Games Beaten in the Year of the Ox (2021)

26.11.

I HATE ESCORT MISSIONS.
I HATE ESCORT MISSIONS.
I HATE ESCORT MISSIONS.

Instead of playing fair and having to listen to EVA's constant complaining I just beat her up until she passed out and dragged her into the goal. Stupid escort mission, pain in my ass.

9.11.

It just happened that I found an incomplete saved game I had completely forgotten about, so had to play this thing through once more. Still one of the best games ever made.

8.11.

This game just didn't do it for me. It's Metroidvania alright, but most of the game is just repetitious dungeon exploring with very little interesting going on. From what I've read it's also randomly generated, so that might be the reason why the design feels very lacking.

2.11.

These guys clearly love Symphony of the Night. This game is almost as addictive and the soundtrack kills, but the story is way too short and sucks balls. Had it been at least 3 to 4 times longer I would've loved it to death.

16.10.

Japanese version is the best. If you're like me and you absolutely love this kind of beat 'em ups then this game should be easy and fun but sadly very short action packed tribute to Charles Bronson and all the good stuff.

10.10.

There's no October without Castlevania.

15.8.

This game is a perfect love letter to both old-school and new-school of hand-drawn animation. It makes me so happy to see someone who actually gets this thing, most people don't and never will. Not only is the animation itself top notch, but all the actors are A-quality and there's lots and lots and LOTS of references to classic 90's and golden era cartoons.

Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun for example is a parody of those cursed 80's cartoon characters and Babs Bunny from Tiny Toons, they even got Tress MacNeille from the latter to voice the character! Everyone's here: Tim Curry, Frank Welker, Jim Cummings, Dom Deluise... everyone except for maybe Billy West, maybe he was busy enough with Ren & Stimpy.

Sucks hard that this is just the first half of the actual game and the latter was never released.

10.8.

It's surprising how completely one can forget a game within a year since the last playthrough.

21.6.

Another year, another playthrough. Some traditions live forever.

21.4.

Good old Carmageddon. The real fun starts when you beat the game and get access to all the cars and stages. The humor is so stupid it's actually great, like they're advertising some sport drink called "Urine" and beauty product called "Fiasco". That's just amazingly mean and dumb, I love it.

26.2.

Annual playthrough.

11.2.

That was... something.

I don't know how these people knew how my life would turn out in 2021 and managed to make a game out of it back in 2017, but the accuracy is scary. The writing is seriously great for the most part, Greg and Angus were this time my best friends.

I was about to give this game full five stars until I made it to the end, which comes way too fast, is written hastily and ruins the fascinating plot entirely just right at the end. Like there's hours worth of building up and then they just explain the whole thing and then it suddenly ends. There was even a hint that what you are experiencing might just be a real mystery, coma dream or paranoid hallucination the main character got from a serious head injury, but they completely blew it.

The ending kinda ruined it for me. But man, I do wonder how they got my life and personality nearly 100% right...

30.1.

This is one of the best sounding and best looking games of its generation with some of the best character designs ever, I love the idea of combining creative horror designs with anime and Street Fighter mechanics. And then there's the painstakingly hand-drawn colorful graphics which are so beautiful to look at.

My only real complaint here are the controls, to which I couldn't get the right feel despite playing few hours straight. This issue makes the game very frustrating and needlessly difficult, but I cannot say I didn't love the technical side of things.

Darkstalkers was one of the best 2D fighting game series ever. The idea was so good to begin with, but some technical issues and bad choices they made along the way pretty much killed the entire franchise. The original is still the best, this isn't as good, but still awesome in its own way.