Games Beaten 2023

[Ack]

1. Northern Journey (PC)(FPS)
2. Hatchpunk (PC)(FPS)
3. Might and Magic IX (PC)(RPG)
4. Star Wars: Empire at War (PC)(RTS)
5. Chasm: The Rift (PC)(FPS)
6. Real Heroes: Firefighter HD (PC)(FPS)
7. CULTIC (PC)(FPS)
8. Consortium (PC)(FPS)
9. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (PC)(FPS)
10. Forgive Me, Father (PC)(FPS)
11. Teomim Island (PC)(FPS)
12. Regions of Ruin (PC)(Action RPG)
13. Void Bastards (PC)(FPS)
14. Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad - Single Player (PC)(FPS)
15. Quake: Scourge of Armagon (PC)(FPS)
16. Quake: Dissolution of Eternity (PC)(FPS)
17. Bioshock Infinite (PC)(FPS)
18. Chop Goblins (PC)(FPS)
19. Ravenloft: Stone Prophet (PC)(RPG)
20. Halfway (PC)(Tactical Strategy)

Halfway is a turn-based tactics game that looks like it could have come out on the Amiga in the early 1990s. You control a squad of soldiers, scientists, prisoners, and experiments, who awaken from hibernation on a massive spaceship only to discover it is still jumping through hyperspace due to its FTL drive. Something about the repeated jumps have mutated most of the crew into alien soldiers working at the behest of some unknown intelligence. The ship's AI is also corrupted. It's up to you to move across the ship, gaining new recruits while searching for gear and defeating the enemy every step of the way.

This story is further explored through interactions between party members in your hub between levels. You talk to the others to learn more about their lives, as well as unlock side missions and rearrange party equipment or purchase necessary supplies. Characters have limited inventory space but need weapons and armor, and you'll want to make sure they're supplied with ammunition, grenades, health kits, and whatever else will help them survive the fight. While death isn't final in Halfway, it does permanently knock your characters out of the battle, which can turn the tide against you, so it's important to keep everyone armed and strong. Also, the interactions between characters is sometimes hilarious and sometimes horrible; your team is made up of a bunch of misfits, some of whom absolutely loathe each other for good reason.

But combat is where you'll spend most of your time. You start by picking your team of four characters who will navigate the level. Sometimes you have required characters to bring, so making sure everyone is kept up to date with their weapons is gear is vital. Characters also have unique active and passive abilities, so depending on your strategy and builds, you may highly prefer certain teams to others. For example, one character can remove enemy shields, decent against most foes and devastating against some of the final enemies you encounter. Another can bolster his damage to double if he hits, meaning he usually one-shots whatever enemy he aims at if he's armed accordingly. These decisions will impact how you get through, but all you have to do is get through, as everyone ends up back in the hub fully healed (but not with guns reloaded). Levels also cannot be replayed later, so you just have to keep pushing forward.

Once you're in the fight, it's a turn based tactical battle. Everyone has two actions, which can be spent using abilities, healing, throwing grenades, moving, reloading, or shooting. Conversely you can also choose to take no action but retaliate if anyone attacks you, which can be helpful when planned well. You also have some options, such as spending both actions on a single attack to improve your hit chances. Because Halfway is not a game where you get many guaranteed hits. Even being pointblank may only net you a 60% chance to hit, depending on your gun, and I've seen characters miss twice in a row when they had a 91% chance to hit on both attacks. Taking the chance to bolster a hit, particularly when you have a powerful weapon like a sniper rifle or rail gun, can guarantee survival and possibly wipe out an enemy giving you problems.

But don't fear, the enemy is subject to the same rules you are and will be forced to reload, choose between cover and combat, and so forth. They're certainly not all pushovers, but your specials also give you the advantage, so as long as you exhibit sound tactical thinking based on your loadout, you'll be fine. Certain enemy types also tend towards repetition, so once you understand how they operate, you can plan for them. Are the enemy ranks full of melee shocktroops? Pull back and make a kill box, let them come and die in your overlapping fields of fire. Armed with heavy guns? They'll probably hang back, so you can reposition and focus on other foes while basically ignoring them for a while. Change your tactics depending on what you face, but you only have to tweak so much.

Beyond that, there isn't a lot of variance in Halfway. It's a fun game, but not a particularly long lasting one. It does have some little bugs, but these mainly consist of equipment not sorting properly and text sometimes misaligning. I had no other issues.

I liked Halfway quite a bit. It reminded me of X-Com or the more recent trilogy of Shadowrun games' combat. I'd say it's worth checking out so long as you don't expect it to be particularly deep. I had fun.

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

20 so far:

1 Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
A lot of slowdown. Smart level design. Fun to practice! Seemed like endless continues on the last level, took me a couple of hours.
8/10

2 He Fucked the Girl Out of Me
Personal story about doing sex work to pay for transgender medication. Hits hard. Glad to see the creator acknowledges that some sex workers love their job.
7/10

3 Dragon Age: Inquisition
Too long and simple. But the supporting cast has its moments. Some great ones even.
6/10

4 Dragon's Dogma
Open world with many quirks and surprises. Combat never gets old. It's really exciting finding out what this game has in stock for you!
9/10

5 God of War 2
Everything in this game is dumb. Unfortunately, it's bad in a mundane way. I guess combat is occasionally engaging?
2/10

6 Gargoyle's Quest 2
This is exactly like the Game Boy version. Amazingly the same.
6/10

7 Automaton Lung
Fascinating world to explore. Within seconds you feel like you're on an unforgettable adventure. It becomes a bit gamey towards the end though.
8/10

8 XCOM 2
Interface is horribly unclear, making the huge range of options a taxing choice. By the time I had confidence in my choices, it was almost over! Could be a bit faster, too. Exciting combat, though.
7/10

9 System Shock 2
Prey 2017 heavily improves on this game's premise. There's still good resource management to be had, and intriguing world. Screw the respawning enemies and monkeys.
7/10

10 Lego Star Wars: The Video Game
Fantastic tutorial (you pay coins for tips and that's all the explaining it has), and cute. But haphazard controls and overly simple combat often makes it a chore.
5/10

11 Twinkle Tale
Pocky & Rocky is better, but this adventurous shmup has some fun level design.
6/10

12 Super Adventure Island II
Borrows a lot from Zelda 2, but the levels are a maze and combat is dumb. Bare bones metroidvania.
4/10

13 Inscryption
Reminded me of House of Leaves: scary because there's no clear boundary between the medium and real life. Play on a PC with internet connection!
8/10

14 Just Cause 3
Too many bases/towns to blow up. Main story has some awesome bits. Occasionally I felt like a hero! Very creative in ways to clear missions, but it should last 20 hours, not 40.
6/10

15 El Viento
It's fast but unruly. Bad level design and feedback. Subpar run 'n' gun.
3/10

16 Super Meat Boy
Sprites are so small I couldn't trust the hitboxes and when exactly I would stick to a wall. But it's fast and really well designed.
7/10

17 Sin & Punishment
Looks and feels awesome when things go well. Still, targets/enemies aren't always clear, and it's taxing to aim at things and dodge other things at the same time.
6/10

18 Kuukiyomi: Consider It
The minigames are fascinating but it's frustrating how what you want to do often doesn't match what you think the controls are for it. Is this supposed to be funny?
4/10

19 Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
This game has so little respect for the player. I guess being unsure what things are is a part of the mental disorder it's trying to portray? Bad puzzles, lacklustre combat, only 8 hours long but still felt way too long.
3/10

20 Demon's Souls
The jankiness and unpredictability of this game is unique: doesn't have the polish of Elden Ring and that's the best part. Fascinating to see how this series started.
9/10

[BoneSnapDeez]

One game on that list stands out among the others.

[REPO Man]

Does beating Way of the Warrior for 3DO, via the Opera core on Retroarch, as Gaines count as beaten if I played on the easiest skill level?

[Ack]

One game on that list stands out among the others.

Hell yeah, System Shock 2 is amazing.

[REPO Man]

Just beat Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, though I played the color hack.

[PartridgeSenpai]

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

1. Super Hero Operations (PS1)
2. Lil' Gator Game (PC)
3. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (PC)
4. Dragon Quest VII (PS1)
5. Dragon Quest III (SFC)
6. Dragon Quest VIII (PS2)
7. Dragon Quest Monsters (GBC)
8. Mario Party 6 (GC)
9. Last Bible 3 (SFC)
10. Mario Party 4 (GC)
11. Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
12. Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (SFC)
13. Chrono Trigger (SFC) *
14. BoxBoy + BoxGirl! (Switch)
15. The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog (PC)
16. SaGa (GB)
17. Wario Land 3 (GBC) *
18. Sutte Hakkun (SFC)

19. Kane & Lynch 2 (PC)

This is a game I got in some PC games bundle of some kind forever ago. I couldn’t even try to remember which one if I wanted to. But recently a friend of mine got gifted it from a friend of theirs (who very possibly got it from the same place I got it and just still had a key kicking around XD), and she asked me if I would be willing to play through it on stream with her. Both loving streaming with friends and having no idea what this game was (and confusing it with Max Payne for like 2.5 weeks before we actually streamed it XD), I of course agreed~. We played through it in co-op on stream over the course of about 3.5 hours. We played the PC version of it through Steam in English on easy mode.

Kane & Lynch 2 is a sequel to the first game, but that’s a game I have never played and only know the story of via reading the wiki entry. From what I’ve been able to gather, though, this game seems to treat the ending of the last game with some ambiguity. Lynch is living in Shanghai with his girlfriend, and despite how badly their last job together was, Lynch needs Kane’s help for one last weapons deal. Kane really needs the money, so he agrees. Everything goes from bad to worse really fast when a shootout ends up killing the daughter of a powerful gang kingpin, and Kane & Lynch need to wheel, deal, and shoot their way out of the massive sea of shit they’ve landed themselves in.

Narratively, K&L2 wants to be something like an edgy, late-2000’s thriller/action movie, but it has none of the writing competence to actually pull that off. Sure, it’s got nudity, sex, torture, racism, but it’s not remotely trying to say *anything* with any of it. It’s just doing it to be shocking because it knows that that’s what edgy, serious dramas do. Both Kane and Lynch just have virtually nothing to their characters, and the story is more so just a sequence of events happening until its over. I’ve read that the devs say the poor quality of some things is intentional, but if they’re telling the truth, they’ve done a terrible job of it. There’s not enough substance here to be remotely called satire or parody of anything. Satire requires clarity of purpose, but I’m not even sure what they’d be trying to be parodying with the quite racist, sexist, vapid action movie they’ve turned into a game.

Nothing drove home to me more that the writers simply have no idea what they’re doing than the ending. If they wanted to steal a note from something like the Sopranos or tons of other famous “men wrapped up in organized crime” stories, then the obvious place to end the story is at the end of the penultimate level. When Lynch has just let his feelings get in the way of business, and robbed them of their one tiny chance out of all of this hell. That would’ve been the classy time to cut to black. But instead, we get a whole other level before the credits where they make a very underwhelming escape through an airport and just take off after forcing their way onto a plane. They actually *do* escape, which does a hell of a lot to undermine the more obvious possible takeaway from the story, that being “there’s no easy way out of it for men who live their lives like K&L do”. K&L2’s story puts them through the pace of an action movie that would’ve felt generic 20 years earlier well enough, but it’ll leave you as quickly as it comes. While it’s a story that may unintentionally say some things about the culture and development environment that made it, K&L2 as a narrative isn’t trying to actually say anything, which makes it pretty boring to do anything but make fun of.

Something else that makes the game pretty boring outside of making fun of it is the mechanics. Even for the inundation of cover shooters we got after Gears of War, this is a VERY underwhelming one. I’m not even particularly a fan of the genre, and that was still something super easy to see. Guns feel terrible to use and have no kick or impact at all. It’s difficult to even see if you’re hitting the enemies in front of you the animations and player feedback are so poor. You have regenerating health and can take cover behind all sorts of things. You can only carry two guns at a time, but that hardly matters much when they all feel so awful to use. Level design is also extremely linear with no secrets or optional paths/routes to speak of, so it’s almost literally a “corridor shooter” in many regards most of the time. The camera is also TERRIBLE and hella nauseating, especially when you sprint. One viewer of the stream described it as “a camera dangled on the end of a slinky from a helicopter”, and I think that fits the bill pretty well. That’s another very deliberate-feeling choice, and they certainly succeeded well in making an awful camera, so good on them, I guess.

It may be a factor that we were playing on easy, but the enemy AI was extremely unintelligent. A very winning strategy we found worked a *lot* was that the AI tended to laser-focus on to the first person they spotted, so one person running forward and getting all of their aggro can allow the other player to run forward past them, completely worry-free of enemy fire, as they take them out by just walking around their cover.

And that leads me to another thing: For a game with “[Guy] and [Other Guy]” in its naming scheme, it’s a pretty crappy co-op game. This felt much more like a single-player game with a tacked-on co-op mode than a game made for co-op. When your buddy gets down, you have mere seconds to go get them up before they die and you get sent back to a checkpoint. The players also don’t look distinct enough to keep you from firing upon your buddy. We both spent some time playing as each character, and while Lynch is pretty distinct looking with his very balding head and long hair in the back, Kane just looks like a guy in a suit. There we tons of times the Lynch player fired upon Kane because they just thought he was an enemy because he looks so much like the guys you’re fighting against. It’s a problem with the uninspired/bad level design as well, but even the handful of times they split you up, it feels very perfunctory. One player has to fight a ton of enemies while the other guy gives supporting fire from far-ish away, at least until that other guy giving support gets ambushed and killed by enemies out of nowhere with powerful shotguns.

The presentation of the game isn’t terribly nice either. Granted, this is one thing in particular the devs say is intentional of the things that people say are bad about the game. The game is very grey-scale and drab looking, and the human models look like downright hideous playdough people (although I think the latter element of that is due to the game being a PS3 game from 2010 than anything else). Like I said earlier, I don’t think they really use this bad stuff they did “on purpose” to any meaningful effect, but I’ll give them an A for effort that they did make a game that looks quite unpleasant. The music is entirely atmospheric and forgettable. The voice direction is also just okay, but they don’t have a ton to work with, so I’d say the VA do a fine job. Sure, they got guys to actually speak Chinese for the Chinese soldiers you’re fighting, but there’s also some very sloppy voice direction work with things like how Kane and Lynch say some names. At one point, one guy tells you the crime boss you’re fighting is named Shansi (pronounced more like /shang suh/), but both Kane and Lynch (who LIVES in Shanghai and has a Chinese girlfriend) say it like /shang see/, which they’d have no reason to do unless they were reading it off of a script and just hadn’t been told how to pronounce it.

One last note on performance: It runs *terribly*. Now I’m willing to chalk this up at least a little to how we played it. PC ports were often pretty bad in 2010, and I’ll give the game the benefit of the doubt that it runs better on the console hardware they designed it for as well as what PCs were more commonly like back in 2010. But in the 3.5 hours it took us to beat it, it crashed or disconnected at least 4 or 5 times, and if even one player crashes/drops out, it kicks the other from the level, so there were a good few levels we had to redo significant chunks of while we just hoped it didn’t crash again. Animations also glitch constantly as well, but it’s hard to say if that’s a performance bug or if it’s always been that way. At the very least, the Steam version is a pretty crappy way to play K&L2 in 2023 :b

Verdict: Not Recommended. Sometimes I’ll play a game with a bad reputation and find that it’s nowhere near as bad as people say. This is not one of those times. Kane & Lynch 2 is a painfully mediocre shooter with a miserably boring story that completely deserves its bad reputation. It’s at least not SO awful that you can’t even have fun playing it in co-op to laugh at it (as we had a pretty good time streaming it together, though more in spite of the game than because of it), but I feel like that’s quite clearly damning with faint praise. Unless you just like experiencing bad games from the 360 generation, or unless you simply must experience something so bad for yourself, this is a game to leave disliked and forgotten in the dustbin of history.

A special thanks to my EldritchZoe, though, for playing through it with me and giving me such a fun time with such a bad game <3

-----

20. Burger Time Deluxe (GB)

Like Popeye, Burger Time has always been a classic arcade game I really like even if I’m pretty bad at it xD. When I saw that Burger Time Deluxe had been added to the Switch Online GameBoy service, I saw a great opportunity to just sit back and relax with a game that probably went on forever, as it was an arcade game, after all. You can imagine my surprise when the game ended and I saw credits after finishing world six! XD . It took me about 1.5 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on my Switch not using save states or rewinds at all.

The conceit of Burger Time is pretty simple, as is the case for most old arcade games. Peter Pepper owns a burger shop, but the evil owner of the donut shop next door wants him out of business! Rather than simply coexisting (as surely a burger shop and a donut shop could, as they hardly fill the same niche. If anything, surely one being dinner and the other being dessert, they complement one another?) or out competing him, he sends a bunch of living food to destroy Peter Pepper. Pete has to walk over giant burgers to complete them and avoid food along the way, because this is presumably a means to an end <w>. It’s a big of a silly story, but it’s a good enough excuse as any to walk all over giant burgers that are presumably then served to people X3. There are also fun little cutscenes every 4 stages between worlds that illustrate little antics between Pete and the living food, many of which contain tons of completely unique animations and assets which are otherwise not in the game at all, which I found neat and worthy of mention~.

The mechanics of Burger Time are, befitting an arcade game, simple to get a hold of but contain some very difficult design and tricks to lean within it. To complete a level, you need to complete all the burgers. You walk over the entire length of it and drop it down to the next platform. If it lands on another ingredient, it’ll knock that one down too, and that one can knock down the one below itself, and so on and so forth. How they interact with the evil food you’re after is important too though. Of course, if an enemy is under a falling ingredient, it’ll get flattened to death and have to respawn. If you have to take an enemy head-on by yourself though, you’ll need to spend a charge of pepper, which is difficult to get back, but at least it’ll temporarily stun enemies long enough to get away. Every level has a maximum number of enemies that can be out at any time, so you’ll need to weigh the consequences in the moment if the devil you do know (the enemies as they’re currently spawned) is worth getting rid of for the devil you don’t (wherever they’ll respawn from later once killed). If an enemy is on the ingredient with you as you drop it, though, they’ll cause it to fall down an extra floor! More enemies on it mean more floors dropped as well, so even though it won’t kill them, it can be worth assembling a posse behind you sometimes to then drop ingredients faster and make burgers faster too~.

Though I don’t know for sure if other versions of Burger Time do this, there are some neat and interesting tricks to Deluxe that will really help in later levels. For example, all five enemy types have their own AI priorities that they’ll follow in different situations (not unlike the ghosts in Pac-Man). For example, eggs will always take a ladder if they encounter one, even if not taking it would get them closer to you. In contrast, sausages will always try and go towards the direction you are horizontally, even if that path ultimately leads to a dead-end they can’t reach you from. Learning to outsmart the AI was a very fun part of the game for me, and it makes it very satisfying to narrowly avoid dead because of a cleverly manipulated AI quirk~. Another interesting thing is that the items (and even extra ladders) that appear mid-stage are not random but determined by when certain ingredients fall or when particular burgers are completed. Though the where, which, and when of enemy spawning is still at least somewhat random, this deterministic design of item and ladder spawns does a fair job of making the game “solvable”, to a point, which is extra fun if you’re trying to chase high scores~.

The only real complaint I’d have is that some levels are so large that you can scroll the screen left and right. This isn’t exactly a problem, but it means that there’s often a significant part of the level that you just can’t see, and that can lead to making planning them out a task of trial and error rather than quick and clever planning in the moment. It’s not a huge problem, but the limited screen resolution definitely makes the game feel a bit harder than it needs to be, at times. At least you have infinite continues that will put you back at the start of the world you’re on, and passwords to bring you back to the start of a particular world if you’re having trouble though.

The presentation is very good for what’s ultimately quite an early GB game. The little enemies and Peter himself are animated and drawn up very well and distinctly, and there’s never any ambiguity in play because of how the graphics are put together. The music is also very fun, doing a good job of bringing the jaunty arcade-y energy of Burger Time to something the size of the palm of your hand~.

Verdict: Recommended. Arcade games aren’t for everyone, and the same goes for their handheld ports, but this is a very fun port of what I call a very fun game. It’s not perfect in its design, but that doesn’t keep it from being a bundle of fun. If you’re into Burger Time or just into arcade-y action games, this is a great thing to dive into whether on the Switch Online GameBoy service or through some other means~.

-----

21. Super Mario Advance 4: World e+ (GBA)

Mario 3 is a game I’ve played a ton of across various methods and platforms, but I’d never gotten around to enjoying the e-Reader exclusive content that the GBA port got until now. It had always been on my Wii U eShop wish list, as that version came bundled with all of the e-Reader content as well, but I just never got around to it. But now that it’s a part of the Switch Online GBA service, it felt like the perfect time to give it a try~. It took me probably about 7 or 8 hours in total to play through all the levels via the Japanese version, collecting all of the A and e+ coins as Mario with heavy save state and rewind use.

There isn’t really any story to this, being that it was just extra levels distributed via e-Reader cards that you could feed into your Super Mario Advance 4 game. It’s just a bunch of levels that you can play in any order if you so choose that is completely separate from the normal Mario 3 content in SMA4. The levels have a very Mario Maker feel to them, despite being put together so many years before Mario Maker was created. Using mechanics, enemies, and even power ups from Super Mario Bros. 1 all the way to Yoshi’s Island, this does a really cool job of making a ton of totally unique mechanics and animations to SMB3. If only it were any fun ^^;

That’s honestly the biggest problem with World e+, as the game calls it. They’re special challenge levels, sure, but they have such a different design philosophy behind them, you can tell that they were made in a totally different design environment from the normal SMB3 levels. Lacking any checkpoints (as this IS SMB3, after all), it just feels mean an not fun as you trudge your way to the same nearly impossible jump again and again or comb over levels again and again looking for that one A coin or extra collectible you missed. Sure, going for the collectibles makes them even harder, but given how many of the stages are mazes of some kind, going for all of them seems like a pretty clear intention of its design to me. I cannot imagine how frustrating this must’ve been on an original GBA with no save states or rewinds, because good gods are so many of these levels overly demanding and unfair towards the player. It’s not quite the hardest Kaizo Mario hacks you’ve ever seen in terms of difficulty, but it’s certainly close enough to that that it’ll keep you from having much fun a lot of the time.

The presentation is very SMA4, but the new bespoke assets (like how Mario uses the cape from Mario World but as his SMB3 self) do look very nice and pretty. Other than the cape, though, most assets haven’t had new versions made. They’ve just had the sprite imported wholesale, so there’s not a ton of visual cohesion between SMA4 and, for example, the little blue penguin fellas from Yoshi’s Island you run into. The music is good, but it’s just all stuff originally from SMB3 anyhow, so nothing really special to report on that front.

Verdict: Not Recommended. I said it best when I said it earlier: This game mode just fails to be much fun. The comparison to Mario Maker earlier was absolutely every bit as much praise for the concept as it was criticism of the design. It’s not literally unplayable, but it’ll certainly make you wish you were playing a different, better Mario game (like Mario 3!) a lot of the time you’re playing it. I’m glad I didn’t actually pay money for this, as I would’ve ended up feeling quite cheated at the quality of these levels. They’re something neat to check out if you’ve already got the Switch Online’s Expansion Pak service, but your time is ultimately better spent elsewhere with other platformers.

[prfsnl_gmr]

7 Automaton Lung
Fascinating world to explore. Within seconds you feel like you're on an unforgettable adventure. It becomes a bit gamey towards the end though.
8/10

I’m sad I missed this in the 3DS eShop! I hope it gets a Switch port at some point!

@pidge, I’m sorry to read you weren’t a big fan of the e-reader levels! Based on your review, I think you disliked them for the very reason I like them so much!

[REPO Man]

Don't need the 3DS eShop if you have the hShop.

[PartridgeSenpai]

7 Automaton Lung
Fascinating world to explore. Within seconds you feel like you're on an unforgettable adventure. It becomes a bit gamey towards the end though.
8/10

I’m sad I missed this in the 3DS eShop! I hope it gets a Switch port at some point!

@pidge, I’m sorry to read you weren’t a big fan of the e-reader levels! Based on your review, I think you disliked them for the very reason I like them so much!

I think it's super valid you enjoyed them! XD
A lot of them are very cool in concept, but they're just not very fun to play compared to more curated levels you'd usually find in a Mario game. I may describe them as "too Mario Maker (derogatory)", but I can absolutely see why someone would find them enjoyable for that very reason instead