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52 Games. 1 Year. 2019.
- Thread starter Wozzer
- Start date
Main Post
90. SOMA - 9.40 - 01.12
Safe mode made this a playable game for me. I detest the pure hide and seek gameplay, but that mode made everything else the game offers available to me. And i loved everything about it. The story is merely ok, but the writing and character development elevate it to something special. It's a bleak world that SOMA depicts, yet it seems so believable. And it's still a pretty creepy game, with lots of scares peppered throughout. It's beautiful as well, and kind of insane this was achieved by such a relatively small studio.
91. Wish Stone - 36h40 - 02.12
More mobile picross.
92. Journey - 2h20 - 07.12
This game has lost some of the magic that i first experienced with it years ago, but it's still a solid experience. It's shorter than i remember. Throughout my playthrough i came across a fair amount of people journeying along. I was surprised to see the game so populated. And it's gorgeous.
90. SOMA - 9.40 - 01.12
Safe mode made this a playable game for me. I detest the pure hide and seek gameplay, but that mode made everything else the game offers available to me. And i loved everything about it. The story is merely ok, but the writing and character development elevate it to something special. It's a bleak world that SOMA depicts, yet it seems so believable. And it's still a pretty creepy game, with lots of scares peppered throughout. It's beautiful as well, and kind of insane this was achieved by such a relatively small studio.
91. Wish Stone - 36h40 - 02.12
More mobile picross.
92. Journey - 2h20 - 07.12
This game has lost some of the magic that i first experienced with it years ago, but it's still a solid experience. It's shorter than i remember. Throughout my playthrough i came across a fair amount of people journeying along. I was surprised to see the game so populated. And it's gorgeous.
Master Post
79. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Took me a bit longer to finish this then I would've liked. I actually stopped playing it and deleted it from my PS4 as I wasn't feeling it initially. Mainly due to the combat and constant back tracking, but I'm glad I decided to see it thru the end as I grew to love the game and will be in my top 10 possibly top 5 for my GotY list.
79. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Took me a bit longer to finish this then I would've liked. I actually stopped playing it and deleted it from my PS4 as I wasn't feeling it initially. Mainly due to the combat and constant back tracking, but I'm glad I decided to see it thru the end as I grew to love the game and will be in my top 10 possibly top 5 for my GotY list.
November and December Games!
Master Post!
January through August
THE CHALLENGE IS COMPLETE.
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
If I could give anything a 1.5/5...
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I DID IT! ! ALL 52 ITS OVER ITS DONE I RETURN TO THE SHIRE
okay a P.S. - I have immensely enjoyed this challenge the past year. I have been 'floating' through my gaming hobby for a long time now, just playing whatever seemed good at the time and rarely finishing game. It would get to the end of the year and I'd be reading about all the games and say "wait that came out this year? Did I even play it..?" so this has been forcing me to put all my thoughts down and really dig into things. It has also cut drastically down on me spending my free time after work just on browsing the internet or going through crap like Reddit on my phone - I had stuff to get done!! The one issue I do have is it really disincentives longer games - I've been eyeing Pathfinder Kingmaker all damn year, but it is 100+ hours long I aint got time for that!!
I'm not 100% sure I'll do the challenge next year, but I will at least be trying to keep putting my thoughts down about what I do play! Or maybe just do 90% indie stuff that takes like an hour to beat lol
Master Post!
January through August
THE CHALLENGE IS COMPLETE.
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Sunset Overdrive!! It feels appropriate to only use multiple exclamation points when talking about my feelings on this game. Sunset Overdrive is a quite ridiculous, over-the-top open world shoot-em-up that has been stuck on the Xbox One since its initial launch in 2015 until very recently releasing on steam. *Checks dates*. 2014 release date! And it came out at the end of last year on Steam. I got it then but didn't get too far until stopping. After playing a lot of Death Stranding though I decided I needed something a bit more light hearted... and I definitely got it here.
You play a young worker in a fictional city during the night of the release party of a new Energy Drink - Fizzco's OVERDRIVE! Unfortunately the drink turns people into fiendish mutants and the city is almost entirely destroyed... but you and some other survivors are just too fuckin' punk to go down like that, so you have some fun in the apocalypse instead! The game is drenched in punk aesthetic, music and art all over the place. It's a very cute theme to drench an apocalypse in and the game NEVER takes itself seriously. The game routinely pokes fun of gaming tropes (Let's talk to an NPC in a cutscene and remark on the fact that they will disappear completely after its over!) and itself. This might sound tiring, but thankfully the game isn't too long so just when you think you're maybe getting tired of things, there's some new gun or power up to throw in the mix or new clothes to buy and then the game ends right on cue.
The game does have an EXTENSIVE customization theme that was fun to play around with. The main character can be freely switched in terms of body and gender, clothing options, mods for your MANY guns and personal abilities.. loads of stuff to play around with. I will say the gun mods were a bit disappointing - the game makes a big deal about how they can change your playstyle a lot, and whole missions are devoted to making new ones buuuuuuut... I dunno, they didn't seem to do all that much? Your guns are already devastating, what does it matter that much if they turn enemies to ice sometimes, or blow up just a little bit more than usual? The game is also so fast-paced and frantic that you might say "Oh MORE explosions and frozen solid enemies!? That's Cool!" and yes fictional person that is indeed cool however you're on the move so fast you basically never get a moment to stop for an actual second and appreciate how cool it is.
There's a story to this game of course, but its firmly in the "who gives a shit" territory. The characters you meet along the way are charming or funny enough to make you like them, and the game ends with a suitably All-Our-Powers-Combined moment that is fun to see everyone join forces to help you out. In particular the Troop Leader who ate all of his arms and legs or the Day of the Dead Cheerleader Captain who REALLY enjoys punching your lights out are the standouts.
Overall Sunset Overdrive is a damn fine palette cleanser of a game. I started it to balance out my progress with Death Stranding but I ended up playing a lot more of it than I intended... it is a fun, silly and entertainingly explosive romp through an orange-soaked apocalypse. Oh yeah, and this is by the dudes who made Spider-Man, one of my first games of this year! Also a winner.
Final Grade: A-
You play a young worker in a fictional city during the night of the release party of a new Energy Drink - Fizzco's OVERDRIVE! Unfortunately the drink turns people into fiendish mutants and the city is almost entirely destroyed... but you and some other survivors are just too fuckin' punk to go down like that, so you have some fun in the apocalypse instead! The game is drenched in punk aesthetic, music and art all over the place. It's a very cute theme to drench an apocalypse in and the game NEVER takes itself seriously. The game routinely pokes fun of gaming tropes (Let's talk to an NPC in a cutscene and remark on the fact that they will disappear completely after its over!) and itself. This might sound tiring, but thankfully the game isn't too long so just when you think you're maybe getting tired of things, there's some new gun or power up to throw in the mix or new clothes to buy and then the game ends right on cue.
The game does have an EXTENSIVE customization theme that was fun to play around with. The main character can be freely switched in terms of body and gender, clothing options, mods for your MANY guns and personal abilities.. loads of stuff to play around with. I will say the gun mods were a bit disappointing - the game makes a big deal about how they can change your playstyle a lot, and whole missions are devoted to making new ones buuuuuuut... I dunno, they didn't seem to do all that much? Your guns are already devastating, what does it matter that much if they turn enemies to ice sometimes, or blow up just a little bit more than usual? The game is also so fast-paced and frantic that you might say "Oh MORE explosions and frozen solid enemies!? That's Cool!" and yes fictional person that is indeed cool however you're on the move so fast you basically never get a moment to stop for an actual second and appreciate how cool it is.
There's a story to this game of course, but its firmly in the "who gives a shit" territory. The characters you meet along the way are charming or funny enough to make you like them, and the game ends with a suitably All-Our-Powers-Combined moment that is fun to see everyone join forces to help you out. In particular the Troop Leader who ate all of his arms and legs or the Day of the Dead Cheerleader Captain who REALLY enjoys punching your lights out are the standouts.
Overall Sunset Overdrive is a damn fine palette cleanser of a game. I started it to balance out my progress with Death Stranding but I ended up playing a lot more of it than I intended... it is a fun, silly and entertainingly explosive romp through an orange-soaked apocalypse. Oh yeah, and this is by the dudes who made Spider-Man, one of my first games of this year! Also a winner.
Final Grade: A-
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Finally a single player Star Wars game!! And it's quite good too... It's been nearly ten years since we had an enjoyable single player Star Wars game (Force Unleashed, which wasn't actually that good..) but the crazy guys at Respawn (Titanfall devs) took their shot and yeah, it's good.
The game is led by Cal Kestus, played by the younger brother of Shameless fame as a young man who survived the purge of the Jedi by the sacrifice of his tough-but-fair master, played by Travis Willingham. The game itself is an odd mix of Sekiro + Souls + Uncharted with a splash of Metroidvania. The combat is fairly tough and focused on dodging/blocking/parrying, and has a checkpoint and health system ripped straight from Souls games. Unfortunately as this is the developers first real go at this kind of game, it doesn't quite have the polish and feel to it that Souls manages in their games and there are more than a few times where you will die because the controls and animations weren't quite as good as you might expect them to be. There's a fairly good amount of enemy variety in the planets you traverse and most things are enjoyable enough to fight once you get the hang of things. Your expanding repertoire of force abilities also expands your combat options as well, though I'll admit I didn't use them that often... Once I got the double-bladed saber I pretty much just cut people to pieces haha
Speaking of Force powers, this is where the metroidvania stuff sets in. Each planet (or major section at least) has some force power that will unlock as you progress that will allow you to find more secrets on other worlds in addition to advancing the plot. This is an interesting tool that certainly helps pad out the run time and for folks who enjoy seeking every nook and cranny (and the map is just damn helpful in showing you where you can and can't go) but to me felt like more reason to just wait until near the end of the game and just do it all at once? But normally I'm not a huge fan of these games so maybe that's not what you're intended to do. The other major gameplay pillar is the Uncharted-style exploration and puzzle solving. There's MANY jumping and climbing sections which all look very nice and are generally straight-forward, but unfortunately I feel like some of them are pretty finicky and too easy to fail at in the first few attempts and it gets reeeeal frustrating.
For the story, it tells a Fine-Enough tale of a padawan trying to find his place in a galaxy gone mad. He starts an expedition to find a mysterious holocron with the location of new force sensitives
Final Grade: A-
The game is led by Cal Kestus, played by the younger brother of Shameless fame as a young man who survived the purge of the Jedi by the sacrifice of his tough-but-fair master, played by Travis Willingham. The game itself is an odd mix of Sekiro + Souls + Uncharted with a splash of Metroidvania. The combat is fairly tough and focused on dodging/blocking/parrying, and has a checkpoint and health system ripped straight from Souls games. Unfortunately as this is the developers first real go at this kind of game, it doesn't quite have the polish and feel to it that Souls manages in their games and there are more than a few times where you will die because the controls and animations weren't quite as good as you might expect them to be. There's a fairly good amount of enemy variety in the planets you traverse and most things are enjoyable enough to fight once you get the hang of things. Your expanding repertoire of force abilities also expands your combat options as well, though I'll admit I didn't use them that often... Once I got the double-bladed saber I pretty much just cut people to pieces haha
Speaking of Force powers, this is where the metroidvania stuff sets in. Each planet (or major section at least) has some force power that will unlock as you progress that will allow you to find more secrets on other worlds in addition to advancing the plot. This is an interesting tool that certainly helps pad out the run time and for folks who enjoy seeking every nook and cranny (and the map is just damn helpful in showing you where you can and can't go) but to me felt like more reason to just wait until near the end of the game and just do it all at once? But normally I'm not a huge fan of these games so maybe that's not what you're intended to do. The other major gameplay pillar is the Uncharted-style exploration and puzzle solving. There's MANY jumping and climbing sections which all look very nice and are generally straight-forward, but unfortunately I feel like some of them are pretty finicky and too easy to fail at in the first few attempts and it gets reeeeal frustrating.
For the story, it tells a Fine-Enough tale of a padawan trying to find his place in a galaxy gone mad. He starts an expedition to find a mysterious holocron with the location of new force sensitives
Final Grade: A-
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Time for another Beat-Em-Up! Only two of one of my favorite genres in one year..? Actually two games in one! Tower of Doom and the eponymous Chronicles of Mystara. These were arcade beat em ups from the very early 90's and it shows!
The first game Tower of Doom is pretty barebones as far as features go. There's four characters, you pick one and go through some pretty straightforward levels and punch kobolds til you find a boss. Well actually it was more like troglodytes rather than kobolds but... who the hell picked trogs btw? Those are DnD enemies that are basically no one's favorite! Oh no you're super smelly that's such a great defining characteristic... anyway you proceed through some decent enough environments, talk to 1 note townfolk (with some pretty solid art actually) and save the day from the Evil Lich... somebody I dunno. He certainly looks imposing and his final boss battle is bullshit. Thankfully these versions give you infinite game overs haha...
Chronicles of Mystara is the second game and things are a heck of a lot more polished. There's two more characters to choose from, the UI is a LOT slicker and better laid out, I could even read what my spells were!! I respect any game though that assumes I have an encyclopedic knowledge of early DnD - because I sure as hell do. This time you're out an adventure to defeat an evil sorceress, and she actually thwarts you several times through the adventure and has some cool "Shadow elves" working for her! Did the drow not have a name yet? I thought they for sure did at this point...
Mystara at least has some very segments where you actually get to fight a sweet dragon (and become legends!!), visit a gnome village, fight on an airship, go up a giant revolving tower (that moves in the background!! neat!)and general high level dnd shenanigans. Speaking of high-level, I had a lot of spells this time. I played as the Elf in both campaigns, who is basically a fighter-mage, and had a very nice time balancing the two aspects of the character. You can also free-swap characters when you die so I did try out the other classes for portions of each level just to get a taste, but I do love me some fighter-mage.
The combat in the games felt pretty solid, as the Elf I had a large variety of spells and since I didn't have to pay for each revive in the game, my spells came back with enough regularity to be fun. There were the very obvious and cool choices like chain lightining and fireball, but also invisibility, polymorph other and cloudkill make an appearance as well. There's an equipment system in the game as well as you find magical items but frankly I was not able to make heads or tails of it. I just beat up everyone and moved along!
I didn't spend an immense amount of time with the series, mostly just a few slow days during Thanksgiving weekend, but it was a good enough time. It has been in my backlog quite some time, but having a taste of DnD and a solid beat em up was a great way to pass the time. Not as complex or satisfying as River City Girls or even approaching Scott Pilgrim but damn good at what it wanted to be.
Final Grade: B
The first game Tower of Doom is pretty barebones as far as features go. There's four characters, you pick one and go through some pretty straightforward levels and punch kobolds til you find a boss. Well actually it was more like troglodytes rather than kobolds but... who the hell picked trogs btw? Those are DnD enemies that are basically no one's favorite! Oh no you're super smelly that's such a great defining characteristic... anyway you proceed through some decent enough environments, talk to 1 note townfolk (with some pretty solid art actually) and save the day from the Evil Lich... somebody I dunno. He certainly looks imposing and his final boss battle is bullshit. Thankfully these versions give you infinite game overs haha...
Chronicles of Mystara is the second game and things are a heck of a lot more polished. There's two more characters to choose from, the UI is a LOT slicker and better laid out, I could even read what my spells were!! I respect any game though that assumes I have an encyclopedic knowledge of early DnD - because I sure as hell do. This time you're out an adventure to defeat an evil sorceress, and she actually thwarts you several times through the adventure and has some cool "Shadow elves" working for her! Did the drow not have a name yet? I thought they for sure did at this point...
Mystara at least has some very segments where you actually get to fight a sweet dragon (and become legends!!), visit a gnome village, fight on an airship, go up a giant revolving tower (that moves in the background!! neat!)and general high level dnd shenanigans. Speaking of high-level, I had a lot of spells this time. I played as the Elf in both campaigns, who is basically a fighter-mage, and had a very nice time balancing the two aspects of the character. You can also free-swap characters when you die so I did try out the other classes for portions of each level just to get a taste, but I do love me some fighter-mage.
The combat in the games felt pretty solid, as the Elf I had a large variety of spells and since I didn't have to pay for each revive in the game, my spells came back with enough regularity to be fun. There were the very obvious and cool choices like chain lightining and fireball, but also invisibility, polymorph other and cloudkill make an appearance as well. There's an equipment system in the game as well as you find magical items but frankly I was not able to make heads or tails of it. I just beat up everyone and moved along!
I didn't spend an immense amount of time with the series, mostly just a few slow days during Thanksgiving weekend, but it was a good enough time. It has been in my backlog quite some time, but having a taste of DnD and a solid beat em up was a great way to pass the time. Not as complex or satisfying as River City Girls or even approaching Scott Pilgrim but damn good at what it wanted to be.
Final Grade: B
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
RE 0! A game I was not planning on playing this year until I saw some screenshots and gifs of the train and I was like eehhhhh it's on sale for 6 bucks lets do this!!
RE 0 takes place more or less concurrently with Resi 1, with Rebecca Chambers from Chris's campaign taking the starring role in this game. She is joined by a an ex-marine Billy Coen (I even remembered his name!!) who was convicted of the murder of two dozen civilians and his former squadmates. They both take shelter on a train in the woods around Raccoon City when they are attacked by monsters, and the two of them team up to survive. Now you might be thinking "Wait, are these horror protagonists actually doing the SMART thing of sticking together?!" Yes!! Now of course there are reasons in Resi 1 - 3 for why our main heroes are split up, but its still nice to see in this instance people making some sort of sense. Unlike in Resi 5 and 6 however there is no true co-op here - the player controls one main character at a time and can use a stick to move the other, or give them basic commands. They also can easily share their inventory items, and the games primary 'gimmick' over Resi 1 is how these are used in puzzle solving. Unfortunately, it does not work out as well as I imagined the developers had hoped...
While the split puzzle sections are vaguely interesting in theory, what they often work out to be is an exercise in tedium as you try to balance your very limited inventories with equipping two characters and holding onto all the quest items. This game has no shared 'box' space like RE1 - 2 - 3, but instead allows you to place items and ground and come back for them any time. I didn't find this too annoying as the map has built-in functions for keeping track of all items and where exactly you put them. There was only one particularly egregious example of a quest item being nearly forgotten and then forcing me to track it down near the end to continue (sup hookshot), otherwise I had a fine enough time doing the 'Inventory Shuffle' Resident Evil so enjoys.
Having two protagonists is a large detriment to 5 and 6 I feel, and this also carries over to 0, however to a smaller degree. Having another person with you certainly reduces the tension somewhat, and the player is pretty easily able to let the AI handle a lot of the wetwork if you want which automatically makes things a bit less scary. Thankfully the masterful fixed cameras and spooky atmosphere are very much done with finesse here so even though it shares a bad feature of 5 and 6 (partner character) it at least executes on the idea well enough so that it doesn't ruin the proceedings.
Speaking of partners - the characters themselves! I generally did like the two main characters, but ultimately felt like they were undercooked. They are initially distrustful but after saving each other a few times, they start to respect each other and Rebecca even lets Billy go free at the end as she promised (leading to her entrance in RE1, and sidestepping why Billy wasn't with her or even mentioned!), however, we get not a lot between the two as the game progresses. There's one particular moment with Billy going into his backstory (sort of) but it never actually returns to this conversation to show their growth after he rebuffs her. For several moments in the game I was waiting for a bit of banter between the two that would have fit right in, but ultimately never came. The main story itself is also kind of stupid - one of Umbrellas founders went crazy and injected himself with T-Virus leeches and turned into an anime villain..? RE0 is the first game chronologically to descend into dumb anime bullshit and I'm not happy about it alright?
Ultimately, Resident Evil 0 suffers from the same basic issue that RE5 did - It is aping an excellent classic of a game, with a handful of things to set it apart (albeit large things!), but just not being as clever and bold as what they're emulating. The game is cut right from the cloth of RE1, and it shows in the best and worst ways possible. The obtuse and silly puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere and environments, the anxiety-inducing camera angles, balancing health/ammo/progress... all well done and compared favorably to 1. However, it lacks a cohesive narrative, charismatic and endearing characters, a memorable setting (the Train is AWESOME, everything after that is pretty meh) and the sheer cleverness of its predecessor. That along with a faulty co-op system that I'm sure sounded great on paper but just didn't work out in practice... RE 0 is not one of my favorites, but I still thinks its good!
P.S. I picked this up after I beat the first campaign of RE6 and finished it well before I finished the third or even fourth campaign. Holy crap it is so much better lol
Final Grade: B-
RE 0 takes place more or less concurrently with Resi 1, with Rebecca Chambers from Chris's campaign taking the starring role in this game. She is joined by a an ex-marine Billy Coen (I even remembered his name!!) who was convicted of the murder of two dozen civilians and his former squadmates. They both take shelter on a train in the woods around Raccoon City when they are attacked by monsters, and the two of them team up to survive. Now you might be thinking "Wait, are these horror protagonists actually doing the SMART thing of sticking together?!" Yes!! Now of course there are reasons in Resi 1 - 3 for why our main heroes are split up, but its still nice to see in this instance people making some sort of sense. Unlike in Resi 5 and 6 however there is no true co-op here - the player controls one main character at a time and can use a stick to move the other, or give them basic commands. They also can easily share their inventory items, and the games primary 'gimmick' over Resi 1 is how these are used in puzzle solving. Unfortunately, it does not work out as well as I imagined the developers had hoped...
While the split puzzle sections are vaguely interesting in theory, what they often work out to be is an exercise in tedium as you try to balance your very limited inventories with equipping two characters and holding onto all the quest items. This game has no shared 'box' space like RE1 - 2 - 3, but instead allows you to place items and ground and come back for them any time. I didn't find this too annoying as the map has built-in functions for keeping track of all items and where exactly you put them. There was only one particularly egregious example of a quest item being nearly forgotten and then forcing me to track it down near the end to continue (sup hookshot), otherwise I had a fine enough time doing the 'Inventory Shuffle' Resident Evil so enjoys.
Having two protagonists is a large detriment to 5 and 6 I feel, and this also carries over to 0, however to a smaller degree. Having another person with you certainly reduces the tension somewhat, and the player is pretty easily able to let the AI handle a lot of the wetwork if you want which automatically makes things a bit less scary. Thankfully the masterful fixed cameras and spooky atmosphere are very much done with finesse here so even though it shares a bad feature of 5 and 6 (partner character) it at least executes on the idea well enough so that it doesn't ruin the proceedings.
Speaking of partners - the characters themselves! I generally did like the two main characters, but ultimately felt like they were undercooked. They are initially distrustful but after saving each other a few times, they start to respect each other and Rebecca even lets Billy go free at the end as she promised (leading to her entrance in RE1, and sidestepping why Billy wasn't with her or even mentioned!), however, we get not a lot between the two as the game progresses. There's one particular moment with Billy going into his backstory (sort of) but it never actually returns to this conversation to show their growth after he rebuffs her. For several moments in the game I was waiting for a bit of banter between the two that would have fit right in, but ultimately never came. The main story itself is also kind of stupid - one of Umbrellas founders went crazy and injected himself with T-Virus leeches and turned into an anime villain..? RE0 is the first game chronologically to descend into dumb anime bullshit and I'm not happy about it alright?
Ultimately, Resident Evil 0 suffers from the same basic issue that RE5 did - It is aping an excellent classic of a game, with a handful of things to set it apart (albeit large things!), but just not being as clever and bold as what they're emulating. The game is cut right from the cloth of RE1, and it shows in the best and worst ways possible. The obtuse and silly puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere and environments, the anxiety-inducing camera angles, balancing health/ammo/progress... all well done and compared favorably to 1. However, it lacks a cohesive narrative, charismatic and endearing characters, a memorable setting (the Train is AWESOME, everything after that is pretty meh) and the sheer cleverness of its predecessor. That along with a faulty co-op system that I'm sure sounded great on paper but just didn't work out in practice... RE 0 is not one of my favorites, but I still thinks its good!
P.S. I picked this up after I beat the first campaign of RE6 and finished it well before I finished the third or even fourth campaign. Holy crap it is so much better lol
Final Grade: B-
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
If I could give anything a 1.5/5...
Ugh, what a slog.
Normally when I finish a game, I just write down a sentence or two to kick me off when I do write the complete review. This is the second time now that I have left that initial impression as I feel it pretty succinctly encapsulates how I really feel about the game. This game is just kinda garbage. In theory, it should be a game I love. A series I'm just getting into and am generally having a joyous time catching up on has a giant Avengers-Esque adventure bringing together heroes and plot-lines in a way to excite and amaze. Chris and Leon meet! Sherry is back as an adult and she's a badass who can't die! There' four whole campaigns!! YOU GET TO PLAY AS ADA
Awesome right? Nah it sucks. I played the campaigns in order from the main menu, and each of them at least has a very different feel to them, so kudos to the team for managing that. Kudos taken away however as none of them are particularly good at what they're trying to do.
Leon's campaign is the most "Resident Evil-~y" of the bunch, calling on Resident Evil 2 and the fall of Raccoon and several creepy locales (a church/mausoleum, a graveyard, and spooky sewers) and having Leon make some snide one-liners like in 4. However, Leon's partner is with him the whole time cutting any real tension (don't even have to care about ammo for her) and there's some element of mystery to her about what she wants but it amounts to basically 0 in terms of the plot other than her sister dying, which basically never comes back up again. But don't worry! Her sister turns into a mega-hot zombie monster that the camera loves to stare at, so there's that weirdness added in too. Also, Leon reunites with Sherry on screen for the first time in 20 years..... and they have 2 seconds, and Sherry says "I was too young and don't really remember anything" BULLSHITTTTTT. Best moment - zombies on a plane! Literally ripped straight from Air Force One and I'm here for it. Worst - Aforementioned Sherry reunion.
Campaign 2 - Chris! It's like RE5 but even worse!! Okay not exactly, I actually super liked Piers and the ending is fuckin' solid. We get some decent character development for Chris, but it is otherwise garbage. The story bops around in time rapidly, and it is pretty tough to keep track of what exactly happens when... but we'll get to that later! Best moment - Ending scenes with Piers. Worst - battle in the street with a Giant monster that is really boring and easy.
Campaign 3 - Sherry/Jake! Jake is Wesker's kid. Stupid stupid stupid... he himself is kinda okay, but mostly only when he's interacting with Sherry who is still pretty cool. Seeing more of her is fun, but Jake is often a douche-nozzle and this game tries to be RE3 but instead of being good it is bad. So that's a strategy. It is also spending a LOT of time shipping Sherry and Jake, then does nothing with it and ends. Best moment - Jake fist-fighting shitty nemesis. Worst moment - most of the other things Jake says or does.
Campaign 4 - Ada! We get to play as Ada for real! Yeah, we did that already with Resi4 DLC buuuuut whatever, we get more from her post-Wesker biting the dust. This HAS to be interesting and revealing right?! Nahhhh we get jack shit. Not even any good moments between her and Leon. Just her 'relationship' with the big bad of the game Simmons, of which we learn almost nothing and seems like an insane and one-sided thing she has to put an end to. She also has a clone who is the final boss, which seems like it could've been cool but I promise you it's not. Well, it looks okay anyway. Best moment - real puzzles again! Worst moment - stealth sections, wtf? And they suck!
This is a tough game to wrap up in one paragraph. It's trying to move action combat forward in the series, doubles down on the co-op mechanics and ramps up the movie set pieces. All the things I really hated about 5 and was meh about even in 4 when they did it right. The combat has plenty of layers to it, but it never actually CARES or makes you interact with those layers. Enemies drop bullets and health so you don't need to be all that careful, maybe a force higher difficulty would save it? Ultimately though it just doesn't feel good to play. I've played a lot of shooters in my time, and this is one of my least favorite. For the story, obviously its dumb but it always is. Characters though, the only people who grow or do anything really of note are the new partners, who only in 1 case really make an impact on things and were enjoyable to be around.
Its really four shorter games packed into one, and that is in one way very cool that they tried to" Avengers" this shit, but honestly, they just ended up "Justice League"-ing it. And I mean that in the most offensive way possible.
Final Grade: D
Normally when I finish a game, I just write down a sentence or two to kick me off when I do write the complete review. This is the second time now that I have left that initial impression as I feel it pretty succinctly encapsulates how I really feel about the game. This game is just kinda garbage. In theory, it should be a game I love. A series I'm just getting into and am generally having a joyous time catching up on has a giant Avengers-Esque adventure bringing together heroes and plot-lines in a way to excite and amaze. Chris and Leon meet! Sherry is back as an adult and she's a badass who can't die! There' four whole campaigns!! YOU GET TO PLAY AS ADA
Awesome right? Nah it sucks. I played the campaigns in order from the main menu, and each of them at least has a very different feel to them, so kudos to the team for managing that. Kudos taken away however as none of them are particularly good at what they're trying to do.
Leon's campaign is the most "Resident Evil-~y" of the bunch, calling on Resident Evil 2 and the fall of Raccoon and several creepy locales (a church/mausoleum, a graveyard, and spooky sewers) and having Leon make some snide one-liners like in 4. However, Leon's partner is with him the whole time cutting any real tension (don't even have to care about ammo for her) and there's some element of mystery to her about what she wants but it amounts to basically 0 in terms of the plot other than her sister dying, which basically never comes back up again. But don't worry! Her sister turns into a mega-hot zombie monster that the camera loves to stare at, so there's that weirdness added in too. Also, Leon reunites with Sherry on screen for the first time in 20 years..... and they have 2 seconds, and Sherry says "I was too young and don't really remember anything" BULLSHITTTTTT. Best moment - zombies on a plane! Literally ripped straight from Air Force One and I'm here for it. Worst - Aforementioned Sherry reunion.
Campaign 2 - Chris! It's like RE5 but even worse!! Okay not exactly, I actually super liked Piers and the ending is fuckin' solid. We get some decent character development for Chris, but it is otherwise garbage. The story bops around in time rapidly, and it is pretty tough to keep track of what exactly happens when... but we'll get to that later! Best moment - Ending scenes with Piers. Worst - battle in the street with a Giant monster that is really boring and easy.
Campaign 3 - Sherry/Jake! Jake is Wesker's kid. Stupid stupid stupid... he himself is kinda okay, but mostly only when he's interacting with Sherry who is still pretty cool. Seeing more of her is fun, but Jake is often a douche-nozzle and this game tries to be RE3 but instead of being good it is bad. So that's a strategy. It is also spending a LOT of time shipping Sherry and Jake, then does nothing with it and ends. Best moment - Jake fist-fighting shitty nemesis. Worst moment - most of the other things Jake says or does.
Campaign 4 - Ada! We get to play as Ada for real! Yeah, we did that already with Resi4 DLC buuuuut whatever, we get more from her post-Wesker biting the dust. This HAS to be interesting and revealing right?! Nahhhh we get jack shit. Not even any good moments between her and Leon. Just her 'relationship' with the big bad of the game Simmons, of which we learn almost nothing and seems like an insane and one-sided thing she has to put an end to. She also has a clone who is the final boss, which seems like it could've been cool but I promise you it's not. Well, it looks okay anyway. Best moment - real puzzles again! Worst moment - stealth sections, wtf? And they suck!
This is a tough game to wrap up in one paragraph. It's trying to move action combat forward in the series, doubles down on the co-op mechanics and ramps up the movie set pieces. All the things I really hated about 5 and was meh about even in 4 when they did it right. The combat has plenty of layers to it, but it never actually CARES or makes you interact with those layers. Enemies drop bullets and health so you don't need to be all that careful, maybe a force higher difficulty would save it? Ultimately though it just doesn't feel good to play. I've played a lot of shooters in my time, and this is one of my least favorite. For the story, obviously its dumb but it always is. Characters though, the only people who grow or do anything really of note are the new partners, who only in 1 case really make an impact on things and were enjoyable to be around.
Its really four shorter games packed into one, and that is in one way very cool that they tried to" Avengers" this shit, but honestly, they just ended up "Justice League"-ing it. And I mean that in the most offensive way possible.
Final Grade: D
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Writing this review is pretty difficult as this particular game represents a great deal more than just a game. First and foremost, it represents my success in the 52 game challenge and I'm incredibly pleased I was able to do this and will 100% be attempting next year. This is also my 52nd time I'm trying to capture my thoughts and I've got a lot of them over the year to think about. This is also the end of the mainline Resident Evil franchise that I have now played in its entirety* (not re1 original) and now I have to sift through my feelings of some pretty intense ups and downs even in the past couple of weeks. If I could plan this year out a little better I definitely would have put more time between the last couple RE games but unfortunately I REALLY wanted 7 to be my 52nd game of the year so we ended up with a 0 -> 6 -> 7 progression here that I have to work around. All in all though I'm immensely glad I completed this challenge and subsequently joined the fanbase of this, overall, superb franchise.
So anyway, Resident Evil 7. There are a lot of major departures for this entry to this franchise and the biggest I think is the perspective which has once again shifted - this time to first person. I'm an enormous fan of first person RPGs so this wasn't a difficult transition for me especially as the game maintains a much slower pace than its 3 predecessors. It also has a completely new protagonist a story almost wholly divorced from the enormous canon that RE6 tried to utilize and expand all at once, with another new virus and another new batch of enemies. Where RE7 succeeds where I think RE5 and 6 failed however (and 4 succeeded at as well) with their new infections was a sense of consistency. The new 'mold' creatures (sadly there are only a handful of varieties) have a VERY strong visual identity and have powers that seem to track with their deformities. They're damn tough as well with ammo being pretty scarce again it makes for some tense situations. The most intense one for me is in the main picture - I had to make my way through a boiler room with 3 enemies, and used all of my ammo to do it. What happens when I get to the next section? 2 more drop behind me so I go literally toe to toe with both of them and just my knife.. I scraped through with some fancy footwork and a few healing items hahaa... It was a very tense moment that drained me of my resources, but the game also let me chill for a bit afterwards to build my self up again. PACING!
The gameplay continues in traditional RE fashion - you're pretty vulnerable and have to stay on your toes to start with, but you slowly build strength over time and are blasting away foes by end game - though never quite with full confidence... The RE tradition of a giant 'FU' boss continues but thankfully they know at this point it is more symbolic - you can shoot it a few times and then you get the 'Rocket Launcher' to kill it and roll credits. No need to save up boatloads of your own ammo to get the job done. Back also are a number of small puzzles and backtracking with various keys - mercifully labeled on your map! It feels good to be trapped in these weird funhouses, literally this time by one of the antagonists!
Speaking of antagonists - the story and character of RE7 are all quite good with just a couple of issues, primarily our protagonist Ethan. Ethan is... a guy. I didn't mean to end that sentence in a generic way but I genuinely tried to think of character traits and I honestly don't think he has any. Contrasted with the Bakers (all delightful) or Mia or Eveline, characters with some real interesting depth to them (not a lot of course but enough) he just really sticks out as being an outsider. It also pretty sharply contrasts with previous RE history where the protagonists are all great characters! When the game switches protagonists about 80% of the way through I was kinda hoping we would stay as Mia, a person with real relevance to the story buuuut oh well. In terms of the Bakers, I feel like they more than make up for the lack of enemy variety otherwise with the molded. Jack is a 'stalker' Nemesis type which leads to some EPIC boss battles, Margaritte is creepy and has a weird bug thing going on, Eveline and her crazed desire for a 'family'... Good stuff all around. Lucas is a POS and I really liked the revelation he was basically garbage the whole time and more or less unaffected by Eveline's madness!
Overall, Resident Evil 7 is a superb combination of returning to form for the series but also pushing it forward in exciting ways. What was before a bombastic yet empty fireworks display is now a smaller, grittier and yet much more satisfying experience. The first person camera helps makes each hit and scare that much more real, and adds to the tension of exploring this run down and corrupted home. The characters are more than interesting enough to carry the story forward and I genuinely hoped for a bit of redemption for the Bakers at the end of it, and a twinge of regret and compassion for the 'monster' that made it all happen. A riveting experience I couldn't put down, and I don't think I've really felt that from the beginning since Resident Evil 2!
Final Grade: A
So anyway, Resident Evil 7. There are a lot of major departures for this entry to this franchise and the biggest I think is the perspective which has once again shifted - this time to first person. I'm an enormous fan of first person RPGs so this wasn't a difficult transition for me especially as the game maintains a much slower pace than its 3 predecessors. It also has a completely new protagonist a story almost wholly divorced from the enormous canon that RE6 tried to utilize and expand all at once, with another new virus and another new batch of enemies. Where RE7 succeeds where I think RE5 and 6 failed however (and 4 succeeded at as well) with their new infections was a sense of consistency. The new 'mold' creatures (sadly there are only a handful of varieties) have a VERY strong visual identity and have powers that seem to track with their deformities. They're damn tough as well with ammo being pretty scarce again it makes for some tense situations. The most intense one for me is in the main picture - I had to make my way through a boiler room with 3 enemies, and used all of my ammo to do it. What happens when I get to the next section? 2 more drop behind me so I go literally toe to toe with both of them and just my knife.. I scraped through with some fancy footwork and a few healing items hahaa... It was a very tense moment that drained me of my resources, but the game also let me chill for a bit afterwards to build my self up again. PACING!
The gameplay continues in traditional RE fashion - you're pretty vulnerable and have to stay on your toes to start with, but you slowly build strength over time and are blasting away foes by end game - though never quite with full confidence... The RE tradition of a giant 'FU' boss continues but thankfully they know at this point it is more symbolic - you can shoot it a few times and then you get the 'Rocket Launcher' to kill it and roll credits. No need to save up boatloads of your own ammo to get the job done. Back also are a number of small puzzles and backtracking with various keys - mercifully labeled on your map! It feels good to be trapped in these weird funhouses, literally this time by one of the antagonists!
Speaking of antagonists - the story and character of RE7 are all quite good with just a couple of issues, primarily our protagonist Ethan. Ethan is... a guy. I didn't mean to end that sentence in a generic way but I genuinely tried to think of character traits and I honestly don't think he has any. Contrasted with the Bakers (all delightful) or Mia or Eveline, characters with some real interesting depth to them (not a lot of course but enough) he just really sticks out as being an outsider. It also pretty sharply contrasts with previous RE history where the protagonists are all great characters! When the game switches protagonists about 80% of the way through I was kinda hoping we would stay as Mia, a person with real relevance to the story buuuut oh well. In terms of the Bakers, I feel like they more than make up for the lack of enemy variety otherwise with the molded. Jack is a 'stalker' Nemesis type which leads to some EPIC boss battles, Margaritte is creepy and has a weird bug thing going on, Eveline and her crazed desire for a 'family'... Good stuff all around. Lucas is a POS and I really liked the revelation he was basically garbage the whole time and more or less unaffected by Eveline's madness!
Overall, Resident Evil 7 is a superb combination of returning to form for the series but also pushing it forward in exciting ways. What was before a bombastic yet empty fireworks display is now a smaller, grittier and yet much more satisfying experience. The first person camera helps makes each hit and scare that much more real, and adds to the tension of exploring this run down and corrupted home. The characters are more than interesting enough to carry the story forward and I genuinely hoped for a bit of redemption for the Bakers at the end of it, and a twinge of regret and compassion for the 'monster' that made it all happen. A riveting experience I couldn't put down, and I don't think I've really felt that from the beginning since Resident Evil 2!
Final Grade: A
I DID IT! ! ALL 52 ITS OVER ITS DONE I RETURN TO THE SHIRE
okay a P.S. - I have immensely enjoyed this challenge the past year. I have been 'floating' through my gaming hobby for a long time now, just playing whatever seemed good at the time and rarely finishing game. It would get to the end of the year and I'd be reading about all the games and say "wait that came out this year? Did I even play it..?" so this has been forcing me to put all my thoughts down and really dig into things. It has also cut drastically down on me spending my free time after work just on browsing the internet or going through crap like Reddit on my phone - I had stuff to get done!! The one issue I do have is it really disincentives longer games - I've been eyeing Pathfinder Kingmaker all damn year, but it is 100+ hours long I aint got time for that!!
I'm not 100% sure I'll do the challenge next year, but I will at least be trying to keep putting my thoughts down about what I do play! Or maybe just do 90% indie stuff that takes like an hour to beat lol
MAIN THREAD
COMPLETED 2019 | 61
COMPLETED 2018| 64
#53: Katana Zero(10/3/2019) | 7/10 | Switch| ~ 4.5 Hours | Recommend: M
# Overall - 7| Game never really clicked with me but can fully admit there is some good stuff there
Gameplay -7.8 | Good graphics, levels have some cool layouts that make you think about your actions.
Sound -7 | Soundtrack fit game well, two months later just can't really remember anything special about it though (Would listen to again).
Story/Online -7 | Actually had a wild story that was cool to see play out.
Asking Price-7 | I am glad I played it but for someone that loves these style of games didn't leave a huge lasting appeal.
#54: Rayman Orgins (10/13/2019) | 7/10 | Vita | ~ 11 Hours | Recommend: M
# Overall -7 | Fun platformer but towards the end I was ready for it to be over
Gameplay -7.8 | Art is fantastic, Rayman controls well. Levels and enemies blend together design wise
Sound -7 | Wasn't bad but wasn't a big fan at same time
Story/Online -7 | Like most platformers not main focus.
Asking Price-7.67 | If you enjoy the game lots of collectibles to go back and find. Didn't leave me with any lasting appeal.
#55: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (10/18/2019) | 8/10 | 3DS XL | ~ 23 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | A nice change to the series formula while giving the spotlight to a character I enjoy
Gameplay -8 | Investigations are fun and the pacing of the game seems to work well
Sound -8 | Ace Attorney games always come with a good soundtrack
Story/Online -8 | Story wrapped itself up nicely and brought the series to interesting locations
Asking Price-8 | Great game, not sure if I would replay it but the content there is well worth playing
#56: Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (11/10/2019) | 8/10 | Xbox One| ~ 26 Hours (100%) | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | 1 a great lego game, 2 a great collection of the movie franchise
Gameplay -7.8 | Has some of the same faults from older lego games but great levels and lots of variety
Sound -8 | If you like Pirates movie soundtrack you will love this game
Story/Online -8 | Does a good job for no voice acting to convey movie events
Asking Price-9.33 | Lot of good story content and items hidden in each level.
#57: Super Mario Maker 2 (11/18/2019) | 8/10 | Switch | ~ 12 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall 8- | Such a fun game to play that is endless in its ideas. If online with others had better servers could of easily been 10
Gameplay -8.4 | Feels great to play and utalizes previous Mario games art well
Sound -8 | Got the classics with some nice extras
Story/Online -8 | Single player was actually really fun to play. Online on your own is fantastic. With others ranges from outstanding to bad
Asking Price- 9| A game you could easily go back to in a few months and have endless content to choose from
#58: Picross Lord of the Nazarick (11/30/2019) | 8/10 | Switch | ~ 35 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | Its Picross. If you like its 2D iterations you will love this.
Gameplay -8 | Feels good to play, later puzzles are good challenge.
Sound -7 | Good but forgetable
Story/Online -7 | I didn't know anything about Nazarick series and I left even more confused. Seems to recap series
Asking Price-8.67 | These games are always so cheap and have a ton of great content
#59: Rouge Legacy (12/7/219) | 8/10 | Switch | ~ 13 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | Only game I put down twice before and tried a third time. Came away really enjoying the game.
Gameplay -7.8 | Castle & Enemies feel little lackluster halfway through but the gameplay loop is fantastic and keeps you playing
Sound -7 | It was fine to play but I can't remember any tracks I would listen to again.
Story/Online -7 | Small story that is interesting but you play this more for the gameplay
Asking Price-9.33 | Endless replayability. New Game + already showing some great changes to initial run.
#60: Castlevania (12/9/2019) | 7/10 | Nintendo Classic | ~ 3 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall - 7| Glad I played it to see series origonal. Don't feel the need to ever replay.
Gameplay -7.6 | Controls are alright at best, lots of repeated enemies. Boss fights are fun (Thank goodness for Save function for NESC)
Sound -7 | Few tunes but they are good
Story/Online -7 | Barebones story but still fun single player game.
Asking Price-7 | Enjoyable to play for experience but definetly feels dated
#61: Luigi's Mansion 3 (12/11/2019) | 9/10 | Switch | ~ 20.5 Hours | Recommend: Y 100%
# Overall -9 | A very well made game that takes series to new level with fun levels and ideas.
Gameplay -8.6 | Controls are hit or miss but level design, graphics and puzzles are excellent
Sound -7 | Nothing wild, think sound in first game was the best but it can be funny at times
Story/Online -8 | Good single player, simple story. Did not try out online.
Asking Price-9 | I got a 100% and really enjoyed start to finish. Each room feels well crafted and never dull to explore.
COMPLETED 2019 | 61
COMPLETED 2018| 64
#53: Katana Zero(10/3/2019) | 7/10 | Switch| ~ 4.5 Hours | Recommend: M
# Overall - 7| Game never really clicked with me but can fully admit there is some good stuff there
Gameplay -7.8 | Good graphics, levels have some cool layouts that make you think about your actions.
Sound -7 | Soundtrack fit game well, two months later just can't really remember anything special about it though (Would listen to again).
Story/Online -7 | Actually had a wild story that was cool to see play out.
Asking Price-7 | I am glad I played it but for someone that loves these style of games didn't leave a huge lasting appeal.
#54: Rayman Orgins (10/13/2019) | 7/10 | Vita | ~ 11 Hours | Recommend: M
# Overall -7 | Fun platformer but towards the end I was ready for it to be over
Gameplay -7.8 | Art is fantastic, Rayman controls well. Levels and enemies blend together design wise
Sound -7 | Wasn't bad but wasn't a big fan at same time
Story/Online -7 | Like most platformers not main focus.
Asking Price-7.67 | If you enjoy the game lots of collectibles to go back and find. Didn't leave me with any lasting appeal.
#55: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (10/18/2019) | 8/10 | 3DS XL | ~ 23 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | A nice change to the series formula while giving the spotlight to a character I enjoy
Gameplay -8 | Investigations are fun and the pacing of the game seems to work well
Sound -8 | Ace Attorney games always come with a good soundtrack
Story/Online -8 | Story wrapped itself up nicely and brought the series to interesting locations
Asking Price-8 | Great game, not sure if I would replay it but the content there is well worth playing
#56: Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (11/10/2019) | 8/10 | Xbox One| ~ 26 Hours (100%) | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | 1 a great lego game, 2 a great collection of the movie franchise
Gameplay -7.8 | Has some of the same faults from older lego games but great levels and lots of variety
Sound -8 | If you like Pirates movie soundtrack you will love this game
Story/Online -8 | Does a good job for no voice acting to convey movie events
Asking Price-9.33 | Lot of good story content and items hidden in each level.
#57: Super Mario Maker 2 (11/18/2019) | 8/10 | Switch | ~ 12 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall 8- | Such a fun game to play that is endless in its ideas. If online with others had better servers could of easily been 10
Gameplay -8.4 | Feels great to play and utalizes previous Mario games art well
Sound -8 | Got the classics with some nice extras
Story/Online -8 | Single player was actually really fun to play. Online on your own is fantastic. With others ranges from outstanding to bad
Asking Price- 9| A game you could easily go back to in a few months and have endless content to choose from
#58: Picross Lord of the Nazarick (11/30/2019) | 8/10 | Switch | ~ 35 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | Its Picross. If you like its 2D iterations you will love this.
Gameplay -8 | Feels good to play, later puzzles are good challenge.
Sound -7 | Good but forgetable
Story/Online -7 | I didn't know anything about Nazarick series and I left even more confused. Seems to recap series
Asking Price-8.67 | These games are always so cheap and have a ton of great content
#59: Rouge Legacy (12/7/219) | 8/10 | Switch | ~ 13 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall -8 | Only game I put down twice before and tried a third time. Came away really enjoying the game.
Gameplay -7.8 | Castle & Enemies feel little lackluster halfway through but the gameplay loop is fantastic and keeps you playing
Sound -7 | It was fine to play but I can't remember any tracks I would listen to again.
Story/Online -7 | Small story that is interesting but you play this more for the gameplay
Asking Price-9.33 | Endless replayability. New Game + already showing some great changes to initial run.
#60: Castlevania (12/9/2019) | 7/10 | Nintendo Classic | ~ 3 Hours | Recommend: Y
# Overall - 7| Glad I played it to see series origonal. Don't feel the need to ever replay.
Gameplay -7.6 | Controls are alright at best, lots of repeated enemies. Boss fights are fun (Thank goodness for Save function for NESC)
Sound -7 | Few tunes but they are good
Story/Online -7 | Barebones story but still fun single player game.
Asking Price-7 | Enjoyable to play for experience but definetly feels dated
#61: Luigi's Mansion 3 (12/11/2019) | 9/10 | Switch | ~ 20.5 Hours | Recommend: Y 100%
# Overall -9 | A very well made game that takes series to new level with fun levels and ideas.
Gameplay -8.6 | Controls are hit or miss but level design, graphics and puzzles are excellent
Sound -7 | Nothing wild, think sound in first game was the best but it can be funny at times
Story/Online -8 | Good single player, simple story. Did not try out online.
Asking Price-9 | I got a 100% and really enjoyed start to finish. Each room feels well crafted and never dull to explore.
November and December Games!
Master Post!
January through August
THE CHALLENGE IS COMPLETE.
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Sunset Overdrive!! It feels appropriate to only use multiple exclamation points when talking about my feelings on this game. Sunset Overdrive is a quite ridiculous, over-the-top open world shoot-em-up that has been stuck on the Xbox One since its initial launch in 2015 until very recently releasing on steam. *Checks dates*. 2014 release date! And it came out at the end of last year on Steam. I got it then but didn't get too far until stopping. After playing a lot of Death Stranding though I decided I needed something a bit more light hearted... and I definitely got it here.
You play a young worker in a fictional city during the night of the release party of a new Energy Drink - Fizzco's OVERDRIVE! Unfortunately the drink turns people into fiendish mutants and the city is almost entirely destroyed... but you and some other survivors are just too fuckin' punk to go down like that, so you have some fun in the apocalypse instead! The game is drenched in punk aesthetic, music and art all over the place. It's a very cute theme to drench an apocalypse in and the game NEVER takes itself seriously. The game routinely pokes fun of gaming tropes (Let's talk to an NPC in a cutscene and remark on the fact that they will disappear completely after its over!) and itself. This might sound tiring, but thankfully the game isn't too long so just when you think you're maybe getting tired of things, there's some new gun or power up to throw in the mix or new clothes to buy and then the game ends right on cue.
The game does have an EXTENSIVE customization theme that was fun to play around with. The main character can be freely switched in terms of body and gender, clothing options, mods for your MANY guns and personal abilities.. loads of stuff to play around with. I will say the gun mods were a bit disappointing - the game makes a big deal about how they can change your playstyle a lot, and whole missions are devoted to making new ones buuuuuuut... I dunno, they didn't seem to do all that much? Your guns are already devastating, what does it matter that much if they turn enemies to ice sometimes, or blow up just a little bit more than usual? The game is also so fast-paced and frantic that you might say "Oh MORE explosions and frozen solid enemies!? That's Cool!" and yes fictional person that is indeed cool however you're on the move so fast you basically never get a moment to stop for an actual second and appreciate how cool it is.
There's a story to this game of course, but its firmly in the "who gives a shit" territory. The characters you meet along the way are charming or funny enough to make you like them, and the game ends with a suitably All-Our-Powers-Combined moment that is fun to see everyone join forces to help you out. In particular the Troop Leader who ate all of his arms and legs or the Day of the Dead Cheerleader Captain who REALLY enjoys punching your lights out are the standouts.
Overall Sunset Overdrive is a damn fine palette cleanser of a game. I started it to balance out my progress with Death Stranding but I ended up playing a lot more of it than I intended... it is a fun, silly and entertainingly explosive romp through an orange-soaked apocalypse. Oh yeah, and this is by the dudes who made Spider-Man, one of my first games of this year! Also a winner.
Final Grade: A-
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Finally a single player Star Wars game!! And it's quite good too... It's been nearly ten years since we had an enjoyable single player Star Wars game (Force Unleashed, which wasn't actually that good..) but the crazy guys at Respawn (Titanfall devs) took their shot and yeah, it's good.
The game is led by Cal Kestus, played by the younger brother of Shameless fame as a young man who survived the purge of the Jedi by the sacrifice of his tough-but-fair master, played by Travis Willingham. The game itself is an odd mix of Sekiro + Souls + Uncharted with a splash of Metroidvania. The combat is fairly tough and focused on dodging/blocking/parrying, and has a checkpoint and health system ripped straight from Souls games. Unfortunately as this is the developers first real go at this kind of game, it doesn't quite have the polish and feel to it that Souls manages in their games and there are more than a few times where you will die because the controls and animations weren't quite as good as you might expect them to be. There's a fairly good amount of enemy variety in the planets you traverse and most things are enjoyable enough to fight once you get the hang of things. Your expanding repertoire of force abilities also expands your combat options as well, though I'll admit I didn't use them that often... Once I got the double-bladed saber I pretty much just cut people to pieces haha
Speaking of Force powers, this is where the metroidvania stuff sets in. Each planet (or major section at least) has some force power that will unlock as you progress that will allow you to find more secrets on other worlds in addition to advancing the plot. This is an interesting tool that certainly helps pad out the run time and for folks who enjoy seeking every nook and cranny (and the map is just damn helpful in showing you where you can and can't go) but to me felt like more reason to just wait until near the end of the game and just do it all at once? But normally I'm not a huge fan of these games so maybe that's not what you're intended to do. The other major gameplay pillar is the Uncharted-style exploration and puzzle solving. There's MANY jumping and climbing sections which all look very nice and are generally straight-forward, but unfortunately I feel like some of them are pretty finicky and too easy to fail at in the first few attempts and it gets reeeeal frustrating.
For the story, it tells a Fine-Enough tale of a padawan trying to find his place in a galaxy gone mad. He starts an expedition to find a mysterious holocron with the location of new force sensitives
Final Grade: A-
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Time for another Beat-Em-Up! Only two of one of my favorite genres in one year..? Actually two games in one! Tower of Doom and the eponymous Chronicles of Mystara. These were arcade beat em ups from the very early 90's and it shows!
The first game Tower of Doom is pretty barebones as far as features go. There's four characters, you pick one and go through some pretty straightforward levels and punch kobolds til you find a boss. Well actually it was more like troglodytes rather than kobolds but... who the hell picked trogs btw? Those are DnD enemies that are basically no one's favorite! Oh no you're super smelly that's such a great defining characteristic... anyway you proceed through some decent enough environments, talk to 1 note townfolk (with some pretty solid art actually) and save the day from the Evil Lich... somebody I dunno. He certainly looks imposing and his final boss battle is bullshit. Thankfully these versions give you infinite game overs haha...
Chronicles of Mystara is the second game and things are a heck of a lot more polished. There's two more characters to choose from, the UI is a LOT slicker and better laid out, I could even read what my spells were!! I respect any game though that assumes I have an encyclopedic knowledge of early DnD - because I sure as hell do. This time you're out an adventure to defeat an evil sorceress, and she actually thwarts you several times through the adventure and has some cool "Shadow elves" working for her! Did the drow not have a name yet? I thought they for sure did at this point...
Mystara at least has some very segments where you actually get to fight a sweet dragon (and become legends!!), visit a gnome village, fight on an airship, go up a giant revolving tower (that moves in the background!! neat!)and general high level dnd shenanigans. Speaking of high-level, I had a lot of spells this time. I played as the Elf in both campaigns, who is basically a fighter-mage, and had a very nice time balancing the two aspects of the character. You can also free-swap characters when you die so I did try out the other classes for portions of each level just to get a taste, but I do love me some fighter-mage.
The combat in the games felt pretty solid, as the Elf I had a large variety of spells and since I didn't have to pay for each revive in the game, my spells came back with enough regularity to be fun. There were the very obvious and cool choices like chain lightining and fireball, but also invisibility, polymorph other and cloudkill make an appearance as well. There's an equipment system in the game as well as you find magical items but frankly I was not able to make heads or tails of it. I just beat up everyone and moved along!
I didn't spend an immense amount of time with the series, mostly just a few slow days during Thanksgiving weekend, but it was a good enough time. It has been in my backlog quite some time, but having a taste of DnD and a solid beat em up was a great way to pass the time. Not as complex or satisfying as River City Girls or even approaching Scott Pilgrim but damn good at what it wanted to be.
Final Grade: B
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
RE 0! A game I was not planning on playing this year until I saw some screenshots and gifs of the train and I was like eehhhhh it's on sale for 6 bucks lets do this!!
RE 0 takes place more or less concurrently with Resi 1, with Rebecca Chambers from Chris's campaign taking the starring role in this game. She is joined by a an ex-marine Billy Coen (I even remembered his name!!) who was convicted of the murder of two dozen civilians and his former squadmates. They both take shelter on a train in the woods around Raccoon City when they are attacked by monsters, and the two of them team up to survive. Now you might be thinking "Wait, are these horror protagonists actually doing the SMART thing of sticking together?!" Yes!! Now of course there are reasons in Resi 1 - 3 for why our main heroes are split up, but its still nice to see in this instance people making some sort of sense. Unlike in Resi 5 and 6 however there is no true co-op here - the player controls one main character at a time and can use a stick to move the other, or give them basic commands. They also can easily share their inventory items, and the games primary 'gimmick' over Resi 1 is how these are used in puzzle solving. Unfortunately, it does not work out as well as I imagined the developers had hoped...
While the split puzzle sections are vaguely interesting in theory, what they often work out to be is an exercise in tedium as you try to balance your very limited inventories with equipping two characters and holding onto all the quest items. This game has no shared 'box' space like RE1 - 2 - 3, but instead allows you to place items and ground and come back for them any time. I didn't find this too annoying as the map has built-in functions for keeping track of all items and where exactly you put them. There was only one particularly egregious example of a quest item being nearly forgotten and then forcing me to track it down near the end to continue (sup hookshot), otherwise I had a fine enough time doing the 'Inventory Shuffle' Resident Evil so enjoys.
Having two protagonists is a large detriment to 5 and 6 I feel, and this also carries over to 0, however to a smaller degree. Having another person with you certainly reduces the tension somewhat, and the player is pretty easily able to let the AI handle a lot of the wetwork if you want which automatically makes things a bit less scary. Thankfully the masterful fixed cameras and spooky atmosphere are very much done with finesse here so even though it shares a bad feature of 5 and 6 (partner character) it at least executes on the idea well enough so that it doesn't ruin the proceedings.
Speaking of partners - the characters themselves! I generally did like the two main characters, but ultimately felt like they were undercooked. They are initially distrustful but after saving each other a few times, they start to respect each other and Rebecca even lets Billy go free at the end as she promised (leading to her entrance in RE1, and sidestepping why Billy wasn't with her or even mentioned!), however, we get not a lot between the two as the game progresses. There's one particular moment with Billy going into his backstory (sort of) but it never actually returns to this conversation to show their growth after he rebuffs her. For several moments in the game I was waiting for a bit of banter between the two that would have fit right in, but ultimately never came. The main story itself is also kind of stupid - one of Umbrellas founders went crazy and injected himself with T-Virus leeches and turned into an anime villain..? RE0 is the first game chronologically to descend into dumb anime bullshit and I'm not happy about it alright?
Ultimately, Resident Evil 0 suffers from the same basic issue that RE5 did - It is aping an excellent classic of a game, with a handful of things to set it apart (albeit large things!), but just not being as clever and bold as what they're emulating. The game is cut right from the cloth of RE1, and it shows in the best and worst ways possible. The obtuse and silly puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere and environments, the anxiety-inducing camera angles, balancing health/ammo/progress... all well done and compared favorably to 1. However, it lacks a cohesive narrative, charismatic and endearing characters, a memorable setting (the Train is AWESOME, everything after that is pretty meh) and the sheer cleverness of its predecessor. That along with a faulty co-op system that I'm sure sounded great on paper but just didn't work out in practice... RE 0 is not one of my favorites, but I still thinks its good!
P.S. I picked this up after I beat the first campaign of RE6 and finished it well before I finished the third or even fourth campaign. Holy crap it is so much better lol
Final Grade: B-
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
If I could give anything a 1.5/5...
Ugh, what a slog.
Normally when I finish a game, I just write down a sentence or two to kick me off when I do write the complete review. This is the second time now that I have left that initial impression as I feel it pretty succinctly encapsulates how I really feel about the game. This game is just kinda garbage. In theory, it should be a game I love. A series I'm just getting into and am generally having a joyous time catching up on has a giant Avengers-Esque adventure bringing together heroes and plot-lines in a way to excite and amaze. Chris and Leon meet! Sherry is back as an adult and she's a badass who can't die! There' four whole campaigns!! YOU GET TO PLAY AS ADA
Awesome right? Nah it sucks. I played the campaigns in order from the main menu, and each of them at least has a very different feel to them, so kudos to the team for managing that. Kudos taken away however as none of them are particularly good at what they're trying to do.
Leon's campaign is the most "Resident Evil-~y" of the bunch, calling on Resident Evil 2 and the fall of Raccoon and several creepy locales (a church/mausoleum, a graveyard, and spooky sewers) and having Leon make some snide one-liners like in 4. However, Leon's partner is with him the whole time cutting any real tension (don't even have to care about ammo for her) and there's some element of mystery to her about what she wants but it amounts to basically 0 in terms of the plot other than her sister dying, which basically never comes back up again. But don't worry! Her sister turns into a mega-hot zombie monster that the camera loves to stare at, so there's that weirdness added in too. Also, Leon reunites with Sherry on screen for the first time in 20 years..... and they have 2 seconds, and Sherry says "I was too young and don't really remember anything" BULLSHITTTTTT. Best moment - zombies on a plane! Literally ripped straight from Air Force One and I'm here for it. Worst - Aforementioned Sherry reunion.
Campaign 2 - Chris! It's like RE5 but even worse!! Okay not exactly, I actually super liked Piers and the ending is fuckin' solid. We get some decent character development for Chris, but it is otherwise garbage. The story bops around in time rapidly, and it is pretty tough to keep track of what exactly happens when... but we'll get to that later! Best moment - Ending scenes with Piers. Worst - battle in the street with a Giant monster that is really boring and easy.
Campaign 3 - Sherry/Jake! Jake is Wesker's kid. Stupid stupid stupid... he himself is kinda okay, but mostly only when he's interacting with Sherry who is still pretty cool. Seeing more of her is fun, but Jake is often a douche-nozzle and this game tries to be RE3 but instead of being good it is bad. So that's a strategy. It is also spending a LOT of time shipping Sherry and Jake, then does nothing with it and ends. Best moment - Jake fist-fighting shitty nemesis. Worst moment - most of the other things Jake says or does.
Campaign 4 - Ada! We get to play as Ada for real! Yeah, we did that already with Resi4 DLC buuuuut whatever, we get more from her post-Wesker biting the dust. This HAS to be interesting and revealing right?! Nahhhh we get jack shit. Not even any good moments between her and Leon. Just her 'relationship' with the big bad of the game Simmons, of which we learn almost nothing and seems like an insane and one-sided thing she has to put an end to. She also has a clone who is the final boss, which seems like it could've been cool but I promise you it's not. Well, it looks okay anyway. Best moment - real puzzles again! Worst moment - stealth sections, wtf? And they suck!
This is a tough game to wrap up in one paragraph. It's trying to move action combat forward in the series, doubles down on the co-op mechanics and ramps up the movie set pieces. All the things I really hated about 5 and was meh about even in 4 when they did it right. The combat has plenty of layers to it, but it never actually CARES or makes you interact with those layers. Enemies drop bullets and health so you don't need to be all that careful, maybe a force higher difficulty would save it? Ultimately though it just doesn't feel good to play. I've played a lot of shooters in my time, and this is one of my least favorite. For the story, obviously its dumb but it always is. Characters though, the only people who grow or do anything really of note are the new partners, who only in 1 case really make an impact on things and were enjoyable to be around.
Its really four shorter games packed into one, and that is in one way very cool that they tried to" Avengers" this shit, but honestly, they just ended up "Justice League"-ing it. And I mean that in the most offensive way possible.
Final Grade: D
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Writing this review is pretty difficult as this particular game represents a great deal more than just a game. First and foremost, it represents my success in the 52 game challenge and I'm incredibly pleased I was able to do this and will 100% be attempting next year. This is also my 52nd time I'm trying to capture my thoughts and I've got a lot of them over the year to think about. This is also the end of the mainline Resident Evil franchise that I have now played in its entirety* (not re1 original) and now I have to sift through my feelings of some pretty intense ups and downs even in the past couple of weeks. If I could plan this year out a little better I definitely would have put more time between the last couple RE games but unfortunately I REALLY wanted 7 to be my 52nd game of the year so we ended up with a 0 -> 6 -> 7 progression here that I have to work around. All in all though I'm immensely glad I completed this challenge and subsequently joined the fanbase of this, overall, superb franchise.
So anyway, Resident Evil 7. There are a lot of major departures for this entry to this franchise and the biggest I think is the perspective which has once again shifted - this time to first person. I'm an enormous fan of first person RPGs so this wasn't a difficult transition for me especially as the game maintains a much slower pace than its 3 predecessors. It also has a completely new protagonist a story almost wholly divorced from the enormous canon that RE6 tried to utilize and expand all at once, with another new virus and another new batch of enemies. Where RE7 succeeds where I think RE5 and 6 failed however (and 4 succeeded at as well) with their new infections was a sense of consistency. The new 'mold' creatures (sadly there are only a handful of varieties) have a VERY strong visual identity and have powers that seem to track with their deformities. They're damn tough as well with ammo being pretty scarce again it makes for some tense situations. The most intense one for me is in the main picture - I had to make my way through a boiler room with 3 enemies, and used all of my ammo to do it. What happens when I get to the next section? 2 more drop behind me so I go literally toe to toe with both of them and just my knife.. I scraped through with some fancy footwork and a few healing items hahaa... It was a very tense moment that drained me of my resources, but the game also let me chill for a bit afterwards to build my self up again. PACING!
The gameplay continues in traditional RE fashion - you're pretty vulnerable and have to stay on your toes to start with, but you slowly build strength over time and are blasting away foes by end game - though never quite with full confidence... The RE tradition of a giant 'FU' boss continues but thankfully they know at this point it is more symbolic - you can shoot it a few times and then you get the 'Rocket Launcher' to kill it and roll credits. No need to save up boatloads of your own ammo to get the job done. Back also are a number of small puzzles and backtracking with various keys - mercifully labeled on your map! It feels good to be trapped in these weird funhouses, literally this time by one of the antagonists!
Speaking of antagonists - the story and character of RE7 are all quite good with just a couple of issues, primarily our protagonist Ethan. Ethan is... a guy. I didn't mean to end that sentence in a generic way but I genuinely tried to think of character traits and I honestly don't think he has any. Contrasted with the Bakers (all delightful) or Mia or Eveline, characters with some real interesting depth to them (not a lot of course but enough) he just really sticks out as being an outsider. It also pretty sharply contrasts with previous RE history where the protagonists are all great characters! When the game switches protagonists about 80% of the way through I was kinda hoping we would stay as Mia, a person with real relevance to the story buuuut oh well. In terms of the Bakers, I feel like they more than make up for the lack of enemy variety otherwise with the molded. Jack is a 'stalker' Nemesis type which leads to some EPIC boss battles, Margaritte is creepy and has a weird bug thing going on, Eveline and her crazed desire for a 'family'... Good stuff all around. Lucas is a POS and I really liked the revelation he was basically garbage the whole time and more or less unaffected by Eveline's madness!
Overall, Resident Evil 7 is a superb combination of returning to form for the series but also pushing it forward in exciting ways. What was before a bombastic yet empty fireworks display is now a smaller, grittier and yet much more satisfying experience. The first person camera helps makes each hit and scare that much more real, and adds to the tension of exploring this run down and corrupted home. The characters are more than interesting enough to carry the story forward and I genuinely hoped for a bit of redemption for the Bakers at the end of it, and a twinge of regret and compassion for the 'monster' that made it all happen. A riveting experience I couldn't put down, and I don't think I've really felt that from the beginning since Resident Evil 2!
Final Grade: A
I DID IT! ! ALL 52 ITS OVER ITS DONE I RETURN TO THE SHIRE
okay a P.S. - I have immensely enjoyed this challenge the past year. I have been 'floating' through my gaming hobby for a long time now, just playing whatever seemed good at the time and rarely finishing game. It would get to the end of the year and I'd be reading about all the games and say "wait that came out this year? Did I even play it..?" so this has been forcing me to put all my thoughts down and really dig into things. It has also cut drastically down on me spending my free time after work just on browsing the internet or going through crap like Reddit on my phone - I had stuff to get done!! The one issue I do have is it really disincentives longer games - I've been eyeing Pathfinder Kingmaker all damn year, but it is 100+ hours long I aint got time for that!!
I'm not 100% sure I'll do the challenge next year, but I will at least be trying to keep putting my thoughts down about what I do play! Or maybe just do 90% indie stuff that takes like an hour to beat lol
Good job to both of you for making it to 52!
Definetly feel that this challenge makes the individual a lot more organized both in terms of what you have and what you want to play. Every year I look at my backlog full of RPGS and think, nahhhh not going to make 52 this year but somehow it happens. For longer games there is no time limit to finish it any given month so even if you chug a few hours here and there while you play shorter games at the same time it all counts the same. You can even start playing Pathfinder now, get some hours done this year and then its less hours to play when you finish it in 2020.
47. Super Mario Land (1989, GB) ★★★★☆
Never beat it back in the day. Now, to celebrate the game's 30 year anniversary (!!!), I picked it up again for an afternoon to re-experience the catchy tunes and beat the game in the process. Remember always getting stuck on the final boss because I would lose a hit to the cloud boss that precedes it. Overall, a pretty interesting game in the Mario series, bit of an outlier really. Sarassaland feels tangibly different from usual Mushroom Kingdom surroundings, what with the Moai and Ancient Egypt themed levels, and some weird shoot-em-up levels in between. Feel like the game could've used one more shooter level to be honest, especially since the Moai boss is very uninspired compared to the rest. Very competent game that still comes highly recommended.
48. Pokémon White Version (2011, DS) ★★★★☆
It's been a while since I enjoyed a Pokémon game, after disliking the 3rd and 4th generation titles. This one is much better though, can see why it was regarded as a mostly confident return to form for GameFreak. They allow generation 5 to stand on its own during the main quest, by having all-new Pokémon designs with new interesting type combinations, and keeping the references to previous entries to a minimum. The only things holding this one back are its overly linear progression, the annoying character drama, and the poorly handled story.
Especially the latter feels like quite a letdown, since the core premise is quite inspired.
Team Plasma seek to liberate all Pokémon, since humans hold them captive and make them fight each other. Obviously, that's always been the most potent criticism people lob against this franchise, but this game completely squanders the potential of doing anything interesting with the premise. Instead, it raises the question and then cops out with the most obvious, predictable "gotcha" twist. You can sense it coming from miles away, but still dissapointing.
49. Metroid: Other M (2010, Wii) ★★☆☆☆
Famous musicians will often release greatest hits albums, perhaps peppered with a recording of some live performance, maybe one new song, a remix and/or a cover of a song outside their usual wheelhouse. Metroid: Other M aspires to be something akin to that, but winds up more in tribute act territory. Familiar bosses and music are paraded in front of you, with the hope they'll invoke memories of better times than the one you're having right now, and they all ring a bit hollow and generic.
I will say the discourse surrounding this release is often downright toxic, and I'm not here for that. Other M is just a dull action game with minor highlights when it reminds you of previous game in the series. It's unfortunate this game will never escape comparison against the behemoths that populate the routinely outstanding Metroid franchise, but even on its own the game is underwhelming and very forgettable.
50. Rollercoaster Tycoon: Corkscrew Follies a.k.a. Added Attractions (1999, PC) ★★★★★
Rollercoaster Tycoon classic has been my gaming comfort food for two full decades now. The base game is both accessible and complex, and this first expansion pack contains only fantastic additions. Several more extreme coasters, as well as rickety classical ones, more stalls and flat rides - I basically like every addition, although more thrill rides would've been welcome. I also like the more finnicky rides like the Ghost Trains and Heartline Twists, which are tough to use well, but rewarding to get right. Most importantly though, this version added the blocked path sign, which is unironically the single most useful item in the game.
It took me years to chip away at this expansion pack. With 30 scenarios it's easily a 100 hour game, so I don't see myself starting the second expansion (Loopy Landscapes) anytime soon - but one day I'll be back for more.
51/52 SO CLOSE I need to do write-ups
Main Post
1. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4) Jan 3 90 hours 4.5/5
2. Sunset Overdrive (XB1) Jan 26 48 hours 4.5/5
3. Sunset Overdrive Dawn of the Rise of The Fallen Machines (DLC) (XB1) Jan 28 4 hours 2/5
4. Sunset Overdrive The Mystery of The Mooil Rig (DLC) (XB1) Jan 30 4 hours 3/5
5. Dead Cells (Switch) Jan 30 42 hours 4.5/5
6. Life Is Strange 2 Episode 1 Roads (XB1) Feb 2 3 hours 4/5
7. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (PS4) Feb 18 15 hours 2.5/5
8. Uncharted Lost Legacy (PS4) Feb 24 14 hours 4/5
9. Detroit Become Human (PS4) March 3 22 hours 2.5/5
10. The Garden Between (XB1 March 16 3 hours 3/5
11. NBA2K19 (XB1) March 24 104 hours 3.5/5
12. Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice (XB1)March 24 7 hours 4/5
13. A Way Out (XB1) March 31 7 hours 2/5
14. Tales From the Borderlands Episode 1: Zer0 Sum (XB1) April 6 2.5 hours 3.5/5
15 The Council Episode 1 The Mad Ones (XB1) April 13 3.5 hours 3/5
16. The Council Episode 2 Hide/Seek (XB1) April 20 3.5 hours 3.5/5
17. Soma (PS4) May 24 15 hours 4/5
18. The Council Episode 3 Ripples (XB1) May 25 3.5 hours 3/5
19. The Council Episode 4 Burning Bridges (XB1) June 1 3.5 Hours 3.5/5
20. Borderlands GOTY Edition (XB1) June 5 47 hours 4/5
21. Borderlands The Island of Dr. Ned (DLC) (XB1) June 6 3 hours 3/5
22. Tetris Effect (PS4) June 9 27 hours so far 5/5
23. Borderlands The Secret Armory of General Knoxx (DLC) (XB1)June 25 18 hours 2.5/5
24. Borderlands Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot (DLC) (XB1) June 30 6 hours 1/5
25. Borderlands Claptrap Revolution (DLC) (XB1) July 6 7 hours 3.5/5
26. Destiny (XB1) July 23 45 HOURS so far 4/5
27. Destiny The Dark Below (DLC) (XB1) July 25 7 hours 3/5
28. Destiny House of Wolves (DLC) (XB1) July 27 10 hours 3/5
29. Life is Strange Episode 2 Rules (XB1) July 29 4 hours 3.5/5
30. Destiny The Taken King (DLC) (XB1) August 8 17 hours 4/5
31. FIFA 19 The Journey (XB1) August 8 22 hours 3/5
32. Destiny Rise of Iron (DLC) (XB1) August 23 20 hours so far 3.5/5
33. Erica (PS4) August 27 4 hours 4/5
34. The Council Episode 5 Checkmate (XB1) September 4 3 hours 3.5/5
35. Life Is Strange Episode 3 Wastelands (XB1) September 12 4 hours 3.5/5
36. The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan (XB1) September 14 8 hours 2.5/5
37. My Friend Pedro (Switch) September 28 13 hours 3/5
38. Gears 5 (XB1) Oct 8 22 hours 3.5/5
39. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) Oct 19 22 hours 4.5/5
40. Destiny 2 (XB1) Oct 21 37hours 4/5
41. Afterparty (XB1) Oct 30 7 hours 4.5/5
42. Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019) (PS4) Nov 1 11 hours 3/5
43. The Outer Worlds (XB1) Nov 4 26 hours 4.5/5
44. Syberia (Switch) Nov 10 7 Hours 3/5
45. Syberia 2 (Switch) Nov 12 9 hours 3/5
46. Life Is Strange Episode 4 Faith (XB1) Nov 22 4/5
47. Syberia 3 (Switch) Nov 25 6 8 hours 3.5/5
48. Until Dawn (PS4) Dec 4 15 hours 4.5/5
49. Superhot VR (PS4) Dec 6 12 hours 5/5
50. Headmaster (PS4) Dec 8 15 hours 4.5/5
51. Untitled Goose Game (XB1) Dec 19 5 hours 4/5
Main Post
1. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4) Jan 3 90 hours 4.5/5
2. Sunset Overdrive (XB1) Jan 26 48 hours 4.5/5
3. Sunset Overdrive Dawn of the Rise of The Fallen Machines (DLC) (XB1) Jan 28 4 hours 2/5
4. Sunset Overdrive The Mystery of The Mooil Rig (DLC) (XB1) Jan 30 4 hours 3/5
5. Dead Cells (Switch) Jan 30 42 hours 4.5/5
6. Life Is Strange 2 Episode 1 Roads (XB1) Feb 2 3 hours 4/5
7. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (PS4) Feb 18 15 hours 2.5/5
8. Uncharted Lost Legacy (PS4) Feb 24 14 hours 4/5
9. Detroit Become Human (PS4) March 3 22 hours 2.5/5
10. The Garden Between (XB1 March 16 3 hours 3/5
11. NBA2K19 (XB1) March 24 104 hours 3.5/5
12. Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice (XB1)March 24 7 hours 4/5
13. A Way Out (XB1) March 31 7 hours 2/5
14. Tales From the Borderlands Episode 1: Zer0 Sum (XB1) April 6 2.5 hours 3.5/5
15 The Council Episode 1 The Mad Ones (XB1) April 13 3.5 hours 3/5
16. The Council Episode 2 Hide/Seek (XB1) April 20 3.5 hours 3.5/5
17. Soma (PS4) May 24 15 hours 4/5
18. The Council Episode 3 Ripples (XB1) May 25 3.5 hours 3/5
19. The Council Episode 4 Burning Bridges (XB1) June 1 3.5 Hours 3.5/5
20. Borderlands GOTY Edition (XB1) June 5 47 hours 4/5
21. Borderlands The Island of Dr. Ned (DLC) (XB1) June 6 3 hours 3/5
22. Tetris Effect (PS4) June 9 27 hours so far 5/5
23. Borderlands The Secret Armory of General Knoxx (DLC) (XB1)June 25 18 hours 2.5/5
24. Borderlands Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot (DLC) (XB1) June 30 6 hours 1/5
25. Borderlands Claptrap Revolution (DLC) (XB1) July 6 7 hours 3.5/5
26. Destiny (XB1) July 23 45 HOURS so far 4/5
27. Destiny The Dark Below (DLC) (XB1) July 25 7 hours 3/5
28. Destiny House of Wolves (DLC) (XB1) July 27 10 hours 3/5
29. Life is Strange Episode 2 Rules (XB1) July 29 4 hours 3.5/5
30. Destiny The Taken King (DLC) (XB1) August 8 17 hours 4/5
31. FIFA 19 The Journey (XB1) August 8 22 hours 3/5
32. Destiny Rise of Iron (DLC) (XB1) August 23 20 hours so far 3.5/5
33. Erica (PS4) August 27 4 hours 4/5
34. The Council Episode 5 Checkmate (XB1) September 4 3 hours 3.5/5
35. Life Is Strange Episode 3 Wastelands (XB1) September 12 4 hours 3.5/5
36. The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan (XB1) September 14 8 hours 2.5/5
37. My Friend Pedro (Switch) September 28 13 hours 3/5
38. Gears 5 (XB1) Oct 8 22 hours 3.5/5
39. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) Oct 19 22 hours 4.5/5
40. Destiny 2 (XB1) Oct 21 37hours 4/5
41. Afterparty (XB1) Oct 30 7 hours 4.5/5
42. Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019) (PS4) Nov 1 11 hours 3/5
43. The Outer Worlds (XB1) Nov 4 26 hours 4.5/5
44. Syberia (Switch) Nov 10 7 Hours 3/5
45. Syberia 2 (Switch) Nov 12 9 hours 3/5
46. Life Is Strange Episode 4 Faith (XB1) Nov 22 4/5
47. Syberia 3 (Switch) Nov 25 6 8 hours 3.5/5
48. Until Dawn (PS4) Dec 4 15 hours 4.5/5
49. Superhot VR (PS4) Dec 6 12 hours 5/5
50. Headmaster (PS4) Dec 8 15 hours 4.5/5
51. Untitled Goose Game (XB1) Dec 19 5 hours 4/5
Last edited:
Did it! As of last Thursday I reached my 52nd game beaten! Didn't think I would get it this soon, especially with all of the Destiny 2 I've played this year. Last year I made it by December 30 or 31 lol
Main post with list and count
Main post with list and count
Main Post
Update 1: January
Update 2: February - March
Update 3: April-July
Update 4: August-December
Bonus December Game(s)
Completed
August
26: Operencia - 20 hours
Operencia is a style of western RPG that you don't see much of anymore, a first person game that is focused around exploring small and very tightly designed hand-made dungeons. Each dungeon/area may only take you ~2 hours to play through, but feels like a unique and deliberate addition to the game with its own self-contained story and secrets to find. If I had one criticism of Operencia it would be that it doesn't feel super polished. The character progression had D&D vibes for me where you were attempting to synergize your stats, armor, and ability choices to make well-rounded characters but feels a little underbaked with many unexciting skill tree/equipment choices. The voice acting throughout the whole game is a mixed bag, but the voices of the characters in the intro are by far the worst and may even discourage people from playing. Complaints aside, I'm really glad hand-crafted dungeon crawl games like are still being made. The visuals are also fantastic, vivid and diverse, and this game was a great choice to break-in the new XB1/TV I bought this year.
8/10
27: Hidden Folks - 4 hours
Hidden Folks is similar to Where's Waldo but since it is a digital game the areas and villagers within them are full of animation and personality that makes them feel real. Playing the game often feels like peering into another tiny world. The black & white art style gives the game a unique story-book feel and adds to the challenge of finding villagers using the clues the game gives you. The game is strongest when it has you in small levels where you can appreciate the details without getting overwhelmed, which sadly means the back half of the game isn't much fun to play with massive maps to search and huge lists of villagers to find.
7/10
28: Aaero - 2 hours
Aaero is a combination of a rhythm game and rail-shooter, I enjoyed it despite the Dubstep soundtrack. Bouncing between lines to the beat a la Amplitude is great fun but when combat does pop up the game feels a bit too chaotic and it's hard to get a good read on the screen to see if you've locked-on to all the targets that you wanted to. For example, the target reticule, lock-on icon, and danger icon are all the same shade of red. It's very cool and impressive that this was made by only two people! I would like have liked to see more music variety (anything besides more Dubstep, really) and some improvements to the combat, but this was still a fun time.
7/10
29: Destiny 2 - 12 hours
Destiny 2 is polished to an incredible sheen with amazing gunplay and super fluid graphics. I've had problems with both Destiny 1 and 2 of appreciating the game beyond the surface level polish however. Neither the loot or the open world objectives in 2 excited me at all and as a consequence me and the friend I played though 2 with both groaned whenever we realized we needed more levels before moving onto the next story mission. My biggest complaint with the game is that I still can't get into how Bungie does world-building and story-telling. Destiny is rife with incoherent terms, factions who have no personalities, and even the damn menu terms are unnecessarily complicated and deliberately weird. Instead of a Mission Menu Destiny has The Director. Instead of Achievements Destiny has Triumphs. It seems like a small pedantic complaint, but this sort of deliberate and unearned need to differentiate Destiny from every other game is present through every aspect of the experience playing it. A good version of Destiny 2 would be, for me, a game that focused on a being a tight co-op experience instead of a GAAS title designed to keep people playing forever and never really satisfied. It would also be a game focused on telling a good story instead of hopelessly trying to build a convincingly different setting.
7/10
30: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon - 3 hours
I think I might hate this game. It was retro in all of the wrong ways: clunky controls, unfair deaths, and a lives system that puts you in an awkward position every time a key character dies and leaves you wishing the rest would die too so that you could get full-strength attempt at the next section. It's a short game that feels weirdly bloated both in levels and ideas. Rather than acting as an appetizer or proof-of-concept of the full-fledged Bloodstained release this year Curse of the Moon felt like an active warning to stay away from it.
5/10
31: Wandersong - 9 hours
Indie games have a reputation of covering more personal & serious themes than most big budget games are willing to and this is certainly true of Wandersong. What appears to be an overwhelmingly saccharine game based on the visuals & premise actually tells a pretty nuanced story about how people deal with optimism and pessimism. The story was my favorite thing about the game, but it's also worth mentioning that the game does a fantastic job at keeping the same singing mechanic fresh for the ~10 hours it takes to reach the end. In one area you may use the analog stick & song to shape platforms out of vines, while another might have you using the same analog stick & song mechanic to fend off attacking crows. That the same 2-button interaction can remain fresh and interesting for the entire game is really impressive.
9/10
32: Assault Android Cactus - 3 hours
Assault Android Cactus does a great job of bringing bullet hell chaos to a fully 3D 4-player game. At full player count with all the gunfire and lasers bouncing around the game looks like pure chaos and plays beautifully on PC. There are a lot of Androids (characters) in the game at this point that all have a very different feel to them with 2 unique weapons and a unique Ultimate ability. The weapon/ability kits feel sufficiently deep and varied within and no Android feels too-niche. Despite the short length the game does feel very repetitive, and could have benefited from getting out of nearly identical Arena levels and a bit more enemy variety.
8/10
33: Hue - 5 hours
Where Wandersong managed to get ~10 hours of variety out of a color-wheel mechanic, Hue doesn't manage to achieve the same feat. The game has a pretty clever color-block platforming puzzle that it introduces at the start but it feels like the same puzzle is repeated in every level the game ends. The regions/levels in the game are not distinct from one-another and do not introduce any new puzzle ideas, though the last level gets pretty close to feeling different. The story starts off with an interesting philosophical premise about how people see the world through a shared understanding of colors, but it never goes anywhere with it and falls a bit flat overall.
7/10
34: Slay the Spire - 40+ hours
I picked this up during early access based on how promising the concept looked, a rogue-like deck-builder, and finally checked it out when it officially released this year. It's fantastic. Each run feels exciting and new thanks to the huge variety of items, random events, enemies, and bosses. More importantly, each run feels different due to the great variety of cards and possible ways to build out your deck with each of the 3 current characters. Even within a single character the game succeeds here and you might have one "Silent" character run focused around poisoning enemies to slowly defeat them and another focused around card draw and defeating enemies with massive combos. Hell, even if you focused around poison in multiple runs with the Silent character, the way you are poisoning enemies and the overall feel of your deck will still be different. An average run takes ~2 hours and the time goes by in an instant. I think the game is basically perfect and I enjoy it so much that when I did a run the other day, a few months after "finishing" the game (by completing a run on each character), to refresh my memory for this write up I ended up playing for another 10 hours and am looking forward to playing it more over the holidays to unlock all the cards and try for the true ending.
10/10
35: Ape Out - 3 hours
Ape Out is a jazz-inspired take on a Hotline Miami. In it you play an Ape trying to escape from a military medical testing facility. Every action you take and enemies take, whether it is turning around a corner or throwing an enemy into a wall builds sound into the jazz soundtrack. When you're running at full speed down a hallway while bullets fly by you and the music is capturing all that action it's really impressive and near-synesthetic. Where Hotline Miami asks you to memorize levels and enemy patterns and then execute it perfectly, Ape Out has levels that are randomized and reset to something different every time you die. That makes the focus of the game more about reacting to what is going on around you, embracing chaos and movement, instead of planning things in advance. It's very much in the spirit of jazz improvisation and the game does a pretty brilliant job at connecting the soundtrack and gameplay. Ape Out doesn't outlive its welcome and I had so much fun with it that I wish there was an album or two more worth of levels.
9/10
36: Void Bastards - 9 hours
An immersive sim where all the levels are randomly generated seems like a paradoxical premise, but Void Bastards does a pretty good job pulling it off. Within each level you are making decisions about how to spend your finite resources, which paths to take, and whether to use technology & stealth to succeed or brute force. At the start of the game this works pretty great and the game makes an impressive first impression with lots of weapon/upgrade variety and simple but fun combat encounters. Once you get deeper into the game you start to see that there is a severe lack of enemy variety, and that exploring ships more thoroughly to find all the secrets and cool stuff is never worth the risk. All the levels start to feel the same and B-lining towards objectives becomes the best strategy as the enemy numbers & difficulty grows. You'll have seen everything in the game within the first 2 hours but it goes much longer than that even if you focus on the critical path. Void Bastards is an impressive accomplishment but one that needed a bit more variety and balancing to be a great game. Worth mentioning that the game has an amazing art style and the sci-fi comic book look was the one thing about the game that never got old.
7/10
September
37: Horizon Chase Zero - 8 hours
Horizon Chase Zero is a retro 2D arcade racer designed to honor the racing games of the 8 & 16-bit era. The very first thing I noticed when I started playing is that it has a great sensation of speed that I didn't realize was missing from modern 3D racing games. Even with the starter car stages fly by you at breakneck speed, making every moment of the game feel exciting. The stage visuals are beautifully varied as you tour around the world and the levels that start during the day and transition to night are amazing to watch unfold. On the downside the soundtrack needed a bit more variety to match the variety that exists in all the levels. The difficulty is also a bit uneven and it feels like the middle of the game is where the hard levels exist and was the only time I felt like I needed to replay older levels in order to progress. Still, I had a great time playing this and it's proof that arcade racers still have a place in the modern era.
8/10
38: Control - 12 hours
Control doesn't make a great first impression. The narrative starts off deliberately confusing and drops you in with almost no set up. The combat initially feels stiff, difficult, and overly simplistic. The layout of the Oldest House is confusing and hard to navigate. I ended up loving the game by the end. They manage to tell a cool story in a cool way and they justify starting you off in the dark. The combat quickly adds important abilities to your toolkit that allow you to get around easily and deal with enemies in creative and satisfying ways. It's fantastic by the end, feeling a playable version of the battles I dreamed about while reading X-Men comics as a kid. The highest praise I can offer is that the game felt short, despite it being a meaty 12-hour campaign and longer than most games I played this year, and I didn't want it to end. I hope it did well for Remedy because I'd really like to see more games in the setting.
9/10
39: Judgment - 27 hours
I played Yakuza Kiwami 1 last year and Yakuza 0 the year before that. I like the series for the unique setting, fun characters, and the total dedication to story telling that they have. Still, for me these are games I like in-spite of the big problems they have: bad mini-games, mediocre combat, and a crazy 1:8 ration of gameplay to cut-scenes. Judgment has the best version of Yakuza combat out of what I've played but it's still not great: every combat encounter feels the same and combat lacks weight and intention in your actions. All of the other mini-games/game segments are almost universally awful. I groaned every time a drone segment or tailing mission came up. Weak gameplay means that my enjoyment of Yakuza games is almost entirely based on the quality of the story, where Judgment is a mixed bag. The story becomes increasingly implausible as you play and the last 1/3 of the story definitely felt like the weakest part of the game. I liked the story overall and really enjoyed Judgment's cast of characters but it wasn't enough to make up for the weak gameplay this time.
7/10
40: Wolfenstein Youngblood - 10 hours
I'm a huge fan of the Dishonored series so hearing that Arkane Studios were going to help develop a co-op Wolfenstein with immersive sim elements was exciting news to me. In practice the levels feel only very lightly inspired by immersive sims and it never quite feels like you are building your own path through a level or that exploring is rewarded with cool items or stories. The mission design on top of those levels is very repetitive and you'll revisit the same areas or ones nearly identical to each other to complete missions that also feel identical to each other. I enjoyed the presentation of the game and the fun "sister duo kill Nazis" spirit of it that is reinforced through banter and elevator dances. The combat is also sometimes thrilling with guns that all feel fun to shoot and enemies that are fun to shoot at. As a whole the game feels underbaked, like it needed more time and mission, level, and combat encounter variety. That said, even mediocre co-op games pretty fun with a friend and Wolfenstein is no exception.
6/10
41: Gears 5 - 12 hours
Gears 5 feels like a massive step upwards from Gears 4 which I also played earlier this year. Both the tech weapons and robotic enemies in Gears 4 receive a substantial upgrade and are actually a bit of fun to fight with and against. The game also feels a bit more comfortable letting you use older/classic weapons throughout the story and I never felt like I was stuck with a loser. The story builds on lore from Gears 3 and answers interesting questions instead of feeling like a "next generation of characters" rehash. The visuals are gorgeous and colorful and the game does a great job with visual and mission variety throughout the lengthy campaign. I liked the addition of a third player in co-op though a competent human playing Jack does sort of break the game. I didn't spend a ton of time in the multiplayer but it seemed like a fun version of Gears PvP. Overall Gears 5 is a really promising next step for the series.
9/10
42: Monster Hunter World: Iceborne - 54 hours
MHW was my GOTY last year but I did not get into the post-game much. After a ~ 1 year break from finishing it Iceborne felt like more of the same in a way that wasn't immediately welcome. I played solo this time as well because friends had either not finished the base game (a requirement), had moved on, or both. The expansion really throws you right back in the fire, asking you to defeat a new monster and relearn the combat right away. It took me a few hours to get back into the swing of things with the Chargeblade but once I got over that initial hump and started using SoS for multiplayer I fell in love again and the hours just melted away. The expansion feels pretty packed with new content, though the single new environment doesn't quite stand up to some of the originals in MHW and it looks very same-y throughout. The new monsters are great and there seem to be a ton of them and the story is pretty well-done. I think the expansion does lean into a few of the post-game elements of MHW in ways that I didn't love, and it feels a touch more grindy than the original campaign with many weapon/armor that you'll want for normal story progression locked behind extremely rare drops. Overall I loved it though, just like MHW, and I can't wait to see the future of the franchise.
9/10
October
43: Untitled Goose Game - 3 hours
Untitled Goose Game is irreverent and charming, content to let you run around as a goose in a small English town causing low-stakes chaos. The game was a total hit at parties every time someone brought it out which I think speaks to the game's strengths: it's a bit more fun to watch than to play. As the person controlling the game you might be annoyed by the clunky feeling of the controls as the game asks you to do increasingly difficult things towards the end, especially as those tasks are near people who can shoo into a corner or otherwise cause your goose to get stuck. As the person watching the game, the clunky controls and questionable competence of the goose only make it more fun to watch.
7/10
44: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (2019) - 16 hours
I played the original Gameboy version several times as a kid so this was an interesting remake for me. Compared to other 2D Zelda games it feels pretty short and confined, like an introduction to the series rather than an entry that stands alongside the greats. When you remember that it was a Gameboy game though, the game feels huge and lengthy. Looking back as an adult it is retroactively amazing that they managed to cram so much content and such a large map onto a 512 KB cartridge that played on a 160x144 pixel display. I was really impressed by the art style of remake where characters and environments often evoke stop-motion clay. It's still a fun and pretty unique Zelda-game, story-wise, but it's a little shallow if you compare it directly to all of the other amazing 2D Zelda games that have come out in the 25 years since it was originally released.
8/10
November
45: Concrete Genie - 8 hours
The artwork is front and center for Concrete Genie which is appropriate for a game about painting. Everything about how the game looks is great: the graffiti monsters that are full of life, characters reminiscent of stop-motion animation from yester-year, and all the bright and interesting things you cover the walls of the town with. While everything looks great, the gameplay falls a bit short of the creative painting dream you might imagine when you first see the game. Painting is more akin to using stamps and the game places several limits on how and where you can paint. With the only activity you can do in the first ¾ of the game being that painting mechanic, things feel repetitive and get stale pretty fast. A late-game shift in the gameplay is welcome but does not control particularly well and feels like something out of a PS2 game. Overall, Concrete Genie feels like a really creative and passionate product that falls a bit short of the polish, gameplay depth, and length that you'd want from a modern game. There is a lot of charm and a lot to like here though and the friendly and mischievous graffiti monsters never failed to put a smile on my face.
7/10
46: The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan - 5 hours
I'm a big fan of Until Dawn but have not been impressed by any of Supermassive's follow-up work. Hidden Agenda & Inpatient both felt like short and underbaked side projects and not successful iteration on the things I liked about Until Dawn: the branching narratives, the creative and tense QTEs, the psychological profiling the game does on you the player, and the great mesh between a watchable a playable game for groups. Man of Medan wears its lower budget on its sleeve compared to Until Dawn but I'm happy to say that it feels like a solid follow-up. Passing a controller and playing with a small group was my favorite way to play Until Dawn and Man of Medan fully embraces that with two entirely different ways to play co-op. The QTEs aren't quite as creative this time around as the game is not exclusive to one platform and cannot lean into unique controller features like the light strip on PS4. The branching isn't nearly as robust this time around and the game is a much shorter experience overall but this is matched by a lower budget/cost. I hope the game does well enough to make more "Dark Pictures Anthology" series games beyond the already-announced sequel and that we continue to get more games in this unique style.
7/10
47: Devil May Cry 5 - 11 hours
DMC is a series that I kind of lost track of after the first one was released. It stuck with fixed camera angles longer than most series and felt pretty dated at the time the sequels came out. More importantly DMC seemed really juvenile both in how the main character(s) acted and in the amount of fan service from the female characters. I was surprised when I checked out DMC5 and found that I was really enjoying myself. Dante & Nero are fairly likable characters here and V gets less screen time but is appropriately mysterious. The humor, weirdness, and fan service in the game are still not always welcome, but at least feel like they true to the Japanese developers rather than just being a marketing gimmick. The star of the game is definitely the combat which is chock-full of variety and has about a million different ways to approach each encounter. Everything runs at a beautiful 60FPS and as a result the combat always feels fluid and responsive. Nero was my favorite character to play with his Robotic Devil-Breaker arm keeping combat variety moving at all times as they rotate out and are replaced during combat and your moveset changes a little bit accordingly. I think the game does expect a little too much from players as you switch between 3 characters that play fairly differently and so many weapons & special attack mechanics for each character on top of that, but I appreciated how much variety was there for people that wanted to perfect their gameplay or replay the game. This is definitely one of my favorite things I played this year.
9/10
48: Patterned - 10 hours
Patterned is a very simple and traditional visual puzzle game on Apple Arcade. Each image is a repeating pattern so finding where to slot each puzzle piece can occasionally be tricky, but the difficulty remains very low throughout. There are ~120 puzzles in the game but the gameplay never changes or evolves in anyway, so it does get stale quickly. For me this was strictly something I played to kill time while commuting or during flights. The best aspect of the game is that all of the solved puzzle images are available to use as high-resolution wallpaper on your mobile device and there is loads of great looking artwork to consider.
6/10
49: Luigi's Mansion 3 - 16 hours
Luigi's Mansion 3 is the first game in the series that I've spend much time playing and certainly the first I've finished. I loved the setting of the game and how charming and full of personality all of the characters and ghosts were despite having almost no text or voice dialogue. I did not expect, but greatly appreciated, all the weird themes the floors of the mansion explore. I loved how every single room in the mansion felt like it was stuffed with secrets to find, to the point where it often felt like the core of the game. On the downside, I wish the economy of the game had been more interesting as you spend 90% of the game sucking up coins and there are 0 interesting things to use them on. Likewise, the collectibles in the game were fun to chase, but ultimately provided no benefit either and felt like a missed opportunity. Still, this was an all-around pleasant game to play and it felt like a great value too by modern standards with a campaign that is stuffed with content.
8/10
50: Grindstone - 34 hours
Grindstone is based on pretty tried-and-true mobile game design: matching and chaining same-colored rows of objects to try to get high scores, but it rises above most of those games in a few ways. First off, it's got the typical Cabybara games art style and polish complete with lots of great looking enemies and environments. Second, it could have very easily felt too repetitive since you're repeating the same basic puzzle gameplay loop for ~30 hours. Instead the game is constantly throwing enemies, environmental mechanics, items at you to use, and even bosses to fight. There are 150 levels and each set of 15 feels pretty unique both visually and mechanically. Lastly, and most importantly, since it's an Apple Arcade game instead of a mobile F2P game there are no time-wasting mechanics and the game is not designed to try to get you to spend money or to play a certain number of sessions a day. Instead of a metric-and-revenue focused game like most in the genre, Grindstone is simply focused on fun. It's the most exciting game in the genre since Puzzle Quest and even that series eventually fell victim to F2P mobile game design.
9/10
51: Pilgrims - 1 hour
Pilgrims is another adventure game from Amanita design which attempts to make the puzzle-solving more organic an open than the "only 1 key fits" design of most adventure games. This made it easier to progress in the game, as solutions to puzzles were a bit easier work out, but I was still left in situations expecting a solution I had in mind to work only for the game to say it wasn't valid. I liked the art style quite a bit and appreciate how the game expresses character motivations and emotions without ever using dialogue but still don't like the genre.
7/10
December
52: Pit People - 8 hours
Pit People is a co-op tactical RPG from the Behemoth. The big "twist" on the genre is that Pit People embraces RNG: you cannot assign targets for your units to attack, instead they randomly attack anyone without range of their weapon. This is what most of the complaints in the community focus on, but I didn't mind it much. The random attack targets mean that when you're playing with a friend it's just another thing that can go wrong during battle to laugh about and you end up teaming up a bit more often to try to ensure that threatening or low health targets die. My bigger problem with the game is how slow combat feels. The sense of power or character progression is non-existent despite the game showering you with loot after every battle, and this means that for the entire game you're stuck with characters doing tiny amounts of damage. A single battle can take over an hour as teams slowly chip health away from each other and it can take 5-6 turns to defeat an enemy even if everyone on your team can hit them. The whole game drags as a result of this and all the side content & optional battles on the map (of which there are * tons* of, when I finished the game my completion % was ~15%) is completely unattractive when you know that any random battle will take an extraordinary amount of time to finish. The game does have a fun sense of humor and is nice to look at but it's a shame that such a core component of the game, the combat, falls so short.
6/10
And with that I'm done! I didn't end up playing a couple GOTY contenders that I was planning to like Sekiro, RE2, or Outer Wilds but there is always next year. It's also possible I'll finish another game or two during the holidays but my current plan is just to play lots more Slay the Spire.
This year was a bit crazy for me career-wise and current events continue to be depressing as fuck so I was always grateful to have this challenge and finishing fun games to focus on. Thanks again to everyone else who participated and Wozzer for running it.
Update 1: January
Update 2: February - March
Update 3: April-July
Update 4: August-December
Bonus December Game(s)
Completed
August
26: Operencia - 20 hours
Operencia is a style of western RPG that you don't see much of anymore, a first person game that is focused around exploring small and very tightly designed hand-made dungeons. Each dungeon/area may only take you ~2 hours to play through, but feels like a unique and deliberate addition to the game with its own self-contained story and secrets to find. If I had one criticism of Operencia it would be that it doesn't feel super polished. The character progression had D&D vibes for me where you were attempting to synergize your stats, armor, and ability choices to make well-rounded characters but feels a little underbaked with many unexciting skill tree/equipment choices. The voice acting throughout the whole game is a mixed bag, but the voices of the characters in the intro are by far the worst and may even discourage people from playing. Complaints aside, I'm really glad hand-crafted dungeon crawl games like are still being made. The visuals are also fantastic, vivid and diverse, and this game was a great choice to break-in the new XB1/TV I bought this year.
8/10
27: Hidden Folks - 4 hours
Hidden Folks is similar to Where's Waldo but since it is a digital game the areas and villagers within them are full of animation and personality that makes them feel real. Playing the game often feels like peering into another tiny world. The black & white art style gives the game a unique story-book feel and adds to the challenge of finding villagers using the clues the game gives you. The game is strongest when it has you in small levels where you can appreciate the details without getting overwhelmed, which sadly means the back half of the game isn't much fun to play with massive maps to search and huge lists of villagers to find.
7/10
28: Aaero - 2 hours
Aaero is a combination of a rhythm game and rail-shooter, I enjoyed it despite the Dubstep soundtrack. Bouncing between lines to the beat a la Amplitude is great fun but when combat does pop up the game feels a bit too chaotic and it's hard to get a good read on the screen to see if you've locked-on to all the targets that you wanted to. For example, the target reticule, lock-on icon, and danger icon are all the same shade of red. It's very cool and impressive that this was made by only two people! I would like have liked to see more music variety (anything besides more Dubstep, really) and some improvements to the combat, but this was still a fun time.
7/10
29: Destiny 2 - 12 hours
Destiny 2 is polished to an incredible sheen with amazing gunplay and super fluid graphics. I've had problems with both Destiny 1 and 2 of appreciating the game beyond the surface level polish however. Neither the loot or the open world objectives in 2 excited me at all and as a consequence me and the friend I played though 2 with both groaned whenever we realized we needed more levels before moving onto the next story mission. My biggest complaint with the game is that I still can't get into how Bungie does world-building and story-telling. Destiny is rife with incoherent terms, factions who have no personalities, and even the damn menu terms are unnecessarily complicated and deliberately weird. Instead of a Mission Menu Destiny has The Director. Instead of Achievements Destiny has Triumphs. It seems like a small pedantic complaint, but this sort of deliberate and unearned need to differentiate Destiny from every other game is present through every aspect of the experience playing it. A good version of Destiny 2 would be, for me, a game that focused on a being a tight co-op experience instead of a GAAS title designed to keep people playing forever and never really satisfied. It would also be a game focused on telling a good story instead of hopelessly trying to build a convincingly different setting.
7/10
30: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon - 3 hours
I think I might hate this game. It was retro in all of the wrong ways: clunky controls, unfair deaths, and a lives system that puts you in an awkward position every time a key character dies and leaves you wishing the rest would die too so that you could get full-strength attempt at the next section. It's a short game that feels weirdly bloated both in levels and ideas. Rather than acting as an appetizer or proof-of-concept of the full-fledged Bloodstained release this year Curse of the Moon felt like an active warning to stay away from it.
5/10
31: Wandersong - 9 hours
Indie games have a reputation of covering more personal & serious themes than most big budget games are willing to and this is certainly true of Wandersong. What appears to be an overwhelmingly saccharine game based on the visuals & premise actually tells a pretty nuanced story about how people deal with optimism and pessimism. The story was my favorite thing about the game, but it's also worth mentioning that the game does a fantastic job at keeping the same singing mechanic fresh for the ~10 hours it takes to reach the end. In one area you may use the analog stick & song to shape platforms out of vines, while another might have you using the same analog stick & song mechanic to fend off attacking crows. That the same 2-button interaction can remain fresh and interesting for the entire game is really impressive.
9/10
32: Assault Android Cactus - 3 hours
Assault Android Cactus does a great job of bringing bullet hell chaos to a fully 3D 4-player game. At full player count with all the gunfire and lasers bouncing around the game looks like pure chaos and plays beautifully on PC. There are a lot of Androids (characters) in the game at this point that all have a very different feel to them with 2 unique weapons and a unique Ultimate ability. The weapon/ability kits feel sufficiently deep and varied within and no Android feels too-niche. Despite the short length the game does feel very repetitive, and could have benefited from getting out of nearly identical Arena levels and a bit more enemy variety.
8/10
33: Hue - 5 hours
Where Wandersong managed to get ~10 hours of variety out of a color-wheel mechanic, Hue doesn't manage to achieve the same feat. The game has a pretty clever color-block platforming puzzle that it introduces at the start but it feels like the same puzzle is repeated in every level the game ends. The regions/levels in the game are not distinct from one-another and do not introduce any new puzzle ideas, though the last level gets pretty close to feeling different. The story starts off with an interesting philosophical premise about how people see the world through a shared understanding of colors, but it never goes anywhere with it and falls a bit flat overall.
7/10
34: Slay the Spire - 40+ hours
I picked this up during early access based on how promising the concept looked, a rogue-like deck-builder, and finally checked it out when it officially released this year. It's fantastic. Each run feels exciting and new thanks to the huge variety of items, random events, enemies, and bosses. More importantly, each run feels different due to the great variety of cards and possible ways to build out your deck with each of the 3 current characters. Even within a single character the game succeeds here and you might have one "Silent" character run focused around poisoning enemies to slowly defeat them and another focused around card draw and defeating enemies with massive combos. Hell, even if you focused around poison in multiple runs with the Silent character, the way you are poisoning enemies and the overall feel of your deck will still be different. An average run takes ~2 hours and the time goes by in an instant. I think the game is basically perfect and I enjoy it so much that when I did a run the other day, a few months after "finishing" the game (by completing a run on each character), to refresh my memory for this write up I ended up playing for another 10 hours and am looking forward to playing it more over the holidays to unlock all the cards and try for the true ending.
10/10
35: Ape Out - 3 hours
Ape Out is a jazz-inspired take on a Hotline Miami. In it you play an Ape trying to escape from a military medical testing facility. Every action you take and enemies take, whether it is turning around a corner or throwing an enemy into a wall builds sound into the jazz soundtrack. When you're running at full speed down a hallway while bullets fly by you and the music is capturing all that action it's really impressive and near-synesthetic. Where Hotline Miami asks you to memorize levels and enemy patterns and then execute it perfectly, Ape Out has levels that are randomized and reset to something different every time you die. That makes the focus of the game more about reacting to what is going on around you, embracing chaos and movement, instead of planning things in advance. It's very much in the spirit of jazz improvisation and the game does a pretty brilliant job at connecting the soundtrack and gameplay. Ape Out doesn't outlive its welcome and I had so much fun with it that I wish there was an album or two more worth of levels.
9/10
36: Void Bastards - 9 hours
An immersive sim where all the levels are randomly generated seems like a paradoxical premise, but Void Bastards does a pretty good job pulling it off. Within each level you are making decisions about how to spend your finite resources, which paths to take, and whether to use technology & stealth to succeed or brute force. At the start of the game this works pretty great and the game makes an impressive first impression with lots of weapon/upgrade variety and simple but fun combat encounters. Once you get deeper into the game you start to see that there is a severe lack of enemy variety, and that exploring ships more thoroughly to find all the secrets and cool stuff is never worth the risk. All the levels start to feel the same and B-lining towards objectives becomes the best strategy as the enemy numbers & difficulty grows. You'll have seen everything in the game within the first 2 hours but it goes much longer than that even if you focus on the critical path. Void Bastards is an impressive accomplishment but one that needed a bit more variety and balancing to be a great game. Worth mentioning that the game has an amazing art style and the sci-fi comic book look was the one thing about the game that never got old.
7/10
September
37: Horizon Chase Zero - 8 hours
Horizon Chase Zero is a retro 2D arcade racer designed to honor the racing games of the 8 & 16-bit era. The very first thing I noticed when I started playing is that it has a great sensation of speed that I didn't realize was missing from modern 3D racing games. Even with the starter car stages fly by you at breakneck speed, making every moment of the game feel exciting. The stage visuals are beautifully varied as you tour around the world and the levels that start during the day and transition to night are amazing to watch unfold. On the downside the soundtrack needed a bit more variety to match the variety that exists in all the levels. The difficulty is also a bit uneven and it feels like the middle of the game is where the hard levels exist and was the only time I felt like I needed to replay older levels in order to progress. Still, I had a great time playing this and it's proof that arcade racers still have a place in the modern era.
8/10
38: Control - 12 hours
Control doesn't make a great first impression. The narrative starts off deliberately confusing and drops you in with almost no set up. The combat initially feels stiff, difficult, and overly simplistic. The layout of the Oldest House is confusing and hard to navigate. I ended up loving the game by the end. They manage to tell a cool story in a cool way and they justify starting you off in the dark. The combat quickly adds important abilities to your toolkit that allow you to get around easily and deal with enemies in creative and satisfying ways. It's fantastic by the end, feeling a playable version of the battles I dreamed about while reading X-Men comics as a kid. The highest praise I can offer is that the game felt short, despite it being a meaty 12-hour campaign and longer than most games I played this year, and I didn't want it to end. I hope it did well for Remedy because I'd really like to see more games in the setting.
9/10
39: Judgment - 27 hours
I played Yakuza Kiwami 1 last year and Yakuza 0 the year before that. I like the series for the unique setting, fun characters, and the total dedication to story telling that they have. Still, for me these are games I like in-spite of the big problems they have: bad mini-games, mediocre combat, and a crazy 1:8 ration of gameplay to cut-scenes. Judgment has the best version of Yakuza combat out of what I've played but it's still not great: every combat encounter feels the same and combat lacks weight and intention in your actions. All of the other mini-games/game segments are almost universally awful. I groaned every time a drone segment or tailing mission came up. Weak gameplay means that my enjoyment of Yakuza games is almost entirely based on the quality of the story, where Judgment is a mixed bag. The story becomes increasingly implausible as you play and the last 1/3 of the story definitely felt like the weakest part of the game. I liked the story overall and really enjoyed Judgment's cast of characters but it wasn't enough to make up for the weak gameplay this time.
7/10
40: Wolfenstein Youngblood - 10 hours
I'm a huge fan of the Dishonored series so hearing that Arkane Studios were going to help develop a co-op Wolfenstein with immersive sim elements was exciting news to me. In practice the levels feel only very lightly inspired by immersive sims and it never quite feels like you are building your own path through a level or that exploring is rewarded with cool items or stories. The mission design on top of those levels is very repetitive and you'll revisit the same areas or ones nearly identical to each other to complete missions that also feel identical to each other. I enjoyed the presentation of the game and the fun "sister duo kill Nazis" spirit of it that is reinforced through banter and elevator dances. The combat is also sometimes thrilling with guns that all feel fun to shoot and enemies that are fun to shoot at. As a whole the game feels underbaked, like it needed more time and mission, level, and combat encounter variety. That said, even mediocre co-op games pretty fun with a friend and Wolfenstein is no exception.
6/10
41: Gears 5 - 12 hours
Gears 5 feels like a massive step upwards from Gears 4 which I also played earlier this year. Both the tech weapons and robotic enemies in Gears 4 receive a substantial upgrade and are actually a bit of fun to fight with and against. The game also feels a bit more comfortable letting you use older/classic weapons throughout the story and I never felt like I was stuck with a loser. The story builds on lore from Gears 3 and answers interesting questions instead of feeling like a "next generation of characters" rehash. The visuals are gorgeous and colorful and the game does a great job with visual and mission variety throughout the lengthy campaign. I liked the addition of a third player in co-op though a competent human playing Jack does sort of break the game. I didn't spend a ton of time in the multiplayer but it seemed like a fun version of Gears PvP. Overall Gears 5 is a really promising next step for the series.
9/10
42: Monster Hunter World: Iceborne - 54 hours
MHW was my GOTY last year but I did not get into the post-game much. After a ~ 1 year break from finishing it Iceborne felt like more of the same in a way that wasn't immediately welcome. I played solo this time as well because friends had either not finished the base game (a requirement), had moved on, or both. The expansion really throws you right back in the fire, asking you to defeat a new monster and relearn the combat right away. It took me a few hours to get back into the swing of things with the Chargeblade but once I got over that initial hump and started using SoS for multiplayer I fell in love again and the hours just melted away. The expansion feels pretty packed with new content, though the single new environment doesn't quite stand up to some of the originals in MHW and it looks very same-y throughout. The new monsters are great and there seem to be a ton of them and the story is pretty well-done. I think the expansion does lean into a few of the post-game elements of MHW in ways that I didn't love, and it feels a touch more grindy than the original campaign with many weapon/armor that you'll want for normal story progression locked behind extremely rare drops. Overall I loved it though, just like MHW, and I can't wait to see the future of the franchise.
9/10
October
43: Untitled Goose Game - 3 hours
Untitled Goose Game is irreverent and charming, content to let you run around as a goose in a small English town causing low-stakes chaos. The game was a total hit at parties every time someone brought it out which I think speaks to the game's strengths: it's a bit more fun to watch than to play. As the person controlling the game you might be annoyed by the clunky feeling of the controls as the game asks you to do increasingly difficult things towards the end, especially as those tasks are near people who can shoo into a corner or otherwise cause your goose to get stuck. As the person watching the game, the clunky controls and questionable competence of the goose only make it more fun to watch.
7/10
44: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (2019) - 16 hours
I played the original Gameboy version several times as a kid so this was an interesting remake for me. Compared to other 2D Zelda games it feels pretty short and confined, like an introduction to the series rather than an entry that stands alongside the greats. When you remember that it was a Gameboy game though, the game feels huge and lengthy. Looking back as an adult it is retroactively amazing that they managed to cram so much content and such a large map onto a 512 KB cartridge that played on a 160x144 pixel display. I was really impressed by the art style of remake where characters and environments often evoke stop-motion clay. It's still a fun and pretty unique Zelda-game, story-wise, but it's a little shallow if you compare it directly to all of the other amazing 2D Zelda games that have come out in the 25 years since it was originally released.
8/10
November
45: Concrete Genie - 8 hours
The artwork is front and center for Concrete Genie which is appropriate for a game about painting. Everything about how the game looks is great: the graffiti monsters that are full of life, characters reminiscent of stop-motion animation from yester-year, and all the bright and interesting things you cover the walls of the town with. While everything looks great, the gameplay falls a bit short of the creative painting dream you might imagine when you first see the game. Painting is more akin to using stamps and the game places several limits on how and where you can paint. With the only activity you can do in the first ¾ of the game being that painting mechanic, things feel repetitive and get stale pretty fast. A late-game shift in the gameplay is welcome but does not control particularly well and feels like something out of a PS2 game. Overall, Concrete Genie feels like a really creative and passionate product that falls a bit short of the polish, gameplay depth, and length that you'd want from a modern game. There is a lot of charm and a lot to like here though and the friendly and mischievous graffiti monsters never failed to put a smile on my face.
7/10
46: The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan - 5 hours
I'm a big fan of Until Dawn but have not been impressed by any of Supermassive's follow-up work. Hidden Agenda & Inpatient both felt like short and underbaked side projects and not successful iteration on the things I liked about Until Dawn: the branching narratives, the creative and tense QTEs, the psychological profiling the game does on you the player, and the great mesh between a watchable a playable game for groups. Man of Medan wears its lower budget on its sleeve compared to Until Dawn but I'm happy to say that it feels like a solid follow-up. Passing a controller and playing with a small group was my favorite way to play Until Dawn and Man of Medan fully embraces that with two entirely different ways to play co-op. The QTEs aren't quite as creative this time around as the game is not exclusive to one platform and cannot lean into unique controller features like the light strip on PS4. The branching isn't nearly as robust this time around and the game is a much shorter experience overall but this is matched by a lower budget/cost. I hope the game does well enough to make more "Dark Pictures Anthology" series games beyond the already-announced sequel and that we continue to get more games in this unique style.
7/10
47: Devil May Cry 5 - 11 hours
DMC is a series that I kind of lost track of after the first one was released. It stuck with fixed camera angles longer than most series and felt pretty dated at the time the sequels came out. More importantly DMC seemed really juvenile both in how the main character(s) acted and in the amount of fan service from the female characters. I was surprised when I checked out DMC5 and found that I was really enjoying myself. Dante & Nero are fairly likable characters here and V gets less screen time but is appropriately mysterious. The humor, weirdness, and fan service in the game are still not always welcome, but at least feel like they true to the Japanese developers rather than just being a marketing gimmick. The star of the game is definitely the combat which is chock-full of variety and has about a million different ways to approach each encounter. Everything runs at a beautiful 60FPS and as a result the combat always feels fluid and responsive. Nero was my favorite character to play with his Robotic Devil-Breaker arm keeping combat variety moving at all times as they rotate out and are replaced during combat and your moveset changes a little bit accordingly. I think the game does expect a little too much from players as you switch between 3 characters that play fairly differently and so many weapons & special attack mechanics for each character on top of that, but I appreciated how much variety was there for people that wanted to perfect their gameplay or replay the game. This is definitely one of my favorite things I played this year.
9/10
48: Patterned - 10 hours
Patterned is a very simple and traditional visual puzzle game on Apple Arcade. Each image is a repeating pattern so finding where to slot each puzzle piece can occasionally be tricky, but the difficulty remains very low throughout. There are ~120 puzzles in the game but the gameplay never changes or evolves in anyway, so it does get stale quickly. For me this was strictly something I played to kill time while commuting or during flights. The best aspect of the game is that all of the solved puzzle images are available to use as high-resolution wallpaper on your mobile device and there is loads of great looking artwork to consider.
6/10
49: Luigi's Mansion 3 - 16 hours
Luigi's Mansion 3 is the first game in the series that I've spend much time playing and certainly the first I've finished. I loved the setting of the game and how charming and full of personality all of the characters and ghosts were despite having almost no text or voice dialogue. I did not expect, but greatly appreciated, all the weird themes the floors of the mansion explore. I loved how every single room in the mansion felt like it was stuffed with secrets to find, to the point where it often felt like the core of the game. On the downside, I wish the economy of the game had been more interesting as you spend 90% of the game sucking up coins and there are 0 interesting things to use them on. Likewise, the collectibles in the game were fun to chase, but ultimately provided no benefit either and felt like a missed opportunity. Still, this was an all-around pleasant game to play and it felt like a great value too by modern standards with a campaign that is stuffed with content.
8/10
50: Grindstone - 34 hours
Grindstone is based on pretty tried-and-true mobile game design: matching and chaining same-colored rows of objects to try to get high scores, but it rises above most of those games in a few ways. First off, it's got the typical Cabybara games art style and polish complete with lots of great looking enemies and environments. Second, it could have very easily felt too repetitive since you're repeating the same basic puzzle gameplay loop for ~30 hours. Instead the game is constantly throwing enemies, environmental mechanics, items at you to use, and even bosses to fight. There are 150 levels and each set of 15 feels pretty unique both visually and mechanically. Lastly, and most importantly, since it's an Apple Arcade game instead of a mobile F2P game there are no time-wasting mechanics and the game is not designed to try to get you to spend money or to play a certain number of sessions a day. Instead of a metric-and-revenue focused game like most in the genre, Grindstone is simply focused on fun. It's the most exciting game in the genre since Puzzle Quest and even that series eventually fell victim to F2P mobile game design.
9/10
51: Pilgrims - 1 hour
Pilgrims is another adventure game from Amanita design which attempts to make the puzzle-solving more organic an open than the "only 1 key fits" design of most adventure games. This made it easier to progress in the game, as solutions to puzzles were a bit easier work out, but I was still left in situations expecting a solution I had in mind to work only for the game to say it wasn't valid. I liked the art style quite a bit and appreciate how the game expresses character motivations and emotions without ever using dialogue but still don't like the genre.
7/10
December
52: Pit People - 8 hours
Pit People is a co-op tactical RPG from the Behemoth. The big "twist" on the genre is that Pit People embraces RNG: you cannot assign targets for your units to attack, instead they randomly attack anyone without range of their weapon. This is what most of the complaints in the community focus on, but I didn't mind it much. The random attack targets mean that when you're playing with a friend it's just another thing that can go wrong during battle to laugh about and you end up teaming up a bit more often to try to ensure that threatening or low health targets die. My bigger problem with the game is how slow combat feels. The sense of power or character progression is non-existent despite the game showering you with loot after every battle, and this means that for the entire game you're stuck with characters doing tiny amounts of damage. A single battle can take over an hour as teams slowly chip health away from each other and it can take 5-6 turns to defeat an enemy even if everyone on your team can hit them. The whole game drags as a result of this and all the side content & optional battles on the map (of which there are * tons* of, when I finished the game my completion % was ~15%) is completely unattractive when you know that any random battle will take an extraordinary amount of time to finish. The game does have a fun sense of humor and is nice to look at but it's a shame that such a core component of the game, the combat, falls so short.
6/10
And with that I'm done! I didn't end up playing a couple GOTY contenders that I was planning to like Sekiro, RE2, or Outer Wilds but there is always next year. It's also possible I'll finish another game or two during the holidays but my current plan is just to play lots more Slay the Spire.
This year was a bit crazy for me career-wise and current events continue to be depressing as fuck so I was always grateful to have this challenge and finishing fun games to focus on. Thanks again to everyone else who participated and Wozzer for running it.
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104. Heaven's Vault (17 hours)
A very addictive language-deciphering system serves as the driving force of what turned out to be a very compelling sci-fi mystery.
Full list to date
A very addictive language-deciphering system serves as the driving force of what turned out to be a very compelling sci-fi mystery.
Full list to date
Well, I'm not going to make it this year because, unlike last year where I did do 52, I haven't been trying to get through as many as I can, but I'm going to post because I like to keep track of them. Some are old favourites that I replayed.
Games Completed:
Games Completed:
- Short Games: Superflight, Refunct
- Onimusha: Warlords
- Dark Souls 3
- Resident Evil 4
- Resident Evil 2 (2019)
- Super Hexagon
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
- Devil May Cry 5
- Sekiro
- Crash Bandicoot
- Mega Man X
- Mega Man 2
- Mega Man Maverick Hunter X
- Mega Man X2
- Mega Man X3
- Mega Man X4
- Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
- Sunset Overdrive
- To The Moon
- Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
- Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
- Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled
- Psychonauts
- Firewatch
- Bloodborne
- Spyro the Dragon
- Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!
- Spyro: Year of the Dragon
- Portal 2
- Darksiders
- Amid Evil
- Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate
- Celeste
- Costume Quest
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Kingdom Hearts
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
- Resident Evil 5
- Shovel Knight: King of Cards
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Finally got up to 52 games last night, kinda cheated counting life is strange 2 as 2 games 👀 but I'm still gunning to finish a couple more before the years end
Detroit, DMC3, Transistor, Astrobot, Shenmue, Chase cold case, Murdered soul suspect, Red dead 2, DMC5, MGRising, Golf peaks, Deltarune, Katana zero, Guacamelee 2, 25th ward, Travis strikes again, Sekiro, dead space 3, sonic generations, resi 2, Yoku island, Ori blind forest, Evil within dlc, Mario bros 3, dishonored DOTO, octo expansion, LiS 2 ep2, LiS ep3, wolf cyberpilot, trials and tribulations, Tacoma, FE three houses, astral chain, Catherine FB, links awakening, sky, sayorana, what the golf, untitled goose game, hollow knight, mark of the ninja, box boy and girl, gato roboto, iceborne, death stranding, mega man 11, poke sword, Lara Croft go, rime, abzu, Luigis mansion 3 and shovel knight king of cards
I ain't ever committing to this again though, gunna try the end finishing Monster boy and Yooka laylee
cant decide what my fave game of 2019 is, hard to decide between Sekiro, Astral chain and Death Stranding.
Detroit, DMC3, Transistor, Astrobot, Shenmue, Chase cold case, Murdered soul suspect, Red dead 2, DMC5, MGRising, Golf peaks, Deltarune, Katana zero, Guacamelee 2, 25th ward, Travis strikes again, Sekiro, dead space 3, sonic generations, resi 2, Yoku island, Ori blind forest, Evil within dlc, Mario bros 3, dishonored DOTO, octo expansion, LiS 2 ep2, LiS ep3, wolf cyberpilot, trials and tribulations, Tacoma, FE three houses, astral chain, Catherine FB, links awakening, sky, sayorana, what the golf, untitled goose game, hollow knight, mark of the ninja, box boy and girl, gato roboto, iceborne, death stranding, mega man 11, poke sword, Lara Croft go, rime, abzu, Luigis mansion 3 and shovel knight king of cards
I ain't ever committing to this again though, gunna try the end finishing Monster boy and Yooka laylee
cant decide what my fave game of 2019 is, hard to decide between Sekiro, Astral chain and Death Stranding.
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Main Post
93. Picross Jenia - 59h40 - 11.12
Yep. More picross. I think i got that out of the system for the time being. The game itself is alright. Has a lot in common with the other mobile picross games i've been playing. Smooth and snappy, and that's pretty much what matters for their purpose.
Not sure if i'll be actually finishing anything else this year as i've been mostly dabbling in longer games and also a lot of games of which i've been playing for 1-2 hours and putting aside for good. Cleaning the backlog from titles that i was kinda interested but kinda iffy about so to say.
93. Picross Jenia - 59h40 - 11.12
Yep. More picross. I think i got that out of the system for the time being. The game itself is alright. Has a lot in common with the other mobile picross games i've been playing. Smooth and snappy, and that's pretty much what matters for their purpose.
Not sure if i'll be actually finishing anything else this year as i've been mostly dabbling in longer games and also a lot of games of which i've been playing for 1-2 hours and putting aside for good. Cleaning the backlog from titles that i was kinda interested but kinda iffy about so to say.
Forgot to do November's post the other week so better later than never:
Master Post
Games beaten in October:
41. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (Switch) | 7th Nov - 10 hrs | 4/5
42. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (NSO on Switch) | 11th Nov - 6 hrs | 3/5
43. Battalion Wars (Gamecube) | 18th Nov - 7 hrs | 3/5
44. Skyrim (Switch) | 30th Nov - 30 hrs } 5/5
Progress so far: 44 games
January - 5 games
February - 1 game
March - 2 games
April - 4 games
May - 2 games
June - 5 games
July - 8 games
August - 5 games
September - 4 games
October - 4 games
November - 4 games
Thoughts on November
41. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - This was the N. Sane trilogy remake and I liked it a lot, though I think I was expecting it to be better than the first game. It was still fun but a few of the death routes were really annoying (thanks, whoever decided backtracking through the snow level one was a good idea) and the ending barely felt like it happened (weeks later and I still forget that I did in fact beat it). The first game kind of had that problem too and it's not a game you play for plot, but with all the between level cutscenes I think I expected slightly more. Ah well, still a fun enough time, 4/5.
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42. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - This one disappointed me. It wasn't bad, I can see why people like it, but it just never clicked with me. There weren't a ton of memorable platforming segments, and exploration was fine enough but I was never compelled to do a lot of it. I do like the art style and I did have some fun but yeah, I don't think this is a game I'll go back to, so... yeah, 3/5.
43. Battalion Wars - Alright this game is a weird one. I like its concept, shooters are a genre I really wish Nintendo would tackle more often because when they do, we get some really interesting games out of it. I like the RTS elements, though the AI could be better at listening to what you tell it to do. My biggest complaint are the vehicles. Vehicle segments from this generation of consoles never seem to age well, and unfortunately this game has a LOT of vehicles you need to handle. I had a lot of fun, but I was also frustrated more than I wanted. That said the game is almost worth it alone for how gloriously wrong the comedic Dreamworks/Pixar-esque tone of the story and characters is in contrast to the horrors of war. I had a good time. A flawed, good time: 3/5.
44. Skyrim - You guys know why Skyrim is great, I won't get into it. 5/5, I got tricked by the Devil in a bar so how about we finish the main quest next year.
TOTAL: 44 games, 3 weeks left
Master Post
Games beaten in October:
41. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (Switch) | 7th Nov - 10 hrs | 4/5
42. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (NSO on Switch) | 11th Nov - 6 hrs | 3/5
43. Battalion Wars (Gamecube) | 18th Nov - 7 hrs | 3/5
44. Skyrim (Switch) | 30th Nov - 30 hrs } 5/5
Progress so far: 44 games
January - 5 games
February - 1 game
March - 2 games
April - 4 games
May - 2 games
June - 5 games
July - 8 games
August - 5 games
September - 4 games
October - 4 games
November - 4 games
Thoughts on November
41. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - This was the N. Sane trilogy remake and I liked it a lot, though I think I was expecting it to be better than the first game. It was still fun but a few of the death routes were really annoying (thanks, whoever decided backtracking through the snow level one was a good idea) and the ending barely felt like it happened (weeks later and I still forget that I did in fact beat it). The first game kind of had that problem too and it's not a game you play for plot, but with all the between level cutscenes I think I expected slightly more. Ah well, still a fun enough time, 4/5.
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42. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - This one disappointed me. It wasn't bad, I can see why people like it, but it just never clicked with me. There weren't a ton of memorable platforming segments, and exploration was fine enough but I was never compelled to do a lot of it. I do like the art style and I did have some fun but yeah, I don't think this is a game I'll go back to, so... yeah, 3/5.
43. Battalion Wars - Alright this game is a weird one. I like its concept, shooters are a genre I really wish Nintendo would tackle more often because when they do, we get some really interesting games out of it. I like the RTS elements, though the AI could be better at listening to what you tell it to do. My biggest complaint are the vehicles. Vehicle segments from this generation of consoles never seem to age well, and unfortunately this game has a LOT of vehicles you need to handle. I had a lot of fun, but I was also frustrated more than I wanted. That said the game is almost worth it alone for how gloriously wrong the comedic Dreamworks/Pixar-esque tone of the story and characters is in contrast to the horrors of war. I had a good time. A flawed, good time: 3/5.
44. Skyrim - You guys know why Skyrim is great, I won't get into it. 5/5, I got tricked by the Devil in a bar so how about we finish the main quest next year.
TOTAL: 44 games, 3 weeks left
I'm going to have to update my posts as I completed a bunch since then. I'll finish the year under 40 games. Which I'm super proud of as the summer was a wash cause I put in a lot of extra hours, I got married in the fall and just bought a house. Getting close to 40 still shocks me.
Main Post
I did it! I was going to be really annoyed if I didn't hit 52 this year!
I recently got a new job that has been taking a lot more of my time so I really thought I wouldn't be able to make 52. I want to hold off on counting Smash Bros Ultimate until the final character of the season pass is released and I get some time with them despite having played like 90 hours of it already because I tend to count fighting games by season. I wasn't as active with Tekken or SFV this year so I'll probably count them late next year compounding the content of two years.
I've just been playing too many big time-consuming games this year. I recently bought a bunch of indie games so I predict the start of next year giving me a strong head start. Probably got another game or two left in me before the end of the year but I wanted to make sure my 52 were counted!
OCTOBER GAMES(cont.)
45. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch) | 18th Oct - 175hrs | 5/5
The way I play games is going to mess up the stats for this year haha. I must have had 120 hours from 2017, then I spent random amounts of time throughout 2018 playing the DLC and I finally spent another like dozen hours recently cleaning up the rest of the shrines and I finally feel done with the game. I probably won't do all of the korok seeds though. Ballad of the Champions is a fantastic piece of DLC, the final boss is my favorite boss in the entire game - I hope they do interesting bosses like that in the sequel.
46. Assassin's Creed Origins - The Curse of the Pharaohs (PS4) | 25th Oct - 20hrs | 3/5
Another carryover from 2018, I thought I was ready to jump back into AC but I'm still burned out on this style of game. There's just so much for my completionist self to do but so little of it is consequential. I don't know if I can handle this again in AC Odyssey but I bought it anyway because I never learn.
47. Resident Evil 2 (2019) (PS4) | 30th Oct - 14hrs | 5/5
As previously stated, I'm so much less familiar with the earlier Resident Evil games so I never played the original. I absolutely love this remake, coming fresh off of RE1 remake, all of the quality of life stuff was really appreciated. The map layout was also much less annoying to me and I was able to memorize it fairly well in comparison. Really looking forward to RE3make, I hope they make RE8 after and learn from these games instead of continuing from RE7 (which I also haven't played yet, shhhh).
NOVEMBER GAMES
48. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (3DS) | 9th Nov - 8hrs | 5/5
MISSILE IS THE BEST. The low poly art in Ghost Trick is fantastic and I wish more games would pursue this aesthetic. This game is just oozing with personality with all of its bright and unique characters. I'd say the game isn't really challenging at all but the mechanics are fun to mess around with. It wouldn't make sense for this game to get a sequel but maybe it would be neat to see another game set in the same world with similar mechanics?
49. WarioWare Gold (3DS) | 15th Nov - 10hrs | 5/5
WarioWare is so good, why is this a franchise that's struggling to survive? It's just so fun! I had finished the campaign much earlier in the year but I put off playing all the various arcade modes and unlocking every mini-game. I don't think I'll get all of the collectibles but the toys and extra minigames in that section of the game are fun too. I hope we get a multiplayer WarioWare game on the Switch because that's an experience I've never gotten to do.[/QUOTE]
DECEMBER GAMES
50. Pokemon Shield (Switch) | 12th Dec - 122hrs | 4/5
This game is fun damn it! I've played a fair amount of Pokemon games, I have a massive nearly complete living dex up to Gen 7, and I still enjoyed a lot of Shield. I caught and bred all 400 Pokemon! (with some caveats but shhh). My one major complaint is the removal of the GTS which was my best friend in completing my living dex in previous gens. Trading with codes is such a chore and going onto forums to find people to trade with feels archaic - much love to the trading thread on Resetera though. Will I be suckered again into whatever Pokemon game comes out next year? iunno. We'll see.
51. Sky: Children of the Light (iOS) | 15th Dec - 7hrs | 4/5
So I finally upgraded my phone and got an iPhone 11 Pro. I had to see if any games were pushing the limits of the platform and was also curious about the newly added Dualshock 4 support. To my surprise, thatgamecompany had developed a new exclusive game on mobile! Sky is very much a spiritual successor to Journey and I ultimately wish it had come to consoles because it is gorgeous but I hate fighting with touch screen controls and the DS4 would randomly disconnect. Also you have to hold the PS button for 15 seconds to turn it off, it's such a weird choice. I'm giving a lot of caveats that make this sound bad, the game is breathtaking, the music is beautiful, the environmental storytelling is elevated from Journey, play it.
52. Ape Out (Switch) | 15th Dec - 4hrs | 4/5
The dynamic music in Ape Out is downright hypnotic! It really pushed me to keep going when I was frustrated. Maybe I'm just bad at the game but some of the later levels felt very random and hard to react to for me, especially when it was big open maps with not much to hide behind. Coupled with later levels getting much larger and longer, the game really felt like it hit a sudden difficulty spike. However, I also feel this game doesn't overstay its welcome and explores its premise exactly as much as it needs to.
I did it! I was going to be really annoyed if I didn't hit 52 this year!
I recently got a new job that has been taking a lot more of my time so I really thought I wouldn't be able to make 52. I want to hold off on counting Smash Bros Ultimate until the final character of the season pass is released and I get some time with them despite having played like 90 hours of it already because I tend to count fighting games by season. I wasn't as active with Tekken or SFV this year so I'll probably count them late next year compounding the content of two years.
I've just been playing too many big time-consuming games this year. I recently bought a bunch of indie games so I predict the start of next year giving me a strong head start. Probably got another game or two left in me before the end of the year but I wanted to make sure my 52 were counted!
OCTOBER GAMES(cont.)
45. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch) | 18th Oct - 175hrs | 5/5
The way I play games is going to mess up the stats for this year haha. I must have had 120 hours from 2017, then I spent random amounts of time throughout 2018 playing the DLC and I finally spent another like dozen hours recently cleaning up the rest of the shrines and I finally feel done with the game. I probably won't do all of the korok seeds though. Ballad of the Champions is a fantastic piece of DLC, the final boss is my favorite boss in the entire game - I hope they do interesting bosses like that in the sequel.
46. Assassin's Creed Origins - The Curse of the Pharaohs (PS4) | 25th Oct - 20hrs | 3/5
Another carryover from 2018, I thought I was ready to jump back into AC but I'm still burned out on this style of game. There's just so much for my completionist self to do but so little of it is consequential. I don't know if I can handle this again in AC Odyssey but I bought it anyway because I never learn.
47. Resident Evil 2 (2019) (PS4) | 30th Oct - 14hrs | 5/5
As previously stated, I'm so much less familiar with the earlier Resident Evil games so I never played the original. I absolutely love this remake, coming fresh off of RE1 remake, all of the quality of life stuff was really appreciated. The map layout was also much less annoying to me and I was able to memorize it fairly well in comparison. Really looking forward to RE3make, I hope they make RE8 after and learn from these games instead of continuing from RE7 (which I also haven't played yet, shhhh).
NOVEMBER GAMES
48. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (3DS) | 9th Nov - 8hrs | 5/5
MISSILE IS THE BEST. The low poly art in Ghost Trick is fantastic and I wish more games would pursue this aesthetic. This game is just oozing with personality with all of its bright and unique characters. I'd say the game isn't really challenging at all but the mechanics are fun to mess around with. It wouldn't make sense for this game to get a sequel but maybe it would be neat to see another game set in the same world with similar mechanics?
49. WarioWare Gold (3DS) | 15th Nov - 10hrs | 5/5
WarioWare is so good, why is this a franchise that's struggling to survive? It's just so fun! I had finished the campaign much earlier in the year but I put off playing all the various arcade modes and unlocking every mini-game. I don't think I'll get all of the collectibles but the toys and extra minigames in that section of the game are fun too. I hope we get a multiplayer WarioWare game on the Switch because that's an experience I've never gotten to do.[/QUOTE]
DECEMBER GAMES
50. Pokemon Shield (Switch) | 12th Dec - 122hrs | 4/5
This game is fun damn it! I've played a fair amount of Pokemon games, I have a massive nearly complete living dex up to Gen 7, and I still enjoyed a lot of Shield. I caught and bred all 400 Pokemon! (with some caveats but shhh). My one major complaint is the removal of the GTS which was my best friend in completing my living dex in previous gens. Trading with codes is such a chore and going onto forums to find people to trade with feels archaic - much love to the trading thread on Resetera though. Will I be suckered again into whatever Pokemon game comes out next year? iunno. We'll see.
51. Sky: Children of the Light (iOS) | 15th Dec - 7hrs | 4/5
So I finally upgraded my phone and got an iPhone 11 Pro. I had to see if any games were pushing the limits of the platform and was also curious about the newly added Dualshock 4 support. To my surprise, thatgamecompany had developed a new exclusive game on mobile! Sky is very much a spiritual successor to Journey and I ultimately wish it had come to consoles because it is gorgeous but I hate fighting with touch screen controls and the DS4 would randomly disconnect. Also you have to hold the PS button for 15 seconds to turn it off, it's such a weird choice. I'm giving a lot of caveats that make this sound bad, the game is breathtaking, the music is beautiful, the environmental storytelling is elevated from Journey, play it.
52. Ape Out (Switch) | 15th Dec - 4hrs | 4/5
The dynamic music in Ape Out is downright hypnotic! It really pushed me to keep going when I was frustrated. Maybe I'm just bad at the game but some of the later levels felt very random and hard to react to for me, especially when it was big open maps with not much to hide behind. Coupled with later levels getting much larger and longer, the game really felt like it hit a sudden difficulty spike. However, I also feel this game doesn't overstay its welcome and explores its premise exactly as much as it needs to.
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69: Shenmue (Start: 12/11/2019. End: 12/16/2019)
I have a lot of thoughts about Shenmue. An ambitious game that left a huge impact, both positive and negative, on the industry. This game, in and of itself, was not responsible for Sega's downfall. But it wasn't their savior either. For people who enjoy seeing how video games have evolved over the years, this one is a must-play, even though many of its mechanics do not hold up. Many of its ideas have been developed further in other games that have come out since. But at its heart, this is a simple tale of a man seeking revenge for his father's murder.
Also, I had this game beaten before Christmas in-universe, lol.
I have a lot of thoughts about Shenmue. An ambitious game that left a huge impact, both positive and negative, on the industry. This game, in and of itself, was not responsible for Sega's downfall. But it wasn't their savior either. For people who enjoy seeing how video games have evolved over the years, this one is a must-play, even though many of its mechanics do not hold up. Many of its ideas have been developed further in other games that have come out since. But at its heart, this is a simple tale of a man seeking revenge for his father's murder.
Also, I had this game beaten before Christmas in-universe, lol.
Main Post part 1
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33. Ion Fury - 15 hours
Ion Fury is an impressive example of what can be achieved even with such old tools as the Build engine. It's a fast-paced, old-school First Person Shooter, and it plays so damn good it doesn't feel outdated at all. Compared to most of the modern scripted shooting galleries, Ion Fury actually feels fresh, and it was fun for me to play it like it's the 90s again.
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33. Ion Fury - 15 hours
Ion Fury is an impressive example of what can be achieved even with such old tools as the Build engine. It's a fast-paced, old-school First Person Shooter, and it plays so damn good it doesn't feel outdated at all. Compared to most of the modern scripted shooting galleries, Ion Fury actually feels fresh, and it was fun for me to play it like it's the 90s again.
First of all, the level design in this game is just amazing, stages have interesting layouts and always full of secrets. Levels in Ion Fury are extremely fun to explore, looking for hidden places with supplies or just little easter eggs. Designers really outdid themselves in this game, they've really tried to use all available tools in creating interesting situations. Like I love what they did with mirrors in this game, you can see your character reflection in them and sometimes can even spot the enemy who's hiding behind the wall. Working mirrors is a huge problem in recent graphics-heavy games, so it's great that developers tried to use the advantages of the older tech to provide something unique compared to modern titles.
The gameplay itself is very fun and challenging, I was playing on Ultra Viscera difficulty and that's where this game really shines. Ion Fury is action-packed and not an easy game, but it never feels unfair, enemies threat is perfectly balanced with weapons that you have at your disposal. If you want to beat this game, you need to constantly strafe and play it smart - and also use quickload hotkey A LOT. Yeah, at first it can be kinda frustrating, but once you learn how to dodge projectiles and don't forget to constantly switch between weapons depending on the combat situation, Ion Fury becomes addictive and fun to play.
Despite the age of Build engine, I think Ion Fury looks great because they nailed the artstyle and it looks really charming. I loved those first stages on the streets of some futuristic city, and excellent work with audio only adds to this game's atmosphere. I can't praise enough the soundtrack for this game, it's like it's taken straight from the '90s, and those electro-industrial tunes are totally my jam.
Unfortunately, I can't say that Ion Fury is a perfect game. First of all, the storyline is seriously lacking in depth and basically doesn't exist. I'm not saying that something like retro FPS really in the need of the complex plot with twists and drama, but there's simply not enough lore about the game's world. We don't know the protagonist's backstory and what happened to this city, only that we are killing bad guys who did the bad things. All those cool looking levels are just empty decorations for arenas where you shoot enemies, and it's a shame because it feels it could have been so much more than this. The protagonist and main villain are occasionally talking to each other, but despite good voice acting, those dialogues get old pretty fast because there's literally nothing else happening in the storyline.
Maybe it could have been less of a problem if Ion Fury wasn't such a long game. It took me 15 hours to complete it, but as much as I loved the gameplay, I think it could have been much better if the game was like twice shorter than this. It was a mistake to release it in Early Access because Ion Fury suffers from uneven pacing. It's clear that developers were adding those stages as they were ready without doing full playtests because soon after the first few stages, they forgot to start adding new things to the gameplay. You unlock all of the available weapons within the first few hours, and the game barely introducing any new enemy types, so Ion Fury slowly starts to become repetitive after each new stage. The fact that later stages are moving from city levels to those boring dark undergrounds and labs only making it worse, I hated those types of levels in old games and I still hate them now.
There are also boss fights in this game, but they were all kinda underwhelming. You just need to kill the overpowered enemy by repeating the same tactic over and over again until his health drops to zero. They are not hard, it just takes way too much time to beat them, like with that Revenant boss battle - it's like his hitboxes are messed up and he simply ignores most of the damage. And during this battle, you can resupply only with chaingun ammo by picking only 10 bullets at once, and to pick more you have to stand still for a few seconds, which in this game is the equivalent of the death sentence. Last boss fight was a mess too, I honestly hoped to see something more memorable and interesting that… What we got in the end.
Well, despite the lack of proper worldbuilding and storytelling, disappointing boss fights and not enough variety in enemy types, Ion Fury is still a great game. It slightly overstays its welcome, but the gameplay and level design are so good they help to ignore repetitiveness and lack of surprises in the last stages. Yeah, it could have been better, but I still had a blast with this game, and considering its price, I definitely recommend you check it out. It has an extremely satisfying shooting, excellent sound design and hand-made levels that are fun to explore, so in my book, it is worth a shot. I just hope that the studio will listen to the criticism and next time won't go with the Early Access route because linear FPS is not a very suitable genre for that kind of development process.
I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get any more completed between now and the new year so below are games 30 - 38.
Main list is here.
GAME #30: Dirt Rally 2.0
Codemasters - PC - ★★☆☆☆
Completion State:
Completed a number of career and freeplay championships in both rally and rally cross (~15 hours, 195/1000 Xbox achievements)
Comments:
I don't think I like rally games that much, the courses are visually uninteresting and are too punishing when you only have 5 restarts per event, particularly when the load times are significant.
I'm also not a big fan of not being able to enter the career (for want of a better term) events when racenet is down despite it being a strictly single player affair.
All in all an OK simcade rally and rally cross game but not really my thing.
GAME #31: Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
CD PROJEKT RED - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Completed the game (78 hours, 33% Steam achievements)
Comments:
There's some very strong points in here, some great character design, some decent enough acting, some wonderful production and direction in cut scenes, some interesting plot lines and some interesting stabs at having a message. For traditional story telling this is pretty good, far more convincing than the usual AAA dross but I still can't love it. All the good story beats are so diluted by virtue of the open world, unimaginative quest structure and rote combat that it loses impact as an entire piece.
It's a shame but oh well, maybe the expansions are better paced.
Overall a good story limited by too much padding, open world pacing and limited choice as well as by gameplay that doesn't satisfy.
GAME #32: Please, Don't Touch Anything
Four Quarters - PC - ★★☆☆☆
Completion State:
Completed all endings but used a guide for several (3.2 hours, 73% Steam achievements)
Comments:
Obtuse puzzle game that reminds me of old school point and click adventures crossed with The Room. I think it's probably good for those that like this sort of thing but for me it is a little too much. The puzzles that require thought aren't all that satisfying and at least one takes a leap that I would simply never have got.
I mostly played it through as I had seen it briefly so many times and I'm glad I did but it didn't grab me like it did some when it first came out. Maybe it gains something in VR.
GAME #33: NEO Scavenger
Blue Bottle Games - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Escaped Michigan (57 hours)
Comments:
An interesting hex based isometric survival based RPG with the basis of an interesting story that is delivered in a way that made me interested, maybe even intrigued, before missing the landing with the ending.
The survival aspects are brutal and it took me tens of hours to even work out how to survive more than a few days in the harsh world of post apocalyptic Michigan. Once I had conquered these numerous and at time obtuse challenges and developed a character able to survive and thrive I started to look into the lore and it was pretty compelling with some interesting locations and characters to investigate. There's a loose thread to the story to follow and it gives glimpses into some interesting stuff but for me it fails to deliver on a lot of the teases and the conclusion is disappointing or at least unrewarding given the effort I went through to get there.
That said, I'm looking forward to the next game from Blue Bottle, Ostranauts, as I believe it is set in the same universe so perhaps may answer some of my unresolved questions!
GAME #34: F1 2018
Codemasters - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Completed a full season, won the drivers championship and played around with some of the other modes (28 hours, 445/1000 Xbox achievements)
Comments:
I tend to only being interested in playing a season or two and fgenrally ignore the side content in these yearly F1 games. As such it does exactly what I want out of an F1 game giving me a full season to play from whatever team I want (I chose Sauber) and a meaningful sense of progression through the season.
The side stuff here is also quite fulsome and some of the additional content, like the themed championships and challenges are actually pretty good.
The driving model is pretty much what I expected and is very similar to the last game from the series I play (2016) but given Codemasters have pretty much nailed this and assists can be set pretty granularly I don't see this iterative refinement as a negative.
Overall, a very competent, good looking F1 sim.
GAME #35 / 37 / 38: Destiny 2: The Red War / Curse of Osiris / Warmind
Bungie - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Completed the original campaign, got to 900, did some public events and played around with the Halloween event content (32 hours)
Comments:
A pretty cool game. Great moment to moment movement and gun play, just enough lore to be intriguing and plenty of, admittedly fairly mindless, additional activities to do surrounding the core game.
The campaigns themselves are pretty average in what they present but there's enough here in terms of world building to make me interested enough to carry on playing and to fill in the gaps in myself with my own imagination.
This is certainly not hindered by the slightly predictable but ever so well done locations. All of the campaigns have some visually arresting and imaginative locations with some great sci-fi imagery.
It also has a very pleasant community around it that have been nothing but friendly and helpful to me as a brand new player post the game going F2P. DestinyERA are good folk and that helps with a game with as many currencies, stats and systems as this one!.
NOTE: I am really just scoring each campaign here, if I were to consider the game as a full package I think I would up this rating to 4.
GAME #36: Grand Theft Auto V
Rockstar - PC - ★★★★★
Completion State:
Completed the story and a few side missions (101 hours, 23% Steam achievements)
Comments:
I've played this game to completion twice before so have no real comments to make except it's still great!
- Dirt Rally 2.0;
- Withcher 3: Wild Hunt;
- Please, Don't Touch Anything;
- NEO Scavenger;
- F1 2018;
- Destiny 2: The Red War;
- Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris;
- Destiny 2: Warmind; and
- Grand Theft Auto V.
Main list is here.
GAME #30: Dirt Rally 2.0
Codemasters - PC - ★★☆☆☆
Completion State:
Completed a number of career and freeplay championships in both rally and rally cross (~15 hours, 195/1000 Xbox achievements)
Comments:
I don't think I like rally games that much, the courses are visually uninteresting and are too punishing when you only have 5 restarts per event, particularly when the load times are significant.
I'm also not a big fan of not being able to enter the career (for want of a better term) events when racenet is down despite it being a strictly single player affair.
All in all an OK simcade rally and rally cross game but not really my thing.
GAME #31: Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
CD PROJEKT RED - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Completed the game (78 hours, 33% Steam achievements)
Comments:
There's some very strong points in here, some great character design, some decent enough acting, some wonderful production and direction in cut scenes, some interesting plot lines and some interesting stabs at having a message. For traditional story telling this is pretty good, far more convincing than the usual AAA dross but I still can't love it. All the good story beats are so diluted by virtue of the open world, unimaginative quest structure and rote combat that it loses impact as an entire piece.
It's a shame but oh well, maybe the expansions are better paced.
Overall a good story limited by too much padding, open world pacing and limited choice as well as by gameplay that doesn't satisfy.
GAME #32: Please, Don't Touch Anything
Four Quarters - PC - ★★☆☆☆
Completion State:
Completed all endings but used a guide for several (3.2 hours, 73% Steam achievements)
Comments:
Obtuse puzzle game that reminds me of old school point and click adventures crossed with The Room. I think it's probably good for those that like this sort of thing but for me it is a little too much. The puzzles that require thought aren't all that satisfying and at least one takes a leap that I would simply never have got.
I mostly played it through as I had seen it briefly so many times and I'm glad I did but it didn't grab me like it did some when it first came out. Maybe it gains something in VR.
GAME #33: NEO Scavenger
Blue Bottle Games - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Escaped Michigan (57 hours)
Comments:
An interesting hex based isometric survival based RPG with the basis of an interesting story that is delivered in a way that made me interested, maybe even intrigued, before missing the landing with the ending.
The survival aspects are brutal and it took me tens of hours to even work out how to survive more than a few days in the harsh world of post apocalyptic Michigan. Once I had conquered these numerous and at time obtuse challenges and developed a character able to survive and thrive I started to look into the lore and it was pretty compelling with some interesting locations and characters to investigate. There's a loose thread to the story to follow and it gives glimpses into some interesting stuff but for me it fails to deliver on a lot of the teases and the conclusion is disappointing or at least unrewarding given the effort I went through to get there.
That said, I'm looking forward to the next game from Blue Bottle, Ostranauts, as I believe it is set in the same universe so perhaps may answer some of my unresolved questions!
GAME #34: F1 2018
Codemasters - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Completed a full season, won the drivers championship and played around with some of the other modes (28 hours, 445/1000 Xbox achievements)
Comments:
I tend to only being interested in playing a season or two and fgenrally ignore the side content in these yearly F1 games. As such it does exactly what I want out of an F1 game giving me a full season to play from whatever team I want (I chose Sauber) and a meaningful sense of progression through the season.
The side stuff here is also quite fulsome and some of the additional content, like the themed championships and challenges are actually pretty good.
The driving model is pretty much what I expected and is very similar to the last game from the series I play (2016) but given Codemasters have pretty much nailed this and assists can be set pretty granularly I don't see this iterative refinement as a negative.
Overall, a very competent, good looking F1 sim.
GAME #35 / 37 / 38: Destiny 2: The Red War / Curse of Osiris / Warmind
Bungie - PC - ★★★☆☆
Completion State:
Completed the original campaign, got to 900, did some public events and played around with the Halloween event content (32 hours)
Comments:
A pretty cool game. Great moment to moment movement and gun play, just enough lore to be intriguing and plenty of, admittedly fairly mindless, additional activities to do surrounding the core game.
The campaigns themselves are pretty average in what they present but there's enough here in terms of world building to make me interested enough to carry on playing and to fill in the gaps in myself with my own imagination.
This is certainly not hindered by the slightly predictable but ever so well done locations. All of the campaigns have some visually arresting and imaginative locations with some great sci-fi imagery.
It also has a very pleasant community around it that have been nothing but friendly and helpful to me as a brand new player post the game going F2P. DestinyERA are good folk and that helps with a game with as many currencies, stats and systems as this one!.
NOTE: I am really just scoring each campaign here, if I were to consider the game as a full package I think I would up this rating to 4.
GAME #36: Grand Theft Auto V
Rockstar - PC - ★★★★★
Completion State:
Completed the story and a few side missions (101 hours, 23% Steam achievements)
Comments:
I've played this game to completion twice before so have no real comments to make except it's still great!
105. Space Harrier (<1 hour)
As it turns out, the progenitor of rail shooters such as Sin & Punishment is no less difficult than the games it would inspire. Fun as hell, though.
Full list to date
As it turns out, the progenitor of rail shooters such as Sin & Punishment is no less difficult than the games it would inspire. Fun as hell, though.
Full list to date
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I gave up awhile ago but good on all of you folks that were able to succeed! I had a lot of fun tracking what I played so thanks for this.
Game #107 - Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn
Time: 50 hours / ongoing
After hearing about how good FF14 was these days, with it getting better and better with each expansion, I decided to finally give it a go as the complete edition had a nice sale recently, and while this will only cover the ARR (A Realm Reborn) stuff, I do have every expansion and will most likely cover them in a 2020 entry. Anyway, FF14 is a strange beast, as it's not the easiest mmo to get into, especially if you're coming from WoW. The GCD is very long making for a very slow gameplay experience in the first few hours, but to it's credit it does get much better as you get more skills later on, mainly because the game has a lot of skills that are off the GCD so you end up weaving skills as other skills are coming off cooldown in a neat way and it actually ends up feeling quite unique in that sense. The game itself is pretty much what you expect out of a mmo, just very polished with some great classes, good dungeons and pretty graphics. It also has a heavy focus on story but the story in ARR is pretty bland, and the voice acting is terrible (both things apparently greatly improve in the expansions, including a whole new voice cast). Still, it manages to scratch both the Final Fantasy and the WoW itch at the same time, and I will at least play the expansions and try out other classes before my free month is up. Even if I dont resub (which I most likely won't), I'm already happy with what I played and the consensus is the best is yet to come. Oh and +1 brownie point for the nicest community I've ever seen in a mmo.
Main Post
This will probably be my last entry as I'm currently juggling several long games I won't finish until 2020 rolls over, and I most likely won't finish the Heavensward (much less the other expansions) stuff in FF14 either. T'was a good year, easily my most productive games wise in ages if not ever, which means the least productive real life wise >_>
71: God of War 2005 (Start: 11/23/2019. End: 12/18/2019)
You ever play a game that you have never played before, one brought up as a classic, and discover that you don't really like it? Yeah, that was me and the original God of War. I don't think it has aged super well.
You ever play a game that you have never played before, one brought up as a classic, and discover that you don't really like it? Yeah, that was me and the original God of War. I don't think it has aged super well.
OP
OP
Thanks Ted, as ever happy to help! Hope next year goes well for you and we get to see you posting in the new thread as it goes. :)
Speaking of which, the above folks have managed to hit the ever illusive 52 this year so I've added them to the first post. Congrats all! Now I need to go back into hiding so I can try to catch up in an attempt to get on the list myself :D
Main Post here
Demember update
49-Control -12h- 5/5
50- Star Wars Fallen Order - 15h- 3/5
51-Total War DLC, The Hunter and the Beast -25h- 3/5
52- Sayonara Wild Hearts -1h- 4/5
53- GatoRoboto -3h- 2/5
49-Control -12h- 5/5
A pleasant surprise, didn't expect much from it but wanted to try the game.
And got one of the best games this year has to offer, a David Lynch like story telling with amazingly fun fast paced gameplay. On top of that, great OST and epic & fun moments.
Looking forward for more Jesse adventures.
The maze was one of the best gaming moments I've had this year.
50- Star Wars Fallen Order - 15h- 3/5
I never been a huge Star Wars fan, nonetheless, this game was fun to play and the final hours are very interesting and hooking.
Great mix of Uncharted exploration + soulsborne combat.
51-Total War DLC, The Hunter and the Beast -25h- 3/5
Wanted to try the last patch, and they did fix a lot of things.
The new QoL where the "end turn + enemy turn" it's faster really helps because it's super fast, a game changer.
This DLC campaign adds new mechacnics, new lords and units, some better than others but great DLC overall.
52- Sayonara Wild Hearts -1h- 4/5
Amazing short game everyone should play this year.
Great OST + lovely visuals mix that takes you into a great experience for the short period it last.
One of those games that will left you with a smile when you finish it.
53- GatoRoboto -3h- 2/5
Comfy game, 1:1 metroid but inside the robot-suit this time you get a cute cat.
Short and comfy game not much more to say.
Now playing:
-YS VIII DANA
And with this, 53 games finished this year and the challenge completed. A few more games than last year, but far from the 67 completed of 2017.
I don't think I'll finish any more games this year, gonna take it easy with a long Falcom game and wait for 2020 to come.
Thanks to Wozzer and everyone for the thread, it was fun to keep track of the games.
Demember update
49-Control -12h- 5/5
50- Star Wars Fallen Order - 15h- 3/5
51-Total War DLC, The Hunter and the Beast -25h- 3/5
52- Sayonara Wild Hearts -1h- 4/5
53- GatoRoboto -3h- 2/5
49-Control -12h- 5/5
A pleasant surprise, didn't expect much from it but wanted to try the game.
And got one of the best games this year has to offer, a David Lynch like story telling with amazingly fun fast paced gameplay. On top of that, great OST and epic & fun moments.
Looking forward for more Jesse adventures.
The maze was one of the best gaming moments I've had this year.
50- Star Wars Fallen Order - 15h- 3/5
I never been a huge Star Wars fan, nonetheless, this game was fun to play and the final hours are very interesting and hooking.
Great mix of Uncharted exploration + soulsborne combat.
51-Total War DLC, The Hunter and the Beast -25h- 3/5
Wanted to try the last patch, and they did fix a lot of things.
The new QoL where the "end turn + enemy turn" it's faster really helps because it's super fast, a game changer.
This DLC campaign adds new mechacnics, new lords and units, some better than others but great DLC overall.
52- Sayonara Wild Hearts -1h- 4/5
Amazing short game everyone should play this year.
Great OST + lovely visuals mix that takes you into a great experience for the short period it last.
One of those games that will left you with a smile when you finish it.
53- GatoRoboto -3h- 2/5
Comfy game, 1:1 metroid but inside the robot-suit this time you get a cute cat.
Short and comfy game not much more to say.
Now playing:
-YS VIII DANA
And with this, 53 games finished this year and the challenge completed. A few more games than last year, but far from the 67 completed of 2017.
I don't think I'll finish any more games this year, gonna take it easy with a long Falcom game and wait for 2020 to come.
Thanks to Wozzer and everyone for the thread, it was fun to keep track of the games.
Main Post
With the year winding down and the chaos of the holidays starting up I'm not sure how many more games I will be able to knock off.
64. Mega Man II - Gameboy
Completed 12/6/19
Score - 7/10
Short and pretty much on par with the first Mega Man game on gameboy. It's enjoyable enough but the music and sound effects were awful. I actually muted it during a few stages. I actually found it quite easy and only died once or twice. I like that the gameboy games are a bit different than the original games. Worth playing if you have access to it and enjoy old school Mega Man.
65. My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess - 3DS
Completed 12/17/19
Score - 9/10
Picked this up with MyNintendo points back a year or so ago. I didn't know what Picross was but hey free is free. Man...I totally slept on this puzzle genre. I LOVE PICROSS. I see others say they get addicted and I feel it now. I picked up Pokemon Picross, Picross 3D and plan on getting Picross 3D too at some point. GAME IS FANTASTIC. Especially being a free game. Consider me a fan.
66. Gunman Clive 2 - 3DS
Completed 12/20/19
Score - 7/10
Still a pretty great game but I found this one incredibly frustrating in the final 2-3 levels. I think level 23 I died countless times at the most ridiculous stuff. As frustrated as I was...that final boss brought a smile to my face. Game is ridiculous but overall fun. Don't pass up on the Clive.
With the year winding down and the chaos of the holidays starting up I'm not sure how many more games I will be able to knock off.
64. Mega Man II - Gameboy
Completed 12/6/19
Score - 7/10
Short and pretty much on par with the first Mega Man game on gameboy. It's enjoyable enough but the music and sound effects were awful. I actually muted it during a few stages. I actually found it quite easy and only died once or twice. I like that the gameboy games are a bit different than the original games. Worth playing if you have access to it and enjoy old school Mega Man.
65. My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess - 3DS
Completed 12/17/19
Score - 9/10
Picked this up with MyNintendo points back a year or so ago. I didn't know what Picross was but hey free is free. Man...I totally slept on this puzzle genre. I LOVE PICROSS. I see others say they get addicted and I feel it now. I picked up Pokemon Picross, Picross 3D and plan on getting Picross 3D too at some point. GAME IS FANTASTIC. Especially being a free game. Consider me a fan.
66. Gunman Clive 2 - 3DS
Completed 12/20/19
Score - 7/10
Still a pretty great game but I found this one incredibly frustrating in the final 2-3 levels. I think level 23 I died countless times at the most ridiculous stuff. As frustrated as I was...that final boss brought a smile to my face. Game is ridiculous but overall fun. Don't pass up on the Clive.
Main Post
Guess i inadvertently lied when i said i wouldn't be finishing more games this year. I will probably get to 100 at this pace.
94. Resident Evil VII - 14h - 18.12
Despite the change in perspective, i found this closer to the feel and ambience of the original game than anything since maybe Code Veronica. It's a fantastic ride from start to finish, and i'd easily put it among the best Resi games. Full of surprises, great ideas and just good old survival horror. In this regard, it benefits a lot from being first person. And the game does grow outwards in an interesting way as it goes along. Never found it boring or limited in any way.
I hope the next mainline title builds on this.
95. Castlevania - 2h - 19.12
Decided to get the Castlevania Collection, as i had never played any of those games, apart from a bit of IV back in the SNES days.
Confession time. I absolutely suck at these games. Save states are a godsend and the only way i'm able to even think about finishing any of them.
The first title is a lean action game, short and to the point. It's pretty good actually. Most of the CV tropes are already apparent here. Including those stupid medusa heads, which are probably my most hated enemy in any game. The level design is very straightforward and the action is a bit one note, but it's a NES game after all. But more importantly, the series' charm and atmosphere are very much present from the start. And the music, so good.
96. RE7 - Banned Footage - 3h10 - 19.12
A collection of DLC, i found this to be a bit uneven throughout.
Nightmare is a wave based rogue lite survival mode, and i thought it was pretty lame. The gameplay itself and the spaces you play through are not at all thought out for this kind of frantic gameplay. The doling out of scrap, which is the upgrades currency, is too sparse, and the whole thing is really stacked against you at the beginning. Maybe it gets better with further upgrades but i couldn't be bothered to find out.
Bedroom was a pretty cool escape room kind of experience. It's essentially a big puzzle with a twist. Some of the puzzle steps you need to take will attract mama Baker and you need to make sure to hide any evidence of your future escape. Fun but short. I'd play more dlc like this.
21 is a deadly game of blackjack. I love horror and i love blackjack. I was sold immediately.
Daughters is played through the eyes of Zoe, and it's alright, if short. It has two endings and i truly had to check out a guide for the good ending, as it's pretty obtuse.
I'm still going through the rest of Resi's dlc, but those are separate stories.
Guess i inadvertently lied when i said i wouldn't be finishing more games this year. I will probably get to 100 at this pace.
94. Resident Evil VII - 14h - 18.12
Despite the change in perspective, i found this closer to the feel and ambience of the original game than anything since maybe Code Veronica. It's a fantastic ride from start to finish, and i'd easily put it among the best Resi games. Full of surprises, great ideas and just good old survival horror. In this regard, it benefits a lot from being first person. And the game does grow outwards in an interesting way as it goes along. Never found it boring or limited in any way.
I hope the next mainline title builds on this.
95. Castlevania - 2h - 19.12
Decided to get the Castlevania Collection, as i had never played any of those games, apart from a bit of IV back in the SNES days.
Confession time. I absolutely suck at these games. Save states are a godsend and the only way i'm able to even think about finishing any of them.
The first title is a lean action game, short and to the point. It's pretty good actually. Most of the CV tropes are already apparent here. Including those stupid medusa heads, which are probably my most hated enemy in any game. The level design is very straightforward and the action is a bit one note, but it's a NES game after all. But more importantly, the series' charm and atmosphere are very much present from the start. And the music, so good.
96. RE7 - Banned Footage - 3h10 - 19.12
A collection of DLC, i found this to be a bit uneven throughout.
Nightmare is a wave based rogue lite survival mode, and i thought it was pretty lame. The gameplay itself and the spaces you play through are not at all thought out for this kind of frantic gameplay. The doling out of scrap, which is the upgrades currency, is too sparse, and the whole thing is really stacked against you at the beginning. Maybe it gets better with further upgrades but i couldn't be bothered to find out.
Bedroom was a pretty cool escape room kind of experience. It's essentially a big puzzle with a twist. Some of the puzzle steps you need to take will attract mama Baker and you need to make sure to hide any evidence of your future escape. Fun but short. I'd play more dlc like this.
21 is a deadly game of blackjack. I love horror and i love blackjack. I was sold immediately.
Daughters is played through the eyes of Zoe, and it's alright, if short. It has two endings and i truly had to check out a guide for the good ending, as it's pretty obtuse.
I'm still going through the rest of Resi's dlc, but those are separate stories.
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124. Syberia
Taking it slow lately due to exams which I am trying to put more time into revising for. Finally got around to finishing this game up.
Visually it is quite impressive, though the gameplay is...passable?
My least favourite part of the game was the middle where you explore a university, I had to move around multiple screens at one point to talk to to 3~4 different people just to be able to progress through a locked area. Heaven help you if you didn't get an item that could be picked up in a room, as you may need to backtrack for 2 minutes, then another 2 minutes to get back t the area you needed that item for.
Visually IMO the game aged well, but not so much the gameplay. Of the PnC adventure games released during the 2000s era though...I think Syberia 1 is deserving of its praise.
Taking it slow lately due to exams which I am trying to put more time into revising for. Finally got around to finishing this game up.
Visually it is quite impressive, though the gameplay is...passable?
My least favourite part of the game was the middle where you explore a university, I had to move around multiple screens at one point to talk to to 3~4 different people just to be able to progress through a locked area. Heaven help you if you didn't get an item that could be picked up in a room, as you may need to backtrack for 2 minutes, then another 2 minutes to get back t the area you needed that item for.
Visually IMO the game aged well, but not so much the gameplay. Of the PnC adventure games released during the 2000s era though...I think Syberia 1 is deserving of its praise.
Syberia is one of my favorite games of all time due to the characters and the world it creates. But yeah the gameplay can get a bit iffy.
One of us. One of us.
One of us. One of us.
Trying to finish the last of the PS3 exclusive games, before i officially store it away for good. I also finished Pokemon Shield, which was pretty enjoyable but too short for me. I finally finished ACO, started it in the end of spring. Very enjoyable game, and reinvigorated the series, now to start Odyssey.
Game 11: Assassin's Creed Origins (Xbox One) | 90 hours
Game 12: Resistance 3 (PS3) | 15 Hours
Game 13: Pokemon Shield (Switch) | 22 Hours
Game 11: Assassin's Creed Origins (Xbox One) | 90 hours
Game 12: Resistance 3 (PS3) | 15 Hours
Game 13: Pokemon Shield (Switch) | 22 Hours
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97. Before the Storm ep.1 Awake - 3h40 - 20.12
Back to Arcadia Bay. I loved Chloe in the original game, so i'm all in on this prequel. It's a shame Ashly Burch is not present though, the character suffers a bit from it. DeVries does a well enough job, but it just doesn't feel the same. As for the episode, it does a great job at showing the budding relationship between Rachel and Chloe, while once again hinting at the rot underneath Arcadia Bay. Definite highlights are the great Backtalk segments and a fantastic DnD game.
98. Before the Storm ep.2 Brave New World - 4h - 20.12
A very emotional episode, full of great scenes. This story feels more and more like Fire Walk With Me, which i have to guess is pretty intentional, seeing as i walked around the entire episode with a FireWalk t-shirt. We finally find out what the deal with Rachel's family is, and secrets abound. As with the first game, the music is another star here. Really good, if not as immediately iconic so far. I also love the dream sequences, where we get to expand on Chloe's relationship with her father.
99. Before the Storm ep.3 Hell is Empty - 4h - 21.12
This felt a bit uneven when comparing it to the first two episodes. I really loved Chloe's moments with her father, a truly hilarious DnD campaign (thanks tiny bard), and it has a very strong ending (honesty always), but there were some not so strong narrative choices interspersed. That stalker bit in particular was very dumb. Predictable yet it kinda came out of nowhere at the same time. And the whole knife thing felt more like Showtime drama of the week than anything else in LiS. All in all, a weaker episode, but still good. Sidenote, Chloe's diary is really cool and well written, just as Max's was.
100. Before the Storm bonus ep. Farewell - 1h30 - 21.12
And what a better sendoff to Arcadia Bay than a fun treasure hunt with young Max and Chloe. Once again we play as Max, and get to explore their last day together before the big move. Not gonna lie, this one got me. What a gut punch for those who have been accompanying these characters for such a long time. A bittersweet goodbye.
97. Before the Storm ep.1 Awake - 3h40 - 20.12
Back to Arcadia Bay. I loved Chloe in the original game, so i'm all in on this prequel. It's a shame Ashly Burch is not present though, the character suffers a bit from it. DeVries does a well enough job, but it just doesn't feel the same. As for the episode, it does a great job at showing the budding relationship between Rachel and Chloe, while once again hinting at the rot underneath Arcadia Bay. Definite highlights are the great Backtalk segments and a fantastic DnD game.
98. Before the Storm ep.2 Brave New World - 4h - 20.12
A very emotional episode, full of great scenes. This story feels more and more like Fire Walk With Me, which i have to guess is pretty intentional, seeing as i walked around the entire episode with a FireWalk t-shirt. We finally find out what the deal with Rachel's family is, and secrets abound. As with the first game, the music is another star here. Really good, if not as immediately iconic so far. I also love the dream sequences, where we get to expand on Chloe's relationship with her father.
99. Before the Storm ep.3 Hell is Empty - 4h - 21.12
This felt a bit uneven when comparing it to the first two episodes. I really loved Chloe's moments with her father, a truly hilarious DnD campaign (thanks tiny bard), and it has a very strong ending (honesty always), but there were some not so strong narrative choices interspersed. That stalker bit in particular was very dumb. Predictable yet it kinda came out of nowhere at the same time. And the whole knife thing felt more like Showtime drama of the week than anything else in LiS. All in all, a weaker episode, but still good. Sidenote, Chloe's diary is really cool and well written, just as Max's was.
100. Before the Storm bonus ep. Farewell - 1h30 - 21.12
And what a better sendoff to Arcadia Bay than a fun treasure hunt with young Max and Chloe. Once again we play as Max, and get to explore their last day together before the big move. Not gonna lie, this one got me. What a gut punch for those who have been accompanying these characters for such a long time. A bittersweet goodbye.
106. Sonic the Hedgehog (1 hour)
Mechanic design, level design, art direction. Yep, in comparison to its immediate sequels, the original pales in all.
Full list to date
Mechanic design, level design, art direction. Yep, in comparison to its immediate sequels, the original pales in all.
Full list to date
Game #108 - Metropolis Lux Obscura
Time: 3 hours
I guess I had one more in me, unfortunately it's fucking awful and not the best note to end this year on. Let's get the positive out of the way... err I like the comic book style art style. At least when it's not shoving boobs in my face like it's trying to appeal to my inner 14 year old. In fact, the whole thing feels like it's a horny 14 year old's idea of what Noir is. Just a terrible story (multiple endings and apparently they are all shit, I only saw 2 of them), "hardboiled" in the worst way (like I said, like a horny 14 year old would imagine noir). The actual gameplay outside the comic book style vignettes is a super basic and pretty shitty match-3 game that relies even moreon RNG than most match-3 games. Just a shitshow all around and a waste of 3€ or whatever I spent on it in the winter sale. Probably the worst game I played this year. AVOID.
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101. RE7 - Not a Hero - 3h10 - 22.12
A free piece of DLC that ended up being pretty substantial. Playing as Chris Redfield, we get to chase after a particular asshole from the main game. I like how despite being a short experience, there is so much variety here. There's also a lot more action this time around. I enjoyed it a lot.
102. RE7 - End of Zoe - 2h40 - 23.12
Now this is just too silly not to enjoy. We play as Zoe's uncle, Joe. And we literally punch out way through the game, Condemned 2 style. There are a lot of mold monsters and gators to deal with, and a little more story to uncover. The moveset is limited, but effective. It's good.
RE7's DLC surprised me in a good way. There's a lot of good stuff in there.
101. RE7 - Not a Hero - 3h10 - 22.12
A free piece of DLC that ended up being pretty substantial. Playing as Chris Redfield, we get to chase after a particular asshole from the main game. I like how despite being a short experience, there is so much variety here. There's also a lot more action this time around. I enjoyed it a lot.
102. RE7 - End of Zoe - 2h40 - 23.12
Now this is just too silly not to enjoy. We play as Zoe's uncle, Joe. And we literally punch out way through the game, Condemned 2 style. There are a lot of mold monsters and gators to deal with, and a little more story to uncover. The moveset is limited, but effective. It's good.
RE7's DLC surprised me in a good way. There's a lot of good stuff in there.
Main Post
Finished 14 games, main post already updated. This is such a busy year that I only managed to finish only a few of my bucket lists.
Will post my impression, but I'm too tired right now.
Games List:
13. Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled (PS4) | 30th Jun – 60hrs | 5/5
14. Castlevania 3 - Castlevania Anniversary Collection (PS4) | 20th Jul – 6hrs | 4/5
15. Brandish The Dark Revenant (PSP) | 3rd Aug – 19hrs | 4/5
16. Diablo 3 (PS4) | 20th Aug – 100hrs | 4/5
17. .hack//G.U. vol. 1//Rebirth (PS4) | 3rd Sept – 30hrs | 3/5
18. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (PS4) | 6th Sept – 100hrs | 4/5
19. Xanadu Next (PC) | 23rd Oct – 26hrs | 5/5
20. Elder Scroll V: Skyrim (PC) | 2nd Nov – 11hrs | 5/5
21. Crimzon Clover World Ignition (PC) | 19th Nov – 5hrs | 5/5
22. Pokemon Glazed (PC – Emulator) | 21st Nov – 30hrs | 3/5
23. Shovel Knight {PC} | 13th Dec – 11hrs | 5/5
24. Raiden V (PS4) | 22nd Dec – 5hrs | 4/5
25. Black Desert Mobile (Android) | 23rd Dec – 50hrs | 3/5
26. Dota Underlords (PC) | 23rd Dec – 143hrs | 3/5
Finished 14 games, main post already updated. This is such a busy year that I only managed to finish only a few of my bucket lists.
Will post my impression, but I'm too tired right now.
Games List:
13. Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled (PS4) | 30th Jun – 60hrs | 5/5
14. Castlevania 3 - Castlevania Anniversary Collection (PS4) | 20th Jul – 6hrs | 4/5
15. Brandish The Dark Revenant (PSP) | 3rd Aug – 19hrs | 4/5
16. Diablo 3 (PS4) | 20th Aug – 100hrs | 4/5
17. .hack//G.U. vol. 1//Rebirth (PS4) | 3rd Sept – 30hrs | 3/5
18. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (PS4) | 6th Sept – 100hrs | 4/5
19. Xanadu Next (PC) | 23rd Oct – 26hrs | 5/5
20. Elder Scroll V: Skyrim (PC) | 2nd Nov – 11hrs | 5/5
21. Crimzon Clover World Ignition (PC) | 19th Nov – 5hrs | 5/5
22. Pokemon Glazed (PC – Emulator) | 21st Nov – 30hrs | 3/5
23. Shovel Knight {PC} | 13th Dec – 11hrs | 5/5
24. Raiden V (PS4) | 22nd Dec – 5hrs | 4/5
25. Black Desert Mobile (Android) | 23rd Dec – 50hrs | 3/5
26. Dota Underlords (PC) | 23rd Dec – 143hrs | 3/5
Still chipping away at the Shovel Knight games as well, but just to be sure I cross that 52 finish line I'll post these early...
51. F-Zero X (1998, N64) ★★★★☆
Like Mario and Zelda, F-Zero too transitioned into the 3D era with a seemingly effortless ease. While I don't doubt it was a nightmare to squeeze 24 tracks, 30 distinct drivers & cars, and even an endless track-generation mode onto a single N64 cartridge and still retain a rock-solid, high framerate; the actual play experience hides most of the evidence of the technological mountains being moved in the background. Yes, the music is compressed to heck, the announcer's voice is garbled to the point of incomprehension, and the visual details are so stripped down every level feels familiar regardless of setting (Big Blue, Mute City, or Firefield? Who could tell!).
But in some ways, 3D environments were always destined for F-Zero. Why restrict yourself to flat surface races, when these hovercars could zip all around pipelines, overtake each other in cylinders, or launch themselves from halfpipes? While the jumps from the original F-Zero don't return in as prominent a fashion, the 3D level designs allow the developers to move away from surprise tight corners to catch you off guard with. Instead, you're now tasked with keeping in mind which way is up and which is down, all at 1,000mph.
The commitment to the game's spartan visuals results in a clarity where you're rarely blindsided by an unseen turn or object popping in late, and you can clearly distinguish fellow racers to pick out the rivals you want to bump off the track. I've got one minor complaint about this mechanic: why are the sideswipes & spin attacks mapped to button combinations, when we have 2 unused face buttons within reach?
That said, F-Zero X is great. Now where's our F-Zero NX with 30-player online, Nintendo?!
52. Gravity Badgers (2014, Wii U) ★★★☆☆
Fairly clever concept for a puzzle game: you launch badgers through space towards wormholes, while minding the gravitational properties of planetary objects which affect your trajectory. Do it right, and you'll launch a jetpack-strapped badger in a smooth, curving pattern, assisted by the push and pull of space rocks around him. Do it wrong, and he faceplants into a meteor.
Decent game, but the puzzles don't really become clever enough to require much variation in approach. Music is way too bombastic, and there's 2 bossfights which are much harder than anything else the game throws at you.
53. Infinity Runner (2016, Wii U) ★☆☆☆☆
Feels bad to rate this so low, since I get the feeling a lot of its problems might be specific to just this particular port of the game. Infinity Runner is a first-person auto-runner broken up in shorter levels and sections, which sees you sprinting through hallways on a giant spaceship appropriately called The Infinity. When things work, this game isn't too bad; there's lots of different obstacles to dodge, a repetitive techno soundtrack to get you pumped, and even a half-baked mechanic where you change into a werewolf.
Unfortunately, very few things actually work reliably. The game is very dark, making hazards outright impossible to see. Coupled with the frequent drops in framerate, anticipating hazards becomes luck-based rather than rooted in skill or reflexes. I partially solved this by cranking my TV's brightness up from 30 to 70%, giving everything an ugly PS2 look, but at least it was visible.
Next problem: this (version of the) game is very buggy. End-mission cutscenes have about a 50/50 shot of actually loading, and sometimes you'll hear the same dialogue twice. The third level greeted me with audio pretty clearly destined for a later stage. (Not that you miss much here, mind. While the voice actress is doing a decent job that aims for GLaDOS, it's pretty clear the material on offer is just terrible, meaning none of the jokes really land.)
Other technical issues: you regularly clip through floors and ceilings when you jump in places they don't expect you to, off-TV mode somehow disables all sound altogether making it useless, and perhaps most damingly of all - I've found a 100% replicable crash during the loading screen for the second sector of the final level, making the game impossible to finish. Had to YouTube the final sector.
Look, I suppose this game could be better elsewhere, but Infinity Runner on Wii U is inexcusably broken; a literal unfinishable mess.
51. F-Zero X (1998, N64) ★★★★☆
Like Mario and Zelda, F-Zero too transitioned into the 3D era with a seemingly effortless ease. While I don't doubt it was a nightmare to squeeze 24 tracks, 30 distinct drivers & cars, and even an endless track-generation mode onto a single N64 cartridge and still retain a rock-solid, high framerate; the actual play experience hides most of the evidence of the technological mountains being moved in the background. Yes, the music is compressed to heck, the announcer's voice is garbled to the point of incomprehension, and the visual details are so stripped down every level feels familiar regardless of setting (Big Blue, Mute City, or Firefield? Who could tell!).
But in some ways, 3D environments were always destined for F-Zero. Why restrict yourself to flat surface races, when these hovercars could zip all around pipelines, overtake each other in cylinders, or launch themselves from halfpipes? While the jumps from the original F-Zero don't return in as prominent a fashion, the 3D level designs allow the developers to move away from surprise tight corners to catch you off guard with. Instead, you're now tasked with keeping in mind which way is up and which is down, all at 1,000mph.
The commitment to the game's spartan visuals results in a clarity where you're rarely blindsided by an unseen turn or object popping in late, and you can clearly distinguish fellow racers to pick out the rivals you want to bump off the track. I've got one minor complaint about this mechanic: why are the sideswipes & spin attacks mapped to button combinations, when we have 2 unused face buttons within reach?
That said, F-Zero X is great. Now where's our F-Zero NX with 30-player online, Nintendo?!
52. Gravity Badgers (2014, Wii U) ★★★☆☆
Fairly clever concept for a puzzle game: you launch badgers through space towards wormholes, while minding the gravitational properties of planetary objects which affect your trajectory. Do it right, and you'll launch a jetpack-strapped badger in a smooth, curving pattern, assisted by the push and pull of space rocks around him. Do it wrong, and he faceplants into a meteor.
Decent game, but the puzzles don't really become clever enough to require much variation in approach. Music is way too bombastic, and there's 2 bossfights which are much harder than anything else the game throws at you.
53. Infinity Runner (2016, Wii U) ★☆☆☆☆
Feels bad to rate this so low, since I get the feeling a lot of its problems might be specific to just this particular port of the game. Infinity Runner is a first-person auto-runner broken up in shorter levels and sections, which sees you sprinting through hallways on a giant spaceship appropriately called The Infinity. When things work, this game isn't too bad; there's lots of different obstacles to dodge, a repetitive techno soundtrack to get you pumped, and even a half-baked mechanic where you change into a werewolf.
Unfortunately, very few things actually work reliably. The game is very dark, making hazards outright impossible to see. Coupled with the frequent drops in framerate, anticipating hazards becomes luck-based rather than rooted in skill or reflexes. I partially solved this by cranking my TV's brightness up from 30 to 70%, giving everything an ugly PS2 look, but at least it was visible.
Next problem: this (version of the) game is very buggy. End-mission cutscenes have about a 50/50 shot of actually loading, and sometimes you'll hear the same dialogue twice. The third level greeted me with audio pretty clearly destined for a later stage. (Not that you miss much here, mind. While the voice actress is doing a decent job that aims for GLaDOS, it's pretty clear the material on offer is just terrible, meaning none of the jokes really land.)
Other technical issues: you regularly clip through floors and ceilings when you jump in places they don't expect you to, off-TV mode somehow disables all sound altogether making it useless, and perhaps most damingly of all - I've found a 100% replicable crash during the loading screen for the second sector of the final level, making the game impossible to finish. Had to YouTube the final sector.
Look, I suppose this game could be better elsewhere, but Infinity Runner on Wii U is inexcusably broken; a literal unfinishable mess.
107. Horizon Chase Turbo (12 hours)
A really fun throwback to classic arcade racers like OutRun.
Full list to date
A really fun throwback to classic arcade racers like OutRun.
Full list to date
Main Post part 1
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34. Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Grand Caiman - 2 hours
Well, this DLC is so far the best one from SotTR Season Pass, nice variety and pacing, good story bits and great looking tomb. It's still kinda short and feels like it was supposed to be a part of the main game, but whatever, it's a part of definitive edition now anyway,
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34. Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Grand Caiman - 2 hours
Well, this DLC is so far the best one from SotTR Season Pass, nice variety and pacing, good story bits and great looking tomb. It's still kinda short and feels like it was supposed to be a part of the main game, but whatever, it's a part of definitive edition now anyway,
Although the year may be close to ending keep pushing!!
I wish everyone that is still hunting down game #52 the best but just remember, its not about the destination its about the journey :D, so have fun and I wish all of you some good ol Happy Holidays and a great New Year!
I hope to see many of you post again come the next 52 game thread for the year 2020. Much love, have yourself a damn good one, and be ready....2020 is gonna be one hell of a ride.
I wish everyone that is still hunting down game #52 the best but just remember, its not about the destination its about the journey :D, so have fun and I wish all of you some good ol Happy Holidays and a great New Year!
I hope to see many of you post again come the next 52 game thread for the year 2020. Much love, have yourself a damn good one, and be ready....2020 is gonna be one hell of a ride.
Didn't have time or energy to post proper detailed updates for a while (work and real life happened), but I did finish my 52nd today, so I'll at least publish my final list. Probably won't be able to complete anything else this year.
1) Torn PC/Vive (Playtime: 7h 43m; Completed: January 06, 2019)
2) Summer Funland PC/Vive (Playtime: 5h 10m; Completed: January 07, 2019)
3) Prey: Typhon Hunter - TranStar VR PC/VIve (Playtime: 1h 21m; Completed: January 08, 2018)
4) Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight PS4 (Playtime: 22h 34m; Completed: January 18, 2019)
5) Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight PS4 (Playtime: 22h 58m; Completed: January 18, 2019)
6) Persona 4: Dancing All Night PS4 (Playtime: 12h 13m; Completed: January 18, 2019)
7) Vampyr PC (Playtime: 38h 10m; Completed: January 19, 2019)
8) Arcade Saga PC/Vive (Playtime: 6h 41m; Completed: January 25, 2019)
9) Don't Knock Twice PC/Vive (Playtime: 2h 39m; Completed: January 30, 2019)
10) Apex Costruct PC/Vive (Playtime: 9h 29m; Completed: February 05, 2019)
11) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Switch (Playtime: 122h 40m; Completed: February 07, 2019)
12) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC Switch (Playtime: 20h 16m; Completed: February 07, 2019)
13) Cloudlands: VR Minigolf PC/Vive (Playtime: 2h 40m; Completed: February 08, 2019)
14) Battletech PC (Playtime: 94h 10m; Completed: February 21, 2019)
15) CLANNAD PC (Playtime: 101h 54m; Completed: February 25, 2019)
16) Blind PC/Vive (Playtime: 4h 33m; Completed: March 02, 2019)
17) Neverout PC/Vive (Playtime: 2h 57m; Completed: March 05, 2019)
18) Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition PC (Playtime: 131h 05m; Completed: March 09, 2019)
19) Steins;Gate Elite PC (Playtime: 31h 53m; Completed: March 10, 2019)
20) Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs PC/Vive (Playtime: 3h 31m; Completed: March 14, 2019)
21) Knockout League PC/Vive (Playtime: 3h 39m; Completed: March 21, 2019)
22) Shooty Fruity PC/Vive (Playtime: 5h 29m; Completed: March 31, 2019)
23) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots PS3 (Playtime: 21h 24m; Completed: April 05, 2019)
24) Hitman 2 PC (Playtime: 96h 11m; Completed: April 06, 2019)
25) The Council PC (Playtime: 17h 43m; Completed: April 13, 2019)
26) Skyworld PC/Vive (Playtime: 9h 17m; Completed: April 15, 2019)
27) The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky PC (Playtime: 59h 38m; Completed: April 22, 2019)
28) Super Mario Odyssey Switch (Playtime: 15h 23m; Completed: June 16, 2019)
29) Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram PC (Playtime: 31h 37m; Completed: June 29, 2019)
30) Return of the Obra Dinn PC (Playtime: 12h 10m; Completed: Completed: July 01, 2019)
31) Nier: Automata PC (Playtime: 48h 28m; Completed: July 02, 2019)
32) Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn Wii (Playtime: 88h 34m; Completed: July 06, 2019)
33) Love Language Japanese PC (Playtime: 15h 26m; Completed: July 10, 2019)
34) Street Fighter V PC (Playtime: 11h 46m; Completed: July 23, 2019)
35) Endless Space 2 PC (Playtime: 63h 29m; Completed: July 24, 2019)
36) Chaos;Head PC (Playtime: 31h 12m; Completed: July 26, 2019)
37) Roundabout PC (Playtime: 3h 42m; Completed: August 02, 2019)
38) Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker PS3 (Playtime: 21h 58m; Completed: August 09, 2019)
39) The Last of Us PS4 (Playtime: 20h 06m; Completed: August 22, 2019)
40) The Last of Us: Left Behind PS4 (Playtime: 3h 01m; Completed: August 26, 2019)
41) Hollow Knight PC (Playtime: 41h 18m; Completed: August 28, 2019)
42) Chaos;Child PC (Playtime: 63h 42m; Completed: September 12, 2019)
43) Shaolin vs Wutang PC (Playtime: 5h 57m; Completed: September 15, 2019)
44) The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - Second Chapter PC (Playtime: 80h 28m; Completed: October 09, 2019)
45) Telling Lies PC (Playtime: 13h 49m; Completed: November 21, 2019)
46) Aviary Attorney PC (Playtime: 4h 12m; Completed: November 29, 2019)
47) Hotline Miami PC (Playtime: 5h 44m; Completed: November 30, 2019)
48) Dead by Daylight PC (Playtime: 220+h; Completed: December 03, 2019)
49) Catherine PC (Playtime: 29h 53m; Completed: December 07, 2019)
50) Into the Breach PC (Playtime: 10h 34m; Completed: December 07, 2019)
51) Elite: Dangerous PC/Vive (Playtime: 100+h; Completed: ??? I'm not done with this game, but I won't be playing it this year anymore)
52) Life is Strange: Before the Storm PC (Playtime: 12h 18m; Completed: December 24, 2019)
Detailed impessions for 1-35 can be found here:
Games 1-7
Games 8-14
Games 15-21
Games 22-28
Games 29-35
1) Torn PC/Vive (Playtime: 7h 43m; Completed: January 06, 2019)
2) Summer Funland PC/Vive (Playtime: 5h 10m; Completed: January 07, 2019)
3) Prey: Typhon Hunter - TranStar VR PC/VIve (Playtime: 1h 21m; Completed: January 08, 2018)
4) Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight PS4 (Playtime: 22h 34m; Completed: January 18, 2019)
5) Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight PS4 (Playtime: 22h 58m; Completed: January 18, 2019)
6) Persona 4: Dancing All Night PS4 (Playtime: 12h 13m; Completed: January 18, 2019)
7) Vampyr PC (Playtime: 38h 10m; Completed: January 19, 2019)
8) Arcade Saga PC/Vive (Playtime: 6h 41m; Completed: January 25, 2019)
9) Don't Knock Twice PC/Vive (Playtime: 2h 39m; Completed: January 30, 2019)
10) Apex Costruct PC/Vive (Playtime: 9h 29m; Completed: February 05, 2019)
11) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Switch (Playtime: 122h 40m; Completed: February 07, 2019)
12) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC Switch (Playtime: 20h 16m; Completed: February 07, 2019)
13) Cloudlands: VR Minigolf PC/Vive (Playtime: 2h 40m; Completed: February 08, 2019)
14) Battletech PC (Playtime: 94h 10m; Completed: February 21, 2019)
15) CLANNAD PC (Playtime: 101h 54m; Completed: February 25, 2019)
16) Blind PC/Vive (Playtime: 4h 33m; Completed: March 02, 2019)
17) Neverout PC/Vive (Playtime: 2h 57m; Completed: March 05, 2019)
18) Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition PC (Playtime: 131h 05m; Completed: March 09, 2019)
19) Steins;Gate Elite PC (Playtime: 31h 53m; Completed: March 10, 2019)
20) Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs PC/Vive (Playtime: 3h 31m; Completed: March 14, 2019)
21) Knockout League PC/Vive (Playtime: 3h 39m; Completed: March 21, 2019)
22) Shooty Fruity PC/Vive (Playtime: 5h 29m; Completed: March 31, 2019)
23) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots PS3 (Playtime: 21h 24m; Completed: April 05, 2019)
24) Hitman 2 PC (Playtime: 96h 11m; Completed: April 06, 2019)
25) The Council PC (Playtime: 17h 43m; Completed: April 13, 2019)
26) Skyworld PC/Vive (Playtime: 9h 17m; Completed: April 15, 2019)
27) The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky PC (Playtime: 59h 38m; Completed: April 22, 2019)
28) Super Mario Odyssey Switch (Playtime: 15h 23m; Completed: June 16, 2019)
29) Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram PC (Playtime: 31h 37m; Completed: June 29, 2019)
30) Return of the Obra Dinn PC (Playtime: 12h 10m; Completed: Completed: July 01, 2019)
31) Nier: Automata PC (Playtime: 48h 28m; Completed: July 02, 2019)
32) Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn Wii (Playtime: 88h 34m; Completed: July 06, 2019)
33) Love Language Japanese PC (Playtime: 15h 26m; Completed: July 10, 2019)
34) Street Fighter V PC (Playtime: 11h 46m; Completed: July 23, 2019)
35) Endless Space 2 PC (Playtime: 63h 29m; Completed: July 24, 2019)
36) Chaos;Head PC (Playtime: 31h 12m; Completed: July 26, 2019)
37) Roundabout PC (Playtime: 3h 42m; Completed: August 02, 2019)
38) Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker PS3 (Playtime: 21h 58m; Completed: August 09, 2019)
39) The Last of Us PS4 (Playtime: 20h 06m; Completed: August 22, 2019)
40) The Last of Us: Left Behind PS4 (Playtime: 3h 01m; Completed: August 26, 2019)
41) Hollow Knight PC (Playtime: 41h 18m; Completed: August 28, 2019)
42) Chaos;Child PC (Playtime: 63h 42m; Completed: September 12, 2019)
43) Shaolin vs Wutang PC (Playtime: 5h 57m; Completed: September 15, 2019)
44) The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - Second Chapter PC (Playtime: 80h 28m; Completed: October 09, 2019)
45) Telling Lies PC (Playtime: 13h 49m; Completed: November 21, 2019)
46) Aviary Attorney PC (Playtime: 4h 12m; Completed: November 29, 2019)
47) Hotline Miami PC (Playtime: 5h 44m; Completed: November 30, 2019)
48) Dead by Daylight PC (Playtime: 220+h; Completed: December 03, 2019)
49) Catherine PC (Playtime: 29h 53m; Completed: December 07, 2019)
50) Into the Breach PC (Playtime: 10h 34m; Completed: December 07, 2019)
51) Elite: Dangerous PC/Vive (Playtime: 100+h; Completed: ??? I'm not done with this game, but I won't be playing it this year anymore)
52) Life is Strange: Before the Storm PC (Playtime: 12h 18m; Completed: December 24, 2019)
Detailed impessions for 1-35 can be found here:
Games 1-7
Games 8-14
Games 15-21
Games 22-28
Games 29-35
Yeah I agree, this challenge made me finished some of my games on my backlog list, it made me not wasting the games that I bought this year too.
72: Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium (Start: 12/3/2019. End: 12/24/2019)
We're closing out this year on the end of the tetralogy that was close to my halfway point, it's Phantasy Star IV. An ambitious JRPG of the Genesis Era. I don't know if I'll be able to beat anything else in 2019, but if this is the game I close the year on, I can't say I'm disappointed.
We're closing out this year on the end of the tetralogy that was close to my halfway point, it's Phantasy Star IV. An ambitious JRPG of the Genesis Era. I don't know if I'll be able to beat anything else in 2019, but if this is the game I close the year on, I can't say I'm disappointed.