Lurker > Paratroopa1

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

I'm not familiar with the Crash Bandicoot series at all, so you should trust me when I say that this is a highlight run. It's just a super fun watch, as a speedrun of a pure platformer it's consistently entertaining throughout and has tons of cool execution, tricks, and the commentary is great throughout. This game is an especially good run for an uninitiated viewer because it's always so easy to see everything and easy to understand what the player needs to do to advance; the stakes are clear. Probably one of the better pure speedruns you'll see in the marathon.

- This is another game with slide kick canceling after Kirby. It's just a theme I guess! Apparently this game is particularly arthritis-inducing which is a shame.

- "We don't wanna bounce on these, so we're just gonna do this - okay, backup, so we're just gonna do that- okay, backup, so we're just gonna do THAT - I'm dead."

- There was almost a 'that's never happened before' in this run but he took it back.

- Apparently multiple possible chances to softlock your game in this, but all of them were avoided in this run, thankfully.

- I'm gonna dial in for this one, you guys talk about whatever. "Yeah, so this is the second snow level -" and he's already dead.

- "Beautiful. This is art. Spin these, slide back, slide back, slide back..."

- It is apparently a meme to insinuate that the lead dev put problems in the game just to mess with speedrunners.

- "Skip this flame, get over to these nitros, light this TNT and die. ...I did not die." "To be clear, dying was not the intended strat, it was just what potty was expecting."

- "You didn't die, we take those." "I did die. "You did? Well, it's midnight."

- I feel so bad for the donation comment in which they talked about playing this game as far as they could as a kid until they could save up to buy a memory card. I never had this problem as a kid - I didn't own a PS1, and my N64 came with a memory pak - but that's such a mood anyway. I totally get that feeling of just doing what you can.

- "You can kill seals with a charge by the way. A lot of people don't know that."

- This is the first time I've ever noticed someone mention having different input latency on the TV they're playing on, which is something that's always freaked me out about the idea of playing at GDQ. If something's even like a millisecond off I freak out. Potty seems to handle it though.

- On the game's gauntlet of three levels at the end - "One of them has a frame perfect trick, one of them you can't die at all [or the game softlocks], and one of them is just terrible."

- "I'm gonna say check this out assuming I do this perfect, so check this out."

- "That's it for me. I need to go to bed. Clap, I suppose." The audience clapped. He Jebbed the audience!

#3 - Champ'd Up

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/5/AAA-H0AADdvB.jpg

Champ'd Up is a solidly fun drawing game sort of in the style of Tee KO, but I prefer Tee KO, and here's why; in Tee KO, most of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of your drawing and someone else's slogan mashed together by a third person, and it's just sort of beautiful to see what shakes out of that - it doesn't really matter if your drawing is good or not. In Champ'd Up, it sort of matters if your drawing is good. I feel like it's another game that's very creatively demanding, in that if you can't draw well, then you at least have to have some really good idea for a character. I feel like I just totally strike out on this one a lot. When it hits, though, it hits.

#2 - Quiplash 3

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/6/AAA-H0AADdvC.jpg

Having at least some variant of Quiplash in your Jackbox toolbox is an absolute requirement, as it's one of the biggest crowdpleasers on pretty much any night in most groups. That said, I wouldn't remember most of Quiplash 1 or 2's prompts by now, so either of those will usually do, which renders Quiplash 3 one of the more inessential Jackbox games out there (not to mention it has the worst music of the three). The main improvement it has is the final round, which is now questions that you answer in sets of threes, which can be really good when you do it well. It's the definitive Quiplash now, but it doesn't add much over its predecessors. (This could easily rank #1 if I wasn't taking that into account.)

#1 - Blather Round

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/7/AAA-H0AADdvD.jpg

Easily the dark horse favorite, and I think nearly everyone agrees on this. Blather Round feels like it harkens back to actual party games that you'd pull out of the closet at a family game night, like Taboo and such. It's chill and relaxing and not a very demanding game (although guessing can be surprisingly hard sometimes), and makes for a great opener or closer to the night since it only goes up to 6, which makes it perfect for when people are filtering into the group. It's surprisingly funny; the descriptions that people have to come up with for various characters or movie titles based on the given words leads to a lot of comedy, although I sort of wish Blather Round didn't give you so many freebies if you're having trouble; there are definitely words programmed in to make it easy. Great game though - easily the most essential game to have out of the pack.

Overall, Jackbox Party Pack 7 is really solid all around, but I think for me it's one of the least essential packs; Blather Round is still one of the weaker 'best' games of any of the packs, and I feel like most of the games here I wouldn't really miss if I didn't have access to them. If I were buying all of the packs to introduce them to a brand new group of players today, 7 is probably the last or second last I would buy (I might buy 7 over 2, since it would cover the Quiplash requirement, and I like Blather Round more than Bidiots or Earwax; 4 covers Fibbage). That said, it was still really great and I liked it a lot at the time of its release; every Jackbox pack is a riot. It basically gets onto this list for free.

Next Up: This is the least obscure game on my list.

#29: The Jackbox Party Pack 7

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/0/AAA-H0AADdu8.jpg

Including Jackbox games on these lists always feels like cheating, in a few ways.

First of all, it's just so easy to add this game to my list. Most of these games, I have to like, buy them, install them, set aside time to play them, actually go through some level of effort and all that. When it comes to Jackbox, I don't have to do shit! Some nice person, usually Wigs, is always ready to host the games on discord and all I have to do is show up with my dumb ass and a phone, join the game, have a few hours of laughs with my dear friends, and consider it another game done. Playing games is supposed to be hard work and sweat and tears! I'm supposed to agonize over these fucking things.

Second, these things are yearly installments in an age when you're lucky if your favorite franchise puts out a game every five years. It is what it is, game development is a lengthy process nowadays and it takes a long time for a game to become polished. But in the time since they started releasing these, I can't think of many franchises that have had more than two brand-new mainline entries, and here Jackbox is with fucking 8 of these things. Jackbox is a near guarantee to show up on any GOTY list I make for now into the foreseeable future (this is the 13th best 2020 game on my list, but this is including two games older than 2020... we'll get to those). It's too easy. These lists should be obscure indie trash that only I've ever played and I can impress you with the depths of my knowledge by showing them off. Everyone knows what Jackbox is by now and who knows how many years they'll keep going with these things - I think we'll get to at *least* 12 before the future of the franchise becomes murky, but come back and talk to me in a few years and we'll see if that's true - maybe 9 will be the final one, who knows? (I hope not. Never stop making these fucking things ever please.)

The way they most feel like cheating though is that they're packs of multiple games. Every Jackbox Party Pack is really five games in one. Should I be ranking the games by themselves? I figure the answer here is no - these games (with a rare exception or two) haven't been available as standalone and are only featured in the packs, so it's more like a minigame collection than anything else. That's what I'm sticking to - one Pack is a single game. These releases are so frequent that in my game of the decade list I actually had a problem where even ranking all 6 packs on the list felt redundant and silly, so I decided to make the choice of grouping them all together as one thing (ranked at 19th, which somehow seems too low given the amount of joy Jackbox has provided over the years, but the competition was tight). I don't have that problem here, fortunately, as there's a lot fewer of them to deal with.

Anyway, despite the whole "the entire pack is one game" thing, I think the only thing to do is to have a mini-ranking of Party Pack 7 games within my ranking! Let's talk about all of them, from my least favorite to my favorite.

#5 - The Devil and the Details

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/1/AAA-H0AADdu9.jpg

I think most people will probably put Talking Points below this one, but I found that Devil and the Details was fun for one, maybe two plays, and sort of wears out its welcome after that. I think it's conceptually pretty cool and I like the idea of a frantic co-op game kind of like Space Cadets in Jackbox form, but all of the activities you have to do are mostly pretty simple and boring. Some of the group activities are a little more fun, but for the most part it really does feel like a series of chores that you have to do and it doesn't really feel like there's much I can do in terms of actually playing the game intelligently. I think it might be more fun in person as opposed to over Discord. It's not a bad game though, I would still be willing to play it more. Party Pack 7 has a high floor.

#4 - Talking Points

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/2/AAA-H0AADdu-.jpg

I've only played this one once, and I mean, I get it. This is probably the longest Jackbox game when played with 8 people, and it's pretty heavy. It's hard for most people, even those skilled at improv, to flawlessly perform a good speech to a powerpoint presentation on the fly, and this game asks a lot of you in terms of being funny. I would REALLY like to play this one again sometime, though, because I think the concept is super fun - I just love the idea of having to think of stuff to say quickly for new slides. Patently Stupid is probably a lot more of a crowdpleaser in general though, and it goes faster, so something like Talking Points doesn't get a lot of play.

I can take chickens, I spent a couple of weeks tending a chicken coop, just bring good gloves

what do you think my answer is

Metroid
Mega

gotta take away the voting rights of the homeless

I think there's at least a decent chance of it being real, just because leaks HAVE been real in the past, they're not always fake (remember when people thought a real leak of the gen 7 starter evos was fake?)

but since these are some pretty optimistic projections of stuff that might happen I am keeping my expectations thoroughly in check

mnkboy907 posted...

- 120-140 new Pokemon

I immediately don't buy it

memoryfactory.lzh
Necessary Discrepancy
46-:ri9

Zelda
Mario

An Endless Desert
Time Moves Slow (Home)
The Glittering City of Yusnaan

Isquen posted...

I forget the context of this bridge clip - was it in the last normal level?

No it's the second to last level, it's just a part that has a lot of enemies

TeamRocketElite posted...

Have you watched runs of Spyro or Perfect Dark before?

Spyro yes a little bit, Perfect Dark not that I remember

Perfect Dark

Another game I have not played! This will be a short writeup, my apologies - some of them are going to be like that because I basically just watched the run and went, ok, that was fine but I didn't have a lot to say.

I think FPS runs, especially older ones (pre-Halo 1 or so) are really tricky to watch for a couple of reasons. One, the forced perspective means it's really hard to get a good understanding of the level design and where the objectives are if you don't know the game well. Two, it's hard to appreciate how much danger the player is actually in - there's a lot of damage tanking in this game that doesn't slow you down at all and I can't really tell how close to death they are. Most other games it's kind of clear how bad it is to get hit, especially since it usually at least slows you down.

As a result, this run isn't really for me. But I'm sure you'll enjoy it if you know the game! I'll compromise a little bit in my rankings with this one.

- This game DOES start off with two different out of bounds clips in the first 45 seconds, though, which I appreciate greatly. Can't be all bad with that.

- At first I was surprised by how high def this was for an N64 game, but then I realized it was the 360 remaster. Does make things easier to see, at least, and the framerate's probably a lot better too.

- Gotta push Jonathan because Jonathan is too slow. Fuck you Jonathan.

- GDQ out of context: "We have to kill the guards so Elvis doesn't kill them." I would watch the movie Elvis if it turned out the twist is that Elvis Presley was a serial killer.

- "This guy has a 50/50 chance to notice you or not notice you."

- "And last but not least, we want to get over this bridge-" "Please die, please die, please die!" "...without dying, preferrably."

- Apparently Elvis has a 1 in 50 chance to just randomly die to an enemy that isn't even spawned in the level, and that's exactly what happened. Oops!

- A classic pause-buffered kidnapping. I like all the npc pushing you have to do in this run.

Spyro the Dragon

These are the types of runs where I know I'm going to run into a bit of a problem; runs of games that are definitely a lot more nostalgic for other people, but not for me. Spyro is a tricky one - the game moves really fast, but because so much of it is just running from point A to point B it feels a little slow at first until you really understand the rhythm of the game and what the player is trying to do. I'm sure it's immediately a lot more relatable for someone who has played the game, but that's not me! Nontheless, I did still enjoy this one, and I'd recommend it.

- Dayoman is very high on energy, and I was very low on energy watching this. It was a bit of a mismatch. He seems like an absolutely lovely person and I enjoyed his run a lot, but he does talk a mile a minute sometimes!

- "This game came out at the same time as Resident Evil, let that sink in as far as movement is concerned." An incredibly good point - this was an early era PS1 game, at a time when 3D movement was... uh, still a bit experimental. I've never played this game but I'm sure the controls are a bit of experience, so movement is probably a lot harder than it looks.

- Most of this run I just kind of let wash over me. Speedruns like this are kind of a weird paradox - there's absolutely no downtime here, but that lack of downtime means I'm never really able to get my bearings and understand what's going on.

- I think it's interesting how he describes this game as having no human ceiling, and I think that's more or less probably true. There's SO many incredibly tiny movement optimizations throughout this entire run that nailing them all in sequence would be impossible; any run of this game is going to have tiny, inconsequential errors that add up. At one point he sort of alludes this to being like a racing game and I think that's a fascinating comparison; it's all about taking the shortest lines possible, cutting corners and turning at precise angles, etc.

- It's also absolutely true what he said about how my primary experience watching this game is thinking "oh no, did he really grab that gem or not?" Of course, he always has an extremely good awareness of his pickup radius at all times and whether or not he got them, but it's like basically constantly on my mind.

- They talk a lot about other Spyro games in this and I'm just totally not privy to these conversations. I kinda tuned out for parts of this run.

- I think it's sweet how wholesome this run is. Dayoman's mom is proud of him! The couch is proud of him! It's really nice.

- "When was the last time you used Skype?" It always blows my mind to remember that there was a time when we had to use Skype, or Mumble, or whatever to chat instead of Discord. Ever since the mid-10's Discord has just really replaced all of that.

- I keep forgetting that Stewart Copeland wrote this game's soundtrack. What the fuck?

- "Thank you for releasing me" is a good meme.

- GDQ out of context: "When you hit that wizard just right, he gets squished."

- A tech name called T-N-Trick. Not sure if they made that one up on the spot!

- Damn, another major missed skip, which is a bummer. Been a lot of those so far! Again, though, I do love these high-stakes skips.

- Someone is here in a Spyro costume. It's adorable.

- "If we have time I'd love to show off credits skip? Do we have a minute - we do not." I always feel bad when a runner has to get yanked off the stage like this, but it was the right call - he was already over estimate.

- There's a prize segment after this one. Sent's on the floor.

- "Can I interest you in this love Pikachu? It goes lovely with this lovely crocheted Dittochu. It's like a Pikachu. Or is it." The way he delivers this line is inexplicably funny in a way I can't describe, you just have to hear it.

- Cool prizes I can't have as usual. Love the Sleep Kirby quilt and the Spyro perler + painting is an incredibly cool mixed art piece.

Inscryption

I have no familiarity with M:TG, so any reference to it is lost on me, although I did imagine there must be some element of it in here. Obviously the final act with painter guy is a love letter to Yu-Gi-Oh, but I've always wondered what the other games are meant to be.

Oh I do agree that the twist that P03 is trying to use you to upload the game onto the internet is actually a great twist by the way. I knew I would forget something.

Alright, now the other stuff.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/8/AAA-H0AADdQm.jpg

Obviously, if you've played the game, you know what the deal is and why there's spoiler text.

While I was ultimately quite surprised by the game's major twists, I did know that there was going to be a twist and it would be along these lines for two main reasons. One, the fact that everyone has to be hush-hush about the game kind of already means the jig is up, much like some other games in this vein that you might be thinking of right now. Two, more importantly, I played one of this dev's previous games, Pony Island. It didn't make my top 100 games of the decade list but it was a pretty interesting little experience; I found a lot of the horror elements to be extremely trite, but the fourth-wall breaking mixed media experience was really something else, and very much directly prepared me for the kind of thing Inscryption would do. Nontheless, Inscryption still found a way to surprise me, which is commendable - I did not foresee the entire game completely changing from Slay the Spire to Pokemon Trading Card Game. Unfortunately, this is where the game started to go off the rails, in my opinion.

The first few hours of this game were absolutely sublime, for me. The initial Spire-esque mechanics really hooked me and made for an extremely fun game that was exciting to play at every turn, and Leshy as the "dungeon master" so to speak is such a menacing yet also fun character that you can't help but develop a sort of stockholm syndrome for him. Everything about the atmosphere and the environment, how the card game plays out in an actual physical location that you're in instead of in an abstract UI, is genius. I love that you can get up and explore the room and discover things. The only problem I had with act 1 was using the knife to get the eyeball. I had already used the dagger once before and it did not produce this effect, either because I wasn't at the trigger point yet or because I was in the final battle, I'm not sure; but when I got the hint for the portrait of the dagger it didn't really mean anything to me and I got stuck for a while until someone in twitch chat told me the answer. Minor quibble though - it could have just been my dumb ass.

I was excited for the switch to act 2, although I was sad to leave act 1 and its fun mechanics behind, and sadly, act 2 is where I realized that this isn't really a roguelike deckbuilder game to be played and enjoyed over and over; it's a narrative experience where the card game mechanics are part of the set dressing. The Pokemon TCG send-up here is cute, but mechanically it's not very fun to play. It's not the type of game where you're gonna settle in for 20 hours, collecting cards and tweaking your deck to build something with great synergy - all you can really do in most fights is hope for a good draw and try to win as fast as possible, otherwise you'll just lose. It's more like a puzzle game, but not a very good one. I lost a lot here and started to get really frustrated, feeling like the mechanics of the game are too unfairly stacked against you, but I eventually squeezed through somehow.

At the start of act 3, I thought I was about to enjoy this game a lot more - the twist of going back to the 'real world' but with P03 in charge now, with all of the mechanics of the game changed once again and with act 2 serving as a tutorial for many of them, was brilliant. Unfortunately, I also found this part of the game to be too frustrating at times; there were some fights where I felt like I didn't have a good enough deck, but because it's no longer a roguelike I couldn't start over and try again, and as a result I really banged my head against the wall for a good while. I actually dropped the game and didn't twitch stream (which I was doing because I had friends that wanted to see the game) the rest of it as a result because I just wasn't having fun and I had to put it aside and come back to it on my own time. I did eventually break through, only to discover that all of the boss fights I hadn't yet reached were actually super clever and fun, and that the game was waiting to give me a bunch of upgrades I needed to trivialize the rest of the game. It's actually a shame, because act 3 starts to introduce some really cool mechanical concepts that you basically only get to use in one or two more fights before the whole thing's over - there isn't even a final boss (though the game's final segment is certainly memorable to say the least).

Much like I said about Pony Island, I found the game's horror elements a bit trite, at times. I love the characters and their bizarre quirks and motivations, and the surprisingly character-driven nature of this game pushes it forward, but I find all of the stuff that's like - oh, there's a SATANIC CONSPIRACY that's CORRUPTING THE GAME and MAYBE THE ACTUAL SATAN IS IN THE GAME AND IT'S SPOOKY is like, ugh, it was silly in Pony Island and it's silly here, but fortunately the presentation and atmosphere of the whole game makes it pay off anyway, even if I don't really care about the found footage segments where this is some kind of creepypasta game a person in real life found in the woods and even if I don't care about the payoff to it. I feel bad, because I'm sure some people were really blown away by these aspects, but I feel like this meta fourth-wall breaking stuff is passe at this point and it just didn't do much for me.

I was excited to play Kaycee's Mod and come back to the part of the game that was really good - act 1 - but as I did, I discovered that that part of the game wasn't really meant to hold up like Slay the Spire. The mechanics are fun but not super well balanced, and since each run kind of starts the same and there isn't a lot of variation, it really lacks that 'one more run' sort of feeling to it. It's good for exactly as long as it needs to be in the first act, which for me was about... like, four runs or so, the game's not very hard. So I played Kaycee's Mod a small handful of times and dropped the game, probably for good this time. It's not Spire. It's not trying to be Spire. It doesn't need to be Spire.

So it's a mixed bag, overall. Act 1 was great, the other acts were a bit overindulgent and annoying. The horror elements were beautifully made, but also sometimes kind of ridiculous. Brilliant at times, frustrating at times, but overall a game that I'll remember for a very, very long time, and that counts for something.

Next up: This is the only game on the list that I do not own or have downloaded. I don't have a physical or digital copy of it, and it isn't in any of my friends' shared libraries either. I cannot play this game at will.

It's fine you guys, you were right the first time, again.

#30: Inscryption

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/6/AAA-H0AADdQk.jpg

Inscryption is a horror-themed roguelike deckbuilder that is best experienced for yourself, if possible. It involves some element of surprise, mystery, or something else along those lines that rely on an unvarnished player experience. I will be using spoiler text in this review to preserve that experience.

When writing this list, I wanted to try to avoid writeups where I would have to put the whole thing in spoiler text. I was able to do that for Forgotten City, since while there was some spoilery stuff I could have talked about, it wasn't really too crucial for me to talk about my overall thoughts on the game. Inscryption, though, I do need to get into some of the nitty gritty details, and it will be safer if I do so in spoilers.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/7/AAA-H0AADdQl.jpg

The non-spoilery thoughts; Inscryption was very much a love-hate game for me. There are times at which I enjoyed this game enough to put it in the top 10; there are other times playing this game at which I wanted to swear it off entirely, drop it, and not include it on this list at all. I can say, without a doubt, that I understand why it has received such superlative praise. Inscryption is a unique game, and its presentation is utterly masterful. It somehow really nails the premise of playing a card game dealt by a scary serial killer in a cabin in the woods, and that's not a sentence I thought I'd be saying a year ago. When this game clicks, it *clicks.*

I was talking with someone the other day about what I call the post-Slay the Spire period of gaming we're in right now where there's a number of games coming out now where you can directly point to Spire's mechanics as an inspiration. One Step From Eden has this in spades, for instance, with its branching paths and card adding/removal. Even games like Pawnbarian which aren't strictly deckbuilders clearly draw something from Spire's ascension mode, having multiple difficulty modes that very gradually ramp up and add small changes. Inscryption is a loving tribute to Slay the Spire in pretty much every way; or perhaps a twisted parody of it. If you're a fan of Spire, you should probably check this one out, but also don't go into this expecting Spire. This isn't that. But it is an incredibly worthwhile experience.

Mario
Fantasy

Out of the options presented, Zelda > Mega Man > Mario > Metroid > Castlevania > Final Fantasy > Fire Emblem > whatever

My actual fourth favorite would have been Famicom Wars but that wasn't an option! (I mean, I don't like the Famicom Wars games, but I do love Advance Wars)

Dodo's Lair
The Wind's Blooming Mountain
IroniA

Kart
Mega

Labyrinth V - Forgotten Capital
Secret of the Forest
Mechonis Field

Pokemon Snap

This was another run I was majorly looking forward to - Pokemon Snap's another nostalgic favorite of mine that I haven't really revisited that often recently, and I'm interested in seeing what goes into speedrunning high scores out of it.

Some of the very minor manipulations you have to do to go fast in this game are pretty interesting; always trying to look forward so your vehicle doesn't slow down, lag manipulation, planning your routes so that you have to run through each level the fewest times possible, getting some shots from some pretty funny angles. It wasn't QUITE as compelling as I hoped, since the game is pretty short and most of the Pokemon are pretty straightforward to get - a lot of the pictures aren't even very good because if they're too good they take up more time! Still, though, it's worth it for what interesting manips do exist. And I love the goal here - I think it's so much more interesting to need a good score at the end than simply getting to the end.

- I love that SNOM was the winning filename. Snom is a good Pokemon. The donors are good people.

- This is probably a topic for another time - like say, a best games list - but I just love the late 90's Pokemon aesthetics. There's something special about it that's just not the same anymore, and I can't explain it. We were cleaning out the basement earlier this week and we found some vintage Pokemon merch, including an unopened pack of gen 1-era stickers, and I'm just so excited and happy about it.

- You go slower when you look backwards, so you always want to be looking forwards. What a positive message!

- The first level is almost entirely looking at the sky. Thrilling!

- Second reference to orbs this GDQ. I feel like there's stuff I should keep tallies of like this.

- Bad Cloyster rng. He's the one Pokemon that ruins this run. Booooo, Cloyster.

- The river is my favorite level in this run - he does it in one go and there's just so many quick pictures that have to be taken in quick succession with good accuracy.

- I love the Doduo snipe at the start of the return to the beach level - just knowing where it's going to be and hitting it as soon as it comes out.

- "You didn't see them because of lag reduction, but trust me, they were there, and it was cool."

- There was a warning not to look at the screen because of motion sickness, but I thought it was going to be a warning not to look at the screen because of Jynx.

- The single best picture in this run is the one of Pikachu riding on Articuno, where we clip through Articuno and get a picture of Pikachu showing off its taint. Beautiful. No further comments.

---Highly Recommended---
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Mass Effect
---Recommended---
Shadow of the Colossus
Rolled Out!
Pokemon Snap
---Maybe Recommended---
WarioWare: Touched!
---Not Recommended---
Sonic Generations

#31: SNKRX

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/0/8/AAA-H0AADc08.png

Oh my god, I played this game for HOW many hours? 244 hours??? Why? How could this happen? Why didn't anyone STOP me?

SNKRX is an incredibly addictive game, and against all odds, somehow my 3rd-most played game of the last two years. I had a run of games on this list with beautifully crafted worlds and thoughtful game design, but sometimes what I want is some dots moving around on the screen that shoot dots at other dots and make numbers and my seratonin go up. SNKRX is one of these.

SNKRX combines the idea of Snake with a tower defense game, all with some roguelite mechanics. Your snake, which you turn left or right as it constantly moves forward, is made up of colorful little dots that you buy in a shop, each one with its own attack pattern or special ability. You build a snake out of these and you take it through a series of increasingly challenging levels where you have your dots shoot at some ovals, who also have their own special abilities. You get permanent upgrades along the way as well as better dots. That's the whole game. Yay!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/1/0/AAA-H0AADc0-.png

There's a surprising amount of depth to this otherwise incredibly simple game. The various different 'characters' that you can add to your snake, themed after your basic RPG classes (ranger, wizard, etc), all have surprisingly interesting and varied abilities, and they all belong to a 'class', and adding more characters of the same class gives you set bonuses, which gives you quite a bit to think about when constructing your snake. And the items that you get every few levels add a lot to the game too - there's a lot of variety there and you can get some pretty fun builds going.

It's pretty challenging, too. It took me a fair number of attempts to get a winning run, and the game really cranks up the addiction level by giving you a Spire-like ascension mode, where the enemies gradually get more hp but you also get more slots for your snake with each run. There is what seems to be a glitch in this game where your difficulty level can go higher than intended, as well, and I've had a lot of fun trying to fight through like - I think I got up to NG+8 when the game is supposed to cap at NG+5? It gets pretty wild. At sufficient difficulty levels, this game gets downright sadistic, and playing it well gets really fun and exciting. Again, there's a truly surprising amount of depth to this game. It doesn't have a lot to it, but what's here surprisingly passed the test as far as roguelites go, for me. If I play a roguelite for more than 50 hours, it's a good one. You can take that to the bank. (The bank doesn't accept # of hours spent playing a roguelite, I tried.)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/1/1/AAA-H0AADc0_.png

This was, for a time, the game that I would just boot up and play to keep my hands and my brain busy while watching a youtube video or a twitch stream or something. It's a terrible habit of mine, I waste a lot of time doing this, but sometimes it's also what keeps me sane day-to-day. Apparently SNKRX was this game for a while - it feels like I played it for months, but I guess I unlocked every achievement in about two weeks. I haven't really picked it up in a while since, which makes a game like this hard to rank. Extremely addictive and ate over 200 hours of my life, but not really fascinating enough for me to return to and keep playing once I'm done with it. It's a hard one to judge.

I was very disappointed to learn that plans to expand this game and implement some changes were canceled. I completely support the dev's decision to do this, as it sounds like he had overscoped on the project, was burnt out and struggling to keep a timetable for it, and badly needed to move on, and that's completely reasonable. The game, as it is, is already largely complete, though there are a few things I would have liked (the fact that the game doesn't tell you how much HP each character has is maddening, it's an important stat that the game makes opaque for no reason). Mostly I was just hoping that an update would give me a chance to come back to this game and experience it one more time, and maybe add a little bit more depth to this game, but it is what it is, and this is the game's final state, I suppose. If you want a snake roguelite that's about driving dots around to shoot other dots and you want to waste a few hours, this is like 3 bucks, I think it's probably worth it. Don't do what I did and play it for 244 hours though. Find something else to do! Don't be lured in by SNKRX's hypnotic charms and promises of one more run!

Fun fact: This is the first game where I took my own screenshots of the game instead of using google image search. The pics of this game I found by searching were all garbage.

Next up: Okay, this is a fun one. At least one major publication named this next game as their Game of the Year.

Tetris
Kong

This is kind of an insanely good collection honestly, none of these games are bad

SS > DL3 > 64 > DL2 > A > DL

I pity voted DL3 though lol, even though I admit SS is the best. but they're all worthwhile games, even the original Dream Land which is super charming

Kenri posted...

Yeah, corpse runs, a stamina bar, high difficulty, and constant auto-saving are the gameplay factors for me, though not every game has them all.

Death's Door has like 0.5 of these haha

Even the mood of Death's Door doesn't really remind me of Dark Souls that much, it's a little too cute and silly, the comparison feels so flimsy

Fromsoft may like crows but do you PLAY as a crow who holds a sword in its wings? I think not

It's a good thing you guys were correct, otherwise it'd be awkward

#32: Death's Door

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/0/AAA-H0AADcu4.jpg

No really, why DO people compare this game to Dark Souls, though? And don't say that people don't do that, I've heard it from like three different people! Is it because this game has a dodge roll? Because it has a slightly melancholy vibe and grayscale aesthetics? Dark Souls didn't even invent those things! It's not like Dark Souls at all! There's no RPG elements, your attacks come out instantly and have no windup, and it's not frustrating and annoying to play. It has a crow! What I'm trying to say is that Death's Door is better than Dark Souls. Come at me. I will fight you and I will win because my attacks don't take 12 seconds to perform.

(Dark Souls is fine, by the way. It's just not for me. Please don't actually fight me over the merits of the game, I will immediately acquiesce.)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/1/AAA-H0AADcu5.jpg

Death's Door is a little isometric action game with some very light Zelda elements where you play as a little crow who has to go reap some souls. That's pretty much it. What it lacks in the originality of its gameplay premise, it makes up for by its presentation being polished to a mirror shine. It really lives off of its visual style in particular; the game's world pops off the screen like a little animated diorama, the environments so uncannily smooth that they almost look like they could be real, made out of real miniatures fimed in some kind of impossibly fluid stop motion. This is an example of a game where just wanting to look at it is something that consistently drew me back in. It has a relatively muted color palette compared to most of the games I like (up to this point, I think BPM, Pawnbarian, and Forgotten City are the only games I wouldn't describe as explosively colorful) and it's rare for me to really get drawn into these 'dark' color palettes, so that really speaks to the immersive quality of this game.

Like Astalon in my previous writeup, it also - at least for me - had a nearly perfectly designed difficulty curve. The game is demanding, but not unfair. You don't have a lot of room for error as your health bar is pretty small, but all of the basic enemies and bosses give a fair amount of telegraphing to their attacks, and your little crow has responsive movement and a dodge roll, so any time you get hit by something it really feels like your fault; yet, the game's attack patterns are interesting and tricky enough that you will get hit nontheless. Attacks feel good; weapon attacks are quick and snappy, and charging up and letting loose your ranged attacks is satisfying, although I wish attacks landed with a little more of a 'thud' to them.

I wouldn't call this game a metroidvania, but it does have a little bit of that vibe to it with getting upgrades that let you explore more places. I felt like this game could have used a bit more of that, as cool new weapons and upgrades are too far and few between to make exploring feel like it's worth it some of the time. On the bright side, though, I was surprised by how well hidden secrets are in this game; health and magic upgrades come in the form of these giant shrines that you feel like you couldn't possibly miss, but the game uses these clever camera tricks to keep them just out of view, which makes the swinging of the camera around the level to reveal them once you've found the hidden path immensely satisfying. I've always had a big soft spot for secrets that are fair but well hidden since DKC2 so this won me over.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/2/AAA-H0AADcu6.jpg

I don't know how I feel about this game not having a map. I've always praised Metroid 1 for exactly this, because getting helplessly lost and having to remember where things are yourself is somehow satisfying in a slightly masochistic way, but the mazelike areas of Death's Door and the inability to zoom out and see where in them you are can be more than a little frustrating at times, and I always felt like if I put the game down for too long I'd forget where I was going. I also think the game has way too much wandering around - there were a few times where I couldn't figure out where to go and I'd literally spend up to 20 minutes just kind of pacing back and forth through empty areas cleared of any enemies or threats, without any map or fast movement to help me clear ground faster, and it feels almost designed that way to pad the runtime of what's otherwise a modestly short game. There's some postgame stuff to do, but because it would require me to go through all these areas again I couldn't really bring myself to do it.

In any case, I'm glad I gave this game a chance, because it's a gorgeous looking and competently made action game. I probably wouldn't have given it a chance if it didn't have a crow. This game has a whole bureaucracy full of crows! Birds are my favorite animal and pretty much any game that features them is going to inherently get a lot more attention from me. I think I wouldn't have enjoyed this game half as much if it just starred like, some guy. I don't just want to play as some guy. I want to play a cute bird and it's simple stuff like that that keeps me playing a game sometimes.

It's actually occurring to me now that Hollow Knight is probably a better comp for this game, and Hollow Knight also gets Dark Souls comparisons a lot. I've never played Hollow Knight but I feel like it's pretty similar to this game? A world that's equal parts cute and bleak, attacks that come out fast and attack patterns that are fair, a little too much wandering around backtracking through empty areas for some peoples' tastes. Cool, glad we cleared that up. I'll play Hollow Knight at some point and see if my comparison was accurate. In the meantime, I'm glad I gave Death's Door a chance - it was recommended to me more than once and I nearly passed on it and I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

Next up: snek

I don't know why but it's EXTREMELY funny to me that both shots are of Pinsir in the EXACT same pose, at the EXACT same moment, at the EXACT same angle, with completely different scenery and lighting

andylt posted...

I thought Para was saying that Astalon was the time loop game, not the next entry.

right

I forgot to mention by the way that TECHNICALLY this is a time loop game but I didn't include it as one because I don't really think it plays like a time loop game

I do remember the bit about Algus having made a pact with a demon which is pretty cool.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

I played this game specifically in preparation to watch this run - I was going to skip it at first but instead I ended up taking a couple days off to beat it, so here I am! I'm really glad I played this game. I think this might be my favorite Kirby game ever; it feels like the first time they've ever made a Kirby game on a Mario budget, if that makes sense. A top of the line, prestige game meant to flex Nintendo's muscles and not just a solidly made, mid-budget title meant to fill the back end of a console's lineup in its waning days. It's amazing that this is the first time they've ever made a mainline 3D Kirby game! Anyway, most of the gushing about this game is probably best reserved for "Para's top 50 games 2022-2023" or whatever.

Anyway, I was really excited about this run because it's a game I really enjoyed that's super fresh in my brain, and throughout I was noticing all sort of potential speed things that would be fun. I was excited to see how Fire and Tornado would be used for movement and I was excited to see how quickly bosses would be killed (I already noticed that no-copy Kirby insanely powerful and I was right about that). I didn't expect there to be out of bounds glitches though, so this run managed to surprise.

I did kind of frame this list as an objective one - the runs I would recommend to other people, rather than merely my favorites - but it is a favorites list, really. I'm definitely biased towards certain games that I really like, and while some runs of games I don't know will occasionally really grip me, this is definitely my favorite run of the marathon so far. I'm a sucker for long adventure games where there's planning and routing and payoff, and Kirby has a lot of that with deciding what powers to carry, which Waddle Dees to save, when to buy items, etc. And otherwise this was just such a fun, cozy showcase of a new game that's sure to be part of the speedrunning canon, and I'm sure it's gonna be a highlight for me.

- One of the first things I noticed playing this game was that slide kicking and jump canceling out of it was a lot faster than walking, so I did it a lot when I played. Happy to see that I was not wrong and the speedrun has to start with this until it gets Fire/Tornado.

- It's nice to see no-copy Kirby get to shine throughout this run. As fun as copy powers are, I've always felt it's a bit of a shame that Kirby's gimmick of inhaling and spitting things out gets sidelined so often, since it's a lot of fun itself, but because of the way this game works with giving you lots of stars to work with it's an insanely powerful ability. The mix of powers and inhaling that has to be used in this run is really awesome.

- This run does start a little slow, with the first 5-10 minutes or so being really straightforward and not involving a lot of routing decisions, but it gets more interesting later on. Almost no Waddle Dees are saved early on which leaves a lot of the level unexplored, but in later levels it's more interesting because they have to spend time routing Waddle Dees in which makes the levels more dynamic and interesting.

- I like that despite not being a super speed-heavy game there's a lot of movement tech. There's a lot of slight mistakes that get made into impressive backup strats to make cycles.

- It's hilarious how many things in this game I didn't know about until I watched this run. I didn't know you could take the invincibility candy all the way to Frosty in Alivel Mall. I didn't know you could guard with ice to kill bosses quickly. I didn't even know there was a stage select!

- "Please do not greet birds by flamethrowering them."

- Stuff you can do to save time in this game: Eating a single can of tuna, so that the game does not spend two seconds giving you a hint about eating cans of tuna.

- "For me, I love sleep. (Audience applauds) "Yeah, deep sleep is so good!" (Audience applauds louder)

- Everyone raves about Wondaria Remains and all the lore behind it and I agree, it's the best themed world with the coolest environments. Speaking of which, another speedrunning thing I love about this game is how often Kirby can jump on objects to get enough height to skip over things. Since this game is such a love letter to urban exploration in abandoned places, there's something very meta about being able to parkour off of objects in a way that's neither specifically intended nor disallowed.

- Tornado movement in this game is so satisfying, and I love how much it can skip by covering tons of horizontal distance.

- "I like the ring mouth because I have a very close friend who hates it and I'm desperate to get them a figurine of that for their birthday."

- "I love how Elfilin was willing to tell you about a blueprint you left behind, but a caged Waddle Dee? That's not a priority."

- Invasion at the House of Horrors is, indeed, the best level in the game, and I'm sad they blow by it so quickly (using the patented speedrunning technique of Not Using The Provided Light Source In A Dark Area Because You Know Where Everything Is Already).

- Swallowing all the swords against Clawroline, another thing I didn't know you could do. It's really funny that you have to turn auto-powers off, because otherwise you'd gain the Sword power here - turning that feature off completely changes the nature of this fight.

- A shame how many attempts the Blizzard Bridge skip takes, but I love when there's high stakes at a GDQ run - it makes it all the more exciting when someone does pull off a difficult trick first time, and I love the nervous feeling of not knowing if someone is going to succeed. Amazing that skip even works, it's such a bizarre glitch and there's no reason for there to even be collision up there.

- They, like me, note the raw intensity of the name THE WASTES WERE LIFE BEGAN. ("It's just a normal desert level, that's the weird part")

- "Are you telling me this game has OPTIMAL SLEEPING?" This is probably the first Kirby game where obtaining the Sleep power is optimal speedrunning tech! (I love that world 5 has a lot more Waddle Dee routing)

- I have never heard of tiger stripe ice cream, but orange ice cream with licorice swirls sounds absolutely terrible. Everyone else picked normal, sensible favorite ice cream flavors, and then my guy over here with the absolute most deranged thing I've ever heard.

- I don't know if I love or hate that this game has a technique called "instant suck."

- World 6 is just great in general, I made a lot of notes like 'wow' or 'cool' but I'm not gonna repeat them all. Unfortunate that he dropped a Waddle Dee mission late though and had to repeat a level to make it up - I wondered what would happen if he missed a Waddle Dee like this, and the answer when it's the last Waddle Dee of the run is, gotta redo a level!

- "I unlocked something? Oh, fishing!"

- Leongar skip was really cool! Actually got that one more-or-less first try.

- "This game has a fear rating just because of that boss I'm pretty sure." If you played the game, you know.

- "The Wastes Where Life Began" can't even begin to compare to the title of the boss theme, "Two Planets Approach the Roche Limit." I love how extra Kirby always is.

- For some reason, there's a sliding mechanic where Kirby slides down a hill and it's only ever used in a hard to find easter egg room. I wonder if it was planned to be used somewhere else at one point.

That was a long run to have out of the way! I guess it's natural that I'll have more stuff to talk about for a run like this.

Wow I have not yet seen all this Frillish stuff lol, this game has so much stuff in it that's hard to find but rewarding

PumpkinCoach posted...

for the next one i'll guess Astalon.

We have another winner!

#33: Astalon: Tears of the Earth

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/4/AAA-H0AADcfU.jpg

I feel like my writeups for these games tend to be pretty cliche. I always write them in this sort of five paragraph essay style where my intro paragraph is always something that's either semi-related or unrelated to the game I'm talking about and then I tie it in later. I try to play around with voice and style as much as I can with these things to make them interesting to read, but I've also only got so much time in the day and I'd like to at least put these out at a rate of like, once per day. I wanna get this shit done.

Anyway I sat on this one for a few days because I was just like, oh shit, I have to think of something profound to say about Astalon: Tears of the Earth. Some kind of thesis statement, or just something about the game I really want to talk about. And I've got nothing for this game! Nothing really urgent that I need to talk about here. Astalon is just a really good metroidvania that you should probably play.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/5/AAA-H0AADcfV.jpg

Astalon: Tears of the Earth has you playing as three characters that you can switch between; a warrior with close range sword attacks, a mage with a fast mid-range projectile, and a rogue with a slow, long-range bow. There's a plot that I frankly don't remember at all, and a sprawling dungeon that you need to explore and kill some bosses in. The main gimmick is that every time you die, you get brought to a shop where you can buy upgrades, either upgrading each of your characters' stats, or buying other shared upgrades that will help you in your next life. It's not a roguelike at all, but it does have the familiar ebb and flow of a metaprogression roguelike where you'll die quite a bit but then grow stronger every time, and it makes for an addictive hook into the game.

I think what I like most about this game, though, is the level design. This is one of those games that feels like a proper metroidvania, one that really understands the assignment. The world feels big and its series of rooms and hallways feel properly complex. There's plenty of doubling back to old areas, upgrades hidden in tricky places, areas that you can't get to yet but can come back to later. It can be a lot; this game relies a lot on one-way doors that you have to open from the other end. But, every new pathway and shortcut you open feels well earned; this is a dungeon that feels like it needs to be excavated, not just explored.

This is aided by the fact that the difficulty curve felt just right for me. This game is challenging and demanding enough that I died quite a few times, but never so difficult that it felt impossible or frustrating. The game does get a bit easier over time, as games with upgrade systems tend to, as Algus, the mage, becomes unbearably overpowered when upgraded and mashes the final boss into a fine paste by the time you're done (which is good because the final boss would be insanely hard otherwise). The upgrade system helps ensure that you're never quite stuck - I never did much farming at all, the currency I had on hand always just put me over the hump.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/6/AAA-H0AADcfW.jpg

I've got a few complaints, but they're fairly mild. I did have to look up a walkthrough once or twice just because this game has occasional moments of La-Mulana-esque crypticness, where a puzzle doesn't quite make sense either because you don't understand what the game wants of you, or because you missed something you needed along the way, not to mention the numerous times throughout where you'll *feel* like you're missing something (all those weird yellow blocks you see throughout the game do serve a purpose, but not until POSTGAME content). There's upgrades that are weird too, as some of them are permanent but some only work for the next run for some reason, but the game doesn't tell you which are which - and the upgrades that work only for the next run still get more expensive every time you buy them, a mechanic that I never really quite worked out. This always left me feeling like I didn't quite understand the game fully, which was a weird experience.

Still, it's a rock solid metroidvania. I was reminded of the days when I used to read Nintendo Power and look at maps for games I wouldn't play; I was always fascinated by adventure games in which you'd have to travel deep into the game's world, get some important upgrade, but then eventually double back to the game's starting area to get stuff you missed the first time. It always made the game seem so rich and interesting when it was nonlinear like that. Astalon: Tears of the Earth kind of feels like it's pulled straight out of my imagination of what those games must have been like. It feels properly retro, with bright, beautiful spritework right out of the NES or SMS, but it's a finely polished action adventure with a solid 10 hours or so of content in it. I love games in 2022 that make me feel like I'm playing what I imagined would be a really good game in 1990.

Next up: I almost skipped this game because it was frequently compared favorably to Dark Souls. Fortunately for me, it's hardly anything like Dark Souls, people just haven't played other games. (I bought it because of the main character.)

GavsEvans123 posted...

On topic, I was wondering, since the older adult heroes are in the process of being phased out, and many of the new heroes being introduced are teenagers, does anyone think this is a conscious decision to aim the MCU at a younger audience than before?

I think it's more that this is just the natural consequence of having an extended film universe like this. They can't keep having their gradually aging stars playing the same character forever, and they've decided to go the route of (mostly) not recasting. Eventually Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans are going to stop being Iron Man and Captain America. Given that the MCU carries so much weight now, you're better off scouting young talent and developing them into a role and making a star out of them and surrounding them with older, bankable talent in villain and one-off supporting roles. At least, that's kind of the way it seems to me. It could be a conscious effort, but I also think it's kind of your only option at this stage in the game.

oneofcircles posted...

did you look at the poll results?

Did YOU read even a single word of the people in the thread telling you off?

Hbthebattle posted...

exactly what you think it means lol

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/261-politics/80080239

Wow I was expecting the politics board to be a wasteland but the replies just beautifully skewer this dumbass premise, I'm a big fan

No, unless it was completely asymptomatic. I have not experienced cold symptoms since 2019, which is amazing honestly. I used to get sick basically all the time to the point that I'd have cold symptoms for two months out of a year.

It's insane that they released this collection and it's not an absurdity to argue that HL2 is the weakest of the three games. I mean, HL2 is great, but I played over 1000 hours of TF2 and Portal is Portal

Castlevania
Chrono

Good ol' Spider-Man

By the way I did actually end up beating Kirby to the point that the run goes to, so now I can watch it next unspoiled, which I will likely do tomorrow. No skipping around for me!

(I did start Tunic also)

Sorry, I was on vacation and forgot about this for a bit! I'm still interested in it, if you are.

Uh.......... Glaceon 1?

wait, did Secret of Mana really miss out on the main bracket lol

Fox
Mine