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.

I admire this game as a shitpost, an absolutely fucking mindless activity that deserves a place in the Waste of Time Hall of Fame. Despite that, I despise this game as a game, an absolutely fucking mindless activity that deserves a place in the Waste of Time Hall of Fame.

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."

For E-sports, Global Offensive is the obvious choice for a Counter-Strike title in a tournament. I used to play it a lot, but in every other regard, Global Offensive is so much less exciting to play than any Counter-Strike before it; a casualty of Valve (more so Hidden Path Entertainment) trying to keep up with the times, even if its Deathmatch mode and community servers were undeniably fun. Unfortunately, this game is no longer playable (in proper form) in favor of Counter-Strike 2, and even if it wasn't my go-to Counter-Strike, this will likely remain one of Valve's most brutal mistakes.

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).

Some of the most entertaining time you will ever spend with friends, and for a browser drawing game, it surely beats the fuck out of Skribbl.io. This isn't a game that would have been a contender for "Best Video Game of 2020," but alas, it accomplished something that a lot of AAA games of 2020 couldn't: being fun.

My opinion of this game is, admittedly, clouded almost completely by intense nostalgia but I recently played it again and to say I had fun was an understatement.

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.

It's entirely possible that I'm being harsh, but this is the type of game you find in the weirdest corner of Newgrounds, play for five minutes, have a good laugh about, and never play again. Not to mention that the five minutes you spent playing it likely amount to the time it took to initiate and complete game development, too.

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.

Get these fuckin' motion controls outta my Mario Party game.

Get these fuckin' vehicles outta my Mario Party game.

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.