As someone who was, until now, untouched by the taint of gacha games , I encountered many surprises while I played Persona 5: The Phantom X . The first was that all the game’s thunder was stolen by another gacha about horse racing, but the horses are ladies . The second was that Persona is not supported on any of my mobile devices, forcing me to play on the Steam client exclusively during my no...
Well, I haven't dumped a block of text on here since the the new year, for a few reasons. Mostly, though, I've been in a kind of gaming funk for a while now. I have indulged almost exclusively in backlog titles this year, with the only new releases being visual novels (and Doom: The Dark Ages, which I'm still sorting out my feelings on). I'm not joking in the least when I say my most anticipate...
It was a backlog year. My game-playing went in a weird direction in 2024. At the outset, I was psyched for a trilogy of high-profile RPG releases. Once that high wore off, though, I found myself somewhat unmoored. New for this year, I set a purchasing limit to keep my backlog under control. It kind of (sort of) worked, but there was an unintended side effect. I was now scrutinizing every new re...
Astro Bot! Astro Bot! Astro Bot! Now that game of the year has been settled… My Apes Gone Again So many good costumes for these monkey fellas. As many have pointed out, Astro Bot is essentially the modern Ape Escape game Sony was too cowardly to give us. So heck, why not play some Ape Escape right afterwards? I already replayed the original this summer (to get that sweet platinum trophy). So, i...
It’s been a little while, but The Game Lord never truly rests. We’re all just killing time until Astro Bot releases, yeah? I’ve been playing a smattering of older games while I wait. Back to the ‘90s… Again This colorful, picturesque landscape is just one of the many appealing worlds to explore! There’s a conception in gamer world that if you haven’t played the right titles from the 1990s, you’...
I love the art style they have for character illustrations and wish there were more chances to see it in the game itself. The Switch still represents a golden age for ports and remasters. With hundreds of games finding a new home on the platform, fans continue to beg for more. There are even remakes of games I had never heard of. So it was with Another Code: Recollection , which remakes two gam...
If I had to list all the upcoming AAA releases that excite me, I could get to… probably two . Indie games, though, are a different story. The various summer showcases put dozens of small games on my radar. That rolled right into Steam Next Fest, where many of those games published demos. Basically, my wishlist is full to bursting. I set aside a day to try as many demos as I could. I didn’t play...
Here's a hot take for you: The gaming industry is in the toilet! Yeah, I'm not about to tell you anything that you also haven't thought about recently. But I've really been shaken up this past week, and a word vomit post is my only way to really process it. The consolidation and layoff train has been rolling for years by now, but the last straw for me was Xbox's closure of Arkane Austin and Tan...
My unofficial hiatus hasn’t been from a lack of gaming time; rather, I’ve just been too scatterbrained to organize a coherent string of thoughts. Let’s just blast out quick hits on as many titles as I can. Tower Climber! I would have checked this out eventually, but there was a nice surprise... Since the start of the year, I have competed in MinnMax’s Trivia Tower competition every month. With...
Video Games, Son. Around this time last year I drew up a huge list of games I wanted to play. Well, wanted may be a strong word. I filled it with titles that slipped through the cracks. Some of them I had started in the past and forgot for one reason or another. Others sat in my Steam account for a literal decade without ever getting installed. Throughout the year, I kept digging away at the mo...
By 2011, I was done with the Wii. At the time, I was more focused on building my Steam library with games that wouldn’t be played until this very backlog battle. I skipped out on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword despite my fandom for the series. In the following decade, I saw the standard “Zelda Cycle” take place in popular opinion. There was the initial hype, followed by legions of haters, a...
Is anyone actually happy with where things are right now? Microsoft has finally completed its gargantuan acquisition of Activision Blizzard King . After so many months of drama, my own feelings on the subject have turned to malaise. The biggest Xbox fans are anticipating Activision's hits on Game Pass. But will that move the needle on subscription numbers in the way the execs are hoping? Gaming...
I don’t know what else I could have done. The first experience I had with Mimimi Productions is with 2020’s Desperados III . It was basically on a whim. I didn’t have any experience with the isometric stealth genre it belongs to. Frankly, I wasn’t even aware there was a Desperados I or II. But giving the game a chance paid off tremendously. The expertly tuned mechanics, masterful level design,...
Man Look, I screwed up. I got sidetracked. I’m supposed to be playing Advance Wars , but I’m also dealing with the uncomfortable truth that I don’t actually like Advance Wars as much as I thought. Instead, I spent this summer gorging on multiple titles in the Like a Dragon franchise. The series became one of my favorites in just a few years. The storytelling is often great, but even more appeal...
Go figure, the game I cover after Tears of the Kingdom is Nintendo’s next big release. I can’t help it. I’m in the bag to play the new games in both series whenever they come out. In Pikmin’s case, that’s only once about every 10 years, so it’s not that tough of a commitment. For a stretch of time, I was more excited about Pikmin 4 than Zelda. Where Zelda first took a subtle approach with its t...
DISCLAIMER: This post does not contain any story spoilers outside of a dedicated spoiler block, which even then is not specific. However, this is unfortunately one of those games where it’s best to keep as many surprises for yourself as possible, and I will write in detail about mechanics and structure that is best discovered on your own. Also, this post is based on a 50-hour playthrough where...
CAVES! We’re going into caves this time! No light! Damp rocks! Huge bats! Let’s GO! Cave Story I hope I don’t upset you by saying this, but Cave Story, the game that inspired every modern indie game and therefore transformed the entire industry, will be turning 20 next year. I had my own personal moment of crisis when I saw that my most recent Steam achievements in the game were from March of 2...
In a moment of FOMO-induced delirium back in 2017, I desperately secured a preorder for the Super NES Classic Edition. It's a novelty miniaturized console with 21 SNES games built-in. I liked the thing quite a lot, but the fact that it’s not currently in my house should say something about its longevity. Nevertheless, something was eating at me recently. I have enjoyed most of the console’s mus...
Before the flood of new releases starts up again, I took advantage of this lull period to blast away some of my troublesome backlog. I buy games faster than I finish them. However, the joyous feeling of beating games is ingrained in my psyche. I gotta do it! The three subjects of this post earned starkly tiered responses from me. It’s time to write about games everyone else has already played i...
I will never, ever, EVER care about Elden Ring . Those games are 100% not for me, and no amount of online gaslighting will change that! Sorry, I had to get that off my chest. 2022 was another year of positive changes in my life, but we’re here for video game talk. The year wasn’t exactly devoid of big releases, but most of them passed me by. Nintendo’s decent offerings were overshadowed by dela...
30 games. 431 achievements. 8500 Gamerscore. Hundreds of hours. One year and one week from start to finish. All for an intangible quantity of bragging rights and accomplished feelings. I dedicated myself to earning every achievement in 2015’s Rare Replay collection. Why? Because it’s there, and because I love setting huge goals for myself to do “all of X.” What I need to realize is that setting...
Rare Replay was made to commemorate 30 years since the company’s founding. Enough time has passed now that all of the games discussed in this post, save one, are at least 30 years old, too. Game design and complexity evolved pretty seriously over this period, but the fact remains: These are some dang old games. This first grouping includes 16 titles, more than half of the collection. It’s a hig...
If there's one good thing about this challenge, it's that no bananas had to be burgled. We’ve hit a three-year time skip, and in that time, Rare has gone from a mercenary studio with ambitions to a cutting-edge partner of the industry’s most iconic company. Rare’s work in prerendered technology in Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country positioned the developer as one to watch as the 3D era ful...
When Microsoft acquired Rare, they gained both a studio with boundless ideas and a library of IP that had attracted loyal players. We can get a sense of where their head was at in 2002 with the announcement video, which I had not seen in full until now. The video promised that Perfect Dark, Banjo , Conker , and a new character would be gracing Xbox consoles in the future. We’ll get to that last...
Keeping Dinosaur Planet as-is probably would have been better for everyone. We have officially crossed the 20-year anniversary of Microsoft’s purchase of Rare for 375 million dollars. If you count Ultimate Play the Game as the start of the company, Rare has now been under Xbox’s green umbrella for as long as it hasn’t. Despite that, the quantity of games shipped in the past two decades is tiny...
Whatever you heard about Perfect Dark Zero is probably true. It’s a below-average shooter that, while still playable in 2022, fails to match the unique vibe of Perfect Dark One . There are no aliens, of course, and that’s less of a sticking point for me than you may think. More importantly, the futuristic and light cyberpunk elements of the first game’s world have been stripped back to a point...
[Editor’s note: Please forgive the lack of “ñ” in this post. I didn’t feel like using it.] Wait, this game had a PC release? I wish I could have played that! By this point in the challenge, I had conquered all sorts of heinous tasks. I battled disgusting design, crappy controls, and egregious grinding. Despite my victories, I was still trepidatious when it was time for Viva Pinata . This kind o...
Square nose?? Ruined Forever!! A disgrace. An insult. A real… boneheaded move. These were the sentiments I saw when Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts was new. Eight years after the last time the bear and bird starred in a platformer , here was Rare throwing all of it out in favor of building vehicles and racing around like jerks. I wouldn’t have the means to play the game for myself for another 13...
My hunger for Gamerscore is still ravenous. As you can tell by my maxing out Edith Finch in an hour. Well… this is the part where I’m supposed to break down, right? “I played every Rare Replay game and went CRAZY” should be the title of the video, shouldn’t it? I was waiting for that shoe to drop, but that’s not what happened. Once I launched the app, cashed in my final stamps, and played the c...
Tinykin is Pikmin … isn’t it? I mean, what else could it be? You’re a little guy in a big world building an army of even littler guys to perform tasks for you. It seems very cut and dry. That’s what the trailers may have led you to believe, but Tinykin’s similarities with Pikmin are only skin-deep. In Tinykin, there is no time limit, combat, resource management, or tactics of any kind. It has n...
Talk about putting the card before the horse! Wait, wait! Oh god, don’t leave! I recently spent my gaming time bouncing between two very different games developed by the same studio . On Nintendo Switch, the most forward-thinking and unique entry in the Pokémon series yet created. On 3DS, a bizarre downloadable title that mixes horse racing with card strategy. Pokémon Legends has a far greater...
On Tuesday, EA announced that Respawn entertainment would continue to stake its claim in the Star Wars universe with a whopping three games in development for the license. At first blush, this may seem like a surprisingly heavy commitment with a studio that only has so much development bandwith. However, this move fits right in line with how Disney is shepherding Star Wars and the rest of its b...
Ch-ch-ch-changes… 2021 was a year where a lot of things changed for me. I spent the first months of the year freezing my rear off in a warehouse. Then, I spent the rest sweating it off in Florida. I ultimately internalized that you can’t predict what’s going to happen – you just gotta roll with it. Not only did this very website see some big changes, but I stepped out of my comfort zone for try...
Okay, full transparency here: I’ve been trying to write something about Genesis Noir off and on since I played it in August. As so often happens, nothing stuck. But I’m giving it one last try here because it’s an interesting game that deserves to be talked about. Since it’s possible that something else could push it off my year-end list, I want to give it its due here. Point and click. Jazz mus...
Sometimes, finding Game Pass titles is like the candy in line for the cashier. You think “why not, I’m already here” and throw it in your download queue. That’s the case for me with Rain on Your Parade, a comedic puzzle game made by Unbound Creations. The most reductive way to describe Rain on Your Parade is Untitled Goose Game, but you’re a cloud. While the inspiration is pretty clear, I found...
It takes a game like Unpacking to fully understand the possibility space of the modern games ecosystem. The title sums up, in a single word, the entire experience. In Unpacking, you take all sorts of household items out of moving boxes and place them in a home as you follow the path of one woman’s life. It’s a concept that fits into what I’ve started calling “alt-dev.” Many indie developers are...
It’s rare that a long-awaited product meets expectations, but the final iteration of the languished Metroid Dread is here to great acclaim. While I haven’t heard from anyone who fully dislikes the game, I found it interesting which criticisms did pop up. One group of people thinks the game is overly difficult and leaves players to get lost without any help. Another group wishes Dread didn’t hol...
Psychonauts 2 is a game so good, I’ve had dreams about it. Every second is brimming with wild imagination, instantly classic characters, and unstoppable joy. Not only does the sequel quell any concerns that arose during its protracted development, but it signals the start of a golden era for the studio that brought it to life. Which actually makes my job harder, because it’s tricky to structure...
If anyone saw footage of Cris Tales before release, they were arrested by its striking, colorful art style and exciting time travel mechanics. The game promised the opportunity to explore its world’s past, present, and future all on the same screen. With listed influences including the best role-playing games in history, Cris Tales quickly earned my attention. I hoped for a light adventure to e...
When I played Persona 5 , I was enchanted by its eye-popping visual style, phenomenal music, and hokey yet resonant story. When credits rolled after 75 hours, I wanted to spend even more time in that world. But of course, I didn’t. Not only is the game a mammoth time investment, turn-based RPGs just aren’t my primary genre of choice. What I really wanted was for Persona 5’s unmistakable spirit...
Welcome back! I do have a big review-style blog coming soon, but in the meantime, I thought I’d bring back the E3 Watchlist this year. I went in with general excitement but no major expectations. There aren’t that many games that strongly grabbed me, but I’m definitely anticipating some new visions and updated favorites. METAL SLUG TACTICS As it turns out, pretty much any property can become a...
An introspective reflection on passion, self-forgiveness, and dedicated fart buttons It’s safe to say that my life has completely transformed in the last six months. In 2020, I was unemployed and bored, so I put away over 60 games. In 2021, I have a full-time job, not to mention I now live in Florida, where it reached 100 degrees this week, and most days I just want to watch TV and sweat. The s...
For transparency, I should say that I had no idea Omori existed until this January. I wasn’t following the game’s interminable development from its Kickstarter in 2014 to its release last Christmas. After finishing the game, however, I really should have. The game is lauded from those in the know, yet I never heard a mention of it until I saw Nitro Rad ’s video. He’s one of my favorite game cri...
If you’ve read my work before, you know that I make an effort to look at things optimistically. Yes, it would be ludicrous to call 2020 anything other than a shitshow. The Forces That Be seemed determined to hurt as many people as possible. The bright-eyed predictions I made 12 months ago are now laughable. But you don’t need me to tell you that. Instead, I’m going to remind everyone that we ma...
I’ve always had a soft spot for underdogs. It could be a hopelessly outmatched sports team, a musician rising from obscurity, or, in this case, a great game that isn’t getting the recognition it deserves. Desperados III would have completely passed me by if not for an internet reviewer praising it enthusiastically. After finishing the game, I have to pay it forward and tell you everything that...
(note: I wrote this as a "review," but the way reviews on the site work means I can't format it as one? So this will have to do.) Once Braid and Limbo kicked off the indie puzzle scene, an arms race of increasingly wild gameplay concepts began. We’ve gone from manipulating time to literally rewriting the rules of reality . Heavy stuff! Creaks from Amanita Design doesn’t have a radical hook to m...
I’ve tried a few times to write something to follow my last blog post, but the only thing that will stick is more talk about cartoony platformers. It seems that there’s more to say on the subject, and what better things do I have to do? Since the last blog, I completed the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy , and the “fourth” game in the series was unveiled. Looking at the series with a critical e...
It’s not hard to determine that my favorite genre of game is the platformer. Especially in tough times such as these, I love jumping into something that simply asks for the player’s reflexes. The comparative merits of 2D and 3D styles of platforming have been endlessly debated. Both are great! However, a period in history that has always interested me is the overlap between them. As 3D technolo...
Firaxis’s XCOM games are the modern touchpoint for the tactics genre, and for good reason. The balance between depth and accessibility has attracted droves of fans, each with a story about how a tragic missed shot destroyed a campaign. I have personally dumped an imposing number of hours into XCOM 2 and its expansion. Now, the studio aims to keep the flame going with XCOM: Chimera Squad. The bu...
As much as I love writing up games, the new releases I played this month didn’t lend well to full reviews. One is a puzzle game that doesn’t have too much to discuss, and the other two came out last week and I’m not through with them yet. So, they’re getting the anthology treatment as I wrap together my thoughts into one neat post. Murder By Numbers: Genre mashups are trendy in the smaller game...
Nintendo rumors are like pimples. They tend to pop up all the time, but it’s rare that they become anything to worry about. Online Nintendo fanatics freak me out because they take each new leak as gospel, only to be shocked when they get a Byleth instead of a Dante . Unless concrete proof exists, I don’t trust anything that doesn’t come from official sources. The paper motif allows for some fun...
Call me crazy, but I look forward to game of the year time every December. It’s a wonderful chance to look back at the experiences that shaped my digital year and what I’ll take into the next one. I like to broadly theme each year when making these lists. The commonality between my favorite games in 2017 was powerful emotion. 2018 focused on strong design. In 2019, the theme is creativity . Mos...
Ah, game creation. Who hasn’t dreamed of dazzling Shigeru Miyamoto with their masterpiece? Or showing off something cool to their friends? Making a game is one of my many pipe dreams (it seems more likely than entering the Baseball Hall of Fame). Many titles have attempted to gamify game-making, but few are as successful as Super Mario Maker. And to my surprise, the average level found in Super...
As we all know, E3 is less than a week away! As another year of high-profile announcements draws ever closer, now is the perfect time to unwind with smaller experiences. This week, I played through two very short indie games on the Switch , both published by Devolver Digital and focusing on animal characters. What are the odds, right? You might already be familiar with Ape Out because of its ey...
Much like Dante in DMC5, I have awoken from my months-long slumber and I'm ready to go! Only instead of killing demons, I have an insatiable urge to... blog!! You know how back in the day, people would say that games are “good rentals?” For many, those opportunities have sadly dried up. The decay of stores like Blockbuster has left the state of game rentals in a bad place. Unless you can borrow...
We all want what we can't have. Before every Nintendo Direct, the live chat is always tittering about something or other. Animal Crossing, Pokémon, whatever. These games will come. But there’s one request that only seems to get louder each time. Mother 3 . “Come on Reggie , give us Mother 3!” yelled a puppet nerd at E3 a couple years ago. The community was ecstatic to get any recognition, even...
WOW!! Another year, another list. While 2018 in gaming didn't reach the emotional highs of last year, there was plenty of good old-fashioned fun to be had. The main entries on this list were released in 2018, but I also included some honorable old games that I enjoyed too much to ignore. Also, don't worry too much about the specific numbering, because I switched some around just between draftin...
Oh god, it’s this dude again. I thought we were rid of him for good this time. What lame-ass excuse does he have this time? Um… my computer broke? Yeah. For real. Anyways, I wanted to get at least one more blog post out before my game of the year list later this month. I’ve talked about my excitement for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate a few times now, and after the fighting itself and the crazy cro...
Mega Man has to gear up to take on these bosses. Switch City is BACK! (again). Which is fitting, because Mega Man is BACK! (again). Everyone's favorite blue robot had a hibernation period, then there were some games imitating the classic NES style, then there was another stretch of time where nothing happened, a sad, sad game called Mighty No. 9 , and finally here we are. When playing Mega Man...
There are lots of ports coming, but Isabelle is making sure Mario Maker ISN'T one of them! Hello once again readers! I've been spending time with many others in Spider-Man's New York, catching pigeons and assisting the police state, or whatever you do in that game. But Nintendo's latest direct presentation has finally rolled around, so I thought I'd do what I do best - picking it apart like the...
Do you smell it? Things are changing. Soon, the leaves will fall and the cool air will blow. Not that I'll notice, because I'll be too busy playing those new video games! Between God of War, the Yakuza series, and catching up on the Switch's cavernous library, this year has already bore some impressive gaming fruit for me. But that don't mean we're done by a long shot! Conveniently for blogging...
Vol. 4: Enter the Gungeon Attention, everyone! I'm back with a hot-off-the-presses new release on the Switch. It's the sequel to Picross S , Picross S2!!!! I had no idea this was coming out. It just sort of dropped from the heavens and I was more than happy to pick it up. I've still got a long way to go in Picross S (and I've barely touched mega picross) but I wanted to see what was up in the s...
Bienvenidos a Switch City, everybody! For the person out there anxiously awaiting this blog, I apologize once again for the lateness. Between my normal duties and a crippling addiction to XCOM 2 , I just haven't had time to get into something new on the Switch. It was only a few days ago that I picked up my next game, Enter the Gungeon . Given the short time I've spent with it, and the nature o...
Vol. 2: Super Mario Odyssey I never really cared for the Metroid genre. It's not like I didn't try; I went through Super and Zero Mission, I tried Prime, I played a number of indie games in that style... but it never really clicked. There were too many issues and annoyances that I assumed were just inherent to the genre. Plus, I kind of hate the term "Metroidvania." For one, the real Castlevani...
Vol. 1: Introduction and Picross S Welcome back to Switch City! I may have been without substantial internet for over a week, but that didn't stop me from doing my homework for this feature. That's the magic of the Switch, I suppose - a magic I have begrudgingly come to enjoy. I used my time away to get every last stinking moon in Super Mario Odyssey . This was one of the "big two" for the Swit...
Aw, shit. I bought a Nintendo Switch . Dammit. For the first year of its life, I held some amount of malice towards this console-handheld hybrid. It may sound stupid (and it is), but on some level I felt betrayed. For its whole life cycle, I defended the Wii U and its great games while the rest of the gaming community turned up its nose. Once those games came out on Switch, everyone changed the...
I may have recently put myself down for compiling an E3 watchlist last year , but that won't stop me from doing it all again. After all, can you really award yourself the coveted "gamer" status if you don't pointlessly list the games at E3? I think not. This year, I tried to limit my excitement so my list would be full of things I actually play. And while only a handful of games grabbed my atte...
Some people on the internet have been raising complaints with the story in God of War, notably around the choice for Faye to have passed away before the game begins. I don't want to pick apart people's interpretations of story elements, because I see where they're coming from. but this particular choice was really effective for me personally for a few reasons. For starters, let me make the obli...
Finals are done, classes are out, and that means gaming time is way up. In just over a week, I was able to bust through four - count 'em, four - games. Of course, that's a little misleading, as two of those were really quick. Still, considering the scope of the other two, I feel pretty good about my gaming productivity over the past week and change. The first item on the hit list was finishing...
Oh lord, it's that time of year again - "PrE3." Whispers are popping up in podcasts and comments sections. Everyone is getting frenzied about what games will be shown at E3. I'm no stranger to that mania - in fact, last year I listed some of my favorite announcements. But thinking back on it now, how many of those games did I actually play? The first game on my list was A Way Out . The premise...
When I was but an infantile gamer, CD-ROM games from Humongous Entertainment were my jam. They made classics like Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, Spy Fox and Freddi Fish. They Even made some great Blue's Clues games with an FMV Steve. These games are really nostalgic for a ton of people who love to click on things and make wacky stuff happen. Humongous stopped making games years ago, but their classics...
2017 was an experience for me. In addition to entering a new stage of my life, I played more games than I can remember playing in any other year. I also got more involved with the Giant Bomb community. I explained the trials and tribulations of becoming a Hong Kong Legend . I wrote a pair of blog posts saying Kingdom Hearts was bad, which unexpectedly blew up when an unpopular new series croppe...
I am thou… thou art I… I am slave (to Persona 5). Want emancipation (from playing Persona 5)? Thou hast begun a new blog post… Hi everyone, I’m back! If you were wondering what I’ve been doing since my last post about Persona 5, the answer is playing Persona 5 ! ...And that’s about it! At the first check-in I was at 30 hours. My final play time was a rather healthy 75.5 hours. That’s over three...
It's been a long time since I wrote down my thoughts on here, and I've been meaning to give it another go. So, even though I've got other, more productive things to do, here I am writing about Persona 5 . Which is appropriate, because for the past week or so after picking the game up it's been dominating my thoughts like little else this year. When I haven't been playing it, I've been thinking...
Another E3 is in the books, and now that everyone's properly locked down I thought I should organize the titles that stood out the most to me this year. There were less of them than maybe I was expecting, but that doesn't mean there weren't some really cool ideas up for display. A Way Out This co-op adventure by the creators of Brother Bear mandates splitscreen at all times. The examples they g...
The more I look at this image, the less sense it makes. Is Donald floating? My last blog post was all about how much Kingdom Hearts sucks on a conceptual level. Spoilers: My feelings have not changed. To recap, all the overdesigned original characters, awful plot, and backseating of Disney characters take away from what could have been a great crossover game. Now, I didn't know if it was fair t...
Who are these people, am I right? Kingdom Hearts could have been something really cool, but the Square Enix elements in everything make it not. (to me) If you don't love a good helping of Disney , you're probably an entity of pure malice from another dimension. I've always thought all things Disney were the greatest, especially when I was a kid. Toy Story's a masterpiece, The Lion King is fanta...
I fight battles with my inner completionist much like Dr. Jekyll struggled to keep his evil alter ego at bay. Especially in my earlier gaming days, I had a burning desire to get every last tenth of a completion point in my favorite games. In the process, however, these checklists of objectives would often turn into chores, and the sense of reward I would get at the end of the long journey would...