In retrospect, it's absolutely hilarious that Drake's Fortune somehow established one of the most important (for better and worse) franchises for this era of gaming, because it's a remarkably generic cultural product. It's like if the Wanted film adaptation somehow had the cultural impact of The Matrix. Look, I know there are plenty of vocal Uncharted haters out there, but the other games in the franchise have a lot going for them in terms of production values, creativity, and sharp blockbuster writing. They're not to everyone's tastes, and that's fine. Drake's Fortune has literally none of that: it's a soulless corridor shooter that feels like a B-grade Indiana Jones ripoff, complete with the lame supernatural twist near the end. There are many, many worse games out there, but nobody would remember Drake's Fortune if it wasn't for its sequels, and that really says it all. Also, this is my go-to example of a game that takes place mostly in one day (along with Sands of Time), so I guess it has value as an answer to that particular trivia question.

Return of the Obra Dinn does a lot right. The monochrome art style is one, and surprisingly not as bad on the eye as you'd think (And you have a lot of colour options for specific computer aesthetics!). It is a detective puzzle game where almost everything is important to solve the ship's mysteries, and I mean almost everything - who the shipmates calls out to, their outfits, who they hang out with, where they are positioned in the art sketches you're given, even the bloody numbers on the crew list... if you are perceptive enough, everything can be solved without guessing.

And yet what I feel is the greatest strength of Obra Dinn is how much leeway it gives you in solving fates. It knows the frustration of knowing the answer in old adventure games, but not knowing the exact answer said game wants you to input, and thus has a few answers be malleable. For example, when a shipmate is crushed by a loose cannon, you can input that as his fate or blame the individual who loosened the cannon in the first place, and both answers would be accepted. It's a small thing, but one that undoes so much frustration, I can't believe I haven't seen it much in other games.

Also the jingle when you get three fates correct releases the good brain chemicals. Always good to have one of those.

I recommend you play this game.

Smash Bros has always likened itself to a toybox. Straight from the opening of the original game, Smash has been powered by the childlike wonder of roping all of your action figures into an Avengers movie spectacular. It was never about a "plot", it was about seeing characters from vastly different franchises interact in interesting, fanservicy ways. This is why despite being a relatively inferior Smash game, Brawl's Subspace Emissary handed me what was possibly the best birthday of my entire life. Now we're here, and so is everyone else.

At last, Ultimate is the heir to Melee's crown, and it's truly a dream come true. It's well balanced, it's overflowing with content (both solo and multiplayer), and the gameplay is as fun as it has ever been. It's a crossover event that likely will never be matched. A perfect celebration of video games. God bless Sakurai and god bless his team.

Kentucky Route Zero is in one way a collection of stories intertwined between ghostly caricatures of the past, complicated stressed and living individuals, and government and environmental factors that work in such mysterious and incomprehensible ways to the denizens living underneath and on it that they might as well be supernatural, and which they are shown as within the entire work.
Every Act has interesting messages to tell, and lives to reflect on and shed a tear with. By the time everyone comes together to mourn the end of the journey, each person is fleshed out further than the featureless faces that adorn them would suggest. The game touches on several aspects of a decaying shifting void that is midwest America, whether that be the brainwashing ghastly denizens of corporations that push people into the neverending spiral debt hole they craft, or the old denizens on the high mountain scattered long after their nature project failed with an attachment to a dingy computer program that sounds constant static. There isn't really a single piece in here that feels without purpose or really in the wrong space at all. It is dense, certainly a less explicit piece than most, and a large amount of factors that make up the whole are something that it intentionally encourages you to research on your own. Each dialogue in their own points to several meta and thematic factors that don't just have to do with the characters at the receiving end of each line.
The visuals and music are just as thematically placed, each a perfect painting and screenshot in of itself. A lot of work was put into matching the perspective of the characters and where the camera is placed. A few specific examples that stand out to me is the revolving passage of time in Act 5, as a cat hearing everyone mourn and discuss where they're going, or the overbearing perspective when you move about the Hard Times. Or my favorite part, The Entertainment, as you bounce between each painfully depressing line.
I won't claim to understand all of what I saw as I played through the game, and honestly there are a lot of things that are too subtle for me to catch on, or maybe I'm just not in tuned enough to just get it. But that's fine. It's still a masterpiece of the medium, something I wish to see considered in high regard for the recognizable future. I hope it inspires people as much as it teaches me on aspects of life I've never been a part of or could directly relate to. It's a perfect encapsulation of what it sets out, and I was very emotionally invested. I highly recommend getting Kentucky Route Zero.