Ok, so this is solid proof that Kojima still has it in my opinion. This game was absolutely masterful from start to finish, and I will gladly tell you why I think so. First of all, the level design is probably the best I've ever seen. It feels like every rock, cliff and river is placed there with care, and therefore almost every mission feels absolutely amazing to play, with its own peaks and valleys, but in this case literal peaks and valleys. It literally feels like every option has been given thought, so no matter what route you take, it ends up feeling like a true journey. Now, secondly, controlling Sam feels absolutely incredible. It took a few hours to get used to, but after that I was hooked on controlling him! You truly have to treat the ground like a puzzle in this game, navigating around rocks all the time while simultaneously controlling Sam's balance and speed so you don't go too quickly or fall over, dropping all your packages. And finally, we get to the story, which felt like a beautiful rollercoaster ride of emotions. I have almost nothing bad to say about it, and it ends wonderfully on some moments that make you recontextualize a lot of things that have happened in this game. It has so much lore too, and most of it is very well developed and makes sense within the logic of the world. I feel really bad for people who didn't like this game, becuase I fear that they simply played it the wrong way. I've noticed that people who dislike this game in reviews and stuff are mostly people who try to speed through everything, where as I liked to take it slow and had a blast with just about every second of the way through. It's a shame, because I really think some of those reviewers would like this game a lot more if they just got through the first three chapters, because everything beyond those is top of the damn class in my opinion. One of the best games of the last decade, and a true masterpiece in my opinion!

Probably the most bleak, depressing and soul-crushing game I've ever played. So many sections in this game leave you feeling completely empty inside, and even its attempt at humour is so dark that it just comes off as depressing. First of all we have the setting. The world has no females, which means that the men left are essentially just waiting for their doom. Just that is an incredibly bleak concept, but it gets worse, because it portrays all the different ways people act during this apocalypse. The world is riddled with corpses, hanging bodies, people who are broken or have simply lost the will to live, and much more. But the worst thing is the concept of Joy, a drug that makes you feel nothing. The main character, Brad, is addicted to this because of his traumatic past. This is interesting, because Joy is an actual item in the game, which makes Brad a lot more powerful and increases his health, but makes him eventually suffer from withdrawal, which reduces his damage. This makes you consider taking Joy to make the game (and by that, the pain) easier to handle. Another thing this game heavily features is a world where your party members can and will die. You can recruit up to thirty people, but when a central part of your team dies, it just feels painful. I definitely felt a lot of pain towards area 3, so much in fact that I had to shut off the game and do something else. I completed the game after returning to it, and BOY, the ending is surely something. Without spoiling anything, it is bleak as hell and will make you feel empty as all hell. Luckily, this game has some quite amazing gameplay to balance out all the bleakness, so it isn't like a Drakengard completely. It succeeds a lot better than that game did by somehow making the game both fun and painful to play at the same time. I cannot give this game any less than a 9. It was that impactful!

A damn amazing game that is as good, if not better, than Dark Souls. But one thing it definitely has over DS are the wonderful aesthetics. Fucking hell, this world is gorgeous. I mean, it's pretty ugly in most cases, but it is very intentionally ugly, and all the designs, enviroments and skies just look amazing and really capture that dark and gloomy setting. At first, I thought this game was harder than Dark Souls, but as I got into it, I found myself dying a whole lot less than I did in that game. Bloodborne has such a cool playstyle. In Dark Souls, I was using a shield for the first 3 hours because I thought that was the way to play. It was only when I removed my shield and started taking more risks that I found myself enjoying the game to the huge extent that I did. Bloodborne simply gives you no shield. There is one, but it is godawful, and should not really be used. Instead, you get a gun which you can use to parry enemy attacks. And you definitely should be doing that, because visceral attacks in this game are extremely satisfying to pull off, and you can even get runes that get you back health on successful visceral attacks. The bosses in this game are all great in my opinion, but my favourites were probably Micolash because of how different he is, Darkbeast Paarl because of my redemption arc (I found the boss pretty early in the game, got destroyed pretty hard and realized I had to go to another boss. After a while, I went back to him and defeated him first try), The One Reborn because of how truly intense that battle is, and Gehrman because of how difficult but fair that fight feels. I've always felt that the music in the Souls games wasn't really that noticeable, but in Bloodborne, it has a different vibe that I can't really describe, and therefore I liked it a lot more than the soundtrack to Dark Souls, especially the music when you are fighting Gehrman. This was an amazing game that I will probably play again, and again, and again!

Talk about a game that was almost the complete opposite of what I expected. For a while I have disliked the huge fetishization of retro games, as I felt like they put games in a stereotypical mold that I disliked a lot. I don't want video games to be a medium where the music associated with it has to be 8-bit tunes (which unfortunately is still the case, and chiptune-inspired albums or songs are still generally seen as being "video game inspired"). While it is true that 8-bit music has a very valuable place in video game music, this fetishization of everything retro risks obscuring more games with more modern sensibilities. Maybe not the games per se, but definitely the soundtrack. If you ask any layman to name a tune from a video game, he will most likely name the main Super Mario Bros. theme, or maybe the Legend of Zelda theme. This shows how modern video game soundtracks have unfortunately fallen in the shadow when it comes to the general population. But what does all of this have to do with Rain World, I hear you ask. Well, Rain World managed to completely shatter that expectation. I walked in expecting a retro-inspired game that would be fun for a very short time and came out at the other end having just played one of the most exciting, beautiful, unique and amazing games that I've ever played. I know that I've placed a lot of high scores for games recently, but it's probably just because I have played so many good games recently. But Rain World is definitely the best of these. I have never in my life played a game that emulates nature and the ecosystem as well as Rain World. I have never encountered something as beautiful as this game. I will admit that it was a bit rough in the start due to its extremely high difficulty, but as soon as I got into the game, I was completely hooked and never looked back since. The environments are simply incredible both to look at and to play in, as the levels are almost always extremely well designed. Some areas in particular, like Five Pebbles and Subterranean, are probably some of the coolest locations I've ever been to in a game. And it's not just the gameplay that is absolutely top notch. We are talking about a masterclass in sound design, which is so good that there is a YouTube channel dedicated to basically just uploading ambience from different locations in the game. And the soundtrack, which comes in once in a while, is always welcome, and provides a very strange but compelling mix of synthwave-styled stuff and more modern production styles. I always felt welcomed into the world every time I went back to the Shaded Citadel from Shoreline and that incredible trip-hop-ish tune started to play. So, to summarize: this is one of the best games I've ever played. Basically everything is absolutely top notch, and I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. The creators deserve the money, so buy it at full prize. You might not like it at first, but the environments and sheer beauty of the entire thing will keep you coming back most likely. What a game!

A true classic. This was the first Zelda game I ever played, and I had some trouble at first, but after a year of being stuck at Forsaken Fortress, I got past it and started really enjoying myself. Now I replayed it with a friend in the HD version, and I must say that it is basically a straight upgrade in just about every way. Positives are everywhere. There is a sail that lets you change the direction of the wind AND go faster with your boat, which removes having to change the wind manually all the time and makes you travel the sea faster. The triforce hunt has been largely redesigned to still capture the feeling of exploring the sea that the original had, but also removing some of the charts required, making it a whole lot less tedious. There is actually just one thing that I would mention as both a positive and a negative: by jump attacking and then immediately inputting a spin attack, your damage doubles for the spin attack. This turns out to be incredibly overpowered, killing most enemies a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. Otherwise the game is much the same, and here are some opinions on the game in general. I love the music in The Wind Waker! Not only is it highly nostalgic to me, but some more experimental tunes have sneaked their way in there, like the song playing in Hyrule Castle before getting the Master Sword, which sounds incredibly broken, distorted and has a very relaxed relationship to silence which I absolutely love. My absolute favourite of these experimental tunes has to be the Illusory Room in Ganon's Castle near the end. Everything about it is odd: odd rhythms, odd instrumentations, etc. I especially love how one part of the mix is delayed by an eighth note, making it sound different the more time passes. And because it is a modern Zelda game, every dungeon and boss music is incredible, with the highlights being Wind Temple, Forbidden Woods, Tower of the Gods and Forsaken Fortress for the dungeons, and Helmaroc King, Gohdan, all Ganon related boss tunes and Molgera. I also love how open the world is in this game. You are stuck for a bit in the beginning, but after the first two dungeons, you are free to go basically wherever you like. And there is just so much to explore, and it feels so natural to explore it because you are on the sea! I think that too is awesome, the fact that you are on the sea. And the final section rivals the final sections of my more appreciated Zelda games like Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time. I think the bosses toward the end are the best in the game, and that's exactly how it should be. This game would have been an 8 if it was the original version, but thanks to all the improvements I cannot justify giving this anything less than a 9!

This is a game that I have played many times, and for each time I just seem to like it more. I've heard many comments from people saying that the only reason people like this game so much is for the story and for nostalgic reasons. And while the story is certainly part of that, I feel like the gameplay is very underrated, and frankly, many of the problems that I thought the game had the first times playing it were absent from this playthrough. For instance, I disliked how long it took to change from 2D to 3D, which is a major feature in the game, and used in almost every puzzle. But during this playthrough, I found that problem to be non-existent. The whole gaming experience felt seamless. What I've always loved about the Paper Mario series is the world and the environment around you. And Super Paper Mario offers what is probably the best world(s) in the entire series. Because every world you travel to feels very distinct, has a very distinct atmosphere, and I just feel so immersed in the world because of this. Another thing that really adds to this are the different items the enemies drop. Because those items are usually very thematically correct. For instance, Crazee Dayzees and Amazee Dayzees drop Dayzee Tears, which you can use to make certain recipes. But many enemies drop these appropriate items, which really drew me into the game. I also think the main mechanic of flipping from 2D to 3D was a resounding success, probably in large part because of how incredibly detailed all the environments are. If you flip to 3D anywhere in the game, you get information about the world through things you just couldn't see in 2D, which makes it feel rewarding even when you don't find anything special there. And let's not forget about the music. This game has one of my favourite soundtracks ever, an incredibly consistent collection of weird, bumping, melancholic and bouncy tunes. Few games have better soundtracks honestly. The dialogue is also one of the strongest parts of the game. This game made me chuckle so many times throughout the game that I lost count. However, the main thing that makes me love this game beyond almost every other game I've played is the story. The story of Blumiere and Timpani is so beautiful, sad and sweet that I can't help but shed a tear or two every time I get to the ending. It may be standard in some regards, especially with its portrayal of love as the dispeller of evil, but I feel like it is actually true. Love is truly a wonderful force. All these things combine to form a game that I previously considered the strongest 9/10 that I had ever played. But now that I've played through it once again and enjoyed it so immensely, I have to give it too a 10. One of the best games I've ever played!

I love it when a game completely blows your expectations out of the water. I expected an inferior version to Dark Souls with clunky mechanics, bad bosses and bad levels. Instead I got a game that may actually be better than Dark Souls (can't really decide that before I replay it yet again) with great mechanics, extremely unique bosses and better levels than Dark Souls on average. It was a wild ride that I enjoyed basically every second of. It was a whole lot easier than Dark Souls tho, but it felt harder on some points due to the levels actually seeming harder in my opinion. But the environments were great, and they were also very immersive due to everything just making sense. Of course the enemies in Stonefang should be miners, as it is a mine, and of course that is the place where you find the most stone-like stones which you use to upgrade certain weapons. Once I arrived there, I decided to play through the entire game with the pickaxe, which was a very fun choice. So me and my pickaxe carved our way through the different areas and bosses. My favourite area overall was probably the fourth one. I loved how different each level in that area was, and the final archdemon of that area was damn epic! Another thing that greatly surprised me was the soundtrack. Overall, I am not a huge fan of the soundtrack of the Souls series, as they tend to fall more into the category of "uninspired orchestral music" to me. But Demon's Souls has a very unique soundtrack compared to Dark Souls, using a lot of more ambient textures, and many of the boss fights actually use less bombastic tunes, which just adds to the variation. I got the urge to download the soundtrack as soon as possible, which is something that I absolutely did not feel about Dark Souls' or even Bloodborne's soundtrack. In my opinion, Demon's Souls was a huge risk that basically payed off in every way, and I loved it very much.

I am usually not a fan of games that value aesthetics over everything else. I felt that a bit with RiME before it actually turned into a good game. But Journey has changed my positions a bit, because this game is SO beautiful. It is not a hard game at all, nor is it probably meant to be. It's simply you, the player, travelling through a desert to a mountain in the distance. And the journey there is actually a lot of fun. I played it with my girlfriend, and she was absolutely wowed by it, and it was hard not to be influenced by that. I liked the game because of how cool the sand gliding and flying mechanics were. I liked how you could stay in the air indefinitely if you just had enough skill (and luck) to be able to consistently fly into the carpet creatures that refill your fly meter. I liked how intensely focused the game was on delivering a fully immersive experience to the point that you can't even pause the game. The character just sits down, and no menu shows up. However, what made me love the game was the aesthetics and the soundtrack. The aesthetics are amazing! The game constantly shifts colour pallet throughout its runtime and plays around with different kinds of surfaces where you leave a trace. First it is sand, then it is snow. And the sand changes colour as well, at one point being blue and green when you are in a tunnel. But the soundtrack was definitely my favourite part! Because there is a pitfall that these aesthetic-valuing games sometimes fall in, and that is that the soundtrack focuses on beauty above everything else. Journey's soundtrack isn't like that at all! It has varied instrumentation based on where in the game you are, it is usually melodic but turns somewhat dissonant whenever something dangerous happens (I especially liked how it sounded when you were heading through a blizzard towards the mountain), and it even uses my absolute weakness, which is the key of B Minor. I just think it sounds melancholic and beautiful in a way that no other key manages for me. And the end section where you go to the mountain is triumphant and entirely in the key of B Minor with my favourite chords in that key playing throughout the section. The only parts where I felt that the game was somewhat lacking was some parts of the snow section, where it slowed down by blowing wind in your face. It didn't have to do that to convey the hopelessness in my opinion, that feeling was already there. Overall a great game though!

The NES is not a console that I used to consider had good games. I felt like most of them were absolutely held back by your inability to save, and while some of those like the Super Mario Bros. games tried to play around this by having very short games with warp zones to later worlds, I can't help but feel like this was playing around a system that was broken from the start. The Legend of Zelda is different. First of all, you can actually save in this game. Second of all, it is a wonderful open world game in an era long before open world games. This game drops you in a moderately sized world and asks you to do whatever you want. You can go in any direction you want, to any place you want as long as it isn't blocked off by an item you need. I have to praise the overworld a lot, because it is not too small, which makes it so that you don't get tired of it. At the same time, it isn't too big either. This is good because you have to start over from the beginning of the map if you die. And trust me, you will die a lot in this game, as it is brutally difficult at some points. I think I died more than 150 times throughout the 14 hours of gameplay. But if you die, you will restart in a map that easily allows you to get back to wherever you previously were. And if you die in a dungeon, you will simply restart from the start of that dungeon, a tradition that other Zelda games have also used. The gameplay is difficult, but fun. I like how you keep all the items you obtained even if you die, making this very Dark Souls-esque. In fact, I think the soulsborne series definitely was inspired by this game specifically. I also have to praise the final dungeon for how great it is design wise. It definitely feels like a true final gauntlet, and it is very satisfying to find your way through that lethal maze of a dungeon. However, not everything this game offers is perfect. The combat is pretty awkward sometimes, because Link stops every time he does something with an item or a sword. This definitely adds to the game's insane difficulty, and arguably in a way that isn't as fun. The soundtrack is also pretty one-note, only containing four songs in its entirety if I remember correctly. Still, this isn't a game that you should miss out on if you like challenging games. Definitely one of the best games for the NES!

I got recommended this game at least four years ago, so I felt like it was finally time to give it a shot (no pun intended). And it was a damn fun game. The core gameplay consists mainly of shooting guys, but it's made super satisfying (and stress inducing) due to the fact that everything dies in one hit, including you, and the respawn time is very quick. The soundtrack was holy amazing, especially "Hydrogen", which made me look forward to the level every time it played. The story was the part where I felt the game fell short in my opinion. I liked it in the beginning, especially in the details. For instance, you save a girl from a level, and from that point on, she appears in different places in your apartment every day. It becomes a routine, so when she disappears, it's a shocking moment. But after a certain point, the story starts to spew the same message that so many other games already have made, the message about how "you enjoy all the killing, don't you?". That point was made as early as 1998 in Metal Gear Solid, and now it feels pretty old in my opinion. And the way the game ends felt like a huge anticlimax, which was probably the point, but it didn't make it more satisfying. So, a mixed bag on some points, but the gameplay was so satisfying that it made up for all its shortcomings. A damn good game!

The GameBoy Advance version of this game was the bane of my childhood. I loved and hated it at the same time, loved it for how good it was and hated it for how difficult it was. I never played it on the NES though, and if childhood me had seen that you can't save on the NES, he would surely have flipped out. I was a little worried about the difficulty going in actually. But it turned out to be not only fine, but more than fine. First of all, this game is a lot easier than both Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2, which is positive in the NES era as you can't save on these cartridges. I felt like this game was the most well-designed out of the three though. It gives you a ton of 1-Ups, which really help to make the game manageable. So I managed to beat the entire game in one sitting, and it was a thrill ride that I absolutely loved. This is probably the best game I've played so far for the NES, and I can't wait to try out more games to see what they have in store!

Dropped this game because of a couple of reasons. I don't like this game. I think Mario is annoyingly hard to control, which is not exactly complemented by the level design that has a huge preference for platforming, which becomes incredibly awkward. People often praise SM64 for its level design, but I think it's frankly horrible. The levels are ugly and unrealistic in their structures, and while there are some cool tricks, it's far too often incredibly annoying to move around. I will say that I do not hate everything about the movement. I like how fast Mario can get. Unfortunately, this is done a lot better in Super Mario Sunshine, which is probably my favourite 3D Mario game, so 64 can't really compete. Another thing that is absolutely atrocious and unacceptable is the camera, which barely functions in my opinion. This makes traversing some of the landscape a nightmare, and after a while I couldn't stand it anymore. Sorry, SM64. I gave you an honest chance, and I probably played you a lot more than I actually enjoyed. But this is not a good game unfortunately.

I wasn't sure whether I was going to play this game or not, but then I read a review that argued very much in favour of this game. This is usually all it takes to convince me to try out a game, so I did just that. And boy, I do not regret doing that. This game was refreshingly different from any other Zelda I have played, and while it had some frustrating things, I did enjoy my time with it quite a lot, especially towards the end when I had mastered it. Let's first talk about the combat, because I consider that to be by far the strongest aspect of this game. In the beginning, it feels good, but not incredible. This, however, changes once you acquire the ability to do down thrusts and up thrusts. This makes the combat feel amazing, and at the most frustrating portions of the game, this was what kept me playing honestly. And the sense of achievement of having beaten a game that is this hard, but I digress. The level design is functioning, but not anything special. I was surprised over how easy it was to navigate most of the dungeons, even though they didn't have a map, and the rooms looked pretty similar. I say most because the Great Temple was actually so confusing that I decided to look up a map just to not have to waste too much time just searching it in vain. But I still really liked the ending portion of the game, and the boss of the Great Temple was definitely my favourite. Speaking of which, I find it interesting how in many NES games the bosses are easier than the dungeon or even some of the enemies. This was not the case for the bosses of the two last temples, but it was definitely true for the rest of them. But they were all pretty fun. Another thing I liked about the game was that the items you got in the dungeons were not to be used in the dungeons, but instead in the overworld. This is very fitting for the game in my opinion, because it is a 2D platformer instead of a "traditional" Zelda game. In that way, it feels almost like a Pokémon game, where you unlock certain abilities and are able to use them on things you have seen earlier in the game. But my favourite aspect about the game has to be the difficulty. This game is hard for a beginner, and you will struggle at first. But as you get better, you will see yourself plough through most of the sections that you used to have huge trouble with. The Iron Knuckles and the jumping bird enemies are my favourite example. In the beginning, Iron Knuckles are this huge threat that will probably kill you over and over again until you learn how to fight them, but once you do you simply destroy them. And while you do not exactly destroy the bird enemies as they are incredibly difficult, probably the most difficult in the game (I honestly died more to them than to any of the bosses combined), you learn to fight them more easily. After having finished this game, I just felt this huge feeling of accomplishment, as if I had just completed a humongous task, which I possibly also had. It was a great game all the way through, and while there are some flaws, such as some frustrating dungeon designs late in the game, and some incredibly annoying enemies, I had a blast honestly!

So here it is. I completed what by many people is referred to as one of the hardest games ever made. And sure, a big reason for that is that you are intended to play it on the NES, which has no saves. That, and the fact that if you die to the final bosses even once, you are sent back three levels. I played it on the 3DS, so I used save states. Initially I only used it so I wouldn't have to start over from the very beginning every time I started up the game. But in the end, I realized that the final boss gauntlet would actually be way too difficult (in that you have to play through three levels to get one single try at them, those levels being some of the hardest in the entire already damn hard game), so I saved before the final boss and retried until I beat them. Now that I have figured out the strategy, I could probably beat the game without using those final save states if I tried to, and I may do that in the future. Why? Because this game was so much FUN! I cannot underemphasize the importance of everything dying in one hit in this game. Because this game is hard, the enemies are relentless and infinitely spawning, and they knock you back into bottomless pits if they hit you, killing you instantly. You can also die by running out of health, which happened to me many times because of how relentless the barrage of enemies is. This would have been majorly annoying and have made the game borderline unplayable if the enemies did not die in one hit. But they do, and this makes the game SO enjoyable! Sure, it's trial and error most of the time, and you have to memorize many of the later stages and make up strategies for them, but I actually think that is part of the fun. The infinite continues this game gives you encourages this play style in my opinion, and it's very quick to restart, so it feels seamless. Probably one of the best games for the NES!