Games

I loved the art of this game so much. Such charm. The soundtrack too was just fantastic. The gameplay was a little hit and miss. I remember a few situations where the camera clipped into objects or had other issues, nothing so major as to make me completely put down the game though. Clearly a game with a lot of heart and soul put into it.

A very fun zombie killing experience. I wasn't huge into the Left 4 Dead games but I do get the appeal. The card system was pretty fun, I ran a fully melee build with Sharice and it was great just running through a horde hacking and slashing like a maniac.

Never forget what was taken from us. A genuinely fun game with interesting characters and a fun MOBA shooter hybrid thing. The singleplayer campaign was solid too, though the most fond memories I have of this game was playing with friends in private games. There was this one bot, Boldur, who must have been bugged or something because any time a team got him you were just down a team member. Then there was Oscar Mike on the opposite end, an absolute beast. Knowing that the game is gone really stings. Apparently people made it playable on PC though! Might have to check that out: https://x.com/BgBckBattleborn

An absolutely fantastic game that I hold very dear. The gothic setting is fantastic and was one of the first games that really got me to appreciate architecture. The depth of combat mechanics built on the Dark Souls formula in such a fun and interesting way too, the rally mechanic was the perfect piece of game design for teaching players to be aggressive blood crazed lunatics. An awesome game I have beaten many times and I'm sure will beat again.

An absolute classic. The gameplay is pretty simple, but the art is so full of vim and vigor. The animations are excellent, the color pops, everything about that game's style I love. It's short too, which I think is great because it doesn't outstay its welcome. Beaten it many times, and for whatever reason I seem to love the terrible characters. Blacksmith and Alien are my boys!

A criminally underrated 3DS title that really impressed me. It was made by the folks that did Fire Emblem, and has the really incredible comic book art style. The combat mechanics were really engaging, with a roster of 12 heroes all with different interesting weapons and playstyles. The gameplay was a turn based strategy with this sort of active shooting mechanic where you had to actually aim your shot at enemies, and there was a really interesting weakspot mechanic tied to that, so a headshot would do extra damage on certain enemeis for example. Genuinely fantastic. I think the multiplayer aspect was the most interesting part of it to me, I'd love to have been able to play against someone who had a deep understanding of the mechanics.

Beat this game with a friend, which made it substantially more fun. It is an absolutely broken mess that required an absurd amount of research and figuring out how to work around bugs just to even be playable, but for all its faults it was fun exploring a giant hostile world and building a massive tower of doom. Never touched the big multiplayer servers, for better or for worse. Also an insane time sink, must've played around 100 hours before we saw everything there was to see. Would not touch this again, but enjoyed it the first go around.

Up there as one of my favourite RPGs of all time. Such an engaging battle system with a brutal but fun game loop. The art style is so distinct, character designs especially are just incredible throughout. I really liked pretty much everything this game had to offer, and have beaten in many times on various difficulties.

A game that holds a very special place in my heart. I beat this game as a teenager with a friend, then again and again, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, and always in awe of the world and the feeling playing it evoked. It really nailed that feeling of entering a mythical world and seeing legends made real. I think each of the Dark Souls game does something that the others don't, and Dark Souls I think above all has the best representation of a mythical world or age on the precipice of decay. It somehow balances being beautiful and melancholy perfectly, and fights like Artorias or Gwyn really embody that concept.

I know this game has gotten alot of flak over the years, but I've always really enjoyed how "experimental" DS2 was compared to all the others. Powerstancing, deaths slowly visibly eroding your character's humanity, and especially all the strange weapons (Bone Fist my beloved). It also is just such a lovely game to look at. Majula is the best hub of all the souls games hands down, and the world itself just feels more vibrant than the other titles.

The most technically complex of the dark souls trilogy, and definitely the one I enjoyed PVP in the most. They really did a good job of making the world feel exhausted too. The dark souls games always did a great job of making you feel like you were seeing the end of an era, with DS1 being the end of the first age of fire, then DS2 being the end of King Vendrick's reign, but DS3 really was the end of everything. The normal ending of linking the first flame really stuck with me, where you just sit down next to the first flame as it barely has the strength to set you alight. That isn't even mentioning the DLC. Gale is a fantastic true final boss, truly one of the best in the series.

What an interesting title. I love beat 'em ups, Double Dragon, Castle Crashers, Golden Axe are all excellent. This one is unlike anything I've beaten before. I got into it because I watched someone talk about it on Youtube (infinitecringe, great channel) and was blown away with how in depth the mechanics were. I think the only game that looks to have a similar level of depth is Absolum, which as of writing I haven't played yet. Then there is the art. On one hand, absolutely beautiful work, super detailed, just awesome. On the other hand, holy gooner batman. The amount of provocative imagery on display is so overwhelming it comes back around to being comical. Honestly, good on them for commiting fully to the bit.

A really enjoyable game, good combat, interesting world and characters. Really beautiful too, the 3D artists did a great job and I remember the colors were quite vibrant in a way that really appealed to me.

I have mixed feelings about Elden Ring. On one hand, I adore it and have put probably near on a thousand hours into it over the course of many different characters, but on the other hand, it's just so gosh darn big. I don't think it's a bad thing mind you, but while with the other games I can replay them and want to go explore places again just for the sake of it, Elden Ring repeat playthroughs often boil down to: run around for 2 hours to grab all the stuff to get your build online, then rush the mainline bosses. That is of course still fun, and the build variety in this game is amazing, but I don't have the same sense of wonder as I do coming back to Elden Ring as I do with the others. I guess with the older titles, mostly DS1 there always feels like a little interesting nook and/or cranny to explore that has something interesting as a reward. It might not be an item, it could just be a beautiful view, and I feel Elden Ring is so big that even if it has that I feel too fatigued to find it on a repeat run. That said, the first playthrough was truly amazing, absolute top tier. I guess if the main complaint is "I want to beat the game again for the first time" it's probably pretty solid. Also, the damage on some late game enemies is insane, good lord.

I have mixed feelings on this game. The first section of the game is really engaging. Beating Garland, exploring the overworld, meeting the elves and dwarves, saving the elvish prince and giving the witch back her crystal eye all felt really good because the exploration was really engaging. Sure I might have just been wandering around an overworld and fighting monsters until you found a dungeon or town, but the region itself would be really small and the constant random battles also just meant I was grinding levels as I explored. However, as soon as I got the ship and the world opened up, the exact same formula quickly lost its charm. It is still charming in its own way especially just from a historical perspective given how influental it was at the time it came out, but I doubt I'd ever revisit it.

Oh man, what a game. There's a lot of nostalgia attached to this but even as an adult there is a lot to love. The story is excellent, the ATB battle system is still engaging and those pre-rendered backgrounds were really beautiful. I'm a sucker for pre-rendered backgrounds. The music of course is iconic, there was just so much to love about this game.

Right when I was growing fatigued with pokemon, fossil fighters swooped in and showed me how truly fantastic creature collecting games are. The story for this game is fantastic, the battle system is awesome, 3V3 battles with this really clever positioning system where backliners buff the frontliner with bonus stats or debuff enemies, but there's usually tradeoffs to certain stat boosts, like an amazing backliner buffer might have terrible stats themselves and is therefore liable to get sniped by the enemy frontliner etc. The digging, cleaning, and battling gameplay loop was awesome, just the whole game was stellar from start to finish. I think this and Dragon's Quest Joker are up there as some of my favourite creature collecting games.

An overall really intense and engaging metroidvania with a parry focused combat system. Oddly enough, I enjoyed most bosses except for Yanlao who I really struggled against, who apparently many people found easy, then inversly found many of the more difficult bosses like Lady Ethereal and even Eigong much easier in comparison. The art direction and music were top notch, I really liked the art panels for certain cutsenes. The game just oozes style, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Sekiro and Hollow Knight.

This has got to be one of my all time favourites. The story is great, the gameplay is simple but so engaging, it's just a fantastic title. YOOM TAH!

My first ever pokemon game, so it holds a special place in my heart for the nostalgia factor alone. Gen 1 to 5 were really special to me, and while I can look back at it now and remind myself that the grinding in that game was honestly not the most fun, I'll forever look at it through rose tinted glasses. It's also probably what kickstarted my love for the monster catching genre in general, which eventually led me to find games like Monster Sanctuary. What can I say, it's beloved, warts and all.

My introduction to "too much of a good thing". The pokemon formula is great and all, but two whole regions to explore was just too much for me personally. I still hold the game in really high regard, and the second region was still really cool, getting to take on their gym leaders in any order was great, but at some point I just grew tired of it, which is a shame. This was also around the time I was starting to get fatigued with pokemon in general, so I think it is still a good game, so maybe it was just that the sense of wonder with pokemon in general had faded a bit.

A pretty fun little title that felt a little simple for a rhythm game. Everything being controlled by the stylus though meant simple was probably the best option. The animations were cool and the music was nice when the nostalogia hit, but it just didn't really gel with me enough to do more than the basic courses and a few of the challenge levels.

A game I did not beat until I was an adult, and admittedly I still found it extremely charming. I played the 3DS remake? Remaster? Whatever it was, I do get why it is a classic. There were a few moments of annoyance here and there, some tedium in the water temple and travelling between the different times definitely wasn't my favourite mechanic, but gosh was it just such a neat world to be in. Despite my favourite Zelda title still remaining The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, I'm really glad I got to finally experience this firsthand, even if it was just to be a tourist oohing and ahhing at the scenery.