"Let's make a cartoon with a great setting, lovable characters, and amazing writing"
"But sir, we're a video game company"
"Shit, I guess throw some obtuse puzzles in between"

Normally I'm not a fan of "video games should be games" arguments, but many point and click/adventure games work much better than this. This is one of the few games I think should be definitively not have been a game.

That being said, please make a Grim Fandango Netflix series

Most rhythm games stop gameplay if you miss a certain number of notes. Sound Voltex doesn't care. You define what is success, whether that be getting a B or a perfect combo. I feel like that in and of itself is a quite powerful ludonarrative for a world where one's standing is usually set by someone other than yourself.

The game also goes the brave step of actually modifying the sound of the music according to your play style, which goes a long way to making you feel like you are actively making music as you play. This sadly makes song creation very hard, to the point that many community dumpers just add the FX to the actual ogg file, but I feel this issue is outside of the game itself, so to speak.

Finally, in most rhythm games, difficulty is only scaled up by the reaction time between notes, the complexity of note placement, or the density of notes. The multi-tasking nature of Sound Voltex makes it so that songs can scale difficulty in very different ways. There are very difficult songs that do not make use of the FX buttons or white keys at all and still provide a satisfying experience. An absolute gem of a game.

It really makes you FEEL like you are in a war-zone.

Let me explain it like this, in a Paradox game like Europa or Victoria, a war is represented by what color a province is. In actuality, war is never so simple, there are spies behind enemy lines, local resistance, checkpoints, civilians between the fire. New Vegas captures the lawlessness and factionalism of a war-torn country with such impact that has not been matched to this day (as far as I know). Combine that with a more than acceptable combat system and great characters, and you have one of the best games of all time.

I will say though, people who think New Vegas' story is a philosophical masterpiece because the writers read the Wikipedia pages of Fukuyama, Hegel, Malthus, and Evola are fucking delusional. But games don't need to be philosophical diatribes to be good stories.

And here I was thinking that pool was some dumb game for people who go to bars. Yakuza 5 then made me actually play and ho boy, I like it.

The best way I can describe it is that pool is like a non-discrete version of chess. You still have positioning and all that stuff, but the mathematical continuity of the playing field makes it much more enjoyable. There is a high amount of mechanical beauty and strategic depth that one can find in pool. I mostly play 8-ball, but for example, the opening move of a frame can be done in two different ways, one that spreads the balls across the table or one that keeps it to the top side. The topside strategy is what I prefer, it gets rid of the second player's advantage to almost always choose solids or stripes by cluttering both groups at the top, but at the cost of a less advantageous third turn position.

(I don't follow professional pool so maybe everything I just said was nonsense, but it's great that the game let's you experiment with such play styles)

Additionally, the game is fairly easy to get the hang of even without knowing the rules of pool due to great visual cues and a generous but not overpowered aim assist (which can be later turned off).

My only big complaint is that the game falls into the trap of having alternative objectives in matches to unlock skins, such as doing a specific type of shot or getting a certain number of balls in the hole in a row. I feel systems like this promote artificial play-styles by encouraging the use of strategies regardless of whether or not using such strategies is advantageous. Luckily, this is completely optional.

I've never played any other dedicated pool game so I don't know how this stacks up, but as a first go, it is far more than serviceable. It's a great way to get into pool if you don't like the bar atmosphere.