52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

[dhaabi]

23. Kids || PC || 05.10.24



Nearly six years ago, I remember first watching the teaser trailer for Kids and having my attention immediately grabbed. Despite it being a short experience and one which I've had available to me for about four years, I'm only just now properly playing it.

Self-described in succinct ways such as it's "a game about crowds" and "the psychology of the group," Kids presents its audience a strange series of screens with nondescript cartoon persons—I suppose the titular kids—interacting with another as a crowd. In some ways, Kids blends the puzzle game genre with interaction animation, as its development grapples with the connection between game and short film. Like those short descriptions imply, the project demonstrates what a crowd is and the various events which often surround them, whether they be positive or negative. As the player, it is not necessarily about our controlling or even guiding them but instead witnessing what happens through our brief engagement which serves as a catalyst for some sort of event, whether it affect two or two hundred.

At times, these faceless figures you dictate are few in number, but other times you will see their presence grow into the hundreds. Then, the screen becomes a sea of figures who, on their own, represent nothing, but, as a collective, are perplexing to understand what they are exactly based on their actions and reactions. In some situations, crowds demonstrate groupthink as they stand motionlessly, awaiting for any one of their neighbors to act of their own free will first, so that they themselves know what to do. However, other situations are the inverse. During these moments, we instead see crowds disrupt to devolve into minor conflict, as they react in clear opposition to someone's initial action, perhaps thinking they know best. No matter the scene, all kids must agree to progress.

Through its simple yet effective visual design, the project's presentation is often hypnotic as patterns seemingly unfold, greatly evident once a proper crowd is a part of the scenario at-hand. This is especially the case because, until the player understand what sort of action is necessary to progress, the game runs on loops. Additionally, great use of contrast is employed through its binary color system, as new screens may appear suddenly and shift from black to white. I'll also mention that I surprised to hear voice acting, however minimal it may be. In each of these scenes, the simple dialogue complements the on-screen action, perfectly demonstrating what it's like to be in a group. At the same time, the project's use of music sung by a boy's choir is haunting as it amplifies the empty void these characters reside in.

Ultimately, Kids is a project up for audience interpretation, which was an intentional design choice. I don't necessarily think there is one explicit takeaway to be gained from the experience, but clearly there is some sort of commentary on groupthink and the dissonance or harmony it may bring. Nevertheless, Kids offers an alluring experience to the introspective, which I'm glad to have played. Like I mentioned above, Kids is short, about 15–30 minutes. I know several here have access to it through a massive itch.io games bundle from years ago, so I'd suggest for any one with immediate access to it who are curious to try it for themselves.

[realpoketendonl]

7. Miraculous: Rise of the Sphinx [Switch]

Hold your horses, got a lot of thoughts on this one.

I got this game because it was on a huge sale (with my gold coins I got it for 3 bucks), and I really like the animated series it's based on. This game does not do it justice though. I knew it looked bad, and yeah, it was kinda bad.

The game’s biggest problem is just how monotenous it can be. The level design and platforming are basic and dull. Combat is basic and repetitive, with only like 1 or 2 enemy types with different skins (excluding bosses). Combat doesn’t feel good either. There’s barely any sense of impact, some sound effects are outright missing, your movement and actions all feel a little slow, but worst of all: it downright feels unresponsive sometimes. You will get through the earlier levels effortlessly with button mashing. Their idea of making levels more difficult though, is to just throw more enemies at you. And at that point I sometimes found it hard to get through, in no small part because I was fighting the controls when I wanted to dodge. You also can’t control the camera, and in some points the angles it chooses cause real problems. I know this is a kids game and I don’t expect Bayonetta here, but I doubt this could even hold the interest of kids for long, or it would frustrate them to the point of quitting.

The combat is broken up by sections where you go around and talk to your friends as a civilian. This feels almost unfinished. The controls can be straight-up broken sometimes here: whenever you leave a menu you can get stuck spinning on your axis, and it frequently takes me two or three tries to simply talk to someone. I’ve also seen layering issues, with text boxes being covered up by other elements. On top of that, I’ve even managed to trigger dialogue out of order, simply by walking into a location as the wrong character. This could’ve been interesting, and it is admittedly neat to see the characters from the show in any form, but at any point it’s either dull, broken or feels pointless.

Visually the game looks pretty bad too. On top of the basic level design, the models and character renders look rushed, with very awkward facial expressions and basic problems like odd hair colours in dark lighting. A shame, especially because I feel like Miraculous’s visual style should not be that hard to adapt faithfully into a game.

The performance is really bad too. I played the Switch version, but this is nowhere near pushing the limits of the platform. But still, the load screens take long enough for me to almost write this paragraph. The framerate frequently dipped into what felt like less than 10 fps. It would stutter noticeably whenever you trigger a change, like a cutscene or written dialogue, with the transition always looking sloppy.

And then there’s the glitches. I encountered a few, including one which could’ve locked me out of finishing the quest if I hadn’t figured out how to undo it. Good luck if you’re little kid with that problem.

I also need to mention the voice acting. There is voice acting during the action parts by the original voice actors, which is good, but they’re only oneliners and parts of the dialogue. No grunts during attacks or when you get hit or anything like that. How do you forget to add attack grunts? On top of that, most of the dialogue between characters is text only. That is hard to excuse in a game based on an animated series. It really should be fully voiced. Also, there’s a distracting amount of typos in the dialogue.

It’s a real shame. A Miraculous action game could be amazing. The series has a lot of creative fight scenes, moves, choreography, enemies, and abilities. There’s so much potential. But this game does not live up to that. I enjoyed it slightly, but that's solely because it looks like a show I like. I picked it up for 3 bucks. If you have a kid that really loves Miraculous and really wants this, I say it’s worth that much. But otherwise, just skip it. You can do a lot better elsewhere.


So that's 7 games beaten thus far, six of which for the first time. Also finished 8 books thus far this year. Decent progress! In terms of games, I did also abandon BROK the InvestiGator. A shame, I was really charmed by its world and characters, but the combat just wasn't clicking for me, and I found out the game has a lot of different endings, which is something I just hate in games. No idea what I'll play next, but thinking Star Fox Zero or The Big Wave or something. We'll see!

[realpoketendonl]

8. Star Fox Zero

Unf, god this game.

I know it has a bad reputation, but I wanted to play it for myself. And for a decent part of the game, I'll say I didn't think it was bad. The controls didn't have to be the way they are, but they worked fine for me. Occasionally I would forget I had two screens and mess up because of it, but other times I did find myself looking between both screens decently naturally. And in all-range mode (full free flight mode), I even found it useful in a few cases, to be able to look around my surroundings on one screen while keeping aim on the other. But a lot of the game is pretty basic in its level design, and towards the end you start to figure out why. I don't know whether it's the controls or whether it's poor boss design, but towards the end the game genuinely got on my nerves. That final boss especially frustrated me so much it almost made me want to quit the game entirely. I did defeat it in a not-crazy amount of attempts, but in that fight I felt I just wanted to be done with the game, which is not a good feeling. And that's not even getting into stuff like how bland the game looks, how little content there is, how insanely clunky the walker is, etc. I'll give the game some leadway, maybe I just don't click with the genre either (I prefer faster paced action games) and maybe with more playtime the controls will click better, but I don't feel a desire to replay the game and find out. Try it if you're already curious, but otherwise I think it's perfectly OK to skip it.

(And the worst part is: I thought I lost my disc, so I bought it again, but then I found the original disc. So now this game is on my shelf twice.)

So that's 8 games beat (and 9 books read) thus far this year. Got another short indie game on my radar, but also planning to play Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door when that comes out on Switch.

[ignition365]

Spent the last 3 hours writing up blurbs about the games I had played this year.  Managed to get up to like a week ago, hoping I can bother to churn out a few more blurbs tomorrow and catch up.

[dhaabi]

24. Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly || GameCube || 05.20.24



Despite having already played Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly long ago around the time of its release but for PlayStation 2, I couldn't remember much about the game, so I had been contemplating revisiting it for some time. Of course, this is in spite of the reception the game's garnered for being one of the worst installments in the franchise. However, since I didn't remember much about the game before playing now, I couldn't remember on my own if that reputation is valid or not, but I didn't necessarily remember having a bad time with it before.

As the fourth main entry to the series but the first to not be developed by creators Insomniac Games, Enter the Dragonfly will be familiar—in fact, far more than familiar—to those who've played previous games. Like games before it, Enter the Dragonfly is a 3D platformer with an emphasis on collecting items. Acting as the titular character Spyro, players are introduced to a scenario that's a near copy of the preceding game's story: in short, to round up a large group of dragonflies which the villain-character Ripto threatens to use as a powerful resource for their own purposes. Unfortunately, this is the only narrative device present this time, which results in story that's largely undeveloped and, ultimately, unoriginal. Nevertheless, along Spyro's journey which mimics his previous ones, the dragon ventures across a variety of worlds to gain back what's been lost, which inevitably also leads to saving the people within these worlds from Ripto's forces.

Be that as it may, I doubt the majority of those playing any games in the Spyro franchise do so for the narrative foremost. So, this leads us next to gameplay which is no different than the story regarding its lackluster quality. With each sequel entry building off the first game's core mechanics of charging at enemies, blowing flame breath, and gliding, the fourth entry offers little that's new. In fact, the only new mechanic is that Spyro can now evoke several different breath types to attack enemies. While this may have been an interesting mechanic, it is mostly unimportant, as there are only about three enemy types among the thirty or so which require a specific breath attack to defeat them. As for Spyro's other abilities which have been gained over the course of the series, they appear only once in brief moments, if at all.

While the initial trilogy of games were never groundbreaking in terms of gameplay, they did offer some variety through their use of mini-games and simple puzzles. Regarding the former, they're also present in Enter the Dragonfly and are mediocre at best. But, the latter are entirely absent for this entry. So, these two aspects lead to a game with middling level design, as other gameplay elements are instead used to fill in the void. As a series focused on collecting and exploration, these two elements always felt balanced in that the game instilled the desire for players to explore to seek out hidden treasures and secrets. But, now collectibles feel littered about stages with very little to discover as the natural progression to most stages is straightforward and linear.

To make design decisions worse is the game's performance which is, by all accounts, bad. In fact, there is an entire inventory of quality issues and bugs which make an average experience sometimes aggravating. These range problems range from camera control, draw distance loading, frame rate, and control inputs not registering. Generally, I am not someone who obsesses over high quality for some of these matters, but, when the quality reaches so low a point that basic gameplay is negatively impacted, it does become a major detractor.  Of the multitude of issues, the one I took fault with the most was the game's low frame rate, simply because it affects other aspects. For instance, items are mostly gathered from Spyro's companion Sparx, but this basic mechanic seldom operates correctly. As a result, Spyro is forced to walk around so as not to overload the game, which is the exact opposite to Spyro's horns-first while charging attitude. And, even when walking, the game regularly struggles as quick or sharp movements are made.

Lastly, I will mention two other design decisions which felt like little forethought for how they operate was given, only because they made my playthrough much more irritating. The first of these issues related to world portals, which naturally transport Spyro from one area to another, including areas where mini-games take place. Throughout any given stage, there are at least three portals, and little differentiation between them. This may not be such an issue on its own, but the stage layout often has the proposed end of a stage actually not be at the end. Instead, other collectibles and even additional areas almost always exist past the exit portal. So, I found myself charging through the stage exit portal thinking it was a mini-game portal a total of four times, which lead me to backtrack through the entire stage upon re-entering. The second issue is similar to the first, as it also relates to stage movement. On the pause menu, players can access a journal of sorts which details each stage's progress. In backing out of this menu altogether, the game recognizes two buttons as the cancel action. However, only on the page which serves as a table of contents does one of these two cancel action button option serve another purpose: warping to another stage. So, also for a total of four separate instances, I found myself only trying to exit this menu to instead be taken away elsewhere.

From what I've read, the consensus is that either both the PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions of Enter the Dragonfly are on par with another on the low end of the spectrum or that the latter port is notably worse. Whichever the case, my experience playing the game this time was unpleasant. The departure of Insomniac Games developing the franchise clearly shows with the final product, as there's a considerable amount of polish needed to bring the game's quality up to a higher standard which players may find fun. As a result, there really is nothing redeemable about Enter the Dragonfly within the context of other entries within the series, meaning there is little reason for anyone interested in the franchise to seek it out.

[kashell]

41. Skautfold: Shrouded in Sanity - B Ending

This is the first game that's part of the Skautfold: Bloody Pack. This was an impulse buy in the most major way. No research, no word of mouth, no nothing. I just saw the cover art and thought it looked cool. The price was nice, too: two games in one pack. I'm glad collections of games are becoming more and more popular. Anyways, Shrouded of Sanity can best be described as Souls-like (sigh) mixed with Castlevania mixed with Mega Man. You play as a corpse brought back to life that needs to put a stop to a deadly fog that's covered old-timey London. Said fog has turned the workers of the palace into bloodthirsty beasts. Stopping the fog requires you to kill four boss enemies in any order and then the big-bad king. It's gothic horror setting and zippy combat give nods to Bloodborne. I finished the game in about two hours. The game is tough, but as always, it's doable with enough patience. I'm glad I picked up this pack on a whim.

[kashell]

42. Skautfold: Shrouded in Sanity - A Ending

I ran through this game again, knowing what and what not to do in order to get the best/true ending. Usurper takes place after this ending so I'm geared up to begin that whenever the time comes. What a surprise this game was. I was initially turned off by it being ANOTHER Souls-like but there was a lot more to it. I'm a sucker for the creepy and atmospheric settings so that was able to outweigh my misgivings. If anyone is looking for something quick, challenging, and imaginative then I recommend this.

[realpoketendonl]

9. Metroid II: Return of Samus

So I'll be honest, the main reason I wanted to play through this game, is just because I was planning to put up a Metroid II poster I got from My Nintendo, and it felt weird to hang up a poster of a game I hadn't beaten yet. I know that even Metroid fans often say they skipped this one and that it's OK to do so. Not because it's bad at all, moreso because it's a game that really shows its age. And yeah, it kinda does.

I'll be honest: I played this on Nintendo Switch Online, and I played through the entire game using an online map and save states. And I have no shame in admitting that. In case you don't know, this game does not have any sort of map at all, and I have absolutely no clue how people were expected to play through this without one. It was definitely a limitation of the hardware, I get that, but that doesn't change how difficult it is to keep track of where you are and where important things are or could be without a map to check. It sometimes felt difficult in kinda stupid ways too. I'm talking having to backtrack for 8 minutes(!) for a weapon recharge (plus 8 minutes back to where you were), or letting me enter the final boss fight while it would be impossible for me to defeat it because I started the fight with 2 missiles less than it would take to kill it (seriously). Also, the game is so zoomed in that getting hit by stuff off screen, especially when traversing downward, is very common.

It's not all bad though, far from it. The scope of the world is genuinely impressive for Game Boy. The sound design, spritework and some of the music is fantastic, and the running-and-gunning feels pretty good too. This is not a bad game by any means, it's just a clearly dated one.

Most Metroid fans won't blame you for skipping both the first game and this one, and while I haven't seriously played the original yet, I agree on this one. It deserves to be remembered and is worth trying if you're curious, but I would not say it's required playing.

Poster looks great though.


Now onto Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door!

[tripredacus]

18. Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut
Playing this was really strange for me. Except for the opening area (Sarif lab and Detroit hub) I had no recollection of this game. I remembered the UI and some of the characters, but basically none of the levels, the story, the interactions. Strange considering that Steam says I played the original game for 30+ hours. Even the ending seemed alien to me, for I thought that the original game ended with killing a bunch of people like setting off a nuke or something. Also I will say the ending cutscenes were not really expected and weren't really endings. No video showing the choice and the response/future events type thing and instead it was just Adam talking about his feelings over archival footage.

No technical issues with the game except one time. There was one instance where a sound effect got stuck and looped. It was a low frequency sound so it wasn't distracting, but when this happened I heard no dialog. So I may have missed about an hour's worth of audio from either the communicator, environmental audio (people talking in other rooms) or talking to NPCs. Cutscenes played fine and other game sounds including guns worked. It did eventually get to a point where an in-engine cutscene needed to play and the game crashed.

Like the original, I can't see how it would be possible to do a no-alarms run, or perhaps even a no kill run. Maybe it can be done on New Game+ since you can keep your praxis and probably use the stealth options better.

19. Lego Marvel Superheroes
This looked interesting to me, at least these modern Lego storytelling games alltogether such as the Star Wars version, from watching some videos. I tried it out but it really was not something I could get into. The controls were weird. The tutorial messages were too big on the screen, showed too much info too fast and made the controls appear generally confusing. I don't mind a game of this perspective, but I really don't care for having to use fighting game combo system to do things. There was a QTE very early and it was not at all satisfying. Knowing I was just going to be frustrated by these things, I decided to uninstall.

[shfan]

Yesterday I played through Cadillacs and Dinosaurs with my 5 year old son, taking it in turns to play. It was a little emotional because it's a game my Dad took me to play at the arcades back in the day, felt odd playing it through with my own youngster. I've deliberately avoided getting SHfan Jr. interested in video games, others have done so, so it's a great feeling that I can start to introduce him to games I love which might interest him. Now I know how you gaming dads and mums feel

[Cartagia]

Star Wars Jedi - Survivor is a better game than the first in almost every way.  It is still a little janky in a couple of places (mostly some collision detection and a couple of cutscene graphics), but it plays better, runs better, and has more fun exploration.  The main hub is great, but I kinda wish they either set everything around that area, or made at least one of the more story driven areas a bit bigger / more explorable.  It has way better, more varied, and more meaningful side activities, which was very welcome, since that was one of the bigger issues with the first game.

All that said, though, while the story has better individual plot elements it isn't paced super great, and the whole second act doesn't work for me narratively.  It rights itself immediately in the third act, and completely knocks that part of the story out of the park, but I spent a big chunk of the game thinking "Oh, this story kind of sucks."  I think if they had shortened the length of the second act and used that time to further flesh out the back end of the game it would be way better.

[kamikazekeeg]

14 - Gooba Ball (PC 2024) - ENDLESS - This one was an easy game to add, it's short, endless, it's a Suika Game copy, but it's a game dedicated to the 1st year anniversary for the Vtuber group VCHIBAN, and it's just a goofy little freebie game.  Put 2 hours into it, probably will play it more, basically if you can't pick up Suika Game on Switch, just grab it for free on Steam through Gooba Ball.

[kashell]

43. Tales of Eternia

This was a journey. To date, I've played through this five times. It's easy to forget how far the series has come since 2000. I want to talk about the bad, which isn't that bad given the game's history. First, the controls aren't as tight as I remember. I played on my PlayStation 3, which might have had something to do with what seemed like a slight delay. In a game where combat requires you to be up close and super personal with the enemy, that caused a lot of frustration. Speaking of combat, it's a shame that the game basically forces you to make Reid your main. Yes, he's the main character and has the most abilities but playing as Farah provided its own level of fun. That said, both Reid and Farah don't come into their own until you're passed the halfway point. Combat remains slightly cumbersome before that. It doesn't help that most of the enemies are small.

Taking it a step further, to get the most out of Farah, you have to really dedicate time to fight a certain number of battles (300!) with her and use her moves one too many times. I tried my hardest to stick with her for the entire journey but Reid's combos just flowed better. There's also a lack of a grade shop, a lack of new game plus, a lack of a warning that says "saving over this cleared file will start you over", tedious cooking, and close to zero story inclusion for Max and Chat. The lack of a new game plus is the biggest hit because there's some neat stuff that can only be unlocked on a clear file, but doing so means starting from ground zero.

All that to say, the game is still a solid entry in the series. The game still looks amazing. The art style is just *chef's kiss*. Mutsumi Inomata (RIP) toned down her character designs and the game is better as a result of it. Sakuraba's musical style is in full effect, too. The adage of "third time's a charm" really rings true. Funnily enough, this was my third game in the series, too. Tales of Eternia provided a lot of firsts for the series: cooking (it's still tedious, but man it's helpful), manual mode, spells that don't freeze the combat, Mystic Artes, combination skills, cameo fights, and probably more that I'm missing. It's easy to sink a good 40 to 50 hours in every playthrough. Once you get to a certain point, combat becomes fluid and addictive. I'd spend a good hour or so just running around a dungeon trying different set ups to see what did and didn't work. I remember the first time I played this I wandered into a hidden dungeon all on my own pre-GameFAQs. I felt damn proud of myself for doing so.

I still stand by the fact that this is the best entry in the series to start with. Others will recommend Symphonia. That's a fine choice, but to really see where the series got some good bedrock for what's to come, then I say Eternia. This is also the game that would benefit most from some sort of reimagining. There's a lot of potential here to fix the above mentioned flaws and make something even more epic.

[kamikazekeeg]

15 - Dave the Diver (PC 2023) - BEAT - What an absolutely charming game.  I initially got into the game because I liked the art style, there was a Godzilla crossover, and I have that soft spot/spook spot for underwater stuff, so the general idea of diving into deep waters and hunting for fish seemed neat.  I wasn't expecting to like the more "management" side of things as you are getting fish to run a sushi shop, but it's all fairly straightforward and doesn't get tedious or boring.

I think what this game does best is variety.  There's always some silly little new minigame, a boss fight with a crazy creature that is different from the last one, there's always new fish and new areas to gather in, and while it has combat and such, it's still a pretty casual game I feel, like it's not Stardew Valley casual, but it's somewhere between something like that and say a survival game like Subnautica.

The games story and characters are really nice, and it's just a fun game.  It's kinda that perfect game where you can just jump in whenever, do a dive, hunt for specific fish you want, trying to get the best quality meals and make money for upgrades and expansions, and then come back later. I still have more to do also with the post-game.  The DLC they have that's for free right now are pretty light, something for the boat game Dredge and something for Godzilla, but they are very additions, don't think of them like expansions, though Dredge might be one that offers something more to the actual game, compared to the Godzilla one, which I would say is mostly glorified cosmetic DLC, but it's free, so zero real complaints. 

I have no actual major complaints for the game either.  There are a few elements of jank here and there with movement and aiming, and I think some of the boss fights are a little clunky, but I enjoyed myself, I kept wanting to progress to see where things went, what new areas there were, and what new fish I'd come up against.  Big recommend here.

[kamikazekeeg]

16 - Nightmare Kart (PC 2024) - BEAT - More low poly, retro throwback love.  Been waiting on this for abit, took longer than expected due to the dev having to rebrand everything after Sony told her she couldn't put out a game with Bloodborne branding.  What we get a Bloodborn-enough kart racer that is pretty fun.  Lots of love to the aesthetics and music, and it's all for free.  The only real complaint is that the AI is pretty bad.  They were only a challenge at the final race level because they would otherwise get stuck on the map.  Still love it though, the music is so goofy, in that it's like classic PS1/N64 era racing music, but in a gothic horror setting lol

There are multiple runs in the campaign required to unlock everything I believe, NG+ style, but gonna wait on that for when it finally releases on Steam to make updating easier as otherwise it's currently available on itch.io.