The worst launch day "killer app" glorified tech demo Nintendo ever released, as well as the one that did the least to hide the fact it's a tech demo. A soulless shill for Joy-Cons, my favorite totally non-drifting and totally not overpriced video game controller.

This game is kinda sus...

Probably the best traditional battle royale game, despite the incredibly low bar. This game has a fuck ton of character, personality and terrific gameplay, with each successful knockdown or kill feeling like a great adrenaline rush instead of a chore; of course, this is a Titanfall spinoff, so I suppose Respawn Entertainment had a head start configuring this game's intense charisma, but the point still stands. That said, fuck this game too. Why? Because spending more than 15 minutes on Apex Legends and encountering the Nickacado Avocados of the world is unbearable. That said, I can't necessarily fault the game for that because any online multiplayer game is going to have its hardcore dedicated players and Apex Legends, otherwise, is kind of fantastic. And to think this was made on the fucking Source engine. Yes, there are games that aged pretty well visually on that engine, but if you compare Half-Life 2 and Apex Legends, regardless of the fact that Half-Life 2 is way superior as a title, it is really difficult to believe that both of them run on the same (at the time of writing) near-twenty-year-old engine since Apex Legends is so polished in comparison. I recommend playing this only if you have friends to play it with.

Awesome is You

How could I not like a puzzle-sidescroller game with Will Stamper's narration? The level design is quirky and extremely fun, especially with friends, and it can even get occasionally challenging if you try to 100% it (like I did). Though the design is like any game by Behemoth, this is, nonetheless, a game that should probably go down as a modern classic, even if inferior to its more famous and celebrated predecessor.

Ah, Brawlhalla. The game debatably kickstarted the mainstream prominence of Super Smash Bros. clones, and wouldn't you know it! This one is probably one of the worst. Why? Because it's one of the first. Despite the attention-grabbing visual style, the dexterity required to play this game is practically nonexistent and, thus, never feels quite right. Not that I'm a competitive Smash fan or player, but this feels so limp and embarrassing compared to the games Brawlhalla spawned that I find Brawlhalla to be a very unpleasant experience, bordering on irritatingly bad.

Behemoth's best title; this is one of those games where if you grew up in the 2000s or 2010s and didn't play it, you'd be questioned if you ever really had a childhood at all.

Except for Halo 3 and Valve's own Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike 1.6 is the ultimate online first-person shooter. The GoldSrc engine does its Counter-Terrorists vs. Terrorists bomb-defusal concept justice with easily the series' tightest gunplay, fast movement, and a wonderfully old-school PC-gaming charm that'd been lost by the time of Global Offensive. Consider this a game where its ties to the past only propel its transcendence.

Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment take Blizzard's Overwatch 2 approach to the next level—glance at your most popular game, give it a generic (maybe "lifeless" is more apt) UI makeover, mess with the gunplay, promise new features without being able to follow up on them, remove community servers, strip away old ones (even Deathmatch is now simply a free-for-all mode), make no attempt to playtest it for bugs (including one that allows for players to shoot and kill through walls), and update the visuals at the cost of optimization and system compatibility. All of this, *just* to show off the Source 2 engine and render Counter-Strike: Global Offensive worthless and unplayable. What a "fuck you."

Of all the Counter-Strike titles, Source is the one I play the most. It's the most broken and seemingly dated title in the franchise, and my god, the gun balance is fucking abysmal. Despite its worse quality compared to its eternal predecessor, Counter-Strike: Source and its community servers, regardless of how toxic they are (few games are as demonstrably stuck in 2004 as this one), find a way to keep this game fresh and more interesting than Valve's second and more commercially successful attempt at a standalone Counter-Strike game on the Source engine.

A decent endless runner with visuals that are definitely entertaining. Like most any mobile game, however, it falls by the wayside after a small bout of addiction to it (I almost forgot this game existed, but I spent a good month playing it when it came out in 2014, and as of writing, holy shit, that was almost ten years ago).

Admittedly, I burned myself out on it. It's objectively a great game but I can't bring myself to play it anymore. All replayability is nonextant. Shame too, this used to be a bit of a favorite. Don't even want to look at the game's art anymore.

Fun with friends! And that's about as far as the substantiative quality goes; nevertheless, it's a very silly game with an eye candy aesthetic that probably serves this game's style more so than whatever substance you're supposed to find here. Having said that, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is ultimately (no pun intended) one of the better battle royale games to blow up over the past few years, likely because it's atypical of the genre via its presentation as a party game. My big issues boil down to the janky game physics—and sure, that's by design, but it unfortunately ruins quite a few of the minigames that otherwise sound really fun on paper—and how stale it can get after even just one or two full matches, but other than that, if you're looking for a comfort food game for you and your friends to play, this game should satiate that hunger.

Update: While I still believe a decent portion of what I've written is true, I will concede that I was being harsh and mostly basing my opinion of it on the main battle royale mode, which was where most of my experience lay. The zero-build battle royale option and some sessions with friends who are considerably deeper into the game have since changed my perspective. I still haven't spent money on this and refuse to, but I understand why someone might do that (other than mere sunk cost fallacy). The point of the game, I've realized, is to have mindless fun, and with the new game expansions in Chapter 5 in particular, it's rather intriguing to see what this game has become since I first reviewed it. Substance shmubstance, this game wasn't created for serious critical analysis. Which, for the record, is not an excuse for how grossly corporate it is, or how middling the main battle royale mode still is, but I'm willing to say I'd probably much rather play this than a lot of online multiplayer games that have made waves as cultural phenomena. ------------------------------------------------------ Original review from 10 Oct 2022 (Score: 5.0): This game singlehandedly ruined the video game industry. Sure, PUBG may predate this game in terms of blockbuster battle royales, but no game had so profoundly affected gaming in the last ten or fifteen years as much as this one, since this was free and PUBG wasn't. Consequently, Fornite became the catalyst for new battle royale games (for better and *mostly* worse) and even forced competition out of franchises that aren't even related to the battle royale style of game, i.e. CS:GO's Danger Zone mode (an inclusion that incentivized Valve to make the game free-to-play and milk every penny out of players for all the additional content). For what it's worth, it's not a terribly bad game; personally, I would never in a million years use money to acquire this game, and I'm happy to say I've never spent a dime on any of Fortnite's in-game add-ons or virtual currency. However, I firmly believe calling this game fun or great is the equivalent to watching any given Marvel film and walking out of it believing that it was cinema's best. Sure, it's a novelty to have all of these forces of pop culture come together to duke it out, but it's not sufficient enough to redeem the qualitative failures of the media itself. In the case of Fortnite, between its general lack of personality and the slog of both its crafting and attacking mechanics, no Goku costume could ever make this game more than the uninteresting chore it is.

I imagine playing this with a VR headset would resemble the experience of playing VRChat. It's got some classic game modes and servers to play them in, but personally, I never found the proper time to gel with it. Still better than VRChat though (for whatever that's worth).

cj? OOOOOOHHH MY DAWG, WHASSUP!? HAHA, HAHA!

I hate to admit it, but Grand Theft Auto V's scope and content are so over-the-top, nuanced, and detailed that denying its greatness only seems like popularity-borne contrarianism. It doesn't transport you into a specific era like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas does, but perhaps that's both the consequence of V taking place in the same year it came out and a testament to how relevant and modern the game still feels ten years later. It may be too close to call it, but I don't think "timeless" wouldn't be an apt adjective for this game.

For the ten minutes I played this game after almost nine years of having not played it, I can confidently say that Jetpack Joyride is great for all of those ten minutes. Any longer and it's a snoozer, unfortunately, but I don't believe it's straight up mediocre—it's just a hair away from it.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes stands out among video games in the party genre for accomplishing what most of them are simply supposed to achieve: being a genuine party game, a la Mafia/Werewolf or What?. The base game is stressful, but that pales in comparison to some of the intricate puzzles developed as freely available mods online. But with or without mods, anyone who tries this game out with friends will likely have a blast (or a really heated argument, like any good party game) and want to play some more.

Maybe I'm being generous to Krunker, but it's just dumb fun with friends and I've never really had a truly unenjoyable time playing it.

My grade would be higher if: A. I didn’t think this game’s RNG was abysmal and B. I didn’t believe this is occasionally one of the buggiest messes present in a genuinely good game. Nevertheless, both are true and annoying beyond belief, especially because I’m in a phase with a friend where I’m trying to 100% this game for fun. Suffice to say, it isn’t very fun. In a casual setting though? This is clearly the ideal co-op FPS video game, a shit ton of fun, warts and all. I’m being harsh just because this game is fucking annoying and I’m a baby, so take it with a grain of salt.

An arcade classic that is really shockingly underrated on here. It's not Super Mario Bros. 3, yeah, but this game is seemingly inimitable, and its countless remakes are always a treat, too. Except for the Virtual Boy one, fuck that.

A great party game with some unfinished aspects that somehow improve the fun of it all, and while we're at it, why does my hand feel like I've been climbing rope?

Get these fuckin' game-breaking modes outta my Mario Party game.

The best Mario Party game and probably my favorite party game of all time. Yeah, every bit of it is unforgiving, but even as I wallow in my butthurt from losing a round of Bumper Balls, I can recognize it's part of the charm. Not to mention the costumes!

I think this one has aged a bit worse than its predecessor despite the welcome additions of Waluigi and Daisy. Still, it's an absolute riot, and the game's variety is among the most exciting of the whole Mario Party series.

Perhaps the modernization of Mario Party is the start of its fall from grace, and sure, some of the boards are bland as shit, but I'll vouch for Mario Party 4. I think some of its minigames are terrific, and for what it's worth, the first GameCube-era entry in the series was only as good as it could be after three exceedingly-successful Nintendo 64 Mario Party titles, regardless of the snoozefest boards.

Mario Party 4, but with better boards. Touché.

An improvement when it comes to having personality (since 4 and 5 decided to drop the ball a tad), though I'm not particularly enamored with the mode that shills the microphone gimmick, and I think the minigames can be pretty hit or miss; not too sure why this one is so highly regarded, but it's probably due for re-evaluation at some point since it has been a while.

Look, I think mixing up a tried and true formula for any game franchise tends to be a net positive more often than not, yet somehow, Mario Party has eluded success in the execution of such a simple concept. Enter Mario Party 7. Ugh, did we need a Bowser event every fucking five turns? The overhauled star system is a tiresome aggravation, and I can't say I'm impressed with this entry's minigames. That said, I will iterate that this game is still enjoyable because, despite these flaws, it's a mix-up that didn't fundamentally ruin the essence of Mario Party. Plus, relative to the failure of its successors, I'd accredit 7 with breathing some new life into the series—if only briefly.

A vast improvement and the first genuinely good Mario Party game in well over a decade. I don't give a shit that this game nostalgia baits—I prefer it that way after all the horseshit. May Super Mario Party become obsolete in its wake.

Fucking slaps, don't care if this is a stupid sports game with the cast of Mario and Final Fantasy. Maybe it's not great but, shit, it's close.

I probably like this game more than I should because, compared to most of its contemporaries, it hasn't aged well, but the controls still feel satisfactory, and I never find myself bored or burdened by the game. It's not Street Fighter II, but it's not trying to be, and the aesthetic of Mortal Kombat was always more enticing anyway. Who doesn't want to rip someone's spine out when they play this?

A return to form, even if contrived, but who cares!? This was the game that saved and redefined Mortal Kombat. Perhaps the fatalities are now a tad overkill, but man, this game feels great, and the cinematic campaign is a fantastic retelling of the original arcade games' lore. Everything falls into place, and the ninth Mortal Kombat game is the best in the series since Mortal Kombat II. Easily the best modern Mortal Kombat, too.

Judging by the timeline of events, Midway took their time to make the third entry in the Mortal Kombat series. However, judging by playing the game, it becomes apparent Midway hastily threw it together and removed most of the elements and characters that made the first two Mortal Kombat games so good the first time around. They did try to rectify this with two future revamped versions of it, but the scars that besmirch Hank Hill Sub-Zero and the rest of this game hurt it enough that 3 is the black sheep of the arcade Mortal Kombat titles; when all is said and done, it's still a good enough fighter, and the introduction of its combat system marks the first time Ed Boon and Jon Tobias threw their hat in the ring for contention with the "serious" fighting games; it simply couldn't live up to the expectations of the two games before it, especially Mortal Kombat II.

It's the black sheep of the sixth-gen era Mortal Kombat games, and yeah, Kreate-a-Fatality sucks, and the mechanics and graphics are practically the same as its two predecessors, not to mention that the payoff for beating its main modes is lacking. But I'm willing to forgive a few of these flaws with the understanding of the limitations Midway faced to cram in as much content as they did because even if it meant chopping off Motaro's entire fucking body, all the franchise's characters returned (which meant that half of the roster consisted of classic characters and the other half, not so much, but you still get the option so that issue is minor), and all of the side modes—especially Motor Kombat—are the most fun in the Mortal Kombat series since Trilogy was released a decade prior (it's only a coincidence that both of these Mortal Kombat games are the only ones that took the approach of utilizing every character they could). There is a bit of a balance, but at the end of the day, the monotonous everything of the main game still leaves it in the qualitative realm of its two predecessors. That said, this is the title of the sixth-generation Mortal Kombats I'd most likely pick up again for fun.

I'll own up to the fact that this game's difficulty is insane and that by "regular" fighting game standards, the entire Mortal Kombat franchise seems to pale in comparison. That said, I couldn't care less; unlike its predecessor, Mortal Kombat II's graphics and sound design in 2023 are rather impressive for the 16-bit era, and on original arcade hardware, it's one of the most responsive and scarily fast-paced fighting games I've ever played. I'd also argue that Mortal Kombat II is the most aesthetically successful game in the series, carefully toeing the line between its camp nature and the intense brutality it was meant to convey without overdoing either or effect loss. The roster is likely the best in the series and, in terms of lore, one of the most enthralling across any game practically built for multiplayer. No modern Mortal Kombat game after it is nearly as impressive, and the one that comes the closest is a franchise reboot that is most inspired by and based on Mortal Kombat II. You'd be hard-pressed to find another goofy arcade fighting game as fun or challenging as this one.

True, Mortal Kombat 3's second and final version does have an intense loading problem, and everything about it is a mess, ranging from its proto-Smash Ultimate approach for the character selection to its lazy new finishing moves and move sets. Despite this, Mortal Kombat Trilogy is playable enough that it transcends those flaws for what is ultimately the definitive version of the franchise's third game. That is unless you're playing the horrid Nintendo 64 version, which Midway clipped for no fucking reason because the size of the original game could have fit on an N64 cartridge. Every other version, though? Fantastic.