Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2022 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

Simoun posted...

Ziggurat 2 (PC)

That is to say, if you like

I fell asleep posting this. So I was just going to say if you like roguelike for itself, there is still a mode within the game that lets you do it. In fact the replayability is designed with this game as Prestige exists and you can ascend as many times as you want, making the game harder and harder for yourself.

Paperball Deluxe (Switch)

I love me some ball-rolling games, but this is in the running for most challenging that I've played.

Deathloop

finally got around to playing through this. It was alright - nothing special, but pretty fun for most of it.

Pharaoh Rebirth+ (PC)

This game is rad as hell. It's basically Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia crossed with Indiana Jones, plus Metal Gear Solid's codec calls. It isn't a true Metroidvania because it's stage-based but there's a lot of exploration in each stage and reasons to go back to them later.

My only real complaint is that the controls can be finicky (you open the map by double-tapping up, for example) and it wasn't made any better by the game not letting me use my gamepad's d-pad instead of the joystick.

Forgive Me Father (PC)

This is what Amid Evil should've been for me. Especially with that final world. Being a Lovecraft shooter, the descent to madness is very slow going here. Amid Evil had alot of ideas for enemies and weapons but all the levels and boss fights (save for the last two) felt constrained and contained. This game gave you everything from the beginning (using a rudimentary RPG system) and tossed the danger in your face as soon as you left Episode 1. There was some disconnect with enemy placement I feel and more often they didn't seal a door in an arena room, allowing you to pipe enemies through a doorway. Enemies also had a range of sight so you could actually kite them one by one if you wanted too. But its still all much better than what I've played so far this year.

Not subtle, but it takes its time with the variety of levels offered as old enemies disappear and new ones come out. Probably didn't like how the plot devolved into just shooting things going deeper and deeper instead of the investigative nature of a Call of Cthulhu game and it didn't even do this halfway. As early as the end of Episode 1, things just didn't matter anymore. Episode 2 was all about sussing a cult but after that it was just pointless with the readables you find being pretentious ominous stuff.

The art style took some getting used and the weapons feel amazing and are varied. The bosses are also more than just circlestrafe heaven. They can actually kill you if you don't think about what you're doing. Probably my hatest enemies are the ones in the finale where I had to actually turn the difficulty down. Strafing bastards swarming you everywhere.

Spooky Ghosts Dot Com (PC)

Oof, this game is... rough. I love the aesthetic (sign me up for anything Halloween-themed - love horror that isn't actually scary) but the game is clunky and the bosses are difficult. They have challenging attack patterns, which is good, and loads and loads of HP, which is less good. Overall I just wish the game was a smoother and had a bit more in the way of character progression to level out the difficulty spikes a bit.

Steins;Gate (PS3)

Took me a while to sort out my thoughts on this visual novel. This is really my first ever "pure" VN, and it was an interesting experience. I'm pretty sure that I liked it, but there are a lot of qualifiers on thatit's a very flawed experience.

First, one of the strongest points about this game is the science fiction aspect. I'm not super into science fiction, but the science in the game is explained at a level that is understandable to a layperson, without traveling too far down any rabbit holes or overly obsessing on the details. It's very accessible.

The other strong point is the "true ending" storyline, which resolves in a satisfying way. Some of the side endings are also nice and fun, even if they don't always make sense. Unfortunately, the "true ending" is locked away behind the silly and convoluted phone email system, which makes it a chore and practically impossible to get on a natural playthrough. It would have been a lot more impactful to just have that be the normal ending, or to at least make the trigger something in the endgame so you don't have to start over again to get it. I wasted an hour or two making different game choices before finally just consulting a guide.

I get that they want to reward you for "work" or whatever, but making some of the most impactful scenes hidden behind arbitrary/invisible choices robs them of a lot of their significance. For instance, I waited the whole entire game to see the resolution of Chekhov's Jellyman, only to discover during the 100% cleanup that I missed the only Jellyman scene because I didn't call the right person at a certain time. By that time, I had already seen Mayuri die dozens of times, so the scene had zero emotional impact.

I generally dislike anime because of certain aesthetic and thematic tropes, and while this game avoids a lot of them, the tropes it embraces are some of the worst thematic ones. The inclusion of some of these (the "trap" character and nonstop normalized sexual harassment of female characters) threatens to ruin what is generally a very good story. The catgirl crap, while also annoying, is at least tolerable in comparison.

The storyline twists were a mixed bag. I feel like most of them are very heavily foreshadowed, so much so that Okabe kind of comes off like an oblivious idiot for not noticing them. Of course Suzuha is a time traveler, and of course Moeka is an untrustworthy person who never should have been allowed to send a D-mail. The only things I did not really see coming were Mayuri's death, which of course was designed to be shocking, and FB's identity, which was not very important in the end. On the positive side, there were a few plot points that I deduced only a minute before they happened, which is really the perfect way to design a good twist.

I wish the last chapter was a little less contrived. I had been waiting since the prologue to see how the time-travel questions there would be resolved, and was hoping it would be Okabe and his friends coming up with some way to save Kurisu. So when it just turned out to be "Suzuha time travels again and tells him what to do" I was disappointed. I still really liked it, but I felt like the problems were mostly conveniently solved off-screen.

Still, as I said at the beginning, I overall liked the game. I had no expectations going in, and did not expect to come to enjoy many of the characters like I did. I understand why it's such a popular time-travel story.

The Inheritance of Crimson Manor (PC)

Sometimes a house with puzzles is just a house with puzzles. I think I played a similar game like this ages ago with the exact same premise minus the gothic bent. I think this game was refreshing; you don't need things to be played for horror or have some ambiguous but mundane mystery like Gone Home to make a good game. This was by the numbers just you and an empty house solving logical puzzles, backtracking throughout the place as you unlock more and more rooms and though the final twist is morbid it doesn't try to do anything else for you and leaves you to your own conclusions. Like I hate it when there's some revelation and a scare chord is played to emphasize the moment. This premise bares it all on you and lets you decide.

I love that the puzzles requiring observation are well-designed. The game gave you this magic monocle like in The Room, but unlike that game, did not pepper the entire manor with its use. I was actually surprised to find many times in which I was stumped only for the solution to be "use the monocle!" which meant that I didn't run around the place with a shade of tinted green in my face 90% of the time and it was enjoyable. The manor was enjoyable, not too cluttered and things you need to observe standing out but not blatantly so. There were also alot of "pick up and rotate" objects that were actually useful to rotate for once. And the ratio of useless rotateables to not-useless with roughly 50/50. It didn't let you pick everything up which was honestly refreshing as the game wasn't trying to show off its 3d engine or something.

One thing though is that while I did not mind the repetitive calming singular track, I was a bit bothered by the ambiance of the house itself and I'm sorry but I had to look up if there was actually going to be a jump scare here. When I found out there wasn't I enjoyed this game thoroughly.

Kenri posted...

Spooky Ghosts Dot Com (PC)

Oof, this game is... rough. I love the aesthetic (sign me up for anything Halloween-themed - love horror that isn't actually scary) but the game is clunky and the bosses are difficult. They have challenging attack patterns, which is good, and loads and loads of HP, which is less good. Overall I just wish the game was a smoother and had a bit more in the way of character progression to level out the difficulty spikes a bit.

ugh tell me about it. I gave up on this one pretty early

Assassin's Creed Unity (XB1)

Having not played a game in the series since 2016 and having four or so games in the backlog, I decided to finally go through another. It was definitely better than I expected, though I know its poor reputation mostly stemmed from a disatrous launch that was clearly patched up quite a bit.

The main assassination missions were definitely the highlight, mixing in the open-endedness of stealth series pioneers like Hitman and Thief. I really liked France from an aesthetic point, and it was interesting putting this during the French Revolution, but arguably the biggest draw to these games for me is scaling incredible archiecture, and 18th century France has nothing on the Italian and Middle Eastern settings of previous games.

Hopefully I don't take six years to start Syndicate.

Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC)

No reason just felt like it. I see that my FPS skills havent changed (i still suck). But also, I had no idea you could pirate players to your team in advanced without having to unlock them normally by winning the ladder matches. This significantly helped the already dumb AI sometimes and would explain why you gain ALOT of money in this game but barely use it.

KCF0107 posted...

Assassin's Creed Unity (XB1)

Having not played a game in the series since 2016 and having four or so games in the backlog, I decided to finally go through another. It was definitely better than I expected, though I know its poor reputation mostly stemmed from a disatrous launch that was clearly patched up quite a bit.

The main assassination missions were definitely the highlight, mixing in the open-endedness of stealth series pioneers like Hitman and Thief. I really liked France from an aesthetic point, and it was interesting putting this during the French Revolution, but arguably the biggest draw to these games for me is scaling incredible archiecture, and 18th century France has nothing on the Italian and Middle Eastern settings of previous games.

Hopefully I don't take six years to start Syndicate.

Honestly Unity was peak AC for me. They wouldn't ever try being this ambitious again with the world design. But it suffered from a buggy first release and everyone just feeling like Arno is Ezio 2.0. I wish Ubi still had the sense to stop making AC games every year and explored this guy's lore a bit more. It could've been its own trilogy entirely.

TOEM (PC)

A great little photography puzzle game.

Omori
Didn't love it, didn't hate it.

Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7 Devils (Switch)

This is a cult classic Metroidvania so I was excited to finally play it. But ooh boy, this game has some issues.

So there's two stories: Bunny Must Die where you play as Bunny, and Chelsea and the 7 Devils where you play as Chelsea. They have the same map but play very differently and have different power ups. Unfortunately both are just frustrating to control. This game is like the anti-Hollow Knight: where everything in that game just felt precise, effortless to control, and just fun to play, this game turns "jump over a small gap" into an incredibly frustrating experience.

Okay so, you know how Super Metroid has the standing straight jump and the moving spin jump? Let's take that system (which is, let's be honest, already kinda frustrating) and add a third kind of jump: dash jumps, which provide almost zero vertical movement but get you more horizontal distance than a spin jump. Now let's make it so almost every jump in the game can only be completed with one kind of jump.

Also, absolutely everything you do feels like it's both on a delay and has input lag, so if you want to attack an enemy, turn around, run towards the ledge, and jump, you need to wait for your attack lag to end, turn around, wait for your turning lag to end, start running, and then push jump before you'd think you need to so the input lag doesn't throw you in a pit.

It is so. Insanely. Frustrating. Just to play this game. I finally starting getting it by like hour 4 but I'd nevertheless describe the game as "completely uncontrollable". There's three kinds of wall jumps and the game never teaches you how two of them work, they just seem to happen kinda at random until you look up an explanation. There's a boss who kills you instantly if you're looking at him. There's an "upgrade" that makes your jump significantly worse and the game doesn't tell you how to turn it off. This whole thing is just a shitpost of a game and of course I 100%'d both stories.

Painkiller: Black Edition (PC)

I may have beat this thing before but it was so long ago and this time actually looking for all the secrets and trying not to cheat. Having had my time with Serious Sam games previously and looking beyond the fact that it was a horde shooter, I started noticing the nuances of design and enemy placement. I always thought that Painkiller was mindless as well but now I see how great it is. For the most of it, the game was actually solid. It dips in quality around the halfway point with all the goddamn hitscanners.

It's not without its flaws though: Gating the non canon good ending behind an entire difficulty that required initially beating it to unlock (I used a script that unlocked all the levels gated by difficulty). I also tried my best getting the tarot cards this time and succeeded 90% leaving the impossible BS ones out. Secrets were also pretty BS. I never noticed them before because the levels were so simple but having to look them all up now, its ridiculous that you actually need a PHD in bunnyhopping to get to most of them. There is no sprint or crouch button and so the game expects you to play one way only to not when secret hunting. And almost all of them are located in the most asinine location. Even Quake wasn't this ridiculous.

What I also found out was this game still has a strong fanbase, mostly Russian. Because the game was proudly scripted in Lua, modding scene has been easygoing including an unofficial patch that restores basic things like the main menu music. Still flawed and bugged, game crashed and froze on me more times than I can count. I prefer Serious Sam but I can see the charm this original game brought. I also loathe that 10-level expansion pack with clearly "beta" content.

I'm thinking of playing the other PK games now. I hear it gets lukewarm then just a whole lot of worse then the original levels get remade. Might be quite the journey.

Painkiller: Overdose (PC)

Well whaddya know. It sucks. Well it was drained of whatever original spirit the first one had. It's certainly better than Battle Out of Hell though. Basically this game is like the Serious Sam 2 of the franchise except from here it doesn't get any better and the remake is just the same game in HD (gated by holding half of its stages behind DLC).

So first off, I guess they just saw Painkiller and were like "oh we can do this too. just rooms and monsters." And that's it. They didn't even care for balance---some rooms are simply huge courtyards but the enemy placement would've been better in a smaller room and vice versa. At least they didn't do that cheap thing where they put hitscanners in a pillar a mile away. Mostly.

One change I liked was the weapons which were honestly just reskins but they were interesting with subtle improvements. For example the bolt sniper/stake gun was now a faster crossbow that shoots 3 at once and easily became my favorite weapon. The shotgun though looking more badass than before was made even more pathetic and became a situational weapon for its one-shot freeze alt fire. I know its annoying but I like how they made Belial shout AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH whenever youre firing the machine gun for long periods of time.

And if its one thing this team did with the Painkiller formula that works its having unique setpieces and monsters to go with those set pieces. They didn't even recycle for the most part and when they did it fit 90% of the time. That said, they were just following rooms and monsters' formula and so a cool setting such as a Nuclear Plant was really just empty industrial lots full of parked cars, empty shelves, pillars, walkways, and electrical tesla coils you know the usual OSHA breaking policy architechture. And in order to even get here you'd have to stomach the rather crappy first chapter as it rehashes tired themes. Hit or miss mostly. Maps I remember are for their themes and not level design: Mt Vesuvius' eruption, the American Civil War, a fractured fairy tale setting, airships in WW2, Animal Farm.

This game also added a whole lot of trap hallways which isn't really made for a game like this but at least they weren't one hit kill and they affected enemies too so whatever.

The Tarot conditions are insane. No thought into them unless that thought was We're Dicks. You basically have to be a Painkiller Veteran to even attempt them. Even the early ones. They often have crazy conditions like do not grab a single soul in a map that isnt huge mostly and there are 300 enemies. Or grab at least 160 souls and there are only 161 enemies. I've never played PK without cheats till recently so now I recognize how fitting each tarot condition is for a level and I can tell you that the ones here are absolute bullshit. Even moreso the cards themselves 90% suck. The prize for maintaining your HP above a certain point is...a card that gives you +50 HP. What.

As soon as I saw how ridiculous Tarot was, I just breezed through the game forgetting them. Mostly with the main weapon because ammo is ridiculously scarce in this one. I guess they wanted to make things harder and challenging so crank up the horde but dont give the player anything.

Finally I know the story is BS and I never actually played any Painkiller after the original so I was kinda happy to see that the final boss of this game was the karma houdini in the first one. There isn't even a cutscene but I was still very satisfied taking this guy out.

Well that's it. Now I'm thinking do I play the crappy ones or just skip to the remake.

Yumeutsutsu Re:Master (Vita)

Yes, this is a yuri visual novel and one of the last physical Vita games to be produced. I've only finished the one route so far but I found it to be interesting; the characters all work at a small game company so there's a lot of details on how game development is, considering crunch time and deadlines to be made. It's kind of funny that the characters are creating a visual novel in the visual novel but it does work. One of the endings I did get I would much rather forget exists, though. Considering other games I've played from this developer I am not surprised.

Painkiller: Resurrection (PC)

Here we go. The first of three crappy fan-sequels released in some official capacity.

Okay I gotta give it credit. One thing this one does well is half the levels were made with an open-world feel. Reminds me of that crossing the countryside level in Serious Sam Siberian Mayhem but made in 2009 so in some ways it was ahead of its time. You crossed between biomes like a mountain, a sawmill, a fortress, each with their own enemies and nuances. And all from just one big load (which was probably a bitch to load in 2009 honestly but not currently). Having only 6 maps, monsters are now as many as 600+ and you could honestly just skip them and bunnyhop to the finish.

That said, everything else about it sucks. Completely forgoing everything that made Painkiller great. If Overdose sucked the soul out of the original, this one crushed the body and spirit in a blender and drank the blackened sludge resulting in it. Monster placement is "random" and abysmal. Often just spamming alot to keep you busy but at the same time just utterly cheap as you are bombarded by suicide bombers and hitscanners. Only reason why I even finished the game is I was just hop skipping through everything.

Story is nonsense, just ignore it. The fact that they went through the effort of making voiced cutscenes is an effort in itself.

This is the real shitshow folks and I am now so curious about the other 2 games because theyre actually not original maps but spliced multiplayer maps and a ton of enemies tossed in.

I would just like to preface that I will now be using cheats in the next 2 games. There really is no point for me other than morbid curiosity. And if I give up on them you'll know because I won't be posting them here lol. All the comments I'm reading about them is that its just rooms of nonstop waves. I wonder if I can bunnyhop my way out as I had done here.

This game is lukewarm but not nearly enough to piss me off.

Gun Devil (PC)
Cute freeware prototype of a sidescrolling run-n-gun game. Looks straight off of Newgrounds.

Gorogoa (Xbox One)
Forgot to post this about a week or so ago, but I played through this as sort of a short game to get through for July.

The puzzle solving gameplay is intriguing and art style is beautifully done. Narrative is pretty trippy though. You're not told what's going on in the game since there's no text and there's a constant shift in "timelines" then the game just....ends.

So yeah, something you'd play purely for gameplay and artistic and it's good for those.

Painkiller: Redemption (PC)

So I like to preface this by saying that I actually "acquired" this one (and the one before) and the one after this because there's no way I'm paying for trash. That said, I would rather play this than Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis but that's only because you can make your own fun with this game. I mean you'll have to if you actually wanna beat it.

Also I played this on the easiest difficulty. The one that regenerates your health and didn't require you to pick up souls to go demon mode because lmao this game actually had the gall to disable cheats. I can't ever imagine anyone being sane enough to beat this on Trauma. It's just fucking impossible.

Also. I never actually "beat" it. I mean I killed a boss at the end of chapter 1 (of 2...which only has 2 levels) and suddenly the Single Core Processor this game was made for started crapping out and slowing down on me. The game wouldn't register the level beat because I had to wait millennia for the ragdoll of the boss to come to a complete stop. So I thought this was a great stopping point and call it a day.

If Painkiller Resurrection was slurping the black sludge of Painkiller's body and spirit, this game is if you took a sledgehammer to the blender itself containing said sludge and ate everything, glass and machine parts included. This is bottom of the barrel Painkiller and it makes me actually love Overdose if only for awhile.

No thought into anything. Just rooms and monsters. But unlike Overdose it is Just. Rooms. And. Monsters. M-O-N-S-T-E-R-S. There are so many of them, its like a kid whipped out the level editor and decided he was gonna make "the bes gaym evar" by spamming the spawner because I dont know how to do scripting or music or any sort of originality that's going to give my game a twist. Mercifully, this kid also did not know anything about hitscanners and you only really encounter them in one level. Most of the game is just ALOT of monsters attempting to whack you.

There's no rhyme or reason as to why the guy who made this (different team from the last one) thought he could pass it off as a real "official" Painkiller game other than to scam you. It is bone-grindingly dull and if anything I felt like I was truly in purgatory with this one.

Also I haven't been mentioning this but both in this game and the last, you are also expected to find level *secrets* and fulfill tarot conditions. Ridiculous.

Shit. Now I'm gonna have to play the last fangame Recurring Evil just to see how terrible it is in comparison.

Littlewood (PC)

Great town sim game with streamlined mechanics. My favorite is that time elapses based not by time but by successful actions. While not a game that one would traditionally called beatable, credits roll after getting married, so I guess I will add that to here.

fault - milestone one (PS4)

Another short visual novel in my collection that clocked in at about two hours long. It had a decent premise to start but veered off on a whole different direction after a while, and ended with an annoying cliffhanger when the next game in the series hasn't even been released on PS4 yet (not even mentioning the 3rd game which has been in development hell for seven years). If the later games come to PS4 I might play them, but this isn't a series I would go out of my way to continue on either PC or Switch.

Painkiller: Recurring Evil (PC)

Is it weird that I couldn't wait to get off work to finish this game. I just had to see it. And now I'm convinced, just like Puritas Cordas probably, Redemption was an attempt to stall for this game. This game actually had original maps. It still had ridiculous monster spawns but at least it wasn't boring. I can't put my finger on it but the spawning had a bit more sense to it. That said it was still terrible. Do not play these 3 games. Maybe the first of them if you've never heard of Serious Sam 4. I think these fangames had the wrong idea on what a retro modern shooter was. And with the onset of retro FPS these days, there's absolutely no reason to other than for an obsessive-compulsive desire to post on an internet forum for video games.

Mercifully this was only five levels. It's time to dive in to the real treat: the remake/remaster.

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5)

Haven't finished a game in a while!

The first Spiderman game was really fun so Miles Morales was always on the list to play. I wanted to play it on the PS5 though and I got a friend to lend me his copy. The game is also super fun, it's more of the same but with the new mechanics it feels pretty fun and fluid to play. It's pretty short overall though, I replayed the game on NG+ and just sped through the story missions and managed to clear it pretty quickly.

BlackDra90n posted...

The game is also super fun, it's more of the same but with the new mechanics it feels pretty fun and fluid to play.

This is the best part of the game. They distinguish Miles's Spider-Man from Peter's with different mechanics and powers. Frankly I prefer Peter's but I'm glad they actually made it different.

Hopefully Spider-Man 2 will have you playing as both. I don't see why not considering the different characters you played as in the first one.

Yea I have a hard time not seeing them both being playable. Pretty hyped for it.

The Gunk (XB1)

As sort of a fan of Image & Form, I was interested in trying out their first non-SteamWorld game in a decade. It did everything moderately well but nothing really stood out by the end. The foundation is in place for a more robust attempt at an unrelated sequel.

Dicey Dungeons (Switch)

This has been my downtime-at-work game for a while, but after two 7+ hour road trips in the last 3 weeks I've finally beaten it. It's a very silly game! But fun. I had trouble learning most of the characters (not to mention some of the trickier episode gimmicks) but eventually got them and came to enjoy playing them... except the Witch, kinda. The Witch just feels underpowered.

I do wish the game was a bit less reliant on RNG and that each episode was a bit more varied in terms of the equipment you get, and yes I realize those are contrary wants but

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (PC)

This is a fairly short VN with three romance options and 8 endings; the route I did took me about 2 hours, with one bad end on the way. The conceit of the game is that you and your best friend have summer jobs working on a cruise ship, which is what drew me to the game initially because, idk, cruise ships are just a comfy setting for me I guess. The game's itch.io pages promises "realistic 'serving onboard a cruise ship' action" and I was fully expecting that to be compromised in the service of telling a cute romance story, but no, the job is fully as hellish as, to my understanding, it actually is, and the characters largely bond through commiseration (at least at first). The characters are super cute, especially the main two girls.

As you might expect from the title -- well, maybe you'd expect it to be a game about The Killers, because the title is fully cribbed from the lyrics of Spaceman. But if you didn't expect that, you might expect the game to have a supernatural element, and it does. It's interesting and I didn't find myself going "this story would be better if it had 80% less fantasy" like I do all the time, but I do wish it had more of a chance to really develop. The whole conflict is introduced and resolved very, very quickly. Maybe there's more here if you do the other routes. I might revisit it eventually and check.

I don't usually post in these, but I have a pretty surprising (for this board) first time clear here.

Portal (PC)

I've had the Orange Box since 2010 but I never actually beat Portal, so it was the longest lasting non-RPG on my backlog. I'm making a large backlog push of mostly RPGs (which I might make into a thread here) starting this December, so it's good to get one of the shorter games out of the way.

Amelie (PC)

This is a short horror/mystery/romance VN. There are six routes, but they open up somewhat linearly -- the first route, then the next two, then the next three, with each grouping following a different one of the three main characters. After the first route you'll start getting options about accepting/denying fate, and the effects these have on the game are somewhat confusing because no matter what you do, it doesn't really lead to any change in the characters' ultimate fates (there's like five very bad ends and one that's obviously bad but significantly less so). I was getting more than a little annoyed until beating all six immediately shunts you into the "true ending" where you actually can change fate and get a more satisfying conclusion, though it still ends on a rather dumb stinger. The whole game is about 1.5 hours long so it definitely doesn't overstay its welcome.

Spider-Man: The City that Never Sleeps (DLC) (PS5)
Collectively, the DLC packs for that game. There are some pretty great segments in there, between the new story and side missions, and also a few that fell flat, like trying to shoot down those drones following Silver Sable. (I was bumbling through that one for ages, not hitting a fail state but also not accomplishing anything whatsoever.) All in all, definitely a worthwhile expansion, although I don't regret skipping it at full price when I played the original version.

Pokemon Dream Radar (3DS)

This is basically a first-person gyroscopic arcade-shooter with gameplay that has almost nothing to do with Pokemon, but with Pokemon and items as rewards that you can transfer to Black 2/White 2. Most of these Pokemon are either common or at least relatively innocuous (ie Beldum and Riolu) but with their hidden abilities. However, there are some legendaries! The main goal of the game is to catch Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus, which is also why I bought the game (for just $2.99 on the eShop). I HATE hunting down roaming Pokemon and this was a somewhat time-consuming but guaranteed way to get the genie trio. Once you catch those three, you can also catch Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Lugia and Ho-Oh by having the corresponding Gen 4 gamepak inserted. When you transfer the Pokemon to Black 2/White 2, they are registered with you as the OT, and are leveled accordingly to how many badges you have. With 0 badges they are at level 5, and this includes the legendaries. So you could play through the whole game with a team of proportionately-leveled legendaries! Like the Pokemon, the items range from common stuff you can buy at a Pokemart to rarer team-building items like evolutionary stones and PP-Ups. If you've got Black 2/White 2 and still have access to the 3DS eShop, you may as well shell out the $3 for this to get some extra legendaries and rare items.

AVICII Invector (PS4)

Made in memory of the Swedish DJ Avicii, this is a rhythm game exclusively featuring 35 of his songs made throughout his short lifetime. While I enjoyed the songs and the (limited) story, the gameplay has some bizarre decisions that detracted from the experience - mainly adding sections that have nothing to do with the rhythm in the middle of songs, and having notes that if missed, causes you to miss many more notes that follow it. I enjoyed my time with it, but I couldn't recommend it for anyone looking for a good rhythm game because of this.

Arietta of Spirits (PC)

It was a fine action-adventure game. The sword had such a small reach though, and I don't like 99% of stamina implementations in action games. This was no exception.

Death's Door (PS5)

I enjoyed this game (enough to marathon 100% it over the course of like two days) but I think it's a little overrated, though I suspect a lot of that comes down to personal preference. I think the game's pretty ugly -- I've heard people say this game looks great and I just don't see it, it's an art style I find very very generic and bad. I also don't think it's served at all by the 1/3rd perspective, and that certain combat sequences would be a lot less finicky from a top-down perspective. It also desperately needs a fuckin map. I know Dark Souls didn't have a map but 1) you're not Dark Souls and 2) Dark Souls also should have had a fuckin map.

On the bright side, the music's great, the plot is fun (don't bother getting the true ending though, it's a big "didn't ask + don't care" moment -- some of the tasks leading up to it are worth doing though), the combat is generally satisfying, the exploration is fun, and the bosses are good (if generally pretty easy).

Sable (XB1)

This game is completely up my alley. A no-threat exploration game is up there among my favorite game archetypes, and in many ways this game delivers. Unfortunately, performance issues, which is all too common on all versions, sap it of some magic.

I hope that they continue to clean it up because I would love to come back to it and do everything that I want to do there.

Sable looks sooo cool but yeah, I'm wary to pick it up because I've heard the performance has some issues.

Yeah, I would be a little upset if I paid for it outright instead of being a part of Game Pass.

Myst (2021) (XB1)

I had always been meaning to play a game from the Myst series, and the remake seemed like the best option. I think it is well-designed, and I'm glad that I played through it almost 20 years later, but I found the individual puzzles to be hit or miss with little between.

Steam Tactics (Vita)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80134008

A very basic strategy RPG with an almost non-existent storyline. It was a good time waster for around six hours - there's forty story missions that take place in an 8x6 grid and you have anywhere from 2 to 4 characters on your side (depending on how far into the story you are) to defeat the 3 to 6 enemy ships in the grid. As long as you replay story missions on higher difficulties for better rewards and constantly upgrade your ships and weapons, it's an easy ride to the end. Most of the ships and weapons I used were the third tier when I finished the final battle. There's no miscellaneous trophies either - all the trophies will be unlocked through the story or through upgrading your items.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention
Boneraiser Minions (PC) (Early Access)
Although I'm not sure clearing one basic run counts, and I haven't got all the achievements. A distinctive-enough Vampire Survivors clone, which counts for something when most of them aren't. Could use work, though.

Painkiller: Hell & Damnation (PC)

Well there you have it. Series is finally done. I actually beat it ages ago; the game is quite easy and should be played on Hard for Normal classic Painkiller experience. That said, the reason why it was done so fast is because the game is using deceptive practices. The main game is only 10 or so levels not including bosses. In order to achieve the "ultimate" experience, one would need to shell out for every DLC except for 1 which was a topdown diablo ripoff that wasn't good at all and had the gall to include two levels from the fangamey Painkiller.

But is it good? Well, I came from the classic PK experience. So yeah, it was. Improved I guess. Secrets requiring bunnyhopping were replaced with easier ones. Hallways that made no sense were patched with easier obstacles. But would I play this over Classic well its hard to say. For the price point, classic is better since you get everything. I can only love this game because I've been through everything else but my wallet suffered for it.

There was also a new weapon kinda cool I guess. And I don't understand how the game brought to life some but not every enemy and level in the game even with DLCs. Disappointing at best.

Nioh 2 Complete 100% achievements got done, now. We may keep going in Underworld, because it's fun. That's the only big goal remaining and the end is pretty far.

Kirby: Triple Deluxe (3DS)

Only the second Kirby game I've beaten in my life after randomly playing through Squeak Squad years ago, although I've played a bit of others such as Kirby's Adventure, Canvas Curse/Power Paintbrush etc. It's fun and colourful, but generally, I don't love Kirby games, I just enjoy them.

Triple Deluxe is no exception, but it still was a fun game, definitely. Colourful, nice music, some fun use of the 3D effects (such as the electrical bars and shooting cannons at the other plane) and a couple of decent bosses (some are better than others). I was surprised by how long some of the levels ended up being, especially if you go for all the Sunstones (which I did). My favorite levels were definitely the Hypernova levels. It's so fun and cool to see everything just get sucked up and it's just crazy and cinematic. Fortunately, there were just enough of them. More would have become boring (they are very easy and sometimes slow), and less would have made it a pointless gimmick to include.

I did think towards the end it became too boss heavy. The final boss sequence was, for me, on the long side and I don't feel Kirby games really need that. I didn't enjoy the final world as much as the other worlds. Some level design elements are repeated too much as well throughout and while they are being built upon, sometimes it's very minimal.

Overall, solid platformer that was well worth the 12 bucks I ended up paying for it. Nothing too memorable, just another polished Kirby game with a pretty good amount of content (and definitely better than Squeak Squad). A solid 8/10 for me.

Burnout Paradise Remastered (PS4)

I never played the original Burnout Paradise so this was completely new for me - and I enjoyed it a lot, actually! Each of the various events are very fun to mess around in, though they did get a bit repetitive going up to the Burnout license. Similarly, the showtime and time road rules are nice challenges but there are so many roads that I only did enough for each trophy's requirement. I think my favorite part of the game was when I was just starting and going through yellow gates and billboards for the first time. I don't know if I'll pick it up again to get the rest of the trophies, do the DLC, or go for the Burnout Elite license - I think I'm satisfied with what I've played.

Sinking Island (PC)

I thought it humorous to say that this is only the second game I've played that has 'Sinking' in its title that also happens to be a mystery set in a place that's constantly raining. So only I only knew the genre of this going in. When I started the game I saw that the game was made by Benoit Sokal----oh ffs. Syberia mechanics rear its ugly head: "Useless" scenic screens, animations that take time, pixel hunts, backtracking, triggers dependent on scenes that encourage said backtracking, and dialogue that can't be skipped. That last one being the most egregious.

You see, the Inspector asks questions to all 10 suspects and all 10 have their unique things to say (well 9 seeing as one of them is mute) which is frankly great at the very least it wasn't just dry reading a script and the effort to have 9 different takes on a certain topic was admirable and the non-answers were not just "No I don't know that." replies. That said, even though 99% of them only give the reply in a single take, the Inspector has to ask EVERY question over and over. Like we get it alright, we know the questions already. Literally, the game's length could've been cut in half by removing the Inspector's questions. And while I'm at it, his tone is all over the place; he's a schizophrenic good cop bad cop rolled into one.

I like the concept of the Sinking Island. You can choose to play this "in real time" in which the island you're on is literally sinking, preventing you from gathering vital clues at the right time. But this is pt-click adventuring so f that. Points for concept though seeing as this is one of Sokal's earliest games I think. There's also this weird anachronism in the tech involved. Nothing as outlandish as Syberia, but working well with the motif to provide an easy forensic experience. I'm talking about how you have oldschool celphones to communicate with...in a violent hurricane/storm, but also a handy dandy pda that loads all your convinient evidence and testimony in a very nice UI honestly. In addition, the mandate system kind of guides you on what you need to accomplish. I would say the interface and the game flow is rather similar to Phoenix Wright but not so much railroading. Honestly would've preferred if this was a visual novel because then we'd solve the backtracking issue.

The mystery itself is....normal. It's nothing we haven't seen before. Classic Agatha Christie. But the way you get there is nice I suppose. If you're a mystery nut like me, then this is just fine that is if you ignore all the Syberia-like nuances this game offers. I would say the setting is phenomenal and did not overstay its welcome. I think this was based Sokal before he decided to dream farther and farther into the fantastically exaggerated. It is also not an easy task developing 10 distinct characters who do not get killed off one by one so as to make individual responses and reactions for everything throughout the game.

I just found out Benoit Sokal is no longer with us as of 2021. Rest in peace. Now I'm fully compelled to play the last 2 Syberia games eventually.