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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition (PS4)

Seven years later, it is basically exactly as I remembered it
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Final Fantasy IX (PS4)

I never played FF9 when it originally came out but I got the PS3 version, played it for a bit, and never finished it. Figured I'd get the PS4 version to actually finish it and get the trophies along the way. It was a decent game but I was disappointed in it. The game gets a lot of hype so I had some expectations going it, but it didn't really deliver. Nothing about the game really stood out to me so I'd personally list it near the bottom of the Final Fantasies I've played. Not a bad game but I just didn't think it was that special.

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Gex (PS1)

Continuing my nostalgia trip, decided to take this one for a spin. Honestly never played this but I saw demos of it at a department store when I was a kid. Was expecting a crap experience given the graphics, but turns out to be surprisingly solid. The wisecracking got grating after awhile but everything was excellent. The boss fights, the varied music, the zones and levels were very distinct despite the engines limitations at the time. Personally feels on par with the first Crash Bandicoot.

I also beat all the challenge levels in the secret zone. Good game.

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A Plague Tale: Innocence (PC)

I probably have a number of games I haven't posted here, but this one was outside my wheelhouse and I pushed through it anyway.

I had no idea what APTI was going in, somehow. I rarely buy games blindly, yet this is pretty much exactly what I did here. And just shy of the first two hours, I was tempted to return it just because it was clearly not what I normally play. The early game has a lot of stealth tactics that give way to what almost feels like survival-horror. It would be more accurate to merely say it's an "action" game, though, in the vein of a contemporary Tomb Raider with less combat.

However, what the game does well, it does phenomenally well. The voice acting, the graphics, the level design are all absolutely top notch. I feel like the story jumped the tracks a little at the end, but the character end of the writing is incredibly well done. Would recommend.

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Tomba 2: The Evil Swine Return! (PS1)

Absolutely loved this game as a kid so definitely how could I resist coming back to it, especially since it used a save from Tomba 1 to get some extra stuff in it.

This time I went and got all events, even the stupid fucking minigame ones I couldn't beat before. They were still hard now as they were then and they expected children to beat it?!

I also encountered something hilarious playing this. Apparently someone flubbed a line and just left it in there. It was totally a blooper but they stuck it in an obscure questline nobody thought they'd see lol. And also, finally saw what I had thought was a scene where one of the characters swore because of some ill-perceived mature content, turned out to just have been my imagination.

Anyways, nice game to get back to.

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Eggs of Steel (PS1)

Oh man. Me and this game have had a very strange history. I saw it once in a gaming magazine and I thought it was pretty cool, tbh. I was thinking this out loud when a classmate of mine was like "I have this game." and so he lent it to me. I do remember playing it a loooong time ago and it was good if not clunky. But after like months of playing, my friend got angry that I was hogging his game and forcibly took it back. Never saw it again and I agonized over never beating it again for a long time too. Until today.

This game is quite odd as it is obscure. Rhythm and Hues made this game? Atlus and Enix published this? No guides, no nothing about it. But these are big names and for 1998 that was like the PS1's prime. It had a magazine ad so it was a pretty big deal. Did it do well? Did it fail? Hm.

The game itself is an action puzzle platformer with an animated egg, set in a static cg backdrop. Its very uhm. It's very solid for what it is. I can forgive its frustrating camera angles for the briefness of its levels. Usually it'll just have this one gimmick and if you solve it, you move on. For what it was, I was surprised that the boss fights were innovative. I tip my hat though for the Dark this game has. Charlie actually causes the very mayhem he's trying to stop AND he literally murdered his supervisor, who is this game's final boss in the form of a vengeful egg ghost. And yet, everybody just praises Charlie like he's the hero of the story. There's even a sideplot where the resident accountant went crazy and turned to a scottsman, forcing you to fight him. Fucking idk. It's late. I just beat this game once and for all. And my brain is fried.

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Coma (PC) (Flash)
Man, Flash games are going to be even harder to access in December. I hope they get archived properly. That said I was curious about this because it inspired a full game that came out recently, Neversong. It's what you might call an LBP level, over in 10-15 minutes without much having happened. It's cute though.

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Coma was nice for its time when it first appeared. We've sadly come a long way since then.

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Catherine: Full Body (Switch)

I played this last year and loved it, so wanted to replay with the new edition. I liked most of the added stuff though Rin felt kind of like a pointless addition Overall, I'd recommend this highly!

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Megami Tensei (Famicom)

The Super Famicom port, to be precise, which is part of a compilation with its sequel. Going to take a break and do some Final Fantasy before jumping into said sequel, though.

Also I forgot to post when I finally finished the Blue Lions path of Three Houses, which I guess was last month?

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Gex: Enter the Gecko (PS1)

Woot, good ol classic platforming. Not the worst I've played. The levels weren't memorable but the design was alright and the music was still amazing. Biggest gripe in this game is the fucking camera. There would be times where the angle just changes by itself even when there's no logical reason to. I guess this was like one of the first 3d platformers so I can forgive it.

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Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (Vita)

Other than getting a Digimon from my uncle in the late-90s and watching a few episodes of the animation a few years later, I didn't much exposure to the franchise. It's hard not to compare this to Pokemon, but man the requirements to evolving some Digimon to higher forms are just stupidly arbitrary. I was planning on doing the tournaments, but I spent almost an hour on one of them, and in the final fight, I just got fucked up by a team of Digimon that kept healing and buffing each other every turn, so I think I'm done.
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Mulaka (PS4)

It is very much budget Okami. It has less focus on combat and adventure but more on mythology and platforming.
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Pac-Man World (PS1)

This was hard. Like "How could a kid do this?!" Hard.

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Aldred Knight (Switch)

You are Aldred Knight, a courageous knight of the brotherhood who has to stop Lord Grugor who is threatening the kingdoms.
You go through 3 worlds with levels from point a to b. There are also evil insignias to destroy but it's only for completionists and has no other purpose.

You can use a sword and eventually get an axe to destroy rocks, a bow & arrow where you can also use arrows as platforms. You also get fire, ice and lightning magic. You can also use a gold armor that gives you temporary invincibility.

There are a few boss fights that were kinda creative. Some of the music is also nice. Sadly there's a bug that freezes the game if you try to open a treasure chest in World 3-3.

Blazing Chrome (Switch)

This was a hell of a good Contra inspired game. Felt more along the lines of Contra: Hard Corps
It was so good. I'd rank it pretty highly if it were part of the Contra series.

Bare Knuckle III (Mega Drive)

I played this via Sega Genesis Classics on Switch. Switched the region from US to Japan. This version is a lot better the US version by far. The difficulty is a little easier for one. The story is a little different and experiencing the first stage mid boss, Ash was...really something.

Donkey Kong Country (SNES)

Played this via SNES Switch and played Contest mode against a friend. I won as the Yellow Team and got 101% and beat him by two worlds. He kept getting bodied by Mine Cart Carnage and he finally made it to Gorilla Glacier.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (Switch)

This game was pretty good and difficult. I beat all 4 chapters and got 5 endings.
The music was sadly disappointing to me except for one track.
Hachi is also a good boy.

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Just Cause 4

As usual with JC, messing around with stuff and causing mayhem/explosions was great fun, then the missions happened and, like, "eh".

But playing with the boosters and balloons gave me some really mischievously enjoyable moments. Fairly short campaign so once I was ready to be done with it, I was able to finish quite quickly. Had no inclination to do the majority of the side missions or anything of that nature. Looked nice as well.

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Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition (PC)

Finished this up, and loved it! The game was extremely over the top, which I loved. The game ramped up a huge amount, and had a large variety of encounters (even if the enemies were mostly humanoid). The The plant monster and the Giant fight in the helicopter were pretty badass. I loved the variety of the weapons, and all the separate abilities of each gun. I actually used all the guns (except for one, which I just didn't like) throughout the entire game.

Now kind of at a loss to what to play next.

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Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past (3DS)

Man people weren't lying when they said this game is long. Almost completely burnt myself out at Alltrades Abbey. I guess it doesn't help that I'm the kind of person who constantly likes to talk to NPCs to see what new stuff they have to say and holy shit does this game have a lot of that. I think I finished at around 85 hours.

Shovel Knight (3DS)

I'm either not as good at video games anymore or I'm a greedy fucking asshole who keeps dying to try and save my lost moneybags. Maybe a bit of both

Castle Crashers (PC)

Not sure if it's because of how long I waited to play it, but meh. Combat was very repetitive throughout, and didn't care for the humor.

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Beyond Eyes (PC)

Meh, don't really have a whole lot about this one. Didn't care much for it.

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Kimmy (PC)

Been playing some short games in my backlog since I haven't been able to find anything else to play. It was a game that exists. Basically you baby sit this girl named Kimmy and teach her and kids around the town games to play, while things go on. I honestly don't remember where I got it, probably some Humble Bundle where I wanted a different game in the bundle.

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249USDollars posted...

Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past (3DS)

Man people weren't lying when they said this game is long. Almost completely burnt myself out at Alltrades Abbey. I guess it doesn't help that I'm the kind of person who constantly likes to talk to NPCs to see what new stuff they have to say and holy shit does this game have a lot of that. I think I finished at around 85 hours.

When I last played this I made an effort to read all NPC dialogue every time it updated

I think I clocked in around 250 hours (also doing basically everything, all DLC, etc)

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I had to force myself to stop doing that because I knew I was going to burnout if I didn't. Had to take a multi week break around Alltrades because of it. Still tried my best to speak to as many people as possible, but I wasn't running back to Estard as much to see if someone had something new to say every time.

Yeah, I didn't burn out in VII, but I did doing the same thing in XI (the prospect of checking every town at the beginning of part 3 was too much for me).

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Mushroom Quest (Switch)

You play as a Mushroom and you push blocks around to collect crystals to go on to the next level.
Game is pretty short with only 30 levels but it was fun. Some of the levels took me some time to think of the solution but once I solved it I felt satisfied.

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Covered already in the appropriate topic, but:

Outer Wilds

I dunno. This might be the best game ever made. It's so intricate. It's awe-inspiring like the Sistine Chapel and yet also somehow as intimate as a tiny local church. Smart, too, covering huge themes - the biggest possible - yet still feels so personal and folksy. Stunning moments of visual, trippy beauty. Occasionally terrifying and horribly tense. A perfect ending that brings a huge mix of emotions. Sadness and melancholy but also hope and awe. Great sound design/music. I love all the space science stuff too - even though it's obviously fantasy it's at least partly grounded in some real theories; though it obviously draws inspiration from a ton of places it is totally unique. I can't stop thinking about it. My only sadness is that unlike my other favourite games, I won't replay it again and again. My memory is too good to forget the solutions to the game, I think. But maybe that's ok - I don't need to play it to death. I'll always treasure it.

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Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix HD (PS3)

Playing through these Disney worlds again reminds me of how horrible they were in III

Ms Pac-Man Maze Madness (PC)

Another childhood demon knocked down. I genuinely loved this game back then. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who's into Pac-Man as it is more a Pac-Man game than the actual Pac-Man World games because of its fixed perspective and light puzzle elements.

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XIII_rocks posted...

Covered already in the appropriate topic, but:

Outer Wilds

I've been meaning to get started on this. But I gotta ask, is the time limit/backtracking annoying as fuck?

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Double Dragon IV (PC)

This game felt like something that could be played on Newgrounds.
It was still kinda fun to me.

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Ben There, Dan That (PC)

A fairly humorous point and click. Sometimes the text was a bit hard to read on the background, and the art was quite... interesting. But for how short it was, it was a fairly decent game. A few points took me a bit to work out what to do - though it was never very difficult.

This weekend plan on playing more Broken Age and getting further into Banjo finally.

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Mario Golf: World Tour (3DS)

So one of the cool things is that you can unlock various pieces of equipment that increases your Mii's stats to make tournaments easier. The bad thing though is that there are only three tournaments in single player and they can all easily be beaten with the default equipment. I'm guessing most of that was supposed to be for the now dead multiplayer.

Simoun posted...

I've been meaning to get started on this. But I gotta ask, is the time limit/backtracking annoying as fuck?

Not for me - I think I hit the loop less than 10 times. I set a goal for myself and if I accomplished it I ended the loop before time ran out. Or I died.

And I never felt like I was backtracking. I felt like I was making constant progress. You will have to revisit areas sometimes multiple times but I never once felt like it was a chore.

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Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge (PS1)

All coins, at least Silver time in all levels.

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XIII_rocks posted...

Not for me - I think I hit the loop less than 10 times. I set a goal for myself and if I accomplished it I ended the loop before time ran out. Or I died.

And I never felt like I was backtracking. I felt like I was making constant progress. You will have to revisit areas sometimes multiple times but I never once felt like it was a chore.

Sounds great. Thanks for the info!

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Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (Switch)

Did not expect that game to be 100+ hours, oof. Had a few big issues (pacing, AI/combat balance, a few plot beats) but it also did plenty of things well and I really liked several characters.

BORN IN A WORLD OF STRIFE

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Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time (PS1)

Yep yep just churning out the nostalgic games here.

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A Short Hike (PC)

Played for the Game of the Month of August, and I loved it. There was so much to explore, just when I thought I had run out of things/explored everywhere another place popped up. There were a few things I missed out on, and will definitely look around for them more later on, a fantastic game to relax to.

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Ah, forgot to say
Cuphead (PC) (Third playthrough)
I had a new save and decided to mess with achievements before moving on to Expert. That miniplane one is really bad on any of the actual bosses. King Dice's miniboss 6 is much less painful even when walled behind another fight and dice rolls. Pacifist is a rough time too. I'm sort of experimenting with Expert now, hopefully clearing A ranks at the same time or at least making them seem easier on Normal.

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So, would you all consider playing through all the Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns as beating it? Been conflicted whether to count it as null or as beaten.

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A Short Hike (PC - itch.io)

Dragon Quest XI ~= Celeste > Portal 2 ~= A Short Hike > 999 > Deiland > West of Loathing

More in the GotM topic soon.

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Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (XB1)

Great remake of arguably my favorite kart racer. While I am not a fan of the unlock system, I am especially disappointed that I can't just buy things I want and have to hope that they appear in the Pit Stop.
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Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP)

Fucking grindy ass game. Full of backtracking and padding too. Went and did the bonus dungeon as well. Never touching a JRPG for awhile, maybe >_>

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Ghost of Tsushima (PS4) (Platinum)
I recommend it.

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No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise (PS3)
This port at least is Deadly Premonition levels of jank, and just as bizarre and endearing.

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Yakuza Kiwami (PC)
Like Yakuza 0, a game with a wonky progression system. This one has 3 skill trees that use EXP and one that mostly uses fighting Majima. I'll take that over taser-shotgunning a big man over and over.

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Fable: Anniversary Edition (PC)

This was always my favorite Fable. Didn't care for TLC stuff, which I've not done before.

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