GB's Game Reviews: 2024-2025 Edition

2024, or at least the first half of it in particular, was the year of playing games I'd played already.

I love Backloggery. I've talked about it before. It's a really cool website that lets you compile a database of your video game collection and track your progress with them, referring to the games you own but haven't beaten yet as "your backlog". It's a great idea, but admittedly I think it's given me a bit of tunnel vision. Sometimes I think a little too much about how next to enhance how my collection looks on Backloggery, choosing what to play on the basis of needing to beat more games. This is fine, but it can go too far when I'm reluctant to play something I've already 100% completed, or have beaten but can't realistically 100%, just for the fun of playing it. When I was a kid I didn't have this problem - even if I'd beaten a game a dozen times over, if it was fun enough I'd pop it in the system and do it again. Playing a game you've already finished isn't a "waste of time" - it basically accomplishes just as much as playing something you haven't played before, as long as you still get entertainment out of it. Games are meant to be fun, after all, and trying new ones is a good idea, but I shouldn't be casting old favorites into a "never touch again" box if they can still bring me joy.

Anyway, that preamble is because in 2024 I placed an unusual amount of focus on playing older games, many of which I'd beaten before. This started out as getting 100% completion on games I'd played thoroughly but had never managed to do everything in. This was seen in my reviews last year, where I finally 100%'d a number of games I consider absolute classics, such as the original Sonic games and Banjo-Kazooie. That mindset continues into this year's reviews, with the likes of Super Mario 64 crossed off the list, but then I also spent a lot of time with Vampire Survivors, which I had started in 2023 but didn't finish. However, eventually I even started playing games I'd finished a long time ago, such as Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Trading Card Game. Since it's been over a decade since I've reviewed some of these old games, though, I will be taking another look at them here in this edition of the blog, marking the first time in this blog series I've ever re-reviewed anything. As summer became fall, I started playing more new games (though Banjo-Tooie joined the replay fun after its' surprise NSO release), and you'll see that reflected in the reviews as I start tackling a number of small indie titles as well as a few bigger games I'd never played before this year - but I do still finish the blog off with a review of a game I first played over fifteen years ago. I also end up playing a whole lot of Sonic games here as I became re-invested in the franchise that got me hooked on video games. I tried out both Sonic's newest games and some popular fangames as well as going back and taking care of some older titles I never beat. If you read my January blogpost about my history with the Sonic series and still want to read more words about that darn blue hedgehog, he's all over this blogpost.

I hope you enjoy this especially retro-flavored look at what I've been playing since April 2024!

GB's 100 Games: 100-96

Welcome to the first installment of GB's 100 Games!

I have been gaming for two decades this year - ever since I was old enough to hold a controller. Over the course of the last twenty years, I've played a ton of different video games on a wide variety of systems - not as many as some, but enough to have a good grasp on what I like and what I don't like. Here, I have assembled 100 games to offer my thoughts on. First, a few important notes.

1: Only games I have beaten as of today will appear on this list, with the exception of a few arcade games that have no ending.
2: In order to cover a wide variety of games (and because I sometimes have difficulty choosing one game in a series to rank above others), I have grouped some games that are similar together.
3: This is not a definitive ranking. Games from different genres - and especially from different eras of gaming - are difficult for me to compare solidly against each other. There is a vague progression from "games I liked" leading up to "games I absolutely cherish", however, and the top fifteen or so is full of what I consider to be AAA titles.
4: For release dates, I use the American date, as that is where I live. Many games release earlier or later in different territories. Some older games may not have full release info.
5: For systems, I use the system I played the game on (unless it was part of a compilation).

With that settled, let's get started with Number 100...

Gaming Retrospective (Part 2)

Before I answer the big question as to what got me to pick out a fancy new video game system at the end of the nineties, I need to touch on two minor systems that came into my life earlier in that decade.

In third grade, I was approached by my second-grade teacher. She had some very old computers she had to get rid of, because the school was replacing them, and wanted to know if I would like one. BOY WOULD I! The "computer" turned out to be a Commodore 64, and for the two years or so I had it before it stopped working I wiled away many an hour on its interesting library of giant floppy discs. Memory is fuzzy enough to not warrant a full list of recommended games, but I recall liking Choplifter and Boulderdash and totally failing at Donkey Kong and Impossible Mission. My favorite game, though, was Pooyan, an ancient Konami title that involved a family of pigs shooting arrows to pop the balloons of foxes and keep them from reaching the pigs' house.

Around this same general time period, I also received my first "portable" system for Christmas - a Sega Game Gear with Super Columns, a puzzle game. This was the first "dud" system, as it cost a stupid amount of money and didn't offer too much in return. However, the Game Gear did eventually find a niche - I later got Pac-Man and a collection called "Arcade Classics" for it (Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong), and my mom wound up playing it regularly in the early 2000's. It was pretty much "her" system at that point. I won't be recommending Game Gear games either since I didn't play any that were amazing enough to try and hype up.

Super Columns, by the way, stands out for two reasons in my mind. The first is that for a long time it stood as the only video game in the house that my mom had beaten but neither me nor my brother had. That changed last year when I fired up the old Game Gear one more time and took that thing down. The other reason is the first guy in story mode. His opening quote is "I have orders not to let you pass but play me for the privilege." WHAT A SMUG LITTLE SHIT.

Okay, back to the late nineties. The Game Gear was a bust, the Commodore may or may not have still been working. I was at school one day and I see some kids standing off to one side looking at trading cards. "Hey guys, what are you doing?" Then one kid takes pity on me for not knowing and gives me one of his duplicate trading cards.

...What is this thing you call "Charmander"?