Fantastic gameplay, but save yourself and skip the story, it's not worth it.

It's a fast-paced movement / platforming FPS. It is a joy to play and optimise. It even has a bit of a puzzle element to it, in figuring out how to optimise your resource use to try to rise a few ranks on the leaderboard. Incredibly satisfying.

It is, however, done a great deal of disservice by its story, which is... not great. In short, it's Danganronpa for straight people. It's uncomfortably male-gazey. So just skip it.

Some games are about their vibe and their story before being about their mechanics or even their genre. Inscryption is definitely one of those: i could attempt to describe the way it is played, but not only would i need to spoil a lot of things, it would still not accurately portray what this game is. One of those games that is better if you play it without any prior knowledge.

But it's hard to blindly recommend it, when i know it's not going to be for everyone. So, uh it's... a psychological horror card building roguelike?

It's good is what it is.

Lovely game, that basically created a new genre of "vampire survivors-like". It starts slow, but very quickly you unlock to make this game absurd. And being absurd and chaotic is what it does best: most runs end up with projectiles covering the entire screen, obfuscating your character and the enemies, only to be obfuscated by a deluge of damage indicators.

The game keeps being updated to add more options, more characters, more levels, more weapons, more secrets. It's fun, it's easy to pick up, it even has a co-op mode now: give it a try.

Yet another childhood-defining game that i cannot be objective about. I played it when i was 12, after a year of waiting impatiently for its release, not knowing exactly when that would be because we didn't have the internet yet. It was my first Zelda game, and i fell in love with the franchise then and there.

Beyond my subjective feelings about this game, it is worth noting that it has an interesting legacy. It's the first 3D Zelda and signals a new direction for the franchise, but at the same time it's very true to its roots and has basically the same exact structure as A Link To The Past). Most importantly, its main legacy is its music. To this day, Zelda's theme in this game is used as a leitmotif in the big orchestral pieces of more recent games like TOTK. Likewise with the Song of Storms. Likewise with Ganondorf's theme.

A true masterpiece.

Yet another game that i cannot review objectively.

I played it as a teenager. I had borrowed a PS1 from a friend without my parents' knowledge, because i was supposed to study. It was hidden under my bed. I played it over a week or two, and i would have to wait until the next school day to be able to talk to my friends about it.

I remember telling them at recess that "when i reach the end of disk 1, I'll go back to do a bit of cleaning up before moving on to disk 2". Reader, i did no such thing. When i witnessed the end of disk 1, i rushed through the rest of the game as fast as i could to see the end, to get revenge if not closure.

Has this game aged? Yes. There's missable undocumented stuff left and right. The frequency of random encounters is way too high. The English translation is bad (shout-out to Ahriman and Midgarsormr) and contains the r word on multiple occasions. But it also hasn't: as i wrote in my Crisis Core review:

> FFVII was a game that, as far back in 1997, said: ecoterrorism is a valid response to a dying planet, corporations will wage war to extract capital and will militarize to protect themselves to escape the consequences of the destruction they have wrought, it is your moral duty to oppose them.

It is no surprise that this game is being remade and has countless spin-offs. It is iconic.

We will also not mention the impact on egg me of Cloud in a dress.

Hard Drive nailed my feelings about this game in their article titled: "Heartbreaking: Man Too Good at Fighting Game to Enjoy Playing Against Friends But Not Good Enough to Play Competitively".

More seriously, this is the definitive version of Smash for me. The most fast, responsive and dynamic since Melee, the full roster of characters... I love this series, despite not being very fond of more traditional fighting games otherwise.

Docking half a star, however, for the poor quality of network play.

I remember standing in a game shop, in 1997, looking at a screen showcasing the game. It was unlike anything i had ever seen. I then got it at Christmas, along with a N64, the first (non-handheld) gaming console i ever had, and nothing can recapture the sheer joy of being 11 and beginning a video game journey with this game.

I have replayed it so many times. My PB for 100% is around seven hours, which is abysmal, but i can still do that years later without looking at a guide, because i could recite the full star list off the top of my head.

I therefore can't review this game objectively. I genuinely think it has aged well and that it was a landmark in video game history, but i will never be able to see this game without the pink tinted glasses of nostalgia.

Dread was a pleasant surprise: announced and release within six months, after fifteen years of silence! And it did not disappoint: we're back to good ol' 2D Metroid, and this game delivers. It's fluid, it feels good to play, it's solid.

One of my favourite things about it is the characterization of Samus. After what Other M did to her, it's nice to be back to a more cold and ruthless Samus. What is impressive is that this characterization is done wordlessly: it is entirely conveyed by her body language in the cutscenes. She moves with precision, with an economy of movement, she doesn't flinch, she doesn't hesitate.

A small criticism i have would be that it didn't feel as replayable as some previous titles, but i'm not sure why. I should replay through it at some point.

Picture this. It's 2006. You think you know video games, you've been playing them for a while, you've even started doing some basic 3D stuff yourself. And then the first Portal trailer drops, more than a year before the game's release, and everyone loses their mind. You can see infinitely through portals! Objects move through them! WHAT SORCERY IS THIS! No one had seen anything like this.

Even if it was short, and the concept has been since refined by so many other games, Portal was the first, and it was iconic. It wasn't as carroonish as Portal 2, and ended being almost unsettling at times, in a good way. It introduced GLaDOS, the cake, the companion cube, it brought us Still Alive. It was the first game like this, and it absolutely nailed it, and transformed the game industry overnight. I still replay it every now and then: i genuinely think it holds up better than Portal 2.

Now you're thinking with portals.

I'm conflicted. On one hand, it's a short but forgettable adventure game, that doesn't innovate a ton. On the other, YOU PLAY AN ADORABLE CAT AND YOU CAN MEOW.

I feel like the cat aspect is what saves the game. The exact same game, but playing as the robot that accompanies you, would not have received anywhere near the same critical acclaim. Which is not to say that it's not a good game! Just not groundbreaking.

The best part of this game will forever be the videos of cats reacting to it.