Games Of 2024
 

2023 was dominated by Tears Of The Kingdom, and it wasn’t until the very end of the year that I had another game I even wanted to consider for GOTY. In 2024, I already had three main contenders by June. Funny how that works out sometimes!

Even outside of those three, it’s been a stellar year. I think as BBLC progresses, my attitude towards games has changed enough that acquisition is no longer a priority; I’m really only buying games that I want, rather than anything that seems like a good deal. As a result, there are fewer clangers (though there’s still been plenty of Bins!). Not at all a bad thing, I’m certainly spending less money, and I’ve managed to whittle the backlog down to under 40 games for the first time in about 5 years. With 59 games played in 2024, will next year see the backlog cleared? I've said so every year since I started so probably not!

Expect to see some virtual reality on next year's list! A last minute surprise from Santa saw me gain ownership of a Quest 3S headset which I'm still adjusting to. 2025 may also bring us the successor to the Switch, and regardless it will certainly be bringing Metroid Prime 4. Odds are good that my GOTY 2025 has already been decided. But that’s the future, and this article is about the past. Video games!

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Ys 8: Lacrimosa Of Dana

Last year’s ‘GOTY That Isn’t TotK’ is this year’s ‘GOTY that I think people reading this will enjoy the most’. I started playing it at the end of last year and it lasted into February of this year, so I get to count it for both years. My early estimation that Ys8 was going to be a great time was spot on, with fast fluid combat and a ripping soundtrack, but what surprised me was how much I enjoyed the cast of characters, as they came together in Castaway Village one by one, each with a tale to tell. When the game ended I genuinely felt a little sad, because I was going to miss our little village. Of course, there was also the small matter of the end of the world to deal with, but that’s old hat for Adol by now. I have the novelisation to read through still, whose existence still baffles me.

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Hitman 2 Hitman Harder

Between only being sold 80% of the actual game (via a bundle that didn’t mention this, the rest having since been de-listed and impossible to acquire) and a general apathy for the score-chasing content (all of which was denied me due to playing offline, because this entirely single-player game needs to always be online or it doesn’t function correctly) I was less than impressed by Hitman. It’s a shame all the corporate bullshit ruined what could have been a fine time.

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Project Wingman

I have so much to say about Project Wingman. It's my 'Game Of The Year That Is Just For Me (I, Solely, Am Responsible For This)'. I played through it three times in succession all the way to the hardest difficulty setting and came away still wanting to play more. A constant visceral thrill that nails the hard-to-master experience, skill progression is palpable and pulling off a crazy stunt that nails a difficult kill is always a rush no matter how many times you do it. Outside of that, the radio chatter between characters is wonderful when you can take your attention away from the dogfighting to notice it, and I've developed an affection for the whole squad- an impressive feat given you never see more of them than their planes zooming by for a fraction of a second. The orchestral soundtrack is phenomenal, culminating in a truly harrowing final boss sequence to utterly gorgeous music. And then right at the end of the year they dropped a six-mission DLC pack with one stage in particular that will live with me forever as one of the most stressful and most enjoyable videogame experiences of my life. No exaggeration, I came away from it with my arms and legs going numb because I was so tense I wasn't breathing. ...In, like, a good way. You'll be seeing this again in next year's list because I still just hop into a mission from time to time so I can enjoy the skies some more- and it's VR capable so you can bet I'll be sitting in the cockpit for real once I get my sea legs.

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Ducktales

This really landed in that sweetspot where licenced games were good, didn’t it? Before the SNES era where they were deliberately made unreasonably difficult because Disney didn’t want to miss out on the rental money, and long before they became shovelware dreck because they knew it would sell even if it was bad. I can imagine a modern audience turning their nose at the idea of playing an old disney platformer for these reasons, and that’s a shame- there’s a good, if brief, time to be had here.

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Touhoumon Another World Revised

At about 80% of the way through the story, this accessible and player-friendly game said “ok, now you’re a competitive player” and started pulling off some absurd nonsense that no casual player could hope to understand or counter. A real damn shame as I was enjoying the hell out of it until that point. There's some neat QoL stuff that is probably found in most fangames and romhacks these days, but still I'd like to see the official games adopt some of it. Let me change what ball my pokemon are in!

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Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

This game is just neat. I think giving it the Final Fantasy title may have actually done more harm than good, but it's still a good time with some fun ideas, a mild Zelda-lite approach to dungeons, and a monstrous soundtrack. Control your expectations and you'll have fun with Mystic Quest.

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Orwell

In my BBLC review, I wondered if I was doomed to fail no matter what I did as part of the game’s political commentary, or if I just sucked. Having played through it a few times to see all the alternate routes, turns out I just suck. Surveillance works!!!!!

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Wandersong

Nope, I still can’t talk about it. You have to experience this one for yourself. It’s a warm blanket on a chilly day, and you'll love it. This isn't one of those "but actually it's DARK AND GRIM!!!!" kinds of 'trust me', it's just lovely and has some really fun surprises.

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Banjo Kazooie

It's very rare that old games are as good as you remember them, but BK just got it right. Every bit as playable today as it was when it released, tight levels absolutely crammed full of things to find and very fun movement throughout. Even the humour isn't as dated as I suspected it would be. Simply a top class game that has withstood the ravages of time.

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Hexologic

I finished it before I wrote my post, so I'll let that stand. It's great!

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Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze

I played four DKC-likes this year, and this was my least favourite. It's almost-but-not-quite like the old games brought into the modern era, but they changed all the small things that made it DKC. Also I know he's a gorilla and is supposed to be weighty and feel heavy, but even so the momentum is just all over the place. DK feels very difficult to control once he gets going, and also very hard to get going in the first place, which was never a problem in the SNES games. Finally, the puzzle rooms are just thoroughly miserable and I'd rather they were excised completely. There's perhaps 6 unique designs that are re-used ad nauseam through the whole game. The SNES games had 1-3 unique rooms per LEVEL. It's not at all a bad game, but definitely disappointing. Despite all of this, it gets 10/10 because Dixie Kong is cute.

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Yooka Laylee impossible Lair

It's a better Donkey Kong than Tropical Freeze was. Not without frustrations- when you take damage Laylee will fly around the screen randomly and chasing her down will often just lead you into more trouble, for example- but they are worth enduring for the excellent level design and fun secrets. HOWEVER! The Impossible Lair itself, which is the game's final level, is complete and total ass. I understand that's the point of it, and in that regard it’s a job well done, but something that is 'bad on purpose' is still bad. If not for that, this would be an easy and hearty recommendation to anyone who likes 2D platformers, but the final hurdle is too much for anyone who doesn't have a steep tolerance for frustration.

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Sunset Overdrive

I am astonished by how little impact this game left on me. I Recycle Binned it in my review but I actually played it through to the end (not 100%) and the whole experience just washed right off me. It is an incredibly, extremely, astonishingly ok game, just about as Fine as a game experience can be, and it's hard to talk about. I am however left to wonder; after film had been a medium for twenty years or so, do you think there was a sudden wave of 'haha, because it's a film'-style jokes? It seems to be rife during this era of video game to grind everything to a halt in order to waggle their eyebrows at the player and make self-references. It's very very difficult to pull that kind of humour off well and Sunset Overdrive doesn't manage it. (MGS2 and Undertale are the only examples that come to mind of it being done well.)

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Earthbound

For as frustrating as Earthbound frequently is, holy smokes the entire Giygas sequence is worth it.

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Great Ace Attorney

I’m still plodding my way through this one so I won’t give a definitive verdict. It’s definitely a more disposable entry into the series- not necessarily a bad thing. I do not like the jury system at all, it doesn’t add anything to the cases, the jurors are all annoying and they don’t have any actual character (none of them are named) so it’s not like they are actually going to matter to the story at all. I’m on case 4 and poor Naruhodo just can’t catch a break!

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The Corridor

It's a short experience that I talked about as much as I wanted to during my BBLC post!

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Melody’s Escape

I don't have anything more to say about Melody either. Good game!

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Soundodger

I got maybe 2/3s the way through the advanced levels before calling it quits. Very fun game but I had played all the songs I enjoyed and the remaining ones were a slog to get through with some annoying patterns (the reverses are very cool in theory but I have no way of knowing when one will happen or where the bullets will go, stop this). The Chipzel level is absolutely fantastic and that's all that matters.

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Mass Effect

I had fun being the universe's most petulant jackass, starting fights for no reason and condemning people to death because I could, but the gameplay itself was a little underwhelming. Combat lacks any sense of impact and I found myself simply watching healthbars to see if I was actually doing any damage with my shots, as there is no other sense of feedback. It was also a lot shorter than I expected, though that might be in part because I didn't do any of the sidequests- still, KOTOR and Dragon Age's main quests felt a lot longer. Overall not a bad game, perhaps past its prime- I didn't play the Legendary version which may be improved in exactly these ways.

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Dragons Dogma

A surprise hit in the late summer, I went into it expecting a mostly-okay RPG in the Elder Scrolls vein, but found a much snappier and more responsive experience. I modded the shit out of it for some QoL stuff that had me scratching my head but once that was done, Dragon's Dogma became one of my favourites of the year. It wasn't only because you can throw people off cliffs without consequence. Not *only* because of that. The legend of my tiny homunculus called Balls will live on for eternity.

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Final Fantasy 6

In the ever-swirling vortex that is 'ranking final fantasy games', this one was mid-tier for me. People praise its story and characters which I agree are ALMOST very emotive, but also three minutes after his entire family and country are killed in a horrific poison attack Cyan is having goofy lol magic robot clown hour and the mood is a little off kilter as a result. Going to invoke the wrath of the entire universe by saying, of all the FFs, this one could use a modernisation the most. FF7 didn't need it, FF4 REALLY didn't need it, but FF6 would very much benefit from it. Giving its characters room to breathe in animated/voiced cutscenes would nail the tone, I think. Now, listen, this goes against EVERYTHING I usually stand for, alright? Leave Chrono Trigger well alone. I only want this for FF6.

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Master Of Orion 2

Surprisingly I didn't play much Orion this year. I think I burned out playing an especially large amount last year and didn't quite get the buzz back. I think I got a little too good at it, I guess. Maybe I should switch back to Civ 5 in 2025 which is the-same-but-different enough to scratch the itch but give a different experience.

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Neopets

Neopets is in a weird spot right now, even for Neopets. I came back last year to join the faerie festival which gave away an endgame piece of battle equipment for little more than logging in 5 days consecutively, and stuck around to take part in the plot that was due to begin six months later, which released literally the only weapon in the game that is more powerful for little more than logging in for 20 days consecutively. Since then there's been a vast swathe of incredibly rare and expensive items just kinda given away for nothing, which is an effective if questionable way for them to tackle the thorny issue of black market off-site sales for real money, but I suspect there is something else at play here. When mobile gacha games shut down they usually have a month-long event where you get to roll at vastly increased odds just for the fun of doing it, and I wonder if the same is happening here. 'The Void Within' plot signals the December of neopets as it is known today, and rather than try to fix the myriad issues it'll be retired and reformed into a mobile-friendly app game, or just licenced out for endless mediocre match-3 games (oh, too late). That's sad to think about, but I do at least intend to ride out the plot in full.

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Half Life, Hazard Course, Deathmatch

I painstakingly sought out and tinkered with the demo version of Half Life, which was actually its own standalone title called Uplink, in a fit of nostalgia. HL1 is showing its age a lot, in part because it was so ahead of its time. It is so atmospheric you expect it to play a far more modern game of stealth and cover, but in actuality it plays a much more oldskool run-and-gun type of game. Anyway, about two weeks after I managaed to get it working, Valve updated the steam version of HL1 to work seamlessly on modern computers and it also now comes bundled with Uplink in the package. Womp womp. The Hazard Course is also fun to run through- it's the tutorial for what was a pretty complex game at the time, and I remember me and my brother used to race through it and I frustrated him with my strategy of ducking under doors to clear them half a second faster than you can when standing. I miss those days.

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Starcraft 1 demo

I first played this in… goodness, 1998? 1999? We only had the demo version but I played it a lot, and had strong memories especially of the little animated profile pictures each unit had. The soldier guy saying “go go go!” but only opening his mouth one time was a source of endless hilarity when I were a wee boy, and it was a sudden remembrance of that fact which made me seek out the demo once again. The game hasn’t held up too well, especially in terms of unit pathfinding, but it sure scratched the nostalgia itch. If you linger on the first mission briefing too long the AI lady gets concerned and asks if you’re alright, which I thought was really cool as a kid.

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RTX Portal

My ultra-fancy new graphics card came with this as a demonstration of its power. It’s the standard Portal in all ways except it’s very shiny and nice. I was particularly impressed with the way light refracted through the big red floor buttons. But I’ve never really been one who cares much for graphics, and it wasn’t long before I just stopped noticing how nice it looked. Still, Portal is a great game and it had been long enough since I last fired it up that it was worthwhile going through it again.

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Xenoblade Chronicles

Incredible game. It's my third Game Of The Year, and any other year it would have absolutely swept up. I own both 2 and 3 but I wanted to play the first game before starting those, so I rented it and it absolutely blew us away. midgi got ABSORBED and she wasn't even playing, she just happened to be around while cutscenes were happening and suddenly she's sitting with me to watch the rest. The characters, the voice acting, the staging, the music, everything was superb. ...Except the gameplay. The battles are a bit pants. But who cares about that when Melia is here? Metal Face was such a great villain, Shulk is a lovely protagonist, I wish Dunban was my dad. Xenoblade's got it all and I can't believe it took me so long to get to it. I can't wait for 2 and 3, the latter of which I understand is even better, BUT I don't want to burn out on RPGs so I am being very well behaved until the backlog dice roll them.

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Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta

Didn't finish on stream this year, but we played long enough for me to roll berserker for the first time! Thf/Whm/Ber/Nin was my final team, rerolling a Chm in the fourth slot for something a little more fun. Some real nice interplay with that team, thief gives zerk some much needed speed, while eqp axes on white mage makes for a very entertaining quakebot (and whm powers up the rune axe on the berserker of course). Finally, white magic on ninja makes scrolls super deadly, leading to another triple crown. I wanna play with a blue mage next year!

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Donkey Kong Country 2

The best of the DK games, despite starring Diddy Kong. That soundtrack is just legendary and the level design still fully holds up, but most importantly it gave us Dixie Kong. I only wish the DK Coins had some purpose like they do in DKC3- it is still fun to collect them (though I have long since memorised where they all are) but if I ever miss one it feels like a slog to go back and get it just for a high score at the end of the game.

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Donkey Kong Country 3

Pretty much every level except the very early ones have some sort of gimmick in this game, which makes them all memorable, but with ~50 levels and so ~50 gimmicks you can be sure not all of them are winners. The waterfall levels are a particular nadir with a lot of fiddly jumps that send you falling back to the start of the level for daring to explore in a game that normally encourages it. I kinda miss the straightforward platforming stages in 3, but it's still a good game.

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Space Crusade (Atari ST, DOS, Amstrad)

The first computer in my life that actually belonged to me was an Atari ST, and Space Crusade was my favourite game for it. I didn't really understand how to play it (a moderately technical board game adaptation was a bit beyond me at the age of six) but it was a fave, and later in life I came to own the superior-in-every-way Amiga version and played that to death. Curious, I wanted to go back to the ST version to see if the differences really were that significant (yes) and in the process learned of an MS DOS and an Amstrad version, so I had to give those a go too. Suffice to say, Amiga remains king. This is a pretty cool game that unfortunately has a significant reliance on RNG and it will ALWAYS screw you over, which makes it more frustrating than it needs to be.

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APB Amiga

And while we're playing old Amiga games, holy crap my brother had this for like 3 days and I always had a very vague memory of it but I couldn’t remember the title or anything else about it until just by happenstance I was on an amiga website and saw a screenshot of it, and lo and behold a decades-long mystery was solved. It's kinda bad!

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Bar Games

This uhhhhh wow haha I shouldn't have been playing this as a kid

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Deadlock

Valve's new game that was a big secret for a long time, by the time this post is going up I'll be allowed to talk about it in full. I hardpicked Vindicta on my first round and haven't looked away. I don't really care for MOBAs; every round is pretty much exactly the same game and I get bored quickly, and I DEFINITELY don't have the patience to learn the ins-and-outs to become anything close to proficient, but it's fun with friends.

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Unreal Tournament

This was another nostalgia trip. The bot AI doesn't really hold up any more but the shooting is so frenetic it's still fun anyway. I dread to imagine what the online is like.

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Lord Of Rigel demo

This might be The One. I only played a little bit of the demo and it felt a lot like Orion 2 without aping it fully. It also felt very different from Orion 1, which a lot of Orion-Likes tend to lean towards. Feels promising- I want to play the full version before getting too attached though.

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Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster

First time playing this version! Obviously I have played FF1 to death in other flavours but there's some fun changes here, most obviously a return to vancian magic (spell slots instead of MP) but more significantly a change to how enemy AI works. Chaos can now use Curaga at any time and even spam it if you're unlucky. Strategy remains to buff up as much as you can until he first casts it and then delete him as quickly as possible. I did a normal run through with characters called Fighter, Thief, Red Mage, and White Mage (you'll never guess what classes they were), and then a sort of casual speedrun taking advantage of the PR's ‘boost’ function to essentially cheat my way through as quickly as possible, using what I have figured to be the most optimal party- Fighter, Fighter, Fighter, and Red Mage. Got a time of 2:14 which I think could pretty easily be pushed under 2 hours. I love this game and I know it very well so it's nice to get a slightly different take on it. Music is fantastic, obviously.

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Team Fortress 2

I don't know why I do this every year. I play the Halloween event, get frustrated by all the BS, stop playing and decide not to play any more... then load it back up an hour later and see if the next map sucks less. It doesn't. I just really want to finally get that one single cosmetic that never ever dropped over 10+ years of running the same event, and I don't even know why I want it any more since I don't even play the game. It's a shame that something I used to look forward to has become such a thorn in my foot. It would be improved significantly if you could do the contracts in any order, so you could skip the truly awful maps. Oh well, back to grinding out souls to roll the slot machine one more time.

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Tacoma

Not much gameplay to this, but I enjoyed the story. It has a moderate twist to the ending that makes the player's actions a little more positive (rather than mercenary) and leaves things open in a fun way. It's hard to talk about it without spoiling it.

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Ghost Trick

Please play Ghost Trick, by whatever means necessary.

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Entropy Zero

This is a Half Life 2 mod so I didn't want to make a BBLC entry tearing it to ribbons because, heck, teams of folks coming together to make mods is awesome even if they aren't to my taste. This one has some very impressive mapping, and custom weapons which are rare to see, but the tone is all over the place and bucked me off like a bronco. It wants to tell a dark broody bad-guy story about revenge and does so via a main character who makes wisecracks after every kill and communicates entirely in pop culture references. I dipped when the keraaaaazy aperture turret sidekick was introduced and the dialogue became "[wacky oddball nonsense]!" "Shut the hell up" ad infintum.

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Portal Reloaded

I fell off. I am 85% sure I have solved the puzzle I am stuck on correctly, but slightly incorrect angles on the laser beams all need adjusting and it’s a total pain to make those changes given any alteration in the present fully resets the future. Alternatively, I’ve just solved it incorrectly, but I can’t know that for sure until I’ve iterated my current solution enough times and it’s hard to raise the motivation to do that.

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198X

I think I said everything I needed to in my post. If you think it might resonate with you, it probably will.

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Bloody Hell

I finished it not long after my BBLC post. The final boss was fun for me, but I can definitely see someone with less STG experience getting frustrated with what was a pretty significant difficulty spike.

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One Button Boss Fights

Only played a little little piece of this. In a 2D single-screen game there is simply no reason for the camera to wobble and shift around with the player's movements. Nauseating.

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Shining Resonance Refrain

The music that plays while it is raining in town is utterly lovely, but all the effort in this OST otherwise went to the various pop songs that the characters sing, which isn't my personal cup of tea. It's surprising to me that in a game themed around music, I've kept only a few tracks for my personal playlist. This is a pretty fun RPG as such things go, a little cheap and a little janky but I enjoyed the characters and story a lot. Main character Yuma never endeared me but the villains are all great, ranging from 'I can fix her' to 'absolute bastard man' and all points between. Very fun roster of bad guys.

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Child of Light

It's been on my backlog since 2016, but attempting to play it in November 2024 proves that time has been unkind here. Wrestling with the required ubisoft account launcher only to find the game crashes upon launch. Hopefully one day it'll get patched to remove all the ubijunk.

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Pony Island

There's a chromatic aberration filter over the whole game, coupled with a slight-but-pervasive screen wobble that never stops, which combined to make this game impossible for me to play without feeling very unwell. A shame as it seems right up my alley, but I'm not going to make myself sick for the sake of a neat game.

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Pokemon TCG Pocket

Honestly baffling that this game launched with trading unavailable. Battle events need some serious rework, and battling as a whole quickly becomes boring. They need a random battle feature where you come up against a random deck (from a list of premade decks, not an entirely random set of cards) so you're not stuck fighting the same deck over and over. Maybe, like, you can do 10 random battles per day and you get an hourglass for each victory, or something. I think the pokemon card game itself, in real world form or gameboy form as well as here, is just kind of bad in execution from the ground up, but being bad doesn't mean it isn't fun.

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LTTP Randomiser

LTTP is my favourite game of all time and I was worried playing it in such a way would spoil it somehow, but it was actually the opposite- I got to use my fairly extensive game knowledge to solve unexpected problems and find my way through, and even learned a few things (never once had I stepped into what the community calls Hype Cave, I'm almost certain). Some highlights include spending 500 rupees at the Zora to receive 5 rupees instead of the flippers, pulling a shield from the Master Sword plinth, and getting 300 rupees from my dying uncle, who was killed in battle, and no wonder how. I played five runs in total, three on Absolute Baby Mode and then a Triforce Hunt and an Inverse game. Inverse is fun, but as soon as you get Light World access it pretty much becomes a standard game again, so I'd probably only do that once.

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Fartbutt

I fell off after they changed the locker and effectively removed the ability to save a loadout and shuffle between them. They fixed that this year so I went back in, but it was too little too late and I'd been gone too long to get back into it. Also that one battle pass with only marvel skins was absolutely bloody awful because they've already done all the characters anyone cares about. Fortnite Man wearing Captain America's outfit? Gwen Stacey But She's Deadpool? C'mon.

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Research And Development

This is a very cool little Half Life 2 mod that uses the physics engine to create something more akin to a puzzle game. There's no direct combat here- you need to use the environment (and for one section, a giant evil lawnmower) to escape the facility. If you have Half Life 2 (of course you do) it's free and well worth a couple of hours of your time.

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Khimera Puzzle Island

A surprise late entry for this Binned game- the developer rolled out an update to address the only issue I had with the game (and called me out personally when doing so!), and I have since played an unearthly amount of picross. The puzzles are great, soundtrack is top tier, and even the cutscenes (skippable if you don't care) are enjoyable. I have only good things to say about the Khimera series.

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Bins:

Brutal Legend
Nirvana Pilot
Spore Creatures
Blaster Master
Dont Give Up
Bioshock
Knights of Round (capcom beatemup)
King of Dragons
Klang TWO

That's all for this year. See you at the end of 2025!