After stopping my car at the 15th big door I need to go find a button to open and then oh no it's unpowered we gotta do a light electricity puzzle to get that working and drive onto the next big industrial door I realized this is actually one of the games most directly pulling from HL2-era Valve level design. I live for that shit. Between that and all the things I recognized and desperately wanted to know more about having played Control first, I spent the whole game Leo pointing at the screen.

Really great and bold especially for its time, but really should've been much more of an adventure game with a bit of puzzling and combat sprinkled in than the full-on third person shooter it often feels the need to be. Whether you see that as console action games reaching higher in terms of storytelling than was typically done or as a 3D adventure with combat stapled on to appeal to a mass market is on you, I suppose. That focus also lead to de-emphasizing their beautiful yet mundane rural setting that draws me to this the most. My favorite moments were those spent looking around in the kid's section of a library or national park vistor's center, not popping a thousand not-zombies.

I'll be real I just got this because it was 50 cents and the artwork is really cute so I'm glad to have it on my home screen.

What's actually here is the most basic implementation of something you could call a roguelike platformer with uninspiring level generation, mashy combat, and obnoxious Spelunky-like insta-kills from spikes that are everywhere. I wanted to finish this for the sake of the log but it isn't really worth that. Still, the adorable spritework and thumbnail art were worth the half dollar.

This is truly excellent just as you would expect from any souls game, but only getting to this after playing Sekiro due to the platform exclusivity means experiencing it as a half-measure rather than the full flip on the formula introduced in Demon's Souls that Bloodborne must have felt like on release. While its pro-aggression "take what you need" changes are deeply satisfying, there's a lot of legacy systems and options left intact which don't really point toward that goal, and by the end you'll find yourself waiting around for the exploitable attack to parry rather than going in and tearing shit up like it wants you to. There's tons of big cool slow weapons that if you choose to use them completely nullify the smelling blood and advantage-pushing gameplay. And what's up with the vials? Why is THIS the game where they let you tank everything? I can play a thousand games that play like Dark Souls and be more than happy, but Bloodborne's rebellion against its older siblings is incomplete, still living in their shadow. With nearly all of Bloodborne's mechanical goals I can't help but think "this is great, but DAMN did Sekiro push this 10 steps further."

Aesthetically, this is one of the most well-realized settings Fromsoft has put together. "You should do cocaine about it" doctors and grimy victorian cities slowly give way to forbidden knowledge and eldritch horrors as you lose your damn mind and it's a wonder to take in. Problem is, the main area of this game has a relatively poor sense of space compared to its sister games, taking away from the potential impact of the setting. The different nodes are indistinct and not the most memorable, with the middle sections all blending together in my mind. Each area is beautiful (despite the distracting aliasing all over the place, jesus this deserves a rerelease) in its own right, but there isn't all that much visual variety, with pretty much the same color palette throughout.

The bosses don't help, as there's a whole lot that are too easy for their own good and again, aren't super memorable by Fromsoft standards. That isn't to say that they aren't fun to fight in the moment or that they're complete misses, they're a blast like nearly every souls boss, but most of the ones I'll be excited to revisit whenever I pick this back up are in the DLC. Vicar Amelia is the coolest design though, holy shit. All that said, I'm sure there were plenty I missed as there was still more I could have done with the chalice dungeon system.

This sounds largely negative but that's only by comparison to the masterpieces it's related to. At the end of the day Bloodborne is still a brilliant work of art and I'm glad I finally have the hardware to experience it.

I love how this builds on the Splatoon formula, adding an extra element of verticality through foam that stacks and builds up walls and ramps throughout the map which players surf upon and can launch off to smoothly transition into their attacks. There's this wonderful flow to it all that has me gushing about Foamstars to my friends already. The amount of things to do is somewhat lacking which is particularly unfortunate given that the series this pulls from has the same problem, but I have some hope this will outgrow the issue since Nintendo is particularly awful at supporting multiplayer-focused games and it really wouldn't take all that much to pass em up there.

The missions are basically glorified character tutorials with constant dialogue on top, but they're such goofy fun and each of the character designs are so good that I was happy to play through all of them before hopping back into multiplayer. All of the cute girls make my gay little heart sing. A particular highlight is Penny Gwyn fucking killing corporate executives to save her family of penguins in Antarctica from climate change.

Rating and general thoughts are subject to change as while I did get plenty of multiplayer in, this is just a completion log for finishing the single player missions. That was just day 1, after all.

Utter mastery of the 2D metroidvania that was entirely worth the wait. No one knows how to pace, animate, and score this genre like Bombservice. Everyone else needs to study up.

Reverie still stands out as the entry with the most character, but this is every bit as tight and refined while boasting some of the most breathtaking pixel art I've ever seen. In the future I'd like to see the team be more narratively ambitious as they started to be in Minoria, but Farewell doesn't feel particularly lacking in that department...it's just that with everything else being near-perfect, this is the one area left to improve upon.

Now this is the lovely Momodora I know. The metroidvania formula works SO well in a bite-sized format where you can easily grasp the whole map. Mechanically this is nothing special and the combat still feels very spammy with none of the weight of the more recent entries, but the boss attack patterns are fun to dodge and the gorgeous art and music carry the experience.

I'll admit to needing to use turbo again for the final boss, I'm just not willing to tear my fingers to shreds for games. Don't feel bad if you do the same, watch out for your health.

The art and tone are really the highlights here, as it plays extremely rough and is very of its era when it comes to indie platformers. I came to this to prep for Moonlit Farewell as I began the series with Reverie, but to be honest other than the cute girls, little of the appeal of the newer entries reaches back this far.

I suggest using a turbo button, as I absolutely tore up my fingers before caving and setting one up. I'd probably enjoy this more as a harmless little early experiment if playing it wasn't causing actual physical pain.

While this is transparently an attempt by Sony to mythologize the PlayStation brand much like Nintendo has been doing for decades alongside defining the character of the PS5, I can't help but love it. Astro's Playroom is overflowing with cute little guys and love for retro hardware and that's all I need in life. This is especially refreshing given that the more fun-loving side of the PlayStation identity was left behind when the PS3 became the place for Serious Experiences and developers like Naughty Dog started pushing out Netflix original-tier self-serious yet empty schlock.

Video games don't only have to be digital toys and many of my favorites are much more than that, but there's a simple joy to a fun toy crafted with love.

Wonderful to pop onto now and then and get my brain just activated enough thinking about synergies and how to pivot between different strong combinations to let the time pass without feeling a strong compulsion to play a ton. I'm not very good, but the extreme depth is evident and if I ever felt like it I'm sure I could get really into improving my skills. There's a special kind of richness to rolling with the punches of RNG or exerting your will over it that is very enticing to the TCG player part of my brain.

You piece.