Yes!

I love Pandora's Tower, happy to see I am not the only one.

45: Mega Man 11

42: The Last Story

I do enjoy my Monster Hunting from time to time and therefore I was in with a new title. I was fearing that Capcom was too much into mainstreaming the game, because a lot of what I liked about the series was actually things that made it different from other action games and usually stuff people hate. But Capcom found a good middle ground to cut off useless stuff while maintaining the major draws of the series. So I enjoyed my time with the game.

I am usually not too focused on graphics, but I have to say what Capcom here did on the Switch hardware is bordering on a miracle. It seems they have a good grasp how to make excellent graphics even on limited systems, because that seems to happen more often, I remember for instance Resident Evil Revelations. But I digress. Besides the graphics Capcom introduced new mobility, verticality and kept some new stuff from MonHun World like endemic life. All these changes are pretty good. Especially the Palamutes are excellent in every regard, I really love that. Wall runs feel great and are tied in well in the existing system of endurance.

The monsters are the stars of the series though and the main content, and Rise is no different. It brought back some good classics, like my beloved Arzuros, but also new monsters. I especially love the flagship Magnamalo. Just listen his battle theme. Looks and effects, the fight with Magnamalo is always so enjoyable. The hub Kamura village is beautiful.

I also have to mention the level design. Capcom did not add the verticality just as a gimmick, the different areas now have a lot to discover using your new abilities. This is very enjoyable, as a lot of more or less secret locations can be found and reward you with different stuff.

The only part I did not like about the game are the new Rampage quests. These feel like a break to the normal gameplay. Instead you play some sort of tower defense and your normal gameplay is for the most part useless. This feels forced and breaks the flow. But luckily these quests are for the most part optional, so you get through with what you have to do and ignore it otherwise.

I really like the direction the series takes with this new entry, and with Sunbreak arriving next year there will be more to play. If I could make a wish, I would like a remake of MonHun Tri with the new mobility (Palamute) and continuous areas, but not with the Wirebug, as the old levels wouldn't work with it. But maybe it partly is, as some areas of Rise obviously took inspiration from Tri.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6C5lH5b-f4&ab_channel=MonsterHunter

Missed a whole day today. Will resume the guessing and the hinting tomorrow hopefully.

More hints:

#40: Eat PCB (printed curcuit board). You play an orange blob in this old puzzle game. Despite being an clone of the gameplay of Boulder Dash, I like this one more than the original. Collect all Infotrons and find the exits without dying. Zonks roll off of RAM-chips, but lay stable on hardware.

#39: The "first part of the name of the game" Project is an independent global scientific organization, formerly a secret branch of the United Nations, dedicated to studying threats to humankind. It was founded in 1945, but was preceded by a number of other organizations, such as the Committee for the Study and Prevention of Species-Level Threats (Soviet Union, 1918-1927) and the "first part of the name of the game" Working Group (United States, 1935-1945). As the world is in peril by the mutating Pandoravirus, this organization rises from the ashes to protect the remaining survivors. This turn-based tactics is the spiritual successor of a 90s game, both created by the same guy. Synedrion is technologically advanced and governed by a council. Guessed by Kakadu18 and Machina.

#38: Turn-based or real-time? I can't decide in this fourth entry in the series. Fight in a war on a fictive continent which looks a lot like europe. Guessed by Zippy6.

#37: Red haired guy meets blue haired girl in his dreams. Guessed by Kakadu18.

#36: There are secrets behind the destruction of a mediterranean city the year before. Guessed by S.Peelman.

Guessed by coolbeans

Often overlooked in how important this game was for the development of first person shooter games is 'Star Wars: Dark Forces'. In this game, it was finally possible to aim up and down, and enemies could stand floors above or below you. When I first played it however, I knew nothing of these things, because I knew basically nothing of video games yet. After having played 'Star Wars Rebel Assault II' (#42) though, I wanted more Star Wars, and we had a demo, on a demo disc, those were a thing, of Dark Forces consisting of the first level of the game.

Dark Forces was completely different to my other experience of course, but I thought it was super cool so we got the whole game shortly after. Rebel Assault is a lighthearted series however, and I wasn't really prepared for this dark and gritty shooter that had some tense moments, and scary scenery. In the second level, there's bodies of dead people scattered around a deserted colony, and in the third level, there are monsters in sewers. "Dianogas" like the one that pulls Luke Skywalker under water in the trash compactor in Episode IV. The sewers have dirty, murky water you can't look through as well. This was too scary for my young self, and I'd develop a bit of a phobia for dark water levels. Especially sewer levels. Even to this day, even though I'm not scared of fake stuff anymore, I will hesitate a second, when I need to enter a sewer in any other game. Weird how that works.

42 - Nope! 

41 - Yep!

#41: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

The second Assassin's Creed I've played after AC III Remastered. IV is superior to III in almost every way except for the story. I enjoyed Connor's journey a bit more than his grandfather's from a narrative perspective. That said while the gameplay is largely the same IV is basically my favorite part of III in feature length. I loved the sea battles in III, so the sequel having not only way more of that but improving on it by alot made the game as a whole more enjoyable.

The game is set in the caribbean sea where you get to explore alot outside of the main story. Destroying dozens of Spanish and British vessels never gets old and especially fun to beat are the pirate hunters. Upgrading your ship is very satisfying and catching sharks and whales seves as a fun diversion. The crew singing songs is pretty funny to me.

On top of that AC IV obviously also offers several cities with a bunch of soldiers to murder. Fun for the whole family.

I spend 200+ hours of destroying the entire Spanish and British fleet several times over.

While alot of the large amount of content is just filler the gameplay and the still very good story keep it from getting boring.

This is my second favorite Ubisoft game.

I don't see myself Dark Forces as so important on a technical level. Let's not kid ourself, id software was it who again and again brought the technical improvements. Others like this game or Duke Nukem 3D made some gradual improvements, but not big jumps. But I see Dark Forces bringing something new in another area. Doom had something of a story, but not much, and the levels and textures hardly resemble anything one can recognize as something real. Dark Forces produced levels that clearly resembled places from the movies or at least places that clearly would've fit into the movies and LucasArts sew that all together to a coherent story. So I would say, Dark Forces really developed the shooter genre by combining it with storytelling and level-design fitting to that story. That is something that was a standout for a long time, I would say Half-Life is the next shooter with this level of storytelling. Sadly Dark Forces wasn't praised as much as Half-Life for that improvement.