This is a weird game to give a number score. It is absolutely rife with problems: the levels vary from uninteresting to dreadful, everyone but Modern Sonic ™️ feels clunky and awkward to control (that “classic” style gameplay is especially rough after the near perfection it had in Sonic Mania), and pretty much everything else is absolutely embarrassing.

But God, playing this with my friend while we were both just riffing on it and creating our own OC with an overly complex backstory and character arc that we just improv’d over the course of the game is an experience I’ll never forget, and if that kind of thing appeals to you, I really can’t recommend this enough.

I have an incredible amount of bias towards Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate since it was my first Monster Hunter game. In fact, I had been so interested in the game from the start that when I saw it on sale, I picked it up months before I even had a Wii U. An action game entirely dedicated to lengthy boss battles just stood out from what I was expecting when looking into the early titles on the system. In a strange way, the Wii U's limited library worked in favor of this game with how easy it was to spend hundreds of hours replaying all the different hunts. Despite the long quests and numerous times that missions had to be replayed to get the right loot, it rarely ever feels like a grind. It's just a fun challenge that always feels so unbelievably satisfying when you finally take down that monster.

Although I appreciate how the later installments prioritize fast movement and drop the underwater fights, I'm also glad MH3U plays how it does for a uniquely "weighty" combat experience. I'll definitely be back for more once fan servers resurrect the online play.

If there's anything out there, it's not going to be something we understand. We already have enough trouble at home defining ourselves, constantly pushed and pulled by gravitational forces we can't free ourselves from. A society crafted around making sure our culture is rigidly defined so that we can understand ourselves for what is human. But what is humanity, really? We keep pushing the ceiling of what that can be, and we project what is "alien" on things that are certainly human-like, because we have nothing else to draw from.

These are esoteric and difficult questions to answer, and even harder to do so when we're still stuck here shifting through our job yearning to free ourselves. Heaven Will Be Mine is queer, in every sense of the word. Queer in that it breaks me from my shell, liberating me and driving me to tears as it helps me understand my own way of expression and why I refuse to be circumvented by this "gravity." Queer in that it breaks between the line of reality to understand what seems strange, and help us transcend the grounded narratives we spin to keep us center. It's deeply personal too, with characters that each deal with their own traumas and flimsily work to try to understand each other in relationships that draw between romantic, heartfelt, and deeply serious.

For hours after I finished the route of Saturn I was in tears, and the route itself took me more time than it should've because I had to take a break to sit there in silence. I had to wrestle with phantoms of if I truly felt liberated, or if I really have grown out of the cage and pull of culture that people craft for me so that I may live. Am I really living my life here?

The discordant thoughts cross around for a while, and Pluto brings me back to center.
Saturn: "And you'd like that, right? Cutting loose with no gravity to tie you down?"
Pluto: "I think about that every day. It's so tempting.
You've got to be ginger with the universe, you know, Saturn.
Now that you're this strong, you've got to be careful. So much can go wrong."
Saturn: "I'll make sure to be very careful with the universe you love."

In another excerpt, Mercury asks "That's just it. Are we too attached? I want to be something new, and share it with everyone. Am I too heavy for this apple?"

The reading is dense, and it might not have to be. But it enraptures me and brings me close. I feel lost and I'm being given the proper guide to truly learn, even if I have to take every paragraph at a time, slowly. I'm shivering by the ending as I feel like I'm reaching a true understanding of why I'm queer, why I identify in the way I do. Why I WANT to live in the way I CHOOSE.

Saturn: "I don't owe them anything but, there's one more thing I can't stand.
Not being seen for what I am.
So, choose to come with us, or choose to stay.
But I won't be happy without them knowing what they're missing out on.
Look up in the sky, and see all the weird stuff we get to do with each other!"

And then I ascend, too.

The most terrifying, oppressive, claustrophobic experience I've had in the medium is no surprise a stalking disturbing message of an encroaching patriarchal faith. Heather wants nothing to do with it, and neither will I. Monsters of repressed memories and physical/sexual trauma stalk the corridors, but catharsis is found in making them all Burn. Aborting god is probably the rawest turn on killing god tbh. I personally got lost in the woods of the threads near the end but I think on just initial reflection that there's a large point in there about an incomprehensibly massive societal issue that makes it difficult to form into something tangible (e.g. male gaze and abuse). It's also like a crystalized end to everything the series culminated in before, tying everything back together. Genuinely super well crafted, and a crazy good final message. That cycle of disparaging hatred is still overturned by the real spark of sympathy, we just want love.

It's thrilling seeing 2D Mario back to heights it hasn't reached since the 80s. No longer relegated to low effort (but still decent) nostalgia bait, this has been given the love, attention, and sheer bombast that has been reserved only for the 3D entries ever since they came around.

This is a game of beautiful setpieces and a barrage of new ideas only used for exactly as long as they still feel fresh. That is, Nintendo recognizes that while solid platforming and smooth level design can make for a good enough 2D Mario, in an age where those fundamentals have been mined again and again, the series is in desperate need of novelty. The wonder mechanics make every level an opportunity to try something new, exciting, and beautiful and it makes for the most memorable experiences the series has offered in decades, moving it far closer to the rapidfire paradigm shifts in Odyssey than the straightforward simplicity of NSMB.

Wonder is adorable, joyful, and gorgeous in every way. It genuinely feels like Nintendo packed every little idea they've had in the last 30 years into one game. On toward 100%!

One of the most huggable games ever made, but so fundamentally slow and clumsy that it works out to not being very good. Side objectives are tedious but no more difficult or engaging than the regular ones meant to be achievable for Literal Babies (no way I'm going through all those levels to get the second ending), movement is the most sluggish shit I've ever felt with a hilariously unresponsive double tap to run, powerup combinations are cool but often worse than their base forms, etc. There's a number of impressive setpieces but they're often held back by how incompetent they are at communicating depth and when hitboxes will be active, a problem that would have been understandable earlier in the generation but is absurd to see in a game released in the 21st century.

But I can't rate it lower. Kirby is just a lil guy, yknow?

I'd like to know who at Game Freak was personally stalking me when they decided to make a game that directly appeals to everything I like about Pokemon campaigns. It's a smartly designed decision that this game came out, because it knows exactly what a Pokemon campaign's strengths are. Sun/Moon doubles down on the worldbuilding Pokemon is so good at, in fact I'd say it pretty much just is the game. It's constantly about Alola, every new pokemon design and area bleeding the personality and culture of the region and it never really lets up even till the end. It didn't have to end there either, Sun/Moon actually brings in a story worth a damn, all wrapped around family values concerning Lillie and Lusamine, finishing in a clash that really delves deep into empty nest syndrome.

There's a very obvious side effect of all this, and that's that you can't move probably 30 minutes without being wrapped into a cutscene. Personally I think this is fine because I prefer my Pokemon campaigns to be roller coasters since I never truly enjoy the full customization experience to last an entire 30 hours due to AI teams being incompetent enough for me to always bulldoze over them. But I do understand where people will find this an issue that walls them off from caring about the game.

That being said, I do have one more positive to cover. Sun/Moon actually attempts to have PvE rather than PvP. While I would like to cover it in a full article, to summarize briefly a main problem with Pokemon campaigns from a gameplay center is that they hit a bottleneck by conforming to AI teams. Pokemon's combat systems are practically entirely designed for a real player vs player experience where it's structured around mind games and dazzling team combinations that catch the opponent off guard, creating a neutral game where each side has to understand and infer what the other side will do next with their Pokemon. That's entirely how competitive Pokemon works and it's completely missing in the base game, where AIs are so simple that they can be bulldozed by type advantage or overwhelming numbers. This issue can be mitigated by stronger Pokemon teams but what's a way way better solution is to throw out the middleman and try to make a PvE experience that uses Pokemon combat as a base to be built atop of.

And this is what Sun/Moon succeeds at, mostly. Totem Pokemon require you to make enemy-specific strategies and brute forcing requires more effort than just leveling. This comes to a head especially in the sequel where Ultra Necrozma which is practically a playwall that demands a fundamental understanding of a lot of Pokemon's combat so that you can 'cheese' it. It's not perfect, it's a very weak step forward but a step forward nonetheless.

Overall I find Sun/Moon to be the best a singleplayer Pokemon game has been, mostly since it scratches each itch I have for a Pokemon campaign and that it has a powerful soul and heart to every hour of playtime. Also Gen 7 competitive is good enough to elevate that.

"When people encounter sorrow, they try to forget it, and pretend it never existed at all."

Dreams are, in a general sense, a kaleidoscope of our deeply set emotions, traumas, and discordant thoughts. Lunatea's Veil wants more than anything to present them as they are, walking and jumping through a melancholic journey that deeply wants you to stay and view the extremes and earnest feelings you have. And by the end, also understanding the ones you try to keep down the most. Experiencing past traumatic memories set in maze-like collections of mirrors, joys flamboyantly strung like circus minigames, sorrows stuck in a decrepit kingdom sectioned off from the world. It all paints a picture that's maybe too real, that often I paused just to reflect in a similar vein. I've had a very long weekend up to now where I've fallen to the heart the same way Klonoa does, and as a weird spin this brought me much comfort.

Understand, it's ok to cry, just as long as you never give up!