Bottom Line: I keep saying bad things but this game is pretty cool just as a weird thing.

The game was really nice to just put on and play for a bit when I wanted to unwine.

There are some unlockable story things that are honestly written pretty badly and I kind of prefer to pretend they don’t exist.

Just a really chill no stress golf game with immaculate lo-fi vibes.

I would love to have more chill games like this that mix gameplay with a fun narrative on the Playdate

The gameplay isn’t amazing but I found myself playing it a lot because I liked the characters and wanted to see how the story went.

Honorable Mentions

Resident Evil 4 Remake

Bloodborne

At first I didn’t really like this game, but like some of the others in the collection I hadn’t really “gotten it” yet.

I’ve heard the versus mode is a totally different experience and I want to try it out.

Now that I have the cherry I don’t see myself playing more of this game but it ended up becoming one of my most played because I kept going back to it for whatever reason and I never really got tired of doing so.

Turns out though, that the game is much more fair than it seems, and if you are really on top of things you can solve almost any board.

Like Attactics, when I first played this I just couldn’t hang. I was barely able to get through two levels.

I don’t really want to say much else about it other than I think it’s one of the most impeccably designed games I’ve played and it sits right next to Outer Wilds for me in that respect.

Every single thing in the game feels deliberately placed and over the course of many deaths you will slowly unravel the mysteries of the game and there are some real brain explosion moments when you discover just how many steps you can skip once you know how.

Bad: This game isn’t doing much beyond the assignment of making a game that evokes PSX era survival horror games.

Good: The game is actually pretty creepy when it wants to be.

Sorry We’re Closed

Crow Country

Honorable Mentions

The Separate Ways DLC is also a great addition that satisfied my desire to play more without having to start over from the beginning.

This game is just a lot of fun to play. it controls well, the set pieces are cool, and the level design is good. The pacing is also great, with intelligently placed breaks in action to give you just enough time to breathe before throwing you back into the gauntlet.

Leon, Luis, and Ada are all well performed but for me Ashley stole the show. She’s much more endearing in the remake and felt like way less of a liability. It was always funny to see her duckwalking around a combat zone and somehow not getting killed.

I liked the updated renditions of all the characters. The merchant has new dialogue but it’s all well delivered and some of it is quite funny.

This means that you still have to be deliberate about your movements and that it’s easy to be overrun, which provides good tension, but also you have a lot of guns and can suplex zombies.

As everyone probably knows, this is more of an action game than a horror game, but Leon has a weight to his movement that gives a sense of physicality not present in more overtly action shooters.

Resident Evil 4 (Remake) is the best kind of remake in that it feels like your memory of how a game was but is actually way better.

Bottom Line: I have nothing else bad to say about Arco because it rules

Donut County

The Legend of Zelda

Bottom Line: This was a really fun game to tour (with a map). I don’t think I’d play it blind now but I think the overall game design holds up really well.

Bad: You really just have to burn random trees and bomb random walls to find everything

Honorable Mentions

This game is extremely satisfying to play. The combat feels really deliberate and I always felt incredibly accomplished when I finally beat a boss I was struggling with (fuck you Blood Starved Beast).

The weapons are really fun too. I love the whole “trick” concept and switching between two modes depending on what you’re fighting added some fun depth ( even if I mostly only used one...)

I’m not someone who actually reads all of the lore so I don’t really know what was happening, but I love how weird and disturbing everything is.

So far this is only my second FromSoft game but it’s like they took my preferred way of playing Dark Souls and turned it into a full game. Blocking sucks so getting to parry and roll through every encounter was great.

Arco

Bottom Line: I played this game for the majority of a four hour flight

Bad: Gacha/mobile progression mechanics

My one big gameplay criticism is that the game is pretty easy to break once you figure out how to do it. Fortunately I like breaking games but it did happen a bit earlier than I would have preferred.

Tinkering with team compositions and using if/then statements to improve their synergy and optimize their distribution and use of skills...

There are so many different layers and mechanics in this game that it would be ridiculous to list them all, but somehow they all feel in service of the overall gameplay and I naturally found myself doing basically everything.

Bottom Line: I still think this game is cool but also it was my most disappointing game from a “what it looks like” versus “what it is” perspective

Bottom Line: I enjoyed this game but I was really sick of playing it by the end

Bad: Gameplay is mid. Some interesting ideas but they wear out quickly and there’s too much of it

Unicorn Overlord

Bad: The gameplay is really bad and the writing isn’t strong enough to offset that

Good: Very stylish, cool characters

Good: Arguably better writing, more wholesome but still horny

Sorry We’re Closed

Thirsty Suitors

Honorable Mentions

I’m really glad I finally went back to this game. In addition to being a fun and interesting experience it gave me some context for two other games I played this year that did not work as well for me.

The puzzle game is also really fun! I’m not going to go out of my way to play more of it (though there is an arcade machine with more levels in the bar) but I do understand why people were playing it at tournaments.

The game is also cool as hell. I am sure that is normal for people who have played the Persona games, but the bar interludes in Catherine are awesome. You get alcohol trivia from trying different drinks, you receive and send texts, and you chat with other patrons.

It’s a story about somewhat problematic dudes in their early 30s and their relationship problems. That sounds like a bad idea on paper but it’s surprisingly earnest and I found the characters sympathetic, if not always relatable

I went back to Cathrine because it came up on My Perfect Console and ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected to.

Catherine: Full Body

Thirteen years ago I played this game for maybe an hour and then quit. At the time I was really frustrated with games that use obviously coded dialogue choices to funnel you into the type of ending you may want. It felt like rather than making a bunch of decisions you really only make one.