GB's Game Reviews, 2023-2024 Edition

What a year for gaming it's been for me! I'm used to playing games only in limited fits and starts during the warmer months of the year, as ZFRP ends up consuming a lot of the time I'd otherwise be using to play. However, things were different this time. For the first time in a long time, I found the energy and motivation to keep playing new games continuously throughout Season 13 of RP, and as a result of that (plus other factors like continued trips to Funspot and playing several compilations full of quick new additions to the blog) I played dozens of games this year. In fact, this might be an all-time record for me!

It felt good to get my bad experience with Mechstermination Force out of my system in last year's post, so I will be including a few more reviews in this post of games I played but didn't finish if I have something to say about the experience, positive or otherwise. (Xenoblade fans, I am sorry.) This time the reviews are in roughly the order I played the games, so things kind of hop around at times, but at other times you'll see a bunch of Mario, Sonic, or TMNT games clustered together as I stuck with a franchise for a bit.

With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy the largest GB game review blogpost ever!

GB's Vidya 2016: Year In Review

You guys know the drill by now! Every year I give a short review to every video game I beat in the past twelve months, ranking them from least favorite to most favorite as I try to find my favorite video game of the year. Two years ago I played only a handful of games, and last year I played a whole bunch but many of them were small, quick games played more for the blogpost than anything else. This year I focused on "major" games - only nine titles are represented (I have combined two of them into one entry, so there are eight reviews here), but the majority of them were long games I had to sink a lot of hours into. With three Pokemon games, two Ace Attorney games, and another RPG on top of that, I spent a lot of time gaming this year - just not on a lot of different games!

First, lemme just give a shoutout to last year's winner, Robot Arena 2. Just as I was finally tiring of it, I found another mod that completely overhauls the game, introduces a bunch of real-world robot opponents, and basically just breathes new life back into a well-worn game. I still mess around with this game almost daily, if only for a few minutes. Definitely deserved that win last year if I'm still playing the dang thing.

Let's get started.

43 Games I Haven't Reviewed Yet

For years, I've been doing mini-reviews of my video games. I started with the "100 Games" project in January 2013, and since then have done a roundup of everything I beat each year. But that means that some games got left out - ones I didn't include on my initial list.

Not getting on the original 100 Games list doesn't mean these games are bad. On the contrary, I rather enjoyed quite a few of them, and some of them probably deserved to make the list. I never claimed to be good at ranking stuff, as fun as it is.

As usual, only games I cared about enough to see to the end get listed here, and everything I haven't already written about is up for grabs. Sifting through my Backloggery turned up 43 entries' worth of games (a few games are combined into one entry). Instead of trying to rank them, I'll cover them alphabetically.

I've also linked a gameplay video for each game. It's a longplay whenever one is available. Looking at how few games DIDN'T have a complete longplay up on YouTube speaks volumes as to how good longplayers are at doing their job.

GB's Vidya 2015: Year In Review

It's that time again! Every year I make a sequel to my 2012 "100 Games" series by reviewing every single vidya I beat that year. As usual, the only qualification for a game to make the list is that I completed the main objective. Sometimes legit, sometimes I cheese it, whatever - if I saw the end, I put it on the list and talk about it.

After last year's disappointingly short list, I knew I had to step up my gaming. I pulled it off, and this year's list is three times the length of last year's, clocking in at 15 titles. This is, however, still inferior to 2013's 21-strong roster.

Longtime readers will know the drill - I've ranked these games in a rough order from worst to first, but as usual I'm not that great at ranking, although I enjoy doing it - I can usually figure out the worst game and the best game pretty quickly, or at least make tiers, but ordering within a tier is not easy and can often change on a whim. Suffice it to say I consider everything I beat this year save the bottom-ranked game to be at least decent, and the bottom game was at least not offensively bad!

The crop this year is even more old and obscure than usual - 13 of the 15 games are over a decade old, and many of them are over two decades old. I hope to include some more mainstream titles next time, but I do prefer talking about games people don't know about, since you can only write "super mario 64 was a good game" so many times before people stop caring, y'know? Anyway, on with the show.

GB's Vidya 2013: Year In Review

Last year I made the twenty-one post series "GB's 100 Games", wherein I gave short writeups of 100 games I had beaten that I considered to be good or better. Since then, I've beaten over a dozen more video games. I've decided to make a sequel of sorts to 100 Games in the form of a "Year In Review" that gives writeups on every game I beat this year. In addition to that, I'll be putting the games in a rough ranking. Remember, the game can be released in any year, and I can first acquire the game in any year - as long as I first finished the game in 2013, it qualifies for the list.

First, however, to get them out of the way...

Unranked: A Horde of Atari Games
Trying to place all the new Atari 2600 games I played this year would be far too difficult. It's hard enough ranking such old games alongside modern ones as it is - with this many, it'd just be a pain and the list would be littered with them, so they all get shoved here.

Games in bold were played on an actual Atari 2600 with a cartridge. Games in italics were played on my Atari Flashback plug-and-play system.

Atari Climber - A game similar in some respects to Donkey Kong. You must climb from the bottom of the stage to the top, avoiding hazards and scoring points.

Atlantis - You control three cannons and try to shoot down flying ships that want to bomb your city. The cannons cannot aim or move, so timing is literally everything. Nice graphics for the 2600.

Demon Attack - A very similar game to Phoenix. Demon Attack is a static shooter in which you fight wave after wave of "demons". They come in many shapes, but they mostly behave the same.

Dragonfire - In this medieval quest, you alternate between two screens. The first screen is about jumping over and ducking under fireballs to reach a castle. Once there, you gather treasure for points while dodging the attacks of an angry dragon.

Off the Wall - I've never been good at Breakout-type games. Off the Wall is not an exception.

Secret Quest - One of the rare games on Atari that cries out for instructions. I can't give this Zeldaesque game a fair shake because I didn't know what to do a few levels in.

Space Jockey - Space Jockey is hurt by technical limitations - only three enemies are onscreen at once, making the game far too dull. A difficulty option to make the enemies move randomly may help your experience somewhat.

Video Checkers - Not sure how I'm supposed to win. The computer seems to counter my every move. Then again, I don't play much checkers.

Video Chess - Same problem - the computer consistently outfoxed me even on the lowest difficulty. I played chess a lot back in elementary school, and I don't remember being this bad at it.

Yar's Revenge - One of the strongest Atari games I've played. Yar's is more complicated than most Atari games, but it can be figured out pretty quickly, and it's a lot of fun. Once upon a time I had a Game Boy Color version of this game, but I wasn't any good at it and wound up selling the cartridge in a yard sale.