Main ListGuide:
bold games are games that have been beaten, previously beaten, or are unbeatable.
italicized games are in progress.
standard games are games I am not currently trying to beat.
strikethrough games are games that have been abandoned.
34.
Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past (3DS)
Just started this up this morning. Haven't had a single battle yet, getting ready to enter the first dungeon, I believe. Already wasted money by buying equipment for someone not in my party and equipment that I found for free shortly after. Whatever. Quite a bit further, recently got the 4th party member, I'm kind of assuming this is one of those games where you have an explicitly defined amount of player characters and cannot swap out your team, which is totally fine. Lost a party member, so I'm back down to 3, which is frustrating because I fed him some seeds for apparently no reason at all. Just now got to where I can assign vocations. Alltrades part of the game took a good long while. Moved along and still only have 3, I'm wondering when I'm going to get more party members again. Eventually got a 4th party member and then shortly after lost another party member back down to 3, and then gained a new party member so I'm back up to 4. I'm kind of assuming I'm going to lose this new party member and gain back the one I previously lost, definitely feels like a temporary character, but I could be mistaken. Mistaken, new party member was fairly permanent.
Rating: Highly Recommended.
35.
Yakuza 6 (PS4)
Decided to temporarily drop Yakuza Dead Souls so I can start and finish 6 so I don't have to worry about spoilers anymore. This is a brand new engine for me and with it brings a lot of changes. First change I noticed was that when ordering food at places, they don't identify which foods you have already ordered, quite annoying. Leveling up your skills isn't driven by money or plain experience points, but rather by a variety of experience points split across 5 categories. I'm having trouble earning Technique xp, I think. I have Technique maxed out and I still can't manage to keep it high enough to get upgrades whereas every other skill type I've got thousands of xp. Finally finished up this game. I have mixed feelings about the ending. I understand it helped set the story, but I was disappointed by the lack of Majima, Saejima, and Dojima in this game.
Rating: Recommended, provides closure to Kiryu's story.
36.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (X1)
Not sure how to track this one since it kinda just goes from one thing to the next and at any given point I probably don't know where I am. Having a difficult time getting into this game and I don't know why. I really enjoyed the first one and the second one wasn't terrible and I liked it as well, but I'm just not feeling this one. As I've progressed, I've gotten into the game and am enjoying it. Normally I would say a game that takes more than an hour to hook you is not a great game, but I think with this game I was just in a funk and just not feeling it personally. I think a lot could've been done to push me into it faster, but I definitely think it was harder for me because of the mood I was in, so I won't hold that against the game. Eventually I did get into the game and am enjoying it, but for some reason I'm having trouble with combat other than stealth, so I'm mostly sticking with stealth. There is a moment in this game, it will definitely 100% be my memorable moment for the year. I feel like it's kind of spoilery to go into the details, but Lara essentially snaps and goes on a murderous rampage... it's dope. Opinion on order of greatness in the trilogy. Tomb Raider > Shadow > Rise. Tomb Raider and Shadow are pretty damned close though.
Rating: Recommended
37.
Until Dawn (PS4)
I accidentally erased my wife's save data for this game when I was migrating to a new PS4 a while back and told her I'd play the game for her to sort of make it up to her. Spoiler, she watched me play the entire game and said she remembered everything... apparently she did beat the game and just didn't remember it.
I'm not a fan of spooky games nor jump scares, but I actually kind of enjoyed the fuck out of this game and mildly considered going for the platinum as it would only take an additional half playthrough to get what I'm missing.
Rating: Recommended if you like horror games.
38.
Borderlands 2 (X1)
Current Progress: Sanctuary
We were talking about buying some FPS games on Switch and whether or not my wife would play them given that her preference is PC. So we decided to play a co-op FPS game and see how she handles the twin sticks since she has been playing We Happy Few on PS4. She seems to be doing well enough so far, still doesn't understand that there is a difference between Xbox and Playstation and keeps hitting A when it says X. I liked this franchise when I was in college, but it just feels too MMO/WoW and I just don't feel that anymore.
Rating: Recommended... I guess.
39.
Dark Souls Remastered (NS)
Don't really know why I bought this, and don't really know why I didn't get the X1 version honestly. This is sort of my first time playing through a SoulsBorne game without my wife's cousin taking part in the process... I have however beaten this game before... so eh. Enjoying my time with it so far. Started my playthrough with the plan of doing something out of the normal for me, picked a bandit instead of a thief or knight. Put all of my stats into strength and such. Got a little further and realized that I was still playing similar to how I normally play. I'm trying to play really heavy tank instead of just a balanced character... but it's been very balanced so far. Might start a new playthrough and go straight faith/intelligence and go mage build. Having played this on Xbox and now Switch, it's interesting that I'm having so much trouble with the controls. A Switch Pro controller is very similar to an Xbox controller, but I instinctively use A on Switch to be "Okay" and B to be "Back", but the game behaves as if you are using a Xbox controller and it is the inverse, A is "Back" and B is "Okay". I really shouldn't have the trouble, but I do. Gonna go ahead and try and play this game with the gamecube controller because maybe it'll be easier to play. I also swear I read somewhere that you could remap controls, but maybe you can, but the menus still do the annoying backwards back and okay buttons.
Rating Obviously recommended, but maybe go with the X1/PS4 version.
40.
Opus: The Day We Found Earth (NS)
Bought this a while back because it looked interesting to search the universe for planets and such. Kind of a let down. I played through the game and as far as I can tell, the only planets you can discover are the ones as part of the story, the rest are just "Sorry these planets aren't enough like Earth". Story is mildly interesting and the game is pretty cheap... but it's just not very good.
Rating: Solid pass.
41.
Piczle Lines DX (NS)
I've been playing this one on and off like Picross S, but I hadn't bothered to track it until now. Game is essentially Link-a-Pix puzzles, with a sorta Puyo Puyo story telling. Don't really recall the story because I've been playing the game that slowly and for that long. Story nonsensical and doesn't seem to really matter. Definitely a difficult game to justify unless you really like Link-a-Pix puzzles... and I like link-a-pix puzzles.
Rating: Solid pass.
42.
Florence (Android)
My wife played this game at PAX South earlier this year, and she bought it day one when it came out on Android. It happened to be a family sharing enabled game, so she insisted that I play it at some point... I've been putting it off for a while and decided I really don't want to play DQ8, so I started playing this instead. I'll detail that in the DQ8 thing. Game seems to tell the story of a 20 something girl, no text or voice, just conveying stuff through facial expressions and music and pictures. Interesting story and way of telling the story, but the ending was sort of, anticlimactic. I don't know.
Rating: Good, but pass.
43.
Dragon Quest Builders (PS4)
I really needed a palette cleanser after Until Dawn. I was originally planning on playing Dark Souls Remastered, but I just really needed a light game to play because Until Dawn fucked me up so badly, so I decided to play this. Game is like a cross between Minecraft and A World of Keflings. Crafting and building like Minecraft, but also city management like Keflings. So far I only have 2 major complaints about this game, and they are pretty important complaints. Camera work sucks, doesn't adjust well when in caves or buildings. Can't change control scheme, consistently I press the wrong buttons because it just feels unintuitive. X is pause when it should be jump.
/\ is attack when it should be pause. [] is place item when it should be attack. O is jump when it should be place item. Game is fun and lasts a decent while. A tad too walkthrough heavy if you want the platinum, so I didn't bother with that.
Rating: Soft Recommendation if you like Minecraft.
44.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Wii U)
Played quite a bit of this when my nephew came over to help with some stuff around the house the past few weekends, and then I spent half a day playing doing some of the event matches that I never got the reward for. After earning a few of the rewards I needed, I recalled why I never finished the events, the rewards are just stickers/badges for upgrading characters if you use that content. I never used that content so I didn't bother.
Rating: Recommended as always, but might as well pass and wait for Ultimate at this point.
45.
Steamworld Dig 2 (NS)
I don't know if I was watching Critical Role or 30 Rock, but I was watching something on TV and wanted to play a game while listening instead of just playing Dragon Quest Builders, so I started up Steamworld Dig. Very similar to the original, some obvious improvements such as wall jumping. Overall a giant improvement on the previous entry, which was already an amazing game.
Rating: Highly Recommended
46.
Poi (NS)
Started playing this shortly after finishing Super Mario Odyssey last year, but I quickly quit because it was a vastly inferior collectathon game. Decided to finally jump back into it because I wanted to play a collectathon. Only took about 4 and a half hours to beat the game and it's not a terrible game. It is an entirely bland collectathon game, so it really doesn't have much to draw you to purchase this game unless you are just interested in playing a new collectathon game. Which I did.
Rating Soft pass.
47.
Wonderboy: Dragon's Trap (NS)
I really don't know why I really decided to play this game other than maybe the fact that HLTB states it takes about 5 hours to beat. I wanted to play through the first 3 Wonderboy games before jumping into Dragon's Trap. I know most games have no real continuity, but I just enjoy playing things in the order they were meant to be played... that includes playing them in release order because graphics and gameplay mechanics have improved over the years. Overall it's a fantastic platforming game. Short enough that it doesn't over stay it's welcome, but long enough that you don't sit there craving more. Difficult enough to be challenging, but not so difficult that you rage quit. Some part were definitely annoyingly difficult, but with perseverance you can do it.
Rating: Recommended.
48.
Dark Souls (X1BC)
I considered not counting this, but I did play it for several hours to build a new character so I could be summoned by my nephew to help him in his game of Dark Souls. I decided to play through this time as a squishy mage/cleric type character. Things I will comment though after having played Remastered, this game is not very pretty, especially on X1 on a 4K TV. Other than that, perfectly fine. Stopped playing because I can't get too high of a level above him or I can't help him. Though I'm pushing for him to get a Switch (I kind of already bought him one, but I'd like for him to pay for it, I got it pretty damned cheap though) and a copy of Remastered.
Rating: Pass, only because Remastered exists and that is recommended.
49.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (NS)Been waiting some time for this game, pretty much ignored all information about this game leading up to release other than character announcements. Learned a lot of things about this game that, for the most part, I don't care for. They nerfed dodging/blocking in general, if you block or dodge too much the game will slow you down and make you more vulnerable to attack. A lot of people apparently love this because apparently it's a big issue that people will dodge spam. I'm sorry, if you're an aggressive player and I'm capable of timing my dodges to dodge all of your attacks, I should be able to do that, all this does is make things easier for more aggressive players. I'm more of a tactical player than an aggressive player, now I have to plan my dodges/blocks accordingly because they are now limited in use. Bots are programmed with this knowledge, so rather than dodging or blocking, they spend a lot of time in the air where dodging doesn't appear to have limitations. I've also dealt with a lot of bots doing the quick left-right dashing thing that I guess pro players do... which is... concerning? Now on to story mode, oh my god is story mode huge, there are like 4 major maps with quite a few sub maps on each map. I completed story mode 100% and that took me roughly 45 hours. The themed challenges are impressive and pretty damned cool to be honest.
Rating: Highly recommended
50.
Katamari Damacy: Reroll (NS)
Was trying to think of a game to play while taking a break from Smash bros and my wife suggested I play Katamari now that she finished it. So I popped it in and started playing... completely forgot how short this game is. Beat it, not 100%, in a couple of hours. Literally a remaster of the original Katamari Damacy game, so nothing really new here.
Rating: Soft Pass, since you could just play it on PS2 and I don't see any updates other than maybe graphics.
51.
Picross S (NS)
I heard about this the day it released and knew I had to buy it. I love me some Picross, especially from the folks over at Jupiter. I already burned through the normal Picross stuff and am now going through the Mega Picross stuff. Mega Picross is a different type of picross, but it appears so far that you are just remaking the same pictures from normal picross, just using different information. Kind of a shame, but hopefully that's just for the first few puzzles and then things get unique. First unfinished title from 2017 to be carried over. Decided to hop back into this after finishing Katamari Damacy and noticed that I'm only maybe 20 puzzles away from finishing this, so I figured I'd finish this off to get it off my list and start to close out the year.
Rating: Soft Pass, even if you like Picross games.
52. [/b]Wolfenstein II[/b] (X1)
So many of these games are too hard to track where you're at. At least this game is fairly linear in that it won't be hard to pick back up when I hop back into it. Hoping to finish this game before Smash Ultimate comes out. This game has a feature that I've not seen in other games, I'm sure some game has done it, but it's new to me. You can dual wield any combination of weapons, which is pretty damned dope. So I'll have a shotgun in one hand and an assault rifle in the other, or a silenced pistol in one hand and a sniper rifle in the other. The combinations make for some useful and fun scenarios. Going to space for one of the sections felt very Wolfenstein/Doom, kinda cool. Enjoyed the game very much, pleasant surprise from a title that almost immediately hit the bargain bin.
Rating: Recommended.
53.
Axiom Verge (NS)
I started playing this a while back, but I never tracked it at all and I didn't get very far I think. I decided to give it a go for some reason or another. Very Super Metroid in almost every fashion, but then you start getting more and more weapons and other nifty ass features. Honestly, I gotta say I think this game is better than Super Metroid in almost every manner. And I enjoyed the fuck out of Super Metroid. Not my favorite Metroidvania, personally I'm not a fan of stupid secret compartments and stuff, where I think a game like Steamworld Dig 2 had secrets, they were easily found or you could buy stuff to show you on the map where stuff was, so at least you knew that you missed something right there. This game is a getting a physical Wii U release from LRG next year at some point, so I'm personally looking forward to that and will plan to double dip to get one of the rarest Wii U and possibly last Wii U title, even if it is double dipping.
Rating: Highly Recommended.
54.
Road RedemptionAt the same time I'm also going through another Rogue-lite game, Road Redemption. This game is a Road Rash Rogue-lite game. Campaign is an objective based Road Rash campaign where if you die you start over arcade style, but when you finish the campaign, win or lose, you can spend your earned XP to provide yourself with permanent upgrades to make the campaign easier. Any unused XP is forfeited so you have to be efficient with your decisions, and the further you get in the upgrade branches the more XP you'll need to upgrade, so end upgrades will require essentially completing the campaign. I've unlocked a few bikes, but as far as I can tell they are all massively worse than the starting bike. I had expected this game to last me significantly longer, but I realized that a lot of the other characters are rogue/rogue-like characters and I have no interest in that. So after I beat it with a couple of characters I decided that I'm good, I might come back to it later for the rest of the rogue-lite characters, but that's about it.
Rating: Good, Recommended for Road Rash fans, but the rogue and forced rogue-like elements really put a damper on this game's viability.
