Forza Horizon 5 has it all, a gigantic map, hundreds of activities, a roster full of the most exciting cars in the world and almost instant access to all of it. You want for nothing in Horizon but when you want for nothing you end up having little to strive and work towards.

Horizon 5 is still a great game, it looks great, sounds great, plays great, it's well made, it's polished and you could get lost in it for hours at a time or just hop in for a race a day. But it didn't quite hook me after playing Horizon 3 and Horizon 4 for hundreds of hours each. Maybe that's just a bit of fatigue on my part but ultimately I feel there's just too much Horizon 5 and too much all at once. Even going slow unlocking festival sites there's dozens and dozens of map markers in just a few hours and a garage full of half a million dollar sports cars almost instantly. I get that it provides full freedom in what you want to do and when you want to do it and even with that accelerated pace there's still hundreds of hours of content but the trade off is you don't really get to savor any of it. I have like 5million dollars in 25ish hours of playing but why buy cars when Horizon gives them out like candy. There's plenty of excitement to be found in playing but no excitement upon unlocking anything, no excitement on finally saving up to get that expensive Ferrari or Lamborghini after driving Golfs or beat up off-roaders for a while. You can only go so big with these games and I would love to see more purposeful and focused progression for Horizon 6 a bit more restraint in rewards, I just think Horizon is due for a bit of a change up.

Mario 64 × Dark Souls

Movement, physics, atmosphere, sound, and level design all are phenomenal. It's open ended design, paired with super high skill ceiling movement makes traversal, progress and finding little secrets and skips really rewarding. The negative side of that open ended level design and movement that let's players skip parts is there is nothing to get players back on track if they get lost, there were a handful of times I didn't know if I wasn't doing something right or was missing an ability, or figured out I got partly into an area I didn't have the ability for by breaking sequence a bit, for me its middle just lost a bit of focus. But it's worth a bit a wondering in the middle because so many of its elements are among the genres best, forget platformers, if every game had the movement and physics of Pseudoregalia they would be the better for it.

EDIT Actually can't begin to fathom how anyone played this before they added a map. Got lost/frustrated a handful of times WITH it.

As I grew up with Mario 3 and Mario World and both remain two of my favorite games of all time I fear I am nearing the time of falling into the boomer "this isn't the "insert thing here" I grew up with" stance. Cause Mario Wonder isn't the Mario I grew up with that Mario is gone. For good and for bad, there are absolutely brilliant stretches of levels here but there's also a lot of badge and extra levels that add a bit of bloat and ultimately don't stack up to the best levels. But I can't believe how many of the new enemies are fantastic, the hit rate is pretty crazy honestly, Condarts, Outmaways, Maw-Maws, Missile Megs, Seeker Bullet Bills, Armads, and Konks are all new enemies I really enjoyed both mechanically and design wise. I just wish it pushed those new enemies, as well as new powerups, and level mechanics I really enjoyed even farther iteratively than it does. I would love to see Nintendo follow up on this really quickly Galaxy 2 style, really push even further what they have here.

Ultimately my highest praise and harshest criticism is one phrase I said probably a dozen times over the course of playing thru Wonder: I can't wait to see what we can do with this enemy/block/mechanic/theme in Mario Maker 3.

Honestly holds up better than I was expecting, was ready for the combat to be excruciating, but walked away higher on it than after playing it when it came out. It's really the combat encounters and level design that are lackluster as opposed to the feel of the combat itself. The combat has a little something, it's not perfect but you can see the foundations of where they take it with Quantum Break and Control. But it's obviously way more about the story, world, and atmosphere and all are still really good.

Joins Doom 1 and 2 and Quake as older FPS's I was playing for the first time ever in the 2020's I ended up really enjoying after not being sure how they'd hold up going in to them. And similar to those other 3 one of my favorite parts of Perfect Dark is the level design, it's not as smart or secret filled as the others but games and level aren't designed the way anymore. I don't mean that purely negatively in regards to modern gaming but there's a sprawling, winding nature to the design of levels in this era that just is fantastic when done right. Also the tone, world building, and soundtrack are all great as well.