I’ve always liked Super Meat Boy, but never loved it until recently. Being one of the first of the many “masocore” platformers, it’s always maintained relevance since the 2008 prototype. It doesn’t have any major gimmicks, and instead focuses on the games of old. You have a simple goal.

Dr Fetus has kidnapped Bandage Girl. Save Bandage Girl! It’s as simple as it gets. Well, what about the controls? You run, jump, and that’s it. So, where’s the fun? The controls. I firmly believe that Super Meat Boy has the best controls of any platformer released to date. Meat Boy is incredibly fast, while also having a floaty jump. Normally I’d say that this is bad for most games, but Super Meat Boy makes it work. All of the levels are designed with this high speed and floatiness in mind, stretching the controls to the furthest possibility. It’s most noticeable in the much later levels, but even then, this attention to detail is present in earlier levels. It makes the game feel truly limitless, by allowing you to speed through the levels, having an extremely high skill ceiling down to the very frame. It’s a bit unwieldy, but once you master it, it feels like you can do anything. And do everything you shall, because there's a catch. It’s called SUPER for a reason. Super Meat Boy is considered among the hardest platformers, and for good reason. It’s a relentlessly difficult game, doubly so for 100%, but that’s where the beauty of the game lies within. Sure, you may retry a dozen times just to unlock the Dark World level, but by all accounts, the game pushes you to that mastery by rewarding you for overcoming challenges. It wants you to succeed. It’s difficult, but fair, and one of the most rewarding to conquer. The levels all feel distinctive from one another, and each individual one teaches the player a different lesson throughout their short runtimes. The level progression of Super Meat Boy is nothing but incredible. It introduces a gimmick in one level, and each level builds upon it. And then suddenly, another gimmick pops up. And then another, and another, and another, until you’re working with all of the mechanics before you even know it. And then the Dark World version of the level shows how much better you can get with said mechanics. No gimmick feels underutilized, nor unfun and cheap, and no level feels forgettable at all. It emphasizes how strong the whole game’s design is. And if you really want a challenge, you can always go for the Bandages! The bandages of Super Meat Boy force you to master the level to even get a shot at them. Getting them is the easier part. Surviving is harder. If you so much as graze a saw with these babies, you lose the bandage, but succeed and the game proudly announces that you got the bandage. It's a feeling like no other. I had my shit absolutely rocked throughout the entirety of Super Meat Boy 100%. Getting the bandages really made me feel like I accomplished something, both in a metaphorical and literal sense, as unlocking bandages allows you to play as brand new characters.

Akin to The Binding of Isaac, all characters cover a specific niche. Meat Boy is your main man, with all of the levels designed for him first and foremost. The others give you entirely new platforming abilities, but typically have a stipulation, like for example, Commander Video. He gets a short float, but is pretty slow compared to Meat Boy. There's about 10 characters overall, a few of which require a secret code to be inputed. The cool thing about it is that most characters come from other indie games, making Super Meat Boy feel more like a video game which proves how far indie games have come. Even more interestingly, the console and PC versions of the game has different characters within them, each accommodating the difference in the Indie scene on PC and Consoles. The Warp Zones themselves have the same characters, so Commander Video from Bit.Trip, Jill from… Mighty Jill Off, Ogmo from Jumper, the titular character, Flywrench, and The Kid from I Wanna Be The Guy are all here and accounted for. Meanwhile, Gish, Tim, Guy Spelunky, Pink Knight, and The Ninja are console exclusive, while Headcrab, Alien Hominid, Josef, Naija, RunMan, Captain Viridian, and MR. MINECRAFT, are all exclusive to PC. In the end, it doesn't really matter which version you play, but it kind of sucks that we never got some Super Meat Boy Definitive Edition with all of the characters from both versions, but in general, the balance of characters is very solid. While The Kid is among the best characters in the game for the best double jump in the game, he is a lot slower and jumps lower than Meat Boy. And also, in order to even get him, you need to complete the 3 hardest levels in the game, back to back.

This is a perfect transition into talking about the bane of my existence. GOLDEN GOD. Is actually really fun! Super Meat Boy will take you about a weekend to complete, but GOLDEN GOD could take upwards of a month to achieve. I played on-and-off ad nauseam over the course of a year, amd Golden God completely transforms Super Meat Boy as a game. In order to achieve Golden God, you need to
- Clear all 7 Light Worlds, with an A+ Rank
- Clear all 7 Dark Worlds (aka X worlds), harder versions of the Light World, but no A+ ranks are needed
- Obtain all 100 Bandages
- Unlock every Character
- Clear all Warp Zones, sets of 3 bite sized levels with 3 lives per level
- Clear all Glitch levels (technically optional but adds to 100%)
So... yeah, any completionist certainly has their work cut out for them. The Dark Worlds alone nearly broke me, but damn did I pop off when I cleared every one of them. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6 are pretty manageable when it comes to their challenge, but I genuinely contemplated quitting the entire operation at World 4X. I was 100%ing each World at about 1 or 2 per day, but 4X threw off my flow by a lot. It took me about 3 days to fully beat it alone, and 5X only got more and more challenging. 5X is among the most challenging worlds in the entire game. Each level was a challenging contraption made with only the most difficult platforming setpieces in the entire game. But each time I died, the music always brought me coming back for more!

Super Meat Boy’s soundtrack is legendary, no doubt about it. Some of the most Newgrounds esque shit that you can imagine, but it’s some of that good shit nonetheless. Forest Funk was stuck in my head for months once I first conquered Super Meat Boy, Beatus Blues is an incredibly catchy tune. Can O’ Salt is a Minecraft song (described by one of my IRLs), Hell feels grand and imposing, and The Rapture feels like a goddamn military tune. The End is weirdly cinematic but also really good, and CHAPTER MOTHERFUCKING 7!

Chapter 7 is where my 100% streak really died off. I completed 5 levels a DAY at this point. There are no bandages, no warp zones, nothing. Just you, your controller, and Bandage Girl. Yeah, for Chapter 7 alone, you get to play as Bandage Girl. And these levels aren’t among the most difficult in the game, they ARE the most difficult in the game. Don’t let the happy music and overabundance of pink fool you. The Cotton Alley has some of the most pseudo-pixel perfect shit that you can imagine, but once again, it’s HARD but FAIR. I never wanted to ragequit because the game wasn’t unfair. It’s one of the hardest 2D platforming levels ever made, but one of the best. Every single piece of tech that the game taught you comes back for a spectacular finale, and a spectacular finale that is. This all culminates in the HARDEST level I’ve ever beaten. “The Four Letter Word” is IMPOSSIBLE. It’s 1 minute of straight pixel perfect platforming, easily the hardest level in the game, and it was 11 PM. I was in my room alone, with only the bright visuals of the Cotton Alley keeping me awake. But I was determined. And it took over a very long time, but after an hour, I saw Meat Boy. I was at the goal. I made the final jump, and dropped my controller. I was so satisfied, but I knew that was only half the battle. So, I got a good night’s rest, knowing that the following day would be hell.

Or was it? I powered through Cotton Alleys’ Dark World like it was nothing. I was Meat Boy. I felt the heaviness on my heart each time he died, but each victory kept me coming back for more and more. I crushed half of the levels like soda cans. But the remaining few pushed me past my breaking point. And with 4 levels to go, with just me and the game, I received... Golden God??? Welp, that was fun! Yeah, not sure why the achievement unlocked early, but I decided to leave it at that. But as the final completion reward, you unlock the Meat Ninja, who always runs and can teleport through sawblades after pressing X. You can’t use the leaderboards with him, but it’s a solid reward for 100%.

Super Meat Boy is a masterclass of game design, being one of the best platformers ever made. It has over 300 handcrafted levels, all of which test the player’s skills in the best way possible. It’s one of those pick up and play games, where you can play and clear a few levels, or complete the entire game in a sitting. It’s a fun game, to put it simply, and I can’t recommend it enough, now that the XBLA store is shutting down. Rest In Peace, but long live Steam. Welp. What is there to to cover now?

MYSELF. Yeah, I know this is pretty out of scope to cover in a controversial platforming series with a silly cube of meat, but I wanted to talk about another controversial platforming series with a Witch. A dark one, perhaps. Plus, it directly related to me and the near future of zeusdeegoose as a whole, and I’ve done so in the past with my Binding of Isaac reviews. So humor me for a bit, or, if you’ve had your fill, feel free to click off, and I wish you a good day. For many people within my Discord and other related spaces, they knew that I was re-reviewing The Legend of Dark Witch series in it’s entirety; keyword, was, and I have to upsettingly say that said review series is now canceled. Many people don’t know about it, and I think that’s a good thing. It was a series that I used to play in the past, and me and a few friends have heavily criticized over the past few years. We also have a bit of bad blood within said community itself. We were talking about it again and how the developer sucked, practically beating it down as a farce of a franchise, mostly leaving the community stuff out of it as a whole. And while I still agree those remarks about the developer, one discussion got taken pretty far as I took a jab at one of the wiki’s vandals, and that spiraled into one of the members of the server leaving. Initially, I thought it was going to be a lighthearted joke, but it was pretty inappropriate of me and for those involved, I do apologize. I won’t extrapolate anything further at the behest of the people in said chat, as the server that the discussions were held within was a private venue, and I don’t wish to share any links so said server.

Secondly, after said conversation, I realized something huge. I didn’t NEED to re-review the series. I mean, what would I get out of it? Initially, the thought going in was that this would re-introduce people into zeusdeegoose’s past by re-reviewing what got the ball rolling for the long ass review format and to bury the hatchet for the final time, but here’s the thing. I already kind of did that. I had already archived my Wiki reviews on Backloggd, and notwithstanding the occasional bias, my criticisms of each game have still held up. So the newer reviews would just be... lesser. I don’t have the energy nor the time to discuss every stage in Dark Witch 2 again when that would go against the overall message of the review series; that being that The Legend of Dark Witch is a dogshit series, aside from 1 and 2, and I don’t think it’s worth potentially burning some bridges just to prove my point. Me and other friends have already long since moved on, and potentially bringing a lolicon back into the spotlight simply isn’t worth the effort that’d I’d put into it.

Thirdly, I got burnt out. Ladies and Gentlemen, I LOVE tearing apart games I hate, believe me. Super Meat Boy Forever is one of my favorite reviews that I’ve ever made. But I can only say “This game fucking sucks” so many times before getting tired, folks. And that’s just the review side. Imagine playing 8 games back to back, 99% of which are mid, and the 1% are games that I’ve burnt myself out on and already played for hundreds of hours already (not joking, btw). I didn’t hate myself for booting up The Binding of Isaac, because The Binding of Isaac is an actually GOOD video game that I like. Wow! But whenever I boot up any Dark Witch game, I just feel disappointed.

Fourthly, who cares? I could make point after point about why NAN-A and The Legend of Dark Witch suck, but it’s fruitless. The Legend of Dark Witch is far past it’s eShop era where it was actually semi-popular. Hell, I’d bet now that the games don’t even average a sale a day, with the 3DS eShop now gone. Now, only a very small, inactive fanbase remains. Ever since me and others left, it’s a complete GHOST TOWN. Nobody cares about it anymore. I’ve barely heard anyone in my online sphere talk about it, and it remains as a niche franchise, like it should be. People got their balls blown off with 1 and 2, and then almost all of us collectively fucked off afterwards because the games SUCKED and it wasn’t active anymore. Now that the dust has settled, it’d only serve to piss people off who still give a damn about the series anymore. And trust me, they WOULD get pissed. I’ve seen it firsthand. And as funny as it would be, I don't want to act as if I'm some villain or something.

So... yeah. That’s all I got to say on the matter. Sorry to anyone who was expecting the review, and sorry to anyone who was involved in the first incident. It was a flawed idea from the start, and I really don’t have anyone to blame for the reviews except myself. Now, for real this time, I’m burying the hatchet. No more of my valuable time will be spent on a video game franchise made by some jizzer. I may edit this out sooner or later, because truth be told, it’s mostly irrelevant to a game series with a funny meat man, but I just needed to get my thoughts out, off of my chest, and announce that the series is canceled, as disappointing as it may be. Finally, I still have all of my Dark Witch reviews in a Google Doc, so if you'd like to see them, whether that be out of curiosity or otherwise, come on over. ;) Shoot me a DM to @zeusdeegoose, either on Twitter or Discord. They’ll remain forever unfinished, but hey, if people wanted to know how it would've played out, they can come and see. But now, with all that being said, lets just move on to greener fields because I don’t know what else to talk about.

Sooooo... it might be too early, but it may be time to start another review series. I’ve been playing a wider variety of games than ever before. Old games, new games, and even bear games. I’ve had good games and bad games, but it’s true love that we share! So I do have quite a few on my mind that I want to do. Blaster Master Zero, Super Monkey Ball, and Devil May Cry are all on my mind. So, I hope you’re looking out for those because they’re probably coming soon. Blaster Master Zero will probably be first up, as I’ve finished all of them, and then Super Monkey Ball and DMC will follow soon after. Again, there may or may not be a bit of a drought when it comes to reviews thanks to the aforementioned cancellation, so apologies. But, zeusdeegoose always comes back stronger than it was. So please tune in, when it’s ready of course. But in the meantime, I’m going back to the Basement so I can type more reviews. If you’ve read this far, I really appreciate your support, but please go outside. It’s almost Summer now, and the sun is good for your skin and health. Don’t be like me. Or hell, play Super Meat Boy! You wont regret it.

Just like Dreamland 2, the first time I fully beat this game was in 2022, directly after Dreamland 2 actually. I first played this years ago when I got an SNES classic, and thought it was cool. But I'll come out and say it, I never really digged the whole multiple bite-sized campaigns in one shtick. I had a greater appreciation for this game, when I played it in 2022, due to some of the series staples it added. But even then, it wasn't one of my favorite Kirby games. How do I feel about the game now though? Basically, the same tbh. Though, when compared to every Kirby game that released prior to this, I'd say it's the clear best.

The biggest improvement, and this would be a Kirby staple once Return to Dreamland released, is the expanded move set. No longer do you only have a single move per copy ability. Now, depending on your directional inputs on the d-pad, you can use several different moves per copy ability. This is a fantastic addition, and probably my favorite aspect about this game, as it makes beating each level more fun. Both of the fire abilities that were in Adventure, are now in one and the one that would turn you into a fireball is your dash attack. Spark, which was a staple in Adventure and Dreamland 2, isn't even in this game and was basically replaced by Plasma (which is all around better because of the electric shield you can get). The copy abilities in general, are really good in this game. You have your series staples like sword, hammer and all that. But then you have new ones like Bomb, Mirror and Yo-Yo which are all really awesome. Compared to prior games, the amount of copy abilities in this game is massive and I think it even rivals some of the modern games. You can also, at anytime, turn whatever copy ability you have into a little NPC helper. This was a fun addition and let's you play the game with two players? I actually never tried it out myself, but I assume you can do that and not have the multiplier be regulated to the minigames.

I am a Dreamland 3 fan, and while I prefer how that game looks visually, Superstar still looks really good for an SNES game. The game is full of that Kirby personality, whether it's with Kirby himself or the enemies he faces. The animations on some of the enemies in this game are just really expressive, and that includes the bosses as well. They're all very charming, especially the computer virus boss, that one is very witty. Some bosses are better than others (I really hate fatty whale) but most of them are pretty fun..especially with the expanded move set.

Now for the meat and potatoes of this game, the game modes. This is the part of the game I'm not much of a fan of. The game consists of 9 modes in all. 4 of them are normal Kirby campaigns, 3 of them are short minigames, 1 is a weird campaign that is more akin to a Metroid game and the last is a boss rush basically. They're all mostly fun in their own right, I just much prefer a more focused, full sized campaign since even with the longer modes here, they just don't stick in my mind as much. I'll delve into each mode though and explain my feelings on every one of them.

Megaton Punch is a short, button timing mini-game where you must see who creates the biggest crack on Popstar. It's very short and humorous to watch, but there's not much to it. Samurai Kirby is basically a remake of the one western minigame from Kirby's Adventure, and it's even more simple to play. You just press the A button faster than your opponent but I swear I just can't do it, even on the easiest difficulty. I always lose to Meta-Knight at the end. It's alright but I prefer Megaton Punch. The last mini-game is Gourmet Race. I won't get into the staple song just yet, but know it's my favorite of the three minigames because of its music and because its fun to race Dedede (and to see his reactions to you winning).

As for the normal campaigns, the first one is Spring Breeze. Not much to say here, it's the shortest of the four and is basically just a remake of Dreamland 1. It's actually even shorter than that game since it lacks the reused portions of levels before Dedede. Dedede is also super easy in this version compared to Dreamland 1. Dynablade is a little longer than Spring Breeze, but not by much. Also don't really have much to say here either, it's a pretty uneventful set of Kirby levels. Revenge of the Meta Knight is a lot longer than the previous two campaigns, or at least it felt like it was. It has Kirby trying to stop Meta Knight and his crew. The level takes place, mostly, in his ship as you destroy it. It also has the most dialogue in the game, because of his crew members, and it's very charming because of them. This felt like the most unique of the normal campaigns and it was definitely my favorite next to the final one. The final one, Milky Way Wishes, has Kirby trying to stop the sun and moon from fighting, which Kirby must make a wish using Nova (this cat face clock thing) because this fella Marx told him to. In the end of the adventure though, Marx dupes you and takes the wish for himself and you have to fight him. This one probably has the most stakes out of any campaign and Marx has a really cool design. I also really liked the space theme and I really really liked the copy ability mechanic. Basically, you can only get copy abilities from these pedestals hidden throughout the world, but once you do you keep the ability forever and can freely switch between any you've gathered at anytime. Thinking about it then, this is probably my favorite mode in the game..it would've been really cool to see this one fleshed out even more though since it still isn't very long.

As for the other two modes, The Great Cave Offensive is different from the other modes. It acts as sort of a metroidvania, where the goal is to explore each section of the game for treasure. You can backtrack freely which is unusual for a Kirby game and is why this one feels different from the other 4 campaigns. It's fun but getting every treasure can be a pain, and pretty much all of the bosses (which you would first see here) get reused in the later campaigns. The last mode, which you unlock from beating every other one, is the arena. This is the boss rush I mentioned earlier, and it's a staple in like all of the modern Kirby mainline games. I actually didn't beat it this time, I gave it like 10 go's, but I did beat it back in 2022. The copy ability you want to use is definitely hammer as it does the most damage. The arena is usually the hardest part of the modern Kirby games and that's no different here, as you have to defeat every boss in the game with only 5 Maxim tomatoes for all of them. It's not totally my thing but it's a decent inclusion nonetheless.

The OST is good, as most Kirby games are, and the standout of course is Gourmet Race. It's one of the most well known Kirby songs for a reason (besides becoming big because of Smash) and yeah it's pretty awesome. The rest of the OST is good too, but this was my favorite new song, as this game continues the trend of remixing a lot of older Kirby songs.

I'm not crazy about this game like some other Kirby fans are, due to the multiple campaigns, but I can't deny it added some great series staples like the expanded move sets and the arena. While not in my personal top 5, at this point in the series this is definitely the best Kirby game thus far. Fun time overall!

I have no interest in hunting and I do not find it fun. I'm not sure why I even own this game (I might have found it for like 1$ at value village?). This game is of a worse quality than Wii era shovelware but requires a 7.3GB data download in order to be playable. The gameplay consists of running through the most generic pre-made unreal engine terrain you have ever seen to shoot animals, and it controls like garbage. My first 30 seconds into the game I got softlocked because I got stuck in a crack between two rocks and the slope was too deep for my character to walk out of. I'd also like to give a special shout out to this games incredibly diverse character roster (why does it have a character roster??) that consists of 4 white men and 2 white women, all of whom definitely do not look like they'd have an unhealthy obsession with a certain yellow haired, orange faced, formerly presidential individual.

Mega man and bass is often described as a very difficult and unfair game, but that wasn't gonna stop an epic gamer like me from giving the game a try. Boi am i glad i gave this game a shot because for me, this is easily a top 5 mega man game.

You get to choose between 2 characters to play as which are of course Mega man and Bass. In my playtrough i decided to play as Bass.
Bass is really fricking fun to play as! He has a dash, a double jump and his base weapon has the abilty to fire rapidly in almost all directions. The weapons that Bass acquires throughout the game are all very fun. Copy vision, lighting bolt and spread drill are my favorite weapons.

Copy vision creates a clone of Bass fires for a few seconds and then disappears, and thats cool as fuck!

Lighting bolt summons a bunch of lightings that will inflict damage on everything on your screen.

Spread drill shoots a giants ass drill tha can transform into smaller drills.

You can also buy many upgrades by using bolts acquired during levels. These upgrades are very useful and some of them are definitely worth buying to give yourself an easier time, the one that i mostly used is the one that upgrades your base weapon which is very useful for both enemies and bosses.

I was a huge of fan of the levels in this game.
Every single level is just the right lenght and all of them are unique, challenging and very fun to go through.
My favorite levels are: Magic man's stage, cold man's stage and astro man's stage.

The bosses are hit or miss. Some bosses in the game are very solid but some bosses are straight up poo poo stinkers.
King, burner man, cold man, magic man and ground man? Very great bosses and my personal favorites of this game.
King's tank, atetemino, jet king robo and green devil? EW! DOO DOO! POO POO! STINKY BOSSES!

The graphics are very nice and colourful, like seriously every single stage looks really good in my eyes.

The music is pretty great. Some of my favorite tracks include: the robot museum, king stages, boss battle and astro man stage.

So yeah i really like this game! Wanted to make a short review during school since i was bored.
8.5/10

Nice little bite sized treat.
I'm on a mission to finish games that were too hard for me as a small childe.
Aladdin is a good ol' platformer with fluid animation and is (for the most part) faithful to the movie with regards to the movie and the soundtrack. It's not too challenging, it's short and very sweet.

They managed to capture the overall tone and vibe of the film very well and it's cool to hear the film's soundtrack with these SNES renditions.

Concluding a trilogy is a hard thing to do.
When the first two games (or any other media for that matter) are really good, fans tend to have very high expectations for the third game.
People like trilogies. People like a beginning, a middle and an end.

In Halo's case, this was never supposed to be the case. Halo 1 was supposed to be a one-and-done, but it got really popular, so Halo 2 became a thing. With Halo 2, development was troubled, and they couldn't finalize the ending, so it ended on a cliffhanger.
If Halo 2 had been finished, who knows what Halo 3 would've been like. Would Bungie have still stuck around or would they have moved on?

Well, the what if's don't really mean much anymore, considering we're now far removed from Halo 3's 2007 release.
So, did Bungie end things right? Did Halo 3 really finish the fight?

Well, you're reading to find out my opinions on this game, soooo.... I mean, the rating probably already gave you an insight into it, or maybe you just jumped until the end to read that last paragraph. I'm not judging, for the record. Can't blame you.
Let's start this review proper:

In terms of story, Halo 3 is much more simple than Halo 2, and maybe even simpler than Halo 1 in some aspects. Like I said earlier, Halo 2 was not supposed to have a cliffhanger, so Halo 3 is just focused on finishing what Halo 2 could not.
Even with it's simpler story, I found myself enjoying the resolutions to the plot threads seen before. It doesn't really disappoint, and offers enough satisfying moments to leave you fulfilled with the journey you embarked on during this trilogy.

The gameplay really makes up for it, as the level design kinda goes back to being more like Halo 1. I didn't like how Halo 1's level design felt empty, so you'd assume I'd feel similarly with Halo 3's.
Truth be told, no, I didn't really care about it much this time around. I think it's because when it did get more open, the game gives you a vehicle. And once again, the vehicles are fun to drive on.
A lot of epic moments in the campaign came from driving around and having your teammate blast at things. Like the big Scarab Tanks that appear a few times during the story.
While there's less missions here than Halo 2, no level feels shorter than another, and having that consistency really helps Halo 3's campaign feeling... well, consistent!
It did end up being shorter than the previous games, but I don't mind that much, because I'd rather have a short, but satisfying game, than a long and drawn-out one.

While you can't play as the Arbiter this time around, he does follow you through most of the missions, and we get something that we barely saw last time. A team-up between Master Chief and the Arbiter!
I just think they looked cool together, and I really liked their conversations!
The game also gives Cortana more attention here. Halo 2 really felt like it pushed her back a bit, to give the new plotlines more attention. This time around, we get to see Chief and Cortana interact more, and it's really good! Just like Halo 1, I really liked their chemistry, and I wonder how it's going to evolve in future games.
I do know the premises for 4, 5 and Infinite though, so I think I have an idea at how things will go, but I have to see their writing.

The graphics have seen a massive boost! We're on the Xbox 360 now, we're in HD territory, and while not everything from the game has hold up well, there are plenty of parts that have.
The variety of environments in Halo 3 really help!
I did play the game on my PC, and I was surprised that it was able to run! Not at a consistent 60FPS, but it was around 50 FPS, I think, so it wasn't too bad.

And the music, it's awesome! It manages to recapture a lot of the epicness seen in the last two titles, and even feels like it pays some homages to them, especially the first game.

Halo 3 is a really great game! I had a lot of fun with it. It may have a simple story, but the campaign is probably the best we've seen so far, and the pure adrenaline this game gave me was awesome!
It definitely feels like a hype game, but it's a really good hype game!

I finished the fight, Chief. I hope I made you proud.

He might just be the greatest Dave to ever do it. Dave the Diver is a game that succeeds in blending a very fun sea diving adventure with a cool restaurant simulator that, for better or worse, is constantly trying to expand on itself.

The gameplay mainly revolves around diving into the vast sea and gathering materials and ingredients during the day, and then using what you acquired to create dishes for your sushi bar which you operate during the night. This day/night loop hooked me from the very beginning and it stayed that way for a good chunk of my playtime. Exploring the ocean and discovering/catching all the aquatic life was very fun and you're given a lot of tools and upgrades to work with. The restaurant management section of the game starts out very slow but quickly picks up once you start building up your rating and more things are opened up to you. I honestly ended up enjoying it more than the diving section by the time I was done with the main story.

Speaking of the story, I ended up really liking that as well. It's silly, endearing, and pretty well-paced for the most part. I think what really makes it shine though are the characters. The main cast is really cool and each of them have their own little quirks that make them stand out. The way they interact with Dave, whether helping him out in some way or just simple banter, is really nice. I ended up liking a lot of these characters more than I originally assumed I would. Trust me when I tell you Bancho is the coolest character in the game.

The game is also really good-looking. The 2D-pixel art is really appealing to look at and the cutscenes are really over the top in the best way possible, they fit each character perfectly, and I rarely ever skipped them.

Remember when I said this game constantly tries to expand on itself for better or worse? Yeah, that's my main issue with it. This game constantly introduces new mechanics, features, minigames, etc.(especially in the 2nd half) in what I assume is to try to keep the gameplay loop fresh. While some of the things they introduced are nice, how they went about it and the sheer amount of stuff brought in is almost overwhelming. By the end of the game, a lot of it just felt like I was just doing busy work. Getting overloaded with a constant flow of new information...now I know how Jogo felt.

Despite the issues, I really enjoyed my time with Dave the Diver and I do recommend it. Not sure if I would call it a "cozy" game like a lot of other people do tho.

One of my favorite games that I never want to play again. When I originally played Breath of the Wild, it was a truly special experience. The sense of exploration and discovery was unlike any game I had played prior. That first blind playthrough was something special, which is a double-edged sword. I usually don't replay games so that isn't something that would really affect me but this game sticks in my mind. Breath of the Wild does not hold up on subsequent playthroughs because you can only play a game for the first time once. However, I believe there is more to how I feel beyond that.

I jumped into each DLC as they came out but never finished them. With each DLC that came out, I was having an increasingly less enjoyable time. Maybe if I played them from the beginning of a fresh save file, things may have been different. But then that leads to the first problem of not being able to play the game blind again. The DLC doesn't feel like it should be played from an existing file, but to enhance a new playthrough. But enough about the DLC itself, whenever I jumped back in, the experience felt hollow and the things to do were tedious. These were feelings that I never felt in my initial 100+ hour playthrough of the base game.

These were all feelings that I felt in Tears of the Kingdom and made me look back on how I actually feel about Breath of the Wild. I have around 50 hours in Tears of the Kingdom and this feeling of hollowness crept in far sooner than its prequel. After the honeymoon phase wore off, I just felt bored with it; copy-pasted activities, Ubisoft towers, and resource gathering. All of these things that I criticize in other games, but I didn't criticize in Breath of the Wild. It made me reflect on Breath of the Wild and wonder how would I feel if I played it for the first time now.

Would I have gushed about it as much as I did when it was new, I don't know. Maybe the hype of getting a new console, that at the time was being scalped to high hell, carried my enjoyment, again I don't know. Another thing that is worth noting, is that this is the first Zelda game I finished. I played many prior but this was the first one to get me to finish, why? Again, I don't know, my feelings are so cloudy on this title. All I know is that Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games that I never want to play again.

P.S. Weapon durability is fine, you're just too attached to some generic weapon that you'll replace in the next ten seconds.