An immensely, immensely cynical attempt at putting Overwatch back into the hype cycle by calling an arbitrary patch Overwatch 2 has at last concluded with the only remaining selling point — the long-promised PvE content — being cancelled. There is now significantly less of a reason for this to even be called a sequel, and it was already a tenuous prospect from the outset.

Overwatch was a game that started out middling and got progressively worse over the years. Overwatch 2 picks up from the lowest point Overwatch ever fell to and drives itself deeper into the ground than previously thought possible. The enforcement of stale metas, content droughts, heavier microtransactions, season passes, a community as welcoming as an acid bath, the fact that this is developed and produced by one of the most blatantly evil companies in video games; all of these have been exceedingly well-documented and complained about for years up until this point. Even then, staring down every single flaw that this game had, there were still players holding out for the hope that they'd get to have a single player/co-op campaign as the advertisements had promised.

It won't be coming.

Years of allegedly active development have resulted in nothing but thin air. Contrary to Blizzard's most famous bit of vaporware, Starcraft Ghost, you could actually buy this one before it got a number stapled to the end of the title. Anyone who picked this up in the hopes of getting what was promised later down the line will not be getting the product that they were told they'd get. You could say that these people were foolish for buying the mere promise of something to come later, and I would agree. I can also, however, clown the fuck out of Blizzard for fumbling what by all rights should have been one of the biggest IPs in gaming today and creating something whose legacy is going to be little more than the endless Blender porn animations of its cast.

Buckle down for the retrospectives and video essays that are going to start flooding in about this to try to explain why Overwatch failed as hard as it did. I imagine you're going to start seeing a lot of takes from a lot of people all speculating on what the exact, singular reason was, be it Blizzard's floundering reputation, or the death of the pro scene, or the moneymen deciding that more and more corners needed to be cut.

Allow me to share my theory, though: every story of "why you stopped playing Overwatch" is always the same, and it's never because someone decided they'd had enough fun and hung it up while their opinion was still high. This game is seemingly designed to make people flame out. Someone on your team fucks up hard enough, or you fuck up hard enough, or an enemy player pulls out some unbalanced trick that'll be patched in a week, and you rage and you quit and you never pick it up again. Overwatch is a game with no unity between players, with no community, because Blizzard has devolved into a company which tailors all of its experiences towards glory-seeking leaderboard watchers and nobody else. It's never enough to succeed, to win; you have to dominate, to be the absolute best, to be the first in the world to ever do it.

Look at the way that World of Warcraft has warped itself over the years from being an open and free journey into rote and optimized mechanical rotations, with bosses and dungeons literally designed under the assumption that you'll be playing with plug-ins that tell you exactly where to stand and what button to press at a given time. Overwatch followed a similar trajectory as its life went on, though perhaps made even worse by the fact that they were made compulsory; can't have too many tanks on one team, that's not allowed. Can't have more than one person playing a specific character, that's busted. Can't have a team without tanks or healers, so you're forced to play one if nobody else will. It's one of the worst and most obvious implementations of a forced meta I've ever seen in a game, and it's all in service of a competitive scene that no longer exists for pub players who think they're going to be scouted anyway.

If you're playing with friends and want to try an off-meta strategy, you are literally forbidden by the game's mechanics from drifting too far away from an intended vision of what your team comp ought to look like. God help you if you're in a public lobby and you decide to pick anything other than the highest winrate, highest complexity, most glorious and flashy characters that are available to you. You will be flamed into either submission or a shouting match if anyone on your team becomes suspicious that you aren't playing optimally. Everything has to be optimal. It's all about optimization. And why shouldn't that be what the players expect? It's the idea that Blizzard forces on them. Of course they're going to be toxic shitheads who cry and shout and scream when they perceive the game not being played perfectly.

They learned it by watching you.

There are some strange rare design choices that cause minor moments of frustration, like one song constantly switching on and off between off-beat hits and another song that can overwhelm you with a flurry of notes right after an in-song cutscene, but in general, this game absolutely rules. It does a great job translating the song's lyrics and major beats into a firmly telegraphed form with the overlapping circles + lines that have to be traced as held notes, and they're all placed carefully in order to keep the chart and the player in-tune with the beat, perfect for the compact DS touchscreen. Admittingly it's not ideal relying on sheer score accrual over individual stage rankings to unlock the bonus stages, but it at least provides another incentive to master more difficult stages and the hardest settings when the thresholds are set that high. Either way, the game's charm is absolutely infectious and it never gets old watching three guys in suits and sunglasses dance away everyone's problems, no matter how minor they may be. Without a doubt, I can see myself coming back to push through the highest difficulty after clearing this on normal, so it's an easy recommendation despite some low points. I saw this advertised all over the place as a kid and can't believe it took me this long to finally try it out: hands down one of the best titles on the DS, and it's a real shame we don't see anything from iNiS anymore.

There's a nebulous concept I've struggled to pinpoint about certain games that's completely intangible to the usual scale that's often used to weigh them of their quality. It's not really unique entirely to Yoshi's Story, but to me it's probably among the strongest in it's field. It's that magical ability to have your emotions be naturally struck and never fail to bring a smile across your face. I really don't want to just call it "nostalgia", because it implies that it's only associated with me in particular, and no one else can really experience that same sudden wave of warmness. As I slipped more into pessimistic adulthood though, I started doubting this magic really existing.

"It's just an easy platformer with some high score mechanics, nothing more, nothing less. It's nothing special."

Everyone was right, it really was just my nostalgia overtaking my childish feelings. I'm just overly emotional. Yoshi's Story isn't special. Despite this, throughout all the troubles...the frequent moves to different homes, the friends permanently borrowing games, the trips to GameStop to sacrifice others in hopes of getting something new outside of Christmas or my birthday.....even the near-complete extinction of my childhood N64 cartridges due to my own dwindling interest in the system.....you're still here. That's why I sit here on my notepad document struggling to write about you, and I ask myself that ever so important question:

"What makes you so special?"

It's all too much. My hope to secure my reasoning beyond my own overactive imagination continues to falter. It can't be just because of Shy Guy Limbo and singing Yoshis, there has to be something. I start to believe that the so-called magic that I conjured in my own head is just that, only in my head. Just close the damn document and get back to work on that concept art you're supposed to be doing for a friend. Stop wasting your time. It's hopeless.

but...

Once in a while, I feel that spark of hope once more, and my fire burns again. Those rare times I meet someone who utters "I loved that game", or even "yeah, that music cheers me up too". My childhood optimism returns, perhaps...it isn't just me. The magic does exist. That quality that transcends anything else, something so powerful that it negates any terrible feelings. To remind oneself of simple and innocent times, to give some much needed emotional relief in times of hardship. For me, that right there is the strongest quality any form of media could possibly have.

Thank you, Yoshi.

Pikmin without the hassle

The art style of the game is super cute and the music is awesome.

It's a bit lacking in the challenge department since the game doesn't contain any fight but it's a great game to chill and do some fun platforming and simple puzzle solving.

"Maybe life is like a ride on a freeway
Dodging bullets while you're trying to find your way" -unnamed polymath

I know I'm not the only person caught unaware of how they made not only one, but TWO mainline sequels to the Crazy Taxi series. While they may not be fully souped-up reimaginings, Crazy Taxi 2 and 3 contain all of the content in the prior entry plus a little more, it's a little more apt to think of these as expansion packs. What this mercifully does is maintain the lean and mean purity of the breakout title and sprinkle in a handful more options and maps for just the right amount of variety and personalisation.

The most standout addition in these expansions for me is the jump button, it's wild how much this shakes up your approach to the West Coast you'd otherwise be nailed to the ground for. With the ability to scale buildings and a sense of mastery of the course, it's insanely satisfying to defy the will of the sat-nav and take batshit and overly-direct routes to a dropoff point. I particularly love pulling off a crazy boost and landing on top of a highrise in the middle of nowhere and finding that the developers had the foresight to put a hidden customer there as a little treat. This is kind of fucking amazing. Unfettered videogames. The moment I understand how the fuck you're supposed to pull off a Crazy Drift it's over for you all.

If ever you feel the meter calling, the PC version of the game is easily available in a simple google search. Be sure to use the CT3Tweaks fan patch that adds certain optimisations, greater framerate and resolution support. The soundtrack is kind of hilariously bad but it's all stored in the root folder as .ogg files and I'm sure it'll be no problem to customise yourself.

One of the more interesting phenomenons in gaming is when a series releases two consecutive games with wildly different philosophies. The most famous of these situations would likely be Ocarina of Time & Majora's Mask, but just as interesting-although less discussed-is the dichotomy between SSX's 2nd and 3rd installment; SSX Tricky & SSX 3. While the former stuck much to the original SSX's model of extreme, whacky racing from all around the world, SSX 3 opted for a new approach; one continuous mountain to improve your skills upon in an effort to reach the summit. For SSX, that meant that for the first time, gameplay was freed from its rather linear nature of racing and performing tricks.

The phrase "open-world" might seem like an odd one to apply to an extreme sports title, but the core sense of a world waiting to be explored is what SSX 3 does so well. Everything in SSX 3 takes place in the same setting, offering a sense of connectivity and progress that other extreme sports games lack. Progression itself is varied; other than winning races and slopestyle events, there are earnings goals and freeride challenges you can complete which also give rewards and unlock further events. There's also the mountain in general, which contains 3 peaks, each with their own races and freestyle events. A unified setting does somewhat limit the amount of variety and personality courses can contain, it's a sacrifice well worth making for the sense of immersion the mountain creates. Most impressive are the backcountry sections, which are untracked areas with plenty of traversal options; you're likely to ride down them a dozen times before discovering every path they have to offer. The final setting makes use of them by taking you all the way from the summit to the bottom of the mountain, lasting over 25 minutes with multiple race zones, while requiring no loading. This was incredibly impressive in 2003, and it's still quite remarkable today.

What helps tie all this immersion together, though, is the voiceover work of DJ Atomika. It's impossible to understate how much this element brings to the game. The DJ will constantly respond to the player's actions and victories, while also offering plenty of irrelevant anecdotes which do nothing more than give the game a tremendous amount of heart and personality; it's an inclusion which would be beneficial to almost every sports game. And when combined with SSX Tricky's already well-refined gameplay, SSX 3 comes out as a refreshingly unique title to experience almost 20 years post its release. In fact, its aged quite well in all regards; controls are still as good as ever, and the game feels great to play. Racing and slopestyle are back from previous entries, as well as new Big Air and Super Pipe events, which both add to the SSX experience and help to further vary the gameplay. It hasn't lost a single step to the passage of time, and outside of its passable graphics, it's a snowboarding game that has no trouble standing up to modern games and, in many ways, outpacing them.

The extra challenges and modes to complete makes SSX 3 the bulkiest title in the series to date, which is excellent news for those who want more of the action. Those extra areas are where the gameplay can drop a bit in quality though, which makes 100%ing the game feel like a bit of a drag sometimes. A couple of the challenges in free ride mode, mainly any involving passing through gates or collecting items, can be quite bothersome due to the often inconsistent hitboxes. The collectable snowflakes are nice to encourage exploration, but would seriously benefit from some kind of map to track which ones you've found and which you haven't. There's also the difficulty, which starts out fine, but doesn't increase fast enough to keep up with the player's progression. This is especially noticeable in the final slopestyle and race events, which fail to deliver on their epicness somewhat due to the lack of challenge involved with them. They're still very fun to playthrough no doubt, but an optional "final boss" like event would have fit the occasion much more. By the time you've reached that point, though, you've experienced dozens of hours of excellent gameplay, and it's unlikely to shift your opinion on the game much.

SSX 3 isn't discussed as much as its predecessor in the modern day, and that's a shame, because there's enough adoration to go around. Luckily, though, there's nothing missing from this game that was there upon its release in 2003; it remains one of the greatest snowboarding games of all time, and a shining example to modern day titles as to what the potential of the sports genre truly is. It's a wildly innovative title from a series that could have just played it safe, and it's all the better for it. SSX 3 represents a creative peak for the franchise which has still yet to be matched to this day; good thing this game feels just as good to play as the day it came out.

SSX 3 perfectly builds upon the groundwork of the previous two games by adding interconnected tracks, a nice progression system, and some nice gameplay improvements!

SSX 3 might lose the more zany humor that Tricky has, but it has a nice controlled humor I would say. Nothing too off the rails (pun, indeed intended)! You get some fun unlockable accessories for your character that can help in this regard though! One such example is a pumpkin head. Grand comedic stuff while snowboarding down Peak 1, 2, or 3!

The progression is the best in the series I tend to believe slightly over Tricky. It's a nice cohesive progression compared to unlocking the next level after a Gold medal or such. For each Peak of the mountain, you have different progression systems, such as the usual races and freestyle type of events.

However, in SSX 3 they introduced collectibles and challenges throughout each Peak that can help you gain more medals and earnings in that regard!

After a set of two or three races or freestyle events, you get to face off against the rival you have in the Peak which changes for each section. You face off against them through either whichever you clear first, the Rival Race or the Freestyle Challenge of a certain track. After either of those, you get a certain time to beat for the whole Peak, so some of those tracks that you went through prior, you get to go through them again as one cohesive track! And the same goes for the Freestyle events as well! You get a certain point total Goal that you have to eclipse through the whole Peak. My only qualm about these last goals, or time, oriented events is that you might finish the goal, but the medal you get is a Bronze, it's not too clear as to how you could achieve a Gold. It's a bit ubiquitous as to that. So you just need to try again and again.

BUT! When you get to Peak 3, you don't get the luxury of facing your rival in a one-peak fashion. You must beat your rival through the whole Mountain! All three peaks combine into one track that you must beat your rival through a race or freestyle event! It's a true culmination of the entire journey that you've gone through up until now! You better settle in for them since they can take up a good chunk of time too!

And if you fall in any situation, one of the gameplay improvements is being able to try and tap a button quickly enough to recover as fast as possible to not lose too much ground!

A thing that I enjoyed was that the medals you earned in Freestyle events were not guaranteed to stay the same. You get messages from the Radio announcer, DJ Atomika, saying that someone beat your score on a certain track, go get it back!

Speaking of DJ Atomika, I enjoyed his presence and I find him charming and whimsical in his segments! Not as grand as Rahzel, but you can't really beat a legend such as him.

SSX 3 and Tricky are the literal Peaks of this franchise. Play them both. Love them both. And most importantly, Uber Trick till your body crashes into snow.

This game is so easy to understand, yet so difficult to master. Very few games strike that balance so well, but Super Monkey Ball nails it. You roll your ball around the stage and try to get to the goal. Along the way, you'll be tempted with bananas to collect, but sometimes it's safest to just ignore them.

It's a game of digital balance, and it's always fair. But it also has one of the greatest mini-games of all time in it:

MONKEY TARGET.

Let's be real, Super Monkey Ball 2's "Monkey Target" mode is the best thing to ever come out of the franchise. You roll down a ramp with up to three friends, open your capsules like gliders, and try to drop into the highest-scoring zone possible. It's one of the greatest 4-player party games of all time, and is the reason anyone with a GameCube should buy this game.