52 Games. 1 Year. 2023

KtotheRoc · Feb 24, 2023

16: Scarlet Nexus. End: 2/19/2023

I've seen a lot of anime in my day. And I didn't care one bit about this game's story. The combat is enjoyable, but I felt certain segments, particularly later sections of the game, just went on for too long.

17: Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. End: 2/23/2023.

Awkward title aside, the version of this title on NSO is great as it comes with new levels (including some old levels remade in this game's engine). Beyond the new levels, it's Super Mario Bros. 3, one of the best video games ever made.

18: Super Mario Land 2. End: 2/24/2023.

It's weird to go from SMB 3 to Land 2. The physics are radically different in this game compared to other Mario games, and it can take a little getting used to. I think it's a good game, but it's clear it was made by different people than the usual Mario team. (It is amusing that this is Wario's first appearance.)

Whimsicalish · Feb 24, 2023

11 | Pentiment
PC | Feb 20 | 21 h | 5/5

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It's very character heavy with a dash of mystery. My most read genre of books is mystery/thriller whodunnit. Pentiment went above and beyond what I expected from a video game. The writing in this game can shame some books I have read last year alone.

You play an artist that is caught in the middle of a murder investigation. You are tasked with questioning the town in an attempt to find clues related to the murderer. I won't lie, it's a ton of walking and dialogue. There are a few sequences to be nosy and dig up dirt on people but it's mostly gossip. You can choose skills, such as languages or lifestyle, that can give you an edge in your investigation. My Andreas was a scoundrel that loved fist fighting. There's different ways to play and choices that will influence whether someone will aid you or not.

I did play side by side with Lobotomaxx. We made certain to pick different choices from each other. (His was more suave than my Andreas.) It was fun to see the different options when spending time with townsfolk and clues.

My only negative was constantly talking to every townsfolk I could to see if they had new dialogue. It may have cut down time if you could see where folk were on your map and if they had something new to say?

I had fun while playing and I thought about the game when I wasn't playing. I do see myself playing another run in the future to pick paths I haven't seen yet.

12 | Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles
Steam Deck | Feb 20 | 21.5 h | 3/5

An open world adventure with farm plots. There's less emphasis on the farming aspect and more focus on exploring, which I did enjoy. You can set up farms on specific plots of land to ranch animals for their produce. You'll need a garden box to grow trees and plants.

The animals are cute and provide crafting materials. But that's about it. You can ask an animal in your farm to follow you, however they don't benefit from it. You cannot mount the larger animals to ride; it's a shame because you do a ton of walking in this game.

Speaking of walking....it's a lot. There is an item you can craft to fast travel to any farm you own in any of the 8 biomes. You'll have to craft one anytime you want to travel. There are also stones you can visit to fast travel but you need to be at that location. Plus the FT points aren't at any town. It's not convenient.

The barter system was fun. Some sellers will change their inventory when the day cycles. You don't have to worry about money, just trade items you no longer want.

It was fun enough to earn all achievements. The wandering back and forth put a damper on my attention span. The game really leans into the slow-moving rancher lifestyle.

13 | Luna's Fishing Garden
Steam Deck | Feb 23 | 3.5 h | 3/5

Another 'enjoy the slow pace lifestyle' simulation game. This was more simplistic than Yonder. It's a 2D gardening management.

You occasionally get quests from NCPs animals while you plant trees and go fishing. You earn income from your garden, plant more trees, then it cycles. Basic and simple gameplay. Perfect when I wasn't feeling well; a pastime when you need to turn your brain off.

It was quick and easy to get all achievements. I do wish there was more to spend your currency. Maybe decorations to spruce up your garden? At the end I had a ton of money and some empty space. I didn't know what to spend it on.

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djinn · Feb 25, 2023

Whimsicalish said:
11 | Pentiment
PC | Feb 20 | 21 h | 5/5

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It's very character heavy with a dash of mystery. My most read genre of books is mystery/thriller whodunnit. Pentiment went above and beyond what I expected from a video game. The writing in this game can shame some books I have read last year alone.

You play an artist that is caught in the middle of a murder investigation. You are tasked with questioning the town in an attempt to find clues related to the murderer. I won't lie, it's a ton of walking and dialogue. There are a few sequences to be nosy and dig up dirt on people but it's mostly gossip. You can choose skills, such as languages or lifestyle, that can give you an edge in your investigation. My Andreas was a scoundrel that loved fist fighting. There's different ways to play and choices that will influence whether someone will aid you or not.

I did play side by side with Lobotomaxx. We made certain to pick different choices from each other. (His was more suave than my Andreas.) It was fun to see the different options when spending time with townsfolk and clues.

My only negative was constantly talking to every townsfolk I could to see if they had new dialogue. It may have cut down time if you could see where folk were on your map and if they had something new to say?

I had fun while playing and I thought about the game when I wasn't playing. I see myself playing another run in the future to pick paths I haven't seen yet.

12 | Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles
Steam Deck | Feb 20 | 21.5 h | 3/5

WILL ADD SOON
13 | Luna's Fishing Garden
Steam Deck | Feb 23 | 3.5 h | 3/5
WILL ADD SOON

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Completely sold me on Pentiment

KtotheRoc · Feb 25, 2023

19: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. End: 2/24/2023.

It's been a long time since I played Superstar Saga. Felt good coming back to a game that actually mostly holds up pretty well (although one translation bit at the end feels a bit iffy to me). The gameplay is solid. The game itself is actually pretty funny. It's easy to see why so many were so charmed by this series from this first entry alone. It's still an enjoyable game.

Griffin · Feb 25, 2023

First update of the year!

#1 - Nobody Saves the World (Xbox Series) - ★★★★☆

This was a fun little action RPG by the makers of Guacamelee and Severed, although it ended up dragging a bit by the final act. Though players start out as a Nobody, they gradually unlock a number of different roles to change to. These start out as RPG mainstays like Knights and Rangers, but end up including a slug, a mermaid, an egg and a buff bodybuilder.

Each class has a number of quests that are based around using their unique abilities. Clearing them earns stars, which are needed to enter dungeons and progress the story. It's an addictive system that encourages players to constantly change up their classes and experiment with different combinations of abilities. The quest system is great because it feels like you're always making progress, outside of some of the more frustrating dungeons that don't allow players to change forms or earn experience. It's not a game that'll really stick with me, but the funny script and some creative classes made it a nice twist on a typical overhead adventure.

#2 Pokémon Violet (Switch) - ★★★★☆

I went in with some skepticism, but I ended up enjoying the latest entry in this series quite a bit. The nonlinear progression mostly works well, with three distinct storylines that intertwine at the end and a larger setting that had me wanting to explore every inch to track down new monsters. While it does have some glaring performance issues, the ability to explore the whole world alongside friends is a massive improvement over the dodgy multiplayer and boring "wild area" in Sword and Shield. The raid battles are actually enjoyable now, with the type-switching Terrastralized Pokemon adding a fun layer of strategy to battles.

The story ends up going to some surprising places and introducing some unique twists on familiar Pokemon with the Paradox forms. Of course, the new Pokemon are great too (especially best starter Quaxly, who everyone is wrong about). With the lousy visuals and lack of voice acting, the game does feel a few generations behind in some ways, but it's a fun template that I hope future games build on.

3 Telling Lies (PC) - ★★★☆☆

This follow-up to Her Story felt like it was drawing too much from the same playbook, so it didn't have the same impact as that first game. Once again, players watch fragmented snippets of several stories, then search for different keywords that'll lead to other clips that help to contextualise the recordings and piece together the overarching mysteries.

The four central characters are interesting (although it's often because of how awful and manipulative they can be), but there's too much going on and far too many conversations to sort through. It doesn't help that all of the clips are webcam recordings, so you'll only see half of a conversation at a time (or worse, another bloody bedtime story). It's a minor irritation, but there's no way to quickly skip to the beginning of a clip too. Telling Lies has some interesting things to say, but it abruptly ended just as I was starting to piece things together.

Celestial Descend · Feb 25, 2023

15. Blackwell Deception | Adventure | PC | ★★★☆☆ | 2-25
Finally, the real story begins. The hidden power behind everything rears its head, and it feels like the payoff for this long running series is close. Gonna need to play the final chapter before giving my final verdict for the series.

16. Hatsukoi 1/1 | Visual Novel | PC | ★★☆☆☆ | 3-3
I have enough artsy-fartsy games on my list I don't need to feel ashamed for adding this one. It's the kind of visual novel people would quick to dismiss as having nothing to show for except anime titties. And yet, this game kicked off a successful brand of VNs containing Gin'iro, Haruka and Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai that, at their core, not so different from this game: full on slice of life galore, school activities and vanilla romance, absolutely nothing over the top. Slice of life stuff is not what I'm into but I admit VN like this have their place in the market. True to its name, this game is all about fullfilling that perfect first love fantasy.

17. A New Life. | Visual Novel | PC | ★★★☆☆ | 3-4
This game is less of a cautionary tale than missed messages, which gives the story more room to maneuver. On the other hand, the story might be too ambitious for a 40 minutes run, some scenes can take a bit more time to get further fleshed out. The art is absolutely beautiful.

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Subnats · Feb 25, 2023

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Megaman & Bass: Challenger From The Future (Bandai Wonderswan) - February 25th
Managed to sneak in one more game before the end of the month and with this I'm pretty sure I've beaten all of the handheld classic Megaman games. Challenger from the Future was a bit of a weird one, an odd curiosity, both a sequel to Megaman and Bass on SNES and Megaman II on the Gameboy. Neither of these games seem to be particularly well liked from what I can tell, though I personally like both a lot, so it's weird that either would get a sequel, especially both at once. I really enjoy how Bass feels in MM&B so I decided to start this game with him and honestly it really isn't a great way to play this game and immediately soured me on it. Bass just does not feel great to play here. I understand that some concessions would need to be made with the dash considering that the Wonderswan only has 2 face buttons in its landscape rotation, where the majority of the game is played from, and giving it the same input as Megaman's slide, down and jump, is better than a double tap of the dpad (which isn't even an option here) and would be good, but for whatever reason you simply cannot get any momentum when jumping out of a dash, and it's input means that if you try to jump while shooting downwards you'll end up dashing instead which got me killed multiple times. Bass' buster isn't great either, it is incredibly weak compared to Megaman's and turns even normal enemies into absolute bullet sponges. I know it was weaker in the SNES game too but the difference here feels absolutely massive and I swear the fire rate is slower as well. Despite the not so great impression the Bass playthrough gave me I decided to give Megaman a try if only to get some extra runtime out of the game since it's pretty short, even compared to other handheld Megamans. This was a pretty great decision, if the original MM&B was a game designed around Bass then this is a Megaman game expressly designed around Megaman (wow who'd have thought?). The Megaman run of this game is honestly really enjoyable and he feels just as good to play as here as in any other game. Enemies actually go down in a normal amount of hits and the level design just generally feels way more catered to Megaman's abilities. The game would frankly be better if it solely had Megaman as a playable character. As a Wonderswan game, the console's ability to be rotated into TATE mode has to get some usage and it's done pretty well here for Airconman's stage. It's nothing too special, just allowing for a more vertical level design but it's nice and it works well, though it does have the one point in the game that feels more catered to Bass with its miniboss. Presentation wise, I'm gonna be honest the game looks really damn ugly to me, I just really don't like how everything looks aside from the cutscenes which are fairly decent. The music is fairly good though, it's mostly Wonderswan renditions of tracks from MM&B but what's there is good and it sounds nice overall. All that said while the Bass run of the game threatened to make me dislike it, I did end up enjoying my time with Challenger from the Future overall. It's not a looker and certainly not worth playing over any of the other handheld Megaman games or the original Megaman and Bass, but it's a neat curiosity that might just be worth a look if you're a big Megaman fan.

3/5

el_galvon · Feb 26, 2023

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So... I just played a bunch of early 80's arcade games:

08. Tapper (Arcade - 1983) | Feb/25 - 1hr | 7.5/10

More fun than I expected, in addition to being visually very charming. Interesting balance in deciding to finish the level as quickly as possible or trying to get a higher score by serving more customers, which can get pretty chaotic very quickly. In addition to details such as the difference in the speed at which each customer drinks or the decision to go or not to collect the tip to activate the dancers that can distract some customers. Overall a very satisfying arcade experience.

09. Mappy (Arcade - 1983) | Feb/25 - 30min | 6/10

A type of "platform Pac-Man", also from Namco, Mappy has charisma-filled visuals and soundtrack, but it gets kinda boring very quickly. It's relatively simple to avoid the cats, at least until the screen is completely filled with them, and the levels have little variation overall. Can be fun in a short session.

10. Donkey Kong 3 (Arcade - 1983) | Feb/25 - 30min | 5/10

Perhaps the most curious game to carry the name of the famous gorilla, since the game is practically a fixed shoot'em up. Conceptually very interesting but I didn't find it particularly very fun, as the only variation on the challenge is to cram the screen with more and more enemies until poor Stanley "the Bugman" is devoured by a cloud of bizarre insects.

11. Donkey Kong (Arcade - 1981) | Feb/25 - 1hr | 7/10

The first classic by Shigeru Miyamoto and the forerunner of the platform genre is a very competent game even today, despite the unfair deaths by fall damage. It's hard to look at Donkey Kong without taking into account everything it revolutionized, but I feel that it's a game that it's fun by itself, even without taking into account its historical context (perhaps that's why it is what it is) .

12. Pac-Man (Arcade - 1980) | Feb/25 - 1hr | 9/10

Third greatest achievement of Toru Iwatani's career, followed by Pac-Man Championship Edition and, of course, his cameo in the Adam Sandler movie Pixels.

13. Q*bert (Arcade - 1982) | Feb/25 - 30min | 5/10

Q*bert has an interesting concept for a puzzle arcade game, but the actual challenge comes much more from the isometric perspective, which is difficult to get used to. The highlight is its sound design and the humor of the game. But overall this is a case where the experience was worth more for the historical value.

L Thammy · Feb 26, 2023

12. Hyper Dyne Side Arms (Via Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium)
Bad - ★☆☆☆ (1/4)

It feels a little weird to say, but I don't think Capcom had the expertise with the delicate gameplay of action games to pull off a top notch shmup at this stage in their career. It has a bunch of ideas for how to differentiate itself, but the realization of its gameplay are too rough to recommend, at least as I played it. It might be that the game is lot better with two players or at lower difficulty settings.

Essentially, it's a scrolling shmup, but you have shoot buttons to fire either left or right. You also collect different weapons which you can switch between with a third button, although you lose your equipped weapon if you die. A cool detail is that there are distinct sprites for each weapon, with the Mega Bazooka Launcher being as large as you are. Item drops can be shot to scroll them to different items, including a speed up and a negative speed up. There's also an item you can get which will fuse both player's robots - summoning them if you're only playing single player - which adds a shot that fires in all direction to whatever weapon you have equipped, and which lasts until you get hit and revert back to your normal form. There are actually two different designs depending on which player gets the power up, if I'm not mistaken.

For all this neat stuff, there are a few things that make it painful to play. The worst thing to me is that your normal speed is totally fine, so collecting speed ups just makes you harder to control, and when you're cycling through powerups every other one is a speed up. That means it's very easy to shoot a powerup and accidentally make yourself too fast, much easier than actually selecting the powerup that you actually want to get. I also think there's a general sense that the game is too chaotic and they don't really have a clear way for you to approach the challenge in mind; you'll just die because something pops out of nowhere, then die again on your next life because something else did. The worst enemy type are centipede-like machines, which home in on you, take forever to kill, and don't go away on their own. It takes a lot of focus on them to kill them, and meanwhile you're being swarmed by enemies every which way. Fittingly, the final boss is essentially just a bigger and meaner version of this one enemy.

I should probably also note that the Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium version actually has some altered sprites from the original game. It's pretty obvious that Capcom had Gundam in mind when they were making this game, and in fact they included certain Mobile Suits from Gundam as enemies, in particular the Zaku and the Z'Gok. They're redesigned in this compilation, presumably to avoid legal conflicts with Bandai.

shadowman16 · Feb 26, 2023

Ishin's been keeping me busy so not much progress on much else. But I have managed to get some progress done on my handheld backlog:

35. Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB) - Its quite impressive how much bigger this one is over the first one. The first one is fairly short (both in stage count, and stage length), and this game improves on both of those. Its more challenging too! (not insanely difficult, but I did lose a few lives, compared to me having almost maxed out lives in Land 1).
The game is based closely on DKC2 from what I understand, with a few tweaks to suit the handheld format. Only issues I had were with the animal powers (mapped to select button, which was annoying, especially for the Spider), and that one of the end secret levels had some weird scrolling issues where Id die because it didnt scroll fast enough despite me going the right way and there being ground below me.
Its worth doing the hidden stuff in the game, as getting all the krem coins unlocks the real last series of levels - tough finale levels before one final showdown with K Rool (which is pretty simple hilariously enough).
Also, bonus points to the game for being "clearer" graphically. It was much easier to follow when playing it on the Analogue Pocket, it didnt look as busy as Land 1 did.

All in all, really recommend it, excellent 2D platformer for the GB.

Next up:

Monster Hunter Rise
RGG Ishin Kiwami! (Chapter 5)
Mass Effect 2
The Pathless (3 monsters defeated)

Original post:

52 Games. 1 Year. 2023

A thread for people that are trying to play 52 games in a year. Tell us how you're doing and what you are going to play next - claim a post and update us on your progress! How do I take part? Claim a 'main post' where you will list all your completions for the year. You can use fancy images...

www.resetera.com

el_galvon · Feb 27, 2023

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Another two games from 40 years ago:

14. Dragon's Lair (Arcade - 1983) | Feb/26 - 1hr | 4/10

I can understand the impact that Dragon's Lair made with its incredible animation quality, which is impressive even today. I see no problem with the game's concept being a series of events playable via QTE (before the term even existed), but the execution is abysmal. Several scenes don't even hint at which button to press, and even when you know what to do, the timing is ridiculously tight. It's too frustrating, even considering it's an Arcade that only aims to suck as many coins out of the player. At least the unique death animations combined with protagonist Dick the Daring's screams are funny.

15. Space Ace (Arcade - 1983) | Feb/26 - 30min | 2/10

Exactly the same concept as Dragon's Lair, with the same excellent animation quality and the same terrible game design issues. I consider it worse than its predecessor for having a less charismatic hero and for the annoying villain animations after each death.

djinn · Feb 27, 2023

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4. Spider-Man: Turf Wars DLC
Yuri finally gets some spotlight but her time to shine is a double-edged sword. This is, unfortunately, a lot more dour than The Heist with not a lot to liven it up. Screwball has well and truly warn out her welcome and hideouts just feel like more of the same. There's very little in-person interaction between Yuri and Parker and I feel like that definitely hinders this dlc. The spiderbot missions were OK, though, and I do appreciate how far this was willing to go with its content and themes.

Deleted member 32615 · Feb 27, 2023

Game 13: Omega Boost (PS1) (3 Hours) (February 27th, 2023)
Oh man, Omega Boost is so cool. The cinematic action gameplay is top notch, the bosses are intense, the music is amazing and the movement feels brilliant. This is genuinely one of my new favourite games

Game 14: Kick Master (NES) (2 Hours) (February 27th, 2023)
Another NES game that I've wanted to play for a while, this one is awesome. A super sick mix of platforming and RPG elements on the NES. The sprite work is great and the game just generally feels perfect to control

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L Thammy · Feb 28, 2023

13. Shinobi
Outstanding - ★★★★ (4/4)

Above all else, I found this to be a remarkably well balanced game, which is why I can't bring myself to give it a lower score even though it's not as exciting to me as other similar games. Being limited to one health point sounds intimidating, but the short stages and fairly predictable enemies allow it to be manageable. The enemies make the experience, since they actually have some variety in their behaviour which make them fun to engage.

There are some issues I find in the game, though. The difficulty curve isn't right, with some levels being remarkably difficult - at least if you're like me and don't like to make use of your ninjutsu - followed by a bunch of stages that are a breeze to go through. Later stages feel like they're more a matter of memorization gameplay which I'm not hot on. The bosses are kind of absurdly designed, with a lot of them going down pathetically easy when taking damage but having something else that you have to deal with first which is actually threatening. The shading on the sprites looks pretty bad and there's really nothing cohesive or interesting about the aesthetic.

I think the biggest thing keeping me from being excited about it is just that there have been so many similar games like Ninja Gaiden for the NES, Ninja Spirit, or Mystic Warriors that I feel like this just is kind of plain by comparison. It's not realistic, it's not over the topic, it's not futuristic, it's not contemporary, it's not historical, it's really just a ninja game and that's all there is to it. And while I do think it's really good, I don't think I'm going to return to this particular one again any time soon.

Supaidaman · Feb 28, 2023

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9. Kingdom Hearts: Melody Of Memory (PS4) - 3/5
This is the last game of February that I'm completing. Hearing all these songs made me want to play the main games again. Also, the "plot" at the end made me want KH4 NOW. Now, I have some gripes with it, mainly:

I didn't want to be forced to play through let it go, stop making this a thing
KH3 is really missing representation, and the stages being just videos are kind of shit. I understand why they did that, though.
I would have preferred if they used sprites instead of KH1-2 models, but, again, I understand why they did that.

I still have some songs to unlock, but I finished the main story, so I'm considering it complete as of now. I do plan into at least unlocking everything later.

VahineCacao · Feb 28, 2023

I'll try this year

January

1) Valheim (20/01/2023) - 114 hours

2) The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (20/01/2023) - 4 hours

3) Prey (26/01/2023) - 35 hours

4) Dead Space Remake (29/01/2023) - 11 hours

February

5) Deathloop (02/02/2023) - 35.5 hours

6) Dishonored : Death of the Outsider (05/02/2023) - 14.5 hours

7) Arx Fatalis (08/02/2023) - 20.8 hours

8) Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (10/02/2023) - 7.5 hours

9) Cuphead (13/02/2023) - 7.5 hours

10) Dusk (14/02/2023) - 6.9 hours

11) Returnal (21/02/2023) - 28.4 hours

12) Atomic Heart (25/02/2023) - 20.7 hours

March
13) Like a Dragon: Ishin! (11/03/2023) - 101 hours

14) Yes, Your Grace (13/03/2023) - 5.2 hours

15) Resident Evil 4 (2023) (26/03/2023) - 26.3 hours

April

16) Sifu (09/04/2023) - 13.8 hours

17) Hotline Miami (10/04/2023) - ~2 hours

18) Hotline Miami 2 (11/04/2023) - ~3 hours

19) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (27/04/2023) - 32 hours

May

20) The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (16/05/2023) - ~100 hours

21) Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (17/05/2023) - 26 hours

June

22) Dredge (09/06/2023) - 10 hours

23) Persona 3 : FES (18/06/2023)

24) Civilization VI (20/06/2023) - 67 hours

25) The Last of Us Part I (25/06/2023) - 14 hours

July

26) Mundaun (01/07/2023) - 6 hours

27) HROT (02/07/2023) - 5 hours

28) BattleBit Remastered (30/07/2023) - 50 hours

August
29) Battleblock Theater (17/08/2023) - 8 hours

30) Cuphead - The Delicious Last Course (21/08/2023)

31) Professor Layton and the Curious Village (21/08/2023) - 9.5 hours

September
32) Outer Wilds (11/09/2023) - 14 hours

33) Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye (20/09/2023) - 9 hours

34) Baldur's Gate 3 (22/09/2023) - 180 hours

October
35) BPM : Bullets Per Minute (11/10/2023) - 10 hours

36) Papers Please (30/10/2023) - 6.5 hours

November
37) Dave the diver (01/11/2023) - 24 hours

38) Lies of P (08/11/2023) - 30 hours

39) Jusant (11/11/2023) - 5 hours

40) Cyberpunk 2077 (11/11/2023) - 194 hours

41) Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty (11/11/2023)

42) Vampire Survivors (17/11/2023) - 27 hours

43) Fable : The Lost Chapter (19/11/2023) - 16 hours

44) Super Mario Bros. Wonder (22/11/2023) - 10 hours

45) Chant of Sunnaar (23/11/2023) - 8 hours

46) Alan Wake II (26/11/2023) - 19.5 hours

47) Cocoon (26/11/2023) - 3.5 hours

48) Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise (28/11/2023)

49) Super Mario RPG (30/11/2023) - 11.5 hours

50) Superliminal (30/11/2023) - 1.8 hours

December
51) Rollerdrome (01/12/2023) - 5 hours

52) Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (05/12/2023) - 12 hours

53) Hi-Fi Rush (06/12/2023) - 11.7 hours

54) Sekiro (10/12/2023) - 26 hours

55) Iron Lung (19/12/2023) - 1.2 hours (damn editing is hard with a phone)

January

1) Valheim (20/01/2023) - 114 hours

+100h in less than a month and we beat the last boss available for now so I'm counting this one

2) The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (20/01/2023) - 4 hours

Was not a fan of the original, but I get it now I guess. Funny. Didn't do all the routes though I might come back later.

3) Prey (26/01/2023) - 35 hours

I don't really remember which part but something in Stanley Parable reminded me of the window breaking scene at the beginning of Prey. I dropped it a few years ago so I decided to give it a try. Perfect game, did a full human and full typhon run. And it convinced me to try all the other Arkane's game that I did not played yet.

4) Dead Space Remake (29/01/2023) - 11 hours

original was one of my favorite game as a teenager, remake looked great and like Prey it's in a big ship in space with aliens, I had to play that one. It was cool but not as scary as when I was younger

February

5) Deathloop (02/02/2023) - 35.5 hours

Second game for my Arkane checklist, I played it at launch but I was too messy on PC. Super fun to play, to the point that I 100% the achievements and discovered a few more secrets. My only disappointment is that it was too "linear" since you only have one way to complete the loop. Can't wait to play it again though.

6) Dishonored : Death of the Outsider (05/02/2023) - 14.5 hours

Another Arkane, I played all the Dishonored but not this stand alone. It's Dishonored so yeah it's great. Really fun to play and replay. 100% achievements on that one too

7) Arx Fatalis (08/02/2023) - 20.8 hours

Hoooly what an adventure. It was exactly the type of game I wanted to play for a few time now since I was craving some dungeon crawler. There's so much stuff to see and do, and from what I read online after playing the game, I feel like I still missed a lot.

8) Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (10/02/2023) - 7.5 hours

Last one on the Arkane's list and, damn, what a bummer. Not a big fan of the gameplay overall, the story was boring and yeah the interactions with the girls were weird. I rushed it.

9) Cuphead (13/02/2023) - 7.5 hours

"But there's so much love put into these boss fights that you can't just walk away" I was rewatching dunkey's videos and yeah, that one made me retry Cuphead. I dropped it in 2018 but I had to try again now. Didn't struggled as much as 5 years ago but some bosses were still pretty tough. Loved it though so thanks Dunkey. I'll do the DLC later.

10) Dusk (14/02/2023) - 6.9 hours

Great DA, weapon's feeling is great, it's funny and it can be very scary. Loved every seconds of it.

11) Returnal (21/02/2023) - 28.4 hours

Cool gameplay and the environments were splendid, I took too many screenshots of this game.

12) Atomic Heart (25/02/2023) - 20.7 hours

The fights are fun, also you should play with Russian voices

March
13) Like a Dragon: Ishin! (11/03/2023) - 101 hours

FINALLY. I wanted to play this game since I played Yakuza Zero in 2018. I'm really happy they finally ported it to PC and in English BUT the game look very ugly at times and the dungeons/farming for the weapons is a painful experience, even if you're trying to forge one or two good weapons. I do not recommend anyone to look into this aspect of the game.
I hope they'll do Like A Dragon: Kenzan! next :)
I finally learned Mahjong with this game, it took me a good day or two with the kemono Mahjong app though. But it's really fun.

14) Yes, Your Grace (13/03/2023) - 5.2 hours

It was a cool little game, not much to say about it. At least it knows when to stop (looking at you Reigns)

15) Resident Evil 4 (2023) (26/03/2023) - 26.3 hours

Awesome REmake. Loved the work done for the relationship between Leon and Ashley. Some things were better in the original but overall it's a great game.
Can't believe they removed the laser room though

April

16) Sifu (09/04/2023) - 13.8 hours

SIFUUUUUUUU. Finally on Steam, not the first time I'm playing it but I never did the true ending, but now I can say it's done. It was really fun to master the parry and the devs did a great job with all the updates, I even think it could deserve a nomination for the Best Ongoing.
I just love everything about this game and I can't recommend it enough

17) Hotline Miami (10/04/2023) - ~2 hours

18) Hotline Miami 2 (11/04/2023) - ~3 hours

A friend started Hotline Miami for the first time, only reason I played them again. It's Hotline Miami, it's still super cool there's nothing else to say

19) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (27/04/2023) - 32 hours

Played the Gamecube version with the 4K texture pack. Pretty good, I can only compare it to TWW so I would say that overall the map isn't great and the game ask you to travel too much on this (kinda) boring map, the worst part being the one just before the City in the Sky. You need to go to the same places multiple times and going to all the statues was a chore
BUT, the dungeons were awesome, the bosses and the items too. And just for that (and Midna) it's a really good game

May

20) The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (16/05/2023) - ~100 hours

I'm pretty much a BOTW hater, I love the beginning of the game, but it always become so boring for me and I never managed to finish it. I bought a Switch to play BOTW and sold it partly because of BOTW ~~(and also because I have a good PC)~~. So as a good hater, I was waiting for the sequel and when I heard it was "accessible" I promptly started playing it to better badmouth it.
Well overall, I liked it. I think the main reason is that the powers are so so much enjoyable. My main gripes about the game are
- the sky is lacking. I would have loved to see more large area like the Great Sky Island.
- The Depth... I mean, I am guilty of doing all the Roots but man is this place boring as hell. The Great Abandonned Central Map is super cool and the Lynel Arena was challenging but after that ? A big wasteland filled with emptiness and just thinking about it makes me angry.
- The main dungeons. Looks better than in BOTW but managed to be more boring and less challenging.
Other than that I had my fair share of fun, I did all the shrines and more importantly I finished the game (splendid final boss btw) so that's an improvement on that side for me

21) Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (17/05/2023) - 26 hours

Don't have much to say. Liked it at first and the Star Wars vibes were perfect but it really felt too long and the combats were too clunky to be enjoyable. It's a shame and I hope they'll do better with future games

June

22) Dredge (09/06/2023) - 10 hours

Cute little game with a cool artstyle and a relaxing gameplay but with some scary/spooky events at the same time. Not a big fan of the

"it's lovecraftian so it must end badly for you haha"

but it was still worth playing

23) Persona 3 : FES (18/06/2023)

Finally managed to beat this game. It took me exactly one year between the first session and the last. I really liked the story, the confidents and Tatsumi Port Island, such a cool place. But I couldn't stand the combat and Tartarus was the last place I wanted to be in. Thanks God for the emulation and the quicksave/load + speed hack

24) Civilization VI (20/06/2023) - 67 hours

I never managed to enjoy 4X games, and it's been a while since I last played a strategy game for real. This time, it finally clicked and I really enjoyed the hell out of CIV6.

25) The Last of Us Part I (25/06/2023) - 14 hours

I think it's 5th or 6th time I'm beating this game. I always think I'm going to be bored, but I'm not. It was awesome to see the game in ultrawide, just stunning but I hope the performances will be better for the TLOU2 port (even though I didn't had that much issue, except a few traversal stutter in new)

July

26) Mundaun (01/07/2023) - 6 hours

I'm glad I watched the Annapurna Interactive Showcase because I never heard of this game before that. Nothing much to say but it was interesting and if you like the art you should play it too.

27) HROT (02/07/2023) - 5 hours

Love the aesthetic of the game but I didn't get 99% of the references.

28) BattleBit Remastered (30/07/2023) - 50 hours

I didn't really want to play a lot during this month of July, so BattleBit was the perfect game for that, just play one or two games to relax myself and then stop. However, it quickly became redundant, I don't think i'll play it again.

August
29) Battleblock Theater (17/08/2023) - 8 hours

Was in holidays with a friend, we didn't know what to played and decided on Battleblock. It was a fun puzzle/platform game

30) Cuphead - The Delicious Last Course (21/08/2023)

Started in coop with the same friend. But we didn't have time to finish it (there was only the final boss left lol). So I had to do everything over again on my steam account AND beat the final boss. Tbh, it was a blast to be able to rush all of these bosses after so many tries the first time. Excellent DLC, bravo.

31) Professor Layton and the Curious Village (21/08/2023) - 9.5 hours

I played the Android port, and the Layton series seems to be a perfect fit for a mobile game. You can just pop the game, solve two or three puzzles and then stop. I played the Curious Village more than 13 years ago but I was surprised at how much I remembered of this game. Really cool, love the atmosphere and I can't recommend it enough if you're bored on your phone.

September
32) Outer Wilds (11/09/2023) - 14 hours

I started Outer Wilds 3 years ago, and kind of dropped it because... reasons ? In any case, I don't know what I can say because I think everything's been said before, but it's an amazing adventure and I'm hyped to try the DLC.

33) Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye (20/09/2023) - 9 hours

I don't have anything to say. Just like the original game, it is a must play.

34) Baldur's Gate 3 (22/09/2023) - 180 hours

Did two runs. I almost started a third one but I was afraid it was going to be too much. An absolute unit of a game that still have much much to offer. The most I hope we'll see a DLC for it someday but I also can't wait for the next Larian Studio game

October
35) BPM : Bullets Per Minute (11/10/2023) - 10 hours

Just wanted to play it again, great game with awesome musics.

36) Papers Please (30/10/2023) - 6.5 hours

I started this game 2 or 3 times before that but never managed to get into it. This time I managed to get past the first week and that's when the game start to be a little more interesting. Cool game but I liked Obra Dinn much much more.

November
37) Dave the diver (01/11/2023) - 24 hours

Ops, almost dropped that one, I started playing at the release but I lost interest near the ending. Still a cool game overall but sometimes it has too much of a mobile game "vibe" to it.

38) Lies of P (08/11/2023) - 30 hours

It was not an easy game at all. The bosses are absolute beasts and the two phases discouraged me a lot of time and I trash-talked the game more than I could admit. But it was a really really great game, and all the boss forced me to know exactly all their patterns. In the FromSoft games, I had a few "That's it ?" moments or when you feel like you just missed out the boss by being too overpowered. It did not happen with Lies of P and it felt awesome.

39) Jusant (11/11/2023) - 5 hours

Really beautiful game and I dig the abandoned buildings with all the maritime equipment. Good thing it's short though.

40) Cyberpunk 2077 (11/11/2023) - 194 hours

I can't describe how mad and disappointed I was at the release of this game. I think I finally reached the acceptance phase. I didn't planned to but I replayed the game at the release of the 2.0. And I had a lot of fun. It didn't changed that much but the gameplay is a lot more fun and knowing what to expect from the game helped me to enjoy it more for what it is. It's still not the game I hoped it would be but it's still a great game.

41) Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty (11/11/2023)

Just like for The Witcher 3, I really think CDPR shine the most with their DLCs. It's smaller and shorter but so much better. I loved every bit of it.

42) Vampire Survivors (17/11/2023) - 27 hours

Chronophage

43) Fable : The Lost Chapter (19/11/2023) - 16 hours

A classic, still a lot of fun to play. I would love to play Fable 2 and 3 but it seems very annoying to do that on PC

44) Super Mario Bros. Wonder (22/11/2023) - 10 hours

I think it's the first ever Mario platformer I managed to complete. It was so visually appealing and filled with cool ideas, you just want to see more.
I managed to collect all the Seeds and do the Special World too but I didn't do the hyper duper secret level. I loved the game but not to the point of playing ALL the levels where I missed a big coin

45) Chant of Sunnaar (23/11/2023) - 8 hours

When I saw this game (I think it was during the Tribeca Games Spotlight) I knew I had to play it. Hard to resist this art style and the concept was promising. Good call on my part for that one because it was amazing
The game is easy enough to not make you stuck in the same puzzle for hours but it was still challenging for some parts. The most fun I had was translating from a language to another and I wish we had a little more of that. Great game, merci la France

46) Alan Wake II (26/11/2023) - 19.5 hours

The only thing I want now is a FBI/investigation only game with the same scenery and creepy atmosphere. Also I really need to watch Twin Peaks.
The whole Alan part was not that interesting, there's some cool ideas but the only thing I wanted was to get back and play with Saga. (Chapter 4 of Alan was the best part of the game though)

47) Cocoon (26/11/2023) - 3.5 hours

Short but sweet, but really really too short. I would have easily took another 1 or 2 hours of these puzzles. The final ones were really interesting and cool, you just want to do it a little more.

48) Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise (28/11/2023)

It's Rhythm Paradise
I thought the Fan Club was also on this version of the game but NO, I was so disappointed

49) Super Mario RPG (30/11/2023) - 11.5 hours

It started of really strong but after a few hours, you really really do the same things gameplay wise. The combats ends up having no interest, except the final boss and Culex because you can finally exploit an enemy weakness without them dying in one or two turns.

50) Superliminal (30/11/2023) - 1.8 hours

I knew it was short but not THAT short. Also, the perspectives puzzles where you need to make objects bigger or smaller are cool and interesting but really feels underutilized. Too much traversals puzzle where you need to find your path, idk, most of the game was not interesting to me.

December
51) Rollerdrome (01/12/2023) - 5 hours

You roller skate while shooting, or maybe it's the other way around
I'll try to 100% it

52) Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (05/12/2023) - 12 hours

Like the first one, played it on my phone. It was really cool, I love the city and I didn't remember this on as much as the first game.
Not a fan of the "twist" for the story though.
I completed all the puzzle but I really didn't like the Bonus Puzzles. It's too much MATH, Layton these are not puzzles, it's just math problems please leave me alone. I gave up for a few of them.

53) Hi-Fi Rush (06/12/2023) - 11.7 hours

It was a lot of fun and the levels just look amazing.
My main gripe is that I would have liked a little more fights ? Or longer fights idk, I know you unlock things after the end but it was kind of too late for me

54) Sekiro (10/12/2023) - 26 hours

Not my first time with the game but, except with a really harsh beginning, it was a lot of fun to be better than ever in Sekiro, to the point where I managed to enjoy Demon of Hatred, it's nuts
I also did the boss rush to unlock the Inner Genichiro/Owl/Isshin and it was exhilarating to complete those. I did them multiple times because you just want to fight more and more.
I also wanted to try the Mortal Journey but after dying three times against Duo Ape I sadly called it a day, I really don't like that one lol

Currently playing

Lethal Company : with friends
Elden Ring

Want to play

Yakuza 3 (and 4/5/6/7...)
System Shock (2023)
Resident Evil 4 : Separate Ways

Dropped

Fire Emblem : Three Houses (12/01/2023)
- Really not my type of game
Darkest Dungeon (12/02/2023)
- I think it's my third or fourth try with this game but it's too stressful for me. Every time I finish a dungeon I just want to take a 30 minutes break lol
Inscryption (19/03/2023)
- The art style is what draw me to this game, but in the end it really wasn't for me. The only times I managed to won the "first act" was with the help of cracked totems. And the second act is adding deck building ? Nah, I'll pass
Super Paper Mario (27/07/2023)
- What a snooze fest, I dropped after the chapter in space. I really did my best to not drop too quickly but it's impossible, I can't finish this game.
Stardew Valley
- I consider this one dropped, I'll probably pick it up again but not that soon
Half Life Alyx
- I'll finish it someday I swear

LonestarZues · Feb 28, 2023

VahineCacao said:
I'll try this year

January

1) Valheim (20/01/2023)

+100h in less than a month and we beat the last boss available for now so I'm counting this one

2) The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (20/01/2023)

Was not a fan of the original, but I get it now I guess. Funny

3) Prey (26/01/2023)

I don't really remember which part but something in Stanley Parable reminded me of the window breaking scene at the beginning of Prey. I dropped it a few years ago so I decided to give it a try. Perfect game, did a full human and full typhon run. And it convinced me to try all the other Arkane's game that I did not played yet.

4) Dead Space Remake (29/01/2023)

original was one of my favorite game as a teenager, remake looked great and like Prey it's in a big ship in space with aliens, I had to play that one. It was cool but not as scary as when I was younger

February

5) Deathloop (02/02/2023)

Second game for my Arkane checklist, I played it at launch but I was too messy on PC. Super fun to play, to the point that I 100% the achievements and discovered a few more secrets. My only disappointment is that it was too "linear" since you only have one way to complete the loop. Can't wait to play it again though.

6) Dishonored : Death of the Outsider (05/02/2023)

Another Arkane, I played all the Dishonored but not this stand alone. It's Dishonored so yeah it's great. Really fun to play and replay. 100% achievements on that one too

7) Arx Fatalis (08/02/2023)

Hoooly what an adventure. It was exactly the type of game I wanted to play for a few time now since I was craving some dungeon crawler. There's so much stuff to see and do, and from what I read online after playing the game, I feel like I still missed a lot.

8) Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (10/02/2023)

Last one on the Arkane's list and, damn, what a bummer. Not a big fan of the gameplay overall, the story was boring and yeah the interactions with the girls were weird. I rushed it.

9) Cuphead (13/02/2023)

"But there's so much love put into these boss fights that you can't just walk away" I was rewatching dunkey's videos and yeah, that one made me retry Cuphead. I dropped it in 2018 but I had to try again now. Didn't struggled as much as 5 years ago but some bosses were still pretty tough. Loved it though so thanks Dunkey. I'll do the DLC later.

10) Dusk (14/02/2023)

Great DA, weapon's feeling is great, it's funny and it can be very scary. Loved every seconds of it.

11) Returnal (21/02/2023)

Cool gameplay and the environments were splendid, I took too many screenshots of this game.

12) Atomic Heart (25/02/2023)

The fights are fun, also you should play with Russian voices

Currently playing

Like a Dragon : Ishin!

Hades (trying to do 100% achievements)

Dropped

Fire Emblem : Three Houses (12/01/2023)

Really not my type of game

Darkest Dungeon (probably)

I think it's my third or fourth try with this game but it's too stressful for me. Every time I finish a dungeon I just want to take a 30 minutes break lol

I feel that as well with Darkest Dungeon lol. Great game, but stress thru the roof everytime I play it.

shadowman16 · Feb 28, 2023

36. The Pathless (PS4) - A bit of a weird one this one... I was excited about it because the pre release vids showed it as this amazing traversal and mix of action... which was a wee bit incorrect as 90% of the game is environment based puzzles, traversal is quite lacking as you only have a couple of viable moves, and action is sparing as there's only a couple of beasts to fight (around 5-6 in total).
That said, the puzzles are actually pretty fun, and once I got into the groove of things I had a ton of fun. Some of the bosses were better than others, with the last couple I fought the most fun (in my opinion), and the game looked really slick.
I did end up getting all the "things" to unlock the slightly extended ending, as I felt the puzzles and exploration was fun enough (with a podcast for company) that I just kept playing until I had found them all.

Definitely not in the running for best indie title ever, but I did eventually end up quite enjoying it, just took a tad longer than usual.

Next up:

Monster Hunter Rise
RGG Ishin Kiwami! (Chapter 6)
Mass Effect 2
Moonrider
Kirby Return to Dreamland

Original post:

52 Games. 1 Year. 2023

A thread for people that are trying to play 52 games in a year. Tell us how you're doing and what you are going to play next - claim a post and update us on your progress! How do I take part? Claim a 'main post' where you will list all your completions for the year. You can use fancy images...

www.resetera.com

BentMyWookiee · Feb 28, 2023

-> Main Post <-

FEBRUARY COMPLETIONS:

9. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)| 4/5 - I never played the original game, so I don't have the nostalgia for Link's Awakening that many do. I really love the aesthetic they went with for this game and think it gives it a lot of charm. I found it silly seeing things like Goombas and Kirby in a Zelda game. I did find myself getting stuck in a couple of dungeons more than usual for a Zelda game and had to look up a guide before I beat my head against a wall too hard. Link's Awakening did not reach the heights of A Link to the Past for me, but overall I enjoyed the game and thought it was a very solid entry in the series.
10. Super Castlevania IV (XSX) | 3/5 - Continuing my trek through the Castlevania series brought me to this one. I think visually it was doing some really impressive effects for the SNES hardware. In terms of gameplay, I really appreciated being able to attack vertically and diagonally. The wiggle whip definitely made it at lot easier to deal with some otherwise annoying enemies. Not my favorite Classicvania game, but definitely not the worst. I'd put it somewhere in the middle.
11. Graze Counter GM (Switch) | 5/5 - I played a decent amount of Danmaku Unlimited 3, but the grazing mechanic in that never really clicked with me for some reason. I don't know what it is about Graze Counter, but I found myself really enjoying grazing in this game. Grazing builds your meter, which lets you fire off special shots that cancel bullets and do more damage. It's simple fun mechanic that makes the game feel satisfying to play. This is going in my rotation of shmups that I will continually replay. This game's music kicks ass too!
12. Wild Guns (NSO) | 3/5 - This was a cool game, though it feels a little clunky. I dig the setting; the wild west with some robots! The pixel art is pretty fantastic as well. It has me interested enough to check out Wild Guns Reloaded in the future to see if that's improved on the formula with any modern QOL touches.
13. Portal (PC) | 5/5 - The last time I played this game was just before Portal 2 released, so it's been awhile for me. This game is a classic for sure! I remember enjoying Portal 2 even more than the first game, so I'm really looking forward to playing the sequel soon.
14. Star Wars Battle Pod (Arcade) | 3/5 - I came across a Star Wars Battle Pod arcade machine and played through every level. It was a decently fun arcade experience. I found it more enjoyable SW cockpit experience than the Smuggler's Run ride at Disney Land / Disney World. The game was pretty easy though and I'm not sure if it was actually possible to lose. The machine was on free play, which is why I played through the entire game. But I think if I were putting in a dollar for each credit, then I probably only would have tried a single level and moved on.

CURRENTLY PLAYING:
Hi-Fi Rush (XSX)
Metroid Prime (Switch)
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Switch)

Deleted member 11285 · Feb 28, 2023

Couple more to add with a few more nearly finished

5: Fire Emblem Engage - Intelligent Systems - Nintendo Switch

I love this game. Wasn't expecting to after hearing that the social aspects of the game had been toned down since Three Houses but there's still enough there to keep me entertained. The gameplay is outstanding and I had a real fun time making Framme my martial arts murder machine.

6: TMNT: Shredder's Revenge - Tribute Games - Xbox Series X

Played through with my brother for maximum nostalgia. A fun, short experience that looks and plays great. The devs did a great job of capturing the fun those old games had.

Ongoing games

1: L.A. Noire
2: The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth + DLC
3: Binary Domain
4: 428 Shibuya Scramble
5: Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition

Main post

TP17 · Mar 1, 2023

February progress

My most played game in Feb continued to be Genshin, alongside starting a few new ones (Fire Emblem Engage) and making some progress in a few others but falling behind pace for the 52 early on.

3. Genshin Impact: Chasm - PC - ★★★★

The lack of voice acting aside, I really enjoyed this quest chain and area exploration - nice quest update with Dainsleif too. Account wise I got lucky pulling Yelan early including winning the 50/50.

main post

Psychotic_Mantis · Mar 1, 2023

February update - Main Post

9. Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures (Steam Deck) - 7/10
Found this one extremely difficult. I had to knock it down to the easier difficulty to complete it. The final boss still took me a long time to get through. Overall, I get it and I did have fun throughout but some of the gotcha moments are overkill and create frustration.

10. The Last of Us: Part 1 (PS5) - 9/10
Still a great game and the touch up does look nice. Not much else to add. Probably the definitive copy at this point.

11. The Last of Us: Left Behind (PS5) - 8/10
Short but solid side story for Part I. I still have never played Part II and this is my third time through both LoU and LB. Maybe this is the year I finally see what all the fuss is about.

12. Quell (Switch) - 7/10
Short little puzzle game. The later levels require a bit of trial and error but I never was stuck for too long. Usually on sale for pretty cheap and worth a pickup if you're into puzzles.

13. Super Mario 3D World (Switch) - 9/10
Just oozing with charm. I started and stopped on the Wii U and I think it was due to me thinking this was a normal open level Mario game. Coming back around to it, I love the level design and the later difficulty jumps. Wish we could get another evolution of this idea.

14. Yoshi's New Island (3DS) - 7/10
Annoying music aside, this was a pretty fun game. Barely any difficulty outside of getting all the starts, coins and flowers in a stage. I think I ended the game with 100 lives.

15. Evoland (Steam Deck) - 7/10
I love the idea of this game and I did have fun...but it just kind of starts and stops. I have heard Ecoland II is much better take on their idea and I'll probably jump on that later this year. I would love to jump between the different ages more frequently.

16. A Short Hike (Steam Deck) - 8/10
This one I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would. Just roaming around the island and climbing to the top was enjoyable Collecting the feathers and flying everywhere was even better. Maybe that could make A Longer Hike?

17. Dead Space (PS5) - 9/10
Still a fantastic game. Loved 90% of my time in this one. I still hate some of the arena segments with ambush of never ending necromorphs. I also found the time you have to kill the tentacle as it grabs you at various times was a bit tight. I had to actually purchase ammo to make sure I could take it down quick enough in the time they gave me. Really looking forward to Dead Space 2 remake which was my favorite of the series!

18. Digger T. Rock - Rare Replay (Xbox Series X) - 4/10
Awful. I love old school NES games. I remember seeing this in a box as a kid and never played it. Was going to knock out some Rare Replay games and started with this and I regret it completely. Not fun, ridiculous difficulty and confusing path to the end. Definitely use the Rare Replay provided cheats on this one!

Fei · Mar 2, 2023

1. Grounded (Xbox) 9 I might be underrating this. Spent 150+ hours having a wonderful time with friends and son.
2. Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line (Switch) 8 I'll finish this eventually by completing all songs, but saw credits and we'll worth it.
3. Metroid Prime Remastered (Switch) 7 Maybe a bit harsher than it should be, as most of the game is great. But the artifadtnhunt and the general lack of a useable map really grates on you the last quarter of the game.
4. Goldeneye (Xbox) 5 Held up better than I thought, but still feels very old.
5. Zelda Picross (3DS) 6 I was hoping for more music, and really the overall,game is pretty pretty slight. Picross is still fun.
6. Katamari Damacy (Xbox)
7. Sea of Stars(Xbox)
8. The Messenger (Switch)
9. Cocoon (Xbox)
10. Vampire Survivor (Xbox)
11. Planet of Lana (Xbox)
12. TMNT: Shredder's Revenge (Xbox)
13. Goldeneye (Xbox)
14. Elden Ring (Xbox)
15. Super Mario Bros. (Switch NSO)
16. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch)
17. Super Mario RPG (Switch)
18. Pikmin 4 (Switch)
19. Dave The Diver (Steam)

chrominance · Mar 2, 2023

February update:

3. Fire Emblem Engage (Switch, 2023) - 59:12 - February 15
4. Rose and Camellia (iOS, 2020) - 0:09 - February 27
5. Rusty's Real Deal Baseball (3DS, 2014) - 4:28 - February 28

Engage is... weird. I've gone back to play Three Houses again after finishing Engage, and the two games are more different than I expected given they're both mainline entries in the same franchise. While playing Engage it was clear that the characters were a bit one-note and the story mostly bad, but going back to Three Houses really demonstrates just how awful those aspects of Engage are. But that comparison goes both ways; Engage feels like a tighter game when it comes to the core combat, and it feels a lot more polished in the performance department too. And while the activities on the Somniel feel borderline pointless, I guess you do at least get through them faster than the Monastery. A real study in contrasts, those two, but only one of those games has convinced me to dump over 100 hours into it.

My recommendations this month are the other two games I completed in February, for wildly varying reasons. Rose and Camellia is that perfect pairing of ridiculous premise and extremely low cost of entry--watch an ad or two and you'll be able to get through the entirety of this game during a lunch break with time to spare. And who can resist the allure of the female cast of a Jane Austen novel slapping each other Punch-Out style?

Rusty's Real Deal Baseball, on the other hand, is a limited-time offer: this bizarre free-to-start 3DS game is essentially a game of haggling for baseball-themed minigames, except in this case every minigame is an actual piece of DLC you pay for with real money. So haggling is not only gameplay but a way to lower the real-world price of the game, from a list price of $40 for all the minigames to $16. There's nothing else like it out there, and this unique experience will cease to exist at the end of the month when the 3DS eShop stops working completely. Act now, supplies are limited.

March should be about two things: Like a Dragon: Ishin! and Atelier Ryza 3. But Three Houses has snuck its way back onto the top of my pile of games, and I haven't even started Ishin yet. Hopefully I can change that this week.

L Thammy · Mar 2, 2023

14. Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja
Bad - ★☆☆☆ (1/4)

I was originally planning on beating Raiden next, thinking I could quickly go through it before work, but I had forgotten that it's probably the game's rough Gradius syndrome that stopped me from beating it previously. So I settled on this since I didn't think there would be any difficulty credit feeding it.

Not to make a joke of it, but this game's pretty bad. It's apparently perfectly possible to beat it on one credit, but I certainly had no idea how to go about it, and it doesn't feel like anything that would be intentional. It pretty much just throws piles of enemies at you and that's it.

Of course, the main reason I'd have gotten it in the first place is because it's a zany meme game, and in that sense it might be okay, since it's got a certain amount of silly stuff in it. You get to fight Karnov, there's "NAMSHIT" written on a wall for some reason, some ninjas set themselves on fire. But it's not like it's Trio the Punch where it's totally worth playing through just to see what nonsense there is to find. It's mostly just a nondescript pre-Final Fight beat em up that hopes that if it just has enough content maybe you'll keep playing.

Classy Tomato · Mar 2, 2023

2. Yakuza 4

This is far far more enjoyable story and gameplay-wise compared to Yakuza 3. Pretty much all of the new playable characters are likable, especially Akiyama. He just oozes charm and every scene with him is entertaining, though I find his "do anything to survive" test to his customers kinda petty, but whatever. I just can't shake the feeling that Tanimura is supposed to be the game's main protagonist since his backstory intertwined with much of the plot. His parry movement is also cool and feels fresh. I also like how Saejima is depicted as a force to be reckoned with. I really hate how the game tries to limit his movement by forcing him to go through the sewer and rooftop. I understand story-wise, but it just kills the pacing. Good ol' Kiryu steals every scene he's in it, so it's a good time.

3. Call of Duty World War 2

This is my first CoD game after ages and has been sitting in my library collecting dust for years. I was lately in the mood for something linear and I can play with my brain turned off, so I decided to install it. The graphics are still surprisingly really good even though it's almost a 6-year old game. The detail on the face and the animation are stunning. I'll never be tired of seeing those faces. The gameplay is surprisingly varied. I really dig some stealth sections in the game. The dogfight section is really frustrating with the keyboard and mouse though. I literally need to drag my mouse to the edge of the table a couple of times just to turn. The rest is your typical CoD gameplay. Explosive cinematics. Shooting at enemies covering behind something. Those CoD stuff. I still enjoyed it though.

Lord Fanny · Mar 2, 2023

Finished out this month. Main post is here.

Lord Fanny said:
February (12/52)
9. A Space for The Unbound Prologue - PC - 22 minutes
10. Dead Space (2023) - Xbox Series X - 11 hours, 36 minutes
11. Wanted: Dead - Xbox Series X - 11 hours, 26 minutes
12. Dead Space 2 - Xbox Series X - 7 hours, 30 minutes.

Kind of as expected, I didn't get much done this month vs the last one, but did end up finishing up a few titles. Once again if I do manage to get the 52 it will be close again this year, especially since a lot of the games that I'll be playing this month will be on the longer side.

March (14/52)
13. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty - Xbox Series X - 32 hours, 4 minutes
14. Resident Evil 4 (2023) - Xbox Series X - 18 hours, 18 minutes

Cheat Code · Mar 3, 2023

Main post

Here we go. Had to focus on smaller games for Jan-Feb because of time availability, but was nice to clear some backlog! Also realised I never actually posted my last batch of 2022 games.

So this is a pretty interesting one. The concept of erasing memories to "fix" somebody's life is a cool concept, but I don't think it's very well executed here. I think the issue stems from the mutliple choice, very static progression of choosing a memory to delete, as either it's incredibly easy to spot which one is correct, or you're just pissing into the wind.

As this is what I think is a first-time solo dev project, it's an ok start, and the core concept of the game is intriguing enough that I think it can be developed further. It is also super short and cheap, so if you are intrigued it's probably worth ago, as some of the story beats are engaging.

Actually surprisingly solid for what I was worried could be just one of those games that gets thrown out onto PS Store without any care. It's a pretty compelling puzzle game, similar in vein to Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which a bunch of different challenges and puzzles to work out.

Puzzles range from basic to absolute horseshit, and it swings pretty wildly, without a consistent difficulty progression. It's also quite short, but this is also somewhat in it's favour, as you do get to the point of repeated puzzles later on. Definitely worth a go though, especially as it's cheap.

So I went into this expected a Captain Toad-esque diorama puzzle game. It doesn't actually play like Captain Toad at all, and it's moreso a point and click puzzle game with a little bit of physics puzzling in there too. Bunch of different levels in steadily increasing difficulty to navigate your eyeball freak robot through.

Unfortunately, it's pretty wonky, and the dodgy camera and controls make the game harder than it should be, as it makes it difficult to see passages and move to certain places at the right time, especially when moving platforms come into play. It's pretty charming though, and has a great style.

Why I decided to play this series in reverse order, I don't know. I also thought these games were a shitpost, but then it turns out they were put out by an actual Japanese studio. Then, in another twist, turns out the studio was actually shitposting anyway, which is pretty funny.

Not much to say though, it's an easy, silly escape room game where instead of searching for a Nintendo DS, you are looking for a hiding spot. Some of the gameovers and solutions are pretty funny, but the gameplay is pretty much just something you do to see the funny cutscenes.

A physics platformer in the vein of I Am Bread, but significantly easier and for whatever reason more story driven. It's ok though, the controls aren't unbareable like Bossa games, and some of the worlds you go through are nicely put together and there is a bit of challenge here and there.

Some of the levels are blatant filler but some go on for much longer, and there are a couple of levels that require perfect timing on moving your noodle which took me far too many tries. In the end, though, I found it pretty charming. Worth a look if you are into silly games.

The love of a Mii and Minecraft Steve told in a game. I actually didn't anticipate such a clever puzzle game nestled in here, I assumed it would be narrative first, gameplay second, but they are balanced really well and the breaks in the puzzles to focus on character development and storytelling are a nice reprieve and don't feel like they ruin the pacing.

New mechanics are interspersed throughout the chapters, as standard for a puzzle game, and there are also a couple of bonus worlds with their own dedicated mechanics. The narrative is also a pretty engaging story about long-distance relationships, that is definitely sweeter than it is cheesy.

I mean, it's the same thing as the pudding one. Can't really change the rating when the games are borderline identical.

So this one I think is nearly very good, but ruins itself by introducing physics puzzles and massively overcomplicating the game, to a point where I wasn't particularly engaged as the puzzles became less about figuring out a clever way to proceed and moreso about working out the 1 very specific route you have to take, and the 1 specific way you have to manipulate the physics objects.

The first 4 worlds are pretty great though, and the Escher-esque artstyle and overall gimmick of the game are great. I probably wouldn't push through the last levels of the game though, they are super tedious and don't really do anything unique.

So this is basically identical to the first game, except it's set in an Office US parody for some reason. This massively limits the fun, creative level design that the first game had, as everything is isolated to the one environment with more of a focus on doing a sitcom tribute act.

As I have no emotional attachment to The Office, I didn't really care for this one, and would've preferred another adventure through some new wacky worlds. You might like this more if your an Office US fan.

Pretty basic game here, run left and right and don't die. While it sounds really easy (and is at the beginning) it rapidly drives up the difficulty and actually becomes an engaging twitch action game. There's also a few different modes, like competitive 1v99 battle royale and survival, although bizzarely none of them are actually multiplayer.

The only multiplayer is split screen survival, which is still fun but limited. There's also a pseudo-campaign of sorts where you can play to unlock funny characters, like a penguin or a man on a bike.

Probably the best escape room video game that's out there at the moment (at least from what I've played). You can tell that the developers are big fans of escape rooms in general, and there's a lot of care in the puzzle design and rooms they take place in. Nothing ever feels bullshit or impossible to work out, with a bit of effort and time you can crack most of the puzzles, even the later ones.

I also didn't mind the characters and basic storyline that encompasses all of the different puzzle rooms. Pretty base level stuff, but it doesn't interfere with the game and the voice acting is pretty good. Looking forward to the DLC and the apparent randomly generated level mode.

I'm actually annoyed this game isn't more popular. Not necessarily because it's the best game of all time and a hidden gem, but because the platinum is complete horseshit and it looks common because barely anyone has played this game.

It is genuinely a good game though. It's basically a boss rush where you kick a ball at a bunch of different shapes until they explode. Each boss has a distinct gimmick and the majority are fair and encourage some light twitch gameplay and clever use of the combat mechanics. Surprised this one hasn't picked up more.

So this one was a pretty major disappointment. I was immediately interested and grabbed it when it released, because I liked the style of the game and I was on a bit of a puzzle/adventure game kick. Turns out this is little more than a chapter 1, and could even be passed of as a demo.

The puzzles either make zero sense or are trivial. This is not helped by the poor translation, which I thought was funny at first (there is a cat called Lagsagna and I'm still not sure if that's on purpose or not) but eventually interferes with actually understanding what you are meant to do. This isn't helped by the game having no traditional movement and constant loading. Made it a bit of a slog.

A puzzle game where you you walk backwards and forwards doesn't sound particularly interesting, but the game actually makes pretty clever use of it's mechanics, the way you can manipulate the world around you is really cool. Most of the puzzle design is fair and makes complete sense, although there are a couple of roadblocks that completely stumped me.

It's also definitely worth highlighting the silent narrative, which does a great job of portraying the characters and their lives, with a fantastic ending that still pops into my head. If you have PS+ Extra definitely download this.

Not much to say here, it's a short, speedy platformer that controls competently and has a decent pixel art style. Most platformer fans have probably played a billion games like this, and it doesn't do anything knew, but it's solid and kept me occupied for an evening, so who am I to complain.

Except that it didn't register any progress I made across like 20 levels so I had to do them all again. No I idea how that happened but the levels are so quick it didn't really matter.

This game taught me that I have no fucking patience whatsoever, and while I don't mind a narratively driven game, having characters talk at you for like 6 hours isn't something I particularly enjoyed (I know it's a visual novel but I thought the barista side of things would be more prevalent).

The character arcs are also just incredibly predictable and you'll realise the character's eventual fates basically as soon as you meet them. Nothing surprised me, or really engaged me. Even the final big reveal was just a WTF because it made no sense whatsoever. However, even though it is boring, it is still well written and the art is great. Actual visual novel fans probably LOVE this game.

This game sucks ass. It's Clustertruck combined with snakes. The physics are completely broken and getting 420 segments for the platinum trophy ruined my weekend. Don't play this.

You gotta pay respect to the classics, apparently. However, this game is so archaic and borderline impossible to play, I don't understand how it became such a classic game. I guess it's probably balanced around 2 player mode, but playing this single-player was just constant frustration that was only balanced out by having infinite lives.

I'm glad I wasn't gaming in the 80s.

So I love Silent Scope, and I thought this would be a quirky version of Silent Scope, which it kinda is. The actual 15 campaign levels are just a case of finding the thing you are meant to kill, and then making sure you actually hit them with your rifle swaying like its made of bread.

A major annoyance is the levels where you have to wait for way too long for a target to appear and some random place across the giant level, making the game more trial and error than a challenge. This is also prevalent in the "Find" mode, which is basically all luck and ruined my day. I probably would recommend against playing this.

Interesting idea for a core mechanic, with the world you cannot see shifting and changing, which eventually begins to light your way forward. I think they missed a trick not using this idea in a horror game though, in which I think it would be much more effective, and in the end it's just a mish-mash of pseudo-surrealism.

Also because the level morphs are random it makes certain levels (where you have to generate a path) take ages, as you have to keep spinning around until something appears that will actually help you progress. Wasn't a fan of that.

So I immediately assumed, because of the tone of the screenshots and the trailers, that this would be very much a charming, casual puzzle game in the vein of something like Unpacking. Unfortunately, it's actually a giant pain in the ass, with some of the later levels having some of the worst ideas I've ever seen in a puzzle game.

Doing a jigsaw is one thing, doing a jigsaw with no reference, no discernible pattern and having all the pieces jumbled up is another. There are also too many colour puzzles without any colour-blind options, which was not great for me. This review also seems massively negative but the game was actually a decent time for most of it, the late game did leave a sour taste, though.

So upon finding out about Birth, I thought it would be a good idea to check out Madison Karrh's previous output before I picked it up, and on reflection, I recommend everyone does the same. It's not so much that her initial games were insanely good or anything, but you see a very clear progression of the dev's talent, with the art, puzzle design and pacing continuously getting better.

This is probably the weirdest of her 3 games, and definitely has the most frustrating puzzles, but it's a trippy adventure accentuated by Madison's very distinct artstyle, which perfectly combines cute palettes and drawing styles with grotesque subjects. It's also free so you can immediately get an idea of what you're getting into with these game.

With this you can immediately see the improvement from Whimsy. Whilst it's still super short, actually about the same length, every element of the game's design is improved. You'll definitely see a lot of familiar puzzles from Whimsy, but also some new ideas.

The narrative is also stronger here, with a great ending that tops off an already weird and surreal story. I'd definitely play this, either on it's own or definitely before playing Birth.

I wouldn't say this is Madison Karrh's magnum opus as such, I think she can still go even further, but this does feel like a sort of culmination of her continual improvement, not only in her artwork but also in her gameplay, puzzle and narrative design. It's probably the most "simple" of her games, but this is offset by a richer variety in environments and ideas.

The game is definitely shorter than I would've wanted it to be, as I was finding the actual gameplay cycle really engaging, and I think there is definitely room for a bigger game here, but what I did play was really great, and in keeping consistency with her previous work, has a great ending.

So obviously this game is somewhat questionable in making suicide a funny joke rather than a very serious issue, but I think it is offset by the blatant absurdity of it's design offsets that. The entire plot is stopping yourself from spilling your beer while your asleep, it's really not that deep.

As a puzzle game, it's a funny idea, having to figure out a way to kill yourself in a variety of levels. A lot of the levels are little tributes, either to games, TV or film, and while some of them drag on a bit too long, most of them are pretty good. The controls are definitely a bit wonky though, you are never too confident in what you are doing.

bushmonkey · Mar 3, 2023

11 - Horizon: Call Of The Mountain - PS VR2 - 7 hours / 3rd March - 8/10
Amazing showpiece for the PS VR2. The graphics and sense of scale as you climb massive mountains is just spectacular. I thought the climbing would get old quick but you unlock a lot of cool traversal mechanics and there are quite a few inventive set pieces. The combat is the weak point in the game, it's not terrible but it's not as fun or exciting as it could be. overall though I really enjoyed it.

AvianAviator · Mar 3, 2023

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7. Hi-Fi Rush

Watched my husband play this from start to finish, so I'm definitely missing the gameplay part of this review. But overall I really enjoyed the story, characters, and humor. This game had a perfectly executed Saturday morning cartoon vibe. GREAT looking boss fights, incredible characters (particularly the first few villains). Only complaint was the first half was a little long, and the second half was kind of rushed (like, you can pinpoint where they ran out of budget or time). I'll probably play it myself and update this with my full impressions later.

8. Far: Changing Tides

Loved managing the creaking, groaning ship, loved the ship's evolving gameplay over the course of the few hours it took to beat it. Some telegraphing wasn't really clear, some of the telegraphing that was there was hard to see, and I started to get impatient with it in the end. But when the music mixes with the subdued sound of the ocean and the waves, it's pretty great.

9. Coffee Talk

I was hoping the barista portion would be more complex, and the conversations would be a little...deeper, I guess, but I still enjoyed it. It's a casual conversation simulator. Chill in a coffee shop with your buddies who also happen to be mystical creatures. It's nice for what it is and I'll be checking out the second game at some point in the future. Music is really great.

10. Destiny 2: Lightfall

Sigh... I play Destiny on and off, very casually, and only because my husband wants to spend time with me in the game. Not here for the gameplay, but I have grown to like the lore. Lightfall was the first expansion I was really hyped for, and the campaign was not good. Really not good. I'd refund it if I could.

SpaceUI · Mar 3, 2023

Onto #2...

02. Disco Elysium | PC - March 3rd - 29hrs - ★★★★★

As two men opened an old board game on a cloudy day, on a cold beach at the edge of the world, they began to play, and realized that winning meant nothing, but playing the way you want to play meant something.

What more needs to be said about Disco Elysium? If you haven't played it, I encourage everyone to go in blind. This is a brilliant, happy, sad, hopeless, hopeful, melancholic, tender, heartbreaking, funny game that I won't ever forget. I'm grateful it exists. One of the best games ever made.

This absolutely unique experience was about emotions for me. It often made me feel self-conscious, analyzed by the many voices in your head.

Every aspect of this complimented everything else, the writing is simply outstanding, which is helped by a lot of stellar voice acting; I even find myself sometimes reading text in the narrator's voice. The brilliant music established a pristine atmosphere of melancholy, longing and joy. This helps the world feel truly alive, finding scattered throughout it a myriad of amazing characters who breathe life into the barren and bittersweet landscape. This feeling is amplified if you know that the creative leads of the studio that made this left, and a sequel or another game by the same developers is not likely.

The ending was a bit underwhelming imho, but it reminded me that it was all about the journey, not the destination.

Next I'll probably beat Dragon Quest XI over the weekend! Excited to see the conclusion.

Main Post

Blindy · Mar 4, 2023

9) Spongebob Squarepants & The Cosmic Shake(PS5) 2/9, 2/11, 2/13-2/14

So I was pretty hyped for this game considering on how much I really liked Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. While I would never consider that game a "must have" for any platformer fan, I thought the game regardless if you were a fan of the TV show, was hilarious and had ton of spirit. In addition, it wasn't a necessarily difficult game to play, so much that I got everything possible within the game itself. Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated lived up to the hype that a lot of 00's platformer fanatics proclaimed about for so many years so upon the announcement of the spiritual sequel, The Cosmic Shake, I was pretty hyped. This hype was put on hold because of a bad disc I got from my physical copy for the PS4 so it made me all the more curious about this game but after a week, I got a good disc(Thanks Best Buy) and got to jump right in!

Lets cut to the chase....did the game live up to my expectation? Not quite but that doesn't mean it is a bad game! It's tough to describe my overall thoughts of Spongebob Squarepants & The Cosmic Shake because it borrows and incorporates so much of what made the aforementioned Battle for Bikini Bottom game so well. Tons of platforming segments, the goofy humor that this TV show is beloved for by plenty, and tons of collectibles where it isn't a one note platformer(Racing segments, sliding segments, even a beat em up section in this game!) that some of the lesser known platformers fall victim, on paper The Cosmic Shake does a ton right for me.

But it is the overall lack of polish that the game had for me that took the game down a notch that I never really felt with Battle for Bikini Bottom. It's tough to describe because it wasn't that the game was littered with bugs, it was just the there was so much that I wish could have been done better. The overworld felt very restrictive in the main hubs, the worlds for the most part felt like they didn't do too much different overall from one another, the combat sequences felt very same-sy where true that this game does incorporate a fair amount of new enemies to whack around, but the combat segments just became "Wipe out all enemies in a now closed off area to advance" where after the first few times, just got to be the same thing give or take. Most games suffer from repetition to an extent, but this game didn't take the leaps & bounds I was hoping for in comparison to it's predecessor, which can be both a good and bad thing I suppose.

There is a lot to like with the game, especially as a Spongebob fan. Tons and I mean tons of costumes that can be purchased with in game currency earned as a collectible, most of the characters from the show are in this game(Where is Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy?!?! I know one of the actors passed away but still they were in the Rehydrated game!), and it has the same humor and jokes that the TV show would have. This game really captures the show very well so if you remotely like this TV show, you are in for a treat. Pretty humorous story to boot that got a couple of chuckles out of me too. The game gave me 8-10 hours of content and that wasn't even going for every single little thing as I didn't get entrapped with The Cosmic Shake as I ended up getting with Battle for Bikini Rehydrated.

Overall: 7.75/10 An overall solid entry, just it doesn't really do anything drastically different than Battle for Bikini Bottom which despite having the years of leg up on, I guess I was hoping for a little more. Still, it's a more than solid game and I was happy enough with what was given as a fan of the previous game. The Cosmic Shake is a worthwhile recommendation for fans of the series and anyone who likes the Spongebob video games and even for a platformer fan to try.

apps.19313.13659592663783828.c218620d-b41e-4037-9cc0-e5ec840c80aa.94384030-1c7c-409c-9dec-8edcea56ba04

10) OPUS: Echo of Starsong(XB1) 2/11, 2/16, 2/19-2/20

A game that came out in August 2022 for XBOX Game Pass, OPUS: Echo of Starsong was a game that I tried out via the subscription but I fell off within the 1st 30 minutes. It has such a slow beginning and throws characters at you with little to no real background that it was just something that I didn't really get and thus dropped it.

I feel like with me trying to venture a little more with visual novels and the like, this was one I did want to re-visit and sure enough, I did! But was it a great experience.....ehh. It was solid but there were certain gameplay mechanics that I wish could have been done without. This game is one of those that I wish was just a full blown, true visual novel with minimal gameplay involved as the story and cast of characters would have shined more without having to move around or play a game of 'RNG: The Video Game'(Will get to that shortly).

Lets start with the good, the game tugs on your feelings quite a bit. Not in a cheap, easy way but in the 10 or so hours that this game has you in it's grasp, it utilizes the time to really get you invested in the main 3 characters that you play in this game that are with you until the very end. Yeah the game is somewhat slow in the beginning as far as giving you the player reason to care for these characters but OPUS: Echo of Starsong eventually gets to the point where you care about each one and want them to succeed towards their goal in this intergalactic space world that you embark on. By the end of the game, without spoiling, I was holding back tears a little which says something about this game's connection to you. Again, I am not that much of a softie when it comes to gaming but the ending with the appropriate music and tender, soft scenes does such a good job at hitting home the end of the journey and the closure one of the character's get years upon years later.

The music compounds this game very well, not a soundtrack I will go back to listen to but it is appropriate and given the game's smaller budget as it's an Indie studio game, it's very good. The space world that this game takes place gives off such a "Nomads going base to base trying to avoid the perils of being on the run' and I thought the Japanese dialogue was good(No English voice acting, so it's subbed all the way).

Some of the things I thought were not so good were the gameplay elements. As I mentioned before, OPUS: Echo of Starsong was a game I wish just went the visual novel route instead of the 85% visual novel and 15% gameplay because it wasn't so good. What was lacking exactly?

See, this game has an RNG/Dice game that upon arriving to locations or trying to get to spots, you may get ambushed by space pirates or intergalactic bandits where pending on a dice roll, you may either get to your destination unharmed or get shotdown and lose ARMOR PLATES/game's form of health. You also get dice rolls that can either give you maps based off of NPC interactions if successful or a token of failure if you don't, which stinks because that means content(Albeit minimal) is locked upon being successful with these RNG rolls. One can attest that you can soft reset to make sure you do land the proper means to get what you want but I don't think that should be something necessary. There are ways to improve your luck, like buying certain items at a vendor and/or during your scavenging to sites, you can get items to help you out but these still aren't full blown guarantees that you get the result you want. This was one game mechanic that I wish would have been done away with personally speaking.

The couple of explorations work and the puzzles are fine but there's a section that is timed where you have to get the right items to allow you to solve puzzles that didn't really work, especially since there's no run button to really move along these segments. These are mandatory towards advancing in the game(The exploring you do in the outer space is visual novel driven so you aren't doing anything outside of using an exploration pack/expendable obtainable items and getting rewards) and I don't think they were necessary. The puzzles are very good and are heavily based off of sound and needing to get the correct soundwave/vibration to open up doors or find new places to scavenge but the gameplay itself felt slow and when timed obstacles or an instant death encounter with an assassin happen, you really wish it wasn't in this game.

Overall: 7.5/10 The good outweigh the bad here but it's definitely a game with tons of promise held back by the little things that fully stop OPUS: Echo of Starsong from reaching great heights, at least for me. The story while gets a bit confusing, the meat & potatoes of it with the 3 main characters is solid, the music & space setting that you have is very good for a visual novel and you get some solid puzzles...just the gameplay portion and RNG minigame were ideas that maybe could have been best left out. Considering this was an Indie game and all, this was a very respectable outing for a small studio and I still am glad to have comeback to this one and finish it.

11) GRIS 2/27(XBX)

GRIS was always something I wanted to play given how much acclaim that this game has gotten and seeing so many past 52 game threads consistently mention this game as one of the games played by a good chunk of people. I knew little to nothing about the game itself but a 50% off the Microsoft store enticed me to jump in and what I thought was a puzzle game ended up being a platformer with blends of puzzles & heavy metaphors galore much to my surprise!

To start off with the good, the art and design is phenomenal and arguably worth playing alone. Full of color, full of animation, there's no denying how pretty GRIS looks when playing it. It feels almost like a cartoon movie at times with how captivating the game looks. Especially the current gen patch this game got, playing this on my OLED TV was a sight to behold. The music fully immerses you to the game and fits like a glove. Nothing that will make me go and play it's soundtrack but again for a game full of emotions, the music really helps push the point of getting you to feel a certain way. The game isn't overly difficult nor can you "die" in this game so as a relaxing game fresh off a hard day of work(I played this on a Monday, was very ideal!). The puzzles while make you think a little bit are nothing you need to look at a guide towards doing and never fully overstay it's welcome which is a very good thing for me. The story leaves it up for interpretation which is good for me and the cutscenes are really impactful with the metaphors & messages it sends you as a player. No dialogue, no nothing, just gripping visuals.

The bad is how short this game is, doing one run without getting all of the achievements ran me under 3 hours! It's almost criminal how short this game is, I beat it in one mere sitting and was left wishing there was a little meat on the bone. Given the going price it is listed for XBX/PS5 as $15, I am sort of glad to get this half off as under $10 is the best price of admission. The game also feels a little samesy with the platforming and while you do learn new tricks along the way during your short journey, the game asks you to do very similar platforming feats throughout each of the 'colors'/levels which can get a tad bit repetitive, albeit nothing turning the game off worthy.

Overall: 7.25/10 This is the type of game perfect if it popped up on Game Pass or PS Plus collection since there isn't really much to do once you beat it excluding getting achievements maybe. That isn't meant as a knock but it's a great one night playthrough and is as stress free of a game as one can get. It's such a beautifully looking game and isn't a real demanding game even if I just wanted more content out of the overall journey, maybe an extra level or so, just something! I don't think it's the masterpiece that you must drop everything to play that some reviews on Youtube were indicating but it's a real ride for however long it is.

pete_clarf · Mar 4, 2023

5) Fortnite (XBox Series X) - 3/4/2023 - 9.0/10
I started playing Fortnite out of the blue a couple of months ago. I never had any interest in it, but decided on a whim to start playing it. It can be super obnoxious, but it's still really fun and I felt like I was able to do well right out of the gate (I think I've won five times or something and almost always get in the top 25). There's not really an end to the game, so I figured I'd count it as "complete" when I got to the end of the battle pass. Compared to other GaaS I've played, I don't feel compelled to play Fortnite every single day because you're constantly getting experience to level up. The cosmetics are pretty reasonably priced and I've actually bought a few. I said it was obnoxious earlier, but seeing Isaac from Dead Space ride around on a giant boba bubble can be pretty dumb fun.

Main Post

Illusionary · Mar 4, 2023

6 games beaten in February takes me to a total of 16 for my second monthly update, still decent pace if a little slower than January, and including a few that I'v been meaning to get to for quite a while.

Main post here

11. Chained Echoes (Xbox One) | 4 February 2023 | 9/10
Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked (1,000G). Far from being 'just another' retro-style JRPG, Chained Echoes is pretty much the highest-quality homage to Chrono Trigger that I've played, succeeding in capturing the meticulous world design, epic narrative scale and, particularly, dynamic tactical feel of its turn-based battle system - and arguably surpassing its clear inspiration in some ways.

Set amidst a war of conquest by a recently-ascended prince, the story follows an expanding party as they seek allies in an attempt to stop the war - and ultimately a much greater threat. While the writing isn't the game's strongest facet, it does a good job of pressing forward the story, remaining compelling in the face of a handful of optional quests - just be warned that the game's first act (of four) is by way the longest, probably around half of the total! The pixelart that depicts the world is unfailingly detailed and attractive, imbuing the environments with a real sense of life - even if the backdrops themselves are mostly static - and with chests, hidden caves and buried treasure spread liberally to reward exploration.

Eschewing a traditional levelling system, character progression in Chained Echoes comes mostly from gradually expanding each party member's skills with points earned from each 'significant' encounter (mostly bosses) and equipment upgrades. This *will* be controversial, but to my mind works well, with the absence of a need to grind making for a refreshing change, and preventing the ability to win battle simply by out-levelling opponents - in-battle tactics are key. This brings me to the game's strongest facet, its battle system, which introduces a truly innovative 'overdrive' system. This sees the party's battle readiness represented by a bar, starting in a minimum position and gradually increasing with attacks/abilities and damage taken as the party 'warms up' and reaches an 'overdrive' level, increasing damage dealt, reducing damage taken and halving skill costs; however, exceeding a limit sees the party 'overheat', instead taking increased damage. Battles then become focused on managing this overdrive level, which is reduced by defending and the use of skills that fit into a rotating type (physical attack, magic attack, buffs, etc.), ensuring an ever-present requirement for tactical thought, always compelling. With a total of 12 diverse characters available, with up to 8 participating in a given battle (4 active, 4 in reserve), an impressive level of variety in approach is possible too. Also notable is the implementation of automatic full-healing after every encounter, an approach that more RPGs really should follow!

It's not perfect, with a few elements that don't quite hit home as they might - a crystal-based weapon customisation system is a notable example that's just a bit too complex and involved to feel worth exploring - but when taken alongside the stunning fact that the whole game was created near-single-handedly, as a complete package Chained Echoes is very impressive.

12. Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series - Klonoa: Door To Phantomile (PS5) | 6 February 2023 | 6/10
13. Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series - Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil (PS5) | 12 February 2023 | 7/10
Completed with platinum trophy earned. In Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, we have a well-made remaster of a pair of classic PS1/PS2 '2.5D' platformers, with an attractive gloss on the original graphics. With this being my first experience with these games, I've not sense of nostalgia around them and found the gameplay to be somewhat slower and floaty than I'd typically prefer in a platformer, with the level design being based around the capturing and throwing of enemies to achieve a double-jump - it's decent enough, but nothing that I found overly inspiring. Mechanically both games are largely similar, though the second game (Lunatea's Veil) mixes things up with occasional forced-scrolling 3D sections - which honestly I didn't find to be particularly enjoyable. Generally the level of difficulty is quite low here, though if you play with a completionist mindset, seeking out all of the collectibles in each level pushes up the difficulty level significantly, quite frequently requiring more involved/advanced movements to reach some out-of-the-way items - and particularly in the second game, sees some interesting use of the '2.5D' approach, as the side-scrolling stages wind their way through 3D space.

14. CrossCode: A New Home (Switch) | 19 February 2023 | 10/10
Complete playthrough, including all side quests. Well, we start from knowing that CrossCode is one of the greatest games of all time - and against that high bar, the A New Home succeeds wonderfully. Adding four new episodes to the base game's story, it's fantastic once again to be back in the company of Emilie, Lukas et al (alongside some characters who we might now have expected, all of whose characterisation is an absolute joy throughout. Adding an expansive new beach area and probably the game's largest dungeon - alongside expansions to other areas, a set of new, high-level quests, area-appropriate enemies and plenty more - there's an impressive amount of content here, all with the same meticulous level design that CrossCode particularly excelled at. I absolutely should not have waited as long as I did to play this, but time has done nothing to lessen the experience.

15. Supraland Crash (PC - Steam) | 25 February 2023 | 8/10
100% in-game completion; 100% of achievements unlocked. Supraland returns with a fully-featured DLC campaign and once again there's an engrossing combination of 3D 'Metroidvania' exploration/upgrading, platforming and puzzles. While it feels that there's a bit of an overuse of relatively minor collectibles required to progress, which don't in themselves provide any direct upgrade (there are now bones, coins and scrap pieces), these don't detract too heavily from the satisfaction of puzzle-solving or finding (and reaching!) a hidden area. A charming sense of humour and fun runs through the game, with its frequent fourth-wall breaking always raising a smile, whether that comes from well-designed achievements or in-game dialogue.

16. Wario Land 3 (GBC - Nintendo Switch Online) | 2 March 2023 | 8/10
All treasures and all music coins collected on all levels, plus time trial runs. For its time, Wario Land 3 is an impressive proto-'Metroidvania', building on the puzzle focus from Wario Land II with levels that, while individually self-contained, change and evolve as treasures are collected from other levels. Once again, it's (nearly) impossible for Wario to die, with enemies instead inflicting temporary status effects - which in fact are often key to progressing through various obstacles (e.g., blocks that can only be passed with flames), though at other times can be frustrating with time spent waiting for them to expire. The levels are generally well-designed and expansive, though the intricacy with which some treasures (which are the game's key collectible) are hidden does get a bit excessive at times - and the overall pace of gameplay is quite slow, which won't appeal to everyone. Playing via emulation would definitely be my recommendation, where 'rewind' functionality can help to mitigate much of the frustration where it does occur.

RedShift · Mar 4, 2023

Not expecting to get to 52 really, last year I played 42 and this year I have several 50+ hour games I want to get through that will probably bring me down, plus TotK that could easily eat up 100+ hours. But on the other hand I've managed to stay on track to 9 games in 9 weeks despite getting through one 50 hour game already, so who knows.

Final list:

#	Title	Platform	Time (estimated)
1	Vampire Survivors	PC	8.0 hours
2	Hades	Switch	22.0 hours
3	Super Mario Odyssey	Switch	12.5 hours
4	God of War	PC	22.5 hours
5	Looney Tunes	PC	1.5 hours
6	Sonic Adventure DX	PC	9.0 hours
7	Dark Souls	PC	51.0 hours
8	Axiom Verge	PC	10.5 hours
9	Celeste (C Sides)	Switch	6.0 hours
10	Hyper Light Drifter	PC	8.0 hours
11	Yoku's Island Express	PC	5.5 hours
12	Tinykin	PC	6.0 hours
13	Gris	PC	3.5 hours
14	Red Dead Redemption II	PC	44.0 hours
15	The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog	PC	2.0 hours
16	Pizza Tower	PC	6.0 hours
17	Advance Wars	Switch	15.0 hours
18	Railbound	Android	3.5 hours
19	Beyond Blue	PC	2.5 hours
20	The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom	Switch	115.0 hours
21	Oxenfree	PC	4.5 hours
22	Limbo	PC	3.5 hours
23	Metroid Prime	Switch	13.5 hours
24	Celeste Classic	Switch	0.5 hours
25	Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising	Switch	27.5 hours
26	Elec Head	PC	2.0 hours
27	LEGO: Builder's Journey	PC	2.0 hours
28	Dredge	PC	9.0 hours
29	Sonic CD	Android	2.0 hours
30	Resident Evil 7: Biohazard	PC	9.5 hours
31	The Last of Us Part II	PS4	24.0 hours
32	Toodee and Topdee	PC	7.0 hours
33	Sonic Triple Trouble: 16 Bit	PC	2.0 hours
34	The Rise of the Tomb Raider	PC	13.5 hours
35	Stray	PC	5.0 hours
36	Pikmin	PC	8.0 hours
37	Bloodborne	PS4	33.0 hours
38	Donut County	PC	2.0 hours
39	Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood	PC	15.0 hours
40	Spec Ops: The Line	PC	6.0 hours
41	Pikmin 2	Switch	11.5 hours
42	South Park: The Stick of Truth	PC	11.5 hours
43	Oxenfree II: Lost Signals	PC	6.0 hours
44	Bioshock	PC	12.0 hours
45	The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	PC	41.0 hours
46	Pikmin 3	Switch	13.0 hours
47	Nova Lands	PC	13.5 hours
48	Sonic Mania	PC	5.5 hours
49	Elden Ring	PC	69.5 hours
50	Super Mario Bros. Wonder	Switch	9 hours
51	Pikmin 4	Switch	17.0 hours
52	Baldur's Gate 3	PC	91.0 hours

AvianAviator · Mar 5, 2023

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11. The Shivah | Mar 04 2023

Short, noir point-and click about a financially struggling rabbi who finds himself in the middle of a murder mystery plot. The story was cliche and predictable, but had a great sense of humor and was pretty well voice acted. (Apparently the version I have is a remastered version.) I really enjoyed the brief references to their other games (the Blackwell series and Primordia) and the bloopers at the end.

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L Thammy · Mar 5, 2023

15. Raiden
Flawed - ★★☆☆ (2/4)

My understanding is that Raiden was what other shmups aspired to for a time. I do get it; the sprites are good, the music is good, it was filling the screen with bullets before Touhou existed and you could power up to match. There was a slight problem with my playthrough that I can't shake off, though. I just went with what seemed to be the default and went with the Japanese setting, which it turns out has a very significant effect on the difficulty of the game.

When starting a single player game in the original Japanese release, you find that every time you're hit, you're sent back to the checkpoint. It doesn't matter if you have lives left, you always restart at the checkpoint. You also find yourself without powerups. That itself isn't too bad at first - the game's still technically credit feedable, but it demands more skill than a lot of arcade games since you do have to successfully get to the next checkpoint to progress instead of being allowed to continue from where you left off as long as you have credits. The big problem is that while every checkpoint does have a powerup nearby to start you off, it also always has an aggressive group of enemies there, sometimes immediately in front of you, and generally in a trap formation which makes it hard to move without getting hit. If you die, you get punished again over and over. It's incredibly difficult to regain your momentum.

I did eventually manage to beat this, but by putting in a coin for the second player. I was hoping this would just allow the screen to scroll a little further through a section I was struggling with, but it actually completely changes the system so that you restart where you died and drop a few powerups that you had collected. In fact, the way that the international version makes things easier is by having the single player mode do this as well, although you're still sent back to the checkpoint if you run out of lives and have to use a continue. It makes the first half of the game much more sensible, but I ended up getting frustrated at the same place and beat international mode the same way.

Even putting the continue business aside, this is one of the hardest shmups I've played in recent memory. It notably isn't a bullet hell shooter in that while there quite a lot of bullets and enemies on screen, they aren't there for the aesthetic at all - they're all things that could realistically threaten you. You rarely just have one kind of thing to watch out for. Being fully powered up makes a huge different, but that's really hard to get to except through the pity full powerup items that the game drops if you die in the same spot a few times - which I don't like using, so I just avoided them when I saw them.

It certainly still has its merits, but with the amount of shmups that are accessible today, I don't feel any desire to return to this one or to get good at it., where I'd want to do better because it feels rewarding and not because it's unreasonable.

Subnats · Mar 5, 2023

RedShift said:
6. Sonic Adventure DX (Steam Deck)
For some reason I had a hankering to revist this, and it went on sale for basically free right when I got my new Deck. I have a lot of fond memories of going round my friend's to play it on his Dreamcast as a kid but man... turns out this game really sucks. I replayed SA2 a few years ago and thought it held up pretty well, but now I'm afraid to revisit it in case it turns out to be awful too.

Did you play this with the Dreamcast conversion mod? Base DX has a lot of issues that make it a worse experience than the original especially the newer versions since they're ports of a port of a port. Not sure if it's easy to install on Deck but I'd recommend trying it out cause it really is game changing imo.

shadowman16 · Mar 5, 2023

Ishin and VR monopolise most of my time, so progress is slow (but money grinding in Ishin chicken racing is going superb lol), but I am getting some indie titles finished.

37. Power Wash Sim (PS5) - A long time in the making, this one took 10s of hours to finish once the larger jobs opened up, as they took 1 hour + to complete. Bizarrely addictive, super relaxing, and actually really fun. I really love indie games like this where it really commits to a random idea and turns out better than it had any right being. There's something satisfying cleaning a particularly hard to read area of the Ferris Wheel, or having a large area like the subway going from caked in dirt to sparkling clean.
Only issue I could really level at the game is that sometimes I really struggled to find the one spec of dirt that was needed to finish an area.

Oh, and I plat'ed the game, which was not as straight forward as you'd imagine - most trophies essentially give you special goals when playing certain levels, which made said levels really fun to do. Not a hard trophy list, but a creative one (the best kind).

Next up:

Monster Hunter Rise
RGG Ishin Kiwami! (Chapter 6)
Mass Effect 2
Moonrider
Kirby Return to Dreamland
Moss Book 1

Original post:

52 Games. 1 Year. 2023

A thread for people that are trying to play 52 games in a year. Tell us how you're doing and what you are going to play next - claim a post and update us on your progress! How do I take part? Claim a 'main post' where you will list all your completions for the year. You can use fancy images...

www.resetera.com

Bosh · Mar 5, 2023

MAIN THREAD

Quick Update:

Kirby Star Allies - Found myself bored with this game unfortunatly. There are much better Kirby games in the series
Ultimate Alliance 3 - Overall its fine. Its not a great game but it serves some good hours when you want some mindless fun
Final Fantasy III Pixel Remastered - Loved this game, also loved the pixel remaster additions. Keeps the game true enough to original while adding some nice updates such as telling you how many treasure chest are in each location.
Chained Echoes- Not really much of a fan of this game overall unforunetly. Left longer comments on our discord quarterly channel
Like a Dragon Ishin!: Another great game in the series. While it doesn't stray to far from general formula, it has some fantastic chapters and content.

shaneo632 · Mar 6, 2023

Been playing mostly smaller games so far this year but almost polished off Midnight Suns which has taken me about 30 hours.

1. Jan 8-Jan 12: New Tales from the Borderlands (PC/Deck)
2. Feb 5-Feb 5: Tails: The Backbone Preludes (PC/Deck)
3. Jan 30-Feb 6: Hi-Fi Rush (PC/Xcloud)
4. Feb 9-Feb 10: Five Dates (PC/Deck)
5. Feb 6-13: Deliver Us the Moon (PC/Deck)
6. Feb 13: Press X to Not Die (PC/Deck)
7. Feb 13: She Sees Red (PC/Deck)
8. Feb 14-16: Ten Dates (PC/Deck)
9. Feb 27: Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk (PC/Deck)
10. Mar 5: Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk (PC/Deck)
11. Mar 6: If Found... (PC/Deck)

Whimsicalish · Mar 6, 2023

djinn said:
Completely sold me on Pentiment

Sorry for replying late but I really hope you enjoy it!

Whimsicalish · Mar 6, 2023

AvianAviator said:
Main Post

7. Hi-Fi Rush

Watched my husband play this from start to finish, so I'm definitely missing the gameplay part of this review. But overall I really enjoyed the story, characters, and humor. This game had a perfectly executed Saturday morning cartoon vibe. GREAT looking boss fights, incredible characters (particularly the first few villains). Only complaint was the first half was a little long, and the second half was kind of rushed (like, you can pinpoint where they ran out of budget or time). I'll probably play it myself and update this with my full impressions later.

8. Far: Changing Tides

Loved managing the creaking, groaning ship, loved the ship's evolving gameplay over the course of the few hours it took to beat it. Some telegraphing wasn't really clear, some of the telegraphing that was there was hard to see, and I started to get impatient with it in the end. But when the music mixes with the subdued sound of the ocean and the waves, it's pretty great.

9. Coffee Talk

I was hoping the barista portion would be more complex, and the conversations would be a little...deeper, I guess, but I still enjoyed it. It's a casual conversation simulator. Chill in a coffee shop with your buddies who also happen to be mystical creatures. It's nice for what it is and I'll be checking out the second game at some point in the future. Music is really great.

10. Destiny 2: Lightfall

Sigh... I play Destiny on and off, very casually, and only because my husband wants to spend time with me in the game. Not here for the gameplay, but I have grown to like the lore. Lightfall was the first expansion I was really hyped for, and the campaign was not good. Really not good. I'd refund it if I could.

I haven't yet tried Coffee Talk but it is on my "to play" list. Love your game poster designs!

Whimsicalish · Mar 6, 2023

14 | Elsinore
Steam Deck | Feb 26 | 21.5 h | 5/5

You play as Ophelia, a young noblewoman in the world of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Quickly you realize you're trapped in a time-loop. It's up to you to sneak, gossip, and uncover the secrets around Elsinore castle.

I normally do not enjoy time travel/loops in stories, but Elsinore did it well. It was engaging and fun to discover what you can change in the environment. How will person X respond to this information you found out? Or what does person Y do around this time of day? There are many dialogue options to find and question with a large cast. There are 11 different fates you can discover making this highly re-playable.

Honestly, a wonderful well-written adventure game. I love how it ultimately lets you choose Ophelia's fate.

15 | Home
Steam Deck | March 05 | 4 h | 2.5/5

Home is a side-scrolling pixel narrative. Not a story, because you (the player) makes the deduction of the story. That can be good or bad. I saw many reviews that clearly did not enjoy that decision.

My first playtime took one hour. I tried to be thorough finding all items and hidden areas but I did miss some information. Thus my first thought of the story wasn't great based on the information I had on hand. Then I played a second run, found new info, and decided maybe there was more to the story and this character.

The game never says "this is what happened or this is the true ending." It's solely based on your perspective with the information you found. If you only played it once and in a hurry, it can feel like the developer didn't fully write a story. After playing it four times, there is something there but it's scratch deep. The dev could have gone further with it. I believe I can see their goal for the game, but there's too many unknowns to feel completed.

The pixel art style is great for the short experience. The audio was fine until the final area. With a loud constant annoyance, I wanted to rush through my exploration because of the need to get away from that sound. It was awful.

16 | Ghost of a Tale
PS4 | March 06 | 15 h | 4/5

I loved this stealth adventure more than I initially thought. Please give me more games that allow me to play as a mouse.

I wasn't thrilled with the stealth; however, the game does give you an option to essentially remove that aspect of the gameplay. (Thank you devs!) The characters are fun to get to know. The world is much more expansive and open. I thought this was a strict linear story. Nope, you explore a ton here. There's side quests, useful costumes with purpose, tools, and skills. It was a joy to play. Only a few frustrations.

The open world was fun to explore. They did a fantastic job bringing in castles, ruins, a forest, etc to life. It's a pro, but sadly, also a con. No other way to say it; there is a ton of running back and forth in each area between exploring and completing quests. There is no fast travel. You have to use your little mouse feet to get around these LARGE areas. It could have benefited from tightening the maps. It's easy to get lost and there are areas you can walk around with nothing in them. Sometimes bigger isn't better, ya know.

The other frustrations came from worrying if I accidentally broke quests. There are a handful of quests that seem a bit buggy, touchy? Thankfully after reading posts about other players having the same issues and yet able to continue, the anxiety would go away. But it doesn't feel great when a game isn't clear as it could be and you stress you broke something.

In the end, I adored Ghost of a Tale. I hope there is a sequel so I can join the world again with Tilo.

Main Post

Subnats · Mar 7, 2023

Main Post

7 Days To End With You (PC) - March 7th (7 Hours)
Starting off March with a pretty interesting one. I found out about 7 Days To End With You from a Nintendolife video talking about the Switch release a few weeks ago. It looked pretty interesting and unique with the whole premise being a visual novel/puzzle game where understanding the actual text is a puzzle. My first run through the game was a bit of a difficult experience, languages were never exactly my forte back in school and while what's presented here isn't anywhere close to learning a language it was still a bit of a struggle for me. Despite that though I was very much hooked and by the time I reached the ending with only about 40% of the words even kinda translated, I was really invested in diving right back in. Looking back my original interpretation of the story was pretty off the mark

I had assumed your character's amnesia and illness were something to do with trauma or injuries from the war they were in and the woman was trying to somehow produce a cure, which uh yeah that's not the case at all.

but that's honestly one of the best parts of the game, being able to piece things together as you slowly build up more and more context through further getting a grasp of the language. It definitely helps that the game doesn't expect you to understand grammar or anything, sentence construction is very simple and honestly I feel it helps to give the feeling of having a lacking grasp of a language. This might just be me and my horrible language skills but I did find that a few words were just too lacking in context for me to really understand and by the time I was going for alternate endings I just resorted to using a guide to get the last few words.

Understand was the absolute worst for me, it being the middle word at the clock just did not click for me at all. It was pretty cool that words could actually be decoded though since the alphabet does correspond to English, just using a Caesar Cipher to jumble up the letters. I definitely made use of that to have some sense of discovery on the more difficult ones without resorting to a guide just yet.

Again though you could argue that it does reflect the experience of not really knowing a language. Despite that I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game, and came out of it very satisfied with what was basically an impulse buy. I haven't really seen many people talk about this game (though that might be because it originally released a year ago) and that's really a shame. 7 Days To End With You is a very fun time, it isn't perfect and definitely has moments of obtuseness but it's an experience you'd be hard fetched to find anywhere else and for that it's definitely worth a look.

4/5

RMChoodie · Mar 8, 2023

January
1. Pentiment (XSX) Jan 1 18 hours and 12 minutes 8/10
2. Kentucky Route Zero (XSX) Jan 16 12 Hours and 43 minutes 9/10
February Update
3. HI-FI Rush (XSX) FEB 20 14 HOURS AND 55 MINUTES 9/10

March Update
4. REZ Infinite(PS5-PSVR2)March 6 15 hours and 12 minutes 10/10
5. Guardians of the Galaxy (XSX) March 15 25 hours and 14 minutes 8/10
6. Arcade Paradise (PS5) March 19 58 hours and 44 minutes 9/10

April Update
7. Coffee Talk (XSX April 17 10 Hours and 4 minutes 6/10

May Update
8. NBA2K23 (PS5) May 9 84 hours and 12 minutes 9/10
9. MLB The Show 23 (XSX) May 19 71 hours and 27 minutes 9/10
10.High On Life (XSX) May 28 15 hours and 46 minutes 7/10

djinn · Mar 8, 2023

Main Post

5. Chained Echoes
Might be my favourite rpg since DQ11. It feels like it's been so long since an rpg really surprised me. And it's so funny that it's come from what looks from the outside like nostalgia bait. And, granted, there is a lot of Pointing Leo Dicaprio moments to be had. At the same time, though, CE feels like a breath of fresh air. No levels, auto healing after battle, no random battles, 2 unique battle systems and genuinely difficult and engaging combat. Not to mention a story that goes unexpected and surprisingly mature places. CE goes out of its way to be different, so it's no wonder that this game has been a bit divisive. Myself, as I've said, I couldn't be happier with what I got. Honestly for the first time since DQ11 I loved an rpg from beginning to end. It's been so long I almost forgot why I love this genre. I'm definitely looking forward to the likely sequel.

shadowman16 · Mar 8, 2023

38. Thumper (PSVR2) - I never could finish Thumper on the PS4... I got to the "final boss" but just couldnt crack it, game felt too fast and difficult to read. In steps the PSVR2 version years later which I find VASTLY easier to see what's going on thanks to being in VR (I assume), so not only is it an even more fun game, I actually managed to crack those last three levels I could never do! I still have some attempts at trophies to do, but the main game is wrapped up, tops marks all round for both the game and VR2 integration, I absolutely loved it.

Next up:

Monster Hunter Rise
RGG Ishin Kiwami! (Chapter 6)
Mass Effect 2
Moonrider
Kirby Return to Dreamland
Moss Book 1
Rez Infinite

Original post:

52 Games. 1 Year. 2023

A thread for people that are trying to play 52 games in a year. Tell us how you're doing and what you are going to play next - claim a post and update us on your progress! How do I take part? Claim a 'main post' where you will list all your completions for the year. You can use fancy images...

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His Majesty · Mar 8, 2023

4. Horizon Forbidden West - 5/10

Didn't catch my attention as the original did. Now that the central mystery is gone, it turns out that there isn't much story left to grab the player's attention. The characters didn't interest me either and Aloy's personal growth arc from lone saviour to teamplayer (who still does mostly everything herself) got on my nerves quickly. Aloy's rude behaviour and dismissive attitude clashes with the insistence of the game to show her as the selfless heroine of the story. While the combat is arguably the highlight of the game together with the graphics, it is let down by the very tedious loot treadmill. Forbidden West feels like a sequel chasing all the new industry trends but without any regard for the basics of what makes a video game engaging.

5. Atomic Heart - 8/10

Definitely the weirdest and most uneven game I have played this year. Atomic Heart combines great aesthetics, a phenomenal soundtrack and frantic combat with an undercooked open world and 'so bad it becomes good again' writing. The poster child of a game with high highs and low lows, which I always find preferable to mediocrity across the board.

L Thammy · Mar 10, 2023

16. Hissatsu Buraiken (Via Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium)
Bad - ★☆☆☆ (1/4)

This is the Japanese version of the game also known as Avenger. For some reason there's no option to select the North American version in Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium, although one does exist. The Japanese version has all English text anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter much unless there were notable balance changes.

Holy hell is this game bad. I haven't played a ton of Capcom's early work, but I suspect that this is in the running for the single worst game that they've released. I'd chalk it up to lack of experience, but this was by the director of Kung Fu, who you'd hope would at least know how to make a simple beat em up fun, if not particularly fancy. Additionally, this was after Commando and Gun.Smoke, so top down action games were something that Capcom had found success with before.

This is a single top down beat up with three moves. Your punch seems like your basic move, but it's probably the least used. It has the shortest range but it's the fastest attack by fast, essentially being spammable as fast as you can hit the button. You can also use it when moving. It's pointless in the stages where enemies generally die in one hit anyway, but for the first half of the game it's your main tool for damaging bosses, since you can quickly chew through their health by mashing the punch. It seems that later bosses are immune, though, so the punch becomes completely useless. If you find a ranged weapon, it replace your punch, but you can still kick normally if you want to conserve your ammo. Your kick is your main tool, which is slower but has longer reach and is possibly stronger. You also have a roundhouse kick which was originally performed by pressing both buttons. Various Final Fight clones have trained me to expect that this is a desperation attack, but it's actually probably your second most major tool. You spin around slowly in a circle while kicking, which is good for clearing out enemies that are rushing at you, but you do need to be aware that you might need to mash out since enemies are perfectly capable of grabbing you from the back.

The stages are relatively inoffensive, with most of the enemies being a single enemy type who grabs you and drains your health like in Kung Fu. There are a bunch of rarer enemy types who often don't make much of a difference a lot of the time. On the other hand, there are some enemies who there doesn't seem to be any convenient way to deal with, like the knife throwers in the first few stages. If you try to approach them they move further away, if you wait them out they'll be there forever. Their projectiles are fast and you're slow, so I don't know how reasonable it is to dodge them. If you see a door, you can break it down to enter a short timed bonus stage which might have nunchaku, kunai, or grenades for you to use, but those are limited usage and you can't bring them into boss fights so you don't really need them either. The stages are short as it is.

The boss fights are a nightmare, though. They're kind of puzzle bosses in that they're often immune to a certain kind of attack, so you have to think of the effective way to hit them. But there's never really a moment where it's safe to hit them and their attacks are too fast to be read or reacted to, so you're probably just going to eat their attacks. I think the worst might be the second level boss, who splits into three, with only one taking damage. Even if you know which one is the one that takes damage, all three can hit you and they take a lot of room, so they can easily trap you. The bosses' range is also longer than yours so if you do manage to get up to the boss he can just win out on range and you can't do anything. I think theoretically the best way to do it is hit the boss from back with rapid punches, but I don't think it's really viable. On the standard difficulty settings, I couldn't get through the second boss because even if I managed to get into position to start rapid punching him, he'd have eaten all my lives by that point.

52 Games. 1 Year. 2023

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