Competent enough, but very bland to play. The gameplay is devoid of interesting choices and the writing falls flat as a criticism of objectivism, one of the easiest philosophies to criticize.

An extremely fun game at its core about feeling out enemy behaviors and responding to them fluidly, with some really nice touches. Waiting through the opponent's ten-count does a great job of building tension. I find that the enemy boxers' damage output gets a little ridiculous around Soda Popinski, though, it doesn't feel like I have a reasonable chance to experiment.

A sublime Metroid experience. Short, sweet, and great fun, with plenty of opportunity for sequence breaking and speedrunning.

Peak autismcore gaming, build a gorgeous little miniature and watch all the little ant people walk around and ride the rides. This game is fantastic. In the modern day the way I recommend playing it is by picking up RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and the OpenRCT2 sourceport, as well as a user-created campaign pack that recreates the original game's scenarios. Almost no change to the actual content and mechanics of the game, but lots of improvements made on the technical side of things to keep it running smoothly on modern systems.

Feels great to play with the swimming mechanics' momentum to leap out of the water and such, unfortunately the game doesn't seem to know what to do with what it has. Quickly throws you into a dungeon environment where these elements are more of a burden than a gift. Worth a look nonetheless, coming to grips with the controls and exploring the early areas is an absolute delight.

I'm really glad we got to see the "words" mechanic used in actual gameplay, and there are some great setpieces here framed very cleverly though Wake's subconscious's aggressively bad writing that seeks only to hurt Wake, with no further purpose beyond that. Pretty short but a very good DLC chapter, and hard to complain about given that the only currently available version of the game includes it and its sequel as a pack-in rather than offering them as separate purchases.

1993

It may not have invented first person shooters, but it codified what the genre would come to be, and aside from that DOOM is just a fantastically fun time, as well as blazing a trail of robust mod support which has kept its fan community alive to this very day.

While I'd be lying if I said Adventure is particularly compelling to play in 2020, I'd be remiss to ignore what it did for the medium in 1979, reframing what video games can be and packing enough content in to completely fill the 2600 cartridge's storage capacity.

What if Space Harrier was harder to control

2002

A bit of an oddity in the form of a Roguelike styled after DOOM and featuring a bunch of choice quotes from the famous DOOM comic, DRL is a pretty fun time if somewhat frustratingly difficult

Sly 2 expands on the first game's formula in terms of story and heisting, but unfortunately the more open structure robs the game of a good deal of focus and shines a light on some of the ways in which the mechanics fall short.

The gold standard for NES run and guns, Contra is a near-perfect game. The one flaw on its mirror sheen is the overly strict number of lives given to the player, but fortunately the game features a cheat code which fixes this and makes it a very enjoyable experience.