I planned to play more spooky games this month, but I'm still broken from playing Amnesia the several years ago that that game came out. I did still play games though. 9 of them to be precise. Bringing my total to 82/100.

74. Destiny 2 [2017]

Something about Destiny 2 doesn’t quite measure up to the first game. It could be the “lack of content,” but I don’t think that’s it. I think it largely has to do with the writing. It’s somehow a better told story and more coherent, but it’s also less interesting and comes off as generic sci-fi. A more personal gripe with Destiny 2 I have is the way you take damage. The first game operated very similarly to Halo, in that running away was almost always effective, enemies sucked at shooting you when you weren’t looking at them, but in Destiny 2 it’s a crapshoot and death comes a lot easier. Apart from that stuff it’s still a solid game, but man, the story stuff is a real letdown.

75. Divine Divinity [2002]

With Original Sin being all the rage these days I figured I’d go back to the series’ roots first. I played this game just about non-stop for about a week. I just got way into it. It grabbed me in a similar way that Diablo did earlier this year for me. I played that game in one day. This game is a bit longer, but I’d basically wake up and play it until I fell asleep or when I got home from work I’d play it from the moment I got home until I fell asleep. Part of the reason I committed so hard to it wasn’t necessarily because it’s that good, but because I knew if I stopped I probably wouldn’t come back with all these hot new releases coming out. I also had to do a gaming career first, a bit of save editing with an outside program because one of the NPC’s bugged out on my save and I couldn’t to talk to them. I’d put 30+ hours into this game already and was determined to not let anything stop me. Pretty good game if you like that old Diablo style action, but also want a sort of open world structure to it.

76. Samurai Shodown [1993]

This game is not as good as its sequel. I typically try to avoid playing games out of order, but this game’s sequel is so much more readily available that I just went ahead and played it first, and my reception to this game is probably diminished because of it. It’s a solid weapon fighter, but the refinements of the second really showed, even if a lot of the stages and characters were all for the most part reused.

77. Splatterhouse [1989]

This game is kind of garbage, but it controls just well enough so that it’s not complete garbage. And it was kind of funny to see what passed for hardcore gore back then, because I could see this game passing with an E rating from ESRB today.

78. Kirby’s Adventure [1993]

I haven’t spent the most time with Kirby games, but the ones that I’ve tried have generally been pretty good. Kirby’s Adventure follows that tradition, but it should’ve been moved to the SNES. It probably would’ve been awesome. There is a great and cool game here, but the framerate just can’t keep up on the NES hardware.

79. Super Mario Odyssey [2017]

I wasn’t even 6 years old when Super Mario 64 was released. I thought that game was kind of whatever back then and multiple revisits over the years never persuaded me it wasn’t much more than an important game that generally was just okay, and I’d certainly rather just pop in any 2D Mario if I’d ever had a Mario itch. Super Mario Galaxy woke me up to the possibilities of Mario in 3D, but Mario Galaxy 2, 3D Land and 3D World didn’t ever live up to the promise of that first Galaxy. I’d skipped Sunshine until a couple months ago, even with low expectations that game is a disappointment. I loved what I saw at E3 and in pre-release coverage and nothing was going to prevent me from playing it, but my expectations were a bit tempered by my experience with Mario in a 3D space. “Surely there is no way Odyssey lives up to how I feel about the first Galaxy.” Let’s talk about the festival though, or Cappy, or the ending, or any of it. What a wonderful time to be wrong, and what a wonderful game.

80. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus [2017]

I can’t get enough of the Starbreeze brand of shooter. The Darkness, Syndicate, Butcher Bay. I’m pleased to know that Machine Games is continuing that tradition with Wolfenstein. The New Order is great and so is The New Colossus and it goes some places. You should see those places for yourself. I’ll just leave it at I really want to see the end of Wolfenstein: The New Reich or whatever they end up calling it.

81. Middle-earth: Shadow of War [2017]

The nemesis system is just as impressive as it was a few years ago, and it still feels wasted on Middle-earth. Despite all the controversy I had no need for lootboxes, nor any desire to acquire them. The real problem with the end game is that you’re doing the same mission over and over and there’s not much variety to it. I for the most part enjoyed the main story, and the Arkham combat was serviceable enough to get enjoyment out of the nemesis system, but I really hope Monolith gets the chance to try something else next, because while going to Mordor has been pretty fun these past two trips, I’m not sure a third would be. *cough* NOLF 3 *cough*

82. Haunted Castle [1988]

This was my Halloween game. I love Castlevania. I’d played all mainline Castlevanias except for this one I considered for the longest time that I only had one Castlevania game left to beat, looking past this one, because it seemed bad. But it fit the Halloween theme best for me, because Amnesia broke me. I have to say, it’s not as bad as I’d have thought. It’s certainly not a very good Castlevania game, but it’s okay considering the time. It also introduced some great tunes to the series. Now the only Castlevania that remains for me to play is Lords of Shadow 2, which if I make it that far, will be the 100^th game I play this year. I do not expect to like it much.

So there you have it. 9 more added to the tally. Can I do 18 more games this year? I'm honestly not sure, because I'm starting to run out of ideas as to what to I should play.

January Progress Report 19/100

February Progress Report 24/100

March Progress Report 26/100

April Progress Report 37/100

May Progress Report 46/100

June Progress Report 48/100

July Progress Report 52/100

August Progress Report 63/100

September Progress Report 73/100

October Progress Report 82/100 (viewing)

November Progress Report 88/100

December Progress Report ???/100