Crash 4 should be the best game in the series. It has some of the best-designed designed levels in the series and fantastic music. But it suffers from bloated content that kills any interest I have in ever fully completing it.

Whenever I play a 3D platformer, I always try to collect everything because it's more fun and lets me enjoy the game longer. Crash Bandicoot 4 however has way too many collectibles that are not fun to collect. It just demotivates me from ever fully completing it.

The game forces you to replay the same levels multiple times to fully complete it. After a while, I got so tired of trying to fully complete levels that I just started ignoring the boxes. I had more fun, but it made the length of the game abysmally short.

You either play a fun game with 5 hours of content or you spend 50 hours on monotonous garbage.

I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a quick, fun, and challenging platformer. However, be warned that 100% completing Crash 4 will kill any fun you could have with this game.

(Review only covers Section 1-2)
Deltatraveler is the first Undertale/Deltarune fan game that I got into. I was always interested in trying Undertale fan games, but none of them stood out to me except for Deltatraveler and TSUnderswap. So I tried out Deltatraveler and I was pleasantly surprised to find a really fun reimagining of the ruins from Undertale and a fun premise.

The main premise of the fan game is simple: What if Kris and Susie go to places that they shouldn’t be at? It’s based on the “Kris where the hell are we” meme that was popular last year. The meme had Kris and Susie edited into different games while Susie is in her silly-looking wide sprite. The game takes this meme and goes more in-depth with this idea. How would the story play out if Kris and Susie were inserted into random games? What would be different?

//Section 1 "In Ruins"//
The first section of this fan game is called “In Ruins” and primarily takes place in the Ruins from Undertale. My biggest worry before I started was that area would be a bit too similar to the ruins from Undertale. Deltatraveler's Ruins are completely unchanged from the original however the narrative that takes place is completely different. Susie adds a lot of great commentary on the area and ends up drastically changing how the story plays out compared to the original. I like how natural the story changes in the game are. The scenes with Toriel hits hard and the boss of the section was a great surprise.

The combat is pretty much just Deltarune’s combat system in the Undertale UI. Those 2 systems are already pretty much identical so the combination makes sense. Like in Deltarune and Undertale you have the option to either spare or fight enemies. There are 3 main routes in the game; Pacifist where you spare every monster you come across, neutral where you pick and choose what monsters you want to spare or kill, and Obliteration where you kill every monster in the area. I highly recommend doing either neutral or Pacifist first because like in Undertale Obliteration is a miserable experience that is not worth doing unless you want to be an asshole.

Whatever route you take the enemies will be the same and they are identical to how they worked in Undertale. Their attack patterns and ACTions are the same. The only real difference is Susie's S-actions which adds another way for you to spare enemies. I’m fine with the attacks being the same since it’s a fan game. The music however is a mixture of old tracks from Undertale and entirely new tracks. The battle theme, ruin’s theme during the obliterate route, and the boss theme are completely new. They’re really good. The new rendition of Enemy Approaching is a banger and the boss theme is fantastic. The music was great and I’m excited to hear new tracks in future sections.

//Hard Mode//
Hard mode is Section 1, but you play as Frisk instead of Kris. A lot of the dialogue of the area is changed to fit this change leading to humorous moments. The enemies are all changed to their more challenging counterparts. Not much else to say about this part of the game except that it's worth playing (especially for that ending.) Also, the remix of stronger monsters is incredible.

//Section 2 "Oh Mother"//
When I first saw the teaser at the end of section 1 that the next section would be based on Earthbound, I was so hyped. After finishing the section, it lived up to the hype.

Section 2 primarily takes place during the Happy Happy Village portion of Earthbound. The story follows familiar beats of the original area's plot with of course differences due to the Deltarune character's involvement. Seeing Kris, Susie and Noelle explore Earthbound's bizarre world was fun.

The combat is done in the Deltarune/Undertale combat which is neat. All the earthbound enemies have all new and unique bullet patterns. Each enemy also has its ways of sparing them.

The visuals of the Earthbound areas have been completely redone to fit the Deltarune art style and all of the sprites look great. The world, characters, and animations look great. The new music for this section is fantastic. The new battle theme, boss theme, and the credits' theme are excellent.

There is also an obliteration route for this section. Don’t do it. Unless you like being horrible don’t do it. The exclusive content isn’t worth it awful feeling in your gut when you reach the end. Just enjoy the adventure in the pacifist or neutral route.

Overall Deltatraveler is a great fan game that I highly recommend checking out. If you are an Undertale/Deltarune fan this is a must-play.

Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door improves on many issues from the original Paper Mario but has many problems of its own that damages the experience.

One thing that I love about the game is its story. The overarching narrative of saving Peach is straightforward for the most part, but each chapter tells its own self-contained story. I won't spoil anything, but all the chapters have engaging stories that are all worth experiencing.

The battle system has been substantially improved compared to the original. Attacks have a lot more complicated action command inputs, unlike the original where you mostly had to push the button at the right time. You also can pull off tricks for stylish points during attacks that fill up your SP gauge and are satisfying to pull off. Almost everything involving the combat has been improved, but there is one change I despise.

There are now stage hazards that happen randomly during combat. The stage hazards are awful. They can come out of nowhere and completely fuck up any strategy you came up with. Spent a turn setting up buffs to do massive damage "well too bad" here is a random fog that makes it impossible to attack the enemy. It adds nothing to combat except to waste time and annoy you.

Another element of the game that annoyed me was the backtracking in the game. Throughout many points of the adventure, you are forced to retread through the same area over and over again. It doesn't help that all the areas in the game are just straight lines with barely any diverging paths. It's monotonous, and it feels like the game isn't valuing my time.

The visuals and music in the game are good, but I vastly prefer the music of the original. Besides the battle theme, none of the tracks are memorable to me. They're good but pretty forgettable. The visuals in the game look great. Some of the areas in the game look gorgeous. Chapter 2 and chapter 4 are visually fantastic, even if traveling around those specific areas is a slog.

Overall the combat in the game is (mostly) improved from the original game, but the game suffers from not really valuing the players' time. I highly recommend checking out this game if you loved the original but be warned that the game does have problems that the Paper Mario community doesn't mention when they say this game is a "masterpiece."

Fatal Frame creates a very horrifying atmosphere. The sounds that play in rooms, the music that changes whenever a ghost is nearby, the way the controller subtly vibrates whenever something supernatural occurs, and the camera angles really help you get immersed. Because of this, it’s terrifying to play. I haven’t felt this tense playing a horror game in a long time. And part of it is due to the way you fight ghosts.

In Fatal Frame, you use a camera to defeat ghosts. Taking pictures of the ghosts makes them disappear. Here comes the scary part, since you need to take a picture of the spirit, you need to stare at them directly. You have to stare at the enemy dead in the eye and watch them inch closer and closer toward you. Some ghosts aren’t that much of a threat since they usually stay still, making it easy to take a clear shot of them. However, that doesn’t apply to all of them. Some ghosts can move very quickly to avoid getting captured on the camera. Some can even disappear for a brief moment to attack you from behind. I loved this. Fights with ghosts always felt tense because of how tricky they can be to take a picture of. The samurai ghost was my favorite because he’s fast and is the only ghost able to use a weapon, which made him stand out from the rest.

The story is alright. Although, I didn’t play this game for the plot. The story has you playing as a girl named Miku to find your brother in a haunted mansion with a dark past. I think what hampered the plot was the voice acting. It’s atrociously bad, and not in a funny way. It feels like Miku doesn’t care about what's going on due to how emotionless she sounds. No hate to any of the VAs. The game is old, and poor voice acting during this time was common. It just, unfortunately, makes it difficult to get invested in the narrative. I like some of the ideas and how disturbing it gets when you learn the mansion's past, but overall it's the weakest aspect of the game.

Fatal Frame is a fantastic horror game and created an experience that I’ll never forget. There was a portion of the game where I ran out of healing items, and that was the most scared I felt in any horror game in a long time. I highly recommend trying out this game if you can. It's a classic!