APE OUT

Finally a game drummers and lovers of drums will truly enjoy! Though not necessarily a rhythm game, Ape Out follows a large ape fleeing his cage and killing guards in a facility built for biological research in a bloody beat 'em up classic. A steady-paced swinging drum chops are backed by anything you do on the screen, and so the sounds of glass breaking,foot tapping, splashing the guards against the wall or smashing things, and of bombs ticking all  add to the drum phrases that leave the player mesmerised and driven. I haven't been this impressed  by any gaming music in decades.The fact that Matt Boch decided to make the ingame music entirely around solo drumming is enough reason to try the game. The gameplay itself is never dull or repetitive, as the walls and guards are randomly generated with each try. Add the aviary perspective with extremely high walls and exceptional stylized graphics that remind me of beebop and hardbop mid-century jazz coverart and book covers of beat poets and you have a unique piece of gaming history well worth you 15 euros. Highly recommended!   

GRIS

This is the most visually astounding and satisfying game I've ever played. Although less expansive than its 3d counterpart Journey which is a personal all-time favourite, GRIS leaves you completely in awe of what the game designers achieved. When you play a game and its visual component beats everything else you've ever seen in a game the gameplay comes second.It's as if the designers in this game had over 500 years of art and design experience collectively - it's daunting how immersive  admiring someone's artistic achievement can be, as it completely affects the gaming experience itself. You seem to foget you're actually playing a cleverly designed platform game.This is what Dali\s Dysney movie should have looked like.

RUN AN EMPIRE

Pokemon Go was a revelation and paved the way for games to come, but very few games have ventured into this area since. Another game did go even further into getting people out of their homes and arcades for a unique gaming experience - Run an Empire does not only expand on what a strategy game could be, but it also makes the running application meaningful for those who are not diehards needing no external stimuli apart from the Sun and the track or the road..
Using a real map, players go for catching hexagonal tiles , and  running through an area marked by a hex more times than others enable the player to claim the area and build structures ,encampments objects etc. Now, I know lots of people cringe at the very thought of gamification and think games should be games and not means to achieving short-term real-life goals, but I believe Run an Empire  shows us one of the many possible ways of introducing new concepts into the stale world of gaming and dealing with the mundane in real life. At least we can now do away with boring running track routines and stops -we can look at them as checkpoints.
I wish someone else in my area played it, would love to have some competition,

PUSH ME PULL YOU

Been waiting for ages to see this gem come out. I  remember seeing people play the beta version  somewhere on Youtube and thinking how great it was to invent new sports. And while at it,  why not alter players to the point of their physical appearance defining the very game? CatDog finally got their own sport and it works beautifully- it is fun, weird, and the controls are easy to learn but impossible to master as the awkwardness of physical movement  is a substantial part of this game and it's charm.  You keep coming back to it, satiating  your sick desire to  see and  be two human bodies seamed at the waist  claiming the ball and owning  their half of  the playground. With different modes and a possiblility to move both heads with a single controller, or share controls with a friend on a single controller, PUSH ME PULL YOU becomes an even more exciting ride. It  will surely become a timeless co-op family multiplayer  classic that everyone will still love revisiting 20-30 years from now.

KATAMARI DAMACY

You're on a mission from your father, the mighty King of All Cosmos, to rebuilt the stars that he accidentally destroyed for no known reason., and you do so by using adhesive balls called katamaris, sticking many objects trolling the katamari over them until there's enough material for a  new star amassed. Naturally one has to make sure the overall shape of your "creation" stays  as "rollable" as possible in order to complete the task more successfully. Sometimes it's about a time limitation to do a task and other times it's about about specific materials used for particular stars.

With engaging soundtrack of various styles, odd and funny cutscenes, easy-to-master controls, blocky graphics that allow you to appreciate the concept and attention to details even more, its high replay value , and its absolutely magical  child-like quality, Katamari Damacy quickly proves to be a fun and unique experience for anyone who tries it. With  characters like  Kings and Princes of the Cosmos one would think a  fantasy world  would be the only obvious choice as a setting of choice, but making the Princes whereabouts mundane and common only makes the contrast suit the story even better. The fact that the game is about "mass consumption" (Takahashi) might make you look at events in the game with a new set of eyes, but this information does not tae away from your play sessions.

HOCUS

A 3d puzzle game based on impossible perspective and objects? Yes, please! Although Monument Valley  pioneered the concept of using impossible perspective in a game, it also sugar-coated it  and made it more about construction and the combination of pieces, the lovely designs and the music phrases that accompany movements across moving platforms, while Hocus focuses on the undilluted experience of enjoying the unsettleing and alluring  objects/drawings in the style of Duchamp, Escher, Penrose and McDonald. It's about consciously observing the geometry of each object while trying to find a way out for your red cube. The design is simple and effective , the controls are basic and levels progress with grace, each offering you the same exhilaration you felt when observing Escher's staircase drawing for the first time.

CARMAGEDDON

A relatively open world you can explore and demolish while driving in your car, racing against others or disregarding the track was a huge revelation for us back then. Sure , its elements were already present or implied in other racing and non-racing games, but it is the sum of these ideas and the presentation that made CARMAGEDDON a legendary game. It is gory, funny, replete with out-of-this-world characters and pimped vehicles with crazy add-ons that help you score destruction bonuses, Carmaggedon was a bold mainstream venture into the unknown that defied the racing genre and its narrow confines where  racing track was god. Finishing the race meant either clean racing , or destroying cars and property or killing all people in the streets.Sure, its outdated graphics might belittle its importance, but its pioneering  concept inspired hundreds of games in and outside racing genres, most important being the original GTA. Loads of fun , even today
Oh, and featuring Fear Factory's music in the game was the most natural thing to do at that time :)