Part of my old gaming mindset I still struggle to shed is this self-inclifcted necessity to "finish" what I've started. Here's an excellent case in point - a Worms game I downloaded from Game Pass last summer because it checked the hyperspecific boxes I was looking for: local multiplayer with one controller. And as far as Worms games go, it was absolutely fine. It was everything I remember Worms to be, plus or minus a couple of weapons. And that's a very good reason why there's no need whatsoever for me to spend hours blowing my way through whatever semblance of a campaign mode it had. There's no story here, it's just... Worms. I scratched the itch already when I played a couple rounds with my sister last summer. That can be fine! That can be my entire experience with a downloadable video game. The more time I spend here the less I can explore other, better games on my backlog. Still coming to grips with this. Bear with me, fam!

Time for a little spring cleaning on the "now playing" list. Ostensibly I've been playing this for eleven years. That's not true, though. Eleven years ago I played it like, twice, and despite some vague-and-getting-vaguer memories of cute vibes and good times I hadn't touched it since then. Until now! Sadly, it's not a game that aged well. I'm not sure any Wii game has, honestly. I loved the arts-and-crafts aesthetic here but couldn't put aside the thought that LittleBigPlanet was doing the same thing in HD a few years prior. Gameplay-wise, it's Kirby taken to its easiest extreme. You can't die! You literally cannot "lose" here, you can only fail to collect everything you want to collect. I have no beef with that, but it may have contributed toward making this game feel much older than it is. Hey, they can't all be classics.

Fairly quick but impressively immersive and complex time loop game with a couple interesting twists. I liked this better than Outer Wilds - just more my speed and style - but your mileage may vary. Knows exactly when it's run its course, too - five, six hours max? - and never feels thoroughly bogged down or repetitive, which is hard to pull off for a time loop game. Starts out small, gets much larger and deeper in scope like a good mystery ought to. Then sprinkles in just a dash of introductory morality and ethics. Just a lot to like here, really.

Safely calling it. I complained in one of my last reviews that Unpacking, a game consisting solely of unpacking boxes and organizing contents, was one of the most tedious experiences I've ever had. But at least that game was short and sweet and told a little story! The same can't be said of this game, which is exactly what it purports to be and reminds me of that old Simpsons gag where Bart wants to play Yard Work Simulator at the carnival after blowing off actual yard work to go to the carnival. I can't even say the hour and change I spent on this (three mowjobs, two too many) made for a soothing experience. The ride-on mower handled like garbage and it was way too easy to miss strips of grass and hit flowerbeds. All my best wishes to people pouring actual chunks of time into this game. You only get the one life, you know?

A marked improvement, so many years later, over the Left 4 Dead games. But you'd certainly expect that much! I had plenty of fun and more than a little frustration working through this campaign with two buddies over the past month and a half, starting out mostly just spraying bullets and swinging bats and running from Point A to Point B, ending up having lengthy conversations about deck builds and level strategies. We learned the game together, and taught each other as we went. And that's kind of cool and rare these days, no? All that said, the game itself was repetitive and sometimes felt borderline broken in the early going. There'll be no need whatsoever to go back for this one a few years from now if you pass on it now.

In theory, I understand the appeal. There's something cathartic about organizing your clothes and your books and your liquor cabinet, and a game that consists solely of unpacking boxes and decorating rooms in increasingly large and fancy apartments and houses is probably meant to tap right into that joy-sparking feeling of tidying up. But this has to be just the dullest and most monotonous game I've played in years. I have two kids. All I do anymore is take things out of boxes and tidy up by throwing a bunch of shit in a semi-neat pile. There is no joy for me - none! - in doing a simulated version of that with an Xbox controller. You click a box. Out comes a pair of underwear. You move it to the open drawer in the closet. You put it there. You go back to the box. It's another pair of undies. Back to the drawer. Place.Back to the box. Pick up. Back to the drawer. Replace. And so on and so on. Twenty fucking pairs of panties. Six pairs of jeans. Thirty hangers. Thirty things that go on those hangers. One hundred books. Click, move, click, move. Now the kitchen. Now the bathroom! And now it's time to unpack all that same crap all over again in the next apartment. Good lord, the bore this was! But it was short and it looked pretty enough and there's the vaguest hint of a happy story subliminally told, so, not a total waste of my time!

One of my all time faves. Beat the hell out of this thing five, six, seven times way back when, and haven't touched it in close to twenty years. Finally played the War of the Lions version for the first time - not logging it separately, sorry - and it's thankfully just "more" all around. That's good, because if this game leaves you wanting anything, it's "more." You spend thirty or forty hours training an intricately assembled party but by the end of the game you're overpowered enough to fly right through the story's conclusion. The only reward for managing to find, poach, or steal the rarest and best items in the game is the items themselves. I've done a handful of self-imposed challenges and this time opted for a "no duplicate equipment" run. Gotta keep things fresh and interesting, you know? The difficulty is still way too unbalanced with three or four insanely hard battles and a shitload of creampuffs, and the learning curve is laughably steep in 2021 - mostly because of how opaque the game is about everything - but man do I love this game and its characters and engine and story. Always have, always will.

Oof. Here's the first big departure from the rest of the Annapurna Interactive Ultimate PS4 Collection for me, the previous four games being one-or-two-sitting experiences, this one more of a ten-hour slog. It's an interactive novel - no less, no more - that feels like a Murakami take on Gothic Americana. Magical realism with a heavy dose of mountain ghost towns and midnight bluegrass. And it started out so strong! An old antique delivery man and his dog are looking to make one last drop-off, but can't find the address. A blind gas station attendant points him toward a TV repairwoman, and one accidental trip down an abandoned mineshaft later, a wormhole of sorts opens up - the titular Kentucky Route Zero - and baby we are off to the races. If only the ensuing chapters could match the opener! For my money, each of the five acts was inferior to its predecessor, to the point where I spent the fourth and fifth just angrily mashing my way through endless streams of text, lamenting what a waste of time it all was. Your mileage may vary, and plenty of people seem to love this thing, but I have to wonder if some of those people just haven't yet discovered, well, books.

This was quick and mostly enjoyable. Would love to see more Nintendo IP spin-offs like this today except this is exactly the kind of video game they could never make today because if they did it'd be a $5.99 smartphone app. Decent little physics puzzle game, really, and thank God for save states because the original design punts your ass all the way back to the first tee if you bogie a couple times. That said, those same save states make the whole thing a 3-hour play at most and expose just how thin and small you used to be able to make a console game if you made it hard enough. C'est la vie!

Another planned abandonment as I kinda play but mostly watch my way through the Devil May Cry series. This one's reputation as an all time disappointment precedes it, and I totally get it. There are two or three small things this does better than the first game but just so many big steps backward. The story's empty and nonsensible (even relative to the first one) and the characterization is nealy absent. Gone as well are all the castle backtracking vibes that gave the first game just a hint of Metroidvania flavor. Can't complain too much - I actually prefer the combat here relative to the original Devil May Cry - but it's definitely a big old bucket of "but why?"