🎮 2024 Gaming/Backlog Clearing Recap

Inspired by various 2023 recaps from my friends (be it music or games), I've decided to start my own recap for 2024. I've got plenty of video games around which I've either never picked up or have been meaning to but never got the time to do so. Of course, some services do their own recaps for their users, but they're kinda preformatted and cookie-cutter, you know. I like to give my opinions on things, and having a recap like this lets me convey more information about my experiences.

Alongside basic information, each game I've played will have a few bits of additional info listed: whether the game is something recent or something I've acquired a greater amount of time ago in a bundle or something, how it came into my possession (if I can remember it), how much of it I've completed, and whether I think you shud pley it or nu.

📅 January

GTA: Liberty City

Released in 2022 / "New" / Free
Progress made: any% speedrun completed
shud u pley it: nu

Essentially just a mod which ports the content of GTA III over to the engine used by GTA Vice City (meaning III's gameplay with additions such as bikes, poppable tires, being able to attack NPCs inside cars, cops deploying spike strips etc.). Might sound exciting, but quite honestly the novelty wore off really quickly. Some missions have dummied out objectives added back in, so "Taking Out the Laundry" in Portland now has 4 vans you have to destroy, and the endgame mission "Bait" has you bait 4 cars instead of 3.

Despite having a speedrun personal best of about 1h30m, the run of this mod took me 2 hours because — as we all found out in the race that we did — the enemy pathing AI is borked and does not know how to reach the compound in "Bait" without being directly on the player's tail.

This mod's credits visible while exiting list over 100 nicknames. Somehow none of these people have noticed these issues — or worse yet, they had, but decided not to say that this is something that needs fixing. The mod is potentially fun for 15 minutes if you're really desperate to see bikes in LC.

🔗 ModDB Page

OTXO

Released in 2023 / New / Steam Sale
Progress made: ending achieved
shud u pley it: yis

Holy fuck. A fully fledged successor to Hotline Miami. Dynamic and unforgiving ballet of violence. Gorgeous presentation, excellent soundtrack, engaging gameplay.

I've written a way more lengthy and descriptive review on Steam. Click here to read it in full!

🔗 Steam Store Page

Conflict: Denied Ops

Released in 2008 / Backlog / Retail (CD-Action bonus disc)
Progress made: 2 levels, gave up on 3rd
shud u pley it: nu

A game released in 2008 that is best left in 2008. This title is characterized by poor level design, clunky mechanics, laughably bad animations, a painfully generic story – and absolutely aggravating character writing. Graves and Lang, despite how hard the game wants to sell them as a buddy-cop duo, are not characters, but tired-trope-shaped one-liner machines (and not even good ones at that).

🔗 Steam Store Page

Refunct

Released in 2015 / Backlog / Steam Sale
Progress made: 100%
shud u pley it: yis

Short, sweet, and to the point. A first person perspective platformer where you jump on tiles and activate buttons to "restore life to a lifeless world". Surprisingly challenging if you're going for 100% achievements – both the one for finishing with less than 33% coverage and the one for finishing in under 4 minutes require really good map knowledge and movement skills. The game is simple, but also an absolute joy to play. I'd even say it's worth considering as one's first foray into speedrunning if they liked the game enough.

🔗 Steam Store Page

Dead Island: Riptide

Released in 2013 / Backlog / Retail (CD-Action bonus disc)
Progress made: main story finished
shud u pley it: nu

(Played as Logan on Normal, NG+ (old save bonus, started at Lv.45). Regular game, not Definitive Edition.)

This game repeats all of its predecessor's shortcomings instead of innovating in any way; rather predictable after they didn't even have the balls to call this one a sequel. Fittingly, it's more of an expansion pack for the first Dead Island as it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Terrible acting, awful gameplay design, uninteresting plot. The nicest description I can give for DE:R is "aggressively mediocre", and even just saying all these things here is more attention than it deserves.

🔗 Steam Store Page (Definitive Edition)

BABBDI

Released in 2022 / Backlog / Free
Progress made: 100%
shud u pley it: yis

Escape from Bydgoszcz. An uncanny 3D platformer/exploration game where you walk around a surrealistic brutalist cityscape and try to figure out a way to leave. The exploration aspect and the joy of finding new details and hidden objects and whatnot makes it a worthwhile experience.

sewers oil

🔗 Steam Store Page

📅 February

20 Small Mazes

Released in 2024 / New / Free
Progress made: Game completed
shud u pley it: yis

Aesthetically pleasing puzzle game where you solve mazes, but each maze is tied to its own separate mini-puzzles. The nature of puzzle games is that going into details will spoil the surprise, and indeed what prompted me to play this was a recommendation by a friend and an invite to race it blindly to 100% completion. Overall a very pleasant experience.

🔗 Steam Store Page

Stop Dead

Released in 2023 / New / Bought on sale (90%)
Progress made: Finished Early Access content (first 3 chapters)
shud u pley it: yis

Something I've scored thanks to a Knockout forum thread, still counting as a February game as I've bought it and launched it on the 29th. Gameplay flow will be instantly recognizable to those who have played Neon White. You control a person unwillingly mounted with some sort of a bomb collar which will detonate if they stop moving, and your tasks include targeted gratuitous violence using gravity gloves.

The game is practically built for speedrunning. Each level has two separate leaderboards – one for style points, the other for fastest completion – and the entire experience is highly customizable, be it through flexible difficulty settings or through being able to toggle or drag and drop HUD elements to make the interface exactly what you need in your gameplay.

This game deserves more attention, and even though I'm glad I was able to score it for under 2 USD, I think the devs deserve much more than that.

🔗 Steam Store Page

📅 March

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)

Released in 2005 (duh) / New / Second-hand
Progress made: Completed the Career Mode + did like 75% of the Challenge Series
shud u pley it: yis

Not sure if it's right to be calling it a cult classic (the "cult" part usually implies a small fanbase, whereas Most Wanted is one of the beloved installments in the franchise), but it's definitely a classic. My first exposure to the game was through its demo that I've played as a kid... almost two decades ago, I think. I've ended up with a copy purely by happenstance and I thought "eh, might as well". Funnily enough, I've played Carbon before Most Wanted because I'd already had the chance to buy them in the past, but found out MW had drag races and Carbon didn't, so I ended up skipping MW. I hate drag races with a burning passion.

What is there to say that hasn't been said by others before me about this game? Almost two decades after release, it makes for a great time capsule of the pop culture in the 2000s, really capturing the zeitgeist of what was considered "cool" back then. Gameplay-wise, it's a very solid arcade racer. Plot-wise, it's a really fun adventure of taking down a club of pricks too pompous for their own good. I expected it to be a short adventure given the fact that I was able to finish Carbon's story mode in two evenings, but lo and behold, Most Wanted took me several sessions (and crashes) spread over a month and a half. Rightfully a classic.

😞 The game is available in retail only, so your only chance of playing it nowadays is by obtaining a used copy. CEX is sometimes neat for that.

📅 April

Umurangi Generation

Released in 2020 / New / Bought on sale (~90%)
Progress made: Finished the base game
shud u pley it: yis

An intriguing title from the get go. Its birth year may coincide with a certain global event you may remember as having disrupted the normal flow of life for a solid few months. Indeed, Umurangi Generation is an experience born out of the game's author's frustration about the way the government of New Zealand had handled the pandemic. It wears Māori culture with pride (indeed, Te Reo Māori is the first listed option in the in-game language selection, and "Umurangi" is that language's term for "Red Sky") and throws you into the shoes of a Māori courier delivering packages to various places and taking photos of the world as it loses its fight against alien invaders.

It's a very short, but very interesting bit of environmental storytelling and social commentary. The world is not spelled out to you - it's up to you to put together the pieces of the puzzle and understand the situation as well as the general atmosphere of it all. And oh boy did the author end up delivering on the vision of having Umurangi Generation be an insight into "shitty future".

🔗 Steam Store Page

📅 May

Buckshot Roulette

Released in 2024 / New / Bought at full price
Progress made: Finished, missing 3 achievements
shud u pley it: yis

I mean, with a title like that, where do you even start?
You know how Hotline Miami was an extremely violent game series which actually condemned the violence happening in it? Buckshot Roulette is kinda... that, but for gambling addiction, or just gambling in general. It doesn't get more in-your-face than a face full of buckshot (roulette) as a metaphor for gambling's destructive nature – and how sometimes it doesn't matter how well you prepare, you just get unlucky and that's it. But it'd be dishonest to chalk the entire experience up to nothing more than an art piece chastising gamblers.

Buckshot Roulette pits you against a mysterious creature only referred to as the Dealer in the backroom of a nightclub as you willingly enter a game of Russian roulette. The main twist is that the revolver is replaced by a 12-gauge shotgun (fittingly enough, its original price on itch.io used to be $1.20) and the chambers are a sequence of 8 randomly inserted live and blank rounds. You and the Dealer take turns wielding the shotgun, with the main choice – besides items – being whether to shoot yourself or your opponent. Getting hit by a live round will take away one magical defibrillator charge from the target. On the other hand, if the round is blank, shooting yourself will skip the other side's turn and keep the shotgun in your hands, but shooting the opponent with the blank will hand the gun over to them. The previously mentioned items allow their user to replenish defib charges, skip the currently loaded round, force the other side to skip one shot, check the currently loaded round, increase the damage output, and more if you're playing the game's infinite Double Or Nothing mode.

It's a simple gameplay loop, but a surprisingly enjoyable one, even despite the spectacularly morbid subject matter. The items are a really clever way of adding a strategy element and letting the player influence the situation and minimize the risk of shooting themselves... but the danger never goes away. No matter your preparations, no matter the item use, no matter the strategy – just like in real gambling, sometimes you just get unlucky, and sometimes it can lead to your untimely demise.
Thankfully this is just a video game though ;)

🔗 Steam Store Page

Anarcute

Released in 2016 / Backlog / Part of a bundle
Progress made: Halfway through
shud u pley it: dunno

It's a riot! And a cute one! Sounds like it should be right up my alley, but honestly I just couldn't get myself to play it organically, instead needing to remind myself that this is a game that I wanted to interact with.

The gimmick of controlling a growing crowd and the theme of strength in numbers is admittedly interesting, but it wasn't enough to keep me invested enough to keep going beyond the first two bosses. Despite that, I don't feel comfortable with outright not recommending it to anyone. It's not a bad game or a poorly made one, it kinda just failed to retain my interest.

🔗 Steam Store Page

📅 July

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

Released in 2020 / New / Bought on sale (~80%)
Progress made: 100% completion
shud u pley it: yis

Honestly one of the cutest and comfiest titles I've ever played. You play as a 11 year old girl named Alba as she visits her grandparents on a small Mediterranean island and tries to save its natural fauna and flora from destruction by human greed.

The core gameplay loop revolves around exploring the island and interacting with the world around you. The main overarching objective is documenting all the animals that live on the island. Despite the game using low-poly models, the animals are depicted in an absolutely adorable yet still faithful manner. The devs behind Alba describe it as a "chillectathon" – and indeed, there is no time pressure to taking all the pictures and solving all the problems on the island. You can take your time completing the handbook and taking in the sights (and also admiring the animals because they are incredibly cute aaaaaaa–).

The adventure is relatively short, but filled with incredible amounts of charm – and the underlying message of protecting nature and respecting it is something that speaks to the human being in me. Big recommendation.

🔗 Steam Store Page

TWHL Tower: Source

Released in 2024 / New / Free
Progress made: Finished
shud u pley it: yis

A collaborative project that's part of a mod series for Half-Life 2: Episode 2, where all action technically happens within the confines of one building: the titular tower. Each contributor is allowed to do absolutely whatever they want within their floor, with the only limitation being the physical size of the area. There's no imposed theme or genre beyond "this is one floor of a building", the modders can go wild. And boy do they go wild.

The quality of the levels — which are literal levels of the building — ranges from "baby's first map" (chief examples being "Watermelons in Jail" and "Water Reservoir") to what are practically their own bite-sized games. Special recognition must go to "Caution: Biological Hazard", which is a love letter to the original Resident Evil games until you grab the shotgun and you go from fixed camera angles to a first-person shooter within the same map, and to "Fallen Angel", which is a surprisingly emotional dialogue-focused piece. The mod also offers achievements and bonus maps, adding that bit of replay value to what's already a pretty enjoyable experience.

As TWHL Tower proves, you don't need a cohesive plot or a consistent theme to have a fun little adventure. If your heart's in it, you can achieve success by just committing to your own thing and trying to make it as good as it can be.

🔗 Mod's page

📅 September

Press Any Button

Released in 2021 / Backlog / Giveaway
Progress made: Finished
shud u pley it: yis

A short experience in which you are asked to participate in a test which reveals itself to be more philosophical than initially promised. You spend about an hour with an artificial intelligence that tries to grasp the intricacies of our human existence. Your task is to press any button to respond.

🔗 Steam Store Page

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Released in 2019 / New / From a bundle
Progress made: Started
shud u pley it: yis

I've always played games predominantly on PC, with short stints on Wii and whatnot, so the console classics such as Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon entirely passed me by. I've received the Reignited Trilogy in somebundle from Humble and I've installed it because my girlfriend had fond memories of playing Spyro and wanted to reexperience that and whatnot... so I thought "eh, why don't I also give it a shot?".

I have not made any real progress, and I don't feel a drive to consistently play the game for days in a row, but it is definitely a fun little collectathon from what I've experienced so far. I have managed to beat the first boss of the first game, but I'm having the most fun just exploring the worlds of the game and looking for every last gem and skill point to reach. I will finish it eventually, but I don't feel committed to the game. That's on me though - on the merits of the actual product itself, I definitely can't discourage people from playing this one, that's for sure.

🔗 Steam Store Page

📅 October

Peggle Extreme

Released in 2007 / Backlog / Free
Progress made: Finished
shud u pley it: yis

A truly baffling crossover. This is a demo version of PopCap's Peggle, reskinned to reference... Valve's Orange Box collection of games. In terms of actual content, this is just a ten level-long adventure mode with a "plotline" of creatures and characters from Valve's games invading the world of Peggle, with five challenge levels to cap it all off. In gameplay you only have access to Bjorn, whose skill is a guiding line telling you exactly how your ball will bounce off the first thing it comes into contact with.

The game milks the artstyle mismatch for all it's worth, with things such as Bjorn, the first master of the game and the character on the title screen, having a dead headcrab stuck impaled on his horn. There's also G-Man's face on the rising sun, just like that one baby in the Teletubbies. There's also TF2's Pyro burning one of the Peggle characters to death on the background art of one of the levels. I dunno.

The entire thing will take you less than an hour to finish, both the adventure mode and the five levels in the challenge mode. Not much else to say here. It's free, and it's a good demo for a good game, even if it really goes the extra length to remind you that This Is A Demo™ and they're inviting you to spend your money on the Full Version Of The Game This Is A Demo For™.

🔗 Steam Store Page

📅 November

NIGHT-RUNNERS™ PROLOGUE

Released in 2024 / Backlog / Free demo
Progress made: ?
shud u pley it: yis

A game I had put on the backburner months ago and only got around to trying it one bored evening... and honestly I don't know why I've put this one off for so long. Night-Runners is easily one of the best games I've ever played in terms of presentation. This game oozes with a gritty down-to-earth aesthetic of illegal street racing in turn-of-the-millennium Japan. Keeping in mind this is a demo of a game that's still in development at the time of writing this, it's a very solid product on its own, even if it's not fully featured yet.

The story of the demo – or the Prologue – is that you arrive in Japan, get some money from a friend to buy a used car, only to learn that some local meanie noticed that your friend alleges to have no money but gives you enough cash to afford a car, and so you're saddled with a debt that you have to repay through wagers from illegal street racing. The main draw is the robust customization system that lets you compose the perfect car you need to cruise through the night. All of this is lined with a dynamic soundtrack that sells the feeling of speed as you swerve between trucks on the highway.

And if you don't think that's the sickest shit ever just from the description alone, honestly don't even talk to me. For shame, dude. Waster.

🔗 Steam Store Page