Top Games I Played in 2021

         2021 was a pretty good year. Looking back on it, a lot of my favorite game series either had their old games re-released or had completely entries. finally come out. It was a really damn good year for smhups. These aren't included in this years list but amazing Cave games like Espgaluda II, Mushihimesama, and even Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu came out for the Switch thanks to LiveWire. And towards the end of the year we got awesome stuff like Ilvello Swamp + Radirgy Swag's physical release that comes with both games. And then of course there was the recently release compilation of Deathsmiles I & II by City Connection! Some other notable shmup releases were Eschatos on the switch, one of my favorites (I hope Qute ports over their other games and R-Type Final 2, a new entry in a landmark series. Oh and Darius Cozmic Revelation which included a HD port of G-Darius and and Dariusburst. This was honestly an amazing year for shmup releases, and I even managed to get invested into a new series. The Smash DLC came to a bittersweet end, and while Ryu Hayabusa didn't make it, I'm grateful to Sakurai for adding in Pyra and Mythra! There was a lot of stuff I didn't get to follow up on through out the year and I'm still lagging behind a bit, but I think this was a strong year for games as a whole, even if you take some of the more modern and mainstream games into account There's actually a pretty good amount of games I need to catch up on and finished, and some new ones that I'm looking forward to. Sorry that this post is several days late, some stuff prevented me from finishing ahead of time.

Top Games I Played in 2020

    I think it's fair to say that 2020 has been a tough year for pretty much everyone. Coronavirus, millions of jobs lost, people dying etc. It really sucks, and even though times are tough, you just gotta move on, toughen up and survive. Because of the virus, at least everyone got to stay home and hopefully play tons of video games or watch anime idk. I've been trying to stay positive this year as much as I can, I'm not depressed or anything, but it really sucked when i couldn't see my best friend for about 3 months because people couldn't risk getting sick from going outside. That really sucked but it honestly wasn't the worst of it, I'll talk about it later in the post as I don't wanna sour the mood. That being said let's get right into the games I enjoyed this year.

Top Games I Played in 2019 (plus extra stuff)

     

   Alright so now 2019 is coming to a close, and there were a shit ton of games that came out. I played a bunch of games this year, a lot of old ones as usual, but I've also been playing the Switch a lot, at the moment, it's probably my main system that I play on for now. It can be played in both handheld mode and TV mode so for me and with my job, it's extremely convenient for me, I can play games at work lmao. After over half a year of working in my profession, I finally got a goddamn permanent spot, so now I can just sit on my ass and chill during overnight shifts.

 Oh right, this year I'd say was pretty huge for me, as I went to Japan for a month during the summer. Not only that but in Japan I visited a bunch of arcades and played a lot of shooting games and some fighting games. I visited Osaka, Tokyo and Kyoto and it was fun the entire time! Oh shit AND I EVEN PLAYED F-ZERO AX!! I actually found it, and it was fucking awesome! If you ever visit Japan, Tokyo specifically, go to Shinjuku and VISIT MIKADO GAME CENTER! It has Daytona USA/F-Zero GX/Space Harrier/Street Fighter III 3rd Strike/Virtua Fighter 2 etc. And while I was in Japan, I managed to find a pretty good amount of JP switch games, as well as some stuff for the Wii (unfortunately I couldn't find Rena, the cat game...) A bunch of stuff happened while in Japan, so I should probably make a full post about it soon. (Probably should've done that like 4-5 months ago...can you believe it's already been half a year since I went to Japan, shits crazy man...)

Anyways it's probably a good idea to get started and present the highlights the year, there's a lot this year, so that means I need to write a bunch.

Top Games I Played in 2018 (Plus bonus stuff)

2018 was a pretty long and transitional year for me. I went through a lot of personal shit and I'd say that my life has changed for the better. I have a good job and I can finally buy some games for myself.

These are just some of the games I had a lot of fun playing, most of which (the 1 player games mainly) I've managed to finish by the time I've made this list. It's been forever since I last made a post, back when I made the NieR Automata review From The Stack, but yeah I'm gonna obviously make more written reviews eventually.

From The Stack: NieR: Automata review

Game: NieR: Automata
Developer: PlatinumGames
Publisher: Square Enix
Release: 2017-2018
System: PS4/PC/XB1
Genre: Action RPG

This is game I didn't expect to get so invested in. I remember everyone obsessing over it last year, and 2B's ass being all over twitter, and it kinda turned me off from wanting to play because it was getting nothing but universal praise that I felt at the time was just blind hype. Well after beating the original at least once (first ending) I thought it was a really fun game. I liked all the main characters, Nier himself, Grimoire Weiss, Emil and of course Kaine. They were all memorable and the overall story was easy to follow and I was invested. So after waiting a while, up until recently, I decided to actually play the second game, NieR Automata. Only warning is I'll probably be discussing spoilers at the end of the review, but I'll provide my overall thoughts before the spoiler section.

Top Games I Played in 2017

It's the end of the year, and I played a lot of games. There's gonna be some honorable mentions this time, either due to not being very far, or feeling like I'm gonna need to play more to see if it can qualify for this list or the list for next year. There's probably gonna be some obvious ones in here, but there's probably some surprises as well.

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions Review - I don't know what to add here

     Before we start the review:

 So Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga remake got leaked like a week or 2 ahead of its release, and I decided to play it. Since the original version on GBA is one of my favorite games ever, I was pretty skeptical and worried that they would fuck it up in one way or another. Long story short, they actually didn't. The original Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga was released in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance and it's a game that's very near and dear to me, I grew up with the game, I even got it when it first released, so in regards to the remake, I think I can talk about it pretty thoroughly since I'm a big fan. Seeing as the game was a part of my childhood, I have replayed it a few times recently, so I'm making sure this isn't gonna be full of nostalgia. (Also, I didn't care enough about the Bowser's Minions mode in the game, so I'm not covering it here) Okay, now for the actual thing.