Games Beaten 2024

Post by **MrPopo** » Sat Dec 28, 2024 9:53 pm

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

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC
53. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred - PC
54. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - Switch
55. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - PC
56. STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl - PC
57. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - PC
58. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - Switch
59. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - PC
60. Extraneum - PC
61. Diluvian Ultra - PC
62. Starfield: Shattered Space - PC
63. X-Men: Children of the Atom - Arcade
64. Marvel Super Heroes - Arcade
65. X-Men vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
66. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
67. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes - Arcade
68. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes - Arcade
69. Marathon 2 - PC

Marathon 2 picks up where Marathon left off; you awaken from being in stasis for 17 years by the Durandal AI from the first game and are informed that you've gone to the planet of the alien race you help out at the end of the first game to free them once and for all and give Durandal whatever it is he needs for his long range plans. And at the end, the star gets exploded and destroys the planet to try and rob you of the victory (though everyone evacuates in time or something).

In terms of what's new, three of the enemies have been swapped out for three different enemies; one of these swaps makes the flamethrower even more of a liability, as they're immune to it (and they explode on death, which is nice to experience). You get one new gun, a shotgun that can be dual wielded. Ammo is quite scarce for it, but it also has big damage (and more importantly, consistent damage against all targets). And they changed the alien gun to be worse; now it only fires straight ahead, or you can use secondary to fire at angles but not straight ahead, or both buttons to do both (and drain ammo the fastest). And it sets enemies on fire, so it precludes you from getting more. It doesn't kill as fast as the original, so it's a major disappointment.

But let's talk about the real new thing: water. This game introduces water, which can rise and fall. When you're in it, the only weapon you can use is your fists. The only enemy that can attack you is the one new enemy added, and they do so at melee range. They also have way too much HP for something you have to fight with your fists when in water. Like the vacuum level of the first game, you have an oxygen meter that depletes while in it and can only be refilled from switches on the wall. And the final bit of weirdness is how swimming works. This isn't like Duke Nukem 3D, or most other FPS's, where being in water is essentially zero G with maybe additional friction. Here you naturally sink to the bottom, but at any time can hold down dash to rise to the top. If the edge is low enough you can also get out this way, but the physics of it are janky and you often will take multiple tries. This is bad enough normally, but it's especially bad when you're in a hazardous liquid. And the level designers decided it was a good idea to have critical paths require you to go through hazardous liquid. Hope you have enough health ahead of time.

Overall, it's more of the same, still a janky mess whose reach far exceeds its grasp. I will say, they did improve how they handled switches. While you don't always know what door was opened by a switch, all the critical path doors either stay open or are close enough that you can see them open and run through; no more guess work like the last game, not to mention no awful puzzles around float dancing and getting platforms raised to the exact right height.

Post by **MrPopo** » Sun Dec 29, 2024 6:52 pm

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

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC
53. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred - PC
54. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - Switch
55. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - PC
56. STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl - PC
57. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - PC
58. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - Switch
59. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - PC
60. Extraneum - PC
61. Diluvian Ultra - PC
62. Starfield: Shattered Space - PC
63. X-Men: Children of the Atom - Arcade
64. Marvel Super Heroes - Arcade
65. X-Men vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
66. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
67. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes - Arcade
68. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes - Arcade
69. Marathon 2 - PC
70. Castlevania: The Adventure - GB

Castlevania: The Adventure is the first Game Boy Castlevania, and was created in the first year of the Game Boy's life. And boy, does it show. Most of the platformers in the early Game Boy era had lots of problems, and Castlevania is no exception. About the only good thing is it's short.

The first thing you'll notice is how goddamn slow you move. Everything else moves glacially slow too, except for the bats and enemy projectiles. So you'll take a fair amount of damage from a projectile going at an angle you can't react to in time. The second thing you'll notice is there are no subweapons in the game. You do get a ranged attack when your whip has been upgraded to the second level. And that's when you notice the third thing; taking a hit causes your whip to downgrade, all the way down to the leather whip if you get hit twice. This is far worse than Bloodlines downgrading you from the super whip state; if you could stay at the chain whip it would be reasonable, but often you'll be stuck on the leather whip. About the only saving grace is the game is shockingly generous with health restoration.

The actual platforming is balls. People have long decried the intentionally stiff platforming of the Classicvanias, but this takes it to another level. Most egregious is your short horizontal distance when jumping. The devs actually have a bunch of pixel perfect jumps that require you to reach the very end of a platform's standable area to be able to make the next jump; this actually has your walk cycle look like you've stepped off the platform. You deal with this as early as stage 1 of four.

Speaking of the stages, the first one serves as the introduction to the main mechanics and is tolerable before you get to the precision jumps. Stage 2 is a maze and introduces you to the projectile enemies that will keep getting you. Stage 3 consists of three different sections of death traps with no screen transitions to cut a checkpoint. The first section is straightforward, but the other two are races against an advancing wall of doom and there is room for maybe one mistake every so often. Stage 4 actually dials back a bit, though now it introduces a bunch of rooms where if you jump wrong you hit an instant death spike, and this includes hitting your head on the ceiling. You'll discover that the character sprite's hitbox is actually larger than it looks.

Overall, this is a bad game, flat out. It feels like what someone's first attempt at a video game would result in, and that person had never actually played a video game before, they'd only seen them played.

Post by **MrPopo** » Mon Dec 30, 2024 12:12 am

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

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC
53. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred - PC
54. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - Switch
55. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - PC
56. STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl - PC
57. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - PC
58. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - Switch
59. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - PC
60. Extraneum - PC
61. Diluvian Ultra - PC
62. Starfield: Shattered Space - PC
63. X-Men: Children of the Atom - Arcade
64. Marvel Super Heroes - Arcade
65. X-Men vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
66. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
67. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes - Arcade
68. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes - Arcade
69. Marathon 2 - PC
70. Castlevania: The Adventure - GB
71. Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge - GB

Belmont's Revenge is what happens when Konami goes "what if we made The Adventure good?" It came out a couple years after the first game and it fixes every problem with the first game while bringing it closer to a proper Casltevania experience. While there are fundamental compromises due to being on the Game Boy, it's a legitimately solid game.

The first thing you'll notice is your move speed is increased just enough that it feels right. You'll also notice that you don't lose your whip levels when you take damage, except when it's the projectile from the turret guys. But those projectiles now move slower and in trajectories that are more favorable to the player being able to destroy them. But most importantly, you'll notice you now can pick up one of two subweapons; the holy water or the axe (apparently in other regions you get the cross instead of the axe). You also can now attack while on ropes, which is vital in some stages.

The stages themselves are much better. In a first for the series, you can tackle the first four stages in any order. Each stage has a theme, and a lot of care was put into the backgrounds to sell that theme. The stages all have just the right difficulty; no outrunning walls of doom with no checkpoints, no bullshit "oops, you fall in pit because your jumps weren't pixel precise". Even the spikes are no longer instant death, just big damage. The bosses also got upgraded; they're far more interesting and sometimes they are more interesting than the NES bosses.

After the first six stages you do a two stage Drac castle. The boss at the end of stage one kind of sucks, in that he's an auto-scroller with fixed timings, and if you don't hit those timings in your movement you are guaranteed to take hits (and if you don't maneuver right during the i-frames you'll take more). It basically comes down to did you memorize or not. The end of stage 2 is a fight against your kid (who was kidnapped to kick off the plot), which is reminiscent of the doppelganger fight of CV3, though here the AI is much easier to manage. Finally, there's a one stage Drac fight that also comes down to memorizing, due to him having a fixed pattern of teleports and each teleport location having fixed safe spots. It doesn't take long to figure out how to handle most of the teleport locations, and at that point you should have enough health to tank the one you haven't figured out yet.

It's amazing just how much better this game is than its predecessor. It completely makes up for all the faults of the first game.

Post by **MrPopo** » Mon Dec 30, 2024 4:01 pm

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

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC
53. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred - PC
54. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - Switch
55. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - PC
56. STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl - PC
57. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - PC
58. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - Switch
59. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - PC
60. Extraneum - PC
61. Diluvian Ultra - PC
62. Starfield: Shattered Space - PC
63. X-Men: Children of the Atom - Arcade
64. Marvel Super Heroes - Arcade
65. X-Men vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
66. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
67. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes - Arcade
68. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes - Arcade
69. Marathon 2 - PC
70. Castlevania: The Adventure - GB
71. Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge - GB
72. Kid Dracula - NES

Kid Dracula is a cute platformer that reimagines the Casltevania series in a goofy vein. You play as a young Dracula with insane hair as you fight through monsters and defeat Galamoth, so you can bring all the monsters over to your side (though watch out, someday a man with a whip may come for you).

Your basic attack is a fireball that can be thrown forward, up, or down. You can charge it up for a larger fireball, and after each stage you gain a new power that comes off of the charge shot, such as a homing spread or bat form. Killing enemies with the charged form causes them to drop coins, which are used in minigames after stages to gamble for extra lives. The gameplay is otherwise standard platforming, though there are some really impressive setpieces for the NES, such as a high speed rollercoaster segment.

The game has an uneven difficulty. While for the most part the enemy placements aren't mean, several levels have some surprisingly precision platforming, with you sometimes needing to get halfway off a platform to avoid bonking your head on the ceiling. But then the next level will be straightforward. The final stage consists of a boss, an instant death auto scroller, another boss, and the final boss, with no checkpoints, which is quite a pain. But once you learn the simple patterns of each boss they aren't tricky. So again, uneven difficulty.

Overall it's a fun NES platformer, and it's definitely impressive from a tech perspective. It's worth a playthrough, though I don't know if it's one you would come back to afterwards.

Post by **elricorico** » Mon Dec 30, 2024 5:31 pm

1. Sonic Lost World (WiiU)
2. Kirby and the Forgotten Land (NS)
3. Kinect Adventures (XB360)
4. Metal Slug (PC)
5. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (SNES)
6 Modnation Racers (PSP)
7. Mario Kart 8DX - Expansion Pass (NS)
8. Splatoon! (WiiU)
9. Tactics Ogre:Let us Cling Together (PSP)
10. Sackboy, A Big Adventure (PS4)
11. Mutation Nation (PC)
12. Bad News Baseball (NES)
13. Star Ocean First Departure (PSP)
14. Star Tropics (Switch)

15. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster (PS4)

The last couple of months of gaming for me have been dominated by modern remakes of games I played through many times over the years. The first Final Fantasy was one of the earliest games I ever beat, and it changed the course of my gaming life, leaving me a JRPG fan for life.

When the anniversary print of the Pixel Remaster Collection came out I couldn't resist. I got the platinum on this game, playing only about 13 hours since the quality of life improvements make it a fairly short game. I really enjoyed it though, it definitely took me back to a simpler time and I think it is the definitive way to play Final Fantasy today.

16. Dragon Quest III HD Remake (Switch)

Dragon Warrior 3 has been my favourite NES game since I first played it. Something about the ability to create your own characters, not being limited to just 4, and the customization available always sucked me in. Again when the remake was up for pre-order I knew I would have to order it and I haven't been disappointed with the choice.

This one I've spent far more time with, as it is both a much larger game to start with and making characters, changing classes and post-game opportunities create a lot of opportunity to spend hours. I beat the final boss and started into the post game. I'm not sure I'll end up doing every single thing that would have earned a platinum trophy if I played this on a Playstation System, but I'm sure I'll be close. Again, I consider this now to be the definitive way to play a classic.

Post by **MrPopo** » Tue Dec 31, 2024 6:38 pm

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

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC
53. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred - PC
54. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - Switch
55. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - PC
56. STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl - PC
57. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - PC
58. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - Switch
59. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - PC
60. Extraneum - PC
61. Diluvian Ultra - PC
62. Starfield: Shattered Space - PC
63. X-Men: Children of the Atom - Arcade
64. Marvel Super Heroes - Arcade
65. X-Men vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
66. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
67. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes - Arcade
68. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes - Arcade
69. Marathon 2 - PC
70. Castlevania: The Adventure - GB
71. Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge - GB
72. Kid Dracula - NES
73. Marathon Infinity - PC

Marathon Infinity wraps up the Marathon trilogy, taking the storytelling in new directions, but in a way that mostly fails. It's a mixture of a handful of "why did you do this?" levels and then a bunch of actually reasonable levels. The most notable component is about half the levels feature friendly NPCs, compared to just the couple of end missions in the previous two games.

The game begins with you being told by Durandal that the triggered nova from the end of the last game unleashed an eldritch abomination that will consume everything, and that jumping onto another ship might let you escape. But when you do, you instead find yourself back in time, prior to Marathon 2, and under the control of the Tycho AI. So begins the timeline hopping that the game poorly gets across through its terminals. Essentially, you end up redoing Marathon 2, but at different points that adjust the events until you can cause Durandal to fuse with another AI so that it has the knowledge of how to stop the eldritch abomination from escaping its prison.

Gameplay-wise, there is a single new enemy, which are humans with plasma guns (and they're always hostile to you). You get one new weapon, an SMG that can actually fire underwater and in space, as well as having an absurd DPS. Two things keep it from being better; the first is that ammo is scarce, and the second is that you can carry very little ammo for it. It drains a clip in a third of the time of the assault rifle, but it can only have half as much in reserve. Additionally, the usage underwater isn't nearly as important as it would have been last game, as this game deemphasizes water and by the time you get it, you've stopped needing to fight in water.

The game resets your inventory three times, but it isn't super predictable when it will occur, which means you often will have a bunch of good ammo unused. It also features false exists from one specific time nexus level, where if you go to the exit teleporter you used last time, it will put you back to the level it originally teleported to, thus putting you in a loop. As long as you remember to always go to a new path you'll be fine.

Overall, I think I liked this the best of the three, in that I didn't feel like I was having my time wasted as much with the level design. There was definitely a point in the middle where it got dickish, bringing back two vacuum levels back to back, with the first one having no health or air terminals (just a couple of air pickups, hope you don't save with too low of air), but after that it mostly was fine, just a couple of small annoyances. Still not a series I would recommend.

Post by **MrPopo** » Wed Jan 01, 2025 12:39 am

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

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC
53. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred - PC
54. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - Switch
55. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - PC
56. STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl - PC
57. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - PC
58. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - Switch
59. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - PC
60. Extraneum - PC
61. Diluvian Ultra - PC
62. Starfield: Shattered Space - PC
63. X-Men: Children of the Atom - Arcade
64. Marvel Super Heroes - Arcade
65. X-Men vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
66. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter - Arcade
67. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes - Arcade
68. Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes - Arcade
69. Marathon 2 - PC
70. Castlevania: The Adventure - GB
71. Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge - GB
72. Kid Dracula - NES
73. Marathon Infinity - PC
74. Castlevania Dracula X - SNES

Dracula X is Konami taking the assets and general storyline of Rondo of Blood and using them to make an SNES game. And not a very good one. The game has poor level design and enemy placement, and the various missing Rondo features are apparent as you play through. Its only saving grace is the bosses are quite easy compared to the stages (even the evil Dracula fight).

There's a weird sort of sluggishness to the game beyond the standard Castlevania stiffness. I couldn't figure out if it's related to animation frames or to control responsiveness, but the net result if you often don't feel like Richter is controlling quite as well as you would like. Compounding the problem is the fact that the mercy invincibility only lasts long enough to get you out of the hitbox of whatever is knocking you back; at times you can easily find yourself being knocked back and forth between multiple enemies. The only mitigation is the fact that if you are crouching or on the stairs you are immune to knockback (this is important on the Dracula fight).

The game has two routes; if you fall in a pit in stage three you go to stage four prime, while in stage four if you can carry a useless key subweapon to the end of the stage you can go to stage five prime, otherwise you go to stage five. Stage four plus five prime are required for the good ending, as that is how you rescue Maria and Annette. Stage six and seven are the same, though the boss of stage six depends on if you saved Annette or not. Finally, there's the Dracula fight, which takes the Rondo fight and puts it on a series of pillars over a pit. They are placed such that it is incredibly easy to fall off just from the Castlevania jump trajectories. If you have patience, understand the jumps, and have the axe, it's quite simple, but it's so easy for something to go wrong.

Overall, this is a low tier Castlevania game. At a technical level it's fine, it's not the trainwreck that The Adventure is, but its level design is just incredibly bad, with a ton of cheap (even for the series) enemy placements and an overall uninspired design. You're much better off just playing Rondo instead.

Post by **alienjesus** » Wed Jan 01, 2025 11:00 am

Final games beaten of 2024:

1. Yakuza 3 Remastered PS4
2. Gley Lancer Mega Drive
3. Flink Mega Drive
4. Zero Wing Mega Drive
5. Super Bomberman 3 SNES
6. Streets of Rage Master System
7. Goof Troop SNES
8. Pokémon Card GB2: Great Rocket-Dan Sanjō! GBC
9. Pop'n Twinbee: Rainbow Bell Adventures SNES
10. Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shougun Magginesu SNES
11. Super Mario Maker Wii U
12. Donkey Kong Land 2 Game Boy
13. The Fish Files GBC
14. Kirby Super Star Ultra DS
15. Yakuza 4 Remastered PS4
16. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Vita
17. Psychonauts 2 PS4
18. Spyro the Dragon PS1
19. LittleBigPlanet PS3
20. Faxanadu NES
21. Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia DS
22. Donkey Kong Country Returns Wii
23. Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars Master System
24. Batman Returns Master System
25. Master of Darkness Master System
26. Sonic Chaos Master System
27. Cloud Master Master System
28. Disney’s Aladdin Master System
29. Astro Bot PS5
30. Darkwing Duck NES
31. DuckTales 2 NES
32. Tiny Toon Adventures NES
33. Adventure Island Part II NES
34. Yakuza 5 PS4
35. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride DS
36. Kabuki Quantum Fighter NES
37. New Ghostbusters 2 NES
38. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance Switch
39. Demon’s Crest SNES
40. Control PS5
41. Zero Time Dilemma Vita
42. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PS5
43. Star Fox Zero Wii U
44. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy PS4
45. Star Fox Guard Wii U
46. The Violinist of Hameln SFC
47. Chibi-Robo!: Park Patrol DS
48. Gravity Rush 2 PS4 *NEW*
49. World of Goo 2 Switch *NEW*
50. Ys Origin Vita *NEW*

Gravity Rush 2

The original Gravity Rush is a game I’m quite fond of. It was a charming open world game where you could shift gravity to fly, or rather fall with style. The game featured an interesting if slightly convoluted story and a charming characters and a fun world to explore, but my one criticism of it was it always felt like a game that had a fun mechanic it didn’t really know what to do with. Combat was a big thing, but the combat always felt a bit unwieldy and never quite hit it’s stride. Going into Gravity Rush 2 then, and it’s very much a rich get richer experience. The gravity shifting is as fun as ever, and the world and characters are built upon in interesting ways. They also smoothed out some of the less polished mechanics in terms of the gravity slide move that lets you slide forward along the ground, and the throwing stuff with gravity which is now very smooth and probably the best way to fight. Unfortunately, the weak elements of the game are still notably weak – combat is still tedious and clunky and environments are sometimes a bit too big and empty so it takes a long time getting places. The sidequests and challenges you can find are definitely improved in this game compared to the first game, but they are drip-fed to you a couple at a time each chapter, normally spread really far apart, which exacerbates the the large empty feeling of the place. There are lots of gems to find to power you up, but the game could use some Breath of the Wild Korok style mini challenges to do scattered around to earn these to make exploration more interesting. Still, whilst it is a flawed game, I did enjoy my time playing Gravity Rush 2. It’s sad we will probably never see a third game, but this one wraps stuff up well enough.

World of Goo 2

World of Goo was one of the most iconic Wiiware games, and a game I’m very fond of. You build structures using goo balls which link together. The goo comes in several varieties – the standard black goo, plus flammable red goo which creates weaker links but can be used to build fuses, green goo which can be removed and reattached to the structure unlike other balls which are permanent and more. I was curious how World of Goo 2 would built upon this, and the answer seems to be that the developer has discovered how to make fluid physics work. This game introduces pools of goo which can be sucked up by clear goo balls and transported to various new objects by connecting them. The main ones are a trumpet like creature that turns liquid goo into goo balls which can be used to clear the level but not built with, and a Cthulhu like crate that turns liquid goo balls back into liquid goo. There are also new goo ball types that expand or shrink the structure when filled with liquid goo. The story takes a bit of a curveball in the 4th world, and without spoiling too much the gameplay changes pretty significantly for a while, before going back to the classics for the short final stage. I think ultimately the first game is the better of the two, but I respect the new mechanics of World of Goo 2 – if they hadn’t been added it’s hard to imagine what they could do to make the second game not just a repeat of the first. I still had a great time with World of Goo 2 and would happily recommend it.

Ys Origin

Ys Origin is a prequel entry in the franchise that takes place hundreds of years before Ys 1. It shows you some of the history of the world of Ys and why things are as they are in the first 2 Ys games. Mechanically, the originally game released after Ark of Napishtim on PS2 and Oath in Felghana on PSP, and plays in a similar manner to those games – fast paced combos but using buttons to attack. It was originally a PC release, but I played it on Vita, where it looks great – but you can tell it was made for a bigger screen as enemies drop collectables upon being defeated which are absolutely tiny on the Vita – luckily it’s not really important to determine exactly what has been dropped so it’s no bother. I played through as Yunica – there are 3 characters stories to play. I’ve heard people say you need to do all 3 playthroughs to get the true story but the game was just long and just grindy enough to feel like I didn’t want to do multiple back-to-back playthroughs, even though it’s quite short for an RPG at about 8-10 hours. The story has you playing the entire game inside the Darm Tower, which appears in Ys 1 as well. You must ascend 25 massive floors to defeat an evil demon at the top. Over time you gain new abilities which help you to explore further – some are equippable items that allow you to see invisible doors and floors or walk on slippery surfaces, some are passive upgrades that let you double jump or dash, and some are spells which can be applied to both combat and exploration – for example, the wind spell as Yunica can be used midair for a distance boost to increase how far you can jump. The game was breezy and fun, although the bosses are definitely pretty tough, and I usually found a little extra grinding was needed here and there – as is tradition in the franchise, a couple of extra levels can make the difference between a boss being functionally impossible and fairly easy. This is one of the better entries in the series I think, and I enjoyed playing it. I’ll have to come back for the other playthroughs soon.

Post by **alienjesus** » Wed Jan 01, 2025 11:20 am

Final stats for 2024

Games beaten: 50

Digital vs Physical: 49 Physical games beaten vs 1 digital

My 1 'digital' game beaten this year was Streets of Rage for Master System, which I played on my everdrive. I liked it so much that I bought it later in the year.

Console vs Handheld: 39 console titles vs 11 handheld titles

Home consoles got a lot more of my attention this year than normal, although this is inflated by all of the short 8-bit titles I beat on NES and Master System.

Games beaten by genre:
- Platformer: 23
- Action Adventure: 12
- RPG: 4
- Shmup: 3
- Adventure: 2
- Beat 'em up: 1
- Puzzle: 1
- Rail shooter: 1
- Other: 3

The 3 'other' games were Super Bomberman 2, New Ghostbusters 2 and Star Fox Guard. Platformers also were mainly represented by a bunch of 8 bit games I beat in the early Autumn, whereas a lot of the longer games I played this year feel into the Action Adventure category and probably represented the majority of my playtime.

Games beaten by console generation:
- Gen 3 (NES/SMS): 14
- Gen 4 (SNES/MD/NG/GB/GG): 10
- Gen 5 (N64/PS1/Saturn/GBC/NGPC/WSC): 3
- Gen 6 (GC/XBox/PS2/DC/GBA): 0
- Gen 7 (Wii/360/PS3/PSP/DS): 6
- Gen 8 (WiiU/PS4/Vita/3DS/Switch): 14
- Gen 9 (PS5): 3

The majorty of my playtime this year was spend playing games on relatively modern platforms, but I did manage to beat a bunch of 8 bit stuff too. Gen 6 went completed unloved, as it also did with my games purchased this year. I actually really like the 6th gen so I should try and remedy this next year. That said, my goal for 2025 is to try and stay on top of my modern games and reduce my huge Switch backlog.

Games beaten by console:
- NES: 7
- SNES: 6
- Wii: 1
- Wii U: 3
- Game Boy: 1
- Game Boy Colour: 2
- Nintendo DS: 4
- Switch: 2
- Master System: 7
- Mega Drive: 3
- PlayStation: 1
- PlayStation 3: 1
- PlayStation 4: 6
- PlayStation 5: 3
- PlayStation Vita: 3

It felt like a very Playstation heavy year this year, but technically I beat more Nintendo stuff. That said, the games were way longer on Sony platforms. This year I also tried to beat games in groups of 3 - every time I beat a game on a system I tried to beat 2 more games for that system too, with the exception of my summer games challenge games.

Post by **MrPopo** » Wed Jan 01, 2025 12:08 pm

This year's wrap up:

74 games beaten; it was looking like a very low year until the end. I did some accounting and some shifts in my lifestyle (other hobbies) means I don't spend as much time on gaming as I once did. I need to sneak in short stuff to pad out the total.

Platform break down:

Arcade - 6
GB - 2
NES - 2
PC - 41
PS1 - 1
PS5 - 6
SNES - 1
Switch - 15

Notable aside from the standard bulk being PC is I did a bunch on the Switch. That's my primary platform for indie games that use a controller. But in general this was not a very indie year; only the PS1 title was an actual throwback as opposed to something ported like the MvC collection.

Genre breakdown:

Action Adventure - 3
Adventure - 1
Beat em Up - 1
Deckbuilder - 2
Fighting - 6
FPS - 18
Metroidvania- 4
Platformer - 7
Puzzle - 1
RPG - 20
RTS - 1
Simulation - 2
Soulslike - 1
SRPG - 1
Strategy - 3
Survival Horror - 2
Third Person Shooter - 1

In general my tastes are the same as before; FPS's and RPGs are my genres of choice. Notable this year is the number of platformers and fighting games I went through; the latter comes from the MvC collection and the former is a mixture of filling out the rest of the Castlevania series and some good ones I saw at the GDQs this year that I decided to pick up on Switch.

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