Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

@Heavyarms55 Yeah, Firewatch felt like a VN with a controllable camera. It really didn't need to be a video game to accomplish what it set out to do.

Got the Spider-Man PS4 bundle during Thanksgiving week, and have surprisingly already completed three games on it (guess I really just like playing on the thing, lol).

Marvel's Spider-Man - This may be my GOTY. Both combat and exploration are absolute bliss with the web-slinging mechanics, the story kept my attention (I even teared up during one scene at the end), and it had me hooked so much that I even completed all side objectives (technically not 100% since I didn't bother to ace everything, but I still poured quite a bit of time into it). Of course it looks fantastic as well.

Yakuza Kiwami - Got this through PS+ and it was a good time. I felt that the combat was a bit rough (boss battles especially felt like wars of attrition rather than tests of skill, IMO), but still it was fun bruising up punks around town, and the story had a few great twists. The game really shines with it's small but intimate & content packed open world, and I especially liked spending time playing Mesu King, Pocket Circuit, Darts, and the Batting Cages.

Titanfall 2 - Got it during the current sale, and just finished it up maybe an hour ago. I'm not huge into the FPS genre, but I liked the heavy sci-fi look of this so I took a chance and really enjoyed my time with it. The shooting mechanics felt good, but I also really enjoyed the decision to break up the firefights with platforming segments which were a nice break (plus, there were mission specific gimmicks that really kept things fresh). The story wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it had the epic blockbuster moments you'd expect from a title like this, and I really liked the kinship between Jack & BT.

Alright! Man, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse! What kept me from playing this game for so long!? What an absolute joy! I loved basically everything about this game. The music was catchy, the pixel art nice, animations gorgeous and fluid! I love the character design, loads of lovely ladies and funny dudes! The humor in the game was right up my ally! I love the occasional 4th wall breaks, and Shantae saying she was dressed like a space princess referencing Star Wars nearly broke me! The game-play did take a bit of getting used to, and this is a game that I think absolutely MUST be played with a D-pad (I actually finally picked up one of those Hori D-pad joy-cons!) but once I got the hang of it... it remained challenging but with only 1 or 2 areas in the whole game that left me salty. (in particular the first room of the last dungeon almost made me rage quit for the day, but I am so glad I didn't!) And I really liked the final boss fight, with the sole exception of, I think he had way too much health. He had so much that I paused the game to look up if I was doing something wrong!

But overall what really impressed me with this game is the way it's generally always pretty tough without ever feeling too tough. It makes you pay close attention and learn from your mistakes, but it never punishes you too hard. It always felt really good to clear an area and learn how to progress. It never felt like I got lucky and once I got it, I learned I could repeat it. Great stuff!

Now, should I play Shantae Half Genie Hero next, or should I take a break and play something else to avoid burning out? Hmmm.

Tetris Effect: I'm calling it now: first completed game of 2019. At this point, I've completed the Journey mode on Normal difficulty and have completed every Effect mode with a C-rank or better (I've S-ranked several of the modes and achieved A ranks in most others; the C-ranks are for the modes I struggled to even beat initially). I think I've given up on the idea of ever getting the Platinum: I could potentially see myself SS ranking some of the modes I'm consistently getting S-ranks in anyway, but these modes where I have to struggle to get a B or a C-rank? Probably not happening.

Anyway, I'm impressed with the modes in this game: unlike so many other versions of Tetris, where the non-Marathon modes feel like filler, almost every gameplay mode in this title feels substantive and compelling in its own way. Mystery and Purify, in particular, are extremely fun and have eaten up several hours of my life already.

It's still Tetris at bottom, though, and there's not much to do with it beyond altering the aesthetics. The developers went to town with this approach and used a combination of responsive sound design, gorgeous music, and various particle effects in the background to fashion a version of Tetris that often feels like pure art. While I don't get much of the visual effects (I zoomed in as far as possible on the board, dimmed the flashing effects, and generally have to pay attention to what I'm doing in the actual game), the AMAZING music really does a great job of consistently immersing me in the experience (this is a game that I'm totally unwilling to play without headphones plugged in; there is just a world of difference in terms of the immersion factor, and my TV's speakers just can't do justice to the sound in this game).

There's not much else to say. On a single-player level, this is the best version of Tetris I've ever played by a long shot. It's so compelling, and the unique aesthetics and sound design reinvigorate one of the most well-worn games in the puzzle genre. I hear it's even better in VR, but I didn't have the privilege of trying it out with a headset, unfortunately. The only negative thing I can think of to say about it is that it's missing multiplayer, but, honestly, I don't even care: Tetris has always been a primarily single-player game to me, and Tetris Effect plays to that perfectly. I expect I'll be dipping back into this game for months and perhaps even years to come

9.5/10

@Heavyarms55 Half-Genie Hero is sufficiently different from Pirate's Curse that I doubt you'll experience any burn out. But yeah, the game is wonderful. I'm glad more people seem to be gravitating to it on Switch!

Ori and the Blind Forest. Amazing metroidvania. Challenging platforming segments.

Great game.

Finished Crosscode and Dust: An Elysian Tail.

Crosscode is an amazing piece of game, and action RPG to boot. The story's real fun and the puzzle elements are great too- although I end up using Youtube to help solve most of them (too lazy to try brain through them).

And for Dust... it's good yeah. Not a bad story, the gameplay's nice although I wish his animation is faster during attacking and running. The story ends up disappointing for me though (At first I liked the story, then the reveal is given and it's a disappointment). Overall not bad.

@Ralizah I'm calling it, that was not the first game completed in 2018.

@gcunit Woops.

@Heavyarms55 I got that game a few years back for the 3DS, and I agree with the final dungeon. I almost gave up at that point since I felt it changed from metroidvania exploration (which I like) to precision timing platforming (which I tend to shy away from). I'm glad to say I stuck with it and did finish it. 1/2 Genie Hero is on my list of games I want to get some day (which unfortunately is extremely large).

Haven't finished any Switch games recently, seeing that I've only been playing Warframe and Smash Ultimate. I have been trying to switch (no pun intended) between games a bit more often so I'll get a best of everything. I might throw in some of the NES games from the Switch Online catalog to see if I can finish some, Adventures of Lolo coming to mind first and foremost.

On the PC front though, I finished Lego the Hobbit. Didn't 100% it, but I actually enjoyed it more than the more recent Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2.

@OfNullAndVoid I do want to be clear that it was only the first room of that last dungeon. The rest of it, while tough, didn't feel too bad. Though, after that room, had the difficulty actually gone up, I would have just rage quit because I doubt I would have been able to do it. I must have died 40-50 times on that one room. Way out of proportion with the rest of the game...

Star Wars The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360)
I used to like that game when I played it with PS2, but it is aged very badly. Too bad there are no more good Star Wars games.

New Super Mario Bros. U: Second game of 2019 for me. I've owned this game for a pretty long time (I got it free as part of the promotional campaign Nintendo launched to get people to buy Mario Kart 8 at the time, which saw them giving out free retail games via download), but I never got past the first world or so before getting turned off by the NSMB aesthetic and dismissing it as another cookie-cutter game in that series. I definitely rushed to judgment, though, as, having pretty thoroughly beaten this game (all secret paths found, all star coins collected in all the normal worlds, and four of the eight superstar road courses fully completed at this point), I was shocked by how much fun I was having. This is very much the cream of the crop of the NSMB franchise, a stellar 2D platformer that, if not for some unfortunate niggles, would be among the best games on the Wii U.

First, the good: the level design in this game is fantastic. They're often large and vertical enough to allow for a decent amount of exploration, as well as hiding a number of secrets. Like Mario games of yore, this game is filled with secret exits that allow the player to bypass large sections of the map at a time. Once you get a number of these, the world map, which, by the way, is one big, interconnected thing, you'll find interesting paths connecting the various worlds in this game.

The world and boss diversity both take a step up in this entry, with somewhat more creative environments alongside boss encounters that, honestly, are probably some of the best I've seen in a 2D Mario game. You're still always fighting the koopa kids, of course, but their manner of attacking changes somewhat. My favorite was an aquatic boss battle where you had to lure bullet bills to keep hitting the enemy, even as he kept making them encroach on my character from various side of the screen.

Of course, both these aspects pale in comparison to something like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, but, for 2D Mario games, which tend not to be hugely creative affairs, I found them to be satisfactory.

There's also apparently a wealth of bonuses challenges and side content in this game. I played a few of them after finishing the game, and new challenges kept unlocking when I mastered more basic ones. It seems like, even after fully completing the game, you could get a lot of mileage out of trying to master these challenges.

As for the bad... the first thing I have to say is that, however much fun this is to play, it's still a NSMB game, which means terrible, repetitive music and a lifeless art-style that is the video game aesthetics equivalent of American cheese: artificial, tasteless, and plastic-y. There's no getting around this: I imagine this great platformer would have been much more well-received if it had actually gone the extra length to distinguish itself aesthetically from past NSMB games.

The other complaint I have is the weirdly restrictive controller options available to you. By default, in single-player mode, you can use the GamePad, Wii U Pro Controller, and sideways Wiimote. The classic controller and Wiimote + Nunchuk don't work out. But this is still OK. The trouble comes when you want to play in multiplayer mode. For some godforsaken reason, the game will not let one person play on a Pro controller and the other on the GamePad, Oh no. Instead, anyone using the GamePad is relegated to "boost mode," which involves tapping the touch screen to place blocks in the game. If they actually want to play, though, and you only have one extra controller, then someone is getting saddled with the sideways Wiimote. And I hate the sideways Wiimote. It's worse than a sideways joycon, because I can't even put it in a controller shell and make it more comfortable to hold. I have a GamePad. I have a classic controller. I have a nunchuk. All of these could easily be made to work well with the game (I believe Tropical Freeze gave you all of those controller options, in fact!). But no: instead, I'm stuck with a control scheme that practically makes the game no fun to play.

Additionally, the game had Miiverse heavily integrated into it, and there's no way to turn this off. But Miiverse is dead. It CONTINUALLY popped up messages at me asking me to do stuff on Miiverse, which was irritating, as this could have easily been patched out of the game, and I don't care to have the game continually nagging me to do something outside of the game anyway. It's worse than those 3DS games that keep popping up annoying reminders to "take a break from playing once in a while," as if Nintendo wants to be my parent or something.

Not the best 2D platformer ever made, or even the best on the system, but it's still a pretty polished, addictive, and superb little adventure. I played for 5 or 6 hours straight as I was finished it up tonight, and the time really flew by. It took me 20 hours or so to complete as much as I did, and I imagine you could get a lot more time out of it by pursuing all of those challenges. Definitely worth looking into for anyone who owns a Wii U (or a Switch, which should have fixed at least two of the three problems I mentioned in the upcoming port).

8/10

@Ralizah Goodness, I'd never have expected to see so much griping about a sideways Wii Remote May not be ergonomic perfection but I've always loved the simplicity and versatility of the Wii Remote.

Admittedly though, I'm yet to try NSMBU in multiplayer, so haven't had to deal with the control conundrum (Edit: but I have played NSMBWii multiplayer so probably did then - don't remember it being a problem).

My biggest gripe with the game was the lack of save points. I think you have to beat 3 levels before you can save... which frustrated the pants offa me. When I lose a life playing SMB games I tend to get impatient and try and approach the bits I'm being forced to repeat faster, which results in my throwing lives away with silly mistakes, game overing more times than I care to admit, and having to go back to the last save point, often making me have to beat levels I'd already beaten multiple times. Making me angrier, making me play faster, making me die even more... vicious spiral like.

Then to top it all off, I finally beat the game and it then let's me save anywhere as a reward, just to rub it in.

As a result, it wasn't really a game I enjoyed very much, and I'm yet to attempt to finish it off to the extent you have. One day maybe...

@gcunit I think my biggest gripe is the tiny D-Pad. Also, it's terrible trying to do vertical movement on the thing in 2D games. It just don't have the ergonomics down to be a decent 2D controller.

Anyway, you can quick save anywhere and the game autosaves whenever you beat fortresses, towers, airships, or unlock hidden stages. I actually have no idea what the game does to you if you lose all your lives in single-player mode, as the game throws lives at you like candy, but in multiplayer mode, the game just... gave us continues and extra lives if we lost all our lives. Didn't even make us replay a bunch of levels or anything.

@Ralizah Glad you had fun with NSMBU, it really does have some of the best level design in the series, and is one of my personal favorite 2D Mario games, up there with SMB3. With that said, the Miiverse nagging got to me, too, and is one of the reasons I'm just gonna trade in my copy and get the Switch version.

After loving the second Bleed and pouring several hours into it, I finnaly picked up the sequel on sale. I can confirm the second is better in nearly every way.

@MysticGengar Did you mean the first Bleed?

@gcunit
Woops. My bad. I meant prequal instead of sequal. Oops!

@MysticGengar No beef. Was just trying to work out whether there was another Bleed game I want aware of. I've been playing Bleed 1 this week and liked it enough straight away to buy Bleed 2 without hesitation, but will finish 1 first.

(this post will be kind of disorganized and rambling; I have a lot to say about this game, and my thoughts aren't really in order, seeing as how I've only just fully completed it)

I've completely finished Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice on the Nintendo 3DS, which makes it my third finished game in 2019. While I've always remained a fan of this series, I won't pretend that my enthusiasm for recent AA games, starting with Apollo Justice, hasn't divebombed. AJ and Dual Destinies are both fine games in their own right, but they simply couldn't live up to the standards of the original trilogy. I'm glad to report, however, that trend has changed massively with the latest 2016 outing in the series, Spirit of Justice, which not only goes back to the level of excellence I associated with the original trilogy, but actually tops those games in many respects.

There's so much to praise here. First: I really, really like a lot of the new characters in this entry. They're fun and realistically complicated people in their own right, even when they can, at first glance, easily be fit into predefined character archetypes (the character Rayfa, for example, is definitely a tsundere, but she also has enough variation to her characterization to allow her to transcend this and become a unique fictional person in her own right). Ema returns here, and, thankfully, she's a lot less miserable than she was in Apollo Justice.

I've had a lot of difficulty relating to Apollo over the last couple of games, and have struggled to find him anything other than obnoxious. This game truly does Apollo justice (heh), though, illuminating his personal history and tying his fate in with the destiny of a nation in a complex and electrifying final case that might actually surpass Bridge to the Turnabout in terms of how it fuses the personal with a wide-ranging conspiracy that ties the entire game together into one epic narrative.

One of the best immediate changes made in this game is situating most of it in an entirely different region. Khura'in is a fantastic new setting for a few reasons: it deeply connects the histories of certain major characters; as a theocracy ruled over by an unjust and fanatical monarchy, it poses a lot of genuinely fascinating challenges for cases taken on by Phoenix (primarily, a law that sentences defense attorneys to the same punishment meted out to their client should they happen to lose; this persecution quickly led to all of the country's lawyers seeking asylum elsewhere, and forced those charged with crimes to undergo trials without any kind of representation on their behalf); and, tying into the theocratic aspects of the setting, and leaning in to the always-present supernatural aspects of the series, the use of divination seances by the princess of Khura'in to summon the memories of the dead is an innovative twist that, in addition to providing an entirely new trial mechanic, also helps "even the playing field," so to speak, with Phoenix Wright and his ever-increasing crew of lawyers and friends with outright superpowers. It's cool to see the supernatural being invoked on behalf of the prosecution.

This might be the first game in the Ace Attorney series where I genuinely enjoyed every single case in the game. Some of them are much lower in quality than others, but the average quality of the game, from case-to-case, is probably the highest it has ever been in the mainline games.

My favorite aspect of SoJ is, unquestionably, how well it ties the entire series together. There has always been a lot of... disconnection between the trilogies, with connections and older character cropping up only occasionally, and even then feeling like out-of-place cameos, but the integration of old and new characters in this game really makes the Ace Attorney universe come together brilliantly. Maya, Pearl, Phoenix, and Edgeworth fit alongside Apollo, Trucy, and Athena into one integrated story. The game actually revisits Kurain Village at one point!

Presentation-wise, everything is similarly fantastic. The game uses full 3D models, similar to the previous series entry, Dual Destinies. Unlike that game, though, these models are actually extremely well-animated and surprisingly detailed. There's a lot more natural movement and life in these character models (perhaps a bit too much: once in a while, the game will hang on a dialog box or stutter a bit after a particularly complex animation or set of animations. I feel like this game is pushing against the limits of what is comfortably achievable on the standard 3DS hardware). One fully 3D animated cutscene that particularly benefits from this step up in production values is Rayfa's Dance of Devotion at the beginning of a Divination Seance: it looks really, really good for the system. The music is also superb, with some remixes of older tunes that really jazz them up alongside compelling newer tunes.

So, for the most part, I was extremely satisfied with this game. It does still have some minor issues that keep it from being as good as it could possibly be. To briefly list them:

• There are two filler cases in this game: Case 2, The Magical Turnabout, and Case 4, Turnabout Storyteller, are both disconnected from the larger plot of the game, and seem to only exist to give Apollo and Athena something to do before the harrowing final case. I happen to think Case 2 is one of the better cases in the series, and, even though Case 4 isn't great, it's still better-than-average for an Ace Attorney filler case.
• While I like Nahyuta Sahdmadhi (especially in terms of how he connects to Apollo and the game's compelling larger story in Khura'in), he's not especially interesting as a prosecutor. The original Ace Attorney and Trials and Tribulations both benefited from having complex and interesting prosecutors who were full of personality. Nahyuta doesn't bring a lot to the table in this regard, unfortunately, and spends most of his trials calling you putrid and ENDLESSLY telling you to "let it go, and move on." Endlessly. It's his catchphrase, and he uses it for every situation. With that said, he's still a good character in terms of his role in the final case, and I really dig his character theme.
• The Big Bad in this game doesn't quite get enough build-up to make your confrontation with them nearly as satisfying as it was confronting the bad guys in the first and third games, respectively.
• The writers for this series don't seem to know what to do with Maya other than imperil her. It was bad enough that she got kidnapped in both the second and third games; now she gets kidnapped TWICE in the same game! She's becoming the Princess Peach of the Ace Attorney universe. Anyway, Maya is an awesome character, and I hate seeing her be reduced to a mere prop in these mysteries.

Overall, though, I couldn't recommend this game enough. It'll be interesting to see how the series evolves past this point, given how the way it ends shakes the status quo up in a pretty significant way. If we do end up getting a new set of games, the narrative focus will have to change. I wouldn't mind a game that fleshes out Athena Cykes, personally, but we'll see what happens. An easy 9/10. With just a few changes, it could have been the best game in the series. As it stands now, I'd place it just below Trials and Tribulations, making it my second favorite game in the series.

I also played all of the DLC cases. There are two jokey hour-long ones that are... cute, but utterly insubstantial. They come with 3DS themes, which is cool, but those themes are kind of boring. They both made me laugh enough to be worth the money I paid for them, though. The real meat of the DLC is another full case, Turnabout Time Traveler, which is kind of a throwback. Maya is your companion through the entire thing, a certain annoying character from the original trilogy makes his grand return, and you square off in court against Miles Edgeworth. This aspect is reasonably well-done, and great fanservice for long-time fans. With that said, the case itself, while decent, was one of the weakest in the game, and very predictable in some respects. Again, definitely worth the money, but not as good as the DLC case in Dual Destinies which was, surprisingly, the high point on that game. Overall, I'd give the DLC a 6/10.

@CanisWolfred It's a pity NSMBU came out when it did, and on the console it did. People were already kind of tired of the series anyway, and people just weren't super enthusiastic about Nintendo's new console, so it didn't get the reception it deserved. Hopefully that'll change with the Switch re-release. it's definitely one of the best side-scrolling games in the series.