Peer Schneider

So many creative little — and big — touches! Super Mario Bros. Wonder gets better with every level. Just when you think that the desert stages are truly inspired, Nintendo tops itself again with even more clever takes on classic platforming. Half the fun is going back and trying to “completely” complete a stage. Kudos also for the smart community “ghosts” displays. Other players act as hints for hidden stuff, add life to the experience, and help out despite not actually being in your game. Multiplayer is also well-tweaked, avoiding the New Super Mario frustration of players bumping each other off platforms and into pits. All in all, an absolute gem!

What a clever little gem of a game. Though (purposely) stuck in the past when it comes to freedom of exploration and linearity, Alan Wake 2 invites players to hang out in its moody and often surreal environments. Its immersive, despite not giving you much choice in how you explore or interact. Often channeling that classic Resident Evil setup, it has the look and feel of a David Lynch adaptation of a Stephen King novel… or whatever their Finnish counterparts may be. The game just oozes cool — and it’s genuinely creepy even when it’s not tossing jump scares at you. One of 2023’s must plays!

An gem of a racer, brought down only by (deliberate) reward imbalances to fuel an unnecessary and predatory microtransaction system. Seriously, this is a full price game and one that deserves to be wholly loved by its audience. The pay-to-advance shortcuts are far too enticing when the car prices are this high and the rewards generally this low. I still had a ton of fun with it. The Cafe aspect is wonderful, but ran out of content too quick.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is perhaps the best-looking game on Switch. When you play it back to back with Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD — an updated port of a 3DS game — the differences are glaringly obvious. The lighting (virtually no shadow-casting) is a step back from even the GameCube original. The audio is in stereo only. The visuals, while pleasing, aren’t even in the same league as LM3’s But its biggest limitation remains that the quest is sliced up into shorter missions — perhaps appropriate for what we expected on 3DS, but here it frequently disrupts game flow. You may have eyes on a hidden jewel and you’re about to try and figure out how to grab it, but then the quest ends and you’re forcefully brought back to the Professor’s Lair. For needless exposition and the option to replay that same mission or head somewhere completely different. That, in addition to the frequent (mandatory) “tips” interruptions shows Luigi’s Mansion 2’s age. It’s a good game with some fun environments, acceptable controls (LM3, again, wins here handily), and some nice tunes. It’s worth a replay, but it’ll likely greatly improve your appreciation of its must-play sequel.

Clever puzzles and a unique style set Animal Well apart from the many 2D Metroidvanias out there. There’s no combat — it’s all about avoiding overpowered opponents and figuring out how to get past obstacles via logic puzzles and timed challenges. The upside: you’ll feel awesome for getting past a tricky puzzle or figuring out a buried mystery. The downside: you’ll also get lost a bunch and have to backtrack and waste time trying to figure out where on the — blurry — map the next loose end awaits. The final battle is a bit of a letdown and doesn’t quite use all that you’ve learned to give you that final payoff that would’ve made Animal Well truly special. But what’s there is super-fun and clever. Great game!

Twelve Minutes is an interesting experiment that initially had my full attention — but when the game doesn’t understand what I’m trying to tell it, it gets a whole lot less engaging. I stuck with it and got to the end. But the payoff wasn’t there. A good idea that needed more work.

This is such a wonderful labor of love! I was a young lad when I first booted up Karateka on my Atari XL computer -- and I was floored by the quality of the animations and the incredibly smart in-game story-telling on display. I also remember gleefully noting how much smoother my version ran than my friend's C64 one... The Making of Karateka brings all those memories back. I really, really, really love this gaming documentary format the team at Digital Eclipse pioneered (see: Atari 50). I can't tell you how special it was for me to hear the stories about this game's creation, including the tribulations of trying to port it to other, very distinct platforms. The ability to then actually PLAY all the different versions and hear such excellent commentary by Mike Mika while playing a modern remaster/remake is something genuinely new and exciting. If you're into classic games, don't miss out! This is a new way of celebrating classics.

The N64 version is most likely the most-overlooked multiplayer gem on the system. Fantastic four-player split-screen tank combat.

What a stunner! While it remains very playable today, it felt like a time-traveler from the future when it first came out. A game outrageously ahead of its time that not only solves problems of moving games to 3D, it does so while being dazzling, entertaining, and utterly charming.

Maybe it’s purely nostalgia talking, but I remember being dazzled by how well the game translated key moments from the movie — despite the now-primitive graphics. It’s an interesting adventure game relic today, but it pulled off some impressive multi-screen exploration concepts for its time.