Reviews

Shenmue 3 is disappointing. The story just repeats itself from Bailu and Niaowu and nothing happens, from I what heard, until the very end of the game is when anything exciting happens. No build up like in Shenmue 1 or 2, there's nothing pulling on a string making you want to see what happens next. Never bothered to even finish it because the same sub plots is the exact same shit in the previous location. I got up to Grandmaster Whoever his name is after getting the arcane book then he told me to beat the Dojo leader just so he can teach me the move (this same exact sub plot happens in the previous location).

Combat system is mixed, don't hate it or like it, I prefer the older system from 1 and 2. However the combat feels like a grind. You are forced to level up your attack and endurance just to progress the story by doing minigames multiple times and defeat the leader of the Dojo; it is an extremely monotonous experience. This would have been alleviated if there was a single sub plot that if Ryo had to train his kung fu somewhere and get better over a period of time instead of forcing the player to do these minigames and defeat the leaders multiple times just so you can progress.

I like the mindless distractions in Shenmue 3, but it feels overwhelming with all the various items and sets that I just don't bother completing them.

The original Link's Awakening on Game Boy has always been one of my absolute favorite games, so naturally I was pretty hyped for the remake. And for the most part, that hype was justified.
The game is still a ton of fun and has some of the best dungeon designs that are less linear than those seen in other Zelda games and have a few really clever gimmicks. The story, world building and atmosphere is also very unique, with the existential dread of this world's nature and fate looming over the player at all times, while light-hearted and silly things are happening left and right, complete with weird references to other Nintendo franchises, all culminating in an intense, melancholic and fairly ambiguous ending that sticks with you for a while.

This remake in particular comes with a lot of quality-of-life improvements. One of the biggest issues with the original was the constant pausing and item-swapping, required mostly due to the Game Boy only having two buttons and a few design oversights on Nintendo's part. These issues have been fixed by mapping certain abilities to the many more buttons available on the Switch.
Besides that the game's old, simple pixel-art aesthetic has been replaced with a miniature, diorama-like appearance that took some people off-guard, which I however find incredibly charming as it looks great for the system while retaining the kind of "tiny world in your pocket" feel of the old one.

That, however, is about it when it comes to what I can praise this remake for.

It's still really good, don't get me wrong, and if you've never played any version of this game before, I'd probably recommend this one above the others, but as a remake that is sold at full price in 2019, I feel like this one's been on the low-effort end.
When Nintendo first re-released this game in the DX-version on Game Boy Color, they didn't just colorize the visuals, but added a few extra things; mainly a new dungeon that made full use of the color graphics and a new character, a mouse photographer, that would show up at specific points in the game to take some pictures that showed Link and some other characters in more detail than ever before and put them into some cute situations.
Sure, the photographing mouse was definitely a ploy to market the Game Boy Printer, which let you print tiny, black-and-white stickers to put on your school bag or fridge at home, but it also added something new to discover and collect for those who've already played the original. And it's something I would have liked to see adapted, and expanded, in this new one.

Unfortunately however, while the Color Dungeon is still in the game, this photo feature has been completely removed and replaced with the one major new feature of this remake, a Dungeon Maker mini-game featuring Dampe of Ocarina of Time fame.
This new feature, while it looks at first sight to be Mario-Maker-esque, isn't really worth playing, as all it does is let you string together rooms taken from dungeons you have already beaten, to create new dungeons, just without any of the clever design or reward. There's nothing new or interesting here and I only gave this feature a brief look.

It's generally become kind of annoying how bare-bones and minimal Nintendo's remakes and re-releases have become. When they re-released the Super Mario Bros. games on the Super Nintendo, they gave them a new presentation, some other small changes, and packaged four games together at the price of one while also adding a save-feature and allowing you to pick from two control schemes.

When Link's Awakening was re-released it got the additions mentioned above. Most of the Mario re-releases on Game Boy Advance had a lot of original content and added features. A Link to the Past's GBA port had a whole new multiplayer mini-game and a new, challenging dungeon added. When they re-released Ocarina of Time as a free pack-in bonus with The Wind Waker, even that one got Master Quest added as an extra little treat.
Super Mario 64 DS had new mini-games and three new playable characters.

It showed that they wanted to give people a good reason to buy these games again and replay them, even if they already owned the originals.
But when The Wind Waker HD came out, not only did they not go back to add the dungeons that had to be cut from the original due to time constraints, they didn't bother to really add anything new either. The same goes for Twilight Princess HD. And the 3DS ports of the N64 games are also largely the same  with barely anything new to speak of.

And, unfortunately, the same also goes for Link's Awakening on Switch.
For a full-price game I would have at least expected one new dungeon, but we only got the aforementioned quality-of-life fixes and that pointless dungeon maker.

I also don't think that the presentation was all that great, either. I said already that I like the art style of this game, which I do, but when it comes to the way they used it, I would have expected more. My issue is that they have basically kept everything just about 1:1, only translating it from 2D sprites and tiles into 3D models. That means if map graphics repeated on the Game Boy, they still do now even though there is absolutely no reason for them to do so. Everything is pretty much exactly in the place you found it in decades ago and looks like they just adapted each tile individually instead of remaking the maps with the strengths of the current tech in mind.
On top of that, the game suffers from an unstable frame-rate. By no means is it horribly bad or unplayable, but the game does not look very demanding and this is just another way in which this game seems rushed and somewhat carelessly made.

The D-Pad of the Switch also remains completely unused, which doesn't make any sense to me. Link's movement is restricted to a digital 8-way movement, as if he was controlled by a D-Pad, but you can only do so with the left Analog Stick, which feels unnatural and weird. Not giving me the option to then actually use the D-Pad for this digital movement is baffling. And then they didn't even map any items or anything else to the D-Pad either so it really makes no sense.

The music is also kind of a mixed bag. The original's great, dungeon-specific compositions are still here, remade into a more modern sound and some of this new OST sounds pretty awesome, but there are quite a few dungeon tracks that have been completely robbed of their atmosphere and energy. Generally, the music too feels like a pretty bare-minimum adaptation that didn't take much thought or care. I've heard much better from unpaid fans.

So, to wrap this up, I still recommend this game. I played through it and had a lot of fun, simply because the original game was so great and this is that game, just polished up to keep the annoying bits to a minimum. But that "keeping to a minimum" thing is also the remake's biggest issue, because the additions and the effort have also been kept to said minimum and I wish we could expect better from Nintendo, but at this point I can't say I was surprised.

For me, this is as good as Mario has ever gotten.

This game is an absolute masterpiece with great level design, simple but very tight controls, just the right selection of both useful and kind of silly power-ups, a sizable cast of enemies and great sense of journeying through a big world of magical kingdoms.

For many people of my age, there has always been the debate of whether Mario 3 or Mario World is the best game in the franchise, and I get it. Mario World had more to its move set, had more stage gimmicks, more stages in general, simply felt bigger, more explore-able and, well, it had Yoshi. And it's a great game. But Mario 3 still has it beat in my opinion, which is mostly due to the variety in its worlds.
Super Mario World might be bigger and might have more to offer as a whole, but it always felt like it was basically just a vastly bigger version of Mario 3's World 1, which is the most vanilla and boring part of that game for me.

I always loved how memorable every stage in Mario 3 was, due in no small part to the fact that each world was themed around its own specific gimmick, which was explored fully in each one and then mostly just left behind before it could overstay its welcome.
Going from the regular, predictable Grass Land to the desert, complete with a traumatically scary angry sun trying to kill you, and then cooling off in a water-based world, for instance, was always something I absolutely loved and didn't feel has been replicated by any other game in the franchise.
It's easy to have a favorite and least-favorite world in Mario 3, while I would be hard pressed to come up with an answer for that in World. And I also love that Nintendo had the balls to keep some of the most unique gimmicks, like the Goomba Shoe, limited to a one-stage occurrence. 

There really isn't much I can say about this game that hasn't been said time and time again, so I guess I'll just leave it at this: This game is a master piece and while I don't believe in the concept of perfection, Mario 3 is definitely one of the closest I have ever seen a game get to said concept. There really isn't much I could come up with that would improve this game.
It's amazing and one I still love to play through on a regular basis, decades after it was first released.

Before this game came out, I had only a passing interest. Blizzard was never a developer I cared about very much (I tried, really really hard, to like WoW many times throughout the Vanilla days and whenever a new expansion came out, but I just didn't) and the game itself, while looking interesting, reminded me way too much of a MOBA at the time to really grab my attention. Plus, since Counter-Strike and Ragnarok Online, I have barely managed to really get into a Multiplayer game again.

However, then the Open Beta for Overwatch came around and, being incredibly bored at the time and not playing anything online anymore, I decided to give it a go.
I haven't stopped since, bought the game immediately at launch, 3 more times after to have 4 accounts because I'm a fucking idiot, and I still play it today, going into 2020.

In this time, a lot has happened. I briefly played the game in a Clan, just like I used to when I was actively playing Counter-Strike Source, but ended up stopping that when I didn't get along with the leader much and when I decided that the pressure of that was too much.
I've been to almost every rank, from barely Grand Master all the way down to barely Gold and currently sit at High Platinum - Low Diamond, depending on the role and the day.
Playing Comp, I have cured my irrational fear of using the Microphone while speaking English, have gotten a very chill, positive attitude, got really good at keeping toxic teams together and focused on a goal, broke, started hating the game and especially its community and since warmed up to it again and now play it not daily anymore, but still on a regular basis, having fun, doing my best, being generally positive, but stopping my session as soon as toxic players start getting to me.

I do have to say, though, that in the past few months my outlook on the game has become way more cynical. The refusal of the developers to really commit to anything in fear of humiliating specific playstyles, even those they and most of the community don't approve of, is starting to get in the way quite a bit. Balancing updates that shake up a quickly stale meta take forever now and content has been getting more and more sparse since Year 2, after they spoiled us with constant new things and promise of a lot more for the first 12 months of the game's life.

2020 isn't looking very promising in that regard either, with them focusing their work on a big, free update that they have been holding back for a while already, just to couple it with a PvE spin-off and call it a "sequel", which might be another year, or more, away still.
Things have been getting frustratingly stale and slow, and aren't looking to speed up anytime soon.

Still, the game, as a whole, means a lot to me. The first 2 years in particular were incredibly fun and a mostly positive experience. And those who haven't been playing since launch will definitely not feel as content-starved as veterans do, which is why I would still highly recommend the game to anyone even remotely interested in this kind of thing.

The game controls and feels great, visuals are clean and pleasing, character voice lines and interactions are charming as all HECC and while Competitive might not be for everyone, Quick Play, the Arcade and especially the Custom Game browser leave a lot of room for just some nice, casual fun.
It's easy to be jaded and cynical, but I mostly am because of how much time I have pumped into this game and all the potential and promise it had. Compared to what I thought, in the first year or two, where this game would be by 2020, it's a disappointment. But when compared to what other multiplayer games have to offer, at that price (40 bucks main game, no paid DLC, still being updated), especially in the past few years, it's absolutely amazing.

+++
If you care at all about Game Design as an art form for any reason and want to learn about player guidance, conveyance of information, sound design or environmental clues, this game is one that absolutely MUST be studied.
+++

I'm not the biggest Valve fan out there. I have an immense amount of respect for the company, especially if we're talking about the time frame of Portal 2's release and the impact the Half-Life franchise, the Source Engine and Steam have had is in no way lost on me, but their flagship titles have always been a mixed bag for me.
I think Half-Life is cool and its sequel was super interesting and technically impressive at the time, but the world-building, atmosphere and just general minute-to-minute gameplay never really gripped me in the way it has gripped others.
Due to their shorter length, I actually preferred Episode 1 and especially Episode 2, but I never really cared all that much about any of the Half-Life games, personally, and saw myself more as a distant admirer of what they have achieved, though I still say, to this day, that the Source Engine is one of the best-feeling engines ever.

So, naturally, while I was blown away by the value of it, I didn't really care that much about the Orange Box when that was announced, and chances are I wouldn't have given it a go anytime close to launch if it wasn't for that weird little extra game shown as a little pack-in bonus: Portal.

The trailers were incredibly intriguing at the time. The cold, sterile environments, the mind-boggling gimmick of the Portal Gun and the unique flavor of humor they presented players with made it impossible for me not to look forward to the Orange Box.
Everyone was hyped for Episode 2, some really cared about Team Fortress 2, and Portal was seen by most as just this extra little curiosity. Almost like some kind of tech demo or something. But for me it was the other way around.

And then came release day, and I played through Portal in a single sitting, and would just sit there afterwards for at least 10 minutes, with a huge grin on my face and slightly teary-eyed, in awe of the amazing ride I had just experienced.
This game, while incredibly short, was something truly special and struck a really good balance of demanding conundrums and the kind of silly humor that feels like it's melting away your brain. All of it presented mostly in a very chill, take-your-time kind of manner but interspersed with a few highlight scenes that are quite intense in comparison.

Needless to say, the experience stuck with me for a while, and not just because of the memes the game spawned.

So when the sequel was announced, as a full-price standalone title, the hype was overwhelming. I was aware how much I was setting myself up for disappointment. Portal was lightning in a bottle and kind of had the perfect length, ending pretty much right before it would start to overstay its welcome. And it was something unforgettable and special, yet not something I would've deemed worth more than maybe 20€ to most people.
So how could Portal 2 possibly NOT disappoint? How could it possibly more than a retread or a paid expansion or something?

But still, the hype grew bigger and bigger with every month, week and day the release grew closer. Every new trailer and gameplay video they showed, I was giddy with excitement and bracing for the whiplash once the almost inevitable disappointment would kick in.

But ooh boy... as you can probably tell by the rating I gave this game, and the tone of this review so far, it somehow managed to exceed my incredibly high expectations.


Portal 2 definitely IS more Portal, but at a far greater scale in any way. It constantly expands the scope of the basic Portal puzzles and adds so many new gimmicks and tools that the portals themselves begin to feel secondary, instead of the main focus, even though they are constantly being used. They simply start feeling like, say, Mario's Jump, in that it is integral to the gameplay, but kind of "is just there" as a natural part of your move set while the many other gimmicks demand the player's attention.

The environments have also been expanded greatly. The game still takes place in the same research facility of the original game, but the player is no longer restricted to a few simple, mostly white rooms and instead gets a literal look behind the scenes, as well as to what happened to this facility in the long, undisclosed amount of time since its abandonment.

Portal 1's "story" and writing was carried mostly by the evil, sarcastic AI GLaDOS and supported by some more-or-less hidden environmental story telling left behind by a previous test subject.
There is so much more of both of these in Portal 2, with GLaDOS becoming way more of a developed character than she was in the original, but even her brilliance is now rivaled by newcomer Wheatley, a little, spherical, British robot who both guides and hinders the player throughout the adventure.
I don't wanna give anything away, just at the off chance that someone who hasn't played the game is reading this, but there are a lot of hilarious, and awesome in the original sense of the word, twists and turns this game's story takes that makes Portal 1 almost feel boring in comparison.

In this way Portal 2 takes everything people loved about the original and expands it in just about any conceivable way.
And to top it off, there is a whole separate Co-Op campaign with its own unique dialog (well, monologue really) and its own brilliant level design.
And some time after the game has been out, Valve even released a pretty easy to use and publish Level Creator tool which gives the game almost endless content.


What really impressed me about the game above all else though is how polished and well-designed it is. There are so many subtle audio-visual clues about solutions that, without feeling hand-holdy, always seem to get you to the right solution of a puzzle eventually, no matter how absolutely stumped you might feel at the outset.
When you first play the game, you probably won't really notice, or quickly drone out, many of the noises given off of the different things found in a level that inform and remind you of the state and location of them in subtle ways, even when you are not actively looking at them. This helps immensely in giving the player a complex image of any level and puzzle in their head and gently guides them towards the right path.

The pacing, too, is amazing, which kept me from either getting exhausted and puzzled-out or bored, even though I played the game pretty much in one setting with only a few short breaks in-between. And I was laughing the whole way through, though the game does get pretty intense and mellow at times, especially if you do pay attention to every little thing.

This game is simply a masterpiece that I lack the competency to properly do justice. If it seems AT ALL appealing to you, you absolutely owe yourself to play through it at least once. And at this point, especially during special sales, the game is dirt cheap and should run on pretty much any machine bought in the last decade-or-so, so you really don't have an excuse not to play it.
And if you have, hecc, go play it again!

I grew up on Sonic 1 and 2 on the Mega Drive / Genesis and always thought that Sonic 2 would be unbeatable as my favorite Sonic game of all time, especially because I am just so nostalgic for it. But Sonic Mania actually managed to kick it off its throne.

Like for many others, the Sonic franchise has always been a mixed bag for me. Not just are there games like Sonic 06, Shadow the Hedgehog, etc. that weren't very good, I personally didn't even care that much for even the more popular ones, such as Sonic CD or the GBA games.
Even the HUGE Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, especially when put together and merged into one like god intended, never really reached the pure greatness of Sonic 2 in my book, though I do still like S3&K a lot and would even go so far as to say that, objectively speaking, it is the better game. But I just didn't like it as much.

Which is why I was willing to except the suggestion that maybe I was a bit nostalgia-blind and would never love another game in the franchise as much as Sonic 2, no matter how great that other game would be. 
And then Sonic Mania came around.

I just love the fact that this game exists in the way that it does. Never before have that many passionate fans of a franchise gotten together with an actual publisher and developer of said series and given the budget and guidance they needed to see such a passion project through to the end, but Sonic Mania shows how wonderful the end result can be.
Even now I get goose bumps whenever I hear the Hyper Potions songs used in the trailers for this game and looking at the incredibly charming animations used in the announcement trailer and game intro fills me with so much joy since they are so reminiscent of the one thing I was always super hyped about when it comes to the otherwise pretty meh Sonic CD.

And then there's the game itself, which basically feels like what would've happened if they fully fleshed out the Classic Sonic sections in (the pretty good) Sonic Generations without screwing up the physics and leaving the visuals in sprite-based 2D.
Yes, there could and maybe should have been more original stages and the fact that some of those recycled here have already been remade in other Sonic games is a bit of a bummer, but what they did with them, the way they remade the music and re-designed big parts of these stages is incredibly masterful and they absolutely nailed the controls and feel of the 16-bit originals while still making use of technical advancements wherever appropriate.
Plus, there now is the "new" Drop Dash mechanic which is probably one of the most natural feeling additions to any old franchise I have ever seen, though as it turns out, Sonic Mania wasn't actually the first time this ability was used, since there was a prototype of Sonic 3 discovered that had it too.

The game just oozes with love for classic Sonic and there are very few things I can imagine that would improve this game, besides the aforementioned more original stages.
If you used to love Sonic and have fallen out of favor with the franchise, this game is an absolute MUST. But even if you never cared for or even tried any 16-Bit Sonic game, I still urge you to play this one to see what the fuss is about, though I am aware how much this game relies on nostalgia and catering to a very specific part of the audience. So if modern Sonic is more your jam, there is a chance that this one's not gonna be doing it for you.

For me, though, it's exceptional and my absolute favorite game in the franchise.

Persona 5 has one of the most unique, best soundtracks of recent memory, so a rhythm game based on that sounds pretty neat on the outset, especially if, like me, you are a fan of the genre. The problem is, however, that a large portion of this great soundtrack is more on the down-beat, chill side, which doesn't exactly lend itself well to high-energy rhythmic gameplay.
There are a few songs that work great in that context, such as the Opening Theme or battle music. But that would hardly be enough content for a whole rhythm game, leaving Atlus with the more low-key, mellow stuff that works amazingly in an RPG, but not really when isolated in this way.
Atlus tried to remedy this by remixing a majority of tracks to shoehorn them into this game, with pretty underwhelming results. These remixes are serviceable, especially if you only give them a single try here and there, but they really aren't anything I'd listen to outside of playing this game, let alone choose them over their originals, which makes the collection of music, even with the DLC added, a very mixed bag that mostly didn't feel worth my time. A pretty big issue in any music-centric game. Though I do realize how subjective that is, and your mileage may vary.
I just personally really disliked a lot of the remixes and only a small handful I actually found enjoyable.

Another thing that separates the good rhythm games from the bad ones is how those songs are being used and how they translate into gameplay.
While I do enjoy how the game inserted story, characterization, aesthetics and social features from the main game into the context of a more casual experience like this, that unfortunately remains the title's biggest strength.
When compared to, say, a Hatsune Miku: Project Diva, the dancing sequences playing in the background during stages (those that have them, which isn't the case for all of them, especially when talking about the DLC) also felt like Atlus put in a fairly small amount of effort and thought. Movements feel random and repeat often and don't often mesh with the songs that are being danced to. In the aforementioned Miku games you get song-specific sequences, all with their own environments, sometimes even telling a story, complete with unique dances designed specifically for any given song. Persona 5 Dancing just kind of feels like a cut-and-paste job in comparison.

The beat maps, for the lack of a better word, also aren't very satisfying. They aren't exactly off-beat or anything, but it doesn't feel like their placement or rhythm has been given much thought. I did feel similarly about the Miku games and think that Pop'n Music, Guitar Hero or the Osu/Elite Beat Agents games are a much better example of how to make you feel like you're really merging with the songs you're listening to.

All in all the game is playable and a decent encore to the story of the base game with a nice walk down memory lane when it comes to the soundtrack. The presentation outside of the actual choreographies is great and even during the main gameplay there is some charme to be found. There's also a nice sense of progression with how new songs, costumes and social interactions/story bits are unlocked.
Still, I felt like I was more-or-less wasting my time as I played it and when I judge this purely on the merits of a rhythm game, I can't help but highly recommend others mentioned in this review over this one.

A hidden-object type game disguised as a puzzle game.
Good parts overshadowed by bad ones in a constant rollercoaster of emotions.

The good parts are the visuals, the style of the castle and some clever puzzles.
One of the above mentioned clever puzzlesd gets immediately ruined by an added part that is mindnubingly stupid for execution and placement.

Having to constantly click everywhere to trigger small hitzones to discover stuff gets tedious very fast.
The uswer interface doesnt give clear feeedback of interatable objects.
Succesful resolution of a puzzle often has no audio or visual feedback leaving the player confused on the next steps.

The puzzles near the end of the game become an exercise in frustration, because key elements need to be clicked in badly light enviroments and with no mouse-over interacation prompts.

The realization that some elements that seemed just secondary collectibles now are needed for the completion causes some annoying backtracking and pixel hunting.

The last puzzle is a mathemtical slogthat would have been more appropriate midway through the game, instead of pissing of the palyer one last time with tedious number fumbling.

In an age of of very rare decent puzzles game that arent all Myst-clones, this stands out a bit and for that reasons its worth playing, despite all the above mentioned issues.