In recent times, the only memory people seem to put into this game is the ability to piss and shit on command and the bizarrely dark plot, however Dog's Life is more than just these elements.
There was clearly care put into making sure Jake's movements look natural when making turns or going up and down slopes. His legs will move in a believable enough way and his body will rotate accordingly. It's a shockingly good looking system considering the rest of the game. However this makes the platforming frustrating, seeing as he will refuse to make a jump unless it seems feasible and would look natural. I can appreciate the effort put into this in spite of how it makes the game feel to actually play.

The music is wonderful and compliments each area really well. It's a lot of peaceful and relaxing tracks, with a few high tempo ones that are catchy and fun for the appropriate sections they play in.
However, visually, the game is a mess. Human models are gross and low poly and all the textures are muddy even for PS2 standards. The dogs were clearly the main attraction for the developers, but some of them still look just off, like the doberman.
Strangely enough, Jake has a dirt system where the more you run around the more mud gets onto his coat, albeit far too quickly, and you need to clean it off if you want to be presentable to random people.

On Jake's quest, he will need to collect enough bones to get past the dog catchers doberman. To do this, you will need to talk to NPCs and do tasks for them, collect certain scents, and even take control of other dogs. To do this, you need to collect one of two types of scents in the area that has a minigame attached. These range from marking territory, races, tag, and more. Once you complete one of these tasks you get to control the dog whenever you want, however there's a time limit related to how difficult or far away the task is. Completing the second minigame after this gives you a bone. There's actually a shocking amount of bones in the game, and you'll need 90 to get into the finale.
There's enough variation in the tasks, and each NPC adds a little extra spice, so even some mediocre tasks have enough going on to keep me invested until the end.

Ultimately, I think the game is worth playing for anyone into dogs or collectathons. Or just oddities on the PS2 in general. I played it as a very small child so my opinion may be clouded, but I think it's worth remembering past the toilet humour present.

Also there's rampant pedigree advertisement in it.

Ratchet and Clank is finally on PC, and being a longtime fan of the series, I'm glad I can play this without shelling out for a PS5.

Rift Apart is a very solid game. Maybe I have to ruminate on this longer, but I prefer it over any of the ones on PS3. However, as someone that played the PS3 titles, seeing certain sections of levels lifted straight from Tools of Destruction and a suite of enemies that barely feel different from their incarnations in the PS3 games, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Bosses are also mostly absent. There are a few unique ones, but most of them are reused minibosses constantly thrown in to cap off sections, and it gets old.
Narratively, Rift Apart is just okay. A few jokes made me smile a little but a majority fell flat. Certain characters were charming, but I quickly got tired of every protagonist being self doubting and lacking in self confidence. Maybe this was just the vibe at Insomniac during development. Dr. Nefarious still feels a bit empty without Lawrence, but he's a welcome change of pace from all the sadsacks you play as.

The PC port is mostly solid, running okay on my old 1050 TI and with swift load times for being put on a HDD over an SSD. However I did experience several crashes and a lot of dropped frames.
The M&KB controls feel fantastic and I would love to play more of these games with them if they were ever to port more.
Overall, I'm happy with the game. It's one of the best post PS2 Ratchet titles and I look forward to playing it again in the future on a stronger PC.

Hiding behind 500 layers of irony and a strange false premise of being a game a guy made when he was 16, Slayers X is a fairly decent first person shooter.
Level design is nothing to write home about and enemy variety is limited, but what elevates the game is a fairly unique arsenal of weapons. A melee weapon that doubles as a short range but strong projectile when you have close to max "hackblood", a shotgun that recontextualizes how you view the environment, as glass shards are ammo, and a grenade launcher that spawns swarms of rats, the weapons mix things up from the usual shooter fare.
Unfortunately fairly unfunny, crass toilet humour rears its ugly head with monsters made of poo, constant jokes about banging moms, and intentional misspellings and irony-laden one liners. It's also short, but at the very least it never overstays its welcome. Although even in this short runtime I had one crash and a consistent bug with dead enemies making constant noise.

It's only after playing this game that I discover it's some sequel or spinoff to Hypnospace Outlaw. A game I haven't played. Maybe playing that beforehand would've elevated my opinion of this game, but as it stands I found Slayers X to be a decent romp, but not worth running out and playing before any other classic shooter or modern classic style game.

Tears of the Kingdom improves on Breath of the wild on most fronts. The world feels fresh in spite of a reused map, the NPCs feel more alive than they ever did in BOTW, and the dungeon selection this time around is more fitting of that title, although still not perfect.
Link's new toolkit is more interesting and creative than the one in BOTW could ever hope to be and results in some simple but satisfying puzzles. As well as the creative freedom within the puzzle solving that Breath of the Wild was celebrated for.

Without delving into spoiler territory I also found the narrative told to actually be fairly engaging this time around. There was enough ties between the events in the past and present to make me invested in what was going to happen, even if it's still a fairly conventional beat ganon narrative.

This title won't convince anyone that didn't much care for Breath of the Wild, but as a huge Zelda fan that enjoyed that game, Tears of the Kingdom is what I truly wanted from the first title 6 years ago.

A fairly decent 3D platformer overall. The graphics are one of the highlights of the game. It looks fairly on par with the recent output from Toys for Bob with similar design ethos and lighting. Kao controls fairly well but the game is really easy and the levels are a bit too straightforward.
Kao the kangaroo lacks any defining feature to make it stand apart from the competition outside of being a reboot of a fairly obscure platforming mascot from Poland. The most it has are elemental powerups that you can imbue in your boxing gloves to solve puzzles, however the elemental powers are one note and never interact together or with the environment in any creative ways. You see a button surrounded by water you hit it with the ice glove, you see a cobweb, you hit it with the fire glove. There's an air glove but it gets so little use and shows up so late that it feels weird to even include at all.
So if it's lacking in originality, it should make up for it with quality, right? Well unfortunately Kao the Kangaroo is one of the least polished games I've played in a while.
Cutscenes are awkward with stiff animation, and the bland but bearable soundtrack will often decide not to trigger, leaving the game with this awkward empty silence. The only things breaking said silence being Kao's footsteps and grunts, because the levels mostly lack any kind of ambience to set the mood outside of the music.
The game features a lot of smashing pots and crates but it felt like half the time they wouldn't shatter into pieces but would instead simply despawn after just sitting there for a second. The world was also unfortunately very transparent, literally. The game opts to use the see through trick to help with camera issues, however a lot of the world becomes semitransparent almost all the time and it really hurts the games aesthetic. It's as distracting as something can be.

I enjoyed my time with the game, but I don't think it stands out among the crowd. Kao himself has some really fun bouncy animation and movement, and if you're really into platformers it's an alright way to spend a dozen hours but I wouldn't reccommend this over many of the other 3D platformers that have come out in recent years, and especially not over the classics that defined the genre.
I got the game on a half off sale and I'd say if you want something very casual and don't mind a little blandness, the Kao reboot is an okay option for that price. I just wish I could give it a better recommendation because there's clearly a lot of talent at Tate Multimedia.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero - Deleted Scenes is a strange footnote in the Counter-Strike series. A collection of scenarios that feel simultaneously like a tech demo for goldsrc and a series of fanmade minicampaigns that they bundled together into a single package.
Deleted Scenes has no real narrative to speak of and the counter-terrorism ops the game sends you on have varying degrees of production value and length. Some have opening scenes setting up your helicopter crashing or simple debriefing before a mission, while others spawn you straight into the combat zone with a simplistic objective displayed on the HUD. Level design is haphazard. At times it feels like I'm making progress in unintended ways, except it's the only way forward. The level designers have a habit of placing terrorists behind walls or doors that you're bound to go past to try and catch you off guard which gets predictable and somewhat dull through the short runtime.
Enemies themselves fall into a few different categories you're probably used to, with different tactics they employ in combat and are decent, if a bit stupid. The satisfying gunplay propping up most of the titles enjoyment.
Graphically the game is on par with later goldsrc releases and at times looks quite pleasant. Voice acting is hit or miss and the soundtrack is fine when it's there.

Condition Zero - Deleted Scenes is a fine enough title to play through in an afternoon if you're bored and feeling up for some solid but simple first person shooting action. It feels good to play, but the overall package lacks the cohesive quality that Valve's other singleplayer offerings have.