So much more my shit than the first game was. Just total earnest mayhem, time travel shenanigans and heartfelt relationships. The gameplay is so much tighter, the story way more original and fun, the characters more exciting, and an ending that genuinely blew me away.

It doesn't surprise me at all that the gamer dudes didn't like this one, but this is probably one of my favorite Final Fantasy titles. What an insane improvement, loved basically every second!

The new remaster is absolutely horrible, ugly cutscenes and non-functioning multiplayer, just a total wreck worth avoiding at all costs. However this is still one of the most endlessly replayable games I've ever touched. There's some kind of secret sauce here that has kept me hooked since birth. The 10 hours I'm logging here is only for the Switch version, because I genuinely have no clue how much time I've spent on this over the years.

For some reason, I always had trouble wrapping my head around the combat, but man, what a world to live in for a while. I really like all these characters, and the insane nonsense of the story really won me over. To call this bad is just odd to me, as it isn't doing anything other Final Fantasy games don't have worse examples of. I think it's quite good even! Now onto XIII-2, which from what I've heard, will be much more my style.

This review contains spoilers

The Dark Place is where you go when you get high and go to the store

Life is Strange if it sucked ass. Silent Hill is back, but I want it to leave again. This is least effective anti-suicide ad of all time, please god do not make any more of these.

Just really boring, honestly. It starts out interesting but it doesn't go anywhere with the idea of actually being in Night Springs. Inessential.

Sam Lake's writing is endlessly indebted to the work of David Lynch and Mark Z. Danielewski, but he's very aware of this. Alan Wake, to me, is about the forms of violence inherent in art. The vision of seeing yourself as that which worlds are born of, centering yourself within the universe. It's certainly clunky, and the game itself can be repetitive to actually play, but I can't help but admire what Lake and his team are going for here. One of the rare director-driven video games, I'm extremely excited to try Alan Wake 2!

Like basically all beat-em-ups, this is almost worthless if you aren't playing it with a group of friends. But thankfully, I was playing on a classic machine with all of my siblings, so it was a real blast!

This review contains spoilers

A vast improvement over the last game in essentially every way, but still quite a mess. I love the idea of making Peter/Harry/Venom a love triangle, but that dynamic is bogged down by every other character in this story being unbelievably boring versions of themselves. The combat also feels... worse to me now, for some reason. At least when Peter isn't using the symbiote. Broadly it's good, but very flawed.

Hi! You have to check out this game. It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years.

The cop stuff makes the narrative here almost unbearable. Everything Spider-Man does or thinks in this is related to the police, he's a lap dog for the state. Fine game otherwise, but nothing special. Give me gay Venom in 2