I love Platinum's brand of simple-to-learn, difficult-to-master, hairtrigger-dodging combat but this combines it with a colourful, bombastic world that is just so fun. It feels so perfectly at home among a Nintendo console's line-up, and that theme music gets me genuinely pumped. It's a mainstay of ...

After hearing TCGS, along with a few friends, bang on about this for all of 2020, I had to give it a go. I think this is a game that absolutely nails it across the board. Mechanically, the game is satisfying to play moment-to-moment. The metagame is compelling on top of the individual runs. The stor...

I always liked the idea of Sonic better than actually playing his games. Sonic the Comic? Sign me up. A little plush of the old, round, 90s character? Adorable. But actually playing Sonic the Hedgehog after a lifetime of Mario was an exercise in frustration. Recently, a friend suggested I'd been goi...

For my money, Nintendoland deserved to be up there with Wii Sports. The way it used the Gamepad to provide unique asynchronous multiplayer sessions right there in one room was wonderfully fun. Mario Chase, with the little face of the player smirking in the corner of the TV, was so simple but endless...

Apart from Pokémon I'm not really a JRPG guy, but Xenoblade Chronicles was my big exception. The world is absolutely phenomenal to explore, the characters dragged me through the story with genuine excitement and the music is in my head to this day. I think the user-friendly touches with fast travel,...

Like other folks have said, Metroid's incredible sequels and GBA remake cast a big shadow. That said, the music and lonely atmosphere are present and correct all the way back here in the original. I'm not going to play through it over and over like Super Metroid but going back for a little taste now...

I think Sonic the Hedgehog, on the Master System, was the first game I ever played. My grandmother had a Master System and used to play a good amount of Sonic, and I would ocassionally have a go and die repeatedly. Many years later, after several Game Boys and my dad's PS1, I had a gamecube and my N...

My main memory of Mario Kart y was a really stupid falling out it caused between me and my then girlfriend; I was insistent on playing as Mario characters, she wanted us to play as our respective Miis, she thought this was me not wanting to spend time with her, I was being obnoxious and stubborn. . ...

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is up there as one of my favourite games of all time. These are my favourite incarnations of Link and Zelda, and they inhabit such a beautiful world. The painterly visuals, the spine-tingling music and the oodles of character poured into everyone and everything you...

Let me just start by saying Bayonetta 2 is a blooming brilliant game. It just isn't quite as good as the all-time classic masterpiece its a sequel to. I think Bayonetta 2 suffers from a lot of the problems Super Mario Galaxy 2 suffers from. In the haste to get players to the good stuff, the sense of...

I'm glad I played Undertale as early as I did, having not been subjected to the hype and proselytising the game's fans have been spreading since release. The writing was funny, the symbiosis of gameplay and story was ingeniously done, and what the endgame said about the player, and games as a medium...

Generally, I've always been more fond of the 3D Zeldas than their 2D counterparts. Link to the Past and the NES originals felt to me like they were straining to capture the grandeur and world that later games finally delivered on. Link Between Worlds never felt that way to me. It was slick and immen...

I came to Super Mario Kart quite late, having already played to death the Gamecube and DS versions. Rather than finding it a disappointing, stripped-back experience I found the digital precision of the Mode 7 racing to be a brilliant purification of the idea. Super Mario Kart is timelessly fun. I th...

I'm sure I'm woefully ill-equipped to say anything interesting about Tetris. From the intrigues of its origin, through its addictiveness, success and ubiquity, it's a game that has been spoken about at length by people much smarter than me. For me personally, the game was pretty perfect right from t...

I loved this game, right from the first episode which a lot of people wrote off. Some of the characters were irritating, sure, but very realistically so. From that opening, the story was a wonderful mix of character piece and thought-provoking exploration of time travel. Like Mass Effect, or any oth...

Wind Waker is one of the most beautiful, heartfelt games ever made. The characters, music and visuals are all gorgeous on the Gamecube or the Wii U. It has to be played in the right mindset, though. Trying to push through it, it lacks drive and direction. Played as a leisurely exploration, it sings....

Mass Effect 3. I played all three Mass Effects last year, within a matter of months of each other and after the endings had been extended. For me, this game absolutely completed the trilogy which joins Dark Souls and Mario Galaxy as some of my favourite games of all time. After two games of build-up...

Another game which compelled me to stop lurking and contribute. First thing's first; this was definitely a fantastic experience which I would recommend to anyone, albeit a very grim and unpleasant one at times. It looks phenomenal, the environments swing from beautiful natural vistas to decrepit was...

A pair of games that are so incredible I felt compelled to stop lurking and contribute. These are games which transcend consoles and generations, development teams, fandoms and debate. Galaxy has the most perfect controls, a direct link between player and plumber which has not been surpassed. It has...