Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Ex-Mutants and Marko's Magic Football on the Megadrive. Next up is X-Men on the Megadrive. Already beaten half the game on easy mode, but I have to do it all on normal if I want to play the rest.

The Banner Saga on PC. Fun, if somewhat flawed, game that combines VN, survival, and tactical RPG gameplay elements. The art design and music in this game are absolutely fantastic. The battle system felt too simplistic at first, but I felt like the game fleshed out its nuances enough by the end of the game. Your characters are constantly journeying in this game, which leads to a lot of waiting as you watch your characters trudge across the lands. While I appreciate the tone this establishes, certain portions of the game became rather tedious to play through as a result. It's not too huge an issue, but I hope the sequel addressed it somewhat. The world-building is pretty good, but the cast was too large for me to form any particular attachments to any of the characters, which can hurt more dramatic parts of the game where you're forced to make life-or-death decisions. Overall, I thought it was a pretty good experience, and I'll definitely try out the sequel one day.

Oh, and I have to mention: while a lot of games give me trouble with the steam cloud, this game synced perfectly. I was able to play it on various computers with no trouble whatsoever.

Wario Land 3 on the 3DS VC. I was expecting to like this one as much as its predecessor, but...it just fell a bit short with me. It's still an excellent game in most cases; I think my two main problems with it were: A. I prefer Syrup and her Brown Sugar Pirates to searching for music boxes for an evil obese clown who's a pushover once you figure out what to do, and B. I'm sure I was knocked off of stages, platforms, etc. WAY more than in Wario Land II. I understand adding some challenge to the game, but this was borderline trolling in some cases; I had to cave and use restore points in some of those sections to save time and sanity. Also, I felt that the music was a bit lacking compared to the previous entry, but at least the ending wasn't bad.

I also finished the main story in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag last night. I definitely had more fun with this game than its predecessor on the Wii U, especially with pillaging ships. The story wasn't award-winning, but it still kept me entertained and expanded my love for AC's (admittedly convoluted at times) lore. The Caribbean was beautiful, and I really enjoyed some of the shanties (Drunken Sailor was my favorite, but if I have to hear Johnny Parker again...ugh). My only major complaint with this one is the same as with all AC games: the fallacies of the free-running mechanics; I failed pillaging some of the more important ships and had to redo some missions because of it.

I'll probably do a few extras with both games for a little while when I need a break from other games; in particular, I want to at least take down all the remaining oceanic forts in ACIV and do a few other side missions.

X-Men (great game) and Rambo III (pretty average) for the Megadrive.

So far that's 8 games finished for the year. At this rate I'll finish off my entire Megadrive library.

I recently beat fallout 4 for the PC. I would guess that I spent 25 hours on it.

Well I can add Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition to the list.

Stayed up until two in the morning finishing Bayonetta 2. It was definitely a great experience, and I'm glad I've finally got one of these games fully under my belt (I've played a couple of hours of Bayonetta 1 on Xbox 360, but I never got around to finishing it). My thoughts:

PRO

• The best thing about the game, of course, is the blisteringly fast and surprisingly deep combat system. The game, despite being hack'n'slashy, really punishes button mashing and rewards player skill. It took awhile to get my timing on the dodges down, and to learn various combos, but once I did, I was defeating enemies much more swiftly and getting higher ranks on the verses. Also, interestingly enough, it pays to watch new enemies closely and understand their attacks before just rushing in, even if it keeps you from obtaining that coveted pure platinum metal.
• Speaking of, the extensive post-game stuff, various weapons to experiment with, accessories to buy, and the score system all seem to encourage replayability. I want to focus on clearing out my backlog, so I won't be doing too much of this, but it's nice to know that the game has a lot of content once you finish the story.
• Most of the voice acting is pretty good. ESPECIALLY from Bayonetta. Good lord, she's so fun to listen to.
• Bayonetta is a great character. Despite beings sexy, sassy, and all-around cool, you can definitely see how a lot of her attitude is a mask she uses to face the world, as, when bad things start happening, that mask can occasionally slip, and we can see the kindness and concern that lie underneath.
• The music is lovely, and fits the action on-screen really well.
• Game's performance is phenomenal during normal gameplay.
• I really like some of the optional challenges that pop throughout the game, and how it doesn't punish the player for failing them, encouraging the player to try creative solutions to difficult challenges

CON

• The storyline is borderline incoherent for the most part. The bits that did make sense seemed like generic anime/JRPG stuff: kill a stand-in for God, rah rah human free will, etc. etc. Nothing special here.
• The game suffers from FFXIII disease: namely, it has so many strangely named organizations and individuals that they become almost indistuinguishable as narrative entities. It seems to substitute the dropping of weird names left and right for real world-building.
• The game isn't very well-paced. Usually games have an ebb and flow, but almost every chapter in this game feels ridiculous and climactic. While this certainly adds to the spectacle and keeps the game from feeling boring, it's a bit tiring to play when every chapter ends with some UBER AWESOME GIANT BOSS BATTLE!!!!!
• The actual cutscenes are gorgeous, but I'm not a fan of the VN-ish presentation of many of the story scenes. ESPECIALLY more action-packed ones. I understand this was probably done for budgetary reasons, and the game is polished in the most important areas, but they feel out of place in an otherwise very AAA-feeling game.
• Most of the other characters aren't terribly well-developed.
• "fuhgeddaboudit" ad nauseam
• While I like the fact that the game tries to change up the gameplay from time to time, the "vehicle" segments are gimmicky and, far and away, the worst part of the game.

CONCLUSION
Overall, I'm very happy with Bayonetta 2. It's a fantastic action game that didn't sell nearly as well as it deserved to. The localization was almost perfect as well, and I have the version that came with Bayo 1, so I still have another game to play, in addition to all the extra stuff that awaits me in Bayo 2. Very much worth the $60 I paid for it when it first released. Just... don't play it for the story.

Pokemon Sun, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy XV.
Still going to run around a little bit in FF15, I think. But not too much. We'll see. The Platinum trophy in this game is realistically obtainable, and I'm somewhat tempted to go for it.

I do want to go back and finish up my Mass Effect 3 save as I was wanting to replay the trilogy (for the fourth time) before Andromeda comes out in March.

Sonic Unleashed (Wii version). I remember playing the PS2 version of this game back in 2009 (very long ago, I know) but I had never finished it. Here's some of my thoughts on this game:

• The Wii/PS2 versions of the game were developed by DIMPS, the company that worked on the great Sonic Advance/Rush series. Not sure if I am remembering this correctly but the Wii version seems to have way better loading times than the PS2 one.
• From what I've read, this version has more night stages than the HD version. (DIMPS, why?). 3 night levels/world with some exceptions.
• The night stages are cool the first few times but then they start to get boring and repetitive. Kill enemies, swing from poles, use boxes to keep buttons pressed, repeat...
• The day stages are pretty good but there are only 1 of them for each world plus obligatory challenges (get 100 rings, don't break the vases and such).
• I feel the other way around about the bosses: The day bosses are very generic and they all feel like the same, while the night bosses are fun to fight.
• The life system is one of a kind: By opening gates with a certain number of medals on the Gaia Gates you can find extra lives that will increase your starting lives permanently. The catch is, you can't get more lives on the stages themselves and you need these extra lives. I didn't know about this when I played the PS2 version so I never could get pass Eggmanland.
• The day Eggmanland level is brutal. One little slip and you will fall to your death. I actually slowed down to a crawl on some of the areas of this level. Never got past it in the PS2 version and it think it would be impossible for me with only 2 starting lives.
• The absolutely hardest obligatory mission of this game is finishing a certain area of Eggmanland within a time limit. It took me about 40 tries.
• I like the great scale of the game, as it is set and based around the real world.
• Chip is kinda annoying.
• You can't skip cutscenes. I found a few of them boring and unnecessary I wish I could've skipped them, but no big deal. Just me nitpicking tbh.
• The final boss is kinda annoying but his theme is awesome.
• The game has great music in general.

So, that's how I feel about the DIMPS version of the game. Never played the HD version so I don't know if it's better, but yeah, it's kinda of a mixed bag for me.
The night levels were very boring and could have way more depth to them, the combat could be more complex and there should be more enemy variety. The day levels are great and I'm glad they expanded on them with Sonic Colors.

The Plague Knight campaign of Shovel Knight. I really liked Plague gameplay, way better than Shovel one. And i keep listening to the OST, it's really fantastic. I can't really wait to try Specter of Torment on Switch!

Pokemon Moon. Fun game. I really like the visual overhaul these games received, and Alola is one of the better regions in the series. Also, riding Pokemon is such a fantastic alternative to the HM system. There were times that the game felt like I was being shuffled from one cutscene to the next, which was annoying, but overall I really enjoyed it.

Just beat Twilight Princess HD. I'd never played it before and I really loved it. I beat WWHD last year around the same time. I thought that was great, but I think I like Twilight Princess a bit better. Both are great.

Getting into Xenoblade Chronicles X. It's...complicated. I feel like I'm doing everything wrong and dying a lot. Not sure how I'm feeling that. Also playing Yoshis Woolly World. Loving that.

Also recently 100% beat Batman Arkham Knight on my One S. Excellent game with loads of content.

Over the past week: Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition for the Wii U, Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude, Jungle Strike, DJ Boy, and Robocop Versus the Terminator all for the Mega Drive

How was Jungle Strike? I was considering it, but it looked frustrating after watching a few videos...though, that was a long time ago, and they could've just sucked.*

I vaguely remember Robocop vs Terminator being especially frustrating, too. Congratz, either way.

_{*In retrospect, a lot of people who made videos on Youtube were actually pretty terrible at the games they were recording. First playthroughs & whatnot. It'd be like if an art museum featured the three-hundred-and-twenty-seven different scrapped versions of a masterpiece that they fished out of the artist's garbage can. Is there really any reason to record the "learning experience" that comes with a first playthrough? I'd rather just see something indicative of a proper playthrough, especially if its an action game.../rant}

Half-Life 2

Turns out it's a good game.

The last chapter or so is pretty epic. I did find the campaign a bit long for my liking, but the gameplay is great so it's not too much of a beef. Later into the game you get given a few people who act like a squad, but all they really seem to do is get in your way and see how quickly they can get themselves killed.

Other than that though it's a very intelligent game for its age, and a great sci-fi adventure. I liked that you, while ammo isn't always plentiful, you're never out of ammo for a particular weapon for long, and the game is testing at times but never too hard. T

he biggest trouble I probably had was just figuring out which way to go at times, cos although it's a linear campaign, there's not much hand-holding, no map or radar etc. so you've just got to explore and hope for the best.

Grav gun is good fun.

Can see why this game is so well regarded. Holds up today, no problem. Play it if you haven't yet and you like FPS stories.

Half-Life 2 is up there with FF6, KH2, and Dark Souls in that I want to like it...out of peer pressure and the fact that it does present some good ideas, and I know I've enjoyed it sometimes, but I honestly found the problems to be too big to ignore to call it a great game. It's been a while since the last time I played it, though, so I'm still willing to give it another shot someday. I mean, a lot of its problems that I recall having came down to mission structure (I disliked how often it would stop you just to do some lame physics-based puzzles, and pretty much everything to do with the gravity gun was ballocks in my opinion), presentation (those "interactive cutscenes" lose a lot of immersion when you can just run around the room and messing around with the furniture while no one in the room reacts in any meaningful way, just continuing their shpiel like its a normal static cutscene), and the fact that I was sold on the game due to how immersive it was, yet I found that really never sucked me in the way Fallout 3 or Metroid Prime did, both of which were fresh in my memory when I first played it.

...So hopefully, knowing all that, I can still enjoy it in spite of those issues the next time I play it. Ravenholm's still gonna be a problem, though. It doesn't even scare me anymore, it just frustrates me. Its so confusing to navigate, and when those fast zombies show up, forget it...

I didn't care for Half-Life 2. It just wasn't fun to play. Granted, I never beat it, but I have to dislike a game a good deal to simply stop playing it and never go back.

@CanisWolfred if you really don't like the gravity gun then, yeh, I don't think the game's ever gonna win you over.

Regarding Ravenholme, that's where I initially stopped on my first play. I didn't intentionally stop forevs, but in game I was a bit worn out and it felt like that section was intense enough to need a break from it for a while. But funnily enough, when I went back to it, about 5 years later, I found it pretty straight forward. Those fast zombies aren't difficult to kill, just take a couple of whacks with the crowbar I think.

@gcunit I didn't even think to use the crowbar there. Maybe I'll have to try that next time...

@CanisWolfred Crowbar was my primary weapon in Ravenholme.