Imagine New Super Mario Bros. but made in the Super Mario Bros. 3 engine and conceptualized as a celebration of the entire Super Mario series, including the some of the oft-maligned entries like Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) and Super Paper Mario. It's one of the most impressive ROM hacks I've ever played, and I mean that sincerely.

I'm only putting it down because I tried to play it on an Analogue Pocket (an original hardware facsimile), and boy does the new stuff in this game bring that device to its knees sometimes. Absolutely worth checking out if you haven't already, but consider doing so on a software emulator.

Finally, a game that dares to ask: "what if the X-Files had budget and was based out of the 𝙷𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚎 from 𝙷𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚎 of Leaves (𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚊𝚞𝚛 included)?"

This happens more and more now.

So much of this game is playing exactly to some of my more niche tastes, from the brutalist office building full of deeply unsettling horror imagery occupying impossible space and time to the absolute overdose of collectibles in the form of data logs, documents, and inter-department communications that rewards exploration with substantial lore and world-building details. For me, exploring the sights and untangling the narrative were the strongest points of Control, and Remedy remains one of the best studios when it comes to environmental storytelling. It helps that this game is pretty much Alan Wake 1.5, while simultaneously making Control into a nexus of sorts for the entire Remedy Connected Universe. The Oldest 𝙷𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚎 is an awesome setting for a game too, allowing for effectively infinite possibilities within its pocket dimension - doubly so when the Oceanview Motel and Casino is considered. I've honestly never seen a game so ambitious with its setting alone, truly.

The word that describes this is redacted.

The only thing holding this game back for me is its combat. It's serviceable, but there's simply too much of it given that it boils down to shoot til empty -> launch stuff while gun recharges -> shoot while launch recharges. I also just hate randomly generated loot stats in games - I probably spent a cumulative two hours of the game comparing mods like "health +34%" vs "health +33%" to clear out the abysmally small inventory you get. This issue is exasperated in the expansions when the amount of unique mod types quintuples but your inventory cap stays the same. It's annoying, especially given that enemies randomly respawn as you explore the 𝙷𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚎. If you replaced even a quarter of the random lootbox exploration rewards with more documents or multimedia collectibles or altered items or lore rooms, this would be an easy 10/10 for me.

You want to smile.

All in all though, Control is an easy recommend because there's simply nothing else like it. If you're wondering if you'll like it, here's a good heuristic: does a puzzle that requires you to decipher a code in the reversed lyrics of an in-game song sound rad as hell to you? If you answered yes, then you should play Control.

You want this to be true.

Waiter! One Metroidvania, hold the "-vania" please!

I should really like this game. I think I just had the misfortune of playing the worst possible version of it.

First, the good: the visuals and spritework are amazing overall, and the soundtrack is absolutely killer. If you weren't looking that closely, you could easily mistake this for a Metroid game on GBA, which is pretty cool! And the fact that most collectibles are completely unique weapon types or in-game lore drops is a great change - no more "bomb inventory +5" bullshit here, instead you get rewards like LIGHTNING GUN. And with the password system and secret areas, there seems to be a lot here for people who connect with this game. Cool ideas in a cool world with some cool atmosphere.

Second, the bad: a modern Metroidvania without any kind of fast travel is just poor design, sorry. I never had fun while backtracking to try and find the next objective since that often required me to trek back across the entire map. Combat is also hampered by the lock button not allowing you to move while aiming, making shooting diagonally while evading nigh impossible. And just like in Metroid, vertical platforming through combat areas just sucks, as does pixel hunting for destroyable blocks that have no visual indication that they should be investigated. I know it wouldn't really be a Metroid successor without that, but that's the kind of thing that kills the completionist in me.

And third, the PS Vita: four gameplay actions (two of them major functions) are relegated to pseudo-buttons on the touch screen that require you to take your fingers off of the movement or combat controls in order to use them. I should not have to tell you that this is awful, but the fake buttons are also visible on screen at all times - and yet, the area of input for each is so small and precise that you will never press that bomb button under duress without stopping to focus on doing so. In addition, for some reason, the game would just completely freeze up for almost a whole second fairly frequently, with the most freezes happening in Edin. This game will also lag and drop frames on Vita, if you can believe it. Several times, I thought the game was about to crash on me, especially when a freeze happened after a lag spike when the music stopped looping but failed to start back up again. And for whatever reason, the PS Vita's thumb stick liked to accidentally activate the "double tap a direction to evade" ability, which is truly a heinous input mapping for a game like this.

I dunno fam, I really wanted to like this one. Kind of bummed out that I didn't care much for it by the end.

"there's an elegance in the simplicity of a well-designed town"
-> "the clockwork efficiency of a bustling city can be strangely serene"
-> -> "we should completely abolish the very concept of personal automobiles."

* Played perfectly on Linux via Proton 7.0-6.

Remedy has to stop giving all their "good stories but half-baked gameplay" IPs to Microsoft because this game is just begging for an Alan Wake 2-tier sequel. There are a few moments where the otherwise standard (but very well-written) time travel plot veers ever so briefly into rad as hell territory, but those aspects of the narrative never get their proper moment in the sun and are largely left for us to speculate about. I would love to see what Sam Lake and his merry band of madlads cook up with those concepts now that the foundation of this world has been firmly established, but alas, Quantum Break is likely locked up in the Recycle Bin alongside Internet Explorer for the foreseeable future. Ah well, at least we've got legally distinct Tim(e) Breaker and Warlin Door now.

I'd give this a solid "check it out" even if I can only muster to rate it "good", because there's a wonderful sense of ambition on display here. Like, love it or hate it, you're not gonna find another game that plays full, live-action TV show episodes with dynamic content based on decisions you made in the gameplay segments in between its narrative chapters. Most people would call that very concept absurd just due to simple logistics, but Remedy will not be dissuaded by such mundane troubles. Sure, the episodes are shot like the digital display ads you might find in a dentist's office between fillings, but goddamn I'll give them props for going for it all the same.

Of course, it helps that Lance Reddick brings his best to every scene he's in, because that's just how he rolls. Rest in peace, man - gone too soon for real.

I was totally vibin' with this and considering it a perfectly satisfying portable Monkey Ball experience (note: I have not played the original GCN games) up until the first level of the "advanced" courses completely filtered me. If it takes 5 continues to beat Level 1-1 then I simply do not care to experience the rest of those levels!

Side note: this era of gaming gives me serious "dead mall" vibes at times. For instance, the top-level menu of this game has a dedicated Facebook icon that, when selected, tells you that its functionality, whatever that used to be, is no longer supported. Had the same experience with Touch My Katamari and its "near"-powered Buddy Plaza. Feelin' like a ghost in the machine with how many Vita features just no longer work in 2024.

HOLD THE FORT. You mean to tell me that Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Masahiro Sakurai collaborated on a falling block puzzle game in 2006 and I'm just now finding out about it??

In short, this game rules. Sakurai brings the Melee orchestral soundfont, quirky game menus, charming art direction and scenario, and simple twist on a beloved genre that completely reinvents its gameplay. Mizuguchi brings the snappy gamefeel, reactive sound design, and overall dopamine-inducing game design. Together, they've made an addicting little time waster that's perfect as a pre-bedtime ritual.

Notably, this game is designed in such a way that I can't imagine it working on anything but the DS due to the touchscreen. Maybe a modern smartphone or even Switch port is possible, but Meteos is one of those classic victims of innovation left in the dust by the modern games industry.