POV: you are a busy mother and your child has just handed you the controller to beat a tough level for them

The Pale Beyond was an emotionally gripping tale that didnt quite stick the landing in a few key ways. It's a survival/management game with a narrative focus, and its strengths are in presenting the player with situations that appear stressful but are navigable with good planning. I say "appear" stressful there because personally, I found the game to be too easy on normal difficulty, which undermined the narrative. It really seemed like the game expected me to get to the end with half my crew dead and the other half disloyal, but by the end of it I had only one death and all but one of my officers remained by my side. If you're experienced with management type games, I'd probably recommend playing on hard mode for the best narrative experience.
The narrative itself is solid but it's held back by a few key aspects. You play as Robin Shaw, first mate in a doomed expedition to the South Pole. It's a compelling tale, and the characters' speech gives strong vibes of 18th century adventure novels - "Treasure Island" especially springs to mind. In terms of minutia, the game's writing is quite solid. All of the major characters have solid dialogue and there are plenty of small pockets of excellent writing woven throughout the various characters' small conversations with Shaw. The overarching narrative, by contrast, feels a little sporadic. My impression is that the goal was to take a streamlined approach, cut out the fluff from the story and focus on the big dramatic moments. This works well enough early on, when there are enough periods of management and milling about with the crew that it's not really noticeable. This facade wears thin in the latter half of the game, though, as the connective tissue of management fades into the background and the story becomes a series of set pieces strung together by little to no other elements. The ending was compelling, if a little frustrating. Without spoiling anything, it ends with a partial fourth wall break that feels awkward, but at the same time I cannot call it ineffective because it did spark some imagination in me.
Beyond the aspects already listed, the game is very well put together. The visuals are often stunning, and the music and sound design work incredibly well. I found the way that portraits changed in difference scenes to adapt to the new environments to be quite endearing. Overall it's a solid game and one that I do recommend, though it's nowhere near perfect. It's definitely enough that I'll keep my eye on the future works of this team and its developers, though.

Sound design is one of those things that usually is in the position of "if it's good, you don't notice it." Hi-Fi Rush flips this on its head. "No!" they say, "we made a game all about how fucking incredible our sound design team is and you're going to play it NOW," and I did, and I loved every second of it.
It's not often a game comes out from a big studio that is so focused in what it wants to be. Every single part of this game is dedicated to making every other part better in a meaningful way and the result is an experience that is some of the greatest joy you can get out of a video game.

When I first started playing this game, my friend said to me that it is one of the few games he wishes he could erase all memory of from his brain and play again. I could not agree more with this sentiment.

Outer Wilds is a fantastically imaginative expression of weird, rustic sci-fi. From the genderless aliens to the ancient archaeological sites to the strange black hole mechanics to the ghost comets, this game is truly brimming with charm, heart, and imagination. Top it all off with one of the best mystery stories (and one of the best systems for keeping track of clues) that I've ever seen in a game make this one for the history books.

Alan please take Stephen King's cock out of your mouth and be a video game protagonist thank you

Initially this game made me very happy. I felt that Ryuji and Tama were charming additions to the cast and seeing Mizuki all grown up was awesome.

Unfortunately, this game's insistence on being a spoiler-free sequel kills it for me. The events of AI: The Somnium Files are so transformative for so many of its characters and seeing all of them essentially reset to square one frustrates me to no end, especially since I came into this directly off the back of AITSF.

Maybe one day I'll power through to the end and see if there was anything else in there worth seeing but for now this game just makes me kind of sad and disappointed.

Solid enough gameplay I simply cannot get past the writing on this one. The conversations are so stiff and the way dialogue tends to be sequenced leads to a lot of characters just repeating the same stuff over and over again.

Wish I liked this game more because it's very charming and I love Edgeworth but this game is straight-up not fun most of the time.

Roguelikes, especially ones set up like this, just aren't my thing. Still, there's a lot to love in BPM. The visuals, music, and moment-to-moment gameplay are incredible I just personally was not compelled by the roguelike setup.

A solid beat-em-up with a few interesting ideas. Its writing is generally solid kids show material but feels the incessant need to age itself up by swearing every 5 seconds, which definitely knocks it down a few pegs. Still, a surprising amount of depth of character and a fun combat system make this a solid "worth my time."

The best classic Castlevania game hands-down. Shame they un-femboyed Eric in the English release.

A beautiful example of how good acting can elevate an experience with otherwise just okay writing.