Star Sled is a Playdate space game where you control a spaceship and attempt to encircle all the targets while avoiding obstacles. I'm beginning to realize that the Playdate games I enjoy the most are the ones with discrete levels and an obtainable objective, rather than just arcade style. Star Sled is a good example of this, featuring 30 or so levels where your ship steadily gains new abilities as the game progresses. It has a very clear and well done art style, and is simple to pick up and understand. My one criticism is the controls. This game uses the crank to steer the ship, with two optional settings -- "absolute" mode where the ship always points in the same direction as the crank, or "relative" mode, where the ship turns as a multiple of how much the crank has been turned. Having this option is nice, but neither one really jelled well for me. Since the goal of the game is to constantly encircle things, the turning radius never felt as precise as I would like, but I think that's less a criticism of the game and more a criticism of using a crank as a control scheme. Still, even with somewhat loose controls I quite enjoyed this game and think it's one of the stronger Playdate titles to date.

Penny's Big Breakaway is the debut title from Evening Star, a new studio formed from several developers who worked on Sonic Mania. I was a big fan of Mania, and was excited to see what a talented team could do without the constraints of the Sonic franchise. The game is a 3D platformer where you control Penny and her magic yo-yo as you progress through as series of levels. The control scheme reminds me slightly of Super Mario Odyssey, where the character uses an object to gain extra platforming moves, in this case riding on a wheel, performing a swinging move, and dashing forward. I've seen some complaints about the control scheme, but I actually found it pretty fluid and easy to grasp, although there were some moments where some moves just didn't seem to want to fire correctly -- the dash move in particular. Sadly, while I enjoyed the controls I don't have much positivity for the rest of the game. It's not a bad game by any means, but I found it very bland. Pretty much every level is exactly the same, and they all blend together. They reuse the same level design ideas over and over again, and there's no single level that really stood out to me. The levels do have some optional tasks for you to complete, but I'm not sure why anyone would actually do them. They're just tedious enough to not be fun, and the only reward is some extra points. That's true of a lot of this game, completing extra objectives gives points, finding secrets gives points, landing on the best goal position gives more points. However the points don't actually do anything -- there's no extra lives to gain -- and if you die you're guaranteed to lose almost all you've gained that level. It was a lot of effort put into a system that has no real incentive for the player to engage in, so I ended up just playing all levels the same and racing to the end. The enemy design is also pretty weak, there are only hoards of penguins which attempt to grab onto you. If too many grab on, you die, but there's no way to actually defeat them. Your only option is to run away and try to engage with them as little as possible. The bosses as well are pretty uninteresting, most of them being trivial to beat, with the exception of one that just seemed very poorly designed and a bit buggy. Penny herself is... fine. I didn't engage with the plot at all, and they made the odd decision that while all the characters just speak in speech bubbles (which is a good choice), Penny herself is a silent protagonist. It's really weird that everyone else has dialogue while Penny just... stands there. As I said, I didn't dislike this game, but I also didn't really have any positive experiences with it. I hope it does well enough for Evening Star to continue forward, as the talent is clearly there, but I don't think I would be interested in a Penny sequel.

Trials of the Blood Dragon is a crossover between a Far Cry 3 DLC and the Trials series, neither of which I've played, and after this neither of which I will. The game tries to embrace every 1980s film stereotype including overly macho characters, film homages, massive explosions, aliens, giant monsters, Communists threats, a Miami Vice colorscheme, you name it. This was a bit of a fad when this game came out, but they do it here with little subtlety, it's just thrown in your face in a vague attempt to be funny. Combine this with some awful voice acting and contrived storylines, and it makes the cutscene plot, which is a significant amount of the runtime, a complete waste of time. This is a motorcycle game however, we're not here for the plot, and unfortunately that's just as bad. Firstly, there's more than just motorcycle levels, as they also introduce mechanics like dual-stick shooting and a grappling hook, which are incredibly frustrating to use, not to mention straight platforming levels. Perhaps a third of the levels are just platforming with no vehicle riding, and the physics are very wonky. My issues with the physics extend to the actual vehicle levels as well though. You'll ride a bike or motorcycle depending on the level, and they are awful to control. You have very little fine control over controlling them, once they gain angular momentum, it's a waste of time to try and straighten out again, and they have so much torque -- particularly the bike -- that you'll often just flip over trying to climb hills. This is probably a more fun game to watch than to play, and I'll admit the music is pretty good, but everything about it is just grating and frustrating. Finally, I know they're doing a 1980s parody, but singling out the Vietnamese as the villains of the game, complete with ahem stereotypical dialogue, is just abhorrent.

Another game among the upper echelon of Playdate titles, Inventory Hero is a fun and fast paced game where you simply maintain the inventory of a hero on his quest. You can watch said hero fight waves of enemies on the top of the screen, but your job is to either use or discard the items that are automatically gathered. You have six possibly inventory slots, which can be filled with armor and weapons to equip, food and potions to drink, or just straight junk that must be discarded. It's a really cute game and I really enjoy the premise and the gameplay. It doesn't have a huge amount of replayability, especially since you'll hit the end of any additional content pretty quickly in a run, but I still think it's more replayable than the majority of Playdate titles. The artwork is really well done and the music isn't half bad either. Definitely one of my favorite Playdate games thus far.

I originally beat the first Mass Effect game about a decade ago, and to be honest I don't think I really appreciated it then. My poor laptop wasn't well suited to running the game, and my inexperience with shooters made for a cumbersome experience. Returning to it now, via the Legendary Edition remasters, my greatest impression is how good the world building is. You play as Cmd. Shepard, the first human soldier to join an elite arm of the galactic special services. You find yourself embroiled in a plot to continue a cyclical pattern of galactic genocide taking place over the course of millennia, and you have to make allies of various unique and interesting species to stop the threat. It's a game where your choices really do matter, both in how other characters treat you, but even towards who lives and dies and how the ending plays out. These choices can directly carry over to the sequel titles, giving a level of storytelling that even now hasn't really been surpassed. I really enjoyed the look of the future presented in this game, not just with the technology and alien races, but even things like how human fashion will evolve. It's a well thought out and cohesive vision. There are a variety of different combat methods, but those are somewhat locked depending on what class you choose at the beginning of the game, which is a bit of a shame. I ended up going pure third person shooter, which is rather enjoyable, if not terribly original. Any complaint I have towards this game is pretty minor. It's surprisingly shorter than I recall for one. I did nearly all the side quests available to me, but I think there's only five or six stages in the main campaign. The side quests have interest premises, but all take place in one of two copy pasted enemy bases, which can feel a bit silly. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable replay, and I'm looking forward to continuing on to the rest of the series, which I never got around to finishing back in the day.