Facing this game is a dilemma for me. I’ve always been against the idea of using “aged” as a descriptor for a game, as all games age. As people are social-historical, so are the games they make. A game is aged as soon as it’s released; a product of its own context, and it’s on us to adapt to it, not on it to be able to stand the test of time (and culture).

Of course, there are games that require less effort to get into than other contemporaries; this art constantly builds upon itself and whilst some paths led to where we are today, others got forgotten with time, most with good reason. And the lack of familiarity leads to adapting requiring more work and you can see where that goes.

Now you must be wondering, where does A Link to the Past fit into this discussion? You’ve seen the score, surely it means that this game “aged” so badly it made me change my mind about the whole concept.

But it didn’t.

A Link to the Past is a butter-smooth, sex-machine of a SNES videogame. Save for a few weird dead spots in the sword’s attacks and unintuitive puzzles that require out-of-the-box thinking, it’s straight-up perfection; a game-changer.

But I still think it has “aged poorly”, however in a different, unique manner.

Even with how important and influential it was, A Link to the Past has been surpassed. We stand in a point in time when its importance and greatness have been overshadowed by the fact that its concepts have been done and redone in multiple ways since then, in different (like Ocarina of Time) or in the same but straight-up better (like A Link Between Worlds) ways.

I don’t think I can recommend this over any other Zelda game, except for 1. Hardcore fans that somehow have not played it yet or 2. People interested in the history of videogames, in this specific era of gaming, or anything analogous to that. As an exercise.

But when it comes to standing on its own? It’s very important, but I don’t think it has anything to say anymore. And that’s why it’s hard for me to analyze it properly: it games my system; it contradicts my own philosophies.

Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it would require someone way more passionate about it than me to figure it out. As it stands, what was once the most important Zelda game is now just another one.

Now this one I can get behind. Just a pure, unique and horrifying game to enjoy with friends. Even the downtime is fun, as you can watch them miserably and hilariously fail to accomplish anything while getting demolished by these eldritch abominations with just a shred of hope that they can get the loot to the ship. You would think they’d know better, but none of us do.

It does get stale, though. Maybe if I took it more seriously it would get a little more fun to play for hours, but it’s too ridiculous a game for that idea to even be suggested. For now it remains as a fun game to enjoy as a group before we inevitably boot up Overwatch and play until everyone collectively ragequits over how dogshit that game is and yet we still play it. Ad infinitum.

This one might seem like a “less is more” kind of indie metroidvania, being made by a one-man army and having this minimalistic art style in a game with zero dialogue and combat.

This is misleading; minimalistic Animal Well is not. It is a complex, deep game made with dedication, care and the utmost intricacy.

It is a masterpiece in the sense that it creates this layered environment that 1. Leaves the player with complete freedom over how to experiment with its tools in order to progress through its elaborate world; 2. That in turns rewards them by making them feel clever by solving seemingly hard puzzles by themselves; 3. Said puzzles have different levels of depth for different kind of players, and they all get something out of it.

Animal Well’s secrets have secrets. And its secrets’ secrets also have secrets. And even though that might pressure some, it is made in such a way that allows for you to play through it your own way and finish it seeing only what you want to see.

There’s the puzzles for those who feel satisfied by just playing through the game and reaching the end credits; there’s puzzles for those who really want to see what the game can offer, requiring thorough exploration and attention to detail; and then there’s puzzles for the obsessive maniacs that analyze every single atom that is present in the many different biomes and try to make sense of the most minute of details, engaging in this community-wide search that will probably take months or even years to see through.

I’m on that second category, but I did have to ask a friend (google) for some hints to get through some of the brick walls in my progress. It gets THAT complicated.

Even with that, reaching the end of it was considerably fun, and while I don’t plan to help the community on the search for REDACTED, I definitely will be there when they inevitably get to the bottom of it all.

Just the epitome of a good idea that feels too stupid and ambitious for it to work and yet it ended up even better than it sounds.

I have some personal issues with some of the mechanics feeling like the game betrays itself, and with how intrusive dialogues get when retrying battles and how that turns what would otherwise be a fun challenge into a big time waste, but these are negligible.

The delightful novel of everything being synched with the beat, the vibrant and cohesive yet varied art style full of personality and the self-aware humor that permeates the whole game from the dialogues to the readable files, and how well the combat works in spite of how inherently delimitating the rhythm-based mechanics are make this one of the most intriguing games of these past few years and one big example of why actual creativity and innovation shouldn’t be limited to the indie landscape.

It’s a game about music, shitty puns and the power of friendship. Of course I’d love it.

Tackling on mental health issues is a move most videogames aren’t touching with a ten foot pole. Unless you have first-hand experience dealing with this stuff (Games like Hellblade do it well because psychologists and neuroscientists were involved, for example), it’s easy to mess up and unintentionally stereotype and disrespect those that have to live with it. That’s why it’s so common to make the subtext do the heavy lifting when these themes come to light. It’s a move some might find cowardly, but it’s comprehensible.

Now The Cat Lady isn’t the least bit afraid to wear its themes of depression and suicide. Right off the bat it starts with its protagonist, Susan Ashworth, reading her own suicide letter before overdosing in sleeping pills, surrounded by the stray cats that keep her company.

It might feel heavy-handed at first, but it treats it how it should: without euphemisms, cutting out the bullshit; this woman is fed up with the world and is trying to kill herself to stop the pain she has been drowning in for so long. This is empathetic; it shows how she is feeling without beating around the bush.

Empathy IS what makes this game so good. This is an adventure game that’s bloody and gritty, there’s instances of fetishist serial killers, cannibalism, healthcare violence, dead babies; hardcore edgy death metal shit, but it doesn’t feel unwarranted. It channels the darkness of Susan’s past and present, mirroring how she feels on the inside.

That aspect is very interesting, because the line between what’s fact and what’s fiction here is very blurred. There are both supernatural elements and navigable dreams, and it often jumps between them and the actual world, making you question whether or not what’s happening is true, false, or something in between.

This surrealism works quite well here, for the abstract allows for abstractions; raw emotions flow out of the characters and are made form. This also is an interesting way of subverting expectations; the jumps between “this is just a dream” to “OH SHIT THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING” make this an engaging and thrilling psychological horror experience.

This is all communicated through a Lucasarts-like aventure game, that works like a point-and-click but it actually presented like a 2D side-scroller. This is because it’s important to show the protagonist and her interactions, since it’s such a character-driven game. The camera is also used against the player, as it allows for the game to hide things that are in her field of vision, which works as a tool for creating suspense and horror.

The puzzles are standard Lucasarts and King’s Quest stuff, requiring lateral thinking in a mixture of common sense and thinking outside of the box to be solved. Unlike these games, however, they involve stuff like giving drugs to a heroin addict and killing a kidnapper with poison gas. Fun stuff.

Visually, it’s very singular. It mashes these semi-realistic pre-rendered backgrounds with black and white hand-drawn characters that look weird but still very much human; and they do come to life through the excellent voice acting (that does suffer from poor audio quality… it’s a budget game). As a vehicle for showing what it needs to show, it’s perfect. I actually finished the game in love with its style.


The soundtrack is amazing. The horrifying footstep sounds and music brings the scary moments to a whole new level, whilst most of the game is this alternative rock album that helps paint the picture and intensify the feelings it’s trying to convey so well. There’s sad, hopeful, and even badass moments that are dictated by how good the accompanying score is.

Susan is like that. She’s sad and lonely and charming and badass. A tough old lady. Through the trials she overcomes and the bond she creates with this lovely young woman that was also dealt a bad hand in life (but nonetheless teaches her so much) makes her grow a lot, and is a big symbol of hope for me.

Through this deep dive into her past, present and future (all at the same time) I was able to learn about myself and about people, and is something I can’t recommend enough for those struggling with themselves. It’s heavy, but beautiful. Isn’t that how life is?

This is one odd game. So odd that it's hard to talk about it critically. It's junk food. Is it arrogant to critique junk food? Do you treat McDonalds like you'd treat a restaurant, fine dining or not? Of course it's not the same thing, this used to be an AAA priced game on launch that got price-dropped afterwards, but it still isn't set out to wow you with its amazing story and visuals or whatever do AAA games promise nowadays, and that is fine.

That being said, it succeeds. It's a fun game with deep systems and engaging combat that makes you feel powerful, segmented by competent dungeon-crawling segments, each loosely based on a different numbered game in the series (which is unfortunately too subtle to be impactful). This is all accompanied by a story that is fun to experience and doesn't take itself seriously, but at the same time is a bit hard to follow and is not as meme-y or as satirical as it might seem for those who watched clips of it online. These funny moments are actually part of main character Jack's oddly compelling character development, something that is one of the game's biggest charms and gives the journey more meaning. Other than that, there's the in-depth job system that allows for a lot of customization and the amazing and surprisingly free co-op, which is by itself the ultimate way of experiencing this gem.

Overall, it's a relatively short soulslike experience that can be straight-forwardly played with friends, and that is something that I'm partial to. It being a Final Fantasy game with a Final Fantasy story is just icing on the cake.

A solid DLC featuring the game’s strengths and weaknesses. It definitively does a good job of explaining Leviathan’s absence from the main game whilst approaching it in an interesting and different way from the other Eikons. The main area is stunning and the new characters are compelling and Clive’s as amazing as his companions are useless, standard FF16 stuff we love. And they added in a rogue-like mode, cause that’s what the kids are into these days.

As a side note, I love how every side quest adds lore tidbits, it’s a strength of the game and I love how they kept that. I do wish they weren’t as shoehorned into the UI and had more meat in them, but as a lore nerd I’m satisfied.

I’d just be sad this is it for this cast. They are so great and full of untapped potential it’d be a waste to just move on.

A critique of The Stanley Parable itself would be too ironic for me. An irony that I’m not keen on taking part of, much less if it means creating the opportunity to be made fun of by the devs when The Stanley Parable: Ultra Mega Deluxe Director’s Cut or something comes out.

Instead, I wanted to express how surreal it was to begin the game at 12:00 AM not knowing that the game asks what the time is first thing when booted up, as the default time IS 12:00 AM.

And I realized that only when booting up the game for the second time; it asked the time again, and I adjusted it accordingly. The game mentioned how it was pissed off at how I didn’t adjust the time the first time I booted it up but calmed down after I actually adjusted it the second time around, jokingly saying that it must had actually been 12:00 AM then. But it was.

The coincidence itself is cool and all but it actually mentioning that afterwards was just an awesome meta moment that made the whole game worth it.

This game stunlocked me for over 100 hours and I’m still waiting for me to recover so I can properly talk about it.

It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it is one of these games that is so good you can’t help but wonder when will the compromises show themselves; but unlike its predecessor, they never do.

It’s dense and full of glee, in a way that it made me like things I usually despise in games, to a point where I was doing every single activity it threw at me.

How can a studio deliver a game like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in less than 4 years after its predecessor through a worldwide pandemic and have it be everything it promised and much much more?

It might just go down as one of the best sequels of all time. Final Fantasy LIVES.

A real jolly good time, feels very much like a late 90s/early 2000s platformer made in 2024; unfortunately, I’m not sure how much of this is paying homage, and how much is just due to it being rough around the edges.

It’s a very standard 3D platformer with satisfying movement options. If you’re looking to scratch that Super Mario Odyssey itch, this might just be the game you’ve been longing for.

It’s very much themed around yo-yo tricks. Not necessarily ones that performers do in real life; it’s more far-fetched. Like riding the yo-yo like a little hoverboard kind of far-fetched. The best comparison I can make is that it’s similar to how Yoku’s Island Express uses pinball. It’s more enamored to the concept than it is to how it’s realistically utilized, which works in its favor.

There’s a fun little story being told, and the dialogue both in and out of cutscenes is hilarious and light in tone. However, there are weird gaps between cutscenes and gameplay sequences. For exemple, there’s an instance of a sailor that had its ship damaged talking normally to the protagonist before realizing who they were talking to; they start to get angry and then the game suddenly cuts to a gameplay sequence where you have to fix their ship while avoiding their attacks. It’s sudden, and while you can piece things together, it’s still an odd jump. Such moments are frequent and can make a very simple story seem messier than it is. Luckily it is, while good fun, not what we’re here for.

Each world is memorable and unique, thanks to a strong art direction that isn’t afraid to get trippy, and levels that follow the themes faithfully. That does work against it, though, as most worlds just present themselves through the first level and the rest of them don’t really build upon the concept; they’re just more of the same. The levels themselves are fine, they’re all over the place with multiple paths while being very intuitive in terms of progression.

While the movement itself is very fun, the game does suffer from depth problems. I’m not sure if it’s the pre-programed camera angles or if its the saturated art style, but there were a lot of times where I was way farther than I previously thought, or the opposite. The camera is specially weird, they settled for this angle that can only be micro adjusted using the d-pad (as the right stick is used for yo-yo tricks) and it works most of the time, but backtracking becomes nigh impossible, making going back for collectibles a risky choice at best.

The collectibles spread throughout, composing of three special coins and three little side quests (or as the game likes to call them, dilemmas) per level. The coins are pretty standard collectathon stuff, but the little quests are quite fun; they all follow the level’s path (so no backtracking) and are quite varied, between collecting a certain number of objects within a time limit to reaching a certain score in the yo-yo tricks point system. And yes, there is a scoring system similar to what you’d find in a hack and slash, but it involves doing the maximum amount of tricks without standing still on the ground. It’s pretty basic dopamine-farming stuff, and it sometimes can feel a little inconsistent, but it is quite rewarding to reach a high score while speeding through a level.

The difficulty balancing is fine. It’s not hard nor easy, it feels just right. Definitively on the jollier side, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

As stated before, the art direction is intriguing, but visually the game isn’t the most appealing. It is cute and bright, but the saturation makes colors clash in weird ways and the models aren’t the best looking. There’s a blur on faraway objects and sceneries that makes them look like watercolor painting, and it just looks weird on an HD screen.
This being a shadow drop, it makes me wonder if it should had spent a little more time in the oven. It’s not a buggy mess, but there were a bunch of moments when weird collisions, physics, or just plain bugs got in the way of the gameplay. There’s a little button-prompt minigame at the end of each level that isn’t the most polished, and it’s as precise as it looks. And it looks weird. Not as weird as the in-engine cinematics, though. Specially in boss fights; some of the animations look like those 2000s adult swim low-budget animations, like Xavier Renegade Angel.

Alright, that was a bit too harsh. But I do wish it looked a little more pleasant. It just made them feel anticlimactic, which is the opposite of what a boss fight should be. I’d be happier if it just settled for not doing it at all, instead of them looking and feeling like that.

Also, the menus look nice, but there’s some odd choices here and there. You can press the left and right bumpers to access the in-game shop and some challenge levels (that are short, fun and use the coin collectibles to unlock) respectively, but pressing the return button takes you back to the start screen instead of the level selection. I believe it’s meant to cycle between the three options, but it is an annoying and easy mistake to make. Or maybe I’m just stupid. Either way, I hope they patch that shit.

One thing I want to praise are the 2D art sequences they have going on. It looks beautiful and it fits with the regular 3D art-style nicely.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this one, but I wish it had a little more going for it. It’s an easy recommendation for fans of the genre, but I’m not sure if there’s enough bang for the buck. Might be worth it after a few price drops, or if you just want to support the Sonic Mania dev team.

Disclaimer: I wanted to talk about a lot of things but for the sake of omitting spoilers I settled for a certain vagueness. Sorry not sorry. Also, I would easily give it 5 stars but I can’t in good conscience do that to a game that wants me to pay extra to access NG+. To whoever called this shot, a sincere go fuck yourself.


Fiction can impact people in many ways. By allowing them to empathize with others through characterizations that express humanity’s own flaws and hardships, or by presenting them with a story that can keep them on the edge of their seat, or simply by allowing them to experience something that can stimulate their senses in cool ways. For better or for worse, the eighth installment in SEGA’s ever-growing… i-don’t-even-know-how-to-describe-it crime drama franchise aims to check all of those boxes, much like its predecessors, and while they do achieve this with varying degrees of success in what is their most packed adventure yet (even surpassing their bloatum opus Yakuza 5), Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s greatest achievement is, much to my surprise, in how it is able to deliver its underlying message in an elegant yet emotionally impactful way.

Plot aside, there’s an insane amount of content here and that makes it one hell of a journey (I reached credits with 96 hours of game time), but the depth of the story’s own themes give that journey meaning.

With the days of the Yakuza reaching an end, both in game, out of game, and in real life, what better way to move forward the series that has for so long dealt with criminals, their struggles and how they affect innocent people than with atonement. The ending of Kiryu’s saga had him realize that conciliating his past as a criminal and his dream life as a father for a whole orphanage is nigh impossible, and thus leading him to be declared dead to everyone he knows. Infinite Wealth seeks not to revert that, but to make this sad conclusion into something positive, much more fitting for a series that has dealt at length with finding beauty in criminals.

It’s an interesting fact that this is an Ichiban game. He’s the one that leads 10 out of the 14 chapters in this story, he’s the one that protagonizes all of the game’s 52 substories (that are all hilarious and worth doing, save for the final six; they have him being sexually assaulted by different women and it’s played off as a joke), he’s the one that trains the game’s own fully playable Pokémon parody minigame story, and he’s the one that leads the game’s own fully playable Animal Crossing parody minigame story. Yes, these are both pretty in-depth things in this game and I can’t believe I am serious about this. And they can last some 30 hours combined. And they rock. Anyway, it’s interesting that it’s an Ichiban game, because for him, it’s another chapter in his story. A (very bloody) vacation, if you will. But for Kiryu, this is very much a grand finale. And a very grand one indeed, but I’ll leave it at that.

But what really had me thinking is that even though this is a true passing-of-the-torch moment, Kiryu’s influence doesn’t really change Ichiban all that much. The burden on his shoulders got heavier, sure, but he’s still the same ol Kasuga that we love. Kiryu, on the other hand, has a compelling arc very much impacted by his goofy friend. Even though he already has over 10 games to his name. I don’t know how they keep doing that.

It’s hard to delve deeper into how that is without spoiling the experience, but there are a lot of newfound circumstances behind all this that make it a very fresh take on a character that already had his whole damn life played out through these games.

The fact that they can make this whole-ass game set on a completely new location and then double down on what made the previous game special and triple down on what made that game’s predecessors special and tie it all with a bow into an almost cohesive story is very much something to be celebrated. With how large the scale of this title is, it’s impressive how they manage to make it make sense and tie loose ends; even if certain characters deserved more development and screen time, everything here is enough to deliver a powerful message about living and atoning for your past sins, about this Infinite Wealth that is life itself.

Just raw arcade beat em’ up combat with punches and kicks, in a way that a PS5 controller can just barely do justice to. Cool ideas and passion can go a long way, even if devoid of depth. A game can be fun enough that it compensates its shallowness, and that is why even though I just stumbled upon this while running an errand in Infinite Wealth I couldn’t stop until I rolled credits.

And yeah, I beat this through a Yakuza game. Through another game. As Kiryu. Videogames sure have come a long way, huh