Jess’s Game Clearing Reviews

Release Year: 2001 System: Switch Date Finished: February 26th Status: Beaten Seems like it’s become sort of obligatory for people to play through this one after Game Boy NSO was added lol. It’s a very neat concept for a puzzle game, that gets super difficult pretty fast in the story mode. Some of the stages just feel like romhacks with the wild layouts. Challenge mode for the most part feels like the difficulty is kinda back and forth. You never know if you’ll get an easy as hell one, or an utterly brutal stage. Occasionally annoying difficulty aside, very cool game and I hope we eventually get more of the games available on Switch

Release Year: 1992 System: Switch Date Finished: February 13th Status: Completed A simplistic cute little platformer that feels very emblematic of the era, and not in a bad way. It falls right in line with other platformers at the time where levek design might be relatively simplistic but you have some weird, very unique way of dealing with obstacles. It certainly feels a bit odd not having the series’ signature copy abilities, but on its own the game doesn’t feel like it’s particularly missing anything. The main method for dealing with enemies just being eating them and spitting them out is still fairly intuitive, and I can easily imagine an alternate timeline where that sole action remained the focus of future games and not copy abilities. Visuals are basic but given the series originated on the Game Boy, it doesn’t feel compromised in any meaningful way. Regardless of the system it still has incredibly catchy tunes that have since become iconic for good reason. And the hard mode is ...

Release Year: 2020 System: Switch Date Finished: January 28th Status: Beaten Very charming game about a smol ufo taking on odd jobs to move around things with a crane claw with…*physics*. Adorable, pretty fun, and occasionally a bit frustrating because of said physics. You also have 3 side objectives in every level and they can range between easy and insanely tricky. One issue sometimes with those side goals though is that it just gives you a picture to show what it is..and it’s not always very clear what it actually means and what you’re meant to do. Overall a good time, but going for all the side missions and harder versions of the stages can test my patience at times.

Release Year: 2021 System: Switch Date Finished: January 26th Status: Completed A very wacky and meta point and click adventure non-game, you take a narrator with you on a journey through different dimensions, solving point-and-click type puzzles along the way with some comedic writing and scenarios. Presentation is simplistic for the most part but works well, there’s some funny surprises with the chapter premises, and a fairly heartfelt story by the end. For me at least the puzzles could kinda flip-flop in difficulty, sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes not so much. But thankfully in addition to the narrator himself occasionally giving a hint, there’s an actual thorough hint system that even includes the full solution to a specific problem if you still can’t understand what to do. Even if at times I was relying on that, it was much preferable to using an online guide so I really appreciated the option. I’d recommend checking it out if you’re interested.