Developers have long since exhausted the trope of "child trapped in a scary world," yet despite that, Murasaki Baby remains compelling in a way that none of its competition ever was. Simply put, it quite literally puts the child's fate at the player's fingertips. Your goal is to ferry a young girl across screens of hazards by manipulating hazards using both the Vita's front touchscreen and the back touchscreen to cycle through various backgrounds unlocked by popping colored balloons. I find the Ico comparisons to be on-point, as the player must physically guide the girl by the hand via holding and dragging on the touch-screen, taking care not to stretch her arm too far lest she stumble and fall. While the game isn't mechanically complex or challenging, it nevertheless constantly engages the player by gradually introducing more elements that require the player to micromanage dragging the girl and the balloon out of harm's way and switching/tapping the background to progress. The best example of this occurs during the final stretch of the game; after another character pops a hole in the girl's balloon, the player must juggle dragging the girl around, tapping the green background to repeatedly pump air into the leaking balloon, and switching/tapping additional colored backgrounds to flip the stage with the Vita's gyro controls and powering moving platforms with electricity. Though the path forward remains clear, the game demands a strong degree of attention and precision to quickly recognize and solve the game's many puzzles while building the bond between the girl and the player.

Murasaki Baby has unfortunately been more or less forgotten by the public. A slew of technical issues does hold the game back somewhat, as others have reported that saving sometimes breaks down in the middle of playthroughs and a few more (myself included) have experienced crashes. If I really had to nitpick, the game also could have done a bit more integrating all of the Vita's control functionalities into the gameplay (unlike say, Tearaway), as the face buttons/triggers/cameras are never used and the joysticks are used for exactly one exclusive segment outside of the menu screen. While I do feel as if the game was fairly short (about an hour and a half) and wrapped up just when I was beginning to feel a bit more pressured, I'm still glad that I got to try another overlooked title that showed real promise of how far a game could utilize controls to create an emotional and completely new experience. Until the day Astro's Playroom gets a follow-up, I suppose we'll just have to dream of a world where Sony invested wholeheartedly into its hardware and the Vita was seen as more than just a glorified control gimmick.

I wish I gave the game 5 stars. It was for a while, but I can still confidently say it's a benchmark of the genre. Kiwami 2 rejects its modest PS2 origins and manages to embrace its spirit in the process. Playing this gave me the feeling that what I played the day before was something I had done 20 years ago beat by beat, little by little. This mirrors what Kiwami 2's story is about. Kiryu is pulled back in to be a criminal syndicate's wheelchair, and finds a fitting end, only for... yknow, there are sequels, so it's not gonna be a conclusive ending. I've managed to do all substories but the cabaret ones, speaking of it's absurd of much that mode pulled me in. For, like, an hour.

It's a long game, so I should have a lot to say... a lot of it was whopping ass. There's great joy in managing the skill tree almost as much as the fighting in itself. And huh, the ending does similar mistakes the original did, but I'm under NDA I can't reveal further. Yakuza once again a gold mine of screenshots. The quirky and the silly, their stocks are through the roof. What's even better is how they sometimes make you stop and accept profound wisdom from the mentally deranged. At some point, Kiryu even blurts out that some thing or other is, that's right, like a dragon and I couldn't help but clap. Tell it how it is, Dame Da Yakuza! (I'll never be able to make a Yakuza review without alluding to da dame joke)

A beautiful little throwback JRPG that maintains the spirit of the games that inspired it. It can be very challenging and unforgiving if you aren't paying attention to your party's abilities and composition, but the difficulty never really reaches an unfair level.
I didn't do all the side content and grinding necessary for the platinum, just because the game is leaving PS+ in a few days and I don't really want to be grinding until it leaves, but I do feel like I've seen what the game had to offer me and I was content with it. It was a pleasant experience, and the story was surprisingly touching, especially the ending.

The best thing about this game is probably the story - basically a movie experience, but way more detailed and interactive. All the characters, cutscenes and conversations are top notch.
I liked the sound and visual design, which despite the low poly and low res graphics, looks good and conveys the atmostphere.

Metal Gear Solid is considered a stealth game, but the actual stealth seemed secondary to me. It has some really nice mechanics, especially for the time, but in general isn't exciting enough to hold up on its own IMO, the gameplay would feel repetitive if there was nothing besides it.

It mostly comes down to dealing with 2-3 guards on each location and the way melee grabbing works kinda sucks. In order to do this you need to stand REALLY up close from behind and press the square button without holding any directions. There is no way to control your movement speed (it's either running or full stop even with an analog stick) so it's always hard to position yourself right even when the enemy is not moving. You would constantly overrun and bump into him raising an alarm immediately, or accidentally throw over the shoulder if you happened to not release the directional button before pressing "square".
Also, I find the lack of the radar on Hard difficulty really annoying. It makes sense on Expert, which is unlocked after beating the game and oriented on players who learned the routes and everything, but for the first playthrough it means playing blindfolded. Because of the overhead view you can't see further than 2 meters, and to find out where the enemies are you need to stand still and frantically look around with the first person view. And while running towards a guard to knock him out you never know when he'll change direction (even though logically Snake would see it with his eyes), so you constantly either lose guards out of sight or get spotted off-screen. It is bearable (I kept playing on Hard for the more difficult bosses and other conditions) but still needless trial and error.

But it's not like I didn't enjoy the stealth, other than the problems I mentioned it's really cool. But what makes the gameplay even more fun and diverse are the boss fights and other action scenes. They are all well designed, challenging in a good way and really memorable. Overall, the game turned out to be better than I remembered it from few years ago, definitely a must play classics for PS1.

The 'Smooth Moves' sequel we deserve. Insanely wacky, ridiculously fast and hilariously fun - as WarioWare should be! Some of the forms are a little cumbersome to pull off in such short spaces of time (particularly "Pounce" and "Hand Model"), and occasionally the motion controls become unresponsive during the more frantic moments. But damn, I love this series! The characters are vibrant, the colours are popping and the microgames never fail to make me smile. Now time to get some more high-scores...

my ONLY complaint about valhalla is that it wasn't longer. I love how it structured the roguelike genre with adding bits of exposition along the way as opposed to sticking it in a log/text file somewhere, as it was a beautiful reward for putting a build together - learning about my favorite game character's experience. With all of the incredible features like seals & mastery goals, it would've been great if the final cutscene arrived just a bit later, but in the grand scheme of things, it is hardly a flaw. I enjoyed the beautiful orchestral score, edited layouts of places we've been before, and interactions between characters.

Amazing story
Amazing combat
Amazing world
Amazing ending
My favourite game of all time!