The 7 games I played in January 2021

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2: I have played through almost every Tony Hawk game, and I love most of them. The Tony Hawk series introduced me to punk rock as a pre-teen, and I will always be grateful for that, but even divorced from the soundtrack the gameplay is just its own thing with an expression-through-play that no other game captures in the same way. After not touching a Tony Hawk game in over 5 years, it was great to be able to just jump right back in, the controls still burned into my brain. I am especially grateful that the developers put together the perfect repertoire of abilities form the series history, instead of limiting it to the tricks present in the original THPS 1 & 2. That said, this compilation of 1+2 has only made me more adamant that 3 & 4 are the best Tony Hawk games. They really embraced a wider variety of goals that made each level feel a bit more video gamey and gave it some personality.

Ketsui Deathtiny: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi: A port of Cave's vertically scrolling bullet hell shooter from 2003. What makes Ketsui interesting is its combo chain system, which encourages getting up close to enemies while frequently switching between tapping the shot button and holding it for a lock on mode. Though the arcade version of the game is a bit too challenging for me, this is a part of M2's excellent ShotTriggers series, which means there are a whole host of other modes to choose from. In particular, the arranged Deathtiny mode completely changes the scoring mechanics and balance of the game, making it feel totally fresh all while keeping the actual moving and shooting exactly the same. My one gripe with Ketsui is that, while there are 4 different arrangements of the soundtrack, I don't particularly love any of them, and I need a great soundtrack to gel with a scrolling shooter.

Mole Mania: A late-in-life Game Boy puzzle game from Nintendo (and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto himself), Mole Mania is a puzzle game that's kind of like a 2D Zelda game that only has dungeons. There's a lot of block pushing and rolling, but the main gameplay hook is your ability to dig underground to access a kind of second plane. For a puzzle game, the difficulty curve is extremely shallow, which I loved. The single-screen puzzles didn't start to get challenging until the 5th of 8 worlds, so you really get a grasp on the mechanics before Mole Mania demands much out of you, though some of the later levels caused just the right amount of head scratching. I now consider this to be one of my favorite Game Boy games, up there with Donkey Kong '94.

Crackdown: Crackdown is basically a Grand Theft Auto game in the lineage of III/Vice City/San Andreas, but with a big focus on jumping. Orbs that increase your speed and jumping ability are scattered throughout the city, and it's a blast jumping from rooftop to rooftop collecting them and seeing that progression. The city is designed in a very purposeful way to encourage big jumps, and it never stopped being thrilling through my time with Crackdown. The rest of the game (shooting and driving) is janky in a fun way: the mechanics are easy enough to cheese your way through most of the combat.  The story is dumb and basically nonexistent, though your handler/narrator is a particular bright spot.

Rocket Arena: A 3v3 hero shooter where every character uses a different rocket launcher. Damage is handled similarly to Super Smash Bros, where filling an enemy's damage meter makes them easy to launch off the stage to their defeat. Playing with 2 friends online was a blast, though I think a good part of why I had such a good time was that we never lost a match, and the team synergy was great when we were combo-juggling hapless enemies with our rockets. While the character designs and general vibe of the game is a kind of League of Fortnite dumpster, the actual gameplay and varied abilities of each character more than made up for it.

Simple 2000 Vol. 6 (Atelier Double, : The Snowboard: If SSX didn't exist, this would definitely be my favorite PS2 snowboarding game. Even though it is as barebones as its Simple 2000 lineage implies, the actual snowboarding in The Snowboard feels good, the course design is nothing crazy but varied enough to be interesting, and the soundtrack really ties the package together. There are 4 different modes, but the race mode where you are just trying to get to the end of the track as fast as possible is by far the most enjoyable, as the tricks system is not well-developed enough to interest me.

Dead Rising (Capcom, 2006): This was a game that I recall being very jealous of Xbox owners getting to play back in 2006: a Capcom action game with hundreds of zombies sounded like the perfect time for me, but giving it a go 15 years later, it's a very middling game. The controls are as awkward as the voice acting and pacing, the bosses are a tedious slog, and the worst part is that the action is all over the place. A big draw is the variety of weapons, but when it became clear that only a handful feel any good to use, I had to put Dead Rising down.