The game I most wanted to get a PS3 for. Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction (no Future tag in the UK, though I do lovingly call these games "the Future trilogy") is damn near my perfect video game.

First and foremost, it's a 3D platformer with great traversal and general movement. It's a bonkers run-n-gun shooter with interesting weapons and varied mechanics. It's a brightly coloured visual feast. Then, after all that technical ambrosia, it adds a narrative cherry on top.

This is Ratchet & Clank maturing and getting a little more complex with its themes and storytelling without trying some absurd switch into a grimdark tone. Tools of Destruction grapples with themes of identity, survivor's guilt, and found family, among others. It does all of that with aplomb while never losing the slapstick charm that makes the series special. Do you have any idea what a monumental achievement that is to me, specifically?!

Of course you do, you just read me waffle about it for three and a bit paragraphs.

Y'ever just play a game that seems vaguely attuned to your wavelength, only to find the vibe aggressively agrees with you and taps into your pleasure centres to a downright primal degree, causing you to immensely beam at your screen between sips of the steamy beverage you're sipping on, between sips of the steamy beverages you're serving?

Yeah that's Coffee Talk for me.

I'm a practicing Muslim and I'll still yell at the top of my lungs "A MAN WHO NEVER EATS PORK BUNS IS NEVER A WHOOOOLE MAN!"

'Nuff said.

Far and away the best use of video games as a medium to tell unique, complex, utterly compelling stories. Stories, multiple, as 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim features thirteen protagonists to push forward in their own narratives---all the while intertwining them into one grander tale.

It's an audiovisual joy with its artstyle, voice acting, and music. It's a fun intro to more tactical gameplay with its unique combination of turn-based RTS combat sections. It's a brilliant genreblend of said combat and the side-scrolling visual novel, with narrative elements of mystery, romance, drama, mecha, post- and pre-apocalypse, yakisoba pan, and both shounen & seinen.

I love 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. If you give it a shot, I truly think you might, too.

3D platformers of my younger years are ones I always look back on as my first experiences with true immersion: of feeling as if I, myself, were running and jumping in the wacky worlds opening their doors to me on my TV screen. Nowhere have I ever felt this specific brand of joy so potently as in Super Mario Galaxy.

There are constant new mechanics thrown at you, switched out for others, then returned in new fashion later on. Insanely inventive level design abounds, never veering too far from the innate joy of just climbing a structure. A very light focus on combat adds some pressure, but never distracts from what makes this fun.

Not to mention a soundtrack that varies from delightful to downright grandiose, and a hub world that truly feels like home. Super Mario Galaxy is radiant bliss like little else.

This is the quintessential Yakuza game.

Do you understand what that means?

This is the quintessential underworld soap opera in which you play an absolute gem of a man haunted by demons of his past while struggling with the foes of his present as he runs a cabaret club and shoves people's heads into microwaves for 7-11 employees to serve warm in between solving the existential woes that plague the people of his city and hitting obscene high scores in Virtua Fighter to blow off steam from all the bikes he's smashed over the heads of individually named yet aesthetically copypasted street goons. Twice.

That's rad.

I rebuke objectivity. The beauty of who we are as human beings is that there is no such thing as objectivity---every thought and experience we have is coloured by our own adventures, our biases and beliefs, what we had for breakfast this morning. "Objectivity," as far as explaining the value or beauty of games and art at large, is an utter myth.

Portal 2 is objectively a must-play for everyone who has ever shown even the slightest interest in games.

Let me tell you a story.

It's the height of the pandemic. Lockdowns are in full effect, and right after graduating university, you're more than a little lost with what to do with yourself. You had plans, hopes, dreams. Those are still there! They're just... a little different now. Delayed, to put it in familiar terms. Life goes on, yet is also on pause.

Enter this far-from-little gem. A whole host of worlds to explore; a whole cast to grow closer to; a whole new life to live. Not necessarily replacing the life I call my own, but doing a fun job of filling in the gaps for a little while. I'm one to allow myself to be swept away by the media I interact with; to truly make everything an experience. With Persona 5 Royal in 2020? That concept has literally never been easier. Fighting demons both metaphorical and literal, forging bonds with utterly loveable friends, consuming burgers that moonlight as celestial bodies. Man.

I played Persona 5 Royal slowly over the course of four months, and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. As for the finer details of what that experience entailed?

Let me tell you a story.

Ah, my beloved unfinished dance.

Hollow Knight is one of those aforementioned harder games that contributed to my gradual challenge-loving awakening before Bloodborne blew those particular doors wide open. I'll still never forget the high of finally smiting the Soul Master, that zippy bastard.

Hollow Knight is a stellar exemplar of the Metroidvania genre, a masterclass in environmental storytelling, and cute as all heck. It's also got a Platinum trophy that I thought I'd go after. I encountered the mushroom messenger in every place he shows up, I fully explored the map, I killed every great foe I found---and then I tried the Pantheons.

See, at the time, I was utterly unable to Platinum a game if the requirements extended beyond the ending. If I couldn't get every trophy before the final boss, it wasn't for me. There's a sense of finality to credits that, to this day, I hold sacred. Yes, postgames are cool, but I want to be done when the game's done, dammit. I've mostly gotten over that now, but for Hollow Knight, I hadn't. So when I realised that I'd have to beat the difficult true final boss and THEN conquer the insanely brutal later Pantheons, gauntlets only unlocked by beating the game first, I left. I got to the final boss of the game, and left. I reached an impasse between how I wanted to experience the game, and the experience with the game I wanted to have---and left.

It's stupid. It's poetic. It's kinda funny? It's my experience with one of the greatest games I've ever played.

God forbid a man get grandiose while writing about some of his favourite games of all time---experiences that changed his life in some small way. Bloodborne did just that, and it wasn't small.

I've always considered myself somewhat good at the games I play, yet never really one for more explicit challenge. I like gradually chasing mechanical mastery, not so much slamming my head against the wall till it cracks. With Bloodborne, I realised that not only can the former exist with the latter, it's better for it.

I slowly played and platinumed Bloodborne over the entirety of 2021. I had flashes of rage, waves of euphoria, and shocks of "what the hell is THAT?" throughout. You know what else I got? A sense of being better. True GROWTH. Every boss was another notch in my gaming belt, another sense that I may, in fact, be built for this. Not just able to survive, but to overcome.

I, too, can play difficult games.

Getting that big shiny trophy at the end reaffirmed this revelation, and forever changed my outlook on the medium I most allow to envelop me. Challenge is now fun, and that's seeped from games into other aspects of my life. I've overcome other challenges that motivated me before, and have indeed achieved things that I'm very proud of. Yet, it is no exaggeration to say that without Bloodborne, I would not be quite the same person I am today.

Fear the Old Blood.