I'm so bummed out by this. We wanted to love it so badly, but the writing was intolerable. The wife is mean, the husband is annoying, the book pelvic thrusts... that's the character dynamic and it doesn't get any deeper than that. You never know why they're getting divorced in the first place, you get "you're never home" "yeah well someone has to make money to pay for food" and some bickering about them both mutually failing to do chores. Their reconnecting feels so forced and unearned, they're so nasty to each other the whole time and in contrast, the bits we see of them talking about the divorce they seem pretty mature and reasonable about it. They really should have gotten the divorce, it would genuinely improve the game, they have no chemistry and it did not feel like they actually fixed things. The plot is just a mashup of Freaky Friday and Inside Out, while forgetting that those narratives actually have character development to earn their narrative beats.

So many of the gameplay gimmicks are just taking something from another older game and doing a lite version of it for about 10 minutes, getting you to just start to like it before taking it away and never returning to it. Don't get too attached, it'll be over in no time and then you'll do a different gimmick. You'll have Crash Bandicoot running towards the camera, Mario Sunshine fludd gameplay, Mario Galaxy gravity gimmicks, Diablo, a bunch of Ratchet and Clank... they actually do a solid job of mimicking these games, they clearly understand why they worked, but they never quite go the distance with these gimmicks and they're over just as you're trying to figure out how they'll escalate it and really hammer the concept home... no escalation, just an abrupt ending, like the story.

Lastly, I really did think the elephant scene was gonna be overblown. Nah, it's as unpleasant and mean-spirited as I've read prior. It'd be so easy to make it work with the narrative, too... have them say how they were senselessly hurting their child, or that they were being selfish and short-sighted... nope. They do it and never remark upon it again.

A truly Zappy game. Engage nails the Fire Emblem experience by putting me in scenarios that appear to be totally unwinnable until I stuff Yunaka in a bush to make her a god. Peak Fire Emblem is when my best plotted strategies completely fall apart due to bad luck and I'm forced to use obscure loopholes and idiotic bullshit to get myself out of a bind, and Engage gave me that in spades. While the writing is definitely more Saturday morning cartoon than Three Houses' enthralling shades of gray politics, it sold me early on that it knew exactly what it was doing by having the traditional Doomed Fire Emblem Parent ask Sigurd (the protagonist infamously killed in a fire before he can ever be a parent) for parenting advice. That said, my one gripe is that by being a self-referential celebration of the series, the world of Elyos is definitely far less fleshed out and nuanced feeling than most Fire Emblem worlds... but hey, it still manages to be more coherent than Fatesland, so I'll take it.

I think it's worth specifically pointing out that Super Mario Land 2 has an enemy kill counter, which may just be the weirdest part of what already is one of the weirdest Mario games ever made. Mario decides to buy a castle for some reason, and Wario is then invented specifically to steal it. You get eaten by a turtle to then get eaten by a whale, fight Jason from Friday the 13th alongside a bunch of yokai, and an entire set of levels is themed predominantly around ants. Super Mario Land 2 is bizarre and because of that I'll always have a soft spot for it. Just a nice easy breezy hour or two of platforming, what's not to love?

God DAMN that was one of the most abrupt and rushed endings I've ever seen in any media, it's practically on the level of the movie Blood Debts. Look, I know this is a game for kids, but you have the villain sitting there for 20 minutes typing away at a computer while you explain the entire plot of the game to the mayor... run up, kick him in the dick, and restrain him. Holy shit. Why are you letting the scrawny bastard scientist doing evil plans just sit there RIGHT NEXT TO YOU for eons while you explain how his plan is evil! He's actively doing his evil plan! You are right there! Stop him! Do something!

I actually really enjoyed the original, it's a simplistic game but I had fun with it and liked it for what it is. It cruised by on charm and decently clever Pokemon themed storytelling across various interesting setpieces, it was never anything IMPRESSIVE but it was solid comfort food. This genuinely starts out pretty solidly. The first case is a fun little caper and we were pretty sold on the game from that alone, exploring the city was fun and the interactions were pleasant and made the world feel like it had some life in it. We were excited to see what was in store! It then proceeds to fall into very poorly paced linear storytelling that clearly is intended to do nothing more than wrap up the first game and forcefully end this sub-series. God, the chapter focused on "hey, we're gonna tell you what's up with Dad and Pikachu" was so slow and painful to crawl through, the amount of times the game just screams to the characters "this is what happened" and Tim just sits there all "huh. That's weird." without piecing it together for like three hours, god damn it, that was absolutely miserable pacing. It's a shame because, again, this is nothing earth shattering but I found it fun and enjoyable the first go around, would've been easy to just churn a few of these out and I'd have been there for each one! And even here, there are plenty of isolated moments where I was having a good time! But no, let's just focus so much on a poor main plot, write worse, and pace it so painfully slowly that you have trouble holding your interest. What really kept me invested was the little sidequests. They're braindead easy, you just talk to a character, go find another character, and you either solve it there or return to the original character to solve it. There are no puzzles involved but it was fun to connect little story threads and soak in the atmosphere of the world. Look, it's the holiday season, some simplistic pleasant moments based purely on vibes are a good reprieve right now. But whenever the actual plot shows up? It just gets stupid, they'd consistently have potentially smart moments (Electrode is exploding? Get Wooper!) and every single time they'd undercut it by deciding that you aren't allowed to think or react, we're just gonna spell out the solution and have you do it. There are no fail-states. Just go back to the other room and talk to Wooper, you are literally not allowed to do anything else, that's it, why should you solve puzzles in the detective game about figuring out puzzles?

This is so clearly forcefully rushed out, and yet they've been working on it since around 2018. What happened here? This isn't a complicated or demanding game, nor is it long. It has Pokemon money behind it, did they give it nothing for funding? What happened! I'm really just sad about it, because I was genuinely looking forward to this since it was announced, and it severely underwhelmed. There will clearly never be another one because Detective Pikachu is no longer a character and the ending is so abrupt that it basically openly tells you that you will never see these characters again. Fuck you for caring - it's done, it's over, we're not revisiting this, we're the Pokemon company: we don't let projects complete themselves in a satisfying way.

Wonderfully self-aware, Village is a masterclass in balancing genuine scares with over the top absurdity. It consistently keeps things fresh by cycling through different horror lenses, and knows exactly when to veer into campy humor as a palate cleanser. Exploring the village was a joy for me, I loved that sense of discovery when I realized I could finally go somewhere and see what it hid. Ethan Winters is the biggest dork in video games and the hand scene after that one Dimitrescu encounter is the absolute peak of video game comedy. Looking forward to going on this rollercoaster ride many times to come, I adore this game.