52 Games Challenge 2023!!!

[kashell]

58. Shadow of Destiny - D Ending

Shadow of Destiny had me intrigued since about 2002. There was an advertisement for it on the back of Ephemeral Fantasia's instruction manual. I played the PlayStation 2 version about five or so years later. Honestly, I can't remember much about it other than the phoned in voice acting and the trial and error gameplay. I need to go back and read my review for it. Anyways, being a PSP fan I've always wanted to play this version. Not much was changed other than some names, new endings (which I'll end up watching on YouTube) and a more solid cast of voice actors. The script remained unchanged, which is fine, but the new voices behind the characters were effective. Otherwise, it was more trial and error gameplay trying to figure out how to stop Eike from getting killed over and over. As a result of my choices, I ended up with an ending that left me feeling rather meh. But, since the game on the whole is pretty meh, I doubt I'll replay it. Oh well. It was a nice way to take a break from story heavy RPGs. And when the game's big reveal did happen, I was surprised by all of the reveals.

[telly]

Game 21 - Paper Mario (Wii U) - 24 Hours

The first Paper Mario to me seems to be overlooked considerably compared to it's bigger brother, The Thousand-Year Door. And while TTYD is almost a direct upgrade to the original in pretty much every way, that shouldn't mean that the first entry isn't worth playing.

It's worth recognizing the groundwork that Paper Mario 1 laid out for future games in the series, and it's really quite an impressive game. The visuals in particular are some of the most striking on the N64, and still hold up even to this day. I'd say Paper Mario is the best looking game on the entire system. It has gorgeous environments and beautiful animations that build a colorful and imaginative world. The gameplay set the standard for future games, implementing a fun turn-based system with action commands to either increase or take less damage, as well as an interesting badge system to customize Mario's abilities. Mario is also paired with a cast of colorful characters that help you both in battle and while exploring the world. The story, while standard and a little bland, does enough to move you along through the game and is overall pretty well done.

There were some aspects of Paper Mario that I thought could have been better. For one, I kind of despise most of the music. It all felt very superficial and oftentimes annoying. There were some good tracks though. For all of the whopping 8 characters that join you during your journey, they only have a small moment of character development when they join your party and then they never speak or do anything meaningful for the rest of the game. Limiting your progression to only 30 BP really stunted any chance at meaningful experimentation with your badges, which was disappointing.

Playing on the Wii U, I also really didn't like that the C-stick menu commands were mapped to the right stick. While this matches up with the N64's button layout, I was constantly moving the stick in the wrong direction on accident since you need to press the stick in an exact cardinal direction to make the right menu come up, and I would constantly mess up and pick the wrong menu because the Wii U analog stick isn't precise enough.

[kashell]

I was at a game night over the weekend where I got to partake in some of the new Jackbox games.

59. Dodo Re Mi

Jackbox has finally gone the way of Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Your phone is your instrument. Notes come down and you'll tap them in time to play the song with your friends. I liked this, although it wasn't as responsive as I would have hoped. Plus, you had to unlock songs. Neat animations, though. The plant is very Little Shop of Horrors.

60. Hypnotorious

Probably my favorite of the new games we played. You are given a secret role and need to sus out everyone else's. You're given prompts that you need to answer in character. There's always an outlier. I ended up winning so that was a plus. The brain avatars are adorable.

61. Tee K.O. 2

Ugh. I was not looking forward to playing this one since I never liked the first. But, played it we did. It's more of the same. You can alter someone else's doodle if you want. Yay?

[dhaabi]

35. Krispee Street || Mobile || 11.06.23



So, something I never thought I'd experience is playing a game through Netflix's mobile app, but that happened. Quickly looking at their library, I came across the hidden object game Krispee Street that is designed just like Where's Wally? books, so I decided to spend some time with it.

To explain the game mechanics for any unfamiliar to hidden object find-it games, the player is tasked with finding items. In the past, video games using this puzzle design rely on text only as clues, but Krispee Street maintains a visual approach which gives all the information players need to locate exactly what's needing to be found. Unlike a physical book which are generally large for this sort of puzzle activity, mobile screens are obviously much smaller, so players now are limited to only a portion of the static game stage as a time. Across the game's dozen stages, level design tends to become much larger and denser as players advance which adds a new layer of difficulty compared to hidden object books since the latter's layout can be viewed all at once.

At the bottom of the screen, the stage's lost items are present, with the player having the ability to cycle through them leisurely. To formally discover a needed item, the player must ensure it's actually selected and then hover over its stage placement. When an object is selected, a preview image is overlayed onto the stage, which is useful as it's scaled to size, even when the player utilizes the zoom tool. On that note, the zoom tool is a huge benefit as the player is constantly scanning through the environment, on account of there being countless tiny objects to find alongside a fair amount of medium to large items. Something I'll mention briefly is that, upon being found, most objects having simple animations, and some have sounds. It's a small feature, but I did find it to be helpful since not many items are in close proximity to others.

As I mentioned level design's increasing density and scale before, that also relates to stage difficulty. Unfortunately, I found difficulty to be inconsistent to what I was expecting. While difficulty gradually increases over the first half of levels become most challenging at the midway point or so, it sharply declines at its peak. After that point, I didn't feel that challenged at all. However, difficulty relates to one other aspect, which is the stage design itself. At times, a lot of the stage simply blurs together which is an intentional to confuse players. Perhaps the best example of this is in a space-themed stage, with the majority of lost items needing found having no background information whatsoever to rely upon and instead suspending in a black void. With the above screenshot in mind, it's greatly recommended to rely on all of the lost item preview icon's information such as surface color, surface pattern, scale, and, perhaps most important, other items. Removing any of those elements limits the player's understanding of where the item could be, which, at its worst, forces them instead to aimlessly skim through everything. That sort of challenge adds to the fun, though.

Over time, players will accumulate a resource I'll call flower points which allows the player to buy hint options toward finding the currently selected lost item. There are over 800 items to find, but I only relied on these tools twice and only after I had already found the lost item without properly discovering it so that I can understand how they operate. Accruing this sort of in-game currency throughout the entire playthrough, I wasn't actually sure what its purpose is until near the end. That said, I didn't want to rely on any kind of hint tools anyway because that defeats the entire purpose of these kinds of games, meaning I was quite persistent in finding every object on my own even in the most challenging of levels. If it takes a long time to find a specific item, so be it, because there is always something else to find, with the most expansive stage having over 150 objects to find to illustrate.

Alongside flower points, the second resource collected is coins which may be spent on a a gachapon-type section to gain cards which have different rarity types. In brief, the cards have no importance. They're accessed in a gallery of sorts, but there is no way to sort cards by name, rarity, or type of card; in fact, you can't sort them at all, and they're displayed in the order they've been collected in. Something I thought would have added more interest to this feature is for every card to have different rarity classes to encourage players to earn the most valuable, but it's clear that this section of the game was an afterthought. What's worst is the the cards aren't interesting and don't entice the player to actually scroll through the gallery. That coins are exclusively spent on gachapon cards is a poor attempt to provide more depth to the core gameplay.

Lastly, there are two other smaller gameplay modes: daily challenges and Zen Mode. For the former, a map from the dozen available stages is randomly selected each day, and players are tasked with finding a handful of random objects. Being timed, the goal is to complete the daily challenge stage fastest. This mode incorporates a leaderboard, so I found it to be okay feature. It's probably one that everyday players who've memorized each map love. For the latter, Zen Mode is what it suggests, being free-play mode. Random objects are shown one-at-a-time for the player to find, and it's never-ending. Players can skip an item if they wish, and they can toggle through each map. This mode is also okay, but it didn't interest me due to the lack of goal.

To my surprise, I had a lot of fun playing Krispee Street, and it comes highly recommended as a hidden object game. I found the core gameplay pretty addictive, honestly.

[Cartagia]

I finished The Quarry last night.  Not nearly as good as the previous big release from Supermassive, Until Dawn.  Even though this one has far more big name actors, the performances are generally worse, although a lot of that may be due to the writing.  Justice Smith in particular is bad.  It's like he's sleepwalking through the whole thing.  Skyler Gisondo is great, though.  And Lin Shaye and Lance Henrikson are pretty solid, even though they don't have nearly enough to do. 

I think the main issues are that they doubled down on making some characters unlikable, as I found at least half of the main cast insufferable, and the fact that, unlike Until Dawn, which changes gears multiple times throughout the campaign, The Quarry is trying to tell one continuous story for 10 hours.  Also, Until Dawn starts with tension and conflict amongst all the characters from the prologue but The Quarry doesn't have that, so it takes a while (like almost half the game) before you start feeling any real tension or fear.  Once it does get going it is a pretty fun ride to the end, but it takes way too long to get there, and then the ending is incredibly abrupt for most characters' storylines.

You can get the same amount of solid gameplay experience from the studio's smaller "Dark Pictures Anthology" series, which are much shorter titles, and all the better for it.

[dhaabi]

I finished The Quarry last night.  Not nearly as good as the previous big release from Supermassive, Until Dawn.  Even though this one has far more big name actors, the performances are generally worse, although a lot of that may be due to the writing.  Justice Smith in particular is bad.  It's like he's sleepwalking through the whole thing.  Skyler Gisondo is great, though.  And Lin Shaye and Lance Henrikson are pretty solid, even though they don't have nearly enough to do.

As for the game's writing, I think that it's a matter of loving it or hating it. I can certainly see the case for the latter, but I personally liked the authenticity of stupid, awkward teens brought out by the writing. I can't agree that Skyler Gisondo's performance is great, though—it's certainly fine, but he doesn't have any standout moments, really. As for me, Grace Zabriskie and Ted Raimi offer the best performances alongside Lin Shaye, but I wish that Shaye had been given more screen time. I also found it a little laughable at how much David Arquette was marketed despite the handful of lines he's given.

[kashell]

While not a full game, I did finish the new DLC in Final Fantasy XVI.

More of the same. If not for my trophy OCD, I would have skipped this.

Hell, the "campaign" could have been included in the main game but SE is going to SE. Surprisingly, it didn't take me long to get back the muscle memory. But, getting back said muscle memory is emblematic of the game's biggest problem: repetition. Every boss fight takes too long to finish since every boss' HP is through the roof. At least Clive had the help of Jill and Joshua since they're so helpful in combat...oh wait.

There's not much else to say about this. The Buster Sword is a downgrade from the Ultima Weapon. The Bits appeared helpful but it's hard to gauge how effective they actually are since, again, bosses in this game have to be the biggest HP sponges I've ever seen.

That leaves the banger boss theme from the fight against Omega Weapon. Woo hoo.

[kashell]

62. Mega Man Battle Network 3 - White Version

This will probably the last game I finish this year unless I decide to play something quick. I think I know why I had such a tough time getting through this one: I played the first two games too closely together. Battle Network was released in October of 2001. Battle Network 2 was released in June 2002. I didn't have to wait the eight or so months between releases. Also, Battle Network 3 didn't get released until June 2003. I kept hearing that BN3 was the best so my thought of blazing through the first two to get the third seemed like a good idea at the time. Oh well, lessons learned. BN3 is definitely the best I've played. The new options are great, but the overall gameplay loop is old hat all while the same three songs play on a loop. It gets tiring going here, then there, jacking in, jacking out, and getting caught up in random battles along the way. To add, you spend a lot more time in menus in this one. I'm sure I'll get the urge to continue with the series but I'm going to have to really wait before I jack into BN4.

[dhaabi]

36. Whitewater Wipeout || Playdate || 12.02.23



To my surprise, I was recently gifted a Playdate. It's an interesting, little single-use gadget with an actual crank only meant for games to be played, unlike many other modern devices which have all sorts of other capabilities and functions. Included with the system itself, 24 digital games are included across twelve weeks which become available as virtual gifts waiting to be opened. One of the first two games is Whitewater Wipeout.

At its core, Whitewater Wipeout is a simple, arcade-style game with an emphasis on high scores and repeated playthroughs. As a surfer, the player's goal is to surf along a never-ending wave while performing spins. As momentum accumulates, the player is able to reach great heights which allows for them to not only be more daring, but to gain points. At first, only single rotations are possible, and barely at that. Soon, though, double-rotations become possible, which is the start to when combos may be achieved. However, it's possible to perform triple and probably even quadruple rotations, although the latter is based on assumption alone. When a combo begins, achieving the same spin count is necessary for the combo to be maintained, or else the combo will end.

Unlike what I said above about the wave being never-ending, that is not entirely true, because the whitewater will consume you. Always a short distance away, the whitewater is a constant threat of impending destruction, so players must evade it along the wall of the wave. What the game doesn't tell players it that you're not required to jump in the air with each upward motion to perform spins but instead can coast along the wall to regain distance from the whitewater. At first, it may seem impossible to outrun the crash, but finding the right up-and-down flow along the wall makes it so as surfing speed heightens.

In addition to the basic gameplay, smaller elements include soaring birds unable to be seen from the wave's base level. As one would expect, making contact with them adds a score bonus. Alternatively, sharks randomly appear throughout the lower portion of the water. Despite their supposed threat, they've not yet posed a problem for me during my time playing as they're uncommon, although I imagine they result in player failure. One other aspect is that, if moving too far down off the wave, you will crash. This, of course, is in addition to how players will most likely fail, which is crashing naturally if a spinning rotation isn't successful.

While not every Playdate game utilizes the crank, Whitewater Wipeout does. In fact, the crank is the only part of the system which is used for this game. That said, it's all about finding a good rhythm and reaching that understanding about how the crank operates. Since the crank is the Playdate's standout feature, Whitewater Wipeout is a good starter game offered to players. At first, though, it was very bad. For at least my first ten full times playing across 30 lives, I couldn't perform any kind of spin consistently. Then, the next day, I started recognizing the relationship between animations, crank positions, and cranking speed. Having the crank as part of the system controls is obviously unique, but I'm finding more fun in how it forces the player to adopt a new way to play, as opposed to the typical four-button, D-pad, and analog sticks format which most modern controllers utilize.

Overall, Whitewater Wipeout is a fun pick-me-up which offers engaging gameplay that's perfect for those with only a few moments to spare. An entire run can be less than a minute, whereas the oppose is that, I suppose, the game is technically endless. The high score leaderboards are daunting to see, and I can't imagine anyone being able to achieve those kinds of scores. Right now, the highest score I've achieved is 21,088 which is completely dwarfed to the all-time global high score of 2,094,948.

[kamikazekeeg]

35 - Death in the Water 2 (PC 2023) -  BEAT - While I'm not a big fan of straight up "horror" games, I'm not really looking for jump scares and all that, so what I tend to like is tension and atmosphere, and deep water stuff is usually pretty tense for me, it's why I enjoy SOMA or Subnautica.  This game is basically a "Wave" game, you get to a location, fight the creatures, complete the level.  I think overall it does a decent job, looks good, can be quite tense, it's all mostly real sharks and fish you fight, though there are Sirens as an added addition.  I kinda wish the game had more you do, objectives to accomplish, it could use some more weird stuff going on, maybe that's for a sequel if they make it.  It's a straightforward game, but I thought it was alright.  Ending ended abit weird, as you fight the final boss, and I had gotten it down to nearly dead, and then off screen I guess it died somehow as it kinda zooms away and comes back, and then there's just a text crawl that was like "There was a horrific shriek as it dies" and that wasn't in game lol An actual cinematic or something as a reward would've been nice.

But for a budget game, it's totally fine, the underwater aspect does a lot to exude dread, which was all I was really wanting out of it.  I'd recommend it if that sorta stuff creeps you out.

[bikingjahuty]

4. LSD Simulator (PS1) - ABANDONED

I've known about this game for a long time, mostly as a collector's curiosity, but I finally decided to give it a try to see if it's very strange premise translated at all into an enjoyable experience. I can safely say, no, no it did not...


In fact, LSD Simulator might be the worst game I've ever played, which is saying a lot. For one, it's not a game at all. You are literally just wandering around various strange environments with terrible draw distance while the frame rate is constantly in the single digits. You can't do anything other than walk, run, and look up and down. That's literally it. You simply run into random objects or creatures and are then transported to somewhere else that is just as random, ugly, and unremarkable as the last place you were in. Nothing about the game will make you want to continue to see what will happen next after playing for 15 minutes. I played for nearly 3 times that and I honestly want that half an hour of my life back. Not to mention, the audio in this game feels like a form of water torture half the time. Literally nothing about this game is fun or entertaining, as a game should. Apparently that the game creator's intention, but being on a video game console, I at least expected a bit more out of this game. It just reminds me of some pretentious film or art project that people try and assign meaning to when there really is none. Whatever though. All I can say is I refuse to let this be the last game I play in 2023 lol. (12/11/23)

[dhaabi]

4. LSD Simulator (PS1) - ABANDONED

Literally nothing about this game is fun or entertaining, as a game should. Apparently that the game creator's intention, but being on a video game console, I at least expected a bit more out of this game.

LSD's outer packaging and even advertising campaigns boldly state "こんなのゲームじゃない" in full transparency, which translates to "this is not a game," so it's fair to say that you definitely went into it with the wrong expectations.

[bikingjahuty]

55. Eco Fighters (PS2)

I actually just found out about this SHMUP a few weeks ago, but given it was created by Capcom in the 90s, it immediately had my interest. The game is pretty good looking visually, especially its cool modular bosses and colorful graphics. Audio is also pretty good and about what you'd expect from a Capcom Arcade game from this era. Unfortunately the gameplay wasn't as good as I was hoping. You're given a arm that you can swivel 360 degrees to destroy enemies in every direction. You can also swap out the shot type for the rotating arm too. However, in execution this works out way less ideal than in theory. For one, I found the arm rotated too fast to control effectively, or if i tried doing it slowly I'd get killed before it was aimed in the direction i wanted it to go. On top of that, half the weapons you can switch out were more of a hinderence than anything I found helpful at anytime during the game. In addition to this, there are so annoying balancing issues that are present throughout the game, that are made even worse by the aforementioned gameplay issues. Overall, I didn't completely dislike Eco Fighters, but it wasn't that great either. I'm glad I tried it out, but am certain I'll probably never play it again. (12/12/23) [29/50]

[bikingjahuty]

56. Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness (PS4)

One of my mains in Marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2 is Capcom's Jin, a character I had no idea where he was from, just that I really liked playing with him in the aforementioned fighting game. It wouldn't be until years after playing MvC that I learned he was included in a fairly obscure Capcom fighting game called Cyberbots. Being included on the Capcom fighting collection, I decided to give this game a try finally and see how it stacks up. Overall, it's a fairly entertaining game and has some really cool featured such as detailed destructible environments, cool mech designs, fun special moves, and a pretty good OST. Unfortunately the reason why this game isn't as well known most likely has to do with its gameplay which seems to lack really any polish for the most part, and is more or less a straight up button masher. While still fun to play it this way, it's easy to feel like you've seen everything there is to see pretty quickly in this game, making you wish you were playing another Capcom fighter instead. Cyberbots is no doubt fun and entertaining, but I struggle to call it some sort of hidden gem or anything like that. (12/12/23) [32/50]

[dhaabi]

37. Eggman Game || Browser || 12.03.23



At random, someone I know sent me a link to play Eggman Game. So, I did.

In truth, there is little depth to Eggman Game, and I imagine many wouldn't even classify it as a game. Still, I'll explain what it is. At one side of the screen, an anthropomorphic cartoon egg stands, mouth agape. At the opposite side, a basket of eggs is set. At the top of the screen, the straightforward prompt "FEED EGGS" tasks players. So, naturally, players must feed the cartoon egg one inanimate egg at a time by dragging them. That one task alone makes up the entire gameplay.

Like many at this point would imagine without any additional context, the game is a joke. There is no reason behind why eggs are being fed to the titular Eggman, but we're doing it, nonetheless. Furthering some absurdist work even more so, a pop-up appears at random with accompanied speech stating "[random number] eggs," as if that's the player's score. However, that number is entirely arbitrary and devoid of all sense, as it fluctuates from highs to lows and no where close to the actual number of eggs which have been fed. The number appearing could relate to how many eggs are needing to be fed, but it changes too often for players to confirm that thought.

At one point early on once Eggman has been fed a few eggs, the basket becomes emptied. A different prompt then asks if the player would like the buy more. No matter what the player's written response is, eggs are gained.

I didn't anticipate for the game to reach a conclusion, but it does, unexpectedly. At some randomized point, "41 eggs" appears in the pop-up prompt, and the player is congratulated by Eggman dancing to the middle of the screen, pulling down his bottom half as if they're pants, and flashing the player. The game then resets.

Partway into my time playing, I realized that Eggman Game is part of a comedy sketch in Tim Robinson's comedy show I Think You Should Leave. I've seen the particular sketch featuring this non-game game but had completely forgotten about it, so playing Eggman Game was a fun reminder, with the quality of the game being objectively, yet intentionally, bad. Having since revisited the particular sketch, it's nice to see all the little details originally presented in the sketch preserved in this fan recreation.