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.
22.
Night Driver (2600)
Just a basic driving game, drive for so many seconds and time runs out, that's pretty much it, there isn't much to this and doesn't really seem like there is much of a goal other than what's your score... but that's most games back in this era.
Rating: Hard pass
23.
Surround (2600)
Another 2600 game that was a favorite from my childhood. It's basically tron where you move and leave a trail behind you and you want to have your opponent hit someone's trail and crash.
Rating: Hard pass
24.
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe (2600)
4 layer, 4x4 tic tac toe. I lost a bunch of times because I didn't realize it was 4 in a row and not 3 in a row and then it took me some time to realize it could be 4 in a row in tons of dimensions. Good, but again, they probably have a more modern incarnation of this.
Rating: Hard pass
25.
Flag Capture (2600)
You've got to find the flag, you've got a grid of locations and you pick a spot and it gives you a hint to where the flag is, the flag, or a bomb. Another one that would be good to play with the kid.
Rating: Hard pass
26.
Concentration (2600)
Memory matching game, really that simple. Kind of violently loud when you're wrong... and when you're right. Honestly kind of terrible any way you look at it.
Rating: Hard pass
27.
Crash Bandicoot (NS)
I played the trilogy back to back over the weekend (Actually longer, but it felt like a long weekend because jury duty). I'm honestly having a tough time remembering specifics from each game. This game felt pretty short, afaik it was the same length of around 25 levels with boss fights, but the DKC style world map thing it felt shorter. Don't particularly care for that world map type of thing, I get annoyed by it for some reason. I think of the Crash games, this one is the hardest. It was okay for the most part but towards the end the levels got gruesomely difficult. This is probably the start of my franchise run of the Crash series. At least that's the plan, but I just realized that I don't own Crash Bash, so gotta figure that out... it is a spin off party game, so I could reasonably skip it, but I probably won't. It's not a terrible game, but I'm just not a fan of this style of platformer.
Rating: Hard pass
28.
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (NS)
Started up the second game and it goes to a nexus hub type of system with multiple rooms that lead to levels. This one felt just as difficult as the first one, so I can't say for sure, but I imagine it's at least a little bit easier as things generally are as QoL improves. I say this knowing that this remastered didn't really improve anything. This seems to be the game that establishes that Crash is a moron and is kind of the entire premise of the game that he's being tricked.
Rating: Hard pass
29.
Crash Bandicoot: Warped (NS)
Started this one up as soon as I finished the second, this one has a bit more compressed hub world and level structure. It has a bigger emphasis on voice acting I feel like. This is definitely the easiest of the 3 games as through out the whole game I don't think I game overed once and was constantly at like 20 lives and stuff. This game did introduce the racing levels though, which were ridiculously tough as you had to basically do a perfect run with a starting boost to win, and you have to win to progress the game... but the upside is it's impossible to die and lose lives on the level so you wind up grinding lives just trying to beat the level, which might be why I had so many lives the entire game.
Rating: Hard pass
30.
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled (NS)
Gave my kid the choice between this and starting Spyro trilogy and he wanted more Crash. For some reason my kid loves Crash, probably because he's dumb, wacky, and jumps around a lot. This didn't really have much to it though, 14 races, a couple of boss races, and that's about it. There's some other stuff to do completion wise, but that's the gist of the story mode. Unfortunately the majority of the game's unlockables are locked behind a coin system that you can either earn 30-100 coins per race or you can buy coins (microtransaction) and every unlockable costs 1000+ coins, so in beating story mode I earned enough coins to unlock 1 thing... plus the unlock store has a rotating inventory... it's just absolute garbage how much time you'd have to put into this game in general and over time in order to unlock characters... it feels like this should have been a games as a service thing rather than a paid game. The drift boost system I still don't fully get and the controls for this game are pretty wonky af. Honestly, I don't look forward to playing the other older Crash racing games, but I'm gonna try.
Rating: Hard pass
31.
Far Cry 6 (XS)
I need to do better about writing stuff about games as I play them. I've been playing this one for a while and I'm just now about to beat the game and I'm just starting to write stuff up about this. Thinking about previous Far Cry games, they were all very much a far cry in that you character was just suddenly some badass. Went back and looked and I guess most games you're not some joe nobody. Far Cry 3 I think in the game they state that your character was a soldier, but I also feel like he was just a frat party boy and Far Cry 4 you're character definitely wasn't a soldier. But 1, 2, 5, and 6 your character is definitely a trained soldier. This one specifically sounds like you were trained by the very people you're fighting against. Story is a bit incoherent and the characters are hit or miss. I got devastated at the death of one character, surprised at the non-death of another character, felt disconnected from whole groups of characters. Plus this game, I don't feel as connected with the world. I feel like previous Far Cry games I felt a personal incentive to explore and do all the things, this game, not so much. I went out of my way to unlock certain weapons and I've been doing certain side stuff to unlock fast travel points, but I don't feel the need to go do everything in the game like I've done in previous games. I enjoy the game for sure, but I'm just not feeling it to be honest. I won't say this one falls flat, but I'm just not feeling it. Also, it doesn't help that the entire soundtrack for this game is like tejano music... and I have a personal thing with tejano music because I live in Texas and my neighbors will blare tejano music at all hours and I hate it so much. I legitimately went into the settings and just set music to 0, so now cutscenes and stuff will have "Oh, let's dance." "Oh, that's some good music" or a character starts rapping, but there is no music playing so it's kinda fucking weird, but I'm not turning it back on. Not happening. If I was scoring this game like I was trying to do at one point, this game would get a big 0 for sound. This game has some stuff that irked me but I think I see why now. So first off, this game does a good job of connecting you with your character, previous Far Cry entries you were basically a faceless protagonist, but not only do you have a face and a voice, but you are in cutscenes and the game even does some stuff in 3rd person so you see yourself. Personally, I wish the game let you have the option of running that whenever you wanted, not that I'd do it, but I'd definitely want it for driving.
Rating: Soft recommendation
32.
Marvel's Avengers (PS5)
I'm still playing this, but I'm marking it beat for now because I did the original main campaign and got the credits to roll. I'm actually not sure I'll even continue because I tried to start the Hawkeye campaign and I couldn't figure out how to actually start working on it. On to notes about the game. I remember originally being hyped for this game before they showed anything because I like Crystal Dynamics work, then they showed off the game (of which I largely ignored it like I do) and heard a lot of complaints about how bland the characters are and how uninspired the gameplay is. I know a lot of folks were irked that they didn't try for MCU likenesses, but I get it and it doesn't bother me too much... what does bother me is that bland castings, don't get me wrong, I love Laura Bailey's voice and Nolan North, Willingblam, and NFT idiot whose name escapes me are very popular... but I'm sick of hearing their voices to be honest. They voice way too many people in games and I can't help but hear other characters instead of who I'm seeing, it just doesn't feel matchy or at least it feels too generic because these people voice everyone... and critical role didn't help, it really brought to the forefront just how overused these people are. I will always knock games points for using these overused folks, you could save yourself some money I bet going a bit lesser known and you'd get voices that aren't used in just about everything. That said, Willingblam has been voicing Thor in video games since 2013 and Laura Bailey has been voicing Black Widow since 2013 as well. Doesn't change that I'm sick of em. Speaking on the game itself though, it did have a lot of glitches towards the end. On the final mission one last enemy was stuck in a wall alive, so I couldn't progress because I had to "Secure the area" but I couldn't get the guy as he was stuck in an invincible animation. I wound up using all of my special moves and one of them actually knocked the enemy back out of the wall and I was able to proceed without having to start over thankfully. But then there were a lot of other issues where if I jumped right before one of those pre-animated sequences, the sequence and animation would start, but I'd be in mid air... so Captain America would start walking towards a computer, but he's floating 10 ft in the air. Or I'd start walking, but Captain America would do a falling animation and just slide across the floor until it decided to swap to a walking animation. Or an enemy broke and just slid around in a T pose. Goofy stuff. Weirdness and terrible voice choice aside... the next issue is the decision to go GaaS (Games as a service) really brought this game down. The game has this sort of artificial length to it that you need to grind out to get better equipment so you have to keep playing and there's constant daily/weekly stuff to incentivize continual play, but for me, it just encourages me to just burn through the game as fast as possible. If you tell me I've got to dump time over time to get anywhere good in a game, I expect I'm not going to enjoy your game because it goes from being fun to being a chore. So I just skip all of that extra content that could've just been good, because you had to corrupt the concept. And even ignoring that, in a given mission there are chests with equipment and such in them, equipment might not be good or better than what you have, so high likelihood of being a waste of time and then currency you earn by doing that is so little in comparison to buying a single item that I played through the whole game and didn't earn 10% of what it costs to buy 1 item and there are tons of items to buy. Again they expect you to dump hundreds of hours just to get 1 item when there are hundreds of items to acquire, no thanks. And I went into this game knowing that the costumes (purely aesthetics) were locked behind microtransactions, and I thought it's okay, who cares... but I found that I cared, if only because the base outfit you get for all characters really suck, but I'm not dumping money into a bad game just to get an aesthetically pleasing outfit. Some outfits can be unlocked, like 5 out of 50 total, but it's a huge slog of time over time to unlock, because you can only earn points daily/weekly and you need a ton of points... again GaaS garbage. They really leaned on it hard and it backfired imo. The final groin kick on this shit cake, to do the final mission, you have to grind out resources, and one of the resources is so rare that you could do 5 levels and not see the one enemy who drops what you need... and they still might not even drop it... and you need 2. So I burned through the game pretty quick, but then I had to replay 1 level 10 times to get the resources I needed to even start the final mission... that pissed me off. That all said, the story was okay, very comic book or at least tongue in cheek comic book? The characters were good enough, but definitely could've been better. None of this sufficient to really save the games failings. The only possible positive I can really say for this game, playing as Black Widow was quite good, you could really see that Crystal Dynamics leveraged their experience with the Tomb Raider franchise and made her gameplay quite good and fun. It makes me yearn for a Black Widow stand alone video game from the Crystal Dynamics folks. Not sure how they'd do it, but I think it could be quite good fun. I'll just continue dreaming on that though as it'll never happen... plus does Laura Bailey really need more voice work? After a bit of reading I've come to the conclusion that there is some post game story content I missed that maybe I'll go see about doing before I really jump into the 3 add-on campaigns.
Rating: Hard pass.
33.
The Medium (XS)
I started this game last year shortly after the game's launch, but I inadvertently abandoned it pretty quickly. I don't remember what was going on, but my interests and priorities shifted and I just didn't make time to play it anymore. I had streamed the game once or twice and I had intended on continuing streaming the game when I picked it back up... but I just didn't. I had been feeling good pain wise, so I was planning on it, but the day I actually went to play it again I was hurting a lot and just couldn't be bothered. I couldn't even be bothered to do a no commentary stream just directly streaming from my xbox. I wish I had, because I did play for hours straight and it would've been fine, but I just didn't. 2 daily sessions of playing this at night and I managed to finish it. The game is almost a good survival horror spooky type of game for me, it's pretty low stakes as combat is few and far between, but the "combat" is you running from a monster. I've never really been a fan of the Crash/Uncharted running from/towards the camera thing, but I deal. There isn't a lot in this game that will kill you, but dying can be very frustrating outside of the monster sequences, because if you die, you have to redo everything. I could give this game so much more credit if it at least saved you collecting items and hearing dialogs, but you have to redo everything. Additionally, the monster sequences, if you die, you have to sit through the full death animation, loading screen, and the enemy's monologue before you can get back to it. So one of the final monster sections, you're sitting there for a full minute before you can play and potentially die in like 3 seconds. These two things are so inconvenient to the process that I can't put it on my top 5 even this early in the year. The story is pretty good, but the ending is left pretty open which is fine and all, but it's not something I usually enjoy. I like closure, good or bad. Additionally, the game feels more Syberia point and click than Silent Hill survival horror, just about the entire game feels very at your own pace except for when the monster shows up, and it's nothing like Nemesis or Mr. X in RE, it's scripted little sequences between certain areas. Basically the game feels more like a suspenseful point and click than a survival horror game. The game isn't even that scary so much as just creepy. Without getting into spoilers, the game does pretty well to make you feel vulnerable at certain points and powerful at other points and it works pretty well within the context of the story.
Rating: Soft pass.
34.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (NS)
Started this one up shortly after finishing Crash Team Racing. This one has a lot of quality of life changes that are truly appreciated. Like the unlimited lives concept so I can just keep retrying over and over without having to worry about starting the entire level over again. The game even seems like it has dynamic checkpoints, so if you can get through one part easy but another part is giving you trouble, the game will generate a checkpoint between the two sections so you don't have to keep redoing the easy part. I really appreciated that once I noticed what the game was doing. Every level you 100% complete unlocks you an outfit, which is incentive to 100% individual levels, but personally I'd rather a store where I can spend gems so I can pick and choose outfits and such, but I won't nitpick because it's whatever. I don't actually care too much about the outfits for this game, unlike Avengers where I felt compelled to have outfits I couldn't have. I'm not going to 100% a single level so it's whatever. The game unlocks some features over time to encourage you to replay levels which is nice and almost cool way of convincing players to spend more time in the game. It won't work on me, but I appreciate it. They add tough "throwback" levels, they add in secondary characters that you can play as in certain levels. When Tawna showed up I kind of lost it, she's such a cool character both in looks and in gameplay. I even went and played a level or two as Tawna but realized it was just secondary content not important to completing the game and went about my business... kind of wish I could swap her in and play as her instead of Crash or Coco, but it's whatever. Just kind of breezing through the game at this point. The last 3 levels, it's ridiculous, I died like 60 times per level, right at the end of the level. It would be insane to play this game not on casual mode. And then the final boss was actually pretty enjoyable, but the previous levels were harder. The checkpoints for boss fights legitimately makes boss fights trivial, but I don't mind. I want to say hard pass, but this game has a ton of content to be quite honest.
Rating: Soft pass.
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