Games You Beat in 2025: Year of the Backlog

[MetalCaveman]

Lords of the Fallen (2023)

 

Easily one of my favourite non-FromSoft Soulslike lol, but it also has a bunch of issues.

 

One of the biggest ones is how it handles item descriptions, yes, lore being hidden in item descriptions is not a new concept, but this game takes it to another level, by locking the actual content behind stat checks lol, this results in my favourite bit of lore in any Soulslike ever:

 

Quote

Increase your radiance AND inferno to learn more.

Riveting. 

 

It's not a low requirement either, put about 30 points into inferno and I was still getting that message, don't know what level you need to reach before it actually tells you stuff.

 

Boss fights were pretty disappointing too, either strength is super OP or bosses are just pathetically easy, in three playthroughs I only died a couple of times to bosses, first one was from a boss with attacks that fill the entire screen with effects, making it impossible to see what's going on, second was when I used the wrong buff on my weapon, my attacks were barely making a dent, when I switched to the right elemental buff the boss melted in less than a minute lol. Some pretty cool designs here, but the actual fights are disappointing.

 

There's this area that's super dark, and it's by design so cranking the brightness in both the game and my tv did nothing, that place was hell to go through, though a recent update did increase brightness in that area so that one's been fixed.

 

Enemy variety is super limited, and not helped by the fact that most of the bosses you fight will be immediately used as normal enemies.

 

There's also some technical jank, crossbows have this line that helps you aim, except for me it would disappear every other shot, making sniping enemies take way more ammo than it should lol, there are also some spots were your character can get stuck, not even when going off the main path, just when following the main path you'll run into, "there's this one spot in these stairs that's home to some kind of gravitational anomaly" kind of thing.

 

The endings (there's 3 endings) are also pretty lame, one of them is lame all around, with nothing cool or interesting happening, the other two are more interesting, specially the radiance one, with all the Adyr stuff, but the main issue is that for all endings, all you get a  is short cutscene, all the cool stuff, the actual ending, happens in a black screen with some text describing what happened next.  There isn't much variety either, one is just "Everyone dies and gets eaten by monsters", another is "Everyone dies because you're all sinners!" and the last one is "Everyone and everything dies, the end".  

 

In spite of all this, I still liked it a lot, when playing, the combat and exploration brought me back to Dark Souls, in a good way, it was cool to explore a side path, find a ton of stuff and then end with a shortcut to the beginning of the area, combat felt good, with some cool systems, like how ranged weapons use ammunition, instead of having a bunch of each type of arrow or bolt, you can use anything you want, and it all uses the same items to recharge. Spells being tied to buttons instead of having to cycle through them made buffing before big fights way faster too.

 

There's also some cool armours and weapons here, really liked my last playthrough, with this cowboy-crusader style:

 

 

Overall, it's a much MUCH better game than the previous Lords of the Fallen, but not without some issues, that it released in a pretty broken state and so close to Lies of P and Shadow of the Erdtree didn't help, still, if you're looking for that classic Souls feel, I'd recommend this one. Sequel is looking pretty cool too.

 

Grade: B+

[danielpholt]

On 10/23/2025 at 7:42 AM, MetalCaveman said:

Lords of the Fallen (2023)

 

Easily one of my favourite non-FromSoft Soulslike lol, but it also has a bunch of issues.

 

One of the biggest ones is how it handles item descriptions, yes, lore being hidden in item descriptions is not a new concept, but this game takes it to another level, by locking the actual content behind stat checks lol, this results in my favourite bit of lore in any Soulslike ever:

 

Riveting. 

 

It's not a low requirement either, put about 30 points into inferno and I was still getting that message, don't know what level you need to reach before it actually tells you stuff.

 

Boss fights were pretty disappointing too, either strength is super OP or bosses are just pathetically easy, in three playthroughs I only died a couple of times to bosses, first one was from a boss with attacks that fill the entire screen with effects, making it impossible to see what's going on, second was when I used the wrong buff on my weapon, my attacks were barely making a dent, when I switched to the right elemental buff the boss melted in less than a minute lol. Some pretty cool designs here, but the actual fights are disappointing.

 

There's this area that's super dark, and it's by design so cranking the brightness in both the game and my tv did nothing, that place was hell to go through, though a recent update did increase brightness in that area so that one's been fixed.

 

Enemy variety is super limited, and not helped by the fact that most of the bosses you fight will be immediately used as normal enemies.

 

There's also some technical jank, crossbows have this line that helps you aim, except for me it would disappear every other shot, making sniping enemies take way more ammo than it should lol, there are also some spots were your character can get stuck, not even when going off the main path, just when following the main path you'll run into, "there's this one spot in these stairs that's home to some kind of gravitational anomaly" kind of thing.

 

The endings (there's 3 endings) are also pretty lame, one of them is lame all around, with nothing cool or interesting happening, the other two are more interesting, specially the radiance one, with all the Adyr stuff, but the main issue is that for all endings, all you get a  is short cutscene, all the cool stuff, the actual ending, happens in a black screen with some text describing what happened next.  There isn't much variety either, one is just "Everyone dies and gets eaten by monsters", another is "Everyone dies because you're all sinners!" and the last one is "Everyone and everything dies, the end".  

 

In spite of all this, I still liked it a lot, when playing, the combat and exploration brought me back to Dark Souls, in a good way, it was cool to explore a side path, find a ton of stuff and then end with a shortcut to the beginning of the area, combat felt good, with some cool systems, like how ranged weapons use ammunition, instead of having a bunch of each type of arrow or bolt, you can use anything you want, and it all uses the same items to recharge. Spells being tied to buttons instead of having to cycle through them made buffing before big fights way faster too.

 

There's also some cool armours and weapons here, really liked my last playthrough, with this cowboy-crusader style:

 

 

Overall, it's a much MUCH better game than the previous Lords of the Fallen, but not without some issues, that it released in a pretty broken state and so close to Lies of P and Shadow of the Erdtree didn't help, still, if you're looking for that classic Souls feel, I'd recommend this one. Sequel is looking pretty cool too.

 

Grade: B+

 

No one in the UK can see that image but I personally feel much better knowing that whatever it was can't be viewed by my children. Thanks Keir. 

 

Anyway. 

 

I started and I finished a little game by the name of Caput Mortum last week. It's a short little thing; maybe 3-4 hours if you get a stuck (like I did). It's a horror based puzzle game that isn't overly scary, but does have a really cool vibe and some nice moments. It won't change your life, but it was a fun way to spend an evening. 

[toxicitizen]

Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater

I've been working my way through this one slowly since launch, playing a little bit here and there. Mostly because the Master Collection came out recently enough that I wasn't actually itching to replay the game just yet. So, is it good? Well, it's a fairly 1-to-1 remake, so it's kinda hard to screw that up too badly. At the end of the day, you still end up with Metal Gear Solid 3. So it's hard to complain because that's one of the best games ever made.

Personally, I would've preferred something of a re-imagining like Capcom did with the Resident Evil remake. Don't turn it into an open-world or anything dumb like that but at least make it so the maps seamlessly connect to each other, maybe bring over some of the gameplay from MGSV, things like that. The original MGS3 is finally available on modern platforms, so I could've always just replayed it if I felt like having the classic experience. Something a bit new would've been more interesting. Then again, I did notice some slight changes. 

This may be because I did my first playthrough on hard but I feel like they tweaked how the game works under the hood just enough to throw me off and make me suck at the game in the first few areas. Small things like enemy line-of-sight, how much camouflage actually hides you, how much sound your foosteps make, etc. Also, for the first few hours I just couldn't sneak up on anyone. It was actually starting to drive me fucking nuts. I'd slowly inch up behind a guard to grab them and they'd always notice me at the last second and raise the alarm. Well, turns out this version of the game has a sneak button. So you gotta use that to sneak up on people otherwise they'll spot you. Good to know! IIRC you could walk very slowly with the d-pad in the original but I don't think it was required to be able to grab someone without causing an alarm. You could walk slowly enough with just the analog stick.

 

Another thing I struggled with was lining up headshots with the tranq gun. I would hit nearby enemies fine but would always seem to miss my headshots on enemies further away. Turns out the darts start to drop after a certain distance so you need to account for that when aiming. I don't think it was that way in the original.

Also early on I was crouch-walking a lot. That addition alone seemed like a massive QoL upgrade. But by the end of the game, I was barely using it anymore and went back to crawling like in the original. If you want to move faster, you get spotted so easily when crouch-walking that you might as well just stand up and run. I'm sure there's a slight difference but it ultimately wasn't as big of a change as I thought it would be.

By the end of the game, I got used to the small changes and I felt like I was playing a shinier version of MGS3 but not necessarily a better one. I don't know if Delta replaces the original entirely for me. The original MGS3 was so ahead of its time visually that it still looks fine to me. You can tell it's an older game but it doesn't really feel dated visually because of its strong art direction. I'll probably still replay it here and there out of nostalgia. But it's nice to have a more modern-looking option now, I suppose.

 

I don't mean this to sound overly negative. In the second half of the game when I started to get a feel for it, I was actually having a ton of fun with Delta and I definitely want to bump up the difficulty and do another run soon. It just sticked too close to the original to really leave a mark of its own, I guess. It's just MGS3 but marginally better. It's probably the best way to play the game for a new player but the original will always feel special to an old fuck like me.

 

fake edit: So a few days passed since I wrote this and I started a new game on Extreme and oh boy, yeah there's definitely been some changes here. I made it all the way to The Pain boss fight and I just... couldn't do it. I looked up strategies online and I feel like I got it down pretty well but I just could never actually fucking get him.

 

I would get to a point where I would only have a shot or two left but then I'd run out of ammo and would need to dive into the water to grab some grenades or some mk22 ammo. And I would just get stuck in a loop of dodging his attacks and never get an opening again. This motherfucker is seriously overtuned. It's legitimately insane. You'll get his shield off with a grenade and he'll immediately bring it back or just go right into one of his attack and you'll have no choice but to dive into the water to avoid it. 

 

So I started over in Legacy Mode to see if it was easier. Making it all the back way to the fight was actually kind of challenging because in Legacy Mode you only have access to the fixed camera angles, you can't switch to third-person on the fly like in the original. I'm assuming because the two modes are balanced differently. Anyway, I guess I got used to playing this game in third-person over the years because I kinda hated how limiting the fixed camera angles were.

 

Oh and I wasn't crazy, sneaking up on enemies is definitely easier in Legacy Mode. They still notice you but there's a longer pause between them spotting you and the alert going off, which leaves you just enough time to body slam them into the ground. Also, in Legacy Mode you can easily headshot enemies with the tranq gun no matter the distance. I'm assuming this is part of the balancing to account for the perspective change between the two modes.

 

Anyway, I persisted and finally made it back to the Pain and... yeah, fuck this. I don't know if he's actually easier in Legacy than in New Style but the classic controls are so counter-intuitive that I just didn't have the patience to try more than a few times. It's a bummer because after my initial playthrough I was actually looking forward to replaying the game with more of a challenge (and I was loving everything up to this point) but this is just a roadblock I don't have the patience for. I play these games for the stealth gameplay, not for the gimmicky boss fights. I don't have the patience for this bullshit anymore. If you play this, stick to normal/hard difficulty. Maybe I'll give the original a replay just to see if I end up having the same problem...

 

So yeah, overall it's a fun game but I don't think it quite manages to replace the original. If they do another remake, they should probably do MGS1 cause that one felt dated as hell when I replayed it through the Master Collection.

Edited Monday at 02:08 PM by toxicitizen

[TheMightyEthan]

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.

[toxicitizen]

2 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Luckily I was on PC and could install a mod to remove him.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

21 hours ago, toxicitizen said:

 

 

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.

[Thursday Next]

iirc there are certain story beats where he disappears till you hit the next trigger, I looked up when those were and spent that time exploring everywhere I could before hitting the next trigger. It would be nice if there was a toggle or something for frequency of appearances so you could play a more "casual" mode.

[TheMightyEthan]

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.

[Thursday Next]

Completely agree. Like that it is an effective way of making you consider whether it is worth the noise of blasting a bunch of zombies, running around etc. vs playing more stealthily, but making him go away is a bit... tedious, whether you do it by shaking him off and getting some distance (normally in the wrong direction for your current objective), or by hiding in a safe room till he resets.

[TheMightyEthan]

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

[MetalCaveman]

RE3R might be the worst of the bunch tbf, unlike RE2R, 3 cut out a good chunk of the original, including branched paths and a full boss fight, honestly, I'd recommend checking out the original if you can, way better IMO, even with how old it is.  

[toxicitizen]

Yep, RE3R was alright but very disappointing as a remake. It's really dumb how they upgraded Mr. X into more of a stalker that roams around dynamically but then went on to reduce Nemesis to scripted encounters and boss fights in the very next game. I'm sure that in reality Nemesis was more scripted than he appeared to be in the original but he was still the original stalker that felt like he could show up at any time. That remake was such wasted potential. It could've been something truly special but instead they treated it like a box to check so they could move on to remaking RE4.