I've always enjoyed fighting games from afar, never able to truly enjoy them myself because I lack either the patience or the capacity to learn their distinct movesets and quirks. Street Fighter 6 is the ideal fighting game for someone like me, creating an experience that isn't only accessible, but also enjoyable and genuinely made me feel like I could learn fighting games. The World Tour mode is a blast to play through, though I did get annoyed that some sections of the game felt like they required a good amount of grinding (probably due to my aforementioned lack of ability). It's a game that's bursting with cleverness and character, and one of the best fighting game campaigns of all time (which I'll say confidently despite only experiencing a handful firsthand).

I can't help but find this silly little game to be endearing, with its cute and unique take on the classic JRPG formula. I'll say that this is stronger as an adventure game than it is as an RPG, because I wasn't the biggest fan of the battle system. There's not a lot to it, with some of the final battles feeling a bit more luck based than strategy. It's not the deepest or even funniest games, but it's charming enough to be worth the quick playthrough. I did find it very annoying that cutscene dialogue was entirely autoplay, because I read much faster than the dialogue would page.

It's truly hilarious that Contra is the crossover that poncle and Konami have chosen and for that I commend them. That said, perhaps Vampire Survivors is starting to wane for me because this DLC didn't feel as though it was offering anything that I hadn't seen in previous releases. The new weapons are OK, but finicky to build outside of one of the two new stages. The new stages are interesting, but lacking anything special aside from a Contra coat of paint over Vampire Survivors. I did enjoy revisiting the game for this DLC, but it definitely didn't feel essential.

I already thought that Final Fantasy VII Remake was damn near perfect, so to have this sequel improve on its predecessor in a number of ways is simply mindblowing. It's clear that this world is being treated with utmost respect, with an attention to detail that's almost second to none. In my mind, this is the best action RPG battle system in gaming. It deftly blends the classic turn-based Final Fantasy staples with a more modern, action-focused battle system in a way that just feels perfect. Everything that's been recreated from the original game is lovingly touched up, while the additions are of an equally high bar. I truly cannot wait for the conclusion of this trilogy and I will happily live in the world of Final Fantasy VII for as long as Square Enix will have me.

The third game in the series and the worst game in the series. This is supposed to be the culmination of the previous two Parascientific Escape games, but instead it's a confused and muddled mess. The script is absolutely riddled with typos, a typical scene would contain at least a dozen mistakes (even misspelling proper nouns referring to important in-game places and concepts). The story itself is all over the place, a poorly executed rendition of a boring concept. The puzzles are OK, but sometimes lean into some serious logic leaps. I would not recommend this game, even to players of the previous games.

I've started various Advance Wars games over the years but have never seen one of these games to completion, until now. Glad to finally experience the first game in the series (albeit with a fresh coat of paint), because it was a great time. I played the game in casual as this was my commuter game and still found it to be a reasonable challenge. I'll say that the story and characters were a bit more background than I'd expected, but they were still charming. The gameplay itself is addictive, if a bit repetitive and somewhat simplistic. A lot of the matchups can feel a bit rock-paper-scissors and "decided" battles tend to drag out a bit longer than necessary. This was still a great re-introduction to the series and I'm excited to play through the sequel.

Beacon Pines is just a lovely and charming game. The art is gorgeous, with lots of expressive characters and detailed & colorful backgrounds. The narrator offers a decent framing device, along with the branching path gimmick lending some interesting interactivity to the storytelling. The story itself has engaging characters, a digestible mystery with some fun plot twists, and a satisfying conclusion. This is just the kind of thing that's up my alley and it certainly made me nostalgic for my childhood of reading Hardy Boys books.

It's always a pleasure to see a game that sets out to achieve essentially one thing and then proceed to execute on that one thing flawlessly. Pseudoregalia demonstrates this with its movement, resulting in perhaps the most satisfying movement platformer that I've played. The world is cleverly crafted to enable players to use their tools in such a way that reaching a ledge or a platform often feels unintentional. Finally pulling off just the right string of moves to make it to a platform that seemed unreachable was exhilerating each time it happened. Outside of the movement, I felt like the game was perhaps just a bit too obtuse with its direction and that the combat felt half-baked, but getting around the castle and its surrounding areas just felt too good for these things to get in the way of my enjoyment.

I'm generally a fan of bite-sized Metroidvania games, but this one didn't really do it for me. Playing on Steam Deck was a little awkward because the control stick just mapped to the d-pad buttons making it challenging to properly handle up and down inputs. This minor frustration, plus the lack of any real indicators on the map (e.g. save rooms, pickups) made traversal less fun. The bosses are fine enough, requiring some basic strategy to beat them, but the game just ends abruptly once each boss has been cleared, with no real fanfare. It would have been nice to have perhaps one final area that the four bosses culminated in. Not a terrible game, but not something that I'd recommend unless someone was deep into Metroidvanias.