Well, it was bound to happen eventually - the joke has now officially gotten annoying. The Mayo trilogy ends not with a bang... but with a whimper - a series that went from passable and kind of funny to downright torturous. Feels like a chintzy rehash of the first two with a worse art style than both and what seems like only half the actual gameplay. Making the back half into whatever that walking simulator part was turned out to be a dire move, with minigames that feel awful and increasingly more stale humor ripped right out of 2014. Not even funny bad, just bad. Hated it.

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.

Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes

Woeful, a prime example of the seventh generation's knack for mediocrity. Here we have yet another video game world from this era that's butt-ugly and color-coded like puke. Nothing much is really that terrible here but I honestly didn't care about any of it - especially when its linear progression is played out in the most boring manner possible with a story that's impossible to be invested in (we were really obsessed with empty, cheap 'doom and gloom' storytelling at this time for some reason, and it really doesn't work here imo). There's some inventiveness in the weapon/currency system but not enough to justify spending an entire slog of a game with it, one with horrendous characters abound, no less. And the whole moral point system is stupidly cryptic. I liked the trippy stuff though, I guess. Really glad we moved past this kind of game design. Entirely generic.

Perfectly adequate! Finding the workbenches is one of the most annoying missions in the entire game and the story feels half-finished, but at the same time you've got a massive vault to call your own and build in - which is a key element for a game like Fallout 4. New assets from the DLC will sometimes glitch out and despawn, but there are still ample resources here to justify a full expansion pack. Very middle-tier DLC overall but I still can confidently call it neat, especially at only $1.99.

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?

Better than GoW I and GoW II, if only because the combat here feels more like there's some actual strategy involved (though the evade roll is still junk) and it manages its length a whole lot better - this version of Kratos feels better in bite-sized spurts, the repetition issue previous games had isn't really felt so much in this one. The weapons + magic are fun to use, it pushes the PSP to its limits (though of course the dependably pretty HD remaster is the way to play), and even though the environments aren't as dashing as the second game there's still some more winners to add to the series' roster of solid levels here - particularly the giant temple of Helios, and the titan Hyperion melded into the cliff face. Still not convinced there's too much going on in these that you can't find elsewhere, but we're starting to get there. Not too shabby, even the "Challenge of Hades" is half tolerable!

Top 50 Favorites: #44 (Enhanced Edition)

Careful, confident horror about the incomprehensible and the lengths your mind will go to fill in the gaps. Far from perfect, even at its strongest still feels like a low-carb Silent Hill 2 - but I just can't help but admire how bold horror games were around this time. Stuff like this, Cry of Fear, Slender: The Arrival, hell even the first Five Nights at Freddy's were majorly innovating for a good solid 3 or 4 years straight - it's easy to laugh at now but there's something to be said about the effective simplicity of creating a horror video game for practically the express purpose of holding a place in the collective conscience simply for scaring your favorite YouTuber. I was never that into "Let's Plays" but there's an almost warm comfortability of a horror game that takes itself seriously but not too seriously (unlike, say, The Last of Us); one that is interested in crafting a good, tight, accessible lore without wanting to spin it into a disparate web of pointlessly convoluted bullshit for the sake of seeming deep on internet comment sections (Hello Neighbor and most of the FNaF sequels); and one that sets out to create good scares and a memorable atmosphere over being a cynical flash-in-the-pan meme to sell merch (Poppy's Playtime, Baldi's Basics). It's crazy to look back on how this era really future-proofed itself by doing what everyone at the time swore would make them dated - wills itself to life by going back to basics and asking how they can be done really, really well. Is way more concerned with leaving its own self-assured stamp instead of worrying about sterilizing itself so it won't have a single blemish and it's all the better for it. Filled with character.

Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes

"Look at how they massacred my boy... " - Don Vito Corleone, The Godfather (1972).

Monotony. Right off the bat it's impossible to knock the ambition on display, trying to take the series in a new direction - but out of a combination of sufficient resources not being there and a core concept that isn't fully realized yet, it flounders as soon as it begins. Instead of having some of the finest, most definable levels of any 3D platformer collectathon like the (infinitely superior) first game you've got a shittier collection of micro-levels that mostly feel the same as one another - in an overworld that's a major bore to navigate. Frill Neck Forest is kind of okay with its big floor net and lightly foggy skies, but the rest bite the dust. The progression system here can't even be called competent let alone satisfying, and the voice acting mostly stinks (I loathe that Steve character). And in trying to be a Ratchet & Clank/Jak and Daxter clone you inevitably end up being worse than even the crappiest games from those series. A big swing, but ultimately a miss.

Graphically impressive, aesthetically grim, mechanically dull, narratively ruinous. While personally I don't think Resident Evil 4 cracks even the top 3 RE games, it's always stupefying to revisit just how misread the success to that one was when they were creating this. Someone clearly must have thought that RE4 being more action-oriented meant that that was all people wanted out of them, or something? Idefk? At any rate, like everyone else has already mentioned sucking the horror out of this horror franchise was a huge mistake - one made during the beginning of gaming franchise hell, where tons of games thought that dumbass QTEs and being the most like a bland Michael Bay movie was the future. Which would be one thing entirely if the action or bombast here was actually that good - and it isn't really, the only worthwhile asset is the usual MVP Wesker in full Matrix ripoff mode. Even as cockamamie as Resident Evil - CODE: Veronica X was, at least it was still grounded in sincerely creepy dread and its silliness felt both fun and surprising. This has its moments but ugh, what a dud. Sheva Alomar is a total nonentity here and her A.I. should be studied by MENSA on how to make the most useless, annoying possible partner system you're of course forcibly chained to for the entire thing. And what they did to Jill Valentine in this is another crime entirely. I'm all for trash but this is just drab, though in its defense everyone who said this was racist hasn't actually played the game.

Top 50 Favorites: #29

Hardly a new statement to argue that this is the most "vibey" GTA game, but if I have any semi-controversial remark to make it's that imo this smokes not only Grand Theft Auto III but also Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for nearly everything they're worth. The gunplay is incomparably better than the former, and the map here is much more contained - removing the long stretches of nothing that padded out a lot of missions from the latter. I will even defend those little RC missions, Rockstar weirdness matters! (And they aren't that hard imo). Obviously this still shows its age: not everything is as precise as the 7th gen games and upwards would make it. But above all else, this is just a downright fucking TONIC - vibrant characters blowin' off heads in neon-lit bloom at nightfall, so magnetic, man... like how summer vacation used to feel like as a kid. Vaporwave dreamscape. Totally sucks you right in and keeps you there. All that plus voice acting from a murder's row of Hollywood "who's who" from the era this is inspired by, Rockstar's timeless cynical-yet-juvenile sense of humor, and a soundtrack that will knock your socks off (Hyperactive!, Self Control, and Keep On Loving You have been stuck in my head for almost four years now) - chef's kiss. The first of these games that really felt like they found their identity moving forward. Lovely.

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.

Strong candidate for the most hideous-looking video game ever created. Gameplay isn't even worth discussing, bears less of a resemblance towards flash games or early 2010s iPod Touch shovelware as it does with one of those bad bootleg Genesis cartridges like CrazyBus. Yes instantly having its terrible music blare in your face loudly upon simply opening it up without the immediate option to fix it sucks but the level design is downright illegible - next to impossible to distinguish what is and isn't interactive. Plus it's just ass ugly, I particularly loathe the characters who all look like some sort of virus boil - along with the addition of arguable random casual racism in the unlockable sticker section... k then.

Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes

Graphically indistinguishable from Madden NFL 97, in fact I actually think this even looks a little worse. This is technically a better game as well, but only ever so slightly, in a way that doesn't really justify a full new release. It's a little tighter, the passing is slightly more responsive, UI is a bit cleaner, and there's this really cool feature where divots gradually build up in the field over time where big hits took place. But all of this feels like a patch as opposed to a standalone entry. And again, after a couple of these matchups I'm over it.