Obviously insanely impressive from a purely contextual perspective, the fact this game even got made at all and came out this good is astounding. I've never played the original Half-Life so I can't really comment on all the changes Crowbar Collective made, but it is staggering how much of this feels like a full Valve release. It's beautifully designed throughout, the level design is pretty much flawless, every set piece tops the last, and the new Xen is indistinguishable in quality from the rest of the experience. In terms of design, it's basically perfect.

With that said, I can't say that I love to play it. As a piece of gaming history, Half-Life is one of the most important out there, but it also took me a month of on and off play sessions to finish it. I had a similar thing happen to me with Half Life 2 (although I ended up never finishing it). I have a huge amount of respect for both the original and the remake, but I'm not exactly clamouring to replay them anytime soon.

The presentation is absolutely impeccable, the ridiculous commitment to the paper aesthetic, the writing, the music, all fantastic. I really loved Colour Splash's attention to detail, and they've managed to capture a similar level of polish here. At the same time though, they've somehow managed to make the gameplay even worse than the deflated kiddie pool of the last few games. I don't know why Nintendo are so committed to keeping Paper Mario as far away from its RPG roots as possible, but I'd be fine with it as long as the new gameplay systems they introduced were better, or at the very least on par with what came before. But they're consistently worse, the ring puzzles are a tacked-on excuse to try and make the battles palatable, but they somehow managed to make them even more boring than they were before. Instead of being able to quickly get them out of the way when I accidentally walk into a goomba, I now have to spin some rings around, solving the same 5 copy pasted 'puzzles' over and over again for no reward. How have they not just removed turn based combat at this point, it would make the games so much better.

The interconnected world is cool on paper, but it just ends up making the level design ridiculously dull. Instead of the tightly designed, distinctive areas of colour splash, you've got these large open areas with nothing in them. The glorious 'filling in pieces of the map that are missing' mechanic returns, even though it adds nothing whatsoever. The boss fights are thankfully not quite as bad as before (honestly though a dead rat would have improved the pathetic excuse for bosses in the last game), but for some reason Intelligent Systems decided to give the bosses a completely different gameplay style from the regular battles. Cool conceptually, but there's again nothing here that justifies that change, it's still boring and never feels remotely satisfying to pull off anything.

Crucially, the game is also missing a hell of a lot of the same charm that Colour Splash had. That game was deeply flawed but also had a boss fight where you grilled a giant steak to perfection. In Origami King... you fight some pencils...

Completely bored throughout the 10 hours I played. Nice looking water though... so there's that.

As someone who loves Metroidvanias for their unrivalled potential for environmental storytelling and unfiltered exploration, this really did not tick that box for me. It ticks a ton of other boxes, the combat is really fun, the level design (fundamentally) is good, the story is actually well told and engaging, every late-game boss is a fucking treat, but it always feels comparatively clunky in comparison to its contemporaries. There was not a single moment the alien planet I was exploring actually felt like an alien planet, and not just a series of rooms with deliberately placed progression barriers to guide me to the next upgrade. I understand that colour coding every single breakable block and doorway is part of the series' heritage, but when it’s at the expense of the worldbuilding I think you should just rip the band-aid off.

I'll probably come back to this in three years and give it five stars but it's hard to truly enjoy something when you're constantly wishing it was something else.

Absolutely adored this. Rolling up small household objects before you graduate to full-time continent relocator is already inherently wonderful but then you throw in a bizarre plot and art style and one of the best soundtracks ever made oh my god it slaps so hard. This thing revels in its weirdness, it knows exactly what it wants to be and goes all in, from the control scheme to the characters. Surreal that this even got made in the first place honestly; there's nothing else like it and I love that about it.

This is easily the most fun I've had with a Halo game, this is such a refined and entertaining sandbox that I could just spend hours messing around with. The grappling hook fits so well into the core loop it feels like it's always been there, and every other minor tweak and change is all in service of making the game even more fun. Picking up a fusion coil and lobbing it at some poor sap who's completely unaware of your existence will never not be entertaining.

It's a shame that everything else it attempts is very hit and miss. You can feel the corners cut everywhere and it's very obvious that this doesn't have an original bone in its body. This is no Halo 3, there's no awe-inspiring set pieces or distinctly memorable moments, and while it does hand you the tools to make your own, I'm not about to top The Covenant.

Played this with my very drunk friend, which probably wasn't a great choice for a partner but we managed it (just). Very ambitious for what it's going for, and because of that it does feel stretched thin, despite the short length. A lot of creative mechanics for puzzles are thrown to the wayside in favour of yet another sliding block puzzle, while everything else is seemingly missing an entire layer of polish. It's still really fun though, a higher budget sequel with a control scheme that doesn't suck ass would be very much appreciated.