Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2020 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

Elderborn (PC)

Painkiller meets Dark Souls. Okay, this game ain't terrible. But, I wouldn't blame you if you lost all interest about 1-2 hours in. There's only 2 episodes in this game, and the first half is utterly forgettable and ridiculous. The combat system was made for maneuverability, finesse, and tactics. But the enclosed spaces, dark hallways, and multitude of enemies ganging up on your wasn't making it easier for you. If you somehow shouldered all that, the 2nd half and beyond is a dream. I don't mind the monotony of countering enemy attacks thanks to its rockin' tunes which permeate the setting and completely remove the fact that the premise is kinda horrible.

6 out of 10

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Pop'n TwinBee (SNES)

Played it via Switch.
Beat it with a friend on Online while on Couple Mode
He was TwinBee and I was WinBee.

Playing the game on Couple Mode is unique. What Couple Mode does is the enemy attacks will aim at Player 1 most of the time if two players are playing together. This feature is made for less experienced players to enjoy the game together with a more experienced player.

Another cool thing with two players is you can toss your partner at enemies and the partner that gets tossed is invincible during the attack.

Aside from shooting, you can also drop bombs on ground targets. You can even punch that not only does a lot of damage when you charge it up and release it, you can also deflect bullets.

You can shoot Bells and change their color to get various power ups like Speed, Options, Triple Shooter, Cannon Shots, Smart Bombs, Shield.

This was a very fun shoot em' up. The graphics are nice and colorful, good music and it was very fun overall.

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ALL ON STEAM
2/21 - Arcania
2/23 - Wildermyth
2/24 - Tales From the Borderlands
2/29 - Resident Evil HD (Chris)

18 games so far!

Rank Categories of January's & February's:

BEST
Bug Fables
Disco Elysium

GREAT
La-Mulana
Saints Row IV
Slay the Spire
Tales From the Borderlands

GOOD
Resident Evil
A Short Hike
Song of the Deep
This War of Mine

ALRIGHT
Arcania
Avadon: The Black Fortress
Distrust
Higurashi Ch.2 - Watanagashi
Monster Prom
Wildermyth

MEDIOCRE
Anna's Quest
River City Girls


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Star Fox (SNES)

An ancient replay.
Completed Path 1.

Dated be damned, I still think the game still plays well and it's still fun to me.

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Marvel's Spider-man Complete

8 / 10

Story was great, MJ was a bit meh, but I enjoyed the switch ups. Platinum get. On to some dlc.

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Infinitode 2 (Android)

Many months in the making leading up to that final level. Okay, it was a p2win tower defense game. But by the time I knew I needed to grind I was hooked. So kudos for actually having an ending and actually have such a huge tech tree to work with.

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch)

Azure Moon/Blue Lions route. It's pretty good! I'm almost surprised at how much better than Awakening and Fates it is.

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A Way Out (pc)

That was super fun. I wish more games were like this, and/or they were more commercially viable

It's cool that if one person owns the game, their friend can play with them for free. Should really be the standard

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Geki Yaba Runner Anniversary Edition (Switch)

You play as a gnome as you save the kingdom, rescue a princess and collect socks.

An auto runner. You gain new mechanics to the gameplay as you proceed.
While running, you can jump, use underpants as a parachute that can help you get across gaps and can also be use to draft yourself upward in a tornado, don a viking helmet that can plow through trees/knight statues/dust tornadoes/drop down fast from a fall and a dash to make you go fast/jump further.

It was fun.

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Dark Souls (XB360, played on XBOne)

Had started and stopped this multiple times over the past few years, but over the last couple months, I finally started powering through it. It definitely made you measure each strike, and feel amazing whenever you took out a boss. Joins Halo 4 as games beaten in 2020. Starting in on Halo 5 now, then potentially Dark Souls 2: SotFS shortly after.

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The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)

Overall it was decent. Enjoyed the dungeons and the style. Didn't like how some of the stuff had no indication of it needing to be done or where to go to.

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Alchemist's Castle (Switch)

You play as an Apprentice that has to face off against the Alchemist.

As you go around the castle, you can find Journal entries to discover more of the game's story/lore.
You can jump, move boxes, throw explosive potions, double jump and sprint (those are all the abilities you can find) as you find your way around the castle,

It was a very fun and short Metroidvania.

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Disney Magical World (3DS)

It's kinda an Animal Crossing/Tomodachi Life/Gauntlet mixture that relies way too heavily on RNG and grinding. The game will also ask you to get something early on that's completely unfeasible to get until the late game way too many times.

Suikoden 2 (PS1, via PS3)
Quite a good game but there are some rare/broken collectibles from random mobs and very specific choices you have to make to not miss things.

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Portal 2 (Steam)

As I said to the last person who asked me what I thought, I can simply say that it, to me, had the perfect amount of difficulty for a puzzle game. There's definitely things where since I'm not perfect at solving stuff, I had to look a couple things up. It takes a lot of thought on some puzzles.

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MEANDERS (PC)

Bought this back in 2018, but in three spurts basically six months apart from each other, I have finally beaten this! Reminds me of Refunct in a way.
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Life is Strange 2 (PS4)

Played through the game twice for the platinum. First time I played through normally and the second time I went and tried to get another ending. Was a pretty good game, I enjoyed it. I think the characters weren't as great as the first one but I enjoyed the overall game.

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Crash Bandicoot (via N. Sane Trilogy) (PC)
That was hard.

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Halo: Collectors Edition (XGP)

Overall it was decent, though not a fan of shooters (outside of HL). I thought it felt extremely dated. The story was decent. I liked the difficulty curve, and really enjoyed the last escape mission.

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I can't edit it anymore, but I want everyone to know it only took me 10 hours to realize my mistake. It is supposed to be Combat Evolved.

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Dragon Quest 5 (DS)

I loved 4 and it was my favorite of the bunch, but we have a new DQ winner. Everything about this game is just outstanding. The cast, the story, the emotional weight of EVERYTHING. Just wow. Also Bianca 4 lyfe.

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Grim Dawn + All DLCs (PC)

Had no idea it was made by the Titan Quest people until about a quarter in. If that were the case, I'd say its a big improvement. I finished all the mandatory stuff but I can see that there is some replayability here. Unfortunately such theorycrafting is not to my liking and in fact the honeymoon period was so over by the time I got to DLC 2. What I will say though is that I enjoyed reading on the lore, which was basically done Dark Souls style. Dozens upon dozens of textbooks that had nothing to do with the main story was there for your perusal. It's got that feeling that the game had been constantly worked on and is certainly not the crap that Titan Quest was.

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Super Mario Bros. (NES)

Replayed via Nintendo Switch.

It was a nice way to celebrate Mario Day!

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Fossil Hunters (XB1)

Mediocre first impression, but I grew to like it after the initial disappointment that I basically had to play co-op (local-only) to get the intended experience. Playing solo makes some levels take significantly longer.
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A Robot Named Fight! (Switch)

You are a Robot...named Fight and you must stop something called the Megabeast from destroying the planet.

Game has 3 endings and I got 2 of them.

It's a roguelite Metroidvania.

It has wonderful pixel graphics and the controls are really good. The Achievement system is really good and well done cause you can unlock many different weapons/items and even unlock new areas to explore in each run.

This game is very fun and addicting! Highly recommend it,


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I bought it like two months ago when it was on sale for like a dollar or two. I will get around to it eventually.
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Portal 2 (PC - Steam)

I'll post my thoughts in some detail in the Game of the Month topic, since said topic is the reason I finally cleared Portal 2 from my backlog. TL;DR: I (of course) liked it.

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MetalmindStats posted...

Portal 2 (PC - Steam)

I'll post my thoughts in some detail in the Game of the Month topic, since said topic is the reason I finally cleared Portal 2 from my backlog. TL;DR: I (of course) liked it.

Portal 2 was my favorite game for a long time.

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Safecracker (PC)

Old Adventure Company game that basically predates Flash room escape games. A nice distraction full of tiringly cliche block puzzles. Also hilarious ending where you get to decide who gets the inheritance you've been hunting. You can even give it to yourself.

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Pokemon HeartGold (NDS)

Properly beat it this time, aka beating Red. Grinding is so much easier in these remakes because you can spam phone calls to Gym Leaders. The fact that I had to grind does point to my teams flaws, but I still love them all dearly, which is what Pokmon is all about for me. Sploosh and Ms. Mittens probably the MVPs. Final team:

Prodigy (Typhlosion) Lvl. 71, Sploosh (Politoed) Lvl. 71, Jet (Togekiss) Lvl. 70, Ms. Mittens (Ambipom) Lvl. 71, Flowey (Sunflora) Lvl. 70, A Tree. (Sudowoodo) Lvl. 70

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Chrono Trigger (SNES) (replay)
2 thumbs up!

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Borderlands 2 Remastered + All DLCs (PC)

Haven't played it since 2014. When I heard there was DLC tying this game to the 3rd, I set out on a quest to restart this game, beat everything significant in it, do everything I can possibly do solo, all with a character I've been dying to use (Krieg). Today, that quest ends. Every mission. 1 or 2 Raid bosses beat. Equipment and weapons I always wanted to have. And all the miscellanea like achievements and easter eggs and such. Its not 100% but, I can now safely move on from this game without ever coming back.

I think it has aged pretty well. It's a timeless classic even if the humor is just super crude. I'm a little piqued about playing Tales, because of the significant tie-in which I didn't think was significant at first.

Anyways, my next big venture would be the Pre-sequel which I just never actually finished. So, I'm not gonna be playing the 3rd game anytime soon and maybe by the time I do, the DLCs will all have dropped.

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Mario is Missing! (SNES)

Replayed.
It was picked for Achievement of the Week at Retro Achievements to celebrate Mario Day.

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No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

Overall I think I preferred the first game, though still really liked this one. I liked the quality of life changes, with the ability to quick travel and being able to go straight into ranking fights without grinding money. The four different beam katana's were a nice inclusion, and there was a reason to go back to the older beam katanas (well, outside of the original one). I usually used the Peony or the dual-katana. The bosses seemed a fair bit more difficult in this one - I think there were more memorable ones in the first game. I didn't like the 2 bit minigames at all, and could never get passed 5 stars in the muscle training (may explain the difficulty on bosses). This is going to sound really dumb considering the first game, but the story and such was a LOT less grounded, which I didn't find appealing. Anyway, on to Travis Strikes Again!

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Prince of Persia: Warrior Within HD (PS3)

Warrior Within > Sands of Time
It has always been so and will always be so

I beat Bloodstained last week.

Forgot to put it here

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Which one?
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Ori and the Blind Forest (Definitive Edition)

Saw that the sequel was out on Game Pass and figured it was time to finally play the first one. This was a beautiful, magnificent game. I was let down by the story in Celeste after hearing such reverence for it, whereas I didn't even know the story here was one of this game's stronger elements. But holy shit I am still engulfed in feels from that ending. That's how you do a story in a platformer. 100%ed the map afterwards and am tempted to do a second run through on hard, but I'll probably just move on to Will of the Wisps.

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KCF0107 posted...

Which one?

RotN on 2/29, so it was 2 weeks ago.
It's a great game. SotN is still the best of it's kind. But this is a very fun new rendition and it's my favorite game of 2019.

CotM, I am still stuck on the boss with the green slashes. That's a hard game.

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God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PS3)

Oh yeah two games in one day

Swordbreaker The Game (Switch)

A visual novel that plays out like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books.
There are 333 scenes.
Some of the deaths to the hero are painful, bloody and absurd.
Game has 3 different endings.
The illustrations look really nice and the choices you make are really something.

I'd recommend it if you like choosing your own adventure and if you can get it at a low price/discount.


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Ori and the Will of the Wisps (PC)

I still don't care for those escape sequences. The ending reminded me of Dark Souls.

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Bloodroots (PC)
One of the games that captures some of Hotline Miami's greatness without being very similar to it at all. A ridiculous cartoon massacre overflowing with weapons and mobility.

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Alan Wake + All DLCs (PC)

When I heard that (other game spoilers) one of Control's DLC might finally resolve this game's plot. I decided to go back and play the Remedy game that I missed. I actually mistook this for another game which was also console exclusive at the time: Heavy Rain, for some reason and most of what I knew about Alan Wake turned out to be from that game in particular. So I went in this blind. And it was okay. Shitty combat but intriguing story and I'm always a sucker for things that are inspired by Twin Peaks and/or Stephen King.

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Ys 1 (Steam)

Not much to add here, just GotM and it is a quick game.

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ReCore: Definitive Edition (XB1)

The inclusion of grindy elements is baffling for such a narrowly focused game, but this was a decent if unspectacular game. I know it was widely panned, so I was expecting to only give it an hour before calling it quits, but it held my interest enough to want to finish it.
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