Decisive victories galore against the dreaded backlog.

Beyond: Two Souls

I don’t know why I am compelled to go back through the David Cage games. Self loathing will be my guess. Beyond is probably the safest of his games I’ve yet to play. It doesn’t have the reckless creativity or the open disdain for being a video game that some of the others have. Which just makes it a bit plain and ordinary. It tries to hide this by telling its tale in a jumbled order, bouncing around the timeline non linear. It’s fine, I guess.

Breath of the Wild

So. At the start of the year I spent a lot of money I didn’t really have on a new PC. Since time began, I’ve always kind of built my own from the parts that other people threw away or sold for nothing on Ebay and I decided it was time that stopped. It was a mistake, and it was nothing but hassle until it stopped working all together. I had to find another way to spend my off time to drown out the voices in my head, so I decided, I would play Xenoblade Chronicles X, which I had bought for the Wii U many years ago for reasons I no longer recall. Most baffling: Like everyone else, I do not own a Wii U. I was going to buy one but, turns out, someone had one they could lend me, and it showed up with a small pile of games, including BotW. Oddly, I could not get the parental lock off the Wii U, which halted my XCX plans, so I played this instead. To the surprise of none, it turns out it’s pretty decent, and I put a lot of hours into wandering around aimlessly and getting one shot by sentient plants. I got pretty far before my PC came back, and the plan was to continue because I was having a lot of fun. I’d have to find something pretty remarkable to play once I booted the PC back up to park this. Then, like a fool, I bought Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and I suspect BotW will cease to exist for me at least until wring everything I can out of that game.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Destroyer of Link and good time vibes, E33 is a generational game. Ridiculous sounding hyperbole it may be, but I think it’s going to be that RPG game that launches RPGs for a certain age set the same way FFVII (pre tone-deaf remake) did back when. I spent way longer in this game than I needed to and left only once I was confident that there was nothing left to find. All the achievements, all the secret bosses. And that main hidden boss was hard, dude. Absolutely deserved to sweep the game awards.

Darkseed

Darkseed is not a great game. It is, in fact, a soft lock nightmare that asks you to do a number of obscure things in an undefined time limit and when you, inevitably, do not do these things you have no way of understanding, you are locked out of progressing and left to wander the game world like an idiot. It has two selling points. One is that it is based around the art of H.R. Giger and the second is that the studio spent all their money on licensing H.R. Giger so they didn’t have any money left and had to do all the acting roles themselves. The main character, Mike Dawson, is played and voiced by game director, Mike Dawson. His lines are written by Mike Dawson. He is the most Mike Dawson to ever Mike Dawson.

Darkseed 2

This is both a very faithful and a very unfaithful sequel. Even though Mike Dawson the video game writer has nothing to do with the game, Mike Dawson, the cost-cutting self-insert returns to directly continue his adventure by doing things very differently. DS2, standalone, is a much better game. DS1 hated you with secret soft locks and while DS2 does have a few ways to tank your playthrough, it has the decency to let you know. It’s also a lot more self aware and happier to poke a bit of fun at itself.

Mind blowing fact: both these game got a PSX/Saturn port - but only in Japan.

Echo Night

A PS1 Fromsoft horror. Takes the King’s Field engine and tries to tell a weird time traveling ghost story that almost kind of makes sense? It has awkward first person tank controls that I never really got used to, but it was such a bizarre little tale that I powered through. I stole a doll from a grieving father and distracted a homicidal spirit with a mechanic crow.

Echo Night 2

This only got a JP release, but there’s an excellent fan patch in circulation, so I picked this up right after the first game. It’s, more or less, more of the same. Clunky first person horror with dated, awkward controls that plays a big part in how unique it feels. It does a lot better than the first; the story is more cohesive and the game area is considerably larger. This does mean there’s more backtracking than I would have liked, and it doesn’t feel as lean. Still a worthwhile little oddity.

Echo Night Beyond

My least favourite of the three; it seems to drop so much of what made the first games their uniqueness and turns more into an item hunting game with light horror elements. Yet still doesn’t really update the awkward controls. I mean, it tries, but just makes something new and clumsy instead. The last two games were set in the past and had time traveling themes, but this one is set in the future - and in space! A literal horror trope for when a franchise has run out of ideas. Standalone, it’s not a bad game, but it’s a lot less interesting than the other two.

Etrian Odyssey

My current playthrough. Little over 20 hours in and probably around the half way mark. I never finished this on the DS and, while the map drawing aspect obviously works a million times better on the handheld you can actually draw on, the dungeon delving is considerably better on the PC.

Excavation of Hob’s Barrow

It’s a gritty pixel-plotted slow-build horror point and click game, and I adore it. The entire game has this weird sense of wrongness throughout, but you just plough on, doing your mundane excavation stuff in a village full of weirdos (it is up north…) and by the time you’ve figured anything out, you’re screwed. There’s a bit of hate about the way this game ends, but I’m a fan.

Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2

I beat this one back in, yikes, 2018 originally. I picked it back up again to play through it on co-op, and it’s still a blast. Only now I have someone to blame when things go wrong. It’s a mobster-trope loving run and gun where you fight zombies. And nazis. And zombie nazis.

Kathy Rain 2

Did I mention how much I adore slow-burn point and click horror games? Not my best kept secret. Anyway, I reviewed the original Rain back in 2016. Then again in 2021 when they re-released it in better resolution. I picked this one up on launch and did consider keeping the review streak alive. Maybe I’ll revisit. Anyway, it’s a great game that I don’t think quite lives up to the one that came before - it wants to be a stand alone experience, but endgame relies very heavily on prior knowledge.

Mark of the Ninja

Stealth game play done right. Not sure it’s ever been eclipsed. I don’t remember why I picked this back up after so many years, but I ground out all the achievements before putting it back down again. Even the really hard ones that don’t let you kill a guard then hang him from a lampost to give his friends PTSD nightmares for life.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy

This game is an absolute banger that flopped massively due to circumstances outside their control. History lesson, kids; Marvel used to be on top of the world, cranking out billion dollar films that people loved, until people got bored of cape films around the time the quality dropped and the quantity increased. Funny coincidence, that. Anyway, around the time of their apex, Marvel went to Square Enix with two games they wanted made, this one and a live action Avenger game. SE, being successful at the time, had a few high profile developers under their belt. They gave Guardians to Eidos, who did a great job. But a year before, the Crystal Dynamics team also under their umbrella shat out Avengers, and it was a studio killing disaster. No matter how good Guardians was, no one wanted to touch it; it had become tainted by association. It’s a crime, really; it’s a very fun third person shooter but it's a narrative heavyweight. Sure, it tells the same Guardians story that is always told, a team of misfits learn to trust in each other, but it’s so well constructed, both mature and relentlessly goofy, that the trope is buried.

Mass Effect – all of them

Mass Effect

The most Bioware of the series. You know, the good Bioware; not the dribbling skinsuit wearing charlatans we’re forced to suffer now. Anyway, the first Mass Effect is very much a RPG with action elements, which would soon be revered for the rest of the series. It didn’t bother me then, and it didn’t much bother me this time around - the game still holds up great and is added by a lot of quality of life additions by the Legendary Edition I played all three original games under. I still let Kaiden die.

Mass Effect 2

Back when I first played these games, I never got to play a lot of the DLCs. It was beyond my means, so it was neat to go back and fill in these little bits that I missed. And, as 2 was around the time EA bought out Bioware, 2 is the start of the DLC siege. I like 2 a lot; it’s this weird middle ground where it’s trying to shed some of its too-complex-for-casuals RPG roots without abandoning them and I think it does pretty well. It’s more character driven then the first, which is more about advancing the main plot, and all the characters are pretty great in their own way. Aside from Jacob. Fuck Jacob forever.

Mass Effect 3

Look. ME3 is still a good game, but that doesn’t prevent it from being a real drop in writing quality. When it hits highs, like the geth redemption arcs, it’s amazing, but it also has real lows like the lowbar efforts and zero consequences of something like the rachni. It makes promises like all the hard choices you’ve been making will actually mean something, but its success rate on this is maybe 20%. Also, the ending is arse, this is well known. So, for this playthrough I downloaded a bunch of the highest rated user-made mods (including a fanfic ending) and the game was significantly better than the base model. It didn’t fix everything - that was never an issue, but it helped highlight what the game did right.

Didn’t find a mod to remove Jacob, though. And I messed up my chance to kill him off in ME2 like an idiot.

Mass Effect Andromeda

I still can’t decide if this is a poorly written story saved by a really good base game idea, or a really good base game idea ruined by a poorly written story. The idea is Mass Effect in a new galaxy that you’re exploring from scratch, building up your foothold slowly with a series of small cascading victories that sees your presence grow with your success. Sadly, it’s invested with quirky characters and goofy dialogue and modern writing, produced by people convinced they're funny because they roam Reddit each day looking for memes. It’s not the same Bioware. That’s not a hyperbolic statement; the previous team was put to work on Anthem (ha!) and a completely new team made Andromeda. It shows.

Nihilumbra

When I first played this, it was via a review code from Gamergate (the digital storefront) which I’m not sure is even a thing anymore. I seem to be going back to a few games in the last few years on a whim. The pattern continues here; I’m picking at at until I get all the steam achievements then I’ll drop it again. I did not remember the later levels being as bloody hard as they were…

ORCS

Because of how easy it is to wipe your (one) save file and doom yourself to starting again from the start, this will probably be my forever game. It’s a pixel platformer, but it’s bloody hard. I make good progress, get frustrated and come away for a while, then wipe my progress and drop it for months, then reinvent the cycle. I will end you, ORCS, if it’s the last bloody thing I do!

Overblood

I loved this awful little game back when I was hoovering up obscure PSX stuff as my only source of joy (before I gave up on the concept completely). It’s a historic benchmark of sorts, being the first survival horror game to take place in a full mapped 3D environment. Only Overblood’s not very hard to survive and it doesn't have a lot of horror. And its protagonist looks so much like Terrance Stamp from Superman 2 I spent the entire playthrough yelling “KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!” at every encounter I won. You can see it off in about 3-4 hours.

Overblood 2

Back in the PSX days, I also picked up Overblood 2, for much the same reason as I picked up the first. The thing is, 2’s not a kooky sci-fi survival horror like the first, but a JRPG cyberpunk industrial espionage game, and that ridiculous tone shift was exactly the jam I was looking for back when. But, tragically, the game had a fatal bug where if you did some stuff in a certain order, the game crashed and you could not get past the second chapter. This happened to me back when. Twice. And because it was an obscure game, only released in Europe and Japan, I couldn;t find a reason for why I was triggering a crash or how to sidestep it. So this was abandoned, and I was annoyed about it for decades. UNTIL! At the start of the year, I found it had a fan patch and I would finally be able to play it to completion. So I did. Was it worth the multi decade wait? No, not even a little. It’s a painfully slow game, but it’s got so much broken ambition that it can’t hope to make good on, I had to go back through. No regrets.

Phantasnagoria

At the end of this game, you’re playing cat and mouse with a deranged killer through the CG replicated walls of an old mansion while controlling a live action actress. Depending on where you go, you might find yourself in a theatre and spot one of the game’s character’s sitting in the pews. You go to her, grateful that they’re alive but, nope. You would-be killer has scalped the woman and is wearing her frizzy hair as a hat to fool you. I can’t not love this game. Especially since you can bypass this entire section if you’ve been pointing and clicking right and have already gathered up all the items you’re forced to run around the house looking for.

Poco

It’s a free adventure game I saw off in a bit under two hours. It’s charming and fun and kind of adorable with a dark undertone hinting at much more sinister stuff that the game smartly never tries to confirm.

Portal 2

On release, I beat the Portal 2 co-op mode, but never touched the solo campaign. It seemed like an oversight, so I got around to fixing it and – this bit will shock you – found it to be a uniquely sharp, witting puzzle game that rewarded you for thinking way outside the box and trying to break its narrative with funny little easter eggs.

Sunset Overdrive

Recently started. Bit buggy to get running but has some potential. It’s an irrelevant third person sandbox game that turns and entire city into zombies because of the energy drink obsession. It’s much more arcade than simulation, and combat comes down to the weird hybrid of Tony Hawks style grinding and a little too loose gunplay. It’s a little too modern Hollywood quirky humour at times, but something fun to attack in small doses.

Syberia: The Time Before

Got halfway though then stopped. I think it coincided with the PC crash, but now enough time has passed to start a new playthrough rather than trying tio remember where I was. I probably will because I’ve seen the series this far, and Time Before is better in every conceivable way to the horrific rage fuel that was Syberia 3.

Velocibox

I will never stop playing this game. I might go away for a few years, but something drags me back every time. I’ve now hit the ungodly mark of getting to level 9 enough that I’ve triggered Super Velocobox and, dear God, my twitch reflexes are not up to this anymore.

Witcher

I had to review this thanks to Rob (also, by the way, the same deal applies: first person to request a review from anything on this list, and I’ll get that done in the next 6 months or so as a reward for reading this far). It was a fun time, but the obsessive completion in me makes these games 20 hours longer than they need to be by trying to ferret out everything. This meant I could use my save data in the next game. So I spent hours making sure I had the best swords and the best armour, which you start 2 with and is completely obsolete by the end of Chapter 1. Hurmph. Still, I had sex with a plant girl AND a fish girl. 60 hours well spent.

Yakuza 5

This neverending bloody series is so good, even when you’re playing through the years when they’re trying to pretend people care about any of the other characters as much as Kazuma. Still, 5 was wild; Kazuma goes on his usual one man war against underworld criminals that have wronged him while the other cast members… go hunting in the snowy mountains. Or start baseball grudges, only, to the death! Or be a super adorable idol and learn complex dance routines then use them to take part in illegal street battles. Also, Kazuma drives a taxi in this one and does missions where he’s docked points for pulling off too fast or clipping the curbs on corners. Once I clear my plate, it’s time for 6.

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