Games Beaten 2025

[Ack]

1. Growing My Grandpa! (Point-and-Click Adventure)(PC)
2. The Black Masses (Action RPG)(PC)
3. Dead Estate (Action)(PC)
4. Call of Cthulhu (Horror RPG)(PC)
5. 100 Asian Cats (Puzzle)(PC)
6. Blade Chimera (Action)(PC)
7. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Action)(PC)
8. 7 Days to Die (Action)(PC)
9. An Arcade Full of Cats (Puzzle)(PC)
10. Excive A-1000 (FPS)(PC)
11. Only Lead Can Stop Them (FPS)(PC)
12. Home Safety Hotline (Horror)(PC)
13. Viewfinder (Puzzle)(PC)
14. Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered (FPS)(PC)
15. Wanted: Dead (Action)(PC)
16. Crime Scene Cleaner (Action)(PC)
17. Beyond Citadel (FPS)(PC)
18. Turbo Overkill (FPS)(PC)
19. Project Warlock 2 (FPS)(PC)
20. Saints Row: The Third (Action)(PC)
21. Saints Row: The Third - GenkiBowl VII (Action)(PC)
22. Saints Row: The Third - Gangstas in Space (Action)(PC)
23. Saints Row: The Third - The Trouble with Clones (Action)(PC)

I beat Saints Row: The Third as part of this year's Summer Challenge. Previously I had played Saints Row 2, and I've gone through most of the PS2-era Grand Theft Auto games, so I knew what SR was parodying and having fun with. SR3 goes even more ridiculous and over the top, in a way that feels ludicrous but entertaining and fun, and it also offers up a ton of side content as well as choices that sometimes have important impacts on playing the game. This includes a canon ending and an alternative one that is...well, a little lackluster.

You're Playa, your gang members are international celebrities, and you rob a bank that belongs to an international criminal cartel which is primarily based in the city of Steelport and run by a bunch of James Bond-style villain rejects. And then the government gets involved, which means you also face a paramilitary force with laser rifles and a willingness to take out civilians.

So you do missions to take out your rivals, but there are also activities, ranging from surfing on top of cars to robbing stores to base jumping after jumping out of an airplane. You can steal vehicles, perform assassinations, dress up your character how you like, and redo yourself in the plastic surgery boutiques whenever you like. This time I started as She-Hulk, became Jason Statham, and then Pam Grier for a bit, because I could and because it was fun. There are a lot of ways to enjoy SR3, and I happily dove in to them all.

The one area that feels a little lacking is the gunplay, unfortunately. Even fully upgraded, some of the firearms just don't feel powerful. I rarely ever used the shotgun, and the fully upgraded base assault rifle was useful mainly because it had an underslung grenade launcher. That said, there are also a lot of ridiculous weapons too which are better for comedic effect, so you may find some things which appeal to your taste that didn't work for me.

And then we have the three DLCs that add new missions: GenkiBowl VII, Gangstas in Space, and The Trouble with Clones. These expand on storylines and activities. GenkiBowl VII is like a murderous Japanese game show with bizarre challenges, Gangstas in Space is a bad sci-fi film production, and Trouble with Clones involves the cloning storyline with a nerdy obsessed fanboy that is...well, it's awkward. Reviewers at the time seemed to like Trouble with Clones the most and GenkiBowl the least, but I actually prefer them the other way. At least GenkiBowl added more than just a repeating loop of missions.

I liked it. One day I may play Saints Row 4...one day.

[alienjesus]

Regarding Start Fox:
I still don't understand how to figure out when to accelerate to dodge large things in the space levels.
Without having the ground to tell you how far away something is, how do you do it?
I am asking seriously. I only ever completed Star Fox on the easiest route because of this.
Well, I mean, maybe for other things too, but it was my weakest point in the easy route and ended my run on the middle route.

I don’t have any big tips for this one really, except that I always historically changed the view in the space levels to third person, but on this playthrough I used the first person view and found it easier to judge distance

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

First 39:

1. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
Cynically, in the modern chapters, this game even admits that it's a commercially pedestrian blockbuster. It depicts history wrongly all the time, so there's little value in that. Purely as a game, it's mostly the same as the previous games, which means gameplay is automatic and shallow, while you hoover up symbols on your map. The only thing going for it would be the ship battles, which while sluggish and imprecise, are still somewhat novel and explosive. In about forty hours of play time, I think I had about an hour of fun being a pirate.
4/10

2. Minecraft
I was extremely pleasantly surprised at how much respect the game had for the player's ingenuity. The tutorial is merely some pages you can find in the options menu. You have minutes to set up a safe haven, preferably with a bed and torches, with little to no instructions. Dying halves your experience points and leaves all your gear scattered about. Although randomly generated, there's always a feeling you might find something unique. The final boss is a treat, being open ended and seemingly insurmountable at first. There's a lot of random stuff that can set you back a couple of hours back, which keeps the challenge honest and respectful. However, it is still a game about crafting, meaning half the time you'll be doing busywork and clicking around in menus.
8/10

3. Street Fighter 6
Link combos now have a three frame buffer, while the super meter(s) allow many alterations to your moves. Competitively, this means you'll spend less time practicing the same combos over and over, and instead practicing reading different situations. With less neutral and much more creativity, this makes Street Fighter more like the other anime fighters. Which while a good thing, makes me wonder why this should be played at all. The answer is the masses: the single player mode is a poor man's Yakuza, but nevertheless will feed the tournament scene with plenty of folks confident enough they'll want to compete.
8/10

4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Is this a recruitment ad for the US Army? The production values are very impressive. Obviously, the game propels you forward, set piece to set piece, always giving you blockbuster flare. Occasionally, precision and strategy is required, and everything falls apart. Perhaps the lack of clarity and random nature of the enemies is realistic, but it does not make the challenge engaging. Luckily, it's over within a couple of hours. I hear the multiplayer was popular. Perhaps, but I doubt there's a reason to play this over Counter Strike or Quake.
3/10

5. Felvidek
A brisk 'Japanese' RPG instead located in Hungary, as its name implies. It delights in its historic background, where the church is at odds with cultists, and the monarchy at odds with the peasantry. The combat might just be barely strategic enough to keep the fights interesting, but this leaves more headspace for the eccentric narrative. Both silly and serious themes are explored, with intriguing writing and distinctive artistry. It's no Disco Elysium or Undertale, but if you want more in the same vein, a must play.
7/10

6. Blazing Lazers
Hectic and sharp, this is everything you could hope a 16-bit shmup can be. At times there might be too much going on, while you're bomb attack is too slow, but otherwise the difficulty is mostly fair. Space Megaforce has more interesting weapon choices, and MUSHA has more pizazz, but this one is still almost as good and definitely a step up from earlier Zanac/Aleste games.
7/10

7. Company of Heroes
On paper this sounds like any other RTS, but this one has a bombast to it that makes everything feel urgent, hence its popular appeal. The campaign benefits from high production values, enhancing the historic significance of the battles. There's an extra emphasis on controlling many different parts of the map for resources, and less on building structures, making skirmishes action packed. Still, I'd recommend only trying out single player, as CoH3 and SC2 have better competitive scenes.
8/10

8. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The amount of personality is commendable, but that's really all this 'game' has to offer. You can't help but feel like half the time you're just doing mundane tasks. And for what? Happy emotes and the occasional joke? Perhaps being able to show off your creativity with online friends. Fundamentally, this genre is flawed due to being in a medium that limits expression to moving things around and making extremely simple dialogue choices. Still, picked up at the right time in small bursts, there's no denying it's a charming experience. And for what it's worth, there is more to see and do than in the prequels.
6/10

9. Shatterhand
The risk/reward element of short ranged attacks works better in Zelda II and Ninja Gaiden due to them having defensive options. Shatterhand relies a lot on speed and brute strength, which is exciting, but also tense. The upgrades are awkward to yield and keeping them around is even harder. There's a lot of potential here: think Mega Man with fists and body extensions. And while the execution is polished on a surface level, the combat is too frustrating to make it a classic.
5/10

10. CyberPunk 2077
Amazingly ambitious, just seeing the effort put into this is a marvel. Goes beyond the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher III in almost every way, and thankfully, also in terms of gameplay and emergency. Unfortunately, the whole thing buckles under its own weight, as it's clear that the design process was hacked into parts for delegation. So don't expect level design as bold and organic as in Deus Ex, and systems working as well together. But there's still a lot to toy around with, and often enough make a choice with emotional weight.
8/10

11. Wario Land 4
Despite being the third iteration as a costume-based puzzle platformer, design is still rather tame and in stark contrast with the its exuberant personality. Some of the later levels dare the player to think twice, but never are you allowed to attempt things creatively. Still, it's a highly saccharine trip and you can't help but feel glee as Wario plows through ancient ruins with reckless abandon. Great bosses, too!
7/10

12. SUGAR (Jen Simpkins)
This interaction fiction is so short, it borders on being poetry. No matter, every second is gripping, as is every branch in the narrative. We already knew she was a talented writer as editor of Edge. I can only hope Jen's talents make it into other games. And you get to be a sex worker that eats the rich, indeed a very wholesome topic.
7/10

13. Earthbound
The best parts are when it subverts genre conventions, but rarely does it subvert gaming conventions. This tragically leaves the experience emotionally bound to 90's Japanese role playing games. Which in turn might ironically create its charm: it's yet another go at one of these, only this time everything's a bit different, making it both familiar and odd at the same time. The overworld portions are memorable, the combat isn't.
6/10

14. Venba
The cooking is surprisingly involving, as the meals have an existential weight to them. The cut-scenes between them are just barely long enough to get you interested in the next family conundrum. In the end, it's a bittersweet tale you can almost smell at times. And yes, you unlock a cook book at the end to add these recipes to your own memories.
7/10

15. Mario Kart 8
Now with more pizazz!! Luigi's Death Stare(tm) will never get old. And all the Nintendo characters having political alignments is hilarious. Toadette for life. /raisefist
7/10

16. Super Mario 64
Are you into speedrunning? Then this is the golden standard. There's boundless creativity in the movement options and oddball architecture. But as an adventure, this one quickly loses steam, as the horrendous camera does not gel well with the demanding platforming found in later stages. Most of the enjoyment comes from seeing how Nintendo got the most personality out of limited polygons. Often, the compromises create fantastic 90's SGI landscapes, which are a pleasure to trek through.
6/10

17. Resident Evil 2 Remake
There's something cozy about turning an unsafe area (in this case, the police station) into an orderly safe haven. The power fantasy is domestic: it's not that the place is empty, it's just under control. As the narrative delves deeper and astray into lacklustre areas and explanations, this one devolves into run-of-the-mill post-RE4 Resident Evil. The Claire run fares better thanks to the girl's side-missions.
5/10

18. Fantastic Dizzy
Stupid puzzles and annoying platforming are combined into something more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps the anticipation of seeing if your solution actually works is heightened by putting dexterous challenges in your way. And there's adorkable energy abound, as the Darling Brothers yet again shamelessly slap together a jury-rigged budget title according to a proven formula. While it is not recommended to be played, it should nevertheless never be forgotten.
5/10

19. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
A commercially injected by-the-numbers kitchen-sink metroidvania: doing everything as expected, and meticulously programmed. Of course, Ubisoft doesn't understand that it's mystery that ignites a sense of adventure (as done in Super Metroid and Hollow Knight), so its predictability makes everything feel redundant. And yet, you get a bunch of moves to play around with, while the developers went ham with exploiting tightly designed obstacles.
7/10

20. Chess 2: The Sequel
Easily the best Chess variant ever made. Some of these rules should at the very least be instituted in normal play (like winning by crossing the mid-line with your king). David Sirlin yet again amazes by adding five new armies to choose from. No need to memorize opening moves, and mid-game excitement is practically the whole game. Tragically so good, it exposes Chess's fundamental flaws. By turning the classic into a modern strategy game, one starts to realize that Chess was never really that interesting for competition. Its main attraction was that it's a rabbit-hole that has been studied for centuries.
7/10

21. Project Gotham Racing 4
PGR's last hurrah is more of the same, only this time flashier. Going down to 30 fps wasn't worth it though. There's fun to be had, climbing the ladder and fantasizing about the rivalries you make. One of the more demanding racing games, the repetition rewards the player with excellence. The kudo system, bikes, and alternative objectives keep the racing fresh. Unfortunately a bit too gimmicky for a sense of simulation, but too serious for pure fun.
6/10

22. Lode Runner
What I didn't expect is how much tension is added by the slow animation for making holes. This means you have to think ahead to keep Bomberman at bay. Combined with its fair share of different obstacles, I can see why the level editor was so popular. One of the best pre-crash games I've ever played!
7/10

23. Grand Theft Auto IV
You can easily watch ten better gangsta films in the time it takes to get through this one, while also avoiding all the unfunny sexism, homophobia, and juvenile humor. The driving and shooting have amazingly bad controls, considering the prestigious amounts of money that went into this. Nothing has been added to GTA's best parts, namely blowing stuff up and seeing how the world reacts. Instead we get mundane dating mini-games and a character with half-baked introspective moments.
1/10

24. Prince of Prussia
The original is infamous for its excessive animations and wonky sword fighting. Now all animation is cut away, making the platforming zippy and fun. And what's even more fun is that you get to stab nazis in the back. It's simple, gratis, and short, and very much worth your time.
7/10

25. Riven
The stand-alone puzzles of Myst are replaced by two huge world spanning puzzles. The connection between the world's logistics, and the symbolism used for the puzzles, is a bit contrived. But it nevertheless does give everything a potential meaning. The puzzles aren't solved by hard math, but by intuiting what the designers were trying to communicate. The clean mid-90's silicon graphics aesthetic fits well with the serene nature of the fictional setting and is a delight to surround yourself with, click by click.
7/10

26. Ghost of Tsushima
Basically a Ubisoft map set in Japan. The combat has more bells and whistles, but is still heavily restrained by sensational animations. The lack of mini-map doesn't really make you pay better attention to your surroundings, as every challenge is still bluntly applied cookie-cutter style. Only about three of the Witcher III-inspired tales are memorable, and even more startling, even fewer have a sense of humor to them. Triple-A at its best and worst: spectacular detail on the surface, while design gets more rudimentary the more you try to get out of this game.
4/10

27. Double Dragon
I don't recall being this annoyed by all this slowdown forty years ago. Were it not for that, this would still be a decent beat-em-up with almost everything you could hope for: a nice variety of moves and enemies, exciting locations, catchy music, and a few gimmicks like treadmills and booby traps. Good luck finding somebody else to play this with to the end for -that- classic duel, as thirty minutes of sluggish gameplay is a hard sell.
5/10

28. BABBDI
Probably the best tutorial since Dusk. There's no combat or death, and interactions are mostly limited to movement. But still get ready to question the meaning of everything this game throws at you. Good luck trying to go over the borders of the map. Yes, you can jump higher using the bat. Heck, it even has bunny hopping! At about two hours, it's over too fast. But still has as many thrills, and better ones to boot, than the likes of Half-Life 2, Metro, and STALKER.
8/10

29. Cuphead
The challenges are divided into bite-sized chunks, hence its mainstream success. But beyond its glorious animation, there's also some modern gameplay technology, like dashes, parries, and equippable skills, which lift it above 90's era run 'n' guns. Cuphead lacks the depth of Alien Soldier or Battle Garegga, but it compensates by simply having a lot of well thought out encounters with multiple phases. A delight!
8/10

30. Uncharted 2
The best parts are the cut-scenes, and I'm not sure they're even as good as The Crystal Skull. The epitome of Naughty Dog's water and oil design: nothing fits together, whether it be the puzzles, shooting, or climbing. None of which are done well. There are countless Quartermain/Indiana Jones knockoffs; this one is simply unnecessary. If for whatever reason you enjoy the first half, be warned, the second half just drags on and on.
2/10

31. Shock Troopers
You can so easily picture this game just by reading its contents. Neo Geo top down shooter, where you can make teams of three characters (indeed with different attacks and speeds). You can roll as a defensive maneuver. There is an overhead map with three paths to choose. Yeah, that's all there is to it. Nothing wrong, nothing remarkable.
5/10

32. The Forgotten City
That Skyrim mod gets plenty of extra flair as its own game. Now a cornucopia of ancient religions are thrown together in order to explain the time loop. And while you're at it, pointing out logical fallacies in their dogmas. Clever. And despite all this, it is never overwhelming or obtuse. Within a few hours you should be able to connect all the dots and feel satisfied both in your intellectual prowess, but also in seeing how such a project came together splendidly. Just don't expect the dazzling pomp of Outer Wilds.
8/10

33. Splatterhouse
Combat can hardly be any simpler: jump, kick, punch, or swing a weapon. Still surprisingly effective at offering a bit of a challenge. Obviously, this is played for cheap scares contained in a 16-bit side scroller. Again, quite effective and often fun to see. Is it worth your time though? As a standalone experience, no. But as an artifact to see what was possible with an 80's arcade cabinet? Sure.
5/10

34. Limbo
Like Inside and Cocoon, the puzzles are just barely difficult enough to stump you for a moment. What makes them engaging is that there's no real universal playbook for all of them. Sometimes you'll solve one by understanding physics, another one by understanding the nature of spiders, and another by finding out what a switch does. There's also a layer of narrative interpretation, something about feeling guilty for killing your sister or something, but please don't write an article on this. Just slightly mindlessly stroll through this one for a couple of hours.
6/10

35. How Do You Do It?
Considering how badly sex is represented in video games, this one gets kudos for exploring sexuality in video game form, albeit through the eyes of a kid who has no idea what sex is. And dolls that are functionally sexless. The point is frustration: in this three-minute "simulation", only questions are raised, and definitely no satisfaction, whether intellectual, spiritual, or physical. Just like every other video game. This leaves the player begging the question: is it the medium's fault? Or what we make of it?
7/10

36. Kingdom Hearts
Strip away the Disney sight-seeing and you're left with a really bad action-rpg. Combat is shallow, platforming is headache inducing, the frame-rate is viscous, and the story has the depth of a Little Golden Book. The way the PS2's lighting subdues primary colors is more saddening that the plot. And yet, the fact that there are no enemies in the Hundred Acre Wood is a touching detail. It's always tragic when a work's best feature is reminding the user how great the works are it's based on.
3/10

37. Tails Adventure
The gist is that Tails can collect power ups and use them to open up new areas to explore. Exciting? Hardly. The main draw of this game is that if you squint hard enough, this Game Gear game looks like a Genesis game. The level and enemy design is pedestrian, as are the "puzzles". But for what it's worth, it's an adventure game that doesn't bog you down with explaining stuff and you briskly get to decipher what the developers were trying to challenge you with.
4/10

38. Say No! More
Well this game gets its point across staunchly! All you have to do is press the "NO" button whenever anything gets in your way. Sometimes you'll use a stronger NO, sometimes one with a different attitude, but for two hours, you'll be doing the same thing over and over. It's all anti-corporatist, with humor and wholesomeness coloring your actions. Perhaps not extremely funny, but still a unique, and interactive, approach to giving sound advice.
6/10

39. The Case of the Golden Idol
A brisker Obra Dinn if you will, with a funnier plot, but the solutions are a bit more clinical in their execution. Ultimately, you're mostly equating meaning to symbols. The levels use different themes and situations, keeping the puzzle solving fresh. The grand finale comes just in time to tie everything together in a slap-stick manner. You'll revel in finding out how exactly the cult destroys itself from within. It's easy to see why this game has spawned its own genre of sequels.
8/10

40. Einhander
That SquareSoft shmup hopefully got some folks into this underrated genre. But this one is more about survival than high scores, so I doubt this is a gateway drug to the classics. Like a 3D Thunderforce IV, it's explosive and stylish, and there's a hint of Gaiares as you can steal weapons from enemies. But also Gradius, as a death can set you back heavily. Your big hitbox, and unclear hitboxes of enemies don't help either. There are three ships: normal shot power, bonus weapon power, or bonus weapon versatility. That's pretty much the extent of depth this has.
5/10

41. Super Mario RPG
A novel concept at the time, it's hard to fully enjoy a game that relies heavily on knowing it's doing something different. There are still a couple of quirky moments worth a chuckle. And luckily it's so easy you don't have to grind, with things moving at a swift pace. The best part is seeing how this was a stepping stone towards later sequels. Alas, the story, characters, and combat are even flatter than Paper Mario.
6/10

42. Metro Exodus
The best parts are when it's trying to be Deus Ex. The semi-open world maps facilitate creativity, while also still having fairly good level design to facilitate challenge. And the enemy AI is relentless and patient, giving your tactical options a lot of weight. The worst parts are when it tries to be Half-Life. There are plenty of scripted events. And perhaps it tries too hard for you to like the other characters, with lots of superfluous (unskippable) dialogue. But some folks you stumble across in the wild have colorful lives.
7/10

[ElkinFencer10]

Games Beaten in 2025 - 9
* denotes a replay

January (Not Shit Beaten)

February (Not Shit Beaten)

March (Not Shit Beaten)

April (Not Shit Beaten)

May (Not Shit Beaten)

June (6 Games Beaten)

Doom: The Dark Ages - Series X - June 2
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - PlayStation 5 - June 16
3. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour - Switch 2 - June 16
4. Fast Fusion - Switch 2 - June 17
5. Sniper Elite: Resistance - PS5 - June 21
6. Mario Kart World - Switch 2 - June 22

July (3 Games Beaten)

7. Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom - Switch - July 1
8. Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army - Switch 2 - July 4
9. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster - Switch - July 12

9. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster - Switch - July 12



The original Final Fantasy, releasing on the Famicom in 1987, revolutionized the RPG genre. Arguably the most influential JRPG of all time and definitely the most influential JRPG on the NES, Final Fantasy launched a series that spans well over 100 games and has earned Square approximately ten gajillion dollars. I actually have pretty limited experience with Final Fantasy having only played Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, Final Fantasy XVI, and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Of those, my first was this game, the original release of Final Fantasy on NES. Having played the original release of the game and now the most recent release of the game, it definitely follows the trend of "older games are harder" because the Pixel Remaster on Switch, PS4, Xbox Series, and Steam definitely take off a ton of the BS and bugs that made the original release a bit of a slog in parts.



The version I most recently played and will be focusing on here is the recent Pixel Remaster, and while it's a faithful remake of the original game, it makes some stylistic changes that may not appeal to purists. There are sharper visuals, updated (and much more detailed) sprites, an updated UI that actually allows for full words and a much more readable font, and a plethora of quality-of-life changes. The visual changes are mainly to keep a relatively consistent visual presentation across the six games included in the Pixel Remaster collection, so this game looks more akin to its Super Nintendo descendants and the original NES release. The nostalgic part of me mourns the loss of those clunky sprites, but I would be lying if I said the overall feel and tone of the game didn't benefit from more detailed pixel sprites. To the remaster's credit, the sprites weren't just redone by random interns; they were redone from the ground up by the original artist, Kazuko Shibuya, so they very much feel authentic even if they're new and more detailed. The remaster has also been designed for wide screen, although there are some minor frame pacing issues, so folks sensitive to frame rate dips might notice some mild jitter. I, personally, didn't notice anything, but I'm not terribly sensitive to jitter, and I know it's a common complaint online.



The biggest change here - and one that I personally adore - is that the soundtrack has been completely redone. You can still set it to use the iconic original chiptune soundtrack if you want that nostalgia trip, but the new arrangement is a beautiful orchestral recreation that feels more like a realization of what the original soundtrack was meant to be if not for the limitations of 8-bit hardware than an attempt to "change" things, per se. Don't get me wrong, I love a good chiptune soundtrack, but having been a trumpet player from 5th through 12 grade, I have a real soft spot for orchestral soundtracks, so the arrangement made for the pixel remaster really blew me away. I definitely recommend using the new soundtrack for those playing on Switch, PS4, Xbox Series, or Steam.



The QoL features are really what make the most difference here with this new remaster. The biggest aspects of that are the ability to toggle run as your default movement speed in towns and dungeons, the ability to toggle random encounters on or off (super useful if you're out grinding and overextend yourself a bit and need to get back to town safely), and the boosts. These boosts allow you to adjust the rate of xp, ability points, and gold gain from 4x the normal rate for an easier, less grindy experience all the way down to 0.5x if you not only want the original grind but want to Dark Souls the original grind and overall difficulty. Additionally, you have the ability to quick save anywhere you want - even in dungeons right before a boss - and these quick saves can be accessed even if you close the game and turn off the system. That alone makes bosses a lot more manageable, although I personally didn't find any of the bosses to be particularly difficult save for the final boss. You also have a bestiary that catalogues things like stats and drops for the monsters you defeat, making it easy to reference the strengths and weaknesses of the foes you'll face in any given dungeon.



The overall experience is preserved very well from its NES roots. The six classes - Fighter, Thief, Black Belt, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage - are still your class options, and the quest to restore the four crystals and defeat Garland is unchanged. At default xp, ability point, and gil drop settings, which is how I played, the game is a challenge but very manageable if you're willing to grind a little bit, and the overall improvement to the flow and speed of the game makes it less time consuming to grind than the NES original, especially the ability to toggle auto battle. Being an early 8-bit JRPG, Final Fantasy doesn't hold your hand as far as where you go and what to do. It definitely tells you what you need to do next, and it usually tells you the general direction of where you need to go, but you need to make sure you talk to every NPC because that direction is not always given by the "important" NPCs exclusively. It also requires a fair amount of good ol' fashioned exploration. Fortunately, the pixel remaster lets you pull up a world map that shows you where each location you've visited is and even how many chests you've opened and how many chests there are total, so that definitely makes it more user-friendly than the NES original since it can be hard to remember the name of each town and village and where in the game's world each one is.



In general, I consider the pixel remaster to be the definitive way to experience the original Final Fantasy. This is especially true of the Switch version; it boasts slightly faster load times than the PS4 or PC versions, and it gives the option of portability (I played the entire time while lounging in bed with my girlfriend over the course a week). There is, however, a definite downside that needs to be noted. While the visuals, orchestral soundtrack, and QoL changes are amazing, the pixel remaster does lack the extra content found in the GBA and PSP versions of Final Fantasy. If you're going for the most content possible and are willing to sacrifice the modern improvements and conveniences found in the pixel remaster, one of those versions might be a better fit for you.



The original Final Fantasy, while arguably the progenitor of the JRPG as we know it alongside Enix's Dragon Quest, hasn't aged terribly well despite being a solid game. The pixel remaster definitely gives it a nice face lift and addresses some of the things that aged poorly such as the lack of full backgrounds in battles and the absolute slog that grinding can be, but because it's a faithful remake, it retains some things that just don't stand up today such as a thin story, non-existent character development, and often obtuse objectives. That said, the pixel remaster does make the game much more approachable for younger gamers, and it's faithful enough to keep older gamers like me happy with this modern take on the experience. If you're into retro-style indie RPGs released in recent years, give the original Final Fantasy a shot in the pixel remaster collection; you'll probably find that a lot of what you like in modern indie JRPGs is borrowed from a nearly-40-year-old juggernaut.

[marurun]

This looks great and is the Pixel Remaster I'm most likely to pick up (for purely nostalgia-related reasons). But I'm concerned that there's frame rate jitter on a title like this. There is just no reason there should be any performance hitching at all.

[ElkinFencer10]

This looks great and is the Pixel Remaster I'm most likely to pick up (for purely nostalgia-related reasons). But I'm concerned that there's frame rate jitter on a title like this. There is just no reason there should be any performance hitching at all.

The problem is apparently that the default movement speed is 80 pixels per second, and the mismatch between that and the 60 frame per second frame rate causes the slight jitter. I never noticed it at all, but that's what I've read.

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

1. Tomb Raider II Remastered - PC
2. Tomb Raider III Remastered - PC
3. Blade Chimera - Switch
4. Cyber Shadow - Switch
5. Signalis - Switch
6. Ender Magnolia - Switch
7. SimCity 2000 Special Edition - PC
8. Ghost Song - Switch
9. Citizen Sleeper 2 - Switch
10. Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider - Switch
11. The Last Faith - Switch
12. Anger Foot - PC
13. Avowed - PC
14. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Classic Mode - Switch
15. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Classic II: Dominque's Curse - Switch
16. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II - PS5
17. Pacific Drive - PC
18. Mekkablood: Quarry Assault - PC
19. Tempest Rising - PC
20. Astalon: Tears of the Earth - Switch
21. Voidwrought - Switch
22. Death's Gambit: Afterlife - Switch
23. Mechwarrior 5: Ghost Bear: Flash Storm - PC
24. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - PS5
25. Doom: The Dark Ages - PC
26. Haiku the Robot - Switch
27. Alwa's Awakening - Switch
28. Warhammer 40000: Boltgun: Words of Vengeance - PC
29. Alwa's Legacy - Switch
30. Wizordum - PC
31. Project Warlock II - PC
32. Exophobia - PC
33. Haunted Castle Revisited - Switch
34. Mario Kart World - Switch 2
35. Rebel Transmute - Switch
36. Guns of Fury - Switch
37. Street Fighter Alpha 3 - Dreamcast
38. Street Fighter III 3rd Strike - Dreamcast
39. Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service - Dreamcast
40. Record of Lodoss War - Dreamcast
41. Skald: Against the Black Priory - PC
42. Between the Stars - PC

Between the Stars is an indie space game that features capital ship combat, unlike most games which tend to be at the starfighter level. You server as a captain in the Republic as the war between the Republic and the Children of the Sun heats up. You're going to have to pull out all the stops if you're going to hold back their massive fleet.

The game starts you off in your choice of three small ships, and you begin to go through patrols and basic duties. But then the story kicks in, and you'll get the opportunity to get bigger ships with more weapon hardpoints. Upgrading your weapons is critical; there is a significant power difference between the starting weapons and the later ones, and it allows you to take out ships fast so you can deal with the sheer numbers being thrown at you. The game uses the fairly standard "energy for shields, ballistic for hull" system, encouraging a weapon mix. By end game, though, the best ballistic weapon is almost as good against shields, so you'll just swap to that fulltime. Also, the game has a lot of weapon variants, but they all are worse than the standard energy and ballistic series, so they aren't worth exploring (of particular hilarity is the beam weapons, which are the worst of both worlds; slightly better than lasers against hull and slightly better than ballistic against shields). Because you're flying capital ships your maneuvering is more about getting as many of your turrets on target as possible, rather than dodging fire.

The game is full of systems, and most of them are half-baked. Whenever you jump to a star there will be randomly generated events available for you to engage with. Some of these lead to sidequests, including one bizarre repeating one with a guy who is convinced you're a long time compatriot who went insane (and I never got an explanation on it by the end of the game). These often involve long dialog sessions, better suited for a text-based RPG, and the writers have never heard of less is more. Sometimes you'll get skill checks, which will roll one or more D10s trying to make a target (on a single die, so multiples is just advantage) against your or your crew's skill levels. Other times you'll have a full-on ground combat session, which involves each side rolling a die to see what actions they have available (and you hare heavily advantaged here, as you get extra action possibilities on the die AND you get items to do extra damage AND you act first). You and your crew level up, which buffs your ship a bit, but never by a noticeable amount. There's a crafting and upgrade system for your weapons, but most of it is going to be looted from enemies (and then maybe topping off with an upgrade), and the weird thing is every time you craft or scrap something it takes time. But only like, 30 seconds at a time, so it feels like an unnecessary delay. Either make it instant or have things take a meaningful amount of time you do in the background.

The game also just ends up being too long for every story arc. At every turn when it feels like a story beat should be finished, there is one or two more steps in the chain. Given you'll have one of the best ships in the game by the midway point and be routinely pounding everything you encounter, this length inflation leaves the latter half of the game being more humdrum, as the game ran out of things to show you. And the final couple missions have zero real difficulty because they want to progress through their extremely lengthy dialog sequences, so the enemy doesn't actually give you any real threat but you also can't actually do anything to the enemy.

Overall, it's a middling experience, mostly saved by the novelty of being a big ship game in the already sparse space genre.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2025 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
* indicates a repeat

1~50

1. Arc Rise Fantasia (Wii)
2. Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)
3. Battlefield: Hardline (PS3)
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops (PS3)
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (PS3)
6. Dead Nation (PS3)
7. Kileak, The Blood 2: Reason in Madness (PS1)
8. Paro Wars (PS1)
9. in Stars and Time (Steam)
10. Tetris Battle Gaiden (SFC)
11. Super Tetris 3 (SFC)
12. Battlefield 4 (PS3)
13. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
14. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3)
15. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (PS4)
16. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (PS4)
17. Call of Duty: WWII (PS4)
18. Resistance 3 (PS3)
19. Tearaway: Unfolded (PS4)
20. Grow Home (PS4)
21. Grow Up (PS4)
22. Ratchet & Clank (2016) (PS4)
23. Dark Sector (Steam)
24. Nagano Winter Olympics '98 (N64)
25. Multi-Racing Championship (N64)
26. Super Smash Bros. (N64)
27. Puyo Puyo Sun 64 (N64)
28. Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Toukon Road - Brave Spirits (N64)
29. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 6 (N64)
30. Let's Smash (N64)
31. Mario Tennis 64 (N64)
32. Ucchannanchan no Honō no Challenger: Denryū Iraira Bō (N64)
33. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 4 (N64)
34. FIFA: Road to the World Cup 98 (N64)
35. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 2000 (N64)
36. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 5 (N64)
37. Time and Eternity (PS3)
38. Pokemon Red (GB)
39. Dr. Mario 64 (N64)
40. Shining Force Neo (PS2)
41. Chou Kuukan Nighter: King of Pro Baseball (N64)
42. Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2)
43. Star Wars: Episode I - Racer (N64)
44. ChoroQ 64 (N64)
45. F-Zero X (N64)
46. Homefront (PS3)
47. Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed (PS2)
48. F-Zero (SNES)
49. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (PS2)
50. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2)

51. Wave Race 64 (N64)
52. Bakushou Jinsei 64: Mezase! Resort-ou (N64)
53. Mother (Famicom)
54. Famista 64 (N64)
55. Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening (PC)
56. Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (Wii U)
57. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
58. Wario Land: Shake it! (Wii) *
59. Mario Party 8 (Wii) *
60. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Wii)
61. SimCity 2000 (N64)
62. Prototype (PS3)
63. Prototype 2 (PS3)
64. Final Fantasy X (PS2) *
65. Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)
66. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)
67. Crackdown (Xbox 360)
68. Crackdown 2 (Xbox 360)

69. Alan Wake (Xbox 360) *

I played this game more than a decade ago on the PC with my girlfriend at the time. I’d watched a YouTuber I like play it, and we ultimately had a fun if kinda unmemorable time with it. Flash forward to now, and Remedy have done a lot of really good work really worth talking about. It’s made me think a lot about this old game and how it might be worth revisiting it someday. However, what admittedly made me consider that more than anything was that, when I was looking last year or so for Xbox 360 games to grab that were backwards compatible with the Xbone, my local Book Off happened to have a complete in box copy of the old limited edition. It was too silly and cool a thing not to buy, so of course I picked it up despite having already played Alan Wake before. As rare a collector’s piece as a Japanese limited edition of Alan Wake undoubtedly is, I felt bad for just having it sit on my shelf doing nothing but gather dust for so long. As long as I already had the Xbone hooked up from playing Crackdown, I figured it was high time that I finally replay this. Playing the Japanese version of the game via the downloadable “enhanced for Xbox One” version, it took me around 13 hours to complete the game on normal mode while trying to find every collectible I could. (fair warning that this is going to be another more directly analytical and therefore spoilery review)

Alan Wake is the story of the titular character, Alan Wake. A famous author, he’s been struggling to even start a new story after concluding his breakout award winning series over two years ago. In an attempt to get away from it all, he’s taking a vacation to a tiny lake house with his wife Alice in the tiny northwestern town of Bright Falls. However, not all is at it seems in Bright Falls. After a mysterious shadowy woman gives Alan the key to their lake house in stead of the guy they thought they were meant to meet there, Alice is kidnapped and taken away into the lake. After diving in after her, Alan suddenly wakes up in his car having seemingly just crashed it on a mountain road near Bright Falls. With no memory of what’s happened since the lake, Alan sets out to figure out just what’s going on here at Bright Falls and, most importantly, save his beloved wife.

I had never given Alan Wake all that much credit for being a very well written game up until now, but it’s taken until this replay to really get an appreciation for just how well put together this game is. Sure, it has likeable and memorable characters brought to life by great voice performances, but it’s got more than that too. The literal events may be Alan and his friends battling against an eldritch darkness creature, but, at its core, Alan Wake is an allegory for the creative process itself. On one hand, you have the external factors that creators face. Nothing is made in a vacuum, and even something as straightforward as a book isn’t brought to market by just one person. The other people in your life can make creation that much easier, but they can also make it a lot harder too.

In terms of the former for Alan, you have his agent and best friend Barry, and then you have his wife Alice. Alan describes her as his muse, but despite that status, their marriage and relationship have been a lot more strained over the last couple years than the initial impression would have you believe. Alan even learns that she was going to have him committed to a mental institution here in Bright Falls in an attempt to bring him back to the “normal” he was back before he began this most recent (evidently fruitless) effort to break into a new kind of fiction writing. Even still, Alan still never does anything but try and save her, because his love for her is nothing but sincere no matter what troubles they may be facing. In terms of the latter, however, you have the story’s antagonists. Though one is a mental health quack who takes advantage of the creatives in his care for his own benefit, and the other is an ancient creature of darkness that uses creatives’ work to bring its will into being, the mortality of either is ultimately unimportant. It’s no accident that Alan describes the former as a “producer” and the latter as an “editor”, as the selfish whims of those who hold the keys to publishing power can be a great detriment to all aspects of creation (both material and metaphorical).

There are also the internal aspects of making art, which Alan Wake also brings up very fun metaphors for. There’s the struggle of what makes you create in the first place. For Alan, you could easily point to something like Alice. Between her distinction as his muse and the reality of their troubled marriage, that emotional tug of war is something Alan never wavers in his convictions towards. No matter what, he has to save her, because losing her means effectively losing himself. Then there is the not just literal darkness, but the metaphorical darkness too that’s trying to take Alice from him (and therefore causing and exacerbating that relationship trouble). Alan has been battling his internal demons for the past two years and losing badly as he both fails to create and slowly drives a wedge between him and his wife. The battle against Bright Falls’s darkness is a literal one, sure, but it’s also effectively his last and best chance to save his marriage and his creative ability by finally facing these demons head-on however dangerous it may be.

While I think it’s perfectly possible to enjoy Alan Wake without getting into any of this subtext, I had so much fun thinking and talking about it with my friends once I was done with the game that I couldn’t not mention it all here too. The character writing in this game is really strong, and the pace of the narrative is really well done too, at least until the last chapter (but we’ll get to that later). I’ll also take this opportunity to say just what an excellent Japanese localization Alan Wake has. I couldn’t help but giggle at first at what a “cool guy” voice they gave Alan in Japanese, but I quickly found myself drawn deeply into this version of the narrative nonetheless. They do a really compelling job of recreating Alan Wake’s characters and story in Japanese, and it’s easily one of the best English to Japanese localization jobs I’ve ever seen. While Alan Wake is certainly far from my favorite story in a game, it’s still a really well put together story from the surface to the subtext that anyone can enjoy.

It also helps a lot that the gameplay is pretty fun too. It’s not the best paced or deepest action game in the world, and I do think that it wears out its welcome by the end of the game, but the well-executed story does a lot to help make the gameplay that much more compelling to the story’s conclusion. Alan Wake is a third-person shooter where it’s Alan versus the darkness. The form that takes is Alan fighting “the taken”, as they’re called, which are humans who have been corrupted by the darkness and become one and the same with it. To fight the taken, Alan has two main weapons of which he has to use both. All of the taken and darkness-controlled objects are protected by barriers of shadow. Whether it’s a flash bang grenade, a flare, or your trusty flashlight, the first order of business is getting rid of that shield. Once that’s gone, it’s time to finish them off with bullets, and you’ve got a pistol, rifle, and shotgun that you can use to take out the baddies. There’s a survival-horror style aspect of resource management to the game, so you’ve gotta be careful not to waste ammo willy-nilly, but at least on normal mode, I never found ammo nearly scarce enough that I had to worry about running out of it most of the time.

There’s not much more to it than that, in all honesty. The game has linear stages divided up into 6 “episodes”, and it’s just following objectives to complete each stage. One aspect of the game I really do love is how it handles collectibles (at least kind of). One on hand, there are the coffee thermoses which are just there to be collected. They’re quite video game-y and boring, but they’re not the important part here. The more important part are the pages of Alan’s manuscript scattered throughout the game. Scattered around each episode are pages of a manuscript that detail the events of the story as they’re about to happen. Not only are they diegetic to the plot, but they’re also a really novel storytelling device. They cleverly give the player both a sense of foreshadowing on what’s about to happen as well as insights into what’s happening with farther off characters without giving more direct breaks in the action. I think it’d be really hard to replicate this kind of thing in any other game without seeming really clumsy, but the guys at Remedy pulled it off exceptionally well here.

The only real downside to the game is just how long it is, in perfect honesty. There are quite a lot of points where the action sections in between more noticeable story beats are too long, and they can really drag the story down. It’s usually tolerable, admittedly, because you’re usually getting a steady enough flow of manuscript pages (if nothing else) that the story and its stakes are being kept fresh in your head, but that flies out the window in the last episode. Episode 6 is basically just one massive trek to the final confrontation, and while there are a small handful of pages, it’s virtually no story at all for over an hour of gameplay. An hour may not sound like a long time, but for a game that’s only a bit over 10 hours long, that’s a really sour ending note to put on the experience. It’s definitely not an game-ruining issue, but the relatively clumsy implementation of the action mechanics and how they tell the game’s story is easily what makes me hesitate most at recommending this game *too* highly compared to just watching one of those “Alan Wake: The Movie” videos on YouTube.

Aesthetically, the game is quite good if not exactly aged the best. For starters, the soundtrack is good and so is the voice acting, as I’ve already said before. As far as the visuals go, it’s a quite nice-looking Xbox 360 game for 2010, but that doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot these days. Human models aren’t hideous, and they still do a perfectly okay job of selling the story and creating a good atmosphere for it, but they really do show their age in both the quality of the models and the animations. Playing it on the Xbone definitely ups the resolution a fair bit from what it was meant to be played at, and it also improves the frame rate a fair bit too from what I’ve read, but even still, this game isn’t going to visually wow you in the 2020’s.

Verdict: Recommended. I did really enjoy my time with this game, but I also really can’t bring myself to recommend it *that* highly given the aspects of it that I really loved the most. That said, especially if you like Remedy’s newer games, then this is a great classic game to check out. Between finding an old 360 copy or buying the newer remaster, it’s never been easier to enjoy the original Alan Wake story. As long as you don’t mind an action game that drags a bit in places, there’s a really great action adventure game waiting for you here in the darkness~.

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70. Dead to Rights (Xbox)

I enjoyed playing through the PS3-generation Dead to Rights game many years back on my 360, but this wasn’t really a series I ever learned anything more about since then. I honestly can’t even remember why I picked up DtR: Retribution way back in the day. It’s just been that long. Despite that, when I saw that this game was both backwards compatible with the Xbone *and* was only 100 yen at Book Off, it was too obvious a choice to grab right away despite not knowing anything about it. Playing the Japanese version of the game in the “enhanced for Xbox One” fashion, it took me around 8 or so hours to beat the game (my in game clock said 6.5 hours, but that doesn’t count time wasted in game over’d attempts, so this is my best guess at a total playtime).

Dead to Rights is the story of Jack Slate. A cop in America’s most crime hell of a city, Grant City, everything goes topsy turvy for him one day when he discovers his dad has been murdered. Jack sets out at once to find his old man’s killer, even if it ends up setting the entire city’s power structure against him. A friend of mine described this game’s story like if a Hong Kong action movie and a Hollywood action movie had a baby that was wilder than either, and that’s honestly not too far from the truth XD. The voice acting is mostly quality but it’s also often very campy, and it gives the whole story such a delightfully melodramatic flavor that it’s great fun to watch play out. What’s a lot less fun is just how nightmarishly pro-cop the game often is. It’s a really weird and arbitrary form of neoliberal copaganda where the system itself is somehow ultimately fine despite every part of it being so visibly corrupt and unsalvageable. There are some bad apples spoiling the bunch (Jack is basically the only named character to survive the story), sure, but only the cops in scary super armor are bad. The rest are just blamelessly doing their jobs (i.e. you get an instant game over if you kill one). The wild bombast and weirdness of the story ends up being entertaining enough that it’s not too hard to ignore those less savory elements, but I’d be very remiss if I just opted not to talk about them at all.

What’s genuinely impossible to ignore is the gameplay itself, which may’ve been fine back in 2002, but holy crap has it aged like milk in the sun since then. The main gimmick of Dead to Rights is the combination of melee brawler combat with third-person shooter gunplay. You’ve got a pile of guns you can pick up and use, but they run out of ammo pretty quick. Once you’re out of ammo (or if it’s just a part of the game where it’s all brawling anyhow), then you’ve only got your fists to beat up a bad guy, take his gun (if he’s got one), and get back to blasting things up yourself. If you’re too far to safely brawl an opponent’s gun away, you’ve also got your trusty K9 unit dog Shadow. Shadow recharges on a timer, and you can sic him at any enemy within range to have Shadow both instantly kill them as well as take their weapon to you instantly for you to use. It sounds pretty dynamic and novel on paper, but the actual execution leaves a LOT to be desired.

The gunplay, for one, is such a wild pain in the butt. It plays a lot like its contemporary Grand Theft Auto games in how those games handle their small arms weapons. While you *can* zoom in and go first-person, you can’t move while in first-person mode, so that’s nothing but a great way to die 99% of the time. The main way you’ll be taking out bad guys is holding a shoulder button to lock on, and then mashing the A button to fire at them until they’re toast. Unlike PS2-era GTA games, at least, you can actually toggle between enemies you’re aiming at with the right stick, but that’s a small blessing with an auto-lock on system this janky and enemies this terribly lethal. You’ve got the ability to take human shields to soak up some of that damage for you, but lacking the ability to look up and down with the right stick makes actually targeting enemies very awkward a lot of the time. Mercifully, the game is usually pretty forgiving with checkpoints, so you won’t be replaying large sections of levels after each death, but you’re still gonna be dying a fair bit as you learn each level and where enemies will ambush you, health/armor power ups are hidden, and how to even complete certain objectives.

Things are honestly even worse with the melee combat. This game loves throwing so much melee-only combat at you, and it’s such a massive pain in the butt. It’s A to punch, X to kick, and B to grapple (or break an enemy grapple) while you hold the right trigger to block/dodge, and while that sounds alright for a shorter game, it terribly outstays its welcome here. Harder fights, especially boss fights, just turn into games of trying to goad them close enough to you that you can land some punches because their AI just forgets to make them block for whatever reason. Blocking yourself can be useful sometimes, but if they grapple you, you’re probably not going to actually counter in time unless you’re already primed to hit the B button for it. Even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll even land a hit once you break free either, so it’s back to the same song and dance in the first place.

Blocking also drains your stamina like crazy too. Stamina is used in melee fights to block, and doing a successful grapple yourself (or just standing still long enough) will restore it back, but in gunfights, stamina is used for your slow-mo jumping powers. It’s an extremely “we, too, saw the Matrix” mechanic, and while it’s cool at first, I very rarely found it useful. Sure, you can light up bad guys like no one’s business while you’re slow-mo-ing through the air at them (because you can still fire your guns as fast as you can mash the A button despite time being slowed down), but you’re still just as vulnerable to enemy fire as you were before, and it turns out that jumping out into the middle of a ton of gunfire will get you turned into Swiss cheese with or without slow-mo powers.

None of that will save you from the boss battles, though. Bosses are a mix of too tanky and too gimmicky (with bad signposting as to how to actually beat them), especially once you get towards the game’s later chapters. Boss fights generally felt like a mix of learning the fight, death after death, until I could do it just well enough to survive just as much as they felt like a test of getting lucky enough with the boss’s attack pattern to cheese out a win. This version of the game is overall tuned way too difficult, and it was a relief to eventually learn that the PS2 and GameCube ports (as well as apparently the EU Xbox port) both add difficulty selection at the start of the game as well as tune the difficulty down in general as well.

That may all sound annoying and dire, but no early 2000’s game would be complete without mini-games, and boy howdy does this game have a bundle of them. It’s something that makes this game really feel a lot like it still has a lot of DNA from the previous generation’s design philosophies, but there are a lot of little mini-games you’ll have to do and redo to see Jack’s story to its end. Thankfully, unlike the game’s main fighting mechanics, they’re generally not too bad. They maybe break up the action a little too much, when all is said and done, and certain mini-game-heavy sections like the prison could certainly stand to be shorter and have fewer mini-games, but at least they were never anything that felt grossly unfair or poorly conceived. Just be aware that if you have disabilities that prevent you from button mashing that you’ll likely be totally unable to play, let alone finish, Dead to Rights with how much the gunplay necessitates mashing the A button to fire on top of just how many of the mini-games are button mashing contests.

Aesthetically, it’s a game from 2002 and it really does look like it! X3. I’m playing the enhanced for Xbox One version of the game, so I get to see all those super polygonal human models in all their HD resolution glory X3. The soundtrack is weird and funky and even has some DDR-like techno music in it, but the soundtrack is overall pretty solid between the fun voice acting and fine music. If you’re not a fan of overly polygonal human models, then you’re gonna really take issue with this game’s aesthetics, but if that’s really the case for you, then I can’t imagine why you’re even reading this review or considering playing this game in the first place <w>. The main criticism I have about the version I played, at least, is that this seems to be a less than perfect port to the Xbone. Here and there I found some very serious animation bugs with a boss fight or two’s bespoke animations (especially the limo fight), and a few cutscenes clearly ended before they were supposed to. I’ll admit that I never made it around to researching if those were errors in the original releases of this game, but I can safely say that the Japanese Xbone version has those problems, at least.

Verdict: Not Recommended. This game may be silly and campy, but holy crap is it miserable to play. Maybe the later releases that reduce the difficulty are more tolerable, but this original Xbox version is for the birds, frankly. I can definitely see how this would’ve been both novel and impressive enough to ignore the mechanical jankiness back in 2002, but that is not benefit of the doubt that a game deserves in the current year. If you want to experience the fun parts of Dead to Rights, I highly recommend watching someone’s let’s play of it or something, because that’ll get you all of the camp with none of the (personal) frustration of having to deal with its whacked up mechanics XP

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71. Medal of Honor (PS3)

I’ve played through a lot of PS3-era FPS games over the past year or so, and this has been one of the last few of such games I’ve been on the lookout for. I already tried out one of the classic Medal of Honor games on PS2, and while I found it archaic and unforgiving, I still had an okay time with it. It felt only appropriate to give a look at a more modern Medal of Honor game too. My attention was drawn to this one in particular because a friend of mine played it recently, and she found it thoroughly mediocre. Naturally, this meant I had to give it a try too once I finally managed to track down a copy X3. I’m also not going to bury the lead here, but I’m far from glad that I eventually tracked down this copy, because holy crap “mediocre” is if anything overly generous praise as far as I’m concerned XD. It took me about 5 hours (mercifully short) to beat the Japanese version of the game on normal difficulty.

This game is apparently based on a true story. However true that is, the one thing I will say is that the final product they put in the video game manages to be one thing above all others: boring. This game has both no subtitles (in any language) as well as a lot of dialogue over firefights. It also has a really clumsy localization where they’ve just literally translated the detailed meanings of the original English and put them into “natural” Japanese without any consideration of how possible it is to say those things without motormouth-ing your way through them in the time allotted for the original English lines. All this is to say that this is a story I both barely cared about as well as barely understood because they do such a terrible job trying to actually communicate the story to the player.

The story itself is a painfully generic story (which is perhaps the price of being based on a real story) of American coalition forces in Afghanistan fighting against extremist terrorists, but it’s an impressively boring anti-terrorist story even down to the fundamentals of the storytelling. The story barely has an antagonist of any kind beyond nameless hordes of terrorists. There’s an American general whose lack of care for Afghan collaborator lives is framed as a bad thing, and I’ll admit that a superior’s racist attitudes towards the native people of the place they’re occupying/assisting does make for a very interesting narrative premise. However, that is absolutely not the story that we’ve set out to tell here. They go absolutely nowhere with that premise, and the actual narrative we see is a bunch of really generic, flavorless dialogue between soldiers as they carry out a handful of missions to stop some super plot or some other.

Mid-mission dialogue is very mechanical and practical, and cutscenes between missions are generally incredibly dull as well and mostly consist of one guy stood still talking (very fast) about mission details to another guy doing the same thing. Mid-mission dialogue often goes on for so long that it ends up dragging out the game really badly too. They don’t even have the courtesy to make these “walk and talk” exposition sequences like so many games of the time did. What we get much more frequently are bits where we get to a door you can’t open (one of your NPC buddies has to when he feels like it), and then you’ve gotta stand and watch them chatter on about nothing interesting until they finally feel like opening the door. It winds up blowing way past boring and into downright tedious.

One slightly interesting note is that it did end up feeling like one of the most straightforward “advertisement to join the actual armed forces”-style stories of any of these I’ve played, but I think that’s more a testament to its aggressive mundanity than anything else. Admittedly, it’s not like the other major FPS franchises were making stand-out and really fun campaigns at this point either (at least as far as I’ve experienced). 2010 is seemingly the watershed for FPS campaigns really starting to break away from realism and towards action movie-adjacent bombast, and that on top of stronger level design really ended up being for the better. That’s all to say that, to a certain point, I can’t say that I’m *that* surprised that this game’s story and construction are boring and shoddy, but it also certainly doesn’t excuse just how much of a snore-fest this game ended up being .

That propensity to put the player to sleep also extends to the gameplay, sadly, but mostly in terms of level design. Levels are very linear, and they’re generally incredibly uneventful corridors with the occasional defense mission or vehicle section here and there. There’s basically never even any reason to pick up guns you find lying around since the stuff you come equipped with is both very strong and well suited to your mission in addition to how your NPC buddies have infinite stores of ammo to hand over if you just ask them. The gunplay is thankfully pretty decent because this is the era where EA was just having its studios copy Call of Duty. From the basic controls even down to aiming down sights centering you on an enemy in front of you, it’s CoD gameplay from head to toe. I quite like the way CoD plays, so I don’t really mind this, but it’s just one more thing making the game’s construction feel uncared about, generic, and sloppy.

Nothing makes it feel more sloppy than just what a bad PS3 port it is too. I’ve certainly played some bad EA ports to PS3, and this is admittedly not the worst of them, but that’s damning with faint praise given how bug-riddled games like Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 are on this console. The frame rate is terrible, and it jerks all over the place making gameplay meaningfully more difficult very frequently. The game is also quite ugly, with texture resolution not only being low, but textures themselves taking noticeably long to load in. Loading times in general are terrible for a PS3 game, with large chunks of far away scenery making the entire game hitch badly as they load in very frequently. Frankly, I’m quite suspicious that those doors where your buddies prattle on about nothing for ages are mostly just to mask load times.

The game even has more basic critical bugs. There were several times where critical NPCs would get stuck and simply not advance despite me fulfilling the condition to advance the story. At first, I didn’t even realize it was happening the first several times because I thought it was just another really long loading time or poorly paced mission XD. I eventually just had to reload the checkpoint and hope that things would be fixed the next time around. As much as I’ve complained in the past about CoD’s checkpoints making it all too easy to get locked into soft locks that force you to replay the level, this game’s relatively infrequent checkpoints may’ve indeed made it a pain in the butt to constantly replay firefights, but at least they made it harder to get soft locked by the game’s frequent glitches :/

I feel like I don’t really need to talk all that much about aesthetics. When the textures and such are actually loaded properly, they look pretty nice, but it doesn’t stop things from feeling lifeless, brown-ish grey, and generic so much of the time. The soundtrack is extremely forgettable, but at least the gun sounds are okay.

Verdict: Not Recommended. If it somehow escaped your notice in your time reading through the previous 1000-some odd words of this review, my main impressions of this game were a mix of “generic”, “boring”, and “broken”. This is an awful port of a deeply uninspired game that, frankly, wouldn’t be worth your time even if it ran great. This is a poor FPS showing by EA *even compared* to other deeply mediocre wastes of time FPS campaigns they put out around the same time as this (Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3), and I am downright blown away by how they managed to publish something inferior to even those wastes of time. Needless to say, this game isn’t worth your brain space in the slightest, and I can only hope that reading this review brought you at least a little entertainment, because that’d be more joy than the actual experience of playing the game ever would’ve brought you :/

[ElkinFencer10]

Games Beaten in 2025 - 10
* denotes a replay

January (Not Shit Beaten)

February (Not Shit Beaten)

March (Not Shit Beaten)

April (Not Shit Beaten)

May (Not Shit Beaten)

June (6 Games Beaten)

Doom: The Dark Ages - Series X - June 2
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - PlayStation 5 - June 16
3. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour - Switch 2 - June 16
4. Fast Fusion - Switch 2 - June 17
5. Sniper Elite: Resistance - PS5 - June 21
6. Mario Kart World - Switch 2 - June 22

July (4 Games Beaten)

7. Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom - Switch - July 1
8. Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army - Switch 2 - July 4
9. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster - Switch - July 12
10. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Series X - July 14

10. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Series X - July 14



Released by French studio Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG that is best described the way my friend, Pat, described it to me - "very sad and very French." It is definitely very French with names like Gustave and Renoir, and even before you know what's going on in this world, the deep sadness that consumes every facet of the game's world feels ever pervasive. The "Expedition 33" part of the title becomes apparent almost immediately as the intro unfolds, but the "Clair Obscur" part of the title took me a long time and a Google search to figure out of which I'm sure my college art history professors would be ashamed. Clair obscur is the French term for the Italian art term "chiaroscuro" which refers to an art style that creates drama through the use of strong contrast between dark and light. It's obvious from the start of the game that "artistic expression" was the core development philosophy, but as you progress through the story, you begin to see that art itself is at the heart of the narrative.



The game follows the survivors of "Expedition 33," a team sent from the island city of Lumiere to "the continent" (representative of the French mainland) with the mission of reaching and eliminating The Paintress, a giant sad-looking lady who spends her entire life sitting at the base of a monolithic rock and paints a number on that rock every year, originally counting down from 100. Anyone who is the age painted on the monolith or older - 33, in this case - will "gommage" or disappear, the word translating from French to "to rub" or "to erase" in English. Basically, if you're 33 on the day the Paintress painted the 33 on the monolith, you're going to disappear into a cloud of rose petals. The exact mechanism by which this works or that causes this is unknown. At least until the end of the game. The game's world is shrouded in a palpable sense of misery, but it's done so with exceptional beauty thanks to the use of Unreal Engine 5 and well executed ray tracing effects.



Expedition 33 is one of those games, like Bioshock or SOMA, that I would describe as "cerebral," forcing the player to think and reflect on the experience as much as just play and enjoy the game. A lot of the game, especially the last few hours of the game, is deeply philosophical and not nearly as straightforward or black-and-white as "kill the big evil to save the world," something that you slowly piece together as you make your way towards the Paintress. This is, in my opinion, what should immediately come to mind when you hear the phrase "adult game" - not some garbage sex nonsense but a game that makes you ponder the very nature of existence in a way that children and even most teenagers wouldn't be able to appreciate fully. One of the most effective tools the game uses to create this outcome is stellar voice acting. The voice acting is some of the best I've heard in recent games, and the writing is absolutely top tier. The lines of dialogue, nine times out of ten, feel very intentionally and carefully written. Very, very few lines feel extraneous or like filler. The game's dialogue skillfully builds the sense that the continent isn't what you were led to expect and that there are major machinations going on behind the scenes to which your character isn't privy. These secrets and hidden plans are very slowly and very deliberately hinted at throughout the game but rarely revealed until the last quarter or so.



The combat follows the common turn-order setup that many JRPGs use but with a QTE feature reminiscent of Super Mario RPG. When a character's turn comes up, they have a few options. Obviously, you can skip your turn, but that's rarely wise. You can use an item - a healing potion, an AP (action point) potion, or a revival potion. You can also use a basic melee attack which generates one AP or a basic ranged attack which costs 1 AP and can be used as many times as your AP can afford per turn. Then you've got skills which will be your bread-and-butter damage dealers. These might be healing abilities, buffs, debuffs, or attacks. There are numerous kinds of damage - physical, fire, ice, electric, earth, dark, light, and void - and skills can either be single target or hit all enemies at once. They can also inflict status ailments like burn, slow, stun, etc. Each skill costs AP with the weaker ones' costing one or two and the strongest ones costing a full 9 AP, the maximum you can have at one time. Lastly, you have your gradient attacks. These are special very powerful skills that use gradient points to use. You generate gradient charge for each AP that your skills burn to fill the meter, and you can store up to three gradient charges at once with each gradient skill using one, two, or all three charges. Like your skills, some of these are powerful moves, like an attack that hits a target ten or twelve times, and some are powerful healing skills, like one that revives all downed allies and buffs them. Unlike skills, which you unlock using skill points gained upon level up, gradient skills are unlocked by progressing through the game and building relationship levels between characters.



I mentioned that the game features a QTE element a la Super Mario RPG. This comes in with the skills, both regular and gradient. When you use a skill, you will have to make between one and three QTE button presses with success granting a better effect and failure granting either a lesser effect or, in some cases, causing damage to you instead of your enemies. This QTE timing also comes into play with defense. When you're attacked, there's a tiny window of time where you can press the correct button to do a parry. If you parry every hit in an enemy's attack, you'll automatically trigger a counterattack. You can also choose to dodge these attacks which requires pressing a different button at the right time. Some attacks require you to jump to avoid them which is a different timed button press followed by another button press to perform a counterattack. It sounds super complicated, and it can definitely take a bit of practice to get used to pressing the right buttons at the right time for the right attacks, but the game introduces these various QTE elements to you slowly over time. You've got pictos, items of which you can have up to three equipped at a time, that give passive combat abilities. You can "learn" these after using them in battle enough and use your lumina points to keep them activated even when the picto is unequipped. There's a lot of depth of the combat beneath the turn-based surface, and you'll probably be halfway through the game before you truly get fully comfortable with all aspects of it.



The game's soundtrack is best described as "haunting" with an orchestral and operatic style that sets it apart from anything I've played recently. Even Final Fantasy VII's One Winged Angel track with its operatic vocals doesn't achieve the depth of emotion that Clair Obscur's soundtrack creates. The soundtrack's somber vibe is the perfect support for the game's pervasive themes of mortality and loss. It's not just the sound design that I consider to be virtually perfect; the game is also what I would call a perfect length, clocking in at between 30 and 40 hours for most players depending on how much you go out of your way for side content. There are some definite problems with the game - there are occasional clipping and lip sync issues, exploration is a pain with no minimap, some of the relationship building dialogue does feel a bit ancillary and forced, and there are definitely some difficulty spikes that can frustrate players who aren't adequately levelled and comfortable with the combat system. That said, the emotionally gripping storytelling, captivating soundtrack, beautiful world, and replayability via New Game+ all far outweigh those negatives.



Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't literally a perfect game, but it's damn close, especially considering it's the debut game of a studio with fewer than three dozen team members. If this is their first game, imagine what they could do with more experience and a bigger budget. This is one of those instantly classic games, like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the 5th gen, Persona 4 for the 6th gen, and Xenoblade Chronicles for the 7th gen that will continue to be revered and discussed for years and decades to come. There are few games I consider true must-plays for literally every gamer, but this is definitely one of them. The story will grip you, the characters will enchant you, the soundtrack will captivate you, and the tragedy of it all will move you. It's only available for modern platforms minus Switch 2 - something I actually approve of since it would need serious cuts for the hardware, and this game deserves to be experienced as envisioned by the artists - so you'll need to have an Xbox Series S or X, a PS5, or a gaming PC to play it, but if you have one of those platforms, you seriously owe it to yourself to play Expedition 33.

[marurun]

So, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is raising a lot of questions, again, about what is an indie game. Because Kepler (the publisher) and Sandfall (the developer) are not one of the big studios or publishers. That said, this game is steeped in investment money. It had a large team and was well-funded. This is sort of the opposite of the whole Dave the Diver thing where it was a small game developed by a small team (Mintrocket) which just happened to be owned by Korean gaming monolith Nexon. So if Indie means small, it doesn't matter who owned and supported/funded Dave the Diver's development team. But if Indie means outside the major players, it doesn't matter than Clair Obscur was made with many many millions of dollars in a way very much like development at the major players.

This is all a way of saying Indie has become as meaningless in games (at least on a precise definition level) as it is in music, where the biggest artists basically create their own labels. Did you know Adele is her own label? Yup. She's distributed by Sony, though. And Adele isn't Indie at all. Because it's basically a genre at this point and doesn't have as much to do with how music is made, exactly. I think Indie in gaming is now in the area of "I know it when I see it" because the "rules" are meaningless.