52 Games Challenge 2022

[vivigamer]

36. Dino Crisis 2 (PS1) 21/07/2022

A MUCH better game than the previous game, no more 2-keycard solutions for ever door or fingerprint scanning nonsense! This game ramps up the action to 11 and it benefits so much from it! I was surprised by the variety of extra mini-games involved which acted as a better mechanic to puzzles. The sotry was also much more compelling and I liked how the setting was thrown into the mix of time travel. The combat is very gun-ho and I killed more dinosaurs in the 1st couple of maps than the entire previous games. I did find that the increase of enemy encounters lead to being attacked by off screen enemies that would respawn quickly. But beyond that, combat was great and much more engaging. The ending was a bit of a let down, I reckon it could have done with a better epilogue sequence - As I heard neither 3 nor 'Dino Stalker' address the ending of this game.

Overall very positive though and I think if they remade DC 1 & 2 A proper follow up to DC 2's ending would be a great idea! But a lot of work still needs to be put on the predecessor and it's overbearing puzzle mechanics.

[gngtiger]

10: Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (360) 7/22/22

I'm really fulfilled now that I've completed this game. This was the very first Lego video game I ever played, and gave me my completionist mentality with games in general. I think it's more condensed and a better experience then Lego Batman One. The hub world was the first truly open world in a Lego video game, and the first with voice acting. A really pleasant experience, and one I recommend highly. Especially of you like DC or Lego.

[kamikazekeeg]

19 - Holocure (PC 2022) - ENDLESS - I decided to take some time away from Vampire Survivors to let it get more updates and then ended up playing Vampire Survivors, but with vtubers lol It's good though, it's a fan game, but it does everything Vampire Survivors does, but I think the art is abit nicer in general and it has some of its own gimmicks (It's based abit on another game too, but I don't know anything about that).  I think I put like 5 to 10 hours into it and I'll put more in as things are eventually added.  Definitely recommend if you want more of what Vampire Survivors does.

20 - Hell Let Loose (PC 2021) - ENDLESS - Needed a decent shooter as I'm just barely managing to scrape by with Battlefield 2042 and with the recent sale on it and it playing decent on my PC, seemed like the right time.  Very solid shooter, more hardcore than I tend to play more often than not, but it's not so hardcore that it feels tedious like Squad could feel like to me. I tried playing back before it release, but it had some real rough optimization, but plays very decent now.  I'm still very much learning the game as there's a lot of depth and I'm just focusing purely on the infantry game as there is a lot to learn for squad leaders, dealing with the supply system, running a tank, etc...

[kashell]

41. Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman

I almost gave up after seeing how the last boss was insanely overpowered. I tried again, making sure to leave my equipment off and killing every enemy I came across so I could arrive to the tenth floor with a boost. When I got to the final floor, I equipped my gear, took down the enemies with remaining throwable items, got to the last boss, activated the speed boost, and went to town. Thank the gaming gods I had an auto-revive chip. Overall, cool game. While forgiving for a rogue-like, it still pulls the usual NISA bulls*** with it expecting the player to grind.

[kashell]

42. Omori

Too pretentious and artsy-fartsy to be enjoyable. I should have known that I wasn't going to like this. Combat was neat after a few hours, but the game just wouldn't get to the damn point - dangling the big reveal in front of me at every chance only to snatch it away and make me go through more BS. Oh well. It's always good to try new things.

[tripredacus]

10. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Something I actually was looking forward to play each day even if I couldn't. I liked it better than SoTN for sure. Got stuck a few times and had to go do side quests or try to get materials to make things or rank up shards. So basically had to level up and I think maybe each time I ran into one of those tough bosses I ended up beating them later being overleveled. I had to use walkthroughs and the steam forums a bit to figure out some things, where to go and especially how to get something other than the bad ending. I only got the first bad ending (game over) where you kill Gebel but not the second bad ending. I'm not sure I can get that one now without starting over. I beat this and got credits and resumed the save. I still have to beat the OD boss but I will need to work on some other grinding first because he destroys me easily. Maybe I will try to get all of the achievements, maybe except the complete the monster or shard list because I'm not sure I can win the Ninja race to get his shard.

[Cartagia]

Finally hit credits on Assassin's Creed Valhalla yesterday.  My most disliked game in that series in a while.  It's too long and too bland.  Odyssey was too long, but it had interesting mission and story variety.  Eivor is pretty solid as far as protagonists in AC go, but they are surrounded by total snoozes.  I also love they they absolutely do not care about the Templar / Assassin conflict, but the game doesn't do anything interesting with it.  All the optional side activates are lame, and the cities are crushingly samey.  A shame, because I thought Origins and Odyssey did a lot to liven up the franchise.

[kamikazekeeg]

21 - Mega Man Zero 1 (Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection 2020) - BEAT - Kind of a mixed bag with this game.  The gameplay is generally fine, I like that since it's not about taking stuff from bosses, Zero has his blaster that will upgrade with use, along with three melee weapons that do the same.  The Cyber-Elves are pretty awful though, I hate how they are designed.  You get ones that are single use or ones that you have to feed, which unlocks them, and they give permanent boost from what I've gathered, but the issue is that you earn very little crystals to feed them doing missions, which forces you to grind in a farming spot to get the crystals you need. 

I think I only ever upgrade two Cyber-Elves because it's such a boring process and I only did one of them because it boosted my health bar as there's no pickups in the game that boost you otherwise.  I wouldn't have beaten the last boss without it.  In the scheme of things, farming the spot for an hour would probably give me what I need, I just hate that.  Grinding doesn't bother me in some games, but in a game that's meant to be like a snappy 3 hour experience roughly, a grind is just boring padding. 

Also thank goodness for the save assist in this collection, it made the game more tolerable as it's so easy to die.  I actually wasn't liking the game at the start because it felt like I was dying way quicker than in previous Mega Man game, not that I think it's particularly harder.  I used save states in previous Mega Man games, usually before boss fights, and the save assist system might be a tad lenient, but I enjoy the games more this way as they can be very unforgiving at times.

Not the best start to this series, but I'm hoping they get better.

[undertakerprime]

10. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Something I actually was looking forward to play each day even if I couldn't. I liked it better than SoTN for sure. Got stuck a few times and had to go do side quests or try to get materials to make things or rank up shards. So basically had to level up and I think maybe each time I ran into one of those tough bosses I ended up beating them later being overleveled. I had to use walkthroughs and the steam forums a bit to figure out some things, where to go and especially how to get something other than the bad ending. I only got the first bad ending (game over) where you kill Gebel but not the second bad ending. I'm not sure I can get that one now without starting over. I beat this and got credits and resumed the save. I still have to beat the OD boss but I will need to work on some other grinding first because he destroys me easily. Maybe I will try to get all of the achievements, maybe except the complete the monster or shard list because I'm not sure I can win the Ninja race to get his shard.

Bloodstained helped get me through recovery from heart surgery, and it’s the only game I’ve been motivated to platinum. After recently replaying Symphony of the Night, I find myself debating which I like better. It really was worth the extra time Iga took to polish it.

Just keep trying, you’ll win the ninja race eventually. Try using your shards in creative ways…for example, you can use the Reflector Ray shard to constantly teleport ahead.

[Cartagia]

Finally got around to playing a Kirby game.  Can't say that I cared for Kirby's Adventure.  Imprecise slippery controls, bland simple level design.  Maybe they've gotten better with time.

[kashell]

43. .hack//G.U. Vol. 1//Rebirth

A really cool game and the start of what looks like will be a neat tale. The end of the game was indeed a cliffhanger, but I'm good holding off on the next volume for a few weeks while I play other things. I started the second volume just to convert my data, get a save file, etc. but I won't fully commit until later.

[tripredacus]

12. Batman: Arkham Origins (abandoned)

I knew by just looking at the option after I launched the game that this was going to be a problem. But before getting to why it was abandoned after 5.3 hours, I can talk about some positive things.

First thing to note is that the game has defaulted to home theater for audio setting and it actually worked properly. A lot of games either don't support a true surround setting, have the sounds done correctly and/or it runs in software mode. The presentation was good and I did really like that you could just go around the city basically anywhere you wanted. I liked the idea of the collectibles and the extra content.

Middling things... the game does not necessarily tell you how to do everything. Or in reality it uses a tutorial system and will only tell you how to go about certain things until the point in the story where the developers decide, aka some thing you have to do to advance the story. This is an issue because after the tutorial area, the game immediately puts you into the open world where you can find these things and when you do encounter them, either an option won't be present or it doesn't have any hint as to what to do. Such as being able to throw the batarang through electricity and have it hit a box to open a door or container. There are also things that you find that I had found you couldn't do anything with until you get an upgrade, but there is no notification that you can't do whatever. I can hear you say about how games don't need to tell you anything, but this game tells you everything else and certainly it would be putting up prompts had I gotten to those tutorial segments in the MQ. Also, Batman can't go into water, ever. And Gotham has no people in it besides gang members.

Despite being open world, the game does not actually offer you the ability to be creative in solving situations. There are some fights where it is just not possible to full stealth it. Maybe it is because there is an enemy with a gun and the game wants to tell you how to use some mechanic. And then what happens is that most of the fights against enemies that are not low tier are actually scripted. You have to defeat them in a certain way and not any other way. And for a game with a stealth mechanic, not actually being able to stealth 100% of the time seems like a waste, especially since most fights are annoying to begin with. The first real boss fight against Deathstroke showed my fears from looking at the options menu at the beginning. You have to fight that boss the way the game wants you do, and then it becomes a quick-time event simulator. And with all of the different skills you can unlock, you get more and more options for button combinations you can do making things even more tedious.

I was willing to push forward only with one answer: cheats. And unlike a lot of games there are cheats available BUT only if you have DLC. I didn't have any and I looked and found there was one DLC for $2 I could get. Then I read that you pretty much needed the Season Pass for the cheats to work and I wasn't willing to even try to see if the $2 DLC would have been enough.

There was one good glitch I encountered. There is a part where you have to go onto Penguin's boat and when you get there, Batman says to himself that he needs to take out the two snipers. Only the back half of the boat has enemies on it. One sniper is in a tower and the other is at the middle of the boat on a container. In between them are 6 others with machine guns. I took out the one on the tower with stealth. Then I snuck around to the middle of the boat and took out the guy on the container. Then I saw a pickup on the front half of the boat and went to pick it up. On my way to there I hear "I'm OK!" and this was the sniper on the container waking up. Then I pick up the intel item. Then I hear a bunch of screams. Looking on the detective vision I see that all of the enemies on the deck of the ship (including the container guy) all suddenly clipped through the ship and fell into the bottom of the map and died. Sure made that section easy.

Next I will retry getting Wolfenstein The New Order to run on my computer.

[kashell]

44. DDR Max: Dance Dance Revolution

Today was a good day. So, I decided to dance about it. After going through nine songs it's clear that I'm very, VERY out of practice. Or my dance pad is janked. Or a combination of the two. Either way, it was fun to cut a rug for an hour.

[kashell]

45. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

The game is adorable as can be, but man. Something about the controls just feels off. I feel like I need a second player at all times for the boost jump since, even with Klonoa's "double jump" he has the hardest time getting any air. I hope I have more fun with Klonoa 2. That was the first one I ever played.

[Cartagia]

After beating the remake of Battle for Bikini Bottom (which is a solid 3D collectathon platformer) I popped in the remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater thinking I was just gonna cruise through the campaign, and I just found the short time limit goal oriented levels kind of insufferable.  It's fun to do a free play and just skate around, but I couldn't do the strict limitations of the campaign.