52 GAMES IN 52 WEEKS 2021

[Samus Aran]

ALL CAPS EDITION

LETS DO IT

GAMES ANNIHILATED


1. Streets of Rage 4 - 1/1 - 3 hrs
Well, it's Streets of Rage. It's a fun, classic-styled beat-em-up without any real frills. Played through this co-op with a friend. It's a solid entry to the series. It's definitely not anywhere near as cool of a modern beat-em-up as River City Girls was, but still, can't really complain too much.

2. Fire Emblem: Awakening - 1/15 - 84 hrs
This is the second Fire Emblem game I've finished. I fuckin loved it tbh. I've heard plenty of differing opinions on this entry from FE fans, nobody seems to really agree on it. But I thought it was fantastic. I really love that the support system in this one is so integral in both combat and in recruiting new units. And speaking of new units, the child units in this game are so cool. Love the stat/skill inheritance system. The story in this game is pretty subpar, as is a lot of the writing in general, but I was so invested in the core gameplay and mechanics that this never really bothered me much. Tactical JRPGs - the most based RPGs?

3. Bust-A-Move - 1/15 - 3.5 hrs
I've had this forever but never really actually felt like playing it the whole way through until now. 100 levels of consistent fun. I am not very good at puzzle games, but Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble is kind of its own beast that doesn't feel like other games in the genre and idk I just dig it quite a bit. This is the SNES port of the original game, btw. Which is a solid enough port.

4. Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen - 2/10 - 7 hrs
This game is pretty sick. It's a top-down action RPG, sort of a Zelda-like, but with a leveling system. However, it's a short game and very anti-grinding - you don't need to worry much about leveling. Interesting world and story, though said story is only part of a larger story and thus I can mostly forgive it for not answering most questions. The "push" battle mechanic is pretty lame, not gonna lie, would prefer to just swing my sword, but I give it slight props for uniqueness. The music is insanely good, like stupidly good. And the arrangements in this particular version (Chronicles+, it's on Steam) are incredible too. Cool series, will have to play more.

5. missed messages. - 2/10 - 20 mins
Short visual novel that I thought I would hate because of the art style but in the end I actually found that style to be pretty endearing, and I appreciated being able to play a game that talks seriously about issues of depression and suicide, with writing that felt decently genuine. Not bad.

6. Touhou Luna Nights 2/16 - 7.5 hrs
Technically I "beat" this in about 4 hours, but it was another few hours before I finished the extra level and got the "true" ending. Both an excellent Touhou fangame and a solid (if short) metroidvania game. You won't get as much out of this without knowledge of Touhou (especially EoSD), but even still it manages to be more than just a fangame. Had a great time with this one.

7. Shadowgate: MacVenture Series - 2/16 - 2.5 hrs
Not a ton to say here. Classic point-and-click adventure game. A ton of trial-and-error involved. But I had fun!

8. King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match - 2/23 - 20 mins
Specifically, I played through the "team match," which is basically arcade mode but in team (3v3) mode. This is my favorite of the classic King of Fighters games.

9. Touhou 9: Phantasmagoria of Flower View - 2/25 - 50 mins
This is unfortunately probably the worst mainline game in the series, at least as far as the Windows games are concerned. It's a two-player competitive danmaku game, so it inherently plays different from the rest. You basically try to both dodge things and also use your spell cards on your enemy, who is doing the same on their side of the screen. But the whole experience is really watered down, Touhou has always been about meeting interesting new boss characters and incredible music and presentation, not to mention difficulty. This kind of has none of those. Interesting take on the formula, but not a very good one.

10. Worms Armageddon - 2/26 - 16 hrs
Look, this game is really cool. With your friends. On your own, Worms games are kind of lame. The single player "campaign" for this consists of missions that range from challenging to nearly fucking impossible. Holy shit. Never before have I had to use an outside application to force controller support onto a keyboard game just to beat one specific level. What the fuck. The missions can be pretty fun but there are a pretty sizable amount of really frustrating ones. Still, not like I can call the game bad. But you should really stick to multiplayer with this.

11. Metal Slug - 3/10 - 1 hr
The first in a long list of kickass run and gun games with incredible visual flair. This one isn't as good as X ofc (which I've played in an arcade a few times), but it's still very solid and very fun. And rather difficult, but all of them are. Btw this is on a PS2 collection I snagged - I'll probably play through all of them throughout the year.

12. Friday Night Funkin' - 3/16 - 30 mins
This is one of the worst rhythm games I've ever played. Some of the music is honestly pretty awesome, but that's where the positives end. It's ugly, has wack charting, and just plays like ass in general. Actually, one more positive - it's extremely easy to mod, and there's a ton of mods out there already that are really cool/funny.

13. Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu - 4/14 - 31 hrs
It's Pokemon. But it's not. It's some middle ground between a traditional game and Pokemon Go. Thank god they chose to remake Yellow in this bizarre new format instead of try a whole new region/story, because the familiarity and nostalgia goes a long way in making this less of a bore. It's not bad, per se, but catching Pokemon in the Pokemon GO style is just really...lame. And there is a TON of standard functionality missing. No abilities, no held items, tons of missing moves, level up movesets for every Pokemon are smaller. Wack. But I still had fun. Has some interesting post-game stuff too. I liked being able to battle Green.

14. Touhou Spell Bubble - 4/20 - 10 hrs
This is a really fun Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move game that is a collaboration with Touhou Project. However, it's a lot more than just Puzzle Bobble with a Touhou skin. It's a very fast-paced version of Puzzle Bobble with a rhythm game element, where plays that pop a large amount of bubbles at once will start a combo that requires you to hit a button in rhythm with the background music - and you want to nail these, because you and your opponent are both frantically trying to send "junk" bubbles to each other to knock each other out. A knockout isn't an immediate win, but it is worth a ton of points, thus the key to winning is to basically knock your opponent's board out more times than they can do to you. Characters have special abilities too that add to it. I was honestly really surprised just how good this game is, but of course a lot of your mileage will vary depending on how big of a Touhou fan you are, and if  you know the music used - most of which is comprised of popular Touhou remixes, including some absolute classics like Bad Apple!!, Night of Nights, and Cirno's Perfect Math Class. Recommended if you're a fan of Touhou, even more if you also like Puzzle Bobble.

15. Wolf Tails - 5/8 - 2 hrs
Anime titty visual novel game. But it's a surprisingly good titty game, although that doesn't mean a lot considering the bar is so low. I mean this isn't a very good visual novel or anything but I was surprised that the art is so good and that it features effectively four different playthroughs in one tiny game. The ability to choose for your character to be male or female, and for the story and sex scenes (and included art) to actually reflect that choice is quite nifty. Pleasantly surprised. But it's still just a porn game, so you know.

16. MUSYNX - 5/13 - 5 hrs
I wanted to like this because I kind of wanted to buy that limited Switch physical release for it. But honestly this isn't very good at all. One of the most poorly designed rhythm games I've ever played. The presentation, the songs included...it's all very lackluster. It also, by default, includes this really, really bad feature where notes ONLY play if you play them right, and they only play at the exact MOMENT you press the button, meaning everything will sound like fucking trash because you're not realistically going to play everything perfectly. Which will cause you to mess up even more because it's disorienting. Thank god you can turn that off. It's boring enough to be forced to play Canon in D, and then you're going to make it sound awful too? No thank you lmao. Poor game that feels like a knockoff of traditional PC 4-key/6-key rhythm games. At least it included a song from Muse Dash, a much better rhythm game also by a Chinese developer.

17. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 - 5/26 - 10 hrs
This game is great. I don't really consider myself much of a Tetris fan, I've always found it a bit dull, but I got this because I like Puyo a lot and it just looked really neat. And it is really neat! I never played the first one, so the way the game so flawlessly pits Puyo and Tetris against each other was really surprising to me. And there's so many modes of play, too! Swap mode is fun, Big Bang mode is REALLY fun, and Fusion mode is...awful! Horrendous! Thankfully you only have to play it a couple times lmao, the rest of the game more than makes up for that though. The story is understandably pretty stupid, but this is a puzzle game - you can only do so much, and it does what it does really well. This almost makes me wish I was much better at either Puyo or Tetris so I could play against people online and actually do well at all, but alas I am definitely a casual when it comes to these games. I will say though that the story mode's "auto difficulty," which you can turn on or off, is pretty busted. If you so much as score three-chain combos even somewhat consistently in Puyo (which is child's play, frankly), the game will suddenly think you're an expert and the next battle's AI will be an unbeatable god. Oh well, that difficultly mode is definitely designed either for people who are really bad (so the AI will go easy on them) or really good (so the AI will be appropriately brutal), and not for people who fall somewhere in between like I do.

18. Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy - 5/28 - 7 hrs
This was...an experience. What started as frustration became a gradual understanding of the intricacies of the game's physics. Basically, in the beginning, I liked it. Once I was past the beginning and facing my first major hurdle, I hated it. Over and over I fell, not even knowing how to progress. And once I finally figured that out, I liked it again. And once I got even further (basically once I was climbing the chapel), I suddenly realized that like...wait, I kinda love this game. I think your enjoyment of this game will vary greatly based on how much you can appreciate the b-game developer mentality that Foddy was going for here, and how much you can appreciate his insight on how he likes to make games, how he views games in an artistic context, how he revels in the masochistic tendencies of players that love seemingly insurmountable challenges, etc. I think that without his voiceovers, the game would be a lot less meaningful. So it's crazy to me that so many people find him to be annoying lol. I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would, and I really only even played it just to say I've beaten it. Came away with a lot of appreciation for it.

19. Mega Man 5 - 5/28 - 2.5 hrs
I'll admit it. For the longest time, I considered myself to have beaten MM5 and 6. I couldn't really remember much of anything about them, but I was pretty sure I'd played through them at some point. Now I can say for certain that, no, I don't think I ever actually finished these games before now. Just played them a bit. Anyway, 5 is a pretty fucking weak Mega Man game, and I don't just mean that because it's extremely easy (for a Mega Man game). It's also just quite dull and uninspired. It did introduce Beat (I think, unless he appeared in a Game Boy one first), but other than that this is easily the most forgettable in the OG series. Still good though! It's MM after all.

20. Mega Man 6 - 6/1 - 3 hrs
So 6 is definitely better than 5, but still worse than 1 and 4 by a bit, and a far cry from the quality of 2 and 3. The Rush Jet and Power modes are actually quite cool in this one, although Jet's physics are rather finicky if you ask me. The game is mostly pretty easy, like 5, but not quite as easy - extra lives seem to drop less often, there aren't quite as many E-tanks lying around, and a couple robot masters are decently difficult. The real clincher though is that this game's first Wily stage (not Mr. X, the second castle) is really fucking frustrating. Because it's almost entirely rooms where you drop and then have to avoid spikes as you fall, and they're really fuckin cheap rooms - I think mostly because Capcom expects you to use Jet to help in these situations. Well fuck you. There are two rooms where you are actually required to use Jet to maneuver past spikes and I hate them. But that stage is really the only really hard part of the game. Anyway, the improved level design and the two Rush modes definitely put this one over 5, as well as an insanely good song in the Mr. X stage theme. I don't really think the Robot Masters in this one are very interesting, but they weren't in 5 either. Pretty damn good game overall tho, just a bit weak for the series.

21. New Pokemon Snap - 6/14 - 12 hrs

22. Sakuya Izayoi Gives You Advice and Dabs - 6/24 - 30 mins
Note that this game is not a half hour long, it's like three minutes at best, I just went through many of the dialogue choices so I could read basically everything I wanted to. Also counting the epic DLC, Nitori Kawashiro Offers You Advice in Exchange for Cucumbers and Eats the Cucumbers. Meme Touhou VN with...actual good life advice, believe it or not. Bad game. But on purpose. Cozy.

23. Planetarian: Reverie of a Little Planet - 7/2 - 3 hrs
A "kinetic visual novel" by Key. Kinetic meaning that it's nothing but reading, no choices. It's a pretty good story. Of course, being that it's by Key, it's very melodramatic. But I think this game's setting and writing excuse the melodrama more than their other VNs. I enjoyed this.

24. Doom Eternal - 7/11 - 20 hrs
Man this game fucking rules. What an improvement over Doom 2016. The dashes are great, the meathook is great. The game's movement is just so much better and allows for combat that is way more fun, way more strategic, way more challenging, and ultimately way more rewarding. Every single weapon and tool feels useful, it's actually nuts. Definitely a couple sub-weapons are less useful than others, but this game does a really good job of making it feel like everything you have at your disposal should be used and you should switch things up constantly. It's so fucking good dude. I have to admit I had a lot of trouble with the Icon of Sin but I still had a blast persevering through how fucking hard it was. And the demon variety is improved a lot too! Love to see my boy Arachnotron back. Hell, even just traversing the environments between fights is so much better, with the dashing and climbing and whatnot, and the levels just feel better designed in general for traversal. Literally the only thing that might be better about 2016 is the music, but even still the OST for Eternal bangs too.

25. Streets of Kamurocho - 7/13 - 10 mins??
This is just a lazy reskin of Streets of Rage 2 designed to advertise the Yakuza series. And only the first level. It blows. But its not like it was intended to be a full game anyway.

26. FEZ - 7/16 - 6.5 hrs

27. Metal Slug 2/X - 7/16 - 1 hr

28. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - 7/20 - 17 hrs

29. Final Fantasy III (Pixel Remaster) - 8/11 - 21 hrs
This is the best version of FFIII. If you haven't played this game at all, this would be the version to play. It's an amalgamation of changes made between various previous versions and a slew of new QOL updates and rebalances, with a beautiful new rendition of its OST to boot. And the new music still FEELS like classic Final Fantasy, while still being gorgeous new arrangements. The new version of "Eternal Wind" is just phenomenal. But at its core, this is the NES game, NOT the DS one. So new content they added to that one is unfortunately missing. Not a big deal imo. New QOL stuff includes: streamlining menu mechanics (like Ninjas having a Throw command from later games instead of having to equip Shurikens and then re-equip them after throwing them), small rebalances to various jobs to make them more usable, the ability to switch jobs on the fly without having to spend job points or whatever (thank GOD), a run button, a "quick battle" button that's more useful than you'd think, a general difficulty rebalance that makes the difficulty feel just right tbh, and other minor things less important. The new sprites look great, the backgrounds are basically the mobile version's which look good and very similar to SNES FF games, and the general effects like explosions, magic, etc. are all updated to look great too, again a lot like the SNES ones but a little better in some cases. Granted, this is still FFIII. Barebones story and clunky dialogue and everything. And of course your warriors are unnamed heroes, unlike the named ones in the DS version (but I gave them their DS names lol). It's a solid RPG. Classic and lightweight. My only gripe with this version specifically is that I wish they had also included the old NES OST and allowed us to switch between them.

30. Street Fighter III: Third Strike - 8/12 - 1 hr

31. F-Zero - 8/13 - 3 hrs

32. RefleX - 8/20 - 5.5 hrs
Kickass shmup. Great visuals, great music, the shield/bullet reflect mechanic rules, and this probably has the coolest story out of any shmup I've ever played - which is saying a lot because shmup stories are usually best ignored - just there to give anything happening on screen a reason to happen. But this game, and hell the whole ALLTYNEX trilogy that it's a part of, actually has a neat story. Rather overdone though lol. Love this game tho, I highly recommend this trilogy to anyone who likes scrolling shmups, especially cinematic ones like this, as well as Treasure's games (like Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun) or CAVE's. Note that this game is not nearly as long as my completion time right there says. A run through this game is about 45 minutes or so. My time is basically how long I kept playing this until I could finally beat it lol. Like Treasure's shmups, this one gives you an extra continue to use every time you game over (or beat the game). Once I finally had enough continues and had learned the game well enough, I finally beat this fucker.

33. Blank Dream - 8/27 - 2 hrs

34. Momodora - 9/9 - 2 hrs
I only just recently learned that Momodora is a whole series and that Reverie Under the Moonlight is just the newest one. The old first three games though are all pretty archaic indie games. This first one is basically a short, linear Cave Story clone, and not a good one. It's painfully average, really. Also surprisingly difficult in some spots. Super rough start for this series.

35. Nekopara Vol. 3 - 9/21 - 5 hrs

36. Sonic Adventure: DX - 10/7 - 9 hrs

37. Metroid Dread - 10/11 - 9 hrs

38. Tales of Arise - 10/18 - 68 hrs

39. Before Your Eyes - 10/24 - 2 hrs

40. Metal Slug 3 - 10/31 - 1 hr

41. Another Metroid 2 Remake - 11/9 - 5.5 hrs

42. Save Me, Sakuya-san! - 11/11 - 30 mins

43. Metal Slug 4 - 11/15 - 1 hr

44. Tsukihime - 11/20 - 50 hrs

45. Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk - 11/28 - 17 mins

46. Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story - 12/1 - 30 mins

47. Metal Slug 5 - 12/6 - 1 hr

48. Shin Megami Tensei V - 12/8 - 110 hrs

49. Momodora II - 12/9 - 1.5 hrs

50. Momodora III - 12/9 - 1.5 hrs

51. Perfect Dark - 12/16 - 9.5 hrs

52. Metal Slug 6 - 12/22 - 1 hr

53. Star Fox: Assault - 12/30 - 6 hrs

REPLAYS

Super Mario 64 - many times due to speedruns
Super Metroid - many times due to randomizer runs/races, as well as speedruns
Pokemon Fire Red - nuzlocke run that took 73 hours in-game time, but I made heavy use of the fast-forward function on my emulator
Ocarina of Time - a few times due to randomizers
Donkey Kong Country 2 - casual replay

[Nyerp]

GAMES LIGHTLY TENDERIZED

1. CYBERPUNK 2077 ON PS4 v.1.06 - 66:42 - 4/10 - 1/16/21
^{Blunder of the century, at least on last-gen consoles. All that waiting for a buggy looter shooter with somewhat decent writing, lol. Fails to match the dynamic and emergent open world of GTA games, fails to match the in-depth RPG systems and choices of Fallout, fails to match the combat of basically any other FPS, and fails to match the graphical consistency of Witcher 3, a 2015 game by the same developers on the same console. CD Projekt Red just became the new Bethesda in the worst way possible. Even when all the glitches and horrid loading problems and crashes are all fixed, this will still only be around a 6/10 in my eyes. The missed potential is palpable.}

2. CRASH BANDICOOT 4: IT'S ABOUT TIME! - 23:08:53 - 6/10 - 1/20/21
^{This is sadly a series revitalization that deeply misunderstands the strengths of its predecessors, akin to Mega Man 9. And like Mega Man 9, I assume this series will burn out again pretty quickly after the release of Crash 4 and be lost to time yet again. No, the original Crash games were not fun because you had to get all 300 crates in every level, 20 of which are hidden behind walls offscreen or are easily missable in rail sequences, and then master the speedruns of every level, and then not die in every level, and then not die in every level WHILE getting every crate, and then do all of that AGAIN in inverted versions of every level. This is how you kill a franchise, not revive it. I only started to have fun in the last couple of worlds where I gave up my delusions of even completing even 80% of everything in this game and just played the levels like a normal goddamn platformer. Sad!}

3. BLASTER MASTER ZERO - 10:07:26 - 7/10 - 1/26/21
^{Somehow the best game I've played so far this year. Retro throwback pixel game by Inti Creates. Never really played a Blaster Master before besides some vague memories of a PS1 entry in the series. This was pretty fun! The mix of overworld sidescrolling tank gameplay mixed with top-down on-foot monster blasting in mini-dungeons is neat. There's a REAL reward for getting 100% items in this (whole new area and new ending) and most games don't do that, so that's cool to see. But I do have some gripes with how tedious the backtracking can be since there's no fast travel if you get to the end without all items. Also getting out of your tank thing in the overworld feels so sluggish and awful, especially since falling 5 feet will instakill you wtf???? Anyway I'm definitely playing the sequel despite all that.}

4. RESIDENT EVIL 3 (REMAKE) - 7:20:47 - 6/10 - 2/1/21
^{Damn, I need to stop playing so many disappointing games in a row lol. RE3R is a MASSIVE step down from RE2R and it's such a shame. Like it's perfectly fine as a dumb zombie action game but it suffers so hard in most comparisons to the previous year's entry. Nemesis is a joke compared to how Mr. X hounds you in 2 and is relegated to short chase sequences and boss fights outside of the beginning city section. The game in general is much more scripted, linear and short. Deaths feel a lot more like cheap shots than genuine player failures (Hunters (beta AND gamma) being designed around one-shotting you). No second playthrough with a different character's perspective to add genuine replay value. No compelling bonus modes besides the trash failed RE:Resistance that I'm never touching. No Mercenaries, even though I'm pretty sure RE3 is where that started appearing wtf??? Again there's nothing BAD about this game but it still feels very half-assed and phoned-in, probably so whoever Capcom outsourced this to could pump it out in time for a yearly schedule. I fear for the RE4 remake.}

5. BLASPHEMOUS - 21:21 - 7/10 - 2/10/21
^{Grimdark 2D pixel Soulsvania with a Catholicism-inspired (I think?) fantasy twist. I say 'Soulsvania' because it's a Metroidvania with Souls influence brazenly written all over it. Bloodstain mechanics, rechargeable health flasks, vague lore, depressing tone, dark fantasy setting, the works. Game's biggest strengths, though, are its intricate sprites and animations.....which shouldn't be your game's biggest strength. The combat is just kind of...there. The bloodstain mechanic makes a mistake that Souls games tend to avoid, in that you can get your "Guilt" stuck in a location like a cloud of deathgas or a pit of spikes that will force you to spend "Tears" to retrieve it. The lore is so vague that you won't feel connected to anything that's happening and you'll probably have to look up how to get the """good""" ending due to the unneeded air of murkiness around the game's story and secrets. This game mostly just kind of reminded me of how tired I am of Metroidvania AND Soulslike tropes when so little is done to make them feel fresh. So, decent game, but happens to fall a little flat for someone who has played a LOT of the games it's taking inspiration from.}

6. HALO 3 - less than 10 hours - 7/10 - 2/14/21
^{Glad to see the story (mostly) play out after that nasty cliffhanger at the end Halo 2, but this was easily the weakest campaign of these first 3 Halos. Starts off with an abrupt momentum reset and just kind of awkwardly stumbles through terrible vehicle sections for the first few missions. Thankfully they make up for it later on but the beginning was ROUGH for me. Also why can't you play as Arbiter in this one? I liked that in 2. :/ Brutes do not feel nearly as dangerous in this game, I guess because you never fight Elites in this one so they had to make Brutes functionally replace them without becoming overwhelming. Regardless, it was fun to end the Flood threat here so I probably won't play too many of the spinoffs/sequels.}

7. DRAGON QUEST VII: FRAGMENTS OF THE FORGOTTEN PAST (2016) - 85:50 - 6/10 - 2/26/21
^{Welp, I just wanted to play a Dragon Quest game but it seems like I picked one of the worst ones to start with LMAO. The game's episodic island-by-island structure was unique and enticing at the beginning of the game, but there is such a thing as having too many 'episodes' with too little story. Plus the game is just waaaay too fucking long for no real reason, as you'll be backtracking through previously explored areas for at least 60% of the game. I think this is the epitome of one of the biggest problems with JRPGs in general: strong content for a 30-hour game stretched and padded beyond belief to hit an arbitrary 70+ hour mark. I pretty much just finished it so I could say that I did. A few good story moments here and there, a surprisingly bittersweet ending, wacky and expressive enemies, tons of jobs and skills to learn...but it's all a little quantity over quality. Here's hoping my next DQ experience will be better!}

8. CRASH TWINSANITY - 6:35 - 7/10 - 3/1/21
^{A mediocre, strikingly unfinished game with a ton of heart. The wacky a capella soundtrack is great, having Neo Cortex as your reluctant partner is great, the slapstick comedy is great. The game toys with multiple gameplay styles that are all at least decent (until the final level where it's clear they ran out of time and have to start rehashing ideas). But the version I played of the game (original XB disc on XB360) was nigh unplayable for certain sections due to extreme slowdown and had mild flow-destroying slowdown through the entirety of the game. Also, a quick look into the unlockable concept art shows that the final game is really half of what it could have been, sadly. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this quirky semi-experimental platformer quite a bit and YES I'm giving it a higher score than Crash 4, this is the REAL Crash 4 fuck you!!!!!}

9. BUBBLE BOBBLE 4 FRIENDS - This game is 1 hour long. - 4/10 - 3/8/21
^{This game is 1 hour long. I blinked and it was over. There's nothing else to say.}

10. BUG FABLES: THE EVERLASTING SAPLING - 36:06:12 - 8/10 - 3/30/21
^{Surprisingly good indie Paper Mario-inspired RPG. Graphics are kind of simple and rough but you get used to it fast. Combat takes the PM64/TTYD system and changes it to be more party-based with different advantages to how you position your characters. The badge system is here as well, which gives tons of potential depth and strategies to the fights. They even bring in an expansive cooking system with 70 recipes, multiple challenge battle gauntlets, optional boss fights, sidequests, enemy data collecting, and more. Characters are likeable and the story is okay, although it can get a bit wordy at times. Absolutely play this game if you like the first two Paper Marios. Hopefully this game gets its own TTYD-tier sequel so we can finally dump Intelligent Systems in the trash where they belong!}

11. DOOM ETERNAL - idk over 20 hours for sure - 8/10 - 3/31/21
^{Fun as hell. This and DOOM 2016 are games that are guaranteed to put you into that flowstate of satisfying challenge and success. Weird thing, though, is that I think some of the enemies were nerfed by the big DLC patch in the middle of my playthhrough. Which is weird because I'll never get to see the original Marauder that everyone was whining about. Oh well! I still had a blast and collected every item in every level. The addition of a hub world was great; it adds a nice break between some of the more draining levels. Will definitely get the DLC expansions at some point.}

12. KILLER IS DEAD - 11:09:29 - 6/10 - 4/11/21
^{Three words: style over substance. There's no better way to describe this game. Combat is fun but pretty basic and button-mashy. You can literally launch an enemy and mash the attack button to do an infinite combo on them. Visual style is sleek with its dark, heavy shadows on everything. It looks "cool" but I have no idea what the story was going for the whole time. Film noir DMC brotherhood rivalry? Symbolism about the sun, moon, and Earth? Forgotten and twisted childhood memories? Minigames where you sneak looks at women's titties and panties? What even was this game? It ends on a sequel hook as well, ensuring we'll never get the full answers. I'm convinced the devs just threw darts at a wall of ideas and crammed it all into one game. Grasshopper Manufacture already had an established, cult classic franchise about assassinating wacky targets anyway. This game's existence baffles me!}

13. THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY: CURTAIN CALL - 12:36 - 7/10 - 4/12/21
^{Yup, this sure was the sequel to Theatrhythm! I don't remember much about that first game, but were the RPG "mechanics" always this pointless and hamfisted? And was the "story" always this barebones, with literally nothing happening except Chaos showing up at 20,000 points, forcing you to play a song, and then credits rolling? Oh well, I bought this game to play random FF songs in rhythm game form and I got what I paid for.}

14. BANJO-KAZOOIE: NUTS & BOLTS - 16:53:19 - 7/10 - 4/27/21
^{No one really knows why they took Banjo and turned it into a vehicular challenge game, but I had more fun with this fan-hated supposed abomination than I ever did with Tooie. Not even trying to be contrarian, the simple gameplay loop of "should I try to brute force this with a premade vehicle, add 2 more engines to something I already made, or spend 10 minutes making an abomination just for this challenge?" is 10 times more engaging than anything that happened in the previous entry. Showdown Town is a surprisingly fun hub world to explore as well. Of course, the game DOES have its faults, like how easy it is to make a car with dogshit handling, or the pointless Jiggy retrieval/vending system, or how the game goes out of its way to feel smarmy and insulting to people who wanted a normal Banjo sequel.......but fuck it, if you like messing around with vehicles or physics engines, this game is worth playing.}

15. RESIDENT EVIL 6 - 22-23 hours - 5/10 - 4/28/21
^{This game is so depressing. Every mistake Resident Evil 5 made with RE4's basic formula is doubled down on here. It's a shame because all of the new actions the player can do make this potentially the most expressive action-horror game ever made. You can dodge roll, duck, leap onto the floor and shoot your weapon, sprint, slide, roll and shuffle on the ground, counter enemy blows, running attack, multiple melee options, take cover behind corners and waist-high walls, quickshot, backflip, and maybe more. The game barely tells you about most of these, but it's still cool that they're there. So with those combat mechanics, what went wrong? Well for starters, the game is too long with FOUR campaigns that most players probably won't bother to do. And then the rest is...everything else. It's too long to get into here, but they screwed up with the story, level design, lack of enemy hit reactions, encounter design, dumb focus on co-op (although they mostly won't die on you this time thank fuck), constant QTEs, hyper-linearity, pointless filler like door opening animations, and a metric fuckload of bafflingly horrible gameplay sections that are far too long to list. You'll be having fun engaging with the basic enemy encounters and then every 5 minutes some weird unfun bullshit section will pop up and remind you that you're playing RE6 and that simply sucks.}

16. BLOODSTAINED: CURSE OF THE MOON 2 - 5:01:09 - 6/10 - 5/5/21
^{I hate that I didn't enjoy this game very much. They must have really taken complaints that the first one was too easy to heart because this is easily 5 times as hard as that game. I managed to beat the first playthrough on veteran (normal) mode but I got to the Stage 6 boss in Episode 2 and I was like "nope fuck this." Maybe if I admit that I suck and put the difficulty down to casual then I'll finish it, but until then...yeah, old Castlevania just isn't for me. EDIT: I switched to easy mode and blasted through the rest of Episode 2 and Final Episode. I still don't like the game very much LOL. Certain spoilery things that happened towards the end were pretty cool though.}

17. TOMB RAIDER: UNDERWORLD - dunno - 8/10 - 5/10/21
^{Pretty good ending to a great Tomb Raidin' trilogy. Certain aspects of this game's narrative feel rushed but we finally get the answers that Legend teased about Lara's mom's fate. Levels feel like massive playgrounds to test your exploratory skills in instead of linear hallways and action setpieces like in the newest reboot trilogy. Playing the Legend trilogy makes me wonder what I ever even saw in the 2013 and beyond games. Worst thing about this game (and the PS2 iterations) though is that they never figured out how to eliminate all the jank in the climbing mechanics...or even most of it. This is very much a PS2 game in "HD" and it even runs like one. But even that can give this trilogy its own unique flavor and identity that the bland new ones could never hope to reach. Fun times!}

18. MEGA MAN LEGENDS 2 - 13:56:14 - 6/10 - 5/16/21
^{Well, this is awkward. I was expecting to like this just as much as Legends 1, but I'd be lying if I said I had very much fun with this game at all. Sure, the graphics and camera and gameplay are improved from the original but so much about this game disappointed or even outright annoyed me in ways I never felt about the first one. There's an abysmal water dungeon that slows your movement to a crawl as your second real dungeon and that's where I knew something was just "off" about this game. The story is mostly bunched into the first and last hours of the game so it feels both very sparse and very rushed at the same time while also not delivering on a lot of its ideas. A lot of the enemies feel like complete damage sponges unless you spam (read: waste) your special weapon on them, a lot of boss fights boil down to circle-strafing and holding the shoot button while you slowly chip away at a massive health pool, the dodge move is incredibly stiff and shitty to pull off, Mega Man can't shoot at an enemies while running backwards, etc. etc. You know what? Maybe the novelty of a 3D Mega Man simply wore off between me playing these 2 games. Maybe I expected more improvements than they could have feasibly accomplished at the time so the outdated aspects feel extra outdated. Would I even enjoy the first one if I went back to it? Who knows!}

19. YS ORIGIN - 8:42:15 - 8/10 - 5/23/21
^{This game was a pretty fun 2.5D action RPG. I played as Yunica and while my playtime seems pretty short, I feel like I pretty much got what I wanted out of this game. You see, you're actually supposed to play the game as 2 different characters which then unlocks a THIRD character to play through the game as. But as far as I know it's all the same levels, same enemies, same bosses etc. So, like......I don't wanna. It'll just sully the fun time I had with pointless padding and repetition. Yunica and co. had a pretty satisfying, if bittersweet, ending and there's nothing about it that makes me scream "I NEED TO KNOW MORE!!!" So if I do end up doing those 2 more playthroughs then it'll be as a bonus, but I'm not doing them out of obligation.}

20. A HAT IN TIME DLCS (SEAL THE DEAL + NYAKUZA METRO) - who knows - 7/`10 - 5/30/21
^{Two decent DLC expansions to a decent-ass game. Had to wait years for these to come out on PS4! They were worth it, I guess. I enjoyed the 2 new worlds plenty enough. Didn't care for Death Wish and the lack of new boss fights though.}

21. NEW POKEMON SNAP - 12:21:40 - 7/10 - 5/31/21
^{It's finally here, the sequel to Pokemon Snap! And it's pretty good! It was definitely fun to see all these newer Pokemon in this style of game finally. The aesthetics of the game are way more sleek and modern, but I do miss some of those nostalgic sound effects tbh. You can't get the pokes to evolve this time around, which sucks, but all in all I enjoyed uncovering the "mystery" of the Lental Region. Other minor problems include the camera misunderstanding which Pokemon you were aiming for as your subject sometimes, the request system being finnicky and feeling like filler (that I barely interacted with), and some sections of the game's overall progression being grindy (water levels, I'm looking at you). Regardless, I mostly enjoyed this experience as a relaxing photo-taking trip through the Pokemon world. I'm so glad they didn't just remake the original.}

22. RESIDENT EVIL 7: BIOHAZARD - GOLD EDITION - 11:29:49 (main story) - 8/10 - 5/31/21
^{Despite watching playthroughs of this game back when it came out, I still loved my first time playing this myself. It's just Resident Evil in first person and that's great. It's arguably one of the scariest games in the series too. What a great way to cleanse my palate after playing the 3 remake and 6. I also played some of the DLCs (Bedroom/Daughters/Not a Hero/End of Zoe) so those added about 6 hours of extra goodness. I had never seen anything about End of Zoe so ending it with that was a neat surprise. What a great game, although with a few disappointing and/or dishonestly designed moments that bring it down a tad. I can't wait to jump straight into RE8!}

23. RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE - 13:01:47 - 7/10 - 6/10/21
^{I'm torn on whether to give this game a 7 or an 8. Regardless, I do think it's weaker overall than 7, although that could be my bias towards 7 because of all the DLC I got to play after the campaign. This game has highs and lows, peaks and valleys, sections that feel fully-fledged and fun and sections that feel underdeveloped or even cut down. The castle and factory levels were great, large areas to explore with mild RE-esque backtracking that lead up to satisfying finales. But the 2 areas between those (the dollhouse and the lake) felt like half-baked ideas that could have been expanded on greatly. The opening hour and the climactic action sequences were also mixed bags, albeit leading to a decent ending. Exploring and re-exploring the village between levels to find new goodies (and new enemies) was a cool idea as well. As much as I like the village itself, though, its Lycan inhabitants perplexingly end up feeling like a complete afterthought. They have nothing to do with the four lord characters or even the main villain (at least aesthetically) and all they get in terms of escalation is horde fights and boring, silent, hammer-swinging bosses. The concept art of them boasts that they were the basis of the whole game's concept but I guess they must have gotten bored of them quickly during development. Said concept art also contains an outright lie that the Lycans are more varied and intelligent than any RE enemy so far (even namedropping Ganados and Majini). This is absolute garbage; there are only THREE types of werewolf enemies in the WHOLE game and the basic ones literally just run at you or, very rarely, shoot arrows from afar. These boring werewolves are coupled with enemies that start out pretty cool (female vampire zombies with hoods) that quickly lose their hoods once you leave the castle and become the most boring-looking RE zombies EVER. Jeez I went on a huge rant lmao. Anyway yeah I liked this game a lot but it could have used more time in the oven or something. EDIT: Also I want to add that I died 15 times when I played RE7 but 0 times here, both on standard mode. Game just doesn't commit to the idea of being swarmed and overwhelmed like you are in the first hour and Ethan moves and aims way too fast for enemies to be a real problem. You'll never run out of ammo either. This game is firmly a 7 in my head now and kinda gets worse the more I think about it.}

24. SPYRO THE DRAGON (120% COMPLETION) - ??? - 8/10 - 6/16/21
^{Don't know why I played the other 2 games in the OG Spyro trilogy but never the first one, but better late than never! Glad to see a more simple, straightforward version of a collectathon here rather than the sequels' convoluted NPC-based minigame objectives. Don't know what else to say, it's just a fun, yet somewhat basic 3D platformer that's satisfying to 100%.}

25. PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME - 7:24 - 8/10 - 6/16/21
^{This is one of those games I have tons of nostalgia for but never actually played myself. I've fixed that now though. Despite me playing the shitty PS3 collection version with audiovisual errors out the ass, I had fun. The story and characters are great, the music is great, the graphics were stunning at the time, the acrobatic level traversal is fantastic, and the gimmick of reversing time to fix your mistakes is awesome and still really unique. But I gotta say: the combat is kinda ass. I think I appreciate the game a lot in spite of it, but it's absolutely the low point in general. Not even the time reversal really fixes it; it's hard to parse when you're safe to stop rewinding and the whole process just slows the game down. Plus the "time circle" system, where you can only rewind as much time as your stupid little circle allows (DESPITE how much sand you have) is plain awful and I never understood it. This lead to a few cheap deaths since your circle resets to 0 once you steal an enemy's sand (which is like the only way to kill enemies). Ah well, at least the combat animations are pretty.}

26. STREETS OF RAGE 4 - short - 7/10 - 6/21/21
^{Fun little beat-em-up romp. Could use more content though. Also fuck that last level. The characters are all pretty fun to use but the game could have a had a better tutorial because I looked up top-level gameplay after I beat it and the game doesn't tell you like half the shit you can do. In the end I'm just glad to play a beat-em-up that isn't too crusty and old and punishing. The art is gorgeous as well; I love Lizardcube's design aesthetics.}

27. CROSSCODE - 67:16:25 - 8/10 - 7/13/21
^{Long indie action RPG with great visuals and likeable characters. The writing can get kind of corny but it is basically about a bunch of dumb kids playing an MMO so it works. Oh yeah, the setting of the game is within an in-universe MMO that takes place on a distant moon that the players use lifelike android avatars to traverse from the safety of their homes. Pretty cool idea for a game. I'll admit that the game started to drag pretty hard around the middle jungle area with its tedious pixel-hunt exploration and I even considered dropping it, but I'm glad I didn't. Oh I also forgot to mention that this is also somewhat of a puzzle game with Zelda dungeons that are rich with brain teasers based around bouncing your ranged attacks off of corners and walls. It's fun, but just be prepared for a lot of that if you ever play this.}

28. GOROGOA - 2 hours - 8/10 - 7/24/21
^{Short, narrative, tile-based puzzle game that messes with perspective, layering, timing, and environmental exploration using just four squares. It's a great game for how short it is, but I would have never bought it if it wasn't on sale for $5. There's no other game quite like it (that I've played at least).}

29. NINJA GAIDEN SIGMA - 14:31:01 - 5/10 - 7/26/21
^{Hoo boy. I don't think I enjoyed a single second of this game. Every single level is unpleasant and oppressive. Most of the enemies and bosses are gross and weird but in a really uncool 2004 kind of way. The controls feel ever-so-slightly sticky and unresponsive, making the platforming and basic movement miserable. The camera is dreadful and there's no manual lock-on. The combat is extremely defensive, evasive, and reactive. This is not a stylish game whatsoever. You are going to be flipping around and blocking constantly so you can jump away and spam the Flying Swallow move, a near-instant aerial decapitation move which will obliterate most of the regular enemies in 1 or 2 hits and even cheese some bosses, because actually staying on the ground to use combos will have every onscreen enemy punishing your endlag all at once. Speaking of the bosses, they are mostly abysmal affairs that will spam 2 or 3 moves over and over again while you look for tiny windows to take cheap potshots inbetween their fucking projectiles and 60% damage grabs. What a mess. It's like if a character action game was made by an unimaginative douchenozzle. It's like if the dark roughness of DMC 1/2 never evolved into 3 and beyond, and the damage values were all raised so you could trick the audience into thinking it's hardcore instead of archaic and shitty. I guess the graphics and animations and music and weapon variety are cool. But then you run into a new enemy late in the game: the ghost fish. You have to equip the flail and hope you time your combo so that your move ends when they all stop attacking or else all of them will latch onto you at once and drain your health to zero. And then you get to another shitty boss fight. You win, but the next chapter starts and dozens of ghost fish immediately swarm you and send you back to before the boss. Fun! Also, hope you happened to have multiple save slots so you don't end up without any healing items before the bullshit final boss! There's no shop in the last chapter despite being freely peppered throughout the rest of the game, because FUCK YOU! Actually, fuck Itagaki and fuck anyone who pretends this isn't one of the worst "character action" games ever made.}

30. NO STRAIGHT ROADS - 7:49:50 - 4/10 - 7/30/21
^{This is a shitty game. But it has charm. You almost forget it's a shitty game when you're watching the cutscenes. The art, animation, music people, and SOME of the voice actors were pretty competent. Nobody else knew what they were doing. Story, gameplay, graphics, polish and more are all subpar. They had an *idea* for a game but no real core gameplay concept to execute it with. So you get a really shitty "rhythm-based" "boss rush" "beat-em-up" where nothing feels quite right and there's no need for the player to time anything to the music. There's a linear hub city area where you collect power cores for no particular reason. Your characters jitter around awkwardly and have 1 basic combo and a bunch of useless special moves that all look like ass. The gulf between the promise of the aesthetic, character designs, and music and the actual gameplay experience is so vast that it'll make your head spin. I felt absolutely nothing upon completing this game, not even after a dumb glitch forced me to restart the final boss, and not even after forced plot devices and weak character arcs brought the story to its ever-so-predictable conclusion. I guess it's cool that this was a Malaysian project, but it ends up feeling more like an embarrassing school assignment rather than a shining professional example. And then you look up the devs and see that the directors were lead designers on FUCKING FINAL FANTASY XV LMAO. Please PLEASE learn how to make games next time you fucking hacks. If this game interests you, just watch the bosses and cutscenes on youtube. That's all this should have been anyway. I'm embarrassed to admit that I own a $30 physical copy of this.}

31. PARAPPA THE RAPPER 2 - short - 8/10 - 8/5/21
^{Finally, a Parappa game where I can visibly see whether I hit a note or not. Actually I think the game is just more forgiving in general; I never had to retry a single stage. I did only get to Cool mode a couple times though. Still, this was the ideal Parappa sequel I was looking for when I played Um Jammer Lammy. They finally got it right! What a great little series.}

32. KATAMARI DAMACY REROLL - idk - 8/10 - 8/10/21
^{Nothing much to say besides this was as good and fun as everyone says it is. Unique and quirky in a charming way instead of overbearing. Controls took a little getting used to but they started to feel more and more natural as I played, despite some moments of awkward collision detection. For whatever reason I bounced off of We Love Katamari back in the 2000s but I'm glad I gave this series a second chance. The music is amazing enough to make the game worth playing by itself.}

33. ABZU - a couple hours - 8/10 - 8/17/21
^{A short, interactive art piece about exploring an undersea world and appreciating all types of marine life. This game knew what it wanted to do and succeeded at it. Still glad I got it for free though. The gorgeous stylized visuals and swelling orchestral soundtrack elevate it a lot from being a glorified screenaver. It is missing the online features of its spiritual predecessor Journey, though. But like Journey, sometimes stripping everything away from the game besides a sense of wonder just...works.}

34. PSYCHONAUTS 2 - maybe 30 hours - 7/10 - 8/30/21
^{It's been 16 years and sadly it seems that the creative spark that made the first game so great in my eyes is mostly gone here. It's a good game, don't get me wrong, but the genre shifts that made P1 special are largely missing here. The levels are more consistent but also far more boring, constantly stopping you to watch cutscenes between lackluster platforming. There's also a complete lack of a difficulty curve. They must have taken the Meat Circus whining way too seriously. The last 2 levels are just as easy as the first 2, at least for anyone with bare minimum 3D platforming skills. This exemplifies the dangers of "designing for accessibility;" unless you actually put the effort in to make varied difficulty modes and sliders, you just make a game that's boring as fuck for everyone else. An invincibility mode for the combat is just a band-aid to hide the fact that you've absolutely gutted the paltforming and puzzle aspects because there's no toggle that can cover for those. The final level is a massive letdown, literally pulling you out of a game-long built-up confrontation for a boring, slow, easy, charmless waste of a climax. Anyway I liked the graphics and the characters and the dialogue and the hub world exploration. These aspects were good enough to trick me into thinking this was the best way this game could have turned out, before I got to the utterly disappointing final third. Oh well. 16 years of expectation can hardly be met anyways.}

35. NO MORE HEROES 3 - 20:13:09 - 7/10 - 9/1/21
^{This game was kind of awful in every way but also weirdly fun and so sure of itself that I can't help but like it at least a little. Yep, that's No More Heroes! At first I was pretty upset that they brought back the lawn-mowing minigame grinding and shitty open world of the first game as well as removing actual levels. You seriously spend 90% of the first half or so in the open world doing dumb garbage and only 10% playing the actual game (which is now relegated to repetitive combat arenas and the main boss fights). But after I got to the second half I was amassing so much money that I didn't really need to touch the stupid minigames anymore and was able to blast through the rest at my own pace. The combat is very simple and the input buffer is awful (like in TSA) still but it's flashy and satisfying. The story and characters are crazy but not really THAT crazy compared to the precedent set by previous games. It's an alright sendoff to this series and that's pretty much what I wanted.}

36. GHOST OF A TALE - 12:03:35 - 7/10 - 9/9/21
^{This is a rodent-themed stealth adventure game set in a small interconnected environment with quests and dialogue options. It's rough in a lot of ways, like how the ideal way to play is to wear a costume that nullifies the stealth aspect but slows your movement to a crawl. But then you can slowly upgrade it so that you move at a decent pace, but now it's literally not a stealth game anymore. Weird. Graphics are decent but there's a surprising lack of animation from a game that touts a Dreamworks animator. It's an indie game after all, and that means lots of jank. What makes up for it though is the story, characters, and dialogue, all of which will push you to end credits. The cast of anthropomorphic mice and rats carry this game beyond its moment-to-moment experience, almost to the point that I wish the pointless stealth mechanics were removed and we got a fully voice-acted pure adventure game instead. Sadly all of this leads up to a disappointing (yet aptly haunting in a strange way) cliffhanger of an ending that might never be followed up on. At least we got this hidden gem, though.}

37. KATANA ZERO - short - 7/10 - 9/12/21
^{What if you took Hotline Miami and made it a sidescroller? You'd get rave reviews and endless admiration in 2019 even though your game isn't that great. Seriously, what was with the rapturous praise for this thing? It ends in an awful state; unlike the last game I played, the story feels literally unfinished. This game will make you say "that's IT??" when you hit the credits. It's fun for what it is but I can't help but feel a little ripped off.}

38. BULLETSTORM - who cares - 6/10 - 9/14/21
^{WHY DO I KEEP ACCIDENTALLY PLAYING GAMES THAT END IN AWFUL CLIFFHANGERS??? Anyway this was pure 7th gen brown-n-bloom dumb FPS junk food. I've seen people call this a "parody" of generic shooters from that era, but I'm not seeing it. The story takes itself seriously, and that story is the same played out hypermasculinity, sex jokes, revenge and redemption cookie-cutter nothing you've seen a billion times with no real teeth. Gameplay is pretty standard, but the main gimmicks of using a gravity defying energy leash to pull enemies toward you as well as being able to kick enemies into slowmo mode and filling them with bullets and finding creative applications for these and more to discover more and more 'skillshots' are decently fun. You're incentivized to get creative with your kills so that you fill up an arcade-like score which acts as currency to buy more ammo. However the game started glitching out about halfway through and started randomly giving me full ammo and supercharges so ammo stopped being a problem??? Weird. I did kind of get bored of all this towards the middle as well. If rentals were still a thing, this would be a rental.}

39. NIOH 2 - 84:17 - 7/10 - 10/10/21
^{Yeah, this game sure did take me a month to beat. Maybe I could have finished it faster if I didn't do almost all the side missions, but those kept me at or above the recommended levels so I was afraid to skip them. So anyway, this was more Nioh. Some flaws from the first game were fixed (enemy variety mostly), but most of the polarizing stuff that makes Nioh Nioh is still here in spades: Diablo loot, boring and repetitive environments, disjointed story with weak characters, and just being a bloated slog in general. The new ability to use yokai attacks in your arsenal and counter big moves that glow red with a special Burst Counter were welcome additions, though, especially to obliterate enemy stamina to get those repetitive fights over quicker. I know the sheer number of possible builds and attacks you can give your character is a strength of this game, but I found an attack with my dual hatchets that I could spam to delete enemy health and ki at around the 75% mark and I abused the fuck out of it from there to the final boss lmao. And no, I will NOT be playing the endless lootgrinding NG+ cycles or DLC, this game was already obnoxious and long enough thank you!}

40. KINGDOM HEARTS 3 RE:MIND DLC (ALL EPISODES) - 17 hours because i suck - 7/10 - 10/16/21
^{I beat Yozora. FUCK Yozora. This series has finally gone off the deep end and I'm not sure I'm here for it. It was weird to suddenly be challenged by such a usually unchallenging game, but at least KH3 feels "complete" now. God why am I still playing this dumb series, it's time for everyone to move on. But Nomura living out his Versus XIII revenge fantasy by hijacking an established franchise is too fascinating of a trainweck to ignore.}

41. ZONE OF THE ENDERS - 5:21:37 - 7/10 - 10/23/21
^{Cool mecha game but too short. Feels like just the first act of a much larger story. Voice acting is very early 2000s and everyone sounds stilted EXCEPT for the AI character, ironically. The 3D mech action is surprisingly solid and fun but there's just not enough of it or enemy variety. And there's some weird progression design moments where the game gives you no direction and you just have to randomly go to different areas looking for events to trigger. I ended up liking what little of the story there is though. I'll definitely TRY the sequel but I remember it being ridiculously hard when I tried it a long time ago.}

42. DELTARUNE CHAPTER 2 - 4 or so hrs - 7/10 - 10/26/21
^{3 years' wait for this? At this rate Deltarune won't be finished until I'm like 40 wtf. This was okay I guess.}

43. APE ESCAPE 2 - 8:33 - 7/10 - 11/13/21
^{I saw credits so I beat it idc. Regardless it was kind of mindlessly easy with stiff platforming so maybe this series isn't as good as I thought it was going to be. Cute tho.}

44. KIRBY: CANVAS CURSE - 3:45 - 5/10 - 11/25/21
^{What if Kirby, but the controls were shitty and weird. Damn. I don't think I've ever had less fun playing a Kirby game. Took me back to the dark Wii/DS era where every game was ruined by touch/motion gimmicks. Don't know what I expected frankly!}

45. CASTLEVANIA: HARMONY OF DISSONANCE - 7:04:11 - 8/10 - 11/27/21
^{Wtf I literally forgot to add this???? That's a first. Anyway this was simply a solid Metroidvania that I unfairly discarded back in the day due to the limited graphics and sound. Turns out this game was just as good as, if not better than, Circle of the Moon and I was a dummy for ignoring it for so long.}

46. 13 SENTINELS: AEGIS RIM - 49:03:41 for Platinum - 9/10 - 12/16/21
^{Vanillaware's magnum opus. Gorgeous art and a VN-esque story just as great, lengthy and satisfyingly intertwined as Odin Sphere but without the ridiculously repetitive gameplay. Instead there's a pretty fun mech strategy game that you can play basically at your own pace. I can't wait for Vanillaware's next project.}

47. WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH - 2 or 3 hours - 7/10 - 12/21/21
^{Standard sad indie walking simulator. Thankfully this one gets straight to the point and doesn't hide what the game is about with vague metaphors until the ending like certain other shitty indie games. There are actually a few pretty innovative/novel "gameplay" setpieces too that keep the game from feeling repetitive. Play this if you're a sicko who wants to feel sad and existential for some reason.}

48. WATTAM - 2 or 3 hours - 7/10 - 12/22/21
^{More like "Watt am" I even playing right now. lole!!! But really this was just a cute little diversion clearly meant for mostly the 5-8 year old crowd and not sad old gamers like me. It's more akin to a playable Nick Jr. screensaver than anything; definitely don't play if you're looking for the next Katamari (it's by the same guy). No challenge, just weird little shape-people babbling like babies.}

49. BLASTER MASTER ZERO 2 - 9:32:29 - 8/10 - 12/24/21
^{Great sequel to a great game. Simple but effective. More people should play this series.}

50. OUTER WILDS: ECHOES OF THE EYE DLC - many hours of being confused - 7/10 - 12/27/21
^{Only rating this lower because it fucking crashed when I went to get the new ending. Other than that it was great and pretty much a full-length game in and of itself.}

51. WARIOWARE: GET IT TOGETHER! - short - 6/10 - 12/30/21
^{They took WarioWare and added even more RNG and a helping of inconsistency with loads of awful physics-based microgames and more than a handful of the playable cast having godawful control schemes. Disappointing gacha-esque bonus content as well that I can't imagine anyone actually wasting time on. No thanks, I'll just stick to WarioWare Gold. Make more Rhythm Heaven you cowards.}

52. METROID DREAD - 9:23:31 - 6.5/10 - 12/30/21
^{Metroid Dread is a linear romp on a track where the way to go is always just in front of you and every enemy on your path of endless upgrades can be defeated with a single easily-timed parry. An elevator trip or two between areas will disguise the Fusion-esque railroading, but don't forget to actually get items between the hordes of sudden boss fights even though the game will never actually push you to explore on your own with real world design! You'll take a break here and there to contend with the gimmick instakill EMMIs who never surprise you by breaking protocol and are always taken out with the same methods, never inspiring "dread" unless your version of dread is being annoyed for 2-5 minutes before getting right back to the actually fun gameplay. More memorable moments on your one-way trip will include repeated boss fights that randomly feel overtuned to bleed your lifebar to make up for the overly generous checkpoint system, because god forbid we have the player *gasp* backtrack to a boss room when they die. That's only to be reserved for ***OPTIONAL*** item hunting! I've witnessed the degradation of a genre within just one series, where now the solution to any obstacle will be found within 20 minutes to an hour of even finding out that obstacle even exists and that pesky *bleugh" exploration that Metroid once pioneered has been smoothed out to just one unified road to victory. But WOW look at Samus do the epic cinematic kill whoooaaahhhh. Game was fine whatever.}

[ME##]

I'M GOING TO REPLAY GTAV LII TIMES THIS YEAR

[AAAAAAAA]

HELLO

• Hypnospace Outlaw - 1/2
• RAD - 1/3
• Tetris Effect - 1/9
• Spyro: Year of the Dragon - 1/9
• Final Fantasy VII Remake - 1/14
• tint. - 1/15
• Murder by Numbers - 1/23
• Enter the Gungeon - 1/27
• Lair of the Clockwork God - 2/6
• Control - 2/13
• Jenny LeClue Detectivu - 2/21
• Solitairica - 2/22
• NUTS - 2/28
• Final Fantasy VII - 3/7
• World of Warcraft: Shadowlands - 3/13
• Astro's Playroom - 3/18
• Bugsnax - 3/22
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - 3/27
• Breath of Fire - 3/30
• Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise - 4/2
• Sonic Mania - 4/4
• Gnosia - 4/11
• Golf Story - 4/24
• Persona 4 Golden - 4/29
• Titanfall 2 - 5/2
• New Pokemon Snap 5/??
• NieR Replicant ver 1.22283742938547129834 - 5/9
• Paradise Killer - 5/12
• Persona 5 Strikers - 5/31
• World's End Club (Part 2) - 6/19
• The Room - 7/1
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - 7/4
• Heaven's Vault - 7/11
• The Room Two - 7/24
• The Touryst - 7/24
• Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition - 7/25
• The Room Three - 8/4
• Ape Out - 8/4
• The Room: Old Sins - 8/??
• Metroid Fusion - 8/8
• Disco Elysium - 8/13
• Maquette - 8/14
• Rivals - 8/15
• Ys I - 8/15
• Ys II - 8/20
• Twelve Minutes - 8/21
• A Monster's Expedition - 8/22
• Psychonauts 2 - 8/30
• The Great Ace Attorney - 9/10
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - 9/14
• Dishonored: Death of the Outsider - 9/20
• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - 9/27
• WarioWare: Get It Together! - 10/5
• Metroid Dread - 10/10
• Sable - 10/11
• The Great Ace Attorney 2 - 10/20
• Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - 10/23
• SteamWorld Heist - 11/??
• Yakuza 0 - 11/21
• VA-11 Hall-A - 11/??
• Fantasian - 12/10
• The Forgotten City - 12/10
• Mini Motorways - 12/15
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - 12/28

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

i didnt even make it to twenty this year but fuck it lets gooooooooooooooo

[ME##]

i didnt even make it to twenty this year but fuck it lets gooooooooooooooo

SORRY I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING

[Hiro]

let's fucking do it

• It's Mr. Pants - ~5:00 - 3/7 - 2/15/21
  Puzzle game made by Rare for the GBA, has some of the most annoying music, sound effects, and visuals in any game I've played, but it's so absurd that it was most likely intentional and is kind of amusing. It's fun when you have it figured out, but so many of the puzzles have exactly one solution that can only be found by repeating the level over and over again. Would have been much better with an undo button.

[Samus Aran]

beat one already: streets of rage 4

[Hiro]

absolutely based

[TooB]

I GUESS ILL MAKE A SPACE TOO



GAMES SMASHED


1. Nioh 2

2. Jade Empire

3. Nier Replicant ver. 1.2269420

4. Resident Evil VIIIage

5. Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time

6. Ratchet and Clank: Into the Nexus

7. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

[C.Mongler]

aw SHIT

CMONGLER'S BEATIN GAMES SMONGLER


2021 GAMES IN PROGRESS (so i remember 2 beat them and stop starting new shit)
1. Monster Hunter Rise - just trying to max out my hunter rank and then putting it on the list
2. Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods - part 1 done, like a third of the way done with part 2
3. Sackboy: A Big Adventure - couple worlds deep
4. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - probably like a quarter done?
5. Forza Horizon 5 - vrrooom


----

1. Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) - 1/24/2021 - little over 20 hours
Rating: 3/5
ehhhh. like i want to try and be objectivish and put out of my head that both A) this is not the game that they promised it would be and B) these guys made the fucking Witcher 3, and look at it for what it is on its own, but yeaaa also maybe its fair i don't lol. It's basically a GTA, Fallout Scrolls hybrid, and it's worse than any of those games in those series. the discourse around this game has kind of been beat to death at this point, but to summarize my thoughts: there's little reason to give a shit about V, night city is completely soulless, samey, and is basically just a boring backdrop for the story, there's almost zero choice or agency in the game, and it honestly doesn't even really qualify as an RPG, the game is buggy as fuck, most of the game feels really unpolished and underdeveloped. i didn't hate the game necessarily, i even enjoyed some of the aldecaldo stuff that's ironically outside of night city itself lol, but so much of the experience brings it down unfortunately. i feel like if it had 1-2 more years in the oven it could have hit the marks it set out for a lot better, but uh, it is what it is now I guess.

2. Immortal Fenyx Rising - 2/20/2021 - 22 hours and 11 minutes
Rating: 4/5
honestly way more fun than i anticipated when my normie coworker goaded me into picking up and playing this game lol. it's shamelessly wearing BOTW inspiration on its sleeved mixed with greek mythology lore. if you want to play BOTW with indestructable weapons and a million more collectables/power ups, then check this out. feels like there's a billion fucking things to seek out in this game and i barely scratched the surface. the writing/dialogue is corny at times but the game also just doesn't take itself seriously at all so i didn't mind too much; it was occasionally actually funny too. my issues with the game are similar to BOTW tbh. all the game's dungeons take place in a weird ethereal Final Destination esque plane, and therefor they all feel kinda samey. the game also relies on puzzles so much that they get kind of tiring by the end. "oh boy, time to move blocks or roll a ball for the 100th time". i also wish the combat was a bit more intentional. there's not a ton of enemy variety, and they all feel kinda samey regardless. there's a ton of different moves and upgrades, but by the end you can kind of just button mash with no real repercussions in every fight. also they often throw boring meat-grinder fights at you just so it feels like you've got something to do, but they aren't challenging, just a time sink. overall I had a good time, and its not overlong like some other ubi games, just wish it was a little bit tighter in terms of dungeon and enemy design.

3. Bowser's Fury - 2/21/2021 - like 3 or 4 hours
Rating: 5/5
i'm counting this as its own thing cuz its v different than mario 3d world lol fuck it. basically this game is a mario romp without walls. no loading screens between levels, no menus, nada. it's a big ole open island with "levels" that you can travel between at will. and then there's also big ole' bitch bowser who every few minutes pops up and starts fuckin' with shit that you gotta play around. my only complaint is that it's pretty short, but there's a lot of neat ideas on display here that i hope Ninty rolls with in the future; would love to see a full-ass game in this style. maybe not as much weird cat shit tho.

4. Super Mario 3D World (Switch) - 3/12/2021 - like 7 hours, idk lol
Rating: 5/5
honestly one of my favorite entries in the mario platformer franchise. there's so much variety in levels (plus theres SO MANY LEVELS), they all have little secrets and quirks to figure out, it's got multiplayer, they made the switch version EVEN FASTER, its got a boppin' soundtrack, i love this frickin game. my only complaint is that i personally get fucked over by depth perception sometimes because the camera and shadows get a little fucky occasionally, but its not usually a huge deal.

5. Devotion - 3/19/2021 - like 3 or 4 hours
Rating: 5/5
decided to pick this one up on Red Candle's new webstore as I've been wanting to play this since I heard about its "controversies". it is a very good horror game, and definitely cemented itself as one of my favorites. it tells a very interesting, dark, but also somewhat heartbreaking/touching story about a Taiwanese family. Gameplay is a mix between the usual hallway-horror style that's gotten popular, but it has a few puzzle sections and variety that doesn't make it feel boring like other games like Layers of Fear imo. There's a few jump scare moments that were kinda corny, but overall all the spooks were actually well done too. Very good game, definitely recommend if you're looking for something spooky.

6. Ratchet & Clank (2016) - 6/9/2021 - like 10 hours
Rating: 3/5
finally got around to playing through this because i picked up rift apart and am looking forward to giving that whirl on friday. for the record, i have no nostalgia for this game or this series and this is the first one i've ever played to completion, but man, this is the video gamiest video game i have ever played. like if someone came out of a 40 year coma and was like 'what is a video game', i'd show them this. the game looks great, there's a lot of cool guns, but everything else i can kind of only describe as "fine!". levels are straightforward and not really notable, the plot and humor are kind of whatever, enemies are boring, and it feels like 100 games i've played before. i didn't hate it, but hope rift apart brings a lot more to the table lol

7. Knights of the Round (Arcade) - 6/25/2021 - an hour lol
Rating: 4/5
pretty decent old school beat-em up game that I played through with my buddies. it was pretty neat how your amour and shit gets upgraded as you level. it was kind of annoying how all the PCs look like enemies though lol we kept trying to kill each other. all an all, you kill shit, what's not to like.

8. Picross S - 7/16/2021- over 30 fucking hours lol
Rating: 4/5
i mean, it's fucking picross, what do you want me to say lol. it works, it's polished enough, it's dandy! the main 'game' is 150 picross puzzles, all of which i completed during my shits over the span of like half a year to achieve this beat. there's also a MEGA picross mode, which i did not complete because i thought it was kind of annoying, but it probably wasn't terrible if i gave it a chance, but i didn't wanna lol. uhhh complaints? i guess it would have been nice if there was more than 3 music tracks and a way to randomize them. maybe some like background themes? idk its fucking picross lol

9. Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin - 7/31/2021- 40 hours, 33 minutes
Rating: 5/5
beat the main game and all 3 DLCs. I went into this not expecting a ton given its notoriety, and mostly just wanted to give this game a fair shake on my souls-journey before I played DSIII, but I actually liked it a shitload. i think the worst part for me was just learning that iframes were tied to a stat, so the game felt super off and weird at first, but once I pumped like 20 levels into that stat I was having a good time. i thought this game had a lot of great bosses (i for one am a fan of man in armor bosses, so whatever lol), had a lot of great locales even if the world/map made zero fucking sense, and I think had the best presented story and lore of any souls game I have experienced thus far. while I won't be as contrarian to say i liked this more than ds1, there's enough that I liked more that it rivals it in a lot of places in my book.

10. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 8/12/2021- idk probably 15 hours or some shit
Rating: 5/5
this is probably the fourth or fifth time i've beaten this game in my life, but i hadn't done so since college. started playing this here and there a few months ago on my emulator handheld and finally kill'd ganon last night. game still fucking rules after all these years, and p sure it's still my favorite zelda game. i will say the last few levels are kinda brutal in difficulty when you suck ass tho lol but i eventually got through it. an all time goat 4 sure.

11. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD - 9/2/2021- just shy of 30 hours
Rating: 4/5
alright i have tried to play this game like 6 fucking times and I finally have actually completed it. and guess what? IT'S FINE. it's still probably my least favorite 3d zelda, but there's still a lot I really like about the game. most of the dungeons are some of the best in the series, the art kinda slaps IMO, and there's a lot of really neat, funny, and charming characters in this game (especially compared to like, TP, where every character was fucking boring or annoying). that said, yes, the motion controls objectively make this game worse in every conceivable way. there's parts where what the game asks of you via motion is neat, but jesus like 10 years later and a brand new controller, and this shit is still awfully imprecise on joycons. you're constantly re-calibrating trying to slash in the correct direction. luckily there's an option to play with just controllers, which after about 1/3 through the game i committed to lol. it has its own problems, like it removes free camera without using a hotkey (which would be fine if you could fucking use the hotkey to toggle or swap weather pressing it activates the camera or the sword, but this is nintendo so fuck options i guess lol) and a lot of stuff is mapped to stick combos that can take a while to remember, but once you get used to it it honestly makes the game 100% more bearable. anyway, i'm glad i finally beat it, it was interesting enough, but i see why people fucking loathe it lol

12. Boomerang X - 9/10/2021- 1 hour and 45 minutes
Rating: 5/5
this game is super fucking fun. it's an incredibly fast, level-base wave-based first-person shootie slash traversal game? think kind of ghostrunner meets dishonored meets ninja boomrang thingy?? basically you do different levels that have different waves of enemies you need to take down, you can slow time, teleport, move basically however you want or need, while killing hordes of dudes. this game is definitely a speedrunners' delight, and was definitely designed with beating it ver and over, faster and faster in mind. that said it's REALLY short, as I beat it in less than 2 hours lol. they easily could have made this game twice as long and it wouldn't have worn out its welcome, but i enjoyed it a lot for what it was.

13. WarioWare: Get It Together! - 9/11/2021- like 3 hours
Rating: 4/5
i brought this over to my buddies house yesterday and we played through the whole story and a few of the additional modes. in summary: a pretty fun romp if you're going to play it with other people, but somewhat of a weird departure from warioware of yore. basically this time around they have avatar-ified every warioware character, and you complete microgames as an avatar instead of as an onlooker pressing buttons. the interesting bit is every character controls completely differently and has their own gimmicks; typically you're building a team of characters that you swap between randomly for each microgame. the downside here is half the characters are borderline useless because they have arbitrarily constricting or weird controls, and there's definitely an obvious tier listing of the best characters. basically the ones that have free movement and shooting are the best by far. it's fun for sure, but not my favorite game in the series. it's a good time with friends, however due to every character controlling differently, it's not something you can just pick up and play necessarily since you won't know how a character works until you've used them a couple times lol. so all-in-all, kinda weird.

14. No More Heroes III - 9/16/2021- just shy of 13 hours
Rating: 4/5
what a fucking wild ride lol. if you don't like this series, this won't change your mind, but I'm glad this game exists even if it is just as flawed as any of the other ones. nmh 3 has maybe the best opening of any game i've played in a while, but after you get past that it's a lot of doing chores to chase the next cutscene or boss battle. the game brings back the open world from the first game, and while it's mildly better, it still kinda of sucks lol. there's no longer any beat-em-up style levels in the game at all, which i think was kinda lame; instead you do kill-em-all style missions to get money and gain access to boss levels. also not to spoilerino, but i also found the bait and switching the game constantly pulls with the bosses kinda wack. anyway, i did like the game too lol: the combat was the most satisfying its ever been (even if its still not 100% great lol), the music fucking rules, the story is fucking bonkers and engaging as hell, and the game overall oozes style. at the very least it's way better than TSA (a game i kind of fucking hated playing but enjoyed for the plot), and might be my favorite of the franchise. game runs like shit on switch though, hope it comes to PC at some point lol.

15. Death's Door - 10/4/2021- 8 hours and 36 minutes
Rating: 4/5
I really enjoyed my time with this game, but I think there was just a little spice missing to the formula to make it truly something fantastic. This game is very clearly classic Zelda inspired, but it's more combat focused than puzzle focused (i dont think there were really any puzzles at all now that i think back), and I also found it pretty fucking difficult to boot. I think largely that's because the game has an isometric perspective that sometimes makes it difficult to accurately aim your attacks and see projectiles. Also the game has extremely limited HP upgrades that are all super hidden, so it's very plausible to play the entire game with only 4 hits to death. I think there's maybe only 2 or 3 more hits you can pickup though lol. All in all I liked it though; the characters and world really grew on me towards the end, I liked a lot of the boss fights and the pre-boss challenges (though one of the final bosses had a kind of fucked up hit box that made the fight really frustrating), and the soundtrack was top notch. Recommend if you want something kinda zelda-y to try.

16. Resident Evil Village - 10/26/2021 - 10 hours and 4 minutes
Rating: 4/5
what a fucking weird game lol; I think I can summarize this game as RE7's RE5. IMO it improves almost nothing from its predecessor, and in a lot of ways just feels like the only feedback they took into consideration was "uhhh you want more shooting??". The game is almost entirely front-loaded (kinda like RE7!!), with everything after vampire mommy's castle feeling like an atmospheric shooting gallery in different locales and not much like a survival horror game. The game at least does kind of expand the amount of boss and enemy types and encounters from 7, but pretty much every boss is "shoot it until it dies" which is just kind of tired after a while considering the gunplay in this game handles like shit (on PS5 anyway) until you dial the settings way in, and even then, it's still not great. but, despite my groveling, i still found it "decent"!! The set pieces, as set piece-y as they are, were interesting, this game introduces some of the series' best characters, the game looks great, and also includes a lot of shit to explore. i just wish they perfected what RE7 setup instead of just kind of continuing it lol

17. Metroid Dread - 10/31/2021 - 7 hours and 20 minutes
Rating: 5/5
this was a good-ass video game!! i was honestly skeptical what another Metroid game would offer in 2021 in a landscape that feels like has a 10/10 metroidvania coming out ever other week, but by gosh they actually nailed it. the game's fucking massive, everything flows together beautifully (once you get past the first couple hours which has a couple spots I found easy to get lost lol), the abilities are all sick as shit, and the bosses are perfectly difficult and fun. the only complaint i can muster is the E.M.M.I. stuff gets lightly annoying towards the end; i just ended up dying 2 or 3 times coming up with a route to speedily cheese through the danger zones because trying to avoid the E.M.M.I's becomes a slow pain in the ass. but yeah, good fuckin game

18. Returnal - 11/10/2021 - about 24 hours
Rating: 5/5
man this game was phenomenal. one of the best feeling games just to move and glide around in with an extremely satisfying gameplay loop. I even started a new run once I beat the final boss because I just wanted to play around with my new endgame powers in the earlier areas. Returnal is basically a bullet-hell third person shooter rougelite. It's also tough as shit, though I found the first act a lot tougher than the second. The third biome is fucking hell. All-in-all this game is great, though I did experience run-ruining bugs on multiple occasions, and the story feels like it's trying too hard sometimes (especially once you've seen the endings), but I think I can forgive.

19. Halo: Infinite - 12/29/2021 - i dunno like 15 hours maybe
Rating: 4/5
i dunno what to rate this one lol. i thought some parts of this game were easily the best halo has ever been, and then some parts of it were a snooze cruise lol. so the good: yeah i think the 'open world' concept works really well for halo. the combat is fucking NICE. you generally have to plan out how you're going to engage in combat, use your full arsenal of tools, and i died a lot lmao, game's kinda tough at points. new weapons are tight, grappling hook is tight, the grunts are hilarious in this game; I had a great time actually playing the game. BUT some stuff sucked ass. all the interior levels feel exactly the same, they're generally just straight metal lined hallways, and you always will have to press a button, or find a battery and then press a button. i also thought it was goofy most of the games plot and world-building basically takes place in the form of holograms. you either are talking to your AI, or some hologram is yelling at you, or a hologram memory is playing out like a war-torn-future TikTok. It's all kind of boring lol. But luckily there's enough good shit in this game that it kind of gets a pass from me? I had a good time

[Samus Aran]

i've decided that 60 will be what i aim for

[Nyerp]

BEAT MY FIRST GAME OF THE YEAR.....and it's cyberjunk

[ME##]

BEAT MY FIRST GAME OF THE YEAR.....and it's cyberjunk

You poor soul

[Nyerp]

another game beaten, another disappointment.....it's crash 4, a game designed by sadists for the sole enjoyment of masochists!