Year Plans 2024: What I've Missed

Last year, I made a list like this, going over all the games I had planned to cover during the year but didn’t; that meant playing roughly an hour of each of them, and collecting my “first impressions” (by default of not having enough time to play through their entirety, like I try to for regular reviews) into a single article.

I thought I had done poorly this year, but no – when compared to 2023, where I had 14 games I hadn’t played through, this time around I have 17, which… yeah, it’s more, but it’s not that much more. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t hit my goals, but then again – I did overshoot while setting up my Year Plans. I won’t explain my method in depth, but it’s more than just “roll for a random number”. As usual, I’ll be setting this up in time for my retrospective, next week.

One thing I noticed when going back over the titles I didn’t play this year: I had a lot of RPGs in there. When I was picking these games, I also stumbled on a few two-game franchises and put the whole franchise in there to make it simple. So yeah, I had a lot of stuff to check out. Opening with…

The variety

Wait till they toss in bugs! And fire! And MORE!

Starting with a funny puzzle game (that I had almost forgotten about!), Girls Like Robots is a creation of Popcannibal. In this game from 2014, we seat girls, robots, nerds and various other characters (with the loadout changing at every chapter) to reach as much happiness as possible. Girls love to sit next to robots, but a robot cannot stand being surrounded by four girls. Nerds like edges, corners, and robots, but girls don’t like them. Girls and nerds like pie, but robots don’t! New requests, character interactions, and rules get added regularly to shake things up. It’s fun, and gets surprisingly tricky even an hour in.

It's a lot to keep track of. Good luck in these...
interesting times.

The second game is Not For Broadcast, a Full motion video game from NotGames. You got volunteered to man the editing booth at the local TV station in a country in turmoil. You take care of maintaining an audience while following the basic rules of television. Keep the camera on who’s talking, with occasional glances at other people; cut to breaks on time; bleep out curse words; keep the transmission working; choose the ads; and so on. On and off air (where you make choices for your character’s personal life), your decisions will impact what happens afterwards. That one is stressful, but it's a unique experience, and the FMV adds something special to it.

It ain't easy being the kid of the God of the Underworld.

Then, Supergiant Games’ Hades, one of the roguelikes I’ve heard the most about these past few years but never got to pick up. You play as Zagreus, the son of the God of the Underworld, who yearns for freedom outside of his father’s realm. Hades ain’t so keen on that, but the remainder of the Greek pantheon is a lot more eager to lend a hand, providing Zagreus with skills based on their respective areas of expertise. To escape the Underworld, Zagreus needs to go through the Tartarus and find the exit, but the challenges ahead are too much for his current abilities… The game is mainly a roguelike, but the story progresses every time you return home after death, which is a novel concept for the genre.

Gee, they're practically walking over each other trying to
land a hit on the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Last but not least in the Others category, Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. Earlier in the year, I tried playing it and recording my playthrough, but my PC crashed every time. After I got my PC corrected, I still feared trying it again – but the hour I played for this article went fine. This open world lets you take to the skies of New York as the famous webslinger, beating mobsters and helping the police. Obviously, a single hour doesn’t give me a lot to talk about, but it was a fantastic introduction. Lots of controls to remember, I’ll probably need to redo that hour when I finally get to give this one a full playthrough. Legit mad my PC issues made me skip out on this one. Who knows, maybe next year.

The platformers

When I was setting up my Year Plans, my system landed me on Psychonauts 2 and Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, so I added both games’ prior entries as well.

The first level looks like it could be the last.

In Double Fine’s Psychonauts, released in 2005, we follow Razputin “Raz” Aquato, a kid who joins a training camp for psychics where they can develop their powers, aided by mentors. The character designs are funky. Raz and the other kids have a plethora of abilities to learn and train, but the game is better known for its main setting: The broken minds visited by Raz, the headspaces taking the shape of bizarre, themed worlds. Most of the mechanics are puns on mental stuff. Double Fine’s brand of zany humor is present and adds its charm to the whole thing. It’s a quirky platformer with a fun concept and a great atmosphere, and yeah, when I'll go back to it, I’ll be very happy to do so.

It's only going to get more unsettling from there, isn't it.

Psychonauts 2 resumes where the first left off, with a long intro spoiling a ton of elements from the previous entry. I know too much now. The introductory level here pulls us into the continuation, and it’s just as zany, combining an office and… a mouth??? We’re thrown into it with most of the abilities I hadn’t learned yet in the predecessor, so it was a bit of a learning curve. The sixteen-year jump between entries is noticeable, with major upgrades not just to the graphical style, but also to how the story is delivered, and how the gameplay is presented. I’d dare say that I liked this one even more, at least what I’ve seen of it; more reason to revisit these, hopefully sooner than later.

It's colorful, the main two have a fun dynamic... It's the only
game I went back to when I had free time between tests.

Moving on to something very different: Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee, which was released in 2017 and tries to be a spiritual successor to the classic Banjo-Kazooie collect-a-thon platformers. I’ve never played Banjo-Kazooie, so I’m missing the experience of the “homage” aspect, but I know enough to recognize the elements that Yooka-Laylee mimics. This hour did get me to check out many of the features, such as unlockable bonus moves, the collecting of quills and Pagies, and a hint towards additional things you can do with the chameleon Yooka and his bat friend Laylee once you’ve found more abilities. Several quests are mini-games with Pagies as rewards, and exploration is strongly encouraged. Yup, that’s a collect-a-thon alright. A remaster, Yooka-Replaylee, has been announced.

This also looks pretty good! However, it's obvious that it's
a lot harder than the predecessor.

A much more classic 2.5D platformer, the sequel, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair was released in 2019. Yooka and Laylee are enlisted to help rescue the Royal Stingdom and its ruler, Queen Phoebee, from their enemy Capital B. This involves rescuing her Beetallion. Those, in turn, can help make the titular duo more resistant to the constant dangers of the Impossible Lair, the dungeon where Capital B. resides, and which is… well… I would not say impossible, but hard! Regular stages are classic 2D fare with special coins to find and collect, whereas the world map can be explored using the duo’s moves to uncover secrets, collectibles, and “tonics” (also present in the previous game), which can change the game’s look or how it’s played. That’s a lot to keep track of, but that first hour gave me a decent glimpse into the game’s features.

The part-RPGs

But... But... we used to be colleagues!

Tying into the previous section about platformers, we’re moving on to the section made of games that are part-RPG. In Paper Castle Games’ Underhero, an RPG/Platformer mix, you play as an underling to the world’s most dangerous villain, picking up the hero’s weapon after accidentally killing him. Your masked kid is then pulled into a story that forces them to take up the mantle. You explore this pixelated 2D universe through classic platformer means, including a gliding option using the kid’s hoodie. Due to your character’s status as a minion, you can chat up the enemies you encounter. Combat is directed like an action RPG with stamina, attacks, dodging, and using a shield to defend or parry. There’s even a music-based mechanic for fighting in time to the soundtrack! This one was nice.

Fastball Special with a side of Kaboom.

Next is Disgaea PC, a Strategy/RPG from Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. In the Netherworld, Prince Laharl awakens two YEARS after the death of his father, the King. The guy’s passing left a nasty power vacuum, and it’s up to Laharl and his allies to reclaim the throne… by beating up everybody else. The franchise is famous for its explosive penguin Prinnies and for the outrageous maximal level cap of 9,999. It combines RPG elements with strategy, as you move your characters around the grid on each level, attack close-by enemies, or use a variety of tactics to get closer, or attack from a distance. That first hour was barely enough for tutorials and two levels, so I’m nowhere near done with that one.

I can't even pet the dog as thanks for the help.

Diametrically opposite, Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas is an open-world first-person adventure with RPG elements. It’s my first time in Fallout, but not my first in a Bethesda game. Just swapping out the fantastic of Skyrim for the post-apocalyptic American wasteland, swords and magic for guns, demons for mutants. Different setting, same deal of warring factions that disagree with each other, scrounging up cash out of stuff lying around, and tailoring your character traits to the experience you want. For some reason, I built my character for charisma and helpfulness. Perhaps opening on getting murdered in New Vegas by a rich dude’s cronies, then rescued by a robot and patched up by a doc in a broken town, convinced me that sweet-talking my way around would have more perks than going in guns blazing.

Bossa Studios’ Deep Dungeons of Doom is a dungeon crawler/roguelite with minor RPG elements. You are tasked with defeating the great evil of the land – just gotta find it, first. Dungeons are merely visited one room after the other, with semi-random enemies in a sequence and a boss at the end. Simple controls: Left-click or right/D to attack, left/A to defend, down/S to go down a floor. You’re subjected to random chance regarding the items you can find in chests and the shrines you find that grant bonuses. You unlock new characters and skills over time. It’s a roguelite, as you get to keep a few things between runs. It’s alright. I like the pixel art for it, but other than that, gameplay didn’t stand out significantly. Again, that’s just after playing for an hour, maybe it improves further down the line.

The actual RPGs

You can very easily die in your first battles
if you're not careful (or not lucky).

I’m starting with two retro titles. First is Phantasy Star II, a game I own from the Wii Virtual Console and which I keep trying to play, only to never get around to it. This story takes place in a futuristic world where you can just get cloned back if you die, on a planet terraformed from a desert to become lush green. This game gives you plenty of lore to read, but is horrible at explaining gameplay mechanics. You must figure everything out yourself, up to and including the combat system. One of my two starting characters wouldn’t attack at all… until I Googled the issue and found out her starting strategy was to constantly defend, rather than attack. The starter monsters are already too much to handle, so until you learn (through trial and error) how everything works, you need constant trips back and forth to heal. Understandable for a game from 1989, but still, there isn’t a lot here that’s intuitive or helpful. I’ll bet it gets a lot better once I’ve got all the mechanics down.

Next up was Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VI. The one with Kefka, you probably know already. One hour may not be enough to get a full glimpse at what’s going on in this world, but we get a part of the picture. Our first character is a girl with amnesia, and she’s mind-controlled into helping two guards on a quest that goes awry. We learn about Magitek, and about the return of real magic, and that some ill-intentioned clown intends to use both. I stopped just as the girl and her new ally were in a castle, speaking to a king. My biggest gripe so far? The game’s first proper boss, a lightning snail/whelk, requires you to grasp the “Active Time Battle” system fast if you want to have a chance at beating it. It’s also got a trick where it will hide in its shell and retaliate if you attack during that time; a trick that feels too nasty for a tutorial boss, if you ask me, but whatever, I got through and saw what comes afterwards. Hopefully I will see soon where that story goes…

Yep, I remember that from Naruto, Episode 2 or 3.

Moving over to a set of two games made using RPG Maker. Starting with Destiny Warriors, which has an interesting system where the characters can use a variety of special attacks split in two categories, Skill and X-Tu; the former’s moves can be used after gathering enough points, while the latter is a more classic “magic” system. So far, my biggest issue is with the story. Let’s see, a school of ninjas with the students split in groups with teachers. In the group we follow, there’s the brazen one, the girl, and the brooding dark dude. X-Tu is basically jutsu. The village leader is called a Kage. Yep! It’s about as derivative of Naruto as can be, it’s utterly shameless about it.

This place is giving me the blues.

Then, there’s Labyronia. First of a series of games by the same creator, with a lore that follows across all installments. This is a world in which the gods created an ill of the land that causes labyrinths to appear. You play as Arres, a mage investigating the events. Hey, I’m not gonna complain, this story is a lot more original. Gameplay begins rather normally, with classic turn-based battles and towns to visit. However, this is the type of fanmade RPG that expects you to already know to inspect every nook and cranny to find items and spells to use; otherwise, you miss out on stuff that can be vital in the coming dungeons. I got stuck in the first dungeon, a lengthy maze (hey, that’s the series’ theme!) ending on a nasty “boss” fight I didn’t get to beat during this hour. Guess I’ll just have to come back to that one someday to see it to the end.

Not a lot of difference with the other hour, but hey, all
RPGs have that moment of level-grinding.

Finally: Crema’s Temtem was already covered in last year’s failed Year Plans. I simply resumed my game! However, I didn’t really do much progress, so busy that I was getting back up to speed with my team. I caught a couple more species as well. Visited the town I was in, since I don’t recall doing so prior. And made some progress into the next Route. I had to get back to the system on display here, since the inspiration is clearly Pokémon, but there are many differences in regards to gameplay and general ideas. I like that you see numerous PC trainers running around all the time. As for covering this game, maybe third time will be the charm.

That’s it for this year! I’ll do one of these again at the end of 2025! Be sure to tune in on the 3rd of January for my yearly retrospective.