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video games

Video games that I've played, and my thoughts on them!! sort of like a lot of mini-reviews where there's no pressure to write too much or too little, that aren't directed enough to fit onto my blog. If I want to write a lot about the game, I will make a separate page or a blog post, since blog posts are for cadence's thoughts :)

everything else...

This is all very very under construction. I am constantly improving the language and detail text sections and adding new games.

You can change the order that you want to see the games in this list:

spoilers?

There are totally spoilers on this page for a bunch of different games, so if you'd prefer to only read about certain games, go to the version of this page that has spoiler protection. This version would also let you get an overview of the game titles much easier.

CrossCode!!!

Release date
2018
Play date
2017
Systems
Computer, Switch
Stores
Steam, Itch, GOG, Switch
Bundles
Bundle for Ukraine

Wikipedia:List of video games considered the best

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

Release date
2011
Play date
2013
Systems
Phone, Computer, Switch
Stores
Google Play, Apple, Steam, Switch

I will eventually make a separate page about sworcery because it's so meaningful to me and I want to create something really cool for it, that transcends text! it's HyperText, baby!!!

Portal series

Release date
2007
Play date
2017
Systems
Computer, Switch
Stores
Steam, Switch

I like the Portal series a huge amount! I particularly like the lore and how it gives the fans a lot of license to interpret things however they like, while still not being excessively cryptic about what the game is about! So I can think more about the backstory of the games if I want to, but if I just play them, then the game gives me a lot of information itself that I can enjoy in its same form. That's awesome!

gemini://cadence.moe/gemlog/2021-03-17-thoughts-on-portal.bliz

Super Mario Bros

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
1985
Play date
2020
Systems
NES

The game has poor physics and it doesn't hold up well at all today. Some of the levels have very uninspired design. The lives system is annoying. It inspired far too many uncreative mini-throwbacks in Nintendo's other games. It's not worth playing, despite its legacy. You cannot save your progress in this game without emulator states.

Super Mario Bros 3

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
1988
Play date
2020
Systems
NES

They made a lot of improvement to the game in 3 years! The levels, powerups, and enemies are far more creative and interesting. Mario can move in two dimensions instead of one. The physics are still a little janky, and the lives system is still a little annoying, but this is a reasonable video game. You cannot save your progress without emulator states.

Super Mario World

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
1990
Play date
2014
Systems
SNES

This game is really good. There's a lot of levels and a lot of variety. The level design is a lot more interesting and fair overall, and levels use the tools that the game provides to do a lot of different things. There are a huge variety of secrets and secret levels! I really enjoyed playing this game. There are certainly flaws in it, such as the lives system and the lack of an indicator showing if a level has been completed, but these are all outweighed by the good parts of the game. The game will randomly prompt you if you want to save - to save at any other time you have to use emulator states.

Yoshi's Island

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
1995
Play date
2014
Systems
SNES

Just when you thought the game design and the levels and the mechanics were already great, now they're fantastic. The gameplay is totally changed, much for the better. I believe this to be the best game in the series by far. Yoshi's tools are used in great ways by the level, and there's secret minigames and lots of optional things to collect. Completing any level will save your progress as well as all of your collectables.

Super Mario Land

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
1989
Play date
2015
Systems
Game Boy

Game Boy game. It's janky! I think it's okay, but it takes a lot of getting used to. I'm not a huge fan of it. You cannot save.

Super Mario Land 2

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
1992
Play date
2015
Systems
Game Boy

Now this is a good Game Boy game! Each level feels really interesting and unique from the others, and the final boss and final level are surprisingly intense and challenging! The world design is totally different from the rest of the series, which is much needed. For example, there is a spooky world, and a bee world! That's awesome!! You can save anywhere.

Wario Land 2

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
1998
Play date
2015
Systems
Game Boy

This is one of the best games on the Game Boy, and my second-favourite game in the Mario series. The levels are imaginative and there's so many of them. They manage to be decently challenging despite the enormous difference that Wario cannot die, at all. There is no lives system because there is no death, and this is so cool!!! Nintendo really needs to try more ideas like this in the future. Wario Land 2 changes the way everything is designed and it's so much for the better. Some of the levels are a little tedious to get through, since the alternative to death is walking back and trying again, but those negatives are totally outweighed by the massive positive that is the ridiculous basketball-themed boss fight. I think that 100%ing this game was my second best experience on my Game Boy.

New Super Mario Bros Wii

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
2009
Play date
2012
Systems
Wii

This game is decent, but I don't like it as much as Super Mario World. It feels backwards in several ways, like the designers forgot about a lot of the things they learned while making the previous games in the series. The penguin power-up is very funny and it makes great noises, but it's so easy to lose it and then just be normal again afterwards for the rest of the level :(

Super Mario Galaxy

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
2007
Play date
2012
Systems
Wii

This game is super cute and pretty and fun! I definitely recommend it. I don't have to lot to say about it.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
2010
Play date
2013
Systems
Wii

Fun fact: the code name for this game is SUPER MARIO GALAXY MORE. Which about sums it up. It's more levels, which don't really feel better or worse! It's… more Super Mario Galaxy!

Super Mario Odyssey

Series
Mario platforming
Release date
2017
Play date
2018
Systems
Switch

It's a really fun distraction, and the movement is fantastic. But it also has some flaws. A lot of moons are just lying around in the open, or are obtained through trivial tasks, and feel really lame and cheap to get. Nintendo would have done well to halve the number of available moons, so that the remaining ones have interesting and fulfilling tasks associated with them.

Super Mario Odyssey - It's No Masterpiece, by Joseph Anderson [2:00:00]

The Legend of Zelda

Series
Zelda
Release date
1986
Systems
NES

Although I haven't played them, I have seen a complete playthrough of Zelda 1 and 2, which are full of many hidden objects that would be almost impossible for a casual player to find, and they do not hold up well at all compared with modern video games, especially modern exploratory video games! They also have very little text and I don't feel that they're well connected to the lore of the series at all because of this. So I've seen the whole of those games, but decided that overall I don't really like them.

A Link to the Past

Series
Zelda
Release date
1991
Play date
2014
Systems
SNES

I played the first part of Link To The Past many years ago, and I wasn't enthusiastic about it! A lot of things there didn't make much sense, and I found it more fun to walk around the town and mow down the bushes rather than trying to head for the blinking markers on the map that would achieve my goals. I do remember that I got to the dark world and then stopped playing about 1 minute afterwards. So I played the first part of the game, but overall my conclusion is that I didn't really like it.

Link's Awakening

Series
Zelda
Release date
1993
Play date
2016
Systems
Game Boy

I played Link's Awakening on my real Game Boy a few years ago, when I was about 16 or 17. I liked being able to take the game around with me, and the sword-based combat and the feather item were pretty fun, but the game mechanics were still kind of annoying to play with. I didn't really care for the other power-ups such as the grappling hook, partly because I didn't feel that they were used in interesting ways in terms of the game's design. It was more like, “yay, you have the thing that lets you travel to the next area now”. It would be fun if there was a platforming stage that required you to use the grappling hook to swing around between ceilings, for example! I don't think there was a stage like that. I remember that I got really annoyed by the 6th dungeon, the vertical one, because I couldn't figure out the right place to drop the balls through the floor. I tried it several times, but ultimately I couldn't do, so I stopped playing the game. The text boxes and the font in it were really pretty! Sadly they weren't used to add anything to the wider lore of the series. It was definitely my favourite game that stars Link, and pretty high up when compared to the original Game Boy games. But despite playing almost all of the game, overall my conclusion is that I didn't really like it.

Breath of the Wild

Series
Zelda
Release date
2017
Play date
2021
Systems
Wii U, Switch

I have tried playing Breath Of The Wild twice.

The first time I really couldn't get into it, because I thought that the shrines would be interesting and the combat would be interesting. The shrines were not interesting at all, because they were incredibly short and relied on understanding how objects would interact rather than an actual puzzle, or something that progresses in difficulty. Since the shrines are all totally segregated sub-areas, it would have made a lot of sense for them to be divided into a few difficulty tiers, and then for the game to present shrines of the easier difficulty first, allowing the player to learn more over time as they explore the game! However, they are basically just in a random order, so none of them were allowed to be interesting. I also found the early combat excessively punishing and difficult, since you have so few hearts and since the enemy attacks vary so much in power. The damage taken in this game seems to be very unbalanced, and I dislike the combat a lot as a result! I probably tried seeking out the shrines and combat over all the other parts of the game since the plateau relies heavily on those, and I thought that the main gameplay would be in those factors, but I believe they are actually very weak parts of the game.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to interpret these reasons at the time - I just stopped playing because I felt extremely frustrated a short time after leaving the plateau, and I decided that I didn't really like this game.

I then watched a combined 6.5 hours of video essays about the game.

I recommend both of these videos. They explain which kinds of things are in the game, and discusses in detail which of those things work well and which things work poorly, and why that is the case. surprise, I was seeking out the worse parts of the game all along!

Much later, I started playing the game all over again with a friend to watch me, seeking out exploration more than the shrines or fights. I'm enjoying it a lot more because she has played the game before, so she knows parts of the game that would be exciting or that we should visit together, which is fun! The game doesn't seem to have much of a story either. Despite all the cutscenes at the start and the couple of villages I've visited, nobody has really spoken to Link or even introduced themselves. The overall objective to go to the castle and defeat Ganon remains, but nothing in the game is setting me up for that at all. I haven't played Breath Of The Wild in a while, not since about October or November 2021. Maybe I'll return to it one day.

thoughts on the zelda series in general

I think I should move this to a blog post.

A lot of games that I do really like, such as CrossCode, either market themselves as or have been described be reviewers as being like Zelda in some form or another. I dislike this kind of marketing, because what it means to be "like Zelda" can mean a lot a lot a lot of different things, which means it's not incredibly useful information. It also makes me more apprehensive about whether I will enjoy the game, since I am not a Zelda series fan and am not excited about its games just because they are Zelda games.

Often I will end up liking these games that describe themselves as "like Zelda", though, which leads me to think about what the differences are between Zelda and between these other games. I have noticed that several things which appear to be very commonplace in the Zelda series only and which are absent from other games are the things that I dislike the most about Zelda! For example, the Zelda series lore is exclusive to the Zelda series. Some concept ideas like the general design and layout of the dungeons are also exclusive to the Zelda series. I don't like these things in particular, which means I am more likely to enjoy other games since they do not contain these things.

Really, instead of saying that they are like Zelda, these game designers should allow the thing that they create to stand on its own feet, and be something different from other games, its own thing, even if parts of it were inspired by other games. I think the reason that a lot of developers invoke the name Zelda is because it is a popular series and saying that a game is like it bestows a social value through an imagined form of what people think the games are. I think this is overall harmful to these games.

For example, CrossCode has some design elements that are shared with the Zelda series, such as it being in the RPG genre, and there being locations called dungeons. However, these games are totally different. CrossCode's combat style is much more dynamic and exciting thanks to the combat arts and the ability to seamlessly move between melee and ranged combat; and the fact that each area bestows a permanent character upgrade that is the same, yet different, that you instinctively know how to use. CrossCode is a unique and fantastic game and I think it should stand on its own and be its own thing rather than clinging to the name "Zelda" to chase some of its value and meaning. Comparing yourself and your unique values to a lesser version of someone or something is harmful, and will always put you on the negative side of this comparison.

To draw some sort of conclusion from all this: I'm not a fan of the Zelda series, but I do generally like games that say they are similar. This is because I like RPGs and I like character progression, but I do not like the things which are specific to the Zelda games and only in those games.

Refunct

Release date
2015
Play date
2020
Systems
Computer, Switch
Stores
Steam, Switch

Refunct is a chill single-player 3D platformer for computer and Switch. Everything about it is chill, especially the music. There are no enemies or obstacles. You wander around and touch grass. It's really relaxing; occasionally I play it before bed. You could spend about 30-40 minutes playing on your first time. It's also a really fun speedrun, and the computer version has an achivement for any% faster than 4 minutes, which I have managed to do after finding strategies and practising a lot.

Mind: Path to Thalamus

Release date
2014
Play date
2021
Systems
Computer, Switch
Stores
Steam, Switch

This game made me realise exactly what a walking simulator is and why other people dislike them so much. I didn't find the puzzles, the story, or the walking engaging at all. The worlds were beautiful and the developer could have done so much more with them. For example, they would have been the perfect setting for a new game similar to Myst, if it had situated detailed puzzles within detailed worlds, allowing you to seek out and piece together events that took place in the past. But maybe that's just my Myst special interest making itself known.

I didn't like the way the puzzles were all based on doing things with the environment. For example, some objects only being visible, or some paths only being reachable, when the surroundings are dark or when it's raining. And then stepping in a patch of flowers changes the weather or sun position. It didn't feel tactile, and the bits felt fairly random and disconnected from each other. I solved the puzzles with a strong feeling of frustration rather than wonder and glee.

But people are different and different people like different things. Some other people do like this game. You might be among them! I don't like it, though, and I can't bear to play out the rest of it to see if it gets any better.

Celeste

Release date
2018
Play date
2019
Systems
Computer, Switch
Stores
Itch, Steam, Switch
Bundles
Bundle for Ukraine

wow a trans girl who played celeste, who could have possibly imagined

Celeste is incredibly fun to play. The designers clearly know what makes a platformer fun, and they're not afraid to use that knowledge!!

There is no lives system, and you get a checkpoint each screen (screens are very short!), meaning that each screen can be its own challenge in isolation to practice and overcome. This is in contrast to the Mario platforming series where each level as a whole is the challenge. I think Celeste's approach is much more enjoyable to play!

The core movement is used in so many interesting ways, and just when you think you've completed the game and you know all the movement mechanics, the game shows you a whole new mechanic and opens up even further. You don't gain any abilities through the course of the game, so finding out that a certain movement technique was available the whole time is surprising and awesome.

Celeste has a variety of stages each with their own setting, graphics, music, and difficulty. There is a huge range in difficulty as you go through the game; the bonus stages are incredibly challenging but anybody can overcome them with enough practice and determination!

I won't speak about the story, you can look online if you want to know what the story is like.

Hollow Knight

Release date
2017
Play date
2018
Systems
Computer, Switch
Stores
Steam, Switch

I'm told that Hollow Knight is in the metroidvania genre of games. I haven't played any other games in this genre before or since, so I don't know what it compares to, but I do know that it is really really really good.

As I was playing, I realised that there were so many design pitfalls that a game like this could have fallen into, and I am very pleased to say that Hollow Knight did not fall into any of them. I could have easily gotten lost, walked in circles, and hated everything if the game was a little different, but it gave me barely enough direction to keep me going smoothly while feeling like I had little direction, which was pretty awesome of it.

There's a lot of unique bosses to fight and lots of challenge to be found if you would like to go looking for it.

Inner Tao

Release date
2021
Play date
2021
Systems
Computer
Stores
Itch, Steam
Bundles
Bundle for Ukraine

Inner Tao is a puzzle game about opposite colours. There are light areas and dark areas, and light dots and dark dots. The objective is to get the dots onto their destination spaces, like Sokoban. The catch is that the objects that you play as can move inside the dots, can be pushed around, and the dots can form bridges for you to connect areas and travel between them. It starts simple and gets extremely difficult extremely quickly. I don't think there's many levels (about 20?) but I haven't finished all of them.

The solution to a puzzle might come to you quickly, or you could stare at it for half an hour and get nowhere before the answer suddenly teleports into your mind. It's pretty cool and mind-bending.

osu!

Release date
2007
Play date
2016
Systems
Computer

osu! is a game that I have a strange relationship with. I've played the different modes on-and-off for a few years. The mode that I most got into was osu!mania, but that was for a lack of better VSRGs at the time - see my blog post osu!mania is a bad rhythm game for more details on mania.

The first mode I played was the circles mode when I first discovered the end of the game at the end of 2016, in the heat of summer with the smell of air conditioning in my nose and sore feet from dancing and the feeling of love in my heart. The game and the music were overwhelming and they enveloped me. For a couple of weeks then it was good for me and I enjoyed it. I liked the selection of music I stumbled into - about 20% of that being anime intros - and the addicting and satisfying gameplay and graphics and interface.

But after a few weeks, I began to feel less and less comfortable with the game. My flow didn't feel right. The scoring system began to grate on me. I flipped between game modes and mods. None of it felt right. I wanted to enjoy the game and I couldn't.

Eventually, I played mania instead, but that's another story. It culminated in me placing 13th across Australia and New Zealand in the 2019 tournament, and after that I stopped playing entirely.

In 2022, I got a touchscreen laptop and downloaded lazer on a whim. The new visual style of the game made it feel like it was new again, and brought back waves of those 2016 memories of when I first started playing the game. These feelings didn't last forever, but they were enough for me. Now I just play, offline, whenever I feel like it, and I enjoy myself because I am using a touchscreen and have edited the scoring algorithms.

Wii Sports Resort

Series
Wii simulation
Release date
2009
Play date
2011
Systems
Wii

Read my blog post: Thoughts on Wii Sports Resort

Wii Play

Series
Wii simulation
Release date
2007
Play date
2012
Systems
Wii

Since all of the games were available for two players, I primarily played this game against my siblings, not playing it much at all on my own. I think the best way to play the game is with others because it's so silly, and you can laugh at it together!

Shooting range

This is a decent game. Trying to hit the ducks is really funny because they always come across the screen at the same part of the game, so after you've played a couple of times you'll be able to point the remote in advance when you know that they're coming. Hitting the ducks usually offers a lot more points than whatever activity is happening at the same time, so context switching between balloons or targets and then to the ducks and back again is really funny.

The UFO stage in multiplayer is great because you get points at the end based on how many of your own Miis are left on the field. So whenever a UFO captures one of your friend's Miis, it's best to not aim at it! This makes the game a lot more stressful when you have to identify and hit specific UFOs with their unpredictable movement and within the already tight time limit.

This is a great game to play a couple of times.

Find Mii

I am horrific at Find Mii. I have played it several times and I have lost every single round. The first two stages are okay, but after that, I feel completely blind when I play this game.

Table tennis

You can never hit the ball off the table, you just have to align the remote in order to return it. It's much better to play Wii Sports Resort table tennis, unless you want the dying-from-laughter-because-the-game-is-so-silly factor.

Pose Mii

I like this one more than I should. Nobody else wants to play it with me. I can objectively see that it is a bad game, but something about it draws me.

Maybe it's the picture slideshow that plays in the background of the game that looks like a set of default photo wallpapers on a computer from 2009.

Laser hockey

Like table tennis, this game controls fairly poorly, but under the surface is hidden an actually great chaotic hilarious game. These factors combine to make it the second best game from Wii Play. The ball WILL go in unpredictable directions and you WILL score an own goal while you struggle to aim the wiimote and you WILL laugh and cry.

Push A+B during the countdown to change the shape of your paddle!

Fishing

This game feels like skill but I think it's all luck. I think this could have been good if a little more thought had been put into it. The fish are pretty. It's really really funny to screw over your friends by stealing or scaring the fish that they are helplessly trying to attract. Scores in the fishing game are often totally unbalanced between the players; one person will often win by an overwhelming number of points.

Charge!

I think this is the game that's more fun in singleplayer because it's more about precision compared to multiplayer which means you also have to go faster than the other person and try to bump them out of your way. Bashing down the rows of scarecrows is satisfying enough that this is good alone.

Tanks

Yes! Wii Play Tanks, the game that everyone remembers above the others. It is the final game that you can unlock in Wii Play and it stands out above the others for its exciting gameplay that required patience, strategy, and practice.

There are many different levels, each peppered with a variety of tanks. The behaviour of each tank is based on its appearance, which allows the enemies to be predictable while still behaving independently. It's always really scary when you encounter a new type of tank and you have to discover what it does for the first time!

Unlike most of the other games, it also has a loss condition. When you lose the game, it ends there — winning is what allows you to see more of the levels. This is quite different compared to, for example, shooting range which plays all stages and then tallies the scores at the very end, or laser hockey which is played until one player scores a certain number of points. Unlike the others, Tanks is a game where the challenge is to make it as far as you can into unknown territory, and that's why I think it felt so exciting and different to the other games.

Playing and practising allows you to build up knowledge of how the game is played, such as the behaviour of each kind of enemy tank, how many bullets can be shot at once and how many times they can bounce, which walls are destructible and how they can help you, which spots are easy to camp in to lure the enemies... and so on. Many people think it is the most thoughtful game in Wii Play, and that is justified.

I completely recommend Tanks.

Fast RMX

Release date
2017
Play date
2019
Systems
Switch

Before Fast RMX, the preceding game was called Fast Racing. That sums up the game. You are in a spaceship car sort of thing racing very fast through lush tropical urban areas. And the game works. It's fine. It is enjoyable. I'm about to write about a lot of things that I saw as flaws in the game, but Fast Racing is good enough, particularly for its price. If you like the ideas that the trailer shows, I think you will like the game overall.

Though the game never really drew me in. I don't think it will ever be a well-remembered masterpiece, and I reckon that's partially due to the memorability of the courses. Due to the stunning and realistic graphics, the courses are all visually different... yet they are all the same. In Mario Kart, all the courses are totally distinct and feel unique because of the scenery; the scenery makes the course what it is. In Fast Racing, while the scenery of the courses can be distinguished by things being different colours and heights, that's about the extent of it. Because you're moving so fast, all the scenery is so far away from the course so that you can actually take it in. It's all part of the background, none of the decoration comes close to the foreground to be distinguishable and recognisable. It's all a blur.

The steering part of the gameplay, a core piece of any racing game, is also not ideal. Going very fast all the time means that the game can't really through sharp corners at you. Some corners are banked, which can make it effectively sharp on the map, but not feel sharp while you're driving it, a similar flaw to Mario Kart 8's anti-gravity.

Lacking distinctive gameplay, distinctive names, and distinctive scenery, the courses all blend together. "Oh, which one was the snow one?" you might be asked by the person next to you. You don't know. "What were your favourite courses?" you might be asked by another. You can remember some of the courses, like the raining overgrown one and the ones with burners that spin you out, but you don't know their names and you don't know why they're better than the others. All you know is that those couple of courses have one unique foreground element that makes them stand out from the others.

While the game does have multiplayer, its speed is a disadvantage here. The realistic graphics and motion blur makes each feature blend and leak into itself, making it hard to know what is happening. You are playing but you lose the substance. Another Mario Kart comparison: the solid colours and large contrast involved in Mario Kart's art style makes it easy to distinguish what the course is doing and where the next turn is, unlike in this game.

To write about soon...

Mario Kart series, (double dash 2007, wii 2017, mk8 2019) Wonderland series (first played when I got the collection disc, adventures in 2007 then a year after disc, potz 2022), kirby series (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8xh-pj4jmk), other wii games (fever 2017), game boy games, ios games (labyrinth 2), minecraft...

A seal on a cushion spinning a globe on its nose.
Another seal. They are friends!