Castlevania Collection? Really?

Oh you mean the GB original. Yeah some really do go for lots but have to be CIB and mint.

71. Sonic & Knuckles - Xbox Series S/Xbox 360 (1hr 45mins)

I planned to play the full Megazord Sanic until I remembered that the XBLA versions I bought aeons ago couldn't be combined.  Or maybe they could once upon a time, but they can't now.  I've played Sonic 3 far more than this, given that I owned that as a kid and only ever borrowed S&K, so I opted for a run through of the latter as Knuckles.  The full bifta is an amazing Sonic - arguably the best - but solus Knuckles is a wee bit weak and lacks any real S/A tier stages, especially as you don't even get to play Sky Sanctuary as Knuckles.  Flying Battery and Lava Reef Zone might have some of the best classic Sonic tunes around, but I doubt they'd grace a list of many people's favourite stages.  Nor would Hydrocity or Marble Garden though, I guess.

It's a decent enough game on its own despite being my least favourite 16-bit mainline Sonic.  The special stages in this and 3 are actually fun for a change, rather than annoying (Sonic 1) or swish but impossible with a CPU Tails in tow (Sonic 2), so I nabbed all the emeralds on today's playthrough.  As the back half of the game doesn't really flow like the first I never amassed 50 rings to find out if Knuckles becomes Super Knuckles though, which was annoying.

There are plenty of different routes to take and the more platformy elements are mostly well implemented.  It's a decent 16-bit platformer in the scheme of things with some lovely graphics, neato scaling effects and top tunes (which vary from stage to stage rather than simply level to level), but it's best experienced as part of the double stack package deal.  80%

73. Fight 'N Rage - Switch (80mins)

Yoss praising this recently coupled with a glowing write-up in (the glorious) Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat 'Em Ups prompted a revisit to see if I'd been a tad harsh on it in 2020.  I was expecting to warm to it on reappraisal, but if anything I found myself getting slightly more annoyed with it second time through.  It's a brutally tricky game on normal difficulty - although there's a good chance I just suck at it - and I adopted the die and retry approach to most stages as there's not much point in attempting to make it through with less than three lives (which only top up when you continue).  Especially on the final checkpoint, which I didn't think I was going to make it through at one point.  It's a simplistic brawler with a few deeper tricks up its sleeve.  The throw/knock-back cancels are unusual and well implemented, and the parry ability is great.  I particularly like the way it handles specials on a cooldown system - use one and it'll start to recharge, use another before it finishes recharging and it'll take a small chunk of health away.  Miles better than the old school 'specials hurt you too' approach, and a decent alternative to SOR4's regain mechanic.  The combat leans heavily into crowd control, moreso than any other game that springs to mind in the genre.  You can throw enemies backwards or forwards mid combo, and in order to clear zones you'll need to constantly shepherd the assorted baddies into manageable conga lines, which can feel a tad repetitive (strange criticism to level at the genre I guess - YMMV).    

I played with F.Norris last time and Gal today.  They both felt about as useful as each other (i.e not quite useful enough in places), but all the gals have such pendulously jiggling jugs I didn't know where to look during juggles.  It's silly really - sometimes the medium's obsession with MEDIUM BAPS can be amusing, but the fact that someone sat there and painstakingly animated the wibbly wobbliness on show here is a bit creepy.  

There's a strong emphasis on replaying ad infinitum to earn credits for various unlockables, but the core experience isn't strong enough for endless playthroughs imo, and that's coming from a fan of the rinse & repeat nature of these things.  I'd definitely play again in three player, but it's unlikely I'll play solo again any time soon.  

I mentioned this last time, but the CRT filter and screen options are the best I've seen anywhere so I'll mention it again.  Music is eclectic and decent enough, it just doesn't really feel like a good fit - the genre needs propulsive street prowler tunes, not slightly off tempo jazz numbers.

It's a decent game with a lot going for it.  I think [6] was about right for the single player mode though.  I played it briefly with two mates and it's no quite on the podium for modern examples of the genre, but it's good fun with a group of friends and an optional couch.  There are plenty of different routes and modes to keep dedicated players occupied.  I'm happy to leave it at casual playthrough level, so I doubt I'll ever find out what's hiding behind all the question marks on the mode select screen.     

BUT WAIT.  I've been reading a little more about the game while finishing this review off, and I think I'm going to give it a go with Ricardo tomorrow.  Watch this space, let's see if we can bump this up to a [7].  I want to like it more than I actually do.

14. SIFU - 5 Hours - 7/10 - PS5

This was one of my given up on games but with the introduction of the ‘easy mode’ I went back. I did like it before but simply not enough to get into the flow of it, remembering the moves, counter moves etc, never been a fight man’s and this does kinda need it. But with the new mode it becomes a fun modern scrolling button Mashable beat em-up which was hella fun.

Just burned through it in a couple of sittings and finished it having only added a couple more years but it was nice just playing it for fun instead of getting irritated knowing progress was pretty much impossible when you’d reached a certain age and still had the boss etc.

Definitely worth it now as if you don’t get on with the tougher journey you can just switch it up and be a badass.

15. Trek to Yumi- 7 Hours - 6/10 - Xbox Series-X

Strange one this, feel almost the exact same as Moot. There’s a score it should be as it’s so very repetitive without ever really expanding on your moves to make it very different or worth switching up combo’s etc. Everything looks the same, and it throws some crap puzzles at you maybe two thirds of the way in which are super simple and just get in the way…but…it’s just always cool being a badass Samurai.

The samey samey combat does look and feel ace when it all flows and you take out several enemies with finishers and deft strikes, doesn’t happen as often as it should but when it does it’s aces.

That’s the problem and the best part of this, when it works it’s ace and cool, when it doesn’t it’s just clumsy and so limited. Hopefully they go on to improve their formula. 6/10.

Wow, quite the catch-up post!  I must play There Is No Game.

hylian_elf wrote:

Wow, quite the catch-up post!  I must play There Is No Game.

Realise I also have Disco Elysium, Cyberpunk, Deep Rock Galactic and Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

I assume it's for Xbox?

74. Valfaris - Switch (6hrs 45mins)

I described this as the best example of the genre ever created after my first playthrough in June 2020, and I'm nodding in full agreement with my early lockdown self.  It has a smattering of nifty tricks and techniques but minimal gimmicks; at a core level it's a traditional run and gun in the Contra multidirectional aiming mould.  There's no slide, sprint or i-frame dash, but you can counter (both projectiles and close quarters attacks) and lock your stance for eight-way fire, plus there's a heavy emphasis on melee combat as it refills your special bar.  It's mostly old school, but it's ultimate form stuff.  As comparable examples I think I gave Blazing Chrome an [8] a few years ago, which was an enjoyable stab at a blates Contra homage, and Hard Corps Uprising a [9] last year after finally deciding not to be a PUSSY'OLE and tackle it after years of whimpering at the memory of level 2.  This is head and shoulders above the former and like, half a head ahead of the latter.  It's also better than Cuphead, Gunstar Heroes, Alien Hominid, Broforce, Probotector and any other mighty fine left to right platform shooters I may have forgotten.  Yes, even Huntdown.  Admittedly I've never properly played a Metal Slug for some unknown reason, but I'm happy to guess it's better than those too.      

Ignore or embrace the visuals, it's irrelevant really (I can't deny warming to them a little this time).  The excellence of the gameplay/design can't be understated: there is no better trad run & gun in the history of forever.  It doesn't have the zip and panache of a Housemarque shooter, but it wouldn't be put in the shade by their best work as it executes almost everything it attempts perfectly (the mech sections are on the iffy side admittedly, but they're still a welcome enough diversion).  Bring on the sequel.  [9]

NB: this is £6.74 on Switch at the moment, and may be on sale for other consoles too, which is the cheapest it's been by some distance. 

Nice write up, that - glad you enjoyed it.

Outrageous

I had to remove 5 points for Splasher because I remembered it was a Monkey rec.

77. One Finger Death Punch 2 - PS5 (7-8hrs)

It's a bit of a cliché to describe a gaming experience as 'zen-like', but ignore all the other times you may have read that and put all your faith in me, just for the following sentence - there's a tranquil core to the staggeringly frantic, intrinsically repetitive action of OFDP2 and I've rarely (if ever) played such a turbulent game that rewards a calm approach to play.  If Rocket League is the ultimate videogame representation of football, which people do say and I get their point - no other game has come anywhere near it for the dropping-for-a-volley, This is My Momeeeent feeling for a start - then this is the ultimate representation of, um, Buddhist monks defending themselves?  Or something like that anyway.  Take a deep breath and let all the colours of the rainbow try to knock you off your square.  They might be rushing you like a 180 bpm DnB head wobbler but if you play it smart (between the notes, master of the mind not the body, Mortal Kombat kebab man, there is no spoon) you'll be in the middle catching a leaf like Ryo listening to that Chinese Fiddles track from Shenmue.  I don't know how they pulled it off but the feeling of chaotic serenity is wonderful.  It's an incredibly relaxing (not to mention addictive) experience, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible to explain why without getting someone to play it for themselves.  

For what it is, which clearly won't be for everyone, it's close to perfection.  Cards on the table: I only decided that I wasn't going all in with a [10] when I finally sat down to write this review.  This is that good at what it does.  It's an ultra-focused amalgamation of rhythm action, tower defence, autorunners and (hear me out) LCD gaming.  For the latter, think of something like Greenhouse, where the difficulty ramped up as you desperately sprayed away the relentless hordes of pests across both screens.  You're essentially fending off moments where you're eventually overwhelmed here too, albeit with less inputs required than Greenhouse, and I don't think there's ever been a game that nails that simplistic weather the storm, controlled carnage feeling better than this.  It's an astonishingly good game with an unparalleled rhythm to the inoffensive yet bloodthirsty offensive defence core.   

The art style is banging.  From the excellent stick man sprites to the primo nasty Amiga box art looking scene cards it's a good job well done.  Even when the action slowed for an extended killing animation I never groaned once. I could wax lyrical about the whole thing all day but I won't.  Actually I often type that to hook myself off stage if I'm aware I've been waffling, but I'm on holiday so I'm going to ramble on for a bit today.

More stuff.  The way each enemy type settles straight into the rhythm after only one or two appearances is startling.  Most games let new mechanics stretch their legs a bit before the throwing the deep end at you, but somehow in OFDP you learn to take it in your stride almost instantly.  Or I did anyway - maybe the CBD E-liquid I've been messing around with came up trumps?  It's like chucking extra objects at a juggler and having him snatch them out the air and add them to the mix on the fly, or being good enough at an instrument for 'watch me for the changes and try and keep up' to suffice as instruction.  The passive perks are great, the bonus rounds never get old, none of the more off-beat level types are over-used (projectile master over here) and the voiceover does precisely what it should be doing - which is: sounding like someone doing an impression of a 30% more jocular Tatsu from the first Ninja Turtles film. 

The whole thing uses two buttons.  Two buttons!  All you do is defend yourself from the left or the right when the frontrunners of near-endless swathes of enemies (or projectiles) threaten to encroach on your personal space.  Due to the length of your attack zones on either side you'll either be smacking folks an inch from your face or stepping toward the danger to snuff it out, which adds an element of sashaying screen control to the crowd control.  Honestly, I can't do it justice describing the way things work so I'd encourage anyone who's even remotely intrigued by this to give it a go.  It's £2.80 in the current PSN sale, so even if you think it looks like a hideous affront to gaming it's got to be worth a punt.  I've convinced two people to buy it so far and my success rate for thumbs up stands at 50% (technically 25% on Whatsapp).  And he might've just been lying to shut me up.  I didn't think it was a difficult game as I only outright failed a handful of stages, and rarely more than once, but I kept the manual speed pretty low and used a few revenge tokens to see me through my chosen route.  The campaign/quest is unnecessarily long on paper, but that's irrelevant for something as relentlessly addictive as this.  I'd still be playing it right now if the wonderful end sequence hadn't played earlier. 

Only Returnal beats it this year for anything I've played, so many thanks to @afgavinstan for the rec.  Near perfect in-the-zone gaming, straight into my all-time top 50.  [9]

Part 1: Games 1-4 (Ready or Not, Can Androids Pray, Bad End Theater, Anger Foot)
Part 2: Game 5 (Bloodborne PSX)
Part 3: Game 6 (Day Repeat Day)
Part 4: Games 7-14 (Elden Ring, GT7, Horizon: Forbidden West, Emily is Away 3, Fifa 22, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Good Night Knight, There is no Game)

No, I haven't completed another 8 games - several of these were games I finished at the beginning of the year but forgot to write up. After double-checking dates and times of certain screenshots on the PS5, I realised I hadn't talked about the first 4 of these games. So...


15. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut

Yes, it's very wordy and smart and dense and, often, quite pretty. The actual role-play side of this role-play game is a hoot, feeling meaningful in a way that, say, a Bethesda game never, ever will be. It also got deep into my head and the lead character's attempts (or lack of attempts) to not be a complete human disaster hit home more than once. I just wish it was a little more fun to play. [7]


16. Cyberpunk 2077

Absolute heresy given that I just gave Critical Darling and Game Awards Game of the Year Disco Elysium a 7, and we all know how awful Cyberpunk is but...i much prefer this. 

Bought this at launch (on PS4) and played a fair amount. Never completed it, though. Came back towards the end of last year and finally did a whole new run-through from start on PS5.

So yeah - the game is uneven. Certain questlines feel like they just end half-done. Certain skills are broken. A lot of the upgrades don't get the blood pumping. There are still bugs. NPCs are painfully dumb. The city feels incomplete. The cyberpunk side of cyberpunk feels like something purely decorative and, unlimitedly, they don't really do anything interesting with it.

But it doesn't matter because, despite all this, nobody in the world does characters as good as CDPR. Characters glace and wink and smile and look in awe - not in a way that feels deliberate or overacted, not in a way that feels stiff and gamey. This is Naughty Dog cutscene surpassing stuff applied across dozens of characters across hundreds of hours and it stinks of love and care and time and money. 

It helps that guns feel crunchy and loud, that the car interiors are lovingly detailed. It helps that there's a great soundtrack. It helps that often the game is just stunning to look at. It helps that I think Keanu is actually really, really good in this. 

But most of all I go back to those character moments. Sitting next to each other and just staring in awe at the character animation. Watching NPCs look up at the stars and recognise their gaze, and the small disbelieving smile on their face as they are overwhelmed with beauty. Multiple times I've looked at characters and just gasped with how alive they look. 

And then a texture will go janky or an NPC will randomly catapult through the air. [8]
 

17. Deep Rock Galactic

Rock and Stone!

Amazing in co-op. [8]


18. Yakuza: Like a Dragon

A bitter disappointment. I like The Yak. I like turn-based combat systems. But this...naw, not a fan.

The Yakuza game humour has to do a lot of carrying, especially early on, but I actually feel like the hit/miss ratio of this game doesn't stand up to something like 0. 

I quite like Ichiban as a new series lead, and I like the games focus on the losers of society - it feels nice and sweet in a way that Yak can excel at - but ultimately the game's themes were too broadly and crudely conveyed and the game had one unforgivable sin...

Strip away the ZANY MADLAD YAKLAD animations and decoration from the combat and you're left with something...boring. It's just a dull combat system. Not because it's turn-based, it's just a bad turn-based system and I straight up didn't want to get into fights. That has never happened to me in a Yakuza game before. [5]


19. Manifold Garden



It actually made my stomach turn. It's also quite pretty. It does quite a lot with a little, in terms of the number of different pieces it includes in puzzles. Things get more complex over time, and new mechanics are introduced, but it mostly just leans on all the head spinning fractal jiggery pokery and that was probably a good idea. [7]


20. Factori



Yes, Factori. Not Factorio, that's a different game. Nina said this game has the worst name ever and I am inclined to agree - purely from a search engine perspective, this name is a disaster. But, hey, the game itself is pretty cool. 

It's one of those production line games like, er, Factorio (oh, ffs), but with a couple of twists.

Twist The First: You're producing letters of the alphabet (mostly) by taking the starting letter "i" and running it through machines that can flip, curve, twist, duplicate and invert. At first you're just tasked with making a letter. Need an "o"？ Ok, well, get your "i", curve it into a "c", duplicate, flip one around and then combine...

But soon enough you're being left to figure out entire words. Sounds stressful except...

Twist The Second: It's really colourful and chill. Very much one of those new-fangled lo-fi games that all the cool indie kids are huffing, this is actually quite relaxing despite the complexity. Also, it's quite cheap. Get it here. [8]


21. Circadian Dice

Well, this was a nice surprise. It's Out Soon on Steam, but already for sale on itch.io - although there is a Steam demo which you can try out. I downloaded the demo off the back of a recommendation and lost a good few hours without realising it. After that, went straight out and got the whole thing.

It's a turn-based deck builder, but instead of cards you have dice.

You start each run with just 2 dice but that can increase to 4. On each side of your dice you will see some symbols with early characters (there are about 9!) only have a small selection (usually Attack, Defend, Money, Gem) and later characters having a growing number of options and sub-symbols.

Strategy comes from both choosing which moves to keep and which to re-roll, while also figuring how best to augment your dice. You see, you can buy better sides for your dice - some replacing existing parts of your dice, others augmenting them. But, there's often a balance to consider. Get more gems on your dice and you have a better chance to be able to use special attacks, but at the same time you might leave yourself with an uncomfortably low chance of rolling an attack symbol when needed. Or, go heavy on money to buy better dice in the later rounds, but leave yourself without many shields for defense. 



Then, complexity increases. Penetrating attacks that ignore shields, enemies that reduce all attacks to 1, enemies that always deflect level 1 attacks - meaning you need at least an attack +2 to roll (if you even have one!), attacks that curse, poison, disease, petrification, a day/night cycle...

There's winning (which isn't too hard) but then there's winning with a score high enough to get 5 stars and unlock new things (which often requires turning down certain bonuses between waves in favour of maintaining a "streak"). Then there's relics you can take into fights (similar to Slay the Spire). 

And yeah...it's an impressive game for such a low price. 

Now, to be clear - this is absolutely not Slay the Spire levels of mechanical polish. The RNG can be cruel and sometimes you're just screwed because every roll from the start comes up with something you don't need. Leaving a run and restarting is absolutely needed in certain fights if you want 5 stars and that's ok as unlike some other games of this ilk, runs are done and dusted in 10-25 minutes.

Overall, it's a generous, well-made and mechanically satisfying game despite its flaws. And one I could wholeheartedly recommend to any people who enjoy deck builders. [8]


22. NieR Re[in]carnation 

The free-to-play mobile phone NieR game. 

I started playing it as a FFXIV crossover event was coming up and I decided I wanted to check it out. What I found was a gatcha game with very simple mechanics where you roll on characters and weapons and hope you get something rare and shiny. Then, grind and level up. 

Mechanically it was basic and the fights literally manage themselves - you rarely need to touch anything once a fight has started. Strategy only really comes into play on the higher difficulties where weapon and character comp finally starts to matter, but for the most part you can ignore that. 

So...it's hardly earth shattering, and is mostly inoffensive. It's the story, characters and music that make it worthwhile. Those are pure NieR, and it was worth playing the game in order to experience those. Need to log back in as there's still stuff to do, but played enough and seen enough to know where I sit on it. [6]

I've had Dusk on my watch list for a while, heard good things. Might take it off now though!