Games Completed 2023

Entertainment!
41

Spider-Man 7/10

Didn’t disappoint, this. Some of the best combat I’ve experienced in a video game. So satisfying, fluid and creative with the gadgets. I actually enjoyed the Spiderman stealth parts - I’ve noticed these getting a bit of heat from other players, but they were a good change of pace and never really felt too difficult. New York is mindblowing tbh - can’t really believe the level of detail they managed. Ran and looked lovely on the Steamdeck, so no complaints there either. Really enjoyed the rag-tag sack of villains it throws at you too. HOWEVER, I really, really, REALLY fucking hated the parts it makes you play as characters that aren’t Spiderman. apujurrasicpark.jpg. There’s a way to handle pacing in a game like this, and this ain’t it. I also thought the web swinging and traversal around the city could have been better - just felt like I was flying everywhere, momentum was too easy to achieve, and I ended up just spamming the web-zip move over and over. The street crimes could have been a bit more varied, and I didn’t think much of the minigames you do in the lab but easily avoided for the most part. Anyway, a very good game, could have been really great had they nailed the web swinging and not elected to shoehorn in a crappy stealth game with the world’s most boring, low stakes characters.

1 Like
42
  1. God Of War: Ragnarok

it’s not a 10/10 all timer but it is very good. As a piece of work it’s hugely impressive: art, direction, gameplay, music, even voice acting.
I struggled to care too much about the story because I hate the kid, but Odin is a great baddie.
Combat is somewhere inbetween Botw and Elden Ring and that’s fine.

old school score: 86%

3 Likes
43

Firewatch 8/10

Feels weird reviewing this and even giving it a score out of 10 because its like more or less nothing I’ve played before, but yeah, I really enjoyed it. Very immersive and pretty. Really felt like I was actually there during the more tense bits. There are little bits of detail that I absolutely love - the kid’s secret den, the letters you find from people you’ll never meet, and the animation of Henry going down the stairs from the tower where he ducks a little bit as it’s obviously not level. That sort of detail - the imperfections in the world that are never covered in video games, films, tv etc - really made me happy for some reason. Not really bothered with how it ends, which seems to be the sore point for most people having read a couple of reviews after finishing it, but I’d have liked…a bit more story? A few more things to do? Idk. Kind of feels unfinished in a way. Also would have liked a fucking massive gun to kill n00bs with, which I’m also having to deduct a point for.

7 Likes
44

Resident Evil 3 Remake

Bit of a disappointment. It’s good pulpy fun like all RE, but it’s not a patch on 2. The shift to a more action orientated approach doesn’t play to the series’ strengths, and it’s very slight - feels more like a substantial DLC episode than a full game. I’ve completed the RE2 Remake four times this year, but I doubt I’ll be going back to this.

45

Thought this too then ended up going back to 3 a lot cos it’s so short and snappy

1 Like
46

2. Pentiment

Yeah this was really great. In terms of branching narrative games, I’ve rarely played one where I really felt the weight of my decisions like this, and also how easy it is to make a “bad” decision, or that a lot of decisions are pretty grey rather than good or bad.

I really liked how you have to choose how to spend your time following up on different leads, so that you never have the full information for each of the murder mysteries. Really gave those decisions a lot of weight.

Spoilers for both this and Red Dead Redemption 2

Find it kind of funny how both of the games I’ve finished this year are of the “main character ‘dies’ and you play as another character for the extended final act” variety.

2 Likes
47

Really need to finish this

Played act 1 but was getting really stressed out as time was ticking down, thinking I was gonna get a game over screen :sweat_smile:. Then I realised what was going on

1 Like
48

Would advise you to finish it sooner rather than later as I did similar to you and was struggling to remember who all the characters were in the subsequent acts

1 Like
49
  1. Stray

it’s a bit like Inside, but easier and you’re a cat. Makes the controller do a meow.
Music is surprisingly great

74%

2 Likes
50

Pentiment

Whole bag full of mixed feelings about this game…

The story is great, the art is gorgeous, the characters are well drawn and interact with each other brilliantly. The game world is superb and I love the Name of the Rose esque plot. All cracking stuff.

And yet… It’s barely a game. Part of me wonders if it wouldn’t have worked better as a graphic novel. Almost all the time you’re just reading text on screen, think I would have much preferred it on switch cos it felt more like a reading experience than a playing one. There were a few places where the branching narrative demanded decisions and therefore a game structure but I felt like I wanted to actually play something when I sit down with a controller in hand. Dunno.

Well well worth playing if you like the concept, mind you.

2 Likes
51

1 - God of War Ragnorak - PS5
2 - Citizen Sleeper - Switch
3 - Cultist Simulator - Switch
4 - Tinykin - Switch

I am classing both Cultist Simulator and Citizen Sleeper on my completed list as I have at least got to one of the successful ending in both games.

Citizen Sleeper is a really interesting game with minimal graphics (you basically just see a view of a spaceship that you can maneuver around to progress the story and complete task by using your daily allotted dice and trying to fill up meters to complete each task). The plot is really interesting (You are a human that wakes up on a strange space ship to find you have been digitized and put into a robot body.and you are on the run from the company that owns that robot). The many branching story arcs definitely support repeat playthroughs and the writing and characters you meet are really great and fleshed out well.

Cultist Simulator - man that has a difficult learning curve in that there are no instructions and the main game mechanic is not easy to pick up but when it does click the game is really satisfying, who doesn’t enjoy an overly complicated Lovcraftian horror card-based simulator? I think playing on the Switch definitely added to the challenge (I had died 20-30 times before I realised there was another screen I could be looking at in the game to pick up new cards to use).

Tinykins was a hell of a lot of fun. I decided to check it out after @riverwise mentioned it up the thread and seeing there was a free demo to try it out on the Switch. Great fun game full of exploration and mini puzzles to solve by throwing (literally) a host of cute little critters at them that you collect as you explore each area,

Games Abandoned
Days Gone I was having a lot of fun with this sneaking around, stealthily taking out zombies and enemies, picking them off and then running in and clearing out the rest when there were a handful left but then the game decided to force me to ignore that and threw 100s of zombies at me in one go and forced me to run around like a headless chicken trying to throw bombs until my stamina depleted and they caught up with me and killed me. Stopped enjoying it at that point so it’s on to something else.

4 Likes
52

Just remembered that there’s actually an option in settings to tune how quickly they start giving you hints! I only found it half way through the game though.

Think I left mine on default tbh, need all the help I can get :upside_down_face:

1 Like
53

They need to make that more obivous then as I looked for something like that after the first couple of puzzles but could not find anything in the setting that suggested it could be turned off! Ironcally I needed a hint to find out how to turn off the hints.

1 Like
54
  1. Hi Fi Rush
    Not sure about this one. I adored the graphics, absolutely crushing on Peppermint a lot, and the music and level design was ace.

But.

I’m just shit at it. The parrying is crap, the QTE stuff was trash every single time, and I never ever felt like I was in control. I’ll never remember the combos so I just bumped the difficulty down and mashed the buttons, always forgetting you were meant to time them to the beat. And then some of the platforming was a bit annoying too, just strung together in bits to eek out the levels.

7/10.

55

  1. Hi-Fi Rush

  2. Metroid Prime Remastered. Loved this the first time I played the original about 20 years ago. First time playing it again, and had a brilliant time. Such a good remaster. Looks great, controls are better, while still feeling like the game that I remembered. Nuts that all the layouts of places, the sounds of everything and how to do things were still lodged very clearly in my brain. Feels like it’s a game that’s good at getting you to pay attention - working out how to get where you need to, looking at for hidden stuff and scanning for info. etc.

3 Likes
56

I don’t get a lot of time to play games these days but my wife was out last night and I stuck on A Short Hike. What a charming game! So chilled out too. I had only intended to have a quick blast while my dinner was cooking but played the whole thing, some of it one handed while eating, in about 2 hours. I’m going to show it to my wife and daughter when I know they’ll have a few hours free to play it themselves

7 Likes
57

  1. Vampire Survivors

  2. Hellblasters

  3. Cosmo Dreamer

Brilliant bullet hell, really inventive patterns, simple but intuitive weapons system and great soundtrack. Beat the TLB on a normal run.

  1. Super Mario Land

Great soundtrack. Tight platforming. Just a smart little game. Nintendo should take the shmup segments and make a full blown Mario Gunners title.

58

One of my fav games of the past few years. Utterly charming

1 Like
59

  1. Vampire Survivors

  2. Hellblasters

  3. Cosmo Dreamer

  4. Super Mario Land

  5. Super Mario Land 2: Six Gold Coins

More Mario magic. Still simple but some lovely elements, really nice design (the light through the windows in the pumpkin zone is so amazingly done given the Gameboy limitations). Last boss is a bastard but that’s what emulating with infinite save states is for.

Was also funny to encounter bosses I remember absolutely crushing me as a kid and making me give up on the game, then smashing them in about 10 seconds now.

2 Likes
60

Jan 13th - Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4)
Feb 7th - Hi-fi Rush (Xbox Series S)
Feb 10th - Goldeneye (Xbox Series S / Switch)

Feb 20th - Halo: Combat Evolved / The Master Chief Collection (Xbox Series S)

Other the Infinites campaign I’ve never properly played a Halo game before (bar some misspent multiplayer youth on the dodgy Mac port). So it’s interesting to see how much Infinite simply recycles and resurrects of this original game.

The first half of Combat Evolved really holds up well. You can see why people were blown away back in 2001 by the opening outdoors levels; the way soldiers can jump on your vehicles, the enemy flanking you, dropships swooping overhead… it really has a sense of scale and mania that must have been incredible over 20 years back. Bar the variety of weapons, enemies and the inability to run, it still feels good to play.

The weird tone of it all feels very much of its time too. I don’t think you get games made like this so much now but it feels like several teams working on different projects, smashing the results together. The music is choral choirs one minute, awful guitars another. The enemies behave comically at times, but the cut scenes go all out horror in places. The final run of levels feels like ending upon ending upon ending layered up; I must have set off about 4 self destruct sequences and nabbed a vehicle to escape by the end.

To that point, it reminds me of Half-Life, in that the first half feels original and great; but then the second half… dear God. The wave after wave of mutated tree enemies grate. The indoors sections feel hollow and on rails. The checkpoints are irritating. Repetition is rife (there is one section where you scale 4 identical floors, blow something up, come down again and then repeat it). Tonally it felt like a different, far less successful game to me.

It improves just before the end (though why anyone decided on that final escape to put columns everywhere to block your Warthogs exit, I have no idea) but yeah… it’s a game of two halves, for sure.

Much like Infinite to be honest, which shares so much of its DNA.

Outdoors, fun, sandbox Halo = great.
Indoors, corridor shooting Halo = shite.

I can see myself playing through the other games little by little though, just to see where the series goes…

2 Likes