JordiLS

Lara Croft will always be an icon. Sure, games like this haven't "aged well" in the graphics department. But it was still revolutionary, action-packed and a very solid game as a whole.

I'm not usually into horror games or movies. They tend to bore me. This franchise peaked my interest though for some reason, and I really enjoyed the movies. When I tried this game I wasn't expecting much, but I LOVED it. The slow pace, the tension, and yes also the action scenes. It was so much fun, specially when your friends were either playing, or watching you play, and had some jump-scares on our playthrough. It was magic. I haven't been able to replicate it since.

Possibly the best strategy game of all time. It was such an improvement over the first game in the franchise, which holds a special place in our game library in part because of nostalgia (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). AoE II takes you back to the middle ages as a ruler, you gather resources, you expand your empire, have a dozen civilisations to choose from, you know the gist. But no matter how many years have passed, whenever you go back to play a campaign, or just a "short" scenario, before you realise, you'll have spent most of your weekend playing.

Possibly the most ambitious title in the entire franchise. It has everything you've ever dreamt of for a Super Smash Bros game, and more. It has way more playable / unlockable characters than you thought you wanted, and it also has so many stages that if you're a casual player you're probably going to be like "oh I never played this one" when you have in fact, played it. But it also has a lot of playable hours in both the classic and the story modes, which came as a surprise to me. Perhaps my nostalgia is clouding my judgement, but as of now I still enjoy Super Smash Bros Melee a tiny bit more than this one. However, Ultimate is such a close second-best game in the franchise, that in a couple of years, after I have spent many more hours playing it, I may end up holding it in higher regard. That's how brilliant I think this game is.

A huge improvement over the first installment of the franchise on almost every aspect. But the fighting remained, to its core, as fun, crazy and unexpected as it was. You had way more characters to choose from, more scenarios, more stuff to do other than battling. In my opinion this is the best game in the franchise yet, the only thing that could have made it stand out more (compared to the more recent games) was if it had a few more characters. Other than that, no notes. You'll have an absolute blast everytime you play.

The idea for this game ("What if your beloved Nintendo characters fought each other in a game?") was brilliant, it was something a lot of us wanted, but perhaps we thought only die-hard Nintendo fans would enjoy. The fact that it has become one of Nintendo's biggest franchises, while it may seem obvious right now, it would feel kinda crazy in the late 90s. This was a great introduction to this idea though. The graphics may be a bit dated, but the mechanics were fun and intuitive, and it's one of those games you can play so many times and you have a different experience each time, even if you play it with the same people (or by yourself). I'm not the biggest fan of multi-player games or modes, but this one does it well.

While it's not as beloved or popular as Colosseum (both Pokémon and Nintendo weren't doing as well as they're doing right now), it was a great game. Dare I say better than the previous game? It had a few areas where wild Pokémon could finally spawn, way more shadow Pokémon (which made the game feel longer to complete perhaps) and it expanded on the storyline of Colosseum. It was a great experience on the GameCube.

I enjoyed playing this game as a teen, but I have to say at first it shocked me by how dystopian that entire world felt at first. Who knew we'd be heavily into that kind of stuff 1-2 decades later. It's also one of the hardest Pokémon games we've had to date, you have to take training seriously in order to succeed in this game, and strategise more than in previous games, considering every battle is a double battle. Trying to rescue all the shadow Pokémon takes a while as well. One of the few Pokémon games that didn't hold your hand and expected you to know most of the things we already know as regular fans.

Gen 3 is the generation of Pokémon games with the most replayability in my opinion. It had great visuals and art direction, a compelling story, and it felt, and still feels, fresh with all the new mechanics it had (one of them has only been explored once in these past 20 years, and won't be fully explored again until Winds and Waves comes out). While Emerald was the perfect combination of the best elements of Ruby & Sapphire, and the remakes expanded on the original story as well, these two games are still really really good.

Being able to bring your Pokémon to your home console for the first time, battle with them, win tournaments, or just play minigames was wild back when this came out. Even if Pokémon games now have better graphics and are on the home / hybrid console by default, I hope we get something like this, that's not really mainline, but you can use your Pokémon to fight (in the preset battles of that game, not in online tournaments), get other Pokémon as prizes (and bring them to your regular games). But perhaps a game like this isn't needed anymore with all the other Pokémon games and apps we have, and is better left untouched as a relic of the late 90s and early 00s. It was a very fun and unique experience though.

The perfect remake for Generation 1. The GBA style graphics will always look vibrant and cute, which is something I miss from most of the newer games (when they released the remake for Pokémon Yellow in Let's Go: Pikachu / Eevee they did bring some of those colours back though). The base game is what you'd expect from an early Pokémon game. Training wasn't as fast and easy as it is now, neither was completing the entire Pokédex. So even if it isn't a difficult game, it still brings some challenging battles during your playthrough. It has also a ton of post-game content with the Sevii Islands, the roaming legendary, rematching a stronger Elite Four and more. Also, in the Switch version it also has the extra events active (Navel Rock and Birth Island). So, dozens of hours of pure enjoyment.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A has the most dynamic and entertaining fight mechanics we've had in a Pokémon game yet. Even if I really like the turn-based combat, I hope they bring some of these elements for future Pokémon games, at least the catch mechanics for wild Pokémon. The story as a whole was good (even it's not as replayable because of the lack of skippable scenes), and the map being just a city felt a bit small a couple of times, yet with all the side-quests you can do after beating the game, you'll rarely get bored playing it.

If this game had been developed by a different company it could have been something better and more ambitious in my opinion. But the ability of catching Pokémon in the real world is still a very strong concept. If we kept all the quality of life improvements we got during 2020-2021, that would have made this game a 10/10 for me.

I'm not usually a fan of cozy games, and I initially thought this game wasn't for me. But after watching the trailer I was intrigued and I wanted to try it. After playing it for the past 2 weeks I must say I'm totally addicted and this game has delivered in so many ways I didn't expect. It has much more content than I anticipated, and it has the best elements of both Minecraft and Animal Crossing, mixed with Pokémon. I'm gonna keep playing this game for the rest of the year.

Pokémon: Let's Go had a very beautiful art direction, and it was a great way to introduce Pokémon to a more casual audience, and to finally bring the world of Pokémon to the Switch. It also had a lot of post-game / extra content that Pokémon Yellow didn't have. If it wasn't for the catch mechanics it would have been a perfect remake.

Having played this game only on Switch 2 for the past few months, I have to say it's one of the most fun experiences I've had with a game recently. The open world element is a brilliant idea (I wasn't sure of it when I first heard of it), and even if it could have been even better with more side-tasks and more NPCs to interact with, I didn't miss it because in previous Pokémon games they overdid it in my opinion (hopefully they'll find a balance for Winds and Waves). The 3D models for Pokémon are some of the best we've had in a while as well. I understand that when it came out for the NSW it had some issues, but if you're a new player, or if you recently bought the NS2, you'll enjoy the experience thoroughly, it's a completely different game thanks to the NS2 patch and the fixes they've made over the years.

While I'm still getting used to Donkey Kong's new look / design, the game as a whole offers such a fresh reinvention of the platformer genre. It's as fun as the trailers show, and it still retains some of those elements that make the Donkey Kong games so enjoyable in the long run.

The perfect Pokémon game. Hoenn was a great region already in Ruby & Sapphire, but Emerald took those games to the next level, with the extra content both with the main story and in the post-game. This is one of the 5 games that I've replayed the most in my entire life (including both console, mobile and PC games). It needs a remaster for the Switch 2 someday (we already got a Gen 3 remake, so I don't think that generation will get another remake anytime soon).

I think this is easily the best platformer for the Nintendo 64 and one of the best platformers of all time. It was a long game but didn't feel too long, it wasn't too complicated but it had a couple boss fights that were tricky (and lengthy), and if you wanted to really complete the game, you had to invest a lot of time in it. Plus, you can never go wrong with the DK rap. Also, being able to play with 5 different characters? That was great, specially Diddy Kong and Tiny Kong.

This was the best first person shooter I ever played. I hope we get a remaster for the Switch 2 someday, or a remake. It was just perfect. Both single player and multiplayer modes guaranteed dozens of hours of play without ever getting bored.