Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2019 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

Observation (PS4)

Super fucking weird game. I enjoyed it though.
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A Fisherman's Tale (PSVR)
Fun little game
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One Finger Death Punch 2 (PC)
I had my save file erased somehow and the devs made me a new one approximating where I was. Now I've cleared the maps aside from those two "secret" stages
Birdgut(PC)
Not a bad little game except I was using JoyToKey and at the end it requires mouse+keyboard which was really rough on my laptop touchpad. I got through it.
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Titan Quest: Anniversary Edition (PC)
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11. Metroid Fusion (Wii U Virtual Console)
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RealMyst(PC)
A long-held dream of mine. Did it with just a few hints when I never got anywhere before.
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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PC)

Strong contender for my GotY. Heads up for anyone who plays this and starts a new game plus though, don't use the homeward idol item before you save Kuro. Doing so breaks the game and stops you from progressing.
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Dangan Ronpa V3: Killing Harmony (PS Vita)

Night in the Woods (PC)

I actually beat this game two weeks ago, but I admittedly kind of tuned out this topic until I happened to see it at the top of the first page just now. I posted my general thoughts in a separate topic back then, so here's a lightly edited repost:

First, some general notes about my playthrough: I opted to hang out with Gregg (Rulz Ok) the whole way, and I didn't nearly discover all the secrets, and unlock all the notebook sketches, concept art, or achievements. Eventually, I'll do a second playthrough for these things, and to hang out with Bea.

NitW really resonated with me on a personal level, to the point where it was maybe too real and personal. There's entirely too many similarities between Mae and myself (though also some notable differences), down to a fair few minor things. I don't really want to say anything more than that on the subject.

Emotionally, and even physically, no game has ever affected me nearly this much. I was close to tears at times in part 4; the events, I thought, left me thoroughly tired and gave me a headache. Where Mae has best friends, I have my family, and honestly, that ending gives me hope just as Mae held on to her hope.

You won't see much more of me in these topics. Even when I play games (rarer and rarer these days), they tends to be ones you can't really beat in the conventional sense.
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Yomawari: Night Alone

That last part was kind of cheap but whatever, it was short and sweet. The sound design really scares me.
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Crusader of Centy (Genesis)

This was a game that I have been meaning to check out for sometime. I almost regret not checking it out sooner given how much praise it got! A lot of people have said that this game is the Genesis' "Zelda: A Link to the Past"

It came out in 1994. Published by Atlus and developed by Nextech.

You play as a boy named Corona who turned 14 and has inherited his late father's sword to fight off monsters that threaten the human race's existence. There's a lot more to the story which I thought was pretty good.

It's an action/adventure game played in an overhead view. One of the coolest parts of the game is you get Animal friends and they bestow upon you different powers you can use.

If there's one minor thing about the game is that it's a little on the easy side and most of the bosses do not pose much of a challenge.

Overall, I think this is a great game that I feel is a must play on the Genesis and for anyone else looking for a good Action/Adventure game.
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What Remains of Edith Finch

A good, short simulated walkthrough game. Although I was expecting more of the mystery to unravel than what actually did. A fairly easy game to platinum.
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The Gardens Between for XB1

I was wary of spending $20 on this, so I decided to try it out via Game Pass. It's probably the third-best game that I beat for the first time this year (after Minit and Uncharted 4), so I intend to support The Voxel Agents by buying it on Steam or something in the future.

I tend to go into games mostly blind, and I was surprised that it was on-rails and you only use three buttons all game (well, two joystick directions and a button). While I am curious to see someone attempt to do a game like this using Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons free-range dual controls, the on-rails worked out excellently with this game. While the puzzles were not overly complicated, I felt a great sense of accomplishment completing virtually every level.

Add in fantastic atmosphere and a dialogue-less, non-lingering, bittersweet story that hits deep, and you have quite the game on your hands.
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What Remains of Edith Finch for XB1

I'm not high on walking simulators in general. I feel that do to their lumbering nature, poor interactive elements, and in my experience clumsy and pretentious storytelling, it's hard to come away impressed. While Edith Finch still has elements of all of those, I would say it is one of the better walking simulators that I have played, though I also admit I don't play that many.

Where Edith Finch succeeds is the setting, visual variety, and a consistent tone. The Finch estate is ridiculously over-the-top in a good way with all its nooks and crannies. It made the walking part far less tedious than other games of this genre. The graphics as a whole are ugly, something that oddly too many walking simulators share (you would think they would want to put a lot more effort on them), and the lightning was atrocious in some of them (Molly being the biggest offender), but the various aspects of visual design that they incorporated for each individual story (Lewis, Barbara, and Gus being the standouts) showed a deft understanding of the themes for each character and their tale.

That being said, the game doesn't succeed in just as many, if not more, critical areas, such as the things outlined in the first paragraph, an unconvincing lead (I suppose this is also tied into clumsy and pretentious storytelling), and due to the nature of this game, a wild disparity in story qualities.

While I am glad I went through it, I am also glad that I didn't pay money for it and found Giant Sparrow's previous work, The Unfinished Swan, to be their superior work.
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Super Lucky's Tale for XB1

A throw-back 3D/2D (like 75% of the former) combo platformer, this really isn't anything special, but I definitely enjoyed my time as it scratched an itch on a genre that seems mostly dead outside of Super Mario. With more polish and hopefully fixing the double jump so it is less like Jak & Daxter, I think a theoretical sequel could have great potential.
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Far from Noise for PC

Odd narrative game that was equal parts boring and captivating. Art and sound design were excellent at any rate.
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RiME for XB1

Tequila Works is starting to create a nice little varied portfolio now with Deadlight, The Sexy Brutale, and RiME (they also developed The Invisible Hours, which I own but have not played). RiME does many things extremely well, mostly in the visual and sound department, but it is also an uneven experience, so The Sexy Brutale still reigns supreme.
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Majyuuou (Super Famicom)

This was quite the game. It has been compared to Castlevania with a touch of Altered Beast.
Majyuuou translates to "King of Demons"

You are Abel who has to travel into Hell to rescue his daughter from Lucifer.

You use a 9mm Beretta to attack. You can also charge it up for a more powerful shot. You can also double jump, do a dive kick and a roll. You can also have a fairy companion with you that acts as an option (like Gradius) and to revive you. At the end of some boss fights, you can pick up a colored gem. If you wait for a little while before shooting the gem and picking it up, it changes into different colors which will allow you to transform into different demon forms. If you want, you can also decide not to ever pick up the gem and stay in human form for a more challenging game. One more thing about the forms If you play with all 3 different forms as you progress. You get a secret 4th form that is very powerful if you use the 3 other forms in one session and it also leads you to a better ending

Game was pretty solid and it even has multiple endings.
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Stories: The Path of Destinies for PS4

Equal parts funny and dark (sometimes both), the action exceeded my expectations. I would like to see a game like this with far more elements at play. The way things played out kind of reminded me of 999 in a very abstract way. Because there was a very limited pool of characters and plot points, there wasn't much of a mystery to it, which I thought could be to its benefit.
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Songbringer for PC

While not a re-imagining of The Legend of Zelda, it's basically a love letter to that game. The parallels are numerous and quickly apparent. Overworld is not overwhelming to navigate, and you probably won't get killed there. Difficulty ramps up in the dungeons, but it's fair as any progress you make when you die stays there if you continue where you left off. The final boss is an enormous difficulty spike though, but after three phases, I had no healing items left and decided to meditate only to realize I was invulnerable while meditating and allowed my AI companion to take care of the final phase of the boss virtually on her own.
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Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

Amazing. I did not expect to love it this much. One of the few games these days I'm actually sad I finished. I got everything I could get in the game and I'm going to do the post-game dungeon and a few optional raids/hunts as well. I always have some feeling of boredom or tedium at some point in every game, but I just didn't get that here for one second. I could boot it up for 30-60 minutes and enjoy it and get stuff done, but most of my recent sessions I just got lost in it for hours on end.

So happy I bought this, having never played an Ys game before.
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A Hat in Time + 2 DLCs (PC)

Lovely game. Absolutely charming and perfect.
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Nancy Drew 16: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek (PC)

Absolute bullshit. ND14 had harmless but boring padded sequences and an unnecessary treasure hunt. ND15 had a stupid criminal, a stupid plot, and the eponymous monster and cave were red herrings. And padding.

This one updates the UI and revives the time system from 10 games ago where different things happen based on what time it is. No problemo. The problem is, you have to cook AND clean like a real person to keep your 'cover' up. And if you miss even one, your psychic benefactor chastises you from miles away and you're forced into a minigame you didn't want. And that's not even covering the infuriating puzzles and the immense amount of backtracking, possibility of cheap death, and slow as fuck transition animations which didn't need to exist.

I joke that its the ice version of Shadow Ranch, but the game literally points this out to you. I have never hated a single ND game so much as this bullshit. The only positive is the voice acting and the suspects.
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GoT telltale game

Nancy Drew 17: Legend of the Crystal Skull (PC)

Day off well-spent.

Finally. A return to form to what an ND game does best. Puzzle solving, mystery finding, shennanigans. And because of the updated UI it feels like a better Treasure in a Royal Tower. It's got none of that padded bullshit and everything makes sense.
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Massive Chalice for PC

Received this from Icon in our first Steam Secret Santa, so it feels especially good to be able to say I have beaten this. I do not play many strategy games, but I had a ton of fun with this. The RPG portion was fine, though it became tedious after awhile once the encounters started to take seemingly forever to finish (I wish you could skip all the actions and animations from the AI's turn). That being said, it was also a very exhausting experience that I can't see myself doing twice.
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Castle of Heart (Switch)

You play as a knight who has to rescue his beloved maiden from an evil sorcerer. The sorcerer casts a curse upon the knight and turns him into stone. The maiden's tears brought back the knight back to life before she was taken away. The knight is now a sentient stone knight.

This was an alright action/platformer. You have to constantly be on the move as your health slowly deteriorates. You can gain health back by defeating enemies that drop red crystals. You can also find red crystals in jars/crates/barrels. You can also get secondary items along the way to carry in your other arm like another melee weapon/crossbow. If your health drops low, one of your stone arms will break off that carries the secondary weapon unless you either get health back or lose your health to restart from the last checkpoint. You can get sub-weapons similar to Castlevania like knives and various different bombs. The environment can also be used to your advantage like dropping hanging objects that are hanging off the ceiling that you can cut/shoot down like lanterns/boulders/etc to drop down on enemies. You can also jump on top of enemies' backs to use them as platforms or if you want to get away cause sometimes it's usually not best to fight mobs of enemies. Collecting blue crystals can also increase your life bar. You get a full health restore when you reach a checkpoint.

In each of the levels you can find 5 Pieces of Heart which are needed to see the true ending of the game (which I got for the first time). At the end of every chapter you fight a boss. They were ok in the story but as for the fights themselves they were nothing to really write home about except for maybe the second boss cause it required some effort.

Overall, I thought this was an alright game and I didn't really find the game too hard like some of the reviewers made it out to be and I'm guessing there was a patch this game got that fixed most of the problems that this game supposedly had. Also got it for a good price when it went on sale awhile back.
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Sonic Mania for PC

This is probably the best Sonic game? I'm not enamored with the series, but only 3+K and Colors come close. It helps that I think the development was outsourced. I am curious how many of these were original stages because I think at least five were from previous games.
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Outer Wilds (PC)

Damn.
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The Beginner's Guide (PC)
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Nancy Drew 18: The Phantom of Venice (PC)

Breath of fresh air, probably one of the few non-scooby doo plots in the series. I liked this one. The change of pace was refreshing. I think for awhile, all adventure games at a certain era were trying to follow on the Ravenhearst fad, which would explain all the scary shit in the past.

My only complaint is that some puzzles required revisiting whenever you returned to that location. It wasn't as annoying as Icicle Creek's cafeteria, but it could've done without it. I believe this is also the first use of Currency and minigame to make money. Something I'd see again in the Silent Spy.
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Shatterhand (NES)

The year is 2030. You are Steve Hermann who is a police officer from the Bronx and ends up losing his arms from members of the military renegades known as Metal Command led by General Gus Grover (who has a resemblance to M.Bison). Steve gets two cybernetic arms developed by the Law and Order Regulatory Division (L.O.R.D.). Steve is now Shatterhand and he is on a mission to defeat Metal Command.

Standard NES story stuff.

I was really happy on finally beating this one. I played this game about 3 years ago and got to the last level. I felt defeated when I couldn't beat the game and put it on the back burner.
I had an incentive to beat this game cause it was picked for Achievement of the Week over at Retro Achievements. After watching a few vids and doing a little research I prevailed!

This game is a really cool action/platformer. Aside from enemies, you can also punch down walls and projectiles/bullets to defend yourself.You can also hang onto fences to get around. You can also punch little white crates to get power ups and money to be used for special platforms to power you up, get extra lives and get a full life restore. The power ups are the Greek letters and (Alpha and Beta). If you pick up 3 of them in a certain order, you can summon a robot satellite and it has different attacks depending on what order you picked them up. My favorite combination is the Yoyobot () is projectile energy balls you shoot out that retracts like a yo-yo. You can even hang from your robot satellite and it gives you a boost to do an extra jump.

If you also pick up 3 more Alpha and Beta power ups in the same order in which you summoned your robot satellite, you can combine with it and use a really powerful robot suit that grants you a 15 seconds of invincibility and can shoot out powerful waves of energy.

Very good game.
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Lost Horizon for PC

I had quite a few 2005-2010 point-and-click adventures in my library one way or another. Most had various issues, especially in the UI department, but this is one that I stuck with from start to finish. A pleasant surprise!
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Don't Disturb for PC

I didn't understand the main menu, so I apparently started the game with the original language text (I assume Japanese), and I quickly had to restart using English. It was okay. Art is neat, but the actual game is pretty mediocre for what it is. I'm pretty sure that I recently got this in a bundle.
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Renowned Explorers: International Society for PC

I liked this one a lot and intend to go back to it from time to time. Unfortunately, I will probably just stick to discovery mode on easy or normal difficulty, so I guess I won't ever be playing "the intended" experience again after failing it once. I really like the exploration part and making decisions, often risky ones, for the sake of adventure! Combat is what it is though, and while the flavor of it is different than other games that use a similar combat, nothing stands out about. So when the changes in modes and difficulty really deal with combat much more than the other, more exciting stuff, I went with discovery mode and didn't look back. I won with Anna, Maria, and Delores. My original group was Yvonne, Emilia, and Jan-Piet, but I hit a wall in just the second expedition when the combat difficulty just spiked.
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Overlord for PC

While I am sure that Pikmin wasn't the first game like it, I scour for all games in the vein of Pikmin. In a list that includes Masters of Anima, Little King's Story, and The Wonderful 101, and others Overlord is probably the best Pikmin-like game that I have played (obviously excluding Pikmin). I'm definitely getting the second one on Steam.

Other than the lack of a map of any kind and micromanagement being a little unwieldy (it was only required for a few battles), I have essentially just praise for this game that was less RTS like Pikmin and more action-adventure.
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I beat 4 games so far this year soul calibur 6 street fighter 5 dead or alive 6 mortal Kombat 11

Double Dragon II: The Revenge (NES)

Replayed via Nintendo Switch.
Still a great game to this day.
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Duke Nukem Forever (PC)
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DNF huh? I bailed on that when I couldn't get past how slow aiming was. You might be the first person I know to have actually beaten it.
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Cat Burglar: A Tail of Purrsuit for PC

I got it when it was free, but I guess it is now a paid game, though I assume most if not all of the profits go towards the animal charities it highlights. It's a cool but basic stealth game that is a good use of two hours or so.
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Hey! Pikmin for 3DS

Pikmin is probably my second favorite Nintendo series after Super Mario (did I already mention that in the Overlord writeup?). I was always going to get this game, but I had reservations with it being 2D and the lukewarm reception it had. While definitely not as good as the first three, it exceeded my expectations. I only wish that Pikmin didn't die by simply touching most enemies.
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Duke Nukem Forever: The Doctor Who Cloned Me DLC (PC)

And its finally done. I looked into this game initially out of morbid curiosity. I know it sucked, but I still had to see how badly it fucked up. In the end it was relatively mediocre. Okay-Mediocre, but a rather mundane-mediocre by the end. The DLC was the same. They said it was better and yeah I guess it was but it is haunted by the same flanderizations that removed the soul of Duke. It was interesting though that the bad guy was John's old Nemesis, Dr Proton from the DOS game which is why it was super interesting when they killed him off halfway! Wtf.
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KCF0107 posted...

DNF huh? I bailed on that when I couldn't get past how slow aiming was. You might be the first person I know to have actually beaten it.

Just saw this. The aiming wasn't so bad once I realized the enemies moved as slow and predictable as well. It's one of those games, think DOOM 3, where the series attempted to "modernize" by making things less frantic. There are less enemies. The shooting is cover-based.

Game's actually okay, 3/5. What irked me rather is the game attempted to jam in as much of what was cool when it started development, but have since been obsolete in a non-ironic way. Things such as QTEs (barely tho, no penalty happens if you fail), shitty driving sections that encompass 40% of the game, Crude chauvanistic and sex humor which would've been okay if Duke was a Man Out of Time like in Wolfenstein New Order but this was played wholly straight, idiotic plot when it could've just been aliens aliens aliens, and the damning limited weapon slot mechanic that I'm sure was an attempt to mimic Halo at the time.

I especially loathed the driving sections. The car physics were so bouncy and not like an action game at all. And the game attempted what was suppose to be this chase sequence and it ended to quickly the moment it began. Mercifully and Unfortunately, the levels were really short. You could almost predict what was gonna happen based on the pun-based title alone. Most levels will have the one shooting sequence, an obligatory puzzle sequence, then suddenly fade to black and its over.
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Rime (Switch)

FINALLY on the board for the first time since October. Went through some rough shit shortly after that and lost a lot of interest in games.
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Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer featuring The Legend of Zelda (Switch)

I think I've been pretty consistent about using official titles for this, but that one's quite a mouthful
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Pocky & Rocky (SNES)

A very good but hard game.
I like the soundtrack and I liked using Rocky.
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Downwell (Switch)

This game was sooo addicting. I definitely felt the Spelunky inspiration in this one.
I really loved the ending. <3
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I have played Downwell off and on for a few years. The furthest that I have made it is 4-2.
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Cadence of Hyrule - Crypt of the NecroDancer featuring the Legend of Zelda (Switch)

Fun little game.
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