What an interesting experience this was. From what I can tell, most Ace Attorney fans see this as a “high highs, low lows” kind of game, and yeah I’d say I agree with that. I think the new mainstays are very strong, Pearl and Franziska are both great characters, and again those highs are insanely high. The final case is better than every case in the first game, and the second one is very strong too. But the first case is a mixed bag, and Turnabout Big Top is one of the worst segments I’ve ever played in a video game LMAO. So that alone shows that the game is literally a 50/50 experience. I have my other issues with it as well, like how Franziska is kind of underutilized, and how it feels more like a tool for the overall series’ plot rather than something that is a conclusive story from start to end. Seems like the score I have is way too high, and tbh maybe you’re right 💀. But at the end of the day, it’s still Ace Attorney. All of the first game’s best qualities are still on full display here, the gameplay is insanely satisfying and cathartic to succeed in, the mysteries are consistently pretty investing and leave you wanting to know the truth, the main characters are still as strong as ever, if not stronger. Characters like Edgeworth and even Mia get new sides explored of them that we didn’t really see in the previous game, and the dilemma that Phoenix is faced with in the final trial is genuinely incredible, and acts as a fascinating deep dive into his character. Sure Maya is pretty much the same but also she’s the goat so I can let it slide. Basically, if this were a game in a shittier franchise, then it’d be a LOT more fucked.

Very few games have thrown me for a loop as hard as The Messenger did. I went into it thinking it was a simplistic, yet fun and challenging homage to classic NES platformers, Ninja Gaiden especially. It felt like a modernized, more accessible take on that type of game, almost like Shovel Knight in that sense. It was really cool, but nothing insane. Then the second half of the game hit and I was completely blown away. What I thought was just a cute little homage to the NES era of gaming turned into a dimension swapping, time traveling metroidvania which completely smacks you in the face with “IM RETRO BITCH!” Yet it still manages to maintain the same general gameplay as the first half, it introduces the metroidvania stuff in such a natural way. Out of all the games out there that have you revisit levels to find new things to beat the game, The Messenger does it in possibly the coolest way I’ve ever seen. While I adore this game conceptually, it does occasionally falter in execution, specifically in the second half. Again, it’s a really cool switch up, but due to the fast travel system being pretty damn limiting, there’s still a lot of backtracking involved. Since you do play through new versions of the levels alongside the old ones, it can still be pretty fun at times seeing how the levels change from old to new. But more often than not, I found myself just kind of being annoyed that I had to do pointless wandering through levels I’ve already played, especially when I didn’t actually know where to go. Also I’m not huge on the writing, it’s clearly not the focus but I find the humor style kind of😐it doesn’t really do much for me. Conceptually one of the coolest games I think I’ve ever played, and while it occasionally falters in the execution, it mostly manages to stick the landing.

Holy hell this game is so badass. Taking the basic mechanics of a rhythm game and implementing them into a brawler game is such a good idea that Hi Fi Rush gets the most out of. The whole way this game works is that whenever you fight an enemy, you need to time your attacks up with the beat of the music, and hoooly shit it’s so awesome. Genuinely one of the coolest gimmicks for a game I’ve seen in a while. The game isn’t just carried by it’s ideas though, the rest is good as fuck too. The writing is awesome, the characters and their designs are very memorable and great, the story isn’t anything insane but is still very engaging, and holy FUCK the presentation in this game is unbelievable. Obviously the music is banging, but the looks of this game are unbelievable. The cutscenes have so much life, not a single one of the animators were slacking when working on this. Plus the way it seamlessly transitions between in game action, cutscenes with the in game engine, and hand drawn 2D cutscenes is absolutely insane. The amount of effort the team put into this game is fucking nuts, such an insanely commendable game. If you’re a fan of brawlers, and music as well, you are doing yourself a disservice by not checking out this game.

It’s about time I got into this damn series! I started playing this game years ago, but never finished it until now, and I’m really glad I did. Very few games are as satisfying to progress in as Ace Attorney, every time you prove you’re right and get to hear an “OBJECTION!” or a “TAKE THAT!” you just feel like an absolute boss. The recurring characters are all really likable, the writing in general is really good, and it’s just a game that constantly keeps you invested. Outside of like, the first one I guess, each case has you constantly playing to find out the truth of it all. There are some moments in this game where you really have no idea how it’s even possible for you to win, but again when it all clicks you feel like an absolute beast. Turnabout Goodbyes was easily the peak of that, I genuinely did not have any sort of clue on where it was gonna go after the first trial. Rise From The Ashes was also really good in that regard too, and frankly the other cases too. Whether the case is insanely mysterious and hard to figure out, or involves someone close to you, you always have a motivation for wanting to discover the truth, and it’s really awesome that they pulled that off. Amazing start to the series, and I am really excited to play the rest.

Puyo Puyo Tetris was too good and now I’m getting invested in the older Puyo games. Starting with the original, I think it’s a cool history piece and I’m very glad this rerelease happened, but there’s really no reason to go back to it today other than just out of curiosity of how the series started. It’s cute to see some of the old names for characters that would go on to appear in future games as well, and it’s still a good game for sure, just not something really worth playing today. All you can really do is just go through the game’s arcade mode, with no free play option for single player really. As a result, if it weren't for the fact this rerelease has unlimited continues, it’d be a much more frustrating experience than a fun one. Thankfully this version doesn’t end up falling into that camp because of the continues, but that leads to the game being pretty barren. You blaze through the story mode in basically one go, and then you’re done with it. The core Puyo gameplay is still very solid, it’s not a surprise that it’s changed so little since this one, but the game as a whole isn’t really one worth revisiting. It is a very cool re-release though, which is what’s keeping it from 5 territory. There’s leaderboards, savestates, online support, replays, they added some very cool stuff to this and I fuck with that. The game itself isn’t anything super special though.

Weirdly enough, I think I liked this one less than the first game, though not by a lot cause honestly they’re basically the exact same thing 💀. I just think the way this one is structured is a bit lamer. There isn’t much of a plot, it's basically just a tower of opponents with short dialog boxes before each one. Which for one, does nothing for me since they didn’t even translate this game so I can’t read it, and two, it just feels a little less cool than the first game. The first game basically did the same thing, but it was all built around this quest to stop Satan, and the cutscenes had a lot more depth to them. I will again give credit where it’s due though, even if it isn’t translated they put a lot of effort into this rerelease. It has the same extras the first Sega Ages game had, and I definitely can appreciate it. Plus Arle actually sounds like Arle a bit now so that helps, though it also kind of gives me more of a reason to go back to the first game instead. I can see Arle be Arle in any Puyo Puyo game! I don’t get any other ones where she’s called Silvana and sounds like a dude! Overall, a pretty underwhelming experience.

not the craziest game ever really, but it has a lot of charm to it. Being a puzzle game from the N64/Dreamcast era, it has simplistic gameplay combined with a lot of simultaneously updated and slightly outdated visual flair, and honestly I kind of love it. The sprite art is kind of whatever to me, but I really like the hand drawn art, and the kind of hard to make out 3D backgrounds in the cutscenes always really appealed to me idk why, it just has a super cool look. I think the game did get a bit frustrating at points, especially with the new power up feature. I think it’s a cool addition to the series, I appreciate them spicing up the core gameplay for sure, but it also just means the CPUs can almost always unfuck themselves, making matches drag a lot more. Still though, I’d def go back to this one the soonest out of these earlier Puyo games. It’s the same great gameplay with a lot of extra charm in the presentation, and even if it gets a bit tedious at points, it’s still a really cool piece of Puyo Puyo history.

For an arcade puzzle game based off an anime, they put WAY too much effort into this. I'm not complaining though, this game is fire.

Again, for an arcade release, this has a really impressive amount of content. Every character has their own routes in both of the single player modes, and you're able to unlock tons of pieces of art of all the characters that any Azumanga fan will get a kick out of. Not to mention the gameplay itself is just solid, it's just Puzzle Bobble/Bust A Move pretty much but it's still really fun. This was actually my first time ever playing one of these games, and it being introduced through one of my favorite pieces of media ever made me have a lot more fun with it. I do think the gameplay can occasionally be a bit luck reliant, which for a puzzle game isn't really my thing, but eh it's not the end of the world.

As an Azumanga fan, I loved this. Getting to play as Osaka in a video game is a very powerful feeling and unlocking all the cool recreations of scenes in the series was so awesome. As a video game fan, I still really liked this. The gameplay is really fun, and the amount of content is insanely admirable.

My peak senses are tingling.

Puyo Puyo Tetris is straight up just one of the best puzzle games AND one of the best crossover games ever made and I don’t really know how I feel about that. I do know how I feel about the game though, THAT SHIT SLAPS!

They could’ve so easily just made this “puyo puyo and tetris haha lmao.” But instead, they went above and beyond to give us a strong contender for the best entry that both of these series’ have seen. With a wide variety of game modes and gimmicks, tons of playable characters, a whole ass STORY MODE, they tried way too hard on this game and I am all here for it.

The story mode is so insanely goofy and stupid, yet I still managed to fall in love with all the characters and the crackhead energy they each have on full display. Plus it manages to just do a really good job of balancing all the different gameplay styles and showing you them without cramming them down your throat. Going into the campaign I really only cared about Tetris and barely cared about Puyo Puyo even remotely. But they somehow made me genuinely invested in learning the mechanics and trying to pull off the best combos I could.

This is also just an incredible party game, some of those game modes get intense as hell and that was when I was playing with only CPUs. Real life/online multiplayer with this shit is probably 10 times as crazy. Shoutout Big Bang in particular, that one is definitely my favorite.

Admittedly I am definitely aware of how unbalanced this game is competitively, since a good Puyo Puyo player will pretty much always beat a good Tetris player. But I just don’t care man, this is a package that has so much more love put into it that I really cannot hate much about it. I’ll get to the sequel later down the line, but for now I’m gonna continue to have a blast with this one. Btw shout out Arle and Carby they're my goats 🙏

God this was such a cool ass experience. Celeste is like one of my favorite things ever, so seeing an anniversary celebration this special was such a treat.

With very heavy inspiration from Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine, Celeste 64 captures an old school and feel good energy that I have not seen many other games recreate. They adapt Celeste’s moveset/control scheme into 3D shockingly well. It’s a little bit clunkier, and that can become especially frustrating in a few of the bonus levels, but you get the hang of it as you go along. I especially appreciated that glitch dash jump still being in the game, I used it a lot and it made traversing very fun :D.

This is a very short adventure, with only 30 collectable strawberries in total, and none of them seem to be even necessary for getting to the end. But for what it is, it left me with a big dumb smile on my face almost the whole way through, and I’d highly recommend it to any Celeste fan.

Is it weird to say I was disappointed by a 30 year old gameboy game? I’m gonna do it anyway. I’ve felt like a bit of a fake fan for missing out on this game for so long, but I wasn’t really missing a ton I’ll be real.

It has some very good things about it, it has some very creative theming which for being such an old Mario platformer is really admirable. I think the structure of all 6 zones being available since the start and you getting to do them in any order you want is awesome. Also I love the Carrot powerup, it’s a shame they’ve never brought it back. Between all that, and on top of stuff like all the unique enemies/bosses, and the fact that it’s the first game to feature Wario, man! This game has a lot to love about it! It sure is a shame that it’s unplayable!

Exaggerations aside, the controls in this game are ROUGH. They’re somehow simultaneously stiff and slippery, I cannot count how many times I died to such insanely simple obstacles just because of how poorly the game controls. Even if I didn’t get any unfair deaths from it, it just doesn’t feel very fun to play the game. The weight is off, every level feels like an ice level, Mario 3 and Mario World already existed at this point and were infinitely more fun to control Mario in. Sure they were on better hardware, but does that really impact the physics of the game that much? Plus I think losing all the golden coins you’ve collected when you get a game over is RIDICULOUS. No I don’t mean the normal ass coins you get in every level, I mean the titular 6 Golden Coins that are the main collectables you get after each world. Literally all this makes you do is just replay all the bosses at the end of a playthrough before going to the final level, it’s sooooo pointless. I get that the game is pretty short, but this isn’t how you make it longer LMAO.

Out of every Mario game, I think this might be the one that I’d want to see a remake of the most. It could be a really great game if it just controlled well and had the game over system reworked, and updated visuals on top of that would make this game go hard as hell. Those great ideas it has are just enough to make it slightly above average, but an overrated game regardless.