Big old catch up post. Everything since the end of February - I need to be more organised, obviously! Everything's on PC except for Zelda and Trails.
9. Shadow Warrior 3 - Feb 27 - 2/5After enjoying Evil West this felt like a real let down. Short, unsatisfying, and feels unfinished. They seem to have been influenced by Doom Eternal but the game lacks the flow of Doom. A disappointment.
10. Resident Evil 4 remake - Mar 26 - 4/5This really hit the spot. Loads of action, lots of guns and great visuals.
Steam Deck report: I didn’t play much but I can see this running just fine at 40 in lower detail.
11. Stranger of Paradise - Apr 11 - 4/5A much better game than originally suggested by the reveal and demo. The combat is fast and responsive, with loads of jobs and skills to explore - the way the game basically takes you through all the classic FF jobs as you go through levels based on old FF games with a great soundtrack is great FF fan service while also being a great introduction to this style of game. I think it does a better job of being an introductory game than Wo Long does.
The only issue I really have is that the DLC’s balance is completely different to that of the main game. Looking it up, you’re almost expected to basically make yourself invulnerable until you push through a wall of stats, as even the simplest enemies become damage sponges that can flatten you in a couple of hits.
12. Nightmare Reaper - April 16 - 4/5I was initially put off this game by a description of it being a rogue like; it isn’t that at all, but it is an FPS with procedurally generated levels and weapons. Just clear about 80 of them and you’re done!
Loads of weapon variety, with the later level 3 weapons being completely ridiculous and a lot of fun. Maybe not the most technically proficient in terms of design, and it made my 3900X processor suffer later on, but it’s so easy to get caught up in the blasting as the enemies and gunfire increase.
13. Octopath Traveler 2 - May 8 - 5/5Excellent stuff. Feels like a mix of Final Fantasy and SaGa as you go through a non-linear quest with free form character advancement, an amazing soundtrack and an extremely fun game system. One of those games where changing your tactics can completely make or break an encounter, and for the most part if you’re stuck you can just go and come back.
Steam Deck report: almost flawless 60fps. Set the game’s frame limiter to 120 as the UE limiter has bad frame pacing. Basically looks as good as it can be with around 3 hours of battery; the only issue is some slightly odd looking text scaling from time to time in Japanese.
14. Zelda - Switch - May 24 - 4/5I enjoyed this a lot but in the end it didn’t reach the heights of BOTW for me. The end section in particular felt like a step too far and almost balanced with the expectation that you’d be duplicating materials for rupees and upgrades.
The final area ended up bringing the whole thing down for me as a result and the mushy combat didn’t help.
15. Diablo 4 - Jun 11 - 4/5Funny one, this. I loved the beta and stress test builds, and then rushed through the whole game in a week or so but then just kind of dropped off. Compared to early Diablo 3 it’s much much better but when I think of the absolute carnage of later D3 it feels a little empty at times. That’s not to say it doesn’t advance the game - I think this is a more successful attempt at the MMO-style overworld in this kind of game than, say, Lost Ark, and the story and especially the (unfortunately few and far between) cinematics are absolutely classic Blizzard.
Season 1 was a complete disaster and I didn’t touch it but I did come back and played through the scenario bits for two characters in Season 2. I’d have gone for a 3 after S1 but I think they’ve righted the boat with this one, especially with higher mob density.
Steam Deck report: after a little bit of a fiddle getting the Bnet launcher running with Lutris, the game itself runs really well. A bit blurry with a low/medium mix and FSR2, but aside from some stutter in towns as it loads player characters it is surprisingly close to 60fps a lot of the time. I even played on a 4K TV and it looked surprisingly good - it scales down really well.
16. HROT - Jun 18 - 4/5Finished episode 3 and this really goes places. After a couple of relatively formulaic retro FPS episodes with a lot of 80s Eastern Bloc flavour and some surprising enemies, the game really leans into its setting for Episode 3 with some really entertaining levels and ideas which give the game such a great sense of place while also being a technically solid shooter.
Well worth playing. But not on Steam Deck - there’s something with the engine which means it tops out at maybe 20fps.
17. Astlibra Revision - Jun 23 - 5/5I think this is basically what Falcom would have ended up making by Ys 8 if they had carried on with the side scrolling games after 3.
The game is a bit rough and ready as you’d expect for something a guy put together in his spare time, especially graphically, but the fundamental combat is so much fun it carries you through. The story ended up getting me as well - especially in the extra chapter added for Revision which had me completely gripped in a situation where they could have had me drop completely off.
I can’t recommend this enough; there’s a good sized demo available which shows both low and high level combat and it runs on absolutely anything.
Steam Deck report: faultless, except for some slightly scratchy sound occasionally. Expect 4 hours on battery.
18. Star Ocean 6 - Jul 2 - 4/5I ended up really enjoying this, even though you can feel the budget a lot and the engine runs really poorly on PC. The combat is as fun as it’s ever been and since you can basically fly, exploration is fun in a way that I haven’t experienced in other games.
Weirdly, the game’s best parts are kind of opposed: the exploration and combat really excel in the game’s wide open spaces as you fly and dash around but the plot really gets good in the back end as you end up on ships and high tech installations. There are some well-done Star Trek style ship combat cutscenes where everything plays out on the bridge because there’s no budget to show actual ship combat.
I do hope Tri-Ace get another one of these as they’re definitely on the right path with this series.
Steam Deck report: Steam says this is not compatible but I played a fair amount of it. The problem is performance: there are areas which just hobble the frame rate for seemingly no reason and in some areas the Deck will be in the high teens without actually showing anything interesting. There’s a room in a town full of crystals which maxed out my 3080 to the point where it dropped to 45fps, just with some crystals. Weird stuff.
As a more general PC port point the game tries to pre-compile shaders with varying levels of success as the game will still stutter on quite a lot of effects. Weirdly the downloadable shaders on the Deck don’t seem to stick either which made the first run through in some cutscenes genuinely painful with multiple-second pauses.
19. Sludge Life - Jul 14 - 4/5A really neat atmosphere piece with some cool visuals and sounds. It’s great to just run around the map and drink it all in. Weird without getting too silly about it.
Steam Deck report - runs at or around 60 just fine. It does drop from time to time but the grungy aesthetic means that it’s not too much of a problem anyway.
20. Slayers X - Jul 15 - 3/5Has some nice ideas and pushes a very particular 90s Windows multimedia aesthetic but the game itself just doesn’t quite have the level design quality to want to go through it again. Still worth a single play through though because of how well they commit to the gimmick.
21. Kuro no Kiseki 2 - PS5 - Jul 25 - 2/5
It's my own fault, really, for thinking this series was picking up again. The story starts interesting and exciting and just falls away into the toilet as the stakes go down and down and down. In the end the writers' inability to just let characters go has become a millstone around the neck of the series and has been for a long while now. I'm just going through from habit now, and I can't recommend this series to anyone starting anew anymore.
And as a side note - a game that looks like this should not be performing this badly on a Playstation 5. This new engine really is terrible.
22. Remnant 2 - Aug 1 - 4/5What a confident, well-made sequel. I sort of struggled to the end of Remnant 1 but I could see that they were going for, and with the sequel they have largely fixed the problems that a solo player would have (especially with certain bosses) which leaves 20 hours or so of extremely fun shooting, once you pick up a good gun.
The thing that really got me, though, was the realisation that with the way the levels worked you were only intended to see about half of the game’s areas in one run through. At a time when it feels like there are so many games trying their absolute best to snow you under with objectives and quests, having a game actually keep stuff back to keep the game’s pace up took me by surprise. For a game that wasn’t even released at full price, it really punches above its weight.
Steam Deck report - you can convince it to get to 30 but I wouldn’t; I had the most fun playing with keyboard and mouse because fundamentally it’s a shooter.
23. Rise of the Triad Ludicrous Edition - Aug 5 - 4/5It’s ludicrous! A flawed gem of a mid-90s shooter given the level of spit and polish that its ambition (if not its execution) deserved. What we’re left with here is still a game that has real personality, especially in the first full episode as you curse the level designers for their nasty tricks and traps.
Sure, it doesn’t hold up as well as something like Blood, but it’s finally getting the recognition it is well past due.
Steam Deck report - Runs great as you’d expect, while sipping power. I’d probably still be more comfortable with a mouse but it’d be a good excuse to get that soundtrack going through some quality headphones!
24. To The Core - Aug 12 - 2/5An interesting idea with the planet mining that doesn’t quite hit the idle game ‘numbers go up’ spot in the way that something like Spaceplan did. I’d be interested to see what comes next, though.
25. Harvestella - Aug 19 - 4/5This was an extremely pleasant surprise. The ‘work’ component of farming games has done a good job of keeping me away from other games of a similar type like Rune Factory but something about how this one all came together means that this is much more than the sum of its two individually simplistic parts. The story gets kinda crazy and the soundtrack’s by Go Shiina so it’s got that pomp and energy to keep you going.
Steam Deck report - Expect around 3 hours of battery at 60fps. There aren’t any graphics settings so just set and forget. There’s a bit of weirdness around the prerendered videos, though there’s only about 3 of them in the whole game, but check ProtonDB before starting off as one’s right at the beginning.
26. Armored Core 6 - Sep 17 - 5/5This game gets practically everything right. As a new Armored Core game it took me back to playing multiplayer AC3 in a way the later games never did. The variety of weapons and the agility potential of your AC make this the best feeling robot game I’ve played, even as I ended up gravitating towards becoming a floating death fortress. And as you’d expect from modern From, it takes strong characterisation and makes that into a compelling plot that gets you through three full plays.
Sure, it’s not perfect - the post-game runs almost feel too easy with a couple of exceptions, and it’s very easy to fall into a preferred play style once you get good - but I don’t think that’s a major issue and stomping those two infamous bosses using better weapons was very gratifying.
Steam Deck report - Runs at 40 most of the time in medium settings. Bits of slowdown here and there, usually when things are exploding really dramatically so personally I’d go for 40 with drops rather than a more solid 30. Very acceptable, I did the end of my first playthrough and most of the second entirely on Deck as I was out of town and I never felt like I was being held back by the hardware.
27. Mortal Kombat 1 - Sep 23 - 2/5This one’s a shame. There are clearly some fun ideas in there, most of which are at the end of the game, but the story kind of peters out and I realised a week later I’d completely forgotten most of it. The Invasions mode is just boring and bad as well.
The fighting’s decent but I don’t play MK for the fighting bit.
Steam Deck report - I wouldn’t bother. You can convince it to run at maybe 40 - and there’s an option for a 40 cap in there so the porting studio clearly intend for that to be a thing - but it doesn’t look great and isn’t worth the hundred or so gigabytes it’ll chomp out of your SSD. After playing a good chunk of 11 on the Deck this was a real disappointment.
28. Fate Samurai Remnant - Oct 12 - 5/5A great RPG hybrid by Omega Force. There’s a real love for Fate in here which is obvious throughout, and the story is told to a very high standard. I wasn’t able to put this one down throughout.
In the end I think it's the fan service which makes it; being able to both talk to and play as classic and new Fate servants is great fun. I was picking up bits of Musou game move sets while going through the list; I hope the season pass stuff is more battle heavy with more characters as it really is a lot of fun.
Steam Deck report - It’s close enough to 60 even in denser areas that I was OK just setting it and leaving it. I suspect this runs on the same version of the engine that P5 Strikers did, meaning that the graphics options aren’t as extensive as I’d like, but it’s certainly good enough not to have to completely muller the visuals. Only thing I’d say is to remember to turn the game mode to ‘quality’ rather than ‘performance’ as that implements a 60 rather than 120 limit.
29. El Paso Elsewhere - Oct 27 - 3/5There’s a lot to like about this vampire-filled take on Max Payne. I thought it did a good job of nailing the self-important inner monologue of the main character, slow motion is always fun and the weapons, while few in number, generally have a decent punch. It doesn’t quite get there though; the biggest issue is probably the enemies themselves as most of them are melee types that just dumbly rush towards you. It’s also too long for the lack of level variety. It took me a little under 10 hours to get through all the levels but I think it could have stood to be more like 5-6.
30. Robocop Rogue City - Nov 4 - 5/5I like being surprised by a game and this was a really nice surprise. The developers' affection for Robocop is completely obvious the whole time you’re playing. On the one hand, the script clearly wasn’t written by a native English speaker and most of the voice overs are the quality you’d normally get in a badly dubbed kitchen roll commercial, but on the other the actual plot itself is a much better follow-up to Robocop 2 than what they came out with in Robocop 3, Peter Weller puts in real effort as Robo himself and the game’s levels evoke Robocop incredibly well.
In fact, it’s that sense of place, whether you’re going around the wonderfully detailed recreation of the police station or realising you’re in the same steel mill from the first film where Murphy met his end, which makes the game work. Verhoeven-level gouts of blood spray forth from the creeps, walls explode in showers of plaster and documents scatter through the air as you trundle through the areas and power up your Auto-9, which eventually becomes a hand-held heavy machine gun full auto sniper rifle with unlimited ammo by the time you’re done with the game. As you would want from Robocop, the game does a great job of keeping you as a walking tank while still raising the stakes with new enemies.
In the end, this game’s got moxie and that’s what’s pushed it to a 5 for me. That and the ridiculous final boss. If you really like Robocop I think you'll get a lot from it.
31. Like a Dragon Garden: The Man Who Erased His Name - Nov 11 - 5/5Another RGG Studio game, another incremental improvement on the last release. Being the first time we’ve controlled Kiryu since Kiwami 2, the thing you notice right away is that this blows away previous Dragon Engine incarnations of his fighting style. Whether you’re dispatching low level mooks at Musou levels of pace with his agent gadgets or blasting bosses’ energy bars with his even more charged up brawler style (Tiger Drop now back at its full power, doing more damage and sounding significantly louder than, say, a shotgun blast), Kiryu starts strong and only gets more dominant. The new arena mode, with up to 11v10 battles, just becomes absolute chaos - loads of fun.
More importantly, though, the game justifies its existence as it follows Kiryu between the end of RGG6 and about halfway through the events of 7, culminating in a final section which delivers on the promise of the consequences of what happened at the end of 6. The shadowy Daidoji faction and its absolute ruthlessness is something I hope we see more of in 8 because there are some characters there who I’d really like to get more screen time, particularly the absolute bastard Yoshimura and Kiryu’s handler Hanawa. being made alongside 8 seemingly allowed them to include more characters from throughout the series too which hit hard.
Speaking of which, the demo for 8 which is included is definitely worth a run through. Hawaii looks great and the bad guy you meet at the start is a really promising looking cold-blooded gangster character.
Before release there was some rumbling about the game’s initial plan as being DLC; the obvious comparison point here being the Kaito DLC for Lost Judgment. That had a really strong story but felt slight due to the complete lack of side activities; I’m not sure how much longer this would be to just main line through the story but the extra activities absolutely make it stand up on its own. As a shorter, concentrated experience it’s hard to complain and I'd like to see some more of this.
Steam Deck report: It defaults to medium settings with FSR in Quality and it pretty much constantly held 40 throughout. These ports are getting better and better.