GospelEXE
My name is Mark, although I often go by my alias GospelEXE, or Gospel for short. For you MegaMan Battle Network fans, if you know, you know. Welcome to my first entry of my video game backlog progress.
I've returned to Completionator from one of many of my hiatuses, this year being around a 3 year hiatus. Upon my return, I've noticed a lot of wonderful improvements on the site and the blogs section kind of piqued my interest. I figured... why not start one of my own? There were a few articles pertaining to backlog progress and I figured it would be interesting to document the games that I've played, beaten, and even played to 100% completion. After each game, I'll give a quick paragraph (or two) review on my overall thoughts of the game.
After my list of completed games, I will also proceed with writing up a list of games I'm currently playing and plan on playing for the month of February! It's a short yet busy month, so we'll see what I can get done.
You can also review my backlog progress which includes previous years dating back to 2017 on the games that I've beaten. The tab linked displays this year on the games that I've beaten/completed, the games that I'm working on and some of the games that I'm hoping to work on in the near future. I'd be interested to see what you'd like me to start playing from this list! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EuLJn5a7zxU9t4JdI8Zpg4JiGjjXt3lnQWvgiWrghMs/edit?gid=806460779#gid=806460779
Games marked as Beaten are games that were played from beginning to ending credits.
Games marked as Completed are games that were played to 100% completion, whether it be everything that the game can offer or all achievements.
If I develop enough interest to continue with this series, I shall do so.
Without further ado, let's jump right into the games that I've completed for in the month of January 2025.
Game #1 - Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk
Beaten on: January 1st, 2025
Status: Completed
I picked up this game most likely from a Steam sale. HLTB showed that this was a short game and... what a short game it was. This is your multiple choice visual novel where you are helping a girl buy a bag of milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk... The game certainly took a much darker turner than I expected due to the history of the main protagonist suffering from severe trauma, making what may seem like an incredibly trivial task to others extremely challenging to this individual. As there was not much to do in this game, it took less than an hour to obtain all three achievements which includes me playing through the short campaign.
Game #2 - Ex-Zodiac
Beaten on: January 1st, 2025
Status: Beaten
I remember playing the demo of this years back. As someone who grew up with the SNES Star Fox game, this really hits back and makes you feel incredibly nostalgic in this modernized game. The visuals are stunning and the game plays extremely smoothly. All of the stage environments and bosses are all unique that I couldn't believe that I was playing the same game. As of writing this blog, there were 10 stages released for this game with more being developed in this Early Access title. Although I don't think I'll dedicate enough time to obtain all of the achievements in this game, which require S-Ranks on all stages, I will certainly look forward to more updates in this spectacular title.
Game #3 - Donkey Kong Land
Beaten on: January 2st, 2025
Status: Completed
I played this on the Nintendo Switch Online library. I was really in the mood for a Donkey Kong game and figured that this might have been an interesting choice. "Interesting" was certainly a word choice here as this game offered many visual challenges in terms of color and dimensions compared to its SNES predecessor, Donkey Kong Country. Although I started this game back in the beginning of December, going for every collectable that I could, there was one particular stage in the third world that just made me need to take a break from this game. After a little more breathing, I returned to this game, overcame that challenge and eventually found myself on the road to victory by obtaining a 100% file.
Game #4 - Ys X: Nordics
Beaten on: January 13st, 2025
Status: Beaten
This was another fantastic game that I started as soon as it was launched in November. I've been playing this game on and off, mostly because other games had my attention at the same time, sometimes more than this game. But when I did play this game, I often found myself progressing through the story in pretty great spurts. My goal was to beat this before the 2024 holidays, which I failed to do, which resulted in me losing custody of my PS5 to allow my step-daughter to borrow the system for her Christmas gift that she received. After a couple of weeks, she eventually relinquished the system back to me so that I could beat this.
Overall, this game was top notch. The game offered a relatively completionist-friendly checklist in terms of collectibles, although there were a few items that were missable throughout the story, which I unfortunately did. But exploring every island to retrieve all of the items for a 100% exploration rate was one of the most achievements I've obtained throughout this series. In addition to some of the missable items for some trophies, the game also requires a second playthrough on some of the harder difficulties, which I did not feel up for at the moment. For now, I'm satisfied with just beating this game.
Game #5 - The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
Beaten on: January 21st, 2025
Status: Beaten
If you told me to check out a Smurfs game in my 30s, I'd think you'd be crazy. For some reason whatsoever, this game was really hyped up in the RPG Club Discord that I participate and moderate in. During the winter sale, this game was a measly $2. What's two whole dollars to me? Just for the heck of it, I decided to purchase it. One weekend without the kids, I decided to check this out. How was it? More addicting than it should have been.
The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf is your basic platformer with elements that may be similar to Powerwash Simulator and Okami HD (two games I was playing at the time) in the aspect where you are going through areas and purifying affected areas in the towns and areas. Another member of the club dubbed it "Super Smurfeo Smurfshine", which I fullheartedly agreed on. Each area/chapter offers dozens of collectibles to reach out for to provide to another Smurf for your upgrades, further assisting you in your behavior. The difficulty overall felt fair; not too difficult but not too easy, although this was also me playing on the "Hard" difficulty. I was surprised on how much fun this game provided to me.
Game #6 - Okami HD
Beaten on: January 28th, 2025
Status: Beaten
RPG Club Non-RPG Game of the Month for January 2025
This game was LONG overdue for me. I've only heard wonderful things about it and people have always recommended this title to me. However, I have one HUGE problem with this game and I'm sure many others agree... The text. The dialogue, more often than not, advances TOO slowly. While several non-cutscene text can be advanced more quickly, the majority of them force you to go through the auto-scrolling process of waiting for the text to finish spawning in order to advance. Despite this being an HD re-release, this issue was not fixed.
But that's it for the most part. There were a lot of unique elements to the game that I kept feeling engaged with. While the majority of areas were blocked by forced plot walls, upgrades are presented that encourage you to revisit areas you've already unlocked in order to uncover some hidden treasure that you may not have had access to previously. Many puzzles are presented in the game that almost have a Zelda-esque feel to it and it always felt satisfying solving these puzzles in order to advance through the dungeons.
Game #7 - Piczle Cross Story of Seasons
Beaten on: January 31st, 2025
Status: Completed
The Picross/Nonogram/Piczle series is something that I've always been very interested in. More often than not, I play a few dozen puzzles only to feel rather burnt out from the title. Piczle Cross Story of Seasons was something that kept on driving me and it was one of those games that I could play as a nice relaxing game. There were many times where I felt completely stumped on puzzles to the point where I actually resorted to using the hint system a handful number of times, or I simply accepted defeat at the time and eventually revisited it. Surprisingly, I was able to crack the code after a little brain break.
Piczle Cross Story of Seasons offers a total of 270 puzzles from the Story of Seasons series, along with an additional 84 puzzles that create 5 different collages, ranging from your elementary 5x5 puzzles up to 25x20 puzzles. This game never failed to make me put on my thinking cap and it has made me want to explore this category even more.
January is starting the new year off fairly strong, providing me with opportunities to explore more games, spending time more efficiently as opposed to scrolling through social media posts, but most importantly, just enjoying myself.
Games In Progress
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd
This might be my primary game that I'll be working on for quite a bit. It has been nearly a year since I've beaten The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC and this has been on my list for a while now. My goal is to beat this by the end of the month.
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin
Sakuna has been on my wishlist for a while now. Steam had a 50% sale during the winter sales, where it was finally time to dish out the cash. The RPG Club hosted a Non-RPG Game of the Month where this game was my choice and it won. While it does seem to have a lot of RPG elements to it, there have been debates online whether this is truly classified as an RPG or not. I'm also aiming to beat this by the end of the month.
2024: Mosaic Retrospective
Another Minesweeper-like puzzle game that I found from an RPG Club member. A giant 60,000 block puzzle that has two options: Light or dark. Numbers are scattered throughout the board that act as the center of a 3x3 box. The number indicates how many light-colored blocks are in the 3x3 box. Logic and reasoning are used to advance through the puzzle. The entire board is also divided into dozens of sections that are shaped like objects that also represent some history that happened in the year 2024. The best part? This game is FREE!
Powerwash Simulator
A nice cozy game that I was gifted during the holidays. One thing I try to do? Definitely try to play the games I'm gifted and make my friend's gift value worth it. I've been playing this where I want to play something, but I don't want to do any thinking whatsoever.
Dave the Diver
I've been working on this for a while, which was gifted to me for my birthday last year! I'm certain that I'm nearing the end, so I feel like I should wrap this one up sooner rather than later...
Mario & Luigi Brothership
My Nintendo Switch game that I've been working on and off for a while as well. I'm also approaching the finale of this game, so this is something I should also finish up so I can switch to a new game
Influent
During the holidays, we had some family stay for about a month which has been inspiring me to learn more Spanish. This language-learning game has been helping evolve my vocabulary for Spanish with 300 out of the 420 words mastered in the game. Will I be able to master them all soon?
So that is that. It has been a busy year already! But I'm glad to have finally made some sort of good traction with my backlog. I have dozens of shorter games that I'd like to tackle throughout the year, so I expect this list to continuously grow.
I appreciate those that have taken the time to read this. Any suggestions for blog formatting or even games in general are more than welcome in the comments! Moreover, I hope that I can maintain some better consistency with my Completionator account going forward.
Until next time,
Mark/GospelEXE