Mario sports games were all pretty cool. They turned traditional sports into fun mario-themed versions of them with a surprising amount of charm and depth. However, when Mario Sports Superstars came out on the 3DS, it seemed like it would obsolete all of the other Mario sports titles. It had five different sports in one package, which in theory should mean that there would be no need to buy any of the other Mario Sports titles. But it turned out trying to pack 5 sports into one game meant that you had 5 very boring game modes instead of one fun one. The game tried to do too much.
Mario Odyssey has 52 different playable characters and over 700 objectives.
You can connect the dots.

I can feel the effort that went into this, it's a shame that there are so many things holding it back.
To list a few:
1. Boss fights all suck ass. They take forever and you just feel so weak and helpless but not in a fun way.
2. The dream sections are almost a direct downgrade to the gameplay. Dream combat is messy, the 2-D overworld is a nightmare to traverse, and the visuals go from clean looking, cohesive and fun to a mess of color and random elements all splashed onto the background. Every time Luigi puts his head on one of those goddamn pillows I want to lose my shit.
3. The story is terrible, but for some reason they just can't stop having these people yap at you the whole time. The pillow guy is yelling at you, the star guy is yelling at you, the yellow cube guys are yelling at you, I just want them to shut up.
And the worst part is that when people aren't talking at you and when you're not in the stupid dream world and when you aren't bashing your head against the absurd boss fights (especially that sprinkler one) you might actually be having a nice time. There were moments where I thought the game was being cute with the visuals and the combat was being fun and the puzzles were okay. The problem is that at the end of nearly every one of these fun areas is another stupid pillow and you just immediately stop having fun.

I feel like when they were designing the characters for this game they just had like 1 idea for a fun thing and that was the character. Like, with roadhog they had the idea for the hook and that was it. The problem with this is that roadhog now IS the hook. There isn't really anything else to do with him, so you just waddle around the objective, soaking some damage and then hook someone. When you do, you get your little dopamine rush and that's it. There isn't any learning how to play roadhog, getting better, learning about positioning, or evolving your gameplay like some other games I can think of. (R6, literally any fighting game) No, you just f* press r1 and have your brainless fun. The only thing that keeps it from getting stale is the fact that there are quite a few characters so you can swap to whichever type of brainless fun you want to have at any moment. For this, and because there is still enjoyment to be had, just not a very deep enjoyment, this game gets a 6/10 from me.

Galaga is fantastic. I would say it's definitely more fantastic in an arcade setting, but it's fantastic nonetheless. I think that out of all the reasons why it's fantastic the main one has to be the gameplay, and more specifically the feel. Galaga is a very snappy game. You fire very quickly, you move quickly, the enemies move quickly and it's your job to keep up with the pace they set until you can't anymore. This was a very common trend among arcade games of the time (pac man, centipede, tapper, etc.) but Galaga pulled this off the best. When you die in centipede you just get upset with the stupid trackball thing and when you die in Pac-Man you get upset at the fact you're outmatched 4-1. In Galaga, because everything is so snappy, your eventual death feels fair, which is essential for a good arcade game. The gameplay also is very satisfying considering its simplicity. The game is built around a fundamental dilemma: You need to attack, which requires you to be in front of the enemies. However, you also need to avoid death, which requires you to not be in front of the enemies. You can put off defeating the enemies but they'll just come back for another round, meaning your decision has consequence. How you handle this dilemma and when you choose to attack and evade is the gameplay of Galaga and it really does work. As for the aesthetics, it's as retro as it gets, and it can totally bring you into an arcade's vibe with all its warbling sound effects. And given that it gives you a couple lives for a quarter and you almost never feel upset when you lose makes Galaga perfect for an arcade setting. Overall, Galaga is a perfect little bundle of arcade goodness that gives you a moment of fun every time you play.

Honestly, the game isn't incredible. It doesn't have a ton to work with, it's very limited, and one could be forgiven for looking at the other zoo tycoon games and scoffing at the puny DS entry. What I find impressive about this game is how it fits it's platform so well. You see, the game is structured a bit strange. It's made up of a bunch of small scenarios where you'll have to build a zoo under different restraints. This might seem strange, as zoo tycoon is enjoyable because of it's progression, the rags-to-riches story. This is produced by gathering upgrades and seeing your zoo grow in size, profits,
Why this fits so well is that progression is distilled so that you can experience that progression on the go. The game is also very replayable, as you can build your own zoo under different conditions or restrictions, such as using specific animals. It's by no means a masterpiece, but it's built itself from the ground up to be an on the go, quick, yet satisfying game.

Ok its kind of absurd how much this improves over chapter 1 after playing them back to back. Chapter 1 was about going through annoying character interactions every screen with Lancer who really just wasn't that great, and resolving a very predictable arc with Susie. The puzzles weren't that fun and overall it was just meh. This game is so so so so so much better. Susie, ralsei, and Kris play off each other so much better in 2 (mostly because they're actually all in the party at the same time) cyber world isn't my favorite but it has more identity than the first chapter, the queen is funny, Noelle is nice, the more meta-mystery parts of the game are much more interesting, and even the moment to moment gameplay is improved by additions like the spinning teapot minigames. Overall it reminds me a lot more of the charm that undertale had than the first game did.

If a normal game wants to go from the middle of a round to a win screen, usually it will have some sort of pause to let the player understand that the game is over, and then the game ends. In Street Fighter 1, you just die and then 1 frame later the opponent makes the victory animation. You end up confused because it didn't inform you that you lost all your health. Imagine you played mario and if you landed in lava you just instantly reset to 1-1. That's what playing sf1 is like. Get hit? The knock back sends you back at an unprocessable speed. The jump happens so quickly you can hardly react to it. They didn't seem to have invented any sort of hitstop so the game just sorta processes the damage and moves you before you even looked. Special moves are literally just luck but are the only way to beat the nightmarish campaign, the game really likes the color brown for some reason which makes the stages really uninteresting, and overall the game just feels unnatural. Honestly I don't even know what to say because this game is so bad.

I really wish I could give this game a higher score, but it just has so many flaws. ARK is a game with an exceptional premise, one that I can't deny the efficacy of. Like, the game is supposed to be about exploring the prehistoric wilderness, using your resources and surviving. The game really does fulfill this promise. You will do many of the things you would want to do in a prehistoric setting. You can tame dinosaurs, ride them, breed them, build primitive tools and slay them. And, that's what you'll be spending a lot of time doing. Even resource harvesting is something that you can make so much more efficient with the introduction of a Dino. The game is built to fulfill that fantasy of living with dinos.
Continuing with the positives, the progression is really what it's about. You start off as a naked man on the beach and as you grow you'll not only get access to many more dinosaurs, but also more advanced tools. You'll make a flare gun, then a hunting rifle, then an assault rifle, ending off with a technologically advanced alien assault rifle. You'd think this would break the theme, but honestly it still just feels like you against a prehistoric world no matter how advanced you become. What also helps are the Sci fi elements that are implemented well into the story. Anither great thing is the world design. It does feel like a real prehistoric world with lots of environments. The terrain also naturally produces slopes an edges that are not only interesting to look at on their own but also provide vantage points to look out across the world from. This really actually adds a lot to the game.
Unfortunately, the game is so far from perfect it's not even funny.
For one, immersion isn't a given in this game. The dinosaurs themselves kinda act like robots. The wild ones will wander around, which works with a lot of space. They'll either run away when you hit them, run towards you when you hit them, or run towards you as soon as they possibly can. The issue is that the dinosaurs often have just one attack animation, so they'll run up, [BITE ANIMATION] [BITE ANIMATION] [BITE ANIMATION]. Yknow? It feels a little unnatural. But nothing compares to when you tame them. When you tame a dinosaur, they literally just become statues until you interact with them. They went through the trouble of making every single animal shit in this game, but didnt make good dino AI. Even if you turn "Wandering" on for the dinosaurs, they don't have any ai to avoid fences, so they'll get stuck walking into fences all the time. When you're riding them, it doesn't really feel like you're controlling an animal, but rather like some sort of vehicle that stops on a dime. All of this can melt away and you can get immersed in the game. I vividly remember running through the wilderness on my iguanadon, a dilophosaur following close behind, looking for a place to stay. It was really cool. However, there are still a lot of frustrations. For one, the game is very much centered around resource gathering. This does present a cool little problem where you have to find the resources and create a route to get there consistently without running through a T-Rex den. The issue is that this gets very old after the 50th time. ARK was built as a multiplayer game so I think this wasn't supposed to be as intense a system as it turned out to be, but singleplayer is really all the game is good for so the problem still exists. Another big problem that ARK sometimes feels like a permadeath game. Let me walk you through a situation in this game. You're exploring a little in an area not too close from your house. BOOM raptor gang aaaand you're dead along with any dinos you brought with. You respawn, go back and the raptor gang is still there. You either have to wait and get it when they are too far from your body to aggro them (very rare) or just leave it and now you have to build up the resources get some of your most important gear back. What makes this frustrating was how immediate and almost unavoidable the death was. If there is a pack of raptors that just absentmindedly wanders into your aggro range you are fucked. This makes exploring very difficult which sucks because it's such a huge part of the game.
As for final things I need to add, the multiplayer is useless because you can almost never catch up to the dominant tribe on any server and will just get murdered for fun if you try, the music is good, the dinos could look a little more different from one another, like maybe my 1st sabretooth has longer fur than my other one or something. Taming makes a cool little defend the point sidequest, but it takes so long sometimes that it hurts. Finally, windows is the only good version of the game, the rest are truly terrible. It only has a couple glitches on windows though at the moment.
I guess that's it. I know that wasn't a very organized review, but this game really does mean something to me. It's very flawed, but somehow for me at least, the core of the game is so special that it lives despite the flaws. I think ARK could've really been something special if they just put some more work into it, but for now, I have to call it an even 7. The bad parts of the game really drag it down, but it excels enough to put it right on the "average" score.
Anyway
Thanks for reading!

I truly, truly wish I could give this game 5 stars. It does so much so incredibly right, but it just has a couple too many flaws. It's still incredible though. Let's talk about those flaws.
1. The dungeons and shrines have very little visual variety.
2. The dungeons really could benefit from some more self contained puzzles, like the other zelda games.
3. The side quests are almost all terrible. "Rushroom Rush" can go lock itself in a burning building
4. It isn't very replayable. The core gameplay loop revolves around discovery, and that doesn't really happen on multiple playthroughs.
Ok, now onto the positives.
I tend to measure a game's quality based on the memories I have with it. If there are moments in a game that I think back to and remember fondly, then the game probably succeeded. Breath of the wild has so many moments it honestly astounds me. I'm pretty sure that the map of breath of the wild is more condensed than any other video game ever. Each corner, every crevasse hides something, it took two years of combing through the world for me to feel like I had done it all. The world lends itself so naturally to discovery because no matter where you go there's something to find. The physics system gives you so much freedom that you can kill enemies with random stuff just lying around. The world is beautiful and robust and natural, that some locations I don't thing I'll ever forget. The game I'd flawed, but what it does right is so right that I can't really fault it.