I bought a used Kinect just to play this and felt entirely justified by the end.

I've always loved Twisted Pixel's games for their irreverent humor and unique mixing of FMV with gameplay. In a way, Gunstringer is like the ultimate realization of their style: A Panzer Dragoon-meets Mad Dog McCree run 'n' gun with a ton of great gags and surprisingly effective mechanics given the limitations of the Kinect.

Unfortunately the game design isn't always up to snuff with the hilarious jokes. It runs a bit long and repetitive, with each chapter feeling like 25% longer than it should be. And each boss fight is a copy/paste of the one before with little variety. By the second half, it feels like the gimmick is running a bit out of steam. There's a reason, after all, why Time Crisis and its imitators are sub-1 hour games rather than 6 hour ones. Even Panzer Dragon is about a 2 hour long title. They're in and out before the player can get tired of the flow; before they can run out of new things to do with their limited set of mechanics.

Gunstringer, however, goes so long it even runs out of jokes to make about the western genre it's lampooning. By chapter 3, it moves on to... random generalized Asian jokes? It's really bizarre, and by far the weakest segment of the game. The first half of the game lampoons lumberjacks, oil barons, brothels—all sorts of old western movie stereotypes. Then the third chapter is about a samurai. And I genuinely think this could work if it lampooned samurai films—they are, after all, inextricably tied to the western genre—but instead of hyper specific samurai film references it's... just generalized Asian gags? There's a great wall, a giant dragon boss fight, the environment is covered in bamboo shoots and lucky cats and zen gardens. And, oddly, this chapter is when the hordes of red (yes, Chief Wahoo level bright red) native american enemies encroach on the player.

It's... it's not even offensive so much as it's lazy with its humor. Just the most basic stereotypes you could imagine, with no clever spin or joke to it. It's the only part of the game where the humor made me roll my eyes rather than giggle. It's by far the weakest part of the game, and is luckily followed by a far better final chapter in which you fight the spirit of death itself.

This is, thankfully, mostly a very fun and funny game that I enjoyed quite a bit.

But I'm still not convinced you couldn't make this as good, if not better, on a controller—Panzer Dragoon manages it, after all—but I'm not exactly disappointed given that a used Kinect is now $10. RIP to anyone who shelled out $150 for a Kinect just to play this and Child of Eden a decade ago, though.

Keita Takahashi makes games that feel like "play". He doesn't really tell stories or ask you to invest in a world. Instead, he focuses on a central gameplay mechanic that's inherently unique and fun and crafting a unique aesthetic around it that enhances how irreverent and fun his concept is. It's all the strength of gaming as an interactive medium.

I could nitpick how some of the constellation levels are tedious, but that misses the point. Rolling a Katamari around and collecting ever-bigger objects is a joyful bit of interaction that no other game can capture. And it's backed by one of the best visual and audio aesthetics in the medium.

Fun arcadey action game from the early 360 years. Still looks pretty damn great today running at a high resolution on PC. The colors still pop—blinding white snow contrasted against bright orange bug goop plays really well on modern HDR displays—and the DX11 fur shading is still so effective it literally crashed my performance to sub-20FPS during one of the boss fights. No joke on that one. The giant spider boss was actually so intense I had to turn the graphics down so my 3080 could run it at 4k.

Really fun. If there's one issue, it's that the thermal energy mechanic feels sort of meaningless in the game. Theoretically it functions as a sort of timer—always ticking down, theoretically limiting how long you can stay in a level—but in reality, even on higher difficulty, it doesn't really come into play. Enemies and environmental objects give you so much energy there's never a reason to sweat. In the rare instances it comes up, like, say, you reach a boss with a little too little energy left over, it just feels more like a minor annoyance than something you could have better strategized around. It feels like a mechanic better suited to an open world style game, where it could function as a friction against exploration. In a game with a more free-form structure, it could make the player ask "is it worth it to check out that cave or encampment? do I have the energy to make it through?".

Here, in a linear arcade actioner, it's more flavor than mechanic. Something that effectively highlights this world as one of stark survival, but not something that really comes into play as A Meaningful Mechanic.

Ryu Hayabusa is one of the coolest protagonist designs in history. After a slow open, you hit a level on an airship where Ryu finally dons the sleeveless ninja gear from the cover and it's like the game announcing "alright, the real shit starts here".

With that chapter's over the top setting, the change to Ryu's outfit, the introduction of some over-the-top enemy designs, and the essential parry mechanic the game had me hooked.

There's just something special here with the game's stripped down, more defensive approach to action. You're not learning 100 different dial-a-combos like in Bayonetta or something else. Instead, you're blocking and waiting for your opening in each encounter. Every enemy a new puzzle to learn—when can you parry them? what moves or weapons work best? Play carefully, push only when you have the advantage, and success will be rewarded with your survival. And failure? Well, I hope you like seeing the game over screen.

One of the best action games I've ever played. It kicked my ass a bunch. A+ experience.

Adorable, pleasant little idle game that sits at the bottom of your screen. Like the gamification of the 90s spyware phenomenon BonziBuddy.

Cannot recommend it highly enough based on vibes alone. Everything from the art, the animations, the music hit just the perfectly relaxing note. It's like everything that makes farming games such a soothing past time adapted into an idle game.

My one issue with it, if I have one, is that it tops out a little early. Unlike most idle games which can often require days of idling to get to get one endgame unlock, everything in Rusty's Retirement is always in arm's reach meaning you can clear the game of every unlock—its various plants, its buildings, its little workers—in a weekend's worth of checking in on it.

Which maybe isn't so much of a problem for a little $7 game that I enjoyed every minute with. I love my cozy little farm. Maybe I should make another.

Dragon's Dogma II asks, "What if Dragon's Dogma was prettier, had a slightly different (but not much different) story and came out today instead of a decade ago?" and the answer is that I would put 118 hours into it and love every minute.

It's everything good about Dragon's Dogma, from the combat to the innovative pawn system and all the little emergent gameplay moments, but bigger and better. Even the lows are higher this time, with the story and quests at least a little more interesting than last time. Although not by much—this is still Dragon's Dogma, after all, and the world is still very much one of generic fantasy role playing.

But that's sort of the magic of Dragon's Dogma. The contrast of this generic fantasy world full of basic D&D monster manual creatures that is then enlivened by this highly dynamic set of gameplay systems. The fact that a griffin can crash down and interrupt your party at any given time, or that your pawn can pick up an enemy and toss it at another or even at YOU, is made all the better by the fact that it's contrasted against this generic setting.

The magic of Dragon's Dogma is that contrast. That it's the best, most fun action RPG you'll play this year. That you can grab onto the side of a griffin and stab it as it rises into the air, carrying you halfway across the map before it dies and crashes you to the ground. And that all this happens in a very self-serious, stone faced fantasy land.

It's wild and crazy gameplay mechanics set against basic D&D trappings. D&D filtered through the gameplay sensibilities of the Devil May Cry team. It's the greatest.