By all accounts, I should love this game, but it didn't quite do it for me. Pikmin is one of my favorites franchises of Nintendo's, and Pikmin 2 is easily one of my favorite games. So I should adore Pikmin 4, being the biggest, most AAA feeling Pikmin game to date, with much of it's design being borrowed from Pikmin 2. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy Pikmin 4, but I struggled a bit to get through the whole thing.

So why is that? Well I think it comes down to what so many other people have said; the games too easy. This game so frequently just feels like you are going through the motions to the point where the game can feel a bit like a chore rather than a game. It's a lot of just getting to a particularly part of the map so your pikmin can carry back a Watermelon or whatever back to the ship.

The enemies just don't feel that threatening in this game in comparison to others in large part do to your dog companion Oatchie. See, all you have to do is level up Oatchie's charge ability to the max ASAP, spam it repeatedly, and just about every enemy's health bar will be disintegrated almost immediately. It is quite satisfying to do, and overall I do enjoy the addition of Oatchies, it just gets extremely repetitive by the end. I feel this game could've potentially benefited from a hard mode which just increased the health bar of every enemy to make this not quite as OP as it is.

That said, this game is just charming as every other Pikmin game, and it does have some of the best level design of the franchise. They really make use of the new camera angle and added mobility from Oatchie to make some large levels with lots of verticality, which is really great to see. I also LOVE the addition of being able to explore at night, as well as all the Dandori battles. I was never too challenged by these, but they do add a bit of challenge, and really help to break the monotony of the game. Adding these multiplayer/time challenge missions into the main campaign is a genius move. Do wish they had some difficult time challenge missions outside of the main game though like in Pikmin 3.

Chants of Sennaar continues the trend of incredible puzzle/detective games like Return of the Obra Dinn and Curse of the Golden Idol. However, this game sets itself apart by not being about murders, but instead about deciphering several languages, and honestly deciphering these languages is such an incredibly satisfying experience. Like can you imagine being dropped in the middle of like China or something and just becoming fluent in the language through context clues? You'd feel like a god. Of course, this game makes that process way easier than it would be in real life, like each symbol is one word, which isn't the case in most languages, and you only need to solve like 50 words instead of the like 1,000 or so you would realistically need. Still though, I think this concept is really cool and Chants of Sennaar does a great job of delivering that fantasy. I really hope they make a sequel honestly!

I also just want to mention they do a great job in creating a bunch of different cultures, which you can really immerse yourself in. That said some of the cultures they develop end up taking away a little from the experience. For example, one of them requires you to stealth the whole way through, while the last language is practically given to you. May have been worth going back to the drawing board for those, but still did lead to an overall immersive experience I really enjoyed.

I want to like this game so bad. The art is great, the name "Electroplankton" is real cool, and the idea of this abstract meditative music making game really appeals to me. But the game just feels like a tech demo. None of the mini games have any depth, and I would be surprised if anyone would be engaged enough to spend more than 10 minutes on any of them. Like Hanenbow looks super cool artistically, but it's just not fun and it's borderline impossible to purposely create any music with it. Super cool to see something so weird come out of Nintendo, but can't say I really enjoyed my time with Electroplankton.

Dredge is a neat Lovecraftian horror fishing game with a satisfying loop. The loop is basically you go out to fish, and then sell that fish to upgrade your ship/equipment so you can get more fish. It works well, though I wish the act of fishing was a little more fun. Where the game really shines is in its bazaar world filled with lovecraftian sea monsters. It really begs you to explore it and uncover it's secrets. Unfortunately though, the horror aspect is a little lacking. There is some tension at night, but the game rarely forces you to go out at night. So if you play carefully, you may never see all the weird things that can happen at night. In fact, near the end I barely saw anything at night since I got buffed to not have as much panic at night. Still though, it is a very novel experience that I don't regret playing at all.

This game isn't quite as bad as people are making it out to be. Like yeah, the dialogue is terrible and it's basically the same tired open-world design we've seen so many times, but the combat is pretty fun and the magical parkour is pretty legit. It's not really enough to save it, especially with how poorly it is paced with the game literally telling you to read books at one point, and it taking forever to unlock the second set of spells. So yeah, the combat is fun, but everything around the combat keeps from wanting to play more.

This game looks like RE2 remake, plays like RE2 remake, but is structurally very different. Where RE2 tries to raise the tension while you explore a police station similar to a metroidvania or a Zelda dungeon, RE3 remake has shorter levels that are way more focused on action and set pieces. In RE2 the big bad is unpredictable in the way he chases you, while in RE3 the big bad is dealt with almost exclusively through scripted sequences, which destroys any fear you may have had of the monster.

RE3 isn't bad by any means, afterall the gameplay is taken straight from RE2 which was fantastic. However, RE2 wasn't fantastic just due to the fact that shooting the zombies was fun, it was fantastic due to how well crafted Raccoon City's Police Department was and how well integrated its mechanics were. For example, the RE games let you examine items in your inventory. This usually done to solve puzzles, but in RE3 it is almost exclusively used to open up boxes. It was like the devs knew they needed the mechanic, but didn't have time to implement it properly so they just took the laziest option. That example says all you need to know about RE3; it looks and plays like an RE game, but the experience as a whole is pretty hollow.

This game wears it's inspiration on it's sleeve. Entropy center is a first-person game where you solve puzzles in a sciencey place with a sci-fi gun, as an AI with a lot of personality talks to you..... sound familiar? Its basically Portal with some things swapped around. The biggest change is that the gun you use rewinds time instead of shooting portals.

Now being a Portal ripoff isn't a bad thing, especially since there aren't many games like it. However, it does mean you will be compared to 2 of the best games ever made, and this game doesn't stand up Portal 1 and 2. The writing and story is pretty good, the time gun is pretty cool, and the game is very polished. However, the puzzles just aren't as fun. What you find out pretty early on, is that basically every puzzle has you moving a cube from the final position you want it to the first position you want it, so you can rewind it as you jump through the puzzle. You do need to figure out where the cubes need to go, but its rarely that difficult, and after that the puzzles kind of just solve themselves. Not to mention the fact that tracing the path you want the cubes to move in is a little tedious, and if you screw up, you need to redo everything from the start.

That said the game is still fun. I just wish there was a little more to the puzzle design.

Return to Dream Land is probably the most traditional Kirby game in recent times. Even more traditional than Star Allies. So while it doesn't break any new ground (even when originally released), it's also very solid since Kirby's Adventure is very solid, which is clearly what this is trying to be. So yeah, if you haven't played a Kirby game before, this is a great entry to start with. Much more so than Star Allies that's for sure.

For those who have played this before on the Wii, I would only recommend if you want to replay the game. The game looks magnificent, and the new content is great, but it is by and large the same game. The new content mostly comes in the form of two new modes. First is Merry Magoland, which is basically just your typical Kirby mini games, though there are a lot more this time. It's pretty fun, though also not much we haven't seen before. The second is an epilogue where you play as Magalor, which is actually pretty great. The gimmick is that you are powering Magalor up, and teaching him new moves so he can get bigger and bigger combos like this is DMC or something. It works really well, though definitely would get quite repetitive if stretched past it's 2 hour length.

So yeah, I quite enjoyed this return to Return to Dream Land. It was just a dandy time.

Shit like this is the reason why I decided to collect DS and 3DS games. There's just so many weird, but fun games I missed out on on these systems. I have heard so much praise for this game, and I gotta say, they weren't lying. This game is absurd and fun in all the best ways. It's a fantastic rhythm game with a killer soundtrack. Not only that, but while you are playing it, the craziest shit you've ever seen is happening on the top screen. If you have a DS, you gotta play it. Don't be a fool and wait 17 years to play it like I did.