I definitely gotta play more metroidvanias going forward. Metroid Prime is very good but I did have a lot of small grievances with it, the backtracking and the boss fights being the worst of it. When I say backtracking I'm not referring to revisiting areas, I'm talking about having to traverse the same pathways over and over again to get to and from a specific area. My problem with the boss fights comes from how long they take and how they aren't involved enough to remain interesting for the whole duration. None of my complaints are major enough to ruin the game or anything but they're enough for me to dock it a few points.

Assassin's Creed has got to be the only game in existence whose movement becomes less interesting after implementing a grappling hook. How is that even possible? Syndicate is such a dull and monotonous slog, I can't help but think that this is the exact experience that comes to mind for people who aren't that familiar with this series and just assume all the games suck. Do not play this. If you want to give Assassin's Creed an honest chance, play the Ezio trilogy instead. They aren't representative of what AC has become but those games are everything Syndicate wishes it could be.

I've never been more awed by a game than when I first finished Katana Zero. I was absolutely speechless when the credits started playing. Part of me is tempted not to write this review whatsoever. This is the most blind I've been able to go into a game since I was a little kid. I didn't know how other people felt about it, I didn't know what the premise was, I didn't even know what genre it belonged to. I quite literally had zero expectations and that allowed everything to be a surprise to me and I wish to preserve that for other people as much as possible. If you're reading this and are still undecided on whether or not to take the plunge: go for it. Katana Zero is both short and cheap, there's no reason not to give it a try. I absolutely cannot recommend this game enough.

"Gameplay is king". It's a sentiment I've seen shared here and there over the years, usually to condemn games whose best aspect isn't their gameplay. I do understand the idea to an extent. People are perfectly willing to overlook poor writing in a game or when a game doesn't have much in the way of plot but it's way harder to ask people to overlook when a game plays terribly. At the same time though I believe the statement is misguided. One of the greatest strengths of videogames as a medium is flexibility. They're able to provide so many different experiences across so many different genres. To dismiss a game or even an entire category of game merely for having different priorities than others is very reductive if you ask me. The Last of Us is a game that's incredibly cinematic, narrative driven, and cutscene heavy, all of which combined can be a dealbreaker for some. In my opinion at least a great game doesn't need to tell a great story and it also doesn't need to have great gameplay but if it lacks one of those it has to make up for it by having the other. The gameplay is far from this game's best quality, but in my eyes that doesn't matter so much when compared to the rest of its achievements. The story it tells is simple but it's conveyed magnificently, cementing it as a classic.

P5 was my first foray into Persona but P4 was the game that cemented my love for the series and allowed Persona to become my favorite video game franchise, even if I haven't played all of the games. I first started playing P4 only a few weeks after finishing P5 which in some ways might've been to its detriment but in others ultimately served to enhance the experience. The setup for P5 is almost the complete opposite of P4. In P5 you play as somebody from the countryside who's forced to move to a big city for a year. In P4 you play as someone from a big city who's forced to move to the countryside for a year. This symmetry lends well to playing these games in close proximity to each other, even if the transition is a bit off putting initially. I found P5 extremely overwhelming when I first started off while in P4 I found it frustrating and honestly felt that the game was a bit antiquated. Like Inaba itself though, the more time you spend with P4 the more of its charm you're able to discover, charm which isn't immediately obvious. There's a certain magic to it that P5 simply wasn't able to capture in my eyes, even if it was an extremely high quality game. I didn't even grow up playing P4 and yet it manages to evoke these strong feelings of nostalgia within me. With the release of P3 Reload people are speculating about the possibility of P4 being remade. I almost don't want that to happen because I know that no matter what improvements are made I'm not going to like it the same way I do the original. Persona 4 is an absolute gem and truly a one of a kind experience. Not to mention it probably has my favorite soundtrack out of any video game.