Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Finally beat the New Super Luigi U campaign. Still have to go back for some levels and Star coins but I'm done lol. Was a pain in some parts but offered a good challenge and remix to the Mario formula.

Also beat the main campaign in Division 2. Still going to be playing for probably 100s of hours but good to get thru the main story.

@redd214 I still need to go back and play Luigi u.. Only went thru the 1st few levels then I started playing something else 😋

Same here. I played New Super Mario Bros. U (Wii U) recently and got 100% for the second time (first time was on release date). This is the best "New" game in the series, no doubt. Then I started playing New Super Luigi U (for the first time) but I just played a few levels. I don't think that I'm going to love it but the different physics and level design is a good alternative for some people, I guess.

@Tyranexx I played VII on PC back in the day but couldn't complete it. Then I played IV on DS and now I am collecting all the Final Fantasy games on Xbox One with the older ones on 3DS/DS/GBA and SNES Classic. I really like the SNES Classic and I've beaten some games 100% (once again), like Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong Country... I even liked Star Fox and Star Fox 2 in spite of the graphics and slow-motion. I love the controller, the menu and the save and rewind features.

@BlueOcean yea that's why I'll play it. Just to get a different perspective or way of play from the regular smb games

@BlueOcean That reminds me that I haven't cleared my 3DS's DKC and DKC2 in 101% and 102%, which is more easy now thanks to the Restore Point feature. I have beaten both but haven't achieved all percent completion.

@BlueOcean: I haven't properly dug into my SNES Classic yet but plan to before long; the only reason I bought one before I really wanted it was because it was starting to become scarce over here. I luckily bought it at its MSRP; it retails for higher than that now.

I bought it primarily for nostalgia purposes, but I did a count and realized that I've only played 7 of the games that shipped with the system. ... Technically 8 if you count Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting as I know I've played some version of SFII...just not that one.

@SamusLv7 Donkey Kong Country trilogy is amazing, they are among my favourite games ever. Ha, yeah, 100% was 101, 102, 103 indeed... It was funny at the time, now many games seem to do that. I always played DKC2 and wasn't happy until I got 102% but that games is so good that it's never a chore. I think that the most difficult is 3 because of a few levels but I can get everything in the first two without restore points but just because I've played them many times. It's nice to have them on New 3DS, too. New 3DS is such a wonderful thing.

Your profile picture just reminded me that I also played Super Metroid 100% for the first time on SNES Classic, using a guide, and I have to say that the atmosphere, sound and level design impressed me much. The first Metroid I played was Prime which I also loved but Super Metroid is a 2D masterpiece.

@Tyranexx Star Fox 2 is a good deal as brand-new release but also Yoshi's Island as it is the first re-release ever (ignoring the GBA version which has serious downgrades). Some of the other games are also a big thing although some really important games are officially not included, even first-party (Super Mario All Stars).

I went back to my Wii U about a month ago. I decided to dedicate that time to 100% Super Mario 3D World. Other than that, I've been working on Super Mario Odyssey and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Switch.

@GlacierAC I also want to play Super Mario 3D World again, I played it once but didn't go for 100% at the time. Same for Yoshi's Woolly World (even though I got the Yoshi amiibos).

@BlueOcean I also cleared Super Metroid 100% just a few years ago (in N3DS) and agree that it is masterpiece. The first 2D DK that I beat, is DKC2. The levels, music and atmosphere made it my favorite 2D Donkey Kong and the best of the 2D ones in my opinion.

@BlueOcean: Good to know! I've never played Yoshi's Island but do intend to try it out, though I'm kinda worried that Mario's crying will become annoying before long. As for Super Mario All-Stars, I find its non-inclusion disappointing yet understandable; they only had so much room for Mario franchises. XD

I came I saw and I conquered blaster master zero 2. It was so much better than the first one. Go out and grab it everyone!

@NintendoByNature You already beat it!??? 😨 That was quick. I know next to nothing about the game's playtime hours, replayability, etc. as I only watched the trailer. I haven't even watched the NLife review of this game 😅

@SamusLv7 yea it took me about 10 hours on the hose. But I feel like people can beat it alot quicker than I did ( I got stuck a few times and didn't know where to go). Someone familiar with that genre like yourself can probabaly get through it in 8 hours id think. You should seriously grab it. It's really good!

@Tyranexx Mario crying is annoying but it also makes you a better player once you start throwing eggs upwards and jumping and throwing you tongue very quickly while avoiding spikes or holes below.

@SamusLv7 I agree, Donkey Kong Country 2 is the one I've played the most. 10/10. I also like the other two but the second game got everything right and has a brilliant soundtrack.

@BlueOcean: I'll take your word for it.

@Tyranexx I forgot to say that you do all that to avoid hearing his crying and also to not lose many stars.

Title: Okami HD

Platform: Nintendo Switch

What is it? An HD remaster of a 2006 PS2 game.

Level of completion: Completed the main quest and found all of the brush techniques (required and secret). Did not complete all of the side-quests or find all of the beads, however. Also didn't engage in any post-game activities.

What I liked:

• The game is most famous for its gorgeous mix of cel-shading and and an ukiyo-e art style, giving it a distinctive, timeless, and gorgeous visual presentation that still looks fantastic on modern HD consoles.
• The main character, Amaterasu, is a god in the form of a white wolf, and she's a wonderfully animated and charming protagonist. Granted, there's no talking, but there's a ton of body language and fun silliness involving her canine embodiment. Simply put, there's a bunch of great physical dog humor in the game. More broadly, the game never abandons its sense of humor.
• I really dig the way this game derives its fantasy elements from ancient Japanese mythology. The approach makes this game feel very cool and distinctive in a way you'd never get with, say, a game like The Legend of Zelda or Skyrim.
• The music, very much a high point of the experience, also has a traditional Japanese folk flair to it, but arranged in ways that are more modern. This old-timey inspired music with more contemporary instrumentation gives the game much of its identity. And, speaking plainly, the score is just flat out gorgeous most of the time. Definitely play this with headphones on, if possible.
• This game (mostly) successfully emulates the game design of older Zelda titles.
• There is a wealth of stuff to do besides advance the main plot. There are a number of collectibles, a decent amount of weapons to buy, new techniques to learn, side-quests to complete, etc. In this respect, the game feels denser than your average Zelda title.
• Unusual for games of this era, the game has a surprisingly robust fast travel system in place. Although I generally didn't need to warp around the game's world too much.
• The game's Switch port is great all around. The presentation is seemingly flawless. You can control the celestial brush in a number of ways: with the sticks, with motion controls, or with the touch screen. I often found the touch controls to be ideal for this game, and the game looks stunning in handheld form, so I spent 90% of the game playing undocked. But the gyro controls work about as well as you could expect them to, so it's a good time either way.

What I disliked:

• I'm not really a fan of how demons were integrated into the overworld (or, rather, how they weren't). As it stands, you run around the game's fairly barren areas while flags that represent enemy demons chase you relentlessly.
• The worst aspect of this game is the dungeon design. It simply sucks. The dungeons barely have any puzzles and are, for the most part, incredibly linear. This becomes even more noticeable because of how closely this game hews to the design of post-OoT 3D Zelda games in other respects. The dungeons are what really stand out in those games, and, in this respect, Okami simply fails.
• Some control and camera issues that weren't uncommon in games from this era.
• Issun, this game's equivalent of OoT's Navi and possibly the one character you'll hear the most over the course of the game, is incredibly unpleasant: he's rude, selfish, and, worst of all, aggressively misogynistic (don't play a drinking game where you take a shot every time he refers to a woman in this game as "busty" or "babe" or makes a perverse remarks to their faces unless you want to quickly die from alcohol poisoning).
• In general, there aren't a lot of really memorable characters in this game.
• The game's structure is unfortunate. The story is roughly divided into three arcs, but, for me, these never felt like properly cohered into a satisfying narrative. Rather, it just felt like the writers were unable to craft a compelling narrative that could stretch the length of the game and encompass the various ideas they were interested in exploring, so they just had you fight a series of more and more powerful evil forces over the course of the various arcs.
• Why is there a three minute cutscene every time you feed an animal? Sure, you can easily skip it, but it's odd and just another thing that makes this title feel unpolished as an experience.
• There are a variety of weapons to purchase and utilize, but, in lieu of stats or special abilities, I didn't see a reason to opt for one weapon of a particular type over another. There were only three or so actual weapon types, so it was an odd situation where I didn't feel like I had much to choose from, despite having purchased several weapons of those few types.
• I found the cherry bombs difficult to accurately place in this game. I'd paint one on the screen, only for it to appear somewhere else entirely, which was troublesome when I needed it to explode over a specific enemy or object.
• Having to remember what brush technique you had to use to finish off a particular enemy to obtain their fangs was a bit annoying to me. As was the process of demon fang farming in general.
• The Yooka Laylee-esque nonsense language these characters speak in is painful to listen to. Thankfully, the game allows you to mute the "voice acting" (if meaningless, repetitive noises can indeed be called voice acting), which is preferable to having my ears shredded every time I talk to a character.
• I really, really hated the block enemies in this game. A few times throughout the game (at least two of them being mandatory parts of the experience), these large block monsters keep you from advancing until you hit them in a randomized sequence of spots across their bodies with the celestial brush (from memory, because the spots are only illuminated for a split second). If you're even a tiny bit off, you have to start over, and, I swear to god, I was stuck for a good hour at each of these tossers. Worst part of the game. They ruined my mood whenever I encountered them, because I knew whatever fun I was having at the time was about to change into pure frustration.
• The final boss fight is disappointing. Granted, none of the bosses are fantastic, but this one seemed pretty basic and lackluster.
• In general, the ending feels a bit unsatisfying to me.

Final thoughts: Okami HD is a superior port that looks and sounds gorgeous and controls very well. Unfortunately, there are some game design shortcomings that kept me from appreciating this as much as I had hoped to. It's still a solid game, and it's currently the one truly traditional Zelda-like experience on the Switch, but I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, by any means.

Score: 6/10

@Ralizah I love all of your posts after youve finished a game. You put alot of thought into your post/ /review and that's really cool. I on the other hand just say" yea I beat it, its cool or it blows lol, but you rock it my friend. Kudos to you!

@NintendoByNature Hey, thanks for the kind words. I find that thinking about and writing down my impressions of a game helps me to cement my opinion of it in a more concrete and objective way than if I relied on my own malleable memory.

This write-up was pretty rough. There's a lot more I could add, and probably a lot of awkward sentence structure, word choices, etc. Glad to know it's not totally unreadable, though!