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)
7. The Exit 8 (Horror)(PC)
8. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (RPG)(PC)
9. Killing Time: Resurrected (FPS)(PC)
10. Darkenstein 3D (FPS)(PC)
11. Metal Garden (FPS)(PC)
12. Caput Mortum (Horror)(PC)
13. Corridor 7: Alien Invasion (FPS)(PC)
Corridor 7 marks the third Capstone Entertainment FPS I have beaten of the 5 they made. Two of them, Corridor 7 and Operation Body Count, were made with the Wolfenstein 3D engine. The other three (Witchaven 1 and 2 and William Shatner's TekWar) were made with the Build engine. There was another in the works, Corridor 8, but it never got anywhere close to completion before the company folded.
So, it's 1994. The FPS market has been rocked by the likes of Doom. But some companies are still producing Wolf3D style games, such as Blake Stone: Planet Strike. And, truth be told, sometimes there is innovation. Operation: Body Count I praised for introducing some tactical elements to the gameplay involving guiding a squad.
Corridor 7, however...well, there's no such luck here. Instead, each level has a bunch of aliens wandering around, and your goal is to kill enough to be able to use the elevator to go to the next level. You can choose to search for secrets and kill everything for a higher score, but if you're just wanting to get through, go in, shoot a handful of enemies, and get out as soon as you're allowed. This means levels can be completed in a few seconds. That's actually not a bad thing, as there were 30 in the base game (and 40 in the CD release), not including the handful of secret levels.
Unfortunately, there really isn't much in the way of innovation. Operation Body Count released the same month as Corridor 7, so while both had maps and means to track enemies, OBC was a more interesting experience. C7 offers up a bunch of weapons, but they share from two ammo pools, so it's not really worthwhile to experiment beyond whichever you prefer of the two sets. Level design also gets trickier later as ammo sources become less plentiful, but healing can still be found, so you can plink your does to death with the weakest gun and still have enough health to be full on the next level. And that's really what the strategy is: do just enough to advance while making sure you're topped up on supplies. Anything further is extra credit.
Which is not to say that C7 is all bad. It's colorful, with vibrant enemy designs, including one for that can go invisible. For the Wolf3D engine, it's bright, but it also incorporates some elements such as night vision, so you can have dark levels too. But by the time of its release, it didn't stand out, and it's tough to argue it stands out today. I keep going back to it, but Operation Body Count is the more interesting title to me, despite Corridor 7 looking more colorful.
Well, chalk another FPS down for me.
Games Beaten 2026
-
PartridgeSenpai
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 3173
- Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2015 9:27 am
- Location: Northern Japan
Re: Games Beaten 2026
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)
12. Ghost of Tsushima (PS5)
13. Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island (PS5)
14. Astro's Playroom (PS5)
15. Michael Jackson: The Experience (PSP)
16. Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5)
17. Control (PS4)
18. White Album (PS3)
19. Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (GBA)
20. Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)
21. Breath of Fire III (PSP)
22. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2) *
23. Sly 2: Band of Thieves (PS2)
I tried this game out a little bit many years back after my first time through Sly 1, but it was just so different that I ended up putting it down pretty quickly. I'd wanted to give it a try again in the years since, but it's a pretty rare release out here in Japan, so I'd given up on ever being able to try it out. However, thanks to my wife giving me her old American PS2 and games from when she was younger, I suddenly found myself with the whole trilogy at my hands~. After finishing Sly 1 again, it only made sense to finally move on to Sly 2 and finally take a crack at this game that I bounced off of so many years ago. I ended up 100%-ing the game (albeit there's not a ton of side content), and it took me about 17 hours to do it on the English version of the game.
Sly 1 saw Sly Cooper and his friends/partners in crime, Bentley and Murray, putting the Thievius Raccoonus (the tome holding all of the passed down secrets of sneaking and thievery from Sly's family line) back together and destroying the Cooper clan's ancient enemy Clockwerk, a great owl who hated them so much that he replaced his body with mechanical parts in order to live forever and eventually kill them. Despite Clockwerk's blown up body falling into a volcano at the end of all of that, it apparently did nothing to actually destroy or meaningfully damage him at all. His pieces are all still in tip top shape, and a band of criminals known as the Klaww Gang have gathered them up for their own nefarious (and strange) purposes. Sly, Bentley, and Murray are now on another globe trotting adventure to stop the Klaww Gang, get the Clockwerk parts back, and put an end to this ancestral evil once and for all.
While the premise has changed a bit, the overall vibe and tone from the first game remains fairly unchanged in Sly 2, and anyone who read my Sly 1 review knows that I believe that this is unfortunately a development for the worse. As the larger play time indicates, this game has a *ton* more dialogue and story than the last game, but it is also sadly just as shallow and engaging. Some stand out characters like the delightfully baffling and trendy (operative word there being "baffling") Dimitri are the exception, but by and large the whole cast, old and new, are just as paper thin as ever and don't even have the courtesy to be funny either. Our main gang of three continue to be the biggest boy scouts who ever decided to be grand larcenists, and that whole vibe of "rich people acting out what they reckon Robin Hood is like" from the first game is still here in spades as a result. In a slight positive, the casual racism from the first game is meaningfully lesser here (mostly just down to where this game happens to take place, or rather not take place, as the case may be), but the pro-status quo copaganda is also far higher in exchange. As a side feature to that, the completely casual vibe with which Bentley will pull off aspects of each caper that amount to close to or genuine war crimes is totally crazy with how it's delivered, and it ironically ended up being the only source of laughter I got out of the game with just how absurd it was XD. The utter incuriosity about the subject matter which defines so much of Sucker Punch's work is still on full display here, so if that's something that's bothered you about their other games (as it has bothered me so much), then this game will likely only exacerbate any issues you had with the Sly series before this.
While the writing is ultimately quite similar to what it was, the gameplay is remarkably different. Rather than the stage-based action with stealth aspects like the previous game had, we now have an early open world game! The game is eight chapters with a main hub for each. You take a series of missions in each hub to set up the big heist at the end of the chapter, and those missions either take place in that hub area map or within a tiny bespoke side area (but usually the former rather than the latter). They've even increased the number of playable characters! Rather than only Sly (who retains a good portion of his move set from the last game), you've now also got Bentley and Murray to play as well for various missions. The move sets have increased quite a bit too, as money you find on missions (or from extra big treasure you ferry back to base or pickpocket from enemy goons) can be spent on new active and passive moves to use on your quest. This move purchasing functionally replaces the stage-by-stage extra pages of the Thievius Raccoonus that gave you new moves in the last game, but the clue bottles from that game are actually still around. Find all 30 in the hub area of a chapter and bring them to the hidden safe, and you'll unlock a bonus special move not available in the in-game store (and finding all of those clue bottles is really the only thing you've gotta do for 100% completion).
This is the PS2 era, however, and open world games are still very much in their infancy. As is so often the case with older games in this genre, there are a lot of growing pains in the collective process of figuring out just how to make a good game in this genre, and time has been incredibly poor to Sly 2 with how the genre has grown since. While the big maps to explore and lots of moves to use were undoubtedly very wowing back in their day, they're not going to impress anyone these days with the scale they have on offer. The map design is honestly quite poor, on the whole, and you'll find yourself working up and around the same one way-ish routes through the map over and over as you do different missions. Not only is Sly's whole "press O to special platform" still just as annoying and fiddly as ever (if not even more so), but a lot of the difficulty from Bentley and Murray's missions is based solely on how they lack Sly's special platforming abilities. It makes getting around maps not just difficult, but a massive chore, especially with how much verticality so many of these maps have (I think it's very telling that by far the best playing chapter, the 6th one, is the flattest one out of the lot of them). The platforming has very little actual skill to it (compared to something like a Mario platformer, anyhow), so there's little fun to be had in the mere exercise of getting around the map, and it gets boring fast even if you're not hunting for the clue bottles in each chapter.
Outside of the platforming just not feeling very fulfilling or interesting, we also run into another common bugbear of old open world games: lack of variety. Even if the maps themselves are different, the activities you're doing in each chapter are just far too similar too consistently, and they really start to drag. The combat is far too simple to ever really be fun with how low the enemy variety is, and all the extra moves you can get add very little to the experience because the combat is too simple to ever actually warrant anything close to such technical play styles. Repetitive, clunky, and dull mission design wouldn't be such a big issue if the story were entertaining or more compelling, but as I already covered earlier, that is sadly not the case. You're gonna be in Sly 2 for probably close to 12 or 14 hours even if you're not 100%-ing it like I did, and the game just doesn't have the spice to keep things interesting for anywhere near that long.
Aesthetically, this is a very nice looking game for the time, at least. Character animations in cutscenes are very odd and robotic with how characters snap from one gesture to the next, but it's got a nice, retro charm to it to the point that I never minded it. Music is fine for what it is, but nothing particularly memorable. The big mixed bag is the voice acting for me. Sly's delivery has always been weirdly flat, but a lot of his dialogue in the first game was just narration over cutscenes, so it didn't matter as much. Here, he's got a lot more dialogue, and just how little Sly seems to actually emote with his voice contrasts quite a bit with how much his body emotes (not to mention with just how much everyone else has emotion when they speak, even if their personalities are so flat). Sly's main rival, Inspector Carmelita Fox, has also been very noticeably recast while the rest of the returning cast seem to be the same. This wouldn't be anything worth mentioning normally, but not only is her dialogue really stilted and emotionless (even more so than Sly's to the point where it quite frequently sounds like they just recorded her cold reads without a second take), but her Spanish accent is also very conspicuously completely gone. The craziest part about all of that is that it's not like Carmelita's new VA just isn't very good or anything, because she also voices the new character Neyla, who is easily the best voice acted character in the whole game, so I have no idea how any of that madness happened outside of truly baffling VA direction.
Verdict: Not Recommended. While Sly 1 was a bit underwhelming as well as frustrating mechanically, Sly 2 manages to be that and so much more (at least in regards to reasons not to play it). While they've polished up *some* aspects of the platforming and combat a little, they've introduced so, so many new larger problems that anything fixed ends up becoming a moot point. The main words that comes to my mind when I think of Sly 2 is "boring", and that is likely what you'll feel too unless you have a lot of nostalgia for it or are utterly entranced by the idea of setting up heists as a bunch of furry characters (in which case you'll probably have a decent time). I can definitely see the places in this game that made it something very novel and appealing at the time of its release, but open world games have moved on *so* far in so many ways since this game that it's a very difficult game to recommend anyone should trouble themselves to go back to these days.
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)
12. Ghost of Tsushima (PS5)
13. Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island (PS5)
14. Astro's Playroom (PS5)
15. Michael Jackson: The Experience (PSP)
16. Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5)
17. Control (PS4)
18. White Album (PS3)
19. Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (GBA)
20. Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)
21. Breath of Fire III (PSP)
22. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2) *
23. Sly 2: Band of Thieves (PS2)
I tried this game out a little bit many years back after my first time through Sly 1, but it was just so different that I ended up putting it down pretty quickly. I'd wanted to give it a try again in the years since, but it's a pretty rare release out here in Japan, so I'd given up on ever being able to try it out. However, thanks to my wife giving me her old American PS2 and games from when she was younger, I suddenly found myself with the whole trilogy at my hands~. After finishing Sly 1 again, it only made sense to finally move on to Sly 2 and finally take a crack at this game that I bounced off of so many years ago. I ended up 100%-ing the game (albeit there's not a ton of side content), and it took me about 17 hours to do it on the English version of the game.
Sly 1 saw Sly Cooper and his friends/partners in crime, Bentley and Murray, putting the Thievius Raccoonus (the tome holding all of the passed down secrets of sneaking and thievery from Sly's family line) back together and destroying the Cooper clan's ancient enemy Clockwerk, a great owl who hated them so much that he replaced his body with mechanical parts in order to live forever and eventually kill them. Despite Clockwerk's blown up body falling into a volcano at the end of all of that, it apparently did nothing to actually destroy or meaningfully damage him at all. His pieces are all still in tip top shape, and a band of criminals known as the Klaww Gang have gathered them up for their own nefarious (and strange) purposes. Sly, Bentley, and Murray are now on another globe trotting adventure to stop the Klaww Gang, get the Clockwerk parts back, and put an end to this ancestral evil once and for all.
While the premise has changed a bit, the overall vibe and tone from the first game remains fairly unchanged in Sly 2, and anyone who read my Sly 1 review knows that I believe that this is unfortunately a development for the worse. As the larger play time indicates, this game has a *ton* more dialogue and story than the last game, but it is also sadly just as shallow and engaging. Some stand out characters like the delightfully baffling and trendy (operative word there being "baffling") Dimitri are the exception, but by and large the whole cast, old and new, are just as paper thin as ever and don't even have the courtesy to be funny either. Our main gang of three continue to be the biggest boy scouts who ever decided to be grand larcenists, and that whole vibe of "rich people acting out what they reckon Robin Hood is like" from the first game is still here in spades as a result. In a slight positive, the casual racism from the first game is meaningfully lesser here (mostly just down to where this game happens to take place, or rather not take place, as the case may be), but the pro-status quo copaganda is also far higher in exchange. As a side feature to that, the completely casual vibe with which Bentley will pull off aspects of each caper that amount to close to or genuine war crimes is totally crazy with how it's delivered, and it ironically ended up being the only source of laughter I got out of the game with just how absurd it was XD. The utter incuriosity about the subject matter which defines so much of Sucker Punch's work is still on full display here, so if that's something that's bothered you about their other games (as it has bothered me so much), then this game will likely only exacerbate any issues you had with the Sly series before this.
While the writing is ultimately quite similar to what it was, the gameplay is remarkably different. Rather than the stage-based action with stealth aspects like the previous game had, we now have an early open world game! The game is eight chapters with a main hub for each. You take a series of missions in each hub to set up the big heist at the end of the chapter, and those missions either take place in that hub area map or within a tiny bespoke side area (but usually the former rather than the latter). They've even increased the number of playable characters! Rather than only Sly (who retains a good portion of his move set from the last game), you've now also got Bentley and Murray to play as well for various missions. The move sets have increased quite a bit too, as money you find on missions (or from extra big treasure you ferry back to base or pickpocket from enemy goons) can be spent on new active and passive moves to use on your quest. This move purchasing functionally replaces the stage-by-stage extra pages of the Thievius Raccoonus that gave you new moves in the last game, but the clue bottles from that game are actually still around. Find all 30 in the hub area of a chapter and bring them to the hidden safe, and you'll unlock a bonus special move not available in the in-game store (and finding all of those clue bottles is really the only thing you've gotta do for 100% completion).
This is the PS2 era, however, and open world games are still very much in their infancy. As is so often the case with older games in this genre, there are a lot of growing pains in the collective process of figuring out just how to make a good game in this genre, and time has been incredibly poor to Sly 2 with how the genre has grown since. While the big maps to explore and lots of moves to use were undoubtedly very wowing back in their day, they're not going to impress anyone these days with the scale they have on offer. The map design is honestly quite poor, on the whole, and you'll find yourself working up and around the same one way-ish routes through the map over and over as you do different missions. Not only is Sly's whole "press O to special platform" still just as annoying and fiddly as ever (if not even more so), but a lot of the difficulty from Bentley and Murray's missions is based solely on how they lack Sly's special platforming abilities. It makes getting around maps not just difficult, but a massive chore, especially with how much verticality so many of these maps have (I think it's very telling that by far the best playing chapter, the 6th one, is the flattest one out of the lot of them). The platforming has very little actual skill to it (compared to something like a Mario platformer, anyhow), so there's little fun to be had in the mere exercise of getting around the map, and it gets boring fast even if you're not hunting for the clue bottles in each chapter.
Outside of the platforming just not feeling very fulfilling or interesting, we also run into another common bugbear of old open world games: lack of variety. Even if the maps themselves are different, the activities you're doing in each chapter are just far too similar too consistently, and they really start to drag. The combat is far too simple to ever really be fun with how low the enemy variety is, and all the extra moves you can get add very little to the experience because the combat is too simple to ever actually warrant anything close to such technical play styles. Repetitive, clunky, and dull mission design wouldn't be such a big issue if the story were entertaining or more compelling, but as I already covered earlier, that is sadly not the case. You're gonna be in Sly 2 for probably close to 12 or 14 hours even if you're not 100%-ing it like I did, and the game just doesn't have the spice to keep things interesting for anywhere near that long.
Aesthetically, this is a very nice looking game for the time, at least. Character animations in cutscenes are very odd and robotic with how characters snap from one gesture to the next, but it's got a nice, retro charm to it to the point that I never minded it. Music is fine for what it is, but nothing particularly memorable. The big mixed bag is the voice acting for me. Sly's delivery has always been weirdly flat, but a lot of his dialogue in the first game was just narration over cutscenes, so it didn't matter as much. Here, he's got a lot more dialogue, and just how little Sly seems to actually emote with his voice contrasts quite a bit with how much his body emotes (not to mention with just how much everyone else has emotion when they speak, even if their personalities are so flat). Sly's main rival, Inspector Carmelita Fox, has also been very noticeably recast while the rest of the returning cast seem to be the same. This wouldn't be anything worth mentioning normally, but not only is her dialogue really stilted and emotionless (even more so than Sly's to the point where it quite frequently sounds like they just recorded her cold reads without a second take), but her Spanish accent is also very conspicuously completely gone. The craziest part about all of that is that it's not like Carmelita's new VA just isn't very good or anything, because she also voices the new character Neyla, who is easily the best voice acted character in the whole game, so I have no idea how any of that madness happened outside of truly baffling VA direction.
Verdict: Not Recommended. While Sly 1 was a bit underwhelming as well as frustrating mechanically, Sly 2 manages to be that and so much more (at least in regards to reasons not to play it). While they've polished up *some* aspects of the platforming and combat a little, they've introduced so, so many new larger problems that anything fixed ends up becoming a moot point. The main words that comes to my mind when I think of Sly 2 is "boring", and that is likely what you'll feel too unless you have a lot of nostalgia for it or are utterly entranced by the idea of setting up heists as a bunch of furry characters (in which case you'll probably have a decent time). I can definitely see the places in this game that made it something very novel and appealing at the time of its release, but open world games have moved on *so* far in so many ways since this game that it's a very difficult game to recommend anyone should trouble themselves to go back to these days.
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
Re: Games Beaten 2026
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
8. Silent Hill f - PC
9. Resident Evil Requiem - PC
10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist - Genesis
11. Sins of a Solar Empire II - PC
12. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! - PC
13. Gauntlet Dark Legacy - GC
14. A Street Cat's Tale 2: Outside is Dangerous - Switch
15. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time - SNES
16. Dragon's Crown - PS3
17. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom - PS3
Tower of Doom is a beat 'em up by Capcom using the Dungeons & Dragons license. It's a very fond arcade memory of mine, as the ice rink my sister used to skate at had a cabinet, so whenever we went I would spend some money trying to get through the game. It's a fairly unique game, giving the player more options than other beat 'em ups of the era, by virtue of trying to capture the essence of D&D, even if it doesn't have actual RPG elements.
The game supports four players, one for each class. Your party consists of the fighter, the cleric, the dwarf, and the elf, and is set in the Mystara campaign setting. Since this is a setting for Basic D&D, this means the dwarf and elf are distinct classes, rather than races. The dwarf is fighter 2.0, while the elf is effectively a multiclass fighter/mage. The party sets off on adventure, and as you move through the stages you get contacted by a local noble to find the source of the monsters and cut it off.
The game has a fairly extensive moveset. In addition to your standard attack, jump, jumping attack, dash, and dashing attack, you can hold up a shield to defend yourself, duck (with an awkward control), and do a slide attack. More notably, the game has an inventory system. You can find throwing daggers, arrows, and bottles of oil that you can throw at enemies, and the caster classes will gain spells they can use. There are some magic rings that can cast low-power versions of the spells that anyone can use, but the bulk of your artillery comes from the casters. You get a limited number of uses of each spell which resets after each stage. In between stages you get a shop interface where you can purchase throwable items and purchase health restores (as you only restore a fixed amount of health between stages). This inventory system requires two extra buttons; one for activating the item in inventory, one for swapping to the next item.
The game is divided into seven stages, and four of those stages have multiple routes. Generally, you will do some kind of intro segment, then are given a choice of paths to take. Each path will have different enemies, different environments, and different bosses. There is a wide variety of enemies, but one constant they seem to have is they are much more mobile than you and almost always have more range than you. Maneuvering yourself is very important, and you generally have to come up at enemies from below to successfully get in hits. One other D&D component is that your damage seems to be a bit random; I would not be shocked to find that they explicitly put in the dice-based damage of D&D weapons. Enemies also tend to be smart enough to walk backwards away from you to keep you at range; this ends up being a big component of enemy (especially boss) difficulty, as just getting in safe hits is tricky.
Overall, it's a fun interpretation of D&D in the beat 'em up setting, and it provides a different experience from the average beat 'em up. It's definitely a lot harder to get a good run than in something like a TMNT game, as there is a lot more randomness in enemy behavior and your ability to manage enemies.
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
8. Silent Hill f - PC
9. Resident Evil Requiem - PC
10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist - Genesis
11. Sins of a Solar Empire II - PC
12. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! - PC
13. Gauntlet Dark Legacy - GC
14. A Street Cat's Tale 2: Outside is Dangerous - Switch
15. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time - SNES
16. Dragon's Crown - PS3
17. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom - PS3
Tower of Doom is a beat 'em up by Capcom using the Dungeons & Dragons license. It's a very fond arcade memory of mine, as the ice rink my sister used to skate at had a cabinet, so whenever we went I would spend some money trying to get through the game. It's a fairly unique game, giving the player more options than other beat 'em ups of the era, by virtue of trying to capture the essence of D&D, even if it doesn't have actual RPG elements.
The game supports four players, one for each class. Your party consists of the fighter, the cleric, the dwarf, and the elf, and is set in the Mystara campaign setting. Since this is a setting for Basic D&D, this means the dwarf and elf are distinct classes, rather than races. The dwarf is fighter 2.0, while the elf is effectively a multiclass fighter/mage. The party sets off on adventure, and as you move through the stages you get contacted by a local noble to find the source of the monsters and cut it off.
The game has a fairly extensive moveset. In addition to your standard attack, jump, jumping attack, dash, and dashing attack, you can hold up a shield to defend yourself, duck (with an awkward control), and do a slide attack. More notably, the game has an inventory system. You can find throwing daggers, arrows, and bottles of oil that you can throw at enemies, and the caster classes will gain spells they can use. There are some magic rings that can cast low-power versions of the spells that anyone can use, but the bulk of your artillery comes from the casters. You get a limited number of uses of each spell which resets after each stage. In between stages you get a shop interface where you can purchase throwable items and purchase health restores (as you only restore a fixed amount of health between stages). This inventory system requires two extra buttons; one for activating the item in inventory, one for swapping to the next item.
The game is divided into seven stages, and four of those stages have multiple routes. Generally, you will do some kind of intro segment, then are given a choice of paths to take. Each path will have different enemies, different environments, and different bosses. There is a wide variety of enemies, but one constant they seem to have is they are much more mobile than you and almost always have more range than you. Maneuvering yourself is very important, and you generally have to come up at enemies from below to successfully get in hits. One other D&D component is that your damage seems to be a bit random; I would not be shocked to find that they explicitly put in the dice-based damage of D&D weapons. Enemies also tend to be smart enough to walk backwards away from you to keep you at range; this ends up being a big component of enemy (especially boss) difficulty, as just getting in safe hits is tricky.
Overall, it's a fun interpretation of D&D in the beat 'em up setting, and it provides a different experience from the average beat 'em up. It's definitely a lot harder to get a good run than in something like a TMNT game, as there is a lot more randomness in enemy behavior and your ability to manage enemies.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
Re: Games Beaten 2026
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
8. Silent Hill f - PC
9. Resident Evil Requiem - PC
10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist - Genesis
11. Sins of a Solar Empire II - PC
12. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! - PC
13. Gauntlet Dark Legacy - GC
14. A Street Cat's Tale 2: Outside is Dangerous - Switch
15. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time - SNES
16. Dragon's Crown - PS3
17. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom - PS3
18. Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara - PS3
Shadow Over Mystara is the sequel to Tower of Doom, expanding the game in every way. There are more classes, more spells, more enemy types, more equipment, and more moves. It's just more of everything, taking the foundation established by the first game and really reaching for the stars.
The game is set a couple years after the first game, with the party continuing their adventures. Your characters start at approximately the level they ended the first game with, which means they are more capable in terms of health and available spells. In this new part of Mystara they discover a new big bad who wants to do evil stuff, yadda yadda. You don't come to an arcade beat 'em up for the story.
The first thing you'll notice is there are two new classes: thief and magic user. The thief has the damage of a fighter, not the defense, and has big mobility. The magic user has even more spells than the elf and is dogshit in combat. The second thing you'll notice is that you can now have two people play a single class. This will lead to unique sprites for each, and in the case of the cleric and the magic user there are a handful of different spells.
The real changes come once the game starts. Animation is smoother and everything moves a bit faster. This is a two-edged sword; on the one hand your character reacts a bit better, but on the other hand this makes enemy attacks more furious. This gets especially bad on some boss fights that like to play keep-away; it can be hard to even get in a hit before they're gone. The game extends the D&D trappings by extending the inventory system much further. The game now uses a ring menu to select your items and spells, and you only have six slots for non-magic inventory. You can't just stock up on a ton of magic rings for later. On the spell side, it more properly uses the spell slots system, where spells are assigned a level and you get so many casts of a given level. This means, for example, that your fireball and lightning spells share a total use count. The game doesn't really show how spells are connected, so you can accidentally blow through a critical spell because you used a different one.
In the first game, you could pick up magic items like rings of protection, and they would have a chance of breaking every time you took a hit. Now the game both adds more equipment you can pick up and it makes it take up slots on the character, so you can't stack multiple rings, for example. You can get replacement weapons and shields (with elemental powers), and you can find special accessories that might do stuff like increase your damage or your magic damage. You can even get drops off of certain bosses and then turn them into magic items, like turning the skin of the displacer beast into a displacer beast cloak at the next merchant.
The characters have more attack options. They made the ground attacks easier to perform; now it's a quarter circle forward motion, rather than the weird crouch and then into the attack you had to do before. Your attacks combo better, and you can do a bit of juggling on enemies. And you get a desperation attack that costs some health for aoe damage and invincibility. When things click you can get a good flow in the combat, but you also definitely need to pull it off with the more intense enemies.
Like the first game, you will sometimes have multiple paths to take. It happens a bit less frequently in this game, but it still adds some variety to runs. Almost all the bosses are completely new, though the final boss is just a remaster of the superboss from the first game. Overall, it's a great update of the first game, though there is something to be said about the more deliberate play of the first game.
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
8. Silent Hill f - PC
9. Resident Evil Requiem - PC
10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist - Genesis
11. Sins of a Solar Empire II - PC
12. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! - PC
13. Gauntlet Dark Legacy - GC
14. A Street Cat's Tale 2: Outside is Dangerous - Switch
15. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time - SNES
16. Dragon's Crown - PS3
17. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom - PS3
18. Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara - PS3
Shadow Over Mystara is the sequel to Tower of Doom, expanding the game in every way. There are more classes, more spells, more enemy types, more equipment, and more moves. It's just more of everything, taking the foundation established by the first game and really reaching for the stars.
The game is set a couple years after the first game, with the party continuing their adventures. Your characters start at approximately the level they ended the first game with, which means they are more capable in terms of health and available spells. In this new part of Mystara they discover a new big bad who wants to do evil stuff, yadda yadda. You don't come to an arcade beat 'em up for the story.
The first thing you'll notice is there are two new classes: thief and magic user. The thief has the damage of a fighter, not the defense, and has big mobility. The magic user has even more spells than the elf and is dogshit in combat. The second thing you'll notice is that you can now have two people play a single class. This will lead to unique sprites for each, and in the case of the cleric and the magic user there are a handful of different spells.
The real changes come once the game starts. Animation is smoother and everything moves a bit faster. This is a two-edged sword; on the one hand your character reacts a bit better, but on the other hand this makes enemy attacks more furious. This gets especially bad on some boss fights that like to play keep-away; it can be hard to even get in a hit before they're gone. The game extends the D&D trappings by extending the inventory system much further. The game now uses a ring menu to select your items and spells, and you only have six slots for non-magic inventory. You can't just stock up on a ton of magic rings for later. On the spell side, it more properly uses the spell slots system, where spells are assigned a level and you get so many casts of a given level. This means, for example, that your fireball and lightning spells share a total use count. The game doesn't really show how spells are connected, so you can accidentally blow through a critical spell because you used a different one.
In the first game, you could pick up magic items like rings of protection, and they would have a chance of breaking every time you took a hit. Now the game both adds more equipment you can pick up and it makes it take up slots on the character, so you can't stack multiple rings, for example. You can get replacement weapons and shields (with elemental powers), and you can find special accessories that might do stuff like increase your damage or your magic damage. You can even get drops off of certain bosses and then turn them into magic items, like turning the skin of the displacer beast into a displacer beast cloak at the next merchant.
The characters have more attack options. They made the ground attacks easier to perform; now it's a quarter circle forward motion, rather than the weird crouch and then into the attack you had to do before. Your attacks combo better, and you can do a bit of juggling on enemies. And you get a desperation attack that costs some health for aoe damage and invincibility. When things click you can get a good flow in the combat, but you also definitely need to pull it off with the more intense enemies.
Like the first game, you will sometimes have multiple paths to take. It happens a bit less frequently in this game, but it still adds some variety to runs. Almost all the bosses are completely new, though the final boss is just a remaster of the superboss from the first game. Overall, it's a great update of the first game, though there is something to be said about the more deliberate play of the first game.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
-
Markies
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 1608
- Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2015 4:29 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: Games Beaten 2026
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)***
8. Phantasy Star Online: Episode I & II (GCN)
9. Pikmin 3 (WiiU)
10. Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
***11. Evolution 2: Far Off Promise (SDC)***
I completed Evolution 2: Far Off Promise on the Sega Dreamcast this evening!
Back in 2024, I beat Evolution 2 after really enjoying the first Evolution game. After playing both, I would say I probably enjoyed the original Evolution more just because the randomized dungeons were more exciting. That is not to say Evolution 2 is a bad game, it's just a little boring and not as exciting to play. Eventually, I still wanted to go back to it to finish it, but I was not expecting it to happen this year. However, my New Year Backloggery Roulette decided that it was time, so I went right ahead.
Besides a few minor tweaks, Evolution 2 is almost a carbon copy of the original Evolution. One change is that you start the game in a new town that is bigger than the first. Still has the same amount of shops and you are still working for the Historical Society collecting rare treasures. There is an overall arching story involving your travel companion and that was a nice touch. It added a bit of variety to separate it from the original. The combat is once again very simple and easy to comprehend. I think this series would be a great introduction to RPG's for new comers as well because of the simple and engaging combat. Cute characters and addicting game play add to the enjoyment of the game. There is a randomized optional dungeon, but the main plot dungeons are not randomized as they are set. They are mostly themed on elements, but most of them aren't too bad.
Unfortunately, I would say the Randomized Dungeons were the most exciting part of the original game. Every time I started up the game, the dungeon was different and each room could lead to anywhere. With this one, I had little incentive to go back to dungeons or explore more. The randomized dungeons are saved for the two 50 Floor Bonus Dungeons. Unfortunately, they provide little experience and are used to learn new skills, which is pointless at the end of the game. Also, each dungeon is a slog and takes forever to go through.
Overall, I still really enjoyed playing through Evolution 2. I enjoyed the first one much more because of the randomized dungeons. The two 50 Floor dungeons kind of soured my taste a little just because of the slog they are, but that won't necessarily ruin my overall positive opinion about the game. Not an exciting or overwhelming sequel, but a good one nevertheless. If you liked the first one or are interested in the series, this is a good one to try out!
***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)***
8. Phantasy Star Online: Episode I & II (GCN)
9. Pikmin 3 (WiiU)
10. Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
***11. Evolution 2: Far Off Promise (SDC)***
I completed Evolution 2: Far Off Promise on the Sega Dreamcast this evening!
Back in 2024, I beat Evolution 2 after really enjoying the first Evolution game. After playing both, I would say I probably enjoyed the original Evolution more just because the randomized dungeons were more exciting. That is not to say Evolution 2 is a bad game, it's just a little boring and not as exciting to play. Eventually, I still wanted to go back to it to finish it, but I was not expecting it to happen this year. However, my New Year Backloggery Roulette decided that it was time, so I went right ahead.
Besides a few minor tweaks, Evolution 2 is almost a carbon copy of the original Evolution. One change is that you start the game in a new town that is bigger than the first. Still has the same amount of shops and you are still working for the Historical Society collecting rare treasures. There is an overall arching story involving your travel companion and that was a nice touch. It added a bit of variety to separate it from the original. The combat is once again very simple and easy to comprehend. I think this series would be a great introduction to RPG's for new comers as well because of the simple and engaging combat. Cute characters and addicting game play add to the enjoyment of the game. There is a randomized optional dungeon, but the main plot dungeons are not randomized as they are set. They are mostly themed on elements, but most of them aren't too bad.
Unfortunately, I would say the Randomized Dungeons were the most exciting part of the original game. Every time I started up the game, the dungeon was different and each room could lead to anywhere. With this one, I had little incentive to go back to dungeons or explore more. The randomized dungeons are saved for the two 50 Floor Bonus Dungeons. Unfortunately, they provide little experience and are used to learn new skills, which is pointless at the end of the game. Also, each dungeon is a slog and takes forever to go through.
Overall, I still really enjoyed playing through Evolution 2. I enjoyed the first one much more because of the randomized dungeons. The two 50 Floor dungeons kind of soured my taste a little just because of the slog they are, but that won't necessarily ruin my overall positive opinion about the game. Not an exciting or overwhelming sequel, but a good one nevertheless. If you liked the first one or are interested in the series, this is a good one to try out!
-
TheSSNintendo
- 128-bit
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:27 pm
Re: Games Beaten 2026
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)
10. Crystalis (NES/Switch Online)
11. Mega Man II (Game Boy/Switch Online)
12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers (Game Boy/Cowabunga Collection)
13. Prison City (Steam)
14. Mega Man X2 (SNES/Mega Man X Legacy Collection)
15. Tunic (XBox One) - I got the "bad ending", and sometime down the line I might try for the good one.
16. Ducktales 2 (NES/Steam - Disney Afternoon Collection)
17. Talespin (NES/Steam - Disney Afternoon Collection)
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)
10. Crystalis (NES/Switch Online)
11. Mega Man II (Game Boy/Switch Online)
12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers (Game Boy/Cowabunga Collection)
13. Prison City (Steam)
14. Mega Man X2 (SNES/Mega Man X Legacy Collection)
15. Tunic (XBox One) - I got the "bad ending", and sometime down the line I might try for the good one.
16. Ducktales 2 (NES/Steam - Disney Afternoon Collection)
17. Talespin (NES/Steam - Disney Afternoon Collection)
-
PartridgeSenpai
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 3173
- Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2015 9:27 am
- Location: Northern Japan
Re: Games Beaten 2026
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)
12. Ghost of Tsushima (PS5)
13. Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island (PS5)
14. Astro's Playroom (PS5)
15. Michael Jackson: The Experience (PSP)
16. Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5)
17. Control (PS4)
18. White Album (PS3)
19. Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (GBA)
20. Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)
21. Breath of Fire III (PSP)
22. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2) *
23. Sly 2: Band of Thieves (PS2)
24. Army of Two (Xbox 360)
I grabbed this game for cheap last year while I was picking up every old 7th gen FPS game I could get my hands on, but I never got around to playing it until now. This is because it was very highly recommended to me to play the game co-op with a buddy rather than just go with the in-game AI, so I waited until my wife visited to sit down and play this. She's not really much of a shooter player, especially on controller, but she ended up being a total natural at it (at least as good as me, though I'm hardly pro at these either X3), and the two of us ended up having a really fun time with this game regardless. It took us about 5.5 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on easy mode playing on our Xbox One.
Army of Two is the story of Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios, two army rangers who meet a hot shot PMC while on assignment in the middle east in 1993. That PMC winds up recruiting them for his outfit, Security & Strategy Corporation (SSC). The rest of the game then follows the biggest highlights of their time working with SSC through the late 90's and even in the future of the late 2000's. While the game is hardly as full front and center about it as something like the Metal Gear Solid games so often are, it was a really nice surprise to see this game so overall negative towards PMCs as a concept (as they are, indeed, incredibly undemocratic and intensely societaly damaging in how they exist to turn warfare & killing into profit). The other really big plus with the writing are Salem and Rios themselves, because omfg they're so fucking funny. They're a couple of goobers, Rios as the more serious one and Salem as the more immature goofball one, and their banter and dialogue was really entertaining and well written even nearly 20 years later.
The whole game is a really well written dramatic comedy, as even the mechanics lean into just how silly and over the top the narrative is getting in places. The two of us cackled out loud when they actually had Salem waking up to a phone call telling him to "Turn on the news!" so he could see 9/11 happening. While almost certainly not a point of comedy when it came out, it definitely felt that way in 2026 if for no other reason than just how surprising it was to see a video game character reacting to 9/11. I also now completely understand why there were SO many memes even back when these games were new about these guys being gay, because they are SO god damn gay, omfg XD. They definitely feel like more than just good, lifelong friends, and their chemistry is awesome, too! As a queer person myself, I absolutely mean this as a compliment with just how gay they feel, and it's a really fun knock-on effect of just how good and natural the dialogue writing feels. You have a mechanic where you can thump your buddy for messing up, but there's a positive version of that, too. Watching the two of them bump fists and then put their fingers into a rocker pose as they tell all of the non-existent ladies around them to "lift [their] shirts!" had me roaring with laughter every time with just how comically macho and goofy it is. The dev team absolutely knew just how homosocial and ridiculous the military story they were making is, and it even extends to the gameplay beyond being able to buddy bump your pal when you do something awesome.
The game on its face is a third-person shooter with a co-op focus, and that is absolutely true. Playing it in local co-op is hardly ideal (even if you don't have any other choice these days with the servers down and no PC version) due to how much less of the screen you can see with the horizontal screen split, but it's certainly better than playing alone (how could you possibly get satisfaction from buddy bumping with an AI rather than your actual buddy!?). You've got a handful of weapons you can get, but you don't pick up them up off of enemies. The only thing you find from enemies is ammo, because you buy all of your weapons and upgrades at certain checkpoints. I'm not convinced there are great reasons to pick up a lot of weapons like the pistols or shotguns when better rifles or SMGs seem to be the obvious choice in terms of efficacy, but completing objectives both optional and required gets you cash to spend on this stuff even if you'll likely end up with far more than you can actually use far before the end of the game.
Weapons all have different stats that they show you in bar graphs on screen (a very appreciated feature), but the most interesting one is this game's unique "aggro" stat. The aggro system is, as the name implies, a discrete aggression system for how your enemies focus on either you or your buddy. Straddling the boarder of the split screen is a big bar that will fill up one way or the other as one of you fires off your gun and/or gets kills, and your enemies will focus on the guy with more aggro. The other guy, as the intro tutorial video describes, is basically invisible to enemy fire (actually turning transparent while the other guy glows bright red when he's full of aggro), and it makes flanking maneuvers a lot easier as you stealth up behind enemies to rinse them with gunfire while they're all focused on the other guy. You've just gotta be careful to not get too full of aggro in the process, because that's a great way to get mulched mid-flank operation <w>. Taking smaller, less aggro-full guns is a great way to work as a team to have a dedicated flanker, and you can even bling-out your gun to give it artificially more aggro, or put on a suppressor to artificially lower it. It's a really clever system, and it made for an extra fun co-op shooter experience. While it's hardly the best mechanic, my favorite one definitely has to be the "Back to back" mode that happens at certain set pieces from time to time. Salem and Rios go "back to back" as they're surrounded by enemies, and the whole world slows down as the two of you get temporarily infinite bullets to fire into the waves of bad guys coming at you. It's so incredibly silly and macho that I could not help but get a giant grin on my face very time it happened, usually while yelling "OH shit it's time to back to back!!!" X3.
The presentation is very much what you'd expect from a game from 2008. The facial models and animations look quite nice, thankfully, and they hold up quite well. The overall color palette is a lot of greys and browns when you're not in greener jungles, of course, but this is thankfully of the era that had very silly enemy ragdolls still, so there's still plenty to giggle at despite the pretty standard graphical quality. The soundtrack is just fine for the action at hand, but the voice performances are really good all around, and they compliment the good dialogue writing very nicely (it's just a shame that this series changes writers and VAs so often! XP).
Verdict: Recommended. While this game is hardly the best third-person shooter on 7th gen consoles, it's got such a novel approach to the genre that I think it still comfortably stands above many others even today. The writing is really entertaining and well done, and EA Montreal's efforts to make a genuinely engaging co-op shooter experience. If you've got a console to play it on and a local buddy to play with. Army of Two is a fantastic way to spend a weekend afternoon if you wanna have a fun, silly time together. (It's just a shame the game ain't on PC so you could play more easily from farther away!)
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)
12. Ghost of Tsushima (PS5)
13. Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island (PS5)
14. Astro's Playroom (PS5)
15. Michael Jackson: The Experience (PSP)
16. Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5)
17. Control (PS4)
18. White Album (PS3)
19. Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (GBA)
20. Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)
21. Breath of Fire III (PSP)
22. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2) *
23. Sly 2: Band of Thieves (PS2)
24. Army of Two (Xbox 360)
I grabbed this game for cheap last year while I was picking up every old 7th gen FPS game I could get my hands on, but I never got around to playing it until now. This is because it was very highly recommended to me to play the game co-op with a buddy rather than just go with the in-game AI, so I waited until my wife visited to sit down and play this. She's not really much of a shooter player, especially on controller, but she ended up being a total natural at it (at least as good as me, though I'm hardly pro at these either X3), and the two of us ended up having a really fun time with this game regardless. It took us about 5.5 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on easy mode playing on our Xbox One.
Army of Two is the story of Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios, two army rangers who meet a hot shot PMC while on assignment in the middle east in 1993. That PMC winds up recruiting them for his outfit, Security & Strategy Corporation (SSC). The rest of the game then follows the biggest highlights of their time working with SSC through the late 90's and even in the future of the late 2000's. While the game is hardly as full front and center about it as something like the Metal Gear Solid games so often are, it was a really nice surprise to see this game so overall negative towards PMCs as a concept (as they are, indeed, incredibly undemocratic and intensely societaly damaging in how they exist to turn warfare & killing into profit). The other really big plus with the writing are Salem and Rios themselves, because omfg they're so fucking funny. They're a couple of goobers, Rios as the more serious one and Salem as the more immature goofball one, and their banter and dialogue was really entertaining and well written even nearly 20 years later.
The whole game is a really well written dramatic comedy, as even the mechanics lean into just how silly and over the top the narrative is getting in places. The two of us cackled out loud when they actually had Salem waking up to a phone call telling him to "Turn on the news!" so he could see 9/11 happening. While almost certainly not a point of comedy when it came out, it definitely felt that way in 2026 if for no other reason than just how surprising it was to see a video game character reacting to 9/11. I also now completely understand why there were SO many memes even back when these games were new about these guys being gay, because they are SO god damn gay, omfg XD. They definitely feel like more than just good, lifelong friends, and their chemistry is awesome, too! As a queer person myself, I absolutely mean this as a compliment with just how gay they feel, and it's a really fun knock-on effect of just how good and natural the dialogue writing feels. You have a mechanic where you can thump your buddy for messing up, but there's a positive version of that, too. Watching the two of them bump fists and then put their fingers into a rocker pose as they tell all of the non-existent ladies around them to "lift [their] shirts!" had me roaring with laughter every time with just how comically macho and goofy it is. The dev team absolutely knew just how homosocial and ridiculous the military story they were making is, and it even extends to the gameplay beyond being able to buddy bump your pal when you do something awesome.
The game on its face is a third-person shooter with a co-op focus, and that is absolutely true. Playing it in local co-op is hardly ideal (even if you don't have any other choice these days with the servers down and no PC version) due to how much less of the screen you can see with the horizontal screen split, but it's certainly better than playing alone (how could you possibly get satisfaction from buddy bumping with an AI rather than your actual buddy!?). You've got a handful of weapons you can get, but you don't pick up them up off of enemies. The only thing you find from enemies is ammo, because you buy all of your weapons and upgrades at certain checkpoints. I'm not convinced there are great reasons to pick up a lot of weapons like the pistols or shotguns when better rifles or SMGs seem to be the obvious choice in terms of efficacy, but completing objectives both optional and required gets you cash to spend on this stuff even if you'll likely end up with far more than you can actually use far before the end of the game.
Weapons all have different stats that they show you in bar graphs on screen (a very appreciated feature), but the most interesting one is this game's unique "aggro" stat. The aggro system is, as the name implies, a discrete aggression system for how your enemies focus on either you or your buddy. Straddling the boarder of the split screen is a big bar that will fill up one way or the other as one of you fires off your gun and/or gets kills, and your enemies will focus on the guy with more aggro. The other guy, as the intro tutorial video describes, is basically invisible to enemy fire (actually turning transparent while the other guy glows bright red when he's full of aggro), and it makes flanking maneuvers a lot easier as you stealth up behind enemies to rinse them with gunfire while they're all focused on the other guy. You've just gotta be careful to not get too full of aggro in the process, because that's a great way to get mulched mid-flank operation <w>. Taking smaller, less aggro-full guns is a great way to work as a team to have a dedicated flanker, and you can even bling-out your gun to give it artificially more aggro, or put on a suppressor to artificially lower it. It's a really clever system, and it made for an extra fun co-op shooter experience. While it's hardly the best mechanic, my favorite one definitely has to be the "Back to back" mode that happens at certain set pieces from time to time. Salem and Rios go "back to back" as they're surrounded by enemies, and the whole world slows down as the two of you get temporarily infinite bullets to fire into the waves of bad guys coming at you. It's so incredibly silly and macho that I could not help but get a giant grin on my face very time it happened, usually while yelling "OH shit it's time to back to back!!!" X3.
The presentation is very much what you'd expect from a game from 2008. The facial models and animations look quite nice, thankfully, and they hold up quite well. The overall color palette is a lot of greys and browns when you're not in greener jungles, of course, but this is thankfully of the era that had very silly enemy ragdolls still, so there's still plenty to giggle at despite the pretty standard graphical quality. The soundtrack is just fine for the action at hand, but the voice performances are really good all around, and they compliment the good dialogue writing very nicely (it's just a shame that this series changes writers and VAs so often! XP).
Verdict: Recommended. While this game is hardly the best third-person shooter on 7th gen consoles, it's got such a novel approach to the genre that I think it still comfortably stands above many others even today. The writing is really entertaining and well done, and EA Montreal's efforts to make a genuinely engaging co-op shooter experience. If you've got a console to play it on and a local buddy to play with. Army of Two is a fantastic way to spend a weekend afternoon if you wanna have a fun, silly time together. (It's just a shame the game ain't on PC so you could play more easily from farther away!)
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
-
RobertAugustdeMeijer
- 64-bit
- Posts: 307
- Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2022 10:15 am
Re: Games Beaten 2026
20: Sanabi
Considering the aesthetic and narrative, it's somewhat hard to believe this wasn't made by the developers of Katana Zero. But that isn't any criticism. Your grappling hook has a very long reach and mouse/analog stick controls, making combat perhaps the fastest ever in a game. Unfortunately, enemies are slow, so the challenge comes mostly in the form of speedrunning. Still, ithe controls are snappy, keeping movement fun. And some of the bosses are exciting. What probably makes this game so popular though, is the story, one about a daughter who recreates her father as a robot. In turn we get to witness some profound science fiction dilemmas. About a third (!) of the playtime is watching sprite-based cutscenes. At times it drags. But there are emotional beats which just might be good enough to herald its own show. If The Last of Us could lead to quality television, surely this can, too.
7/10
Considering the aesthetic and narrative, it's somewhat hard to believe this wasn't made by the developers of Katana Zero. But that isn't any criticism. Your grappling hook has a very long reach and mouse/analog stick controls, making combat perhaps the fastest ever in a game. Unfortunately, enemies are slow, so the challenge comes mostly in the form of speedrunning. Still, ithe controls are snappy, keeping movement fun. And some of the bosses are exciting. What probably makes this game so popular though, is the story, one about a daughter who recreates her father as a robot. In turn we get to witness some profound science fiction dilemmas. About a third (!) of the playtime is watching sprite-based cutscenes. At times it drags. But there are emotional beats which just might be good enough to herald its own show. If The Last of Us could lead to quality television, surely this can, too.
7/10
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ElkinFencer10
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Re: Games Beaten 2026
Games Beaten in 2026 - 7
* denotes a replay
January (2 Games Beaten)
February (1 Game Beaten)
March (3 Games Beaten)
April (1 Game Beaten)
7. Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen - Switch - April 6
Pokemon fans have come to expect, in addition to a new generation every few years, a new remake every few years. That all started with Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen on the Game Boy Advance, the first remakes and what I consider to be Kanto perfected. The Kanto games have since been remade again in a much more casual and Pokemon Go-compatible form with Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee, and while I love those games, FireRed and LeafGreen are definitely the definitive Kanto experience for serious Pokemon enthusiasts.
FireRed and LeafGreen follow the same storyline and game beats as Red and Blue (or Green if you’re in Japan) up through beating the Elite Four with the exception of moving Moltres and adding an additional requirement before accessing Cerulean Cave. That alone justifies playing it. I adore the original Red and Blue, but they’re definitely janky - no running shoes, no held items, lots of bugs and glitches, and Special Attack and Special Defense combined into one incomprehensible stat by modern standards. FireRed and LeafGreen fix almost all of that. The Special/Physical split for moves happened after this, so what’s a physical attack and what’s a special attack is based on the type; for example, all electric moves are special but all ghost moves are physical. That’s definitely weird for modern players to get used to, but that’s really the only complaint I have, and that’s not a flaw as much as just being released before the change was made. What takes the game from being the perfect remake to being what I consider to be the second best game in the series (after HeartGold and SoulSilver, of course), however, is the post-game.
After you beat the Elite Four, your journey is not finished. You may have rolled credits, but there’s still more to do. Mewtwo has always been restricted to post-game as even in Red and Blue, you couldn’t access Cerulean Cave until you beat the Elite Four. FireRed and LeafGreen doesn’t just have that bit of post-game, though; it adds an entire new area of seven islands to explore, the Sevii Islands. There’s a quest you have to complete here before you’re allowed into Cerulean Cave and able to catch Mewtwo. That’s not too bad, though, because the other thing the Sevii Island post-game does is let you catch most of the Johto Pokemon and a couple of the Hoenn baby Pokemon as well as giving you the ability to trade with Ruby and Sapphire. That was a big deal at the time as it made getting certain Pokemon easier, and for some like the Kanto starters, it made them obtainable in Ruby and Sapphire for the first time ever via trades. It also unlocks post-Gen I evolutions. For example, before you beat the Elite Four, breeding isn’t possible and Porygon and Scyther are incapable of evolving into Porygon2 and Scizor. Once you’re in the post-game, though, the items that allow them to evolve become available to you, and you can obtain the baby Pokemon by unlocking breeding.
Visually, this is my favorite Pokemon game. I personally think sprite graphics hit their apex with the 32-bit Game Boy Advance, and while the sprites in Gen IV and Gen V may have been more detailed, I will always have a soft spot for the art style of the Pokemon sprites in Gen III and in these Gen I remakes. Move effects look awesome while still retaining a classic feel, and the ripple effects of traversal over water look great. The music is also peak Pokemon chiptune OST. The soundtracks of modern games with modern music may be better in a technical sense, but nothing will top the nostalgia of Pokemon chiptune music in my heart. The same is true of the Pokemons’ cries. The nostalgia makes me temporarily forget that I’m staring middle age in the face. My one sole complaint about the audio design is the danger sound when your Pokemon’s health is in the red. Future games had the alarm sound for a couple of seconds, and then it stopped. FireRed and LeafGreen released in the era where that sound was still constant and unceasing as long as your active Pokemon’s health was in the red. It’s honestly super annoying. It was always super annoying, but it’s especially annoying now going back after getting used to years and years of Pokemon games that don’t eternally berate you with a screaming warning siren.
With their re-release on Nintendo Switch, FireRed and LeafGreen are now easily accessible for old folks like me to relive our nostalgic childhood games and for young players to experience these adventures for the first time. It needs to be noted, though, that these aren’t cheap for what they are, and there are no modern quality of life improvements. They are completely faithful ports through and through, so there’s no online battling or trading; online play didn’t exist for the GBA, so it’s not an option here. They do add in by default the event items that let you catch Ho-oh, Lugia, and Deoxys, though, so that’s awesome. As for the price, a lot of folks were upset they weren’t just added to the Nintendo Switch Online GBA library. I didn’t expect that - that would be leaving money on the table for an IP like Pokemon - but I didn’t expect the separate eShop price to be $20. Each. So if, like me, you want both versions so you can get all of the version exclusives, you’ll need to fork out $40 plus tax. That’s excessive. $10 would have been reasonable, I think, and while $20 is obviously not a deal breaker - they’ve sold extremely well on the eShop - I do think it’s the upper limit of what one could justifiably argue is “reasonable.” On the bright side, not being wrapped into the NSO launcher means that, at some point down the line, we’ll get Pokemon Home compatibility. On the not-so-bright side, it’s been confirmed that those will be one-way transfers; you can move Pokemon from FireRed and LeafGreen into Home, but you can’t move Pokemon from Home into FireRed and LeafGreen. While this isn’t entirely unexpected, it definitely sucks as Home was the way one would fill in version exclusives in Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, Sword/Shield, BrilliantDiamond/ShiningPearl, and Scarlet/Violet. Still, though, it will make adding Deoxys to their Home collections a lot easier for players who haven’t been playing for decades.
Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen are probably my third favorite set of games in the entire series, and they’re my second favorite of the remakes. Their age means that they do retain some of the archaic mechanics and design elements that most Pokemons are glad got left in the past, but in no way does that make them less worth playing. They are still the definitive way to experience Kanto, and they’re still absolute masterpieces in their own right. Just remember that you’re playing games made for a 2D handheld device over two decades ago. A lot of us, myself included, think Pokemon was best when it was 2D, and I’d argue that this is one of the best of the 2D games.
* denotes a replay
January (2 Games Beaten)
Pokemon fans have come to expect, in addition to a new generation every few years, a new remake every few years. That all started with Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen on the Game Boy Advance, the first remakes and what I consider to be Kanto perfected. The Kanto games have since been remade again in a much more casual and Pokemon Go-compatible form with Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee, and while I love those games, FireRed and LeafGreen are definitely the definitive Kanto experience for serious Pokemon enthusiasts.
FireRed and LeafGreen follow the same storyline and game beats as Red and Blue (or Green if you’re in Japan) up through beating the Elite Four with the exception of moving Moltres and adding an additional requirement before accessing Cerulean Cave. That alone justifies playing it. I adore the original Red and Blue, but they’re definitely janky - no running shoes, no held items, lots of bugs and glitches, and Special Attack and Special Defense combined into one incomprehensible stat by modern standards. FireRed and LeafGreen fix almost all of that. The Special/Physical split for moves happened after this, so what’s a physical attack and what’s a special attack is based on the type; for example, all electric moves are special but all ghost moves are physical. That’s definitely weird for modern players to get used to, but that’s really the only complaint I have, and that’s not a flaw as much as just being released before the change was made. What takes the game from being the perfect remake to being what I consider to be the second best game in the series (after HeartGold and SoulSilver, of course), however, is the post-game.
After you beat the Elite Four, your journey is not finished. You may have rolled credits, but there’s still more to do. Mewtwo has always been restricted to post-game as even in Red and Blue, you couldn’t access Cerulean Cave until you beat the Elite Four. FireRed and LeafGreen doesn’t just have that bit of post-game, though; it adds an entire new area of seven islands to explore, the Sevii Islands. There’s a quest you have to complete here before you’re allowed into Cerulean Cave and able to catch Mewtwo. That’s not too bad, though, because the other thing the Sevii Island post-game does is let you catch most of the Johto Pokemon and a couple of the Hoenn baby Pokemon as well as giving you the ability to trade with Ruby and Sapphire. That was a big deal at the time as it made getting certain Pokemon easier, and for some like the Kanto starters, it made them obtainable in Ruby and Sapphire for the first time ever via trades. It also unlocks post-Gen I evolutions. For example, before you beat the Elite Four, breeding isn’t possible and Porygon and Scyther are incapable of evolving into Porygon2 and Scizor. Once you’re in the post-game, though, the items that allow them to evolve become available to you, and you can obtain the baby Pokemon by unlocking breeding.
Visually, this is my favorite Pokemon game. I personally think sprite graphics hit their apex with the 32-bit Game Boy Advance, and while the sprites in Gen IV and Gen V may have been more detailed, I will always have a soft spot for the art style of the Pokemon sprites in Gen III and in these Gen I remakes. Move effects look awesome while still retaining a classic feel, and the ripple effects of traversal over water look great. The music is also peak Pokemon chiptune OST. The soundtracks of modern games with modern music may be better in a technical sense, but nothing will top the nostalgia of Pokemon chiptune music in my heart. The same is true of the Pokemons’ cries. The nostalgia makes me temporarily forget that I’m staring middle age in the face. My one sole complaint about the audio design is the danger sound when your Pokemon’s health is in the red. Future games had the alarm sound for a couple of seconds, and then it stopped. FireRed and LeafGreen released in the era where that sound was still constant and unceasing as long as your active Pokemon’s health was in the red. It’s honestly super annoying. It was always super annoying, but it’s especially annoying now going back after getting used to years and years of Pokemon games that don’t eternally berate you with a screaming warning siren.
With their re-release on Nintendo Switch, FireRed and LeafGreen are now easily accessible for old folks like me to relive our nostalgic childhood games and for young players to experience these adventures for the first time. It needs to be noted, though, that these aren’t cheap for what they are, and there are no modern quality of life improvements. They are completely faithful ports through and through, so there’s no online battling or trading; online play didn’t exist for the GBA, so it’s not an option here. They do add in by default the event items that let you catch Ho-oh, Lugia, and Deoxys, though, so that’s awesome. As for the price, a lot of folks were upset they weren’t just added to the Nintendo Switch Online GBA library. I didn’t expect that - that would be leaving money on the table for an IP like Pokemon - but I didn’t expect the separate eShop price to be $20. Each. So if, like me, you want both versions so you can get all of the version exclusives, you’ll need to fork out $40 plus tax. That’s excessive. $10 would have been reasonable, I think, and while $20 is obviously not a deal breaker - they’ve sold extremely well on the eShop - I do think it’s the upper limit of what one could justifiably argue is “reasonable.” On the bright side, not being wrapped into the NSO launcher means that, at some point down the line, we’ll get Pokemon Home compatibility. On the not-so-bright side, it’s been confirmed that those will be one-way transfers; you can move Pokemon from FireRed and LeafGreen into Home, but you can’t move Pokemon from Home into FireRed and LeafGreen. While this isn’t entirely unexpected, it definitely sucks as Home was the way one would fill in version exclusives in Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, Sword/Shield, BrilliantDiamond/ShiningPearl, and Scarlet/Violet. Still, though, it will make adding Deoxys to their Home collections a lot easier for players who haven’t been playing for decades.
Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen are probably my third favorite set of games in the entire series, and they’re my second favorite of the remakes. Their age means that they do retain some of the archaic mechanics and design elements that most Pokemons are glad got left in the past, but in no way does that make them less worth playing. They are still the definitive way to experience Kanto, and they’re still absolute masterpieces in their own right. Just remember that you’re playing games made for a 2D handheld device over two decades ago. A lot of us, myself included, think Pokemon was best when it was 2D, and I’d argue that this is one of the best of the 2D games.
Patron Saint of Bitch Mode
Re: Games Beaten 2026
1. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (SAT)
2. Castle Crashers Remastered (NSW)
3. Soul Calibur (DC)
4. Final Fantasy VII (PS1)
5. Alien Storm (GEN)
6. Captain America and the Avengers (GEN)
I originally played Captain America and the Avengers on the Genesis at my childhood friend's place. He only had a few Genesis games and I think this may have been the only co-op game he had. Unfortunately, I never ran into the arcade version of the game when it was out, but I hear it's pretty fun. I hadn't revisited the Genesis port in a long while, but I picked up a copy in nice shape a few years back and gave it another go. Glad to say I finally beat this one!
Captain America and the Avengers is a beat 'em up featuring couch co-op, developed by Data East and was released on the Genesis in 1992. A port was also released on the SNES that same year, while the NES got a game with the same title, but a different game, which was a side-scrolling action platformer. Players have a choice to select between Captain America, Vision, Iron Man, and Hawkeye. For this particular playthrough, I chose Captain America. In regard to gameplay, each character has a few moves including a regular attack, a throw, a jump kick, and a long range attack, which is accessed by pressing both jump and regular attack at the same time. Each character can also dash by pressing forward twice and has access to a dash attack. And lastly, you can hold down the attack button to put your character in a defensive stance, which will block projectiles. Other than regular side scrolling beat 'em ups, the game also features two sections that play similar to a shmup, which is a nice change of pace for a bit.
Graphics wise, Captain America and the Avengers is a bit of a mixed bag. The game does make good use of color, but I think the character sprites and backgrounds aren't as polished as some other titles that were released around the same time on the system. Even though the game was released in late 1992, it still has more of an early Genesis look to it. Soundtrack wise, I think the composers did a good job with the background music here. There are some fun and energetic tunes that definitely fit with the action and the super hero theme. The game also includes voice samples, which are a bit muffled. There are some hilarious lines as well, thanks to some of the dialogue having a poor translation. I also just want to take a moment to recognize the cover art, which is pretty awesome, IMO. The illustrator did a great job!
I have a few minor nitpicks with the game, the main one being the controls. While you have access to three buttons, for some reason the developers assigned your regular attack to one button, your jump to one button, and for your projectile attack, you have to press both at the same time, instead of just assigning it to the third button available on the Genesis controller. This decision annoys me a bit, seems like a poor use of the Genesis controller. My other nitpick is with the translation. While it's fun to repeat some of the one-liners, it would've been nice if some of these issues were cleaned up.
Overall, while Captain America and the Avengers isn't one of the top tier beat 'em ups on the console, I think it's still a fun one to check out if you've played the other more popular games on the console. Alternatively, if you're a Marvel fan and want to see what they had to offer in the 16-bit generation, this is an interesting one to look into. Avengers, assemble!
2. Castle Crashers Remastered (NSW)
3. Soul Calibur (DC)
4. Final Fantasy VII (PS1)
5. Alien Storm (GEN)
6. Captain America and the Avengers (GEN)
I originally played Captain America and the Avengers on the Genesis at my childhood friend's place. He only had a few Genesis games and I think this may have been the only co-op game he had. Unfortunately, I never ran into the arcade version of the game when it was out, but I hear it's pretty fun. I hadn't revisited the Genesis port in a long while, but I picked up a copy in nice shape a few years back and gave it another go. Glad to say I finally beat this one!
Captain America and the Avengers is a beat 'em up featuring couch co-op, developed by Data East and was released on the Genesis in 1992. A port was also released on the SNES that same year, while the NES got a game with the same title, but a different game, which was a side-scrolling action platformer. Players have a choice to select between Captain America, Vision, Iron Man, and Hawkeye. For this particular playthrough, I chose Captain America. In regard to gameplay, each character has a few moves including a regular attack, a throw, a jump kick, and a long range attack, which is accessed by pressing both jump and regular attack at the same time. Each character can also dash by pressing forward twice and has access to a dash attack. And lastly, you can hold down the attack button to put your character in a defensive stance, which will block projectiles. Other than regular side scrolling beat 'em ups, the game also features two sections that play similar to a shmup, which is a nice change of pace for a bit.
Graphics wise, Captain America and the Avengers is a bit of a mixed bag. The game does make good use of color, but I think the character sprites and backgrounds aren't as polished as some other titles that were released around the same time on the system. Even though the game was released in late 1992, it still has more of an early Genesis look to it. Soundtrack wise, I think the composers did a good job with the background music here. There are some fun and energetic tunes that definitely fit with the action and the super hero theme. The game also includes voice samples, which are a bit muffled. There are some hilarious lines as well, thanks to some of the dialogue having a poor translation. I also just want to take a moment to recognize the cover art, which is pretty awesome, IMO. The illustrator did a great job!
I have a few minor nitpicks with the game, the main one being the controls. While you have access to three buttons, for some reason the developers assigned your regular attack to one button, your jump to one button, and for your projectile attack, you have to press both at the same time, instead of just assigning it to the third button available on the Genesis controller. This decision annoys me a bit, seems like a poor use of the Genesis controller. My other nitpick is with the translation. While it's fun to repeat some of the one-liners, it would've been nice if some of these issues were cleaned up.
Overall, while Captain America and the Avengers isn't one of the top tier beat 'em ups on the console, I think it's still a fun one to check out if you've played the other more popular games on the console. Alternatively, if you're a Marvel fan and want to see what they had to offer in the 16-bit generation, this is an interesting one to look into. Avengers, assemble!