I need people to know I'm not exaggerating when I say Wizard101 is my favorite thing ever. They're cooking something absolutely goofy with this video game

A lot of it comes down to how underdeveloped the school setting is, frankly. It barely seems to augment the stories the game is telling, and in Penny's case, reveals some pretty glaring gaps (it would be nice to actually *see* a bullying problem at the academy firsthand, for instance).

S/V was pretty fun overall (especially the DLCs imo), but I think the game just has a pretty weak thematic backbone that makes the whole thing feel kind of disjointed and uninteresting. I'd struggle to tell you what S/V is really "about" in any sense.

So in that regard, I definitely prefer ZA.

Well, I was thinking of Mario Wonder, TOTK, Echoes of Wisdom, Scarlet/Violet, now ZA

I don't have a Switch 2, but I did play a demo of MKW and Bananza and felt I got more or less what I needed to know😅

I don't dislike anything listed here, but I'm not super passionate about them either.

The last one I really connected with before Brothership was Kirby and the Forgotten Land. That was an unexpected banger

ngl, Returns and Tropical Freeze have spoiled me on a lot of 2D platformers. I fear those games' sauce cannot be topped

I sure hope so 😅

I've only played the first Metroid Prime, but I had a good time with it

Wonder was pretty good, but it was also so friction-less it slid right out of my brain. I never really felt tested or challenged, and most of the wonder effects felt no more memorable than, say, your average Donkey Kong Country stage.

It's shocking how so much of the game's plot revolves around AZ and L, but these two characters could be entirely removed and almost nothing would change.

Of course, it's important not to read this as high praise. Legends ZA does absolutely nothing interesting with these concepts, alongside a dozen other cool ideas.

Like most Pokémon games, ZA offers the implication of insight, but never gets around to actually providing the insight.

Indeed, Lumiose goes through a kind of puberty in ZA. The city grows pimples in the form of mega crystals. Rogue Mega Evolution is a hormonal outburst, growing pains from two groups who have not yet been able to coexist.

I'll try not to get too Freudian with the whole... Prism Tower... thing.

There is the fear throughout the game that Lumiose's human population will be emptied out, that it cannot be shared with Pokémon. As the number of wild zones increases, it does not mean integration; rather, the wild zones are the Pokémon "taking" Lumiose away from the humans.

Not that I disagree with Geller here, though!

See, I would go further and say the game is doing much worse than nostalgia parades.

The hostility with which Astro Bot paints its villains for taking Sony's IP underlines the same logic Nintendo uses to shut down fan projects or punish emulation; it is effectively an argument against public domain

I'm considering making a small, uh... not-so-nice video about the game along these lines, but it's still a solid game overall.

And the premise plays out like corporate paranoia.

The game is about thieves and pirates divesting Sony of its IPs, and you as the corporate mascot must return these IPs to their "rightful owner." It's the most cynical premise for a platformer I think I've ever seen.

I had a pretty good time with it. I think Astro Bot *itself* is my biggest hangup, actually. Like there isn't a "setting" of Astro Bot nor really a "character" of Astro Bot (in the way Spyro, or Sly Cooper, or Kirby have), and this game made me realize I value those things in my 3D platformer a lot

I'm just inconsolable if I don't read the same information three different times before starting any video, so this is perfect for me