The first impressions I had for Dreams were that the toolset was impressive but that kind of thing wasn't for me, and the Media Molecule content at the time was fine but severely lacking. Things have changed massively in my three years away and if you're not into creation, I'd recommend looking at the games that MM have created and highlighted as there are some really interesting looking experiences there. One of these was Tren, which launched last week, a delightful little puzzler where you need to make your way across various wooden train-set levels to the goal.

A lot of concepts are crammed in here and while some are occasionally overused of not hugely fun (sorry Cren), the majority are well designed and your movement as the train is simple while feeling natural. You have a free moving camera for 95% of levels which is fine but it can occasionally have a mind of its own, zooming in when you don't want it to, preventing you from seeing up ahead. A minor frustration normally but when you're up against a time limit it can lead to situations where it's hard to adjust and you miss hazards, necessitating a restart or reset to track. That said, it's a rare problem and the overall challenge ramps up quite nicely throughout, with some intricate and almost thrilling levels coming your way towards the very end of the game.

The set dressing is wonderfully cozy and all the paraphernalia strewn across the levels and hub world (three rooms in a house) really hit those nostalgia buttons. I also really liked the music - chill in hubs and more dedicated puzzle levels, but playfully intense where attempting to beat the clock is involved. Alongside a couple more specific MM throwbacks, it really made me miss what that studio can do in their own dedicated games.

And this last point really got me thinking about how the MM (and some user-generated) games that have been made in Dreams should be classified. These creations are made in Dreams and for sure I spent the hours in this software to play them, but they can also be fully fledged experiences (I spent 9 hours with Tren) with Dreams being more akin to an engine at that point. So I feel a bit strange about how to log, rate and review this and other Dreams games that I may try in the future - and there are a few that look really interesting - as while I'm technically playing Dreams, I'm also not. I know a line has to be drawn somewhere but it feels really fuzzy to me here.

Due to the huge toolset and variety of content that can be created which spans a huge range of genres and tone, I think Dreams in its own little world of almost being its own platform - a normal level creator this title is not - and I find it a bit disappointing that there's no way to talk about these games on BL in standalone terms. The record will say that I replayed Dreams with a playtime of 9 hours, but that really doesn't tell the whole story.

Described by my partner as 'the game I hate where you're a box and you're inside a box and you're outside the box', this a great twist on the Sokoban formula.

Big fan of the critical path puzzles never really going too far in terms of difficulty, but with separate off-shoot challenge levels being available on each themed stage if you want to explore those ideas further. The post-game challenge levels can be a bit obtuse when mechanics are piled on top of each other but I guess that's where it makes sense for the puzzle design can go as wild as possible.

It's been said a lot but this game really is to Pikmin 2 what 3 was to 1.

Happily, 4 resolves a lot of my issues from Pikmin 2 - cave levels are now curated, things that fall from the ceiling will happen at the same place each time round and the treasure tracker no longer sounds like a banshee screeching in my ear. Also thanks to the overworld being much larger, I no longer felt like I was running around a glorified menu selection screen, though it would have been good to have a few more environmental puzzles.

Sure, I do still miss there being some kind of time limit in the caves - I know time is meant to pass 6x slower there but there's no real risk as the day will never end while you're spelunking. I reckon a happy medium for me could have been having it pass 3x slower with the gauge still visible and still have that little bit of resistance to encourage Dandori, especially as there's a level select when/if you do return to the cave in the future.

I have some other small nitpicks (lack of respawning enemies in the overworld, auto lock-on issues, lack of bingo battle) but otherwise Pikmin 4 is a treat. Visually stunning for a Switch game, some great Dandori challenges, a bit of fanservice and the usual tonka-truck full of charm to keep you smiling through the story. From the demo I thought Oatchi would be overpowered and trivialise the need for Pikmin themselves but that noseless pup fits in a lot better than I expected.

Pikmin 3 remains my favourite as it's a bit more accessible for replays (both story and mission), but I'll still return to 4 to try and perfect Dsndori.

Positive note - the little cutscenes you get of Pikmin doing Pikmin things are cute and give those little flower creatures a lot of character that you don't see as much in the mainline games, and that charm did a lot of heavy lifting here.

It's a shame then those same cutscenes kill all momentum you might have in every level in an already glacial-speed platformer. I feel like there are nuggets of good ideas here which I think could have been turned into a decent puzzle platformer-squad management combination but it's something that's barely explored and most of your time devolves into slowly wading through a level and bashing the screen throwing your Pikmin from that stage (usually of just a single type) at any enemy that appears with no thought whatsoever. Some levels have two types of Pikmin (and maybe one has three!) but I only counted a single occasion where this change required any additional thought.

It takes 8 worlds (per world that's 5 stages, one boss encounter, one bonus level and four puzzle levels) for any semblance of challenge to appear and only then because of the risk of falling off a stage and being sent back to the very beginning.

At least it's better than Chibi-Robo Zip Lash.

The core of Pikmin is excellent so this is still a good game, but most of the decisions made for the sequel really don't work for me. On the positive side, I like the addition of White and Purple Pikmin (even if the latter are a little bit broken in battle) which add a little more strategy to your daily loadout and what you need to take into caves. The variety of enemies also gets a little boost, with some expert planning required in order to limit your losses as much as possible, while the Pikmin themselves get a nice little improvement in AI and no longer feel like they have the IQ of a rock. Also the Piklopedia, treasure descriptions and Louie's recipes add a lot of humour and charm to the series, so much so that I think a good hour of my playtime was purely down to reading every entry and regularly chuckling to myself.

I don't mind the overall timer being taken away (even if I prefer it), but I'm not a fan of the cave system and there being no kind of time limit there at all. To me, Pikmin always needs some kind of urgency, whether that's an in-game day limit, needing to get your Pikmin to a safe space by nightfall or just through challenges and missions. Once you enter a cave, all that evaporates and the game becomes something very different, something more survival focused. Not necessarily bad, but not what I was expecting or hoping for. The first Pikmin was a shorter and smaller game, but I felt like I was exploring a world. Here, the overground sections felt like I was walking through a large menu to get to the next cave.

In isolation I could deal with that, but with non-curated levels, random enemy placement and the occasional bomb falling from the ceiling with no warning, my enjoyment levels did start to take a slight hit. It hits its nadir when all of the above combine with having treasure nearby - not because of the gameplay of collecting them but due to the incessant and incredibly annoying chirping of the treasure radar. It's distracting mid-battle, and the ringing just won't stop even after that point until its deposited safely - the only way it will go away is by turning all in-game sound effects off which isn't a great solution.

But as I said at the start, this is still Pikmin. They're still a bunch of little guys working together in a big world to collect objects and dissolve bulborbs. The review sounds quite negative but I still had a good time playing through - I just don't think I'll be returning to this entry in the series much compared to the first and third.

I know it's a slow paced game (I went in expecting that), but everything takes just a little bit longer that it should. Things like turning keys and opening doors are a bit of a chore, and the transition delay from picking something up to be able to move again really did affect my desire to wander around what is a very beautiful world.

Narrative wise, I think the game fares a lot better in the story it sets in the past. It does wrap up quite suddenly and not entirely satisfactorily at the end but it was an engaging tale. The adult sections on the other hand are incredibly barebones and seem to exist solely as a bridge to move time forward a few days in your flashbacks.

I mainly play this series in co-op career and it's fun, but so many random and annoying bugs just keep cropping up - not being able to setup the car for a grand prix, AI overtaking the safety car without penalty, end of race classifications which don't match the timings, cars DNFing but staying on the circuit for the whole race and slowly moving across the track (and in Monaco to add to the mayhem). And this happens every single year, it's getting a bit tiring.

And then there's the addition of Supercars which isn't bad, just completely unnecessary when there's other things that people buying focusing on open-wheel racing would much prefer they work on.