My Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door review isn't quite what I wanted it to be when it was bouncing around in my head, but it's a review I keep thinking about in terms of where my passion draws from when speaking about art and where I can specifically improve in terms of providing both an interesting and insightful perspective.

I don't know if it's the review I'm most proud of per se cause it's pretty straightforward and bite-sized but Pikmin 1 HD hit me so hard that I wound up writing more of a half memoir half review that was about the most heartfelt thing I've put on this site. My Saw: The Game review was also pretty funny so there's that too. I like writing much longer reviews but the Pikmin 1 HD one stuck out to me instead this time.

oh oops I forgot to link it, here it is https://backloggd.com/u/Lynxelot/review/1048249/

wonderful idea!!
@curse linked me to this one & said i had to be a part of it and my stardew review is certainly the one closest to me and the one i'll hold above all other reviews 4ever
https://www.backloggd.com/u/BEAUTIFULBRUTE/review/726342/

This is really cute, I don’t really have a lot of admiration for my own writing but I put a lot of effort into my dark souls 2 review and people seem to like it a lot which makes me feel pretty good about it

Not sure how you would include this, but the five part set of reviews I did for Super Mario All-Stars is probably the reviews I had the most fun making, and I still have a good time reading them over again even now.

I felt like I really put a feeling in my heart down on my Lonesome Road review. Felt good to like actually lay something down in a review that isn't just talking directly about stuff in the game and extrapolating on things.

This is a really nice Idea.

I only joined the platform this year and I'm still figuring out the best way to note down my thoughts. But I spent a lot of time on my Like a Dragon: Gaiden review, which I'm quite proud of.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/Oshha/review/1148119/

I've written a lot (a lot more than I would've figured, even!) this year, so I'm not exactly sure which one I'd really point at being my favorite. There is one (well, technically two) I'd want to suggest as my inclusion, but I'm saving those for my own 2023 Recap list, so I'll throw my review of Paper Mario 64 instead. I was already kind of treading towards it before, but I really feel like this was when I honed in on my experiential and personal conveyances while coinciding it with (light and typically easy to find) sources as to what exactly the developers were intending.

Love this list!

This is a really cool idea for a list! While it might not be my best review, I'm really proud of some of the game design analyzation I did in my 'Viewtiful Joe' review. It was really nice to write about more than just what I liked and what I disliked in a review, so it's the one I'm most proud of. https://www.backloggd.com/u/Consciovs/review/1109591/

my stupid ass skimmed over the 'and talk about it' part.

Yakyuken represents the culmination of months of research and preservation work. Prior to my working with Gaming Alexandria to get it backed up, there was no accessible means of playing the first commercial eroge, with what few scans of the type-in program did exist missing over half the code. It shows how a simple research question inevitably blooms into a far larger process when exploring new historical ground. It is everything I adored about my undergraduate studies on Canadian postwar queer histories brought to the medium of games. It is an attempt to explain why so many games have strip rock paper scissors. It is an answer to how physical games enter the digital space. It is in stark contrast to my 177 history -- not showing why something is reprehensible, but rather why something so mundane is so rich and fascinating.

Yakyuken is also a mark of maturation for me, and a signifier of what is to come. The research process led me to numerous materials that simply weren't accessible -- now they are. I've taken up the act of preservation and archiving as a dedicated hobby, a manifested action towards my (hopeful) future career in Library Sciences. It got me into volunteering in the collections of a local museum. It introduced me to a bevy of American and Japanese literature about erotic works which are barely documented and are now being acquired and made available to all. It got me to start helping the Video Games History Foundation's staff's obtuse quest for a Myst parody porn film. It put me in contact with folks who could preserve titles from my Sharp X68000 collection. It ingratiated me to a circle of games historians in the West and Japan as it explained the why of Yakyuken not just to English speakers, but the Internet at large. It got me to finish a damn video and want to dedicate more time to video content. It got me to actually tell my family what projects I've been working on over the past year. And yet, it's just rock paper scissors.

I shudder to think I've somehow peaked with Yakyuken, but I hope it is a pivotal moment for myself and my writing as I continue along the path of ultra-obscure histories. Further journeys into the banal to find value therein.

Apologies for the late response, everyone! Over here it was a bit late so I had to leave, but now every single one of the reviews has been added, if there's any problems, please tell me and I'd be happy to do the necessary changes! :D

@theia Added! Had the chance to give it a read while adding it to the list and it's fantastic, and it's a fantastic thing that it serves as a point of reference for improvement for you while also feeling proud of it. Great work! :D

@Lynxelo To the list it goes! I’ll be sure to read it as soon as I can; love to see heartfelt reviews, and even if sometimes those can be shorter than others, that doesn’t mean that they are by no means less special. Thank you for sharing! :DDD

@BEAUTIFULBRUTE Thank you so much for the kind words :D! Glad to be able to have it on here, it's a fantastic and deeply personal piece, and I can't say anything else but except that I'm extremely happy to know are getting better, and excellent work! :D

@hilda Aw thank you :)))))))! It is an excellent review, I still love how you talked about it and it’s the write-up that inspired me to plan to replay it in the future, so I'm really happy to seeing it on here.

@MegaTheRealOne Being a 5 parter I couldn't leave anything out, so I hope that I did a good job adding them all, and if there are any problems, please let me know!

@Snigglegros Added to the list! I'm not familiar with New Vegas, but reading your reviews on it and the expansions was a blast and super interesting, and your Lonesome Road one was a highlight of all of those stellar pieces, really happy to see it on here :DDD

@Oshha Thank you so much! Haven't read that one yet so I'll be sure to check it out, and hey, I think writing is a continuous learning process, so it's good to keep learning from previous work while also feeling good about it! :DD

@BlazingWaters To the list it goes! Happy to know more people are working on their own recap list, and I’ll be sure to check out yours as soon as you publish it! For now, your Paper Mario 64 review was indeed a joy to read and incredibly written, so glad you decided to share it over here :DDD !

@MrWarm Thank you so much for the kind words, really glad to see people enjoying it, especially when this is such a great community effort :D
@Consciovs Added, thank you so much for the kind words and for sharing it! :DDD

@Detchibe Talking about was more of a suggestion and not mandatory at all, but I’m really glad you did, super interesting insight and you don’t have to worry at all, I’m certain that as you said, this is a mark in your writing and not your peak, and I’m sure in the near future you’ll write write-ups on par with and even better than it :D.

This list is such a great idea, I want to thank everyone who took their time to write these fantastic reviews. The two reviews I'm mostly proud of are probably my Baldur's Gate 3 Review and Resident Evil 4 Remake Review
Can't really decide which one I like more but both took a long ass time to write since English isn’t my first language.

@SkeletonGrimm67 Thank you so, so much for the kind words and appreciation :DDD! As someone whose mother tongue is not English as well, I completely get the effort that must have gone into both of these; and while I'd only allow a single review by user (unless they are divided into parts), I'll add your BG3 as the main one but also link your RE4R review, since if you feel equally proud about both of them and required a ton of work, I won't put any barriers when this is dedicated to precisely celebrate our own work and effort.

This is a super cute and wholesome list idea :3
I'm most fond of my Goodbye Volcano High review, not necessarily because it required the most effort, but I was a sobbing mess late at night after finishing it and wrote it then, and I was flying out to see my girlfriend for the first time the next day so I really got to pour my heart into it. It's my most emotional piece of this year :)

@Momoka Thanks a ton for the wonderful words :DDDDDDD! It's always nice to see sunch an emotional and heartfelt review, especially about a game that touched the person that played it, and yours is the perfect example. I'll add it as soon as I can :)))

First I would like to thank you for providing us with this space. I'm going to choose my Alan Wake II review for sure. Usually, I just make (un)funny jokes about the game on my reviews, because I think seriously reviews normally are boring. But with Alan Wake 2, I just couldn't. It's such a fantastic, so singular, so unique game, that I think it would be a disrespect don't give the proper coments the game deserves.

@Kijimoshi No need to thank me at all! I'm glad to be able to creat this kind of positive space and it makes me extremely happy to see. And when a game forces to break the mold in the way we write, the is the sign it's a truly especial work (god I really need to get into the Alan Wake series...). I'll add your review as soon as I can, so thank your for sharing and for the kind words! :DDD

This is a fantastic idea! I initially just used this site to organize all the games I’ve played over the years, but then stuck with it and eventually started writing myself because of the great insights I frequently found in other users’ reviews. If anything, Backloggd needs more spaces like this where people can highlight and share their favorite texts. I’m looking forward to reading all the reviews gathered here. Thank you @DeemonAndGames for creating this list!

As for myself, I think I’m most happy with my Castlevania review mainly because it was the first text I managed to finish this year after a long period of absence. I still have a lot of loose notes and fragments for many different games, and I hope that I will be able to string them together into coherent reviews more frequently next year.

@Undercover Thank you so much for the wonderful words! :D! And as I said before, no need to thank me at all, I'm beyond happy to be able to make this and that so many people are using to share and enjoy reviews for others, it's the least I could do after so many wonderful moments using the site this year, and I myself had a very experience similar to you; I initially didn't really use the site other to track what I played, but after discovering and reading so many wonderful reviews and users I started to write longer, far more personal reviews, and now being able to give back even a little bit through this as a thanks it's the least I could do, and I'm so happy to be discovering even more fantastic reviews I never got to see and for others that also missed them to read them. I'll add and read yours as soon as I can, and once again, thank you!

I think this is a wonderful idea! While I haven't written as much as I'd've liked to this year, I'd like to volunteer my Disco Elysium review as what is probably the best thing I've written this year bar none. I didn't think I would have the chops to write about a game as massive as Disco Elysium, but I think I really managed to nail on the head what makes that game so resonant and captivating to me and so many others.

Thank you for providing a space for people to showcase their work like this.

My friend Lag0n wrote a text that was, to say the least, thought-provoking and very inspired, with his vision of the Street Fighter franchise, his discontent with the path and decisions that the franchise had been committing in recent years, and how Street Fighter 6 changed his state of dissatisfaction and renewed their opinion about Street Fighter

@ConeCvltist Hey, super glad to see you here and thank you so much for the kind words :DD! Quality over quantity as they say, and your Disco Elysium review is indeed stellar; even tho I still have the game in my backlog, that didn’t stop me from understanding how much of a powerful write-up it was and made me even more excited to eventually get to it. I’ll add it to the list in a moment, and once again, as I said before, no need to thank me at all, it’s a joy to see so many people coming together and sharing their reviews with such love and positivity, and for others to read them with the same feelings as well.

@HelplessTitan Super nice to share so much love for your friends, work! However, I would prefer to add reviews made by the person suggesting it themselves, so as to not ‘cause much possible confusion and since to make this a space focused on sharing and appreciation our own work with each other. However, if your friends also considers that one to be their best review and have no problems with it being on here, I’d be more than pleased to add it :)))))

@DeemonAndGames I have no problem, you can add it

this is 1 billion percent the best thing I wrote all year :0

also thank you so much for giving me (and others) the opportunity to showcase my more serious writing. I feel like I need to do more soon so hopefully this can give me the motivation to continue 🔥🔥🔥

*our serious writing oops lol

@Lag0n Sweet! Just wanted to be sure so there are no weird surprises and confusion, I'll add it then as soon as I can and also give it a read right after! :DDDD

@Nightblade On the contrary, it should be me giving thanks to you all! Thank you and thank you all for writing such interesting and amazing reviews; I'll be sure to read this as soon as I can't wait to see more of your stuff in the future. Thank you so much for the kind words and for stopping by! :DDDDDD