52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat]

[Plum]

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GAME 5: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion
Nintendo Switch | Finished 26/1/24 | 17 Hours Played | 6/10

This was a game that felt like it was held back in many ways both necessary and - frankly - unnecessary. Despite the impressive graphical and gameplay overhaul this remake delivers, it's impossible to ever truly move away from the feeling that - at its core - you're playing a game held back by the PSP, outdated design decisions, and, frankly, the 'Final Fantasy VII Compilation' as a whole.

Now, to not be too negative, there are many positives here. The game's cutscenes are frequently impressive. The materia and materia fusing system, whilst confusing at times, is fun and versatile enough to create some nice variety in builds. I was even quite fond of the DMW system, and how it provided a sort of 'chaotic' element to RPG systems that you don't usually see. Also, despite having as much ghosting as a Luigi's Mansion game, the graphics were some of the nicest I've seen on Switch; it was generally just quite novel seeing the 'modern Final Fantasy' style on such an underpowered platform, and running fairly decently to boot. In terms of story, I think Zack is actually a pretty good character despite the weird voice-acting, and his scenes with Cloud are a particular highlight. His scenes with Aerith less so, but they're still worthwhile I'd say. I also think they, crucially, did that final-final scene really well, as melodramatic as it was. It's just a shame what came before it.

But that's sort of where the compliments end for me. The main story tries to change things up, but ultimately falls short with tiny environments that mostly just boil down to encounter corridors. All mixed in with a whole shitton of "unnecessary short cutscenes," that often really mess with the pacing. Outside of the Materia system, it's really just serviceable at best. Never feeling great to fight, explore, or quest.

What really shocked me here is just how small the main story is compared to what are essentially 300 almost-identical missions. I say almost-identical, because sometimes you're fighting in some caverns, or some hallways and - wow - sometimes in a small field. Any which way, whilst I get the idea, they really - really - did not have to be *so* repetitive. Why they don't more-frequently use like half of the game's environments baffles me (they might do, but frankly I threw in the towel at 35% completion), and so does the fact that they literally *never* change things up.

Spoiler: Story Thoughts

Then there's the story, which I think is the perfect example of overcomplicating what really did not need to be complicated. And by complicated, I mean it didn't need Genesis. Now I understand why I've seen PlanetSmasher hate on him so much, because god *damn* does that guy just completely suck out any potential interest in the room whenever he walks onto screen. Without him, the game could've been a tragedy about mentors and the inspiration they give to those that follow them, and ultimately inherit their dreams and values. A simple narrative that leads into one that ultimately becomes a lot more complex in the chronological sequel. You know, like a prequel should be. With him, that simple narrative is constantly interrupted by a bunch of shitty faux-Shakespeare lines wrapped up in nonsense ramblings that have no bearing on the game's themes, emotional beats, or anything really. The worst kind of 'Final Fantasy nonsense.' Argh.

So, yeah. Overall I can't say I had that much fun with this. Not nearly as much as I did with Final Fantasy VII or Remake. I can fully, fully understand why it's considered by many to be a PSP classic, but in the context of modern times, it just did not work for me in any significant way.

 

[Rhaknar]

Game 9 - Prince of Persia The Lost Crown
Time: 26 hours
Platform: Switch
Rating: 9.5/10

And my first game of the year contender arrives in shocking fashion, as Ubisoft gives us easily one of the best metroidvanias ever made, and probably my favorite Prince of Persia game ever. Just a fantastically crafted game, from the presentation, to the amazing level design, fantastic combat and traversal, very meaty campaign, just a perfect example of the genre that stands with the best like Hollow Knight, SOTN and the like. An absolute must play for any fan of these games, or even as an introduction to the genre. A near perfect game that I could nitpick but won't because I loved it.

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[djinn]

4. There is No Game: Wrong Dimension
Excellent mobile game. The perfect amount of challenge but too long I feel. I enjoyed the meta and it got some laughs from me. The most frustrating parts were trying to control something on the screen and my fingers would get in the way of seeing anything.

 

[entremet]

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2. Elden Ring (PS5)

My first playthrough is done. I'm a big fan of the Souls games and finally beat my first character. Did a Bleed Build, which is a bit OP in this game. Definitely a masterpiece, but with many flaws. The boss design was frustrating to say the least with bosses with long combo strings, input reading, and ones that just make you chase them, makes many of the encounters not that fun. I don't mind a challenge, but I wasn't really looking forward to learning a few of the end game bosses here because of those tactics.

The Open World and level design are From's best, however. Volcano Manor, Raya Lucaria, Leyndell, are all amazing. A very good effort for From's first open world game. Not perfect. I hope they do better tuning of the bosses for the next game. The Demon's Souls mobility options just are outdated here and it is really evident with some of the boss encounters.

 

[maximumzero]

I'm not foolish enough to think I'm gonna manage 52 games this year, but I do want to make a concerted effort to play through (and potentially sell off) some of my backlog this year.

After lots of "Blabbin' About Batman" listens lately, I decided to pop the seal on my copy of Arkham Origins. I finished Arkham City Armored Edition years ago (but never got all the collectibles) and I may give it another playthrough soon as well.

 

[vertThunder]

1. Plantera 2 : Golden Acorn (PC)
   1. relaxing idle game, helps that getting all the achievements isn't that tough
2. Fortnite Reached Lv 100 in a season
3. Chillquarium (PC)
4. Final Fantasy 7 Remake (PS5)
5. Final Fantasy 7 Intermission (PS5)
6. Fortnite Reached Lv 200 in a season

 

[Plum]

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GAME 6: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Exasion
PC (Steam Deck) | Finished 29/1/24 | 100% | 2 Hours 40 Minutes Played | 7/10

This was a charming little game, albeit one that wasn't really long enough, or funny enough to leave the biggest of impressions. It's a very truncated 'Zelda-Like', with gameplay focused around a few (very small) dungeons, bosses, fetch quests with random NPCs, and so on. Which I think works in its favour; the design means it can introduce, elaborate on, and throw away new idea and elements with a really good pace. Similarly, the light difficulty throughout makes the adventure suitably breezy; though the free roguelike update is there if you want to get deep into Turnip Boy gameplay. Its story is fairly typical for the micro-genre that is 'cutesy games hiding darkly comedic secrets', and it definitely moves a bit much into referential/lmao random humour sometimes, but there's definitely a cute sincerity here that I can really appreciate. The final boss was a particularly fun highlight. Altogether, a nice little breather in between bouts of Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy, Like a Dragon, and other similar ridiculous-length titles.

 

[Subnats]

Sneaking in one more game before the end of January. A little behind now but I should be able to catch back up next month

3. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch) - January 30th (20 Hours)
Considering that Super Mario 3D World is one of my favourite Mario games, I'm surprised it took so long to play through Captain Toad. Well I've finally played it and I'd say it's pretty good. It does a very good job of expanding on the concepts introduced in 3D World while adding a bunch of new ideas throughout. There's a lot to love here and there's a decent amount of proper brainteasers, especially with the pixel toads. I don't quite think I'd recommend going for 100% here like I did, just because it can take quite a while to figure out some of the more difficult challenges and pixel toads, hence my playtime. I also like how it somewhat flips the whole damsel in distress trope, at least for a bit, though unfortunately it still ends up falling back to it in the end. The Switch version of the game is overall pretty good. In handheld mode it plays exactly as you'd expect it to, losing the dual viewpoints of the 3DS/Wii U versions but otherwise playing identically. Docked isn't a particularly great experience though. The gyro pointer works well most of the time but other gimmicks that rely on touchscreen use can be fairly cumbersome to use. Gyro aim is also completely disabled in docked mode for some reason, not that it's particularly well implemented here with how unresponsive it feels. I might actually say it'd be worth playing the other versions over the Switch release because of it, though at least handheld mode holds up well. Overall I wouldn't quite say that El Capitan Todd ever quite reaches greatness, but it's a very solid time throughout as long as you're playing it with a touchscreen. Fuck Mummy-Me Maze Forever though, took me like 2 or 3 hours to finally beat.

3.5/5


*edit* Managed to squeeze in one more game today. Should be the last for the month.

​

4. Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble (Gamegear) - January 30th (1 Hour)
So funny thing, Sonic Triple Trouble was actually one of the first classic Sonic games I completed. I bought it from the 3DS Virtual Console over a decade ago at this point and at the time I really liked. I knew it wasn't quite the same thing as the Megadrive games but on its own it was a fun little romp. Coming back to it years later, my opinion surprisingly remains the same. I don't think I quite like it as much as I did as a child, and its flaws are certainly easier to see, but I had a pretty fun time revisiting it. I found the level design to generally be a lot more interesting than I would've previously given it credit for. Stages like Tidal Plant Act 2 weren't great but I had a blast going through Sunset Heights, Meta Junglira and Robotnik Winter. There's a sense of speed here I wouldn't have expected from a Gamegear game either, and while it doesn't have anything close to the physics of its console counterparts it's still fun to play around with whats there. Having both Sonic and Tails available to play as is nice and Tails even gets to actually fly while Sonic gets the Super Peel Out. The screen crunch can be a bit of an issue at times, being a Gamegear exclusive without any (official) Mastersytem port means your field of view isn't the biggest and that can sometimes lead to awkward situations, though it's mostly a non issue. It generally looks and sounds pretty great as well, it really flexes just what the power of six AA's can do though there is the occasional sprite flickering, most noticeable on the end screen after the credits. It's not perfect and of the 8bit Sonics I'd probably put Chaos above it, but Triple Trouble but overall a fun playthrough. still worth a look if you're interested in them.

3/5

 

[Squardles]

Games 6-10

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6. Monster Hunter World - XSX - 4.5/5
7. Monster Hunter World Iceborne - XSX - 5/5
9. Monster Hunter Rise - XSX - 4.5/5

These are just replays of my favorite franchise, owned them of different platforms so decided to do a XSX run of them. Obviously I'm pretty hyped that we have a new entry coming out next year. Plan is to play through the whole series throughout the year bar MH2, that's the only one I don't have a copy of.

Click to shrink...

8. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank - XSX - 4/5

Great sequel to the original even with the core gameplay change. Took about 3 hours, recommend it if you have GamePass.

Click to shrink...

10. Doom 64 - XSX - 3.5/5

This was a game that when I started I was having a blast, but by the end I was ready for it to be over. I think the biggest contributing factor was the lack of a great OST doom was known for. Getting through some of those labyrinthine levels in Doom 1 or 2 is definitely made easier do to the rocking music. Searching for a wall button you missed for 20 min in silence was just not a great experience. Night Dive port was great.

Click to shrink...

Currently Working on MHR: Sunbreak, Brotato and playing through Palworld with the wife.

 

[stn]

2. Tekken 8 (PS5) - I count beating the story as a completion. Going for the rest of the trophies. [8.5/10]

Next: TBD

 

[shadowman16]

26. Rainbow Islands (PS4) - Hands done one of my top 10 games of all time. A clever platformer that relies on your accuracy when defeating enemies rather than haphazardly spraying rainbows everywhere. Where the enemy falls determines which coloured gem you get, and if you wanna access those extra stages you need to get all the big gems which are given to you by getting all the small gems on each level.

Its clever, additive, and gorgeous. And now thanks to the Arcade Archives port, its fair. See - my main bugbare with RI is that after level 7, when you get the optional levels unlocked, you are basically left to fend for yourself on that one last credit - no continues allowed - but here you can enable the continue cheat so that's no longer the case, and it works perfect! This plus other QOL changes make this by far the best way to play the game, I could finally sit back and enjoy those final few stages.

Currently Playing:

Sega Rally Revo (Steam Deck) - Amazing arcade racing game that has a really tough difficulty curve. Im still trying to unlock the last master race and its rough, I can do some races, get smoked in others. Even so, Ive raced in every course (I think) and have had a blast playing it this past week. No idea if Ill be able to clear these last few, its a legit challenge!

Yakuza 8 (PS5) - 12 hours, onto chapter 3. Im playing super slowly as I keep getting distracted by things to do (by the way, this is BEFORE things really open up!)
Its amazing, exactly what I wanted. Also the Sega Model 3 games are amazing in this, will probably count them as separate game completions considering the time time Im putting into each!


Dropped. TMNT 2 Battle Nexus (GBA) - I had a whole rant typed up but the forum seemingly swallowed it up. But basically its an utter POS that was designed so ineptly that I couldnt bring myself to finish the last few levels. Every single design choice is factually awful - from forced stealth, forced to replay stages over and over for shitty collectibles needed to complete the game, to the game speed, to the combat, to mini games... Seriously, even by 00 Turtles games, this is still way worse than anything else Ive played. Its just THAT bad.

Original Post:
52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat]

 

[chrominance]

Three games added to the list for January:

1. Grand Theft Auto Online: Los Santos Drug Wars (PC, 2022) - 1:18 + 14:41 in 2023 - January 1
2. Doom (PC, 1993) - 5:27 + 1:10 in 2023 - January 4
3. Grand Theft Auto Online: The Criminal Enterprises (PC, 2022) - 7:59 - January 10

I thought I knew how the second half of this month was going to go; try and get through a significant chunk of Final Fantasy VII and then play the rest alongside Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. But then a funny thing happened: Palworld. I've spent more hours in Palworld than pretty much all the other games I played this month combined. The fervor has died down significantly for me, mostly because my forward momentum has stalled in the game, but it's still weirdly easy to pour time into the game without realizing it.

Another game where that's true, and one I really didn't see coming: Atelier Resleriana, the gacha game based on the Atelier series that actually seems to not be absolute garbage (sorry Atelier Online). This one I have much more mixed feelings about, but I still spent a lot of time in it; it's #3 on my list in terms of hours played.

Next month will likely be dominated by RPGs; I'm really getting into Infinite Wealth now, and I'm hoping that I can wrap that up as well as FF7 before the release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth but I'm not sure that's going to be possible. Add into the mix the likelihood of patches for Palworld, and that's the month of February seemingly all accounted for before it's even begun. We'll see if there are any surprises.

 

[SlayerSaint]

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JANUARY UPDATE:


January: 7/52
1. Madden NFL 23 - 12hrs - 2/5 - 1/3/24
2. The Jackbox Party Pack 3 - 3hrs - 4/5 - 1/7/24
3. The Jackbox Party Pack 4 - 3hrs - 1.5/5 - 1/7/24
4. The Jackbox Party Pack 5 - 3hrs - 2/5 - 1/7/24
5. The Jackbox Party Pack 6 - 3hrs - 3.5/5 - 1/7/24
6. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 10hrs - 1.5/5 - 1/25/24
7. The Finals - 20hrs - 3.5/5 - 1/31/24




Currently playing:

Alan Wake 2 - 50% through
Palworld - probably done with for now soon, no real completion %
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - 30% through
Pokemon Violet - pretty early into it
Disney Illusion Island - 40% through
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - 50% through
Hollow Knight - pretty early into it

As you can see I am dividing my attention between way too many games right now and it's slowing my single player completion percentage down. Thanks to a couple of game nights with friends for different Jackbox games , some co-op with my girlfriend, and some online gaming, I have at least some progress to report this month. Honestly don't feel like doing any write ups for these games, I have reviews on my Backloggd, feel free to follow me: https://www.backloggd.com/u/SlayerSaint/

 

[Illusionary]

With January behind us, six games beaten is a decent start. Main post here.

1. Sokobond (PC - itch.io) | 1 January 2024 | 7/10
All puzzles completed. Taking the block-shifting premise of traditional Sokoban and giving it a chemistry-themed spin, the objective of Sokobond's levels is to form molecules from various atoms within a 2D grid. Complexity comes first from each type of atom requiring different numbers of bonds (1 for hydrogen, 2 for oxygen, etc.), then later from additional elements within each level that can add/remove bonds, cause rotation, etc. A little knowledge of chemistry may be helpful here given the familiarity that it brings with the overall concept of covalent chemical bonds, but nothing beyond basic high school level and it's certainly not required – all the information needed is clearly displayed on screen.

Elegantly designed throughout, the puzzles nonetheless become challenging as they progress, and I'm not ashamed to admit to having resorted to a guide to get through a few – so there's certainly a hefty challenge here for those who want to test their special visualisation skills!

2. The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories (Switch) | 1 January 2024 | 6/10
Completed with 100% of collectibles. My first experience with a Swery game, puzzle-platformer The Missing is certainly a memorable game, if not necessarily for altogether positive reasons. The LGBT themes at the core of its story are very well realised and I'm sure will resonate with many within that demographic. However, while I get that it's likely intended to have a metaphorical meaning, the darkness underlying the core puzzle-solving mechanic really doesn't appeal to me - this sees the player-character severely injuring herself to progress and solve puzzles (the most basic example being dismemberment allowing access to smaller spaces). The core gameplay is decent if unexceptional, with some interesting puzzles but frequently feeling quite clunky in practice – but at roughly 4-5 hours for a complete playthrough, it fortunately doesn't have time to become too frustrating.

3. The Expanse: A Telltale Series (Xbox Series X) | 2 January 2024 | 6/10
Completed, including DLC chapter, with all achievements unlocked except for scavenge collection (1,050/1,200G). The Expanse is a decent but unexceptional title for Telltale Games' return, well-presented and with little sign of the technical weaknesses of some of their earlier games. The harshness of the setting from the TV show is well-captured here and the game fits nicely into the series' canon, with a handful of distinctive characters whose interactions are always interesting to see playing out. The game between these, however, feels really quite slow, largely involving a formula of navigation within or around the Artemis spaceship, picking up/interacting with an item, dialogue and then repeat. The complexity of the plot and the extent of events feels quite limited overall compared to recent contemporary Star Trek: Resurgence, for example, which is a shame given potential of the setting.

The game also commits a cardinal sin with its achievement design, featuring two sets of collectible-based achievements and a chapter select, but not allowing per-chapter clean-up of those collectibles - and unfortunately a full new playthrough really doesn't appeal for the sake of the two that I missed.

4. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon (Switch) | 18 January 2024 | 8/10
Normal difficulty playthrough with 100% of collectibles, bonus chapter also completed (not attempting time trials). The number of games taking inspiration from Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is frankly shocking, considering how effectively emotional that game was, but Bayonetta Origins is here to redress the balance somewhat. Following a young Bayonetta and her adopted demon as they attempt to escape an enchanted forest, the simultaneous two-character control is central to the gameplay, which is significantly more action-focused than Brothers. There's still plenty of puzzle-solving as you navigate the interconnected forest environments, but it's somewhat less bespoke than Brothers, while having combat encounters liberally dispersed around the game world. Inevitably the controls take a while to become familiar and the combat isn't especially deep, but overall the game's implementation of its various mechanics is commendable.

Perhaps the biggest detractor that I came across is that while the game's world is impressively large and diverse, away from the critical path (which has clear markers to help you along) it can become difficult to navigate, as the connections between each area aren't clearly indicated and require a fair amount of trial-and-error - which makes seeking out collectibles quite troublesome - even with a guide. While this means that the final part of the experience slows down significantly, overall Bayonetta Origins is an impressively novel take on this type of adventure game, which hopefully we might see more of in future.

5. Sayonara Wild Hearts (Switch) | 21 January 2024 | 9/10
Completed with gold ranks on all stages and the majority of 'Zodiac riddles' solved. A replay, but my original review still stands four years later - Sayonara Wild Hearts is an absolutely superb, extremely stylish rhythm game, with a stunning electronic pop soundtrack. The level design and variety is excellent throughout, always perfectly complementing the soundtrack for each stage, with an electrifying sense of speed for the faster stages. Behind the gameplay and music is an uplifting story of recovery from heartbreak, which is a nice touch though not at all necessary for enjoyment of the game. While a short experience for a single playthrough (around an hour), chasing high scores ( I gather that there's a higher ranking even than gold) and achievements brings some longevity, quite aside from just enjoying the music.

6. Long Gone Days (PC - itch.io) | 25 January 2024 | 7/10
Complete playthrough. Long Gone Days is a 2D RPG set amidst a modern-day war - a relatively unusual setting for the genre, which it uses well to facilitate some meaningful character and relationship development, exploring themes of friendship and loyalty, alongside moral dilemmas that conflicts naturally bring to light. The gameplay is admittedly relatively basic and, especially early on, the battle system doesn't provide a great deal of options - but some complexity does eventually come, as the party expands and develops. With no random encounters and limited healing options, the feeling is definitely one of an attritional struggle, very fitting for the setting. I wouldn't say that the game ever truly excels, being limited by that overall lack of complexity, but it's certainly been a worthwhile experience all the same.

 

[Psychotic_Mantis]

Going to try and do a better job of updating my played games with some thoughts. I love reading everyone elses updates and I slack on providing my own... so here is
January:
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1.Merry Snowballs (Meta Quest 3) - 7/10

Wife got me the MQ3 for Christmas and I randomly gave this game a go. It didn't work on my previous Rift S and saw it was delisted. It was actually a pretty fun time and got difficult near the end. Hard to recommend since it doesn't really exist anymore, but if you have it in your library it's a quick fun time.

2. Bloo Kid 2 (3DS) - 7/10

Tore my achilles over the holidays and wasn't able to move much. Decided to jump into some of my handheld random games. Bloo Kid 2 is a pretty simple platformer that I bought on the final days of the 3DS. Glad I played it and had fun with it…but it doesn't do a whole lot different than other platformers. The final levels were somewhat challenging but you can knock this out in 2ish hours.

3. Gato Roboto (Switch) - 8/10

Really enjoyed playing through this one. Unique metroidvania where you have to solve situations with the cat in and out of the mech suit. Highly recommend and this one is around 3 hours or so.

4. Witcheye (Switch) - 6/10

Really struggled with this one. I loved the art but I never truly felt in control of the eye. It's definitely a unique control system but you could tell it was built with mobile phones first. There were some very tricky levels due to the quick response time and needing to feel full control. If the controls click for you, this could be a fun little gem.

5. Chicken Wiggle (3DS) - 7/10

Another final 3DS purchase and was happy to play through this one. It's basically a puzzle platformer and I rarely ran into any trouble in it. There is exactly one boss and the boss was tricky to figure out since it is nothing like the rest of the game. The best part of this was the user created levels..but that will sadly be dead with the online services ending soon.

6. Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle (Steam Deck) - 8/10

Stuck on a couch, it was time to clean up some of my Keen games on the Steam Deck. 4 was a pretty solid entry in this series. The graphics are cleaner and the levels make more sense. I had more fun with this one than the original 3 episodes. Give Keen a chance and maybe he can come back!

7. Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine (Steam Deck) - 8/10

Another solid entry that builds on episode 4. I enjoyed the level layout in 5 just as much as 4. I wish episode 6 was available since I would like to finish all of the games. I haven't tried Keen Dreams yet…but I am sure I will get there.

8. Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (PS5) - 8/10

Another metroidvania with fantastic art. I know nothing of Lodoss War but I still had a blast playing through this. The bosses were a lot of fun throughout the entire game. It was a bit on the easy side, but exploring the entire map was great. Really recommend this one.

9. Spotto! (3DS) - 7/10

Another 3DS closing purchase. I believe this was on the DSi service and it's a small puzzle game where you toss bombs up at ghosts. This gets extremely tricky by the end of the game and had to power through since I didn't see any other videos or write-ups of this game. Unique and trick, worth a go.

10. Chronos: Before the Ashes (PS4) - 8/10

Had no idea this was originally a VR game and I had no idea that this was tied into the Remnant games. It's a more simplified Souls game with similar combat and less complex leveling. The unique feature is that each time you die, your character grows 1 year older. There were a few bosses that gave me a challenge but overall I think I died 10ish times ( I was 32 when I finished). I don't see this game talked about much and the trophy completion was pretty low. Might be a hidden gem and I would really recommend giving it a go. I might even pick up the VR version on the Quest store down the road.

11. Prehistoric Dude (Steam Deck) - 7/10

Not sure how I picked this game up but ended up enjoying it for what it is. Basically a super simple metroidvania. Everything in it is quite easy and the challenge is finding the secrets and getting 100% on the map. There were 3 bosses and they were all pretty easy. Should be pretty cheap on Steam if interested.

12. Nixxsz Castle (Steam Deck) - 7/10

I want to say this was recommended somewhere on here. It's basically a short punishing platformer where you need pixel perfect jumps. I had to put it down a few times due to the frustrating nature of the game. When you eventually overcome the castle, it is a nice rewarding feeling. It's usually available for under a buck and I think it's well worth that price See if you can get all the trophies and make it to the end!

13. Cats Hidden in Bali (Steam Deck) - 7/10

Random find on Steam and had a blast for the 30 or so minutes it took to find all the cats. Super basic game with 1 image and finding 100 cats along with a few random secret trophies. They should just combine all of the Hidden Cat games into one package…but whatever. Fun if you like finding games.

14. Frog Detective 1: The Haunted Island (Steam Deck) - 8/10

Finally gave this one a go after hearing people love it. It's short, cute and has a lot of charm. I think the whole thing took maybe an hour to get through. I didn't love it as much as others, but it's definitely worth a play. I'll probably play eps 2/3 soon.

15. Steel Diver (3DS) - 7/10

Have had this in my 3DS library for awhile. Basically a tactical submarine sim game with some challenging moments, especially in the end game. The final level/boss was extremely difficult. Once you get the controls and vibe of the game down, it's pretty unique and can be fun. Not a super long experience and you can still find it on eBay for a few bucks.

 

[RedShift]

January update
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Week 5: 6 games complete

Made it through a bunch of shorter games after playing The Witcher 3, Elden Ring, and BG3 in quick succession at the end of last year. Not counted here, I also played through Olimar's Shipwreck Tale in the Pikmin 4 postgame, which has cemeted 4 as my favourite Pikmin game.

1. Super Mario Land - 1 hour | Game Boy emulated on PC | 1-Jan (replay)

A nice quick replay of a game to start the year. As well as being one of the first or possibly the very first games I ever played, this playthrough is special because it's my first time playing a game through on an emulator I've written from scratch! I've been working on a Game Boy emulator for a couple of months and it's finally at a point where everything is pretty much playable. I'll probably be going through a fair few Game Boy games on it throughout the year.

As for the game itself, it's actually pretty good? It's obviously quite bare bones as an early Game Boy game, but IMO it's a better game than Super Mario Bros (apparently this is a controversial opinion on Era). The levels and worlds have their own personality and the music was great, even though I still need to finish implementing some sound features. The sub and plane levels feel a little weird in a Mario game but I like them.

2. Death's Door - 9 hours | Steam Deck | 2-Jan → 11-Jan

Finally got around to this after meaning to play it last year. It's hard not to compare it to Tunic as another isometric action game with an animal protagonist, and while I preferred fox game to bird game this one is definitely worth playing too. This game takes less of an inspiration mechanically from the Souls games than Tunic, but it has a similar fun exploration loop of clearing areas and unlocking shortcuts and reaching checkpoints, alongside fun boss fights.

At times I found the tone of the writing a little jarring, especially alongside the Dark Souls like overall plot. I really enjoyed the character designs and world design though, some of the NPCs are very memorable. The soundtrack is also really great, listening back to it there are loads of very memorable tunes. Overall a solid would recommend.

3. Cocoon - 4½ hours | PC | 11-Jan → 13-Jan

This game fucking rocks. If you're at all interested in puzzle adventure games I strongly recommend picking it up. I've seen it compared to Portal, and honestly the comparison is justified. Your character finds these orbs that can be used to solve various puzzles, but also contain a whole other world inside them which are themselves full of puzzles. It takes that simple mechanic and builds on it until your brain explodes. I think the mark of a good puzzle game is one where you feel like a genius after completing it, and I frequently felt like a galaxy brain mastermind after getting through some of these puzzles.

The art design is fairly simple but it looks beautiful, the animation in particular really makes the worlds feel alive. And the soundtrack is a stunner. Cannot recommend this game enough. it's only 4-5 hours long but it fills every moment with great puzzles that never feel stale.

4. Bzzzt - 2 hours | Steam Deck | 13-Jan → 14-Jan

Picked this up on account of really liking the artstyle. It's got a really clean pixel art look, and nice animations to go with it. Unfortunately aside from that I didn't really enjoy this game. I don't mind difficult platformers, I really liked my time with Celete's B and C sides for instance, but this was just… not fun. It really leaned into as many hitboxes in the level, moving around as much as possible, which when a single hit sends you back to the start of the level is a real drag when something comes out of nowhere.

Maybe I would have enjoyed myself more if I'd swallowed my pride and switched to easy mode where you take 3 hits to die. In the end I finished the game but I was counting down the levels by the end and if it had been longer than the 2 hour run time I probably would have dropped it. Wouldn't really recommend this unless you're really into pixel art 2d platformers and somehow don't have any others to play.

5. Pokémon Red Version - 20 hours | Game Boy emulated on Android | 5-Jan → 29-Jan (replay)

Putting my self-made Game Boy emulator through it's paces again, by playing through Pokémon Gen 1. It's my first time through the original version of the game in a very long while (I think I played about half of it when it came out on 3DS), and I think weirdly I've come to the point where I'd rather play this version warts and all over the GBA remake. Maybe it's just nostalgia but I find the original monochrome graphics much more charming and more fitting to the tone of the game. (I dropped Leaf Green half way through last year)

This was also my first time playing a Pokémon game without using Nuzlocke rules in over a decade. I think I was getting a bit burnt out on Nuzlockes, especially the lack of choice when it comes to building a team. I made an effort to use mons I haven't ever really used before which was nice. Also glad with how my very non optimised emulator managed to run ok even on mobile Firefox. Will try to get through some other shorter GB games before maybe giving Gen 2 a go.

6. Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain - 1 Hour | PC | 30-Jan

A lovely surprise treat for fans of Celeste and 3D Mario. It plays out sort of like a single world from SM64 themed after the forgotten city level from Celeste, with collectable strawberries standing in for power stars.

I loved all the little callbacks both to Celeste (mostly the powerups and the convos with the characters dotted around the map) and to 3D Mario, like the freezeframe on Madeline when she collects a strawberry, and the camera zoom back from at the start of the cassette levels that is very reminiscent of the secret levels in Sunshine. Also I can't get over how the trees dance to the music in the cassette stages. The gameplay is a bit on the fiddly side and I'm not really convinced the dash fits in a 3d game, but for a short game made in a week it works well enough. Definitely worth playing if you've played Celeste.

Game of the Month: Definitely Cocoon.

Next up: I'm in need of a comfort game, so I've started playing Sonic Adventure 2 on Steam Deck.

 

[DestinyArrives]

Main Post

January Update - I'm actually impressed I'm keeping up with so far!

1. Super Mario RPG (Switch) | 8th Jan - 13hrs | 8/10

This was actually my first time playing this game! Incredibly charming, lots of fun, and had my attention from start to finish. There were actually a few boss fights that gave me more of a challenge than what I was expecting. As someone who loves the Paper Mario series, I highly recommend you give this a shot!

2. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (PC (Steam) / ROG Ally) | 20th Jan - 16 hrs | 10/10

In my opinion, this game is one of the best video games of all time. The story is absolutely phenomenal from start to finish - choked up at the end with how impactful it was. There's a lot of fun to be had and I will happily play this game again in a few years prior to Spider-Man 3. If you haven't played this and like Spider-Man at all, please give this a shot! One of my favorite Spider-Man stories - I prefer this over the most recent movies (minus Into the Spider-verse, that's perfect in my eyes). This game is also perfect to play on a handheld - I was in shock how amazing it felt and looked on the ROG Ally. Probably one of the greatest handheld experiences I ever had!

3. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (Playstation 5) | 22nd Jan - 7 hrs | 9/10

Same feelings as the prior game - just felt the story didn't hit the same highs as the first one. Absolutely loved this and felt the length was perfect as an in-between title.

4. Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (Playstation 5) | 27th Jan - 15 hrs | 9/10

I absolutely loved the villains and story in this game. Same feelings as the prior two - although this game I had ran into numerous glitches. Some of them were so bad that I needed to restart a checkpoint a few times - so I had to knock a point away from it. Perfect game to cap a trilogy (for now - definitely more to come).

 

[arvan59]

I played a couple of games on the shorter side before starting Control. Main Post

8. Go Mecha Ball (PC) - 1/26

I was really impressed by the demo during Steam Next Fest and was eager to give the full game a try. It's still a very vibrant, fluid game, but I couldn't shake the feeling while playing that I had already gotten my fill of the game during the demo. A full run is about 30 minutes, which isn't that out of the ordinary for a Rougelite, but I was able to complete a run on my fourth try. In fairness, you get access pretty quickly to new characters with different stats, and the higher difficulties seem to add enemies you need to combat more actively. I genuinely did enjoy time with the game, but didn't fully connect with it this time around.

9. Frog Detective 3: Corruption at Cowboy County (PC) - 1/28

I think this is my favorite of the three. The writing is sharp, the new cast of characters are great, Frog Detective has access to a scooter, and there's a character switch two thirds into the game. I don't know what Worm Club/Grace Bruxner are up to next, but I'll be looking forward to it all the same

I'm currently playing through Control now, and will probably go for Mario Wonder and/or my Steam Backlog next.

 

[pete_clarf]

MAIN POST

4) The Last of Us Part I (2/1/2024) - 10/10
Played on PS5

I finally finished this game... and loved every second of it! I played it on PS3 when it came out and maybe it wasn't the right time or something, but I didn't get very far. I tried again on PS4 and probably got about 60-70% through, but just stopped. I really want to play Part II before the show comes back, so figured I'd best get through this while I can. Definitely going to do Left Behind soon and also go for the Platinum trophy (which shouldn't be hard... I missed one stupid comic). Anyway, so glad I finally finished this masterpiece!

 

[djinn]

5. Minute of Islands
Well this was disturbing and depressing. Not at all the light affair I expected it to be. Adventure Time art combined with the inevitability of failure trying to complete an impossible task made this a real downer game. Beautifully crafted art, design, writing and voice acting; there's a lot of attention to detail put in this.

Gameplay is not great. It's a puzzle platformer with very finicky and inaccurate controls. And everything in this game is so slow. Extensive loading times, sometimes we'll get a scene of nothing but the boat travelling for about ten seconds and then go into yet another loading screen. The hallucinations often feel like busy work, yet more padding to slow you down. I'm not sure why the developers did this, unless it's to make you feel as frustrated as the character you're playing.

Mo is an interesting character. Relateable but not necessarily likeable. Her mood becomes increasingly foul as the game continues, as seen by the descriptive text becoming more and more self-abusive and the voiced narration becoming more and more vicious and paranoid. This atmosphere only grows and there's no real let up. There are no happy endings here but I suppose there's peace eventually.

This is a difficult recommend. It's well made and a pretty unflinching portrayal of depression and self-sabotage. It did get to me occasionally, but being only about 5 hours helps.

 

[Ganepark32]

My update for January. Haven't had a chance to sit down and put it together till now so I apologise for the wall of text. Just over a quarter of the way to 52.

3. Journey (PC/Steam Deck) - January 3rd - 9/10
This is one of those games that no matter how many times I go back to it, I still end up loving it. Sure, that feeling you got when you played it for the first time can never be recaptured but managing to pair up with someone and chirping, gliding and flying your way to the top of the mountain only for them to disconnect or disappear still manages to come close to eliciting that feeling. It's a game that doesn't feel likes its aged a day, continuing to look and sound beautiful and the simplicity of it all is something I appreciate more and more as I get older, especially with how big some games are these days. Such a joy to play.

4. Firewatch (PC/Steam Deck) - January 5th - 9/10
Much like Journey, this is another that I've come back to a couple of times over the years and its still a fantastically well put together title. That ending especially hits hard after you've had all those conversations with D throughout the game and not getting to meet her really puts the knife in on what is generally speaking a tragic tale of escapism and never truly managing to escape from the ghosts that haunt us; that inevitably, we have to come back and confront what we don't want to. Again, another simplistic title but one that carries a heavy narrative beautifully and remains a highlight within the walking simulator sub genre for me.

5. Little Inferno (Android) - January 5th - 8/10
Pretty much the perfect podcast game if ever I could point to one. A game about burning your bought possessions to earn more money to then buy more items to burn them. It's a simple gameplay loop with plenty of subtext about the flippancy of consumerism and a literal case of burnout and the need to step away when something takes you over.

6. Lumbearjack (XSS) - January 8th - 7/10
A simple puzzle game about a lumberjack bear looking to reclaim the environment from a corporation that is polluting the natural habitat. It's short and sweet, changing up enough throughout the run time to keep you engaged.

7. Half Life (PC/Steam Deck) - January 9th - 8/10
My first time sitting down to play Half Life properly and not the 10-15 minutes I played of the cancelled Dreamcast port back in the day. And I ended up enjoying it even though there are elements that are very much dated and frustrating (I mean what was that last sboss fight about). The updated controls for Steam Deck work really well, though I'll admit the aim assist is very much appreciated in moments of chaos. I do wish I was able to adjust the volume for characters speaking or at least put subtitles on because I could barely hear what was being said and as such, much of the nuances of the narrative we largely lost on me during play. It was cool to finally get to play the full game but I could have done without the helicopter and tank sections and some of the areas as you go through Xen towards the end really dragged for me. Half Life 2 is a very different beast and while I can appreciate its beginnings here, I very much prefer the sequel.

8. Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Emerald (PC/Steam Deck) - January 10th - 7/10
Another short free experience I had sitting in my Steam library that I hadn't played. Given that it was by Crows Crows Crows, I thought I'd remedy that and I enjoyed the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Simon Amstel as the voice guiding you through the experience, great performance from him there. Easily could have expanded this, similar to what they've subsequently done with The Stanley Parable and in some ways, I think the meta nature of that title can get a bit much in places (don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic game) and I liked the general straight forwardness of this one.

9. How Fish Is Made (PC/Steam Deck) - January 12th - 5/10
This was... um, yeah. It was what it was which was a weird but thankfully short experience otherwise advertising a bigger game that's to come down the line from the developer. It was competently put together but I didn't take much from it and haven't really though much of it since other than what the hell did I play.

10. Mass Effect 1 (PC/Steam Deck) - January 17th - 9/10
One of my all time favourite franchises. When the Winter sale had the Legendary Edition down to a fiver, I grabbed that as I thought it would be perfect for playing on the Steam Deck and I was right. Issues with the EA app aside, it's always a fantastic experience to play this game because of the shear amount of universe building that's done, howw fleshed out the codex entries are on the life you find. Sure, the gameplay is still dated compared to the later entries but there's something rustic about it that makes it endearing and enjoyable which when matched to the writing and that universe, makes for a truly special game that subsequent entries haven't quite managed to hit. A younger me used to say that ME2 was my favourite entry in the franchise yet as I get older and replay the games, this is the one where everything felt like it came together best of all and is a truly incredible experience.

11. The Last Campfire (XSS) - January 20th - 7/10
A short but sweet experience from Hello Games that they put out in between updates for No Man's Sky a few years back. It's straight forward but enjoyable, short but engaging. I'd love for them to continue to do more of these smaller experiences but given their continued development on No Man's Sky and their recently announced next title, it seems like bigger is better for them. Perhaps they'll revisit this style of game down the line where things clicked together nicely to create a nice apperitif experience.

12. Loddlenaut (PC/Steam Deck) - January 22nd - 7/10
Another short 4 hour experience and a game I'd had on my wishlist for a while. It got lost in the shuffle for me but I picked it up in a recent sale and enjoyed the general experience of cleaning the underwater environment for the loddle creatures. It's ppretty basic stuff of zapping, sucking and cleaning away gunk and picking up rubbish to cleanse areas before moving on to the next one, all while you can befriend little creatures that you can name, feed, hug and play with. A lovely little experience to play in that lull period in January but perhaps a tad longer than it needed to be as I did find the gameplay to be a bit one note and thus dragging things down a bit the longer the game went one.

13. Lil' Guardsman (PC/Steam Deck) - January 29th - 8/10
First new 2024 release that I've finished and it was a good one. Well presented with a strong visual style and some truly great voice work for all the characters involved (even otherwise small roles are voiced so well). I enjoyed the general gameplay of deducting the reasons for people wanting to enter the city and whether they were telling the truth of lying. I did find initially the limitations on item use difficult to navigate, especially with how nebulous it was at times to get the full 4 stars for correctly admitting, denying or jailing people. The later addition of drafting people to the war was something I didn't enjoy as the main crux of the gameplay as the nebulous nature of the writing made it difficult to determine the positive and negative effects of sending people to the front such that when I thought I'd made good choices, I'd lose battles and vice versa. Still, it was a well done game that hopefully won't be lost in the shuffle as we go through the year for releases.

14. Super Kiwi 64 + DLC (Switch) - January 31st - 6/10
Played this originally when it dropped in 2022 but with the new DLC update, I thought I'd give it another run through before tackling the DLC. And while it's a solid enough experience, I found the initial set of levels to be simplistic and not really captivating. The free DLC brings 3 additional levels to the table that are similar in scope to the original levels but provide much more in the way of interactivity, with more tasks to undertake to be able to complete them fully, an aspect required to unlock the third and final additional level. Added cutscenes and voice work is a nice touch but I don't feel like it added a huge amount to my enjoyment of the experience.

And my first entry for February:

15. Cyberpunk 2077 (PS5) - February 1st - 9/10
Finally sat down to tackle this at the start of the year and finally put a bow on my first playthrough yesterday. I'd initially picked it up close to the launch of the native PS5 version but I fell off part way through. SO starting a new save as a nomad, I went through and got The Star ending, choosing to go off into the sunset with Panam by my side. The game really clicked with me this time around and I felt far more invested not just in the cast of characters around me but also in the world and my version of V. I played it over the course of a month but it feels like that time flew by and I know there's still so much left to uncover but I think that speaks positively to the depth of the world and the content on offer here. Well written characters, an engaging world, great subplots (the overarching narrative didn't land for me as well) and great gameplay made this a captivating experience. I can see why, on release, people who played the PC version spoke highly of the game here. If it hadn't been marred by so many technical issues, as well as social issues, then this could've been an all time great game. What's here now is utterly fantastic and I can't wait to step back into Night City as my V or as a new one and see how things pan out differently from different choices.

Main Post

Currently playing: Anomaly Agent (XSS), Go Mecha Ball (XSS), Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (XSS), The Crew Motorfest (XSS), Mass Effect 2 (PC/Steam Deck), Sovereign Syndicate (PC/Steam Deck)

 

[Zerpette]

January Recap (6/52)
Link to main post

A Memoir Blue (2022 | PS5 | 2h | 7/10)
When the Past Was Around (2022 | PS4 | 2h | 7/10)
Hoa (2021 | PS5 | 2h | 7/10)

I kicked off the year with this trio of snack-sized games. All three were short enjoyable experiences taking about 2 hours each. A Memoir Blue and When the Past Was Around are both point-and-click games focusing on a bittersweet sentimental narrative, though the former is mostly just an interactive experience while the latter has more of a puzzle gameplay element. Hoa is a simplistic puzzle platformer with a lovely Ghibli-esque art style. Though ultimately rather slight, they are all solid entries of the broader "cozy afternoon" indie game type.

Detroit: Become Human (2018 | PS4 | 26h | 8/10)

Based on some of the negative reactions out there, I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. As a fan of Telltale-style games, I appreciate how there are consequences to your choices and QTE failures which actually branch the story in meaningful ways. It adds a level of tension to the dialog choices and QTE sequences that aren't really there in the classic Telltale games once you pierce the illusion. Playing on the PS5, the graphics are still quite excellent though the 30fps frame rate is disappointing, especially since it's still occasionally unstable.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [Legacy of Thieves Collection] (2022 | PS5 | 40h | 10/10)
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy [Legacy of Thieves Collection] (2022 | PS5 | 23h | 10/10)

After doing an initial playthrough of both of these games focused on enjoying the story and not worrying about trophies or collectibles, I actually would've rated both of these a bit lower - perhaps an 8 or 9 rather than a 10/10. In pursuing the platinum for the collection, however, my appreciation for them only deepened the more time I spent with them.

Beyond the initial playthrough, I fully went through both games a second time at the highest Crushing difficulty while picking up all the collectibles. Then a third time for A Thief's End speedrun trophy. Then a replay of half of Lost Legacy for a no gunfire trophy. Then repeating numerous chapters and encounters for this trophy or that one, etc. etc. Even after unlocking the platinum trophy after over 60 hours of play, I'm still not burned out on the game.

It's worth noting as well that this collection is absolutely stunning on the PS5 with an HDR display for those who haven't revisited these since the PS4 days. I played using the 2160p 40Hz+ VRR mode and personally I would be ecstatic if more current generation AAA games aspired to this combination of image quality and performance.

 

[chum]

5. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5): February 2. 52 hours. Rating: 10/10
This game made me feel like a giddy school child again. It grabbed me so hard for the first ~10 or so chapters, I didn't sleep much last weekend when it came out. The characters, substories, and side content are excellent as always (seriously, who consistently writes more likeable and unique characters than RGG?), but the battle system in particular felt greatly improved with the addition of positional attacks and duo/chain attacks. I completed Dondoko island the first time the game took me there (8 hours straight) and they took their ridiculous meter to another level with Sujimon (which is the true Pokemon clone of 2024); the extent to which they reference Pokemon and parody it while making all the Sujimon and their trainers look ridiculous made it the most charming side activity they've ever made, which is quite an accomplishment. This is also the first time I felt an RGG game was out-of-this-world beautiful too and they nailed the aesthetic they were going for both visually and aurally in Hawaii. The main story was engaging the first 3/4 of the game, but trailed off for me toward the end as I really didn't care for the main motivations of the villains nor did I find them very compelling. The references to prior games/characters were powerful and hugely satisfying for fans who've played all the mainline games. Biggest complaint I have is the boring dungeons which are just hallways filled with enemies again; I would love them to do something interesting with them, maybe some more interactable or puzzle elements.

(As an aside, I played the Japanese dub and was very distracted by the ridiculous English voice direction of this version. I get why RGG studios always has ridiculous, over-enunciated, unnatural English in their Japanese dubs (to make it easier for Japanese players to understand), but I thought that now of all times they would try to make the English more natural since this is the first game taking place in the English-speaking world. I also wish they came up with some device (literary or literal) explaining why all these non-Japanese people speak fluent Japanese, like Kasuga getting an app on his phone with an earpiece that automatically translates for him or something. Bryce in particular was especially jarring since he's a white guy that speaks fluent Japanese and they just used his Japanese voice actor to read his English lines, which sounded ridiculous coming out of his mouth. The writers could've done some really cool things playing on the language barrier too. I also would've loved to hear Kuroda speak full English sentences lol. This really didn't have a big effect on my enjoyment of the game, though, just something that came up often.)

This game will be very tough to beat for my GOTY this year. In 2020, Yakuza 7 barely edged out FFVII Remake for me, and I think it will be a similar race this year.



Next: Finishing Crisis Core: FFVII Reunion

Total: 5/52

Original Post

 

[Sillen2000]

Main Post

January update: 4/52

New year, old me. Feels like I have about a million JRPGs that I want to play this year, so we'll see if I reach 52, but a pretty good start to the year at least!

1. January 6th | Super Mario Bros. Wonder | Nintendo Switch | 18h | ☆☆☆☆(/5)
Bought and started playing this game on release, but played the entire game in multiplayer and my partner was very busy those last months of the year, so took a while for us to finally beat it (and 100% it!) Had a lot of fun playing the entire game with someone, but it's honestly not a very good multiplayer game since the camera is always strictly tied to one player at a time which means the second player always have to keep pace with them in order to not go offscreen and get bubbled. It's never unplayable or anything like that, but a bit strange how much better the multiplayer was handled in the NSMB games.

As for the rest of the game, I thought it was pretty great! I'm not the biggest fan of 2D Mario outside of Bros. 3 (World is very good, but I find it pretty unspectacular as a whole), so probably the second best in that sub-series? Doesn't really matter I suppose, but what does matter is how fresh Wonder feels to play. It's very much a mix of Yoshi's Island and classic Mario, with more focus on exploration and finding secrets rather than platforming challenges, but unlike Yoshi, it doesn't feel completely inconsequential to just go through stages without collecting everything since the wonder flower gimmicks kept throwing surprising and almost always amusing new gimmicks at me on almost every stage, and it's also not a pain to try and find all the purple coins and hidden wonder seeds in a stage. It's also impeccably paced for a game where the player is expected to replay stages to find every secret, having them be pretty short (though never too short, I thought) and letting you skip the wonder effects in order to get through them even faster.

Also really loved the overhauled visuals and sound effects. The Poplin Kingdom is so vibrant and beautiful to experience, and the varied landscapes never stop being impressive, especially with this being a Switch game that runs at a pretty rock solid 60fps the entire game. The characters are all so expressive through their animations; you can really tell how much love and care has been put into making all of them feel distinct and fun to play as, despite them all playing exactly the same (we played as the two Toads for most of the game, by the way. Never even touched Mario.) Also really bold move to get rid of the iconic jump sound in favor of... A guitar chord? Not really sure about the instrument, but I really like the sound of it either way! The really high amount of unique enemies also have weirdly distinct sound effects to each and every one of them, really giving them some more identity than just their (admittedly often really good) designs. Mario Wonder is not a perfect game, but it is an audiovisual treat the entire way through.

But why isn't it perfect? Well, it's definitely a bit too easy for one. Like, I was never bored by the game, but it was very noticeable during the special stages – that are really just at a pretty medium difficulty outside of the final, final special stage – how much more engaged I felt when the game started actually demanding some sort of platforming skills of me. I don't think the developers were that interested in making a challenging platformer, being more interested in a relaxing game focusing on discovery, but I guess I would have liked just a bit more friction from the main game at times since some stages could feel a bit too much like I was just playing Wonder on auto pilot. This game sold extremely well so I expect a sequel will probably come at some point, and hopefully it'll take the Galaxy 2 route of retaining the core gameplay, but just adding a tiny bit of challenge to the overall experience.

The boss fights also aren't that good. For a game full of so much creativity, it's a bit disappointing to just do variations of the same boring fight against Bowser, Jr., and then a pretty anticlimactic final boss fight against Bowser (who I'm not really sure why he wanted to turn into a sentient castle.) No 2D Mario has especially good boss fights (and honestly, most 3D Mario boss fights aren't that great either), but even when they're not very good, they can at least be killed so much quicker than these ones that just drag for no reason whatsoever, and are extremely easy like the rest of the game.

But overall, Mario Wonder is a super fun game (and the tenth best of 2023, some would say) that shows how a new 2D Mario has a place in the present day, and how something new and interesting can be made with its previously pretty strictly followed formula. Looks great, sounds great, and leads to a lot of laughter when played with someone else, despite the jank of the multiplayer. Certainly wouldn't say no to getting another game in this vein, or the elephant power-up being in every Mario game from now on!

Soundtrack highlight:
Airship Theme

2. January 15th | Octopath Traveler II | Playstation 5 | 78h | ☆☆☆☆
Another game I bought on release last year, but unlike Mario Wonder, I didn't actually start playing it until December. So it took me a long time to get to Octopath Traveler II, but when I did, I was completely hooked on it for weeks because goddamn was this a good time! I haven't played the original OT so couldn't tell you if this is some giant leap in quality over the first (though most seem to think that it is), but I can tell you that this feels very standalone, and is the best new turn-based JRPG I've played since... Persona 5 Royal, maybe? So a few years, at least.

I guess the main draw of these games are the eight separate stories that you play through, that all take place within one world and all basically at the same time. It is a bit weird to play through the game and the characters not really acknowledning each other whatsoever despite appearing in the party during each other's stories (the old FF6 problem of maybe being a bit too ambitious and open to the player), but after accepting that's just how it is, I definitely appreciated these bite-sized RPG stories each character took part in. I wouldn't say any of them are fantastic and all of them suffer from being a bit wordy, cutscenes tending to be slower than they probably should be, and having at least one very stupid plot point (except for maybe Throné, now that I think about it). But they're mostly a good time since each of the eight main characters are really compelling in their own right, and their stories are all really good at setting things up that I as a player look forward to see the conclusion of, or mysteries that I want to see solved. The end-game where all eight characters do intersect sadly feels a bit rushed, though, and feels like it pulls out a bunch of twists more for the sake of having twists than them being properly set up at all, but at least the game ends on a high note. The english voice cast is also really good, so even the lesser material they work with is delivered with a lot of conviction, and the HD2D ensures that even the most static of conversations manage to look very, very good.

So while enjoyable, the game but stumbles a bit in the story department. However, not only does Octopath Traveler II have the best soundtrack of last year, it is also an extraordinarily well designed game to actually play (which is why some might say it was the sixth best game of 2023.) It is sort of difficult to explain why a turn-based battle system is good without showing it off, but something I really appreciate about OTII is how flexible it is. Like, every single character and subclass feels viable, and each of the eight have a couple of really good unique skills that make them useful in most situations. Of course, that's partly because the game is certainly not the hardest JRPG out there, but I do also want to commend the developers for how they've seemingly taken almost every party constellation into account and making sure that the ones you enjoy playing with are also going to work in basically every scenario, and that those left on the bench will feel useful and actually pretty fun those few times the game wants you to use those as well.

The battles themselves are also really quick and snappy (doesn't hurt that you can turn on double speed in combat, which every game like this really should have), the animations are great and attack pack some punch. It's also just plain fun to use up all battle points (you get one per turn and can use up to four to charge up abilities) and destroy enemies with attacks that, while previously looking pretty cool, now has the cinematography of an attack that would kill a god at the end of a game like this. Enemies look good, boss look great, and it's somehow here we get the only party interactions for most of the game, with party members actually cheering each other on (by name! Partitio's "You're a star, Agnea" gave me quite the shock when I first heard it)

The exploration is really good as well. OTII is basically an open world JRPG so you can go anywhere at any time (though different areas have different level recommendations, so maybe don't go into a lv 40 area after beating a character's first chapter), and the developers were really smart to make it large enough that it does feel like an adventure to traverse the entire world and see all the different biomes with their own, very distinct looks and atmospheres, but it's also small enough that travelling never feels like a slog, and basically every screen has something new to discover, whether that be an optional dungeon or a side quest. Just like the combat, movement on the overworld just feels so snappy and fast in a way a lot of other JRPGs just aren't. Encounter rates can feel a bit high at times, admittedly, but no dungeon or non-town screen is large enough that it ever becomes a big issue. So nice to have a lot of different towns, by the way. From large industrial cities, to small forest villages, there's a lot of variety here, but they all feel lived in, and are full of weirdly interesting NPCs (seriously, use any type of interrogation skill on townspeople and you'll get to read some of the most interesting character bios that have ever been put into a game, and there is one written for almost every single NPC in the game!)

Also, uh, that super boss is really good, right? It's extremely difficult, especially when compared with basically every other fight in the game, but I cannot remember last time I felt so good about something in a video game as when I finally managed to beat it (I'm lying of course. It felt just as good when I finally got the S+ on professional in RE4R after wasting my final save before the Krauser fight.) The flexible combat system really shone brightly here, and the track that plays during the fight is just too good.

Soundtrack highlight:
Cropdale, Village at Peace (Night)

3. January 22nd | Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers | PC | 10h | ☆☆½
So I used Backloggery's randomizer function to give myself 12 games of mine to try out this year (all 12 can be found in my main post if anyone's curious), and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers was one of them. I bought this during last year's Steam summer sale so it's not like I've owned it for a long time, but I would probably have taken me much longer to get to it if it hadn't been for this very gimmicky thing, and... Honestly, that would have been fine. Gabriel Knight is, after all, not a very good game in my humble opinion.

And it's frustrating because there are parts of the game that I really like! The story's super interesting (outside of the very forced romance between Gabriel and Malia Gedde), the mystery is fun to watch unravel, it legitimately taught me a lot about voodoo, and the giant dialogue trees are so extremely well written and voice acted (well, Tim Curry in the titular role is honestly pretty bad and couldn't do a New Orleans accent to save his life, but everyone else is great! Especially Michael Dorn as Doctor John!) that I'd have probably been content with if the game was just dialogue and didn't have any its adventure game aspects. It's also presented in such a nice way, with beautiful 1993 adventure game graphics that still look great today (and with some shockingly good lighting!), and a fantastic, atmospheric soundtrack where there isn't a single song that feels out of place or fails to enhance the mood of any given situation.

It's just too bad that actually playing Gabriel Knight just wasn't a particularly positive experience for me. These old adventure games did have a habit of being sort of nonsensical and you'd really have to know the language of the genre to get on their wavelength, and even then they're still very clearly made for a market where not as many games were coming out constantly and there weren't really resources to make particularly long games while still maintaining these production values, so they're fairly short, but extremely obtuse so that they'd last a long time. This is definitely the case with Gabriel Knight as well, sadly.

First of all, the game is set over ten days and there are things you can do as early as the first day, but that are actually supposed to be done later, so there's no feedback whatsoever when solving one of those puzzles, and they're also just noise that makes it confusing which puzzles you should be doing to end the day, and the game is so bad at giving directions at what Gabriel's supposed to do that even finding those correct puzzles can sometimes be even harder than the puzzles themselves (though a lot of the puzzles are complete BS. Strangely enough most of the worst ones are in the first half of the game, though.)

This also isn't helped by the very egregious pixel hunting the game forces the player to do, which is made a lot worse since there is no text to tell you what you're highlighting. You just have to use the "look" action on basically everything and hope that Gabriel has some interesting reaction to it, because it's almost impossible sometimes to even see a relevant thing since it just completely blends in with the rest of the background. Sometimes the puzzles also don't really don't give any clear feedback when completing them, but are still mandatory to do that day despite not showing their relevance until several days later, so there's really no consistency there.

Overall I feel like I'd have wanted more subtle hints from the game regarding what it wanted me to do, because while the puzzles would still be really hard most of the time, not even knowing where to go and what I should be aiming to do when I'm even at the right spot gets really frustrating after a while. Of course, there are guides these days and I definitely used one for this game (not for the entire thing, but probably for at least one or two puzzles every other day), which I'd usually say lessens the experience a bit since figuring out these puzzles are a big part of the genre's charm, but when I don't even know where to start it's pretty hard to make any sort of progress. That sekey madoule puzzle in particular would probably have just been the end point for me if I'd played the game 30 years ago (and that's if I'd even get past the part where Gabriel has to guide a mime to a cop in order to listen to a police radio.)

So no, I did not have a great time with Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. I do, though, still want to play the sequel since it seems to be one of very few FMV games that a lot of people seem to really like, and as much as I disliked the gameplay here, I really wouldn't mind more of Jane Jensen's writing. Hopefully she can write a better romance in that game, though, or maybe just not have one at all. I do, however, hope that he still asks everyone what they know about Voodoo and New Orleans (despite him being born and raised there.)

Soundtrack highlight:
St. George's Books

4. January 25th | Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace | Playstation 5 | 9h | ☆☆½
Technically the first 2024 release I've played, but obviously in actuality a game from 1999. I played the PC version of this game at a friend's house back when it was still fairly new, and thought it was extremely cool how the Jedi could use guns and how open to the player the game seemed. Only did play it once, though, and I think it was the first Naboo stage, so I really only got a glimpse of what Phantom Menace had to offer and it's been one of those weird sort of nostalgic games I've occasionally remembered over the years, but never actually gone back to play or really had much interest in.

Having now done so, though, I can say that just like the movie it's based on, this is not a particularly good game. But unlike the movie this actually does a few ambitious things that I find very charming and interesting, even though they're rarely executed in a particularly decent way. First of all, it really is as open as I remembered it, but often for no reason whatsoever since there's usually no reward for going off the correct path, and some stages have side quests that give you no reward at all. I think both of these things are just symptoms of a very rushed development cycle where some things were added without being fully completed. However, it also makes the game world feel a lot more real and like the galaxy far, far away doesn't just exist for the player to find something cool wherever they go (it's actually pretty stupid to not rush towards where you're supposed to go when you're in a hurry and there're enemies everywhere!), or that a Jedi should need a gameplay beneficiary reason to help someone in need.

The game's also just plain weird. There're small dialogue trees for most conversations you can have, and you're really allowed to act like the biggest Jedi asshole that ever lived. You can even kill most NPCs in the game without much repercussion, even being able to beat the gungan stage by killing every gungan rather than talk your way through on the way to release Jar-Jar Binks from prison. From absolutely nowhere, the middle of the game also almost completely abandons its action gameplay and turns into a fairly simplistic adventure game where Qui-Gon Jinn has to trade with people in Mos Espa to get the right parts for Anakin's Podracer, and later has to trick a man to lead him to Watto by buying him enough drinks (and after having taken money from Jabba the Hutt for fighting some weird monster of his). Maybe strangest of all, though, is how one stage lets you play as Captain Panaka, who I'd be surprised if most people would remember even appeared in the Phantom Menace movie, but is given a weirdly large part in this game.

So Phantom Menace is kind of a whirlwind of a game that would probably not get made today since it is a strange as it is, but that's not all it is, because it's also quite bad. I would genuinely recommend everyone with an interest in the game to play it because it really is a memorable experience with a lot of ambitious ideas and weird combinations of genres, but I would warn them that it controls like absolute garbage (too stiff with the d-pad, too sensitive with the stick), guns are almost impossible to aim with, enemies do an insane amount of damage very quickly, the isometric camera is way too zoomed in on the player, and the platforming is a nightmare whenever it rears its ugly head. There's also quite a bit of slowdown as soon as there are more than, like, two enemies on screen, and loading saves (which is a frequent occurrence since death comes often in this game) certainly takes a PS1 amount of time.

The escort missions are kind of a nightmare since the AI you're escorting is dumb as bricks and just walks into enemies' lines of fire, get stuck on geometry which sometimes forces you to restart the entire stage, and I even had Padme fall through the floor and despawn once which gave me a game over. Playing this game can be real pain at times, is what I'm saying, and it's really only my love of its many idiosyncrasies that makes it fairly enjoyable to me. It is also a bit charming to go through the movie's locations in these charmingly primitive 32-bit graphics, and John William's soundtrack is still some of the best scores he's composed (though it's bizarre how Duel of Fates appears in the game, but not when you're fighting Darth Maul at the end).

So yeah, somehow my 2024 GOTY at the moment. Hope that changes soon.

Soundtrack highlight:
Duel of Fates (this music video can be accessed from the game's main menu, by the way)

Currently playing
Pokémon White (NDS)
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (NSW)
Metroid Fusion (NSO)
Persona 3 Reload (PS5)
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (PC)

 

[datamite]

Tried doing this last year but didn't end up keeping it going. Gonna give it another go. Some of the dates over January are a little rough.

01 | The Talos Principle + Road to Gehana | ★★★★☆ | Early January

Played the base game years ago. Never played the Road to Gehana DLC. Replayed it cause I was really interested in the sequel which had just come out. I'm a huge puzzle game fan. This is overall a great game for that. The philosophy stuff is nice, but can feel vert tangential to the game. It's a lot of text and audio logs and that's about it. The puzzles themselves are good. I think some of them could be simplified, as in some of them have extra steps that are just busywork around the core insight the puzzle is trying to get across. Also the some of the bonus stars are a little to esoteric. Some of them require a lot of searching around for the last nook where something is hidden, or find the one spot you can jump on. I wouldn't mind if they were purely optional, but they are required for the True Ending. The DLC is I think an improvement of the plot side, making some of the philosophical ideas attached to real characters that have an actual stake in the world, something they expand on a lot in the sequel.

02 | Momodora: Moonlit Farewell | ★★★★☆ | Mid January

The fifth Momodora game, I played the 4th back when it came out but haven't touched the rest. This one seems like a huge step up in scope for the series. They're neat little metroidvanias, clearly heavily inspired by Cave Story. This one was around 8 hours to 100%. I was surprised by how short the previous one was (only about 3 hours to finish), and I was surprised by how long this one was. Lots of neat ideas and very lush art and animation, but nothing particularly new or groundbreaking here.

03 | Starcraft 2 | ★★★★★ | Mid January

Finished a semi-annual replay of the 3 main campaigns. For my money easily the best RTS ever made. Just the core actions of moving and controlling units is so, so smooth. Any time I try playing a different game, its just so clunky in comparison. Campaign rankings for me are HotS > WoL > LotV. I play the multiplayer regularly still. I play on Brutal difficulty, and its a fun static yardstick to compare against for my skill as it gets easier and easier every time I play.

04 | Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown | ★★★★☆ | Late January

Came into this one directly after Momodora, so the Metroidvania fatigue was getting to me at the start, but once I pushed past that, this is a lovely game. Its interesting to see that metroidvania has pushed out of the indie sphere and solidly into AAA territory. It does a lot on the art and animation side that bely its large budget. Lots of bespoke animations and cutscenes, that are gorgeously done. The exagerated features, and anime inspired stylings work really well. Similar to Momodora though, it just does't really do much thats new, which I guess comes with the territory for AAA. It also is bogged down a bit by the story being kinda meh, and having quite a few bugs. It has this big montage at the end where it flashes all the faces of the characters from the game in front of you, and at least for me it really fell flat because I just absolutely didn't care about any of these people.

05 | The Talos Principle II | ★★★★★ | Feb 3rd

Absolutely fantastic game. Improves on the original in every possible way. The core puzzles are of similar quality to the first. Lots of new interesting mechanics are introduced. I still think some of them could have been paired down a bit though. The stars are a big improvement, being a bit less esoteric. The story is, I think, the biggest improvement by far. Its able to give the philosophy so much more weight by (similar to gehana) tying it's viewpoints to characters that all have real stakes in the world, and (unlike Prince of Persia) I really, really cared about a lot of these characters. They have so much life to them, and are really brought alive by the fantastic voice work. I do think it does veer just the tiniest bit into getting a bit too sacharine near the end, and least with the ending I got.

 

[KtotheRoc]

5: Persona 5 Tactica. End: 2/1/2024.

Persona spin-offs don't tend to break new ground with their stories. They tend to focus on people who want to spend more time with the characters. It's the game play that feels different. A Tactical RPG (hence the name) is a bit different from the usual Persona formula. It's not too complex a tactical game, which might be a little to its detriment. It's a fairly standard tactical RPG with a Persona skin on top of it.

 

[Whimsicalish]

11 | A Way Out
PS4 | Feb 01 | 6 h | 3/5

I don't think the team was going for a goofy vibe, but that's what we got here. There are some pretty silly scenes; one in particular meeting up with a man for information. Hilarious. I will be referencing this in the future with Lobotomaxx for laughs.

It was overall fun and entertaining to play. It nice to see how much they grew with It Takes Two.

12 | I Am Setsuna
PS4 | Feb 03 | 33 h | 3/5

The game was mostly enjoyable up until the final boss. Most of the characters are alright to play; easy to find your favorites. It's fun to discover combos and gain skills through items rather than leveling. Incredibly strange to unlock one of the team members literally right before the final encounter. I only used them when necessary because at that point I already had a favorite setup.

The bosses are frustrating with cheap trips and one-shot moves so be prepared. Thankfully there are saves before those battles. I do wish there was a skip option to save myself time mashing X to quickly skip dialogue. It would also be nice to swap party members during battle. I know they're standing right there watching you; there's no story or in game reason why they cannot hop in.

The real drag was the usual RPG grindy mess in the late game before the final showdown. Powering up levels, collecting gear, and triggering fluxes will consume hours of your time. Jumping into a fight, battle, collect rewards then rinse and repeat. Over and over and over. It is not relaxing to me. I hate grinding for something like leveling. It's boring and leaves a bad experience. Overall I do think the majority was fun but I am ready to move on. It overstayed its welcome.

13 | Hidden Through Time
PC | Feb 03 | 8 h | 3.5/5

I enjoyed playing through this one and no eye strain compared to Hidden Folks. It doesn't have the same charm from HF but it was still fun to explore.

It does seem short. My playthrough of the base game was near 4 hours. The doubled time was playing online maps. I do appreciate that I did not need the DLCs to see the newer content in the online maps but you're at the mercy of a player designing those maps. There are some creative maps; however, others were complete duds.

I would rather have well designed maps from the developers than drag my playtime sorting through online maps.

Main Post

 

[64bitmodels]

I haven't posted here in a while, so here's a post summing up the 5 other games I beat in January.

2. Mega Turrican (Sega Genesis) 7.5/10.
Amazing art, music, and visuals for the Genesis. Every scene in the game is jam packed with tons of detail and at times it feels like i'm watching a demoscene production with all the gritty, futurisitic visuals. The difficulty is ridiculous though, & I had to use savestates a ton. Plus, the gameplay started feeling a bit exhausting towards the end, though it's a very short game so that's not much of a problem.

3. Sonic Generations (PC) 8/10.
This was one of the first video games I ever played and it holds quite a special place in my heart, as a sonic fan and a gamer in general. 10 years after the fact and it's still quite a lot of fun blasting through the Modern stages. I feel like classic could have used some work since their physics are nowhere near the older games, but they're still fun as a more slowed down regular 2D take on classic sonic. The boss fights drag this one down though, as they're just kind of a drag. Not enough to kill the fun I had with the game though.

4. Mega Man 2 (Sega Genesis) 7.5/10.
I've never really understood the hype for Mega Man 2, and having beaten it now even with the enhanced Wily Wars version on Sega.... It's a good game, and the experience I had with it was very enjoyable... But I still feel like later installments would do the formula much better. The level design is OK, bosses are fun, music is great and weapons are extremely overpowered. But everything from Megaman 4 onwards is such an evolution that it's hard to call this the standout Megaman game that everyone treats it as.

5. Jak and Daxter (PC via OpenGOAL) 9/10.
First off props to the openGOAL team, I love their work and appreciate that there's decompilation efforts centered around freeing PS2 games from their 2000 console prison. The port is well made, is a great improvement visually over the original, and the mods for it are good too. If you have an original PS2 copy of the game & a good PC this is a no brainer to play it on.
But secondly props to 2001 Naughty Dog for creating a genuinely standout and amazing platformer. It's insane how much people downplay how good this game is, how good it feels to control, how expansive and well crafted its levels are, how immersive its world is (helped a lot no doubt by how little loading times there are) how beautiful it looks, It's an AMAZING game for what it does. The platforming gameplay is a bit slower than I'd like it to be, but by the end I knew this was a 9/10 game in pretty much every aspect.

6.Pseudoregalia (PC) 8/10.
What a fun and interesting platformer. While I feel like the level design could have been more experimental and that the visuals were just a bit too blocky and basic, the game otherwise was fun to bounce and jump around in. The movement carries this game because the amount of self expression that's possible with the full moveset that Sybil obtains is quite insane and it's some of the best in a 3D platformer since Mario 64. The story eluded me though, and the combat could use a lot of work. But the game does its central gimmick of parkour speedy platforming too well that it carries it a lot for me.


This challenge might help clear my backlog.

 

[shadowman16]

27. Side Arms (ZX Spectrum) - An ok game... just ok. Its around 4 levels long, bosses repeated from levels 1 and 2 in 3 and 4 (and none very hard) and stages that are super short...
Its not the worst Capcom port Ive played (still Final Fight!) but its control scheme is too messy to play as swapping weapons is always locked to keyboard (as no one apparently created a control with more than one button back on computers...)
There's a tiny selection of enemies and really the only dangerous one is the long snake that takes several hits to destroy. If it werent for a bad hitbox on your character's part, it'd be a pushover to complete.
I cant really muster that much of an opinion one way or the other on this one... its just... ok. If you want a more interesting port, the PC Engine version is out there to play, quite a toughie to finish but I really enjoyed it.

28. Street Fighter (ZX Spectrum) - So this one is a bit harder to judge. Granted controls are compromised due to that one attack button again. Movement is a bit janky and floaty, but one could fairly argue its the same on the arcade original, so really it doesnt feel a million miles away from said arcade port. The enemies even have their moves (or some of them), I cant confirm if Ryu does because pulling off special moves seems impossible... which either means they were cut or its arcade accurate as its not exactly easy to pull them off on that either lol.

The main cuts are music (sad, I loved it) and the nice backgrounds for the second fighters per country, and the boards mini game (Karate chopping the stack of blocks is kept though). But all fighters are present, look the part, have (most of) their moves and honestly... it played better than I expected. Or maybe its a more damning opinion about how bad the arcade game always played!
That said, it has its... quirks - most fights if positioned properly can be won by cornering a character - basically you can sweep kick enemies in a corner and your not pushed back - so spam that move and you basically destroy them in seconds. Yes, even Sagat!
There's only one exception here - that's Lee. He is harder to hit for some reason, so beating him was legit tough as just hitting him felt like a crap shoot at times. Compare Gen and Adon (the next two fighters you fight after) and they are pushovers as the hit boxes/collision detection go back to normal.

Sagat, while you can corner him still puts up a heck of a fight. His tiger shot is brutally powerful, can KO you in one attack if your unlucky, but you can duck under it. Then get him in a corner and you win. Still easier to hit than Lee!

29. Gun.Smoke (ZX Spectrum & Amstrad CPC) - Because of Spectrum loading shenanigans I only did a partial runthrough on that system, and then a full run on the Amstrad version.

Now, GS isnt a game Im a big fan of, I feel the difficulty is just too evil, instant respawn would fix it and turn it into a credit muncher at worst but instead its basically expecting you to be a proper arcade pro to clear those last few stages legit.

The computer ports are shorter that the arcade version - it only has five levels, with the caveat that the levels are around 2-3 times longer than the arcade version as compensation. And Im not a fan of this change, Id argue Side Arms was at least smart enough to not have the levels drag on...

So the gameplay is somewhat close to the arcade version at least. Its a vertical scrolling shooter, though all those button combos for certain shot angles are all gone (expected) so you can only aim diagonal left and right, and straight ahead. Now granted, its been a while since subjecting myself to the arcade version, but I seem to recall enemies mostly attacking you (in droves) from the front. Sure some would show up behind you but that felt rare. But here? It feels like a 75:25% split in favour of enemies showing up from behind. This is annoying in the Spectrum version since enemies shoot less and do bugger off after a while, so its a matter of being careful, there's strategy there. But in the Amstrad version? It feels way more constant, enemies are faster, enemies can go all "bullethell" on you (only you have a huge hit box...) and more often than not you'll lose a life... they dont even really go away unless they get stuck on scenery... So basically you'll be putting up with that shit all game... I only actually finished the game as I had infinite lives, definitely would not have finished it otherwise.

Weirdly the bosses are easier though. They are easier to hit (they were a nightmare in the arcades) so they go down WAY quicker. The last boss was bizarrely a complete pushover as well. Some boomerang wielding kid, which is weird as you fight an entire family as the arcade finale in one hard as heck shoot out (absolutely a worthy end to the game, its crazy).

There's also some weird moments where I got stuck on the environment, not sure what happened there... doesnt help that most paths are so narrow (which only adds to the annoyance). The levels are also so long now that boredom will set in really quick - I had honestly started wondering if level 1 was looping the first time I played it, where in fact it was just a very similar street I was walking down but was actually later in said level. Level 4 is on a raft, and its even more boring, after about a minute you'll be wishing it was over, but it goes on for several more.

Its a pity, the game could have been good... if you didnt have constant back attacks and snooze inducing long levels, I might have enjoyed it, and maybe even preferring it to the arcade game.

Lasting thought - the NES (or Famicom Disk System if your me!) version of GS is actually more an reimagining than an arcade port - it includes different weapons, requirements to find wanted posters (required for spawning bosses) and VASTLY more balanced gameplay/levels. I honestly put it up there with Bionic Commando and Legendary Wings on the NES - ports that are FAR superior to their arcade counterparts. So go play that one instead!

30. Tiger Road (ZX Spectrum) - A big ol' "that was it?" was my first response when finishing this one. TR is a side scrolling action game from Capcom, its pretty darn tough, but enjoyable once I got the hang of it (definitely one of its more unsung hits from the 80s). This port replicates it... well, a couple of bits. So as usual the main problem with a port like this is collision detection and smoothness. Its choppy and it feels really hard to avoid anything. Oh and your jump feels like it sucks! You can quickly get through the first scene by jumping onto higher platforms and then avoiding everything else. The next scene your dodging these huge dudes who try and grab you (you can beat them, but they take several hits). You also have to hope they dont grab you otherwise its an instant life lost. Net is a Donkey Kong style area where you have to jump over barrels, then a boss fight against a dude that climbs walls, then an ascent up a vertical passage (in the arcade, you were given powers to fly briefly, but its never shown here) and then finally you fight a big boss dude who has shit collision detection and a belly flop which KOs you instantly if it sorta hits (collision detection here sucks). Good news, you can hide in the corner on that boss and just sorta cheese him, as you and he overlap and he cant hit you.

There. That's pretty much the entire game! No I didnt make it sound shorter than it was, you really could finish this in less time than listening to Led Zep's Stairway to Heaven... heck you could probably listen to Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and finish it just as the final boss is defeated. Yes, its REALLY that short. If you want an actual good console port, check out the PC Engine port, which is excellent, and equally as tough as the arcade version. I cant recommend that one enough. Now I look up my next Capcom Spectrum game and its... Fucking Strider Returns. Yeah, Im not even going into this one positive lol.

Original Post:
52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat]

 

[shadowman16]

31. Strider Returns (ZX Spectrum) - Ok, its not as bad as I expected! Its still not great though, I just expected it as bad as the Mega Drive version. At least this one doesnt last as long!
The main issue I have with this game is the level design. Coming off of the amazing original Strider game, this one completely misses what made that game amazing, but like the Spectrum port of Strider, you can hold down the button to attack endlessly so just move forward while swiping and your already a good ways there!
There's only around 5-6 stages to clear here, they are an array of pretty average designed levels - sorta maze like at points, some platforming but its easier to evade anything that takes more than one hit to defeat. You find "E" pickups as you go which fills a bar up - when you reach the end of the level Strider gets a mech (for some reason) and you then shoot the boss until it explodes. No tactics, no skill, no evasion, just hammer the fire button. You basically win if you have more health than the boss does, so find those E pickups!

The game was thankfully fairly easy, an actual lack of cheap attacks etc. so as long as you took the time to explore a bit, you would be fine for the bosses, otherwise suddenly it becomes (almost?) impossible to win.

As it sounds, its not great. Its not remotely close to the original or actual sequels, not even as good as the port of Strider on the Spectrum, but I was expecting an unplayable mess, and instead I got an average action platformer. Low praise, but still sorta praise.

32. Sega Rally Revo (Steam Deck) - This one took a little while! I also didnt technically finish it in the traditional sense but more on that in a minute.

Ive really fallen down a Sega Rally hole at the moment, spent a nice amount of time last year learning and perfecting (well, sorta) my arcade SR run, and thanks to a user on here, I was tempted into getting the PC version of Revo set up on my Steam Deck, and I could barely put it down for the last few weeks.

Unlike SR 1&2, Revo is a lap based rally game, not a point to point one, but the courses are pretty much all really well designed, its still a super arcadey game with power sliding aplenty and no focus what so ever on sim aspects. So right up my street. Its also bastard hard. The main mode is the Championship mode which has you clearing courses and getting points based on your place - 3 courses per GP, maximum of 30 points per, and really your only target is getting enough points to unlock each classes final GP, finishing said GP kinda... does nothing.
The thing is, the game gets really hard, really early on. Car AI is amazing, with even the smallest of mistakes giving them leads that feel impossible to catch up to, and while I did manage 2/3 finale's in first place, the last few GPs on Master mode were just too much for me. Doesnt help that since you have 3 courses per GP, you have to play perfectly across all 3 because you cant restart in the middle, which just leads to more wasted time.

However I didnt quite feel Id really earned the reason to include this on the list, so I went into quick race and decided instead to do all the tracks (just the normal ones, not mirror mode) and finish in first in each, in each of the three classes - so 45 first place wins in total. And I found adjustable difficulty in this one mode! So I started by setting it to hard and for the most part, had no problems, races were mostly tight but after a few tries Id get first place.

But there's exceptions - the two major ones being Alpine 1 and Canyon 2... for some reason Alpine 1 is a complete nightmare to race in any class, but the beginner class especially - Id get second fine, but reaching that first placer felt impossible! It took so many attempts to finally reach him AND finish the race ahead. Canyon 2 was just a Master class issue. I had to lower the difficulty to medium, and even then? Still took me many tries just to reach that first placer - more often than not they'd take off into the distance, but the one time I succeeded and did reach them, it was neck and neck all race, didnt have any breathing room, truly a challenge!

All in all, difficulty level aside, I loved it. Incredibly replayable and challenging, I loved the handling and course designs, and honestly just thought the game was super fun. Not quite on the level of SR1&2, but its still a worthy game to the series.

33. Forgotten Worlds (Amstrad CPC) - Fuck this was bad. FW is one of those games that should have been on a "do not port" list for anything with less than at least 2 buttons else the game is essentially unplayable - to explain - its a side scrolling shoot em up where you have 8 way fire - in the arcade you had a special joystick that rotates that lets you aim in these directions, and move independently of aiming. Later ports (PS2 and up) wisely used the second analogue stick to basically make it a duel stick shooter (and it plays basically perfectly because of it), but older consoles (Mega Drive and PC Engine) basically let you enable auto shoot so you could just focus on using the buttons to rotate your aim clockwise and counter clockwise. Its not perfect but it works.
But this (and other computers) decided the solution was to aim by moving your ship left or right... so you cant move and aim at the same time (unless you only wanna go up or down) because your aim would keep switching. And of course in typical moronic US Gold style they never bothered to redesign levels to take this into account so you have four, utterly unplayable levels of shit. I had an infinite energy cheat and honestly I dont feel bad about it, the games basically unplayable without it... its the only game Ive played on the system to get as low as Final Fight is in terms of utter garbage port wise...

In Progress:

Street Fighter One (PC/MUGEN) - So while this IS Street Fighter, its also kinda not. Its a remake made within the fighting game engine MUGEN - so this means it actually doesnt play like shit (so the total opposite from the original version). Messed around a bit and done arcade mode with Ryu and Sagat and Im impressed. Its not jaw dropping or anything - but its a faithful recreation of the game but also adds better movement, controls, collision detection combat and combos. For a fan made release, its great.

Original Post:
52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat]

 

[Celestial Descend]

2. Chants of Sennaar | PC | ★★★★☆ | 1-20
Another indie banger from last year, a brilliant puzzle game with a wholesome message. The amount of detail put into the grammar and word structure is just right. It does not overwhelm the player, but remains challenging enough to demand attention and creative thinking. Above the puzzles, the game tells story about misunderstanding and prejudice, about communication and collaboration. Of course it is too idealistic to assume all the world's problems can be solved by people simply sitting down and talk, but it's certainly better than not to.

3. Alan Wake | PC | ★★★☆☆ | 2-3
The story is interesting enough to take me through the end, though it does come with its own bag of cliches. I swear if I ever see dead wife in a horror game again... It's a shame a large part of the story is just manuscript. Please, developers, don't make me read a novel in your game amid shooting and driving. I find the gunplay solid, if lacking in variety. Throughout the game you shoot at the same old enemies with the same old guns. The gameplay never carries itself as a reason to play the game, but it is not an annoyance either.

4. Sumire | PC | ★★★☆☆ | 2-11
Name another 2D side scroller where you move to the left side of the screen,. You can't! It's a beautiful narrative adventure game with a heartwarming story, except when you choose not to. Oh yes, the game also has an evil route where you can play as the most nasty little girl imaginable. I'm not the kind of person that play evil route in videogame, but I appreciate that it exists. The story is not terribly original, but playing as a hateful witch sure is a fresh experience.

5. Once in a Lifetime | PC | ★★★☆☆ | 2-12
I'd always like to think I'm somewhat familiar with eroge, but only recently did I discover the world of western Ren'Py VN. In my defense, the few times I encoutered one of these games, it looked nothing more than "big dick go brrr". This game certainly is that, but the narrative is far more evolved than I expected. There's a plot that is genuinely interesting and characters whose charm extends beyond physical attributes. There are jokes that actually made me laugh, and scenes that are surprisingly moving. I'd say the porn to story ratio is still on the high end, but it has always been a fine line to walk for an eroge creator, especially for one who was making their maiden work and did not realize the full potential of their own storytelling ability.

Main Post

 

[chrominance]

main post

4. Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator (PC, 2024) - 29:39 - February 8

There have been worse Atelier gachas; the last time someone tried it was Atelier Online: Alchemists of Bressisle, a game that felt so completely inessential that ignoring it for its brief lifespan was easy to do. Resleriana caused waves when it was announced as the next mainline entry in the franchise, causing all sorts of panic: was traditional Atelier dead?

Thankfully, the answer appears to be no; Gust has confirmed there will continue to be traditional Atelier titles in the future. The other bit of good news is that Resleriana could've been a lot worse. Surprisingly, it feels more polished than most mainline Atelier titles; we're a far cry from the early days of gacha when the gameplay and visuals were rudimentary at best, though I'm sure anyone who isn't living under a rock would already know this from titles like Genshin. I think this game might legit have more bespoke animations for characters than all the Ryza games did. The story... is fine, I guess? The biggest issue with it is that it doesn't really feel particularly Atelier-like, what with all the inclusions of evil alchemists, evil guilds, and a lot of shonen-feeling fight scenes.

The first protagonist you meet, Resna, feels like a blank slate character, someone who's pursuing alchemy because, well, alchemy's great and isn't it fantastic how amazing it is? She doesn't really get a real reason to use her alchemy powers until you're most of the way through the story available at launch; until then she's just an alchemist because she thinks alchemy is really keen, y'all. This lack of specificity is all over the story; people tend to talk in bland platitudes a lot.

And then there's the matter of the various alchemists from previous games showing up; after a brief discussion of where they all came from, the weirdness of this is basically never remarked on. None of the alchemists seem worried about being brought to a new world or wanting to figure out how to return home. But to be fair, this isn't the first game to pull that trick; Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists, a previous spin-off game, did the same thing. But at least there we got a lot of fun interactions between the different alchemists; for the most part you don't really get a sense of anyone's personalities here. Considering that the primary appeal of the gacha, besides pure gameplay efficiency, is collecting your favourite alchemists, this seems like a huge missed opportunity.

As for the gameplay, it's basically a lot of turn-based battles. This is fine as far as it goes; the biggest problem is really just that 80% of the time, you're either finishing a fight with everyone alive or you're getting a party wipe. There isn't a lot of in between (the other 20% is mostly finishing a battle with one person KOed), and when you get the worst outcome it means one of two things: you've hit a hard stats check that you need to defeat by leveling everyone up, or you... just run the exact same battle again with the same parameters and hope that the various status panels line up favourably this time. The number of times I've had a team wipe while auto-battling the first time, only to emerge victorious with no losses when I tried again, is kind of ridiculous.

Synthesis is an important part of Atelier games, so it's especially frustrating that in Resleriana, it's become kind of dull and uninteresting. Traditional Atelier games make alchemy a puzzle you have to solve to get the best results, and there's a lot of entertainment in figuring out how best to break the system to get overpowered items and equipment. Resleriana doesn't really have any of that appeal; the only inputs you can change are which characters contribute to the synthesis (i.e. you get better results if you roll for more gacha characters) and what optional ingredient you drop in. All of these contribute traits, but none of the traits have anywhere near the creativity of the traditional games, nor are there really a lot of fun ways to combine or upgrade them. After a while, most of your alchemy will be done to grind for shiny coins so you can buy light orbs to upgrade your characters.

So would I recommend this to anyone? Maybe to diehard Atelier fans if you can get past the alchemy system being so dumbed down. But if you're a diehard Atelier fan, isn't that a big part of the appeal? I'll probably keep playing it to an extent because I am the biggest sucker for Atelier games, but frankly it feels like the game is just wasting your time a lot, or that you're not really making a lot of progress. And you never, ever get that feeling of spending hours at the alchemy cauldron mixing and matching things to get just the right traits on a high-quality item. If you're just in it for another gacha game, there are lots of others that probably don't feel like such a burden.

 

[djinn]

6. Little Inferno
This was a strangely sweet little fairy tale. Very Tim Burton/A Series of Unfortunate Events kinda kooky style, which I'm a big fan of. You just burn stuff and write letters to your neighbour as the city chokes to death on smoke and freezes under constant snow fall. Didn't get all the combinations but it was fun experimenting. Controls well on Steam Deck.

 

[chrominance]

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5. Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage (Android, 2021) - 22:21 (continuing from 2022/2023) - February 9

So for Colorful Stage I usually call it "done" when I've finished a full cycle of events: two marathons and a Cheerful Carnival. The game itself doesn't change significantly between cycles, it just gets more songs added to it. Consider this a review of the most recent year of my Colorful Stage career.

Last year around this time, I felt like finally the allure was fading: the grind was starting to be a bit much and I felt like I'd hit a wall in terms of difficulty. Difficulty level 26 is by far the biggest roadblock to progress I've run into so far; that's when you start getting the most basic Master-level songs and it's also where Expert really starts to ramp up in difficulty. Without the feeling of constant progress, I thought my days in the game were numbered.

But then two weird things happened. The first is I got laid off. Suddenly I didn't feel so much like I was trying to fit the game around my schedule, getting in a round during my lunch break or whatever. The second is that I started to break down the level 26 wall. It took months of daily play to finally remember the various patterns I'd run into and anticipate them. Last December there were a bunch of missions involving hitting a certain number of perfect notes, full-combing songs, and so forth; this got me to re-engage with one of the game Discords I hadn't really talked to much in a while, and we got to play a ton of co-op as we all tried to meet our mission goals. It also finally got me to start playing Master songs a lot more, and to stop worrying so much about failure.

The end result is I have a bunch of FCs in 26 and even 27 difficulties now, something I probably would've thought permanently beyond my reach a year ago. And this speaks to why I love this game so much: it has just the right difficulty curve and the right incentive to play on a regular basis that I feel like I'm constantly getting better over time. Rhythm games often give me fleeting glimpses of that feeling; Colorful Stage is better at it than most.

I can see the next wall at 28, and that feeling that notes are coming just a little too fast, or are just a little too small to hit reliably on my phone, or the patterns just a bit too confusing to parse on the fly. But now that I've been through this once, the wall doesn't seem as intimidating. We'll see where I get to next year.

 

[djinn]

7. Golf Club Nostalgia
Kinda meh. Courses were fine but controls aren't very precise. I really didn't care for the radio stories nor much of the music. There's a little comic book at the end of the game that still doesn't really explain what happened to Earth or the main character. There certainly was potential here; occasionally the social commentary got close to being interesting or relevant. But I tuned a lot of it out the more I got frustrated with missing shots.

 

[shadowman16]

34. UN Squadron (Amstrad CPC) - Ok, the frame rate sucks. Sadly I have to point this out as its really noticeable, but lets move on and be a bit more positive about one of these ports!

Aside the FPS, Im actually quite a fan of this port - we get all the stages (I think? We get 10+ which is quite a few considering stuff like Tiger Road and Sidearms have only a couple), the game feels like it plays pretty ok as its a shoot em up (using the alt weapon is easy as well, so no control issues) and the hit boxes seem legit good. Difficulty is all round solid - can be tough but its fair. So really, in terms of Capcom ports to these computers, FPS aside this is one of my favourites - its no Strider or Bionic Commando, but its no Final Fight or Forgotton Worlds either.

Even stuff like enemy spawns seem fair (nothing spawning on top or cheaply behind you constantly like Gunsmoke), enemy behavior is as expected, the bosses are nice and varied and because of the low FPS, you can really navigate through quite a few bullets no prob. The final stage is even as I remember it - with a huge ship that you take apart piece by piece, eventually destroying the core.

Is it worth playing instead of the SNES port? Nope, but it is at least worth trying, unlike a fair few of the previous games I could name!

35. Dynasty Wars (Amstrad CPC) - In case anyone actually wonders - Im playing through everything Capcom put out, ports included as a challenge to myself. I find it fascinating just seeing the games on different platforms and how they perform, control, and what differences each have. As such your bound to have a few bad ones... And sadly the 8bit computers encompass a heck of a lot of bad ones! I still enjoy my time with the games, even if Im rather scathing at times.
With that said, Im being scathing because I really thought this game was flat out bad!

Dynasty Wars is based on a Manga which itself is based on the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" era wars in China - so Guan Yu, Zhao Fei etc. are here to fight Lu Bu, Cao Cao etc. as per usual. The game is different to other scrolling brawlers because its based entirely on horseback and your main attacks are governed by a charge meter - more you charge, better the attack. This stuff is replicated properly on the Amstrad port.
Problems arise in three key areas - the game is so painfully slow you'll lose interest by stage 2 (it has around 10 stages), the collision detection is questionable at best, which isnt helped by the fact that there's no hit stun or indication your actually hitting enemies, so good luck figuring out if your doing any damage...

Its hard to pick just which is the main problem in the game, as all three sorta come together to be this perfect storm of shit. But the game limps through 10ish stages until finally your reach the finale... and somehow the game got worse for me at this point. Its not clear just where the problem stems from - whether its maybe a control or emulation issue, or whether this was genuinely coded this bad - but the final level has an issue with the dirt roads that make up most of the level - I couldnt move normally on them, Id constantly get stuck on nothing, which actually got worse when the game wouldnt scroll properly - itd only move a bit, then stop... cue several agonising minutes of me slowly nudging the screen forward, finally reaching the final boss (which was basically identical to all previous bosses).

This isnt a good port, not close... Any sense of enjoyment the original game had is gone, replaced with a meandering slog of a "game" that I couldnt recommend. The PC Engine CD got a great port with nice audio enhancements... go play that one instead!


Currently Playing:

Yakuza 8 - 27 hours, mid chapter 4 - Now THIS game is one I can recommend lol. Its amazing. Feels part vacation, part epic crime drama. The story and characters as always have me hooked and the side stuff is amazing. Im still very much opening the side stuff up, and the later chapters should in theory go a bit faster, but either way Im having a blast slowly playing this all through. Definitely the GOTY contender for me until DD2 arrives. Now back to collecting Sujimon to become Sujimon Master and become Sujimon master!

Super Mario RPG Remake - On Bowsers Keep now, should be at the end of the game, and loving it. Will be trying the post game bosses as well, but this has been a wonderful little title that's been fast paced, no fat to slow me down, and looks and sounds terrific. Its taken way too long for me to play this one, but Im glad I finally got round to it! Hoping to be done next week in time to move onto Mario Vs DK's remake.


Original Post:
52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat]

 

[ThisOneHasNoName]

MAIN POST

Spider-Man 2 (2023)
Developed by: Ryu Ga Gotoko
Published by: Sega

Due to all the hype for Infinite Wealth, I decided that 2024 would be the year of Yakuza/Like A Dragon and have now completed the first stop in playing through everything. Yakuza Kiwami is a great first entry with a compelling cast, gripping story, and just enough ludicrous moments that I am overly excited to get to Kiwami 2 and beyond over the course of the year. Kiryu is just one of the best video game protagonists ever. He is instantly likable, charming, and somehow the writing is able to play the serious story with the goofy side content perfectly that it never felt out of character. I also want to shout out the changes made to this game in presenting trans characters in a better light then the original did. It's still not perfect but I was so happy to see the game an Kiryu not fall into tropes about how a tough dude is supposed to feel about both trans and queer characters. Most of the side content is fine, some stick out better than others, but the true gem is Majima. Every time he popped up I was surprised by how excited is was to both fight him, an see what new scheme he had concocted to make Kiryu accept in character. Overall a great first entry that I am very happy I finally got around to completing, just don't try to platinum it because that shit is ridiculous

 

[shadowman16]

36. Super Mario RPG Remake (Switch) - I missed basically every RPG growing up (not my genre) but Im now trying to go back and play a few of them, with Mario RPG being one of the ones I really wanted to play because I adore Mario. And I was not let down!

Honestly the only complaint I have for the remake is that its somewhat easy (thought those post game bosses push it to 11!)

Otherwise, this game is a 10/10 for me. Its delightfully Mario - with a colourful cast of characters including Geno and Mallow (though Bowser steals the show for me), with an amazing soundtrack, gorgeous visuals that almost always stick to 60FPS (there's some dips here and there). And the combat is a terrific fast paced turned affair, where turns are executed really fast so your never waiting for your next move. I also really love the focus on timing based inputs, adds a nice bit of skill to it (in fact - Yakuza 7&8 pull from this blueprint HEAVILY to the point where I feel they must have played an Mario RPG or two when designing the combat).

The pace of the game is well done as well. There's minimal plot dumps, and the world "map" is just you selecting which area to go to next - unlike other RPGs Ive played (like Breath of Fire) where you have a lot of freedom, this one feels more linear in approach and yet it worked for me. Never wondering where to go, never stuck grinding, never bored, just go to the next area, advance the plot, fight a new boss etc.

Overall despite the game being easy, I couldnt put it down. It was a great nod to all things Mario at the time, while leaving its own imprint in the series.

37. Street Fighter 2 (ZX Spectrum) - This port was never going to be good, it just wasnt possible. I mean, a 6 button fast paced fighter with tons of animation and characters on a lowly 8 bit computer? I was doomed from the get go. Doesnt mean I cant find some info playing one of these impossible ports!

So SFII needs no introduction, and the Spectrum version is one of those games Ive been curios about for years due to how ill fitting it is to play such a fighter.
The game itself is sorta shocking - all TWELVE fighters are here (the four bosses arent playable of course), and all the characters have a special move. No my grammar doesnt suck today, I did say "special move" - singular. I mean... you didnt expect it to play identical did you? They basically pick one iconic move and let you perform it (somehow), the rest of the normal attacks are done by pressing attack + direction. Obviously you dont have 6 buttons worth of attacks here, but they do a surprisingly accurate job of portraying the moves they do keep. Of course the game plays at about 10 frames per second, and super slow, so the gameplay sucks ass, but again, that was expected.

Graphically its missing colour (expected), sprites are pretty darn big - and detailed - they actually really do look like the characters you know and love, and someone like Dhalsim even has his stretchy limbs and looks the part.

But... yeah its almost unlpayable!

So the big problem aside the super slow pace is the collision detection, most character moves just dont feel like they hit. So you'll be using Dhalsim and not be able to hit anyone with his slow stretchy limbs, but even Blanka's heavy punch attack whiffs more than it should.

But wait! What if I told you, you can win the game with a single attack, and most moves with a single button? Well see, I had all sorts of issues getting the controls to even work on this (no clue why) and before I got the controls config'ed I was stuck using Ryu and only had one button work - the attack button. And the hilarious thing? You can win with just his standing HP attack because:
Its the perfect anti air attack
It has insane priority over other attacks (even Blanka's roll and Bison's Psycho Crusher)
It has decent reach
Its collision detection doesnt feel broken.
It deals insane damage

Most fights start with enemies leaping at you, a well timed punch would knock them back and deal great damage. Then as long as the characters would come to you, you'd basically always win. Sagat's the one that messed this up, but once I got controls working he was toast.

Its also funny seeing how broken other stuff is - Zangief gets his Spinning Pile Driver (well, no spinning) but it does ZERO damage.

The whole thing is a hilarious mess and Id have it no other way. Not like I dont have 1001 other ports of SFII to play if I need a good one!

38. Mercs (ZX Spectrum) - Good news, ending off on the final Spectrum game on a high, as aside some bizarre glitches, this feels the part and plays pretty well, at least compared to previous turkeys.

So Mercs is that sequel to Commando, only with the action dialed up to 11. Its fast paced, its got tons of weapons and even some big bosses, and once again most (if not all) of the game is here!

So Mercs was refreshing - its again not a patch on the arcade or MD ports, but the game plays fast, gets the controls down right and the action feels faithful to the arcade game. So in that sense, its mission accomplished already. The game is a decent legnth and they mostly retain everything the arcade version had, its not a Side Arms related case where you only have a couple of levels.

The only issue I found (and another Youtuber also mentioned, its not just me) is a glitch/issue where you all too quickly lose health and continues. I think its down to big enemies crushing you, but it just seems so random sometimes - you'll have some points where lives disappear into thin air and replaying the same bit via save state and you'll be fine. I honestly lost most continues due to these phantom KOs.

Boss with I feel that due to the damage, they are fairly tough. Even with your bombs, your still gonna need a few good hits to KO bosses, and trust me if your doing that without any lives lost (due to phantom lives lost), you gotta be SO careful. The first boss (a pushover in the arcade) is legit one of the hardest bits to do perfect in the game for me. Not impossible, but tough. There's a couple more bosses that really test you, like the train late in the game.

Overall, a fine way to wrap up my mixed Spectrum/Amstrad Capcom run. Still to go is the C64 Capcom ports, and Amiga Capcom ports. But before that, I have a few better Capcom games to get to, those can wait!

Original Post:
52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat]

 

[Subnats]

First game beaten for February. Should hopefully be able to catch up a bit as the month goes on.

5. Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (Playstation 2) - February 10th (4 Hours)
Jak & Daxter is a game that's pretty near and dear to my heart, I never played it as a kid aside from maybe one or two goes at a fast food place that had PS2s hooked up but around the time Covid first hit a friend recomended it to me and I immediately fell in love. Jak is by far my absolute favourite 3D collectathon, and a game I adore revisiting, doing so at least twice a year since I first played it. If you kept up with my posts last year though you might realise that I didn't play through the game in 2023, so this run was to make up for missing it last year. A bit of a tradition between me and that friend is to race eachother to beating the game. This run was no different, being a fairly casual any% run through the game. Being nearly two years out of practice made meant neither of us were going too hard on actually trying to be fast so it was a nice relaxing playthrough overall. I didn't end up winning unfortunately, losing a lot of steam in the game's final sections but I had an absolute blast with one of my favourite games of all time.

Normally I'd play Jak via the HD collection on PS3 for these races or casually via the Vita version modded and overclocked for 30fps, but for this run I settled on trying out the original PS2 version on a CRT. It doesn't look particularly good unfortunately (I just really dislike the jagged look field rendering gives it), but it was super interesting seeing how subtly different it was to the HD version. It definitely took a little bit to aclimate to the forced inverted camera (and meant that I completely skipped the rat minigame this run so I wouldn't have to deal with it), but it was otherwise a very comfortable way to play the game, even if I doubt I'll be coming back to this version over OpenGOAL or the HD Collection.

So yeah Jak & Daxter is really good. It's a bit of a comfort game to me, and while I initally played it relatively recently it's after giving me a lot of good memories. If you haven't played it then definitely give it a shot, you won't regret it.

5/5

 

[chum]

6. Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intermission (PS5): Feb 10. 9 hours. Rating: 8/10
Played for the first time in the lead-up to Rebirth, since it's been almost four years since I played Remake and wanted to brush up on the story/characters/world. The combat here remains excellent and I enjoyed how different Yuffie felt and her shinjuku attacks added a whole other dimension to combat that makes her unique as it allows you to attack multiple characters at once even if they're not in the same AoE. The story and Yuffie's characterization of Yuffie were fine and pretty much what I expected going into it, but I was particularly impressed with the end when Sonon sacrifices himself for her and she feels both the loss of a friend/fellow Wutaian but also the frustration of being treated as though she needs protecting like a child. I'm sure this will lead to some significant character development in Rebirth when she finds her spot in the team. Also, I read some fan speculation that Sonon may turn into Azul from Dirge of Cerberus, and OMG I would die if they went there lol. I love how the dev team is really taking the time to develop side characters that didn't get much attention in the original game.

7. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion (Switch): Feb 11. 29 hours. Rating: 7/10
This is my first time playing, also in preparation for Rebirth. I was happy with it overall, though I got a little too invested in the side missions which became a total slog and resulted in me being way overpowered for the last ~40% of the game. You can tell this is a crusty old PSP game that they prettied up, but the combat, story, and character development kept me invested. I didn't like the dialogue at all for much of the game - it felt less refined/mature than what Square Enix has done lately (particularly in comparison to FF XVI), but it got better later into the game (especially with Zack's character growth). The DMW system was just fine, but I did get mildly addicted to the materia fusion mechanic and thought that's an interesting way to utilize all of the low-level loot you accumulate throughout the story and side missions. The game also played well enough on Switch and I got used to the 30 fps and lower quality textures/resolution.

Next: Honestly not sure what I'll play between now and Rebirth, but leaning towards DmC V, since I've had it forever and never given it a fair shot.

Original Post

 

[ApinchofSaltz]

Game 7 - Humanity
Time - 14 hours
Platform - PS5
Score - 8/10
Completed: 1/17/24

Game 8 - Planet of Lana
Time - 4 hours
Platform - Xbox
Score - 8.5/10
Completed: 1/16/24

Game 9 - Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe
Time - 7 hours
Platform - Switch
Score - 7.5/10
Completed: 1/24/24

Game 10+11 - Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp
Time - 18 hours
Platform - Switch
Score - 8/10
Completed: 1/29/24

Game 12 - Yoshi's Crafted World
Time - 7 hours
Platform - Switch
Score - 7/10
Completed: 1/31/24

Game 13 - Silent Hill the Short Message
Time - 2 hours
Platform - PS5
Score - 4/10
Completed: 2/2/24

Main Post

 

[KtotheRoc]

6: Gradius. End: 2/12/2024.

Sometimes the mood just strikes to play an old-school shmup. I picked the NES' Gradius to satisfy my mood. It's overly simplistic in nature (particularly by today's standards) but can be frustratingly difficult to survive the onslaught of enemy fire aimed directly at the player.

 

[Rhaknar]

Game 10 - Resident Evil 6
Time: 25 hours
Platform: Switch
Rating: 8.5/10

Finally got around to playing this as it was one of the few Resident Evil games I hadn't played, not because it had a mixed reception (to say the least), but I never got around to play it. I'm glad I did tho because I ended up really liking it, but at the same time I can't blame anyone that doesn't. There's very little actual Resident Evil here, at least game structure wise, as it leads even more into the action after 5, with very little to no puzzles or exploration at all. Still, the gameplay is super fun, I lvoe how the 4 campaigns intersect, it's a behemoth of a game (especially for a RE) at 20-25 hours, and the Switch version looks shockingly fantastic, especially portable (unlike other survival horror games *cough*alanwake*cough*). I liked it a lot more than I expected going in, it was a nice surprise.

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[Plum]

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GAME 7: Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission
PS5 | Finished 14/02/24 | All Trophies Earned | 14 Hours Played | 7/10

Yes, I'm counting DLC here... especially one that took me 14 hours lol.

This was a short and, relatively, sweet introduction to Yuffie as a character; though it very much has all the same issues I have with the main game. To start off positive: I love Yuffie's move-set. Perhaps because of her status as a DLC character, she feels so much more 'in-depth' to play as than other characters, whilst not becoming overly complicated. Moving between ranged and melee, synergised and not, with only the occasional (thankfully beneficial with Hard Mode) spell thrown in for good measure was incredibly fun. Also helps that some of the new traversal elements really help with the cumbersome movement of the base experience.

But then there's the bad, and I think the main thing here is the fact that, despite so many new characters being introduced, none of them feel as fleshed out as they could be. The story here is so all-over-the-place despite not much actually happening within it, and that's really an issue I haven't seen in many other places except for the 'FF7 Remake Universe.' Issue is, where the base game had 18 chapters to develop its cast... this only has 2. And in that time, most of it is spent running around similar - or identical - to the base game, with few major character moments to really let them shine.

So plot points that are supposed to hit hard barely do, because most of these characters barely get any significant screentime. Doesn't help that most of them were just dull. I don't know how many of them introduced here will appear later on in Rebirth/3, but I do know that I'm not really excited for them to return. Fortunately, Yuffie herself is introduced well here, and I suppose that's what matters most.

Now I wasn't expecting to play this before finishing my - still ongoing - hard mode run of Remake, but I needed a break from that so here I am. I must say, I definitely enjoyed getting the 100% (no Platinum as it's just a DLC) here. Frankly with help from a - very useful - guide. Fort Condor, for instance, has a lot of potential, but it was too slow for me to really get invested. So in comes the guide, showing me the most broken strategy. One of advancing with a single guard dog and then obliterating the opponent's home base before they can even attack mine.

The two superbosses were both frustrating, but not too much so. Helps that I've already defeated their counterparts in the main game. One thing I did learn here is that simplicity is often the key when it comes to looking up guides and such. The three-stage 'fight the summons' VR mission is one that, according to guides, requires pinpoint button presses and a 50-step-long list of direct commands. Instead, it just required some thoughtful strategy, a bit of patience, and some pre-existing skill.

So, yeah. Should be finished with my replay of the main game within the week, and then it's a few short games before the 'main event' that is Rebirth. I look forward to it :)

 

[stn]

3. Granblue Fantasy: Relink (PS5) - beat the campaign, grinding for the platinum now. [8.5/10]

Next: Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (PS5), Wanted: Dead (XSX)

 

[slinch]

I forgot to do it for January, but I can do it this month, so here's my bi-weekly recap.

Main post (#138)

14. Tekken 8
PS5 / 1. 2. 2024 / 3h
Backlog stat: none, played asap

Figured I should start with story mode and it's as bonkers as ever. I have to say it's my favorite way of tackling the story so far, it actually does feel like I'm a part of a narrative, even though the narrative is straight out of a fever dream. The final fight could very well be an episode of Dragon Ball and it is fantastic. It plays as good as always with just enough visual and technical upgrades to warrant a higher number. It'll likely stay in rotation for a long time.

15. Thomas Was Alone
NS / 9. 2. 2024 / 3h 20m
Backlog stat: On wishlist since 24. 2. 2018

I enjoyed the idea, but the execution left me wanting more. The puzzles just weren't exploring the possibilities enough, the narrative just wasn't up there with the genre's greats. It felt a tiny bit emptier than I expected.

16. Shovel Knight
PS5 / 9. 2. 2024 / 7h 40m
Backlog stat: On the shelf since 11. 7. 2019

It was hard for me to enjoy this at first. The game is very honest in its inspirations and ambitions, but those aren't what I was ever really familiar with. It's a nostalgia blast, but someone else's nostalgia, not mine. So some of the quirks that are this genre's staples were very new to me and I resented the game for them. I just couldn't forgive it for how platforming was the real boss fight, not the bosses. But as time went on it grew on me. I still think I'd like and enjoy it more if I wasn't so new to how it plays, but I liked it well enough.


17. You Have to Win the Game
Steam Deck / 14. 2. 2024 / 1h 45m
Backlog stat: In library since 12. 12. 2018

Made it to the lose ending and had fun for the night, but I don't think I'll return to get more out of it. I do think it's excellent for what it is.

 

[Nocturnowl]

5. Tekken 8 ★★★★

(I'm sorry French era, but not that sorry lulz)

In the month leading up to this game's release, I found myself surprised by how hyped I was getting.
See, historically Tekken is a series I'd only played casually in a few multiplayer sessions, across all Sony platforms, and it just never took.
I'd always prefer Street Fighter to it, in the 3D fighter space I'd take Soul Calibur over it, Tekken's general style and tone has always struck me as being a flavour of late nineties/early noughties teenager cheese that feels trapped in that time period, tribal tats! flaming pants! dumb hair! brooding leads! I just could not click with it.

The T8 hype circuit hadn't fully swayed me either, only three new characters is massively underhwelming to me as someone without any mains from the exisiting characters, and as someone who loves just seeing new characters in general. I also wasn't seeing much from the single player side in the lead up, another outdated cinematic story mode after SF6 shook things up with World Tour? it just wasn't quite looking like the full package, just another good tekken game and nothing more.

Yeah well serve me up some crow, and I'm happy to eat it, Tekken 8 is a great time and I'm finally clikcing with the series, and that in itself feels great.
When I picked up Tekken 7 on the cheap late into its life cycle, I was taken aback by how bare the package was, considering the generation long burial of SFV's anemic launch content and slow recovery that could never shake off those launch year woes, it was crazy to find that endgame Tekken 7 had less going on than endgame Street Fighter V, I couldn't even go into a vs CPU mode to try out new characters, or have a tutorial to learn how to play characters, Tekken Tag 2 had those and more right? effectively while I thought Tekken 7 was a fun game to watch, the game itself had me underwhelmed.

Tekken 8 brings all that content in, and while not a perfect storm, it offers a great introduction to the series with its confusingly twee toned arcade quest which is a disguised tutorial, and the more bombastic cinematic story that. well it doesn't do much for me, but it sure is there.
Throw in character arcade routes with ENDINGS (yaaay!), ghost battles, unlocks for customisation and so on, this here is the kind of package I expected from Tekken 7.
And in giving me this well rounded package, I've become a fan, funny how that works, this is why you don't skimp on the content fighting game devs!

Tekken has always been easier to play as a complete mashing beginner than a lot of 2D fighters, you can hit buttons and accidentally do cool shit, thus making it way more casual friendly than SF where you mash buttons and just do stilted punches and no cool shit. Actually understanding Tekken though? whew, that's a big jump, these characters are so varied, with some deep tool kits, the learning process has been a lot of fun though and finally learning Alisa's bag of robo tricks is the most "heck yeah" learning experience I've had from a fighter since realising how to actually do combos launching into air combos in MvC3.

While there is an attempt at a SF6 style alternative control scheme, it can't match the SF6 modern scheme at being an alterntive option due to the sheer depth of Tekken movelists, instead it's more like the autocombos with a slightly more expansive scope, a small shame but one I completely understand.
Online has been given a lot of flak for its rollback not matching its close competitors even down to the anime fighters, I've found it more than acceptable, but I'm also a scrub wi-fi warrior (sorry) and instead found myself impressed by how well it's actually played out compared to the online reception.

While on the whole I think each element of the game is just one step behind SF6 (be it single player modes, new characters, even menus and online options, though Tekken has the better replay mode), being one step behind what I considered my 2023 game of the year means that you're basically still putting out an excellent entry into the genre, and I look forward to following this game into the future.
Fighting game fans are eating good right now.



6. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney HD (replay) ★★★★

What a pleasant return this was, over time my appreciation for what Apollo Justice tried to do for the Ace Attorney series has only grown stronger. And putting it in a package alongside it's disappointingly regressive sequels only serves to highlight the boldness of this otherwise iterative fourth mainline ace attorney game, even if it fumbles on the way.

Speaking purely visually, this HD revamp of AJ might be peak Ace Attorney, gorgeous spritework for expressive characters, it looks like a gleaming and well polished attorney's badge, pure gold. And it kicks off with a bang, one that can be a bit of a double edged sword as saying that the best case in an Ace Attorney game may well be its first one, sounds more like a damning statement if anything. Truly that's not the case I'm making, it's an explosive start that sets the tone for the rest of the game, a fascinating tone at that, one that's a bit more dour, cynical, a touch biting y'know? in the world of AA4/AJ, things don't always go to plan, bad things happen to good people, those who are supposed to be working with you act against their interests be it intentionally or unintentionally, it's almost possible to describe this one as the most REAL of Ace Attorney games (and certainly a lack of spirit medium fluff is a nice change as well).

As a lead, Apollo has never quite got off the ground, this original outing presents a character a bit too close to the original trilogies Phoenix Wright, while dropping said Wright into this game in a far more fascinating role that upends the entire character, divisively so but a decision I love that they had the balls to commit to (then AA5 walks it back, urgh). This does end up working against Apollo who never really takes off in his own game, heck in this apparent trilogy of which this re-release is a part of.
There's a running joke we'd make in era threads when this trilogy was announced, "now people can experience Apollo's three different backstories!", and that might be generous to AA4 here which doesn't actually give Apollo even that much, the backstory he has is more of a circumstance of the characters around him.

In any event though, Apollo's one sane man in a cast of nutters does endear him to me, the obligatory spunky teenage girl companion is my fave of the lot with budding magician Trucy Wright. The game's prosecutor puts a pin in being overly antagonistic, a bit smug sure but it's appreciated variety that leans more towards post character development Edgeworth. There's a more clear throughline plotwise tying these cases together than in the original trilogy as well, some strange stumbles for sure (the final case offers both the most interesting and fundamentally flawed investigation segment in the series, plot holes? we got 'em, sorta, it's a bit whishy washy) but I do like the consistency, right down to how all of Apollo's clients are some form of uncooperative be it language, abrasive personality or socially stunted.

You can see writer Shu Takumi trying to find ways to not just make this one of those safe and sterile sequels that a lot of series end up with as their fourth quickfire sequel, something Capcom knows a lot about considering every mega man series that reaches a fourth outing starts feeling pretty been there done that.
It's a damn shame that the sequels don't follow up on the groundwork laid here and retreat to boring fan service safety, it took until the Great Ace attorney to actually follow up on this game's dangling gameplay mechanic even!

As such, I can now safely say, I think Apollo Justice is a great entry into the AA series, and I hope this new re-release gets it revaluated by fans and newcomers alike.



7. Yakuza: Like A Dragon ★★★★

Truly I thought I was done with this series, the combo of burnout and increasing frustration with the brawler mechanics of the series reached a breaking point once I finished Y4 back in 2022.
Really though I always wanted to try the turn based JRPG shakeup "Like a Dragon" after I finished Kiwami 2, my friend and a fair number of yakuza era pressed the idea that one should continue going through chronologically, I should've trusted my gut and just jumped ahead, because for the first time since I started with Zero, I really enjoyed one of these titles again.

LAD is perhaps not quite the true refresh I think the series would benefit from, as the deeper you get, the more of the usual suspects and such turn up and things start getting that whiff of overfamiliarity, up until that final third though I was fully into the new adventures of Ichiban, the right kind of new face to run with as I think even as someone who never truly finished Kiryu's saga, they'd done all they really needed to with him by the end of Y3 (which I'd argue is reflected by the multiple characters added in 4 and 5, but I digress).
Ichiban has both a bit more of an edge to him, while being incredibly wholesome in spite of that, trading Kiryu's comedic stoicness in silly sidequests for a character who can more revel in the absurd scenarios this series oh so loves to dole out, and now he gets a crew along for the ride and man, it's just such an obvious fit for this series that I'm surprised it took this long.

The "buds factor" of LAD is one of the game's strongest weapons, the core group of Ichi, Nanba, Adachi and Saeko are unique among your JRPG party tropes, partly due to their age, kicking off with a pair of rock bottom 40 year olds is a choice and one I loved, factor in the seedy world these characters occupy and there's a ton of fun interactions you wont see in your usual teenager fare.
Formula wise, plot progression and the general flow is very much like the games of old, yet the switch to a turn based combat system really is a boon to a lot of these series traditions, after all the older games were effectively action rpgs, but now the game can lean a lot further into the JRPG-isms and so much of the content fits better this way.

Now admittedly, while I'm more forgiving for their first swing at the style of gameplay, it's not a tour de force of JRPG mechanics, you can see the stumbles in design quite clearly despite the cool foundation here like the semi dynamic battle system where everyone moves around the world in real time which has cool potential for positioning but subject to randomness, characters getting snagged on scenery, planned multi hit attacks whiffing by the time your character reaches the target etc.
And of course like most JRPGs it runs out of steam halfway through and the rest of the game is often me trying to fast track my way to the finish line with multi hit attacks. All while the game's levelling curve goes from well done to one of the most bafflingly off kilter I've seen maybe ever? the Majima/Saejima boss fight spike is legendary for a reason, and even beyond that it goes all over the place in the final third and basically requires the player to commit to re-running a specific arena that grants so much more exp than anything else like a clumsy band aid.
That and the cool job system (and what amazing modern day jobs we have put into JRPG form) is hamstrung by how important having a high job level is later in the game, thus soft forcing the player to commit to one per character instead of explore, y'know outside the pro tip of "but do grind fortune teller to 18 on as many people as you can" because the game's lategame balance being wack really benefits from a multihit lightning attack.
If nothing else, I'm genuinely excited to see the QoL improvements from the recently released sequel.

To try and dig into all the elements of this game would take forever, to more quickly nail down more of the things I really liked...
- The enemy types, bosses, attacks, classes etc have a zany modern day edge that's almost earthbound esque, Ichiban's imagination opens the door to so much creative hilarity
- The soft social link elements ala Persona where you have drinks with your buds, learn their past, evolve your mechanics in gameplay as a result is a winning formula
- While the plot definitely has a lot of Yakuza-isms that I don't like (the overly generous and almost redemptive approach to criminals, combined with main characters as part of that underworld while remaining good golden boys that do nothing wrong etc), it had me engaged, a late game political angle was great fun and goddamn if Ichiban didn't nail the endgame, speaking of which...
- I started this game subbed, but switched to dub early on out of curiosity, and man, what a great dub, Ichiban is top notch, a lot of the dialogue while walking around works a lot better when you don't have to read everything in the top corner and can simply hear it in your own language, I'll miss sub Kiryu and Majima but there's no going back now, I'm in for these dubs, sacrilege I know.
- The business management sidegame is great fun, easy sure but the best side mode in Yakuza for my money (ho,ho!) stakeholder "battles" alone highlight everything I like about this game. Wish Dragon Kart was a bit spicier though, I actually preferred the can collecting minigame which is like pac man EVOLVED

All in all, a rough edged, fairly draining yet very endearing JRPG that has revived the series for me and I look forward to playing the sequel which will inevitably burn me out on this new formula, until then though, friendship ended with Kiryu, now Ichiban is my best friend.

 

[shadowman16]

39. Micro Mages Second Quest (Evercade) - So this was billed as a harder campaign, akin to a second loop like Super Mario Bros's second loop, or of course Ghosts n Goblins... but weirdly the original Micro Mages already had that! Doesnt really matter, as this game is still a blast and it is indeed a harder version of the original MM. Basically it expects you to learn how to use the more advanced platforming techniques earlier on, as some of the platforming will be super difficult without it. Having already done the second run in the original MM I was well prepped and basically walked through the initial run on this game. It was only on the second loop of this one where things started getting harder, but still things felt easier? Even level 3's stages (the hardest point for me initially) felt easier for whatever reason. Skill in part perhaps, or just adapting to how the game wants me to think.

Either way, its a great series of stages and one that I had an absolute blast playing through. Difficulty is just right, movement is amazing, and the bosses were fun.

40. Tenchi Wo Kurau (Gameboy) - One of the Capcom games I sorta... missed from 1994! Having finally gone back to play this one, I mainly enjoyed it. However I still have a few critiques over the game's design which lets it down.

The game itself, like the Famicom releases (NOT the arcade ones) are top down, turn based RPGs that are set during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms age in China. You know - Cao Cao, Lu Bu and all that jazz...
You once again play as Liu Bei who basically has to amass an army to take out Cao Cao who is the recurring villain throughout the game (and has a really weird sprite!)
Unfortunately you only have 3 characters this time, instead of 5, and armies play a far smaller part, so instead of the great gameplay of the Famicom games, it feels like a far more cookie cutter JRPG.
Also while I praised Super Mario RPG for its linearity previously, this one handles that really badly. See... throughout most of the game you'll find gates and cities that you just cant enter for various reasons. So most of the game sorta just boils down to figuring out exactly where you need to go, and find the one place that lets you in. Its not exactly fun! The Famicom games were far more forgiving in this aspect, with the biggest difficulty being some loooooooooooong stretches where you cant access towns/inns for healing. So make you you preserve your tactics for when you really need them!
The game also has a habit of taking characters away from you for a while, which seemingly deletes all their weapons and armor. Now, they might be stored, but I could never figure out how to retrieve anything from storage, at least I could never find the items ins storage to retrieve. There's a space where this happens a good 3 times in an hour, and getting gear isnt as easy as one might think... as the limited access to areas? This means sometimes you'll go long stretches without access to armor in weapons as shops sometimes on sell one or the other. Its really fucking stupid. It made that middle of the game unbearable at times.

HOWEVER

Once you get through to a certain point, the game is basically "ok, now unite China under Liu Bei's rule and beat up that Cao Cao dude". At this point your given free reign over cities etc. so you can go wherever you want without any messages. Suddenly this a) becomes more freeing and b) has a nice mix of difficulty and fun. This second half basically has you revisit every castle on the map (shout out to GameFAQs for having a complete map!) and just capturing one after the other, sorta like in a DW mission. The only part of this which is annoying, which comes back to troops, is that at certain points you'll have the game force you to defend one of the castles against an incoming army. If you dont have enough troops its impossible to defend. And it seems impossible to ever have enough troops. So the very end basically plays as sort of like a whack a mole - you have all but say... 3 castles, you get one but lose another... and so its the case where you slowly capture them faster than you lose them to get the game to give you that final Cao Cao boss encounter (which is easy by that point - I was over leveled).

All in all its a step down over the excellent Famicom games (2 especially was badass), but even with its issues, I was glued to it, it was fun (mostly) and it was also a really smooth game to play, with really nice sprites and artwork. A bit of a stepdown perhaps, but still a solid RPG that was worth my time.

Original Post:
52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat]

 

[AvianAviator]

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6. Postmouse | Jan 24, 2024
Developer: Critters Collective
Genre: Adventure, platforming

Postmouse is my dream game. When I was a kid, I loved shows and movies with mouse worlds, where little critters lived right alongside humans, using resources generated by humans to the benefit of their own societies. Ratatouille, Flushed Away, The Tale of Desperaux, elements of Tom and Jerry, Hamtaro…and I've been longing for a video game with these elements. Something like Grounded comes really close, except you're a shrunken down person instead of a little animal…so not quite.

But then, enter Postmouse! You're a little mouse, and you work at a delivery center in your little creature society. The carrier pigeon who normally delivers far-off mail has gone missing, and so it falls to you now to climb trees, scale buildings, slink into pipes, and generally brave all kinds of harsh territory that any human would walk past without thinking. The mundane is made giant, awe-inspiring, and threatening. I love that. And I love the feeling that Postmouse gave me for that.

Aside from that, it's also just really charming and earnest. The titular mouse and the creatures he meets are all very whimsical. There's a grumpy old frog sitting by his house-stump, there's a turtle vendor who has all his wares tied to his shell (but you can't buy anything from him! Missed opportunity…), and more. It's not a long game, so I don't want to reveal much else. In spite of its flaws (it's a little janky), I adored my time with it and will forever seek more games like it.

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7. Furi | Jan 28, 2024
Developer: The Game Breakers
Genre: Action, bullet hell

I wrote a lot about Furi already here in my LTTP on it, so I won't say much more here. Just that it's a well-designed, challenging game that is more forgiving than it lets on, and it taught me the power of perseverance.

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8. Coffee Talk 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly | Feb 05, 2024
Developer: Toge Productions
Genre: Visual novel

The structure of this game is the same as the first; you are a coffee shop owner in a magical version of Seattle, where humans walk alongside minotaurs and vampires and elves and orcs and mermaids and more. All equal citizens, but it wasn't always that way, and long-standing prejudices and injustices still linger. Your coffee shop is a place of sanctuary for its inhabitants, where they can relax for a while and have an ear to listen to their troubles.

You've got recurring faces and recurring ingredients, but the few newly added characters have pretty compelling storylines and I really ended up loving them. The few newly added ingredients were nice but added no new mechanics, so once again there was no challenge other than "can you figure out what kind of drink this person wants?" They did also add objects to the game though; if someone has something they want to pass along to another patron, like a business card, they can leave it with you. Or if someone leaves something, you can give it back to them the next time they arrive. This leads to apparently a myriad of different endings for each person's character arc. Serving them the right drink or making sure they get the right items they need helps get them to the best point in their arc.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Hibiscus and Butterfly a lot more than the first game. I think the scenarios were a little bit stronger and I was more invested in the characters this time around. Overall, it's a very cozy and low stakes visual novel.

 

[Emkaset]

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9. Master Detective Archives: Rain Code

I've realized that since the start of this year, I've been playing quite a few detective games (I've played Professor Layton 3, Layton's Mystery Journey, and Another Code), and I continued in this vein with Rain Code. I thought I was just going to play a nice little game, but I was actually quite surprised by the consistent quality of the title, whether it be in terms of the characters, the investigations themselves, but also the technical aspects and the art direction: the game is very, very beautiful. I'm not going to say much to avoid spoiling the investigations, but overall, the game is divided into chapters, each with its own investigation to solve, taking place in a new area of Kanai Ward, which I also find incredibly well done. It was truly a pleasure to wander around in it.

I hope we'll see Shinigami in another game!