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1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. 📱 Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 8. (Famicom Disk System) The Legend of Zelda 9. / Hades 2 (first time) 10. (Famicom Disk System) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link 11. (Famicom Disk System) Metroid 12. Dispatch 13. Metroid Prime 4 Going into the game, the only review I had heard was from Giant Bomb, and their reviewer gave the game a 5/5. This game is not that. It's AT BEST a 4/5. The Metacritic rating has it about 80%, and I think that's around where I fall as well. It was an enjoyable game, absolutely gorgeous, running at 4K/60 docked, and 720p/120hz in handheld mode. It's a bit too linear for my tastes. Without getting into story spoilers, there's an "open world" desert area that connects the other main areas. The game funnels you through two of them at first without giving you choice, and then after that the game says "okay, now you can go anywhere!" Except that you can't. I tried to go to one area that I saw off in the distance, and the character you can call to give hints (or get hints whether you want them or not, and as of this current version, you CAN'T turn his help off), would tell me to go to a completely different area. After going to that area, you can only go so far before you have to get an item from there, take it back to another area on the complete opposite side of the map so that he can install it into your gun, and then go to a completely different area to use that item. There's no fast travel, and there's just about nothing to do in the main open world area. There are a few "shrines", a few powerup areas, and then a ton of green crystals. One of the things the Giant Bomb reviewer mentioned was that you should try to grab as many of the green crystals you could as you went through the game. So I did just that. You need the green crystals to unlock something that will help you get to the final area (an area you can't get to without it), but the game itself never tells you that it's absolutely REQUIRED to do. You have to get an INSANE amount of these. Every time I came across one in the hub world, I grabbed it, and it STILL wasn't enough. It's not a terrible game by any means, it does just fine as a reintroduction to the series to people who haven't played it before. Not being able to turn off the helper character is a crazy choice to make (hopefully a patch puts the option in, because there are times when he just will not shut the fuck up). The other real complaint about the gameplay is the button to jump outside of morph ball is B, but inside the morph ball it's X for some weird reason. There's a way to change it, but I learned that with about 2 hours left in the game. Like I said, it's a beautiful game, the bosses are interesting and fun to fight, but there's a lot of it that just isn't really worth it, IMO.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Shang Tsung in the first Mortal Kombat movie) at age 75

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. 📱 Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 8. (Famicom Disk System) The Legend of Zelda 9. / Hades 2 (first time) 10. (Famicom Disk System) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link 11. (Famicom Disk System) Metroid 12. Dispatch A pretty good adventure game that tells a really fun story, with great characters. If you like Telltale stuff, I think you'll like this. The actual gameplay part of it (where you send out heroes to save the day and such) isn't crazy fun, and it took me a little bit to figure out exactly what I was doing wrong. At the beginning of the game, it gives you a choice between quick time events during the cutscenes, or you can just let them go as they do. I did the QTE option and kinda wish I didn't. There were really only two, hit A at the right time, or hold the right trigger and move the right stick in a direction, so not a lot of variety there. I'm super confused about one thing, and a lot of people I saw on reddit were confused about the same thing is how

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. 📱 Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 8. (Famicom Disk System) The Legend of Zelda 9. / Hades 2 (first time) 10. (Famicom Disk System) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link 11. (Famicom Disk System) Metroid

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. 📱 Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 8. (Famicom Disk System) The Legend of Zelda 9. / Hades 2 (first time) 10. (Famicom Disk System) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link I've beaten a final boss in Hades 2 a few times now, and am going for the other final boss at the moment, haven't gotten to them yet, but I do believe i'm in the last area? But yeah, don't feel like posting every time I beat the one final boss. I booted up Zelda II a while back, thinking I would just fuck around and not actually try and beat it. The only times i've beaten it were with save states, never on original hardware or without save scumming. Ended up getting addicted and felt the urge to see it through, which I finally did. I had to grind a bit to get the last couple experience levels in all my skills, but got them all maxed out with two palaces left to go. Funnily enough I had a harder time in the second to last palace than I did the last. I think I took maybe two hits from both of the final bosses? Getting TO the last palace is more of a headache than the palace itself, even if that is no cakewalk. I ended up not getting any of the 1-ups until I was on my way to the final palace, so going into it I had I think 5 lives in total? I think I died twice on the way to the final palace, but i'm not 100% sure.

One Battle After Another I thought it was alright. The trailers made it look like it had more humor than it did, but it told an interesting tale. The trailers also didn't make it seem like it was so topical, which was a surprise.

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. 📱 Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 8. (Famicom Disk System) The Legend of Zelda 9. / Hades 2 (first time) Finally got around to hooking up my Famicom/Famicom Disk System to do something i'd wanted to do for a while: beat the first Legend of Zelda on its original hardware. Breezed through most of it, as I remember a good chunk of the secrets/money spots. Still used a map foe the last two dungeons, as I never got crazy familiar with them. Beat the final boss (without spoiling anything, I can't say who it was) of Hades 2 for the first time, and as anyone who Beat the first game knows, that's just the beginning. I think I beat him on my 5th try? I had full health and two death defy's going in, and he only managed to kill me once.

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Great 2D sequel to the Ninja Gaiden series. Not nearly as challenging as some of the older games, but still a decent challenge. The bosses were fun to fight, to me it felt like how others feel when fighting Dark Souls bosses: slowly learning it's attacks and how to counter them through trial and error. The checkpointing was pretty good, especially before boss fights. Older games had your last checkpoint before a boss be about halfway through a level, but in this they're usually right before the fight itself, making them way less of a hassle to go back to when you lose. The game has multiple endings, but i'm not really sure if I care enough to go back and get the others. May just end up watching them on Youtube.

Me too. It got me to give Alan Wake 2 a try (thank you, local library!), that game didn't seem like my kinda thing, but i'm kinda into the shared universe thing, so hopefully it'll lead to some interesting things

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control I've beaten this before and had a decent enough time with it. The controls (no pun intended) never fully clicked with me, but playing through it again on console and turning on a bunch of assists just to enjoy the story again made the game even more enjoyable than before.

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza Gonna preface this by saying I know i'm an outlier, but I don't care. I did not enjoy this game. I feel like it should've ended a few hours before it actually did, and the twist seemed incredibly unearned, since there was absolutely zero setup to it. I only ended up beating it because I was so close to the end when I stopped giving a shit. I will say, the only thing I really, absolutely hated was the gameplay. The visuals were great, the music was awesome, but playing it quickly became a chore. The camera was god awful. So many times i'd be midway through a mountain, unable to see where the fuck I was going or what I was actually hitting. I don't really know what they could've changed to make it better, but whatever they went with wasn't it. I beat the final boss, there's a bit of an epilogue after, but about 5 minutes into the epilogue, I realized I didn't give a shit. Closed the game, deleted it and the save data off my Switch, and am probably going to either trade it in this weekend or sell it on Facebook.

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Got the partner into Diablo 3, so we've been playing a lot of Diablo in general. Decided to finally finish the D4 campaign I started way back when it came out. Got hooked, and played through the expansion as well. Minor expansion spoilers

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. Balatro Even though I only beat it with one deck, i'm still considering that a completed game. Downloaded it on my phone to kill time while bored at work, and was finally able to beat it with a blue deck. Trying now with a red deck and it seems a lot harder

Ballerina A John Wick spinoff that takes place between 3 and 4. Highly enjoyable action, but the suspension of disbelief was huge, even for these movies. She did all of this on basically her second mission?

Last year's list Surprised I haven't been a game this year until today. 1. DOOM: The Dark Ages This honestly wasn't on my radar, I thought the dark ages thing meant it wasn't a traditional Doom game, but boy was I wrong. I liked it a hell (no pun intended) of a lot more than Doom Eternal. It had similar things where certain attacks would refill various things (armor, weapons, health, etc) but I think you weren't limited to one method per stat. Like, I think using the flamethrower would give you armor back, while using a melee would give you ammo back or something like that. This seemed to combine a few, so it felt like there were many different ways to refill your stuff. Being able to parry was a neat addition, but it's not something I need in other Doom games. I loved being able to throw your shield (eventually you get the ability to bounce it between enemies, Captain America style) and have it stick to a guy, which would basically stun it. I ended up mainly using the shield charge to get close to an enemy and blast it in the face with the super shotgun, rinse and repeat until most enemies were dead. I doubt that's as viable a strategy at higher difficulties though. There were a few levels where you would fly on a dragon, and a few where you'd pilot a mech and honestly, while they were neat, I don't really want to do those things in a Doom game. The mech at least felt cool, the dragon not as much. The dragon kind of boiled down to locking onto a turret, dodging its attack, and then counterattacking, no real crazy strategy, which made it pretty boring. The thing I never got tired of was the sensation of being this big, powerful guy. Your steps (at least when you're running) boom with each footstep, when you jump from a decently high area, you can land and create a shockwave that kills a bunch of fodder enemies, which was a lot of fun.