52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

[bikingjahuty]

7. Pokemon Diamond - Coming back all these years later has really taken off those rose tinted glasses I've had for older Pokemon titles. I've just played a lot more JRPG's since I was a kid, so I kinda have a better understanding of just how basic Pokemon is and can see it's inability to evolve and learn from the larger gaming landscape a lot more clearly.

Pokemon Diamond isn't a bad game. It's just perfectly mediocre. Pokemon was never known for having a great story or deep characters, but Sapphire / Ruby did take a step in the right direction by introducing an enemy faction that had real goals and reasoning behind said goals. Were they kind of stupid? Sure. Flooding the planet because people disrespect the oceans and harm water Pokemon is directly disrespecting the land and harming all the Pokemon who live on the land (and vice-versa). But there was a kernel of thought put into the story. Diamond goes right back to "we are evil because we want to control the world". Team Plasma's reasoning is barely explained beyond Ghetsis wanting to recreate the world so he can rule it. It's just team rocket with a coat of paint. The game also does nothing to make the characters you meet standout or memorable. Every gym leader will give you a few lines when you challenge them and a few lines when you beat them but that's about it. I couldn't even tell you the names of 5 characters in an RPG I put 30 hours into. And the characters I could name, I couldn't tell you anything about them.

As for the game itself it played it really, really safe compared to previous games. Gen II and Gen III both overhauled the battle system in big ways. Gen IV doesn't change much at all, feeling largely the same as Pokemon Emerald in terms of gameplay. It could be said that Gen IV was the first Pokemon game to be complacent in the way that modern fans have been complaining about.

Overall it just didn't do enough to really stand out compared to its predecessors. I'd give it a strong 5 - light 6 at best.

Gen 4 got me back into Pokemon after nearly a decade of ignoring it. With that said, it's a sad state of affairs when you can safely say you've played pretty much every other Pokemon game once you've played one of them. There is a bit of diminishing returns too when you get into many of the newer generations, which typically include worse new Pokemon and even more simplistic/easy gameplay. Sadly, each new Pokemon gen seems to sell better than the last, meaning Gamefreak has zero incentive to deviate from their tried and true formula. This has pretty much resulted in me being a fan up to Gen 3, with a few games after that I selectively enjoy. Other than that, I don't actually care that much for the franchise these days.

To be fair, I think Gen V is the best Gen by far. They actually tried a lot of new things (It's the first Gen since the first to use an entirely new pokedex so every Pokemon you meet it a new one you have never seen before, new battle types, seasons), I think it put the most effort into making Pokemon look as good as it could for its time (some of the best 2D sprite work of all time imo, and finally animated them) and some much needed QOL finally got implemented (no more single use TMs). And to top it all off, there is an actual story. You actually learn about who N is, what his goals are and his personality. You talk with him multiple times throughout the game. Is it the best story? No, outside of the plot with N it is still super sparce. But they did actually try to tie a larger narrative into the journey like in Gen III, and they did a better job of it in Gen V imo.

I think Gen VII is also when they started to feel more like RPGs, and you actually talk with characters outside of the context of battling. Lillie is a complete character (and one of my favorite in Pokemon tbh) and some of my favorite "gym leaders" (not really gym leaders in that gen but they have the same role) come from that game such as Hala and Acerola. Why? Because they are real characters who take part in the story outside of just being someone you have to defeat. You actually get to know them a bit outside of battle.

TBH at this point I've just come to realize how rosy I was looking back at Gen IV, because before my replay it was an easy 7/10, maybe 8/10. But after this replay, after playing many of the classic JRPGs that would have came before it, I realize just how little impact it had on not only the genre but even within Pokemon. It didn't do anything interesting for the series. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to the other gens as I get to them cause I really do love Gen V especially. It's been in my "top 25 games of all time" list for a while now lol But tbh I haven't played it since high school, and I may also be looking back with rosy glasses at it too.

Right now 4 generations into my Pokemon playthrough my rankings are:
1. Gold/Silver (8/10)
2. Blue/Red (7/10)
3. Sapphire / Ruby (6/10 for Saphire, 7/10 for Ruby it's strange to have separate scores I know but there is a reason behind it)
4. Diamond / Pearl (5/10)

My favorite gen is still Gen 1. I beat Gold version for the first time ever (I came close when it first came out in 2000, but never beat it back then) last year and was surprised that I didn't like it more. After all, it's essentially everything from gen 1 cranked up several notches, plus having the entire Kanto region to replay once you're done. It was then that I realized that 90% of Pokemon's appeal to me rests in my nostalgic associations with the series. With that said, I played the remakes of Gen 3 back when they first came out and loved them and I actually liked gen 6. However, Gen 7 was when I just couldn't get into it anymore, and that was confirmed when I tired Sword when that came out and dropped it a few hours in.


It's funny you mention Gen 5, because I REALLY want to try that game out. I actually bought Black version the day it came out, started playing it, but never finished. My then girlfriend, now wife, did however beat it and it's one of her favorite Pokemon games. I've been meaning to pick it back up and actually beat it for the reasons you mentioned, but just haven't got around to it. I actually maintain a backlog planning list on another site (Backloggd if you're curious) and it's on my plan to play list for next year. I'm really hoping I'm able to get more into it this time around.

[kamikazekeeg]

19 - Mina the Hollower (PC 2026) - BEAT - Had a real good time with it and I realized I never fully knew what this game was going to be.  I know it had influences of the Game Boy era of Zelda, the general world and execution is very in line with that visually, but there's vibes and ideas connecting to other games from that era such as Mega Man and Castlevania and it is a very challenging game.  It's "souls-like" through some of its execution with Underlabs strewn around to recover at, vials that heal health but is based on how much plasma you have to fill up your health, which requires finding flowers or attacking enemies, and when you die you drop a "spark" and if you die again with no more sparks left, you lose "bones" which is the games currency.  It's not exact as Souls games as you get things and upgrades that give you more sparks and technically you aren't losing bones upon a second death, it's only when you run out, and you only need to recover the spark to get that specific spark back, not to recover your bones.

Overall it's very tough and I think it's maybe abit much in a few places, but its also quite satisfying, and there's so much to find from upgrades, to more weapons, to trinkets that notably change mechanics and offer up anywhere from stat boosts to enhanced moves, etc...And if the game is too hard, they have a ton of modifiers to change enemy health, damage, bone loss, like two dozen different stats.  You do lose achievements/feats activating any of them, but realistically those aren't important, but with that, you can make it an easier game if its too much.

I had a real good time, I got nearly 75% complete on my run at nearly 20 hours, and you unlock an NG+ and some more modifiers upon beating the game.  If you want an old school styled game to kick your teeth in abit, I do recommend it.

[kamikazekeeg]

12 - Death Stranding 2 (PC 2026) - BEAT - Took abit of a break a month or so ago I think, as I was right at the end which was kind of a long single run to beat the game, but came back, finished it up, and I think my view has mostly been the same since I first played it last year.  It's a fun, good, sequel that expands on what it needs, while being even weirder and crazier, though I don't know if I would put over the first game due to how initially unique the first game was and it's much more focused story and that I think DS1 Sam works better than DS2 Sam.  Him not talking much, being disconnected, it makes more sense, where as here it feels like there need to be a lot more with Sam emotionally, dialogue wise, and characters like Doll Man kinda undercut the experience for the sake of having another voice.

There's very little I don't like about the sequel, it's very enjoyable, and I hope we get another game eventually, I'd be happy if perhaps Kojima lets someone else at the company run lead, would work well with what I think the new game could be if we were to perhaps move on from Sam (We really need to move on from Sam), but we'll see.

[Cartagia]

I thought Astalon: Tears of the Earth was an excellent indie Metroidvania.  Some of the most fun I've had exploring a map in a long time.  Almost completely undone by the healing and respawn system.  You only get to heal at checkpoints once after a boss kill and when you die you respawn at the start of the game and have to make your way all the way back to wherever you died.  I think it would have been in my Top 5 if not for that.

[kashell]

45. Resident Evil 2 Remake - Leon

As soon as Code Veronica's remake is announced, I finish yet another run in an modern RE. I think I like Claire more as a character, but I like Leon's route more. Getting to play as Ada for a bit was a nice change of pace. Otherwise, it's basically the same thing. Leon doesn't get access to the Heart Key in the station. Instead, he gets the Club Key. Leon doesn't get the grenade launcher, but he gets a flamethrower. Fighting William in container yard area is still annoying as hell; something that seems to be a common factor in all horror games. I'll probably play Requiem next, which looks to be amazing.

[supremeusername]

23. PRAGMATA | 2026 | PC | 5/23:



     I played the "Sketchbook" demo for this back during one of Steam's Next Fests last year, and I was pretty shocked to find that: one, a big publisher like Capcom would release a demo during an event mainly for indie developers and two, that the game was really fun! What makes this game stand out from many triple-A titles is just how innovative it feels gameplay-wise. It's a third-person shooter with weapons that you'd find in any other game of the genre: pistols, shotguns, missile launchers, yadda yadda. What really makes PRAGMATA shine is the "hacking" element on top of the shooter gameplay. You can hardly damage any of the robots you battle over the course of the game without opening them up first via. hacking.

     You get a puzzle game on top of a shooting game: chaining different nodes together in the hacking mode to do the most damage, while consequently opening up the robots for more damage with shots from your weapons. It's an engaging gameplay-loop that gets more fun and challenging as you progress through the main story. Besides unlocking new types of nodes and weapons, you engage with new, more intimidating enemies that require you to think more outside the box. The bosses in PRAGMATA are so interesting to face as you really have to learn their moveset in order to defeat them. It may require you getting defeated once or twice to finally figure out what you have to do. There's nothing wrong with that because the game is so much fun to play, who cares if I have to fight the same boss again at full HP?

     This game was made more for a controller in mind, but it plays pretty well on mouse & keyboard for me. You have to really give your mouse a lot of room in order to work with Diana's gameplay, but it's satisfying once you do. Diana is one-half of PRAGMATA's gameplay-loop: the little girl in the back who deals with hacking enemies. Hugh is the astronaut who does all of the dirty work. You get a feel of how both of them interact with one another throughout the story. There's not a huge emphasis on the story-telling like there would be in something like, say The Last of Us. Half of the context comes from logs and emails left behind by the scientists that were there before you. However, you get just enough story moments to where I did feel attached to both characters and was looking forward to seeing where they were going next.

     The various environments encompassing the moonbase facility you're stranded on are all very detailed and gorgeous to look at -- as gorgeous as you can make a fractured facility look like. There's also purpose to fully analyzing every room as you obtain both upgrade parts and collectibles. Most upgrades use some form of lunafilament -- a type of matter that's introduced to you early on and has a strong presence in PRAGMATA's story. It's used to upgrade almost anything you can think of that would be useful to you. Collectibles are pretty useful as well, since they unlock various activities in the hub area that Diana can perform, furthering the bond between her and Hugh.

     It's such a treat to be getting something new and different from a well-established powerhouse like Capcom. It has the kind of polish you would expect from a modern game with big production values, while having the kind of heart that's rare to find in operations of the same size. This is definitely in contention for the "supremeusername's Game of the Year Award for 2026".



Grade: A+

[marvelvscapcom2]

23. PRAGMATA | 2026 | PC | 5/23:



     I played the "Sketchbook" demo for this back during one of Steam's Next Fests last year, and I was pretty shocked to find that: one, a big publisher like Capcom would release a demo during an event mainly for indie developers and two, that the game was really fun! What makes this game stand out from many triple-A titles is just how innovative it feels gameplay-wise. It's a third-person shooter with weapons that you'd find in any other game of the genre: pistols, shotguns, missile launchers, yadda yadda. What really makes PRAGMATA shine is the "hacking" element on top of the shooter gameplay. You can hardly damage any of the robots you battle over the course of the game without opening them up first via. hacking.

     You get a puzzle game on top of a shooting game: chaining different nodes together in the hacking mode to do the most damage, while consequently opening up the robots for more damage with shots from your weapons. It's an engaging gameplay-loop that gets more fun and challenging as you progress through the main story. Besides unlocking new types of nodes and weapons, you engage with new, more intimidating enemies that require you to think more outside the box. The bosses in PRAGMATA are so interesting to face as you really have to learn their moveset in order to defeat them. It may require you getting defeated once or twice to finally figure out what you have to do. There's nothing wrong with that because the game is so much fun to play, who cares if I have to fight the same boss again at full HP?

     This game was made more for a controller in mind, but it plays pretty well on mouse & keyboard for me. You have to really give your mouse a lot of room in order to work with Diana's gameplay, but it's satisfying once you do. Diana is one-half of PRAGMATA's gameplay-loop: the little girl in the back who deals with hacking enemies. Hugh is the astronaut who does all of the dirty work. You get a feel of how both of them interact with one another throughout the story. There's not a huge emphasis on the story-telling like there would be in something like, say The Last of Us. Half of the context comes from logs and emails left behind by the scientists that were there before you. However, you get just enough story moments to where I did feel attached to both characters and was looking forward to seeing where they were going next.

     The various environments encompassing the moonbase facility you're stranded on are all very detailed and gorgeous to look at -- as gorgeous as you can make a fractured facility look like. There's also purpose to fully analyzing every room as you obtain both upgrade parts and collectibles. Most upgrades use some form of lunafilament -- a type of matter that's introduced to you early on and has a strong presence in PRAGMATA's story. It's used to upgrade almost anything you can think of that would be useful to you. Collectibles are pretty useful as well, since they unlock various activities in the hub area that Diana can perform, furthering the bond between her and Hugh.

     It's such a treat to be getting something new and different from a well-established powerhouse like Capcom. It has the kind of polish you would expect from a modern game with big production values, while having the kind of heart that's rare to find in operations of the same size. This is definitely in contention for the "supremeusername's Game of the Year Award for 2026".



Grade: A+

Incredible game.  Capcom is truly on a tear rn. 

[2ko]

8. Red Dead Redemption - I started playing this game over a decade ago but lost interest pretty fast. It takes more than an open world for me to be interested in a game, especially after I played Skyrim, which despite all of its flaws was an awesome world to lose yourself in.

My basic problem at the time, which was the same for this playthrough honestly, was that the opening was incredibly boring. Combat is so simple that you can basically just walk up to any fight and shoot everyone. No need to use cover or think about how to engage, just keep walking forward and shoot everyone. If you somehow find yourself in a pinch, simply just slow down time and get autotargeting headshots on everyone. The characters were fine, but the dialogue was stilted and felt forced. One second you are talking about something serious, whether its politics or philosophy, only for you to hit some dialogue gate that forces the characters to instantly change topics to something else. It makes a lot of the more serious themes the game tries to explore feel ham-fisted in, like they couldn't think of a way to have it come up naturally so they just shoved a 2 minute conversation into the story without thinking how it fits in with the surrounding dialogue. Characters just bring up these topics on a whim and end the conversation on another.

But as I played more I started to like it a bit more. It has an interesting cast of characters, including the protagonist John Marston who is somewhat of an opportunist and doesn't hide the fact. He'll do just about anything if he sees it as benefiting his own cause. You aren't really a hero, even though the game does try at points to paint him as one. The story also has enough strong moments to keep you pushing towards that next mission.

Overall it was an okay game in the end. I can see why some people like it, especially if you don't care about the simplistic gameplay and care more about the story. I find it hard to ignore who bad the dialogue is at times but I feel like most people just ignore that aspect for some reason. Fair enough. I'd give it a solid 6/10.

9. Kirby's Dreamland 2 - Wow what a gem on the Game Boy! They clearly learned a lot after Kirby's Adventure and put all that knowledge into making one of the best games I've played on the system. It plays incredibly well, sounds and looks great, and believe it or not puts up a good challenge! Kirby games are kind of known for being incredibly easy, but I died many times over the 7 worlds of this game. Seriously, if you like Game Boy and haven't played this one yet you are missing out! Amazing game, I gladly gave it an 8/10.

[bizzgeburt]

05 - Medal of Honor: Rising Sun [DE] (GameCube)
https://vgcollect.com/item/285259

Hardware: Nintendo Wii + GameCube Accessory
Playtime: about 20 Hours

In some way, this is Episode 2 of Bizz playing GameCube-FPSs on Nintendo Wii - after finishing Call of Duty 2: Big Red One a few days ago, I just went on grabbing another GameCube WW2-shooter from my shelf: Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. I already had terrible memories of this game being full of technical flaws, and having been a major disappointment after it's release. Medal of Honor: Frontline was a huge hit and a great shooter for it's time, but Rising Sun really didn't live up to that in so many ways. Nevertheless, I decided to give it another chance in 2026 because I wanted to see if my memory tricked me or not. Spoiler-Alert: It didn't…

The version of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun that I played was released on November 27th 2003 in Germany by EA who also developed the game in most aspects as Electronic Arts Los Angeles. A few minor studios were involved that were partly made up of ex-employees of Acclaim and Logicware. Looking up their development catalogue you only find few household names like Grand Theft Auto or Command & Conquer. EA Los Angeles assimilated remaining parts of Westwood Studios and EA Pacific in 2003, and became Danger Close Games in 2010. For many of the smaller studios involved, this entry seems to have marked the end of their activities … what does this tell us about the game itself?

As the title suggests, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun shows the pacific theatre of WW2. This was rarely seen back in the day. I personally remember it being the first in-game depiction of the attacks on Pearl Harbor I've seen. You play as Corporal Joseph Griffin, the prototype of an american young man, dominating sports in school and signin' up for the Marines the day he graduates. Of course your reputation as a gift to every platoon soon leads to you being trained as a standalone-fighter by your commanders.
Stationed in Honolulu, you experience the fierce airborne attacks on Pearl Harbor first hand and are sent straight to battle in this pacific war your country joins into immediately after what your President titled the "Day of Infamy". The game's plot mostly revolves around you and some other soldiers following the track of a japanese Commander and a fortune in gold that he robbed in order to boost Japan's war economy as well as searching for your beloveth brother Private 1st Class Donnie Griffin, who disappeared when the Imperial Army invaded the Philipines.

As for gameplay, Rising Sun didn't reinvent the wheel in comparison to Frontline, but they put a few more vehicle-based sections into the game as well as side-objectives and mission-rating, which can earn you medals and lock picks. Those lock picks can be used to open a hidden crate in the respective mission to unlock multiplayer-skins. The back of the box says something About GameBoy Advance compatibilty, but the Manual doesn't contain any info- Researching told me, that when connecting your GameBoy Advance with the game cartridge of Medal of Honor: Infiltrator in it to your GameCube, the GBA's screen acts as a little interactive mini-map of your mission. I don't own the cable needed to do that, nor the Advance game, so I didn't bother - but this might have helped with an issue I'll describe a little further down in this text section.
Besides those additions, even when first playing the game back in 2003/2004 it already felt like it was rushed into publication and sales to catch the promising christmas-sales. Player movement is frustratingly slow, aiming is a pain in the ass + hit boxes seem surreal … almost everything regarding the controls in this game seems somehow irresponsive as hell. Friend-NPCs are poorly scripted, mostly positioning themselves between enemies and your aiming point or blocking your path to progress the mission. They shoot, but never hit, whilst enemy NPCs ignore them completely. Ultimately, they just act as kinda warning systems, warning you About approaching enemies, that otherwise you would barely notice until they hit or even Banzai-charge you. The scripting of your mission's objectives also seems kinda buggy, which left me stuck and forced to restart more than once. This occured mostly when having to handle or interact with any movable/pickable object in the surroundings. Whilst suffering my determined way through this ruthless disgrace of it's predecessor, there were moments in which it felt like some sections of the game were solely put in there to frustrate the player, like that whole Guadalcanal mission by night: Not even the surrounding jungle you navigate through is really visible, even when concentrating your view till it aches, you simply can't make out any route nor enemy attacking. I found myself helplessly turning and cussing, not able to make out enemies locations to properly fight back … probably this was put in the game to give the player kind of a glimpse of how it might have felt to fight in jungle terrain and so on, but then at least make the surroundings a bit more visible! >< Guess I'm just too used to seeing where shots are coming from. I don't know if this wasn't yet invented back in 2003, but in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, muzzle flashs don't light up sh**, and are just a simple animation in front of your enemy's gun. 
All those flaws made it feel almost unplayable back in 2004, and it still feels unplayable today even compared to FPS from the same time. Now I learned that there's a way to get through, but this way is filled with frustrating situations, endless repetitions and simply glitches and bugs disturbing your play all the time. If any reader reminds playing this title on another platform than GameCube, please tell me that the version you played was better!

I love games - and hate to say something bad about them, but in some cases you just can't sprinkle sugar on a turd and call it a cannolo. But let's get to the things Medal of Honor: Rising Sun does right imo …

Visually, I lean towards liking the game. At least most of the time. The single-player-campaign's maps, though linear in total, contain various little forks, pockets and sometimes even larger areas that invite to some exploration which often rewards you with completion of side objectives, additional health or ammunition or a way into the flank or rear of enemy groups. The 2000's in total are a shamefull blindspot in my gaming vita, tbh, so I have a hard time comparing textures and stuff … but it look's okay to me. Besides jungle exteriors, surroundings and especially buildings are modelled with much detail and you never really run across the exact same building or interior layout twice. The missions and locations are all very unique yet always giving you a few sideways and oftentimes more than one way of getting through a section. Even if the fighting itself does get a bit repetitive - the level design does not. What's weird is that some smaller weapons have reload-animations, but most weapons don't. This game was my first getting in contact with the infamous japanese Type11 light machine fun, a fancy gun side-fed by a hopper containing standard clipper strips. It'd be hilarious to have the player exercise the finicky reloading process of this particular weapon, but I guess it's better they left that out of the game. Tbh, this was the first game I ever played dealing with the pacific war theatre in general and I don't know if there were any similar shooters available for home-consoles at that time. It sure was something seldom seen.

Man, MoH music is always awesome. The score for this entry of the series was composed/conducted by none other than Christopher Lennertz (who won the 2003 Interactive Academy Award for best original Music with this Soundtrack) and it shows the same cineastic and epic approach as the soundtracks of the MoH-games I played up until that time: Underground and Frontline. This time, some asiatic/japanese traditional sounds and instruments are mixed into the pieces to accomodate the game's east-asian setting. One specific piece ("Reqiem for the California") even contains an impressive choir. Lennertz is best known for it's music in "The Boys" or "Supernatural", so yea, no amature.

All in all, back then and today, I wish they would've put the same effort in programing, testing and making the game work more fluent technicaly, that they obviously put in the plot, optic and music/sound of the game - Maybe then I'd even favour Medal of Honor: Rising Sun more than I do Frontline which is my actual favourite of the series. It's stressing to work yourself through this game, and all the good aspects of it make it even more depressing. It took EA many years to come back with a newer MoH-title, and playing Rising Sun kind of explains, why. They almost buried a well-established household franchise with this hastily released, poorly worked out entry.
I did enjoy traveling back into this era of my gaming life, but on the other Hand I did not really enjoy playing Medal of Honor: Rising Sun for GameCube. Leave this one out unless you're really into the franchise and want to play every single entry there is.

phew, 5th game finished in 2026 - on to the next one!