Nintendo’s most under appreciated series put out one of the best games Nintendo has ever produced. Pikmin 4 took everything great from the first 3 games and put them together to make a special game that is easily the class of the series, which is really saying something. This is one of the most just pure fun game that I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.

The return of caves, 9 types of Pikmin, the greatest surprise/Easter egg in gaming history (imo of course), and my favorite addition dandori challenges. I honestly would buy a Pikmin spin off game that is just a ton of dandori challenges. Also the Easter egg added about halfway through the game blew me away and made me so happy.

The art is my favorite in all of gaming. It is absolutely beautiful. The Pikmin are beautiful, the characters have a unique design, moss and Oatchi are adorable, the world is beautiful and put together so well. The feeling it gives of making you feel so small, it really makes you feel like you’re viewing the world from a bugs perspective. It’s unbelievable how good the art is.

Pikmin is one of the most replayable series ever and I cannot wait to replay this game again. If you have a switch please do yourself a favor and buy this masterpiece. It’s the first game in the series that is killing it in sales but it deserves even more to bring light to this fantastic franchise.

This game easily made my top 100. Check out where here.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/

I don’t know why I wait so long to play some games. Portal is a big one that I can finally mark off the old checklist. I know I’m not telling anyone anything new here as I’m one of the last people in the world to play it but wow what an inventive, clever, wonderful game. I am not usually a fan of puzzle games but this is easily the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. The puzzles as I said are inventive and clever but not to hard to figure out after just a minute or two but Valve did a great job of making you feel like a genius when you figured each little thing out. It was amazing the amount of high level intelligent puzzles they put together using the most simple concept of just using two portals, some switches, and some blocks. GLaDOS was an excellent and hilarious villain. The comedy hit just right as well. I purposely died to GLaDOS the first time just because I wanted to hear all of the dialogue and it was worth it.

This games deserves all the hype and praise it has gotten. It’s a joy to play all these years later and feels like a game that could have come out this year. I played the first chapter of Portal 2 last year and decided I needed to play this one first to get the full effect but I am so excited to finally play it now!

I thought I was done finishing games in 2023 but I squeezed one last game into my list.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2023-ranked/

A masterclass of the medium and in my opinion without a doubt the greatest puzzle game of all time. It took everything from the original and ramped it up and tuned it to perfection. The puzzles are more varied, more inventive, more clever, bigger, better, with more viable options, new items to use to solve them, and still boasting amazing physics that feel damn near perfect. It succeeds yet once again in making you feel smart when you get the aha moment.

The story in the first game was ok but the story in Portal 2 is so much deeper and nuanced. We get to see some of how Apatuer Science was created and what led it to becoming what it currently was. GLaDOS is back and funnier than ever and new robot Wheatley is hilarious. The humor is on point from beginning to end.

This is phenomenal game and deserves all the praise and more that it has received over the last decade.

A little over a year ago I decided to make a conscience effort to fight through my back log as much as possible. To try and stop replaying the same games over and over when there are so many I hadn’t played. One major thing I’ve learned is I will never be able to play every game I want to play before I die. We only have so much time and sometimes you just need to know when to call it and say this game just wasn’t for me. While Kingdom Heart Final Mix was definitely for me but unfortunately the follow up Kingdom Hearts Re: Chained Memories was unfortunately one of those games I had to call and end it early.

The main reason for this is while I in no way think it’s a bad game, I don’t know why they completely changed the action rpg gameplay to a card game you play to battle. I really gave it a fair shot but it just wasn’t a fun or engaging experience. I believe there is a reason Kingdom Hearts never again went back to this type of gameplay in the other dozen or so entries in the franchise. Not only does the gameplay not really hit with me but it felt way to unnecessarily grindy. Between the RNG of the cards you receive and needing certain cards to open certain doors I just didn’t have the patience or want to to finish this game.

I want to continue my journey through the Kingdom Hearts series so I watched a in depth video about the story of Chained Memories and I’m so glad I did because I don’t think I could have played the 25 or so hours of playing cards it would have taken to beat the game. Again I’m not saying this is a bad game or saying I don’t recommend it, just that it’s not for me and that if playing a game of cards to swing your sword against your opponent doesn’t sound appealing it may not be for you either.

Games of 2024 Ranked
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown was somehow my first ever experience with the series. I know that this is the only 2d Metroidvania, which is my second favorite genre, but if the other games are anywhere as interesting or as well made as this entry I am itching to dig further into the series.

Sargon is an excellent protagonist and easily the most likable of the immortals. His movement, upgrades, battle abilities everything just feels extremely smooth and leaves every moment a joy to play through. The gameplay is something I can easily point to and recommend for the reason to play this game. I also thought the difficulty was perfect. There are parts that will really test you without being overly difficult but nothing in this game just comes easy either. I feel Ubisoft hit the perfect sweet spot for difficulty here.

You can see they really put in a lot of work studying the greats. The sprawling map riddled with secrets, the potential for sequence breaks, the ahh hah moment when you get an upgrade that will let you solve something that was stored in the back of your mind that you couldn’t get to earlier. The game borrows heavily from Hollow Knight with the wak wak trees being Hollow knights bench, your amulets being Hollow Knights charms, the fighting is definitely different but strangle feels similar, and select special abilities when you have enough ather or in Hollow Knights case souls. The movement however feels like they were very inspired by the Ori series. I don’t want to spoil anything but it truely feels like Ori once you get your last movement ability.

The story is good not great. Many of the turns I felt coming a mile away but it was still enjoyable and a good story. I like that they give you bits and pieces of peoples backstory and the lord through items and tablets and such through the game.

My only two issues are I feel they didn’t explore the immortals more in the beginning which hurts your ability to care for them more which hurts by lessening the things that happen to them through out the story. If we would have grown to love them some story beats would have hit so much better. The second is I encountered several bugs. One where the game just froze when talking to someone costing me progress, one where I went out of bounds through a floor and ended up on the other side of the map, and most importantly one of the side quest is bugged and there is a good chance you get locked out of it causing you to miss 100% and some items as well as a trophy for doing all side quests. Ubisoft does apparently know about this as it is a big across all platforms and is supposed to be getting patched out. If it wasn’t for these two things I would have given this a 5 star rating and I’m sure one of those will be fixed with patches relatively soon.

At the end of the day this game deserves to have its name mentioned amongst the titans of genre: Metroid, Castlevania, Hollow Knight, and Ori. It deserves your attention and is an extremely easy game for me to recommend to any type of gamer. I hope this game get the attention it deserves so we can see more Prince of Persia metroidvanias.

Hey it made my top 100 list:

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/

And here is where it ranks amongst games I’ve played so far this year.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

There’s a lot to enjoy about potion permit, but it wears on you pretty quickly.

At first, crafting new potions and discovering more of the island are super fun and exciting, just as developing relationships with the residents and upgrading the town are. You are eager to try and mend the strained relationship between moonbury and chemists from an accident that happened before your time, and that’s exciting!

But before too long, you enter the soul crushing farming in this game. You get stuck in a cycle of go out, farm as much as you can in the short day cycles, talk to as many people and do as many quests as you can, and repeat. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really go beyond this. It is very linear in progression and gameplay, whereas a game it gets compared to a lot, stardew valley, there are seemingly endless possibilities on what you want to accomplish.

There’s a ton of potential here, and I did have a good time, I just have a sour spot for how the mid to late game left me feeling, with no true good ending for all my hard work.

I was very excited when they announced that a sequel to a game I grew up playing was coming out 20 years later. Battle for Bikini Bottom is a gem of the early 2000s that was very overlooked, and it finally was getting a well deserved sequel.

Cosmic Shake feels like an extension of BFBB in so many ways. Plays just like it, very similar(although enhanced) graphics, great SpongeBob comedy, and more. Where this game excels over its predecessor is the level designs. Each one is so unique and vibrant in its theme and I had so much fun exploring them all. It also has PLENTY of collectibles, and while some of them are really fun to discover/ look for, others are kind of tedious.

I really enjoyed the removal of other playable characters, and how they basically just give SpongeBob all the abilities the others had in the first game as you progress. It felt seamless and streamlined whereas the first game had you stopping and looking for a bus stop for you to switch characters just for one little thing. I also seriously enjoyed the different costumes you unlock throughout the game, most paying homage to the episodes of the show we all know and love.

The story is meh, about what you would expect for a game like this. Not much to say there. I do wish that the combat was a little more evolved, but it mostly felt the same as BFBB. There were some unique enemies, but none that were impressive, and the combat is laughably easy. But I get it, this is a game that is targeted towards children.

Much like BFBB the boss fights are some of the best parts of the game. While some of them were ok at best there were a few that I truly had fun with. Unfortunately, the final boss was an extreme let down for me. It kind of just, happens all of a sudden, and it’s over as quickly as it began, leaving me unsatisfied and wanting more. Honestly I thought the penultimate boss was much better and a more fitting “Final Boss”.

All in all, I am very pleased with this sequel, and it managed to recapture what made BFBB so fun and memorable, hitting my nostalgia bone just right. I would love if this series continued in the future (and not 20 years from now) but for some reason I feel like this is the end of the line. If that’s true, I am happy that we were given two awesome, solid SpongeBob games in this style.

I’m not going to write a long review about this game, and know that the rating I give is purely based on the video game and my time with it.

I love this game. I grew up a massive Harry Potter fan and for a brand new story to be introduced into the franchise and to be a playable as a video game was an absolute treat. It is so much fun to experience this world from your own viewpoint, and I kept finding myself exploring just for the heck of it, ignoring any quests that I had. Avalanche nailed the fan service as well, not being in your face like they very well could have been.

This is a very good, fun video game, and I had such a fun time playing it with my wonderful wife.

This game didn’t even need a remake. If you look on any “Top *** games of all time” it will be there. But thank God they finally pulled the trigger in this. It’s unbelievable. Most of the nitpicks with the original, mainly the graphics and controls” and completely revamped for the better.

This is one of the best looking games on the entire platform, allowing you to rediscover this world we all fell in love with years ago. It’s breathtaking. I was constantly spamming the capture button on my pro controller, and looking at comparisons online.

But the star of the show in my opinion is the dual stick controls. My only complaint for the OG was the clunky control system, even if it was pretty impress for gamecube standards. The transition was flawless and the game feels so damn good to play.

It was already a masterpiece, but this remaster catapulted MP into the perfect game category. I really hope that Nintendo continues to show Metroid the love it has been getting lately, and hopefully we can look forward to Prime 2 and 3 getting the same treatment soon.