An absolute banger of a game to play with a group of friends. Me and a couple of pals started of together from scratch and I've had a blast.
The only downside is how the game handles multiplayer during the story mode of the game. Mandatory assignments have to be initiated solo until the monster is discovered, after which every player except one have to leave the quest in order to team up. This combined with the unskippable cutscenes led to some complaining and groaning which could've been avoided if the game simply allowed for a smoother co-op experience during the story.
Nevertheless, Monster Hunter World is pure co-op excellence

I can't bash this game too much considering it was short and free, but man am I glad that this wasn't a full-priced, 30+ hour long game.

The Short Message is a walking sim without the lingering tension of a proper Silent Hill game. The singular monster only appears during scripted chase sequences which you can see coming from a mile away, meaning that exploration felt like a leisurely walk in the park at all times.
The chase sequences themselves do a poor job of instilling fear, as you merely run down a set of corridors. The initial tension was quickly replaced by annoyance whenever I had to retry these segments.
The final chase sequence was especially horrendous as you are forced to run aimlessly down a maze of corridors to find "keys" in order to proceed, all while being chased.

This isn't how I imagine a proper Silent Hill game, and I sincerely hope that this isn't the direction the series will move towards in the future.

South Park: The Stick of Truth shines as a South Park medium, but leaves a bit to be desired as an RPG.

Any fan of South Park would feel right at home with the humor and writing. Most reviews like to bring up that the game feels like a playable episode of the show, and this is Stick of Truth's greatest strength.

The combat is simple, and doesn't overstay its welcome, which is great. However, most battles can be overcome by spamming the same skills over and over thanks to both HP and PP being restored after each battle. This makes the combat feel somewhat monotone and brain-dead.

Ultimately, I enjoyed my time with The Stick of Truth, even though I felt like it stepped over the line a few times during its more disgusting sections. As a fan of the show however, I know that this is just par for the course, but I got the impression that the writers wanted to cross a few boundaries that simply wouldn't be accepted on TV.

Hi-Fi Rush brought many smiles, a few laughs, and a ton of head bopping.

As a fan of hack-n-slashes as well as a huge fan of rhythm games, I truly feel that the mix of these genres were a match made in heaven. Pulling off combos and successful parries to the beat along with a killer soundtrack is a sensation like any other that can only truly be experienced first-hand.

The tone of the game is cheesy, but the colorful cast of characters were utilized in such a way that the humor and jokes managed to hit the mark. I can imagine that I'd grow tired of Chai's antics if he were to be put in any other setting, but the party dynamic, as well how the antagonists react to him manages to keep his annoyingness in check, at least for me. In a world where most games try to go for being dark and gritty, I gotta say that a full-on light hearted game felt like a nice breath of fresh air.

Hi-Fi Rush appeared out of nowhere, yet it managed to leave a significant mark on how I'll remember the release line-up of 2023.

I don't think I can put into words how incredibly satisfying this game was to solve.

Return of the Obra Dinn made me put on my detective hat big time and never made me feel like the game was impossible to beat without a guide.
Granted, there were many a time where I managed to fill in some of the names merely thanks to checking every name in the list, but I must say that I quite like the system of cementing names and causes of death in your book every third correct guess. This leaves room for bypassing those tougher nuts to crack, while making you feel uber smart for correctly guessing the remaining 2 all by yourself.
My only real complaint with this game is that I wish that there was a way for the player to hop between each scenario more conveniently. Having to manually walk to a scenario that only can be reached by another scenario felt a bit taxing towards the end when I had to solve the remaining missing people that unexpectedly went missing during a particular part of a chapter.

Return of the Obra Dinn has been on my backlog for just about 3 years now, and I'm so glad that I finally gave it the time of day to finish it. I can't recommend it enough if you enjoy logical puzzle games.

I'm not sure what to think about this game.
The Earthbound/WarioWare/Mario RPG inspirations are apparent, and I was a fan of the combat at first, but it became more and more frustrating as time went on.

The concept of fighting and countering attacks using WarioWare-like minigames seemed brilliant on paper, but most minigames grew old fast. Not to mention that I was in a constant flux of feeling under-powered and over-powered at the same time. Fights tend to drag on a bit too long for comfort, due to the often low damage output from the player characters, the length of certain minigames, and most, if not all enemies act more than once per turn. Moreover, the minigames you play have multiple difficulty levels, which may be possible to beat unscathed at first, but become nigh-impossible to beat later on. This in combination with the fact that when you eventually fail these minigames and get hit by an attack, they hit like a goddamn truck, which further cements the feeling of constantly being weak. This issue can't be remediated by grinding either, since all enemies are static encounters that never respawn.
I did mention feeling over-powered too, right? Yeah, sometimes. The circle attack which is randomly selected among 3 normal attacks is more overpowered than it should be as pulling off a ridiculously high combo is way too easy. This trivialized the use of damaging skills entirely as these seldom reached the same damage output as the circle attack. There's also a super move that needs to be charged up passively that deals ridiculous amounts of damage. One use of the super move kills most enemies instantly and shaves off a great chunk of health off most bosses. The only downside is that it takes a really long time for it to charge. This becomes a problem during boss fights as it's seemingly expected that you're gonna use it at least once during the fight, due to the massive HP pools that they are given. This means that boss fights turn into a waiting game where you shave off what little HP you can while trying to stay alive until you can use your super.

So, I'm obviously not too happy with the combat, but what about the rest of the game? I'll start off with what I liked, and that would be the music and aesthetics. It has the general weird and quirky Earthbound feel, and I'm all for it. However, one quirk from Earthbound which shouldn't have been brought over is the limited inventory. It kind of worked in Earthbound without too much of a hassle, but it's just absurd here. I never bought anything in shops because I knew that I'd just have to throw whatever I bought away later to make room for something more important.

What about the story? I wish I could tell you about it, but it was such a mess that most of it slipped my mind. There's something something conspiracy, something something evil gang, something something solving the mystery, but I couldn't tell you more than that. All in all, it didn't strike a cord with me.

This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2023, and I'm sad to say that I almost quit on it halfway through out of frustration and lack of engagement. There's so much potential and charm here, but a lot of it falls flat on its ass.

JSR is one of those games that is really tough to get into, but is crazily satisfying when it all clicks.

The cons:
The controls are a bit clunky and seem to go against you some times.
Whose idea was it to assign the spray action and the camera reset action to the same button??
I don't like how you can't do a short hop while going full speed.
You can slide on some walls. Which ones? Just guess.
The way the momentum works is weird. There's no way to gain momentum while sliding, unless you're moving downwards. This is realistic of course, but screw realism. It would've been more fun if you gained some speed while grinding. Also when you jump onto a moving object, you basically gain that object's momentum instead (if that makes any sense). Basically if you jump onto a car going in the opposite direction that you're going and you immediately jump off the roof, you'll go the exact opposite way that you were originally going. Is that how physics work in real life? I don't know, but it feels weird.

The pros:
This is one of those games that hasn't aged a day. Its soundtrack and general aesthetic is candy to both my ears and eyes.
The gameplay is super satisfying when you start to understand how the character movement works. Furthermore, once you get a feel for the the stage layouts you'll get around quicker and more efficiently, while simultaneously pulling off more sick tricks and combos.
The plot was surprisingly entertaining, due to the fact that it goes absolutely bonkers towards the end. Gunning down kids with choppers and tanks because they go around tagging the city? Seems reasonable.

As it stands, Jet Set Radio is a really fun game. I'm glad I played in now, because I'd imagine that I'd have a hard time plowing through it if I'd played its spiritual successor Bomb Rush Cyberfunk first. As such, I can't recommend it to players who expect a flawless game with tight controls. But I gotta give credit to the game for holding up so well all these years later.

This was my first ever Pokémon game, and I've only just now finished it, over 20 years later.
I've had several playthroughs over the years that have been abandoned partway through. This time, I had the thought of using my team in Pokémon Stadium as my driving force, which propelled me through to the end.

Going forward, I'd like to point out that this review is directed at the generation 1 as a whole, and not just Yellow.
The first generation of Pokémon is not a set of games that I hold in particularly high regard, even though Yellow was my first game. It's not a secret that the games barely hold themselves together with their broken mechanics and odd balancing choices. However, there is some enjoyment to be found here, partly due to its humble simplicity in comparison to later entries in the series. I'd argue that most of the balancing issues wouldn't be a problem if these games simply were a single player experience. If that were the case, it would make sense that powerful TMs can only be found once per playthrough, for example.
However, this makes team building for Pokémon Stadium a real pain, which I think is a shame. Furthermore the lack of good grinding spots make the journey towards level 100 seem so far off that I barely want to bother attempting it for my current team.
I can acknowledge that is a bit unfair to judge the gen 1 games based on how they affect the Pokémon Stadium experience, but these issues were present during the story as well.
I must admit that I feared that I'd have to grind much more than I actually did, but when I eventually had to grind, the issue was that the good grinding spots always had Pokémon who yielded severily low amounts of exp. as their most common encounters, which slowed down the process significantly.
Like I mentioned earlier, team building became a pain due to most of the good TMs only being available once per playthrough. This discourages players from experimenting and trying different teams during a single playthrough. It would've been much more preferrable if these could be purchased somewhere in the game. Just make it so that more powerful moves such as Earthquake costs much more than the rest.

I would lie if I said that I said that I didn't have some fun during my time with Yellow, however I can't see myself revisiting it anytime soon. I'd much rather play the generation 3 remakes over this.

Super Mario Sunshine is a game that I love to play but absolutely hate to complete.

After several playthroughs spanning across many years, I've learned most of the cool techniques that Mario can perform which 100% hightened my enjoyment of this game.
Simply yahooing and wahooing about, or performing cool dives, triple-jumps, and consistent and reliable spin-jumps that takes me to places which I previously thought were unreachable is a f***ing blast.

I absolutely adore the sunny, tropical setting with its stages that all take place on different tourist attractions on the island.

So why do I hate to complete this game?
The blue coins and some of the BS secret stages. The blue coins could have been really neat. All they had to do was make it so that all coin could be found in every chapter of each level.
Meanwhile the notorious pachinko machine and lilypad level makes me sigh loudly on every playthrough.

I've 100%:ed Sunshine twice and completed it several times now and everytime I see the end credits, I appreciate its positives more while also despising its 100% completion criteria a bit more.
I can see myself revisiting this masterpiece for years to come, but another 100% run is unlikely.
Nevertheless, this game is highly recommended.

Mario Wonder is probably the most stylish and creative Mario game to date.
The game oozes with charm from its bright colors, adorable animations, and creative stage gimmicks. There are however some setbacks that take away some points from my personal experience.

The Wonder-mechanic is obviously the game's biggest draw, but I feel like the overall level design suffers somewhat because of it.
The stages themselves are usually not that interesting until you reach the Wonder Flower and the crazy stuff start to happen.
The bosses are surprisingly few and far between, and none are particularly good. Although, I do prefer having fewer bosses if it means that we get more stages. Bosses have never been particularly amazing in Mario games, so having less of them is more or less a non-issue.
It seems evident that the game tries to make itself more accessible to younger, or less experienced players, which is fine, but as a veteran player, I couldn't help but crave more of a challenge. There were a couple of stages that were challenging, but most 5-star stages felt like a walk in the park. This includes a large chunk of Special World stages, which was a bit disappointing, since the bonus world is usually where the tough stages can be found. Furthermore, I wish the game had more secret exits and hidden stuff to find overall. It would've been awesome to find entrances to the Special World through secret exits à la Super Mario World. Instead most of these entrances are found behind a somewhat tougher stage placed in each world. A couple of other entrances simply require you to enter the final "stage" of a world which houses the Royal Seed a second time.
Final negative thing before I move on to the positives; the music leaves a bit to be desired. They do the Super Mario World thing where there's a leitmotif present in most songs, which makes them feel extremely repetitive towards the end. The fact that there aren't that many songs present in the soundtrack doesn't help either.

Despite all of that, I had a ton of fun with Wonder. The game may not have excellent level design, but it excels with its memorable moments. Most of the Wonder Flowers bring something new and unexpected to the table, for example by introducing mechanics that flips the concept of the entire stage on its head.
I also want to give praise to the voice acting and overall sound design. This is our first Mario-game post Mario 64 without Charles Martinet as the voice of Mario and Luigi. I figured I'd have a hard time adjusting, but Kevin Afghani manages to do an excellent job as a replacement. There are some lines that feel a bit off, but some others manages to sound spot-on.
Meanwhile the sound design brings a unique flavor to the game by giving all sound effects a more acoustic feel. The characters also have unique jumping sounds now, which I think is cute.

In conclusion, Super Mario Bros. Wonder leaves a bit to be desired for me as a veteran fan in terms of difficulty and level design. However, it more than makes up for it with its aesthetics and overall charm which makes this entry the most interesting Mario's ever been in 2D since Super Mario World probably. Highly recommended.

I tried clearing out a fort once because I wanted to see what was inside. A few dozen killed men later and I realized that they wouldn't stop spawning. Furthermore, my honor meter was as low as it could possibly be. I was basically Satan at this point.
Went to nearest town, said hi to a few pedestrians and noticed that my honor went up slightly.
Brilliant idea incoming.
I rode to Saint Denis and greeted every person I saw until Arthur was considered a saint.
Wonderful.