2022 was another rough year, maybe slightly better than 2021. It’s honestly hard to judge as each year seems to be trying to out-shit the previous. It makes me realise just how much I took for granted pre-2020. I’m now left with more psychological baggage and have found out I may have more rare genetic conditions. A lot of entertainment was also pretty crap as if it’s a reflection of our times, thankfully I have avoided most of the garbage (at least in the cinema) and I don’t really play any new releases so hopefully I can show more positivity in the rest of this post.
Movies in 2022:
The Batman: I was not expecting this movie to be good at all. I was pleasantly surprised by most of the film, the tone was unique compared to previous movies and they tried something new without making too many mistakes. Biggest criticisms are that movie felt too long at times, the batmobile chase sequence was cool but stupid and some of catwomans dialogue was weak.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2: A decent follow up. It’s honestly surprising that the sonic movies were decent family movies with a decent entertainment value for fans. The weakest element is that some dialogue doesn’t land properly but not enough to be too much of a drag. I have no clue if these movies can survive without Jim Carey though.
Top Gun: Maverick: A rather simple film but a really fun one. It seems mostly well made with only one really large co-incidence at the end, but compared to a lot of movies these days it’s a small problem. It was very reminiscent of movies from the 80s and 90s in general. I think it was actually better than the original Top Gun which didn’t age as well as many other classics from the era.
Bullet Train: I was incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. It’s full of style and interesting moments, it devolves into nonsense at some points but I think that’s one of the themes of the movie and it works as far as I can tell. I recommend giving it a go.
Violent Night: A Christmas movie that lives up to it’s title. I can easily seeing this becoming a yearly classic with how ridiculous and over the top it gets. I think it’s worth watching at least once anyway.
Anime in 2022:
Kimetsu no Yaiba – Mugen Ressha-hen: I was impressed that movie managed to make me care about a side-character in such a short amount of time. It was overall a good time and I don’t really have any complaints that I can remember.
Kimetsu no Yaiba – Yuukaku-hen: While not as emotionally impactful as the movie this season had some fights that blew me away and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I think the animation is impressive and I look forward to see what spectacle the next season will present.
Mushoku Tensei: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu: Considering how worn out the isekai thing is by now it’s honestly surprising that something of this quality was made. Hopefully this one actually reaches a conclusion as there’s enough effort put into this story, it’s world and it’s character that it’d be a shame if it ended up on the enormous pile of unfinished anime.
Ousama Ranking: This show makes a really weird and arguably terrible first impression but if you can get a couple episodes in you’ll find an enthralling show full of drama, intrigue and a really unique art style. It’s worth giving it a go.
Record of Lodoss War: It’s a decent anime with a nice art style and an acceptable story. I can’t say it’s a must watch but you could do worse.
Spy x Family: It’s actually good. If for some reason you haven’t watched it yet give it a chance. I was surprised by how moved I was by one particular episode. My only complaint is that opening song sounds off to me. Also it looks like I need to catch-up on the latest season already.
Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime: At times this movie seemed like it was just trying take ideas from Summer Wars and Beauty and the Beast. Funnily enough it went into a rather different direction that I didn’t predict and while I think some of the ‘how’ is a bit illogical or extremely co-incidental I think it just needed some fine tuning. It hits the emotions it wants to hits so in that regard it succeeds.
Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru: I’ll be honest I was expecting this to be vapid and shallow. It was surprisingly wholesome at times but I have no idea if it’ll last in my memory. Still it was better than expected at least, I just hope it doesn’t get bogged down in the usual tropes.
Games in 2022:
Yakuza Kiwami (PS4): I have no frame of reference for this series however I managed to have a decent amount of fun with this title and maybe I’ll play the others eventually.
Metroid Dread: I love this game but I can’t say that it’s the perfect Metroid title. While not obvious the game does hold your hand and tries really hard to guide you in specific directions. However it’s actually possible to sequence break the game and it doesn’t at least feel like the game is bonking you on the head with directions all the time. In many ways I’d argue it takes the ideas of fusion and actually makes a fun game out of them. Instead of scripted SA-X sequences we have the more dynamic EMMI areas that at least have more room for multiple approaches. The music is a little hit and miss suffering from some of the same musical problems as Samus Returns (It’s not bad but not amazing either). The art direction is good, although the removal of the traditional end screens is lame, they were never overly spicy and it just feels like an attempt to doge the ire of a certain class of people (who knows if that’s true or not but it’s difficult for these things not to raise an eyebrow at least). Funnily enough as a standalone action game separate from it’s series it’s incredible, and shows just how much the 3DS held Samus Returns back in terms of controls (and graphics). Samus Returns deserves to be ported to switch so that the gameplay can shine (maybe in a collection?). Dread is probably a must play game, but as a 2D Metroid game it’s fighting for 3rd place with the Metroid 2 remakes. Nothing has quite been able to dethrone Super Metroid in my eyes and Zero Mission is in 2nd place (although sometimes I feel Dread might be able to beat it, as I am often fickle). Anyway I apologise for rambling I just have many disparate thoughts on the series and am a little overly passionate about it.
Part Time UFO (Switch): I ‘m hesitant to put this game here because I know there’s much left to see. However I also know that there’s far more patience needed than I can give to finish it properly. That’s because it’s part puzzle game but also part funny physics game which leads to some frustrating moments. It’s oozing with charm though so it’s not a waste of time per se but maybe not exactly for me.
New Super Lucky’s Tale (Switch): After the the previous 3 games I needed something simple, easy and straightforward and Lucky’s Tale is just that. It’s very much a 3D platformer for beginners but it’s got plenty of charm and I honestly don’t remember much to complain about.
HITMAN (PS4): The menus are pretty shit and unintuitive. The game itself though is a lot of fun and has some decent replay value. I feel a greater focus on fleshing out the game and less focus on trying to monetise it further would’ve made this a lot better overall.
Dig Dug II (NSO): I’m not sure how playable this game is without nintendo switch online but with modern conveniences it’s quite a lot of fun. If you have the service give it a go.
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (Switch): Thanks to modern conveniences the game holds up way better than expected. I actually had more fun with it than I did with Shadow Dragon on DS it’s also better looking than that remake in spite of it’s limitations.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Possibly the only new release I played last year. It’s a little reminiscent of Super Mario 3D World in gameplay perspective but plays much better than that game and is far more creative and interesting visually. They successfully took Kirby into 3D and managed to keep it fresh. The game rarely got stale and I would’ve fully completed it if it wasn’t for the absurd final boss rush tournament thing. I’ll be honest it’s least my favourite part of the series in general because it’s often just a huge difficulty spike that the games don’t really prepare you for properly. But hey I guess that means pretty much every aspect of the series made it into the 3rd dimension.
Arcade Archives The Ledgend of Valkyrie (Switch): An obscure Namco arcade game which I think came out only in Japan. It was fun to play this with family even if we didn’t understand the cutscene’s. It’s got some archaic mechanics but it’s still playable and the challenge is to acquire the easy to miss spells. One spells lets you skip some of the clunky platforming segments at the end of the game (created to chew up coins I suspect) and can only be used once from what I can tell. It’s rough but you can brute force it if you want. I’d be curious if this IP ever gets bought back to life.
Duck Hunt (Wii U VC): It’s interesting playing these old games with relatively modern tech. Duck Hunt is a fun little distraction, and is quite charming.
Wild Gunman (Wii U VC): Less fun than Duck Hunt but not bad by any means. Probably has the best visual flare of the 3 light gun games on here.
Hogans Alley (Wii U VC): This game was the most fun out of the 3 light gun games thanks to the Trick Shot mode which was rather addictive.
Bomberman ’93 (Wii U VC): I think this is both the first Bomber Man game I’ve finished and the first TurboGrafx-16 game I’ve finished. It’s a simple game from what I remember but a very charming one. The sudden difficulty spike at the very end caught me off guard but I guess they felt the rest of the game was too easy or something?
Metal Gear (PS3): I loved this game even if it’s a bit cryptic at points. The soundtrack is pretty great probably one of the catchiest tunes I’ve heard in a long while. The biggest problem is that dumb Bulldozer thing which felt like a crapshoot, just chuck your grenades at it and hope you’re in the exact right pixel.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (PS3): This game improves on the first in almost everyway. There’s an actual story here unlike the first one and it doesn’t bog down the gameplay to insane degrees. That doesn’t mean it’s without issue though. The hand gliding stuff was extremely unintuitive, the rooms with the mannequins are unfair bullshit, and that one boss room having an extra crucial item just ended up being a huge time waster as I either didn’t trigger the codec call or I ignored it thinking it was a repeat call. Considering how ambitious the game is though I think it’s impressive that most of the time it was a reasonable challenge.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Game Gear (3DS VC): I have a soft spot for these 8-bit Sonic games. I originally tried to play this years ago on the Wii Virtual Console and never finished it. You could argue that one is a different version to this one, since that was the Master System version of the game but either way it was nice to finally beat this game and get the good ending. I can’t recommend it to most people but I like it anyway.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PS3): While an interesting story that was ahead of its time, the gameplay itself has taken a bit of a back seat. It’s a bit clunky especially with it’s boss fights but the fact is I wanted more areas to explore and sneak through and that is a sign the game is fun but just needed some more meat on the bones. The Snakes Tales feature adds some stuff but it’s mostly recycled content. I feel it’s a shame that this is the last game that was built with the overhead view and the radar in mind since I think there was room to perfect this classic style.
Disney Afternoon Collection (PS4): This is actually a lot of games in one package. However I zoomed through them so quick I felt to just lump them together. TaleSpin is kind of a frustrating shoot ’em up but that’s not a genre I’m overly familiar with. Darkwing Duck is a cool Mega Man clone with inconsistent difficulty, it’s easy to see why this is a classic for some people. The Chip n’ Dale games are fun and easy, clearly meant for a 2 player co-op experience. Duck Tales is a classic but it’s arguably been replaced by the Remastered version which is more fleshed out. Duck Tales 2 is a hidden gem that was really fun and probably the best game in this collection. The extra boss rush modes this collection adds is pretty neat but ultimately I’d say it’s a pretty basic collection of games for this day and age.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS3): In terms of gameplay this might just be the best game in the series. It took me a while to figure everything out (for example I kept forgetting to use the D-pad early on) and I’m probably still terrible at the game but I think it’s amazing anyway. The whole thing feels rather James Bond inspired too which was a nice change of pace but it’s got a unique identity all it’s own which is why it’s probably persisted in the minds of many players.
Kirby and the amazing mirror (Wii U VC): A Kirby game for GBA that seems designed for multiplayer. Ultimately I think it would’ve worked better if focused on the single player experience which is essentially a more fleshed out version of the great cave offensive from Kirby Superstar. Instead of useless treasures you find alternate colours for Kirby and bits of the soundtrack. The ultimate goal is to defeat all the bosses and get the mirror pieces and there’s a large amount of freedom as to what order you do this in. A certain enemy can also give Kirbys moveset from melee which is a neat addition (and it’s kinda op as it lets you deal with many obstacles in one power up). The only problem is that it’s fairly easy to end up doing pointless loops because of all the one way doors.
Demon slayer – the hinokami chronicles (Switch): It seems to run okay on switch from what I can tell, this is no masterpiece but it’s a fine interactive recap of the anime (it only goes as far as mugen train with the latest season being just represented by DLC characters). I think the combat is fine for a single player experience but there’s not a lot of meat on the bones here you get to do some very basic exploring of small areas and some mini-games (localised to one chapter). There’s a seed of a good idea here but I think they should probably wait until the anime has finished before trying to make another game so that they actually have much more content to base a more meatier game around.
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask (3DS): As far as Layton games go it’s about average. A lot of the twists were on the predictable side making the mystery not as interesting. However it’s still fun to do most of the puzzles and the story has the same kind of emotional pull that the previous games did. Question is will I remember this games story into the future? that I can’t be sure of.
Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (???): It was much better than I expected but it did seems like it was missing some of the features the other GBA games had. The difficulty curve was a bit odd, towards the end it got much easier and the final boss was kind of a pushover. Up until that point it was quite a difficult game at times, perhaps the game just wanted to reward the player for making it that far? Just be careful if you play this though since it seems pretty easy to get locked out of the true ending. Make sure you get those sacred weapons and don’t break them. As for the story it’s okay, it’s not as detailed as some later entries but the main antagonist is at least a little bit interesting and I don’t really have any complaints.
Dangan Ronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp (Switch): Waste of my time. Mildly addicting at first especially when you get to see some impossible character interactions, but once that wears off you are left with a shallow grind fest. Maybe if you have a compulsive need to gacha you’ll get a kick out of it but even that is limited. You’re better off avoiding this even at a discounted price.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PS3): Considering this was a PSP game it’s pretty good, just not as good as MSG3. The story had some neat ideas and the cutscene art style was interesting. Ultimately though once you’ve seen the credits and seen the huge twist it just becomes a game of grinding. It’s not a fun grind either, enemies are just made to sponge more damage as the mission levels increase and they in turn do stupid amounts of damage to you. It’s a shame because the game is actually quite fun to play up until that point and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the boss battles. My last complaint is that the scripted button mashing sequence is probably the worst in the series, rivalled only by the original Metal Gear Solid.
Mega Man 10 (Switch): This was the first Mega Man game I finished and quite frankly I didn’t feel much accomplishment because I had played it on easy back then. Now that I’ve actually played through it properly on normal difficulty I can affirm that it’s a good Mega Man game that is reasonably challenging unlike Mega Man 9 which was a much more brutal game.
Record of Lodoss War -Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth- (Switch): If you like Castlevania sotn then this game tries to scratch that itch while also being an anime tie-in. Watching the anime does provide some context for the story but I’m not sure if I’d say it’s needed. I was impressed with the animation, the music and a lot of the gameplay ideas. Even if the locations feel a little bland to me it’s not a huge knock against the game and the only thing that might hold it back is that the items in the shop are priced either too low or too high. If you can just buy the best weapon the moment you first enter the shop then it’s not priced correctly. I recommend this to enthusiasts of the genre if you need to scratch that itch.
Iconoclasts (PS4): The gameplay is fun but the characters are irritating and the story kind of suffers because of it. I think they attempted to have serious drama but it felt like it was written by a naïve teenager. I think it’s the first time the writing has made a metroidvania game worse for me but hey this broke new ground.
Ape Escape (PS4): Fun monkey game with unique controls that is really easy and relaxing. I remember renting this is a kid but I don’t remember the details so it felt relatively fresh. The unlockable mini-games are kind of lame though.
Halo 3 (Xbox 360): I did play this co-op back in the day when visiting friends but I don’t remember if I ever got to play the whole thing from start to finish. I played on Heroic mode which is probably a first for me but I enjoyed the challenge even if it meant dying to random shots at times. I enjoyed my time with the game unfortunately all the Halo’s tend to blend together in my memory so I’m not someone to discuss it in greater detail.
SOMA (PS4): I typically avoid these types of horror games. Running away from monsters in first person and then hiding isn’t my idea of a good time. However SOMA has such an interesting story and world that I was able to disregard my distaste for the gameplay style. It’s clear to me that this is a game that has earned it’s praise and I recommend it highly. I didn’t use the safe mode (even if sometimes I wish I had) but it exists and should allow even the most timid to enjoy the games story and ideas.
Resident Evil HD (Xbox 360): I’m kind of kicking myself that it took me so long to get to this masterpiece. I will say that the game misled me into playing on easy for my first playthrough, but it sure didn’t feel easy. I made sure to a second playthrough with Chris on normal and at times that felt easier than the easy difficulty. Which to me shows that it just took an entire playthrough to adapt to the game. I’m very impressed with the level design it may be some of the best in gaming as a whole. I’d argue it’s almost a Metroidvania in this regard. I highly recommend this game if you’ve never played it.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (Switch): This game is really cool but I think it has balancing issues. It’s either too easy in the casual mode or stupidly punishing in normal difficulty. I think a middle of the road option where the boss fights remain challenging but the checkpoints are actually decently placed (which they are at the start of the game) would’ve been amazing. It gets increasingly punishing and difficult at the same time and it’s a little infuriating. For those who like that kind of challenge you’ll find it amazing for me though it doesn’t cross the finish line. Casual mode is fine I guess, but the game is constantly dropping hearts in that mode removing any tension.
Oddworld: New n Tasty (PS4): The original Oddworld was on a demo disk I played as a kid. It was hard and confusing. Thankfully this remake is more forgiving yet not devoid of challenge. I actually ended up really liking this game and now I’m curious about the rest of the series.
Gargoyle’s Quest II (Wii U VC): Yet another NES platformer but this one has a rather unique set of moves and has an RPG style overworld. Ultimately it’s a linear game but the extra effort into the presentation gives it some added charm. Once you adapt to the movement mechanics the game is really fun although at the start it’s rough going because you’re under powered in terms of stats and abilities.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: This was a pretty cool movie. As a game it feels like a step back from MGS3, everything seems so focused on spectacle that you don’t really do any sneaking until chapter 3 and then in chapter 4 the stupid mini-gekko things just make everything painful. It’s a shame because I think the game controls better than 3 in some ways and has some good ideas but doesn’t do much with them. As an experience though it was cool, but the gameplay felt like an afterthought to me.
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series (Switch): While it’s nice more people can play Klonoa this remake of the first game is nowhere near as beautiful as the original in my eyes. The hitboxes feel a little off as well. On the plus side I got to finally play Klonoa 2 which is a really cool game and that remake seems less jank to me. If you have no alternative this is an okay way to play these great games.
Mega Man X3 (Wii U VC): X3 is brutal at the start, at some points in the middle and right at the end. I can only imagine how much rougher it would be without certain weapons and armour. It’s odd since the game rewards you for not getting everything and instead you need to get everything except the pink capsules. I guess it rewards you for not giving into the temptation? Anyway all that aside most of the upgrades are in straightforward places this time around so it’s not a finger breaking exercise to get 100%. You’ve got the great tunes and mostly solid gameplay with even more movement options thanks to the up-air dash. Just be prepared for an ass kicking at the end.
And hey that’s all for now lets see if we survive yet another year.
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