Games Beaten 2023

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Sat Dec 30, 2023 1:00 am

Partridge Senpai's 2023 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
* indicates a repeat

1~51

52. Gyakuten Saiban 3 (GBA) *
53. Pokemon Gold (GBC)
54. Beltlogger 9 (PS1)
55. 64 De Hakken!! Tamagotchi: Minna De Tamagotchi World (N64)
56. Koudelka (PS1)
57. Pilotwings 64 (N64)
58. Mickey's Speedway USA (N64)
59. Boku No Natsuyasumi (PS1)
60. Pokemon Stadium: Gold & Silver (N64)
61. Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Switch)
62. Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64)
63. Pokemon Yellow (GB) *
64. Pokemon Stadium (N64)
65. Batman (GB)
66. Pokemon Snap (N64) *
67. Diddy Kong Racing (N64)
68. Wipeout XL (PS1)
69. Bomberman 64 (2001) (N64)
70. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (N64)
71. A Short Hike (PC)
72. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (N64)
73. Super B-Daman: Battle Phoenix 64 (N64)

74. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64)

I've played quite a lot of Star Wars games over the year, and I've been something of a fan of Star Wars for quite a long time too. In my head, I always knew that this game was quite popular, so I've been meaning to play it for absolute ages, but it's only now that I've finally gotten to playing it. I'm not the biggest fan of flying games, but given that this was more arcadey than sim-like, I figured this would be okay for me. It was clearly okay for me enough to beat it, at least! XD. It took me about 9 hours to beat the game's 16 missions, and out of those I got 3 silver medals and 6 bronze medals. I played the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

Rogue Squadron is the story of the titular squadron, who are a fighting unit in the Rebellion and then in the New Republic in the Star Wars expanded universe. This game has four chapters, with the first three having five missions and taking place in or around the respective first three Star Wars films, and the last chapter 4 only having one mission and taking place well after the 3rd film. You usually play as Luke Skywalker and it's following side stories around him specifically. The writing is nothing really amazing or exceptional, but it all makes for a fun time. This game exists to facilitate fun Star Wars Stuff, and the story does a very good job of allowing that.

The gameplay is a more arcadey approach to a flight sim. You play in a series of missions with their own specific objectives, and sometimes those objectives evolve and expand as you progress through the respective mission. Your flying is far from complicated as far as flight sims go, but it's a lot more complicated than something like Star Fox 64. There are even some upgrades you can find hidden in some missions to empower your arsenal even further. They're quite hard to find and generally very well hidden, so I'd recommend a guide to find them, but there was no way I was ever going to beat the game without them.

I'm not the biggest fan of this kind of game, and I'm also not super familiar with this kind of game in general, but with my limited experience with these kinds of things, I found it fairly well designed. That said, there are some design choices and hardware limitations that really harm the overall experience. The missions have basically no checkpoints outside of 4 respawn extra lives you get. Player information is also quite poor, as you only ever know your own health. The health of the thing(s) you're guarding, where objectives are at all, or even where missiles/shots are coming from is never made clear and it can make it very difficult to survive missions, let alone complete them. On top of all that, the very often poor framerate really makes the whole experience that much more frustrating than it already is. None of these are totally game breaking problems, but they definitely show just how badly the game has aged, and it'll all likely make for a very frustrating time for people more used to more recent (and better optimized) flying games.

The presentation of the game is, like the story, perfectly suited to facilitate fun Star Wars Stuff. All the ships you fly and fight against are just like they are in the movies and such. The voice overs and VA are good quality, and the sound-alikes they got for the characters from the films sound spot on. It's a bit of a shame that there's no Japanese VA, because I can only imagine how difficult it is playing a flying game while hurriedly reading subtitles, but at least that's something you can justify by saying that it makes it more like the films if we keep the original English voices. The music is also taken largely right from the films, and the presentation is really just what you'd want from a space-flying N64 Star Wars game.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. While I will fully admit that this just isn't a game for me, the technical issues of the hardware its on make it a pretty difficult game to recommend. If you're a fan of flying games or a BIG Star Wars fan, you very well might find this game a lot of fun, but if you're just looking for some casual Star Wars fun on the N64, this game is probably going to be quite a difficult game to get through, and it's likely going to be a pretty tough time to find fun with it as well.

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75. Jinsei Game 64 (N64)

A game you probably are more familiar with under the title of "The Game of Life," that board game is actually popular enough in Japan to have received Japan-specific editions as well as video games (of which this is one). I hadn't planned on picking this one up, but I'd heard it was quite neat and happened to find it at Book Off earlier in the month, so I figured I'd give it a try. Upon reflection, I actually had probably heard of the Taito-developed game released a year or so earlier, so I hadn't actually found the sick score I thought I had, but I bought what I bought, so I figured I might as well see what makes it tick XD. I played the game on real hardware, and I went through three games (two short, and one long) and spent about 11 hours doing it all, though I managed to win only the last of those games that I played (the 5+ hour long one).

There is no story to speak of, as this is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the board game. The additions present are largely in the execution of the gameplay experience, but the story is still the same. You start as a baby, and this game follows you through school and work all the way to the end of your life, and at the very end King Yama judges your soul and you get to see which part of the afterlife you end up in. It's just a board game, though, so it really doesn't need a story. The story is one you put together yourself as you rage at your friends for how much bullshit luck they happen into XD

The actual gameplay is really just The Game of Life, though it is a very noble attempt at trying to make that (bad) board game more interesting. You spin the spinner, you get good events and bad events, you decide to go to university or not and you get a job, you can get cards to use when you want. It's nothing that different from many versions of the game, at least as far as the base mechanics go. For the more advanced stuff, they've put in a small handful of mini-games which you get to play now and then to upgrade your stats. That's right, there are stats in this version, smarts, body, style, and morality, and you'll need higher stats to both get certain jobs as well as get promotions in those jobs. You can also get married and have kids (if you get lucky enough to land on the romance spaces and get lucky enough events with them), and you can also buy things like pets or real estate or find things like skills or items, though this is still The Game of Life. At the end of the day, everything comes down to money, as that's the game's only real method of totaling up your scores, and that's really where a lot of the faults come into play.

Now when we start talking about faults, we can't really ignore that, at its core, The Game of Life is a pretty boring board game. You can make little decisions here and there on how to use the special cards you find, what job to pick and when to change careers, and which path to take on the small handful of tiny forks in the road, but this is a game largely defined by how lucky each player gets and not much else. This isn't helped by just how badly the AI is at playing the game. They make utterly nonsensical choices constantly outside of cards with specific targets (which they always use to target the person in 1st place). They never buy real estate, and that's often going to be the metric that decides who wins, so they're actually really hard to lose to once you know what you're doing (especially because your standing only takes into account your current cash-on-hand total, not your net worth, for whatever reason). It's also really easy to get trapped into cycles of debt that are nearly impossible to get out of, as the game makes it VERY hard to get out of debt with your debt growing by 10% every payday regardless of your salary.

I could list a bunch more little problems here and there, but it all comes down to that playing by yourself is awful, and the way the game works overall makes it not terribly fun to play with friends either. It has procedurally generated boards, and you can even make your own boards and make your own characters to play as, both of which is quite neat. However, on my copy, character creation simply doesn't work, so take that for what you will. Games also take like 2+ hours to play at the absolute shortest, so even if you're just playing with one other person, get ready for the long haul if you're playing this game. That's right, it's not just boring, it's also VERY long too XD

The aesthetics, at the very least, are very nice. The 2D animations that play for your character during the good, bad, and otherwise events are very charmingly put together and it's always fun to see what weird nonsense is gonna befall your poor little fellas. The music isn't anything special, but it fits the tone of the game just fine, and the mini-games in particular have very fun little songs tied to them.

Verdict: Not Recommended. While this may be about as noble an attempt as is possible (outside of the nearly useless AI) to make The Game of Life an interesting and fun experience, but there's only so much that you can polish a turd XD. It's a neat curiosity on the N64, but it's also just such a crappy time that it's not worth much more than being a neat curiosity, and your time is probably better spent playing any of the other myriad of party games that are on this console.

Post by **SpaceBooger** » Sat Dec 30, 2023 5:28 pm

Lufia and the Fortress of Doom (SNES) 1/21/23
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (SEGA CD) 4/1/23
Crystalis (NES) 4/21/23
Life on Mars (GEN) 4/30/23
Illusion of Gaia (SNES) 5/31/23
Wonderboy in Monster World (Genesis) 6/15/23
Final Fantasy Legend (GB) 7/2/23
Metroid Prime (Wii) 7/21/23
Donkey Kong Country (SNES) 7/29/23
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (XBOX One) 11/20/23
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA) 12/1/23
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES) 12/28/23
Traumatarium (GB) 12/30/23

Traumatarium (GB) 12/30/23
This is a new GB game I Kickstarted to get a physical copy to play on my GBC. The game is described as:

Welcome to Traumatarium, a short Game Boy game where the goal was trying to push the visual limitations of the hardware, and create a randomly generated, visually engaging, dungeon crawling experience.

There are five random dungeons that are made of 10 rooms. Each time you play a dungeon or the game everything is random. Since you can go back and redo dungeons you already beat, it is easy to grind to get the gear to blow through the final dungeon. After I beat the game there was a rank presented to me... and I was not satisfied. It must have been the grinding.
Since this is a short game, I will try to beat it again for a better rank.
This is a perfect portable game. If you are interested in playing it in a browser or buying the ROM for your Analog Pocket or FlashCart check out the games itch.io site: https://horatiunyc.itch.io/traumatarium

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Sun Dec 31, 2023 12:51 am

Partridge Senpai's 2023 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
* indicates a repeat

1~51

52. Gyakuten Saiban 3 (GBA) *
53. Pokemon Gold (GBC)
54. Beltlogger 9 (PS1)
55. 64 De Hakken!! Tamagotchi: Minna De Tamagotchi World (N64)
56. Koudelka (PS1)
57. Pilotwings 64 (N64)
58. Mickey's Speedway USA (N64)
59. Boku No Natsuyasumi (PS1)
60. Pokemon Stadium: Gold & Silver (N64)
61. Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Switch)
62. Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64)
63. Pokemon Yellow (GB) *
64. Pokemon Stadium (N64)
65. Batman (GB)
66. Pokemon Snap (N64) *
67. Diddy Kong Racing (N64)
68. Wipeout XL (PS1)
69. Bomberman 64 (2001) (N64)
70. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (N64)
71. A Short Hike (PC)
72. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (N64)
73. Super B-Daman: Battle Phoenix 64 (N64)
74. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64)
75. Jinsei Game 64 (N64)

76. Soul Blazer (SFC)

Known as "Soul Blader" here in Japan, I've been meaning to get to this game and its two sequels for quite some time now, and a simple sort of Zelda-like was just what I was in the mood for after all of that N64 playing earlier in the month. I honestly had virtually no idea what this game was even like, but its reputation was good enough that I was willing to take the chance regardless. It took me a bit under 8 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on emulated hardware without abusing save states or using a guide.

Soul Blazer tells the story of a heavenly guardian come down to the world to set things right. The great demon lord Deathtoll was summoned by humanity, so the souls of just about every living thing have been sealed away by his dark minions. It's your mission to head down there and set things right again. While the story's presentation is quite of its time (that being quite simple and without much use of scene-setting music), it's actually a surprisingly well written story dealing with how there can always be hope in the world despite how eager humanity can be to march towards its own demise for personal enrichment. It's not exactly the best story on the Super Famicom or anything, but it was one I enjoyed nonetheless, and it's nice to see a more well considered story in a Zelda-like like this.

While I do call this game a Zelda-like, it's honestly much more like Ys 1&2 and Gauntlet had a baby that was then raised by Actraiser XD (which makes some degree of sense, given that this was made by the guys who made both Ys 1&2 and Actraiser). It's a top down action game much like Gauntlet or Dungeon Explorers, and you go through dungeons killing all the monsters in an area. Upon killing all of the monsters out of a certain spawner, the spawner will explode all on its own, and walking over it will destroy it and free the soul of the being trapped in it.

Upon returning to the town of that particular area (of which the game has seven), you can talk to these beings (be they people, animal, or plant) and receive information, goodies, or just a simple thank you. This game has no money, so your goodies you find generally fall into being either new equipment (armor, swords, or spells), or just the power gems that you collect to power your spells. It's a pretty simple gameplay loop overall, but it's one that works really well regardless. It'll probably be a bit of an easy game for some (though the English version is a little bit harder), but I found its challenge to be juuuust right for me as a veteran of the genre. Even if you are having a hard time, you gain experience points from killing monsters, and there are always monsters that aren't connected to spawners that simply respawn when you enter and leave the screen, so simple EXP grinding to power up more is always an option if you're having trouble~.

The presentation of the game is really stand-out excellent. As mentioned earlier, we're taking a LOT of stuff from Actraiser, as almost all of the sound effects and even significant bits of the UI seem to just be copied directly over from Actraiser. Heck, even the way enemies get stunned slightly after hitting them is right out of Actraiser XD. Thankfully, not only is the Actraiser stuff very good and functional, so reusing it here is hardly a problem, but we also got a banging soundtrack too! This game's soundtrack was awesome, and there was barely a new area I got to where I didn't say out loud "oh hell yeah, this song rocks!". The graphics are also very pretty, though they're certainly of the time for a '92 SFC game.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. With a nice little story and really fun and balanced gameplay, this is a super easy recommendation. If you like 2D Zelda-type stuff at all, then this will likely be a game you quite enjoy, and you don't even need to be super good at these sorts of games to beat it. An awesome action/adventure game to spend a weekend with, if there ever was one~.

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77. Illusion of Gaia (SFC)

Continuing on with the Super Famicom's Quintet trilogy, this was the obvious next choice to play after Soul Blazer. Now this is a game I actually have played some of before, but I only got like a third of the way in and it was a LONG time ago. I'd also heard a lot of things over the years about how much worse the English version was vs. the original Japanese one (in a very standard mood for an Enix-published title), so I was very interested to see what the original version was like. It took me about 12 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on emulated hardware without abusing save states.

Illusion of Gaia is the story of Temu, a young boy who lives in a coastal town and spends all day hanging out with his buddies. He's always had strange, telekinetic powers, but he's a kid like any other, and as soon as he's able, he's vowed to go out and find his father who disappeared a year ago when he left town to search for the Tower of Babel. After the kingdom's princess flees to his town and hides in his house, he and her become fast friends, and before they know it, the king has imprisoned Temu and they've all started onto a grand adventure to save the world.

In grand Enix fashion, I've heard many times over the years that this is a really poorly translated game in its English release. I've heard it described as outright nonsensical, even. The Japanese version, on the other hand, is actually a surprisingly really well written story. It's a really thoughtfully written tale about growing up, and I really loved how it tackled themes of discrimination (and while not perfect about it, it's a lot better than even a lot of games now get these sorts of things, frankly). Illusion of Gaia is a story very concerned about life, death, and just what you spend the one life you have doing. Life is never a completely pretty thing, and good people do bad things all the time for all sorts of reasons. What sort of life you lead and what you get from it, as well as what you do to others, is what paints this grand tapestry we call life. It's got some similar execution problems to Soul Blazer in how it doesn't always use music as well as it could to set certain scenes, but the story was nonetheless a really excellent one, and it's easily one of my new favorites on the console. It's just a shame it's nowhere remotely as good in the English release ^^;

The gameplay is once again a sort of Zelda-like, but with generally stiffer feeling combat as well as a transformation gimmick. Temu can turn into the dark warrior Freedan at save points in dungeons (and even another transformation much later into the game), and the respective powers of the different transformations are used to solve puzzles in dungeons. The boss and puzzle design isn't quite up to par with something like Link to the Past or other 2D Zelda games, but it still makes for a quite fun action game even if the adventure parts are more centered around the story writing than the exploration in towns and dungeons.

Speaking of which, there are significantly more towns in this game than in the last one, but they're largely for painting scenery and for telling the story. This is still a game with no money system, and you also don't level up with EXP like you did in Soul Blazer. Instead, clearing all of the monsters in a room gets you an upgrade to your max health, your attack power, or your defense power, so there's a hard limit to how great your stats can get in this game. There being no money also means that there's a hard limit to how many healing items you can get, and I've heard many a tale of how important it is to save your healing herbs in the English version to be able to deal with the harder bosses (which are MUCH harder in that version than in this one). The Japanese version, at least, had quite a nice difficulty curve to it, and while it's a bit harder than Soul Blazer and has no option to grind for power (though you can grind for extra lives, for whatever that's worth), this version should be eminently completable, especially for people familiar with the genre.

The presentation here is once again very good. The graphics are very pretty, and each location looks very distinct. NPCs and monsters are also very expressive and cool looking respectively, and the UI on top of the screen that shows monster and boss health is super appreciated for a game like this. While the UI design may've moved on from just copying Actraiser, the quality of the music is thankfully still just as strong as ever, and Illusion of Gaia has a soundtrack very befitting of its legacy.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. At least for the Japanese version, this is a game I can't recommend enough. It's a real shame that the English version is so much poorer, because it's honestly one of the strongest games on the system when it's actually written the way it's supposed to be. The action may not be the strongest on the system, but the story more than makes up for that (despite the imperfections and casual racism ^^; ), and this is absolutely a game worth checking out for action/adventure and 2D Zelda fans.

Post by **Limewater** » Sun Dec 31, 2023 1:56 pm

SpaceBooger wrote:Traumatarium (GB) 12/30/23
This is a new GB game I Kickstarted to get a physical copy to play on my GBC. The game is described as:
Welcome to Traumatarium, a short Game Boy game where the goal was trying to push the visual limitations of the hardware, and create a randomly generated, visually engaging, dungeon crawling experience.

Huh. I gave this a shot on the website and just died a bunch. I guess there's something I'm missing. I didn't start with enough gold to buy any equipment.

Post by **prfsnl_gmr** » Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:36 pm

Traumatatium is also available on the Nintendo Switch for just a few dollars. Just FYI.

Post by **prfsnl_gmr** » Sun Dec 31, 2023 11:21 pm

First 40

41. Metal Slug 3 (Neo Geo)
42. Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (Switch)
43. Twinkle Star Sprites (Neo Geo)
44. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Switch)
45. Shock Troopers (Neo Geo)
46. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (Switch)
47. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Switch)

Finishing out 2023 pretty strong!

I beat Shock Troopers a few weeks ago with my son. It’s probably the best of the top-down, “dudes running around shooting stuff” games that originated with Front Line and was popularized by Ikari Warriors. It features branching pathways, distinct playable characters, a fair challenge, a ludicrous plot, and unbelievable sprite work. You can beat it once in about 45 minutes or so, but seeing everything the game has to offer will take some time. Highly recommended.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 is more of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. That is, it’s more Castlevania III- and Ninja Gaiden-inspired 2D action platforming. A lot more. A lot, lot more. I played through the game six(!) times, and I still didn’t see everything it had to offer. It was consistently tough, especially after the first playthrough, and as a sucker for punishment, I adored it. The graphics are great; the soundtrack rocks; and it doubles-down on the silliness. (One of the best playable characters is a steampunk mech piloted by a corgi.) Anyone new to the series should play Curse of the Moon first, but anyone’s who enjoyed that game is sure to love Curse of the Moon 2.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a kickstarter funded metroidvania designed by Koji Igarishi (who directed the beat Castlevania games, including Symphony of the Night). It’s a late-period Castlevania game in every way but name. It features a massive castle; it’s loaded with secrets; the RPG mechanics are both overly complicated and insanely simplistic. It’s silly and fun, and I loved it to death. Despite a very weak first impression - it’s ugly as sin and the game’s performance on the Switch is inexcusable - I quickly found myself hooked, and I couldn’t put the game down until I’d explored every inch of the castle, collectors every monster shard (like a Pokémon game!), crafted every recipes, etc. It’s easily a top ten meteoidvania for me, and if you have t played it, you should. Highly recommended.

Post by **REPO Man** » Sun Dec 31, 2023 11:45 pm

Games Beaten 2023:

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Friday the 13th: The Game for Switch, Virtual Cabin Mode
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Portal 2 for Switch
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Metroid: Zero Mission for GBA (emulated)
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Sonic Mania Plus for Android (unofficial port), as Knuckles with all Chaos Emeralds, used Knuckles Plus mod
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AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) for Android
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Super Metroid for Super NES (emulated)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Arcade, via TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection for Switch
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Metroid Fusion for GBA (emulated)
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Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 for GBC (hack)
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Sonic Triple Trouble 16-Bit for Android
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Dead Island 2 for PS4 (base game) as Ryan
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Uncharted 3 for PS4
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Viewfinder for PS5
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Borderlands 3 for PS5 (base game) as Amara, Normal Mode
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Marvel's Spider-Man for PS4
:arrow:

Dead Island 2: Haus for PS5 (DLC) as Ryan

TOTAL: 16

SEE YOU ALL IN 2024!

Post by **MrPopo** » Mon Jan 01, 2024 3:57 am

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

First 50:

51. This Way Madness Lies - PC
52. Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: The Dragon's Gambit - PC
53. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - PC
54. Sprawl - PC
55. Zortch - PC
56. Ion Fury: Aftershock - PC
57. Spider-Man 2 - PS5
58. Alan Wake II - PC
59. Ghostrunner II - PC
60. RoboCop: Rogue City - PC
61. Super Mario RPG - Switch
62. Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold - PC
63. Turbo Overkill - PC
64. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince - Switch
65. Sigil II - PC
66. Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion - PC
67. Elderand - Switch
68. Front Mission 2 - Switch
69. Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader - PC
70. Eastward - Switch

Managed to finish one last game before the new year rolled over. Eastward is an indie action-adventure game that takes the general gameplay of Zelda and mixes it with the aesthetics of Mother 3. In the process it manages to be the lesser of each, creating an experience that is painfully indie. There is a seed of a good game here, but the execution leaves a lot to be lacking.

The game starts with John the digger, who is part of a small community of post-apocalyptic people living underground. Prior to the start of the game he discovers a young girl in some weird yellow jelly while digging; he adopts this girl, Sam, and continues to live his life. But Sam speaks words of the outside, where the sky is blue and the grass is green, and the two are eventually expelled. So begins their journey into the east, which comes complete with digging into why there was a girl in some weird artificial womb underground.

The basic gameplay outside of story segments is very Zelda inspired. You have a melee attack and a variety of tools that are used for environmental puzzles. Sometimes you split the characters apart to go through parallel paths where each one clears for the other. The puzzle design never gets too frustrating, with only a handful requiring real reaction time. The combat is another story; you are at a dead halt when attacking, you take a half step forward with each swing, and most enemies don't suffer knockback. They also tend to have way too much health; 4-8 attacks is the average for enemies through the game. If you think this is a recipe for taking a ton of damage, you're right. The game is stingy with drops but has a cooking system that makes up for it, so you're never in real danger as long as you keep your backpack full of food.

The story segments are where the Mother 3 inspiration really shows. Aside from the obvious aesthetic lift, the characterizations are very heavily inspired by Mother 3. However, they only seem to capture the surface elements, without understanding the deeper why. The characters fall into "look at how quirky they are, isn't that charming?" without having depth behind the quirk like Mother 3 did. There isn't any commentary going on, just some wacky characters. This gets especially grating in the middle of the game, where you have a very artificially drawn-out sequence where you keep getting sidetracked to help out other characters because Sam is an 8-year-old with no impulse control and John is a mute who just rolls with anything Sam wants. In fact, the single biggest thing I noticed in the game is the devs lack the sense to know when NOT to put something in, whether it be an extra puzzle sequence or lines of dialogue. You could cut out half of the game's required text without actually losing any substance, and that's not a good place to be.

That said, this game will appeal to a specific type of person, the kind who talks to every NPC, learns their stories, then talks to them again after every event in case there is more to those stories. There's definite catnip there for that sort of player. But it didn't land for me; there was a general purposelessness to things, and the combat missteps exacerbate things.

Post by **alienjesus** » Mon Jan 01, 2024 9:58 am

First 50:

51. Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin PSVR
52. Stray PS5
53. Bowser's Fury Switch
54. Super Mario Bros. Wonder Switch *NEW*
55. Luigi's Mansion 3 Switch *NEW*
56. Battalion Wars GC *NEW*
57. Ratchet & Clank PS4 *NEW*
58. Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy MVS *NEW*
59. Blue's Journey MVS *NEW*
60. WarioWare: Move It! Switch *NEW*
61. Silent Bomber PS1 *NEW*
62. Gimmick! Switch *NEW*
63. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile *NEW*

Posting my final reviews for 2023 - I'll also post my top 10 games of 2023 later too!

Post by **alienjesus** » Mon Jan 01, 2024 12:03 pm

Time for AJ's end of year wrap up and top 10!

First up some stats.

Games beaten in 2023: 63

Digital vs Physical games beaten:
Digital games: 8
Physical games: 55

Pretty much par for the course for me - many of my digital games were part of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection on switch, so in reality I played even less digitally than it seems.

Home console vs portable breakdown:
Home console games beaten: 29
Handheld games beaten: 33
VR games beaten: 1

Surprisingly even split between console and handheld this year, with handheld dominating the first half the of the year and home consoles making up more of the second half.

Games beaten by generation:
3rd gen (NES/SMS): 2
4th gen (SNES/MD/NG/PCE/GB): 9
5th gen (N64/Saturn/PS1/GBC/WSC): 11
6th gen (GC/DC/PS2/Xbox/GBA): 9
7th gen (Wii/PS3/360/DS/PSP): 0
8th gen (Wii U/Switch/PS4/3DS/Vita): 31
9th gen (PS5): 1

This is a bit misleading as most of my gen 8 beats were on Switch, and actually quite a number of them were ports of much older games from compilations and rereleases. It's been a much more retro year for me this time round.

Breakdown by console:
Dreamcast: 1
Gamecube: 2
GBA: 1
Neo Geo: 8
NES: 2
PS1: 4
PS2: 4
PS4: 4
PS5: 1
Saturn: 1
SNES: 1
Switch: 27
Wonderswan/ Color: 6
Xbox: 1

Somehow I still have about 80 unfinished switch games despite beating so many in 2023. Hopefully I can bring that number down in 2024.

Breakdown by genre:
Action: 2
Action Adventure: 8
Adventure: 2
Beat em up: 4
Fighting: 1
Flight combat: 1
Party: 1
Platformer: 20
Puzzle: 4
Racing: 1
Rhythm: 2
RPG: 3
Run n Gun: 6
Sports: 2
Strategy: 3
Other: 3

I played way more platformers this year than I realised. I didn't finish many RPGs though which is a problem as I have so many on the backlog. Best tackle that in 2024!

And finally, my Top 10 games beaten in 2023!

First off, I'm excluding any games I played in 2023 which I've already beaten previously, as I wanted to focus this list on new experiences. Titles like Klonoa and Mario 3D World are fantastic games but they made lists I've down previously already! In addition, I played a lot of great games this year, so my honourable mentions list is full of titles that would have absolutely been deserving of a spot in other years:

Honourable mentions:
Sly Raccoon, Jumping Flash, Yume Penguin Monogatari, Castlevania II: Simons Quest, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2, Sakura Taisen, Samba De Amigo, Luigis Mansion 3, Ratchet & Clank, Gunpey, Shock Troopers 2nd Squad, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, The Ninja Saviors, Terranigma

And finally, onto my top 10:

10:

9:

8:

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6:

5:

4:

3:

2:

1:

racketboy.com

Games Beaten 2023

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