raccoons4444
1992
A racing game with miserable controls, which are the only thing a racing game needs to get right. Probably impressive for its time, but the bland levels with over-repeated themes and a cheating AI make this only worth trying for historical value.
A game near and dear to my heart, who's relaxing, positive atmosphere got me through countless rough patches in High School. New Leaf is all the best parts of Animal Crossing and more, from the daily interpersonal and maintenance routines, to the minigames and night-time beetle catching on the island, to the near-endless customizability of your town with your mayoral powers, to the most adorable secretary ever, Isabelle!
2021
A short point-and-click adventure boiled down to its purest form. The screens of the inbound asteroid are detail-rich and inspired; it's this blend of photorealistic environments and surreal creatures that make this 15 minutes a fascinating one.
2015
If you're not an experienced car gamer, you'll likely crash a lot, then call it quits after scoring low in the challenge lots/racetracks like I did. If you are a car gamer, Absolute Drift is a mechanically deep, realistic and appropriately challenging state-machine that rewards mastery, set to pretty minimalist visuals and flow-state inducing electronica soundtrack.
Edutainment point-and-click adventure game where children who got this game for free at Chic Fil' A play loosely educational minigames, learn about the environment, and collect items hidden throughout the forest. The Brain (voiced by Steven Crowder in the show) is tasked with making one of the 3 contraptions to get your party rescued throughout the game, but it only ever shows him working on his own suggestion (the radio). What a dip!
P.S. Grab onto the tree branch so you can find the hidden Trilobite fossil!
P.S. Grab onto the tree branch so you can find the hidden Trilobite fossil!
2001
Kuru Kuru Kururin is an A1 concept for an action-puzzler with tons of replay value; you navigate a bird fellow through maps in his ever-rotating "Helerin," at first figuring out the paths you can take to clear while surviving, then replaying maps for fast times and cosmetics once you've got a better handle on the mechanics. The execution... mostly results in appropriately challenging/satisfying levels, but there's a handful of gimmick stages that feel like luck to survive, and couple of endgame maps that are a dastardly combination of most difficult to beat and three times longer than anything else in the game.
2014
A (mercifully) short look into the brainspace of that weird girl from middle school, who kinda hung around the goth crowd, but they didn't really include her in stuff probably out of embarrassment or fear (maybe both?). Yeah it's kind of shitty that your boyfriend cheated on you with your sister, but the VN plays it off too mean-spiritedly for me to sympathize with killing him.
Biblethump child descends deeper into the caverns below his small house on a hill, collecting household knickknacks and tchotchkes to ward off the grotesque abominations trying to kill him at every step. The game loop is as addictive as ever and experimenting with cool synergies is always a pleasure, but this expansion holds the game back a little when you're hundreds of hours deep with it's generally low difficulty, awful Greed mode and item pool bloat.
A smash-like party platform fighter (with ROLLBACK NETCODE) where you duke it out with a selection of buff animals from your favorite internet memes in a surprisingly fluid movement system with "shield dropping" and an anime game airdash. The stagelist is full of gimmicky maps and every character doesn't have that many moves, but that more casual nature would make a killer side-game at a Smash event.
WOOOOOOO YEAH BABY!!! That's what I've been waiting for, that's what it's all about!
2008
Mario and the gang go on a quest to take back America's pastime from Bowser & his illegitimate son by traveling to each of his friend's themed baseball parks to recruit top mushroom kingdom prospects (like Yellow Pianta and Baby Luigi) by solving light puzzles and playing baseball minigames to eventually mercy rule Bowser. Maybe people would enjoy watching baseball more if the outfielders could buddy bounce each other to deny you a homer, or Mariano Rivera could throw a Toadsworth change-up.
A short puzzle adventure game inspired by early PC games and sokobans. Kishoutenketsu tells you nothing about the goal or mechanics other than how to move, but I think the sense of discovery and naturally figuring things out is the coolest part of the game.
2012
You play as the owner of an indie airline company, slowly building your empire by choosing bitizen(s) or cargo to transport in between different airports located in real world cities. Played this one a ton as a kid, I loved choosing flight paths to maximize profit from my armada or watching my planes, and the fact that flights took an approximation of the time they would take in real life was kinda genius (although progress is entirely too slow, as you were forever locked out of any kind of high-level planes if you weren't willing to spend real cash on 'em).
2014
A simple endless runner where you jump over cacti and duck under pterodactyls as you wait for your computer to connect to the internet. Whoever decided that employers should be able to disable this game should be fired.
2008
Extremely simple arcade game where you move the d-pad left and right to control a paper airplane's falling angle/speed to avoid crashing into walls. There's a handful of levels to beat and lower your time on, an endless mode to see how far you can get, and my personal favorite, a head-to-head multiplayer mode that me and my brother used to play the shit out of on long car rides.