This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

Sometimes you start a game and within 2 minutes you already know everything about the game. This isn’t in a predicted sense of what this game is going to be about, but in the quite literal sense of knowing exactly what this game will be the whole time you play it. Extreme Exorcism is that game, it doesn’t try to hide itself, there isn’t deep lore or a bunch of hidden depth beneath the surface. It is a game that I purchased before an extra-life marathon thinking it would be a fun game to play with friends locally, but something we never got around to during that particular event.

To be clear, Extreme Exorcism is a score based arcade game that has you pick a level and then play infinitely until you run out of lives, only leaving you with a high score to show off. There are two modes in this game, the first is the arcade mode, and the second is a challenge mode. For the sake of this review, I completed every single challenge in the challenge mode, and played every level at least once in the arcade mode.

The game itself is rather simple, you pick from a character mainly based on what color they are, and then a level where you want to exorcise ghosts. Keep in mind that the characters have no inherent traits, skills, positives or negatives, and they don’t even have names (maybe I don’t remember them). When dropped into a level, there is a single possessed chair on screen that you need to defeat. At multiple points on the stage there are weapons that spawn from whatever weapons you have unlocked on your profile (you unlock future weapons based on total kills). Once you have a weapon, or 5…(you can hold multiple different types of weapons at one time) you then proceed to attack the chair.

A single hit will kill all enemies you will ever encounter, but that also means a single hit will kill you as well. Once the chair is gone, the round ends and a new round begins. At the start of a new round you lose whatever weapons you had at the previous round, and you will notice a G-G-G- Ghost has appeared. This Ghost mimics everything you did as the player character in the previous round. Every time you hit the attack button, every time you jumped, and where you went. Your goal for the 2^nd round is to hit the ghost before he hits you, when you do so a new round begins. Every round you survive a new ghost will appear on the level that mimics the previous round, so in round three there will be two ghosts (one mimicking your actions from round 1, and one mimicking actions from round 2). This process will continue until things can get hectic and you can have 20 or 30 ghosts on screen at a given time should you survive that many rounds. The ghosts can’t hit each other, so every bullet you have fired for 20 or so rounds will be the same ones you have to dodge later on. Each round doesn’t end until you have killed the newest ghost, so you can technically end a round just by killing one ghost and not really worrying about the others that are floating around, but the other ghosts might be in your way or make it harder for you to achieve your goal.

All of this can get overwhelming, but there is hope. Occasionally a super-power will appear at a weapon pickup spot, and should you get it, allow you to create a fairly small exorcism circle, that should any ghost get captured in it, they are permanently exorcised and will not appear in following rounds. The key here is to make sure you know where the hotspots of the ghosts seem to go (perhaps you always went towards the top corner, so a lot of previous ghosts are over there) and then to time it so that you can capture the most ghosts at any given time. In order to survive to later stages and pad your scores, you will need to make sure you use these to great effectiveness so that you are clearing out 3-7 ghosts on every usage. I think the power appears after every 5-6 ghosts you kill so you can (and I have) worked my way from a large selection of ghosts back down to a single ghost 20 rounds in at that point.

When playing the arcade mode, you are asked with getting to a certain point threshold which will unlock the next level, and so on and so forth. You don’t automatically move to a new level, it just becomes available for selection should you start the arcade mode over. Each level is roughly the same size, but each “world” has its own unique obstacle to overcome. Fighting on any of the balcony stages, means you compete with wind which can push you around as well as any grenades you might launch. Playing in the Kitchen areas mean you have to dodge fire because you can be killed by the environment, and playing at the altar (the last level) only has one weapon spawn that means all of your past ghosts have to go there as well. I found that the further I went in the arcade mode the least I wanted to play it. Playing 5 minutes versus 50 hours in this game is the same but the later levels require higher scores to keep unlocking future levels and that just means more playing. I eventually got to a point where I would hit the score goal and then just kill myself to end the run.

The final alter level is the end of the game and you do face off against a boss. This is very weird, because you don't face a boss in any previous levels and unlike the ghosts in the previous levels this boss is large enough to take up a 4th of the screen and can kill you just by touching you. The boss will slowly release ghosts that follow your movements and if you kill enough of them a Exorcism charge will appear. You can use that to hit the boss, and 4-5 hits later the game ends. I appreciate the end having something different than just another level, but I have to assume that very few people are going to make it all this way. Its not because its difficult, but because playing those earlier levels can be so monotonous that you might just not want to see it to the end.

In arcade mode you can play 4-player Co-op, but it doesn’t really work in the way you would think. As opposed to spawning 4 new ghosts every round (one for each person playing) it only mimics the person who landed the killing below on the target ghost/chair. It technically colors that ghost the same as the player who killed it, but if you were looking to compete to see who killed the goal ghost more, that doesn’t really work here. The same person could kill the ghost everytime, while other players stand in corners and there is no push or pull that changes that dynamic any different than single player. In fact a strategy for single player is to limit how often you actually fire your weapon, because that means the ghost of you fires less time in subsequent rounds. Since the 3 players that don’t get copied are free from this constraint, they could sit there firing their guns 100s of times and you won’t have to worry about that next round as long as they didn’t get the final kill. I think it would be far more interesting if each player’s ghost appeared every round and maybe the only goal ghost is the one that won the previous round, but at least you would have to account for what the other players did previously. It would potentially up the difficulty and make it more hectic because clearly you aren’t going to remember what your friends did every round.

Challenge mode is not much different, except it picks the level and gives you a goal to achieve each time instead of a score to hit. These goals can be anything from only using a certain gun, to surviving for x minutes, to having all ghosts kill you on touch. For me personally having these smaller goals made the game more focused and more enjoyable since it set parameters for me to work towards. It’s nothing amazing, but the kills you earn in challenge mode do count towards your unlocks for the game (not levels) so you can unlock weapons in that mode if you want to switch it up. Speaking of which, every so many kills unlocks a new weapon that will randomly show up in the levels, it adds variety to the fighting, but isn’t something I would suggest you should focus on. I didn’t have any extra fun once I unlocked a boomerang compared to playing the game before it.

Which leads me to the final point here, this game is exactly what it looks like with no extra hidden bells or whistles. It is a potential co-op game you could play with other people for 15-20 minutes and then not touch again for months without really missing out. When I finally did play this with friends, we had an ok time playing the game, but everyone was pretty bored less than an hour in. While it’s a neat idea thinking about how your past actions can kill you, its also pretty easy to manipulate if you plan accordingly. Go stand in a corner for a long time without firing a bullet, and then the next round you know a safe place to kill the goal ghost, or only hit the attack button when you know you are going to kill so you aren’t littering the world with stuff you have to dodge next time. I could consistently make it to round 15 in each level by using a few of those steps and then move on. The problem is that this game doesn’t grow into anything, the levels don’t get more exciting to unlock, the game doesn’t get harder or faster, and you can play level 1-1 the same as you play 4-1. Sure there are minor annoyances to avoid in later levels, but it never took me more than 2 tries to beat a score goal in arcade mode.

Perhaps it’s just me and my sensibilities now, but a game where the goal is just to get on a leaderboard with no beginning, middle, or end, has no appeal for me at this stage. I don’t mind leaderboards in general, but a game that is just dedicated to it seems to harken back to the olden days of gaming but without the charm. Having a boss at the very end is a nice touch, but it's so far into playing the game that only the die hard players will even get to him and I can't imagine how many die hard players can exist into this game.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: Not even close

Where does it rank: There is nothing inherently wrong with this game, but it just isn't really all that interesting or fun to play outside of the first 20 minutes of the game. I was excited about the premise, but it doesn't hold up much and even playing multiplayer doesn't add much longevity to the game. I have it ranked as the 138th Greatest Video Game of All Time, it sits between Golf Peaks (137th) and Lost Lands: Dark Overlord (139th). It's not an inherently bad game, its not broken, but you play 20 minutes and then never again.

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening