After so many posts and reviews I think there is no need for me to say how big of a platforming fan I am. Maybe the fact that I grew up with the genre by playing many old-school Mario games and great Sonic adventures made my admiration for platformers grow over they years especially when games like Banjo-Tooie and Rayman 2 offered brand new perspectives on the genre by improving on many areas first explored by the genre's pioneers.

Therefore, naturally, I am always very disappointed when I end up missing out on platforming gems that don't hit the consoles that I own, a feeling that is maximized by the almost absolute lack of constant releases of that kind of game. This generation there have been plenty of those titles including: Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet and Clank and the indie success that is Braid.

Much to my surprise, shock and delight just three days ago I discovered by chance that Braid had indeed been released out of the 360, as the game gained a PC version early this year. While I wondered if my mildly powerful Laptop would be able to run the game I quickly accessed a website and got the game, right after confirming I had the necessary specifications.

The last PC game I bought was Warcraft III back when it hit store shelves for the first time, so I don't even have to expand on how much I use my PC for gaming purposes. Either way, I have been playing Braid for quite some time and I am loving every minute of it. The time manipulating mechanics that change with each passing world are always unlocking new puzzle opportunities and challenging you in new ways. Braid is a constantly surprising and never repetitive game.

Tomorrow I plan on getting an hour or two with the game so I can finish it, but I will certainly keep on playing in order to get all the extras and squeeze every single minute I can out of this fantastic highly artistic game.

Here is yet another big review, feel free to skip it all because it is extremely big. If you do make it through the entire review and like it please recommend it.

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Square's amazing ability to tell great stories transforms an average package into an absolute winner

Through the course of its history the Kingdom Hearts saga has achieved what was thought to be impossible in joining two very distinct fan bases, Disney aficionados and followers of the Final Fantasy series. By mixing Square's story telling with Disney worlds and characters the series has succeeded in gaining respect from both gamers and critics on its execution. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is yet another chapter on this beautiful friendship tale and like its predecessors it excels in character development and technical achievements.

The game follows the story of Roxas - Sora's nobody – during his time with the Organization XIII, hence the number 358 on the title. The game starts by the end of the original Kingdom Hearts and sheds a light on the occurrences of Chain of Memories eventually ending precisely before the beginning of the second Playstation 2 title. During that time players will be able to get an inside look of the evil organization and watch the growth of Roxas and Axel's friendship.

Those who are not familiar with the series may get lost at some point in the game due to the constant appearance of many returning characters, but that doesn't mean Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days doesn't welcome new players because it surprisingly manages to hold up as a game of its own, even if some central parts of the plot can only be fully comprehended by having a good knowledge of what happened in previous titles.

The game is played from a 3-D perspective and features two control options. The initial one is faulty since it has players pressing the select button to enter a camera control mode from where they can move the view as they wish. This specific setting breaks the pace of the game, and it also makes players vulnerable for a considerable amount of time as all actions your character can perform are disabled when you are moving the camera. When you take into consideration that it is during battles that your camera will need the most adjusting it is easy to see why the first control setting fails.

The second one is much better as it allows players to move the camera by simply pressing the L or R buttons. While this doesn't fix the camera hiccups that happen from time to time it makes the overall experience much more pleasant. As usual, players will engage in real time hack and slash battles and perform combos to make enemies hit the ground.

Magic is also an option and can be accessed through menus on the left portion of the screen which are controlled with the X and Y buttons. Navigating through those menus during battles can be a nuisance, especially before you get used to them. Fortunately it is possible to create shortcuts that will allow gamers to perform magic with the press of a combination of two buttons, a delightful solution for a sometimes confusing menu system.

During his time with the organization Roxas will have to undertake a series of missions to climb up the ranks. These missions – mostly happening on Disney worlds – don't offer a lot of variety as they are basically separated into a few different categories: Reckon missions have players exploring and discovering info about a newly found world, other tasks have Roxas killing either a large horde of minor enemies or a massive boss.

However it takes a long while for this limited mission variety to kick in as during the first four hours of the game you will be basically going through very limited missions that feel more like tutorials than actual gameplay. These assignments usually have players following instructions given by their partners. The fact that the game takes such a long while to pick up the pace and throw a decent challenge at players can make it boring before it has even started which will absolutely turn off some players.

Your duties are performed on a daily basis and most of the time you will be paired up with an AI controlled character. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days manages to stay away from the current overflow of poorly controlled AI partners and presents very intelligent assistants that will indeed help on battles without ever getting in the way and making players mad due to bad programming.

On every single day Roxas spends with the organization your routine will be exactly the same. Talk to your boss on the organization's base, accept one of the missions provided by the game and do your job. It is undeniable the game offers plenty of missions (even though a bunch of days will be skipped during your adventure), but truth is most of them are extremely repetitive. Chances are that after a while the only reason to play the game will be watching how the story develops and eventually seeing how it all ends, which is unfortunate due to the time and care that was put into the worlds – a sentence that is not true when it comes to mission design.

Even the game's bosses, while huge and impressive in size, don't take a lot of thinking in order to be defeated. Instead of being creative battles most of the bosses encountered during the adventure will simply be bigger, stronger enemies with a huge amount of stamina, naturally making those battles extremely long hack and slash affairs. Truth be told though, the big guys do have a very nice range of attacks that demand a lot of skill in order to be avoided.

The biggest and best new feature of this particular entry is the addition of a Panel System. Before heading out on their missions players must carefully assemble a series of blocks containing different abilities, magic spells, items and etc into a specific gridded area of their inventory. Mixing up the correct abilities and making the items fit perfectly into the limited space takes a lot of rational thinking and strategy which are necessary to succeed in the game's highest difficulty levels.

Visually the game is a huge achievement by Square. The character models are wonderful to look at with very smooth edges and animations, showing how far the DS hardware can go when rendering 3-D models. When it comes to the scenario it is hard not to be overwhelmed by what you see, the Disney worlds (Beast's Castle, Agrabah, Wonderland, Neverland, Halloween Town) are wonderful to look at and are perfect reproductions of what was featured in the movies. However, the low quality textures take away some of the scenario's quality even though it is hard to think that Square could have done better with what they had in their hands.

The songs present a lot of recycled material from previous games, which is far from being a bad thing. The story is mostly told through outstanding Square-quality cutscenes, which means that as far the DS goes they are only paralleled by other games produced by the company.

Besides, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days also presents a lot of extra content for fans of the series. There is a multiplayer mode where each player plays as one organization member on unlocked Story Mode missions, there are also tons of unlockable characters that are sure to keep hardcore fans playing for many hours after completion of the regular story.

Overall Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a nice addition for the Nintendo DS. The game thrives on its technical achievements and is mostly hold up together by the amazing storyline developed with each passing day in the game. Long time fans of the series will spend up to 50 hours unlocking everything this amazing package has to offer while other gamers will spend thirty-hours to complete exclusively the Story Mode. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days may not be one of the system's finest moments, but Square's amazing ability to tell great stories and make players deeply care for their characters transforms an average package into an absolute winner.

Actual Score: 8.2

A Boy and His Blob is on its way and I can't wait to play that 2-D visual work of art, meanwhile I decided to sit down and write my thoughts on Mario and Luigi's third adventure. To me it is not clear whether or not it is superior to Superstar Saga given the extreme quality both games posses, but out of the two it is definitely the most creative and inventive game. Anyway, as usual this thing is huge so feel free to skip it, but if you do read it then please recommend it.

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The ultimate portable masterpiece

Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga presented the concept of allowing players to control both of the brothers simultaneously. What at first seemed like a complicated idea to execute became one of Mario's best games of all time guided by simple gameplay mechanics and a battle system filled with action. Partners In Time improved on many areas, but it failed to impress gamers despite its greatness, simply because it didn't achieve the quality of the original. Since its announcement it was clear that Bowser's Inside Story had a steep hill to climb. In order to succeed not only did it have to be a great game, but it had to match the original's astounding quality and whether or not it would be able to raise the bar would pretty much define Mario and Luigi's third adventure.

Bowser's Inside Story kicks off when the Mushroom Kingdom is hit by a strange disease called "The Blorbs" in order to stop the calamity Princess Peach unites a council to determine how to act. Meanwhile Bowser roams a forest and is deceived by mysterious man into eating a supposedly "Lucky Mushroom". Later, while striking the castle the Mushroom's effect kicks in and Bowser swallows the entire council, including Mario, Luigi and Peach which end up trapped inside the tyrant's body. With the sudden turn of events the evil Fawful takes over the lovely Kingdom and it is up to Bowser and our trapped heroes to save it from its new ruler's insanity.

Like it happens with every single game of the series Bowser's Inside Story is developed via hilariously silly dialogue. There is humor in nearly every single line spoken by the characters and some of the best ones are certain to make players laugh out loud. More importantly, the game sheds a light on the backstage acts of the Mushroom Kingdom giving long time Mario fans a deep look at the lives of Peach, Toadsworth, Mario, Luigi and Bowser, which happens to be the star of the game, a funny perspective that is unexplored on the Mario platformers.

Through most of the game players will control Bowser on the top screen while Mario and Luigi roam Bowser's guts on the bottom screen. All the characters are controlled with the D-pad, but Bowser performs his moves with both the X and Y buttons while the brothers do their thing with the A and B buttons. Only one screen is active at a time, but switching between one and another is as easy and fast as it could possibly be. Turning what would be an annoying task in some less polished games, into a simple press of a button on the highly well produced RPG.

Bowser will explore a huge non-linear overworld filled with different scenarios and Mario and Luigi will be controlled on a side-scrolling perspective when exploring Bowser's body. Even though these sections are in a 2-D perspective the game still throws environmental puzzles at the players requiring some backtracking, thinking and a lot of exploration. Unsurprisingly both the inside and outside worlds are fantastic, on lesser games a portion of the world would go underdeveloped due to the other's greatness, but here the two overworlds feel and play like full-fledged portions where a lot of care and time was put on.

Overall the game has outstanding level design and is at its best when Mario, Luigi and Bowser must work together in order to accomplish the same goal. At one point in the game Bowser will come across a fountain of water which will fill his insides with the liquid, and Mario and Luigi must enjoy the changing water level to reach new areas and further explore the big guy's body. At other times Mario and Luigi must travel to specific body parts and engage very compelling mini-games in order to unlock Bowser's hidden powers giving him supernatural strength for a while. It is hard to find a game as creative in its execution as this one.

Bowser's Inside Story follows the footsteps of its predecessors by keeping the very same battle system. Attacks must be performed with timed button presses in order to be fully effective, besides each and every move performed by the vast number of enemies can be avoided with a lot of practice and great timing. Not only does the constant button pressing add action to the turn-based battles, but it also demands a lot of skill from players.

The characters also have special moves that require an even bigger sequence of timely actions. Those attacks are as powerful as they are fun to perform. Mario and Luigi will join forces and it is up to players to know when to press either the A or B buttons correctly. As for Bowser, his specials are delightful. The King of Evil will have different minion squads at his command, each of these groups (Koopas, Goombas, Bob-Ombs, Kameks and etc) when called will trigger a fun mini-game on the bottom screen requiring players to use their stylus and perform different actions to fully maximize the attack's power. Instead of feeling like tacked on mini-games those are actually very natural and amusing fitting right into the gameplay. From time to time players will be going for special attacks with the sole purpose of having some fun.

The battles also take advantage of the game's core concept as there are some enemies that appear on the top screen that can be swallowed by Bowser, only to be finished by the brothers inside his body. This concept will often be used on the game's cleverly designed boss battles which, just like the rest of the title, are overflowing with creativity.

However, the traditional Mario and Luigi turn-based battles are – surprisingly - not the game's action pinnacle. Since Mario and Luigi is a naturally over-the-top series developers decided to go all out on the insane giant Bowser clashes. Whenever Bowser is faced with a life-threatening situation the brothers will be able to trigger his giant form. When Bowser grows big your DS will have to be turned sideways as Bowser faces massive structures in battle such as a train, a castle and etc. By exclusively using touch screen controls and the microphone you will be able to punch, breath fire, throw fireballs and much more to totally beat down enemies on epic affairs that had yet to be seen on a Mario game.

Visually Mario and Luigi is a delight especially on its ridiculously beautiful character models. Mario, Luigi and the others are wonderful examples of pixel art animation, and the polish put into Bowser is something that has yet to be achieved on the Nintendo DS hardware. The scenarios have definitely been improved compared to the other games, but the leap is not nearly the same achieved by the models, still they are very impressive sights to look at.

The soundtrack ranges from traditional Mario tunes to brand new compositions that will be certainly returning on upcoming Mario games due to their quality. When it comes to dialogue the game is limited to charming beeps and some occasional grunts from the major characters. As usual Mario and Luigi's gibberish Italian is hilarious to listen.

Bowser's Inside Story is clearly a game that is not content on simply being nearly flawless. Developers have gone out of their way in order to make every single second of this adventure a wonderful gaming moment whether because of its nice story, amazing battles, overwhelming creativity or fun mini-games. If there is such a thing as a big flaw in this title it has got to be its difficulty which will barely affect experienced players. The boss battles are much easier than they were on previous installments and while being occasionally lengthy they will fail in providing a maddening challenge.

Mario and Luigi Bowser's Inside Story is the defining moment of the Nintendo DS. As the handheld approaches the end of its cycle Nintendo and Alphadream have crafted the ultimate portable masterpiece that utilizes every single feature the system has to offer in a very natural and fun way while squeezing every bit out of the machine's hardware. Match that with great level design, a brilliant core gameplay concept, amazing art, the unique charm of the Mario RPG titles, over twenty hours of gameplay and you have one of the best titles Nintendo has ever put out in the market in your hands.

Actual Score: 9.8