Fill the grid as well as you can (you can leave some spots unfilled like me) and post your grid here! Bonus points if you explain your reasoning behind some of your choices.
As a good OP, I will be the one to start:
Favorite game: I struggled a bit thinking about which game to put in here. In the end it came down to Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix or Pokémon Black. KH2’s story is a bit of a slug sometimes in the Disney worlds (and the fact that in this game Normal difficulty is pretty much Easy), but it manages to have a conclusive and satisfying game to the saga for the most part. I feel like Kingdom Hearts should have just gone on a completely different arc with many new characters after this game, because going on with the story is one of the reasons why I wouldn’t recommend playing any KH game after this one.
The best part of this game was trying to complete all of the side and postgame things right after doing the main story, which not many games have made me do. The superbosses of this game really are a big challenge and they force you to use every single tool on the combat system. I specially appreciate the Lingering Will fight, even though I found it very frustrating at the time.
OST is also a banger because of Yoko Shinomura.
I would say that the main downside of this game however, is how you have to play KH1 (which is good) and KH:CoM (which is hit or miss) before playing this one, which means that it doesn’t really stand on its own.
As for Pokemon Black, I think it is a really solid Pokémon game and I just really like Pokémon. I’m not going to talk too much about it because I feel like I could digress a lot and write a 15 page essay of the current state of the Pokémon saga (I would also have to play the Switch games that I have skipped), so I’ll just say that it has charmful graphics even after having impressed me the first time I played it on launch and a more elaborate story than other games on its time without being as childlish as the Alola games. It’d also allow you to invade your friend’s worlds like Dark Souls with Entralink and had some cute interactions with the browser game Pokémon Dream World.
Honorable mention to The World Ends With You because it got to be my favorite game for a couple of years after I played it.
Best story: I don’t really think that videogames can have a good story in the same regard that a book or a movie have. It is true that since I am the type of person that considers Visual Novels as videogames, I considered placing Higurashi on this spot, since the 8 main games make a 100+ hour story that somehow doesn’t feel as long.
However, the campaign mode of Super Smash Bros Brawlstill has some scenes that I really consider iconic (Ike and Sonic’s first apparitions come to mind), and the fact that they managed to do a story with only the stock voices of the fighters adds a nice layer of originality to it. If there was a category for best couch co-op, this campaign would win it by far.
Favorite art style: I tend to like the artstyles of all of the Fire Emblem games (except for Engage, which felt more like it had overly designed gacha characters than the average Fire Emblem). The World Ends With You was another game I was thinking about, but I have already added it to Best Soundtrack so I felt like it’d be better to leave it just there.
I feel like Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia has a bit of a more original style than other Fire Emblem games. Even though most of the Fire Emblem games go for that JRPG design, this one tries to look a bit more realistic while keeping characters with weird hair colors.
Biggest personal impact: Pokémon LeafGreen was the first Pokémon game I played! I was also thinking about Minecraft but I felt like it’d be criminal to not add a Pokémon game to this list, given how much time I’ve spent with Pokémon games in my life. I haven’t done a proper playthrough in a while (kinda wanna try Scarlet on a Switch 2, feel like I’d really like the game on playable hardware which the game wasn’t originally designed for) but I still play Showdown from time to time.
Best combat: Devil May Cry 3 is still amazing today. I think DMC4 and 5 could beat this from what I’ve seen, but I still haven’t gotten around those games. I believe that KH2 is only slightly behind, I only added this one instead because style ranks and the combo potential is so fun. Dante does exactly what I want him to do and I enjoyed experimenting with all of the options the game would be giving me and thinking about which would be the best weapon combination for each boss.
Overhated: Can’t think of anything here… If I end up liking Pokémon Scarlet once I play it I could place it here, it’s definitely a hated game lol.
Underrated: For me, Underrated meant that the game is widely known but not given the recognition it deserves. Wii Sports Resort is a widely known game that I felt like it has not been given a try but many potential fan. It has some motion controls that I found on par with Switch Sports and I also think is one of the few games that everyone can enjoy to play since the controls and the sports are simple enough. I think that the new Switch Sports Resort 2 could end up beating this game on this list, but that game isn’t even out yet and I don’t have a Switch 2 as for now.
Overrated: The only souls-like game I’ve played is Dark Souls 3. I found a second hand copy on a store and grabbed it because the price seemed nice and I had never tried a Souls game before. I picked the default Knight class at the beginning since I thought that the game would be really hard and got going. At first, I found the game a bit hard while I was getting used to the controls and stamina system, but after I got past the first boss, I started thinking it was more cheesy, as I would start to suffer damage more because of enemies sneaking up behind me from an invisble camera angle on a room rather than because of my lack of skills. I ended up dropping the game after beating the third boss.
Some years after, after Elden Ring got out, I learned that most people try to beat the enemies without using a shield. I guess that DS3 would have been much harder to beat if I hadn’t used one but I didn’t know that shields were a “journalist weapon”, since blocking is a central part of KH2’s combat.
Needs a remake: Drakengard is a really unique game, which has an atmosphere and visuals that capture you in a way only few other games have managed to do for me. However it suffers from an awful combat system and mediocre visuals that makes it a miserable (but still original) experience. It was Yoko Taro’s first game, so it’s natural that it feels rough at the edges. A game like this with some interesting core ideas but loads of margin of improvement would be an ideal candidate of a remake, unlike the 3rd remake of OoT that I don’t really think we need right now.
Criminally underlooked: When thinking about an underlooked game, I basically tried to think about a game that is rather obscure and that I enjoyed, so I present to you Z.A.T.O: I Love The World And Everything On It, a visual novel which is free on Steam! It really reminded me of other visual novels I have played before, like Subahibi, but it’s ambiented on Soviet Russia instead. I would prefer to not spoil anything about it other than the fact that is around 5.5 hours long, so it’s rather short!
Protagonist/Antagonist: I had to add a picture of Vergil with MSPaint lol.
I think Dante is a really solid and complete protagonist as he acts like someone who is “too cool for school” most of the time on a videogame that doesn’t take itself seriously while also having some scenes in which he gets actually serious or emotional.
Vergil’s dynamic with Dante is what made me put him as the antagonist, together with the fact that I really struggled to think about an antagonist I’d like at all.
Honorable mentions for other protaginists I’ve enjoyed playing as include Roxas(Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days) aaaaand that’s it lol.
Best Soundtrack: The World Ends With You wins for me because it has an OST that could be launched as an album completely unrelated to the game and it’d still succeed. This is done in purpose as the OST was made in a way that the player would hear whatever Neku (the protagonist) is listening to on his headphones at the time.
This being said, there are MANY great songs that I have heard on videogames, some of which surpass TWEWY at times (Zero from AC:Zero (haven’t played the game), Twilight of the Gods from FE:Shadows of Valentia, God Shattering Star from FE:3H, Shadowlord from Nier (haven’t played this game either), Red’s theme in HGSS and many Kingdom Hearts songs…)
Best Multiplayer: I have played some World of Warcraft: Classic here and there, and even though I praised Super Smash Bros Brawl as the best couch co-op game, WoW: Classic has all of the elements to give you a nice adventure to level 60. I have never gotten further than level 25 though...too grindy, but I’ve sunked like 60 hours in private and blizzard servers and I am confident to say that this is one of the best MMO.
The main “problem” is that once you get to the maximum level of 60, if you aren’t interested on raids, there isn’t much for you to do. I personally don’t think this is an issue, but since MMORPG’s are expected to bring unlimited amounts of content to the table, I believe this is an area some people won’t like.
The main reason as to why I think it’s a good multiplayer game is that I have played it alone and with geb and whim and how you can feel a really big difference on your experience when other people help you with certain spells or by giving you items that they gave gotten from their professions. Classes interact with each other in a way that promotes people to socialize.
All of this being said, yeah Blizzard is too greedy and they will fuck up the new OSRS-esque WoW:Forever game they just announced with microtransactions.
Maybe I should give OSRS a try one day before I die.
Not usually my thing but…: I don’t like sandbox games and I have thousands of hours in Minecraft…
Turn my brain off: Don’t feel like I’ve got to explain why I added Team Fortress 2 here. Honorable mention to Splatoon 2. I should get back into Splatoon 3 as well, I really enjoyed it at first and I played it a lot on the first few days I got it, but life got in the way and I only managed to finish all of the single player missions except the challenge one.
Best with friends: I had lots of fun playing Lethal Company with my friends so this pick is based just on my personal experience lol. I feel like a game like this is really boring while playing alone and amazing with the right people (and gambling mods).
Best retro game: TF2 will be 19 years old in a month so I think it counts lol. If not I could place Super Mario 64 instead, it was either one or the other for me. I enjoyed playing Super Mario RPG but I never managed to finish it as I got bored of it…
Nostalgic childhood game: I brought the Switch for a trip with my friends recently and when I botted up Ultimate someone mentioned how much he liked Super Smash Bros Brawl so there’s that.
Game everyone should play: Super Mario 64 (and its DS version) is an accessible game which can get challenging sometimes, although I think that most of my difficulties back then were because I was playing the game with no guide at all.
As a good OP, I will be the one to start:
Favorite game: I struggled a bit thinking about which game to put in here. In the end it came down to Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix or Pokémon Black. KH2’s story is a bit of a slug sometimes in the Disney worlds (and the fact that in this game Normal difficulty is pretty much Easy), but it manages to have a conclusive and satisfying game to the saga for the most part. I feel like Kingdom Hearts should have just gone on a completely different arc with many new characters after this game, because going on with the story is one of the reasons why I wouldn’t recommend playing any KH game after this one.
The best part of this game was trying to complete all of the side and postgame things right after doing the main story, which not many games have made me do. The superbosses of this game really are a big challenge and they force you to use every single tool on the combat system. I specially appreciate the Lingering Will fight, even though I found it very frustrating at the time.
OST is also a banger because of Yoko Shinomura.
I would say that the main downside of this game however, is how you have to play KH1 (which is good) and KH:CoM (which is hit or miss) before playing this one, which means that it doesn’t really stand on its own.
As for Pokemon Black, I think it is a really solid Pokémon game and I just really like Pokémon. I’m not going to talk too much about it because I feel like I could digress a lot and write a 15 page essay of the current state of the Pokémon saga (I would also have to play the Switch games that I have skipped), so I’ll just say that it has charmful graphics even after having impressed me the first time I played it on launch and a more elaborate story than other games on its time without being as childlish as the Alola games. It’d also allow you to invade your friend’s worlds like Dark Souls with Entralink and had some cute interactions with the browser game Pokémon Dream World.
Honorable mention to The World Ends With You because it got to be my favorite game for a couple of years after I played it.
Best story: I don’t really think that videogames can have a good story in the same regard that a book or a movie have. It is true that since I am the type of person that considers Visual Novels as videogames, I considered placing Higurashi on this spot, since the 8 main games make a 100+ hour story that somehow doesn’t feel as long.
However, the campaign mode of Super Smash Bros Brawlstill has some scenes that I really consider iconic (Ike and Sonic’s first apparitions come to mind), and the fact that they managed to do a story with only the stock voices of the fighters adds a nice layer of originality to it. If there was a category for best couch co-op, this campaign would win it by far.
Favorite art style: I tend to like the artstyles of all of the Fire Emblem games (except for Engage, which felt more like it had overly designed gacha characters than the average Fire Emblem). The World Ends With You was another game I was thinking about, but I have already added it to Best Soundtrack so I felt like it’d be better to leave it just there.
I feel like Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia has a bit of a more original style than other Fire Emblem games. Even though most of the Fire Emblem games go for that JRPG design, this one tries to look a bit more realistic while keeping characters with weird hair colors.
Biggest personal impact: Pokémon LeafGreen was the first Pokémon game I played! I was also thinking about Minecraft but I felt like it’d be criminal to not add a Pokémon game to this list, given how much time I’ve spent with Pokémon games in my life. I haven’t done a proper playthrough in a while (kinda wanna try Scarlet on a Switch 2, feel like I’d really like the game on playable hardware which the game wasn’t originally designed for) but I still play Showdown from time to time.
Best combat: Devil May Cry 3 is still amazing today. I think DMC4 and 5 could beat this from what I’ve seen, but I still haven’t gotten around those games. I believe that KH2 is only slightly behind, I only added this one instead because style ranks and the combo potential is so fun. Dante does exactly what I want him to do and I enjoyed experimenting with all of the options the game would be giving me and thinking about which would be the best weapon combination for each boss.
Overhated: Can’t think of anything here… If I end up liking Pokémon Scarlet once I play it I could place it here, it’s definitely a hated game lol.
Underrated: For me, Underrated meant that the game is widely known but not given the recognition it deserves. Wii Sports Resort is a widely known game that I felt like it has not been given a try but many potential fan. It has some motion controls that I found on par with Switch Sports and I also think is one of the few games that everyone can enjoy to play since the controls and the sports are simple enough. I think that the new Switch Sports Resort 2 could end up beating this game on this list, but that game isn’t even out yet and I don’t have a Switch 2 as for now.
Overrated: The only souls-like game I’ve played is Dark Souls 3. I found a second hand copy on a store and grabbed it because the price seemed nice and I had never tried a Souls game before. I picked the default Knight class at the beginning since I thought that the game would be really hard and got going. At first, I found the game a bit hard while I was getting used to the controls and stamina system, but after I got past the first boss, I started thinking it was more cheesy, as I would start to suffer damage more because of enemies sneaking up behind me from an invisble camera angle on a room rather than because of my lack of skills. I ended up dropping the game after beating the third boss.
Some years after, after Elden Ring got out, I learned that most people try to beat the enemies without using a shield. I guess that DS3 would have been much harder to beat if I hadn’t used one but I didn’t know that shields were a “journalist weapon”, since blocking is a central part of KH2’s combat.
Needs a remake: Drakengard is a really unique game, which has an atmosphere and visuals that capture you in a way only few other games have managed to do for me. However it suffers from an awful combat system and mediocre visuals that makes it a miserable (but still original) experience. It was Yoko Taro’s first game, so it’s natural that it feels rough at the edges. A game like this with some interesting core ideas but loads of margin of improvement would be an ideal candidate of a remake, unlike the 3rd remake of OoT that I don’t really think we need right now.
Criminally underlooked: When thinking about an underlooked game, I basically tried to think about a game that is rather obscure and that I enjoyed, so I present to you Z.A.T.O: I Love The World And Everything On It, a visual novel which is free on Steam! It really reminded me of other visual novels I have played before, like Subahibi, but it’s ambiented on Soviet Russia instead. I would prefer to not spoil anything about it other than the fact that is around 5.5 hours long, so it’s rather short!
Protagonist/Antagonist: I had to add a picture of Vergil with MSPaint lol.
I think Dante is a really solid and complete protagonist as he acts like someone who is “too cool for school” most of the time on a videogame that doesn’t take itself seriously while also having some scenes in which he gets actually serious or emotional.
Vergil’s dynamic with Dante is what made me put him as the antagonist, together with the fact that I really struggled to think about an antagonist I’d like at all.
Honorable mentions for other protaginists I’ve enjoyed playing as include Roxas(Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days) aaaaand that’s it lol.
Best Soundtrack: The World Ends With You wins for me because it has an OST that could be launched as an album completely unrelated to the game and it’d still succeed. This is done in purpose as the OST was made in a way that the player would hear whatever Neku (the protagonist) is listening to on his headphones at the time.
This being said, there are MANY great songs that I have heard on videogames, some of which surpass TWEWY at times (Zero from AC:Zero (haven’t played the game), Twilight of the Gods from FE:Shadows of Valentia, God Shattering Star from FE:3H, Shadowlord from Nier (haven’t played this game either), Red’s theme in HGSS and many Kingdom Hearts songs…)
Best Multiplayer: I have played some World of Warcraft: Classic here and there, and even though I praised Super Smash Bros Brawl as the best couch co-op game, WoW: Classic has all of the elements to give you a nice adventure to level 60. I have never gotten further than level 25 though...too grindy, but I’ve sunked like 60 hours in private and blizzard servers and I am confident to say that this is one of the best MMO.
The main “problem” is that once you get to the maximum level of 60, if you aren’t interested on raids, there isn’t much for you to do. I personally don’t think this is an issue, but since MMORPG’s are expected to bring unlimited amounts of content to the table, I believe this is an area some people won’t like.
The main reason as to why I think it’s a good multiplayer game is that I have played it alone and with geb and whim and how you can feel a really big difference on your experience when other people help you with certain spells or by giving you items that they gave gotten from their professions. Classes interact with each other in a way that promotes people to socialize.
All of this being said, yeah Blizzard is too greedy and they will fuck up the new OSRS-esque WoW:Forever game they just announced with microtransactions.
Maybe I should give OSRS a try one day before I die.
Not usually my thing but…: I don’t like sandbox games and I have thousands of hours in Minecraft…
Turn my brain off: Don’t feel like I’ve got to explain why I added Team Fortress 2 here. Honorable mention to Splatoon 2. I should get back into Splatoon 3 as well, I really enjoyed it at first and I played it a lot on the first few days I got it, but life got in the way and I only managed to finish all of the single player missions except the challenge one.
Best with friends: I had lots of fun playing Lethal Company with my friends so this pick is based just on my personal experience lol. I feel like a game like this is really boring while playing alone and amazing with the right people (and gambling mods).
Best retro game: TF2 will be 19 years old in a month so I think it counts lol. If not I could place Super Mario 64 instead, it was either one or the other for me. I enjoyed playing Super Mario RPG but I never managed to finish it as I got bored of it…
Nostalgic childhood game: I brought the Switch for a trip with my friends recently and when I botted up Ultimate someone mentioned how much he liked Super Smash Bros Brawl so there’s that.
Game everyone should play: Super Mario 64 (and its DS version) is an accessible game which can get challenging sometimes, although I think that most of my difficulties back then were because I was playing the game with no guide at all.
i could probably make this more accurate but my powers of recollection are poor
idk what my number one favorite game is but i do play pokemon sleep every day
Favourite game: Super Mario Odyssey may not have my most hours, but it is the game that stays on my mind most of the time. It is the only game i ever speedran and will speedrun. The movement might be the best out of all the mario games which makes it a lot of fun to just put hours in whenever. A game you can just boot up and replay or try different things in regardless of the amount of time you have is a good contender for a favourite.
Best Story: This category has a lot of contenders for me, but A Way Out takes the win here. Even after not having played it for years, it is one of the few games where i pretty much remember all of the story. You experience this story with a friend, which not only creates a memory of the game, but also of a fun playthrough with a friend. Besides that, it is probably one of the more "realistic" stories in games, making it way easier to empathize and relate with the characters. I dont think its the most well written story per se, but in the end that doesnt matter as long as it was enjoyable. Sorry im not a plot reviewer i dont know what else to write about it.
Favourite Art Style: Ni No Kuni It looks really pretty :D
Biggest Personal Impact: League of Legends is a pretty common theme in this post. I may have spent most of my teenager years in this game. And this is mostly positive even though i know i could have used my time way better. I have made some really good friendships through this game, most still standing now.
Best Combat: I put Persona 5 Royal, but any of the 3 4 5 fit here. Its pretty classic jrpg-ish so not super special but really nice.
Overhated: Pokemon Brilliant Diamond gets way too much hate, just because it looks goofy. But nintendo/pokemon fans will never be happy. It brought back the joy of my first pokemon game, with a different look. Gooofy does not instantly equal bad
Underrated: Corekeeper is a terraria like game mixed with a bit of stardew. Pretty fun and cute to try out when its on sale
Overrated: I put zelda breath of the wild here, but i will selfishly extend this to the whole zelda franchise. I just can not get into it, i do not enjoy it. I tried all the big titles, but they just bore me.
Needs a Remake: Orcs must die was my first steam game, wow omg. It was a really fun zombie wave protect your shit tactical type game. All the different kinds of traps you could place were all very unique and fun to place in ways so they could interact with eachother. I would like to see it remade so it handles better.
Criminally Overlooked: I feel like i barely ever see people talk about Mario and Luigi: Dream Team. I really remember liking this video game on the 3ds.
Favourite Protagonist(s): This might be recensy bias, but Split Fiction is a co-op story game, just like a way out, however in a more fantasy/scifi setting. Their character development is really nice. Its cool to see actual mental troubles and growth from it, rather than just oh im fixed now.
Favourite Antagonist: I'll be honest in my mind there aren't really any antagonists that i find that memorable. Yes i remember a lot of them, but rarely do i feel like yeah i get why you are evil i would be too. So i picked osu!. I feel like nook/unko is the biggest antagonist of osu! because she is actually so good she would completely destroy the leaderboard if she actualyl played.
Best Soundtrack: A lot of games could go here, but lately マイブーム is the Thrice Hice soundtrack.
Best Multiplayer: Kinda copout answer, but in iRacing i have quickly come to a point where the people racing are serious enough to not just yeet it into you. And generally in my races everyone is very respectful, which is hard to come by?!
Not Usually my Thing, but...: Teamfight Tactics is a auto-chess like game made by riot games league of legends. The first time i played it i questioned who would even like strategy games where there is zero mechanical skill involved. But the past few years as i have been becoming mechanically slower (not even old yet) i started enjoying it a lot.
Turn my Brain off: Dirt 3 might be the goat for this, just drive around on dirt (wow) and rally or drift gymkhana and do whatever you like in the car.
Best with Friends: Wow second League of LEgends appearance and THIRD riot games appearance on top of that!!!!! I would say this is very like csgo/tf2 in that if you play with friends its never not fun. Stupid things happen? You got your whole team to laugh with you instead of people getting angry.
Best Retro Game: I put Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 here because its the first one that came to mind :D
Nostalgic Childhood Game: One of the bangers of all time: Jazz Jackrabbit (2). My first memory of actively playing a game on the com-puter was this one. I think there are even pictures of me playing it, very locked in.
Game Everyone Should Play: Whatever the name of the latest arcade version for Initial D is. Playing this in the arcade versus the others there might be the most fun you will have in an arcade. Able to make friends very easily like that and also learn how to get better way quicker than just playing it by yourself
hosimati suisei please
I'm honestly not 100% about these and there's a couple that are absolutely interchangeable but I just couldn't think of in the moment but here we go I guess... I really need to play more games LOL
Favourite Game: Mindwave - this one is really jumping the gun since the game isn't even set to come out for another almost two years but i'm already in love with just about every aspect of it, the warioware inspired gameplay, the art direction, the character designs, the music, i'm beyond excited for this game to release and i otherwise wasn't sure what to consider my One And Only Favourite Game, there's other contenders but they were already represented in other categories and I didn't want to have dupes :) the real answer is probably splatoon 3 but that's an insanely boring answer...
Best Story: Fata Morgana no Yakata - admittedly i'm overselling this one, i think there's other games i've played and games i plan to play someday with better stories, but this one just had moments that hit me really hard and it was the first thing that came to mind. it also has very pretty art direction and the music is also great but its also a little goofy because most tracks have lyrics but they're in some goofy made up language, it has its charm but its certainly goofy
Favourite Art Style: Mogeko Castle - ...but really just funamusea in general, once again there's other games i've played with objectively better art styles, whatever "objectively" means in this scenario but i'm sure you can fill that in for yourself, something about funamusea's art style just scratches the brain the right way
Biggest Personal Impact: Splatoon 2 - After initially dismissing Splatoon and its home console the Wii U as STOOPID I finally decided to dip my toes into the demo Nintendo was hosting in March 2019 after finally picking up a Nintendo Switch in the same month. Seeing reemo et al post about the characters pretty much from the moment the initial game on the Wii U released, which my bitter stupid idiot ass 2015 self also dismissed as STOOPID initially but they eventually grew on me and put it on my radar. The trailer for the Octo Expansion followed by the reveal of Smash Ultimate initially presented with two inklings havin a lil turf war in the March 2018 direct also made me more interested cus OE looked interesting tonally and to be the vehicle through which The Smash Game is revealed shows the trust Nintendo has in the franchise methinks. I played the demo for like 15 minutes and bought the game a literal month later, unsure why I waited but the rest is history.
Best Combat: Disgaea 1 Complete - I picked Disgaea 1 Complete specifically because that's the version of the game I actually finished. One of the few games where grinding is an expected part of the process but I didn't think it became boring, even though at one point I was basically autopiloting my hand on the controller while watching youtube on another monitor but that's just part of the process and it looked funny.
Overhated: Pokemon Y (and X) - I was originally also A Hater but that mostly stemmed from general dissatisfactions I had with the 3DS that are likely semi irrational based on the fact that I wasn't allowed to buy the console cus I was Too Old For Video Games (my mom will deny she ever said this!). I extended the same irrational hate towards Mario & Luigi Dream Team Bros and while I did play that one and came to like it a good while ago, it wasn't until earlier this year that I decided to give Pokemon Y a shot after really enjoying Lumiose City in Pokemon Legends Z-A and wanting to experience more of Kalos. I think it's my favourite region now and the game is fun.
Underrated: Gravity Rush - I feel like anyone that learns about this game and plays it ends up loving it and much like all good things Sony owns the rights to, they do nothing with it. Kat was a contender for Fave Protag too. It's available on PS4 and PS Vita (and PS5 through backcompat I guess), really give it a whirl if you've never played it yet, and for the love of god leave the gyro camera controls on.
Overrated: Super Mario Odyssey - Before you burn me at the stake, I do like this game but people act like it's the only good game Nintendo has published/developed in the past 10 year. This is a thing it shares with Zelda Breath of the Wild, which similarly to Arysil I've always found it really difficult to get into Zelda games, so perhaps that should've gone here BUT because Odyssey is a game i've actually finished (the story at least, by no means 100%'d) I feel it's more at home here.
Needs a Remake: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time - This is one of my favourite games of all time and I'm generally not super psyched on the concept of remakes, but I think the scenario and concept of PiT is really cool for a Mario game but the game itself is a little bit undercooked compared to what came directly before and directly after. I do wonder how much of my impression of the game is coloured by the fact that, for a Mario game, the game was pretty heavy on dialogue and I could not really read English yet at this point so I had to fill in a lot of blanks. I have enjoyed the game each time I've replayed it since childhood so maybe that worry is misplaced. True flashwave fans will remember the minor crashout (joking) I had after the aforementioned March 2018 Direct where they announced Bowsers Inside Story was getting a remake, skipping partners in time. We all know how that ended... I have yet to play Brothership because I wanted to stream the entire series but due to various Menthol Moments I haven't even gotten around to finishing the streams of Superstar Saga yet.
Criminally Overlooked: Refind Self - The Personality Test Game - I had a very hard time picking something for this category from the assortment of games I've actually played. I learned about Refind Self in a random Nintendo Direct and it looked cute. There's not a whole lot to it but it's a fun little experience and somewhat replayable.
Favourite Protagonist: UNBEATABLE - Beat is just really cool I think. Also a contender for best soundtrack, but I'm more selective with it than the game I ended up going with for that category. It's a good rhythm game and I am bad at it.
Favourite Antagonist: Danganronpa - While I think DR2 is the best game in the DR series, I really liked the way things went in the original too. GLaDOS/Portal was definitely also one I had on the mind for this category but whim already brought it to the table for this it and I wanted to put Portal elsewhere.
Best Soundtrack: deltarune - but also UNDERTALE! Almost a decade later and I still find Rude Buster infinitely loopable. Both games have incredible soundtracks and I'm excited what chapters 7 and 6 have in store.
Best Multiplayer: Splatoon 3 - ...NOT... but I'm not sure what else I'd put here. Splatoon 3 is the only multiplayer game I play on a regular basis but to refer to its online play with a word that's closely related to "good" just feels wrong. That being said I do really love this game and the franchise it is a part of.
Not Usually My Thing, But...: Roller Coaster Tycoon - this one could've also gone into Nostalgic Childhood Game but I think it fits this category more since I'm usually not that into this kind of simulation type game, but I suppose it was installed on the family computer at the right point in time. I haven't played it much or at all in recent times but back in the day I really enjoyed messing with it.
Turn My Brain Off: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - whenever I just need to burn some time or just feels like Turning My Brain Off I fire up the 200cc tournament room. There's a couple other weird people that like 200cc a lot so I get to play against a lot of faces that have become familiar over time. The only way Mario Kart World would overtake this position is if they were to add a similar tournaments system and also 200cc and while I do believe the latter might happen at some point in like 2050 when the game is ported to the Nintendo Switch 64 as Mario Kart World Deluxe Plus, I'm not sure if we'll be seeing tournaments system because Nintendo is confusing.
Best With Friends: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Particularly using the MTA:SA client and the Touhou modpack. So many goofy hijinks were had in this game ranging from speeding for weed to crawling to the top of an insurmountable pile of haybales to be the one to consume the burger to just messing about in freeroam... I really need to set this stuff up again if it isn't still running, I honestly have no clue because it's very set and forget.
Best Retro Game: Love Live! School Idol Festival - i miss it so much... it's probably blasphemous to put a phone game here instead of Super Mario World but that would've been insanely predictable and SIF still stemmed from a purer time in exploitative gacha mobage where it wasn't all ads and terribleness + it was a fun rhythm game.
Nostalgic Childhood Game: Prince of Persia (DOS) - Or Mario on the computer, as I saw it as a child. I don't think I've ever beaten the game myself but I loved watching my mom play through it. Calling it "Mario on the computer" is doing it injustice, it's still a fun game I think!
Game Everyone Should Play: Portal - Portal is probably one of the best put together games ever made. It mostly paces itself well and concepts tend to not overstay their welcome. My preference has always gone to Portal 1 over Portal 2, even though the latter is also an amazing game you should definitely play too, I think the ambiance and tone of Portal 1 is better whereas Portal 2 went a little too hard on the goofiness factor. All relatively speaking of course because both are amazing games and you should play them.
i think this list is by no means final and is very subject to change and I really should really play more games...
Favourite Game: Mindwave - this one is really jumping the gun since the game isn't even set to come out for another almost two years but i'm already in love with just about every aspect of it, the warioware inspired gameplay, the art direction, the character designs, the music, i'm beyond excited for this game to release and i otherwise wasn't sure what to consider my One And Only Favourite Game, there's other contenders but they were already represented in other categories and I didn't want to have dupes :) the real answer is probably splatoon 3 but that's an insanely boring answer...
Best Story: Fata Morgana no Yakata - admittedly i'm overselling this one, i think there's other games i've played and games i plan to play someday with better stories, but this one just had moments that hit me really hard and it was the first thing that came to mind. it also has very pretty art direction and the music is also great but its also a little goofy because most tracks have lyrics but they're in some goofy made up language, it has its charm but its certainly goofy
Favourite Art Style: Mogeko Castle - ...but really just funamusea in general, once again there's other games i've played with objectively better art styles, whatever "objectively" means in this scenario but i'm sure you can fill that in for yourself, something about funamusea's art style just scratches the brain the right way
Biggest Personal Impact: Splatoon 2 - After initially dismissing Splatoon and its home console the Wii U as STOOPID I finally decided to dip my toes into the demo Nintendo was hosting in March 2019 after finally picking up a Nintendo Switch in the same month. Seeing reemo et al post about the characters pretty much from the moment the initial game on the Wii U released, which my bitter stupid idiot ass 2015 self also dismissed as STOOPID initially but they eventually grew on me and put it on my radar. The trailer for the Octo Expansion followed by the reveal of Smash Ultimate initially presented with two inklings havin a lil turf war in the March 2018 direct also made me more interested cus OE looked interesting tonally and to be the vehicle through which The Smash Game is revealed shows the trust Nintendo has in the franchise methinks. I played the demo for like 15 minutes and bought the game a literal month later, unsure why I waited but the rest is history.
Best Combat: Disgaea 1 Complete - I picked Disgaea 1 Complete specifically because that's the version of the game I actually finished. One of the few games where grinding is an expected part of the process but I didn't think it became boring, even though at one point I was basically autopiloting my hand on the controller while watching youtube on another monitor but that's just part of the process and it looked funny.
Overhated: Pokemon Y (and X) - I was originally also A Hater but that mostly stemmed from general dissatisfactions I had with the 3DS that are likely semi irrational based on the fact that I wasn't allowed to buy the console cus I was Too Old For Video Games (my mom will deny she ever said this!). I extended the same irrational hate towards Mario & Luigi Dream Team Bros and while I did play that one and came to like it a good while ago, it wasn't until earlier this year that I decided to give Pokemon Y a shot after really enjoying Lumiose City in Pokemon Legends Z-A and wanting to experience more of Kalos. I think it's my favourite region now and the game is fun.
Underrated: Gravity Rush - I feel like anyone that learns about this game and plays it ends up loving it and much like all good things Sony owns the rights to, they do nothing with it. Kat was a contender for Fave Protag too. It's available on PS4 and PS Vita (and PS5 through backcompat I guess), really give it a whirl if you've never played it yet, and for the love of god leave the gyro camera controls on.
Overrated: Super Mario Odyssey - Before you burn me at the stake, I do like this game but people act like it's the only good game Nintendo has published/developed in the past 10 year. This is a thing it shares with Zelda Breath of the Wild, which similarly to Arysil I've always found it really difficult to get into Zelda games, so perhaps that should've gone here BUT because Odyssey is a game i've actually finished (the story at least, by no means 100%'d) I feel it's more at home here.
Needs a Remake: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time - This is one of my favourite games of all time and I'm generally not super psyched on the concept of remakes, but I think the scenario and concept of PiT is really cool for a Mario game but the game itself is a little bit undercooked compared to what came directly before and directly after. I do wonder how much of my impression of the game is coloured by the fact that, for a Mario game, the game was pretty heavy on dialogue and I could not really read English yet at this point so I had to fill in a lot of blanks. I have enjoyed the game each time I've replayed it since childhood so maybe that worry is misplaced. True flashwave fans will remember the minor crashout (joking) I had after the aforementioned March 2018 Direct where they announced Bowsers Inside Story was getting a remake, skipping partners in time. We all know how that ended... I have yet to play Brothership because I wanted to stream the entire series but due to various Menthol Moments I haven't even gotten around to finishing the streams of Superstar Saga yet.
Criminally Overlooked: Refind Self - The Personality Test Game - I had a very hard time picking something for this category from the assortment of games I've actually played. I learned about Refind Self in a random Nintendo Direct and it looked cute. There's not a whole lot to it but it's a fun little experience and somewhat replayable.
Favourite Protagonist: UNBEATABLE - Beat is just really cool I think. Also a contender for best soundtrack, but I'm more selective with it than the game I ended up going with for that category. It's a good rhythm game and I am bad at it.
Favourite Antagonist: Danganronpa - While I think DR2 is the best game in the DR series, I really liked the way things went in the original too. GLaDOS/Portal was definitely also one I had on the mind for this category but whim already brought it to the table for this it and I wanted to put Portal elsewhere.
Best Soundtrack: deltarune - but also UNDERTALE! Almost a decade later and I still find Rude Buster infinitely loopable. Both games have incredible soundtracks and I'm excited what chapters 7 and 6 have in store.
Best Multiplayer: Splatoon 3 - ...NOT... but I'm not sure what else I'd put here. Splatoon 3 is the only multiplayer game I play on a regular basis but to refer to its online play with a word that's closely related to "good" just feels wrong. That being said I do really love this game and the franchise it is a part of.
Not Usually My Thing, But...: Roller Coaster Tycoon - this one could've also gone into Nostalgic Childhood Game but I think it fits this category more since I'm usually not that into this kind of simulation type game, but I suppose it was installed on the family computer at the right point in time. I haven't played it much or at all in recent times but back in the day I really enjoyed messing with it.
Turn My Brain Off: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - whenever I just need to burn some time or just feels like Turning My Brain Off I fire up the 200cc tournament room. There's a couple other weird people that like 200cc a lot so I get to play against a lot of faces that have become familiar over time. The only way Mario Kart World would overtake this position is if they were to add a similar tournaments system and also 200cc and while I do believe the latter might happen at some point in like 2050 when the game is ported to the Nintendo Switch 64 as Mario Kart World Deluxe Plus, I'm not sure if we'll be seeing tournaments system because Nintendo is confusing.
Best With Friends: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Particularly using the MTA:SA client and the Touhou modpack. So many goofy hijinks were had in this game ranging from speeding for weed to crawling to the top of an insurmountable pile of haybales to be the one to consume the burger to just messing about in freeroam... I really need to set this stuff up again if it isn't still running, I honestly have no clue because it's very set and forget.
Best Retro Game: Love Live! School Idol Festival - i miss it so much... it's probably blasphemous to put a phone game here instead of Super Mario World but that would've been insanely predictable and SIF still stemmed from a purer time in exploitative gacha mobage where it wasn't all ads and terribleness + it was a fun rhythm game.
Nostalgic Childhood Game: Prince of Persia (DOS) - Or Mario on the computer, as I saw it as a child. I don't think I've ever beaten the game myself but I loved watching my mom play through it. Calling it "Mario on the computer" is doing it injustice, it's still a fun game I think!
Game Everyone Should Play: Portal - Portal is probably one of the best put together games ever made. It mostly paces itself well and concepts tend to not overstay their welcome. My preference has always gone to Portal 1 over Portal 2, even though the latter is also an amazing game you should definitely play too, I think the ambiance and tone of Portal 1 is better whereas Portal 2 went a little too hard on the goofiness factor. All relatively speaking of course because both are amazing games and you should play them.
i think this list is by no means final and is very subject to change and I really should really play more games...
