The First 50:
51. Kid Dracula (Switch)(Platformer)52. Castlevania (Switch)(Platformer)
53. Akumajō Dracula (Switch)(Platformer)54. Akumajō Dracula [Castlevania IV](Switch)(Platformer)55. The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone (PC)(RPG)
56. Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (Switch)(Platformer)57. Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge (Switch)(Platformer)
58. The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine (PC)(RPG)59. The Darkness II (PC)(FPS)60. MOTHERGUNSHIP (PC)(FPS)
61. SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash - SNK Version (NGPC)(Card Game)62. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC)(RPG)
63. STRAFE (PC)(FPS)
64. Shadow Warrior [2013] (PC)(FPS)
65. Shanghai Mini (NGPC)(Puzzle)The Elder Scrolls III: MorrowindI have been playing Morrowind off and on since its release in 2002. That's nearly 20 years of exploring Vvardenfell, searching its ruins, fighting its foes, and plunging its depths. I have gone on to complete both expansions, Tribunal and Bloodmoon, and checked out the new areas that they added to a fascinating and unusual world. Yet somehow in all this time I never actually beat the main plot.
How is this possible? Well, that's the beauty of Morrowind; you can just wander off in any direction at any time and find new things to explore and discover. After a while, I would simply get bored of the main plot and go do something else. And then something else after that. And something else after that. Until eventually the main plot was simply forgotten as I was now busy running three guilds, a major House, an assassins organization, so on and so forth. Morrowind was my first real taste of an open world done right, but it offered up so much content, it could become easy to drown in. Yet it always left me wanting more.
Well, finally, in 2020, after nearly two decades, I decided to bet the main plot...and I still ended up wandering off long enough to take over the Fighter's Guild before coming back, but I did it. I finally beat Morrowind. It feels extremely bittersweet, as this is a game I have loved for so long and now can put away, yet wandering its hills, islands, and wastelands was a strong comfort. But it's also hard not to notice the flaws too.
While this was a great moment in moving from the norms of earlier WRPGs and their tabletop influence into enabling me to explore a world fully, there are some things that are just archaic and frustrating. Hidden dice rolls are perhaps the most noticeable; Morrowind uses them for calculating whether you hit, so even though you swung your sword through an enemy, if the roll didn't count up, you didn't connect. You can't actually see the rolls, and its partially based on RNG, so even with high stats, expect moments where you'll swing over and over again at a basic rat and miss, but your next four hits on a much tougher opponent will all connect. You also have rudimentary means of interacting with people and merchants as well as doing things like lockpicking, which would be replaced by minigames in later entries to try and keep things interesting.
There are also problems with monster generation, primarily known as the Cliff Racer issue, where the most annoying enemy in the game is the most common, will follow you forever, and at times will seem to come at you in near-infinite numbers. At this point, many folks mod Cliff Racers out of the game entirely, and playing the base game without any changes to them, man, I forgot how annoying they are.
Now some of these problems have been improved or fixed with mods, but the combat system's woes haven't really been repaired outside of attempts to add numbers to the formula to register hits. Modders are still working with Morrowind, so if you want new content, there is plenty. Unfortunately, it creates issues with stability, and even today, Morrowind is prone to crashing, as well as other bugs such as falling through floors in the major city Vivec. Still, since when was an Elder Scrolls game not plagued by bugs?
Sadly, Morrowind saw the end of Spears as a weapon class and the stupid powerful Levitation spells, which has made the series considerably less vertical. The next Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, lacks some of the fascinating dungeon design that could be incorporated as a result.
I still love Morrowind, despite its flaws. Perhaps one day I will return yet again to wander it, but with so many other games to play, it is time to set this aside, possibly for good. Farewell, Dunmer of Vvardenfell, from your dear Neravar.
STRAFESTRAFE got a lot of hype when it first popped up on the scene with a ridiculous and fantastic promo video in the middle of this decade. It promised randomized levels, constant violence, and solid throwback gameplay to the best of the 1990s. On release...well, it petered out. Given time, however, it has since booted many of the bugs, implemented better level designs, and added more content. It still isn't quite the '90s FPS I want it to be, but it brings me the copious amounts of blood and violence, so I can forgive it and see it as its own game, not just a wannabe of a glorious and idealized past.
Here's the plot: you're on a space ship. It crashes. Explore and kill anything that gets in your way. Actually, it reminds me a lot of Unreal in this regard. It never says, it just does, so the plot must be inferred as you are busy blasting off limbs and turning enemies into paste. In that regard, it mostly excels, as enemies can often be blasted apart, torn limb from limb, and otherwise demolished into pixelated smears of red blood. There is even a strategic element to this, as some enemies bleed acid, yet red blood can cover it up, so I know just where to kill my enemies to help myself out.
Unfortunately, your weapon choices are limited to an assault rifle, shotgun, and railgun at the start, each with an alternate fire. Yet these weapons commit a cardinal sin in throwback design: they require reloading. Worse yet, they work based on Tactical FPS design, so while you can hold 99 magazines, if you empty half of one and reload, you just threw away the other half of that magazine. Them's good bullets you could have been using. While this forced reloading can make for a frantic pause in the shooing while you're trying to dodge monsters, it does stop you from keeping your guns blazing constantly in the way you could in something like Doom or Quake.
Still, there are other elements mixed in which make for a fascinating experience. For one, there are numerous secrets to find, which often contain minigames inspired by or parodying important titles in FPS and gaming history. For instance, you can find a Wolfenstein parody in the first couple of levels. The second set of levels includes a jump map which will require all of your skills at maneuvering, Quake-style: bunny hopping, strafe jumping, rocket jumping, plasma jumping...you name it, its there to use, and in some cases you'll even have to swap between different styles midway through a maneuver. Also, there's a parody SNES with a parody version of Enter the Gungeon and a joke on a Walking Sim that reveals you're playing a famous FPS leading man. Not to mention numerous other secrets and references. It's obvious the devs had a love for the genre that cannot be denied.
You also have other additions, such as alternate game styles found in a faux DOS input system, a tutorial, an "Easy Mode" toggle for the weak, a New Game + for the strong, and an options menu that reminds me of those green card catalog systems from public libraries circa the late 1980s.
Yeah, I liked STRAFE. I liked it a lot, especially uncovering the weird and wonderful things it contains. I'm glad I missed the early release woes and waited, but I had a blast once I snagged it.
Shadow Warrior [2013]Look, I loathe the original Shadow Warrior. The level designs don't work for me, the weapons feel wildly inconsistent and don't fit the theme or even borderline unusable, and the game is laced with more casual racism than I care to recall regarding different groups of peoples from different East Asian countries. Duke Nukem 3D works as a parody of action films, and Blood works as a parody of horror films, but Shadow Warrior fell flat to me as a parody of martial arts movies.
However, the 2013 revamp of the series is great. It's not perfect, but it takes the next generation of the three major build engine games and blows them away. Let's face it, Blood II sucked, and the less said about Duke Nukem Forever, the better. Shadow Warrior is now king of this mountain, and it does it by paying homage to the martial arts movies that inspired it while also making hero Lo Wang (shame about that name though) into an interesting character and not just another Asian stereotype. This guy's a Chinese immigrant who collects comic books and works as a hitter for the leader of a Japanese megacorp, and he grows and develops over the course of the story in subtle ways, even as he cracks wise against his enemies and sometimes screws up his lines. In fact, he's more endearing when he does screw them up, because it makes him seem that much more relatable. He's not cool all the time, but he's cool often enough.
The game starts with Wang being sent to purchase a sword for his boss, Orochi Zilla (another terrible name from the first game). Of course, things go south, demons show up, and you are joined by a ghostly creature known as an Ancient that loves movies and can't remember why he's been booted out of his dimension. You then learn that the sword you're seeking is just one piece of three swords, so to help out your new buddy Hoji and try to stop this demonic invasion, you go on your epic journey of blowing shit up and providing bullet and sword injections into the faceholes of every enemy you meet.
Shadow Warrior pays homage to the weapons of the previous game, while dropping the worst elements, such as the shotgun-chaingun in favor of an ugly multibarrel shotgun that can be upgraded even further. In fact, everything is upgradable, including your sword skills, your guns, powers, and even standard stats like enemy drops, speed and stamina, health, etc. You acquire money to purchase gun mods, you earn karma through combat to learn new techniques and skills, and you seek magic crystals which are then converted into tattoos to give you powers and upgrade said powers. The array of possibilities lets you build how you wish, and on an initial run, you won't get everything, though you will get most. That's ok, you can do a New Game + and keep going for more with your upgraded gear later if you so choose.
Of course, there are still problems. The first is that the devs just couldn't shed everything from the original, so you are still stuck with a guy named Lo Wang, a bad dick joke that never goes away. The second is that the game likes its bottomless insta-kill pits, but it sometimes puts them in weird places where it looks like you can jump down. I died something like 14 times in my playthrough, and nearly all of them were due to things like this. "Hey, let me drop down to go grab something" DEAD. "Hey, there's a shallow lane that looks like it goes right under that bridge. Maybe it's a secret" DEAD. It's mostly an annoyance, but in a game that gets a lot right, the annoyances do stand out.
Still, it is fun to hack a bunch of demons limb from limb, then turn around and unload with a pair of upgraded uzis into a bigger demon that's charging at you, so you can then take its head and use it as a weapon against a horde of flying demons that just swooped in from above. Oh yeah.
Shanghai MiniThe NGPC had a variety of puzzle games, slot machine games, and even the likes of a Picross knock off. It also has a Mahjong Solitaire game, so of course I picked it up. What surprised me was just how much content I would be getting.
Shanghai Mini is Mahjongg Solitaire in a variety of ways. The first is a traditional set of designs that you go through. There is no time limit, and you match your tiles and continue through. Get stuck? You can go back multiple moves, or you could simply restart. While the tiles aren't always easy to see on the small screen, this is my favorite part of the game; it's relaxing, it's entertaining, and it's fun to work through the designs.
The second is a "tournament" mode that has a plot, in which a guy in Bruce Lee's yellow jumpsuit from the unfinished Game of Death climbs a pagoda of Mahjongg Solitaire masters. Yeah, more Game of Death. However, these puzzles have time limits, you can't go back, and the designs are more intricate. In fact, they're annoyingly intricate, and there appears to be only one specific method you have to use to get through the design. While there is a password system to let you get to specific stages, you'll probably end up brute forcing many of these puzzles until you find the highly specific manner in which it wants you to resolve said puzzle. As a result, it just isn't fun when compared to what I want out of the game. I would much rather go back and play through the various designs of the original mode again.
The third mode is multiplayer. Yep, there is a competitive way to approach Mahjong Solitaire, either against the computer (represented by a robot) or another human player on their own NGPC. The object is to race against the other person to resolve your puzzle the fastest. To make things more interesting, there are special tiles you can use as well which impact the other player, such as causing their controls to reverse, flipping their tiles over for a few seconds, or even restoring the last four tiles they just got rid of so they have to backtrack. While the AI doesn't have much of an issue tackling this, it can throw a person off their game fast. Also, if you don't like these special abilities, you can turn them off both individually or as a whole to suit what you want. It's a level of customization that I greatly appreciate in what should by all rights be a very simple game.
I wanted Shanghai Mini from the moment I learned about it on the NGPC, and I have happily returned to it several times when I go on my NGPC kicks. Even though there are parts which don't work as well, there is enough variety to offer fans different ways to play depending on what they want, and I respect even those modes that I do not care for. I'm glad I bought this.
