Yes it's better than the garbage Nintendo put on their portable console. But let's drop the mask a bit, while fun, Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is just a decent kart racer, not the second coming of whatever deity you're into.

I'll use a list format for this review because I'm a bit lazy to write an in-depth review right now.

• The game is actually overall pretty fun despite the flaws I will mention.
  
• This is, by far, one of the smoothest running Unreal Engine 5 game to date. It shouldn't be a praise, but this is so rare nowadays that I feel compelled to mention it.
  
• The tracks are pretty good for the most part.
  
• Super Sonic Speed feels extremely satisfying to play at.
  
• Online seems a lot more stable than in some other games. Although things aren't entirely synced and the real position of your opponents actually differ slightly from what you see.

• No actually interesting singleplayer content: Remember All Star Racing Transformed. Lots of stuff to do and unlock, some actually challenging stuff too. Here, you just get 24 tracks, 8 cups and you grind them endlessly, the same way, all the time. Barely any real unlocks worth your time outside of gadgets, which are one of the roots of my next complaint.
  
• The game is unbalanced. Like really unbalanced, and for multiple reasons.
  
  • First would be the gadgets system as a whole. To even be on the same floor as other players online, you need to waste many hours just grinding to unlock gadgets slots. And then some more to unlock gadgets.
    
  • Second, the items. Items are far too punishing, stun duration is quite long and on top of that you lose a stupid amount of rings, which affects your stats. That leads to a situation where the best strategy is sandbagging (Staying at the back) for most of the race to hoard good items, and just use them all at the finish line... And the track design emphasizes this as a good strategy, with the finish line always being a straight line with boost pads/rings, allowing you to very easily overtake anyone you'd hit with an item.
• The game is disgustingly grindy: The tickets system as a whole is meant to suck hours of your life out of you. And for little actual rewards. By spending tickets on the friendship system (Which doesn't contain a single dialogue or anything lol.) you can unlock some title banners, vehicles (Okay that's a good reward here) and boringly designed alternative character skins.
  How much tickets do you need to spend per character? 50 000.
  How much do you earn per race? About 40 at best.
  
• Festivals. Cool on paper, but then they basically lock you out of standard online racing into team gameplay modes, and have FOMO rewards, including gadgets. (Gadgets are said to come back later, but no indications when or how.)
  
• The audio mixing is terrible... And a huge part of the soundtrack is just serviceable. That's a bit sad, considering it's a Sonic games, and if something was constantly good in Sonic games, it was the soundtracks.
  
• Extremely lazy DLC content. No voices for DLC characters, and well for anyone with a bit of experience, it's extremely easy to just apply an pre-existing armature to a 3D model, maybe make some new animations and release that as DLC. Seeing footage of the Minecraft track, I won't complain about it, it's cute and good. Seeing footage of the Spongebob track... This one is short, with not much happening and no real visual flourish.

Anyways, I likely missed some stuff. I still like and will continue to play the game. But I definitely wouldn't recommend it full price.
And honestly, people who prioritize singleplayer should consider getting All Star Racing Transformed instead. It's dirt cheap, plays overall better, and might feel less repetitive...

The art is gorgeous, the music is haunting, and the writing is just on point. None of that is a surprise if you’ve played the first game, but it still feels magical to experience.

The difficulty makes it clear this was meant to be played after Hollow Knight, which makes sense since the game started life as a DLC. The early balance can feel a bit harsh, though.
However... Some regular enemies and environmental hazards probably should only deal one damage instead of two. That level of punishment works well for big slow enemies and bosses, but some fast-hitting enemies, environmental traps, and hazards outside of maybe lava feel a little overtuned.
A consequence of that is that the first health upgrade feels particularly unrewarding, since in most cases it doesn’t even save you from an additional hit.

Combat, though, is excellent. Hornet’s speed and agility let you weave together stylish combos and give fights a fast, dynamic rhythm. Bosses are clearly designed around her moveset, and their patterns are exciting to learn and react to.
The only weak part are encounters that throw waves of adds at you, which drag out too long compared to the otherwise sharp pacing.
Tip: if you’re struggling with fights, make sure to engage with the tools system. They’re surprisingly powerful and open up new strategies.

Exploration is where the game truly shines. It feels endless, with new discoveries around every corner. Every secret seems to hide another, and the sheer amount of content is far beyond what you’d expect launching the game for the first time.

Now... to the diagonal pogo complainers: Either you didn’t take enough time to learn, or you’re too Hollow Knight brained. That’s a Silk Issue. Hornet’s moveset is fine, and the game even provides a way fairly early on to make pogoing easier if you really need it. She controls beautifully once you embrace her flow.

Flaws aside, Silksong definitely feels like one of the best metroidvanias around. To me, it was worth the wait, and I can only hope Team Cherry supports it post-release the way they did Hollow Knight, because I definitely want more of it.

Guys, wake up. New Kart Killer™ dropped.

✔️ Terrible optimization to the point of having DLSS and Framegen as the target for recommended system specs.
✔️ 70 bucks of DLC day one. (Cosmetics or not, this isn't acceptable.)
✔️ Two layers of DRM (Denuvo and Capcom Anti-Temper). Both of them contribute to the trash performance.

It's sad that we are normalizing this kind of mediocrity by buying into such games, and yus, I'm guilty of it too. What's even more sad is that the game under all this garbage is actually a pretty solid Monster Hunter title:
- The updates to weapons' movesets are all pretty cool.
- The scenario is actually pretty decent for once. (Albeit slow paced and having too much "Talking while Seikret brings me to next monster."
- The world actually looks pretty cool.

It's not without flaws though:
- The focus system is quite cool, but procs so easily it isn't super satisfying to use, turning some hunts into stunlock fests.
- Difficulty... It's easier than other Monster Hunter games as it currently stands. Hopefully expansion will change that. I personally think this is due to the fact that hunters are given a lot of cool new stuff while monsters don't really get anything new.
- Honestly, if it would've helped performance, I wouldn't have minded big open zones instead of an open world, as the world being open doesn't serve much purpose in this game.
- The online systems are a bit convoluted. Didn't bother me personally, but Rise and the classic MH titles had it much simpler.

I'm not really done with the game yet, but the performance issues and bad practices are enough to make me not recommend this game regardless of my enjoyment of it. The game however is very good if you can overlook those.

If you still intend to grab the game, I heavily recommend you to install REFramework (Even if you don't mod, as it contains some perf iomprovements.) and update the DirectStorage DLLs for a potentially massive performance increase.

One of my favorite games in the "Press R to restart" genre.

It's a fantastic rhythm game, but don't go in expecting your experience from other Rhythm games to translate over. Ultimately, this game isn't about tapping keys very fast in the rhythm of the music, but about reading and solving a "living" chart. The variety of gimmicks can be overwhelming at times.

While I wouldn't call myself a rhythm game pro, I'm comfortable with fast, complex charts in most games.
Yet, here I'm struggling even on late game medium difficulty due to my inability to process all the different types of note.
Despite this, I am still greatly enjoying the game. It feels like a fresh take on the genre.

As for the rest, the soundtrack is banger after banger, the story mode so far is pretty cute for whoever liked the characters from Crypt of the Necrodancer, the minigame and bosses are fun, and there's enough of everything to keep you entertained for many, many hours. Oh, also workshop support.

Overall I greatly recommend the game, but be warned that if you're more into the usual 4K+ kind of rhythm games this might not exactly be what you're looking for.

Been playing it quite a bit during the alpha, and was very much in love with it. It feels a niche no other games manage to fill at all, and does it brilliantly. Excited to see what final form it'll reach.

The only thing it truly is missing is Fishing. ♪