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52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

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tripredacus:
13. The Sims 4
It is FTP at base game, I figured I'd give it a shot. It seems fine enough but one thing I noticed fairly early is that perhaps I am not interested in this type of gameplay any longer. I played it the same was as previous games, but there is a lot of sitting around involved. I think that my own personal behaviours have changed since those days and this type of game is not that interesting to me. The game played well enough and did seem to be easier than previous versions. The sound was very low and surround did not work. I ran into a big issue, somehow on my second session the game softlocked and I was not able to do anything. To make things worse, there is no autosave enable or available, so when I reopened I had lost about 3 hours of progress. If the game is that buggy even now, then I'm not going to put time into it.

14. Tetris
It is Tetris on the NES, the official version. I didn't play the Tengen version, I had that as a kid. It is still the same as I remembered. I made it to level 9 on Type A on my first attempt. However there was some input issues with the controller where the D-pad did not function as I would expect and the result was that sometimes I press a direction and nothing happens. I had not experienced that in other games. I then tried a Game Genie code that makes it so the blocks don't fall. It is a neat way to play but you can't do any of the last minute block movements to get into slots because the game did not support moving in two directions at once. Either way, I made it to level 22 with this cheat. Good enough for me.

kashell:
I won't count it among my finished games, but I finished the Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth Demo. I'll try to avoid spoilers in case someone for some reason still hasn't played the original FFVII and/or some of its spin-offs.

The Nibelheim section was up and down. I appreciated some of Sephiroth's quips to Cloud that were actually meant for someone else. I also liked how the screen would show static and get chopped up when Cloud was trying to remember what happened. The Shinra Manor was spooky. But, when I was actually playing the demo, I was quickly reminded of how exhausting Remake was. I don't know if I have the energy for all this. There is just so much going on in combat that it's hard to keep up. Knowing me, I'd probably want to get all the trophies. This would mean having to play the game on Hard mode. That would also mean going through unskippable areas and cut scenes again. Slow segments like crawling through small areas or scaling walls just pad the length. I didn't play too much of the Junon section. Within the first five minutes there were tutorials out the wazoo, someone named MAI shouting through my controller, and now I can apparently make items? It's a lot. So, yeah. I'm holding off on this one for a long time. I just don't have the energy for all this stuff, and knowing that the game is more "open worldy" is a major turn off.

telly:
Game 4: Pokémon Violet (Switch) - 45 hours

Okay, so full disclosure, I haven't played a Pokémon video game on release since Sun. They've just dropped so drastically in quality with the move to the Switch that I never bothered to give them a shot. However, my interest in Pokémon since 2016 has not abated whatsoever. Between Pokémon Go and the trading card game, I've been enjoying Pokémon in honestly a bigger capacity than ever before. I think it's because those aspects really bring out the community power of Pokémon more than the games ever could. It's been such a fantastic experience connecting with other fans of the franchise in new capacities than the video games, and as a result I didn't feel the need to really play the games anymore.

The reason why I ended up playing Pokémon Violet was actually because my wife wanted to play it. She played it for a couple hours when it came out in November of 2022, went through all the initial story beats then gave up and I took up her save file and continued on. And I've been playing it off and on over the past couple of years. That said, my playstyle with it was so fragmented and weird that a lot of the story elements are not really what I'm going to be focusing on.

I did find the story to be mostly... fine? It wasn't anything special. I do like the school-based focus of the story early on, but it's largely split into three smaller storylines and they ranged from pretty enjoyable (Arven) to a total slog (Penny). One of my biggest problems with modern Pokémon is the lack of voiced cutscenes that are presented in-engine with no amount of polish or care put into them. It makes going through the story an absolute chore because they are so lazy and sloppy. There's just no excuse for no voice acting at this point and it would exponentially improve my engagement with the story.

Speaking of lazy, the obvious issues that everyone points to is the game's performance. There are so many issues that persist to this day even with the game's numerous patches. The game has consistent framerate and animation problems, pop-in, low draw distance, clipping issues, crashes, and other blemishes that really take away from the overall experience. Also, no clothing customization options? Why did the game take such a huge step back in that regard? Makes no sense. My third largest gripe with the game pertains to the open world design. I really think it was a mistake not to have level scaling. It meant that my experience playing was a total rubber band. I'd either be getting rocked by high level Pokémon or it was a total cake walk. I was looking for something in between.

But, with all my complaints you might think I'm down on this game. I actually really enjoyed my time playing when I wasn't doing story stuff and was just exploring the open world, catching Pokémon, collecting items and setting up a picnic or two. It's very relaxing in that way. That's why it took me so long to finish the story because all I wanted to do was just explore and take my time. The game has fantastic music and atmosphere in both the wide open expanses and the towns, that can really suck you in. Overall, I like most of the new Pokémon designs. There are some that I don't like but others that I got really attached to. Some of my favorites include Smoliv, Fidough, Bellibolt, Orthworm, and a bunch others. I think one of the strongest aspects of the Sword/Shield era was the Pokémon designs, and this generation is a bit of a step back but still has some really great ones. I really like the concept of future and ancient Pokémon too.

In summary, I find myself in the middle with Violet. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. There's definitely some good bones here that I hope get expanded upon in the future. I don't think it's as bad as people say it is, however.

bikingjahuty:
3. Earthbound (SNES) - ABANDONED

Like many collectors, I've known how coveted Earthbound since pretty much as soon as I started trying to acquire the more rarer and sought after retro games out there. Years ago, I finally tracked down a cheap copy of Earthbound, started playing it shortly after, and well, I didn't understand the appeal. I tried again several years later and found it even less appealing. Yet, over time, more and more people kept telling me to stick with it and to try and appreciate it for what it is rather than comparing it to other acclaimed JRPGs of the 90s. Maybe against my better judgement, I tried one last time earlier this month to get into Earthbound, telling myself that I'd stick with it way past when I felt like giving up to see if maybe the game did get better or something later on clicked with me and I'd finally understand why this game is so beloved by retro RPG fans. Well, I did play it considerably longer than I ever had, yet nearly the entire time I felt bored, frustrated, and just underwhelmed as I trudged through the game once more. After 10 hours, I finally hit my breaking point and just couldn't continue playing. I get that Earthbound was very unique for the time in that it didn't use some fantasy or scifi setting like almost all other JRPGs of the time, but even with the more unique, modern setting, quarky characters and dialogue, and all the other aspects that fans of the series love to use as justification of why it's so amazing, I still found the game mediocre at best. Compared to many of its SNES JRPG counterparts, it's lacking in nearly every possible way. And while I'm admittedly not as big of a JRPG fan as I was in the 90s and 2000s, I'm still able to appreciate a good RPG when I see one, and Earthbound is just not one of them. I honestly wanted to love this game like many others, I really did. However, after three failed attempts over the course of a decade, I'm finally ready to admit I don't like Earthbound and never will. I'm happy for everyone who does like this game, whether they played it as a kid in the 90s or even just a year or two ago for the first time, but I will never be one of those people. (2/24/24)

kamikazekeeg:
10 - Sons of the Forest (PC 2024) - BEAT - With the game out of EA, I dove back to see what was added and improved since I originally played it.  It was pretty barebones back then, mostly just the fundamental gameplay, location, and visuals worked out and then some other general features.  I think they overall did a good job, but there's a lot of cut corners here.  The survival aspect of the game is very basic, it really needed a lot more depth, along with needing to drastically overhaul the amount of animals and supplies you can find.  There's a custom game mode difficulty that allows you to change a ton of stuff, but the normal mode should've been way better.  I just don't think it got enough playtesting as I would've made normal have weaker enemies, but harsher supply and animal cut.

The story is there, it's sorta similar to the first one where you get bits here and there, you piece together stuff from the past through notes and such, to figure out what happened, and I think it mostly works, but it's not a strong narrative.  The first game did it a little better as there was more of a drive to it being a father looking for his son, rather than who your character is who just isn't really important to the story.  He's not a no name guy, but it kinda feels that way.

There's other things I could call out here and there, as I think the game needed another few months of cleaning up and a few more additions, but overall I liked it.  There are better survival games out there, but I had enough fun with this one, I just hope they are going to continue adding to the game, give me a reason to go back as there more than a few areas on the map they could add stuff to.

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