Well, last year was a bit of a crap year for creative stuff (Hopefully I’ll have some good stuff to show you soon!) but I did play a lot of games Let’s have a look back at everything I played. Mostly because I’m getting on a bit now and my memory’s crap and I might have to refer to this later:
Godzilla – PS3
The kind of title that can be dismissed with the dreaded faint praise of ‘for the fans.’ If you’re not a fan though…why are you even here? Movement is a bit sluggish but it’s exactly what you want from two giant monsters duking it out, complete with inexplicable sparks when they punch. This is the most perfect Godzilla game there’s been…and that’s before you get to the point where you can make cute dioramas.
Import Tuner Challenge
Project Diva – PC
The vocaloid music will divide the crowd (it’s not AI. Stop it) but Project Diva remains a fun rhythm game with some kooky music videos and something for everyone. Power Drift and Afterburner in my case.
Ghostrunner 2 – PC
The sequel to the least-glitchiest Cyber Punk game of 2020 packs a punch. Just when you think you might be getting more of the same the game chucks some amazing vehicular sections. Well, well, well worth your time as long as you don’t mind the difficulty.
Star Luster – NES
This one feels much more like a Speccy game than it does the kind of thing you’d normally find on the NES. Merging strategy and action you hop around a solar system, taking down enemy fleets and protecting friendly bases/planets. Though limited by the controls, its still good fun.
Groove Coaster – PC
Another good rhythm game to dip in and out of. Can’t beat the trippy visuals and the fact it has Daddy Mulk.
Lego 2k Drive – Xbox
Had completely forgotten I’d played this one this year.
Street Gang Football – Zx Spectrum
This will be on the list most years to be honest. Despite the punk stylings, its realistically a completely daft ‘kids having a kick about’ simulator.
The Darkness – PS3
A not quite faithful adaption of the comic that reinvents Jacky Estacado’s meeting with the Darkness and has some fantastically dark WWI-hellscape sections. Just as good as it was back in the day, though the limitations of the PS3 and 360 are laid bare a bit by the frequent loading.
The Darkness II – PC
An interesting followup that ditches both the original voice actor and character from the original along with any pretense of open world. As a straight linear shooter it plays well enough though.
Rambo 2 – Zx Spectrum
I didn’t complete this one back in the day, so it was nice to do so this year! Just like the film, rescue pows, find a helicopter, fly everyone out. Simple. Except its an 80’s arcade-style shooter without a map…
Turbo Outrun – Zx Spectrum
A pretty good port of Sega’s more linear Outrun followup. The linearity definitely helps the old girl handle the game and it does appear to run smoother than the original panned Outrun Port. It isn’t a bad effort at all and it was nice to finally complete it all these years later.
Robocop: Rogue City – PC
A real labour of love. The shooting and movement are satisfyingly Robocoppy, and all of the CYOA decision making caught me offguard in the best possible sense
Vaporwave Pinball – PC
It’s always nice to support an Indie-dev, but even better when they’ve created the ultimate chill pinball game. Great aesthetic and soundtrack…shame it doesn’t work on an actual table.
Exolon – Zx Spectrum
Huge sprites, but slightly repetitive action. The game glitched and somehow reset my lives to maximum so i could get to the end, but to be honest you’ve more or less seen the whole thing in the first 15 minutes. Did I mention the huge sprites?
Warhammer 40K: Gladius – PC
Civilization but Warhammer! Win by conquering other factions or prove your cultural superiority by…err…conquering all the other factions! Slightly scummy DLC practices, but the special rules for each faction are implements well and it is fundamentally fun to play.
Ancient Land of YS – Master System
The original bump-to-fight RPG! You will most likely die within 60 seconds of starting, but the world is small, open and instantly accessible with only minimal 80’s design bullshit. You will have to spend a while grinding though, but at least each level makes a noticeable difference to the player’s abilities.
Warhammer 40 – Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels
The best Space Hulk game, blending elements of strategy, FPS action and pre-rendered rock-paper-scissor based melee combat into a massively atmospheric and challenging experience.
International Karate + – Zx Spectrum
I still prefer Way of The Exploding Fist, but this is a great slow, tense one-hit-kills combat simulator with that patented slightly ropey 8-bit collision detection.
Midnight Resistance – Zx Spectrum
This is a really good port considering it lacks the wheel controller from the original arcade. I’ve always found something really appealing about the slightly squished and chunky sprites.
Warhammer 40k – Shootas Blud and Teef – PC
A fun shooter that plays the story for laughs, but takes the gameplay very seriously. Some cheap sections, but we really enjoyed playing it in co-op
Warhammer 40K – Battle Sector – PC
Skirmish-sized WH40k action! The early game is pretty punishing but it’s a lot of fun once you can unleash a small group of tanks and war suits. The dialogue you get between missions is great too.
Warhammer 40K – Space Hulk ’93 – PC (DOS)
It’s just like Vengeance of the Blood Angels but more basic, just with the ability to see your whole squad at once while listening to a pumping Adlib soundtrack. Being able to see what everyone is doing doesn’t help much as this game is ridiculously difficult. Definitely best played on a platform with Save states in 2026.
Donkey Kong Country – Snes
The game which stole the 32x’s thunder somewhat. The stylised nature of the prerendered world means the visuals hold up pretty well and the soundtrack is an all-time classic.
Warhammer 40K – Space Hulk: Tactics – PC
The most modern Space Hulk is an interesting one. Is it a Board game? Is it an FPS? Well it’s sort of both. Reviews are a bit mixed because of that, but if you can get behind the concept this is a lot of fun. Interestingly, its the only adaption in 30 years that has let you play as the Genestealers.
Neo Turf Masters – Neo Geo
Golf is never my first thought of a go-to arcade experience, but between the nice visuals, great soundtrack and streamlined experience this one one me over. It’s a genuinely great game
River City Girls 2 – PC
Can you have too much of a good thing? You probably can. The writing is still great, but the original River City Girls more or less fleshed the concept out to its fullest. What’s left is a lot of ‘go from one side of the map to the other, killing all the bad guys on the way’ missions that begin to gripe after a while.
Halo Infinite – PC
It had somehow been a couple of years since I’d played Halo Infinite. The New (or maybe now very old) PVE mode is very welcome though.
Rad Mobile – Arc (1CC)
As good as it is having MAME and modern releases of old stuff, nothing beats playing an arcade game in its original context – especially when its as good as the original arcade Rad Mobile. Completed it in one go too.
Warhammer 40K – Space Marine 2 (PC)
Swaps the originals format of go somewhere > kill Orks > Chaos surprise for go somewhere > kill Tyranids > Chaos surprise, but is still a tremendous. The rivers of Tyranids sweeping across the landscape are one of the few ‘next gen’ moments I’ve had over the last few years.
YS II – The Final Chapter – NES
A straight forward continuation of the original, with a more ambitious world and the addition of magic! The first half plays like a welcome expansion of the original, though the confusing temple complex that basically makes up the entire second half let’s the side down somewhat.
John Wick Hex – PC
I wanted so much to like this! The idea is great: it’s essentially a turn based strategy game without fixed turns – instead each action takes a different amount of time on the game’s ever moving timeline (so, for example, a quick jab to the face takes a third of the time of a complicated take down), but the final project feels more like a tech demo. The amount of weapons and martial arts moves John has access to are relatively small, and there aren’t really any contextual attacks you can use to take advantage of the scenery. Disappointing.
Mouth Washing – PC
First of a trio of PS1-coded horror games for halloween. This a short, narrative sci-fi adventure is probably worthy of the acclaim it recieved as I liked the story telling and the trippiness of some of it. Glad I picked it up on sale.
Late Homework- PC
A short and sweet homage to the classic PS1 survival horror titles that sees the player attempt to uncover the secrets hidden at protagonists Haneko’s school while being stalked round its corridors by an unspeakable beast. Simple mechanics, creepy feel and some nice unlockables mean you can’t go wrong for the £5 asking price.
Happy’s Humble Burger Farm – PC
This is a totally normal game, where you make burgers in a totally normal burger restaraunt where there’s absolutely nothing suspicious going on at all.
R.E.P.O – PC
Our eldest badgered me for this one, which lands somewhere between Resident Evil and Bonanza Bros. Seeing that player’s cute robot avatar raid a variety of different locales for valuables. Still a bit of work until it will leave open access, but what’s there is good fun.
Aladdin – Megadrive
Back in the day, ask which Aladdin was better and the reply wold probably be “Wait, what’s the other Aladdin” – the Megadrive game really was the only one in town. Playing today it’s easy to see why – the animation remains some of the most fluid of the 16-bit and the cart is packed samples taken from the film. It really is like an interactive cartoon. It doesn’t even have the problem with right-angular level design that plagued so many Western-designed platformers.
Pilot Wings 64 – N64
On reflection, a launch title that shows up one of the major flaws with the platform (I.E. it basically has to use one, supremely stretched texture to represent the whole of the mid-west United States) possibly wasn’t the best plan, but Pilot Wings 64 is one of the best chill games going. Considering the original was a completely flat mode 7 game, the ability to dive into canyons in a hang glider and take photos was seriously impressive stuff. It holds up pretty well today.
Warhammer 40K – Mechanicus – PC
Another plus +1 to the Warhammer Strategy game count. This one’s like X-Com and sees a combat-ready squad from humanity’s It support descend into the tombs of (heavily Ancient-Egyptian-coded) robot skellingtons, with the aim of eliminating them all before they’ve woken up and had their coco-pops. The mechanic of balancing upgradable tech priests (who have powerful abilities that have to be fueled with ‘Cognition Points’) with disposal troops that have one or two actions which are always available is quite interesting, but the game see-saws from way too hard to way too easy at around the halfway point. Still good fun though.
Alicia Dragoon – Megadrive
One of those titles I’d been meaning to play for years, and finally did! Has that slightly disjointed feel of early Megadrive games that were developed by teams used to working on machines like the PC-88 and MSX, but it’s good fun initially at least. Not a huge fan of the games highly-repetitive 15 minute-long boss fights at the end.
Taiko No Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival (PC)
Namco’s cute drumming game gets a decent Steam port! It works well with USB drums and has a decent selection of music and a cute story mode. You can’t go wrong with that, really.
Five Nights At Freddy’s – Switch
The kids wanted to have the FNAF collection on the Switch, so I thought I’d give them a go to. Bloody hell, so ingeniously simple. Mainly random number generation and static images it’s amazing that it became the phenomenon that it did.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 – Switch
100% improvement over the original. In fact its classic video game trilogy fodder: The original introduces the core concepts, while the sequel improves more or less everything – more animatronics with different attack patterns that need different defensive measures, more locations, better writing, mini games. If you were to play only one FNAF game, this is the one that would give you the best impression of what it’s all about.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 – Switch
Like an entry from the great video game trilogies, FNAF3 solves the problem of what to do once part 2 has perfected the core gameplay by doing something completely different. Sticking with familiar camera-based gameplay, FNAF3 is basically a duel between the player and the spirit of overarching series villain William Afton, with the player trying to use audio lures to move him away. The additions of phatoms who can break the players gear without ending the game is a nice touch (plus the phantom jump scares are impressively horrible), but its weird that Afton in his Spring Lock suit is so underwhelming when he wins – basically wandering into your office looking like a confused patient on a dementia ward.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 – Switch
Changing things up against, sees a child stalked by nightmare versions of the FNAF animatronics in their room. Aside from the change of location the mechanics have been updated too, with a heavy shift towards audio rather than visual. Unfortunately, on the Switch at least, i found it completely unplayable. There’s huge dynamic range between the quiet sounds of the animatronics in the hallway and the very loud jump scares. Even with head phones and the volume turned up, there were sounds which i simply couldn’t hear, which was a pity.
Sonic Rumble
I did dear the worst when this apologetically limped onto Steam in the latter part of the year, but Rovio’s first sonic game is surprisingly good. It’s an absolute shameless knock-off of Fall Guys, but at least its a really, really good knock off which benefits from Sonic-y movement and jumping physics. The monetisation is a bit shameless though – I’m not paying £45 for a Mechagodzilla skin. Apparently it had dodgy kernal-level anticheat for Windows players at launch but it was removed after players kicked up a shitztorm
W40k: Dark Tide – PC
Another cheap 40k code, Darktide is a a 40k version of Fatshark’s Vermintide series. It isn’t massively complicated , but it working with other people to mow down entire hoards of digusting poxy badguys is a lot of fun with solid classes and progression. Not the most original game in the world, but it’s definitely one you’ll have fun with.
Sonic Frontiers – PC
I’d already played through this one on the Xbox on release, but I thought it was worth another play through. Sonic’s ability to scream through the open world makes it a much less tiresome experience than other open world titles and the soundtrack is dripping in atmosphere. It’s a shame they didn’t manage to resolve the pop in issues for people who could up the graphics quality settings.
Chaos – ZX Spectrum
The original GOAT. Though on the surface it looks like simple turn based strategy game, the randomisation and illusion system (which allows you to automatically cast an version of a creature that is invincible to minions but instantly dispellable by the opposing wizards) make for a surprisingly deep timeless classic. You can play it on WOS right here, right now.
Oops, I was going to do Films/Books/Albums but it’s taken me until the 17th to get round to doing games. New years resolution: Do this as I go!