Q: why shouldn't you kiss anyone on january 1st?

A: because it's only the first date.

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My favorite videogame moment so far this year focuses on the face of a teenage girl – freckled, flushed, screen-lit. She’s playing a broken arcade machine with her eyes closed, listening to her best friend narrate a Street Fighter fantasy. It’s an act of trust, of shared imagination. And in this moment, Ellie is seen.

Left Behind repurposes its AAA mechanics – the shooting (of waterguns), the lobbing (of bricks at cars), the quick-time-event (her face) – not for domination or survival but connection. It left me longing for entire games of altered verbs. Of fumbling connections. Games of seeing and being seen.

Before Your Eyes was an intensely emotional experience for me on many levels. I teared up at a few different points, and the ending caused me to weep. The game is only an hour and a half long, the passage of time in the game is controlled by your real-life blinking, and it goes on to explore a lot of challenging and engrossing themes that were paid off very effectively in ways I wasn't expecting even partway through; if this sounds appealing then I advise you learn nothing more about the game before playing it, even though I am someone who isn't particularly spoiler averse this is absolutely one of those rare examples of a game that is best played with as little foreknowledge as possible. If you're not convinced you want to play this game, hopefully me touching on its strengths in this review can help in some way though be warned I will talk a fair amount about the emotional impact of the mechanics and I lightly hint at the themes of the game's narrative.

Two things really stand out to me thinking back on this Before Your Eyes. The first is the game's exploration of memory and transience, which just on a textual level is already fascinating and moving to me, but the blinking mechanic breathes life into this discussion so beautifully. The are moments where you're caught in a moment so warm and safe you want to linger there forever, and you try and hold your eyes open so you can, but then you come to this acceptance that time has to move on, everything will pass eventually, and you give in and finally learn to let go of that moment, that precious memory of the past, and move on to what waits for you in the future; you give in and blink.

Conversely there are moments where you're in the middle of listening to what your mum, your dad, your best friend, has to say and then you reflexively blink without intending to and that moment disappears; memories, and time, slipping away from you like sand through your fingers. There were moments where this happened and I was okay with continuing onwards, but also multiple occasions where time escaping me like that, where this relentless march of time leading to sentences being cut off in your memory, half-formed, felt like an emotional gut-punch, leaving me longing to be able to turn back the clock even for a moment.

The blinking mechanic is, sadly, not perfect. It worked well enough for the game to absorb me into its world like it did, and led to some incredibly emotional moments as I detailed above, but there were definitely a handful of moments where I blinked and it didn't register (though thankfully the alternative, registering blinks that didn't happen, didn't occur which is good as this would have been much more dire I feel). These imperfections are the main thing stopping me from giving the game a perfect score, though they aren't so notable as to stop me from loving the game and all it has to say and show.

The other thing that stands out to me about the Before Your Eyes is the themes it explores via its narrative. Partway through the game I actually had a few different things I wasn't entirely onboard with about this narrative, and yet by the end every single one of these concerns had been directly addressed and often subverted in ways that paid off the fact that I wasn't entirely onboard with them earlier. I don't want to go into the themes here too explicitly since I don't want to ruin the ways in which they come together so beautifully, but I will say that the game's final notes are remarkably mature having something to say that we dearly need to hear in this time of rampant capitalism. The way this messaging was delivered was deeply affecting, incredibly healthy for me, and left me feeling very well-nourished.

Rainbow Road was the biggest anticlimax in video game history lmfao.

Great game that garnered me plenty of fond memories. I remember when this first came out and I was blown away by how beautiful the game looked and how completely amazing and creative the new tracks were and by how phenomenal and fresh the retro tracks were. I remember being super excited for more information and reveals about the game and, especially, the DLCs. And all of that excitement still holds up today, it's one of the coolest kart racing games ever made. I think this is Nintendo's best looking game ever...... maybe... it's a hard battle between this and Wind Waker HD but, holy shit, actually playing this for the first time was just as mindblowing as seeing the first trailers for the game. It's so creative, balanced and fast paced, the tracks are fantastic and Star Cup was the pinnacle of the series, the soundtrack bops, and the anti-gravity sections make the tracks super dynamic and awesome. I was mesmerized by the lighting, especially in Sunshine Airport and Dolphin Shoals (if you played the game you probably know exactly which parts of these tracks I'm talking about). Pretty much everything about this game is amazing... aside from the battle mode which is just as terrible as people make it out to be. Also Pink Gold Peach, lmfaoooooooooo. But eh, I guess the Switch version is better.

What surprised me about this game is how considerate it is. Between meal tips, detailed stretch demonstrations, feedbacks and bits of advice, it has little touches that ask you what you think of the difficulty or how you're feeling in general, considers your surroundings and lots of other minute variables. When you have to get up or change positions, it reminds you not to rush. It will check your pulse, tell you how you're doing, and when it thinks you might be tired, asks you to consider if you want to stop now, or when you might want to stop and take a break, creating a supra-cognizance and to allow the player to reconsider and evaluate their own personal goals.

It feels very much like a personal trainer in the form of a game. The way the ring peripheral is used is also very smart with the game and level design. It's all very simple, but very effective at feeling like a game rather than a haphazard mishmash of conflicting goals between personal fitness and play. It allows for the fitness goals to dictate the mechanics and the player's personal goals to modulate the details of the game through a flexible rpg system.

I embrace and welcome the ludic future, a true extension of the ludic past. More gamification of lifestyle and personal or experiential expression, less gamification to maximize profit incentive and user retention.

A beguiling experience, so much so that I ended up replaying it within a week of finishing it for the first time.

I think this game threw me off in my first encounter with it because the early-game seems to have such a focus on dictatorships and their oppressive powers, as the child you guide sneaks past guards and their vicious patrol dogs, as people are turned into zombies, cattle even, whilst the land is left to ruin. I assumed that on some level that was just going to just be the point, each gut-wrenching death an admonishment of the system enacting them, and so was caught completely off-guard by the game's increasingly surreal and fantastical developments.

More prepared for this mysterious world's descent into progressively stranger and unreal territory on my second playthrough, more prepared for how the visceral, very real horror that inhabits the game from its opening moments eventually warps into the kind of horror that consumes our minds, our very flesh, I ended up being even more on-board with what's going on here.

The game leaves a lot up to interpretation, but my own personal read is that INSIDE is very much about control. The most immediate tie-in here is how oppressive systems seek to exert control, but the game expands on this asking questions about the nature of control within narrative, control within videogames, and how ultimately who is in control is so often going to come down to a matter of perspective. I have a lot of feelings, largely positive, regarding how the game explores all of this but don't want to send this review into the territory of overt spoilers.

Despite all the things I love about this game, I do think it tries a bit too hard to be, well, a game in the conventional sense. The subtle environmental platform-puzzler aspects that weave themselves into your adventure as your propel yourself along are wonderfully handled, but moments when the game stops you in your tracks to make these puzzles more of a focal point are much less appealing to me all at once disrupting the immersion brought by the game's atmosphere by making the environments less believable whilst also bringing the game's compelling forward momentum to a grinding halt. This all just leaves me wishing the game had leant even harder into its narrative and artistic focus.

That all said, INSIDE is a wonderful little experience, one whose best moments and ideas tunnelled into my brain, and whose ending arc is going to stick with me for a long time.

A Short Hike just goes to show how much more you can do with less. It’s a simplistic premise about taking a hike up a mountain that reveals surprising layers of depth the more time you spend there. More importantly it’s the best kind of distraction: A game that takes you somewhere else for at least a little while.

The game’s top down perspective and artstyle immediately brings to mind Animal Crossing, but the game gently subverts your expectations by adding more options to your movement. You can run, jump, glide and climb virtually any wall, which will render ground that seems unexplored completely interactive. What seems to be a gentle immersive sim peels back the curtain to reveal a surprisingly tight 3D platformer with a host of toyetic mechanics to mess around with.

It’s less the size of an open world and more like a park or a jungle gym where you’re encouraged to run wild for a few until you’re all tuckered out. The overarching goal is to get Claire to the top in faint hope that her cell phone will get a signal so she can receive an important call, but she can’t make the climb without Golden Feathers, the game’s principle collectable that will increase her mobility. Thankfully the denizens Hack Peak Providence Park are willing to part with them if you humor their quirky games, responsibilities or desires for a bit.

This open ended progression calls to mind a lot of early 3D collectathons without much of the padding of those games. Exploring, playing minigames and completing side missions is usually fun in their own right with these concepts exhibiting a lot of polish. The direct impact just completing them has on Claire’s movement is the best kind of motivator to keep trying things, enforcing a satisfying experience in every way.

The camera perspective and tone along with the tight 3D platforming will bring back a host of titles from the gamecube era, but since these elements are blended into the same world in a smooth way, the nostalgia factor mostly works in the game’s favor. This game’s target audience likely played Animal Crossing, Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker etc. at Claire’s age so the send-ups will bring a player back to a time where they might have resonated the most with her.

We don’t really know what’s got Claire so worked up until the end, and initially I felt like this was a mistake but thinking back on it it might not have been hidden as a way to have a twist toward the end. Perhaps it was done so players of any kind would insert herself into her shoes.in her shoes. Any worries or anxieties pulling at the back of your mind are sure to disappear for at least a little while as you spend a day running and playing on an island paradise with your friends.

The game’s length will definitely be a point of criticism going forward, but I think it largely works to it’s benefit. No concerns about total playtime means only the most polished of gimmicks, mechanics and minigames made it into the final game. It also kind of fits the game’s premise as a short, fleeting day spent away from normalcy. It’s like a day spent at a birthday party, the beach, or even inside playing a cool new game that only lasted a couple of hours as a child but left an impression on you for a long time.