I never played Marble Blast Ultra so I have no real nostalgia for this game's pedigree (I may have played a teeny bit of the OG Marble Blast on a school computer but the memory is hazy). I picked this up after watching a Patricia Taxxon video where she endorses it and she's correct that it's great; I feel like I have a lot to say but it's all just parroting points in her video. The comparison to a fantasy of a good 3D Sonic game is particularly apt. You even collect gems... can emeralds be purple?

I "beat" this, in that I finished the "last" level, but this is the sort of game where getting to the end is not very challenging and does not feel like the point of the experience. Getting anything less than gold in a level feels like a hollow victory; getting diamond feels tremendous.

The Curse of Monkey Island is a staple of my life like few other games. Point n Clicks don't really lend themselves to multiple playthroughs (unless you're speedrunning or something; I've thought about it) but good ol' COMI.EXE is such a refuge of nostalgic comfort that I come back to it every few years and go through all the motions again and again. I am, frankly, incapable of assessing it as a game with anything resembling objectivity.

Nostalgia aside, much of the appeal is audiovisual. The 480p era of adventure gaming was extremely short lived, and this is clearly the pinnacle of it. The Michael Land music is, unsurprisingly, extremely good. And I'm convinced that nobody in video games knew how to direct voice actors correctly for years EXCEPT at LucasArts, where they were unimpeachable.

Although it's certainly my most replayed, I don't think this is the best Monkey Island game. The first two games were witty but also mysterious, a nuance that Curse abandons almost entirely for pure goofiness. They also clearly ran out of time/money before they could flesh out the final act, which feels more and more tacked-on every time I play. Still: inevitably I will play this again.

I'm afraid you have to compare this to Obra Dinn, their similarities are too obvious and there aren't that many fill-in-the-blank scene-frozen-in-time historical-fiction mystery games... it's a pretty tiny genre.

Golden Idol is Obra Dinn streamlined, with much of the potential friction removed and a much more controlled player path. As such, while Obra Dinn may have impressed me more and was (eventually) much more satisfying to complete, now that I've finished it I've had enough of it. But I could keep playing Golden Idol scenarios forever. Drip-feed them to me until I perish probably in some "freak accident" surrounding a mysterious statue.

Oh wait... there's 6 scenarios-worth of DLC waiting for me! And a sequel recently announced! Hot dang

Sort of an impulse purchase, a little out of my regular wheelhouse. I think I gave it a fair shot, but it probably isn't for me. It's a satisfying gameplay loop for sure, but for whatever reason (maybe I didn't feel I was improving quickly enough?) it couldn't get its hooks in me.

That's a thing of note about roguelites: either they hook you and you get that compulsive, I-want-to-play-this-forever feeling or they don't, and if they don't they just feel hollow. Doesn't mean the game actually IS hollow, just means it didn't sucessfully capture the necessary parts of your brain.

An expansion on the core ideas of Pony Island (and everything else Mullins has released, to some extent). It’s also a very direct riff (or dunk??) on The Beginners Guide, and makes heavy use of the neither-you-nor-your-player-character-want-to-do-this-but-you-have-no-choice-to-proceed mechanical narrative device (the “Bioshock Special”). So a real mishmash of video game meta-narrative concepts.

Less elegant than Pony Island but still a good time. Glad I got to experience Inscryption first (like most people, I’m sure) before seeing some of the same tricks used here in what’s hard not to think of as a trial run.

Top-tier GBC game. Compulsively playable, rarely frustrating but not completely fricitonless, bite-sized, interestingly put-together, and quirky. And, for me at least, a surprisingly relaxing game.

Some of the platforming puzzles toward the end are, for lack of more descriptive words, dumb and bad. But at least they aren't difficult too, which would be a real bummer.

The other mild criticism I have is how hard it is to keep track of what stages have unlocked paths. Little post-level cutscenes point them out, but you can only rewatch the latest one. This is the main reason (I'm telling myself) I haven't yet pushed myself to 100%, although I think I will go on and do that at some point.

First time playthrough, and my first Castlevania game. I beat it... which means I liked it! It's also the first game played on my old PSP since I dug it out and revived it recently.

Frankly, it's not as beautiful-looking as Rondo of Blood—not a controvertial statement, I think. The music is a side-grade too. So when I unlocked the original (and SotN) early on in my playthrough I did have to decide if I was gonna keep playing the remake or start over in OG Rondo... I chose to keep playing Dracula X Chronicles because I wanted a PSP-native experience and also because even though it isn't better I still find the new presentation charming in its own way. Plus I already know what most of Rondo of Blood looks like via GameCenter CX, etc.

When I've dipped my toes into Castlevania in the past I've been scared away by how slow and deliberate you have to be to succeed. It's the anti-Sonic, basically. In my increased age I am a much more patient person and much more receptive to at least this specific game's charms. Also, fuck that guy Dracula he sucks.

Another "early access" game I dip in and out of.

When I was a kid playing Sid's Civ 4 I used to liken that game to a board game, albeit one that would be too complicated and fiddly to be fun without a computer simulating it.

I get a similar feeling from Against the Storm—only this time instead of a bloated world conquest-themed Ameritrash game I'm getting vibes of a bloated Eurogame-inspired nominally-multiplayer effectively-solitaire game (if you play many board games you know this is basically a genre). Very easy to imagine a prototype of this design using physical components: card decks for all the random buildings/perks/orders/etc... little wooden "worker placement" figures in all the little animal shapes... lots and lots of tiny plastic currency tokens...

Qualitative assessment paragraph goes here. It's fun.