Games Played in 2020

Here we go baby 2020 WOOOOOOOO

Top 10 games played in 2020:

1. Xenoblade Definitive Edition

2. Half-Life: Alyx

3. Persona 4 Golden

4. Disco Elysium

5. Ghost of Tsushima

6. Dragon Quest Builders 2

7. The Wonderful 101: Remastered

8. Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner Mars

9. Doom Eternal

10. Higurashi Ch.8 Matsuribayashi

Completed: 126 Dropped: 62

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner Mars [Completed]

1. Still the best mecha game ever made. Action is smooth and fun with flashy attacks and a variety of useful subweapons to play with. The artstyle remains perfect and hasn't aged at all. Jehuty and Anubis are still some of the best mechs ever designed. The boss fights are varied and the gimmicks never make the fights annoying. The story is cheesy and fast-paced which fits the game to a T and the poorly directed voice acting combined with the strange dialogue is campy and endearing. The soundtrack remains great as well. The only problems worth noting come from the shoddy port. While being in Jehuty's cockpit in VR is cool, the limited view compared to 3rd person is disappointing and not being able to see Jehuty in action takes a lot of the cool factor out of the gameplay. The game starts in VR mode and turns on my headset and starts up steamVR before asking if I want to play in VR mode instead of after which was very annoying. The sound is very quiet and only solvable by changing a setting in the volume mixer and going back to turn it off after I'm done playing the game. Vsync also broke the game entirely and performance was poor at the start of the game for no reason. All that being said, ZoE2 is still fantastic.

Wattam [Completed]

1. By far the most wholesome piece of media ever concocted. Lovely aesthetic, fun happy little inanimate objects. Great music and sounds of laughter to force a smile out of you. The tasks are incredibly simple so any difficulty comes from trying to remember that the camera is controlled by the triggers and not the analog stick. The movement can be too clunky and slow and while this may have just been my PS4 being old or something, the performance was terrible which got very annoying. Thankfully the problems didn't have much time to set in since the game is very short. It was a memorable experience with a very beautiful ending. It's just a shame the issues couldn't be ironed out before release.

A Plague Tale: Innocence [Completed]

1. A very cool linear story experience very fitting of the year of the rat. It's not so long that it overstays its welcome and not so short that I couldn't get invested in the story. The setting is fresh and the plot even moreso. Most of the characters aren't very developed but are handled well despite their simplicity and the way they help you during the gameplay sections does a good job of endearing you to them, particularly Rodric. Amicia and Hugo are more nuanced and make a good pair of main characters. Amicia is strong and determined but the game doesn't forget that she's not some trained soldier or a mother or anything and she has a hard time dealing with everything going on around her while having to take care of Hugo. She's capable with her sling and alchemy, both properly set up by her parents, but she's still way too weak to handle any trained soldier who catches up to her. This makes for a good power balance that kept me from feeling too weak or too strong in any situation besides the end when you become the rat wizard. Hugo has his annoying child moments but they're kept to a minimum and he was more often a cute and likable companion I wanted to protect. Another thing that helped the characters was the fact that the game wasn't made in America so the characters don't all look like horrid gremlins while still looking realistic. The rat imagery is exceptional throughout the game and there's a lot of cool setpieces in every chapter that kept me intrigued. The moment-to-moment gameplay is pretty simple and there's rarely any difficult situations to solve, but the variety in sling ammunition and enemy setups keeps the gameplay fresh. My only issues with the game consisted of an ending that was very very quick to wrap up and a random issue that would cause my sling to randomly not fire which caused a few deaths. The rat wizard duel finale was lit though.

Monster Hunter World Iceborne (PC) [Completed]

1. Just as fun as on console but with high FPS and minimum load times as well as the ability to hunt with my friends. Tons of great additions to the monster roster and a fun clutch claw to use. Not really a change by the game but I was much more prepared equipment-wise this time so the fights were less annoying. The story and unskippable cutscenes are still unbearable.

Rez Infinite [Completed]

1. Cool soulful rail shooter. I love the cyberspace aesthetic and the stages have a lot of cool visuals to enjoy, especially in VR. But while it is an amazing visual experience, the gameplay aspect is pretty simple and repetitive. I would say Gal Gun is more fun as a rail shooter. Area X adds a fun spin on the gameplay by giving you freedom of movement but it's more fantastical and lacks the oldschool cyberspace appeal I was fond of in the original levels. The music is also pretty rad and fits the levels very well. The most annoying aspect of the game for me was I could only use my left VR controller despite being right-handed.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 [Completed]

1. This one took a long while wew boy. The game oozes with charm from every block-shaped orifice and is simply a joy to play. The goofy dialogue, lively characters, great music, and Toriyama artstyle all come together in a soulful hotpot of adventure. The long length of time you spend on every major island in the game helps a lot in endearing you to the characters and world and I really felt like I was making a difference in every section. The story, while pretty simple, still manages to be compelling thanks to the likability of the characters and the elements connecting it to DQ2 are very well-implemented. The connection between my character and Malroth in particular was very endearing and I'm glad they didn't stick you with some unlikable stick in the mud for the whole game. The gameplay is fun and comfy. I have a hard time getting into Minecraft since all the enjoyment relies on my own creativity, so I much prefer Builders' process of giving you blueprints to build and missions to complete instead. My favorite moments were the ends of each chapter where the people you've been helping for hours finally get the inspiration to help you build and you get to see them come together and quickly produce huge structures that would've taken ages alone. As for my few issues with the game: the number one would be how mind-numbingly slow the master of destruction's dialogue is. Every time he pitched in I would alt tab and browse the internet for several minutes while he spelled out his dialogue at a blinding one word per hour. I also feel the game tends to hold your hand too much and there's a tad too much dialogue at the beginning. If the devs are going to give me the ability to move the camera, I would like them to also trust me to look around and find the items of note that they want me to interact with. But yeah so far best adventure of 2020.

Virgo Versus the Zodiac [Dropped]

1. Round of applause for the first dropped game of 2020. The artstyle is nice, music is pretty good, and the writing is enjoyable enough. However I find the gameplay pretty dull and frustrating. Your combat options are few and for the harder fights it feels like making one mistake can ruin the whole fight due to the inability to completely negate damage no matter how good your timing is. For the easier fights, it's just a slow back-and-forth of QTEs. Some variation in the QTEs would've helped to spice it up a little but in the first couple hours there were just 2 types and even very little variation in the timing of them. The search for quality yuri games continues.

Hades [Completed]

1. Fun stuff. The only other roguelite I've played extensively is the Binding of Isaac and this feels much better to play. It's also somewhat easier than BoI and I managed to beat the final boss in less than 20 runs. The variations in olympian boon combinations make the runs interesting and unique. The large amount of unique dialogue also helps to keep the runs feeling fresh. I would've liked the Hydra and Minotaur/Theseus to have some alternate bosses in their place from time to time like the Furies but they're fun enough as is. The artstyle and voice acting is great, as expected of supergiant, and the writing is pretty good as well even though the story is currently lacking a conclusion. Probably my favorite part of Hades is the permanent progress you get after every run in the form of the mirror powerups, weapon aspects and underworld renovations. I would feel much less inclined to keep trying again and again if I wasn't making at least a little permanent progress. Most of the weapons are fun to play and they're all substantially different from each other in playstyle so switching weapons per run keeps everything feeling all the more fresh. I'm excited for it to come out of early access.

Dragonball Z Kakarot [Completed]

1. Disappointing game. The RPG elements that permeate the entire game are uninteresting and only serve to drag down the actual good aspects. The levels, items, crafting, and skill trees don't add anything enjoyable to the game and the reliance on "stats" detracts from the decent action combat by bloating HP numbers and drawing out fights. The main story is a fine enough retelling of the DBZ story and I appreciate that it actually goes through the buu saga unlike plenty of other DBZ games. While the models and world look nice and certain cutscenes look fantastic, a lot of the story is just presented with characters standing around and talking to each other with textboxes which feels like a waste, the buu and android sagas also felt pretty rushed. The combat is flawed but okay. Animations and flying are pretty good and the attacks look great but fights got repetitive since you rarely do anything besides punch punch punch kamehameha. The lack of variety in player options could've been made up for with more variety in enemy situations but there's rarely any attacks you can't easily nullify by dodging right or holding block with very little timing required. Some bossfights have special attacks that spice up the fights a bit but they're rare. Enemies also enjoy randomly deciding to start charging superarmor attacks mid-hitstun which is extremely annoying. The open world is beautiful and fun to fly around in but there's very little interesting things to do. I stopped doing sidequests after finishing the frieza arc because there were pretty much 0 sidequests that didn't devolve into "collect X items" or "defeat this group of random grunt enemies" like I was playing a lame MMO. The enemy mobs on the map are incredibly lame and lacking variety. Cooking requires gathering materials which is much duller than just moving on with the story so why would you when it isn't even necessary? Special moves which could help the combat feel more interesting are locked behind a skill tree which requires collecting medals scattered randomly around the map which I didn't want to bother with. The community board system is a fun little minigame but it is ruined by the lackluster nature of the other systems since you end up having no reason to put emblems on any board that isn't the fighting or exp ones. The music is largely unmemorable besides the versions of cha la head cha la which are great. I liked the little throwbacks to dragonball at least. Overall this game brings very little to the table compared to other DBZ games.

Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada [Completed]

1. Mmmm musou goodness injected directly into the bloodstream. This probably has the best story in a musou game thanks to it's more focused plot surrounding the Sanada clan rather than jumping all over the place. Yukimura is a pretty typical shonen protag but by the end of the game he is plenty cool enough to make up for it. Sasuke's development is nice albeit predictable, and Masayuki is quite compelling since you get to follow him for so long. I would've liked if the Sanada trio had some fun interaction while they were older to help drive home the family theme. I also quite liked the direction of the ending. I can't really verify this but it felt like it was trying to be more historically accurate than other musous and I appreciate that. That being said I might still prefer Dynasty Warriors 7 just because I like the Three Kingdoms more than the warring states period. While the focused approach is great for the story, the gameplay does suffer somewhat because of the lack of variety in playable characters. You spend about 70% of the game playing as either Masayuki or Yukimura and another 10% playing as Kunoichi or Sasuke. This is a pretty big problem since moveset and character design/personality variety is important in maintaining the fun of a musou game. The stages are generally enjoyable and the Stratagem/Feat system does a good job of giving you objectives to juggle instead of just making you plow through enemies nonstop. The exploration missions and material nonsense are completely boring, unnecessary, and do nothing but drag the game down and there's unfortunately a substantial amount of them. The combat is the same as samurai warriors 4 so there's not really much to go over there except it's still fun. I hope they never do away with the dash attacks. The game can look nice in cutscenes but a little upgrade would be nice. The village tunes were also great.

Rakuen [Completed]

1. A short and sweet emotional journey that really tugs at the heartstrings. I have a deep respect for any piece of media that can make me feel some significant amount of emotion and Rakuen pulled this off in a very genuine and heartfelt way. The character stories are all very compelling and hit hard while also having a bizarrely "family-friendly" vibe to them that felt very fitting. The art looks very nice though the animations are pretty janky. The music is great and very emotional, particularly the vocal songs. The dialogue has an endearing charm to it that kept the game feeling uplifting when it should despite the overarching dread of where the plot is going and the fate of the characters. Even though I was carelessly spoiled on the basis for the story, the small revelations of the events before the story pertaining to the boy's family and his hospitalization still kept me invested. The only problem I have with the game is the lackluster controller support that wouldn't allow me to use my D-Pad and the fact that I had to patch it to be able to sprint which felt like it should be in the game by default.

Maximum Action [Completed..basically]

1. The core gameplay is fun and the aesthetic is nice but I've never seen a more "Early Access" game. It's been in early access for more than a year and has less than an hour of content not counting the endless mode where you just fight the same two or three enemy types over and over again. The small amount of uniquely designed levels are too short and simple. I hope the game ends up getting a substantial amount of content because it has the makings of a good game.

Alice Mystery Garden [Completed]

1. A nice little gimicky VR game. The cute presentation and main character make for a jolly time and the VR puzzles are quite fun. The VR aspect makes it feel substantially different from every other puzzle game. I did have some problems with the control of the game, though it's mostly attributed to having to use my WMR headset's touchpad to move instead of the analog stick. The physics could also be a bit finicky at times and the game looked unusually blurry. The game's not long but it was also super cheap and I got my money's worth.

Banner of the Maid [Dropped]

1. I feel bad about dropping this one. The game clearly had a lot of hard work put into it with it's great pixel artstyle and character art. It's a decent fire emblem clone for a while and the idea of making a more modern fire emblem-style game in a more modern setting is great. The writing is decent enough though the english language beta can be a bit shaky at times. I like the cute girls in the game, particularly Eugenie which is why I would've liked to continue the game. Unfortunately as the difficulty of the game increases, the losses feel more and more unfair and it feels less like putting together your own strategies and more like figuring out the one or two ways you can clear a mission with little leeway given the frustratingly strict defeat conditions a lot of the time. I probably could have just repeatedly grinded with optional missions but I didn't want to waste time with that especially since the missions are probably just going to get harder and require more grinding.

Sin and Punishment [Completed]

1. Truly bizarre game. The story is a crazy rushed sci-fi anime that makes very little sense but it's fun to watch at least. The english voice acting despite the game not coming out of japan was strange and added to the odd tone. The gameplay is pretty fast and satisfying and the bosses and setpieces made each level feel quite enjoyable without having it get too stale. It's a short game but that's fine with me, I think rail shooters should be short since the gameplay style can get repetitive faster than the average genre. The character models looked pretty awful but the environments and the dynamic camera were very cool. Overall while it wasn't a very impactful game, it had a lot of classic japanese soul.

The House in Fata Morgana [Completed]

1. Very good VN. Short and very well-paced. Fata Morgana handles its themes of empathy and acceptance in a mature manner and I quite enjoyed it. The writing is good and maintains a decent balance of casual dialogue and flowery narration. The first portion of the story with the doors isn't too engaging, the twists are surprising to various extents and they do a good job building up the basis for the main plot and conflict but the tragic endings can get a tad tiring and predictable. The latter part of the story focused on finding the truth behind everyone's motivations and saving Morgana, as well as the relationship between Michel and Giselle is great and enthralling. The ending ties up everything perfectly and I really liked how everyone wasn't just forgiven, but pardoned with mixed emotions. The characters all end up feeling realistic and sympathetic regardless of the magnitude of their crimes. I also felt the VN treated its setting respectfully and didn't shy away from problems of that era in fear of offending people. The music is good and fits in most cases, but at times the vocals can be so loud that they distracted me from the reading. The art is great for the most part aside from Mell's freakishly small arm in the first chapter and I liked the character designs as well. If the game had a normal anime artstyle, I feel it would've detracted from the mature nature of the story. Good stuff.

Einhander [Dropped]

1. Game's got a cool style and all and an especially cool title but it's too hard for me. Maybe it's just because I'm bad at shmups in general but isn't having the player die in one hit while also barely telegraphing boss attacks bad game design? It infuriates me at least.

Superhot VR [Dropped]

1. Really cool game, I'm sad I couldn't finish it. The game expects me to move forward too much in my limited space and I accidentally hit my monitor so I don't wanna take the risk of doing that again. That being said, I cleared almost every level before this happened so at least I got the experience. The gameplay and style are very cool, but there are some big issues like throwing with VR being incredibly unreliable and the mind blast attack being extremely inconsistent. These might just be a problem with my WMR controllers however. Also with some levels it felt like the enemy actions were inconsistent enough where what felt like the only solution to a situation wouldn't work 100% of the time. Maybe if I had more free range for movement there would be more opportunities.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma [Completed]

1. I think Ryu Hayabusa is a 10/10 action game character stuck in a 6/10 action game. Fighting grunts is the best part of the game because Ryu's moveset is so robust and killing stuff feels so good. Combos are fast and fluid while also not being too difficult to pull off and the Izuna Drop may be one of the best attacks in a video game. The enemies also all pose a threat to some extent so unlike in DMC you have to constantly be on your toes. The problems arise in literally everything else. While Ryu's fast far-reaching jumps are good in combat, they end up being a liability during exploration platforming sections. Countless times I intended to do a wall run and ended up running straight up the wall instead or I just wanted to jump forward and Ryu decides to cling to random nearby structures. The levels are fairly uninteresting both to look at and traverse and this is especially bad given the amount of backtracking you need to do. While fighting grunts generally is fun, the military level manages to make even that subpar by dumping you in an area full of enemies with guns so someone is ALWAYS hitting you. The GHOST FISH are absolute abominations and drag chapters 17 and 18 down tremendously. The bosses are typically either frustrating, unfun, short, or some mixture of the 3. Bosses lack any sort of personality and I wouldn't really describe any of them as fun or memorable. The way they seemingly decide when to block your attacks at random and nullify your techniques likes ninpo, flying swallow and izuna drops makes them intrinsically less fun to fight than grunts. I realize most people prefer ninja gaiden black so I poured over all the differences I could find to make sure I wasn't making some big mistake by playing Sigma instead and I can't say I would've liked Black much better. The Rachel missions are pretty lame but they're short and I didn't mind them too much. The ability to fire projectiles mid-jump is good and makes fighting flying enemies and the helicopter/tanks much more bearable. The new burning village chapter was pretty good as well. I also don't really like Rachel that much, I think her outfit looks really stupid and I would've much preferred playing as Ayane. I didn't really dislike the game and as much as I got frustrated, I still had plenty of fun thanks to how good the combat is. I would really like to see a new Ninja Gaiden with at least half the personality and level/boss quality of the DMC games.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor [Completed]

1. A wildly fun arcade experience. Star Successor is a big step up from its predecessor with tons of over-the-top setpieces and boss fights making good use of the updated hardware to better convey the original vision. The gameplay is still very fun and the new challenges let it shine much better than before. The story thankfully still makes very little sense but I quite liked how casual the main duo was and it ended up feeling more natural for better or worse. It also helps that the game was about 3 times longer than the first, but still a reasonably short length to keep it a short and sweet experience. My only problem with the game would be that some of the boss fights near the end are too challenging for my tastes. The jump in difficulty especially for the final boss felt pretty unfair. But besides that, good job Treasure.

Jet Set Radio Future [Completed]

1. All the fun of the original and more. I'm glad this is the sole game working flawlessly on the xbox emulator so I could enjoy it. The artstyle still looks beautiful today, the gameplay is smooth and improved over the original and the music is super funky with the exception of birthday cake which made me want to tear my hair out every time it came on. The areas are fun to traverse and painting all over the place is still really satisfying. One thing I prefer in the original is the cast of player characters but I do prefer Beat and Gum's new designs so I just alternated between them. The bosses were all pretty fun to fight and made much better use of the game mechanics than in the original though the extendable arm dude got out of his vulnerable state way too fast and the flamethrower chick was hardly even a fight. The bit of voice acting in the game by professor K and gouji is great and really livens things up. The game is just oozing with personality from top to bottom. I don't have many problems with the game, just birthday cake, weak camera control, and the few areas where you can fall down but not die causing you to waste a lot of time going back to where you were.

Metroid Prime 3 [Dropped]

1. Didn't play much of it, just the first couple hours. The atmosphere of the first 2 games was gone, the story felt like a star wars cartoon, the frequent motion controls were annoying on mouse and keyboard and the game just generally didn't run well with a lot of stuttering. Maybe it gets better if you play with an actual wiimote and the atmosphere returns later on. Might look into playing it again when it inevitably gets ported to the switch.

Ganbare Goemon 2 [Completed]

1. Decent SNES sidescrolling action game. The goemon soul is present but not even half as cool as the N64 game since it felt like a fairly standard sidescroller. The platforming action is alright but can feel pretty unfair at times. The town sections are simple and kinda just make me wish there was a sprint button. The best part of the game is the thematic styling of the stages like the toy castle that look pleasant and distinct. Also kinda sad I couldn't play as Yae. The Goemon Impact parts were very similar to their N64 counterparts and were fairly enjoyable.

Mega Man Zero [Dropped]

1. Fun game bogged down by it's frustrating design. Playing as zero and slashing enemies feels great and the game looks good too. The game is extremely short and they very clearly tried to mask this by making your HP as low as possible so you would spend forever dying and retrying. The assist save option in the collection alleviates this for the levels but the low health during boss fights can be extremely frustrating considering how difficult it can be to avoid a lot of their attacks. The stages are less frustrating but still pretty poorly designed and filled with a lot of small unfair obstacles. It's a shame because a lot of the bosses would be pretty fun if you had more leeway healthwise. The final boss in particular is a nightmare and caused me to drop the game. The upgrades are pretty uninteresting compared to classic megaman since all they do is change your damage values against specific bosses with no special effects or anything. The story is weak and uninspired but ciel is cute at least. I'll still play the sequel because I hear this is the worst one by far and I can tell it has the makings of a great game hidden beneath the frustration.

428: Shibuya Scramble [Completed]

1. A very very fun journey from start to end. 428 handles the constant switching between the main characters excellently and it makes for a very dynamic and enjoyable story with frequent tone shifts and twists. The story doesn't end up being particularly impactful or anything but it's a ton of fun with a lot of likable characters and good presentation. Osawa's sympathetic parental plights, Tama's scam hi-jinks with Yanagishi and Chiri, Kano's buddy-cop action with Stanley, and Minorikawa's overflowing charisma mesh better than I could've hoped and made for a large variety of quality scenes. At first I was perplexed by the lack of proper mouse support and manual saves but I quickly realized it doesn't really hurt the experience at all. The lack of text speed options did get pretty grating though and honestly the game probably would've been about 2 or 3 hours shorter if I could properly skip through text I've finished reading or scenes I've already viewed. The music is pretty good, particularly when it's bombastic like in Tama's scenes with Yanagishita though the somber tunes in Osawa's story fit very well too. Each story brought something to the table and was enjoyable in its own right, though Achi's could be pretty weak at times with his shonen-ish personality and typical romance scenes. I was very happy with how each character played a significant role in ultimately saving Shibuya, including best boy Minorikawa. I also appreciate how the Keep Outs and bad ends forced me to go through each story together instead of just going through one story at a time in its entirety which helped me get engrossed in the bigger picture and how everyone's actions tied together.

SMT: Nocturne [Completed]

1. A unique and very good JRPG mostly carried by its gameplay. Nocturne has cool atmosphere and the process of building both your character and your team of demons to overcome the many challenges is a great time. The story is very very sparse and that makes it incredibly difficult to really sympathize with any of the characters and it makes the neutral choice the obvious one since every other character is stupid. Isamu and Chiaki could've been handled better by making them your party members for a while in the beginning and giving you some insight regarding their pasts and how they lead to their respective Reasons, but as is they are just people you barely know that suddenly go from normal kids to power-obsessed weirdos. Despite the story not really being much to care about, the dialogue is fairly well-written and the NPCs and demons tend to have fun little comments. The presentation during the story scenes is also great and makes the scenes intriguing enough even if the characters are weak. Nocturne has nice difficulty in that as long as you regularly update your team and have a good enough build yourself, you can handle most challenges once you figure out the bosses' gimmicks. Matador is probably the only blatantly unfair thing I came up against in the game, he should've been placed one area later. The game does have some notable gameplay flaws however. The demon fusion not letting you pick the skills you carry over is a huge annoyance and demon negotiation is absolutely random and that is terrible. Thankfully some of those frustrations were alleviated through liberal use of save states.

Atelier Ryza [Dropped]

1. Only played for about an hour or so but the beginning was so slow and uninteresting I didn't really want to play any further despite how attractive Ryza is. What little of the combat and alchemy I experienced didn't really give me the idea that I might enjoy it later down the line and the lack of english VO is kind of a downer.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter [Dropped]

1. I thought it was going to be an action RPG or something based on how polarizing it is among the BoF fanbase but I was pretty disappointed when it just ended up being a pretty by-the-books turn based JRPG. Not a fan of the character models either.

Megaman Zero 2 [Completed]

1. Big improvement over the first game. Level design and bosses are much more fair and thus the game is a lot more fun than frustrating. The story is better but still nothing really special. It does suck that you have to fight the 3 boss characters from zero 1 again with few changes but thankfully you only have to fight them once each. The new chain weapon is cool but the swinging is kinda janky and it could get pretty annoying when they had you use it to get over spikes. I also miss the jump spin attack I had in zero 1 but I think it's probably relegated to one of the forms. The forms and EX skills are a much better incentive to get people to play the game longer than just jacking up the difficulty but I only ever ended up getting one form since I like to use just the z-saber so I didn't really get to enjoy them much.

Megaman Zero 3 [Completed]

1. Best in the series so far. The levels are smoother and more fun than in 1 and 2, there's more boss variety, the cyber elves being split into options and usable items makes them much more interesting, and you actually get some nice upgrades like the double jump and auto-charge. Story still isn't really worth caring about but it was fine. The new tonfa weapon is kind of lame since it doesn't really act differently from the z-saber besides pushing enemies back at the cost of less speed and range. Also the ability to finally skip cutscenes is VERY much appreciated.

Megaman Zero 4 [Dropped]

1. They were doing so good with each zero game being better than the one before it but 4 is lame. I appreciate that they tried to go for more gimmicky stages to keep things fresh for the 4th installment but a lot of it just ends up being annoying and the bosses are more similar to the unfair nature of 1 with attacks that are really difficult to dodge in the small space they give you. I generally liked what I saw of the writing in this one more than the others but the humans in the settlement are pretty obnoxious. The changes to the elf system seem cool enough but the weird crafting system feels stupid.

Megaman ZX [Dropped]

1. I might just be burnt out on the megaman Z games but the unnecessary shift to metroid-style progression doesn't help. The music's cool and Aile is cute and I get my spinning jump slash back finally but all the downtime and running around between missions and complete lack of difficulty in the early part of the game is just too dull for me. I'm also not a big fan of megaman X so being restricted to basically playing X for the first hour or so was pretty annoying as well as having to change back and forth between robo and human form in the city.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask [Completed]

1. Pretty standard fare for Layton which means it's pretty good. The puzzles are fun and it makes the jump to 3D very well. I like that the story is less sparse than in the original games but it does suffer from an extremely predictable plot twist and a lengthy ruins exploration segment that removes the varied puzzles for some repetitive boulder pushing and avoiding mummies. Overall it was a fun time though.

Touhou Puppet Dance Performance [Dropped]

1. Really nicely put together game. The visuals are great, particularly the sprite animations, and the music is good too. Unfortunately aside from a couple bizarre difficulty spikes, the game was extremely braindead easy from what I played of it. I never had to use more than my nazrin's hammer throw for 95% of the fights and the writing is really uninteresting as well so I just don't have the motivation to continue.

Shanghai.EXE Genso Network [Dropped]

1. An extremely well-crafted fangame with a lot of love for MMBN. The spritework, gameplay and music are all perfectly reminiscent of the battle network games with its own touhou touch. That being said, the story feels weird to me since the touhou characters are reworked into school kids and it just ends up feeling like a battle network game that just uses touhou designs. I'm certainly not even a big touhou fan but it still bugged me, particularly the inclusion of the writer's original "tsubaki" character which just felt out-of-place with everyone else being a girl from touhou. I enjoyed most of what I played but the difficulty takes a big leap up around the middle starting with the fight with Reisen and the tournament and I can't be bothered to keep struggling against it with how fast you die to the bosses. I got my fill anyhow, especially since it hasn't really been that long since I went through all the battle network and starforce games anyways.

Etrian Odyssey V [Dropped]

1. Pretty standard dungeon crawler with some annoying difficulty spikes and slooow grinding. I like the art and character designs as well as the music, and there are some interesting events that arise during your dungeoneering. Unfortunately the game is just too slow for me. Average random encounters take too long, drawing the walls on the map is boring, and characters gain exp far too slowly. There's also not really a story to keep me going or anything.

Glove on Fight [Completed..basically]

1. Glove on Fight 2 is clearly a massive step up from this since this one is super barebones, but it's still pretty charming in its simplicity and getting to beat up the chick from Kanon with dejiko was pretty fun.

Kara no Shoujo [Completed]

1. KnS handles its 50s murder mystery drama in a mature and compelling manner. The setting feels classic, the music is nice, the characters and their interactions are fun and interesting enough. Reiji is a solid main character and holds up a lot of the maturity with his dry reactions to a lot of the murders, though his lack of emotional reaction toward Toko's condition and kidnapping at the end of the game feels strange and lessens the impact. The story ends up feeling like it's juggling a few too many characters given how short it is and there's the occasional out-of-place sex scene as well, so overall the story feels more lacking than it could've been. The murders and their grotesque imagery do a good job of driving home the depravity of the antagonists and making you want to solve the mystery just as much as Reiji, but the gameplay unfortunately sabotages this with its unnecessarily complicated choice requirements to reach the ending. Having to check the walkthrough at every choice was a pain but it's better than wasting a dozen hours trying different choices. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to seeing the continuation of the story in KnS 2.

Saya no Uta [Completed]

1. Horror schlock made to appeal to teenagers. Saya no Uta has an interesting premise, and at the very least it made me want to play to the end and find out what happens, but the writing is subpar, the short length leaves no chance to get attached, and the main characters are completely impossible to feel sympathy for. The most interesting part of the story, Saya's background and the science behind her, is relegated to a very small 5 minute section so they could make more room for sex. The awkward sex scenes are very clearly just there to sell the game to coomers who associate their lust for saya with actual care. Frankly the best part was Koji beating Fuminori with a steel pipe and Ryoko blasting Saya with a 12 gauge Resident Evil-style.

Touhou Luna Nights [Completed]

1. A great homage to castlevania with excellent visuals, great music, and a well-implemented timestop mechanic. It's a tad short but at least most of it is high quality. The bosses are fun to fight, though most of them are a tad too easy. The last couple levels are unnaturally difficult compared to the rest of the game which can get annoying. I'm not a big fan of normal attacks costing MP and i think that should've just been relegated to skills. So far this is the only good 2hu game i've played so good job guys.

Nioh 2 [Dropped]

1. More like Nioh 1.5, Nioh 2 is generally an improvement over the first game but the difficulty throws a wrench in my enjoyment. I like that I can make my own character this time around since William being a set main character didn't do the first game any favors. The story is a little better but still an uninteresting mix of japanese history and characters you have very little reason to care about. The level design is much better but Nioh 2 retains the problem of lacking enemy variety and you generally fight the same things 20 hours in that you fought in the first 2 or 3 hours. The loot system is still completely unnecessary and decreases the value in exploring the levels. The co-op is practically nonexistant but that's more likely the fault of there being so few people helping others out. The AI companions are some of the most incompetent I've ever seen in a video game and serve absolutely no purpose in anything besides a 1v1 human boss fight. The combat system is still fun at its core, but the enemies are radically unbalanced and do far too much damage. What caused me to drop the game was the process of spending 10 minutes fighting a boss or going through a level without any incident, then dying immediately after making one or two mistakes because every enemy can 2-shot you. A ton of enemies and bosses also happen to have extremely powerful grab attacks which is very annoying considering how poor the telegraphing is on most of the attacks in the game. The difficulty just left me feeling tired even when I pulled through in a desperate situation and I just wasn't having a lot of fun. The weapons, while fun to use, have very large skill trees with very few actual useful skills. The fact that they're still each tied to a different stat is also annoying because it basically means you have to build for about 2 weapon types at most, while in something like dark souls you can switch between many different types of strength or dexterity weapons any time throughout the game. The yokai abilities are cool enough but the snake ability is so powerful there's very little reason to use anything else, especially when a good amount of them have lengthy animations that don't make you invulnerable.

Doom Eternal [Completed]

1. Doom Eternal is an improvement on 2016 and probably my favorite Doom game and one of my favorite FPS games overall. All the weapons feel great, there's plenty of enemies to fight, the boss fights are pretty well-designed especially for an FPS. The difficulty is at a constant high with highlights like the slayer gates and marauder fights and it kept my blood pumping throughout the whole game. A lot of people seem to have an issue with the amount of platforming but I find it really fun and satisfying. The areas are much more interesting and fun to traverse than those in 2016, especially with the dashes which greatly improve the momentum. The shortage of ammo at all times keeps the fights hectic and the flow of switching between shooting, glory kills and the chainsaw feels really natural and kept me on my toes. The sword and big punch were awesome too and add to the combat variety, though I would've liked if the normal melee was stronger. The story was serviceable but the cutscenes were entertaining as well as the constant doomguy circlejerk. It was also really surprising when doomguy actually spoke and I enjoyed it quite a bit. While I love collecting upgrades throughout the game, a lot of the upgrades in eternal felt like filler, especially the praetor suit upgrades which is a shame since those are the ones they shower you with nonstop. While I enjoyed stomping everything in 2016, the constant challenge and triumphant feeling of overcoming difficult encounters makes Eternal a real winner for me.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt [Completed]

1. A big ol' fun adventure for the whole family. TW3 is an impressive game with the sheer amount of voice acted and directed story content it has and the story is certainly compelling. The writing and dialogue is good enough to make up for the fairly lackluster combat and Geralt is a great main character whose neutral stance does a good job of letting the player freely make the choices they want without them clashing too much with an already established character. Even so, the few parts where Geralt actually shows emotion such as the scene where he finally reunites with Ciri are great and really made me feel for him. Geralt and plenty of the other main characters are charismatic and it's fun to see where they go in the story despite my complete lack of experience with the franchise. While there are plenty of highlights in the story like the bloody baron questline and the defense of kaer morhen, the Wild Hunt themselves are pretty underwhelming as the main threat. I would've been fine with them if they kept their masks on and maintained their image as a cool-looking army of ghost knights even if they're absent for a large portion of the game, but revealing that they're a bunch of elves with human motivations just makes them typical uninteresting power-hungry warmongers. As previously mentioned, the combat is lackluster but at least it's simple so it didn't impede my enjoyment of the good parts and it can be fun enough to cut up lower-level enemies. The batman detective vision sections are pretty dull but inoffensive, and I quite enjoyed the parts where I was just riding through the nice-looking environments on roach. Hopefully if they make another witcher game they'll remove the swimming.

The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone [Completed]

1. A great expansion. The quests are longer and more in-depth than those in the main game and the new characters Olgierd and Vlodomir are interesting and endearing. The party quest with Vlodimir was a ton of fun with all the goofy thing I got to hear from Geralt's voice actor and Vlodomir ended up being a really likable and sympathetic character despite appearing to be a common bandit at first. Olgierd's plight with his wife and the further exposition on Gaunter O'dimm's character were also very compelling and the finale was rock solid. The heist was fun and different from the other things you do in the game but lacked the endearing nature of the party quest. Getting to hear Geralt call someone a cuckhold was fun though. The only thing I disliked about the expansion was spending all that time with Shani, thirstiest maiden in the land, and not getting a single option to tell her I was already in a relationship with Yennefer.

Arms [Completed]

1. Fun geemu. I really like the characters, style and music of Arms. The gameplay is fun but I can't really see myself playing a lot of it since the fights all end up feeling pretty same-y despite the variety in arms. I would've liked to see all the great characters in a more traditional fighting game. The difficulty of the AI in the arcade mode is impressive for a modern nintendo game, though Hedlock is stupid and begs the player to cheese the fight. The minigames are fun enough but the AI can't figure out how to play them. The online works surprisingly well for a modern nintendo game as well. I also like all the art you can get in the gallery, plenty of soul. Min min best girl.

The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine [Completed]

1. Another great expansion that surpasses the quality of the main game. While the characters aren't as endearing as in Hearts of Stone, the story is longer and feels more fleshed-out. Toussaint is an excellent area and is surprisingly large to boot. The area music is fantastic and the colorful environment is a pleasure to traverse. The sidequests are great, I particularly enjoyed the one where Geralt has to sit in a bank for hours trying to get the forms he needs to make a withdrawal and the one where he's the subject of a painting with a comical result. Getting my own vineyard was nice even if I didn't spend a lot of time there, it at least gave me something to spend my money on. Participating in the knight competition was also very cool even if a tad too easy and it's nice they added a new mutation system to help with unnecessary skill points. The main quest is very eventful and compelling, particularly the fantastical fairy tale segment and the vampire action. While the duchess and the villain were fairly unlikable, Regis, Detlaff and the knights of Toussaint made up for it with their likable personalities and sympathetic plights. I also quite liked how Blood and Wine works as a conclusion to the game overall with Geralt finally getting to happily live in peace with Yennefer in his own comfy vineyard.

Shenmue III [Dropped]

1. I didn't want to drop it but I'm not going to force myself through a game I'm not big on just because of what series it's from. Shenmue III is unfortunately stuck in a spot where it's desperately trying to recapture the soul of the original which it simply can't because it's not a dreamcast game. Shenmue I and II had an intrinsic soul thanks to their pushing the limits of the dreamcast's power with a semi-realistic artstyle and lovingly crafted environments. Shenmue III retains all of the clunky aspects of the original games but lacks the soul that would make up for the more shoddy aspects and even turn them around and make them endearing. The artstyle has an uncanny cartoon-y look to it that is generally unpleasant to look at for every character but shenhua and the environments are reminiscent of unreal engine tech demos. The combat somehow feels worse than the original games with a serious lack of impact on the hits like every opponent is a human-shaped sandbag. Also for some reason you lose health for running which is a poor decision. What really pushed me to finally drop it was learning that the game does not even conclude the Shenmue story which is ridiculous even if the series was initially stated to have like 6 parts, because Yu Suzuki and his team should've known that managing to put out this game was a miracle in and of itself. I fear that conclusion will never come now. If I can praise the game for one thing, it's that they managed to get Ryo's original voice back and he somehow sounds exactly the same which is a nice walk down memory lane.

Resident Evil 3 Remake [Completed]

1. Good game but fairly disappointing as far as remakes go. Compared to RE2, there's much less content and the more action-oriented nature dampens the survival horror aspect just like the original. That being said, the gameplay is still very enjoyable, particularly the revamped dodge mechanic which is actually reliable enough to use now. The game does suffer from not having a "main" area to explore like RE1's mansion and RE2's RPD but the areas are still well-designed with the exception of the clock tower area which they removed even though it was the part I was most looking forward to. I would've liked for them to expand the raccoon city streets substantially. Nemesis could have been a great step up from Mr.X if he actually followed you through areas as you completed them but instead he's mostly just relegated to setpieces and boss fights. To be fair, the boss fights are good but he could've been implemented much better. Jill and Carlos are handled pretty well but Nicholai is a weak villain and I think they should've just left the villainy to Nemesis. Fighting hunter betas as Carlos was a pain in the butt since they can use their one-hit kill when I'm at full health and his weapons can't handle them very well which was extremely annoying. Overall the game really doesn't feel like it was crafted with half as much love as RE2make, but it was still enjoyable enough.

Acceleration of Suguri 2 [Dropped]

1. Enjoyable enough when playing with a friend because the fights are a whacky mess, though I don't really have an interest in playing the story. Also I really dig the main menu.

Doom 64 [Completed]

1. Fun classic doom action. Doom 64 has great levels with fun action and nice atmosphere. It's unfortunate there's not really any new weapons to play around with besides the red laser thing I barely got to use, but the original arsenal is still enough to have plenty of fun. The final boss was terrible with her homing missiles but besides that, the difficulty is generally pretty well-balanced and I hardly ever got frustrated. There was a tad too much of pulling switches then having to look for what door opened or what platform dropped and the like but most of the puzzles were well-done. Also I would've liked if they added mouselook considering it's a modern PC release and it's a given in fanmade versions of Doom 1 and 2, but the classic auto aim style wasn't too bad.

Tekken 7 [Completed..basically]

1. Pretty fun. As far as 3D fighters go, I prefer soul calibur and DoA but Tekken has it's own charm with its large roster and customization options. The music's pretty bad but the game looks good and the treasure hunt mode is pretty fun. Online is pretty solid too. Only thing I'm not really a fan of is the skin textures which have an odd plastic look to them.

Kara no Shoujo: The Second Episode [Completed]

1. I was weary of KnS 2 to begin with due to the first couple hours consisting mainly of incredibly dull slice-of-life high schooler antics. Thankfully it serves the purpose of introducing a lot of the primary players in the main mystery and afterwords we get right back to the main appeal of Kara no Shoujo: The detective drama starring a mature tired adult. KnS 2 is a straight upgrade from the first game thanks to it's beautiful art, tone-setting music and focus on a single larger overarching mystery with a complex string of branching sub-mysteries that tie into it. The first game suffered from being rather short and still splitting its focus between 2 cases and antagonists even if they did tie into each other, while KnS 2 is much longer and more focused. While Reiji is a great protagonist, it's nice that the game regularly switches perspectives to different characters like Ayato for a little bit just as a change of pace since the game is so lengthy. It was a bit disappointing that Uozumi and Takashiro are pretty much absent from KnS 2 but I do like Yaginuma having a larger presence since his antagonistic-yet-competent-and-understanding demeanor contrasts well with Reiji and makes for some entertaining scenes. The new side characters like Toji and the takoyaki merchant are great additions as well. Aside from the intro, the game proceeds at a good pace and the cool 50s detective drama atmosphere makes up for the slower parts. The mystery is complex with enough bits and pieces to keep you from figuring out everything for 90% of the story, though it can spend a bit too much time on blood type analysis. KnS 2 also ends very well with a cathartic but depressing conclusion reminiscent of Max Payne 2. While a part of me would've liked for the story to be a bit more connected to the first game, I appreciate that it's set on the backburner as a closed case much like the search for Toko.

Sega Bass Fishing [Dropped]

1. It has some dreamcast soul and the process of actually reeling in fish is pretty fun but actually getting them to bite is so inconsistent that it saps out a lot of the fun. The controls are pretty clunky as well, particularly switching between reeling and moving the rod. Some variation in the music would've helped as well.

Touhou 15.5 [Dropped]

1. I had decently high hopes for a 2hu fighting game and the gameplay seems solid enough but the single player content sucks and I don't want to go through the hassle of port forwarding for multiplayer. The spritework is great and the music is good as well. The fighting is interesting enough with plenty of attack variety but I would've preferred if you had free range movement rather than jumping up and down. The story mode has a very simplistic story with short and uninteresting character interactions and the fights all play out the same way with one braindead 1st round that has no reason to exist since it lasts 5 seconds and a second round where the opponent uses one or 2 attacks over and over again while the fight is artificially extended by a shield that removes the counter-plays usually seen in fighting games. I couldn't find a way to consistently block bullets so the opponents would frequently fill the screen with bullets that I had no way of effectively dealing with in the later stories. Maybe I was just missing something but I pressed all the button combinations and the game has no tutorial so I don't feel I can be blamed for that. I was told dashing would make me invulnerable but it didn't seem to work 80% of the time.

Resident Evil Resistance [Completed..basically]

1. Can't say I really expected much out of this tacked-on multiplayer mode but I definitely wasn't impressed. There might be some fun to be had if you play with friends or get into a room with people of a similar skill level, but there are so few players I got stuck in a match with experienced players that sped through the level while knowing the location of every objective and completely nullifying the threat of the mastermind. The matchmaking itself also took like 5 minutes and was awful. The big damage numbers when you shoot stuff is also bad. Same with the lack of the dodge mechanic from the main game. Yeaaaaaah not a great time.

Animal Crossing New Horizons [Completed]

1. Exactly what you'd expect from animal crossing I guess. It looks nice and the island atmosphere is super cozy. As always I really like collecting fossils and fishing. I'm not a fan of the very slow drip-feed of content and the easter event was terrible. I like the crafting for decorations and such but having to constantly craft replacement tools is nothing but a waste of time. I like the idea of completing certain objectives to increase the island ranking but being told to plant more flowers every day for a week was very boring. The game lacks some pretty obvious QoL features like crafting multiple objects at a time and skipping dialogue you've heard dozens of times. The online system is very archaic but I didn't use it too much. I might have just gotten some bad villagers but my villagers never really had anything interesting to say, especially the two jock types who were extremely one-note. Besides the gathering of bugs, fossils, and fish, there's not really much to do so it feels pretty barebones despite knowing that you're really supposed to just play it for half an hour each day. It may just be nostalgia but I feel like I got a more complete package from wild world on the DS.

Half-Life: Alyx [Completed]

1. Best game I've played all year and the best VR game period. Alyx is more of a survival horror game than an FPS but it melds the two perfectly. The immersion of VR enhances everything from shootouts to exploration to puzzles to scavenging for ammo and resins. It doesn't rely on gimmicks, and instead has great level design and a large variety of environments, setpieces and confrontations. The gravity gloves are fantastic additions that make collecting items feel great and keeps the annoying height issues surrounding picking things up to a minimum while still feeling natural. Weapons are satisfying to fire, upgrades feel substantial and the game is short enough that only having 3 weapons doesn't get dull. The banter is rarely funny but it's endearing and generally appears at the right times. The atmosphere of the levels is great, particularly sneaking around Jeff and the wild ride in the finale. The ending is great and takes the franchise in a very interesting direction. The only issues I really had with the game are that there's a tad too many puzzles, sneaking around barnacles is annoying without really having a good grasp of how wide your "body" is, and not really the game but my headset's tracking could get a bit wonky. Can't wait for Half Life 3.

Boneworks [Dropped]

1. I'm guessing this is a lot better with an index. Boneworks was physically uncomfortable for me, not because of the motion but because there's no toggle for holding items and weapons so I was stuck holding 2 trigger buttons on one and sometimes both controllers for extended periods of time which was hard on the hands. The physics are impressive but I spent more time struggling with them than being immersed. The melee combat felt awful and the combat encounters were generally bland. The levels overall didn't really have much spark to them but the music was great.

Skyrim VR [Dropped]

1. It's nice that you can play the entirety of skyrim in VR, and it's a pretty cool experience for a while. Unfortunately, once the novelty wears off you realize it's just your 10th skyrim playthrough with some slightly more entertaining combat. The novelty wears off relatively faster than with other VR games since it had the bare minimum adjustments made to make it VR and there are very few ways to interact with the world. You even have to mod the game just to see your own body when you look down.

Kid Icarus Uprising [Completed]

1. Very well-made game kinda let down by the fact that it's on the 3DS. The controls are fine for the air battles but are hard on the hands for the ground battles and I just really don't like controlling the camera with the touchscreen especially since I don't have a stylus. The game also would've benefited from a dodge/dash button instead of having it rely on sudden analog stick movements. The small screen could also get pretty cluttered at times. Aside from that, the game has a lot of visually appealing and energetic levels with fun dialogue and charming characters. The character models look quite good for a 3DS game and the character designs are varied and memorable. The music is quite good as well. Even though the game was relatively short, it does kind of feel a bit padded out with some levels not really bringing anything interesting to the table. The bosses, while varied and generally well-thought-out, die surprisingly fast so they don't really stick in the mind. I would like to see a sequel on the switch or something with improved controls that gives the cast more time to shine since a few characters like phosphora and pyron barely got to appear.

Beyond Good & Evil [Completed]

1. I was seriously impressed that Ubisoft of all companies managed to make something this good once upon a time. BGE has a surprisingly great soundtrack, fun gameplay, smooth setpieces, likable characters, well-written dialogue, and a compelling story. Collecting pearls is enjoyable, especially since they provide substantial upgrades, are very necessary for progression, and rarely require going through repeated or uninteresting content. Taking pictures of animals is also fun since the creatures are pretty unique and it gives you pearls. The combat is simple and most of the game is pretty easy to breeze through but killing enemies feels good enough to make up for the lack of difficulty. The stealth sections require more thought and balance out the braindead nature of the combat. The game has a nice enough artstyle for a gamecube game but could use a remaster. There were some frequent audio bugs where voice lines would overlap or cut each other off. The only other issues would be the game not really telling you need to get a flight stabilizer before the domz would attack the lighthouse, the last phase of the final boss being a big pain in the butt, a tad too many stealth sections, and the game ending on a cliffhanger that probably won't be resolved any time soon.

Panzer Dragoon [Completed]

1. A very short, pretty cool rail shooter. The 3D saturn graphics have a neat look to them and the stages are atmospheric. The soundtrack is also pretty good but it can be hard to hear over all the shooting. The story is simple and not very interesting and the intro cutscene goes on for too long but the dragon and rider designs are good. The gameplay is pretty standard fare for a rail shooter, though it's cool that you can rotate 360 degrees at all times. I'm never a fan of movement being tied to aim but it's only really an issue in the tighter spaces. I don't really have a problem with the length since I didn't pay for it but I do feel they ramped up the difficulty to compensate for it and that can get annoying.

Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei [Completed]

1. A big improvement over the original in every way. Zwei's gameplay is smoother with faster shots, easier movement and a better camera. The areas are more visually interesting and the music is great. The story is still pretty simple but it's much better than the first one and easier to follow and care about as well. It's also cool how they incorporate some ground sections for variety. The difficulty feels more fair in this one though the last couple levels can be a pain to get through in one go. Also the final boss fight is awesome. Sega just can't stop pumping out the soul.

Final Fantasy VII Remake [Completed]

1. A really good game that really likes to waste my time. FF7R has great presentation with some nice-looking areas and great music. While the graphics are