Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Completed Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins last night on my 2DS. Short, pretty easy but good fun. Finding the secret levels again after all these years was the hardest part.

To think I use to always fail at the underwater levels when the game first came out, I breezed through them this time.

Makes me want to play NSMB2, but got a bit of a back log at the mo so will pick that up once the log is cleared.

Will probably carry on with Shantae & the Pirate's Curse next as I'm in the platforming mood still, had a quick go when I got it on the humble bundle but now time to play it properly.

UnderTale (HARD MODE)
Fun distraction from normal UnderTale, but Toby Fox wasn't kidding when he called this Hard Mode! I spent almost as much time getting from the start of the game to the battle against Mad Dummy !

Finished all of the puzzles in My Nintendo PICROSS The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess yesterday.

Game was fun but I like Pokemon Picross better. Mario's Picross is still my ultimate favorite picross game ever (at least so far).

Just completed Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Remastered. It was an interesting game. Definitely a step up from the first one in every way. It's nowhere close to being the best Playstation exclusive, though. To be honest, I wouldn't even put it in the top ten best exclusives. Nevertheless, here are the things I liked and disliked.

PROS

• Fun dialogue and character interactions, as always. The characters (particularly Drake) are largely quippy and irreverent, like the characters in an 80s action movie like Lethal Weapon might be.
• 60 FPS made following the action on screen much easier
• The game is incredible looking, especially when you consider that this is a last-gen remaster
• Diverse environments.
• Extremely well-paced and involving action narrative. I had to play this for hours at a stretch because the game often skillfully chains together multiple action-filled setpieces, and I didn't feel right leaving in the middle of a high-stakes battle.
• Some really cool setpieces. A battle that spans the length of a series of high-speed train cars, in particular, stands out as the highlight of the game.
• A few of the puzzles are actually pretty decent, and remind me of something I would encounter in a Legend of Zelda game.

CONS

• Performance could get rough at times for this remaster. I noticed numerous visual hitches and severe framerate dips during the course of the game. It usually happened during times when action wasn't going down, so it's hard to say that it had a really negative effect on my gameplay experience, but it feels very unpolished in this regard. It's especially weird considering I experienced nothing of the like while playing TLOU Remastered, so I know ND can remaster games and have them run flawlessly.
• The plot is pure B-movie hokum. Perhaps this is excusable as Uncharted is clearly influenced by classic adventure stories, but a lot of the plotting and character development in this one just felt lazy.
• I was disappointed to see that ND still hasn't found a way to satisfactorily end its story. It was disheartening to see them rely on monsters, yet again, during the final part of the campaign. I don't mind some supernatural elements, but when the game suddenly starts feeling like Gears of War because hordes of bulky monster men begin swarming the player, it feels like the developers are opting for a zero threat in the most generic way possible.
• Too many enemies rely more on having tons of health than on actually being smart or intimidating.
• Platforming controls are as infuriating and awkward as ever.
• Several sections of the game felt like they were included to pad the length of the very short story.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the game, and it's definitely my favorite of the modern ND games I've experienced thus far. All I have left now are Uncharted 3 and 4, which I'm sure I'll play in due time. Still tremendously overrated, of course, but it was definitely good, dumb popcorn entertainment.

I finished up my playthrough of Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright last night. The game was fun, but even for someone like me that generally sucks at Fire Emblem and strategy games it was definitely on the easy side and the mission structure could've used something more than "just kill all of the dudes".

Beat Donkey Kong Land III. All I have left to complete are some difficult speedruns. I was very happy with the game overall. It's extremely solid on a mechanical level, has great level design and is much more visually appealing than the previous DKL games. To be honest, this is the only one I can say I really enjoyed. None of the horrible design choices that plagued the first two. Probably my second favorite DK-themed game on the GB after the stellar Donkey Kong '94, and the third best DKC-related game I've played after DKCR and Diddy's Kong-Quest.

Being forced to collect all the optional stuff before I could fight the final boss was pretty annoying, though.

@Ralizah Thanks for the comprehensive but spoiler free review of Uncharted 2.

I've been playing 9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors over the last week or so. I've seen one ending, but given how it turned out I can't imagine how other endings can be much different. I'm going to try one more play through to see how different it gets.

@gcunit You ought to go for all the endings in 999 if you're enjoying it. They vary wildly, and this is most true of the True Ending path, which has some mind-blowing twists, ties the entire game together, and sets up the following game.

Sonic Adventure DX (2003): I had fun with Ice Cap and Speed Highway, but overall it's extremely buggy and poorly designed. I don't think I'll even bother playing the other character modes.

I just beat Rodea the Sky Soldier for the Wii. Great game! And the music is fantastic! The controls felt smooth and the lock-on feature works every time. It was a great story, too. A little on the short side, (25 Chapters total), but it will still fun all the way through. I don't think I'l to get all S ranks, but I think I'll continue searching for the legacy medals for awhile.

I haven't tried the Wii U version yet (but I plan to soon!), so I can't compare the two versions yet. With the Wii U version being quite different from the Wii version though, I feel like I won't like it as much, but you never know until you try.

Beat surgery sim Trauma Center: Under the Knife (DS), and now I feel like I need surgery on my hand - in part thanks to the New3DS's tortuous stylus - far too small, and the tab kept digging into my finger. The game wasn't particularly easy either.
It didn't occur to me to use my WiiU stylus.

But I managed it - beat all story chapters up to the credits, which leave the 7(?) X-Chapter challenges which are very difficult, not to mention S-Ranks on every operation.

Good game though. Though I probably wouldn't want to play the DS sequel or Wii remake, I wouldn't have minded being able to play Trauma Team. Shame it wasn't released in Europe.

@Ralizah @gcunit
I have to admit I had to use a guide for some the best endings for 999. VLR was much better for me in that respect, because you were told what path you were going down. I'm really looking foward to the final game.

Just beat Donkey Kong Country 2. I had to restart from scratch because I lost all of the save data on my last 3DS, but it was significantly easier this time, although certain levels are still hair-rippingly difficult. It's a beautiful game. Probably my favorite platformer on the SNES thus far.

@edhe Yeah, the trading sequence you have to go through to get the true ending is more of an annoyance than anything. I expect ZTD will have a more intuitive system for finding different endings than 999 as well.

I recently finished a linked game of Oracle of Seasons (3DS VC). It's definitely more action-oriented than Ages, but there are some puzzles to be found here as well. Overall I feel that Ages is the slightly stronger game (better/more original bosses, better story imo), but Seasons is charming in its own right. The Subrosians are probably my favorite unique race out of both Oracle games, though the Piratians are a close second.

I'm still trying to collect a couple of random rings that I'm missing, then I should be done for a while until I decide to use my Hero's Secret.

Recently beat Kingdom Hearts. Was a lot worse than I remembered, but still a solid 7/10 I guess.
Main thing is that everything is 'too small'. The environments are too small and the worlds are too small. That makes the camera very annoying and everything seem strangely empty and lifeless.
There were also a lot of game design flaws regarding the battle system and controls. Now that I've started Kingdom Hearts 2 I can definitely tell they noticed this as well as every single one of those flaws is gone.

Still a solid game, but kind of glad I'm done with it and that the other games in the franchise are a bit more polished.

Just beat Sonic the Hedgehog 2 3D. Overall it's still the chirpy, colorful game I remember loving as a kid, but I'd forgotten just how much I hated the Aquatic Ruin and Wind Fortress Zones.

Still a great game, though.

Xenoblade Chronices X. 110 - 120 hours well spent.

Well, I wouldn't say I cleared the game recently but I finally finished Pikmin 3 and I'm ready for Pikmin 4! Pikmin 3 was an excellent game, but what I was really shocked at the length of the game. I was expecting to spend days upon days gathering a lot of food and exploring a VERY, VERY large world but it seems that wasn't the case. Aw.
I could have sworn I cleared another game recently, but I can't even remember the game... Wow.
EDIT: Oh, right! It was Portal for PC! Now I'm currently playing Portal 2...

I got the last ending for "Fallout New Vegas" for the PS3 last night. Also polished off "Retro City Rampage DX" for the 3DS recently.

Skyward Sword. That's sooo it I'm done with Zelda for a while. The Wii motion controls really spoiled parts of it for me, namely the stupid damned robot pirate in Lanayru Desert, and when you basically reface him, only with solid gold hair, during the Skyloft dungeon. Then they had the audacity to put that same battle style into Ghirahim at the end. As if Shielding wasn't horrible enough. But the story was really great, although simple and really easy to follow, no guessing games. All memorable characters who I like even more now. Luckily the story and the art made up for what seemed to be a long list of annoyances I had while playing.

I've been playing through Luigi's Mansion again for the past few days and got to the end today. I love that game so much! Definitely one of my favorites! Too bad it's so short, though. I haven't played it in a few years, never since the sequel came out. After playing through the original again, however, I realized just how much better the first one is over the sequel, in my opinion. The more I progressed through the original, then more I disliked Dark Moon! lol XD The only thing I missed from Dark Moon was Luigi's ability to jump while trying to catch a ghost.

Dark Moon was a fine game; it wasn't horrible, but it definitely wasn't the sequel I was hoping for. The online in Dark Moon is really fun, though! I've probably spent more time online in that game than on the story mode! XD Hopefully there will be a Luigi's Mansion 3, and hopefully it'll be more like the original!