Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2023 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

MIND0 (Vita)

One of the very now rare Vita exclusive games, this dungeon crawler has a story that sounds like it was ripped out of someone's Persona fanfiction, and the dub matched it by bringing in some of the dub VAs from that game as well. The game play though is pretty good - but only on expert difficulty where it makes a lot of the battles throughout the game - all of them, even random ones - a lot more interesting as you go through the game. I still have the 50 floor bonus dungeon to go through but I should have fun with that one as well.

Shady Part of Me (PS4)

In this indie puzzle platformer, you control two girls - one a shadow, that runs in the background, and another normal, who cannot be exposed to light. The puzzles revolve around these two concepts, and there are collectibles in the form of origami cranes scattered throughout the levels. The story is simple, but well thought out and the voice acting does a good job of supporting the game. Took me four hours to play through all four acts.

UnMetal (XB1)

Cool Metal Gear-inspired game that while it has its own share of faults, the QoL improvements from NES-era games of this kind more than make up for it.

Next:
Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS)

What I had been playing for most of the year before I had a problem I had to wait a little bit for. I could have beaten it months ago but I stalled out wanting to break a bunch of my hoarded weapons and then finally gave up doing that. Granted, I levelled up enough that I had the disappointing one-rounded Grima so... kinda made the ending of the game underwhelming. Plus many other problems I've addressed to other people that puts this game in my bottom half of FE games.

I beat 10 games this year so far...
I could not tell you the last time I actually fully beat 10 games in a year...lol
Sure most are all short games and some may have been started the year prior....but darn it I did it! lol
I usually just play a game halfway through and stop.

Anywho

Rockman: Battle & Chase

One of the games from my collection of Mega Man JP PS1 games. This was a fun spin on Mario Kart. Simple but effective. The Wily Level was a huge spike in difficulty (This game was super easy until then so in a way it was welcomed....even if it was really cheap haha). The game is setup to play through multiple times, but I got an ending screen that had awesome music so I am counting it lol.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Damn good game. Shame it took me so long to finally finish it.

Kenri posted...

Mega Man 10 (replay, via Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Steam)

THIS game on the other hand. Holy shit, wasn't this supposed to be easy compared to MM9? This game fucking destroyed me, especially the Wily stages. Admittedly, I was using Proto Man, and I strongly regret that decision because I'm just not good enough at this series to deal with dying in 3 hits without it being a miserable experience, but even the platforming was insanely tough. No wonder I had to grind bolts and buy 9 of every healing item to beat Wily's Fortress when I first played this as a kid.

I suspect I'd have had more fun as Bass than Proto Man but I think he wasn't available to begin with? I dunno. Anyway, I generally like this game but those Wily stages are just brutal so I'm ending this 10 game marathon on kind of a sour note, unfortunately.

Well...playing as Proto Man comes at a price.
You get to charge your Buster.
You get the Slide.
You get to use his Proto Shield when you jump to deflect some projectiles.
The tradeoff: Proto Man takes double the damage compared to Mega Man and he can only shoot 2 regular shots instead of 3 like Mega Man. Although if you use Proto Coil, it will allow Proto Man to shoot out 3 regular shots when you have the Coil out.

Bass was originally a DLC character for $2.00 for those that owned Mega Man 10 on Wii/PS3/360 in their respective shops (not soo much for Wii anymore since the Wii Shop closed down).
Bass is unlocked when you beat the game. You can also use a push button code instead to unlock him in Legacy Collection 2.

Also, yes. Bass is super fun to play as.

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (PS5 - The Nonary Games edition)

Played this through mostly with my partner watching. I had already played it and gotten one ending on the DS version years ago, but there was still soooo much to uncover. We really got into this, I love these kinds of visual novel-style games. I also got completely absorbed in Danganronpa 1 (and 2 as well to a sliiiightly lesser extent, haven't played 3 yet).

However, 999 is much darker and the characters are a lot more realistic. Just amazing. The escape rooms were generally pretty easy and kind of guide you along and there is a lot of script here, but the structure of how the mystery unfolds is just great.

Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (XS/X)

What a weird mess this game was. It has a ton of ideas/features, but seldom do they elevate above bad/okay, and they just don't often mesh well with one another.

Octopath Traveler II (Switch) - I've been playing this for 3 months and put 90 hours into it, but now I've truly beaten it. Well, aside from the super boss, but I don't care about that.

Tough game to evaluate for me. It was very chill to play, lots of freedom and it improved on the first game in basically every way. However, those improvements do feel like edits to me moreso than grand changes that might have made it completely transform into something truly amazing. It is very good, very solid, lots of content. The latent powers end up being pretty important by the end, so that gameplay change made a bigger impact than they initially seemed to. The game also at least tries to play around with its structure a bit, even if it's not always that significant or deep. The stories and characters are more interesting, but the problem is that for me the increase in scope and epicness doesn't really translate well to the short story format. The game also felt easy, which can be prevented, but still. The final battle was really cool though.

A game that I liked a lot for what it is and I respect that the developers tried their best to combine their own vision with the criticisms of the first game, even if it's fairly minimalistic in its impact. I don't think it's a vastly different experience compared to OT1, but the small improvements and little things they put in do add up.

Ranking the retro boomer shooters I've played so far:

Hedon
DUSK
Ion Fury
Hands of Necromancy
Cultic - is only this low because they decided to release it as "Episode 1"
Cruelty Squad
Dread Templar | HROT
Project Warlock
Amid Evil - This is my "Its okay, Average" Rating
Powerslave Exhumed
Postal: Brain Damaged
Prodeus | Forgive Me Father

Noting that they are all good. But if I had to rank them it would be this.

Ive only so far given up on one and that's Nightmare Reaper as I couldn't handle the roguelike elements and the desire to push on with the plot through repetition.

I have played a lot of those and Prodeus is my favorite maybe lol. Well, maybe I'm wrong that your list goes in descending order of greatness.

Prodeus is great. My gripe about it is the design choice to make it more arcadey and the obvious glaring issue where if you die you just restart somewhere and you have to run all the way back. And the game's levels can often go into 20 minutes+ and expects you not to die in one sitting is ridiculous.

I don't know if they changed it, but it seems they didn't. I feel like they went with this with community-generated mapping in mind that will keep the game alive.

I'm not finished with it, but I do agree that some levels do feel overly long. The 15-ish minute levels that covered the first 5+ levels seemed perfect in that regard. I can't really speak too much about the death thing. I have died twice and right around where I had last hit a nexus point or whatever they're called. All progress seemed to stay after dying, so if I died in a big arena fight, I wouldn't have to do it all over again, which I of course appreciate. I still have a couple of levels to go, but I'm playing on the default difficulty or whatever the middle is if there wasn't one if that matters.

Half-Life 2

Did a playthrough to get all the achievements (damn you Lambda Locator). I still love it, but man, I forgot how much I dislike Anticitizen One and Follow Freeman. It's just one chaotic mess of huge firefights with useless friendly AI and hiding and throwing rockets at Striders and gunships. None of the tight linearity that is HL's strength imho.

Ocean's Heart (Steam)

Imagine a Zelda game that's basically Minish Cap in the setting of Wind Waker and you'll get Ocean's Heart, which means I loved it. There's not much in the way of large dungeons or innovative items but the game makes up for it with a superbly designed world, where exploration is extra fun, satisfying, and rewarding. It feels like every time you go down one path it leads to two more, and there are tons of secrets to find.

If I had one major complaint it's that the game is extremely easy, even compared to other Zelda games. It's a little better balanced at the start, but once you're exploring and finding health upgrades all the challenge disappears. There's an optional area you can visit to curse yourself so enemies deal extra damage, and I did this, and it was still easy but at least there was a threat of dying again. But if you don't really demand a challenge this is a fun, feel good 2D Zelda-like.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus
I'm not sure if this counts as formally beating the game, but I beat the final big trainer, and then got a message to capture all of the pokemon for the final boss, and just said no. Decent game, but not great.

Harmony's Odyssey (Steam)

This is basically just a jigsaw puzzle game, except the jigsaws you're solving are adorable little 3D dioramas (and there are a few other puzzle types mixed in). Honestly it's pretty juvenile, BUT the story is very cute. It involves Harmony's little chaos gremlin of a cat causing problems across the globe. It's also extremely funny that this saccharine kids game is scathingly critical of the TSA.

Mega Man Battle Network (Legacy Collection -Switch)

First real foray into this series, although I have played this first title a little bit before on an emulator. All in all, it was okay. It did have charm and a surprisingly nice story and universe. Core gameplay concept is unique and really suits the Mega Man universe in terms of making it an RPG. It looked and sounded okay too, if a bit repetitive.

But this is otherwise pretty barebones and it has some really tedious design elements. Most random encounters (which trigger constantly and cannot easily be escaped from if you don't draw Escape cards) are easy with an occasional bad luck combo where you have no safe spots to go to on your grid. Some bosses are very easy and others are frustrating, especially as those hard ones tend to come right after another boss. Drop system is very annoying. I like that there are good things to get from exploring the environments, but the environments themselves are very tedious to navigate, especially with you being taken out of it every few steps. The dungeon puzzles I thought were actually fun in concept, but are again made worse by the dungeon structure and encounters. The Power Plant was horrendous of course. Oh, and there were a loooot of spelling/grammatical errors. Not that big of a problem, but it does come across as cheap.

Still, I did know that this game would be rough as I've been reading that everywhere and that most other games in the series are far better. So I am still interested in MMBN2 and seeing how that improves things.

Prodeus (XS/X)

A lot of recent FPSs meant to emulate those from the 90s have done an excellent job at enhancing the feel and sound of shooting and other QoL improvements vital to the genre. Prodeus is up there among the best. The campaign is a little uneven though with its extended length (it felt much longer than the 9 hours I put it, and I feel like 4-5 is a good range for this style of game) and inconsistent levels.

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late (PS3)

I cleared arcade 4 times already, I think that's good enough to call it beat. I mean I've posted here calling fighting games beat after only 1 arcade clear.

This game is pretty fun. Online is outright dead since it's the first version that was on consoles, but I was able to get 2 online matches in (and you need to play 1 ranked match for a trophy) and I won both of them, so while I may be bad at fighting games, I can at least win matches.....if my opponents don't know how to deal with someone rushing them down or are rushing me down themselves.

Cadence of Hyrule (Switch)

OK this game absolutely fucks. I tried Necrodancer and I did enjoy it but it was just too hard for me, a person who cannot keep a beat to save their life. This game felt like the difficulty was just about right, though eventually I got so many bottles/heart containers that it felt too easy and the Dark World can feel cheaply hard at points. But yeah I have been playing this obsessively for the past couple days and have already beaten the main story and Octavo's story. What a good game.

The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve (Switch)

And that's the end of this duology for me! Beat the first game quite a long time ago already and I started this second game around a year ago I think, but very slowly progressed through it. Now I've been in the mood to actually finish games and since my partner started watching along around halfway through case 3, it gave me extra incentive to play this daily and finish the game.

Doing it together was quite fun and all in all, this was a solid Ace Attorney game. Better than the first, but they should be played as one whole anyway. The presentation was beautiful, the setting was really nicely done and the characters were really fun and had great animations. I liked Ryunosuke a lot as a defense lawyer, he's actually smart and grows quickly throughout the games. The other main characters were also pretty much all really cool or funny. They're definitely also getting weirder each game. Sometimes, that does take me out of the immersion a bit. But aside from the wordiness and repetition of quirks/catchphrases, it was all right in this game. Sholmes and all the other references to Sherlock Holmes made for a fun focal point.

The overarching plot was also cool, if a little predictable and loving some Deus Ex Machina here and there (always the case in these games though). I do feel that at this point and after so many AA games, there's only so much creativity that can still be put in some of these elements. But the historical setting and the great presentation give the game its own identity within the series nevertheless. The new gameplay features are cool and work well with the setting, but they don't amount to much in terms of changing how you play the game.

However, I was missing that oomph in the revelations and the twists a bit. So overall, while it's a very solid package, it never reaches the heights that some other games in the series do for me. As a balance, the games have almost no actually bad cases. That goes for both part 1 and part 2. Some solutions, murder methods and all that really ask you to suspend your disbelief, but again, this is Ace Attorney and it happens in older games as well. Part 2 is definitely longer and more involved, so I like that one more overall.

KCF0107 posted...

I'm not finished with it, but I do agree that some levels do feel overly long. The 15-ish minute levels that covered the first 5+ levels seemed perfect in that regard. I can't really speak too much about the death thing. I have died twice and right around where I had last hit a nexus point or whatever they're called. All progress seemed to stay after dying, so if I died in a big arena fight, I wouldn't have to do it all over again, which I of course appreciate. I still have a couple of levels to go, but I'm playing on the default difficulty or whatever the middle is if there wasn't one if that matters.

EDIT: I only just saw that you finished it haha

No that's what I'm saying. Normally in an FPS, there are checkpoints to mark your progress. When you die, you load back into the checkpoint and the enemies you didn't kill after that checkpoint are still alive.

But in this game, they remain dead. It forces you to traverse what is essentially a dead level just to get back to the point where you died. And that's not too bad if some of the levels weren't dependent on platforming. It's not alot, but it's still a little annoying.

You should also know that from the UI it might seem that there are alot of weapons. But you won't get to play with some of the final tier weapons by game's end! Which leads more credence to the fact that the devs probably expected people to just put these weapons in when they make their own maps. I have no complaints about everything else the enemies are cool the gameplay loop is fascinating and the gore is just right. It's just this roundabout way of doing checkpoints and the unfinished/odd design choices the devs want to take this.

In my last ranking, I forgot to put in Fashion Police Squad, which is high up for its comedic concept and storyline, its great boss fights, its innovative albeit repetitive clothing shooter system, and that music. Adding it now, and the game I just beat:

Hedon
DUSK
Ion Fury
Hands of Necromancy
Cultic - is only this low because they decided to release it as "Episode 1"
Fashion Police Squad
Cruelty Squad
Dread Templar | HROT
Project Warlock
Amid Evil - This is my "Its okay, Average" Rating
Powerslave Exhumed
=======================================
Warhammer: 40k Boltgun (PC)
=======================================
Postal: Brain Damaged
Prodeus | Forgive Me Father

Fresh from HROT and a new Retro FPS drops, of course I'm going to play it. I'm probably going to piss alot of people off because I don't particularly see where the magic of this game is. It was fun it was rip and tear bloody and it was frantic. You don't need to be a Warhammer fan to appreciate. But it was also kind of...off.

8 Missions for 3 Episodes is just too much. Some of the levels sort of just blend in with each other and their environments were unremarkable mostly. In fact I swear that the game recycles a couple of mausoleums from one episode to another. I barely remember what makes each episode distinct. Secrets were mostly easy despite the wallhumping, and its very strange for them to make certain powerups hiding in plain sight to be "secrets". You'll pretty much meet most of the enemies and weapons by the first third of episode 2 barring the bosses and by then you'll be starving for more. The first 2 episodes were kinda boring but had better environs and the 3rd episode all took place on your ship so it was mostly industrial corridors but it was also when the game stopped holding your hand and started spamming enemies.

The game also gives you way too much ammo and difficulty is based on your durability and the sponginess of the enemies which I feel is artificial padding in an attempt to curb the game's challenge. There is an implied "proper weapon for the proper enemy type" mechanic going on but I mostly ignored it because of this abundance of ammo. You'll barely need to even find the secrets to survive. And while the gunplay is fine, the game doesn't really attempt to give you a satisfying shootout setpiece. Your first weapon the eponymous Boltgun is so nifty you'll be using it half the time as you take out enemies from afar long before they can see you. It suffers the same symptom as Postal Brain Damaged but this game ranks a little higher because it makes good use of arena shooting. Albeit...it tends to spam the shit out of it in the later missions, making the experience feel more Serious Sam and Painkiller than DUSK.

Probably the worst thing I hate about this are the bosses. There are 3 and they are all annoying as hell mainly because they can resurrect dead enemies as well as summon new ones and that's not even including their pinpoint accurate projectile moveset, one of which drains your shield because MaGiC. In addition, you'll have seen all of them halfway and then they become regular bosses as you unlock the final weapon which is "a gun that kills faster the bigger things are", trivializing the bosses up until the final level where the game has the gall to pit all three in a sort of gauntlet fight. I highly detest summoner battles in these kinds of games and when you've been fighting nothing but summoner bosses, it gets kind of irritating by the end when the Final Summoner would gate a mana shield behind the life of another Summoner boss. And you expect me to deftly dodge all the shit flying in my face while traversing an arena over a bottomless pit? Game, please. At least kill me fairly. This final fight got me so frustrated by the artificial challenge that I just played it on easy to get it over with. This and the final battle of Ion Fury are the worst endgames I've ever played in a retro shooter.

But the most annoying thing I think was that this game included Navi. The fairy from Ocarina of Time. As a skull thing, as it uselessly points out information and where the ammo is but the ammo is fucking everywhere dude. Like, he could've just been a voiceover with subtitles. Often times I'd be in a quiet corridor and this fucking thing teleports in my way making a sound indistinguishable from an enemy apparating. I've been spooked alot of times if it weren't just extremely annoying to have. Just let me be the silent FPS protagonist in peace. (Yes Im aware there is a taunt button haha)

Ghost 1.0 (Steam)

Geez, I don't know what to make of this game. It has some of the best presentation I've ever seen in a Metroidvania title. I'm not sure I can remember any other MV with full voice acting this high quality. It even has a somewhat interesting plot, though there's a fair amount of cringe too (why are characters in this sci-fi cyberpunk future still referencing movies from the 70s and 80s...?) It's got a weird control scheme but I don't think I'd recommend remapping it much because it works; even if jump on LB feels like a weird choice it's pretty necessary since you'll be using your right thumb on RS to aim.

The issue is that it's a rogue-lite and that whole conceit feels pretty half-baked.

So basically, throughout the game are places where you trigger an alarm - some are mandatory, others completely optional - which will lock you in the room and force you to survive waves of enemies until your mission control can override the alarm. Each time you survive an alarm, the alarm levels up and increases the difficulty of the next alarm, up to level 20. If you die, you lose all non-permanent upgrades but the alarm de-levels to 1. The problem is that the best source of gear is from surviving alarms, so anytime you die, you're heavily incentivized to go and grind alarms 1-8ish to reequip. Which is a huge time sink, and for what...? To be back to essentially where you were before?

It feels like a rogue-lite system built forcibly on top of an existing MV game, rather than an actual synthesis of the two. A Robot Named Fight works as a rogue-vania because it gives you an entirely new map when you die, so getting upgrades again feels natural rather than feeling like a complete stop to your momentum. I think I'd have enjoyed Ghost 1.0 more just playing it on classic mode instead of survival, especially because the game doesn't auto-save when you die so you can just reload your save to avoid taking a death, and it feels VERY TEMPTING TO DO THAT compared to grinding for 20 minutes before you can make progress again.

Overall, good game but it could've been a GREAT game if it really got its systems all working together.

I prefer Mini Ghost and UnMetal from unepic_fran, though I did enjoy this game. Never felt compelled to finish it.

I played Mini Ghost last year, I think? I don't remember anything about it lol, just that I enjoyed it.

Cyberpunk 2077 (PS5)

I read taht the PS5 version of the game fixed a lot of problems so I finally gave it a shot. Pretty fun game, the world is interesting and the gameplay is kinda fun. I wish there was a bit more to it though. Night City is huge but it doesn't really feel alive so it just feels a bit empty when you're driving around.

The platinum also took a lot less time than I thought it would, so that's great at least.

Mass Effect 3 (XB1)

I can't believe that I finished this trilogy (again) in just three months. Looking at the games I have beaten since I started, I've probably put fewer than 40 hours in non-ME games since the end of February.

Crystal Project

Kanzaris recommended this in another topic and holy shit, it really got its hooks in me. Good RPG with a solid job system and difficult battles. Recently got mod support, so I'm interested to see what people do there.

Kirby's Pinball Land (GB)

I finally got around to setting up my Steam Deck with emulators so maybe I'll make some progress on my old game backlog.

This game is fine but the pinball physics feel slightly off, getting to the boss battles is frustrating, and the bosses themselves are pretty simple. Clear the three boards and you can fight Dedede. I'll just say it makes sense that I beat Metroid Prime Pinball as a kid but not this, that game is much much better.

Katamari Damacy REROLL (Switch)

Something short and quick to play from my collection when I wasn't able to play on the TV. I dipped my toes in a while ago, but now I played it more and beat it. My first Katamari experience and it was a really nice, quirky game. Super satisfying to get bigger and roll up everything in a huge ball. However, it did take me a while to get used to the controls and the camera, but I eventually did. Also, the game was incredibly short. I know you're kind of supposed to replay levels a lot and get better scores, but I think it could have just had more levels/bonus levels.

All in all, a nice amount of pure Japanese weirdness. One playthrough of this is enough for me, but I'm happy to have experienced a Katamari game. Who knows, I might get the We Love Katamari remaster at some point as well.

The Price Is Right Plinko Pegs

Stupid internet flash game that's rather addictive.
I beat all the rounds and had the 8th best score today (Which is probably only like the last 2 hours lol) no where near the week or month leaderboard.

Anywho, been watching The Price is Right and wanted to try online Plinko and that's what I found.
I'm counting it.

I am also in the verge of two more games, one game literally can't figure out how to get the last hit of the last boss.....I almost want to call that thing complete, It's all pixel perfect and insane mashing stuff, even with rewind functionality I can't beat it. Worse to worse...it's the last mini game of an obscure JP game that has like almost no info on the internet of lol

Peggle Nights (PC)

Always glad to go through Peggle games

Kirby's Dream Land (Switch)

It's been so long since I played this that I did not remember there being a boss rush at all

Lost in Random (XB1)

Felt like a mix between American McGee's Alice (more Madness Returns than original) and Zoink's previous games (specifically Stick it to the Man and Flipping Death). It took awhile to come up with a deck that worked very well for me. Pacing still felt uneven, especially with combat scenarios. I think I spent around 15-20 hours on it, and I think 10 would have suited it better.

Vectorman 2 (Genesis)

Definitely prefer the first game but this one is fine, I guess. Shout out to my friend from elementary school for giving it to me like 25 years ago, though the version I beat was emulated.

BurgerTime Deluxe (Switch)

I really liked this game that reminded me of Donkey Kong a lot, but then the frustrating final worlds put a little damper on my outlook on the game. Still a good and enjoyable Game Boy game that I'm glad I finally got to try!

Street Fighter V (PS4)

I'm writing this off as "beat" with clearing the Character Stories of the Base Roster & Wave 1 DLC (and a few other DLC characters that I felt like doing), as well as finishing the General Story.

The General Story was pretty underwhelming. I would say that the Character Stories were a lot more interesting story-wise. One of the annoying things about fights in the general story, is that it isn't always obvious who you'll be playing as. Like for example, there will be a scene that focuses on Cammy, and then Vega appears to interrupt whatever is going on. Then it'll cut to a fight between these two and suddenly you're playing as Vega fighting Cammy. You won't really know who you're playing as unless you take a look at the health bars and see which one has "You" on it.

Still, with fighting games, how good a game is doesn't really depend on the story, since gameplay to them are way more important. So I'm playing this game after it got all of its updates, and it's a very complete game in the end. I do know about the game's very rocky launch, which didn't even have the arcade mode ready, which I will say is well made in this game, with you being able to go through the sequences of the past games.

I actually had fun with the fighting itself and won a few matches online. I think I like using Rashid the most, so I'm looking forward to his inclusion as DLC in Street Fighter 6, which is set to be sometime this summer.

Xtlm posted...

I am also in the verge of two more games, one game literally can't figure out how to get the last hit of the last boss.....I almost want to call that thing complete, It's all pixel perfect and insane mashing stuff, even with rewind functionality I can't beat it. Worse to worse...it's the last mini game of an obscure JP game that has like almost no info on the internet of lol

Eff man, just as an update becasue I wanna rant. I beat that 4th guy. It was NOT the last boss, I still can't mash fast enough to beat the later stage mashing attacks, but I was able to rewind to an infinite degree to get those 1 frame inputs in.

So the final stage is a UFO, where the mashing portion takes away 75% of your health. I literally do not think I can beat this. The speed at which you have to mash increases each stage, i do not know how to get my hand any faster.

This is dumb, if anybody ever beat this game without emulation or the rewind feature, you sir are incredibly dedicated.

I've put a lot of time into this game, I just want it to be over.

Hot Wheels Unleashed (XS/X)

I think my favorite thing about the game is that even though cars have various, explicit stats, all the cars feel unique due to shape and size having a tangible effect on the course that doesn't show up on the stat sheet. This encourages experimentation, and some vehicles that I added to my favorites list were ones that I wasn't expecting based on their stats.

WIth that out of the way, it's kind of a shock that this came from a veteran racing studio. The racing mechanics are fine, but there are just some baffling design choices that I just wouldn't think a studio that has been making racing games since the mid-90s would make including, but not limited to, track designs that render many vehicle builds useless (long jumps and loops make vehicles with low speed/accel. combos a liability), poor and inconsistent collision physics, intentional sun glare and other hazards that can be indistuishable among the track, and the worst kind of rubber band AI.

Altered Beast (Genesis/Switch)

Replayed via Sega Genesis Classics

I felt like wising fwom my gwave.

Lies of P (demo) (PS5)
Here's the Bloodborne clone with terrific aesthetics and uncertain gameplay footage, by nobody in particular. It's also a grimdark reimagining of Pinocchio, making it about the 10th adaptation of the classic novel in the last several years. Well, turns out the gameplay is good too. It's not overwhelmingly original or flashy, but a solid Soulslike combat design is not something just any developer can throw together, and this one is solid. The warping of the original story is fun as well: Pinocchio and the suitably-creepy monsters are both a type of AI-controlled robots built to follow Asimov-like laws one of which is not lying to humans, although there is clearly more going on than a large-scale accidental malfunction.

Street Fighter 6 - World Tour Mode (PS5)
I did this a few days back, but the ending point is somewhat uncertain. The mode is conceptually quite fun, making your avatar, meeting the characters, and customizing your own fighter with a mixture of their moves. It's cool getting to challenge nearly any NPC to a fight, and using special moves to traverse the environment is also janky fun. The downsides are mostly RPG quirks like weird, huge spikes in enemy stats, grindy character progression, and high numbers of random encounters.

I always forget about this topic, but I finished a game a couple days ago, so sure...

Afterimage
Indie metroidvania that reminds me of a blend between Ori and Ender Lilies, with Hollow Knight's movement. The story is nonsensical (and maybe questionable translated,) and the quest instructions are obtuse, so despite there being full voice acting, the writing is by far the worst part.

What's fantastic about Afterimage, though, is the world. It's enormous, it's beautiful, and although I'm able to in hindsight see that the progression is fairly linear, it doesn't feel linear when playing it. It feels like I can go all over the damn place, and the game is just very sparing with new abilities. Like, seriously, this map is enormous. Each area is on par with the largest areas from HK -- think Deepnest or Kingdom's Edge -- though they feel even bigger because they're seamless rather than divided into rooms. But there's also like 30 of them, whereas HK has maybe 12?

Like Ender Lilies, there's a leveling system, so if you hit something hard, the solution is usually to just come back later. There were a few bosses I beat my head against a little, but none of them are genuinely hard. If you're an ultra-hardcore challenge-seeking gamer, you might not find this one to be the hardest you've ever played, but there's six weapons to customize your combat, and the joy of exploring in Afterimage is unparalleled.

Star Fox 2
Obviously, unreleased game so not many chances to play it. Actually ran through a whole game, which is to say I saw the end credits, I dunno if that truly counts as "beating" this style of game, since it looks like they've gone for an arcadey score-attack style of game you replay over and over, but it was a good, fun run. Managed 0% damage to Corneria... Normal seems to be a bit too easy, Falco and Peppy alternating and health items meant we could kinda just facetank whatever and just shoot down whatever was in the way with impunity. I'm sure Hard and Expert are closer to the difficulty they really went for.

As a sequel to Star Fox goes, its not great, but as a standalone game it is kinda dope.!

Accel_R8 posted...

Obviously, unreleased game so not many chances to play it.

It's seen multiple official releases now, actually.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
This was a replay, got all hearts but I skipped a bunch of gold skulltulas and the fourth bottle.

Far Cry Primal (XBO)

Far Cry: Primal is an adventure. It offers you a lot of freedom to traverse and explore the world, but the lack of linear structure is also its weakness.

Far Cry: Primal opens up with you, Takkar, joining your tribe in a mammoth hunt for meat. While you manage to fell the beast, a sabretooth tiger pops up to kill your comrades, steal your food and chase you off to parts unknown. You're left to quickly gather some materials to hunt for food, and trek through a cave, where you encounter the sabretooth again. You manage to scare it off and find Sayla, a woman who's also part of the Wenja tribe but whose tribespeople were killed by the Udam, a rival cannibalistic tribe. She asks you to take vengeance and to rebuild your people.

This is more or less all the story you're going to get in the game. FCP is not really a story-driven game; it's all about the adventure. You set out, gather materials, kill enemy tribes and wild animals and try to end up on top of the food chain. The gameplay loop is enjoyable, or it was at least for me; I had the advantage that this was my first Ubisoft open-world game, so I wasn't dragged down by Assassin's Creed or other Far Cry games. Still, the first story missions you receive are to recruit specific people to your tribe: a shaman, a warrior, a huntress, and an inventor. These are the people who will then later offer you quests, alongside the gatherer Sayla who welcomed you in the beginning. None of the people are particularly different; they don't receive a lot of character development in their missions and being cavepeople, they are all varying kinds of crazy.
Yes, cavepeople. Far Cry: Primal is a game that takes place in caveman times. There are strenghts and weakness to this setting: one positive is certainly the setting. The world is named Oros, and it is beautiful. There's plenty of beautifully lush forests to run through, lakes and rivers to traverse and wonderful vistas to admire from high rocky mountains. There's also a part of the map that's essentially all snow, which is a great sight but like most snow areas, loses its luster after prolonged exposure.

The early parts of Far Cry: Primal are tough. You have to gather materials to make all your weapons and to progress the missions. Combat is two-fold; either you'll be facing the enemy tribes of the cannibalistic Udam or the fire-worshipping Izila who have their own unique challenges and fighting styles but are generally manageable, or you'll have to deal with Oros' true hell: animals.
Animals will tear you to shreds and not think twice about it. This is the area where there is actual enemy variety; Udam are more physical and will charge at you with clubs while Izila will generally chuck spears, arrows, rocks, and fire bombs at you from a distance but each animal type really has their own fighting style. Dholes are like dogs and generally easy to take care of, but wolves will often fight in packs and overwhelm you early on. Big cats like leopards and jaguars will use a hit-and-run fighting style while bigger animals like bears and sabretooth tigers will physically overpower you. You'll be half dead before you notice a badger snuck up on you and is tearing you to shreds, and their hardiness means you won't kill them too quickly either. And woe upon you, poor cave(wo)man, should you anger a mammoth, as it will mostly likely result in a quick game over. Later on, you'll get missions to hunt the most ferocious animals, and the Blood Mammoth as it is called, could genuinely fit into a survival-horror game.

The animal menace can thankfully be dealt with as you are the Beast Master. Tensay, your shaman, will quickly instruct you in the way to tame wild animals and once you manage to recruit a sabretooth tiger (which scares most other animals when they approach you, leaving you to traverse the world in relative peace), the game really opens up. I found it to be very interesting game design, as there is a clear difference in difficulty before and after taming a sabretooth tiger because animals really will not hesitate to attack you, most are quite fast or hit incredibly hard, and are much more difficult to deal with as opposed to enemy tribes.

As the game opens up, the game becomes more comfortable to play. The more outposts and Wenja you add to your tribe (which can be done by clearing sidemissions and story missions), the more resources get added to a general resource stash that you have access to; this makes it so later on in the game you don't have to hoard as much wood and rocks and animal hide as your villagers will do it for you. Most of the missions are pretty simple 'kill these people' or 'gather these things'. There's some variety but not much. The game also gets easier as later on you'll recruit one Udam tribesman and one Izila tribesman, who will give you special skills. The Udam, Dah, teaches you how to make a berserk bomb, which turns enemies crazy and makes them attack one another. Once you have these, outposts and bonfires can be cleared in seconds; you let your owl fly over them and drop a few, and the enemies will take care of themselves. You could also drop sting bombs, which contain bees which will easily take out all but the strongest enemy types. It doesn't make the game completely easy though, as dropping bombs will generally alert enemies and later enemy camps will have horns that can be blown into to call for reinforcements, so a good combination of scouting and timing when to go for the Berserk Bomb is crucial.

After playing many hours of Far Cry: Primal, you'll reach the ending, and actually be surprised with some character and story moments. Both the Udam you recruit and the Udam leader, Ull, have some surprisingly nice scenes in the story finale. After defeating both Udam and Izila, the huntress you recruited also has a scene that made me somewhat surprisingly emotional as it played out. The strength of FCP without a doubt is how easy it is to just slide into it, to get into the gameplay and explore and do missions. Halfway through the game you will probably start missing a little depth; there's plenty of skills but many that aren't particularly useful, several weapons that don't feel like they fit a particular use, and a general lack of reason to do the missions you're doing. The characters will ask you to do something and you'll do it because it's a quest, not because there's a real reason in-game that makes a lot of sense.

However, Far Cry: Primal succeeds in what is, for me, the most important thing in a video game: it's fun. It's a good time. It's a pleasure to be in the world and marvel at the wonders, to lose yourself in the sounds of the animals, and to just pick up your spear, whistle for your sabretooth tiger, and trek out on another adventure.

Kirby's Dream Land 2 (Switch)

There were a lot more relentless enemy types and auto-scrolling segments than I remembered