It's very difficult to review this without looking at Undertale or Deltarune or LISA or any of the other countless games inspired by this - from a modern day point of view there's not a lot here I haven't seen before. In 1995 this must have been completely bizarre, and I start to get exactly why this is a cult-classic rather than a straight up classic.

Let's go right into the story - this story. It exponentially gets weirder and darker as it goes one, while the team follows a very simple task - go to 8 special locations. Whilst they calmly go about this task, we have zombie infested towns, KKK-esque cults, diamond dogs, a lost underworld filled with dinosaurs, A DUNGEON WHICH IS A MAN AND ALSO JOINS AS A PARTY MEMBER - it's so dense with strangely wonderful characters but they all make sense in the world's context. Everyone just goes about their business and it just works! The translation job does most of the heavy lifting with choice lines throughout, and the music is equally as odd as the game. Such a great scenario and a well written story.

The gameplay has aged, however - what may have been fine in 1995 isn't great now. The inventory system is dire (and I still hate it now when implemented in a Toby Fox game), the movement of this game just sucks - I hate the decision to just stop when you hit an angled wall rather than just...move up against it? It's also painfully slow to do anything in the overworld - travelling is slow, going in/out buildings is slow, battle transitions are slow, menuing is a chore. Combine this with the amount of enemy spawns (it really gets ridiculous at the end of the game) and dungeons start to take a while.

Which brings me to the battle system. I love this battle system. It injects the EarthBound weirdness in some great ways - I like that status' are just...things like crying or having a cold. Then there's the ticker system, which is just fantastic, and I can't think of another game that has it. Saving a doomed ally by healing as their HP ticker goes down - that is such a good feeling. Outside of Ness' massive level jump from Magicant, I never felt overpowered, and there's a great selection of PSI moves. I loved Jeff's weapon system, though it introduces it far too late in the game for my taste.

But the whole game is just a precursor to what is my favourite part of it; the final battle with Giygas. I wasn't sure if what I'd heard was hyperbole, but goddamn did it live up to expectations. The final hour of EarthBound is oppressively dark, with the music and the background and the Prayer system - it felt on another level to the rest of the game. And then the epilogue, where you have free rein of the world with no monsters, is the complete opposite in feeling. Suddenly there's no cares other than soaking up the atmosphere.

There's not much more to be said outside of everything else - it comes across as a near 30 year old game in some areas, but in others it feels like it's more recent. Yes it's painfully slow and could trim the fat in a few areas, but what RPG from near 30 years ago isn't like this? I finally checked this off my bucketlist and was not disappointed - I came in expecting a cult-classic and left with a classic added to the list.

Crypt of the Necromancer is a goddamn masterpiece, but this... hoooo boy.

The move from a rogue-lite to a fully explorable world doesn't really fit right - due to the size and the lack of anything to do but kill things, a lot of the world becomes essentially needless, as why waste time & resources clearing a screen just to get a probably-useless item? The game only fell into place for me within the dungeons, which were essentially just standard levels from CotN. When you've got to work the space with enemies and projectiles in conjunction with your weapons - beautiful stuff.

Actually, the amount of weapons/items also seems bit much. A lot of them I just didn't use as other's seemed to do the same thing in fights (why use the Boomerang over the Longshot?).

Even the soundtrack is so-so compared to the godly OST from Crypt - yeah, some of them sound good but you'll be hearing them so often they quickly fade.

At it's core it's still a good game, but I just don't think it achieves everything it could with this mash-up.

I still remember that initial trailer, and how hyped I was for a game to even approach what was shown. I was there day one for Infinite's release - and then I played and wow this was not what I (or many others) expected.

Gameplay is a lot faster than previous Bioshocks, akin to more conventional FPS's of the day. It makes it a lot more approachable but loses a lot of the world discovery which made the original so good. The vigors are the real star, though - they are all really fun to play with and combine in combat.

The story works well with the gameplay - it's diverse to begin with and up to about halfway (the first few hours are brilliant), with a nice mixture of shooting, stealth, and discovering the world. Then the wheels just come off, and the gameplay devolves into endless shooting galleries whilst the story just goes all over the place before vanishing up it's own ass. Urgh, I still hate that ending.

Somewhere in one of those alternate universes, a Bioshock Infinite exists with all the promise of that original trailer. Instead we have...this. And then 2K shut down Irrational so who knows what the next one will be like!

I wasn't expecting too much of an evolution with a sequel but this was generally the same thing as the first game - it's been a couple of years since I played it but nothing jumped out as "New!". The story felt like it hit the same beats so it was difficult to care about what was happening.

The graphics are as good as ever - but Christ does everything on screen just blend together. It's difficult to know what you can stand on and what you can't, and with the amount of particles on screen at once, some of the faster sequences (I cannot understand who thought those escape/chase runs were a good idea), it becomes a game of "What am I thinking?" between you and the level designer as to what to do next.

The world design is also very samey - the last desert world was a great change from the forest/cave/lake trifecta we've had for the last game and a half. It's fun to control Ori around these levels, but there's some puzzling layout choices which make fun fluid movement difficult to do.

Music is still top notch - and whilst they boiled down to mostly fetch quests, the addition of these was a nice break at times. I cannot say the same for those Spirit Trials - yikes, talk about inane.

I feel playing it on the Switch hampered it as I got a lot of bugs (random shutdowns, areas not loading, getting trapped in walls) - it's a commendable port but I feel playing it on the Series X would have given me a better time.

A fantastic and sprawling story, a wonderful battle system and fight mechanics, and some great characters only slightly let down by the rigid job system put in place. It really scratched that itch left by Final Fantasy Tactics, allowing me to put hours into battle strategies and upgrades whilst telling a compelling story which can be very different between playthroughs.

For any sequel (please), it would be nice to have some freedom of job switching, as very quickly you settle on a set of core characters who have the best jobs (Anna, Medina) and quickly forget about those who barely offer anything (Groma, Lionel). A fantastic game worth the time of any strategy fan.

An incredibly patchy games with high highs and low lows - the meat of the game is fantastic, with traversal mostly fun and the new mechanics being great additions. As is always the case with Gamefreak, they've removed a lot of that worked from previous games for their own reasons, which removes a lot of individuality of how you play and how you look. The technical aspect is diabolical, with slowdowns and awful textures throughout my run - the fact BotW runs and looks better and is 5 years old is incredible. There's a noticeable lag with any input in all menus and when using the bike mode, and the online is abysmal - it shouldn't take 30 seconds for me to get told I can't join a tera raid.

I say this for every Pokemon review, but this is a good jumping off point for the next game. I'm starting to think this will never be the case, and all we'll get are half baked games like this for the next few years.

Takes the freedom of Odyssey's kingdoms and runs with it - it works so well that open world Mario has to be the concept for the next mainline game. It's basically a tech demo, but though it's only 3-4 hours to 100% it's so good to just work around the islands with your power ups or ride Plessie about.

The Fury Bowser idea works for the most part, though I found myself either waiting it out or ending it as soon as I could - if there was a version where this was completely omitted I'd be much happier, his frequent interruptions marring an otherwise fantastic game.

As much as I'd like to complain that this is barely a Final Fantasy game, I'm wise enough to realise that it can't always be an ATB-spells-and-swords kind of affair every time - even so, this is well outside of it's wheelhouse and it shows in almost every facet.

First off, the game looks gorgeous - Square Enix have never had any problems getting good looking games out there, and it delivers in spades here. The animation and particle effects are spectacular, and watching some of the cut scenes you get to see a lot of this on display.

It's everything else where the cracks start to show - for a game that wants you to take it seriously as a political story around the subjugation of the Bearers, it's more than happy to veer off into ridiculous territory. The fights go full on shonen, which just flies in the face of the more grounded world and story and undoes a lot of the good it sows in the first few hours. The story is borderline nonsensical (though the voice acting is superb). the characterisation of anyone but Clive is...not good (this game in particular really seems to hate women, either killing them or giving them absolutely no urgency - Jill could have been such a good character!) and the ending just sort of happens after a strange lull? It's incredibly badly paced, and you get to see the pattern of the game very quickly (story beat, back to base for side quests, next story beat, back to base etc.). From such a good introduction to a grounded world and a more politically intriguing Final Fantasy, it lacks the courage to continue this and instead goes into full on pants-on-head stupidness.

Everything surrounding the main story are also subpar - side quests have taken their MMO-inspiration far too literally and are just boring delivery quests, or go-here-and-kill-this quests. When the game is trying to make growing an apple seem exciting, something has gone horribly wrong. The crafting system seems to have been stripped back, as there isn't one - you'll occasionally upgrade your sword, but all the crafting items picked up in the field or as rewards are largely meaningless as you can really only upgrade 3 items. The RPG side of this game is really lacking.

Which wouldn't be so bad if the world was fun to explore, as the time between story beats would be enjoyable. But it so actively discourages exploration of an incredibly drab and empty world that you shouldn't bother. When the field items are things like 5 gil or some common crafting materials, you will leave large swathes of the environment undiscovered - as it turns out that there's nothing even there to discover. On top of a main character that can't run on command, and a Chocobo which seems to actually be slower than running? A better movement system would help here.

If you played the demo, you'll know the combat system is a lot of fun and has the potential to stretch out into more fun areas - it has taken a lot of inspiration from things like Bayonetta, Dark Souls or Jedi: Fallen Order. Unfortunately, the combat system has no evolution like that aforementioned games, and once you've found a few Eikon moves you like you'll be doing the same thing every fight. Even the Stagger system is easy to unpick, and for most of my playthrough I would actively avoid fights as it wasn't fun to do the same thing over and over. It's not as if the game was overly difficult that this affected anything, anyway. The upgrade system falls by the wayside once you've found the 2-3 moves that get you through the game.

In terms of Eikon battles - ehhhhh. I seem to be against the grain here, but they are overly long and boring and didn't push any buttons for me. The Titan fight in particular just goes on and on for far too long, and the spectacle of them really just got old for me. You are looking at a full 30 minutes for one of these fights, and that was with me skipping the many cutscenes due to boredom. Bahamut is even worse, clocking in at a full hour - and worst of all, it flashes up that you've defeated Bahamut and the fight is over, then proceeds to continue into another Bahamut fight! That is not how things work! I found the Eikon fights overly flashy button mashers where the required amount of thinking or skill was minimal.

You can do a lot better for an action focused RPG (and the RPG side is paper thin here) for the ridiculous price of £70. The combat doesn't hold through the 30-40 hour runtime, the story goes all over the place and suffers for it, movement and controls are dire, there's barely anything to do outside of the main story quest - I could go on, but you'd be better placed picking up something else - The Witcher 3 does everything here 10x better and came out in 2015, which is ridiculous. The game sure is pretty, but that's about it.

It's been a long time since I've been as drawn into a Pokémon game as this, as this is a great jumping off board for something spectacular in Gen 9. The 'just one more thing oh no it's 2am' hits hard at times, and I found myself mopping everything up so that I could keep playing.

Let's start with the positives - wow is this fun! Taking plenty of cues from BotW, it fits perfectly with how Pokémon should be played going forward. Everything gameplay wise is so snappy - catching is quick and easy, sneaking around is surprisingly complex, crafting gear works really well and traversal is plenty of fun. The environments aren't too similar, even within the biomes, so there's a want to see the next area - and Pokémon - around the corner. I do wish we could actually go between biomes instead of having to use Jubilife as a go-between, but it's a good first step!

I came in blind to this so had no idea who was in the Pokédex, so there were some surprises. Not many, though - there's still the age-old problem of gen 1 bias, and some of the new Husuin forms are...rough (look how they murdered my boy Goodra!). It's still fun to see them roaming the environment, and having Alpha Pokémon is also a great new feature. The Pokédex having levels of research for each monster is great, though you'd be mad to think about getting them all, but it adds another interesting layer and almost forces you to switch your party about if you want a full Pokédex.

So now on to the not so good. This story - woof. Pokémon has a habit for people a slow starter and this one is no exception. It takes a good hour or so of walking and text to finally get into the meat of the game. After that, the story wanders a predictable path and then just sort of ends. I have to say though, some of the cutscenes were really well done, but it's a low bar to clear based on previous games.

The battling system has been absolutely gutted to the bare minimum - I found there's very little tactically left. They go so fast and levels don't make as much of a difference anymore, but there's no abilities, items and several moves have been altered to accommodate this new system. Trainer battles are almost non-existent and get to the point where you're just spamming your most powerful move - why wouldn't you, there's no time or reason to set up, debuff or apply weather or anything. There are also issues with the new turn order system - there were times where the order didn't match what was being shown to me, and this is without getting into the Agile/Strong attack system. I think something more in-between this and the older system would have worked well, because battling is easily the worst part of the game now. The new boss fight system, complete with dodge rolling - eeeehh, it would've been more fun if I could see what was happening. The Arceus/Dialga/Palkia fights and had so much going on and you're zoomed in so closely it starts to resemble a bad Dark Souls arena.

Let's not forget the elephant in the room - the graphics. They dip between acceptable to absolute dogshit - pop in is everywhere, I've had textures not even load at times and everything just has a very blocky quality. It's passable for now, but Game Freak aren't known for their technological prowess when it comes to games so I have no idea if this will improve. The Pokémon models themselves look great, but the grass and mud they're walking through is just flat and lifeless which is just sad.

Despite these faults, a few very small niggles that I had (the clothing variety, urgh), I walked away from this blown away by how good it was. I came in with low expectations after the DP remakes, but goddamn it's fun just to run around lobbing Pokéballs everywhere and walk around a living, breathing world. This is the Pokémon game we've needed the last 15 years.

So expectations were already low based on the dual facts of this not including any Platinum content and not even being developed by Game Freak. But - to be fair - this is an almost 1-to-1 remake. The problem is that the games they've decided to remake are just dull.

The Pokemon diversity is still terrible, the decision to go full 3D movement but not update the map is boneheaded (the amount of times I got caught on an edge due to this - urgh!), the levels are all 5-10 levels too low for this game to start being challenging. People can say it's a faithful remake all they want, but Platinum solved a lot of the originals issues, and for them to be ignored just feels strange. Coming from Legends: Arceus to this feels like stepping 15 years in the past. Games like this need to stay there.

Within about 5 minutes of controlling Samus you can tell this is going to be a great game, and a worthy addition to the Metroid franchise - the new movement additions feel fresh whilst also being familiar, the level design is (mostly) wonderful, and running at 60fps it just feels really good.

This is probably the most I've died playing a Metroid game - the bosses in this can be brutal at times until you learn their movesets. The E.M.M.I machines - goddamn, countless deaths to them from being greedy or just trying to whiz past, it's fun to actually require stealth in a Metroid game. I don't dare to think how bad Dread mode is.

There's some issues with the aforementioned level design - it feels like exploring the wider ZDR planet is pointless until you get the last couple of powerups, as there's needless blockades which can only be circumvented by these which halt a lot of exploration. This is also related to the other issue, which is the hand-holding - it feels far too aggressive at times. I like that I never got lost (and the Aeon moves help alleviate this), but it always seemed to be guiding me too much? It's a strange complaint but in these sort of games I want to get lost and stumble on things. The soundtrack is also non-existent outside of a couple of remixed tracks - not sure what happened here as Prime/Fusion had fantastic OSTs.

All in all, a fantastic return to form and a good alternative to the (imo superior) Prime series.

Mind twistingly good and a step above the original in every single way. Takes a much deeper and darker storyline and just infuses it with such good and varied gameplay and art - you can tell the background artists on this game had an amazing time. The worlds are varied both in style and playability, with a fantastic script stringing each one along - by the end it all connects back to the original for such a tight set of games I'd be almost disappointed if they made a Psychonauts 3.

With such a deep storyline, the whole experience took around 25 hours but drew to a wonderful conclusion without dragging at all. Psychonauts 2 is an absolutely fantastic experience, that has brought the collect-a-thon platformer back to the forefront - this is a must play for anyone who enjoys games.