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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: October 15, 2025, 11:39:03 am »
It's next on my list too once I finish up Last Time I Saw You
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: October 08, 2025, 09:29:48 am »
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Previous List
114. Caravan Sandwitch (PC)
I had been interested in this game since I first saw it, can't recall if it was steam or in store, but game looks like a chill driving, 3d platforming, collectathon sort of, kind of game, which is totally up my alley. The game has a big open world, you spend most of your time driving, occasionally hopping out and wandering about for things. Sort of reminds me of Mad Max in that way because that was a lot of what that game was, though this doesn't have any combat as it's a chill laidback kind of game. All in all, sounds great, the problem is the game has lots of bugs, the driving feels a bit awkward most of the time, and the game isn't really intuitive at least early on when you're limited in what you can do. Game is mostly composed of fetch quest type things, which can be derisive for some, but I enjoy the chill nature of that gameplay. Early gameplay seems promising in the size of the map and the amount of content there looks to be, but it's misleading because most of the world is vast and empty with nothing in between a lot like some of BotW and TotK, but really not comparable in quality here as this game truly provides nothing to do between locations, like there are some map areas with literally nothing but the tower that unlocks the map for that area, I'm possibly be hyperbolic here, but it's an apt description. Story wise, it all makes a bit of sense, though it could have leveraged more ruins/abandoned sites to truly convey the events of the story and provide more value to the player. Story itself is fairly good, the endings aren't the best, your choices do feel meaningless, and the game... and I feel like a jerk saying this but... seems to heavily lean on being overly inclusive for no reason other than to, in my opinion, check some boxes. I've got no issue with inclusiveness, but when the content is made part of quests for no reason other than to check boxes, it feels more forced than natural and that's where I take umbrage. Without giving a real example, I'd say something like the game has 3 inclusive characters/groups, 2 of them make sense within the story and have their own plots that make it make sense, but 1 person/group is just claimed to be to claim to be, but has no plot or story and serves no significance other than to just say a character is a certain way to check a box. Like if a story has a character in a wheelchair, but there is no explanation, it's never talked about, and it never comes up in any way because the character doesn't take part in events for one reason or another, it serves no purpose other than to check a box. I'm really going on a tangent on this, I really just mean to convey the game seems more concerned about checking boxes than providing natural or interesting content. That all said, I did enjoy the game, I just recognize it could've been better, the game is very middling and honestly maybe just might not be worth your time.
Rating: Soft recommendation.
115. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (XS)
I had started this game last year when it launched but dropped it fairly quickly for no good reason, this seems to be a habit for me. I jumped back in because there was a global quest for Playtracker for the game and I was really struggling to find games to earn points so I knew this would be one I would have to do to get my 7 points in. The game being a MachineHead games game, it definitely has a lot of the mechanical feel of the Wolfenstein games, which is great because those games are absolutely smooth games to play. I will also start off with that Troy Baker (I think that's who voices Indy here) doesn't sound like Indy/Harrison Ford, he sounds like Garfield. I hope if you play the game, you hear it too and now that I've said it I hope you can't unhear it, because that was my experience with the game from start to end.
Previous List
Quote from: Legend
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.strikethroughgames are games that have been abandoned.
114. Caravan Sandwitch (PC)
I had been interested in this game since I first saw it, can't recall if it was steam or in store, but game looks like a chill driving, 3d platforming, collectathon sort of, kind of game, which is totally up my alley. The game has a big open world, you spend most of your time driving, occasionally hopping out and wandering about for things. Sort of reminds me of Mad Max in that way because that was a lot of what that game was, though this doesn't have any combat as it's a chill laidback kind of game. All in all, sounds great, the problem is the game has lots of bugs, the driving feels a bit awkward most of the time, and the game isn't really intuitive at least early on when you're limited in what you can do. Game is mostly composed of fetch quest type things, which can be derisive for some, but I enjoy the chill nature of that gameplay. Early gameplay seems promising in the size of the map and the amount of content there looks to be, but it's misleading because most of the world is vast and empty with nothing in between a lot like some of BotW and TotK, but really not comparable in quality here as this game truly provides nothing to do between locations, like there are some map areas with literally nothing but the tower that unlocks the map for that area, I'm possibly be hyperbolic here, but it's an apt description. Story wise, it all makes a bit of sense, though it could have leveraged more ruins/abandoned sites to truly convey the events of the story and provide more value to the player. Story itself is fairly good, the endings aren't the best, your choices do feel meaningless, and the game... and I feel like a jerk saying this but... seems to heavily lean on being overly inclusive for no reason other than to, in my opinion, check some boxes. I've got no issue with inclusiveness, but when the content is made part of quests for no reason other than to check boxes, it feels more forced than natural and that's where I take umbrage. Without giving a real example, I'd say something like the game has 3 inclusive characters/groups, 2 of them make sense within the story and have their own plots that make it make sense, but 1 person/group is just claimed to be to claim to be, but has no plot or story and serves no significance other than to just say a character is a certain way to check a box. Like if a story has a character in a wheelchair, but there is no explanation, it's never talked about, and it never comes up in any way because the character doesn't take part in events for one reason or another, it serves no purpose other than to check a box. I'm really going on a tangent on this, I really just mean to convey the game seems more concerned about checking boxes than providing natural or interesting content. That all said, I did enjoy the game, I just recognize it could've been better, the game is very middling and honestly maybe just might not be worth your time.
Rating: Soft recommendation.
115. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (XS)
I had started this game last year when it launched but dropped it fairly quickly for no good reason, this seems to be a habit for me. I jumped back in because there was a global quest for Playtracker for the game and I was really struggling to find games to earn points so I knew this would be one I would have to do to get my 7 points in. The game being a MachineHead games game, it definitely has a lot of the mechanical feel of the Wolfenstein games, which is great because those games are absolutely smooth games to play. I will also start off with that Troy Baker (I think that's who voices Indy here) doesn't sound like Indy/Harrison Ford, he sounds like Garfield. I hope if you play the game, you hear it too and now that I've said it I hope you can't unhear it, because that was my experience with the game from start to end.
3
General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: October 06, 2025, 06:53:09 pm »
Main List
Previous List
98. Paratopic (PC)
I kind of have no clue what's going on this game, except maybe you're smuggling a cursed VHS tape, or maybe VHS tapes are special... I don't know, it's weird. Just a really weird game, there isn't a ton of game play to it either and it's relatively short at around an hour. The game is broken down into sections with various, mechanics, I guess. The driving sections are weirdly stressful as nothing is going on and you're just kind of driving for a few minutes, I think there's a a handful of achievements related to driving, but the controls aren't well explained, so I think I missed like all of those achievements because I think there is a way to drive faster, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do that. You infrequently have some camera based gameplay where you take some pictures, very minor, maybe less than the driving. The rest of the gameplay is first person walking simulator with some minor interactions as you proceed from point A to point B. The game has almost no action, except maybe right at the end for the ending. Just a really weird game with an incomprehensible story.
Rating: Soft pass
99. GUILTY GEAR Xrd REV 2 (PC)
Like a lot of the other games on the list this year, I'm playing through games I won on steam gifts in an effort to increase my play rate on games won. For the most part, when I pick up a game, I aim to beat the game so I can be "done" with it, with a minimal side goal of also getting 25% of achievements. I'm also using it as an opportunity to get some games off of my PoP lists that I'd rather not be forced to play in a time frame. I'm not big on fighting games, I think it's that I just have no interest in learning the intricacies of the game's systems and combos and whatnot, if I cared, I could probably get good enough, but I just don't have the interest in the time investment, so I'll almost never have a good recommendation for fighting games unless something else about the game sticks out like the story in Mortal Kombat games. I tried to follow the story mode, which is essentially just a series of kinetic visual novel esque scenes with no gameplay, didn't really enjoy that but I suppose the concept is novel, I just wasn't expecting or in the mood for a VN let alone a kinetic one. I played through arcade mode as Jack-O I think and got achievements and whatnot. Really don't know what's going on story wise in the game or series overall, but I'm also not really willing to invest myself in the story, but maybe one day? Unfortunately, I'm a scrub and button mash in fighting games when I don't understand the controls and systems... it's enough to get me through story mode/arcade generally, and in this case it was, so I've got no good information to provide regarding the games mechanics and gameplay. I did play through the tutorial to learn some of the controls and it went well enough, but I did have some trouble with the advanced concepts. Game seems easy enough to pick up, but surely difficult to master.
Rating: Soft pass
100. Diluvian Winds (PC)
Another win I played to improve my rate. Initially I had intended on just getting the 25% goal without beating the game, but as I played the game I decided that I would aim to beat the game because I was enjoying it well enough and the game did have a set of story/chapter based achievements where I could definitively say, yes I've beaten this. Each chapter of the game teaches you new mechanics to the game basically playing out as a long winded tutorial which culminates in you "beating" the game. It allows you to continue playing or start a new game, but at that point it's an endless game once you've played through the story of learning all of the game's mechanics. Not some short tutorial, but a nice long series of requests and features drawn out over a series of like a month of in game gameplay. The game is in essence a city builder, resource management game, but the game's play is very casual in nature allowing you to take your time in making your decisions and planning out your days while keeping an eye on any looming or upcoming events.
Rating: Soft recommendation
101. Escape This (PC)
I think I was collating data from my steam account to backloggery and noticed that I was only missing one achievement in this game and that that achievement would only take a few minutes to achieve. I don't recall ever playing this game in the first place, but apparently I played it like ten years ago. Don't know where the game came from, I could look it up, but I won't. Game looks like a real cheap game, like something that was probably given away for free, and I suspect I probably didn't put much time into it for it giving me the 100% overall. Janky move the ball through the puzzle type of game.
Rating: Hard pass
102. Tooth and Tail (PC)
Another gift win that I decided to play to get my play rate up. Started it and realized I needed to play through it because I really wanted it off my play list. I'm not a big fan of RTS games, I really dislike RTS games because they require constant time and resource management and an intricate understanding of the game's systems and AI. I followed a guide to a T for this one because I knew I couldn't push myself to invest the effort in learning the game's systems and I'm just not at a point that I can really enjoy non-casual strategy games. One day I'll push myself to play the older Fire Emblem games and I'll have the same thoughts and feelings I'm sure. I had a lot of trouble telling when a character was on my team, neutral, or an enemy, so that made the game even more difficult for me. It also doesn't help that throughout the game you swap what faction you are, so you have to constantly pay attention to what color you are and what color your enemy is... and I'm color blind. I breezed through the game so I didn't really pay attention to the story, but I could tell that the story was an interesting seeming story, but seems to end with mutual destruction at the end? I can't fairly rate fighting games and strategy games because I just don't enjoy those types of games. I've started making a habit of hiding such games so I can't win those gifts as I know I won't enjoy them. Unfortunately, I thought this game was just a general strategy game with high praise so I went for it not realizing it's an RTS game.
Rating: Soft pass
103. 100 Korea Cats (PC)
A group I'm in was having an event for playing hidden object games so I went out and picked a few profile limited hidden object games that I could play that I knew could not benefit me on playtracker and went through and played them. Just went and grabbed 3 100 cats games that I owned or were free that were profile limited and played through them. Took all of 5-10 minutes each again not any different from the other 100 x cats games.
Rating: Soft pass
104. 100 Funny Cats (PC)
See previous review
Rating: Soft pass
105. 100 Alient Cats (PC)
See previous review
Rating: Soft pass
106. Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry (X1)
This is the oldest AC game I hadn't played. I had it via PS+, when I had the service, but I never played it because I knew I wanted to play it on Xbox with all of my other AC games. I'm weird about it for no good reason. I only relatively recently, within the last year or so, bought the season pass/freedom cry for Xbox and the game came up as a choice in playtracker dungeon, so I finally decided I'd play it to make a little bit more progress on my Assassin's Creed franchise run. Unfortunately, I should've played this years ago, as I'm certain the age difference and mechanical disadvantage of going back to an old game after playing Origins was going to be a problem. I don't fully remember the story of Black Flag, just that it was one of the better AC games of the early years. I don't really remember who Adawale(?) is within the story other than maybe a mentor to the protagonist, but the game serves as a backstory to the character. Game has limited stealth sections where most of the game seems to take place during the day where you're going to get caught up in open combat if you engage, as far as I can remember there was only 1 forced stealth section and it was quite painful because enemies would detect me through walls (by sight, not sound as I was crouched and slow), have to repeat the whole section due to mistakes, and overall jank. Ship combat is fine as I recall and relatively few and far between and quick enough when it did occur. There is islands to be explored, but seems to be purely optional as most of the content takes place between 2 or 3 locales. Story feels quick well, but doesn't feel like it really links well to the whole templar/assassin overall story nor the modern content at all, despite the story being interesting and giving backstory to what I assume was a well liked character. The slave liberation content is fine enough, but quickly you realize that almost all of it is repeatable content and there is no hard limit to the amount you can save and enemies frequently respawn in their same patterns, which is probably a regular mechanic of the series, but having played Origins recently, I recall cleared areas staying cleared for at least a while. Parkour mechanics are pretty awful, but might be on par with Black Flag and maybe I'm spoiled by recent games. Overall, not bad, doesn't contribute much to the overall story, but an enjoyable enough experience.
Rating: Soft pass
107. Fling to the Finish (PC)
One of those games that is designed for couch co-op, but completely playable start to finish with a single player using a single controller. controls work well enough, but do frequently get confusing when the left ball swaps sides with the right ball, but the controls obviously don't switch which stick controls which ball. Game has 7-8 mechanics that repeat, making the game last significantly longer than you might otherwise want, given having to replay levels over and over with different rules, but the game has something around 20-40 levels to play, so lots of content, but the extra rules makes the game feel like too long of an experience, but overall the experience is enjoyable start to finish without too much jank. Unlike other co-op games, this game is quite enjoyable as a solo experience, possibly more enjoyable lacking the frustration of forced cooperation. That said, the repetitive nature and simplistic gameplay doesn't really make the game well worth playing.
Rating: Soft pass
108. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (360)
I started this game years ago when I was going through my Metal Gear franchise run, but I just never finished this one. I think I didn't get terribly far into it before I abandoned it and I can't quite recall why I abandoned it, but surely it was partly due to the fact that that era of gaming just didn't click with me where so many games felt the same way XBLA indie games felt... it's ineffable but they just don't click with me. This, like Yaiba Ninja Gaiden Z, just sort of bored me very quickly with its combination of gameplay and pacing, despite generally wacky story telling, Ninja Gaiden being another game I keep very slowly making progress on. This time I sat down and said I would not abandon it and I would not move on until I finished it. It made the experience a little hard as I was definitely having the problem of trying not to fall asleep while playing, more a commentary on myself than the game to be honest. I've never been big on hack and slash games as they essentially feel like button mashing fighting games in a PvE story based setting, not unlike Musou games. Gameplay wise, they just don't click with me for several reasons, which the general gameplay bore also makes it difficult for me to consume the story content (A big reason why I really don't recall much of the DMC series unfortunately) and this one being a side story set well after the events of the mainline series with limited callbacks strictly to MGS2 (Maybe a little bit MGS4, but lets be honest I don't remember that one much either). The game has a lot of the same jank you get from other Konami/Capcom hack and slash games and takes itself about as seriously as DMC. A fun game for most I'm sure, but how it truly relates to the mainline MGS franchise and lore we'll never know.
Rating: Soft pass
109. A Game About Digging A Hole (PC)
I bought this a while back because it is quite a cheap game and it was stupidly popular for a while, but as always I don't get around to these things until way later. The game quite honestly feels like a cheap imitation of another game, despite it being its own unique thing (AFAIK). Despite the jank, the game does require a certain level of planning and strategy between balancing money, lighting, equipment, resources, and general traversal maintenance. Game starts out monotonous enough, but gradually get a bit unhinged culminating in the final ending. Overall a real simple, cheap, janky game that will definitely eat up more hours than dollars, despite no real pay off, maybe that'll disappoint, but the game is a decent time waster akin to Powerwash simulator.
Rating: Soft recommendation
110. Cats Hidden in Japan (PC)
Another find the cats in a location game, you can see any of many previous reviews for these types of games, nothing really special, easily completed in 5-10 minutes.
Rating: Soft pass
111. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (360)
Man, this is just a year for picking up old franchise runs with games around the early 10s. I started this one shortly after finishing the first game, but abandoned it rather quickly for no reason in particular. Game seems to be a relative direct continuation from the first game with direct ties to the plot of the first game jumping back and forth between past events around the first game and modern day stuff with older and new characters. Feels a bit more plot driven than the first game, though the first game was pretty plot driven, but it had that in a bottle stuff where it's just flashbacks while you sit in an interrogation type room. Overall your average CoD experience, I understand why they started to back away from these plot things because while people enjoy them, and possibly even buy the game for them, they stay with the game for the multiplayer... which I don't play unfortunately for these games.
Rating: Soft pass
112. Mega Mosaic (PC)
I played a game similar to this on Android earlier this year and bought up a bunch when I found out similar games existed on Steam. Finally rolled them on backlog dungeon so ran with this one first. Minesweeper meets picross, but instead of 100+ levels or something like most puzzle games will do, you get 1 humongous puzzle with like 50000 blocks to fill/cross. The game very quickly becomes one of those puzzle games that you dream about and see when you close your eyes. Again, one of those things you have to decide for yourself if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Game lasted me roughly 40 hours iirc. Personally, I think the concept works well, but it is fairly complex, so I would only recommend it if you like both minesweeper and picross.
Rating: Soft recommendation
113. Humankind (PC)
Another game I won that I intended on just playing for a bit to hit 25% or atleast get a few achievements to get it off my list. Again, I'm trying to do better and actively ignore games I don't think will bring me joy. I started it up, dabbled in the tutorial, and then wound up playing for several hours and decided that I would go through a full game at least. I wasted a lot of the early game time because I didn't understand things. I wound up keeping up with the 1st/2nd faction, but that wasted early time really cost me in the end, plus all of the me learning how to play and the AI knowing how the systems work from the get-go. I wound up making an alliance with the 1st/2nd faction thinking ok, keep them on my side peaceful like and take over the world and then squash them... they wound up secretly/maybe not so secretly making all the right choices to lock the best lands and resources. While they were in a war I tried to take advantage and grab some territories while they were distracted. Eventually I realized they outpaced me very quickly so I decided I would go the war route and demolished everyone except them... unfortunately for me, as I demolished other factions, they snuck in and took the land for themselves, which I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't let me take the land, still don't understand and they just walked up and claimed it despite me having troops there and trying to claim it. Had a lot of instances of them doing that which I guarantee is what won them the game. Towards the end I decided I would develop nuclear weapons since I had a monopoly on uranium, built nuclear warheads en masse, only to find out for some reason, I'm not allowed to launch them directly at capital cities or something, so I had to hit alternative locations of way less economic value, and also found out all of the ICBMs I were building don't do a sliver of damage to cities even when you fire like 20 of them, so I dumped all of my missiles on them, and they still managed to destroy me in war because I couldn't hit anything of importance with nuclear missiles and they were able to just trounce me. In the end, I came in second, ended frustrated because I still don't understand why I couldn't do what I had meticulously planned for like a solid year of gameplay or whatever the time frames are. So many combinations of things I didn't and still don't understand that the AI took advantage of wound up making the end experience of the game absolutely miserable. I even spent the post game trying to figure out what I did wrong and how I could've successfully leveraged all of my weapons, but I eventually realized I was dumping more time in a game I didn't enjoy because I wanted to win, childish shit, so I uninstalled the game and moved on. Shit like this is exactly why I don't enjoy most RTS/strategy games, they have stupid little hidden rules that aren't explained until you try to do something and by then its too late and you've wasted a fuck ton of time... and in this case, it happened multiple multiple times with multiple multiple things.
Rating: Solid pass
Next List
Previous List
Quote from: Legend
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.strikethroughgames are games that have been abandoned.
98. Paratopic (PC)
I kind of have no clue what's going on this game, except maybe you're smuggling a cursed VHS tape, or maybe VHS tapes are special... I don't know, it's weird. Just a really weird game, there isn't a ton of game play to it either and it's relatively short at around an hour. The game is broken down into sections with various, mechanics, I guess. The driving sections are weirdly stressful as nothing is going on and you're just kind of driving for a few minutes, I think there's a a handful of achievements related to driving, but the controls aren't well explained, so I think I missed like all of those achievements because I think there is a way to drive faster, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do that. You infrequently have some camera based gameplay where you take some pictures, very minor, maybe less than the driving. The rest of the gameplay is first person walking simulator with some minor interactions as you proceed from point A to point B. The game has almost no action, except maybe right at the end for the ending. Just a really weird game with an incomprehensible story.
Rating: Soft pass
99. GUILTY GEAR Xrd REV 2 (PC)
Like a lot of the other games on the list this year, I'm playing through games I won on steam gifts in an effort to increase my play rate on games won. For the most part, when I pick up a game, I aim to beat the game so I can be "done" with it, with a minimal side goal of also getting 25% of achievements. I'm also using it as an opportunity to get some games off of my PoP lists that I'd rather not be forced to play in a time frame. I'm not big on fighting games, I think it's that I just have no interest in learning the intricacies of the game's systems and combos and whatnot, if I cared, I could probably get good enough, but I just don't have the interest in the time investment, so I'll almost never have a good recommendation for fighting games unless something else about the game sticks out like the story in Mortal Kombat games. I tried to follow the story mode, which is essentially just a series of kinetic visual novel esque scenes with no gameplay, didn't really enjoy that but I suppose the concept is novel, I just wasn't expecting or in the mood for a VN let alone a kinetic one. I played through arcade mode as Jack-O I think and got achievements and whatnot. Really don't know what's going on story wise in the game or series overall, but I'm also not really willing to invest myself in the story, but maybe one day? Unfortunately, I'm a scrub and button mash in fighting games when I don't understand the controls and systems... it's enough to get me through story mode/arcade generally, and in this case it was, so I've got no good information to provide regarding the games mechanics and gameplay. I did play through the tutorial to learn some of the controls and it went well enough, but I did have some trouble with the advanced concepts. Game seems easy enough to pick up, but surely difficult to master.
Rating: Soft pass
100. Diluvian Winds (PC)
Another win I played to improve my rate. Initially I had intended on just getting the 25% goal without beating the game, but as I played the game I decided that I would aim to beat the game because I was enjoying it well enough and the game did have a set of story/chapter based achievements where I could definitively say, yes I've beaten this. Each chapter of the game teaches you new mechanics to the game basically playing out as a long winded tutorial which culminates in you "beating" the game. It allows you to continue playing or start a new game, but at that point it's an endless game once you've played through the story of learning all of the game's mechanics. Not some short tutorial, but a nice long series of requests and features drawn out over a series of like a month of in game gameplay. The game is in essence a city builder, resource management game, but the game's play is very casual in nature allowing you to take your time in making your decisions and planning out your days while keeping an eye on any looming or upcoming events.
Rating: Soft recommendation
101. Escape This (PC)
I think I was collating data from my steam account to backloggery and noticed that I was only missing one achievement in this game and that that achievement would only take a few minutes to achieve. I don't recall ever playing this game in the first place, but apparently I played it like ten years ago. Don't know where the game came from, I could look it up, but I won't. Game looks like a real cheap game, like something that was probably given away for free, and I suspect I probably didn't put much time into it for it giving me the 100% overall. Janky move the ball through the puzzle type of game.
Rating: Hard pass
102. Tooth and Tail (PC)
Another gift win that I decided to play to get my play rate up. Started it and realized I needed to play through it because I really wanted it off my play list. I'm not a big fan of RTS games, I really dislike RTS games because they require constant time and resource management and an intricate understanding of the game's systems and AI. I followed a guide to a T for this one because I knew I couldn't push myself to invest the effort in learning the game's systems and I'm just not at a point that I can really enjoy non-casual strategy games. One day I'll push myself to play the older Fire Emblem games and I'll have the same thoughts and feelings I'm sure. I had a lot of trouble telling when a character was on my team, neutral, or an enemy, so that made the game even more difficult for me. It also doesn't help that throughout the game you swap what faction you are, so you have to constantly pay attention to what color you are and what color your enemy is... and I'm color blind. I breezed through the game so I didn't really pay attention to the story, but I could tell that the story was an interesting seeming story, but seems to end with mutual destruction at the end? I can't fairly rate fighting games and strategy games because I just don't enjoy those types of games. I've started making a habit of hiding such games so I can't win those gifts as I know I won't enjoy them. Unfortunately, I thought this game was just a general strategy game with high praise so I went for it not realizing it's an RTS game.
Rating: Soft pass
103. 100 Korea Cats (PC)
A group I'm in was having an event for playing hidden object games so I went out and picked a few profile limited hidden object games that I could play that I knew could not benefit me on playtracker and went through and played them. Just went and grabbed 3 100 cats games that I owned or were free that were profile limited and played through them. Took all of 5-10 minutes each again not any different from the other 100 x cats games.
Rating: Soft pass
104. 100 Funny Cats (PC)
See previous review
Rating: Soft pass
105. 100 Alient Cats (PC)
See previous review
Rating: Soft pass
106. Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry (X1)
This is the oldest AC game I hadn't played. I had it via PS+, when I had the service, but I never played it because I knew I wanted to play it on Xbox with all of my other AC games. I'm weird about it for no good reason. I only relatively recently, within the last year or so, bought the season pass/freedom cry for Xbox and the game came up as a choice in playtracker dungeon, so I finally decided I'd play it to make a little bit more progress on my Assassin's Creed franchise run. Unfortunately, I should've played this years ago, as I'm certain the age difference and mechanical disadvantage of going back to an old game after playing Origins was going to be a problem. I don't fully remember the story of Black Flag, just that it was one of the better AC games of the early years. I don't really remember who Adawale(?) is within the story other than maybe a mentor to the protagonist, but the game serves as a backstory to the character. Game has limited stealth sections where most of the game seems to take place during the day where you're going to get caught up in open combat if you engage, as far as I can remember there was only 1 forced stealth section and it was quite painful because enemies would detect me through walls (by sight, not sound as I was crouched and slow), have to repeat the whole section due to mistakes, and overall jank. Ship combat is fine as I recall and relatively few and far between and quick enough when it did occur. There is islands to be explored, but seems to be purely optional as most of the content takes place between 2 or 3 locales. Story feels quick well, but doesn't feel like it really links well to the whole templar/assassin overall story nor the modern content at all, despite the story being interesting and giving backstory to what I assume was a well liked character. The slave liberation content is fine enough, but quickly you realize that almost all of it is repeatable content and there is no hard limit to the amount you can save and enemies frequently respawn in their same patterns, which is probably a regular mechanic of the series, but having played Origins recently, I recall cleared areas staying cleared for at least a while. Parkour mechanics are pretty awful, but might be on par with Black Flag and maybe I'm spoiled by recent games. Overall, not bad, doesn't contribute much to the overall story, but an enjoyable enough experience.
Rating: Soft pass
107. Fling to the Finish (PC)
One of those games that is designed for couch co-op, but completely playable start to finish with a single player using a single controller. controls work well enough, but do frequently get confusing when the left ball swaps sides with the right ball, but the controls obviously don't switch which stick controls which ball. Game has 7-8 mechanics that repeat, making the game last significantly longer than you might otherwise want, given having to replay levels over and over with different rules, but the game has something around 20-40 levels to play, so lots of content, but the extra rules makes the game feel like too long of an experience, but overall the experience is enjoyable start to finish without too much jank. Unlike other co-op games, this game is quite enjoyable as a solo experience, possibly more enjoyable lacking the frustration of forced cooperation. That said, the repetitive nature and simplistic gameplay doesn't really make the game well worth playing.
Rating: Soft pass
108. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (360)
I started this game years ago when I was going through my Metal Gear franchise run, but I just never finished this one. I think I didn't get terribly far into it before I abandoned it and I can't quite recall why I abandoned it, but surely it was partly due to the fact that that era of gaming just didn't click with me where so many games felt the same way XBLA indie games felt... it's ineffable but they just don't click with me. This, like Yaiba Ninja Gaiden Z, just sort of bored me very quickly with its combination of gameplay and pacing, despite generally wacky story telling, Ninja Gaiden being another game I keep very slowly making progress on. This time I sat down and said I would not abandon it and I would not move on until I finished it. It made the experience a little hard as I was definitely having the problem of trying not to fall asleep while playing, more a commentary on myself than the game to be honest. I've never been big on hack and slash games as they essentially feel like button mashing fighting games in a PvE story based setting, not unlike Musou games. Gameplay wise, they just don't click with me for several reasons, which the general gameplay bore also makes it difficult for me to consume the story content (A big reason why I really don't recall much of the DMC series unfortunately) and this one being a side story set well after the events of the mainline series with limited callbacks strictly to MGS2 (Maybe a little bit MGS4, but lets be honest I don't remember that one much either). The game has a lot of the same jank you get from other Konami/Capcom hack and slash games and takes itself about as seriously as DMC. A fun game for most I'm sure, but how it truly relates to the mainline MGS franchise and lore we'll never know.
Rating: Soft pass
109. A Game About Digging A Hole (PC)
I bought this a while back because it is quite a cheap game and it was stupidly popular for a while, but as always I don't get around to these things until way later. The game quite honestly feels like a cheap imitation of another game, despite it being its own unique thing (AFAIK). Despite the jank, the game does require a certain level of planning and strategy between balancing money, lighting, equipment, resources, and general traversal maintenance. Game starts out monotonous enough, but gradually get a bit unhinged culminating in the final ending. Overall a real simple, cheap, janky game that will definitely eat up more hours than dollars, despite no real pay off, maybe that'll disappoint, but the game is a decent time waster akin to Powerwash simulator.
Rating: Soft recommendation
110. Cats Hidden in Japan (PC)
Another find the cats in a location game, you can see any of many previous reviews for these types of games, nothing really special, easily completed in 5-10 minutes.
Rating: Soft pass
111. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (360)
Man, this is just a year for picking up old franchise runs with games around the early 10s. I started this one shortly after finishing the first game, but abandoned it rather quickly for no reason in particular. Game seems to be a relative direct continuation from the first game with direct ties to the plot of the first game jumping back and forth between past events around the first game and modern day stuff with older and new characters. Feels a bit more plot driven than the first game, though the first game was pretty plot driven, but it had that in a bottle stuff where it's just flashbacks while you sit in an interrogation type room. Overall your average CoD experience, I understand why they started to back away from these plot things because while people enjoy them, and possibly even buy the game for them, they stay with the game for the multiplayer... which I don't play unfortunately for these games.
Rating: Soft pass
112. Mega Mosaic (PC)
I played a game similar to this on Android earlier this year and bought up a bunch when I found out similar games existed on Steam. Finally rolled them on backlog dungeon so ran with this one first. Minesweeper meets picross, but instead of 100+ levels or something like most puzzle games will do, you get 1 humongous puzzle with like 50000 blocks to fill/cross. The game very quickly becomes one of those puzzle games that you dream about and see when you close your eyes. Again, one of those things you have to decide for yourself if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Game lasted me roughly 40 hours iirc. Personally, I think the concept works well, but it is fairly complex, so I would only recommend it if you like both minesweeper and picross.
Rating: Soft recommendation
113. Humankind (PC)
Another game I won that I intended on just playing for a bit to hit 25% or atleast get a few achievements to get it off my list. Again, I'm trying to do better and actively ignore games I don't think will bring me joy. I started it up, dabbled in the tutorial, and then wound up playing for several hours and decided that I would go through a full game at least. I wasted a lot of the early game time because I didn't understand things. I wound up keeping up with the 1st/2nd faction, but that wasted early time really cost me in the end, plus all of the me learning how to play and the AI knowing how the systems work from the get-go. I wound up making an alliance with the 1st/2nd faction thinking ok, keep them on my side peaceful like and take over the world and then squash them... they wound up secretly/maybe not so secretly making all the right choices to lock the best lands and resources. While they were in a war I tried to take advantage and grab some territories while they were distracted. Eventually I realized they outpaced me very quickly so I decided I would go the war route and demolished everyone except them... unfortunately for me, as I demolished other factions, they snuck in and took the land for themselves, which I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't let me take the land, still don't understand and they just walked up and claimed it despite me having troops there and trying to claim it. Had a lot of instances of them doing that which I guarantee is what won them the game. Towards the end I decided I would develop nuclear weapons since I had a monopoly on uranium, built nuclear warheads en masse, only to find out for some reason, I'm not allowed to launch them directly at capital cities or something, so I had to hit alternative locations of way less economic value, and also found out all of the ICBMs I were building don't do a sliver of damage to cities even when you fire like 20 of them, so I dumped all of my missiles on them, and they still managed to destroy me in war because I couldn't hit anything of importance with nuclear missiles and they were able to just trounce me. In the end, I came in second, ended frustrated because I still don't understand why I couldn't do what I had meticulously planned for like a solid year of gameplay or whatever the time frames are. So many combinations of things I didn't and still don't understand that the AI took advantage of wound up making the end experience of the game absolutely miserable. I even spent the post game trying to figure out what I did wrong and how I could've successfully leveraged all of my weapons, but I eventually realized I was dumping more time in a game I didn't enjoy because I wanted to win, childish shit, so I uninstalled the game and moved on. Shit like this is exactly why I don't enjoy most RTS/strategy games, they have stupid little hidden rules that aren't explained until you try to do something and by then its too late and you've wasted a fuck ton of time... and in this case, it happened multiple multiple times with multiple multiple things.
Rating: Solid pass
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: September 03, 2025, 10:16:47 pm »
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84. Kaizen: A Factory Story (PC)
I have a love hate relationship with Zachtronics games, they are usually really really good and have parts that are highly addictive and fun to play, but then they also have some parts that start that way and quickly spiral in difficulty and lose their joy. This game keeps the joy from start to finish... and they are still adding content to this day, me writing this months later. No new achievements afaik, but new content, so good stuff. It's a bit silly of an automation game because it starts out making some sense in how you make some things, but then it gets kinda weird how you piece things together when you think about it, but it's still a really neat puzzle concept and it keeps it's joy. The hardest puzzles among them is pretty much the last puzzle where you build a rather large and complicated item, that one took a bit of ingenuity, but the game prepared you with lots of reasonable puzzles and ended with a single large complex puzzle rather than hitting you with one early and slapping you with them continuously, making this game a joy from start to finish.
Rating: Solid recommendation
85. Athenian Rhapsody (PC)
A Undertale rip-off if I ever saw one, but unfortunately doesn't do anything it sets out to well enough to be called anything but a cheap, not good Undertale clone. It tries to lean on meme content, but that falls flat. It tries to lean on similar "tropes" and concepts as Undertale, but executes them poorly. The game has few to no likeable characters and has you doing quite a bit of backtracking. Plus the achievements in the game take the polar opposite route of Toby Fox where you've got lots of BS achievements and requires multiple playthroughs to get them all.
Rating: Solid pass
86. Islets (PC)
I had high expectations for this one, so while it is still a good game, I did go in expecting higher quality than what was received just based on how crisp the artwork looked. Building out the world by connecting the areas was a neat concept and made for interesting gameplay... but the game had early flaws with fast travel and the game's map had some issues with accuracy of information it displayed. Then as the game progressed and we got fast travel other flaws came to the surface. The game's later game concepts for complicating traversing the world made working through the later areas painful, which coupled with the final areas being split made the game quite annoying towards the end. Also didn't help that almost none of the characters in the game were likeable. Despite my disdain for shmup gameplay, the shmup gameplay in this wasn't awful and was more than tolerable. Despite complaints, it's still a good game, I just had higher expectations for the game than I should have allowed myself.
Rating: Soft recommendation
87. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC/GPU)
I think I had intended on playing this on XS but for some reason I wound up playing it on my PC via Game Pass... I honestly can't recall why I did it other than maybe at this point I've got this stigma in my head that if I play a console game I'm going to fall asleep while playing which I'm less likely to do sitting at a computer. Also, I was probably listening to wrestling or something while I was playing to be more likely. I had the chance to get this for Steam but I decided I'd just play it on game pass before it left, which shortly afterward it got announced that it was leaving game pass, so I decided to prioritize the game. Game play winds up being a lot more of the same as the first Turnip boy game, but roguelike instead of zelda like. You get a few minutes to run through the levels before time runs up. Game does have plenty of accessibility features which I took advantage of because of the short time frame I knew I would have to play the game. Continuation of story from the first game with lots of references back to characters and plot from the first game, so definitely need to play the first game before hopping into this one. Game has a little bit of Minit concepts in that you need to get certain objectives done in the short period you have and those objectives will sustain, basic roguelike stuff. I think using Minit as a comparison though, Minit is digestable in its chunks, I don't think this game would have done so well for me without the accessibility features as progression would have been much much slower, whereas minit's progression felt continuous and relatively constant.
Rating: Soft recommendation
88. Disney's Dreamlight Valley (XS)
I had been playing this off and on for several years, but not making much progress as I was mostly just dabbling in the game and wasting time for Game pass quests. Finally started playing the game for real this year for some reason, probably because my kid was getting really big into Disney. He started playing it too. Told my wife I thought she should play the game because it seemed like a game she would like in general and Disney would just elevate it for her... unfortunately she took that to heart and has been playing the game like crazy. She finally hit a wall eventually where she's running out of things to do, but I think it's just days until I wind up buying the ultimate edition of the game for her, I can't buy it for her on my account because she wouldn't get the bonuses, so she needs to buy the game. I could buy her a global key for it worst case, but I think the best price is still just the sale price, I just don't know if my price is cheaper because game pass or not. idk. Anyway, solid little casual life farming and character quest and what not all Disney. They actually still update the game with free updates, they just added Inside Out characters and Beauty and the Beast characters, they even just announced another paid DLC which if I buy her the ultimate edition, I'd still need to buy her that too. Gah what a money sink. Frustratingly, this game really should be a F2P game with how much they want you to spend money and honestly the DLC has value with how much content it adds, but it's hard to justify when the game itself already costs $40 or something. Definitely a game for Disney fans though, otherwise you could find a better farming game, but this game definitely makes its value and money on the Disney license. Tons of content and story to be had, but the game is buggy, lags a lot, and so much good stuff is locked behind paywalls, thought even at its base the game provides like 100+ hours of content. That all said, ignoring the disney license the game just doesn't have the value and I concern myself that the game will become unplayable once Gameloft loses the license.
Rating: Soft pass
89. Spirit City: Lofi Sessions (PC)
Essentially not a game. There's some interactivity and you can quickly earn like 80% of the achievements with little play, the last few require you to have the game running basically 24/7 hitting around 250hrs to 100% the game. The game is an idle game, if you use it for it's intended purpose, it's not a game, but more or less a soundtrack of lofi beats to chill to or whatever, but for the average gamer, it's just wasting time that could've been spent playing games that you can't play because your account is being hogged by this idle app. It's cute, the music is nice, it connects with Spotify I think, but it doesn't even serve well as an app to incentivize you to get shit done.
Rating: Hard pass
90. Tiny Aquarium (PC)
Another idler/clicker game. You take care of an aquarium (you can get multiple) and that's about it. You can breed and feed your fish. You can buy eggs, you can go fishing, you can sell fish... that's about it. Not a ton to this game and I don't even think it serves as a decent screensaver type of thing just running while you're doing stuff.
Rating: Hard pass
91. Ocean's Heart (PC)
OMG this game... I got so mad at this game. My entire time playing this game, I constantly thought to myself, man this game would be so much better if you had a shield... Partially the developer's fault, partially an achievement guide writer's fault, but ultimately entirely my fault for not double checking stuff. Originally the game had an achievement that said, never visit this location, so the guide lists don't go to this location. I beat the game and the achievement never pops... the developer removed the achievement from the game because he decided it was a dumb achievement that made the game worse for no good reason other than to be worse. I think the achievement got him a lot of bad press because that one achievement... has you never go to the location that gives you a shield. So I suffered through this game with no shield, constantly having trouble, constantly trying to find health items and such... only to find out after I beat the game that I missed the shield due to an achievement that no longer exists... I really don't even want to write more about it, it ruined the entire experience for me. The game was insufferable for no good reason, it could've been such a good game, but I just can't give it that opportunity because of the situation
Rating: Hard pass
92. Desert Child (PC)
Weird little game. I don't even know by the end I fully understood the racing concept of the game. I think I had trouble with the final face just to find that if you idle the game... you win, it's bonkers. Ignoring that, the walking around, doing little... shit I wouldn't even call it fetch quests, talking with people and stuff is just as boring and confusing as everything else. I'm assuming the whole game is just a parallel with capitalism or something. I feel like I recall people talking about enjoying this game when it got announced to get a physical release with limited run, but like a lot of limited run releases, it's not a great game and probably didn't really need a physical release. It's hard to recommend a game that you can win by idling the final bit.
Rating: Hard pass
93. Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim (PC)
I had wanted to play this series in order, but I had this as a required play game and didn't have enough time to get through 3-5 (I think) so I just went ahead. Disappointing myself to realize that the series is a contiguous story. A fairly linear, fairly simple action RPG game, not as simple as the original where there's no action, just walking into enemies (I think that's Ys
) but still quite a good game. It has its annoyances regarding backtracking that really annoyed me as I don't think the game's fast travel is really good, it exists, but in some areas you still have to back track a lot to get to places. Game did have a callback to Ys 1 which I really didn't recall as it's been so long since I played Ys 1 and 2, so the idea was good, but ultimately meaningless given 1 -> 6 and how long it had been since I played the first... plus would I know better anyway comparing 16 bit to relatively modern 3D? Game is simple enough that I probably didn't miss much of anything through my playthrough, yet still action/skill based which unfortunately leads to the game not being a good RPG, a good action RPG, or just good in general, very middling across the board and makes me question is the Ys franchise as a whole is worth the time?
Rating: Soft pass
94. INDIKA (PC)
Another one that I won that required that I play it in short order. I got conflicting information from that game in that I expected beautiful art and graphics, but a lot of screenshots showed pixelart, but pleasantly the game has both and only relies on the pixelart for flashbacks, which adds a layer of uniqueness to the game. The gameplay of the game is quite linear and fairly shallow, but that's because the game is more story telling than gameplay. It has its moments where it has "gameplay" but it's either puzzle (perfectly fine) or stupid traversal sections with instant death mechanics (absolutely awful), but luckily those are few and far between and possibly limited to a single section of the game. The story blends flashbacks, current scenes, and scenes of psychosis. Not particularly a fan of the open ended ending, I never click with the "artistic" decide what the ending means for yourself concept. Game feels like a not awful Pathologic game with real dark tons, outcast themes, but the gameplay isn't as convoluted or awful. I'm still surprised this isn't an Annapurna game, definitely has that feel.
Rating: Soft recommendation
95. FIND ALL (PC)
Another find the object game. Despite the cat themes, the FIND ALL series has you finding a bunch of a certain type of item (broom, hammer, sconce, etc.) so it does play out better imo than some of the other find the object games. I've only played a few of this series, but the achievements aren't as straight forward as a lot of the other find the object games as this has what I would call real achievements and not only just did you find everything achievements. One of the other games has a gambling game in it, where you've got to spend hours in just the minigame to get some achievements, personally not a fan of that kind of added effort and forced grinding, but it definitely makes the game stand out. This one however, just has a set of speedrun achievements, so you've got to essentially beat the game in 5 minutes. I hate speedrun achievements, and this one did require me to sit around and play through the game a few times to nail down where everything was, which I hate, but I did wind up 100%ing the game in 41 minutes, game should have taken around 5 minutes, so nearly 10x the time because of the speedrun achievement... again, not a fan of that.
Rating: Soft pass
96. Until Then (PC)
Boy oh boy... I enjoyed this game up until the very end. I didn't appreciate unskippable scenes, slow text, nor the tough achievements that seem to be very luck/rng based. I enjoyed the story and the characters, but I felt there was enough not explained and left open to interpretation that honestly, I would've been happy not getting the true ending. I'd consider recommending just stopping at the first ending and calling it a day. I understand how the true ending is supposed to be the best ending, and the open interpretation can excuse whatever you want since it's open, but it ruined the game for me. Additionally, going for the 100% requires doing so many Rhythm Heaven style mini games, and when I say Rhythm Heaven I do mean tough af and not the most intuitive, plus some semi-normal rhythm based minigames too (controller based DDR stuff), that I personally didn't bother. I feel like every ending had bad stuff to it and I believe the concept is that the true ending is the best ending because it did the least damage. Personally, I think the first ending is the "best" and most thought provoking and emotional ending. It has not good things, yes, for sure, but personally, I disliked the true ending enough that this felt the most appropriate ending despite the lack of up front character growth. 2nd ending is truly awful and inarguably the worst ending, but shows a lot of story growth and character development, it sucks, but the concept should be a major payoff for the true ending. The true ending, gives you the best of almost everything, at the sacrifice of the majority of the game's character development. In the end it turns into one of those had the interferer never interfered you'd have had the best ending tropes, essentially making it such that the entire game serves no purpose other than maybe the whole butterfly effect trope of every change you make makes the world worse, thus time travel is wrong (not that this game is time travel). It's definitely subjective bias showing here, I wanted the fan service pay off and the game didn't give it, and while it's maybe just opened enough that one could justify assuming what you want will happen, I'm not one of those people. You, the developer, didn't show it, thus it didn't happen. :shrug: It feels awful to say "Had you given me the ending I wanted, I'd give this game a solid recommendation" and essentially that's what it's boiling down to, but the game had enough mechanically wrong with it that the game wound up being a chore... for a payoff that I didn't appreciate, thus ruining the entire experience for me. Had the game's mechanics not been as bad, one could overlook the unappreciated ending, but the combination is unforgivable. Additionally, the character's constant bouncy animations are sort of unsettling.
Rating: Soft pass
97. Spirit of the North (PC)
I only forced myself to play this one because I needed to play the sequel as a request and wanted to play through this one first. I had always been interested in this game because it looks beautiful and I usually like walking sim type games, despite them usually being derisive for me. I had the trouble that this game was too open world and I frequently didn't know where I was supposed to go, I wound up following a guide which was still difficult to follow given the world. The world just being this big relatively ambient world, made it difficult to find where I needed to go. The puzzles were fine for the most part, but towards the end the puzzles got more convoluted and complicated. Additionally, the game was unplayable on Steam deck as the game would lag horrendously and not recognize steam deck or external controller inputs. I wound up having to play it on a PC, which was fine, but started the experience poorly. Even on the PC the game did have several framedrops throughout the game play which marred the experience. Unfortunately I can't recall for sure, but I'm fairly confident that the game doesn't have a map system which made the game even more difficult to traverse, plus the lack of a fast travel system made finding collectibles even more of a chore. I didn't go for the majority of the content in the game as I realized it would be a major pain to do so without following a step by step guide. Overall, this game feels like a huge let down compared to how beautiful the game looks, but if you're willing to follow a guide or wander aimlessly for tens of hours, you'll probably enjoy this game. For me, this was the wrong kind of figure it out on your own, like Everybody's Gone to the rapture.
Rating: Soft pass
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Quote from: Legend
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.strikethroughgames are games that have been abandoned.
84. Kaizen: A Factory Story (PC)
I have a love hate relationship with Zachtronics games, they are usually really really good and have parts that are highly addictive and fun to play, but then they also have some parts that start that way and quickly spiral in difficulty and lose their joy. This game keeps the joy from start to finish... and they are still adding content to this day, me writing this months later. No new achievements afaik, but new content, so good stuff. It's a bit silly of an automation game because it starts out making some sense in how you make some things, but then it gets kinda weird how you piece things together when you think about it, but it's still a really neat puzzle concept and it keeps it's joy. The hardest puzzles among them is pretty much the last puzzle where you build a rather large and complicated item, that one took a bit of ingenuity, but the game prepared you with lots of reasonable puzzles and ended with a single large complex puzzle rather than hitting you with one early and slapping you with them continuously, making this game a joy from start to finish.
Rating: Solid recommendation
85. Athenian Rhapsody (PC)
A Undertale rip-off if I ever saw one, but unfortunately doesn't do anything it sets out to well enough to be called anything but a cheap, not good Undertale clone. It tries to lean on meme content, but that falls flat. It tries to lean on similar "tropes" and concepts as Undertale, but executes them poorly. The game has few to no likeable characters and has you doing quite a bit of backtracking. Plus the achievements in the game take the polar opposite route of Toby Fox where you've got lots of BS achievements and requires multiple playthroughs to get them all.
Rating: Solid pass
86. Islets (PC)
I had high expectations for this one, so while it is still a good game, I did go in expecting higher quality than what was received just based on how crisp the artwork looked. Building out the world by connecting the areas was a neat concept and made for interesting gameplay... but the game had early flaws with fast travel and the game's map had some issues with accuracy of information it displayed. Then as the game progressed and we got fast travel other flaws came to the surface. The game's later game concepts for complicating traversing the world made working through the later areas painful, which coupled with the final areas being split made the game quite annoying towards the end. Also didn't help that almost none of the characters in the game were likeable. Despite my disdain for shmup gameplay, the shmup gameplay in this wasn't awful and was more than tolerable. Despite complaints, it's still a good game, I just had higher expectations for the game than I should have allowed myself.
Rating: Soft recommendation
87. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC/GPU)
I think I had intended on playing this on XS but for some reason I wound up playing it on my PC via Game Pass... I honestly can't recall why I did it other than maybe at this point I've got this stigma in my head that if I play a console game I'm going to fall asleep while playing which I'm less likely to do sitting at a computer. Also, I was probably listening to wrestling or something while I was playing to be more likely. I had the chance to get this for Steam but I decided I'd just play it on game pass before it left, which shortly afterward it got announced that it was leaving game pass, so I decided to prioritize the game. Game play winds up being a lot more of the same as the first Turnip boy game, but roguelike instead of zelda like. You get a few minutes to run through the levels before time runs up. Game does have plenty of accessibility features which I took advantage of because of the short time frame I knew I would have to play the game. Continuation of story from the first game with lots of references back to characters and plot from the first game, so definitely need to play the first game before hopping into this one. Game has a little bit of Minit concepts in that you need to get certain objectives done in the short period you have and those objectives will sustain, basic roguelike stuff. I think using Minit as a comparison though, Minit is digestable in its chunks, I don't think this game would have done so well for me without the accessibility features as progression would have been much much slower, whereas minit's progression felt continuous and relatively constant.
Rating: Soft recommendation
88. Disney's Dreamlight Valley (XS)
I had been playing this off and on for several years, but not making much progress as I was mostly just dabbling in the game and wasting time for Game pass quests. Finally started playing the game for real this year for some reason, probably because my kid was getting really big into Disney. He started playing it too. Told my wife I thought she should play the game because it seemed like a game she would like in general and Disney would just elevate it for her... unfortunately she took that to heart and has been playing the game like crazy. She finally hit a wall eventually where she's running out of things to do, but I think it's just days until I wind up buying the ultimate edition of the game for her, I can't buy it for her on my account because she wouldn't get the bonuses, so she needs to buy the game. I could buy her a global key for it worst case, but I think the best price is still just the sale price, I just don't know if my price is cheaper because game pass or not. idk. Anyway, solid little casual life farming and character quest and what not all Disney. They actually still update the game with free updates, they just added Inside Out characters and Beauty and the Beast characters, they even just announced another paid DLC which if I buy her the ultimate edition, I'd still need to buy her that too. Gah what a money sink. Frustratingly, this game really should be a F2P game with how much they want you to spend money and honestly the DLC has value with how much content it adds, but it's hard to justify when the game itself already costs $40 or something. Definitely a game for Disney fans though, otherwise you could find a better farming game, but this game definitely makes its value and money on the Disney license. Tons of content and story to be had, but the game is buggy, lags a lot, and so much good stuff is locked behind paywalls, thought even at its base the game provides like 100+ hours of content. That all said, ignoring the disney license the game just doesn't have the value and I concern myself that the game will become unplayable once Gameloft loses the license.
Rating: Soft pass
89. Spirit City: Lofi Sessions (PC)
Essentially not a game. There's some interactivity and you can quickly earn like 80% of the achievements with little play, the last few require you to have the game running basically 24/7 hitting around 250hrs to 100% the game. The game is an idle game, if you use it for it's intended purpose, it's not a game, but more or less a soundtrack of lofi beats to chill to or whatever, but for the average gamer, it's just wasting time that could've been spent playing games that you can't play because your account is being hogged by this idle app. It's cute, the music is nice, it connects with Spotify I think, but it doesn't even serve well as an app to incentivize you to get shit done.
Rating: Hard pass
90. Tiny Aquarium (PC)
Another idler/clicker game. You take care of an aquarium (you can get multiple) and that's about it. You can breed and feed your fish. You can buy eggs, you can go fishing, you can sell fish... that's about it. Not a ton to this game and I don't even think it serves as a decent screensaver type of thing just running while you're doing stuff.
Rating: Hard pass
91. Ocean's Heart (PC)
OMG this game... I got so mad at this game. My entire time playing this game, I constantly thought to myself, man this game would be so much better if you had a shield... Partially the developer's fault, partially an achievement guide writer's fault, but ultimately entirely my fault for not double checking stuff. Originally the game had an achievement that said, never visit this location, so the guide lists don't go to this location. I beat the game and the achievement never pops... the developer removed the achievement from the game because he decided it was a dumb achievement that made the game worse for no good reason other than to be worse. I think the achievement got him a lot of bad press because that one achievement... has you never go to the location that gives you a shield. So I suffered through this game with no shield, constantly having trouble, constantly trying to find health items and such... only to find out after I beat the game that I missed the shield due to an achievement that no longer exists... I really don't even want to write more about it, it ruined the entire experience for me. The game was insufferable for no good reason, it could've been such a good game, but I just can't give it that opportunity because of the situation
Rating: Hard pass
92. Desert Child (PC)
Weird little game. I don't even know by the end I fully understood the racing concept of the game. I think I had trouble with the final face just to find that if you idle the game... you win, it's bonkers. Ignoring that, the walking around, doing little... shit I wouldn't even call it fetch quests, talking with people and stuff is just as boring and confusing as everything else. I'm assuming the whole game is just a parallel with capitalism or something. I feel like I recall people talking about enjoying this game when it got announced to get a physical release with limited run, but like a lot of limited run releases, it's not a great game and probably didn't really need a physical release. It's hard to recommend a game that you can win by idling the final bit.
Rating: Hard pass
93. Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim (PC)
I had wanted to play this series in order, but I had this as a required play game and didn't have enough time to get through 3-5 (I think) so I just went ahead. Disappointing myself to realize that the series is a contiguous story. A fairly linear, fairly simple action RPG game, not as simple as the original where there's no action, just walking into enemies (I think that's Ys
) but still quite a good game. It has its annoyances regarding backtracking that really annoyed me as I don't think the game's fast travel is really good, it exists, but in some areas you still have to back track a lot to get to places. Game did have a callback to Ys 1 which I really didn't recall as it's been so long since I played Ys 1 and 2, so the idea was good, but ultimately meaningless given 1 -> 6 and how long it had been since I played the first... plus would I know better anyway comparing 16 bit to relatively modern 3D? Game is simple enough that I probably didn't miss much of anything through my playthrough, yet still action/skill based which unfortunately leads to the game not being a good RPG, a good action RPG, or just good in general, very middling across the board and makes me question is the Ys franchise as a whole is worth the time?Rating: Soft pass
94. INDIKA (PC)
Another one that I won that required that I play it in short order. I got conflicting information from that game in that I expected beautiful art and graphics, but a lot of screenshots showed pixelart, but pleasantly the game has both and only relies on the pixelart for flashbacks, which adds a layer of uniqueness to the game. The gameplay of the game is quite linear and fairly shallow, but that's because the game is more story telling than gameplay. It has its moments where it has "gameplay" but it's either puzzle (perfectly fine) or stupid traversal sections with instant death mechanics (absolutely awful), but luckily those are few and far between and possibly limited to a single section of the game. The story blends flashbacks, current scenes, and scenes of psychosis. Not particularly a fan of the open ended ending, I never click with the "artistic" decide what the ending means for yourself concept. Game feels like a not awful Pathologic game with real dark tons, outcast themes, but the gameplay isn't as convoluted or awful. I'm still surprised this isn't an Annapurna game, definitely has that feel.
Rating: Soft recommendation
95. FIND ALL (PC)
Another find the object game. Despite the cat themes, the FIND ALL series has you finding a bunch of a certain type of item (broom, hammer, sconce, etc.) so it does play out better imo than some of the other find the object games. I've only played a few of this series, but the achievements aren't as straight forward as a lot of the other find the object games as this has what I would call real achievements and not only just did you find everything achievements. One of the other games has a gambling game in it, where you've got to spend hours in just the minigame to get some achievements, personally not a fan of that kind of added effort and forced grinding, but it definitely makes the game stand out. This one however, just has a set of speedrun achievements, so you've got to essentially beat the game in 5 minutes. I hate speedrun achievements, and this one did require me to sit around and play through the game a few times to nail down where everything was, which I hate, but I did wind up 100%ing the game in 41 minutes, game should have taken around 5 minutes, so nearly 10x the time because of the speedrun achievement... again, not a fan of that.
Rating: Soft pass
96. Until Then (PC)
Boy oh boy... I enjoyed this game up until the very end. I didn't appreciate unskippable scenes, slow text, nor the tough achievements that seem to be very luck/rng based. I enjoyed the story and the characters, but I felt there was enough not explained and left open to interpretation that honestly, I would've been happy not getting the true ending. I'd consider recommending just stopping at the first ending and calling it a day. I understand how the true ending is supposed to be the best ending, and the open interpretation can excuse whatever you want since it's open, but it ruined the game for me. Additionally, going for the 100% requires doing so many Rhythm Heaven style mini games, and when I say Rhythm Heaven I do mean tough af and not the most intuitive, plus some semi-normal rhythm based minigames too (controller based DDR stuff), that I personally didn't bother. I feel like every ending had bad stuff to it and I believe the concept is that the true ending is the best ending because it did the least damage. Personally, I think the first ending is the "best" and most thought provoking and emotional ending. It has not good things, yes, for sure, but personally, I disliked the true ending enough that this felt the most appropriate ending despite the lack of up front character growth. 2nd ending is truly awful and inarguably the worst ending, but shows a lot of story growth and character development, it sucks, but the concept should be a major payoff for the true ending. The true ending, gives you the best of almost everything, at the sacrifice of the majority of the game's character development. In the end it turns into one of those had the interferer never interfered you'd have had the best ending tropes, essentially making it such that the entire game serves no purpose other than maybe the whole butterfly effect trope of every change you make makes the world worse, thus time travel is wrong (not that this game is time travel). It's definitely subjective bias showing here, I wanted the fan service pay off and the game didn't give it, and while it's maybe just opened enough that one could justify assuming what you want will happen, I'm not one of those people. You, the developer, didn't show it, thus it didn't happen. :shrug: It feels awful to say "Had you given me the ending I wanted, I'd give this game a solid recommendation" and essentially that's what it's boiling down to, but the game had enough mechanically wrong with it that the game wound up being a chore... for a payoff that I didn't appreciate, thus ruining the entire experience for me. Had the game's mechanics not been as bad, one could overlook the unappreciated ending, but the combination is unforgivable. Additionally, the character's constant bouncy animations are sort of unsettling.
Rating: Soft pass
97. Spirit of the North (PC)
I only forced myself to play this one because I needed to play the sequel as a request and wanted to play through this one first. I had always been interested in this game because it looks beautiful and I usually like walking sim type games, despite them usually being derisive for me. I had the trouble that this game was too open world and I frequently didn't know where I was supposed to go, I wound up following a guide which was still difficult to follow given the world. The world just being this big relatively ambient world, made it difficult to find where I needed to go. The puzzles were fine for the most part, but towards the end the puzzles got more convoluted and complicated. Additionally, the game was unplayable on Steam deck as the game would lag horrendously and not recognize steam deck or external controller inputs. I wound up having to play it on a PC, which was fine, but started the experience poorly. Even on the PC the game did have several framedrops throughout the game play which marred the experience. Unfortunately I can't recall for sure, but I'm fairly confident that the game doesn't have a map system which made the game even more difficult to traverse, plus the lack of a fast travel system made finding collectibles even more of a chore. I didn't go for the majority of the content in the game as I realized it would be a major pain to do so without following a step by step guide. Overall, this game feels like a huge let down compared to how beautiful the game looks, but if you're willing to follow a guide or wander aimlessly for tens of hours, you'll probably enjoy this game. For me, this was the wrong kind of figure it out on your own, like Everybody's Gone to the rapture.
Rating: Soft pass
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: September 03, 2025, 05:09:33 pm »
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73. Blue Prince (XS)
So many games come out with hype and hit gamepass and get additional hype just from being accessible on game pass. I had so many people talking about this game around release, so I downloaded it day one. I don't think I actually wound up playing it though until the achievement for beating the game was listed as a global challenge on Playtracker. While I did beat this game and dumped a good amount of hours into it, I only wound up unlocking 1 achievement, beating the game. I don't even know if it's possible to unlock any other achievements until you beat the game. If I'm not mistaken, the achievement system doesn't track achievements until you beat the game, at which point it will start tracking and allow you to unlock. The actual unlock requirement for all of the achievements in the game isn't just to meet the criteria, it's to meet the criteria and collect the literal trophy in the game and place it on the trophy mantle/shelf/case. Game is quite enjoyable, but that was really annoying and didn't leave me wanting to actually play more because I should have unlocked an achievement or two, but it didn't count because I did the requirement before beating the game and trophies don't spawn until after you beat the game, so nothing counts beforehand. Anyway, talking about the game itself and not the shenanigans that annoy me... the game is quite good. A roguelike escape game, definitely a good time waster, runs take anywhere between a few minutes (if you're super unlucky I guess) to 30 minutes/an hour. Usually your runs will last somewhere in the 20-40 minute range I think, which makes it just long enough that you can't just casually play for a bit here and there because I believe if you quit in the middle of a run, you just lose the run. It's one of the huge setbacks in the rogue genre for me, because I very rarely can commit more than 5 minutes to a game, if I can even get 5 minutes. Sometimes, at night, I can commit longer, but even that is hit or miss. The game's tile system is synergistic which can make for interesting combinations but ultimately everything is luck of the draw, despite that you can influence it some. I do recommend the game though, because it is a bit addictive, but I will say I had to do a lot of guide reading to reach a point that I could figure out optimal scenarios, otherwise I never would've learned on my own the right patterns and combos to get good tiles.
Rating: Soft recommendation
74. Pikmin 1 (NS)
For like 20 years, I've been trying to get myself to play through the Pikmin games. I never bothered on GCN, Wii new play controls I never got around to it, then it finally came to Switch and I still kept putting it off. I really don't know why I finally decided to start playing it, but I did a year or so back, but I had only played the first level or two. This time I think I was looking for something to play that I could play in front of my kid and I think I wasn't in a scenario where I had any obligations, so I went Switch. It's possible I went Switch because I was actively avoiding Xbox because my wife and kid were both playing games on there and it actually doesn't support Quick Resume with multiple profiles, so my progress was always kicked out and I figured it was just easier to just not play Xbox for the time being. Anyway, it being my first experience, I enjoyed the start, got into the groove of it learning with red, and then blue, and then yellow. Eventually started getting to more complex levels, levels where I had to actually concern myself with environmental hazards and tight maneuvering. Got to a point that I looked up a guide because I was concerned that I would beat the game let alone get all of the parts in time. I managed to get all of the parts with several days to spare which was nice. I think I was hoping for a more chill and relaxed experience as opposed to the strategy based experience I wound up with towards the end. Eventually I'll move onto Pikmin 2 and the rest, but I'm not as excited after dealing with the stress of this first game. One day I'll need to play the old Fire Emblem games too and I'm sure I'll be stressed with those too since they aren't casual optioned. lol But I am concerned about the complexities of them adding new Pikmin types in the new games, so even more not sure I'm looking forward to it, but I'll definitely do it eventually.
Rating: Soft recommendation
75. Resident Evil 0 (PC)
Another PoP pick, RE3 wasn't a PoP pick I think, but this one was. I don't know what it is with my pickers always picking games that I've said I've already beaten, like maybe they don't see that tag or something and they're just like oh yeah, this franchise is a must play, play it.
Anyway, I sped through this like I do all of the already played games when they get picked. Followed a guide I think at least for a bit so I could get through quicker because I recall this one being real fucky throughout it especially on the train at the beginning with the routes you were supposed to take. To be quite honest, I don't know that I'd ever get through RE0 without a guide, so much was not intuitive about how you were supposed to know to climb out a train window or something. It's a nice little side story, but I think I always felt it was weird to generate this prequel with a character and never bring him back, but it's also hard to care much about anything RE when the series was basically thrown away with RE7... I do say that knowing I've never played RE7 or newer games and I really would like to get on that, but people keep making me replay these old ones.
Rating: Soft pass
76. Atelier Ryza 2 (PC)
I really like the Ryza games, but got damn are the PC versions of these games absolutely atrocious. Horribly optimized, crash a ton, and tons of bugs. I did play on deck, and I can't recall if it is verified, but protonDB listed a config that did wind up working better and I stuck with that, but the game still had some crashes and framedrops. It was another PoP pick, though I think I requested this one because either it was a required play or something, I can't recall, definitely gift related. Shortly after starting or beating this Ryza DX got announced which really chapped my hide because of course there is no upgrade path and you've got to rebuy the games and these originals will get delisted. New achievement lists with DX though, I guess, I'll consider buying the set in a year or so when it's on discount bundle on steam. Great game, but I guess I would have to recommend playing on PS4/PS5, even Switch played the game better than Steam Deck which is real sad. Had I played on PC proper I maybe would've looked to see if there were any good mods, but to be honest they were probably all nsfw lmao
Rating: Solid recommendation, but maybe not on PC.
77. The Witness (PC)
So I got this on Xbox years ago, passively played it off and on throughout the years but got this picked for PoP and noticed that unlike the console version, the PC version only has 2 achievements: beat the game, get the secret ending. I used a guide to get through the game because I had already done most of the puzzles on console and didn't really feel like trying to refigure out everything I had already done, but solved a lot of the later stuff myself. Came to find that the last puzzle or few puzzles are random and there is no real guide to them, you can't cheat them, you have to, like a school exam, prove you understand the game and its puzzle concepts, and well enough, that you can solve 2 complex puzzles, individually, in 15 seconds. Did take me a few minutes to solve them, because I hadn't expected that, but I did understand the concepts well enough, but not well enough to solve in 15 seconds, so it did take a bit to on top of everything figure out basically what was to be expected because 15 seconds isn't a long time for these complex puzzles even when you know what you're doing. I did find it amusing because it was probably designed to fuck off players who were following a guide so I got a little chuckle at that. I didn't manage to get the secret ending because I saw that that was also a series of complex, time related puzzles, and I knew that that would take a long time and lots of frustration for me to get. I can do puzzles, I can even do them pretty quickly, but I just hate being hit with a timer that makes me start the whole process over again if I've got one misstep. That all said, as mind fucking as the puzzles are in this game, I didn't really feel any pay off, even adding in the fact that I had been working on this game elsewhere for the better part of a decade without a guide.
Rating: Soft pass
78. Aurelia (PC)
Oh man, so I help run a giveaway group and a member wanted to give this NSFW game and the admin team had to have a discussion if we would allow such games and the consensus was, quality games are allowed regardless of NSFW or not and this one was deemed quality... I was among the folks who said even if we don't allow it, wishlisted. I wound up winning the giveaway so I played it. I really enjoyed the game. Ignoring the NSFW elements, the game is really solid, has good story telling and likeable characters. The game is a solid RPG game with a nice variety of systems and plenty of real good story telling. The NSFW content is also quite good, could be more and better, but still quite quite good. If there were a list of NSFW games worth playing, this would surely be among them, not just for the story telling, but also the solid gameplay. That said, I won't throw solid recommendation because it is NSFW.
Rating: Soft recommendation
79. Dusk (PC)
Okay, this game, like a lot of boomer shooters, has been on my list for a long time... and just like some others (Turok), they really don't resonate with me. For the most part, I am capable of playing the game and don't need a guide or anything, but it just doesn't feel as satisfying. Maybe I was never big on Doom or Duke Nukem and I just have nostalgia because of N64 and stuff. Maybe it's the level based nature, where I have a similar problem with games like Mario and the original Castlevania. I don't know, but I constantly find myself thinking when will it be over... and that's not an enjoyable mindset to be in. This game constantly had me looking for ammo, even on lower difficulties, and like a lot of these games had me trying to find guides for the later levels when I had no clue what the game expected me to do. I feel like this style of shooter winds up being more twitch shooter/puzzle solving than your average just let me kill everyone shooter.
Rating: Soft pass
80. Aka (PC)
Chill fetch quest type of game. I love fetch quest games like this, but this one had some issues between its small farming system and some bugs that could be steam deck related, not sure. Never a fan of games that have 1 achievement that requires you to grind out extra hours for no good reason, this is one of those games. I think it actually might have 2 or 3 like that. 1 is sleeping 30 times or something, something you wouldn't do in an average playloop and the other required watering a tree for 100 days or something like that, especially not something you'd get in a normal playloop. Gameplay was enjoyable, mostly didn't require a guide, but some things weren't intuitive and did require a guide to understand, but definitely needed to follow a guide to get quite a few achievements. The farming mechanics are frustrating in their controls, maybe would've been better with mouse, but also I expect it was just as bad if not worse. For the most part the story telling is the only worthwhile thing in the game, because while I enjoy fetch quest style stuff as a chill gameplay mechanic, it was definitely held back by the farming system and unintuitive controls in general. Like I want to be able to recommend it for the story, and the gameplay wasn't that bad, and the game is pretty short, but overall it just isn't worth the time playing. Don't get me wrong, I can't think of a game that provides this experience better, but it also just isn't that great of an experience.
Rating: Soft pass
81. Death's Gambit: Afterlife (PC)
I enjoyed this game, but I also really disliked a lot about it. I sort of tried to have a pure experience with this, but by the time I decided to use a guide for some stuff, I realized that I had fucked up so much at the hub area allowing a lot of NPC characters to die because I didn't understand what was going on. Sort of aligns with that Dark Souls thing, but definitely makes me wish I had followed a guide from the start and I'm rarely in favor of a game requiring a guide just to have a good time. I did have a good time regardless, but I can see it's one of those games that expects you to play through multiple times and I'm just personally not about that, so I like to get as much as I can in a game in a single playthrough. Combat is absolutely solid and boss fights definitely have that Dark Souls appeal where you learn the patterns, win by getting gud, and feeling proud of your accomplishment... tough yet fare... except there are a lot of areas where it's the enemies on the way to the boss or the terrain that make the game awful. I can't think of where it was, but there was one area in the game where I died tens of times because the enemies in the area were both in large numbers, but also high toughness, like the type of enemy you'd expect to not respawn because they are essentially mini-bosses, but they do respawn, that pissed me off. Like the area ends with a mini-boss, but just getting to that mini-boss requires fighting like 10 mini-boss quality enemies that respawn, so I spent more time getting to that mini-boss over and over and over than times spent fighting that mini-boss, who was as one would expect a BS human NPC enemy which are always some of the most dangerous enemies in souls-like games. Ignoring that stuff, plot and characters are pretty good, maybe a step above Dark Souls games where its impossible to follow what's going on, still a little difficult to grasp, but there are definitely stuff going ons that you can follow. Afterlife content adds quite a bit more story and more endings, feels tacked on, but also feels necessary, so not much complaints about that, though I will always complain about DLC, though I have no clue if this game has DLC achievements, I wasn't aiming for 100% regardless. I think as usual with these types of games, I didn't optimize or dig too deep into the game's systems, which might have made the game better or worse, but I find when those systems get needlessly complex I lose interest, consider me an old man.
Rating: Soft recommendation
82. Mario Kart World (NS2)
Lmao, literally the only game I have for NS2 and other than Bananza, I haven't been thinking about getting other NS2 games and I don't know that I will get anything on NS2 other than exclusives at this point because I'm shifting so hard on PC at this point there's no point, and I'm back on achievement BS. Only reason I have this game is because I bought the NS2 bundle that came with the digital download of the game and even that I regret slightly. I FOMO'd and bought a NS2 because I expected it would be hard to obtain and the price would go up with tariffs. I still think the price will go up with tariffs like the other consoles have, but I can see now that the system is not in the demand that could have been expected and I should have assumed as much given the state of the economy... shit is fucked. Anyway, game is solid and fun and the open world stuff is neat. I enjoyed roaming the world, looking for outfits and doing the little challenges. Game has your standard Grand Prix Mario Kart fare... but all in all, this game doesn't have that much content to justify its high price. Grand Prix is just Grand Prix, the open world is neat, but the incentive to wander the world kind of just isn't there. The only thing I got from the game from a single player experience I enjoyed to an extent over other games was unlocking outfits for characters, but that's a quick process and easily obtained fairly quickly if you know where to go. I did play the game early when there were no guides so I didn't have that luxury, but at this point surely it's well documented. The endurance race/tour/elimination race thing is neat in concept, but in execution you wind up with a 30 minute race where if any players get eliminated early you wind up playing by yourself with AI while you real life other players just have to sit around while you finish the endurance race, kind of annoying in a non-competitive environment. Multiplayer in general feels lacking in content, the multiplayer modes are few and not the most fun compared to stuff like Mario Kart 64, again consider me a grumpy old man. Anyways, while it is a great game, possibly the best MK to date, it's definitely not a system seller on its own and the economy isn't helping that. I feel I may have some bias showing so I'll give it time and maybe I'll adjust it as they add free content? Though I expect content to be paid or linked to the expansion online which will maintain the soft rating
Rating: Soft recommendation
83. Police Stories (PC)
I've played a few top down games like this, sort of reminds me of Hotline Miami, I'd say not as hectic, but honestly this one kinda is. The AI is janky af, sometimes you can sneak on them or something and sometimes they'll shoot you through the wall without you doing anything to get detected. Thus it winds up being about as hectic as Hotline Miami and for the most part you wind up having to not do things by the book and go on a corrupt murder spree. Game was enjoyable for the gameplay, story left a lot to be desired, doesn't help in this cultural climate plus my own biases, I was never going to relate with cop characters in any manner. I barely like Brooklyn 99, truly a shame that show took as long as it did to get to talking about police corruption, glad that show got cancelled. Anyway, I'll never recommend a game about cops, I may play them, but I'd never expect to find one worth recommending.
Rating: Soft pass
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Quote from: Legend
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.strikethroughgames are games that have been abandoned.
73. Blue Prince (XS)
So many games come out with hype and hit gamepass and get additional hype just from being accessible on game pass. I had so many people talking about this game around release, so I downloaded it day one. I don't think I actually wound up playing it though until the achievement for beating the game was listed as a global challenge on Playtracker. While I did beat this game and dumped a good amount of hours into it, I only wound up unlocking 1 achievement, beating the game. I don't even know if it's possible to unlock any other achievements until you beat the game. If I'm not mistaken, the achievement system doesn't track achievements until you beat the game, at which point it will start tracking and allow you to unlock. The actual unlock requirement for all of the achievements in the game isn't just to meet the criteria, it's to meet the criteria and collect the literal trophy in the game and place it on the trophy mantle/shelf/case. Game is quite enjoyable, but that was really annoying and didn't leave me wanting to actually play more because I should have unlocked an achievement or two, but it didn't count because I did the requirement before beating the game and trophies don't spawn until after you beat the game, so nothing counts beforehand. Anyway, talking about the game itself and not the shenanigans that annoy me... the game is quite good. A roguelike escape game, definitely a good time waster, runs take anywhere between a few minutes (if you're super unlucky I guess) to 30 minutes/an hour. Usually your runs will last somewhere in the 20-40 minute range I think, which makes it just long enough that you can't just casually play for a bit here and there because I believe if you quit in the middle of a run, you just lose the run. It's one of the huge setbacks in the rogue genre for me, because I very rarely can commit more than 5 minutes to a game, if I can even get 5 minutes. Sometimes, at night, I can commit longer, but even that is hit or miss. The game's tile system is synergistic which can make for interesting combinations but ultimately everything is luck of the draw, despite that you can influence it some. I do recommend the game though, because it is a bit addictive, but I will say I had to do a lot of guide reading to reach a point that I could figure out optimal scenarios, otherwise I never would've learned on my own the right patterns and combos to get good tiles.
Rating: Soft recommendation
74. Pikmin 1 (NS)
For like 20 years, I've been trying to get myself to play through the Pikmin games. I never bothered on GCN, Wii new play controls I never got around to it, then it finally came to Switch and I still kept putting it off. I really don't know why I finally decided to start playing it, but I did a year or so back, but I had only played the first level or two. This time I think I was looking for something to play that I could play in front of my kid and I think I wasn't in a scenario where I had any obligations, so I went Switch. It's possible I went Switch because I was actively avoiding Xbox because my wife and kid were both playing games on there and it actually doesn't support Quick Resume with multiple profiles, so my progress was always kicked out and I figured it was just easier to just not play Xbox for the time being. Anyway, it being my first experience, I enjoyed the start, got into the groove of it learning with red, and then blue, and then yellow. Eventually started getting to more complex levels, levels where I had to actually concern myself with environmental hazards and tight maneuvering. Got to a point that I looked up a guide because I was concerned that I would beat the game let alone get all of the parts in time. I managed to get all of the parts with several days to spare which was nice. I think I was hoping for a more chill and relaxed experience as opposed to the strategy based experience I wound up with towards the end. Eventually I'll move onto Pikmin 2 and the rest, but I'm not as excited after dealing with the stress of this first game. One day I'll need to play the old Fire Emblem games too and I'm sure I'll be stressed with those too since they aren't casual optioned. lol But I am concerned about the complexities of them adding new Pikmin types in the new games, so even more not sure I'm looking forward to it, but I'll definitely do it eventually.
Rating: Soft recommendation
75. Resident Evil 0 (PC)
Another PoP pick, RE3 wasn't a PoP pick I think, but this one was. I don't know what it is with my pickers always picking games that I've said I've already beaten, like maybe they don't see that tag or something and they're just like oh yeah, this franchise is a must play, play it.
Anyway, I sped through this like I do all of the already played games when they get picked. Followed a guide I think at least for a bit so I could get through quicker because I recall this one being real fucky throughout it especially on the train at the beginning with the routes you were supposed to take. To be quite honest, I don't know that I'd ever get through RE0 without a guide, so much was not intuitive about how you were supposed to know to climb out a train window or something. It's a nice little side story, but I think I always felt it was weird to generate this prequel with a character and never bring him back, but it's also hard to care much about anything RE when the series was basically thrown away with RE7... I do say that knowing I've never played RE7 or newer games and I really would like to get on that, but people keep making me replay these old ones.Rating: Soft pass
76. Atelier Ryza 2 (PC)
I really like the Ryza games, but got damn are the PC versions of these games absolutely atrocious. Horribly optimized, crash a ton, and tons of bugs. I did play on deck, and I can't recall if it is verified, but protonDB listed a config that did wind up working better and I stuck with that, but the game still had some crashes and framedrops. It was another PoP pick, though I think I requested this one because either it was a required play or something, I can't recall, definitely gift related. Shortly after starting or beating this Ryza DX got announced which really chapped my hide because of course there is no upgrade path and you've got to rebuy the games and these originals will get delisted. New achievement lists with DX though, I guess, I'll consider buying the set in a year or so when it's on discount bundle on steam. Great game, but I guess I would have to recommend playing on PS4/PS5, even Switch played the game better than Steam Deck which is real sad. Had I played on PC proper I maybe would've looked to see if there were any good mods, but to be honest they were probably all nsfw lmao
Rating: Solid recommendation, but maybe not on PC.
77. The Witness (PC)
So I got this on Xbox years ago, passively played it off and on throughout the years but got this picked for PoP and noticed that unlike the console version, the PC version only has 2 achievements: beat the game, get the secret ending. I used a guide to get through the game because I had already done most of the puzzles on console and didn't really feel like trying to refigure out everything I had already done, but solved a lot of the later stuff myself. Came to find that the last puzzle or few puzzles are random and there is no real guide to them, you can't cheat them, you have to, like a school exam, prove you understand the game and its puzzle concepts, and well enough, that you can solve 2 complex puzzles, individually, in 15 seconds. Did take me a few minutes to solve them, because I hadn't expected that, but I did understand the concepts well enough, but not well enough to solve in 15 seconds, so it did take a bit to on top of everything figure out basically what was to be expected because 15 seconds isn't a long time for these complex puzzles even when you know what you're doing. I did find it amusing because it was probably designed to fuck off players who were following a guide so I got a little chuckle at that. I didn't manage to get the secret ending because I saw that that was also a series of complex, time related puzzles, and I knew that that would take a long time and lots of frustration for me to get. I can do puzzles, I can even do them pretty quickly, but I just hate being hit with a timer that makes me start the whole process over again if I've got one misstep. That all said, as mind fucking as the puzzles are in this game, I didn't really feel any pay off, even adding in the fact that I had been working on this game elsewhere for the better part of a decade without a guide.
Rating: Soft pass
78. Aurelia (PC)
Oh man, so I help run a giveaway group and a member wanted to give this NSFW game and the admin team had to have a discussion if we would allow such games and the consensus was, quality games are allowed regardless of NSFW or not and this one was deemed quality... I was among the folks who said even if we don't allow it, wishlisted. I wound up winning the giveaway so I played it. I really enjoyed the game. Ignoring the NSFW elements, the game is really solid, has good story telling and likeable characters. The game is a solid RPG game with a nice variety of systems and plenty of real good story telling. The NSFW content is also quite good, could be more and better, but still quite quite good. If there were a list of NSFW games worth playing, this would surely be among them, not just for the story telling, but also the solid gameplay. That said, I won't throw solid recommendation because it is NSFW.
Rating: Soft recommendation
79. Dusk (PC)
Okay, this game, like a lot of boomer shooters, has been on my list for a long time... and just like some others (Turok), they really don't resonate with me. For the most part, I am capable of playing the game and don't need a guide or anything, but it just doesn't feel as satisfying. Maybe I was never big on Doom or Duke Nukem and I just have nostalgia because of N64 and stuff. Maybe it's the level based nature, where I have a similar problem with games like Mario and the original Castlevania. I don't know, but I constantly find myself thinking when will it be over... and that's not an enjoyable mindset to be in. This game constantly had me looking for ammo, even on lower difficulties, and like a lot of these games had me trying to find guides for the later levels when I had no clue what the game expected me to do. I feel like this style of shooter winds up being more twitch shooter/puzzle solving than your average just let me kill everyone shooter.
Rating: Soft pass
80. Aka (PC)
Chill fetch quest type of game. I love fetch quest games like this, but this one had some issues between its small farming system and some bugs that could be steam deck related, not sure. Never a fan of games that have 1 achievement that requires you to grind out extra hours for no good reason, this is one of those games. I think it actually might have 2 or 3 like that. 1 is sleeping 30 times or something, something you wouldn't do in an average playloop and the other required watering a tree for 100 days or something like that, especially not something you'd get in a normal playloop. Gameplay was enjoyable, mostly didn't require a guide, but some things weren't intuitive and did require a guide to understand, but definitely needed to follow a guide to get quite a few achievements. The farming mechanics are frustrating in their controls, maybe would've been better with mouse, but also I expect it was just as bad if not worse. For the most part the story telling is the only worthwhile thing in the game, because while I enjoy fetch quest style stuff as a chill gameplay mechanic, it was definitely held back by the farming system and unintuitive controls in general. Like I want to be able to recommend it for the story, and the gameplay wasn't that bad, and the game is pretty short, but overall it just isn't worth the time playing. Don't get me wrong, I can't think of a game that provides this experience better, but it also just isn't that great of an experience.
Rating: Soft pass
81. Death's Gambit: Afterlife (PC)
I enjoyed this game, but I also really disliked a lot about it. I sort of tried to have a pure experience with this, but by the time I decided to use a guide for some stuff, I realized that I had fucked up so much at the hub area allowing a lot of NPC characters to die because I didn't understand what was going on. Sort of aligns with that Dark Souls thing, but definitely makes me wish I had followed a guide from the start and I'm rarely in favor of a game requiring a guide just to have a good time. I did have a good time regardless, but I can see it's one of those games that expects you to play through multiple times and I'm just personally not about that, so I like to get as much as I can in a game in a single playthrough. Combat is absolutely solid and boss fights definitely have that Dark Souls appeal where you learn the patterns, win by getting gud, and feeling proud of your accomplishment... tough yet fare... except there are a lot of areas where it's the enemies on the way to the boss or the terrain that make the game awful. I can't think of where it was, but there was one area in the game where I died tens of times because the enemies in the area were both in large numbers, but also high toughness, like the type of enemy you'd expect to not respawn because they are essentially mini-bosses, but they do respawn, that pissed me off. Like the area ends with a mini-boss, but just getting to that mini-boss requires fighting like 10 mini-boss quality enemies that respawn, so I spent more time getting to that mini-boss over and over and over than times spent fighting that mini-boss, who was as one would expect a BS human NPC enemy which are always some of the most dangerous enemies in souls-like games. Ignoring that stuff, plot and characters are pretty good, maybe a step above Dark Souls games where its impossible to follow what's going on, still a little difficult to grasp, but there are definitely stuff going ons that you can follow. Afterlife content adds quite a bit more story and more endings, feels tacked on, but also feels necessary, so not much complaints about that, though I will always complain about DLC, though I have no clue if this game has DLC achievements, I wasn't aiming for 100% regardless. I think as usual with these types of games, I didn't optimize or dig too deep into the game's systems, which might have made the game better or worse, but I find when those systems get needlessly complex I lose interest, consider me an old man.
Rating: Soft recommendation
82. Mario Kart World (NS2)
Lmao, literally the only game I have for NS2 and other than Bananza, I haven't been thinking about getting other NS2 games and I don't know that I will get anything on NS2 other than exclusives at this point because I'm shifting so hard on PC at this point there's no point, and I'm back on achievement BS. Only reason I have this game is because I bought the NS2 bundle that came with the digital download of the game and even that I regret slightly. I FOMO'd and bought a NS2 because I expected it would be hard to obtain and the price would go up with tariffs. I still think the price will go up with tariffs like the other consoles have, but I can see now that the system is not in the demand that could have been expected and I should have assumed as much given the state of the economy... shit is fucked. Anyway, game is solid and fun and the open world stuff is neat. I enjoyed roaming the world, looking for outfits and doing the little challenges. Game has your standard Grand Prix Mario Kart fare... but all in all, this game doesn't have that much content to justify its high price. Grand Prix is just Grand Prix, the open world is neat, but the incentive to wander the world kind of just isn't there. The only thing I got from the game from a single player experience I enjoyed to an extent over other games was unlocking outfits for characters, but that's a quick process and easily obtained fairly quickly if you know where to go. I did play the game early when there were no guides so I didn't have that luxury, but at this point surely it's well documented. The endurance race/tour/elimination race thing is neat in concept, but in execution you wind up with a 30 minute race where if any players get eliminated early you wind up playing by yourself with AI while you real life other players just have to sit around while you finish the endurance race, kind of annoying in a non-competitive environment. Multiplayer in general feels lacking in content, the multiplayer modes are few and not the most fun compared to stuff like Mario Kart 64, again consider me a grumpy old man. Anyways, while it is a great game, possibly the best MK to date, it's definitely not a system seller on its own and the economy isn't helping that. I feel I may have some bias showing so I'll give it time and maybe I'll adjust it as they add free content? Though I expect content to be paid or linked to the expansion online which will maintain the soft rating
Rating: Soft recommendation
83. Police Stories (PC)
I've played a few top down games like this, sort of reminds me of Hotline Miami, I'd say not as hectic, but honestly this one kinda is. The AI is janky af, sometimes you can sneak on them or something and sometimes they'll shoot you through the wall without you doing anything to get detected. Thus it winds up being about as hectic as Hotline Miami and for the most part you wind up having to not do things by the book and go on a corrupt murder spree. Game was enjoyable for the gameplay, story left a lot to be desired, doesn't help in this cultural climate plus my own biases, I was never going to relate with cop characters in any manner. I barely like Brooklyn 99, truly a shame that show took as long as it did to get to talking about police corruption, glad that show got cancelled. Anyway, I'll never recommend a game about cops, I may play them, but I'd never expect to find one worth recommending.
Rating: Soft pass
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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: July 09, 2025, 11:38:20 pm »
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53. Elden Ring (PS4)
This is my third time 100%ing this game. I don't recall why I decided to 100% this again, I would think it rolled in Dungeon for PT, but it shouldn't have been able to populate if I've never played it before on PS4. I don't know, I really don't, but I did. I spent a chunk of April playing this. This experience was different than my Xbox and PC experience as Xbox the game was brand new, I was playing with my wife, and I have Game Pass and PC it doesn't require a subscription to play online and the lion's share of players are on there. PS4, I don't have a Plus subscription anymore, so I couldn't play with others and had to solo the game. It did make for a new experience having to rely on summons and spirit ashes, but the game was more than doable and I really enjoyed my time running through for the umpteenth time. I'd say 3rd, but I played through a few times on PC using randomizer which only does so much to change up the experience (Still recommended). I can't recall what spirit ashes I relied on early game, but towards the end I was leveraging the mimic tear and my character was a tanky tanky tank tank with double giant weapons and so many natural buffs that my weapons did like 1k damage each and putting that on my spirit ash as well made just about every boss in the game go down in less than a minute, it was insane. The exception was probably solely Parthurnax or whatever, the optional tough ass dragon boss, but I think even Radagon+Elden Beast went down super fast with my spirit ash and I just bonking the shit out of them.
Rating: Highly recommended, though suggest PC over console.
54. Fill-a-pix (Android)
I don't recall how I found this, I don't generally look at phone games, but I found this game that was a cross between picross and minesweeper and just kind of fell in love with the game. Spent so much of my spare time playing this and just thinking how much I'd love for a game like this on Steam to earn achievements. Eventually I found that on Steam, games like this are called Mosaic games and there's a developer who makes a ton of these games. I bought a bunch of them and have beaten 1 and started another at this point, but I'll get to those later. This one has a standard level based system broken down by difficulty, that's what I went through. The game also has daily/weekly/monthly puzzles that rotate, I only checked those out a little bit, but I just don't generally bother with that stuff because I'll forget to keep checking and I like to move on to other things. All in all, a real fun and cool game that definitely has that puzzle factor of playing too much of it and seeing the puzzles when you close your eyes. Consider that a pro or a con on your own, I've got strong feelings about it, but in both directions, definitely means that the game is addictive, but also means the game is addictive. Now that all said, knowing they have the mosaic games on steam, I wouldn't recommend this over those, but definitely consider the puzzle style if you enjoy minesweeper and picross.
Rating: Soft recommendation
55. 100 Christmas Cats (PC)
Another find all the cats thing. This is another one where the developer puts out new versions regularly, but they are generally profile limited so I don't play them until they get verified generally. Most of these are free which is always good, but some are paid. I'm sure this one was free, it being a christmas one.
Rating: Soft pass
56. 100 hidden mice (PC)
Another 100 hidden game. I almost shouldn't bother writing anything. I will run out of these games to play eventually and my lists will hopefully get more meaningful again lol
Rating: Soft pass
57. Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk (PC)
I had seen this on Twitter from Wario64 a bunch, but it wasn't until a person on Discord talked about it being one of their favorite games that I decided to go buy a bunch of this developers games and wishlist the rest. I'm so susceptible to suggestion from folks about games to play, even if they are awful. Anyway, a real short game, like under an hour, that is so very obviously about mental health, definitely more an experience than a game, but definitely worth checking out. It's cheap enough and can be had for under a dollar frequently. I definitely recommend the experience.
Rating: Soft recommendation
58. Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion (PC)
Got this one picked for me as a PoP game. Every time I write about a PoP game or a PT game I get a little depressed that I've sort of lost my autonomy of picking games for myself because these keep me so busy I don't have time to pick stuff for myself, plus I have limited play time since I really can't play anything in front of my kid. This is one that should be friendly enough that I should be able to play it in front of my kid, but I fear Adventure Time might be too silly and too violent (can you believe that) for my kid given how impressionable he is. I do like the humor and writing of Adventure Time and would like the finish the series one day. This has its own stand alone adventure, which does reference content from the show, possibly even stuff I haven't yet seen because I don't think I made it that far into the show, maybe season 2, couldn't check if I wanted to I imagine. Combat is fine but definitely gets grating towards the end, but the game is only a 15-20 hour game and a fairly simple 100% completion. Overall really enjoyable licensed game, and wouldn't surprise me if it's the only good or best Adventure Time licensed game, but I will try to play the others eventually. I'd say I might replay this one day because I do have it on console, but I don't know that I'll waste my time replaying a game even if I do recommend it.
Rating: Soft recommendation
59. KungFu Kickball (PC)
I think this was a backlog dungeon pick and a steamgift win so I played it to improve my play ratio for my gifts. Overall a pretty simple and fun sportsball 1v1 arcade game, like a little less convoluted #IDARB. It's fun enough, but I'm never quite that fond of couch multiplayer games, mostly because it's not something I can really do, but I know I would've enjoyed something like this in my high school or college days. That said, there are definitely better more fun more interesting games to play than this, so I wouldn't recommend it over any of the better ones.
Rating: Soft pass
60. How Buddy's parents met - jigsaw puzzle (PC)
simple jigsaw puzzle game, not even that interesting either, and frustratingly the achievements for it require playing each of the games like 6 puzzles at varying piece amounts. I like the art, but I can't abide that level of bs to force increased play time. If I really wanted jigsaw game to waste hours, I'd consider it, but I just can't see it worth the time.
Rating: Hard pass
61. We <3 Katamari: Reroll + Royal Reverie (XS)
I think I only played this because my kid saw me play Katamari Damacy earlier in the year and loved watching me play and I didn't want to play that to 100%, but I definitely wanted to check out Royal Reverie. We <3 Katamari itself is a fantastic game, an amazing improvement over the original, but Royal Reverie doesn't add much to the game really, a few extra levels where you play as a young King of the cosmos and get a little extra story on the character. It's neat, and it is added content which is also great, but it is annoying that you can't unlock the young king for the main game, he's just on his own on the side. I did manage to 100% the game, which I don't think was too much of an annoyance, I think the game did have collectively easier achievements than the first one as it did require 100% completing the item collection, which is truly a PITA. That all said, the game is still amazing, and one shouldn't look a gift horse in the ass when given a great game + good content.
Rating: Solid recommendation
62. Lots of Cats in Every Moment (PC)
This one, one of the few games that I have an exclusive category for Beat (Needs DLC), a game that I would've completed before DLC ever released, but since DLC released, I've got to wait to buy the DLC to be able to properly complete the game. Standard find the cat game, but stupid dlc achievements. And it's not just a few, 50% of the achievements are paid DLC... really brings down your average completion rates.
Rating: Hard pass
63. An Arcade Full of Cats (PC)
Can you believe it, back to back both games that required the creation of the Beat (needs DLC) category. Another game where the game's got a load of DLC achievements, this one is worse though, because over half of the achievements are paid DLC. I "completed" as much as I could without dlc and I'm only at 42% completion. Another one weighing down my average completion rate. Don't get me wrong, I'll probably buy the DLC eventually like a dope, but it certainly sucks, but at least in this one's case, the proceeds to go to shelters and such.
Rating: Hard pass
64. Another Crab's Treasure (XS)
So, I completed this game last year when it was brand new, but the game got a major title update this year adding new game plus, boss rush, and a bunch of other stuff. I hopped back into the game to get all of the new achievements, none paid DLC mind you, just a free title update. Added content is great and appreciated and not too difficult to complete, but definitely stuff that had I known were coming and had been on the fence on starting the game, I would've waited for the DLC to come out to start the game. Still an amazing game, highly recommended.
See Game 29 of 2024
Rating: Solid recommendation
65. 100 Capitalist Cats (PC)
Gosh this feels like not that long ago, but maybe I'm getting periods mixed up and this isn't even the group, truly might not be the group. Anyway, another find the cat game, boy are these a dime a dozen and unfortunately not financially, just how common the game style exists. Anyway, nothing really special about this one once again. I'd probably find more joy in playing Artifex HOGs with stories that last me an hour or so rather than these shallow 5 minute games.
Rating: Soft pass
66. 100 hidden aliens (PC)
Insert generic message about these 100 hidden games. Again, 5 minutes for 100% not worth the time, game doesn't provide value lol
Rating: Soft pass
67. Beautiful Katamari (360)
I beat this game years ago, a decade ago at least. My kid beat We <3 Katamari, so I decided I'd show him the 3rd main entry. I know there are a lot more Katamari games and this probably isn't the 3rd, but I'll call it that. This one actually kinda sucks, it's kinda like Super Mario Bros 2, the real SMB2, not SMB USA, the game is tough, it can be fun, but it expects you to be a master of Katamari just to progress the game, ignoring the fact that the achievements for the game are even tougher and I think there is a lot of online components to the achievements too which might be doable if you coordinated with people, but surely that's tough too even with the game being backwards compatible. It does do some interesting things, but it's all mandatory which in previous games the interesting stuff was optional and you had the pure Katamari experience. This game forces all the goofy stuff upfront, plus the game has a weird scoring system so even if you meet some arbitrary goal, you've got to come back to do it the way it wants or as good as it wants so you can get a higher score.
Rating: Soft recommendation
68. Assassin's Creed: Origins (X1)
I started this game years ago, not sure if it was around release, but it was definitely around the time that Ubisoft starting swapping all of their games to... geez I don't even know what to call it, cursor based menus and lvl based equipment. You know where they encourage you to redo stuff over and over hoping to randomly get better loot. Would you consider that Diablo style equipment, I have no clue. I abandoned it pretty quickly, more because of the menus than the equipment BS. Personally, I'm not a fan of level based equipment, just give me unique weapons with stats and an upgrade system, adding a level system on top of all of that makes upgrading useless. I don't think I upgraded a weapon once in this game, because there just wasn't a point if I'm going to abandon the weapon as soon as I find a higher level version. 1 or the other, not both. Anyway, I came back to this recently, partly wanting to continue my franchise run and I think partly because I pulled it in backlog dungeon and it was a personal productive thing to do. One of the few instances of playing something I do actually want to play even if I had a site pick the game for me. I was always interested in this and the newer ones because the combat was described as more Dark Souls and less whatever the fuck the older Assassin's Creed games were, which to be fair were great for stealth, but actual combat it was like "you should've used stealth, moron". I enjoy that freedom. The story in this game is fairly good, feels fairly disjointed until things start piecing together and there's a lot left desired, but cohesively the experience is one of the best Assassin's Creed games to date. I really look forward to playing Odyssey and Valhalla. The game does bring back the whole outside animus story thing and seems to be trying to get back on track and connects back to Desmond's story iirc, it has been a while since I played this, but I look forward to the overarching story to continue.
Rating: Solid recommendation
69. Monaco (PC)
So, this is one of those games I bought on 360 way back in the day, but never got around to playing. Truly do regret so many 360 era arcade purchases, especially this one. I got it on Steam eventually and had it picked for me for PoP so I made myself play it. Game has 2 acts, which makes it sound like you need to play both acts to beat the game, but really the two acts are the same, just different perspectives, so you get the whole story with act 1, you just get an alternate telling of the story with act 2. Act 2 however, has different and I think harder criteria to beat the game, so it's basically a hard mode/ng+ type of deal, so I noped out. Had to explain that to the event organizer, because I just really had no interest in spending more time with the game to beat it a second time to consider it beat. Luckily they didn't give me that hard of a time about it, but had they said no, I might have forced myself to go through with the Act 2, but I would've hated every second of it. This game didn't click with me that well and I think I didn't get the controls + strategy and stuff because every level I wound up just murdering my way through because I just didn't understand so many of the mechanics. I'm sure I should have been able to stealthily get through every level undetected, but I just didn't get it and there were so many things that were difficult for me to tell because some stuff was color based. I'm not even confident I followed the story other than your generic heist stuff where you get betrayed at the end.
Rating: Solid pass
70. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (NS)
Every year, at some point in the year I wind up playing this game for a day or two because I'm trying to convince my kid to play. We actually wound up finding a 3rd copy for real cheap this year and I had made the comment that since we each have our own switch, maybe we could try and once a week play this like a family and visit each others islands and stuff. Didn't last, didn't even open the 3rd copy. Couldn't get my wife to actually play with us and it only took a day for my kid to start being a bully in the game again. He tends to walk around and hit the villagers with his bug net until they get mad and say they are going to leave his island. So we have to stop playing pretty quickly. I constantly forget how much of an asshole my kid is sometimes. I honestly don't recall what my previous ratings were, so I'll update this if I had said something different in a past year when I get around to collating 2025.
Rating: Soft recommendation
71. Resident Evil 3 (PC)
Another PoP picked game. These are particularly annoying. I tell my pickers please don't pick games that are marked as games that I've already beat, but every season they always always always pick games that are marked as such. This season (right now, not then), I've got at least 2 that are marked as such. It's such an annoyance because I want to be more productive on games I've never played, but especially annoying in situations like this where I'm still technically in the middle of a franchise run and I'm replaying older games in the franchise that I've already played. And once again, this season I got another Resident Evil game, I may go check, I'm wondering if I've gotten Resident Evil games every season for the past few seasons. Anyway, I like this game, despite it being shorter than RE2, RE2 is better for sure, but I will always hate the areas in these games where you're running from giant Tyrant man. I didn't play this for PoP... I don't know why I played this. Maybe backlog dungeon? I really don't know. I'm actually quite perturbed by it.
Rating: Soft recommendation
72. The Darkside Detective (PC)
This one was definitely a PoP game. I don't want to say this is one of my first experiences with point and click games, but I don't usually play this type of game. I've got no issue with them, but I think I don't have the time or patience to play them the way they are meant to be played. I generally follow a walkthrough, especially if I check out the achievements and notice there are missable achievements that could be easily obtained by following a guide. If a game has straight forward story based unmissable achievements, I might give the game an honest go without a guide, but that's rarely the case. Almost feels like cheating with these types of games, but I also feel like these games are always so obtuse, rigid, and overly specific in what they want you to do and how they want you to do it. The humor of this just barely doesn't click well with me, and it doesn't help that the art style doesn't click with me either. This game isn't bad, it's quite good even, but they'll always lose points for those two things because with how little these games provide, these two things are really important. Game is case by case which makes the game a tad more palatable than longer point and click games given its sort of episodic nature. I don't believe the game has an overarching story where the cases culminate in some larger thing, but I don't recall. Short, pretty good, I'll say the extra cases at the end make the game last just a little too long and if they were optional (read as not having achievements) I'd be pretty happy personally, but the game did wear out its welcome by the time I got through the extra case.
Rating: Soft recommendation
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Quote from: Legend
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.strikethroughgames are games that have been abandoned.
53. Elden Ring (PS4)
This is my third time 100%ing this game. I don't recall why I decided to 100% this again, I would think it rolled in Dungeon for PT, but it shouldn't have been able to populate if I've never played it before on PS4. I don't know, I really don't, but I did. I spent a chunk of April playing this. This experience was different than my Xbox and PC experience as Xbox the game was brand new, I was playing with my wife, and I have Game Pass and PC it doesn't require a subscription to play online and the lion's share of players are on there. PS4, I don't have a Plus subscription anymore, so I couldn't play with others and had to solo the game. It did make for a new experience having to rely on summons and spirit ashes, but the game was more than doable and I really enjoyed my time running through for the umpteenth time. I'd say 3rd, but I played through a few times on PC using randomizer which only does so much to change up the experience (Still recommended). I can't recall what spirit ashes I relied on early game, but towards the end I was leveraging the mimic tear and my character was a tanky tanky tank tank with double giant weapons and so many natural buffs that my weapons did like 1k damage each and putting that on my spirit ash as well made just about every boss in the game go down in less than a minute, it was insane. The exception was probably solely Parthurnax or whatever, the optional tough ass dragon boss, but I think even Radagon+Elden Beast went down super fast with my spirit ash and I just bonking the shit out of them.
Rating: Highly recommended, though suggest PC over console.
54. Fill-a-pix (Android)
I don't recall how I found this, I don't generally look at phone games, but I found this game that was a cross between picross and minesweeper and just kind of fell in love with the game. Spent so much of my spare time playing this and just thinking how much I'd love for a game like this on Steam to earn achievements. Eventually I found that on Steam, games like this are called Mosaic games and there's a developer who makes a ton of these games. I bought a bunch of them and have beaten 1 and started another at this point, but I'll get to those later. This one has a standard level based system broken down by difficulty, that's what I went through. The game also has daily/weekly/monthly puzzles that rotate, I only checked those out a little bit, but I just don't generally bother with that stuff because I'll forget to keep checking and I like to move on to other things. All in all, a real fun and cool game that definitely has that puzzle factor of playing too much of it and seeing the puzzles when you close your eyes. Consider that a pro or a con on your own, I've got strong feelings about it, but in both directions, definitely means that the game is addictive, but also means the game is addictive. Now that all said, knowing they have the mosaic games on steam, I wouldn't recommend this over those, but definitely consider the puzzle style if you enjoy minesweeper and picross.
Rating: Soft recommendation
55. 100 Christmas Cats (PC)
Another find all the cats thing. This is another one where the developer puts out new versions regularly, but they are generally profile limited so I don't play them until they get verified generally. Most of these are free which is always good, but some are paid. I'm sure this one was free, it being a christmas one.
Rating: Soft pass
56. 100 hidden mice (PC)
Another 100 hidden game. I almost shouldn't bother writing anything. I will run out of these games to play eventually and my lists will hopefully get more meaningful again lol
Rating: Soft pass
57. Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk (PC)
I had seen this on Twitter from Wario64 a bunch, but it wasn't until a person on Discord talked about it being one of their favorite games that I decided to go buy a bunch of this developers games and wishlist the rest. I'm so susceptible to suggestion from folks about games to play, even if they are awful. Anyway, a real short game, like under an hour, that is so very obviously about mental health, definitely more an experience than a game, but definitely worth checking out. It's cheap enough and can be had for under a dollar frequently. I definitely recommend the experience.
Rating: Soft recommendation
58. Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion (PC)
Got this one picked for me as a PoP game. Every time I write about a PoP game or a PT game I get a little depressed that I've sort of lost my autonomy of picking games for myself because these keep me so busy I don't have time to pick stuff for myself, plus I have limited play time since I really can't play anything in front of my kid. This is one that should be friendly enough that I should be able to play it in front of my kid, but I fear Adventure Time might be too silly and too violent (can you believe that) for my kid given how impressionable he is. I do like the humor and writing of Adventure Time and would like the finish the series one day. This has its own stand alone adventure, which does reference content from the show, possibly even stuff I haven't yet seen because I don't think I made it that far into the show, maybe season 2, couldn't check if I wanted to I imagine. Combat is fine but definitely gets grating towards the end, but the game is only a 15-20 hour game and a fairly simple 100% completion. Overall really enjoyable licensed game, and wouldn't surprise me if it's the only good or best Adventure Time licensed game, but I will try to play the others eventually. I'd say I might replay this one day because I do have it on console, but I don't know that I'll waste my time replaying a game even if I do recommend it.
Rating: Soft recommendation
59. KungFu Kickball (PC)
I think this was a backlog dungeon pick and a steamgift win so I played it to improve my play ratio for my gifts. Overall a pretty simple and fun sportsball 1v1 arcade game, like a little less convoluted #IDARB. It's fun enough, but I'm never quite that fond of couch multiplayer games, mostly because it's not something I can really do, but I know I would've enjoyed something like this in my high school or college days. That said, there are definitely better more fun more interesting games to play than this, so I wouldn't recommend it over any of the better ones.
Rating: Soft pass
60. How Buddy's parents met - jigsaw puzzle (PC)
simple jigsaw puzzle game, not even that interesting either, and frustratingly the achievements for it require playing each of the games like 6 puzzles at varying piece amounts. I like the art, but I can't abide that level of bs to force increased play time. If I really wanted jigsaw game to waste hours, I'd consider it, but I just can't see it worth the time.
Rating: Hard pass
61. We <3 Katamari: Reroll + Royal Reverie (XS)
I think I only played this because my kid saw me play Katamari Damacy earlier in the year and loved watching me play and I didn't want to play that to 100%, but I definitely wanted to check out Royal Reverie. We <3 Katamari itself is a fantastic game, an amazing improvement over the original, but Royal Reverie doesn't add much to the game really, a few extra levels where you play as a young King of the cosmos and get a little extra story on the character. It's neat, and it is added content which is also great, but it is annoying that you can't unlock the young king for the main game, he's just on his own on the side. I did manage to 100% the game, which I don't think was too much of an annoyance, I think the game did have collectively easier achievements than the first one as it did require 100% completing the item collection, which is truly a PITA. That all said, the game is still amazing, and one shouldn't look a gift horse in the ass when given a great game + good content.
Rating: Solid recommendation
62. Lots of Cats in Every Moment (PC)
This one, one of the few games that I have an exclusive category for Beat (Needs DLC), a game that I would've completed before DLC ever released, but since DLC released, I've got to wait to buy the DLC to be able to properly complete the game. Standard find the cat game, but stupid dlc achievements. And it's not just a few, 50% of the achievements are paid DLC... really brings down your average completion rates.
Rating: Hard pass
63. An Arcade Full of Cats (PC)
Can you believe it, back to back both games that required the creation of the Beat (needs DLC) category. Another game where the game's got a load of DLC achievements, this one is worse though, because over half of the achievements are paid DLC. I "completed" as much as I could without dlc and I'm only at 42% completion. Another one weighing down my average completion rate. Don't get me wrong, I'll probably buy the DLC eventually like a dope, but it certainly sucks, but at least in this one's case, the proceeds to go to shelters and such.
Rating: Hard pass
64. Another Crab's Treasure (XS)
So, I completed this game last year when it was brand new, but the game got a major title update this year adding new game plus, boss rush, and a bunch of other stuff. I hopped back into the game to get all of the new achievements, none paid DLC mind you, just a free title update. Added content is great and appreciated and not too difficult to complete, but definitely stuff that had I known were coming and had been on the fence on starting the game, I would've waited for the DLC to come out to start the game. Still an amazing game, highly recommended.
See Game 29 of 2024
Rating: Solid recommendation
65. 100 Capitalist Cats (PC)
Gosh this feels like not that long ago, but maybe I'm getting periods mixed up and this isn't even the group, truly might not be the group. Anyway, another find the cat game, boy are these a dime a dozen and unfortunately not financially, just how common the game style exists. Anyway, nothing really special about this one once again. I'd probably find more joy in playing Artifex HOGs with stories that last me an hour or so rather than these shallow 5 minute games.
Rating: Soft pass
66. 100 hidden aliens (PC)
Insert generic message about these 100 hidden games. Again, 5 minutes for 100% not worth the time, game doesn't provide value lol
Rating: Soft pass
67. Beautiful Katamari (360)
I beat this game years ago, a decade ago at least. My kid beat We <3 Katamari, so I decided I'd show him the 3rd main entry. I know there are a lot more Katamari games and this probably isn't the 3rd, but I'll call it that. This one actually kinda sucks, it's kinda like Super Mario Bros 2, the real SMB2, not SMB USA, the game is tough, it can be fun, but it expects you to be a master of Katamari just to progress the game, ignoring the fact that the achievements for the game are even tougher and I think there is a lot of online components to the achievements too which might be doable if you coordinated with people, but surely that's tough too even with the game being backwards compatible. It does do some interesting things, but it's all mandatory which in previous games the interesting stuff was optional and you had the pure Katamari experience. This game forces all the goofy stuff upfront, plus the game has a weird scoring system so even if you meet some arbitrary goal, you've got to come back to do it the way it wants or as good as it wants so you can get a higher score.
Rating: Soft recommendation
68. Assassin's Creed: Origins (X1)
I started this game years ago, not sure if it was around release, but it was definitely around the time that Ubisoft starting swapping all of their games to... geez I don't even know what to call it, cursor based menus and lvl based equipment. You know where they encourage you to redo stuff over and over hoping to randomly get better loot. Would you consider that Diablo style equipment, I have no clue. I abandoned it pretty quickly, more because of the menus than the equipment BS. Personally, I'm not a fan of level based equipment, just give me unique weapons with stats and an upgrade system, adding a level system on top of all of that makes upgrading useless. I don't think I upgraded a weapon once in this game, because there just wasn't a point if I'm going to abandon the weapon as soon as I find a higher level version. 1 or the other, not both. Anyway, I came back to this recently, partly wanting to continue my franchise run and I think partly because I pulled it in backlog dungeon and it was a personal productive thing to do. One of the few instances of playing something I do actually want to play even if I had a site pick the game for me. I was always interested in this and the newer ones because the combat was described as more Dark Souls and less whatever the fuck the older Assassin's Creed games were, which to be fair were great for stealth, but actual combat it was like "you should've used stealth, moron". I enjoy that freedom. The story in this game is fairly good, feels fairly disjointed until things start piecing together and there's a lot left desired, but cohesively the experience is one of the best Assassin's Creed games to date. I really look forward to playing Odyssey and Valhalla. The game does bring back the whole outside animus story thing and seems to be trying to get back on track and connects back to Desmond's story iirc, it has been a while since I played this, but I look forward to the overarching story to continue.
Rating: Solid recommendation
69. Monaco (PC)
So, this is one of those games I bought on 360 way back in the day, but never got around to playing. Truly do regret so many 360 era arcade purchases, especially this one. I got it on Steam eventually and had it picked for me for PoP so I made myself play it. Game has 2 acts, which makes it sound like you need to play both acts to beat the game, but really the two acts are the same, just different perspectives, so you get the whole story with act 1, you just get an alternate telling of the story with act 2. Act 2 however, has different and I think harder criteria to beat the game, so it's basically a hard mode/ng+ type of deal, so I noped out. Had to explain that to the event organizer, because I just really had no interest in spending more time with the game to beat it a second time to consider it beat. Luckily they didn't give me that hard of a time about it, but had they said no, I might have forced myself to go through with the Act 2, but I would've hated every second of it. This game didn't click with me that well and I think I didn't get the controls + strategy and stuff because every level I wound up just murdering my way through because I just didn't understand so many of the mechanics. I'm sure I should have been able to stealthily get through every level undetected, but I just didn't get it and there were so many things that were difficult for me to tell because some stuff was color based. I'm not even confident I followed the story other than your generic heist stuff where you get betrayed at the end.
Rating: Solid pass
70. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (NS)
Every year, at some point in the year I wind up playing this game for a day or two because I'm trying to convince my kid to play. We actually wound up finding a 3rd copy for real cheap this year and I had made the comment that since we each have our own switch, maybe we could try and once a week play this like a family and visit each others islands and stuff. Didn't last, didn't even open the 3rd copy. Couldn't get my wife to actually play with us and it only took a day for my kid to start being a bully in the game again. He tends to walk around and hit the villagers with his bug net until they get mad and say they are going to leave his island. So we have to stop playing pretty quickly. I constantly forget how much of an asshole my kid is sometimes. I honestly don't recall what my previous ratings were, so I'll update this if I had said something different in a past year when I get around to collating 2025.
Rating: Soft recommendation
71. Resident Evil 3 (PC)
Rating: Soft recommendation
72. The Darkside Detective (PC)
This one was definitely a PoP game. I don't want to say this is one of my first experiences with point and click games, but I don't usually play this type of game. I've got no issue with them, but I think I don't have the time or patience to play them the way they are meant to be played. I generally follow a walkthrough, especially if I check out the achievements and notice there are missable achievements that could be easily obtained by following a guide. If a game has straight forward story based unmissable achievements, I might give the game an honest go without a guide, but that's rarely the case. Almost feels like cheating with these types of games, but I also feel like these games are always so obtuse, rigid, and overly specific in what they want you to do and how they want you to do it. The humor of this just barely doesn't click well with me, and it doesn't help that the art style doesn't click with me either. This game isn't bad, it's quite good even, but they'll always lose points for those two things because with how little these games provide, these two things are really important. Game is case by case which makes the game a tad more palatable than longer point and click games given its sort of episodic nature. I don't believe the game has an overarching story where the cases culminate in some larger thing, but I don't recall. Short, pretty good, I'll say the extra cases at the end make the game last just a little too long and if they were optional (read as not having achievements) I'd be pretty happy personally, but the game did wear out its welcome by the time I got through the extra case.
Rating: Soft recommendation
Next List
7
General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« on: May 07, 2025, 01:10:56 pm »
Yeah, the shift towards lim print and digital pushed me to PC gaming. The only things I buy for console these days are bargain bin/clearance and exclusives. I've still got my outliers like Yakuza/Like a Dragon and Assassin's Creed where I'll keep going PS and Xbox respectively for consistency, but at this point, I still wait on bargain bin or clearance prices for those anyway. Otherwise, I'm waiting for steam key bundles for games... because everything gets bundled eventually.
8
General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: April 15, 2025, 08:14:05 am »
Main List
Previous List
32. PictoQuest (PC)
I love me some picross/nonograms. This one and another one have been sitting on my backlog for far too long and this one came up in PT dungeon iirc. This one is just a series of picross puzzles across a Mario World overworld map with some little dialogue here and there. Overall a really enjoyable picross experience. The other picross game, which to date I have yet to play, sounds way more interactive and I have concerns that it might hinder the puzzle experiences, but overall, this one is real good and I recommend it.
Rating: Soft recommendation
33. 100 hidden gnomes (PC)
Another 100 hidden game. There are a finite number of these games and a lot of them are profile limited, but as they leave profile limited status I'll continue playing these. Are these games worth your time, idk, I enjoy them despite them being 10 minute games, but they are easy 100%s for game completion stats on steam and other sites... and that's kind of the only reason to really play these. I mean if you enjoy hidden object games like this where there's no puzzles or stories, just find the things, then it's great, but again only for 10 minutes and zero replay value.
Rating: Soft pass
34. Katamari Damacy REROLL (PC)
I love Katamari games, but the only reason I played this was because it got selected for me for PoP because I had previously won the game in a giveaway. Fantastic game, would've loved to go for 100% but it was just too much of a time investment to fill out the compendium or whatever it's called having rolled up every available item throughout the game. If not for that achievement, I surely would've went for 100%, but I know how annoying it can be to find every tiny thing given that certain items only appear in certain levels and items do despawn as you shift from size to size. Ignoring that stuff, the game is a classic and absolutely fantastic. Highly recommended for its goofy and addictive gameplay
Rating: Solid recommendation
35. Devil May Cry 5 (PC)
I played this as part of my franchise run of the DMC franchise years ago and I didn't enjoy this game. The art is beautiful and afaik spawned a lot of SFM content, but I just don't enjoy DMC style hack and slash content, I'm also not big on score attack type games that rate you constantly. These are all things that detract from the experience for me, but I knew I didn't give this game a solid chance my first time around because I wasn't enjoying any of the games in the franchise, but was just playing them to check boxes and be able to say, yeah, I've played the DMC games. That's kind of the running thing with the franchise runs is just checking boxes so I can say yeah, I've played all of the games in that franchise, has nothing to do with whether or not I like the games, but more about the whole "1000 games to play before you die" type of thing where I definitely take suggestions from others and books and whatnot, but I also want to be able to form my own suggestions and it's nice to have outliers playing games others might not have given a chance. Usually ends with stuff like this where I wouldn't recommend a single DMC game as a must play, but that's definitely bias driven. I think I did do better this time around playing the game as I had played it before, knew what to expect, and wasn't burnt out on hack and slash gameplay... but I still didn't really enjoy the game. I also really hate that Dante looks like Matt Mercer, that will never not irk me.
Rating: Soft pass
36. Ghostwire: Tokyo (PC)
This is one of those games where I kinda wish I had played it on another platform, but it was a gift and I needed to play it because it was picked for me for PoP. I think I would've had a better time on PS5/XS, not that I had a bad time necessarily, but I know the steam deck doesn't look nearly as nice as PS5/XS. Game was largely enjoyable to play, I would've liked to put more time into the game to do more collectible stuff, but traveling and traversing was actually quite a chore in this game, and I feel like there were some achievements in the game that would've made the 100% a real pain in the ass, so I just couldn't be bothered to do more without the intent of aiming for 100%... looking back it looks like there is a lot to do, but nothing dealbreaking, it just would've taken me another 30 hours to 100% which was more time than I was willing to invest at the time. I'll consider going back to it, but again, it's tough justifying. I really really hate how late I am with writing this stuff. I didn't care for a lot of the story telling in this, it's definitely one of those situations where I as a character wouldn't have made the choices that I was forced into making, but the game mechanically is very solid and enjoyable, though a lot of the combat was just plain tiresome. It gives me Death Stranding vibes in that way, I enjoy the most of the game, but the combat really brings the experience down. I'm also concerned that I'll decide to go back to the game to finish up stuff and I won't be able to recall the systems and mechanics and will push off from the game because of it.
Rating: Soft recommendation
37. Forza Horizon 5 (XS)
As always, I'm playing this game off and on. This time around I was playing to aim to get all events done in the given series 4 seasons. I did everything in every season to get the awards and I think the achievement for it. I'm actually wondering now if I got all of the items but didn't get the achievement because I missed some stupid event that was really time sensitive, but I was playing this game daily for weeks to attempt to do this. I'd be really sour if I found out in retrospect I never earned that achievement. I'm not going to look, I don't want to know for sure. I tried to check out some of the new content that released when the game launched for PS5, but I think I didn't delve into it too much, I'll write about that maybe next year lmao. Anyway, this game is a joy and it's definitely sad that as good as this game is, it'll be a piece of shit as soon as it gets delisted. I need to give Horizon 4 a go now that it's delisted and see what's left to be played now that there is no support for the game, that will be telling about how feasible this game will be once it goes offline. AFAIK Horizon 2/3 are the last good Horizon games because they weren't quite service games.
Rating: Highly recommended
38. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 (XS)
I've been playing this game off and on for like a year or so. It's a real good time waster and I've been enjoying my time with it when I just want something to do without needing to worry about language or violence. I did look at a guide and it seems you can get the 100% a bit quicker via some shenanigans, which I could do, but then I wouldn't have the game to rely on as a time waster, so while I'm considering it, I probably won't take advantage. Game is simple enough that it's not too much of a chore to play, but the game is tedious enough that it does get tiresome. I tried to do the barn stuff and I'm just like I'm not sure I get the point of being able to buy used parts essentially. I can repair some parts, but I can't repair others, and there is no visible icon or anything that lets you know if a part is repairable and you definitely can't repair parts under 15% health, so I've basically just ignored used parts. Maybe it would save some money, but I don't even know if the used parts values are really cheaper than just buying them new, and parts are cheap enough and you get enough for selling fixed up cars that I just couldn't be bothered with that mechanic. I go to the barns just to find cache crates because that's the only viable way to get XP to level up to get the achievement for hitting level 50. I think I might have one of the older versions of this game on Steam, so I'll definitely give that a try at some point to see how the series has changed over the years. Game does have a lot of DLC but gratefully the game didn't add DLC achievements, otherwise I'd be really not considering spending more time in the game given I'd never get the 100%.
Rating: Soft recommendation
39. Days Gone (PC)
Another game that I think I might have enjoyed playing on console over PC. Game played relatively fine on steam deck, but I bet would've played a bit better on PS5 via BC, though at this point I'm irked about the PS5 remaster and the shenanigans with that. Shortly after I beat this game they released new DLC for PC, paid DLC, so I'll never get the 100% now. I considered coming back to it for the 100% but I knew I couldn't get it before the DLC so I said nah. Another game that I enjoyed but gets held back by its combat. The game starts real slow, to the point that I had played it on PS4 originally, but abandoned it fairly quickly because of how slow the game started. I got this picked for me as a PoP game due to it being a gift that needed to be played, so I committed to the game because of that. That said, once you get over the hump the game is actually quite good. Has a good story, good characters, proper drama, good gameplay, but a lot of the combat can get tiresome and annoying and while the horde stuff is interesting once you're equipped enough to do so, but a single horde will empty your entire inventory clearing it out and it's such a fucking slog to refill your inventory. So while it's a great thing to do late or post game and really enjoyable, having to prepare in the first place and having to prepare for the next horde after finishing a horde basically ruins the fun of the experience given how much effort goes into filling your inventory back up. The game is quite long compared to what I expected. I expected an Uncharted level time to beat for the game, but the game is easily 40 hours to beat, which is just awesome, but on the other hand, and I hate to recommend it, this game would've been better had it been split into 2 games or even 3 games with even more story. By the time you hit the point that you go to the south area, the game already feels like a full fucking game and could've been a good sort of cliffhanger ending with the sequel taking place in the south. Don't get me wrong, who am I to complain that a game has too much content, but I think the game would've been more palatable that way. The game stuck around a bit too long. Really good game despite its flaws.
Rating: Soft to solid recommendation
40. A Castle Full of Cats (PC)
I'm pretty sure I had previously beaten this game, but the game added content and achievements, so I went back to it to finish it out. Yeah, I had beaten the game last year and they had an update at some point that added 4 additional achievements and some extra areas in the game.
More info from 2024
Rating: Soft recommendation
41. Cats Hidden in Italy (PC)
Another hidden object game. These are just one big scene with cats hidden about. I don't care for this style of hidden object, 1 really big screen that you have to zoom in on, but it's still enjoyable.
Rating: Soft pass
42. Sex with the Devil (PC)
Man this year is being a bit unhinged with these awful NSFW games. This one, I don't think it was a gift, but I think it did pop up in dungeon, but maybe it was a gift, I can't recall. Anyway, NSFW content in the game is fucking weird and awful, but I don't think it's necessarily the point of the game. Gameplay is wandering through a maze, not getting murdered, and finding items to unlock a door to continue the game. Real basic stuff, story doesn't have a good ending as you shouldn't be surprised.
Rating: Solid pass
43. 100 hidden mushrooms (PC)
Another 100 hidden game, again, not much to say, not really worth the time, but I do it to bulk up my achievement count and my completed game count. Feels cheap to do so, but it is what it is. Also do it to build fast rep in PlayTracker, which I'm hoping when guilds releases is something I'll be able to take advantage of, but looking at what guilds are at the moment, I won't be surprised if it stays locked to developers and publishers.
Rating: Soft pass
44. Cats (PC)
What a game name lmao. This is a hidden object game, I can't recall if it's the same dev as other ones, but it only has 2 achievements and takes all of 4 minutes to complete, again, not worth the time
Rating: Solid pass
45. Stray Cats in Cozy Town (PC)
I enjoy this dev's games mostly because I know they donate their profits to shelters and stuff which is cool, this one is a little neighborhood with cats hidden all over and it's pretty neat. I think I needed hints or something for the last couple of cats. I do enjoy the DevCats games and at least the proceeds go to a good cause, but again they aren't really worth the time and unfortunately the dev has started to include DLC achievements in their games which is unfortunate for folks who care about such things. This one for instance, the dev added paid DLC but it has no achievements which is nice, but I think one of their newer games they added achievements with the DLC, so at least this one is completable without the DLC, but have to be careful going forward.
Rating: Soft pass
46. Wordle (PC)
I've played other entries in this series, mind you it predates Wordle as you know it, but it's a shitty little letter word game.
See Game #20 2024 for more info
Rating: Solid pass
47. Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5)
Man, Kiryu, I keep expecting to be done with him and he keeps coming back. I thought Y6 was a good send off, then Y7 gave more of a send off, and then this game gave even more of a send off... and then Y8 gives him presumably a final send off. I appreciate Kiryu keeping coming back, and I do love Kiryu, but I just, I have so many mixed feelings about what they've done to Kiryu, but it definitely feels like one of those we have to end the character so people can drop it, we tried to let him go off into the sunset and that wasn't good enough, so now he gets to go away for good. I'm really trying not to spoiler anything, but I think the writing is on the wall here. This is the last true Yakuza game and it's so good. I do hope to see more Gaiden games whether it be younger Kiryu or other characters, I do really hope it becomes a mainstay. This one is sort of a side tale telling what happens with kiryu between Y6 and Y7 and sort of taking place during Y7. Absolutely highly recommended for anyone who has played Y0-6 because this one is just an amazing send off for Kiryu, handled much better than Y8 did, Y8 did Kiryu dirty... even if I do understand the reasoning
Rating: Solid recommendation
48. Cats Hidden in Germany (PC)
and you thought we were done, never... here's another one of the crummy full picture city based find the cats games. Again, not worth your time. I keep saying that despite me continually playing them. I have no defense to it other than quick easy 100 achievements and real easy to pick up and play and get through the whole game in a single sitting, though at 4-10 minutes, it's still not worth the cost of entry.
Rating: Soft pass
49. Street Fighter (PC)
I'll be honest, I think I always had it in my head that the first Street Fighter game was Street Fighter 2010 or whatever for the NES, which I think isn't even a traditional fighter game. I had been gifted one of the Street Fighter collections and rolled it as a backlog game and decided that I would beat at least 1 Street Fighter game, to make progress on a franchise run, every time it shows up in backlog dungeon. Though, I think I just months later, rolled it again and skipped it, I don't know why I did that, might have been an accident. Anyway, this one you can only play as Ken or Ryu and the controls are really stupid simple and janky and the game is tough as balls. Really don't recommend it. I do have to make the consideration if I'm going to make the effort to get all of the character's arcade endings in each game as I do recall in Street Fighter II that there are character endings. Like I vaguely recall Chun-li's character ending in SF2.
Rating: Solid pass
50. Nonogram - Master's Legacy (PC)
Just a nonogram game, I love me some nonogram. I played this one for all of 20 minutes to get the majority of the achievements, this game's claim to "fame" is that it has a community area where you can create your own nonograms. That's neat, but what's a nonogram game without a tightly curated list of nonograms to do. Honestly, not really worth the time, there are way better nonogram games, though the majority of them probably don't have a nonogram creator mode... so :shrug:
Rating: Soft pass
51. Heroes & Legends: Conquerors of Kolhar (PC)
I won this on steamgifts nearly 10 years ago, it's one of my oldest wins, mind you I only have like 7 wins that are older than 2 years ago as I was off the site for like 8 years. Game is fairly short, not too much of a chore and actually a quite enjoyable game. It wasn't until the last level or two that I really had to spend time grinding for xp which was a little annoying that the game had a curve at the end that required grinding. Personally, I'm not a fan of games extending their playtime by requiring you to arbitrarily have to grind for XP, games lose points for that with me. The abilities are nice, they are simple enough that you don't have to really "learn" them like some more complex games, but they do make a natural synergy and flow that does give combat depth and strategy. That all said, it is a really old game at this point and really doesn't do anything noteworthy, not a bad game, but not worth checking out honestly.
Rating: Soft pass
52. Bots are Stupid (PC)
I love puzzle games and I enjoy programming, so games like these tend to grab my attention. Now even with my attention, they are generally hit or miss, some are a joy like Kaizen and Zachtronics games, but then you have ones like this which start okay, but just aren't that enjoyable and I wind up suffering through it just to be done with it. It's an okay game, but the mechanics and flow just aren't that enjoyable and I didn't find myself with the a-ha moments like I'd get with Kaizen or Human Resource Machine. It started that way, which was enjoyable, but after so many levels the game started getting convoluted and outstayed its welcome. I think a big part of it was the weird granularity of the wait system that made it truly a chore. You have to set the wait command to such an exact value "1.14 seconds" for instance, that makes the trial and error nature that much more annoying and forces the trial and error nature as well, which takes away from a lot of the ability for it to be a "programming" game as you can plan a bit, but you wind up spending a ton of your time trial and erroring for the exact wait time between commands.
Rating: Soft pass
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Previous List
Quote from: Legend
bold games are games that have been beaten, previously beaten, or are unbeatable.
32. PictoQuest (PC)
I love me some picross/nonograms. This one and another one have been sitting on my backlog for far too long and this one came up in PT dungeon iirc. This one is just a series of picross puzzles across a Mario World overworld map with some little dialogue here and there. Overall a really enjoyable picross experience. The other picross game, which to date I have yet to play, sounds way more interactive and I have concerns that it might hinder the puzzle experiences, but overall, this one is real good and I recommend it.
Rating: Soft recommendation
33. 100 hidden gnomes (PC)
Another 100 hidden game. There are a finite number of these games and a lot of them are profile limited, but as they leave profile limited status I'll continue playing these. Are these games worth your time, idk, I enjoy them despite them being 10 minute games, but they are easy 100%s for game completion stats on steam and other sites... and that's kind of the only reason to really play these. I mean if you enjoy hidden object games like this where there's no puzzles or stories, just find the things, then it's great, but again only for 10 minutes and zero replay value.
Rating: Soft pass
34. Katamari Damacy REROLL (PC)
I love Katamari games, but the only reason I played this was because it got selected for me for PoP because I had previously won the game in a giveaway. Fantastic game, would've loved to go for 100% but it was just too much of a time investment to fill out the compendium or whatever it's called having rolled up every available item throughout the game. If not for that achievement, I surely would've went for 100%, but I know how annoying it can be to find every tiny thing given that certain items only appear in certain levels and items do despawn as you shift from size to size. Ignoring that stuff, the game is a classic and absolutely fantastic. Highly recommended for its goofy and addictive gameplay
Rating: Solid recommendation
35. Devil May Cry 5 (PC)
I played this as part of my franchise run of the DMC franchise years ago and I didn't enjoy this game. The art is beautiful and afaik spawned a lot of SFM content, but I just don't enjoy DMC style hack and slash content, I'm also not big on score attack type games that rate you constantly. These are all things that detract from the experience for me, but I knew I didn't give this game a solid chance my first time around because I wasn't enjoying any of the games in the franchise, but was just playing them to check boxes and be able to say, yeah, I've played the DMC games. That's kind of the running thing with the franchise runs is just checking boxes so I can say yeah, I've played all of the games in that franchise, has nothing to do with whether or not I like the games, but more about the whole "1000 games to play before you die" type of thing where I definitely take suggestions from others and books and whatnot, but I also want to be able to form my own suggestions and it's nice to have outliers playing games others might not have given a chance. Usually ends with stuff like this where I wouldn't recommend a single DMC game as a must play, but that's definitely bias driven. I think I did do better this time around playing the game as I had played it before, knew what to expect, and wasn't burnt out on hack and slash gameplay... but I still didn't really enjoy the game. I also really hate that Dante looks like Matt Mercer, that will never not irk me.
Rating: Soft pass
36. Ghostwire: Tokyo (PC)
This is one of those games where I kinda wish I had played it on another platform, but it was a gift and I needed to play it because it was picked for me for PoP. I think I would've had a better time on PS5/XS, not that I had a bad time necessarily, but I know the steam deck doesn't look nearly as nice as PS5/XS. Game was largely enjoyable to play, I would've liked to put more time into the game to do more collectible stuff, but traveling and traversing was actually quite a chore in this game, and I feel like there were some achievements in the game that would've made the 100% a real pain in the ass, so I just couldn't be bothered to do more without the intent of aiming for 100%... looking back it looks like there is a lot to do, but nothing dealbreaking, it just would've taken me another 30 hours to 100% which was more time than I was willing to invest at the time. I'll consider going back to it, but again, it's tough justifying. I really really hate how late I am with writing this stuff. I didn't care for a lot of the story telling in this, it's definitely one of those situations where I as a character wouldn't have made the choices that I was forced into making, but the game mechanically is very solid and enjoyable, though a lot of the combat was just plain tiresome. It gives me Death Stranding vibes in that way, I enjoy the most of the game, but the combat really brings the experience down. I'm also concerned that I'll decide to go back to the game to finish up stuff and I won't be able to recall the systems and mechanics and will push off from the game because of it.
Rating: Soft recommendation
37. Forza Horizon 5 (XS)
As always, I'm playing this game off and on. This time around I was playing to aim to get all events done in the given series 4 seasons. I did everything in every season to get the awards and I think the achievement for it. I'm actually wondering now if I got all of the items but didn't get the achievement because I missed some stupid event that was really time sensitive, but I was playing this game daily for weeks to attempt to do this. I'd be really sour if I found out in retrospect I never earned that achievement. I'm not going to look, I don't want to know for sure. I tried to check out some of the new content that released when the game launched for PS5, but I think I didn't delve into it too much, I'll write about that maybe next year lmao. Anyway, this game is a joy and it's definitely sad that as good as this game is, it'll be a piece of shit as soon as it gets delisted. I need to give Horizon 4 a go now that it's delisted and see what's left to be played now that there is no support for the game, that will be telling about how feasible this game will be once it goes offline. AFAIK Horizon 2/3 are the last good Horizon games because they weren't quite service games.
Rating: Highly recommended
38. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 (XS)
I've been playing this game off and on for like a year or so. It's a real good time waster and I've been enjoying my time with it when I just want something to do without needing to worry about language or violence. I did look at a guide and it seems you can get the 100% a bit quicker via some shenanigans, which I could do, but then I wouldn't have the game to rely on as a time waster, so while I'm considering it, I probably won't take advantage. Game is simple enough that it's not too much of a chore to play, but the game is tedious enough that it does get tiresome. I tried to do the barn stuff and I'm just like I'm not sure I get the point of being able to buy used parts essentially. I can repair some parts, but I can't repair others, and there is no visible icon or anything that lets you know if a part is repairable and you definitely can't repair parts under 15% health, so I've basically just ignored used parts. Maybe it would save some money, but I don't even know if the used parts values are really cheaper than just buying them new, and parts are cheap enough and you get enough for selling fixed up cars that I just couldn't be bothered with that mechanic. I go to the barns just to find cache crates because that's the only viable way to get XP to level up to get the achievement for hitting level 50. I think I might have one of the older versions of this game on Steam, so I'll definitely give that a try at some point to see how the series has changed over the years. Game does have a lot of DLC but gratefully the game didn't add DLC achievements, otherwise I'd be really not considering spending more time in the game given I'd never get the 100%.
Rating: Soft recommendation
39. Days Gone (PC)
Another game that I think I might have enjoyed playing on console over PC. Game played relatively fine on steam deck, but I bet would've played a bit better on PS5 via BC, though at this point I'm irked about the PS5 remaster and the shenanigans with that. Shortly after I beat this game they released new DLC for PC, paid DLC, so I'll never get the 100% now. I considered coming back to it for the 100% but I knew I couldn't get it before the DLC so I said nah. Another game that I enjoyed but gets held back by its combat. The game starts real slow, to the point that I had played it on PS4 originally, but abandoned it fairly quickly because of how slow the game started. I got this picked for me as a PoP game due to it being a gift that needed to be played, so I committed to the game because of that. That said, once you get over the hump the game is actually quite good. Has a good story, good characters, proper drama, good gameplay, but a lot of the combat can get tiresome and annoying and while the horde stuff is interesting once you're equipped enough to do so, but a single horde will empty your entire inventory clearing it out and it's such a fucking slog to refill your inventory. So while it's a great thing to do late or post game and really enjoyable, having to prepare in the first place and having to prepare for the next horde after finishing a horde basically ruins the fun of the experience given how much effort goes into filling your inventory back up. The game is quite long compared to what I expected. I expected an Uncharted level time to beat for the game, but the game is easily 40 hours to beat, which is just awesome, but on the other hand, and I hate to recommend it, this game would've been better had it been split into 2 games or even 3 games with even more story. By the time you hit the point that you go to the south area, the game already feels like a full fucking game and could've been a good sort of cliffhanger ending with the sequel taking place in the south. Don't get me wrong, who am I to complain that a game has too much content, but I think the game would've been more palatable that way. The game stuck around a bit too long. Really good game despite its flaws.
Rating: Soft to solid recommendation
40. A Castle Full of Cats (PC)
I'm pretty sure I had previously beaten this game, but the game added content and achievements, so I went back to it to finish it out. Yeah, I had beaten the game last year and they had an update at some point that added 4 additional achievements and some extra areas in the game.
More info from 2024
Rating: Soft recommendation
41. Cats Hidden in Italy (PC)
Another hidden object game. These are just one big scene with cats hidden about. I don't care for this style of hidden object, 1 really big screen that you have to zoom in on, but it's still enjoyable.
Rating: Soft pass
42. Sex with the Devil (PC)
Man this year is being a bit unhinged with these awful NSFW games. This one, I don't think it was a gift, but I think it did pop up in dungeon, but maybe it was a gift, I can't recall. Anyway, NSFW content in the game is fucking weird and awful, but I don't think it's necessarily the point of the game. Gameplay is wandering through a maze, not getting murdered, and finding items to unlock a door to continue the game. Real basic stuff, story doesn't have a good ending as you shouldn't be surprised.
Rating: Solid pass
43. 100 hidden mushrooms (PC)
Another 100 hidden game, again, not much to say, not really worth the time, but I do it to bulk up my achievement count and my completed game count. Feels cheap to do so, but it is what it is. Also do it to build fast rep in PlayTracker, which I'm hoping when guilds releases is something I'll be able to take advantage of, but looking at what guilds are at the moment, I won't be surprised if it stays locked to developers and publishers.
Rating: Soft pass
44. Cats (PC)
What a game name lmao. This is a hidden object game, I can't recall if it's the same dev as other ones, but it only has 2 achievements and takes all of 4 minutes to complete, again, not worth the time
Rating: Solid pass
45. Stray Cats in Cozy Town (PC)
I enjoy this dev's games mostly because I know they donate their profits to shelters and stuff which is cool, this one is a little neighborhood with cats hidden all over and it's pretty neat. I think I needed hints or something for the last couple of cats. I do enjoy the DevCats games and at least the proceeds go to a good cause, but again they aren't really worth the time and unfortunately the dev has started to include DLC achievements in their games which is unfortunate for folks who care about such things. This one for instance, the dev added paid DLC but it has no achievements which is nice, but I think one of their newer games they added achievements with the DLC, so at least this one is completable without the DLC, but have to be careful going forward.
Rating: Soft pass
46. Wordle (PC)
I've played other entries in this series, mind you it predates Wordle as you know it, but it's a shitty little letter word game.
See Game #20 2024 for more info
Rating: Solid pass
47. Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5)
Man, Kiryu, I keep expecting to be done with him and he keeps coming back. I thought Y6 was a good send off, then Y7 gave more of a send off, and then this game gave even more of a send off... and then Y8 gives him presumably a final send off. I appreciate Kiryu keeping coming back, and I do love Kiryu, but I just, I have so many mixed feelings about what they've done to Kiryu, but it definitely feels like one of those we have to end the character so people can drop it, we tried to let him go off into the sunset and that wasn't good enough, so now he gets to go away for good. I'm really trying not to spoiler anything, but I think the writing is on the wall here. This is the last true Yakuza game and it's so good. I do hope to see more Gaiden games whether it be younger Kiryu or other characters, I do really hope it becomes a mainstay. This one is sort of a side tale telling what happens with kiryu between Y6 and Y7 and sort of taking place during Y7. Absolutely highly recommended for anyone who has played Y0-6 because this one is just an amazing send off for Kiryu, handled much better than Y8 did, Y8 did Kiryu dirty... even if I do understand the reasoning
Rating: Solid recommendation
48. Cats Hidden in Germany (PC)
and you thought we were done, never... here's another one of the crummy full picture city based find the cats games. Again, not worth your time. I keep saying that despite me continually playing them. I have no defense to it other than quick easy 100 achievements and real easy to pick up and play and get through the whole game in a single sitting, though at 4-10 minutes, it's still not worth the cost of entry.
Rating: Soft pass
49. Street Fighter (PC)
I'll be honest, I think I always had it in my head that the first Street Fighter game was Street Fighter 2010 or whatever for the NES, which I think isn't even a traditional fighter game. I had been gifted one of the Street Fighter collections and rolled it as a backlog game and decided that I would beat at least 1 Street Fighter game, to make progress on a franchise run, every time it shows up in backlog dungeon. Though, I think I just months later, rolled it again and skipped it, I don't know why I did that, might have been an accident. Anyway, this one you can only play as Ken or Ryu and the controls are really stupid simple and janky and the game is tough as balls. Really don't recommend it. I do have to make the consideration if I'm going to make the effort to get all of the character's arcade endings in each game as I do recall in Street Fighter II that there are character endings. Like I vaguely recall Chun-li's character ending in SF2.
Rating: Solid pass
50. Nonogram - Master's Legacy (PC)
Just a nonogram game, I love me some nonogram. I played this one for all of 20 minutes to get the majority of the achievements, this game's claim to "fame" is that it has a community area where you can create your own nonograms. That's neat, but what's a nonogram game without a tightly curated list of nonograms to do. Honestly, not really worth the time, there are way better nonogram games, though the majority of them probably don't have a nonogram creator mode... so :shrug:
Rating: Soft pass
51. Heroes & Legends: Conquerors of Kolhar (PC)
I won this on steamgifts nearly 10 years ago, it's one of my oldest wins, mind you I only have like 7 wins that are older than 2 years ago as I was off the site for like 8 years. Game is fairly short, not too much of a chore and actually a quite enjoyable game. It wasn't until the last level or two that I really had to spend time grinding for xp which was a little annoying that the game had a curve at the end that required grinding. Personally, I'm not a fan of games extending their playtime by requiring you to arbitrarily have to grind for XP, games lose points for that with me. The abilities are nice, they are simple enough that you don't have to really "learn" them like some more complex games, but they do make a natural synergy and flow that does give combat depth and strategy. That all said, it is a really old game at this point and really doesn't do anything noteworthy, not a bad game, but not worth checking out honestly.
Rating: Soft pass
52. Bots are Stupid (PC)
I love puzzle games and I enjoy programming, so games like these tend to grab my attention. Now even with my attention, they are generally hit or miss, some are a joy like Kaizen and Zachtronics games, but then you have ones like this which start okay, but just aren't that enjoyable and I wind up suffering through it just to be done with it. It's an okay game, but the mechanics and flow just aren't that enjoyable and I didn't find myself with the a-ha moments like I'd get with Kaizen or Human Resource Machine. It started that way, which was enjoyable, but after so many levels the game started getting convoluted and outstayed its welcome. I think a big part of it was the weird granularity of the wait system that made it truly a chore. You have to set the wait command to such an exact value "1.14 seconds" for instance, that makes the trial and error nature that much more annoying and forces the trial and error nature as well, which takes away from a lot of the ability for it to be a "programming" game as you can plan a bit, but you wind up spending a ton of your time trial and erroring for the exact wait time between commands.
Rating: Soft pass
Next List
9
General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« on: February 27, 2025, 10:29:46 pm »I've been an avid proponent of leveraging Discord. I live on Discord, I had even prototyped a bot that would post when new entries were created. I'm in the same boat though, I pretty much only come here for 52 game challenge, though I try to track my collect on here and VGPC mostly because VGPC doesn't handle variants well and only supports first party accessories, but I got granted elevated privileges on VGPC years ago because of a lot of the curating I do over thereDue to the unstable state of this website recently, I've chosen to back up a lot of my thread posts, especially the stuff in the 52 Games Challenge threads. One thing that dawned on me as I've been doing this is how fast time has gone by since beginning the challenge in 2015 and also how poorly I've kept track of the last time I played certain games. For example, if you would have asked me when I last played a few of my favorite games of all time like Ocarina of Time or Half Life 2, I would have said maybe 2020 or 2021, when in fact I last played both those games in 2018, 7-years ago. I almost feel bad for having not played many of my favorite games of all time in 5+ years. Seeing this has definitely made me want to go back and play some of my favorite games again given the unacceptable amount of time since my last play throughs.
How do you back them up? When the site dropped for a few days it kinda made me sad about all the reviews I left in the movie thread vanishing. Also some of the funner thread topics on here. They are fairly precious memories to me.
Do you just copy and paste and place them into like a google drive or is their a simpler way?
A combination of copying and pasting stuff into notepad on my computer, google drive, and also joining backloggd.com which is geared more towards tracking your backlog than tracking collections like this site. I actually have been a bit addicted to backloggd since joining last week. For better or worse, it has no forums so the community there feels a lot more disjointed, but other than that it's a really well done site. I do still plan on using vgcollect, I just hope the site returns back to normal soon. I worry that this recent rash of problems might have caused a lot of users to jump ship. The forums here don't need to be anymore dead than they already are. Sometimes posting on here is like shouting into the void and hoping someone hears you.
It's fairly sad. And I had hope because I seen an influx of newbie accounts that were participating recently. Really boosting engagement. I doubt hardly any of those will return or keep loyal with half the sites features going in and out of functionalIm still not even sure what even happened.
But even as such. I am unsure how stable the site is or if a full collapse is impending. But I do hope we all can congregate somewhere somehow if the day ever comes. I met a lot of cool folks here and I am happy to still be on these forums with you guys! We the final few gents. Its been an honor playing with you tonight. (Titanic violins continue) I hope for a full recovery but have begun saving text based posts as well. Just in case. I will remain on vg collect forever.
I know the overwhelming majority of users on this site don't use the forums, or so I've been told. This site is just the forums for me at this point. If the community ends up leaving (not that it mostly hadn't before what I call the VGpocalypse a couple weeks ago) I might leave to. I really enjoy the community here and that's pretty much the only reason I've stayed. I track my collection on pricecharting because it helps me track the value of individual items for insurance purposes. As a gamer, my heart has been more about playing than collecting for several years now, which is why I'm mostly engaged in the 52 Games Challenge here. The lack of transparency over what caused all this in the first place is a bit concerning and annoying to be frank. Even a "we don't know yet" would suffice. But yeah, I'm worried that recent events and the site's overall instability might be what kills what remains of the forum community here at least. I hope not, but we'll see.
10
General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:
« on: February 27, 2025, 02:06:07 pm »
So I started exploring Backloggery's newish features and I see that I can essentially migrate all of my 52 game challenge stuff over there so I'm gonna start doing that as best I can. Add my notes as reviews, go and backdate my beats and completes. Doesn't quite give me the cohesion I have/had here but it's easily searchable.
11
General / Re: Your 2025 Gaming and Collecting Goals
« on: January 14, 2025, 12:42:28 pm »
I didn't meet many of my goals last year, but more of the same
Beat 104 games
Beat a game from every year x to 2025
Work on franchise runs
Keep up with my backlog groups
Grow my curator groups on steam
Beat 104 games
Beat a game from every year x to 2025
Work on franchise runs
Keep up with my backlog groups
Grow my curator groups on steam
12
General / Re: A Year in Review - 2024
« on: January 14, 2025, 12:19:58 pm »
Alright, trying to get to it.
Favorite 2024 Release: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It might not have had the best story of the LAD games, but adding new cities to visit is always great, a liked some of the new characters, and the stories are always filled with twists and swerves. I think I definitely got more into this one than Y7, and finishing Kiryu's story is great.
Least Favorite 2024 Release: I'm probably going to say Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I was so disappointed by it sticking to the script as closely as it did, but I suppose 3 will have the opportunity to turn it around.
Favorite Game Played in 2024: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased his Name. I really enjoyed this game, it's not as long as Infinite Wealth, but it's probably the last proper Kiryu game that we'll get and I really enjoyed my time with it.
Least Favorite Game Played in 2024: Acceleration of SUGURI 2. I hated this game so much, but I started it and needed to finish it for a challenge. Hated this game so much.
Sleeper Hit of 2024: For games released this year? Another Crab's Treasure or Little Kitty, Big City. Completely different games, almost polar opposites, but they are both great games for their respective genres and I don't think either one got talked about much outside of release month. Played in general? Velvet Assassin/Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I really want to give it to Velvet Assassin by itself, but the final level, or really the final section of the final level, pretty much ruined the experience, but the game was a fantastic stealth game.. and Enslaved, I feel like it's not such a sleeper hit, but I definitely slept on it for over a decade.
Favorite Gaming Moment in 2024:
Proudest Collection Accomplishment of 2024: None, same as last year, I've basically gotten out of collecting. I buy modern stuff I plan on playing and that's about it. Maybe getting tons of steam games for like nothing? I did get a bunch of 2024 releases for nothing out of my pocket due to saving up reward points and then finding some stuff on clearance though.
As usual I'll add some categories
Proudest Gaming Accomplishment in 2024: Not too many this year, I guess 100%ing Another Crab's Treasure?
Favorite Game Revisited in 2024: I'm gonna go with Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. I played a bit of this on X1 years ago and got pushed to play it on PC recently and I really enjoyed playing through the game. I plan to revisit it in 2025 to do more side content.
Top 10 Games played in 2024:
Ten worst games played in 2023
The order here is a bit loose because they were all various levels of awful
Favorite 2024 Release: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It might not have had the best story of the LAD games, but adding new cities to visit is always great, a liked some of the new characters, and the stories are always filled with twists and swerves. I think I definitely got more into this one than Y7, and finishing Kiryu's story is great.
Least Favorite 2024 Release: I'm probably going to say Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I was so disappointed by it sticking to the script as closely as it did, but I suppose 3 will have the opportunity to turn it around.
Favorite Game Played in 2024: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased his Name. I really enjoyed this game, it's not as long as Infinite Wealth, but it's probably the last proper Kiryu game that we'll get and I really enjoyed my time with it.
Least Favorite Game Played in 2024: Acceleration of SUGURI 2. I hated this game so much, but I started it and needed to finish it for a challenge. Hated this game so much.
Sleeper Hit of 2024: For games released this year? Another Crab's Treasure or Little Kitty, Big City. Completely different games, almost polar opposites, but they are both great games for their respective genres and I don't think either one got talked about much outside of release month. Played in general? Velvet Assassin/Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I really want to give it to Velvet Assassin by itself, but the final level, or really the final section of the final level, pretty much ruined the experience, but the game was a fantastic stealth game.. and Enslaved, I feel like it's not such a sleeper hit, but I definitely slept on it for over a decade.
Favorite Gaming Moment in 2024:
Proudest Collection Accomplishment of 2024: None, same as last year, I've basically gotten out of collecting. I buy modern stuff I plan on playing and that's about it. Maybe getting tons of steam games for like nothing? I did get a bunch of 2024 releases for nothing out of my pocket due to saving up reward points and then finding some stuff on clearance though.
As usual I'll add some categories
Proudest Gaming Accomplishment in 2024: Not too many this year, I guess 100%ing Another Crab's Treasure?
Favorite Game Revisited in 2024: I'm gonna go with Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. I played a bit of this on X1 years ago and got pushed to play it on PC recently and I really enjoyed playing through the game. I plan to revisit it in 2025 to do more side content.
Top 10 Games played in 2024:
- Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5)
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5)
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (NS)
- Little Kitty, Big City (XS)
- Another Crab's Treasure (XS)
- Dave the Diver (PC)
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion (PS5)
- Pokemon Scarlet (NS)
- Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (XS)
- Balatro (PC)
Ten worst games played in 2023
- Acceleration of SUGURI 2 (PC)
- Cyber Hook (PC)
- Basic Math (NS)
- Yaris (360)
- WWF Betrayal (GBC)
- Spy Muppets: License to Croak (GBA)
- Pathologic 2 (PC)
- Bramble: The Mountain King (XS)
- 198X (PC)
- Praey for the Gods (PC)
The order here is a bit loose because they were all various levels of awful
13
General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!
« on: January 04, 2025, 11:57:15 am »
lmao I feel bad bumping this but I ran out of usable posts for myself to make my notes, so there will be this updated post with notes and my final stats hopefully at some point today.
Main List
Previous List
128. Thirty-One 3D Premium (PC)
Final game for the year. I started a couple of curator accounts on Steam for various things and occasionally I'll get stuff from developers/publisher to play and review and this was one that I reached out to the developer to request and they actually sent me a couple of steam keys for their games, so I might giveaway the extra keys at some point. Anyway, 31 is a card game that my family played a lot when family would gather in my childhood, so I was bit hyped to give this a go because I have fond memories of the game. That said, this game is a different variant on 31. I did think to myself maybe we played with a variant, but I went and searched the internet and our way to play was pretty standard and this game's style I couldn't find listed in any variants I read about. I didn't really enjoy this variant given that you have only the cards dealt to everyone plus 3, so you have a very finite list of possibilities, which does make for quicker game, because you can choose to end the round as soon as you notice someone swap suits, but that also makes the game lose a lot of its charm because the game ends as soon as someone notices that someone changed suits.
Rating: Hard pass
Final Stats
Top Games played released in 2024
Top Games played NOT released in 2024
Top Games played overall in 2024
Console breakdown
Platform Count
PC 77
XS 19
360 10
X1 7
NS 5
PS5 4
GBA 2
GBC 2
PS4 1
PSX 1
Platform with the Most Beat Games: PC had a small lead last year, PC fucking demolished this year eating up more than all other platforms combined. Holy cow.
Platform with the most unfinished titles: Again I didn't really keep track of abandoned games like last year, I really need to make an effort of keeping track of that somehow... but I think PC probably wins that, as I actually did real good finishing up console games that I started this year. I think I only had 1 tracked unfinished game this year despite playing a lot of games that I didn't track at all.
Current v. Retro v. Mobile/Handheld v. PC v Arcade: 36 - 11 - 4 - 77 - N/A. Again PC dominated, didn't do any Arcade this year, and only a few handheld games. Console total wasn't awful, kinda respectable, but much lower than historic.
Game that ate up the most time: Real hard to tell, because year end reviews didn't share hours across the board and I had some inflated times with Forza Horizon 3/4 and some PC games... I'd guess Infinite Wealth or FF7R2 probably win that given how many months it took me to beat each, though I was sprinkling my playtime... so maybe Forza Horizon is legit?
Quickest game beat: Another 100 hidden game.
Game per year list
2024 Balatro
2023 Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
2022 Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion
2021 Arietta of Spirits
2020 Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered
2019 Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions
2018 Simmiland
2017 Hidden Folks
2016 Forza Horizon 3
2015 God of War 3 Remastered
2014 WWE 2K15
2013 Shadow Warrior Classic Redux
2012 Need for Speed: Most Wanted
2011 WWE '12
2010 Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
2009 Velvet Assassin
2008 Elements of Destruction
2007 Yaris
2006 Feeding Frenzy
2005 Perfect Dark Zero
2004 Lilo & Stitch 2: Hämsterviel Havoc
2003 Spy Muppets: License to Croak
2002 Lilo & Stitch
2001 WWF Betrayal
2000 Pokemon Puzzle Challenge
Main List
Previous List
Quote from: Legend
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.strikethroughgames are games that have been abandoned.
128. Thirty-One 3D Premium (PC)
Final game for the year. I started a couple of curator accounts on Steam for various things and occasionally I'll get stuff from developers/publisher to play and review and this was one that I reached out to the developer to request and they actually sent me a couple of steam keys for their games, so I might giveaway the extra keys at some point. Anyway, 31 is a card game that my family played a lot when family would gather in my childhood, so I was bit hyped to give this a go because I have fond memories of the game. That said, this game is a different variant on 31. I did think to myself maybe we played with a variant, but I went and searched the internet and our way to play was pretty standard and this game's style I couldn't find listed in any variants I read about. I didn't really enjoy this variant given that you have only the cards dealt to everyone plus 3, so you have a very finite list of possibilities, which does make for quicker game, because you can choose to end the round as soon as you notice someone swap suits, but that also makes the game lose a lot of its charm because the game ends as soon as someone notices that someone changed suits.
Rating: Hard pass
Final Stats
Top Games played released in 2024
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5)
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (NS)
- Little Kitty, Big City (XS)
- Another Crab's Treasure (XS)
- Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (XS)
Top Games played NOT released in 2024
- Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5)
- Dave the Diver (PC)
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion (PS5)
- Pokemon Scarlet (NS)
- Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (PC)
Top Games played overall in 2024
- Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5)
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5)
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (NS)
- Little Kitty, Big City (XS)
- Another Crab's Treasure (XS)
Console breakdown
Platform Count
PC 77
XS 19
360 10
X1 7
NS 5
PS5 4
GBA 2
GBC 2
PS4 1
PSX 1
Platform with the Most Beat Games: PC had a small lead last year, PC fucking demolished this year eating up more than all other platforms combined. Holy cow.
Platform with the most unfinished titles: Again I didn't really keep track of abandoned games like last year, I really need to make an effort of keeping track of that somehow... but I think PC probably wins that, as I actually did real good finishing up console games that I started this year. I think I only had 1 tracked unfinished game this year despite playing a lot of games that I didn't track at all.
Current v. Retro v. Mobile/Handheld v. PC v Arcade: 36 - 11 - 4 - 77 - N/A. Again PC dominated, didn't do any Arcade this year, and only a few handheld games. Console total wasn't awful, kinda respectable, but much lower than historic.
Game that ate up the most time: Real hard to tell, because year end reviews didn't share hours across the board and I had some inflated times with Forza Horizon 3/4 and some PC games... I'd guess Infinite Wealth or FF7R2 probably win that given how many months it took me to beat each, though I was sprinkling my playtime... so maybe Forza Horizon is legit?
Quickest game beat: Another 100 hidden game.
- Best Racing Game: Forza Horizon 4 (XS)
- Best Puzzle Game: Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions(PC)
- Best Platformer: Hell Pie (PC)
- Best RPG: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased his Name (PS5)
- Best Action Game: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased his Name (PS5)
- Best Story: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5)
- Best Soundtrack: Rock Band 4 (X1)
- Best Shooter: Perfect Dark Zero (360) [This was an awful year for shooters for me]
- Best Independent Game: Little Kitty, Big City (XS)
- Best Handheld Game: Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (NS)
- Best Xbox Game: Little Kitty, Big City (XS)
- Best Playstation Game: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased his Name (PS5)
- Best Nintendo Game: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (NS)
- Best PC Game: Dave the Diver (PC)
- Character of the Year: Ichiban Kasuga/Kiryu Kazuma
- Studio of the Year: Ryu Ga Gotoku (Like a Dragon)
- GOTY from another Year: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased his Name (PS5)
- Game of the Year: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5)
Game per year list
2024 Balatro
2023 Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
2022 Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion
2021 Arietta of Spirits
2020 Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered
2019 Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions
2018 Simmiland
2017 Hidden Folks
2016 Forza Horizon 3
2015 God of War 3 Remastered
2014 WWE 2K15
2013 Shadow Warrior Classic Redux
2012 Need for Speed: Most Wanted
2011 WWE '12
2010 Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
2009 Velvet Assassin
2008 Elements of Destruction
2007 Yaris
2006 Feeding Frenzy
2005 Perfect Dark Zero
2004 Lilo & Stitch 2: Hämsterviel Havoc
2003 Spy Muppets: License to Croak
2002 Lilo & Stitch
2001 WWF Betrayal
2000 Pokemon Puzzle Challenge
14
General / Re: A Year in Review - 2024
« on: January 01, 2025, 01:55:56 am »
Ohhhh, yeah, gotta build up my stats for this too!
15
General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!
« on: December 31, 2024, 06:43:10 pm »
Main List
I'm starting to move my notes over to backloggery. I haven't decided if I'll keep posting my notes here to move over there or if I'll just cut out the middleman so to speak and just work over there. For now I'll try and post here until I'm done collating the information.
1. Dreamland Solitaire (PC)
At the beginning of this year, I was having some health problems and was spending a lot of time laying in bed. Working from home in bed, playing games in bed, not bedridden, just spending a lot of time in bed. Eventually I did PT and got better, but I was laying in bed when I played this game. Real simple tri-peaks style solitaire type of game. Not really worth playing, but I always enjoy solitaire games.
Rating: Soft pass
2. 100 hidden fish (PC)
Same as all the other 100 hidden games, takes about 10 minutes to complete, enjoyable waste of time.
Rating: Soft pass
3. Astro Bot (PS5)
I really enjoyed this game. I went for the platinum, and I still need to go back to it for the trophies they added in updates. The levels are relatively simple, some of the additional levels can be quite a chore, but overall the game is immensely enjoyable and all of the themed astro bots add a little something special. Entirely possible that this game will stick out as GOTY for me. I had some hopes for NightReign, but it's definitely not GOTY material.
Rating: Solid recommendation
4. One Finger Death Punch (PC)
I won this game on steam gifts like 10 years ago or something and it had just been sitting and it finally got picked for me in a PoP cycle, so I played it. This is while I was still laid up in bed, but the game is playable with a controller with its basic controls. Overall a really enjoyable game, if not really really difficult to master and complete. I stuck with just beating the game because anything more seemed like it would make me hate the game, but overall it's a really enjoyable sort of rhythm combat game.
Rating: Soft pass, curious if the sequel is better
5. 100 hidden snails (PC)
Another 100 hidden game, all of these are a blur to me despite them having differing mechanics from time to time which do make the games better or worse. I could make the effort to check before I write these reviews, but let's be honest, it doesn't make much difference, the games are worth or not worth playing all the same.
Rating: Soft pass
6. Cats Hidden in Georgia (PC)
Another hidden object game. These are just one big scene with cats hidden about. I don't care for this style of hidden object, 1 really big screen that you have to zoom in on, but it's still enjoyable.
Rating: Soft pass
7. Finding Paradise (PC)
I can't recall if this was a PoP pick or if it was just a giveaway I won under the condition that I earn a single achievement (The game only has a single achievement :shakes fist:) Anyway, the game is really enjoyable, though it being the final entry in the To the Moon series, I wish I had been able to play the first 2 titles in the series first, because there are some call backs to previous entries though I don't actually know how important the call backs are as I've not played the previous entries. Overall enjoyable, but the game is a bit of a slow moving slog until you start getting into the tail end story which is always unfortunate for story driven games.
Rating: Soft pass
8. 100 hidden frogs 2 (PC)
Another 100 hidden game, I swear I am running out of these to play, but yeah, I'll continue to keep playing these... especially as they leave the profile limited status on steam.
Rating: Soft pass
9. Minit Fun Racer (PC)
I don't recall, might have been a roll on Backlog Dungeon, but I enjoyed Minit and looked forward to playing whatever this little racer is. It is just a little left to right scrolling racer game where you collect things and avoid obstacles in an attempt to finish a race in a minit, I mean minute. Overall enjoyable and dare I say maybe worth playing given the proceeds go to charity. That said it's not much substance, but it has replay value
Rating: Soft recommendation
10. Hidden Cats in London (PC)
I really enjoy these styles of hidden object games as the map colors in as you find everything in the area, so you know you don't have to look there anymore and that is such a great quality of life feature making the game much more worth playing over the other hidden cat/animal games.
Rating: Soft pass, but better than others lol
11. Cats Hidden in Bali (PC)
Another hidden object game akin to the previous in Georgia game. Same rating.
Rating: Soft pass
12. Double Cross (PC)
A steamgift win that got picked for me on PoP. I relatively recall enjoying the game, but I didn't go for the 100% because I'm pretty sure it either had missable achievements or required multiple playthroughs, which is generally a no go for me. Artwork was good, characters are interesting, story was a tad tropey and I think it wound up fairly obvious who the bad guy was, and I feel like some of the gameplay mechanics were frustrating. I will say, before I finish up this review, I'll go watch some gameplay clips to jog my memory. Okay, yeah, I recall enjoying the platforming, though some of the split paths might have encouraged replay or something to get missing collectibles and the combat I recall being frustrating because enemies would respawn frequently, and I feel like I recall some of the boss fights being frustrating. Overall a decent mega man clone, better than Mighty No 9 lol
Rating: Soft pass
13. Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath (XS)
I had bought the ultimate edition or the DLC or something at some point, but had never come back to the game to check out the DLC over the years and decided to finally jump back into these games. I did load up Mortal Kombat XL to check out the extra content, but realized that it didn't actually add anything of value or I had already done the content and just didn't remember doing the content, so I was pretty quick to just move on to 11. Now I had played through 11 years ago, well before the Aftermath DLC came out, but this one for sure added more content, IIRC it did add almost sequel-esque story to the game showing what Lui Kang did with his new god powers... honestly at this point I'm at a blank for what the story was, I really need to be writing this stuff as I play these games and not literally months later when I can't recall for the life of me. Anyway, regardless, the added story is definitely worth checking out because it should link directly to MK1. Now I haven't played MK1 yet, but I am looking forward to it. I have the game and all of the DLC I believe. The rating for this is strictly for the DLC, I will say, for me personally, I will always find MK series to have the best stories for fighting games.
Rating: Soft recommendation
14. Arcade Classics Anniversary: Vulcan Venture (PC)
Oh boy, I'm not gonna remember crap from any of these Konami Arcade classics. I sat down while in bed still and tried to play through the arcade games in the collection and this was the one first one I played through, I think. All of these games are just get to a certain score, earn the achievements, and then you're done technically speaking. I'm really not a fan of shmup games, it just doesn't click with me. I can play them for sure, especially with emulator features, unlike RTS games which I just absolutely can't get myself to play. Anyway, this one was a really straight forward horizontal shmup, minor annoyances largely due to my dislike for shmups and it is a really old game.
Rating: Soft pass, surely there are more worthwhile shmups to play
15. Arcade Classics Anniversary: Twinbee (PC)
Tate style (I think) vertical scrolling shmup. I recall seeing tons of vertical shmup games through my youth and this seemed just as samey as the rest. I enjoyed this one more than Vulcan Venture, not that that one wasn't enjoyable, it just was so-so. This one felt more forgiving and thus immediately plays better to me lol. I enjoyed the pickups the made you progressively stronger. It made the game feel completely different if you managed to lose your powerups, which I suppose is probably a staple of shmup games. I'm super not knowledgeable on shmups, but I think Parodius and Game Paradise are vertical and I imagine the context of the game might make them more enjoyable, so I'll have to give those a try down the line.
Rating: Soft pass, fun enough, but again I'm sure there are better vertical shmups.
16. Sweety Little Witch (PC)
Real simple jigsaw puzzle game. IIRC there are like 7 puzzles and you can change the difficult for the given puzzle by increasing the pieces available. Game has no achievements, the artwork isn't great, almost random art styles, so I'm concerned the art was lifted as it has no reference to AI usage. Overall, definitely not worth your time.
Rating: Solid pass
17. Arcade Classics Anniversary: Nemesis (PC)
I'm really not big on shmup games, and I honestly don't recall enjoying many of the ones in this collection and I only really "suffered" through them because of the save states and the fact that the game was a gift and I'm trying to prioritize gifts I've received. I'm doing much better these days declining gifts from folks when I know I really won't enjoy the game, this is one I might have considered declining, but I also try to give classics a chance from time to time. I recall this one having a lot of BS stuff, but I also know a lot of these games will have really simple mechanics that make the game better that I constantly miss.
Rating: Soft pass
18. Monkey Party (PC)
I was gifted this one a while back and didn't realize it was a Suika game, so I sat around for an afternoon and 100%'d the game. Pretty short, pretty simple. Honestly nothing to write home about because it's a basic kind of mechanic and the only thing that can make these games great or stand out is good art and this game does not have great art. It's just crappy google cut out images of various monkeys... but the game is enjoyable nonetheless, but it's a low bar for these kinds of games.
Rating: Soft pass
19. Life Force (PC)
I think I didn't hate this one, but all it took was losing your upgrades just once to make the game unsufferable, so I really had to rely on save states and just hope that my save state didn't lock me into getting hit, because that was like a game breaker if that happened. I think I had to start over once because of that because I lost my upgrades and just couldn't make it through the level without the upgrades. I want to say I enjoyed this one more, but I also know I hated it more because of the stress of losing the upgrades.
Rating: Soft pass
20. Cats Hidden in China (PC)
Another hidden object game akin to the previous in Georgia game. Same rating.
Rating: Soft pass
21. Bar Dungeon (PC)
Oof this one, I really didn't know what it was when I agreed to it, like I was like ok on name whatever. It's a picture puzzle game of dudes (Nothing nude or anything iirc) in BDSM gear. Just really weird stuff, obviously don't recommend this.
Rating: Solid pass
22. Ball Fall (PC)
No achievements to be had in this, and I was trying to improve my gift stats, but didn't realize that stat scripts skip achievementless games, fine regardless. This game is an endless game about a ball falling, that's it. There is really nothing to this game. Highly encourage not playing this game.
Rating: Solid pass
23. Typhoon (PC)
Another vertical shooter, though this time a helicopter one. I enjoyed this well enough though I don't think I got the mechanic quite well of dropping the bombs. Game played well enough and sort of made me want to play the old chopper attack/helicopter games. I don't think I enjoyed those either, but something about it made me really think about playing those old games.
Rating: Soft pass
24. Temptations X: Darkest Fantasy (PC)
Another one that I didn't look into before accepting. Had the art been better or the gameplay not been awful, it could've been serviceable in some manner, but both are pretty awful and made the game insufferable. Especially when the stuff is random and timed so it's nigh impossible to 100% the game.
Rating: Solid pass
25. Dark Fear (PC)
I'm trying to watch a youtube playthrough to jog my memory of this game and I remember little bits. I remember the point and click nature of the game and the battle system, but not much else. It's a pretty short game and a relatively easy 100%. I recall not hating the game, but definitely not feeling like it was something I would've played had it not been picked to be played for me. This is definitely a game that this "review" would have benefited from me having written it shortly after playing the game because even watching a video I barely recall much of the game. I do recall the fights towards the end of the game actually getting difficult and having to worry about stuff but all in all I think this game was pretty forgettable.
Rating: Soft pass
26. ChromaGun 2 Demo (PC)
I wouldn't normally include a demo on this list, but this demo had achievements, which is wild. But regardless of that, it was long enough that I'd consider it a full enough game. I enjoyed it enough I was preparing to purchase the first game when the developer let a lot of folks know that they'd get free copies of the first game for playing the demo, which was dope. I still need to play the first one, it's on my backlog now. Anyway, this game is very much portal inspired, especially Portal 2 where the different goos do different things, but less Portal and more just the goo from Portal 2. Still, obviously Portal inspired. It's actually quite a good game and I highly recommend checking out the first one and the second one once it comes out. I will give it a soft recommendation though, because it is just a demo
Rating: Soft recommendation
27. #IDARB (X1)
I actually had "beaten" this game years ago and I have no clue why, but I decided that I would go out of my way to get the final achievement in this game. I'm not kidding, I truly have no clue why I decided. I don't think I rolled it in playtracker, but maybe, I've got no clue. I had to find someone on True Achievements who was looking to boost for this achievement, and managed to find someone in need. Maybe I was collating data and noticed it... I really can't recall. Afterward, the dude sent me a request and wanted to work on some other obscure games. This was a neat and fun game back in the day, but at this point it's just not got the support or players, but I recall the twitch interactions being real neat in concept for this game, though I'm fairly confident they are broken now.
Rating: Soft pass
28. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (PC)
For sure this is one I wish I had written about while I was playing and even after having played it. This game was originally recommended to me by my wife's best friend as it is one of, if not the most, her favorite games of all time. I've had this game recommended to me many times over the years, but I had skipped on the original when I heard dark arisen was coming and just never got around to it. There is something about those late oughts early 10s Xbox 360 era games that I just kinda can't stand. Had I played this game during that time period, I probably would've dumped a ton of hours and really tried with this game, but I just wasn't enjoying it as much and while I did give it the good old college try, I did kind of just try to breeze through the game at some point because I kinda just wanted it over with. Not because it was bad or I hated it, but because I just wanted to move on. I think part of it was that I didn't realize until it was too late that I had been missing out on quests that expired as you progressed events or as time passed and that really irked me. I get it in the scope of immersion and games trying to become more nuanced, but I just have never liked those types of concepts. Let me enjoy the game and we'll suspend our disbelief about events just sitting idly by while I'm goofing off with side quests. I think games have gotten better about that over the years, but during this time period that was definitely in rage or whatever. I never got deep into the games systems to really get into the mechanics that would have probably made the game "cooler" or for me to have an easier time with combat situations, but I did what I could without having to really get into much of that. I mostly just tried to make sure I recruited folks of rounded classes so I always had someone who could fill some role. Game is full of jank and can be super repetitive and I suppose because I didn't bother to learn a lot of the nuances of the game, the game just didn't stand out to me as a good game. I've not heard a lot of great things about the sequel and I imagine I feel about this game a lot of how folks feel about the sequel, which concerns me that when I finally get to that game I'm really going to hate that game, but who knows. I don't own it, but I know I will eventually. I will give it the softest of recommendations though, because it's not an awful game and does have some unique mechanics that do make it stand out and I can't just ignore the fact that this game has been recommended to me over and over.
Rating: Soft recommendation
29. Hidden Cats: The Last of Cats (PC)
I don't recall, but I think this is a FIND ALL developer game, as opposed to some of the other hidden cat games, and this one was okay, but again these games are pretty quick, don't offer much, but are accordingly cheap
Rating: Soft pass
30. Hidden Cats in New York (PC)
Same developer as Hidden Cats in London, so similar notes. I really enjoy these styles of hidden object games as the map colors in as you find everything in the area, so you know you don't have to look there anymore and that is such a great quality of life feature making the game much more worth playing over the other hidden cat/animal games.
Rating: Soft pass, but better than others lol
31. Cats Hidden around the World (PC)
This is the same developer as Cats Hidden in [Country] but they gave you multiple locations with tons of cats to find in each, essentially tons of games in 1 compared to the other games. The annoyance is this game, unlike the other ones only has a handful of achievements because instead of an achievement for each cat, it's an achievement for each level basically. More content, less achievements, but not much else. I suppose technically there's more value in it and should be expected to be a better value, but the lack of achievements compared to the others annoyed me personally.
Rating: Soft pass.
Next List
Quote from: Legend
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.strikethroughgames are games that have been abandoned.
I'm starting to move my notes over to backloggery. I haven't decided if I'll keep posting my notes here to move over there or if I'll just cut out the middleman so to speak and just work over there. For now I'll try and post here until I'm done collating the information.
1. Dreamland Solitaire (PC)
At the beginning of this year, I was having some health problems and was spending a lot of time laying in bed. Working from home in bed, playing games in bed, not bedridden, just spending a lot of time in bed. Eventually I did PT and got better, but I was laying in bed when I played this game. Real simple tri-peaks style solitaire type of game. Not really worth playing, but I always enjoy solitaire games.
Rating: Soft pass
2. 100 hidden fish (PC)
Same as all the other 100 hidden games, takes about 10 minutes to complete, enjoyable waste of time.
Rating: Soft pass
3. Astro Bot (PS5)
I really enjoyed this game. I went for the platinum, and I still need to go back to it for the trophies they added in updates. The levels are relatively simple, some of the additional levels can be quite a chore, but overall the game is immensely enjoyable and all of the themed astro bots add a little something special. Entirely possible that this game will stick out as GOTY for me. I had some hopes for NightReign, but it's definitely not GOTY material.
Rating: Solid recommendation
4. One Finger Death Punch (PC)
I won this game on steam gifts like 10 years ago or something and it had just been sitting and it finally got picked for me in a PoP cycle, so I played it. This is while I was still laid up in bed, but the game is playable with a controller with its basic controls. Overall a really enjoyable game, if not really really difficult to master and complete. I stuck with just beating the game because anything more seemed like it would make me hate the game, but overall it's a really enjoyable sort of rhythm combat game.
Rating: Soft pass, curious if the sequel is better
5. 100 hidden snails (PC)
Another 100 hidden game, all of these are a blur to me despite them having differing mechanics from time to time which do make the games better or worse. I could make the effort to check before I write these reviews, but let's be honest, it doesn't make much difference, the games are worth or not worth playing all the same.
Rating: Soft pass
6. Cats Hidden in Georgia (PC)
Another hidden object game. These are just one big scene with cats hidden about. I don't care for this style of hidden object, 1 really big screen that you have to zoom in on, but it's still enjoyable.
Rating: Soft pass
7. Finding Paradise (PC)
I can't recall if this was a PoP pick or if it was just a giveaway I won under the condition that I earn a single achievement (The game only has a single achievement :shakes fist:) Anyway, the game is really enjoyable, though it being the final entry in the To the Moon series, I wish I had been able to play the first 2 titles in the series first, because there are some call backs to previous entries though I don't actually know how important the call backs are as I've not played the previous entries. Overall enjoyable, but the game is a bit of a slow moving slog until you start getting into the tail end story which is always unfortunate for story driven games.
Rating: Soft pass
8. 100 hidden frogs 2 (PC)
Another 100 hidden game, I swear I am running out of these to play, but yeah, I'll continue to keep playing these... especially as they leave the profile limited status on steam.
Rating: Soft pass
9. Minit Fun Racer (PC)
I don't recall, might have been a roll on Backlog Dungeon, but I enjoyed Minit and looked forward to playing whatever this little racer is. It is just a little left to right scrolling racer game where you collect things and avoid obstacles in an attempt to finish a race in a minit, I mean minute. Overall enjoyable and dare I say maybe worth playing given the proceeds go to charity. That said it's not much substance, but it has replay value
Rating: Soft recommendation
10. Hidden Cats in London (PC)
I really enjoy these styles of hidden object games as the map colors in as you find everything in the area, so you know you don't have to look there anymore and that is such a great quality of life feature making the game much more worth playing over the other hidden cat/animal games.
Rating: Soft pass, but better than others lol
11. Cats Hidden in Bali (PC)
Another hidden object game akin to the previous in Georgia game. Same rating.
Rating: Soft pass
12. Double Cross (PC)
A steamgift win that got picked for me on PoP. I relatively recall enjoying the game, but I didn't go for the 100% because I'm pretty sure it either had missable achievements or required multiple playthroughs, which is generally a no go for me. Artwork was good, characters are interesting, story was a tad tropey and I think it wound up fairly obvious who the bad guy was, and I feel like some of the gameplay mechanics were frustrating. I will say, before I finish up this review, I'll go watch some gameplay clips to jog my memory. Okay, yeah, I recall enjoying the platforming, though some of the split paths might have encouraged replay or something to get missing collectibles and the combat I recall being frustrating because enemies would respawn frequently, and I feel like I recall some of the boss fights being frustrating. Overall a decent mega man clone, better than Mighty No 9 lol
Rating: Soft pass
13. Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath (XS)
I had bought the ultimate edition or the DLC or something at some point, but had never come back to the game to check out the DLC over the years and decided to finally jump back into these games. I did load up Mortal Kombat XL to check out the extra content, but realized that it didn't actually add anything of value or I had already done the content and just didn't remember doing the content, so I was pretty quick to just move on to 11. Now I had played through 11 years ago, well before the Aftermath DLC came out, but this one for sure added more content, IIRC it did add almost sequel-esque story to the game showing what Lui Kang did with his new god powers... honestly at this point I'm at a blank for what the story was, I really need to be writing this stuff as I play these games and not literally months later when I can't recall for the life of me. Anyway, regardless, the added story is definitely worth checking out because it should link directly to MK1. Now I haven't played MK1 yet, but I am looking forward to it. I have the game and all of the DLC I believe. The rating for this is strictly for the DLC, I will say, for me personally, I will always find MK series to have the best stories for fighting games.
Rating: Soft recommendation
14. Arcade Classics Anniversary: Vulcan Venture (PC)
Oh boy, I'm not gonna remember crap from any of these Konami Arcade classics. I sat down while in bed still and tried to play through the arcade games in the collection and this was the one first one I played through, I think. All of these games are just get to a certain score, earn the achievements, and then you're done technically speaking. I'm really not a fan of shmup games, it just doesn't click with me. I can play them for sure, especially with emulator features, unlike RTS games which I just absolutely can't get myself to play. Anyway, this one was a really straight forward horizontal shmup, minor annoyances largely due to my dislike for shmups and it is a really old game.
Rating: Soft pass, surely there are more worthwhile shmups to play
15. Arcade Classics Anniversary: Twinbee (PC)
Tate style (I think) vertical scrolling shmup. I recall seeing tons of vertical shmup games through my youth and this seemed just as samey as the rest. I enjoyed this one more than Vulcan Venture, not that that one wasn't enjoyable, it just was so-so. This one felt more forgiving and thus immediately plays better to me lol. I enjoyed the pickups the made you progressively stronger. It made the game feel completely different if you managed to lose your powerups, which I suppose is probably a staple of shmup games. I'm super not knowledgeable on shmups, but I think Parodius and Game Paradise are vertical and I imagine the context of the game might make them more enjoyable, so I'll have to give those a try down the line.
Rating: Soft pass, fun enough, but again I'm sure there are better vertical shmups.
16. Sweety Little Witch (PC)
Real simple jigsaw puzzle game. IIRC there are like 7 puzzles and you can change the difficult for the given puzzle by increasing the pieces available. Game has no achievements, the artwork isn't great, almost random art styles, so I'm concerned the art was lifted as it has no reference to AI usage. Overall, definitely not worth your time.
Rating: Solid pass
17. Arcade Classics Anniversary: Nemesis (PC)
I'm really not big on shmup games, and I honestly don't recall enjoying many of the ones in this collection and I only really "suffered" through them because of the save states and the fact that the game was a gift and I'm trying to prioritize gifts I've received. I'm doing much better these days declining gifts from folks when I know I really won't enjoy the game, this is one I might have considered declining, but I also try to give classics a chance from time to time. I recall this one having a lot of BS stuff, but I also know a lot of these games will have really simple mechanics that make the game better that I constantly miss.
Rating: Soft pass
18. Monkey Party (PC)
I was gifted this one a while back and didn't realize it was a Suika game, so I sat around for an afternoon and 100%'d the game. Pretty short, pretty simple. Honestly nothing to write home about because it's a basic kind of mechanic and the only thing that can make these games great or stand out is good art and this game does not have great art. It's just crappy google cut out images of various monkeys... but the game is enjoyable nonetheless, but it's a low bar for these kinds of games.
Rating: Soft pass
19. Life Force (PC)
I think I didn't hate this one, but all it took was losing your upgrades just once to make the game unsufferable, so I really had to rely on save states and just hope that my save state didn't lock me into getting hit, because that was like a game breaker if that happened. I think I had to start over once because of that because I lost my upgrades and just couldn't make it through the level without the upgrades. I want to say I enjoyed this one more, but I also know I hated it more because of the stress of losing the upgrades.
Rating: Soft pass
20. Cats Hidden in China (PC)
Another hidden object game akin to the previous in Georgia game. Same rating.
Rating: Soft pass
21. Bar Dungeon (PC)
Oof this one, I really didn't know what it was when I agreed to it, like I was like ok on name whatever. It's a picture puzzle game of dudes (Nothing nude or anything iirc) in BDSM gear. Just really weird stuff, obviously don't recommend this.
Rating: Solid pass
22. Ball Fall (PC)
No achievements to be had in this, and I was trying to improve my gift stats, but didn't realize that stat scripts skip achievementless games, fine regardless. This game is an endless game about a ball falling, that's it. There is really nothing to this game. Highly encourage not playing this game.
Rating: Solid pass
23. Typhoon (PC)
Another vertical shooter, though this time a helicopter one. I enjoyed this well enough though I don't think I got the mechanic quite well of dropping the bombs. Game played well enough and sort of made me want to play the old chopper attack/helicopter games. I don't think I enjoyed those either, but something about it made me really think about playing those old games.
Rating: Soft pass
24. Temptations X: Darkest Fantasy (PC)
Another one that I didn't look into before accepting. Had the art been better or the gameplay not been awful, it could've been serviceable in some manner, but both are pretty awful and made the game insufferable. Especially when the stuff is random and timed so it's nigh impossible to 100% the game.
Rating: Solid pass
25. Dark Fear (PC)
I'm trying to watch a youtube playthrough to jog my memory of this game and I remember little bits. I remember the point and click nature of the game and the battle system, but not much else. It's a pretty short game and a relatively easy 100%. I recall not hating the game, but definitely not feeling like it was something I would've played had it not been picked to be played for me. This is definitely a game that this "review" would have benefited from me having written it shortly after playing the game because even watching a video I barely recall much of the game. I do recall the fights towards the end of the game actually getting difficult and having to worry about stuff but all in all I think this game was pretty forgettable.
Rating: Soft pass
26. ChromaGun 2 Demo (PC)
I wouldn't normally include a demo on this list, but this demo had achievements, which is wild. But regardless of that, it was long enough that I'd consider it a full enough game. I enjoyed it enough I was preparing to purchase the first game when the developer let a lot of folks know that they'd get free copies of the first game for playing the demo, which was dope. I still need to play the first one, it's on my backlog now. Anyway, this game is very much portal inspired, especially Portal 2 where the different goos do different things, but less Portal and more just the goo from Portal 2. Still, obviously Portal inspired. It's actually quite a good game and I highly recommend checking out the first one and the second one once it comes out. I will give it a soft recommendation though, because it is just a demo
Rating: Soft recommendation
27. #IDARB (X1)
I actually had "beaten" this game years ago and I have no clue why, but I decided that I would go out of my way to get the final achievement in this game. I'm not kidding, I truly have no clue why I decided. I don't think I rolled it in playtracker, but maybe, I've got no clue. I had to find someone on True Achievements who was looking to boost for this achievement, and managed to find someone in need. Maybe I was collating data and noticed it... I really can't recall. Afterward, the dude sent me a request and wanted to work on some other obscure games. This was a neat and fun game back in the day, but at this point it's just not got the support or players, but I recall the twitch interactions being real neat in concept for this game, though I'm fairly confident they are broken now.
Rating: Soft pass
28. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (PC)
For sure this is one I wish I had written about while I was playing and even after having played it. This game was originally recommended to me by my wife's best friend as it is one of, if not the most, her favorite games of all time. I've had this game recommended to me many times over the years, but I had skipped on the original when I heard dark arisen was coming and just never got around to it. There is something about those late oughts early 10s Xbox 360 era games that I just kinda can't stand. Had I played this game during that time period, I probably would've dumped a ton of hours and really tried with this game, but I just wasn't enjoying it as much and while I did give it the good old college try, I did kind of just try to breeze through the game at some point because I kinda just wanted it over with. Not because it was bad or I hated it, but because I just wanted to move on. I think part of it was that I didn't realize until it was too late that I had been missing out on quests that expired as you progressed events or as time passed and that really irked me. I get it in the scope of immersion and games trying to become more nuanced, but I just have never liked those types of concepts. Let me enjoy the game and we'll suspend our disbelief about events just sitting idly by while I'm goofing off with side quests. I think games have gotten better about that over the years, but during this time period that was definitely in rage or whatever. I never got deep into the games systems to really get into the mechanics that would have probably made the game "cooler" or for me to have an easier time with combat situations, but I did what I could without having to really get into much of that. I mostly just tried to make sure I recruited folks of rounded classes so I always had someone who could fill some role. Game is full of jank and can be super repetitive and I suppose because I didn't bother to learn a lot of the nuances of the game, the game just didn't stand out to me as a good game. I've not heard a lot of great things about the sequel and I imagine I feel about this game a lot of how folks feel about the sequel, which concerns me that when I finally get to that game I'm really going to hate that game, but who knows. I don't own it, but I know I will eventually. I will give it the softest of recommendations though, because it's not an awful game and does have some unique mechanics that do make it stand out and I can't just ignore the fact that this game has been recommended to me over and over.
Rating: Soft recommendation
29. Hidden Cats: The Last of Cats (PC)
I don't recall, but I think this is a FIND ALL developer game, as opposed to some of the other hidden cat games, and this one was okay, but again these games are pretty quick, don't offer much, but are accordingly cheap
Rating: Soft pass
30. Hidden Cats in New York (PC)
Same developer as Hidden Cats in London, so similar notes. I really enjoy these styles of hidden object games as the map colors in as you find everything in the area, so you know you don't have to look there anymore and that is such a great quality of life feature making the game much more worth playing over the other hidden cat/animal games.
Rating: Soft pass, but better than others lol
31. Cats Hidden around the World (PC)
This is the same developer as Cats Hidden in [Country] but they gave you multiple locations with tons of cats to find in each, essentially tons of games in 1 compared to the other games. The annoyance is this game, unlike the other ones only has a handful of achievements because instead of an achievement for each cat, it's an achievement for each level basically. More content, less achievements, but not much else. I suppose technically there's more value in it and should be expected to be a better value, but the lack of achievements compared to the others annoyed me personally.
Rating: Soft pass.
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