Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Mighty Switch Force! 2
I nabbed this when it first released, but I never fully finished it before now. It's a lot like the original in that the gameplay revolves around solving environmental puzzles and platforming, both of which are reliant on the block-switching mechanic. Like the original, the 3D is extremely effective and helps with the gameplay. Other than using your fire hose to douse flames, the gameplay is extremely similar to the first game. It can probably be completed within an hour if you just rush through it, but I got a good 8 or so hours out of it by speedrunning levels and trying to find all the hidden babies (which you humorously kick to safety).

Nothing incredible, but the pixel art is attractive, the gameplay is tight, and it's a good time overall. Also, the music is surprisingly decent. Especially the awesome ending credits theme.

Just cleared Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Torna the Golden Country last night. It's by far the best DLC/expansion I have ever played. I absolutely loved it!

I finished my 100% Master Quest run of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D a week ago. It's been six years since I played the original quest, and it still holds up quite well. They weren't kidding when they called it "Master Quest"....I admittedly had to look up the weird solutions to a couple of puzzles. I wonder what sick, creative mind thought that using cows for switches inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly thought that was a good idea....XD The story, gameplay, characters, side quests, and exploration are as memorable as ever.

This one is still a classic. 10/10 Everyone must buy.

I also managed to finally finish Paper Mario: Color Splash this past week. I...really don't know what to think of this game.

On one hand, the dialogue was funny, Mario's 2D paper world was beautiful and fun to explore, Thing cards are fun to use, and for the most part I enjoyed the paint mechanics. Huey was a decent fellow. Despite the complaints of others, I even enjoyed many of the Toad characters; most of them looked the same and could have been fleshed out more personality-wise, but at times their personalities did shine through.

On the other hand, this game fell short in various ways. The story was by no means bad per se, but I found it fairly predictable and lukewarm. The combat grew old fast. It feels strangely limiting to rely on cards that may or may not work against certain opponents and have to be bought time and time again. Other than Thing cards, combat became tedious after awhile; I often found myself avoiding enemies if I could. Combat wasn't meaningful other than serving to upgrade the paint capacity in Mario's hammer. After the beginning hours of the game, I very rarely ran out of paint. Speaking of paint, whose idea was it to have the Shy Bandit spawn in random areas of the map? Having something spawn far away from you, THAT YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET TO IN TIME because of how paths on the map are drawn, and suck away all of your painted progress in a level really irks me. I probably wouldn't have minded this much as a kid, but I'm quite sensitive to how long something takes as an adult. Needless to say, I didn't bother with 100% completion in this game. Also having Kamek appear and mess around with the player isn't fun. There was a point in Redpepper Volcano when he appeared during an encounter with those fireball dudes who can only be defeated with certain cards. He pulled the "I'll steal everything except six cards" thing. Guess what? Only two of the six cards that he left were of any use. I had to run from the encounter and, guess what? No cards. I ended up just going back to my last save and starting the level over.

This was my first Paper Mario game. While I'm definitely interested in playing most of the other games in the series, I'll be giving Sticker Star a wide berth. I've already picked up a used copy of Super Paper Mario.

Not exactly recently (about a month ago), but it was We Love Katamari (PS2, 2005).

This was the second and last Katamari title directed by Keita Takahashi, the series creator. It's a pretty cool sequel. It's funny how meta the game is, the story is about fans of the original title who ask favors for you and tell you how much the first title inspired them.

WLK is one of the most varied games in the series in terms of settings. WLK has underwater levels, a level set in a field of flowers (with a very romantic song called "Angel Rain", might I add), a school level, a level where you roll a flaming Katamari in a camp, a level where you Katamari is actually a sumo fighter and a level where you gather fireflies for a student (one of my favorites).

What more can I say, It was amazing fun. I'd say I enjoyed it more than the original because of the level variety. The soundtrack is amazing as always. My favorite songs from the game are "Houston" and "Angel Rain".

Persona 4 Golden (PsVita)
Bought it 4 years ago digitally on my psvita and never wen’t beyond the opening velvet room scene. Rebought it physically in june and finally started it 4 weeks ago. The game is amazing. Building all social links/arcana’s was fun to do and you actually get feelings for those characters. The dungeon crawling part was okay but it was a small part of the game (about 25%).
I read that having multiple lover relationship didn’t influence the game as long as you didn’t go to the movies with any of them, which was kind off true, but once you reach valentines day the game makes sure you feel like a cheating ghij and kinda makes you depressed.
I recommend this game to any psvita or pstv owner.

Metroid
Decided to play Metroid on Switch yesterday and I finished it today. I've beaten Metroid once on 3DS but back then I used a map. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy the game was this time. I didn't get lost even though I didn't use a map and I only died twice. My play time was 4 hours so I only got to see Samus' face. I missed quite a few upgrades too, including wave beam.

I have much more appreciation for NES Metroid than I ever had before. It introduced so many iconic power ups right from the get-go. It was awesome to find screwattack even before tackling either of the two bosses. I defeated Ridley first since he's really easy but I had some trouble with Kraid and decided to turn back and gather some more energy tanks (I had 3 when I first found Kraid). The exploration was fun although the game can be a bit confusing thanks to NES limitations which meant some rooms are pretty much identical. A map would make the game much more approachable and better experience overall. Then again, it could also make the game even shorter than it already is. One last thing I was surprised by was the controls. I also really like how Samus controls. She really has a sense of weight to her. Her jumps are precise once you get used to the arc and the knockback from enemies isn't as frustrating as in games like Castlevania.

Luigi's Mansion (3DS)
I gotta say, I really enjoyed this for what it was: a simple action/adventure game. Exploring the mansion was a lot of fun; there could be a new secret (or ghost) around every corner. A lot of the boss fights were fun and (mostly) creative. Using the Game Boy Horror earned some chuckles out of me with Luigi's thoughts and descriptions. XD The story wasn't anything to write home about, but let's just say that I found a moment at the end quite endearing.

Negatives...I wasn't really fond of Gooigi being shoehorned into the game's plot, but at least you didn't have to use him. I also felt that the controls were a bit clunkier compared to Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, but they can be adapted to.

I think I slightly prefer Dark Moon to this game (raises shield), but overall I quite enjoyed this seasonal romp. I plan on revisiting it at some point to complete the Hidden Mansion.

I beat Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Director's Cut: Wii U: DX: ft. Dante from the Devil May Cry series a little while ago.

Awesome game, especially this updated version. Still a shame SE sent this version out to die. Between the unfortunate save issues I had and constant reloading, it took me 85 hours, which is crazy. For like a reasonable person it's probably half of that...at most. Extremely glad I got to beat the game, and this version in particular. The bosses are actually really good for a genre that people wouldn't associate with good bosses, and now that they're beatable in a stealth playthrough. They remind me of the more clever bosses in the Arkham games, especially Mr. Freeze.

@kkslider5552000 I think that may still be my favorite game on Wii U. I loved it. It's the only version I have ever played, and I have always wondered how the bosses played before because I heard the Director's Cut added the stealth possibilities. That would be super annoying to go through the whole game stealthily and then be forced to go all Call of Duty guns a-blazin' on the bosses.

@kkslider5552000 @Xyphon22 I didnt know there was a stealthy boss version until I read your posts lol. Well, no wonder I thought the bosses were a pain. I completed the game a couple of weeks ago (PS3) but had to change to Tell me a story-difficulty to get past them. Awesome game otherwise.

Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition on PS4. Played as the female character (I don't really know if the male and female avatars' campaigns are different or not).

That... was dreadful.

Despite ostensibly being a short game, it took me months to will myself through its campaign, because every time I played it for a couple of hours I lost the will to return for a good while. Yesterday I decided I was going to say goodbye to this title and get through the final four missions in the campaign. I don't like leaving games unbeaten if they're not just complete trash.

This wasn't QUITE trash, but it was the least fun I've had playing a game in a while. The levels are overly long (I had to have spent 40+ minutes on each one), samey, and filled with endless waves of zombie mobs. The game is dark, so my score multiplier would frequently tank when some unseen enemy would start wailing on me, and, in general, I had a hard time seeing what I was trying to shoot. Weapon selection takes place in real time, so by the time you realize: "Hey, I need to switch to that gun that shoots blades to kill the giant monster gunning toward me," they'd already be on me, and I'd have to frantically throw out flares/mines/etc. in a desperate attempt to get away from the enemy for long enough to switch my weapons (one of the few games which desperately needs a weapon wheel that stops or slows time). Oh, and yeah, those were lovely: the monsters that kill you in one or two swipes and are total bullet sponges. Good luck switching to a strong weapon in time to kill them. No, what you have to do is die continuously in the same areas over and over until you can start predicting exactly when the stronger enemies will show up, and switch to the weapons you need in advance. Some of the weapons are neat, like the shocker, but they go through ammo so fast that they're practically useless to me, even fully upgraded. The best weapon in this game, besides the fully upgraded rifle, is the fully upgraded flamethrower, which saved me more times than I can count.

Oh, and to top it all off, the story presentation is forgettable at best.

There's nothing for me to like here. 3/10, and that's only because it performed and controlled well enough (I don't remember any lag or framerate hitches).

@Ralizah Yeah, Dead Nation was a dull slog that was dead on arrival. You certainly got more willpower than me, though. I cetainly wouldn't have bothered to finish it.

@CanisWolfred This is the second Housemarque game I've played and not been hot about, the other being the merely decent Resogun. I find myself wondering why they have such a sterling reputation.

RDR2 - Not going to write too much about it here as I’ve posted enough to fill a novel in the game thread. Quick blurb is it is both as good AND as bad as you may have read. I don’t think i’ve ever loved and hated a game as much as this; It feels like it’s constantly fighting you as you try to play it (in many ways it feels like it wants to be a movie more than a game) but holy heck is the payoff worth it in the end. It’s like a 12/10 with some 4/10 bits glued on to drag the whole package back down to ‘8 territory’.

Golf story - finally finished this little beast. What an amazing little surprise of a game - any rpg nuts should check it out as it’s such a quality little throwback. The golf aspect only adds to the experience too so don’t let that put you off!

They made a decent Galaxy Wars-esque game before the market was oversaturated with them. They've also made Outlands, which was a stylistic action-platformer, IIRC. Best game I remember them for, personally. Otherwise, it's more a case of retaining their Indie Darling status since Sony keeps giving them preferential treatment, therefore keeping them in the consciousness of a market that's easy to get buried in.

Beat all 3 paths in NieR: Automata.
Enjoyed the game quite a bit! I'd highly recommend if you enjoyed Bayonetta or The Wonderful 101. Combat is a ton of fun, the characters are all pretty interesting and have phenomenal voice acting, and there's plenty of surprises that the game throws at you which keeps gameplay fresh. I've heard some people say that the second path is a bit of a slog to get through but I didn't mind it at all. It doesn't take too many hours to beat and had enough variance from the first path to keep me interested the entire time.

I wasn't a huge fan of the exclusion of auto saving. I'm so used to it now in modern games that I hardly ever manually save anymore. When you pair that with a ton of unexpected "joke" endings that give you a game over if you get them, it can be pretty frustrating. There were a couple of times where I came across one of the bad endings and ended up losing about an hour of progress each time. Another thing I didn't really like about the game was the first 30 minutes or so. I think it was a bad first impression. The shmup section at the very beginning was okay, but when you take control of 2B the entire factory section feels so constricted. I really didn't like the fixed camera angles in the game, except maybe the side-scrolling platformer parts, and this area is full of it. The game doesn't really open up until you get into the city. One last complaint is the pacing of the story. Each path itself isn't very long, especially for a JRPG, which makes sense for the nature of the game I suppose. But there are plenty of things that felt rushed while other sections felt drawn out way too long, like the cult robot factory section.

I've heard people say that it's not necessary at all to play NieR to fully understand the story of Automata, but I don't think that's true at all. There are plenty of things that I wish I had more background information of, like Devola and Popola, the Black Scrawl, Emil, and the demise of humanity in general.

Transformers: Devastation on PS4. I'm not a huge Transformers or Platinum fan, but I really enjoyed this game. The presentation is beautiful, the script is fun and very hammy, like a saturday morning cartoon, and the combat is fast, skillful, and addicting. I really love the fluidity of transformations, the way you gradually upgrade your weapons over the course of the game, the loot system, and the great pacing of the entire experience. The levels, while mostly pretty directed, also allow for some exploration, which can be fun, and side-quests are available throughout the game. It's a lot like Bayonetta, but without the incoherent plot and gimmicky setpieces that bring that series down. The combat is initially a bit simplistic, but as in other Platinum games, you can expand your moveset over time.

Two cons of the experience as the samey environments (most of the game takes place against the backdrop of generic city environments) and some boss battles later in the game that almost felt unfair, to the point where I made myself using stat boosting items just to get through them.

Really enjoyed it. This is probably my favorite pure action Platinum title so far (NieR: Automata is, of course, my favorite overall). It's a massive pity that this was delisted. I'm glad I was a PS+ subber when I was so that I could experience this little gem.

Just finished Hatoful Boyfriend (on iOS, but it's available almost everywhere). Is it a game? Not sure. Anyway, I finally played through enough endings to get to the real main ending, which was really quite cool. After that, I knocked off the last two half-endings I was missing so I could get the final epilogue too.

Haven't done many visual novels, and I'm not 100% sure this has made me want to do more, but I must admit this is a cracking bit of writing. The various frothy romance storylines can be knocked out pretty quickly, and each one mostly has a quirky element (beyond even the fact you're a sole human schoolgirl flirting with pigeons in an avian world) to recommend it. Some are really out there, but some are pretty mundane... And then you get to the real ending, and everything has new light cast upon it. As I said, great writing.

My only criticism would be that the final storyline has very little gamification - I never felt like my choices mattered in that final route, despite it being maybe four or five times longer than any other path. That said, I'd still recommend it.

XD I can’t remember a game I beat

Burly Men at Sea on the PS4. Via PS+, obvs.

It's... uh... cute. I beat the game four or five times and cleared the majority of obvious choices I saw.

There's bearded men. They sail around in a little adventure game, and stuff randomly happens to them. Then they go back home. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Not really my sort of game. This seems like one of those indies that's quirky for the sake of being quirky. But it has decent sound design, and it doesn't outstay its welcome like Abzu or Journey, so I can't complain much.

5/10. Very average experience.