1. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)(Adventure)2. Final Fight [Japanese Version] (Switch)(Beat 'Em Up)3. Ziggurat (PC)(FPS)
4. Magrunner: Dark Pulse (PC)(FPS)
5. The King of Dragons [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)6. Captain Commando [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)7. Knights of the Round [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
8. The Witcher (PC)(RPG)9. Tenchi wo Kurau II (Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
10. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (PC)(RPG)11. Lichdom: Battlemage (PC)(FPS/RPG Hybrid)
12. Star Wars: Republic Commando (PC)(FPS)13. DOOM 64 (PC)(FPS)
14. Half Dead 2 (PC)(Adventure)15. Powered Gear - Strategic Variant Armor Equipment (Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
16. Torchlight II (PC)(RPG)17. Battle Circuit [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
18. Hard Reset Redux (PC)(FPS)19. The Stanley Parable (PC)(Walking Sim)20. Waking Mars (PC)(Adventure)
21. Requiem: Avenging Angel (PC)(FPS)22. Night Slashers (Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
23. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD (PC)(Action Adventure)24. Strikers 1945 (Arcade)(SHMUP)
25. SiN Episodes: Emergence (PC)(FPS)
26. Crysis Warhead (PC)(FPS)27. Metro 2033 (PC)(FPS)
28. Good Job! (Switch)(Puzzle)
29. Blasphemous (Switch)(Action Adventure)Yeah, another productive weekend.
Metro 2033It comes as no surprise to those who know me here that I am an enormous fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series in all forms, whether it be the film, the games, or the novella that started it all,
Roadside Picnic. As a result, I picked up Metro 2033 soon after it's release...and then I didn't play it. For one thing, I didn't have a computer that could run it. But time also wore on, and I simply didn't pay attention. Finding myself done with a few other FPS games recently, I proposed a list to Popo, and he recommended it heartily, so I finally got around to checking it out.
I'm glad I did. Metro 2033 presents me with another despairing Russian tale of science fiction in the aftermath of nuclear catastrophe, though this time it was an armageddon that forced the citizens of Moscow into their transit system. Now, two decades later, the world above is a radioactive wasteland in the grips of nuclear winter, while the tunnels teem with life, not all of it human. As a citizen in this world, you find your little station coming across some new kind of menace, known only as the Dark Ones, and you set off on a mission to save your station and possible the rest of Moscow from this shadowy threat. However, the journey involves bandits, mutants, a war between Soviet and Nazi extremists who have nothing better to do than sink into their spiteful ideologies, and the strange S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-themed anomalies that pop up along the way. Yeah, this game took a lot of inspiration, though it feels like an homage in a far more linear setting.
You also have to weigh your survivability against your income, because in this post-apocalyptic future, bullets are now currency. While in lower difficulties, you probably won't have too much issue with this, checking into the more "realistic" Ranger modes will cause you to take stock of whether you should really buy an extra first aid kit or save the rounds and hope you can scrounge one off the dead. Since there's no HUD, guns do a lot more damage, and you're getting fewer rounds off the dead any time you find some, you better have some skills in Ranger difficulties. Stealth becomes preferable, to the point that at times, Metro 2033 is more a stealth game than a proper run and gun. Then again, it also wants to be a horror game at times, though it never quite goes full force in that direction either.
Still, I enjoy this kind of world, so I'm happy to go run through the subterranean tunnels, weighing whether it is better to be ready for loud or spend my bullets on a silenced weapon and hope I've got the skill to get through to the next station. I've gone through the game a couple of times now and am slowly working through the Ranger modes now too, so I guess I'll see.
Good Job!I picked this charming little puzzle game up to play with my wife, and we had a blast with it, despite it also resulting in some frustration over how often I simply prefer to smash everything.
In Good Job!, you play the child of a CEO who brings you in to work on the ground floor of the family corporation. On each floor of the corporate skyscraper, you find a different department, each with three challenges that must be completed before the fourth Promotion challenge of the floor opens up. Finish the fourth, and you get promoted, granting you access to the next floor of the building and additional puzzles. These puzzles are based on..."realistic" work situations, so they can include things like fixing the office wi-fi, getting lounging employees back to the assembly line, or redirecting lasers to power the company's nuclear reactor.
Yes, your corporation has a nuclear reactor. Yes, they let you play with it. Yes, your rise to power is the height of nepotism and the absolute pinnacle of your ability to get the job done while most likely smashing everything in the way. You will succeed by failing your way up through wanton destruction.
It's probably best not to dig too deeply into the plot here and instead enjoy the fact that you can go into an area, move the furniture, mop up the floor, and use extension cords like slingshots to launch objects through walls, thus completely destroying things in the process but enabling you to get the job done! Sure, I may have drained the pool and filled what water is there with broken glass, but hey, the pool floats got picked up.
Every level also features findable objects to grab for clothing, so you can customize your avatar as you see fit. And since there's no penalty to having a second player, co-op lets you bring out new strategies to get things resolved. It may also result in arguments over where your wife should put that damn mirror to bounce that stupid fucking laser off of, and oh great, now she's not talking to you AND has put the mirror in the wrong fucking spot, but that's ok. You helped the family corporation, mainly by breaking everything you could.
And at the end of it all, you become the next CEO. I probably hospitalized a bunch of my fellow employees, smashed all their hard work, and I don't even have a degree. Isn't nepotism grand? My wife and I congratulated ourselves by going into the developer room in the post-game and then spraying everyone with a fire hose.
BlasphemousImagine if Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a lot harder and a lot more Catholic. Yeah, that's Blasphemous. It's a Metroidvania-style game that gives a world full of Spain's Inquisition-style Christian mythology, that while isn't Christian, is certainly borrowing the pomp, circumstance, guilt, self-flagellation, masochism, guilt, and OH MY GOD THE GUILT.
You play the Penitent One, in a fictional land of Cvstodia, who has taken a vow of silence. You have to make your way through the land, using a sword called the Mea Culpa that was birthed from a nun stabbing herself in the chest with a crucifix. You're going up against a religion based around the Great Miracle, which involves pretty much everyone having to suffer in some heinous way simply to prove their devotion to whatever sacred deity is the center of this religion. I don't really know, but whatever god birthed this place, they can go get right proper fucked. Being silent is one thing; imagine your penitence is to heal others by kissing their wounds, or you try to join a convent by climbing up a freezing mountain to prove your faith and likely die on the way up only to have to grievously burn your face when you do make it as an act of faith, or you could simply have been tortured and forced into an iron suit stuck in a tree. Pain is salvation under the Great Miracle. Seriously, does nobody's piety happen to involve something nice? Why is it always suffering?
Anyway, you travel through a variety of locales in this 2D side-scroller, navigating treacherous jumps, fighting nasty monsters, and hoping you don't die, because if you do die, your guilt from doing so will build up until you can recover it by reaching your last resting place. Get used to dying too, because a lot of the game is about learning how to fight the new monsters you encounter, how to survive, and how to traverse points A and B in far more terrible ways than simply backdashing like you were some vampire's prettyboy kid or something. You'll get through an area, figure out the puzzles, finally make it to a save point, and then you fight OH DEAR GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
And then you fight a boss. Each boss is a feat, both in terms of design and skill. Bosses in Blasphemous can be brutally difficult, and getting through them is a matter of perseverance just as much as getting more powerful. You'll have to memorize how they move, learn their patterns, learn their tells, and be more than a little light on your feet. You'll also probably sacrifice yourself at least once just to learn how to prepare yourself for each fight.
Visually, the bosses are mostly stunning creations, whether it be a giant burned head, a massive bishop's skeleton held up by the pious in glory, an enormous baby that will rip you apart like a rag doll, a tree monster that tears the head off a statue when you first confront it, or in a few cases, a few regular-seeming people in this nightmare holy world...and they're the hardest fights of all, the bastards.
And at the end of the game, you will feel like you've accomplished something incredible, because the adrenaline from what you have overcome is fantastic. If you're ok with witnessing some horrible suffering and more than your fair share of blood, guts, and that face you make when you see something totally horrid, then yeah, play Blasphemous.