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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Shantae and the Seven Sirens (Switch)
I actually started this playthrough back in October (I waited for a physical copy), but got sidetracked, mostly by GotM stuff. That triple-header of Golden Sun, Splatoon 2 and Star Fox Adventures distracted me. I tried to go back but actually left off at a part where there was very little clue as to what I had to do next so I put it aside even further. Finally picked it back up and had to look at everything I'd done and use a step-by-step guide to determine exactly what I had to do next. Even after that, there were things I had to look up because they absolutely relied on you remembering little things, which, after all that time, I absolutely did not.

I mean, what's there to say? This series is really fun. For a guy who says he's not good at Metroidvanias, I beat two in a row, and consider Shantae among my favorite gaming series. I actually had a ton of fun bopping around the world with all Shantae's powers, and even the late game enemy rush was really fun once I had a shit ton of powers to work with and a full inventory. I will say that there is a late-game boss that, as far as I could tell, was largely trial-and-error-based, which was really annoying, and the final boss was a bit tiresome. Also there are a few Clu Clu Land-like segments that seemed out of place and pointless, and a few rooms that took a long time to reach that, again, seemed pointless. Toward the end I spent a lot of time simply uncovering the entire map and, lo and behold, a lot of the new rooms and paths I uncovered turned out to be pointless by that point.

All of my complaints aside though, this game had some really fun platforming, some neat puzzles, absolutely bopping music, and all of the hilarious characters fans of the series have come to know and love. Another minor complaint is that they kinda half-assed the voice acting. There were a few fully-animated cutscenes which were fully-voice-acted, but then the regular dialogue was mostly not, but every now and then they'd throw in a few lines that were fully-voice-acted, and often they were random, unimportant lines. It was so weird. I hope the next game has full voice acting.

Play Time: 9:21:39
Item Collection: 68%

I remember 100%ing Half-Genie Hero, but probably won't do that with this one anytime soon. Overall I would say I rank this either 3rd of 4th in the series. Risky's Revenge and Pirate's Curse are definitely better. Shantae 1 is definitely worse. So this and Half-Genie Hero are a toss-up in the middle there. I'm inclined to say this one simply due to the fact that, due to not reaching all of its stretch goals, HGH was only about 2/3 of what it could have been. But I actually love all five and can't wait for the series to continue (I know it's no guarantee, but as WayForward's flagship series, there's no way they don't make a Shantae 6 in a few years).

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GNOG (PC)

I'm really bad when it comes to finally playing games that I've long coveted. GNOG was in my Top 5 on my Steam wishlist for awhile before finally grabbing it...only to let it sit in my library for a couple years. I finally took the plunge, and it was everything that I could have hoped for. Outstanding. It reminds me a little bit of a structured and more logical Mu Cartographer.
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Undertale (PS4)

I first heard of Undertale from GameFAQs contests and back then I wasn't super interested in playing it. But, it seemed like it had a decent amount of staying power over the years, so I figured I'd give it a shot when it went on sale.

The game was ok I guess. I went through the game completely blind and didn't think it was too special but I beat the game last night and I think my opinion may have changed a bit. The ending was pretty interesting and reading about the other endings now has made me kinda wanna replay it for the other endings. Still on the fence of whether I want to replay or just watch the other endings on YouTube.

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Underleveled posted...

This probably isn't something I'll play again anytime soon, but I'm glad I played it. Having played some of Wario Land 3 and Wario World years ago, and heard nothing but good things about Wario Land II, I know this is a series that gets better from here.

Wario Land 4 is actually the best one imho. WA-HO!

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Riptide GP Renegade (PS4)

It functions virtually identical to its predecessor, but the course design, while more complex, I'd say is worse, and there were several baffling design choices that make this the clear inferior product.
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Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (PC)

It's kind of a wonder that I grew up to love video games as much as I do, because I very much got my start in gaming with NES platformers, and I was never any good at them at all. Now, these days, we've got a lot of games being made with those sorts of titles as inspiration, and... I'm still pretty lousy at them. Pretty small sample size and all, but GameFAQs has such games as Celeste, Cuphead, and both La-Mulanas (all of which I've played in the last couple years) rated as harder than CotM2 by the community, and I found this to be notably tougher than any of them on a screen-by-screen or level-by-level basis. But hey, I finished it! And according to Steam achievements, plenty of folks don't, so that's something I guess!

Anyway, as the game itself goes, it's definitely the weakest of the three Bloodstained projects. Hard to put my finger on exactly why, but it just doesn't seem to have the same heart or care put into it. Levels feel less "tough-but-fair" and more "claustrophobic trial-and-error." The music isn't nearly as good, either. And the story (at least through Episode 1, which is all I'm doing for now because the others as I understand it are just the same stages done with different characters) is kind of a carbon copy of the first CotM. It all just feels less inspired.

Still quite solid, to be sure, but as another point of reference, that first one took me one sitting of a little under hours to get through, and this one took about 3 and a half across four sittings, so yeah, just didn't grab me. Glad I did it, but I was ready to be done by the end for sure.

Think next up might be Hades, which I'm incredibly excited for.

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She Remembered Caterpillars (PC)

I have been playing this on and off for several years now, but I finally got through it. Lots of cool mechanics, but there's also a lot to do on any given puzzle that it can be deflating when you are completely lost in the middle of it all.
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Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (PC)
I didn't play much myself. Yeah, I didn't feel it. The melee combat design is very frustrating, and bosses tend to be either recycled or indistinct.

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Neo Cab (PC)

Very similar to Night Call, which I went through last year. I feel like their pros and cons are almost the opposite. Neo Cab had a relatively strong overarching premise, but I feel like their integration of the FeelGrid wasn't the best, and the individual storylines of the passengers were very hit or miss.
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Scribblenauts Unlimited (PC)

I had a hard time getting into the DS one like a decade ago, but I found this to be pretty fun. I just enjoy trying out silly answers to problems to see what works.
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Picross 3D Round 2 (3DS)

I loved me some Picross 3D on the DS and didn't even know this sequel existed until recently. For 20 euros I definitely had to buy it and it gave me 60 hours of relaxation, slight frustration and most of all; tons of fun. I beat all the puzzles on Hard from the start, for me that was the best experience because this game has a lot of small and easy filler puzzles (even on Hard). The final one was massive. I liked the blue and orange distinction a lot, it definitely gave the game another major logic element to work around. Some puzzles felt like guessing the shape was actually part of the puzzle rather than just pure numerical logic. Not sure if that's the case, but it almost always worked anyway. Sometimes the puzzles got too big and my brain glitched out, so I ended up pressing the wrong colour or the hammer button when I actually meant to press something else, and the absolute mass of numbers in the bigger puzzles sometimes made it difficult to distinguish grayed out numbers and circles/squares. But these are all minor nitpicks, because I already miss my go-to game for chillout moments and train rides. I wouldn't mind another game like this in the future at all.

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Zombie Shooter (PC)

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Haven't been on my desktop account in a while to post this:

Metroid Fusion (GBA)

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Guilty Gear -Strive- (PC) (Story Mode)
This isn't even really a VN so much as a movie, but it's the closest thing the game has to a completion state. And it's not bad. It's an improvement over Xrd's, in part due to being a movie instead of a somewhat dry VN attached to too much fighting game lore.

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Hades (PC)

First of all, a huge shout out to @PrivateBiscuit1 for gifting me this game for Secret Santa this past year (alongside Cuphead, which I neglected to mention when I posted about it a few months ago, and Stardew Valley, which I'm obviously getting to eventually). Thanks again for the truly awesome set of games, man!

Anyway, Hades has had a lot of awards and superlatives thrown at it pretty much since the day it released, and it dang sure earned every one of them. It's been a long time since I got annoyed at my daily life responsibilities (work, school, etc.) specifically because they were getting in the way of me playing a video game rather than because they just suck on their own merits, but that was the feeling I got with this one. Incredible experience in every possible way, at absolute minimum a top 25 game all-time for me.

My gamer confidence was a little low after CotM2, but after this game I think I've kinda confirmed that it's indeed mostly just those old-school platformers that give me trouble, because from what I can tell in some quick browsing of other forums and such, I think I made it through my playthrough here at a pretty solid clip compared to many. Made it to the Hades fight on my eighth escape attempt, beat him for the first time on #15 after a couple very close calls, then did it again on #17, and then rattled off eight in a row starting on attempt 19 to finish the main story, including at least one clear with each weapon and a couple different Heat levels thrown in for good measure when I got ambitious.

Definitely not gonna put this one on the proverbial shelf yet - want to at least make it to the epilogue before I call it quits, but July has been such a prolific month that I'm gonna put it on the backburner for a week or two just to see how many more I can squeeze in. And then I think I'm gonna go on a mini Supergiant streak because I played Bastion forever ago but have had Transistor and Pyre just sitting in my Steam library for a long while and I think it's definitely time I get to those.

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Bless you buddy.

Just glad you're having tons of fun with it! I recommend the other Supergiant games! They're all completely awesome!

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Iconoclasts (PC)

I played through almost all of this game nearly two years ago and decided to come back to finish it right quick in the name of my recent productivity. Turns out I was even closer to the end than I realized - all I had left was what essentially amounted to an endgame boss rush.

The reason I dropped it back then was because this was an extraordinarily disappointing game that simply collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. Joakim Sandberg, the single-handed man behind the project, created a fascinating world and some really great characters in the seven years he worked on it. You know what he didn't create, unfortunately? A coherent, palatable story and gameplay experience that allowed those elements to shine. It's technically a Metroidvania, but it earns that classification by being juuuust non-linear enough for it; exploration and combat aren't fun enough to justify revisiting areas most of the time anyway. And there are undoubtedly some legitimately profound themes going on in its lore, but it's presented in such an awkward, esoteric fashion that I can't imagine the vast majority of players could ever actually figure out what the hell it's trying to say under the surface.

There's good things about Iconoclasts, but taken as a whole experience it's way too uneven and prone to getting in its own way to the point that even with its crazy long development time, it ends up feeling rushed at the end. Not awful by any stretch, but I think my ten hours could've been better spent elsewhere.

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Mega Man 11 (switch). Improve records in Dr. Light trial.

The burning-through of quick games that have been in my Steam library for way too long continues.

Abyss Odyssey (PC)

Short and pretty mediocre. Cool ideas but it doesn't quite control well enough to take advantage of them. Don't reckon I'll ever really think about this game again.

Astebreed (PC)

Also short but much more sweet. Super solid bullet hell, just the right difficulty for its hour-ish runtime, surprisingly great music.

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The Hex (PC)
Another big explosion of meta weirdness from the creator of Pony Island. Thumbs up.

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NBIceman posted...

Iconoclasts (PC)

I played through almost all of this game nearly two years ago and decided to come back to finish it right quick in the name of my recent productivity. Turns out I was even closer to the end than I realized - all I had left was what essentially amounted to an endgame boss rush.

The reason I dropped it back then was because this was an extraordinarily disappointing game that simply collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. Joakim Sandberg, the single-handed man behind the project, created a fascinating world and some really great characters in the seven years he worked on it. You know what he didn't create, unfortunately? A coherent, palatable story and gameplay experience that allowed those elements to shine. It's technically a Metroidvania, but it earns that classification by being juuuust non-linear enough for it; exploration and combat aren't fun enough to justify revisiting areas most of the time anyway. And there are undoubtedly some legitimately profound themes going on in its lore, but it's presented in such an awkward, esoteric fashion that I can't imagine the vast majority of players could ever actually figure out what the hell it's trying to say under the surface.

There's good things about Iconoclasts, but taken as a whole experience it's way too uneven and prone to getting in its own way to the point that even with its crazy long development time, it ends up feeling rushed at the end. Not awful by any stretch, but I think my ten hours could've been better spent elsewhere.

I can echo these feelings. I really did not care for the ending, even if I understood the "intent" behind it. I also really didn't care for what happened with one of the characters for the end, you probably know the one. Just... a lot of disappointment all around. I loved a lot of the game though, but I just left with a bad taste in my mouth from the end.

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I also didn't particularly like Iconoclasts and eventually quit playing.

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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PS4)

I played A Way Out relatively recently and my friend said that Brothers was the game director made first, and that it was also worth playing. It was on the PSN Summer Sale so I decided to get it and try it out.

I wasn't that impressed. The gameplay had some neat elements to it and it was cool seeing what elements transferred over to A Way Out, but I really didn't like the dual joystick controls. It was different but not in a good way. I found myself just struggling with the controls a lot. The story was also pretty simple and didn't really resonate with me, so just overall a miss. That said, it was cheap and short, so not terrible I guess.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

I also really didn't care for what happened with one of the characters for the end, you probably know the one.

I would assume Royal? Because that was my feeling as well. I went so far as to look up a guide for the part where you have to leave him behind on the exploding base assuming I was missing something, because it made absolutely no narrative sense to me why THAT would be the solution of all things and the end of his story.

Glad I wasn't the only one let down there!

Furi (PC)

This game absolutely kicks ass. This was another one I'd been wanting to play for a while but always shied away from because the difficulty was so notorious and I wasn't confident in my ability to beat it. But after Cuphead and a few other things from this year, I figured I'd at least give it a shot. And I actually found it quite manageable. It's definitely tough, but it's never unfair, and it always feels incredibly satisfying to win a fight. Died once to the Hand, several times to the Edge, and a few more times to the final boss - everything else was a first try. The Strap, the Burst, and the Song were the standout fights to me, but I honestly didn't think any of them were underwhelming; at absolute worst, they were creative.

I'm blown away by how few folks on B8 seem to have played this game (according to my friends list) relative to some of the other Steam offerings I've beaten, because I personally can't recommend it enough and just wish like hell it was longer. I was worried it'd be a letdown after how much I liked Cuphead, which is a similar game in a lot of ways, but I honestly enjoyed Furi just as much. It's every bit as stylish and challenging and fun and I'll definitely be coming back to achievement hunt a little bit.

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NBIceman posted...

I would assume Royal? Because that was my feeling as well. I went so far as to look up a guide for the part where you have to leave him behind on the exploding base assuming I was missing something, because it made absolutely no narrative sense to me why THAT would be the solution of all things and the end of his story.

Glad I wasn't the only one let down there!

Yuuuuup. For arguably the best character in the game, we don't see a satisfying end to him. It's a bleak, terrible, depressing one. Royal tried, and failed, and tried, and failed, and tried again, and then he finally comes to the conclusion that maybe he's not the prodigy he thinks he should be, and is so sure of the entire game. He KNOWS he's a failure, and he actually can't deny it any longer.

But the direction the game goes is for him to absolutely fail, and you need to leave him behind as the only use for him now is as a glorified paper weight so you can go on. How is the conclusion for him to come to realize he's not great after all, then let him die saying he's a worthless failure? That's not good writing, it's just SAD.

And I get the game is supposed to be all about Iconoclasts, fake bullshit people worship, fake yadda yadda. But Royal finally broke past that and saw it. And he was promptly punished further for it with an unsatisfying death. Just so, so, so sad in all of the worst ways. Have him at least go "I know I'm a worthless failure... but let me do this one thing for you. Let me succeed at something." And just sacrifice himself in a blaze of glory. That has a lot more emotional impact than dance around him and dump him on the ground and run. It was always clear he was nothing special. It doesn't cheapen your story by having the guy who is not special do ONE thing right.

Very, very frustrating storytelling.

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Zombie Shooter 2 (PC)

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Iconoclasts was amazing. I love the story and it made me think about it for weeks. But I will admit the metroidvania part of it just fails.

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Simoun posted...

Iconoclasts was amazing. I love the story and it made me think about it for weeks. But I will admit the metroidvania part of it just fails.

Yeah, I'm sure it really did resonate with some people and certainly understand why. I just wasn't one of them. Felt like the game was talking at me for ten hours without really actually saying that much.

Furi's story accomplished so much more to me in about 1% of the text, if that. The Beat has one line of four words that's had me lying awake thinking about it both nights since I finished that game. Less is more sometimes.

Strider (PC)

Super, super solid. Nothing groundbreaking from a strict gameplay perspective, but it stands as a wonderful example of how to do a remake well, which isn't to say that it isn't fun exclusively on its own merits, either. Movement is slick and tight and free, which is good, because this game is a whole lot Metroidvania-esque than I realized and so fits in with what accidentally became a bit of a theme for me this month. Hiryu is just as cool of a video game character as any you could name. Fun time.

And with that, I've officially beaten ten games in July 2021, which is a completely arbitrary feat that I will almost definitely never repeat in my life. Lot of good stuff in the last ~30 days.

I've also now got exactly as many finished games in my Steam library as uncompleted ones now, which is also not likely to last very long.

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Bionic Commando (Game Boy)

Replayed. It's low key one of the best games in the series.
I even enjoy it over the NES version.

One Strike (PC)
Replayed. Fun fighting game. Wish it had true online play/matchmaking instead of using other means.

Mana Spark (PC)

Replayed and completed it as Ellis.
I like this game a lot.


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Splatterhouse (PS3) (replay)
Jason Goes to Development Hell
I guess nostalgia wore down the edges on this game, because a lot of the edges are rougher than I remembered. There's still a lot here to like, and it deserves credit for being as good as it is considering that development was killed by Bandai Namco and the studio disbanded. I think it would all be a lot more tolerable with shorter load times, though.

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The Legend of Zelda (NES) second quest. Interesting game.

Nier Automata (PC)

It's actually a replay, played it once before in 2017 when it came out but it was a pirated copy.
Decided to buy it after I played Replicant and this time go for all achievements.
I must say...it really loses it's charm in a second playthrough. I was never a fan of the gameplay of Nier games, and since atmosphere is everything to me...a second playthrough is less enjoyable.
Also, difficulity is even worse than Replicant. In Replicant "Hard" had enemies being bullet sponge but at least they didn't OHKO (well..most of the times). So here I decided to play on Normal and it was too easy while hard was too hard
Losing chips if you die before recovering your body doesn't help either

Wish I could experience this game for the first time again because it was truly magical. Second time...not so much

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Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)

Figured I should get a move on this one since the DLC just recently came out so I went through the entire story mode, took about two hours to do it. Wasn't expecting much of a storyline given the series, but it was interesting enough and the combat is good. I only went through with Axel so far. At least for now I think I will be buying the DLC at some point, hopefully in a sale sometime down the road.

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Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS) (Replay)

Eh, it's about how I remembered it: not amazing, but better than people say. 4-2 has an irredeemable day 1 and 4-3 is a slog pretty much the whole way through. On the other hand, 4-1 is great and 4-4 is pretty underrated (or over-hated?)

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Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS) (Replay)
Holy shit. That's not something you see every day. Anyway, I guess it seems better than I remember it, but still not that great. I also want to emphasize that Spark Brushell is scarier than anything in Resident Evil.

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Spark Brushell was such an opportunity to have a cool character and instead they made... that...

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Cyber Protocol (Switch)

This was one of the first games I bought on the Switch eShop. It was an impulse buy. I didn't really understand what it was about, but it looked awesome. After chipping away at the 100 levels for almost two years, I have to say that it was awesome. I'm not sure how to describe it accurately, but maybe challenging arcade puzzle with shades of Pac-Man? It's definitely a unique and rewarding experience.
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Florence (Switch)

Fresh off the high-octane, 10-ish hour Cyber Protocol, this sub-1 hour game where I did mini-games alongside a few years in the life of the titular young adult was a good cooldown game. I expected something a little better given the people/companies involved, but the art and audio were fantastic.
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World to the West (PS4)

The Followup to Teslagrad, what they lost in having a more generic-looking game, they made up for it with an intricately designed world given the four playable characters and their unique abilties in how to navigate the world and solve puzzles. Still, it felt like a chore eventually because once you were able to control all characters at will, you were often forced to bring them all together to proceed in the game, and the fast travel system is just...something.

Each character has to reach each fast travel location themselves, meaning lots of tedious stretches to the game, and given the linearity the game had in its first half or so, sometimes you had to start out so far away from your desitination from a character. Sure the game would have been over quicker and collectibles would be easier to collect if all characters should use any fast travel location once one character unlocked it, but like who cares. What they did do was just baffling, especially since during the intro chapters they had a scripted scene where a character came to a fast travel spot that they hadn't unlocked before!
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Brutal: Paws of Fury (Genesis)

I beat the game with Foxy Roxy.
This game has some jank with the hit detection and some of the controls don't feel too responsive when trying to pull off some of the special moves.

The game is pretty unique in having you learn your special moves after you win a fight against the computer. You are then given a password to save your special moves, which is weird for when you want to do multiplayer. The game also has some nice animations.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Hyperstone Heist (Genesis)

Replayed, but this time around I played it with a friend to do online co-op mode with the Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Collection via Steam using a Mod from the Workshop. I was Leo and he was Don.

This game is still worth checking out despite it being a little similar to Turtles In Time. It has enough unique things that stands out like a few new stages, a new boss and even new music.

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Darksiders 3 (PS4)

It's not a great game, but it's pretty good. The PS4 version has sundry technical issues that prevent me from recommending that version, though. By the end of the game, the crashes, stuttering, long load times, and glitches were all enough to make me glad that I was done with it.

I had the end of the game twist spoiled for me, but that's OK because the story is very much an afterthought in this game. The gameplay is what makes this one worth playing. I have a hard time with the slow and deliberate way the Dark Souls games play, so Darksiders 3 is a nice marriage of the action combat of the earlier games and the design of Dark Souls. It's definitely not as hard, and I am OK with that. The combat is just mashy enough to be what I'm looking for, and still rewards you for memorizing the enemy paterns and doing perfect dodges.

The game starts off pretty difficult but gets easier and easier as the game goes on. I used my crystals very sparingly and was underleveled as a result, but still had little trouble. By the time I got to the final bosses, I popped all my crystals and gained 30 levels, which was enough to just steamroll everything.

Also did 100% of the collectables without a guide, which was refreshing. Nothing felt like it was unfairly hidden away, as long as you explore each room thoroughly. I thought the area design in this game was exceptional, but you can tell that it's a limited-budget game. Lots of reused assets everywhere.

There's a NG+ mode that seems to have some depth, but I am pretty sure that I am done, at least for a while.

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Penumbra Overture (PC)

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Transistor (PC)

3/4 Supergiant games down now, and while this one was still quite good, I think I'm comfortable calling it my least favorite so far. Bastion just does everything slightly better, I'd say, and I know that may be kind of a lazy comparison in some ways, but Transistor also sort of invites it. I'm very much of two minds on the ending - would enjoy hearing what others thought of it.

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One Night Stand (Switch)
Despite the fact that this game has been out for five years on Steam and two years on consoles, I had never heard of it until Nintendo sent me an email the other day with some eShop recommendations and this was one of them. The art style and premise intrigued me enough to cave in at the price point ($5).

This VN has 12 endings and I had a choice as to what I wanted to count as "beating" the game - get one ending, get the best ending, or get all 12 endings. Given the extraordinarily short length of the game (at least one ending can literally be attained in under two minutes), I decided "all 12" was the way to go, and as it turns out, I ended up getting the best ending last anyway (part of that was intentional, but even after getting all the others it took me many more tries to figure out how to trigger it and I'm actually still not 100% sure what I did differently to get it). There's also a small bonus ending for getting all 12 endings, which just confirms that that's the real way to "beat" it.

In this game you play as a young man who wakes up one morning in a stranger's bed with a massive hangover and no memory of the previous night. Given the description of the game, I expected this to play out like the film The Hangover, where you have to use the clues you have to piece together a crazy-ass night and get an answer to a mystery. Instead the focus is actually on the woman - learning who she is, deciding where you want this to go, and figuring out how to achieve that goal. As I said, there are 12 endings here, ranging from being angrily kicked out naked to discovering something potentially beautiful has blossomed, and everything in between. This is the order that I first unlocked each ending in: Walk of shame; Going viral; Heading separate ways; No time to waste; Friend request; True friends; No matter what; That's a wrap!; In a twist; Run of shame; Caught; Her song.

I actually really enjoyed the woman, but to be fair she is definitely of a "type," and if you aren't into that "type" it will probably hinder your enjoyment of the game. I definitely sympathized with her in these endings, especially the really awful ones. The art style and animation are uncannily similar to Hotel Dusk/Last Window, which made me really happy because I love those games and the art and animation is a big part of their charm. The gameplay reminded me a bit of Crimson Room - searching a small room for clues that help you escape one way or another. A couple complaints are that sometimes the text options were a little too sensitive to the button touch, and I'd select one that I didn't mean to while I thought I was still scrolling through text, and each playthrough felt more and more repetitive, especially since some of the endings branch off at the very end and take very minor tweaks to trigger one from the other. I can't really complain about it not being quite what I expected, because for what it was, I actually thought it was kind of cute. Even after playing through it 12+ times, there are still dialogue options I never picked and things I never discovered, so I might play through it again from time to time just to see everything it has to offer. That being said, I definitely think there are some questions that, like in a real one-night stand, simply don't get answered.

At $5 (actually, $3 if you go for it on Steam), if this game seems like it would interest you even the slightest, I say you may as well give it a shot. Like a real one-night stand, you probably aren't going to fall in love, but if it's your thing, you'll probably be satisfied for a night and it may even stay on your mind for a few days.

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Luigi's Mansion 3 (Switch)

It took me nearly a year, but I finally got through it. This is probably the best in the series? While I miss the first game for having a great environment, being an interconnected mansion that truly made you feel like a ghost hunter, I'd say that 3's quality of life improvements and other details pretty much make it superior to the other two in every other meaningful category.

That being said, I greatly disliked the final boss, and setting the gyro sensitivity to 0 only marginally made the experience better.
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NBIceman posted...

Transistor (PC)

3/4 Supergiant games down now, and while this one was still quite good, I think I'm comfortable calling it my least favorite so far. Bastion just does everything slightly better, I'd say, and I know that may be kind of a lazy comparison in some ways, but Transistor also sort of invites it. I'm very much of two minds on the ending - would enjoy hearing what others thought of it.

It has been almost a decade since I played Bastion, but I felt it was a solid if unspectacular isometric action game. I was disappointed that all the best weapons were introduced like 75% through the game. I played through Transistor last year, and loved it. All the possible ability combinations and utilizing them in real time or through semi-pause planning was a blast to play around with.
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Penumbra: Black Plague (PC)

I feel that this shouldve just been the game itself. It didnt need to be a duology. It feels like FEAR 2; an improved game in terms of horror and mechanics but mainly more of the same. At least I dont have to skulk around some mines for more than half the game.

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The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (Switch)

Was nice to finally play this. Sholmes was great.

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Mass Effect Andromeda (XB1)

At its best it rivals and even surpasses the original trilogy with better explorable environments, improved combat, and a trio of squadmates in Dreck, Vetra, and Jaal that are among the series' best. The hook of all, well I didn't see at least two mentioned, the races we came to know from the Milky Way traveling to a new galaxy to call a new home was quite gripping and gave it a sympathetic sense of urgency. I do appreciate how they made it feel like a complete game, which is why the first Mass Effect might be my favorite in the trilogy.

I wish they kept up the sense of accomplishment in making other planets more viable and establishing outposts like they did with the first planet. I also wish there were more new races, though I suppose there is the possibility of one or two others given the events of the game. One of my favorite things to do in the trilogy was going through various solar systems to discover and interact/mine uninhabited planets, but it was kind of neutred in this game.

I am extremely sad that there won't be a direct sequel to Andromeda, but it at least got the Mass Effect 1 treatment as opposed to 2.
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Pic-a-Pix Pieces 2 (Vita)

I thought I had posted a platinum topic (#207) but apparently I did not, and it's now two days later so I'm not going to bother.

Anyway, this game has a ridiculous amount of content for a picross game, clocking in at 480 color puzzles (making up 20 images - 24 puzzles per image). Got it in a sale for $4, so it was less than a cent per puzzle. It is still color picross so it is much easier to finish all the puzzles, but still a great value overall. Vita version has some bugs in the game as it wasn't optimized for the system, as a few puzzles have the final row at the bottom either partially on the screen or not on the screen at all, which happens when the top numbers are too long. Also, if the puzzle has six colors the sixth color freezes the selector and to change colors on the puzzle after selecting the sixth color, it requires you to quit and head back in to the puzzle. Just a bunch of annoyances, but it's probably best to play it on PS4/5 or the Switch when it eventually releases there, as those systems will probably not have these bugs.

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