Emmett Watkins Jr

Writer, Podcaster, and Video Producer for nearly a decade. Video games, movies, and music critique is my specialty. Looking for work in writing, video production, or podcast creation.
(email, CV, and social media links below)

Published Work

Below is a collection of articles I've written for VGU.TV and other places, sorted by most recently published. They range from reviews and list articles to features. You can also find all of my written work for VGU.TV here.

Michael Review: God's Perfect Idiot

The older I get, the more I’ve realized that my biggest role models growing up as a kid were Jesus Christ and Spongebob Squarepants. I think this is because both of these people are not real people. Well, historically that isn’t true for both, but let me explain.


SpongeBob is one of those classic characters that is pure of heart, but dumb of ass. He often manages to completely fuck up even the most simple tasks given to him, and his ignorance paired with his willingness to try anyway is often...

Ereban: Shadow Legacy (2024) Review - The Shadowed Warrior

Thanks to Selecta Play and Super Baby Games for the review code!


There’s been a lot of talk about how much we all love AI lately, so I wanna talk about one of my favorite things AI has ever done, the crossover. If you don’t know basketball, then welcome, I only know what little I do from Like Mike, rap lyrics, and NBA Street. However, one thing I do know is that Allen Iverson could trip up damn near anyone on the court with that one move. It’s a move I myself have deployed in so many other si...

Gecko Gods Review: Mythical Charm

Thanks to Super Rare Originals and Inresin for the review code!


I played Shadow of the Colossus when I was 15 years old, back when I was more easily capable of experiencing childlike wonder. Despite also getting Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 that same Christmas day and having rolled credits on it before sundown, Shadow of the Colossus managed to stay with me not only for the several additional days it took for me to beat it, but also for the years and years that it’s story and world have sat...

illWill (2023) Review: Cute, Chaotic Carnage

No one talks about Death Jr. You know, Death Jr., the PSP launch window action platformer? The one with the Tim Burton-esque art style and Invader Zim-esque sense of humor? The one who’s sequel had a trailer that was set to the instrumental for Eminem’s Bitch Please II? Well, if you’ve read my writing or heard me talk about games before, it might not surprise you that Death Jr. is one of the first games I ever beat. It’s a bizarre one, but I always loved how strange it was while still having sol...

Homura Hime Review: Nier Perfection

Thanks to Crimson Dusk and PLAYISIM for the review code!


I wrote last year about Echoes of the End and really enjoyed it despite it being so heavily inspired by the modern God of War games that the comparison defined the entire experience. Homura Hime is in a similar predicament, but it’s main inspiration is Nier Automata. Everything from the themes and structure of the story to the gameplay itself is clearly pulling from that Platinum Games masterpiece. The only difference is, for every part...

VGU.TV Game of the Year 2025

It’s that time of year again! That’s right, Emmett, Al, Josh, and Graydon have all come together to decide the best games of 2025 in 16 categories. You can see the winners of each below, but if you want to hear how we came to these final picks, you can listen to the podcasts for each here, or click the Day headers for each section to go straight to that episode. But without further ado, let’s celebrate the winners!

It’s that time of year again! That’s right, Emmett, Al, Josh, and Graydon have a...

The 25 Best Video Essays of 2025

Took way too damn long, but it’s finally time! Welcome to my annual list of my favorite video essays of the previous year. This time, I have 25 excellent essays to share from 2025, and despite it being several weeks into the following year, I can guarantee all of these are still fun, informative, or relevant to watch. If this is your first time here, then much like the previous lists from previous years, this one will be unranked, but the final entry is far and away my favorite. Each title links...

Emmett's 2026 Gaming Resolutions

2025 was an incredible year for video games, at least releases anyway. Clair Obscur, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Blue Prince, and so many more titles like these captivated us all, but the problem is, I didn’t play any of them. In fact, while I did indeed accomplish my goal of beating at least 24 games in 2025, I still feel like I missed out on a lot of potential classics I could have fallen in love with or hidden gems I could have given a spotlight to. Plus, while I’ve written many more reviews for...

Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion Review: Hilarious, Irreverent, and Human

Thanks to bubby darkstar and NoQuarter Software for the review code!


Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion is perhaps the best distillation of the ethos of internet humor that has ever existed, at least in the medium of video games. It combines random juxtapositions of Invader Zim style cartoons, the crassness of Adult Swim shows, and the glaringly rough edges of internet culture to make the funniest game I’ve maybe ever played. But at the end of the day, it is all ultimately just a joke. It’s a well...

Echoes of the End Review: God of War at Home...is Still God of War

In January of 2023, Forspoken released and a lot of people were mad and disappointed in it. Despite being published by Square Enix and being developed by the team behind Final Fantasy 15, it got middling to bad reviews from nearly every outlet. But worse, it had a cultural reputation of being…well embarrassing. It’s tired style of humor and middling combat that clashed with it’s impressive graphical fidelity and clearly high budget made sure that the name, Forspoken, would forever live in ironic...

Sword of the Sea Review: The best One Of These™ of all time

Like everyone else, I played Journey and thought it was great. But unlike most, it didn’t change my life, reconfigure my understanding of the medium, or even make me cry. For a few years there, I thought maybe I just didn’t play it under ideal conditions and maybe replaying it later would make me connect with it on a deeper level. Well, I never got around to that and just came to the conclusion that it doesn’t have to have such a profound effect on me, and that’s fine.


I kinda forgot about my...

Metal Garden Review: An Ode to Minimalism

Metal Garden is a testament to what you can do with not a whole lot. This game is 90 minutes long, and there’s no mechanical motivation to replay it. There are only 3 enemy types, 4 if you include a single boss enemy that you fight in the game’s only boss fight. The game is dead silent for almost it’s entire runtime, and the color pallet is limited to about 5 colors, and they are all the greyest ones they could find.


But I love this game despite, or maybe because, of all of that. With so few...

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 Review: Good Content, Bad Art

Every Saturday night right before my 4 day work week starts, I try to put lunches together for that entire week to eat at work. A few weeks ago, I cooked some rice in my rice cooker, but didn’t know what I would add to it to make it a full meal. My parents had left town to see my little brother play football in a different state, but they left some cooked ground turkey in a pan in the fridge. After ensuring it was free to use, I put a little of it and the rice I cooked into meal prep containers...

Star Overdrive Review (& My Problem with Open World Games)

Thank you to Jesus Fabre Games PR and Caracal Games for the review code!


In the years since its release, I’ve become a pretty big hater of the Nintendo Switch. I’ve become frustrated with its inability to hold up graphically when compared to not only other home gaming consoles, but also other popular gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck. I’ve become annoyed with the fact that the online subscription, which is admittedly worth its low price, only includes DLC for the Nintendo games I already o...

Captain Blood Review: Blood Tinted Glasses

Before he mercifully died a few years ago so he could further tarnish his name, Kanye West was responsible for some of my favorite music. One of his most iconic songs is Runaway, a song you might know from it’s “Toast to the Douchebags” refrain, it’s excellent Pusha T verse that brings it home, or the sparse piano keys that open the track. That opening immediately sends shivers down my spine despite being just a few notes spaced out over dead air. It’s beautiful not only because it’s minimalisti...

Thoughts on The Microsoft Boycott

There are plenty of great reasons to despise GameStop. Their selection of used games rarely carries any titles I care about, let alone for a good deal relative to what can be found online or at conventions. Their stores have slowly morphed into toy and merchandise stores rather than game stores. Their pivot around COVID to other money-making endeavors led them to sell NFTs based on 9/11 photos. And their reputation as places for fellow game enthusiasts to meet each other and hang out hasn’t been...

Ninja Gaiden Black II Review: Back in Black...Again!

I believe the purpose of all art is to experience humanity, to see the world through the eyes of another. To play as Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption is to better understand the value of life and the joy of community. To watch I Saw the TV Glow is to feel the dread of necessary transitions in life. To listen to Lemonade is to experience the emotional ups and downs of love and betrayal. But these experiences are all things I could reasonably experience in real life. I can come to appreciate t...

The 24 Best Video Essays of 2024

Welcome to the start of yet another year! Despite everything, I have managed to watch a lot of excellent video essays this past year. If you are new here, know that this list is unranked, but my words will show which videos I loved more than others and, more importantly, why. You can find each video by clicking the image or title of each section. I also went out of my way to find creators I’ve never heard of, so while you will be seeing some familiar names on this list again, I hope this year’s...

VGU.tv's 20 for '25

2024 may not have been the best of the decade so far, but now at this halfway point, we’re ready to look to the future! We kicked off last year with a look at our most anticipated pieces of media (or events!) in 2024, and this time we’re narrowing the playing field by choosing five each! Join Allan, Emmett, Graydon, and Josh as they ring in the new year with their Top 20 of 2025! Will all of their wishes come true? God, I hope so. We deserve it, dude.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II Review — Return of the Bro Shooter

This is, potentially, the greatest bro shooter of all time.


If I played this game when I was younger, maybe around the same age I was when I played and loved the original Space Marine, I think this would have been the piece of Warhammer media that would convert me. I know Warhammer is much more than just cool little painted figures; it’s hundreds of books, tabletop & video games, and more across tomes and tomes of fantasy and science fiction lore. It’s frankly so much that I get intimidated b...

GNX Review: The Compton-ist Manifesto

On December 4th, 2024, Luigi Mangione gunned down the CEO of United Healthcare in the middle of the street, to the delight of the entire country, if not the entire world. We’ve all known, or even witnessed first-hand, how health insurance companies kill the vulnerable by denying coverage of life saving medical care. United Healthcare isn’t the only company with blood on its hands, but considering that it denies claims 2-3 times as often as any other US health insurer, it is certainly the worst o...

This Was Supposed To Be an Astro Bot Review. It's Not Anymore.

Prince and his guitar shaped into his symbol. (Image Credit)

This is because I wasn’t born until the end of the following year, Dec 11, 1994. And only eight days before I came into the world, so did the original PlayStation console. Anyone who would be reading an article like this, about a topic like this, on a site like this, doesn’t need to be told of the influence of the PlayStation brand. For millions, it was their first exposure to CD technology, DVD technology with the PS2, or Blu-ray tec...

Bad Boys Ride or Die Review: Lost Sauce Restored

It took me a while, but I get it now.


Anyone who knows me knows that Bad Boys II is one of my favorite films of all time and I hold it up in my mind as a near-perfect movie. So I was beyond excited for Bad Boys 4 Life (which should have been the title of this movie). Well, while the excitement of the franchise returning carried me through the movie, I soured on it the more I thought about it. It wasn’t a bad flick, but it felt like a very utilitarian film, trying hard to fit within modern tas...
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VGU.TV Videos

This playlist has every video I've made and appeared in for VGU.TV over the years, including Let's Plays, unboxings, and more.

The Player's Club Podcast

All episodes of The Player's Club Podcast are hosted and edited by me and can be found here. I also had a special series called Keepin It 100 where I decided my top 100 games of all time, which can be found here.

VGU.TV GOTY 2025 Day 1: Best Look, Zeitgeist of the Year, Biggest Gaming News, & What Took So Long?

New year, same club.

Welcome back to The Player’s Club Podcast!

It’s been a while, but we haven't been doing nothing all this time. Al, Graydon, Emmett, and Josh have all gotten back together to talk about the best games they played in 2025. There are 4 whole days of deliberations, so let’s get it started right in this first episode! Day one includes the following categories: What Took So Long? (best old game we played in 2025), Biggest Gaming News, Best Look, and Zeitgeist of the Year.



Timestamps:




00:00 Start



What Took So Long?    16:45



Biggest Gaming News    39:41



Zeitgeist of the Year    1:05:25



Best Look    1:27:45



Let's Wrap It Up!    2:07:32



Housekeeping:




Darwin Paradox | VGU Test Drive (https://vgu.tv/?p=42137)



Malibu Bikini Volleyball l Game Olympics (https://vgu.tv/?p=42122)



The Player's Club Podcast Special: Black Jeopardy 2026 - VGU.TV (https://vgu.tv/?p=42090)



The 25 Best Video Essays of 2025 - VGU.TV (https://vgu.tv/?p=41844)



Emmett's 2026 Gaming Resolutions - VGU.TV (https://vgu.tv/?p=41423)  


Check out YouTube Channel here!⁠ (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYNf0R9uHJCv-oJnEijWTWQ)

⁠Follow us on Bluesky, @vgu.bsky.social!⁠ (https://bsky.app/profile/vgutv.bsky.social)

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Personal YouTube Channel

I also have been making videos on my personal YouTube channel for some time now. My best work there can be found in my Kendrick in Review series, where I analyzed each of Kendrick Lamar's albums, including Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. That series can be found here.

Vidjagame Apocalypse

I've recently been invited to be a permanent third chair on long running podcast Vidjagame Apocalypse. Here are some of the episodes I can be found on.

Welcome to the Thing

I've been a co-host of Welcome to the Thing, alongside T.L. Foster and Jarrett Green for over a year. These episodes can be found here.

Other Samples and Work

Important Links