(I originally wrote this elsewhere; copy & pasting)
Games I played in 2019, in order: (pink is High, green is Average, and yellow is Low)
1.
Detective Pikachu (3DS) (finished on 2019-01-08) ā I thought the idea behind this game was cute already, but I decided to make the jump and try this, after seeing the trailer for the live action Detective Pikachu movie
I ended up later on seeing the movie as well, and while I kinda have mixed feelings about it, that's another topic.
One interesting thing in particular about this is how, through Pikachu acting as an interpreter, you get to actually hear how different Pokemon feel about their environments, their ways of life, how they relate to the humans in their lives, etc. It's not a side of Pokemon that one often gets to experience, outside of a small handful of exceptions (talking Pokemon like Meowth in the anime). I found it very interesting to better be able to understand how the actual Pokemon themselves feel about things, beyond simply using them to battle in the mainline games.
All in all, this is pretty obviously intended to be enjoyed by kids. It's at times glaringly obvious who the culprit is, long before the characters in-game come to the same conclusion as the player. But all the same, it can be nice to have a simple game like this to sit down and relax with.
Most people are probably aware of Detective Pikachu from the movie, which has Ryan Reynolds playing Pikachu. While I'm not a fan of his performance as Pikachu (he basically feels like Deadpool to me), in the game, Pikachu is instead voiced by Kaiji Tang, who among other characters, voiced Owain in Fire Emblem Awakening/Heroes :3 I didn't even realize it was the same actor until I looked him up, lol; he does a good job of having a gruff, assertive voice for Pikachu, which just feels charming coming out of a cute electric mouse. hehe
2.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) (finished World of Light mode with 86.99% completion on 2019-01-12) - ...It's a Smash Bros. game. You should pretty much know what to expect at this point, lol.
I don't generally like fighting games, but Super Smash Bros. has always been the one exception to that rule. I think the reason why is that Smash Bros. plays more like a competitive action-platformer, rather than a traditional fighting game. I love action-platformers, so the familiar mechanics and skill requirements mesh with my tastes much more, compared to Street Fighter/Killer Instinct/Soul Calibur/Mortal Kombat/pretty much every other fighter I've ever played. It doesn't hurt that it features a bunch of characters from my favorite series, like Mario, Fire Emblem, Mega Man, and the like. I'm curious to see what new characters will show up as DLC fighters over the next year; here's hoping Doomguy and Travis Touchdown make it :s
Speaking specifically about the Adventure mode, also known as āWorld of Lightā... honestly, I didn't care too much for it. The Nintendo Directs about it made it seem like the team tried their best with it, but it was pretty monotonous to play for nearly 27 hours (according to my in-game tally). It's mostly a long, looooooong string of fights against each fighter in the game, as they serve the role of āsubstituteā for the correlating spirit you fight; this was done so that Nintendo wouldn't have to create even more character models beyond the ones for the main fights/assist trophies. So for example, when you fight young Alm and Celica (Fire Emblem characters), they're represented by two Villager palette-swaps (Villager being from Animal Crossing), since Villager happens to be a playable character while Alm and Celica aren't. It's a cute idea, and some of the spirit battles were genuinely clever... but it's not really enough to sustain a nearly 30-hour adventure, with such a bland, meaningless story and villains with no real motivation, leading to an ending with no real satisfactory conclusion. There was some fun fanservice in places, but gosh, this was a mess overall. I remember having much more fun with Subspace Emissary in Brawl. Meh.
3. Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (NES) (finished on 2019-01-31) ā I grew up with Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden II on the NES; they were among my absolute favorite games for the system. Action-platforming with a breakneck pace and lots of difficult obstacles and enemies to work my way around... just my kind of thing. They were known in particular for their immense difficulty, including enemies who immediately respawned if you didn't scroll past their spawn point after killing them, lol. They're manageable with practice, but not many people have seen them through to the end. It took me decades of off-and-on practice to be able to beat them, lol.
For whatever reason, I never owned or played the third Ninja Gaiden, however. With the Wii Shop Channel closing, I decided to make Ninja Gaiden III my last purchase, and I definitely don't regret it.
Admittedly, Ninja Gaiden III isn't quite perfect; the hit detection seemed just a tiny bit off at times, for whatever reason. (maybe that could be from playing it on the wireless Wii Remote? I'd be curious to try this on original hardware to compare) The ways that the overseas version was made harder could also be pretty frustrating; I ended up doing 1up farming in stage 7-2 a bunch, so that I wouldn't have to keep replaying the first six stages again and again. All in all though, I had a lot of fun with this. I like the more sci-fi aesthetic/story that takes place here, and despite the limited continues, the enemy placements felt a lot more generous, thanks to enemies not respawning at all. Even enemies who get scrolled off-screen without getting killed, don't come back immediately like in the first two games, so it's much more forgiving in that regard. I also really like the bars you can hang from - they were a welcome addition, considering ladders became pretty much worthless after Ninja Gaiden II added the ability to climb normally on any wall.
So yeah. Ninja Gaiden III is a good game. I'd even go so far as to say I like it more than Ninja Gaiden II, though my favorite would still have to be the first game. I'm really happy I played this. Maybe I should give The Messenger a shot soon.
4. Resident Evil 2 (REmake 2) (Steam) (finished Claire A on 2019-04-07, and Leon B on 04-08) ā Wow, I sure went a long time without beating anything. Fire Emblem Heroes saps up too much of my free time. But anyways... this is good. Like, really good.
For the longest time, I personally had the stance that Resident Evil 2 did not need a remake. The original game is already good, so why waste time trying to revisit it? Well... I'm glad Capcom revisited it now, haha. This could very well be my favorite game in the series now, and I don't say that lightly when speaking of a series that has Resident Evil 4 in it.
Thankfully, a few years back, Capcom ended up delivering a nice return to form with Resident Evil 7. Despite the new first-person perspective, RE7 ended up feeling much more like the classic Resident Evil games than anything else the series had seen in the past several year leading up to that point. REmake 2 continues from where RE7 left off, hewing even closer to classic Resident Evil design, and while it again changes the camera (this time to something more closely resembling RE4), its core game mechanics are pure uncompromising survival horror. While the first REmake was pretty neat and all, I actually find myself preferring REmake 2, as far as Resident Evil remakes go. With this, Capcom successfully managed to mesh together pretty much everything I've ever loved about Resident Evil into a singular cohesive experience, that manages to feel fresh as hell in spite of being patterned off of a game I've played before. Even moreso than REmake did, REmake 2 stands on its own, and is truly a masterpiece that anyone interested in horror should experience.
In addition to other aspects like the game design and the atmosphere, I've got very high praise for the writing here. I'm not used to playing a Resident Evil game that actually has good dialogue and characterization! Lol, it really is commendable. Granted, the fact there is an original Resident Evil 2 to base this game's story on certainly helps, in terms of having a basic framework to build off from, as well as having the freedom to tighten up loose ends and whatnot... but it's still quite good. It manages to avoid the issue that many Japanese games localized into English struggle with to varying degrees, in that character dialogue here feels totally natural and believable. I don't get the feeling at all that this was written in a different language first, and then localized later on into English. In addition, the voice acting all around is quite good. I especially like the little exclamations Leon and Claire both make during gameplay. Often they'd yell out something like āWhat the fuck?!ā right around the same time I'd be thinking that to myself; it helps provide a bit of respite from the horror of slunking through dark, dingy hallways filled with decaying zombies and menacing lickers.
5. Kid Dracula (Famicom; played via Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Switch) (beat on 2019-05-18) ā I just beat Kid Dracula ^_________^ yayyyy! To be honest... it's not that great a game. I mean, it's okay... but it's sorta clunky, kind of a mess performance-wise, and eventually becomes really difficult (stages 4, 7, and then 9 especially stood out to me as hard), moreso because of said clunkiness than because of interesting design. But it shows some potential; there are some imaginative moments in the game, and the new English localization is pretty cute (including a Metal Gear reference of all things). All in all, I think it's worth checking out if you're curious, but I wouldn't recommend buying the Anniversary collection solely to play Kid Dracula.
I do hear that the Game Boy version is apparently better though... maybe I should give that a shot.
6.
Super Castlevania IV (Super NES; played via Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Switch) (beat on 2019-05-27) ā This is one of those games that I had friends insisting I should get around to playing. Well... I've done it now! And yeah, it's pretty good. I think I've been coming to the conclusion that my favorite time period for Castlevania is the 16-bit era. The 8-bit stuff is too frustratingly difficult for me, and the meandering exploration of the Metroidvania era means that stuff doesn't really appeal too much to me either. Super Castlevania IV is one of those games that's in a nice middle ground, where it provides action-platformer gameplay that is decently challenging, across distinctly well-paced linear stages, without frustrating the hell out of me like the NES trilogy does. While I prefer Rondo of Blood over this, this is a fine game in its own right too.
7. Final Fantasy IV (aka Final Fantasy II) (Super NES) (beat on 2019-06-09) ā Funny story ā my family growing up had Final Fantasy on NES, Mystic Quest on SNES, and III on SNES. So, for years and years I was under the impression that Mystic Quest was Final Fantasy II. I mean... it made sense, right? I figured it was just the oddball sequel, like how Zelda II and Mario II were different, so... surely it would make sense that Final Fantasy II was different as well, right? Then the series would clearly go back to being more traditional with III, and I thought that was that. It wasn't until years later, that I learned that Final Fantasy II was an actual distinct game. (this was before even learning that it was actually Final Fantasy IV, which was another mindfuck). Hahaha
So... yep. I decided finally to remedy this oversight in my gaming history, and play through this. It was pretty neat, getting to experience firsthand the game that would help establish the formula for many a Final Fantasy title to come. From its bombastic orchestral-style synth soundtrack, to its melodramatic story beats, Final Fantasy IV would come to define what makes a Final Fantasy game. It's a little rough in places; it lacks the UI improvements that later games like VI and VII would bring (not having a minimap was a bit annoying on the overworld, for one thing), and Final Fantasy IV's localization is... kinda rough. It's acceptable overall (though with a couple glaring issues that make it sound very clunky in certain spots), especially for a time period when there wasn't much competition in terms of viable RPG localizations, but this doesn't meet the par that Ted Woolsey would later establish with his Final Fantasy VI localization.
IV's core story is fine for what it is ā a redemption story featuring a dark knight who is hesitant about his role in the world, an evil empire, and sinister workings behind the scenes to set the story in motion. It bears some pretty clear influence from stuff like Star Wars and Hayao Miyazaki's work, but it manages to feel like its own thing. There are a lot of emotional ups and downs to this game's story, rife with melodramatic tragedy and joy alike. It's definitely not subtle... but it's enjoyable nonetheless. I do think the game lays it on a little too heavy with certain themes like sacrifice, but it moves ahead at a brisk pace for the majority of one's playthrough, and it doesn't overstay its welcome.
Ultimately, it's a fun JRPG which isn't too difficult to get into, and it's still pretty fun to go back to, even as someone who never played this back when it was new. I think I still prefer Final Fantasy VI over this (Square seemed to learn some lessons between IV and VI's development cycles), but IV is worth checking out on its own terms. Definitely the highlight of this game is of course, Nobuo Uematsu's music. It's sooooooooo goooooooooood OMG <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
8. Void Bastards (Steam) (beat on 2019-06-14) ā Indie developers often tend to make ārogue-liteā games (games that incorporate elements from the game Rogue ā such as randomly-generated environments, random item placement, and a loss of progress when you die, forcing one to build their resources and inventory back up after death... kinda like an arcade game in a way!); I say ārogue-liteā instead of ārogue-likeā, because often they don't really play like Rogue itself. Often they'll take elements from Rogue, and recontextualize them in other genres, such as Zelda-esque action-adventure as with The Binding of Isaac, or side-scrolling action-platformer as with Spelunky.
Void Bastards is in the same vein to an extent... though it takes the approach of mixing Rogue elements with an immersive sim ā playing much like a randomly-generated System Shock or Bioshock. The end result ā a randomly-generated first-person game with shooting, stealth, looting, and surviving... is really good! I've had quite a bit of fun with it.
The developer, Blue Manchu, have put together a mix of gameplay elements which happens to really click with my taste in gaming. Void Bastards is at times hectic and exciting, while at other times bleak and moody. There's the occasional moment of dark humor, which both lightens the mood and forces the player to sit back and reflect on how depressing their situation really is. The stylized ācomic-bookā art style is fitting, and helps the game stand out visually, with nice cel-shaded graphics during gameplay. In between the ships you scavenge, you manage resources as you move your ship across the nebula, deciding which ships to raid and which to avoid, as you attempt to not die. It's not a hugely complex game, but when you get into the groove, it can be quite enjoyable.
All in all, I'm happy to have played this. This isn't quite a revelatory experience or anything, and it can be a little repetitive at times, but it knows what it wants to accomplish, and sets out to do just that. If you enjoy short replayable first-person survival/stealth/shooting/etc., then Void Bastards is worth a look.
9. Princess Maker Refine (Steam) (got Baroness ending on 2019-06-17) ā Some years back, I played a simulation/strategy game called Long Live the Queen. That game's plot revolved around a 14-year-old princess, who is set to succeed the throne... yet there is a power struggle surrounding who gets to take the throne. Her life is at stake, and the objective of that game is to keep her alive. The bulk of the experience involved organizing her schedule (mostly deciding what fields of study she will pursue), as well as selecting various dialogue options (like a visual novel), in an attempt to ensure she grows and survives to become queen. All in all, it was pretty fun, if a bit too reliant on trial-and-error.
While looking at reviews of Long Live the Queen, I did hear people compare Long Live the Queen to another simulation game... namely, Princess Maker. So, at long last, I decided to give this series a shot.
As said, this is a simulation game by Gainax of all companies (perhaps best known for the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion); here, you raise an orphan to be your adopted daughter, and depending on what types of work/education/etc. you give her, she can either grow up to be a princess, or baroness, a nun, a mercenary, etc. This differs from Long Live the Queen in that you don't have a pressing need to protect her from assassination... but you also have far more options in terms of what to fill your schedule with, beyond simply choosing fields of study.
For my first playthrough, I opted for a no-combat run, focusing on boosting my daughter's elegance; I guess I succeeded, as I got the Baroness ending, where she grew to marry into nobility. A few days later, I began a (short-lived) second playthrough where I opted for a mostly combat-oriented run. I didn't really get the hang of the game's turn-based combat however, so I just kinda dropped it early on.
This Refine edition that I got through Steam, is the first time any version of this game has ever seen an English release. Honestly... the localization is hot garbage, lol. It's so bad - like, it's worse than 1980s-era localizations at times. Words regularly run out of space in their respective text boxes, causing them to awkwardly be separated across multiple lines... the save slot numbers do not match up with their respective slots, resulting in the need to count each row to figure out what slot you're saving in... there are extraneous words and typos and the like... etc. It's such a mess.
Another thing noteworthy about the Refine edition, is that it apparently cuts out a couple endings that were in the original game. One ending had your daughter marry the Devil... which I don't really care about, personally. The other one however, involved your daughter growing up to marry you, becoming your wife in the process... yikes. I can't say I'm surprised that that got cut from the Steam release.
On a similar note, be careful with the vacations; sometimes they pop up a perfectly harmless image, but other times a piece of nude artwork comes up, for no good reason whatsoever. Honestly, I am surprised that Valve allowed this nudity to be in the Steam release uncensored... and that CFK (who are responsible for this release) felt that was okay to leave in, despite getting rid of the above endings. Makes me glad I didn't decide to stream this game >_>
Ultimately... I think Princess Maker, mechanically-speaking at least, is pretty fun. It's far from flawless, and at times it did feel a bit irksome to play... but its positive aspects, such as the variety of traits and stats to focus on building, and the sandbox nature of the game's design, I found to be pretty engaging. I have trouble recommending this for various reasons, but when it's not being totally creepy and/or convoluted, it has some good ideas. I hear that its sequels aren't as bad, but frankly, I'm not sure I'm willing to give them a shot. I like certain aspects of this game... but really, fuck this garbage, lol
10. Gunforce (SNES) (beat game on 2019-07-19) ā Holy fuck, this is an awful game. The arcade game isn't exactly super remarkable as far as run-and-gun shooters go, but my gosh, this is an abysmal home conversion. Where do I even begin?
The controls are awkwardly laid-out (the placement of the jump & fire buttons is reversed from how virtually every other game plays), and you can't adjust the button mappings in the settings... in fact, there are no settings! The screen scrolls slower than your character can move, which results in you constantly outrunning it, and you often need to step forward and pause for a second to wait for the screen to catch up to you. You can ostensibly lock your aim in place, yet there's no dedicated button to do so, which often leads to you aiming in a direction you don't intend to aim. The jump physics are really floaty and tough to manage. The game regularly slows down to a crawl, feeling nearly like a slideshow in terms of low framerate. It's just a fucking disaster. This is an absolute piece-of-shit conversion of a game. Don't waste your time with this bullshit.
11.
Gunforce (arcade) (beat game on 2019-07-19) ā For whatever reason, I decided to play this, the original version, after the Super NES conversion. In a way, playing the SNES game first made my time with the arcade version a bit easier, because I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from most levels, while the immense slowdown of the SNES port helped me to get a feel for the level design and enemy placement. This does have one unique level that isn't in the SNES game (some level set inside a desert base, which lets you drive tanks), but by and large, they're really fairly close to each other, despite the hardware differences. When it comes down to it, the arcade game isn't as flat-out awful as the SNES port... but it's still a fairly bland, uninteresting game, with barely anything worthwhile going for it. It's really astounding that Gunforce could start out being so mediocre, while its eventual sequel would go on to be a masterpiece. Funny.
12. Ion Fury (Steam) (beat Wanton Carnage (aka Normal) on 2019-11-01) ā This game just frustrates me to think about. Overall, it's a very, very good game. In some ways I might have considered it one of my favorite FPSes of all time. It does a good job of recapturing the sense of wonder and excitement that older Build Engine games like Duke Nukem 3D offered, with intertwining level designs and intense, energetic combat. As far as gameplay alone is concerned, Ion Fury is a masterpiece.
However, it so happens that the devs are bigots. That's a shame in and of itself, really... but there have been cases where I've liked something that turned out to be made by a piece of shit, yet the creator's shittiness wasn't necessarily embedded in their own work. Sadly, that's not the case here. I won't go retell the events surrounding the controversy that this game ignited around its launch week, but it was definitely upsetting to deal with, especially the fact that they went as far as to include actively homophobic content within Ion Fury itself.
The main thing that really fucking upsets me, is that 3D Realms had put out an apology statement, which seemed pretty good. They pledged to remove the bigoted content from the game, as well as donate to the Trevor Project and give mandatory sensitivity training to Voidpoint's employees. That helped me to feel a bit better... and I'd almost gotten over it. But then a week later they fucking backtracked on their apology, now pledging to not edit some of the game's homophobic content out, because ācensorshipā. Holy fucking shit.
That whiplash really got to me. Oh my gosh. I still feel betrayed over it even now. Ugh <_>
So... yeah. It has some positive aspects to it, but at the same time, I have trouble recommending it for various reasons. It's up to you whether you can stomach the devs' shit or not...
13.
Way of the Passive Fist (Steam) (beat on Ardent Wary Alert Vigilant Traveller difficulty on 2019-12-31) ā After a second half of the year which was incredibly busy for me, both in terms of work and school... I successfully found time to beat one last game before the decade's end :3 And thankfully, unlike the past few games here, I was able to enjoy this without strings attached.
Way of the Passive Fist (it's a pun in case you missed it - āpassive fistā sounds like āpacifistā, lel) is a rather atypical genre fusion, playing kinda like an arcade beat-em-up (if one can call a game about avoiding enemies' attacks that) mixed together with the timing-based gameplay of a rhythm game. I'm always down for unique genre fusions like this, and Household Games delivers strongly here.
This isn't heavy on story by any means, but it does feature a cartoonish post-apocalyptic setting. You play as the Wanderer, a masked person with a cyborg arm and a unique fighting style that emphasizes avoiding enemy attacks in order to build and hone your energy while draining theirs. Eventually your enemies will get tired out, allowing you to lightly knock them out, Homer Simpson style. Combine this with an imaginative style and sense of humor, plus a badass '90s-style arcade soundtrack, and you have a recipe for something brilliant. Certainly not a bad way to conclude the decade!
Games I didn't beat, but played a decent amount of:
Somari (Famicom) (played the first few stages on 2019-11-18) ā This is a fairly notorious bootleg port of the first Sonic the Hedgehog to the Famicom, except starring Mario for some reason, who goes by the name Somari. It's... bad. Yet in some ways, it's a bit remarkable for a bootleg game. It's maybe not the most unstable game I've played... which is maybe a compliment? haha
Secret Quest (Atari 2600) (made it to stage 4) ā This is a game whose existence I'd known about for ages, but my gosh, this is way better than I'd ever expected it to be. Being a very late official release for the 2600, it was designed as Atari's answer of sorts to Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda. Considering how much weaker the 2600 hardware was compared to the NES, it's quite a marvel what was pulled-off here. This isn't a straightforward Zelda clone at all ā rather, it feels like a mix of the first Zelda, with... frankly, survival-horror elements. You fly from space station to space station, finding the codes needed to set them to self-detonate, all while managing limited resources (oxygen, ie health, or energy, ie ammo) and contending with monsters whom require you to either fight them, or avoid them.
It can be very tense and demanding, which is amazing if you're looking for that sort of experience. It's not easy to pick up and play, and it kinda requires you to read the manual to understand what's going on, but this has definitely been a pleasant surprise for me. Just this year I played Void Bastards, a game which came out in 2019, and yet this game's design feels surprisingly contemporary to what games like Void Bastards would set out to deliver. So yeah, I dig this, and I hope to find time to beat it in 2020
Castlevania Bloodlines (Genesis; played via Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Switch) (made it to stage 5) ā So yeah... pretty fun. So far, I'm enjoying it more than I did Super Castlevania IV, but I just haven't really had the time lately to play much farther into it. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it soon into 2020!
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch) (made it to Chapter 5) ā New Fire Emblem game. Yep. And one that I happen to have not really played much of. I'll get more into it down the line... but frankly, I feel like it's not nearly as easy to pick up and play as the 3DS games were. In particular, the monastery exploration sections really drag down the game's pace to an egregious extent, and feel like a chore to do. They're like the exploration segments from Trails of Cold Steel, except in a much more boring, location which is much more tedious to traverse. I'm... not a fan. Oof. Hopefully I can push on to finish the rest of the game eventually...
So yeah. My favorite game of 2019 that I've played, is easily REmake 2. It is so good <3 uwuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
I ended up later on seeing the movie as well, and while I kinda have mixed feelings about it, that's another topic.
