Beacon Pines is just a lovely and charming game. The art is gorgeous, with lots of expressive characters and detailed & colorful backgrounds. The narrator offers a decent framing device, along with the branching path gimmick lending some interesting interactivity to the storytelling. The story itself has engaging characters, a digestible mystery with some fun plot twists, and a satisfying conclusion. This is just the kind of thing that's up my alley and it certainly made me nostalgic for my childhood of reading Hardy Boys books.

It's always a pleasure to see a game that sets out to achieve essentially one thing and then proceed to execute on that one thing flawlessly. Pseudoregalia demonstrates this with its movement, resulting in perhaps the most satisfying movement platformer that I've played. The world is cleverly crafted to enable players to use their tools in such a way that reaching a ledge or a platform often feels unintentional. Finally pulling off just the right string of moves to make it to a platform that seemed unreachable was exhilerating each time it happened. Outside of the movement, I felt like the game was perhaps just a bit too obtuse with its direction and that the combat felt half-baked, but getting around the castle and its surrounding areas just felt too good for these things to get in the way of my enjoyment.

I'm generally a fan of bite-sized Metroidvania games, but this one didn't really do it for me. Playing on Steam Deck was a little awkward because the control stick just mapped to the d-pad buttons making it challenging to properly handle up and down inputs. This minor frustration, plus the lack of any real indicators on the map (e.g. save rooms, pickups) made traversal less fun. The bosses are fine enough, requiring some basic strategy to beat them, but the game just ends abruptly once each boss has been cleared, with no real fanfare. It would have been nice to have perhaps one final area that the four bosses culminated in. Not a terrible game, but not something that I'd recommend unless someone was deep into Metroidvanias.

If there's any adjective to describe Hylics it would be "unique." This is the closest thing to abstract art that a turn-based RPG can be, and in that respect it succeeds wholeheartedly. Its metacommentary on the pointlessness of most RPG dialogue and its usage of RPG tropes make for a fun deconstruction of a genre that I love, but it's also fairly basic when it comes to actually playing the game (and remarkably short). Still, it makes for a charming playthrough even if it feels like the game could have been even more.

Trepang2 is at its best when you're living a super soldier power fantasy, absolutely slaughtering crowds of soldiers without even breaking a sweat. This part is endlessly entertaining but it seems like the developers wanted to lean hard into making this a horror game, with some slower paced segments that felt more like a drag than actually instilling fear. The story and setting is also underutilized, with some solid worldbuilding that doesn't seem to ever truly pan out. That said, I was certainly satisfied with the slaughtering that ensued throughout most of this game's runtime.

Pikmin 2 is an all-around improvement to its predecessor, making it an excellent sequel. Almost all of my complaints from the previous game have been addressed -- Pikmin group better and are less likely to get lost when traversing, frustrating enemies seem to have been toned down making it less likely to lose a larger number of Pikmin in one go, and the day cycle is a bit more forgiving making the game feel more relaxed. I also greatly enjoyed the treasure aspect versus collecting ship parts, as it allowed for some wonderful creativity in naming the treasures. Pikmin 2 has certainly aged better than the first game and it makes me even more excited to play the rest of this series.

I played the original Anodyne probably ten years ago at this point and have memories of it being a wholly unique and engaging experience, so it's surprising it took me this long to pick up its sequel. Anodyne 2 is also a remarkably unique, unrelentingly earnest, and deeply engaging video game. The way that it experiments with narrative, game design, fourth wall breaks, and so much more makes it a delightful experience from start to finish. It asks some thought-provoking questions without being pretentious, and does so in a way to deftly handle complex concepts with both humor and respect. It's also a game which is respectful to the player, making it a breeze to play through with none of the content feeling tedious. I loved this game and I absolutely need to play the rest of Analgesic Productions' games.

This has to be one of the most boring concepts for a game that I've experienced. The core gameplay centers around matching audio samples with a number of provided samples that have been distorted and need to be correctly tuned using the crank, which turns out to be about as exciting as taking an exam. This truly felt like it belongs in a music theory class, which makes it a terribly dull gameplay experience. The story starts out interesting but rapidly devolves into drivel which offers no compelling reason to continue drudging through the horrendous puzzle sections. Truly one of the most mind numbing games I've had the displeasure of experiencing.

Chained Echoes has so much to like while also managing to feel unpolished in many other ways. It's genuinely impressive how much one person has created here, with a strong art direction, a solid story, and some great music as well. The battle system is the area that I take the most issue with. The ovedrive / overheat system is cool in theory, but ends up resulting in more micromanagement than necessary, often getting in the way of strategies by requiring random moves to reduce the heat bar. The Sky Armor battles feel even worse, given there are fewer ways to manage the heat bar. On top of this, too many bosses have the ability to act multiple times per turn, creating some scenarios that feel truly unfair. Despite these quirks, I did enjoy Chained Echoes a good bit, but it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been.

I missed Pikmin back on the GameCube and have been intending to catch up on this series for years, so finally playing this I see what captivated players back in 2001. Pikmin is charming and unique, especially for a console RTS. That said, 2001 was nearly 25 years ago so some mechanics have aged somewhat poorly. The Pikmin themselves path quite poorly as they follow you, which can be frustrating, and the game can sometimes feel clunky to control. Additionally, the final boss felt unfairly difficult compared to the rest of the game. In spite of this aging, the game still holds up and was a blast to play through.

With The Crew's servers going down in less than two weeks, I felt compelled to play through the campaign before it goes away forever. My expectations were fairly low coming in, and The Crew was actually even more boring than I thought I'd find it. I did find the massive map to be impressive and driving through it could sometimes be zen-like, but the campaign events are repetitive and the plot is threadbare. The entire game feels pointless and boring as a result, with little reason to play event after event. The multiplayer aspects also appear to be shoehorned, though I didn't experience it directly.

Wendy: Every Witch Way feels like a prototype for WayForward's future game Mighty Flip Champs, so I wasn't surprised when I looked it up to find that it was actually the inspiration for that later game. This game is charming and looks amazing for a Game Boy Color game, but it's definitely lacking in challenge or longevity. It seems like the developers could have gotten a lot more creative with the stage design given their flipping mechanic (and they later would), but they mostly played it safe here.