jah.

I can say that I started this year at a pretty high level, when it comes to beating my backlog… Throughout entire January I’ve beaten 17 games (for comparison in 2023 I finished 38 games…). This is actually a result, of my New Years Resolution. I never did any of those, but this year I made some, and they mainly revolved around games :D
The first one, as you can see, was to play as much of my games as possible. I just figured that I have 1000+ games that I never even downloaded, and many of them are few hours long. So this way I managed to set my record for now.
The second one was revolved around what I want to play. And this comes to two “genres” - classics that I’ve never played (and that’s embarasing) and AAA games for which I have to devote several dozen of hours. I prefer to play small indie games, just because they always felt more innovative for me. And even though I mainly played puzzle games that lasted for 2-4 hours, I’ve found my way and started Horizon: Zero Dawn.
The last one is probably my favourite - play genres that I don’t like/never played before. This could sound dumb, but I actually love to expand my horizons and try new stuff. I started doing it with movies, few years ago, and now, I want to explore those unknown games (to me)

Best game this month:

Half-Life 2
And they say the third parts are always the worst...

The Room Three

84%
5 hours
10 of 10 achievements

I actually played the whole series and I think all of the games were great, but I had to focus on one of them, so here we go. In my opinion, here's were it all peaked.
While playing and completing puzzles throughout first three parts of the series, I felt progress in pretty much every issue. This small indie team somehow managed to create really pretty game(s), with one of the best puzzles I've ever seen, and even added interesting story to all of it. I mean, I've beaten four games, back to back, and still, wanted more… I don't want to say anything more, because there's not much to add. I just want to recommend all of these games to puzzle lovers and people who love escape rooms :D

Worst game this month

Half-Life 2
Kinda cringey, but even worse, the game is just below mediocre

Coffee Crisis

46%
2.5 hours
43 of 48 achievements

Ok, again I do that thing, where I pick not the worst rated game, but I'm doing it intentionally. Why I picked that one? The answer is easy - the only worse game I played was Pixel Puzzles 2: Christmas, so so there wouldn't be much to say.
But with this one, sadly, there is… This game was just really dull, unnecessarily too difficult, and mostly unfunny. It tried to replicate the feeling of a great retro classic (the team even made a version for Sega Genesis) but the result is just not worth playing. Or maybe they thought that inaccurate hitboxes, basic attacks that drain your HP and poor controls is "the retro vibe"… I don't know… I love retro games, but this was just a waste of my time.

Biggest positive suprise:

Half-Life 2
Zootopia + Sin City = <3

Chicken Police

75%
10.4 hours
31 of 31 achievements

While I picked this game, I just wanted to get rid of another one of my forgotten games from some random bundle. It didn't look promising. Visual novel (that I never liked) with a bunch of animals (so immediately furry alert for me) and probably unoriginal, unimpressive noir story. I was wrong.
Yeah, my least liked video game genre is probably visual novels… Sorry… But, as I said in my introduction, I want to explore new grounds, even those that I'm not particularly fond of. And for my obvious suprise, the best VN I've ever played is a detective story with hyperrealistic chicken detectives, set in some alternate humanoid-animal world. Ok, this game still has the same issue I have with every other novel - the gameplay is mostly clicking to see another dialogue line. BUT. This time the whole story was just really good. As a person who is interested in cinema, I always pay attention to the script first (so the biggest thing that every VN has to offer). So, somehow, this absurd story had not only great and interesting characters, a believable world, but even plot twists that I didn't expect and moments where I really laughed to myself.
To everyone who is reading this - please recommend me the best VN that you've ever played. Maybe I won't play it next month, but I want to experience the best this genre has to offer (and as you can see, I think, I didn't start really lofty :D).

Biggest negative suprise:

Half-Life 2
I don't want to limit myself to only my favorite genres

If Found

57%
2.6 hours
15 of 15 achievements

Ok, I just said I don't like VN, and now I say that this one is one of the worst games I played this month… Some of you will hate me for this, but hear me out.
This game is about really hard topics. There is no weird story about some random animal detectives, like before, but this time it's all about real life struggle for many people. I'm not, and never was in any similar position, but it shouldn't influence my perception of any video game, movie, etc. Of course, I won't "feel" what some of the people would, but I just can be analyzing every part of the work I'm just dealing with. So, I think there were a few good things about it, like the way of telling the whole story, many interesting characters, and more, but there were more things, that decided on the final reception of the entire game.. My biggest issue with this is that it didn't feel realistic for me. Don't get me wrong, I know many people could relate to this story, but for me, this story itself doesn't seem "believable". It is set in 1993, but everything and everyone looks, sounds and feels like they were today's teenagers from today's reality. Maybe I'm talking nonsense, but living in pretty similliar country when it comes to values (game is set in Ireland and I'm from Poland), I just felt more like reading someones fanfic about living in the 90s or some teenager's/young adult. present-day diary.

Summary:

Jaded

Wow congratulations on so much progress this month!

jah.

Thanks, I’ll try to keep up with the tempo, this month too :D

Zelrune

Congratulations on your assassinations!! ᓚᘏᗢ
Woah you were busy!!! I also loved The Room series, also Horizon Zero Dawn! Are you looking forward to playing any specific game in February?

jah.

I mean, I’ll probably still be doing mostly short games just to keep the good pace, but above all, I want to complete or just beat Horizon. I don’t know if I’ll do it, but next on my list will probably be some classic I wanted to play (so when it comes to longer games I’ll do them like: AAA-classic-AAA-classic…). I was thinking about GTA 3 or first Hitman, just to keep it “not that long”. Next on my list are games like first Fallout and Baldur’s Gate, so I’ll probably spend a bit more time with them :D

Flygonite

hello I read “recommend me visual novels” so I am here to shill games you have not heard of

MAMIYA is a heavy but beautiful mystery of “what the heck is going on and how do we fix it”, with painfully human characters and brilliant writing that lets you piece together parts of the puzzle before showing the answers

Because We’re Here is “what if all quiet on the western front but you can kiss the homies goodnight”; it’s a romance set in fictional wwi where your choices will not change the broader narrative (which means you can also opt to take the non-romantic route to read it as strictly platonic). it’s emotionally harrowing and crushingly hilarious with some of the most perfect comedic timing I’ve ever seen

Gnosia is single player space mafia that has you actually playing the social deduction game about as much as you read the visual novel; it’s not as linear or strictly narratively driven as other games but it has an extremely lovable cast in a neat setting and I’ll definitely recommend it in the same breath as the other two games here

but for a more mainstream recommendation, purists might not count Ace Attorney as a vn but if you haven’t ever tried it I will definitely recommend you give the trilogy a whirl; it definitely deserves its renown

jah.

Thanks a lot for those recommendations! I think MAMIYA is the most likely to appeal to me, but I’ll try to check all of them!

And yeah, Ace Attorney games are VN for me :D I like detective games and this always gave me that vibe, so I’ll probably play one of them if there’ll be some good discount (or maybe bundle…)