Also available on Linux, OSX, and Windows

It's often said that heroin, nicotine, and cocaine are the most addictive things in the world.  Have no experience with those substances, I can only take recovered addicts at their word.  I do, however, carry with me a strong suspicion based on personal experience that even as addictive as those drugs are, they pale in comparison to the highly addictive nature of Civilization.  "Just one more turn, I swear" inevitably turns into 50 more turns.  "Oh, it's only 9:15," you think as you glance at the clock.  Five minutes later, it's 4 am, and you have to get ready for work in an hour.  Oops.  The only saving grace we had with Civ 6 before was that it was tied to PC meaning that one had to be at a computer in order to play or, if one had a laptop, survive having the heat of a thousand suns on one's lap as that poor laptop CPU tried desperately to keep up with everything going on.  Then, out of a void in our hearts that we never knew needed to be filled, 2K says "Hey, what if we put this on Switch?"  Thanks, figurative drug dealer, for enabling my addiction even further.

When I finally broke down and ordered Civilization VI on Switch, I was expecting it to be a lot like comparing Civilization V and Civilization Revolution - the same core Civilization gameplay but in a MUCH simplified form that works better on console.  To my surprise, that's not at all what I got.  What I got was Civilization VI.  Not slimmed down, not condensed, not kinda-sorta-but-only-barely.  It's legit Civilization VI.  The only big differences between the Switch version and the PC version (aside from the obvious visual effects absent) are the lack of the two major expansions on PC and the lack of community mod support.  Other than that, this is the complete Civilization VI package.  Even the small expansions like the Nubian and Australian civilizations are present.  The fact that they put that masterful PC game on what is frankly an underpowered tablet and got it to run beautifully is in itself an amazing feat in my book.

The game I played lasted (so far) about 700 turns since I'm the very definition of "methodical" in my Civilization games, and in all that time, I only experienced one crash.  The only two complaints I have with the game are the solid five or six minutes it takes to load a game and the tenish seconds of hiccuping that happens between turns as the system processes what the AI opponents do during their turn.  Those two things do definitely get annoying, but it's worth noting that Civilization VI isn't exactly a fast loading game on PC (unless you're rich and have an all SSD build with shit tons of RAM), and it's not at all uncommon to have some short lag between turns on PC, either.  It's worth noting that the vent on the top of the Switch DOES sound a Boeing 747 during takeoff and pumps out enough heat to melt steel beams during gameplay, but the game volume usually drowned out the fan in my experience.  Besides that, it's not like it could possibly be any louder than the Dreamcast's disc drive.

This all sounds great, right?  A no compromises port of Civilization VI on Switch - what could be better?  Well, buckle up, buttercup, 'cause it gets better.  Not only is this a dream of a port job, but it supports cross platform cloud saves.  Provided that you don't use expansions or mods unavailable on Switch, you can start a game on PC, play two or three hours, save, and as long as your 2K account is linked both on PC and on your Switch, you can download your PC save and keep playing on Switch.  "One more turn" just became an even deadlier lie to tell yourself.  It works the other way, too; if you're on a plane, let's say, and you start a game on Switch, but you're just 10 or 15 turns away from finally shutting up those damn French for good, you can save the game, boot up your PC at home, and keep playing from the comfort of your undoubtedly overpriced PC chair.  It's a feature I never knew I wanted, but dear god, is it a nice feature to have.

I know that older Civilization games had been ported to consoles during the 90s, but having only been playing Civ for the past five or six years, I was admittedly unsure of how a console port would go.  I've played Civilization V and Civilization VI on PC, and I've played Civilization Revolution and Civilization Revolution 2+ on 360 and Vita, respectively, so that's what I was expecting a console port of Civilization VI to be - stripped down and bare bones - and I suspect that other Civilization fans probably had similar concerns.  Let me assure everyone, then, that this is not the case.  Civilization VI on Switch is as full fledged and full featured a console port as possible, and absolutely no aspect of the game whatsoever has left me disappointed.  I've read that sales of Civilization VI on Switch have far exceeded 2K's projections, too, so that makes me hopeful that the Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm DLC expansions will make their to way to Switch someday, as well.   If you're a fan of disgustingly deep and addicting strategy games, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of this game on Switch.

Yoshi's Crafted World was honestly probably the Switch game currently available for which I've been the most excited leading up to launch day.  Yoshi's Woolly World is my absolute favorite first party game on Wii U, so when a follow up on Switch got announced, I was bursting at the seams (no pun intended) with excitement.  Feel Good had already proven they knew how to make a fun, approachable, and cute platformer with Woolly World, and with them at the helm for Crafted World as well, I had full confidence that this would be an instant classic.

So does Crafted World stand up to the high bar set by Woolly World?  Well, mostly.  I think Woolly World was still a much better game overall, but that's not to detract from the exceptional experience that Good Feel crafted for Switch owners.  You've got something like 50 levels and over 500 smiley flowers (basically this game's power stars) to collect.  Some of those flowers are found as collectibles throughout the levels, but every level has one that's awarded for collecting 100 coins in that level, one that's awarded for finishing the level with all 20 hit points, and one awarded for finding all 20 red coins in that level.  Each level also has a "flip side" with three flower-bearing Poochy pups to find.  If you find all of that level's Poochy pups within a set time limit, you're awarded an additional smiley flower.

The levels themselves provide a ton of variety to keep things interesting, as well.  Most levels are the standard designs you'd expect from a platformer - get to the end of the level, yay, you're the winner.  Every now and then, however, they throw in a challenge level where half of the collectible smiley flowers are based on your performance.  One, for example, has you pilot a giant Yoshi mech, and you have to rack up 9000 points - easier said than done - to get all three flowers.  One is a race in solar powered cars, so you have to carefully change lanes both to keep out of the shade and to keep ahead of your AI opponents.  One has you flying a plane from a horizontally scrolling perspective where you control the pitch of the plane.  On top of that, there are a few boss levels scattered throughout the game as you seek out the five scattered magic dream meth crystals or whatever plot device they decided to use to justify the purpose of the game.

As was the case with Woolly World's yarn style, the use of a craft theme naturally lends itself to gorgeous visuals.  I do, however, with Nintendo didn't seem to have this stubborn refusal to use adequate anti-aliasing.  Yoshi's Crafted World looks great, but it would look downright stunning if the jagged edges were just smoothed.  Despite the jagged lines, though, it's still a beautiful game with a fantastic art direction.  The music, as well, is the same high quality that most Yoshi games bring to the table.  It's not a perfect game, but it's still an exceptionally good 2D platformer and a definite must-have for any Switch owner.  It started to get a little bit tedious towards the end, but it does provide a perfect way to relax and unwind at the end of a long and frustrating workday.

Have you ever been playing Pokemon and thought to yourself, "Man, I wish these adorable little creatures that I'm forcing to fight to the death were SUPER adorable little girls I could force to fight to the death"?  If so, then you're in luck, because Moemon turns Pokemon Emerald into exactly that game.  In terms of content and Pokemon included, it's exactly the same game as Pokemon Emerald.  With the exception of Pokemon sprites, absolutely nothing is changed, but holy shit, these new sprites are impressive (and kawaii af).

All 386 Pokemon sprites have been completely replaced; every Pokemon sprite has been made into an adorable anime girl.  From my experience with the game, a good chunk seem to have had their Pokedex data removed and replaced with just "X" presumably as a placeholder that, at least by the release of the version I have downloaded, never got replaced.  Honestly, though, who actually reads the Pokedex entries?  We're all here for the  cute moe girl catching and the death battles, and in that respect, it delivers beautifully.

What this ROM hack doesn't provide, however, is a truly new Pokemon experience.  The story, region, NPCs, etc are all 100% identical to the original Pokemon Emerald from what I could tell with the ONLY alterations made being the Pokemon sprites.  To some folks, that's going to be disappointing, but to others, that might be a welcome thing.  I, personally, like my Pokemon hacks to be as new and different as possible, but I know some folks are going to want to just experience a familiar with with a twist, and Moemon provides just that.  If that return to familiarity is what you want AND you like cute 32- bit anime girls, then look no further.  If you want an all new and original Pokemon adventure, however, then I'd probably direct you towards Pokemon Vega.

Also available on Wii U

One of the ironic things about the sixth Fire Emblem game, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, is that despite the fact that the inclusion of a character from the game - the protagonist, Roy - in Super Smash Bros. Melee is a big part of what got Westerners talking about Fire Emblem, it's never received an official English translation.  Fortunately for SRPG aficionados likes me, Fire Emblem has a pretty dedicated fanbase which produced a high quality fan translation patch for the series's handheld debut. 

The first game in the Fire Emblem series to get a Western release was the seventh game, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (simply titled "Fire Emblem" in the West), but that was actually a prequel to this previous game.  In Binding Blade, the game centers around Roy, the son of the seventh game's Lord Ephiram, as he sets out to discover why the nearby neighbor of Bern has launched a war of aggression and shattered the peace that the continent had worked so hard to maintain.  Most Fire Emblem games follow a fairly similar story structure, but in typical Fire Emblem fashion, the quality of the storytelling and the absolutely fantastic character development make up for the relatively generic nature of the story itself.

From what I've read about the game's development, Intelligent Systems tried to make Binding Blade more forgiving than the previous entry in the series, the Super Famicom's Fire Emblem: Thracia 776.  That alone makes me terrified to play Thracia 776 eventually as Binding Blade already had more than its share of challenges.  The game's overall difficulty was tough but fair, but there were a few bosses and individual levels that were absolutely brutal if you didn't have a weapon that could exploit a specific weakness.  I appear not to be alone in that opinion as Blazing Blade and the 8th game in the series, Sacred Stones, both saw the overall difficulty toned down a bit.

Binding Blade had an interesting development cycle having started its life as Fire Emblem: The Maiden of Darkness on Nintendo 64 before being virtually completely scrapped and moved to Game Boy Advance with only the protagonist, Roy, and a swordmaster character, Karel.  Beyond the scrapped development of Maiden of Darkness, though, Binding Blade ended up introducing its own new spins on the series.  First and foremost was the introduction of the magic triangle.  Since the Super Famicom era, Fire Emblem games have had a weapon triangle; sword beats axe, axe beats lance, and lance beats sword.  Binding Blade expanded that mechanic to magic in a system where anima (elemental magic) beats light magic, light magic beats dark magic, and dark magic beats anima.  Binding blade wasn't technically the first game in the series to have this sort of advantage system - that would be Genealogy of the Holy War, the fourth game - but whereas Genealogy only had the dis/advantage affect accuracy, Binding Blade expanded that to have an effect on both accuracy and damage, making it much more crucial to the development of effective strategies.

All things considered, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade made about as impressive a debut on the handheld scene for the series as one could want.  The game isn't perfect as there are some minor quality of life things that I found annoying - the inability to use non-combat items like Speedwings and Hero Crests from the pre-battle prep screen, for example - but those are nit picks at best.  The only real complaint I have is that the game's balance could have used a little bit of tweaking, but at no point does it feel unbalanced to the point of being broken.  I'm not willing to say that Binding Blade is the best game in the Fire Emblem series, but it definitely is the best of the first six games that saw retail release.

Also available for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, Nintendo DS, OSX, and Windows

Call of Duty 4 was the first game in the series that feels truly modern not just in setting but in overall design.  Being one of the most popular games in the series, it's since been remastered for the current generation of consoles which is the version that I played most recently.  Before I get into the actual review, since it has nothing to do with the game itself but rather the idiots who name these games and the dudebro fuckboys playing them, let me just vent for a moment.  Everyone these days seems to assume that when I say "Modern Warfare," I mean Black Ops IIII.  Like, bitch, no.  If I meant Black Ops 4, I'd have said Black Ops 4.  There's only game that was titled "Call of Duty 4."  Don't blame me for the fact that you're too stupid to tell the difference between a title and a subtitle.  Furthermore, does no one at Activision have any understanding of the most basic Roman numerals?  "IIII" isn't a thing.  Yes, symmetry for cover art, I get it.  That doesn't make it any less stupid than saying that the number after ten is "zeroteen."  The Roman numeral for "4" is "IV," not friggin' "IIII."  Seriously guys, it's not that hard.  It's one thing if you don't know Roman numerals for some number like 5372, but 4?  Seriously?  You can't even figure that one out?  Sorry - actually,  nevermind, I'm not sorry - but shit like that pisses me off.

Okay, so here's where the unpopular opinions come into play.  I don't think Modern Warfare is the best campaign in the series, and I don't think it's even close to the best multiplayer in the series.  It's a good campaign, but it falls way short of all three Black Ops games (since the Black Ops 4, in addition to screwing up basic Roman numerals, went the way of the fuckboi and omitted the campaign entirely in favor of just-another-Fortnite-slash-PUBG-rip-off battle royale), Advanced Warfare, Infinite Warfare, Call of Duty, and Call of Duty 2.  As for the multiplayer, again, it's good, but doesn't come close to Black Ops III, Ghosts (oof, there's a really unpopular thing - saying literally anything positive about Ghosts), or WWII even with the modern remaster.  The campaign, however, is definitely the part of the game with which I have the biggest issues since most of my issues with the multiplayer are super subjective and rather vague since I don't usually waste my time on FPS multiplayer.

Okay, let's dig into my plethora of problems with the campaign.  First off, everyone knows (or should know) that the golden rule of writing is "Show, don't tell."  That's not quite applicable to writing a script for a video game, at least not in the same way.  When you're doing something as basic as establishing the setting for your game, yes, you need to show, but you also need to tell.  Don't just have a map quickly zoom in on what geographically-savvy people know is Oaxaca, Mexico and then proceed to spend the entire game just calling it "Central America" and having every character be short, overweight, wear a massive sombrero, and eat tacos throughout every mission.  That's basically what Modern Warfare does.  They may zoom in on what some folks know is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Iran in the second or two of world-map visible in the loading screens, but they never call the setting anything other than "Middle East," and every single enemy is a walking caricature of stereotypes that Americans hold about Arabs.  And it's not like this was a stylistic choice - in the other part of the game, they not only say "Hey guys, the country you're fighting in is Russia," but they sometimes specify regions of Russia.  Like, whose sales are you afraid of losing?  Do you really have that many customers in Yemen, Iran, and Oman?  I get it, we're all terrified of anger the desert boogymen (/s), but seriously, this is not acceptable when it's something as fundamental as your story's setting.  And maybe I just missed something - I was drunk through a chunk of my playthrough - but I'm still not 100% sure why the Russian ultranationalists and the people from Nonamestan were allies.  Did they just want to make the Russians and the Muslims work together for the sake of putting the two groups Americans are the most irrationally terrified of in the same game?  Regardless of the "why," Modern Warfare is a prime example of bad narrative set-up.

So now that we've established I have absolutely zero respect for the writing here, I guess I can address the actual gameplay in the campaign.  It's good.  Honestly, the gameplay in the campaign mode is more than half the reason I'm giving this game a good score at all.  For as suck as the writing was, the gameplay direction was spot on.  Most of the game is your standard FPS affair, but there's enough variety to keep anything from getting stale.  Sometimes you've got a whole squad to back you up, and you're gunning your way through a town.  Sometimes it's just you and your homie on a stealth missions DEEP behind enemy lines.  Sometimes you're trying to get to a specific point as quickly as possible.  One mission has you control the guns on an AC-130 and turn enemies on the ground into meat paste from long range.  Some missions are long whereas some are super short and serve only to show story progression.  Honestly, I have complaints with almost every aspect of the campaign, but the one aspect for which I have nothing but praise is the mission design and variety.  It's an exemplar of what a modern military shooter's design should be.

I don't know how much of an improvement the game's visuals will be for most folks, but consider that my first playthrough was on Wii at 480i over composite, and this second playthrough was at 2160p over HDMI, it scarcely even looked like the same game to me.  I never played COD4 in HD, so going from SD straight UHD was like putting on glasses for the first time.  Everything looked so crisp, clear, and photorealistic.  I'm not an audiophile, so didn't really notice a big improvement in sound, but that's just not the type of thing I'd typically notice.  Regardless, though, Modern Warfare Remastered holds up as a model template of what a remaster should be - keep the game itself as unchanged as possible while polishing every aspect of it that you can.

Call of Duty 4 - be it the original release or the remaster - is definitely not even close to the best game in the series, but it is an excellent FPS title nonetheless.  If you're not a fan of the genre, there's not a whole lot here - the writing is questionable, the multiplayer gets really stale really fast due to the repetitive nature of the genre - but the level design and mechanics of the game are really polished and well designed.  I'm on the edge here with the score I'm giving it, but I'm going to err on the side of a higher score because of how truly well designed the single player missions are.  If you're into shooters, I definitely recommend checking this one out.

Also available on Gamecube, Wii, Switch, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows

I first played Resident Evil 0 back on Gamecube, and it was actually one of my early Resident Evil experiences after the PlayStation original and Resident Evil 4 (which I played on Wii).  Zero's release at the end of 2002 was the perfect accompaniment for the remake of Resident Evil that had come out in the beginning of 2002 as it takes place immediately before the first game not far from the infamous Umbrella mansion.  It was originally a Gamecube exclusive before being ported to Wii and then remastered in HD for Microsoft's and Sony's 2000s HD systems, and while it does somewhat show its age as a 17 year old game, it still holds up as a pretty good game in 2019.

In Resident Evil Zero, a team of elite cops from Raccoon City - a sister squad to the STARS members that starred in the first game - is sent to investigate a series of cannibalistic murders in the forested mountains near Raccoon City.  They quickly discover a crashed military police vehicle and two dead MPs who were apparently transporting a dangerous murderer named Billy Cohen.  You start off playing as Rebecca, a rookie STARS medic, and are investigating a mysteriously stalled train while also searching for Cohen.  Upon realizing that there's some cataclysmic outbreak going on, Rebecca realizes that the only hope for survival is to cooperate with Billy.

The game overall feels a lot like the original Resident Evil; most of it takes place in a mansion with zombies where you have to solve ridiculous puzzles that would never exist in the real world in order to proceed.  It's really good overall, but there are a few stylistic choices that really kill it for me to some extent.  The biggest issue is the inventory.  Inventory space is extremely limited which, in and of itself, isn't a problem.  The problem is that there's no item storage like in the original game, and some of the items take two spaces.  The hookshot especially is a problem because it takes two slots, and you need it at various points through the game right up near the end, but it never tells you when you're done needing it.  Like, I get it, scary horror spoopy games use limited inventory to make it spoopier, but this is just annoying.

Having gone from playing on Gamecube to playing PlayStation 4, the visuals were quite impressive given that it was just a simple upscale.  The controls can feel a little archaic especially where the tank controls are concerned, but the game is much more playable in a modern context than 1, 2, 3, or Code Veronica are (although I still love those games).  Resident Evil 0 does leave a bit to be desired in the details, but it's still. an extremely playable game.  Whether you play it on the Gamecube, the Wii, or the PS4 or Xbox One, it's a fantastic experience.  

Square has been on a real roll of putting out some high quality retro-styled JRPGs lately.  After playing I am Setsuna and Lost Sphear, I was hyped for Octopath Traveler.  I resisted the urge to buy it at launch in my brutal struggle to make not-stupid decisions with my money, but I only held out for a couple months.  Then I sank around 100 hours into the game.  I ALMOST 100% completed the game.  I did all four chapters for all eight characters.  I got all of the best equipment.  I unlocked every job and completed every side quest.  ALMOST was I was at 100% on the game....almost....

So before I go into the one single thing that stood between me and completionist glory, I'll explain the structure of the game.  There are eight protagonists in the game, and when you start, you pick one as your "main" protag.  Who you pick doesn't really affect anything other than whose Chapter 1 you start on, and you can't remove whomever you picked from your party until you finish all eight characters' stories.  Other than that, it makes no impact on the story who you pick.  You then go from town to town, starting new characters' Chapter 1 and then continuing their story.  That's where the game's first shortcoming appears - the game is laid out to have eight separate stories that intersect, but those intersections are loose and sparse at best until you get to the very end.  When you finished each character's Chapter 4, you start to see common strands linking them, but they don't really converge at all until you get to the post-game dungeon (after a solid 15 or 20 minutes of unskippable credits.  Then you find out how they've all been connected all along, and that part is really cool, but they feel completely unrelated throughout the first 90% of the game.  Why are these people randomly traveling together and helping each other?  There's no interaction between the characters aside from unvoice "travel banter" that pops up infrequently and never contains any meaningful or significant dialogue.  It all feels like a gigantic missed opportunity.

The one part of the game I didn't complete is the post-game dungeon.  I finished almost all of it.  There's a boss rush with eight boss rematches and then a two-phase fight with the true final boss.  I got about the final boss's second phase down to about half health before I got rekt.  After six tries and never making it past that point, I said screw it and gave up.  It's post-game, the credit rolled.  I count that as beat.  What makes that post-game boss so damn frustrating is that he spawns souls that lock all of his weaknesses to keep you from breaking his defenses and stunning him in addition to making him completely invulnerable to any damage whatsoever.  The only way to unlock his weaknesses and deal damage is to kill all of the minion souls.  What makes it worse is that all but one of the souls' weaknesses are always locked, and the boss will respawn a soul within a turn or two, so you have one or two turns to kill all of the souls, stun the boss, and dish out as much damage as possible before the boss recovers and spawns more souls, starting the whole process over again.  The boss rush isn't hard, but it's extremely time consuming.  The boss's first phase, however, is tough, and the second phase is downright brutal, and the ridiculous invulnerability ends up making the difficulty spike from "stay on your toes, but you'll be alright" to "wtf balls to the wall" hard, and difficulty spikes like that are - in my opinion - a sign of a poorly made game and kill the fun for me.  So screw it, I got close.  As one of my college professors always said, good enough for government work.

Octopath Traveler's biggest problem is that it just falls short of its potential.  It's not a bad game; it's just a disappointing game.  The characters are all pretty interesting.  Olberic is a noble knight setting out to find the truth about a painful betrayal.  Therion is a master thief on a quest to redeem himself from a shame brought on him by his own pride.  Tressa is a young merchant traveling the world to see what their is to see and gain experience from her journey.  Ophelia is a cleric on a religious pilgrimage across the continent.  Alfyn is a wandering apothecary who just wants to help those in need.  Cyrus is a brilliant scholar seeking out an ancient and taboo tome that vanished from his university's archives mysteriously 15 years prior.  H'aanit is a huntress on a quest to find and rescue her master.  Primrose - Octopath waifu #1 - is on a quest to kill the trio of assassins who murdered her father and brought to ruin her family's once powerful noble house.  Had these stories been written to intersect before the very end of the game, it would have been a fascinating experience.  Instead it ends up feeling like eight extremely short, separate RPGs haphazardly pasted together.  It's still a fun experience with a beautiful world - seriously, the background's visuals here are top notch - but it could have been so much better with a little more TLC in the writing department.

Octopath Traveler is a bit of a mixed bag for me.  On the one hand, the gameplay is a lot of fun, and it feels a bit like Bravely Default.  The multiple protagonists give it a fairly unique feel, but the writing connecting those characters' stories just doesn't feel cohesive enough to live up to its potential.  The difficulty level also spikes from time to time especially if you're going for the "true" ending.  You've got eight characters in a party with a maximum of four characters, and the inactive characters don't gain any experience.  That necessitates a certain degree of grinding which is definitely NOT a welcome feature to a JRPG in 2018 or 2019 for me.  Octopath Traveler is definitely a game worth owning and playing for Switch enthusiasts, but as a JRPG, it's kind of run-of-the-mill and not particularly outstanding in any area aside from "missed potential."  It's good, but it's definitely not great.

Also available on Xbox One and Windows

Fallout 76 is a divisive game to say the least.  In a time when compelling single player games with deep lore and world building are increasingly scarce, Bethesda has long been a beacon of light in a dark cavern of multiplayer garbage with its Elder Scrolls and Fallout series.  Elder Scrolls Online was sort of to be expected because it's basically just Bethesda's version of World of Warcraft, but Fallout 76 was a game that could easily have been amazing or disastrous depending on execution.  It's the first online Fallout game, and that's a hard thing to get right; you don't want a straight up empty world, but it's not very in keeping with Fallout if there are thousands of people in one settlement.  Unfortunately on the spectrum between success and disaster, Fallout 76 falls a bit right of center.

Fallout 76 manages to strike a pretty good balance with the world population.  There are something like a dozen and half max per world which, while still leaving the world feel pretty desolate and empty, keeps running into other players from being a rare occurrence even if it's not exactly common.  The post-nuclear world of West Virginia is also extremely well done and possibly one of the best and most interesting worlds to appear in a Fallout game yet.  Unfortunately that's about all that Fallout 76 gets right.  The rest of the game more or less varies between "disappointing" and "what the hell, dude?"

Let's start with the story.  There isn't much.  The overarching "main" quest line involves following in the footsteps of Vault 76's overseer as she tries to evaluate the damage Appalachia suffered in China's nuclear barrage and to secure the nuclear weapons still unlaunched in the region.  These quests are basically just a scavenger hunt; it's just going from place to place and stumbling upon the supply boxes and holotapes she left behind.  There are four "categories" of quests in Fallout 76 - "Main" quests which include the overseer quests and a handful of other major lore-establishing quests, "Side" quests which shed life on what happened in West Virginia in the 25 years between the falling of the bombs and the day that Vault 76 opened, "Daily" quests which are relatively short and simple quests that can be repeated every day, and "Event" quests which are tied to specific regions like restoring a power plant or repairing a food processing facility.

Because Fallout 76 is an online game, Bethesda wanted to encourage interaction between players.  To achieve this, they decided not to include any human NPCs whatsoever.  Anyone you encounter is either a player character, a robot, or a mutated horror that's trying to kill you.  On the one hand, I can somewhat understand it.  It's only been a couple decades since the bombs fell, so most folks are either dead or ghouls.  On the other hand, we know from holotapes and notes found during side quests that there WERE people who survived the bombs and were alive fairly recently (since you can find mostly undecomposed bodies around).  Not only that, but we know that that there were people long after the bombs because we've all played the older games (shame on you if you haven't), so when you really start to think about it, it's just bizarre that the ONLY living people are suddenly vault dwellers when there had been survivors not long before the vault opened.

Let's turn now to the mechanics and gameplay.  Can someone please explain to me why the hell a game that came out four months ago is built on an engine that's old enough to have a Bachelor's degree?  Oh, sure, it's gone through "revisions" and "major updates," but at the end of the day, Bethesda is still using Gamebryo, and that engine has been around since 1997.  You should not release a full retail price game that's built with an engine that's old enough to drink in the United States.  It shows, too, that they're using an ancient engine and that Bethesda still hasn't learned what the phrase "quality assurance" means.  When the game launched, it was a buggy mess.  Some quests couldn't be completed because you couldn't interact with certain objects, items were unobtainable because the model would spawn but without any actual hit box or item linked to the model, perks were broken, enemies would randomly regenerate, achievements didn't always trigger....it was atrocious.  I was a hardcore apologist at the time, too.  "Oh, it's not THAT bad.  No worse than their other games!"  No, it was worse than their other games. 

Lastly, I need to vent about the carry limit.  I understand that for balance purposes as well as server stress purposes, you need to limit how much weight a player can carry in their inventory.  However if food has weight, bobby pins have weight, ammo has weight, fully broken down resources have weight, that adds up FAST.  But that's fine because you can put it in your stash, right?  Well, maybe.  Most players have, I'd say, about 200 carry weight on average.  The stash can hold 600 (it could only hold 400 at launch).  That fills up FAST especially when some of the powerful weapons that you probably save for Scorchbeasts and Mirelurk Queens weight like 30 or 40.  I understand that server stability - or stability with anything really - isn't Bethesda's strong suit, but the whole game is pretty much an exercise in being ALMOST overencumbered.

Fallout 76 is a massive exercise in missed opportunity and botched efforts.  For the plethora of complaints I addressed above plus the fact that entire factions' traders are limited to 200 caps per day (not individual trader robots) which I didn't even mention, Fallout 76 is a depressingly disappointing game that highlights what happens proper time for bug testing and bug fixing isn't allowed.  Now to be fair, I have still had a lot of fun with this game, and I've had some great experience with impromptu groups.  The base building has been DRAMATICALLY improved from Fallout 4, and the diversity in the locations in the game keep your adventure for looking the same constantly.  Unfortunately, despite the fact that it is a lot of fun to play if you manage to avoid the major bugs (or are very patient with them), it's just not a very well made game when you get down to the details and stability.  That's a shame, too, because this could have been an absolutely incredible game.  As the president of the United States would say, SAD.

Earth Defense Force is my guiltiest of testosterone pleasures.  The whole series from the earliest game on PS2 to this most recent one on PS4 are objectively mediocre games, and they were originally designed to be budget titles.  But DAMN, is it ever fun to massacre entire swarms of 50 foot tall insects with huge rocket launchers.  It's like what would happen if SyFy ever hired me to make one of their crappy made-for-TV monster movies.  It's truly a thing of beauty.

The basic story in EDF - all of them, pretty much - is that giant insects appear and start destroying cities, marking the beginning of an alien invasion.  Then you, as a proud soldier of the Earth Defense Force, must bravely charge into battle with your weapon of choice, be it a sniper rifle, rocket launcher, shotgun, whatever, and use the blessing of unlimited ammo to massacre the invaders and keep those aliens out of our home!  WE'RE GONNA BUILD A GREAT, GREAT SPACE WALL, AND WE'RE GONNA MAKE THE ALIENS PAY FOR IT!  WITH BLOOD!  Literally nothing about this game takes itself seriously, and that's honestly its biggest strength.  It's absurdly ridiculous, and it embraces that whole heartedly from the ludicrous concept to the over the top voice acting.

Unfortunately for us Westerners, EDF5 is the first game in the series not to be released physically in North America since the series first debuted here.  You can get is on PSN for the normal $60, but if you want it physical, you've gotta import it.  Fortunately there's an Asia English version available, and at least when I pre-ordered it from Play-Asia back in November, it actually ended up being about $7 or $8 cheaper (once you factor in tax) even with the shipping.  Not sure why since I usually pay a premium for a physical import vs digital, but I'm not complaining.  Hell, I'd have paid an extra $20 to have it physical; Earth Defense Force is one of my obsessive-lunatic series alongside Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, and Army Men.

Earth Defense Force 5 is a really stupid game.  It's the same kind of stupid as when my friends and I duct taped a lawn chair to a skateboard, tied a rope to the back of a 4 wheeler and tied a handle to the other end, and had the 4 wheeler pull us like dry land redneck wakeboarding.  What I mean by that is that it's objectively stupid, but it's also objectively freaking amazing.  If you're into that kind of stupid, there are few games that will give you as good a time as Earth Defense Force, and this latest entry in the series on the PlayStation 4 performs better than any of its predecessors with the series' staple frame rate drops pretty much limited to heavy action scenes, and I didn't have the game outright crash on me a single time.  It looks great (given what series it is ), and it controls super well, too.  All in all, I don't have any complaints.  Normal people would probably have very few complaints.  With 110 levels, 5 difficulties, and multiplayer, too, there's a TON of content here to experience.

I love Gundam.  I loved the Encounters in Space compilation movie.  I've loved every Gundam game I've play (except New Gundam Breaker; that game was trash).  This game, however, is just...not good.  I tried to like it.  I really did.  There's even some potential for a good game here.  Unfortunately, it's just not that much fun, and they find a way to take an awesome story and make it super boring.

The game basically follows the last third of the original Mobile Suit Gundam storyline with the Federation's push to take Solomon and A Boa Qu to end the One Year War, but it doesn't do a very good job of telling that part of the story in any interesting way.  That in itself was a bit of a shock to me considering that, with the exception of maybe Operation British and the Battle of Odessa, the endgame of Mobile Suit Gundam was the most exciting part of the series.  Maybe it would be more interesting to someone who hasn't seen Gundam, but since I've actually seen these battles and whatnot, it just felt like a bad imitation of something incredible.

The gameplay is a really awkward 3D space combat set-up.  It feels, in a lot of ways, like they had a solid plan for what they wanted to do, but then Bandai was like "Hey, by the way, you have half an hour to finish the game before we start pressing discs," and it got rushed.  The whole control scheme just feels a bit unrefined to me.  The lock-on controls feel cumbersome, movement feels rather sluggish, and as for weapons, your vulcan is useless whereas the beam rifle is basically a noob-tube.  The melee attack feels more like a short ranged attack because to a certain extent, your mobile suit will just rocket towards the enemy even if they're a fair distance away (in the context of melee), but it's hard to tell exactly how far is too far.  The entire control scheme just feels extremely rushed to me.

Visually, the game looks pretty good for the most part.  The mobile suits themselves lacked some detail that I think could have been a big boon for the game, but overall, it's a good looking game given how abysmal the PS2's video quality tends to be (at least in my opinion).  The sound design is fine, but it would have benefited a lot from the inclusion of more music, sound effects, and voice clips from the show.  It certainly would have made it feel a lot more "Gundam."

Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space is okay I guess, but it just does not hold up well against either other Gundam games that I've played or the compilation film on which it's based.  The controls feel rushed and unpolished, and while the visuals are pretty nice, that doesn't make up for the disappointing gameplay and lackluster storytelling.  If you find this for $5 or less, then sure, it's worth it for a Gundam fan, but honestly, I really just can't recommend this one.  It was mostly just boring to me.

Also available on PlayStation 4

I was a HUGE fan of Persona 5 when it hit the PS4 a while back, and I was a HUGE fan of Persona 4: Dancing All Night when I finally joined the #VitaMasterRace.  While I enjoyed it, however, I found myself a slightly disappointed with Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight when it hit the Vita alongside Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight.  It was good, for sure, but it felt underwhelming next to Dancing All Night.  How does Dancing in Starlight stack up?

Fortunately for me, while it doesn't quite stand up as Dancing All Night's equal, Dancing in Starlight left me feeling much more satisfied than Dancing in Moonlight did.  I largely attribute that to the fact that Persona 5 had a much better soundtrack than Person 3 in my opinion, but truthfully, it's probably also partly because I knew what I could reasonably expect going in.  The relatively minimal content compared to Dancing All Night, rendering it a fairly standard rhythm game just with Persona music, caught me off guard with Dancing in Moonlight.  I knew to expect that going into this game, though, so there was less of a risk of disappointment.

As far as actual gameplay goes, it's exactly what you'd expect - standard Vita rhythm game affair.  You use the Triangle, Circle, X, Up, Right (or is it Left?  I forget), and Down buttons along with and analogue stick (or the touch screen, that works for the scratch as well) to match prompts in time with the song.  The responsiveness is great, the tracklist is fantastic, and it's overall a great time for fans of rhythm games.  They don't really do much to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, but it's definitely a fun game and a must play for Vita (or PS4) gamers who enjoy rhythm games.

Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight doesn't really do much to set itself apart from the average rhythm game aside from the use of Persona 5's FANTASTIC soundtrack, but it really doesn't have to.  It may be a largely standard rhythm game in design, but the execution is absolutely brilliant.  I can't speak for how different or similar the PS4 version is, but the Vita version is fantastic and a definite must play.

Mega Man 6 was the Blue Bomber's last hurrah on Nintendo's 8-bit powerhouse.  When this game released in 1993, the 16-bit Super Nintendo was already on store shelves.  Capcom, owing a huge amount of their success to the NES, insisted on giving their Mega Man franchise a glorious swan song.

In most regards, Mega Man 6 is just more of Mega Man 5.  The visuals, while no different stylistically than the previous five games, are bright and colorful throughout with some fantastic boss sprites.  The music is superb, keeping up the series's unbroken record of awesome soundtracks.  The controls and platforming feel tight, response, and polished nearly to perfection.  There's one thing that sets it above Mega Man 5 for me, however, and that's the Rush Adapters.  Mega Man basically fuses with his dog to get a couple of different armors that give some cool new abilities like a jet pack or an extra strong punch.​

There was almost a second addition that set Mega Man 6 above Mega Man 5, but unfortunately, poor execution ruins it for me.  They implemented some alternating paths in a few levels, but not only to the paths feel rather pointless - they branch out in the middle before coming together at the end rather than having alternate level endings like Mario 3 - but they feel like a bit of an afterthought with their implementation.  Only two of the robot masters' levels have alternate paths whereas something like half of the castle's levels do.  It's not that they're bad, per se, but they feel like a last minute addition that could have been so much better if a little more time and thought had been put into them.

Mega Man 6 is an example of what an 8-bit action platformer should be, and as far as I'm concerned, it's right up there tied with Mega Man 5 for "Best 8-bit Mega Man Game."  Overall, it's more of the same from Mega Man 5 with a couple of things that make it better and a couple of things that are slight detriments.  Still, though, if you had to choose one of the six NES Mega Man games to play for the rest of your life, I'd definitely suggestion going with Mega Man 6.

Also available on Xbox One and Windows

Just Cause 2 was an amazing slaughterfest, but it suffered from the hardware limitations of the PlayStation 3.  Just Cause 3 took everything great about Just Cause 2, expanded it, and then used the extra horsepower of the PlayStation 4 to fix the performance drops.  I've still got my gripes here and there with it, but hot damn, it's a world of improvement of its predecessor.

Like the previous game, you play as Rico Rodriguez, a "dictator removal specialist" as the game calls him.  Rico makes his return to his home island of Medici - a bizarre mix of Italian and Spanish influence as far as I can tell - which has been under the grip of a tyrannical dictator since a coup usurped power from the legitimate president.  From there, you help the rebellion in their revolutionary war against the despot, murdering and exploding your way across the island from town to town and military base to military base.

Honestly, the missions don't take up that much time; you could blow through the main story missions in 12 hours, probably.  What kept me occupied for a week was the obsessive compulsion to liberate every town and conquer every military base, and that will keep you busy for 50+ hours, I reckon.  It's so satisfying, though, to steal a bomber and just carpet bomb an enemy base, laughing in malicious glee as the destruction notifications pop up all over the screen.

Truthfully, I only have three big complaints with the game, and they're all fairly minor, all things considered.  First, the steering sucks on two wheeled vehicles.  Cars, tanks, jeeps, etc?  They're totally fine.  Motorcycles?  It's like riding a wild bull that's been violated with a cactus.  Second, the controls when piloting an airplane are REALLY finicky and tough to work proficiently.  Helicopters are fine, and I eventually got a passable ability to pilot planes, but it never felt comfortable.  I understand that controls in a 3D space can be difficult to make both adequately responsive and simple to pick up, but it felt like more of an obstacle than it needed to be.  My third and final gripe with the game is just how relatively few of the buildings were destructible.  In a game that uses "blow shit up" as its major selling point, I can't help but feel like I should be able to level entire cities if I wanted to and had enough explosives.  Instead, only certain guard towers and metal structures can be destroyed.  Everything else is bizarrely indestructible no matter what obscene amount of ordinance you throw at it.

Just Cause 3 is, in a lot of ways, like Grand Theft Auto...except with more explosions, fewer hookers, more government toppling and nation building, and less gang warfare.  If you enjoy murdering brutal autocrats and leaving a wake of corpses and wreckage behind you, this is absolutely the game for you.  If you enjoy stories about political machinations, then this may well be the game for you.  If you enjoy games about friendship, building up peaceful towns, and improving a settlement, this is definitely not the game for you.

​Also available on PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Android, and Windows

Mega Man 5 keeps the smooth controls and solid gameplay of Mega Man 3 and Mega Man 4, but it also, thankfully, addresses the rather boring selection of robot masters that left me a little disappointed ​with Mega Man 4.  Mega Man 5's cast of boss robots, while not especially crazy or outlandishly creative in their designs (with a couple of exceptions), are interesting and well done enough to keep me entertained and keep boredom and monotony at bay.

The latter five of the 8-bit Mega Man games didn't stray too far from the core concept established in the original game, but little bits here and there were added to keep things interesting, and Mega Man 5 is no exception.  The level designs are generally the among the best that the series has to offer although there are some bland spots here and there.  The robot masters are all really well designed, but there are two specifically stand out to me as especially fantastic and, in my opinion, stand out as the best robot masters of the series to this point - Napalm Man and Crystal Man.  Their character sprites and level designs are both absolutely fantastic, and the weapons they drop after you beat them are among my favorite of the series.  Those two bosses and their levels show how much creative talent Capcom had and how much potential the NES color pallet had when properly utilized.

One of the most immediately noticeable changes in Mega Man 5 that most fans might take issue with but that I, personally, loved was that the difficulty level in Mega Man 5 was markedly lower than previous games.  As one who sucks at video games despite loving them, this was a welcome change for me.  The music also really stands out here even in the context of the 8-bit Mega Man games.  There's not a single bad track in the game's soundtrack, and if you've got some good speakers connected to your TV, you're in for a great time.

Mega Man 5 takes the series to new heights and fixes all of my complaints with the somewhat bland robot masters in Mega Man 4.  The visuals are bright and colorful, and the sprites seem to pop off the screen.  The music is top notch, and the difficulty curve make this an especially approachable Mega Man game.  I still have a few gripes - a couple of the bosses were a little TOO easy in my opinion (looking at you, Star Man), but that's a very minor gripe in an otherwise fabulous game.

Dr. Discord's Conquest is a My Little Pony themed fan hack of Mega Man 3 which I reviewed yesterday.  Truthfully, there's really nothing of interest here to anyone other than retro gaming bronies - a niche market if there ever were one - but for those of us who DO happen to be both a brony and a retro gamer, this is a pretty neat hack.  It's far from perfect, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't thoroughly enjoy going through Mega Man levels as Twilight Sparkle blasting things with my unicorn magic.

As far as gameplay goes, the game is exactly what you would expect from a Mega Man 3 hack; you run and jump your way through a platforming level while blasting every enemy in your path until you reach a boss you have to destroy.  Then you get a special power that can help you defeat other bosses.  The end boss, obviously, is Discord, but the stage bosses (standing in for the robot masters) are Celestia, Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Trixie, Rarity, and Luna; and the character portraits for each on the level select screen are actually really well done.  The music includes some decent 8-bit renditions of MLP songs, but it's not quite as impressive as the MLP music in Pony Quest.

 Being a hack of Mega Man 3, the game obviously plays amazingly, but the real star of the show as far as I'm concerned is the attention to detail that went into this hack.  The visuals, both enemy sprites and environments, have been totally redone to reflect the My Little Pony theme.  It's a bit weird seeing Twilight walk exclusively on her hind legs, yeah, but the sprite itself looks good.  Even Derpy makes an appearance as a bubble-chucking enemy even despite not being one of the boss ponies.  While just a random fan project, it's obvious that this hack was a labor of love with the amount of care that was put into it.

Dr. Discord's Conquest may be "just" a Mega Man 3 hack, but it's a hell of a Mega Man 3 hack that had a lot of effort put into it.  From the presentation to the quality of the sprites to the music to the level design, nothing was half-assed in this hack.  It's a little awkward to see Twilight spend the whole game on her back legs, but that's more than made up for by the fact that you spend an entire game blasting enemies in hours of gameplay reminiscent of the changeling swarm scene during the season two finale.  There's really not much point in playing this if you're not a fan of My Little Pony or a FERVENT Mega Man fanatic who plays every halfway decent ROM hack, but if you are a fan of MLP and classic Mega Man, then I absolutely recommend checking out this hack.  It's fantastic.

I spent a good ten minutes trying to think of some halfway decent intro for this review, but after reviewing four Mega Man games in a row (excluding the MLP fan hack of Mega Man 3 that I'll be reviewing soon...or five if you count that one), I got nothing.  The NES games all play so similarly that an intro seems rather pointless.  Continuing my admittedly excessive critique of the box art, though, this is the best looking Mega Man of the four.  He still looks like an evil ventriloquist's dummy, but it's the most normal looking Mega Man we've gotten so far.  The gameplay maintains the high standards set by Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3, but as for overall game design...it leaves some to be desired.

In terms of game mechanics and control, Mega Man 4 is fantastic.  In terms of visuals and music, Mega Man 4 is great.  In terms of enemy and robot master design, Mega Man 4 is a bizarre step down in quality from its predecessors.  To the game's credit, Capcom did give each level an obstacle that's unique to that level, but when the boss at the end of that level feels lackluster and rather uninspired, it doesn't really break even.  It feels a lot like some of the Pokemon in Black/White or X/Y like friggin' "Roggenrolla" or literally an ice cream cone.  Like the inspiration just wasn't there this go around.

Mega Man 4 also replaces Dr. Wily (at least initially) as the antagonist and replaces him with some lame Soviet Ruskie named Dr. Cossack who just happens to build robots that are just uninspired rip-offs of Dr. Wily's minions.  That's not to say that Cossack ruins the game or anything, but it does seem like an unusual shift.  The slide returns from Mega Man 3 along with the addition of a charged shot that does additional damage.  That's balanced, however, with what feels like dramatically increased enemy  health.  That might be all in my head, but it felt like the enemies were a lot tougher, at times in excess of the added damage of the charge shot.

Mega Man 4 is definitely a step down in terms of overall design from the high standards of 2 and 3, but that's certainly not to say that it's a bad game by any stretch of the imagination.  The robot masters may feel a little uninspired this go around, but the game design and mechanics overall are still rock solid, the visuals are still fantastic, the music still phenomenal, and the platforming is still superb.  It's not as satisfying overall as Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 3 in my opinion, but it's still a damn good Mega Man experience.

Practice makes perfect, and by 1990, Capcom had released their third Mega Man game, and following true with the old adage, it builds upon the foundation of the two previous games and surpasses both.  The North American box part is similarly the best of the first three games; it looks weird, but at least this time it looks like an evil ventriloquist doll Mega Man rather than a middle age super hero well past his prime running around with a laser pistol. 

Mega Man 3, in my opinion, is the pinnacle of the 8-bit Mega Man games.  As Mega Man 2 did with the original game, Mega Man 3 capitalizes on what made the second game exceptional and made it better.  Levels are exceptionally well designed, the boss weaknesses and resistances are excellently balanced, levels are generally tough but fair, and the inclusion of the slide and Rush (best doggo roboi) make Mega Man 3 a truly spectacular game that stands out not only among Mega Man games but among NES games in general.

In terms of performance, the 8-bit Mega Man games generally have a bit of an issue with slowdown, and while Mega Man 3 is not exception, it seemed less severe and less of an impact on gameplay in this game than in the previous two.  Couple that with the fact that the visuals are bright and detailed - especially with the robot masters - and it's clear that Capcom's team had really gotten comfortable with the NES and how to program for it by this point.  As is usually the case with the Mega Man series, the music is exceptional and maintains the high musical standards set by the previous two entries in the series.

If you played Mega Man 2 and were impressed (and let's be honest, if you weren't, there's something wrong with you), then you'll be blown away by Mega Man 3.  As Mega Man 2 did with Mega Man, Mega Man 3 takes everything that was great about Mega Man 2 and makes it even better.  This definitely does stand out as one of the premier action platformers on the Nintendo Entertainment System and highlights just why Capcom was a juggernaut of game design back before the post-Resident Evil 4 days when they abruptly forgot how to make games.  As was the case with Mega Man and Mega Man 2, this game is readily available on just about every console under the sun in one collection or another, so there's no excuse to miss out on this game.  It's not perfect - the slowdown does still get annoying, and it's not totally devoid of the occasional difficulty spike and cheap kill - but it's truly fantastic in spite of those occasional flaws.

​Also available on Genesis, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Android, and Windows

A year after the release of the first Mega Man (two years for North America), Capcom saw fit to bring the Blue Bomber back for another platforming pew-pew party on the NES.  The box art for the North American release still looks more like a Chinese knock-off Power Ranger than Mega Man, but at least it's not as ugly and downright creepy as the cover of the first game was.

Everything about Mega Man 2 is an improvement over its predecessor.  The robot masters feel generally better designed, and there's more of an open ended weakness system with them.  Whereas in the first game, each robot master had one specific weakness, your options are a bit more varied in the second game.  The basic mega blaster will usually take care of them easily enough in a pinch, but they usually have a couple of weaknesses rather than just one, and they have specific resistances this time, too.  In one instance, a certain boss is actually healed by a specific weapon, and in another, a boss is weak against his own weapon.  It's clear that more time and energy went into the weaknesses and strategy in the sequel which makes sense given that the first game actually didn't perform particularly well commercially.

Another area in which Mega Man 2 excels over its predecessor (in part because of the aforementioned attention given to the boss weaknesses and strategy) is the difficulty.  In the original Japanese release, your only option was "balls hard," but when it got brought over to North American and Europe, they added in a "hard but not emasculating" difficulty alongside the "balls hard" difficulty of the Japanese release.  You can also get three special items - creatively called Item-1, Item-2, and Item-3 - in addition to the robot masters' weapons that can make traversing levels MUUUUUCH easier (and I'm pretty sure are required in a few areas) which add to the problem solving that the game requires.  The difficulty still doesn't feel as finely tuned to me as some of the later games, but it's an astronomical improvement over the original.

Mega Man 2 is an entirely different breed of game from the original.  I seem to be in the minority in that most folks seem to think that Mega Man 2 is the best of the six NES games, but even if I don't necessarily think it's THE best, it's definitely in the top three of the six.  The difficulty is much more approachable, the robot masters have some legitimate strategy elements to them with regards to weaknesses, the platforming takes a bit more thought and planning, and the overall game mechanics just feel more refined and polished.  This is basically everything that a sequel should be; fix what's wrong with the previous game and expand what was right.

Also available on Genesis, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Android, and Windows

Mega Man is for Capcom what Mario is for Nintendo, what Sonic is for Sega, and what a blinking red ring is for Microsoft.  He's their most recognizable and iconic image, and while that image is more than a little disturbing on the box art for the series' first release on NES in North America, the game itself holds up surprisingly well today.  It's not without its bullshit to be sure, but it's still a good time for those who enjoy action platformers.

Mega Man is, at its core, an action platformer.  This first game in the series is an extremely unbalanced action platformer, but the gameplay itself is simple - make your way across a level, shoot the bad guys, avoid the traps, and then beat the boss.  Each boss has a special weapon that it drops upon being defeated, and each boss has a specific boss weapon to which it's weak.  The levels can be played in any order (except for the last area), but given that the bosses are WAY easier if you exploit those weaknesses, there is a "best" order in which to play the game's levels.

The biggest issue I had with Mega Man was the balance.  Some levels would seem brutally difficult only to be capped with a total pushover boss.  Other levels would be a breeze but end with a boss that left me wanting to snap my controller.  There would be abrupt difficulty spikes in the levels followed by a return to a more normal difficulty.  Maybe I just need to git gud (I definitely do), but it seemed like the balance and enemy placements could have used just a little more tweaking.  From what I've read and heard from other fans, though, it seems like the first game is pretty widely known for being rough around the edges with regards to balance, a mistake that later entries don't make.

Mega Man definitely isn't a perfect game, but it definitely is a good game, and the series that it spawned is truly fantastic (for the most part).  The difficulty balance could use a bit of work as parts of the game are down right inhumane, but all in all, it's a solid action platformer.  The original NES cartridge is somewhat valuable (though not nearly as much so as the latter releases), but it's readily available on just about every system under the sun in one form or another given how many collections it's been included with, and I absolutely recommend playing this one however you can.

Also available on X1, PC-8801, PC-9801, FM-7, MSX2, X68000, Master System, TurboGrafx-CD, Saturn, PlayStation 2, DS, PlayStation Portable, iOS, Android, AppleIIGS, MS-DOS, and Windows

Over the past couple years, I've fairly rapidly become something of a major fan of the Ys series.  With my transition to Everdrives for my old cartridge consoles and the addition of a RetroPie to my HD set-up, I've decided that I'm going to play through every different version of the original Ys game (and probably Ys II and III).  Joining the Master System and TurboGrafx-CD ports on my "Versions of Ys Beaten" list now comes the port to the Famicom which, thankfully, got a fan translation.

Given that my previous experiences with the original Ys was on the TurboGrafx-16 (the greatest of all 16-bit consoles) and the Master System, a 8-bit system with superior specs to the NES, I went into this playthrough with tempered expectations.  I knew it was unlikely to be as visually impressive as the Master System version, and given that I played the Master System version with the FM Sound enabled, I knew this Famicom port wouldn't hold a candle to the Master System version.  I was pleasantly surprised, though.  I mean, it definitely met my expectations in general, but it wasn't as severe a step down as I had feared.

Visually, the game looks a lot like Hydlide.  It looks like an older NES game with less detailed sprites, but the only area where I felt that was at all to the game's detriment was enemy sprites.  The sprites aren't bad, but they leave some....interesting interpretations.  There are blue gummy bears, self-immolating porcupines, random amorphous grey blobs that look suspiciously like the eggs in a high school cafeteria, etc.  The music is honestly the biggest let down.  I'm certain that part of my disappointment is because I was spoiled first by FM sound on the Master System and then the CD quality audio on the TurboGrafx, but the music in this game just felt mediocre.  It was definitely a solid 8-bit rendition of the music from other versions of Ys, but it felt like playing a classical flute solo on a recorder.  I mean, yeah, it works, I guess, but it's...just disappointing.

The combat - the core of the experience - is thankfully 100% Ys.  It's the bump combat we all know and love (and if you don't love it, you're wrong).  The same strategy still applies; his them from the side, back, or the edge if you have to hit them head on, and you're fine, but if you hit them dead on, you're going to end up taking a ton of damage.  It's a fairly unconventional system for those who haven't played a version of Ys before, but I absolutely love it, and it's iconic Ys.  By no means do all Ys games use this system (I'm not even sure that most do although I've not played past IV, so I can't speak to that), but from my experience, when you mention Ys, what first comes to mind for most people who've played it is the bump combat, and in that respect, the NES port of Ys I is true to form.

Ys I for NES is definitely not the best version of the game to play, but if all you've got is a Famicom, there are definitely worse ways to experience Adol's first adventure.  The music is a far cry from Master System's FM Sound or the TurboGrafx-CD's perfect everything, but it serves the purpose.  Likewise, the visuals aren't quite as nice as the other two version I've played, but they're totally decent.  It's like playing Call of Duty 4 on Wii as opposed to PS3 or 360.  It doesn't play as smoothly, and it definitely doesn't look nearly as good, but judged on its own merits, it's still a perfectly competent and enjoyable game.  I wouldn't recommend this version if other options are available to you, but if you don't have any other options, it's totally worth a playthrough.

Army Men 3D was the third game in the Army Men series following the Windows releases of Army Men and Army Men II and marked the series' debut on home consoles.  Army Men 3D, taking advantage of the hype around 3D game worlds in the mid to late 90s, is essentially a slimmed down remake of the original Army Men but as a 3D third person shooter.  As is par for the course with the Army Men series, it's not a breathtaking game that will make anyone's Top 10 PS1 games list, but it's a fun enough little game especially for fans of the series.

Being a remake of the original game, Army Men 3D follows the same basic story as Army Men albeit abridged.  The short version is that the Green Nation has been invaded by the Tan Nation, and Green intelligence reports that the Tan are assembling a mysterious super-weapon that's being transported in three pieces.  Playing as Sarge, you have to fight your way through Tan forces to secure the three pieces of the key so that you can not only keep the weapon out of Tan hands but discover just what it's supposed to do.  This PlayStation remake cuts out probably a quarter of the game which, given the move from PC to PlayStation, makes sense, but fortunately, what's cut out is largely filler missions that aren't central to the story.  The shorter level list ends up working out well too given the somewhat awkward controls that result in what I felt was a more difficult game than the Windows game.  Overall, I'd say they're roughly comparable in length with Army Men 3D coming in maybe a little shorter.

Visually, the game is about as "okay" as it gets for PlayStation games.  It certainly doesn't look bad for the hardware or the era, but it doesn't look especially good, either.  This is especially true of the cutscenes.  It doesn't preserve all of the cutscenes from the PC original, but it does have the iconic opening and closing cutscenes.  The problem is that these scene are extraordinarily low resolution and noticeably choppy.  To some extent, that's an unfortunate reality of video on mid-90s CD technology, but it's a shame that the presentation took such a hit because of it.  It's admirable that 3DO tried to include those two most dramatic scenes, but given the hit the presentation took, I almost think it would have been better to try to remake the scenes in a style the PS1 could more comfortably handle.

The audio is probably the part of the game with which I have the most issues.  The voiced dialogue is extremely minimal which, truthfully, is more a blessing than anything else given the quality of the cutscenes and the soundtrack.  The music is...truly awful.  It's not even that the music itself is what's bad; it uses the same actual song from the PC original.  What makes the music in Army Men 3D so bad is not what music is uses but how it uses it.  Instead of using the whole song for what I assume are disc space reasons, it uses a two or three measure clip.  And it loops it.  Endlessly.  For the entire game.  I got through about a level and a half before I muted the TV and just turned on Sirius.

Army Men 3D is as competent a first entry into the home console space as a game in that particular series can be expected to have.  It's not bad.  Excluding the music, it's really  not.  I'd even go as far as to say it's a fun time if you're into the premise of Army Men.  Unfortunately, if you're NOT into the premise of Army Men, it's...okay.  The biggest problem is that the whole thing just feels unpolished.  If you're a fan of the series, absolutely play it.  If you're just a PlayStation enthusiast, then I'd still recommend giving it a play as it's a solid even if forgettable title.  Overall, though, it doesn't stand out much from the other "hella 1990s" games on the system.

Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows

Question - what's better than brutally slaughtering Nazis and white robed Klansmen?

Answer - brutally slaughtering Nazis and white robed Klansmen on the go.

This is the beautiful world we entered when Bethesda had the brilliant minds at Panic Button port their Nazi-killing masterpiece Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus to Nintendo Switch.  Crated with the same brilliance and attention to detail as Panic Button's previous but no less impressive Doom port, shows once again that when in the hands of talent developers, the Switch is not only the little system that could but the little system that does more than it has any business being capable of doing.

Since I already reviewed this game on Xbox One when it first came out, this is going to be a shorter review as I'm primarily going to focus on some comparisons between my experience with the game on the two different platforms as well as how it generally looks, sounds, and plays on Switch.  As one would naturally expect when going from a 4K-capable console to a handheld, the visuals took a big hit on Switch, but as was the case with Doom, it's not as bad as one might reasonably assume.  The resolution took a BIG hit - it drops down to the sub-SD resolution of 360p - but the trade off is that most of the lighting effects are kept intact (albeit blurry) and the frame rate is shockingly stable.  That was one of my few issues with Panic Button's Switch port of Doom - the frame rate was fairly unstable depending on how many enemies were on screen.  I didn't notice any of those issues in Wolfenstein II.  It seems that the variable resolution system was much improved for this port, and it really shows where performance is concerned.

Stemming from the necessary visual downgrades comes a similar situation to the Doom port.  As was the case with Doom, the game looks pretty terrible when playing docked, but it looks totally fine when playing handheld.  Its visual downgrades are still apparent, mind you.  The small screen hides a lot of the game's visual flaws and blemishes, and the end result is that while it may look pretty disappointing on a 65" TV screen, it looks totally fine on a screen 90% smaller.  The cutscenes, it's worth noting, look much nicer than the actual gameplay.  That's to be expected, naturally, but the difference in this case is pretty major.  Fortunately given the top notch voice acting and soundtrack, the audio carries over pretty perfectly to the Switch.  The rockin' soundtrack still hits just as hard, and the voice acting is still just as brilliantly performed.

Given the system specs on the Switch, it's really amazing that Panic Button managed to fit the whole game onto the system without cutting any content.  The physical release does require a download as not all of it was fit onto the cartridge, but still, the fact of the matter is that NOTHING was stripped out.  This is a fully intact port.  It's just a bit blurry, but again, that's really only going to be a major thing if you're playing it docked.  If you want to play on your sofa with the TV, then yeah, go PS4 or Xbox One.  If you want to be able to play on the go, at work, on the toilet, so on and so forth, then the Switch is a PERFECTLY viable option.  It's really quite amazing that it runs so smoothly and doesn't look worse than it does given the system that it's on, and speaking as one who's played the game on the strongest system and the weakest system currently on the market - the Xbox One X and Nintendo Switch, respectively - this is a perfectly playable version and a downright remarkable handheld version.

Also available on Android, Wii U, Switch, and Windows

Ace of Seafood is a masterpiece.  It's an absolute masterpiece.  Just like Epic Dumpster Bear was for Wii U, Ace of Seafood is a bizarre indie game that scratches an itch you never knew you had - conquering the seas as a fish that shoots lasers out of its mouth.  Seriously, that's the whole game.  Humans have been wiped out in some nuclear war, and now fish fight for oceanic supremacy with lasers.  It's the most gloriously stupid concept I've ever heard.

When you first start the game, you get to pick between three different starter fish, and from there, you have to kill whatever fish you come across and absorb their genetic material.  If you get enough genetic material of a certain type of fish, you unlock the ability to breed that fish.  Some of these fish are small, weak, and easy to breed like a hermit crab or a sardine.  Some of these fish are big, expensive, and pack some serious muscle like the bluefin tuna and the leopard seal.  Some of these fish are massive, behemoth boss-tier fish with a price tag to match like the great white shark or the giant squid.  Depending on how many reefs you've found and secured, your resource pool for your school of fish increases.  This will allow you to add more fish to your school and add better fish to your school.  A salmon, for example, takes 40 school resources to add; the giant squid takes 300 school resources.  It's all about picking the right tool for the job.

Bizarrely, there are also human ships that you can destroy and collect "genetic" material for to "breed."  I don't really get why this is a thing - all the humans are dead, and boats aren't genetic anyway - but whatever, I can have a nuclear submarine fight alongside my giant squid and great white shark.  I'm NOT complaining, that's freaking dope.  One specific reef leads to the final boss, but it doesn't tell you this until you're there.  You're just wandering around, minding your own business, and you beat the guardian fish for this reef, and you enter the reef to save and heal.  Next thing you know, it throws you straight into a battle (after auto-saving and healing you, thankfully) with a genetically engineered super fish bio-weapon.  That's a tough fight, to say the least, but when you beat Metal Fish Solid (not really the name.  Just my dumb nickname), you're rewarded with the end credits.  It then puts you back in the ocean by the reef to continue your conquest if you so wish along with some huge schools of invading fish that spawn and must be repelled.  I mean, you could ignore them, but where's the fun in that?  MUCHO MARINE MASSACRE MAYHEM!!

Ace of Seafood is my new second favorite indie game ever.  Epic Dumpster Bear will always be #1 in my heart, but holy crap, Ace of Seafood is absolutely incredible.  Objectively speaking, it's not perfect.  The targeting can be a little bit finicky, the menus are fairly bare bones with minimal explanations save for the tutorial that's either go through the whole thing again or go through none of it.  What it may lack in the final polish that games with the funding and manpower of big development teams or publishers, however, it MORE than makes up for in charm and sheer bizarre awesomeness.

Also available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4

Starlink: Battle for Atlas is perhaps the biggest surprise of 2018 for me.  I originally bought it because it was on sale for like $30 on Amazon and had a sweet Arwing model to go along with the Switch-exclusive Starfox content.  I thought it was just going to be a stupid toys-to-life cash grab...and it somewhat is.  If you buy it physical, it's a total rip-off; you can easily spend close to if not more than $200 on the various ship, pilot, and weapon models.  Granted, they're pretty decent quality and look pretty cool, but considering that you can get almost everything digitally if you buy the $60 digital edition...yeah, that's definitely the way to go.

The premise of Starlink is that you're part of a crew of humans on the first interstellar starship bound for the Atlas system in search of the homeworld of Judge, an alien who crashed on Earth.  When you get to Atlas, you discover that a race known as the Legion has taken control of the system's seven planets (there used to be eight planets, but then it exploded.  It never really explains why) and are attempting to exterminate the native species and drain the planets of electrum, the resource that serves as both energy and currency for Atlas.  You then being your quest to pew-pew your way through the star system, murdering countless Legion and conquering/liberating the planets of Atlas.  Then, if you're playing on Switch, you can go blow up Wolf because why not?

The missions themselves are pretty cut and dry for the most part, but the majority of my gameplay consisted of scouring every planet to get my discovery percentage to 100 because for some reason, this is one of the few games that captivated me enough to bother 100%ing it.  You go through each planet to discover each planet's four biological samples, three unique fauna species, and freeing all of the various ruins and outposts from Legion control.  There are also imp hives to destroy (imps are like the Legion's ankle-biter grunt soldiers), Legion Extractors to destroy (they spawn Legion enemies), and eventually Legion Primes to destroy.  There's also a "wonder" on each planet that have an exceptionally strong enemy with its small entourage, but if you defeat these enemies, you unlock a "Relic" ship enhancement.

The big selling point for the game is the ability to customize your ship, and aside from the hella pricey physical ship and weapon options, the game does a really good job of giving you a ton of options (just buy it digitally for the sake of your wallet).  There are five main weapon types - fire, ice, gravity, stasis, and kinetic.  Fire and ice are effective against one another, gravity and stasis are effective against one another, and kinetic is kind of neutral to everything; it's nothing's weakness, but nothing is strong against it, either. If you play on Switch and pilot the Arwing with no weapons attached, you get another option - the Arwing's standard laser cannons.  They're not overwhelmingly powerful, and they can't be modified with weapon upgrades, but they pack enough punch to be viable, and there's not much that looks more badass in a space battle.  Othwerise, though, there are 19 weapon options, and you can attach a weapon to each of your ship's two wings.  You can also Frankenstein up to three wings on one side of your ship, but they just sort of stack onto one another awkwardly making a single sort of chimera wing; you can still only have two weapons equipped.

The neat thing about the physical aspect of the game, rip off though it may be, is that you can make changes on the fly.  Find that your weapons aren't working in the middle of a fight?  Just pull the weapons off of the figure attached to your controller and slap different ones on there.  It changes immediately in the game to reflect the change.  Of course, you can also pause the game and do all of this in the menu which is how it needs to be done if you buy the game digitally, but it's pretty cool to see the weapons and ship configuration change immediately.  With that said, though, it's not really necessary for you to have all of the weapons unless you're trying to 100% the game.  It definitely makes it a ton easier to have ice weapons to use against fire enemies, but it's not necessary.  I was able to kill fire enemies with fire weapons, and I used a shotgun in space.  It's just harder.  Of course, you could always just go with Fox's lasers and pew-pew your enemies to death.

Starlink: Battle for Atlas is an infinitely more legitimate game than I ever expected when I first saw it advertised, and the digital option makes the toys-to-life money pit completely optional.  There are a couple of ships and weapons that aren't available digitally (yet at least), but the digital version has a ton of content and configuration options.  I really expected to hate it, but I ended up absolutely loving it.  My biggest complaint with the game is that the tutorial was really hit or miss.  Some features and mechanics are never explained at all and really could have used a tutorial whereas there are some things that are explained over and over again every single time.  Pick up a rare piece of salvage?  Doesn't matter if it's the first time or the hundredth time, the game will remind you that Prospectors will pay you a bunch for it.  Try to use a shotgun in space?  Every single freaking time, Razor's stupid face appears on your screen telling you to try a different weapon because the shotgun doesn't have the range needed for space.  Like, shut up, woman.  I'm an adult; I do what I want.  Other than those frustrations, though, I absolutely adored my time with this game.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Super Smash Bros.  The obnoxiously toxic competitive scene (which includes a couple of my friends - you know who you are) kind of ruined it for me.  When I bought Smash Ultimate, I did so out of a bizarre feeling of obligation more than anything else.  As an avid Switch fan, a collector, and a Nintendo fanboy, I felt like I HAD to buy Smash.  Turns out, though, the title "Super Smash Bros Ultimate" is quite fitting as this truly is the best of the five Smash games.

Normally any "single player" in Smash is kind of an afterthought.  Brawl made a solid effort with Subspace Emissary, but even then, it was clearly never the focus.  Ultimate is different.  The adventure mode in Ultimate is a fully fleshed out single player that could easily stand alone as its own game.  It kept me busy for around 30 hours, and that's longer than I spend on a lot of full price retail games these days.  In addition to that, each of the more than 70 characters has their own unique classic mode.  All of that is in addition to the standard local and online multiplayer that Smash is known for.  It really feels like they tried to balance the expected multiplayer aspect with a legitimately great single player, and for that, I give some major props.

The adventure mode in Ultimate has you go through a fairly large map fighting TONS of matches against clones of the heroes that have been possessed by spirits (basically replacing the trophies from Melee).  Each match you win frees a spirit which you can use to customize a spirit team that enhances your fighting abilities.  You can have your fighter start off with a beam sword, start off giant, do extra damage to metal enemies, etc.  It adds a TON of options for varying approaches.  They also added a Fire Emblem style type triangle to the "primary" spirits that dictate your type so to speak; Attack spirits beat out Grab spirits, Grab spirits beat out Defense spirits, and Defense spirits beat out Attack spirits.  There's also a Neutral type that's neither strong to nor weak against any type.  Very much like  Fire Emblem's Sword > Axe, Axe > Spear, Spear > Sword with magic being the neutral equivalent (before they added the magic triangle).  Through adventure mode, you can unlock all of the game's characters, and there are three different endings you can get.

The standard multiplayer Smash mode is exactly what you'd expect; up to eight fighters with a TON of playable characters and a TON of stage options.  It's nothing new or exciting aside from a few new items, but it doesn't have to be.  They perfected the formula back in Melee; all they've had to do since then is add characters and stages.  In that regard, they hit the nail on the head.  The toxic competitive try-hards are whining about how they  need to nerf this character or buff that character, but speaking as someone who plays Smash to have fun and not stroke my e-peen, it's fine.  I mean, I also said that about Brawl, so take that for what it's worth, but if you're just trying to enjoy the game and not turn into CS:GO levels of competitive BS, it's great.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate really is the "ultimate" Smash Bros.  Every aspect of this game is clearly carefully crafted.  The single player is a truly fantastic experience that could easily stand on its own as an independent game.  The fact that the multiplayer remains as masterful as ever makes this about as truly perfect a game as Smash has ever been.  This is the perfect Smash package and a definite must-have for all Switch owners.