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30.) Eventide: Slavic Fable Simple little Hidden Object Puzzle/Adventure game. Don't usually go out of my way to play something like this but wanted something straight forward and quick to do on occasion between big games. Normally the kind of thing I'd play on my phone instead of on my computer, but it was like 1/3 the price on Steam vs. the Play Store. Wound up on my radar because a person I watch on Youtube sometimes for Vampire the Masquerade stuff works for the company as an artist and I was curious. It was fine. Nothing overly challenging, but required a decent amount of thought to get through the puzzles. Was a nice palate cleanser before I jump into something bigger again.

29.) Death Stranding Was an interesting game overall. Story was batshit crazy, but it kept me guessing and there were a lot of interesting elements to it and a whole lot of crazy pseudo-science that was kind of fun to dig through. I wouldn't call it a GREAT game, but it was solid and really managed to shine in a couple places. The gameplay itself is something that, on paper, sounds like it would be absolutely terrible, but ended up being really solid and I never quite grew bored of it. Just as I thought it was going to start getting tedious it would throw something new at me that keep it from stagnating too badly. The semi-online element was really cool and probably the most interesting and dynamic part of the game. Trudging through lonely countryside or dealing with crazy ghost things always seemed a little less daunting when you could see the efforts of other people to traverse the same obstacles and it made for a really cool social experiment kind of thing. Overall I was pretty happy with the game. It's definitely something that not everyone would enjoy but I had a lot of fun with it and look forward to seeing what else Kojima can do when he's let off the leash like this.

28.) Rise of the Tomb Raider Been slowly going through this for my daughter since she really likes the story and finally beat it yesterday. Was solid entertainment. Action sequences and climbing parts are consistently fun and only sometimes frustrating and I feel like they did a good job of improving upon the kind of stuff that Uncharted was always good at. Story was interesting overall. Nothing terribly groundbreaking in these games but they are pretty solid all around and fun as a one and done sort of series to play. Picked up the newest one on Black Friday for $15 so will probably start that for her next weekend.

Yeah, it using force power was a bit annoying, but it saved me from enough tight spots that I'm willing to forgive it. Still would have preferred it as a separate fighting style like how it was with switching between the single and double sided lightsabers. Was at least nice that it adapted the Lightsaber throw so that he just detached the one end and threw that so you could keep blocking though.

27.) Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Very fun game. Frustrating at times, but I'm of a differing opinion from MT. I had the most fun when going against multiple enemies. Especially after you get the ability to split the dual lightsaber ability. the Purger trooper types could be really obnoxious though, and fighting some of the wildlife was really awkward. Took a while to get used to the game because I always felt like the characters movement was slightly off. Like his reach wasn't quite as far as it felt like it should have been. Once you get used to it though it flows really nice. Only fights I truly hated were the ones against Second Sister. For some reason, I could just NOT follow her attacks at all. None of the other boss fights caused me anywhere near the trouble the ones with her did. Was getting really frustrated with it. Exploration was excellent. Each planet was SO much bigger than I first thought (other than the first one), and there were more than I was expecting. Game was longer overall than I was expecting too. Story was pretty decent, and the bit at the end after the final boss was a nice surprise and adequately tense. Definitely want to see more Star Wars games with this kind of effort put into them.

They were definitely mostly manageable, especially if you had the right companions with you. There were only a handful of times I saw ones that required 100 in a skill to do and only one of those was in a weirdly early place in the game that I noticed. By the last couple areas there were a number of things that required 100 in hacking to open but that was the most prolific one that I saw. There honestly may have been more though, I think I had the option turned on that hid dialogue options that weren't at least close to your level in that skill.

26.) The Outer Worlds I did high intelligence (though I fucked it up by taking a concussion flaw part way through) and there were definitely some interesting options with it. I hear super low intelligence makes for some interesting stuff too (unlocks "dumb speak" speach options). Including a completely different ending if do specific things at the end. Definitely going to play through it again once the influx of new games I want to play dies down (looks like a dry spell for Dec. - Feb. for me at least) and I have time to revisit it. Loved the leveling system in the game and the mechanics they had in place for everything to feel useful. Having social skills affect combat (and some combat skills adding options to social encounters) was really nice. Very light on bugs too. Only a couple things that I saw that stood out and most of those were more visually oriented anyway and they already have a lot of things lined up to fix or requests to add in from the looks of the list on their forum too so that's cool. Easily one of the best games to come out this year.

25.) Greedfall REALLY solid game. Action RPG reminiscent of the original Dragon Age made by a smaller studio. It's rough around the edges (lots of little things that would have been nice to see in he game), but it can be forgiven most of that considering the quality everywhere else. I wasn't sure how much I would be into it at first because I'm not generally a fan of the 18th century colonial aesthetic it has but it ended up being really interesting. Combat was fun once you get used to it and you can pick up any skill you want regardless of your starting "class" so you can customize in interesting ways. Story had a lot of interesting twists I wasn't expecting, and choices you make have a number of impacts both small and large throughout the game. Even the companions you take with you on certain quests can make them easier or harder to complete in a satisfactory way depending on what you're trying to do . At one point there is even a companion quest that depending on how it goes (or doesn't go), COMPLETELY changes how a major plot point unfolds around the middle of the game. Was interesting to see the little things that would change for simple choices between my play through and my wife's. There are some key choices that determine the brunt of the ending you get but lots of little things that affect it as well therein. It's not anything groundbreaking, and it's shorter than most RPGs of this nature (think I did everything I could find in the game and finished it in about 60 hours), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Launched at $50 and was a complete game that I enjoyed playing so I have no regrets. It's also nice to see smaller developers show up the garbage that most AAA studios shove out these days using less people and less money. Think I'll probably go for the platinum on this one if I have time. Interested in seeing the other endings at least. Not sure if I can manage the highest difficulty though. Some of the fights were rough just playing on normal but I'll probably give it a shot.

24.) Control This is easily my favorite game of the year thus far. Loved everything about it. The challenge, the story, the atmosphere, the visuals, all of it. It's probably the most rewarding game I've played in terms of exploration too. Tons of stuff to find to fill in story as well as upgrade your character and it's really well placed too. Some of the areas are impressively large and have a ton of exploration potential. Was continuously finding myself amazed by how much depth the maps had. Areas that seemed like background were often times explorable once you had the right abilities. Even the post-game had some cool stuff to it. Returning to areas after beating the game resulted in new dialogue from the main character, and there was a new side mission as well (with a really hard boss fight). Character progression felt really solid. You never feel entirely overpowered and a wrong step even against simple enemies can quickly turn against you if you don't play smart and utilize all of your abilities. Probably the only thing I'd consider OP is the launch ability and even that has it's restraints. Other than that, one of the hidden side quests rewarded me with a mod for the base gun that makes it so you have infinite ammo as long as you're hitting an enemy which was really cool. Two of the optional bosses were pretty difficult, and I had to retry them multiple times to get a handle on the fights. Got a little frustrating, but never stopped having fun. I know MT had some complaints about the aiming, though I didn't notice that myself really. At least not beyond what I expect from a 3rd person shooter. Might be something that's more noticeable on PC perhaps? I know these kinds of games tend to have aim assist on consoles which might have made the difference. Performance was a little iffy at first with how much is going on in the game, but a patch they put out a couple weeks ago fixed most of that. Only noticed a lot of stuttering coming out of the menus or from pausing after that. As a side note, for anyone who's a fan of Alan Wake, this game references it a LOT and it's rumored that the second of the two DLCs will relate to it. I've had the game on PC for a while but never got around to playing it. Think I'll have to do that now with how much I loved this game. Also some light Quantum Break references I guess (another one I've always wanted to play), but those are pretty vague as the IP is owned by Microsoft so they couldn't make any blatant ones like they did with Alan Wake. Already looking forward to more of this. One of the few titles that I've got the Platinum for and continued to play to see what else I could find in the game.

23.) Persona 4: Golden I'm not TECHNICALLY done with this yet, but getting close. Hit a bad ending though so I'm putting it up now since it was still technically an ending. >_> A friend let me borrow the game. Played it on the PSTV I bought forever ago so it was nice to finally have a reason to use it. XD Pretty interesting overall. The contrast between the "social" side of the game and the dungeon side of it felt really stark though. No real flow between the two it was "Do a shit load of this. Now do a shit load of this." I've heard 5 handles that a little better though. Story is interesting and I'm enjoying going through it. Combat is relatively challenging and I find myself using status and elemental stuff more than I do in most RPGs which is nice. Looking forward to seeing the good ending and finding out what's actually going on and will probably continue taking an interest in the series based on what I've seen with this one. Was planning on going for the platinum but I'm not going to bother at this point. One of the mini-games that you have to do to max out all the social stuff is fucking stupid as fuck and almost made me stop playing the game honestly. The fishing one specifically. Looked up tons of things about it and tried to figure out how to do it but just can't. Literally all the advice is "you pretty much have to do this on the Vita" which means I'm completely out of fucking luck. Don't know if the response time through a PS3 and PS4 controller is just not good enough or what, but it can go right ahead and fuck itself. Wasted hours trying to do it and can't even get close so not going to bother with pushing for the trophies on it anymore.

22.) Horizon: Zero Dawn This game was pretty impressive overall. Playing through the DLC right now, but the main game was interesting pretty much the whole way through. Has a bit of the Ubsioft signature "Climb a tower to reveal things to find in the open world" shit but it's not overdone and I actually WANTED to find the stuff because the world was interesting enough for it. Combat is where the game really shines though. All of the machines are really well designed and function differently, and they're really intricate. There are so many pieces you can knock off of them to disable their abilities or stun them or whatever and it leaves you with a lot of choice in how you approach fights. Story was really interesting too. Trying to figure out what happened to the world that it ended up the way it did. After credits bit was also really interesting and makes me hope they'll continue it at some point. Felt like there were only a couple shortcomings in the game but they were only minor gripes. One being that basically every vendor is pretty much exactly the same so even as of the beginning of the game you can buy basically any weapon and gear you want (just gotta farm up the money/mats for it) and then don't need to change anything for the rest of the game and crafting materials are almost TOO prolific. I maxed out my inventory pretty early one and spent the rest of the game just selling excess stuff for money that I pretty much didn't need.

Yep. I think the intention was to artificially pad the replay value so you need to play it multiple times to "see" everything, but the game is NOT good enough for that to be anything but fucking infuriating. So glad I looked into it before playing because going into it blind would have made me rage quit it pretty fucking fast.

If you haven't started/got too far yet, I HIGHLY recommend this one. Includes maps for each area, specific time goals to make sure you're still on track, and calls out trophies and stuff, but doesn't spoil important story points at all. It's the one I used and was pretty much perfect. https://www.trueachievements.com/walkthroughpage.aspx?pageid=5914

And that isn't even its final form. Lightning Returns is hardcore anime bullshit through and through and it doesn't try to hide it. Hell, the opening cinematic is basically an atypical anime duel between Lightning and Snow in the middle of a rave. XD I think you'll enjoy it from a story standpoint (still nothing I'd call great, but it keeps your attention well enough). Gameplay has a really strong (if artificially generated via arbitrary time limits) sense of urgency too, but it can be more frustrating than actually fun if you don't have a good handle on it. Combat is decent. Feels like a mix between X-2 and XIII and ends up being more interesting than I was expecting it to be overall.

21.) Erica Saw this came out when I was watching some Gamescom 2019 stuff and remembered being interested in it when I originally saw something about it and saw it was only $10 so decided to grab it. Basically an FMV "interactive story" game, but MUCH higher production quality than you typically see with the genre. First play through took me a couple hours roughly which I was expecting. Ending I got was a bad one I'm pretty sure, but it did leave me wanting to play again to see if I could get to the root of the mystery so that's a plus. Only awkward part was the controls. You have the option to download a phone app and use your phone to control it, otherwise it uses the PS4 touchpad exclusively and feels a little clunky. May try the phone app for the next play through since I feel like that might function more smoothly. Interested to see if the mystery pans out with a better ending, but the experience was pretty solid either way. As long as it doesn't wear itself out before I see everything there is to see I'll be happy.

XIII-2 is actually pretty good, and makes the series worthy of the FF name IMO. Lightning Returns isn't terrible. Enjoyed it more than the original, but not as much as 2. Definitely use a guide for it though otherwise it would be relatively rage inducing and probably require more play throughs than what it's worth. The flow of the overall story gets more interesting in 2 as well. Some of the plot threads in Lightning Returns feel like a bit of a stretch and it seems like they tried WAY too hard to fit every character they could into it, but ends up being an interesting cap to a storyline that was all over the place between the 3 games.

20.) Destroy All Humans! Not a terrible game. Definitely feels like something from the PS2 era. Light weight GTA clone that loses some of its charm once the story is over and all there is to do is kill the same 10 character models over and over again and what not. Got this and the 2nd one along with a bunch of other stuff in a Humble Bundle deal a while back. Might wait on the 2nd one for a bit though. Trophies were pretty straight forward at least. XD

I refused to buy either and got them both free on PS+ so I'm not out anything if I don't actually play it. Don't think I could stand a full game of it being like that though considering I couldn't even make it through the glorified demo. Time to youtube the cutscenes I guess.

19.) Day of the Tentacle Remastered Another old Lucas Arts adventure game I had never played. This one did NOT age well though. It was fine. Some interesting ideas in it, but I didn't find it terribly humorous overall. Later entries like Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games were FAR better imo both in terms of story and humor (and of course gameplay). Didn't know going into it that this was actually a sequel to their first game, Maniac Mansion, but a short ways into it you can actually play a full version of Maniac Mansion so that was cool. Didn't actually go all the way through it though because it was awkward and clunky as fuck to play with a controller. These games set a lot of standards for what adventure games would be come so I appreciate the historic value of them, but I didn't much care for them otherwise. Before this and Hatoful Boyfriend I actually tried to finally play MGS: Ground Zeroes, but rage quite it after like 20 minutes. Maybe I'm just getting old, but playing it felt like shit compared to the older MGS games. Not having a radar or anything was mostly just obnoxious and I got bored with it really quickly. Does 5 feel like that too? Wondering if I should just delete it now and save myself the trouble. Also, Kiefer Sutherland was a fucking terrible choice for voice actor. Kept forgetting it was supposed to be Snake talking and couldn't get used to it at all even after listening to all the mission tapes.

18.) Hatoful Boyfriend Well that was... something. Have had this one sitting in my backlog for quite a while and I've heard good things about it overall. At face value, for those who haven't already heard of it, it's a pretty basic Otome game where the male love interests for the main character are replaced by various birds, while the main character is human. There's a whole subplot you learn as you go through the game about humanity being nearly wiped out by a mutated strain of the avian flu, and a countermeasure causing birds to become sentient and what not to explain this, but the "real" game doesn't actually start until you've gone through it a few times (there are something like 8 or 9 potential love interests, some with 2 endings) and trigger an alternate dialogue near the beginning of the game that turns it from a satirical dating sim into some crazy ass, conspiracy fueled sci-fi/horror murder mystery visual novel thing that feeds of of little hints and clues about the world that you glean from the other playthroughs. I found the whole thing a tad bloated, and a little obtuse at times, and it probably could have used something a little more solid to make it more of a GAME than mostly visual novel, but it held my attention for the most part. Probably an acquired taste, but worth a play if you're looking for something truly bizarre and unique to kill 5 to 10 hours on.

Oof. That name couldn't have done it any favors. Sounds like a cheap party game or something. XD Will look into it sometime though. Apparently the main character of that one is in the newer game made by the people who did the one I just played. It's an interesting genre honestly. Not nearly as cringey as I was expecting based on older examples from the 90s.

17.) The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker Interesting FMV based adventure game. It's clunky, and the execution falls flat at times, but I enjoyed it overall. You're a psychiatrist who is just starting a new job, your predecessor having been murdered, and the patients being the prime suspects of said murder. Each "day", you question the patients, trying to help them as well as get hints as to who may have killed Dr. Dekker. Everything is done in live action FMV scenes, and you have an assortment of questions to ask, as well as being able to type in questions yourself (it uses a text parser so it can be a bit frustrating if you don't use the right keywords). The killer is random each time (out of 6 people), so there is SOME replay value to it, but the game is a bit bulky overall and could have probably used some slimming down in the long run. There are hundreds of questions between the multiple "sessions" and about half way through I just wanted to get on with it. Maybe half the patients were truly interesting and I looked forward to hearing more from them, but some of them felt like they dragged on for way too long. It was a pretty ambitious game, and I feel like they ultimately succeeded in what they were going for. Has a very strong "Lovecraft" feel to it which is wholly intentional (and genuine Lovecraft at that. Very slow burning, existential horror type stuff for the most part) and by the end you start questioning the sanity, motives and even identity of the character you are playing. The acting was surprisingly solid for what I was expecting, and downright GOOD at times. The particular company that made this apparently focuses on FMV games and this is definitely one of the better examples of the genre out of the few that I've played. Overall it was a really solid game for what I was expecting for the price I got it so I was pleasantly surprised. It stumbles in a lot of places, but it has a lot of charm that carries it through despite outstaying its welcome just a tad in the long run.

Last of Us and SotC are two sore spots for me too. Even before DLC, the Last of US multiplayer shit was fucking grindy and obnoxious as fuck and I noped the fuck out of it without even doing anything other than what I got in one time through the main game so I'm basically sitting at like 14% or some shit. SotC I literally ONLY have the Hard Time Attack one to do but they fucked the controls on the port (PS3 at least. Not sure if it was better for PS4) and the gripping is buggy as hell so doing the one with the giant sword/pillar/stick thing that you have to run up at the start is complete bullshit and I finally gave up after multiple hours of fuck ups that weren't entirely my fault that kept me from getting it. Did the same as you on DuckTales. Made a couple attempts at it but it was WAY too frustrating and didn't feel worthwhile in the end.

16.) Darksiders 3 I'm not entirely sure I liked this game. Story was solid, but something about the game didn't feel right. I know a lot of people were complaining when it first came out because they seemed to take it in a sort of "Dark Souls" direction apparently and ended up patching in a "classic" mode later on but even playing on that it felt like enemies hit 2-3x harder than they should and you pretty much had to figure out how to dodge everything or go fuck yourself. I enjoyed the story though I'm getting really sick of these games re-treading more or less the same time period for 3 games now. It's like they're in a perpetual holding pattern because they didn't actually know WHAT they were doing with the story so this one is another half-assed prequel to the original (as was 2) that only fills in 1 or 2 more pieces of the puzzle without actually making things all that much clearer. Probably not going to bother getting the platinum for this one. Seems like a huge hassle when I have other stuff I really want to play right now. And of course the side game that's coming out next is ALSO a prequel. Not only that, it's a top down Diablo-style game, but it only features 2 of the 4 Horsemen and as such, only supports up to 2 players. Talk about missing a fucking opportunity.

15.) Borderlands 2 Finally got around to finishing this now that the game has been out for like 7 years and I've owned it for around 6. XD Still have a bunch of shit to do in it though with all the DLC and if I go for all the trophies.