Games Beaten 2026

[Ack]

1. Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil (FPS)(PC)
2. Doom 3 (FPS)(PC)
3. V Rising (Adventure)(PC)
4. Teardown (Action)(PC)
5. Control: Ultimate Edition (Action)(PC)
6. Peak (Adventure)(PC)

Control

This is an action game set in the same universe as the Alan Wake games. Control has you play as Jesse Faden, a woman searching for the Federal Bureau of Control to try and find her lost brother. Years ago, she set off a massive event and now has a thing living in her head, and the FBC agents arrived to clean up the mess. Now she's arrived at their headquarters in New York, only to find the facility in lockdown. The head of the FBC is dead, the building is shifting, and there's a strange collective entity known as the Hiss taking things over. And Jesse has just become the new FBC Director. Have fun cleaning up the mess!

The game is a third person shooter, but it's also full of fantastic psychic powers. Telekinesis, mind control, levitation, all are tools to fend off the Hiss and complete missions, whether they come from the mysterious extra dimensional Board, employees of the FBC, or the mysterious janitor who may be some kind of Scandinavian god. It's fun, the powers feel good to use, and exploring each area offers up a ton of lore and insight into the world. Spaces will sometimes bend and warp around you, and at other times you'll find yourself in a pocket of another existence. And mysteries are usually left as mysteries, a wise choice in a game like this.

Are there issues? Yeah. The firearm feels lackluster in certain configurations, there are a couple of annoying enemy designs, and if you don't build yourself up right, you'll find the game can be unnecessarily difficult. This particularly happens in the Alan Wake-themed expansion, which becomes accessible surprisingly early on at a time when you are not really prepared for it.

Yet it's hard not to enjoy levitation around, picking up computers with your mind and launching them like missiles at whatever poor sap wandered into your line of sight. I really enjoyed Control and its two expansions.


Peak

You're a member of a scout troop that crashed on a desert island. To escape, you must climb to the very center of the island and light a flare for a helicopter to come rescue you. Trouble is, every 24 hours the map changes; there are several possible biomes that you will have to traverse, with their own unique challenges, all of a random design that shifts daily. The mountain is never the same, though all end with a climb into and up through a volcano in a challenging run while the lava is rising.

Also, the game is probably best in multiplayer, where you have to work together to survive. Help your buddies up, carry their injured bodies to safety, goof off with each other, or even find secret items that let you resurrect or turn them into the living dead. Peak can be ridiculous, but it is also a lot of run and becomes a lot easier when you're not being a jerk to your buddies.

And since the map keeps changing, it's a game worth going back to even once you've managed to escape. I've been playing it off and on for a few weeks, and there is still a whole biome I haven't yet seen. This is a fun one that will last me a good while.

[Markies]

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2026!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

1. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA)
2. Knights of the Round (SNES)
3. Fight'N Rage (NS)
4. Time Stalkers (SDC)
***5. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (PS3)***
6. OutRunners (GEN)
***7. Midtown Madness 3 (XBOX)***



I completed Midtown Madness 3 on the Microsoft XBOX this afternoon!

Back in 2021, I used to do a Fortune Cookie at the beginning of the year for all of my consoles. At the time, I had six less consoles and I was only beating games, so it was much easier to do. Well, that year, I played through Midtown Madness 3 on the XBOX. It was a great little racing game that reminded me of a mix of Crazy Taxi and the driving missions from Grand Theft Auto. After the intense marathon that was Final Fantasy X/X-2, I needed something a bit more intense and lighter, so I thought this would be a perfect time to go back and finish all that I needed to do.

The best way to describe Midtown Madness 3 is if you took all of the Racing Missions in the Grand Theft Auto games, add in a pinch of Crazy Taxi and made them all into a video game. You choose between Washington D.C. or Paris and you take on the role of several odd jobs. You are delivering pizzas or packages, or are a Cop, Limo Driver, Taxi Driver or are crashing cars or doing races. Eventually, you beat one city and move onto the next one. My favorite aspect in the game is the variety of cars you get to drive. You drive a Viper, a limo, a 1950's Cadillac, a Hummer, a 1960's Mustang, an armored truck and so many other cars that it adds a nice variety to the game. The mission variety isn't all that extensive, especially if you play the game for a long period of time, but the cars add a nice mixture to the game. Also, the game controls and feels like a GTA game. You are plowing through cars, destroying property and driving at break neck speeds as the arcade feel is perfect. The extra modes are just different versions of racing through checkpoints as one has opponents and the other does not.

The worst part of the game is the Map. You are driving in ACTUAL Washington D.C. and Paris, so the roads are horrendous. The only map you have is the mini-map in the corner. You can never pause the game to consult a giant map. You have to split second decisions or just do the missions over and over again until you get it right.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Midtown Madness 3. It never really reaches the height of a great game, but it is a perfectly suitable good game. The car variety and being able to drive reckless in a downtown city is always enjoyable. It adds enough flavor and uniqueness to separate it from the other racing games. If you like Crazy Taxi or the GTA Driving Missions, then this is a perfect game for you.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2026 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
* indicates a repeat

1. Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
2. We Were Here (Steam)
3. We Were Here Too (Steam)
4. Tales of Graces f (PS3) *
5. Retro Game Challenge (Switch) *
6. We Were Here Forever (Steam)
7. Tales of Hearts R (PSVita) *
8. Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered (PC)
9. Mega Man 11 (PC)
10. Gravity Circuit (PC)

11. Mario Party DS (DS)

I’m a huge Mario Party fan, and this is one of the last games in the series that I’d been meaning to play but had never gotten around to. I hurt my left hand recently, so I really needed something to play that was both interesting but also wouldn’t require action too intensive from my left hand, so an early-ish DS game like this seemed like perfect fit (and indeed it was~). I played through the story mode with Wario and then messed around in the other modes a bit, and it all took me around 6-ish hours to do with the Japanese version of the game.

The conceit for this tenth entry in the Mario Party franchise is that everyone has been shrunk! After 5 magical sparkly pieces fall from the sky, Bowser finds one and is determined to get the other 4 all for himself! He tricks Mario and his friends into coming over for a big feast that he’s prepared. Once they’ve fallen into his trap, he uses a magical shrink rod to shrink them down to the size of mice and then blasts them out of his castle! Not ones to take a defeat or a trick lying down, the 8 friends race as rivals to see who can be the first to get back to Bowser’s castle first and turn them all back to normal (which happens to take the form of playing through 5 Mario Party boards, go figure ;b). It’s just superficial set dressing like the themes for these games always are, but they actually have a ton of fun with the “everyone shrunk” setup from the aesthetics to the gameplay, and it’s a fine an excuse for some Mario Party-ing as ever

The gameplay is, in the broad strokes, still the very familiar Mario Party formula that Hudson had cultivated over the previous 10 games. You’ve gotta get the most stars by the end of the set number of turns, and you play a mini-game at the end of each turn to try and earn coins to buy stars as well as items as you make your way around the board. However, with all the smart lessons that this game learns from Mario Party 8, Mario Party DS ends up being best ways Hudson ever managed to put together a Mario Party. Much like Mario Party 8, DS’s main focus is on shorter games on smaller maps. Rather than the sprawling super maps you’d see in some of the earlier console games, maps that can take 5 to 10 turns to circumnavigate even with the aid of items, many of Mario Party DS’s maps can be looped in only 2 or 3 turns if you’re rolling well. The map design in general is really strong, and each board has a different method of getting stars much like the console games of the time did (though sadly no star stealing-focused map type). Where so many other Mario Party games have 20 turns as the minimum for a satisfying experience, Mario Party DS manages to make even 10 or 15 turn games tense battles of wits full of twists of fate, and it’s definitely one of my favorite ways to play these party games.

Items also work in an interesting way that support these much smaller maps and faster games. For starters, items are much cheaper in stores, with the item that allows 2 dice to be rolled instead of one costing only *three* coins instead of 10 or 15 like in most other games. Additionally, not only can you carry 3 items at once, but you can also BUY as many as you want with just one trip to the store instead of the limit of one item per visit like so many other Mario Party games force on you. Items you pick up from designated spaces also differ from the ones you can buy in stores. Unlike store bought items, the free items you get by passing by designated points on the map (not unlike the orb/candy systems of Mario Partys 5~8) are ones that can be placed on the board and have a special result when landed on. They disappear after being landed on once (even if you land on it), but the effects are often very powerful, ranging from swapping coin totals with the person who lands on it to even stealing one or TWO stars from the unlucky soul who lands on your trap space! In another very cool design choice, Hudson takes advantage of the fact that every player has their own screen to be able to show you where and what all of your spaces are at any given time. Unlike in the consoles games where that’d be leaking information to the other people looking at the screen, that’s not a concern when everyone has their own DS screen to look through, and it’s just one more thing that makes the item system a great addition to this game’s overall fast and snappy approach to the old Mario Party formula.

The mini-games also take advantage of this screen feature as well. Tons of mini-games have very efficient use of processing power by not showing you anything you don’t need to see (i.e. the other players’ perspectives or controls). This lets them not only make for efficient UI design, but it also allows them to make all sorts of mini-games revolving around personal/hidden information that’d be otherwise impossible in a console-based Mairo Party game. Between that stuff and the general use of the DS’s touchscreen and microphone, this game is chock full of great mini-games, and there’s barely one or two losers among the whole batch.

The only real let down when it comes to mini-games and overall play is that the AI is rather poor. The harder difficulties of the CPUs are pretty good at mini-games at least (with even the top, Hardest-level CPU players being very tough but still conquerable by a skilled human unlike quite a few other older Mario Party games), but CPUs of all difficulties still struggle quite badly to play the board game competently at times. It’s hardly an always problem, but even in the less than 10 games I played, I saw several matches where a CPU player, sometimes all 3 of them, would bizarrely deliberately avoid progress towards the star time and time again for some reason utterly unfathomable to humans. It’s definitely not the worst thing in the world, as especially on harder difficulties they can hold their own in mini-games more than enough to be reasonable opponents, and this is something of a non-issue if you’ve got friends to play with instead of the CPUs, but it’s definitely a strike against this game that I can’t level against basically any other Mario Party I’ve played.

The aesthetics of this game are loads of fun, though. Hudson clearly had so much fun thinking up all types of boards and mini-games to have fun with the Honey I Shrunk the Kids-scale of our playable characters, and seeing just what kind of nonsense the next game would be about made every new mini-game explored that much more fun a discovery. My personal favorite is the one where you’re playing chicken for a duel by jumping off of the top of a blackboard with magnets strapped to your back (and pressing A turns you around to stick you to the blackboard before you hit the eraser serving as your cushion at the bottom), but I really love the 1 v 3 bobsled race too (with the 3 players in a wooden shoe and the 1 player in a spoon X3). The music is as good as usual for a Mario Party game, and the graphics are pretty impressive overall for a DS game from ’07.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. After talking in some of my usual gaming spaces about how much I was loving this game, I was thoroughly surprised at just how many people were under the impression that this game was supposed to be decidedly mid at best. I’d always thought this was thought to be an OK Mario Party, but I really can’t understand the assessment that this is somehow meaningfully lesser than its contemporaries. Outside of the absence of online play and the sometimes poor CPU AI, I really struggle to think of anything other than heaps of praise for just how well Hudson have modified the Mario Party formula to deliver quicker games that are still packed with tension. If you’re a Mario Party fan and have avoided this game due to either its handheld nature or its reputation, then you should really give this game a try anyway, because this is frankly one of the best Mario Partys Hudson ever put out, and that is not praise I give lightly~.

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

11: Super Mario 3D World

The kishotenketsu level design might make you fall asleep, but there's still the occasional delight to be found, especially in the bonus levels. It's a shame one has to first plow through five hours of tutorial-like worlds (especially if you've already beaten 3D Land) in order to get to the best parts. In most ways, this one has been eclipsed by Mario Maker. If only there was something like Cappy to give Mario and friends more freedom in how they got through levels! The best parts are when you can multiply the amount of characters you can control. Trying to keep two, three, four Luigis around is an exciting challenge, wish there were more of this!

6/10

[TheSSNintendo]

1. Deja Vu: MacVenture Series
2. Deja Vu II: MacVenture Series
3. Earthworm Jim 2 (SNES/Switch Online)
4. Crash Banidcoot: The Huge Adventure (Gameboy Advance)
5. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch)
6. Lego Batman: The Video Game (Steam)
7. Ys III - Wanderers from Ys (SNES)
8. Suikoden II HD Remaster (Switch)
9. Technobabylon (GOG)

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

1. Dead Space (2023) - PC
2. Dead Space 2 - PC
3. Dead Space 3 - PC
4. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon - PS5
5. Stellar Blade - PS5
6. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - Switch

Dragon Quest VII is the latest game in the DQ series to get a remake. Like the previous ones, this makes some changes to the base game, both mechanically and story-wise. It isn't as massive as the changes to DQ I & II, but it's more extensive than we saw with III.

DQVII is the story of a boy who lives on the single island in the world. One day his best friend gets him involved in a treasure hunt that ends up with them going back in time to another island, and upon resolving a bad thing that occurred on that island they discover that new island now exists in the present. Cue an episodic journey of going back in time, setting right what once went wrong, and restoring the world. And eventually, defeating the Demon Lord who sealed away all the islands in the first place.

DQVII was notable for having atrocious pacing issues; it took at least an hour to get to your first combat, and the game is a series of small vignettes, rather than a long running storyline. The big bad never works against you; you just keep dealing with isolated incidents his minions get up to until you confront him directly. The game takes way too long to give you access to the job system, and while it is justified for story reasons, it doesn't help the game feel great. And unfortunately, the remake doesn't really fix any of this. And that's with it removing three islands and making four other ones optional.

On the combat side of the house, the remake does make the early game better; the original only gave you a handful of skills, while now you get a full unique starter job for every character. The game switches to having you give commands as your turn comes up, rather than inputting them all at the start of a turn for your entire team. It adds in the "work up" system where you occasionally get pumped and can do a special skill. These are based on your job, and many are quite powerful. Finally, you can now equip two jobs at once; this makes up for you only having a job's skills when you're in the job. Overall, the game's combat is quite easy, and that's with you skipping as many fights as possible because every fight is just you spamming Gigagash three times because enemies are damage sponges.

Dragon Quest VII was always my lower ranked game, mostly winning out against the earliest stuff due to how primitive and unbalanced they were. With the remakes of I and II this puts VII firmly at the bottom. But it's still a solid enough RPG. There's always going to be a worst in any list, and it's not like VII is far below VI (the second worst). But it's not one I see myself revisiting again. I gave it a chance when it advertised that they made story adjustments, but it is far too little and they probably couldn't solve the fundamental pacing issues without a total rewrite.

[RobertAugustdeMeijer]

12: Despelote

Remember the times you recreated your home town in video games. How accurate were you? How much did your memory affect what you built? Despelote is an exploration of turning childhood memories into a game. Do you accept this artifact as real history? 2002 was an exciting time in Equador due to the World Cup, but the liveliness among people is hard to capture in news and encyclopedias. Here we have a developer trying to capture what it felt like to live in that moment. Eventually he comes clean and admits to having filled in a lot, perhaps too much. But perhaps it's human nature to do so, and doesn't that make this an earnest retelling?
Oh, and for those who grew up with Dino Dini's soccer games, there's an extra rush of nostalgia!

7/10

[Note]

1.Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (SAT)
2. Castle Crashers Remastered (NSW)



3. Soul Calibur (DC)

(I've already reviewed Soul Calibur on the forum, so keeping this entry short.)

I had been revisiting some of my Dreamcast titles, as my 8Bitmods VMU Pro arrived recently and I wanted to transfer some of my saves to it. With that in mind, I fired up a few different games, and of course I couldn't skip over Soul Calibur. Once I started it up though, I couldn't put it down, which is my usual experience with this one. I always want to push on to the next round or the next challenger. I think this game holds up to the initial hype around it and it's still one of my favorite titles on the Dreamcast. Also, this is one of the few examples I can think of where the console port surpassed the arcade version.

If for some reason you haven't played Soul Calibur, give it a go!

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

1. Dead Space (2023) - PC
2. Dead Space 2 - PC
3. Dead Space 3 - PC
4. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon - PS5
5. Stellar Blade - PS5
6. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - Switch
7. Silent Hill 2 (2024) - PC

Silent Hill 2 got a remake in 2024, keeping the same story and structure but updating to modern graphics, better feeling combat, and a rejigger of the puzzles and layouts so it isn't just a carbon copy of the original. It serves as an interesting contrast of styles with Resident Evil, as both have fairly similar basic layouts (solve puzzles, conserve resources), but have quite different feelings.

Silent Hill 2 is the story of James Sunderland, a man whose wife died 3 years ago but mysteriously he gets a letter from her. The letter informs him that she is in Silent Hill, a small village they had vacationed at together. James heads to Silent Hill and discovers a deserted town with strange creatures lurking within. The only thing he can do is continuously move forward, trying to find Mary, or at least an understanding of where the letter came from.

The game is divided into several areas. The individual areas have a level of free roam to them, but not as much as a Resident Evil mansion does. There generally is only one unsolved puzzle accessible at a time, rather than several options that you slowly work through in a Resident Evil. However, many of the puzzles aren't just finding the right inventory items; there tends to be some figuring out of logic or orientations that can take some real thinking.

Now, I avoided the Silent Hill series because I'd heard that the games intentionally had bad combat. The idea of being actively disincentivized from combat didn't appeal to me, vs. the Resident Evil style of "combat smart to manage your resources". I'm pleased to report that while the Silent Hill 2 combat still conveys that James is just a guy in a bad situation and so he isn't super great at it, it doesn't feel bad to engage in. The combat is melee focused, and you have a great dodge move that lets you get into a rhythm with enemies. You do get access to firearms, but the ammo management means that you tend to want to save the big guns for bosses and the pistol until after you've built up enough ammo to take out particularly dangerous enemies.

One thing that really stands out is that James engages in almost no narration. Outside of one or two soft "what the hell" utterances, James really only shows his reaction to stuff when he talks with other NPCs. I did find this a bit off putting; James seems to take basically everything in stride, to a degree that really doesn't feel right. It doesn't ruin the game in any way, just more something that stood out.

Overall, this is an excellent horror game that focuses more on unsettling atmosphere and creeping you out, whereas Resident Evil is a fun monster movie. As I understand it, the devs who did this remake are now contracted to remake the original, and I'm definitely going to have to snag that when it comes out.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Man… I have fallen behind with my reviews. Time to catch up!

……

1. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound (Switch)
2. Metroid Prime 4 (Switch)
3. Darkwing Duck (Gameboy)
3. DuckTales (Gameboy)
4. DuckTales 2 (Gameboy)
5. Wonder Boy in Monster Land (Sega Master System)
6. Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield (Switch)
7. Depths of Sanity (Switch)

Metroid Prime 4 is a solid game, and probably my favorite game in the series since the first. It looks great, even on the original Switch, with the Volt Forge among the best, most interesting locations in any Metroid Game. The story is fine, tying up threads from a lot of the lesser games in the series (including the criminally underrated Federation Force); there’s a cool old/new villain; the game is frequently challenging; and the boss fights are all very solid. Still, the game does a bit too much handholding. (Pro-Tip: Turn off the hints and tutorials in the options menu.) Also, it is very apparent that, over the course of the game’s lengthy development it went in three very different directions. That is, I think it started out more like a Halo game; they then tries to make it an open-world game; and finally salvaged everything by making it just a regular old Metroid Prime game. The open world concept could work for the series eventually, but the mostly barren desert in this game did t do it for me. Still, I enjoyed it at least as much as Metroid Prime 3, and more than Metroid Prime 2 - both of which I really liked! - making Metroid Prime 4 easy to recommend.

I got so hyped for the upcoming physical release of the Disney Afternoon Collection, I decided to play a few more of Capcom’s Disney games. Since I’d beaten all the NES versions, though, I decided to check out their Gameboy ports. Darkwing Duck was up first, and it tracks the NES original pretty closely. That is, it’s a simplified Mega Man game with a “hanging” mechanic. The NES version is very good, but the hit detection and limited viewing space of the Gameboy version make the portable version hard to recommend. The same issues, unfortunately, plague the Gameboy port of DuckTales. That is, the game slows down a lot, the controls are laggy, and the viewing area is too zoomed in. The result is a game drastically inferior to it NES counterpart that I don’t recommend at all. Thankfully, Capcom remediation a lot of those issues with DuckTales 2, which is much stronger. It is almost as good as it’s NES counterpart, and I quite enjoyed that one.

Wonder Boy in Monster Land for the Sega Master System is a fine port of a very wonky game. I’ve beaten a lot of different versions of this game, and the Sega Master System port is easily the closest to the arcade original, for better or for worse. That is, it’s a weird arced action-platformer-RPG(?) with colorful graphics, floaty controls, cryptic-to-the-point-of-indecipherable mechanics, and and completely unfair difficulty. For the best experience, I recommend: (1) going through once, blind, with save states, which will likely result in you reaching the final boss only to discover the game is in winnable because you missed an invisible door in the early game; (2) throwing your controller against a wall; (3) buying a new controller; (4) reading a guide; and (5) replaying the game to discover it’s not that hard if you know all its secrets in advance.

February is Black History Month in the U.S.; so, I decided to play some games with black protagonists. The first is Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield, which is a level-based runner in an Afro-futurist setting. It didn’t make a great first impression, but it grew on me a lot once I caught on to the color-based dodging mechanics. (Unlike my favorite runner series, Bit.Trip, and despite a killer soundtrack, the gameplay in Never Yield is not rhythm based at all.) By the end, I quite enjoyed it, and it’s a solid effort from a solo developer. Be warned, however, the the game is very short (2 hours, at most), and I’d wait for a sale if you’re interested in it.

Next up was Depths of Sanity, an aquatic metroidvania with strong Lovecraftian horror elements. In it, an oceanic rescue team goes missing while investigating a signal emitting from the bottom of the ocean, and you play as the team’s captain, piloting a small submarine, in his attempt to rescue them. Your surrounding become increasingly alien, and increasingly sinister, the deeper you proceed into the cold, dark, depths, with our poor captain increasingly questioning his odds of success (low), his chances of survival (also low), and his sanity (not great). The game’s character and story really, really shine, and the whole thing is very creepy and very well-written. The game’s atmosphere is also a highlight, along with the non-traditional gameplay. (No double jump in this metroidvania! You’re piloting a submarine.) The game is pretty linear, but it leaves ample room for exploration and backtracking, with the “good” ending hidden behind some hard to find collectibles. (SPOIlER: The bad ending is the one you really want, though, and the one most consistent with the rest of the game, and while you can’t lock yourself out of the good ending, you can lock yourself out of the bad one.) The main downsides are the graphics, which despite some parallax scrolling, have a very flat early-1990s-DOS-game aspect, and the combat. (Most fish just leave you alone, and you can go through long sections of the game without fighting anything. And, when the late game enemies get really hostile, it’s still best to run!) The boss fights are really solid, though, especially the last boss, and at almost 20 hours, there’s plenty of content. Highly recommended if you’re looking for a hidden gem in an increasingly crowded genre!