It doesn't compare to previous Mario games at all. New Super Mario Bros games got their identity with the wii iteration and this game just feels like a very basic foundation. The powerups feel a little disappointing despite being interesting in concept. The mini shroom is fun but very situational, and the blue shell can harm you more than it helps you. The game knows this to some degree since you end up with a fire flower 90% of the time. Mega mushroom is pretty boring and never matters despite being on the cover. Music is really good in spots, "bah" in others.

This game is not the living hell people make it out to be, although I imagine it is if you were a high tier backer. This game is largely inoffensive and even feels nice to play sometimes. Unfortunately the budget is not reflected in any way. Boring cutscenes, some wack levels, and a horrible final boss. A couple things bothered me about the movement. It feels nice but Beck has some momentum involved that can ruin your precision. This killed me many times on the highway level featuring instakill floors.

The most egregious thing this game did was take up my entire CPU. It would run fine a lot of the time but randomly decide to run like shit and slow down my ENTIRE system. This happened on one of my final boss runs and I nearly broke something.

It's just fun to play. Unfortunately the story kinda blows and it feels like I'm watching a terrible movie a lot of the time. If these games made any sense they would be pretty godlike. While the combat is fun, I feel like there's room for improvement in making things readable and giving the player more movement options. It's frustrating getting endlessly combo'd because I have no out. I wanted to roll but I never unlocked it because I guess I wasn't spamming drive forms enough. Throughout the entire game, bosses will give you less and less openings on low hp which makes it hard to close out battles. Especially at the end of the game this got on my nerves with all the warping and long invincible moves. The Disney portions of these games seem so phoned in, but I like that they are short enough for me to just bang out a couple in one session. The cutscenes are awful but at least they can be funny.

The music is so unreal good.

Ludomalica - I like the concept but it's just not very scary. A little more effort into the scares would take this a long way.

Gallerie - Actually pretty good. I didn't like it at first but I enjoyed how it played out. There was a bug at the end that forced a section restart. Really long for a dread X game.

INTERIM - BAD. Looks like vomit and controls terrible. Whatever I was supposed to take away from this game it did not work.

The Book of Blood - Good but feels underdeveloped. Lots of things that feel like they're supposed to matter but really don't. Still enjoyable.

Beyond the Curtain - Little long for what it is but is kinda cool. Ending is super fucked.

Vestige - I like its presentation. Also feels a bit underdeveloped in places, but I like the game within a game.

Resver - Gotta respect it for the style but I can't say I understood or really enjoyed any of it.

We Never Left - One of the highlights for sure. I like the concept a lot. I wish it didn't do the pixel filter thing. End didn't entirely make sense to me.

Spirit Guardian - Super jank and not scary at all. Not as bad as Interim though.

Karao - Really cool game. Not particularly scary because they give you a gun but I'm glad this type of horror game is present.

Rotten Stigma - Third person game! It's ok. Really short and has some dumb jumpscares.

Hunsvotti - Saved for last because I really like Midsommar but didn't really live up to the hype I created for myself lol. Pretty underwhelming and not scary at all.

Good collection overall. probably one of the better of the collections. Gallerie, We Never Left, and Karao were the highlights for me.

Writing as a PvE Co-op exclusive player.

Survival games in this format are nothing short of miserable. There are no forks in progression and you have one singular goal at any time. This singular goal usually entails grinding the same subset of enemies or scouring for resources for hours at a time. People generally praise this game for the combat, which is mostly good but sometimes frustrating. Nothing new if you're familiar with Battlerite. You get a lot of abilities and spells but they range from useless to redundant. The sunlight mechanic is exclusively annoying. The boss battles, specifically at the end of the game, are the highlights. It doesn't justify the games flaws for me though.

There are many features that exist for PvP alone, so when carried over into PvE the game gets 100x more insufferable. If you play PvE it is a necessity that you enable warping with items and disable durability.

I do not imagine there is a world where playing this game solo is a good idea. Friends make it tolerable.

I wish I had the patience to get the true ending of this game but I do not. This game is kind of a heartbreaker because there's something really cool here but the execution is very flawed. I had heard it was buggy but I didn't expect it to be THIS buggy. The game kept me on my toes as to whether or not doing something would softlock me or not. I got lost a ton. The story doesn't make sense. The last section cuts off your saves for no reason. If this project was handled better it could have been really great but it's just a disaster.