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24.) Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory This was actually kind of impressive. IS basically one of the 3DS Theaterhythm: Final Fantasy games (which were excellent)but turned into a full console thing. It functions as a summary of all the KH games via the music from them, though it kind of starts phoning it in by KH3 which was a bit disappointing, but overall it was a fun distraction with some cool new stuff thrown on at the end (thus continuing the tradition of literally EVERY KH release, no matter how trivial or unimportant seeming, being used to advance the story. XD ). Some of the music was really fun for a rhythm game setting to and had a small sampling of actual Disney songs here and there too. Might actually be able to get the Platinum on this even but we'll see. Depends on how many songs I can do flawlessly on the highest difficulty. Think I'm about halfway and if I can manage that one the rest is a cakewalk (if a bit time consuming).

23.) (PS5) Miles Morales: Spider-man This was tons of fun. Story was a little weaker than the first game, but it had its moments and wasn't entirely unexpected since it was a decent amount shorter. Combat was interesting with the addition of Miles' powers and though it felt harder than the original at first, I'm going through on New Game+ now to clean up trophies and being used to the new abilities is letting me absolutely tear through everything. Length wise, at a guess I'd say it a LITTLE longer than the length of the 3 DLC chapters but WITH all the side quests and collectible content of the original game which gives it a pretty decent length if you do everything. Probably could have benefited from a lengthier story ultimately, but I don't felt that it suffered much as is. Some of the costume options you can unlock were really cool too. Villain spoiler stuff:

22.) The Talos Principle Fun puzzle game. The "main" stuff was relatively straight forward, but the extra stuff for the "real" ending and bonus stuff for the extra ending got pretty hard in a few places. Nice balance overall it felt like. Relatively interesting premise as far as this sort of game goes though exceptionally typical for the genre as well (crank the "mystery" and philosophical themes up to 20 and let it ride). I still enjoyed it though and sought out the collectibles to find out more about the world. Finished the last ending earlier tonight and am playing through the DLC now since it came with it. MUCH harder puzzles and a lot stronger in the story/world building department so far. Still enjoying it, but I am starting to feel that edge of "That's about enough of this, thanks" so the DLC might have been a tad unnecessary overall.

21.) Werewolf the Apocalypse: Heart of the Forest This is more of what I was looking for from the above game. REALLY felt like playing a TTRPG. Some really cool art too here and there. A bit more abstract than this kind of game usually has, but it was nice and really fit the tone of the game. Also made use of music and sound effects really nicely. Choices felt like they mattered and you had a character sheet that was constantly being updated based on your choices which was interesting. Never been super into WtA, but I've always been interested in learning more about the other World of Darkness stuff outside of VtM so this was a nice introduction. There's a full on Werewolf the Apocalypse game coming out early next year so this was a nice primer. Only complaint is that it was pretty short. Got through it in like 4 hours, though there seems to be a pretty solid amount of replay value and I got it for like $10 since I owned the Vampire games that have come out recently so it still felt relatively worthwhile.

20.) Vampire the Masquerade: Night Road Basically a full on 'chose your own adventure' novel with stats that influence choices/success of choices. Straight up text with very few images. I enjoyed it well enough, but it was kind of hard to play sitting at my computer. Would have been better going with a mobile format I think. Had to put on background music from a different game to stay engaged too. Not sure this is quite my kind of thing. I can do visual novels since they tend to have regular images and music and what not. Mechanically, the game was pretty solid. Was basically like playing a TTRPG with limited choices with the way it worked. Seems like solid replayability too compared to similar games. Just hard for me to stay into it. Something with this writing quality/depth with more of the visual novel type of feel would probably be pretty good but this was definitely too bare bones for my tastes.

At least Kasumi got more interesting near the end. Initially she just felt a bit like a sportsy Makoto clone.

19.) Untitled Goose Game This was a fun little distraction. Good for a laugh. They just added a 2-player co-op mode so decided to grab it on sale and played it with the wife. Had a lot of fun though it was pretty short (beat it in a couple 2-hour (at most) sessions). Looks like there's more to do after you "beat" it which is nice since it seemed like there was a lot more you could do to fuck around in the game so will probably play it some more when we both have time to see what else there is to it.

I'd say it would definitely be worth a discount buy. Especially since by then there should be more to the story. XD There is a lot of love that went into this buried under the 'live service' bs. Even the "loading" elevators inside AIM instillations have great (and hilarious) conversations that I rarely hear repeat and still hear new ones despite the time I've put into it. Everything from discussions about their "hero" names, to Widow accusing Thor of stealing her hair ties. Really makes me wish this game could have been more like Spider-man.

18.) Marvel's Avengers Finally finished. Technically I finished a while ago, as the campaign wasn't overly long, but after the main campaign they had a bunch of side objectives that actually continue the story a bit so I waited until I finished that stuff. Last mission thing was actually pretty hard which was nice, but most of the post campaign stuff was a grind fest so it too a while. This game needs a LOT of work. They did some stuff right, but a lot of it is just uninspired. I can't help but think that two completely different teams worked on the game. One for the campaign and one for the "live service" multi-player shit because they are two entirely different levels of quality. Campaign was really solid if a bit short and had a lot of good stuff in it. The lore collectibles add a lot to it too. You can tell the people that worked on it cared a lot about the comics. There are even a number of individual SHIELD agents that have names and are actually established characters from the comics that appear a handful of times. They laid a lot of ground work for where they can take it next too which I liked and I'm actually interested in seeing what they do with it. The other half though is a ridiculous grind fest and what you're grinding for isn't even overly interesting. There's a few good character skins but most of them are ridiculously uninspired which is utterly mind boggling considering they have up to 60 years of comics to pull from for some of these characters. I get that Ms. Marvel has only been around for like 6 years, but making all of her "Legendary" skins be her in different super hero t-shirts is kind of a cop out. A lot of the others too are just one or two decent skins for their Legendary one that is then pallet swapped 4 or 5 times. FUCKING WHY? Granted, I haven't seen all of them yet, but I've seen enough to be annoyed. Thor seems like the one with the best options. At this point, I spend most of the currency I earn on the fucking nameplates because at least those have a lot of variance and stand out. Emotes are pointless since you can only equip one and probably the best thing, the takedowns, are only in the "hard currency" store (outside of ONE you can earn on the challenge card thing) and cost the equivalent of $12 so fuuuuuuuuck that. Once you hit max level too, the gear grind is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen in a game like this. It would be decently balanced if you could focus on one character, but to do the hardest thing in the game, you literally need to max out everyone or you're going to have a bad time because if you get downed by something during it, you have to swap characters and can't if they're not a high enough power level. I also find it kind of ridiculous that the current end game content is something you HAVE to do by yourself. So much for the multiplayer I guess? Not that I mind not having to play with people, but they seem to have their wires crossed with what they want from this game.

17.) Vampire the Masquerade: Shadows of New York This is a standalone expansion for Vampire the Masquerade: Coteries of New York. Basically a visual novel style of game with some slightly stronger gameplay elements than some have. I actually enjoyed it more than the first game. This picks up a few months after the original, from a different characters perspective and there's a set character you play as instead of picking one of 3. It's a Vampire from clan Lasombra which is one of the ones I find more interesting. It still had some of the same issues the first game had, but felt like it had a stronger ending that didn't jump at you out of nowhere. I apparently got the 'bad' ending though I thought it was a solid way to end it. Might actually play through again to see what the 'good' ending is supposed to be since it wasn't terribly long.

Oh damn, that's smooth as hell if that's true. I can totally get behind that.

I THINK I might know what he's talking about, but it's hard to say based on a pure time mark because I tend to play games slower than other people. I also don't think I came across anything in particular that pissed me off to ever stop playing (though I did take a couple breaks due to just how overwhelming depressing the tone of the story is 95% of the game) or that I felt changed the scope of the game. The tone of the game is pretty consistent (which isn't a good thing ultimately I think), and it more outstays its welcome than anything IMO. I still consider it a good game, it just needed some better editing at the very least. The game is fundamentally better than the first by pretty solid leaps over the first one imo (though quite a bit easier most the time at least in part due to them making so many improvements), but from a story perspective I think it falls a bit short of the first in tonal quality and focus. Also, mild gameplay spoiler strictly about enemy types: Depending on how you feel about depictions of violence to animals, you may not want to bother. It's not a deal breaker for me, but I know it can be for a lot of people and as soon I saw an enemy with a dog at one point, my first thought was "Well I see where this is going and it already feels unnecessary".

16.) The Last of Us Part 2 Well that was certainly something. Gameplay improved upon in almost every way (except character skill upgrades) over the first, it has the most amazing Accessibility features I've EVER seen in a game, and I can honestly say (ironically enough) if THIS one had an online multiplayer mode, I might actually consider it (assuming they didn't drown half the trophy list in ridiculous BS for it). The story was a bit... much? It was like 5-10 hours too long at least (think my original playthrough of 1 was like 20 hours? This one was 40). Not that I don't love long games, but the story REALLY lost focus by the end and should have ended before the last 'section' of the game (which seems to be the general consensus), and it felt even longer because it was a mostly miserable experience emotionally. The only saving grace were pretty much all of the flashback scenes in that regard. Not to say that I didn't like it, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Visually the game was beautiful, but it was SO hyper violent that there was a lot of tactless and tasteless stuff going on. If I headshot a dude, I REALLY don't need the ability to find his corpse and see exactly where and how big of a hole I made in his head with ridiculous detail (to name the least of it). Considering some of the controversy Naughty Dog has been having to deal with, this level of detail is beyond unnecessary imo. There was a particular fight scene where I can only imagine the expression on my face as I went through it. It went from fun to obnoxiously unpleasant pretty damn quick in places.

15.) Persona 5 Royal Jesus I think that was longer than P4 Golden. 225 hours. Got the platinum in one play through though so that was nice. Not nearly as grindy as Golden was (or the original P5 for that matter from what I've seen of its list). Great game though. Combat mechanics were stellar. Overall, I think I liked it better than 4 though it felt like some of the more intricate story elements got flubbed a little (mostly with the added stuff for Royal). All around enjoyable experience. Also did end up playing through Last of Us: Left Behind. Solid little DLC story. Easier than the main game overall, and it feels like it ended in an awkward place but it was a nice distraction while waiting for Last of Us 2.

14.) The Last of Us: Remastered Got through it faster than I thought I would so all set for when 2 comes out. Will be able to play through the prequel thing too which I never got to play before. Used a guide this time to make sure I got all the collectibles which definitely boosted my completion for the game vs the PS3 version (had 6% trophies for that and like 30% this time). If I wanted to go through the game again on New Game+ I could probably manage a fair bit more, but not going to bother since I know I'm not going to go for the Platinum anyway. Stupid ass multiplayer bullshit. >:| Game is still fantastic. Held up really well overall. Load time even on PS4 when you're starting up the game is still pretty horrendous though. XD

13.) Quantum Break I wanted to play this one back when it came out, but between it being XBox (or Windows Store) exclusive, and hearing some iffy things about it, I ended up skipping on it and more or less forgetting it existed. After playing through most of Remedy's other games after loving Control, it went on sale on Steam so I finally bought it. Glad I did. Was really fun, and had a pretty interesting story (though a mildly annoying ending that begs for a sequel, much like Alan Wake). You can REALLY see the evolution of their game engine too going from Alan Wake, to this and then ultimately Control. This gameplay was definitely a stepping stone to what they did in Control overall. Not that means it was bad by any stretch of the imagination. A little clunky at times, but very enjoyable overall. I'm a fan of a lot of the actors they used in it too so that definitely helped. The live action "episodes" in between each act that mostly followed side characters were really engaging too which I was surprised by. Though how you watch them is a bit awkward. It legitimately streams it in-game from their servers which makes the quality vary at times. Really wish their was a download option (though it would apparently be like 40GB of data) just in case they ever close the server they're on down. Though I suppose they're probably on YouTube at this point too.

12.) Final Fantasy VII Remake Completely forgot to post in here when I first beat it since I was actively talking about it in the other topic. Got the Platinum last night and cleaned up the Play Log for full 100% completion earlier today. Think my final time at Plat was around 101.5 hours. Closer to 103 when I finished everything else. Really looking forward to seeing what they do with future entries. Not looking forward to how long it will probably take. XD

Part of it is I was never a fan of the direction the MGS games started heading in the first place. The first is by far my favorite, and I've been slowly losing interest since 3. I played 4 for the sheer spectacle of it, and had completely lost interest after playing Portable Ops and seeing Peace Walker and didn't have much interest in Ground Zeroes in the first place. Everything I saw about what they were doing with 5 put me off even before Konami went full retard and catapulted Kojima. Ultimately there's a lot of little things that rubbed me the wrong way for long enough that I eventually became unable to reconcile it and gave up.

I tried playing it a few months ago and after about 30 min. I got mad and deleted the fucking thing. I was having absolutely no fun playing it at all and it just felt too different from what I remember enjoying from an MGS game that I couldn't get into it at all. Have no intention of playing 5 at this point either because of it.

11.) Control: The Foundation First expansion came out for Control and I'm counting it because it had a pretty decent length and good amount of extra content and it did not disappoint. Some interesting hidden things too. Probably the most ridiculous being you can find these 8 hidden lucky cat statues throughout the expansion the require some puzzle solving to hunt down in a few cases, and as you find them they gather around another cat statue and unlock these massive stone slab doors that lead to a room: You get a pair of cat ears as a reward. XD The couple patches they've put out since I stopped playing seem to have really helped the performance too. The only stuttering I get now is coming out of the pause menu. The regular menus and map don't cause it anymore. Still some framerate loss when action gets really heavy, but not near as bad as it was at launch and better than I would expect it to for all the effects the game throws around. This is probably the first game I had played where I actually wish I had a PS4 Pro or an even better PC. Apparently the ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 support make it crazy good looking.

10.) Baldur's Gate Interesting game. Not entire sure I "liked" it. D&D stuff usually doesn't do much for me. Something about the setting has always managed to put me off a little, but the game had some cool bits to it and in terms of depth there is SO much to it that many other RPGs should have taken note of, both in the past and now. Story eventually got me interested, but I never quite managed to enjoy the game play. One part of the story NEARLY elevated it for me too, but it was more of a psych-out moment that ended up not being nearly as crazy as I thought it was at first. Managed to get nearly 90% of the trophies in one go, but one of the ones I have left is beating it on the absolute highest difficulty and considering how much trouble I had with the game on Easy in places, I'm going to nope the fuck out of that right now.

It was fine for a once through. There were some legitimately cool scenes in the game, and a couple decent story bits. Most of the rest of it was throw away though. I don't regret playing it, but would definitely not play it again. Might be a while on Bioshock Infinite though. The massive quantity of RPG releases this year is about to start, and I made the mistake of starting Baldur's Gate in the dead space I have left.

9.) Pony Island Man this got trippy. Was pretty interesting though. Went into it kind of knowing what to expect (Stanley Parable-esque mind-fuck game), but still got surprised a couple times. Mostly that 3rd "core" encounter is what got me a few times. That was some inspired shit right there. XD Don't even remember how I ended up with this game, but am considering checking out some of this guys other games at some point because this was an all around interesting experience.

8.) Bioshock 2 Not sure how to feel about this game overall. It felt partly unnecessary, but had some really solid additions to the story, and some great scenes here and there. Liked the gameplay less overall (except the hacking which was a nice change, and some of the new passive abilities were cool as hell). The combat and the system for gathering ADAM were clunky and annoying though a lot of the time. Was expecting worse overall so was pleasantly surprised in the end. Not going for the platinum for this one. Definitely don't have the patience to do it again.

I've been considering skipping 2 and going straight to Infinite. Haven't heard anything terribly impressive about it (not that I've heard anything particularly bad either) and I know it wasn't made by the same people that did the first one and Infinite.