With this also belated September update on my progress towards beating 100 games this year, I will be officially caught up on the blogging front. Exciting. I played a good mix of good and middling with 10 more to talk about bringing my total to 73/100. Let's get into it.

64. Assassin’s Creed III

Even though Revelations was terrible and this one was supposedly the same way, I’ve still wanted to wrap up the core trilogy of Assassin’s Creed for some time. This game isn’t very good, suffering from the all the quintessential faults of Assassin’s Creed and then some. Turns out 18th century Boston isn’t all that fun to explore. Turns out a character with an interesting story on paper can fall flat. This game just felt botched.

65. SteamWorld Heist [2015]

Image & Form might be the best sleeper developer around. SteamWorld Dig was a delight and I was actually kind of disappointed that they didn’t make Dig 2 when I heard about Heist. I figured Dig was such a brief and chill, relaxing game and Heist seemed long and possibly stressful, so I passed on it for some time. This was a mistake. SteamWorld Heist is so good. So good! Like now I’m sad they made SteamWorld Dig 2 instead of Heist 2.

66. Mega Man X3 [1996]

Mega Man X is one of my favorite SNES games. Somehow Mega Man X2 and now X3 aren’t all that impressive to me. I’d much rather have just played through the first one again. X3 does some things to shake up the game, but none of it really felt well realized to me. It’s just odd to me that the mechanics of this game that I love are there, but something isn’t clicking. But if I had to put my finger on the main issue I’ve had with X2 and X3, it’s that the music doesn’t come close to the first X.

67. Super Mario Sunshine [2002]

Dan is wrong. It’d be funny to leave it at that, but I don’t think this is a horrible game for 2002. It’s not a great one though, probably not even a good one. The camera is a nightmare and them being inverted only makes it that much more unbearable. The worst part about it might be that it auto rotates when you’re jetpacking, so even if you think you have the camera in a workable spot, it’s likely to make itself unworkable at any second. It’s also weirdly buggy for a Nintendo game, I glitched through stuff more than just about any other Nintendo game I’ve played. Overall, it’s not awful, but it’s not good.

68. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild [2017]

I played most of this a few months ago and figured it was time to get back to it, get the Master Sword and wrap it up. This is a very well made good game, but probably not the game its core fanbase makes it out to be. It’s a big direction change for Zelda, but it’s not much different from most open world games out there these days. It’s kind of a shame to me personally, I didn’t find the few dungeons or many shrines to live up to one of the series’ key strengths. Dungeons. I found the weapon durability to be a bit annoying too. It was worse than System Shock 2 and at least in that game it created a panic because of the horror elements. Despite these problems, I still enjoyed this game quite a bit, and it definitely scratched most of my Zelda itches.

69. Jazzpunk [2014]

I think I’m dead inside. The funniest thing about this game to me is that I played it as my 69th game this year, and that’s hardly that funny. I “got” a lot of the bits and jokes, but they never amounted to so much as a smile in me. Maybe I was just in the wrong state of mind to play this game.

70. Heat Signature [2017]

This game is really cool, but it just doesn’t have legs. After a certain point it’s just going through the motions and either that point comes too quickly or the game is way too long.

71. Destiny [2014]

I really ought to have not slept on Destiny. I wrote it off after thinking not much of the beta and the lukewarm reception on release. I got straight abducted by this game. It’s supposed to be a coop game after a certain point, but I the bulk of the content by myself. I played every strike and would do the raids by myself if they were possible.

72. Cuphead [2017]

While I was hoping for the opposite, the long development and iffy game footage led me to believe this game would nothing more than an art show. I’m thrilled that I turned out to be wrong. I mean it’s mostly an art show, but what I underestimated was how the art and animation being this good could make the gameplay that much more fun. It feels like nothing was sacrificed in their vision. Every boss is overflowing with imagination; it’s impossible to absorb all the little touches in one or even a handful of fight attempts. People say this game is hard, and I guess it is, but I was enjoying the art show too much to care about dying repeatedly. Snap fire them business guns!

73. SteamWorld Dig 2 [2017]

I’m not actually sad they made Dig 2 instead of Heist 2 and I don’t know if I can call Image & Form a sleeper developer anymore. I need more SteamWorld games in my life. I like the art, aesthetic, music and the sense humor. This one matches its relaxing predecessor and improves upon it in all of the logical ways and I had a grand old time with it. Get diggin' and bring on SteamWorld [Insert Verb Here].

There you have it, my September output. With Holiday season now upon us, I hope I can find enough games to play to fill out the remaining 27 in time. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for my October update.

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 (viewing)

October Progress Report 82/100

November Progress Report 88/100

December Progress Report ???/100