One weird detail that stood out in my memory about this game were that occasionally you'd encounter a pair of gendered restrooms of which you could explore the women's in an over-the-shoulder perspective (but which never yielded anything). Perhaps my brain was desperate to find meaning in the experi...

I fiddled with the pre-release free browser version a little bit, and it was engaging but didn't really suck me in. However, when the mobile version debuted a year or so later, I got its hooks in me good! Mary a restroom break went by where I wasn't surviving vampires. I managed to complete the 'cam...

I played this in the LucasArts Classic Adventures boxed set back in the day - a huge box of floppies I hungrily devoured after falling in love with the studio via their CD ROM talkie games. After loving the riotous and weird likes of Sam and Max and Monkey Island, LOOM was strikingly different. A mo...

After SnipperClips, Stardew Valley, and Chicory, this was the fourth video game my partner and I played together (and, as it were, the fourth video game she ever played). The mostly gentle interactions with the world, it's systems, and it's denizens provided a compelling and engaging experience for ...

When I first played this game in the 00s, on a sketchy GBA emulator, it was an unalloyed joy. The animation was so lush and expressive, the mechanics were so novel and engaging, and writing was so genuinely funny. The humor had some of the madcap energy of the Mario manga they used to run in Nintend...

My experience with the first Life is Strange game was pretty rocky. The game had to win me over despite the extremely clunky 'American teen girl written by a French guy in his 40s' dialogue, and it ultimately did. The second game doesn't come with any caveats, and hit for me pretty much straight out...

As a child, I mostly encountered Maniac Mansion via oblique references in game hint magazines and shows. I was always intrigued - what was this game with tentacles and mummies and meteors, with verbs like "play rock music" and "put hamster in microwave" rather than "jump&quo...

I've never been a fan of first person shooters. Even all-time classics like the Half Life games, GoldenEye, and Bioshock have left me totally cold. As such, when Metroid Prime debuted, it didn't much capture my interest - my Gamecube was more or less a Windwaker, Smash Bros and Mario Kart machine, a...

I found the game Visually inventive, and constantly surprising. The art direction at this high fidelity feels like a Henry Selick film in video game form, which works a lot better than the visuals of the first game, which I found almost unbearably ugly. The game is also more thoughtful about the res...

Maybe it's because I was coming off of such a cleanly-designed game as Hades, but Wonderful 101 felt like a total mess to me. An ever-growing spaghetti-pile of poorly-explained and unintuitive mechanics, and levels with 'challenges' (enemies, environments, etc.) that seem to want you to use one part...

Prior to Pyre, I hadn't enjoyed SuperGiant games very much. While I could respect the polish of their art and mechanics, neither of those facets had managed to grab me, and they'd always felt a bit generic. Consequently I slept on Pyre, despite friends recommending it to me, and only picked it up a ...