Among Midway's huge arcade library, I genuinely think this is the only homerun they've ever made. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good games under their belt like Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and NARC (which is also bad), but nothing struck a chord within me like The Grid. It is one of the purest forms of arcade action I've ever witnessed. And the fact that this was Midway's final arcade game, it's almost poetic how fantastic it ended up being.

Evolving the atmosphere and vibe of Smash TV, The Grid pits you in arenas where you have to find weapons and take down your opponents in third-person blasting action! There's no real story to take in, as it's all about coming out on top as the victor! The very grandiose sports-like feel of the environment, the crazy sound blaring at you as you kill or be killed, the clutch moments and rubberband mechanics to help you stay in the game, it's all so invigorating!

The controls are notable too, as they lost their collective minds designing this third-person shooter with a flight stick and track ball. So somewhere along the lines, these nuts were looking at flight combat and golf games to make this?! Unbelievable, and it works so well!

I adore The Grid, but never expressed it much before. It deserves some sort of love, or at least a port. Rumors say they're planning to bring this back with some sort of reboot, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd rather see dedicated fans get this game up and running properly on emulators.

A somewhat satisfying conclusion to The Evil Within that--while answering some questions--it also sets up new questions for a future entry (which does a shitty job following up, but that's neither here nor there). Gameplay-wise, it has a noticeable stronger emphasis on gunplay than "The Assignment" but stealth is still the heaviest aspect.

I appreciated the atmosphere when it didn't feel so recycled, and the unique boss encounters were enjoyable as well. Don't have too much to say, it was just aight. Oh, and the Easter eggs were cute and funny too.

Where the original Mega Man games up to this point emphasized careful platforming with limited movement options while trying to shoot peas at bug-eyed bots, the psychos behind Mega Man X said "FUCK THAT! Wall-jumping, dashing, huge charge blasts to destroy these robot goons!"

Mega Man X spoiled me so much that I can't really look at the previous games too fondly, it feels way too good to move and shoot in this game. They cranked the pace of this so much that it must've been hard for some fans to even consider it a Mega Man game. The iconic soundtrack also adds to the atmosphere, and I love the secret pathways that are often found by brute force, rather than leaps of faith like the original games. A cool detail they never really reprised for the series was how clearing certain stages would effect other stages, such as beating Storm Eagle would make his ship crash into Spark Mandrill's domain.

This is simply another game I can't even attempt saying what hasn't been already said. Mega Man X has insanely good movement options and controls, while still managing to blend in that careful platforming of the original series nicely.

Starting game up: Hehe boobs.

First half of 100%ing the game: Hey Mahjong is cool, I like clearing the fields. I can match stuff!

Second half of 100%ing the game: FUCK YOUR STUPID ASS PATTERNS, WHY DID IT END WITH THE SAME TILES ON TOP OF EACH-OTHER FUCK YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT!

(I don't really know how Mahjong works)

I put this down when I realized the only moment I had fun--and not dripping with sweat from anxiety or full of anger--was when that game-ending "VICTORY!" graphic hits the screen.

There's design here and there that's admirable, they make it feel good to movey and shooty as far as this lightly skilled FPS player can tell. But ultimately, the structure of its competitive aspect is not for me. Most aren't. So I uninstalled it during lockdown because, even with friends, I was just not having fun at all. Then the Blizzard fallout happened, and I was like "Hey what an easy boycott, avoiding Blizzard and Activision is easier than ever now!"

There's no real ethical consumption under capitalism, but hey this is the least I could do. Never playing 2 either.

This game looks like goddamn tech demo, and you know what? I fucking LOVE that. I'll be fucked if Super Mario 64 isn't satisfying to run and jump across. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but damn was it everything we needed in 1996. A world before my brain got corrupted by analysts and blowhard reviewers just itching their boners to call something "janky."

I loved this as a kid, and still revisit from time-to-time to love it some more, whether as a half-assed Switch port, or the code-dumped re-engineered PC port. This game still rocks. I'm going to tattoo low-poly Mario on myself someday.

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A great bite-sized survival horror that does a fine job recapturing some of the magic seen in the iconic classics. From the low-poly graphics with proper CRT filters, to the controls and muffled voice bytes. Murder House does a surprisingly good job balancing between being an homage to survival horror video games, and slasher flicks that thrived in the 70s and 80s!

There's also something to be said about how well this kind of game can create fear within the player. The way they present the main threat throughout as the Easter Ripper is sandwiched in the middle of an oppressively terrifying score and sound design, it's all extremely effective! The fact that this game doesn't need super-charged graphics to immerse the player in fear shows how talented these developers are.

The game also doesn't overstay its welcome. The design is pretty simplistic, and they knew that. Instead of dragging this out into some eight-hour campaign, it isn't hard at all to clear the entire game in about two. Which is appropriate, considering the slasher movie feel of the game!

A cute little rhythm game that's pretty strict on reacting and learning the stage patterns! Bit.Trip Runner was a fairly early highlight in the indie sphere, despite first coming to fruition on WiiWare (whatever that was).

As someone that doesn't care for chiptune music most of the time, I actually found the soundtrack in this game very endearing. It has this atmosphere that's a little hard to pin down why I like it so much, but it fit the world perfectly. Not exactly ideal as a game that featured stereoscopic 3D, but I chipped time away on my 3DS with it either way.

The liberties they took to alter the ending to Travis Strikes Again's original story is a bit annoying (especially considering what little value that gave in the sequel), but that blemish is triumphed by the undeniably best Death Ball stage in the entire game, which is Killer Marathon. The best music, the most unique design, and the most challenging run that was clearly intended to be a trial-of-all-trials for those that have played through the main game (as it should be).

The interactions the characters have with its main boss at the end being completely unique between each-other was a very nice extra as well. This DLC piece still manages to be a fine closer to Travis Strikes Again as a whole.

I wasn't really into hack-n-slash games back when this game was new. In fact, I had a strong (and foolish) animosity for them because of a bad experience with the original Devil May Cry when I was like 11 (see my DMC1 review if you're curious). I wasn't even aware of the game Bayonetta, but during that time, I played and loved No More Heroes. However, I chalked it up to loving the brilliant characters and writing, along with the core combat being pretty simple.

No clean way to put it, I was on the internet . . . a lot, and I saw various drawn porn of Bayonetta back then and got the hots for the character. She was practically the ideal depiction of what got me going, so I wanted to learn more about her!

That was when I looked the game up, found it for cheap at a local store, and was blown away by how good it was! Punchy combat, intuitive controls, the rewarding flowy combos, the badass enemy designs, the jazzy music that has a nice blend of angelic and actiony, and of course Bayonetta herself being so funny and endearing as a character with attitude!

There's some missteps, such as a couple scenarios that feel obtusely designed to be frustrating, most-especially QTE scenarios that not only have very small windows, but kill you instantly and ruin your stage rank if you fail it. The story is a little basic too, IMO. If it wasn't for the characters being so charming, I would've considered it entirely hollow. Regardless, the good outweighs the bad in this game by a longshot.

So yeah, seeing a couple of porn doujins as a teenager lead me to properly falling in love with the hack-n-slash genre. I should probably be more embarrassed by that, but here we are. What's important is that it also lead me to properly playing and loving the original Devil May Cry!

A kooky little side-scrolling shooter that has a lot of art . . . a lot of heart . . . but not a lot of game design chops. The game is nifty and has good mechanics, but it feels kinda rickety and inconsistent pretty often. It doesn't have the uber-tight feel that's present in the Metal Slug and Contra classics it was inspired by.

Of course, as a kid, I didn't give a shit. Because it has a lot of charm and style, and this made for satisfying gameplay! It's just tough going back to it and trying to take its game design seriously these days.

Possibly one of the most straight-forward sequels, Rock Band 2 doesn't really add anything new to the core gameplay, but simply adds new features, mainly focusing on online play which added VS modes. Whether it was solo on a single instrument, or with an entire other bands, you can duke it out to get the highest score in a shared song!

Something worth mentioning that I thought was insanely based, this game let you transfer over nearly all the songs from the original Rock Band game (if you have the disc) in order to merge everything into this new game! What's that? Not cool enough of Harmonix? How about the fact that they made all mainline DLC for the lifespan of this game applicable to the original Rock Band as well?

And the rockin' cherry on top was "Rock Band Network" which allowed bands and producers to create tracks for songs they have full rights to and include them as DLC (mainly just for Xbox 360 while Wii and PS3 had limited versions of this)! Absolutely insane. I understand the milking contest was raw between Harmonix and Neversoft while they built Rock Band and Guitar Hero respectively, but I always felt Harmonix had a lot more heart and soul when it came to their products.

Jak and Daxter is the collective effort of everything the Naughty Dog devs learned from Crash Bandicoot's hectic platforming on PS1, and even what worked for other cartoon mascot-centric games like Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. In a lot of ways, this game is a culmination of those cores and smushed into a huge world full of collectables.

I take it people aren't too thrilled by how much this game was a collect-a-thon, but I personally enjoy it still, having 100%'d the game 4 separate times these past 20 years. I think the way the game centers around that aspect is what makes it work so well for me.

Jak & Daxter is charming, unique, and masks its loading screens extremely well, making the world feel seamless, which was incredible for 2001 consoles. Layer that with goofy characters throughout and a chatty Ottsell to keep you entertained the entire way, you're in for a good time.

Probably the best launch title of its generation, Dead Rising 3 is an enormous buffet that certainly gives you a lot to do, but whether or not that content is palpable is the big question. The game is huge and sprawling, but it can also get monotonous from time-to-time. Granted, controlling feels much better than it did in Dead Rising 2, but not quite as smooth as the original game.

The world is a bit too gray, even for a city overrun with zombies, and the story is generic to say the least. The zombie designs themselves feel extremely derivative of hit-works at the time such as "The Walking Dead" (whereas the original Dead Rising already had unique zombies). Regardless, the game is exploding with violent action and absolutely ridiculous weapon combos which lost all sense of reality, even compared to the previous game. Co-op campaign from beginning to end is nice too.

I think, as a Dead Rising game, it's lukewarm at best. But I have to give credit that they put a lot into this game, and despite looking 'pretty' next-gen for 2013, it didn't make compromises in its heavy gameplay or thick content. Dead Rising 3 made for a great time sink, especially compared to . . . idunno, Ryse: Son of Rome?