I'm not entirely sure what my idea of the Yakuza series was before playing this, but I was entirely wrong for ever thinking it was boring or I wouldn't be into it. This is one of the most ambitious games I've ever played, and while it's not perfect in everything it does, it has a lot of fun with all of it. The story constantly goes between hilarious writing (a feat few games can say they've done) to genuinely compelling drama and back. Side missions have so many entertaining characters and a ton of thought put into them. There's so many minigames I'm not sure that I saw them all. My only real complaints are that the combat has some wild difficulty spikes in some of the encounters with a lot of enemies at once, and I ended up turning the difficulty down mid-playthrough despite mostly enjoying it on Hard, and also the ending of the story wasn't the most satisfying and felt kind of forced to line up with the first game in the series, but the journey to get there was still great. Easily a game I could recommend to anyone, I couldn't help but gush about it after nearly every time I played it, I had a fantastic time.

Quadrilateral Cowboy is sick as hell and is a shockingly neat game concept for how obvious it feels in retrospect. I can't really think of many games that try to capture the feeling of heist movies, and this does that perfectly while blending it with very open ended hacking mechanics that let you solve puzzles in some really creative ways. There were so many cool moments in my playthrough where I found a neat unintended solution to a puzzle, and the puzzles mostly aren't very hard to solve in a straightforward way but it's hard not to just have fun with all of the crazy tools and gadgets the game gives you. I have no idea why I put this off for so long after enjoying Blendo's earlier games. It oozes the same style as those but is so much more substantial in the gameplay and scope of the whole thing. This game probably isn't for everyone but it hit perfectly for me.

Echoes of the Eye is very hard to talk about for me, it's a followup to my favorite game of all time, and in that sense it's slightly disappointing. How could it not be? Outer Wilds ended on a perfect note and didn't leave much room for anything else. How well this ended up fitting into the base game despite that is commendable, and surprisingly isn't where my problems with it lie. EotE leans much more into horror than Outer Wilds, and while it does mostly do that effectively, some of the tropes it falls into and some of the mechanics it uses were very disappointing and I felt like this game was better than resorting to that. Things like jump scares, and having to solve puzzles by trial and error much more than in the base game (which if you've played the base game you could imagine how annoying that would be in this sort of game) really bring down the experience of this. It's still sitting here at 3rd on my list for the year, and that's because it is still great in many ways. The sense of wonder and exploration is still very much alive from Outer Wilds, and the first time I entered the new area for the DLC was mindblowing. I still had a really good time most of the time I was playing it and the additions it makes to the story of the base game are smart and emotionally impactful. An easy recommendation to anyone who enjoyed Outer Wilds, but I do wish it could have been just a little bit better.

It's pretty crazy how good Psychonauts 2 turned out. I wasn't even the biggest fan of the first game, I did play it long after it came out, and it was cool but not one of my favorite 3D Platformers or anything. This game manages to not only keep the spirit of that game alive, but elevate it in every way. The controls, level design, visuals, characters, and writing all feel like they've come out of another world where the AAA industry kept making good high-budget platformers ever since the early 3D era. I feel like I don't have much to say about this one except that it executed what it was going for perfectly, it's consistently surprising and creative throughout, and it's a fun game more people need to play.

The Forgotten City is a very unique and ambitious game, it's a Time Loop game that doesn't shy away from the difficult problems of that genre, but tackles them head on. Things like having a lot of characters with tons of contextual and fully voice acted dialogue, or containing you to a relatively small area but still having the story and your discoveries unfold naturally over time are really impressive to me. The story was a lot of fun and was compelling throughout. It's a bit messy in spots, such as the (pretty rare) combat feeling carried over from its days as a mod, but that doesn't detract from the overall experience and it was still one of my favorite games of the year.

Alien Soldier is a really cool game that simultaneously feels like it hasn't aged at all, but also it likely wouldn't be made today due to how brutally difficult it feels starting out. A boss rush game that dumps you right into the thick of things is an intimidating experience, and it's not helped by the number of options you have at your disposal. Once you start to learn the game though you'll fly through it and it's a great time. Someday I'd like to go back to it to attempt a "Superhard" run without infinite retries, but even just playing through it once was a really fun and unique experience.

Splitgate is the most I've gotten into a multiplayer shooter in a while. It feels like a throwback to classic deathmatch shooters with the simple but effective premise of "Halo + Portal", which is executed amazingly. It definitely has a learning curve to it, and I wasn't as big on it when I first started but it grew on me a lot over time until I was playing it every day for a few months, and will probably return to it next year.

A very natural extension of the previous Spider-Man game, there's not a lot to say here that hasn't already been said about that, but both games are good enough that I was totally down to return to that world for another round. It continues to have a pretty solid story for a AAA game, and very fun movement and combat that make it a great game to spend hours 100%ing.

A very fun throwback to Ninja Gaiden with just the right amount of modern conveniences in the controls. I swear it's not just because this is published by Yacht Club that I'd call this the best NES game since Shovel Knight. Straightforward but very enjoyable action platformer, I wish there were more good games like this.

Holy shit they made a new 2D Metroid game! And it's pretty good! There are some drawbacks here like the slightly awkward controls, and most of the boss fights until the end of the game being boring, but I was so excited the whole time to be playing a new Metroid game for the first time again. As much as some of the newer indie metroidvanias have surpassed Nintendo's ability at this point, there's something special about getting something new in this world again.