52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

[realpoketendonl]

8. Just Dance 2023 Edition - Enter the Danceverses Story mode

Yes, you read that right. Story mode. Just Dance 2023 Edition, for some reason, has a story mode. I play a lot of Just Dance, and I mostly consider it an endless game and thus ineligible for this challenge under how I'm counting it. But this is an official story mode, and if that's the case, I'm gonna treat it as such.

There isn't that much to it. It's a set of seven songs with routines that, when played in order, tell a simple story. You're a player joining the dancer Wanderlust to recruit other dancers and defeat the evil Night Swan. Specifically, the seven songs covering this story are:

• Can't Stop the Feeling! by Justin Timberlake
• Witch by Apashe feat. Alina Pash
• Physical by Dua Lipa
• Rather Be by Clean Bandit feat. Jess Glynne
• Locked Out of Heaven by Bruno Mars
• Majesty by Apashe
• If You Wanna Party - a Just Dance original song

I like these songs, and the routines and visuals are well done and fun to dance to. And Night Swan, admittedly, is serving. But does this story mode add much to Just Dance as a whole? Not really.

I do really love Just Dance as a whole. I've been playing it actively for months now. It's really fun! I love many of the songs in it, with the subscription service Just Dance+ you have hundreds to choose from, most of them with fantastic visuals supporting dance routines performed by real talented dancers. The routines are varied and great fun. It's not easy either: many songs take quite a bit of practice and skill to master, and it feels great to hit that Megastar rank. Many songs will really make you work up a sweat too. As someone who struggles with exercising regularly and who does not feel comfortable at the gym, this has been a great way for me to get more moving and exercise in.

However, the story mode, while harmless, is also superfluous. I'm mostly just wondering whose brilliant idea it was to say: "You know what Just Dance needs? A story mode!" Just Dance 2024 Edition had one too, and it's mostly just a tad distracting when you select a song in the regular game mode that you don't realise is part of the story mode and you're suddenly thrown into the middle of a plot. I had that with Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You) by Kelly Clarkson, which is a part of 2024 Edition's story mode.

I still love Just Dance tho. I feel like many gamers tend to look down on it, but it's a series that has a lot of love put into it, and that's great fun alone and an absolute blast in a group. I doubt I'll specifically come back to the story mode often, but I'll definitely be playing a lot more Just Dance in the future.

[kashell]

23. Resident Evil 3 Remake

I would say this was short and sweet, but there isn't much "sweet" about it. The blueprint is there, but it feels like there's more bad than good in Jill's/Carlos' campaign. I like both of these characters, and both seem like seasoned warriors. And yet, I'm having to once again backtrack often to make space for inventory. The Nemesis thing has the same flaws as other games with "stalkers" in them. It's a bit jarring at first, but then it turns into irritation. Needless to say, this was a one and done campaign that feels good but not great. Kudos for the trophy that referenced Power Stone, though.

[kashell]

24. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Asellus

Relatively speaking, I blazed through Asellus' story. From a gameplay perspective, hers has always been on the more challenging side. Bosses appearing somewhat randomly means there's a chance you're not prepared with your party or equipment. It can also be challenging to figure out where to go to advance the story. White Rose isn't a strong character (from what I can tell anyway) and she's the only one to immediately join. So, lots of randomness for Asellus. But in terms of story? Hers is one of the best. It deals with identity, sexuality, the depravity of men, and learning to overcome dysmorphia. Playing it in the late 90's was cool (although some parts are censored). Playing it now as an adult and being wholly aware of how backwards things are progressing, it's necessary. Up next is Riki!

[kamikazekeeg]

23. Resident Evil 3 Remake

I would say this was short and sweet, but there isn't much "sweet" about it. The blueprint is there, but it feels like there's more bad than good in Jill's/Carlos' campaign. I like both of these characters, and both seem like seasoned warriors. And yet, I'm having to once again backtrack often to make space for inventory. The Nemesis thing has the same flaws as other games with "stalkers" in them. It's a bit jarring at first, but then it turns into irritation. Needless to say, this was a one and done campaign that feels good but not great. Kudos for the trophy that referenced Power Stone, though.

This one was disappointing.  They had the blueprint for sure in multiplayer ways, they are coming off two big wins with RE7 and RE2R, and then they just dropped the ball with it, primarily because they cut a ton of content from the original and it felt like a downgrade from RE2R.  The original was meant to be like a quick offshoot of RE, abit more actiony, but you can't do that quite the same here, because it needs to still have most of what the original game had.  Add to that they attached the awful Resistance mode to the game and it's kind of a double whammy of lame.  Just unfortunate that there's all these great new games and remakes post-RE7 and then there's just this huge misstep in the middle.  We need a remake of the remake lol

[kashell]

23. Resident Evil 3 Remake

I would say this was short and sweet, but there isn't much "sweet" about it. The blueprint is there, but it feels like there's more bad than good in Jill's/Carlos' campaign. I like both of these characters, and both seem like seasoned warriors. And yet, I'm having to once again backtrack often to make space for inventory. The Nemesis thing has the same flaws as other games with "stalkers" in them. It's a bit jarring at first, but then it turns into irritation. Needless to say, this was a one and done campaign that feels good but not great. Kudos for the trophy that referenced Power Stone, though.

This one was disappointing.  They had the blueprint for sure in multiplayer ways, they are coming off two big wins with RE7 and RE2R, and then they just dropped the ball with it, primarily because they cut a ton of content from the original and it felt like a downgrade from RE2R.  The original was meant to be like a quick offshoot of RE, abit more actiony, but you can't do that quite the same here, because it needs to still have most of what the original game had.  Add to that they attached the awful Resistance mode to the game and it's kind of a double whammy of lame.  Just unfortunate that there's all these great new games and remakes post-RE7 and then there's just this huge misstep in the middle.  We need a remake of the remake lol

Agreed! Also, I had to look up what Resistance mode was, ha.

[kamikazekeeg]

Agreed! Also, I had to look up what Resistance mode was, ha.

Capcom once again trend hopping like they've done for so many years now, "Oh, asymmetrical co-op horror is popular with things like Dead by Daylight? Let's do that!" and what we get is basically a half-assed, poorly made, version of Resident Evil Outbreak, the thing that fans would actually want if they put the real time and money into it lol

[bikingjahuty]

23. Resident Evil 3 Remake

I would say this was short and sweet, but there isn't much "sweet" about it. The blueprint is there, but it feels like there's more bad than good in Jill's/Carlos' campaign. I like both of these characters, and both seem like seasoned warriors. And yet, I'm having to once again backtrack often to make space for inventory. The Nemesis thing has the same flaws as other games with "stalkers" in them. It's a bit jarring at first, but then it turns into irritation. Needless to say, this was a one and done campaign that feels good but not great. Kudos for the trophy that referenced Power Stone, though.

This one was disappointing.  They had the blueprint for sure in multiplayer ways, they are coming off two big wins with RE7 and RE2R, and then they just dropped the ball with it, primarily because they cut a ton of content from the original and it felt like a downgrade from RE2R.  The original was meant to be like a quick offshoot of RE, abit more actiony, but you can't do that quite the same here, because it needs to still have most of what the original game had.  Add to that they attached the awful Resistance mode to the game and it's kind of a double whammy of lame.  Just unfortunate that there's all these great new games and remakes post-RE7 and then there's just this huge misstep in the middle.  We need a remake of the remake lol

I was completely oblivious to the hate for this game until after I beat it. I really enjoyed it. Sure, it's different than the original, but I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. It seems the biggest gripes seem to be how Nemesis was handled and also the game's length. I didn't have an issue with either and thought the game was pretty fun. I actually like it slightly more than the original game.

[kamikazekeeg]

I was completely oblivious to the hate for this game until after I beat it. I really enjoyed it. Sure, it's different than the original, but I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. It seems the biggest gripes seem to be how Nemesis was handled and also the game's length. I didn't have an issue with either and thought the game was pretty fun. I actually like it slightly more than the original game.

I didn't hate it either, a lot of my annoyance was that it just felt so much more lacking compared to RE2R, like they cut back on what you could do against zombies where you could shoot off limbs and such, which was so weird to get rid of.  After I finished, I found all that was missing from the original and it's kind of a lot, which would've helped with how short the playtime is.  I put as much time into my first run of Requiem than I did all the time I spent playing RE3 lol I know there was some other annoyances that just didn't work great for the game either, but a lot of it was just how short the game was and how unsatisfying the replay for it was. It's one of those games where in vacuum it's mostly fine, but compared to the other games and its original, it's really lacking.

[2ko]

25. Mega Man 2 (PS4)

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that despite being a gamer for over 30 years of my life, I've never really played or beat one of the core Mega Man games.

...

One gripe I have with a lot of video games made before the late 90s is how it was a fairly common for a game's difficulty to be tied to how broken or poorly thought out the gameplay was. Some of this is due to the limited technology of the time, however much of it is also because devs back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s were trailblazing a medium that was still very new for the most part. The end result of this for me personally, is the older a game is, the less likely I'm probably going to enjoy it. My enjoyment cutoff, at least for console gaming, seems to be somewhat in between the 3rd and 4th console generation; essentially most NES and Master System games don't appeal to me all that much,

We are in the same boat (though, I haven't hit the 30 year mark yet. Another 2 years before I can claim that).

Out of the hundreds of games I have played, Mega Man is a pretty huge gap in my experience. I played through 1 and 2 last year for the first time.

Yellow Devil sucks, but the rest of the game was pretty good. A solid 7 for me. 1 gets a bad rap but its not that much worse imo. Like a Low-Mid 6. A little bit more "frustration as game design" than 2, but still manageable.

I will say though that while I agree with your general thought that a lot of games on the NES were somewhat poorly thought out, and as a result poorly balanced (or in the worst case, just not fun) there are enough gems on the NES that I can't personally throw the whole generation out. The NES Super Mario Bros. games are all gems, with SMB3 being one of the best games of all time in my opinion. The Legend of Zelda is an all time classic, and seeing it's DNA in Breath of the Wild is what helped elevate BotW to a 10 for me (I would only consider 3 games I've ever played to be a 10, maybe 4 if you count TotK which feels a bit like cheating cause it's just BotW again with even more stuff lol).

But for every gem there are like 2 or 3 games that treat making the game so difficult that you have to play a level 100 times to memorize their layout as good game design. An interesting thing about this design philosophy though (that the longer you play the game, the better it is) is that it hasn't actually changed. Just instead of making the game super hard and replaying the same content over and over, you now just do the same thing over and over to pad out games. Instead of replaying the same level 100 times, you play a level that has been copy and pasted 100 times instead. It's weird how games evolved and how gamer's brains have been conditioned to correlate playtime with quality.