I'm very hesitant about this game. Whilst I feel like it invokes that survival game charm in a particularly good way that most others seem to fail at, at the same time it feels rather soulless in it's presentation. The company itself is pretty weird, with evidence that it may have used AI to create it's Pals, the CEO saying he doesn't care for making original games, but rather ones that follow trends, and their history of discontinuing Early Access games fairly early on, it certainly gives me a lot of reasons not to support them. That being said, as mentioned before, the core game here is actually quite fun, and there is no concrete proof that these Pals were AI generated, merely (pretty credible) suspicions.

I see mad potential for this game. This is the most fun I've had with a game since Fortnite first came out, which for you simpletons, is a long time. I'm currently nearing 100 hours and still haven't gotten bored and am discovering new things every time I play, even while watching content like a hawk on the game as well. Anything I could really pick out as complaints from the game are either nitpicks due to it being a new release, or balancing issues, again due to it being a new release. So far Embark has been fantastic with communication, and it really does seem like they care about the game. I have high hopes for it and really want to see it succeed, because in my eyes it's near perfection. The destructibility is crumbly enough to be believable but at the same time the pieces are connected enough to make it fun instead of everything just disintegrating as the game goes on, and having an entire building fall on top of you mid-gunfight is still an experience I don't think can be replicated by anything else. Speaking of gunfights, in my opinion they really nailed it. The recoil on most guns isn't terrible (besides the M60), the TTK is perfect (which a lot of recent releases have definitely failed at doing), and the environment lends itself perfectly to these situations. I honestly could go on and on and on, but as I'm in class whilst typing this, I don't think I necessarily have the time lol.
Edit: DONT FORGET THE MOVEMENT OH MY THE MOVEMENT IS SO BUTTERY SMOOTH AND BEAUTIFUL IN THIS GAME I LOVE IT SO MUCH LIKE HOW DID THEY MAKE IT FUN TO JUST GO ACROSS THE MAP WTF

I'll definitely have to come back sometime soon to write up an in-depth review, but as of now, I just beat the story, and I can confidently say this is the best game I have ever played. The story is cute, weaves beautifully into the gameplay, is incredibly memorable as well as being easy to understand. The gameplay itself is utterly perfect. This game taught me my hand eye coordination when it comes to dashes is TERRIBLE lmao. The music, OH THE MUSIC. CHEF'S KISS BEAUTIFUL. I LOVE IT SO SO MUCH. Whenever I would put this game on, I had to turn off whatever video I was watching or whatever I was listening to on Spotify, because the sound design has just such a way of getting you immersed, it is absolutely magical. It's honestly so easy to fall into this game and not come out for a long while, and the only reason I didn't beat this in one or two days was because I always was playing right before going to sleep. Some people don't like the artstyle but personally I think it's extremely artistically pleasing. The only problem I had was sometimes I didn't notice some foreground platforms, or had some trouble distinguishing background and foreground elements, but then again I tend to tunnel vision SUPER hard when I play games, so frankly I would just chalk it up to that. I'm really thinking and the only complaint I could possibly give is that Theo is pretty cringe most of the time, but I was perfectly able to cope with it, it's not like it took me out of the moment while playing. I'm just thinking back to those intense sequences (which i will not specify for the sake of spoilers) where I was zooming through sections first try, not even knowing how I was doing what I was doing, and feeling like an absolute god. Madeline's movement is SSS+ Platinum Rank exceptional feeling and I absolutely love it, which is amazing and I'm so happy they were able to nail that. Something as simple as how your character controls can easily change the feeling of a game like this from something engaging and rewarding, to frustrating and unfair feeling, and I am extremely happy to report that this lands in the former's territory. Overall, this is gaming excellence, and I wouldn't change a single thing about Celeste. It's beautiful and heartwarming every single step of the way.

Octodad is a wonderful experience in so many ways, but most notably, it perfectly conveys a message of somebody so out of place desperately trying to fit in with the world, and how while it is a struggle, that somebody is accepted for who they are.
It's incredibly heartwarming in it's presentation, and in my opinion is the perfect length as well. At no point was I bored or disinterested in what was happening, and that's saying something for somebody like me. Sure, the controls are janky, but (quite obviously) that's the point! That just further heightens the message Octodad tries to convey, and honestly, if you find the controls to be a negative of this game, then you really have to re-evaluate how Octodad would be nearly as enjoyable with normal walking controls.
In my opinion, I never found anything to be too difficult considering the tone of the game, while at the same time having every objective still feel rewarding to complete. In a game like this, you walk a fine line between frustration and that rewarding feeling, and Octodad perfectly walks that line.
Above all though, Octodad incredibly unique, to where I can't think of another game that's similar and also anywhere near the same quality. I love it, and I recommend it to pretty much anyone looking for a good casual game to go through.

Y'know, I'm not quite sure how I should rate and review this game. If I compare this to the many other versions of Tetris out there, it is quite obvious that this is one of the worst ones. From the horrible, ear-piercing beeps after every input you make on the keyboard, to the oh so slow updating of the pieces, to the pitiful amount of inputs the computer recognizes per second, it is not good by todays standards. I mean, to put in perspective, I played one game of Tetris for 37 minutes straight, and I only got to 150 lines. It's really slow.

However. This is in no way a fault of Alexey Pajitnov, but rather the computer that he programmed this on, that being the Electronika 60. Because of this, I won't dock any stars by those admitted negatives I have listed, because quite frankly, they were simply outside of his control. We have to remember the constraints in which he was set in while programming Tetris, and make an effort not to negatively rate this first version due to these constraints.

That being said, for the first version of Tetris, it's pretty much already all here. You have the same matrix dimensions that we still have today, the same tetriminoes, the speed increasing after 10 lines, the next box, all of it. The only things really missing are the fact the next box only shows one piece, there's only one rotation button, and technically the 7-bag next piece system. I won't count that last one however, because quite frankly, while 7-bag is nice, it's definitely not as sorely needed as the other two.

Everything fundamentally works almost identically to the uber-popular NES and GameBoy versions of Tetris (besides the GameBoy versions broken RNG of course) besides the scoring system and less speed levels, and that really is a testament to just how simple but elegant this game is. The only possible complaint I could have besides things that are due to the computer itself, not the program, is that there weren't enough speed levels, and I felt like it capped at too slow of a speed, and that I could really play infinitely long if I wished to.

That gradual increase of speed levels up to the point it's near impossible to play really is basically a staple of Tetris in my opinion, and it's pretty much at it's best in the NES version. Once you reach level 29, the game has what's been dubbed a "kill-screen", in which the blocks move so fast, that the usual method of play is literally impossible once you get to this point. Now, in the over 30 years since the game has released, there have been methods discovered by the NES Tetris community to actually tap fast enough to competently play in the kill-screen, but that's something to be further discussed a different time. The point is, that cap where the game really forces you to stop, is a truly great feature of NES Tetris, and most other Tetris games.

Granted, however, the main reason this kill-screen is actually a driving factor to just keep playing and getting better, and by extension the reason one is driven to actually try and complete Tetrises instead of many, many singles and doubles, is the scoring system, which is seemingly absent in this version of the game.

I previously had a full two paragraphs talking about the importance of the scoring system, and how it is fundamentally required in order to give Tetris any sort of replayability. I then realized that once you top out, the Russian that's added to the screen afterward is actually asking me to put my name, and then it will show you your full score. I did not know this until after I had already closed my window of 150 lines, so I guess we'll never know what score I got.

I also said in the now-deleted two paragraphs how because the speed feels so slow as a cap, and how the score is absent, I cannot put this as a perfect rating. I took a half-star off for both of those features. Now that I know of the score's non-absence, I feel okay with adding a half-star, bringing this up to 4.5.

I would also like to mention how when speaking of how slow this game is, I would learn that at least part of it was simply due to the simulator I was using, and not totally to the fault of the computer itself, when playing on original hardware. I do still believe though, that the speed is a bit slow on original hardware, and I do think I'll stand by those statements, just not to the same exaggerated tone I may or may not have portrayed earlier in this review.

I don't think it's perfect, but I should say as a disclaimer that it's not like it was meant to be. After all, this version was never put out to the public, and was merely created purely for Alexey's own enjoyment. I don't think he could've known the influence that Tetris would have on the video game market when he was first programming it, and I definitely don't think he was aiming to make the perfect video game while making it. That being said, the fact this game is still so incredibly popular, addicting, and true-to-form so many years later, cannot be understated.

Played here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-manhole-gold
Okay, I will admit, this game was a bit of a challenge for me, which is a first for the Game & Watch line. I actually only made it to about 50 on both Game A and B, whereas in other Game & Watch titles before, I just played until I got bored (with the exception of Flagman and Vermin Game B). Other than the difficulty however, it basically feels like a harder reskin of Vermin in the gameplay department. I wish I could give more input on this, but that really is all it is.

Played here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-judge
Judge is very unique compared to other Game & Watch titles of the time, in the sense that this was actually the first multiplayer title. Judge is very simple. There is a small countdown, and then both players on-screen will hold up a sign with a number. If your character has a higher number, you hit the other player. If they have a lower number, you dodge from the other player. It's very reaction based, which I personally enjoy a lot, and I prefer compared to Game & Watch's more high-score based games with speed increases, as they tend to reset back to a very slow speed after you hit 100, or just cap out in difficulty making it an endurance test. Game A is a 1 player mode, that being you versus a computer programmed into the unit. I found it to be pretty easy and formulaic in terms of how good the computer was. It seemed that based on how slow the countdown was (it would get faster depending on how many you got correct in a row), it would have a set time it would wait before giving out an answer. There wasn't really any variable to this waiting time, meaning that unless someone's reaction time magically improved, they were just kind of stuck on the fastest countdown time they could beat the computer on. This kind of sucked because it didn't exactly feel rewarding at all, knowing I could get a streak of however many correct, get one wrong because the computer's answer was basically instantaneous, and then repeat the whole process over again. That being said, Game B seems to be the solution to this, adding the series' first ever 2 player mode. Obviously, instead of facing off against a computer, you face off against another person. Since I didn't have anyone willing to play, I didn't try this, but it's pretty easy to imagine that this mode was pretty entertaining for it's time, and because it was simply reaction based and nothing else, there's really no faults in the device itself that make this unfun to play.
This game's going to be a bit hard to give a star rating on, particularly because Game A feels so lackluster, but for this device, it was really all about Game B. I feel like because of this, I'll give each game mode a rating, and then combine them together with a slight bias towards Game B's rating. For Game A, I think I would actually put this below Fire and Ball (1.5 stars) for the fact it doesn't even feel like an endurance test like those games do, but rather it just feels so formulaic and predetermined. You obviously are going to almost always win against a computer that waits the same amount every time, up until you get to the point you can't beat the computer because he's too quick. It really sucks. For Game B however, I think I would put it on the same level as Flagman (2.5 stars), because with 2 players, there's no predetermined BS going on, so you can just keep playing and playing and playing until somebody gets bored, and that's not the fault of the game, that's the fault of the person if they get bored. So, 2 stars is the final result, and to be honest, I think that's fair.

Played here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-fire-silver-series
I mean, it's okay I guess? There's no difference between Game A and Game B besides a speed increase, something which I think is sorely needed because Game A is super slow in my opinion. It was an absolute slog to get to 50, so I just gave up once I got there. People are jumping out of a building, you control two firefighters holding a trampoline, and you have to get the people to land in the ambulance. It's pretty simple, which is typical of all these games. I found that due to the godawful speed of Game A, it took forever for the game to start giving me two people at a time instead of one person and that was so boring in my opinion. While playing however, I did have a complaint of which is the first I'll give for any game in the Game & Watch line, and that is that the art of the people while they were falling were always a bit left of the trampoline, and for some reason that kept tripping me up. When they actually hit the trampoline they were centered, but while falling it always looked like they were going to fall on the left firefighter's head. As I've highlighted before, the speed in Game A is absolutely abysmal, so after I got to 50 I quickly went to Game B and it was much more entertaining to play. The difficulty ramped up quicker (obviously), however once you had to deal with 3 people at once, it never got any harder afterward. No speed increase or more people, it just felt like it capped in difficulty and that was only once I got to 20, which was a real bummer. I do like how it looks like the people fall at different speeds depending on how many bounces they've had however, and it makes it a lot less formulaic in terms of who to set up the trampoline for since I actually had to think if person 1 on the left was going to hit the ground before person 2 on the right, even if I had bounced person 2 first.
To put it simply, I think it's okay and it's a good concept, but it's lack of difficulty and Game A being practically useless means I gotta put this at the same rating as Ball, which is pretty disappointing.
Game A and B High Scores: 50

Played here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-vermin
I would say this has a very similar gameplay style to Ball, just reskinned and with a bit more difficulty. This game is essentially Whack-A-Mole, there's no beating around the bush there. I would say this is a bit more difficult than Ball, primarily because there are 4 potential places the moles can appear from (5 in Game B), while also having up to 4 moles (5 in Game B) coming upwards at the same time. This means the skill ceiling is a bit higher than Ball, meaning it could give a bit more entertainment overall, but it still does have the same very important flaw as Ball where once you reach score 100 (in both Game A and B), the speed resets, and I find that very annoying because I actually found max speed to be very challenging, as well as the rate in which is speeds up to be a lot better paced than in Ball or Flagman's Game B. There is one new flaw I found in Vermin however that wasn't present in Ball, and that is something that only happens in Game B. At certain points once you're fairly close to the 100 point threshold, the moles will actually come at such a quick pace that it is impossible to hit all the visible moles at once. The animation is only quick enough to allow you to hit 2 (maybe 3?) moles per unit the moles move, meaning if you have 3 (or 4? I wasn't keeping track) moles up, which is guaranteed to happen, then you just aren't gonna get 'em all and you're gonna get a strike no matter what.
Overall, I think that in terms of value and it's time-wasting capability (what I mainly base these ratings off of, since that is the goal of the Game & Watch line of products), I would put this in between Ball and Flagman. It has a higher difficulty spike than Ball for sure, but I really think I would take Flagman mostly because there isn't that extremely noticeable threshold where the game basically resets, meaning that challenge stays pretty much until I get bored instead of it being cut off by the threshold.
Game A and B High Scores: 100

Played here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-flagman
Game A (Simon Says): I got to 23 numbers my brain is busting right now - I will give this mode credit as unlike Ball, the patterns in which you have to follow are actually randomly chosen this time, compared to Ball's predetermined pathing of the balls. There also isn't any weird point threshold like Ball where the game just kind of resets back to how it played when you first started, meaning this can be played pretty much infinitely without having that jarring change of pace that makes you feel like stopping playing.
Game B (Reaction Speed): GODDAMN IT GETS FAST TOO QUICKLY - For what's meant to be a time-wasting device, I find it humorous how quickly it becomes unbearably fast in mere seconds.

Played here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-ball
The game's okay I guess. While this is supposed to be a time waster, it still does get boring after a bit, and I think I've widdled that down to three things. One of these things is that after only a little bit, the speed of the balls seems to cap on me. I don't know exactly what score I got when it stopped speeding up but it had to be in the 30s on Game A or something like that. In my opinion that kind of defeated the challenge, and it began to bore me after a bit. The second thing though is what really does it in my opinion, and it's that when you hit 100 in Game A, the speed resets. I'm not too sure if that's just this emulator's fault, but this creator has the other Game & Watch games on his account and they all seem pretty high quality, so I'm inclined to believe it's actually due to the tech itself. You really feel it start to slog once the speed resets, so after I got to 100 I made myself lose just so I could move onto Game B. After losing a few times on Game B however (just to see what the loss graphics looked like, im not bad I swear), I noticed the third thing that really detracts from the experience for me, and it's that I think these ball patterns are pre-programmed. I tried on a different emulator and my Game A paths were the same as on the browser, and they were the same paths each time, and in my opinion I just don't think that's good design, because now it doesn't become so much of a skill based time waster, it just becomes something that somebody can memorize and then go forever for. While this is a classic in the world of old Nintendo, it's not worth spending too much time over. (btw my Game B high score was 1000 before I stopped, see, I'm competent)

Coming into this game, I was mostly just looking for a time waster, but hopefully something that would keep my attention for more than a few days like the AdVenture Capitalist’s of the Play Store always seem to do. What attracted me to this game were 3 primary reasons.
One being the artstyle, that being a cute kawaii art style you’ll see a good amount of mobile idle games have these days, although I gravitated more towards this because it felt much more expressive than others.
Secondly was the ratings, that being 4.9 Stars on the Play Store. I see most mid-tier mobile games hover around the 4 star mark, but rarely is it ever this high, especially if it doesn’t have some good qualities.
And finally, as I read a couple reviews, I kept reading how there were no forced ads, and that they were only really for in-game rewards. Understandably, I think everybody loves when companies do this, as not only are we actually going to enjoy the game itself more because there isn’t a 15 second video being shoved down our throat constantly, but when we do watch the ads, it’s always guaranteed we’ll get some type of reward to make it feel somewhat worth it.
So, not thinking too much more about it, I decided to just give it a go and see what it’s about. Immediately after opening it, I start giggling at the dialogue. We open to a cat fishing, annoyed because we interrupted him. I was given the dialogue options of “I wanna fish too!” or “That sounds dumb” and figured I’d choose the second option just to see what would happen. What I got was a simple “You sound dumb” and “Anyways tap the ocean to throw the hook”. Wonderful. So stupid yet silly and works perfectly. This speaking style stays throughout the game, which is definitely a good thing, as I would tend to think a game making me smile is good.
I’ll try not to detail the plot too much, not because it’s super important and I’m trying not to spoil it or anything, but for a mobile game, I’d prefer for this not to be a ridiculously long review. Long story short, we fished out a burger, the burger hated us for fishing him out, we tried fishing out another burger to give him a friend, he ate said burger and gave us money, and thus, we are introduced to our gameplay loop. Fish for burger, cannibalism, profit. We can upgrade our stats, such as how many foods we can have on our hook, and how deep we can fish. As we fish deeper we find new fruit for more profit, the next of which being a dragon fruit, which gives us double.
Upgrading my depth level to 3, I go to fish again, and pull up a whole ass Cafe. This cafe gives us drinks to consume, and they give us more money on top of the foods we give to the foods. The drinks replenish by themselves, even when the app is closed, which is neat. Doesn’t tell me how often I can get these drinks however, so I guess we just have to wait and find out. The fishing continues!
Now obviously the fishing is quite repetitive as it is the core game mechanic, but I can’t lie, they make it fun. Pulling those foods out of the water, and having the foods eat the foods all in one bite, they make that feel impactful. Like DAMN. I FEEL POWERFUL. I like it.
After playing for a bit, it is pretty obvious the ad upgrades are definitely worth it, but most of the time it’s only 15 seconds, so not really a slog to sit through. I was pretty happily fishing for about 30-40 minutes without getting fatigued over it, so that should tell you something.
After a bit of fishing, you will eventually discover enough food types to unlock the farm area, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Your foods are harvesting other foods, you can upgrade the harvesting foods and after a bit unlock new foods to harvest, and you can tap the screen for faster profits, as that grows the foods faster. It’s pretty standard so I wasn’t too interested in it, however it was pretty satisfying to see the +(AMOUNT) spammed all over the screen from all the different harvests I had going at once. It doesn’t seem to keep generating currency in the background though, so that kind of sucks.
Merge area is next and to be honest, this one really isn’t that fun. It idle fishes for you, and you have to buy/merge foods of the same type together to upgrade. You can tap the cats for increased profits, so that’s obviously the meta here. Multiple things you can tap on will come on by as well, such has double profit potions or getting another cat to fish with for a limited time, but the problem here is that every one of these abilities requires an ad watch. So altogether you can get like 6x the profit, but you have to watch however many ads to not only get it, but keep it to, since it’s for a limited time. It’s pretty easy to get sucked into this, as I actually am at this current moment writing this part of the review, only typing between the ads, and while it does work in my very specific case, it can get extremely distracting if for example you just want a few minutes break between doing something. On top of that, it really feels a bit more like a chore than satisfying, since I’m constantly having to watch ads and do something else. Not feeling too good about this area, but obviously there are plenty others, so it gets a pass this time.
That being said, that's practically the whole game, and at this point, the grinding starts. I'll probably update this review later on as I keep playing, but for now I'll get on with the actual rating.
As this is one of those mobile games where you just do the same thing over and over and over again for hours, I can comfortably say the 5 star and maybe even 4 star ratings are off the table. I think for a game like this to possibly achieve a 4 star rating, it would have to be absolutely perfect in every aspect. While I do find these types of games to at times be rather high quality overall, the mere lack of substance, variety and story that they fundamentally all lack strip it away from possibly hitting close to that Masterpiece title. While I do believe what I've said, I also believe that this is one of the best games pertaining to this subgenre that I've played yet. It's artstyle, while falling into the kawaii style, is also rather expressive and humorous, straying away from the traditional style without hesitation, and not "playing it safe" as other games of this style often do in my opinion. The mechanics overall are perfectly fine, and they work well for sessions where you can just turn your brain off and wait for whatever you're waiting for to finish. I would say one of the most convenient parts is the no forced ads feature of this game, which I think is always a great decision for developers to make for reasons I have listed earlier. Although, because of this, the ad upgrades are pretty obviously so, so much better than if you were to play the game adless, making it so otherwise, production and upgrades feel really sluggish. I would say overall, this game is cute, fun, and charming, and works perfectly well in what it sets out to do. The ad upgrades are obviously overpowered, making it so if you’re trying to go for max efficiency, you are going to be watching a lot of them. However, it is also completely optional, so I will give it that. The general fishing mechanic is rather fun, but I’m not too fond of the merge or farm areas. There is also a Tower area, but as of writing this, I’m not too sure as to what it does. Because of this mixture between flaws, charm, and good design sprinkled throughout, I’m thinking between 2.5 stars and 3 stars is most fair for this game’s conditions. Since I feel nice, I’ll give it 3 stars.