Pokemon Legends Z-A complete! I really enjoyed my time with it, but now that I’ve beaten the main story I’ve found my drive to keep playing waning… Still, it went out with a bang, and the way it commits to its central theme (without me spoiling what that theme is) actually works super well. I dare say it’s one of the best Pokemon stories in over a decade, but I’m still on the fence as to whether it beats Gen 5’s storytelling.
finished KEEPER today, wild visuals but less enjoyable due to no psychedelic drugs available.
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OP, I hear such good things about backloggd - this may be the year I finally check it out myself.
For the past few years, I’ve had an Excel workbook where I track various things about the games I play and/or finish each year, because my friends and I like to get together at the end of the year and kind of compare/discuss game of the year thoughts. I’ll spare everyone here this year’s info dump, but maybe I’ll post completions in here throughout the year next year - could be fun to keep up with what everybody is up to!
Anyway, my most recent completion is Dome Keeper. Originally came out a couple years ago, but just now getting around to playing it. One part tower defense, one part resource farming - your dome on the surface is attacked by waves of alien monsters every couple minutes, and in between waves you disembark beneath the surface and dig around in search of ore and other resources to upgrade your dome and pilot’s capabilities. Lots of variety here, with different domes, defense systems, and gear to unlock and play around with. Somewhat similar to Wall World, if you’re familiar with that.
As for what’s next? Not sure - the backlog, as always, feels infinite. 
Well I beat Kirby’s Block Ball (see my post in “What games have you been enjoying” a few hours ago) except maybe I didn’t because they teased a secret ending much like in Kirby’s Dreamland 2
I think you need to get top scores in every stage for it but there doesn’t seem to be a way to see the scores outside of beating the stage and when trying to figure out a way to see the scores I found out hitting Select just dumps you out into the main menu with no confirmation so I decided I was done playing.
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I’ve hit credits on Super Mario Bros. Wonder and it was indeed a wonderful experience. The early levels felt a bit too mechanical and polished to me, a bit too much like just another New Super Mario Bros, and I didn’t care too much for the elephant gimmick, but in the later half of the game you’ve got many abilities unlocked and the level designers really went wild with introducing new concepts nearly every level, and it felt like a joy to play.
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I completed Robot Alchemic Drive last night. The earth is safe from the Vulgara invasion, for now. Truly a wonderful game that I wasn’t expecting to love much as I did.
It’s a perfect example of “lets just use the assets we got and make a game that some people will buy” I can’t really recommend the game to everyone as something they’ll enjoy as thoroughly as I did, but I do recommend it as a spectacle worth looking at a little bit. As for me the game was honestly almost perfect. I think I want to try my hand at designing my own spiritual successor project.
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Been meaning to play this ever since the videos of the game have blown up. It looks hilarious.
This has been my issue with modern Mario: lovely, well-designed games, great gameplay gimmicks, art/music, etc, but the main/early game is just way too safe and simple. Feels like the “real game” doesn’t start until you hit that kind of endgame block of challenging levels, but everything up until then feels just a little too easy.
(Fully understand 30-somethings are not the target demo there though, haha)
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I’ve beaten Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip the other day. Wonderful game, highly recommended. Runs good on the Deck too (my “runs great on deck” rating is = <10W @45FPS stable) and was genuinely entertaining. Very great animations, writing, neat designed city and environment. Wholesome experience 
Yeah I’m not gonna be too bothered with “this doesn’t hit like Mario 3 and Super Mario World” because, well, I was 7 then and had never experienced anything like it before.
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beat Kirby Planet Robobot. Great game, fantastic finale
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I finished Metroid Prime 4 over the holidays. I really enjoyed some parts of it and was kind of disappointed by others. Still kind of stewing on how I feel overall but I’m glad it finally came out and I’m hopeful for future Metroid Prime titles!
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I’ve finished Frontlines: Fuel of War yesterday and that was an absolute ride of weird gameplay elements and some horrible writing. The AR has an accuracy that couldn’t hit the large side of a barn, the sub-machine gun was practically a sniper rifle and the shotgun was similar.
While all that was manageable the story just kept getting weirder and weirder. I definitely glossed over parts of it, but it’s a fairly typical USA vs. Russia/China type of story. What really baffled me was that the bad guys in part were evil because they broadcasted propaganda to keep the civilians in check.. while “back home” for the good guys there was apparently a severe enough civil-unrest that “only those with a death wish leave the house at night”. Sign me up for that propaganda instead if you ask me.
The final level has your buddy killed (I have no clue what his name was), and when entering Moscow you end up fighting militia forces who were “forced to fight by the [government]” with another line doing a “this is an age old Russian tactic” spiel. What is this writing, would you just roll over when your homeland is invaded‽
The VA work was pretty mid, but at least they hired actual Chinese people to voice the Chinese enemies so that I do respect them for.
I’m deeply curious if anyone has a long format video on this game’s story where they go deeper into it because this was such imperialist propaganda I’m deeply curious what else I all missed in my rush through it.
(Now on to better games!)
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I’ve finished Spiderman 2. Enjoyed the graphics, some of its combat, some of the minigames, the movement and depiction of NYC but the bootlicker storyline and Peter Parker in particular was agonizing.
I dont remember if SM always been like this or started to be more annoying with the cinema expansion or if I just grew beyond it. I enjoyed one of the cartoons back in the 90s a lot but havent seen them since. It’s such a stupid moralist copaganda trash. Pretty much all us centric superhero stories are, but the late depiction of spiderman is particular annoying since hes so extremely one-dimensional.
I’ve beaten 6 games this year so far:
- Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
- X-Men: Wolverine’s Rage
- Blazblue: Continuum Shift II
- Super R.C. Pro-Am
- Yoshi
- Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter
I’d say Blazblue: Continuum Shift II is my favourite so far and I watched the short accompanying anime which was nice enough
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Just rolled credits on Quest 64. I actually had enough thoughts on the game that I’d written a nearly complete review of the game before I even got to the final segment, though I may need to make a few additions now that I’ve seen the full thing.
My main thoughts are that I liked the game but that’s not nessesarily to say it’s a good game. I think it’s a game that has quite a few interesting ideas that other games could take and iterate on, but ultimately it’s an experience that is not particularly noteworthy.
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I played Quest 64 last year for my friend group’s game club. I was pretty impressed with it! I think it’s one of the few games to capture the feeling of the original Dragon Quest very meaningfully, alongside the original MOTHER… feels a lot like what JRPGs started to move away from in the 6th gen that I miss.
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The thing that’s most noteworthy about Quest 64 to me is that I have distinct memories of it being on worst games of the year/ever lists, probably to help feed the narrative that the N64 didn’t have RPGs.
It may not be good but I wouldn’t say it’s a worst anything.
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Yeah, the narrative about it is really bizarre. Granted, I feel that a lot of the conventional “worst games ever” really are not so bad (Devil May Cry 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Bubsy 3D) but Quest 64 I find the reputation of especially confusing. As much as I like Devil May Cry 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) I am aware that for whatever reason people have a much lower tolerance for bugs than me, and Bubsy 3D is incredibly esoteric and surreal to the point that I’m surprised it was made. Quest 64 is a pretty normal video game.
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I gotta assume its reputation comes from comparisons to its “competition”, like the Final Fantasies of the era, and that style of RPG. I could buy the argument that compared to some of that stuff, Quest 64 feels pretty sparse, at least narratively.
My own counterpoint, though: I thought Quest 64’s combat was really cool at the time. I was starting to feel turn-based RPG fatigue, so I found the much more active movement and combat pretty refreshing. Was only ever able to rent it so I never finished it, but I liked it well enough.
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