Joe Bariso
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Writing For
MonsterVine 
KeenGamer Latest Reviews
Let’s get this out of the way at the top: Donkey Kong Bananza is amazing. If you have a Switch 2, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not playing it. It’s the system’s first true killer app, and one of the best 3D platformers in years. I can and will gush about the game’s features, but if you’re at all interested, trust me, and go get it. My feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t read the rest of the review.
Patapon 1+2 Replay is, well, a collection of Patapon 1 & 2 in one convenient package. The seminal RTS rhythm games from the PSP were brought back for a variety of systems. This is technically the second time these games have been remastered. Patapon 1 & 2 were released on PS4 a few years ago, but not without issue. Both releases suffered from input delay, making the two almost unplayable at times.
DOOM’S BACK BABY! After killing the devil himself in DOOM: Eternal, we take a peek back into the past of the Doom Guy. Seeing the heavy metal medieval-inspired war against hell he took part in, and it RIPS.
South of Midnight is a Southern Gothic platforming game about the legends and myths of the Deep South, and it’s okay!
In a lot of ways Japan has always felt like Ubisoft’s break glass in case of emergency for Assassin’s Creed. The setting was teased in the very first game in the franchise and since then has more or less been the most sought after setting. Ubisoft however, has felt more interested in the western half of the world, giving unprecedented locals like Renaissance Italy & the Caribbean timee to shine. While this has worked for the most part, after years of fan clamoring, and likely some competi...
Despite it all, Metaphor: ReFantazio is a game about hope. The hope of a brighter day. It makes no qualms about the hardship that comes with that hope. The battles that must be fought, the pain that must be endured, but also the friends you make along the way, the power of kindness. The power of belief.
At its core, The Plucky Squire is a pretty traditional old-school Zelda game. It hits all the notes, even down to the traditional hero’s story, albeit with a meta aspect. But the game also functions as a celebration of the stories that stick with us. The small silly things we love from our youth, the stories that inspire our want to create art ourselves. You can feel that love in almost every aspect of the game. Sure there’s a lot of borrowed ideas and concepts, things that might seem formulaic or cliche, but it knows this, it embraces them. The Plucky Squire is here to remind us why we love these tropes. Why every story, no matter how small, is important.
All this said the core combat and the pawn system are great. It’s a joy to mess around with different classes on you and your pawns. Especially when rolling with some particularly weird ones. Like my beloved Frog Nasty. The game really wants you to experiment, and it never feels like you’re being punished for trying something new and it’s always easy to swap stuff if it doesn’t feel like it’s working out.
In a lot of ways Starfield feels like Bethesda Game Studios magnum opus, it’s a collection of almost every design idea and concept they worked on since Daggerfall nearly 30 years ago. A lot of these design choices can be seen as them pushing exploration past simple silhouettes on the horizon but into the joy of discovering mechanics themselves. It’s a weird sometimes messy game, but one that will have a stranglehold on your life. Every moment feels like you could find something new. Feel something new. Be something new.
You also occasionally run up against the edges of what you can do, which again isn’t much and inevitable really. Sometimes a dialog prompt won’t have anything you would want to say. Or a questline will go into a direction you don’t really feel your character would, but this is still a video game and it still has a story to tell, and compared to an actual table top game anything can feel limited at times.