Happy Monday, welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread, glory to Pikmin and death to the Great Satan Louie, yadda yadda yadda. I’m Wolfman Jew, your oft-tired but happy host.

Last week, Brakeman had a prompt that I thought was quite scintillating, on series you aren’t familiar with. It’s a great prompt because it essentially forces you to engage with stuff you by design don’t think about or like. However, when I was filling mine out I realized that most of this stuff was genres and series I just don’t care for at all, particularly military shooters and cinematic action games. So I wanted to spin this into something of a Part 2 that was a bit more purely positive. I’ve done that before and it’s not meant as a sniping of my fellow thread writers, but that’s just because I like prompts that are more purely positive.

And that Part 2 is “what are series you don’t know but want to?” Stuff that peeks out at you from the edges of Steam or the console storefront. Stuff you want to learn about, because you straight up know it’s on your wavelength, but there just hasn’t been the time to actually play it. For me, the biggest series that feels like a gap is probably Yakuza, which is so large and complex that it’s a bit overwhelming. I don’t really know where to jump in. But between the comedy, the drama, the music, the whole conceit of such a small and intimate setting, it seems just perfect for me. Similarly, while I have played it for a couple minutes, I’ve never really tried Grim Fandango and want to eventually dip my toes into the non-Psychonauts side of the LucasArts / Double Fine legacy.

Of course, what have you been playing? For me, I beat Balan Wonderworld… but I’ll leave the rest of that story to the comments. Hopefully Pikmin will be better when it comes in!