I didnt mean to be a Forewarned early adopter, but the desire for a competent proximity chat horror game for Boys Night was strong, and early on Forewarned looked like it would solve many of the problems that the pseudo-genre was struggling with. “Ghosts” have actual distinct characteristics and theres more than just one vague task to accomplish on-site - tho this also creates an issue with too much predictability and routine.

Unfortunately Forewarneds moderate innovations on the genre didnt continue during its stay in Early Access, and it remains in an archaic and unfinished state even post 1.0 release. The addition of the Banishing Ritual segments were initially promising but ultimately detract from the core experience - and outside of that, Forewarned commits the same issue of merely adding quantity and not developing or advancing quality. More flavors of ice cream dont matter to me when its really incomplete ice cream, and so Forewarned is left feeling like a discarded prototype to be used as a guideline for some future dev who will actually bother to figure it out one day.

If there was one segment I could choose to represent Pid as an experience, Id say: About halfway through the game or so, you come across a cavernous maze filled with the somber dulcet echoes of jazz saxophone. At the end of the maze, you find a saxophonist, the cave dead silent as you speak to him. Just needed a quiet place to play, he says. The saxophone picks up in the distance, off-screen, as you depart. Thats what Pid is, a series of vibes.

Its like a dream diary turned into a platformer by one of those game jam kids that only write things down in game engines. The platforming is simple, maybe even sometimes rudimentary. Sometimes its clumsy. But its also always whimsical, evocative, oozing the atmosphere of a quaint and quiet night sky. There are some moments in this game that have left vivid imprints on my mind, that I recall often and which keep this small, seemingly unknown game floating in my constellation of influences.

Theres really only 2 things I can say about this game, and its the same 2 things everyone else can say about Mosa Lina: its (1) very fun in a kinetic, flow state brain improv kind of way and (2) its very pointless as a game (which was intended as a statement). People have a strange and delicate relationship with RNG, and some people might hear “your ability to complete a level is randomized and not at all guaranteed by the games systems” and think “this will straight up piss me off”. More and more lately I personally welcome opportunities to hone my sense of instinct and intuition when it comes to physically playing games I think are interesting and fun to pick apart, to strengthen my connection to “the flow”.

But its just impossible to avoid the feeling of directionless-ness when games dont have intrinsic goals. You could absolutely make the argument that gamers have addled, unimaginative minds that have been spoiled by reward systems and that we are no longer able to just be present with games - but this is also an inevitability in a world where theres just so many games to play. I can do my part and come up with a few extrinsic reasons to play Mosa Lina for more than 30 seconds and once I accomplish those few extrinsic goals I gotta move on unless Mosa Lina wants to sweeten the deal. Sometimes its just a matter of a game providing excuses to continue playing and Mosa Linas all-or-nothing principled stance leaves it hard to engage with as anything other than a very clever toy.

I think the impulse to describe Crabs Treasure as merely a Soulslike is understandable given the somewhat divisive nature of the Souls style difficulty curve - but in truth Crabs Treasure is just as much a PS2 era 3D platformer as it is a challenging action RPG. This fusion is so unexpectedly seamless that its actually kind of difficult to distinguish at first, but when youre unlocking an ability that lets you break purple cubes that have been blocking passages in the past 3 zones and now youre backtracking through levels to collect pink upgrade crystals the experience is unmistakable.

And unlike most contemporary Soulslike titles that determine iteration on the genre means stapling more systems onto the side of the combat experience, Crabs Treasures combination of genres genuinely synthesizes novel gameplay experiences unseen or unrealized even by the Souls games themselves. You ever wanted a boss that truly roams an entire level and acts as a stage hazard in addition to a thrilling Souls fight? Well guess what nerd, the silly crab game is the one that pulled it off - and it might have even pulled it off because its a silly crab game thats slightly less beholden to the confines of realism.

Bonus Thoughts:

- The humor here is kind of tone deaf. Balancing serious with funny is for sure challenging but Aggro Crab makes their gambles with just emphatically bad jokes half the time.

- Swomps not in the game

- Slightly less serious Soulslike means slightly less serious about making sure things like input buffers are tight and unobtrusive, and therefore an occasionally more frustrating game to take seriously.

This game felt like it was 1000 hours long to 9 year old me. Thats a shit ton of podracing. Why did I do so much podracing?? I must have raced through the ceramic mosaic water world of Choot Chumba 100 times, somehow enthralled and also bored to tears as I piloted Kirtl Jonkta and his giant twin swamp cooler ass pods. I raced through the battle marshes of Terkwue, served my sentence in Anikins home desert of Bhutupo-3, and washed through the magma halls of Mount Dooq, all for a chance to unlock Darth Vader, the only Star Wars character anyone really cares about.

But in all honesty I do think I gravitate to Star Wars alot more when its focusing more on the “Star” and less on the “Wars”. Pod Racing isnt exactly the most mystical or sexy thing in a Jedi universe, but it actually presents an interesting cultural exposee with the fact that pod racing itself is an exotic popular sport. You race on planets that dont typically feature in Star Wars media and get a more involved look at how these societies might construct themselves - in some cases you can even see how they engage with the sport itself through contestant racers. Its alien Gran Turismo and thats still got more going for it than regular Star Wars.

To me, Side Order distills the Splatoon PVE experience to its best qualities. Considering Splatoon campaigns have been exclusively composed of levels designed as obstacle courses, enemy gauntlets, and various other trials, it makes perfect sense to forgo the formalities and just introduce a format that is, itself, a series of challenges: the Roguelike genre. Not only does this create more harmony in the progression systems but it also eliminates some of Splatoons more aggravating mission types: theres no instant-failing rail shooting galleries, box sculpting mini games, and generally speaking no requirement to use some of Splatoons more estranged weapon types.

Or at least for the most part. Unlocks are exclusive to each weapon and so full and total completion would require you to do a full run with every weapon type. This is not necessary to enjoy Side Order however, and the way the DLC doles out upgrades makes it more easy than ever to spec away the flaws of particular weapon types - meaning that while this might be Splatoons most demanding campaign to 100% in terms of effort, its also the most flexible and most rewarding Splatoon has felt across the past 4 campaigns theyve made.

Bonus Thoughts:

- The Jelletons (jelly skeletons?) taking inspo from Salmon Run enemies was smart cuz Salmon Run is also something that plays alot to Splatoons strengths as a game.

- Story lacks the huge climaxes that more traditional story campaigns usually have, however I think the more agnostic boss design is much more interesting.

- With even just a few permanent hacks purchased you are nearly unstoppable (pure happiness) It might seem like quite a task, to be expected to win with weapons like the Umbrella but in truth power skews so far in your favor that essentially every run is a win no matter what youre using. It is deceptively doable.

- Its impossible to not make my Agent 8 look like a gimp that just got back from edm night at the club

I was a LEGO kid. I love LEGOs, theres something about the act of building things that has resonated with some deeper part of my personality and greatly impacted my creative existence - and so its actually kind of surprising how few LEGO video games actually let you build something piece by piece. Builders Journey, in basically every way you could look at it, is a love letter to LEGO and what LEGO represents. Small building puzzle dioramas rendered in minimal and luscious fashion, sporting a simple but touching lil story of adventure and assembly, resembling the small box sets you might crack open on a quiet Saturday afternoon in August maybe 25 years ago, when a couple more unique parts for your own toolbox was just as important as whatever fun structure the instructions taught you how to make. It means so much that, while the puzzles are incredibly simple, their solutions are not always strict; you can still over- and under-build to your creative hearts content.

Most importantly: Its also kind of boring sometimes. Interesting in concept, austere in practice.

Narrative-First Adventure Puzzle Platformers are kind of an antique genre at this point, but thankfully things have quieted down enough that the value of the experience can be appreciated once again. Bramble isnt doing anything innovative or different but is instead just a stellar specimen of atmosphere and tension. The brutal and harrowing mythos of Scandinavia is frankly timeless and evergreen material for when you just wanna freak some people out. For some primal reason, we all fear the forest.

And for my money Bramble is among the best takes on the folklore so far in video games. When youre not being lured into a pond by the vexing siren song of Näcken, youre wading through unexpectedly detailed renderings of meat-soup viscera. Apart from featuring more obscure myths the game also has an auteuric sense of framing and presentation, with a brisk flow keeping you moving through concepts and setpieces. The game even has the balls to have gameplay (!!!) and while not especially difficult, Brambles handful of action segments requiring some expression of skill is actually kind of unheard of in the genre. This element of pressure forces you to take Bramble a bit more serious than usual, making a tense and foreboding world that much more actually tense and actually foreboding.

Attempting to pull the same trick a 2nd time, the shared Zero and X series are revived as ZX (tho in truth its much more Z than X). This time however comes with a significant shift in the (albeit somewhat simple) form of a metroidvania style map. As a party favor to all the 12 year old boys out there (me) this time around Mega Man doesnt absorb the powers of bosses but instead gains the forms of the “Mega Men” introduced in the Zero series.

So really, what this ends up feeling like is some sort of self-published tribute album where the idea of “Mega Man” is a title assumed by distinguished individuals, like Hattori Hanzo or Santa Claus. You get to “be” all your favorites, itemized and packaged into conveniently collectible floating cubes - its a really simplified premise but its also a really fun framework. Not only are bosses the sleekest theyve ever been but theres a reward for avoiding their crit spots to preserve the precious Mega Man cubes, and small changes like this feel like the right kinds of innovation on a really tried and really true formula for boss design.

Something of a planned sequel, but also quite the encore title focusing this time on alot of the remaining aspects of the Mega Man franchise - most notably including the forgotten stepchild of the X series, Axl. After ZX allowed you to tranform into the various prominent “Mega Men” of the previous games, ZXA taking advantage of Axls legacy powers to allow players to transform into the Maverick bosses as well (with some exception) is a no-brainer - an aspect which also brings the ZX series in greater alignment with the power-stealing foundations of the Classic series.

While the already limited metroidvania aspects of the first game take an even greater backseat in ZXA, what youre left with is still a fairly fresh and substantial open-roam Mega Man game made naturally rewarding with the powers of Model A - boss forms provide both interesting combat and traversal variety, which impacts level design in some compelling ways. The roster of bosses itself is stacked, ranking probably among the best in the franchise. ZXA even picks the ball up from Zero's Dr Weil by introducing an even more direct Dr Wily analogue with "Albert", bringing the Greatest Hits tour full circle in Ouroborosian fashion.