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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

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dhaabi:
11. Silent Hill: Downpour || PlayStation 3 || 02.20.25



For nearly a decade, Silent Hill: Downpour was what many consider to be the final full-fledged survival horror game within the series. Just like with the games I've played before it, I went in not knowing what to expect or the reasons for its less than favorable reception when compared to the first four entries.

Overall, Silent Hill: Downpour offers an expected story and protagonist that's representative of the Silent Hill franchise. That being said, what Murphy's story is exactly isn't really divulged for some time, although players do become aware of the tragic loss of his young son years prior. For nearly half the game, most of what the player really knows is that they're assuming the role of an escaped prison convict whose situation in Silent Hill arises from a vehicle accident. Murphy actually isn't here purposely and is instead fully set on just finding his way back out of town. Like with many of the previous entries, much of the early game consists of crossing paths with strange individuals who've clearly been broken by Silent Hill or, rather, broken down further by it; meanwhile, little is learned about Murphy until later on.

While many of the Silent Hill games forego straightforward narratives to instead express a vague one characterized by the high degree of mental anguish its characters struggle with, Silent Hill: Downpour is an outlier. That tragic history is still conveyed, but it is broken up considerably by the inclusion of side quests that are introduced once the player reaches the actual town of Silent Hill after navigating its outskirts. While I'm not opposed to the idea of side quests, I'm not entirely pleased with them. While the actual name implies goals separate from the main objective, they are not specific at all to Murphy's past in any way or even to the NPCs whom Murphy meets. Instead, they feel like random puzzle encounters which, while usually enough fun to solve, are superfluous. Overall, I don't really know if an entire side quest system is suited for the survival horror genre.

Perhaps more so than any other game within the series which utilizes combat, Silent Hill: Downpour emphasizes fleeing than confrontation. I'm again surprised at how involved combat actually is, and it's for the worse. When actually deciding to fight enemies—and this is largely in regards to when melee is the player's only available option—I often found myself juggling the controls for attack, focus, and block in a terrible panic. This was much less an issue of terror and more about certain enemies being quite overpowered. With that said, a feature that isn't explained but still an interesting concept lies in the storms that periodically occur. During these sequences, all enemies become far more aggressive than they normally are while actively seeking out the player. Despite it usually being more beneficial to run away from enemies than to engage with them, weapons are littered everywhere. While they can break, there is usually a decent supply of more durable ones to find while naturally progressing. Still, that there are so many comes across as such an odd design choice not only because fleeing is often the better strategy but because inventory space is limited. Players are limited to only two handguns and either one shotgun or melee weapon. Perhaps weapon abundance is to ensure players can remain relatively safe, but that idea rejects the entire genre's conventions altogether. At the same time, the act of fleeing is reinforced by scripted chase scenes that appear during crucial narrative milestones. Instead of actual enemies, Murphy runs away from some ambiguous void which pursues him. During these few encounters is really the only time Murphy spends in Silent Hill's otherworld which is a bit disappointing, and what purpose they really serve in parallel with proper combat sequences leaves me somewhat confused.

Most indoor exploration lacks any actual exploring as environments are often either small or linear, although there are few exceptions. With that said, most wandering will be outside throughout the town proper, although it often proves difficult to navigate even with a map as its layout and pathways aren't adequately displayed while looking the same. In fact, if wanting to branch off from the main story progression, the map leaves much to be desired as it lacks detail in reminding players where to go after discovering points of interest. While I before critiqued the game's weapons, I will mention how a small number of them serve practical purposes, such as axes being able to break down blocked doorways. It's a welcome feature (though not its first implementation in the series) but would benefit from more instances of it, as being able to discover optional points of interest is rewarding. Meanwhile, so many possible paths seem to exist, but they're regularly inaccessible or actually disconnected. Unless the location involves a major road, the map provides little information. This is made worse by the game's semi open-world environment which would otherwise be enjoyable to explore. With how the world of Silent Hill: Downpour was developed, I think it would greatly benefit from a more focused and linear adventure.

In addition to the less user-friendly design choices the game presents, it's unfortunate to report that there are many problems relating to loading the game's environment and frame rate. While mostly an issue while running about but periodically also while simply walking, frame rate stutters and pauses regularly. There were also a few instances where I'd enter a new area without the loading screen transition only for, after a few seconds of actually walking around, the transition to finally appear. During these instances, load times were notably lengthy—upwards of thirty seconds long. While these aren't game-breaking issues nor impact the play experience in any significant way, they were egregious and reoccurring enough to be irritating. Apart from this main issue, the only other thing worth mentioning is that the game would benefit from button mapping or just a less convoluted layout than what was decided upon. Although, I would be amiss to not comment on the developer's music decisions for the game's end credits, which features the following tracks: an original theme from Korn, a contemporary country song, and a song from Louis Armstrong. For a horror game, it was confusing to listen to this sequence.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the negative aspects I've highlighted, I still enjoyed my time playing Silent Hill: Downpour. The experience could have been substantially better had certain design decisions had been made, but the narrative itself was okay enough for me to not be overly bothered by everything else.

kashell:
23. Mega Man X2

This run through was a bit more fun for some reason. I think it's because I didn't stress about getting all the Zero Parts and because I was able to snag the shoryuken, which was useful against the boss you face immediately after acquiring it. Still, of the three on SNES, this one is my least favorite.

Cartagia:
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is an old school RPG in the vein of the old Apple II or Commodore 64 titles.  It's not as ridiculously difficult as those, as doesn't have nearly as many "gotcha" traps in the dungeons.  It was made by an incredibly small team (it might have just been one person) and is an obvious labor of love. While appreciate a general lack of instakill traps and the like, I do think there could have been a little more variation on the encounter types and dungeoneering.  Overall I really liked, but didn't quite love, it.

tripredacus:
Castlevania Anniversary Collection came up and I tried it out. I technically did play it and did put the first game as NES on my game list, but did not count it as a true backlog game. I had the three NES games when I was a kid and I did not ever beat them back them. IIRC for the first game I was only able to get to the Grim Reaper or maybe Frankenstein. I don't know about the second game and the third game I was also able to get near the end. Outside of those three I'd never played any of the other Castlevania games except SOTN. After my short amount of time with Castlevania last week, I had no interest in playing the game again, or playing it enough to be able to get through it. This game collection on Steam isn't anything particularly new, it is just roms running in an emulator. Unlike using a regular emulator, there are no real options. I can't change the controls and of course you can't run codes. In fact the controls are weird where the default buttons for controller are swapped between Castlevania and Super Castlevania IV for example. Some day I would like to blast through these using cheats but my backlog is too big to allow for that kind of extra time.

I also played Blood Fresh Supply on Steam. I had Blood when I was younger but not the expansion. I didn't even care about playing the expansion. I played through episode 1 and didn't want to play it anymore. So Blood is probably retired forever. I also didn't count this as being a backlog game, since I had beat it when I was younger but also probably using cheats.

8. Dragon Age II (Steam)
This is the first game I was able to beat so far this year. It is a long game. The controls are the same as Dragon Age Origins but the inventory system was not like that at all. I was able to use my DAO save to influence this game, but I really don't know what it changes because I'm not going to be playing the games over and over to see what changes. This won't be something I'll be able to do for Dragon Age Inquisition, since I had started a game of that before playing DAII.

It was still good enough to play and I only really skipped one fight. There is one near the end where you fight a dragon. I couldn't get past that at all but since it wasn't required I didn't really try. There is a fight near the end of the game that I could get through. It basically comes down to if you didn't build/gear your characters properly to specifically handle that fight, you were doomed to not be able to get past it. Even on the easiest difficulty. Of course, it probably could be done if you micromanaged the fight like you were playing Starcraft, but there was no other fight or situation where you absolutely had to do that. So for that one fight I used a cheat to make my char unkillable. Which is fine, because the achievements were only on the Dragon Age site and not Steam.

But I want to talk about the internet age and games. First, Dragon Age II is Ultimate Edition, meaning it comes with all the DLC. And apparently has post-endgame things you can do. When I played, I never saw any of the DLC. I didn't figure out why until after I finished the game, where by that point I didn't care about doing anything with it. It comes down to the fact that these online services have been around for so many years and a lot of them used to be something else and was purchased. So it turns out I had two EA accounts for some reason. The DLC isn't tied to Steam, its tied to the EA account. Login with your account and the DLC appears. But the account I had was some other account and not tied to Steam. I didn't know I had two until I tried to link my account and was informed it was already linked to another account. I have this situation with other old-ass services as well... which account do I use for what? I have like 3 accounts for Microsoft/Live/Mojang and at least 3 for Sony. The entire reason why I was (am) TripredacusX on PSN is because my original Tripredacus account on Sony was connected to SOE (EverQuest) and my corporate account. Since I had left the employ of Sony, somehow that account was vanished... however the username is still active and you can't use it.

OK rant over. Some new stuff coming up but it does feel good to actually blast through the backlog to help determine what I actually want to play that I have.

bikingjahuty:
2. Ninja Gaiden (NES) - ABANDONED

It's been a long time, but I finally picked up Ninja Gaiden and decided to see if it is as infamously hard, and also fun, as most claim it is. Having never grown up with an NES and because none of my friends had this game or its two NES sequels, I didn't find out about this game until I was a young adult in the late 2000s. Since finding out about it, Ninja Gaiden always fascinated me and it was a game I knew I was going to try out one of these days. Well, tonight was the night and I have to say I'm both humbled and pretty disappointed.


For one, the crazy difficulty this game is known for is just as much a product of design as it is the gameplay limitation of this game. The frequent and often inconsistent respawning of enemies, the stiff movement controls, especially when jumping, and the placement of specific enemies in close proximity to death pits makes getting through this game the stuff of nightmares and massive frustration. I got fairly far in the game (Act 6), but by then I was an inch away from quitting over how stupid this game can be. I finally knew i was never going to beat it due to its incredibly frustrating controls and difficulty and quit while I was ahead. That's a shame since the OST is really good for an NES game, as is the presentation. It's one of the few NES games I've seen to have cinematic cutscenes between stages and a decent, albeit slightly generic story to piece everything together. I totally get why this game escaped the dustbins of 8-bit obscurity, but its very blaring flaws are often given a pass due to the game's reputation and other positive attributes. For me, I think I'm done with the franchise's 8-bit entries and someday I'll start playing its 3D games that came out in the 2000s and 2010s...someday, but definitely not now. I need to cool off a bit before returning to this series lol. (2/24/25)

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