You would think a video game would get interesting nearly 7 hours in but Bethesda is ruthless in sticking to their obnoxious and antiquated onboarding process. No video game should "get good 12 hours in," it should be getting its hooks in you from the start.

Starfield is boring, sure but it's basically just another one of Bethesda's trademark "RPGs." It looks muddy, feels sluggish to control, has no aim assist for a 30FPS console shooter, and helms the clunky, long-maligned 3rd person mode; this is a Bethesda game. Ultimately, that's fine but I would rather play a 2023 game that feels like a 2023 game. With Xbox Play Anywhere I may pick this back up when I upgrade the PC but I cannot stand the console experience any longer with just how antiquated it feels paired with its hostility towards controller players.

Also implementing analog stick cursor menus in console games (especially in games like Starfield where you're spending nearly a third of your time) should be punishable by a prison sentence.

One of my oldest items sitting in the backlog, but I unfortunately cannot finish it for some reason. Whether this is just poor controls in general or there is something with trying to play this through the PlayStation 5 backwards compatibility, I cannot get the rotary phone section of the first level to work. I tried using several different Dualshock 4s and Dualsense controllers to see if that was the issue, but it has to be either the game or the hardware.

I'd like to return to this at some point but it will have to be on PC, yet I am in no rush to purchase games I already have on other platforms.

Could not get four people rounded up to play this together with but playing the 2v2 mode with bots to help is the best way to play this when not having the adequet amount of players. Sadly 1v1 is dull unless you're playing a front-line character but they are not my preferred way to play.

Aesthetically stunning, smooth to control, but lacking in a true online mode or other expanded modes: Hyper Gunsport can be a bit of a tough sell with pricetag and scant features, but getting people to play this with you is an absolute treat; prime couch gaming.

Finally had the chance to get three other people into the same room to play this with me. Videoball is increadibly fun when playing it the intended way, but if you're someone like me who is mostly confined to single-player play sessions, there isn't much here for you.
Gladly, my friends were hyped about this enough that they said they'll nab copies and can even online play at some point. Glad I was able to get something out of this but buying Videoball and playing it the way Tim Rogers wants you to in 2023 is not the easiest feat. Still, $10 is an excellent price for a simple to learn - hard to master multiplayer digital sport.

It's sad realizing this is where the series peaks and it won't get any better than this.

In my youth, Pokemon was a pretty big thing for me, though I never played the games in the same trajectory as my peers. While many of the kids around me were on the GBA releases, I was on the original GameBoy and GBC, courtesy of a cousin who gave me those games and a GameBoy color for free (items I still have and cherish to this day). It wasn't until I had begged and pleaded my parents to buy me Pokemon Diamond the year it came out that I ever got to play a title while it was "fresh." I justified the $40 purchase from my parents - which they remarked was very hard on them to justify that much for a video game considering how hard they were hit by the financial crisis of the time; plugging away at it day after day going beyond the endgame, and even meeting friends through the online service, obtaining a few rad (and many hacked) Pokemon. Diamond is where I would drop off, though. With my family refusing to nab me Platinum because they said "I already had that game," I fell off naturally as I couldn't keep up. That is why returning to the series years later, with copies bestowed upon me from a good friend and some smart pawn shop purchases a while ago, has meant a lot to me.

For a long while I had heard about what I missed out on from the fifth Pokemon generation. I was lumped in with the group of naive haters that hadn't even played the game, giving it shit for no good reason. "The designs suck," "it looks old," and the eventual "it's just a game for dumb babies" were insults lugged by me and many others; I cannot be happier to eat crow on those words I said so long ago.

Pokemon Black has its fair share of issues, but as a standalone, single-player experience, it is the series in top form. To start, it's a blessing that Black bucked the trend of the time of increasing the scale and scope of the included Pokemon by forcing the player to engage with entirely new creatures. This was very controversial, but seeing how the rest of the series pans out, it's refreshing to not have Pidgeys shoved down your throat everywhere, and had to learn a new way to party build. I felt genuine challenge prepping up for unpredictable fights with Pokemon I did not - or just barely - recognize. Obviously not every visual design is a winner. Every Pokemon generation has its fair share of wonderful designs and bottom of the kindergarten trashbin. Generation 5's boldness to force you to use these new Mons actually made me fall in love with a few I had issues with previously, and turned me onto ones I hadn't known were from this generation/ones I just hadn't seen at all. It was exhilarating to try new things and focus on new strategies unlike the usual party formation/brute force that has gotten me through all of the entries to this point.

Black's difficulty ebbs and flows in a mostly natural way, balancing well despite a few new curveballs put into the gym structure we used to know. Gyms swapping their predicted types around and constructing a new elite four/champion structure gave a new, welcomed sense of difficulty for the most part. Leading up to the eighth gym badge, the game kept a natural curve going that was tough but manageable. Sadly, the final stretch to the elite four dropped the ball and became a 5+ hour grind fest that turned me off from exploring further. Finally rolling credits felt hard-earned, but not entirely for the reasons I had hoped. I would have preferred the ending of this experience not having featured a several hour-long Durant farming spree.

Loading the game back up and beginning to engage with the endgame content also turned me off from playing further. Trainer levels rapidly increasing and wild Pokemon hovering in significantly lower levels turned me off from the further grind. I understand that these games are made to maximize your investment, and if I was 12 years old playing this fresh, I gladly would have 100%'d Black like I did with Diamond back in the day. This just isn't structured for a busy adult who wants to play these games but doesn't want to commit their life to them, and that's okay.

The overall presentation of Black is where it stands the strongest besides its revamped game structure. The new music tracks are some of the hardest in the series, and many of the new locations are beautiful for such antiquated hardware of the time. It can still feel a little puzzling why a first-party DS release came out so late in its lifecycle, but it's undeniable how much effort was poured into the audio/visual presentation: animated Pokemon models, massive 3D structures, triple rotation battles, and a greater sense of elevation; Pokemon has not looked or sounded this good up to this point.

Naturally, when concluding my time with this game, I had to transfer the Pokemon I acquired through SoulSilver and Diamond into Black, and said process sucks. Having the six monster transfer limit at a time is a pain but is only amplified with this antiquated touch-screen mini-game where you have to re-catch your Pokemon over again. I suppose this is a far faster way to acquire your old Pokemon than Diamond's pseudo-safari zone, but it's arguably less fun. I have already moved these old Pokemon from Black to Bank and now Home to remove the temptation of using them in any of the further titles. Going through the process of moving all of these Pokemon has been cathartic to reach a point where all the PC boxes are now connected and you no longer have to play garbage arcade games to move pitiful amounts of creatures around at a time.

I may emulate Black/White 2 at some point in the future, but I want to continue on with the physical cartidges I have for the rest of the generations. As I said earlier, it's bittersweet that this is considered the series peak, and my expectations are pretty low for the following few titles. I would hope that some point in the future, Game Freak (or a third party studio who has the budget and gives a damn) can produce a loving remake of this game, and remind people why this generation is as reveered as it is. My only regret here is just that I did not get to this game sooner, especially while it was relevant so I could've used all of its C-Gear features and accessing the browser game to transfer unique versions of old Pokemon.