Main 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.
1.
Call of Duty 3 (360)
Started this one before the new year in hopes that I'd beat it before the new year, but I didn't beat it in time. The Call of Duty games are weird to me, achievement wise, CoD2, 4, and World at War all have Veteran difficulty achievements, but CoD3 doesn't, just has beating the game on a specific difficulty. So this one I didn't even bother playing on anything but Easy. Again not a big fan of World War shooters, so I'm kinda just breezing through this. Nothing noteworthy or special about this one I think.
Rating: Hard pass
2.
Cats in Time (PC)
I started this one last year and had been playing it on my Steam Deck. It plays well enough, but it definitely needs the precision of playing with a mouse as opposed to using the touchscreen, playable, but annoying. Anyway, simple enough puzzles, interesting enough puzzles, and the game will give you video hints built in if you get stuck and want help. A fantastic puzzle experience. The only downside is the final, secret level is locked behind finding all of the bits of paper throughout the levels and they definitely do not give you hints for that, so you've got to go elsewhere and even then, finding all of the bits of paper doesn't unlock the secret level, it just gives you the info to solve a secret puzzle at the main menu to get to the secret puzzle. Needless to say, I didn't do the secret puzzle because I just don't care enough to go find 100+ bits of paper.
Rating: Soft pass
3.
Pupperazzi (X1)
Saw this was leaving Game Pass and I've had it installed on my xbox since release day. So I loaded it up and started playing it. It's a pretty fun simple mindless little game and it's really short too. I'd dump more time into it honestly, and I might too, but I'd just be doing it for achievements or something. I got what I wanted out of the game, it's cute, but that's about it.
Rating: Soft pass
4.
Call of Duty: World at War (360)
Started this one up almost immediately after finishing the 3rd game. I do have the CoD series listed out for a franchise run, but I'm thinking I'm not gonna bother with that, I just want mindless gameplay for a bit. But if I do commit to doing it franchise run, I need to go back and play the first game and the spin offs for the first handful of games. That said, the reason I'm not committing to aiming to complete the franchise run is that I don't own any of the recent couple of games, but once (if) Microsoft completes their acquisition of ABK, the games will all inevitably find their way on Game Pass, in which case I can commit to finishing the franchise run, but for the time being I don't want to start to commit to the project when I know I can burn through these games relatively quickly (even though there are like 20 of them). Anyway, started doing this one on Veteran mode because of the achievements, got maybe 5 levels through and decided that I was just spending way too much time on this game dying and reloading on Veteran when I could be playing on Easy and just burning through the game. Like I got to a point where I was just dying over and over and over and spending like an hour on a bit that should take 5 minutes otherwise, so I got through, beat the level, popped the achievement, and then dropped the difficulty. Will I come back and get the achievements, probably not, but I made an effort. I think I had the same problem with CoD4, I started working through and then got to like All Guillied up and just said fuck it. After finishing this, I took a quick look at Black Ops doesn't have the same difficulty achievements structure this game and CoD2/4 have.
Rating: Hard pass
5.
Nioh (PS5)
I beat this last year (or maybe the year before) and now that I have the PS5 version with the DLC, I decided that I'd pick it back up and check out the DLC. I played a little bit relearning the systems because I knew it had complex stuff that I wouldn't remember. Then I loaded up the first DLC level. I saw it said Level 155 and I was like I think I remember that being meaningless, so whatever... Everything kept one shotting me, but I made it all the way to the boss of the level and then the boss kept one shotting me so I'm just like what the fuck. I look it up, you're supposed to be level 155 to beat the level, I'm only level 104, so I'm super underleveled. I think I recall that this game doesn't do like Dark Souls where no matter what you level up, your defense increases, in this defense is a specific stat, but largely controlled by your armor, so yes, I need to level up, but I also need to get higher level equipment. My weapons are maxed (I assume) at lvl 150, but my armor is all relatively low. I'm really considering saying fuck it and just starting Nioh 2, but I really want to give this more of a try. So I went and did some earlier stuff that I skipped, but I'll pick it up again later and try and do more of the side content I missed, but regardless, you can't even start the easiest DLC stuff until lvl 150 and I'm only lvl 100, so I've got a lot of grinding to do to get to where I can even reasonably start the DLC and I'm not happy about that. I watched some videos and got myself to a point that I found a level that I could earn 2-6million amrita in a run, that's great except I need 3-4million amrita to level up, so yeah, I can level up like 3 times in 2 runs... maybe. Anyway, I managed to get through the main missions of the 1st DLC and I'm sitting at level 168 right now, so lots of grinding to get me where I am. That said next DLC starts at like level 180, NG+ is 165-180... and DLC 3 starts at like 215. Way too much grinding to be able to get into the extra content, so I'm taking a break. Hopefully Nioh 2 has better pacing, I don't know if I can bother with the rest of this game... but I will jump into Nioh 2 eventually.
6.
Need for Speed: Payback (X1)
I decided after the frustration and stress of Nioh I wanted a racing game and it occurred to me that there are so many NFS games that I've skipped over the last decade that I'd finally hop back in. I actually played NFS (2015) first, but remembered that it does pause and abandoned it pretty quickly. I've since picked it back up, but I'll get into that later. This game is interesting in so many ways. Firstly, this game refers back to previous NFS games, like almost setting up a shared universe, which I think is really cool. Like it makes references back to the Underground games and I'm pretty sure Most Wanted/Carbon as well. I kind of want to dig and see if I can find anything that details all of the crossover/reference material for the games because that's kind of cool. That also said, the ending to this game not only sucks, but it sets up more story that we will almost assuredly never get... even playing I figured that's what was going to happen, but it's frustrating still to be right about it. This game introduced the lootbox elements, which was probably why I didn't play this one either. I don't know if they sorta fixed it or what, but it's still pretty fucked up, you can't just upgrade your car, you have to either earn parts, roll for parts, or wait for the shop to refresh every 10 minutes for parts, and then I still don't know what controls it loading better parts, I found that I kept having to buy parts incrementally to get it to sell me better parts towards the end of the game when I decided I wanted a new car. Overall the racing and story are pretty good, but the gameplay is generally destroyed by these stupid systems for upgrading and the ending of the game itself, plus the giant plothole of the game starts with them blowing up your house, but then they never again try to actually kill you, they've even got cops coming at you, like cops would be the first one to just torch your car and say oops.
Rating: Hard pass
7.
Need for Speed (X1)
I've been very resentful of this game and the franchise since this entry. Maybe even Rivals, tbh, I hated that you can't pause, but I actually played through Rivals, I didn't even touch this one after the beta. That aside this game has so many issues that make it a deal breaker of a game. The three chief ones that come to mind are not 1) You can't pause, even in single player mode. I had my batteries die, I had an eyelash in my eye, my cat got into shit in my kitchen while playing, and I can't even think about playing this during the day. 2) You can't start the game in single player mode, you have to load into online mode and then swap to single player mode. 3) Selecting Restart Race and Exit Race do the same thing, they quit the race so you have to load freeroam and then select to start the race. Additional complaints, you can't just say I want to start a race from the map, you warp to the race so you can start once it loads, the same thing applies to fast traveling to diner, garage, bunker, etc. The game doesn't support Quick Resume, so you've got to load up the game every time. The game being installed on XS it still has incredibly slow load times, just loading into story mode takes like 3 minutes, so swapping to single player takes another 3 minutes. Playing online was mostly fine because not many other players as expected, but last night I loaded up with a ton of other racers who kept just trying to grief me, ramming me constantly etc, to the point they were interfering in actual races, so I had to swap to single player. The rubber banding in this is ridiculous, my controller died and it took me a couple of minutes to find new batteries in the middle of a race, I still came in 2nd, I almost came in first, on the other side, I'm constantly seeing the AI snap to 1st place in like a Civic even though I'm driving a McLaren. The upgrade system is locked behind an XP system and a quest system with one specific character. The story I was constantly waiting for the usual NFS betrayal/revenge storyline, but this game is just purely start to finish a rather wholesome rise to stardom kind of game, it threw me off so bad. Game kept having weird physics/graphical issues, like I'd hit a wall or a curb even and just rubber ball bounce away into the sky, or I'd crash and fall through the world and it would take a minute to reload my car so I'd be super far behind because the race keeps going even though you're loading. Honestly, this is probably hands down the worst NFS game of all time, probably no argument to be had either. I know this game is going to be a hard pass, but I haven't actually beaten it yet. I'm also pretty sure it bugged and didn't give me an achievement that I should've earned. Fuck this game. Final race was a 104 checkpoint Sprint race, takes ~10 minutes, can't pause, rubberbanding is ridiculous, and the final checkpoint is a bit of a zig zag that fucks you over. Took me 4 tries and I fucked up at the last checkpoint 3 of those 4 tries and went from 1st to 6th in an instant, like 10 feet from the finish line. A game that could've been serviceable had it just had a pause button.
Rating: Hardest of passes. Fuck this game.
8.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered (X1)
I recall this being one of my favorite NFS games, so I was ecstatic that it got a remaster. Once I started playing though, I felt like it would've been better served as a sequel than a remaster. It's weird to play a game coming out in 2020 that only has cars from around 2010 and older. Just makes me wish it were a sequel. I had been slowly playing this every so often, but recently I've been on a NFS binge a bit, might even start up that franchise run and go play older games. I've been playing it and having a good time and enjoying it, but then I started getting to some of the levels where I remember getting angry at how stupid some of the stuff works out. How frustrating it is that you can crash out and the AI can't, there's a lot of targeting just you, and just some of the worst rubber banding I've ever seen. If the game wants to keep the AI away from you, they literally boost to like 300-400 mph and zoom away from you... it's fucking bonkers and almost makes picking a car a triviality. Overall enjoyable, but lots of dumb to this game that I would've preferred been controlled by difficulty options. 10 years ago I'd call this a recommendation, but honestly, 10 years ago Forza Horizon was in its infancy, and now, I honestly can't recommend it over Forza obviously, but the hot pursuit nature of the game is something that nobody else does or does well, so it's gotta reason to be played and a reason to exist I suppose.
Rating: Soft pass
9.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (3DS)
So this game is more of Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, except this is what Shattered Crystal should've been. Like almost everything I complained about Shattered Crystal and suggestions I made about what would improve the game was implemented and this game is amazing. Honestly, it might be one of, if not the, favorite(s) Sonic game. Pretty linear, kind of metroid inspired, levels, great combat and controls. Honestly, this is what all 2D Sonic games should strive to be at this point, I'd be excited for an expanded game like this with bigger levels or even full on dive into metroidvania.
Rating: Soft recommendation
10.
WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007 (360)
It's very out of nowhere for me to be playing this, but I yearn for good trashy wrestling games and the Smackdown series is just fantastic. I have some nostalgia for No Mercy, but I remember that game, and subsequently the GCN games too, as fun but frustrating af. My recollection of the Smackdown series is just how fucking good they are. I remember some frustrating challenges for them, but I just recall them being amazing. And tbh the 2K series just hasn't been the same for me. I played this and 2008 I think on PS2, so this was a good excuse to replay them and earn achievements. I plan to earn all offline achievements, online servers are actually still available and I could earn the achievements, but it's difficult and I would need 2 copies of the game to do it myself... and I'm not buying a second copy to grind out some online achievements. Story mode is interesting in that there is a variety to it and I'm sure there are plenty of storylines I've never experienced with how they determine what to do when, but I also in my one playthrough ran into 1 or 2 storylines twice. I say 1 playthrough, but I looped the story mode to get the other difficulty based achievements since they don't stack. AFAIK this one was the game I played the most in my youth (which means college) because it had such a versatile offering of content to allow for replayability. I recall creating tons of CAWs and titles and full on trying to do tournaments and stuff to defend custom titles and enjoying GM mode and stuff, but I don't yearn for that like I did then, but I'm still going to try to go in on GM mode and challenge mode, and hit all of those achievements before I move onto 2008, but I got the credits to roll doing story mode so I'm gonna stop writing up on this unless I really feel the need to add something.
Rating: Soft pass
11.
Goldeneye 007 (XS)
I've been so hyped for this game and I had continuously yearned to replay the XBLA version of this, but I wanted to wait for this where I'd actually earn achievements. It's a little disappointing to know that this doesn't have the same improvements that the XBLA version did and no online multiplayer, but it's pretty true to the original except that it full on removed the button code cheats for unlocking stuff. That's fine, I wanted to earn everything and get all of the achievements anyway, but it's a little disappointing, especially for folks who don't care about achievements or playing single player who just want to do couch deathmatch. This game is diminished for me because I can't really do couch deathmatch, since I have no one to play with, but on the other hand, I have no interest in playing online with strangers either. But I spent the entire weekend working on this game and did absolutely everything. I beat every level on every difficulty, unlocked all of the cheats, beat all of the target times, and earned all of the multiplayer achievements. Finished up Sunday evening with 1000/1000 achievement points, so took me about 3 days to get through it all. I want an excuse to play this game more, but I just don't. When I finished up, someone on a discord had recommended that I do Silo on Agent with the Gold PP7 and Enemy Rockets cheats, burned through that in less than 10 minutes, it was tough but fun. I could definitely go for more things like that, but I'm not creative or interested enough to come up with my own challenges. It would be nice if the game had the versatility to let you do a bit more with stuff like controlling what weapons enemies use, 007 mode only lets you control a few things. To end, I will state that I think a lot of folks expected that this game wouldn't hold up, and I'll say the N64 controller is what held this game back back in the day and even today, but being able to use one of the best designed controllers of all time to play this game just makes that game so much better and allows for it to age gracefully. The game has its quirks, design remnants of its time, but it's still a solid game.
Rating: Solid recommendation.
12.
WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008 (360)
After playing this one, I'm considering going back and updating my review of 2007 to mark it as soft recommendation. I had it in my head that the games got better until like 2k or something, but no I think 2007 was the peak, or one of them. This game has no real story mode, just GM mode and a career mode that is essentially GM mode but for a single superstar... and if you start either one it erases the other, can't have a story mode and a GM mode at the same time. This game is also the game that removed the manual targeting, so you're stuck not being able to attack who you want unless dumb luck and very frequently you'll wind up attacking who you don't want. Just everything about this game is a step down from 2007. Hall of Fame mode is an interesting inclusion, but it's actually very little content and I didn't dig too much into it, but it sounds like you don't just upgrade your CAWs you have to spend money (in-game obviously) to upgrade your CAWs buying items from the shop. It's just all super annoying. Also, having not played this game on 360 before, I went through and earned all of the achievements I could, and almost none of them require you to play the story mode really. Most of the achievements fall into doing exhibition matches, doing GM mode, and playing online. Side note: this game is the game that finally pushed my 360 gamerscore over 100,000 points. It's so crazy to me because I thought I broke 100,000 before the X1 came out, but apparently I didn't, because my X1 gamerscore had been over 100,000 on its own.
Rating: hard pass
Next List
