Animal Crossing New Horizons is a very weird case. It came out exactly when the pandemic took over the world, which greatly changed how I experienced it.

I was so happy to finally have another Animal Crossing game to sink my teeth into. I loved the comfy, cozy vibe this game emits. There are so many new options to customise your island, it's insane. And thanks to the patches that this game received in its first year, there are a lot of fun activities to do.

But do you know what they didn't patch? The villagers (or islanders, I suppose). There are few things that make me feel as dead inside as talking to the islanders of New Horizons. Seriously, they feel like a hollow shell of their previous glory, which is such a shame, because interacting with the villagers was my favourite part of New Leaf and Wild World. This aspect is way more important to me than, say, customisation. You'd think that the devs had more options to make these islanders feel alive and real with loads of interesting dialogues, but it seems like the islanders have less things to say here than in any other Animal Crossing game. The whole experience feels very superficial to me because of it. Like the islanders are just there to look nice and nothing more.

I will never forget the fun I've had with Overwatch. My best friend introduced me to it. Over the years, I occasionally played some matches with him and as long as we stayed in casual modes, it was a blast. Later on, the insane amount of characters decreased my enjoyment considerably with insta kill abilities and op character combinations, but I wasn't playing to win anyways. I was playing casually.

Competitive rounds are a completely different story though. Since my friend was really obsessed with Overwatch, of course he played a lot of comp. So after some time, he asked me to join comp matches as well. I lost so many rounds because I was super stressed. Turns out, I really dislike playing games competitively. I remember one day in particular where I lost like ten games back to back. It completely ruined my day. And if a game mode ruins your day, it's probably a sign to stop playing it. I went back to casual and the simple fun was back on!

There's something unique about the very first Mario Party game. You get the feeling that the game hates everyone who plays it. So many weird bullshit decisions were made with this one. Why are there singleplayer minigames? Why are there 1v3 minigames, where the team of 3 can't win anything? Why does Wario's Battlecanyon even exist?

But all of that gives Mario Party its weird own quirks. It provides a sense of stupidity and enjoyment unlike any other Mario Party game. As long as you can play it with friends, you can be mad at everyone. Your friends, the CPU players, heck, even the game. But that's exactly what makes Mario Party fun.

There are so many small improvements in Splatoon 3 compared to Splatoon 2, I honestly believe it justifies its existence as a new game. If you liked Splatoon 1 or 2, you'll like this one as well.

The only thing that got worse is the map design. Maps are so damn boring and same-y here, it's atrocious. I really miss my janky weird Splatoon 1 maps.

Oh and maybe that's only me, but the insane amount of weapons leads to me never trying out the weird ones and just sticking with the standard stuff. Idk, there are so many purely situational weapons here, why should I even use them? But then I feel like I'm also missing out on all the cool weapons, idk, it's weird.

Oh and at this point it's beyond excusable that this game still uses peer 2 peer instead of dedicated servers, wtf Nintendo?!

Me and my partner have a tradition of trying out any billiards game we can find. This one is of course no exception.

There's a simple beauty in playing a billiards video game with someone else. It's... special. It's comforting.

This one is pretty limited, angles can sometimes feel off, but it's very impressive for an early SNES game. It aged really well, still very enjoyable today.

Picked this one up at a small video game store without expecting anything. I was pretty impressed when I played it. This game started a tradition of playing billiards video games with my partner. It's a lot more fun than you'd imagine.

Cool Shot is easily the best one we played so far. The physics are satisfying, you can do so many cool shots (hehe) here, crazy spins and bank shots, I love it. The soundtrack is super repetitive, but that element of stupidity is part of the fun. Absolutely a hidden gem and I got it for like 3€, wtf!! Makes me want to buy more random games from my local video game store.

I used to deeply dislike Mario Kart Wii. The controls felt unresponsive and wrong and the item balancing seemed nonexistent to me.

Now I understand that especially the latter is part of the fun. And once I got used to the controls, Mario Kart Wii gave me feelings of flow, speed and fun unlike any other entry in the series. This got especially apparent when I played Custom Tracks, it felt like I finally unlocked the true potential of this game.

It's pure frantic fun, isn't that exactly what Mario Kart should be all about?

I sincerely believe that people would like New Super Mario Bros. a lot more if we hadn't gotten three god damn sequels. Because by its own merits, this one is super unique and creative. Sure, the general world ideas are kinda boring (grass, desert, ice etc), but the leveldesign is absolutely top notch.

But that's not why I love NSMBDS. The main reason I love this game is the local multiplayer. The minigames are fun, but the 1v1 jump 'n' run battle mode is where its truly at. I've spent countless hours playing this with my brother and we still have a blast when we play it today, it makes me wonder why we never got anything like this again.