52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

[kashell]

57. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book - Bewildered Bird

I'm guessing there's a lot of extra content, so I'll just dub this the normal ending. Initially, I was not feeling this game. Especially after doing a fresh playthrough of Yoshi's Island. But, once my way of thinking shifted and I understood the game lacked urgency and had its own pace, I had a much better time. I would go as far to say it's better than Wooly World and Yoshi's Story. Some of the tasks necessary to fill in Mr. E's pages were ridiculous but they were few and far between. I really liked seeing creatures from Yoshi's Island getting their time in the sun and "learning" more about them. I was able to name the creatures and I, of course, went with a theme. The theme was "names of people I met in real life that I thought had goofy names." Time to continue filling in those pages!

[kamikazekeeg]

31 - Captured 2 (PC 2026) - BEAT - This was a nice sequel, where the first game feels kinda like any other indie horror game that you come across for like 5 bucks, this feels more like its own thing abit more.  You get a character to be, some story, it's not amazing, and I think they don't embrace it enough, but it's fine.  I think it slightly undercuts the gameplay as it felt like stuff was more obvious with this one than before, and there's abit more padding where you have like Backroom areas you have to do.  I both like and hate those, because they are just straight up the Backrooms, with one being the yellow ugly office rooms, another being a waterpark, etc...You can do kinda weird liminal stuff without just copying Backrooms stuff.

Entities were abit more improved, they are still silly and over the top, but they at least overall look better than the ones from the first game.  Overall, I liked it, it's nothing amazing, but I got both this and the first one for a 9 dollar bundle and I'm getting my monies worth out of it as an experience.  I'm gonna do Hard next which is the only other major difficulty and that'll probably be it.

[kashell]

58. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book - Moon

I have a few more things I need to collect before this is at 100%, but I saw the true ending and the credits roll. The variety in this game was through the roof even after finishing the first part of the game. Again, some of the discoveries took either too much effort, took too long, or had obtuse instructions. Still, it was an overall enjoyable experience and a great palette cleanser. It'll be tough going from this to something else - I have some heavy RPGs coming out soon and a few in my backlog I'd like to start before October (reserved for spooky games).

[dhaabi]

31. Heavy Rain || PlayStation 3 || 08.08.2026



Despite having owned Heavy Rain for almost as long as it's been released, I hadn't ever really considered actually playing it. And I was surprised too, because it very much seemed like something I'd enjoy experiencing after watching a few video reviews for it. So after spending a short time deliberating whether or not to begin a playthrough, I decided to start Heavy Rain.

Now, it's not as if Heavy Rain has been entirely unfamiliar to me all this time. Despite earning positive reception both critically and commercially, it's simultaneously a game that's had its fair share of being laughed at for various reasons, and it's not totally undeserving of those responses either. The game's opening sections in paricular can come across as entertaining as players are introduced to the father protagonist named Ethan whom players can control to be especially goofy, and it's made more apparent by his appearance and lingering camera shots too. But once players move past the opening hour, the game dramatically shifts in tone from its more lighthearted focus on family to something far more sinister: the introduction of the Origami Killer, a serial killer who kidnaps young boys whom ultimately die a few short days later. Needless to say, Ethan's son Shaun has been taken captive as the most recent victim. However, their deaths aren't certain. Soon after each victim has been taken, the opportunity for fathers to save sons is presented, and it results in the ordeal being a series of arduous tests of self-sacrifice to see to what length they'll go to prevent a tragedy.

With that said, the story presented is not Ethan and Shaun's alone. In fact, there are four central protagonists whom the player assumes the role as over the course of the story's events, each with unique roles: a father, a reporter, a private detective, and an FBI agent. And for better or for worse, each character controls the same without any individual play characteristic. One specific character does possess a tool to aid them in their efforts that sets their gameplay segments apart to some small degree, although it still abides to the same control scheme nor elevates this character's sections in any meaningful way. But despite their efforts all being the same—primarily to save Shaun—these four characters are largely removed from another until the story's finale with their experiences all interconnecting into one overarching thriller mystery narrative. Primarily presented as an adventure game, Heavy Rain is strongly dependent on player performance across the hundreds of actions that ultimately may be either achieved or failed, and these combined outcomes dictate story details. So, scenes will vary across each playthrough with added or removed segments and completely different outcomes. There are almost always various action paths to take, something that also includes whether players decide to engage in an action or not at all, and this all comes together to provide an experience offering a considerable amount of replay value.

Yet while Heavy Rain features adventure game elements, it's simultaneously defined by its action, albeit in an unconventional way. In subtitute of more traditional action gameplay, what's instead presented as the game's chief characteristic is its extensive use of quick-time events (QTEs). While at first it seems like QTEs are overly present, it doesn't take long to notice that the game's opening sections in particular serve as tutorial stages for players to become accustomed to gameplay. Six types of QTEs exist in total, and they're regularly used in combination with another to great effect that attempts to replicate on-screen action: button prompts, staggered button holds, button mashing, joystick rotation, slow joystick movements that require precision, and motion control performed with either the Sixaxis controller or PlayStation Move controllers. It can also be difficult to quickly deceipher what's being asked and perform the incorrect input that results in wasted time. That being said, errors are permitted, but too many will trigger a poor outcome. And as the game progresses and more high-stakes situations are encountered, QTEs naturally reflect this rise in tension. They'll not only appear on screen but sometimes float around in a way that replicates racing thoughts, or the camera shot may transition to some other perspective, and these aspects reinforce the time-sensitive and chaotic nature of each QTE itself. This extends to more basic choice options especially which are sometimes ambiguous in translating what they'll do. Needless to say, the QTE is quite in-depth, and it's made abundantly better by the game's difficulty settings that dictate QTE frequency and complexity.

With all that said, there is more to the game than its gameplay. Fortunately, the game is divided into a few dozen narrative scenes that allows for players to revisit them freely from the main menu. So should a mistake be made, players can always retry. However, the means to create multiple save files would have been ideal so that anyone interested in exploring the game's varied endings can accomplish that more easily. Meanwhile, Heavy Rain is a game that makes thorough use of motion capture technology. Visuals generally appear fine when adjusting one's expectations to account for its presentation, and I find all of the motion capture to be impressive for the game's time of release. These are some of the game's more positive feats, though. Oppositely, dialogue and vocal performance are not some of the game's strongest qualities, as dialogue can be stiff and even sound broken due to the majority of central actors being non-American yet acting as American characters. Perhaps the worst example of poor vocal performance is the abundance of mispronounced instances of "origami," a word that's used often but never spoken consistently. Narrative also suffers to some degree due to plot holes resulting from plot changes late in development. In fact, the more one thinks about certain details, the worse the project altogether appears, but first-time and especially casual players—or anyone who's merely playing to appreciate the general tone—can easily look past these omissions.

Now that I've played through Heavy Rain, it seems strange that it's taken me so long to give it a try considering that I've enjoyed a lot of other adventure games with player performance dictating outcomes. While it's far from a perfect game, its focus on mystery thriller elements are easy to maintain player interest, and I do still greatly recognize the effectiveness of how QTEs are implemented, which I find to be the game's strongest accomplishment. I don't own any of developer Quantic Dream's other games which are similar to this one, but that may change in the near future since I'm now curious about playing them too.

[bikingjahuty]

51. Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite (PS4)

I remember the months leading up to Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite's (MvCI) launch in 2017. I was a massive fan of most previous Capcom Versus games prior to Infinite coming out, and even though I wasn't a massive fan of 3, I still had high hopes for a new entry in this series. Unfortunately, as more and more info on the roster got released, I found myself becoming less and less interested in getting the game at launch. I eventually opted to skip the game when it first came out all together due to a combo of my lack of interest in the character roster as well as the mediocre and negative reviews this game got around that time. Months of holding off on getting MvCI eventually turned into years, until several years ago I picked the game up for like $10 from somewhere. I figured for that cheap I'd still be alright even if the game ended up being colossal letdown it was made out to be at launch. Still, despite all that, I still was hoping this game would surprise me and be a misunderstood gem that was maybe unfairly compared too much to the games that defined the heyday of the Capcom Versus series. Now that I've finally played MvCI fairly extensively, I can safely say the reviewers were absolutely right about this game nearly a decade ago.


While I didn't find Infinite to be a horrible game, it's certainly not a good one either. Immediately, the first major issue I noticed with MvCI is...well, it's a bit bland looking. The character models and many animations look like some sort of demake that each character was ran through before it was added to the game. I realize due to licensing issues, the Marvel characters had to look different than their established MCU counterparts, but my god, they look just as flat looking and uninspired as the Capcom side of things. Stages are fairly cool I guess, and while I did just rip on the animations, not all of them are as meh looking, but they're not that far off either. Overall, this is jist a fairly unattractive game considering when it came out. Hell, I'd say with no hesitation that even MvC3 is a better lookin game, and that was released a whole console generation prior.


The audio in MvCI doesn't fair much better. Music is kind of this generic super hero music most of the time, none of which really catches the player's ear and mostly just feels like white noise most of the time you're playing. Voice acting isn't great either, in fact some of the performances are awful. Like so bad, it wouldn't surprise me if you told me Capcom took a page out of Working Design's voice acting hiring practices and literally gave a Janitor or a random Door Dash delivery person $100 just to say a couple dozen lines for a character in this game. Some character's like Chris Redfield so retain their voice actors from previous games they were in, which is nice, but enough of the cast is just not great to where it does actively weigh this game down.


I wish I could let up on criticizing this game some, but unfortunately I haven't even talked about what's arguably the worst part of Infinite, it's gameplay. Unfortunately, MvCI's gameplay is not that great. I feel like the best adjective to describe would be half baked. The fluidity of the combat, the combo system, the Infinity Gem system, the controls, the character balancing, all of it, just feel very unpolished and kinda sloppy if I'm being honest. I still found myself having fun at times while playing, but they were certainly outweighed enough by frustratingly fighting against CPU characters that defaulted to block spamming during 2/3 of the match. And despite the occasional fun I found myself having, I was never really blown away or impressed with anything during my entire time with MvCI. That's a real shame since most of its predecessors are games I've loved returning to over and over again for most of my life.


Following my experience with MvCI, I really have to wonder, what the hell freakin happened here? 2017 Capcom was a solid studio; they weren't in the middle of some massive slump period that most gamer's remember as the dark ages for the company, and they definitely knew how to make good fighting games during that time, so it begs the question why they released such a bland, poorly made, and kinda bad looking game? There may be an answer to this question floating around the internet, but honestly I don't care enough to look. What I do know is that this is without a doubt my least favorite game in the Capcom Versus series and it really isn't even close. (8/22/26) [22/50]