Main ListPrevious Listbold games are games that have been beaten, previously beaten, or are unbeatable.
italicized games are in progress.
standard games are games I am not currently trying to beat.
strikethrough games are games that have been abandoned.
153.
Unpacking (X1)
I was bored and looking at recent releases on Game Pass and my wife saw me looking at this game and was like "Yes, buy that, I need that". I had to explain Game Pass and that she could just go play it on Xbox or PC. She watched me play a bit, said it looked like a good game, but watching me play stressed her out because I was putting stuff where she wouldn't. It's interesting thought that such a zen game could cause such anxiety lol. Game play is pretty lax and wholesome and zen, but then once everything is unpacked, you get the little warnings that things need to go in an appropriate place. This mostly came down to "I don't know what that is" or "I have no clue where you want this to go, seems like it could go anywhere". I only had 1 situation where I was just entirely baffled as to what they wanted me to do. It was right at the end too, but I had a laundry basket that it kept telling me no no matter where I put it. Eventually I swapped it with the laundry basket in the restroom and put the restroom basket in the bedroom and it was happy. baffling. Story seems largely to be one where you make your own inferences and/or assumptions, I'm not big on that personally, but I get it for a game like this. As much as I want to talk about it, it'd be spoilers, but know this is a game I'd love to chat a little bit about. That said, the ending and the less obtuse parts of the story were expected things for me, they are staples of wholesome indie games to the point that it's a cliché. Overall the game is short and sweet, honestly, I'd recommend it.
Rating: Soft recommendation.
154.
Mario Party Superstars (NS)
I don't know why I never wrote up about this game. I consider it beat, but I guess I just must have been busy or really hurting to miss writing up something about it. There is no story mode a la Mario Party 1+ which is a bummer, I enjoyed playing the single player story mode, I think they even had co-op stuff. Also, all minigames are unlocked from the start, so there is no incentive to keep playing other than to play which is another bummer. Mario Party games for me were always about unlocking content through playing. Don't get me wrong, you play to play with folks, but it was additional incentive and I consider that "content" and as such this game really has no content or reason to play other than hey let's play mario party. It plays well and it's great nostalgia, but it's one of my least favorite Mario Party games, just above the ones where you all move together :shudder:
Rating: Soft pass.
155.
Forza Horizon 5 (XS)
Gosh, I went too long without updating stuff here, so I might not have much useful to say strictly out of just not remembering. Started this game day one because I love the Horizon series. It's pleasant to go back to driving on the right side of the road, both 3 and 4 were left side of the road and I'm glad I didn't start this game being used to the other way still. Big expanse open world, I'm always so curious how it stacks up to the real world, are the roads the same, are the towns and such the same, who knows, not I. Unlike last entry, I actually took part a bit in the seasons stuff and did some things, it's novel, but some of the requirements are a bit too strict while not being exactly clear enough and the season championships I get confused and have no clue what races to do. Plus, it feels like there are too few ways to earn the Forza Points and such for rewards, but I guess that's their way of getting you to play over time because new stuff drops daily/weekly. Story has you being the festival champ from the UK, which I don't think you were the champ from Australia or anything, but it seems to have a bit of continuity and even references previous festivals and people which is nice. Graphics are good, but it doesn't feel much better comparing 4 and 5 jumping from X1 to XS, but again, I think we're both early this gen and we're so far along computationally that things can't really get much better can they. I love the Horizon series, so I'll always recommend the latest entry.
Rating: Soft recommendation
156.
Haven (XS)
Another game leaving game pass that has been on my backlog of games to give a try. I'm always annoyed by games leaving Game Pass, but games leaving gives me incentive to finally play the game, which otherwise I might not have bothered to try. Haven is definitely one I would've tried to play eventually, but the next game on this list definitely never would've been given a chance. I put myself in a potentially dangerous situation with these games too, what if I like Haven so much that I'd want it forever? Physical release already came and went, leaving game pass, so do I pay secondary market or do I just go digital? Well, luckily this isn't that great of a game and personally I feel it has little replay value. The character conversations are quite nice, there's drama and bickering and things are never perfect, just like a real relationship. The gameplay isn't great, the cleaning things up is sort of zen, the combat really requires coordination and timing which can get tedious and annoying. There was at least one optional boss I did that kicked my ass for the better part of an hour because I just couldn't do damage to him because as soon as I killed his minions, he spawned more minions, and I can't target him until his minions are gone, but I guess that was a situation to spam the charge items. The only thing I knew about this game, and I presume at this point it was inaccurate, is that the game featured sex I guess, I think I heard people refer to it as that sex game or something. The characters are romantic with each other obviously, but the sex is never more than an implication, so I don't really get what people were getting at with the comments. The dystopian nature of the story is a little interesting, but I feel that they don't go into enough detail into the how's, why's, and what's of the world's history, which is a shame and definitely takes away from my overall interest and ability to recommend the game, because you're just getting this contained story that's really just about these two characters. As it is, the game has two endings, 1 ending is very detailed and distinct about events, and the other ending is very much open ended and I guess leads to more entries in the series, so obviously the open one is the canon ending because I imagine they are working on a sequel, because why wouldn't they.
Rating: Soft pass.
157.
Morkredd (XS)
Another game leaving game pass. I don't think it was on my list and it wasn't one I was particularly interested in, but it leaving game pass, I gave it a try. HLTB gave it like 1-2 hours time so I was definitely like I'll give this a go. I got a little less than 50% of the way through the game (the game tells you your progress in the pause menu) and said to myself "well, you're halfway done, might as well commit" and pushed myself through the rest of the game. Some of the game play concepts are fairly novel, but it's still just a sort of frustrating puzzle game. I played solo because my wife wanted to play Dark Souls, I'll talk about that elsewhere, and I didn't really want to interrupt that or sabotage beating this game in time by trying to fit it in with her... plus I could see this game being extremely frustrating for her and I have no clue if this game lets you swap between solo and co-op, achievements make it sound like a no. The game was mostly fine solo, until it got to a part where you needed to move from left to right, both characters top and bottom on the left side of the orb pushing, very very easily the controls became unintuitive and you just die because you can't remember which stick controls which character. I nearly quit at that part. There were also some other parts that wound up unintuitive that I was concerned might become unsurmountable for me, but I managed eventually. The game did wind up short in that I earned the achievement for beating the game in under 120 minutes, so that worked out. The final section of the game was frustrating, but novel, and I quite enjoyed it. It's almost a completely different game at that point and that game would've been a rather fun game... but that all said, I honestly can't recommend this game. It's not very fun, the mechanics gets frustrating, too frustrating, and there is basically no story.
Rating: Hard pass
158.
Dark Souls Remastered (NS)
This is another case of a game I already beat this year, but I'm playing through it again. I did this with Sekiro a couple of years back and I really had nothing to add the second time around, but this time around the situation is different. My wife was finally convinced to play Dark Souls, which is insane because my wife rarely plays video games and she doesn't play tough games. I really don't recall what finally convinced her. It was slow to start and she was hating it, but it's growing on her. She had the issue she had with Skyrim when she tried to play that game, she just doesn't get the using the shoulder buttons to attack as opposed to using something like 'X'. She also had the issue that she's just not very good with the right stick in games, it's not intuitive for her, it's why she prefers PC gaming in general. She had a few instances of dying and just being like this game is garbage and I'm done. Especially situations with tough platforming or cheap enemies. But she's getting much better to the point that she and I are doing fights just the two of us and she's staying alive and I started a new character and she's going back and helping me pull my new character through the game and she's having little to no trouble assisting. She will make her complaints on occasion but she wants to play every single day and she's finally coming to terms with the fact that dying and losing all of your souls isn't the end of the world because you can always get more souls. I'm really proud of her. I started a new build that is a squishy sorcerer, which is something I've never really done in a Souls game, so it's an interesting experience and while I'm playing with her on Switch, I started playing on Xbox One as well and I'm taking this knowledge with me in that build as well, but I'll detail that separately. Right now we've managed to get to the point that she only has the last lord soul (Seath) and then we can either beat Gwyn or do some other side stuff. We're pretty close to being done, so the conversation is "Will you play Dark Souls 2/3?". The problem being they aren't on Switch and we don't own multiple copies of those games. Now I do own 2 Xbox Ones in essence, so I could just go out and buy Scholar and Fire Fades and we can play, but DS2 is kinda garbage and Switch works because I can play handheld while helping and anything else will require multiple TVs.
Rating: Fantastic second playthrough, Highly recommended
159.
Test Drive Unlimited 2 (360)
I started this game years and years and years ago. No clue why I never finished it, maybe it was Forza Horizon? Like I know I didn't get TDU2 at launch, so time progression, maybe it was around that time. I've always had it in my head that Forza Horizon was a spiritual successor to TDU in general, so maybe I jumped from one to the other. It looks like the last time I played TDU2 was Nov 19th 2011 (10 years ago
) and I can see Skyward Sword came out the next day. So there ya go, I jumped to another game and just forgot to come back and then Forza Horizon happened. This game isn't bad, but it's definitely dated. Part of my comment comes from how much Forza has spoiled me; the driving line, the rewind feature, the better camera work, map system, and world. That said, this game does a lot of what Forza does and I'd argue that this game's world map is way bigger than any Forza game, I'm probably wrong, but it certainly feels bigger. But apparently I dropped this game at the last championship and cup, so I really didn't have much left to do "story" wise. There is still plenty to do and still plenty that I would've been able to do had I played before the servers went down, but I'll just be done with finishing all of the championships/cups. What's nuts to me is how much I consider this a predecessor to Forza, but like this came out like a year before Horizon, so Horizon was definitely in development before this even released.
Rating: Soft recommendation, but like only as a dated example of a good game pre-Forza, otherwise play Forza.
160.
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (PS1)
I bought a couple of busted PS3 slims and one said the only issue was it couldn't read blu-rays so I tested with an extra ps3 game and an extra ps1 game. PS3 didn't load as expected, PS1 loaded as expected. So I played through this. It wasn't on my backloggery and it really has no story mode, it's just a free race kinda game. I did a couple of races, so I'm considering it "beat" because there really isn't much else to it, plus I played this a ton as a kid and I hadn't marked it on backloggery. Fun enough, plays well enough, just not much in the way of content.
Rating: soft pass.
161.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (NS)
Out of the blue I decided to play this again, I wanted to finally play with the DLC characters that I paid for. I wound up doing classic mode and I wound up not even playing with DLC characters because compulsively I wanted to clear all of the characters and I was insisting on doing it in order. I think I may have actively made myself, right at the end, play with Sora once, but after I beat it with Sora I said "Eh, I've had enough of this, I'll go play something else" So I probably played for like 5 hours or something, cleared Classic with 10+ characters, and called it a day.
Rating: Highly recommended
162.
Naughty Bear (360)
I'm pretty sure I bought this game at launch. I thought I had gotten all the way to like the end of the game and just dropped it, but apparently I only got about half way through the game before I dropped it. Not even sure why I dropped it, I feel like I might have felt like the game was frustrating, but playing it now, it's fun. It reminds me of Party Hard, sneak around and murder everyone without getting killed. Lots of fun traps and weapons. Apparently there was DLC for the game and I guess it all got delisted, so I've only got up to episode 8 because I guess that was free and I never bought 9-10. I think I have the gold edition on PS3, so maybe I'll replay it one day and do the DLC, maybe even play Panic in Paradise because I think I have that on PS3 as well. Don't get me wrong, it's not a good game overall, but as a sort of guilty pleasure revenge murder simulator, it's pretty great. Honestly, I'd recommend it strictly as a sort of bonkers interesting kind of game, and it plays well.
Rating: Soft recommendation
163.
The Punisher: No Mercy (PS3)
I bought a couple of busted PS3 systems with the intent of trying to hack them so I could play delisted or otherwise inaccessible games. Managed to finally get around to it and I loaded up this one. I really knew nothing going into this game other than it was an oddity that it wasn't reviewed well and wasn't very superheroey. Real short one this one in that there are only 4 levels to story mode, and it's almost Unreal Tournament style story mode, you just get deathmatches with specific enemies and goals. First one is a team deathmatch first to 50, second is kill 150 enemies, third is regular deathmatch 1st to 40 kills, fourth is a wave based level with limited lives. I saw a review refer to the game as aggressively mediocre and that's pretty apt.
Rating: Soft pass
164.
Dark Souls III (X1)
I wasn't planning on marking this one beat until we actually beat it again, but I'm aware that I'm not going to beat the game again. I'm going to do the same as Dark Souls Remastered and get myself to the final boss to assist my wife and then I'm going to stop and leave the character as a character to be summoned to help folks. My wife beat Dark Souls Remastered and decided that she wanted to keep playing and that she'd play more Souls games, everyone convinced her to skip DS2, but I bought an additional copy of the game regardless, so maybe we'll play that eventually. My wife has been playing through this and I've been running through slightly ahead of her so she doesn't have to worry about assisting me. We're currently at the tail end of the game, maybe just past halfway through.
165.
Ice Climber (NSO)
Really only picked this game to hit 1985 in my list of games by year, because why not. It was hard to find info on this game and everything I read said you beat the game at Mountain 32, but when I talked to people they were like "Uh, doesn't that game loop like Donkey Kong?" and I really didn't have an answer. Having now done Mountain 32 and 33, I can tell you it loops after 32. Shortish game, just a platformer with annoying controls and physics, but it is what it is you know because it is a nearly 40 year old game.
Rating: Hard pass.
Next List