A cute and charming Nintendo take on the ever-popular Resident Evil aimed at kids. It gives Luigi a character, which I like, and some of the puzzles here are there are neat, but overall this just felt repetitive to me. The gameplay loop of "knock on thing, ghost pops out, press R and wiggle stick" got old very quickly, especially in the final third of the game. I also severely struggled with the controls due to the odd perspective; I might go and play the 3DS remake to see if that helps my eyes a bit more. Great sound design all around, though, which is a weird compliment I didn't expect I'd make, but hey. Like I said, it's very charming, even if I personally didn't really care for the end result.

I would say it's time to finally write something to praise this game, despite how hard it is to nail down why I love it. I should note, I am playing on Dark Souls: Remastered, I simply catalog my playthroughs on this game due to it looking better and this site's poor cataloging abilities (at the time of writing, that is). This is also written in the context of a first-time player, meaning no +5 Ascended Pyromancy Flames or low-level Wrath of the Gods or any kind of play like that.

Dark Souls is one of the few games that I believe everyone should play at least once in their lifetime. Maybe not all the way through, maybe not even halfway through, but it should be something you invest at least ~3-4 hours into. If it grips you within that time, however, it will be an experience you will not be able to put down until completion, and one that will live with you for the rest of your life.

The constant uphill battle of the game might be a turnoff to some players, since there never is a point where you're really "OP", unless you spent hours farming souls and materials. The enemies, be it gargantuan dragon bosses or the Souls-equivalent to zombies, know how to fight, and they want to fight you. They'll heal, dodge, parry, backstab, perform all the types of mechanics you have at your disposal against you, as you would them. As such, it creates an environment where you never feel like a truly overpowered god amongst men that can destroy things in one hit, rather a battle-hardened soldier whose every victory (or failure) adds more experience to their name.

That's another thing, death as a lesson rather than a punishment. In most other games, regardless of genre, dying is often as simple as "you lost all your health, now retry." Very little is learned, as you'll just continue and be more alert to heal when you need to. In Dark Souls, however, that's not the case. Every death, for the vast majority of the time, is a fault of the player, not the game. Every death tells you "you failed that encounter, but you have more experience now, so try again." There's no limit to the amount of times you can die, there's no punishment for dying (outside of having to respawn), and there's absolutely no rush lore-wise to defeat your enemies. You may die again, and again, and again, until you fully understand the fight at hand, and defeat it with the skill of a master. Be it something simple, like learning a new boss move and how to dodge it, or something a bit more complex, like planning out how to take on a particularly populated area of enemies, death will always teach rather than frustrate and irritate.

On the topic of frustration, difficulty. While Dark Souls has a reputation for being crushingly difficult, I would feel like leaving it off on just that is somewhat unfair. Is the game hard? Absolutely, no matter the player at the wheel. Certain bosses (such as a certain gold-plated duo) will always be a bump in the road of even the most skilled and elite players. However, the game is always fair in its difficulty. Any game can raise the health and damage values of enemies and say it's hard. Dark Souls doesn't do that. It always keeps things at a leveled playing field so that your enemies are always slightly higher than you, but not ludicrously. This doesn't mean every area of the game auto-balances to your level, but if you've been leveling up as the game intended, then you'll never find yourself being completely crushed by enemies, rather constantly tasked against formidable, but achievable combatants. This one fact of keeping your enemies always higher than you is what makes the gameplay perfect to me. Every fight you have feels like a well-earned victory, major or minor. A "David and Goliath" situation is made out of even the most basic of enemies at times, and each win feels like a result of your acquired skill rather than just luck or repetition. While I don't feel like it deserves its own section, I would be ashamed if I didn't at least mention the bosses. Yes, they absolutely live up to the mountains of notoriety and iconicism that they've garnered throughout the years. In my attempts to keep this review spoiler-free, I don't want to name any particular ones, but every boss feels like a different challenge than the last, with the one exception of 3 bosses being near identical to each other (if you know, you know). From golden-armored warriors to giant, teeth-infested dragons to an abomination of dark magic, every boss provides an unforgettable experience, both in terms of design and fighting.

I'd like to take a moment and talk about how absolutely mind-blowing the design of Lordran is. Now, I won't be talking about the lore, that comes later; the physical layout is the best in gaming, point blank, period. With a few reasonable exceptions later in the game, the entire world of Lordran feels like an actual place that's always updating in your mind the more you travel it. You can round a corner, find a ladder to kick, climb down, and holy moly you're back in an area you were in hours ago! The game doesn't give you fast travel at the start like some other open world games do, it has you unlock shortcuts and learn different paths to take to get from one place to the next. Some may dislike that fact, as it leads to a lot of "pointless walking around", but I feel like that couldn't be farther from the truth. It creates a feeling of reality to everywhere you go, like you truly are an adventurer in a world that lets you step foot in wherever you go and (mostly) return the way you came; one of my favorite things to do when I play is pick 2 random locations and try to find the quickest path between them, just to test out my own knowledge and to experience that feeling of walking through a land that really feels like it exists, despite the high fantasy setting of the world. This might be the hardest point for me to actually talk about, but trust me, it's absolutely amazing to feel when you play the game.

It would be impossible to talk about Dark Souls' gameplay and not bring up the 2 most important features, in my opinions: the iconic Bonfires, and anxiety-inducing Bloodstains. The Bonfires are safe havens in the often intimidating world of Lordran. No matter where you are, a Bonfire signals peace and quiet for at least a small time. Enemies can't spawn around them, nor can they aggro from where they are, so you will always be safe sitting at a Bonfire. Outside of a few occasions, the placement of these checkpoints are, in my opinion, perfect. The way it forces you to learn the area around you and how to fine-tune your run through it adds onto that learning experience I talked about before, and because of how far between they are, each one genuinely feels like a beacon of hope in your journey. However, there's also a fair bit of tension created in how far away they can be. You've just fought through an area you've never been before, are knocking on death's door, and are out of Estus. Do you continue forward in hopes of a bonfire around the corner, or do you go back and walk the path again with more knowledge? Sometimes the first option will be the best, as you might be seconds away from finding one, and sometimes the second option will be the best, as being able to repeat the section with your added experience of going through it results in less Estus being used. In a world of difficult fights and dreadful happenings, these mysterious ongoing fires never fail to relax even the most on-edge players.

Conversely, the reason why so many players are on-edge, the Bloodstains. As you probably know, when you die in Dark Souls, all of your Souls (which are used to level you up as well as buy items) and "liquid" Humanity is lost for a period of time, and can only be retrieved by returning to where you died and touching your Bloodstain. Without this, Dark Souls is infinitely less fair. If they weren't there, then death would become a punishment, the game telling you "you failed, so all of your currency is gone." However, the Bloodstains allow you to test your since-earned grasp on an area and regain that which you lost on death, and the terms are very simple: You succeed, touch your Bloodstain, and get back your lost Souls and Humanity, or you fail, and your Bloodstain is lost forever. When you've died with hundreds of thousands of Souls to your name, the game suddenly becomes the longest tightrope walk ever. You'll play more careful than you ever have before, become more acutely aware of all of your surroundings, just for a chance at getting back what you lost. If you kept your Souls each death, then death would feel similar to other games mentioned before, a simple "don't get hit as much" reminder for the next time, but since you don't, your death can truly feel like being forced to test your own will, since no one wants to lose their hard-earned Souls, but it can happen so easily at just the wrong button press or the slightest misstep. But, in the end, if you lose them all, that just gives you more reason to start again.

Accepting loss is the first step of moving on in your journey, both inside Dark Souls and outside gaming altogether. We fear losing our rightfully earned valuables and cling to them dearly when the chance of losing them is at stake. However, in order to live a life of peace and forward motion, one must disconnect with the fear of loss and accept anything that happens to both ourselves and our belongings. While a common Buddhist teaching may seem out of place in a gaming review, Dark Souls is heavily based around these teachings. Being willing to let go, start again, and learn from your mistakes are fundamentals to how the game functions. These philosophies tie-in perfectly to the mysterious, somber, and tragic tones of the game's world and story.

Just mentioning the words "Dark Souls' story" is a can of worms so large you could rile up the entire fanbase by opening it. I'm not here to say what is and is not true, but it would be unfair to the game's writing and world-building to not mention how the game tells its story in a deliberately minimal and thought-provoking way. Outside of the opening cutscene, there really isn't much exposition outright told to you in the game. You'll meet a few certain high-ranking characters who give larger chunks of information to you, but for the most part, all knowledge of the story is told through chatting with different NPCs and hearing their explanation of certain things, reading item descriptions, and sometimes even the weapons used by someone can tell a part of their story. An example I always love to use is a Red Phantom you encounter later in the game named King Jeremiah. While he's very infamous in the community for his "crown", one of the pyromancy spells he uses is Great Chaos Fireball. One can only get this spell by being a member of the Chaos Servant covenant, and so, through one attack alone, one can infer that Jeremiah is a Chaos Servant in his world. Small details like that make up a huge, rich, elaborate story that is very often up to character interpretation. One of the most hotly talked about story beats is a character mentioning time being "convoluted" in Lordran, and whether that means everything is happening at once, there's a multiverse of things that can cross over, or if time is just a point in space that doesn't move is completely up to how the player wants to interpret it, and craft their own explanation of the world around them.

While Dark Souls' lore, amongst all of the games, is highly talked about and debated, certain things are most clear. The Age of Fire is ending, and once it ends, the Age of Man begins. Once the Age of Man ends, the Age of Fire begins again, and the cycle will repeat itself for eternity. Despite this cycle being known to certain characters, the main quest revolves around linking the Fire and continuing the Age of Fire. However, this brings the question, what's the point in continuing the Age of Fire if it's going to end anyways? And when that question blooms, one begins to wonder about the purpose of all life in the world of Lordran. No matter what happens, the Fires will fade, and the Dark will usher in, and after that, the Fire will rekindle, so on and so forth. Time, as everyone knows it, will end and begin perpetually, so making the most out of what time you have seems... pointless. If your efforts will be wasted in the end, why fight at all? Keeping the Fire alive is merely a temporary extension, and ushering in the Dark is still only temporary. Life as we know it is completely pointless in Lordran. And yet, the characters around you still partake in their own journeys, as do you. The constant reminder of your efforts being worthless is both disheartening, yet cathartic since, at the end of the day (and time itself), you had an experience that made your own life worth living, even if what you did will be forgotten to the steady cycle of Fire and Dark.

The lessons that Dark Souls teach us are both confined to the game itself (professionals will know to kill the dogs first), and a reflection on humanity as a whole. In the grand, huge scheme of our universe, what we do is inherently meaningless, much like the people of Lordran. We can either cry out about the injustice of our own existences and give up (or "go Hollow", as characters would say) or we can continue on our own paths, find joy, love, knowledge, and peace in the time that we have to do so, and continue to fight every day for a life worth living.

I didn't think I'd rank this below Super, but at least that game had charm, this one doesn't even have that. The AI doesn't blatantly cheat like in that game, but my god are these levels the worst the series has to offer. When they aren't painfully simple, they feel deliberately annoying and hard to see because of the GBA's extremely limited screen space. Very little that I like in this, but I'll give the game some credit and say the terrible controls and slidiness might've been because I was playing Bowser. I don't care enough to check how the other racers play.

This will be a much more ramble-type review, because I genuinely don't know where to start with this. For the most part, I want to talk about why this game is one of my favorites and convince people on some of its more contentious elements. It's such a hard game for me to sell to people because I don't know what to say other than "everything is good please trust me." I guess I'll start by talking about the bad stuff, seems easy enough.

This engine is not good for gaming of this size. It worked ("worked") for how scant Fallout 3 was, but New Vegas is much more alive and thriving, and that liveliness means the game has to suffer for it. Constant visual bugs that fans will tell you to "just get used to", inconsistent crashes that seem to happen at random, loading screens every 30 seconds, it's the antithesis of what you would want out of a game going for immersion. Not only that, but the lack of budget is apparent in the voice actors; there's roughly 6 or 7 outside of main characters, and it's so blatantly obvious to the point where it hurts. You'll talk to two NPCs in the same room with the exact same voice actor, and just... try not to notice it. Again, not very immersive. Similar to the engine problems, the gunplay is very rigid and not as smooth as nearly every other game around it at the time, with few guns lacking the punch that a lot of weapons from the classic games had.

Now, all of what I've said so far would turn off most gamers (both normal and Gamer™) from playing this. Why would someone want to put up with a buggy, rushed, unpolished mess? The simple answer is because everything is good, just trust me.

New Vegas is a once-in-a-lifetime game. It is a miracle on every front, considering the constraints put on it. The depth of the world around you, the freedom you have to solve problems as you dictate, the dialogue system that feels genuine and impactful, the landmarks making the wasteland feel interesting and lived-in, the (main) characters all feeling so human and real, everything outside of the gameplay works 110% to make you forget the flaws of the gameplay. There are few games that manage to suck me into a different mindset and world quite like this, which is such a compliment to the writing that it feels like an understatement. But this isn't what I'm here to talk about, because everyone has already said all this. You can find playlists of hour-long YouTube essays explaining what I said in 20x the detail. What I'm here to talk about is the champion of this game, the best showcases of the writing, the most human characters in the entire franchise, the reason this is in my top 5 games of all time.

The DLC.

New Vegas' DLC is such a perfect extension of the game's world that it blows my mind trying to think of how they pulled it off. All 4 stories work to serve as either background to areas of the game not shaded in, thematic experiences to provide food for thought both in-game and out, and in the best scenarios, both. Are they perfect? No, of course not. Honest Hearts' length has always been a mark on an otherwise beautiful story, and Old World Blues' quests are... less than stellar. But that doesn't matter because, much like the main game, every flaw is made up for in the writing. I have my own weird order for discussing them, both for the sake of review and kind of as a ranking, so let's go.

The first one I want to discuss is Old World Blues, because I feel as though I have the least to say about it. Does that mean it's bad? Absolutely not! I find the humor to be very charmingly quirky, reminiscent of high-tier Futurama, and the characters to be an extension of that humor while still somehow having such unique personalities that they feel like more than just jokes. Muggy, the miniature robot "neurotic busboy" could've been nothing more than the butt of the joke, and yet they take the time to tell you why he's the butt of the joke: because one of the scientists who created him is a spiteful jerk who made a robot that could never be happy just to laugh at the original manufacturers. They could have just left him as "haha he's manic and sad", but they reinforce the humor by making it make sense. Outside of the Sink's personality cores, the main 5 (i'm not counting 8) scientists are equally humanly humorous. I don't want to go over each, so I'll go over my favorite example, Doctor Borous. Throughout the entire DLC, he's OVERDRAMATIC and emphasizes random words to seem more intense and theatrical, like he's trying to impress anyone in earshot. One of the main quests sends you to retrieve data from a test center skinned as his old high school, where he's on the loudspeaker basically venting his frustrations about being bullied through school. Doing his side quest for him reveals that, as spiteful and fueled by childhood resentment as he is, there is still humanity within him that you can help bring out. As with all the other scientists, their best endings come from you seeing through their technology and reaching out to the humans inside, which leads to a strikingly poignant finale in an otherwise zany and eccentric DLC. There was Old World Blues and New World Hope, and hope ruled the day at Big MT.

Next on my list is Honest Hearts. As I mentioned, its short length does somewhat boil it down to what I can talk about, but I'll still try my best. Honest Hearts works as well as it does for what it is because of how thoroughly crafted its actors are. Joshua Graham, Daniel, and the two tribes are not only a compelling drama within themselves, but also a brilliant microcosm for the troubles the Courier faces back home, which makes it even more enriching with how you go about dealing with things. It's a very subjective DLC, since it's basically a bunch of leadup to one choice you have to make. Do you side with Daniel and get the Sorrows to safety, avoiding bloodshed and keeping them "pure", or do you side with Joshua and fight back against the White Legs, crushing their entire tribe but ensuring peace for the time being and one less tribe being under the Legion's power? Being the overly soft-hearted pacifist that I am, this DLC nearly broke me. I debated with friends about the choice, thought about hypotheticals that could come before or after the events take place, got as much information as I could to know for sure just what choices I was making, before finally sighing and knowing what I should do. I won't say what I chose, but the strength of both main characters makes it so engaging on both sides, to the point where there really isn't a "right" answer. Each one of them has positives and negatives, nearly equal in balance to the other, which makes it really feel like you're the one making the choice, and not the game leading you to one. I don't want to spoil it, but this DLC also has maybe the best environmental storytelling ever with the Survivalist. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I recommend looking up a list of where to find his logs and going to find them next time you play, you won't be disappointed. It's been a gift to me to behold innocence.

The title of "most controversial New Vegas DLC" is one that's admittedly hard to bestow, and while I don't think this is the most controversial overall, this probably has the most disliked character in all of them. That's right, it's Lonesome Road. A lot of people, my past self included, see this as nothing but Ulysses rambling to you over a typical post-apocalyptic set piece. People find it irritating, condescending, overly wordy, and mark points off for it. And you know what? They're all absolutely right, except for one thing. That's the point. I don't want to come off as the "bad thing is good because it's bad on purpose" type person, but I seriously feel like a lot of people don't actually read into Ulysses enough and toss him to the side because he's overly cryptic and impossible to talk to, and I don't blame them, but I'm here to defend him to the best of my abilities. Ulysses' story is hard to find, deliberately on his part, which can be a double-edged sword for the player. On one hand, it's an interesting melding of story and gameplay, where you have to literally search through destroyed buildings to find history, but on the other, it can lead to some pretty major character details being completely missed. Brilliant thematically, risky design-wise. If you manage to find all of them, without saying too much, you realize that he's just as guilty of the crimes that he points the finger at you for, and he's even more reluctant to listen to his own ideology than you are. He boils down other factions to symbols to make it easier to disregard them, to dehumanize them, because he doesn't care about the people behind them, he sees only what they do than their potential. He buries his meanings behind his overly wordy, pretentious manner of speaking because it makes it easier for him to tell himself what he's doing is right. He is a flawed person, and you can literally talk him down from destroying the NCR('s Mojave branch) by calling him out on it, which leads to perhaps my favorite exchange in the entire series, even more than The Master's in FO1. There's a very powerful beauty to the fact that you can convince someone willing to destroy so much to take a peaceful route by connecting with their beliefs and using them for right rather than for wrong, and he even admits that to you. As much as I love Ulysses, and I do, he's my favorite Fallout character, there is so much more to Lonesome Road than him. They managed to make Deathclaws something you're afraid of again by making them scale with your level, giving maxed-out Couriers a legitimate reason to fear running into every area guns blazing, which is something that Fallout hadn't done since the original game. There was a time, however short, where Deathclaws were something terrifying, haunting the minds of any wasteland wanderers who knew of their existence, and it's really satisfying to see the makers go back to that mindset. That's just a minor example of what the entire backdrop of Lonesome Road manages to do: tap into what Fallout started as. It's easy to forget, with how surprisingly booming the Mojave is, but the original Fallout was much more dire and scarce, with calves of settlements stumbling their way through a war-torn hellscape, and it's so pleasing to me that the developers went back to that style of world design here. The key example I can give is the Cave of the Abaddon, the tunnel built up of overturned building and destroyed houses, literally having you walk through Pre-War times and reminding you of what all used to be here before the bombs. It's stupidly effective, and can really send a chill down your spine if you take the time to look around and take in the details. The blend of classic post-apocalypse atmosphere, thematic unity of gameplay and story, and a deeply gripping narrative about ideology, political affiliation, the past, the choices you make (accidental or not), and the power that one can have on the world around you results in one of the best stories the series has to offer, and one that I really hope naysayers will try again to get more out of. They say that war never changes; men do, through the roads they walk.

And yet, as much as I praised Lonesome Road, it's not the best. But that's not an insult to it. It's the highest compliment I can give to Dead Money. I don't know how they made this DLC. I don't know how they managed to throw out everything people knew about Fallout and turn it into something completely different, and nail it perfectly. But they did. Dead Money is aggressive anti-player. It strips you away of everything that you have, puts you in an unfamiliar environment, and smacks you in the face at every turn and for every mistake you make. The enemies don't respond to your attacks the way you want them do, there are environmental hazards around every corner, and the entire time you're being berated for not being competent enough to move quicker. And I love it. The way that the creators managed to make a section of the game so dedicated to disempowering you in a game full of overpowered-ness is so striking to me that I'm taken aback just thinking about it. Fallout games let you have any weapon at any moment, given you can carry it. They let you solve problems however you please, giving you the freedom to do what you want rather than what the game wants. Dead Money doesn't do any of that, and instead makes Fallout into something I never thought it could be; a survival horror game. The suffocatingly oppressive atmosphere, the exaggerated yet believable characters, the legitimate danger you find yourself in nearly constantly, the dark color scheme and chilling sound design, the repeated theme of letting go, all of it comes together to make something wholly unique and stand-out in the Fallout pantheon. Obviously, this might ruffle some feathers, and could lead to this DLC being considered the aforementioned "most controversial", but if it clicks with you, it's one of the best experiences this series has to offer, bar none. Despite having the smallest cast of characters (outside of Lonesome Road), it somehow manages to make the most of them, rivaling the base game's best moments in its peaks. Connecting with Christine by understanding her gestures due to her lack of speech, Dean's dialogue being dynamic and actually paying attention to what you say without giving it away immediately, Dog/God's inner demons that serve as both a gameplay and story obstacle that you have to solve, and the final encounter with Elijah being the best reinforcement of the themes of the DLC by far. Keeping with the spoiler-free tone of this review, I won't say what exactly happens, but the dialogue and gameplay elements all around you forcing you to "let go" just as much as every other character is just so genius and cool and well-written and this is my favorite DLC I love it so much aaaaaaaahhhhh. Despite being the first to play, it's the last I wanted to write about, because it gives a good quote to end on and because I feel like it's cooler for the review to look like that. I hope I managed to convince anyone reading this to give the DLC's another try if you were mixed or negative towards one or more of them, and I hope you can find as much as I do in them on a replay. You've heard of the Sierra Madre Casino. A promise that you can change your fortunes, begin again. Finding it though, that's not the hard part.

It's letting go.

Bethesda's "Fallout 4" is a foolish, depressing, overproduced video game that mixes post-apocalypse with science fiction to make something that is fun as neither one thing or the other.

Yeah, I finished it out of spite. I don't care anymore. I couldn't live with myself giving a game 0.5 and having so much resentment towards it without actually seeing how bad it gets. After a while of playing, I did become numb to all the awful decisions and was mostly just bored or mildly irritated, but whenever I took a step back and looked at the game as a whole, everything came flooding back to me. Grinding out all the role-playing aspects from a series known for its role-playing, a story that feels like the most generic sci-fi plot ever told with twists that only exist for the writers' masturbatory indulgences, gunplay that feels like the clunkiness of Fallout's past with a much too thick layer of wax over it, just shit all around. It is actually mind-boggling how awful Father is as a character from every single angle, but I don't want to get into spoilers here, I just had to get that out. I don't even know what more to say. The Flanderization of Fallout, full stop.

I completed Chris' playthrough this time around, and while it definitely gave me a new perspective on the game and a lot of added tension, it reinforced my feelings for it as a whole. Every design choice in this works perfectly for the experience, even if it starts to get stale towards the end. The fixed camera angles, the strict inventory, the restricted movement, the limited saves, it makes everything you do a razor-sharp decision that you may or may not pay the consequences for later, but it's that ambiguity and uncertainty that makes your actions so tense, which makes the horror more impactful. A spooky zombie crawling at me isn't that scary on its own, but a spooky zombie crawling at me when I have no ammo and I'm out of kerosene and I'm backed against a wall? That's where things get real scary. Unfortunately, I find that the more open spaces once you leave the mansion to be much less gripping, both visually and gameplay-wise. They're not bad, mind, but it just doesn't compare to the perfection that is the mansion. No matter what qualms I may have with how this game progresses, I will still respect the absolute hell out of it and regard it as one of, if not the finest experience that horror games can offer.

Wait, this was... good? I'm serious, I thought it would just be dated 90s humor and annoying hyper-masculinity, but this was a legitimately fun experience all the way through. The weapons were fun to use, the enemies were tough but not bullshit (for the most part), the level design was shockingly kind of great for a game like this, my only real complaint was with the sound design. The soundtrack isn't memorable outside of the main theme, the sound effects don't really pack a punch, and there were times when the audio drivers decided to torture me whenever I was underwater or in a metallic room. Overall, this was a nice experience that kept me entertained throughout, though not one I see myself coming back to often like other games of the same ilk. Hail to the king, baby.

Not going to rate this until Act III is out, but god damn if this isn't one of the most enjoyable times I've had in a game. It's very clear Hakita is someone who loves video games very much, and he crafts that love into as great of an experience as you can have, extracting only the best parts from his influences resulting in a mish-mash of Quake, Devil May Cry, and Dark Souls, with hints of other influences like Evangelion and 40K peppered throughout that absolutely should not work but soars higher than you could imagine. Everything you've heard about this game is true, and if you even mildly enjoy FPS games, this will be one of the best you ever play.

It's cute. The music is really good and the level design is simple, but effective in giving you a goal and having you succeed in it. I prefer the Stars in the other 3D games I've played (haven't played Sunshine yet), as I think they flow better and encourage more exploration, but the streamlining here isn't bad. Makes it easier to pick and choose whichever worlds you like or don't like. Rosalina is a great character and the Lumas are very sweet. There's a certain... elegance? to this game that really gives it a boost, I think without the setting, music, art direction, it wouldn't have gone as far. Not saying that as an insult to the game or the fans, more so focusing on how much the non-gameplay aspects of this elevate the game compared to the other Marios. Probably not going to rate it any higher due to frustration with the controls and camera, as well as the galaxies themselves being mostly coin tosses in terms of enjoyment for me, but I'm glad I played it.

I'll be fair and not score this since I didn't complete it, but even if I did want to score it, I don't know what it'd be. More than anything, this game is interesting. It's neat to kind of go back in time and see my favorite game franchise's roots, concepts that would get reused or honed in future installments, and for what it is, it is still pretty impressive just how much they got right on the first go. But I can't bring myself to keep going. The disjointed level design, mixed atmosphere (either really great or pretty flat), and overall combat jankiness make this an unenjoyable experience for me. The only reason I played the original was so that I could see its art style before going onto the remake, as I didn't want just one version to live in my mind. I don't think the remake will solve all my problems, but I have hopes it will at least feel smoother than this. At the end of the day, even if I don't like playing this game, I can really respect it and especially Miyazaki's vision.