The core tennis gameplay is the best it's ever been here, it does get a little confusing to follow sometimes but that's just me not bothering to put more time into learning it.

This game suffers from a lack of content past the story mode and core base game, the nature of these kind of games just leads to them getting stale after a while.

The story mode has it's moments and it's cool having boss fights and a world map. Some of the challenges even asks a bit more of the player with some puzzles which was sometimes pretty cool, other times frustrating. As a Golden Sun fan this stuff just has me imagining how a current gen revival of that series would look
It does however have an abysmal difficulty curve with some of the opponents and challenges having downright broken AI.

Sonic Frontiers is an interesting game, it annoyed me in a lot areas and it feels half baked in some aspects too. Which is wild how it still is one of my favorite Sonic games period because the things it does get right just had me grinning the whole way and made me finally excited for the future of this series again.

The open zone format is exactly the breath of fresh air this franchise needed, yes the pop-in can be distracting, the obstacles can sometimes get frustrating to go through, and some of the map challenges are really brain-dead and dumb. However the feeling of blitzing through these massive areas at super-speed is something I've always wanted to experience in a game and Frontiers satisfies that itch. Some of the little mini obstacle courses, while visually can become ugly and too cluttered, is really fun to have so many of that are decently designed. It's like a sandbox for mini Sonic stages which was a genuine joy to sink hours into.

The combat system is fun while leaving a lot to be desired at the same time, the ingredients are there with flashy moves, a parry and an emphasis on speed. It can eventually become too spammy and clunky. Fine-tuning this for future games would be very welcome, ofc also adding a bigger variety of regular enemies to fight since the over-emphasis on bosses (while the bosses themselves are really cool) are too numerous compared to regular enemies which can become very repetitive the more you get through it. This also goes to the levelling system, if Sonic Team is going to go with the ARPG mechanics, they need to commit to it more, at least have different enemies with different levels otherwise

Another thing I want to address is the collectibles, some of it felt genuinely pointless as the game gives you all these shortcuts for collecting them too fast and distracting you from engaging with the actual world. It's a mess as they eventually become pointless way too quick killing that aspect of the game that would've given the open zones some much needed identity for individual segments of its world.

Some of the cyber space levels are really short and pointless and the very limited use of level themes really didn't allow them to stand-out as much, alot of the 2D levels felt like unneeded schlock. However there were quite a number of gems in here harkening back to Generation and Sonic Adventure level design. After being bored by the way too linear levels of Forces, I had a blast going through these levels that had actual branching paths and shortcuts which I missed in the 3D games.

Finally when it comes to the story, I am glad to see Sonic's cast be treated with more respect and have heavy stakes actually given the weight it needs. It does meander with expostion and flashbacks but it comes together nicely. Ian Flynn did a fantastic job. Sage is a fun new addition to the ever growing cast and while her development with Eggman can feel rushed with a lot of key moments needing optional memory logs to fill in, it genuinely does lead to heartwarming moments. And finally I'm glad we can have legitmate badassery in Sonic again, I was taking screenshots like crazy with all the dope shit that can happen especially in the boss fights.

I played the Final Horizons update alongside this but since it has it's own page I'll share my full thoughts there later.

Holy crap this was by far a massive improvement over the previous installments and easily one of the best action games I've ever played. The sheer amount of options the game lets you utilize in terms of guns and melee weapons is crazy. The style system was also a really cool way to get a lot of variety in moveset dynamics, I enabled a style switching mod which opened up so many fun possibilities to really get the most out of this combat.

Story wise they really found their mark here, this younger Dante is a lot more interesting and his carefree spirit is a joy to watch. Some of the cutscenes are here are easily some of the most entertaining I've ever seen in a video game.

Sadly there are a few things that hold this game back from being a masterpiece like some of the non-linear levels being an absolute chore to play and the inconsistent camera can really lead to some unfair hits especially when the targeting system really struggles around walls and obscures your view.

This update partly saves itself by being completely free, I got a lot of time out of it although I'm mixed on the package as a whole. While it still is a lot of fun it suffers from a myriad of issues that I hope Sonic Team takes seriously for their next big project.

The biggest thing that harms this update is the difficulty spike. It's really odd when you have a difficulty spike that makes it's easy mode harder than the base game's hard mode. There is no regular enemies in the open-zones and instead you have suped-up mini bosses which take forever to kill if you don't max out your characters to 99. I wish the game notified me about this before I began with a Sonic that only had 47 damage. The emphasis on perfect parry in the final trial was really annoying seeing as how the titan bosses weren't designed to support that split second timing needed for finishing it with the bullshit 400 rings time limit for the three. Some of the tower climbing feels like it goes into kaizo territory where it's just haphazardly made difficult making you fall and start over, I did learn to use Sonic's mid-air dodging and parry to position myself to avoid falling to the bottom. I appreciate a challenge and while there was aspects of it that were fun, it generally was such an odd way of doing it.

The biggest part of it is the new playable characters and I'm kind of split on them. Running around as Tails, Knuckles and Amy in this massive 3D space and having dedicated trials for them which utilize their movesets was pretty fun. Tails and Knuckles especially though leave a bit to be desired, they have these unneeded wind-up animations for their aerial movement which kills the momentum and pacing. I did like some of their challenges but they did eventually get very samey and kind of clunkily designed. Also the mini-bosses aren't best designed for the move-sets these characters have and take way too long to kill. Amy was a really fun character to play with but the de-emphasis of her hammer for her cards was really odd. I loved having them here and it was fun exploring and doing their challenges but I hope Sonic Team learns from the issues they have and gives us the best version of these characters in the next game.
After you complete their individual chapter, it pulls a DK 64 where you have to awkwardly go back to the main tower to switch between them which is a terrible pace-breaker. I went out of my way to apply a mod which allowed you to swap between each character on the spot and it really saves the pacing and made the exploration of the island a lot more fun.

Some of the cyberspace levels were the biggest highlight of this update. I died a lot and it took me forever to get through some of the bonus challenges they set up for each level (it bumped by playtime to almost 60 hours😬) but it was really rewarding learning the levels and continually improving and increasing my speed in doing the required challenge for that run. The levels are built with the spin-dash in mind allowing you to fly through entire areas and as you master it and learn where to best land it becomes such a rewarding thrill.

The revised final boss was a vast improvement over the base game, the new Super Sonic form had so many awesome animations in battle. It genuinely was one of the most hype inducing Sonic spectacle sequences in the franchise. Next time try not to place your final boss where you big ass trees blocking the projectiles he throws at you, Sonic Team.

Definitely too short and seeing the amount of cut content from the original was disappointing. The replay value is very lacking and the levels aren't as tightly designed besides the hospital which was a highlight.

Still I had a ton of fun with this game. The RE2 remake engine is already fun alone so getting more of that was great. I also really liked the perfect dodge mechanic giving a fresh new way to avoid zombies. Nemesis wasn't perfect but I really enjoyed how menacing he was and how he constantly evolved throughout the game. I enjoyed seeing Jill again and Carlos was a surprisingly awesome character.

A small but more sizeable than expected spinoff using Uncharted 4's engine. It was nice to have Chloe back and giving Nadine some needed growth after her story abruptly ends in 4. The gunplay segments build on the parts that Uncharted 4 did well and while some of the puzzles were nothingburgers there were some solid ones that made me think and were better than base Uncharted 4.

Of course while the story is fun it is pretty by the numbers especially for Uncharted standards, I liked Chloe and Nadine growing to trust each other but it was played in a very cliche and rushed manner at times. Also the one chapter where it's a massive area you can explore while was really cool initially really overstayed its welcome and Uncharted's gameplay style is just simply not designed for open-ended exploration in this way,

I've been looking for an RPG/dungeon crawler that has dungeons as creative with overworld powers and puzzles as Golden Sun was for a while. It doesn't exactly scratch my GS itch but I'm still proud to say that I had a blast with this game. Simple but expansive battle system, creative puzzles keeping the dungeons fresh and a really fun story kept me hooked for the 50 or so hours I was playing this. Although it did drag at points with overstimulating boss fights and enemy encounters as well as the game kind of feeling monotonous and repetitive at points. Regardless those times of frustration didn't detract from the fantastic time I had with it. Looking forward to trying the DLC out soon

Hearing the whispers of an F-Zero revival for the last direct, it was a little bit of a bummer first getting what looked like a simple multiplayer reskin of the SNES game over something more exciting like GX HD.

Man oh man I'm glad this game far exceeded my expectations. As the first F-Zero game with true online multiplayer, this game is truly something I've had a blast playing for the past week. Integrating modern ranking systems and having incredibly responsive and seamless online connectivity is just perfect. Blending elements of the 3D F-Zero as well as different game modes which makes this game only look like the original SNES F-Zero on the surface but gameplay wise feels way more exciting, addicting and frantic.

It can get a little too chaotic at times and the lack of options to play with friends but regardless for a game that's a free NSO download, this is such good value for an awesome game. Here's hoping there's more on the way for this series because this really shows how timeless it's gameplay formula is.

I didn't enjoy the first RE remake so getting right into this I couldn't be more pleasantly surprised. The game generally feels really great to play and really perfects the Resident Evil formula and fixes a lot of tedious aspects that hold back the classic formula from being truly enjoyable for me. It gives you so many options to play it your way that even when I came up some frustrating segments I had the freedom to experiment until I mastered some segments.

The general atmosphere, environments and map layout are so well crafted that I was fully immersed in it's world and did legitimately get spooked by some parts when I was on low health. Of course there's still some weaker puzzles and some less than stellar backtracking but it was very few and far between that it didn't bother me as much.