The most important games for me are ones that seem to pop in to my world at the exact time that I needed them, and Pikmin is a strong example of one of those cases. The moment I was living under my own roof, during the summer before I started college, I felt like a completely different person. I never knew what life was like without the every minor decision or daily bit of minutia being judged with a harsh eye, and subsequent fear, and my first apartment changed all of that. Living alone started as a party, I spent money and time in ways I previously never could, but as the high of freedom wore off, something took it's place, legitimate independence. Local transportation would allow me to effectively perform walkabout's in every area that interested me growing up, and despite growing up in a single parent household, as an only child, this solitude was something different, a vast world that began to teach me thing's. And it was about a year in to this unique solitude that I found Pikmin.
This silly gamecube launch title has valuable lessons about finding peace with death, discovering the logic behind a seemingly harsh world, and most importantly to me, how to deal with being left alone with your own thoughts. I remember sitting in my car in a massive parking structure, before a big event I was involved with, trying to squeeze in a few extra minutes with Captain Olimar and the Pikmin, knowing how important his journey's would feel parallel to mine.
At the end of the day, this is a neat tech demo about a tiny guy fighting monsters, but for someone attempting to finding their own voice; critically, profesionally, and personally, there could be no better companion than Olimar, and no better game than Pikmin.

Steet Fighter 4 will live forever, at least for me. It was a game that occupied my thoughts when I woke up for school, and when I went to bed that same night, and even now, 5 years after those sleepless nights, it crosses my mind regularly. Whether it be the gameplay, the iconic matches, the constant weekend lobby battles with my friend that I talk to, to this every day. Street Fighter 4 is one of those games that may feel impossible to put into words, but I might as well try.

Before I was even born, I was diagnosed with Attention deficit hyper disorder (ADHD), I would hyper-fixate on things, jump from one interest to the other, and never stick with an interest for very long, but something about fighting games just stuck, and it all started with Street Fighter 4.

In June of 2014 the Xbox Live Gold membership promised 2 free games, an edgy beat-em-up with middling reviews known as Charlie Murder, and Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition. I would always keep up with this “games with gold” program. I would know everything about the upcoming free games weeks before they dropped and would tend to hype myself up on a lot of them to a decent degree, and this was no different this month. I remember being so enthralled by the game’s simple yet effective character design, and I ended up watching many lore videos on character backstories and the series’ overarching plot before I even knew what a combo was, or had heard the name Daigo Umehara, and it was around that time that I got the game.

To put it simply, I had no idea what I was doing, I almost exclusively played Dudley because Rocky was my favorite movie at the time, and he was a cool suave boxer. Despite loving the character, I had no idea the kind of combo and mix-up potential he had. The name Smug (Street Fighter 4’s most famous Dudley) existed only in passing references when I googled the character, I threw out his big normal moves, and face rolled my controller until he did his special moves and Ultra attacks. Despite my lack of knowledge, I was beginning to fall in love with the genre of fighting games. [1 these bracketed numbers reference little extra anecdotes at the bottom of the review] That simplicity of 2 characters sharing screen, doing everything within their ability to prove that they are the better competitor, well, it spoke to me, and I began playing just about everything I could find for a reasonable price, or on the right console. It was around this time that I met Andy.

Andy is still my friend to this day, and a lot of that started when he saw me playing the terrible port of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the iPad. That’s right, my longest lasting friendship can be attributed to Capcom’s half assed attempt to get their beloved arcade classic on to the app store. Of course, without any comprehensive knowledge of what a quality feeling fighting game even was, I was none the wiser to this port’s faults, and did my best to unlock and play as every character in that game. [2]. We began sharing our love and experiences with fighting games, and he ended up joining me and my Xbox 360 friends from middle school in endless weekend lobbies of Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, and that was around the time that I learned a new version of this game I had become obsessed with, came out, and it was called Ultra Street Fighter 4.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 was a patch, it was a new version, it was a rerelease, it was a lot of things, but it was also deeply influential as to how I went on to view fighting games. Throughout the summer of 2014 I dove headfirst into the genre, I picked up both Street Fighter 2 and 3’s HD editions on my 360, began watching actual people play the game casually (RIP Super Best Friends and Excellent Adventures) and even began seeing what Street Fighter played at the highest level looked like. My previous love for Dudley led me to becoming a massive PIE Smug fan [3] and I saw him do things that blew my mind with that character. The very first legitimate combo I learned was Dudley’s standing Heavy Kick, cancelled into his EX Machine-Gun Blow, linked into his ducking uppercut. It’s incredibly simple for even intermediate fighting game players, but when it came to that cancel, my hands have never had to move that quickly for a video game in my life (I was playing on pad at the time [4]), but I eventually nailed it consistently and felt my eyes open to what fighting games were and could be.

Goofy weekend lobbies, filled with mashing buttons and wake up ultras. ended up becoming avenues to try new combos, test out new characters, and find out if there was a true main for me.[5]. I ended up entering tournaments, both local weekly affairs and annual regional events, and as the high school years flew by, Ultra Street Fighter 4 remained the only constant. 2014 and 2015 were both unbelievably fun years to track the tournaments for that game, due to the Capcom pro tour, wherein Capcom would grant points to people who placed highly in major and supermajor Ultra tournaments, with the highest scoring players being slotted into the Capcom Cup at the very end of the year. It was an amazing journey, that encompassed everything I loved about Ultra’s competitive scene, and then Street Fighter 5 ended up coming out.

I tried so hard to love Street Fighter 5, and for an entire calendar year I convinced myself that I did. I knew the game was a fresh start, and I was on a relatively clean slate when it came to tournaments, so I tried to take that fresh start, and do what I never could in Street Fighter 4: Not go 0-2 in a tournament. At this point however, cracks began to form. I had temperament/anger issues, even during my Street Fighter 4 days, but something about 5 just had me angrier and angrier every day, and I think a big reason for that is that I was mostly alone in that game. Whereas I had a large group of friends to play with and learn from in 4, most of those same friends ended up buying an Xbox One instead of a PS4, and even though Andy bought the game, it was on PC, so it became more difficult to even play with him. The relaxation and debauchery I could fall back on was gone before I realized it, so for every online loss I took, ended with me sitting alone, stewing in my anger, trying to convince myself that I still liked this game.

I may not have referenced it earlier, but Street Fighter 4 came into my life at a very dark time for me, I was beginning to give up on myself, and doing anything to gain attention and validation from a group of friends that never seemed to have the time for me. But Street Fighter 4 started a shift. I had more things to talk about, with people who seemed enthusiastic about talking about them. Life was starting to become worth living again for a reason outside of anything I tried to fabricate. The passion was real, and new interests started growing outside of fighting games. I’m not going to say that Street Fighter 4 saved my life, but it certainly made me care more about it, and I think that’s why 5 ended up disappointing me so badly. I can get into plenty of gameplay reasoning, but at the end of the day, Street Fighter 5 just wasn’t fun for me, and that’s what should matter the most.
Ultra Street Fighter 4 was a game that I ended up taking very seriously, but despite that seriousness, fun never left the equation, and I could talk for ages about the crazy stories I have playing, watching, and reading about Capcom’s masterpiece. It is an incredibly important game that I still play to this very day, because, at least for me, Street Fighter 4 will live forever.



Extra bits: 1: [Around the summer of 2014, I went to a catholic summer camp, that I frequently went to for years, at that point, and I vividly remember nonstop talking about street fighter 4 lore, specifically Dudley. I also remember making up a ton of information too, because my ADHD brain loved to fill in blanks when it came to lore, this bit wasn’t interesting enough for a whole paragraph, but yea, I was mega obsessed with this game, even when I knew little to nothing about it]

2. [The reason for my investment with Marvel vs Capcom began when I found out that Phoenix Wright was playable in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, and Ace Attorney had been my hyperfixation throughout the chunk of 2014 before I downloaded Street Fighter 4, so by extension, I loved the MVC series, and I downloaded the only edition of this newfound series on the only mobile platform I had.
Upon further research, my timeline may be a little mixed up, it may have gone Ace Attorney -> UMVC3 -> MVC2 -> Andy -> Street Fighter 4, but I think it’s small enough to not really matter since it all happened in less than 4-5 months]

3: [If any of you have the time and appreciation of naturally formed cringe content, you can see a whole lot of my very old tweets from 2014 where I ask countless questions to people in the upper echelons of the FGC, including Smug, James Chen, and UltraDavid. I even ended up becoming decently friendly with eventual EVO winner KaneBlueRiver after wishing him good luck at EVO. I had no shame at that point, and just wanted to talk directly to these faces of the community that I was growing to respect, despite it being a bit annoying and cringe inducting]

4: [I ended up playing on what’s known as a fightpad, it’s a standard grip controller with 6 face buttons, made for fighting games. I did buy a fightstick eventually, but I never was as acclimated to it as I was with the pad https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/411y3LrFV3L.jpg]

5: [I ended up playing Rose, and she’s still the only true dedicated main I have to this day]

Around the beginning of the year, I looked back at my rating for Outer Wilds with a bit of hesitation. I may be more generous than many other reviewers with my 5/5's, but I still genuinely consider everything I give the perfect score to, a league above the rest, and as I looked at Outer Wilds, I couldn't conjure up as many concrete reasons, as I could with any of the others, to the point where I retroactively changed the rating to a 4. So I began to tackle the DLC, in hopes of remembering what blew me away about this game, in a previous life.
Outer Wilds is a game that I played alongside over 50 other's in the oft unfondly remembered year of 2020. During those months of quarantine, fewer and fewer hours at work, and dwindling social interaction, I took to clearing out my backlog at a rabid pace. It got to the point where I was playing multiple story heavy games in the same day. I begin to get addicted to watching the credits roll after beating a game, and so I just kept going, realistically past the point of burnout, but this was Covid era, I was experiencing burnout with everything. And then in October, after my declaration of a 52 game/One game a week pace for 2020, I played Outer Wilds. I was charmed by the world, the atmosphere, but I genuinely wasn't viewing the game for what it actually is. While I was playing Outer Wilds like an open world adventure game with cool sci fi flare, I was missing out on the layered puzzle at the core of it all. For whatever reason, I viewed the obtuse logic and note rewarding puzzles as obstructions to seeing the credits roll, so I willfully looked up walkthroughs, almost immediately when I'd hit an impasse. By the time I made it to the remarkable finale, I tried my best to feel proud of what I'd accomplished, but over time the victory began to feel hollow, and I desperately wished to wipe my memory of the game and start fresh.
Fast forward to 2023; Life went on, my game completion rate dwindled, but everything else began to improve. It wasn't until I sat down with a newly acquired PS Plus (Extra) subscription, and noticed a familiar space-traveling game, that I decided to give Outer Wilds another shot. It was genuinely like I was playing a new game, despite my previous knowledge undercutting some puzzles, I was still having a blast reading the history of the Nomai, figuring out their technologies and cities, and using immensely satisfying A->B->C logic chains to get a full picture of what I had seen 3 years ago. It was then that I remembered that I had purchased the games' acclaimed DLC soon after beating it, but I had simply never played it.
I had a miniature revelation moment, knowing that this was my chance to experience a chunk of the organic discovery process the base game offered, with completely fresh eyes. I made it my goal to avoid walkthroughs, unless I had tried out everything to the extent of my knowledge, I focused on deductions and exploration, and I ended up being genuinely blown away by what Echoes of the Eye has to offer.
This may be one of the best-in-class complete packages that I've ever seen for DLC of a game, it offers something completely fresh, while keeping the same satisfying design principles that the base game did.
As I type this review, I am about one hour removed from the completion of Echoes of the Eye, the tears have dried a while ago, but the impression that I'm getting, is that I finally understand not only what I felt in 2020, but what I missed, playing this game back then with guides. I hope everyone can find some sense of satisfaction with this weird, messy entertainment medium, because Echoes of the Eye definitely reminded me of what that feels like.

Won't be able to un-tense my shoulders for a while after playing that. No idea why I've made it my mission to play a bunch of games that specifically target my Thalasopphobia, I think this fear is genuinely impossible to face. Very happy I was able to play this in a discord call with someone who's played it before. It added a sense of levity that kept me from actually exploding like a gallon of milk surrounded by rubber bands. I will always love something that pushes boundaries on what a game can be, and how horror can be portrayed, even if it scares the shit out of me.

I think Judgement is amazing, and I don't think Judgment needs Yakuza to be amazing. I believe it is at its best when it strays away from the storytelling style of that series, or uses that style to contrast itself. Compared to the bombastic ever-present, crime world shaking melodrama of the titular decade spanning franchise, Judgement decides to zoom in a bit more, tell a simpler story, and make the people the story is about its #1 priority. This games biggest “moments” see fully realized characters reaching the end of their respective arcs and watching as their shifting alignments shape the world inside and outside Kamurocho, where every single thread of fate will intertwine in the climactic finale.

Actually, lets rewind a bit, because like I said, Judgement really is just a simple story, a story about one man, Takayuki Yagami, and how his perceived failures turned him into a detective, seeking forgiveness for his actions. I could not think of a more perfect protagonist for this sort of story than Yagami. Supremely likeable, but incredibly selfish, he has just the right level of bullheaded determination and craving for justice that gives you hope that he can crack any case wide open. That isn't to say Yagami is just some kind of truth cyborg, he's portrayed as a very logically flexible and legitimately intelligent protagonist, which plays perfectly against his endearing oaf of a partner, Masaharu Kaito.
Kaito, and the rest of the Matsugane family, feel plucked straight from the Yakuza series in a way that seems directly opposed to the murder mystery vibe running throughout the game. He's brash, impulsive, and never beyond a joke, even in the most dire of scenarios, but it's loyalty that makes Kaito such a definitively loveable ally. He brings a simple approach to any scenario that helps Yagami out more than any like-minded genius could.

We'd be here all day (and things would start entering spoiler territory) if I really wanted to start diving into the delightful layers of the entire main cast, and even most of the secondary cast, but the main point I'm getting at here is just how uniquely personality driven Judgement's story ends up being.

One big example of this is the games priority on friend events over side quests. Friend events are unique interactions with permanent fixtures of the overworld, barfly's, restaurant manager's, weird cat bloggers, and after these interactions are over and these people's questlines are "done", they never go away. It gives this tangible, lived in quality to the world, as you turn a corner and see your landlady, or the in-universe inventor of Kickstarter. Judgement ends up creating a unique tapestry of associates, friends, and allies that goes to show Yagami's networking ability in real time.

When it comes to the side-quests however, I can't say I was as much of a fan of their general presentation. Despite having some good laughs, and fun writing for the most part, the side quests all ended up having a similar structure that disincentivized me from even seeking them out after a certain point, especially when the main story reaches about the midway point i was so enthralled that accidentally hitting a side-quest event trigger felt way more like a nuisance than it should have.

Which i think is where an interesting line begins to form between Judgement and the Yakuza series. The DNA of Ryu Ga Gotoku's beloved series can be seen all over Judgement, from its setting, to its combat, but that's why I think the distinctions in tone matter so much. Judgement's existence as a mystery story following a singular protagonist leads to a much more streamlined approach to the storytelling, as the player is encouraged to piece together the mystery right alongside Yagami, rather than simply be presented a story, moment to moment. I personally loved this, and found myself itching to play the game every single day after work into the small hours of the morning. I grew up on a steady diet of Ace Attorney and Danganronpa and those series' taught me that even if the mystery is a bit obvious in places, being in the middle of a spiderweb of deceit and intrigue is just fun in and of itself.

I honestly could go on. I could talk about the incredibly fun, if not slightly unbalanced combat system, how warm and comforting the girlfriend mechanics were (as lonely as that makes me sound), Ayabe being the perfect foil to Makoto Date, and plenty of other things, but I think I'll just leave it there. Judgement is a wonderful experience filled with endlessly charming characters, brilliantly written dialogue, and a brisk pace that sunk its hooks into me and never let go. It's so much more than "that yakuza spinoff". I hope everyone reading this finds the opportunity to play it so I have more people to talk about it with.

Also, if I wrote a one sentence meme review for this game it would be:
Kaito is just Kiryu if Kiryu had sex"

The Evil started rolling Within and I was like, hmm...

Some choice jokes/running references throughout my streaming of the game include:
-Supernatural Season 1 grey filter
-"Ethan" Sebastian "Within" Castellanos AKA: The Ethan Within
-Joseph's goofy lil saunter & unbelievable axe proficiency
-"Get a f*cking hobby" directed towards the safe room nurse
-GOOP
(This may be updated with more, later)

This is probably one of the easiest 10/10’s I’ve ever given.
Disco Elysium is a special little oddity, it’s concepts don’t seem outwardly foreign, you are a detective tasked with solving a murder, with a variety of skills on hand, you can talk, fight, or think your way through most problems, even the amnesiatic spin isn’t anything new. The real brilliance comes in the execution and complete breadth of the games world. Martinaise, Revachol, and the entire in-game world have politics, flora, fauna, and interpersonal connections that seem to be moving and developing every second that the player does. The dialogue is the greatest indicator of this, conversations with one person can go on for minutes on end, with truly individual personality and takes on the war-weary land they have to sit in. This, alongside the brilliant and detailed watercolor backgrounds transport you to this fictional country.
My favorite part about this game was diving into the mind of your main character. He’s unmistakably fractured, and this is heavily represented by twenty-four independent chemical personalities floating around and verbalizing themselves in his head. The leveling and skill checking RPG elements of the game go directly towards the power and influence of these voices, crafting a protagonist who may be a walking encyclopedia, or perhaps a screaming electrochemistry driven meathead. It’s one of the first games in a while where I feel a distinct level of say in who I’m controlling.
I’ve circled around it a bit, but the writing is truly this game's main attraction. A brilliantly tight script that lends itself to any number of playstyles, full of legitimately fun characters was all I could think about between play sessions this past week. The impact of every action you take sending ripples across the world, that was continuously and directly expressed through nearly every interactable character was just astounding.
All in all, I can truly say that I loved every second playing this game, and I felt a drive that I so rarely feel when it comes to media with narratives this heavy. Please seek out a copy of this masterpiece for yourself, and enjoy.

It's hard to nail down the charm of a handheld exclusive title, especially one using a pre-established formula, but Aria of Sorrow fills that exact niche with an amazing level of confidence. There's something to be said about the simple charms of checking every corner of a map, getting lost, and having that wonderful moment of discovery that blows the whole game wide open, it's pretty intoxicating, and seems to be a driving factor behind the metroidvania subgenre's explosion in popularity. I think Aria takes a great no frills approach to a lot of those wonderful design philosophies and squeezes it down like a fresh orange, and the subsequent game is a tight, joyous, pulpy little romp that kept me entertained through multiple hotel stays and flights!