This is a perfectly acceptable point and click adventure game. A little too much backtracking and towards the end the puzzles start asking a bit too much out of you, but despite the gameplay and writing hurdles this manages to be entertaining, probably also because of how short it is. I mean it, the game can't wait to end, one second you're doing normal investigation stuff and suddenly you're thrown into the climax, then the ending happens and it kinda feels like the writer got a little bored and just put in the bare minimum

This is a game that I played only because it was given away for free on Steam at some point, and I guess I didn't mind spending the 0 money that was required for me to play it. Check it out if you already have it and you like point and click adventure games I guess.

On a final note, the sheriff character's voice constantly sounded familiar to me but I couldn't put my finger on who the VA was. I checked the credits specifically for this, and he was played by Mike Pollock, who voices Dr Eggman. I guess there's my reason to remember this game for more than a day.

Really fun and unique platformer, I wasn't expecting to like this game as much as I did considering it's from WayForward, a developer I'm usually not particularly fond of. This is one of those games where the gimmick (changing gravity) is the entire point of it, and it is a gimmick that is used to great effect, they really go far and beyond with the usage of it. After a while it becomes second nature to go through a level upside down which I consider really impressive considering how disorienting it could've been. Only two problems I had are some occasionally sloppy level design and the really short length, even considering that this is a Game Boy Color game.

It may feel more like a proof of concept of a great game than a great game in itself, but you can't go wrong with spending 30-40 minutes with this game.

Also I didn't know TDK used to publish games for a bit, I just remember seeing their logo because my dad bought tons of TDK blank VHS tapes. The things you learn by playing forgotten kids games from 20 years ago

This is Exhibit A for games that get completely bailed by their charm and uniqueness, the gameplay itself here is fairly basic (understandable since it's a launch title and it was meant to show the capabilities of the Gamecube more than anything), but it manages to be pretty memorable and even mostly well paced thanks to its short length, the constant barrage of different little scenarios and just how different and wild it all feels.

Everyone has played this game but if you haven't, this is very well worth the 4 or so hours it takes to beat. Just beware of the final act, which is made of really boring backtracking through the by then mostly empty mansion. At least the final boss is pretty cool.

Also this game might have one of my favourite credits themes in any game, I don't know what it is but it's so catchy

I'm very conflicted on Luigi's Mansion 2. It is a general improvement on everything the first game did, but it also has a ton more useless backtracking which I thought even the first game had too much of. Combine that with the fact that the 3DS wasn't the best console to put this sort of game on and you get kind of a mixed bag.

All in all though I think I prefer this one over the first one, mainly because it's a lot more interesting to play and even explore half the time. Too bad that a lot of the charm of the first one is gone but it was inevitable since Luigi's Mansion is now an IP and not just a one-off game. Either way I commend the developer for trying to do something different with the idea and expand on it, even though it not always works.

I have to say though, why was there no rank here? I get that money has another purpose in theory, but it would've been nice to keep that in to give you an excuse to still pick up the money even after you completely upgrade. Can't have my cake and eat it too I guess.

Next Level Games takes another crack at the Luigi's Mansion series, with mostly successful results. The pacing is greatly improved over 2, the game generally doesn't overstay its welcome and it's constantly throwing different things at you (the 17 floors/levels are all wildly different in theme and all have something worth remembering them for, making it more similar to the first one in this regard).

The inclusion of Gooigi was great as it allowed for really interesting puzzles and even a couple of really good bosses, the second to last one being my personal favourite. Having to manage both Luigis at the same time is something the game does fairly often and it's always clever.

Clever is a good way to describe the entire game, as everything here has a very specific purpose and there's very little in terms of filler or padding. Really the only issues I have with the game are that there's things I wish it did, like having a bit more backtracking (considering how interesting every level this time around I'm surprised it only happens around 3-4 times) and generally the game not having a lot of unlockables, meaning that unless you're going for 100% there's not much reason to explore this game. Which is a shame as this is one of those games where it's really fun to interact with everything and see every nook and cranny of every room.

Also kudos to the developers for managing to make a game this good looking on Switch while also having a physics engine running in the background, which I thought really enhanced the game. It's just really satisfying to vacuum objects and throwing stuff at stuff, I could do that for hours.

And ranks are back! They're not as interesting as they were in the first one but I'll let that slide. All in all, this game is very much a worthwhile experience for anybody who is looking for a unique game to play. Very interested to see Next Level Games do more with the series in the future, which I imagine will happen eventually

This is a game that barely runs without blowing up your hardware, where the gameplay is completely broken and fairly simple to begin with, glitches everywhere, obviously rushed to the market, I could go on forever.

But it's so fun. The writing is interesting and entertaining, the reaction to your choices is great (you can play this game 5 times and still discover new things) and at least the game is broken regardless of what class you choose, so it is varied in its simplicity at least.

Very much recommended, just don't play it on higher than Normal

Remember when Ubisoft made games that were meant for entertainment instead of tricking people into "engaging" with their products? I do at least.

This is one of those rare games where everything just clicks into place, the platforming is great, the puzzles are good, the combat itself serves its purpose fine (and I remember it being way worse when I first played it around a decade ago). All of this is kept together by some really good pacing, the designers knew just when to ramp up the action and when to make things calmer, how many times in a row they should use a specific obstacle/mechanic before it got stale, you really can't ask much more out of the game.

What you could ask for though would be a little less waves of enemies at times, half of the encounters seem to go just a wave too long, it doesn't even serve much of a purpose since you can usually heal during the time it takes for the enemies to spawn again. A better camera would've been fine as well, a few times it can be difficult to figure out where your next jumping point is.

These issues though are greatly outweighed by the pros, plus a number of really good decisions on smaller things (the time rewind mechanic is basically iconic, the way the game presents itself is also really original to this day).

If you haven't played this game absolutely do so, it might seem very quaint at first since it introduces a lot of things that most action games made afterwards took, but you'll realize that very few if any of them execute these concepts with such efficiency.

Bloodborne was a Bloodbore.

Not really, I just wanted to make the dumb joke. What the game was though was underwhelming. You have your typical staples of the Souls series: the checkpoints, the oppressive atmosphere, the simplistic combat, the awful camera, you know, the usual. It all feels very been there done that.

The game constantly feels like it's missing that something else to really make it stand out, there's attempts to make the combat system more interesting but a lot of that came at the cost of removing any variety that the previous games, while not great themselves, at least had. Outside of very specific parts, a lot of this is a repetitive game of guessing which elevator will bring you to the boss fight the quickest, running away from the very slow enemies, and engaging with the next mediocre boss fight.

There's more I could say perhaps, but this is a game that really left me with not much to think about. A couple of interesting layouts, a couple of interesting moments, a few interesting-looking locations, but all in all this is just kind of a mediocre action game in a series that really needs some kind of new tricks.

Or at least a game that isn't about humans getting corrupted and transforming into feral creatures, I'd even take that

LA Noire is a game that I really hoped would be more interesting than it ended up being. It is entertaining enough, it has that typical Rockstar charm (and Rockstar's tendency to burn money on the screen for the most minute things) but it really feels like a missed opportunity.

The game takes place immediately after WW2, which is a great setting, but it feels like the devs were so enamoured with it that they forgot to put any substance in any part of the game.

The gameplay itself is so simplistic and scripted that it may as well not even be there, the investigation segments are really basic and the interrogations are sort of interesting but really badly handled (and it never matters how well you do in any of them). Same can be said for the open world, which was a complete waste of money and time to even have, it looks great but it serves so little purpose that I ended up just skipping the car rides every time.

So all we're really left with is the story, but I felt like it was paced all wrong. The game introduces its characters in the first hour, then everything stops for a solid 10 hours, and at the very last couple hours a story starts to materialize. And even then you're not given much to care for considering that by then the game is scrambling to get some kind of structure back, but it all feels very hollow, especially the very anti-climactic ending.

What I will say about the game though is that the creators really cared for what they were making, and it shows on every aspect of it. Too bad that it didn't really translate to a compelling experience.

After the major success of Sands of Time, there were many potential directions to take the new Prince of Persia series in. Maybe something that ironed out some of the issues, maybe make it a bit deeper, maybe go in a new direction. So the obvious next step was Godsmack.

Not that I mind, I think it's fucking awesome. It creates a really bad whiplash effect if you play SoT before this but I find that it works fine for what it's going for. It's not just a change in art direction though: now the game takes place in an interconnected world instead of a typical linear game, and there's much more of an emphasis on combat, which has been reworked.

The problem is that because of this the fantastic sense of pacing and escalation of the previous game is completely gone, since you're constantly going back and forth through the map. Since this isn't a metroidvania or anything, but a completely linear experience, that means tons of backtracking, tons of seeing the same few sections (I counted, there's a few that you'll have to see about 5 times), and generally a lot more repetition, as the game starts wearing itself thin around the end.

What about that reworked combat? Well, there's more going on technically. But with that added depth I don't believe much was actually gained, as the combat itself remains on that level of "fine" that SoT was on, but now there's a lot more of it. I even skipped a bunch of encounters towards the end because I got quite tired of fighting the same enemies for the 423rd time.

But the major sin of this game is how unpolished it is. Glitches everywhere, in combat especially, music that at times doesn't seem to know if it should play or not, sometimes doesn't even know what track it should even play, it's a mess. There's a specific enemy that I was supposed to attack while wallrunning but a combination of the awful camera angle, the awful hitbox and the game not registering my attack annoyed me so much that I just used a friend's save. I never do this for games, but I did it for this one.

Warrior Within is ultimately a good game (the platforming is as good if not better than Sands of Time, sans some really badly thought out moments, and in general the gameplay beats and controls are still there) but it left me a bit disappointed when it was all said and done. Completely opposite to Sands of Time, which did the absolute best with what it presented, this feels like a game that was rushed to market and did what it could while also trying to introduce new ideas and improve the formula. Worth playing, but be prepared to ask "what was that?" about once every half hour.

You ever wondered about whether there was a game that used every single feature of the Wii U? No? Well ok then.

This is entirely a puzzle game that will ask you to change your gaze between the Wii U gamepad and the TV constantly, to mostly decent effect. The designers were smart in making this an entirely non-action affair as it would've been very messy, but considering the relaxed pace of the game checking the gamepad to fix some settings and "testing" them on the field actually is very natural.

Another clever thing is how the gamepad is used to simulate being in an actual spaceship, with its own OS and interface. There was clearly tons of attention to detail put into the "immersive" aspect of the game, which also continues in its storytelling. While light, it actually is fairly interesting, and any piece of media that starts with a satirical fake ad is always awesome in my book.

What isn't so awesome is this game after all the luster wears off. After a while there's a sense of repetition that starts setting in, because while the obstacles to overcome technically change fairly frequently, all you're doing still boils down to checking your current stats, tuning them for the current situation, and proceeding if you tuned the ship correctly. This is a game that actually gets easier the more you play it, because there's no real curveball thrown at the player after the first 30 minutes.

When it comes down to it, Affordable Space Adventures is an interesting puzzle game that is solid enough. If you're still interested in the Wii U and its gimmicks this game is very much recommended, as it's one of the only products of its kind to use literally everything from the touchscreen, to the double screen aspect, to even Miiverse. I just wish this game had more meat and less potatoes, to make a cringey food analogy.

Nights into Dreams is a game that is hard to categorize, and a game that I'm sure was a nightmare to market (hence it completely bombing everywhere).

Despite it not really controlling like one, the game functions very similarly to a current 3D Sonic game: you want to get the most points possible and score the best rank, by doing combos or chain actions and what have you.

The difference is though that you're not actually supposed to finish stages in the quickest possible way; the timer the game gives you is actually the time you have to go around the stage over and over and score the most points you can before getting out and moving on to the next segment of the level. This creates a great risk vs reward situation at times where you have to make a very quick decision on whether you want to make just another trip before leaving or if you don't think those 20 seconds or less are enough.

When you realize this, you start understanding the entire flow of the game, the level design starts looking better and better, and the frantic pace of the game and initial sensory overload on the visuals becomes second nature; in general, everything starts to click. This will only happen if you do want to replay this game multiple times, which is another hard sell about this game: if you want to just get it over with once, it will be done in less than 2 hours and you won't really get much out of the experience.

Having said that though, I really wouldn't have minded one more stage per character, because as it is the game only has 7 of them, one of which is repeated twice. They're all great and very well designed mind you, but they go from training wheels to "possible game over" really quickly.

If you're into arcadey games that are meant to be replayed over and over, you can't go wrong with Nights into Dreams. It might take a bit to get used to its unique systems and controls (even the whole aesthetics of it are probably an acquired taste), but if given the time, there's a great game worth discovering and rediscovering here.

Against all odds and perhaps common sense, Sonic Team decides to give the Nights series a second go, a solid 12 years after the original game. A lot has changed in terms of consumer expectations in that length of time, and a lot has changed in SEGA/Sonic Team themselves, which makes this a very interesting sequel if nothing else.

Something that changed and is readily noticeable, the game has a lot more story this time around. There's a lot of it, it's pretty boring, it's fine enough for kids. This should sound familiar, because that's the same situation for the studio's 3D Sonic games. I understand times changing and all, but I feel like giving detailed lore and explanations to the game's world loses part of the charm of the original, where you don't really know what you're even looking at most of the time.

Another concession they had to make was making the game longer, and longer it is. The original game will take less than 2 hours, this one will take... about 3 of actual gameplay. Not sure it was really worth it either, since a lot of this extra content is basically filler.

Some of it is neat, like the levels where you have to make the highest link combo possible to get a good rank, but a bunch of this is pretty worthless. Harder versions of boss fights, really bad 3d platforming sections (which again, seems very counterproductive considering what the appeal of the game is) and other such sections that seem to exist only to pad things out, while hurting replayability.

The "main" levels themselves are a bit different now: instead of trying to make the most points within the time limit, now you'll have to chase a bird who has a key, and getting that key within the first go around of a level will mean getting a very good rank. The ranking in this game now is very geared towards the time taken to complete any given level, which is probably another concession to make the game more appealing to most people, but a lot of the uniqueness and the addictive flow is lost from the original because of this approach. Doing combos and getting points still matters to an extent if you want that A rank, but the game is so geared towards getting a good time that most players will probably not bother with the minutiae.

Sadly Journey of Dreams is a lesser version of Nights into Dreams in pretty much every way. It's a charming game, and it is fun still about half of the time, but it can't really get anything going because there's too much going on in its very short timeframe. Ironically, despite changing series, this game falls into the same trappings of a lot of Sonic Team games from this time period. It's a shame it wasn't better, but I am glad they made another attempt at a Nights game. Now I'll wait another 15 years before they try it again again.

It's another year and it's another Prince of Persia game. This is now a mainstream IP which means that Ubisoft has expectations to meet with it, did they reach them? Since you can see the rating I'm sure you know what my opinion is.

This is basically Sands of Time 2, with a couple of additions (Dark Prince and some optional stealth). It is Sands of Time almost exactly, complete with having a character narrating the story in the background and asking you if you wish to save the game. Understandable approach considering they had a year to make this and Warrior Within was fairly polarizing.

Playing it safe and smart is pretty much the point of Two Thrones. It gives a satisfying, polished ending to the trilogy and gives more of the at this point familiar but still really fun Prince of Persia gameplay, the platforming is really good, the puzzles, bosses and gameplay diversions are fun and inventive, and it all goes down very smoothly. It may not have the creative spark that Sands of Time had, but it's hard to complain about a game that is so consistently fun to play.

Chances are that you've heard of, seen, or played Everybody's Golf in your life. Unless you're American, then you'd know it as Hot Shots Golf (YIKES).

Either way, you're probably familiar with the gameplay formula here: arcadey golf that is simple enough in theory but complicated enough in application to be really engaging for hours. What's different here compared to the other games in the series (which at least had numbers or subtitles, so I can recognize which ones they are) isn't the gameplay itself but what's around it.

Namely the character building. You now create your character (or multiple of them if you so desire, the creation suite is really robust) and it will get better at specific things gradually, and depending on what equipment you use and how you play. This actually adds a lot to the game as every player can come up with their own solutions and perfect plays, while refining their own skills with the control system and physics.

But that's not all, as Everybody's Golf fancies itself a great "fucking around" game. You can fish, which comes with its own leveling and equipment, roam around various camps either on foot or with various types of carts, play online, do all these things in online courses, exchange profiles, and so on. It even comes up with a meaty single player experience if you don't desire to pay for PS+ (which I don't).

Everybody's Golf is a game that gives you a lot to sink your teeth into, while still doing it with style and remembering that it's all supposed to be chill and fun. Can't really ask anything more out of this game, which goes above and beyond giving players reasons to come back time and time again, making it a great purchase for anyone even just tangentially interested in golf games (or just fun arcade sports games).