I've said in a number of reviews that I'm not a big fan of FPS games, but really I've quietly come to the conclusion that I do like "boomer shooters". Fast, crazy high paced gameplay where you're expected to run around strafing the enemies and collecting health, not hiding behind cover for most of the fights. The recent Doom game revivals embody this philosophy very well, and I've really taken a liking to both their new games. Doom Eternal exemplifies this gameplay very well, featuring about a dozen enemy types you learn how to combat and avoid, eight weapons with various powerups and alternate modes, and a level design meant to invoke a sense of fighting in an arena. It's a really fun and action packed game and is right up my alley. I had actually heard some negative rumblings about this game compared to the 2016 Doom title, but I thought it was on par with that game. I didn't mind the platforming sections, as they never overstayed their welcome and were a nice break from the action. I do have two complaints about this game though. Firstly, the game is balanced around having a full arsenal of weapons. You actually run through your ammunition pretty quickly, but the game gives mechanics making almost all weapons viable, and for replenishing your supplies at once. However, in the first level or two you only have two weapons, meaning you're going to be running out of ammo constantly. Once they give you your third or so weapon, the balance begins to work out, but that first level or two does not give a good first impression. My other issue is the length. Not so much the length of the overall game, although it did just start to drag a bit, but the lengths of the individual levels. I would often play for a bit before dinner or during lunch breaks, and I don't think I ever finished a level in one sitting. It doesn't matter too much, as they're pretty generous with checkpoints and you can quit and resume right back at your most recent checkpoint, but playing through the same level without any indication of when it's going to end gets a bit tiring. There's also more of a plot in this one, but it doesn't really matter and I didn't follow anything that was happening in it. Overall, a strong recommendation for Doom Eternal for me, and I think I need to start re-evaluating which FPS games I should invest in playing.

Somewhat surprisingly, Forrest Byrnes is the first platformer I've played on the Playdate. I was initially skeptical of this, as I'm not a big fan of the Playdate's D-pad, but I ended up rather enjoying this game. It shares a number of similarities with Shovel Knight, not only in its platforming, but even having shovel attacks, digs, and a pogo-stick move. As a forest fire rages behind you, you must traverse a level rescuing other rangers and collecting items while trying to reach the helicopter at the end. The game controls well and has some nice visuals, but is completely let down by the fact that there is just one randomly generated level. While there are a number of different platforming chunks that can appear, you'll quickly see them all. It's pretty jarring that once you complete the level, you're just dumped back at the main menu. Those items and park rangers you rescue yield a grade at the end, but since there's just one level there's zero reason to rescue them -- in fact I don't think your level scores are saved anywhere. The only item that does matter are the puzzle pieces you can find, which do unlock some comical park posters if you collect enough. These pieces are the only reason to repeatedly play the game. It's a shame, I really enjoyed this game, and if they had crafted even just 10 or so levels rather than choosing a randomly generated route, I think it would've been a more enjoyable experience. Still, it's cute and clever and falls right into the middle of the Playdate pack.

Have you ever wanted a game based off of a Ghost Hunters type concept for Playdate? Well have I got a game for you. Sasquatchers is a strategy game where you control one of three characters as they attempt to capture footage of mythological creatures ("cryptics") in the woods. These include old standbys like bigfoot, mothman, chupacabra, etc. You move your characters on a 2D grid ala Advance Wars through the dark map to find monsters to photograph. When taking a picture, the camera angle changes to show the camera viewfinder around the player, with the crank rotating the camera. You get more likes and followers the better pictures you take, which leads to more money via rewards and ad revenue. It's a really clever concept for a game, and one that plays pretty well. There are a few characters to choose from for your party, each with their own abilities both in capturing footage as well as interacting with the environment. The goals for each level are pretty well thought out, but the monsters themselves don't really pose much of a threat, they're more of a nuisance. The game is rather short though, and aside from the different monster types, the game doesn't vary much from level to level. Still, it's a clever idea and clever execution. I do have to mention though, that this was the first Playdate game where I had technical troubles. I got to the second to last level and my save corrupted -- attempting to load it crashes the whole console. That's the first time I've run into any troubles, but it's not exactly a good look.

Spellcorked is a cooking game where you play as a young witch opening up her own potion shop. You receive orders, choose the right ingredients, and perform mini-games to prepare the potion. This is easily the best looking Playdate game I've tried to date. The animations are large, vibrant, and fluid. The game also utilizes the full strength of the Playdate to a higher degree than any others. The ingredient preparation mini-games use the crank in very clever ways, and this is actually the first game to use the accelerometer in any fashion. It's a very ambitious game, and the developers clearly had a good sense of how they wanted to realize utilize the unique platform. There is of course a downside to the game though, and it is really repetitive. There's around a dozen different ingredients to choose from, but only three different preparation mini-games in total, so each round quickly loses any individuality. The UI is also largely really well designed, except for the recipe book. It uses symbols to convey the information you've learned thus far, but I had a hard time remembering which symbol was which, especially once you start getting a large assortment of ingredients. If they had come up with two or three more mini-games, I think this really could've been excellent, but even still it pushes the Playdate to a level most of the other games don't.

The Playdate has not been kind to me lately, as the last three games I've played have by far been my three least favorite on the system. Enter Questy Chess, a 2D puzzle game where you move a chess piece through a maze, gathering items and defeating enemy pieces along the way. It's design is meant to invoke old computer games from the 1970s, complete with audio effects. It's a neat aesthetic, and the idea of using the movement of chess pieces is an interesting one. The problem with this game lies entirely with its puzzle design. I honestly believe its designers don't view the world in remotely the same way I do. As I said, you pick up items while moving through the levels, with some of these being missable, but required for progression. Not progression for that level mind you, but required to progress several levels later. This means you can get to the end of a set of levels, find you're missing the boss key, and have to replay all the levels, making sure to grab all the items until you find the arbitrary, unmarked right one. It might not surprise you that this game is really easy to softlock in levels. There's various ways this can happen -- you can run out of consumables while in a position where you'll take too much damage to escape, the limited screen size can result in you walking into dead end areas without the ability to move backwards, there's a duplication item where if you move the wrong duplicate you'll be unable to position your cursor where it needs to go, and my favorite, you'll enter a level as the wrong chess piece and the game will immediately kill you, forcing you to replay an old level just so you can finish with the correct piece to start the next one. It's just a mess of bizarre design choices that takes an interesting game idea and turns it into a complete slog to finish.

I always do my best to finish the games I review, and while there are some that I may have taken the easy way out, very few are entries that I have given up on. Echoic Memory is not one of those games. I really wanted to finish this game, as it's a somewhat interesting concept for a game and the visuals are genuinely really well done. However, this game is an absolute slog to play. It's an auditory matching game. The game plays a several second-long audio clip, and you need to identify which of the four to sixteen samples matches it. Many of these tracks only vary slightly from each other, making the choice difficult. If the game had stopped there, this would've been an enjoyable, if routine game. What makes this game awful is that the audio tracks are all... shifted? corrupted? altered? in some way. By turning the crank, these changes are undone and you can try and "tune into" the actual audio. This mechanic simply does not work. It's very unclear, at least to a musical layperson, what turning the crank is actually doing, so I have no idea how far or which way the crank should actually be turned to restore the audio to its clean state. There are some entire levels that no matter what I did, I didn't end up with anywhere close to the clean audio tracks, which makes distinguishing the differences between them an exercise in futility. The game only gives you three mistakes per level and, even worse, there's a time limit. I really strove to finish this one, but got to the point where I was dreading playing it so much that I was avoiding my Playdate altogether. In fairness to the other games then, I will throw in the towel on this one and move on with my life. It's a shame too, this is one of the better looking Playdate games, and there's a fairly interesting story about a new worker attempting to fix these machines who are clearly growing in sentience. My guess is that there's ghosts in the shell, but I guess I'll never find out.

Cat Quest is a cute action RPG where you play as a young cat adventurer trying to rescue his lost sister. The game is interesting stylistically, as it's portrayed as if you're walking around a traditional overworld map, with labels and icons displayed on the ground below you. The combat is simple but straight-forward, with only attack, dodge, and some magic spells made available to you. The game doesn't feature any deep mechanics or plot, but it's also not trying to be. It wants to be a light hearted adventure game where you solve silly quests and make cat puns, and it does that with flying colors. The structure of the game can be a bit uneven though, but it doesn't overstay it's welcome. I'm not sure if there's enough here to justify two sequels, so I suspect they expand upon the gameplay quite a bit, but what is here is an enjoyable if brief experience.

This is another Playdate game that probably looked interesting on paper, but really doesn't work in practice. Battleship Godios is a horizontal Shmup, in the same vein as Gradius or R-Type. The game is broken up into short levels featuring only a handful of enemies, where you must expose and destroy their cores to finish the stage. The game's main gimmick is that you only have a finite number of bullets, which fire at 45 degrees and bounce around the stage. They're finite in the sense that you must recollect the bullets as they bounce around before they can be fired again, and if any escape beyond the edges of the screen, they're gone forever. You only start out with two or so, but can find optional upgrades to increase your number. However, if you fail to recapture all of your bullets, you can no longer fire and are effectively screwed. The game does have a rewind mechanic to prevent you from being completely softlocked, but you lose any progress you made when you roll back. As a shmup, the game requires a certain level of dexterity to avoid enemies, but neither the control scheme nor the Playdate's mediocre D-pad are really up to the challenge. As an indie platform, many of the Playdate's games do sometimes feel like quick demos, but none so much as this. Even the artwork, which is usually excellent even on the least noteworthy of Playdate games, is really amateurish here. I think this is probably the first title I've been really disappointed with from the first season, and easily my least favorite Playdate game thus far.