52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

[bikingjahuty]

I need to beat 3 more games before I reach 52, and I'll be damned if this is the first year I don't make it. My life has seemingly been constantly busy since the beginning of November, but with a decent amount of time off in the last few weeks of the year, I'm going to hit 52 come hell or high water. I'm in the middle of two games right now, one of which I definitely intend to beat this year. The other will likely be an early 2025 completion for me. There are a few shorter games in my backlog that I've been meaning to play too so yeah, 52 games should hopefully be in the bag with maybe a game or two more beyond that. What a year though...

[Cartagia]

Knocked out another short one for the end of the year.  Alan Wake's American Nightmare has most of the best elements of the original Alan Wake distilled down into a super optimal side-story, and makes strides towards what Remedy ended up making in Control.  Not perfect, but a fun gameplay loop and reality bending narrative that felt the perfect length for a smaller more direct story.

[dhaabi]

48. Papers, Please || PlayStation Vita || 12.18.24



After reading reception about Papers, Please, I knew it was a game that I'd like to someday experience. Eventually, I was able to secure a physical copy of the game through Limited Run Games years ago before they began their open preorder system. I've had my copy for quite some time now, so I'm glad to finally take the time to play it.

At its core, Papers, Please is a simulation game with overt political themes which has the player being forced to work as a newly-assigned immigration officer at their country's border. With each shift, players are tasked with acting in accordance to regulations, cross-referencing various documents, and generally ensuring the safety of the unnamed protagonist's country of Arstotzka by vetting everyone seeking to enter from the various neighboring countries and districts. In order to achieve these goals, the player must inspect passport details to ensure they're correct in correspondence to another alongside the information found on other required materials. Since the player's daily wages are dependent on how many people are processed, there is a huge incentive to move along quickly but still slow enough to avoid mistakes. Such mistakes first result in warnings, but those then become citations with fines. And while memorizing certain rules and document formats may seem simple enough, it's not. Guidelines are constantly being created, revised, or even removed, so the one job of border security becomes a constant act of juggling all sorts of changing information.

Of course, since there are so many rules to remember and documents to inspect for just one encounter, there was always some brief anxiety I felt relating to whether I correctly followed the guidelines or not. From there, some small degree of frustration would set in if I overlooked some small detail. This isn't to suggest that players must remember everything that's explained, though. Instead, an always-updating rule book is available and is simple enough to sift through, although the stress of remembering what all to verify and cross-reference still remains. At the same time, the game offers players some moments of reprieve, as the protagonist's shift only starts once the player calls the first traveler to the window. So during this time, players can familiarize themselves with rules, which is especially helpful if certain ones are regularly being overlooked or are in relation to others.

However, the protagonist's home land of Arstotzka and the general region is not friendly. People determined to immigrate lie. Bribery is a regular occurrence (which players can choose whether or not to accept.) Terrorism is commonplace, and at one point, the player is encouraged to minimize the threat, so to speak, after being access to a gun. In nearly every encounter, that these people are pursuing the chance for a better life is reminded. But tough decisions must be made. If there is outdated or conflicting information, though—no matter how genuine or desperate the person across from you may seem—I chose to deny them for my playthrough. Operating in a totalitarian state, there are obvious repercussions to actions taken, and the protagonist has their own self and family to support. After each day, wages, bills, and other miscellaneous finances are totaled, and there is often little, if any, savings. There were many days where I couldn't afford to pay for heat and medicine; in the end, all but one of my family members died. To my surprise, there are all sorts of possible endings to achieve which are dependent on the moral choices players make. But nothing in this game can be argued as black or white, and the reasons for choosing any one action seem boundless.

On some level, Papers, Please is one of the more stressful games I've played, although that may be better described as it being a game which demands the player's full attention. While I am curious of other endings, I'm not really interested in playing through the game again—especially not anytime soon. As I've suggested, it's not particularly a simple game, and a lot of people probably wouldn't consider it a fun one either based on the premise alone, but it's not one that was made with that idea in mind. Obviously, the in-game border depicted mimics what could be or even is like for real people, and the game exceeds at portraying that idea.

[marvelvscapcom2]

Close But Not Beat

1. Michael Jackson Moonwalker for Sega Genesis

That darn breakdancing zombie bosses, huh?  had me quit it too

Dont ya know it lol  .   Towards the end it basically feels like the devs just kept right clicking copy and paste on enemy sprites until they got bored.  But its such a glorious game. Wish I could beat it. Maybe ill try again tonight.

__________________________________________

29. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart (Platty)


One of the greatest Video games ive played in the definiton of all a game should be. Great development. Great weapons. And some of the best graphics to date.


I also realize that while I will most likely only beat 30 to 32 games this year.  A good handful of those were platinums on collectathons that added maybe x3 to the playthrough. So im actually really proud to hit 30.



UPDATE


30.  Need For Speed Unbound (Challenging difficulty setting)  - Game was a beauty. Its everything you expect in a need for speed. And based on how inconsistent that franchise is and how odd they can wander into lanes they domt belong.  Saying its true to its identity is a massive compliment. Its easily top 5 NFS for me all time. The delivery missions are a big thrill. 92.5/100

[kashell]

90. Mega Man X

91. Mega Man X4 - Zero

Two plane rides. Two games done during both of them. Not much to say about these classics. I played them both on the Switch. I may go through X4 again with X, but we'll see.

[dhaabi]

49. Soupsoup || Mobile || 12.21.24



While wanting to play another hidden object game for mobile to pass idle time, I found myself attracted to Soupsoup. Admittedly, the bulk of my playing experience was during the springtime of this year, but I did revisit it shortly before collecting my thoughts.

Generally, Soupsoup adheres to the basics of the hidden object puzzle genre without deviating much, which means that players must fully rely on a careful eye to study the game's complex and often chaotic environments. To help provide some sort of direction, descriptions which add context and clues as to where the object to find may be are present. To a degree, these hints do help, but there are a majority which provide no benefit and instead are only commentary for the illustrated scene. Puzzles are designed by various creators, so how a creator decides to write their object description differs for better or for worse. With a detailed game like this being built for smaller screens, the ability to zoom in and out in addition to changing screen orientation is also available, but the ability to enlarge the preview image of the hidden objects themselves can't which often made looking for them much more difficult. And while the majority of hidden objects are aimlessly scattered throughout the illustration, a fair number of them are only revealed after interacting with the environment. There's no indication as to whether objects are actually embedded into the image or need to be added, so fully solving certain puzzles was more difficult than it should have been. Something else I'll briefly mention here is that it's irritating how the hidden object column resets its position every time an object is found, so the player is forced to cycle back through to where they previously were to know what to find next.

As mentioned above, stages are incredibly varied in design and art style as a result of all sorts of artists being involved. To me, this is the game's biggest strength as most puzzles felt unique from one another. And because of this, certain puzzles are designed to more difficult as a direct result of art styles. Subtle animations are employed in various places in a majority of puzzles, including objects that have already been identified too. Across the game's many stages, certain artists will be repeatedly featured, but very few feel similar to each other. A small yet thoughtful aspect added is the decision to credit each artist with their name and social links on the stage select screen which will direct players to their webpage.

Being a free game with free weekly updates, Soupsoup focuses on the amount of stages more than the amount of objects to find, although I suppose that's relative to other hidden object games I've played before. Stages of the game are divided into sections from the main menu, with 23 sections in total (at the time of this writing) which average around twelve puzzle stages in each. So, needless to say, there is a lot of content available since most puzzles average around 25 objects to find. It's also worth mentioning that the game grants players freedom the access to solve puzzles in whichever order they'd like to, for the most part. Of course, the game's objective is to build long-term player engagement rather than providing a game with an ending. In a way this model is nice, but my preferences don't involve prioritizing any one game for an indefinite amount of time.

After counting just now, I completed exactly one hundred stages before abandoning Soupsoup. At the time I stopped playing earlier this year, I was at about the halfway point to completing the available stages, but that's certainly not the case anymore. I've thought about maybe coming back to the game to play through one or two stages sporadically, but I ultimately decided not to since I know I'd become too focused on it again.

[kamikazekeeg]

32 - Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore (PC 2024) - BEAT - Random pick up but the sale going made it worthwhile enough to pick up at the moment as just something small to jump into.  Loved the idea of this when I first saw it, which is someone taking the idea of the awful CD-I Legend of Zelda games, Faces of Evil/Wand of Gamelon, and making a game that embraces goofy style and gameplay, but make it playable and fun.  And they nailed it.  It has silly, over-expressive, pixel art (I think they found a fun cheat too by using 3D models with a pixelated outline for some scenes, which was probably very time saving), a light-hearted and goofy tone, and gameplay that mimics what was trying to be done, but platforming is tight, action is responsive, and it's not super unforgiving challenge wise.

I think the only real negative I have is that most bosses are way too easy.  A couple have decent, basic ideas, but can get you if you aren't careful, while others are complete push overs.  I think the last boss is actually the easiest in the game.  I'm kinda unsure if that was meant to purposefully anti-climatic or not, but I was kinda prepping for a big fight that utilized everything I earned, but you just don't lol

Other than that, the game is great, I love this idea of taking something bad and making an original game out of that is actually good.  I'm positive I saw something similar to NES Zelda 2 being made, but I'd love to see it happen more often as it's a great way to pay homage to the old games, but it's not just rehashing already great games that have been done a ton of times already.  We already got enough games that are retro throwbacks to Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man, Mario, Ninja Gaiden, etc...

[Cartagia]

Probably my last title of the year, I hadn't played Vampire Survivors since spring of 2022.  Finally got all the DLC in one go with the Winter Sale, and I just have to say: it's the perfect Steam Deck game.

I've put in at least a dozen hours since Friday.  So many cool new levels, characters, powers, etc.

Maybe the best value per dollar I've ever seen at MSRP.

[kamikazekeeg]

Probably my last title of the year, I hadn't played Vampire Survivors since spring of 2022.  Finally got all the DLC in one go with the Winter Sale, and I just have to say: it's the perfect Steam Deck game.

I've put in at least a dozen hours since Friday.  So many cool new levels, characters, powers, etc.

Maybe the best value per dollar I've ever seen at MSRP.

I've put nearly 100 hours into the game since I bought before it's 1.0 release, and I think I've spent maybe 10 bucks in total for the game and all of its DLC since release...maybe up to 15 at the top, full price, it's a wildly high value per dollar lol It's such a goofy game, because it's almost not a game, but it's just so weirdly satisfying to run a level or two.  I think the Castlevania DLC in particular is their best yet.

If you like that and want something similar eventually, Holocure is free on Steam, it's basically the same game, but with anime/vtuber girls, but it's just as good.  And that's "free" as in it's a fangame and they are purely doing it for fun, not F2P with microtransactions lol