One of the more enjoyable pieces of Mario content the past decade.

While certainly not a perfect experience, much of the platforming can be rudimentary at times, many of the challenges become consistent and thus repetitive across the island, and islands only being able to load 1 to 2 Cat Shines at once is definitely a pain, the overall experience is a rather enjoyable one.

Its a much more cohesive adventure than Odyssey, Cat Shines feel more worthwhile to collect and feel like actual accomplishments, some of the platforming segments offered are still rather enjoyable, the music is pretty great overall, especially any of the Bowser themes, and there's some cute personality in all the cutscenes.

Fury Bowser is this game's main selling point, and it's both some of the game's highest points, but also some of its biggest disappointments. He never feels like he's fully utilized in the gameplay itself. He can take a while to reappear and his apperances can be so short lived, he can be easily warded off by collecting a single shine, and considering there's at least one shine that can only be collected by his Fury Beam, there will be plenty of times you nearly instantly dispatch Fury Bowser by just running over the the blocks before he spawns, having him blast them, and then collecting the shine and he fucks off, making him not really feel like much of a threat. Not to mention that the first three encounters with him will have him so easily dispatched its a little comical.

However, there will be the occasional, rare moment when he appears while you're in the middle of a long platforming segment, and the atmosphere of the sudden lightning storms, his fire beams firing off as you try your best to avoid them, the blocks falling from the sky, and the rush to get to the shine to get him off your back are some of the most enthralling moments in the game, I just wish they were more frequent. I do quite like that there's actual alterations to the platforming when Fury Bowser is at play though, with the falling spikes smashing into the floor and walls creating new platforms or ramps to move around with. Also the theme when he's at play is one of the best tracks in a Mario game. The final battle against Bowser in this game is also likely one of the best Bowser encounters in the entire franchise, which is an extra boost to it's pedigree.

Overall, Bowser's Fury is a very fun, if, flawed experience. Better than Odyssey by several magnitudes imho, but not really worth the price-tag if you've already played 3D World on Wii U, as someone who's played that game 4 times and isn't a huge fan of it, dropping 60 bucks isn't quite worth it for just Bowser's Fury, so I borrowed the game off of a friend for this playthrough.

Absolute fucking masterpiece of a video game. Immaculately designed from front to back, an absolute blast that rewards your skill constantly, incredible spritework, a great soundtrack, ingenious level design, filled to the brim with soul and little details, and end of level rushes that wrap everything into a neat little package, this is truly one of, if not the best 2D platformer to come out of the Mario franchise.

This game is so good its hard to put into words, I'll probably revisit this review someday.

An immensely unique, stylish, and fun retro FPS that constantly throws surprises and fun gameplay twists back to back, never stopping the entire game. The gameplay loop manages to balance handling specific enemies with specific enemies in a way that manages to create a really satisfying and fun gameplay loop, the minigames frequently shaking up the gameplay in a really good way, and frankly some incredible boss fights for an FPS, every one being an elaborate, comedic multi-phased bout interjecting usages of all your weapon types, interesting gimmicks and minigames in really fun ways. Having a Tony Hawk minigame in your final encounter but not having it break the pace or be disruptive is how you know you're cracked

Feels great to have finally patched this one bit of the Mario RPG experience I'd been missing out on out for good. SMRPG is just a blast of a time, a fun, joyous experience from an era long gone, filled to the brim with soul and personality, perfectly translating Mario's formula into a JRPG experience.

Gameplay is frankly very simple, but set the foundations for every Mario RPG to come (7 story macguffins, timed hits, subverting the usual story tropes, witty writing, etc), with its timed hit system and each characters unique special moves allowing for fun gameplay oppotunities in the early-mid game.

This game also creates one of the most interesting iterations of Mario's world, featuring a lot of characters and locations that are never seen outside of this game, giving it a mystique and unique flair that no other Mario game can provide. The story itself isn't anything fantastic, but the characters you meet along the way, the comedic, irreverent writing, and the crazy happenstances from moment to moment are what carry the experience. Just seeing what silly shit happens next is enough to bring you from point to point in the game.

Despite all the fun one can have with this game, it does have a pretty fatal flaw with its combat, in that after a certain point, the regular, normal timed hits just become the optimal method of combat, with your special moves either being flat out weaker than your normal timed hits. Several character's options are just very limited overall, with only a few notable attacks for each character that just gain stronger iterations every level up. The normal timed hits becoming just, optimal in every situation just boils down most enemy encounters to spamming the basic attack and healing when necessary, which sucks like half the fun out of most battles and drags a pretty fun system down otherwise. Peach also completely breaks this game's difficulty, as if you outfit her with the Lazy Shell Armor, she becomes a functionally unkillable healing juggernaut that can only be slightly scratched by the superboss and final boss of the game, turning any encounter into a non-issue and generally making the game a complete cakewalk. Add in the occasionally obnoxious platforming bit due to depth perception being a difficulty in an isometric SNES game, and that holds this game back from being one of Mario's best RPGs. Despite it all though, SMRPG is still a total blast even to this day, and can still be enjoyed pretty easily. Just bring a guide along, it'll make things a bit easier, and the gamefaqs guides for this game are excellent.

One of the best NES games, a really tightly, expertly designed platformer that expects a lot of the player, but with a short runtime, a super detailed and secret filled campaign, simple but smooth movement with a surprisingly deep momentum & star mechanic, genuinely ground-breaking and limit-pushing visuals and effects for the NES, and one of the best soundtracks on NES, Gimmick is a masterpiece by NES standards.

Some of its secret items require some absolutely fucking batshit insane jumps though, like holy shit lmao

This is the best Mario game in around a decade.

This game is honestly a miracle on all accounts. The fact it even happened is insane, considering the first M+R game in of itself was already a miracle, but I can honestly say this duology is the most inspired, interesting, and fun content to come out of the Mario series post 2010.

Sparks of Hope is one of those sequels that just absolutely beats the shit out of the original in every single way. Gameplay is improved dramatically, with combat and movement across the map generally feeling much smoother and much less restrictive, combat options have been expanded massively, and more interesting, fun playable characters have been added, expanding the gameplay and its options massively. While we lost Rabbid Yoshi and Yoshi, I'll be honest, I don't really care, as Edge, Bowser, and Rabbid Rosalina are just much more interesting additions with playstyles I find much more fun overall.

The game removes the weapon upgrade system from the original, to this game's massive benefit imho. The weapon upgrading system always felt like such a tacked on addition to combat that never really felt satisfying to upgrade. It's been completely replaced with the Sparks, which are are a much, much better system in my eyes. Offering you a massive collection of different attacks, buffs, enhancements, techniques and skills to allow you to outfit your characters in different ways and enhance specific strategies even further, each spark having their own levels to upgrae to increase their capabilities with the Star Bits you're rewarded with at the end of side quests and major battle encounters. I always felt like I was progressing in one way or another, and combining different Spark powers with my character's loadouts to accomplish specific strategies was always cathartic.

I initially thought Sparks of Hope was much easier than Kingdom Battle, but I came to realize it likely isn't, its just that the degree to which your options have been opened and enhanced allows you to utilize strategy in so many more ways that you are always, always prepared for a battle scenario and can always build a perfect team comp for you to handle anything in your way. I'd always get a strong sense of satisfaction when a really out there strategy would work completely and let me clinch a win or when I'd get a perfectly executed plan to work and wipe out the entire force of enemies in one turn, or when I'd perfectly chain all my character's movement to reach the goal while only having to kill a minimum amount of enemies.

The simple act of playing Sparks of Hope was just a blast for me, it not only beats the shit out of the original, it genuinely made me want to 100% it, something I never, ever do with RPGs. I went for full quest completion, finishing every Spark, Side Quest, Hidden Quest, and battle gates, upgrading every single Spark to max level, and finding every lore document I could find. The game genuinely gripped me.

To move onto its other aspects however, its story isn't anything to write home about, much like Kingdom Battle. The plot is relatively standard and there aren't going to be any crazy revelations. The writing and character interactions are all very fun though, and feel like they fit right in with the soulful 2000s Mario that made me fall in love with the series. The background elements, the backstories for the characters, and the discussions you have with the various Rabbids (who talk in full sentences now, which is always a little jarring lol) all have this specific spice and personality that not only feels adjacent with the Rabbids, but also feels like it could fit right in line with some of the dialogue you'd find in Mario & Luigi or early Paper Mario.

Speaking of soul, every drop of animation within this game is pure quality. Every cutscene, background detail, every bit of this game is beautifully and stylishly animated with this squashy and stretchy style that's just an absolute joy to watch in movement. It imbues this game with incredible fluidity and personality that I can't get enough of. The soundtrack is also rather decent, nothing I'd listen to on my own, but all befitting of the game itself.

I've only really got a few small gripes. Performance is generally solid through most of the game, though do expect semi-frequent drops in the overworld when solving puzzles, as for some reason, specific gates have this effect for fading away when the puzzle is solved that completely makes the game shit itself consistently, every single time. I have dozens upon dozens of clips of this happening, and it can last anywhere from 5-30 seconds, making it very distracting. Performance, aside from this one baffling instance, is otherwise solid, only really slowing down if there's lots of particle effects onscreen or a bunch of enemies being hit at once. Occasionally in battle, the larger enemies that attack via melee attacks can be frozen in place for 5-20 seconds at a time for various reasons, either having trouble locking onto you or if you have a damage reflection spark equipped, they can end up waiting in front of you for seconds at a time before it registers they should attack you.

The game's side quests, while fun, do definitely get somewhat repetitive near the end, as many side-quest tropes are repeated throughout the different planets. Wandering enemies in the overworld ultimately don't have much purpose to be fought outside of the sidequests for killing 3 of them, as they dont offer much EXP or rewards, and are ultimately a nuisance after you defeat those 3.

This one complaint may just be an issue of me having gone for 100%, but the game itself also definitely feels like it drags on a bit in the 4th planet a lot, and a little bit in the 5th, as at that point I definitely just wanted to continue on.

Those issues aside however, this is a genuinely incredible game, one of the best titles release in 2022, and easily one of the best Mario games in a decade.

A very strange, interesting little game. In a rare statement from me for 2000s era Mario games, I wouldn't say Wario World is very good by most metrics, its a very flawed, fiddly, and occasionally frustrating game, however, this game also just shits soul constantly. It presents itself and what it is with this undeniable, braggadocios swagger that's rare to see in games that's absolutely not present in Mario games nowadays. So assured in what it is, stuffed to the brim with personality, soul, and a fucking whacky asthetic with a godlike OST to boot, this game is just infectious and puts a huge smile on your face all the way through, it truly does carry the experience. Add onto that it's interesting approach to level design, focusing on smaller, but incredibly compact and content stuffed levels, and this feels like a game that I should absolutely adore front to back.

However, it does have some abundant flaws. The game's controls are extremely loose and slippery, and the physicis system is frankly extremely wonky, and the game surprisingly expects a lot of precision platforming in tandem with its poor physics from you, with some of the things the game asks of you in later levels being frankly kind of ridiculous. The combat gets pretty monotonous and tedious throughout the game, with there being little variation in what you do and the enemies not really shaking things up with interesting mechanics until much later on, the main gameplay loop can get relatively tedious.

The smaller, content packed levels are initially pretty fun to traverse through, but frankly I think they're a little TOO overstuffed. There's only around 8 full levels in this game, and each one can take anywhere from 20-40 minutes (or longer!) to 100% complete, which is just frankly absurd. I enjoy levels that are highly compact and reward exploration, but this game kinda overdoes it at points and occasionally containts frustrating segments to navigate and redo. There's much more I could talk about, like how obnoxious some of the bottomless pit recovery minigames are or how some level gimmicks are just unfun, but I've gone on long enough.

While this is definitely one of the rare 2000s Mario games I'd actually consider sort of a dud, and is certainly a disappointment considering Wario's godlike run of games otherwise, I still generally enjoyed my time with it despite its flaws, and would certainly play it over a majority of Mario games released post 2010.

This game is complete and utter fucking nonsense. Its just chaos from front to fucking back. Despite that it's one of the best Touhou platformer fangames out there. Immaculately smooth and satisfying controls, legit gorgeous spritework for what is effectively a game based on old japanese messageboard shitposts that none of us will ever understand due to the memes being a decade displaced from now, but them still being funny due to the sheer absurdity/hilarity of the sprites themselves. Or the incredible soundtrack and pretty well designed levels and enemy encounters. Everything about this goofy ass game that probably shouldn't click melds together perfectly into a genuinely really good 2D action game. This is one of the best Mega Man X / Mega Man Zero games out there.

Combat was really fun, I found myself really enjoying the combat loop and options for experimentation as time went on. It’s not the deepest system I’ve ever played but it was very cathartic, and the different ways different attacks and weapons interacted with the enemies allowed for some fun movement and gameplay, the gunplay also felt pretty good. It’s only about 12ish hours long too so it won’t overstay its welcome either.

If I had to make any complaints with it: Getting upgrades is a bit slow at times and unless you’re doing a lot of exploring you probably won’t make much progress, which is a little annoying cause the combat and different moves you can unlock and integrate are some of the most fun from the game.

you aren’t playing this game for its story or writing either. The storyline only gets all that interesting at the very end when shit goes off the rails but otherwise there’s not much of interest imho. Some characters (mainly early on) are also sorta annoying.

The aesthetic and world are all super interesting though. The macabre grotesque western art direction is really cool and realized pretty well imho. While there’s a lot of somewhat generic swamps or deserts, that’s somewhat expected of a western archetype and the monster designs and vampiric infection across the lands is just a damn cool aesthetic.

Overall, it’s a great time imho!