I have to give this game credit for being a huge influence on my taste in music. Before this, I just kinda knew whatever music my family would listen to, or whatever I would catch on TV or movies etc. Then along comes this game with all these classic songs that I'd never heard, and a whole genre just clicked with me. I would only get more into it as sequels to this game came out, and I would eventually move on to Rock Band during the next console generation, and start looking up more and more classic songs that were new to me on a weekly basis as a neverending stream of DLC flowed onto the Microsoft store. But this is the game that started it all for me, so it fills a special spot in my game library.

As someone who has played every main series Final Fantasy game minus the MMOs, I was really looking forward to a big crossover FF fighter. Unfortunately the mechanics here are just dull. It's been a while since I've played this but iirc you only get like 6 moves divided into 3 for when you're on the ground and 3 for when you're in the air. There's not a whole lot to the movement either, you're mainly just locking onto something and dashing towards it in a straight line. The story is also not much to think of, basically being a big good vs evil fight. While the novelty of all my favorite Final Fantasy characters interacting was enough for me as a teen, I fear many of these interactions boil down to "What is the biggest most stereotypical trait of this character, let's have them do that." If you're really craving a better Final Fantasy crossover game, and you aren't totally averse to chibi anime style humor, I'd say skip this series and go on over to World of Final Fantasy, which I enjoyed much more.

Minus half a star for the copaganda parts being how you reveal stuff on the map, but without that, this would be my perfect superhero game. Swinging around the city is some of the most fun I've ever had with movement in a game, you almost never want to use fast travel because of it. The music and bright aesthetic also give it a great superhero vibe. This game kind of ruined the Arkham series for me, because I played this first, and it plays like Arkham but better. The different web abilities are very fun to play around with, diving in from the sky and immediately sticking guys to walls once you get powerful enough. Even the story is a great Spider-Man story, which cares just as much about getting Peter Parker right as it does about getting Spider-Man right. When I finished this game I was already craving more, which is one of the best complements I can give, especially since this game has a decent length to it already, especially if you get the DLC.

This has one of the best openings I've ever seen in any game, and I played the campaign on game pass in the hopes that the rest of it would be in a similar vein. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The opening level of this game establishes such a strong tone as a "war is hell" type of experience, as when you die the game simply zooms out to show you the name of your character and his lifespan, and then puts you straight into the shoes of another similarly doomed soldier. Everything is full of mud and grit and soldiers dying all around, and it hammers home the meaninglessness of all of it. After this level, you unlock a variety of mini-campaigns to play, each showcasing a feature of the game; tanks, planes, sprinting, armored soldiers, etc. While the game does try to keep the tone of the opening level somewhat, all of these levels play like the same kind of one man army power fantasies you've played in every other military shooter ever. It's a massive let down going from "war is hell" to "look how good you are at killing, you badass." Also, lmao at the campaign that is all about glorifying T.E. Lawrence and ends with "T.E. Lawrence remains controversial to this day."

Was watching the trailer for Sifu and it just reminded of how much fun the martial arts combat in this game was. That along with jumping from car to car was a very cool way to take the GTA open world formula and make this game have its own style. It's rare to see a game rival Rockstar in their own genre, and while I wouldn't say it goes so far as to surpass GTA, it was a very enjoyable game with the unique elements it brought. Worth checking out if you're a fan of this kind of game and are interested in something with a heavier focus on hand-to-hand combat.

This was one of my top 10 games of 2018 primarily because the main hook and premise of the game is so creative and has so much possibility. This is a multiplayer dating game, where you and up to 3 friends play as monsters trying to get other monsters to go to the prom with you. You can be as cooperative or as competitive as you'd like in this game. There is definitely some problematic writing in this game, for example the character most associated with the "fun" stat is super into hard drugs, but the game being multiplayer makes it easier to just kind of laugh stuff off and have fun with people. I'd really like to see this type of game expand into a larger genre, because there's so much untapped potential in having a multiplayer game based around dialogue systems.

This is a strategy game in which you play as a small resistance group during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. The gameplay consists of choosing where to send your limited number of people to gather support, finances, resources, or carry out missions. After a certain number of days, story segments will play out depicting major events that led to the rise and fall of the Nazi party. The gameplay bits are good at portraying how difficult it is to move around and get anything done when the whole state is against you, but the story bits were what really elevated the game for me. For one, this is the only video game I can think of that actually tackles the holocaust, despite so many games being set during WWII. But it also just excels at giving you a timeline of events of how a nation descended into fascism, and the efforts it took to defeat it, and that’s something I think everyone needs to learn right now, because it really seems like too many have forgotten the lessons of history.