I've always been a big fan of Splatoon's singleplayer campaigns. They were never super long, but they were always incredibly well-designed and rounded out the package nicely. Octo Expansion and Side Order in particular are two of my favorite additions to any Splatoon game for their creative scenarios, tight challenge, compelling stories, and stellar aesthetics and music. So when Splatoon Raiders…
Before I can talk about Rhythm Heaven Groove, I want to talk about Rhythm Heaven Megamix, the last game in the series for the past eight years. Megamix is a compilation of minigames from prior entries (albeit with a big Fever bias), so you'd think it would be a tough act for any potential sequel to follow. However, I was actually hoping Groove would be as unlike Megamix as possible. Despite the…
A while back, I made a few posts about my thoughts on the Star Fox series. Like many fans, I am also fascinated by this series' potential and frustrated how it's never been able to fully capitalize on this. So when Nintendo announced a new Star Fox project only to reveal it's yet another remake of Star Fox 64, I was... baffled to say the least. Maybe even frustrated. And yet, after that initial…
Mina The Hollower was one of my most anticipated games of the year. I loved Shovel Knight and I especially loved Specter Of Torment, so to see Yacht Club Games go full gothic for their next big game was a cool prospect. The clear inspiration from Zelda, Castlevania, and soulslikes, all genres I love, also felt tailored specifically for me. And the reviews on Metacritic looked incredible, a 92?! It…
I've been meaning to get back to writing more longform reviews about the new games I play, but playing Yoshi & The Mysterious Book was what really clinched it. I have so many thoughts about this new Yoshi game, and I just need to let them all out. The Switch 2 has had easily Nintendo's most experimental game library since the Gamecube. A Mario Kart game with parkour and movement tech? A 3D Donkey…
So far, I think Nintendo has been mostly killing it with the Switch 2's first-party lineup, to the point where some of them have caused me to re-evaluate their Switch 1 predecessors in a harsher light. Mario Kart World is the biggest example, as it's so deep and freeform that it made 8 Deluxe feel too restrictive by comparison. But another case of this has been Donkey Kong Bananza, the spiritual…
With Rhythm Heaven Groove (hopefully) on the horizon, I finally got around to playing through all the Rhythm Heaven games, and what an absolute delight of a series this is. There are so many memorable, inventive, and wonderfully quirky minigames across the four entries we've gotten so far, and I want to talk about my absolute favorites. I decided to make two separate Top 10 lists, one dedicated to…
Ever since Hollow Knight Silksong hit the scene and knocked my socks off, I've been on a real metroidvania kick. I played Ori & The Will Of The Wisps finally and thought it was incredible, gave Death's Door a shot and thought it was excellent as well, and then I decided to try out Nine Sols which was a much riskier bet. I never really loved the parry as a move, always preferring a standard dodge,…
2025 was a crazy year for fans of kart racing games as we got three big name entries in the genre: Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing Crossworlds, and Kirby Air Riders. And as you might expect, the competition was fierce and the debate over which one is best is still raging on to this day. Since I unintentionally ended up reviewing the tracks of all three of those games, I thought I might as well wrap…
Well, I suppose I ranked the tracks for Mario Kart and Sonic Racing so I might as well come back to complete the trilogy. Kirby Air Riders has just released and I'm still kind of stunned it exists. I've gone on about how much I love the original game despite its obvious balancing issues. The sheer variety of vehicle builds, creative modes like City Trial and Top Ride, multi-tiered track design,…
Well, I just played Sonic Racing: Crossworlds and it's really, really good. While I still personally prefer Mario Kart World myself for its parkour and open world, Crossworlds is still able to carve out a unique identity for itself with its lovely drift mechanics, fast-paced arcade-y gameplay, and some very tight track design. Not every track is created equal, particularly the titular Crossworlds,…
Super Mario 64 DS is such a fascinating remake because it changes so much from the original. The controls, the visuals, the progression system, and it even tweaks many of the levels in some truly fascinating ways. While I obviously prefer 64 overall for its smoother controls, replaying 64 DS made me realize that I actually prefer some of the levels in this version. So as a sort of followup to my…
Fromsoft has always been one of my biggest gaming blindspots, as the infamously high difficulty of their Souls series always left me a bit cautious about delving into their work. But this year I decided to change that... by getting into their far more niche series Armored Core instead. I've been playing through all the PS1 and PS2 entries of Armored Core over the past few months, and came away…
UFO 50 got a Switch port! As someone who likes delving into console libraries, this was a game that always fascinated me so I'm really glad I was able to experience it. And after days and days of sifting through this massive 50-game behemoth, something I've noticed is just how different everyone's rankings are. With the sheer variety of games on offer, UFO 50 forces its players to open up about…
I've been wanting to make a track ranking for Mario Kart World ever since the game first came out, but I wanted to make sure I really knew what I was talking about first. Now that it's already been about a month since the game first released, I feel pretty confident in my ranking at the moment. I'll solely be ranking the tracks based on their VS versions, though I will mention any alternate…
I've talked a lot about the Donkey Kong Country games on this blog before, but there's one entry that I've always kinda neglected and that's DKC Returns. I always liked Returns but I was pretty sure that it was my least favorite of the five mainline games, since it didn't have the vibes of the SNES trilogy nor the polish of Tropical Freeze. It was a bit rougher around the edges in terms of its…
Sorry it's been a while since I made a post on here, but that's mostly because I've been busy playing my new Switch 2. It's been great, genuinely, I know it's a pretty big hotbed for controversy for a number of reasons, but I feel like I've really been getting my money's worth. It has some welcome improvements over the original Switch in terms of hardware feel and its performance improvements for…
My thoughts on Sonic as a series has always been a bit strange because I'm not someone who would call themselves ride-or-die for any one particular era of the series. I think the 2D Genesis games are still immensely iconic and replayable 2D momentum platformers, I love the Adventure era for its interconnected storytelling and cast along with its more free-form 3D gameplay, and I even have a real…
Star Fox Assault is my favorite Star Fox game. It's also the Star Fox game that frustrates me the most, because it comes the closest to fully realizing the series' potential. Nintendo handed the series over to Namco for Assault, and considering their adeptness at making fun dogfighting games (hell, the team behind Assault worked on Ace Combat 2), it's a pretty perfect fit. Assault's campaign is a…
In my last post, I ranked all of the galaxies in the first Super Mario Galaxy game. This time, I'm going to tackle the sequel, Super Mario Galaxy 2. If the first game was already a near endless stream of creativity, Galaxy 2 takes things up a notch with some of the most inventive back-to-back levels I've ever seen in a 3D platformer. Tons upon tons upon tons of awesome items, fun gimmicks,…
It's been a while since I reviewed a movie, and it's been even longer since I reviewed an MCU movie. But when Thunderbolts* came out to shockingly good reviews, I just knew I had to see it, and I thought I might as well give my thoughts on it. So to keep things simple, I enjoyed Thunderbolts*, I really did. It reminded me of why I liked the MCU in the first place, going back to basics with a…
It's been quite a few years since I last played the Super Mario Galaxy duology, two of my favorite games of all time for their boundlessly creative level design, joyous antigravity mechanics, stellar atmosphere and soundtrack, and incredible levels of polish and detail. And since I was going to be replaying the Galaxy games, it's time for a project that has been long overdue. I'm going to rank all…
Metal Gear Solid is a series that's known for its many iconic bosses, particularly in the initial trilogy and Rising. Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 in particular can almost feel like a boss rush at times with how much of your gameplay time is spent fighting bosses, and a lot of those encounters are really fun. So let's go ahead and rank all of the boss fights in MGS1: 10. Sniper Wolf 1 The first…
Puyo Puyo is not a series I talk about too much, but I've been rediscovering the series a bit later and wanted to make a post about my thoughts on the series. While not my favorite arcade puzzle game, Puyo Puyo is always a great time and probably stands as the best competitive arcade puzzler for how much depth it has and how fast-paced and cutthroat it can be. But even beyond the mechanics, Puyo…
Squaresoft's Brave Fencer Musashi starts with one of the hardest openings I've ever seen in a game. It's a roughly half-hour-long action sequence that introduces you to all the game's mechanics in spectacular fashion, packing in platforming, combat, puzzle-solving, a manic chase sequence down the side of a tower, and a town-destroying three-phase boss fight where you throw a giant mech 10 times…