New Horizons helped keep a sense of normality when the world went crazy four years ago, and coming back to it now on a different platform is like being sent back in time before my dad had the cheek to get sick and pass away. New Horizons doesn't have the same nostalgia factor as Wild World or even New Leaf for me - but my God I can smell our garden in April 2020, I can hear Tiger King on in the background, I can't see my friends but I can tend to a real garden and a virtual island at the same time.

New Horizons is laden with a crafting system that sort of outstays its welcome, an apparent step back in villager interaction where you can start seeing repeating dialogue far quicker than previous entries, and an aggravating Nintendo sense of not being allowed to take things at the pace you WANT to take them. I should be allowed to skip the ridiculously lengthy tutorial section of the game if I previously had a save file on the system. This tutorial legitimately takes about five real life days to complete. I understand the concept of a game you pick up and play for just a bit at a time, but this is a full priced release, not a mobile game.

There is not enough content to justify the absolutely glacial progression and gameplay, especially compared to the offerings from Pocket Camp, a free mobile game. Even simple actions take a small animation to get through and often text that you've read dozens of times before, leading to mashing buttons to skip through them. This is sort of comparable to something like Red Dead Redemption 2's lengthy skinning, looting and cleaning animations - but at least in RDR2 there's something intricate and detailed to look at, while ACNH has a far simpler art style.

All of that in mind, though - there's such a genuine charm and addictiveness to New Horizons that I can't help but really enjoy it, flaws and all. Musically it's bouncy and memorable, the graphics are lovely to look at and the weird mix of realistic bugs and fish contrasted against the cartoony environments and characters works surprisingly well. Once you get out of that first week and the game opens up? It's good. It's very good. Not quite great, but I'm enjoying it nevertheless.

A cheap cash grab with surprisingly high quality (animation wise, not compression) cutscenes. Arguably better advertisements for M&Ms than the crap they put on TV nowadays.

Shell Shocked is not good. The Minis are mentally sick in the head and it felt like I was too by the midpoint - I haven't finished this game. I can't do it. I won't do it. The physics are janky. The graphics are stilted and ugly to look at. The hit detection is dreadful; getting slightly too close to something without actually touching it kills you immediately. The collision accuracy is about on par with Stevie Wonder using a Tommy Gun.

It fails at being a mediocre Crash clone and doesn't even succeed at making me want M&Ms. No wonder the developers just made shovelware until they closed.

Things I learned about Los Angeles from Ready or Not:

- Tech companies and paedophiles are always in cahoots

- Cryptofarmers are capable of Olympic-level feats of accuracy

- Everyone is a bastard and should be peppersprayed at random

- The post office is like taking a leisurely stroll through Fallujah

- Absolutely nowhere is safe

- Door jams are called George Ms

I want to love Ready or Not. There's a lot of stuff I just adore about it; how it looks, how the guns feel and sound, the interconnected plot and the labryinthine levels that reward exploration with environmental storytelling.

But the performance is woeful, the AI is frighteningly accurate and some features simply do not work at the moment. This is still an early access title to me, regardless of what the developers claim.

The world, despite being well-realised, is far too grimdark and edgy to take seriously. However, with that said, I did get the same "oh my God, what the fuck?" sensation I got from SWAT 4 years ago here a few times so that's to be applauded.

The visuals have this odd balance between being very appealing and deeply ugly, and it seems to depend entirely on lighting and which character model is on screen. More work needs done and please please please try to use more of your own assets and not depend on AI tools so much. You can easily tell what's been handmade and what hasn't, and the handmade artwork is far far superior. I don't even mind using AI prompts to give a rough suggestion as to what to make, just draw the final product yourselves!

New Leaf is undoubtedly better in every way, and that game remains the peak of the series in my opinion - but there's something so magnetic about Wild World that I will emulate it on everything I own just to hear that gorgeous title music one more time. It is a time capsule. Wild World is the last days of my pre-teen years, nights spent under LCD illuminated blankets and days spent in the back of a car. It is my favourite, and that is solely based on what it means to me.

To mark it as retired is such a strange finality to me; I usually roll my eyes at sentimentality online, because I often feel like it's performative or melodramatic. Here we are, then. I've been going back through a lot of games I grew up playing, and Wild World ended up being the last one I got to. It's a lot like coming home, but knowing that you're going to leave again soon without feeling upset about it.

Chorizo is the best companion to ever exist in these games and that's entirely based on my bias for dachshunds.

Far Cry 6 starts off very strong, and does have some good moments tucked away in it - but it has the new Ubisoft problem of trying to do far too much with far too little incentive. Coming from Far Cry: New Dawn, the new upgrading gear and bullets system is frustrating at best and a genuine impediment to enjoying yourself at worst.

Far Cry 5 had its issues, but at no point in that game did I ever stop enjoying myself. Even during the constant kidnappings, I was having fun. For some stretches of Far Cry 6's run time, I was not enjoying myself. I was bored - and I have NEVER been bored playing a Far Cry title, not since the crap Wii spinoff.

It has the strong villain these games have basically claimed as their defining feature, but not much else. The setting is gorgeous, but there's just something missing. I'm convinced it's the music and atmosphere. New Dawn may have been a weird post-apocalyptic acid trip with its bright pinks and flourescent colours, but Far Cry 5 is still one of the most atmospheric and sonically rich games I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

To put it into perspective, 5 released in 2018 and I can still hear sound effects and the glorious, glorious music in my head. 6 has been out for two years, and I cannot remember anything past the quite generic pause menu screen, funnily enough.

It's not bad - it's just not good enough to keep going. I haven't gone back to play any of the DLCs either.

Insufferably mediocre. Irritating characters, an ugly aesthetic, and gameplay so stripped back from its predecessors that you may as well be playing an entirely different series.

The plot is forgettable, with tired cliches and a sixth former's sense of political commentary awkwardly inserted between forced attempts at humour. Watch Dogs took itself too seriously. Watch Dogs 2 didn't often take itself seriously enough. This is a bizarre, Frankensteined bridge between the two and it never ever works in my opinion. I hate to refer to a game's dialogue as cringeworthy, but this really is some shite.

That said - the Legion idea is fascinating. Every NPC potentially being a playable character? The routine system? The permadeath mode? The actual city of London that's probably the most well-realised since The Getaway in 2002? Great ideas! Shame they're in Watch_Dogs: Legion. This might have killed the series, I reckon. I hope.

Seemed to pull a desperate nostalgia bait by bringing Aiden Pearce back for the DLC, but even he is a shadow of his former self. Funnily enough, I'm convinced that transplanting Aiden into London would have worked if the entire game were just like the original in terms of tone and gameplay.