Best Vibes

The vibes here are immaculate, no I will not shut up about this game until other people play it, it's good and if you're reading this you should play it, it's free and only takes like 10 minutes

Game with a Fun Anecdote

When I was 4 or 5 my Aunt and Uncle were babysitting me for an evening and at one point my uncle said he wanted to show me something cool, told my Aunt we were going to play Ecco the Dolphin and showed my Mortal Kombat instead. This was the first time I had ever seen a video game. He tried to show me how to rip out a dude's spine and failed but swore it was really cool.

A few months later, my parents were visiting a co-worker and I was hanging out with the co-workers son and he showed my Mortal Kombat, also tried to do the spine-tear-out thing, and also failed at it.

Game I Wish More People Would Play

Fuck, this game is so good!! The music is great, the aesthetic style is fantastic, the mechanics are clever, and the puzzles are super well designed!! I will not stop shouting about TRI until the day I die!!

Best Game I've Never Played

I've watched a lot of this game (mostly in the context of speedruns) and it's something I want to call a Perfect Game despite 1) "perfect" being extremely arbitrary and 2) never actually touching it myself. It sets out to be a very specific thing and absolutely nails it. Also the soundtrack is great.

Worst Game I've Never Played

This is a stand-in for all David Cage games. He's an absolute hack and I refuse to play any of his work, even ironically. It really bums me out that every few years Sony feeds him tens of millions of dollars so he can shit out another piece of garbage while overworking and harassing his workers. His body of work is such a grave indictment of the AAA games industry as a whole. Terrible man, terrible games, terrible industry.

Best Big Gun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XInwJ2fx2E

Best Game to Write Fanfic About

Kassandra is great and a ton of fun to write. Also this game has so many fantastic shipping options for her. Daphnae, Xenia, Alkibiades, Kyra, Roxana, plus so many more.

(My fanfic is Good and you should read it, I particularly like A Kephallonian Love Story https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexaLily/works?fandom_id=13220272 )

Best Game to Distract Myself from how Depressing My Life Is

I've put hundreds of hours into Spelunky (and Spelunky 2) while trying to not be sad and I'll probably put in hundreds more. They also double as great podcast games which, when I think about it, I listen to podcasts for kind of the same reason.

Best Sound that isn't Music

(aka best sound effects, I guess?)

Sometimes I turn on streams or LPs of this game just to listen to it, it's so good and atmospheric and creepy.

(The music is good too, just to be clear)

A Game that Reminds Me of a Music Album

paired with Loud, Fast Ramones: Their Toughest Hits (2002)

I got Guild Wars and that Ramones album around the same time and listening to it a bunch while playing the early parts of this game, to the point that when I'm in the pre-searing section of Prophecies I can't help but think of Blitzkrieg Bop.

Franchise I Can't Stop Thinking About No Matter How Hard I Try

If you haven't read my reviews of some of the Fallout games, here's the tl;dr: I don't like this series very much. I don't find them fun to play and the writing is mostly underwhelming.

And yet I think about these games a whole lot more than you'd expect. If you put a gun to my head and made me talk about something for an hour or else you'll pull the trigger, I would probably go on a tirade about the Fallout games. The ways they're not good, the ways they're disappointing, the ways people are wrong about what they remember about those games. This is all at least partially due to Ranged Touch's 'Too Much Future' series on them but even independent of that I think they're kind of fascinating games to think about and pick apart.

Important Childhood Game

This was one of the first (or maybe the actual first?) JRPGs I ever played and it made me fall in love with the genre. It set a high bar and has been a long-time favorite, even after multiple re-visits. It rules extremely hard and no one will convince me otherwise.

Unimportant Childhood Game

I bought this at a convenience store for five american dollars, played through it once, and never played it again. It's a bad breakout clone. I don't really even like breakout that much, honestly.

Game I Don't Like But I'm Glad It Exists

I wish I liked this game more because narrative picross games are the thing I want most out of video games right now and there are barely any of them, so I'm glad that this exists despite not liking enjoying it very much.

Favorite Review I've Written

https://www.backloggd.com/u/AlexaLily/review/145648/

I don't think I'm very good at writing reviews (I'm usually either long-winded or too light on details to be useful, and almost always an unfocused mess) but I think I did pretty good on this one. Also, I can't explain this part, but something about being the first on Backloggd to review a game makes me feel good, so that's like a neat lil bonus for this one.

Game I've Put the Most Time Into Without Actually Beating It

I got this game when I was but a small child, put about 100 hours into it, and never beat it. I played it again as a teen, got further in about another 100 hour long playthrough but still didn't beat it. Played it on two separate occasions in my 20s, each time getting 80 or 90 hours in but still never beating it. The farthest I've ever gotten is unlocking the final party member and getting to the Ocean Floor, which I think is just before the final dungeon. Maybe someday I'll actually beat this ridiculous behemoth of a game. Maybe.

That island that you invite people to and it changes depending on who you invite is a cool thing that I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen in other games.