Dark Souls 2: This was an entirely miserable gameplay experience. But it’s not actually all that challenging, due to its completely broken healing system that allows you to purchase 99 life gems at all times. And I could not give you a single positive in its favor. Nor a solitary reason why I played it until I reached its end credits. (Besides the fact that I was playing it with someone else.)

Bloodborne: This game is heavily carried by its beautifully bleak art design, and the usually satisfying combat. But so many of the bosses in this game are far too easy and unsatisfying to defeat. (Especially compared to what you have to do to get to them.) The chalice dungeons absolutely suck. And the end game areas feel like a chore to get through. (I think Elden Ring does almost everything better. Even if I’ve played that game thrice as long, and still haven’t finished it yet.)

Dead Cells: This game makes me wish that other games had the same smooth and responsive combat that it has. “Hard but fair” might even describe this game better than most of the souls-likes. (And the updates only made this game better.) So…it makes me wonder if I’ll ever truly “get into” a roguelike, when my reward for beating the game is doing it all over again…

Titanfall 2 (Campaign): One of the best FPS campaigns that I’ve played. (Short of a list as that might be.) My only critique is that it’s a bit short, and its “plot” leaves room for a sequel that we’ll probably never see. (Its time travel gimmick was also something I’d have loved to see a whole game of.)

Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom: A surprisingly challenging experience that kept trying to “one-up” its difficulty (in the latter half) to the point of me being happy that it was finally over. But it still deserves an overall positive rating.

A Hat In Time: Collect-a-thons have never been a genre pick of mine. But I had a decent time throughout. The game had plenty of ideas to keep things from getting repetitive. (Though some levels were much less fun to play than others.) But the default camera was pretty bad in this one. (And even the zoomed-out one had its problems.)

Dust An Elysian Tail: It was a decent experience. Despite having an easily exploitable combat system, and a story that wasn’t particularly engaging. This felt nice to complete after it kept crashing on my PS4. (Though the f*cker still hard crashed on me after a near end game cutscene, and nearly soft-locked me when it respawned me inside of the floor.)

Carto: The 2nd half of this puzzle game was more challenging. (Usually through more obtuse trial and error.) But it also drags on for far too long, and there’s way too much uninteresting dialogue to sit through. This one wasn’t worth getting through.

Journey: I usually like walking simulators. (Like the next two games that were probably inspired by this.) But this one felt a bit dull and unsatisfying to play by the end credits. And the gimmick of ‘anonymous co-op’ felt fake to me. The music was nice though, I guess.

Spirit Of The North: I enjoyed my time with this one. Despite its clunky platforming controls and minimal puzzle gameplay. (With the added cute bonus of my cat watching the little barking fox that I was playing on screen.)

Omno: This one had a lot of charm. (With a lot of creatures roaming about through its stages and little cutscenes where you ride large ones to the next stage.) Though its conclusion feels half-baked and doesn’t have the same impact. (Since it feels like whatever the hell I was doing didn’t matter in the end.)

Journey To The Savage Planet: This ‘metroidvania’ platformer with oddball humor *almost* worked for me. (Even if half of the jokes are basically “boomers amirite”.) Though I only got about halfway through it, before the poor combat and awful fetch quests annoyed me too much.

Dodgeball Academa: A mix of modern cartoon antics and Pokemon sport battles that got way too repetitive for me to complete. And the “always trying to be funny” dialogue in this is pretty bad too. Stopped halfway through.

Ghostrunner: I want to like this game. It’s certainly not a bad one. But the default controls could not feel any less intuitive if it tried. And switching them only made me play long enough to wish that I had this on PC instead. (And I feel like the game isn’t quite tight and responsive enough to be so punishing.) Made the mistake of changing options in the middle of level 3, and it made me start all over again.

Momodora Reverie Under The Moonlight: I gave this one a longer try, and I still didn’t like much about it. The difficulty is all over the place, and the game not saving huge portions of map exploration on death was a huge pain in the ass.

Rogue Legacy 2: One of those games that I’m glad I played “for free”, instead of paying full price for it. The amount of contact damage you get from off-screen enemies is beyond cheap. But I didn’t want to simply “turn it off” in the house rules that it has. (Since it self claimed that it was a significant portion of its challenge. Or something to that effect.) Plus it felt worse to play than Dead Cells in basically every way.

COD Cold War (Multiplayer Zombies Mode only): The amount of grinding expected from you to unlock some of the basic functions of your game is a little outrageous. And I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a game with such a broken multiplayer/party function in recent memory. Closed parties don’t work properly, and the game will constantly reset your options on you. (For instance, I would limit my players to me and friend (2), and it would keep resetting it to four players no matter what I did.) And until I realized that I needed to use “private matches” specifically, it partied our newbie rank accounts with impossibly high level accounts that absolutely skewed and broke the game balance for us. So while it was fun to kill a health sponge boss with a friend, it’s vastly inferior to games like Warframe or Destiny 2.

Ghost Of Tsushima: The game is very pretty and all. But this is literally every single Ubisoft game that has ever existed. With a slightly more in-depth and challenging combat system, that I suppose *is* an improvement. Though I did not see the appeal to play this for fifty hours.

Immortal Fenyx Rising: The fact that this is lauded and compared positively to Breath Of The Wild is fucking hilarious to me. (And that’s coming from someone who feels no fondness for that game.) This game controls like dogs*t. The cutscenes and voice acting are laughably bad. And I was genuinely questioning my sanity when it introduced and encouraged me to find “points of interests” on a perch, and it had like a hundred fucking tiny objects for me to play “hot and cold” with. Probably one of the worst starts to a game that I’ve played this year.

Forager: Certainly addictive for a short period of time. But this is basically a mobile idle-clicker game, without any microtransactions.

Children Of Morta: Expected Diablo-like combat, and got an incredibly clunky roguelite instead.

Bloodstained Ritual Of The Night: Was getting “Ender Lilies” vibes from the bullshit encounter with the first boss, and I just decided to play something else.

Demon Souls (Remastered): Only a dozen or so plus hours into this, and I’m feeling the brick wall potential that “world tendency” is providing. The game is more enjoyable to play than Dark Souls 2. (Least as the OP-feeling mage class.) But it has a lot of the same flaws too. Though I haven’t given up yet, and I’m now in the “Guess I’ll grind” stage. (Though a lot of other games have been played instead. Even more than this list portrays.)

Kena Bridge Of Spirits: The cutscenes and dialogue in this would make it seem like this game is for babies. But the bosses (and basic enemies) will kill you in a few (usually two to four) hits. So I don’t know if pushing myself through this game, just to listen to more of these Minion-level cutscenes, would be worth the time investment.

The Forgotten City (Switch to my PS5): I was enjoying the intrigue that the narrative provided. But the load times for my PC were genuinely terrible. (Probably my own bad.) But it’s free on Extra, so I could always find out and redo my adventure from here.