It's sad, you can really tell this is a struggling, dying Telltale. It's genuinely a fun and interesting Batman story that goes in different directions than you'd expect... but it sure struggles to justify itself as being a game. The game elements are predominantly superfluous: choose dialogue options that don't change very much, lots of QTE segments, plenty of "hold the stick and Batman will slowly walk forwards" moments. Most of the major decisions don't feel major, don't have much of a lasting impact, and often I found the results were largely skewed pretty heavily to one side... kinda implies a majority of people agreed that many of them were just dumb options with how many showed percentages of 80 or more. Each chapter felt short and super linear (barely anything to interact with, minimal dialogue choices), it may be the shortest Telltale experience I've had.

All those gripes aside, I did enjoy most of the story and I was pretty satisfied with the ending I got. Flawed and threadbare as they could sometimes be, I sure do miss Telltale.

It just feels great to play, mechanically it's a fantastic model for 2D Metroid to follow and replaying it makes me extra excited for Dread. It's a shame that it's Metroid 2, though... an inherently repetitive entry in the series with its overall premise being "do the same 4 boss fights 40ish times", further hampered by the damage output of mostly everything being sorta absurdly high. Not sure what the point of energy tanks is when practically everything takes out several in one hit! Love the ending though, all the new stuff they added from Ridley to the Fusion lead-in is excellent. Ridley's just far and away the best fight in the game, which is funny considering he's originally not even supposed to be there.

Oof. I feel bad for Skully because it feels like actual effort was put into it, but unfortunately those efforts don't actually amount to anything. The cast is annoying, the story isn't good and feels unfinished, the platforming veers between too simplistic and too finnicky (at times even seeming broken, as certain invisible bits of geometry halt you or the mechanics simply don't work correctly). I wanted to root for it, but it was just overall pretty bad. Apparently only 5.8% of its xbox playerbase has even finished it... I can understand why.

I'll have to see how Hitman 3 compares when I'm done with it, but this is my favorite of the trilogy so far. A shame that Hawke's Bay is just a short prologue level rather than something a bit more elaborate when they already had the ICA facility built in for tutorial purposes... that said, every level in Hitman 2 is excellent. Even Hawke's Bay is very good for what it is, and the entire set of base game missions are all a ton of fun and the DLC expansion missions are extremely good too. Personally I don't think there's a single dud in this set of levels, and it's hard to pick a favorite. Maybe Miami or Colombia? I don't know if Mumbai is my favorite, but it does have my favorite mission story in the Kashmirian - there's something so special and satisfying about taking out your targets by making a rival hitman do all the dirty work. This game really just takes the foundation of its predecessor and runs with it, and it does that remarkably well.

Co-op is an absolute game changer for Pikmin 3, maybe the single best thing they could've added and frankly I'm surprised it wasn't in the original version. I do think it's the weakest of the three main Pikmin games, but I still love it quite a bit. The cast of characters is great and varied, I love their dynamic, but I do miss Olimar and it's a shame that he's primarily a macguffin rather than a character in this one. At least he's got plenty of data files and the new side missions. I think Pikmin 3 mainly suffers from being just a bit short... I was excited to see if the world would open up a bit more when we got blue Pikmin, but you get them so late that they're pretty much just the cleanup crew for a game that's rapidly approaching its conclusion. The final mission was also super tense and fun, so it's a shame that it's actually a normal timed scenario with a typical day-night cycle... really takes you out of the chase when nighttime hits and you just sorta abandon Olimar only to find that he's just miraculously fine the next day. Really should've put the Pikmin 2 cave mechanic in that last level to make it a one day event... maybe that was just too hard to manage for a solo player, requiring it to be done in one attempt.

On a side note, the side content is excellent. Bingo Battle, the mission mode, and the new Olimar storyline... it's amazing how much all of it adds to the overall package. Hell of a game, and to make it even better, the Piklopedia is back! The writing is always so charming and fun in Pikmin, so adding in more of it is absolutely what I wanted out of this port.

Might just have the strangest pacing I've ever seen in a video game. "Save the Elder! Defeat the Great Evil! ...go play minigames or mindlessly kill some random enemies, I dunno man. It's required content!" Imagine saving every sage in Ocarina of Time but then Zelda yells at you that you're not allowed to fight Ganondorf until you've played at least 6 combined hours of the shooting gallery and the chest minigame. Just absolutely bizarre, the only "compelling" content is the first two levels of every world and everything after is weird filler nonsense that would actually make sense to do if it happened before you already defeated the boss of the world, but it doesn't. Just a really weird game, at times I had fun but mostly it's just kinda badly designed and very clunky.

While there's definitely a valid debate to be had over Pikmin 1's static time limit and Pikmin 2's more relaxed approach, I personally prefer the time limit. It adds that extra weight and importance to your actions on a given day. Yeah, once you're familiar with the game you'll never really be at risk of running out of time ever again, but it's still an effective element and adds the fun layer of seeing how few days you need to escape. I'm still not entirely sure whether I prefer 1 or 2, but the added intensity to survival and the more focused design of each level are definitely points in favor for 1. Just an all around excellent and fun strategy game.