Did you play Hearts of Stone on Death March? Is this appreciably worse (haven't gotten to it yet)?

Yeah, it's hard not to feel the infectious glee radiating from the game.. everything is so ridiculous and amped up, but yet the mechanics are rock solid at the same time. When you start a simple innocuous game about a colorful maid robot who can shake things really hard, it's hard to imagine you'll soon be riding a…

Loving Dandy Dungeon.. genuinely hilarious.

Sold!

This was definitely the moment I turned combat from Hard to Easy and just clicked through half-closed eyes. Those battles were boooooooooooooo-riiiiiiiiiiiiiing.

I think you might be in the majority with that opinion. I ended up enjoying it, but as I said above, I'm a tinkerer. I kinda like poking at obscure systems and figuring out how to optimize them. It's been awhile, but I remember really enjoying it once I figured it out.. but I had to consult a FAQ to get to that…

Two N64 forgotten gems you should look for:

I was one of the few who really loved Vagrant Story. I guess the systems threw people off, but I loved that it was a fairly personal and contained story. Other than Dragon Age 2 (which still involved a whole city, just not A WORLD IN PERIL), RPG's telling a personal story are rare and far between.

Yeah, I keep waiting for that political intrigue game to come out, because I'd love it. With Game of Throne so popular, you'd think someone would take a crack at it, but we tend to get typical Hero's Journey adventure cliches against Bad Guys With Hopefully At Least Understandable Viewpoints

Also, I recall being stuck at a beach house (well, 'in the general beach-ish area') for a few hours while the occupants were occupied elsewhere, and playing Donkey Kong 94 on a kid's Game Boy.. and loving it. Platform-puzzlers are my jam, and it was so well done! I still haven't played the Mini Mario thing released…

Yeah, as I recall the first 30 min were a joke opening where they pretended you were doing an exaggerated old-school Banjo collectathon, minor platforming, some 'plot', and maybe MAYBE a sliver of the intro to the mechanics. I'm sure it's too late to go back, but that first 30 min isn't representative.

Persona 5: Slowly bridging the gap between the second and third palace. There is a *LOT* of exposition between these two! I finally cracked Sojiro's stone facade a little, and used the phone in the cafe a couple of times to experience the truly weird dynamics there. I have the Guts to talk to gun store guy, but…

Hardware limitations and design growing pains aside, but I think there's still a trial element with all mediums, depending on when you experienced it. There are no shortage of movies I've excitedly seen come up on TV from my early-20's-and-earlier, that I end up having to turn off 30 minutes in because I'm cringing…

Eh, they actually charge with any compatible USB charger, so I just use a spare phone charger now. Probably smarter than burning energy on sleep mode overnight anyway!

Unfortunately, Sleep Mode and VR do not seem to get along. No charging controllers overnight through the console for me!

Sam & Max at least have the Telltale series, which IMO was fantastic. Gets off a little rough, and has some bumps, but the heights are higher than the original. There are some insanely clever moments.

Yes, Ape Escape is awesome! So ridiculous, so varied.. a great 3D platformer. I don't know why it didn't make the jump to PS3/4.

I second Pocket Casts. Literally zero complaints here.

HOOAH!

Premium is totally worth it.. I waffled before I calculated how much I was paying per hour of commercials to skip them. It turns out my free time is totally worth $0.05-0.25/hr.