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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

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kashell:
59. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance

This is definitely Shinobi for the modern era. It has that crazy challenge that we know and love, but it has some handy QoL mechanics that make it really easy to hop into on a whim. My file is mostly at 100% (I have a secret boss to kill) and getting there was a lot of fun thanks to a really great quick jump/checkpoint system. Admittedly, I haven't played many games in the series but the ones I have played have either been a hit or a miss; never in the middle. This one is, as expected, a hit.

kashell:
60. Man of Medan

I thought the Devil in Me would have been my favorite of the Dark Picture Anthology, but I'm going to have to give it to Man of Medan. Anything that has to do with the ocean and maritime horror always gets high marks in my book. Plus, I somehow managed to keep everyone alive at the end. I'm surprised at myself because usually someone kicks it during a first playthrough. I really liked this game's setting and cast, too. Granted, I either really liked or really loathed the characters, but eh. Details. As usual, it was fun having folks by my side watching as I played and made all the choices. Up next for these gaming gatherings is Little Hope.

telekill:
In anticipation of Battlefield 6, I installed BF 2042 (got free from PS Plus), and grinded out through level 49 of the free BF6 battlepass. That gets me all but one of the Battlefield 6 unlocks. After dumping 78 hours into that grind, I'm calling it good and adding it to my completed section for the year.

telly:
Game 21 - Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (PS2) - 8 Hours

This game really surprised me. It doesn’t do everything right, but it’s a really fun experience that I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would.

Personally, I didn’t find this game to be very scary. The game’s normal world has no monsters at all so there’s nothing that can hurt you. But, if you treat the game more as an atmospheric adventure game rather than horror, it’s actually quite entertaining. The controls are excellent, and the graphics are very appealing. I enjoyed searching environments for phone numbers to call and for all of the spooky apparitions and anomalies that give you interesting stories that let your mind wander and fill in the blanks. In the nightmare world, everything is blue and icy, which while cool to watch, again, isn’t very scary. The monsters all look the same and they just want to give you a hug and you can just throw them off with a timed button press. While you can die in these stages, it was really easy to avoid the monsters and I didn’t find it challenging enough.

The real meat of the game comes from the psychological profiling that the game touts as one of the big selling points. It’s a very interesting aspect of the game that adds a lot of replayability so you can see how your choices affect certain aspects of the game. However, it doesn’t really do it for me when the game tries to sell these mechanics for anything more than a fun gimmick. This is because the nature of the psychology results is not handled in A) a consistent way and B) a way that actually makes sense.

Right from the jump, the back of the game box and an intro screen tell you that it will be  profiling you (as in the player) as you play, which to me seemed like a pretty tall (impossible really) feat to actually pull off. How you behave in real life vs. in a game are two very different things. As you start playing though, you’re realizing that the choices you’re making in the game are changing what Harry is experiencing – either through the questionnaires or the things he interacts with. So immediately I changed my framing of the psychology portions as a role-playing exercise where you build a personality for Harry, rather than myself. And it’s pretty hardcore roleplaying because you aren’t given enough information about Harry’s past to be able to make any informed decisions about how to answer the questions. These questions ultimately change the clothes that people wear, how they talk to Harry, the monsters he sees, and the ending. So it’s really all Harry’s personality we’re changing.

But THEN the game informs that you are Cheryl while in the psychology sessions, and suddenly the delicate house of cards we had been building with this portion of the game comes crashing down. So now I’m roleplaying as Cheryl instead of Harry, but the questions still affect Harry in the story, but in Cheryl’s mind? How does Cheryl answering questions about her social life in high school make Harry’s personality different? There really shouldn’t be a connection between the two logically even though it’s in Cheryl’s mind. But because it’s in Cheryl’s mind there really isn’t any reality anyway and so nothing with the story matters. It’s inconsequential. And then at the end the psychologist is writing up an assessment about what I'm assuming is you. It just jumps around to whatever it feels like.

The other thing that bothers me about the psychology portion is the interactions with the environments while playing as Harry. When you look at objects, you aren’t given the opportunity to react in any given way. Harry just does a reaction for you, even if you aren’t trying to roleplay in that particular way. For example, if I’m in JCPenny and I look at a bikini on a rack, I’m not automatically made a creep for it. But if Harry looks at that, he goes “yeah nice, I like that”, and the game just assumes the worst-possible reaction. Without knowing the intention behind anything you look at, the game has no basis to make any judgements about you as a person or as Harry whatsoever. It's just done fore you, yet I wish you had a choice on whether the things you look at make you feel one way or the other, which would have been more effective.

The major takeaway with all the psychology-based portions of the game is that they are cool systems that were developed to be showcased on their own rather than connect them to storytelling or characters. A great example is when you color in the drawing of the house and it changes how the house appears to Harry in the game. It’s more of a “look what we programmed into the game” more than an actual vehicle to tell an interesting narrative and it certainly isn't profiling me psychologically any more than a fortune teller would.

So at the end of the day, I really liked a lot of what the game had to offer in terms of atmosphere and a lot of the mechanics of the psychology, but once again, the story and general execution just doesn’t do it for me. It’s way better than Homecoming though and I like that it’s self contained. Don’t get me wrong though – even though I’ve written a lot of criticism about it, this is my favorite Silent Hill out of all the non-original team ones.

dhaabi:

--- Quote from: telly on September 17, 2025, 08:43:59 pm ---Game 21 - Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (PS2) - 8 Hours

But THEN the game informs that you are Cheryl while in the psychology sessions, and suddenly the delicate house of cards we had been building with this portion of the game comes crashing down. So now I’m roleplaying as Cheryl instead of Harry, but the questions still affect Harry in the story, but in Cheryl’s mind? How does Cheryl answering questions about her social life in high school make Harry’s personality different? There really shouldn’t be a connection between the two logically even though it’s in Cheryl’s mind. But because it’s in Cheryl’s mind there really isn’t any reality anyway and so nothing with the story matters. It’s inconsequential. And then at the end the psychologist is writing up an assessment about what I'm assuming is you. It just jumps around to whatever it feels like.
--- End quote ---

This is just my interpretation to make sense of it, but the player's answers to the Psych Profile while assuming the role of Cheryl may affect Harry in a corresponding way because it's Cheryl projecting herself onto how Harry, the father she lost so long ago and probably barely remembers, behaved. More than likely, she's longing for a sort of connection to Harry, and this is the only way she knows how to do that. It's definitely a messy setup, regardless.

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