8. FAR: Changing Tides [7]
Quite similar to the first game, but works as a kind of mirror image companion piece. The big difference is that the parched landscape is replaced by a biblical flood, so now you're sailing, and eventually submarining, from left to right rather than rolling. Keeping the vehicle going is as absorbing as before, and the serene moments between the puzzles make for good pacing.

9. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins [5]
Not entirely awful, but alarmingly rough and unrefined. Some OK combat doesn't make up for dull level design and piss poor writing.

10. Syberia: The World Before [7]
I don't like a lot of point and click adventures, but I rather liked this one. It tells a good story across two time lines, and the puzzles aren't too obtuse.

11. Weird West [5]
It's an ambitious attempt at a indie immersive sim, but the systems don't gel and the AI keeps going wrong.

Combat gets more complex after a few hours once you get a good squad of Personas but it still ultimately is, yknow, that.

14: Gran Turismo 7 (PS5) 9/10

This game is now probably most famous for it's sneaky microtransaction stuff and always online requirement that can render it unplayable for over 24 hours at a time!  Shocking stuff for a game of this stature (shocking for any game really!  But as far as one of the most prestigious Playstation things goes it's just a terrible move).  Hopefully it all gets sorted out properly.  They know they've overstepped the boundary here.  

With that said... I really did like playing through to the credits.  A lot of the old magic is there, starting off if a cheap shitbox and working your way through the races and licences, upgrading and tinkering with your Skyline until it can carve its way through anything you test it against.

The promise of the DualSense is carried out, you could tell the moment you loaded up Astro Bot that it would make for a fucking awesome racing game controller and it's just the best.  With the haptic feedback and the triggers it's going to be a little unfulfilling going back to non PS racing games after this.

It does look a treat, I don't want to call it a problem but it's kinda a shame that dour overcast weather looks SO realistic compared to sunny weather.  Like the sunny stuff does still look good, it's just nothing compared to the drizzle.  They did do great work on the variable weather.

I liked the car nerd aesthetic which I thought was a nice change compared to the EDM energy drink stuff you mostly get in modern cutting edge racing games.  I liked that you've just got these normal looking facebook profile people talking to you about cars the same way Patrick Bateman talks about 80's pop.  No mate, I didn't know that John Ferrari invented the V14 engine to win Formula 1 '67 and I don't really care, but I'm delighted at how excited you are to share this with me.  

On the negative side.  Rally driving is not very good.  The car just loses its shit whenever you get any air.  It really feels off.  It makes up a tiny portion of the campaign.  They know it's pretty ordinary.

You get a loot box when you win.  It has like 5 different things you can win.  But you only ever win a) a tiny amount of credits that you can buy nothing with, b) an inanimate carbon rod to upgrade a car with.  1 car in particular that you probably don't even own c) an invitation to buy a premium car with an expiry date.  The cars are real expensive.  It's clearly just made up so you get FOMO and purchase some credits with your actual money.  Really embarrassing stuff all round here.

Hopefully Sony have been embarrassed enough (and no one's buying the micro transactions) that they'll love the microtransactions and always online stuff soon.  As it stands I had a great time but aren't really inclined to stick around any longer.  Will keep an eye on things and come back if they like just do a normal expansion pack in a year or so.

15: WarioWare: Get It Together! (Story Mode) (Switch) 4/10

I only played the GBA WarioWare for the first time last year and thought it was pretty good!  I forget the details exactly why.  I got pretty sick of story mode about 1/3 of the way through, and it's not a long game.

I think my problems with it were mostly the glut of characters and the lack of immediacy.

RE the characters I didn't care to remember how each of them played differently (they each have a different control scheme or gimmick).  Given you have to immediately figure out how to play the micro games I had a bit of trouble remembering who was who and how they controlled.  It seemed like an unnecessary complication.

RE the lack of immediacy, there's unskippable cut scenes and it's slow to get you back into the game when you Game Over, on top of remembering how your character plays.  I really didn't care at all about the story or the characters.  I just want a range of 5 second games thrown at me, and try to figure them out or remember them as needed.  Anything more seemed to make it worse.

Haven't looked into the other modes but imagine this game would've worked as something smaller and less gimmicky.

Hmm it probably is a little low given I gave Mario Golf Story Mode 7/10 last year!

WW as a series is probably hurt by Nintendo wanting to give each new game it's own twist?  From the little I've played of them less is more IMO.

55. Down in Bermuda - Switch (2.5hrs)

Surprisingly effective mix of ('My First') The Witness, Zack & Wiki, The Almost Gone and Hidden Folks that's recently sucked up the ignominy of a super budget price.  I already half fancied this after the original trailer and banked it for a rainy day when the price plummeted to £1.79.  The rainy day was yesterday, and despite some misgivings regarding the docked controls (d-pad nevery feels intuitive for panning the view, the way the view rotates in a wide sweep feels wrong) it was a definite goodtime.  The puzzles often involve a fairly basic chain of switches and levers and there's a hide 'n seek item quest on each stage, but nothing outstays its welcome, it all just about makes sense (although admittedly I beat the final set of puzzles by randomly rotating stuff for a while) and the credits roll just as enough's enough.  

Would definitely recommend at its occasional low sale price, but the OG £19.99 RRP is some bullshit. [7]

I had to be rescued at a certain point on the last island. The character says something about a pattern while standing on a hexagonal tile in front of clickable mushrooms on hexagonal tiles. The tile you're on flashes hexagons in an unfathomable pattern, which I assumed corresponded to the position of the tiles/order of mushrooms. Eventually my wife spotted that

Which was annoying. The final towers felt like a bit of a stretch too.

57. Kirby & the Forgotten Land - Switch (6-7hrs)

At last, a first party Switch release that feels patterned up properly.  Arriving in what feels like a finished state is, remarkably, actually remarkable considering the recent trend of 'release it in the middle of the developmental roadmap, profit, finish it later' as seen with Tennis, Arms, Golf et al.  It's almost as lovely looking as the five year old Mario Odyssey!  Granted, it noticeably runs at half as many fps and the stages are mostly much smaller, but considering a) HAL Laboratories are - one would assume - a comparatively small dev team, and b) it's a well known actual fact that the Switch is the only console to ever get less powerful with every lunar cycle due to gradually decomposing tech specs, it's a win for the eyes.  Even the way distant enemies appear to be moving in stop motion - presumably to douse the overheating engine with water - comes across as a design choice rather than a HW hoodwink.  

As a platformer it's weak, if you view platformers in the way I tend to.  Specifically: how good does it feel to jump from platform to platform?  A bit shit is the unfortunate answer, but much like Tearaway the slightly B-tier gameplay is given a massive shot in the arm by the relentless inventiveness and high quality variety from stage to stage.  Bosses aren't great either, especially the terrible final guardian, but believe it or not having sub-optimal essential components somehow feels trivial here.  It doesn't really matter that Kirby doesn't control like a dream because the stages are so well designed.  What it does do well are the abilities Kirby's able to Cappy.  The upgrade possibilities are a nice touch and the challenge zones where you earn the upgrade currency are mostly excellent. Each main level has a number of hidden Waddle Dees to find, which feels like a cross between the bot hunting in Astrobot: Rescue Mission and the Teensies tally in Rayman Legends.  Remember how Yoshi's Crafted World gave you a million optional things to do in each stage, but made most of those things boring?  Well imagine that, but with far less things and without the boredom.  This is how you do secrets.  The zone gating is extremely lenient (it's definitely a kid friendly game), but rather than pushing on with the bare minimum amount of secrets, as is my wont, we managed to (afaik) unlock everything in the town without backtracking.

It was a joy in co-op, with the decision to play in baby mode made early by Tilly, who took control of Banana Waddle Dee (actually Bandana Waddle Dee, but she didn't have her glasses on for the first sesh and the name stuck), and decided 'it's not the sort of game where it's fun to die'.  I make her absolutely right.  We died once, and it was annoying.  My advice would be to play it in Spring Breeze mode so you don't give the game's weaker elements a chance to harshen your buzz.

I haven't praised this enough really, but that does seem to be a theme these days.  It's genuinely very good.  Special mention for the ridiculous button mashing required for the penultimate boss.  I don't know if it's because we played in co-op and Tilly refused to lower herself to such base mechanics so I had to do twice as much work, but in all my years of Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment I've never had to stab a button for so long to achieve victory.  Apart from the biblical arm wrestle against my best mate in A Way Out.  I was spent.

One of Nintendo's most famous bench warmers finally gets to star in an adventure of merit.  He's been in some decent games over the years but they usually land at sixes and sevens; this is the most atypical [8] I've played for ages.  Not essential, but you'd be a fool to miss it if you enjoy playing games with smaller versions of adults.

It's the most 8 8 I've played for years! Never a 9 and if it's only a 7 the bar has been raised too high considering there are less than half a dozen better 3D platformers not starring Mario ever.

New Super Lucky's Tail next...

Post script: there's a fair amount of post-game content in Kirby. I still dislike the bosses as they often feel like the game's missing a run button when they go straight for you, but wotevs.

58. Black Bird - Switch (25mins)

Another replay, this time a shmup that I gave a [5] in 2019. I stand by the score considering its a half hour game that can be completed on your first go if you play cautiously, but it's fun. A barmy Fantasy Zone style shooter that goes full Onion Games with its oddly dark style and bizarre operatic soundtrack. I can't dislike or recommend it and I'm glad I got the urge to play it again. Would be infinitely more palatable at £3, unfortunately they want £15 for it outside of sales. A grand but monumentally overpriced curio.

Kirby!  It's a definite 8.  It's really good at being a 3d (Kirby!) game that everyone will get something out of. It's pretty polished and, unusually for a mainline Switch game, it feels finished AND unhampered by the creaking tech. It almost looks good on the OLED screen.

 Actually, whilst i'm here, I'm calling this now and saying there's no way Prime 4 (or whatever it's going to be called) is running on this hardware.

I think I gave the main game a 7, enjoyed it. The co-op stuff is a set of nine split screen stages where you have to help each other by placing basketballs on switches and whatnot. Or deliberately kicking basketballs off switches, down slopes and into water while laughing uncontrollably.

59. Streets of Rage 4 - Switch (2hrs)

Tilly wasn't allowed to play this really (the wife's decision, was the knives that did it). I tried to get her to play SOR2 instead (not officially banned), but she was complaining too much by the end of the second stage. One pleading phonecall was all it took in the end, and this became our second clear of the caravan trip. We played a chunk of it before Mrs Moot noped it but I didn't realise she's been itching to get back to it since. You can change outfits/hair colour now, so she played as Yvette Fielding and I hopped between the rest from stage to stage.

I think this is the 4th time I've had this in one of these threads. It's got to be a [10] really; it's markedly superior to the next best thing in the genre (which is probably Mother Russia Bleeds imho), and I fucking love the genre. With the dlc it's an incredible package and far, far better than I dared to hope it would be when they first announced it. And believe me, I had high hopes. A masterpiece. You wouldn't be a loony to describe it as the best Sega game of all time.

It's such good shit.  Have been mucking around with the weekly challenge again recently.  So moreish, and even after not playing for a while the muscle memory's still there.

Have to say though, maybe I'm not the biggest fan of the genre though because it's just wrecked every other side scrolling beat em up for me.  I just can't get into anything else now.

RE MK 11 agree wit the Moot review and the team has mastered tournament fighter story modes.  They're just too much fan service fun (even if by Aftermath I couldn't keep up who was a goodie or a baddie anymore).  Do a great job of giving you a look at everyone and they never drag on for too long.  Often feel an itch to replay them and Injustice.

I do like all the modern tournament fighters I've played (MK, Injustice, SFV, Tekken 7) but from now on I'm waiting til the complete editions drop.  They're just massive generous packages by the end but it can get too pricey trying to keep up as expansions drop.

PS one more Kirby 8/10

16: Kirby and the Forgotten Lands (Switch) 8/10

Lovely chaser after Elden Ring (Kinda, I'm still not quite ready to move on.  Fromsoft games seem to make me not enjoy other games for a little while afterwards and I bounced off a few old Steam games right after (admittedly they were probably shit to begin with).

Kirby is a LITTLE bit tedious for the first few levels with the so-so platforming and the slow pace.  I'm not massive on collect em up platformers and I don't like having to go back to find enough unlockables to get to the boss fights.  This only happened once though!  It opens up pretty nicely as you get used to the different powers and it throws enough gimmick sections at you to stay interesting.  The super powers are a great touch and I always get excited when they come up.  I thought it got better as it went on and was pretty sad to see it end.

I am thinking of going back for post credits hoovering, but I hardly ever do.

There's some really cool looking stuff and it does look pretty schmick for a Switch game overall.  Some great art that manages to be mostly cute and occasionally creepy without being jarring.  Good stuff!

The post credits is decent - rejigged stages (substantially, on occasion) but with more emphasis on an additional item hunt. I'm pretty sure we've found enough things to progress when we hit the end end, but there are a lot of them. The vast majority aren't well hidden though.

Edit: Kirby

Not played Wulverblade either, I’ll keep an eye out for that one.

River City Girls seemed okay, but unloveable moves in a beat em up just kill them for me. If someone can’t pop in, pick up a pad and not be stuck with a load of boring, basic attacks while I’m wrecking shit, then a significant part of the appeal is lost.