I didn't post this in July because I didn't think I'd have enough to comment on with some of those. Now there's a bunch. Ah well.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (Steam): as a big fan of Golden Idol I don't think it's a huge surprise I loved Duck Detective. Fun voice acting the whole way through, a solid buildup over an initially-silly premise, the act of building a long-term collection of words and clues to play with is cool. Also it's hard to hate a game with a quack button.
Dark Forces Remastered (Steam): It's fine! It's a good remaster! Interesting bonus stuff! It remains Dark Forces, which is a bit of a maze in spots, but surmountable.
I died after killing the final boss because his projectiles were still going off but we'll just pretend that didn't happen.
Power Wash Simulator: Alice's Adventures (Steam): Now, I'm Alice-biased. I am predestined to like Alice content. With that said, I actually think this is one of the best DLC sets they've done. The maps are collectively pretty big and all have really unique shapes to 'em, and unlike some of the other themed DLCs (BttF, FFVII, and 40K being the big offenders) they aren't asking you to deal with a bunch of tiny objects that're hard to get around and hit from weird angles. Loved it, more like this please.
Street Fighter Alpha (Arcade Stadium): I'm gonna be honest here, at this point I largely boot up Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 to get the like fifty Steam trading cards to drop, you get a slew of drops for it because it's functionally 30-something purchases. I don't even really use the cards for anything it just annoys me when there's still drops remaining for games in my inventory.
SFA would be a perfectly solid game if Alpha 2 wasn't sitting right there next to it. I don't think a lot of games are necessarily made obsolete by improved sequels, but this one very much was.
SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter Galaxy Patrol (Arcade): This was largely me going "wait that's been fully dumped in English? lemme go look" more then anything. It's like five minutes long but it has the wildest Sonic voice you could conceptualize.
Manhunter (PC): huh, wild. A new(ish) big(ish) game on this list. World must be ending.
I would've liked Manhunter if I didn't have so many damn technical issues, it adored crashing like no game I've played in awhile. It does make Hopping Out Of The Water And Eating Some Dudes pretty satisfying because it is good at making it clear that everyone in the area kinda sucks a whole lot of ass-you are extremely doing the world a favor by chomping down on weird golf-playing NIMBYs.
I started the DLC, too, but didn't finish it-the difficulty spike immediately felt more annoying then anything else and the conspiracy theory comedy doesn't work when every one of those "comical" ideas can be read in full sincerity on twitter, posted by someone who genuinely believes the chemtrails are full of the blood of aborted children, harvested by trans people that were hand-picked for the duty by Biden.
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Arcade): Always great, always has been, always will be. Just one of Capcom's best brawlers. Not a whole lot else to say, but if you haven't played it, get to it-it's never had a home release but it's quite easy to emulate and you can be in and out in under an hour.
Blade Arcus From Shining (Steam): what a nothing fighting game
Every so often I see this in my library and go "oh yeah I never got all the achievements in that" and do another playthrough but that's about it; it's not got the sauce to hold my attention long. At current pace I'll have beaten it as everyone by like 2035.
like a hundred free Power Wash updates (Steam): these all came out rapid fire, they should sloooow down
it's collectively five maps, for free, and they're all pretty good, large enough to be compelling and intricate but not large enough that I wouldn't casually replay 'em. I also think it's very funny we're still dealing with one of these clients in particular.
Shadowbringers (PC): it took me 28 months but we're done
(not, like, playing regularly.)
Shadowbringers does something weird that I suspect wasn't necessarily intended, which is that I think The First, this alien world, feels more like home then The Source does, to me. I can point to some aesthetic and tonal similarities to Vana'diel, which is very much home, but also I think they did a better job with this writing team of making me care. I think it was a little inconsistent in spots-Ravel and Well are really small bland dungeons relative to the others, the Eulmore stuff got wrapped up really abruptly-but when it's good it's real good.
CLICKOLDING (PC): this is a very silly concept that kinda hit for me. It's a sleazy thing where a man in a mask wants you to do something silly for him in exchange for a live-changing amount of money. It becomes clear very quickly that one of you is not leaving this shitty motel room alive. It becomes more clear that someone else is watching.
It's just a little eerie, it's just a little smutty, it's a little funny. Perfect mix.
Broken Lens (Steam): So this is a spot-the-difference game from the perspective of a robot who has one damaged eyepiece, showing you the same angle twice over. This is a cute idea, and it is accentuated with a sort of grim tone and a dying world. Lot of junk lying around, lot of other broken down robots. Conceptually, I dig this.
Practically I think it occasionally misses the mark. The parallax scrolling hides differences quite well in some spots, requiring the player to think less about spotting something different and more about scanning the same areas over and over zooming in and out. It's a tiny bit jank in terms of things occasionally getting a bit weird-I had multiple things layer over one another and my journal in a quantum-state of being opened and closed once or twice-but those were infrequent. I liked it, think the asking price is reasonable. Music's solid, too.
Kirby's Halloween Adventure (NES romhack): Neat! Actually a pretty good layer of spritework here, lot of character in the new ability icons and some of the new monsters. It's good handiwork. Some stages have changed more then others, but on the whole this was a fantastic lil' thing to poke through real quick.
My Little Pony: Dr. Discord's Conquest (NES romhack): this one is some damned impressive work on some levels, honestly! it's a lil' iffy on some other ones-the hitboxes are a bit weird, certain things just kinda feel off (the timing on the shielded changelings, for instance). But dang that's some effort tossed into it. Fluttershy just having Snake Man's weapon is pretty funny.
Shadowbringers 5.1 (PC): it's on this site as a separate game I get to count it as such, goddammit
I actually like FFXIV's downtime sequences quite a bit, and so I was pretty into some of this. It's nice to be able to take a lil' while and just go "wait how is Kholusia gonna EAT right now." There's buildup to the bigger stuff that'll be hitting me after, sure, but it's fine, it's not the primary focus, and it's not bad.
The dungeon didn't cough up the armor with a tail, though.
Chained Together (PC): right-click Uninstall "are you sure you want to-" yes
it's got a couple clever and creative sort of things in it, but it's still One Of These Games, except now with a multiplayer element so you can get annoyed by one person hanging back because they think it's funny.
Haunted Castle Revisited (Steam, via Castlevania Dominus Collection): Hell yeah this rules. You might say it whips, even.
Eh? Eh?
...honestly, it's a touch on the easy side, but y'know what, for how much HC has injured people with Version M I think that's fair play. Lovely art and cool remixes, it's just a very fun classicvania that they snuck up on us with. Into this.
Fisher-Price titles, two of them (NES): look sometimes it's 4AM and you're loopy from vaccine fatigue but also vaccine insomnia and you go "y'know what I should go get RetroAchievements done on a couple edutainment games"
that's free points babey
anyway these have the most annoying soundscapes I've experienced in a game lately.