Arzette is a really, really good game. It's an homage rather than a parody and I'm happy it exists this way. It shows us in an alternate timeline, the Zelda CD-I games could have been great & that there was something special about them

Put aside how they "ruin" the characters, add just a little polish & you can see how charming they could be. Make the levels more intuitive to navigate and you can see that the levels were always beautiful. And if the CD-I soundtrack just added... Actually, that was the one thing that always slapped about the CD-I games, but Arzette's OST rocks, too!

But even on its own merits the game still succeeds. It's almost like a mini-metoridvania with a level selector rather than an interconnected world, but you still get that same gameplay loop of starting out weak, getting the hang of the game, and by the end you're crushing every enemy on your path to the end.

Arzette is a short game, but well worth every ruby you spend on it. If I had to sum it up in one word it is, unironically, good.

Everything about Bioshock Infinite is awful. As a gameplay experience it's bland at best & soul suckingly tedious at worst. As a story its use of real issues is indefensible. And the story is put together with a hackish lack of finesse that it'd be a mess even if it wasn't racist

Everything from mechanics, to theming, to visuals, to characters, to its writing from its macro level story beats to its micro level dialogue & exposition is atrocious. And it ends on a note so devoid of meaning that it bottoms out farther than I ever thought it could

Mario + Rabbid Kingdom Battle is a game filled to the brim with love. Every corner of this world has something in it, whether it's a collectable item, a battle, or a joke. Its tactic gameplay is fluid and easy to master, while being a consistently enjoyable experience that manages to throw in a decent story and some fun surprises

And even though I do have some gripes with the game (3 character teams with an unswitchable main character will always be a pet peeve of mine) it doesn't detract from the overall package, which is excellent. It is absolutely worth your time getting

It's easy to oversell a Mario game, especially the mainline system sellers. With that in mind it is hard to convey how much I loved Odyssey. Part of it was how easy it was to go at my own pace and never feel I was cheating myself out of an experience

The world is big, beautiful & bursting with things to find around every corner. The multiple creatures to possess made things exciting throughout (my favorite was the sunshine style gushen). And what flaws this game has feels like necessary evils rather than oversights or bad design

I don't like most Mario games, but I really do love Odyssey

Shadow 2005 is an unfinished mess of a game. Most of the weapons in this game suck, the multiple endings add nothing but padding and the only polish this game has is on the ground causing Shadow to slip and slide everywhere

But I also love it. It is one of my favorite games, hands down. The gameplay is simple enough to enjoy, music is terrific, sometimes the story is actually decent and gosh darn it I love all the try-hard edgynes! I especially love all the ending names which are just so emo, like Galaxy's Requiem or At Vagrancy's End

This game is a bad game and I do not think you will enjoy it, but gosh dang it, I love it to bits

Ninja Gaiden is an incredibly frustrating game, but also incredibly fun. It's one of those old school games that push you to be better and understand the rules in order to overcome them. And when you do, you feel incredible. Getting better at the game makes the game more fun and makes you want to play it over and over to keep getting better (or at least I did).

A lot of the challenge does come from unfairness caused by poor programming (most notably the respawning enemies and dying to the final boss sends you back to the beginning of the last level). While that is unfortunate and keeps me from giving it a perfect score, the game functions in its most important features, such as hitboxes, controls and movement.

And I think it's that paradox of being both incredibly unfair and incredibly fair that hits a sweet spot for an incredibly engaging title, worthy of being considered a classic. While rough around the edges, Ninja Gaiden is well worth playing even to this day.

Encore Mode is where Sonic Mania finally hits its stride. The mode is barely different, most notably all the levels having a new palette. But the big difference is you can play as any two characters, swap between them, and rotate through the whole cast. This is Mania at its best

Everyone finally feels useful since some characters are better in certain areas, incentivizing you to change your team. And when you have the wrong characters it feel truly challenging. Despite my misgivings of Mania, Encore Mode is a delight & I'd love to see the idea expanded upon

Before the remaster next month, I want to log my thoughts now about this game. Thing is it's one of my favorite games ever made. Not just because it's an interesting world to explore, not just because the characters you meet are fun and interesting, and not just because the action button system basically makes critical hits into a skill rather than chance, but because this is one of the only games I can actually see and articulate its difficulty curve

Just in the first area alone we start out with Goombas that all have 2 HP. If you do an action command properly, you do 2 damage. Easy! Except the battle you encounter has 3 enemies. So you also need to learn how to defend. The next new enemy you encounter is by itself, but has 3 HP, forcing you to learn the action commands properly. The next fight you're fighting two of them (insert kittens here) and eventually you get to the tutorial boss which has a body part on the ground and in the air, both with 3 HP, which you need to attack before hitting the main body

The game continues like this in a way that lets me physically see the difficulty curve. Like I remember Boggly Woods not just for its amazing color pallet, but because that's when enemies with 4 HP become standard. I remember Keelhaul Key not just because of the shipwreck storyline, but because the Ember enemies introduced have the same 8 HP as the previous chapter but also have an elemental affinity that wasn't present up until this point.

This is also why I don't really like the newer Paper Mario games. Like, I love partners and I love the wild creativity and I hate that those were removed, but those aren't the only things that make a good game. Origami King looks like a fine game, but the battle system doesn't feel cohesive to me. Numbers feel random rather than predictable, so there's no reason for me to invest in the gameplay. Unlike TTYD where I know how much damage an enemy can do just by paying attention to what the game is telling me.

So, yeah. I like this game a lot. Both for its wild creativity but also its incredible implementation of game design that makes knowing how it works feel rewarding. I'll do a more professional (for me) log on the remaster when I've beaten it, but this is just my off-the-cuff feelings of TTYD: I like it because I am a HUGE gameplay nerd

A Hat In Time is nearly everything I wanted from a collectathon. Fun, imaginative, full of surprises, a move set you feel in control of, secrets around every corner, a variety of different costumes to unlock and an overall positive vibe to the whole experience

It's not a perfect game by any means. It can feel very unpolished & the majority of the other characters are weirdly hostile to Hat Kid, but I can forgive that. I enjoy going through the world, I enjoy collecting all the items & that's enough for me: This is a game I enjoy

The fun of Deadbolt comes from formulating a plan & seeing just how well you can stick to it. Deciding what enemies to take out first, what items to grab, figuring out what areas you can use to your advantage & when to reveal yourself to enemies

And what makes this game a true triumph in the stealth game genre is its best levels are the boss fights, because Deadbolt understands that stealth bosses are at their best when they're a well guarded target the player needs to figure out how to take out. All and all, Deadbolt is fantastic

All single player modes are a 3/5, tbh. They're fine, give you enough challenge, but are also frustrating given the limited check points, high difficulty of some missions and they lock away fun additions for multiplayer (which I get, but this was annoying to me even back in 2003)

The multiplayer is what gets a 5/5 because it is a fun, chaotic time. It has a ton of customizable options such as what weapons spawn and where, a tons of unique weapons (electro tool and remote mines are great), many weapons have duel-wielding variants (such as sawed-off shotguns and tommyguns) and dozens of unique characters to play as, including but not limited to a gingerbread man, monkeys, a skeleton priest, robots, a duckman, golems and zombies

While lacking the magic of the Dark Souls games it tries to emulate, Code Vein is still a solid entry into the soulslike genre. Its anime aesthetic is appropriately over the top, and I often think back fondly of its stylish assortments of weapons and skills.

And the one area it does surpasses FromSoft's titles, the character creator, it absolutely knocks it out of the park. There are so many options to tweak little details here & there. It's become one of my favorite creators ever and other games should take ques from it.

I absolutely adored Unicorn Overlord. Its unique take on auto battles feels a lot like dominos in it takes a while to set up but is immensely fun to watch play out & fall perfectly into place. And every class feels unique, which makes experimentation fun and interesting

As others have pointed out the story doesn't have the depth or nuance of something like FFT, but it's still good for what's there. And while characters are a bit one note, they're all likable enough and the several dozen unique rapport events between characters are really nice additions to fill in the otherwise plot focused story

And even if the story is a bit thin, the combat, art, world, music, weapons more than make up for it. But what really impressed me most were the items that effected the flow of battle. Whether they were bear traps that stop enemies to get an advantage over them, or makeshift forts that gave you strategic defense on the road, they all have a unique purpose and use. My favorite are the bells that let you provoke enemies, allowing you to mess up the enemy formation by taunting an archer and killing them before they can assist attack your characters to death

Overall Unicorn Overlord is a wonderful game, and with the amount of content it has it's well worth your money. If you are a fan of strategy and tactic games like FFT, Shining Force or Fire Emblem, you owe it to yourself to play this game

Paradise Killer is a vibes game. The mystery is great, the exploration is fun (especially with platformer powerups you can find), and the characters are all fun to interact with, but the main reason you play it is just to be in its world. The Vaprowave aesthetic is something I thoroughly enjoy and this game oozes it from every pixel

It's not a perfect game. My main complaint is while you interact with the cast of colorful characters they, never interact with each other which hinders some of the story telling. Nevertheless, I throughly enjoyed scouring this world, both to solve its central mystery and to just be there