When I first put together this list of games I wanted to replay at some point, I thought of tossing in Portal 2 as well, I mean, it had been over 10 years (god I'm fucking old...) since I had last played through it. At this point, I must have forgotten how to solve at least a big part of it... right...? RIGHT...?

Well, in the first 2 hours or so I realized that, when it comes to hyperfixations I had in the past, my brain is better at preserving information about them better than I actually thought, because I found myself going from puzzle to puzzle with relative swiftness, with only a couple of them in the late game giving me trouble. So, why did I stay?

Because if there's something I didn't quite remember as well, was the humor being so phenomenal, it's great to see that after all these years, the comedy of this game still stands up to this day. Specially since this time around I caught on some jokes that as a kid pretty much flew over my head, like think about it for a moment, working for someone like Cave Johnson is like talking to a friend that always replies to you with the nerd emoji when you tell them something, the guy was a walking PR nightmare.

To anyone going for their first playthrough, you are in for a delightful experience, and I hope you enjoy solving these amazing puzzles while breathing in the amazing atmosphere of the game... unless you are breathing the asbestos of underground Aperture, in that case... I'm sorry about your lungs lol

I am typially very bad at technical action games but having watched a quick YT tutorial I became pretty decent in a few hours and subsequently had a great time with this. It has a simple but compelling story told in a very Dark Soulsy way. Sifu has such distinctive art direction and varied encounter design that it was no chore playing through the game multiple times, to find all its secrets.
For those of you put off by the reviews saying how hard it is, I suggest watching any video explaining a couple of simple combos and how to beat the hardest bosses without cheesing them and the game will suddenly become much faster and much more engaging.

13 Sentinels is telling an engaging story with some really good characters. The gameplay falls down for me in both sections of the game, however. The visual novel parts don't do enough to make things compelling in an interactive way and the tactical battles are flashy and interesting at first but wear out their welcome pretty quickly.

The story is somewhat unique, taking a couple of different sci-fi tropes and mashing them up in a new way. I found the twist to be very obvious from about halfway through the game, though the details were still engaging to uncover, and the characters' individual journeys were still interesting.
The character stories are the real focus here and they mostly deliver on an individual basis. A couple of them suffer from feeling vestigial or unrelated to the actual narrative. Vanillaware ran into this with Odin Sphere as well -- they are trying to give everyone equal screentime without having an equal amount to say for every character. Megumi and Nenji for example just feel like their stories are drawn out or unnecessary in a way that I got pretty tired of. On the flip side, Natsuno, Yuki, Hijiyama, and Miura all work really well and weave together in interesting ways. 
The game is also very obsessed with pairing up the cast (which sort of makes sense in the end but is still weird) in ways that are not always natural or even believable. I don't think most of the 'relationships' the game adds do more for the narrative or character development than regular ass friendships would, and in most cases just detract from what is going on or feel like nonsense.

All that narrative is presented in a very slick visual novel wrapper. You get a very small amount of agency here (you can walk around and choose conversation topics) but really you are just hunting for the next thing to do to advance the very linear plot. I liked this at first, but I don't actually think the gameplay here justifies this being better than simply reading or watching it in a linear media format would. This is a general problem with visual novels though, so you kind of go in expecting it.
These sections look amazing, of course. The backgrounds are varied and beautiful and the characters are all unique and expressive. I like the more realistic style Vanillaware has opted for here, as compared to their usual Adonis/Venus inspired character designs.
The tactical layer is very cool looking and flashy. I really like the way this is presented, in a very simplified visual style with some smart hand-drawn intercuts and flourishes. It does manage to be somewhat exciting and tense... in the beginning. Some choice and depth is gestured at with different generation of mechs being available and different upgrades you can choose, but the differences weren't impactful enough and couldn't really be leveraged to change your approach or gameplay in many significant ways (beyond one or two abilities). There simply isn't a ton of strategy here, unfortunately, and this mode has more presence in the game than its depth can support.

13 Sentinels is a cool game that does a lot to bring me along despite being a type of game I am not usually drawn to. The story could be tightened up a bit and my choices could matter more, but that honestly isn't really what this sort of game is going for. If you are a fan of Vanillaware or this style of game, I don't think you can go wrong giving this a shot.

Given Tomb Raider's British heritage, a game themed around Arthurian legend was probably long overdue. Granted, Legend plays pretty fast and loose with the Arthurian cycle, casting it as part of a common global legend in the same way that multiple ancient cultures have a flood myth, but that sort of syncretic blend of world legends is part of the fun of these globetrotting treasure-hunting narratives.

I probably owe Tomb Raider: Legend a revisit at some later point, once I've better put the Tomb Raider series into context. As of this writing, this is the only mainline, non-Survivor Tomb Raider I've finished. I know Legend is sort-of the start to its own reboot trilogy, but I feel like I'm missing why it was well-received by not tracking the original run of Tomb Raider's decline in quality through Chronicles and Angel of Darkness. As its own thing, I found Legend fine, not really remarkable but not really offensive. But I suspect that sort of game was precisely what Tomb Raider needed at that point in time: a fresh run in a new set of hands several years after Angel of Darkness broke the series' foundation.

Um, game's a bit janky. A lot of the general jumpy climby stuff in what I've played of the original series feels like that, where it's easy to fling one's self off a cliff in a wild direction despite the game's best efforts, so I sort of feel like that's a problem a lot of this genre ran into before Uncharted really smoothed out gameplay feel (or maybe that's just a consequence of my playing on PC?). But there are a few set pieces that feel very much of its era, taking big swings that don't completely connect. Those motorcycle sequences, for example: neat idea, something that you couldn't really do on PS1, barely something you could do on PS2 if this game is anything to go by. That one bit where you're climbing down a tall, tall chamber is surprisingly rough, too, since between the crumbling platforms and some of the jumps down, it was easy to overshoot and wind up taking too big a jump and ragdolling on the next platform. Plus there was that one boss fight against the guy (don't remember his name) who just kept screaming "DAMN YOU LARA BET YOU WISH YOU COULD DO THAT HUH BET YOU WISH YOU COULD DO THAT HUH FINE WE'LL DO IT YOUR WAY FINE WE'LL DO IT YOUR WAY DAMN YOU LARA DAMN YOU LARA BET YOU WISH YOU COULD DO THAT HUH". Like, dude, chill.

But Legend is one of those where jank adds to the experience, so don't read this as much of a complaint. I do think all the ideas the game advances are sound, even if they are rough in execution. Anyway, the times where the game really does come together are quite fun. Not a lot of the game's stuck with me, but that one level, where you start out at a crummy roadside tourist trap about King Arthur that transitions into Arthur's actual tomb, is suuuuch a fun concept. Definitely worth the visit for me all on its own.

I don't know how to wrap this one up, so here's a video I took during my playthrough that I titled "tombraiderlegends.mp4".

Super Mario 64 is a game that means a lot to me.
It was one of the first video games that I came into contact with! Back when Google Videos was a thing, I remember coming across a TAS Speedrun of this game, and that's how I was introduced to it. I thought that all of the tricks the guy was doing, like backwards long jump, was all part of the game. Silly old me.

I remember when I was in the 4th grade, I used to play with some friends of mine roleplaying us going to various locations in Super Mario 64, and exclamating stuff like "Oh, it's too hot!" or "Brr, it's too cold!" depending on the painting we went to.
Good times.

Funnily enough though, I wouldn't get around to play the original Super Mario 64 until many years later. Before then, I only had access to the DS version, which I'll review one day.

In spite of the many stories I have with this game, and how much it means to me, it's interesting I don't consider Super Mario 64 to be one of my favourite games of all time. I think it mainly stems from other games just having an even bigger impact on me.

Mario makes his jump to the 3rd dimension, having full analogue movement and being able to do all kinds of moves! We've got Double and Triple Jump, the Wall Jump, the Long Jump, the Flip-Jump, a 3-hit punch combo, a Jump Kick, a Slide Kick, and for shits and giggles, we've got the Breakdance move, which I only use to make fun of the game's enemies. lol

It may seem complicated at first, but because all of these moves are tied to only 3 buttons (A, B and Z), you'll get to understand how Mario plays in no time. He's really fun to play as, and I'm glad Nintendo made him how he is!

The level structure has seen a bit of change from Mario's 2D titles. Instead of going to a stage, getting to the goal post, and moving on to the next stage, now in a level, you have Power Stars to get!
Power Stars are scattered all throughout the levels, and to beat the game, you only need 70 of them, out of 120.
Because of this, you have a lot of leeway in how you want to approach levels.

Levels are naturally designed to be sandbox-like in nature. So it's up to you on what you want to do, and how you want to explore a level.
Stages in general, aren't really too big, so most of the stars are easily obtainable.

All of with the exception of the 100-coin Stars. It's exactly what you think they are. They are stars that only appear when you gather 100 coins, and there is one of these in each of the game's 15 levels.
Now, not every one of these stars is hard to get. There are definitely some levels where it's easier to get it than others, like Course 2.
But some of these are an absolute grind!

So, here's some tips from someone who has played this game too much:
1. If you're going for 100%, make these the first stars you get!
I know that sounds odd, considering they're the most pain in the ass to get, but trust me, if you take care of them ASAP, you can comfortably go through the rest of the level without many problems.
2. Red and Blue Coins are extremely important!
Red Coins give you 2 coins, and Blue Coins give you 5. Whenever you see a Blue-Coins button, make sure your surrondings are clear, and that you immediately book to the blue coins that spawn so you don't miss any of them.
3. Unlike other stars in the game, 100-coin stars do not kick you out of the level, so that means you can get the 100-coin star of that level and get another star, like the Red Coin star of that level. 2 birds in 1 stone, as they say.

Outside of that, Princess Peach's Castle acts as your hubworld, and it's relatively small, but pretty fun to travel through. You need stars to unlock more levels, but many of the stars early in the game are relatively easy to get, so this shouldn't be much of an issue.
There are also the 3 Bowser levels, that you'll need to beat. These are more linear than the game's main 15 levels, and they are a great platforming challenge, with a fun boss at the end.

Which leads me into my next point, the boss fights!
They're okay. Yeah, most of these are very simple and don't provide many interesting mechanics of gimmicks. Outside of the Bowser fights... there's not many other bosses that will challenge you.
Even Bowser himself doesn't get challenging until you final encounter with him.

Bowser's model does look a bit funky, but the rest of the game is actually pretty nice to look at! Yeah, some of the game's textures are a bit too simple, but for a Nintendo 64 launch title, I'd say the game's charming low-polygon look still looks decent to this day!

Continuing with the presentation, there's also the soundtrack. A lot of songs here are very iconic, and well composed!
But... there's a lot of repetition, especially later in the game. No, game, I don't need the final 2 levels to have the same goddamn song.

Also, this game was the first one to have Mario speak!... in a mainline title.
Charles Martinet does a really good job as Mario, because inventing the iconic voice we still hear today, even if now we have a different voice actor for Mario.

Additionally, this game was also one of the first games to include a manual camera. Actually, I think it may've been this game that named the concept as a "camera", because Super Mario 64 contextualizes it as a Lakitu recording Mario's adventures on television, and that is really charming!
The camera itself is not bad, but it certainly can get stuck easily in tight spaces. I'll give the dev team a slack, because this was one of the first games to have a manual camera, but it definitely is one of things that hasn't aged gracefully.

In conclusion, there are a lot of things I love about Super Mario 64, but there are also some growing pains in this title that future games would fix. I have a lot of nostalgia with this one, so that's probably this review came out as big as it did, so despite the criticism I have with this game, it still holds a special place in my heart.
Rock on, Super Mario 64!