Context: I only watched this game, I did not play it, but in lieu of an actual good way to get access to games I count full playthrough videos as an equally valid playthrough. It's like renting a movie but it's still your favorite story you saw all year.

Resident Evil & Silent Hill came out after Alone in the Dark, and I think that's a useful thing to keep in mind when the temptation to invoke Five Nights At Freddy's passes through anyone trying to talk about this game. The priming of puppets as potentially malicious forces does owe something to those games, but where those games exist for more commercial pursuits, My Friendly Neighborhood actually tries to talk about things. Either brilliantly or accidentally, it uses children's show "what did we learn" voicing to talk about these things, but if I've learned anything from watching denser stories about empathy bounce off the skulls of sycophants, that's kind of where you have to meet a lot of people who play games if you want to ask them why we let malicious forces do things to us that no one likes.

One of the best things Sega Channel ever did for me, and one of the places where Xbox Game Pass falls short, is not show the box art on games. Clicking a button that just said "Bio-Hazard Battle" in text and then having Bio-Hazard Battle happen is the reason people download huge lots of ROMs, not knowing what they are, just to hit load and go "what the hell is this" and get an answer you'd never see coming. Though, admittedly, this box art specifically isn't the best setup for what actually happens in Bio Hazard Battle, piloting a giant nematode or whatever through science hell to shoot the living fuck out of everything that pulsates. This game is sick and I miss mystery.

This is maybe not my favorite fighting game that I've ever played, but it's definitely the one I'd pull up first if I wanted to show someone how gorgeous sprite art could be and why I feel like we aren't done exploring that space. And by "exploring that space," I do not mean "remaking the same four super nintendo games over and over, but what sprite art can be made to say in context of itself, how it can portray surroundings in a realistic unreality. Technology forcing a limiter on interpretation of modern trends. Meadows of scanlines and oceans of dots.

I was like y'all once, happy to talk about how good Burnout Paradise was and how it's one of the best open world games. I'd play it every so often, because hot damn, what a good game. I even got excited when the remastered version came out! I bought it! I played it! And now I never want to look at this video game ever again. I can't explain what changed, I can only relate it to the breaking point from eating your favorite food too much. The idea of playing this game ever again would make me feel like I just got a terminal diagnosis, and even then, I would feel bad about how I'm using that time.