52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

[kashell]

56. Kirby and the Forgotten Land+ Star-Crossed Worlds

I finished what I guess could be considered the main story. The credits rolled, Kirby and his posse lived happily ever after. Etc. Of course, there's still plenty of game left to discover. The game keeps a percentage for completion and I'm currently at 76%. So, I'll be getting the rest of the "endings".

[bikingjahuty]

93. Doom II (PS4)

Unfortunately my family didn't get a PC until 1999. Even more unfortunately, we couldn't afford anything high end or even average, so we ended up getting so budget build my cousin put together. While I was still absolutely stoked to have my own PC to play games on, the reality of the situation was my PC would barely run any contemporary, late 90s games (unless you want to consider playing what looks like a glitchy slide show "running" it). Even games that were several years old didn't run great. In fact, pretty much if a game was newer than 3-years old, there's a good chance my first family computer could barely run it, if at all. A good friend of mine took pity on me around this time and actually gave me a bunch of his old PC games he no longer wanted. There were some real gems in there, but the jewel in the crown of his pity donation to me was Doom II.


Like many games I grew up with, I never actually beat Doom II as a kid, but I guess in a way I did "beat" it with the aid of cheats. Since there, I've never done a legit full playthrough of the entire game, so I decided to do something about that. With Halloween next month, I figured Doom II would also be a good appetizer to prepare me for much more hardcore horror games once October rolls around. Aside from my childhood nostalgia for this game, I've unfortunately come to the realization that Doom II is pretty much inferior to its predecessor in nearly every way. And that's despite the addition of new enemies, bigger levels, and the introduction of the classic of classic FPS weapons, the Super Shotgun. The new enemy types are often cited as a big reason why Doom II is inferior to Doom, however it goes well beyond that. Yes, the Chain Gunners and Archvile's suck ass to fight, but my main gripe personally is the level layout and design of a big chunk of Doom II's levels. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say, a third of Doom II's levels aren't great and some are even kind of terrible. Bigger is not always better, and this is a major variable in which levels are the worst.


These large, often open levels really disrupt the pacing of Doom II's gameplay. They all mostly start off promising enough until you kill everything in sight and are then left to just wander around until you hopefully figure out where to go or where some stupid key is hidden. This is made even more annoying my Doom II requiring some light platforming, which is never great for the most part. Everything just lacks the same intuitive, well planned and thought out structure present in nearly all of its predecessor's levels and unfortunately it really made this game drag at parts. If not for the same crisp, precise, and fast paces shooting gameplay, the over abundance of crappy levels would have really brought this game down further, but in the end I only enjoyed Doom II a little less because of it. And for the record, there are also a lot of really great stages in Doom II as well; I just wanted to throw that out there in case I accidentally gave the impression Doom II was just crappy stage after crappy stage. It certainly isn't.


Other than that, Doom II's visuals are nearly as good as the original's albeit most stages aren't as interesting as the Mars Base or Hell levels in Doom. Nor are the overall production values. I'm assuming this is because Doom II was literally released just a year later and I'm certain ID wanted to get this out while their first game was still the talk of the town (for better or worse). The audio is also great in Doom II, but again, not as good or memorable as it was in the first game. That really is saying a lot since Doom II's OST is a similar set of midi metal tracks like the first game that sound pretty awesome for the most part. Enemy, weapon, and environmental sound effects are mostly the same and unaltered which is how they should be imo.


In many ways, Doom II reminds me a lot of Doom Eternal. I don't mean that in the sense that Doom II's basic premise of Hell attempting to take over earth was the same, but rather both games took the template laid out by their predecessors and tried making it better. Unfortunately all that ended up happening was both games tried doing too much with what was already an excellent formula and just created something that felt more bloated and less refined. And like Doom Eternal, Doom II is still a great game despite this, but in the end, you kind of just wish you were playing the first game instead. (9/4/25) [38/50]

[dhaabi]

56. These Heavenly Bodies || Browser || 09.02.2025



Slowly but surely, I'm still going through a backlog of free itch.io games that caught my attention for one reason or another. There are a fair amount of horror games that I'd like to space out, so I settled on playing through These Heavenly Bodies first.

As a ten-minute experience, These Heavenly Bodies is a horror narrative adventure involving a priest and a scientist who work together to investigate recently-excavated statues shaped in the form of angels. The player assumes the role of the priest, who is a stranger to the discoveries thus far and is only here after being invited. When the player first appears, it's mentioned that during the pre-analysis phase, it was discovered that the statues are build around human bodies or that, somehow, human bodies have been preserved inside. So, over the course of several nights, the pair study their findings which leads to identifying certain anomalies inside which sparkle. What they are exactly is never explicitly told: are they some energy source? Are they angels? Regardless of what these anomalies are, player interactivity is limited to moving from room to room and clicking on these shining irregularities while viewing imaging scans through point-and-click gameplay bound to a single-screen presentation.

Despite the game's limited interactivity, or perhaps because of it, this bite-sized horror experience reads like a short story foremost. To be brief, I found These Heavenly Bodies to be fine for a short writing experiment, though it was a story with both plot progression and its conclusion being expected. But even in spite of my own opinion on the writing itself, the story was difficult to engage with for reasons totally unrelated to the writing itself. Namely, the game's fast-paced, auto-advancing dialogue was not welcoming, and this problem was considerably worsened by the developer's choice of typeface selections. Some characters were far difficult to read and differentiate from others, such as H and M, and certain ones (maybe all of them?) even have alternate forms. So, needless to say, there were several lines of text I simply wasn't able to read through in time. Going back to the story itself, I don't particularly think that it was elevated in any way by utilizing an interactive video game format and instead wonder if this sort of narrative would have been better suited strictly as a written text.

Still, there were some aspects of the game I thought were done well or were an interesting deliberate design choice. First, dialogue is voiced, so to speak, but it's a robot mechanical sound that's comparable to early computers. It's not exactly a design choice that suits the game's tone and atmosphere, but it was certainly jarring at first. Second is that the game's visuals were purposely designed in a low-resolution style; I actually found visuals to be the game's strongest feature and suited a game of this length while also elevating the sense of unnerving.

Ultimately, These Heavenly Bodies is a strange game with a strange atmosphere and strange premise. It's not a game that stood out in any meaningful way for me really, and I do think I'd have much rather just read through a written story instead of playing through an interactive one.

[bikingjahuty]

7. Gradius III (Switch) - ABANDONED

I absolutely fancy myself a SHMUP fan. Having played literally hundreds of SHMUPs in my life, there are many which I have throughly enjoyed, and some which are among the best games I've ever played. Likewise, I've played some absolutely awful shooters in my day as well. The reason I bring this up is because I want to preface what I'm about to say by demonstrating that I'm not a total newb when it comes to the STG genre, and in fact, I'd say I'm pretty good at most SHMUPs if I say so myself. However, after several failed attempts to get into the Gradius series, I am finally admitting to myself this franchise is not for me.


I absolutely enjoy a challenge when it comes to my shooters. If I didn't, I wouldn't even be playing these games. However, the challenge present in every mainline Gradius game I've ever played, is comically hard. Like there is zero balancing or even an attempt to synchronize the game's difficulty with the parameters of the gameplay and its mechanics. In other words, the game very quickly throws so much at you, so quickly, while confining you in a small space, while completely power up marooning your if you die, while making some of your power ups more of a hinderance than something that actually helps you, that this game will brutalize you over and over again, guaranteed. The best SHMUPS I've ever played are intimately aware how their gameplay mechanics and match what is placed before you to accomadate those mechanics. Even pretty hard shooters like Mushihimesama Futari or Ikaruga do this and the game always makes you feel like the challenge you're presented with is one you can reasonably conquer with enough time and practice. Meanwhile, nearly every Gradius game is kicking you continuiously in the ribs while you're already down on the ground and never wants you to get back up. These games want to break your spirit and ensure you're not having any fun, just getting mercilessly kiled over, and over, and over again.


So yeah, I'm officially done with Gradius. If I couldn't get into Gradius Gaiden, Gradius V, or this game, there is no chance I'll like any of the other games. With that said, I am still open to the various Gradius spinoffs. I've played two different Parodius games and these have been far more enjoyable experiences overall for a variety of reasons. But yeah, Konami's flagship SHMUP series can go burn in hell. I'm done. (9/5/25) - ABANDONED