Thread by @JohanSHolm

2021 games thread: a small review of every game I play and like. Ratings:
[★] Neat and worthwhile, but limited in scope / quality.
[★★] Stronger games falling short somewhat in concept, scope or execution.
[★★★] All-time greats.

Star Fox 64 [★]. A charmingly clunky 3D shmup with plenty of routes to explore. There’s some room to test the player, but it fails to do so cleanly, relying more on messy gimmicks and the less functional all range mode, as well as extreme punishments for tiny mistakes.

N Step Steve: part 1 [★]. A superior version with better pacing compared to its 5 Step predecessor. Most main puzzles are sort of automatic showpieces that teach the rules and interactions, while the secrets are proper challenges and reveal some surprising consequences.

The Exact Moment [★]. A playful and genuine vignette, with some delightful interactive wordplay.

Dr Jelly and Mr Slime [★]. Some fairly interesting rules and puzzles to start, then some really hard ones around the 20 mark to stretch the limits, then it gets into nonograms which are very hard to read and fiddly (even tedious at times) to solve.

Flockoban [★]. The mechanics seem like a small variant on Sokoban, but the implications of those subtle changes and clingy sheep are huge and the hard puzzles just keep coming. The sluggish controls and repetitive soundscape are disappointing, and the levels are hard to read.

Super Mario Galaxy [★]. At best a collection of delightful platforming vignettes, with lots of ideas, a solid moveset, great music, and surprisingly good bosses. There’s a lot that gets in the way of that, from motion controls and camera issues to gimmicks and water levels.

Heartreasure [★]. A delightful Wally-like, with endlessly charming music and visuals.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 [★]. The hub and structure gets worse every entry, 100% is still tedious despite better comets, motion controls are +/-, and it maintains gimmicks like the bird. Nevertheless, it’s more focused and consistent than the first, leaning more into its strengths.

Spider-Man 2 [★]. The swinging is fun and quite in-depth, and combat is pretty decent as well with some juggling. Great to travel around for a while, dynamically framing a sunset harbor, looming skyscrapers at night, the busy morning streets.

Horizon: Zero Dawn (★). Solid core mechanics and mech designs, but poor level design, subsystems and structure, so much unnecessary or detrimental clutter. Then there’s the horrible human combat. Consistently pretty landscapes with a cool concept, but meh storytelling and style.

Fire ‘n Ice / Solomon’s Key 2 [★]. Cute puzzle game, really nice presentation. Some repetition, a slow start, slow execution once you solve some, and turn one dick moves, but there’s some really tight puzzle design with a lot to explore despite the simple premise.

Mega Man Zero 4 [★]. Same old nuanced platforming action, with a bigger moveset and better feedback / tells. Not into the secrets, the level design isn’t too consistent, it’s overly easy (though less friction helps with other flaws), and the finale is a big mixed bag.

Super Mario Bros. 2 / The Lost Levels [★]. I'm not a big fan of the physics, and some additions like wind exacerbate that. It's got a lot more going on level to level, but they're not good enough to capitalize much on that. Inconsistent enemy/platform spawning is real fucky.

Super Mario Bros. 35 [★]. The classic gameplay of killing enemies and juggling powerups taken to a new level has its high moments, but much of the time it’s just mowing down mobs in one of a handful of levels, without any direct interaction or communal aspect.

Pushing It [★★]. Puzzlescript has been mastered, twisted, pushed to the limits, but never so thouroughly subverted and broken. Ponkyban tested the waters for the utter absurdity of this fiddly, janky, delightful trip.

Super Mario Bros. [★]. Cohesive and solid, even if a bit limited in physics and level design. Powerups and secrets work well structurally, whether using warps / A+Start or not. It's quite long form with little upside from optimization, so without speedrunning it stagnates.

Dujanah [★★]. A gallery of bizarre, funny, playful and personal vignettes. Throughout it all it is wonderfully and tragically human, especially through some of the characterization. Tacky and janky in the best of ways, with amazing music.

My Father's Long, Long Legs [★★]. It hits that sweet spot in tension between the seen and unseen, known and unknown. Always unsettling, even puzzling, and sometimes truly terrifying.

Super Monkey Ball [★★★]. Highly dynamic platform racing through a variety of routes, skips, warps and smaller optimizations with each their associated cost or risk, held together by a strong structure. EX levels, Expert's design, and farming bananas bring it down a notch.

The Migration [★]. Nice dreamlike ambience with slow development of the surroundings, serene music, and the most enjoyable thing about Skyrim (see that mountain? You can climb it by spamming jump).

In the Pause Between the Ringing [★]. The environment at first seems like a few simple Escher-esque spaces, but is recontextualized by the narrative exploration of this porous world. The surreal alt history paints vibrant pictures, even if it's mostly in the mind.

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place [★]. An evocative metaphor committed to in magical realism, exploring loss of culture and loss of self, combining some beautiful spaces with elaborate poetry - and disgusting Trespasser-esque eating sounds that I'm not sure if I dislike.

Dream Daddy (Craig) [★]. Simple but sweet, short length isn't so bad since there's an established bond, his kids are relevant with a nice personal conflict, and he's in need of some intimacy so the romance works well. The rest of the dates, and especially outside them, is bad.

Super Monkey Ball 2 [★]. Beginner works ok and it's cool to play the stages 1-2 times, but beyond that the frequent (especially on expert) janky set piece levels ruin the flow. The general level design is harder to read and less nuanced, with lots of cycles and gimmicks.

Lookouts [★]. Very cute art and a nice couple of scenes to accompany it.

Girl Adventure [★★]. Very awkward and limited controls that makes seemingly easy things hard to execute, requiring you to rely on unconventional strategies like tactical deaths to create spawn points. Delightful progression of mechanics and levels to explore those.

The Sea Will Claim Everything [★★]. Exploring the childishly imaginative, culturally rich setting is delightful, with incredible music and flavor text oozing from every surface. Some powerful narrative moments, and a lot of charming characters with their own things going on.

ᗢ / Meow [★]. Cute light-hearted exploration to start, then before long trespassing and getting lost in ancient ruins and sacred places.

Altitude [★]. Beautiful roaming about as a fleeting paper plane. The sticky glow of the clouds is so nice.

Solar Jetman - Hunt for the Golden Warpship [★]. Towing the parts is so clunky I thought they were enemies trying to drag me down. There's some janky attrition with gravity wells, and enemies can respawn as you kill them, but it's a neat hybrid between action and navigation.

Mega Man Battle Network [★]. Solid combat system but very slow paced. Modal combat with no carry-over effects is also a fairly limited structure, without much going on in dungeon design.

GirlJail [★]. Really neat tiny shmup, dope music and nice to look at. With another round or two where it's pushed a bit further it could be really solid.

Glittermitten Grove [★★]. Exploring the world is quite interesting, and it has some real neat gameplay ideas. Slow midgame, but it comes into its own. Solid managɐment game.

Kuron and the Jelly Islands [★]. Some neat puzzly physics interactions, and this nice intense, oversaturated aesthetic. A lot of the levels come down to a similar strategy, and the jank doesn't work that well with super precise requirements or gauntlets.

Heartreasure 2: Underground [★]. Another charming world to glimpse into, with some neat connections between areas.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim [★★]. Remarkable mystery plot in pacing and structure, endless tropes and a lovely nostalgic atmosphere that combine thematically to humanize love and evil. The plot takes priority over characterization so the emotional moments fall flat.

Chuka Taisen / Cloud Master [★]. Gets straight to the point, challenging your movement and enemy priority reactively instead of by requiring spawn memorization. It does still get easier as you learn the levels, and endless powerup scaling makes it really swingy.

Rain World [★]. Some of the dynamic encounters with hostiles and exploring new areas is incredible and naturalistic. The visuals and atmosphere just add to that, as do the finicky controls (well, outside water and tunnels). Sadly softlocks and backtracking slow it to a crawl.

a new life. [★]. Beautiful and tender moments. Some weird branching and sort of meta narrative that blunts the emotional blows.

80 Days [★]. Very impressive web of interactive nonlinear fiction in an evocative alt-history setting. Not just individual random bits, the structure joins them together into a grand adventure never seen before.

Snakebird (replay) [★★]. Wonderfully nuanced and challenging basic movement and levels that interrogate its every consequence. Rediscovering old truths can't live up to the first time, but I am in awe at some of the level design, particularly 44, Star-3 and the finale.

Recursed [★]. The webs of logic are admirable, but don't result in enjoyable puzzles to solve. It pushes mental load more than interesting truths (maybe I'm just bad), and a lot of time is spent on execution and learning level layouts.

Super Hexagon [★]. Dazzling visuals, testing your reactions to the point where reactive conscious play is too slow and you need to get into the zone like you're looking through an autostereogram. Very cool feeling, but very demanding as well.

Spanky's Quest [★]. Really neat moveset and some cool layouts, but optimizing the same levels over and over isn't as interesting as facing new challenges.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia [★]. Eschews tradition to be a more focused action platformer, albeit still with a lot of chaff (mainly rpgshit). Some excellent gauntlets that test consistency at dynamic challenges, but a lot of less interesting content design too.

Shiropen Road [★]. Delightful physics puzzling with so much freedom, even if it gets janky to optimize as a result.

Abzû [★]. Very pretty places to roam around in. Using schools of fish to construct particle effects is neat.

Return of the Obra Dinn [★★]. Really tight mystery-solving with some cool mechanics and restrictions to facilitate it. Stellar music and a neat aesthetic too.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood [★]. Excellent moveset and physics in-between the classics and what was yet to come, with wonderful art and music. Various enemies and other obstacles have some problems but there's some real high points too, particularly the bosses towards the end.

2021 is dead, long live 2022.

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Fun stats:
- 49 good games out of the 276 I played
- 53 arcade, 109 pc, 113 other
- Still ~1h average playtime (on pc at least)
- From 100k to 160k words of notes last 2 years