Welcome to my 3rd retrospective for 2024, where I'll be talking about all the games I've beaten, or made sufficient-enough progress on to talk about, in the 3rd quarter of 2024. As always, these are written in chronological order and no specific ranking. I accidentally clicked and published this a few days early, so sit back and enjoy a "leak" of the retrospective!

I bought this game at the beginning of the year during a 90% off sale, but couldn't quite get it to work with my controller so I put it down for several months. Well I figured out how to get it working, and I'm glad I did! It's Ubisoft's take on Zelda: Breath of the Wild, basically, but it has its own sense of charm and fun gameplay, storytelling and exploration. It's a bit easy, but I honestly didn't mind. The storytelling was ridiculous sometimes but I say that kindly, as it's gotten a fair share of chuckles out of me and puts a more light-hearted approach to Greek mythology. The combat is also simple, but does develop and it's fun to unlock upgrades to feel more godly. Objectives can be repetitive in Ubisoft fashion, but the only ones I found really tedious were the Vaults of Tartaros but they at least made them rewarding with extra gems, gear, and stamina upgrades. It's also nice that nothing "goes to waste" after hitting max, so you can keep upgrading forever. The rest of the puzzles are pretty quick and chill. It's a good time, and $6 for the gold edition is a STEAL. Even if I bought it at MSRP I think I'd be okay with that.

I picked this up at Target when it was on sale for $30. Gasp! A Nintendo IP selling one of their games for $30? Wild. Anyway, I've always been a fan of the series since I first played Touched and then the GBA/GCN one, the Wii one, even DIY. Each game does something a little different that grips me. No exception here as each character has a different moveset to play the microgames. Since the microgames are random, and the characters can be random, there's always a new challenge to find within the game. When I got to the end (including side modes et al), I felt a bit... underwhelmed? Some characters felt awful to use and really needed something to offset them, like 9-Volt or Dr. Crygor's granddaughter. The microgames were fun enough, but the lack of side modes/meaningful unlockables were a let down compared to past games. You can "level up" your characters which is a neat idea, but I don't know. Not a bad game but it is a bit disappointing for a Warioware title, and I'd be bummed if I spent $60 on it.

The Forest is a guilty pleasure to me. It's janky as all, but I really enjoyed it and loved a lot of its systems. I was excited to hear a sequel was coming out and I ended up buying it during the Spring sale. It's basically "The Forest" but more. More map. More caves. More inventory. More crafting options. More exploration options (including an electric unicycle! Heck yeah)! More buggy kinda? More difficult, but not in a bad way. Honestly, if you like the original you're very likely going to like this, and vice versa. I certainly enjoyed it.

This is "We Have Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 At Home" but pretty solid on its own. The campaign is short, but you can play the levels from StEJ2 and replay older levels to get higher "ranks" in both score and time. This is where the game absolutely shines. Trying to go back, get higher scores, faster times and exploration medals, is fun without being TOO exhausting. The game still has that "jank" you'd expect... weird UI sometimes, the car sections either run me off course easily or change my angle of ground, both of which make me restart the level. The story is just as whatever as the first game but honestly, the gameplay is center stage, and it does a really fun job making you jump around, do sick moves, dodge in combat, and platform your way to the top. It's hard to describe more vividly, but the jist is it's good.

I joined Facebook back in 2009. Skipped out on Myspace. This game does a GREAT job at its "artstyle" and accomplishes its goal excellent on that. Clicking Youtoob playlists brings up a comforting aesthetic with links to songs that actually DO work. There's a Digg site you can see. Even some flash games you can unlock via secrets. It's true art to form. As for the social aspect, it's definitely there. You have the best friend that helps you out, the two love interests, the potential relationship-wrecker, and yeah it's kind of predictable and the illusion of choice is present at large, but it's serviceable and really takes you back to simpler times. I am also personally not a fan of having to essentially replay the game with its slow conversing-ness and similarity between characters, just to get a good ending. All in all, it's a fun way to kill an afternoon and a tremendous work of art.

In preparation for Halls of Torment 1.0 coming out soon (which I'll inevitably be writing about next quarter), I decided to pick this one up. It's got that cool old-school jRPG aesthetic to it and it does a lot of mechanics decently well. You get your 6 weapons, you have stats like STR/MAG/LUK, you get equipment that boosts yourself or your weapons' power, and in jRPG style, you can unlock party members that have their own unique strengths. You can unlock 'mix CDs' that play several smaller tracks, and there's quite a lot of em. It's also a shorter romp than most VS-likes, only clocking in at ~20 minutes a run. The difficulty is surprising, but not impossible. It's a little buggy what with being in EA, but only one bug (having 2 rerolls in equipment sometimes acts goofy) being bothersome. In the grand scheme Elemental Survivors doesn't do anything TOO unique, but it's a fun time with a nice aesthetic and does a good job at giving that old-school jRPG vibe.

This was recently challenged to me, and I was in the mood to try something a little different from what I've been playing throughout the year. Simulator games are ones I have a love/hate relationship with, teetering towards love. Thankfully, this is one I'm putting towards the love side. It starts a little overwhelming with you having to balance everything... cleaning/organizing the station, fueling cars, checking out customers at the register, eventually fixing and washing cars. However the game does snowball and you gradually get more upgrades to help balance your needs and swim in sweet cash and popularity. After beating it however, it does get VERY grindy, so do keep that in mind if you go for the 100%. It's also a little buggy like every other simulator game out there, but it's good fun and there's a lot to uncover. One of the better ones in the Simulation genre for sure, and I wouldn't mind picking it up and playing every now and again if I get a grindy itch.

This one intrigued me enough that it was worth spending ~60 cents to check out. What I was expecting was a Metroidvania-style game with an older aesthetic. What I got was more difficult platforming-based and lighter Metroidvania elements. It's FULL of secrets, too. Lots of fake hidden walls and even some fake spikes to jump through. I'm not entirely crazy about that, and the combat was pretty boring. I got about 40% through the game before I soft-locked myself by jumping down an invisible spike with no real way to get around the obstacles that preceded. I'm sure there's a workaround, but I was too apathetic to find it on my own and decided to just drop the game. I heard Legacy was much better, so maybe I'll try that one day.

A fellow Completionator person challenged me to play Super Lovely Planet. I said "okay, why not" and loaded this up instead. Haha, but seriously, I've been curious about the series for awhile now so I figured might as well start at the beginning. Its atmosphere is weird like Katamari Damacy was, but the gameplay is basically a precision FPS. It's pretty fun and colorful! Definitely challenging though. I know I won't be getting all 3 stars in every level but it's a game you can just pick up and play since all the levels are less than 30 secs long, so it's a great time-slot filler.

Unexpectedly short quarter this time around, but with a lot of summertime activities and trying to catch up on adulting things, that's bound to happen. I've got a few things in store for Q4 though, and to the people who have been challenging me certain games to work on, thank you! I will get to them, and I may already have started ;). Thanks for reading!