Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

I beat Shantae: Risky's Revenge last night. Fun, but quite short. It only took me about 5 hours. Worth $10, but I must say I enjoyed Pirate's Curse a lot more. Now to wait for Half-Genie hero!

Popcork! (Android).

It's a F2P mobile game I've had for a long time. It's a carnival shooting game (has a Japanese festival setting) where you use the gyro to aim. It looked like a breath of fresh air compared to all the countless Match 3, Tower Defense/RTS, & "Team Building" games that litter the mobile landscape.

Anyhow, after playing it off & on casually over a long time, I've finally managed to win all the prizes (never spending a cent). It's also very fair with it's F2P mechanic, because the better you do, the longer you get to play (you get 3 coins a day, each worth 5 shots. As long as you knock something off, you don't lose that shot, so in theory you can play indefinitely. I've had sessions where I've played for a half hour on a single coin). Anyhow, I found it relaxing.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (PS3)
So.. Much.....YES!

Finally beat Never Alone (Wii U eShop). It's to be commended for using the video game medium to respectfully explore a culture that doesn't get much time in the spotlight — I love the idea of translating cultural myths (especially those of the oral tradition) into the video game format, and particularly enjoyed the well-documented collection of artifacts and interviews.

The game itself was an engaging puzzle-platformer with superb art direction. I played through the entire adventure cooperatively; it's an ideal game to play with a significant other (in fact, I have a hard time imagining how you'd do it solo). I can really only fault it for just a bit of jank — the bola controls are real rough, the framerate isn't very stable and some hit detection gets a little glitchy. Other than that, I was engaged all the way through. Definitely hope to see more from this group.

My Nintendo® Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (3DS eShop).

This was quite a treat. Picross is always fun, and Zelda fits it perfectly (especially the music). I only wish the "Mega Picross" puzzles had unique solutions, rather than recycle the images in "Picross". It was still very fun though, and I hope to see more exclusive rewards like it.

This was recently couple of days ago of last week but I beat Mickey's Dangerous Chase for the gameboy and beat Pokemon X for the 3DS.

I cleared Metroid Fusion on the Wii U VC. I had a lot of fun with this one and actually liked a lot of the changes from the previous 2D entries.

Though I can see how some complain that it set up Other M.

Ninja Baseball Bat Man (Arcade) Did a playthrough of this with my son, it's not hard just your standard arcade beatem up. It's an odd game though, the enemies you fight and bosses are some of the strangest I have ever seen.

Beat Persona Q the other day. Unsurprisingly, the lovechild of Persona and Etrian Odyssey also turned out to have a pretty long campaign, although, somewhat surprisingly, it has next to nothing in the way of post-game content. That's probably for the best, though: after devoting 90+ hours of my life to it, I'm ready to move on to other games.

I've managed to finish The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, Trails of Cold Steel, Mega Man Legends, Spyro the Dragon, Chib-Robo!, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam and Stardew Valley over the last month. Well, technically Stardew Valley doesn't really end, but seeing as my character is married with children, has restored the Community Center and received the highest ranking from Grandpa's ghost, I'm counting it.

While they were all good to some degree, Cold Steel, Tron Bonne and Stardew Valley ended up being my big favorites of the bunch. ToCS is one of the better RPGs I've played in the last few years, and MoTB and SD are two of the most fun, charming games I've ever played.

Beat Super Mario Sunshine last night. It was fun. I'd love to see a new 3D Mario in the same kind of style.

Journey (PS3)
This game is proof that video games can be a work of art. The beautiful visuals and sweeping score are just the icing on the cake of this wordless epic that needs to be played to be truly understood, as it's quality transcends all words.

Beat Gunstar Heroes 3D. I used to not like the game, but something about it clicked this last time I played it to the point where I actively wanted to finish it. It's a weird little shooter, but I'm growing quite fond of it now. That last gauntlet of boss battles at the end of the game is horrendous. though. Even learning their moves, I barely survived that last portion of the game.

I finally beat Persona 3's epilogue chapter, and with that, the game can be put aside for now. It only took me 140 hours combined.

The battle system was quite interesting; you really had to strategize against some enemies - moreso on the epilogue chapter which defaults on hard difficulty. I'd say it's easier than SMT IV though. Then again, I haven't been forced to play SMT IV on the hard difficulty yet, so I'm sure the game will have a few things to teach me.

I hit a few brick walls against enemies that would just wipe out my team, so ample grinding was required, and even up to the final battle (or so I thought), I was preparing a Messiah persona (just like in my run in the main game), but in the end, I was able to cheese it with a relatively low level persona (the mighty Odin) with an amplified shock attack that increases the chances of my teammates scoring criticals.

Then I got on to the final boss itself, and the teammates I chose were grossly under-levelled, but I still managed to do it. My tactic of bringing down the criticals wasn't working, and I was repeatedly reviving my teammates, but it was a relief to reach the end of that game, after spending so long on it, and watch the ending.

I mentioned it in the "What game are you currently playing?" thread, but I'd rate it as one of my top games (at least the main game, although the epilogue helped me to play the game better): the mix of RPG/Social Sim/Anime was really appealing, and I look forward to Persona 5; IF - in light of recent Atlus related news - it ever releases in Europe...

Just beat the main story in Demon Gaze. Fun dungeon crawler with an interesting art-style and addictive gameplay systems. I'll probably play some of the post-game stuff, but I won't feel bad about shifting my focus to something else soon.

I recently beat Blackthorne on PC - one of those games Blizzard offered for free a few years back. Very difficult - more than I'm used to any way.

For those who aren't familiar with the game, it plays similar to 'Prince of Persia' or 'Another World', but you're a metal-head with a shotgun. You leap and run through several areas, shooting Orks from the Warcraft universe before confronting some demon, and saving the world. To be honest, I wasn't paying too much attention to the story.

The game is split up into 4 worlds with 4 areas each, plus one for the final boss, and while you can continue from the start of each area if you die, the areas involved a lot of backtracking and, in some cases, perilous jumps , and I was finding it quite frustrating to near the end of a level, and make a silly mistake (or just succumb), causing me to have to do the whole lot again.

The hero is armed with a shotgun (which later upgrades to semi-auto>auto>auto high powered), but rather than just spray the enemies with bullets, you have to hide in cover (stepping back into the background slightly). Your enemies can do this too, but I found it a bit difficult to find an opening against some enemies, because their rifle bursts varied in duration. You're able to use various grenades against them (to little effect), but the best tactic I found (if you weren't an Ork gunfire sandwich) was to rush behind them, and shoot them as they turned around, and repeat.

But in all, it wasn't a bad game, although there were times when it was a little unfair, like when an Ork shuffles up to the edge of a ledge you're supposed to grab on to, resulting in it shunting you back down again. And if you happen to be propelled down more than one screen, then it's back to the start of the area.

Similarly, 'Gish'; a platformer where you control a ball of tar (also on the PC) is another potentially difficult game I managed to beat recently. Its main sticking point is its very precise control scheme, and coupled with the wonky physics engine, I found it to be a frustrating experience in places. There were some parts where I'd jump onto a platform, and I'd die instantly, or I'd step on an elevator which propels me through a ceiling, and I'd take variable damage - sometimes, it would actually kill me.

Unlike Blackthorne, the levels weren't as sprawling, but you are able to continue at the start of each level all the same - if you play on the normal difficulty. The next difficulty level starts you off at the beginning of the world, while the hardest requires you to beat the game in one life, which, frankly is near impossible if you risk spontaneously dying for no reason. I doubt I'll ever beat 'Gish' on the hardest difficulty, but I'm just happy to have beaten it. The same goes for Blackthorne.

Finally beat the DLC case in Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. Not sure why I put off finishing it for so long... maybe I just didn't want Ace Attorney to be over? Considering the new game is coming out soon, though, I felt like I needed to put this one to bed. It was a fun, decently lengthy case with nice cutscenes and some great callbacks to the first game.

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, depending on how you define general completion for a game like this.

I've completed Classic & All Star (and won 1st place in Smash Run) with every character (barring DLC ones), so I'm counting it.

I just completed story mode in Pikmin 3 the other day. A small part of me was worried going in that the magic from the GameCube entries wouldn't be there, but nope, I loved it just as much as the first two games. To the point where Pikmin might actually be my favorite Nintendo series now.

I've technically beat Mighty Switch Force on the WiiU - in that I've achieved below par times for all initial regular and bonus stages. Now I just need to do them all again in hyper mode. The super shot is a godsend - I'm pretty sure some level stars aren't possible without it. I'll continue to play it until I achieve 100%.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit - it's not an unfair game, and I do struggle a little, because it is challenging, and I'm sure those hyper levels are going to be pretty tough.