This was one of my first Xbox 360 games, but a frustrating temperature-based level made me put it down for 16 years. “Maybe it won’t be as bad now that I’ve beaten the first two games and I'm better at Katamari,” I thought. Nope! Still an absolutely dogshit level. But also, turns out the whole game is only like two hours long if you don’t care about high scores and optional content lmao. It’s still Katamari, so it’s still fun - the final level in particular, which seamlessly takes you from ground level all the way to space, feels like a logical endpoint for the series - but beyond that this was clearly a series suffering from the departure of its creator. It just doesn’t have the same soul.

Yeah, I just dropped this one after like an hour, even though this game is only like four hours long or something. This is just not at all what I want out of this series. There’s barely any story here, and what IS there is somehow both very thin and needlessly convoluted. Feels like they wanted to rebrand Alan Wake as more of an action series to broaden the appeal while also throwing out a low-budget, what-if, ambiguously canon potential ending for Alan’s story, in case they never made a sequel. I just went and skimmed the rest of the cutscenes on YouTube for context before moving on to Control.

Had a fun time with this one! It definitely shows its age in some areas, and the gameplay gets a little repetitive, and it’s a little too fond of hinging its story on blatant Twin Peaks allusions, but the good outweighs the bad. Alan remains a unique video game protagonist as a kinda trashy airport thriller novelist thrust into supernatural circumstances, and the use of the manuscript pages as a storytelling device is really interesting. The story is sincerely engaging, but it’s also full of campy moments that made me smile. I can see why it’s a cult classic.

This was the first classic Mega Man game I ever played as a kid, since it was the only one ported to GBA. I only wanted to play as Bass, but I struggled to actually beat any bosses as him because they tend to have lengthy invulnerability periods after getting hit by only a single one of his rapid fire buster shots, so I mostly just played the opening stage and the first three Robot Master stages over and over again on the school bus or car rides. (I did eventually get to the later stages of the game in middle school, though I don't think I ever beat King's castle.) As such I'll always be extremely nostalgic for this version and its crunchy soundtrack, even if the logical part of my brain knows it's the inferior version of what's already a pretty mid-tier Mega Man game.

Like basically all of the other mainline numbered FF entries, I’ve started this one multiple times, but never managed to finish it. Something else would always come up and distract me, or I’d get out of Midgar and decide I’d had my fill. But with Rebirth on the way, I decided it was time to finally sit down and play it start to finish. And man, what an all timer.

It’s still clunky in places, sure. Some haphazard minigames, prerendered backgrounds that can be hard to parse, a stilted English translation that really really needs an update. But it’s still so damn fun, and made with so much passion to try out new things and experiment with interactive storytelling. It’s not quite my favorite FF gameplay-wise, but it may still be my favorite in terms of story. I’ll always cherish these characters and the world they live in.

Very clever little one button platformer that's really more of a puzzle game built around understanding the unconventional rules of your movement, the first of which is extremely aggressive fall damage that requires you to jump carefully. This could be considered a Metroidvania, though you never really gain any new abilities. Instead, the game keeps revealing new things you didn't realize you could always do, which in turn makes you look at the areas you've already been through in a new light. If I have one complaint, it's just the lack of checkpoints in one specific tricky area near the end, but the game is so short that it's not a huge issue.

I was OBSESSED with this game in middle school. As much as I love the new classic series entries we've gotten since this one, it's so hard for them to stack up to the sheer amount of STUFF in this game. On top of being a really solid remake of Mega Man 1 with a cute art style and an expanded story, you can also play as EVERY ROBOT MASTER, AND multiple variants of Mega Man, AND Roll with a bunch of free DLC costumes, and even Proto Man?? And there's a challenge mode to put all those characters' skills to the test? AND there's a stage editor, which I poured a bunch of time into making bad levels in? It rules. I'm perpetually sad that we never got a Powered Up version of Mega Man 2.

I am not a survival horror fan at all, and this game didn’t exactly do all that much to sell me on survival horror gameplay. I just don’t think it’s for me. I found it more tedious than scary, and before too long I turned the difficulty down to easy so I wouldn’t have to worry so much about the combat and resource management aspects.

With all that in mind: it should speak volumes about how much I like the story that I still managed to push through as a survival horror disliker and beat the game… twice.

Yes, immediately after beating the game once, I went right into new game+ to see the few scattered bits of extra story it added, as well as the somewhat altered ending. I never do that!! This game is a huge departure from the first, and it doesn’t quite have the same campy charm a lot of the time, and Saga’s side of the story in the real world wasn’t quite as interesting to me, but when it hits, it REALLY hits. Especially in Alan’s side of the story. The way the story keeps finding new ways to wrap back in on itself, layer after layer after layer of metatext, surreal blendings of both in-engine and live action material, all making you question how much is real and how much is a fabrication of one of a story within a story within a story, and if that distinction even matters in a world where fiction alters reality. What a blast. While I think Control was the more fun game overall, this is definitely Remedy’s storytelling at its best. They put everything they’ve learned into this game. This one’s gonna stick with me for a long time. Can’t wait for the DLCs.

Honestly? Not a huge fan of Zero Mission. It's definitely cool for what it is, but it really does hold your hand too much and the bosses are WAY too easy. And, yes, it's cool that the devs included so many intentional speedrunning shortcuts and skips for repeat playthroughs (where the heavy guidance is irrelevant because you already know where to go anyway), but that doesn't necessarily make a one-off casual playthrough more interesting. It kinda kills the atmosphere of the previous games, too, by leaning more into a heroic action-adventure vibe. Again, not bad by any means, but far from my favorite Metroid.