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Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne
26. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - PC
27. Thief 2: The Metal Age - PC
28. Wing Commander II - PC
29. Wing Commander III - PC
30. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Switch
31. Shadow Man Remastered - PC
32. Wing Commander: Privateer - PC
33. Salt and Sanctuary - Switch
34. The Elder Scrolls: Arena - PC
35. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - PC
36. Resident Evil Village - PC
37. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Switch
38. Metaloid: Origin - Switch

Metaloid: Origin is an indie platformer where your primary weapon is a front firing gun that takes a bit of inspiration from the gameplay of Mega Man before you beat any robot masters. You progress through a series of stages that are rather well designed with tricks and traps; the layouts are clearly inspired by Mega Man X's. You start off by selecting one of three characters who will serve you through the game. Each character has a bit of difference in their weapons, but overall there's not a huge difference (nothing like X vs. Zero).

In terms of abilities, you have your basic attack, a dash, and you can climb certain walls. You also have a special attack; this charges over time. It charges just often enough that you should feel free to spam it. You also have three extra weapons that can be purchased through the tons of currency that are in the levels. These use a shared ammo pool, and they are pretty high damage. They tend to have some sort of additional effect beyond just the increased damage that makes them really worthwhile.

All the levels (except the last, which is just the final boss) consists of a long exploration with a mini boss and a boss. Each of the first six levels also has five large currency items worth 400 (normal are 1 each) that only spawns once and a passive power up hidden somewhere in the stage. The stages have your standard array of hazards; there's nothing shocking if you've played a platformer before. It's got a pretty good difficulty curve, though there's a handful of spots that are more frustrating than they should be.

Overall it's a decent enough indie platformer that can give a bit of a scratch to fans of Mega Man X if you're the type to horde boss weapon energy. It's pretty short, though, you can knock it out in a few hours.

I replayed Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for the GBA for the first time in about 15 years. The game holds up really well!

The dash mechanic where you have to double-tap to move faster didn't bother me at all, on the contrary it just made me feel more engaged in the movement. Exploring the castle was a lot of fun as there are secrets absolutely everywhere. The variation of those could have been increased with a bit more interesting items to find, but it was still fun to search for them (did not do 100% though). Movement in this game looks stiff but I really enjoy it.

Music-wise, the game is even better than i remembered. I have always loved the first area's theme "Awake", but almost all other areas either had nice original music or some sweet remixes. The bass is everywhere and it's slapping really hard.

The DSS card system though... as soon as I found the combination for the flame sword I just stuck with that, going in and out of the menues (where the music stops btw.....) to find combinations wasn't as fun as it was with the first few cards. Since I played the game on stream as well I didn't want to sit around for a long time just trying combinations out as most of them aren't very interesting.

Overall, really like this one!

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne
26. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - PC
27. Thief 2: The Metal Age - PC
28. Wing Commander II - PC
29. Wing Commander III - PC
30. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Switch
31. Shadow Man Remastered - PC
32. Wing Commander: Privateer - PC
33. Salt and Sanctuary - Switch
34. The Elder Scrolls: Arena - PC
35. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - PC
36. Resident Evil Village - PC
37. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Switch
38. Metaloid: Origin - Switch
39. SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions - Switch

SaGa Scarlet Grace was the first non-mobile entry into the SaGa series since Unlimited pissed everyone off. It was released for the Vita and so naturally stayed in Japan because it didn't have fanservice. Ambitions is the enhanced rerelease on platforms people actually own. It adds some voice acting, a bit of extra content, and just overall performance improvements. I'm happy to report that this is probably the most approachable SaGa game since SaGa 2 (SaGa 3 doesn't count as a SaGa game).

Scarlet Grace begins with you selecting one of four protagonists through a questionnaire (which you can skip, but then you don't get stat bonuses). You carry the selected character through three acts and then beat up the final boss. Each character has their own primary story which is done in one of the acts, then in the other two you are free to select one of the three other stories; this will have a bit less content because it isn't as personal for you as it is for the primary character. These are done as a series of events throughout the world, which is divided into provinces. Each province has a number of hot spots you can interact with; this might be towns, monster caves, or side quest items. There's usually at least one side quest available in each province, as well as a couple of sidequests that stretch across the world. You're pretty much free to interact with this side content as much or as little as you want.

Like previous SaGa games there are no traditional levels. In contrast to previous SaGa games, you also don't get random stat ups for anything except your HP and your generic skill with a given weapon, which appears to affect overall damage. Your character stats are fixed and can only be affected by equipment, which allows them to have each point have a significant impact. As before, your health restores to full in between battles but falling in battle reduces your LP, which is only restored by sitting on the bench (or a handful of expensive town services). You'll find you will have a primary team of five and then a handful of characters you rotate in as necessary.

Combat is where the game really shows its stuff. Like previous games your characters can learn weapon techniques randomly in battle. This has been simplified; instead of a complex tree and level requirements, here the available techniques are based on the weapon you have equipped; better weapons have higher level techs, and different types of weapons of a given base (e.g. axe) will have different tech lists (normal vs. strength vs technical). The game has a counter whenever you take actions, and once that counter fills up it will spark a random tech you have yet to learn. One notable change is instead of replacing your action it will be a follow up action. This means turns you spark techs are big damage turns, but also that you can't spark a tech when killing the last enemy. Magic is similar, though instead of sparking on use you spark at end of battle.

Where things get more complicated is in the battle timeline. At the start of each turn every combatant is arranged on a line in order of your speed. The actions you queue up can rearrange you, and some attacks will manipulate the order during the turn, and finally the action you took can rearrange you for next turn. Aside from the obvious "if you go first you can kill/disable an enemy to reduce the damage you take", the game has a system wherein if the removal of a killed combatant from the timeline puts two or more characters on the same side together, then those characters will perform a unison attack against a randomly selected enemy. This is yet more damage, can chain if you take out an enemy that brings more of your characters together, can be performed against you (so watch out who you target), and most importantly reduces the cost of your actions for next turn.

Which brings me to the BP system. During battle each side has a number of BP available to take its turns. This will start at some value determined by your formation, raise up according to some criteria (usually one per turn, but more esoteric formations let you manipulate it), and can go up to a max. Every action you want to take costs one or more of these BP; the stronger moves cost more. Any character not taking an action will defend and reduce damage. Your foes are under the same constraints. You can see which foes are taking what actions, but not against who, so there is planning involved in how you target. Thus, combat becomes extremely tactical as you jockey for position in the timeline to set up unison attacks and corral high damage enemies to keep the team up, as healing is once again extremely limited.

This BP system also adds a new feature to your skills; ranking them up. Using a skill a certain number of times will rank it up; they start at 0 and can go up to 3. Ranking up a skill will either reduce its BP cost by one if it costs two or more, or increases the skills power if it already costs one BP to use. This is going to be very important as getting your skills to cost less means you can take more actions and more powerful actions in a turn.

Overall you end up having a very interesting combat system and a fairly free-roam gameplay (depending on specific character's act; generally the primary story is more linear) that still manages to signpost much better than previous games. There's also no random encounters; about 80% of the time you know you are going to engage in combat and its relative difficulty (easy, medium, hard, brutal) ahead of time, with the other 20% being combats that are either optional based on dialog choices or are sprung on you as part of engaging in a sidequest hotspot.

Having played several SaGa games I can say this is the one I would now recommend to anyone looking to get into the series. It plays quite different from your standard JRPG and fixes a lot of the rough edges of previous games in the series. I hope we can see more of this kind of thing going forward for the SaGa games.

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne
26. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - PC
27. Thief 2: The Metal Age - PC
28. Wing Commander II - PC
29. Wing Commander III - PC
30. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Switch
31. Shadow Man Remastered - PC
32. Wing Commander: Privateer - PC
33. Salt and Sanctuary - Switch
34. The Elder Scrolls: Arena - PC
35. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - PC
36. Resident Evil Village - PC
37. SaGa Frontier Remastered - Switch
38. Metaloid: Origin - Switch
39. SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions - Switch
40. Metro Exodus: The Two Colonels - PC

The Two Colonels is the first piece of DLC for Metro Exodus. It follows Colonel Khlebnikov of the Novosibirsk Metro and begins one year before the main game arrives there. The framing story is Colonel Miller exploring the selfsame areas as occurred off screen in the main game, and at the end he does a bit of philosophizing about the position both Colonels were put in as part of the metros.

The DLC is short, but it's priced to match. It starts and ends with a long tunnel crawling section where you are equipped with the new flamethrower weapon. It's quite satisfying to use and has a solid range on it. You have no other weaponry in these parts. You start off on an expedition to try and control the invasive slime that breaks down systems and spawns worm monsters that can grow larger and be a threat to the metro. Afterwards you get some story segments where you learn more about the situation at Novosibirsk. This is followed by a short combat segment against human rioters from other metros before going back to the tunnel crawling; this time trying to find a map that can be the salvation for you and your son. The whole thing is about a two hour experience.

The DLC returns to the atmosphere and claustrophobic nature of the first two games. It's intentionally very linear and the story serves as a way to flesh out the universe a bit more and ask questions about the nature of the sort of post-apocalyptic survival situation that occurs in the Metro universe and how humanity reacts to it. My major complaint is that it relies on a lot of triggered setpieces that involve you intentionally taking damage to trigger the setpiece, but only after you have set up the trigger by taking out enough enemies. It's non-obvious and can cause you to put yourself in some bad situations by either not having set up the trigger or getting your ammo situation in a bad state by going well past the trigger set up. A sub complaint is that the beginning and end feature setpiece enemies that will oneshot you, so you need to hit them immediately (in the first area) or dodge them well in a narrow space (in the last area).

Overall, it's a decent bit of content that can be had cheaply and even cheaper if you get it as part of the pass with the other piece of DLC which promises to be longer. If you're getting Metro Exodus DLC at all you might as well get this one.

Games Beaten in 2021 - 34
* denotes a replay

January (12 Games Beaten)


February (5 Games Beaten)


March (3 Games Beaten)


April (7 Games Beaten)


May (7 Games Beaten)


34. Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure - Switch - May 23



Did you ever wonder what the result would be of an unholy union between a fishing game, an RPG, and a visual novel? No? Well, here's the answer anyway. Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure struck me as a bizarre sounding game when I first saw it on Play-Asia's website totally unaware it had gotten a North American retail release. It seems like it's always on sale on Play-Asia, so I picked it up for like $10 figuring "For that price, how bad could it be?" As it turns out, it really not bad at all! I mean, I'm not sure I'd call it "good" per se, but it's a lot better than I was expecting.



You play as a trio of college students in their university's fishing club trying to decide what to do a report on. They're wandering through a local museum when they see a painting about an "elusive fish" that catches their interest. They end up chatting up a guy who knows the artist and go to meet him and ask him about the fish. That turns into an extended camping and fishing trip for them as they try to clean up the waters around the mountain village where the artist lives in hopes of coaxing the legendary fish to come back and show itself. The story is told in anime-style dialogue boxes like a visual novel, and each of the three characters have a level and gain experience. Sean, the plucky and kind of dumb character, is your main fisherman and gains experience for each fish you catch with his ability upgrades making it easier to catch said fish. Neil, your nerdy geek character, can craft new lures, reels, and rods for you and gains experience from gathering materials as you fish and from crafting new equipment; his abilities expand the array of equipment you can craft and allow you to upgrade that equipment. Alice, the token girl of the group, cooks your dinners and snacks and gains experience from that cooking to let her unlock new dinners and snacks to prepare. Because of course the woman does all the cooking. Way to be woke, Natsume.



The game can feel a little repetitive at times, but I actually found myself enjoying it a LOT more than I was expecting to. Once you get into the swing of things, the fishing is a lot of fun albeit arcade-y and simple (which is perfect for me). My biggest complaints are that the game doesn't look impressive in the slightest. To be honest, it looks like an upscaled Wii game. Textures are just downright ugly, and the only thing that looks like it's even from the early HD era let alone the Switch and PS4 is the water which, admittedly, does look rather nice. My other big complaint is the writing; it's dreadful. Dialogue feels stilted and awkward a lot of the time, and I can't help but wonder if part of that was due to lazy or careless translation. Still, though, while the game may not look very good and have a garbage story with flat characters, the actual fishing is pretty fun, and that's what matters. Just don't expect a lot of depth here; there are only about 20 different fish in the game.



Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure is definitely less shovelware than I was expecting it to be. It's definitely not a "must-play" or a central collection piece, but it's a fun little fishing experience if you're into fishing games but don't necessarily want the complexity that more simulator-style games have. It's usually like $15 or less on Play-Asia, so next time you're over there importing games, go ahead and throw it in your cart. The Asia English version seems to be cheaper than the North American version or at least was when I ordered it a few weeks ago. It's no killer app, but it's a fun time.

1. Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard (PC)(Adventure)
2. Revulsion (PC)(FPS)
3. Nonogram - Master's Legacy (PC)(Puzzle)
4. Sekiro (PC)(Action-Adventure)
5. Grim Dawn (PC)(Action RPG)
6. Grim Dawn: Ashes of Malmouth (PC)(Action RPG)
7. Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods (PC)(Action RPG)
8. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage (PC)(FPS)
9. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior (PC)(FPS)
10. Shrine (PC)(FPS)
11. Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (PC)(Adventure)
12. Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (PC)(Action)
13. Red Alliance (PC)(FPS)
14. The Forest (PC)(Horror)
15. Pixel Puzzles: Japan (PC)(Puzzle)
16. 12 is Better Than 6 (PC)(Top Down Shooter)
17. Torchlight II (PC)(RPG)
18. An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (PC)(RPG)
19. Port of Call (PC)(Walking Sim)

An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire

Battlespire is a side story in the Elder Scrolls series. It was originally intended to be an expansion to Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall but was spun off on its own as a possible beginning to a dungeon crawling side story. While that didn't pan out, we ended up getting what feels like an Elder Scrolls take on Ultima Underworld, which isn't a bad thing...except for the jank.

In Battlespire, you are a new entry to the order of Battlemages that inhabit and train in the Battlespire. Unfortunately, upon entering you discover the Daedra have invaded and taken over the structure, and they have sealed your escape route. You must press forward through Daedric realms, attempting to stop the factions struggling to control the spire as well as find your potential significant other...the story is kind of vague on the relationship.

Combat in the game is real time and involves FPS-like ranged weaponry, menu-based spellcasting, and melee performed by holding the mouse button down and then sliding the mouse around to engage in different weapon strikes. This being early Elder Scrolls, combat is dice based, so you won't actually know how well you're doing, just whether you are hitting or not.

The problem is that the game is buggy. Nightmarishly buggy. Jumping over a pit might result in you hitting the perfect angle to simply get stuck. Or you might sink beneath the floor or swim through a wall. One notorious level increases the file size of your save, steadily corrupting it until it can no longer be loaded.

And those are just bugs. I haven't mentioned that the enemies often have better stats than the player, so going toe to toe is less fun and more an exercise in pain. Also, all enemies have exactly the same AI: they spam spells until out of spell points and then charge you. This is both frustrating and exploitable, because foes will often clip level geometry and kill themselves while casting.

Now one thing I do appreciate about the enemies is that many can be talked to and convinced not to fight if certain conditions are met. You can chat your way out of the occasional battle, though it can't always be relied upon; many enemies will choose to simply ignore you instead. Still, it wasn't a bad idea to try it out.

The music also has problems, in that it likes to start up, play the track, and then stop...and that's it. You get 3 minutes of music for a level that might last an hour. Fun. The sound effects are consistent at least

Look, to put it bluntly, I don't recommend Battlespire. It is far too problematic in its approach to really warrant a look from anyone beyond the most die hard Elder Scrolls fans. Stick to the main series, as you get more than enough solid gameplay and crazy jank as it is. Battlespire feels like it needed another few months in the oven to make it worthwhile. It's a shame it didn't get them.


Port of Call

Port of Call is a short walking sim with a few light puzzle elements on Steam. These puzzles mainly consist of finding the right objects to hold onto, so it's not terrible advanced, but it's still a bit more involved than certain other pure walking sims.

You play a young man who finds himself on a pier. A mysterious woman vanishes before you, and then a boat captain appears and tells you that you now work for him. When you turn around, a ship is now there. You must work to gather the tickets of several passengers on board, mainly by talking to them; by the end, the mystery of who you are in relation to the rest of the characters is revealed, and you can make a pivotal choice to determine which ending you get ..though neither are really impressive.

Still, it's a free game on Steam, and it tries to use some bizarre imagery such as floating objects and characters in masks to add a vaguely unsettling feel. I liked the game well enough, though it did crash on me a couple of times.

I hope you pick up Daggerfall at some point so you can comment on how it compares jank-wise.

1. Horace (Switch)
2. Ghostrunner (Switch)
3. Mickey’s Adventure in Numberland (NES)
4. Mickey’s Safari in Letterland (NES)
5. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Genesis)
6. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Picross (3DS)
7. World of Illusion starring Mickey & Donald (Genesis)
8. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
9. Land of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
10. Legend of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (Game Gear)
11. Portal 2 [co-op] (PS3)
12. Operencia: The Stolen Sun (Switch)
13. The Knight of Queen (Switch)
14. Q.U.B.E. - Director’s Cut (PS3)
15. What the Golf?! (Switch)
16. Prune (iOS)
17. Kenshō (iOS)
18. For the Frog the Bell Tolls (GameBoy)
19. Holedown (iOS)
20. King’s Field (PS1)
21. My Friend Pedro (Switch)
22. MO: Astray (Switch)
23. EQI (Switch)
24. Foxyland (Switch)
25. Carrion (Switch)
26. QUBE 2 (Switch)
27. Aaero (Switch)
28. Portal 2 (PS3)

Aaero is a stupendous rhythm-based rail shooter that plays like a cross between Rez, Guitar Hero, and F-Zero GX. In it, the left stick moves your ship, the right stick moves your targeting reticule, and the triggers fire your lasers. You careen through each level at an incredible speed, locking on to enemies, avoiding obstacles, and riding literal rails to increase your score. All of this is set to a bangin’ British EDM soundtrack. The game looks great, and it sounds even better. It is also incredibly challenging and tremendous fun, and while it is clearly inspired by several other games, it is a uniquely thrilling experience. Even though I’m pretty terrible at it, I absolutely loved it, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Portal 2 is pretty much the best first-person puzzle platformer, and the perfect sequel to one of my favorite games. Great puzzles and great writing combine to create what is easily one of the funniest and best video games in any genre. A truly essential video game I am ashamed I did not play sooner.

I thought you beat Portal 2 a year or two ago? Or was that the first game?

BoneSnapDeez wrote:I thought you beat Portal 2 a year or two ago? Or was that the first game?

I beat the co-op campaign with my son a few months ago. Maybe that’s it? (It’s pretty much a totally different game.). I played Portal years and years ago.