Phew. What a month. It's summer and I haven't been up to as much so I've been able to cross a lot off my backlog. I'm just over the halfway point, and if I'm lucky August should be just as productive. I'm finishing up a "ramp up the ridiculousness" Resident Evil marathon (REmake, then RE4, then RE6. RE and RE4 are done, so now I just have to see if I fall into the camp that loves how over the top stupid RE6 gets. Fingers crossed). I plan on playing Half-Life for the first time (I'm going in totally blind, which I haven't done with a game in a while. I bought it off reputation and how good Portal was), I still want to try and beat Twilight Princess and Paper Mario, and I feel like there's other games I'll get a sudden urge to dive into this month. So far, so good.
Master Post
Games beaten in July:
1. Super Mario Bros 2 (NSO on Switch) | July 2nd - 5 hrs | 3/5
2. Portal (Mac) | July 3rd - 6 hrs | 5/5
3. Yoku's Island Express (Switch) | July 10th - 8 hrs | 3/5
4. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! (GBA) | July 11th - 3 hrs | 4/5
5. Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge (GBA) | July 17th - 6 hrs | 4/5
6. Enter The Gungeon (Switch) | July 21st - 100 hrs | 5/5
7. Resident Evil Remake (Gamecube) | July 27th - 10 hrs| 4/5
8. Resident Evil 4 (Wii) | July 30th - 15 hrs | 5/5
Progress so far: 27 games
January - 5 games
February - 1 game
March - 2 games
April - 4 games
May - 2 games
June - 5 games
July - 8 games
Thoughts on July
1. Super Mario Bros 2 - Another "eh let's speed run one of the Nintendo Switch Online games out of historical curiosity" pick. This one was more disappointing than Kirby's Adventure was for me. It wasn't terrible, there's a lot of stuff I do like in it (the multiple playable characters, the aesthetic, the fact that Peach looks perpetually annoyed that she's on this adventure the entire time you're playing as her), but there was just a lot of small frustrating stuff in it that annoyed me (hello, infinitely spawning enemies, I thought I left you behind back in Ninja Gaiden). Thankfully this version had save states, I feel like I'd be harsher if I was trying to play it normally. The good news is this game got a remake, twice, so I think I'll revisit it down the line either in the All-Stars or the Advance version and see how it stacks up. 3/5, not great but I liked it enough to try a remake.
2. Portal - Now THIS is a game. I got it on sale for $1 on Steam (my first Steam purchase and, aside from Half-Life 1 and 2, probably my last, since I use a MacBook Pro and nobody besides Valve seems to put their games on it). It was my first time playing a game with mouse and keyboard, which I liked more than I thought I would. I wanted something I could beat in a night, and I already own 2 (I just haven't played it yet since I didn't play this one) so this felt like a good choice. I really can't think of anything I didn't like about this game. The length was just right, the mechanics were varied and used efficiently, it was FUNNY and the atmosphere was perfect. Also it got me to impulse buy the Half-Life games while they were on sale, so we'll see how those go when I get to them. 5/5, fantastic.
3. Yoku's Island Express - I really wanted to love this one. The demo hooked me and it's such a creative little game that I really didn't want to be too harsh on it (I'm always down for a wacky, creative idea if it's done well). For the most part, this game does its thing well. It's surprisingly open for a Metroidvania, I love how they tackle all the different aspects of pinball in an organic way and tonally it feels like a sunnier analogue to Hollow Knight. My big issue? Pinball and precise exploration do NOT go well together, it seems. There were
way too many times where I'd be backtracking and trying to get through a board and couldn't get the ball to go where I wanted. This is a problem because backtracking in a Metroidvania is kind of the point, and plenty of games with regular controls can make backtracking feel tedious, so the fact that you can't maneuver yourself with a ton of precision when you're in pinball mode just doesn't really work for me. I will say, I loved the final boss fight (no spoilers but uh... yeah, I like who you end up fighting, and how they handle the fight itself). I really did like a lot about this game and maybe I'll come back to down the line and it'll click with me better, but for now, 3/5. Creative, but kind of frustrating.
4. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! - I was feeling nostalgic for Warioware: Touched! on my DS and I'd never played this one, so I gave it a whirl. God I love the WarioWare formula. This one isn't perfect, but it's such a neat little game with a ton of personality. I forgot how important music was in the DS game, because it almost feels like a rhythm game when you really get into it. I love that finishing anything nets you some kind of unlockable mini game (I even made a thread here about how much I liked the Dr. Wario one as an unlockable). My main complaint is that there were a few too many re-used microgames to a point where I was like "ah, yeah, there's the Jump!(?) one again". It's a cool proof of concept though and good game in its own right, I'll be coming back to this one again, 4/5.
5. Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge - I made a thread because of this game (the discussion was about handheld versions of console games) so I'll just copy what I put there: "Yeah, it's good, especially considering how bad some of these types of games tend to go. The tone and charm of the series is still there which is already about half of my grading system for a game in this series, but the gameplay is also surprisingly solid. Yeah the top-down perspective means there's a lot of platforms that you won't always guess the height of correctly, but other than that it's the same basic gameplay as the console games, just simplified. All of the moves that I would expect these two to have are here (except for flying, but I can forgive that considering the limitations of the system), it's still a collectathon and even the music feels right (if I didn't know that Grant Kirkhope didn't make the music, I'd have thought it was him). Some "isms" of a lot of handheld spinoffs are here and accounted for, of course. Simple and forgettable mini-games account for a few of the jiggies and some generic/out of place NPCs pop up (I'm looking at you, chickens in the first world who look like they should be in the Spyro GBA games), but those are all pretty inoffensive. This is Banjo-Kazooie on a portable. I really like it." If this didn't capture the spirit of Banjo-Kazooie as well as it did, I'd probably rate it a little lower and I don't think I'll be playing it again for a while, but it was just nice to have another solid adventure with these two. 4/5, I'm being generous but only a little.
6. Enter The Gungeon - I'm considering this "finished" for the challenge because I finally made it to the end of the Gungeon after a year of playing the game. It was all luck, I somehow found a Rainbow chest on what was going to be my last run for a while and became so overpowered that I pretty much broke the game. If you want to read about just well the run went, take a look
at my post in this link. Thanks to this run I was able to unlock Rainbow Mode, and since then I've beaten the Dragun several times and killed at least two pasts. This game is too addicting and I'm going to have to put it down for a while, since picking it back up a few weeks ago I went from having 80 hours to 130. I'll be back to finish off the rest of the game down the line. Probably in a few months. 5/5, I'll be back, past.
7. Resident Evil Remake - I already played this as Jill a few years ago. This time I wanted to see what Chris's side was like. It was definitely a little harder, although I did play on easy mode to compensate. Now, I kind of ruined this playthrough for myself, I'll admit. I'm fascinated by the speed running potential of these games and wanted to see if I could learn it myself. Unfortunately that meant that if I wanted to learn the optimal route for the game, I'd be consulting a guide. I used a 1 hour 30 minute speed run on 100% as a guide to figure out what to do, and following that/messing up a few times (like using an old key on a door I wasn't supposed to because I thought I understood what to do and charged ahead anyway) led to my playthrough being about 10 hours. That part I don't mind, but I felt like I was following a walkthrough more than playing the actual game. The game was still fun, and there's a certain satisfaction in finding out you can skip certain boss fights if you want to. I think my next playthrough will be more fun, but for now, 4/5. Could have been 5/5 if I just let myself play it without worrying about a guide.
8. Resident Evil 4 - Immediately after doing REmake, I popped in RE4. This was my first New Game+ and my goal was simple: get the Chicago Typewriter and Brute Force my way through the game. It took me longer than I thought it would to get the Typewriter (I finally got enough money and treasures around the time I got to the maze, and I only just had enough after selling everything I had) but my god this has been a satisfying playthrough. It was already fun using more powerful weapons at the start of the game (the village sequence was over WAY quicker than I thought it would be), but once I got the Typewriter, the satisfaction got cranked up to 100. I just really love this game, I don't even need to get into it. 5/5, masterpiece, magnificent, pure video game fun.
TOTAL SO FAR: 27 games, 22 weeks left.