Truly a timeless classic. If Super Mario RPG and Paper showed people that Mario games can have gripping stories and emotion, Thousand-Year Door outdoes both of those games by miles and gives us one of the weirdest, most unique, and most heartfelt Mario game yet. Everything from the improved battle system to the fun characters and villains to the creative locations is just dripping with charm and there's really no other game quite like it. I legit got invested to the point where this game felt like a really good anime. It's awesome.

>Gets remaster of Wii U game I love for Christmas
>expects to play it casually throughout the next couple months as there are other new games I need to get to
>fucking binges it in a week, getting all fruits in story mode and getting Platinum medals in all the new Olimar missions
>mfw only Mission mode remains
>Pikmin 4 cannot come sooner
>still Peakmin 3

Pikmin 3 is one of my favorite video games ever and I can't believe it took me this long to get to its definitive version. While I was initially skeptical about how much the new side content would really add to a game I already played for years, I found myself not only continuing to be hooked by Pikmin's addictive gameplay premise as well as appreciating aspects of the original game even more than I did initially.

Pikmin 3 always got some flak for being short and while I can't say it's unfounded criticism, I can understand the value of a much more condensed yet ultimately more polished and replayable adventure compared to its predecessor. The world design in this game is just as beautiful as it was back on the Wii U with stunning environmental details and plenty of interwoven paths and shortcuts to open up for more clean exploration as your knowledge of the map grows. The maps used for the new side missions are all ripped from the main game, which sounds like it could be repetitive on paper, but it turns out scrambling the hazards and obstacles on each of the maps and even changing where you start out can drastically change how you approach each level. It keeps the polish and cohesion found in the game's already stellar level design and delivers new and interesting twists on each one to really squeeze the potential out of these areas. It's honestly the best way I believe they could have approached making new content for the game without having to commit an absurd amount of resources to making brand new assets and locations for what ultimately amount to bite-sized missions in the same vein as the original game's mission mode.

Just like with the new content, I found the main experience to be just as fresh and interesting as I remembered it. The charge move feels even better than it did before thanks go tweaks made to the move and allows for some of the cleanest kills in the series. While some may argue this move is a bit too good and can really neuter the challenge in some enemy encounters, I personally believe dealing with a sometimes unreliable reticle shouldn't be the main focus of challenge in Pikmin's combat system; rather it should be how you allocate your resources when multitasking and making attack decisions on a larger scale. This game's (main) bosses all have their own gimmicks and methods for defeat but are all fun and incredibly inventive with which they use the combat system. The last two in particular are still pretty difficult if you aren't prepared and are the two best bosses in the series because of it. My new adaptability to the dodge roll move that was in the original game but I never mastered was very helpful against these bosses, but there were still plenty of moments where one unexpected attack can throw you off and snowball into losing dozens of Pikmin. Boss fights are incredibly strategic but still keep you on your toes in order to keep your Pikmin from scattering and running into danger. And it's this dance of balancing control and frenzied surprises that keeps the Pikmin experience so fresh after playing each game so many times.

I'd still say that Pikmin 2 is my personal favorite in the series due to its replayability, dungeon content, and general greater sense of nonlinear exploration, but damn if Pikmin 3 isn't the highest the series has reached from a pure technical gameplay perspective. Deluxe only adds on top of that, but it turns out adding to a masterpiece still gets you a masterpiece at the end of the day.

Man, it'd probably be more reasonable to let my opinion settle before making a bold statement, but this series hasn't consumed my mind over the past several months for nothing. I spent a good 90 hours on Trails in the Sky SC only to come out thinking "yeah, this is one of the best games I ever played."

I've barely scratched the surface of this series yet and I'm both amazed at how I simultaneously feel like I've already found an absolute peak story and that there's still so much more to uncover in this series' lore. The world feels incredibly fleshed out thanks to the abundance of flavor text and dialogue but it never feels like every answer is just given to you as there are always hints of bigger, more sinister events taking place behind the scenes. Even though Trails is often seen as a slow burn, I never found myself bored with the story as I found it interesting to let my mind wander and guess where the story will go and I can't say I've experienced many games that strike such a rich balance.

The stakes of the story in SC are much higher than that of the first game and that game's set of already established characters are all given time to shine in some of their most emotional and badass moments yet. It definitely helped that most of the characters were likeable from the get-go but now they feel far more fleshed out with backstories being explored and development taking place throughout the story. I don't want to give too many details for the sake of spoilers but I'll let you know that this game left me speechless more than once. And that doesn't even get into Estelle and Joshua's relationship which was a huge emotional Rollercoaster throughout the game and led to some of the absolute peak of JRPG writing if I've ever seen it.

I am slightly disappointed that they mainly reused locations from the first chapter as I liked the new location the game starts out in, but I never found this to be a major hindrance as the aforementioned world-building gives each location enough depth to feel like fully realized settings and the new dungeons revealed in these previous locations contributes to the sense of mystery in this world. The combat similarly went through little change though I found it significantly more addicting this time around, but maybe that's because I actually made stuff resembling character builds and liked playing with the new arts/orbments. I'm almost inclined to do a second playthrough to experiment with more combinations, which rarely happens with RPGs for me.

Either way, I have no clue why it took me so long to try the Trails series. It doesn't really revolutionize the genre but the concepts, mechanics and storytelling are so well executed that I find it hard to call this game anything less than a masterpiece.

Has a cutesy artstyle but is probably one of the most emotional Zelda games out there. The "it was all a dream" trope is actually used to a poignant effect here as you learn early on that Koholint and all of its inhabitants are a figment of a dream and that waking up will cease their existence altogether, despite this being your main goal the whole game. Perhaps the memory alone can keep something alive and thinking back on it can give yourself closure in a way? Everything beautiful is temporary I suppose...

Damn, this video game adaptation of The Ring (2002) + The Grudge (2004) is pretty sick!

F.E.A.R. is a game that has slipped my attention many years despite me knowing of its existence, but playing it has given me one of the most fun and satisfying experiences I've had with a FPS on a purely mechanical level. It can't be overstated how much effort was spent polishing environmental details along with the enemy AI, which runs circles around many games today to a terrifying degree. The "bullet time" mechanic meant to improve your reflexes by slowing down in-game time rewards a level of hyper aggression that makes fights fast and exciting and gives all weapons a chance to shine. I'm used to shotguns being outclassed on higher difficulties since getting up close and personal with enemies is usually a death sentence that will have you instantly sniped (cough HALO 2 cough), but I played on the second highest difficulty and this shotgun FUCKS HARD AND DIRTY! A.I. is great at navigating the labyrinthian hallways and deploys solid tactics when trying to bring you down. I almost couldn't imagine the difficulty without the ability to slow down time.

What also really impresses me is that it takes the two seemingly contradictory sensations, that of being in a kickass power-fantasy and the vulnerability of being hunted down by an unknown being, and perfectly incorporates the two. It's easy to get caught up ragdolling and drop-kicking dozens of enemies in the moment, but when everything quiets down and you're left wandering the lonely industrial facilities, this game pulls some creepy shit. It blurs the line between hallucinations and paranormal anomalies so well that you'll question whether that shadow you saw from the corner of your eye was something you should be concerned about or not.

TLDR; Adrenaline "Point" Man vs Psychic was a kick-ass dynamic and I have no idea why an atmospheric horror game has such dynamic combat. But it's entirely welcome :)