Why I Love Spyro The Dragon

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Whenever I’m in the mood for a chill platformer, Spyro is always my first choice. It’s a game that is light on challenge, but offers lots of fun in a cozy world. It has a humorous premise, with the villainous Gnasty Gnorc imprisoning all the elder dragons in crystal and stealing their treasure after they insult him on live TV. It’s up to youngster Spyro to free the other dragons and collect all the gems Gnasty took to save the day.

The Land of Dragons is a colorful world where every area is themed around a certain type of occupation. Each realm contains cool scenery that reflects its theme, such as Beast Tamers being a big swamp where the dragons have Cajun accents. In the remake, all the dragons you free in each world will have design touches to reflect their jobs, and it’s a really nice addition. My favorite is Magic Crafters, which has many dragons who are wizards and enemies such as druids and sorcerers. This is all accompanied by a great soundtrack from Stewart Copeland. All together, the visuals and audio create a dreamlike world that feels like it came from a storybook.

Spyro can jump, glide, charge and breathe fire to get around obstacles in his path. It’s a moveset that’s just complex enough to be fun without asking too much of the player. None of the levels are particularly challenging to finish, but some have trapped dragons and treasure that are cleverly hidden off the beaten path if you want to go for 100%. And you should, because doing so unlocks a fun bonus level that grants you the true ending. Each world also contains a special level where you spend the entire time gliding, which helps shake things up.

The appeal of Spyro lies in how relaxed it is. The world is full of pastel colors and mellow music. Each level allows you to run around at your own pace and take in the atmosphere. Difficulty being relatively low but asking a bit more of you if you want to see everything strikes me as the perfect balance for a game like this. All in all, it’s a wonderful game if you’re just looking for some whimsical fun.

Why I Love Metroid Dread

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I love metroidvanias, and I love horror. While Metroid as a series has never shied away from sci-fi horror themes thanks to the heavy Alien influence it carries, Dread is the entry I feel perfected the mix. It blends fast-paced action with tense, spooky sections all while still offering up the satisfying exploration and power-ups the series is known for.

Dread feels like an evolution of Metroid Fusion, which makes sense since it basically serves as a very late sequel. It takes the idea of a stalker enemy presented in Fusion and ramps it up. Whereas the SA-X in that game popped up only a couple of times, this game features a whole team of stalker enemies called E.M.M.I. units. Each one patrols a specific area of the planet ZDR, where Samus is sent to investigate after said units went rogue.

What I like about how this game handles this type of enemy is how much freedom you’re given when confronting them. You’re encouraged to use stealth options like a tactical cloak to sneak past them undetected, but it isn’t game over if you’re caught. If an E.M.M.I. robot detects you, it will quickly pursue and try to kill you. You have a tiny window to parry its lethal attack, which will stun it and allow you to run. This is immensely satisfying to pull off. On the other hand, once I had plenty of abilities unlocked and was more comfortable with the map, I found myself often speeding past them to safe zones before they could catch me.

Dread also features plenty of exploration and traditional boss fights that will be familiar to fans of the series. I always love how this series rewards thorough exploration, and that’s alive and well here. There are tons of power-ups hidden around ZDR and many ways to reach them. Shinesparks are back and some of them require insane precision. I enjoyed every boss fight in this game, and while I won’t spoil the final boss, it is one of my favorites in gaming. It’s pure fun and quite the adrenaline rush.

Metroid Dread convinced me that the world could use more horror-themed metroidvanias. The fun and fast-paced platforming pairs surprisingly well with sections where you’re meant to slow down and take stock of your surroundings. It’s a blast to replay, as you can feel yourself get better over time and the series tradition of unlocking rewards for going fast or being a completionist are still here. Whenever I’m in the mood for Metroid, this is the one I pick.

Why I Love Theme Hospital

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There are many types of job simulator games out there nowadays, but as a kid without a PC in the ’90s, Theme Hospital was my introduction to the genre. I stumbled upon it one day in the PlayStation section at the local video store, and my curiosity was piqued by the idea of a video game where you just run a hospital. No jumping or shooting or anything like that, simply managing a hospital and trying not to get shut down. What I found was a fun and humorous game that I still enjoy revisiting to this day.

Much like Theme Park before it, Theme Hospital tasks you with managing all levels of a hospital. You’re in charge of laying out the rooms, hiring staff, training them, keeping an eye on the hospital’s finances and even deciding when it’s time to give up on a patient. It’s a simple yet addictive formula, as you start with a small-town hospital and gradually work your way up to big-city hospitals with more patients and maladies to treat.

Theme Hospital is memorable for its sense of humor. In fact, I’m pretty sure this game served as one of my earliest introductions to British humor. All the illnesses are fictional and silly, such as Bloaty Head, Invisibility and The Squits. Bloaty Head requires a doctor to pop the oversized head with a needle, then inflate it back to the proper size. If the inflation machine isn’t properly maintained, the patient’s head may explode and kill everyone in the room in a display that’s quite memorable and a good way to get your hospital shut down. If your community suffers an outbreak of The Squits, on the other hand, make sure your hospital has plenty of bathrooms and janitors. There’s even a fun little mini game of sorts where you can click on mice in your hospital to shoot them, which unlocks a whole rat extermination mini game when you do it enough times.

It’s a very silly and charming game, which is what makes it so fun to play nearly 30 years later. I doubt a dry, mundane hospital sim would appeal to me that much, but I love playing one where my building might get overrun by a horde of Elvis impersonators needing to see a therapist. I can vividly remember taking Theme Hospital over to my friend’s house one weekend and the two of us cracking up when we built a hospital with nothing but bathrooms and angry patients filled the building. A bit of silliness goes a long way in making me enjoy a sim, and Theme Hospital nails it.

Why I Love The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

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The Elder Scrolls is a beloved gaming series with a storied history, but Oblivion in particular is the one I can get lost in over and over. It’s a very comfy game with a nice plot, lots of unintentional comedy and one of the best expansions in gaming history. If you want a grand fantasy adventure with a lot of silliness and jank, Oblivion is the game for you.

As is customary for the series, you take on the role of a seemingly ordinary prisoner marked by fate. When assassins attack the royal family, a chance meeting with the emperor has him entrusting you with his dying wish. He asks you to find his secret son Martin, a priest unaware of his lineage who is now the only living heir to the throne. You have to help Martin prepare to become emperor and defeat Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction who seeks to take over the world. This involves convincing all the leaders around Cyrodiil to help you prepare for war against an evil god and his forces, which makes for a nice story of cooperation that wears its Lord of the Rings influence on its sleeve.

You even have to enlist the help of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, in The Shivering Isles. This is my favorite expansion to any video game, being a dreamlike journey through a topsy-turvy land heavily inspired by Alice in Wonderland. In this story, you have to help a god challenge his own fate, and he will reward you with great power if you do so.

A lot of the charm of Oblivion is how seriously it takes itself, which is all over the place. The story is full of melodrama, but with that signature Bethesda silliness that makes it feel like a parody at times. Characters around the world have radiant dialogue that will lead to random conversations that go nowhere or screaming at random pests like they’re about to fight to the death. The guilds are full of campy characters, with my favorite, The Dark Brotherhood, being unmatched. They’re the most lovable and dorky murderers you’ll ever meet, and probably my favorite in-game faction ever.

The presentation is also interesting, in both the original and the remaster. Environments are very cozy but often oversaturated and full of bloom to the point it looks like you’re inside a Thomas Kinkade painting. Characters’ faces are uncanny and my husband loves to joke that they’d fit right in with the cast of Shrek. It has an odd aesthetic, but one I can’t help but find charming. The gameplay is also a bit strange, since it gives you tons of options for building your character but has a weird level-scaling system that doesn’t really work in practice. You can make completely broken builds and do fun stuff like paralyze your enemies constantly, if you know what you’re doing.

Oblivion is a game that’s as full of heart as it is full of jank. It’s a fun RPG with lots of things to do around its large world. It will make you laugh unintentionally at times, but it will also give you a memorable story and characters who will stay with you long after your journey ends.

Why I Love Frogger

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Frogger has spent decades as a platforming mascot dating all the way back to his arcade debut in 1981. My personal favorite game starring the daring frog is 1997’s reboot of sorts, simply titled Frogger. It was one of the games I got alongside my original PlayStation, and I think it still holds up today.

This is one of those reboots that does a good job of updating a game for modern hardware while maintaining the spirit of the original. You still control the heroic little frog as he hops around dangerous obstacles to rescue baby frogs, but it’s all in 3D now. You even start with a set of levels that are just the arcade screen translated to 3D before moving on to all sorts of other environments like a desert, a sewer, the suburbs, the sky, a jungle, a factory and more. Each level has 5 baby frogs to find, and each zone has a special golden frog you need to rescue in order to get the true ending.

Frogger is surprisingly challenging at times. Some baby frogs are hidden well off the beaten path, and many levels are full of hazards and enemies that will insta-kill you. It’s a game that requires quick reflexes and some trial and error at times to figure out what exactly might kill you and how to avoid it. Replaying it as an adult and getting past levels that used to stonewall me as a kid is always a fun time.

If you want a game with quick, arcadey gameplay and a fair bit of challenge, look no further. It’s a neat twist on the original formula that makes good use of more advanced hardware. The graphics may be pretty outdated now, but I find the simple, low-poly models charming in their own way. Whenever I want to play a cute but tough blast from the past, Frogger is always at the top of the list.

Why I Love D2

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If you want to play a video game that defies explanation, check out D2. It’s a bizarre mash-up of gameplay styles paired with a story that starts already off the rails and just gets weirder as it goes. But that’s what I love about it, and why it’s one of my favorite games to replay during winter.

You play as Laura, a woman on a Christmas flight that gets hijacked by cultists and crashes in the Canadian wilderness. Eight days later, she wakes up in a cabin after having been found by another survivor of the crash. They soon discover that people in the area are turning into plant monsters and have to figure out how to survive while waiting for help that may or may not come.

D2 explores some heavy themes in a very surreal way. The cast consists of people dealing with their own existing issues while now having to contend with a life-threatening situation. Humanity’s cruelty toward each other, environmental destruction, strained relationships between parents and children, drug addiction and more are discussed, in between gameplay that can’t quite decide what genre it wants to be. Your time is divided between first-person sections where you click on objects in the environment to interact with them, third-person segments where you run around outdoors searching for your next objective, and first-person random battles where you blast the plant monsters with an ever-expanding arsenal of guns.

The weirdness of D2 is exactly why I love it so much. It has a lot to say, but is kind of clumsy in the delivery. There are things in this game that were controversial when it came out over 25 years ago, and they still would be today. On the other hand, the game becomes an unintentional comedy at times. You’ll watch an extremely long cutscene where characters have an intense conversation (despite the main character inexplicably refusing to speak), then get into a boss fight against a special plant monster that’s actually a fully naked person with tentacles, and said monster will fall to the floor in a janky animation punctuated by a stock splat sound effect upon defeat. It has to be seen to be believed.

That’s the thing, though. Despite the game sometimes missing the mark when it comes to execution, it’s obvious when you play D2 that the developers put a lot of passion into it and wanted to create something unique and thought-provoking. I have a lot of respect for people who are bold enough to try something new even if it doesn’t always land, and I think D2 actually hits as much as it misses with its themes. Stick with it to the end, and you’ll still be thinking about it once it’s over.

Why I Love Super Mario World

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My favorite platformer in unmistakably Super Mario World. It’s also one of my favorite childhood video games, having been a staple of family get-togethers in my youth. Many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners involved someone pulling out the Super Nintendo so all of the kids could gather around the TV and take turns playing 2-player SMW.

It isn’t merely nostalgia, however. SMW remains a very fun game in its own right to this day. Mario’s trusty sidekick Yoshi was first introduced here. There are also tons of cool secrets strewn around the large world map. Ghost Houses provide fun little puzzles to solve with their hidden exits sometimes being pretty tricky to find. Star World and Special World are two entire worlds of secret levels. You also have the Switch Palaces that are needed to access some areas due to the extra blocks they add to levels. Memorable touches like the Forest of Illusion leading you in circles until you find a specific hidden exit and the whole world changing seasons when you complete the game add to the charm.

The platforming in Super Mario World is good fun and gives you multiple ways to make it easier or harder on yourself. Get a blue Yoshi, Lakitu’s cloud or cape and simply fly through an entire level, or challenge yourself to make it without any extra help. You can warp straight to Valley of Bowser in a short amount of time if you know what you’re doing, but diehard fans of the game also tend to try and unlock all 96 level exits.

Over 30 years later, Super Mario World remains one of my favorite games to replay. The levels are nicely varied, some of them are surprisingly difficult, the graphics and music are still pleasant, traversing the world map makes the whole thing feel like a grand adventure, and it’s just a joy to play. It’s the perfect game for unwinding around the holidays and remembering good times from my childhood.

Why I Love Final Fantasy VIII

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Final Fantasy VIII usually doesn’t top the series rankings, but it does have some famous fans like voice actor Ben Starr and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche. I think there’s a reason for that, as it’s the FF game I always come back to when I’m in the mood for a cool RPG. It’s a very surreal and honestly messy game that is still somehow full of creativity and unique mechanics.

The story involves all sorts of crazy themes like child soldiers, time travel and world wars. I promise you will be surprised by all the twists and turns it takes. What I really love about FFVIII, though, is how interesting and charming the world itself is. You’ll travel across varied landscapes ranging from a small fishing hamlet to a high-tech city of the future to a tribal village hidden deep underground all the way to a spooky castle. The scenery is unlike any other game I’ve played. One city looks like it’s from Star Trek, while another features classical European architecture. At one point, you travel across a massive, frozen salt lake. And, you get to do all this traveling in a flying school. As I said, it’s a strange game.

The world in this game is full of surprises both visually and in terms of hidden content. My very favorite thing about FFVIII is its wealth of intriguing sidequests. There are lots of summons you can only find by exploring every nook and cranny of the world map, alongside entire areas you can miss completely. Exploring thoroughly may put you in contact with a UFO, or perhaps incur the wrath of a giant Cactuar. It’s also worth mentioning that the game uses a very odd battle system that is surprisingly deep but basically requires digging into the side content to master, as magic and status effects are treated as consumables that must be farmed and equipped.

For my money, Triple Triad steals the show. It’s a very addictive card game you can play with people all over the world throughout the game. You can even challenge people during dramatic moments to get some funny dialogue. Different regions have their own rules for how to play that can be learned and transferred to other regions, some people have rare cards you won’t find anywhere else, and there’s even a whole quest to get a famous artist to paint new cards to put in circulation. It was a popular enough game to eventually make its way to Final Fantasy XIV.

FFVIII also has a phenomenal soundtrack, even by Final Fantasy standards. It includes everything from grandiose orchestral themes with Latin chanting to thumping electronic beats, and it all somehow perfectly fits the atmosphere. The great music combined with the unique world, bizarre plot and ample side content makes it my favorite game in the series to revisit. There’s so much to see and do, and it’s all wrapped up in a very unique setting.

Why I Love Chulip

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Chulip is the quirkiest video game I’ve ever played by far, and I adore it for that. You play as a poor boy who moves with his dad from the big city to Long Life Town, where everyone is more than happy to gossip about you. Our protagonist is immediately smitten with a girl who lives nearby, and soon learns that in this bizarre little town, people build their reputations by exchanging kisses.

It’s a weird game that is part life sim, part puzzle game. You go around town, getting to know your new neighbors and trying to figure out how to impress them to get smooched. Kisses give you more hearts, allowing you to take more damage. And you will take plenty of damage and even die frequently, as many people you try to kiss and even random objects around town like playground swings can hurt you. The game even has a constantly running clock, with NPCs and trains having their own schedules. As you get to know more people, you’ll gain access to new areas and have some crazy little adventures like contacting aliens and helping break a family curse.

What makes Chulip one of my favorite games is how it marries silly vibes with heartfelt themes. One character is a utility pole with a human face and legs; he also has a personal arc that involves introspection about what truly makes a person happy in a society where everyone is obsessed with money. Another character is a failed filmmaker who refuses to get a job that can provide for his family, leading to a strained relationship with his wife. You’ll walk in on them having a heated argument, and then a moment later be fishing poop out of a trash can to sell at the local secondhand store. A little while later, you’ll be talking to a zombie about the tragic circumstances of her death and her eyeball will fall out of place with a comedic splat. All of the people you meet on your journey have their own personal problems, and it feels good to help them.

There is no other game quite like Chulip. It’s funny, sometimes frustrating, and surprisingly sincere. Some kisses are easy to get, while others will take forever to figure out or require good luck. The cast is large and memorable, and Long Life Town is one of my absolute favorite locations in a video game. It’s a very comfy experience, and the emphasis on love makes it my favorite game to play around Valentine’s Day.

Why I Love Silent Hill 2

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If you ask me to name the best story in any horror game, I’ll tell you to look no further than Silent Hill 2. It’s a harrowing and thoughtful journey through the depths of despair, dealing with themes of grief, trauma and guilt while still being scary. Over the years since its original release, the game has become so famous that there’s a good chance you’ve already had the interesting plot details spoiled. If you haven’t, I urge you to consider playing it and experiencing it for yourself.

SH2 is one of those games that will have you firmly in its grip when you play it. It leaves you wondering exactly what’s going on every step of the way. What horrors lie around the next corner? How can a dead person send a letter? Can I trust the people I’ve met? How does a town inhabited only by monsters even exist? The deeper you delve, the more questions you’ll have.

It’s a truly unforgettable journey, thanks in large part to the impeccable atmosphere. The whole town feels suffocating and oppressive due to the thick fog blanketing the streets, the rusty metal and decay littering the “otherworld”, and the surreal architecture that awaits in some areas. Akira Yamaoka’s soundtrack is strange and beautiful, mixing soft guitar and piano melodies with cacophonous noise to punctuate each scene. This game was also the birthplace of Pyramid Head, one of the most iconic modern horror villains who demands your attention whenever he’s on screen.

Something I think is especially nice about SH2 is that both versions of it are great. The original is still well worth playing for any horror fan, but I feel the remake did it justice and brought its own interesting story additions and gameplay improvements to the table. This is a game that will both make you terrified to keep moving and bring a tear to your eye, which makes it a truly special work of art in this medium.