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.

Among Pokemon fans, the two newest games in the series, Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, are pretty controversial.  A lot of the more hardcore fans don't like how "dumbed down" the game is in a lot of ways, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It's essentially a remake of Pokemon Yellow, but the 3D visuals and the jump to HD make this the most immersive Pokemon experience for me personally to date despite the simplified mechanics and strictly Gen 1 Pokedex.

As the titles suggest, your starting pokemon with either Pikachu or Eevee depending on your version.  You quickly get the opportunity to catch the three traditional Gen 1 starters, though, and they became the bedrock of my team.  My team ended up being Pikachu (whom I nicknamed Marth), Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Gengar, and Starmie.  While some folks have criticized the game for being too easy, I found it to be relaxing more so than childish.  That's not to say that the game is completely devoid of challenge.  You still need to use some strategy - you can't go fight Lt. Surge with a team of water and flying types and expect it to go well unless you're way over leveled - but it's not nearly as challenging as some of the older entries.

The highlight of the game in terms of my immersion is definitely the HD visuals and having a pokemon of your choice follow behind you.  Being a remake of Yellow which was inspired by the anime, the game features the images we've come to know and love for Professor Oak, Jessie and James, Blue, Nurse Joy, and Officer Jenny.  The nostalgia here is real for millennials like me.  It's not just for my age group, though.  In a lot of ways, Let's Go, Pikachu/Eevee is for Pokemon what Mystic Quest was for Final Fantasy.  It's designed intentionally to be an entry level game to bring newcomers to the series into the fold.  As such, the biggest drive was accessibility.  From that perspective, yeah, it's much simpler and less challenging than the mainline entries in the series.  If you let that dissuade you from playing it, however, you're making a big mistake.

One of the ways The Pokemon Company tried to make these games accessible is by only including the original 151 pokemon.  Part of the reason for this is obviously that diving in head first to nearly 1000 pokemon is going to overwhelm potential newcomers.  As a longtime fan, I was personally disappointed that the later pokemon are totally absent from the game, but I can hardly hold that against it; it would be judging the game on what I wanted it to be rather than what it was intended to be.  That's what a lot of the user reviews I've seen seem to forget.  This isn't a game for the established Pokemon fanbase.  There's a lot there for us to love if we stop looking for flaws, but the game isn't for us.  It's for newcomers who may have been hooked on Pokemon Go but never played a Pokemon game otherwise, and that's no small group of folks.

What really sets Let's Go apart from the other Pokemon RPGs (as the title should suggest) is its links to Pokemon Go.  First and foremost, it uses Pokemon Go's catching mechanic.  With the exception of a few boss pokemon, you don't battle wild pokemon, and even those that you do battle, the battle is a separate phase from the catching.  The actual capture consists of throwing PokeBalls at the wild pokemon until they decide to stop breaking out.  You can do this by "throwing" the Joycon or PokeBall Plus controller as if you would throw a PokeBall or by playing handheld and using the system's gyroscope to aim and pressing A to throw the ball.  I personally preferred the latter, but I did get the bundle with the PokeBall Plus controller to try it out.  Then my dog ate the controller.  It still works and everything, but it looks all chewed up and terrible.  So I bought ANOTHER controller!  It's fine, though, because you can put a pokemon in the controller (think the PokeWalker from HeartGold and SoulSilver) and "take it for a stroll," using the internal pedometer to level up your pokemon and collect items the more you walk.

In addition to the shared catching mechanic, there are more direct connections with Pokemon Go.  First and foremost, you can link your Pokemon Go account with your Switch and transfer pokemon from Pokemon Go to your Pokemon Let's Go game.  It's not a two-way transfer - you can only transfer FROM Go TO Let's Go - but it's still super cool that there's a connection.  You can also use your PokeBall Plus controller (if you bought one) as a Pokemon Go Plus accessory when you're playing Pokemon Go.  These are all pretty small things, but given that the intention is to pull in those Pokemon Go players to the mainline series, it's a really nice touch, and it's a cool little extra feature.

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee aren't the games that established fanbase was wanting, but it's not the established fanbase for whom the game was made.  This is a game that was designed to be a more casual, approachable experience to bring new players to the mainline series, and it plays like that.  To expect a competitive game with deep battle mechanics is to expect the game to be something it was never intended to be.  There is a LOT to love here.  3D visuals in 1080p.  Pokemon followers some of which you can ride.  A more relaxed experience.  Nostalgia for the days of the 90s with the original anime and Gen I games.  Even for Pokemon veterans like me, there's a lot to love.  As I said with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, if you let the accessible difficulty level and relatively simplistic mechanics deter you from giving it a play, then you're seriously missing out.  This isn't going to challenge an experienced tactical mind, but it will definitely please the nostalgic child from the 1990s trapped within the bodies of cynical and underpaid adults.  Really, that's all I need in life.

Also available on PlayStation 4

One of the big surprise games for me was Persona 4: Dancing All Night when I played that a year or two back.  It was...beautiful.  Definitely one of my favorite rhythm games probably second only to Elite Beat Agents.  When ATLUS announced rhythm games for Persona 3 and Persona 5, I was naturally ecstatic, and being a collector and a Vita fanatic, I naturally had to import the Japanese copies for my shelf and dove into the P3 game almost immediately.  Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the high standard that its predecessor set.

Part of the reason why this game impressed me so much less than the Persona 4 dancing game in addition to the fact that it didn't have the excitement of being a "new" thing going for it involves the direction ATLUS took with the game.  Dancing in Moonlight (or, as it's called in Japan, Dancing Moon Night) is much more like Hatsune Miku in its design.  It have a few little dialogue scenes in the very beginning, but it doesn't have any kind of story mode like Dancing All Night had.  Obviously a rhythm game doesn't NEED a story, but with the writing talent at ATLUS, Dancing All Night proved that a rhythm game can definitely benefit from a story, and unfortunately for Dancing in Moonlight, it just doesn't seem to stand out from the crowd as much without that added narrative element.

One thing that the game does have going for it is the soundtrack.  As anyone who's played a Persona game can tell you, the soundtracks are always phenomenal.  Again, though, following in the footsteps of Dancing All Night is a hindrance for Dancing in Moonlight; Persona 3 had a great soundtrack, but Persona 4's soundtrack was legendary.  The tracklist just can't stand up in a comparison.  There are a few truly killer remixes in Dancing in Moonlight, but all in all, while it's an terrific tracklist, again it just doesn't really stand out from the crowd for the most part.  Visually, however, the game is great.  Seeing the characters from P3 return in such a jovial and musical setting is wonderful, and the choreography for the characters' dance moves is great.  While I loved playing it on the go with my Vita, this is definitely a game that would also benefit from being played on PlayStation 4 or on a PlayStation TV if you have friends over as the dancing itself is good fun to watch.

The most important make-or-break aspect of a rhythm game is going to be the quality of the input controls, and while I may have had some arguably nit-pick disappointments with other aspects of Dancing in Moonlight, the controls give me absolutely no cause to complain.  It's quick and responsive inputs are everything you'd want from a rhythm game.  That input factor is also another reason I went with Vita over PS4 for this one; while the DS4 is a great controller, having controls hardwired to a handheld rather than wireless via bluetooth is always my preference when it comes to rhythm games.  I'm sure it plays brilliantly on PS4 as well - ATLUS isn't one to release a sub-par product from my experience - but it's hard to beat a good Vita game.

Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight doesn't quite live up to the monolithic Persona 4: Dancing All Night, it is still an excellent rhythm game in its own right.  The soundtrack, while the least impressive of the three most recent console Persona games in my opinion, is still terrific with some truly great remixes of those songs thrown in for some variety and genre diversity.  It doesn't do a whole lot to stand out from the crowd in any meaningful way aside from being based on Persona 3, but that doesn't mean that it's not a fantastic game.  It's just perhaps not the most memorable rhythm game you'll ever play.  It is, however, definitely recommended for fans of Persona or just folks looking for a good rhythm game to pass the time.

Xenogears is the one game in the "Xeno" series that I don't have, but with my new attempt to embrace digital games, I decided to buy it on PSN and dust off the ol' PS TV.  I was SUPPOSED to be playing this in tandem with Colin, but as usually, he flaked out on me and decided not to play it.  -insert sadness-

Xenogears is, in a lot of ways, a perfect example of Square's late 1990s JRPG offerings - it's too long, the story is convoluted to the point of confusion, and it's so much damn fun that you can't just quit.  The BASIC story (and this is a bare bones synopsis) is that a colony ship of some sort crashed on this planet 10,000 years ago when some super weapon went haywire and blew it to pieces.  Human survivors established an advanced civilization until some major war destroyed a bunch of it 4,000 years ago, and then some other giant war destroyed even more stuff 500 years ago.  There are like three specific people whose souls are apparently so important that they get reincarnated infintely, and their memories get passed down as well, and then there's some split personalities, and there are giant robots, and somehow the giant doomsday weapon is god but also god doesn't exist but at the same time god is core to everything and...yeah.  It doesn't make any sense.  Unfortunately, it's also a perfect example of what ruins a lot of otherwise good games - plot holes, huge leaps of logic, and cut funding that led to a rushed and frankly terrible second half (or, in this case, last third).  Imagine if the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential campaign were a JRPG.  On paper, it should be amazing and a hole in one.  Certain aspects of reality, however, forces it to crash and burn.  I love games that incorporate ancient Judeo-Christian mythology into their story.  I don't love it when it's done poorly and doesn't many any sense whatsoever.

The tragic story of Xenogears' production is that it was originally intended to be a four disc game as  several other Square JRPGs were.  The first disc is a long and epic 40-50 hour adventure full of world building and character development, and if the game were judged just on the first disc, it would be a great game.  Unfortunately, when they finished the first disc, they were out of money... and only about a third of the way through the story.  So the rest of it got slimmed down beyond the max and crammed into one disc with the bulk of the story being either skipped entirely or relegated to boring vignettes between boss fights with the occasional dungeon or two (compared to the dozen solidly fleshed out dungeons in the first disc).  There's a ton of potential there, and had the story elements in disc two been given the same treatment that the first disc received, it would probably be remembered as one of the best JRPGs of the era.  As it is, however, the second disc totally sucks and ruins the game.

The games visuals are largely so-so in my opinion with a decent 3D world but 2D sprite characters.  Character attack animations are cool, but the game overall fails to match Square's Final Fantasy offerings of the era (probably because of the cut funding).  The music, however, is quite good.  Again, not on the level of the PS1 Final Fantasy games, but it's a solidly second tier soundtrack.  The piece of the presentation that really falls apart, though, is the anime cutscenes.  There are some full anime cut scenes, but the English dub is like something straight out of a 1950s Godzilla film; you'll see mouths moving a mile a minute with no words whatsoever, and you'll hear talking when no one's mouth is moving.  I understand that it's extremely difficult to get English even half synced with Japanese animation especially with a depleted budget, but regardless, the effect is that is just looks sloppy and half-assed.

Xenogears is a Shakespearean tragedy of game development; the first disc is SO exceptional and well done in almost every regard that they blew their whole budget and were left with a second disc that tries to do way too much with way too little to work with and, as a result, ruins the overall product.  I really can't overemphasize just how soul-crushingly disappointing that second disc is.  It truly does ruin the game for me and leave a bad taste in my mouth for the whole game.  I honestly have a hard time recommending this one just because of how much of a let down the last 20 hours or so are, but I'm going to err on the side of a recommendation simply for how excellent the first 40 or 50 hours are.  If I were rating each disc on its own, disc one would definitely get a 4/5 with disc two being given a 1/5.  Unfortunately, that's not how multi-disc games work.  The experiences on each disc may be of RADICALLY different quality, but it's still one single game.

Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, Android, Linux, and OSX

Banner Saga is everything I want in a game.  Seriously, I let it languish in my Steam library, fated to remain unplayed for far too long, until Colin said "Dude, this game is dope, you gotta play it.  You'll love it."  As is usually the case when Colin recommends stuff for me - Gundam, a rewatch of Deep Space Nine, Castlevania - he was absolutely right.  This game is straight fire.  While it's not quite "perfect," per se, it's definitely got my name written all over it.

Banner Saga is an SRPG, but not quite like any that I've played previously.  It's extremely similar to a lot of others in a lot of ways, but it's just different enough to stand out as unique among the games I've experienced.  Imagine, if you will, the game as a math equation.  It roughly boils down to:

Fire Emblem + a Norse theme - permadeath + TellTale style choices + Oregon Trail = Banner Saga

It plays a LOT like Fire Emblem with the square-based grid, the turn based movement, etc. but with vikings and horned giants instead of a more central European medieval setting.  It also lacks Fire Emblem iconic permadeath at least as far as combat is concerned.  Your characters can and will still die for good through the choices you make and plot points, but if they fall in battle, they're simply "injured," not killed.  Speaking of choices, the game is all about choice and consequence.  Much of the game's dialogue provides you with multiple choices that affect the direction that the story takes.  The Oregon Trail aspect comes into play with your caravan.  For almost all of the game, you're moving towards one city or another as your quest progresses, and you have a small army with you in your caravan.  You also have a finite amount of supplies and a constantly declining caravan morale.  If you try to conserve supplies and not stop to rest unless the game forces you, your morale will decrease, putting you at a strategic disadvantage in battle.  If you stop frequently to make sure that your morale stays high, you'll burn through supplies, and if you run out of supplies, your clansmen and troops will start to die every day.  If you use your renown to promote your units, you may find yourself short on funds for much-needed supplies when you get to the next town's market; likewise, if you use all of your renown on supplies for your caravan, you may not be able to promote all of your units, leaving you with a weak and underleveled army against a far superior foe.  Where do you strike your balance?  That's part of the strategy of the game's decision making.

As far as visuals go, the game is done in an almost hand drawn cartoon style.  While this particular art style is sometimes rather "hit or miss" for me, this is definitely an example of a "hit."  The characters are beautifully drawn, the visuals are bright and colorful when they need to be while dark and foreboding when the situation calls for it, and the way the scenes unfold give the whole game a storybook-like feel as if you're being told an epic adventure tale as much as actually playing a game.  That storybook feel is, in large part, thanks to the fantastic narration.  Not only does the narrator himself do an excellent job with the delivery, but the amount of narration is perfect - enough to set the stage and advance the story at key points but infrequent enough so as not to break the player's immersion.

Difficulty in the game seems almost an afterthought, a factor placed on the backburner to focus on the story and its delivery.  There are a few different difficulty settings to cater to the spectrum of player ability levels and desires for challenge, but since more of the game is spent on decision making and managing your caravan supplies and whatnot, the combat difficulty never felt to me like it took center stage the way it does in many other games of the genre.  That's not to say that the difficult was unbalanced or poorly implemented - it definitely wasn't - but the focus of the game always stayed far more on the journey, the characters, and their experiences and tribulations than on challenging the player in battle unless, of course, you specifically seek that out by putting the game on the highest difficulty.  It was honestly a breath of fresh air for me to have a fun and compelling strategy RPG but have it place the emphasis on story more than challenge.  That aspect is certainly not going to be to everyone's liking, but it turned out to be everything I didn't know I wanted from the genre.

Banner Saga is the perfect type of SRPG in my opinion.  Story and atmosphere always take priority over the combat challenge, and the art style, sound direction, and narration are done in such a way that brilliantly enhances that atmosphere.  The only thing about the game that really didn't sit well with me was that the perspective switches between a couple different parties throughout the game before the parties (or remnants of them) meet up at the end.  It certainly wasn't bad, but I tend to prefer having a consistent set of protagonists rather than switching back and forth between two groups.  That aside, however, it's one of if not the most enjoyable indie games that I've ever played.  It has the indie game hallmark bits and pieces that could have used a bit more polish or could have been expanded upon a bit, but even so, it's an absolutely remarkable game, and it absolutely deserved the Switch, PS4, and Xbox One releases that it and its two sequels got.  With availability on all three home platforms, all three major computer OSs, and both major smartphone OSs, there's nary a gamer out there with no way to play.  I absolutely and whole heartedly recommend this game for any who are fans of strategy or fans of a good Norse tale.

Girls und Panzer: Dream Tank Match is a tank combat game based on the anime film, but since my first time hearing about Girls und Panzer in general was when I impulse bought this on Play-Asia, so I'm going to ignore that for the most part.  The story, unfortunately, is more or less completely incomprehensible if you're not familiar with the source material.  It's told in a flashback sort of manner; there's some festival following a big tournament of some sorts that was depicted in a movie, and the girls who participated in the tournament are telling stories of their experiences, and those stories are told through the game's levels.  After the third level, though, I gave up on having any idea what was going on other than "Cute anime girls blow each other up in tanks to learn how to be good women, wives, and mothers."  But there is, at the end of the day, lots of cute anime girls blowing each other up in tanks, so do you really NEED to understand what's going on?

The game's different stages have different objectives.  Some levels require you to destroy all of the enemy tanks, some will require you to reach a certain area, some will require you to survive for a certain amount of time, etc.  Between the varying objectives and the variety of tanks that you're made to use, the levels are different enough from one another to keep from becoming stale.  Unfortunately, while the game doesn't become stale per se, it never really "grips" you, or at the very least, it never really gripped me.  The gameplay is fun enough, but because familiarity with the source material is so important to understanding what's going on, it's hard to get into the game.

The visuals and sound design are about what you'd expect from a run of the mill weeb anime game - decent.  They're not great.  They're not terrible.  They're just decent.  The graphics push the PS4's capabilities in no way, shape, or form, but the models are smooth with nice animations.  The voice acting is good, and the soundtrack is fine.  That's the problem, though - nothing about the game's presentation ever surpasses "fine."  It's entirely dependent on the concept of cute anime girls blowing each other up with tanks.  Which, in fairness, is exactly why I bought the game, so job well done at hooking your target demographic, but actual overall quality of the game?  Eh.  It's fine.

With my affinity for games revolving entirely around anime girls, I really want to love this game.  I want to say that it pushes the envelope of what thirsty neckbeard gaming can be.  I want to be able to recommend it not just to forever-alone types like but to gamers in general.  Unfortunately, I can't do that.  The gameplay itself is fun enough, but I can't say that it's fun enough to recommend.  Given that the only English language release is an Asian import, it's not exactly a bargain bin game, and the game's overall quality is solidly bargain bin.  It's on the high end of bargain bin, sure, but it's still bargain bin.  Truthfully, I wouldn't pay more than $15 for this game, and I doubt we'll see the price drop that much.  Unless you're already a fan of Girls und Panzer, I just can't recommend this game.  If you are a fan, then maybe there's something here for you, but for newcomers to the IP like me?  Pass.

Mario Tennis is my absolute favorite of the various Mario sports series, and of the sports that have been Mario-fied, tennis is the one I find the most entertaining to watch.  With the exception of hockey, tennis games are just generally my favorite sports games.  It's because of that that left me SO disappointed with Wii U's Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash.  It was just...okay...  That's it.  And that's coming off the heels of the INCREDIBLE Mario Power Tennis for Gamecube and revised for Wii with motion controls.  Thankfully Nintendo decided to make up for the lackluster Ultra Smash and gave Switch owners what may well be the best Mario Tennis game to date (although Power Tennis is a DAMN hard game to beat).

  One of my favorite aspects of Mario Tennis Aces which, if I remember correctly, is a first for the Mario Tennis series, is the inclusion of an actual story mode.  It's not a gripping tale with deep character development, but it does have an actual story.  There's this evil tennis racket that possesses anyone who holds it and seeks to collect five power gems to restore its full power to take over the world.  By beating people in tennis.  Like I said, not a thrilling narrative, but it's good enough.  In addition to standard tennis matches against opponents, the story mode also includes various training/challenges as well as legit boss battles.  As you progress through the story mode, you'll unlock new characters to play as (although you're always Mario in the story mode), new rackets to use, and new courts to play on.

Nintendo seems to be adding more characters over time as there are two currently on the roster that the game says you can unlock early by participating in online tournaments, one in October (that one unlocked Birdo) and one in November (not sure what character that is).  I don't know for certain if more characters will continue to be added over time, but it wouldn't come as a surprise to me.  Speaking of the online play, I haven't done this extensively, but the few matches I have played worked brilliantly.  I found matches quickly, and there was absolutely no lag whatsoever; it felt as if I were playing a match against a CPU.

Visually, Mario Tennis Aces probably isn't pushing the Switch quite to its limits, but it does look extremely nice, especially when playing as a handheld.  Motion is fluid, frame rate drops are either non-existent or so negligible that the average person likely wouldn't notice, and the colors really "pop" on screen.  The soundtrack also really excels for a sports game.  The various themes - forest, desert, tundra, Boo house, etc - are all varied and fitting.  The sound effects are also fitting, although honestly, there are only so many sound effects you need a tennis game.  The real start of the audio show is, obviously, the soundtrack, and there's nothing left to be desired here in that regard.

All in all, Mario Tennis Aces is the game that Mario Tennis fans deserved after the slap to face that was Ultra Smash.  Everything wrong about Ultra Smash is fixed in Tennis Aces.  What little was right about Ultra Smash is improved in Tennis Aces.  The online play works fabulously, the game controls smoothly, the soundtrack is superb, and the visuals look beautiful.  I'm not going to go as far as to say that Mario Tennis Aces is a perfect game, but it is definitely a high point for the Mario sports games, and I would call it a must-play for Switch owners.

Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows

I have been waiting for Valkyria Chronicles 4 for years.  The first game was absolutely incredible, but the second game was good but disappointing, the third game never got released in North America, and Valkyria Revolution was....not what I was wanting.  Finally, though, Sega has graced me with a true successor to the series, and not only that, but in a first for the series, it saw a release on a Nintendo platform.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 takes place during the Second Europan War along side the events of Valkyria Chronicles and Valkyria Chronicles 3 and two years before Valkyria Chronicles II.  What makes Valkyria Chronicles 4 different, however, is where in Europa the game is set; whereas the first three main series games (Revolution was set in a completely different fictional universe) cast the player as a soldier fighting for the small kingdom of Gallia against the autocratic East Europan Imperial Alliance (basically Russia), Valkyria Chronicles 4 has one assume the role of a group of soldiers fighting for the Atlantic Federation, a seemingly confederation-type of alliance of democratic nations in western Europa (basically NATO).  I guess that makes Gallia kind of like Yugoslavia if we're going with a Cold War analogy (although Yugoslavia tended to get along a little bit better with the Warsaw Pact than with NATO...eh, an imperfect analogy, but whatever).  It's worth noting , though, that most of the game's main characters are Gallian-born and joined the Federation army to protect Gallia from the Empire before Gallia was invaded.

Following Squad E of the Federation army's elite Ranger Corps, you fight your way east as you try to repel the imperial invaders and, eventually, attempt to push to the imperial capital and bring the war to a close.  Of course, being a Valkyria Chronicles game, the focus is always more on the individual characters than the overarching war itself, and that's part of the reason I love the series so much.  That's not to say that the war itself is just glossed over; the game's story reveals a lot about the context of EWII and expands a lot of the lore that the first game provided.  The way the story is told, however, always has the player caring more about the soldiers' individual struggles, triumphs, and relationships than the Federation vs Empire war, especially once the Federation's dirty secrets start to come to light.

While I've only played the game on Switch and, therefore, can only speak from first hand experience about that version, I have seen several side by side comparison videos that have me feeling confident when I say that the graphical differences between the Switch version and the PS4/XB1 versions are negligible.  There's some shadow and lighting effects that are diminished on Switch, and there's a tiny bit more detail on the PS4 and XB1 versions, but given the watercolor art style used in the game, I doubt anyone would b e able to tell one version from another without a direct side-by-side comparison.  Frame rate is usually where I would expect to see some major differences given the art style chosen, but Sega seems to have locked it to 30 FPS on all versions (not sure about PC; that can probably be unlocked).  With a common frame rate across the board and visual differences that are negligible at best, it seemed pretty clear to me that the portability and cartridge load times of the Switch version made it a pretty easy choice which platform to go with, and I have no regrets whatsoever.  This is probably the best third party experience I've had on the Switch to date.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is an exceptional strategy game that continues the series' brilliant blend of turn based strategy with real time combat.  It allows carries on the series' tradition of putting character development above all else, propelling the game to an experience that is virtually impossible to put down once you get started.  There's a lot of exposition between each battle - that takes at least as long as the battles themselves if you don't skip anything - but very rarely does it ever feel superficial.  The story has a few plot twists, and while few of them came as unexpected, the delivery is such that even if it's expected, it still retains impact because of how it happens more than what's happening.  The game's sound designed - especially its soundtrack - are stellar, but the real star of the show here is the visual design.  The watercolor art style is truly phenomenal and reaches a level of artistic beauty that I've only seen from Okami and Muramasa.  I cannot recommend this game enough especially on Switch.  It showcases spectacularly the system's ability to delivery beautiful and engaging home consoles experience right along side the big boys of the industry.  It is, in my opinion, the best of the series.

BONUS PRO!  The game teaches you valuable life lessons about consent.