A game played by visiting BBSs and exchanging messages in an alternate 1988. The player interacts with the desktop of a fictional computer and progresses by clicking icons and buttons, reading lots of text, and typing in passwords and phone numbers.

As a story-telling method, the interface is a mixed bag. It’s atmospheric and immersive, but the limitations of the in-game UI can become tedious as there are a lot of numbers and passwords to find and manually type in. The story is linear, but it’s not always obvious what needs to be done next which can make the player feel more involved but may also prompt them to simply visit all available BBSs which feels rote.

A rhythm game in which you play along with pop music by tapping, dragging, and spinning on-screen targets at the right time. It is essentially an Americanized version of the Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan games by the same developer released in Japan.

The titular agents are essentially a government agency of cheerleaders - when someone has a personal crisis and calls on the agents for help, they show up and dance to motivate the person to succeed. As you play the song, you’re shown both the agents’ dance moves as well as the progress of the person they’re helping. Each song has a few checkpoints where the person will succeed or fail based on the player’s performance leading to a few different possible endings for each song. Befitting the absurdity of the premise, most songs’ stories are humorously over the top.

A Musou game based on the setting, events, and cast of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The main story mode is split into campaigns that focus respectively on the Shu, Wu, Wei, and Jin factions, plus a handful of other scenarios grouped as Other. None of the factions are really “good guys” or “bad guys” - they just have conflicting goals. Each perspective is presented sympathetically, though everyone resorts to underhanded tactics at least once and though they all say they want to unite the land and end the age of chaos and fighting, they all do this by fighting more and creating more chaos.

The third mainline Danganronpa game with the same structure as its two predecessors - a visual novel in which you investigate murders and then solve them in courtroom sequences. Sixteen high-potential high schoolers are once again held prisoner in an unusual school by recurring mascot villain Monokuma and forced to play the killing game, in which the only way to escape is to murder a classmate and not be voted the culprit at the trial. While it’s marketed as being a new story, make no mistake - this is a sequel and you are highly encouraged to play the prior mainline games first.

A darkly comic FPS with experience- and loot-based RPG progression. Level up by shooting a variety of enemies with a variety of guns, collect drops and loot containers for currency, ammo, and mostly-trash-but-sometimes-better-than-what-you-have equipment, rinse and repeat. There are a few character classes available, all starting with the same basic abilities but having different special moves and skill trees that allow for distinct builds as you level up.

A co-op dungeon crawl with hack-and-slash action for up to four players featuring surprisingly deep class design. The four classic heroes (plus a new one available as DLC) each play quite differently - the aggressive Warrior wades into groups of enemies and mows them down, the vigilant Valkyrie positions herself and her shield to prevent damage, the nimble Elf dodges attacks and picks off valuable targets from afar, and the versatile Wizard has a spell for every situation. Each class has its own playstyle that naturally leads to a particular combat role - my personal favorite is the Wizard who must read a situation, figure out which spell to use, and recall the correct button/element combination to invoke it. Sufficient mastery over your spellbook allows you to handle just about anything while feeling like a total badass.

A co-op dungeon crawl with hack-and-slash action for up to four players and a surprising amount of scale and complexity. There are many stages to brawl and shoot your way through using a mixture of attacks and combos, an extended leveling system for becoming more powerful, and tons of hidden and not-so-hidden items with varying effects. There are a number of playable characters with unique looks and animations, though movesets are basically the same and characters mostly differ by stat allocation.

A 3D platformer with varied gameplay and a lot of collecting. The structure is roughly hub-and-spokes with a handful of areas each containing several levels. The main collectible (“time pieces”) unlocks new areas at a brisk pace (the final boss is unlocked at 25 out of 40 time pieces). Side collectibles include yarn (which allows for the creation of new hats with new abilities), a currency called “pons” (which can be spent on badges that enhance or modify your abilities in various ways), and new skins and color schemes for the hats and the player character.

A compilation of the first three Jak and Daxter games (Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, and Jak 3) remastered with a few visual and control improvements and the addition of trophy support. There are also some bugfixes, including for the save-file-ruining “Stadium bug” from Jak II.

The PlayStation 3 version runs at 720p 60fps and is arguably the definitive way to experience this fantastic trilogy. The Vita version unfortunately suffers a great deal from a reduced frame rate, awkwardly remapping the L2/R2 buttons to the rear touch panel, and input lag in the first installment. (Or so I’ve read; I only played the PS3 version.)

Another handheld followup to the Jak and Daxter series that - unlike Daxter - attempts to be a full sequel and evolve the formula with middling results.

The game is not open-world and missions are in a specific sequence. The setting is far removed from the areas in the previous games and very few characters recur. Gameplay does feature platforming and gunplay similar to what came before, but Jak’s moveset has been substantially changed. There’s more of an emphasis on combat then before but the aim-assist that enabled fast-paced run-and-gun gameplay in the previous games is missing.

A scaled-down spinoff of the Jak and Daxter series that puts Daxter in the spotlight with a game structure similar to Jak II or Jak 3 (open-world mission progression with varied platforming/combat/vehicle gameplay) but substantial mechanical differences due to the change in player character.

Taking place during the two-year time skip at the beginning of Jak II, the game follows Daxter working as a bug exterminator as he tries to find and rescue Jak. Daxter’s limited moveset is enhanced by a melee weapon (an electrified flyswatter) and a combination ranged weapon and jetpack (a bug sprayer with multiple firing modes) and he also gets to use a few different vehicles over the course of the game. Appropriately, Daxter feels less powerful but more agile than Jak, and his platforming challenges feel different but are just as much fun. His combat, on the other hand, is a bit less enjoyable. Most bugs can take several hits from the flyswatter which makes fighting slow and button-mashy. It doesn’t help that enemy variety is low and Daxter encounters the same bugs throughout the game.

A spinoff that expands the dune buggy gameplay from Jak 3 into a full game. Despite using the same characters and continuing the story and worldbuilding where it left off, this isn’t really the same kind of game as its predecessors. As implied by the title, you’re now spending all your time racing and engaging in vehicular combat.

A direct sequel to Jak II that builds on its foundation and adds more. The setting, mechanics, and abilities from Jak II are all present with new ones added on top - a second city to explore, new vehicles to ride, several new firing modes for the gun, and “Light Jak” powers added on top of the “Dark Jak” ones. The core remains unchanged - an open-world mission progression with a variety of polished gameplay against a backdrop with a somewhat dark tone but a strong sense of humor. The game is a bit more accessible than Jak II with slightly lower difficulty and slightly lighter tone, though still not on the level of Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.

A direct sequel to Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy that is a radical departure in tone, difficulty, and structure. While it does still have a strong sense of humor, it’s much darker than its predecessor, replacing the bucolic setting of the first game with a techno-dystopian walled city and opening with Jak being subject to torturous experiments for two years that leave him with a superpowered “Dark Jak” side. It’s also a great deal more difficult, both because the player is tasked with much more challenging objectives and because the structure has changed such that the player can no longer pick and choose which objectives to complete. The Super Mario 64-like hub-and-spokes framework has been discarded in favor of an open-world mission progression of the sort popularized by Grand Theft Auto III. Sometimes you’ll have multiple plot threads open simultaneously and you can choose which mission chain to tackle first, but you still have to complete all the missions in order to advance the story. The player thus has less freedom, but this also means that the story can be more complex and better integrated with the gameplay, and correspondingly there are far more dialog scenes and more characters who matter to the plot.

A 3D platformer in the mold established by Super Mario 64 (a series of hub areas with multiple non-linear levels each with several objectives that can be tackled in various orders but a certain number of objectives that is fewer than the number available must be completed to gain access to the next part of the hub with the next set of levels) but that evolves the formula to incorporate more story, character development, and world-building. The game takes place in a single continuous world and there are dialog scenes establishing character motives and contextualizing the various objectives along the way.

A top-down action adventure set between seasons one and two of Stranger Things and modeled after classic The Legend of Zelda games, in particular A Link to the Past. (Nevermind that the show is explicitly set eight years and two console generations before the release of that game.) Gameplay consists of a series of dungeons connected by the overworld of Hawkins, Indiana, with combat and puzzle-solving in both environments. Unlike in Zelda, however, you can play as multiple characters. You start with Chief Hopper and unlock other members of the main cast as you go. You can switch freely between them and each has their own special ability.

A budget-priced downloadable Color Picross game. The visuals and soundtrack are a bit unpolished, but they get the job done and you really don’t need more than that for a Picross game. The game comes with 150 puzzles ranging up to 20x20 in size, though the largest of these are a bit awkward on the 3DS with the vertical clues displaced to the top screen. There are also several DLC packs available with puzzles grouped by size, the largest of which go up to 35x25 and are only available on the Wii U and not the 3DS.