Greatest hits compilations can be a hard sell since a fan of the series might say "big deal, I've played all these games before" but the beauty of Gold lies in the hardware it was released on. Getting a WarioWare on the 3DS, a system that can emulate both the gyro controls of Twisted and the touch screen of Touched, was a stroke of genius - even if it occurred late in the system's lifespan - and the way it accumulates into an absolutely frantic finale where you're switching between 3 different play styles on the fly was a real "This is why I love video games as a art medium" moment. If you're going to use console gimmicks for your video game, might as well go this hard with them, and if you can, please play this beautiful game on an actual 3DS system. This is where Gold shines. like gold

In a way, WarioWare Gold is an amazing send-off, both for the handheld WarioWare games and the 3DS itself. An absolutely exquisite curtain drop for the system before it succumbs to its fatal injuries via poorly selling remakes, and I'm saying this about a game where Wario gains godlike powers by wearing a communal toilet on his head and tries to murder a small child in front of a stadium full of people while doing so (in makes sense in context, I promise, and also it's unclear if the communal toilet itself has godlike powers or if Wario gave himself godlike powers via the placebo effect).

Oh, and to sweeten the deal, once you collect all the souvenirs, the game slaps you on the back and says "well done, now you get this mildly addicting collectible card game where you play rock-paper-scissors against those random freaks from the minigames". This game rules.

Really not a fan of the fact that 3 of the 4 latest Crash Bandicoot games are (or, in this case, were) battle pass grindfests that want you to turn the marsupial into a side-job as you work the long hours for your free-to-play cosmetics, all while a frog in boiling water scenario is playing out where the releases have been steadily becoming online-only after the success of CTRNF, a game with a "seven dollars gets you 700 Bandicoot Bux!" cosmetics store that at least was still a full game that could be played offline.

But hey, at least they brought back Mr. Crumb from the obscure Tiger electronics game and did a crossover with The Noid at one point, which means that Crash Bandicoot has canonically interacted with a Domino's pizza.

The finest art direction of any fantasy game: trippy but seamlessly so, like it all came together the only way it could. WoW's clunky physicality just pops with warped perspectives and spaces that seem to expand beyond the game container, cued exactly for when it knows you're breathless. The Fel Reaver, a giant that wanders the doom metal concept art of Hellfire Peninsula, is an all-timer. At a distance it moves with the eerie grace of one of Team Ico's colossi, evoking a similar loneliness (just here, it wanders eternally in space). But to forget about the Fell Reaver is to have the ground tremble and everybody else flee, and to have that inhuman loneliness shot through with fear of that which is beyond oneself. The Fel Reaver has a heart, but it does not beat for us. I wonder what it is looking for?

Every single episode of SBCG4AP is a ray of sunshine in a cold, desolate world that puts a smile on my face. Homestar Runner is the balm to a wounded soul. That being said, if you asked me which of the five episodes was my least favorite, I would say this one with zero hesitation.

Don't get me wrong! It’s still super funny and I love all the callbacks! This game just also makes it abundantly clear that Homestar Runner works best when you have this rich cast of disturbed weirdos bouncing insults off of one another and unfortunately we lose some of that when some of the cast (Marzipan and King of Town, mainly) is rendered mute after being possessed by video game characters.

I will say, props to this game for having some really obscure video game references. I was not expecting a joke about LOAD“FILE”,8,1 or Hard Hat Mack.