Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2021 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

Captain Commando (Arcade)

Replayed via Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle on the Switch with a friend online. Played the Japanese version. He was Sho (Ginzu the Ninja) and I was Jennety (Mack the Knife). I ended up getting the high score.

It plays like a much better tuned up Final Fight. I always did like the ability to run upwards and downwards. Doing 3 different jumping attacks is also neat (Vertical Jump, Jump Forward and Running Jump Forward).

A Dark Room (Switch)

This game...was quite the game. It drew me in and I couldn't put it down when I started it up.
It's modeled/inspired by Zork.
The game is all told in text and you are given a number of actions to do in text boxes.
As you get further along when you gather resources, you get a new place to explore called A Dusty Path. This is where the game REALLY starts to get interesting. Suddenly the gameplay shifts into an overhead map-like grid and you can go to explore the path to new locations. You also get into RPG styled fights. The end of the game was...really something.

Another interesting thing I learned about this game was at one point it was pulled from the Nintendo eShop because Amir Rajan, the developer of the game included a Ruby editor in the game as "a last second 'spark of inspiration.'" Rajan apologized for the incident, stating that he simply wanted to introduce people to coding.
At the time all you had to do was plug a keyboard into the Switch and press the Tilde Key to access the Ruby editor. A Dark Room was eventually put back up on the eShop but it was updated so that you can no longer access the Ruby editor.

Bot Vice (Switch)

This game was pretty damn awesome. It's a gallery shooter (reminded me of an overhead version of Cabal).
You can move left, right, take cover and a roll which gives you i-frames. You can also get a lot of weaponry that can do all kinds of damage like a Machine Gun, Spread Shot, Flamethrower, Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher.
It has some nice pixel graphics, gameplay is fun/challenging and even some of the voice acting was pretty good.


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Link's Crossbow Training (Wii)
Remember when we discussed rallying this into a games contest to see if anything Zelda/Link would automatically have at least an ounce of strength? Anyway, needed a break from HZD so I decided to go through this thing I've had sitting around for years and only played a little of long ago (that describes a lot of games I own but I knew this could be beaten in an afternoon).

This is what it is - a tech demo for a peripheral that was only compatible with a few games. I don't think I ever had any of those games, so this was the only thing I was ever going to use it for. It was essentially an arcade shooter with Link as the main character and Zelda-themed levels. There was a surprising variety of gameplay, with four or five different level types, rather than just an on-rail shooter through the whole thing. The stationary radar levels were the worst, because the only way you could turn was by bringing the cursor all the way to the side of the screen. This was particularly frustrating if enemies were right behind you. You should have been able to use the joystick, since it wasn't being used for anything else in those levels. The rest of the level types were good.

The time limit on the final boss was ridiculous and left no room for error. Several times I timed out with one or two shots left to go, which made the next try all the worse because my hands were shaking from the frustration. Technically you could get a medal on the final level without beating him (I actually got a platinum medal on the level without beating him; the only platinum medal I got in the game), but I wanted to beat him to consider the game beaten. To make matters worse, you had to go through the whole final level to try again, which meant I did the other two stages a million times.

The Wii Zapper itself is not a bad peripheral, and I wish it had been used on more games. It would've been a cool option on Metroid Prime Trilogy, for example, and heck, they could have straight up made more arcade shooters for the system. So yeah. I think I paid $15 for this in 2008 or 2009. It is what it is and I didn't expect it to be anything more. Heck, I maybe expected it to be a bit less, so call me oddly pleasantly surprised.

Wow, this was a surprisingly long, detailed write-up for Link's Goddamn Crossbow Training.

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GRIS (Switch)

I feel like they could have cut the game's content down in half to help with the pacing, but the game did have a strong second half

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LineWay (PC)

I made a list of all the games from previous Steam Secret Santas that I received and haven't beaten but planned to. Just nine more to go!

This is a cool, brief, and relaxing puzzle game by the way.

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Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

I'm not sure why I didn't expect that ending, but the surprise factor certainly elevated an already well-done sequence for me. It's a good thing too, since the area immediately before was perhaps the least fun I had playing Super Mario Odyssey, though it was only partially the game's fault.

Otherwise, for as many different ideas as it tried using the same mechanics, I found an experience remarkably consistent in its enjoyability. The downside is that it never really reached any exhilarating highs, so while I would call Super Mario Odyssey a great game, it's not exactly my new favorite Mario game.

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Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead (PC)

Fuck that battle of the bulge level.

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Street Fighter (Switch/Arcade)

Ancient replay via Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. Somewhat of a guilty pleasure to play.
Most of the time you want to attempt (keyword: attempt) to perform the special moves to do massive damage to stand a chance.
Giving Sagat a Shoryuken in the final round (if you can pull it off) is so damn satisfying (Not to mention I got to reenact a canon event!)

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (Switch/Arcade)

Ancient replay via Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
The very game that started something special 30 years ago in Arcades all over the world.
Beat it with Ryu. The Hurricane Kick redizzy combo was fun stuff, heh.

Double Dragon IV (Switch)

Replayed via Switch. I double dipped (I already own it on PC) for this version cause they finally added online play (wanted to play this with a friend of mine online). Surprise, surprise, it doesn't want to work and it can't connect to anybody.
Unfortunately I still feel the same way about this game: It's just so uninspiring. You're better off playing one of the better games in the series.

Oliver's Adventures in the Fairyland (Switch)

I was mislead by the eShop's description of this game that this game has roguelike elements. It does not have any whatsoever.
It's fine though cause it still ended up being a fun decent Metroidvania.
Platforming is a little slippery and nothing too special about this one in the story department but it is a fun short game.

Colorful Colore (Switch)

This was a cute and fun little puzzle game I got for a dime.
You play as a colorful square and have to guide it towards the goal.
There are 50 levels and it is so satisfying when you figure out the solution to make it to the goal in some of the levels.


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Super Blood Hockey (PC)

And another Secret Santa game is down. Like LineWay, I had played it soon after receiving it, but just didn't play for over a year.

Franchise Mode is interesting in that I prioritized health over development. My team was always the least skilled on the ice, but I never suffered a fatality nor an injury that needed rehabilitation.

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)
I'll rate that as entirely better than playing the DS games on not a DS. A few minigames that made me want to tear my hair out. I really could've done without the material collection glitch. But good dungeons, engaging non-dungeon areas, and some really hype bosses.
And lightning strikes the sword of the warrior!

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Ratchet and Clank (PS4)

Never played the series as a kid but the PS5 game trailer got me interested. Found out that the PS4 version was a reboot of the franchise and I already had it from PSN so I decided to give it a try. I really enjoyed it. Was fun, simple, and didn't take itself too seriously.

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Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA)
I actually played the majority of this in November/December 2020, but got stuck on the final boss so I put it aside for a while. I decided that this would be the week I went back to finish it. At first I was thinking Wednesday, but decided to keep playing Horizon: Zero Dawn instead. Then Thursday, same thing. Friday I was determined but fell asleep super early, so it was going to be tonight, and I wasn't going to put it down until I finally beat it. I got this game for Christmas back in 2003, but while I made it far a few times, this is the first time I ever beat it (I'm going for all new beats this year, though I might make an exception or two). I have lots of good and bad to say about it so let's go.

Let's start with the good. Love the humor. Like A Hat in Time, this is a game that knows it's not taking itself seriously. Everything about it is a joke, to the point where the theme of jokes is actually a running plot element. The characters are absurd, the scenarios are stupid, the dialogue is ridiculously hammy, and I loved every second of it. Mario and Luigi's interactions with each other are especially great. So much expression and humor without ever uttering a complete sentence of dialogue. I also really liked the battle system. It's not perfect by any means, but it's very unique and adds different ways for the game to be either easy or challenging. A good enough player could beat this game without ever taking damage (except in like maybe 2 or 3 parts where taking damage is unavoidable for plot reasons). I also like how active it is. There's never a dull moment, and never a point where you go on autopilot like I tend to do at certain points in a lot of RPGs.

Now some bad stuff. Some of the areas were way too long, or at the very least required too much backtracking and had way too much involved. Joke's End was particularly bad, especially for a not-the-last level, but there were others. Some of the enemy patterns were just too difficult for me to read, and thus their attacks too difficult to avoid. Like I said, I'm sure a better player than me could figure them out fine, but considering this is meant to be a game for like, 10-13 year olds, I think some of the stuff was just way too obscure. That final boss... damn, her patterns weren't difficult to figure out, but one mistake could really fuck you up, and the battle was just SO long, you could get really close to the end and then fuck up on her strongest attack and get screwed very easily, which is in large part to my next point... I think the timing aspect was too unforgiving, on both avoiding enemy attacks and performing Bros. Attacks. Once again, this could just be me being a bad gamer, but there were tons of times where I would either get it, or fail an attack, and be like "I don't know how I could have possibly been more than a millisecond better with my timing there." There were a surprising amount of 3D platformer-esque "make one wrong move and you fall from a great height and have to climb back up" moments, which was kinda frustrating because the control mechanics were not the best. If one brother wasn't directly behind the other and was like, half an inch off, the one in the back wouldn't perform the action they were supposed to, and if you weren't paying 100% attention to the icons at the top, you'd mess up and miss. My final gripe is that the game never explained how to perform Advanced Bros. Attacks, so I went through most of the game not doing them, and I'm sure that made battles much more frustrating for me than they had to be. I had to look up online exactly what they were and how to do them, and didn't start using them until just before the final boss, so I didn't have much practice.

Overall I guess I'd say this game was north of the enjoyment line for me. It was funny and definitely had some fun stuff, but just had way too much holding it back for me to put it anywhere near my all-time favorites. I'm sure it was fine back in the day and just hasn't aged well, but I gotta rate it for the experience I had when I beat it.

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Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough (PC)

Man these games are insane

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No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Switch) (Replay)
Now you may ask, does it live up to the original? In some ways it doesn't. It's not as quirky and rough. Some of those quirks are nice not to have to deal with anymore, mind you. And as an action game it's serviceable, probably all around better even. It's also still really fuckin' weird and edgy. The writing struggles a bit in a way that may not have been meant to be as stupid as it was, but it's still got a lot of absurd charm to it. We'll see how the next one turns out. (What was with that spinoff? Some people said it just sucks, but others said it's worth it for a look into the director's mind.)

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Beautiful Desolation (PC)

Other than the crappy cop out ending, I recommend this. So usual for a post-apoc game to be all about how humans continue to survive and nothing really changes blahblahblah. This game takes place centuries after the end, to the point that nobody even remembers what exactly happened. The world does thrive, but is instead filled with these weird inhabitants, some mutated, others mechanical. Or a combination of both. There are alot of moral quandries in this game and the choices while obvious, still make you want to see them all as it isn't just as simple as good=great and bad=worse choices. In an interesting twist though, your choices don't really affect the ending in that you play in the future, and the ending dictates what kind of asshole/saint you were decades ago.

One thing I really like is the lore and worldbuilding. It does that Dark Souls thing where not everything is explained and so the mystery is up to you to piece together and speculate. I think kinda get what the ending is going for, and to truly understand it unfortunately you're going to have to go back and get like 4 more kinds of endings (and a secret 5th one) which I don't wanna bother honestly. Though beautiful and mystical in its appeal and aesthetic, the game is rife with traditional point-click adventure foibles like pixel hunting and backtracking. And it'd be fine, if you didn't move so slow and everytime you jump into a world you have to call your ship and jump through a gate and land and---its padding basically.

Play it once. Maybe twice a week after, then be done with it unless you're an achievement hunter.

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Dishonored 2

Beat it with a powered up Corvo run. Attempted a ghost non-lethal run, and failed on the second to last mission. Love this series. Gonna do a non power Emily lethal run next.

Not sure if I like it more than the first, but both are excellent, and Arkane Studios is massively underrated imo. With the Microsoft transaction, I think hope they use them to the best of their ability(and money), because the Dishonored series is amazing, and Prey is awesome too. Can't wait to see what Deathloop is like.

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Been forever since I've beaten a game it feels like, but I have two now.

The Last of US 2 (PS4)
It's not nearly as bad as everyone online made it out to seem. The story was all right. Not great, but not terrible. The gameplay was great though - I love stealth games so it scratched that itch pretty well.

Super Mario 3D World (Switch)
I didn't like the locked camera, and I wish it were more like a traditional 3D Mario, but overall I really enjoyed it. The levels felt unique, I really like the Cat powerup and the different playable characters. I swapped between Mario and Luigi until I was able to play as Rosalina.

3D Mario game rankings (of the ones I've played): Odyssey > Galaxy > 3D World > Sunshine > SM64

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Battle Circuit (Switch/Arcade)

Replayed via the Capcom Beat Em' Up Bundle and played online with a friend. We switched it up a little with different characters compared to who we normally play as (I'm usually Cyber Blue and he usually plays Yellow Iris). I was Captain Silver and he played Pink Ostrich. We also did the requirements to fight the true final boss.

This game is always a blast to play. Being able to upgrade your character to get new moves in between the stages is always satisfying and this was Capcom's swan song of the 2D Beat Em' Up from the Arcade. A must play for anyone that enjoys beat em' ups.

Contra (Switch/Famicom)

Replayed Contra NES for the umpteenth time via the Contra Anniversary Collection.
This time around, I opted to play the Famicom version.
It was pretty cool to experience this one for myself the first time around and it has some neat things going for it compared to the version most of us played over in the west.

https://tcrf.net/Contra_(NES)
^
A lot of interesting differences

Tuff E Nuff (Switch/SNES)

Ancient replay. I remember renting this game back in the day. This was the fighting game you had to rent over the weekend when they didn't have Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat.
So this game...is pretty generic.
Story is nothing to write home about.

There are two things this game did have that was sorta neat that not many fighting games at the time had that made it different and separated it from the pack of fighters out there.

1. It had a Replay function where you can fast forward/rewind
2. As you progress through the Story mode, your character's special moves increase in looks and power. It made you feel as if you got stronger as you go up the tower to fight your next opponent. It gets a +1 for that.

This game was also called Dead Dance in Japan and they cut out a lot of content over in the west, like character dialogue after the match and even the character endings.

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Morbid: The Seven Acolytes (PC)

Souls-clone with a couple of half-baked ideas rolled into one. Diablo-like inventory but can't use mouse. No Stores, forcing you to predict if the next boss will need what weapon and hope the one you ditched wasn't necessary. About 5-6 status effects but none of them seem to have any effect! There's even a poison effect and no antidote in this game! You gain skill points as you level up which only affect passive Blessings you find only after 2 hours into the game. Like I legit thought I missed the tutorial on levelling up. Weapons are also random AF and tho certain quests reward you with specific gear, none of them are good. I only got the best gun in the very final dungeon which was pathetically easy at that point. Contrast to the beginning when it had an insultingly annoyingly difficult mini-boss for god's sakes.

I only beat it because of sunk cost; I was already deep into it having beaten 5 of the 7 acolytes. The plot is DS vague but unlike DS, none of it ever comes into play at all. There's no exposition, no narration. You wake up on a beach and everyone's dead. Here's a sword, go kill 7 Acolytes. Then it just ends. Not even an ending narration.

Great graphics though. And uhhh let's see. Yeah it's got that 16-bit charm a game in this era would have. But it's also got its debilitating annoyances. Backgrounds melding into each other, and the choice to make it true 2d instead of isometric adds further to the confusing layout. Half the time I didn't know where I needed to go or if this seemingly empty patch of grass was walkable. And that would be fine if it wasn't a DS Clone with all the stamina and 2-hit kill mobs after you.


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I figure there's enough differences to consider it a separate (albeit short) game

Bowsers Fury (Switch)
I really enjoyed this mode, and enjoyed it a ton more than 3D world itself. Being open, and allowing you to go from Shine to Shine immediately without much delay was nice - one of my issues with Sunshine and Galaxy was that it would kick you out of the maps.

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Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (PC)

Now that there's a new one out, I might as well see why this one was so mediocre.

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Sam & Max Hit the Road (PC)

I think that I have now read every comic, watched every episode of the cartoon, and played every game from this fantastic duo

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Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)
This is certainly one of the most accomplished feelings I've had adding a game to my "beaten" list in a very long time. This game had attracted me since I first looked into it back in the fall of 2016, but it took getting selected for GotM (and me having a PS5) to actually finally play it. There's a lot to get into and I'm sure I'm not going to do this game the complete justice it deserves in this write-up, so let's just get to it.

Games this big typically overwhelm me. Not just big physically, but with so many customization options. I just feel so out of my element, especially in games where you pretty much have to take full advantage of this customization so as to not have the game be impossible. Luckily, I actually thought this game streamlined everything pretty well. I was never confused as to how to navigate customizing, nor did I feel like I didn't understand why I was over/underpowered at certain points (err.. to a degree anyway; early on I felt some of this but it got a lot easier as it went on).

The game is MASSIVE. THIS is a beautiful, expansive open-world game with so much to do. At first I thought I was just going to blitz through the main story but that's just not possible. Not only is there so much that just intrigues you, but the difference in experience and... other things you gain from doing certain side missions are vital to making the game exponentially easier, which was honestly fine because I had fun roaming this world. Often times I would take time to just hunt, and I felt really good after upgrading and crafting after a big haul. Gaining lots of experience from quests that honestly didn't seem too difficult was also rewarding and made the truly harder quests feel a little less daunting.

I ended up doing some of the story quests out of order (not to a point where it actually affected the narrative, but there were certain parts where you could branch off and do things in either order, and I ended up doing ones with higher recommended levels first) which actually made the game easier as I went along. There were battles in the middle of the game that took me about a dozen tries, then the battles at the end of the game only took me like 1-3 tries on average.

The combat is awesome. Definitely requires building that skill tree to feel that way, but once I had a lot of weapons and skills to work with, I loved getting into combat (as long as I didn't have like, 3 or 4 mid-to-high tier machines to deal with at once).

Pretty much everything I did in this game felt satisfying, whether it was taking down a herd of machines, or finishing a mission, regardless of how short/easy or long/hard. The game's reward system makes it easy to feel like you're always moving forward. The one thing I'll say is that the story didn't intrigue me much until later on. The early portions felt like I was just doing extensive work to get some lore of this land and its people, but once the action really started getting going, and we got introduced to more characters, I felt more into it. Aloy herself was kind of bland at first but I did eventually get into her backstory and she definitely became more interesting later on. The scene where she scolded the Nora for bowing down to her was probably the turning point for me between "this is an okay protagonist" to "this is a pretty good protagonist."

And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my buds over in the GotM club. They helped me get through this game, support-wise. There were definitely times where I felt like I wasn't good enough for it, or downright frustrated at how bad I was at some things, but they were super supportive and occasionally gave a little hint to make it better, and I couldn't have done it without them.

Overall this was an awesome experience and I can't wait for Forbidden West.

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Blasphemous (PC)

Beat the main game and don't want to bother with the DLC content for awhile if ever. The game's okay, on the middle spectrum of Soulsclones for me, somewhere just below Salt and Sanctuary. It has a mixed bag of design decisions but not as bad as 7 Acolytes. Instead of terrible decisions, most of them were just incomplete. Like, you could only ever equip 3 passives at any time despite being passives. Why bother? Just make some of them toggleable like in Castlevania.

I understand as it was a crowdfunded game, that it felt like certain things were going to lead somewhere or had a backstory but just never existed. This kind of vagueness happened for Hollow Knight too when it originally came out and as I'm reading up, the DLC content fleshed out some one-dimensional NPCs.

Anyways, this game looks great. I'm incidentally a fan of Aquelarre, which is a spanish-inspired tabletop RPG that deals with this kind of religous horror. Lots of drawn to life art pieces as enemies and bosses. The concept itself is great.

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Contra (Switch/Arcade)

Played it via the Contra Anniversary Collection.

Contra for the Arcade was a different beast compared to it's NES counterpart.
Some of the level structure is slightly different in some of the levels.
The Base levels, Level 2 and 4, has a time limit. You gotta destroy the cores quick before time runs out.
You only get 3 continues. It doesn't matter how many credits you put in.

This is one of those rare instances where NES > Arcade version.
It was still a nice experience to see how the Arcade version was like.

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Ys II (Steam)

Was good to get through that, though it might be a little better to get into the later games. Some bosses were just annoying, though not as bad as the first game's ones. It's enjoyable that a game as old as it is had a fully fleshed story though.

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Battletoads (2020) (XB1)

I could never get far in the original, so I like quality of life improvements and other changes (such as a timer for respawning downed allies) to allow me to beat this one. They certainly threw a lot at the wall in terms of the variety of gameplay segments, and most stuck, but man those bike sections are just plain boring and go on forever. I was also taken aback at how hilarious this game was. I kept watching certain cutscenes while I was going through the game.

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Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)
A unique experience of detective work by way of supernatural abilities. Looks great and is a great premise as long as you don't mind a lot of violent deaths and figuring things out on paper.

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Outer Wilds (PC)

I finally got to play this, even though I acquired it a looong time ago when nobody knew about it. 2017 I think. I was planning to get into it but the time loops and flying around space scared the shit out of me. I thought it was going to be one of those beautiful games that dangled around an annoying mechanic. It was for awhile, but when I stopped thinking and started trying to get myself killed as many times as I could, that's when the game really opened up for me.

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Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)

I got engrossed in the world, but not the story, and I am looking forward to seeing Guerilla Games' followup Forbidden West.

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Slay the Spire (PC)

I don't usually stick around for roguelikes like these but the boardgamer in me is drawn to the deckbuilding aspect. I've been playing this game on and off for a year now and only just reached Ascension. Twice.

I think this is a good time to stop and call this game Beat before I get back to it again.

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Tomorrow (I guess technically today now) I'm finally going to be adding one of the worst games I've ever beaten to this list. (The fact that I didn't beat it Wednesday and have now had to play several extra hours of stuff I've already done before going to the final boss through little to no fault of my own is getting me frustrated enough that I might just smash the game instead)

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Titanfall 2 (XB1)

People kept telling me that this was one of the best FPS campaigns out there. As a result, I found the first half to be disappointing before the game showed a lot more promise in the second half, especially with some level-specific items like the arc tool and time-whatever. It wouldn't make my Top 25 FPS campaigns, but I can understand why someone else would hold it in very high regard.

The multiplayer though is where the game shines. It has a ton of modes, and all that I tried were a lot of fun (Last Titan Standing my favorite). It also had a lot of loadout customization options available at the start. It's how I quickly realized I liked the Spitfire/Charge Rifle combo, which is funny because I never touch the latter in Apex Legends.

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Bulb Boy (PC)

Short disgusting game that uses toilet humor. It was meh. Made me chuckle a few times.

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Gears of War 3 (XBO | Gamepass)

Meh. I'm not a fan of straight shooters, which I've mentioned before, but the changes between 1-3 are really minor between games, so they all felt the same. The main difference in this one being that the enemies were even spongier than usual...

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KCF0107 posted...

Titanfall 2 (XB1)

People kept telling me that this was one of the best FPS campaigns out there. As a result, I found the first half to be disappointing before the game showed a lot more promise in the second half, especially with some level-specific items like the arc tool and time-whatever. It wouldn't make my Top 25 FPS campaigns, but I can understand why someone else would hold it in very high regard.

The multiplayer though is where the game shines. It has a ton of modes, and all that I tried were a lot of fun (Last Titan Standing my favorite). It also had a lot of loadout customization options available at the start. It's how I quickly realized I liked the Spitfire/Charge Rifle combo, which is funny because I never touch the latter in Apex Legends.

For me, I didn't think it was the best FPS single player I've ever played, but I appreciated how it felt fresh and fun. It's a little different than the standard FPS campaign, but not too different as to feel unfamiliar. The simple and solid story tied it all together.

The multiplayer definitely is a ton of fun.

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Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (PC)

Disappointing, tbqh. It was good enough to play through the whole thing, but considering I liked Heavenly Sword quite a bit, I was hoping for a bit more. Gameplay wasn't bad, but not very engaging either, and the ending was weak. But it does look good with some good voice acting and the story was enough to make it work until the last scene. The game has unique characters and a good world, but suffers from a lackluster script that leads to weaker character development. It feels forced at times. And Pigsy is bad comic relief.

It's a very mixed bag.

5.5/10

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I think that was a game that I gave you. Sorry that you weren't a fan.

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KCF0107 posted...

I think that was a game that I gave you. Sorry that you weren't a fan.

Yeah, I got it from you. No worries! I'm really glad I got to try it. Even if a game isn't great, I'm always grateful for the opportunity to see for myself on games I'm interested in. So thanks again for that + Republique (which I'll get around to eventually, but maybe not soon).

It wasn't bad or anything, just that I've played a lot of better games and I was hoping for a bit more. If it's below a 5 then I didn't enjoy it. But I did enjoy parts of Enslaved.

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Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash (3DS)
Ugh... this one was rough, but I was determined to finally get it out of my backlog after all these years so here comes the rant. I bought this when it came out (primarily for the amiibo that came with it), played through roughly two thirds of the game and honestly I remember kinda liking it. I didn't finish it because, well, I probably got distracted and, despite having gotten better in 2014, am still not that great at finishing games. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when there was a topic asking what the worst spin-offs ever were. This got listed, and I said that I remembered it being fine, and didn't realize it was hated. I finally went back and did a full playthrough and... yeah that "fine" comment does not hold up.

The game is a mess. The controls are awful. Moving Chibi-Robo feels very stiff, but attacking feels very sloppy. You have two different types of lashes that you can use - the whip lash and the zip lash. The whip lash is short and can only be shot out straight forward or at a 45 degree angle upward. So in order to hit anything you're going to be doing a lot of moving and jumping to get it exactly right, because the margin of error it allows is very slim. The zip lash can be build up much longer and has a full 360 degree range, but it takes a long time to charge and the aim is so sensitive that even the slightest tilt will send your cursor way off from where you want it to be. There are times when the whop lash is clearly the better option and the zip lash is literally the only option, but otherwise it's pick your poison. There are a lot of places where you have to be so precise, particularly bouncing the zip lash through narrow areas, and it will take you a lot of trial and error to get it to go exactly where you need it to. It's awful.

There's a mechanic called the Destination Wheel, and it's literally the worst progression mechanic in the history of gaming, I'm not even exaggerating. At the end of every level, you encounter a dumb minigame where you have to hit one of three UFOs. Depending on which UFO you hit, you get one, two, or three chances to spin the Destination Wheel after the level to determine which level you go to next. This is completely pointless and only serves to frustrate you, because you HAVE to complete every level in each world in order to progress to the world boss and ultimately the next world, so there's literally no reason to want to skip levels and thus no reason to ever want to get anything other than a 1 on the Destination Wheel. If you skip a level you have to go all the way around the world board again and will likely end up having to repeat levels you've already done. It's awful. Luckily the wheel is really easy to manipulate and if you're paying attention you can always get it to land on what you want (and if you aren't good you can spend coins to manipulate it further), so all it really is is a humongous waste of time that you have to go through after every. Single. Level.

Which brings me to my next point. The humongous waste of time that you have to go through after every. Single. Level. There is a whole rigmarole that you have to go through after every single level that you can't skip. You can mash the A button through it showing you all your frigging stats of the level, but you can't skip the nearly-identical cutscenes that take place after every level. Then there's the fact that the characters in this game never, ever shut up. And it's not like they have anything important to say. They either ramble on about stuff you should already know if you fail a level, repeat the same stuff before and after every level, or meander on about the most pointless crap that has ever been written into a game. And you can't skip through the text by pressing or holding the A button. You have to watch each and every letter appear and then wait a second or two before pressing the A button to move onto the next useless rant.

And speaking of wasting time, the endgame requires you to buy (with in-game coins) four huge, expensive items to fight the final boss with. There's no reason you should have to spend coins on these items, and it doesn't even make sense canonically. There's no warning that you'll have to use your coins this way at the end of the game, and I only had about 2/3 of the required coins. And I was pretty diligent about collecting every coin I saw, and didn't spend that many going through the game, so this was a huge flaw that meant that I had to go back and find levels that I could actually tolerate replaying in order to get enough coins to finish the game. Just when I thought I was about to finish this piece of crap, I had to, through little fault of my own, spend several extra hours (yes, hours) going back and redoing crap I'd already done. Between this and all the unskippable stupid stuff I mentioned earlier, I'd estimate that this game was at least four hours longer than it needed to be, which I blame for me not having the game to beat nine games again this month.

And now for me to complain about the product placement. Yes, there is product placement in this piece of crap. Mostly second-tier snacks and candy. The kind you've seen at the grocery store but never buy when it's right next to the better brand that's like 5 cents more expensive. Like Utz Potato Chips. And global equivalents. These served no purpose in-game other than to waste time when you found them with a dumb, unskippable cutscene and to be given to creepy dolls that never shut up for coins. It was so stupid and there was no reason for it to ever be in this game.

There's also a minigame that appears on almost every level, and it's usually right out in the open and you'll see it easily along your travels, but in the first level of the game, it's hidden far out of the way, and if you don't activate it in the first level, it'll never activate in any of the other levels, so I went through the entire game (until I went back and replayed the first level for coins) having no idea what the heck this thing was for in every level. The minigame was also stupid and annoying and barely worth the prize.

And you know the worst part about all this? Every now and then, I actually started to have fun playing this game. Crazy, right? I actually got into a bit of a groove, sometimes for a few levels at a time, where I thought there were some pretty decent platforming and puzzles, and started to enjoy myself and think that I hadn't given this game a fair shot, until something stupid came along again that made me realize, nope, it's as bad as I thought. The skateboarding (and other similar vehicular levels) are particularly bad because they are long, challenging, have no checkpoints, and allow very little room for error, which is fine, until you realize that the vehicles themselves are just as difficult to control as anything else in the game, and you have to go through a bunch of crap each time you fail it and try to start again. It's so unbelievably frustrating. All of this makes me sad that there is actually some semblance of a decent 2D platformer here, but the bad stuff is just so excruciatingly awful that it is not worth it at all.

Overall my experience with this game was very negative. It's not the worst game I've ever beaten, but it's probably bottom 5, if not then definitely bottom 10. Given that there are countless much better similar games, many of which are on the 3DS itself, I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

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Kandagawa Jet Girls (PS4)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79323234

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Evoland 2 (PC)

Probably my underdog game of the year.

A long time ago I played the first game on my phone. It was this tiny ambitious gamejam-esque concept where you started out with gameboy legend of zelda, evolving mechanics and graphics until eventually finished with FF7-style gameplay, all the while riddled with references and fun pokes at the various game genres it goes through with. I knew that the dev was working on a sequel at the time but I never knew it was going to be this epic and ambitious.

Not only is the sequel a full-fledged open-world JRPG that takes beats mainly from Chrono Trigger and Link to the Past. It has made its main mission to jampack every game genre known to man in a single game. There's a beatemup, a platformer, a stealth section, a shmup, guitar hero, professor layton-y puzzling, pac-man, pong, and the list goes on. I fucking lost it when an FF8/9-esque collectible card minigame was unlocked! There has got to be a world record for most game genres in a single game because this thing is just crazy. Not to mention, that the game is chock-full of references from various pop culture media such as Game of Thrones, Tinder, One Piece, Borderlands, etc the list is endless. I think I even spotted a 20th Century Boys reference in there and some obscure ones like Gianna Sisters.

I kick myself now for allowing this game to sit on my desktop for close to a year. I blame the really slow start and pacing, and the by-the-numbers plot that I wasn't really too interested in. I was wrong though; the plot is VERY interesting (but still slow). Initially assumed to be tacked on just to showcase game genres and make references, the game actually follows a more serious tone with dark implications that in the end doesn't really get resolved, which is the entire point of a time loop. There is no beginning and end. Everything that happens affects something. The Future leads into the Past in-game which then leads to the Present and kickstarts everything I find this interesting because in a meta-sense you're also repeating the loop by playing the game again.. And what's really nice is this implication was never spoonfed to you. I love games that let you figure it out on your own and the discussion threads on this has been brimming with talk.

I also love that the narrative stays close to you and your friends. Throughout your journey a couple of time events get tossed around and a couple of people are named, but these very typical JRPG characters are never encountered again if at all and are never deemed significant despite early appearances. There is a clear sense of a balancing act between lampooning and telling a good story, which I feel no other game does. Like, if its a parody it will go out of its way to make references and not take itself seriously. This game risked being serious and succeeded at not becoming an edgy excuse altogether.

That said, the game isn't without its flaws. It was clearly made with variance and variability in mind so, being a jack of all game genre trades and a master of none, there is some visible clunkiness and lack of polish to it. On 2-3 occasions I would get stuck to a wall and would require a restart (fortunately checkpoints are aplenty here). Boss fights, though very interesting and span game genres, are ridiculous at times (but thank god difficulty is easily changed in options). Movement and combat isn't entirely satisfying as its so generic at this point. The evolution aspect was great but after that novelty, sticking to that style of game the whole game with uninspired dungeons with no gimmick is stale at times. The music is also full of short tracks. You will find yourself muting the game at times for how annoying it eventually becomes looping after a minute or so. Its best feature may not also be your favorite feature. Like, would you stop and play 7 rounds of Bejeweled in the middle of your JRPG? They're ridiculously hard and challenging btw. I barely survived the Shmup section myself and one of the collectibles is locked behind it even so good luck getting gud.

For all my complaints though, I can't really blame the 10-man team who worked on this. And to my surprise, I found out that the lead dev Nicolas Cannasse actually created the Haxe programming language (of which Evoland is made from)! I can't help but think that the dude was probably flexing and showing the capabilities of his language by making all those game genres. I would check out his post-mortem on the game itself as its very interesting if you're into that kinda thing.

https://haxe.org/videos/conferences/wwx-2015/the-tech-behind-evoland-2-by-nicolas-cannasse.html

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Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Wii)
I really would've preferred the GCN version but I couldn't lay hands on it. So once again I went with "normal" mode in the interest of fewer motion-control-induced headaches. Despite that, I may have actually enjoyed it more than the first. Something about the light and dark worlds gave a good flow to the gameplay, and areas were more self-contained, meaning less lengthy trekking. Ammo isn't much of a problem and Sky Temple keys are 9 things to collect at the end, barely registering as different from cleaning up upgrades. I'm not quite excited for 3 but at least I'm used to the controls.

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Spyro the Dragon (via Spyro Reignited Trilogy, PS4)

Glad I finally got a chance to play this, since I never had it as a kid. Love the fast-paced gameplay, 100%ing some levels was pretty unintuitive though (looking at you, Tree Tops). The flight levels kinda suck.

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Rise of the Tomb Raider (PC)

Was slowly playing through this as a way to chill after work. I find collectathon games pretty satisfying (100% collected) and the combat/gameplay felt good. Plot was a big whatever - I wasn't really there for the plot anyway. Will eventually move onto the third in the series.

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Tell Me Why (XB1)

I think Dontnod has finally run out of Pacific US states to use in their games

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Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny (PS2)

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Golden Deer (Switch)
Played the Blue Lions on release, so I don't have a whole lot to say about this now, but I put enough hours in that I'm counting it anyway.

The Good:
The map design etc. is certainly better in this route, and I enjoy the extra lore it brings to the story because I very much like the world of 3H. Claude is a good Lord.

The Bad:
"Bad" is probably unfair, but it's hard not to talk about these routes without direct comparisons since the majority of the game is so similar between them. This playthrough solidified that I'm a firm "characters over story" guy. Even with all that extra worldbuilding and such, I still preferred Azure Moon quite a bit, simply because the Blue Lions are a far superior cast.

Overall:
3H is a top ten all-time game for me, and I'm glad I went and played this route, but that'll probably be it for me. CF and SS don't hold that much appeal to me, and considering my completionist tendencies drive me to put way more into this particular game than is strictly necessary, particularly on replays, there's too many other games in my backlog to get through.

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Onimusha 3: Demon Siege (PS2)

Accompanying me beating the remaster of the first game on Steam, this marathon has come to an end (I'm aware of Dawn of Dreams, but that's something else altogether---another game for another time). This game was a masterpiece and I mean it's not just that its the last one of the trilogy, or that Jean Reno is in it, but that it's got that fish out of water temporal theme you don't see anymore unless its an isekai of all things.


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Yoshi's Woolly World (Wii U)
I bought this when it was released, mostly for the amiibo that came with it, but never played it. I intended to at some point, but I never did. Now I finally did. And it was a very refreshing 2D platformer after the crap that was Zip Lash.

I haven't played too many Yoshi games. I've played Yoshi's Story, and a little bit of Yoshi's Island, but that's it before this. Largely because I hate Yoshi's signature jump. But I didn't mind it too much in this one, and it's making me wonder if I should give some of the other games in the series a chance. The scenery was nice, the level design was great, the yarn gimmick was used just as well here as it was in Kirby's Epic Yarn, and, most of all, the music was phenomenal. I might like to get this soundtrack. It was just so happy it warmed my heart.

The difficulty curve was pretty much perfect. The first three worlds were very easy, the fourth, fifth, and first half of the sixth world were tricky, and the second half of the sixth world was actually very tough. I actually got a bit frustrated with the last few levels.

I didn't get a lot of the collectibles. This is something I might go back and try to complete some more of someday, but it's not on my radar right now. Part of the reason for that has to do with my biggest complaint with the game - a lot of the time, there was simply too much to do between checkpoints. There could be a ton of collectibles way out of the way, and then if you you died before another checkpoint, that was a lot to do all over again. Another minor complaint I have is that if you struggle with a level, that is, die more than like twice, the game starts bugging you to see if you want to put it on babby mode, which is kind of insulting and just adds to the frustration.

Overall, while this was certainly no masterpiece, it was cute and I'm glad I played it. It certainly has me wanting to play Crafted World, if not some of the others in the series.

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Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! (via Spyro Reignited Trilogy, PS4)

So this game sucks. Spyro 1 felt awesome and timeless. This feels like something made a decade later by a lesser team that fails to understand why the original was good. I kind of can't believe this was the direct, immediate sequel to Spyro 1. I'd rather play Spyro on the GBA!

Also, not really a knock on its quality but even as someone who likes (prefers, maybe) all-ages games, this just felt like a kid's game. Between the slapstick "humor" and the dumbass NPCs it was almost embarrassing to play.

I was planning to 100% this whole trilogy but I'm definitely not 100%ing this game. I think I could tolerate getting all gems/orbs and all achievements, but the skill points are too much for a game I don't like. We'll see how Spyro 3 is, whenever I decide to get to it. Sorry if I'm bashing anyone's favorite game here!

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