MAIN POST
My last post of the year! Played way more than I expected these last two months but that's also because I've been avoiding larger games for a bit.
Honorable mentions:
---Games I dropped---
Pocket Card Jockey - This was really addicting but I couldn't take the losses anymore and lost my temper at getting boxed in all the time when I had great tools to win the race.
Golf Story - I like this game a lot but not enough to finish it because it's a whole lot of golf. It's really charming though, and has some of the most fun use of HD Rumble.
---Games I Didn't Finish---
Pokemon Ultra Moon - Stuck at Elite 4, it's a long story but the short of it is that I messed up my team comp
Monster Hunter World - Played way too many hours to have not beat the main story yet, I'm getting there. I'm fighting the Elder Dragons.
The Legend of Zelda Oracle Ages - Randomly stuck, been too lazy to look it up, I'm bad at games haha. I'm about to go into Jabu Jabu's Belly
Dillon's Rolling Western - Been trying to get into this series a few times, gotta let go of my perfectionism
Gorogoa - Started it, loved it, need a free afternoon to blast throughh this, it's not great for bit sized game time
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Got distracted by everything else this year, played too many massive RPGs in 2017
Super Smash Bros Ultimate - Taking my time with World of Light
Felt I couldn't not mention those, now let's get into the games I played!
NOVEMBER 2018
57. One Piece Grand Cruise (PSVR) - 2/4 (Completed Nov 1, 2018)
Completed Story | 47% Trophies
I hesitated on including this because I haven't included a lot of PSVR experiences but I love One Piece and I payed for it so I'm going to talk about it. This thing is so cheap and janky, the only thing that saves it was being able to seeing all the One Piece characters and exploring parts of the Thousand Sunny. The most engaging gameplay you do is shooting cannons at things flying at you and there's plenty other similar games that do this. Otherwise you're going to be looking around for 80% of the game. I haven't gotten to explore everything yet since gameplay was so lackluster but it was worth the $5 I spent.
58. Bloodborne: The Old Hunters (PS4) - 4/4 (Completed Nov 5, 2018)
Completed Story | 100% Trophies
Took me long enough. I was closer to the end than I expected, just had to clean up Fishing Hamlet, Lighthouse Hut, and Orphan of Kos. I even finished up the Bloodborne story but I still haven't finished all the Chalice Dungeons. It's been so long since this has come out and I've touched it, I feel a bit of apathy to it? It's really good, one of the best DLC expansions I have ever played, all the new weapons are really fun too.
59. Musynx (PS4) - 2/4 (Completed Nov 9, 2018)
Completed All 4K Mode Songs on Easy | 36% Trophies
I was not expecting Chinese vocaloid! I'm so far detached from Chinese internet culture that I hadn't heard much music like what was in this game. Despite my low score, it's a pretty competent music game, I just don't want to go through all its tracks. It plays nearly identical to DJ Max with its 4 button and 6 buttons modes except it is way more lenient with its score timing. The thing that bothered me the most about this game was how each song doesn't have unique backing videos and how the skins are set for each song with several songs in an undefined set sharing the same skin. This would be fine if there weren't some outright unbearable skins, especially near the end.
60. Super Time Force Ultra (PSVita) - 4/4 (Completed Nov 12, 2018)
Completed Story Mode | 59% Trophies
Another game I started a long time ago and decided to just finish up while at family friends gatherings. This game is insanely fun, the only reason I didn't finish the game whenever it was that I started it was because it's pretty little hard too. I don't think I'll ever finish the Helladeck missions so I think I'm pretty much done with the game now. I feel that there's a bit too many characters too since I mostly stuck to the same few characters but that's not even a good complaint because too many characters don't detract from the game at all. I feel the dialogue can be a bit cringey for some people but I found it fun nonetheless.
61. Sparkle 2 (PSVita) - 1/4 (Completed November 15, 2018)
Completed Quest on Normal Difficulty | Obtained All Stars in Survival Mode | 57% Trophies
I uh... spent way more time with this game than I should have. I can't even say I like it that much, it's just really addicting. I found myself nearly finishing Challenge Mode before coming to the conclusion that this was too repetitive and that I was beating everything easily and it was just eating away at my time while I could be playing other games, so I just put this down and started playing Monster Hunter again.
62. Marvel's Spider-Man: The City That Never Sleeps - Turf Wars (PS4) - 3/4 (Completed Nov 21, 2018)
Completed Story | Amazing Difficulty | 100% Trophies
In retrospect, the weakest of the bunch. At the time, it made me pretty sour on the DLC since I was so into the first one. I was really disappointed to see Screwball yet again. There's something to be said of the repetitive nature of the game but I still really love swinging around New York. The side missions wasn't as interesting as the story behind finding the paintings in the first DLC, which was also somewhat different from the rest of the game. This one, you're just fighting through bases again. I just, augh. I want to play through the game again just not this particular DLC campagin.
63. Tetris Effect (PSVR) - 4/4 (Completed Nov 21, 2018)
Completed Journey Mode | 35% Trophies
Holy shit. Holy shit. Tetris, game of the year. Absolutely mesmerizing. I feel like I played so much Tetris but also go so little done in this game, and I WANT to keep doing more stuff in this game. I almost wish there was just a visualizer mode but the new Zone system just makes Tetris that much more engaging. Maybe I'm just bad a Tetris, I can't do those T-block clear formations things, that last set of missions for Journey mode was pretty hard for me. This has been such a good year for me to re-discover my love for Tetsuya Mizuguchi's games with the releases of Lumines Remastered and Rez Infinite and now this. Never stop.
DECEMBER 2018
64. Rhythm Heaven Megamix (3DS) 4/4 (Completed Dec 5, 2018)
Completed Story Mode | Gold Ranked All Story Mode Games
Been playing a lot of music games this year, but nothing like this. In some ways, this game is even more of a puzzle than the puzzle games with an emphasis on music. I had actually never finished a Rhythm Heaven game before but I've played some of the one on Wii and was pretty happy to see a lot of those return here. It's so satisfying to learn the patterns and get perfects in this game. I just wish I was competent enough to get all the Perfects I need to unlock all the extra games. The story ended being way more fun than I expected too, I don't really want to spoil it but the escalation had my clapping and laughing.
65. Pocket Rumble (Switch) - 3/4 (Completed Dec 6, 2018)
Completed All Lessons | Beat Arcade Mode
Another game I absolutely adore but am just no good at. There's isn't a story mode or anything and I had so much trouble with Arcade mode. This is honestly like if Smash's control scheme was thrown into a traditional fighting game format. There's actually an insane amount of depth with each of the characters despite how the game looks. I'm not quite in the generation to be nostalgic for Neo Geo Pocket games but I still found this really charming.
66. Ikaruga (Switch) - 4/4 (Completed Dec 6, 2018)
Completed Arcade Mode
Oh, I should have saved that last opening statement for this game because I can't even beat this game without cheating and giving myself infinite lives. I had played this a few times in a vintage arcade but it's nice to finally get through it several times and feel myself getting better at the polarity system over time and beating bosses that I wasn't able to before. Oh and I've been playing this with the amazing Flip Grip, it's so satisfying to play this way in bed.
67. Street Fighter V Arcade Edition + Season 3 (PS4) -3/4 ("Completed" Dec 15, 2018)
Completed All Season 3 Character Stories
I wish I could still enjoy Street Fighter V. A large part of my enjoyment of it was playing it in college with a scene but now not many people I know still care to play it either. There's just so much they're doing with Fight Money that's unfair for people that have been there from the beginning, especially in light of the sponsor content. New characters are great choices though, feels a bit late but it's appreciated nonetheless. Season 3 nerfed my boy Rashid, so onward to "Season 4" though right?
68. Dragon Ball FighterZ + Season 1 (PS4) - 4/4 ("Completed" Dec 20, 2018)
Completed Story Mode | 100% Story Mode Collection | 58% Trophies
FighterZ is so good! Except the meta became a bit stale to watch and it keeps getting dropped from tournaments for some reason. I'm so glad there was a game that brought together all the disparate fighting game communities. I'm still pretty bad at games with a tag system but this game has made me a bit better at really fast combos that you just type out what you want instead of worrying as much about timing. The story was ridiculously long and boring and I can't believe I did all of it. I enjoy all the Season 1 choices but even I kind of think that they should have been in the base roster, it feels really weird that a lot of the big characters in the last arc of Super aren't in this game yet but I get the reasoning behind the timing too. This game also gave me a lot of great moments of people saying this is bad because it's 2D, people rage quitting on me, and fantastic memes all year.
69. Marvel's Spider-Man: The City That Never Sleeps - Silver Lining (PS4) - 4/4 (Completed Dec 23, 2018)
Completed Story | Amazing Difficulty | 100% Trophies
Much better than the 2nd DLC but still plagued by repetitiveness. I still think the 1st DLC is the highlight of the bunch but this one actually had nice new setpieces and tied together with the 2nd DLC pretty well. Only problem is the 1st DLC barely mattering in this one so it's not as cohesive of a plot as I would have liked. It's also nice to wrap up the Screwball arc, it's fun enough but I hope the sequel give the spotlight to someone else for challenge missions. The way these DLC have tried to make the game more challenging by just throwing as many enemies as possible at you hasn't been really fun, a few times dying felt really unfair. Despite giving them pretty high scores, I can't recommend this to people who haven't picked up the season pass yet, wait for it to go on sale, there's no rush.
70. Into The Breach (Switch) - 4/4 (Completed Dec 28, 2018)
Beat Final Mission with 2 Corporate Islands | Normal Difficulty | Unlocked All Islands, 5 Squads, 7 Pilots
Bookending my year with a mech game at the beginning and a mech game at the end, couldn't have asked for a better accident. I'm going to be playing a lot more of this game but good god did it kick my butt during the time I played it. This is such a fantastically crafted strategy game, it really forces you to accept your loses and sacrifice the chance to kill enemies so that you can get better positioning to save civilians. I "beat" it on normal but I went back in to mess around on Easy and even one mistake because I wasn't taking it seriously could make me lose a lot of progress. I hadn't played FTL before but I might have to go back and try it now to see the great work these devs have done.
---Final Thoughts---
I can't believe my backlog was this big because I feel I've barely put a dent in it. I'm glad I did this though, the last two years I had been playing more big RPGs and I was getting a burnt out on them and I'd been missing out on a fair amount of fun smaller titles. Oddly enough a few massive RPGs games I need to get to came out this year too, oops. I'm excited to do this again next year, there's still so much in my backlog I said I would play this year that I haven't even touched yet. I'm also excited to find a new voice in how I write because I can feel what I want to write changing. I'm also excited to work on a new (more flexible) banner design! Although Kingdom Hearts III is coming out soon, so uh, we'll see. Thank you everyone that has had to put up with scrolling past my long posts because I keep accumulating finished games and not making posts! I'll try to be better about this in the future; See you all next year!