Most vibrant memories from my youth usually start or end with kicking my siblings' butts in Super Smash Bros on the Gamecube. This game feels like a stroll down memory lane: the characters, the stages, the item drops, etc. are all transferred from twenty years ago. The developers have added fine-tuning, new modes, and new characters of course, but from my recollection, the core mechanics remain the same.

My main gripe has to do with the overhead: I have issues with buying a game for full price (especially a port without a full-length campaign) and then having to pay hefty fees for DLC and online extras. I do commend the developers for keeping couch multiplayer as an option, because in this age of microtransactions, they could have canned every bit of nostalgic excitement and traded it for online multiplayer. Speaking of which, online multiplayer has least amount of care or consideration. Frequent connection issues and a monthly (or annual) fee are some of my major hang ups.

TL;DR: Online multiplayer sucks. Single player campaign is short. Couch multiplayer feeds on nostalgia to great results.

A short platformer that never lulls, Dandara is an indie game released by a Brazilian studio. The game takes inspiration from classic Metroidvanias and adds one grand concept: the player character, the titular Dandara, doesn't run-and-jump; instead she can only leap from one salt-covered platform to the next, a simple mechanic that sometimes turns the world upside down (literally).