A Green Mushroom

Pokémon Scarlet (and Violet by extension) was the rare Pokémon game that hooked me and kept me interested all the way through. I'm not doing a full review, but I do feel the need to call out how much this game struggles on performance.  It chugs along, has tons of bugs, and the frame rate is just brutal.  Although, none of that really detracted from my overall enjoyment.  Your results may vary. The two things that truly let this game get its hooks into me were the open world and the new quality of life feature auto battle feature.  The open world fairly quickly gave me three main story progression paths to go down and complete freedom in the order I wanted to pursue them.  The typical Gyms are here but so is a storyline about Team Star and a completely different storyline about Titan Pokémon. Given the freedom of the open world and the ability to do almost instant auto-battles for experience, I quickly threw on some podcasts and audiobooks while just r...

Marvel Snap is the best digital card game I've ever played on mobile.  In general, it's one of the best digital cards games I've played in years. Their are a few key factors here.  The two biggest of which are the speed of play (fast) and the monetization (cosmetic).  This isn't a trashy mobile pay to win game.  If you want to spend money, you can spend it on cosmetics but you can't spend it on power.  As you "upgrade" cards you're just upgrading how cool they look, you aren't upgrading how good they are against other players.  Which means this game can actually be balanced and fun for everyone. The speed of a single game is also super fast.  Most of my games last 2-5 minutes and that's just about perfect.  You only ever play six turns and then the game is over.  It's enough time to engage your brain and feel like you actually did something mentally stimulating, but short enough that it's not a big deal to lose and you never feel like y...

Gotham Knights is an interesting entry on this list.  As much as any game can be measured objectively... this one isn't great.  It feels like a solid 7 out of 10 type of game and it's hard to argue for it to be rated much higher than that. But, for me, this is one of the 7 out of 10 games that just hit right and kept me interested.  I was craving an open world game and I enjoy the Batman/Gotham setting.  This hit at the right time and was good enough to keep me coming back to play more. It's extremely rough around the edges, doesn't always feel great to play, is full of compromises and odd decisions... but I had fun messing around in it.  Honestly, this is probably higher on my list than it would have been if any other open world game hit around the same time.  The release timing on Gotham Knights was right around the time we typically get Assassin's Creed games which tend to scratch the same itch for me.  Without one of those around this year, my atte...

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was an interesting game to play around with.  I made it through the first world and a half before realizing the game wasn't what I was in the mood for.  It has a lot of interesting things going on with it, but ultimately didn't click with me. Which is interesting, because I could also see this game being the game of the year for certain people.  It's trying new and interesting things in the turn based strategy X-COM-like game space.  I loved the move away from a grid and instead having a certain radius distance you can run.  The addition of movement abilities that don't use your two "actions" each turn was super cool too.  It was consistently fun to do a slide dash through a bob-omb, pick it up, throw it at a group of enemies, watch it explode, and then realize I still had my two primary actions left to play around with that turn. In the end, it was the Rabbids and some minor annoyances that turned me away.  The game take...

Shovel Knight Dig is a game I almost didn't add here but, in the end, decided to capture some of my thoughts about it. Shovel Knight Dig is a roguelike take on the core Shovel Knight platformer gameplay.  As much as I still love the core platformer gameplay on display here, the roguelike nature of this one caused it to not land well with me.  I was hoping for some consistent meta progression that would help me make my way deeper into the game at regular intervals.  There is some meta progression but it wasn't consistent enough or interesting enough to keep me hooked. I wish I could see more of the game without feeling like I'm just grinding the same thing over and over.  I know that each run is actually unique, but it all has that typical roguelike feel of "I've basically seen this before" that quickly wore out it's welcome for me. If you are a Shovel Knight fan and a roguelike fan, you will most likely love this game.  For me, it managed to make it on thi...

Splatoon 3 is both good and disappointing at the same time.  At its core, Splatoon 3 is a solid game.  It still has lots of fun with squid kids, octolings, and fresh styles. All the fun from the past Splatoon games is represented here and there are nice quality of life features that are notable improvements as well. But, unfortunately, it doesn't actually do much new.  There's new gear, a new single player campaign, and one new (time gated) mode.  Besides that, it's basically the same game as Splatoon 2. So, although the core gameplay is fun, this one ends up fairly low on my list since it's not really doing anything new: Elden Ring Xenoblade Chronicles 3 FFXIV Endwalker Citizen Sleeper The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Horizon Forbidden West Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Pokémon Legends: Arceus Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition Cult of the Lamb Neon White Halo Infinite Vampire Survivors Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Playdate Seas...

Kaichu is a cute and lightweight game about Kaiju dating.  You take on the role of a Kaiju looking for love.  The core premise is that Kaijus date through destroying landmarks together. The gameplay quickly shows itself to be a fairly simple game about trying to guess the right answer for compatibility on your dates with other Kaiju.  It's not a complex game... but it's cute, it's cozy, and it has a lot of heart. This one was a quick hit but I had more fun with it than I thought I would.  It ends up near the bottom but... not in a bad way: Elden Ring Xenoblade Chronicles 3 FFXIV Endwalker Citizen Sleeper The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Horizon Forbidden West Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Pokémon Legends: Arceus Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition Cult of the Lamb Neon White Halo Infinite Vampire Survivors Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Playdate Season 1 Immortality Cyberpunk 2077 Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC Triangle Strategy Mari...