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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

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marvelvscapcom2:

--- Quote from: Cartagia on June 14, 2025, 07:52:35 am ---Finished Shantae and the Seven Sirens this morning, and I think it's pretty handily my favorite game in that franchise so far.  It's feels the like the most traditional Metroidvania, and the map is fun to explore, and the abilities are cute and fun.  It is a bit too easy, and kinda rushes to the end.

--- End quote ---

I gotta get to playing my Shantae collection! I recently got all 5 of the limited run games signed by Matt and Eron Bozon of way forward games.  Do you know if they tie in together at all? Based on the others you played. I imagine it's only vaguely connected and can be experienced out of sequence hopefully.  Shantae 1 is hard and id like to start with an easier newer experience. I love the art style.

______________________________________________

Abandoned - Heavenly Bodies [PS5]


Heavenly bodies is a physics based newtonian type of game where realism is its detriment to me.  Played it for all of 10 minutes and uninstalled it. Imagine tediously moving an astronauts individual limbs to push him through unpredictable zero G in narrow hall ways where one wrong move will make you fall all the way down and start over.  It's the game "only up" mixed with cold spaghetti and bland graphics. I seriously hated this game. It is praised. But for whatever reason it doesnt click for me.

marvelvscapcom2:
42. River City Girls: Zero [PS5] - finished Jun 21st, 2025



This game unlike the 2 other river city girl way forward games that in essence revitalize the franchise with new entires is basically a port of the SNES game only released in super famicom markets I believe. Which is obscure and maybe lesser known than the NES game River City Ransom. It's a port in full 16 bit with only quality of life improvements sprinkled in. And they added cut scenes. A radical theme song and made it visually nice.  As a catalyst before I dive into my copy of river city girls. I wanted to experience this. As the precursor of what would come. 

Shocking Depth

The game has you take on the role of mostly Riki and Kunio. Two charismatic teens that are wrongfully imprisoned due to a case of mistaken identity. But you also get to play as the peppy, jealousy drenched colorful girlfriends of said characters. All 4 of which have funny banter amongst themselves and villains.  90s dialogue slaps sometimes. Think letterman jackets, cliche hair slicked tropes and brawling gang members across amusement parks and schools. Pretty cool.  It's a portal to a simple corny badassery that encompassed 90s humor.  Phrases like "be there or be square" and "whos this chick?" Just feel nostalgic.

The girls move sets differ in cliche manner.  And id actually say the 2 leads are not the girls despite the title. Riki and espeically Kudio are much more pivotal to the plot.  The plot of the game without spoiling anything is surprisingly deep and engrossing for a super nintendo beat em up.  Filled with turmoil, trauma, plot twists and more. It actually wasnt just a "mash X" type of beat em up.  It required delicate planning and lots of patience to learn enemy attack patterns.  This felt like a coin swallowing arcade cabinet in a Tokyo laundrymat, it kept all its design the same.  This is mostly good. But being a niche port of a 30 year old beat em up.  It carries issues with it like the soggy rotted grapes that come bundled with the freshly riped vine. They didnt clean it up. So you get what the past intended.  Thats good. Because overall I love the bosses. Its got a sweet short length and wildly hard difficulty spikes. Its not for the faint of heart. And their are flaws that piggy backed along.



Flaws

The hit boxes are fairly small. Like most snes games. You can visually see your leg make contact and not count a strike. That gets annoying on bass battles. The margin for error is so small. And sometimes it does rob you a clean hit.  It also makes it so that some enemies require such a beating to die that it almost seems unfair.  Its hard.  And it also makes you move on a 3d plane of sorta lanes? But its also 2d? Its strange feeling to line up attacks. But that comes with its age.

pros

Big Bertha.  I believe her name is Misuzu.  Is absolutely ballistically Hard. But in a fun "I wanna learn the method to the madness" sorta way modern games dont encapsulate as much anymore.  Beating bosses in this feel triumphant and I love that rewarding feel. 

Awesome Biker sequences. Are exactly like road rash for ps1.  They are sorta intermission stages between levels. And I found the art style and variety those give to be genius.

The visuals have aged excellent.


Overall the controls and special attacks feel nicely done.  It's a cool way to play a SFC classic. It's a box car, a bottle of saki, and a prickly pear if you stare too long.  But I say its worth the 5 dollars I paid. 


Rating - 87/100

Difficulty - 8.5/10

Cartagia:

--- Quote from: marvelvscapcom2 on June 20, 2025, 03:03:37 pm ---
--- Quote from: Cartagia on June 14, 2025, 07:52:35 am ---Finished Shantae and the Seven Sirens this morning, and I think it's pretty handily my favorite game in that franchise so far.  It's feels the like the most traditional Metroidvania, and the map is fun to explore, and the abilities are cute and fun.  It is a bit too easy, and kinda rushes to the end.

--- End quote ---

I gotta get to playing my Shantae collection! I recently got all 5 of the limited run games signed by Matt and Eron Bozon of way forward games.  Do you know if they tie in together at all? Based on the others you played. I imagine it's only vaguely connected and can be experienced out of sequence hopefully.  Shantae 1 is hard and id like to start with an easier newer experience. I love the art style.
--- End quote ---

I've played games 3, 4, and 5, and other than some light continuity stuff regarding Shantae's mom they have all been their own separate stories with not a lot of connective tissue.  It's the same primary roster of characters every time, but you could play them in any order and not really notice.

dhaabi:
39. Formless Star || PC || 06.20.2025



Looking for something casual to play, I decided to try out Formless Star on a whim. Prior to playing, I knew next-to-nothing about the game, but I decided to try it out based on its brief premise and cutesy pixel art design despite not regularly playing games with this kind of art.

As a field researcher for some sort of space exploration team, player-controlled protagonist Anemo is tasked with cataloging information on the planet's biodiversity, specifically its animal life. While this may sound relatively simple, the game is designed so that the world is ever-changing. Each time the player returns to their spacecraft and steps out again, the alien landscape will change to create a new world to explore. There aren't any threats or hazards beyond the world's formless nature, so the game's one sole task is simple to complete. In fact, while there are actually 61 species to identify to add to some compendium, only 30 are necessary to reach one of the game's endings, though it's a ultimately less satisfying experience.

And really, that's all Formless Star really is—a simple, 2D adventure exploration game. When out navigating the environment, exploration is bound to a grid-based tile system. While the world isn't really that large, there are various terrains to traverse through and even varied ground types within them which provide a greater sense of a living environment, and a fair majority of tile types even leave footprint impressions to help prevent players from needless backtracking. I did not realize until near the end of my playthrough, but there is a map system available which is fairly useful considering the game's procedurally-generated design. It's also worth mentioning that, beyond making brief interactions with the world's animals, players are also able to construct bridge walkways and, oppositely, destroy environment roadblocks. For the former, they're also able to be seen on the map which certainly helps identify players with where they are exactly.

Regarding animal wildlife itself, they are predictably unusual considering we've exploring an alien planet. Overwhelmingly, wildlife is non-confrontational as they really just idle around. Interacting with them initiates some sort of reactionary animation or even some action that mildly impacts the player, but there is no consequence during encounters. Since the majority of the game's writing is tied to journal field notes, now seems best to mention the game's lighthearted humor that's, regularly, also twisted in some way by revealing some depressing evolutionary truths. Toward the end of finding every animal, a new species that I believe is guaranteed to spawn right outside the spacecraft appears that provides the means for faster travel. Naturally, this resource makes it much easier to fully complete the catalog.

If choosing to find everything, there is also some not-so-subtle developer commentary regarding the intrinsic value of appreciating art and creating it that actually reminds me of a line from Cave Story. Additionally, finding everything also triggers a short but laughable post-credits scene. Concerning other aspects of the game beyond its gameplay, creature design is strange but whimsical, and this also extends to the world at large. There was one small visual design aspect I did not like, though, which is that a colored overlay filter appears and routinely changes once identifying a certain amount of animals which is evident in the above screenshot even. There is not much to comment on the game's sound, but it's appropriately space-y and with a sort of positive ambiance.

Taking only an hour or so to play through, Formless Star was a short but fun casual experience to relax with. I had been playing through some longer, more trying games while having decided to play through this, so it was a nice respite.

dhaabi:
40. Cuphead || Xbox One || 06.21.2025



Since its first major announcement in 2014, Cuphead is a game that's greatly interested me for its art direction and vision. Several years past before its eventual release, though that it was exclusive to the Xbox platform for some time ensured I'd likely not play it for some time, if at all. I've actually owned a digital copy of the game since 2018 after unexpectedly being given an Xbox One, though it is only now seven years since then did I finally take the time to play the game.

In short, Cuphead from a gameplay perspective relies on several different genre conventions that all help diversify play, and it's made easier with the game's stage-select structure that's, more-or-less, a take on a boss rush challenge. The majority of stages consist of single-shooter boss encounters, though there are also horizonal shoot 'em up segments alongside run 'n gun platforming trials. I've actually not ever played through a run 'n gun game before, and my experience with the broad shoot 'em up genre in general is quite limited. So, I'm not sure how to properly assess the game's difficulty as I have no reference point. Nevertheless, Cuphead is not a game for the casual or inexperienced player, even in spite of both standard and easy difficulty options being available when starting a new campaign that can even be adjusted with each boss stage. With that said, I decided to play through each stage at Regular difficulty, and I was able to complete that goal. Something else is that Cuphead actually has a two-player mode, though I didn't try that out.

During play, players have numerous actions to help aid them clear their goal. There are standard attacks, single-use special attacks that must be fully charged to use, and minor special attacks that only require limited charge. And early on, a shop is introduced which offers power-up wares and alternative shooting abilities, so there is a sense of customization to help players find a play style that suits them. As far the player's movement, a dash ability is paramount to success, and a defensive parry helps prevent damage, though the latter may only be used to counteract specific color-coded hazards and attacks. Meanwhile, bosses have numerous phases which must be tactfully avoided to successfully best them. Their attacks have all sorts of patterns with multiple hazards to avoid simultaneously. Clearing any one stage will likely require repeated attempts as only through trial-and-error and careful observation can patterns be identified. Under normal conditions, players are only awarded three units of health per attempt that can't be replenished, so the level of difficulty presented is considerably high. Meanwhile, platforming trials purely test the player's sense of movement and control with their chaotic design. In nearly every open space, some sort of hazard spawns or is waiting to run past. And for all stage types, there is an arcade quality to them, as a scoring system is present that grades the player on criteria such as health remaining and total time spent. I ignored this system though obviously tried my best with each stage, and my score average on a letter-grade scale was around a B, maybe even B+.

Prior to playing, I actually wasn't aware of the game's narrative details. They do provide context for the game's events but can largely be dismissed should the player choose, although what story there is is minimal. Controlling the titular Cuphead or assumed player two avatar Mugman, the pair finds themselves in a situation where they're debt collectors working for the Devil himself in order for their souls to be spared. With that in mind, Cuphead is not a fully linear adventure and has a small degree of an open-ended structure. Instead of moving automatically from one stage to the next, players navigate throughout a small 2D overworld while choosing which order stages can be completed. There is some gatekeeping present to prevent the game's full world being explored all at once, but there will always be an option for players to choose what's next. Fortunately, I was able to clear each stage one at a time without going back-and-forth through persistent effort.

Without question, the game features excellent visual and auditory design. Really, the presentation all-around is just top-notch, and the effort put in to implement all of the game's small details is hard to overlook. Those who are familiar with the game will know how art direction is heavily inspired by the Golden Age of animation from the 1930s to 1950s, particularly rubber hose animation practices. For each boss encounter, enemies morph seamlessly into something even more destructive than before with nonsensical humor that upends reality. Just like with cartoon viewers then, players never know what to expect when reaching a boss's next phase for the first time. There is a lot of humor just through visuals alone as a result of the game liberally ignoring real-world anatomy and physics. At the same time, music and sound greatly achieves at establishing Cuphead as some pseudo-cartoon from the era it hearkens back to. With every stage, an announcer readies the action to come, and it was always an enjoyable start to the next challenge.

After all this time, I'm glad that Cuphead was able to meet the high standards I expected from it to reach. Since I don't own its DLC, I know it's a game I'll be returning to at some point. It won't be soon, but it also won't be another seven years. I'll also mention that I've started watching the classic Silly Symphony cartoon short films as a result of playing, some of which I've seen before, and they've been fun.

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