Previous Years2018 -
44 beaten,
41 tried and discarded2017 -
37 beaten,
9 tried and discarded2016 -
21 beatenGames beaten01]
The Game Paradise: Cruisin Mix (PS4) |1 Jan| Beaten on what must be arrange mode, the original arcade version was just ridiculous.
02]
Saw: The Video Game (360) |11 Jan| Enjoyed it, another hidden gem. This is already taking too long between games being beaten though!
03]
Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space (Vita) |14 Jan| Good fun as EDF games always are, so far so fine, still need to pick up the pace.
04]
This War of Mine: The Little Ones (PS4) |22 Jan| Yet another replay of one of my favourite PS4 games, finally got January's share completed, need to keep up the pace.
05]
Resident Evil 2 (Remake) (PS4) |27 Jan| Excellent game, really happy to have picked it up as a day-1 purchase, hopefully they'll remake Nemesis too.
06]
Final Fight (PS4) |27 Jan| Aged poorly, enemies only have to fart in your general direction to halve your energy bar, still, fond memories.
07]
The King of Dragons (PS4) |29 Jan| Not one that our local arcades had, have enjoyed it on emulators and retro packs in the past though.
08]
Captain Commando (PS4) |29 Jan| Now this one's a childhood favourite, always reminds me of the movie They Live too, which is no bad thing, nice.
09]
Warriors of Fate (PS4) |30 Jan| Never played this one, good to play another game based on the three kingdoms era China, enjoyed it.
10]
Knights of the Round (PS4) |31 Jan| Another one I played on retro game packs and emulators, good to play it again.
11]
Armored Warriors (PS4) |1 Feb| Emulated in the past, good to play it again, fun beat em up.
12]
Battle Circuit (PS4) |3 Feb| and that's the end of the beat 'em up collection, have to go back to longer games now, if I can find the time. Good game.
13]
Soldner-X 2: Final Prototype (Vita) |9 Feb| Replay, handy when I was waiting in the car.
14]
Earth Defense Force 5 (PS4) |12 Feb| A gem, the best EDF game by a mile, well impressed.
15]
Ice Cream Surfer (Vita) |13 Feb| Decent little shmup, enjoyed it.
16]
Skyhill (PS4) |13 Feb| Tough randomized game, managed to get to the bottom of the tower on Easy. (It wasn't 'easy', even then!)
17]
Riddled Corpses EX (Vita) |21 Feb| Frantic lo-fi twin-stick shooter, repetitive due to having to grind for cash, but still it's been good (un)clean fun.
18]
Doom (PS4) |2 Mar| Decent sized game, basically Dead Space on triple speed, enjoyed it, took a lot longer to get through than I thought it would.
19]
Ape Escape 2 (PS2) |2 Mar| Surprisingly challenging, played this back in the day but I doubt I beat it. Really great to have access to my PS2 games again, so many gems.
20]
Fighting Angels (PS2) |16 Mar| Cheesy ultra-budget wrestling/fighting game, was still fun.
21]
Bloodborne (PS4) |23 Mar| Wow, that was one hell of a journey! Definitely a stand-out game and one which was a real pleasure to explore.
22]
Resident Evil 5 (PS4) |5 Apr| NG+ replay, had a blast again, the endgame does suddenly appear pretty abruptly, but great fun nonetheless.
23]
Bio Hazard Battle (PS4) |11 Apr| Had to use the rewind function on the PS4 MD game pack just to get to the end, this game is mad fast, managed to get there after much slogging.
24]
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (PC) |28 Apr| Replay after God knows how many years, really enjoyed playing an RTS campaign after so long, excellent as I vaguely remember it.
25]
Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (PS4) |4 May| Replay on survival (next hardest above normal) difficulty, first time I beat an RE game on more than normal difficulty, really good to replay this.
26]
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (PC) |20 May| Ugh, the last mission was such a slog it dragged the game down a bit, just pointless back and forth -.-
27]
Feeding Frenzy (360) |29 May| Been god knows how long since I played this game, munched through the main mode in an evening, good clean fun.
28]
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4) |9 Jul| A cracking game, not perfect by any standard, but a good SOTN clone with its own feel.
29]
Alien Shooter: Vengeance (PC) |19 Jul| Mindless blasting, just what I needed.
30]
Drivegirls (Vita) |7 Aug| Playable enough, not a lot else to say about it.
31]
Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PS4) |24 Aug| I think there's at least 2 full games worth of content in here, but I got there eventually, very good.
32]
Build-a-lot (PC) |1 Sep| Great casual game from back in the day, pleased to have seen it through to the end. Woefully behind now though, probably won't match last year's.
33]
Time Crisis 4 (PS3) |5 Sep| Been awhile since a light gun game appeared here, they make a nice change from mechanic-heavy games.
34]
Katamari Forever (PS3) |16 Sep| Long overdue replay (years I think), I need a break from trying new games all the time, so it's good to go back to something so familiar.
35]
Garden Defense (PC) |21 Sep| NG+ replay, managed to beat all levels on normal difficulty but 'perfect', with no bugs reaching the flowers. Excellent tower defence game.
36]
Day of Meat (Flash) |22 Sep| Tower defence flash game, semi-automated (more of an upgrade type game), had me hooked.
37]
Miss Management (PC) |5 Oct| Finally limped across the finish line in this time management game I used to play a decade ago, tough as hell later on, so stuck to the most basic 'pass' in levels.
38]
Luigi's Mansion 2 (3DS) |7 Oct| Not bad, preferred the original's more open format, but it was still a good game, October's looking like it's going to be OK.
39]
Demon's Souls (PS3) |31 Oct| Yep, definitely failing again this year, too many timesinks like this one in the mix, great to finally beat it though!
40]
BioShock (PS4) |15 Nov| NG+ replay, must admit the early game was mangled a bit due to being overpowered.
41]
Castlevania (Lament of Innocence) (PS2) |22 Nov| Back in the day I had a hissy fit with this one, couldn't get my head around it, GameFAQs to the rescue, really enjoyed it this time.
42]
Luigi's Mansion 3 (NSW) |4 Dec| Fantastic game, thoroughly enjoyed playing this one, can't wait to try Mario Odyssey and some other Ninty ones.
43]
Final Fantasy Adventure (NSW) |9 Dec| Been what, 20 years since I played through this? One of my forgotten favourites, it was a real treat to play this in the evenings on holiday.
44]
Secret of Mana (NSW) |16 Dec| Another one I haven't played in God knows how many years, still fun, but the mechanics haven't aged well at all.
45]
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (PS2) |24 Dec| Beaten late Christmas Eve, this was a great little game, not sure where all the animosity surrounding it comes from.
Games Tried/Disliked/Got Rid Of01]
Gray Matter (360) Adventure game, interesting story but the game is unclear as hell with what it expects of you to progress, turned into an exercise in frustration and examing everything over and over.
02]
Zuma (PC) Marble-popper I used to adore years ago, playing it now though it's clear the game has no real 'fairness' to it on later levels, became extremely irritating eventually, bummer.
03]
The Game Paradise: Cruisin Mix (PS4) I actually found this to be a really sub-par shooter with a stupidly difficult arcade mode to boot, just not enjoyable at all.
04]
Corpse Party: Blood Drive (Vita) Really enjoyed the plot, but the game itself is dreadful, stripped-down survival horror to the point it's just cat and mouse in empty halls. Pity.
05]
Wasteland 2 (PS4) Not as funny as it thinks it is, limited (and badly tries to disguise the fact), repetitive combat, just didn't enjoy it at all, a real let-down.
06]
Deadly Strike (PS2) Unresponsive, poorly put together, boring, unbalanced. It's necessary to grind points (cash) just to make the game playable (and even then it's still dull as hell). Nope.
07]
Eternal Quest (PS2) Well-presented but woefully unbalanced Japanese roguelike, goes insane-cakewalk-insane-dead, just a joyless and pointless experience.
08]
Daemon Summoner (PS2) Shoestring budget FPS, an instant game-over stealth section on the second level (where it wasn't obvious how I'd messed up) put paid to this one.
09]
Wonderboy Returns (PS4) Slipshod production, playable enough, but the bosses are 1-hit annoyances which eventually peed me off enough to drop it onto the trade-in pile.
10]
Shogun's Blade (PS2) Mediocre rather than absymal musou type game, but the amount of grinding that would be necessary just to progress through the game massively outstrips how much time it's worth.
11]
Bunny Must Die! (PS4) A Metroidvania with rubbish controls, great. Trade-in pile, now.
12]
Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4) A loan, the juddery-animated tutorial featuring a lumbering 6 year old girl with the face of Val Kilmer was enough to put me off this open-world snorefest.
13]
Burn, Zombie, Burn (PC) It took less than two minutes of gameplay to figure out this sub-par twin-stick shooter was inferior to other games I have. So need to check many other games in the collection.
14]
Gladiators of Rome (PC) Inoffensive, just not fun and with very limited scope.
15]
Resident Evil: Dead Aim (PS2) Awkward to control initially, I mastered the controls soon enough but got well and truly stuck on the end boss, what a waste, the game's too meh to make it worth continuing.
16]
Resident Evil Survivor 2: Code Veronica (PS2) What the heck is this? It's like a student project not a full-priced official RE game, dreadful!
17]
Realm of the Dead (PS2) OK, but then a late-game difficulty spike pushes it into 'nah' territory.
18]
Unepic (PC) Sigh, another game I was seriously enjoying, but there's a massive difficulty spike later on and it just got grindy and tedious. Too many games ending up like this during this year!
19]
Hunter The Reckoning - Wayward (PS2) Again, this one's inoffensive but I just can't be arsed to trog around fuzzy 3D game worlds looking for random doohickeys just to progress.
20]
Fate of Hellas (PC) RTS, started strong, but the first non-tutorial level chucks overwhelming enemies at you right from the off, don't get it, at all.
21]
Stranger of Sword City (Vita) Ugh, wilfully painful dungeon RPG which punishes you without you needing to make mistakes. Absolutely cannot be bothered with it.
22]
The Surge (PS4) Second time I've picked this up and tried this, there's a lot of aspects of the game I like, but the full package is really not worth the trouble.
23]
Never Dead (360) Really not a bad game at all, but just too slow and plodding for me to get excited about. Chaos Legion is my go-to game in this genre and will suffice.
24]
Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story (PS4) Fairly decent experience for several hours, but eventually the shallowness of the game's mechanics left me bored with it.
25]
Eternal Ring (PS2) Effectively King's Field in all but name, however the game systems are underdeveloped and I pretty quickly ran out of interest, not a 'bad' game, but not good enough.
26]
Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (PS2) OK for the most part, unbrilliant, but the mandatory hoverboard race after the halfway point just destroyed it, it's so badly designed.
27]
Ace of Seafood (PS4) The clunky game design doesn't bother me, it was fun, but after almost beating all the reefs it really got boring and repetitive.
28]
Crimson Sea 2 (PS2) Beat the first game a few years ago on Xbox, just can't get my head around this one, ramped difficulty and a poorly dated experience = nah.
29]
Bloody Roar 3 (PS2) Not even sure why I got this, I don't even like 1-on-1 fighters, sure enough I'm not a fan of this.
30]
Paper Mario Sticker Star (3DS) Enjoyable on some levels, but my tolerance for dubious or downright obnoxious game design has disappeared, another one I nearly completed then got sick of completely.
31]
Battle Princess Madelyn (NSW) Gameplay vids make this look great, but the confusing as all hell layout quickly soured my opinion of it, got sick within an hour. My first Switch game too
32]
Dynasty Tactics (PS2) Turn-based tactics isn't my thing anyway, despite liking the DW setting this one was dry as sticks and unplayable for me, both it and the sequel got traded in.
33]
Hellmut: the Badass from Hell (NSW) Bog standard twin-stick shooter, got tired of it within minutes, need to be v. careful with my purchases, this really was a misfire.
34]
Aggelos (NSW) Decently playable WBiMW clone with dodgy controls, got on fine till the last boss, who seems cheap as hell and eventually sickened me off it.
