When it comes to discussions surrounding the beat-'em-up genre, the first franchise that immediately comes to mind for a lot of people is Streets of Rage, with the second game in particular being the entry that made the series really kick off. Outside of me occasionally playing something like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV: Turtles in Time at an arcade, though, I've never had very much familiarity with side scrolling beat-'em-ups, and I've certainly never beaten one in its entirety, and so I've decided to kill two birds with one stone by diving into Streets of Rage 2. This was one of those cases where I respect and recognize the influence of a game far more than I actually enjoyed it, because while I do understand how Streets of Rage 2 has garnered such a strong legacy over the years, I'd be lying if I said I actually had very much fun with it.

Maybe this is more to do with the game's age than anything, but for an experience that's only about an hour or two long in total, I managed to get sick of the gameplay loop of Streets of Rage 2 quite early on. Even with its roster of four playable characters with their own playstyles, it didn't feel like any of them had a wide enough moveset to keep me that engaged with the slow pacing of the game's eight stages, with some of the more awkward button inputs and situational attacks leading to me using the same three moves for pretty much the entire game due to how much more effective they were. The increasingly frustrating enemies made this go from a slightly repetitive button-masher to something outright tedious, with the sudden influx of enemies (as well as reused bosses) with multiple health bars, annoying gimmicks, and a high resistance to actual combos showing up in practically every segment of every level made these encounters feel like they were going on for forever. Winning a stage or even just one fight in Streets of Rage 2 feels a lot more dependent on luck and RNG than any actual strategy or careful positioning, with the seemingly random hits and grabs deciding to land or not land (regardless of whether or not you are actually standing on the same plane as your enemy and vice versa) making many of the enemy encounters come down to just hoping that you'll land your attacks this time.

Even if I didn't have very much fun with this game, I won't act like there's absolutely nothing to appreciate about it, because if there was one thing about Streets of Rage 2 that stuck the landing for me, it would be its presentation. It's honestly impressive to see a home console game from the early 1990s look just as good as something you'd see in the arcades from that era, as the detailed spritework and backdrops, varied animations, and unique enemy designs gave Streets of Rage 2 a very lively and stylized look. The soundtrack of Streets of Rage 2 was also pretty good, and while I don't think it's one of the best game scores of all time like so many others do, Yuzo Koshiro's energetic synths and techno still fit the game's urban setting. Despite all of this, I'd be lying if I said I had very much fun with Streets of Rage 2, and while I am curious about eventually giving Streets of Rage 4 a shot, I think I'll want to wait a while before I actually do.

As someone who owned and actively played on a Wii U back during what might've been the absolute worst time to be a Nintendo fan, I'm surprised at just how many games I didn't bother picking up while the console was still being supported, with one of my bigger regrets being me not playing either of the two Bayonetta games that were on there. Years later, I've still wanted to give this franchise a shot, and since I've been playing quite a few character action games recently, I figured I might as well throw the first Bayonetta into the mix for good measure. This was one of those games that I've heard practically nothing but good things about from both general internet discourse and my actual friends who've played through it, and I think that this general excitement and acclaim towards it might've contributed to just how disappointing of an experience Bayonetta was for me, even if I wouldn't call it a bad game by any means.

For the first few hours of my 10 hour playthrough, I was having an absolute blast with Bayonetta, and most of my enjoyment can be found in the excellent combat system. The vast amount of flashy moves, lengthy combos, and dynamic upgrades made controlling the titular Umbra Witch feel fast, fluid, and buttery-smooth, and activating Witch Time by dodging an attack at the last second was satisfying pretty much every time I pulled it off successfully. Unlike the ranking systems you'd find in something like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta ranks how well you've done in each of the level's individual combat encounters rather than just the level as a whole, and while that didn't really change my approach to fighting enemies all that much (mostly because it was so harsh and required absolute perfection that I just ignored it and did what I wanted), it was still an interesting choice. Although the plot verges on the incomprehensible (especially with how the sound mixing in the cutscenes is so bad that you can't even hear the characters under the sound effects and music), the stylish presentation had me look forward to each cutscene, with the detailed artstyle and gleefully over-the-top choreography working well alongside the lead character's charming personality and the great voice performance from Hellena Taylor. The soundtrack of Bayonetta also greatly added to the game as a whole, and its eclectic mix of genres fit pretty much every scene that the music was used in.

Bayonetta is one of those rare cases where, despite how great the core mechanics are, it feels like every other element of this game is trying to drag that gameplay down to the point where you can't even appreciate it, and a lot of that can be felt with just how bloated this game is with gimmicky nonsense. Whether it comes in the form of clunky vehicle sections, bad platforming, or annoying bosses and enemies that can only be killed using one or two techniques, Bayonetta constantly interrupts you from just getting to the fun parts of the game, and the sheer amount of repeated encounters makes this problem even worse. Even at its best, the gameplay of Bayonetta still manages to get held back, as the genuinely awful camera moves around so much that you can't even see who or what you're supposed to be fighting and dodging (a trend among these character action games that I'm starting to get sick of) and the frame rate can drop so low that it actively ruins your timing for combos and last-second dodges. Bayonetta also has some really irritating quicktime events that occasionally result in an instant death, and since this game decreases your rewards at the end of each level if you die even once, these can end up being straight-up frustrating. The heights that Bayonetta reaches were enough to make me say that I liked it overall, but I won't pretend like I wasn't let down by it or that it wasn't a deeply flawed game, and I hope that Bayonetta 2 makes up for it.

With the mixed reception, failure to meet financial expectations, and eventual abandonment of Anthem, BioWare became yet another victim of EA's money-driven decisions hollowing out the spirit of the company, and the disappointing release of Mass Effect: Andromeda just two years earlier made this blow hit just that much harder. Before all of this happened, though, their legacy as a studio responsible for continuously making innovative and gripping RPGs was virtually untainted, and since Mass Effect is probably their most popular original IP, I wanted to have the first game in the series serve as my intro to their games. Although I have been quite busy over the past month and had to devote most of my time to other things, my actual playthrough of Mass Effect only took roughly 12 hours, and while not every element of this game clicked with me, I still liked enough of its elements to say that I've enjoyed my time with it overall.

When it comes to these kinds of space opera games, I often find their core stories more interesting than their backstories and other bits of extra information, but I was surprised to find that this wasn't the case here. Don't get me wrong, the plot of Mass Effect had me invested right from the outset, but I found the game's lore to be genuinely fascinating, and I ended up having a lot more fun reading about the different races, wars, planets, politics, and technology that surrounded Commander Shepard's attempts at stopping the reawakening of the Reapers than I thought I would, and they also complimented the sleek art direction and awesome synth score. The varied cast of characters in Mass Effect also helped sell this game's world to me, because even with the stiff, robotic animations and use of real-time cutscenes where textures only render about half the time, the game's solid writing and especially great voice acting made each member of my crew feel three-dimensional. Despite the binary morality system at play here where you can only really choose to be either explicitly good or explicitly bad, the more major decisions you make throughout Mass Effect are able to transcend that entirely, as they heavily affect the outcome of the story while also having enough layers to them to make choosing the best option a much more complicated process than it initially seems.

In terms of its writing, presentation, and role-playing elements, Mass Effect was really strong, but what held it back for me was its actual gameplay. The game's combat is definitely playable, but it shows its age in almost every way, with the imbalanced weapons, clunky menus for using your abilities, and a barely functioning cover system made each shootout feel less like a game of tactical decision-making and more like randomly firing at whatever's in front of you and hoping that you don't get killed in the process. Speaking of which, the squad-based elements of Mass Effect didn't work at all for me, as the limited commands and genuinely awful AI from my squad mates just ended up making me use them as distractions or human shields more than anything. The worst element of Mass Effect would easily be the Mako, with its unreliable controls and the repetitive enemies and layouts for its sequences made using it feel like a chore during the campaign and a complete waste of time whenever it came to the already forgettable side content. Despite its flaws, I still enjoyed my time with Mass Effect overall, and while I do plan on completing the trilogy at some point, I'm pretty sure that my next BioWare game will be Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.