by niflhe
It's another year, time for some more games that I played for at least an hour.
(I write these over the course of the year, so any passages of time are denoted by dashes between paragraphs)
Showing 1-10 of 100 items
The first case of Great Ace Attorney 2 has you play as a different character and it's phenomenal, I love this, game of the year. --- God, case two drags though. I understand why it exists on a conceptual level, but I'm not the biggest fan of "well this thing happened in the meantime and now we'll never talk about it again". The set-up for case 3 seems pretty fantastic, though. Love a good mad scientist.
Growing up, I played a lot of handheld games. The price point of consoles and their games meant that I only ever had a few to pick from unless I was renting from the local video shop or borrowing a game from a friend. Couple that with the commitment of turning on a TV, game console, and sitting down in front of a game for a dedicated period of time that I may or may not have always had and it's easy to see why I drifted to handhelds with their easy pop in and pop out nature. I still do this now, even with hundreds of games and dozens of consoles - I'll pick up my Switch or GBA before plunking down in front of the TV. Anyway, Aria of Sorrow was among one of my favorite games as a teenager and holds up just as well today. Beautiful to look at, a delight to listen to, and tons of customization and replayability. Soma is such a fun protagonist, a boy in the longest coat, who is completely out of his element and also able to absorb the souls of the enemies he beats while the adults around him scheme and try to one-up each other. I think I just love how many options are available. All kinds of weapons that each play slightly differently, tons of enemy abilities and spells to utilize, and a really fun second story mode where you play as a more traditional Castlevania protagonist. I just adore using all kinds of different abilities (though I tend to just look for the Lightning Doll and Force Lightning my way through the game). I absolutely love this game and consider it my favorite Casltevania. Look, there's a reason why Bloodstained is basically just Aria of Sorrow 2.0.
Living proof of "out of sight, out of mind" - I apparently played this for about a dozen hours in 2021 and it didn't show up in my Steam recently played so I completely forgot to talk about it! That's also because it's largely forgettable. Serving as a coda to the Trails in the Sky series, the Sky the 3rd takes all of the characters you know and love and throws them into a remix dungeon, while learning about the mysterious green-haired priest that appeared in Trails Second Chapter. At it's core, it's a fanservice game that lets you make parties of whatever characters you wish. More of the same, but the same is really, really good. I've heard this game sets up the overall plot beats of the Trails series going forward, but having played a future game in the series I have not tripped over that just yet. --- Okay, so yeah, it does kind of setup later games but it's not, strictly speaking, NECESSARY as some have made it sound. I'm gonna miss this gang of dumbasses.
I will never learn Mahjong, you can't make me.
Oh, Ys. Nihon Falcom's other long-running series (Dragon Slayer is, technically, what leads into the Trails series and has been around since 1985. The first Ys is from 1987!), Ys has always been a favorite of mine for its incredible soundtracks and action slashing gameplay. Ys VIII maintains that same formula as previous games - Adol crash lands on an island and sets to explore - but keeps the party system from Ys Seven and the Oath in Felghana. And, look. Look. I get it Falcom. You want Adol to be a blank slate so that you don't have to write characterization beyond "red haired boy loves adventure and swords" but the party system is so bad! I hate having a bunch of randos with grating personalities that I have to use in order to actually beat some enemies. And it's never that interesting to use the rapier lady to stab a bird or the farting axe wielder to smash a crab because I usually just want to use Adol!
I beat Technobabylon last year, finally, after several years of trying and jumped into a new WadjetEye game almost immediately. Unavowed is a fun modern magic tale, so far.
I am bad at boomer shooters and I'm at peace with that.
The Pokemon game I always imagined. I fell off at some point and desperately need to get back to it, but something about stealthing my way through the countryside, chucking a ton of balls at unaware Bidoofs was just so exciting.
A very chill, slightly too horny for its own good, 3-star 'fans of the genre' JRPG. And sometimes that's what I need, especially in this, the neverending nightmare that is existence. Sometimes you want some fun Grandia-style turn based combat mixed with low-key cutscenes of gal pals going on dates. I'm not going to sit here and say it's the most amazing game I've ever played in my life—the framerate is dodgy, non-boss encounters are laughably easy, sidequests are super boring—but I had a good time. It's like the best bits of a slice-of-life anime. One of your support partners can kick a can into a boss's face and, in that same turn, you can have another partner summon in a DRONE STRIKE. A land of contrasts, this one.
I've always appreciated the Monkey Ball series from afar, never quite being able to wrap my head around some of the harder stages in the series, but still managing to have a good time. Banana Mania is the first Monkey Ball game I *get*, at least in that I understand exactly how I'm fucking up and really considering getting a Gamecube Adapter so I can have consistent eight-way movement. When a game makes me want to buy things to get better at it? That's a good game, baby.