I didn't realise I needed a sequel to Metroid Fusion until this year.

A lot of what Dread does, Fusion does it much better (the tension, the horror, the plot, the music...) but it was still a very enjoyable addition to the franchise. Collectible puzzles felt amazing, they had lots of moments that make you go "wow, I am so skilled" when you beat them. Also animations are incredible, they invested a lot in details that work wonderfully - everything related to parrying, for example, is fantastic. I loved playing most of the bosses, while others were seriously frustrating: I almost abandoned when facing the hideous experiment being, it was really confusing to play.
The worst parts for me were the "aiming puzzles" when facing the EMMIs, I had to restart so many times because the levels weren't prepared to fire at specific angles. I don't really know why they needed to go with that in a 2.5D way, just firing diagonally may have worked while keeping it interesting, in my opinion. Also, the ending was pretty weak, and visually almost every character or enemy was uninteresting (some bosses and the Chozos aside).

Once again, I came in to play one of the Dark Pictures games with very low expectations, and it turned out to be a fantastic experience with friends. This is probably a really dull game to play alone, but it works wonders as a party game. Everyone was soon super invested in their characters and the action, even earlier than with Man of Medan (which we played last weekend). Soon enough everybody would be passing the controller in an excited "go go go" manner, specially with those new dynamic transitions between characters - which are, incidentally, very cool!
I was expecting another horror experience filled with tropes, but instead we got an Avengers simulator. Well, sort of; but if you reached the final section you will know what I mean, and it was amazing at that. I guess it was quite interesting to see what a pack of Marines would do in this kind of situations where we usually see "normal" people do the most stupid shit, or go the obviously least advisable route. The plot has its twists that felt smart, although they eventually go to some very wacky lengths.
At some point I was afraid the game would glorify the military presence of the US in Iraq, and in a way it did - after all, you are shown how they try to save the day while doing some cool stuff on the way. However there is room in the plot for criticism with the inclusion of Iraqi characters (Salim being the absolute MVP here) and a couple of scenes can be read as Americans regretting their own violent and nonsensical invasion. I wish the writers had committed more towards that idea, but it's not like they remained completely neutral.
On the technical side there is a lot to praise: sound design, animations, voice acting... Like in other entries of the anthology we had some minor issues with popping, and a few face animations took too long to respond, leading to hilarious situations.

One day I decided I had to start investing all the time I invested in just this game into many others. I cannot say I miss it because I still follow the news, updates and competitive scene. But it marked a phase in my life and it feels weirder and weirder to think about it as time passes.
In any case, it is still the most interesting intellectual multiplayer experience out there. Its learning curve is very harsh indeed, but every year it gets a little better, along with the quality of its community, which barely grows but barely shrinks.
The balance is incredible, almost miraculous. It is one of my favorite pieces of game design and I doubt I will ever stop finding it exciting.

Spyro got a very decent glowup, but that is pretty much it.
All the levels and models have been renewed beautifully, I have to say I enjoyed revisiting levels with this new Unreal Engine look. Artists deserve that praise. Also the achievement hunting experience was simple and very satisfying. Now on to the downsides:
I truly wonder why do we keep making remasters like this if what was wrong in the first place in the original remains untouched.
Throughout the three games, controls and camera ranged from enjoyable to acceptable to straight down awful. Some minigames, while not unplayable, made the experience incredibly frustrating. In general, flying and specially swimming were a pain in the ass. It's understandable that in 1998 we couldn't or didn't know how to do better, because the knowledge and practices hadn't evolved that much; but I honestly don't see why accuracy and faithfulness were more important than accessibility and actual gameplay when making the remaster.
In any case, in the end I have to stop and consider that I may be playing these (and keeping good memories from the original games) purely for nostalgia and nothing more. But I don't know, I didn't feel this with Crash Bandicoot.
Also I don't think my playthrough was benefited by playing the three games back to back, I would recommend having some time off between each installment, or simply just play the one you liked the most.

Last time I played, one of the neighbours answered my Sim back and got into a stupid argument. I punished her by imprisoning her in one room with no windows and kept feeding her expired food for days. My other artist Sim decorated the house with pictures of her being miserable, levelling up her photography skill easily. Only after noticing I hadn't received any bills for so long I realised that my prisioner was the neighbourhood mailwoman. Brilliant.
That is just some silly, twisted example of the enormous potential of emergent narrative in The Sims. Whoever says this game is insufficient without DLCs should relax.

What can I say? As a party game, Smash Ultimate never fails. As a Nintendo celebration, it feels very unique and probably (let me elevate my terms) historical. In Smash, I'm way more interested in the concept of crossover and even in the single player modes than in its fighting game aspects (I couldn't care less about that genre), but I'm thrilled about the fact that "everyone is here" and I just love its community. Most of the latest fighter additions blew my mind, and now I cannot see how the franchise can move on further and higher from this. Crossing my fingers for the next step moving away from a fighting game and closer to what the Subspace Emissary was.

I know I was fuelled by nostalgia but I really wanted New Pokémon Snap to be something more than this. It starts as a wholesome passtime but soon the magic of photo safari vanishes. It doesn't feel like navigating through the wild and being lucky enough to capture a unique moment; instead, it quickly turns into a game of memorizing patterns or trying to deduce behaviors that more often than not follow no logic at all. I think the challenges killed the game for me, it could have been more interesting (or felt more "freeish") if they let me found out one Pokémon behavior or other on my own, with the only reward of getting a better picture. I guess I will finish it one day but right now I really don't feel like going through the same route twice again.
Having said that, I am thankful for a non violent Pokémon game, it has cute moments so I'll increase my rating a bit.