Main ListPrevious Listbold games are games that have been beaten, previously beaten, or are unbeatable.
77.
Mega Man Zero (NS)
This was my alternate for Dead Cells, real glad I played Dead Cells though. I didn't know for sure what type of game Mega Man Zero was, didn't even google it. I was kind of hoping it wasn't straight up a Mega Man game, but maybe Mega Man adjacent... honestly I was hoping it was a Mega Man Metroid game, that'd be dope. Anyway, I like Metroid-vania games, but I don't really like Mega Man games, I can play them, I like Mega Man characters and the idea of elemental weapons and stuff, but I'm just not big on level based platformers. I think the level based just makes the game look longer and daunting, I just don't enjoy it. That said, for the most part this game wasn't bad once I got into the mindset of a Mega Man game and not a Metroid game. First boss wrecked me constantly until I got into Mega Man X mode. Then the rest of the game just kind of fell in place with me only needing to look up boss weaknesses. Final boss however, was absolute bullshit. I'll preface this with the statement about the Legacy Collection's Save assist mode which gives you checkpoints and what amounts to infinite lives. The final boss is split into 2 phases, both incredibly tough, no checkpoint between them... So in order to practice the second phase, you have to beat the first phase again, and the first phase is tough on its own. This is definitely something I would have enjoyed them modifying to put a checkpoint between the phases. Future games in this series I may turn on Casual Scenario mode, because this was just absolute bullshit and I enjoyed this game fairly right up until the end. I full on decided to abandon this game right at the final boss, but I was convinced to give it another try with a different strategy, still didn't work, made a strategy of my own adjacent to two strategies I had previously read, changed up the control scheme to go with the strategy and made it work after another 10 tries.
Rating: Soft pass overall, Hard pass on the final boss. Edit: Soft recommendation with Scenario Assist.
78.
Dark Souls Remastered (NS)
This wasn't necessarily on my list of games I planned to play this year, but a Discord I am on is doing a Game Club, nobody would pick the next game. Admin said whoever wrote up a description and such first, that would be the game. I wrote up a quick troll description for Skyward Sword because it's a running joke how much the admin hates SS, he said too bad, everyone's playing SS. I edited my post a few minutes later because it was still my post, I changed it to Dark Souls. That didn't make people much happier still. I even offered to be summoned and help people on most platforms and even offered to assist via voice chat/streaming/etc. So far only myself and one other person appear to be even giving the game a chance, which is really sad and kind of goes against the whole point of what gameclub was going for... giving games a chance that you've never played before. DS gets such a bad rap for being this incredibly tough game, and it is, but a lot of its difficulty is overcome via assistance, knowing what to do, and just practicing until you get better... and my offer to assist, I feel, could've made the experience really good for a lot of folks who made abandoned it once before or were hesitant to give the game a try due to its stigma. DS1 is one of my favorite soulsborne games, Sekiro being my favorite, and the game is great with friends. I actually talked to someone about Sekiro because it's my favorite and they never gave it a try because it has no single player, and their fun with these games is the co-op... it's something I didn't think about because I rarely play games online.
Rating: Solid recommendation
79.
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble (NSO)
I've never really played this game before. I'm sure I've told the story before, but I'll sort of give a quick run down again. I got this game for Xmas one year, probably the year it came out, but that xmas we went to Louisiana to visit family for xmas and didn't bring our SNES. My brother had to take a plane back home ahead of everyone else (we drove) because he had to go back to work, so he asked if he could take the game with him so he could play it since I couldn't play it anyway. By the time we got back home he had already pawned the game to buy alcohol and drugs. Never got to play it, my parents never rebought the game for me, and I only in recent years re-acquired the game, but still being so bitter about it never really got around to playing it. So after being super bitter about this game for over 20 years, I'm finally getting to play it. That being said, this game feels like a completely different game. The controls feel more refined and the graphics look much better. Mind you this game came out on SNES AFTER the N64 was already out. The world seems more open with the boat thing, but I'm not far enough into the game to really understand any of that stuff yet. I abandoned this game again back in 2019, bitterness is strong. Re-picked it up this year and played it on NSO instead now that it's on NSO, so I had to start over anyway. I didn't get what the bears were about as none of them did anything. I found 0 uses for the DK or Bonus coins, the bear coins could only be used at one shop and even then the items I bought did nothing. I might look it up, but it won't make a difference because I'm not going back and the game still didn't explain it. There's a reason this franchise went dormant for 10+ years and we never heard from Kiddy or Dixie ever again. This game isn't great, it tried to hard to be different, and just wasn't as fun as previous entries. A lot more could've been done with what they started to implement, but it just wasn't there.
Rating: Soft pass
80.
F-Zero (NSO)
I played F-Zero something (GP Legend?) on GBA years ago and I didn't enjoy it. It had a legit story mode and it got stupid hard some part way through. This one I expected more of the same, but this has no story, just MK style Grand Prix stuff. Burned through all of the races and consider the game beat even though there are no credits unless I guess you beat it on Master Mode which I'm not bothering with. The game introduces other elements like weather, magnets, road hazards, etc for increased difficulty in later levels and such. I honestly don't enjoy F-Zero in general, so it doesn't affect me that the franchise has been dormant for nearly 20 years.
Rating: Hard pass
81.
Bloodborne (PS4)
I started playing this after Dark Souls Remastered because my wife's cousin made mention he'd never played it before and I was like oh hell yeah, I love bloodborne and you can summon me, I'm on NG+ so I'll have to play a bit to be helpful (like beat a bunch of bosses and such so I can go anywhere they need). So I did most of Central Yarnham, Hemwick Lane, Old Yarnham, and a few other places. Even if I keep playing this, I'm not intending on beating the game as I just want a character build for summoning for folks. I forgot how much I really enjoyed this game. There are some scenarios of enemies being stupid OP. There is this one enemy that spawns for instance that spams a shotgun blast and has infinite ammo. If I'm relegated to holding 20 bullets max, enemies should have a max as well. They should not be allowed to just stay at a distance and spam bullets. There's a reason this one enemy has like 50 notes nearby talking shit about him. I barely beat the guy and I summoned an NPC to play bullet fodder mecca.
Rating: Solid recommendation.
82.
Q.U.B.E. (PS4)
As always, I'm looking for a game to play and wind up just skimming through PS+ stuff. I have Q.U.B.E. 2 on Switch and I've said to myself that I'm not playing it until I play through the first game. So another on a whim game. Plot is very meh on this game, even at the end with no real explanations or anything, it's just not very good. Gameplay is good enough. My statement is if you've never played Portal, just go play Portal. If you've played Portal and say to yourself that you want more puzzle platforming, give QUBE a go, but otherwise don't bother. The plot and dialogue isn't comparable to Portal in any way, but the puzzle platforming is pretty solid in this game, if even a little unforgiving at parts. I considered abandoning the game at some of the tougher puzzles, but I persevered and pushed through against what I wanted honestly.
Rating: Soft pass.
83.
Clannad: Side Stories (NS)
Clannad is one of my favorite animes, so I knew I needed this when it finally got announced. That said, I wasn't aware from the beginning that the game is basically an audiobook. No selections, you can't even choose the pace, it auto continues the text as if you're listening to an audiobook. You can rewind and stuff if you missed something, but there's basically no interaction with this game. This is basically for people like me who love Clannad and just want more story. It's a series of 16 absolutely not connected side stories in the Clannad universe. Some of the stories aren't canon of the true ending, because some of the stories take place during the plotlines of Tomoya dating different characters. That all said, I can't honestly recommend this unless you really click with the Clannad series and just want more. Otherwise there is absolutely no reason to play this. You definitely can't play this if you never played the full Clannad game. I don't think this requires any knowledge of Tomoyo After at least.
Rating: Hard pass.
84.
The Touryst (XS)
My AC went out and we basically lived in my son's room for half a week, and in that time we brought in a TV, portable AC, and my X1X. I saw a couple of games were leaving Game Pass, so I loaded them up and gave them a go. This wasn't the first one I played, but it was the first one I beat. Game is an puzzle platformer exploration game where you go through like 7 islands and do all the things it has to offer. No combat really, basically just mini-games and puzzle platforming sections. A pretty chill game overall. Pretty enjoyable short experience. One of the few games that has me puzzled like when I did Rogue Legacy, technically I played this on X1 and XS (as it has an XS version). I see no reason to mark it beat for both platforms on backloggery, because I really don't identify a difference between X1 and XS, which I guess the same could be said for cross-save PS4/PSV games, so maybe I should mark it as beat on both. Anyway, pretty fun game that I would recommend.
Rating: Soft recommendation.
85.
Undermine (X1)
The other game I played while the AC was out that is leaving Game Pass soon. I saw that the game is a roguelike game, sorta looked like Moonlighter gameplay wise (minus the shop mechanics), so I decided to give it a go because I had been enjoying roguelike games. Pretty enjoyable game overall, but I think I've been more enjoying metroidvania more than roguelike in general, but a zelda-esque dungeon crawler roguelike isn't bad so no real problems there. The enemies stealing money that you don't pick up quick enough is a very annoying mechanic. I think I would've been okay with it if it ended up with "oh, hey, thanks for "paying" us all this money, have this cool thing"... which thinking about it, there was an area that was driven by donations... I'm gonna google real quick and see if that's related... nope, so my statement stands... also reading about the place for donations, it's stupid that if you mess up you basically have to delete your saved data and start the entire game over if you want to try to get in that place. Honestly, I was gonna say this game isn't so bad, but reading that, I'm knocking it points for that bullshit. This game has 96 achievements, so it winds up with like 10 points each. I don't get the point of that, you're trying too hard.
Rating: Hard pass
86.
Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King (NS)
My wife just recently played this game and insisted that I play this after her. It wasn't a terrible game, but it just isn't that great of a game. It's a not very good LTTP clone. I won't make any direct comparisons as it's been a long time since I played Link's Awakening and I never actually finished LTTP, so it'd be hypocritical of me to try to make comparisons. At the very least I can say that this game doesn't have the QoL stuff you'd expect from a modern game, so very dated in many ways... LTTP it's like ok it's a SNES game, whatever, this is a modern game. The game uses very few buttons, so it makes most of my complaints particularly frustrating. The lack of strafing makes the game frustrating, too often you need to hit enemies in a specific direction and it'd make it so easy if you could lock facing a certain direction and move around (strafing). Teleporting is frustrating, it was so much worse for my wife. Teleporting is just a list of location, pick one and warp. It would have been a huge improvement to show a map to the side with the list and a little dot showing where on the map each entry related to. The map itself is frustrating, because you go to look at the map and it defaults to zoomed in on the center of the map, so you have to manually zoom out, and then find yourself... it should just be zoomed out by default and relatively centered on yourself. Items have no name or description, so there are a handful of items that I just never knew what they do because I'm not using a limited resource when I don't know what it does. I still don't know what the butterfly is for. Game has no way to run, eventually you unlock some shoes that let you dash, but the dash eats like a 3rd of your stamina. Stamina drains super fast, but refills painfully slow. It's probably not an exaggeration to say the stamina bar takes a full minute to refill. Most items are unlimited use, but use stamina to use. Boss fights heavily rely on items, so you hit the boss 2-3 times with whatever item and then dodge for a minute waiting for stamina to refill. As it is, boss fights aren't the usual rule of 3s, and bosses don't show health bars, so boss fights are frustrating. By the way, I mentioned dodging, no dash, no dodge roll, no running, it's just moving out of the way. Joycon drift/pro controller d-pad design make a lot of the more precision areas frustrating. We're talking walking over deteriorating floors over a chasm, but the labyrinth takes like a solid 2 minutes to get through, plus they throw enemies at you that either chase you, shoot at you, or just hover about. I suggested to my wife to play Ittle Dew after this because I felt Ittle Dew was a better Zelda clone, but she abandoned it pretty quickly because she felt it was too rigid and difficult. Might have to replay it to see if maybe my memory is incorrect regarding that game. This game wasn't unenjoyable, but there was a enough frustrating about it that I'd be surprised if one couldn't suggest a better Zelda clone easily. Oh and I entirely forgot, since the game only uses 3 face buttons, you've got a ton of buttons that could have been used for say, permanent upgrades/tools, or even letting you assign an item to each face button instead of just the 3.
Rating: Soft recommendation
87.
Later Alligator (NS)
This is another one my wife played that she insisted that I play after her. This one I had no hesitation because of how quickly she beat it. I was enjoying this game honestly, just a stupid little Visual Novel type of game with some mini-games strewn throughout. Some of the minigames are more of a joke than anything which is amusing, some minigames are like whatever, okay, sure. And then some minigames are just stupid. Played through the whole game and I was like I enjoyed this well enough that I'll playthrough NG+ basically to aim for 100% because the game is short enough and there didn't seem that much more content to hit. The first mini-game I hit after starting NG+, I failed it, and it locked the minigame/activity so I couldn't complete it. I'd have to playthrough and get to the next playthrough before I could have another chance... and if I mess up on the next playthrough, I'm having to commit to multiple playthroughs just to get through this one minigame. I turned off the game and deleted it from my system. This is by design for a steam achievement, well no achievements on Switch, so it just feels like a dick move. I get it, but I ain't having it. Don't give me a wholesome chill game and then lock something where if I mess up I gotta play through the whole game again, nothing chill about that. The game wasn't good enough to let me let that go. That aside, controls were too sensitive and made using a controller frustrating. Pretty much designed to have to use the touchscreen, which basically makes it feel like a phone game.
Rating: Hard pass.
88.
Nioh (PS4)
I've been thinking about playing this game a lot as I've heard the Soulsborne comparisons. After playing Dark Souls Remastered and playing Bloodborne a little, I finally decided to give this game a go as I wanted more Soulsborne and something new. So much to unwrap with this one. I wasn't enjoying it at first, but I gave it the good old college try and grew to like it, it just took a lot of adjusting as it really isn't a Souls clone... it's its own thing but it adds in some Souls elements, I expect that it's essentially Ninja Gaiden with some added Souls influence, but I've never played a Ninja Gaiden game, so it's just an assumption. So some observations re: souls, the controls in this game vary wildly from souls, dash and interact are swapped, interact is hold instead of press, attack is [] instead of the triggers, ranged attacks aim/fire a la FPS (L2/R2), almost any enemy can kill you quick and you can/will burn through your Ki (stamina) fighting a single enemy and
must leverage the ki pulse system (basically refills your stamina quicker), and no open overworld, strictly level based self contained maps. That said, playing this game, I put in a few hours and I'm done, I want to play something chill and just be done... but then I go to bed and wake up and I want more... I haven't yet decided if this is good or bad. As I played more, and even got some info from viewers in my twitch stream, I've liked this game more and more. I had the habit of never using the living weapon, to my detriment.. I also wasn't using magic/ninja skills to the best. Eventually I hit a boss where I was getting my ass handed to me over and over and over. I was about to give up and I looked up some stuff and I found out that all status effects work on bosses. I was so used to playing games where bosses are immune to status effect stuff, so I just never even tried. So I came up with this system where I hit sloth, defense down, attack down, spinning sword AOE, and attack up for myself... plus my guardian was adding damage to skills. So I wound up beating the boss in like 15 seconds. I thought it was a fluke, but I applied it to every subsequent boss and it wrecked house in most situations. I definitely plan to come back to this game and possibly even aim for the platinum if it doesn't have difficulty/ng+ based trophies.
Rating: Soft recommendation
Next List
