Late to the party on playing A Plague Tale but I'm so glad I did, and right in time for the sequel. This has got to be the best looking non-AAA game I've ever played, at least in terms of fidelity, the lighting and style bring the world to life.

Gameplay I'm generally positive on. No individual part is particularly amazing (the stealth, the puzzles), but the game is often switching things up, throwing new tools at you and moving onto the next thing before you have the chance to get tired of it.

It is with the story that A Plague Tale comes to life. Performances are all great, and the writing between the characters is endearing. Hopefully the sequel has better facial animation to make what are some emotion scenes have some more punch. Still though, this is one of the best adventure games I've played in recent times.

Absolutely worth playing through, especially since it has an easy breezy run time.

Rollerdrome asks you to perfect its gameplay. You have to maintain momentum, while both dodging a myriad of enemy attacks and endlessly executing tricks to keep your ammo topped up.

You need to blend that momentum with the combat. Switching between weapons on the fly to best suite your next enemy. Timing your attacks and rationing your ammo before your next big trick.

It's the arcade-y combo game of Tony Hawk mixed with the frantic arena combat of Doom although it is not as deep as either of those series' focus. But blending them together elevates Rollerdrome to be something special.

Art style is fantastic, reminiscent of Sable but with its own spin. There is some issues with clarity of the line work which made the fidelity fall short on occasion and made text hard to read (even on maximum size).

On the side of story and characters, Rollerdrome makes an attempt but it is a half-assed one and therefore doesn't give the game the rounded edges to be an all around stellar experience.

I had a ton of fun mastering this games systems but I felt that as soon as I had done that, it was over! I could have used another round of the tournament but then I'm sure there would have been the need of more enemies and another weapon. I applaud the game for staying focused with its vision and tight design, but its use of a pseudo-new-game-plus and additional challenges isn't enough to keep me engaged past rolling credits.

A good ol' fashioned 3D platformer collectathon. Tinykin carves it's own initials in the genre in that it is forgiving, easy and playful. There aren't lives or combat. What seems like a puzzle on the surface, isn't something that stops your momentum to try and figure it out. And the world, characters, sound effects and in game objectives give it that lighthearted texture.

I was completely fine with the game having a flatline of difficulty, because it was just so fun to romp around in these environments. I love the small character in a big world setting. Between the glider, soap slide and line riding, movement is slicky and responsive.

Just a completely joyous experience from start to finish, big recommendation from me.

Serial Cleaners is an intriguing branch within the stealth tree. Instead of taking out targets and hiding the bodies. You instead are sent in after the dirty work has happened. Tasked with cleaning up the crime scene.

I loved the level design, and the art establishes the setting effectively. Mechanics like vacuuming up blood and getting rid of bodies/evidence is fun. And while the voice acting can be dodgy, the story worked for me as well.

This game feels like it is made for me in so many ways. However, it is a greatly janky game. A fair share of bugs and glitches. Intentionally dumb AI that was overtuned on the stupidity. And some levels are way too grindy with how much backtracking you have to do with slow moving characters.

Some of the levels here though, Rykers, the yacht, the office, the police station and more are so well designed. The game is its strongest when you can swap between characters or when you can get really creative to speed up the cleaning process.

Overall I'm impressed with the scope of the game, but that feels like it was at the cost of a tight and finely tuned experience. I really enjoyed my time, and will keep my eye on what this studio makes next, whether that's a sequel or something fresh.

I can't recommend this game to everyone, its setting and gameplay are targeted to a specific audience. I'm glad that I happened to fall within it.

A Plague Tale: Requiem takes a bunch of big swings. This is what leads to some of its strongest parts, both as a sequel and existing on its own. But as a result of its compensatory misses, this game is a lot messier than its predecceor, Innocence.

Once again Plague Tale is visually stunning, from the nature scenes to the busy cities to the deep dark caves. Music is solid. Voice acting is great. Although I had hoped the lip syncing would be improved since Innocence, its still just as bad. They've also renovated some of the characters faces from Innocence, I never fully got used to this.

The new characters don't match the heights of those in the first, but one stands out as being almost at that level. But most importantly, the journey of Amicia and Hugo is what is most successful. I had my ups and downs with the story. The beginning chapters felt like a rehash of Innocence. As did the use of the main villain, although it is much weaker here. The very end had me emotional, feeling the weight of the journey but it wasn't tied together seamlessly. And lots of the steps along with way were messy or otherwise unsatisfactory. At the end of the day, story is still the strongest element of the game.

The other elements being exploration, puzzle solving, stealth and combat. They completely redid the equipment, putting the special alchemies as universal powerups on the different action types, the sling, free throw, pots and the new addition, the crossbow. Giving the player more freedom and options of course appears like a welcome change but the game is still far to linear in its puzzles that the few times I felt like I could get creative, I would be shut out without logic. Other times I was left confused as I would say, try to extinguish fire to move past it, get stuck, check a guide only to realize, 'no you have to extinguish with a different action type'. Not a great feeling.

The combat is given a few more inches of depth, along with embracing killing in whatever quantity you wish. Unfortunately, the combat, for lack of a better word, sucks. the lack of a proper hit point system makes it feel unfair. Limited movement options and no dodge makes it feel sluggish. And boring enemy types make the sling and crossbow feel alright, but more of a foundation than a properly fleshed out combat system.

Stealth and navigating rats have no substantive changes since Innocence. They are good enough but nothing special.

My favorite section of the game is when you are let out on the island. While it isn't an open world (and shouldn't be), it is the largest open area in either of the games. It was a breathe of fresh air. A long break from stealth, combat and set pieces to let you just take in this wonderfully crafted world, admire the sights and sounds. This becomes a hub of sorts and you crisscross through it many times, backtracking I was happy to do.

I had a rocky time with A Plague Tale: Requiem. It is a game that suffers from both not making enough changes from its predecessor and wrongly choosing which elements to double down on. Still its beauty, tragedy and adventure compelled me to blast through it in just a few days. Amicia and Hugo are all time great video game characters as far as I'm concerned and with what is teased towards the end of the game, I cannot wait to see what lies over the next wave.

Neon White is the best feeling game of 2022. I've only ever taken the most baby of steps into speedrunning. But Neon White is able to condense that joy into a digestible package.

The dialogue and characters are something I'm mixed on but the style is a perfect match for the gameplay. The environments aren't too cluttered to keep them readable. And the music helps elevate your own tempo to match that which the game requires to ace each level.

The final set of levels, titled Thousand Pound Butterfly is one of the best culminations of a platformers mechanics in the genre. Taking all of the movement abilities and lessons from the journey to that point. Flipping them on their head with the final card and movement mechanic led to the apex of its many levels.

Blanc is very cute, the visuals are simplistic but effective and the music pleasant. I'm always on the lookout for low commitment co-op games and this seems to hit that niche.

Unfortunately performance on Nintendo Switch is quite poor. I could push through that but it also has weak checkpointing. Me and my partner played through about half the game in a sitting, but when we booted the game up the next day, we lost progress on the last section. Which normally I would be fine to replay but it was the worst sequence in the game, a dreaded escort mission with some dumb (albeit cute) ducklings.

Wasn't grabbed enough by the first half to want to trudge through that sequence again, especially with the performance issues.

Finally played through this game since it was added to NSO.

What a weird Mario game. I liked the Megaman inspired structure where you can go to the different worlds in the order of your choosing. Since it doesn't have the power ups like Megaman, it makes the difficulty flat line, but since the run time is so short, I didn't mind.

The zones feel fresh where Mario games have become stale in the same zones being used over and over. The Halloween inspired zone, Mario zone, Space zone, all really cool. With these weird zones comes a bunch of weirdo enemies, I loved having a bunch of freaks instead of the usual Goomba's and Koopa's (though those still exist).

Not a game I see myself revisiting very often, but it feels like a bizarre time capsule experimental game for Mario, which are few and far between within the long history of the series.

John Wick Hex has a lot going for it but it also misses the mark in a few categories. Immediately one flawless element is the aesthetics. The fantastic music and solid visuals establish a powerful tone. Combined with the shadows that fill in on the fly based on line of sight and the colour palettes of the various unique levels, every set piece was brought to life.

In terms of the strategy and tactics, there are a lot of well thought out elements. The hex grid, represented by dots provides the amount of options in each action that you need when playing a tactics game that only has one controllable character. The timeline as a turn based/real time hybrid is a great idea. Straight forward at first but requires a deeper understanding on the harder levels. The balancing of resources between ammo, focus and time is a captivating trio.

Narratively, John Wick Hex isn't doing anything special, but neither do the the movies so this didn't bother me. Having two actors from the movie was a nice touch and Troy Baker kills it as Hex. It's clear the scope was kept small but the use of smaller voice roles or dialogue from Wick (Keanu or otherwise) could have been nice additions to flesh it out.

I had a good time with this game but there were a few things that kept it from reaching that next level for me.
1. Difficulty curve is way off, second half of the game is way too easy.
2. There were multiple times that it bugged out and I had to restart a level, losing my progress. This is years after release on PC, still these issues remain.
3. There is a lack of layering. After the tutorial, the only new things are weapons and enemy types. No new mechanics beyond I guess elevators, not that that has a major effect on gameplay.
4. The cinematic replay is cool but the janky movement kind of ruins its potential. I wasn't compelled to use it after the first 2 or 3 levels.
5. The cutscenes are also bugged. Spoken dialogue not lining up with the subtitles, making the visual novel cutscenes hard to read and get invested in.

Ultimately I would love to see some of the concepts here refined in either a sequel or a spiritual successor, or even another indie dev inspired by it. Still this was an enjoyable playthrough with a nice runtime. I'll take this any day over any of the movies and is a cool addition to the world of John Wick.

This game has major balance issues which has made it a frustrating slog to get through the later chapters. It must be hard to balance a game that has so much day 1/early post-launch DLC that not everyone is going to have access to like myself.

I don't feel like sharing what I actually do like about the game because the balance is such a mess that its hard to look at it objectively. Put on the shelf, not sure if I'll ever spend the time to pick it back up.

Such a disappointment, first 15 hours or so were slingshotting this thing near the top of my Fire Emblem rankings but that was surprisingly short-lived.

A nice sequel that I liked just a bit less than the first game. Most importantly, the vibes are still there. The chill lo-fi beats, the cute pixel art and simply gameplay form a trio that is ever so serene and peaceful. It makes for the perfect ritual; Complete one in-game day, every day before bed.

On the narrative side of things, I didn't feel like any arc matched the quality of some from the original. But there is still some nice stories, whether that is new characters or furthering development of returning characters.

Mechanics are pretty much the same, and this is something I would like to see overhauled for (hopefully) a third game. There is too much guess work without much ability to test things before committing. Feels like you if you don't blast through it in a few days, you will forget some detail that a character will ask you to remember. It feels bad when you get an order wrong but some orders feel impossible to figure out without a guide, in most games I wouldn't have a problem with this, but it goes against the core feelings that the rest of the game elicits. There are incentives to replay the game through different endings, but this isn't the kind of game I would care to do another playthrough for minor changes in the ending slides.

Looking forward to episode 3, whenever that might happen!