I played this game back when it first came out on Switch, and thought it was the best platformer I have ever played. Decided to replay it on PS4 to get all the trophies this time, and I still think that.

This game has some of the best difficulty balancing and level design of any game I've seen. Most people will find the main story of the game challenging to get through, but it's still very doable for those who aren't very good at platformers. If you struggle more than most though, and want to see the excellent story to it's ending, the game has assist mode which allows you to customize the game to make it easier. It's an extremely well done, and thoughtful way to make the game more widely accessible. Now if you are like me and like a challenging platformer, you can go for and collect all of the strawberries. The strawberries are either a hidden secret, an extra platforming challenge, or force you to do a platforming challenge in a more difficult way. This way the story gives challenge to those who want it. Of course the game also goes further with B-sides and C-sides, which are harder versions of story's levels. Easy to ignore for those who just want the story, but really fun and satisfying to complete for those after a challenge.

The platforming itself is also rock solid. The dash feels absurdly good to use, and it's really fun using some the techniques they teach you after the main game like the wavedash to really break some levels. I imagine this game would be absurdly fun to speed run because of that. What's cool about the platforming though is that it is not just a normal platformer like a Mario or Super Meat Boy, but there is often a bit of a puzzle element to it. You often have to ask yourself where you need to use your dash to past a screen. It's not necessarily completely unique to Celeste, but it did feel particularly prominent in this game.

I also seriously need to shout out the composer for this game Lena Raine. She writes some incredible music, and she really outdid herself with this game. Some of the best video game music I have ever heard. I love the way the song Farewell is used in the DLC level. As you make it through the level the song gets closer and closer to its climax, and it is just so satisfying and beautiful. I do wonder sometimes how much of my love for this game is due to the music alone. It's really that good.

I don't think have anything more say.... just play this game gosh darnit. Just about everyone can get something out of it whether it be the wonderful story about overcoming anxiety and depression, the incredible and fun platforming, and/or the beautiful music by Lena Raine. This game is just about perfection, and is easily one of my favorite games.

A fantastic secret filled zelda-like game. Discovering mechanics I could have done at the beginning of the game from a new collected page of the in-game instruction manual is a very satisfying feeling. I freaked out a little when I finally figured what the holy cross was.

Only major problem with the game is that the combat isn't very good. It's not bad, it's just subpar, which is disappointing when so many games of this style have come out recently with great combat like Unsighted and Hades. Since the combat isn't great, the couple difficulty spikes in the game are a tad frustrating, but never felt impossibly difficult.

This game has a true ending of sorts which I have not gotten (and I don't think I will). It requires you to unearth like 30 secrets in the game using the instruction manual. I did a bunch of them and its quite fun and satisfying to solve these, however it starts to feel like a chore. Some of the things the game asks you to do take far to much time (e.g. the puzzle to open the door at the top of the mountain) and just don't feel worth it to me. That said, if you like hunting down secrets in video games, you are going to have a great time in Tunic.

Incredible open world that is extremely dense and fun to explore. Unlike many other open world games, this game forces you to find everything in the world. So it doesn't litter your map with a million icons, nor does it give you an extensive quest log. This makes exploring the world much more rewarding. It helps that you will constantly be finding new things.

Despite the game being open world, From Software still find ways to incorporate their classic level design in the game. This is largely done through legacy dungeons, which are extremely well designed classic Dark Souls levels. These levels constantly double back on themselves and are filled with little hidden paths to find.

Combat is pretty standard Dark Souls, but refined. There is now an attack you can do when you block an attack, which feels very good and is a very welcome addition. Now that there is a jump button, you can also do jump attacks which is really useful for closing distances. The new addition that brings the entire combat system together is that every enemy now has a hidden poise meter of sorts. This meter can be dropped with any attack, but strong attacks/strong jump attacks are necessary for dropping it to zero. Once dropped to zero, you get a critical hit on the enemy. All these additions make the combat much more strategic and fun, than the Dark Souls games.

From Software's titles are known to be quite difficult, and Elden Ring isn't any different. You should expect to die many times going into the game. However, this game isn't nearly as punishingly difficult as some may have you believe. Most of the game is very doable, but if you run into something too difficult, you can just go off and do something else. You can summon NPCs or other players to make the game significantly easier. The game also adds in items called Ashes which allow you to summon various characters into battle. The game doesn't have an easy mode, but you can absolutely make the game much easier for yourself through summons and through building your character certain ways like going for sorceries instead of greatswords.

Elden Ring not only great Souls game, but also one of the best open world games ever made. The combat is very fun and satisfying. The world constantly surprises with new and unique things, which makes exploration rewarding. Overall, I highly recommend Elden Ring anyone who doesn't hate souls game.

Really fun and solid co-op game. The game has some extremely well-tuned game feel to it. It just feels so good to move around in the game. The animation and art-style are quite good as well. Something particularly cool is how frequently the game changes up what you are doing. For the most part it's a simple puzzle platformer, but there moments where it changes to stuff like a 2d fighting game or to like a top-down action game. The sheer breadth of ideas at display is really cool.

I do have some issues with however. For a very linear co-op game, the game is bit too long. There are certainly some weak sections of the game that could have been cut to make it fun throughout the whole game and make the game less of a chore to get through. Moreover, the story is awful. It just doesn't tackle divorce with much nuance at all. The message seems to be to never get a divorce, just try to rediscover your love. That's nice, but not great general advice, and kinda feels like the protagonists probably should get a divorce. They don't seem to give a shit at all about their daughter who is now alone with her practically dead parents. The character "Book of Love" constantly pops up and is just an awful character. So yeah, play the game for the fun gameplay and cool art style, not so much the story.

If you are in the mood for an open-world game with a ton of quests and points on a map to check off, you can't really go wrong with Horizon. The game is gorgeous, the combat is fun, the plot is engaging, and it is overall very polished.

However, it left me feeling kinda meh overall. The combat is fun, but gets overly repetitive by the end as there isn't much to it. You dodge roll and shoot arrows at weak points and that's about it. I enjoyed the plot, but much of dialogue was quite boring. Alloy is such a boring character, and characters she surrounds herself with aren't any better. The world is gorgeous, but there isn't anything to explore. It's all cookie cutter content, that is clearly labeled.

As an open world game, it's higher quality than your typical Ubisoft title. Though it isn't that much better at the end of the day.

Yooka-Laylee doesn't quite live up to Banjo-Kazooie. It has much of the same fun and charm of Banjo, but it often feels like an unpolished imitation of Banjo than a true successor. I would still recommend fans of the original give this game a shot, but expect to get irritated at many parts.

I'll start out positive and say that the controls are pretty solid for a 3d platformer. You have a double jump and a hover ability, which makes platforming require less precision. It feels good hopping around the levels. There is also a roll ability which acts as your sprint and feels pretty good to use. Also collecting Pagies and Quills is just as satisfying as collecting Jiggies and Notes.

While the controls are good, the camera is not. The camera frequently gets stuck on things, and when it's not getting stuck on things the game barely lets you control the darn thing. The frequently times I wanted to point the camera down at something below me, but the game just wouldn't let me do it. Many abilities Yooka and Laylee have require stamina, which just feels more like an annoyance than an interesting mechanic. Even worse, it takes like 10 seconds or so of waiting around until your stamina regenerates back to full, which is an awkwardly long time.

This game has similar problems to Tooie in that the levels are too big and require moves from later levels, but it's much worse in this game as the levels are significantly bigger than even Tooie's levels. It slows game down quite a bit, and makes it harder to figure out where you have and haven't gone. Plus all the levels feel like a bunch of small levels glued together instead of one coherent thing, which just kinda sucks.

The bosses and minigames also suck. They're not particularly fun and all take much longer than they should. I could forgive the bosses if some of the bosses weren't weirdly difficult. Dying to the last phase of a boss and having to do it all over again is such a drag. Every level has a "Rextro Arcade" minigame, which might make you think it will be styled like a retro arcade game, but no there all 3d and you play as Yooka-Laylee in all of the them. If you want to 100% the game, you will need play each of these at least twice because the game ties two pagies to each for some reason.

Overall, I did enjoy much of my time with Yooka-Laylee, but it never reached the same highs as Banjo. Plus, I often found myself irritated with the larger than necessary levels, awful camera, unnecessary stamina system, and particularly annoying Pagies. It's not nearly as good as Banjo-Kazooie, but I am at least happy that they tried.

It's easy say that Splatoon 3 is basically just Splatoon 2 again, because in a lot of ways it is. When you get into a turf war match, Splatoon 3 feels almost identical to Splatoon 2, just with some new weapons, maps, and specials added. That isn't really a bad thing necessarily though as Splatoon 2's was an incredibly fun and unique take on the competitive shooter genre, and Splatoon 3 is just as fun, but perhaps not quite as fresh with the series being 7 years old now at this point. That said, what makes Splatoon 3 worth the $60 (for at least fans of the series) is all the quality of life updates and sheer amount of content here.

This game has a lot of quality of life improvements that make the game quite bit better than it's predecessor. One of the first you may notice is that the cutscene that plays when you boot the game up is now skippable, which is fantastic. The lobby system now has you able to walk around a sort of training ground while you queue for a match making the wait a lot more bearable. You now spawn into the maps by shooting into them, which is a whole lot more fun than the previous system. Salmon Run is available 24/7 now. You have only one rank now instead of one rank for each mode, plus the ranked mode is designed around sets of 7 matches where you need to win 5 games giving real nice quitting points in the game. The ranked doesn't just judge you on the number of wins you got though, but also on the awards you got which means you can rank up even if you lose, which helps get rid of the frustration of bad teammates. While not quality of life per se, they also added a squid roll for mobility and iframes, and squid surge which allows you to get some vertical height when jumping out of a wall. All these add up and make the game a lot more fun.

Want to note also that the net code is also pretty good, but connection errors happen way more often than they should. The connection errors aren't frequent enough to make me stop playing, but if you play for like an hour it is very likely you have at least one. Hopefully this is fixed as it is incredibly annoying.

Much of the new content in this game bring a little closer to what most modern day competitive shooters do. For example, you now have a name tag which you can customize with a banner, a customizable title, and badges. You can also unlock victory emotes and decorations for your locker, because yes, you have a locker you can customize in this game. The locker doesn't affect anything, but adds one more area of customizability that will hopefully increase the longevity of this game. All of these things (except badges which are unlocked through challenges) can be unlocked through the catalogue which is this games (free) battle pass system, and a gacha system which you can spend in-game money on. All this will help keep people coming back to the game, as it gives you a sense that you are working towards something. Specifically you are working towards that sick dab emote at level 98. Don't want to be missing that!

This game sees the return of Salmon Run as well. It is more or less the same as Splatoon 2's, just with some new events and boss salmonids to encounter. Though it is worth noting you can throw the eggs now which is nice. The big new thing is of course us the new final boss which can randomly occur called Cohozuna. Cohozuna is absurdly difficult, but a really fun fight. In this fight, you can throw eggs at him to deal a good chunk of damage, but also balance the fact that there are tons of other boss salmonids to worry about, plus an incredibly short timer. Only complaint is that beating Cohozuna doesn't seem to award that much, but still pretty fun nonetheless.

With another Splatoon comes another single-player campaign. This one might be the best of the series (except for perhaps octo-expansion). It is admittedly more of the same, but with some big hubs to explore and more diversity of missions (seemingly quite inspired by octo-expansion). A little disappointing they didn't spice it up this time around, but it's still a solid campaign.

This game is also a card game now? The card game is called Tableturf Battle where you placing what are basically tetris pieces in order to claim the most turf. It's honestly better than it has any right of being, though certainly no where near as good as Turf-wars and Salmon Run. Bafflingly though, you can't seem to play against other players. You can play against other players decks, but they are still AI controlled which is incredibly lame.

Splatoon 3 is easily the best of the series, no contest. There is so much polish here, and the sheer amount of content and stuff to do is fantastic. It does feel practically identical to Splatoon 2 in a lot of ways, but Splatoon fans certainly won't regret picking this up. However, if you weren't a big fan of Splatoon, I doubt this will get you into it. I'm looking forward to putting another hundred hours into a new Splatoon game though, and very excited to see the new content they add to this game over the next two years!