Haven't updated for a while. Only reason I'm still on track is plenty of short games.
6. Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (17 h, ★★★). Y'know Nintendo, when people are already complaining that your menus are too long to scroll through, maybe don't make 3 different types of pots echo-able? Was that really necessary? To be honest, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Exploring the overworld was pretty fun. And they managed to make dungeons feel unique, not just in their environments but in their style. Some were more actiony, some puzzly, some explorery. The weakest part, unsurprisingly, was combat (and echoes in general). It is very hard with these games to avoid complacency. To simply find one thing that works and just use it over and over. Guess what I did?
7. Nine Years of Shadows (9h, ★★). A game of highs and lows. Background art is beautiful, but the color motif means the hero and the enemies are all highlighted in garish colors. The heal mechanic is unique, but means that you are usually safe from ever dying, but can get caught in a miserable spot and die from nothing if you are unlucky. Traversal is varied and generally fun, but there are minimal warp zones and regenerating "big" enemies means backtracking can get tedious. And most importantly, there are a ton of varied bosses, which is cool, but enemies are bullet sponges in the game. If you don't complete the big, main sidequest, the final boss will take ~500 hits before going down, and no, that's not an exaggeration. Even with your enhanced weapon it is still ~200 hits.
8. Love (0.5h, ★). It's short. It's relatively easy for a precision platformer. It's very basic. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad though. The locations are unique. There's two unique mechanics: building checkpoints whenever you want and having the ability to slow down time whenever you want. And, being short, it's easy to replay and try to be perfect if that's your thing.
9. Love 2 kuso (0.5h, ★). See above. Seriously, this is a very iterative sequel.
10. Love 3 (1h, ★★). They stared to do something different here, which was probably needed. Yeah, it's the same sort of game and the same sort of presentation, but the best thing about it was that they didn't bother to slowly build up the challenge here; it was present from the start. Which may not sound like much, but when your game is so short you shouldn't bother wasting time with a gentle transition into the game. Unfortunately, the balloon/rocket/whatever mechanic was not very precise, which made life a little bit challenging for a precision platformer. But other than that, it was definitely preferable to the first two.
11. The Talos Principle (14h, ★★★). Why does every first person puzzle game need some pretentious pseudophilosophical story, usually depressing, to go with it? Why can't we just go through 100 rooms of puzzles in peace? Honestly, it doesn't bother me much (after immediately realizing that the random terminals were only for plot purposes and not anything useful, I freely ignored them to make my experience smoother). The annoying part was the focus on atmosphere, which led to very large, samey environments that I got lost in (seriously, I am not good at maneuvering around 3D environments in first person). But even there, the game helped you out with friendly signs that magically crossed off the location if you completed the puzzle. As for the puzzles themselves, the best thing about them is that they were willing to throw in red herrings. Some of these games are relatively simple, where you only need to work backwards to place all pieces together in the precise order. But here, there are pieces you may not need, which can throw you off your game. The worst part, though, is that you might accidentally think your solution is wrong when, in reality, you didn't place your laser reflector beam thingy in the exact right place...
12. Advance Wars [Reboot Camp] (14h, ★★★). That was pretty solid, and surprisingly somewhat challenging. I'm not sure if it's perfectly balanced though. A few CO's having added bonuses that dramatically increase your direct firepower makes some of the others a bit superfluous. Andy was practically worthless in the last battle. It did end up being an enjoyable experience besides that, and I'll be playing the second one eventually.
13. Donkey Kong 94 (3h, ★★★★). Nintendo nice enough to offer an online trial the same day they release the best Gameboy game ever? Sign me up! And yes, this is the best, as it really played to the system's weakness. Screen space so small? Make the sprites really small so that we can see more space rather than the Metroid and Mega-Man approach of practically playing the game blind. Fast gameplay doesn't work due to hardware? Make it slow, but give a variety of different types of jumps to keep the game varied. Focus on puzzles and planning out how to get from here to there rather than fast reactions. And to give the game a sense of value while still recognizing the GB's mobile status, make a ton of levels, but break them up into easily manageable 4-level chunks. Awesome. A bit easier than I remembered though. I hit 99 lives by World 7 I think.
14. Super Mario World (4h, ★★★★). My first time with a 96 exit playthrough. Mario 3 is still better.
15. Legend of Zelda (3h, ★★★★★). Decided to go for the Second Quest in this year's playthrough. Haven't done that in a while. Oddly, I had a serious key deficiency throughout the entire game. I don't remember that being a big deal in previous playthroughs; really slowed me down.
16. Super Mario Kart (2h, ★★★). Decided to come back to this one for a lark. Wow, those levels are short. Kinda weird to see how basic it is compared to what it is now. Items were so limited; almost nothing was actually helpful! I still like the coins though. Pretty cool that they finally brought them back.
TuFaN nice write up. Lies of P is in my backlog for this year. I'm curious though. Is there a heavy focus on parrying? I love the Souls games, but Sekiro was too much for me.
