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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

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dhaabi:
33. Empty. || Browser || 05.26.2025



Looking for a short gaming experience, I decided to play the game Empty. I really have no recollection about how I came across this game, but it's probably been a part of my games to try list on itch.io for around eight years.

As a puzzle game, Empty. emphasizes the principle of minimalism while tasking players to empty out rooms and other kinds of spaces, one item at a time. Rooms are divided into stages and exist individually within a void separated from anything else. They're small in design without much clutter in them but still with items worth relinquishing, and navigating through each room from a third-person outer perspective is simple to accomplish. How removing items is achieved is by targeting specific items—usually in a specific order by the puzzle's design—and aligning their color to the same color of the wall's background. Examining the room's 3D space by controlling perspective is the majority of problem-solving, as there is usually (perhaps always) just one right alignment to identify to progress forward. If at any point other items overlap the one you're actively trying to remove, players will either need to find some other angle or to adjust the removal order of items.

In concept, gameplay is simple and largely remains that way. Past the game's halfway point, an additional small conditional element is silently introduced that attributes an underlying color items. So, once items are removed, instead of it and the background wall disappearing, the wall will instead take on the item's underlying color attribute. Since stages are small, there are only so many walls, so I think this mechanic was added so that all items actually have the means to disappear. As a result, this new color-changing element actually diminishes some degree of problem-solving difficulty as there is usually a clear path to follow regading the order of items to remove. Were this mechanic designed in a way to increase difficulty, I think it would have benefitted the game, as the gameplay loop does become stale across its 24 stages.

However, this is not to suggest that the entire gameplay experience during Empty. is easy, as it's not. Between the final two levels specifically, I eventually ran into the issue of not being able to progress forward. It seemed that nothing I was doing was working, and I was stuck for at least twenty minutes. I even restarted the stage in the hopes of some bug auto-correcting itself, but that didn't work as I later learned there was no bug. I eventually referenced a walkthrough video, and it turns out that there is a major difficulty spike. For only two or three items specific to these two final stages, they must be aligned in a near pixel-perfect way in order for them to disappear. Since this is a small indie game, I'm really not sure if this is intentinal or not, but it's an issue I saw many others complaining about in comments, and it greatly impacted the overall experience in a negative way. I'll also note here that there is a hint system seemingly present to use, but it does not seem to function.

Beyond gameplay, the game's message is reflecting in a minimalist art style. Simple shapes and colors are presented without finer details, and it all appears visually pleasing. Across the game's first half or so, stages and the items within them are overly simple, yet they eventually become more detailed with more specific shapes and patterns while still mostly maintaining solid colors. While the game's visuals are generally fine, I found the latter half's presentation to be more fun. At some point, color gradients are also utilized for background visuals, but I never saw the need for them and think they work against the game's clean display. To an extent, the patterns do this too, but there are also some visually agreeable uses.

Apart from stage design, there is almost always some sort of text passage relating to the concept of minimalism that appears which serves as a break between stages. However, I actually found these interruptions to be irritating. Having one or two to bookend the game's opening and closing stages would be fine, but there are just too many present. Their presence is made worse still as players can't simply advance through them but must interact with them in the same way as stages by rotating them so that they appear legible. Annoyingly, a block of text appears halfway through the game that even states how the passages themselves aren't important to the game's message. It becomes so apparent to then ask, why are they present at all?

Overall, I think that Empty. is fine. I think that a shorter, more refined experience would have been more successful than what was ultimately decided upon, as nothing new is really introduced that changes the gameplay loop at any point. Prior to playing, I wasn't expecting the game to last as long as it did, but I ended up spending about 90 minutes with it. In my opinion, play time probably should have been halved.

bikingjahuty:
63. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)

My eventual goal is to play every Castlevania game ever made, at least the more mainstream released. Castlevania is one of those accliamed franchises that I am woefully behind on, having only beat a handful of entries in the series. For the next Castlevania I tackled, I referred to the infinite wisdom of the internet to recommend me a really good entry in the series I haven't played yet. Of course, Symphony of the Night was recommended constantly, but having beat that game already, I opted for what is commonly considered the second best game in the Castlevania series, Aria of Sorrow. While I was thoroughly impressed with Aria of Sorrow, I feel like some of the praise this game gets is a bit overblown, mostly due to the limitations of its platform.


Aria of Sorrow is absolutely an excellent game. As a metroidvania style entry in the series, you're given a huge map to explore at your leisure. Of course, you'll have to come back to certain portions of the map later on once you've obtained a specific ability to access it, but this formula is what really makes Aria of Sorrow and similar metrovania Castlevania games so good and addictive. Like Symphony of the Night, there are a ton of abilities you can obtain. As mentioned, some of these are used to progress through the castle, while others are used to boost stats, give you new secondary weapons, and some just have strange effects that can be useful in some situations. This is all coupled with an RPG-like leveling system that also leans on the use of items to boost stats. In a way, Aria of Sorrow and other early metroidvanias almost feel like 2D precursors to the Souls games. This is even more evident in the plethora of horrow themed enemies and bosses you'll encounter throughout the game. Pretty much everything from zombies, killer plants, spider women, harpies, demons, and just about everything else you can think of that would fit well into a horror movie are present in Aria of Sorrow. The bosses are all mostly larger than life and require different strategies and abilities to beat. All this culminated in an incredibly fun, rewarding, and just straight up addictive gameplay experience for the most part. However, there are absolutely annoyances and problems that I encountered despite the game being very well made overall.


For starters, the difficulty balancing is all over the place in the game. While I'd say the first third of the game has a progressive difficulty that straddles that line between being hard, but fun, the game sees a massive spike in difficulty once you reach the Death boss. However, this spike is only briefly present until you're given access to a series of items later on that are so OP'ed that I was taking out enemies and bosses that would have otherwise been way, way harder to defeat. As I quickly leveled after destroying them, I found myself so powerful that the rest of the game was a relative piece of cake. Keep in mind, this was at roughly the halfway mark in the game. Way more time and effort should have been spent on the difficulty balancing in this game in order to maintain that excellent difficulty/fun ratio that the game does a pretty good job at during the first third of Aria of Sorrow. My second biggest grievance is the fact that you'll be relying on healing items a fair bit during some of the more hectic sections of the game, however unless you're lucky enough to stumble upon them throughout the map, you'll mostly be relying on the game's lone shop to buy them with money you collect by smashing lanterns and killing enemies. This shop is located at the very beginning of the game and requires a decent amount of backtracking to get to. Even with the minor aid of teleportation rooms scattered throughout the game, it is alwasy a pain in the ass to have to go all the way back to the beginning of the map if you need to stock up on items or buy more powerful gear. There are plenty of save point rooms throughout the game. Hell, there are also quite a few empty rooms with new purpose in Aria of Sorrow. Why couldn't one of those just have been a shop room? It's just bad gameplay design and something I'm surprised was overlooked. Other than that, I could nitpick various small things that created minor annoyances during my time in Aria of Sorrow, but just know 90% of my issues with this game belonged to the two major faults mentioned above.


Aria of Sorrow's presentation is very impressive for a handheld. While this game could never look as good as Symphony of the Night given its hardware limitations on the GBA, it does a good enough job with what it has to deliver a game I seldom could fault from a visual standpoint. Perhaps my biggest issue with the visuals in how derivative many of the enemies and bosses are compared to other Castlevania games, especially Symphony of the Night. I would have definitely liked to see some more originality in that department, while also having some of those series staples that most entries possess. I get that his is the same Dracula's castle from many of the previous games either, but I would have also liked to see it get more of a makeover too seeing how some of the sections of the castle were ripped from Symphony of the Night, albeit with a different layout, different enemies, and slightly altered visuals. And while it's not necessarily the fault of the game given the limited hardware capabilities of the GBA, but the map and overall game just felt a lot more basic, shallow, and shorter than it did in Symphony of the Night. For what it is though, I have little to complain about in Aria of Sorrow from a visual presentation perspective and absolutely loved what I was looking at most of the time.


Finally, the audio in Aria of Sorrow is pretty top notch when it comes to GBA OSTs. Again, limitations of the GBA are what primarily kept the game's audio from being amazing, but that's not to say it wasn't very good, because it absolutely is. The OST is catchy and well done as in most Castlevania games. Unfortunately, this games story and characters would have benefits from some sort of voice acting, if that were possible. Instead, dialogue is delivered through text boxes which just don't have the same punch as a well implemented voice acting cast. Once again, I'm going to compare this to Symphony of the Night which did have voice acting. Even though the dialogue was hammy and not always done well, the original english dib of Symphony of the Night has become the stuff of legends and the game's overall charm would have suffered without it, as it does in Aria of Sorrow.


Before I get to my closing thoughts of Aria of Sorrow, I'm well aware that I've mentioned Symphony of the Night in this review a ton of times, probably to some people's annoyance. Seeing how Symphony of the Night cane out 7-years before this game and set the standard for all metroidvania games in the series that followed, its the benchmark I use for determining how good the other games are. Symphony of the Night is one of my favorite games of all time so the other Castlevania games get to reaching its greatness, the better the game is. Aria of Sorrow falls noticeably short of Symphony of the Night in nearly every conceivable way, with the main factor for this being the system it was developed for. Had Aria of Sorrow been developed for the PS2 or Gamecube, I have no doubt that it would have given Symphony of the Night way more of a run for its money. Instead, Aria of Sorrow is an impressive handheld game and one of the best on the GBA. Even with the limitations of the GBA, Aria of Sorrow still stands as one of the best Castlevania games I've played, second only to...you guessed it, and also possibly Lords of Shadow, but I haven't played that game in nearly 15 years so I'll hold off on that comparison for now. I'm really excited about playing the other games in the series, especially the other metroidvania games to see how they stack up against Aria of Sorrow, especially the other GBA and DS games. Perhaps Aria of Sorrow will become my new gold standard for the handheld metroidvania games. It certainly was good enough to potentially be that for me. (5/29/25) [41/50]

koemo1:

--- Quote from: koemo1 on January 01, 2025, 11:26:30 am ---Completed
1. Wii Play [Wii]
2. Batman: The Brave and the Bold [Wii]
3.  NiGHTS: Journey to Dreams [Wii]
4. Wii Play Motion [Wii]

Currently playing
Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Reload [Wii]

Abandoned
1. New Super Mario Brothers WiiU

--- End quote ---
2. Nintendoland

dhaabi:
34. OlliOlli || PlayStation Vita || 05.30.2025



After playing through OlliOlli World last year and greatly enjoying my time with it, I was definitely interested in trying out the earlier entries in the series. Fortunately, the first game OlliOlli has been a part of my digital library for around a decade.

In just a few words, OlliOlli can be described as a simple 2D skateboarding game which tasks the player to reach the end goal as their main objective. Doing so grants access from the current stage to the next, though accomplishing this task may prove to be more difficult to accomplish than one was initially led to believe. The reason for this is that, should players fail to stick the landing upon navigating the game's 2D platforming at any point, they instantly fail and must try again from the stage start. Stages are fairly short leading there to be no checkpoint system, and players have the means to perform grinds, spins, and flips to continue pushing forward. There are two sets of stages too which are each further sub-divided by locales: amateur levels and pro levels, with the latter being unlocked through player accomplishments. And, while there is no reward in the traditional sense in progressing through the game aside from unlocking new and more difficult stages to overcome, this is the game's main attraction which I'll discuss further below.

As a 2D game, OlliOlli both simplifies and intensifies player controls with its limited perspective. Of course, players have no control over the auto-scrolling horizontal plane, but they are fully in control of movement. One the left analog stick controls player movement and tricks performed, the right side counterbalances every action as the action button must be pressed in a timely manner to successfully complete any decision the player makes. During my early play sessions, I found myself struggling some to find the right timing, but I eventually became quite comfortable with it and was almost always able to perfectly perform tricks and landings. It's worth noting that completed actions are not just graded as pass and fail either, as other grades between these two states exist. The game takes on arcade qualities by enticing players to achieve higher and higher scores, so players are obviously incentivized to perform the best they can rather than not, instead of just moving from start to finish.

Alongside players working toward unlocking new stages, in-stage objectives serve as the game's real challenge and the bulk of time players will spend with OlliOlli. Across the game's fifty stages, five optional objectives are presented to players which greatly tests their skill, observation, timing, and understanding of momentum. Some are simple enough to execute with enough effort such as reaching a certain score total, but others are more creative, including ones which force players to adjust their play style or to seek out optional paths among the game's limited use of verticality. For a while, I found myself struggling to complete stages even when knowing that these challenges were optional, but completing these challenges feels extremely accomplishing. In time, though, I pivoted to separating the more difficult ones from the others. Usually, this meant isolating objective-specific objectives from score-conditional ones, and this generally made fully clearing stages easier.

Of course, these challenges add a lot of play value to the game. Without them, there is little else to do beyond clearing the relatively short stages which don't really require that much skill once becoming comfortable with the controls and playing conservatively. So, I worked toward completing all 250 of them, and I was able to which is when I considered the game completed. However, there one final thing that unlocks once this condition is met which is Rad Mode. While Rad Mode doesn't introduce any new stages or challenges, it instead sets an extremely difficult hurdle to overcome. With this mode toggled on, players are now presented the challenge of clearing every stage perfectly. If the timing of landing on the ground or a rail is off even a little, players will automatically faceplant and fail. I wasn't initially interested in playing this mode, but I did try it out of curiosity. And, just like with the challenges, Rad Mode offers an entirely new layer of depth to the game. It's a huge bonus for the game's most avid players that I enjoyed too, but I didn't want to invest any more time into it for the time being.

While it may seem simple, OlliOlli presents a considerable challenge when trying to clear all of its objectives. It's an easy pick-up-and-play type of game, though it's difficult to put down once starting which is a testament to how fun it is. I know that, eventually, I'll be playing its sequel, and I'm left waiting with some anticipation.

kashell:
39. Guilty Gear Strive - Testament

Just in time for Pride Month, I finished the game again with Testament, who has been characterized as they/them. And I think I finally found my footing. This was my favorite run through in the arcade mode. I figured out some good combos, learned some new ones afterwards, and had a lot of fun. I might go through the game again with Bridgette just to keep with the spirit of the month, but dare I say that I finally found my new main with Testament? I'll mess around some more later in the training mode to officially confirm.

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