Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005)

Despite my love for Need For Speed Underground 1 & 2, particularly 2, I never played the follow-up, Most Wanted. I know it’s beloved by much of the Need For Speed audience, but I never got around to it for one reason or another.

Unfortunately, to get it to run on modern machines, you have to mod it. Thankfully, the process of doing so isn’t too difficult, and if you know where to look, you can find versions of the game with all that stuff included. With those installed, the game runs pretty much perfectly. It looks extremely crisp and runs at my monitor’s full frame rate. I don’t know if there are any frame-rate-dependent aspects to it, but I haven’t found any problems.

The racing is solid. Plenty of events to do with different goals and challenges. The car selection isn’t huge, especially near the start of the game. But even halfway through the game, it’s still pretty minimal and mostly parrots the cars you receive for free by beating the racers on the “Blacklist”.

Dragging down the experience is the whole other half of the game: the police chase segments. These chases have their own challenges and goals, and the best part is that they’re mandatory. You cannot progress the game without dancing about with the rozzers. It bogs down the pacing of the game horrendously.

The serious issue with it is having to babysit the cops so you can get your heat level up just so you can even attempt to take on the challenges that you are required to complete just to continue racing. The whole thing is tedious.

It’s really killed my motivation to continue playing it. Which is a shame, because racing around the world is great. But the other half of the game is an annoyance.

Max Payne 1 & 2

These games have been in my backlog for a long, long time. I originally tried to play them back in 2010-ish but ended up putting them on the backlog. Thankfully, I finally came back to them.

Max Payne 1 is a bit of a rough game. The gunplay still mostly holds up, but the difficulty spikes can be frustrating. The checkpoints are basically non-existent, so you have to rely on quick saves. Levels are mixed in length and mostly take place in corridors or warehouses. Combat in general does get a bit repetitive by the end.

The first game’s surrealism and dream sequences are still as nutty as I remember them, and seeing the new stuff fills in more of the blanks about what Max is thinking about.

The first game overall holds up OK but is a bit rough. It also crashed on me several times.

The second game certainly expands upon the original in terms of design. The new physics system and improved gunplay add a lot to the firefights.

Levels are more varied too, with fewer apartment corridors. The first level is a hospital, with other levels taking place in environments including an amusement park, a construction site, and an elaborate mansion.

The surrealist elements do appear again, but they’re different from the original. There’s less 4th wall breaking stuff. It didn’t stand out as much this time around.

The difficulty is ramped up in 2; stronger enemies with bigger guns are the most prominent cause for the difficulty spike. But they’ve also added multiple escort sections. One of these is a sniping section where you play as Mona and have to cover Max. This section was miserable for me, as I could barely see the enemies with my bad eyesight. Thankfully, I didn’t take too many tries to get through it, but I imagine the harder difficulties would make that section infuriating.

The second noteworthy escort mission involves a Mafia boss wearing a “Captain Baseball Bat Boy” mascot outfit, which has been fitted with a bomb. This section isn’t difficult because of the escort part but rather due to the unrelenting amount of enemies with massive guns that it throws at you, often spawning them behind you, and getting turned into Swiss cheese thereafter.

Despite their faults, I’m glad to finally get these out of my backlog. You can watch my playthrough here & here.

RoboCop: Rogue City

Licensed games are usually terrible. But every once in a while you get an exception. Teyon created that exception with Terminator: Resistance. A game that came out of nowhere and was apparently pretty good. I never played it myself, but I will get to it eventually. But hot on the heels of that, they decided to make a RoboCop game. And I can attest that it is really good. Two licensed games in a row being good is a hell of a coincidence.

Let’s start with the vibes. It nails the aesthetic. The police station, the old steel mill, and OCP HQ all look spot on. The characters look pretty close to their original actors too, although several have been replaced or changed. Lewis spends most of the game in a hospital bed, so we get a rookie as a partner. His name is Ulysses Washington. He’s a bit of a prat and spends most of the game just “being there” and talking in your ear about stuff.

RoboCop is still voiced by Peter Weller and does a solid job. The voice acting is a bit stiff in places but does have a charm in the same way the movies did.

The game is best described as a Deus Ex-like. Specifically the newer ones. Open-ish hub worlds with side quests to do and characters to chat with. There are several points in the game where you can make choices about how you interact with a character, choose a side in an election, and so on. Although it doesn’t change the progression of the game much, it does make some minor changes here and there.

Gunplay is visceral. The main hand cannon (pistol would be an understatement) is pretty much the only weapon you’ll need. Although weapons like an M60 and the high-powered sniper rifle do serve a purpose. The sheer sound of the gun, combined with the bloody squelching when some poor sod gets righteously mowed down, provides a meaty ensemble of justice.

Adding to that, there’s an upgrade system where you place chips on a PCB. You have to use these to connect up wires for different abilities. But there are only so many chip designs, and each has its own percentage of how much it boosts the abilities. So you have to pick and choose carefully. And not everything on the PCB is a benefit. There are actually some debuffs that you might not be able to avoid unless you have the right chips to bypass them. The system is interesting but not really all that difficult to avoid getting the debuffs.

Although, my favourite updates were always the ones that made enemies explode and dismember more.

The main villain of the game is dumb. On paper, his motives seem solid, but the execution turns into a bit of a mess near the end. And that’s probably because the other story beats of the election, Delta City, and the OCP goon that runs the police force eat into the player’s attention.

But overall, I had a surprisingly enjoyable time with it, and I’m looking forward to playing the expansion as well as the Terminator game. And you can watch my full playthrough here.

Outrun 2006

This game is held in high regard by the small cult of arcade racing enthusiasts. I always wanted to give it a try but never got around to it. Eventually, I played the PS2 version of it, but issues with the emulator made me eventually switch to the PC version.

Man, this game is great. The drifting is fun as hell (Most of the time), and the music is probably the best stuff Sega has ever produced. Seriously, give this a listen:

I’m not including Splash Wave of course, because I have standards.

The selection of Ferraris is pretty good. I’m quite nostalgic for the Enzo, as I used to have a large poster of it on my wall back when I lived in London.

Girlfriend mode brings out the weirdness of the game. Challenges in that mode include running into ghosts, avoiding UFOs, and driving through a meteor shower with said space rocks pounding the road in front.

My one gripe with the game is the difficulty curve. It gets hard as you get into the later races in the game, unfair at times. The rubberbanding can get especially bullshit on the longer races, where you get ahead and stay ahead up until the final stretch, and then 3 or 4 cars suddenly pass you.

But I’m still enjoying it regardless.

Echo Point Nova

Holy shit, play this game. It’s incredible.

Imagine Titanfall, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Quake, Tribes, and Minecraft had an unholy baby; that is this game. A fast-paced FPS with environmental destruction, hoverboards, grappling hooks, and a ton of exploration.

The game takes place on a bunch of floating platforms. On these floating platforms are activators for spawning waves of enemies. Defeating these waves rewards you with either a gun, a perk, or a hat. Perks can change the game wildly. They include activating PvP, slowing down time when aiming, and even propelling you while you’re firing, leading to situations like this:

Hats, which make you look cool, also serve the purpose of increasing your allocation points for perks. So, more hats, more perks you can equip. An interesting concept, to say the least.

You also get others, like a springboarding wind power, a grenade, and a combustion power that melts through every material and even propels you when in mid-air.

The general gameplay loop is a ton of fun, and grappling around, multi-jumping, and riding around on the hoverboard just feel amazing. The gunplay is solid, although leading your shots gets quite difficult unless you toggle on some assists.

This blog post has taken so long to make that I actually played the free expansion to it. Unfortunately, it’s more of the same. The main difference being that it takes place on land instead of on floating platforms. It gives more use to the hoverboard.

Collectables are much easier to find in the expansion; they’re almost always within spitting distance of the checkpoints strewn across the map. Which kills the exploration a bit.

Regardless, if I had played this last year, this easily would have been in the top three, if not number one. And I’ve made a mental note to play Shattered Steel, the developer’s previous game.

Sonic Adventure DX

I played the crap out of this game as a child. But I only finished Knuckles’ campaign previously. I probably spent most of my time in the Chao garden back then.

But good God, does this game not hold up. The controls are terrible; everyone feels floaty and imprecise, except for the few times when they handle like mud. There’s also an oversensitivity to the controls. The camera has a fit in a bunch of situations. Bad game feel all around.

The levels sucked. Some of them were broken, so I would fall to my death unintentionally while trying to latch onto some mechanic that would transport me to another part of the level. Other sections might require you to do a spin dash; instead of maintaining speed, I graze a wall and come to a complete stop.

Amy’s levels are particularly awful, as you have to deal with the dogshit controls while also being pursued. Plus, Amy just sucks in general.

The only saving grace of the game is the exploration. You can find upgrades and additional Chao eggs. There’s something comforting about hub worlds in this era of video games. I felt the same way playing Shenmue and Mega Man Legends.

I eventually finished Adventure 1, but I can’t say I enjoyed it that much. But if you want to watch my playthrough, you can do so here.

Sonic Adventure 2

The one thing I liked about Adventure 1 was the open, explorable world. The 2nd Adventure game removes that and replaces it with linear levels and doubles down on everything I disliked about the first game. As you can imagine, I don’t like this game.

There are two story paths, Heroes and Villains. Heroes being made up of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. You switch between them over the course of the game.

In terms of level structure, they’re all similar to how they were in Adventure 1, but with bigger levels. Sonic and Tails aren’t too bad, but the increased level size in Knuckles’ case means I have to spend even more time playing hide and seek with emerald fragments. To make it worse, their positions are more randomised this time, so I spend ages searching and have to rely on in-game hints to figure it out instead of the previously existing radar. Said radar’s radius has been drastically reduced.

The controls are still awful, and the level design hasn’t improved at all. There’s still plenty to get hung up on. And then to top it off, the boss fights are horrendous. They track your movement mid-attack, they have tight timing windows, and the mechanics around them are about as fun as stepping on broken glass.

I dropped the game; I have no interest in torturing myself further with it. Jeff Gerstmann is right; there are no good Sonic games.

Hogwarts Legacy

Oddly, I’m one of the few people that enjoyed the Harry Potter games more than the books and movies. The world-building in the series has always been well regarded, and the movies and games really added a lot to it. Hogwarts Legacy expands on it further by sending the player to the 1890s.

You get to explore Hogwarts in all its glory, plus the surrounding areas of Hogsmeade and beyond. It’s a big old area to explore, and there are craploads to do in it. There are puzzles and collectables spewing out of every nook and cranny. It’s an absolute collectathon nightmare. I found myself spending most of my time doing side quests and random puzzles in the world instead of the main quest.

Most of the rewards are cosmetic: hats, cloaks, etc. At some point I had so many items of clothing that I decided to stop bothering with all the side stuff. But also because it had gotten extremely tedious.

Exploring gets a lot easier with both fast travelling and unlocking brooms. You also get animal mounts, like a hippogriff. That said, your speed is limited for data streaming reasons, so you don’t really zip around all that much. It’s still decent enough.

As for the story, it mostly revolves around some “Ancient Magic” that never gets its full potential explained beyond a single instance of mind control. And in a typical “Main Protagonist Syndrome” way, we’re one of the only few characters that can even see the magic.

The character’s overly chatty and doesn’t really have anything interesting to say. Early on, I decided to start listening to podcasts while playing the game and didn’t stop. At no point did I feel the need to listen to what characters were saying to me, and I didn’t care. It really is that boring.

But how about the gameplay? Spellcasting and combat? In short, it’s underwhelming. Most of the spells are boring, and combat is a chore. You end up using the most effective spells over and over or avoid combat entirely by using stealth. You learn how to turn invisible fairly early on, so stealth becomes trivial, and you can even avoid combat entirely in some parts.

The most interesting thing about the spellcasting is that you get to learn the Unforgivable Curses. But you can only use them on enemies, and there are absolutely no consequences whatsoever to using them. Remember, you’re supposed to be thrown into Azkaban after even one use of them for any reason. And one character can be if you choose. It makes learning them uneventful, as the killing curse amounts to nothing more than a one-hit-kill spell with a cooldown timer.

I enjoyed aspects of the game, but the negatives and shortcomings started adding up, and by the end, I just found the whole experience to be mediocre.

Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

Ever wondered what the Call Of Duty developers worked on before Call Of Duty? Well, that’s what this is. Taking you through various fronts in the Second World War, getting stuck into some of the most important campaigns from 1942 onwards. The American campaigns, that is.

The gunplay is dated; this is a 2002 game after all. No aim down sights, stiff movement, etc. Thankfully, shooting bad guys has been a solved problem in video games for years, so the jankiness doesn’t get in the way too much.

There are a couple of stealth sections in the game, where you wear an enemy uniform and try and infiltrate a base. But in my experience, I get past the first couple of groups of enemies, and then the whole place ends up on high alert. I can’t tell if I’m doing something wrong, but the game really doesn’t give me any feedback at all. It’s either I’m getting away with it, or I’m getting shot at, with no warning or explanation. Again, this was just how old games were.

The difficulty curve is all over the place. Most of the time it’s a non-issue. But then you get to D-Day, and you have to navigate a minefield to get into a trench. But it’s literally impossible to know where the mines are, plus you’re getting minced by an MG42 nest.

It gets worse as you progress. That infamous level with the snipers is no joke. I played the game on Easy, and they were still pushing my shit in. I suppose it’s somewhat realistic, going down a street at a snail’s pace, peeking around every corner, desperately trying to find and pick off snipers that you can barely see.

I didn’t bother with the expansions, the main campaign really took it out of me. You can watch my playthrough here.

Assault Spy

Imagine Devil May Cry, except you’re a Japanese salaryman (sort of). That’s pretty much the premise of Assault Spy. You play as one of two characters, one male, one female. I forget their names; it’s not really that important.

The story is silly. It starts with the male character who’s a corporate spy and has been laden with a rookie. They try to break into their target and find the place overrun with robots that are now attacking humans. Various office workers then become a collectable you can find throughout the game.

The story gets stranger from there, but I think I’ll withhold the details. By the way, the other character is a wacky blonde bimbo that works for the CIA.

Getting into the meat of the gameplay, the male character fights with a briefcase and an umbrella; the female character fights with her fists and a gun (she’s American, of course she does). You unlock combos using a currency you gain from playing the game; think of the red orbs from DMC.

The combat is mostly OK, but I felt that most of my inputs kept getting dropped, and the input timings seemed pretty tight. The explanations for the combos don’t seem to map to the actual inputs correctly; some are also under-explained entirely.

The game gets very repetitive after a while. Enemies are not that varied, nor are they particularly fun to fight. And that’s when you have to fight them. The game features a major stealth section 2/3rds of the way through the campaigns for both characters. And believe me, it’s terrible. Almost made me drop the game entirely.

The bosses are somewhat of a highlight in that they’re at least different, but also a low as some of these fights are more infuriating than anything. But that’s partly due to the shortcomings in the combat in general. I had to cheese the last few bosses, as it was so difficult to actually attack them without taking excessive damage. It made the ending of the game more of a downer than it should be.

There’s certainly an idea with this, and I did enjoy some of the absurdity of it, but the problems with the gameplay just dragged down the experience for me. You can watch my playthrough here.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game – Remastered

This game is the Ghostbusters Reunion Tour. The main four actors are back, and you go to all the environments you remember from the two movies, plus a few new places. And you fight the same ghosts too. Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man make appearances very early into the game.

You play as a silent protagonist that’s a newly joined rookie of the Ghostbusters crew. And that’s for the best, as the dialogue between the lads is more interesting to listen to than whatever some hack writer would likely come up with. Their interactions are entertaining and very fanservicey, often referencing events from the movies.

The Proton Pack is a very fun weapon. You get a variety of different blaster versions with their own uses, including one that acts as a shotgun, one that shoots goo, and another that freezes ghosts. The environments get absolutely ripped apart by the proton beams, burning holes in walls, destroying furniture, and sending debris flying. It’s extremely impressive considering it’s a PS3/360 game at its core.

My only problem with the game is the difficulty curve. A couple of boss fights and even a couple of arena fights are alarmingly more difficult than they need to be. The boss fight in the library stood out as being particularly troublesome. Adding to this, I have to babysit my teammates because they have a habit of running headfirst into danger. Keeping them alive is quite important too, because if they go down, you can’t rely on them to draw enemy aggro or have them revive you if you go down.

That said, it did not detract from my experience that much. Overall, I was surprised by how enjoyable the game was. It’s genuinely great. You can watch my playthrough here.

Quantum Break

This is also a Remedy game, although it doesn’t feel like it. The gameplay is so generic, it’s painful. It’s just a typical 3rd-person shooter with some extra powers slapped on top. The gunplay is lacklustre and gets mundane very quickly. The time powers are somewhat effective but are not exciting to use at all.

The story is very generic. For a game about time travel, it plays it remarkably safe, and major choices do not actually change the gameplay. They do change the live-action cutscenes, however.

Every chapter in the game is followed with a 40-minute live-action TV show episode. They’re not particularly high budget and mostly focus on characters that are not featured in the game at all. Aidan Gillen’s character is a bit of a mess. His explanation for falling from grace is never explained that well beyond trying to correct the timeline that he broke. The late Lance Reddick’s character is somewhat enjoyable, being a bit of a double-crosser.

There’s some enjoyment to be found in the visuals around the time travel stuff, but the game just does not utilise the idea well enough. Quantic Dream do a more interesting job with all of their games than what Remedy does here. It also lacks the Sam Lake weirdness that Max Payne and Alan Wake had. Anyway, if you want to watch my playthrough, you can find it here.

DOOM: The Dark Ages

Doomguy has put on a few pounds since Eternal (although this might be a prequel; honestly, I have no idea) and is now extra thick and heavy. The ground quakes beneath his feet. Lesser enemies shatter as he lands on the ground. And I wish I was making this up. Mobs literally explode into gibs when you land after a large fall.

The shotguns are still fantastic, although I do miss the grappling hook. However, I ended up using them 90% of the time. The other weapons, although conceptually interesting, weren’t really all that much fun to use. A couple has some weird mechanics attached to them that I rarely ever found a use case for.

They’ve added a destruction system for the props in the game, and it’s very impressive. In a time where a lot of games are very static in terms of interactivity, it’s nice to be able to blow some shit up.

Enemy AI is a bit dumber this time around; they tend to just stand there or have limited movement. Eternal and 2016’s AI seems more advanced. The trade-off is that there are a lot more enemies this time around. Dozens on screen, in fact. Not quite the hundreds that the original DOOM games could have, but still impressive.

Some folks have been concerned that the game would turn into “Parryslop”, and I can somewhat understand their apprehension. A lot of enemies and attacks now require you to parry them. Thankfully, the timing is so lenient I don’t even need to be anywhere near the attack to parry it. Seriously, it’s a joke. And you can make it even easier in the accessibility settings.

It’s still a lot of a collectathon. Figures, gold, and other stuff are all hidden around the levels. I swear I spent an alarming amount of time looking at the map screen. Annoyingly, there are points of no return in levels. So if you miss any collectables, you’ll have to replay the levels to get them. That said, they do mark out these points, so you are aware of when they happen. But in Eternal, you could fast travel around the maps, so you could collect almost everything your first time through. In this game, I still got 100% on most levels.

As for the story, it’s very Warhammer, but it never needed to be. They put a lot of effort into the cutscenes, but I genuinely couldn’t care less about anything that happens in them. It just feels like somebody’s fanfiction that they co-opted for this. It’s inoffensive, but it does make it hard to care about the main villain’s motives.

Overall, the game is pretty good, but I wouldn’t pay the £70-odd price for it. I’m glad I played it on Game Pass. You can watch the playthrough here.

Other Stuff I Played:

Balatro

Poker, but it’s about getting the highest number possible from your hands. It’s certainly helped me remember poker hands better, but the RNG screws me over a lot. I usually get bad hands or get a status effect that makes it impossible to win. Plus, I don’t really enjoy playing poker by myself; I would prefer to play against others. I’m interested in playing All In Abyss, as it has similar shenanigans but against characters.

Children Of The Sun

The best way to describe this game is to imagine SUPERHOT, but you’re a sniper. You have a single bullet, and hitting an enemy lets you aim at the next enemy with the same bullet. The goal is to kill everything with a single round. Throw in some clear inspirations from SUDA51’s games, particularly Killer7, and it creates a really neat puzzle game. My only complaint is that it’s a bit short. It’s only about three hours long. You can watch my playthrough here.

Anime Corner:

Okinawa de Suki ni Natta Ko ga Hougen Sugite Tsurasugiru

I ended up checking this out purely because anime set in Okinawa is a bit of a rarity. Plus, I don’t know much about the place. This anime is absolutely jam-packed with trivia, from dance moves to what people get up to during a typhoon. The characters are fun, if a little safe. There’s a bit of a love triangle going on, but it doesn’t really go anywhere in the anime. It’s good fun and makes me want to visit the place even more.

Kusuriya No Hitorigoto – Series 2

After greatly enjoying the first series, I was excited to see where the story was going to go. The second series adds several new characters, including a new servant girl that befriends Maomao. These characters are quite mysterious at first. The first half of the series is a bit boring, unfortunately; most of the episodes are one-off stories or build lore. They don’t raise the tension at all.

Once the second half kicks in, the story starts getting more interesting. Jinshi and Maomao get separated, making Jinshi extremely agitated. You get to see his more serious side and start to understand his secrets. At the end of the series, it’s all laid bare and opens up for a continuation of the story, where hopefully things get even more interesting. I do hope they adapt more of the story; there are quite a few novels to work with and plenty left of it to tell.

Kowloon Generic Romance

I’m not going to lie here; I only know of the manga because I absolutely love the design of the main character, Kujirai. But I never read the manga, and I had no idea what it was about. I went into the anime version completely blind.

The basic premise is that Kowloon exists again and is in a permanent state of summer. The main character, Kujirai, has no memories of her past but feels compelled to work at a real estate agency. There she meets Kudo, and they become a couple over the course of the show. But there’s more.

There’s a mysterious object hovering in the sky above Kowloon, and no-one knows what it is or what it’s doing.

Alongside the main couple, there’s also a gay couple that gets quite a lot of screentime. Unfortunately, their plotline is significantly less interesting than the main couple’s, but they get a lot more screen time than they probably should. A lot of Kudo and Kujirai’s slice-of-life chapters have seemingly been cut, which is undesirable.

As a result, the most enjoyable aspect of the show gets trampled on by additional, unnecessary plotlines. That being said, I still enjoyed the show. The art style is strong, and the overall atmosphere is engrossing. Kowloon was a crazy place, and it’s always fun to see it pop up in fiction.

Ninja to Koroshiya no Futarigurashi

I’m a fan of Shaft’s older work, but recently, the studio has been in a bit of a slump. Sangatsu no Lion was the last anime of theirs that I truly loved. Although the additional Monogatari adaptations are welcome. But it has been a while since they adapted a comedy manga.

“Ninkoro” is a hilarious anime. You expect fun ninja shenanigans and get hit in the face with pitch-black humour and suffering. They go out of their way to make you feel bad for the ninjas that the main character’s partner unremorsefully murders. The main character herself is a damn psychopath, showing no negative emotions whatsoever about turning the corpses of her former comrades into leaves. It’s not just bodies; she turns various objects into foliage, including a building.

It’s good form for Shaft and a good start for their new staff that worked on the show.

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Sorry this took so long to get all this written up. I know I keep saying this, but I’ll try harder to not rush these posts at the last minute.

ADMAN

Another year gone. Once again, it’s time to rank everything I played this year.

Mega Man Legends

I am not a Mega Man fan. Or to be more accurate, I’ve never really played them. But I’ve heard many good things about Legends over the years.

It does hold up quite well visually. The low-resolution textures work quite well because they’re also low detail, but in the way where the anime-esque art style requires it. I emulated the game and played it at a higher than intended resolution, and it still looked great. To be fair, I’m a sucker for PS1-era games upscaled. There’s something about stylised, textured, low-poly assets that look great when up-resed.

As for the gameplay, it’s a behind-the-back 3D game with some light platforming. It’s a 3rd-person shooter in form, but with basically lock-on aiming. The controls are not great, but I didn’t have any serious issues with them. It’s mostly the tank controls and responsiveness of it in general that are the problem. But again, I played through the whole game without any serious issues.

It’s fun to explore the world; there are plenty of shortcuts and hidden things to find. And it’s certainly worth exploring, as hidden items often end up being powerful weapon upgrades or Buster Parts that turn you into an absolute monster against foes. You also get some of these from various hidden quests throughout the world. And I do mean hidden; no markers or anything indicating that characters have a quest you can do.

The quests are fairly interesting in their design. There’s one where you go to a hospital and meet a sick kid; one of the nurses then tells you that they’re unlikely to recover unless the hospital gets more funding. At which point you go to the town’s mayor and make a donation to improve the hospital, along with other buildings in town, and after a while the girl recovers and thanks you for improving the hospital. It’s neat.

I want to give a mention to the boss fights. Some of these bosses are huge. You often fight them in a vehicle due to the size of some of these guys. But I’m genuinely impressed by the scale of these fights; it feels like something the PS1 shouldn’t be able to handle, but it works. Admittedly, you can see the tricks used to get some of these set pieces to work, but I appreciate the effort. That said, some of the later boss fights where you’re running around the ankles of some giant machine are very reminiscent of Shadow Of The Colossus.

And as final point, Tron Bonne is best girl. We’ll talk more about her game later.

If you want to watch my playthrough, here’s a link to the collection.

007 GoldenEye Reloaded

Originally, I heard that this game wasn’t terrible and had some interesting ideas. And was one of the Wii’s better 3rd party games. Reloaded is the PS3 version featuring upgraded graphics and some additional features.

And it’s awful.

The game is not really related to the original N64 game outside of the first level, and it certainly isn’t based on the film. That’s not really the problem with the game, but it does zip you around locales at a strange pace because of it, often in a way where you question how the hell any of these missions are connected to each other.

But that’s not the problem. The core problem is the gunplay. It’s awful. Every gun feels like an airsoft gun. There’s no recoil at all; the sound is very muted; it just doesn’t feel good to play. Every time I get into a firefight, it feels like absolute crap. It’s dreadful.

There are no fun gadgets either. You have a smartphone that does pretty much everything. No grapple hooks, lasers, or any other weird shit here. Every level is pretty much just a discount COD level with bonus objectives, collectibles, and semi-optional stealth. So there’s no reason to have any cool tech, but it also means that they can’t have more interesting levels with multiple pathways where those gadgets could be used either.

Getting back to the stealth, it’s pretty awful. Enemies will get alerted very quickly, and with gun handling as bad as it is, it’s hard to deal with them quickly enough. Once they are alerted, they stay alerted. So all the air ducts and cover points become useless. It doesn’t seem particularly rewarding to maintain stealth, so I tend to just go loud in most encounters once I screw up.

As of the time of writing, I’ve yet to finish the game. It’s just really boring, and I’m not enjoying it. But if you want to see the playthrough so far, here’s the collection.

Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Finally, after many years, I paid my respects by pressing F in the now infamous scene from Advanced Warfare. I’ve heard some good things about this game over the years.

Kevin Spacey is in it, playing an Elon Musk kind of character. But instead of being interested in rockets, he earns his fortune operating a PMC. And initially, they make the argument that they’re doing good work, providing aid and technology, improving infrastructure to developing countries, and so on. However, it’s plainly obvious that something nasty is going on. And after a series of terrorist attacks involving nuclear plants, you start seeing what his true intentions are.

That said, you see that coming from a mile off. There’s no real villain introduced like there was in Black Ops 2 or COD4. Just Spacey’s character. And with the spotlight so heavily on him, it’s hard not to put two and two together on that.

In regards to the gameplay, I’m not sure if this was deliberate or if I’ve gotten too used to modern COD, but the majority of weapons seemingly have no recoil. It feels very off. Most of the guns feel pretty bad because of it. Some of the attachments are cool, with thermal optics being a necessity now, or at least for me anyway. I suspect my eyesight is getting a lot worse.

There’s a new tactical grenade system where you switch settings on your grenade to turn it from a regular frag to a heat-seeking missile or a flashbang. It sounds cooler than it actually is. I found that in the middle of a firefight, switching the setting on it was kind of tedious and prone to getting me shot up.

There are a few more bits of variety in the mission and level design. Levels have a bit more verticality and multiple paths. Add in the new abilities of double jumping and vaulting, and you get a lot more manoeuvrability than in the previous games. It works better in the early levels where they design flanking opportunities, but the later levels are a bit more corridor-focused.

As for the mission design, there are more vehicles and some light stealth dashed about, and even a mecha sequence near the end of the game. It keeps it interesting, but around the halfway point, the levels become really short and very action-focused. The game ends up going at a breakneck speed till the end.

I liked it overall, not really a fan of some of the changes, but it’s still pretty good. You can watch the full playthrough here.

Misadventures Of Tron Bonne

With Tron Bonne being the best girl from the Mega Man Legends series, it of course makes perfect sense for her to be given a whole game to herself.

It continues using the same wonderful art style from Mega Man Legends, so no complaints there. The English voice acting is still not great, but I wasn’t willing to play the whole game in Japanese.

So what’s the story about? Well, Tron’s brother got kidnapped because he owes a bunch of money to some crooks. Meaning Tron now has to work out a way of paying back the money and rescuing her brother. The solution? Crimes.

Yes, you go to different points on a map and do various missions there to make money. One involves robbing a bank, another involves a series of moving block puzzles where you steal shipping containers, and a later one where you steal animals from a farm. There’s also a dungeon you can explore that has a series of boss fights.

Each of these levels has its own quirks and controls. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say this is somewhat of a mini-game collection. But with that comes the bad news: it gets repetitive. Quite quickly, in fact.

But the thing that really made me lose my sanity was the Servebot training. There are two kinds of training with 3 levels each. The first is a bomb-throwing mini-game where you throw the explosive at a target range of stand-ins. The goal is to hit as many as possible in the time limit. There’s a mechanic where you can get two targets with one throw by aiming between them. Occasionally a target will appear that gives you an RPG for a limited time, which is faster than throwing. The optimal strategy is to hit the targets in front of the Servebot, putting them up again, effectively slowing them down.

The second training course is serving in the kitchen and dishing out meals to the other Servebots. It’s not really a rhythm game, but it has the difficulty curve of one. You hear the bot’s order, and then you have to press the correct button or button combination to give them the correct order.

So what’s the problem with all this? There are 42 Servebots. You don’t need to train all of them, but you do need to train a lot of them. And it is required as new weapons and gear will only be available to you this way. It makes the game much easier if you do.

If you want to witness my loss of sanity, you can watch the playthrough here.

KunitsuGami: Path Of The Goddess

When they originally showed this game off during one of Microsoft’s summer showcase events, I was absolutely floored by the visuals of it. The Japanese traditionalism mixed with fleshy monsters and gunk and the psychedelic patterns that are used for particle & visual effects make for a distinct visual style.

When they initially showed gameplay, I assumed it was an action game with some tactics involved. I wasn’t completely far off when they showed it off more and acknowledged the fact that it’s closer to a tower defence game.

You control a dude named Soh as he guides a shrine maiden down a mountain. There are various stages where you have to fight off monsters as the maiden walks the path. Along the way, you pick up various villagers trapped in flesh cocoons. Once you free them, you can assign them job classes like archer, fighter, monk, healer, etc. Then you place them at various points on the map like you would in a tower defence game.

It’s a simple-to-understand system, and early on, it’s pretty easy to get through the levels. But the difficulty curve spikes about halfway down the mountain. Now I’m currently stuck trying to figure out the best solution and lineup for those later missions and dealing with the restrictions on things like NPC count and resources. The missions get hard. As such, at the time of writing, I have not finished the game. But I probably should before it gets taken off Game Pass.

Persona 3 Reload

Yet another Persona 3 release, this is the 4th one, after the original, FES, and Portable. But they’ve given it a significant paint job. Very Persona 5-esque in its presentation style. New menus, new menu animations, new battle animations, a baton system, etc. As someone who played FES some years ago, back when you couldn’t directly control your party members (something they fixed in Portable), I greatly appreciate the improvements to the combat.

In terms of new ways to spend time, there’s a gardening aspect that lets you gain new items. There’s a fridge where you can store food, which often gets stolen. Some social links have been removed and replaced. All the male party members no longer have a social link associated with them. Instead, you hang out with them at the dorm or at night to obtain stat bonuses and items. I believe the events themselves are still based on the original social link stories, but now they take place at night.

The female party members retain their social links so that you can still romance them. So their hangout sequences are completely new.

The social links have gotten a serious rework. They’re completely voiced now, with new and improved animations, the works. That said, the actual content of these social links haven’t changed, so I end up fast-forwarding through a lot of them. I can’t say I care all that much about a lot of the characters in this game outside a couple of main party ones.

Tartarus is still as grindy as ever, but at least the floors have been redesigned with more distinguishing features, making it less visually repetitive. They’ve also added sub-dungeons filled with harder enemies and rare materials to find. Most of these you have to do then and there; otherwise they’ll be locked once you leave the floor. But they do reset if you leave and come back to Tartarus on another day.

They’ve also added a few things that refill your HP and SP, along with a way of boosting the levels of inactive characters. So now lesser-used characters won’t get left behind.

I have some complaints about how the game seems less grim; the general atmosphere and art are a lot brighter than the original. The music is better in some places and worse in others. Some of the new versions of songs I’m not particularly thrilled by. But the original singer from 3 is really old now and can’t hit the notes like she used to. The new songs are really good, especially the opening song.

As of the time of writing, I’m about halfway through the game. I’m going to try and finish before it gets pulled from Game Pass.

F.E.A.R.

Another classic I played this year for the first time. It holds up alright. You’re some police/military dude for a “paranormal” division. As you can imagine, shit goes tits up fairly quickly. And you start seeing weird shit. Notably a girl in a red dress called Alma.

She haunts you frequently throughout the game, although she’s not the threat. But following her around are usually a bunch of monsters and ghosts. It doesn’t get too crazy in the base game; you’re mostly fighting some private military who have been brainwashed by the main villain.

Main combat is OK. The gun handling is quite dated; aiming down the sights is not really a thing. The guns themselves are interesting. Besides the usual assault rifles and SMGs, you get stuff like laser guns, particle cannons, and nail guns.

The nail gun does what it says on the tin and fires a large nail at people. Pinning them to walls and other surfaces if you kill them with it. The problem is that once you get into the game a bit, enemies become very bullet spongy, and the damage output becomes subpar.

The particle cannon, on the other hand, instant kills all human enemies and turns them into skeletons. I called it the “Skeleton gun” in my playthrough.

The destructibility of the levels is still quite impressive. Small props will explode into a ball of particle effects; things will break and get sent flying by impacts, lights will flicker and wobble from shockwaves, and walls will chip and break apart. For a 2005 game, it’s very impressive. It almost makes you think developers are focusing on the wrong things in modern games.

The graphics still look alright. There are some DOOM 3-esque visuals, and the character models look a bit chunky, but the general art design still holds up OK. Then again, it’s kind of hard to tell how good anything looks because it’s so bloody dark most of the time. My flashlight is constantly on just so I can see where I’m going. And I got lost fairly frequently; the level design blends into itself a lot, with lots of office spaces and factory areas. It’s difficult to distinguish one room from another at times.

My other complaint is the repetitiveness of it. With the main game and the two expansions, there’s a lot of slo-mo shooting to be had. But after the main game, I decided to lower the difficulty so I could get through them faster. Once you realise what the most effective weapons are, you start using them the most, and every combat encounter ends up feeling the same from one another.

The first expansion doubles down on the “weird shit” and provides more backstory for the main character and villain. The second one is just more of the same overall.

It’s still a good game overall, and I’m glad I finally got around to playing it. But I don’t know if I want to jump into the sequels any time soon.

If you want to see my playthrough, you can watch it here.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3

I’ll be quick about this one. It’s not great.

The story is a convoluted mess of corpo backstabbing, robot takeovers, and mind fuckery. With an unbelievably stupid ending that just puts a bow on top of one hell of a shit sandwich. It doesn’t help that the game really doubles down on the violence. Right off the get-go, there are depictions of torture and waterboarding. And the first mission ends with the playable character getting torn limb from limb by a robot.

I don’t have a problem with the violence conceptually, but I did audibly exclaim, “Jesus Christ” at some of it. It surprised me how far they were willing to go in places.

Gameplay-wise, well, it has the same issue as Advanced Warfare, where the guns have less recoil than you would expect. Again, future technology that doesn’t exist yet is a possible reason for it. However, it still feels off.

Levels in general are larger, with levels often being a lot longer than you’d expect. There’s a good amount of set pieces also. And some reasonably good-looking water. What isn’t great about it is the enemies, specifically the robots.

If you’ve played COD, you know full well that it’s a fast-paced shooter where you’re gunning dudes down with rampant disregard. Black Ops III introduces robots that are not only bullet sponges but also large, industrial-sized, tank-like robots that are completely bulletproof until you lower their defences. As you get closer to the end of the game, more of these enemies turn up, until by the end, there are entire battlefields full of hard-to-kill machines, absolutely ruining the fast-paced action.

I wouldn’t say I hate Black Ops III, but it’s pretty unremarkable.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

Cold War acts as a soft reboot of sorts. It takes place between the events of 1 and the “in the past” events that happen in 2, specifically in 1981. I say soft reboot as it retcons a few things and puts new characters in that were never mentioned or referenced in 2. Specifically Adler.

Adler is yet another dude in sunglasses whose moral compass is all over the place. Typical CIA glowie. But his fluid morals make for an interesting character at least. More so than the other talking heads in the game.

Talking to characters between missions in the hub is quite reminiscent of the later Deus Ex games. Where the character stares at you while you go through a list of talking points. Other games do this, of course, but something about it reminded me of Human Revolution specifically.

On the subject of the hub, there are quite a few puzzles there. There are a couple that are directly related to side quests that require you to listen to number stations and do cryptographic work, and there’s a couple related to finding notes to figure out a number combination so that you can access a computer in the back. Said computer also has a shitload of text-based games, like all the Zork games.

You’ll be happy to know that the general change in design also makes its way into the missions as well. Generally speaking, there’s more stealth integrated into the mission design. There’s one particular mission where you play as a Russian spy inside a major political building in Moscow, and you have to work your way around, avoiding guards, bribing people, and basically engaging in Hitman-esque gameplay. This is a Call Of Duty game!

I enjoyed the variety. It’s a much-needed change of pace. But in terms of gunplay, it adds back the recoil I’ve been complaining about. The guns feel really good, almost an extension of the player themself.

There are some choices you can make, but there’s no serious pivot in the story for most of these. You can get an alternate ending if you unlock access to that computer mentioned earlier. It’s a pretty cool but grim ending. Offers an interesting potential for a side story where the Cold War got hot.

As for the multiplayer, it’s full of hackers. But occasionally it can be fun. However, the more I played it, the worse the hackers got. So I’ve stopped now.

But overall, definitely a contender for the best Black Ops game.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6

Taking place ten years after Cold War, in 1991; Black Ops 6 tries some new things, and regresses in a few other places.

We have even more new characters this time, with even stronger ties to the CIA this time. Alder is still about, albeit a wanted man. He’s still a complete mystery. Despite being 1991, some of these characters seem a bit too modern in their dress sense, but I’ll let it slide. But yes, the first Gulf War is the backdrop for this game. Going after Saddam and whatnot.

I won’t get into the details of the story, but it’s alright. More mind-controlling drugs and MK Ultra shenanigans. The villain is a bit obvious. The missions are very different from each other, but I’ll get to that in a moment. I do think the lead-up to the ending is very rushed. It ends with a QTE and jump cut to a black screen. There’s no multiple endings this time and no narrative branching at all from what I can tell. That’s a bit disappointing.

The gunplay is still great. Building on top of Cold War’s with some new guns and gadgets. There are a lot of gadgets, many of which I never bothered using. Although one of the new ones, the camera is mandated. It marks enemies Far Cry style. Meaning that you can now tell where enemies are, meaning stealth is a lot easier to deal with.

Generally speaking, it really doubles down on the spy stuff. Bordering Mission Impossible levels of campiness. But the grit of Black Ops does peak in every once in a while. Which brings me on to the missions; they’re all over the place design-wise.

There are the usual blockbuster action levels and yet another Hitman-esque level where you have to don a disguise. But then there’s an open map level where objectives are scattered around. Much like the previously mentioned Far Cry. There are even vehicles and random enemy encounters. It’s quite an interesting level conceptually; I wouldn’t mind seeing more non-linear levels in the future.

Another standout level is the one where you get exposed to another mind control drug and start hallucinating, then zombies appear, and the whole level turns into a horror game. Although the level design, where you have to go down different paths to get different coloured keys, reminds me of DOOM a bit. It’s a wild level, and very tonally separated from the rest of the game up until a part near the end.

There is a hub again; it’s a really big house. With outdoor sections along with all the indoor rooms. But there’s very little to do in it. There’s one, fairly in-depth puzzle that has you running around the place, but the only reward from it is money. And once you’ve done it, that’s it.

The money is useful. You can spend it to upgrade your character attributes, or hoard it to buy some weapon skins for multiplayer.

I’ll talk more about the multiplayer later in this post. But you can enjoy this video from the beta.

Anyway, this ended the Black Ops Marathon that I did just before the game’s release. All of which you can watch here.

Resident Evil Village – Shadows Of Rose DLC

This was my October horror game for the year. I meant to play it earlier, but I couldn’t get the time for it until then.

The DLC is basically a best-of tribute act for Village. You play as Ethan’s daughter, Rose. Who you might remember as being a collectible item in Village. You go through some of the same areas from the base game, but many of the puzzles have changed. Plus there’s now a few stealth sections thrown in for good measure.

I’m not really a fan of Rose, she talks a lot and is a bit dim. Annoying really.

The enemy is once again The Mould, and it’s absolutely bloody everywhere. Rose has a power to obliterate under certain conditions. But most of the time it’s just used to unlock new areas.

The new enemies are bullet sponges, not fun to fight at all. Best avoided most of the time. You only get two guns, a pistol and a shotgun. And just about enough ammo for both.

The story doesn’t appeal to me at all. It’s mostly just the ramblings and troubles of an angsty teenage girl, or at least what some random video game developer thinks an angsty teenager would worry about. But her thoughts are used as the basis for various puzzles, like one where you’re collecting dolls that represent her peers in school as they bully her. I can’t say I’m a fan of it.

If you want to watch my playthrough, it’s at the end of my Village collection.

Mega Man Legends 2

I am seriously disappointed by this one. I loved Legends 1, and although I had my grievances with Tron Bonne’s game, I still liked it overall. Legends 2 isn’t a bad game, but it is a lesser game to its predecessor.

It does improve one thing, the controls. Twin sticks are now supported, meaning the right stick controls the camera. It’s a minor thing, but a welcome one.

So what’s getting my goat with it? Well, in Legends 1, you were on an island you could freely explore. There were side quests, shortcuts, hidden areas, and so on. It was quite rewarding exploring all of those areas. 2 has multiple locations, but to access them, you have to use the Flutter, which is the airship you spend most of the first game repairing.

The problem is that most of these areas are really small and enclosed. They have at least one dungeon, with some having two, and that’s about it. The dungeons themselves are nothing special, usually just a series of rooms. No shortcuts to new areas and only a couple of secrets. The saving grace of these new locations is that they are at least thematically different from each other. One of the first areas you go to is a snowy area with trains and mines. Another area is an oil rig type of city. And yet another is a town in a desert. At the very least, it presents a world instead of just one town like the first game. But now travelling is even more tedious.

Furthermore, the amount of side quests is considerably less than in the first game. The few noteworthy ones I can think of involve giving a pig to a girl as a pet and deliberately turning evil so I could interact with an NPC and buy an item to sell to another NPC for a profit. There were a number of characters waiting about in several areas of the game that seemed like they were meant for some kind of side quest, but they’re never used. I can only assume they were cut.

The game is definitely harder. I found myself healing more often and struggling with some of the boss fights. I had to cheat for the last boss because I had no healing items left.

A way to minimise the difficulty spike is to explore the world for crafting items. But then you need money to upgrade the new weapons you make and buy new armour. Which meant I had to spend several hours grinding for Zenni (the game’s currency) by going into a specific dungeon and killing one particular enemy over and over again.

As for the boss fights, I would say they’re more standard compared to Legends 1. A lot of boss arenas are just you and them, no nonsense. There are still a couple of standout fights; I particularly enjoyed the train fight against the Bonnes. But compared to all the fights against the Bonnes in Legends 1, like the excavator, the giant robot you had to fight on the airship, and so on, the bosses in 2 don’t hold a candle to them.

Like I said, not a bad game. It just feels like a regression in several areas. If you want to watch my playthrough, you can do so here.

Still Wakes The Deep

Ever wanted to know what life on a Scottish oil rig would be like? Well, now you can experience the true horror of doing that. Jokes aside, I do appreciate the developers going out of their way to not just accurately portray the Scottish accent and colloquialisms but also have subtitles for it and even go out of their way to have it in Scottish Gaelic.

However, the characters and story are pretty weak. The general plot is that the character had a punch-up in Glasgow and now has to avoid the cops by going to work on an oil rig, and his wife is mad at him for abandoning her and the “weans”. It’s not as interesting a plot as the game thinks it is.

Anyway, the oil rig strikes an ancient flesh monster, and it starts killing everyone and turning several of them into horrifying monsters. But again, it’s hard to care about these characters. Some of them you’re only introduced to as they are literal seconds away from being brutally killed.

As far as horror games go, it’s not terribly scary. The gore, on the other hand, is quite detailed; people get ripped apart, and the monsters some characters turn into are extremely gruesome. Visually, it’s impressive. The water is very impressive too. I believe I gave it an 8/10.

If you want to watch my playthrough, it’s here.

Little Kitty, Big City

You want a collectathon with a cute cat? Here you go.

There’s not really much I can say about this other than the Japanese-esque city being fun to explore.

I’m not a huge fan of the platforming. It gets a bit wonky in places. And some of the puzzle solutions are not always obvious; sometimes you have to interact with things you don’t realise can be interacted with at first glance.

The stamina system is very conservative. Barely any wiggle room for screwing up.

That said, I enjoyed exploring the world, and I did do most of the things it has to offer. I found all the hats. The cowboy one is my favourite.

And yes, if you place a cucumber on the ground, the cat will react to it. Which sounds hilarious until you’re running about, and then the thing suddenly jumps. Be careful where you leave them, I suppose.

Indiana Jones & The Great Circle

Well, this was a surprise for the tail end of 2024. A AAA Indiana Jones game that is actually good and mostly works without issue… Until you get to the 3rd act of the game, and then it all horribly breaks.

It’s mostly an FPS, going third person when climbing and, of course, showing Indy in cutscenes. But it mostly focuses on brawling rather than shooting. You can use a gun, of course, but I’ve actually gone through the entire game so far without firing a shot. That said, the melee combat is quite mashy and sluggish. Maybe they should have worked with Arkane a bit with that one.

You spend most of the game running around areas like the Vatican, using stealth and disguises to avoid enemies, doing a handful of puzzles to get relics, money, etc. You then use the money to buy books to upgrade your character. But buying the books isn’t enough. You also need Adventure Points, which you get by photographing things, doing quests, and so on. If you’re familiar with the Riddick games, particularly Butcher Bay, you’ll be no stranger to the ideas the game presents.

Troy Baker does a pretty good job impersonating Harrison Ford. Overall, his performance is pretty good. The other characters, besides the villain, don’t stand out as much. But I appreciate the fact they speak their native language and not some dodgy-accented English. Getting back to the villain for the moment, he stands out in the silliest way possible. I can’t tell if I like or hate it. On one hand, it’s enjoyably hammed up. On the other, he’s constantly trying to say that males that show dominance can be put down just by calling their bluff. Which is nonsense, because any number of characters could easily clock him.

This was the most fun I was having in a AAA game for a good while, but unfortunately, my experience was ruined by the 3rd act of the game. When you’re in Sukhothai. The first major issue I encountered was buying the breathing device. It cost more money than I had on me, so I decided to go do some side stuff instead. But in doing that side mission, I ended with the breathing device. However, the check for that quest didn’t complete, and it still wanted me to buy it. But when I went back, it was non-interactable. Therefore, I couldn’t complete that aspect of the quest.

However, that didn’t stop me from progressing. I simply went to the part of the map where the next segment of the quest took place and kept playing. But the game kept the objective marker on the place where I needed to buy this stupid breathing device that I already had. I kept going anyway. Until I couldn’t. Following a sequence where Indy was separated from his lady friend, I found myself unable to climb ladders, dialogue became broken, and cutscenes were not triggering correctly. Then after going through most of a cave, I came to a crevice that Indy would not go through.

I could not go back the way I came, I could not go forward. I was softlocked.

And this is where my playthrough currently stands at the time of writing. The only way to fix this is to roll back my save many, many hours prior and hope that I can avoid it. Or wait for a patch. I was having such a great time up until that point.

Other Stuff I Played:

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III Multiplayer

This one ended up getting added to Game Pass, so I decided to give it a go after playing too much Cold War. It’s nice seeing old maps reimagined with a new coat of paint. What isn’t nice is the awful UI around getting in and out of games and general menus, the confusing unlock system for the guns and their accessories, and the Battle Pass that only rewards you for buying it rather than playing the game.

If it wasn’t for the core gameplay still being fun and extremely satisfying, I probably wouldn’t have bothered dumping as many hours into it as I have. But getting a modernised version of the STG 44 and a .30-06 AR was neat.

Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

The bad news about this one is that it requires a friend. I had fun. It’s a hectic experience, badly describing something you can see and your friend can’t, and vice versa. The real difficulty of it is having a point of reference for what the other person is doing or knowing what they’re describing. There’s a module that uses a lot of mathematical symbols and some nonsense ones. We could describe maybe half of them. We only played it once, unfortunately.

LEGO Builder’s Journey

Probably the prettiest Lego game ever made. And I can now play it with my ray tracing-enabled GPU.

The puzzles aren’t super difficult, plus they’re the kind of puzzles you can muddle through and figure out just by constantly trying different things and seeing what works and what doesn’t. As opposed to just being wrong and having nothing happen.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer

By the time Black Ops 6 was out, I had been playing Cold War’s and MWIII’s multiplayer multiple times a week for several months. As such, I got burnt out on it much quicker than I expected. I got bored of it really. The maps are a bit too standard, barring The Pit and the one in the apartment. Those two are pure insanity, which can be fun. It’s also a bit grindy to make the loadouts I want. Many of the perks and unlocks that you got at lower levels in the beta are now high-level unlocks. So the loadouts I used then are unavailable to me even after dozens of hours later.

The new movement system is not as much of a clusterfuck as I was expecting it to be, but it definitely changes up things. People are generally camping less. Or were at the time I was playing. Unfortunately, hackers are still a problem. And I can only imagine the problem has gotten worse since I stopped playing.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit

I have been itching for a good arcade racer for a while, and this gets really close to scratching it. Tight controls, easy drifting, and fun levels. It’s close to aping the style of 90s racing games.

The drifting is borrowed from Crash Team Racing, where you drift to get a boost, and constant drifting lets you chain boosts for even more speed.

The bad news is that the physics are not built for the kind of speed you can get. You often get so much speed that you go flying. The physics in general tends to be inconsistent. I flipped the car multiple times just by hitting a wall with the side of the car and bouncing off in some odd way. It’s a blemish on an otherwise great game. I still had a lot of fun with it. Also, the ska soundtrack is nice.

My Top 10 Games Of The Year

Released Games That I Wanted To Play Or Play More Of

Granblue Fantasy: Relink

I waited so long for this to come out and ultimately never played it. Although I did play the demo, I wasn’t that impressed.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

I played the prologue demo and liked it, but I just don’t have the money to buy it right now.

Echo Point Nova

Absolutely loved the demo, again, no money.

Balatro

Seems everyone but me is playing this.

Satisfactory

My friends are into this, I probably could get into it, but I do not own it.

Rise Of The Ronin

I don’t own a PS5, waiting for the PC version.

Worst I Played

STALKER 2

Again, another game I waited years to come out. I even pre-ordered it years ago. But it’s really buggy, really difficult, and feels bad to play. It has gotten a few patches since I last touched it, but I haven’t felt the need to play it again.

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And now here’s the top 10:

10. HoloLive Treasure Mountain

I like HoloLive, and I like this kind of puzzle game. Simple as.

9. PuzzMix

This probably wouldn’t have made it normally, but the soundtrack is a banger.

8. Little Kitty, Big City

Cute cat wears hats.

7. Parking Garage Rally Circuit

I miss arcade racers so bad, and this is really close to being really good.

6. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

The artstyle is cool, the gameplay design is solid. I appreciate that Capcom would put something like this out.

5. Persona 3: Reload

A polished remake of an already fantastic game.

4. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6

Not as good as Cold War in some places, but the levels are varied and it improves on some mechanics, particularly the stealth.

3. Indiana Jones & The Great Circle

If it wasn’t for the 3rd act being broken as shit, I would put this even higher. It’s a really good Indiana Jones game.

2. Like A Dragon 8: Infinite Wealth

Improves on 7 in every way gameplay wise, but the story jumps the shark so hard.

1. Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is not better than the original. In many ways, it’s considerably worse. But I still put dozens of hours into it over a period of weeks. Just doing as many quests as I could, exploring all the nooks and crannies of the map, and fighting all the optional bosses. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. But it’s not the game I wanted or asked for. I wanted an evolution and an expansion of the original ideas.

Dragon’s Dogma Online had so much crazy shit in it. From the classes to the new monsters. And nothing from that game made it in here. I don’t know if it’s an issue with the RE Engine or what, but I feel like they just didn’t bother taking the ideas that they couldn’t implement in the first game or the ones that they did formulate in Online.

But I still enjoyed it. The endgame is nuts at least, but you’re heavily restricted with how much time you can spend there.

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Overall, 2024 was not a great year for games. New games are too expensive for me to buy; Game Pass is probably the only reason half the games are even on this list.

Anime Corner:

Make Heroine ga Oosugiru

I was expecting Alya-san to be the better of the two romcoms airing that season. And I was wrong. Yanagi and Nukumizu’s interactions are easily some of the funniest this year. I miss when romcoms were this good. The characters in general mesh well with each other, and the comedy aspect of it reminds me of hearing teenagers on the bus whine about their love lives while I desperately try to hold in my laughter.

Dandadan

I went out of my way to see the first 3 episodes of this at a cinema in Belfast. I thought it was whacky as shit then, and I think it’s whacky now. The first series ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, which annoys me, but at least we’re getting a second series.

Uzumaki

Yes, yes: The 1st episode is clearly better animated than the rest. However, overall, it is still really creepy. The downgrade in the art isn’t so significant most of the time that it gets in the way of the unnervingness of all the spiral nonsense that unfolds. Still worth a watch. Or maybe read the manga instead. Or play the WonderSwan games if you’re feeling really nutty.

My Top 10 Anime Of The Year

1. VTuber Nandaga Haishin Kiri Wasuretara Densetsu ni Natteta
2. Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san
3. NieR:Automata Ver1.1a Part 2
4. Uzumaki
5. Ookami to Koushinryou: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf
6. Nige Jouzu no Wakagimi
7. Make Heroine ga Oosugiru!
8. Monogatari Series: Off & Monster Season
9. Dungeon Meshi
10. Kusuriya no Hitorigoto

I looked back at the anime I watched this year, and most of what I watched I didn’t give any higher than a 7/10. Barring the first couple, these are the few shows that I rated higher than that. Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is such a good show. The 1st cour’s opening is gorgeous with an excellent musical number that really grabs your attention for the rest of the episode. Maomao is a bit of a know-it-all, but her interactions with Jinshi are endearing. It’s an excellent show and very much worth watching. Hopefully the second series elevates it further.

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Well, there’s your roundup. I need to find a better way of doing these; I can’t just keep bum-rushing them out at the end of the year. It’s lowering the writing quality as I have to remember and sum up what I did months ago. I’ll see if I can get better at writing my thoughts closer to when I’m actually playing or finishing games in the future.

Till next time.

ADMAN