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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

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dhaabi:

--- Quote from: marvelvscapcom2 on May 22, 2025, 01:21:58 am ---35. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins [GB]
--- End quote ---

Oddly given my taste in games now, but I have a lot of nostalgia for Super Mario Land 2 and fondly remember playing it on a Game Boy Pocket many years ago. It was one of the few games I owned during that time, so I found myself playing through it on a semi-regular basis. In fact, it's actually the only 2D Mario game I've completed to this day. Maybe one day I'll revisit it once more to see if it actually holds up to my standards of today, as it's probably been around fifteen years since I've last played it. I've always been curious of the series's first and later entries too—I think I'd have fun playing them.

telly:
Two games finished this week! And I'm almost done with Legends Arceus as well!

Game 8 - Beyond Good and Evil HD (PS4) - 11 Hours

There's a lot of things that I really like about this game but there were also a few things that didn't quite hold up in the way I was expecting this game is a fantastic pseudo-open world game with a great combat system. Instead, it's primarily A stealth action game and while the action can be a little frustrating at times I still found it to be enjoyable. What really struck me was how immersive the world and characters were.  Those were super memorable to me and the voice acting was also great. I liked the fact that you're playing as a photojournalist who isn’t only relying on combat but uses other skills to solve problems. Taking pictures was a really fun way to explore the world and contributes to the story nicely.  I really enjoyed exploring the games overworld taking in the sights and sounds, not to mention that the music was great.

I have heard a lot of comments about the game being kind of obscure and annoying to progress plot wise, but I really didn't have that much problems. I had very few hiccups in gameplay and story progression. I only had to look up 1 puzzle that I got stuck on and everything else just flowed very naturally. This might be because I'm playing a remade version that might have fixed some issues from previous releases.

I think where this game really fell flat unfortunately was the story. The setup felt so intriguing at first, with this broad conspiracy underscoring a massive alien attack, and your job is to solve the mystery and bring justice to the planet and your community. But the main revelations about the plot are revealed to the player within the first hour, and most of the following story is just you trying to break that news to the public (which you as the player already know) and it becomes way less interesting as a result. The parts of the story that connect Jade to the final villain were also flimsy and didn't feel like they were fleshed out as much as I would have liked. It's really a solid game though and a great cult classic.

Game 9 - Clock Tower Rewind (PS4) - 5 Hours

Even though it's only a 16-bit game that's 30 years old at this point, Clock Tower still succeeds in bringing a unique powerful sense of tension and fear that really hadn't been accomplished up until that point. The sprite work and pixel art is fantastic. The music is unsettling and creepy. The gameplay is tense and foreboding. It's interesting that the story has multiple endings and branching paths that remind you of an old choose your own adventure novel. Overall just a really solid experience that still holds up.

I do think where this game unfortunately falls a little short are some flaws of early game design. Sometimes certain puzzles will not be solved unless you do it in a very specific way, which can be very frustrating. I remember one example where there was a hole in the floor, and a large plank of wood next to the hole. If you click on the wood plank your character won't put the plank over the hole. You have to click on the hole itself first THEN she’ll move the wood plank. Just silly sequencing things like that that. I found the presentation of the HD collection to overall be pretty good. The one thing that was terrible was the notifications for certain bonus content being unlocked in the game which would get slapped over your gameplay and it was very distracting.

I’m glad that I had the opportunity to play this game as an official release because it's such an interesting and pioneering game for the survival horror genre.

dhaabi:
31. The Pedestrian || PlayStation 5 || 05.21.2025



For about a year, The Pedestrian has been a game I've considered playing without knowing much about it. I just so happened to recently watch a video discussing city design themes within games—more specifically, the implementation of certain musical styles—which highlighted this particular game, so I felt more inclined to go ahead and play it afterward.

As a puzzle-platformer, The Pedestrian places a stronger emphasis on its puzzle elements, whereas its platforming largely serves as a means of stage progression that's typically only performed once the puzzle has actually been solved. Controlling a stick person taken straight from pedestrian signage, you as the player-character move from one real-world environment to the next upon constructing a path of signs, which there is only one possible answer in order to traverse forward. While not overtly clear in its instruction, environmental clues exist which serve as a non-obtrusive means to explain how the game is played alongside teaching how new mechanics operate as they're periodically introduced. Over the course of the game, players never know what the end objective to our exploring is beyond simply moving forward and progressing through puzzles. Regardless, the player-character explores all throughout the expansive city environment including city streets, subway systems, apartment buildings, and so forth.

At the game's simplest, players must navigate through a sequence of paths which will, eventually, progress the game from one screen to the next. However, it becomes progressively more complicated to achieve this as additional puzzle mechanics are introduced. Across all puzzles, the foundation of puzzles is that each screen is comprised of multiple in-game rooms represented by individual signs which can be linked together in numerous ways, though only one that's correct. Ladders and locked doors are some of the first mechanics introduced, though eventually lifts, switches, and other general roadblocks are too. At the same time, these individual rooms may be selected and moved around which is required for them to properly connect. So, players must also consider the placement of each room, and there will be certain puzzles first seen around the middle of the game which require the positioning the rooms to be altered numerous times. Generally, the cannot become unlinked once linked or else a fail state is triggered which resets progress, though this rule will, toward the end, be adjusted once new stage elements are presented. In some ways, I thought that the automatic fail state was annoying, and especially so in the game's beginning sections where puzzles incorporate fewer moving parts, but it's a design choice I ultimately resigned myself to thinking works best.

With each new area introduced, a new gameplay mechanic which allows the player to directly interact with the game's real-world environment does too. These sorts of effects include things like operate a subway train or controlling the power of electrical devices. The game's difficulty progresses fairly, although some puzzles randomly seem to have a sharp difficulty spike, though perhaps these were just instances that I couldn't comprehend what to do exactly even after prolonged attempts. Eventually, puzzle screens become more complex as they act like a central hub with branching paths. At these locations, players must move across several sub-screens in order to acquire items to help pass the main-screen objective. This sort of stage design allowed for each new mechanic to be explained more in-depth while also obviously expanding upon each area. Ultimately, I think this sort of approach worked well, as opposed to there just being a series of screens which the player must overcome one after another without any complexity. At no point does this open-ended level design require the player to take one part of a puzzle to apply it to another. Instead, each of these sub-screens serve as independent puzzles and can be solved in any order.

In the end, I found The Pedestrian to offer just enough challenge. I don't remember there being a single instance where the puzzle's solution seemed obvious, as I was regularly becoming acquainted with additional puzzle mechanics that overlap another which complicates stage progression. Puzzle-platformers are a genre I don't often finding myself playing often, so I felt accomplished after completing the game (almost) entirely without a guide.

bikingjahuty:
62. Vanark (PS1)

A long time ago, I remember someone saying that part of the reason the NES library was so good was because it had so many weird, obscure, and odd games released for it, in additional to all the classics like Super Mario Bros 3 and Contra of course. However, I would argue the PS1 was even more chock full of strange, obscure releases, as well as a ton of games that are now considered iconic classics. One of those strange games that I would even consider to be a borderline gem was 1999's Vanark. Vanark is essentially the PS1's answer to Star Fox 64 and Panzer Dragoon, with a very light dash of Resident Evil thrown in. Yeah, I told you this game was freakin strange!


Vanark is a rail shooter at its core, which means you'll be blasting through seven stages in your X-wing style ship, that is also modestly customizable with different weapon loud outs. Be warned, however, this customization system is far less deep and interesting than it sounds, and more or less you'll fair about the same no matter how you equip your ship before a mission. The same goes for the selectable pilots; they each have their own stats, but honestly picking one pilot over another seemed to do absolutely nothing compared to the others. Even the ship looks exactly the same with one exception in a single stage, but this is more of a scripted event rather than something that occurs because of what character you picked. The controls and combat in Vanark are actually surprisingly good. It's easy to steer your ship where you want and also to shoot down enemies too. I will say that some of the enemy balancing a game design is a little suspect, but for the most part this is a pretty competent rail shooter as far as the late 90s are concerned. There are a few stages that feel a bit too similar in my opinion, but things are mixed up enough between the stage designs and themes, as well as there being unique objective and gameplay experiences for certain stages. Bosses come in the form of mid level sub bosses and final bosses. I actually found most of the boss fights to be one of the weakest areas of Vanark's gameplay, but with a couple of exceptions, none of them are really annoying to fight and are decent for what they are. Before moving into Vanark's visual and auditory presentation, I can't not mention the "Resident Evil" influences of this game. While you're not going to find zombies lurking in rooms or hunting down keys that look like figurines or anything like that, there is a mothership where you'll interact with the other characters and where the story is mostly fleshed out between missions. While there isn't a ton to look at, you'll be exploring the mothership with third person tank controls seemingly ripped out of RE. Albeit, the devs of Vanark somehow made the tank controls in this game even trickier to control, but the mothership portions are so brief and fairly inconsequential to the game that it isn't too much of a hassle to get around during these parts. A will say, these mothership story exposition and exploration parts do more to harm the game than help it, mostly with how they really kill the pacing of the game despite how interesting the whole third person on foot hub portions are as a concept in a game like this.


The visuals of Vanark are actually pretty good for a PS1 game. By no means if Vanark as visually captivating or good on an artistic level as Star Fox 64 or any of the Panzer Dragoon games, but it still holds up particularly well for a game from this era. There are some genuinely memorable and interesting stages, and some of the bosses were pretty cool too (some were also pretty lame as well). There is a lack of variety when it comes to some of the enemies and the first two levels in particular feel fairly similar, which is a bummer. Visual effects and attacks are pretty good for the most part. Certain ships will show of some fairly cool destruction animations when destroyed by your various weapons. The mother ship hub sections are probably the weakest looking parts of the game, with characters looking fairly bland and generic against mostly bland fixed backgrounds. There are a surprising amount of cutscenes in this game, which definitely add to the visual charm of this game and give it an almost movie like quality. Unfortunately if Vanark were a movie it wouldn't be very good given how bad and confusing its writing it, but luckily that's not why you'll be playing or enjoying this game.


The music in Vanark is pretty good for the most part. The various tracks that play while you're on the mothership were the most enjoyable, with a few of the stage songs being good, but not as well. Unfortunately, the audio design of Vanark isn't the best as the sound of your weapons being fired will often drown out the OST playing in each stage. Vanark is also a game that would have benefited from voice actors, however given the budget feel this game has, I doubt that was within the dev's means to afford. But even some crappy, non-professional voice acting would have gone a lot further than none at all. I definitely think it would have gone a long way to improve the buzz kill the mother ship hub sections are in this game.


While I found my copy of Vanark many years ago for real cheap, it's hard for me to recommend this game for anywhere close to its current going rate (around $150). While Vanark is a decent 5th gen rail shooter that does a lot of things right and has some very interesting ideas, it is in no way as good as almost all of its rail shooters contemporaries. Star Fox 64 can be bought for nearly a fifth what Vanark goes for and is way, way more enjoyable and well made. Outside a curiosity and being one of those odd ball games that almost never get made anymore, Vanark is definitely not worth paying over a hundred dollars for, however I will say it's still a decently fun game and certainly a unique one from one of my favorite eras of gaming. (5/23/25) [31/50]

dhaabi:
32. The Mr. Magic Rabbit Show || PC || 05.23.2025



About a month ago, developers Rusty Lake celebrated the tenth anniversary for their series Cube Escape by releasing a free game titled The Mr. Magic Rabbit Show. I had thought about playing immediately after the game released but never did, but fortunately not that much time past before I eventually got to it.

As the title suggests, players are introduced to the titular Mr. Rabbit as he performs an array of magical acts and parlor tricks. The player's role throughout this is to control Mr. Rabbit with simple point-and-click actions as we figure out what exactly the specific act is and how to perform it, so each sequence is presented as its own puzzle. In time, each puzzle's complexity increases to a degree, though they're generally still fairly simple to solve. Still, I found two or three of these to be confusing upon not realizing what I'm being tasked to do. After glancing over a guide just now, these issues I had were definitely more a fault of my own skill in observance, as there are—and always is—just enough information given to allow the magic act to move forward.

Unexpectedly, the game changes direction entirely in a pleasing way. Instead of solving linear point-and-click puzzles to progress in-game events, gameplay now takes on a more exploratory escape-the-room type puzzle design, which is what Rusty Lake is known for foremost. While this sort of shift may seem quite out-of-place to some, it isn't though. Before publishing the game, Rusty Lake also published a supplemental short film to watch before properly playing. While it's not a required viewing, the video does help provide some fun context for the events unfolding. Because of the game being divided into two halves, the gameplay loop avoids becoming stale. In fact, there were several moments where it seems like the game is ending but doesn't. Its length—which is still ultimately short at being less than two hours long to complete—feels far longer than I was expecting for a free experience without overstaying its welcome.

Beyond the game's main puzzles, there are other aspects in the game's design I found successful. Though obviously optional to pursue, in-game achievements have considerable thought put into them as they're gained from discovering an array of little secrets to discover. When going through these secondary puzzles, I was far less interested in activating some corner-screen notification than in testing my skills at both puzzle-solving and being observant. Something else is that the game integrate real-world announcements for upcoming franchise news which is done well while retaining the tone and without breaking the gameplay loop. There is even an unlisted teaser trailer to find as a reward, meaning only those who solve a specific puzzle (or who are directly given the link from someone else who has) have the means to watch it. Also, as he was a major inspiration to the Cube Escape franchise, the game honors the late David Lynch in no less than separate ways.

Before playing, I wasn't aware of Cube Escape's tenth anniversary taking place, but that Rusty Lake rewarded their fans with a premium game at no cost was a total surprise. I've still not gone back to the Cube Escape series to finish off the two final games preceding The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show, but it's something I do think about from time to time. Even if you've not yet played any of the previous games, The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show isn't really a part of the main narrative and is very much its own project, so it's a good starting point for any who are interested in playing the series.

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