The ultimate time waster. Breath of the wild was about discovery, new frontiers both in terms of game design and actual exploration. I had no idea what to expect when I was playing breath of the wild, and it felt joyous just learning basic things like cooking and climbing. It felt like learning to walk for the first time. Playing Tears of the Kingdom is like already knowing how to walk and then going on a much longer walk, with more stuff to do. And while some of this stuff was cool, especially the caves... I feel like people won't look back at this game with the same wonder. The game really is just about finding more ways to fill the design space of Breath of the Wild, but it failed to understand that what made that game so special were those first few moments when you didn't know what to do. Wandering around in hyrule field, interrogating a game space you didn't fully understand.

While technically less cash-grabby than Trap Team, it's only by a little. You had to have land and sea vehicles to access some pretty significant areas, which I remember were just impossible to find at stores. I remember practically nothing about the levels in this game, except that they were pretty boring and not at all challenging. The racing sections are pointless, the game doesn't really have any big boss battles or memorable moments, which really sucks because that's what made the games at all entertaining to begin with. Truly disappointing to watch Skylanders fall from mediocrity to true boredom.

I liked the skylander design in this one, and the levels were pretty off the wall at times (especially Future and the Zeppelin one) but I think this is the only game in the series that really feels incomplete without all of the traps. From what i recall, after every boss fight the game prompted you to trap them, and if you didn't buy the thing, then, rough I guess. From what I recall these guys also corresponded to unique areas, meaning that a good portion of the game was just inaccessible. And the worst part was that when you did trap the dudes, they were incredibly boring to use. They had designs reminiscent of the basic enemies with an element attached to them or were INCREDIBLY dumb. Like who tf cares about "cross crow"? And usually when you did get ahold of them they were extremely basic, and you couldn't even upgrade them like normal skylanders.

The gameplay loop of this game is literally: purchase new character, use for a little bit, repeat. Without the novelty of new characters every so often it gets a little boring sometimes. I will say that at least it had a fair bit of content and some creative sections. The game also refuses to let you skip text boxes which let a younger me appreciate the story but an older me groans at the voice acting. I will say that the atmosphere kind of does work in this game, and the cruddier textures help sell a vibe a lot better than squeaky clean stuff later in the series. Overall, its a specific game for a specific audience, but I think it does manage to hit that mark at least. Bonus half star for the Wilikin Village level. Creepiest shit in a kids game.

I'm trying to understand why I didn't enjoy this one. I'm a chess nerd, so I thought this would appeal to me. Then I thought about FTL, the previous game from these devs, and I realized that i felt more in control over my winning and losing in that game than i do in this one. Into the Breach masquerades as if it has a huge learning curve, flaunting in your face how, if you're smart enough, you can do things like redirect the enemies' attacks against themselves and block them from spawning, but in practice it's almost completely random if these strategies are open to you. Since your characters can do so little every turn, it feels like the battle has already been decided and all you're doing is mildly suggesting the battle go one way or the other.
The first time I realized that my best move was actually to cut my losses and sacrifice a mech or move an enemy out of the way instead of attacking it, I thought it was cool. I thought "wow, this game just made me make an interesting decision. Nice". But now, after playing it for a bit I learned that when I'm forced to do that, I've already lost. Into the Breach has a really bad death spiral problem, where either you're easily winning or limping yourself over the finish line, knowing that you can't handle the next fight.
In summary, the moment to moment combat calls itself robot chess but its not. Chess is fun because both players have a lot of options and the point of the game is closing off those options little by little. In Into the Breach you begin with very few options, and when those options stop working, everything goes to shit. It's still fun and works as advertised I guess, but it just doesn't feel satisfying to play.

This review applies to the multiplayer only, as I have not played the campaign.
Modern Warfare was, in its time, a revolutionary game. There wasn't quite anything like it. Time has passed since then, and many things about the games have changed. There are different weapons, systems, etc. You can outfit your weapons with all sorts of attachments, there are new game modes. It's changed, for sure. But when I look at the game, when I look at what I'm actually doing, I don't see anything new. The gameplay is directionless. You run towards the objective and shoot everyone in sight. At some arbitrary point, the match ends. Sure, the guns might have different ranges, times to kill, and ammo capacity, but effectively it doesn't really matter. You point and press the trigger. And I swear that I would be fine with this if the game would just admit that that's all it is. There's a game mode where you have to rescue a prisoner, and it's clearly copying from r6 seige. You die and you can't respawn until the next round. You have to either get revived or sit there watching the game be played by everyone else. Essentially, the game stopped me from playing because it expects me to care about the objectives and get invested in the tension of the game, except I'm not. The game is not built to support this style of play. I just want to respawn and start popping some clean headshots again. Because of this, i'd say the only mode worth playing is team deathmatch. And for a game that's really just aiming at heads and pulling the trigger? I'd give about $5, nothing more.

Yeah, it kinda falls off towards the end, yeah, the game isn't as scarce as I'd like it to be. Sure, it could be easily improved with some edits, but this game is something else. Citizen sleeper is about being a cog in the machine, a speck of light in an infinite night sky. But rather than sulk about this feeling, Citizen Sleeper emphasizes the humanity in the little things in life: the wordless familiarity you have with the barkeep, the gentle friendship you form with your coworker. The game isn't infinite, and it will run dry, but those precious few drops of life this game has to offer are worth the world.