It's incredibly basic mechanically and a little too long, even with its already short run time but overall Planet of Lana does just enough to overcome some of those flaws.

The 2.5 puzzle platform inspirations are very obvious throughout Planet of Lana. Inside and Oddworld are definitely felt throughout, especially as the game's story progresses. It's not reinventing the wheel when it comes to what a 2.5 puzzle platformer can do but everything for the most part ranges from serviceable to really good. There is nothing inherently bad about Planet of Lana.

The biggest drawback to this game though is the incredibly basic puzzles and mechanics. I never really found myself struggling to get past the puzzles.

The overall look and sound of the game, for the most part, is fine. Nothing too mind blowing, though there are later parts of the game that do a good job of playing with the scope of your environment.

Some of the set pieces are pretty as well, the end game moments in particular are beautiful in the ramp up.

You won't be traveling alone though as you have an adorable sidekick to help you on your journey and assist you in moving forward.

Miu is very helpful in these levels and often time your friend's safety leads to some of the more interesting puzzles. Your death or the death of Miu will lead to resetting the stage and while there were times I cut it too close and died after Miu getting seen at the last second, it never really felt cheap or punishing. It oftentimes was because I just wasn't patient enough.

Overall, the game is pretty short and has some nice moments. It's charming and runs without any major issues. The controls are a little too tight but that's really it from an overall technical 'feel' standpoint. If you enjoy 2.5 puzzle platformers, this one is pretty good but just be prepared for a game feel you're fairly familiar with.

The game has massive flaws, some pretty big bugs, even to this day, but Mafia II's last set piece and story ending do some heavy lifting at the finish line to make it a pretty enjoyable experience despite those flaws.

The camera is wonky at times, every vehicle feels bad to drive, the AI can be unpredictable, including the cars on the road, which can be frustrating at times. A lot of this though is just an age thing though, so some of these frustrations are a bit forgivable for me.

A lot of it is big dumb empty calories of gangster cliches and action-movie-levels of gameplay depth. But if you like those types of games and want one that's got a better than average story, Mafia II is an easy recommend.

An amalgamation of various game genres that just doesn't land anything in a way that feels fun or interesting to play.

Part rhythm based game, part rpg turn based game, part beat em up as well I guess? On paper, it's an interesting combination of different elements. All of which feel very surface level without much development behind them.

If this game was short and sweet, that wouldn't be a big deal but this game took me well over 20 hours to beat so this type of surface level gameplay gets so old so fast.

On top of it, the game has a lot of bugs. When I originally downloaded the game I was unable to open up the first rhythm game which is vital to open up a door in order to proceed. I had to play a lot of this game streaming it via cloud, which when you are a rhythm based game, does not feel great with some delay. This eventually went away and I was able to play it downloaded but there were other issues as well unfortunately.

On top of it, the hit detection on this game is bad. I'd be right next to something on the main stage, trying to attack boxes that were in my way to clear them, but I would oftentimes be considered too far to destroy them, even though my perspective said otherwise. Same with climbing up stairs or avoiding things, it just muddles the experience as a whole.

The main stage traversing in general has a ton of frustration with it. You constantly have things trying to attack you, unfortunately a lot of these things are just random projectiles that you just can't get rid of. When you get hit with these things you will take damage, which isn't actually that bad, the biggest issue with it though is that any time you do get hit from one of these things, you fall down and stop moving for a brief period of time. So you are constantly having to battle with the controls, hoping you're not clipping something and stop moving, hoping you don't hit something so you stop moving, it just gets so tiresome taking a few steps, getting hit, stopping, taking a few more, getting hit, stopping, etc, etc. It just feels like padding to make the game take longer.

There's a lot of that feeling throughout this game too unfortunately. The game feels like it's on the cusp of wrapping up twice before it actually does. The story isn't all that engaging or interesting too so this extension of the game and the story isn't all that rewarding and just feels like a way to make the game longer. Hell, this game uses the "fight the bad guys you fought to get here before fighting the final boss" trope TWICE.

The general turn based battling is nothing to write home about. It's serviceable but if you are not a fan of turn based type games, this is not going to convince you otherwise.

The music is solid and the guitar riffs are neat. The biggest issue is once again, this game is too long so the riffs you play to do special attacks sound good at first but quickly wear out your welcome when you're doing them over and over and over and over.

The style and art are nice as well but none of the things this game possesses as pros are enough for me to say its worth trying in the end.

Pokemon goes open world with Arceus and it's definitely a change that I've always hoped for. Being able to just explore areas and find new and different areas, with maybe new pokemon to see, is a great idea on paper so it's surprising it took this long to actually see this attempted. The end result, for the most part, is a solid first attempt with a lot of room for improvement still.

The areas themselves are pretty great to explore. The game does a good job of making each area you can go to feel unique and worth covering every inch of. Whether you're climbing around mountains dealing with Ice Pokemon or you're swimming around beachy areas looking at water Pokemon, each area does a good job of setting itself apart without feeling too much like an obvious attempt to fit different types of Pokemon in one area.

Like many Pokemon games too, you'll earn HM style upgrades to make this exploration easier as you progress. In Arceus you'll be able to use a flute to call upon various Pokemon, all with unique traits that will come in handy. Whether that's a Pokemon that you can ride on to quickly get from point a to point b, a Pokemon to make sure you don't drown, or a Pokemon that helps you scale rocks or other various kinds of land, or even a Pokemon that can find buried treasure. These skill traits are good for the most part, though some feel less important in the grand scheme of exploring.

Along with a bit of a format change, the game's emphasis also feels a bit different. The Pokedex gets a lot of attention in this game and for the most part, that primary focus works well.

Now, each Pokemon has a set of goals in your Pokedex. They vary slightly depending on the kind of Pokemon, some are pretty standard and common, like defeating a certain amount of them or catching a certain amount of them. Sometimes it changes up though, whether its seeing a Pokemon use a certain move a certain amount of time, or defeating a Pokemon with a certain type of move.

The end goal with these Pokedex tasks ultimately is to "master" full knowledge on a Pokemon by getting it up to level 10. Luckily you won't have to do every single task in order to get it to full expert level which is good for not getting too tedious.

There's no specific big picture end goal for mastering the Pokedex in full in regards to the main story but there are side quests throughout the game that will task you with mastering specific Pokemon with a reward for doing so. You'll at times be rewarded with rare candy and things like that so the rewards for these tasks, at times, is definitely beneficial.

The only real issue with the new Pokedex first focus really is battling feels de-emphasizd a bit too much.

Random trainer battles are nearly non-existent in this version. You'll at times come across them but for the most part these are story driven so they pop up a lot less frequently than in previous Pokemon games where you could come across them on various routes. In order to level up with any kind of consistency, you'll have to do a lot of battling with random Pokemon in the open worlds.

On paper, this isn't all that bad but I did run into some frustrations with this. Wild Pokemon seemed to run away with a decent amount of frequency, which when it happens, your party will earn no experience. That obviously isn't anything new but with the increased focus on leveling up through these random battles, it tends to be a bit frustrating when you're trying to grind a few levels with your party and having to constantly deal with Pokemon running away.

Even move learning takes a pretty big step back. Any type of moves you learn after leveling up isn't really expressed directly. As soon as you're done with a battle, all the experience you gain, levels you gain, moves you learn, even evolving that can take place is all thrown at you all at once on the open world. The game is focused on getting you right back to exploring the open world in front of you but these two aspects clashed for me. I was constantly forgetting about new moves I could learn from my Pokemon or forgetting that a Pokemon could evolve because this info was being thrown at me so quickly without much time for me to take a bit of time to see what was going on with those aspects to the game. Especially since you can be attacked by these wild Pokemon as soon as you get out of a battle.

Another issue I had with the new focus on the Pokedex is a lack of quality of life aspects to that. Because the game wants you to complete these Pokedex tasks, trying to bring up the Pokedex while in a battle doesn't seem possible (it's possible there is actually a way to do this and I just wasn't aware of it but there wasn't an obvious button or anything that alluded to this being possible). So if you find yourself in a fight against a wild Pokemon that you're trying to complete tasks with involving a very specific thing, you'll just have to remember it from memory. If you can't remember which type of move you're supposed to use on a type of Pokemon though, you'll just have to hope you can find some more while you pop open your Pokedex post-battle. It's not a huge loss or massive annoyance, but it's a noticeable omission given the focus being what it is in Legends. There are a few quality of life omissions that could make this game so much tighter and more enjoyable as well. Much like the inability to open the Pokedex during a battle, none are super annoying or frustrating but adding them all up, it does make the game feel like it has a lot of room for improvement.

One of the newer gameplay additions is the agile style/strong style move mastering. If you use a move a certain amount of times you'll eventually master it and be able to change up the move before you use it. If you choose to use a move in agile style, you'll attack faster but for less damage than usual. If you do a move using strong style, you'll attack slower but for more damage. Overall, this didn't really change much from my perspective but it feels like an addition that also has room for being interesting and more strategic in the future.

The game also replaces the gym battle system with something called noble battles. In each area, there is a Pokemon that's been taken over by some strange force that causes them to go into a frenzy and its up to you to fix that issue. You'll do that by throwing items at them and draining a health bar. You can drain it consistently with these items but if you want to drain the meter faster, you'll have to get these Pokemon into a battle. In order to get them into these battles, you'll have to do something to slow them down. Each Pokemon has a different method in order to accomplish this and the only consistent thing is how underwhelming all of it is.

In short, these noble battles are bad. You don't even need to use Pokemon to complete these. You can just keep throwing these unlimited supplied items until the bar is completely empty. A few of the noble battles become a bit trickier with the patterns the Pokemon use but none of them were interesting or fun. All were tedious and boring. You don't even get anything significant to completing these. All the HM-like Pokemon you get all happen prior to these, all that comes with them is a sticker in your book and the story progressing. They are just so flat and feel completely unnecessary.

Overall though, Pokemon Legends: Arceus shows a lot of potential and on its own, it's a pretty good first attempt at switching up the Pokemon format. The foundations are there in this version, but it just feels like it needs a lot more tightening and quality of life improvements to really knock it out of the park. Some noticeable frame rate issues also don't help matters but with time, this style of Pokemon game could be even better than the old format. Only time will tell if they can get it there though

An interesting setup that gets bogged down by poor fighting mechanics and some quality of life features that are noticeably missing.

Vampyr is a game where your decisions matter. This is nothing new or novel but the overall setting and the setup to the game do make these types of mechanics feel a bit different.

You play as a newly turned Vampire at the height of the flu outbreak that moonlights as a world famous doctor. As a doctor vampire, you'll be making decisions throughout the game about who lives and who dies.

Want to kill a character to gain a huge amount of XP? Well that can effect side quests or even the morale of the neighborhood you're in. Decisions you make will also effect the literal lives of people in some of these neighborhoods. Though I never discovered the problems that can occur if the wellbeing of a neighborhood drops below a certain threshold, the game makes your decisions feel weighty.

One decision involved a nurse that left the hospital to start treating people in a more underground fashion in one neighborhood of the city. You can choose to help her, you can choose to shut her down or you can threaten her, all have a different outcome that leads to that part of the neighborhood shifting.

These neighborhoods and their morale changes happens whenever you rest, which is the only way to get stronger in the game, so these shifts are more forced since getting stronger and more skilled is very important in this game. This setup never feels unfair or difficult per se, but some key quality of life functions are missing that make this an absolute chore.

Like I said, the only way to level up in this game and get stronger is to rest. But resting causes the neighborhoods to shift. So whenever you rest, these neighborhoods can drop in quality unless you're keeping tabs on all of these sections.

The only problem though is, you can't fast travel. So if you want to make sure the neighborhoods aren't getting worse, you'll need to travel around to each one which takes time away from the actual gameplay missions.

Want to level up before a boss? Well, better slog through more bad guys that you've already killed a whole lot (they respawn each time you're going through areas of the city). Everything takes so much time and effort and because the combat isn't fun and is a slog, it just puts the games issues right up front constantly.

A lot of the nuance in the storylines and side quests gets completely lost underneath the weight of the crappy gameplay pressing down on you at practically every part of the game. I would've dropped this game a long time ago if it wasn't for the interesting storylines (obviously this eventually broke in the wrong direction).

The game uses a stamina bar that's tied into your attacks and dodging. If the stamina is completely depleted, you won't be able to dodge or attack until you have enough stamina to do either, so you'll have to not only time your attacks and dodges, but make sure you leave space in between at times to make sure you're not completely empty and a sitting duck for anything and everything.

As a personal preference, these types of stamina meters have always bugged me. Throw in a poor targeting system and poor camera don't help either. Since you'll have to be learning attack patterns on the fly too, death will occur and unfortunately, restarting after dying is also pretty unforgiving.

If you use any items or blood attacks (your special vampire powers which are all pretty dope) during a fight in which you've died, you lose these items upon restart. Since many of these boss fights are not near work benches (the place necessary for creating more health potions or other items) and since there is no fast travel, slogging back to find these things to get back to a good level of preparation prior to a fight after every death is just so tiresome after a while. Luckily refilling your blood meter isn't too tough (you can snack on some rats which are usually nearby boss areas) but also having to do that every. single. time. on top of the items leaving, it just adds to the annoyances.

Overall, if you can connect to the gameplay, you may like Vampyr. It was just a large deterrent from an overall enjoyable story that eventually was not good enough to make up for the playing frustrations I was encountering frequently.

A short and sweet little April Fools release from Sega. A whodunnit on a train finding out who killed Sonic is a wild idea on paper. The end result is a super charming, short and sweet little game that, unfortunately, has a terrible gameplay loop. The only real gameplay involved is the standard ring collecting game. It's tiresome, it's boring, it is what it is.

The game is so short and charming and harmless though, that it's hard to be completely upset about this, since you honestly don't do a ton of it overall. The game is easy as hell on top of it all. If you are a big fan or confused by this idea, it's free (also free!) on Steam as of this writing. Give it a shot, it's a few hours tops and honestly, there's potential in this idea for something longer and more fleshed out, just leave the gameplay loop out of it completely.