CRAFT BEETLE
GAMES
Here live some of my thoughts on the games I have completed or played enough of. Sometimes I have a lot to say about the games I spend hours playing. Sometimes I play a game for a few hours, think it's neat, and put it down forever.
2024
20 Minutes Till Dawn
Let me start off by saying that I did in fact play this game for more than 20 minutes, but I did not
beat it. It's a Vampire Survivor like with pretty good gameplay but not anything I expect to be
replaying any time soon. It's good at what it set out to do but seeing as I have not played Vampire
Survivor, I've got no idea if it's as good at what seems like the gold standard.
BPM: Bullets Per Minute
BPM is really odd in that I understood it to be a rhythm game like Hi-Fi Rush so I started out
trying to get all my actions to line up to the rhythm and I struggled. Then I gave up on that and
just played it as a regular FPS, shooting and jumping and dashing whenever I want and I did much
better. I had a fun time with it, but with it's main gimmick so weak I'm not hooked.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
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HITMAN: World of Assassination
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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun
The aesthetic and presentation are on point but the gameplay is lacking. It may just be that I am
not into boomer shooters but I often find myself either lost or bored of the repetitive gameplay. It
may be accurate for a boomer shooter to have generic enemy AI and a simplistic world design but it
doesn't excuse the lack of fun. If it weren't for the presentation and general polish, I would say
this is a mediocre game getting propped up by the 40K IP.
Axiom Verge
I think this game may be too retro for me. I wasn't playing games when the first Metro games were
popular so I don't have any nostalgia for this. Unfortunately, it did not click for me.
Cyberpunk 2077
I have to admit I was a huge hater when this game came out. I had absolutely no hype for it,
didn't watch any trailers and new very little about it. So to me, all I saw was a game
struggling and floundering, and developer promises broken and a poor product sold at full price.
I wrote the game off and moved on. Fast forward to the 2.1 patch. On a whim I broke my promise
of never playing this game and bought it and the DLC on sale. Little did I know the game would
become one of my favorites of all time. I think it really helped that I didn't have any
expectation for the game, I know a lot of people expected an RPG with dialogue and decisions and
character progression, and of course were disappointed with a mostly linear game. Meanwhile I
came in expecting to shoot a bunch of goons for about 10 hours and was happily surprised with
100 hrs of beautiful realistic and well acted characters, a compelling story, and very fun
gameplay. Johnny Silverhand lives rent free in my head.
Monument Valley
A cute little game kill a few hours. None of the puzzles were stumpers but the vibes were clean
and it didn't overstay its welcome. I also played the bonus levels and found them to be about
the same. I first learned about this game from House of Cards. That did not age well, but the
game was good enough to survive that hit.
Downwell
I played a bit of Downwell on Play Pass. I found it to be okay, nothing compelling. Obviously
it's only meant to be a little mini game but it didn't have the draw found in Flappy Bird or
2048.
Slay The Spire
I played this game in short bursts on my phone over the course of a week. I think that is really
what it was designed for, I can't image sitting down at a computer and focusing on it. The
mechanics have enough depth to be engrossing until the end of the game. I slew the spire and
unlocked all 4 characters, though The Silent was my favorite and was the one I used to beat the
game. Overall a very enjoyable experience.
Final Fantasy Tactics
A foundational game with absolutely beautiful artwork and animations. I would watch an
un-narrated long-play of this game just to follow the story. Though I do not have much patience
for the difficulty mainly due to the clunky interface and slow time to get back in the fight. I
have played hours of this game and enjoyed them but I have to put it down.
Sifu
I had a passing interest in the game and finally decided to pick it up after Jacob Geller made a
video about it. It has such an amazing progression, from the episodic aging to the true ending.
I started out as I assume most do, running around getting hit, dying, barely making it through
levels. But as I got better at the game I slowly mastered the flow of bait and punish, as well
as the rush and strike. I easily made it through large portions of the game untouched and
finally finished the game first in the bad ending and then the good. The bonus stages were also
a blast. In a strange turn of events, this game caused me to want to play Sekiro. I needed more
of that beautiful parrying gameplay.
Side note: I played on Linux and experienced a GPU memory leak. The game would get progressively
slower until it became a slide show and I had to reboot it. I finally found the cause in one of
the graphics settings and it was fixed.
2023
Baldur's Gate III
Thinking...
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
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2022
Elden Ring
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2021
ABZร
Beautiful and accurate sea life. I enjoy a good aquarium and I've been to one of the world's largest
as can be seen in my critters page. But it always feels wrong to observe an animal in captivity,
clearly they are not meant to be where we have put them, and so they will never behave how they
truly would in their natural environment. ABZร attempted, and I would argue succeeded, in letting
you
unobtrusively observe aquatic environments up close and personal. It will never be at good as deep
sea diving, but I don't intend on ever doing that so this is more than good enough. Highly recommend
to all.
Hollow Knight
When I first played hollow knight it didn't click at all. I don't think I even made it past False
Knight. Then I didn't play the game for years until I stumbled upon it once more in my Steam library
and decided to give it another shot. That was the beginning of what became an over %100 completion
run and some speed runs. I really love this game, it just sounds and looks and plays so right. You
may have noticed that I liked the game so much that I themed the whole website around it. Wild.
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
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Going Under
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Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
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2020
SUPERHOT
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Shadow Tactics - Blades of the Shogun
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Warhammer 40,000 - Space Marine
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Disco Elysium
Hands down one of my favorite games of all time. My first playthrough was absolutely blind and I
found the game completely enchanting. The voices, the painterly aesthetic, the characters and
choices that affect them. I loved every bit. Then I played it again and found even more to love.
This game and it's amazing writing has concretely changed me as a person.
2019
2018
2017
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
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XCOM 2
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2016
Metal Slug 3
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Fallout 3
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2015
Batman: Arkham City
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The Stanley Parable
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Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
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Fallout: New Vegas
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2014
The Darkness II
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Goat Simulator
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Kingdom Rush
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
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Deadly 30
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Batman: Arkham Asylum
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2013
Hotline Miami
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Other
Borderlands 2
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Carrion
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Frostpunk
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Ghost of Tsushima
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Metro 2033
I never play horror games but this one is something different. Maybe it's more horror themed action?
Whatever the category, it is one of my favorite games, especially having played it the first time on
the hardest difficulty. I got into a flow where I knew exactly how many bullets each one of my guns
had and how much time I had on my air filters. No UI, extreme difficulty, amazing game.
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
Thinking...
Saints Row: The Third
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Shadowrun: Dragonfall
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Shovel Knight
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
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The Last of Us
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Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
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XCOM: Enemy Unknown
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