by niflhe
An on-going list of every game I played in 2025 (for at least an hour or so). The list is written over the course of a year, so any breaks in time are denoted with dashes between paragraphs.
Showing 1-10 of 79 items
Still haven't quite gotten this game figured out, what it wants from me, what it's asking for. It seems like everyone has very stratified roles that they need to fit into, because trying to min-max or get everyone everything is not a good use of my time.
I'm lucky that I didn't have the Legacy of the Wizard as a kid because I could very easily see it becoming my entire personality. It's one of the most fascinating games I've played recently as well as being one of the most frustrating. Inscrutable but ambitious. The premise is simple: you're a family of six (and a dog) living on top of a gigantic labyrinth with a dragon trapped inside of a painting that the family is trying to kill. In order to kill the dragon, you'll need to find four crowns to unlock the Dragon Slayer and then slay the dragon. Each member of the family has different abilities or items that they can use in order to move around sections of the labyrinth that are specifically suited for them. For example, the daughter can jump the highest and a lot of her section deals with jumping puzzles. The father gets a magic glove that lets him push blocks around that forms the basis for his entire section. The dog is invincible to monsters. Something that I found really novel is that almost none of the items for each character are in their own section. Would I have naturally found this out on my own? Absolutely not. But it's kinda cool! You find the dad's items as the dog but then you switch to the dad who finds items for another family member and so forth. This upward progression, item acquisition, and slow learning of the labyrinth as you head in over and over again is an early metroidvania and I think that's rad. It is, unfortunately, one of the worst feeling games I've played. Every attack uses energy and even basic enemies take a few hits. The claustrophobic nature of the pathways and layouts just invites enemies to gang up on you and drain your health. The item drops are based on need, so if you're low on health then you better hope you aren't lower or keys or gold. If you're full up on everything, the game just loves spawning poison after poison for you to pick up. Jumping around feels bad and imprecise, with fall damage for if you fall even a few blocks. One character gets high jump shoes and damages herself every time she lands because she jumps too high. Hilarious, but also frustrating when you keep killing yourself trying to reach a certain platform. In order to actually get the Dragon Slayer, there's a teleporter puzzle across the entire map that's not even remotely hinted at. I'm glad I played it, but I'm equally glad I used a walkthrough because there's just so much going on all the time.
Brandish is one of the handful of PSP games I actually bought on release because I thought it was hilarious that XSEED released a digital only PSP game in 2015. I didn't get particularly far into it. I was looking for a dungeon crawler recently, though, and the mood struck me just right. It doesn't quite scratch the itch that Etrian Odyssey has left behind, but covering each floor slowly and surely to make sure you uncover every nook and cranny was great. Some of the floors, like the entire Dark Zone and some of the Fortress, aren't exactly the most fun in the world but it's still a good time conquering them. Wrapped this one up in about fifteen hours and just had a smile on my face the entire time, even when I ventured into a hallway that's all boulders that immediately crush you (and disables your warp magic, which is extremely funny). --- Dela mode might be better than the main mode, tbh. --- Wrapped up! Dela mode has some incredible bullshit throughout, but the latter half has some of my favorite floors in all of the game. One of the funniest things in the world is there's a door that has a 500,000 Gold price tag to enter and then, when you finally sell enough items to make it through the door, only has the three elemental rings, each with one use only. Incredible gag (but there's more behind those chests if you jump over). The final boss got demolished with Quake and MP potion spam, but I did enjoy it. I think Brandish has quickly become one of my favorite PSP games of all time. I really love this game to bits.
I was one of the earlier Pokemaniacs, that first wave of fifth graders when Pokemon slammed into the shores of North America. My friends at the after school program were talking about some kind of cool monster collecting game on their Game Boys and I quickly became obsessed, especially after getting a copy of Pokemon Blue for my birthday that September in 1998. Pokemon consumed me: the game, the show, anything and everything I could get my hands on. Arguments about which game was better based on the exclusive Pokemon took up entire weeks of my life back then (It's Blue. Blue has Vulpix and Sandshrew, it's Blue). One of my first and only blog posts here on Giantbomb dot com is about early Pokemon and how broken the game is. And, let's be clear, it's entirely busted. Several Pokemon are just clearly better than others and the entire catalog of Psychic types can just wreck your day in any number of ways. The inventory system is limited to twenty spots in your bag and fifty spots in your PC and, in a game where there are 50 individual move teaching TMs and no way to transfer moves or breed Pokemon to pass moves around, this sucks. Plus all of the other items you can pick up and keep around! Even things I think of as the basic way Pokemon works aren't here. The box system is limited to twenty Pokemon and if it fills up, you have to trek all the way back to a Pokemon Center to swap boxes. There's no way to see which Pokemon is in which box. You can't set certain items to Select to use them without having to dig through the menu. Using HMs to navigate through the world also requires digging through the menu. It's such a time consuming waste, all of these menus on menus that feel barely held together. And yet. There's some kind of magic in here, something propulsive that keeps me moving forward and having a great time. It's probably just the nostalgia but I think it's a fun time, warts and all. I solo'd the Elite Four with just a Starmie and that felt pretty great, tbh. --- All of my RetroAchievements got shuffled over to the Red version due to splitting the games, so I replayed through all of Pokemon Blue again. Still great!
I want to love Chibi-Robo, but I don't think I've ever played a game that was in as dire need of a fast-forward button as this one. The intro takes nearly half an hour and is so limiting that I found myself bouncing off. You can barely go from one end of a room to another without having to stop and recharge and your partner Telly loves to stop you every few minutes to chat. It's infuriating.
I feel nothing for these characters and that's maybe the death knell, not for my interest in the series but for this game in particular. I do not care about Rean or his entire deal and I definitely do not care about Crow, even a little. I basically solved the combat by the mid-point of the game where Fie had 100% dodge and Laura was just an "I Win" button. The little bit where you play as Lloyd and Rixia comes out of absolutely nowhere, imagine playing this back in the day before those games came officially, you'd be so lost. Once we went back to Rean, I was so annoyed, we had it all, two of my favorite characters and now we're back to chucklefuck mcgee, god he's so frustrating. ---- The ending boss literally saying "none of this matters, this is all hollow" and the characters saying "yeah, but even so" is the most on the nose thing. None of this matters. Nothing matters. We are in the belly of the terrible Falcom machine and the machine is bleeding to death. I open up my wallet and it's full of 'haha's'. Awful game. Turbo mode made it barely tolerable.
My usual way of playing shmups is to credit spam my way as far into the game as I can and then give up if I don't beat it, content to have a good time as long as the continues roll in. But, what does mastery look like? Learning systems, mechanics, patterns. Figuring out the ways to get every little bit out of a game that pushes back against you? I found a list of easy-ish 1ccs and GG Aleste was on the 'spicier' side. Difficult but not too difficult for a beginner. Well, I had a truly great time getting the Normal mode 1cc in GG Aleste. Just one of the greats. Easy to pick up but tricky to master. Just a great time.
aka GG Aleste 2. More of the same as GG Aleste! More varied abilities and a shield powerup if you get twenty weapon pick ups made this one slightly quicker to 1cc, but I don't think I'm as good at it as I am at GG Aleste. The napalm special weapon destroys bullets on hit which makes things a lot easier.
My current game with my daughter, though she did rebel against this one for a bit because "it's not the one I'm used to!" I get it, kid, but I think Banana Rumble is a much better experience than Banana Mania. A lot of this comes down to the designs of the levels themselves - Banana Mania being a best of Monkey Ball 1+2 means that the levels were specifically designed for a different controller and a different method of playing. Rolling your monkey on an extremely precise path is easier when you have an exact method of holding up at all times, like on a Gamecube controller. I still enjoyed Banana Mania but definitely got frustrated if I wasn't holding exactly up. Banana Rumble instead leans into the strengths of modern controllers. The playfields are less about 'can you navigate this precise path' and more 'can you find the way through' and I think that's more interesting. And also there's a boost dash so you can just shortcut your way through a lot and that feels great every time.
Another in my quest of 'Hey how many Shmups do I own that I can 1cc?" Crimzon Clover is just a delight. I made it to the top 140 based on score in Novice mode and I am starting to get the itch of "okay how high can I take this??". Truly incredible, highly recommend. After spending the time getting that Novice mode 1cc, I immediately jumped into trying a different ship and got another 1cc. I tried with the third ship and didn't quite make it, but got so close. Just amazing, even my failures are fun.