How can it not be the best Smash if you just put all the characters in it and make the controls more like Melee again?

There are more technical fighting games out there, but there's few that are so easy for so many to pick up and play. You can do the sweaty 1v1s, you can do the semi-competitive 4-player sessions, you can do 8 player chaos and team battles. If you really wanna take out the skill factor you can throw items into the mix and play a weird ass map like the Great Cave Offensive. And there's no random tripping this time.

Before Fortnite, this was the series where you could see an officially licensed Solid Snake chokehold Sonic the Hedgehog. After Fortnite, this is the series where that experience doesn't feel like you're playing a dubiously legal Chinese indie game.

Standard Pac-Man == a classic for its time. Solid gameplay but a little dull after a while.

Pac-Man: CE DX+ == Eye cocaine

I don't even remember what compelled me to download this on XBLA all those years ago, but something awoke in me that day. A beast that wanted to repeat the same 10 second gameplay loop until I did it flawlessly; to solve for the absolute most efficient route and run it as quickly as possible. All while rewarded by a light show that got smoother and all the more decadent as I did better and better.

This game is crack and it broke how I play other games and I love it.

One would be forgiven for looking at this game and think that it is not, in fact, a superb kid's game. But I assure you, at 3 years old I was having quite a joyous time with it.

It teaches all sorts of important skills to the young mind, like "spatial reasoning" as you platform around the space levels and aim long rocket shots across the map. It also teaches you practical life lessons like "getting hit with said rocket will turn you into meat chunks, so don't play with explosives." And for today's world of ever advancing technology, you learn the most important lesson of all: how to exploit pseudo artificial intelligence.

So if you haven't started your own LAN party yet to gib bots with your children, maybe you should consider it. The memories will be well cherished.

This game ages like fine wine. After my first playthrough, my opnion was that it had some cool new stuff but was ultimately inferior to KotOR 1 due to the limp ending.... but even then there were little things about the story that stuck with me longer than anything in 1. They nagged at me to think about them, puzzle them out, figure out what was actually happening.

Then I played it again. I noticed more, understood more. Kreia seemed just a bit less like a grumpy hag and I started to think “just maybe this babushka is onto something.”

I played the first game more, too. That feeling of change wasn’t really there. I had experienced the twist and seen what the game had to offer. Still great, but nothing changed.

Then the restored content mods entered the scene for the PC version and I got into those. It wasn't a huge difference but it was enough. Suddenly the ending wasn’t bad. It was certainly unpolished, but I started to think it was actually quite good. My own ability to reason had evolved at that point in my teen years. I could see much more of the philosophical nuance happening in the story and the political machinations ticking away in the background. I could see how the story was rooted in historical accounts of post-war realities like the lives of some Vietnam veterans after they returned home.

In the first game, the Mandalorian Wars were a footnote in the backstory. A good detail, but one that could be mostly ignored without changing the story much. In The Sith Lords it became impossible to ignore. It haunts everything and everyone.

This is a superb game and possibly one of the best pieces of writing in gaming period.

Unfortunately it's also made in a BioWare engine and uses D&D 3.5 based combat systems, so it's a technical timebomb sometimes with weird balancing.

But it’s worth it.

This game was a hot mess, but I beat it 11 times even before the remaster, so that should tell you how enamored I was with its sci-fi world and charming characters back in the late 00's.

I was already a die-hard BioWare fan, with Neverwinter Nights being one of my first games period, Knights of the Old Republic blew my elementary schooler mind, and Jade Empire was fascinating. (Eventually I got to Baldur's Gate as well, but I was terrible at it) So really, it was inevitable that I'd blow past all the janky TPS gameplay to get to the stuff I was really looking forward to from a BioWare title: the dialogue and RPG bits.

I was not disappointed. The game was pack full of interesting details and fun drama. Even 13 years later and after writing and publishing a novel, I'm still incredibly impressed by how well BioWare set up their world. I'm definitely more critical of the writing than I was before, though, but I still appreciate a lot of that.

It used to be with the community that new players were ushered right to ME2 once that came out, I always took issue with that because ME1 is really where the foundation of the story is laid. Thankfully, now the remaster exists and it's smoothed over enough of the rough edges that I don't think any self-respecting sci-fi can weasel their way out of it.

Play Mass Effect. It's not long (for an RPG).

This was a very formative game for me and regularly evoked all kinds of emotions from 4-5 year old me. FFIX was actually my first Final Fantasy, but the medieval-esque setting of that one made it feel at least somewhat familiar. FFVII, however, was entirely foreign to me. It introduced me to so many storytelling concepts that were miles removed from anything else I had access to at the time. The more rudimentary 3D graphics are kind of laughable now, but to my young brain in that time period of technology, and with the accompanying sci-fi soundscape and poignant music score... there's so many young thoughts preserved forever in every inch of this game for me.

Not much of a real review, but you've probably seen 200 already, so just play it already, it's not that long.

A similarly wild ride to the first entry, but this time it feels like a little bit of acid was involved... and that made it better.

I'll get the biggest weaknesses it had out of the way first. Just like the first game, this one sometimes just gets too goofy. Generally, in the dialogue and character scenes the absurdity is great and well appreciated... but sometimes the game would build up a nice, heavy mood then shoot itself in the foot — usually with the guns on-screen.

The action scenes were really not great. I'm normally fine with over the top anime action, but it doesn't work when you're trying to tell a story where murder and violence are so integral to the details of the narrative. Thankfully it wasn't often enough to derail the story, but it did hurt the finale.

Putting that sizable asterisk aside, the plot here was even cooler and darker than the last one, and had one of the most creative uses of branching path narrative that I've seen in a while. It's a story that doesn't spoon feed you every interesting detail, but it presents them well regardless. Beyond the plot, the overall tone and mood of the game will stick with you even longer. Definitely worth the time.

Oh, and the actual game part of the game is really fun, too. The Somnium puzzles aren't the hardest around, but unraveling their dream logic is entertaining and rewarding even when you're getting things wrong as you'll still get charming commentary between the characters.

Muv-Luv is an entertaining game that feels decidedly incomplete, and understandably so once you've started Alternative.

As a multi-route VN I will note for prospective players that there are "two" games here, Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited. Extra has two routes you need to get through to play Unlimited, and three extra routes that I enjoyed. Unlimited has multiple endings but they're all basically the same just with a different favorite character, so pick yours and move on.

Narrative wise, and avoiding spoilers (of which this game has a lot of potential things to spoil), this game is a lot like young love: you spend many hours doing things in very roundabout ways and avoiding the "point" but that's not wasted time, it's a necessary precursor. That is all I can say.

As for the V of VN, this series is actually one of the most impressively directed I've seen. The sprites move around way more than you'd expect, they actually make use of the (perceived) depth of the backgrounds, the camera pans and cuts and there are lots of effects.... it's just overall energetic in a way few other VNs are. Danganronpa is one of the closer comparisons, but even that achieved its effects by rendering 2D cutouts in a 3D space, this is 99% 2D.

I really, really liked 99% of it. So many good scenes, lots of cool sci-fi concepts and such a wonderfully strange use of romance VN tropes.

I want to say I love it, but I'm still reeling a bit from their use of particular sub-set of a common alien invasion trope that just completely derails my experience every time it pops up (If you know, you know).

But, the rest of Alternative in particular was so bloody good that objectively I'd be lying to say it was anything less than incredible, even if I don't feel that fact anymore.

Strange reaction. Good story.

My number one JRPG of all time and by a significant margin. The base game was already amazing, but the release of Royal put it yet another tier higher.

The point most people are familiar with is the art. It's just chock full of unique, colorful, and energetic effects and UIs and animations. 3 and 4 were the same, but 5 made everything so much snappier and tactile. JRPGs are infamously glorified menu scrollers, but these are some of the most fun menus in gaming.

I wholly adore the story and characters. A story this long is inevitably going to have some pacing issues, but the emotions and themes are so compelling to me. Then every time I've replayed it, I'll pick up on another great detail I overlooked before. And then the new story added to the end with Royal is just incredible. It feels both complete as its own episode and yet fitting as an epilogue to the original plot. It turns the themes of prior events around but does so to strengthen the conclusion rather than invalidate it.

A lot of quality of life improvements were made to what was already the pinaccle of the classic line-up turn based system. It's as snappy as ever, but some moves were lifted into relevancy and several boss fights were made more complex and engaging.

Everything this series does drips with style and heart, and this is the drippiest, heartiest entry in it.

While many console shooters have surpassed individual aspects of Halo 3 since its release, I still hold that nothing has come close to being such a perfectly complete and polished package.

There are hundreds of articles and videos written about it, so I'll focus on a few specific details that are important to me:

The lighting and color work are on point. While the models and textures are understandably limited in fidelity (only 512MB of video RAM afterall), somehow they managed to code a lighting system that makes everything feel so full. It's hard to describe, but boot up the MCC and compare Halo 3 maps to Reach or even Infinite. They may be more detailed, but they feel like paper-mache and plastic in comparison sometimes. The only thing I can think of is that they either used a really advanced rendering algorithm that had some kinda wack drawback, or whoever designed the shaders for 3 had just ascended for a brief moment. Destiny 1 felt similar but then D2 lost it again.

The physics sandbox was immaculate. A controller based shooter will never compete with a M+K in terms of precision skill ceiling. Bungie knew that and didn't waste time trying. What we get instead are environments that more actively play into the fights. Projectiles have physics properties, maps had moving objects and force generators, every vehicle and piece of debris had a good weight to it and collisions were smooth (not perfect, but that's for the best).

Then all the easter eggs and spoopy secrets in the campaign. 😤

Lastly, it really just can't be emphasized enough just how amplified every piece was by how polished and complete it all felt together. I certainly have rose-tinted glasses and I will absolutely admit a part of it was the times it released in, but I wholly believe this is the supreme king of console shooters.

This one feels like a bit of a mixed bag after Momodora: Reverie. On one hand, I love the concept art and the backgrounds, but the characters themselves ended up looking very stiff. Rather typical for a studio's first attempt at a hybrid 2D/3D style, though, so I don't think it's a complete loss. Once they figure out the animation side of things, I think they could have something very nice there. Arc System Works sure has proved what's possible.

As a Metroidvania, however, the level design didn't feel quite as inspired as Momodora. I actually like that it refrains from having frequent difficult platforming sections, instead focusing more on combat, but that does make the traversal upgrades you get feel very underused. Still, it was enjoyable. The parry/counter system was a nice addition to the combat flow that makes the overall pace of fights faster and more in-line with what my monke brain wants.

Oh, and a note on the story. I think a significant amount of the major weight of the plot is probably found in the archives you pick up. But I never read them because monke brain was engaged 100% of the way through. However, that felt more intentional than when AAA games usually do that, because the atmosphere of the environments I felt told enough for the type of game it is.

Overall, I'm a bit underwhelmed but I enjoyed it. And, like Momodora, it's a short experience that doesn't overstay its welcome. Worth trying on sale if you already like these types of games.