I meant to start doing this last month but I just kept forgetting. So last year after I decided halfway through October to do a Spooky games marathon, I did a post recapping all the games I played under that umbrella. You know just a bit of fun, I played all these games under a specific idea so it was nice collecting them in one post. But then it turned out, I just liked that format. It let me talk about games that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten around to, games that either were too short for a gaming diary or I didn't have enough to say on them to commit a full essay. Games that I beat and I have thoughts on but not enough to commit their own specific post too. And so, near the end of January, I wanted to start doing that for my other game clearing months. Unfortunately I procrastinated so now this is being written in early March. Oops. At least I'll be able to crank out a couple of these back to back and get caught up.
Something I want to note before I begin: I will be noting if I beat the game, completed the game, or did not finish (DNF) the game. I keep track of my DNFs as game clears, which I'm sure is controversial to most. And I get it, the spirit of game clearing is to beat games and to track your DNFs as game clears does kind of feel iffy, I understand. My logic in it is that a game is finished when you are finished with it. A DNF and a beat ultimately accomplish the same goal: removing a game from your backlog. As long as you made an honest attempt at the game and played it for a considerable part of the runtime, and aren't just like "I played it for two seconds and didn't like how the jump felt and so I abandoned it", that counts as a game clear to me.
Game 1: Parappa the Rapper - DNF
This one snuck in there at the very beginning of the year. The first game I was doing for game clearing this year was Hollow Knight, a game I started playing late last year and took me until early January to beat. I, however did not own Hollow Knight, I played Hollow Knight via a streaming service as, at the time, I had Amazon Prime and so had a selection of Luna games for free with my subscription. The consequence of playing Hollow Knight like that is that, being a cloud gaming service, it requires a constant internet connection to be played. So when my internet cut out for a couple days at the start of the year, well, I had to look elsewhere for games to play. Elsewhere ended up being the games already downloaded on my PS4 and since I didn't want to commit to anything as, once the internet was fixed, I was going to go back to Hollow Knight anyways? Parappa, a one hour game ended up being the candidate.
Parappa the Rapper is an early entry in the rhythm game genre. I don't know if it's the first, I'm sure it isn't, but it's usually the oldest one you hear about. In it, you play as Parappa, an anthropomorphic dog that lives in a world populated by other anthropomorphic animals and/or plants. Parappa is an awkward young man who has a crush on his best friend, Sunny, an anthropomorphic sunflower who is always in the sights of Parappa's rival, the masculine and handsome Joe Chin. Parappa must then undergo a sort of training arc, in an attempt to become more of an adult and attract the attention of his beloved Sunny. Through the usage of hip hop, he will take up karate, learn how to drive, receive gainful employment, and learn to cook. The odds are stacked against the poor dog-boy, due to his size and his general awkward demeanor, but as he repeats throughout his journey, he just has to believe.
Parappa is most noteworthy for its distinctive visual style and soundtrack. It's a very interesting looking game, using 2D sprites in 3D environments that make the whole thing look a bit like a diorama. The characters themselves are flat and 2D, like paper dolls, and the rough PS1 voxels make everything look like cardboard, selling the aesthetic even more. The soundtrack is also iconic, even if it is rather short all told. Containing only six songs is unideal, especially if you're approaching it from a modern lens, but each song is instantly catchy and really fun to listen to. Chop Chop Master Onion is probably one of the most iconic songs in gaming history, so much so that entire competitions have been held just off who can perform that song the best. And every song has an entirely different subgenre of hip hop in it, the driving song has a very old school throwback vibe to represent the serious driving instructor, the flea market song has a nice reggae vibe to it, etc. It's a cool soundtrack.
I hate this game. I'm sure you were thinking of that when you saw I DNFed a one hour game, but like. I truly despise Parappa the Rapper. It all comes down to how its gameplay works. Admittedly, I am coming at this from the perspective of having decades of rhythm games that have come after Parappa. But it honestly feels like Parappa just doesn't function? There's not like feedback for what you're doing, if you hit the button on time or don't, the game's not going to tell you. The one single indicator on-screen that can inform you of what happened seems to go up or down randomly. I swear I can do things perfectly and it says I'm closer to failure or I can really screw up and it'll go "yeah that was good" and I don't really understand why or how I'm supposed to understand why. Parappa is, unambiguously, one of the most important rhythm games of all time, but it kind of feels like the biggest impact that Parappa has left is the knowledge that no game should ever be like this ever again. 2.3/10
Game 2: Hollow Knight - Beat (One Ending)
Admittedly most of Hollow Knight was in last December but I beat it this January so. Shrugs. There are many holes in my gaming history, games I absolutely needed to get to and just. Haven't. But Hollow Knight was a massive one. I am a huge fan of Metroidvanias and Hollow Knight is famously one of the best. Unfortunately I just never got around to it because I was kind of getting into game collecting and was immediately brainwashed by game collectors into thinking owning physical was a moral issue due to how many delistings were happening and so I never wanted to take advantage of the numerous digital sales. And then Covid struck and I stopped having income anyways. So Hollow Knight was pushed off until I found out I could stream it.
I won't go too much into what Hollow Knight is and my experiences playing it, whether I liked it or not, because I've already done that. Hollow Knight was my first gaming diary of the year. The TL;DR is that I didn't love it like a lot of people did, and in the early game I wasn't very fond of it, but about 7 hours it clicked for me and I really liked it. I will say, in the couple months since I've beaten Hollow Knight, I've grown to really appreciate it more. I've been seeing a lot of lore videos explaining it and been listening to the music and regretting I don't actually own it to try and get a better ending. I don't know if I'll go back to play Hollow Knight ever to accomplish that ending, having to start from 0 is a pretty big nonstarter for me with how many other games I want to play. But I do actually kind of really want to play Silksong and don't be surprised if it really clicks for me there and I become a Silksong fanboy.
Game 3: The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap DNF (Softlocked at the Final Boss)
Doing Zelda games is always very touch and go for me. I don't care about my opinion being different from other people, but I don't like to sit here and be like "the things people like about Zelda I think are bad" and just not having any middle ground really to have conversation. I don't like dungeons and Zelda fans don't like overworld exploration, Zelda fans and I are too different now. So starting a Zelda game on this blog is always going to be interesting, especially one that is as beloved as Minish Cap and is as antithetical to what I get out of Zelda. It's literally the smallest Zelda game. So I went into this expecting to hate it and I actually liked quite a bit. It's a good one.
Again, Minish Cap is a game I did a Gaming Diary for so it'd be redundant for me to talk about it. I do want to say I haven't gone back to actually finish Minish Cap. Like, what happened is that I died at the same time as the cutscene telling you that you failed to save Zelda was starting and, as such, the game just stopped. One of these days I should go back and actually finish it, I'm admittedly still pretty salty about it softlocking on me. Having to redo a final dungeon as someone who doesn't like dungeons is a hard no from me, dawg. Someday, though, I promise I'll actually finish Minish Cap.
Game 4: SteamWorld Dig - Beat
It's very rare that I encounter a game that I can beat in one day. Typically a lot of the games that I play are games that take multiple play sessions over the course of multiple days to beat, and that may be even longer if I'm doing a gaming diary alongside it. Some days I need to just write, you know? SteamWorld Dig, though, was a game I effectively beat in one sitting. I had actually started to play this game many years ago, I got it via Humble Bundle I think, and what had happened is that I had begun to dig down and then quickly realized that I did not have a way back up. This was before I had played, like, Minecraft, so I didn't exactly know the rules of digging games, that you're meant to build your own way out. So progress stalled pretty quickly.
SteamWorld Dig is a bite sized indie Metroidvania that exists within the greater "SteamWorld" universe, a series of games that all take place within the same shared post-apocalyptic Steampunk Western setting. In it, you play as Rusty, a young miner robot who travels to the dying mining town of Tumbleton after inheriting the local mine from his recently departed uncle Joe. After meeting the locals and building up a rapport with them, he starts his digging down into the mine to find his fortune, occasionally returning to the surface to upgrade his tools to more effectively mine. But soon into his digging, he finds a mysterious cave, and within it is a message left behind by Uncle Joe. Rusty was not simply brought here to find riches, he's here for a purpose: Uncle Joe disappeared before he could uncover all the secrets within this mine, and he now wishes Rusty to dig down, find all the caves, solve their puzzles, and learn the forgotten history of SteamWorld. Along the way, Rusty will bring life back to Tumbleton, as more merchants and establishments find their way into the dying town due to his bringing wealth back into it.
SteamWorld Dig was not the first entry in the SteamWorld series, but it is perhaps its most famous and the one that has left the biggest impact. It is one of the first titles to blend the beloved genre of Metroidvanias with the genre of sandbox games like Minecraft. SteamWorld Dig has specific objectives that you are trying to accomplish, as you dig down you will be alerted to caves that contain upgrades for Rusty and more clues to the mysterious nature of this mine. But, on the whole, the map is your creation. You have to choose how you want to approach digging tunnels, the most effective way there is to get to your destination while also leaving a path out when you need it. This can be actually rather tricky to do so if your brain isn't attuned to this style of game, it's very easy to misjudge how high Rusty can jump and end up stuck in a pit where the only way out is to die, respawning at the top and losing half your money in the process. This fairly unique blend of genres has led SteamWorld Dig and, moreover, Rusty to become something of an indie darling. In fact, Rusty was a common face in indie crossover games for a bit.
All that being said, I just kind of feel like SteamWorld Dig is fine. I think it's kind of fascinating how small scale it is and how common it was for indie games to be this small scale at the time this released. There's like a four year difference between SteamWorld Dig and Hollow Knight and it's crazy to me how quickly the indie game standard evolved from "smaller games that you can beat in a single session" to "games that are as big, if not bigger, as the titles that inspired them, and often with far more meaning than them". I do actually enjoy the brevity, for what its worth, it's nice sometimes to be able to just sit down and beat a game in one sitting. But it's very basic and very repetitive, the loop of going down, digging for a while, returning to the surface to sell your riches and upgrade your equipment, then going back down is just not particularly noteworthy. It's a very average game, fun for a little while but it won't exactly leave a long term impression other than its interesting setting. I'm interested to play the sequel though!!! I really do like the SteamWorld aesthetic and the characters were fun. 7/10
Game 5: Secret of Mana - DNF
This one is so sad to me. Secret of Mana is one of the Super Nintendo games I was most excited about playing for so long. I actually own a physical cartridge for it, I have a Super Nintendo a cousin gave me and I own three games for it: Mario World, obviously, Mortal Kombat 3, and Secret of Mana. I need to get more Super Nintendo games but also like, it's whatever. I was an RPG fan for much of my life and the SNES era of RPGs in particular had and still has my heart, even if I don't always love the games themselves there is just something truly magical about this era of RPGs. So finally getting to play Secret of Mana as part of this year's game clearing was an exciting prospect. And I didn't finish it because I didn't like it.
This is yet another game I'll avoid talking about at length because I have otherwise talked about it at length before on this blog. But I do just want to say that, in hindsight, I should've just bunkered down and finished Secret of Mana. Like I wasn't having a good time, I think that this game is really poorly designed and just didn't grab me at all with its plot or writing to want to continue past the point I left off. But like, I do regret not finishing it, not just because I don't like having so many DNFs on my list, but because I've committed to finishing way worse games since. Like, at the time of writing this, I am at the end game of Revelations: Persona, the first entry in the Persona series. It's so much worse than Secret of Mana, Revelations: Persona is ranking really low (high?) on the worst list this year. But I chose to beat it for some reason and not Secret of Mana and that's like a disrespect to Secret of Mana, in my opinion. So if there's a Secret of Mana Gaming Diary Part 2 (there won't be), you know why.
Game 6: Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero - Beat
This one is technically a replay, I played the first Quest for Glory many years ago as part of an old game clearing project. However, I felt it poignant to replay it as a new game clear for two reasons. One: Quest for Glory is a series built around the idea of the five games in it being a singular series of quests. You can play them individually, but the way they were intended to be played is that you start in the first game with your own created character and then load that character, with all your equipment, spells, or items into each subsequent Quest for Glory game. While I finished the first one, oh, 8 years ago, I thought it would be best to start over if I'm intending on playing the rest of them, which I am. Second of all, I lost my save anyways. Quest for Glory is not compatible with Steam cloud saves. So like, while I still could just start with the second game since I already played the first one, I felt it was in the spirit of the Quest for Glory saga to see it through from beginning.
Quest for Glory: So You Want to be a Hero is a classic PC adventure/RPG made by the legendary Sierra On-Line. In it, you play as a young adventurer who has just arrived in the town of Speilberg, a small town in a mountainous region of the world heavily implied to be somewhere in Eastern Europe. Speilberg has been, over the course of the past decade, been stricken with a string of bad luck: their princess was kidnapped, their prince disappeared in an attempt to rescue her, an intelligent group of bandits has made their home in the area, the forests have become overrun by monsters and the local Lord has become depressed and reclusive as a result. This all occurred after the Lord ran afoul of the ogre-witch Baba Yaga, who lives to the north of the small kingdom and who the Lord has previously tried to dispose of by sending armies to take her down, only for them all to be struck down easily. Lacking any free hands with which to solve these issues, it becomes the duty of our plucky young adventurer to tackle the problems one by one, saving Spielberg from the curse.
Quest for Glory is unique in that it combines the classic Sierra style of point and click adventure games with its inventory system and focus on puzzle solving with genuine TTRPG mechanics. The way you interact with the world is not that different from the King's Quest series of video games, a very similar series of traditional point and clicks that Sierra also made, with you collecting inventory items to then use at specific points in the game to solve puzzles or overcome obstacles. But with this comes a stat system, spell learning, equipment purchasing, and an in-depth combat system that functions very differently depending on your class. I chose the mage, because of course I did, so a lot of my combat is built around infusing my weapon with magic for massive critical damage, and casting spells to push through combat. But the thief's combat maybe more focused on dodging and looking for opportunities to attack, while the warriors will be more focused on brute forcing it. Similarly, the quest is entirely different depending on which class you choose, with various NPCs holding more or less weight depending on what path you take and some characters and locations being entirely useless depending on your class.
Quest for Glory is not like an especially great RPG or a great adventure game. While I admire its blend of the genres and find it compelling, I would be lying to you if I didn't think it was worse than the sum of its parts. Due to being a Sierra Adventure game, death can sometimes put you back years if you aren't an obsessive saver. In most Sierra Adventure games this isn't too bad because you can often speedrun your way back to where you need to be as you've already solved those puzzles but Quest for Glory, being an RPG, means that you lose levels and lose stats and have to work your way back up to where you were. It ends up slowing down progress a lot and leads to a game that is far harsher than its Sierra brethren. That being said, I think it's really fun. The humor is great in it, the clever way it uses RPG mechanics to solve puzzles, the way it effectively captures the sense of adventure of going on this fairytale quest. It's not great, but I like playing it and I look forward to rolling the other games in this series. 6.8/10
Game 7: Earthbound Beginnings - Complete
Remember when I mentioned finishing games that were worse than Secret of Mana? I love Earthbound Beginnings, mind you. While the gameplay is definitely underbaked, everything about it is so distinctly and unapologetically Earthbound that, as a long time fan of the series, I can't help but love it. I'm doing the thing I often criticize others for; going "yeah, it doesn't really matter how many problems the game has because it makes me FEEL something". But I will be the first to tell you that unless you're so Earthbound pilled that hearing Pollyanna makes you get emotional, this ain't for you. This game is objectively terrible, despite my own feelings on the work. I might've done Secret of Mana dirty, y'all.
This is again a game I'm not going to talk about too much here, as I not only have talked about it at length before on this blog, but I also will continue to talk about it. My gaming diary will not be the last time I talk about Earthbound Beginnings here. I know at this point the recaps feel like just self-promo, but like, I think it would be pretty redundant to talk about something I have already talked about for pages and pages. I will say though that I do regret playing it on WiiU. I don't have an active NSO subscription at the moment so I couldn't exactly play it on Switch but the rewind would've been so helpful. And also like, if I had played it through other means I could've taken advantage of the community's work at making Beginnings a better experience. Instead I just did the whole thing raw, lol.
Game 8: Hypnospace Outlaw - Beat
Hypnospace Outlaw is one of the best games I have ever played. Now to be clear, it's not a game that I rank among my favorites. While I do really like Hypnospace Outlaw, I didn't get as much out of it as I probably could've. I've described this as "one of the best games I don't have time for", Hypnospace Outlaw really benefits from the kind of person who has the time and drive to really explore it and learn its numerous websites by heart. I am not that person, I like to beat games, I like to live in their worlds temporarily and then move on. So at some level Hypnospace Outlaw just isn't for me. But I immediately recognize that this is one of the best games I've ever played.
Hypnospace Outlaw is less a game than it is a simulator for a pre-y2k OS that never happened. In it, you play as a recently appointed moderator for the obscure operating system HypnOS, a technological advanced operating system that you hook up to your head while you sleep and then navigate in your dreams. HypnOS has a small but dedicated community of users, so tight-knit that they often know each other in real life. We enter it in 1999, shortly before the new millennium, and we enter it in a tumultuous time for the operating system, As it becomes more popular and more "legitimate", HypnOS has hired more moderators to crack down on copyright infringement, malware, illegal or unsavory sales, harassment, that sort of thing. As you progress, you start pulling back the curtain on HypnOS' practices, how a major restructuring funneled a bunch of different people running nerdy pages into the same ecosystem, forcing them to develop a deep web in the OS, how the hacker that keeps infecting the OS with malware is connected to other users, what the founder of HypnOS is truly up to.
Full disclosure, I almost wrote an essay about Hypnospace Outlaw. This game leaves an impact on you. What is has to say on the commodification and centralization of the internet, the death of microspaces, the destruction of child-friendly content because it's not profitable, etc. is poignant and depressing. It's not only a celebration of the pre-y2k internet, a celebration of charming blog pages and weird obscure services, but a mourning of it. It's beautiful, frankly. Unfortunately, I felt out of my element and the work never materialized. I get what this game is saying and I find it super interesting, but in the process of writing it, I realized how out of my depth I was to talk about this. I often say I've been on the internet too long, and that's true, I've been regularly on the internet since at least 2005, but I wasn't around for the true y2k era of the internet being this magical, free place. The internet I have always known has been one that was beginning to centralize.
I really wish that I had the time/the headspace for Hypnospace Outlaw. While the story of Hypnospace Outlaw is definitely important and incredibly intriguing, especially in the back half of the game, the person who is going to get the most out of Hypnospace Outlaw is the person who can devote the time and has the want to just live in its world. There are numerous pages on HypnOS that, in a standard playthrough, you are never going to see if you don't seek them out because they don't do anything. But they're still these beautiful works of art that a person who has more drive to just live in this space will get a lot out of. It's kind of tragic, really, I like Hypnospace Outlaw a great deal but also have to acknowledge, at the end of the day, it's not for me. I like something with more of a structured progression and Hypnospace Outlaw is a game that wants you to just vibe in its world. Still a masterpiece, still one of the best games I've ever played, just not for me as sad as that is. 8.7/10
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