This game really brings forth some truly deep existential questions, such as: "Why did the chicken cross the road?". But yeah, this game is basically worse Frogger but with a chicken.

I remember a period as a kid where I went to my grandmas house a lot and my mom wouldn't let me bring my Snes or PS1 over there, but she had a 2600 that I think was my uncles when he was a kid. It had some random games, even some iconic classics like Donkey Kong, Pole Position, and Dig Dug, but a lot of these games were quite difficult for me at the time compared to what I was used to at home, not the least of which is the nightmare which is Pitfall.

I enjoyed playing those sometimes, but I tended to get further and more enjoyment out of the random monotonous simple sports games and the game I probably played the most was this game, Freeway. As I mentioned above, this game is a worse Frogger. I've played Frogger a few times in my life but it wasn't any kind of staple for me, but Frogger has the added layer of the platform moving river segment to each level and encourages horizontal movement more because of it, Freeway is a simple two direction highway and because of it the programming is much more predictable and the game is a lot simpler.

It isn't free of difficulty at times, but it was simple enough for me to play it pretty repetitively compared to some other games I had at my fingertips. Sure Dig Dug was significantly more fun, but getting far in it was always a bit more stressful, so Freeway was probably the game I spent idle time wasting on that 2600 the most ultimately.

Is it a good game? Not really, doesn't stand out much even for its era. But it saved me from some childhood boredom more than a few times and that's worth something!

I have so much trouble rating Shadow the Hedgehog. As a prime specimen of an awkward, nerdy, wannabe edgy preteen in the mid 2000s who wore those silk button shirts with flaming dragons and shit on them, who watched entirely too much anime and liked to play with swords with my friends; This was the game I was waiting for my whole life up until that point. *I was the exact target audience for this game.

There's an amusing irony in the fact that my mom let me play things like GTA and Mortal Kombat regularly at this point already, but I didn't just want to play violent edgy video games... Bringing the violent edge to a beloved childhood franchise was undeniably a pronounced subconscious desire.

I wasn't as* in to Sonic as some of my friends were, but I played most of the Genesis games growing up, because of friends I kept up with the Adventure games in to Heroes in my elementary years, and there were aspects of them I liked at the time. Just not to a crazy degree and it wasn't a top favorite franchise. Of course my edge infused self did like Shadow though... So when this was coming out some like minded friends and I were hyped. It was a first week purchase for me after convincing my mom to give it to me before Christmas so I could play it sooner, and boy did I have a blast with it at the time. It wasn't my favorite game ever even back then but it was my obsession for weeks, killing humans in a kids game, Sonic characters cursing, crazy aliens dominating the world, all the different weapons, the music, the edgy ass story centered on Shadow coming to terms with the duality of his identity, the branching story paths that mirror that. I explored this game for all it was worth and had a blast with it.

Now obviously even just a few years later than that looking back at my time and passion for the game was enough to always make me cringe and I tried to put memories of it behind me. Now in my mid 20s I'm generally much more forgiving to my former misgivings on my ludicrously cringe youth, and taking both my appreciation for Shadow The Hedgehog, and the facets of the game itself in to account with my current mindset I'm much less harsh on both as a result.

My main reaction to this game nowadays is purely how fucking funny it is. Everything from my feelings to it as a child and the fact this game even exists is genuinely amusing to me. And I don't even really mean that in a purely condescending way, there's something charming to be appreciated about this game in the exact over the top edge it's ultimately going for. It is exactly what a game done in that middle Sonic era Adventure/Heroes style centered on Shadow should have been. However this era of Sonic in general is a controversial one of course and Shadow is no exception to that controversy, but I do think it manages to stand out among them as something different that does fit well in to the framework this 3D era of Sonic had set up despite its obviously different tone. Does that mean it's actually good a good game though? Not really lol.

I've revisited Shadow just for the hell of it a few times over the years and I've never really made it far in it each time I've tried. I'd barely say it is remotely a good game for its time. The music is actually pretty solid to me still but not nearly the bombastic soundtrack of my life I perceived as in my youth. It has decent ideas in the level design here and there and while the story is hilarious, the branching story paths are actually well integrated and give an interesting pace that, when I loved the game as a kid, made exploring all it had to offer feel very rewarding. In this way I think it accomplishes a lot of what it must have set out to do and while it isn't great I do respect it.

Because of the cringe I felt for it through my teens I really have absolutely no nostalgia for Shadow the Hedgehog the game itself, and I'm also normally not a very nostalgic person at all in general. I have great memories of the time I did love this game immensely however and as a result I look back on the game and myself with a type of charmed hilarity. That brings me back to why I find it so difficult to rate, it is a bad game, closer to being so bad it's good than anywhere near being genuinely good and even the ironic enjoyment of is much more conceptual in its very existence than in practice actually playing it. With that said I do hold a type of nostalgia for it, at least for the time I experienced it more than the game itself. Its impact on my youth and the memories I have of the game are undeniable, and I honestly have come full circle in to appreciating the value in that time of my life, and, in turn, this ridiculous fucking game. The fact that it happened to come out, and I happened to be able to experience it at that absolutely perfect time for me is something pretty amazing that I think about sometimes.

5.5/10 for a very neutral score, not a good game, its existence is hilarious, but I admire my time enjoying it in my youth quite a lot.

Yoshi's Island is something genuinely special to me. There's many reasons it is one of my favorite games of all time that I don't even know if I could begin to properly put in to words. The main reason that comes to mind of why I think this game is so special really just comes back to how genuine and experimental it is within its simple framework.

It is almost the anti-Mario Mario game, it builds upon the formula and design sense, but mostly reinvents the entire gameplay loop and formula of the series up until that point. If Super Mario World advanced the ideas of the first 3 games to a new generation, Yoshi's Island almost rejects them. The fact that Nintendo ultimately followed Super Mario World with this specifically is truly a special moment in time.

Everything from the music, the art direction, the level design, the gameplay itself, is such a step away from the rest of the series that I can understand why it can be a divisive game for some people. However, it is for these exact reasons Yoshi's Island manages to do things that no other Mario game, no other Nintendo game, and just about no other video game period has done for me personally. It is simple, but so nuanced in all creative aspects it has and manages to be something truly special.

Yoshi's Island is unbridled, but somehow still immensely refined, creativity incarnate, and these fun creative aspects it innately hold make it a game that I can come back to whenever I want or need to and it has remained close my heart for a long time and probably will continually.

Kirby Super Star is an exercise in chaotic unchecked creativity in an otherwise (until that point especially) pretty straightforward game series, and I love the game specifically for that facet of it. Especially after Super Star, Kirby has always been a series that does what it wants to an extent, but most games in the series have more specific aspects and concepts it sticks with and experiment with and expand on over the whole game. Super Star kind of throws that out the window and does whatever it wants, for as long as it wants to, and in whatever direction it wants to go, and I have a lot respect for its chaotic nature in that way.

Is it repetitive at times? Oh yes. Are some parts clearly weaker than others? Absolutely. Are some sections close to being annoying or downright bullshit? Definitely. But despite all that I still revisit it often and always enjoy my time with it immensely. Most of my favorite games are games I can connect to enough to look past the faults I've found with them over time and Super Star is no exception to that, and it what it obviously lacks in story and theme compared to some of my favorite things, it makes up for in just how genuinely fun and creative it always is for me no matter how much I play it.

VA-11 hall-a is such a pure and genuine gaming experience to go through. There's a lot to be said about the story, themes and characters, but such analyses get long winded (especially when I do them hahah) and could be much better handled by someone more eloquent than I.

One thing about that game that greatly struck me and that I do really want to touch on is the wonderful simplistic nature of the gameplay loop. You, as Jill, make drinks, you have conversations, you go home, pay bills, buy things Jill wants to help her focus, and go back to work and make more drinks to experience more conversations and go through the character driven story. All with the use of simplified interfaces and clicks of buttons. The drink interface has some minor nuances to it and you're given varying amounts of freedom to what drinks you should serve a customer, ranging from choices based on their tastes and vague suggestions, down to them downright asking for specifically what they want, you don't have to listen to them and there's room to experiment, but you usually should. There's optional things you can read at home, that amount to passing time before work for Jill, and greatly enhance the worldbuilding and the characters to an extent. And there's things you can buy you don't need, but your decisions with money should be weighed carefully in case there's a bill Jill has to pay down the line.

In this basic limited framework you're given, and the suggestions you should mostly obey to get desired results, the player agency and options you have are very limited. In Va-11 hall-a's case these limits aren't really a bad thing at all however. Because the game is defined by what you, or more specifically, Jill, needs to and should do, above what you can potentially do. This simple loop of playing it integrates so well with the characters, their dialogues, the cyberpunk setting and other related background themes in the game, and highlights a type of melancholy beauty in trivial and mundane existence in an unforgiving corporate world. It is an astoundingly human experience heightened by its simplicity of playing it and going through the motions, even more than any complexity in its writing. It does an incredible amount with very little and it is probably the greatest impression the game left me with. I couldn't imagine it being nearly as great to me if it was just a straightforward VN with choices and reading, and in that way it specifically uses its medium in among the best possible ways, not despite, but specifically because of that simple and pure approach to its gameplay.

I put off VA-11 hall-a for a very long time as I tend to always do with most VN like games, and I'm incredibly happy to finally have been able to experience it. However, I don't really regret putting it off since I ended up playing it at what I think is just the right time for me. It is a game experience I don't think I'll forget anytime soon specifically because of how well every aspect of it serves each other to highlight its beautifully simple concepts and themes.

Panic! is an obscure Sega CD game with a "plot" motivated by absolute nonsense and a weird fixation on Easter Island Moai heads a couple decades before the internet got ahold of them as a meme. It is also probably among the most understandably hit or miss and "not for everyone" things I've ever encountered. In the same way I find it one of the most entertaining experiences I've ever had, someone else could just as easily be annoyed and even bored by it.

Panic!'s "gameplay" is quite literally just pushing buttons. You end up in a scenario, you have a choice of buttons to choose from a interface for that scene, you press one, something happens, and if you press the right one you move on the next scenario (of which the connection with the one you just came from is dubious at best). There's different amounts of buttons for each scene ranging from just 2 or 3 for a few, to over a dozen rarely in some cases. Also there are multiple different scenarios that are possible outcomes of progression in some scenes, so there's a sort of tiered branching tree and navigating to the end through the tree with your button presses is the goal. In theory you could maybe get insanely lucky and pick the right button every time and the game would simply be pushing buttons through loosely connected weird settings to the very end with nothing very entertaining at all except the art and opening/closing scenes of the story.

The real "substance" of Panic! comes from pushing the wrong buttons. When you push a button that doesn't result in you progressing onward to another scene, usually some event happens, then you're taken back to the button interface you were just at. So some levels can become a process of elimination (or you push all the wrong buttons intentionally to see what each scenario has to offer). 90% of the "wrong" button events do something with the scenario you're currently in;. Let's use an example of a scene of a group of buttons for some reason hooked up to a T-rex skeleton in a museum; one button can have the skeleton try to eat you, another might make it do a goofy dance, another might have a bigger skeleton chase the T-rex off or the like. Two more rare possibilities exist in specific scenes as well. One of these seems like you're going to progress but instead you cut to a scene where you get some really odd one liner from one of the very bizarre NPCs that inhabit the game's strange world, then back your buttons as before. Another are boobytrapped buttons which are very rare and present in only a fraction of the games total scenarios, that for some reason cause the destruction of a real world monument in the game like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or something. I can't fathom why this happens, but it does, so you can either try to avoid them, or collect all acts of terrorism which the handily game tracks for you! Then there are also some choice that progress you sideways or backwards along the tree of scenes and even some sections you can end up in loops. So the fun of the game is actually navigating back and forth through this labyrinth of scenarios with your button presses and seeing what weirdness the game has to offer.

The greatest strength of the game's value as entertainment does not exactly come from this simplistic gameplay loop that can understandably get old or frustrating when not witnessing new events and getting stuck in loops or seeing the same scenes again and again; it comes from exploring the scenes for what they have to offer and taking in the bizarre tone, atmosphere and sense of humor present in the wrong button choices in each scenario. It ranges from basic cartoonish humor, and something not unlike Terry Gilliam's humor found in the animated sections of Monty Python, to things that are downright genuinely surreal and odd. In this way Panic!'s greatest strength is its pure, raw creativity. It can be dumb, it can hit or miss, it can be really weird and downright nonsense, but it makes for an unforgettable experience that, if you can appreciate it, is incredibly creative and ridiculously fun. Genuinely one of my favorite and most entertaining experiences with this entire medium simply for how genuinely creative and strange it is.

At first I wasn't quite sure what to think of Night in the Woods. Due to a hand injury I've been on a run of going through my backlog playing simple well written games with easy controls, and it playing was for the most part the exact type of not-too-strenuous, but still rewarding gameplay I had been looking for so that was nice. The first day or two in game actually going through the story was what I was more hesitant about at first.

Even with their younger age, I found some of the characters and their interactions slightly cringey at first. The all too common indie game focus on themes of a anxiety ridden young adult seemed forced. And the small town setting seemed bland and too charming and idyllic despite it's dying nature. Ultimately these things are still in the game to an extent regardless of my current perceptions on them, but as the game went on and peeled back more of the simple but effective layers it had, these aspects of the story and characters became a lot more nuanced.

The themes NitW explores are nothing totally new to gaming, or even general fiction that deals with similar settings and characters, but it approaches and explores them in way that sets it apart, and the simple gameplay and themes ultimately are portrayed in very palpable and complex ways from the perspective of its protagonist.

Mae was a character I didn't much like at first and didn't grasp on too much. She was slightly annoying, a bit selfish, a bit rude and demanding of her friends and family, sometimes cringey and out of tune with the world. I was probably much the same in my late teens often, but it's a difficult perspective to put yourself in place of when you're a bit older and took some time to fully appreciate playing from her perspective. But I honestly grew to accept the story shouldn't be told any other way. The way the Narrative is framed through Mae's perspective of events and understanding leading the plot the directions it goes, and her troubling dreams that break up each day of the game, creates the atmosphere and beats that set the approach to the themes and the small town setting of Possum Springs in the story apart.

Mae's dying, small, rust belt centered home town of Possum Springs serves as another kind of "protagonist" to the story of NitW. The history of the town and varied characters that fill its streets all with their own perspective on the town as place to populate, work, and build a life offer some of the most complex postulation that can be done about the games themes. The town is as much of a living, breathing central character as Mae herself is, and despite my reservations with the setting at first; the way it opens up the history and perception towards the town as the story goes on, ends up being just as central to the plot as Mae's own quirks as a protagonist. Possum Springs manages to escape both the perfect small American town vibe of hallmark movies, or the creepy rural small town tone found in endless horror movies, while still being both of those things to an extent. It has enough of the nuance, ups and downs of real small town America to get its point across; while still fitting unbelievably neatly in to the ideas of the narrative itself.

Night in the Woods didn't quite reach the thematic highs of some of the games I've played recently, but it was still a memorable time and gave me many things to think about since I finished it. It's a game that I think could benefit from a replay one day to experience more of what the town and residents of Possum Springs has to offer and explore some of the reflected parallels of Mae, Possum Springs and the people who inhabit the town that much more, because I do think there's a lot more to find under the surface there than I expected there to be.

Windwaker is one of those games I have replayed innumerable times throughout my life.

Replaying a game can sometimes make or break your experience with it. You can often wonder if your enjoyment of a game, especially one you played as a child, was just nostalgia, or if there was really something there. I’m absolutely the type of person that as I replay specific games more and more, (which is something I do less as I get older for better or worse) I tend to analyze and criticize them more and notice clearly what games lack to me, rather than appreciating what they do have occasionally. I have done this with every other 3D Zelda game ad nauseum. For example: I've played Ocarina of Time so many times I’ve gotten pretty close to actively not liking it as much anymore and destroying all nostalgia I once had for it growing up. Windwaker is probably the Zelda I've played the most, I got, played, and beat it within weeks of its original release, and I’ve replayed it most likely between 15 and 20 times since then, sometimes replaying it back-to-back at once or multiple times in the same year. I believe the first time playing it was my fourth game in the series after ALttP, OoT and Majora's Mask, and I have played (and of course, replayed) almost every other game in the entire series since.

In comparison to every other 3D Zelda game, WW might be the one that is clearly "lacking" the most in some respects, it obviously has issues with pacing in many aspects of its story and even gameplay, it has a noticeable lack of dungeons and even some content in general compared to half the 3D games at least. Although, if I am being honest, of all the games I've replayed to death and gotten more critical of each replay, and essentially crushed all nostalgia for, Windwaker might be the game that works for me the most despite any issues it may have for me. I legitimately do not care about anything this game clearly lacks, and how clearly choppy the pacing of some aspects of it are; because what it does have is so concise and to the point thematically and amazing to experience for me personally, that its faults really do not bother me whatsoever. No matter how much I can and try to critique it, it is among the only games that those critiques don't really harm my overall opinion of what is there in the game. Of course, I could argue it doesn't achieve doing nearly as much with what little it has as a game like Majora's Mask before it did, and I'd say it is absolutely much less directly innovative to gaming as a whole than OoT was at its time; but for me it thematically surpasses both of them, particularly OoT which WW builds off the most directly.

Ocarina of Time is a game about, well... time. Link and Zelda falter in their original naive plan to stop Ganondorf and doom the world and the passage of time becomes an antagonizing force when it seals Link, and he awakens in a world that is conquered by his enemy. The time between that is forever lost to Link and he is unable to directly stop these events as they happen. Link then weaponize that very passage of time against their foes and secures a brighter future by altering it and affecting things in the past before they happen instead. Link, with Zelda's unseen guidance, wields the past, against a hostile and bleak future. Majora’s Mask goes in a direction that takes some of the ideas from OoT and confronts you with these themes about time in the form of an idea of loss and getting back something unattainable and moving on. Windwaker addresses a similar idea but takes it much further and uses these dynamics between the past, present and future in a much more nuanced way in my opinion, that, while not reaching the heights of reflecting this in the gameplay like OoTT does, it manages to build upon OoT's thematic foundation while almost directly rejecting its principles and approach to them in a way that holds up to me astonishingly well.

Windwaker at its core is essentially about the stagnation of adherence to nostalgia and obsession with glory days of the past and rejecting it to build and appreciate something new. A new world, a new beginning, a rejection of a past that has no place in the current world and stops it from growing on its own. It is essentially a direct answer to the story and world OoT gives you. I don't think it's saying "OoT sucks", or anything of the sort, but more that it takes the ideas it presented in OoT and pushes them in a much more interesting direction while directly using its events and themes as a point of reference. It is sort of a duality of rejecting and simultaneously appreciating the work it builds off so much, which is fascinating to me. Windwaker dares to reject the traditions of the Hero of Time, and the world of Hyrule reflected in the obsession and longing with the past that the King and Gannondorf share in different ways. It challenges the harmful stagnation of nostalgia and longing for an unattainable past. Instead urging its heroes to create a new and better world free from the shackles of the old. As I mentioned before, Windwaker is not nearly the innovative game in its structure that Majora's Mask is at its core, in fact it is honestly something much closer to a reflection of OoT's formula in a new direction, but it does manage to have a beautiful story, world and themes, and a remarkable sense of expression and creativity that I love more and more each time I experience it. It is ultimately a game with astounding heart and soul in its core themes and concepts despite some minor flaws and empty space in its actual gaming experience.

With this strong will Windwaker exemplifies to build off but partially reject its predecessor’s approach and go against nostalgia; the negative reception to its artstyle and perceived changes in tone that came with its release, and the constant comparison and desire for something more like “OoT 2”, are then doubly ironic in a way. In story, gameplay and tone, Windwaker continues to build off and go new directions from OoT in incredibly creative ways. The dungeons, the overworld, the puzzles, the major locations, the aesthetic style, the characters, they all take this idea of taking the foundation of OoT and doing something new and quite different with it. It was the perfect game to accompany the Gamecube as the start of a new era and show the unique innovation that come with that newness. It reflects these themes of allowing innovation to take hold over nostalgia in the very essence of its existence and the actual experience of playing it. The beautiful cel-shaded graphics and masterful use of lighting and color in the game which were vilified around its release, and that amusingly make the game hold up perhaps among the best of any game its age aesthetically, ultimately act as a testament to its innovation and acceptance of new things. Exploring and mapping out a mysterious ocean world and the sense of discovery that comes from traversing a world so vastly different from Hyrule shows these ideas in its gameplay incredibly well also. Despite the fact that parts of its pacing does make it quite obvious things were cut from the game just by playing it over numerous times, I think the final result is a wonderful and concise experience that is very thematically consistent with the rejection of nostalgia and hope for a brighter future paved with new ideas reflected in all aspects of it.

Perhaps there's a hypocritic irony in my inability to criticize the game as heavily possibly being a type of nostalgia of its own, but that doesn't matter to me much either honestly. I think for me it's more important that Windwaker is the one game in the series, and one of those rare pieces of media in general, that instills and brings forth a very deeply personal feeling and emotional response in me no matter how much I experience it. It still retains a resonance with who I am as a person at my core and encourages me to experience new things instead of holding on to nothing but the old, which is a powerful and important feeling to who I am. In that way perhaps my willingness to destroy some of my own nostalgia with criticism comes from Windwaker instilling this ideology in me in the first place. I think one of the reasons its themes have become more enjoyable to me instead of less, is because its ideas are the direct result of getting older and maturing as a person. Instead of halting progress and personal growth and adhering to nostalgia, the hope for a future comes in accepting great new things and changes for the better which Windwaker illustrated wonderfully to me from a young age whether I understood it at the time or not.

A simple but beautiful game that resonates with me personally on a profound level, and that has been a part of me for nearly 20 years now and will most likely remain with me continually going forward.

As far as the story and themes of FFVI goes, there isn't much I can say that probably hasn't been said vastly better before. I think it's one of, if not the absolute top, best games in the series on a thematic level. It still carries a bit of the narrative and character simplicity the rest of the early FF games do, but it uses that to it's advantage to tell a story much bigger than any individual character in it and creates a very empathetic and human story about the world at large that's mirrored in it's large and varied cast.

However, of the first 6 FF games, 4 of which I've finished, it's probably in the bottom half of my experience actually playing it. This was obvious my first time going through, but even more my second playthrough where I tried to do everything. I feel, especially compared to V, it sacrifices creativity and fun of gameplay systems, for the story and characters it's trying to achieve. It's essentially a mirror of the same dynamic III and IV had earlier, of which I also enjoy playing III significantly more despite it's glaring faults. I honestly probably enjoy III more than VI honestly.

As opposed to the really creative and rich adaptive Job system V has, VI answers this with a very large cast of characters that fill different roles. There's parts of the game this aspect shines, especially towards the end when you can really adapt and choose different combinations that should always include Mog no matter what if you're a real one. Conversely there's many many parts of the game that railroad you in to using specific characters for narrative's sake and it was personally grating to me quite a bit. The lack of anything unique in the combat other than having a bunch of characters you can't even choose most of the game makes it one of the more bland time turn based systems I've ever experienced personally.

With that said it absolutely is one of the games where the story saves it enough for me to not remotely dislike it. It's more a personal issue I have with actually playing an otherwise great game so it's something I have to acknowledge.

Got trigger finger in my thumb (didn't even know that was possible) and probably can't play games on a controller anymore for a couple months from this game... worth.

On a serious note (that did really happen though, it was more the culmination of a very long binge of playing games on my PS4 a couple months straight culminating in Bloodborne which I refused to put down as my thumb starting getting worse, typing this with my thumb in a brace hahah) I'm not a big fan of the Souls games personally, I've tried the three other then 3 so far and only made it far in Dark Souls 1 before dropping it. I respect them a lot for what they are but 1: while I thought the story presentation was neat I could never really get in to the story lore and worlds themselves, and 2: I've never been one of those people who defines gaming by my difficult achievements and the general challenge and difficulty of "gitting gud". Sekiro and Bloodborne remain the only modern iteration of this type of game in general I've ever actually pushed myself to completing.

Something with Bloodborne in particular clicked with me, I'm sure I undoubtedly approached in the right mood at the right time, and the fact I didn't have to fight even the most challenging bosses in the main game or DLC more than 5 times never made the game test my patience with it's difficulty thankfully. But it honestly wasn't really the gameplay and bosses that sucked me in to Bloodborne in the way that the Souls games didn't. For Sekiro I do think the vastly different gameplay free of RPG mechanics helped me a little with enjoying how nuanced it's style of play was, but for Bloodborne despite being faster and free of shields, it wasn't that different from my experience with Souls playing it.

It was almost entirely, at least 90%, the atmosphere of the game that kept me going. That atmosphere eventually grew better and better throughout the game and DLC and became something even greater. The wonderful evolving style, aesthetic and atmosphere became a truly interesting world and subtle story for me over time. That world and subtle story grew in to rich lore and fantastic conceptual depth. That rich lore and conceptual depth became themes and ideas in the narrative and lore and world that are actually astoundingly fascinating to me. Even the first Dark Souls never quite reached this point for me in my anecdotal experience with it, though I can see how it can for some. Just for me personally Bloodborne had this beautifully vague but tangible thematic factor I latched on to.

It eventually became a game I enjoyed thinking about much more than actually playing, and I did rather enjoy playing it, which was surprising. Definitely a very worthwhile experience overall... even despite the thumb injury. Hahah.

Saying "I like Postal 2" isn't a very simple thing to bring myself to say... "Like" is a strong word, and by almost no means is this game "good" in my traditional experience with that word either...

What word that can describe this game then? I guess the best way to describe my experience with this game is that it was well... an "experience".

If you've played it or even know of it, I'm sure you know this game is just fucking crazy. It's over the top, campy, edgy, backwards as hell. It's early 2000s edge concentrated in a game. In a non ironic sense it's those weird awkward edgy kids on the school bus who listened to Slipknot, quoted Cartman from South Park while missing the irony of his character, and obsessed with wrestlers like Sting and Cain a little too much. In a more ironic sense there's some extremely forced and on the nose but still fun bits of social satire and commentary about the morality of media going on under the surface of this game along with a healthy does of genuine weirdness in the approach to it. But that strange duality and appeal is honestly what makes it such a interesting time to play it.

I will literally never forget my time with this game, I don't know how I ever possibly could. And that at least is something tangible this game absolutely has.

Extremely unpopular opinion... I am not a big fan of the Witcher series much at all, but despite it's clunkiness and dated aspects in the characters and some of the tone, this is probably my favorite of the three games in the series.

I won't go in to a rant about it too much, but essentially I just like the story and simplicity of the conflict in this one the most. It stands on it's own incredibly well and the story of both Geralt's identity and ultimate confrontation with the Wild Hunt and the more personal and isolated unrest happening in the city stuck with me the most of any game in the series.

I probably have more minor nitpicks with this game than the others, but the story itself is the only one in the series I really actively enjoy a lot.

Took me 3 or 4 times restarting this game to finally sit all the way through it. It ended up being a memorable experience absolutely though.

Crackdown isn't really much of anything special aside from it's super powers, the feeling it's open world brings to the table isn't anything that wasn't already done with the early 3D GTA games at the start of the previous generation. It also harkens back to some of the Spider Man games of that prior era in giving new approaches to getting around the world. But in turn it lacks some of the unique identity both those series had in their stories and worlds. There's nothing very unique or alive or remotely interesting about the crime addled world Crackdown just throws you in to. The hardware advances of PS3/360 era really saw a rush of games centered on superpowers and open worlds and Crackdown probably lacks the most individual identity in this entire genre.

With that said, there doesn't much need to be. What Crackdown lacks in identity and tone, it makes up for in the fun of actually playing it and the honestly astonishingly good sense of player progression it has. Crackdown isn't some nuanced super power story, nor does it have any kind of unique gimmick to be had in it's approach to it's power system. It is really just a straightforward generic sandbox filled with enemies for you to kill and obstacles to surmount so you can get stronger and better at the game at your leisure.

Rarely in a game, especially in that era, have I enjoyed the sense of climbing buildings to get some collectable. But in Crackdown those collectables were tied to the progression of making your character better at climbing and jumping. Eventually running faster than a supercar and leaping to the tops of buildings in a single jump is it's own reward. Effortlessly throwing semi trucks makes all the effort of drop kicking endless boring goons over and over worth it.

It would almost be one of the more forgettable games I've ever experienced, but there really was just a sense of fun there that I eventually latched on to that gives me pretty great memories of playing it back then despite it's generic shortcomings.