Going into the Bayonetta 3 later than most people, I didn't have high expectations with all the backlash this game was getting from the fans.
After now beating the game, I see where this backlash is coming from. However, at it's core Bayonetta 3 is still a very good game with some major flaws that held this from being the best in the trilogy.
Being one of the most ambitious Platinum games, it contains some of the highest highs in the franchise, while also bearing some of the lowest lows, with the lows here being bad enough to drag down it's "Great" status that both Bayo 1 and 2 hold.

To start with the good, playing as Bayonetta is as good as ever. She has the largest and most diverse arsenal ever and I enjoyed all the weapons offered. I had an abosulte blast with every second as Bayo and really wanted more.
The scale of the bossfights are the biggest and (arguably) the best. The only comparison I can make here is that each big bossfight feels like something Final Fantasy 16 did with it's huge bossfights where it would mesh the great standard gameplay, with amazing cinematics and fun minigames in between making something absolutley grand and satisfying.
The multiverse scenario also brings foward some of the best and most diverse settings in a Bayonetta game. Playing to find out where I would end up next was a great treat.
While the demon slave system did have some problems which I will go into detail with, I still appreciated the inclusion of it and how it made you truly feel like the demon witch Bayonetta has always been, with the abiity to summon your favorite hair demon and mog anything both big an small.

With those positives, Bayo 3 would have easily been my favorite in the trilogy, but this is where I bring in the issues that severely brought it down.
I will start with the complaint that most people have with this game and it's with the new character Viola.
Viola as a character herself is not nearly as endearing as Bayo, or Jeanne, or even Luca. All I can really say about her character is that she's just a typical clumsy teenager.
Now her gameplay was the worst part. I could not really enjoy her gameplay as she played like a watered down Vergil from DMC. All the diverse weapons, combos and fun that Bayo has in her gameplay is sucked dry with Viloa. She has one Summon too which makes the gameplay even worse as you can't control it, and while summoned Viloas combat becomes even worse with the loss of her katana. She takes about 1/3rd of the game, a 1/3rd that could have easily gone to more Bayo gameplay. This alone soured the game for me and brought the hype I had from the beginning right down.

Previously I also praised the Demon slave system, and while I do like the inclusion of it, it is simply too overpowered and takes away a lot of Bayo's fantastic gameplay. Most of the time you are expected to use it as the game now presents you with a lot of gigantic enemies that you are expected to deal with by summoning the demons. I simply would have enjoyed fighting these giant enemies playing as Bayo alone, but if you try to do that you deal chip damage which takes a much longer time than just using your summons. To fix it, all they had to do was nerf the magic bar. As the magic bar just auto regenerates really quickly, you basically have unlimited summoning time. Repeneshing the magic bar should have not been automatic and should have only been filled up by using items or raking up combos (or any other way to reward good gameplay).

In short, you barely get to have some good time with Bayo's combat, because you're forced to play as a shitty character 1/3rd of the time and with the inclusion of demon slaves, there is even less opportunity to combo your foes as Bayo.

The story was one of the biggest complaints from the fans. Personally, as this is a Bayo game I don't really care for the story as long as it sets up a cool premise for the gameplay. In the case of the Multiverse story, I liked that it gave you an excuse to fight in vastly different areas and meet cool unique alternate versions of Bayonetta. Even all the stuff in the ending, I did not really mind.

I hope the future of this franchise does not take the "Viloa is now the main character" route as that would simply kill any hype and uniqueness the character of Bayonetta brought to action games. But with all the feedback Bayo 3 did recieve, one could simply hope Platinum will listen and bring back what people really like about this franchise.

Released in 1989 and developed by Nintendo, even though it wasn't necessarily the first Gameboy game, it was certainly the most iconic of its launch. A game from Nintendo's most famous series at the launch of the console represented a huge selling point, and indeed, Super Mario Land was one of the best-selling games on the original Gameboy, and is still one of the best-remembered to this day.

It's a game with a real story, albeit a simple one because it's an old Mario story. In this game, Mario has the mission of saving Princess Daisy, in her first appearance in the franchise, and the inhabitants of Sarasaland from Tatanga, the little villain on the ship. Sarasaland is a very different world from the standard Mushroom Kingdom in Mario games, with each stage based on a real-world location, and the enemies, although similar to the originals, are different versions, such as the Goombo instead of the Goomba.

Another notable difference is in the gameplay, where the classic fire flower has been replaced by the Superball Flower, which launches balls that bounce off walls, adding an interesting but sometimes problematic dynamic when you get stuck in a loop.

In addition, the game features spaceship stages, where you control a submarine called Marine Pop and an airplane called Sky Pop, providing an experience similar to a shooting game. The Sky Pop stage is particularly challenging, almost like bullet hell, but with hellish birds instead of bullets.

Returning to the story, to save Daisy, Mario must travel and conquer all four kingdoms present here, Birabuto Kingdom, a desert kingdom based on ancient Egypt, Muda Kingdom, a water kingdom, Easton Kingdom, a kingdom partly based on Easter Island, and Chai Kingdom, a kingdom inspired by mythical ancient China, this last one I can also call INFERNO, because my god what a difficult business, the enemies are positioned in a way that was either completely deliberate to make it difficult, or it was a very poorly thought out level design, every two steps you take an enemy from beyond appears to kill you.

At the end of each kingdom you meet Daisy and she's actually an enemy in disguise, every time...

At the end, after the Sky Pop stage mentioned earlier, you defeat Tatanga in his armed airship, the Pagosu. After defeating him, Mario finally rescues the real Daisy, and the two of them set off together in a spaceship.

That's the basic story of the game. Although it's simple, it's good to have a narrative attached to the game, as it makes things less random, although they are still quite random.

I don't know why they made all these changes, perhaps to innovate or attract attention, but perhaps it wasn't the attention they wanted. Although it sold very well, being the console's fourth best-selling game, the game was heavily criticized in reviews at the time for its graphics, which were too ambitious for the power of the Game Boy, which is understandable, and for its length, which was considered too short, and I disagree with this last point.

Yes, the game is short, but I think that's an advantage, firstly because I'm not the biggest advocate of "length = quality". Besides, I think the greatest quality of this game is its brevity. It's possible to finish it in less than an hour if you play well, and I think this was an important quality for Game Boy games, especially in the early days when it was convenient to be able to play for short periods of time during the day.

The main negative point for me is the gameplay, specifically Mario's movement. They've implemented a kind of momentum on him, so that when you stop pressing the direction button, he keeps moving a little until he stops completely, just like in real life. This mechanic would be bad enough for a platform game that requires some precision like Mario, but the problem is that it only works sometimes, which makes everything confusing.

Another problem with movement is that sometimes Mario simply turns into a rock and falls like a meteor into the holes in the scenery, which is quite annoying.

Despite this, Super Mario Land isn't a bad game, it could just be better. The shortcomings in the gameplay I attribute to the Game Boy's architecture, especially at the beginning, when they still couldn't get the most out of the console, so I put that down to a bit of relief.

The thematic and story part is a bit random, honestly the worlds don't even seem to be part of the Mario universe, they're just a generic desert, a generic ocean, Easter Island and a generic Chinese place. The only good thing that came out of it was the introduction of Daisy, who later became important in the franchise.

All in all, the first great Game Boy game, Super Mario Land, has many flaws, but it occupies an important place in the console's history and is remembered to this day as a classic.

My rating for it is: 3 stars.

Nintendo fans have been waiting years and years for Peach to finally get the spotlight starring in her own console game. It's finally here, and was the wait worth it?

Princess Peach Showtime is overwhelmed with spectacle. So much spectacle which unfortunately leaves little room for substance.

The game is pretty much a Action/Adventure in the most restrictive sense, where I'm almost inclined to call it an on-rails game. Coming from the freedom and fun that was Super Mario Bros Wonder, Princess Peach Showtime is the antithesis of that where your hand is held the whole way through and are forced to partake in scripted segment after scripted segment.

Levels are structured like stage plays, each one having their own genre, where in each one Peach gets a cool transformation to suit the genre of the stage play. Cowboy, Ninja, Chef, Mermaid and much more. At a core level, all stages are 2.5D platformers, but some stages gimmick involve more unique gameplay like cooking or singing.

Showtime's biggest strength is in it's subtitle. The game is filled with glits and glamour. So many cool and amazing looking segments, I could swear the game had a bigger budget than Mario Odyessy. Unfortunately most of these cool segments you find in each stage barely qualifies as gameplay and is more of a cutscene where you are lucky if you're even given the opportunity to press a button.

I honestly feel like this game was targeted towards an even younger audience than the typical Mario game for all ages, which is fair, but honestly Peach deserves better.

One top of all of this, the game somehow runs even worse on the Switch than Tears of the Kingdom did which is baffling considering that this is a much smaller game in scope.

Princess Peach Showtime is one of those games I'll play through once and probably never pick up again. Once you've seen everything spectacular about it, there's no reason to go back and experience again as the gameplay itself barely has anything to offer.

It's still a well made game however... maybe this game was not made for me, but something your younger sibling might enjoy.

FF7 Rebirth not only met my the hyped expectations I had since finishing Remake in 2020, it exceeded them. Rebirth is one of Square's best games ever, if not their best game of all time.

Remake was one of my favorite games on 2020, taking the entire midgar section of the original and expanding it with more lore, story, relationships and just amazing writing all around, and putting it all into a first part of a trilogy, where each game is the length of an FF game. At the same time, I new Remake was only still a taste of what was coming given that Midgar is just a crumb in FF7's giant world. I could only imagine how they would take the open world given that Remake had a pretty safe bet with the fact that it was a fairly linear game like it's FFX and FFXIII predecessors.

Now here we are in 2024 with the final product of part 2 in the FF7 remake trilogy, and it really truly honestly delivered.

One thing I was impressed with in Remake was the fact that almost nothing was cut from the original. Almost everything was there, in addition to all the extra stuff we got. I didn't expect the same for Rebirth considering it was going to be a much larger game. Boy was I wrong, not only EVERYTHING from the rest of Disc 1 is here, there is so much additional sections and lore they added that makes this feel like more than a full experience. Some how 1/3rd of a game is bigger and deeper than any FF game that has released. Square did not skimp out and they put all their love for the original into this.

The story is great as expected. The writing is phenonmenal and brings out so much character from all the cast members. It mostly follows the same beats of the original, however every single area you go to now has extended lore and story. Places like Kalm where there was barely any story in the original now has a big story segment. The damn chocobo stables have a story segment now. Everything is rich and deep with character. Which is what they did really well in Remake. I have one complaint about the story, and it's kind of a spoiler but I won't say anything specific. Those damn last 2 chapters man, I'm not sure what they thinking there, but I'm being hopeful that it will pay off in the next game. I just wish it wasn't as messy as it was.

The gameplay is just an extension of Remake's battle system, which is probably my favorite FF battle system to date. Now with the addition of Synergy abilities, it adds even more depth to the combat bringing more strategy to the party formation you decide to choose. You could say it's gotten a little more action oriented with the additon of the perfect block mechancic, but I mostly got through the game without even using it. I played the game mostly as I did with Remake and enjoyed it just the same. One small caveat here is a lot of the enemies this time around have instant party-wipe abilities which is honestly fine to have in a bossfight here and there, but having a lot of these in regalur ememies kinda dampens the fun a little.

One thing thing that was kind of present in Remake, but heavily missing in FF16 were the minigames. To me, part of the soul of Final Fantasy in the minigames on the side it usually includes. While Remake delivered on the mingames, Rebirth shined with them. It made me feel like I was playing an old Squaresoft game again. Not only is every minigame included super rewarding if you complete them well, but all of them are fun and really well made. I did not hate a single minigame in Rebirth and pretty much played them all to get their best score possible. A lot of people did not like this aspect of the game but for me if a game is gonna be 100 hours, it should definelty not just be 100 hours of combat. Also if you don't like the minigames, most are skippable or you only need to acheive a minimium score. Don't even get me started on Queens Blood. They should make an entire game just for that.

The exploration is amazing, visiting areas I once only knew as a prer-renedered background and rediscovering them as a fully 3D explorable area never got old to me. Running under the Junon cannon for the first time and just looking up was so breathtaking, and rebirth has so many of these moments. I was extensiveley looking forward to seeing how the gold saucer was handled, and I was not at all disappointed.

Every single moment I looked forward to from the original game exeeded my expectations. Rebirth was made with so much love, it feels like a passion project by Square's internal teams, which seems pretty rare these days. They just need to pull of the next game just as well, and the FF7 Remake trilogy has the potential to be one of my favorite trilogies of all time.

Xenoblade Chronicles will definitely be remembered as a classic or all time great. To me, it is more of a flawed masterpiece. An amazing story, world, characters, battle system, and music - but dragged down by some of the most dragged out pacing I've experienced. While the combat gets really amazing and satisfying, it kind of starts off dull and boring until you reach the 50% mark where battles become interesting and challenging. The biggest flaw here is the side questing system. Every side quest is a tedious fetch quest that has no substance and there are literally hundreds of them, which you pretty much need to do if you want to stay decently levelled for the main game - unless you grind out monsters which is even worse. There can sometimes be stretches of up to 10 hours of side questing before you continue the main story. Unfortunately this is no small flaw and without this, Xenoblade would be an easy 10. The amount of grind here drags it down so much. On the flip-side literally everything else is 10/10. I cannot praise enough how much I enjoy the main story aspects of this game.

One of the best games you can no longer buy. Transformers War For Cybertron is one of the big reasons game preservation is so important, as new Transformers fans today would be missing out on of the greatest video game adaptations of this franchise, and just an amazing video game in general.

Coming into this game, knowing High Mood studios developed this, my only exposure to one of their titles was that pretty mediocre Deadpool game, so I didn't really have high expectations for this one. But man, was I wrong - all the fans raving about this game back in the day were right and it's a damn shame most people cannot play this gem of a game today.

Transformers WfC is pretty much an origin story of the conflict that leads to the fall of Cybertron that we never really got to explore in such detail. Every autobot and deception has their time to shine and introduces you them very well, even if you're not a Transformers fan, you will get to be familiar with all of them. Because of this, if you ever really wanted to get into the Transformers as a franchise, this game is an excellent place to start.

WfC is pretty much a coop third person shooter that we got in abundance during the PS3/360 era, however unlike those other games, this is less of a typical cover based TPS and more of a platformer TPS, something akin to Ratchet and Clank. Of course, with this game being a Transformers game, a big mechanic of the gameplay is the fact that you can transform into a vehicle, whether it is a car, truck, plane or tank, they're all here for each unique character. Flipping between robot and vehicle mode is so smooth, with the press of the L2 button you will instantly transform. A skilled player would be zooming around the map transforming in and out while blasting enemies into pieces. It's so fun and never gets boring.

There are 5 levels for Decepticons and 5 levels for Autobots. With each level you get the choice to play 1 of 3 characters, which ups the replayability for the campaign. I love this aspect as Transformers main strength are it's characters, so I'm glad the devs give you a choice to pick from a selected few in each level.

Another big aspect of this game which we can't play anymore due to the servers being down (again, why game preservation is important) is the multiplater/escalation modes. I never got to play this game's multiplayer, but from footage is it basically just a team based deathmatch - the type of multiplayer we also got in abundance during this era. Although the biggest shame is that we can't play Escalation mode. This is basically WfC's version of Firefight/Zombies where you fight endless waves of enemies with friends. Why did this have to be locked behind online servers??? Who knows. This mode would have been amazing to play solo, given that if you just wanna drive or fly around as your favorite transformer while blowing up your foes without playing the campaign. Unfortunetly, the campaign is the only way we can experience the amazing gameplay today.

Transformers WfC is one of the best transformers games I've played, and apart from a few issues like being locked to 30fps and content locked behind decommissioned servers, this is one of the best action third person shooters I've also played.