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Freedom Planet 2 ★★★★☆
I finished this game last year as Lilac but I played a bit more this year as Neera and did the true final boss as Lilac after I learnt that it existed. Really good game and I do need to play through it as the other characters at some point.
Spark the Electric Jester 3 ★★★★★
I was a Kickstarter backer for it and I had played through the entire game in the pre-release beta but I only got around to playing it through post-release this year as well as playing all the levels from 2 that were added post-release. Absolutely wonderful game.
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog ★★★★☆
When this was announced I expected to hate it. I thought it was going to be some irony poisoned self-deprecating “haha Sonic is so cringe and visual novels are stupid dating sims and we know it’s cringe so that makes it funny” affair like the tone of the Sonic Twitter account was for a while, but then I heard it was actually a cute little story featuring the wider Sonic cast that is just sincerely enthusiastic about bouncing their personalities off each other. And that’s entirely true! The autorunner minigame was occasionally frustrating and had to be done a bit too many times but this was just a really fun little romp with the Sonic cast.
F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn ★★★☆☆
A friend was replaying the entire F.E.A.R. series and I offered to be a co-op partner for F.3.A.R., which I had never gotten around to playing. I had also never played this small expansion for F.E.A.R. 2 so I decided to use it to derust myself a bit. It was obviously intended to be for someone who had finished the main game and there were some areas I got a bit stuck on for a while. It didn’t really feel like there was anything much new or super interesting here but as a mini-campaign to have a quick gauntlet of all the different mechanics of F.E.A.R. 2 and remind myself out it all works it was good.
F.3.A.R. ★★★☆☆
Oh my god I laughed so hard when the played Mother over the end credits. I don’t think I could recommend playing this game outside of co-op. It feels like a step down in a lot of ways. Less variety, more generic, constant annoying popups about challenges to get 200 headshots with X gun or whatever, a campaign where levels feel completely disconnected from each other. But hell a co-op campaign is almost always going to be fun unless the game is a complete and utter slog and this isn’t one. I had a blast and it and having someone to riff on the bad jumpscares with (we would say “Hi, mom!” every time Alma popped up) made the obligatory horror elements funny rather than just pathetic.
Sonic the Hedgehog: Project ’06 - Silver levels ★★★☆☆
Over time ChaosX has started taking more and more liberties with this Sonic 06 remake and it is for the better. This is a game that obviously needs a tuneup. Giving Silver more tools and making him faster helps a lot with making his levels not just a slow slog of walking to the next area and doing the same ground slam-pick everything-up combo to clear every wave of enemies and Amy has just been completely redone as a character. I honestly didn’t hate the original ’06 but if he manages to really complete the rest of the game (and even getting the main levels finished there is still an awful lot to go) it will definitely be the better way of playing through it.
Old Site ★★★★☆
Short little mod of the Pico-8 version of Celeste taking elements from the second level of Big Celeste. Not much to say other than it’s a fun little game.
Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle ★★★★☆
After testing that I could run Tears of the Kingdom in an emulator I decided to just sell my Switch because I barely used it at all any more. I still haven’t gotten around to playing Tears of the Kingdom but I did make sure to finish off some games I had on the Switch before getting rid of it. First was this. I was actually on the last level already but had put it away for a while as I was finding it a bit of a slot. The star rating here is definitely for the overall game and not for the part that I played this year. It overstayed its welcome a bit and I had absolutely no desire to play the bonus challenge levels, but for most part Mario X-COM is shockingly good. It wouldn’t have taken many changes for this to get five stars off me and I can’t be arsed nitpicking the problems I had with it.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword ★★★☆☆
The other Switch game I finished before selling it. I feel a bit pained giving it only three as I did love this game a lot when I played it on the Wii and even though the Switch port actually smooths out a lot of the more annoying parts of the game (the fact that they made a trailer to show off Fi annoying you less is hilarious) it is still a bit unbearably hand-holding and time-wasting in a way that replaying it highlights a lot. I like a lot of the parts of the game that other people don’t, I like the motion control combat and all the gimmicks, I like the Silent Realm challenges, I really like playing this game, but so often the game wants me to sit through more unbearable repetitive dialogue and fetch quests and “puzzles” that it won’t actually let you solve until it’s already had Fi tell you the answer outright to get to the next part.
Setris/Sandtrix ★★★☆☆
Cute little Tetris/Falling Sand Game hybrid that was forced to change it’s name due to legal issues. Worth a quick play with.
Grimace’s Birthday ★★☆☆☆
McDonald’s releasing a promotional novelty Game Boy Colour game is cute. It is pretty functional, very playable, and short enough to not be boring. Starting with the skateboard level was strange but I guess it’s attention-getting in a way starting with a normal level would not have been.
Crypt of the Necrodancer ★★☆☆☆
Played co-op with a friend. It seems like a good game but I’ve just never been able to get into the rogue-lite structure much.
Vampire Survivors ★★☆☆☆
See above.
Cortex Command ★★☆☆☆
Played with the same friend again. It’s a cute little toy that I would probably be up for exploring more but it also feels like a set of mechanics in want of an actual game in a lot of ways.
Team Fortress 2 Classic ★★★★☆
Having a version of Team Fortress 2 that is cut back to be less of a mess is lovely. No ugly cosmetics and a much smaller set of weapons that all have a reason to exist (mostly, I feel that some of the trailer weapons feel like they’re just there for the sake of it) is great. Love the Pyro’s alts especially.
Sonic CD (& Knuckles) ★★★☆☆
I have played Sonic CD before but could never get into it compared to other Sonic games. It doesn’t really work if you just try to treat it as a game where you just get to the end of the level. So this time I played it differently. It was the Sonic Origins version and I played as Knuckles and did a self-imposed challenge where in every level I would go to the bad future version of a level, then back to the past to find the roboticiser and hologram, destroy them, then go back to the good future version of the level to finish it. Also I put on the North American soundtrack this time just for the sake of listening to new music too.
It worked? At least I had more fun than when I previously played it. There was a sense of proper exploration and challenge in that exploration, even if I would have sometimes liked a hint about where the bloody machines are. Knuckles’ glide was also very handy for doing time travel with. Still not my favourite Sonic game by a wide margin but I actually had fun with it this time. I have it in the back of my mind to maybe try making a mod that starts you in the bad future for every level and removes the ending signpost from every version of the map except for the good future to force you to play it this way.
Pseudoregalia ★★★★★
Fantastic little metroidvania with incredibly satisfying movement. The only games I think compare in terms of just the joy of the movement of the game in 3D is the Spark the Electric Jester series. It’s also not too long at all. Play it.
Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon ★★★☆☆
While I was streaming this to some friends one of them said “this is the least designed game ever made” and I couldn’t disagree. While the base game felt disjointed this felt like they were just throwing random shit at the wall and not even checking to see what worked or not. It is both extremely fun and extremely frustrating and all of it feels broken. You get all these platforming challenges for the new characters and once you start upgrading them they can break them wide open and bypass most of the intended platforming, but in a way that is fun. Knuckles climbing is janky, the super boost ability of every character is both overpowered as hell and awkward to use, Tails’ wrench attack is baffling, all of them are basically incapable of fighting the upgraded minibosses, but they’re still really fun to use.
The new cyberspace have a similar feel. Like the platforming challenges they are completely constructed of boxes and layers of hundreds of platforms instead of bespoke level geometry, but they have also taken all the guiderails off. There are no invisible walls, ramps are not scripted in the trajectory they send you any more, you are free to fling yourself in different directions with your momentum and some paths require you to do so. It is very much unlike any other 3D Sonic level design in ways that feel half-baked but very promising. I hope someone in Sonic Team has played Spark 3 and discovered you can just let players move freely and it still works! The spindash they added especially breaks the levels in ways that are ridiculous but also very fun.
If they can build on this in a Sonic Frontiers 2 that is more polished but more open and free it could be wonderful.
Seeing Sonic just going full Dragon Ball finally for the main game boss fights in the base game was very fun but the new final boss takes it to new heights. Like everything else it is a bit awkward and fiddly but I forgive it entirely for just fully trying to be the coolest thing a twelve year old has ever seen.
On the other hand fuck the towers climbs and fuck the challenges. What the fuck. Nothing in the base game was remotely this difficult and it is not difficult in ways that are fun. I did not want to play Only Up or have to learn how to do perfect speedruns of all the bossfights. The upgraded minibosses are just not fun either. I was just actively avoiding ever going near them. The new ending is also just worse than the original. Sage’s sacrifice was very obvious and by the numbers as was Robotnik finding her on a backup harddrive or whatever in the end credits, but removing it just undermines both of their character development. And The End doesn’t even get the barebones characterisation it got in the original ending from its monologue.
Dark Souls ★★★☆☆
I played this when it first came out on PC a decade ago and hated it. I decided to give it another go and with a heavy heart I have to admit that, if you just give up and look up guides to tell you how the basic mechanics actually work, it’s quite fun. Some annoying bullshit even beyond the opaqueness but the general combat mechanics are good fun. I just have to fight Nito for the last big soul and I’ve taken a detour to the expansion area before I finish the game and I’m at the Manus fight in that. Mostly rocking a halberd and painting guardian sword.