Games Beaten 2024

[Raging Justice]

I'm getting lazy about updating. I finished Nuclear Blaze and Pikmin 4 on Switch, both really fun.




This weekend I want to try Arzette The Jewel of Faramore, Tomb Raider Remastered I-III, and maybe Mario vs Donkey Kong. I'm all about the Switch right now.

[Raging Justice]

Oh, and uh, if you are a horror afficionado who knows anything about the SCP Foundation, you'll want to play Nuclear Blaze. Oh, and this also applies to anyone who loves cats

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

It's also a great game to play with your lover <3

Lover, you say...

Hah, I can relate to the being in LUVVVvvv, but although I make a killer moussaka, food has never been part of my sex life

[SyedDanishAnwar]

I finished Resident Evil 4 Remake today. And man it was a satisfying play. I had played the original one back in the heydays of PS2 about two decades ago. Seeing the same cast in all the 4K glory was a treat to the eyes.

I got a B rank on my first play in Hardcore. I always play hard mode in games as medium difficulty seem boring to me in all games.

What I like Best: Graphics, story, gameplay, variety of guns, shooting range, puzzles.

What I didn't like: Adas voice was just meh. It was sexy in the original. The fact that they made
Ramon Salazar old looking in the Remake.

My score: 9/10

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

1. Tormented Souls - Switch
2. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II - PC
3. Fantasy Empires - PC
4. Vagrant Story - PS1
5. Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honor - PC
6. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown - Switch
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project - NES
8. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - PS5

Infinite Wealth is the latest game in the Like a Dragon (formally localized as Yakuza) series. It continues the story of Ichiban, the former Yakuza looking to help other Yakuza transition to civilian life. However, events will conspire to upend his quiet life and send him to Hawaii, to try and track down the woman who might be his mother. And he just might run into a certain Dragon of Dojima in the process.

Like the previous game, Infinite Wealth is an RPG that seeks to capture the feel of the previous brawler entries. In combat you can move around some to reposition; this is both important for landing area effects and for being able to set up things like combo attacks, knocking enemies against walls, and picking up park benches to beat them over the head with. It all flows really well, and really rewards you taking a few seconds to optimize things. The job system returns, swapping out a few of the old jobs for a host of new Hawaiian inspired jobs like aquanaut (a surfer dude) and geodancer (hula girl).

The game's story isn't as strong as the previous game; it's split across two protagonists and two villain lines that have some mutual connection, but are working towards two different end goals. As a result, neither story gets quite as much attention as it wants to be fully realized. You also now get a brand new town to explore, Honolulu, but since it only gets half the game's chapters you don't get the same feel for it as you did for Ijincho from the previous game. That said, the enemies are a lot more hilarious. They try to intimidate you as you walk by saying "it's not a show, shithead", and entering battle yields battle cries like "I'll sue you!"

That said, the game's real strength is in how it realizes your party members. Everyone from the first game (besides the optional party member) returns, and four new characters join the party, two NPCs from the previous game, the other two brand new. New elements have been added for party interaction that gives you those extra glimpses into what makes them them. The party is great, and I look forward to seeing them again.

Overall, Infinite Wealth is a solid follow up to its predecessor, even if it doesn't hit the same highs. If you've joined Ichiban on his first journey you'll definitely want to take a second outing.

[Ack]

1. Live A Live (RPG)(Switch)
2. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Action)(Switch)
3. Pathway (Strategy [Tactics])(PC)
4. Rewind or Die (Horror Adventure)(PC)
5. Tomb Raider (Action Adventure)(PC)
6. Remnant: From the Ashes (Action RPG)(PC)
7. House Flipper (Simulation)(PC)

With my interest branching from first person shooters into first person cleaning games, I ended up stumbling across House Flipper, a game where you play in first person as you clean up, deconstruct, and reconstruct houses to sell to a group of individuals with personal tastes and endless budgets. Of course, your budget isn't endless, so part of the balancing act in the beginning is buying cheap and trying to add a few grand to the selling price so you can move on to better properties.

In fact, it starts even more simply, with you taking short contracts to do clean up or home repair jobs to the specifications of your employer. Whether it's being hired to reconstruct a home that was badly burned or clear out an empty lot and convert it into a park, the game gives a variety of tasks to do, from demolishing walls to mowing the grass.

DLCs have added considerably to the content as well, with each one incorporating some new theme into the mix. From garden contests to new construction on empty rural plots to even an HGTV-inspired set where you have to pick between the ideas of the "hosts", there is a lot of variety of buildings to paint, restore, and engage with your inner interior designer.

And as you complete contracted tasks or each new level challenge, these buildings then get added to a master list of overall properties you can buy and redesign at your whim, all with the express purpose of seeking a buyer and hopefully making money along the way. By the end, you have nearly a hundred different locations to try flipping, including a hedge maze, an abandoned animal shelter, and even levels inspired by pop culture media such as Home Alone, Breaking Bad, Friends, and, of all things, Silent Hill 4. Yeah, that one threw me for a loop.

There are also some polite options for those of you who can't handle icky things. For instance, you can go into settings and turn off cockroach nests, instead turning them into piles of broken glass. A couple of levels have haunted house themes, but you can choose not to engage at the start of these levels and simply try to flip the house (though that takes some of the fun out of it). You can even swap currency, because the game was developed in Poland, so it features some interesting options more commonly found in European homes than American ones. It also has an exchange rate built in, so going from euros to dollars will also impact your bank account numbers as well as costs and sale prices.

House Flipper is a game that I could easily pick up and put down, and by the time I wrapped up flipping my last "house", which was actually a lunar base, I had sunk in over 100 hours of playtime. I'm pretty happy with that. There is a sequel out, so I may track that down in the future if I get another itch to clean up a world from first person instead of shooting my way through it.

[ElkinFencer10]

Games Beaten in 2024 - 2
* denotes a replay

January (1 Game Beaten)

1. Army Men: World War - PlayStation - January 9

February (1 Game Beaten)

2. Silver Falls: Guardians and Metal Exterminators S - Switch - February 18

2. Silver Falls: Guardians and Metal Exterminators S - Switch - February 18



Video Review

Guardians and Metal Exterminators was one of the final games released for the 3DS when it launched (for good after some technical issues had it briefly delisted) back in January 2023. Another excellent entry in the Silver Falls series from one-man-show studio Sungrand, Guardians and Metal Exterminators has been given a breath of new life as it makes a remastered and expanded re-release on Switch, now sporting an "S" at the end of the title (for Switch, obviously). The bulk of the game is the same as on 3DS albeit prettier and with smoother performance, but there are some key additions and changes.



Guardians and Metal Exterminators is a bit of an odd duck in that the "main" game modes only make up like 5% of the content in the game. Game A and Game B are designed to emulate the old Tiger Electronics handheld LCD games. They're simple score chasers with shallow but addicting gameplay. Unless you're a serious score chaser, they're unlikely to hold your interest for more than five or ten minutes here or there. That said, that's part of the purpose of Guardians and Metal Exterminators; it's meant to be a game you can pick up and play for a few minutes when you have down time without needing to invest a lot of time in a long story mode or keep up with a lengthy narrative. It is, after all, stylized like old LCD games that one would rarely play for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time.



While Game A and Game B may not be a big draw or enough to make a purchase worthwhile on their own, Frontier Guardians, the game's ostensibly-extra content, is actually where the vast majority of the gameplay is. It's a mission-based RPG mode where you start off with two playable characters, Oxa and Gold, and play through set missions. This is also where the game's story and lore are shown. The premise is that Oxa Boscova, a local ranch hand, meets up with local carpenter Gold Prospector for a blind date near the Allerdyce farm where Oxa works. Unfortunately, their date is interrupted by a bright light in the sky and an explosion at the ranch. Oxa sprints towards the ranch to investigate and make sure things are okay while Gold, dazed and confused as to what the hell just happened and why this crazy lady is running TOWARDS danger instead of AWAY from it, follows haplessly.



Don't let the mission objectives in Frontier Guardians fool you; the way you earn moose tokens to buy items and xp to upgrade your character is through killing enemies, not completing objectives. Completing the objective just gets you 100% of your earned rewards instead of the diminished reward you get from failing the mission; if you manage to complete the mission's optional objective, you get extra moose tokens and xp. What that means is that even if you complete a mission, if you didn't kill any monsters, you don't get any xp. That said, completing missions even if you're too weak to get kills is still worthwhile; completing a mission regardless of kills nets you a new secondary weapon to equip, and these can be both powerful on their as well as have powerful secondary effects. The missions involve your chosen character running around in an overhead view, killing enemies, and completing your objectives. In addition to the human denizens of Silver Falls, you can also play as the Metal Exterminators, too, but whereas every Guardian character has at least a few story scenes, none of the enemy characters do. Bummer. The way you see these story scenes is by upgrading your character, and you can see the story completion % on the character select menu, so you'll easily be able to tell what characters are complete and who still has unviewed story scenes.



As you progress through the game, you'll unlock additional characters, and there are even more characters you can unlock by using the Code Linker functions and connecting with other Silver Falls titles. That doesn't just extend to current Silver Falls games; Jerrel, the man behind Sungrand, makes sure to keep these games relevant down the line by adding Code Linker content that will be unlocked by games planned for release years in the future; even if you 100% every character now and use code linker with every game so far, there will still be a reason to come back because every future release will unlock more content in this game. No paid DLC, no $5 or $10 per character unlock, and no one-and-done content dump. All of that content is free and trickled throughout future releases, and you don't even necessarily need to buy all of the games yourself; if you know someone who has a game you don't or who has a game that's no longer obtainable thanks to the Wii U and 3DS shutdowns (or ask nicely on the Silver Falls Discord), they can help you unlock Code Linker content using their game. Jerrel could have changed the system to require one unlock per purchase, but he intentionally kept it open for this so as to keep it accessible and pro-consumer; he is truly a man of the people.



The highlight of Silver Falls: Guardians and Metal Exterminators S is definitely the character interactions. The LCD games are fun in short bursts, and they're good for high score contests - we've had a few on the Silver Falls Discord - but the real meat of the game and the reason to buy is Frontier Guardians and the storyline. Jerrel writes these characters brilliantly and in such a way that makes the world of Silver Falls feel connected from game to game not just through a shared setting but with consistency and growth from game to game. If you played Undertakers, you met Oxa about a decade before her appearance in this game, and if you play the games set in the 90s or 2000s, you'll see her a bit older, still the same person but realistically wiser and matured. The Code Linker system ensures that you continue to get your money's worth down the line as future Silver Falls titles release. This isn't a big budget AAA game made by a team of two hundred developers and artists; it's an indie game made 100% by a single man, and that shows. It doesn't look as sharp and detailed as Metroid Dread or Pikmin 4. It does, however, have a charm that only a truly dedicated developer who genuinely loves gaming can instill in a game, and Jerrel's passion to the medium and pride in his work show through in the game. That's something no Resident Evil or Dead Space game can replicate no matter how much money or manpower they dump in. Don't skip out on this game. It's a blast, it's got a great story with a genuine small-town feel, and it was crafted with a love and care you won't find in many other games.

[SyedDanishAnwar]

I beat the PSP version of Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII last night at about 3 am. And I found the the story to be heartwarming especially the ending.
I wanted to get up to speed with the background story of FFVII before tackling Rebirth stated to release next week.

After finishing the story, I now know the backstory of Cloud, Zack and Turks and projects Genesis and Sephrinoth, and how the story ties in with the FFVII main game that takes place 2 months after the events of Crisis Core.

I am glad they made Zack live in the Remake. And it would be interesting to see the role he plays in the main game. Although, I wished they also changed the timeline by letting that charming healer Aerith live. But after looking at the latest trailer I don't think it will happen.

What I like Best: Graphics, story.

What I didn't like: Combat system was awful. The rock-like music also sounded jarring.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2023 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
* indicates a repeat
1. Terranigma (SFC)
2. Eastward (PC)
3. Pulse (PC)
4. Lost Ruins (PC)
5. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (PC)
6. Dropsy (PC)
7. Call of Juarez Gunslinger (PC)
8. Pokemon Ruby (GBA) *
9. Secret of Mana (SFC)
10. Fire Watch (PC)
11. Bokura (PC)
12. Romancing SaGa (SFC)
13. Trials of Mana (SFC)
14. Castlevania Legends (GB)
15. SaGa 2 (GB)

16. SaGa 3 (GB)

Still very much in the mood for old RPGs after SaGa 2, I got right to work on completing the last of the GameBoy SaGa games. I bought this collection on Switch well over a year and a half ago, and I figured it was high time I actually finished the darn thing x3. I didn’t know much about this game going in other than that it wasn’t really a SaGa game beyond the title. The creator of SaGa had already been pushed on to Romancing SaGa by this point, so the team that put this together were largely the team that would go on to make Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, and this game was something of a prototype for that game in many ways with how much they share mechanically. At any rate, after all of the wikis I’ve needed to consult and countless stats I’ve needed to keep track of playing other SaGa games recently, I was honestly happy to have something more straightforward to play XD. It took me around 15~20 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game via the Switch SaGa collection over the course of a week (without using the collection’s speed up features).

SaGa 3’s story is very involved and complicated right out the gate. Years ago, a large pot appeared in the sky and began to pour water and monsters out into the world. Within a couple of decades, the world was completely submerged underwater and monsters had destroyed anything that was left afterwards. In a hope to prevent this awful fate, three young heroes were sent back in time to train for the day they’d be able to try and save their doomed world. Their leader, Dune, is our main character, and our story begins on the day their training is complete and they set out on their quest.

The story honestly goes tons of weird places after that, and there are tons of other named NPCs and places throughout the story that you’ll need to keep track of throughout your time-hopping and dimension-hopping adventure. Heck, the other three player characters all have names and roles as well! That said, none of it really matters much. The story is quite complicated compared to the previous SaGa games on GameBoy, sure, but not to much end. It’s a story where a ton of Stuff (TM) occurs, but it’s mostly just for the sake of giving the player a Next Location to progress on to. A decent deal of it is probably me playing this in Japanese rather than English, but I found the story quite difficult to follow, myself, though I gave up caring all that much about it pretty quickly. The dialogue writing is pretty flat, and beyond that, it’s a pretty bog-standard good vs. evil story that happens to have a somewhat novel setting for the time. While that’s not exactly a point against it, it’s not really a point in its favor either.

The mechanics are indeed much more straightforward than a typical SaGa game, and they’re downright nearly as simple as they could possibly be, quite frankly. You’ve got a party of four members, two physical attack-focused and two magic-focused, and you gain experience points from leveling and a level up will give you a general boost to your stats. It’s damn near as simple as a turn-based RPG like this comes, honestly. There are some annoying nuances and lacking of information regarding what strengths weapons actually have, but nothing terribly unique for the time.

To give the game at least a little credit, however, it does try to have *some* SaGa-y mechanics by adapting the monster system from the previous two games. While you can’t have any monsters in your group like you could in SaGa 1 and 2, you can instead have your human and esper party members eat meat or use robot parts dropped by defeated enemies to transform into monster hybrids and cyborgs respectively. Eating the opposite type you currently are will turn you back to normal, and there are some dedicated purification spots to do it at as well if you’re having trouble with that. Becoming a monster or cyborg makes your equipment act differently as well as gives you some special abilities (that are different from spells) depending on what you’ve turned into, and they even shift around your base stats to boot.

Neat as all that is, it’s a pretty poorly implemented system that I never engaged with much. Even if you don’t eat more meat or equip more cyborg parts, you can still shape shift after a random battle into a new form, meaning you can’t reliably maintain a particularly useful monster or cyborg form should you find one. It makes your party plagued with unreliable side-grades and down-grades in how it affects your stats and max HP, and I found it a perfectly viable strategy to just ignore that stuff the entire game and stick with a more stable normal form party. I’ve got to give a little bit of credit where credit is due for implementing such an involved system in the game, but I really wish they’d gone through the extra effort to make the stuff actually feel like it was worth using at all.

The presentation is, at least, quite nice and doesn’t let down its predecessors. The music compositions aren’t quite as nice, in my reckoning anyhow, but it’s still another GameBoy RPG full of good music. The graphics are also quite nice, and while there weren’t any as stand-out memorable as there were in SaGa 2, there were still a lot of neat, silly bad guy sprites to fight along the journey.

Verdict: Not Recommended. This isn’t a bad game, per se, but it’s one I find basically impossible to recommend you spend your time with. The story is dull, the mechanics are bland, the signposting is quite bad, the difficulty is quite easy, and it’s not particularly outstanding in its presentation either. You might not have a bad time with SaGa 3, and the mechanics might frustrate you a bit less than SaGa 1 and 2 on the GameBoy did, sure, but at least SaGa 1 and 2 (for all their faults) were novel and interesting in many ways. SaGa 3 may’ve been perfectly acceptable when it came out, but I think it’s very hard to justify spending time with in 2024 unless you simple must experience every SquareSoft game that’s out there out of pure intellectual curiosity.

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17. Celeste (PC)

This is a game that’s been on my radar for a looooong time. I’m a big fan of precision platformers like this, having enjoyed a lot of games like Knytt and Super Meat Boy when I was younger, and it was really just a matter of having too much other stuff to get to that I already owned that was keeping me from getting to this (a game I knew I’d really enjoy). However, the Epic Game Store gave it away for free a while back, and it’s also a favorite of my wife’s. I was a bit burned out on RPGs after finishing SaGa 3, and my wife had the weekend free just like I did, so it seemed like an obvious choice to finally sit down and play through this while she could watch me~. It took me about 5.5 hours to beat the English version of the normal game (getting 149/175 strawberries and dying 661 times), and then I spent another 6 or 7 hours doing just about all the B-side levels, chapter 8, and as much of chapter 9 as I could manage (it’s very very tough <w> ).

Celeste is the story of Madeline, a woman who has taken it upon herself to journey out to the wilds of Canada to climb the titular Mount Celeste. It’s a strange and mystical place, and the climb is said to be incredibly treacherous, but she refuses to back down regardless. On her journey up, she encounters a strange old woman who lives on the mountain, a similarly strange spirit who haunts the deserted buildings, and a fellow climber named Theo. The actual beat-by-beat happenings of Celeste aren’t terribly interesting to list off (without getting into super spoiler-y territory), but it’s an incredibly well put together story, just as I’d heard it was. While the humor is a little dated in places (you will never forget that this game came out in 2017 XD), the story itself is as strong as ever. It’s a really well told story of self-discovery, self-doubt, and self-realization. Yes, there are a lot of indie games out there that are platformers that deal with significant themes of mental health, this is true. Nonetheless, Celeste stands out from the crowd as a truly impeccable example of just how great this type of game can be.

The story is great, sure, but Celeste being a really tightly designed and well constructed platformer is also a significant feather in its cap. With very forgiving checkpoints and a well put together accessibility system with its Assist Mode options, platforming veterans and newbies are given the best chance they’ll have to get through the 7+ chapters of this game. Madeline has the ability to climb, wall jump, and normal jump, but she’ll gain (and lose) other abilities depending on the stage, and each of the game’s chapters does a really good job of using its particular focuses to make something that feels different from all the others. There is also a fair bit of optional content in each stage, and that’s where the strawberries and B-sides come in. There are also some special (and often quite difficult) puzzles to solve for special heart collectibles, and the cassette tapes you’ll find unlock harder “B-sides” of chapters that you can challenge as well (and even C-sides for the truly daring), but the more common strawberries are only there for bragging rights (as the game very openly states). Celeste is a very well put together precision platformer, yes, but I believe that its dedication to being accessible to all those who want to tackle the climb is a very meaningful part of its design that has led in no small part to just how popular it’s become over the years.

The aesthetics of Celeste are also very well done. The music is excellent, and the pixel art graphics make each chapter come to life in unique and interesting ways that help add to their unique character just as much as their respective design focuses do. Another thing I loved a lot were the character portraits. There isn’t a *ton* of dialogue in Celeste, but just how expressive and numerous the faces that the characters get helps them all stand out and be memorable in their own ways so well that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Honestly, if you’re the kind of person who knows me well enough to be reading this, you probably already know what Celeste is very well given what a popular game it is. Even still, if you like platforming and/or story-focused experiences, then this is absolutely not one to pass up. Celeste’s reputation as a stand-out excellent game is completely deserved, in my opinion, and it’s one absolutely worth checking out yourself too~.

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18. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (PC)

This is a game I’ve owned on PSN for absolutely ages via my PS3, but the one time I tried to play through it years ago on that, it crashed like 30 minutes in and I had to give up XD. I got it free on Steam some time ago, so it’s been something I’ve been meaning to get to for a while, and it ended up being what I decided to do with the rest of my evening that Sunday night. It took me a little under 5 hours to beat the English version of the game using an Xbone controller.

Hell Yeah is the story of Ash, the skeletal rabbit that’s the prince of hell. After a paparazzi scandal catches him in a compromising position and he sees that there are 100 whole hits on it online (2012 was truly a different time XD), he vows to just go out and kill 100 demons, thereby *certainly* getting rid of everyone who’s seen the photo. It’s a very silly game that feels like a NewGrounds game that got an unlimited budget, and it absolutely drips late-era XBLA energy from every pore. Despite some references and such in the comedy being a bit dated (as one would expect in a comedy game from over a decade ago), I was very surprised at just how well the game’s comedy has aged. It’s a bit graphic for the sake of it, of course, but nothing that made me too uncomfortable, and I’m usually a huge baby about that kind of thing (so it must be fine XD). I was shocked to learn that it was made by a French studio, since it’s such a funny game in English I thought for sure that it must’ve been written by native speakers, but it’s a really cool and fun thing to be wrong about~. It’s a delightfully quotable game that sets out to be irreverent and ridiculous, and it accomplishes that fantastically as far as I’m concerned.

Gameplay-wise, Hell Yeah is a pretty darn competent action/adventure platformer too! It’s not quite a metroidvania, as even though you’ve got upgrades slowly throughout the game and do return to some areas later, the whole experience is very guided and linear. Even returning to areas is laid out to you explicitly, so it’s not something you need to remember to do or anything. Ash has his blade wheel/jetpack he rides around in and a whole bunch of guns to kill demons and monsters with, and boy is he excited to do it! These demons are something between mini-bosses and environmental puzzles (depending on the demon), and you always execute them with a WarioWare-style micro game (that you take damage from if you mess it up).

The level design is super varied despite the overall simplicity of the controls, so it remarkably never gets boring despite how much of a similar thing you’re doing from area to area. It’s a few weird ideas that end up coming together remarkably well, and I was delighted by just how far above my expectations that this game ended up hitting. It’s not a terribly hard game, but it’s not exactly easy either. I found it to be a nice challenge, which means it’s probably on the harder side given that I’m pretty comfortable with this sort of thing, but at least you have super grenades and a few other nasty tricks you can grind a bit of cash for to help you out if you hit a particularly nasty roadblock of a demon.

The presentation is really fun! Everything has a very 2012 Flash Game vibe to it, but with the presentation of a proper (even Sega published!) XBLA indie game. There are a ton of weird, wacky characters to run into, and they clearly had a ton of fun thinking up all of the areas and demons you encounter along your adventure. The music is also very fun, and it makes for a great backdrop to all the silliness and mayhem (with my particular favorite being the fake Euro-beat club song that plays in the club level x3).

Verdict: Recommended. It’s not a super incredible, must-play experience, but it’s really good fun as far as action games go! While not everyone will love the humor or the zaniness, if this sort of absurdity is your jam, there’s a lot to enjoy here. If you’re a fan of action platformers and absurdism with a bit of reference humor thrown in for good measure, this is one game that can make for a really fun weekend romp~.

[Raging Justice]

Mario vs Donkey Kong - Switch



I don't think I ever finished the GBA version (even though I own it), so this is a first. Supposedly, a bunch of the levels in this one are new and exclusive to it as well. I finished each stage with all presents collected for 100% completion.

I don't like the new graphical style but otherwise, this has all the charm of the original and plays the same. There's no scoring system now, which means you don't have to worry about how fast you complete a level, though there is still a time limit so you can't take all day. Also, completing the game does unlock a time trial mode for each level. The times seem reasonable so you don't have to be a super hardcore, Games Done Quick, speed runner to complete them, just learn the level and play through it efficiently. I like that on the first playthrough you don't have to worry about how fast you complete a level. I also love that you can hold the trigger button to pause the game at anytime and move the analog around to see the whole level. This pauses the clock, which is great for time trials if you need to compose yourself for a moment, and is just useful in general if you get stuck and need a moment to try and figure out what to do next.

You also unlock extra levels, as well as "expert" levels when you complete the game. I've already beaten two of the extra levels with all presents, and completed the first expert level with all presents collected as well as the time trial beaten.

This is a fun, pick up and play, puzzle platformer that is easy to play in short gaming sessions if you're a busy gamer. Levels are short and this isn't a game with hour long cutscenes, tons of dialog, and endless load screens. I love shit like this. I also how super retro it feels. I love that this is a throwback to the very beginning of Mario's career, even before he was in Super Mario Bros. This really is Mario mixed with old school Donkey Kong. You bash enemies with hammers, you throw barrels at Donkey Kong, you avoid flaming oil cans and even have those old school Donkey Kong sound effects, which make me smile like some Pavlovian response each time I hear them