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52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

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telly:
Game 23 - Silent Hill: Downpour (PS3) - 10 Hours

Silent Hill: Downpour was a very mixed experience for me. It's certainly better than Homecoming, but still falls short in a lot of ways to the main four games and the other western developed games like Origins and Shattered Memories.

For me, what this game succeeded the most in was the combat and exploration, The combat, while frustrating, felt like the right level of difficulty and the ability to run away from fights made it more interesting. Breakable weapons are back, which were annoying, but not nearly as aggravating as having to search for specific weapons to access high ladders or chop through boarded up doors. Exploring the town was probably the best thing that this game has to offer, because it’s the biggest, most expansive town out of any of the other previous games. While the level design was not the best, I did find the final prison level to be pretty good and I also appreciated the return of series staples like puzzle difficulty. I also really liked the addition of side quests. Although most of them really aren't worth completing, they add a little bit of spice when you're trying to explore the town and could have been a great idea if it had been executed a bit better.

Alas, the problem with Downpour at its core is that the developers really tried to broaden this game’s appeal to the mass market, and so the game play feels like it's been injected with a heavy dose of Uncharted or Assassin's Creed. I mean come on, an elevator fight sequence? Moving past timed hazards like spikes and swinging blades? Quick time events for climbing and opening doors? Regenerating health? Autosaves and checkpoints that completely restore your health after you die? These things should not be in a Silent Hill game. Compounding the effects of these gameplay changes is an overall aesthetic that is way too bright, way too overdone, and most of the horror comes across as a haunted house baby-tier spooky thrill ride. The Otherworld in this game features a lot of strange level design choices that feel more surreal than scary. For example, large floating clocks and moving between the floor and ceiling. As a result, just like in previous games, it really doesn't feel like Silent Hill.

As much as I dumped on Homecoming for just being a terrible experience at least it had better monster design than Downpour. Most of the monsters in Downpour just look like regular people, except for their faces are a little messed up, but they really aren't that scary. The “boogeyman” in this game featuring a slick raincoat and gas mask is not effective at scaring you at all, and he just looks silly. This game also features a lot of chase sequences like in Shattered Memories, but it's even worse because it's just a red and black rift and it's really dumb when you think about it. Not to mention it’s given no contextual explanation whatsoever. The game unfortunately is also brought down by being built on Unreal, so a lot of the character textures load in AFTER the models have been loaded in, and it looks awful. On the topic of looking awful, this game performs terribly, and it might even be worse than Homecoming. it is especially in the town the game is constantly stuttering and excessive amounts of screen tearing particularly with high amounts of movement.

And at last, we get to the game’s story. Ultimately, it's one of the most confusing stories in the series, and I don't think that's a good thing. The problem is that the story plays very fast and loose with it’s timing of certain events. It’s completely unclear whether things happened in the past, versus the future, versus whether they happened at all, if they are a dream, if they are a manifestation of the town, or the other world, etc. Not to mention that you appear to die at least 3 times during the game, so you don’t know if the events following are real or purgatory or whatever else you want it to be. If you listen to the developers of this game, this was the intention: keep it as open-ended as possible so that multiple different conclusions can be drawn from the same story material. But all it ends up doing is just contradicting itself and the result is a total mess. This was particularly apparent for me because I got the worst ending on my first playthrough where the entire game was revealed to be a dream of Ann Cunningham. If you disregard that ending, the big problem with this game’s story is that Murphy’s big mistake that he’s supposed to feel guilty/repent for sometimes didn’t happen, which makes most of the symbolism irrelevant. You can tell that they really tried to copy the story of Silent Hill 2, while forgetting that the bad thing James does in that game is always the same, and the different endings are instead how he reacts and either redeems himself or not despite the thing he did.

I’ve now gone through all the Silent Hill games in the series up until the present day, just in time for Silent Hill f (not including book of memories or some of the more obscure titles). Once I finish that, then replay 2 and the remake, I’ll be able to give my ranking of the series.

kamikazekeeg:
25 - Slime Rancher 2 (PC 2025) - BEAT - I enjoyed the first Slime Rancher game, it's a casual, cozy, ranching experience where you huck cute slimes into corrals and feed them food to get "plorts", which are then used to get money to buy new stuff and expand your ranch.  It's a fantastical scifi world and it was just a nice time.  Unfortunately the sequel doesn't really do a lot to build off the first game.  It's kinda just more of the same, but at the same time, has less stuff than the first game had.  There were some improved areas, the visuals look better, I believe resource farming for certain items was made better in this, but that's sorta it.

I think where the game doesn't work for me, is that I think the map is too big, I don't know how it compares to the first game exactly, maybe I'm wrong on this, but there's so much area to explore, but not enough that feels warranted.  Like if you cut down sections of the map by...30%, I think you get a tighter world to enjoy as there just seems like spots that are super empty, or might become something later with future updates, I'm not really sure.

The resource grind feels tough, again, I don't remember exactly how it was before, but getting stuff that isn't slime plorts can take awhile along with needing money for each gadget/upgrade, and it just drags, and there's a late game thing where you need to farm a certain plort time that you can't farm back on your ranch, and to accomplish a 100% in this game, getting all of those unique plorts would take forever.  Thankfully not required to get the ending, but completionists might get burnt out.  There just felt like more tedium here than before, and I think it's not helped by me having played the first game and this gameplay experience is very much the same as it was before without adding much to change or expand.

I do like it enough, I'm sure it'll get updated and they'll add more stuff, the first game had that, but this game should've had more from the start, this wasn't their first game this time, so maybe a year or two from now if I decided to go back, it'll have a lot more going on with it.

bikingjahuty:
Well, I did it! With just a little under 3 months to go in the year, I officially hit 100 games beat for the year! I honestly thought it would be more challenging to reach this number than it was, but I have to say, it's been nice having so much time in 2025 to really tackle my backlog and also try out some other games I've been meaning to check out. But anyhow, here's my review for game #100, Resident Evil VILLAGE.


100. Resident Evil VILLAGE (PS5)

I have to admit, my expectations going into Resident Evil VILLAGE (RE8) were somewhat low. Unlike what seems the majority of the internet and RE fans, I didn't think RE7 was the miraculous "return to form" masterpiece it gets stratified to whenever it gets brought up. I really didn't care for Ethan Winters as a protagonist, I thought the whole black mold/Eva story wasn't that interesting, and maybe most of all, the game just didn't feel like a Resident Evil game to me throughout 95% of my time with RE7. Part of that was the switch from third person to first person, but the whole premise of the game just felt like Capcom was trying to chase the streamer jump scare crowd of the early and mid 2010s more so than make a faithful sequel to their beloved series. So yeah, with all that, RE8 didn't have the best set up from my point of view and I honestly expected to like it even less than I did its predecessor. Thankfully, that is not what happened, and in fact, I found a game that I really enjoyed for the most part and one that gave me something I didn't necessarily know I wanted despite RE8 also suffering from it not really feeling like a traditional RE game. Allow me to explain.


Resident Evil VILLAGE's gothic, old village setting, almost similar to the one we had in RE4, felt even less like RE7 than it did the rest of the mainline franchise. I frequently forgot I was playing a sequel to RE7 actually. If RE7 was trying to be like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, RE8 was trying to be classic horror with vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein monsters, and evil dolls. While none of this really screams Resident Evil to me, it did produce a fun, mostly well put together horror experience presented very will in the incredible RE Engine.


I have to saw, RE8 is nearly a flawless looking game. The character models, facial animations, detailed settings and areas, frightening monsters and other creatures, and pretty much everything else there is to look at show off an insane amount of detail. Typically the mark of a visually amazing modern game is when I actually stop playing for a moment and take the time to appreciate details present in what I'm looking at. I caught myself doing this multiple times throughout RE8, particularly in Lady D's castle as well as certain areas in and around the village that acts as the game's central hub in a way. I also have to give special recognition to the boss characters in this game, which mostly look outstanding. Of course, Lady D (aka Vampire Mommy) was who everyone was freaking out over when this game was announced, but I have to say the other boss characters have nearly as good character design and look just as detailed and good overall. Capcom did an absolutely amazing job making this game pop visually and it really captures that gothic horror feel that I feel so drawn to in pretty much all media its present in. I guess my only real gripes about the visuals were the frequent reuse of models for enemies, which at least wasn't even remotely as bad as RE7 which just used a few variations of the same, bland mold monsters you're primarily fighting throughout the game.


Another aspect of the games presentation is its story and writing, which RE8 unfortunately doesn't excel at in the same way it does with its graphics and visuals. The premise of this game starts out pretty promising and there is a part about a quarter into the story that really ramped up my interest in what was really happening, but overall, the writing isn't as good as it is in most of the previous mainline entries, including RE7, and sometimes just comes across as Capcom trying to put in twists just for the sake of twists. There is one particular revelation that occurs towards the end of the game that had me more confused and asking "okay...why?" more than me being like, "OH, NO WAY!" Likewise, some writing around Ethan Winters is fairly spotty. He motives for doing certain things, as well as his reactions to things just seem really strange at times. On top of that, he makes a lot of really dumb decisions or acts really stupid when what is going on at the time is fairly obvious to the player. I didn't care for Ethan as a character in RE7, and unfortunately RE8 did little to change my feelings about him, even with how determined and selfless he can be in RE8. But yeah, the overall writing isn't bad, but I'd say it's probably one of the weakest games in the mainline series from a story and writing perspective.


When it comes to audio, RE8 is pretty damn good, albeit with a few noteworthy blemishes. The soundtrack is pretty good and definitely fits with the spooky horror settings of the game. However, more than the music that plays during RE8, it's really the overall sound design that steals the show here. You're constantly hear vague creaks, rattles, moans, growls, and other noises that will ramp up your anxiety and add to the tension present in RE8. With that said, I will say this aspect of the sound design was done better in RE7, which for the record was a scarier game, but more on that later. As for the voice acting in RE8, it's somewhat of a mixed bag unfortunately. Some performances are absolutely amazing, most a pretty good, and a few are just sort of meh. One of the meh ones is unfortunately Ethan Winters, the main character. Even more frustrating is not all of Ethan's dialogue is delivered poorly, in fact some of it is up there with the better performances, but at other times the voice acting just doesn't seem to get the tone right or his delivery just seems way incongruent with the situation at hand. I will say his performance it an improvement compared to RE7, but it still isn't great and unfortunately was just another aspect that undermined Ethan's character.


When it comes to RE8's gameplay, its surprisingly different than RE7's. While both games use the same first person perspective, RE8 is definitely more of an action horror title than survival horror. While ammo and herb drops aren't appearing with every drop of blood like they do in RE5, resources are way more plentiful in this game. Whether that's finding them in the wild, buying them from the shop keep that almost travels along with you, or they're crafted for various materials you find throughout RE8's campaign, you will almost never find yourself strapped for ammo or health items. This absolutely undermines the horror aspect of RE8, which overall I found about half as scary as RE7. For some, this will instantly make RE7 the preferred experience, and while I do prefer RE's more survival horror leaning games (REmake is my favorite game in the franchise after all), I appreciate the more action heavy games for what they are as well. I'm probably one of the few people you'll find that will actually defend RE6. But yeah, as a more action focused game, RE8 does a pretty good job. The shooting isn't perfect, but it's definitely good enough to get the job done most of the time. There are a few very annoying enemy types later on in the game which can be a total pain in the ass to fight in the closed quarters you'll often come up against them in, and several of the boss fights feel a bit too cramped, but on the whole everything plays and works pretty well in RE8.


With all that said, I am pleasantly surprised I enjoyed RE8 as much as I did. Like RE7, I often forgot I was playing a Resident Evil game, with most of the tie ins not occurring until the last hour of the game. However, even if I looked at RE8 as its own things separate from the rest of the franchise, I still really enjoyed my time with it for the most part. Maybe up there with how much I enjoyed RE8 is the fact that for the first time in twenty years, I'm FINALLY caught up with the mainline entries and story in Resident Evil. Yep, the last time I was up to speed with RE was around the time RE4 first came out on the Gamecube. Since then, I've fallen behind more and more with this series, probably because I just wanted to go back and replay RE1 - RE3 over and over again lol. But in all seriousness, it feels great to be caught up again, especially with RE9 being only a few months away. After playing and beating RE8 I'm looking forward to what the future of the franchise has in store, even if that future seems like a fairly big departure from the Ethan Winters arc of the RE saga. (10/4/25) [40/50]

bikingjahuty:
101. Area 51 (Arcade)

Area 51 may be my most sentimental, nostalgic arcade machine of all time. One of the defining locations of my childhood and adolescence was a laser tag business near where I grew up called Laser Quest. I went there for countless birthday parties as a kid, may being my own, and beyond how amazing their laser tag guns and area were, they also had an awesome arcade throughout the 90s and into the 2000s. Perhaps the game that I spent the most money on between laser tag matches was 1995's Area 51. In fact, the first time I ever laid eyes on this staple of mid 90s arcades was at Laser Quest. And unsurprising it was one of the machines they had the longest; I believe it first appeared there in 1995/1996 and didn't disappear until the late 2000s, maybe even the early 2010s. But anyhow, beyond my strong personal connection to this game, it a title I've loved going back and replaying from beginning to end once or twice ever few years. Maybe with Halloween around the corner, I just felt like playing it again, partially to relive some wonderful memories and partially because Area 51 is still a blast to play through.


Gameplaywise, Area 51 is about what you'd expect out of a mid 90s arcade lightgun shooter. Your enemies are a variety of mutated humans in colored jump suites, and later on you encounter some more unique bipedal alien creatures that look sort of like insects. The lack of enemy variety in this game was always disappointing, but what is nice about this game is the balancing of enemies being thrown at you. Even as a single player playthrough, Area 51 never feels completely lopsided or cheap for the sake of devouring your quarters. In fact, when things get to hairy, you can use one of your grenades to clear the screen of enemies for a moment. It's a surprisingly nice balancing mechanic and one that makes you feel like you could conceivably beat Area 51 on a single credit if you got pretty good at it. Aside from these screen clearing grenades, you also have a few weapon power ups which include larger ammo magazines, a shotgun, and an assault rifle. These are collecting by shooting a variety of ammo boxes as well as floating power ups that appear briefly on the screen in select sections. The only other aspect of the gameplay there's to mention are ally characters that are present for no other reason than to bait you into accidentally shooting them, causing you to lose one of your lives. Yeah, it's pretty annoying, but this was fairly common in lightgun games back then.


I already mentioned Area 51's unfortunate lack of variety when it comes to enemies, however the game does make up for it with some cool 3D rendered backgrounds, as well as some very period appropriate digitized graphics, which are used for all the human/mutated human characters. It gives it a more "realistic" look in.way, but more than anything it will remind you when game companies were doing this often due to limitations in graphics processing technology and the ability to render realistic looking polygons. All of this results in a game that looks pretty good for its time, but was never groundbreaking at the time, and certainly isn't today.


Finally, the audio in Area 51 is pretty decent, if not dipping its toes into good territory. The OST is appropriate for the game and has a fairly charming mid-90s arcade game sound to it that really drives home when this game originally came out. There is speech audio from the various characters, as well as roars and other noises from the enemies you'll be mowing down. There are also a handful of explosion sound effects as well, but nothing that will make you feel like you're in the middle of a crazy combat situations. It all works pretty well for the most part, even if like various other things in the game, it can feel a tad repetitive.


There is no doubt in my mind that Area 51 is bolstered by my own nostalgia for this game. In all, Area 51 can be beat, start to finish, in under 20-minutes, which was pretty much the perfect amount of time to keep a bunch of 9 year olds occupied before their next laser tag match started. However, someone who never played this game growing up will probably feel like this game is lacking in a lot of ways, and may even write it off as a mediocre game at best. I'd definitely argue you'd have to have been the right age in the mid 90s to appreciate this game. Having been a young, impressionable kid in the mid 90s, I can fully vouch that this game definitely impressed my friends and I, and even 30-years later, I still feel drawn to it, both as a source of wonderful childhood memories, but also as a fun relic of mid-90s arcades. (10/5/25) [34/50]

dhaabi:

--- Quote from: telly on October 02, 2025, 05:29:31 pm ---Game 23 - Silent Hill: Downpour (PS3) - 10 Hours

Alas, the problem with Downpour at its core is that the developers really tried to broaden this game’s appeal to the mass market, and so the game play feels like it's been injected with a heavy dose of Uncharted or Assassin's Creed.

I’ve now gone through all the Silent Hill games in the series up until the present day, just in time for Silent Hill f (not including book of memories or some of the more obscure titles). Once I finish that, then replay 2 and the remake, I’ll be able to give my ranking of the series.
--- End quote ---

I'm not sure if you've already started playing Silent Hill f or not, but you may want to consider playing on Story difficulty then, because anything higher is certainly designed with an appeal to the mass market. When I first began prior to software being updated, what's now Hard mode was previously named Balanced. The name was changed for good reason. Though I will mention that after repeated deaths, players can temporarily (?) choose a lower combat difficulty setting.

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