Top 50 Favorites: #6 (Definitive Edition)

"What if you don't feel at home anywhere?"
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"🎶Run and break the chain I hope to get away someday.🎶"

The Thin Blue Line. Question your own existence while roundhouse kicking triad members in the face and listening to The Drums. 110% amazing. Deeply depressed individuals hiding their insecurities behind violent power structures - a police badge being worn with the same intent as a gang tattoo. Such richly complex characters on display, Wei Shen is an incredibly compelling lead in this and the supporting characters are all just as memorable. Strong themes of gender expectations, nationality/race, infatuation with tradition, oppressive hierarchies, thwarted masculinity, Chinese politics, etc. It's really impressive, plus the voice cast is stacked (Emma Stone, James Hong, Tom Wilkinson, Lucy Liu, and Tzi Ma among others). The gameplay is just as magnetizing - super content-heavy with tons of mission variety, fun minigames, rewarding collectibles, and one of the most exceptionally lively open worlds you'll ever play in. Driving through Hong Kong at night as Bonobo plays on the radio, drenched in the lights of roadside shops with a little bit of rain drizzle hitting... chef's kiss. Even the little number puzzles are a blast to run through. It's also (rightfully) totally inextricable from its kickass martial-arts-based melee combat system, which is a riot and a half to use. You can also jump from moving car to moving car!! Not just the best GTA clone, but one of the greatest video games ever made. Pork buns 4ever.

Impossible to overstate just how revolutionary this was for its time - now... it's still not bad! Certainly not a masterpiece by today's standards of course: movement can be a chore, driving feels impenetrable, and worst of all precision is way less than ideal in a game that really calls for it in middle/late maps. But this very clearly has its own appealing style, and systems/mechanics that are accessible enough to crack yet fleshed-out enough to always remain relatively intriguing. The American Revolt DLC is essentially a meme.

Awful, awful, awful. I expected to find some underappreciated, perhaps ahead-of-its-time value here but this is a rare case where everybody was right, it sucks. It's easy to forget with how spoiled we are now on the genre, but horror games after the Left 4 Deads and before Outlast were (mostly) in dire fucking straits. It's a shame that so many spectacular ideas on display here (the overall A.I. protector system, contamination disguises, the puzzles ain't bad either) are snuffed out by a viciously atrocious execution. Even with a brand spankin' new 1 TB SSD this thing still runs like super glue and takes forever to load, and even if it did perform well - which, I cannot stress this enough, it doesn't - its systems are still finnicky and reliably unreliable. The of-the-era bullshit sci-fi aesthetic stuff is totally unnecessary, controls are hot garbage, and if The Order: 1886 was only half a game then this is like 1/4th of a game. Just makes me feel bad how shitty this is

Fun until it isn't. Tons of great alien mayhem gimmicks without any real connective tissue to bind them all together - leading to an experience that promises no-holds-barred fun right out of the starting gate yet winds up becoming tedious and repetitive shortly after. There's still good shit in here - the telekinesis stuff and general ragdoll/explosion destruction you can cause is pretty entertaining. But those talking segments are just pure trial-and-error B.S., and having to recharge your cloaking device by reading minds akin to Stick it to the Man! (which used this mechanic way better imo) starts out as a funny idea but ultimately leads to hearing the same handful of voice lines over and over AND OVER again to the point of full-on exhaustion. Gotta love its top-tier voice acting from J. Grant Albrecht and - the King - Richard Horvitz, but the game just can't maintain its sense of creativity the whole way through. And that final boss is all kinds of jank.

Cute, bright, weird, and fast - like any good Katamari game should be. I still think We Love Katamari smokes Damacy any day of the week, but fully understand why this one got the first reroll given that it released prior (and it's still a damn fine game in its own right). Like the best remasters, does very little to change the original gameplay experience - essentially just adds a fresh coat of paint and calls it a day. You can't just deny that music either, good shit! The controls being purposefully obtuse makes it all the better imo, fits the funky tone like a glove and otherwise this would be way too easy. All that being said, I feel similarly towards this game as I do to - say - a Splatoon, where I can play it for a couple hours at a time and be totally invested but anything more than that starts to drag. And like others have said, this does get super repetitive on or around the halfway point. But man, when it's on... this gimmick is satisfying.

Top 50 Favorites: #26 (Original)

The fact that this even exists is a miracle - the closest we'll ever get to a true Ghostbusters III (especially considering that it was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, with some scrapped elements from the original third script). I actually find the remastered version to be slightly inferior to the original, ditching the online mode and cinematic loading screens that teach you about new weapons/enemies in favor of generic .jpeg logos in their place. But it's still sensational. All four main actors as well as classic supporting actors from the movies reprise their roles, the combat is righteous and varied, the sense of destruction feels just unreal, the levels are amazing, the weapons are amazing, the enemies are amazing, the atmosphere is amazing, the music is amazing, and it's just loaded up high with detail. Can't gush enough about how great this is. Truly feels like heart, soul, and honest-to-God love for the franchise was poured into this.

Weezer jumpscare. Confident I'm beating a dead horse here but, just because you could doesn't mean you should. I'm all for weird gimmicks from time to time as long as they know their place, but this never for a single second feels good to play. Even if you didn't have to use that uncomfortable, wiggly, plastic tumor jutting out of the Game Boy port of your DS this thing is still barely functional - the stylus strumming misses at least one out of every dozen or so inputs you make on it no matter how definable they are. And the soundtrack is meh, mostly lazily recycled from other rhythm games - I mean how many fucking times are we going to put Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle" on one of these?

Airless. Even by the standards of the reboot this feels dinky, and this is speaking as one of the few defenders of that game and literally every single other DLC from it (yes, even the cosmetic/vehicle packs). Like seriously, no Gwen homie?? The base only has 3-4 homies as it is, you couldn't have even given us the MAIN follower for this questline (who imo after The Nahualli is the best character in the game) as Volition continues to sweep these other three side characters who they once propped up so high under the rug? Not like the characters were all that good anyway, but damn this is embarrassing. The Chill Queen is a total nonentity in her own expansion, and the missions mostly feel rehashed and overwhelmingly mechanical - in fact this whole addition already seems like a lesser version of the LARP plot in the base game as it is, which actually was my favorite storyline from it! Some of the rewards are cool, the Ban Hammer is neat - and I actually decently enjoy the ghost events. But Vallejo << Sunshine Springs.

Top 50 Favorites: #2

Something special. Media Molecule's finest work as a developer in a career jam-packed with unforgettable gaming experiences. Every pixel of this game radiates the same comfort level as a warm log cabin in December, sitting in a soft chair with a mug of hot cocoa beside the fireplace. Makes your controller feel like a true magic utensil come to life, the gimmicks in this game genuinely made me feel like a kid again - "Ooh"-ing and "Ahh"-ing in giddy excitement with each new twist on the DualShock 4 (and your phone, which I highly recommend also using)'s utility. It really shows just how much Sony underutilized the PS Vita that all its features transferred over without compromise - nay, BETTER - from its original rendition. The sense of imagination here is so red-hot that it feels liable to beam out right off of your screen. Can't express enough how much I love this game, the dictionary definition of adventure. Comparing this to LittleBigPlanet, I feel, would be reductive - since this very much has its own unique identity - but it has more of that same 'energy' than that 2020 Sackboy game imo.

Top 50 Favorites: #24

Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes

I realize I'm alone in this, and that's fine - but this is a truly spectacular horror game brimming with atmosphere and filled with careful shit-your-pants jumpscare moments that each feel earned. Mixes the tantalizingly campy creepypasta era of gaming with a genuine lingering sense of real dread - full transparency, I got this thinking it would be a funny meme but the level of creativity on this at any moment is just insane. Equal measures of scary, silly, stylish, and smart. Even its small but memorable one-off predecessor had a fun sense of inevitability and this one not only pays homage to that one in the best way possible, but also amplifies it to levels above. Always loved the variety on display, each vignette essentially serving as a new visual template for something you just know isn't going to end well - the question is how will it proceed to get there? Too few horror games these days take advantage of that simple but effective mindset because it works like a motherfucker here. Also the bizarre lore actually feels like it was cared about in this one, unlike the smarminess of something like Hello Neighbor which only really wanted its bullshit non-story to be streamer bait. Plus it looks rock-solid for what it is even all these years later. Really good shit, severely underappreciated.

"ACTIVATING JOY MODULE"

One major flaw in an otherwise splendid experience - and it's that, holy shit, even by PS3 standards this framerate can CRAWL at what feels like nearly a dead stop. Still, this is a spirited and gushing love letter to the series that more than stands on its own two feet. The heart powerups and prince hop (as long as you don't rely on half-responsive motion controls) are great new additions, as is the Roboking - there's a nice balance between his insecurity and the King of All Cosmos' narcissism that keeps this feeling fresh on a level-to-level basis. Even the remixed music is fun - sure, not all of them are as good as the originals (looking at you, "The Moon & The Prince" remix) but some of them are imo, and are seriously evocative tunes in their own right. Hub menu not as good as We Love Katamari, gameplay more engaging than Katamari Damacy Reroll. Has your usual repetition problems as can be expected with the series, but this is a sadly overlooked entry. Innovates just enough without taking away the core experience, which many game franchises were guilty of doing around this time. "Even Eternal mode can't last forever", "Why do humans adore what can hurt them so badly?".

Sturdy but also Another One of These™. I'm almost totally burned out on these online live service games complete with seasons, microtransactions, grinding, trash skill-based matchmaking, and alienating "you had to be there for it" moments. Speaking strictly from a personal standpoint I just don't understand how someone can play this for more than three or maybe a generous four matches without getting bored. That being said, you just can't help but admire how this just keeps going strong (seemingly strongER) now going on SEVEN years since its release (eons, in games as a service terms) - and there's a reason for that. Look, I slightly prefer Evil Dead: The Game to this, but at least this one has a little thing called a playerbase... and devs who actually give a shit about putting in the content. The amount of horror licenses all in one place here is simply astonishing, pretty much every horror game online forum prior to this's dream come true - and I dig that it still has its very definitive art style even with all that. It's not bad, but after two matches I'm just going through the motions. Sorry, not really my type of thing.

Diverting, but virtually zero actual nutritional value. As per usual the music is great, the gameplay is completely fine too - but there's just not a lot going on here. Obviously bringing Classic Sonic back was a based move, and the customization stuff is fun without being more than it needs to be - though it always feels akin to a Sonic Generations-lite at its core, the level design + themes really aren't as interesting here. That medal system or whatever that was feels kind of arbitrary. And of course the story is bullshit but what did you expect? I'd 100% play this again in a flash, but also can't pretend like it didn't become kind of an empty chore my first time around. Not a whole lot different at all from Sonic Colors or honestly many of the other modern Sonic games, sporadic turn-off-your brain fun.

Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes

Supremely atmospheric visuals and sound in service of a game that, quite frankly, feels bullshit to play - even in its remastered form with all its new bells, whistles, and much-needed gameplay tweaks. Funnily enough I had zero issues with Another World - 20th Anniversary Edition, which came out way before this and has much less in the way of added features. But there are crucial sections of this game that straight-up will not listen to your inputs - ones that require stupidly pixel-perfect accuracy for something as simple as a jump, turnaround, or shot of a weapon (God forbid all three in quick succession).