How is this game so good. I got the same level enjoyment and wonder from it that I got from Super Mario Odyssey, and its just a PlayStation commercial?!? I need more.

What if we took the most vanilla 2d platformer imaginable and made it more annoying by replacing an HP/death system with idiotic 10 second animations every time you bump into an enemy?

A fun first experiment with this whole Kirby idea, sucking up enemies, spitting em out, and being able to float being cool innovations to the genre at the time. The lack of absorbing powers feels huge, but its only like an hour long, so all in all its a fun, quick romp still worth experiencing.

Spent over a 100 hrs enjoying this before my mission. I think it was still technically in beta...? I havent kept up with its whole release history. But I do know they just released the update with the Nether like a month or two before my mission in 2012, so around the same time I played the Black Mesa beta. Since this game lends itself so well to meditative music listening while playing, I have so many music memories associated with this game, like listening to Pavement for the very first time (using Spotify for the very first time!) as well as Zombi, Kanye West, and Frank Ocean. Good times.

Dollar Tree Sean Connery is best Sean Connery. YOUR MAJHESHTY.

Experiencing this game for the first time with my brothers as a kid is a life-defining moment for me. I can still recall our absolute wonder at this fantasy world, working through the dungeons together and savoring the time-bending story as it unfolded for us, first meeting us in our childlike whimsy and taking us into the heart of Ganon's darkness and back. It felt like a real, deep bonding moment between us when we watched with baited breath as my oldest brother Brad scaled Ganon's castle and defeated him. Maybe that alone should make it a 5, but I have it as a 4.5 because I usually run out of steam whenever I try to replay it for various gameplay or pacing reasons. I'm probably due for another attempt though.

Emblematic of my dislike for the MOBA genre. I played this to win a Overwatch skin or Hearthstone card back, and as soon as I earned it, I gladly uninstalled this and never looked back. None of what this game offers connects with me.

Another bewildering experience. The structure of the game is bizarre, offering a "Story Mode" which is really just a chronological list of all the game's heists, which are all only playable online with either your friends (I have none) or randos. You know how randos can barely band together to stand near a cart in Overwatch? Imagine that for a dozen different stealth-based heist tasks. That plus indecipherable controls made this an unplayable nightmare. But I'll keep it at 1.5 to give it the benefit of the doubt for how it plays when you CAN play with a competent group of friends.

It takes my least favorite aspect of the GTA franchise--middle school level immature sex humor--and cranks it up to 11. I still finished it though (I think it was starved of good games in this genre at the time), so it was at least playable and I had some dumb fun, even if I quickly started skipping all the insufferable cutscenes.

Its been a minute since Ive experienced a true, mind-blowing wait-you-can-do-WHAT-in-this-game?? moment like I got from so many of my favorite games as a kid, but this game did it. Breath of the Wild already felt incredibly freeing after what I thought was a series of increasingly restrictive and slow-paced main titles (Twilight Princess and especially Skyward Sword *blegh*), but Tears of the Kingdom somehow blows BotW out of the water. The ability to not only interact with your world but create virtually any structure or vehicle imaginable, limited only by your imagination, feels like a colossal step into fresh territory for this 30 yr old franchise. The story does make me feel like Im going crazy, watching the same events unfold that have happened in every prior Zelda game while the characters pretend like these are surprising twists (wait this grimacing Gerudo warrior is EVIL?!?), but the unbridled freedom in gameplay more than compensates.