Not quite halfway to 100 beaten games in not quite halfway to a year (May Progress Report)

by morecowbell24

In my attempts to clear my backlog it seems I've developed a blogging backlog. Life might sometimes get in the way of my blogging, but not my gaming. I must have written these blurbs months ago, but they hold up to how I still feel about these games I played and beat in the month of May working towards my goal of beating a 100 games I've not already beaten in this very calendar year. 38. Banjo-...

38. Banjo-Kazooie [1998]

TFW you beat a game that's plagued your backlog for generations.

Given the recent release of Yooka-Laylee I decided upon that game’s lukewarm reception to finally get to the root of the matter with Banjo. Despite playing a number of Rare games growing up, this series passed me by. It pleases me to report that I enjoyed my time with it. It sadly doesn’t quite measure up to the amount of acclaim it seems to get, but I suppose if this was one you grew up with I could see how you feel it’s one of the greats. It’s definitely a good game, perhaps even an important one.

39. Burnout: Paradise [2008]

I felt like I’d seen the entire game within my first hour of playing. With every new license the tracks you race reset and you end up racing the same ones repeatedly. The various race types help mix it up a little and takedowns are a neat element, but the open world structure did not win me over in the slightest. It being my first Burnout game probably and its age probably aren’t doing it any favors either, but considering the GB crew’s gush about it, I had to give it a shot.

40. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare [2016]

I can only be disappointed in this game because of how awesome it would’ve been had the Call of Duty core been stripped away from it. I still find shooting people with that engine in singleplayer to be dreadfully boring and made worse by the constant requirement to be behind cover to let the strawberry jam dissipate from the edges of the screen so you can actually feast your eyes on what’s happening. Everything else is still Call of Duty, but the campaign is actually cool as hell, or would be if it wasn’t a Call of Duty game.

41. Prey [2017]

Is it better than this though? I mean, yeah, but... this was straight flush!

Prey is a front-runner for my personal GOTY. Boy, do I love me the “Immersive Sim.” This is the System Shock 3 we never got, which is a bit weird, because System Shock 3 is actually being made. Those are two of my favorite games and Prey lives up to them. It doesn’t however, live up to the Human Head E3 demo from years back, but I think this is probably leagues better than what that would have been and it’s definitely better than its namesake. The core gameplay stays fun and the story keeps up the suspense, even if it misses the mark to a degree at the end.

42. Samurai Shodown II [1994]

I’ve missed a lot of fighting games over the years and while I never beat myself for not paying much mind to Samurai Shodown, I think maybe I should have. It’s a cool weapon fighter that frequently gave me the same sort of feeling as when I uppercut someone in Mortal Kombat. The same sort of feeling that makes MK my favorite fighter. So suffice it to say, I really liked Samurai Shodown II.

43. Dragon’s Lair [1983]

An example of what not pressing the right button in time gets you.

It’s the quick time event pioneer. The game that ruined all of gaming in the mid/late 00’s. The game David Jaffe played and said “let’s do that with blood and doors.” He probably didn’t say that and this game hardly ruined gaming, but it is known for being based entirely on quick time events and its Disney-like animation. Perhaps most interesting are the variety of death animations, considering the semi-recent trend of games having gruesome death animations, and if you really wanted to trace such a trend back, you’d probably start here. It’s a neat gaming relic.

44. Prince of Persia [1989]

The original of a thousand versions

I’ve finally gotten around to playing one of the more important and ported games of history. There are so many versions of this game out there and for good reason. In playing it you can really see the influence it had on the industry, and despite its age it holds up pretty well. It’s difficult to not admire it.

45. Forza Horizon [2012]

Following along the lines of Burnout: Paradise this one feels like a more robust game, but not as fun or interesting without the takedown element or variety of race types. It’s obviously a Forza game, going for more realism while also coming off as a poor Fast and the Furious imitator. Something in me wanted to bolster my racing game cred and with my choices I’m left feeling like I made the wrong ones. Neither this nor Burnout: Paradise were awful by any means, just kind of okay.

46. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [2003]

I’d say this is another important game, albeit not as much so as the original. The Sands of Time moves the series into the 3rd dimension and succeeds in doing so. It’s the game that basically that blueprinted the wall scaling that’s been a staple in the Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted series. I remember all the buzz about the time rewind mechanic at the time as well. It feels good to have finally scratched this one off the list, but sadly it didn’t hold up as well as I would’ve hoped. It’s still a good game, but not the great one it must have felt like at the time of its release.

May was pretty productive month for me towards my goal and for clearing some of my backlog. Tune in next time for my belated June update when I was much less so.