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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
dhaabi:
52. B360 || Playdate || 08.16.2025
Just like with nearly every Playdate game I've played so far, B360 is one I knew nothing about at all prior to starting. Since I have no expectations either, this usually leads to some memorable experiences—whether they be good or bad—though there have been a small number that don't leave much of an impression at all. And, well, I suppose B360 is of the latter.
Of course, the reason for B360's unremarkable impact is due to its less-than-stellar, arcade-style, brick-breaking gameplay. However, I will give the game credit for extensively utilizing the hardware's crank which does set it apart from other games of its kind. At the same time, the player-controlled paddle operates on a 360° swivel instead of the typical placement at the bottom of the screen that moves left to right. What this means is that players cannot move the paddle along a straight axis other than the set path along the stage circumference. At the center-screen, blocks needing to be destroyed are aligned in various patterns, and in many stages, indestructible blocks are also positioned to prolong task completion while amplifying the game's difficulty. Because of the inclusion of the swivel, altering the ball's trajectory at any specific angle is easy in theory but certainly not always easy to execute.
Because of the game's 360° design, the ball that's only controlled by way of the trajectory of each point-of-impact it has with the paddle means that it can move past the paddle into the boundless space on any of the four sides of the playing field. To counteract the increased chances for player faults, a individual safety nets exist as a protective layer on each side. However, these nets are only temporary safeguards and will be removed one-by-one upon the first and only granted mistake made on each of the four sides. Upon either stage failure and stage completion, this safety net resets. The player is also allotted three lives which cannot be gained or regained, and depleting them all results in restarting the current stage. As a result, players will inevitably be able to complete the game through trial-and-error, meaning the game's design is quite forgiving. Still, I found myself repeatedly losing two or even three sections of the safety net at once while hopelessly trying to track the ball. Once the ball gets past the paddle, there's a high chance of it bouncing off to the adjacent section. So, while the inclusion of the safety net is appreciated and does help, it's often ineffective to provide four individual and fair second chances.
As the game progresses, slight changes to gameplay and level design are introduced such as multiple paddles or balls and also bricks which require multiple hits to fully destroy. A single-use tool that also allows for the player to secure the ball once more to manually launch it is also sometimes available to acquire. Only until I was nearing the very end of completing the game did I realize that this tool can and often should be avoided, though, as it's often more beneficial to the player. The reason for this is because, over time, the ball gradually slows down during play as it comes in contact with block after block. Meanwhile, managing the ball's position with any manually-aligned shot is difficult due to its swift momentum. In the late-game stages especially, these fast speeds make it difficult to maintain hand-eye coordination, and stage failure is almost guaranteed. Like the paddle, this assist tool moves around the screen on a 360° swivel, so players with mastery in controls can easily avoid it. However, the unexpected often occurs as the ball ricochets in any unforeseen direction. Fortunately, though, pausing the game does not pause the movement of this tool, so players can strategically wait for it to move onward past where the player's current focus is. More often than not, this tool felt more like a disadvantage, though there still were some instances that it was beneficial.
Despite the game's arcade influences, why such elements are present seem without reason. As previously mentioned, the game is divided into stages, which there are one hundred in total. However, individual stages cannot be manually selected as they are contained within ten larger sections referred to as galaxies. So should players wish to replay any individual stage, they are barred from doing so and must complete any additional stages leading up to the one desired, which would be a maximum of nine. There is also a scoring system implemented, but it serves no function really. The player's high score is highlighted on the main menu, but the score is cumulative across any one sustained playthrough prior to game over. So, the score is not specific to any one stage or set of stages but instead any series of them, which means that what scoring totals represent matters very little and is of no substantial significance. Because of this, players are not incentivized to prioritize the score at all. Although, this does allow for players to feel more willing to do what it takes to survive some of the game's more challenging stages. Since player lives are retained after progressing from one stage to the next, players may choose to employ the tactic of purposely initiating a game over to then begin once more with all three lives so they're enabled a higher success rate to continue progressing. Otherwise, wasted effort toward attempting a stage only to fail it will be experienced, which happened a lot across my playthrough.
For the very specific type of game B360 tries to be, it actually does exceed well as a result of the Playdate's unique mechanics, but it's just that the genre itself is not particularly captivating to me. Nevertheless, it's a good game to pass idle time in short intervals.
dhaabi:
Well, I've reached 52 games completed this year already! For the three other times I've been able to complete this goal, they've been achieved on the very last day of the year. Going forward, I'm not really sure just how many more games I'll get around to playing this year. Maintaining this sort of momentum should place me at around 75 games, but I'm not actually sure if I'll be able to maintain it—which is fine—unless I prioritize playing shorter experiences.
bizzgeburt:
--- Quote from: dhaabi on August 17, 2025, 02:27:07 pm ---Well, I've reached 52 games completed this year already! For the three other times I've been able to complete this goal, they've been achieved on the very last day of the year. Going forward, I'm not really sure just how many more games I'll get around to playing this year. Maintaining this sort of momentum should place me at around 75 games, but I'm not actually sure if I'll be able to maintain it—which is fine—unless I prioritize playing shorter experiences.
--- End quote ---
Congrats! Make sure you beat your personal records. My best was 32 finished in one year. This year I'm at 10 games beat so far, I have no real ambition to make the 50, but I already lowered down my pile of shame aka backlog by a few games. This is what I'll keep focusing on for the rest of 2025.
gamers, game on! 8)
kamikazekeeg:
20 - Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach (PS5 2021) - BEAT - Was told this was playable on console compared to PC and it definitely was, so finally got to play this. It's weird to say I was anticipating a game I knew wasn't very good, but I kinda fell in love with the characters and ideas after seeing it for the past few years and while I still like those things, this game is such a mess. It's overly ambitious, and probably part of why things didn't work out as a map this large needs a whole lot of content and this game is light on story and things to do.
Because of this, exploration is so unsatisfying, because there's mostly just unnecessary collectibles to find (That only really matter for one of the endings) and upgrades that were pretty basic and never really feel like anything was gained. There's security robots all over so exploration is hampered by needing to get around them, it's so large so the Glamrock's basically just functionally teleport around. It's why Secret of the Mimic is so good, because with there being one threat that sneaks around the vents to show up where you are at, sliding into whatever available suit is around, it works out super well. Secret of the Mimic again just scales it down and each place you go to feels like it has lore reasons to it rather than there being yet another utility tunnel or set of themed bathrooms and the collectibles have importance to the Murray family and are involved in a mini-game/secret ending.
The story is also a mess as one of the main antagonist is barely in it, seemingly having content cut and story or things meant to show up in a previous game, that was cut from there. There's some okay moments throughout, but the game just feels empty in general. It also has bugs even on console, I technically didn't beat one ending because I kept having a character glitch out and once I managed to get past it (No auto-saves, so kept having to spend like a minute or two to get back to where I was), I got killed from something else dumb, and said screw it. There's like 4 or 5 endings and technically I got 2 of them. I might potentially attempt the one ending again and then see if I can go back to try what I think is considered the main canon ending, but we'll see as I don't have anything else I'm looking to play at the moment.
I think the full 100% collectible related ending is maybe the main one perhaps, not super sure, but I got maybe 70% of the collectibles and I'm not getting the rest. They try to make it easier in the endgame by giving Freddy a wall hack that displays all collectibles, but it's just too tedious to me to continue, not helped for some reason by deciding they needed to shut down all save stations in the game, and put just one in the main atrium, meaning you can easily lose a lot of progress if you get accidentally caught doing what is leftover. It's very frustrating and a design idea I don't get. Someone said that perhaps it was meant to be part of a post-game mission, where you had to go somewhere to fix the save stations, but because that got cut, they never changed the no save stations, or it was bugged and not fixable, so it just got left in the game that way. Very annoying.
So yeah, while it's a fairly bad game, the elements that drew me into the game were the things I liked while playing, The Glamrocks are fun, Vanny could've been fun had they done more with her, the Pizzaplex is a cool huge idea that could've been this really epic, varied, experience that is bogged down by development problems and lots of story issues. I definitely wouldn't recommend it, Secret of the Mimic is functionally the same concept, just at a smaller, more engaging, scale.
I still have the Ruin DLC to do, I'm not specifically counting it towards my completion of SB, but I'm like an hour or so into it now and will probably beat it tonight, but it doesn't change my opinion on the game as a whole as it's a much different experience from the main game being basically a linear run through the destroyed remnants of the Pizzaplex.
*EDIT* Nevermind, forget Ruin, the annoying design decisions from SB show up here in different ways and I'm just super frustrated to continue on. I tried to do the ending again also a few more times, just to get hung up on more annoying nonsense due to how janky the ending is. Absolutely such a frustrating title lol
kashell:
54. The Last of Us Part II Remastered
This game was a lot longer and heavier than the first, which is saying something considering all of the themes of heaviness the first one dealt with. In terms of gameplay and combat, I have to give all the props to Part II; loved all the new weapons and being able to be even more stealthy. In terms of everything else, it's the first one all the way. It doesn't have anything to do with the way the events played out in the second game. It was mainly due to pacing issues and the inevitable monotony. I play stealthy, so it was sneak, strangle, gather, repeat. If things got hairy, it was because of all the guns and me panicking about where stuff was. I actually grew to like the second character that you control and their arc. Finally, hell yes to all the LGBTQUIA+ representation. We love to see it.
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