Feels weird to say that the best Zork game is the one that's designed more like Myst than Zork but that's the reality we live in! I like Myst and I like Zork so this was a match made in heaven, right? The first hour doesn't make a great impression with how jarring of a contrast it is of taking a normally very lighthearted and goofy series and trying to set up these apocalyptic stakes while you uncover backstory through journals hidden around, but once you get out of the initial hub it does a much better job at carving out its own identity instead of just Myst but less interesting. The pre-renders are gorgeous, the environments are really interesting (minus one volcano area), the atmosphere is haunting, the puzzles are significantly more intuitive than most of the other Zork games, highkey makes me want to check out more Myst clones because it sounds like such a fascinating sub-genre.


HONORABLE MENTION: Return to Zork for being an absolutely bizarre fever dream created out of spite.

Making a compelling puzzle shmup with real staying power after you've solved it is a tough challenge, and so Eigengrau's approach is to give you the nuttiest puzzles you could ever imagine. What if there was a shmup stage where whenever you kill an enemy it teleports you to where they died? What if your bullets had a gravitational pull? Not every gimmick is a homerun, some are definitely less memorable than others and I think the intro world drags a bit but the sheer density of concepts is so large that you're bound to find plenty you like. The best part is the boss fights, where all the ideas from that world come together for this crazy mashup of ten mechanics at once plus who knows what other surprises they decide to stack on top. Even if you haven't played many shmups it's still very accessible so it's worth a look if that sounds interesting to you.


HONORABLE MENTION: Blue Revolver for just being a really fucking tight bullet hell. Amazing pacing, really interesting take on Dodonpachi chaining, there's a bit of Garegga in there too, getting the Parallel clear is some of the most fun I've had with a 1cc. One of the biggest annoyances with 1ccing many arcade-style shmups is how a single death at the wrong time can be enough to tank your whole run, but there's no real penalty for deaths in Blue Revolver as long as you have lives left. Since you don't lose your bomb stock upon dying, grinding to get to the lategame is a hell of a lot less monotonous and the tons of extra little side objectives attached to every boss that you can attempt for extra points is a good way to spice it up too.

Going through Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1, 2, and 4 was a fun enough time with beautiful music and environments but the story and structure sadly didn't do much for me, I think the background behind some of the missions can be cool but the way it's conveyed makes it feel much thinner than it is and very separated from the depth of classic Phantasy Star. Card Revolution is, strangely, actually the exact thing I had been wanting: PSO's glorious aesthetic with tighter missions and its themes and characters discussed more heavily at the forefront. Side NPCs go through arcs that progress through the course of the entire game, there's an SA2-style Hero and Dark story setup of two campaigns that show the events from different perspectives, it's glorious and also a pretty fun card game!!


HONORABLE MENTION: The eight Phantasy Star 2 text adventures for managing to make characters that have two lines of dialogue in the actual game be compelling. A lot of them are pretty hit-or-miss but seeing more of this universe is great and it manages to cover a wide variety of genres and tones too despite taking place in an already established world.


SECOND HONORABLE MENTION: Phantasy Star 3 for being able to softlock yourself in the first couple minutes and having an NPC tell you to just start a new file.

Playing this and Cosmic Otto opened my eye to a woefully underappreciated direction for adventure games: no goals, no objective, simply vibes and exploration. Kinda makes me wish Cyan made more stuff like that despite how much I love Myst, but I treasure their output before that series regardless. The Manhole is an incredibly surreal trip with bizarre characters and tangential connections linking rooms together but Cosmic Otto goes even harder on this with a bigger scope, more areas, more details, it's wonderful. They're very short and well worth the experience, so play them! Cosmic Otto only has one version but The Manhole has many different releases: the OG black and white Mac OS version, the updated CD-ROM version with color and audio, and a really charming pre-rendered remake from the 90s. I've heard good things about the PC-Engine release as well, so whichever you pick, there's no wrong answer!

I like the original Spyro trilogy quite a bit but Spyro 1 is the only entry that resonated with me on a level that few other games do. It has the least variety, the least complexity, and this is why I'm unable to stop thinking about it. It's the Spyro game that best captures the goal of soaking in an ethereal world without worrying about any side characters or missions or skill points or anything else, it is about the beauty of existing in a place and also wondering what the hell is up with that one ramp jump in Tree Tops. Could another Spyro game be made in this way, even around the time of its release? Probably not. I guess that just makes me appreciate the Dream Weavers even more.


HONORABLE MENTION: The Legend of Spyro trilogy is pretty dire but the GBA version of The Eternal Night is a shockingly really good GBA beat-em-up???? There's a style meter, an in-depth combo system about extending juggles and animation cancels, they rewrote the story to shove in a rival character you fight three times over the course of the story with them getting stronger each time, it's the kind of game where you can tell the devs probably had the time of their life working on it. Speaking of GBA Spyros, Season of Flame and Attack of the Rhynocs aren't amazing but they're pretty cute too....

Getting my hands on a Sinden and being able to go through all the lightgun classics that I never had a chance to play has been a joyous experience but going through House of the Dead, Time Crisis, these meatier lightgun campaigns have made me realize something: lightgun games are exhausting. My hand problems are bad enough as is, so continually mashing the trigger for upwards of 30 minutes is not the greatest match either. Virtua Cop's 1 enemy = 1 bullet approach is great for alleviating this and I like its simplicity but that can also be limiting in its own right.

Point Blank is the best of both worlds. The structure of playing 16 mini-games each pressuring various aiming and firing skills leads to a brisk set of very unique challenges that end before it can overstay its welcome--easily my preferred lightgun game to pick up and play, if you ignore that I'm using a Sinden which means that nothing is truly pick up and play.

HONORABLE MENTION: Typing of the Dead for secretly being the true greatest lightgun game?? Also Point Blank 2 for being even better than the first. I will try PB3 and Ghoul Panic eventually I promise!

Could've put this in the honorable mentions section for The Manhole since my praises for this are in line with what I love about that but this honestly deserves its own section, it's a beautiful pre-rendered adventure game in the style of 90s point-and-clicks and something that has deeply etched its way into my brain already. It was left unfinished despite being almost complete but as far as I'm concerned this actually enhances the experience as it shifts your mindset towards taking in the sights rather than viewing it as something to be "completed". Its imagery is overwhelming yet evocative, incomprehensible and unforgettable. Something especially wonderful about its open structure is the sheer amount of weird ass secrets and areas that you're probably never going to find on your own, which really sells the idea of this being an endless rabbit hole where you'll never be able to see absolutely everything. Check it out! https://archive.org/details/frogdays

"Grappling hook metroidvania" sounds like a buzzword at this point but that's not doing it justice, it's also just an insanely good metroidvania. The grapple hook physics are much closer to a bungee cord like in Umihara Kawase which makes the movement bouncy and the sequence breaks a joy to perform with basically anything being on the table if you're willing to lab it out. Even without trying to do anything especially fancy this is still some of the most agency I've seen a game in this genre give the player in awhile and the uneasy atmosphere makes exploration even more engaging despite there actually not being that many major upgrades to find. One of a kind experience, love it.