39. Cruis'n World (N64) - 45mins 

So after playing Cruis'n USA again this year, curiosity has got the better of me and I've decided to play the two sequels before deleting the ROMs.

The positives? It's nice and colourful, I wish Top Gear Overdrive had this much vibrancy to be fair. Erm, thats about it.

The pop up is even worse than in USA, possibly the worst I've seen on the N64. Outside of that it's essentially an expansion pak to that game, all new stages for what its worth.

So yeah, terrible. I'd say worse than USA simply because this came out years later and made no improvements, and USA has a bit more significance in the history of the Nintendo (Ultra) 64.

3/10 

My list

Enjoying this rabbit hole.

I did try the SF Rush games quickly though. 2049 looks like it's running on different hardware compared to the first game, I was quite impressed.

41. NES Remix 2 (Wii U) - 11hr 30mins  

Bite-size chunks of classic first party NES games. It's brilliant one more go gaming, and very hard to put down once you get into it.

There's twelve games to choose from. For me:
The Good - SMB2, SMB3, SMB: The Lost Levels, Punch-Out!!, Metroid, Zelda II, NES Open Tournament Golf, Dr. Mario
The Bad - Kid Icarus, Kirby's Adventure
The Ugly - Wario's Woods, Ice Hockey

If all twelve games were games I liked this would be 9 or even a 10, as it is those four unfortunately drag down the overall experience and fun.

8/10  

My list

36: Glass Masquerade (Switch) 7/10

This is effectively a pretty jigsaw puzzle game.  Instead of a jigsaw puzzle, you're putting together, like, a shattered stained glass window.  Each puzzle is between about 30 and 60 pieces.  Even though the pieces are in different shapes to what you would expect from a jigsaw puzzle, you get used to seeing where each shard should fit.  You can't go too wrong.  The only reason you would fail to beat this game if you get a bit sick of dragging the pieces around the screen.

On the plus side it is relaxing and nice to look at.  On the minus side the interface is a bit wonky and seems to be built around using a mouse cursor.  Analogue sticks are sluggish.  You can use the touch screen, but then your big sausage shaped fingers cover up the piece and you can't see where it's going.  But it's an okay game for a few hours.

I got it on sale in a 2 pack with the sequel, which is more of the same.  Good enough.

37: Persona 5 Royal (PS4) 9/10

There are 2 reasons this did not get a 10/10 from me - I've played a bit too much persona over the last year.  They're pretty similar games.  I think the 4th is the best, and I played it directly before this.  That was a mistake.  It's a tremendous game in its own right but I burned myself out on the formula.

Also - I am a goose and missed most of the new content.  Like I literally paid money for this game to try out the new content and I missed it.  95 hours later.  There's a new guy you're supposed to hang out with. I was too busy doing laundry and eating hamburgers so I could build up the courage to ask my teacher to clean my room.

Even still, I really got sucked into the game all over again by about halfway through and was sad to say goodbye to the gang.  Need to weigh up whether I should begin a new game plus now, or give it some time.  Either way I'll be skipping most of the dialogue, I can't really justify anther 100ish hours on replay for a while.  Not with my entertainment backlog leering so judgementally at me.

Wariospeedwagon wrote:

37: Persona 5 Royal (PS4) 9/10

...

Also - I am a goose and missed most of the new content.  Like I literally paid money for this game to try out the new content and I missed it.  95 hours later.  There's a new guy you're supposed to hang out with. I was too busy doing laundry and eating hamburgers so I could build up the courage to ask my teacher to clean my room.

Yikes, I think that’d break me.

79. Aces of the Luftwaffe Squadron - Switch (6hrs)

Took five/six hours or so took finish, but at least two of those were spent on the final two bosses.  It's a serviceable enough shmup lacking any desirable feedback from the actual shooting of things, plus there are medals to collect and perks to assign which chucks any purity out the window for me.  Nonsensical dialogue obscures the view of your aircraft as characters intermittently spout shit at each other, and you can even tuck yourself away behind part of the hud in the bottom left if you fancy a cheap death or three.  Nice one.    

Was a pushover until level 5-3 (of 5-5), then I had to reassign a load of abilities and tinker with aircraft.  Turns out the bomb is useless and active power ups are the way forward.  Wish I'd learned that a couple of hours before the end.  Actually, I wish I'd read this review before playing it, then I wouldn't have bothered.  Aside from the feeling of satisfaction for pushing myself through the difficulty spike it was a waste of time.  Sky Force Anniversary (and presumably the other one in that series) are miles better than this, even with all the arbitrary grinding.  At least the enemy bullets in those games aren't camouflaged against the backdrops.  A harsh [4], but fuck it. *   



*As the gif seems to reveal a four player mode I'll up the score to a [5].

I would quit gaming if that happened to me.

I just glanced at spoiler. Thanks. I’ve already got him up a fair bit so will spend time and not miss out on that extra content then. Sounds like quite a lot? Dunno. Don’t want to read anymore. I mean you’re right, it’s a huge game and I’m not gonna go back to it for a number of years after this so would be good to see as much as I can.

31.Control: Foundation - 6 Hours - 8/10 - Xbox One X

I absolutely loved Control when it was released so any excuse to go back I’ll grab with both hands, and I’m glad I did. This is an excellent bit of DLC, good bit of story that makes sense...as much as Control can...beautiful environment, as much as you can make of a foundation system beneath the oldest house, decent new mechanics and enemies, and more time in the awesome Control universe. Only downside was buggy last boss which was a disappointment, but that was the only downside. Aside from that very good bit of DLC and cannot wait for the next slice, just wish they’d planned for more.

82. Battletoads - Xbox One (3hrs 50mins)

This was always up against it as it's predominantly a throwback scrolling beat 'em up releasing in the same year as Steets of Rage 4, but the basic brawling is actually pretty strong.  It's the constant attempts to add variety along the way that turn the experience into a bit of a pot luck tombola.  I'd say 65% of the game is the surprisingly proficient fightmens, and the rest is either one-shot or recurring distractions/diversions that either work (the into the screen scooter sections are decent enough) or absolutely do not (not going to spoil it, but I thought one of the slightly more out-there late game sections was RIDICULOUS).  The scattershot approach to gameplay coupled with fairly decent cut scenes works pretty well on the whole, but unfortunately the non scrolly/fighty bits never really threaten to be anything special in any way.  The hodgepodge is worth playing though, probably moreso as a couch co-op experience (although quite how that works on some stages is a mystery to me), but it's a bit of an Earthworm Jim game: all over the place, heavy on the wacky tween TV animation style, maintaining an average of 'quite good' throughout its many styles whilst never troubling the very best of the competition.        

Despite some earlier standard stages outstaying their welcome, whenever the scrolling & punching sections returned in the latter half of the game I was relieved.  It's slightly draining to play back to back sections of new gameplay experiences (poor puzzle platforming, average platforming, QTEs, vertical shmups and so on), but judged on the fisticuffs it attempts some interesting things and mostly succeeds.  The tag system seemed oddly overpowered as it worked far better than the dodge for a quite blast of invincibility, but the tongue grab to either propel yourself toward enemies or Scorpion them over to you is well implemented.  You can dash, spit wads of bubblegum to stick enemies in place and guard break attack, plus there's a genuine rhythm/tactics game going on on standard difficulty, with enemies staying in a dizzy state for ages, certain types posing far more risk and so on.  Some of the enemy placements suggest a game designed first and foremost as a co-op experience, but it's never quite unfair as a solo game.  It's not quite there when compared to SOR4 but it'd give Wulverblade a fair fight (and eventually lose), to name another good modern stab at the genre.   

Overall it feels like a game intended to be developed as a labour of love that ended up a bit rushed.  The visuals have a certain style that seems to rise and fall in terms of quality from stage to stage.  Gav described it as Cuphead played on a recorder, which is glorious but actually a bit harsh; the finished product is no eyesore, but some of the stages just look a wee bit...off.  Not sure who to recommend it to as the series doesn't have much of a fanbase as far as I can tell, but it's not half bad really. [7] feels about right, glad I played it.

38: Glass Masquerade 2 (Switch) - 5/10
39: UFC 4 (Xbox) - 6/10

Could probably just copy n paste whatever I wrote for Glass Masquerade 1 and UFC 3; these games  are just more of the same.  They're okay.

I did get pretty bloody sick of GM2.  The puzzles have a lot more pieces to put back together.  I'm not sure it's a game you get good at, so it's just kind of tedious.  The interface is the same.  It's slow and fiddly.  

Did enjoy UFC though.  I don't think they've figured out how to make MMA intuitive to control but you do get kinda used to it after a while.  But I do like a sports fighting game where you have to look after your stamina meter, and a fight can stop at any second.  As with UFC 3 I played it on easy and quickly reset the game when I lost.  I won the belt and retired undefeated like the big man that I am.

I started Battletoads earlier today. It seems... fine I guess?

5. Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition (PC) - 50 hours including Frozen Wilds DLC

I'm not normally one for the AAA titles, but I was gifted this during the Steam summer sale so I thought it deserved a play.
And all I can say is I am very glad I did. 
The story was excellent, and while it's always hard to make a video game story believable, I think Guerilla did a good job in world building and making you care about the characters. Speaking of which, the characters were for the most part good, and definitely well voice-acted.
Hunting giant robot dinosaurs is always fun, and the gimmick of removable components (some of which you can then use against them) made it a little different than your average open world combat.
The game is also GORGEOUS looking, especially now it's on PC and can take advantage of higher powered graphics hardware. The music also is nicely atmospheric and not distracting.
On the negative side, I can't ignore the port problems to PC. The game was apparently farmed out to a different studio for porting to PC (unlike Death Stranding which runs on the same engine and was done in house) and the stability is....less than great. Before updating to the most recent Geforce drivers, I was getting crashes every 15 minutes, mostly related to lading in new textures I think, and after the update, it was down to every couple of hours or so. Some people have had good stability, and others less so, but it's worth bearing in mind if you are thinking of picking it up on PC.
Combat against humans was also not ideal, but I can forgive that, as the robot dino combat is really the focus of the game.

Overall, I think it's a must for any fans of open world gaming [9]

My man!  Yep they've got the beat em up story mode down to a fine art.  Great stuff.  Loved the old and young Johnny bits.

They seem to come down in price pretty quickly; hopefully it's the same with the new expansion.  Will jump on that too.