TheMightyEthan

Road to Empress First game completed in 2026! This is a kind of FMV choose your own adventure/visual novel where you play as Wu Zetian, the first and only Chinese empress regnant, starting as a consort entering the palace and having to intrigue your way first to survival and then to the top. You'll definitely die a lot of times along the way though. It's a lot of fun, completely over the top in a good way. EXCEPT APPARENTLY IT'S ONLY PART 1! I haven't been got this bad by a surprise cliffhanger since Across the Spider-Verse. Still though, great game, a lot of fun. Perfectly achieves what it sets out to do, no notes. Grade: A+

Game of the Year: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 What is there to say that hasn't already been said? This game is dramatic and emotional and funny, the worldbuilding is fantastic and the combat feels great, it's everything I could want from an RPG. I love this game so much, it's my favorite game in years. Runner-Up: Citizen Sleeper 2 If you like story based games and haven't played Citizen Sleeper you should, it's kind of a visual novel but also a resource management game, where you play as an android trying to survive in a system that doesn't recognize your personhood. It's a little bit Murderbot, without all the violence, and the sequel expands upon the first in a way that manages to be a lot more than just more of the same. Honorable Mention: Zenless Zone Zero I've never played a gacha game before, I kind of have philosophical objections to the whole concept, but this game has its hooks in me bad. It's a lot of fun, the periodic events keep things changing up, and the stories it tells are surprisingly moving for a gooner gambler game. It's not the best game I've played this year, but it's definitely a big part of my year in games, I started in February and I haven't missed a day since.

Oh man, I beat a bunch of games between Yotei and the end of the year that I hadn't posted about: Star Fox 64: Starship - This is a PC port of Star Fox 64, played it on my CRT, was a cool fun time. Grade: B+ Majora's Mask Recompiled - This is a PC port of Majora's Mask, also played on my CRT. I think this game is slightly overhyped, the time loop mechanic was a cool idea but it did mean I didn't engage with the world as much as OoT because stuff would get reset instead of sticking and going through the steps to bring it back to the new state was too time consuming to bother with. Grade: A- Dead Letter Dept. - Creepy supernatural horror game about being a dude whose job it is to type the addresses from envelopes that the computer can't read on its own. Cool and short, definitely recommend. Grade: B Faceminer - Clicker game about training an AI to recognize faces. Interesting, though unsubtle. Grade: B Kaizen: A Factory Story - Puzzle game about setting up assembly machinery in a Japanese factory in the 80's, from some ex-Zachtronics devs. Fun, though not as good as some of the Zach games I might compare it to (specifically Opus Magnum). Grade: B Q-Up - Not actually a clicker, but in the same vein, made by the creator of Universal Paperclips. It's a satire of e-sports, where the sport is just coin flips that you have no control over, so it's perfectly balanced. The game part comes in setting up scores and things to raise your matchmaking rank regardless of the outcome of the flips. I'm glad it has an end and isn't a real forever game, because it's pretty addictive. Grade: A

Ghost of Yotei Good game, as I'm sure will come as a surprise to absolutely everyone. Its tale of revenge is not original, but it's pretty well told, and manages to not just fall into the grimdark take on it like some other Sony studio's game... I'm not in love with it though like I was the first one. I enjoyed it, but there were little niggles that hampered the experience for me. Like there were numerous times in the game where it felt like it was setting you up to make a choice about what to do, but then no choice was forthcoming. Which is fine, I don't need choices in all my games, but it felt a little like a bait and switch each time it happened. I wonder if they were originally planning to have player choices at those moments and then changed course during development. And the combat... I like it on paper, but in practice I felt like it was unfair. Like 75% of the times I got hit I felt like it was the game's fault, not mine. It was frustrating, and not in a good way. Overall though the game is good, I enjoyed my time with it, there's stuff to do in the world but it's not too cluttered, it manages to chart a different course than Tsushima and not just be a repeat. It's number 6 on my top 10 for the year right now. Grade: B+

Dispatch Goddamn this game, so good. The story and the characters are incredible, your actions (at least feel like) they have real consequences, even the dispatching game itself, which I could have done with a little less of, plays into the larger narrative in a very satisfying way. Everything just comes together so well into an almost perfect whole. If you have any interest in narrative games you've gotta give this one a shot, it's better than anything Telltale ever did. Grade: A+

I'm finally sick of my Scuf's bullshit (the controller itself is great, it's the software that sucks), so I'm planning to get the controller as soon as possible.

I'm not a huge fan of beat-em-ups but even I loved Shredder's Revenge. It's especially great for couch coop.

Same, the Kinda Funny review pushed me over the edge. Booting it up now.

Yeah, that new controller looks awesome, I'd definitely be planning to get one if I hadn't recently bought a Scuf.

Oh, if it is that little pause after a dodge then yeah, mine did that too, and like you I just assumed it was designed that way.

lol, just in time for my NG+ runs. I did beat the first playthrough without it, though I never got the unresponsive Hinako bug. My favorite is this one though: because there were all kinds of fan theories about why there were two Shus there, but only sometimes.

Yeah if I didn't already have a high-end desktop I'd seriously consider getting one of these.

I also just finished Silent Hill f and instead of returning to Ghost of Yotei like I planned I will be diving right back in for the other endings.

See that falls into "if you're gonna make a game suck less later on, or on subsequent playthroughs, why not just make it not suck the first time?" for me.

It was okay until it turned into one giant escort mission, then I completely fell off.

I did not. I played RE4 on Gamecube when it was new and didn't like it then, and that's just compounded by wanting something actually spooky/scary, not actiony.

Silent Hill f I'm on a horror kick right now, and I would have continued with Resident Evil but I already didn't like how actiony it had gotten with 3R and I know the following games continue that trend even more. I considered skipping straight to 7, but then was told that 8 is a direct sequel to 7 and is also pretty actiony, so I decided to jump to the new hotness instead.

Resident Evil 3 Remake So similar issues in this game with Nemesis as with Mr. X in RE2R, except at least this time it's only the first section and not most of the game. That said, I don't like this one as much. It looses the metroidvania feel of the earlier ones by moving you through new areas so often, I would have preferred to stay in one place and slowly unlock it like the other ones. I also didn't like how much more actiony it was even than Leon's campaign in 2. I still enjoyed it, but it's definitely the low point of the series so far for me. I did enjoy it overall, but not like 2. Grade: C

Yeah, there are triggers where he does and doesn't appear, but when I'm in one of the parts where he's active and I only have an hour to game and in the first half of that hour I spend a total of 15 minutes hiding from him that doesn't work for me. I think the threat of him appearing is very effective, the dread that he might at any moment appear, which is why I would have preferred an option to make him less frequent, so that threat is still there without it sucking up so much of the time I have to play.

Honestly if I could have just had a mod to make him appear less frequently I would have left him in, because he was terrifying, but that wasn't an option so here we are. I don't have enough game time to spend 2/3 of it just waiting for him to go away.

Resident Evil 2 Remake I really liked this game, though I do think Claire's story is a lot better than Leon's, so I'm glad I played hers first, or I might not have cared to play the second one. I do think Mr. X is a big detractor from the game, he's too omnipresent, and takes too long to go away when you reach a safe room, so you end up spending a stupid amount of time just waiting for him to leave, which is neither engaging nor scary, just tedious. Luckily I was on PC and could install a mod to remove him. If I had been on console there's a good chance I might have just quit the game. Without him though it was excellent, really top notch survival horror, especially as Claire. However, because of that, I don't feel like I can really rate it given that I only liked it because of a mod that changed a core aspect of the game, so I guess no score from me.

Thought it was time to move this to multi-platform games.

It was bizarrely perfect timing, I'd been looking at 3DS's to buy only a couple hours earlier.

So I ordered myself an AYN Thor, grip, and pouch. Looking forward to emulating some DS/3DS games, as well as having an easy portable way to play ZZZ with a controller.