My online alias is Joyboy. I'm 20 years old, and I like video games.

My earliest console was a Nintendo Wii when I was a kid, bought second-hand. I used to rent video games from Blockbuster, back when both Blockbuster and renting games was a thing.

After that, I had a Nintendo DS and a Nintendo 2DS. I currently have a Switch Lite.

I prefer PC gaming. I've only really owned Nintendo consoles.

The game I played the most in the beginning was Super Mario Bros 3. The second-hand Wii we purchased came with a copy of Super Mario Bros 3 pre-installed by the previous owner. The only issue with the game was it wouldn't save your progress, so I'd try to beat the game in full after school in a couple hours before my game would be reset.

The farthest I'd ever get with that time limit was World 7. Normally using the World 2 flute warp whistle.

When I started renting Wii games from Blockbuster, my favorite was Super Mario Galaxy. Since it was a rentable game, I started my first playthrough near the end of the game on a save file left by a previous player. It's been one of my favorite games ever since.

I ended up buying my own copy. I still have the box, disc, player book and receipt. This is the same for my Super Mario Galaxy 2 copy, and my Super Paper Mario copy as well.

Some other games I loved growing up were; Animal Crossing: City Folk, Pokemon Black & White, Minecraft, Kirby Super Star Ultra, League Of Legends, and many more.

I still try to keep up with LOL ESports, and T1 has been my favorite team since 2013. T1 fighting!

Nowadays I play anything that piques my interest. I frequently still play League of Legends, occasionally Valorant, and a lot of steam games. I still regularily replay my childhood favorites at least once a year.

My reviews are pretty messy. I'm just putting my thoughts and feelings about these games in one place.

STRAY (2022)

Stray did exactly what I anticipated it would do. The game exploded for maybe 2 weeks, and then went dead in the greater scheme of things.

My initial impressions of the game were a 50/50. The visuals are clearly well-executed, the environments look wonderful, and it eggs the player on to explore this 'fall of humanity' cyberpunk scenario you've been dropped into. However, within an hour of gameplay it felt restricting. You have this beautiful world, with lore you can parse from something as simple as graffiti and papers on the alleyway walls ... and then you can't jump unless the game has decided you're in a location where you should jump.

On one hand, the platforming would be irritating if you didn't have the instructed and limited format for it to ensure there's no failure. It's also designed around the player being a cat, which adds even more to the idea that you can't fall. On the other, at the very least, being able to jump around even when there's nothing to jump onto, should be a bare minimum here.

The lack of replayability is it's other major flaw. While played, I was concerned about this premise, and I was right. There is 0 real incentive to unlock the droid's memories, because the biggest revelations that progress the story occur no matter how many optional memories you've unlocked. Several of the memories I had unlocked could've been gleamed from the environments, and characters, without the lore being filtered through the companion droid. I think a bigger difference between what the droid remembers and what the environment shows could've added more incentive to actually 100% this game.

Stray was advertised as a cute cat in a cyberpunk dystopia. And that's all it has to offer. If the hype hadn't blown up as much as it did, I feel the standard wouldn't have grown so high. Stray achieved what I believe the developers had set out to do, and not what the consumers had anticipated it would.

I don't believe this game is worth the money. A linear game with a story you can follow, even without the companion droid's input, mid-tier soundtrack, albeit good visuals, and one ending no matter what you find, accomplish or avoid. Stray lacks the satisfaction I was anticipating.

From the beginning, I had anticipated there would've been at least 2 different endings. When it ended up having only one, I was disappointed, not due to the lack of extra endings, but because the one ending the game has is not satisfying. It is open-ended, and not as definitive as I believe it should've been. There are too many factors in this world the game has built in order to reliably answer the question of what happens now? Several games have managed to properly relay an ending that doesn't answer a question, and instead poses one, and Stray fell short in this regard.

I do not hate this game. It's good for what it is, but it could've been so much more.

List of all the games I've played coming soon ...