So, I've been curious about what it was like playing FPS games on the Wii, since I mostly played shooters on Xbox 360 during 7th gen. I decided to boot up 007: Quantum of Solace on a whim. Never saw the movie. Just knew it was an FPS that came out on the Wii, and oh boy it sure is that!

Of course, we gotta talk controls. You can use the Wii remote and nunchuck hand-in-hand, or you can opt for the Wii Zapper. You don't get the option to use a normal controller setup here. No GameCube controller or Wii Classic controller to save you. I personally opted for the Zapper because I think it's a neat peripheral, and despite all the issues I had with this game, I won't take it out on the piece of plastic I shoved the controllers in at all.

I will say though that controlling First-Person games like this is kind of a nightmare! You can aim all around the screen, which is nice for lining up accurate shots. If you want to turn the camera, though, you gotta hover the pointer by the edge of the screen. Wanna look up? Point that thing at the sky and hope no enemies take it as an opportunity to end you! There's a handful of different settings for wiimote and camera sensitivity, and by a handful I mean 4 options. That's it. Of course, because of this limitation I couldn't have a comfortable time at all because there was one that felt too slow and the next setting felt too fast!

So that's it for aiming, how about actually playing the game? Well, they certainly tried their best despite the limitations! ADS and shooting is what you'd expect. The dpad is what you use to switch weapons, switch weapons firing modes, and throw grenades, of all things. Of course, I threw plenty of accidental grenades trying to switch to a different weapon. + is your general "use" button, which is weird at first but you get used to it. - pulls up a map and shows your objective. I think you're supposed to have some control over this, because I tapped the control stick while it was open and the map started sliding to the right and despite my best efforts I couldn't get it to stop. Very weird. Maybe a glitch?

Now, this is a Wii game. How does it use motion control to enhance the experience? Not too deeply! The game was instructing me to tilt the Wii Zapper to reload. Of course, that was unreliable. I got much better results shaking it instead. The other use of motion controls is melee attacks. Whether you want to be stealthy or if an enemy is just too close for comfort, you'll see a big prompt on screen to shove the Zapper in the enemy's direction to take them down. Of course, you're better off just shaking the thing when this pops up. You'd think that would be it, but doing that activates a quick time event where you have to line up the cursor with a circle and press C to actually do the takedown. Simple enough, but these quick times add up and you'll be missing the quickness of melee attacks in Call of Duty very quickly.

Here's where the controls get real weird due to the limited functions of the Wii remote. A acts as both your jump and your crouch button, which you can do by holding the button down. It's very annoying to use because you'll want to hold down the button to extend your jump like in a normal game but then you'll crouch instead and probably fall into a hole and die, which is always fun. The other annoying control quirk has to do with the C button. C acts as your sprint button but also the button you need to hold to enter cover. Imagine you're trying to sprint to a safe spot to get behind to shoot enemies but James magnetizes himself to a low shelf instead, exposing his full juicy ass to every enemy in the room. Many such cases in this game!

Speaking of enemies, don't let too many get on screen at once because MAN OH MAN THE FRAME RATE DIPS ARE SCARY BAD! The game goes from a somewhat stable 30 to easily less than 10 frames per second at times, turning the game into a nauseating slide show. If you've played Sonic Unleashed on PS3 and got to Jungle Joyride Day, it's like that except you're trying to shoot at enemies that are teleporting around cover. It's real rough.

Despite these problems I wanted to do my best to beat this game. Then I encountered a helicopter boss that broke me. Basically you're on a rooftop and there's plenty of cover to hide behind so you can take potshots at the heli. It'll go back and forth across the arena and you have to run to the other side of cover to dodge its fire. Simple enough. Too simple to the devs, in fact, because along with this song and dance of shooting and running to cover, regular enemies are spawning in. They're not here to just shoot at you, by the way. They all have grenades, and their job is to flush you out of cover as soon as they enter the field so you can run out to dodge the grenade and then immediately eat helicopter fire and die almost immediately! That helicopter has a ton of health, too, and despite feeling like I was getting close multiple times, I could never get it to go down.

This fight, on top of the annoying process of turning the camera and getting stuck on cover because I wanted to sprint and the constant defeats due to the grenade-carrying adds just broke my spirit. I wanted to beat this game! Despite the issues I was having with the controls, I was finding ways to have fun! This fight is just too much. I don't know why they thought this was a good idea and I'm very upset. I was playing on the Normal skill level, too, so it really shouldn't have been that hard. This game isn't worth your time. If you're really itching for a FPS on Wii, try to find one that allows for a normal control scheme, at least!

Attack of the Movies is a very simple, generic light gun rail shooter for the Wii. The premise at first seems interesting enough. Each stage is represented as a movie, hence the title. You play through six films, fighting huge bosses at the end of each stage. Sadly, not much is done to make this interesting. You enter a generic movie, whether you're fighting space aliens, trekking through an ancient tomb, or creeping through a haunted house. At the start of each stage an announcer gives you a quick sentence that summarizes what you're doing. They use different wording for each movie, but all it amounts to is "Fight through the stage and fight the boss" every single time, so don't go into this expecting more interesting premises, sadly.

Going through each stage, you're going to constantly be shooting at enemies while trying to hit items like score multipliers, health pickups, and alternate weapons. The alternate weapons have limited ammo, but each stage is littered with them so it's hard to encounter scenarios where you're starving for a power up. There's only two alternate weapons to find at the start, with a third one that can be activated with a code. The two weapons are serviceable enough and feel powerful, especially since without them you're using a pistol that has no rapid fire. Annoyingly, to reload your gun you need to motion your Wii remote towards the bottom of the screen, which can cause you to lose your aim and then take a lot of enemy fire.

Speaking of enemies, there's a good variety of foes here. Surprisingly, enemies are not reused often at all. There was one instance in the tomb stage where an enemy returns from the first stage for a small section, but that's it. There are enemies that will run up to the screen and melee attack you, some that shoot shots that can be deflected if shot at, and some that just shoot shots you can't deflect that you need to defeat before they tear through your health bar. Surprisingly, the enemies that gave me the most trouble in this game were the ones on stage 1. There are these giant blue ants that shoot a projectile that does a good chunk of damage that can be deflected. Despite my best attempts to hit the shots, though, they almost always went through and hit me. I'm not sure if my aim was off or if these shots were given too much resistance to player fire, but they proved to be the most difficult part of the playthrough.

I played through the game on the Easy skill level, as I'm not the best at rail shooters and the first level was proving to be very tough on Normal. Funnily enough, after dying a few times on stage 1 and eventually beating it, the next 5 levels were way easier! I didn't die once in any of them, clearing each one in under 10 minutes, which means that if you're good at these games or keep to lower skill levels, it won't take you much longer than an hour to see everything this game has to offer.

I wish I could say this is a great game that everyone should play, but there are so many better light gun games out there for the Wii that going to this one feels like a waste of time. Don't bother with this one.

Me: Oh wow it's Optimus Prime from Transformers! What are you doing here?

Optimus Prime:
I could have my ✨Gucci on✨
I could wear my ✨Louis Vuitton✨
But even with ✨nothin' on✨
Bet I made you look
I made you ✨look✨

Me:...Neat!

After putting a good few hours in and getting a better feel for the game's progression loop, I have come to the conclusion that I am indifferent to this game. If the combat felt smoother (being able to cancel out of attacks and being able to attack in more than 4 directions would be nice) and you could upgrade your backpack to give it more storage, I probably would stick with it. While there are solutions for the second point, they rely too much on luck for them to feel worth hunting for. I always feel torn between trying to get further into the dungeon and getting out early to sell more things at the shop. I could probably get far, but I don't want to deal with the frustration of making careless mistakes that cost me a run and tons of valuable materials. I guess the game makes me anxious? I'm never in a position where I'm excited to go back into a dungeon after selling stuff, and I'm never excited to sell off the expensive items I found. I wish this game made me feel more positive emotions, but it really gets nothing out of me.

I wish I could like you, Moonlighter, but it's not you, it's me. Actually it is mostly you the combat feel is really rough if it felt better I would probably want to beat this.

DISCLAIMER: This playthrough was completed on real hardware using version 0.9.2 of the mod. There may be bugs or issues mentioned in this review that have been remedied in a more recent update. Please check the patch notes of the mod for any updated information!

When you first hear the title Paper Mario TTYD64, you'll probably assume that this is someone's effort to recreate all of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64. In this case, your assumption would be wrong. Rather, Paper Mario TTYD64 is a hack that aims to take elements of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and inject them into Paper Mario. These elements include things such as giving partners HP, removing the caps on stat growth when leveling up (for example, you are no longer limited to having a maximum of 30 BP), and super-guarding. This mod also adds new locations to the world, some of which are re-created areas from The Thousand-Year Door. Alongside that, you are given access to many badges from that game, including partner versions of some badges. There are also new cooking recipes, items, a Pit of 100 Trials, and new hiding locations for star pieces, so veterans of Paper Mario will have many new things to look forward to here.

As for how the game plays with these new additions, I would say it plays a little bit better than the original, especially since now you don't have to complete the prologue before getting access to action commands. Having these in your toolkit from the get-go definitely helps to speed up the intro, making new playthroughs feel snappier. Having access to the super-guard also makes things more interesting, as you now have a riskier but more rewarding way to counter enemy attacks. Sadly, I did not use it as much as I would have in The Thousand-Year Door, if only because it is much more difficult to use than regular guarding, especially in a game that runs at a lower frame-rate than the game where this mechanic was introduced. I also found it weird that in the tutorial for action commands, Twink never goes over this maneuver. I feel like this should be added in a later patch, as there is always the chance someone new to this mod will not know it is there.

Being able to increase the three core stats (HP, FP, and BP) beyond the regular limit is very rewarding. By the end of my playthrough, I had over 70 BP to use, allowing me to become the powerhouse I always wanted to be in this game. With these limitations removed, the level cap is also increased, allowing you to level beyond level 27, as the game will make sure you get at least 1 star point from every encounter, much like the sequel. Now, you would think that this means you can go to Petal Meadows and fight Amazy Dayzees over and over and level up until the cows come home. Sadly, that is not the case here. Once you hit level 27, all enemies stop giving star points when defeated. This means that when you hit level 27, you go from getting 37 star points off of an Amazy Dayzee to just one, which is extremely saddening. I am not sure if this is an issue carried over from vanilla Paper Mario or an intentional move from the mod creator, but I do hope that in a later patch this is fixed and players can continue to grind levels off Amazy Dayzees after hitting level 27.

Enemies can now also hold items and badges, changing how encounters play out immensely. Are you going to target the enemy holding a thunder rage first? Or will you attack the one holding a dizzy dial? While there may be fights where the amount of items being held by enemies causes a truly daunting challenge, overcoming said challenge can feel very rewarding. Also, along with the aforementioned addition of HP for party members, Parakarry has been given a new move called Parcel Check, which allows him to steal items and badges from enemies. If an enemy is holding something, you can take it! This is very handy as it will allow you to quickly grow a varied badge collection, allowing for all sorts of interesting builds.

There are many new locations sprinkled into the world of Paper Mario in this mod, one of which being the Pit of 100 Trials, first introduced in the sequel to this game. While many will find the pit's challenges daunting, it is very much worth exploring until at least floor 50. Veterans of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will know why. Of course, the deeper you go, the more arduous the battles become. Thankfully, like in the sequel's pit, there is an NPC called a mover that will move you a handful of floors for some coins. I was thankful enough to encounter many of these in a row in my journey to the bottom of the pit, chaining 4 of them in a row on the later floors. I had to change tactics during the final stretch, however, aiming for a "Danger"-based build to maximize evasion and damage output. Despite how stressful the final encounter of the pit was (I won't be spoiling it here), it was definitely a great challenge that I recommend players attempt when playing this mod.

Funnily enough, it was after completing the pit when I learned of a new problem I had with this mod. There is a limit on how many badges you can have in your inventory at any given time. This should be fine, as badges can be sold and re-bought at any time in this mod. However, there is no way to actually know how many badges you have without stopping to count each individual one. The game does not show you a number of badges in your inventory, nor does it show you the limit on how many badges you can have. When you find a new badge while your inventory is full, the badge is sent to Rowf's shop, where you can buy it for a specific amount of coins. I did not know this when I cleared the Pit of 100 Trials and kinda freaked out. Seeing it in the shop made me breathe a sigh of relief, but never being informed about these mechanics is an issue that I hope is addressed in an update or is one day included in a Readme file with the mod.

Another part of this mod worth noting is the music. The title screen music and some battle tracks have been replaced with re-creations of songs from the sequel. There are also specific areas where tracks from the sequel are played. While the inclusion of these is nice and fits the mod, I do feel that some of the new tracks are louder than the older ones, making the audio balance in this game feel off. Aside from that, the tracks make it over to this game mostly fine and are nice to hear in this format.

This mod offers a healthy amount of replayability in the form of new difficulties and modes. During my playthrough, I kept to the normal difficulty with no additional modifications and had a pleasant time. I do not think I would replay this game on a higher difficulty since I do not come to this game for a harsh challenge, but there are some added modes that caught my eye. These modes are one where your only party member is the character Bow, who is made stronger to compensate for the limitation, and there is also a mode that randomizes the placement of items and badges. Both of these modes sound interesting, and I will definitely check them out after this mod receives some updates.

My only other complaints with this mod are that there's no real way to tell what new recipes are in the game without referring to a guide (I would assume most Thousand-Year Door recipes work but I did not want to risk wasting items I wanted to use to find out) and that there are some small bugs scattered through the mod. One notable example of a bug I encountered was when I was fighting the Chapter 1 boss. I had used Kooper's Power Shell move during the second phase, which got locked into place, causing the move to never finish and soft locking the game. Another issue I ran into is that the game crashed when attempting to start a New Game + file, which I am sure will be fixed in a later update.

Overall, I found Paper Mario TTYD64 to be a delightful revisit to a great game adding mechanics and items that help spice things up in ways I did not think possible for this game. If you're a fan of both Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and want to experience what it would be like to have the quality-of-life features of TTYD in the game that started it all, look no further than this mod!

I was honestly surprised by this game. It plays well, the quips from Bubsy are tolerable (plus you can alter their frequency if they get on your nerves), and the game never feels too punishing.

It's also a platformer that does not feel confident in itself in any way and is desperately afraid of scaring you off with challenge. Almost every area where there's a challenge to get lives/wool has a path that lets you completely pass it by without issue. It's good for speed running and clearing stages without dying, but it also screams "We really REALLY want you to be able to beat this game!" I want to make it clear that I'm never against developers doing things to make a game easier for their audience, as accessibility features do a great job of allowing newcomers to games get a full experience, but Bubsy did accessibility in a way that neutered the stage design and turns stages from fun obstacle courses into straight lines that are over in under two minutes.

The only real sense of challenge you'll get from this game are from the boss fights, that are all just okay at best. It's your typical "Watch them do some moves and jump on them when they're vulnerable" routine that's common with games like this, for better or worse. Thankfully bosses have a good amount of moves to use and their attacks even get enhanced as you widdle their health down, so that helps to keep things interesting.

My final note regarding this game is how absurdly short it is. If you're playing casually and not going for trophies/achievements, you'll easily clear this game in under two hours! It's honestly very sad to see, since by the time you reach the end you'll be going "That's it?" This game could have easily lasted an extra two areas at least, but sadly that wasn't the experience we got. I'll never know why this game is as short as it is, but I can say with confidence that the length of this title leaves a lot to be desired.

Overall, this game is okay. When you're going after challenges and trying to clean out stages and take your time, you'll find a decent amount of fun here. However, the short length makes it difficult to recommend picking this up at full price. If you want to play this game, either wait for a VERY steep sale or try it out on PS+ Extra.

The campaign was great from beginning to end. Adler is a very unique character that will stick with me for a while, and some of the stages do some really crazy stuff. The side missions that have you solving puzzles were also a nice touch, if not a very light one. The campaign is extremely short, though. Wish there were a few more stages to play. I guess it makes sense considering the multiplayer focus with these games. I played a few rounds online and had a good time. I won't be playing it for days on end since there's a ton of other games out there I wanna play, but it was nice to take the world on and actually not go negative like I did playing CoD 10 years ago. Oh, if past me had the skill I had today...

Anyway, check out this game, especially while it's still free with PS+!

Final Fantasy XVI is a unique departure from the RPG gameplay style the series is well known for. Here, we see something more akin to a character action game, such as Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, but retaining some elements that are typically seen with RPGs, like levelling up and having equipment builds and crafting stronger weapons.

In regards to gameplay, this is a very satisfying action game. You get access to plenty of cool powerful moves as you progress through the story, allowing for setups that flow pretty smoothly with each other.

Aside from these flashy moves, however, you only get one combo for your basic attack and one basic magic move, which is a shame because I feel like there could have been a lot of unique combos regarding each type of magic you unlock, as well as neat magic attacks that compliment each magic type. Sadly they don't really explore things that much with combat outside the special moves so you're kind of relying on the specials to spice up combat encounters most of the time.

Gameplay aside, there is a lot here to appreciate with the story. It kept me interested from beginning to end, constantly excited to see where things would go with each major event. Side characters are fun and get fleshed out pretty well through side quests and dialogues you can share with them throughout the game.

Speaking of side quests, there's a ton of them here. After almost every major story beat a plethora of the things will spawn for you to check out. Side quests in this game are sadly super simple, and would be pretty boring if it weren't for the additional lore they provide. Each quest's gameplay content basically amounts to doing one of three things: find a person, kill some monsters, or collect a thing. It's very MMO-esque, which can get grating as you complete more of them. Thankfully the character moments and world building these activities provide do a good job of outweighing the tedium, but it's not by a whole lot. You'll still be breathing a sigh of relief each time you wrap up all of the ones that spawned so you can move on to more main story content.

Aside from side quests, there's only a few other side activities to do here. There are hunts, which task you with finding a powerful monster and defeating them. These will give you some rare materials that let you craft some powerful gear. It's also worth noting that this is mainly how you get the materials for the good stuff.

The other side activities I found were trials, which have you completing some specific challenge like beating waves of foes using specific abilities, and an arcade mode, which has you replaying major stages for score, encouraging diverse combat maneuvers to get more points. Neither of these seemed to give an in-game reward or anything so I felt no need to engage with them, sadly. It would be nice if these challenges offered some unique items or something to make them feel worthwhile to do on a casual playthrough.

Final Fantasy XVI is very much an anti-grinding game. You do not need to fight the enemies you see in each map at all unless it's required for story progress or a side activity, and unless it is for one of those, you really shouldn't. It's kind of a waste of time and you don't get enough experience points or currency to make it worth doing.

Despite my nitpicks with the game, I think Final Fantasy XVI is a wonderful experience. Clive is an amazing protagonist, the combat is fun, and the story will keep you hooked throughout the lengthy adventure. It's a major change for the Final Fantasy formula, but I think that with enough fine-tuning, they can make a really satisfying action game with cooler combos at some point in the future.

Torgal is the best boy.