I had an ok time playing through Unsighted, but there wasn't a lot that really stuck with me. It has moments of excellent execution, but most of the game didn't really deliver for me.

Visually, Unsighted has an extreme amount of variance. Some of the pixel art is very well done. The main character is super high quality and most of the sprites you see in combat are well animated and detailed. Most of the other characters look like they are a different style or artist though... honestly pretty rough. The environment art is also hit or miss -- a lot of the time it is difficult to determine height or position of platforms in the world.

The narrative is too heavy handed for me. It is extremely self-serious and sentimental, though that is definitely the vibe they are going for. The content is fine, but I just wasn't that invested.
This extends to the music which is basically a dirge throughout. The game is too long for this to be effective though, and it was just boring and tiresome by the end.
The serious, sad vibes come through in gameplay which is cool, even if it doesn't work super well. Every character in the game has a timer (though many have timers so high they are irrelevant), when the timer ends that character dies permanently (turned into an Unsighted... basically a rogue machine). This is a cool idea, but the constant timer just made me feel like I didn't have time to get to know any of them, so I didn't actually care that they died (other than my fairy companion, who is the only one I used timer extension dust on). The main characters also have special items they give you "if only they had enough time," which really means "give me 3 dust for this item." It feels very transactional and I wasn't really compelled to do it.

Unsighted has a fairly strong gameplay loop of top-down, parry-based combat and exploration with light metroidvania elements.
I enjoyed getting new abilities and unlocking new areas. There are a couple of cool abilities you get that work really well and feel good to use and I like that they are tied to weapons you equip. It feels like you have an arsenal of gadgets by the end. The level design feels very arbitrary and I never had a super clear idea of where I was going or how to get there. I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for the one chest that had the item I needed to progress.
Combat in Unsighted indexes hard on the parry, with many of the fights all but requiring you to master it. The parry works well enough and feels pretty good to land -- enough to carry me through the game, despite much of the rest of the combat feeling pretty loose. There are some arbitrary-seeming rules about when you can be damaged. Jumping dodges some abilities and using a potion makes you temporarily invincible, but not for the whole duration, so you often get hit immediately. Ability buffering can be unresponsive too -- certain states prevent you from healing, but I never had a clear idea what caused this, so the potion just felt unresponsive most of the time unless I stopped everything to use it, leading to the aforementioned post-healing damage.
In addition to these input issues, a lot of the attacks and movements are heavily animation driven and big, so Alma feels very wild and out of control.

Unsighted definitely feels like the team tried to tackle slightly too much. I would have liked this game a lot more if it was about half the length with slightly more polished combat. A shorter length may have helped the over-serious story from overstaying its welcome as well.

Monster Hunter Rise is great. It leans more towards the classic feel of Monster Hunters 3 and 4, but with a lot of the quality of life changes present in Monster Hunter World.

MHR's newly introduced mechanic is the Wirebug, which is a fairly versatile skill. Each weapon has special moves which utilize it, giving you a couple of options on a limited resource that feel like EX moves in a fighting game. You can also use the Wirebug to dodge out of hit reactions, initiate jumping attacks on monsters, or for navigation. It is a cool mechanic that didn't become as degenerate as the Clutch Claw from MHWorld did for me.
Palicos (cat helpers) make a return but are joined by Canynes (dog helpers). I like Canynes more, but I enjoyed that both have something different to offer and it is worth having one of each if you are on a solo hunt.
Other new mechanics can be hit or miss, but serve their purpose of mixing things up. Riding monsters is usually fun and exciting even if the controls can be a bit weird. The new Rampage events are less successful. They feel chaotic and fairly unsatisfying, but they are not very common and not super difficult.

I split my time pretty evenly between Sword and Shield, Dual Blades, and Hunting Horn and enjoyed all of them. I found Wirebug skills for each of them that were super fun and kept the combat feeling active and dynamic. I like the way the Switch Axe plays as well but I am pretty burned out on it from using it for most of my time in MHWorld, so I didn't use it that much here.

Rise has a good selection of monsters, with most of my favorites making a return. The new monsters are all fun to fight and have a definite style to them. There is definitely a sort of Japanese Myth vibe to the game, with monsters that are clearly inspired by Kappa and traditional Samurai. Rise feels unique and more classically fantastical than the other Monster Hunter games I have played.
This style helps sell the visuals in Monster Hunter Rise as well. The environments are not as impressive as those in World, but I like the style and uniqueness of them. The land of Rise is dotted with ancient ruins and buildings that make you feel like you are exploring an overgrown, lost civilization, rather than the wilderness that is typical in Monster Hunter games.

Monster Hunter Rise is a fantastic entry in the series that wisely carries forward most of the quality of life changes made in Monster Hunter World, while also keeping the structure more like a mainline Monster Hunter title. You can't really go wrong with Monster Hunter games and this is absolutely one of the better ones.

Of any Mario Kart game, this was the one everybody my age played and remembers most fondly. Except for me- this is my least favorite entry in the series for a number of reasons and a signifcant step down from everything Double Dash did right.

First of all, this game is ugly. The game has this very muddy look to it that makes a bad impression right off the bat. The biggest gimmick this time around is the Wii Wheel- a simple plastic peripheral that adds a gimmick to the tilt control experience. I actually didn't mind the experience of playing with the Wii wheel- but there are other options like the Gamecube controller (with the item throw button remapped for inexplicable reasons) if you aren't vibing with the Wheel.

Mario Kart Wii goes back to one driver per kart but introduces motorcycles- which have a sharper turn radius. You can pop wheelies for extra speed and after a while realize that this slight advantage make bikes the way to go.

I really didn't like what they did with the miniturbo system in Mario Kart Wii. There's a little depth in manual mode to the angle of your drift, but automatic does it all for you to lame effect and I've seen too many players who have poured countless hours into this game go for automatic. While I understand some players hated snaking, it really separated casual players from those more advanced so I didn't appreciate the change.

Mario Kart Wii tries to compensate by adding tricks, done off ramps with the simple shake of the Wii wheel. It's a fun new addition to the gameplay for sure. There is also drafting off karts in front of you for a boost which is also fun and helps convince racers to get used to the new look behind button.

Like Mario Kart DS, this title has a whopping 32 tracks- 16 new, 16 retro to choose from. It's not my favorite track selection in the series but there are some nice ones- DK Summit, Wario's Gold Mine, Toad's Factory, and Grumble Volcano are very cool places to race.

Mario Kart Wii had an online mode which worked a lot better than the very hacked DS iteration but still at its issues. Still, it was a step in the right direction for Nintendo netcode which still honestly sucks.

At the end of the day, this is still Mario Kart, and it's still really fun to play. As a longtime fan who considers Double Dash and Kart DS as two of my favorite games, I did not appreciate the changes made to the formula. But it was a smash hit and didn't serve to derail the franchise or anything like that.