StarTopic The 2024 Completed Games Thread

[Kreeth]

2024 is mostly going to be my "Year of the Backlog".
Hopefully keeping track of it will motivate me to go on finishing games ^^'

First time completion:

• Chants of Sennaar (PC)
• Final Fantasy XVI (PS5)
• Star Ocean The Second Story R (Switch)
• Persona 3 Reload (XBS) [finished on 2024.03.16]
• Persona 5 Tactica (Switch) [finished on 2024.03.31]
• Super Mario RPG (Switch) [finished on 2024.04.17]

Replays:

• Devil Survivor Overclocked (3DS)
• Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker (3DS)

Now Playing:

• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PS5)

So I finished Super Mario RPG on Switch this week! First time finishing the game since I'm French, we didn't get the Super Nintendo version and I never was able to emulate it without having bugs.

I really liked it, very cute, easy and short enough, extremely frustrating during mini-games and platforming sequences, but it's always been like that with Squaresoft/Square-Enix games for me. I could have used a couple of voices in the short CG cutscenes but overall I had a great time!

My one big question about this game is: why the heavens are american people that obsessed with Geno???
This is the only character with absolutely no personality or evolution or anything interesting in the entire game!! I was so excited to jump on the "Geno for Smash" bandwagon but after playing (and because I'm a very bitter french queen), I will fight to make sure Geno never makes it in Smash EVER!! You tricked me Geno fans!! (obviously I'm joking and I'll help and root for you getting your favorite character into Smash )

 

[Stilt Village]

My one big question about this game is: why the heavens are american people that obsessed with Geno???

He has guns.

 

[BlackthornOrion]

So I finished Super Mario RPG on Switch this week! First time finishing the game since I'm French, we didn't get the Super Nintendo version and I never was able to emulate it without having bugs.

I really liked it, very cute, easy and short enough, extremely frustrating during mini-games and platforming sequences, but it's always been like that with Squaresoft/Square-Enix games for me. I could have used a couple of voices in the short CG cutscenes but overall I had a great time!

My one big question about this game is: why the heavens are american people that obsessed with Geno???
This is the only character with absolutely no personality or evolution or anything interesting in the entire game!! I was so excited to jump on the "Geno for Smash" bandwagon but after playing (and because I'm a very bitter french queen), I will fight to make sure Geno never makes it in Smash EVER!! You tricked me Geno fans!! (obviously I'm joking and I'll help and root for you getting your favorite character into Smash )

When I first played Mario RPG a few years ago, I immediately got it. Geno kinda feels like they intentionally made him everything an 8-to-12 year old in the 90s would think is cool

he's this mysterious hooded figure, he has guns in his arms like some kinda cool robot/cyborg, he's got a move that can do all of the damage if you get the timing right, he's quiet and stoic, he's quite literally an action figure come to life. He just is "the cool party member that you always want to be using"

Like, people hear that Geno's from an RPG and just expect that the appeal comes from some compelling and deep characterization or narrative arc but nah, imo his appeal is (and I don't mean this as a knock against him) almost entirely vibes based and I love that for him

e: tbh he's kinda the closest Mario's ever gotten to a Shadow. He's a serious character in a sea of unserious and comical cartoon characters. People (esp. kids) love that kinda thing

 

[T-Hell]

My one big question about this game is: why the heavens are american people that obsessed with Geno???

I played and beat the game for the first time recently with the switch remake and I honestly enjoyed him combat-wise. Also, while Mallow is miles ahead in terms of personality and story-arc, Geno's enigmatic and serious personality kinda stands out on his own too.

 

[meatbag]

Feeling drained, so for gaming I just decided to finish up a short sidescrolling shmup, Drainus! Eh? Eh? Yeah, I'll see myself out...

Seriously though this is quite a beautiful addition to the genre. The absorption mechanic is fun to use, but I did find it made the game way too easy. But hey that's perfect for unwinding!

 

[Vookatos]

Edit for game 22. Not sure where I would say this, but I've been super happy with backhalf of Baldur's Gate 3. At the beginning it seems that the game just uses pronous and trans options as a bit of a rainbow capitalism tactic, because act 1 basically has only straight couples and the only gay characters are your companions if you choose to infect them with the gay aura. However, I'm very happy that Baldur's Gate 3 is very (Baldur's) gay. The most importnat romance story-wise is a lesbian one and gay couples are very prominent in act 3. Legit very cute to see and I've been happy to not see another game where you can play as anyone (but the rest of the world is still as is and you'll feel alone if you're gay)

Feeling drained, so for gaming I just decided to finish up a short sidescrolling shmup, Drainus! Eh? Eh? Yeah, I'll see myself out...

Seriously though this is quite a beautiful addition to the genre. The absorption mechanic is fun to use, but I did find it made the game way too easy. But hey that's perfect for unwinding!

I've played Drainus and it was super fun! Easy even for me, and I've not really played shmups outside of random emulation and savestates, but it feels so good!

 

[ngpdrew]

Spoiler: Games Completed in 2024

1. Sea of Stars (4/5)
2. Final Fantasy VII Remake (4/5)
3. Mario vs. Donkey Kong (3/5)
4. Balatro (4.98/5)
5. Sonic CD (2/5)
6. Balatro (5/5)

7. Sonic Superstars (PS5) - I was excited for this and then ultimately scared off by the discourse surrounding the boss battles. I was right to be afraid; the boss fights are a little too long with too few checkpoints (see also: none!) and far too few windows where they are vulnerable to attacks. Those fights aside, I really enjoyed this game! It is the best looking and feeling 2D Sonic game since the classic era, excluding Mania of course. The levels don’t match up to the heights of the series but they are plenty of fun in their own right.

Rating: ️️️ out of 5

 

[Vookatos]

23. ILLBLEED

So I was familiar with this game for years through the majestic Let's Play of Supergreatfriend, and as he decided to replay it I've decided to finally play it.

This is one of those games that you can't grade on any normal scale. It's not fit for human consumption.

ILLBLEED is Dreamcasts' Survival? Horror? Game? that sees you visit a horror park and survive through its traps to get money. The gameplay is unique: it's effectively a game where you do that stupid metal detector puzzle but for the whole game. You walk through the enviroments as your "sight", "hearing" and "smell" senses detect traps and you can use limited quantities of Adrenaline to "tag" traps to disarm them. If you fail to tag a trap you lose health, start bleeding, and/or your heart rate goes up.

The gameplay is awful, consisting of invisible traps and items you find via fourth and final "sixth sense", and battle system is atrocious.

ILLBLEED is a bad video game.

ILLBLEED is also a really great video game.

It's surprising to see a game released at the turn of the century to understand the modern humor so much and be so funny. From its presentation to different traps to various weird levels and situations, ILLBLEED knows that it's B-movie schlock and it runs with it. You fight your way through the 4th wall breaking creatures, you investigate a murder, you go through an adult Toy Story parody where a boy gets sick and dies with his doll that's basically Woody who visits hell and fights pretty much Sonic. Like, it's fucking Sonic.

As a game, ILLBLEED doesn't deserve your time. I didn't have fun, I just wanted to experience it. Hell, even if you somehow enjoy it, the core conceit of untagging traps when the traps are the most fun regular thing that happens is broken beyond belief. There are hundreds of animations you just don't get to see when playing well! It's like watching Evil Dead 2 with all the blood removed - the camp is there, but barely any joy.

As an experience, ILLBLEED is sublime. An experiment in creativity so weird and funny I've yet to see a game that even remotely resembles it even in atmosphere alone. It doesn't give a single shit about what it does as long as it has fun. Sure, it might be described as "lolrandom" by some, but there are genuinely funny jokes among the strange and ridiculous.

This is the game that deserves both two stars and a five for me, but even when I was annoyed and angry when playing it myself, I'm just happy it exists. And thankfully we do live in an era of let's plays and streams. ILLBLEED should not be played, but it should be experienced.

 

[Plum]

Main Post

GAME 22: Dark Souls 3 | REPLAY
PC (Steam Deck) | Finished 21/04/24 | 22 Hours Played | 8/10

After finally finishing Sekiro, I figured that it would be best if I mopped up a few other lose ends in my 'recent From Software game' experience. Part of that, was the second half of the 'Ringed City' DLC for Dark Souls 3. A second half that I - because of the game lacking Steam Cloud saves - couldn't get to unless I started a wholly new save file. My endgame file from 2016 lost forever

So a new file is what I chose; opting to go for a build that - for all intents and purposes - was OP as fuck. Dual-swords, with my only stats being Health, Stamina, and as much Dexterity as I could allocate. Couple that with some early upgrade material searching, and the majority of the base game bosses were going down like it was nothing. True challenge only really started to creep back in once I got to the endgame optional bosses of the base game, and the DLC fights. All the while, the lack of build decisions meant I could breeze through the levels themselves. It was fun to be that powerful, really.

Now, as for the game itself... honestly, I found my experience with it strangely lacking when compared to how I remembered it from back in 'the day.' The game is still, on a technical level, good stuff. Level designs are satisfyingly convoluted, enemy variety and balancing is great, the bosses are decent all around, and the DLC - whilst overly tough at times - is really good too. Everything good about the game that I could say, and have said, is still mostly true. However, as I ran through so many similar-looking environs - similar to areas from the franchise prior, and the game itself - I found it hard to really appreciate the game for what it was, instead of simply what it represents to me within the wider From Soft canon. It very much feels like a title lacking its own identity. One wearing the hand-me-downs of Dark Souls 1, and trying desparately to emulate the actions of the then cool-and-new Bloodborne.

Which, ironically enough, makes things feel somewhat hollow. Levels that are otherwise excellently designed start to feel like combat gauntlets instead of actual places (teleporting making this far more apparent). Characters that are otherwise charming feel like they're simply there 'because Dark Souls had it.' Art design that is otherwise incredible begins to feel samey. Worst of all, gameplay begins to feel rote, the game having Elden Ring's focus on pure combat gameplay, but without the open world that made such simple overall mechanics worthwhile. But, I suppose that's the thing with replays, sometimes you're not going to get the same experience you had nearly a decade prior, with all the years of experience and knowledge having accrued behind you. That's fine.

What I will say is that playing this on the Steam Deck was so surreal. The back-buttons were amazing for my shieldless play-style, but I was shocked at just how well it ran throughout. Locked at 45fps (1/2 of the OLED's 90hz), the game rarely skipped a beat, even in areas where I thought it would buckle under strain.

 

[VolcanicDynamo]

Finished in 2024 #18: Princess Peach: Showtime!

After almost 20 years, Princess Peach finally steps back into the spotlight for another starring role. Before launch, I was pretty excited to see what a new take on a Peach game could bring. Now that I'm finished, I unfortunately have mixed feelings.

Princess Peach: Showtime! features the titular heroine taking on a variety of roles across it's many plays. You only spend a little bit of time playing in Peach's standard form - only in the first level of each costume and in boss fights. It's said costumes that take center stage, giving a new set of mechanics each time. To give a few examples, the Swordfighter focuses on enemy combat with a dodge mechanic, the Dashing Thief features a grappling hook you used to zip towards objects and deactivate robots, and the Mermaid features no combat and instead involves you guiding fish around the screen to interact with the environment. Other forms, such as the mini game focused Patisserie or the investigation focused detective, really change up the gameplay. Think less Mario and Kirby, games where you use powers across levels and as a complement to the main mechanics, and more of being presented with several different gameplay loops.

My favorite of these ended up being the ninja. Not only did it have an engaging mixture of stealth and action with a fast pace and plenty of contextual abilities, it also made some of the best usage of the stage theme. As all of the levels are plays, each features different props and stage setups. It was always fun seeing a more complex prop being held up by strings, for example. But typically, Peach's own powers on stage mostly lean into the costume rather than the act of performance - floating around as a mermaid or in a rocket powered Super suit, for example. But the ninja strikes that balance better - of course you got the cool acrobatics and wall running, but Peach also holds up wooden grass when hiding on the stage's wooden grass, or she puts up a reflective screen to blend into walls. It made me want to play a ninja focused stealth action game, and I think this kinda thing is where Showtime can really shine. This game presents a wide variety of game genres, from beat em ups to stealth games to adventure games. For the younger audience this game seems aimed at, not only will they have lots of experiences, it may inspire them to try out specific titles in the future based on their favorite forms.

The downside to this variety is that the game ends up feeling rather shallow. A simple investigation game, a simple set of beat em ups, a simplistic ice skating game. Each of these takes center stage for full levels, but with limited mechanics and no focus on building a core playstyle. Even if you do like a particular form a lot, the three level limit for each means that you only get a short time with that power before you move onto the next. A game with fewer forms but more chances to use those forms could have made for more interesting core mechanics, but that's not quite the case here. And because each play gets shorter as they progress (removing the Princess Peach segment and having one final short challenge stage to save the Sparkla for that form), there is often an inverse difficulty curve happening where the most complex stage of a form is the first one.

The other major problem lies in how the title handles its collectibles. Sparkle Gems are needed to access boss fights (and by proxy higher floors of the theater). You get this within each play, sometimes by finishing a section, sometimes by finding it or eight pieces of a gem lying around, and sometimes by performing strongly in a mini game segment. On the positive end, the game does not ask too much of you if you only wish to see the end - only 100 of the game's 200+ gems are required. But if you do want to go for them all, be prepared to play levels multiple times. Miss a gem because you didn't locate it? Restart the stage, you can't go back. Messed up a segment because you missed one object? No sparkle gem for you, restart the stage, no replaying the mini game. And have fun through the game's many auto scrolling segments or unskippable text! This ended up inflating my playtime significantly, and unfortunately these levels are not so much fun that I am itching to play through them again. I wasn't exactly happy to see how the postgame challenge involves playing every single level again for a new set of collectibles or challenges - yep, this definitely is the team behind Yoshi's Crafted World.

I had my fair share of nitpicking while playing. For example...

• It was neat to get new dresses for Peach, but most of them stayed in shades of pink and you barely play as Peach. Why not also have cosmetics for the forms, or perhaps have more dramatic dresses besides just color swaps?
• For a game focused on a storytelling medium, the stories for each play sure are light and very formulaic. Doesn't help that the game stops you very frequently for unskippable text dialogue.
• On that note, it would have been nice to see Peach have actual dialogue instead of just grunts and one-liners. She's taking the lead role in several plays, it'd be cool to actually see her do some more acting.
• Sometimes the Sour Bunch are straightforward antagonists in the play. Sometimes they interrupt the plays. I feel like a lot of these minions would be totally welcome to participate, but I guess that's not Grape's M.O. here, huh?
• Why do the Sparkla you save have zero identity outside of the role they play? They are actors, not just their roles. They don't even have names! And they are just the usual NPCs in costume!
• Why does Peach even star in this game? I don't mean that we shouldn't have a Peach game, but this title feels pretty disconnected from the wider Mario universe in ways few Mario spinoffs do. It's not like this game builds upon Peach's character like the Wario games do, You could swap Peach out for an original heroine and almost nothing about the game, from its story to its gameplay to the plays, would change at all. Maybe they would have more freedom if not tied to the Mario IP and the Peach character, but that's not what we got.

Am I being too harsh towards Princess Peach: Showtime!? To an extent, yeah. This is a game for a demographic I am not in, and many Mario spinoffs have simple stories or basic setups. Even the Wario games deviate heavily from the Mario universe, creating their own identity. I'd like to stress that this isn't a bad game! It looks nice, has a fun theme, and each of the game's playstyles works well enough. But while I would have noticed those nitpicks regardless, I think I could overlook most of them if the actual game ended up being more fun and engaging.

I really wanted to love Princess Peach: Showtime! That reveal trailer got me thinking, "Finally, Peach deserves more." And sadly, this game did not shift the needle there. I gladly look forward to more Peach games, more chances for one of gaming's most famous female characters to be explored further, to see her treated with a touch more depth (I'm not asking for much! Characterization on par with, say, Luigi in Luigi's Mansion would be plenty!). But Showtime was not that game. It is a fine sampler platter of potentially more interesting games that could've had any lead but stars Princess Peach so that folks like me would pick up a copy. If you're looking for a simple but visually pleasing and polished experience, this show will deliver the goods, but I'm hoping for a much improved encore in the future - or better yet, a trip back to the drawing board.

 

[Zellia]

13. PokéRogue (Browser game)

Considering this 'completed' on the basis that I beat the classic mode (though I did have to reset a few times to figure out a way to beat the final boss Eternamax Eternatus). That unlocks an endless mode so obviously there's no true end here.

PokéRogue is suprisingly compelling. It's also still very much in development so some aspects feel undercooked and there are plenty of moves and abilities that are either not implemented at all or only partially implemented, but what's here so far is incredibly solid. It's a straightforward experience, you battle wave after wave of wild Pokemon and trainers, can buy healing items after every battle and pick a free item, and just do that over and over. It's straightforward but addicting.

What makes it interesting is that when you catch a wild Pokemon, or hatch an egg from the egg gacha you spin with tickets obtained from beating certain waves or unlocking achievements (no real money shenanigans here), it's added to your starters so you can then start with it. The game also unlocks the nature, ability and gender of the Pokemon which you can select freely when starting, and the highest IVs of that species you've caught/hatched are also recorded so there's a feeling of progression. Shiny Pokemon also have a practical use - they increase the odds of an item reward upgrading to a higher rarity.

Definitely a project to keep an eye on as it grows and expands. In terms of roguelike Pokemon games, there's also Emerald Rogue, which is a romhack of Emerald rather than a browser game, and in terms of gameplay flow, I'd call Emerald Rogue the Slay the Spire to PokéRogue's Balatro.

14. Pokémon Crystal Legacy (GBC)

A romhack of Crystal that aims to keep the game feel the same while fixing some of Gen 2's glaring problems, such as its weird level curve, odd availability of Gen 2 Pokemon, and Kanto. I'd say it's successful in that endeavour - the game feels very much like playing Crystal again, but just better. The changes made to wild Pokemon availability and gym leaders feel well thought out and led to me using Pokemon I'd never really considered before, like Golem, Porygon2, and Houndoom.

One of the neat things it does is make it so gyms 5-7 (Chuck, Janine and Pryce) now scale based on how many badges you have, keeping the open-ended nature of Johto's latter half while also not screwing up the difficulty curve should you do things out of the game's intended order. The game is also slightly harder than Crystal (at least on Normal difficulty, I did not try Hard), but not enough so to be frustrating. I didn't have to grind much, only really doing so for Red and even then I probably grinded a bit too much. The game adds Johto gym leader rematches after you beat the Elite 4 the first time, which are honestly incredible for grinding so you need/want to do that.

Kanto is tougher than in the original. It still feels breezy, but Sabrina's gym in particular gave me a surprising amount of trouble. It's no longer the simple victory lap it felt like in the original. After getting the 8 Kanto badges, you now have to face the Elite 4 a second time with improved teams before you can head to Mt Silver, which was also cool.

Overall, well worth a play. Yellow Legacy is also releasing soon - I'm not sure I'm going to play that since I have little remaining nostalgia for Gen 1, but if it's the same level of quality as this one, Gen 1 fans should be pleased.

 

[Plum]

Main Post

GAME 23: Children of the Sun
PC | Finished 21/04/24 | 3 Hours Played | 8/10

A very short experience that leaves one hell of an impression. This 'telepathic bullet' simulator is essentially a puzzle game disguised as a shooter; one that tasks you with figuring out the optimal way to take out a large group of enemies with only a single shot. With that premise the game does arguably all it could realistically do, bringing in ideas at an incredibly quick pace to the point where you're not doing the same thing for more than three-or-four levels at a time. Levels interspersed even more with a few more unique special levels that serve as interludes to the primary 'action.' Rarely did I feel frustrated, and when I did it was only a few moments until I found the level element that put everything into place.

Hotline Miami is perhaps the best game I could use to compare this to stylistically. Both are intentionally-ugly games set in ugly worlds, yet do so in such a way that the games still look beautiful at times. Where Miami's 80s synthwave rocketed you through its levels, this game's soundtrack is almost pure noise: distortion and harshness that perfectly befits the game's grungey experience. Where things differ is the story. Whilst HM's narrative is one of player subversion, CotS's narrative is simplistic and fairly tropey, aiming to not really do much more with its premise than what is said in the first cutscene. The few more cryptic elements don't really help that, I feel. Though I did like the rough art-style of the game's cutscenes.

Overall though I'd definitely recommend it to those who have a passing interest in the premise, and of course those who are fine paying over a tenner for a game that's not much longer than a typical film. Which I am, so all's good there.

 

[Vookatos]

24. D

After Baldur's Gate and Yakuzas and Dogmas of Dragons I wanted to play some weird short game and D is another game of which I've seen a Let's Play way back when, but I didn't remember it at all.
There's a reason for it: it's kinda bad.

D is a fully CGI point-and-click horror game originally released on 3DO in which you come to your mad father who took hostages and end up in his mind palace solving puzzles and slowly walking around. The game is very cinematic and I'd even say looks and sounds good if very dated, but its gameplay is nonexistent. Due to likely high costs of rendering everything the game is really short, featuring maybe 15-20 rooms at most and only few puzzles of which maybe two or three aren't "you saw a color or a number or a pattern, remember it and input it".

The biggest flaw of D is that it really likes to waste your time by design. You see, you can't save in D. You can't pause. The clock is ticking all the time and after 2 hours you will die. Apparently developers realized that it takes like half an hour to beat this game after implementing the time limit, so towards the end of the game you'll encounter the Rotating Room. The contraption is slowly activated and after a short animation rotates the room in which you are standing so that the door leads out into a random location. Now here's a kicker: most doors are just brick walls and there are many of them. Unless there's an internal code saying that 90% of the time player will encounter a brick wall I'd wager there are around 20 rooms and maybe 4 actual exits, which, again, are random, so good luck spinning the room for half an hour.

I wanted to enjoy D, and I kinda did. Its atmosphere is actually pretty good and the music is fairly spooky. Thankfully the shoddy voice acting is rare so it doesn't take away from the horror. What does, however, is the twist. Oh boy this game has twists. It hits you with the dumbest thing you could think of which is unfortunate considering the optional backstory scenes, last of which you'll encounter at around the same time, ARE quite scary and psychedelic in the way I really appreciated.

I don't think the game's worth playing so here's a spoiler:

Spoiler: What DOES "D" stand for?

D stands for Dracula. Dracula is controlling your dad.

2.0/5

 

[Plum]

.

 

[Stilt Village]

So following Yoshi's Island, my curiosity did lead me to revisit one of its sequels: Woolly World.

It's a little difficult to judge, because I played them very differently, rushing through Island to minimize friction and taking my time exploring with this one, because I wanted to try and get the best experience out of both. But I think I would say that Woolly World is the better game, and the best Yoshi game in general. It's so much closer than it should be though, especially with how positive my initial impressions were.

Woolly World has much better level design than Island on average, but it still has glaring issues, expressed prominently through many moments of frustration in its back half, including some truly garbage levels in the last world.

Spoiler

There's a lot more musical variety than Island, where you've heard most of the soundtrack multiple times by the end of World 1. Tomoya Tomita delivers a nice chill score that lands somewhere between Shake It's livelier rock and jazz sound and Epic Yarn's soft and relaxing piano and strings. You could say its focus on acoustic guitar splits the difference. I think it's the weakest of the three by a decent margin, but the huge increase in variety helps it hold its own against Island even if it rarely reaches the same highs. It's worth noting that piano was specifically chosen over guitar for Epic Yarn as the better focal instrument. The rustic tinge to a lot of tracks is nice, but it's hard not to see it as going back for the second best choice because "we're making another yarn game."

The soundtracks's worst point is the main theme by Totaka, which is the exact sort of annoying baby music the series has become infamous for, and it keeps popping up all the way to the last world. The Nintendo (or HAL) composer contributions to their previous two games were fantastic, and Stonecarving City and Fountain Gardens were both killer first stage themes, so this is disappointing. Props to Totaka for running with the guitar thing, but it still sticks out like a sore thumb. Totaka and Tomita write extremely different melodies, and the loopy grade schooler recorder feels like a tonal mismatch with the rest of the level themes.

You've kind of got that Galaxy to Galaxy 2 level design shift here. Not a perfect analogy by any means, but Island had very structurally chaotic levels where each room could be about something entirely different, but Woolly World maintains a more coherent focus and you can expect more traditional platformer level design from it. I consider this a positive, but I assume the "room shuffler" approach speaks to someone. A lot of room-based platformers end up like this actually. Return to Dream Land did it very prominently with how it broke up levels by dedicating rooms to a gimmick item you carried through it or a particular copy ability. I always find it makes it impossible for me to remember which level a room is from unless each level is strongly themed though...

Mercifully, you no longer need to 100% complete a level in one go. And we have actual secret design! Yoshi's Island had a kind of Crash Bandicoot approach, where most stuff was out in the open or easily found by just interacting with everything and going everywhere. Completion was about being thorough or risking life and limb, with the occasional truly hidden stuff usually being offscreen bullshit you would probably never find or something. In Woolly World, collectables are actually hidden now.

...Unfortunately the secret design is kind of fucking awful. There are now 30 things to find in each level too, not counting health! The game relies heavily on invisible shit and things spawning in when you touch a specific spot, it'd make Rayman 1 blush. Even the color indicator for red coins is gone. You have much more interesting stuff to engage with to get collectables now, but overall it's actually a lot harder than before to find everything in a level because some of it is always complete bullshit. It's comical how despite trying every single time, the number of levels that I actually managed to 100% complete across the entire game could probably be counted on one hand. You only need all the flowers in a world to unlock the extra levels now, and even there I got the first one and no more.

And towards the end of the game it starts getting integrated into the main path! My brother walked in while I was playing Vamoose the Lava Sluice, watched me fumble around a room until I found an invisible cloud up in the air that spawned a staircase, and asked why I was playing this garbage. I said "it's complicated". Then he asked if there was another platforming essay on the way, because he knows me. There's always another platforming essay on the way.

If that weren't enough, health is also a lot less generous than before. It's set damage, no timer, and it's hefty. Take a few hits at any point, especially later in the level, and you often won't be able to refill it. It's only clouds and checkpoints too, none of the backup options from Island are still around. And if you die at any point, your health resets to default, so you can end up screwed even easier.

By the way, the game's slow pace and the structure and length of some levels means that you can unironically die and lose 5+ minutes of progress. Minutes is the norm, but it can get soul-crushingly extreme. I have to confess I didn't technically even finish the game; I got to Bowser's Castle, saw it was set up like Marching Milde's Fort, died like ten minutes into the level and got sent back to the start, and turned the game off. If I changed the way I was playing and just focused on getting to the end like I did in Island, it wouldn't be especially difficult to finish, but at that point I was just utterly done with the whole thing.

I watched the final boss on YouTube while writing this. Making Baby Bowser a normal boss fight kind of ruins the point of the original fight, where Baby Bowser was a surprise and not really the antagonist, but I guess that sort of thing is an issue with all of the Yoshi sequels. They just keep spinning their wheels on the same premise and have nothing new to say, only cheapening or losing the purpose of the original story.

I have to mention, I really don't like the growing effect they went with. Which is a bit awkward because the game relies so heavily on it. The boss intros and defeats look really cool in Island with the magic effects, these are missing all that flair. As for the actual obligatory giant Bowser fight, it's pretty lame and anticlimactic, no wonder I forgot about it. You don't even attack him! But major points for being the one boss fight in this game that isn't exactly like every other one I guess.

They clearly weren't capable of putting out the quality and quantity of bosses expected from a YI game. Every single one follows the same process of stun > ground pound > do a background attack, repeat three times. They're often just conceptually boring too. DS had some weird shit in it, and most of the original crew had a very memorable gimmick to the fight. This game has two dull "enemy but big" guys with nothing else going for them, and not only do these two losers show up three times a piece, half the other bosses are taken from Island! It's better than the NSMB-tier bosses of New Island, at least.

The Yoshi's Island world structure does the game no favors in the variety department, with a rigid two castles and 8 levels per world. They didn't have enough ideas for each world's theme to do that many levels, so there's often a non-sequitur in there along with a cave or two. The most out of place was the magic carpet level in the ice world, which had to have been hastily shuffled there when they realized it was way too hard for world 2. It even uses the pyramid music.

I was perhaps most disappointed by the presentation out of everything, actually. The art is definitely nowhere near Island, but for complicated reasons. It's fairly bland visually, each level doesn't have the highly distinct identity of Epic Yarn or Crafted World, maybe as a result of double growing pains from jumping to HD and 3D at the same time. The increase in level number and length that causes it to have about the same 100% speedrun time as Epic Yarn despite having no equivalent to the friend minigames and furniture stuff which makes up roughly half of Epic Yarn's 100% run can't have helped either.

There is an insane amount of personality to Epic Yarn that is nowhere to be found here, just watching the levels get unlocked on the map screen is night and day. A lot of Woolly World is just made up of different colored blocks of fabric, so levels frequently look like palette swaps of one another. Artistically, this game would look older than Yoshi's Island if it were in 2D, which it very easily could be barring a few occasions where the camera moves. The world really doesn't come off as "art" like their other games in this style because so much of it is just the supplies sitting there piled up. It never actually sells itself as a world, it comes off so literal that the yarn isn't an art style, it's just yarn. (Needless to say, this hurts the atmosphere of the entire game immensely.)

Perhaps due to this it, ironically, looks far too realistic compared to Island, and my first impression when I started it was I would have preferred something more stylized to a world composed of realistic fabrics.

I will say, whenever they referenced an Island level, their new version was almost always better. Not universally, I actually thought the first stage was a bit of a flop and a pretty limp tribute to Island's 1-1. But usually. That's where you can most clearly see the difference in level design quality between the two games I think. Also, the reference to the classic Naval Piranha easter egg (which I failed on my Island playthrough btw) was cute. Naval Piranha had a much better boss fight than the original too, which reminded me of one of those Sonic bosses that's really bad about making it clear what parts can be interacted with and how. By the way, the funniest thing about this game is that it's clear the developers played not just Island, but Island DS. That raft ride level? That's straight from DS. They brought back Bouncies! For one random layout of the fruit collecting minigame!

Speaking of the minigame, I appreciate that it's no longer completely luck-based nonsense that's usually a waste of time to even attempt, though I could do without how hard it is not to get it now. It feels like more of an afterthought and only gives extra beads, so there's no real incentive to actually go for it because your bead counts are perpetually in the hundreds of thousands.

Items have been replaced with 14 badges, ala Mario Wonder, but they are obtained at seemingly arbitrary points and cost beads to use each time. Most are pretty worthless or highly situational. The three that theoretically help with completion the most are higher defense, reveal invisible items, and magnet. Magnet actually feels great to use because you don't realize how much time you spend picking stuff up in this game with a fairly slow character. The other two I would characterize as "better than nothing, but not really a solution". I was particularly disappointed by how reveal invisible items still requires you to get close, if I'm using that I just want full x-ray vision of all this bullshit. The most interesting thing about them is that I think you can switch during a level.

On that note, the help features in general are way more minor than I thought. Nintendo platformers of this period are known for offering a million special power-ups on a platter or nagging you to skip the level, but I was surprised by how very not broken this one's assist suite was given Good-Feel's reputation for making baby games. Not really deserved to be honest, but it was there even back then.

Towards the end of the game, I said "fuck it" and turned on Mellow Mode in the last fort level to save myself from a pit I was knocked into—again—while I was stuck in an animation of unraveling a wall, so I didn't have to replay a several minute section (again). And Mellow Mode sucks ass, actually? What the fuck? It's just an easier but really really slow flutter jump. I mean, it got me out of the pit, so it has that going for it, but it took so long I wasn't sure it could even gain height at first. I always assumed this was baby mode, but it's really more alternate character territory, it could break certain levels but it seems like it would be annoying at best in others. It's on the same level as summoning Poochy. On the other hand, it seems it also helps with the health requirements in several ways, so if you're going for 100% I'd recommend playing with it just for that.

Another negative—or rather, another frustratingly mixed bag—is that Yoshi doesn't feel as good to control as he did in Island (some of that could be the gamepad, but he's definitely slower). However, there have also been some very welcome adjustments to things like the flutter jump and landing on pass-through platforms to make them more generous and reliable. I fall in pits less in this one!

I ultimately think the simpler yarn ball mechanics of Epic Yarn offer a superior experience to these more complicated ones, and I often found myself avoiding using them as much as possible and sticking to spitting out enemies, if only so I would have to restock less. Egg throwing had some flashy uses in Island from time to time and more things that required it or interacted with it in some unique way, but here it's rarely more than a slightly tedious resource to be managed; expended to deal with Piranha Plants, clouds, and platforms that haven't been knitted together. It's harder to aim and more involved than Epic Yarn for no real gain.

It's one of the more action-oriented elements of the game that aren't super compatible with the pace Good-Feel tends to go at, which is slightly odd now that I think about it because it could have easily been retooled for puzzle purposes (and was in the sequel IIRC). I don't know Island nearly well enough to say for sure, but I feel like the egg physics are worse here too? If nothing else the feel is miles worse, but a lot of that is down to the switch from bouncy eggs to yarn balls. So much less punch to everything. A not insignificant portion of my dissatisfaction with it comes from the level near the end that relies on the "bouncing eggs off walls at the proper angles to hit Boos" mechanic, which has to be baffling to anyone that didn't play Island, because it's not explained at all. Even if you did, it's wretched.

Overall, a flawed and somewhat disappointing game, but I think I still stand by my assessment that this is the best Yoshi game. I really feel the shadow of Epic Yarn over Woolly World (objectively absurd sentence, thank you for naming your games this).

Make no mistake, this is a sequel with a lot of the same mechanics and concepts adapted into the format of a Yoshi game, which at the time people said Epic Yarn should have been anyway. The fabric aesthetics, a hover and a ground pound, the character morphing shapes through different animations, the transformation sections, the co-op, grabbing enemies or friends with a line and turning them into yarn ball projectiles, collecting beads as currency... Everything it inherits from Yoshi does it no favors though, and combined with the graphical challenges and the sense that a lot of it is a lesser imitation of something from what was Good-Feel's passion project and imo easily their best work, it often feels weaker in every category.

The unique and separate bosses of previous Good-Feel games are better than this game's castles with samey (often reused) bosses at the end. The attempts at more action-focused levels like Sunset at Curtain Falls and the implementation of actual death and punishment were done poorly. The Yoshi's Island maze levels and longer stages in general mesh especially poorly with this level of punishment, which would be of no note in a tighter and leaner platformer like Mario, but not one that isn't that, and where checkpoints are minutes apart and every hit is potentially devastating. I guess I should applaud it for accurately capturing that Yoshi's Island feeling of being an easy game that is somehow also brutally punishing? At least the dickish streak is largely gone from this one.

Alright game that could have easily been far ahead of its inspiration if they had just laid off the invisible nonsense and kept a bit of Epic Yarn's relaxed attitude towards mistakes.

 

[Pillydillsy]

• WarioWare Twisted: This isn’t the best game of all time or anything, but compared to what I played after, this game is the masterwork of Nintendo as a developer. The microgames are usual WarioWare fun on their own, but the way the titular twisting is used adds so much flavor. I think the most recent Warioware could’ve really benefited taking some inspiration from this game, having the gimmick actually add to the game instead of largely making it more confusing. 7.5/10, great game here
• Shark Tale (GBA): Playing this one, I really only had one thing in my mind the entire time, “why did I pick this”. There are literally hundreds of games I could’ve played that are all infinitely more fun and less, frankly, garbage than this. I mean Vicarious Visions couldn’t even be bothered to make cutsc- wait, Vicarious Visions? Dang, what a glow up they got. Anyway as I was saying they couldn’t even be bothered to make cutscenes, they just used screenshots from the movie crunched down to an obscene level. Sorry to say Shark Tale fans, but this game is an affront to all that is good. Still better then Mario Sunshine/10
• Ms Pacman: Alright, really just another Pac-Man esc game for those who want more of that. 6/10

 

[Red Monster]

• WarioWare Twisted: This isn’t the best game of all time or anything, but compared to what I played after, this game is the masterwork of Nintendo as a developer. The microgames are usual WarioWare fun on their own, but the way the titular twisting is used adds so much flavor. I think the most recent Warioware could’ve really benefited taking some inspiration from this game, having the gimmick actually add to the game instead of contributing to making it more confusing. 7.5/10, great game here
• Shark Tale (GBA): Playing this one, I really only had one thing in my mind the entire time, “why did I pick this”. There are literally hundreds of games I could’ve played that are all infinitely more fun and less, frankly, garbage than this. I mean Vicarious Visions couldn’t even be bothered to make cutsc- wait, Vicarious Visions? Dang, what a glow up they got. Anyway as I was saying they couldn’t even be bothered to make cutscenes, they just used screenshots from the movie crunched down to an obscene level. Sorry to say Shark Tale fans, but this game is an affront to all that is good. Still better then Mario Sunshine/10
• Ms Pacman: Alright, really just another Pac-Man esc game for those who want more of that. 6/10

WarioWare Twisted is excellent. In fact it might even be the best game in the series.

 

[Pillydillsy]

WarioWare Twisted is excellent. In fact it might even be the best game in the series.

Sure as hell felt that way after playing shark tale. Twisted ranks second for me personally, I just feel like shake it was better overall, though I can definitely see where you’re coming from.

 

[Enpsty]

Boomerang X
Really fun, short arena fps where you basically fly and shoot in bullet time. The game is around 2-3 hours long, but surprisingly feels like the ideal length since otherwise the gameplay would become stale. I mean you just go from arena to arena, there's nothing in-between.
It's also the first fps I've played in my entire life that thought "this should be played with a mouse and keyboard".
I have finished hundreds of fps games with a controller just fine, but this one made my hands hurt. Even if you enable gyro and auto aiming the last level is brutal. Not the game's fault, it's just too hectic.
7.5/10

I also dropped Glyph. This is a game that the more I played it the more I thought it has the wrong kind of levels. Gaining momentum and fly through the levels super fast is really fun, but instead of having short, linear levels it has big 3D ones. So you have to frequently stop, change directions, jump precisely and wall climb. Each and every one of these kills the momentum. And then you have the time trials levels where the difficulty is all over the place. Some of the easiest ones are almost impossible to even complete. Did they even play test this thing?
I wish I could recommend it, but it feels like it's sabotaging itself.

 

[meatbag]

Finished the DLC for West of Loathing, Reckoning at Gun's Manor. If you enjoy the offbeat wit of the writing of the main game, then there's a bunch more jokes for you to munch on at the haunted mansion. It goes a little too hard with the adventure-game aspect in my books, namely esoteric puzzles with somewhat unintuitive solutions. And you're kinda directed to solve those puzzles because the battles are hard as hell. Unless you cheese, of course.

 

[Vookatos]

25. Life Force (NES)

I'm really not a fan of Konami's approach to its shmups being dropping you into a neverending pit of despair from which you can't recover upon dying.

I'm no shmup master, so I've granted myself a save state at the beginning of each level knowing that death would be worse as it would strip me naked, but now that I've beaten it I wonder if I needed it.

The game has a very uneven difficulty curve: first, vertical levels are much easier, usually presenting you with one obstacle at a time; bosses are all underwhelming and I've beaten each without reloading the stage and am confident I could've beaten them with no power-ups; finally, I want to say that Level 1 might actually be the hardest, featuring several gotcha traps and forcing you to stay close to the edge of the screen. Only the escape sequence gave me more trouble.

It's a comfortable little shmup, even if a bit repetitive at times.

3.0/5

 

[Leo]

1- Dragon Quest Treasures (Switch)
2- F-zero (SNES)
3- The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey and Minnie (SNES)
4- Gunple: Gunman's Proof (SNES)
5- Go! Go! Ackman (SNES)
6- The Legend of Zelda (NSO)
7- Super Bomberman 3 (SNES)
8- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
9- Castlevania III (Switch)
10- Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (Switch)
11- Toem (Switch)
12- Super Castlevania IV (Switch)
13- Cuphead (Switch)
14- Cuphead - Delicious Last Course (Switch)
15- Super Mario RPG (Switch)

Just finished this gem of a game. I have a funny story with it, since when I first played it as a kid, I thought it was a bootleg game made by fans because it looked so weird and Mario just wasn't a RPG franchise. I was a pretty skeptical kid lol

Anyway, I didn't get too far in it and never touched it again. Only years later with the advent of internet I found out the game is not only not a bootleg (lol) but it's also one of the most acclaimed SNES games out there. I vowed to myself to try it again... One day. Then, Nintendo announced the remake last year, and I thought that's probably my cue.

I enjoyed the game a lot. It's not groundbreaking, but I can definitely tell it was at the time. The fact that it still plays so well these days while being basically unchanged from the original is a testament to its greatness.

What I liked the most about it is its flawless pacing. The game is 100% meat, no fat, and it knows when it's the right time to fashionably excuse itself out. I wish more games these days learned from it because god, it's so frequent for me to like a game but get bored by it halfway through because it's unnecessarily stretched out.

All in all I had a great experience. The remake is maybe faithful to a fault as I think some of the more dated aspects could have been improved, but I still had a lot of fun and can say for sure it's the Mario RPG I enjoyed the most and think is the best overall package (I played PM64, M&LSS and PiT).

 

[Twilight]

1. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon [ PS5 ] - 9
2. Dragon Quest [ SNES*] - 7.5
3. Another Code: Recollection [ NS ] - 6
4. Trace Memory (7th Replay) [ DS ] - 9
5. Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain [ PC ] - 3
6. Silent Hill: The Short Message [ PS5 ] - 4
7. Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice (4th Playthrough) [ NS ] - 6 - 1st Switch
8. Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (3rd Playthrough) [ NS ] - 9 - 1st Switch
9.- Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice (3rd Playthrough) [ NS ] - 10 - 1st Switch
10. Baldur's Gate III [ PS5 ] - 10
11. Infamous: First Light [ PS5 ] - 6
12. Resident Evil Village + Shadows of Rose [ PS5 ] - 6
13. Ufouria: The Saga 2 [ NS ] - 9
14. Elden Ring [ PS5 ] - 10
15. Detective Ridelle [ PC ] - 7
16. This Bed We Made [ PS5 ] - 7
17. Carpathian Night starring Bela Lugosi [ PC ] - 8


*18. Dragon's Dogma II [ PS5 ] - 10

Finished a second playthrough of it and yea, it is peak overall.

19. Withering Rooms [ PS5 ] - 9

A fairly impressive 2D action horror RPG title.

As Nightingale you explore around a mansion and its surronding areas trying to escape from a dream, there are inspirations from a lot of titles, American McGee's Alice, bit of Fromsoft's Souls series, and a handful of horror games that I haven't played but know about.

Gameplay wise, you have a pretty simple melee attack and you have magic attacks, the later being more powerful but it comes with downsides, first of all magic has to be crafted from material drops and having a parchment, but using magic will also take mental toll on Nightingale, she has a form of sanity bar that the more it is filled out the location around you starts turning into a more sinister place and spirits might pop up to attack you (these ones you can only defeat by using a camera), fill the bar completely and you get a rot effect that drains your health overtime, you need some special candles that you place on the floor and have to wait there in order to reduce the mental toll. All these elements help elevate the admittedly pretty jank melee combat.

There are also some elements of stealth, hiding from monsters under tables or inside a closet, you can peek into the next room you might want to check out to see what kind of enemies you'll encounter and plan around that.

The game has a bit of a roguelike thing to it, I say bit because is pretty inconsequential and for me that is a positive overall. In the layout of the house you have floors marked by a lenghty hallway in which you can enter various rooms, those rooms in each floor get shuffled around every time you die or when you decide to let a night pass, also enemies respawn, but again is something fairly minimal in the grand scheme of things and the game doesn't really encourage to die over and over, you can get plenty of materials and upgrades without it, personally around late chapter 2 I just stopped dying as a whole.

There is a level up system which is based on tiers within each chapter, you'll find NPCs or a tool that will allow you to level up only a set amount of levels, so say one will allow you to level up 5 times, then you have to wait till you find another tool/NPC to continue levelling.

Dying does mean losing your normal inventory, your costumes/gear, some permanent amulets/rings (accessories basically) and key items when noted will be kept no matter what, unless you get remembrance tears that allow you to remember items after you die, so you can slot in a weapon you like, an useful non permanent accessory, and even start with some healing items already or a rare material if you don't want to fight an specific monster again at the moment.

Game also features some cool sidequests and a good amount of optional stuff to play around with.

The soundtrack is pretty unique is something I'll say and it is kind of hard to nail it down. The game has a good art direction that nails giving it that off putting and oppressive atmosphere when needed.

Besides the jank with some hit boxes and the melee combat, plus some polishing issues (ran into a handful of bugs), Withering Rooms was a really good time and it kept me engaged the whole way through with its interesting story, characters and breadth of mechanics.

*DLC. Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide

​

Lost count of how many "this is Soken's best boss theme yet" I have gone through with this game alone, which is impressive considering some of his stuff in XIV.

Also embarrassing amount of noises of joy from me during the Leviathan fight. Hit me with your next game after Dawntrail CBU3, I'm ready.

 

[Enpsty]

The Case Of Golden Idol
Loved it so much I finished it in two days.
Clearly influenced by Obra Dinn, but with its own character. Visuals are surprisingly charming and the ost is very nice. The story is legit great spanning many years. Each case is fantastic, some more complex than others, but all equally entertaining. If you like detective games this is one of the goats.
10/10

PSA: The Switch version has a bug where the game resets your progress when you exit it! It doesn't happen to everyone, but it did happen to me. Ridiculous that it's still unpatched.

 

[meatbag]

The Switch version has a bug where the game resets your progress when you exit it!

This is why I haven't bit on it yet. I'm very paranoid about losing progress! As I understand it, the devs have already got a patch ready to roll out but it's been red-taped to limbo.

 

[Enpsty]

This is why I haven't bit on it yet. I'm very paranoid about losing progress! As I understand it, the devs have already got a patch ready to roll out but it's been red-taped to limbo.

Thankfully there's a hidden way to autocomplete the previous chapters, so you can go to the case you were in mere seconds.

 

[Vookatos]

26. Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu

I've not played this game for years. Usually when you learn of emulation you start playing through all your old favorites, but this one was tricky to find, since most people from Russia likely know it as its own ROMhack usually called "Mario 10"

A charming little game, fairly easy. A simple romp in the vein of Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania where you only have a short range attack but get power-ups you can activate by pressing up+attack. There's pretty much nothing to say about its gameplay. It controls well, and it looks really good: the sprites are big and charming.

It doesn't leave much lasting impression, though. The levels, while different and sometimes having their own gimmicks are disjointed even in one world, so it feels very disconnected. It's also REALLY short.

3.0/5

 

[Gengar]

Spoiler: Full list

1. Spider Man 2 (PS5)
2. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD
3. Kuru Kuru Kururin (GBA NSO)
4. Persona 3 Reload
5. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

6. Sayonara Wild Hearts

I have been working through a couple other games, but had some trouble getting them to the finish line. So, I thought I would take a break and play something shorter. Sayonara Wild Hearts is a good game, and I enjoyed the music, but I was unfortunately kind of bad at it. I repeatedly crashed into things during some sections, and that sort of disrupted the flow. Other than that, I thought it was pretty good!

 

[Leo]

1- Dragon Quest Treasures (Switch)
2- F-zero (SNES)
3- The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey and Minnie (SNES)
4- Gunple: Gunman's Proof (SNES)
5- Go! Go! Ackman (SNES)
6- The Legend of Zelda (NSO)
7- Super Bomberman 3 (SNES)
8- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
9- Castlevania III (Switch)
10- Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (Switch)
11- Toem (Switch)
12- Super Castlevania IV (Switch)
13- Cuphead (Switch)
14- Cuphead - Delicious Last Course (Switch)
15- Super Mario RPG (Switch)


16- The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe (Switch)

It's kind of difficult to talk about this game without ruining the experience for people who haven't played it yet, so I'll try to be vague. I like the concept a lot, but it's novelty gets old really fast once you realize what it is about, and from there, I think the game has little else to say so I didn't feel motivated to keep playing it for long. The Ultra Deluxe new content is kinda pointless after the introduction.

I had a great time with the game while it was keeping me intrigued, unfortunately that didn't last much longer than maybe one hour. I explored it a bit more after that and called it a day after around 3 hours. Still an experience like no other in games, if you liked Portal, you will like this (although Portal is much more fun imo).

 

[Vookatos]

27. D2

D2 is a Dreamcast survival horror kind of RPG game that has nothing to do with the original D and is the third game in the series.

Set in Canadian snowy mountains, you play as Laura (but different Laura from D) just trying to survive as people turn into weird plant monsters.

The game is a 4-disc behemoth and feels very inspired by Metal Gear Solid. In fact, I'd say it has more cutscenes than MGS. Whereas MGS used codec for a lot of it dialogue, D2 REALLY wants to be cinematic, featuring a lot of unique animations just for picking up things. It really didn't need that, and while it's unfortunate that it didn't sell well, I wonder if it even could sell enough for being a dreamcast exclusive considering how much money went into it.

The story is strange. Just the first 5 minutes of the game feature an evil wizard, a magic mirror, terrorism, and a meteor. It doesn't get much saner after. Most of the game is spent with characters and their motivations and thoughts, and while the voice acting is alright, the writing leaves a lot to be desired. For every interesting and touching scene there's at least one that feels like a cheap imitation of "can love bloom on the battlefield?" from MGS or a scene where characters suddenly become 10 times dumber.

There's something about this game that feels like Silent Hill titles. Not in terms of depth or scares, but in the fact that characters often talk past each other and everything feels very dream-like. The first person you meet traumadumps on you immediately and decides you're friends for life while Laura says absolutely nothing. In fact, you might get the impression that Laura is mute. She isn't. It's not a big reveal or anything, she just doesn't talk for 90% of the game, and knowing now that she COULD talk makes every cutscene even weirder in retrospect.

Just like the original D, the game tries to deal with heavy topics such as drug abuse, sexual violence, and others, but feels very unfocused. At times the game feels like it's really into enviromentalism, but it never commits. It also feels like sexual themes are there just for shock value, but they end up being really funny when a man just decides to act like a rapist for no reason or when you shoot what's literally a robot vulva in one of the boss fights. Weirdly enough there's nothing as shocking as the final flashback cutscene from the original D.

As for the gameplay, it's a weird mix of genres from point-and-click to RPG and I'd say nothing feels really that great. The biggest issue with the game is that it loves to waste your time. Each disc features fairly open maps, but progress is very convoluted, sometimes involving immediately going back or talking to one character 4 or 5 times (even as they fall asleep which I'd think would signify the end of dialogue tree). Random battles aren't scary and consist of you standing and shooting at monsters in first person, but I will say that the music and general vibe of the world work well.

Is it worth playing? I'd say no. Is it worth checking out through the magic of Youtube? Yeah. D2 is a weird game, often unintentionally funny, but charming nonetheless.

3.0/5

 

[meatbag]

Dove back into NSO with Streets of Rage 2. Do you even need a primer on what that is? It's a classic sidescrolling beat em up and I'm glad to finally get the chance to finish it, without having a machine eat up all my coins.

Probably going to continue with NSO for the time being. Still in the middle of my replay of Mario Tennis for GBC, and I think I'll start my first playthrough of Metroid Fusion.

 

[Vookatos]

28. Panic Restaurant

Much like Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu it's another fairly late and mediocre NES platformer that looks and sounds pretty good, but is ultimately very forgettable.
Another game you can beat in 30 minutes and which shows its teeth only towards the end with some really annoying enemy placement.

The gameplay is a simple jump-and-attack affrair with Mario like power-ups gained through the levels and lost upon losing health. While it's enjoyable that the whole game is themed around food, I found the movement to be a bit too slow.

If you want to try something new for the evening, fire it up. It's charming enough to not get boring, but doesn't have enough of an identity to stand out.

2.5/5

 

[afternoon delight]

3. Triangle Strategy (Switch)

For so long I have waited to experience the highs of Final Fantasy Tactics combat again- dare I even dream it to be handheld, like the Advance games of legend? - and did this game answer that dream and exceeded in certain modern aspects. I know they said that FFXVI was inspired by Game of Thrones, but I can't imagine it compares to the literal court intrigue, betrayal, and royal decisions one commits to in order to finish this game. The fantasy writers, scenario designers, and turn based combat heads have given us a feat to feast on for years- I think it makes so many smart decisions in ways that forces the player to act and think, I can't wait to see another ending later this year in NG+.

Don't wait for Square to remaster Tactics, just play this now, instead.

2024 Games Completed So Far...

Spoiler

1. World of Horror (Switch)
2. Sengoku 3 (Switch)
3. Triangle Strategy (Switch)

 

[Tircros]

I played through ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights.
It took 20h to 100% the game and get all endings.
The metroidvania has quite a dark atmospheric environment with deep lore.
The gameplay opens up with later upgrades from "spirits" you get from beating certain bosses.
Upgrades like grappling hook, double jump and ground pound are some that you can get like this.
The avatar is a small white priestess and all "weapons" are appearing spirits with some have infinite
uses like the sword or ar limited like a whirlwind attack.
The game mechanic can lead that you actually avatar is covered by the sprites and it can be hard to see it well.

You can have two banks, which can be switched while playing, with each 3 spirits equipped.
While resting on rest spots you can change the equipped spirits, enhance them and choose passive skills.

From the difficulty it felt quite fair and if you are patience with the bigger bosses and search for upgrades on the
environment it is quite doable. Even I could do it.
The map could be better to show more details in areas you already visited and were exactly you are, but the
areas you in are not that big that is to much of a hassle.

 

[Vookatos]

29. Enemy Zero

A second game in the D "trilogy", Enemy Zero is another "interactive movie" from Kenji Eno, this time for Sega Saturn.

It's probably the game out of the trilogy I've enjoyed the least. First of all, let's talk about the whole "interactive movie" thing. None of Eno's games can be even remotely perceived as movies, and if this WERE a movie, it'd be panned for being a complete and utter rip-off of Alien, which I know even though I've never seen Alien, because it's just so blatant.

I don't think I've mentioned this in my previous reviews, but Kenji Eno had this wild idea about having "digital actors" in his games. That is, the idea that you can reuse the same character who would "play" different people. When examined in the, let's call it Laura trilogy, it failed miserably. Indeed, the only connecting tissue between the games is the main character, always called Laura, who's always a different person. However if you've not read about the digital actor idea, you'd probably just think Eno likes the name, because with games coming out on different platforms Laura always looks different. Does she have the same actress? Also no. In fact, this is yet another game in which Laura is basically mute, which really begs the question as to why you make what's supposed to be a movie with the main character who never really reacts to things outside of a shocked gasp. The only good thing to come out of this idea is that they could skip some of the character design, I suppose.

Enemy Zero is a bit of a mix between D and D2 in terms of gameplay: there are plenty of pre-rendered rooms you can examine and collect items, but it also has a few labyrinthian FPS sequences where you try to kill invisible enemies via a metal detector-like sound system of various beeps and bloops. It's probably the best part of the game because at least it's original and somewhat tense.

As with other Laura titles, this game also likes to waste your time and be needlessly obtuse at points, and this time I just gave up and used the guide halfway through as the game pretty much required me to go to a random spot on a fairly large map. On the other hand, some puzzles basically solve themselves, which is really strange. The music and graphics are, as always, nice, but I just can never recommend actually playing Eno's main series of games because they seem designed to infuriate, and their best (and worst) moments are confined to cutscenes.

And yet again I find that it was the original D to shock me the most with its final flashback scene, as this game can barely be called scary. Unlike with D2 it doesn't even try to go for shock, mainly just featuring various levels of gore throughout. I've still enjoyed playing it more than D which felt completely pointless, but again, if this sounds interesting, Youtube is that-a-way.

2.0/5

 

[Stilt Village]

I don't think I've mentioned this in my previous reviews, but Kenji Eno had this wild idea about having "digital actors" in his games. That is, the idea that you can reuse the same character who would "play" different people. When examined in the, let's call it Laura trilogy, it failed miserably. Indeed, the only connecting tissue between the games is the main character, always called Laura, who's always a different person. However if you've not read about the digital actor idea, you'd probably just think Eno likes the name, because with games coming out on different platforms Laura always looks different. Does she have the same actress? Also no. In fact, this is yet another game in which Laura is basically mute, which really begs the question as to why you make what's supposed to be a movie with the main character who never really reacts to things outside of a shocked gasp. The only good thing to come out of this idea is that they could skip some of the character design, I suppose.

I had to stop and go make sure this man didn't go on to make Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I wonder if Square got the idea from him?

 

[Vookatos]

30. Super Spy Hunter

I wanted to love this game so much. I wanted to sing it praises.

Super Spy Hunter is a vehicular shmup with some really great weapons and upgrades as well as set pieces. Yes, indeed, this NES game has set pieces. It pushes the tech to the limit and is one of the games that makes you feel straight-up badass.
It's first stages are a joy, letting you adjust the speed to your liking so it almost feels like a modern character action game: you can move fast and look cool, or play slow, but look pretty bad.

It all falls apart in last 2 stages. While the penultimate stage offers a new cool gimmick, it overstays its welcome with both grueling boss and a long stage with the most boring background of them all. I can't overstate how gorgeous this game can be. I have no idea what trickery they use, but at times it feels like it uses SNES tricks as opposed to NES' hardware.

Before the final stage I wanted to commend this game for being a shmup that's accessible to new players: you have a healthbar, and the upgrade system is fairly generous. However, the final level features some jank, gotcha traps, and a boss gauntlet featuring final boss firing a one-hit KO beam with no warning.

God, I wanted to love this game, but its end is some grade A NES bullshit that feels like Gradius and doesn't even feature anything as cool as the first few stages did.

3.5/5

31. Big Nose the Caveman

Another NES game, courtesy of CodeMasters. While an unlicensed title, I have been familiar with their work on Dizzy games, one of which I owned as a kid. Big Nose is another one in a long series of prehistoric games and it takes a lot from Adventure Island: you level up your weapon to a ranged one and travel through several islands with few short levels in each. While time limit is present, it's not as much of an obstacle.

It's a simple game, and I wouldn't say it controls well. Your character is way too slippery, and much like Adventure Islands, levels start repeating big chunks towards the end.

There is, however, one thing that pleasantly surprised me: this game has RPG-like upgrade system. Your main collectible, bones, can be exchanged for one-time spells and straight-up power-ups in shops you will visit every few levels (or find in levels themselves). This made the fairly boring trek much more interesting as I was experimenting with spells and tried not to lose my power-ups by dying. It made for a fun time as by the end I was nearly indestructible.

Pretty fun little game, another one that can be beaten in an afternoon, but the one that has a bit more to it than your standard NES side-scroller. I just wish the levels were more distinct.

3.0/5

 

[T-Hell]

Vookatos may end up being the mvp of this year lmao.

 

[Vookatos]

Vookatos may end up being the mvp of this year lmao.

I believe I've cracked a hundo last year. Maybe 120? The trick is to have an easy job from home (or no job, like I did last year) and an emulator. Although I'm not particularly concerned with the count itself, I just love discovering cool new stuff and writing about it. Also after a whole bunch of full-fledged jRPGs I don't think I could care about playing long games for a bit.

 

[Mandos]

12) Just Cause 2
Explosions and chaos including the coherency of the plot in an action movie way. But the grind is too much, I only did under 30% in a Story playthrough and I’m not going back, I’d rather start 3 which I already have

13) Final Fantasy IX
Not gonna lie, ending had me tearing up. Current FF rankings for me are 9=8>>7. Great game tho I just cheesed the combat with built in cheats. Think I was in the 35 hr range. Probably doing a different style of rpg before jumping into X, but enjoying my FF journey

1) Riccchhhhhaaarrrrd Metal Wolf Chaos XD
2) Toree 3D
3) Piczle Cross Adventure
4) Macbat 64
5)Metroid Prime Remastered
6) Good Job!
7)Golden Sun
8) Crash 4
9)Star Wars Starfighter SE
10) EDF2025(ranger normal)
11) Klonoa Door to Phantomile

 

[Vookatos]

32. Zombie Nation

If Zombie Nation was released at any other time it would be a completely unremarkable horizontal shmup. It doesn't control that well and is fairly boring.

However, it's due to the fact that it's an NES game it attracts attention. Sure, SEGA and many later consoles had more horror-themed games, but for NES it was pretty rare, and to see a game where you play as a decapitated head shooting buildings and eating people was a hell of a surprise.

Zombie Nation is quite bad and pretty much worth playing only for its presentation. In fact, first level is probably the best one, as you spit bullets all over a giant city decimating buildings and making people fall off roofs only to consume them for power-ups. Later levels become more and more abstract and feel way less interesting due to that.

The game doesn't have much in terms of power-ups, just a linear progression. Its movement also kinda sucks with your character being able to slide across predetermined rows as opposed to having full movement. Like, if you just lightly tap down, your Head won't go down for a pixel, but rather a full row.

If this were a game about a helicopter, it would be forgotten entirely. It would be one of those games that I'd play and as time comes to write about it I'd need to look at my history to see its name. It lives and dies on its concept, but thankfully the concept is very fun and playful. I'd recommend a playthrough.

2.0/5

 

[meatbag]

Done with Mario Tennis on GBC NSO, specifically the RPG story mode. The controls still feel a little unwieldy, but it's still a grand time doing all the drills and matches and leveling your character up into lean, mean tennis machine. The world needs more Sports RPGs. You hear me, devs?! (Just, uhhh, don't try to put all the sports into one game... ahem)

 

[Vookatos]

33. Kabuki Quantum Fighter

A fairly simple NES platformer in the vein of Ninja Gaiden. A little simpler and thankfully easier than said game, but still on the shorter side.

Just like Ninja Gaiden you have a limited supply of ranged weapon, but unlike Ninja Gaide, which cribbed its ideas from Castlevania, this game has enemy drops and end of level bonuses to your health and ammo: no lanterns here. The unfortunate downside of this system is that you only acquire new weapons after each level, so there's no strategy involved to keeping what you might need for later.

The enemies are fairly weak and easy, as well as programmed well, so they don't respawn every time you move a few milimeters, so the main challenge comes from platforming. Doing ninja moves such as jumps from walls and overhangs is a little weird, but it's the actual platforming that's your enemy. The momentum of conveyors and ice is wild. When pushed backwards you can barely jump, and when pushed forwards your jumps propel you like a missle. Of course devs knew that so the final level is a vertical shaft full of conveyors and barely any enemies.

The graphics and music are very good, and the main character design is hella cute. HAL worked on the game so I suppose it's no surprise that everything runs well. I'm a little surprised that delving into NES' later library reveals that developers were moving away from Mario's 30 stage adventures into tighter 5-6 stage games with bigger sprites and nicer graphics. Often those games end up being not memorable at all, but this one is weird enough and just challenging enough so it never gets boring, even if it can get frustrating.

3.5/5

Edit: 34. Gun Nac

Figured I wouldn't play any more games today because my hand hurts, but discovered a really cool shmup.

Gun Nac is a blast! On its intended difficulty it's quite easy, but it's a very fast paced experience with tons of weapons, upgrades, bombs, and enemies. If you're familiar with shmups I'd recommend setting the difficulty to 3 or 4 because otherwise first few levels can be completed way too easily with the third weapon: a seeking 8-way blaster.

I've tried difficulty 4 after beating the game and it felt more like a hardcore shmup. However, even then, the game doesn't make you completely helpless: upgrades and bombs are plentiful, and your ship can increase its HP by picking up "wings", basically options. Between levels you can buy more weapons, restock on bombs and so on. Even when dying, you'll usually climb back to full power fairly easily.

One thing I've enjoyed in particular is how sticking to one weapon seems to be a death sentense. Sure, I've enjoyed my seeker, until level 3 where I realized that it doesn't differentiate between targets and spends time around enemies that are still underwater. I've completely ditched the weapon on, I believe, level 4 where it would just run into barriers and be completely useless. Actually, on difficulty 2 before final two levels the biggest challenge was to retain a weapon I liked, because picking up a different number altered your gameplay way too much and led me to panic.

One cool thing about this game is that it has Performance Mode. Yep, a game from 1990 lets you choose between focusing on speed or sprites. I'd recommend switching to "sprites" because slowdown be damned one of the bosses on speed is just impossible to parse otherwise (I had to sit at the top of the screen and spam bombs of which I had a LOT)

It's a really good introductory shmup and I believe I've died only around 3-5 times on Difficulty 2, which can be set even lower, so if you feel like shooting aliens and collcting power-ups but are afraid of difficulty of many games, it's a no-brainer.

4.0/5