I'm way more interested in that California Raisins game than I expected, even though it looks almost unplayable.

"It was one of the only games I had" seems like a common reason for playing a bunch of not-so-great games. When you rented something, dammit, you were gonna get the whole weekend out of it! But I love that pushing through those experiences can help us appreciate some things we would've otherwise dismissed.

For a second answer…

Action 52. For those who haven't encountered it before, Action 52 is a compilation for the NES made up of 52 incredibly short, terrible, nonfunctional games. Many are outright broken, most are incredibly unfun to play, and the ones that are neither usually have some other massive flaw (like the bizarrely racist…

It looks like someone silently fixed it, which was probably easier than reenacting the events of the book so it ended up being true.

You can't understand the absolute blinkered insipidness of the gaming community until you've had someone ramble at you about how it's a moral crime to play games that don't allow you to adjust vertical synchronization settings.

I was intrigued that this was apparently a true story, but, um, it doesn't seem like it is? It's true that there was once a Destiny's Child halftime show that featured the military, but I can't find any evidence that the book is based on real events. Is there some famous story and video that disappeared, or is the…

What someone else said: that's an older interactive fiction Portal, which I've heard described as "Gone Home with transcendent beings of energy." Which I didn't know came in a box!

Argh I had to narrow it down, so two ideas. One would be the history of the adventure genre. The genre had such big swings in format and relevance, which is worth studying for its own merit, but there can also be conclusions drawn about the history of gaming and gaming narrative at large from that.

Eagle Eye Fuckin' Mysteries. We need to talk.

I remember a $70 price tag at… Target I think? That was discouraging.

Is this your first time through Mario RPG? That's such a wonderful and earnest game, and I think it's particular take on the Mario world is my favorite.

Grifball is fantastic, but man does it have a problem with the betrayal penalty system. It's so easy to accidentally whack your own teammates, and the game starts asking to boot you after about three.

D.'s got the right answer. Play the way that makes sense for you and lets you feel accomplished, and don't feel the need to compare it to how others choose to play and allocate their time… unless that's the way you've decided you enjoy games. Love it!

Heimdall conveniently blames the lack of women in Asgardian tech on the Bifrost problem.

He truly worked his way up from the bottom, represented here as "eating lube."

Came here to comment about the Review credits notes. My personal favorites were for "Life as a woman."

The Flood really do pour a bucket of cold water on the original trilogy, and it's so unfortunate how they dominate everything. It reminds me of Crytek's problem of never being able to write a second or third act and resorting to crazy aliens that kill you in one hit. It doesn't play to the rest of the strengths of the…

The last act of the game is riddle hunt of the sort that the Metroid games haven't really revisited, and at that point, the sprawling size of the game becomes really clear. The more I think about it, Echoes requires a ton of patience.

Deal!