52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

[Cartagia]

32 - Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2 2025) - BEAT - I'm gonna be honest on this...I'm a little mixed on this game.  Broadly, it's a fun time.  Tunneling is cool, there's fun mechanics, lots of colors, music, silly characters, there's a lot here as a game to do, it is a solid 3D platformer, it's good stuff.  That being said, it sorta does some of what I didn't love with Super Mario Odyssey (This is the same team, where instead of each level having like...10, maybe 20 distinct collectibles like how things were back in the day, each level has anywhere from like 30 to I think 60, and there's nearly 800 in this game, just like Odyssey.  After awhile, the grind to find them starts to get fairly tedious and this includes things like the Fossils, which are used to buy cosmetics, so there's a TON to find here.

It's not poorly handled compared to like Donkey Kong 64, but I realized by a certain point, I think it's abit over halfway through the game, that I was getting abit burnt out finding everything.  You spend so much time just spamming R1, because it's the sonar clap which will show banana's and fossils buried around for you to dig or maybe find a way around, so much is just spamming that and you want to upgrade that as fast as possible along with terrain strength so you can find things better. 

It didn't help that the bosses are kinda lame.  They look cool, but nearly every single one is really easy.  They also re-use a number of the bosses fights twice, with one even getting used a third time.  It's like halfway through they gave up on bosses, it's very unsatisfying especially when they are super easy.  The finale section of the game perked me up, but it was such a weird turn I did not ever expect, it's kinda baffling, kinda fun, I don't know, it's weird.

Game needs some optimization too, like real bad.  It's generally quite smooth, but effects heavy levels like the Ice Layer, and Storm Layer, and then certain boss fights and things where lots of explosions happen cause serious frame drops, like going from 60 to 30 or something, it's bad.

I don't know, I'm generally on board with open world 3D platformer games and I did have a good time, this a good game, but I hit a point in the last third of the game I kinda just wanted to get through the story and sorta pushed my way through.  I have so much to do and collect and there's decent post-game content added also, this is a hefty as heck game.

Also screw that one Rambi racing level, it's objectively the worst level and feels awful to play lol

I'm not finished yet, but this is exactly how I feel about the game.  Cool, bright, fun, tight controls.  Way too long.  I was beating a level, going back and getting every banana, but around Layer 1000 it started getting a little tedious, but I figured the game was wrapping up.  There were eight more layers to go.

[dhaabi]

33. I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero but I Can Secretly Edit the Metadata of the World || Browser || 09.06.2026



For a while, I've been wanting to play some sort of game revolving around language or words. I've had a couple of more premium games in mind that I own, but a game jam project with the same focus caught my attention lately, so I decided to play it instead. And that game would be I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero but I Can Secretly Edit the Metadata of the World.

In short, I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero is an adventure game with branching narrative paths, granting players the direct means to alter outcomes by weighing different possibilities in real-time before submitting the final change. Presented like a children's storybook of sorts with its simple illustrations, each screen introduces a brief story segment. There is a maximum sentence word count, however, so players are required to reduce the total number of words being used by marking some out in a way that maintains a full sentence structure with meaning so that the story can progress in some way. With such a gameplay mechanic, what once was one story outcome may transform to something wildly different, and it's made all more effective by the game's emphasis on humor. No matter what sentences are formed, there ultimately are two major paths to take with various differences in the smaller details. Describing the game in such a way implies little to be discovered, but that's not quite true despite the game's scope, and it's fun to experiment with removing certain words in a way that even alters their category as parts of speech such as transforming what once was originally an adjective into a noun.

As its title name implies, the game is centered around a hero named Gallafrey on a journey. However, whether they're a hero or not is entirely dependent on the player's choices. Perhaps his title is something else waiting to be discovered, or maybe he doesn't even remember his name. Yet, while there is a lot of freedom awarded to players to craft their own narrative, there is, in a sense, a right way to play. Once the story concludes or is unable to advance due to the player's failings, the end screen appears alongside scoring criteria. Not every possible action is achievable in a playthrough, so scores are designed in a way that's based on a pass and fail grading system or sorts. The severity of these choices depends on how many points are either lost or gained, and it's a small but fun inclusion to incentivize players to play as efficiently or poorly as they can. Of course, it's also worth mentioning that there are limits to how the story can advance. There's been plenty of feedback from its community about how certain sentences can be created in accordance to the writing that's already present without allowing the plot to be advanced in a certain way, though it's possible that updates could be published in the future to allow these new possibilities. Still, I found what's currently available to be plenty while offering a rewarding experience.

Alongside the grading score, a line of text stating how more options can be taken appears upon reaching the game's end. So for some time, I assumed that the game was keeping track of my progress in exploring story paths. I may be incorrect, but I don't think that sort of capability is actually implemented. I've made a strong effect to see as many scenarios that are possible while carefully removing words and experimenting with the results, and I do think I've exhausted all possibilities. Nevertheless, the message doesn't update. Instead, I think it's merely there to inform first-time players that various paths can be explored. Whether or not the message does update (meaning I've missed something), the presence of even a slightly more detailed metric that states how many story segments have been experienced out of the total figure would better allow players to play through the game repeatedly to discover new outcomes.

Before playing, I had already watched enough gameplay to know that I Was Seen as the Weakest Hero but I Can Secretly Edit the Metadata of the World would be a game I'd enjoy. That fact didn't diminish the enjoyment experienced, though.

[kamikazekeeg]

35 - Wardogs (PC EA 2026) - ENDLESS - This is one of those games I've been waiting to see for awhile, a large scale shooter with unique mechanics that isn't so hardcore that it's kinda just unfun, or too much of a military sim.  This game straddles that line perfectly of being kinda like an ARMA or Squad, but can be abit quicker to jump into with more freedom like Battlefield.  Battlefield I love, but it has had its issues, Hell Let Loose is too much of a running sim a lot of the time to me, I've never been that into Squad or Arma, but this has a lot going for it.

The game is built a little bit like an extraction shooter, in that you need money to buy gear, which then you go out, fight, and earn money by either supporting, reviving, or killing.  You can earn money in a ton of different ways.  Do you like base building? You can just spend a whole lot of time focused on just that, building up the base locations, building FOB's, it's like Battlefield 1 fortifications if you could build anywhere.  Do you just love flying? You can be a transport helicopter, delivering supplies to FOB's, delivering people (It's often the main way people get to the frontlines if there's not a spawn vehicle set up). You can also have Little Birds equipped with machine guns or rockets and become kind of a nightmare to deal with.  Just want to run around and shoot? There's all sorts of action for that from infantry to vehicles.

It's got a heck of a learning curve, figuring out how everything works, the building, where to build, the mechanics with scoring, dealing with the "F" interact system that can scroll for multiple options depending on what you are looking at, it's a lot, I died a lot of dumb deaths lol But it's a real solid shooter that has had a great start, I hope they can continue to support it long term in a very positive way.  Some games start out great and then missteps happen and it crumbles before hitting 1.0.

[realpoketendonl]

23. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster



What a title. I initially heard about this game from a YouTuber I follow and then picked it up once on a deep sale. I got it because it looked interesting and I like 3D action games, but now that I've beaten it, eh....

El Shaddai clearly wants to be seen as deep and artsy above anything else. And to be fair, some of the visuals do look pretty and kind of intriguing. The problem for me is that that takes priority over almost everything else, which doesn't result in an interesting game for me.

Gameplay ain't anything special. Combat feels a tad simplistic. How deep can you expect a combat system to get with only one attack button? Moving and platforming is often switched up with new things in the world, but in practice never evolves past basic platforming which I found a tad dull. The story feels a bit up its own ass for me, so concerned with dumping important sounding lore on you that it forgets to create an intriguing storyline or engaging distinct characters. On a few occasions the artsiness also gets in the way of gameplay for me, like when I can't distinguish what is and isn't solid ground, or when I lose to a boss and the game just carries on without communicating at all what actually happened or what it expects of me.

Maybe I could excuse it a tad more if the game was mostly about just experiencing the cool visuals, which admittedly can be cool. But this is still also trying to be a 3D action game, and for me, it kind of has its priorities backwards. I stuck with it because I wasn't actively hating my time with it and I prefer to beat games rather than drop them, but I was glad this one was done so I could move on to something else. It's not bad, but to me, it was just a little dull. Personally, I'd say skip this one. There's much better 3D action games out there to try.

(Also, shoutout to some of the lazy aspects of this port. The Switch menu icon is hideous. It looks like a homebrew app. And the pause screen just shows you a QR code that leads to the manual on their website. Why couldn't you just put some settings or a reminder of the controls there?? Why a freaking QR code??)

[ssj4yamgeta]

13: SoulCalibur III (PS2)

Since I recently finished up my PS2 ROM archive and got PCSX2 up and running, I decided to revisit what I consider to be the greatest fighting game ever made. It had been well over a decade since I last played it, because I was dirt poor in my late teens and early 20s, which meant 6th gen lasted 10 years for me. This resulted in me getting burnt out on my 6th-gen games and constantly chasing new releases from the time I could afford an XBOX 360 until just a few years ago. Now I'm gradually going back and revisiting those classics. And I dare say, this one still lives up to my memories. I played through Story Mode with Cassandra, Mitsurugi, Siegfried, and Tira until I finally unlocked my old main, Sophitia. I then played through hers next and thoroughly enjoyed getting reacquainted with her. The game is still beautiful, especially by PS2 standards. Certain stages like the burning mansion hallway, and Abyss' final boss stage with all the meteors and the solar eclipse, make you wonder how they got this game to run on a PS2 in 2005. The only thing that looks slightly dated is the plastic-y skin textures on the character models, but they still look great in spite of it. And for single player content in a fighting game, this game is unsurpassed. Besides Story Mode, there's also Survival, Arcade, Missions, Tournaments, Character Creation (this was the game that popularized character creation in non-rpg games), a Museum with tons of different categories, and an RTS mode. Yes, this fighting game has a full frickin' RTS campaign built into it. The Story Mode routes are multiple choice as well, which gives the mode a high level of replayability, as you can play through it again with a character you've used before and have a different experience.

The game's biggest flaw is it being somewhat unbalanced, which was definitely more obvious to me now that I've expanded my knowledge of this genre of games. Setsuka in particular is a murder machine who can outmatch most other characters with sheer speed alone, landing a strike the instant you drop your guard and well before your own quick strike animation makes contact. I've heard there's an arcade-only version of this game called SoulCalibur III Arcade Edition where they rebalanced the roster, so I'll have to see if I can track down a ROM of that. Despite the balance issues, though, the game still holds up.

Rating: 9/10 (Outstanding)

Completed:

Tomb Raider II (Evercade)
Tomb Raider III (Evercade)
Mafia: The Old Country (PS5)
Gundam Breaker 4 (PS5)
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection (PS5)
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (Gamecube)
Final Fantasy IV Advance (GBA)
Dragon Ball FighterZ (XBOX One)
Virtua Fighter 2 (Genesis)
Street Fighter 2: Special Champion Edition (Genesis)
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation Remastered (PS4)
Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition (PS4)
SoulCalibur III (PS2)

In Progress:

Nioh (PS4)
Farmagia (Switch)
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS4)