NFS Heat sounds fun. And I am definitely buying a PS5 at some point, but I'm excited for even less focus on exclusives next generation. We're almost to where games are like movies and you just play them on whatever home system you happened to buy. Almost. Ok, we're not even close but still closer than most previous game system cycles.
I love that show but it's one of those things where my friend is a bit too obsessed with it to the point I almost don't want to admit to him how good it is cause it's not the be all end all of cultural humanity. It's his Yakuza, to use my exact same character flaw as an example. 
But yeah, I've heard the same thing about the show. I think mostly what people seem to mean by that is how it jumps between lots of different characters and connects between seasons, which was much less commonplace before streaming. I think that's why The Wire had to find so much of its audience later: people were not necessarily ready for televsion to veer from its episodic (re: self-contained episodes like Law and Order) nature in the 2000s.
They have pretty much every popular Japanese gambling parlor game, I'd wager. There are also dice games like cho-han that are completely luck-based I seem to do pretty well in.
Yakuza also has Texas Hold 'Em, black jack, roulette etc. in the casinos. I imagine a lot of the games in this collection you're reviewing are in Yakuza too.
Those games sound like they'd be more book-ish, if anything, which makes sense for your tastes. Although one of the reasons I love Yakuza so much has nothing to do with its cinematic storytelling, but how I feel like I'm living out a novel about urban Japan when interacting with NPCs.
First, thank you for reminding me about that cover cause I was really thinking it was a Stevie Wonder cover the other day and could not figure out for the life of me I was thinking of "Higher Ground." Now I know why I was thinking about Stevie Wonder when I heard the Ohio Players RHCP "Love Rollercoaster" cover come on the other day. Random, I know, but it's been bothering me.
Also, I've never heard "Warped" before but wow is that different for them. I'm not sure if I like it or not. I'll have to listen again when I'm expecting that kind of sound. "Aeroplane" didn't veer away from their typical sound anywhere close to that degree. That's interesting.
STAGE SELECT:
I was thinking you wanted the "best" console launch games, and that theme would have led me to a lot of of the games mentioned before my comment like BotW, Halo, Super Mario 64 etc cause you can't deny how much those games meant for their respective systems. But my personal favorite launch games? Here's that list:
Spider-Man 2 (DS): Look, it's not a great game, but for whatever reason I played the shit out of it and always looked forward to side swinging through its generic level design as sort of a brainless escape. It's one of those games that does absolutely nothing new or innovative, yet is so easy to pick up and play I would do so over and over again. Sometimes you just want run-of-the-mill action. Or at least I do. It definitely held me over in those early DS days when it was either this or playing Super Mario 64 DS with a tiny D-pad.
Peter Jackson's King Kong (360): Ok, this is cheating because I never actually played the 360 version, but I did play the PS2 game I assume this is a remaster of and let me tell ya. This is a fucking good game. Hell yeah I want a cinematic experience in which I play a giant gorilla that rips dinosaur mouths in half. Don't let this game be forgotten. It is a treasure. There's even a Polygon article completely overhyping it: https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/8/20680953/king-kong-xbox-360-game-rayman-michel-ancel
Wave Race: Blue Storm (Gamecube): I mean, I could put Luigi's Mansion here since I actually own it and do enjoy it, but it's always been a bit of a slow game. But when the Gamecube first came out, this game's water graphics and physics blew my 11-year-old mind.
I've heard people (specifically, YouTube channel Game Sack) say the controls are more stiff than Wave Race 64 and they don't like the sarcastic announcer in Blue Storm and I definitely believe those criticisms despite never playing the N64 game. It could be a bit hard to make some of those turns. But damn I loved renting Blue Storm. So fun and graphically hypnotizing.
CAGE MATCH:
I have played far too little of KOTOR to have an informed opinion, but I've never played anything of Tales of Vesperia. I'm gonna vote for Tales of Vesperia cause that game is not attached to a fan base that annoys the living fuck out of me.*
*: Star Wars fans in general; maybe the KOTOR-specific fan base is fine, but my God has the more general SW peanut gallery soured me on that franchise.
On that note, I found something https://imgur.com/a/fZWB3#aEsNnSr
Momodora looks like too many things I already played, but I do love the soundtrack. Hmm ...
I don't know if I'll ever understand Hanafuda or Mahjong. Those games are a big part of the reason I don't ever really try to Platinum Yakuza games. I can probably get the hang of Shogi because it's like chess, but even then I don't quite understand it as well as chess.
