Oh I’m late.

I wish  had a whole lot of games to talk about that I played in April, but I took it real easy on new games… and don’t have a PS5 to play Stellar Blade (fuck Sony). Most of my gaming time has been put into being good at Mahjong Soul (literally had ~25 matches with no 4th places… the game is taking its revenge right now though). There is one game I got from Kickstarter, Eiyuden, yjsy I haven’t played  yet (and am kinda dreading it based on how shit the localization is). I will play it soon probably. Not much else is planned for May since there’s just nothing coming out…. And that kinda goes for the rest of the year… Man I chose the wrong year to do monthly update posts 😀

I do have a few things I played in April, not much of huge note but there’s a few things here… And May ain’t  shaping up great either.

So anyways here’s a few things!

Oh I’m late on this oops. Well, not like there’s anything exciting coming out recently anyways. Basically just Stellar Blade and that’s temporarily stuck on PS5 because Shift Up were idiots who decided to say yes to the Sony money. I’ll get it once it’s on PC like it was originally announced to be. Might even be un-Sony’d by that point.

So for May 2024 I’m highlighting: 7 multiplats, 2 Switch games and 4 PC games. This is a month without highlights. Like, wow. This year is BAD.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. This is not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. Of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Oh and I didn’t include Braid again. It was there last month because game devs are just not able to announce release dates correctly.

Oh hey it’s the end of March. So I should actually be writing about all the shit I played this month. And by shit, and I mean SHIT. A bit of a meh month as far as games, unfortunately.

Several games I was at least a bit excited about, and they ended up being somewhat disappointing in various ways.

So let’s go through the month of disappointment!

Well March was a kinda disappointing month, not to spoil my march update post too much. I don’t really have much to say as an intro beyond… it’s important to continue noticing.

This month I’m highlighting: 10 multiplats, 1 Switch game, 1 PS5 game and 2 PC games. A bit of a quiet month but there’s actually some exciting stuff this month, unlike last month, with a few games I’m getting for sure.

I was gonna highlight Another Crab’s Treasure because it’s a game I thought looked fun, but the devs are assholes so that’s squarely on the “don’t buy it” list. They don’t like gamers so gamers shouldn’t give them money, very simple.

So let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. This is not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. Of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

This might be the meta. Me commenting about upcoming releases, and simpler posts where I don’t have to struggle to find things to say in reviews anymore. The new era of low-effort content! I enjoy doing it, it’s just the reviews have been hard to write because at this point, even playing a newer game, I struggle to find anything to say about them.

So for March 2024 I am highlighting: 14 multiplats, 2 Switch games, 2 PC games and 2 PS5 games. While there’s one big game here, March is mostly filled with smaller niche games and a few mid-level things.

Oh and another fun thing, near the end of the month, is that the Pokemon TCG finally rotating, so a bunch of cards are going out of the standard game mode. Finally I can take Spiritomb out of my decks which is just there to counter Mew Vmax decks.

So let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. This is not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. Of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

You know what? Since I’m so slow at posting reviews nowadays, why not simplify shit around this website? Instead of not putting out content at all, let’s just do possibly-monthly stuff. I’ll still do reviews for some of the more interesting shit if I manage to write them in a timely manner. But, if I don’t, I’ll just make posts like this. That way I don’t have an empty blog with nothing happening all the time.

So the plan is to just… talk about the games I’ve been playing. Say what’s been good, what’s been not good, and give a couple paragraphs about each.

Because it’s my first time doing this, I’ll include stuff from january and february. The included games this month are: Dungeons of Aether, 9 Years of Shadow, Mameda no Bakeru, Chained Echoes, Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Palworld, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Penny’s Big Breakaway, Pocket Card Jockey Ride On and Balatro.

Hey. So apparently I haven’t posted at all in January other than today. lol. I have a review halfway written for Mameda no Bakeru, I will get that done at some point. I also want to talk about Palworld. And I’m also playing through Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which has a depressingly awful localization so every time someone says something in japanese and the english translation is entirely wrong (which is almost every sentence), I just feel like playing it less… so I probably won’t review that because I probably won’t finish it. Disappointing because I was really hyped for it, but the fact that I understand japanese a bit is just sucking out the fun out.

So yeah, February is a month. It has games. I’m highlighting: 14 multiplats, 3 Switch games, 3 PC games, and a PS5 temporary exclusive. I remove a few remasters from the list because they were dumb, like Dark Forces and Brothers 😀 … It might seem like there’s a decent amount of games, but I dunno, there’s not much I’m all that hyped about. I’d say 1 “for sure” and like 3 maybes.

So let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Well the GotY and 2024 hype stuff is done, so back to the regular schedule. Game releases! I do have a review incoming for the japan-exclusive Mameda no Bakeru, once I’m done with it. I have been playing other stuff as well, not sure I’ll get reviews up for those. Namely Dungeons of Aether (very okay/10), 9 Years of Shadow (actually pretty good), and I bought but haven’t started Chained Echoes which I heard very good stuff about.

So here I’m highlighting: 8 multiplats, 2 Switch games, 2 PC games, and the dumbest release in history on PS5. As far as what I’m buying in those, there’s one of my most hyped games this year already so that’s one, and I have 2-3 maybes. Not a terrible start for the year.

Oh and Palworld I think is meant to come out in Early Access this month, I might have a look.

Let’s go and start 2024!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

It’s time for the only Games of the Year awards that matter!
… Just kidding, no GotY awards matter. But I like doing them (which does, in fact, make this more relevant than the VGAs), so here we go.

I am choosing 5 winners, and then one TOP GAME OF THE YEAR winner, just to attempt at variety, and then posting all my honorable mentions which are games I liked but that weren’t GotY material. This is obviously going to be based on games I played myself (which is still over 50 games, even though I reviewed very few of those). So if there’s a game you liked and it doesn’t appear as one of my winners or honorable mentions… it’s because I didn’t play it. And I probably didn’t play it because it was obviously bad.

As far as notable games I skipped one that aren’t bad (or probably aren’t bad), there’s still a few of those. I skipped on both Like a Dragon games, Baldur’s Gate 3 (I will get it at some point), Persona 5 Tactica, Remnant 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Lies of P, Dave the Diver and probably a bunch of other games that were pretty popular and probably-good. Also didn’t play FF16 which… I’ve not been convinced it’s good, but I’m waiting for the PC version so I will review it when I do play it.

And there’s a few obviously bad games I didn’t touch, like Alan Wake 2, Starfield, Redfall and Diablo 4 (I played the beta, it was not good, so I skipped on the full game). And of course there’s some bad games I did play, like Forspoken and Sonic Superstars… or that were fairly subpar like Spongebob Cosmic Shake.

As a general rule, remakes and remasters will not make the list unless they’re substantially different from the original, but some might make it into the honorable mentions.

Anyways, time to rant quickly, then go through the winners and stuff. LET’S GO!

So this is the Game of the Year. Spoilers!

Yeah, when this was announced, I knew it would rank highly as one of my favorite games this year, but I didn’t know exactly how much.

This is a series that us non-japanese people haven’t gotten any of in a long while. The last game in the series we got in the west is Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2, in 2010. We missed on the Pro version of Joker 2 (which is particularly stupid because the Pro version came out in Japan 6 months before the vanilla version came out in the west… where’s the logic?). We missed on Joker 3 and its “Pro” version. We missed on the 3D remakes of DQM1 and DQM2. We missed on all the mobile games (Wanted, Super Light, and the mobile port of the 3D remake of DQM1) except for Tact which barely counts. And we even somehow missed on Terry’s Wonderland Retro which is just a port of the Game Boy version of DQM1 with some extra UI added around the game screen (with stuff like monster stats and labyrinth info)… which is a really fucking stupid game not to port to the west considering an english translation literally already exists from 25 years ago… It IS a fantastic series, but Squeenix hates us.

But when this was announced for a worldwide release, the hype was off the charts. FINALLY we get a new one!

So let’s see exactly how good it is… or whatever it is I’ll write after this, I have no idea.