Author's note: I am considering "Mastered" as acquiring all achievements.

I played this on and off for years with my brothers and that's where the game shines. I got no joy creating in this world alone. And after hundreds of hours, I was happy relying on the creativity and ingenuity of player realms to hastily complete the remaining objectives.

I prefer more goal-oriented play. So while I appreciate the creative nature of Minecraft, it was never totally in my wheelhouse.

I treated myself to AC III back in November of 2012 . A 1-night rental from Redbox - a small Birthday treat to myself that day. I remember being excited by the prospect of a game set during the Revolutionary War - a period that is greatly underrepresented in games.

I was as unimpressed as I was returning to the game 10 years later. I picked this back up after Ubisoft threatened to close the Xbox 360 servers. Seemed like a good excuse to revisit. Satan help you, if you decide to 100 sync this game. The mission parameters are agonizing at times.

The general direction and design of AC 3 is often confusing and unintuitive. I had a little fun jumping through trees and the alternate history DLC is actually pretty damn good.

This is a tiny adventure best played with friends. Even better - create a shared world that you can explore asynchronously. It was a treat to jump in and find new items and structures that my partner had built. And even more rewarding was when we could explore the game together.

The world is novel and interesting and the exploration is rewarding. There are so many secrets packed into the backyard. The combat was more of a utility than a fun gameplay mechanic, but nailing parries was a decent reinforcement.

I would have liked a bit more enemy variety. Don't get me wrong - spiders are the devil spawn - but there are plenty of other gross creepy crawlies to frighten a player (uh centipedes anyone?)

RPG fans have long been used to the trope of fetch quests. But you are still not prepared for this game. Your whole existence for being is to fetch on quests. And then get bombarded with notifications as your city develops, your EXP grows, and your wallet gets fatter.

The dialogue that drags you through the never-ending delivery is painful. I actually started skipping the cutscenes in the back-half because I was hurting so much. So why continue? The combat was simple, yet satisfying. And the art was pleasant. All resulting in a mediocre experience.

Another approximate simulator to add to the pile. The Home Alone and Castle scenarios were a fun diversion, but the bulk of the game is just Sims without the Sims.

There is a weird lighting bug where lights are only on when you're actually in the room. It created a jarring effect while moving throughout a home.

I also see that Game Pass tax on the DLC. Shame.

This franchise has been dragging my corpse around for the last 8 years or so. Deep down, I knew I wasn't having fun - that the games maybe "weren't for me". Which is a tough realization when it's a video game series you've played your whole life. More than that, it's a series that actually got you into gaming. And now it's not for you. Yet I pushed through, hoping I'd find something worth playing. And in this particular entry I found that this wasn't "the best Poke'mon has ever been." It's actually quite the opposite.

Arceus created an iterative blueprint for Poke'mon in an open world. And S/V tried to expand that. Arceus had its problems, but the snappy gameplay made S/V perform like a slug.

That's the first problem with S/V. It plays so slowly. Battles are sluggish and you're inundated with text prompts that offer no value. The game doesn't treat you like a kid - it treats you like an idiot. At the very least, where is a setting to disable all the text? Abilities are back and further slow down momentum. The battles are so slow, that the Let's Go mode can actually get you more EXP, despite the penalty.

Which leads me into the next issue - game design. Nothing in this game fits together. The open world is wretched - it's ugly and boring. Trainers randomly stand around and Poke'mon pop in 2 feet in front of your face. Any potential for discovery is neutered by the amount of pop-in. To take out some binoculars and spot a rare Poke'mon on the horizon - boy that would have been nice.

There are no HMs, but your riding Poke'mon essentially replaces that. You eventually get to swim, fly, and climb. But these features do not actually gate the player. Poke'mon levels make no sense. You can climb a mountain that is only accessible in late game and find Level 10 Poke'mon up there. The gym leaders suffer the same issue. Because they don't scale with the player or # of badges, you will most likely dominate the competition or be dominated yourself. The game lacks any meaningful balance.

Most of the other features are padding or cruft. Picnics aren't fun; gym leader challenges make me think bad things; Team Star bases are embarrassing; and the Elite 4 are pushovers.

The previously mentioned pop-in is one of many disparate issues culminating in a horrendously-performing video game. Slow-down is frequent and textures load-in often. Something as simple as switching a Poke'mon could end up taking ~5 seconds. And the premier co-op experience - raids - only kinda work.

The only spark of legitimate joy I saw in the 25~ hours was the final battle. And the music was good too.

So yeah, I guess I'll give into the main criticism for people who don't like these games anymore. It's not for me. I'll be back when a Poke'mon title wins GOTY from multiple major publications.

A game so bad, they had to release a "New" version of it, instead of patching the original.

In between my Tears of the Kingdom sessions, I've been finishing up achievements for Super Lucky's Tale. I was reminded of how torturous the game can be. You have to really negotiate with the camera. Like a flaky friend, you'll be chilling with the camera in one level, and then wondering where the heck they went in the next.

Ultimately, it's a totally forgettable 3D platformer. Look elsewhere for mascots, Xbox.

Anything Three Kingdoms related is so boring at this point. The characters are indistinguishable and incredibly lame. Lu Bu is cool. But anyone who has cut their teeth on Dynasty Warriors knows that already.

The game wants to tell a story. But for how bad the cutscenes are, there are far too many of them. The game is only worth paying attention to during its hectic combat scenarios. But even when you dig into those, you find too many flaws.

The game is heavily balanced around parrying and fatal strikes. Ultimately, you're rewarded for patiently holding your sword, and baiting an enemy into fatal strike opportunities. It's effective, yet boring. Because you can't cancel out of regular attacks, you're often punished for going on the offensive. You are given other tools to unleash damage in the form of Wizardry and Martial Arts, but neither feel satisfying. Character builds are tedious and ultimately disappointing. The loot system is a huge waste of time. Prepare to send mountains of equipment to the salvage yard.

Completely busted achievements. Need I say more?

Okay, I'll say a little more.

While I appreciate the various horror movie references scattered amongst the costumes, Gore Packs, and movie titles, I was often annoyed by the Roblox-like characters lumbering around on screen. I just don't get it. Why try to make horror look cute. Or whatever the hell the intention was.

Ultimately, this should have stayed a mobile game. Or not even existed to begin with.

Arcade Paradise is a fun, yet uneven trip through the 80s/90s arcade boom. Whether it was a laundromat, pizza shop, or gas station, you could count on there being at least one arcade cabinet to kill some quarters. While this game captures the aesthetic of that time quite well, it decides to strangely pull you out of that capsule with bizarre cabinets that had no analog from the inspired time period.

The game is split into 2 halves - the arcade business simulator and the mini-games found within. Yes, there is the laundry to contend with from the outset, but you will quickly find yourself ignoring those responsibilities as the arcade revenue grows. The sim management side of the house is a means to an end. There is little value is re-organizing the arcade throughout your business adventure, so it's really just there to move the narrative forward.

And everything in-between comes down to the arcade games. Yes, you can play every cabinet you purchase and home within King Wash Laundromat. But the enjoyment is hit-and-miss. Because almost every game is different, there are disparate systems that all had to be developed and shipped into this game. Which means the quality of some suffer. Various games have poor controls, poor physics, or both. Things like air hockey and table football are painful to play. Even one of the game's flagship cabs - Knuckles and Knees, plays worse than something like TMNT or Simpsons arcade - not to mention any modern contemporaries that are even more finely tuned.

Despite the uneven fun factor of the cabs, there are still plenty that you'll go back to. I was confused why the developer opted to include cabinets that had no obvious analog to the time period. Something like Zombat 2 could maybe be compared to NARC or Smash TV. But why not just go all in? There are hundreds of cabinets to model after; I don't get why certain machines were crammed in here. Entries like Line Terror, Attack Vector, Cyber Dance, and Barkanoid have prominent inspirations that feel right at home.

All of these mentioned games have Goals that you can work on to drive up popularity. The issue is that the systems are not all balanced. Your cabinets make cash to purchase more arcade games and building expansions, but you need to complete daily To-Do tasks to build a separate currency for upgrades and music. This didn't really make any sense. You can only do up to 3 To-Do tasks in a day. So your extra currency was significantly capped. Worse yet, the To-Dos did not de-prioritize games you already completed all Goals on, so you often were forced to play a few minutes of something you didn't want to. A better option would have been to remove To-Dos and just reward Goals with the extra currency.

As a 90s kid, I definitely vibed with Arcade Paradise. It has the decor, the music, and (for the most part), the games. It just doesn't have the balance or the consistency to be excellent.

Every year that passed the announcement of a BOTW sequel made me wonder...What could they possibly be working on for so long? What ultimately became a similar development cycle to the open-world precursor, ended up (mostly) justifying its long wait with incredible new functionality and an even opener world than BOTW.

The only issue I have with the game is the re-use of Hyrule. While the surface is modified, it's still very familiar. I was not met with the same sense of wonder as I scaled mountains, crawled into caves, and visited villages, as I was in my first outing à la BOTW. While TOTK is arguably bigger and better in every way, it ironically suffers from the series' prior accomplishments. It didn't do quite enough to surprise me in the same way.

I conclude my Starfield journey at around 120 hours. And that's about 60 more hours than it deserved. I found myself sleepwalking through large swathes of Starfield's barren universe - ultimately an exercise in truly mindless entertainment. So in that respect, I enjoyed most of my time with the game, as unremarkable as it was.

But there are certainly reasons why Starfield will go down as my least played and least enjoyed BGS release. Most egregious is the destruction of their greatest quality - the wonder of exploration. And how ironically painful that the main quest places you on a team of adventurers with exploration as their North Star. That's Constellation, and their ranks are filled with the most joyless companions anywhere in the Milky Way. Along with them, you'll navigate the stars, searching for space's secrets. The problem - there aren't many secrets.

There was a sinking feeling as I realized 95% of the universe was empty or repeated content. Points of interest lack any interest at all. Fauna and flora will quickly become repetitively familiar. Your mode of travel is mostly menu-based. This is in stark contrast to BGS' prior titles that invited you to organically stumble across exciting and unique content. Starfield's design interrupts this flow at every turn.

That said, Starfield does have its share of unique content - mostly in the form of cities. These are usually of decent size and activity. I wasn't particularly impressed with any of these major hubs, though. You'll often gather up plenty of quests and work as you wander these cities - some engaging, but most not. The faction quests will offer the biggest storylines Starfield has to offer, and are worth seeking out.

But as I explore these storylines and am introduced to the state of the universe 200 years in the future, I am depressed at the lack of imagination. Bethesda's vision for the future is indeed drab and really not much different from our present existence. Most confusing is people apparently don't have communication systems, as we are demanded to travel half-way across the galaxy just to deliver 1 line of dialogue.

Starfield is not the next step for BGS. It has aspects of the Bethesda charm and will certainly comfort anyone looking for that particular feeling. But now I'm most excited for development of Elder Scrolls VI to finally begin development in earnest.

Wahoo! What a wondrous journey to experience! Filled with talking plants, dancing plants, singing plants, and many other dextrous flora - Mario and the gang have much to see and engage with.

The rumors about Wonder's inspirations were true - it feels like Super Mario World in its movement, its keyframes, its level philosophy - a true blast from the past. 2D Mario hasn't felt this good in 30 years. Even though it gets so much right from Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros 3, it suspiciously rejects the accomplishments Yoshi's Island made in the boss department. Wonder opts for the tired boss formula that 2D Mario has leaned on for decades now. It's a shame, but not a dealbreaker.

The platforming excellence elevates the game to its amazing status. Everything feels good, secrets abound, and the game does not overstay its welcome. While the core experience is easy, there are serious challenges waiting for players who want to push themselves. There are so many unique enemies, backdrops, and animations, the game exerts passion. And I'm thrilled to see how they evolve this formula, as I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Wonder!