As a kid, I played Keen 1-3 religiously. I had Keen Dreams and the shareware version of Keen 4 as well, but didn't like them as much, so I never had much interest in trying 5 or 6. While I maintain that The Earth Explodes and Keen Must Die have excellent aesthetics and levels, this one might be a better game?? This probably doesn't sound like a big revelation or anything to most people, but the Invasion of the Vorticons trilogy was arguably my most formative gaming experience. It turns out that I was simply ignoring an incredible sequel for all these years, and I'm very glad to have finally finished it! Definitely won't wait another 25 years to beat Aliens Ate My Babysitter!

This is a delightful reskin. The character renders are well done, and the roster slots are jokes (Princess Trunks, Piccolo Yoshi, Vegeta as Wario, etc.) familiar to DBZ fans. I loved the voice clips that were selected, and it's especially hilarious hearing Piccolo yelps mapped to Yoshi's MIDI grunts. The rethemed maps are interesting enough that it's worth playing through each of them (Bowser's Castle becomes Garlic Castle, with Garlic Jr.'s face on Thwomps, and Royal Raceway, along with its appearance in the trophy cutscene, is now Snake Way, Moo Moo Farm is now Nappa's farm with Saibamen instead of moles, etc.) to see what changes have been made. The items' icons have been swapped, but the items themselves are unchanged. This is a little confusing at first, but each choice makes sense. The 1-star Dragon Ball is the Starman, Ki blasts are shells, the Spirit Bomb is the Blue Shell, Capsule Corp capsules are ? blocks, Oozaru are bananas, and so forth. I also enjoyed that the item rolls have been rebalanced, so even if you're doing well, you can still get any item. This means that unlike original recipe Mario Kart 64, you'll still be able to try out every item if you're a skilled player. The main thing I wish this had was new music, I think swapping in DBZ midi files while keeping the instrument voices from the original tracks would have been huge, but I'm no romhacker, so I have no idea how hard that would have been!

Highly recommended if you're a DBZ fan, especially if you can play with friends so you can all laugh when Vegeta yells "STAY BACK FREAKS" or "SAD FOR YOOOUUUUUU!"

Oh and when you spin out it says "BALLZ" over your head

Infection is... fine. It's not the strongest iteration of the "Zombies" concept, I really didn't play it unless the weekly goals required it. The points are done really weirdly, and I'm still not sure how I feel about the zombie speed. The battle pass was okay, it had some cool coatings (though their duplicate entries for each weapon or armor core felt like obvious filler), and ended with a weapon model, which is nice. However, some of the week-long events were really good this season and had better rewards than the battle pass itself! This season easily added more maps than any other up to this point, and Forge only gets better and better as time goes on. @habitablestorm3 is doing some crazy stuff in there!

The single best thing to happen this season is Squad Battle, an 8v8 mode using legacy maps. It's definitely attracting a more hardcore audience, and it's not uncommon for one team to obliterate the other, but 8-a-side just feels better than 12v12, and these old maps are so well balanced. I had a great time even if I was getting slaughtered!

It's been a perfectly serviceable season, though the lack of cross-core cosmetics has led to a LOT of bloat since a single coating can be unlocked for each armor, and we've got 8 of those now. Really hoping cross-core isn't a pipe dream and actually happens this year!

How did they manage to get such awful draw distance and pop-in when porting an 18-year-old game to PS5? There are even mid-level load times!! What's the deal??

We Love Katamari is still an absolutely incredible game, and the new content is nice enough (if a bit light), but it's such a shame this port didn't get the optimization it deserves. The pop-in was forgivable on PS2 given the hardware limitations, but in 2023 items shouldn't be invisible when they're over 15 feet away.

(This is the 1,500th game I've logged on the site! BACKLOGGD FOR LIFE)

The PS5 showcase in the summer of 2020 sold both me and my wife on the system, and one featured game that interested us was Sackboy. Once it came out, reception was middling, so we held off on buying it. But when it hit PS Plus earlier this year, I ran out of excuses to keep putting it off.

The co-op seemed like the preferred way to play, so my daughter and I started making our way through... and she lost interest REAL quick. Now, she's beaten Mario 3D World multiple times, so the genre seemed like a good fit for us, but the whole thing just felt uninspired. The movement is boring, the level design is boring, the enemies, the collectibles, the music, etc. I've tried to keep playing by myself for a while, but while the game is clearly a competent platformer, there's not really anything going on here that stands out from its peers. This is the kind of game that could be fun with the right group or if you were a kid with like 3 games, but in my 30s with a shortage of free time, I can't justify sinking more hours into the gaming equivalent of an ambivalent shrug.

- I only ever watched like half of one YouTube video about this game back in 2011, so I'm mostly coming in blind here
- Shockingly, it turns out that when you disregard any complex physics principles like momentum or friction, it's pretty dang easy to keep your vehicle on the road at full speed
- Is there a reason why that crashed helicopter is there?? The whole game feels comically janky until that, like there was suddenly a moment of menace in this goofy mess
- Driving straight towards a bridge only to clip through it and drive under it is peak comedy
- Playing this with my kids was the right choice, they couldn't stop laughing
- Kind of disappointed that Nightride doesn't work! Finished the other 4 though!

In 2004, I saw this game in so many ads in Nintendo Power, it's been burned into my brain. Even though I hadn't actually touched it until last week, it likely would have been the first thing that came to mind if you had ever asked me to name a non-first-party GBA game. I miss Nintendo Power!

It's Mr. Pants is a unique enough puzzle game. You are given Tetrimino-esque blocks in 4 different colors (but varying sizes, sometimes as small as 1 block) with the goal being to clear existing blocks off the board. Blocks are erased by creating rectangles at least 2x3 in size, and blocks can be placed on others of a different color to replace them. What makes the main mode both appealing and tricky is that, unlike Tetris, you're not getting randomized pieces. Rather, each puzzle has a predetermined order and amount of pieces which you have to use to end up with a completely empty board. It takes a while to learn the game's internal logic, but after a little bit of "How on Earth am I ever going to figure this mess out", every puzzle's solution did become apparent without resorting to looking up the solution. If you need it, there is a solid in-game hint system if you've failed a puzzle three times in a row which will correct your first incorrect block placement.

It was engaging and intuitive enough that I played through the 25 Easy and 50 Medium puzzles, but pushing through all 75 Hard puzzles is too much. (EDIT: I have now learned that there is a FOURTH difficulty setting with 100 puzzles in it. Very glad I stopped!!) It's a very clever game, but as the difficulty increases, it becomes more about guessing the dev's intent rather than puzzling out the solution yourself.

As a Rare game, it of course has a great soundtrack by the Beanland/Wise/Fischer combo, and features vocals by Mr. Pants himself, which add a lot of character. I'd recommend giving this a shot if you're looking for a unique brain-teaser, but I wouldn't call it a must-play by any means.