Although I'm not very well versed in the genre, (the) Gnorp Apologue is a cute lil' idle/incremental game with a surprisingly extense layer of stategy with a lot of visual flair to it, and unlike others it actually has an end goal that's attainable for the casual player and, overall, is a fun time.

As you're tasked with leading your Gnorp creatures with putting shards from the jelly-bean looking rock into resources to use for different buildings, housing to recruit more Gnorps or weapons and utilities to hit the rock even harder in order to cause a Compression Event, you notice how there's a lot of ways to go about it if you prioritize certain units over others. It's a pretty fun time waster, and also sorta challenging in the endgame to figure things out. And that is probably its biggest hold back, it can get tedious to do stuff near the end due to how slow progression gets at that point, but if you're nearing the end you most likely already have a pretty extense knowledge of your buildings, units and prestige upgrades, so in all it becomes a pretty satisfying experience to finish.

A pretty neat surprise to close off 2023.

What poses as pretty much the prototype of the Super Mario franchise is quite fun at its very core. An infinitely replayable endless platformer that tasks you with getting rid of "pests" that emerge from the pipes, every few rounds switching it up and adding new mechanics whilst increasing the difficulty.
It's a little bit fun for a couple of moments, the main problem with it is the controls being wayyyyy to stiff (in line with Donkey Kong's) and there wasn't a clear direction of what to do with the brothers just yet, since nearly all of the enemies here didn't stay for the rest of the franchise either with the exception of the crabs or the Shellcreeper being a prototype Koopa Troopa.

It also doesn't help that literally any other version of this game is better than this one.

Innocent Sin is the continuation of the Persona anthology series, and a lot went into the mix while making it. Mainly ramping it up in gameplay and story, but it mainly succeeds on having a really loveable cast of main characters that are greatly expanded upon and are given so much development in so little, coupled with the story and narrative around them being actually batshit insane (in the positive sense), Persona 2 is simply not afraid to do whatever the hell it wants to do and its one of those games that would definitely get shafted in a localization nowadays just because they would most likely not let a lot of it slide.
It has a lot of "edgy" rocker spunk to it that is highly missing in the Hashino games going forward, but for a game that I abstained to play for the longest time (because I wanted to play the first one beforehand) even if the first quarter of the game was rather slow, it was a very neat surprise to see the direction it was going and how much more complex things get in the latter part of it. I just love how this group of seemingly strangers get put into some very dire and chaotic situations off the bat, to be in a death or life situation a lot of the times really makes them way closer together than most Persona parties in the series.
I also particularly like how you get a lot of mileage if you've played the first Persona before this, even more if you've played Shin Megami Tensei if... or Devil Summoner (somehow) making this trilogy really feel the most connected despite its anthology nature.

Then sadly there's the gameplay department. It still comes from the first Persona game so it's a buncha auto and fast forwarding and later on hope you don't get one shot and die instantly, lucky for everyone the PSP version of it is so easy you can beat with the Personas you get at the start, middle point and the endgame, so save for a few fusions you won't really need to bother with it which is great because fusions SUCK here with the stackable tarot card system, it's so grindy and annoying for no real reason and I have no clue why they changed it from the one they had before. They also kept random encounters which in general is a shitty concept, especially since despite having a grid map you don't really move in a grid in the dungeons so you can take one wrong step and trigger a fight. At least dungeon crawling and most exploration is not a hallway simulator and you can actually move around in 3D environments and see the characters interact in a comic way since the 2D character sprites got an upgrade and are now way more emotive so it gives way for more slapstick humor that goes well with the mentioned already ensemble cast.

I often don't point out the soundtrack in games I play but this one deserves it, just like Megami Ibunroku Persona in the PSX this game also has very extensive and very immersive sound for the most part besides some real great tunes in the dungeons or places you can visit in the overworld, it's also got a double OST but thankfully the rerelease version didn't completely changed up the vibe but made it a little bit more techno which is alright.

I'm pretty happy I finally got around to play this considering everyone in the Persona fandom liked it so much, and yeah I agree, it's better than most modern Persona games and I wish they could revisit these characters in some capacity in the future since they're so good. Hell, I'd even take a Dancing game if that's all we can get.

The port of Donkey Kong for the Nintendo Entertainment System is curious, because it plays better, has a much more amenable difficulty curve and is overall a bit easier to get through and enjoy it, which would make it the better version of the game to play, but somehow they missed the mark by straight up cutting one fourth of the game for whatever reason, I guess the technological advances weren't there yet but it feels weird when the loop is just three levels and it's skipping over the most unique one, the Pie Factory. So it gets knocked down for that one.

Pretty interesting to go back to actually playing some of the earlier examples of an actual video game amongst the sea of pretty much a mess of a medium by that time, Donkey Kong is iconic and remembered by many, but does it hold up as A Video Game decades past? Well, kinda...?

Donkey Kong is an arcade game for sure, it is excruciatingly difficult and made to run your pockets at the arcade machines so you'd have to put in coins to get more and more credits, it's a tactic for sure games like these pulled very intentionally and it introduces a very thick layer of competitiveness to go for high scores against others. The game itself is fine, the controls to move Mario (then known as "Jumpman") are very stiff and it has a very unfair fall damage system that requires you to make your jumps precisely as a fall of little height and be game over, but it sorta makes up for the limited variety of levels that make you use them in different ways, some of these are mainstays of gaming even nowadays as they're referenced in Every Pop Culture Thing Ever, so it's nice seeing the source material for an extended period of time.

It gets boring after a few loops, once you've played those four levels you have indeed played 1981's own original Donkey Kong, and that's fine. This game is just fine.

My Friend Pedro (of the 2019 variety), is a fast-paced side-scrolling action parkour hybrid game born as a reimagining (continuation?) of 2014's MFP: My Friend Pedro, this time expanded upon immensely to the point where this game is pretty standalone from previous entries. With it were added more mechanics, scoreboards and a plethora more of levels and weapons to play with and somewhat of a story along with it. And the end result coming from having played the Flash game a while back would be that it definitely left me quite impressed when it came to refining the formula that was established back then, there is definitely enough of an improvement to the point where this is a fully-fledged game with a lot going for it. For the most part.

It's a game that wants you to play it as if you were doing a Call of Duty montage, so doing all sorts of acrobatics while you dodge enemy bullets and do split-kills and stuff like that, in that department they did great, the new movement options are cool and I like that you get more points when you make it more flashy, not that it's needed but I spent a lot of my time doing so and it was funny.

Notice that I said all of those genres this game might possibly be, but I purposefully tried dancing around the word "platformer", because if this game was a platformer then it'd most likely be one of the worst I've played. The control isn't nearly as tight nor is the movement as precise for it to be a quality platformer, and there's later stages that are purely platform-based and really expect you to pull out some wacky moves that you have to fight against the controls for, that's probably the biggest hitter in this game and why it isn't more than just good in my book.

That being said, out of the 3 or 5 main campaign hours, it does spend its time well but it doesn't really feel fit for replaying or grinding for high scores, which is also a very big thing in the game if you're aiming for the Platinum (100%).

Don't get me wrong, when you're in the zone the game gets super fun trying to stack up these combos and jumping from one place to another, also the new mechanics added to it maintain it fresh all throughout but trying to get all S-ranks is very boring and repetitive as there's a heavy reliance on routing and the game itself isn't really friendly towards people repeating levels over and over again (No way to skip cutscenes, no way to know what the threshold is for an S-rank score, no quick reset that doesn't take forever, etc.) So thats a bummer if you aim to get everything you can out of this, and really waters down the experience a lot as replaying some of the longer levels for a while is nervewracking. The level design is very heavily reliant on you having to go through a stage perfectly to not bork your combo multiplier, and to that also play your movement well to not waste any time, this is often more infuriating than it is fun, especially when in some parts of levels it's impossible to keep a combo without any enemies nearby, so you are left to experiment whether or not you actually need that combo to be higher to get the S-rank, and it eventually leads to watching a YouTube video with the optimal routing for that level, and that gets tired when you do it twice, thrice or five times in a row.

The rest of the game, like the music, graphics or the story (or lack there of) are fine, but I don't understand the overwhelming praise for it, sure it's short and sweet but it's nothing otherworldly in my opinion, if anything the one thing that drove me to play it for extra hours was the demise of it.

My Friend Pedro: Arena is a little spin-off in the Pedro series, more like a treat to the original game's players. In itself its just an infinitely replayable bite-sized version of MFP. And that's pretty much it!

It saddens me to say that while the idea is novel the execution of it leaves a bit to be desired, the main thing is with the levels themselves being so small and cramped to the point where the acrobatics from the game don't work nearly as well, most of the times it's cumbersome to get from a place to another because you're simply most likely to get shot anyways since wall jumping always leaves you vulnerable for a period of time, and since the enemies spawn infinitely and you get very limited heals, then most runs end off very early.

It's kind of grindy since you have to get tickets to unlock more levels and eventually even the newly added Rail Gun, but at the end of the day it's just more Pedro and since every run doesn't last too long then it isn't really more than a little obstacle in the way, last level is fun though.

MFP: My Friend Pedro, albeit a little in the shorter side, did bring me a smile and transported me back to an era where fully and mechanically solid video games could just be frequented as easily as loading into Newgrounds and clicking play. The game itself is a little bit like how a two-dimensional Max Payne video game could be, with time-stopping mechanics and a couple of acrobatics you can pull off to rack up your score and to play around the gunfights to kill gangsters before they can even think of shooting you, with a distinct enough arsenal that you unlock gradually, and some challenges to do as well.

It's a fun little time for an afternoon, and playing it in anticipation of the 2019 reimagining is funny because now I think that this game actually takes place after that considering how dark and gritty it is, and how the protagonist is bald as hell. Fun times.

Grand Theft Auto III is the one big step in the evolution of the GTA franchise, it is one that revolutionized the formula and cemented itself so much in the gaming space that afterwards every game wanted to be like Grand Theft Auto. After a series of top-down arcade-y crime simulators with very mixed reception and a null story comes a complete overhaul of everything that was known at the time; a vast and expansive 3D environment for the time you could do all sorts of things within, a completely voiced story of considerable length inspired by 90's crime drama films with actual characters in it, actual functional weapons that you can aim down with a new layer of stategy because of the added dimension, and just being able to drive through the living parody of New York City, filled with pedestrians and actual traffic to give it life would be just enough to blow someone's mind back in 2001. (Biggest selling point could probably be the fact that you can choose to be a psycho and rack up kills and explode cars like crazy as well.)

With the 3D revolution came a way more delectable way of progressing through the game, something that was kind of prototype'd in the last few games but was never really the focal point, so far to progress in the """story""" you had to rack up points by doing little missions in order to progress and eventually move zones. In this game the way of progressing is the missions, usually point A to point B stuff, with eliminating or escorting someone in between those but the idea is that the way to advance is simpler but highly appreciated, and even if this story is very simple and has not a lot of depth it seems to have worked for them to keep using the formula in this day and age. Also, for some reason GTA2's gang system is still in there somewhat, if you advance to a point in the story where Claude does something to piss off a gang they'll actually try to harm you when you go to zones populated with these, very subdued but noticeable where the idea came from.

So, the formula change is very nice but it's only until a couple hours in where you stop appreciating it and then start focusing on the worst aspects of the game, GTA3 is the very first 3D entry in the series, and thus the sloppiest at its job of being A Functional Video Game. For starters the mission for the majority are all Rockstar peeking over Sega's shoulder when they did Crazy Taxi, there's a buncha driving involved and sometimes you need to take a character somewhere, chase down somebody or drive to someplace really fast and none of this would really be a problem if the driving feeling wasn't so bad... Cars in this game feel like they're made of paper the way they are so light and can get tipped by absolutely anything and float everywhere even with the littlest of crashes, and they break like LEGO, getting set on fire just by crashing a couple of times or getting sprayed by an enemy. This shouldn't even be an issue but when the game is so reliant in the driving at a time limit or having to keep your car in a good state then its something thats kind of rage-inducing for the most part, it can be used to your advantage but it's generally very annoying for it to happen during the longest missions. I also had major problems with driving boats for some missions that require you to do so as they're the stiffest vehicle type and don't really move how you want them to, especially when the missions themselves require a certain point of precision thats just bothersome.

Because there's a lack of movement while you aim with any heavy weapon, and there's a severe lack of cover or even a cover system in the first place then most shootouts end up in everyone spraying at Claude at once and then him dying immediately after, the game is significantly harder just because of the unfair advantage of the AI aiming capabilities, so most combat in this game is done from a safe distance and it gets stale quick. And that's pretty much everything in GTA3, it's nice and cool to see everything new having played the 2D Universe entries but ultimately its a game that doesn't do much with its resources and usually opts for doing the same things over and over again, it gets a lot of merit for being the GTA game that changed everything but going back and playing it nowadays requires a lot of tweaking and patience to get a satisfactory experience out of it, and even then it doesn't really amp up and get better as you progress either.

Grand Theft Auto III is a game that has aged like fine milk in the desert of Sahara, and it really never got any better outside of revisiting the city in Liberty City Stories, which is a shame, I remember the game being more fun.

Persona is the first of the anthology series analogous to Shin Megami Tensei, and is probably the one to carry over most of the genes from its thematic predecessor (being Shin Megami Tensei if...), from the high school setting to the first person dungeon-crawling, it's an experience to be had since from here this little spin-off series have taken the original by storm and even though it's a series that often forgets its origins, elements that mark the difference from a common Megami Tensei game to a Persona game are seen very early on.

Persona as a basis has a very big focus on the characters and its story, and the story told with the ensemble cast of St. Hermelin is one highly inspired on paranormal investigation and mystery anime and manga from the 90's (The ones with the wacky dubs and that very distinct traditional artstyle you'd see on Twitter aesthetic accounts), this game is sort of like that, the mystical and abnormal events that occur are nothing short of bizarre and philosophical, yet also somewhat "edgier" and feverish for a JRPG of its time making Persona a title with a unique aesthetic to it and why it has become a cult classic among people who are big into the genre. (It also features a really well produced, immersive and extensive soundtrack that got shafted in its way to the PlayStation Portable, and we're lucky that there's a partial patch for it since this is the most accessible version for now, but please be in the lookout for whenever the de-localization of Revelations: Persona releases if you're planning to dig into this title anytime soon.)

I won't go into detail for the story since it's a bit all over the place, even if it ends up standing on its own quite nicely it feels like they tried to do too much, but it's forgiven just because of the really good mixing of people we have here, all of the main cast you can bring along are pretty nice and act accordingly to situations and every character seems to have that one thing to them and in their majority are well expanded upon, so good job for that one. Except for Brown, we don't like Brown.

Sadly though, every positive of this game kind of goes to the bin whenever the discussion about its gameplay takes place, it's not horribly bad but most of the times fights and the dungeon crawling can be a bore, it's outdated and slow as hell and the dungeons are just hallways, so in case you have the handy Fast Forward button close you're gonna have to engage slowly with the most shoehorned in grid system that had really no place in here at all, couple that with the fact that you have to grind for Persona Levels to make good use of your cards to fuse higher level and powerful Personas, yeah I don't know why they had to add another level count for how high you're actually allowed to fuse, and the fact that not everyone levels up accordingly so you're bound to have one teammate thats lower level than everyone else and makes the ability to actually negotiate with Demons impossible. So even if the game is super easy to go through (I never struggled with anything more than one-shot attacks, I was fine in money and levels and everything else) you're forced to eventually grind to get your Persona Level up and unlock their abilities faster. At least this is somewhat easy when you have the Auto option since you can just replay what you've done before, but this messed me up sometimes when against Demons who could reflect, and costed me a couple of hours of progress.

Feels like they also should've piped down when it came to the sheer amount of elements and ailments there are in this game, there are SO many of them that you can inflict or be inflicted upon besides the fact that you have actual, real guns to fire with and melee weapons. Makes figuring out weaknesses of bosses a real pain when you have to cycle through everything just to find the guy is weak to Earth damage or something and then you can't hit him because the only party member who has access to that is charmed and the grid doesn't let them. They really could've simplified it and I am horrified to actually know what they'll do whenever they eventually remake it.

All and all, can't blame people who couldn't get into it, but when you get on the groove of things and put up with its stupidities of yore, you have a very solid game, with great music and characters and a convincing enough story. Could definitely use a good face washing in this day and age.

(Didn't play Snow Queen Quest because after SEBEC route I felt like I already had my fill of this game, and don't get lied to whoever tells you that is essential, it's more of like a thing you can do that gets sorta referenced later on and nothing else.)

Pokémon Platinum is a title that resounds loudly when Pokémon discussion comes around, it is a game that has gotten through every stage of fanaticism, with it being the improved version of seemingly one of the worse received and sluggish titles from everyone having played this specific one in the their childhood years thus marking what a Pokémon game would be forever for them. It's truly a generational game that has inflicted in the life of many people to get into the franchise to stay or video games in general... Or so I've heard. People all around me always have considered Platinum to be between one of the best Pokémon, if not just Nintendo DS games of all time and of course that going into this I was a bit excited, maybe they were right all along and I've always adverted myself to the thought of it being that good ever since I first tried out at the ripe age of eight years old... And I simply couldn't feel more disappointed by the end result.

Pokémon Platinum Version is the next big step in the Pokémon series of games, we're talking generational leap from the Game Boy family of handheld consoles to the new and shining, 3D-capable double-screened for double action Nintendo DS, a marvelous invention when it came to the ergonomics of handheld gaming as a whole and a series of handhelds that Pokémon would pretty much see as a home for the next decade or so. With it came completely new graphics mixing 3D objects with the tile-based sprites we've seen before, dynamic day/night cycle due to the clock functionality built into the system and a whole new screen to menu your menus easier I guess, they really haven't found an actual good utility for this one yet so it plays more like just your average GBA game with better graphics and sound.

So, with the new capabilities of the hardware you would expect that they make good use of them and actually bring the experience to a new standard, maybe this new Sinnoh region is vast with never-seen before Pokémon coupled with classics from Generations I-III coming back, right??? The answer would be, kinda? Only one of those is really correct and none of it is really in a good way.

Platinum marks the first Pokémon game to be abnormally long compared to its predecessors, and very little of it is actually used in any sort of meaningful way that would excuse it being this long. The whole game took me 41 hours and with having done a lot of optional stuff, I didn't skip out on any battles nor did I spend time grinding, so I reckon it probably wasn't just me being slow but the amount of padding there is throughout the whole journey, with routes being extra long with trainers that have some killer (hard) teams with little to nearly no time to actually spend in the cities and towns you visit, in Emerald it felt like the location of certain places you needed to go to were in very remote areas but in Platinum it feels like everything is a remote area. It's long, drawn out and so boring because out of those hours spent going everywhere only like 10 of it are actual things of substance relating to the story with Team Galactic and Cyrus, and the story isn't that good to begin with, it has the bare minimum of actual nuance to it and by the end of it I just simply couldn't care no matter what they did, I much prefer how the story was lied down in Emerald with it being spread out through the entire game and the resolve of it tying into the ending and stuff like that.

It being so long could've been somewhat excused if the usage of Pokémon wasn't so badly spread throughout, there's barely any familiar Pokémon from past Generations that aren't just Geodude, Magikarp and Zubat and every single trainer uses the same pool of like 20 mons while Team Galactic goons use the same pool of like 4 (four) mons, by the end of the game I had to check my Pokédex to see if I was actually lacking gray matter in my brain to make me forget about it but in reality is that there isn't nearly as much interesting wild Pokémon, and most of the Pokémon that were interesting enough came from the Ace Trainers that you fight in said long routes. (One particularly interesting one was Tropius being used in one of the teams, Tropius is such an underrated and unknown Pokémon that I was legitimately surprised, but it was an NPC's team so it's not like I could do anything about it) And then when you look at the Pokémon that Generation IV added you notice how bad is the variety of types is and how some like fire type Pokémon are simply neglected if it isn't Chimchar, it's probably my least favorite Regional Dex so far as there's simply nothing to it.

By the end of it, with the help of hacked Rare Candies and abusing the hell out of a measly 1.5x fast forward button the geniuses over at MelonDS headquarters crafted for me, I challenged the Pokémon League with a team at around level 50-ish, I struggled, hard. I know I'm not the best at Pokémon battling in general and I think my methods are a bit meat-headed when it comes to strategy but I didn't think it was that bad, and as an amazing surprise, by the end of it... Turns out I was underleveled. So I had to spend the entire Elite Four battles playing like a little bitch reviving and healing and waiting for the numbers to give me their blessing and coincide perfectly so that my damn Whiscash would actually use Surf once and for all. The game not only is 35 hours long minimum but to add insult to injury is also grindy as hell if you actually wanna have a slight margin of error when it comes to beating it, it's no surprise that leveling up anything past level 35 via natural means in Pokémon sucks and it's a long process but damn, you need to be around 65 to actually comfortably get past all the Elite Four challenges and that's just so much adding onto the pile of miseries this game has held for me.

In general I don't think I've ever felt more bored playing a Pokémon game, or a RPG in my life. Nothing really shines through, the story and characters are nothing otherworldly as people like to think it is, it's slow and has no variety when it comes to its monsters in this monster catching video game, and it's sluggish and slow as all hell. But hey, bonus points for the music department because damn did they pop off for some tracks here and there.