Board 8 > The Great 2018 Video Game Challenge

(+) Yeah! (+)

50-52. Beat three games in a series (Game 3)

Mega Man 3

Phew glad that ones over those were rough
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15. Beat a rhythm game
Tadpole Treble

This game is so freaking adorable. The soundtrack was surprisingly fantastic too.

39. Finish a game in one day
Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights

Always a treat to get to go back and play this. Easily the best Scooby Doo game and probably Top 25 as far as licensed games go. It's pays so much homage and respect to the actual show it's amazing. On top of that it's a metroidvania which is a really surprising genre for this kind of game.
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49. Choose a random page on TVTropes and beat something from the video game section (Weapon Jr.)

Skyrim

Naturally the game I end up playing most on the new console I bought is one I've already played a million times. Playing something new? Psh.

28/50
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8. Beat a spin-off or a game that rebooted a franchise

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

A spin-off of something that isn't out is still a spin-off. I think.

Fun little game. If a side project is this good, my expectations for Ritual of the Night are very, very high.

29/50
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So how are we counting the RPGs? Are we basing them off the country of origin or the gameplay?
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29. Beat a game with comedy as a central theme

West of Loathing

- Thanks to Steam's Spring Cleaning event, I reinstalled a game I put off last year (I think because I ran out of shovels and wanted to dig up every.single.damn.cemetery.plot) and started playing again.

Turns out I could've beaten it in about five more minutes. I still goofed off and spent about an hour or two running around finishing Breadwood sidequests not realizing I was literally ten minutes from the credits (and about 775 plots left to dig up when I no longer worried so much about every.single.sidequest). This is why I quit endgames and leave them hanging. I come back and finish the game because my compulsive need to do everything is long past.

Now if only I could finish a game I actually started since my last game. *stares at KotOR, Stardew Valley, LEGO Lord of the Rings, Trails of Cold Steel, and various other recently purchased games*
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BetrayedTangy posted...

So how are we counting the RPGs? Are we basing them off the country of origin or the gameplay?

I think either option would be fine since genres like that always get murky, so it's up to you!
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32. Beat a game with a non-white lead

South Park: The Fractured But Whole

Great game. I'm not sure if I enjoy the first one or this better. I feel like this is the better game of the two, but playing the first one kind of blew my mind as I didn't think a South Park game could be as good as it was.

This one was a little bit of an easier platinum, as well. I'll be revisiting the first game at some point because the code that came with this one still worked despite it saying it expired in January.

27/50
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20. Beat an action game

Castle Crashers

- Thanks again to the Spring Cleaning Steam event, I downloaded this for free and beat it up real good. It was fun, and I can see multiplayer being a bigger blast. Reminds me well of the early 90s arcades like Simpsons and X-Men. There was a lot to like, but it isn't something I'm likely to purchase or go back to.

50% RANKING!

TOP-TIER - High-ranking among all games played

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd
1. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

EXCELLENT - Wonderful games that left an impression and want for more of their magic

Evoland II
The Witness
2. Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below
Armello

GREAT - There was a lot to enjoy despite some flaws or rough patches

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
3. Crypt of the Necrodancer
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse
[PROTOTYPE]
4. Dead Maze
5. Shadow Complex Remastered
6. LEGO Batman the Video Game

GOOD - A satisfying experience, but not as fulfilling as expected

7. LiSA the Painful
8. West of Loathing
9. Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux
10. Slay the Spire
Beyond Good & Evil
Owlboy
11. Castle Crashers

LIST FILLER - Either too repetitive, janky, short, or basic to be called a good game

Little Alchemy 2
Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore a Fedora
12. Alter Ego
13. Candy Box 2
Ringside Hero
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Robazoid posted...

BetrayedTangy posted...

So how are we counting the RPGs? Are we basing them off the country of origin or the gameplay?

I think either option would be fine since genres like that always get murky, so it's up to you!

Cool, cause I'm trying to mostly do games already in my backlog and I just don't have that many options for WRPGs.

36. Replay a game from a long time ago
Luigi's Mansion
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4. Beat a game released between 2010-2017

Invisible Apartment. Free VN on Steam that's the first in a series, but it really isn't good enough to convince to buy the others. Very short though so I didn't need to invest too much.

18/50
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20. Beat an action game

James Bond 007: Blood Stone
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"Since i was 13" a good fake 10 years

24. Beat a game with romance as a central theme

Highway Blossoms

35. Beat a game with a lead that's from a fictional species

Monster Loves You!

27. Beat a game with mystery as a central theme

Why Am I Dead At Sea

Moved Danganronpa to 45. Beat a game that's been adapted into another medium

Went a while without fully completing anything due to a combination of focusing on other projects and playing very long games, but the Steam spring cleaning event got me to work on a bit of backlog at last!

7/50
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Woo, someone played Highway Blossoms! That's my favorite visual novel.
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12. Beat a game made by a developer you've never tried

Stardew Valley

Finally got around to this since they added multiplayer. I'm counting it as "beaten" since we restored the community center and got Grandpa's approval at the start of year 3, which is sort of the game's main plot. Still going to keep playing to complete collections and such.
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1. Beat a game released before 1990

The Legend of Zelda

I'm really surprised at how well the original holds up today. I've beaten a solid amount of Zeldas and I'm really happy this is in the top half for me
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21. Beat a strategy game

Royal Defense

GameFAQs considers tower defense games as strategy games, which makes sense. As for the game, don't ever play it.

18/50
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8. Beat a spin-off or a game that rebooted a franchise
DOOM (2016)
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19. Beat a platformer
New Super Mario Bros.
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17. Beat a first-person shooter

Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)

- Got it off the recent Star Wars sale pretty much just for this category. I used to love playing it at the house I babysat at, and me and the kid would spend hours trying to take each other's battlefields. He was a great sniper so places like Kashyyyk were tough to conquer or defend. I love playing the engie and making sure things are working and blasting people with shotguns (and being cheap and continually throwing myself health refills).

Beat the story mode pretty quickly. I had some trouble with a few of the stages, but nothing a better strategy didn't fix in most cases. And just because, I also beat Galactic Conquest because that's awesome.

47. Play a technically unbeatable game for at least six hours

Heroes of the Storm

- Forgot about this category completely, but just saw it while filling things out. Thanks to the Lucha event and Shad, I got back in after a five month hiatus and am enjoying Nazeebo, Blaze, and the random Brawl characters immensely.
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28. Beat a game with the supernatural as a central theme

Wizard of Legend

Fun game. Don't think it'll have the same staying power as other roguelikes I've played, but it was definitely worth my time and money.

30/50
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48. Beat a game that starts with the first letter of your username

The House in Fata Morgana: A Requiem for Innocence

I guess it's kinda disappointing that I only found this to be pretty good when the original is my favorite visual novel by a wide margin, but given the part of the story this one tackled, I think it was about as good as it could be. The first sub story was excellent, though, and the third had me grinning like an idiot the entire time.

31/50
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12. Beat a game made by a developer you've never tried

Mahjong (2016)

While mostly a publisher of series like the WRC series and Sherlock Holmes games, Bigben Interactive made this one themselves. It's very basic and has 70 puzzles. I paid $2 and that's about what it's worth.

Moved Devious Dungeon to 20. Beat an action game

19/50
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25. Beat a game with horror as a central theme

Outlast

This one was interesting I thought a lot of it was really cool for the most part.

Now I did get to a point where I started to get annoyed. After the courtyard sequence. The game felt like it was just trying to pump in a few more hours to the game. The build up with Chris Walker and Trager was great, but after that you just go back to avoiding standard enemies again and you lose a lot of the fear. Not to mention the ending was infuriating. I get what they're trying to do, but it was really predictable and wound up being disappointing as a result. Overall I really liked the first 2/3rds, but the rest was really disappointing. Heard the DLC was better so I might try that.
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KujikawaRising posted...

mnkboy907 posted...

It tells you that the houseguests are idiots for thinking Mark using it is really a big deal.

Yes, that's exactly what I was asking about. They're complete morons for thinking Mark sparing himself from potential execution (in case of a flip) was a dumb idea. Marcellas wrote that part of the Big Brother Manifesto: If you win Veto and you're on the block, use the damn thing on yourself or you'll be evicted. Because he made one of the dumbest moves ever by NOT using it on himself and getting evicted by a conniving but brilliant manipulator, Danielle Reyes (so robbed).

But yeah, I'm with Squirrel... this cast SUCKS at the game. Jessica could've saved herself, but by ostracizing herself through disassociation and doing tricks with her fingers, she enlarged the target on herself leading to even Josh changing his mind as to who he wanted out. Instead, she and Cody should've copped a deal with Paul. "You know that once we're gone, you're the biggest threat here, right? You protect us this week and they'll keep coming for us. One of us is guaranteed to go before you and we accept that. And we promise that if we get HOH in the next 3-4 evictions, you're not going up." That would get Paul's attention. An offer for one of them to throw themselves on the sword for him if he protects them? AND an offer to not nominate him for three weeks (including a DE)? Music to his ears. But nope, Jessica only gave everyone reasons to get rid of her.

Raven is a piece of shit who plays the victim. If she breaks a nail, suddenly it's infected and someone needs to help her. Her entire life is a pity party and she's trying to get people to "feel bad for her" but, thankfully, it's no longer working because everyone else sees how one-note she is. She's like Danielle Murphree or Princess Victoria, but those two were feeds gold. Raven is not.

It's really Jess, Cody, and Raven that baffle me the most about how bad they are at the game. The rest of them... aren't much better. Multiple people have crashed and burned once they got nominated (Dominique, Elena) or ignore alliances entirely (Ramses). Since I'm team "fun feeds" I am enjoying the trainwreck, but I am missing that vested rooting interest in anyone. That is my issue. I like someone to get behind, y'know?

this doesnt quite answer the original question of what mark is doing that is wrong

10. Beat a game made by a director/composer/artist/etc that you like

Killer is Dead

Really fun game. I adored how goofy and over the top it was, plus I found the gameplay far superior to No More Heroes. Either way this definitely makes me want to check out Killer7 and Lollipop Chainsaw
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19. Beat a platformer
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

9. Beat a remake or enhanced port
Dark Souls Remastered

39. Finish a game in one day
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
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30. Beat a game with a female lead

Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom

I think I'll be hearing that fifth boss theme in my nightmares.
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33. Beat a game with a robot/artificial lead

Mega Man Maverick Hunter X
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the edit is pretty balanced right now, we're learning a lot about a lot of people

43. Beat another user's favorite game

Final Fantasy X

- Wow, finally. First Final Fantasy game I've ever completed. And I needed to step away for a few months to do so (see: Trails the 3rd). My brain's not awake so I'm likely not going to do this write-up any justice.

Biggest Surprises:
- Just how gooood the combat system is. Every character you have serves some important role in combat and the enemies for the most part need even minor strategy to beat. Flan's require magic, hedgehogs require pierce, ahrimans need blitzballs to the face, some monsters have on-death attacks so you need to make sure you're buffed and healed.

Between the Sphere Grid and the Weapon/Armor slots, it could really begin to feel like FFVII Materia where combat roles are pretty much interchangeable, but throughout everyone fit their starting niche and expanded in really cool and fluid ways. Probably my favorite RPG combat system in recent memory.

The characters, overall, were really well done with a lot of low-key moments influencing who they are at their core and how their journey is helping them grow. I'm disappointed that Kimahri didn't get much more, but everyone else was solid especially Tidus, Yuna, and Wakka. The world building in this game was fantastic too.

The final battles felt easier than expected mostly thanks to Doublecast and LowHP Auron dealing 30000 a blow (I may have overlevelled some trying to beef up for Dark Aeons, before ultimately giving up and shelving the game for a while), but I'l be damned if those Behemoth Kings and petrification dragons didn't ruin my day multiple times.

There is still a lot left I want to do someday (get Anima, find the Jecht Spheres, fill up the captured monsters, upgrade all the legendary weapons, definitely NOT fight the hour-long super boss battle), but I'm not obsessing over it like I was before. Excellent game and I can see why it's another user's favorite.

Character: Yuna > Wakka > Tidus > Rikku > Auron > Lulu > Kimahri
Battle: Rikku (steal everything) > Wakka > Auron > Lulu > Kimahri > Tidus > Yuna > Rikku (actual combat)
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15. Beat a puzzle game

Hexcells

19/50
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34. Beat a game with an animal lead

Ghost Trick.

End game spoilers, in case anyone hasn't played Ghost Trick, and is still thinking about doing so (do it you cowards!)

33/50
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nintendoboy what

26. Beat a game with revenge as a central theme

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn

Way better than it has any right being. That said it's still not that good. It feels like they spent all their time and resources coming up with all the design choices, before realizing they still had to make a game. Either way I had enough fun with it that I don't regret playing it
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5. Beat a game released in 2018

Three Goblets

- Another at-work Kongregate game, this was pretty good for a pseudo-idle RPG. Basically, you fight monsters, gains tats and items, go back and fight some more, and there's some strategy with skill selection to figure out how best to defeat harder levels. It's still pretty short (started about an hour or two ago?), but a good time.
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BetrayedTangy posted...

26. Beat a game with revenge as a central theme

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn

Way better than it has any right being. That said it's still not that good. It feels like they spent all their time and resources coming up with all the design choices, before realizing they still had to make a game. Either way I had enough fun with it that I don't regret playing it

O_O
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20. Beat an action game

Fire Emblem Warriors

Kinda disappointing, might be one of my least favorite Musou games (although I skipped most of the really poorly regarded ones.) For every interesting thing it did, there were two or three baffling design decisions. I didn't hate the game, but I expected better.

34/50
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35. Beat a game with a lead from a fictional species

LEGO Lord of the Rings

- 43.7% complete, lots of stuff still to collect. It was fun. I really enjoyed some of the levels and the nostalgia hit so hard when I first opened it up that I couldn't play (oh how I miss LOTRO). Came around, though, and got through a pretty good game. Loved hearing the movie voices throughout and that amazing score. Really fun ride.
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49. Choose a random page on TVTropes and beat something from the video game section

Final Fantasy V

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bifauxnen
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22. Beat a fighting game

Finished all Skullgirls story modes, that probably counts.

It's certainly good but not for me I think, couldn't get the hang of anyone's playstyle, even Peacock who was a big reason for me wanting the game.
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Hit the random page on tvtropes and actually hit a video game trope.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SupportPower

hm, shouldn't be too hard to fit something in for this
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Halfway point rankings

Personal Favorites
Cuphead
Batman: Arkham City

Wonderful Games
Nier Automata
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Punch-Out!!
Super Mario Galaxy

A lot of fun, but not fully realized
Luigi's Mansion
Killer is Dead
Tadpole Treble

Solid Experience
Outlast
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights
Perfect Dark

Fun but Flawed
The Legend of Zelda
Final Fantasy V
Spec-Ops: The Line

Cool concept, but needs more content
Injustice 2
Game Dev Tycoon
VA-11 HALL-A

Has its moments
Mega Man 2
Yooka-Laylee
Mega Man 3
The Witness

All Around Mediocre
Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn
Mega Man
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2. Beat a game released between 1990-1999

Terranigma

- Wow, what an experience. I remember having a great time with this despite having never beaten it before, but damn, I was shocked by how much I did not enjoy this game.

First, let me start off by saying Illusion of Gaia is one of my favorite games and I really enjoyed Soul Blazer. I was browsing reviews as I was between a bit of grinding earlier, and the 11th post in this topic (archived, can't quote: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588784-terranigma/75664582 ) sums up a lot of my feelings. Soul Blazer does the resurrection of the world much better despite its clunky combat, and Illusion of Gaia is just a beautiful game visually and audibly even when the story seems to falter sometimes (though nearly every place on the map has at least one hugely emotional and memorable moment).

This was... a mess. The translation's partly to blame, for certain, but my god, there is so much wrong in this game.

- Magic is pretty much useless. I attempted multiple plays over a decade ago, and no matter how far I got, I never used Magirock because I didn't at all understand the mechanics of it. Knowing now how Magirock is just a resource, I attempted to use it and it just sucks. Animations go on forever and half the time it doesn't even work, and if it does, it does crap for damage. Plus the ring box takes up your equip slot and navigating the ring menu is just bad.

- The story and gameplay are massively underwhelming. The first bit of the game is still memorable and still a favorite. You learn the attacks, you solve some puzzles, you fight some enemies, you get a taste of what the game could be like in this crystal underground lava world. Halfway through the game, the puzzles are completely unintuitive, the attacks haven't changed and run-jumps are pretty much cake to kill things with, and characters are annoyances more than welcomed. Not to mention all the crap like slow ass escort quests, horribly pathed watchguards that almost require something with save states, constantly reused dungeons, and the story comes at you all at once way at the end of everything.

- The twist was cool, but executed pretty terribly... along with s u p e r s l o w a s s d i a l o g u e.

- I knew playing FFX that the final boss is cake if you're overlevelled even an itty bit. I did not expect 5 points of strength in Terranigma to mean such a difference. At Level 30, I fought the final boss and was only doing 2-8 damage at a time, feeling lucky if I cracked a critical 24 points. I died often. I then set out to find monsters to level up on (which was somewhat difficult considering the two or three dungeon right before were inaccessibleimmediately after). After about ten minutes, I went back to the boss at L32.

My hits were nowanywhere from 11-48 and my crits were in the 100s. The final boss took only about two minutes to beat. That's just... insane.

I do not recommend.
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Also decided to get my Random Trope

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LetsFightLikeGentlemen

Shouldn't be too hard to get this one!
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21. Beat a strategy game

Disgaea 5

Def the weakest in the series, but it made me excited to play the first one again. Excited for the remake on Switch.
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6. Beat a game in a completely new series

Yakuza 4

(I assume this means new to me)

I was pretty darn impressed with yakuza. In my younger days this is the type of game that I could play for hundreds of hours. I loved hostess maker, the dojos, the characters, the weird-ass sidequests. Everything was really cool. I would definitely consider myself a fan of the series now
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29. Beat a game with comedy as a central theme

MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies

For a game with zombies in the title it isn't a horror game at all. The plot is like a parody of other zombie games, while it carries over the gameplay from Neptunia U (and some of the characters).

20/50
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35. Beat a game with a lead that's from a fictional species

The Old Tree. Short and free game on Steam

20/50
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