One of the most important videogames to ever come out by a very long shot, but I can't say I was ever really really into it.

The best way I can describe this game is that it's aged. Not necessarily like wine or milk, just that it's aged. Its foundation is incredibly solid, but its footing and momentum leave more to be desired, and almost every other title after it has improved such foundations tenfold.

Its controls and overall "unforgiveness" are ultimately what threw me off. I can very much tell this is a game a lot of people find an incredible amount of enjoyment, but for me no matter how much I try I can never really get that far. And it's not really the type of hard that makes me want to continue trying over and over again. I feel for me that's something newer games can really achieve, rather than their forefathers.

Graphics wise it really shows its age, putting it next to SMB3 is like night and day in terms of looks. Obviously I am not deducting points just because it looks prehistoric in nature, but that is always something that stuck out to me, given both of these games are on the same system. SMB1 Mario requires some imagination to truly picture the man in one's brain, but SMB3 Mario is immediately recognisable with a simple glance.

Despite my personal biases and tastes, if you are at all familiar with Super Mario, fan or not, I think you should at least play this just for the sake of it. It is a very important game, and I think it deserves to be played by more people for the first time, even after so many years after its release.

Fantastic, quick card game that manages to dodge most of the genre's flaws - matches lasts only a few minutes and, as of now, its fairly easy to collect cards without spending a dime. You may not get the flavour of the month for a while but you'll have enough verity to build a few competitive cards.

Climbing the ladder is not particularly fun as you'd eventually stick to the said competitive decks if you want to perform well and it can get a bit stale.

Marvel Snap still has all the usual dark patterns bullshit but within that spectrum it's the fairest version I've seen.

Ubisoft DOES know how to make good games! This is a really cool Metroidvania, with maybe the best combat experience I've ever had and with new features that should be a staple of the genre from now on. There are still a few areas where this game is lacking, and I wish the world wasn't as huge as it is to make backtracking for 100% completion more appealing, but you really can't go wrong here.

Also, amazing boss fights and amazing boss cutscenes that had me going fucking crazy. I do wish there was at least one more slot for supers so that I could have more freedom to build my super loadout, but it is what it is. I also do wish the game was a little more polished in the visual department overall, as some of the cutscenes really dip in quality.

I think the impulse to describe Crabs Treasure as merely a Soulslike is understandable given the somewhat divisive nature of the Souls style difficulty curve - but in truth Crabs Treasure is just as much a PS2 era 3D platformer as it is a challenging action RPG. This fusion is so unexpectedly seamless that its actually kind of difficult to distinguish at first, but when youre unlocking an ability that lets you break purple cubes that have been blocking passages in the past 3 zones and now youre backtracking through levels to collect pink upgrade crystals the experience is unmistakable.

And unlike most contemporary Soulslike titles that determine iteration on the genre means stapling more systems onto the side of the combat experience, Crabs Treasures combination of genres genuinely synthesizes novel gameplay experiences unseen or unrealized even by the Souls games themselves. You ever wanted a boss that truly roams an entire level and acts as a stage hazard in addition to a thrilling Souls fight? Well guess what nerd, the silly crab game is the one that pulled it off - and it might have even pulled it off because its a silly crab game thats slightly less beholden to the confines of realism.

Bonus Thoughts:

- The humor here is kind of tone deaf. Balancing serious with funny is for sure challenging but Aggro Crab makes their gambles with just emphatically bad jokes half the time.

- Swomps not in the game

- Slightly less serious Soulslike means slightly less serious about making sure things like input buffers are tight and unobtrusive, and therefore an occasionally more frustrating game to take seriously.

A fun, bitesized metroidvania with a vibe all its own. It was very addicting to explore this lovably weird game, especially with the wonderfully cute power-ups you get to further your progress.

I've got a couple of criticisms but my overall feeling is very positive. There's not a lot of meaningful backtracking, a new power-up rarely opened up new paths all across the map, and sometimes I felt the punishment for failing a puzzle was a bit too harsh. I don't know how to feel about the dog chase, it was frustrating to complete but I felt very accomplished once I'd done it. Maybe the controls for the power-ups are a bit too finicky for that part but I did appreciate the challenge.

Despite the lack of backtracking I did love the progression through the map, I never really mind when the journey through a metroidvania is a bit more linear. I also really appreciated how every power-up got a couple of dedicated puzzle rooms to explore all of its mechanics. The puzzle design is top notch.

I can see myself replaying this in the future, just to experience this wonderful vibe again for a couple of hours.

Always a pleasure to see a game converse so much with the player without ever saying a sentence.

A charming, engaging and rewarding journey and the type of game we should always cherish and praise so as to (hopefully) attract more eyes to well-crafted labours of love instead of your regular, half-baked, dull and uninspired AAA titles that still get most people's attention, time and money.

A must play

Western search action with an X-Files plot tied intimately with Alan Wake and the rest of the Remedyverse. It's obviously a banger, gorgeous, with many genuinely heartfelt moments as well as fun speculative worldbuilding. Anyone who grew up loving "monster of the week" shows like me would undoubtedly adore this game.

The core combat loop doesn't really gel until you get Throw, but once you do it's so fun. Played correctly, you're practically invincible, thanks to how good all of your weapons and utility powers are. Floating around the battlefield like some vengeful god, smiting corrupted soldiers with a flick of your finger. It's intoxicating and I think a much better expression of the combat loop of Quantum Break, which I liked but didn't love.

My biggest complaint? Ends sort of abruptly - almost like a TV cliffhanger - even with the DLC, some odd difficulty spikes, and a mod / challenge system that seems completely out of place. Seriously, why are there repeatable challenges to grind for weapon mods? I would've greatly preferred scattering concrete secrets around, like missile tanks in Metroid. Feels so out of place here.

Platted on PC and near-platted on PS4 so it's unlikely I will ever return to Control. I enjoyed my time here though and I hope the next game in this series leans into the exploratory strengths and discards some of the cruft.

There is clearly so much effort and passion and heart put into this that it kind of pains me to say it's one of the most miserably frustrating experiences I've had playing a game in a long time.

First, the positive: the whole aesthetic is top notch. I'm not the biggest fan of pixel art, but this is how it's done. The whole visual design drips with such a wonderfully moody feel, elevated more by the brash, gothic music.

The problem in this game, for there is only one, is the controls. This is not roleplaying as an eldritch god controlling the armies of evil, it's a simulation for herding cats. Your rally point is not saying "go here", it's saying "go in this vague, general area", and even then, units will just wander off the complete opposite direction for literally no reason. This is made even worse by the fact that units engage enemies as soon as they see them. This means if one happens to feel like wandering too far away and engages the enemy army, it'll peel off from your main force to be slaughtered on his own little kamikaze. The vague movement controls and complete lack of any targeting system makes strategy essentially non-existent; ranged units would frequently decide to focus fire on pointless barricades while they're being shelled by multiple enemies. Every encounter boils down to throwing everybody into a mosh pit and hoping you kill them first, so any unit meant to be more clever than that is useless. Cats in particular feel worth mentioning as being completely unusable; as soon as you run into an enemy behind a barricade, every cat will leap over the defenses straight into the meat grinder.

I played Pikmin, a fairly similar game, after playing this (review soon tm). That game had the good sense to make pretty much all of its enemies "big guy that just kind of swats at you", as that's about all you can deal with when you have an army of the stupidest soldiers known to man (or whatever Olimar is). In this game, meanwhile, they expect you to deal with Bloodborne players dodge rolling and shooting and big heavies unleashing AOE attacks at a moment's notice, amongst other things, while you're trying to get your fishman to stop dry humping a fountain. You watch helplessly as your troops are massacred, continuously restarting the section until enough of them manage to fight back that it's even possible to move on.

There's a decent variety of content, but most of it is underwhelming, to say the least. Only one of the other cult leaders seemed even remotely usable (the idea of expecting me to go through this slaughterhouse capped at one lich and nothing else is laughable). Most of the units you unlock are either pretty weak (droghers, maggots) or too niche to ever be useful in a game where you can't actually plan your attacks at all (toads, black cats). There are more branching paths with more unlocks and levels to see, but I honestly struggled to find the motivation to finish this once. It's four hours long and it felt like a lifetime.