Some of my favourite games of all time are the Mario Galaxy games. There haven't been that many 3D platformers that I've played over the years that live up to the variety and fun of those games, especially around their level's tight design and mechanics.

That's until the recent standalone Astro Bot game came along, almost out of nowhere. I liked the previous 'demo'-type games that previously introduced us to the cute little robot, but this standalone feature blasts it out of the park.

This game was made for me. Cute character, check. Finely tuned platforming, check. Awesome theme, check. … Read more →

One of the things that committed me to buying a Nintendo Switch was the promise of a new Yoshi game for the console. It's hard to believe that it's now been almost two years since I bought the Switch, but earlier this year (pre all the transplant dramas), Yoshi's Crafted World came out.

Although I finished the main story a while ago, it's only now that I had the time and steady hands to actually finish it 100%.

Crafted World is a decent Yoshi game, but it didn't live up to the expectations that the excellent Woolly World set 4 … Read more →

Continuing my history of badly titled blog posts when I purchase a Nintendo console, you can probably tell that I recently bought a Nintendo Switch.

I'm actually really fascinated by this device. I was intrigued back when it was announced and launched, but Zelda excepted, there just wasn't any games that launched with it (or soon after) that I was interested in playing. I wasn't going to buy a brand new console at full price just to play one game.

Fast-forward 6 months, and more games have come out (or are about to) that I am interested in. In … Read more →

I've had an absolute blast playing through Horizon Zero Dawn over the past month or so. I enjoyed it so much that I even went to the effort of earning the platinum PSN trophy, something which I've never before done on a Playstation game. It's probably the most I've enjoyed playing a non-Nintendo console game since Burnout: Paradise on the PS3 all those years ago.

Horizon has a few rough edges, but overall, I thought it was spectacular, and well-earned the 60+ hours I put into it. I originally borrowed the game from a friend to play, but after having … Read more →

Some might remember that I loved the original Mass Effect series of games, but hated the ending of ME3 with a passion. The soft reboot of the series in the form of Mass Effect: Andromeda came out recently, and I just finished playing it.

It took me 73 hours to complete it almost 100%, and overall I enjoyed it for what it was. It wasn't 'great', and I tend to agree with most of the criticisms out there on the internet, but it's definitely not terrible.

Let's start with the bad. Yes, the facial animations (especially pre-1.05 patch) are/were … Read more →