LemonCoffeeCake
2019
In terms of gameplay, this is a pretty bog-standard "third-person shooter with RPG elements" in the traditional style. However, the story and environments here hooked me immediately (though to be fair, I am a massive SCP fiend so I was already pretty much into this exact thing), and I'm super excited to explore more of the "Remedy-verse." Love these weird Finnish people.
2016
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
2008
The gathering of talent that came together to make this will possibly never be matched in videogames again. This is indisputably one of the 5 best JRPGs ever made, and almost all of the other options (with the exception of Final Fantasy VI, which is one year older) are so heavily influenced by it that it's kind of hard not to call it actually the best.
2018
Celeste is one of the best platformers ever made and anyone who says otherwise is wrong and knows it. I will hear no argument on this.
This review contains spoilers
An excellent detective puzzler. I found myself having to really think hard to get through some of these puzzles, especially once they started pulling in details from earlier cases. The DLC cases especially had some really fun twists and turns.
2020
Delightfully gross action-puzzler.
2019
This review contains spoilers
I liked playing this more than BL2, actually. The guns felt significantly more varied, giving every character both a selection of action skills and distinct ways they interacted with that system (Amara's elements, Moze's Iron Bear weapons, Zane's double action skills, and FL4K's pets) made each of my playthroughs feel different in a far more substantial way than the other games, and Mayhem mode was a much more useful way to scale up endgame difficulty than BL2's "just play the game again lol" (though you still had the option to do that, which I appreciate). That said, the story of this game coupled with the lack of a dialog skip button makes me want to puncture my eardrums whenever I play it. The Calypso twins are awful villains who only make any progress because every character on our side decides to be massively stupid when it's expedient to the writers (I will qualify this by saying that the stories of the various DLC mini-campaigns were much better, and I really appreciate the commitment to actual character writing in those). If BL4 is simply the gameplay of this and a story more on the level of BL2 or the DLCs, I will eat it up easily.
Worse BL2. Oxygen didn't have nearly enough mechanical weight to make it feel like a meaningful inclusion. Watching Jack descend into evil is fun, as is playing as characters you pretty universally end up shooting in the head in BL2 (except Athena, who I do like, and Claptrap, who I only wish I got to shoot in the head in BL2).
2012
Pretty obviously the best-written game in this series. Handsome Jack is one of the best villains in gaming, just an endlessly hateable bastard. That being said, I still found the gameplay lacking in a lot of key ways - many of the "legendary" guns are kind of identical to standard gear, movement feels pretty bad, and making you play the entire campaign 3 times to reach the endgame feels really bad. A hypothetical fusion of BL2 story writing and BL3 gameplay would probably be my favorite shooter ever, but as it stands this one feels held back.
Worst game in the series, but definitely established a lot of where it would go - both good (diverse character playstyles, wacky guns, occasional bits of legitimately good and/or funny writing, etc.) and bad (unfunny reference humor that was already dated when it came out.)
2019
Pretty good metroidvania with an exceptional art style. I can't think of a single boss in here that I didn't find either incredibly beautiful, incredibly gross, or both.
2023
Short and easy puzzler, but I really liked the art and just the general vibe of the game. Surprisingly cozy despite a very deliberate creepiness. Not going to be an exceptional challenge if you're looking to actually test your puzzle abilities, though.
2013
This review contains spoilers
Best gameplay in the series, but I fully could not deal with the narrative goals of this game. Casting the Vox as basically identical in evil to Columbia's racist sky fantasy is politically nonsensical, especially coming from the studio that made one of the most effective takedowns of Objectivism not even a decade earlier.
2015
Powerful and interesting meditation on game design and development, and art more generally. I liked it less than Stanley Parable, but it also felt significantly more personal in a very impactful way.
Not the worst Arkham game (I liked Knight less because of the tank and Asylum less because of the smaller world), but the least innovative certainly.