#to be fair i do love how unlike 3h we do actually get to see the four nations have their own identity and explore them after a battle

[fourspiceblend]

It's funny cause for the most part of the game, I didn't really care about people's criticisms of Engage's writing and thought they were just mad the story was straightforward and didn't try to be overly complex... But now that I'm (finally) reaching the endgame, there's a loooot of weird plotholes that 3H would be jealous of lol.

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

Games of 2021

Due to the inexorable passage of time, it is nearly the end of 2021, which means it’s time for my yearly retrospective of all the games what I gone done played like. Managed 40-odd games this year, down from last year’s 80-something, but y’know. Real life and stuff happened. Video games! 2021 saw me become a Twitch affiliate, thus proving my sister wrong all those years ago- video games CAN make you money!!!! It also saw me fail to start any of my intended projects. How surprising. 2022 is the year of the Steam Deck, aka the Backlog Buster. I’m very very excited to get mine- we’ll see next year if I’ve actually played the damned thing or if I just put a load of emulators on it and then didn’t touch it afterward. To the list!

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Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke Trailing off from the end of last year, our pokemon journey came to a happy ending as we were declared Champion of Kanto. SugarHurt, Yellow, Daddyama, Goggles, Bootsy, and Swampbert enter the hall of fame, and the history books. A fantastic run and a great deal of fun, I can’t wait to do it again some day. - Pikmin 3 This is Pikmin Perfected, striking the ideal balance between its two predecessors, maintaining the pressure of the first game but in a much less stressful manner. The bonus mission modes are all enjoyable too- rare for me to enjoy these things but P3 got it right. - Fire Emblem Three Houses Phew, alright. I’ve spent four hundred hours in this game so far, currently halfway through my fourth run (of four). It’s fair to say I have fallen utterly in love with this game. It was the subject of many months’ discussion and debate with midgi who played alongside me, as we unraveled the mysteries of Fodlan together. 3H is a vastly different direction for the series and one they’re unlikely to replicate for future entries. I honestly have lots of thoughts about this game that exceed the scope of a write-up like this, but suffice it to say FE3H is my Game Of The Year. - Touhou 18 Went in with high hopes, having enjoyed the demo a great deal. Second half not as strong as the first half in my opinion, but still a lot of fun. I like that ZUN was honest and said he didn't actually put any thought at all into how balanced the ability cards are, but it really shows in Extra where you either get lucky with the random cards or you lose. It's a shame cos I like the Extra stage, but having certain runs just straight up give me three extra lives makes it frustrating when you don't get that. - Yooka Laylee Hmmmm, I kinda rushed my way through this one. A game that steadfastly and deliberately refuses to learn any lessons since 1999, it's really hard to review this. The bad parts are deliberately bad, and they are bad in a very authentic way, does that mean it was good??? I dunno. Ultimately I had a little fun with it but almost equally as much frustration, and I certainly didn't even entertain the idea of 100%ing it. - Gris (Some spoilers ahead) This was a tremendously effective and artistic depiction of grief. The most striking part of the game for me was the giant shadow bird- how Gris just utterly shut down when it first appeared, nothing she could do about it. Much later in the game, Gris has more powers and has grown and recovered so much, and the bird appears again out of nowhere... and she's just as powerless against it this time as she was the first. It's a striking moment because games won't usually do that and that is also true to how grief will suddenly knock you down even so long after you feel you've recovered. I truly wish they hadn't included the collectible achievement items as it only detracts from what is otherwise a great piece of art. - Hades Pyre is still my favourite Supergiant game, but at this point if Darren Korb handed me a bucket of broken glass and said "hey, I need you to eat this", I'd do it. GOTY (I'm allowed to have two, leave me alone) - Zwei Argh, it was a very very shaky Fin when I played it, and when I came back to it I just... couldn't. It's a gorgeous game, but between the horribly clunky interface, the poor camera, confusing directions, and baffling progression system, it was too much work for too little payoff. A real shame. - I hate this game I love this game! Hahahahaha sorry. Some really neat parallel thinking here, 100 rooms deep so it doesn't outstay its welcome. Decent chiptune soundtrack rounds off a nice little evenings-worth package. - Milo and the Magpies Really enjoyed my hour with Milo, it's another cozy fit for an evening. Very sweet and cute and charming. My BBLC writeup says it all. Strong recommend. - Kero Blaster The main game is great. The unlockable extra story relies a little too hard on bottomless pits and instakill mechanics and suffers as a result. Cave Story still the magnum opus, but Kero Blaster is worth a punt if you like retrostyle run'n'guns. - Metroid Dread GOTY (I can have three! Shut up!). Goodness, the entire internet has lavished praise upon this to the degree that I don't know what I can really add. I've only played through it once- I sorely need to get back to it and start doing speedruns. Holy crap, what a tour-de-force. Finally learning what became of the Chozo, after so long, and that WHOLE end sequence that I won't spoil. Damn! What a game! - Hollow Knight I certainly wasn't as taken with it as many seem to be, with a pile of frustrations keeping me from LOVING it, but overall I did have a good time with Hollow Knight. The boss fights are the main draw here, very challenging but the controls are SO tight and well-tuned that they still feel great to battle. only a few optional bosses crossed the line into bullshit. - The Swapper Enjoyable up to a point- it eventually became a little too pixel-finnicky for my tastes. Execution became so precise that it was hard to tell if I had the wrong solution or I was doing the right thing but slightly off-position. - Iconoclasts Haven't gotten back to it yet since writing by BBLC post. It's next up in line though! - Sin And Punishment Another one I haven't got back to yet. I actually haven't even written the BBLC post for it yet because I'm depressed! Oops! Maybe by the time I publish this I'll have put it out? [EDIT: I did! But I'm still two behind ;_;] - Pokemon Shield/Moon/X In an effort to combat seasonal depression at the start of the year, I made it a personal mission to complete a living pokedex, and so scoured all my old carts for blighters to port forward and fill any gaps. It was a nice nostalgia trip and I got to see all my fantastic nicknaming decisions across the years. - Master of Orion 2 I'm telling you, it's going to be on this list every year until the end of time. This year, I streamed it for the first time, hoping to catch a few flies in the web. Don't think anyone took the bait, but my offer stands, I'll buy you a copy if you have a genuine interest in trying it. - Touhou obviously I think I played all of them at some point this year. Someone made a neat package for the first five titles that makes it super easy to run them and They Just Work, which was very cool. I've played them before but the emulation was atrocious at the time, was nice to see them in proper glory. Th01 is really weird. - Donkey Kong Country (diddyspin) I only technically played this. It was for a project that hasn't seen the light of day yet. I wanted to start it in the summer, but alas it didn't work out. I'm still figuring out how to do this. We'll see if 2022 is the year. - Ocarina of Time It has aged far more significantly than a lot of people are willing to admit, and the fan-patcher is pretty much required at this point. It's still great and has an impressive command of atmosphere for an early 3D title. The music in the Spirit Temple still gives me shivers. - Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta I ran the FJF four times this year! First time was the Corona Two event raising money for covid treatment, a cause dearer to our hearts now than it was the first Corona event. I then ran the main event in the summer raising money for the PCRF and we raised over $100, which is FANTASTIC, and to celebrate I did a second run off-stream just for my own enjoyment. Finally, to celebrate the release of the Pixel Remaster, we ran it again in November, which is technically a different game but I'll lump it in here. The PR version is probably the best version out there, although we're still figuring out all its foibles and exploits. Hopefully by the next summer event, it'll be fully explored. PR is the version I'll be using from here on! - Pokemon GO As mentioned earlier, this was part of the effort to battle seasonal depression by completing a living pokedex. It also had the advantage of giving me an excuse to go for a walk in the cold, which definitely helps the brain. I'm not a big fan of the way the game works, but it did what it needed to do. - Wonderboy 2 I love this weird old game, nostalgically and otherwise. This year I wanted to try to recreate a glitch I remember my brother stumbling on when I was a wee babby, with limited success. I was able to replicate it using memory modification to force the issue, but obviously he didn't do that back in the day. Still a cool game that I recommend people give a try. It's pretty difficult but save states mitigate all of that. - Fire Emblem 7 Having run a Girls Only stream of FE8 last year, I wanted to do it again with my favourite of the FE titles. It's a lot more challenging in this game as you don't actually GET any combat-ready girls for quite a long time (in the main game at least), so I allowed use of the main Lord Eliwood as well. It's not like he's some super powerful unit who would break the challenge, so I didn't mind that small allowance. - Chrono Trigger Another game I played for the stream to share it with people who NEEDED to know. Chrono Trigger is widely heralded as one of the best games ever made, and I don't disagree with that assessment. It simply gets so much right, and what it doesn't get right is charming enough that it's forgivable. The love and effort and thought put into every single facet is palpable. - SIF / SIFAS SIF is a game that means a great deal to me, but its heyday is long past. SIFAS is a game that I wanted to try again having bought a new phone that can actually handle it without crashing, but I still just don't really get it. Regardless, you're probably going to see both of these games on next year's list. - Metal Gear Solid 2 This is a game I played hundreds of times as a teen, and I'm very familiar with it and have a nostalgic fondness for it. Going back to it these days it's a little hard to recommend, too busy trying to tell a completely nonsensical story to linger on the actually fun parts of the gameplay. It seems like you spend just as much time skipping cutscenes as you do playing the game. It's also just as guilty as the others in its treatment of women and the general sense of grossness is far more off-putting as an adult. What I'm saying is, I had fun with it but I am not at all going to try to convince anyone it's good. It was a very important game in the history of such things, and an important game for me, but I don't think anyone going back to it will have a good time. - Grand Theft Auto Vice City Not the re-release. Every so often I get the urge to fly across the city in a helicopter to the tunes of VROCK radio station, and the rest of the game is fun enough that getting to that point isn't too much of a chore. But really, just flying over the city, between buildings and under the bridges and over the beach, all to a fun 80s rock soundtrack... it's hard to beat that feeling. - FE3H Girls Only Still working on this, of course- it's a long game! We'll be playing this well into 2022. I really hoped playing this would gather a bigger audience, but oh well. As long as the audience I do have is having fun, it's worth it. - Touhou Danmaku Kagura Touhou rhythm game! It just seems like such a no-brainer, taking a series known for its killer original soundtracks AND the absolutely uncontrollable fanbase producing endless rearrangements, and making a rhythm game based on that, doesn't it? Alas, me and gacha games just don't seem to be compatible, especially this one. Top marks for not tying progression to gacha rolls- every single song is available to play from the start, and you can ignore the mobage aspects entirely if you want- a very cool touch that garners many bonus points, and I'm sure was one of ZUN's stipulations to secure his cooperation. But then there's no sense of progression, and that's a killer for me personally. Events are also handled weirdly, the prize being an exclusive card for a girl who wasn't featured in the event... I stuck with it for a while but eventually realised I was just playing it because I felt I should be, rather than because I was having fun. That's when it's time to stop. - Kokurase 2 + 3 Chapters two and three of a cool RPG maker game, this is unfortunately a story that is likely never to be finished, as no translation studio seems interested in picking up chapter 4. Chapter one is a closed story worth playing by itself, and the next chapters were good for what they are. - Final Fantasy 4 The Pixel Remaster of my personal favourite FF game, this absolutely blew my socks off. Soooo much better than the 3D remake and for my money the GBA remake too. That remastered soundtrack is just phenomenal. I'd love to share this on stream some day. - BMX XXX This gamecube game was universally panned at the time of release and I was always fascinated by it, so having discovered a recent love of aquatic mammals I took a look. Good gravy, it's truly abysmal- an utterly fetid turd of a game. The attempts at humour are pathetic, feeble and embarrassing. Holy Dooley, it's worth playing for all the wrong reasons. - Metroid Fusion I wanted to play through this before Dread to catch back up with the story, but I was too slow and ended up finishing it AFTER Dread instead, so now canon states Samus forgot her computer was called Adam for some reason and had to relearn it. Fusion is great. I understand the criticisms but it's great. - TF2 This year I sold all of my inventory, intending to quit wholesale, and instead discovered that selling all my junk was actually quite liberating and brought back some sense of the Old Days of TF2. Plus I made $100 of steam credit towards my Deck! I still didn't get that one hat I've wanted for nine years though. The botpocalypse brought ruin to the Halloween event, with spinbots everywhere, but they all spam an absolute tune over the voice chat so I didn't mind. - Diddy Kong Racing Both the N64 and DS versions, which I guess are technically different games. The DS version really suffers badly with touchscreenitis. The second race isn't even a race, it's an autoscroller! I quickly jumped ship back to the N64 version, which is wayyy too easy except when it isn't, in which case it's wayyyy too hard. Very odd balance. - Baba Is You Haven't made it back to this one yet since my BBLC stream, but I kind of want to save it for my Steam Deck. It feels like such a great fit for a handheld. - Donkey Kong Land 2 On the recommendation of Supper Mario Broth, I gave the Gameboy version of the best DKC title a go. It's pretty good, surprisingly authentic, and I keep tripping myself up remembering where the secrets are only to be reminded that the level design has been altered for this version and the things I remember being there are in fact no longer there. Quite tricky to unlearn such things. - Bins: REVOLVER 360 Nimbatus Ninja Pizza Girl Turok Final Fantasy Adventure Bit Trip Runner Soul Axiom