The Talos Principle really surprised me. I knew a bit about what I was getting into - a stage based 3D puzzle game which I was actually excited to play from the offset, but what really impressed me was the story and philosophical themes. Yes, much of it is told through reading a console, but I kept finding myself drawn in reading the text files from those who came before, the historical, religious, and philosophical references, and of course having deep arguments with the archival system. While the game ends pretty soundly, I feel like I have so many more questions about existence and life itself. As for the gameplay, I actually thought the puzzles were a good balance. Easy to teach the mechanics, then challenging when they needed to be. I forced myself not to use any outside assistance and felt super gratified getting through every puzzle and climbing the tower on my own and I think that is a testament to just how good of a puzzle game this one is solely from that perspective. I understand this one isn't for everyone, but I think I ended up playing this at the perfect time.

This game is the reason 3D platformers are the way they are. The first of it's kind, Super Mario 64, got so much right when there was no blueprint to work from. For that reason alone does it deserve legend status. The movement (for its time) is crazy for what you're able to do and chain together, let alone in a 3D space. The worlds all have such a unique feel to them making you want to go explore every corner for a red coin or a star. The puzzles are doable, yet when you get one you've been trying to figure out it fills you with accomplishment rather than facepalming that you missed it. The last 10 or so stars for me, I personally found very challenging to scrape together which added to the accomplishment of clearing the game. While the first half of the courses are indeed very iconic, the latter half are much more difficult and choosing to engage with the harder courses surprised me by how difficult and frustrating the ending of this game could be. I think it did reveal a few flaws in the movement towards the end for me. Trying to move the other direction often had Mario move in a circle to get to that direction, causing him to fall off many platforms a substantial amount of times. In a modern game, this probably wouldn't be an issue, but you also can't blame the clunky controls because it really was the first time something of this scale was done in a 3D space - they got it right for the most part. Hard to not give this one a 5 star rating from me, even if parts were frustrating due to the controls.

HiFi rush is a one of a kind-unique experience and a very charming one at that. I played Hard mode because I find myself to be at least above average at rhythm games but this one especially challenged me. It took a while to get used to the timing every one of your button presses on the beat to rack up your rhythm gauge, but once I did I really found myself to be "one with the music". Speaking of music this game has some banger tracks. Also the art style was so cool every zone had such a cool atmosphere and the boss fights were electric. I even thought the story wasn't half bad and while Chai at first seems hacky and stupid, him consistently being a punchline till the end of the game actually made me laugh the more I progressed. There was some real meat here and I knew this was gonna be a good game from the praise it was getting, but I'm honestly kinda bummed putting this down because I know it'll be a while till I play anything else like it.

I thought the story of this game was intriguing and almost comforting in a way despite it being about rats and death, but it lacked depth and complexity. Definitely falls in the bucket of "game you complete in a weekend and never really think much about again". You're really forced to stealth around for much of this game, but it never feels too difficult and there are plenty of tools at your disposal but its almost like you never really engage with half of them. Some of the characters are cute and charming, like the main relationship between the MC and Hugo. I hope the sequel builds upon some of the interesting mechanics debuted here.

It really is as good a game as people say. Was my first Fromsoft game and played with the big sword high strength build. However, I did find the size of the world overwhelming at first and really wanted to get a sense of the lore so I found a spoiler free walkthrough of succinct steps to take where you would get as much story content as possible and approach bosses in a way that I wasn't overleveled but they weren't too much of a challenge still. I was challenged for many of the bosses and the game was SUPER frustrating at times but overcoming those obstacles made it worthwhile. I will say - I did use co-op summons for Millenia, the black blade, and the elden lord bosses. They were tough as hell. I ultimately went with the Perfect Golden Order ending and I'll be honest a 20 second cutscene made the ending I chose feel like it didn't matter and I was curious why they didn't make each ending more interesting and fleshsed out if they were going to make some of the endings really hard to get.

Okay don't get me wrong, there are some really cool and unique mechanics here and the soundtrack/art style is sublime. However there's a big obstacle that brings this game so far down for me. I started this game saying I wouldn't look anywhere for online help and just take my time moving through and experiencing it. For a game like this, that throws so many different mechanics at you in cryptic language, doesn't take the time to explain or retain any sort of explanation I felt I heavily misunderstood a few key mechanics like feeding animals to create more gardens, using compost to make plants grow faster, etc. But for the first half of the game none of that is really necessary at all to understand. So during the first half I had a great time, treated it just like any other metroidvania. But then you unlock this "living network" mechanism and realize you can connect up the shamasal you've already killed. Now again, I'm not using any outside help here, so I figured that in order to beat the game I not only needed to kill every shamasal, but I also needed to link every one up to the network. So I spend hours trying and failing to link up these different pathways, trying to pick the right plant, get the right seed, return back to the original spot, etc. I spend hours doing all of this tedious work and only connected 2 shamasal after giving up. This part of the game (if you choose to engage with it) is ridiculous and so very not fun. And it's not very clear that this is entirely optional and the game leads you into believing it's necessary (by providing you with all these different tools for gardening specifically). For me this was a very middle of the road experience, with some very frustrating stretches because I chose to engage with exploration and the mechanics that the game lays out for you. Without the gardening, this would have honestly been a decent game for me.

This definitely wasn't a bad Assassin's Creed game, but it was definitely flawed in many aspects. From a gameplay perspective I think this is probably one of the more fun Assassin's Creed games in recent history - it really goes back to its roots of being a stealth assassin style game. I loved tackling each infiltration from a super stealthy angle utilizing all the tools I had in my disposal and found that to be one of the more satisfying parts of the game. I played on the hard difficulty so dying in a few hits really helped push me in that direction, but I really feel like that is the true way to play the game other than the storm the castle, parry, dodge, hit style. There were parts of the story that shined, like the beginning and end, but everything in between really felt lackluster. I felt no animosity with the Order and I never really understood why Basim became a Hidden One. Most of the main story I was zoning out for and half the time didn't even fully understand why we were killing the guys. I am really interested in how this fits into the overall Assassins Creed story and am definitely looking forward to seeing what they do next.

I had no idea what to expect when I booted this game up, but I really have never played anything like it. One of the most unique puzzle games out there, and it feels super daunting at the beginning, knowing there are 60 fates to be solved, but with each minor discovery and each piece of information filled in, the picture starts to fill out, and things become clearer. It's so validating and exciting to hear the tune indicating another 3 fates were solved correctly and I felt so accomplished completing this one with absolutely no online assistance.

I hadn't really known much about Chrono Trigger except for the fact that Square Enix worked on it and I'm a big Square fan. This really exceeded my expectations. I played on the PC remake version, so I had access to auto attack which I found eliminated much of the slog. Ended up with Ending 1 - Beyond Time as I did a lot of the side content before fully going into the Black Omen. Overall I found it was a really unique take on the turn based RPG style and the charm of the world it was set in made me fall in love with the characters and the exploration.

Pikmin 3 definitely scratches a pikmin itch and fine tunes some of the mechanics that need fine tuning from the first two games, but it feels almost too forgiving and loses a bit of the intensity that the first two brought. I played on "Hard" mode and it was incredibly easy, only losing large groups of pikmin to certain bosses (and I do think the bosses are fun, but they almost got Mario-fied in this game). They introduced the flying and rock pikmin which I felt were fun additions, but neither are really used too much apart from an obstacle here and there. I think having a pointer on the radar that says "go here" makes this game lose a bit of that exploration element which I loved so much in the first two. Everything really was right where it told you it was, so it felt like I blazed through it way too quickly. Ultimately, it's still Pikmin and the charm is still there so I had a pretty fun time. Excited to play through Pikmin 4 when I get around to it.

Two major standouts from this game - first, the story was told in a really compelling way through the voices in Senua's head, both the friendly and malicious ones. Particularly, Druth's stories of mythology that clearly latched on in Senua's head. Her disability is really on full display and playing the game you really feel a connection with her as being a part of herself. The story is so tragic, but filled with hope in processing grief. The mechanic that was a huge standout was the way they told us at the start of the game, you can pretty much only die a certain amount of times then your save gets deleted. That mechanic really made each life matter in a way I haven't experienced much before. I found myself sweating in fights or even between fights running from the beast or balancing on a beam. I think there were a few puzzle scenarios which weren't very apparant, but overall everything clicked and I would say this was a very immersive cinematic experience.