52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

[kashell]

36. Guilty Gear Strive - Slayer

Ahhh yeah! Guilty Gear, baybee! I had no idea that they had this on the Switch, but here we are! After messing with the tutorial and some of the missions, I decided to go through arcade mode as my boy Slayer. While my usual main (Venom) isn't in the game, seeing Slayer and a very massive roster of new and old faces makes up for it. Slayer will inevitably become my new main as I continue to play this. With this little romp over, I think I'm going to return to the tutorials so I can fully learn all of the ins and outs of Strive. Because, as always, there's A LOT going on in this fighter.

[marvelvscapcom2]

33. Tearaway [VITA] - Finished May 15th, 2025





"We know you asked for a calzone but we're gonna give ya the Stromboli" said Sony studios 2013.  Giving us the universe from a pebble. Ambitious design from mere imagination flakes. You're getting the lava of mordor when I even reference what I just witnessed, this game is the most creative use of unique hardware specific features i've ever played. Far more than Wii aside from maybe wii sports. Or Kinect. This is like a secret gaming paralell dimension tried once and then forgotten forever. It's a full sensory massage, breaking of the 4th wall constantly. This game is a slap to the senses. And it honestly might be the most ambitious game ive ever played. Not even tooting your horn. On Hardware that quite frankly is awe worthy. What an ahead of it's time handheld the vita was and it makes me all the more sadder sony kinda let the Vita slip. But this game alone makes my owning of one worth every cent.  I am in love with this system. And this game. It just is so different.

The touch pad integration feels so seemless, its like the tiny little glossy black plastic gaming device that we call a vita. PSPs biological glow up.  It takes you and integrates you with binary code to place you into the game. Although it's means are simple (using the front camera) it really feels borderline magic seeing yourself in the game. It's almost odd in a new cool way. And this came out in 2013. It's been over a decade.  This technology is so refreshingly radical. All of you. Your face. Your room. Your cat. Your art. Your voice. Your palms. Even your favorite blanket. Whatever you wish becomes the entire game. You basically write the story as it unfolds. So cool.  It's linear but somehow so open.


You play as a messenger with a letter for a head and using the front camera the game makes you the "you" which acts as a guide and main objective for the letter messenger character. Your palm, your voice bellowing through paper mache woods.  It's almost as if you're this video game characters god so to speak.  It makes you feel like a final boss. A rpg vague concept in the sky.


The battle mechanics are simple but multi faceted. Collecting gifts is a blast. Taking photos of the world and somehow that world also blending with your reality. I have never felt a game immerse me the way this one has. In terms of the game and reality blurring.  Even more than VR.


I love the crafting elements. The platforming is quick. It uses all the vitas functions. Touch screens on both front and back. Peeling paper. Sticky glue. Voice. Vaccuums. The game is a wild art project on Ms. Frizzles magic school bus but come to life and controllable. I honestly cant even put it into words. It's really really special.


You can also tell they put a lot of heart into it being purpose built to show off the vita. And it does that well.  The graphics are phenomenal for a decade+ old handheld. And it is consistently making use of all of the technological superiority the vita displayed.  I cant reccomend this enough.


Rating -95/100

[marvelvscapcom2]

34. White Shadows [PS5] - finished May 16th, 2025




SOCIAL COMMENTARY INSISTS UPON ITSELF


The game starts off with a bullentin before you even play it.  Now I dont mind a good social mind tug sorta game. So long as it allows you to come to your own conclusions based on the art. Which in this game is gorgeously dystopian. I dont mind going into deep narrations that make you feel icky but nope. You get...  a big bold opening screen

"This game has depictions of racism, xenophobia, suicide and yada yada".  Basically the developnent team picks up your hand and tries showing you how to pee for yourself. "Hey look... your own conclusions of our art. Nope. Let us preface this is how you better recieve it" and that one opening flat out made it hard to enjoy the game. I was looking at everything through their lens instead of my own. And it was so forced. The line between social art with a purpose and a twitter podcaster trying to seem self important is as thin as this line.  Its the difference between being an abolitionist and being someone who sells "end racism" bumper stickers. The opening screen sets the ship asail but tells you where to land. I hate that. Hate it. In all forms of media. Directors need to know when to step out of their own frame.

_________________


Basically the game is ravens are black.  Also associated with death. People fear them for little to no reason outside of steteotypes.  I'm sure you see where that line of reasoning is going.  Pigs in the game are symbolic of capatalism, greed and enslaving ravens.  Also self explanatory line of thinking. Its hard to put it into words without it being argumentative. But it's not the feel you get when you watch a movie like django.  It feels more trying to fit in. I dont hate it. I'm not opposed to this message being told with animals. It was really creative. I just wish it showed more depth to the both sides.


I won't go on a spiel of the messaging of the game. It's more of the tennis match I refuse to pick a racket up in. I don't deny the games impact and harrowing feel. It however feels massivley pretentious sometimes. I laughed more than I felt sorrow. Stuff like "birds suck" is just comical. Hideo Kojima level lol.  You never needed a disclaimer before the color purple or green mile. A nirvana album.  Madtv. If you're gonna tackle this narrative. Take our training wheels off. Don't spell it out. Keep it a video game. And let us explore the narrative. Honestly. I bet it'd be like 7 points higher if not for that bullentin.  I do think the way they covered the topics was unique and solid.  But the opener makes it feel like you're being told rather than shown.

With that said. Lets enter the pros.

White shadows is an extremely gorgeous game. Think a dystopian noir, a sinister dark land riddled in the shadows. I black world made in 200 shades of abysmal nothingness. It is so meloncholy and euphoircally eerie. It's creepy in a unsettling, clockwork orange. Listening to a beatles record backwards sorta way.  Filled with 50s style jukebox jingles.  It's enjoyable.

Its platforming and puzzle stuff is like inside/limbo meets unravel.  It's solid. Simple. Easy and concise.

I overall enjoyed my time with white shadows. It feels preachy and kinda disconnected.  But at its core. I think it means well. Has a solid focus and has absolutely heart wretching visuals.



Its ok for an indie developed game tackling what it tackles.

Rating - 81/100

[bikingjahuty]

61. Power Stone 2 (PS4)

The original Power Stone holds a very special place in my gamer heart. My first experience playing a Dreamcast, which would become my favorite console of all time, was playing the first Power Stone on a kiosk at my local Hollywood Video rental store. I was so obsessed with that Power Stone demo that I'd deliberately ride my bike over there just to play the demo they had set up. Shortly after that, I'd eventually get a Dreamcast along with Power Stone and it would become one of my favorite games to play on that console back in the day. While I have a deep nostalgia and fondness for the first game, Power Stone 2 just never really did it for me in the same way despite renting that game back around the time it was brand new. Unfortunately my affinity towards the first Power Stone still rings true to this day.


It has been a long time since I played through Power Stone 2. In some ways it's an improvement over its predecessor. You have more characters to choose from, new stages you can select between matches, and play with up to four players at once. While at its heart Power Stone 2 is still a fighting game, Capcom definitely made this more of a party game where friends can get together and unleash absolute mayhem on each other. Beyond the power stones you can collect to transform your character into a much stronger version of themselves, and also giving them the ability to unleash unique supers on the other characters, you have a ton of items at your disposal to damage your enemies with. Power Stone 2 definitely has more items to fight with and also introduces vehicles and stationary weapons too. You'd think with all these additions I'd love Power Stone 2 way more than the first, but instead of being more fun, the game just ends up being more imbalanced, frustrating, and sort of difficult to play at times. Don't get me wrong, it can be fun when things get sort of chaotic, but whenever I play Power Stone 2 I typically just feel like turning it off and playing the first game instead. One other addition that I actually do like more than the first game are the giant bosses they added to the game. The first Power Stone does have one of these, but the ones included in Power Stone 2 are definitely better and more enjoyable to fight.


From a presentation point of view, I have to give Power Stone 2 credit for its greater abundance of characters, stages and other obstacles which all look pretty good for the most part. I'm not as big of a fan of the larger stages, but I get that these were necessary to fit four players playing at once, as well as all the other stuff thrown in to make matches more chaotic. In all, I don't think Power Stone 2 looks better than 1, but it does have some flourishes that definitely make it look just as good overall. The audio in Power Stone 2 is also on par with the first game, with some new tracks to listen to as you play. Albeit none of them are that catchy or memorable for the most part. Each character is also uniquely voice acted which is also a nice touch.


While Power Stone 2 is not too far off from how much I enjoy the first Power Stone, it definitely lags behind, especially in my own personal enjoyment. I could see someone who actually has a few people to play with maybe liking this game more, but for me I preferred the smaller, more intimate fights of the first game and less reliance on the chaos factor present in the sequel. (5/16/25) [31/50]

[dhaabi]

29. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! || Nintendo DS || 05.13.2025



After trying out several different DS games in my library over the last few months but not really connecting with them, I decided to try out something different. So, I settled on the educational game Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! For some reason, this game is one of the system's best-selling, but I didn't really know anything about it before playing.

To begin, Brain Age is not a traditional video game but instead an education tool foremost. As such, an assortment of brain exercises and logic puzzles are included to, as the game implies, help promote healthier brain functionality through daily repetition. Overall, exercises are varied. Some are visual observations including both objects and words which may even task players to read aloud. Others are more objective exercises like solving mathematics equations. And even more are straightforward puzzles, namely sudoku, though this section is actually separated from the game's core activities. Nevertheless, they all test players' concentration and memory.

Generally, training exercises are explained with enough depth in how the game wants them to be accomplished, though not always. For instance, my first encounter with one exercise didn't specify whether counting should be done out loud or mentally, and it definitely impacted my score as I performed the former. I think I normally would have mentally performed the task, but there had been others which specifically mentioned that speech is required. Additionally, activities requiring voice were hit-and-miss. While speaking clearly and concise is to be expected, I regularly experienced the game unable to understand what was being spoken. Of course, this impacted player score which was slightly irritating. Meanwhile, the majority of exercises requires the use of the system's touch screen capabilities by writing with the stylus. Throughout my experience, writing in certain ways with personal stroke order or maybe even style negatively impacted how writing is interpreted, as the game will either misread it or not recognize it at all. An example of how this affected me for some time was how I write the number 4. In daily practice in real life, I use two strokes to write this number, but I was required to shift to only one stroke in order for the game to register my answers.

When playing each new day, players have the option to take a Brain Age test which, in theory, grades how healthy your mind is. But after having played the game for about a week, I didn't quite feel as if my Brain Age score was that consistent. Some days were considerably higher than my actual age, and some days were lower. But perhaps this makes sense, although I did try to play each session under the same conditions and time of day to maintain some sort of controlled variable. I think the real reason for the discrepancy during this time window is that a random selection of activities are presented when taking the Brain Age test, and I just wasn't that familiar with them all. Naturally, though, my scores began improving and maintained consistency, but I don't consider this as some sort of natural mental growth or whatever the game is trying to promote. Instead, I simply came to be acquainted with them both in terms of what sort of focus is needed and how exactly the touch screen reads written inputs. With that said, players aren't required to take Brain Age tests after the initial one. After about ten days, I started skipping them altogether and instead focused on daily training exercises. For these too, players are graded. Each activity even has its own chart which tracks a player's performance records.

While players can only take the Brain Age test once per day, training is limitless. At first, there are few activities to choose from, though a greater variety becomes available the more the game is played with each passing day. Brain Age never specifies this is how these activities are unlocked, though. At the same time, two or three activities can also be unlocked early when achieving a certain score for specific exercises. I don't think this actually unlocks new exercises, though, but instead harder difficulty modes. Toward the end of my time playing, I mostly stuck to the same three or four activities. Since I had stopped taking daily Brain Age tests, I actually wasn't able to play through at least two of the exercises anymore since, for some reason, they're not available to play within the normal training mode. These include the Stroop effect test and a word memory exercise which I thought were both fun and required a strong amount of focus. Instead of having mode-specific activities, I think a better implementation would be for the Brain Age test to simply be fully randomized out of the entire game's pool of test options.

In the end, Brain Age is okay as a novelty. It's not really an educational game which teaches the player but instead a software tool that tests them with mental exercises which most people should be more than capable of doing and are likely familiar with already. I didn't ever really feel smarter after playing, but I didn't really expect to be anyway. Still, I felt more positive about thinking in more focused ways that I really haven't done in the same way since being in a classroom setting. After unlocking the final activity on day twenty, that was when I considered the game completed.

[bizzgeburt]

05 - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance [DE] (PlayStation 2)
https://vgcollect.com/item/111064

This is a game I have fond memories of playing it back in the early 2000s. Revisiting it almost 20 years later, I can say that the playability aged well, and it's still fun to explore the many huge maps for more loot and more enemies to level up.
When playing this title as a youth, I can't recall myself being bothered with the game's story very much and replaying it in '25 gave me the opportunity to concentrate more on that matter. Being mostly a dungeon dwelling hack'n'slay type of RPG, the games story is delivered with few sequences accompanied by a narrator voice, and mosty via conversations with npcs. I always was a fan of the ancient and genre-defineing D&D universe for it being developed over so many decades by so many players and authors alike, and the medevil kind of slang as well as the typical D&D elements like Beholders and Drow just give this game the athmosphere it needs.
Musically, most of ingame background music is quite subtle, consisting mostly of ambient dungeon-sounds and a few echoing keys. Only piece really standing out is the beautiful song sung within the elvensong-tavern inside the town of Baldur's Gate itself, the place the player actually start's his/her adventure.
As to gameplay, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance offers a complex but not to complicated hack'n'slay with many RPG-elements such as tons of different weapons, armors and accessories, 3 classes to choose from, all coming with their indiviual set of skills, parameters and preferences, a leveling system, generated item drops and so on and so on ... you actually slash your way through countless different dungeons such as caves, temples, forrests and swamps, collecting every stack of gold, weapon or armor piece falling out of freshly annihilated foes. Drops themself mostly suck through a huge part of the game though, with a mighty shop-weapon being the one of your choice right up until the last few dungeons. Those dungeons themself are presented with graphics I dare to call top-notch for this system and era, many of them unwinding into actual mazes confusing you even with a hud-map at hand. Elements like fires and water are created jawdroppingly realistic for an early 2000s game.

I really enjoyed revisiting this title after so many years and took with me another amazing gaming experience diving deeper into a game I already knew and loved for what it is. I invite every Diablo- or God of War-player to check this little gem out when looking for a short distraction between bigger titles and when interrested in prequel'ing the modern Baldur's Gate 3 a little bit.

Good game  I'll just start playing the 2nd part, hehe ...

[dhaabi]

30. Sable || PlayStation 5 || 05.17.2025



Ever since its 2018 announcement trailer, Sable is a game I've long been interested in playing. Somehow, I had been able to remain blind to exactly what kind of experience the game offers exactly though was aware of its reception which did ultimate allow for a more rewarding playthrough.

Throughout the game, players assume the role of the titular Sable, a young woman who's taking the first steps toward embarking on a coming-of-age journey. Once reaching a certain age, all young people at this period of life, dubbed gliders, set forth on the same journey of self-discovery to learn who they are and to decide what exactly it is they want to do in life by experiencing the many walks of life people live. While on their expedition, gliders are free to do whatever they want and to travel along the world's vast reaches for however long. Inevitably, though, people will approach them with tasks to complete which has become expected for gliders to follow to help them gain worldly knowledge and experience. At its core, Sable is an exploration-focused game, though individual player discovery is, to a degree, lessened through the game's quest system. Of course, quests give players—and thus gliders, too—direction and reason in what to explore. Nevertheless, players are free to travel the game's world in any order they choose. As a result, I found myself usually navigating each different region's empty landscapes first before heading to its central hub where quests are introduced.

While much of the game is about one's solitary adventure, there are plenty of opportunities to interact with NPCs in the communities discovered and traveled to. The perspective of an adolescent on such a journey into the unknown is achieved well, and the beginning sections which emphasize community and one's place in it has more depth than I was expecting. Dialogue options are also present for the player to select, and while they have no great bearing on the story, they work toward molding Sable in the way players see fit. Despite her young age, Sable is written just as mature if not more so than some of her adult counterparts. She's introspective and able to discern the greater meaning of what's being expressed to her beyond the words being spoken. The game's writing covers a variety of emotions which made Sable's journey all the more rewarding.

As previously mentioned, Sable is an adventure exploration game which focuses on Sable setting off across varied desert environments. The world is large and segmented by regions while still being fully interconnected, though it becomes much more easily accessible with a newfound, albeit ultimately temporarily, hover ability and a hovercraft. There is a strong emphasis on platforming and verticality as well, and I often found myself climbing various obstacles to simply reach higher. Salvaged or simply broken machinery regularly becomes artificial platforms to ascend great heights. Archeological monoliths which have transformed into looming mountainsides pierce the skies above. That you're above a world already so large sometimes even becomes forgettable as you're so high. Meanwhile, the game does feature a map system with markers and others tool available for navigating which do help considerably. A compass is also present, though I did not really find it useful once several markers had been designated and instead just found myself opening the map to identify my position and the direction I was facing.

Of course, the game's most obvious attraction is its visual style that's fully lifted from artist Mœbius. The environment is built with minimal line art and colored by earth tones which frequently adapt to the time of day and the world's numerous regions. As night neared, I regularly stopped to observe the encompassing blanket of shadows cover everything. That Sable was built with a fully explorable 3D open-world environment tremendously allows for its art to make a long-lasting effect. With that said, I'll also note the game's soundtrack which is beautifully written. Each track excellently captures the mood and ambiance of each area players traverse. Developer Shedworks actually went out of their way to seek out someone who hadn't scored a video game before which is how musician Michelle Zauner of the band Japanese Breakfast came to be the game's composer. That Zauner was able to so effectively capture how empty the game's world is impressive, and without her score, so much of that reinforcement would be lost. That both visuals and audio combine so effectively is exceptional.

Unfortunately, though, Sable is widely known for being poorly optimized. So, I was reserved with my expectations. While some of the game's most apparent issues largely relating to frame rate are difficult to ignore, I ultimately found them non-intrusive nor overly affecting any significant bearing on my experience. However, bugs become more and more problematic as play sessions lengthen, and players should expect to reset the software to help mitigate these issues. Largely, bugs relate to only two issues: spawning your hovercraft in the event you strayed away from it (which is often) and being able to engage in the fishing side activity. These issues were absolutely inconvenient and did break my immersion and negatively influence my mood, but they still weren't drastic enough for me to abandon the game.

In so many ways, Sable is a game that's designed so well in its presentation while simultaneously suffering in its underlying performance. Should its issues ever be rectified (which they won't, as Shedworks has confirmed), it'd be easy to recommend Sable. But I know that I'm more tolerant for performance issues than others, so I'll just say for anyone interested to be cautious and to acknowledge the game's weaknesses. Regardless, I greatly enjoyed my time playing.

[kamikazekeeg]

11 - V Rising (PC 2024) - BEAT - Take a slightly slower version of the gameplay from Hades and combine it with a less open sandbox version of Valheim, and you get the vampire sim game, V Rising.  Been wanting to play this for abit and had a good time.  I realized it's not often I get to play the bad guy in games, like an outright villain, and that's a fun change of pace.  I think the overall experience is solid, decent action, the crafting offers up a lot of decoration as you progress through the game to give you the chance to build a neat castle and there's a solid amount of content here as I put 60 hours into it and that was entirely solo PVE.

That's where the cons are, as the game to me feels like it leans more PVP or Co-Op than PVE, perhaps 60/40.  You can do everything solo just fine, but just how things are executed, how things feel, I think if the game was built with PVE in mind, it would've been better, but that's just because I'm not gonna play this outside of a solo private game.  I do appreciate that since you run the private game as a server, you can customize so many options of the game itself.  I highly recommend turning off teleporting limitations if you play solo, it's a mechanic that only makes sense in a server where you have to worry about getting ganked by other players and it makes the game way more enjoyable.  Or you can just jack up the difficulty and challenge all you want. 

Good game, had a solid time with it, definite recommend.

[marvelvscapcom2]

35. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins [GB] - finished May 22nd, 2025



NOT AS GOOD AS ONE


It's ok... one thing I will speak highly of is the power ups. Theirs a bunny ear powerup unlike anything ive seen in a mario game that essentially allows mario to float like princess peach but even grander.  The difficulty ups a tad from the first but this OP power up kinda offsets that.

But what the original has that this one lacks is just idk.. charm.

Good old Gameboy, italian plumber charm.

The first had epic plane flight sequences, cute princess rescuing we are familiar with, and of course simple primitive visuals that just work.  This game ups the graphic fidelity a tad. And the mechanics allow for multi directional movement mid air.  It also brings you into a more world overmap not disimilar to super mario world.

I feel it does fine and proper. But is it as good as the first one? Not at all to me. Id probably never itch to play it again. Its just sorta not reinventing the bologna sandwich imo.  But I am glad to have played it in my quest to tackle my Mario classics backlog

Rating - 76/100

[realpoketendonl]

3. Miraculous: Paris Under Siege [PC/Steam Deck]

Gosh, only beaten 3 games thus far this year, and game number 3 is a licensed kids game. Not good for my #gamerimage. But whatever, here we go.

Miraculous: Paris Under Siege is the second game (excluding mobile games) based on the popular animated series Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, commonly referred to as Miraculous Ladybug. I played the first game, Miraculous: Rise of the Sphinx last year, and I can say without a doubt that Paris Under Siege is a major improvement over the original. However, considering I thought the original game was god awful, that doesn't really say much.

Paris Under Siege is half platformer, half beat-'em-up, similar to the first game. You walk around, fight waves of enemies and traverse various platforming challenges. Compared to the first game, significant improvements have been made. The one that sticks out right away: we actually get control of the camera this time. That alone helps a lot. The game feels a bit snappier overall too. Combat actually feels like it has a bit of a punch to it (not much, but it's at least there). I at least feel like I'm controlling the characters, rather than fighting the controls. Platforming has gotten better too, with some of it actually being decently fun. A standout inclusion are the sections where you can zip around levels via grapple points. It's nothing special, completely linear, but it does feel like the movement of the show and feels pretty good to pull off. I'm also really glad the game is finally fully voiced. For a game based on an animated series, especially one aimed at kids, that's really a requirement if you ask me.

That doesn't mean the game is perfect though. I would've appreciated a lock-on. The game is simple enough that it's not a necessity, but it would've made reorienting myself towards the enemies in the middle of fights a bit easier. I think the simplicity is one of the things that's holding the game back though. The problem is not that it's repetitive, but that it's monotonous. When it comes to combat, the game really is just a simple button masher. I don't mind that the game is easy, that's to be expected for a kids game, but I find the combat doesn't hold my interest. Not all fights are mandatory, and there were moments where I found myself just running past the enemies, not feeling like fighting. It's just not really that engaging nor satisfying to play, and being a kids game is no excuse: there absolutely are simple kid-friendly beat-'em-up/platformers out there that do full engage even adult players.

In terms of performance, I played Rise of the Sphinx on Switch, and it ran downright horribly on there. I'd say it was poorly optimized, but that would mean you tried to optimize it at all. I played Paris Under Siege on the Steam Deck though, and it ran perfectly fine on there. Excluding one section in one level where the framerate absolutely tanked for some reason, it ran just fine as far as I could tell. (Just make sure you use GE-Proton for the compatibility layer to fix some video playback issues). I think the bigger problem remaining is the lack of polish. The game does feel a little rough around the edges in many ways, like developers weren't granted the time and resources to properly smooth everything out before release. It's perfectly playable, nothing game-breaking, but you can feel it as you play (or probably even as you watch a trailer).

Overall, I'd say this game is mediocre to average. There's some fun to be had here. For a kid who's a fan of Miraculous, I think they could get some enjoyment out of this. Don't get it at full price, it's not worth that, but at a discount, you could do worse. But for anyone else, there isn't much here you won't find done better elsewhere. Too bad. I'm still a big fan of the animated series, which does lend itself insanely well to a game of this style. I hold out hope that one day we'll get that genuinely great Miraculous game that the series deserves.

[dhaabi]

35. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins [GB]

Oddly given my taste in games now, but I have a lot of nostalgia for Super Mario Land 2 and fondly remember playing it on a Game Boy Pocket many years ago. It was one of the few games I owned during that time, so I found myself playing through it on a semi-regular basis. In fact, it's actually the only 2D Mario game I've completed to this day. Maybe one day I'll revisit it once more to see if it actually holds up to my standards of today, as it's probably been around fifteen years since I've last played it. I've always been curious of the series's first and later entries too—I think I'd have fun playing them.

[telly]

Two games finished this week! And I'm almost done with Legends Arceus as well!

Game 8 - Beyond Good and Evil HD (PS4) - 11 Hours

There's a lot of things that I really like about this game but there were also a few things that didn't quite hold up in the way I was expecting this game is a fantastic pseudo-open world action-adventure game with a great combat system. It's primarily A stealth action game and while the action can be a little frustrating at times I still found it to be enjoyable. What really struck me was how immersive the world and characters were.  Those were super memorable to me and the voice acting was also great. I liked the fact that you're playing as a photojournalist who isn’t only relying on combat but uses other skills to solve problems. Taking pictures was a really fun way to explore the world and contributes to the story nicely.  I really enjoyed exploring the games overworld taking in the sights and sounds, not to mention that the music was great.

I have heard a lot of comments about the game being kind of obscure and annoying to progress plot wise, but I really didn't have that much problems. I had very few hiccups in gameplay and story progression. I only had to look up 1 puzzle that I got bacon and everything else just flowed very naturally. This might be because I'm playing a remade version that might have picked some issues from previous releases.

I think where this game really fell flat unfortunately was the story. The setup felt so intriguing at first, with this broad conspiracy underscoring a massive alien attack and your job is to solve the mystery and bring justice to the planet and your community. But the main revelations about the plot are revealed to the player within the first hour and most of the story is just you trying to break that news to the public (which you as the player already know) and it becomes way less interesting as a result. The parts of the story that connect Jade to the final villain were also flimsy and didn't feel like they were fleshed out as much as I would have liked

Game 9 - Clock Tower Rewind (PS4)

I’m glad that I had the opportunity to play this game as an official release because it's such an interesting and pioneering game for the survival horror genre. Even though it's only a 16-bit game that's 30 years old at this point, it still succeeds in bringing a unique powerful sense of tension and fear that really hadn't been accomplished up until that point. The sprite work and pixel art is fantastic. The music is unsettling and creepy. The gameplay is tense and foreboding. It's interesting that the story has multiple endings and branching paths that remind you of an old choose your own adventure novel. Overall just a really solid experience that still holds up.

I do think where this game unfortunately falls a little short are some flaws of early game design. Sometimes certain puzzles will not be solved unless you do it in a very specific way, which can be very frustrating. I remember one example where there was a hole in the floor, and a large plank of wood next to the hole. If you click on the wood plank your character won't put the plank over the hole. You have to click on the hole itself first THEN she’ll move the wood plank. Just silly sequencing things like that that. I found the presentation of the HD collection to overall be pretty good. The one thing that was terrible was the notifications for certain bonus content being unlocked in the game which would get slapped over your gameplay and it was very distracting.

[dhaabi]

31. The Pedestrian || PlayStation 5 || 05.21.2025



For about a year, The Pedestrian has been a game I've considered playing without knowing much about it. I just so happened to recently watch a video discussing city design themes within games—more specifically, the implementation of certain musical styles—which highlighted this particular game, so I felt more inclined to go ahead and play it afterward.

As a puzzle-platformer, The Pedestrian places a stronger emphasis on its puzzle elements, whereas its platforming largely serves as a means of stage progression that's typically only performed once the puzzle has actually been solved. Controlling a stick person taken straight from pedestrian signage, you as the player-character move from one real-world environment to the next upon constructing a path of signs, which there is only one possible answer in order to traverse forward. While not overtly clear in its instruction, environmental clues exist which serve as a non-obtrusive means to explain how the game is played alongside teaching how new mechanics operate as they're periodically introduced. Over the course of the game, players never know what the end objective to our exploring is beyond simply moving forward and progressing through puzzles. Regardless, the player-character explores all throughout the expansive city environment including city streets, subway systems, apartment buildings, and so forth.

At the game's simplest, players must navigate through a sequence of paths which will, eventually, progress the game from one screen to the next. However, it becomes progressively more complicated to achieve this as additional puzzle mechanics are introduced. Across all puzzles, the foundation of puzzles is that each screen is comprised of multiple in-game rooms represented by individual signs which can be linked together in numerous ways, though only one that's correct. Ladders and locked doors are some of the first mechanics introduced, though eventually lifts, switches, and other general roadblocks are too. At the same time, these individual rooms may be selected and moved around which is required for them to properly connect. So, players must also consider the placement of each room, and there will be certain puzzles first seen around the middle of the game which require the positioning the rooms to be altered numerous times. Generally, the cannot become unlinked once linked or else a fail state is triggered which resets progress, though this rule will, toward the end, be adjusted once new stage elements are presented. In some ways, I thought that the automatic fail state was annoying, and especially so in the game's beginning sections where puzzles incorporate fewer moving parts, but it's a design choice I ultimately resigned myself to thinking works best.

With each new area introduced, a new gameplay mechanic which allows the player to directly interact with the game's real-world environment does too. These sorts of effects include things like operate a subway train or controlling the power of electrical devices. The game's difficulty progresses fairly, although some puzzles randomly seem to have a sharp difficulty spike, though perhaps these were just instances that I couldn't comprehend what to do exactly even after prolonged attempts. Eventually, puzzle screens become more complex as they act like a central hub with branching paths. At these locations, players must move across several sub-screens in order to acquire items to help pass the main-screen objective. This sort of stage design allowed for each new mechanic to be explained more in-depth while also obviously expanding upon each area. Ultimately, I think this sort of approach worked well, as opposed to there just being a series of screens which the player must overcome one after another without any complexity. At no point does this open-ended level design require the player to take one part of a puzzle to apply it to another. Instead, each of these sub-screens serve as independent puzzles and can be solved in any order.

In the end, I found The Pedestrian to offer just enough challenge. I don't remember there being a single instance where the puzzle's solution seemed obvious, as I was regularly becoming acquainted with additional puzzle mechanics that overlap another which complicates stage progression. Puzzle-platformers are a genre I don't often finding myself playing often, so I felt accomplished after completing the game (almost) entirely without a guide.