Peak Capcom beat em up and peak beat em up in general tbh

Could probably take the number 1 spot if I had played it a bit more

Absolutely love the open ended exploration mixed in with tight enemy encounters

A beautiful ballet of bullet dodging, cancelling, and split second decisions

Damn that Ninja really can jump

Tactical decision making and exciting combat with every run thanks to an excellent enemy roster and great weapon diversity

Also peak Capcom beat em up

Another one that will probably go up as I finish it. Stylish as hell

Solid beat em up action from Capcom, and captures the feel of cartoonier Punisher very well

Bugs

If it came out in the PS1 era and people actually played it, would probably be regarded as a classic

A beat em up revolving around aerial combat is a neat idea that's lot's of fun and the bosses are excellent, though the execution has some flaws

Mixes Zelda 1 style exploration and shmup patterns nicely

More beat em ups should have rocket launchers

The same Castlevania platforming you know and love, now with faster pacing and spectacular sprite work

Fantastic world design and atmosphere, and the platforming is okay too

A gacha should not be this good, but it is still a gacha

Got some fun microspacing centric challenges and you can also punch bullets out of the air like you don't care

Better than Castlevania 3 tbh

Fun spin on the Halo multiplayer formula without much staying power

I love fish

Cute vibes and fun shooting

Reframing Beat em up weapon systems as changing a mech's loadout is a cool idea but not a particularly noteworthy game otherwise

Comfy mix of Doom and Mario, not the greatest encounter design, but provides enough variety to be engaging. Wish it didn't give me motion sickness from playing too long tho

Basic but not bad

The arcade version is slightly better than the MD version, but they're both pretty similar. Tight lethal ninja action

Yamato is a good doggy

Romero still got it

Unique game, but doesn't really take full advantage of it's ideas, it's a concept that could use a revisit

It sure is a beat em up

It lacks the more challenging encounters of Bomberman II but replaces it with more level variety and more charm

I love mechs

When you ask for advice the guy just tells you to buy more stuff, this says a lot about our society

Feels like a love letter to old school Castlevania and NES action adventure games in general, could stand to be a bit more challenging tho

Arthropods amirite?

Solid but not particularly noteworthy Doom level

Some of the X-Men have movesets that are a lot of fun to mess around with, shame about the level design tho

Love the tech maze space dungeon crawler feel of the game, but the enemy encounters are pretty mid

Generating an aura that makes everything dance when you're near them was low key the best new game mechanic of 2020

There's a lot for me to say about this game that I struggle to condense into a format fitting of this list, so I'll just say that it's one of the few games where I've gone between "This game sucks" "This game is pretty good" and "This game is pretty mid" in quick succession

Captures the feeling of being stranded on a hostile planet very well, but there isn't enough to the gameplay for me to rate it higher

Decent mechanics held back by amateurish design

Oh look another beat em up

It would probably be higher if it wasn't a gacha game that costs money up front

It would probably be higher if it had more than 3 waves

As a megafan of super hero comics the presentation, art style, and kinesthetics make me nut hard, too bad the gameplay isn't very good

It's got the same comfy vibes as fruit🍓but it doesn't quite work as well as an arcade style score chaser that it wants to be. I wanna put it higher but I can't really justify it

iD software learning how to do level design and what not to do

The Dragons need a new king

Stawman: "Doom 1 & 2 are dated and bad because the levels have too much backtracking and easy to get lost in"

Me: laughs in Eternal Doom

Meh

Not my preferred travel destination

Opposite of peak Capcom beat em up

Sonic Team really went and knocked it out of the park with Green Hill Zone and then decided not to make any more good levels till Sonic 3

I have a theory that it's called Zero Tolerance because its designed to teach you to not tolerate console FPS games and shitty level design. Mission accomplished

Where are the chameleons, I was promised chameleons

There are better Pokemon games out there, and they even manage to not pretend to be a unique IP too. It's got a decent UI and some of the amusingly bad/strange design decisions tho

Rhythm games are supposed to have music

The absolute bottom of the barrel