I'm flabbergasted Nintendo keeps taking another roll at this god forsaken IP to see if the next one will be successful for once, but without addressing the root problems that make it fundamentally an awful videogame series.

It's all maidwork. The amount of little plant folk that you can have following you around seems impressive at first until you hit the unit cap before you know it and suddenly it seems like this oppressively limited amount. There can be red pills lying around every freakin where and thats when it becomes apparent that those are essentially health pickups and that the unit cap is essentially a health bar. The game ceases to seem unique or interesting at that point. It's about trading health to achieve tasks and then replenishing said health, and taking note of the locations of unneeded red pills so you know where to find them later, like it's a 90s PC FPS.

By tasks of course I mean gathering collectibles and killing enemies. (Very original!) How do you gather collectibles? Throw the plant folk at them until the gauge is filled. You're simply filling gauges in Pikmin. It's a gauge filling simulator. You defeat enemies the same way. It's not really clear how the plant folk actually attack the enemies since they have no teeth or claws or any visible means to damage enemies much larger than them, but you're not really paying attention to that. You're just looking at the gauge that appears onscreen to show how many plant folk to put in the cup to make the big bad go bye bye. Filling gauges. So quirky. Pure Nintendo. Brilliant.

And the sundown timer. That reminds me of when it was time for bed and my dad would count to 10 slowly before he would shut the console off, and that's how much time we had to reach a save point. That's literally what playing Pikmin is.

When night falls in game you know you're done playing Pikmin because instead of being able to start the next day immediately you have to read the main character monologue for like twenty minutes. ("Make 'em reeeead!!" -Miyamoto, probably) I think the final screen in the game occurrs when you have a choice between two levels to land into, which is a fantastic way of introducing our generation to the concept of choice paralysis. Either way you use up one of your remaining days of oxygen or whatever you have left to finish the game in. So BETTER NOT SQUANDER IT, IDIOT. Better make sure to play each day 100% optimally, not just stumble through. Definitely don't start this level or that one if you're just playing for fun. But it's not as if you're playing games for fun?? I mean who does that.

Maybe I'm just not well versed in how Pokémon releases work. I assumed this was a sequel to Moon. But upon playing it, I could not tell you what is different between this and regular Moon. Aside from the in game title card having Ultra in the name, there is nothing I could point to that would definitively prove that this is a new version, and which couldn't simply be explained by me misremembering whether it was in the original Moon or not. (Aside from maybe the Nintendo Switch in your trainer's house, which was obviously patched in- it's the only explanation seeing as the 3DS was discontinued in like 2011 and they obviously didn't know about the Switch back then) From my standpoint I've essentially purchased a second copy of Moon and arbitrarily began to play it as though it were a different game.

For the record I like Moon. I mean, it was alright. I liked it at least enough to beat it, and enough to end up taking a chance on Shield. But after playing Shield, I realized I have zero enthusiasm for Alola region or its characters anymore. Now that I've been to superior Galar there is no going back. Hau might as well be a napkin scribble of a character that would go on to become Hop. And so on. Furthermore the Lillie subplot is also incredibly bland. That said if you have never played og Sun/Moon then this might be perfectly fine for you. It's playable, which is a pretty high bar to clear, especially for a 3DS game, and especially for a game with random encounters.

People rate this game on vibes alone. I won't lie the vibes are strong with this one, but it's overall marred by the corniest and most cringely executed story in a racing game ever, nonsensical replay value structure, and the fact that, as a Ridge Racer title, this one is pretty mid. The game omits out the upgrade system of Rage Racer or really any freedom to choose what to do next, you're simply dragged from race to race w some dialogue scenes sprinkled in, until it's over. The game is extremely short so, as if to compensate for this, four story arcs are included, but you're taken on the exact same courses each time. You're essentially tricked into playing through the game four times. There's little sense of speed and the drifting also seems to be worse, feels.. stuttery somehow. Honestly it felt like the drifting became slightly worse with each PS1 installment, I didn't mind this in Rage Racer since I felt I was getting something in exchange, but not so with "R4."

Another thing I was hung up on was that the courses weren't connected, which to me was like, it defeats the point of calling it a Ridge Racer title! It's too much just like any other racing game at that point. Granted, this would go on to become the norm for Ridge Racer games (Ridge Racer V would be the last one to do it) but that feels like Namco retconning this game to seem less bad by making future games unremarkable.

I always felt as though there should one day be a remake of this game that addresses the issues, and a better story. But it's admittedly futile seeing as everyone likes this game already, and a game already exists called R Racing Evolution which I've only played briefly but is uncomfortably close to being a spiritual remake of R4, but with even more Ridge Racer elements removed, and still cringey. Any future effort is unlikely to fare better.

If I were to try to describe what the game is, or at least at best as I can guess it was trying to be, is a game revolving completely around Sonic's homing attack, except that you choose targets by aiming with the Wii remote, and in which your reach is increased ten or twenty fold compared to that of a Sonic game. When put that way, the way you'd imagine things are meant to go is you homing attack to a faraway target, bounce off it, and repeat to the next destination. Thus most of your gameplay time would be spent in a perpetual attack chain. You're constantly "airborne".

In reality however the thing I most commonly land on is a vertical surface and there's no bounce that follows, which is apparently reserved for only very specific in game objects for some reason. Rather, my avatar simple hangs to the wall Mega Man X style for a moment before plummeting. Even if I manage to find another object in the distance to point to in time, the wall my avatar was hanging on is physically obstructing my avatar from making it to the next surface. At best all I can do is target the same wall over and over, hopefully making up some height in the process. I was at a complete loss as to how the player was actually meant to counteract in these situations. Giving the player a way to quickly turn the camera 180 degrees (such as with a press of a button or a flick of the nunchuk) seems like it would have been vastly beneficial and would certainly have improved flow. (Imagine being able to seamlessly traverse across ruins in a zig zag pattern like a wall jumping fucking ninja.) I found it incredibly laborious to use the pointer turn the camera all the way around to find something new to homing attack to- I'd start falling before I get a chance to complete such a maneuver. More often that not, I am so hurried that I inadvertantly veer my pointer too far to the edge of the screen, which as we all know causes the Wii to forget the Wii remote exists in the first place and requires a good five seconds or so to recalibrate. By that time, you've probably ejected the disc from the console.

The flight mechanics and roomy Angel Island esque environments tease me with the notion that there is something godlike to be experienced if I had both enough patience and an obliviously unreserved lack of standards to figure out a play pattern to make the game function somewhat as it was intended, however that may be. On the surface, at least, the game is completely unplayable.

I love how the soldiers in the opening are like omg and cowering before a group of enemy tanks bout to murder them and one starts yelling (in his off-the-shelf "soldier in a battlefield calling for backup" voice) to "get in touch with w the eight armored division." Not contact, not radio, not call, but "get in touch with". Ask them how's their day. Send a polite request for assistance.

It then cuts to a group of high school kids finding dead soldiers everywhere. They take it upon themselves to save the day on their own. I have no doubt they will succeed.

The difficulty curve primarily comes in the form of your assists being gradually diminished over the course of the career, rather than simply from the AI playing better. As such playing the game becomes increasingly irritating the further you get, and I personally found myself stonewalled on one event in particular- it takes place on a pink table where the objective was simply to pocket three balls in as few shots as possible.

It's a shame too because aside from this one snag Hustle Kings was overall a really smooth take on pool, touch controls and all.

Some dork makes random battle trash in 2015. Nice going.

I keep getting the frog over and over. Talking to it does.. something? Am I understanding the mechanics of this? So I compliment it and run away?

Before playing the game I always thought it was odd how this shmup minigame takes up such a small portion of the screen despite presumably being a major component of gameplay. In hindsight I may have been right on the money.

But maybe I just don't get it.

That lady character tho. I have to give credit, it's not every day you see a character with such a strong maternal presence like that in a videogame. It's nice. I wonder if rule 34 exists of her.

Although this is a review for God Eater 2, it applies equally to every installment in the series. (Come to think of it, each sequel seems to be literally the exact same game re-released with a new story, tweaked graphics, some new character creator options and possibly other fringe additions.) The premise is you use oversized cosplay props to tickle dinosaurs until they melt.

Actually that is hyperbole. After creating my character, most of my time in the game was spent in the lobby and viewing cutscenes. What little hack and slash there is is incredibly mediocre. The weapons have no weight. The enemies do not react to your blows. They actually had the audacity to include a gun form as a momentary power-up state rather than a permanent option. So your reward for your mediocre hack-slashing is to be able to play a mediocre third person shooter, but only for a few seconds. You have the option of 8+ different elemental bullets, that all do the same damage, seemingly for the sake of convolusion.

Aside from slashing you can pick up glowy bits on the ground. You can get these from defeated monsters too. These probably don't do anything. They're just items/loot in the abstract. It's apparently a thing RPGs do nowadays, possibly out of laziness or whatever.