which is basically just your average star ship. In each level you will be tasked with avoiding all manner of obstacles and taking out as many enemies as you can until you reach the end of the level which usually sees you fighting against a mini-boss all the way until you reach the final level, Venom and take on the evil Dr. Andross. What's really cool about this game is that depending on how you choose to complete each level, will determine which path you take through the lylat system. The three paths are marked by color, red, blue, and yellow. While nowadays you can just go on the internet and look up what you have to do in order to take your favorite paths, it was a lot of fun back in the day when you could just test things out and when you finally figured out how to take one particular path that would lead you to a level you never got to play before. This of course makes the game rather short, in fact I'd say it doesn't take more than an hour to complete one playthrough but since you can take all the different paths it adds a lot of replay value, in fact I can't even think of how many times I've played the level "Corneria", I could probably do the whole thing with my eyes closed at this point. The bosses in this game are usually fairly easy as they will have a big glowing spot on them that indicates where to shoot but some of them still prove to be rather challenging, especially when you're using a different vehicle like the Landmaster or the submarine. OK yeah and we might as well address your teammates, there's Falco, Peppy, and Slippy who are all on their own levels of annoying but can also sometimes be useful when they take out enemies for you and I don't care who you are but you all know that hearing "Do a barrel roll" and "Use bombs wisely" 100 times was totally worth it. Except Slippy though, fuck that guy.

Growing up in the late 90's/early 2000's, Pokemon was everywhere! While the height of the series popularity (In America at least) probably came in 1998/1999 when the original 150 were first introduced and the anime was first airing, but for me the true height of pokemon was in Gen 3 where we got to travel around Hoenn. Call me an old man if you want, but there are way too many pokemon these days, there is no possible way I can remember all the new ones, let alone all their abilities and stats (not that I ever cared much about those anyways) so for this game to have a mere 200 pokemon for you to catch and train, that was plenty for me. While I grew up playing Ruby, I always preferred Sapphire due to it having the best Legendary (Kyogre) and also because I was a total Team Aqua fanboy (even though yeah, they are technically the bad guys here). This generation also had so many of my favorite pokemon to date, I won't bother listing them here as that would take all day but I also loved the layout and design of this region, IGN may have complained about there being too much water but in my opinion that was what made this game so great to me, I guess I've always been a water trainer at heart.

I'll be copying and pasting the majority of this review onto my review of Omega Ruby since they're essentially the same game. Anyways, how do you improve upon what is (in my humble opinion) the best generation of Pokemon to date? Why you remake it in full 3D and add the new Mega evolutions of course! It's a rather simple change to the game but the graphics for this game were gorgeous (yes even better than the drivel that is sword and shield) and seeing some of my favorite pokemon and locations in full 3D was just amazing to me, also seeing the old characters you came to know in the original game now looking amazing was also cool to me. This game also allows you to catch and utilize the best legendary in any pokemon game which is Primal Kyogre and I will hear no more on this topic!

Ps. Team aqua for life!

This is in my opinion my favorite of all the Mario party games, it retained a lot of the classic charm that the original game had but also added some new aspects. Old mini games were improved, new mini games were overall a lot of fun and the boards were much better designed this time. Plus how could you not love all the little outfits the characters would wear on each one? I mean obviously Pirate land was the best one but that's beside the point. This one also removed the single player aspect of the first one but again I don't think that's really a bad thing.

It's really crazy to me that this was the first ever Mario Party game, there's been 10 that have come out since then and the series has changed so much to the point where it's completely unrecognizable to me, and while this one may not be everyone's favorite or the most well put together Mario Party game, it's still a classic in my eyes and there's a lot of nostalgia that goes along with it. The concept was pretty simple, if you're not familiar with Mario party is that 4 players walk around a board by rolling a 10 sided die and attempt to beat the other players by collecting the most amount of coins and stars, stars are worth more than coins so that's the thing most people are going for. After each player has taken one turn, they play a mini-game which is essentially the meat and potatoes of the Mario party games, if the mini-games aren't good then the game isn't good. So how are the mini-games in this one? Well, they're alright, again I have a lot of nostalgia for this game so I have some bias but looking back the minigames in this one were not always the best or most fair, the board design this time around also wasn't great and there wasn't really much of a single player mode (but then again you got to be a whole new level of lonely to play Mario party by yourself). It does include mini-game island where you just play every mini-game once and make your way to the next one which is fairly easy but not a ton of fun in my opinion. As you play the game more and more you will eventually unlock two new boards which again are OK but not great. Overall this was a pretty good start to the series but there was definitely much better things to come over the years.

It's actually incredible to me that this would go on to be one of the most underrated Call of Duty games in the whole series, especially when this game did so much for the franchise. I think the main thing that turned people off of this game was that it was another WWII shooter that came right after COD4 which was one of the first really well done modern warfare FPS games and people naturally were craving more of that, especially when you consider the fact that prior to COD4 every COD game was a WWII shooter, not only that but that particular genre of FPS's was pretty common in the early 2000's so to say that people were probably pretty tired of those kinds of games would be an understatement. Not me though, for me WWII is one of the most fascinating parts of history, so no matter how many movies or video games come out about it, I'll probably still be interested. That being said, this game also introduced some new mechanics as well as carried on some mechanics from the last COD game which I feel really made this one stick out. First off, being able to use a knife as your last minute melee attack was really helpful especially since it was a one hit kill. Secondly this game took place mainly during the Pacific theater of WWII between the U.S. and Japan who fought viciously and were not your typical soldiers, they were known to fight to the death and never to surrender, no matter the cost. You also had to deal with a lot of soldiers who would disguise themselves and hide in plain sight which made their ambushes difficult and intense, you also often had to deal with bonzai attackers who would utilize the bayonetts at the ends of their rifles, if you failed to take them out it'd be an instant death for you. That doesn't even begin to get into the amazing story of the Russian campaign, in most COD games at least back then there were different armies you fought with so the second one in this game was a Russian soldier fighting against Nazi's, starting off in the devastating battle of Stalingrad where you sneak your way around the city using a sniper rifle, all the way to the Russian assault on Berlin. During this campaign you meet one of my favorite COD characters, Viktor Reznov, a brave if not a bit extreme Russian soldier who aids you from the beginning. There is also a younger soldier named Chernov, who criticizes Reznov's extreme ways, which often involved killing any sort of Germans they came across, even soldiers who had their hands in the air to surrender. On the American team you have a small platoon of U.S. soldiers who fight their way from the battle of Pelieleiu (I really hope I spelled that right) to the battle at Okinawa, one of the final battles before the U.S. dropped the two atom bombs, the American campaign is definitely less exciting but it includes a character voiced by Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer on the show '24') so that's pretty rad if you ask me.

While the games multiplayer is probably dead seeing as it's been 13 years since this game came out (sheesh, I'm getting old) it was definitely an enjoyable experience and again included many aspects that were originally put into COD4, such as custom classes, being able to add sights to your weapons, perks, etc. It wasn't really anything new but rather more of the old and as I remember it was still plenty of fun. The real show-stopper here though, was nazi zombies mode. This was a brand new "Survive as long as you can" mode where you and 3 other friends are locked inside a building where there are nazi zombies trying to break in, your job is to make sure they don't by watching all the windows and ensuring that they stay boarded up as well as keeping yourself and your fellow comrades alive for as long as possible. There's no real way to win this mode as far as I know but it's still a ton of fun and was a game mode that was included in many of the COD games since, though it is often forgotten which game it came from.

The end of an era. While Sly 3 ended up not being the last Sly Cooper game, it was the final one to be developed by Sucker Punch and as far as many fans are concerned, this is the "true" ending to the series. Once again you have the three main gang members to play as but you also have a good amount of new characters to play as as well, including some of Sly's old enemies! Once again there's a huge variety here gameplay wise and while I'm not really a fan of all the different segments, the ones I like are really great. Boss fights once again are really great and you still have the option of choosing which missions you'd like to complete and in which order.

The story this time around is that after the events of the last game, the Cooper gang has been a bit broken up as Murray left the team after blaming himself for Bentley losing his ability to walk. On top of that, Sly met up with this guy who ran with his father in the old days and tells him about "The Cooper vault", a huge vault in which the Cooper family has been hiding all their findings in for thousands of years, however upon arriving at the vault they discover that a new villain by the name of "Dr. M" has taken over the island and has built an enormous fortress to keep people out and has also been trying to crack open the safe for years but of course always failing. As usual I don't wish to spoil the game but the main plotline is that you go through the game, recruiting new and old members for the gang in order to have a team that's able to break into the Cooper vault. I won't say much but I do have to say that the final chapter in the game included some great character development between the 3 main protagonists and while the game makes it rather obvious that the series is over after this, it still ends on a high note in my opinion but still leaves itself open enough for if they ever decided to do a sequel (which they did, more on that later).

One of my top 3 favorite games of all time, yup I love it that much. While the first game in the series was a fine game all its own this one was for many reasons a huge improvement over it. First off you don't just play as Sly this time around, you also get the option to control Bentley and Murray. The three gang members have so much chemistry and really feel like they've truly been best friends for their entire lives, what's also great is that each one controls very differently and provides a very unique experience as you go through the game. As Sly your main object is to be stealthy and pull off jobs that usually involve things like climbing and platforming, pick-pocketing, so on and so forth. Bentley being the brainy one of the gang as well as their demolitions expert does a lot of sabotaging and demolition jobs, as well as jobs that require more intellect and technological knowledge, like the hacking missions. Finally, Murray is the strong-man of the group and most of his jobs usually involve lots of heavy lifting, taking out multiple enemies, and sometimes just pure destruction. There's also plenty of vehicle missions that give the game plenty of variety in each level. Speaking of levels, each level is fairly "Open" to exploration although this wouldn't be considered an open world game, you can do each mission on your own time and do them in whatever order you want which is something I've always respected in games, boss fights also offer a nice bit of variety as well so there's plenty to like here.

Now as for the story, this picks up 2 years after the last game ended where Sly got revenge on the gang that took out his parents and learned the ways of a thief by reading the Thievious Raccoonus, this included his family's arch rival, a giant metallic Owl named Clockwork. Although Clockwork was defeated at the end of the last game, he has not been totally disposed of as his body parts must be found and destroyed as well so that he can never again return, the parts however have been stolen by another group known as "The Klaww gang" who each took their own pieces of Clockworks body in order to run their own criminal operations, without getting too much into the plot of the games I will say that the main villains are all fairly interesting on their own and that things don't always go to plan throughout the game, again not gonna spoil anything but there's a few parts that caught me completely off guard when I first experienced them growing up and to this day I think this game might have the best written story of any platforming series out there.

A game so simple yet it became the most played game of the year in 2020 and is still being widely played to this day. If you've been living under a rock and haven't heard of or played Among us yet, here's essentially how it works. It's similar to games like Secret Hitler, Town of salem, Werewolf, etc. where one player is not who they say they are and the rest are regular players. In an average match there are several teammates whose main goal is to either complete all the tasks needed in the game, or to vote out whoever the imposter is. The imposters goal is to kill as many teammates as they can while not getting discovered or voted out by the other players. When the imposter kills another player, the other teammates can report the dead body by calling an emergency meeting and everyone discusses what happened and what they saw, obviously the imposter wants to lie here and convince everyone that they aren't the imposter, which depending on who you're playing as can be easier said than done. An incredibly simple game but yet works so well and is some of the most fun I've had all year.

This game completely changed my life. Prior to playing this one I rarely ever played FPS games, or multiplayer games in general but when I got to play this for the first time back in 2007, things changed completely. First let's talk about the campaign, the story this time around is pretty impressive especially for a COD game at that time, you play as Soap MacTavish who works with the British SAS in order to fight back against a group of Russian Ultranationalists as well as a group of terrorists in the Middle-east, one of the most memorable characters in any game appears here with Captain John Price, being a sort of mentor for Soap as well as the team leader. This campaign also includes one of my favorite missions in any video game with "All ghillied up" where you sneak around the Ukraine in order to take out a terrorist who is dealing in nuclear weapons. That's about all I can say without spoiling the game, but it's easily my favorite campaign of any COD game.

Now let's talk about the multiplayer, while this game is 13 years old and not many people probably play it anymore it was a seriously big deal back in the day when me and my buddies used to play together. I have so many memories playing both public and custom matches with friends over the years in game modes like Headquarters and Search and destroy, I still have so many of the maps perfectly memorized and if I had people to play with I'd love to go back and do it all again.

Truth be told, until I played this game I was never super into the resident evil franchise, or horror games in general, I played Resident evil 4 but never quite finished it and could never really get behind the tank controls of the older games, all that changed when I finally played this amazing horror masterpiece. This was a pretty different take on RE, with it being in first person and unlike the last few games it was an actual survival horror game rather than just an action game. The first person perspective may not seem great to everyone at first but it is utilized super well here, aiming your weapon is much easier this time around and it's more realistic seeing things from the characters perspective (especially if you play in VR). As with other survival horror games, your main goal here is to stay alive more so than taking out enemies, you are given a limited amount of ammo and must use it sparingly if you hope to win at the game, also the main enemies (The Baker family) are pretty much impervious to bullets so wasting your ammo on them is pretty pointless, your best bet is to always sneak around them or if they catch you to run and hide. The other enemies are the molded which are fairly easy to kill with just a few shots to the head, and of course there's the bosses which while fairly easy are still a lot of fun to fight against. The story for this game is again totally new for RE with it being about all new characters and having little to do with previous entries in the series. You play as Ethan Winters who we don't know a ton about (nor do we learn much) whose wife had gone missing 3 years prior but has supposedly been found and had contacted him and told him where she was, at a farmhouse somewhere in Louisiana. When he arrives at the house it's a real shit show and he finds a video tape that reveals several people have gone through the house and gone missing afterwards, he eventually finds Mia who has become possessed by something and he also meets Jack Baker who welcomes him to the family. I don't want to get too much more into the story in order to avoid spoilers but I can say for sure this is one of the best and scariest horror games I've played and highly recommend it to anyone who is even remotely interested in that genre.

Believe it or not, there was a time in the 90's when Rareware was one of the best video game developers out there, coming out with hit after hit after hit. While many may debate on what was rarewares true masterpiece, the one that always takes the cake for me will be Banjo Kazooie. This game to me is like the ultimate platformer, it's got just enough stuff for you to collect, colorful and fun characters and levels to explore and it's fairly easy to pick up and play. As Banjo and Kazooie you have a set of moves you can use in order to make your way around levels as well as fight against enemies, as you play through the game you'll unlock more new moves to use that will definitely be useful later on. Each level in the game, while unique all have the same amount of collectibles for you to get, your main collectible is Jiggies (or golden jigsaw pieces) of which there are 10 and are needed in order to open up new levels in the HUB world, secondly is the musical notes of which there are 100 and are used to unlock doors in the HUB world so you can make your way through Gruntilda's lair, finally there's 3 empty honey comb pieces which once you collect 6 of them, you gain an extra health point, which believe me you will need for later in the game. The story of this game while fairly simple is held together by its loveable characters, banjo and kazooie are a bear and bird respectively who are best buddies. Banjo's sister Tootie gets kidnapped by the evil witch Gruntilda in an attempt to steal her beauty so it's up to Banjo and Kazooie to save her, they are helped along their way by Bottles the mole who teaches them new moves as well as Mumbo Jumbo, a shaman who can transform them into different things to help them throughout each level. The only criticism I really have for this game is that there really aren't any boss fights which is odd for a platformer, there is of course the final battle against Grunty at the end but prior to that there isn't really any at all, still that's not a huge complaint to make about one of my favorite games ever.

One of my favorite genres of games are side-scrolling beat 'em ups and while Castle Crashers may not be the best one to date it's definitely way up there. I remember when a friend first showed this game to me and we played the demo, afterwards I immediately told my parents I needed their credit card because I just had to buy this game and complete it with my friends. 12 years later and I'm still returning to this absolute classic, even though I've completed the campaign lord only knows how many times. The basic premise of the game is that you and up to 3 friends can play together and each of you picks one of the 4 elemental knights who all have different magical abilities (Lightning, fire, ice, and poison) and your job is to fight your way through hordes of enemies and bosses in order to save the four beautiful princesses that have been kidnapped by the evil wizard, along the way you will level up your characters and afterwards can decide which aspect you'd like to put your EXP towards (strength, magic, defense, or agility). While the game is fairly short and simple, what really makes it stand out for me is the sheer amount of bonus characters you get to unlock. Some of the characters are unlocked through completing arena challenges while others require you to finish the entire campaign while playing as a certain character, to this day I haven't gotten all the characters unlocked but I've come pretty darn close. You can also unlock several different kinds of weapons that your character can use as well as Animal companions to take with you that all have their own benefits to them (but let's be honest, everyone just fights over who gets the giraffe and the chicken). Finally once you've completed the game once, you can attempt to play it again on insane mode which is a much harder version of the basic game, I have yet to complete the game this way but if you're ever going to do it I recommend using your highest level character as well as getting as many of your friends in on it as you can.

If you've read my reviews on the three original Spyro games for the PS1 then you probably already know how I'm going to feel about this one. Remakes seem to be a very popular thing right now in the gaming industry, whereas before video game remakes were rare altogether we now are seeing a lot of old games get remade and remastered for modern consoles such as this little gem here! (Pun intended) While I'm not necessarily going to review each game individually again I will be reviewing the remake(s) as a whole and talk about what I did and did not like about them, starting with Spyro 1. This one is probably the most well done remake in the trilogy, you can tell a lot of heart and soul was poured into this one as the worlds are vibrant, colorful, and stunningly beautiful, these levels that I grew up with and played countless times are almost unrecognizable with how much better they look in this version of the game. Not to mention we also see all the dragons get new looks as well, whereas before they all more or less looked fairly similar to each other, this time around every dragon has its own unique style and quirks that make it stand out from all the others, the enemies and bosses have been remade as well and some of them definitely needed it but it's unfortunate that they didn't really take the time to try and improve the difficulty of any of the boss fights, I respect them for trying to keep the game as accurate as possible. There's very little negative things I could say regarding Spyro 1, there are a few miniscule issues I had such as the sound effects for picking up gems and killing enemies being changed from the original, and of course all the characters have had their voices rerecorded, these of course are not bad things but made playing through the game a bit odd as I was always expecting to hear one thing but instead got another thing. The one negative thing I do have to say though, is something I think everyones well aware of and that is the twilight harbor enemies, in the original all of them used machine guns and grenades as weapons whereas this time they're using paint guns like in Splatoon, again not a big deal but it was a bit disappointing, if you haven't heard though this was a choice made by TFB because if they had included guns the game would have been given a T rating instead of an E10 so I can understand why they changed it.

Now for Spyro 2. Once again the level, enemy, and character designs are all top notch, it's still a bit odd hearing the different voices for certain characters like I didn't particularly care for Hunters new voice but I did think that characters like Moneybags and Elora were actually improved with their new voices. There were a couple other things I noticed in this version such as swimming underwater feels a bit different, it's too hard to put into words but if you've played both versions then you'll know what I mean. Also for some reason the boss fight against Gulp is much harder in this version, which is certainly not a complaint but it really caught me off guard and I know I'm not alone, many people had a really tough time with him whereas in the original he's really not too difficult.

Finally we are on Spyro 3, my so called favorite game of all time, so how did they do with remaking this one? Well, they did a pretty good job but it definitely needed a lot more polish. Sadly this one wasn't even developed by TFB but rather Sanzaru games in order to get the game released on time, and while I have no issues with Sanzaru, this particular game needed more polish like I said, there's a few glitches and bugs in this version that still have yet to be fixed, especially in the final bonus level that is nearly unplayable. Once again I still don't care for Hunters new voice and while I think I overall will always prefer the original version of Spyro 3 this one still has a place in my heart.

This is my favorite game of all time, so I've been thinking a lot about what I'd like to say about it without just writing some incessant rambling but I think I've kinda got it figured out. This game like the last one, took what was great about the Spyro series and improved upon it even further, I think for me the biggest improvement with this game was the amount of variety was added to it with the new characters you got to play as, as well as all the new tasks and mini games you get to play in order to complete the game. The story this time around is that an evil sorceress has stolen all the dragon eggs and taken them to the other side of the world which the dragons call "The forgotten worlds", it is not entirely clear what she plans to do with the eggs or the baby dragons inside but once again it's up to Spyro to save the day, only this time he's got a bunch of new friends to help him along the way. The new characters might take some getting used to when you first play as them, but eventually you'll be controlling them with no issues and debating which one you like the most. Some interesting new additions was the addition of Sparx levels, where you play as the dragonfly sparx in a top down sort of view, there's also new mini games in each of the flying levels where you play as Hunter in some sort of vehicle. The level and character designs this time around were among some of my favorites and also the boss fights this time were pretty fun, I especially liked how you got to also get help from your new friends in order to defeat each boss. I could go on all day about this game but I think I've said just about everything that needs to be said, this game meant so much to me growing up and it still means so much to me now as an adult.