Games I've completed during the first half of the year: 75
Platform Distribution:
3DS 7
PS5 10
Switch 23
PS4 35
I was quite surprised to see how many games I had played on my Switch and then I seen that 16 were from the NES/SNES/Mega Drive/N64 service. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
At the start of the year I set myself some gaming goals.
It's not going that bad. Could be better but I'm happy with how things have gone so far. My platinum run is still going strong. Every game i've played has been platinumed, with the exception of Nexomon and Neo: The World Ends With You and that's because I'm still playing them.
Favourite Games - Each month I marked a game down as my favourite. Here's what I've got.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits - Fantastic adventure game that took me back to the PS2 era.
Pokemon Legends - A kick up the backside that the series really needed. I haven't enjoyed a Pokemon game as much in years.
Elden Ring - Miyazaki masterclass. How the Souls team manage to keep pulling off amazing game after amazing game is beyond me.
Dragon Quest VIII - Charming, colourful, funny and plenty of grinding along the way. Yup, it's another amazing DQ game.
Resident Evil VII - A different take on the franchise but one that somehow manages to bring back the feeling of the original Resident Evil game.
TMNT: Shredder's Revenge - A blast from the past, both in terms of IP and genre. Perfectly recaptures what a game like this should be.
Worst Games - Like the favourites section, I also record d the worst games that I played each month.
Monster World IV - A fun adventure but it was pretty dated. Plus, it was played in Jan and every other game was a banger.
Earthbound Beginnings - Wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be but it still wasn't great. The praise this series get's continues to baffle me.
Alien Soldier - Awful game that hasn't aged that well. Not one of Treasure's best games at all.
Inkenfell - Bland and overly long RPG. It tried to be funny with it's writing but it just didn't work for me.
Tales of Arise - Worst JRPG I have played in a long time. Story is garbage, characters are rubbish and the gameplay is clearly built around DLC/microtransactions
Mario Strikers: Battle league - The game had very little content to it and was pretty easy to finish. I had long hoped that Next Level would return to the franchise but after only 5 hours of game time, I had finished the game.
Looking at the lists so far, I think the worst game out of them all is clearly Tales of Arise. A lot of the others are products of their time but there is no excuse for the state of Tales. As for my GOTY running, out of the games I've mentioned I would probably say it's between Elden Ring and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Both games were amazing and both deserve a massive amount of praise. Given what we know is coming the rest of the year, the only thing I can see possibly dethroning either of these games is God of War Ragnarök.
It'll be the first week of the month, so it's time for a theme night.
Next Theme Night: Thursday 7th July, 8pm
Every track here includes multiple routes for you to take (Shortcuts don't count), you'll have to think about your routing and whether others taking the same route might get in the way.
If we have enough time for a fourth GP, then that will be Player's Choice.
The game is releasing September 22nd in Japan, as confirmed in a dedicated livestream, and a demo is also landing on 10th August (but again, only listed for Japan so far?):
This might be the worldwide release date as Steam is also listed below this date in the livestream? But it's not yet confirmed.