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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

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bizzgeburt:
05 - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance [DE] (PlayStation 2)
https://vgcollect.com/item/283318

This is a game I have fond memories of playing it back in the early 2000s. Revisiting it almost 20 years later, I can say that the playability aged well, and it's still fun to explore the many huge maps for more loot and more enemies to level up.
When playing this title as a youth, I can't recall myself being bothered with the game's story very much and replaying it in '25 gave me the opportunity to concentrate more on that matter. Being mostly a dungeon dwelling hack'n'slay type of RPG, the games story is delivered with few sequences accompanied by a narrator voice, and mosty via conversations with npcs. I always was a fan of the ancient and genre-defineing D&D universe for it being developed over so many decades by so many players and authors alike, and the medevil kind of slang as well as the typical D&D elements like Beholders and Drow just give this game the athmosphere it needs.
Musically, most of ingame background music is quite subtle, consisting mostly of ambient dungeon-sounds and a few echoing keys. Only piece really standing out is the beautiful song sung within the elvensong-tavern inside the town of Baldur's Gate itself, the place the player actually start's his/her adventure.
As to gameplay, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance offers a complex but not to complicated hack'n'slay with many RPG-elements such as tons of different weapons, armors and accessories, 3 classes to choose from, all coming with their indiviual set of skills, parameters and preferences, a leveling system, generated item drops and so on and so on ... you actually slash your way through countless different dungeons such as caves, temples, forrests and swamps, collecting every stack of gold, weapon or armor piece falling out of freshly annihilated foes. Drops themself mostly suck through a huge part of the game though, with a mighty shop-weapon being the one of your choice right up until the last few dungeons. Those dungeons themself are presented with graphics I dare to call top-notch for this system and era, many of them unwinding into actual mazes confusing you even with a hud-map at hand. Elements like fires and water are created jawdroppingly realistic for an early 2000s game.

I really enjoyed revisiting this title after so many years and took with me another amazing gaming experience diving deeper into a game I already knew and loved for what it is. I invite every Diablo- or God of War-player to check this little gem out when looking for a short distraction between bigger titles and when interrested in prequel'ing the modern Baldur's Gate 3 a little bit.

Good game  8) I'll just start playing the 2nd part, hehe ...

dhaabi:
30. Sable || PlayStation 5 || 05.17.2025



Ever since its 2018 announcement trailer, Sable is a game I've long been interested in playing. Somehow, I had been able to remain blind to exactly what kind of experience the game offers exactly though was aware of its reception which did ultimate allow for a more rewarding playthrough.

Throughout the game, players assume the role of the titular Sable, a young woman who's taking the first steps toward embarking on a coming-of-age journey. Once reaching a certain age, all young people at this period of life, dubbed gliders, set forth on the same journey of self-discovery to learn who they are and to decide what exactly it is they want to do in life by experiencing the many walks of life people live. While on their expedition, gliders are free to do whatever they want and to travel along the world's vast reaches for however long. Inevitably, though, people will approach them with tasks to complete which has become expected for gliders to follow to help them gain worldly knowledge and experience. At its core, Sable is an exploration-focused game, though individual player discovery is, to a degree, lessened through the game's quest system. Of course, quests give players—and thus gliders, too—direction and reason in what to explore. Nevertheless, players are free to travel the game's world in any order they choose. As a result, I found myself usually navigating each different region's empty landscapes first before heading to its central hub where quests are introduced.

While much of the game is about one's solitary adventure, there are plenty of opportunities to interact with NPCs in the communities discovered and traveled to. The perspective of an adolescent on such a journey into the unknown is achieved well, and the beginning sections which emphasize community and one's place in it has more depth than I was expecting. Dialogue options are also present for the player to select, and while they have no great bearing on the story, they work toward molding Sable in the way players see fit. Despite her young age, Sable is written just as mature if not more so than some of her adult counterparts. She's introspective and able to discern the greater meaning of what's being expressed to her beyond the words being spoken. The game's writing covers a variety of emotions which made Sable's journey all the more rewarding.

As previously mentioned, Sable is an adventure exploration game which focuses on Sable setting off across varied desert environments. The world is large and segmented by regions while still being fully interconnected, though it becomes much more easily accessible with a newfound, albeit ultimately temporarily, hover ability and a hovercraft. There is a strong emphasis on platforming and verticality as well, and I often found myself climbing various obstacles to simply reach higher. Salvaged or simply broken machinery regularly becomes artificial platforms to ascend great heights. Archeological monoliths which have transformed into looming mountainsides pierce the skies above. That you're above a world already so large sometimes even becomes forgettable as you're so high. Meanwhile, the game does feature a map system with markers and others tool available for navigating which do help considerably. A compass is also present, though I did not really find it useful once several markers had been designated and instead just found myself opening the map to identify my position and the direction I was facing.

Of course, the game's most obvious attraction is its visual style that's fully lifted from artist Mœbius. The environment is built with minimal line art and colored by earth tones which frequently adapt to the time of day and the world's numerous regions. As night neared, I regularly stopped to observe the encompassing blanket of shadows cover everything. That Sable was built with a fully explorable 3D open-world environment tremendously allows for its art to make a long-lasting effect. With that said, I'll also note the game's soundtrack which is beautifully written. Each track excellently captures the mood and ambiance of each area players traverse. Developer Shedworks actually went out of their way to seek out someone who hadn't scored a video game before which is how musician Michelle Zauner of the band Japanese Breakfast came to be the game's composer. That Zauner was able to so effectively capture how empty the game's world is impressive, and without her score, so much of that reinforcement would be lost. That both visuals and audio combine so effectively is exceptional.

Unfortunately, though, Sable is widely known for being poorly optimized. So, I was reserved with my expectations. While some of the game's most apparent issues largely relating to frame rate are difficult to ignore, I ultimately found them non-intrusive nor overly affecting any significant bearing on my experience. However, bugs become more and more problematic as play sessions lengthen, and players should expect to reset the software to help mitigate these issues. Largely, bugs relate to only two issues: spawning your hovercraft in the event you strayed away from it (which is often) and being able to engage in the fishing side activity. These issues were absolutely inconvenient and did break my immersion and negatively influence my mood, but they still weren't drastic enough for me to abandon the game.

In so many ways, Sable is a game that's designed so well in its presentation while simultaneously suffering in its underlying performance. Should its issues ever be rectified (which they won't, as Shedworks has confirmed), it'd be easy to recommend Sable. But I know that I'm more tolerant for performance issues than others, so I'll just say for anyone interested to be cautious and to acknowledge the game's weaknesses. Regardless, I greatly enjoyed my time playing.

kamikazekeeg:
11 - V Rising (PC 2024) - BEAT - Take a slightly slower version of the gameplay from Hades and combine it with a less open sandbox version of Valheim, and you get the vampire sim game, V Rising.  Been wanting to play this for abit and had a good time.  I realized it's not often I get to play the bad guy in games, like an outright villain, and that's a fun change of pace.  I think the overall experience is solid, decent action, the crafting offers up a lot of decoration as you progress through the game to give you the chance to build a neat castle and there's a solid amount of content here as I put 60 hours into it and that was entirely solo PVE.

That's where the cons are, as the game to me feels like it leans more PVP or Co-Op than PVE, perhaps 60/40.  You can do everything solo just fine, but just how things are executed, how things feel, I think if the game was built with PVE in mind, it would've been better, but that's just because I'm not gonna play this outside of a solo private game.  I do appreciate that since you run the private game as a server, you can customize so many options of the game itself.  I highly recommend turning off teleporting limitations if you play solo, it's a mechanic that only makes sense in a server where you have to worry about getting ganked by other players and it makes the game way more enjoyable.  Or you can just jack up the difficulty and challenge all you want. 

Good game, had a solid time with it, definite recommend.

marvelvscapcom2:
35. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins [GB] - finished May 22nd, 2025



NOT AS GOOD AS ONE


It's ok... one thing I will speak highly of is the power ups. Theirs a bunny ear powerup unlike anything ive seen in a mario game that essentially allows mario to float like princess peach but even grander.  The difficulty ups a tad from the first but this OP power up kinda offsets that.

But what the original has that this one lacks is just idk.. charm.

Good old Gameboy, italian plumber charm.

The first had epic plane flight sequences, cute princess rescuing we are familiar with, and of course simple primitive visuals that just work.  This game ups the graphic fidelity a tad. And the mechanics allow for multi directional movement mid air.  It also brings you into a more world overmap not disimilar to super mario world.

I feel it does fine and proper. But is it as good as the first one? Not at all to me. Id probably never itch to play it again. Its just sorta not reinventing the bologna sandwich imo.  But I am glad to have played it in my quest to tackle my Mario classics backlog

Rating - 76/100

realpoketendonl:
3. Miraculous: Paris Under Siege [PC/Steam Deck]

Gosh, only beaten 3 games thus far this year, and game number 3 is a licensed kids game. Not good for my #gamerimage. But whatever, here we go.

Miraculous: Paris Under Siege is the second game (excluding mobile games) based on the popular animated series Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, commonly referred to as Miraculous Ladybug. I played the first game, Miraculous: Rise of the Sphinx last year, and I can say without a doubt that Paris Under Siege is a major improvement over the original. However, considering I thought the original game was god awful, that doesn't really say much.

Paris Under Siege is half platformer, half beat-'em-up, similar to the first game. You walk around, fight waves of enemies and traverse various platforming challenges. Compared to the first game, significant improvements have been made. The one that sticks out right away: we actually get control of the camera this time. That alone helps a lot. The game feels a bit snappier overall too. Combat actually feels like it has a bit of a punch to it (not much, but it's at least there). I at least feel like I'm controlling the characters, rather than fighting the controls. Platforming has gotten better too, with some of it actually being decently fun. A standout inclusion are the sections where you can zip around levels via grapple points. It's nothing special, completely linear, but it does feel like the movement of the show and feels pretty good to pull off. I'm also really glad the game is finally fully voiced. For a game based on an animated series, especially one aimed at kids, that's really a requirement if you ask me.

That doesn't mean the game is perfect though. I would've appreciated a lock-on. The game is simple enough that it's not a necessity, but it would've made reorienting myself towards the enemies in the middle of fights a bit easier. I think the simplicity is one of the things that's holding the game back though. The problem is not that it's repetitive, but that it's monotonous. When it comes to combat, the game really is just a simple button masher. I don't mind that the game is easy, that's to be expected for a kids game, but I find the combat doesn't hold my interest. Not all fights are mandatory, and there were moments where I found myself just running past the enemies, not feeling like fighting. It's just not really that engaging nor satisfying to play, and being a kids game is no excuse: there absolutely are simple kid-friendly beat-'em-up/platformers out there that do full engage even adult players.

In terms of performance, I played Rise of the Sphinx on Switch, and it ran downright horribly on there. I'd say it was poorly optimized, but that would mean you tried to optimize it at all. I played Paris Under Siege on the Steam Deck though, and it ran perfectly fine on there. Excluding one section in one level where the framerate absolutely tanked for some reason, it ran just fine as far as I could tell. (Just make sure you use GE-Proton for the compatibility layer to fix some video playback issues). I think the bigger problem remaining is the lack of polish. The game does feel a little rough around the edges in many ways, like developers weren't granted the time and resources to properly smooth everything out before release. It's perfectly playable, nothing game-breaking, but you can feel it as you play (or probably even as you watch a trailer).

Overall, I'd say this game is mediocre to average. There's some fun to be had here. For a kid who's a fan of Miraculous, I think they could get some enjoyment out of this. Don't get it at full price, it's not worth that, but at a discount, you could do worse. But for anyone else, there isn't much here you won't find done better elsewhere. Too bad. I'm still a big fan of the animated series, which does lend itself insanely well to a game of this style. I hold out hope that one day we'll get that genuinely great Miraculous game that the series deserves.

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