Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Expand

DOOM II: Hell on Earth

Platform: PC

Completion Status: Beat the entire game more than once. As with the first game, I didn't receive 100% completion on EVERY level, but I did find a larger number of the in-game secrets this time around.

DOOM II released less than a year after id Software's legendary shareware classic, DOOM. Unlike the original, which released in a staggered format that lent it an episodic structure, DOOM II was a full commercial product from the beginning, and, reflecting this, contains one continuous campaign from beginning to end, which removes one of the early irritations of the original title.

I've just gotta say, switching to PC for DOOM II was the right move. Aiming with the mouse in classic DOOM games is just a joy, and offers so much more precision than a stick ever could.

Picking up where DOOM left off, Doomguy is now on Earth, and discovers that the planet has been overrun with demons. Humanity understandably freaks out and attempts to leave the planet via spaceship(s), but the demons are using some sort of force field to keep humanity from escaping. After Doomguy disables this field and allows humans to escape into space, he is linked the coordinates to the portal that opened to Hell - in the heart of his own hometown! Doomguy plunges into Hell again, set on ending this supernatural terror plaguing his world once and for all.

Probably the strongest area of improvement in DOOM 2 over the original is in the degree of enemy variety. In OG DOOM, there were only a small handful of enemy types to face off against, and most of these attacked you in a similar manner, leading to combat in the game having a very repetitive and predictable feel to it. DOOM II, on the other hand, infuses the game with a number of new enemy types that can pretty radically change up the flow of combat.

The first new enemy type is actually something that should look familiar to people acquainted with the original DOOM. The Hell Knights are essentially the Barons of Hell minibosses from the first game, but recolored and with half of the HP. This nerfing allows them to be incorporated into the full game as proper enemies, allowing them to be used a lot more than their stronger older brothers were in the original game.

In a similar vein, the Arachnotron enemy is basically a repurposing of one of the last bosses from the original DOOM, the Spider Mastermind. The ridiculous chaingun that made that boss so miserable to fight has been replaced with a much more manageable plasma weapon. Those plasma blasts still hurt, though, and even with a fraction of the Spider Mastermind's HP, these big guys still won't go down easily.

This handsome chap is called an Arch-Vile, and they have one of the most unique attack patterns in the series. Other enemies generally shoot projectiles at the player, but the Arch-Vile uses magic to hit the player with an undodgeable attack that does significant damage. Well, undodgeable by traditional means: you can actually negate damage from his attack if you break line-of-sight with him before he pulls off his spell. With this enemy, it actually pays to exercise some level of caution instead of blindly shooting like a moron due to the degree of damage their attacks do.

The Pain Elementals look a lot like Cacodemons, but they're significantly more irritating. These big boys don't actually attack; instead, they continuously spawn Lost Souls until you kill them. Lost Souls, for those unaware, are these annoying skulls that fly around trying to bite you. The sooner you put these guys down, the better.

The Mancubus is an obese demon with fireball launchers strapped to both arms. You'll want to kill them quickly, and they unfortunately absorb a lot of abuse.

The Revenant is... I mean... it's a skeleton with rocket launchers strapped to its shoulders. Heat seeking missiles, in fact, that can follow you around a stage, so you'll want to waste this guy quick. Don't get too close, though, because this cheeky fellow is one of the few enemies with a sub-attack: try to close the distance between him and yourself and he'll punch you right in your gob!

Last but not least, the Heavy Gunner is a new soldier type. The game has been good about not relying on these, and, like most of the other new enemies, he poses an instant threat with his chaingun-thing. Thankfully, a close blast from your shotgun will put this fellow out of his misery.

Thankfully, to balance out all of these extra nasties you'll be fighting, DOOM II introduces the hilariously powerful "super shotgun." This double-barreled wonder does absurd amounts of damage to enemies at close-to-medium range, making it the perfect weapon to mow down these denizens of hell. You can swap between the normal and "super" shotgun with the press of a key, but the only time you'll want to have the normal shotgun equipped is when you're trying to snipe smaller enemies. All of the other weapons are back as well, but the super shotgun is the only real addition to your arsenal in this entry.

If there's one thing I can definitely say is inferior to the original game, it's the level design. Granted, I wasn't a huge fan of the first game's labyrinths or its aggravating late-game stage design, but THIS is just... all over the place. Level construction can range from pretty good to horrendous, with no consistency when it comes to what you should be able to expect. While I like the concept, the game is at its absolute worst in the city levels, which are gigantic, barren maps filled with abstract geometry, enemies at a variety of annoying elevations, and obnoxiously random level progression as you scamper from building to building looking for an area that you can enter.

There are levels here that are just the worst thing ever. The Chasm, for example. This darling of a level features gigantic sections where you have to tight-rope walk your way across thin platforms, little more than a handful of pixels wide, while enemies fire at you. If you fall, the floor below is toxic and will quickly kill you. I doubt I need to elaborate on why I hate this level.

Seriously, screw this level!

With that said, the much more highly experimental nature of the level design in DOOM II allows for some interesting, if not always organic, level design that leads to some unique and almost puzzle-like experience. Two I'd like to immediately highlight are Dead Simple and Barrels o' Fun. The former places you in a ridiculously simplistic (thus the name) Deathmatch-style arena filled with high-level baddies. Despite this, there is an emergent logic to how you can go about killing the enemies here without minimal risk to the player. In the latter level, you will find yourself trapped in various locations filled with high-level enemies and dozens of explosive barrels. It's fun concepts like these that keep DOOM II feeling fresh despite inadequacies in level design elsewhere.

It's also worth mentioning that this game actually has a proper final boss. While it's not amazing as far as boss fights go, it's a massive step up over the irritatingly OP baddies you stumble across in the first game, and the enemy feels like something that would represent the culmination of your time with the game.

Despite being, in some respects, a more inconsistent experience, I definitely think DOOM II holds up better than the original game. The awesomely over-powered shotgun, bigger levels, much wider enemy variety, and single, connected campaign made this entry feel like a much more complete experience. It's a pretty terrific shooter, and I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed the original entry to give it a go.

Expand

I've done a lot since the last time I posted here so prepare for a long message (as I do while I'm writing this).

Kirby Super Star Ultra - I've beaten the original Super Star (or Fun Pak as it's called here) before but this was my first time playing Ultra. It took a bit to get used to Kirby's movement and other mechanics after just playing Triple Deluxe. They feel quite different. Kirby is super slippery, unless he's on a ladder in which case it's the opposite, and enemies have more health than I'm used to. I bumped into so many enemies because I thought they'd be dead from the previous attack.

But that's enough comparing. How's the game? I go with my typical answer for a Kirby game. It's Kirby. It's fun. It has variety thanks to its number of different modes but each mode is also very short. My favorite mode was probably Revenge of the King which wasn't in the original. It's pretty much just the hard mode from the original Kirby's Dream Land.

I completed the game and got the special "completed the game" message but I may go the extra mile and beat Helper to Hero with each helper. The game only requires you to beat it once but you get a medal in the menu for each helper that you've beaten the mode with. It's pretty pointless but I'm curious to see how I do with each ability. I've already done 3: hammer, wheel and fighter.

Murder by Numbers - A mix of a visual novel and nonograms (picross). The ratio between the two elements is just about perfect. You never go too long before stumbling upon a new puzzle. The story is good and the dialog is well written. I really like most of the characters. And the music is awesome. They didn't borrow just the exploration and presenting evidence from Phoenix Wright but the composer too. As for the puzzle solving. It's pretty close to Jupiter's Picross series but it's not quite there. The main problem is when you have to erase previously marked square. There's some lag there that throws me off.

I really enjoyed the game but I have one pretty big gripe with it. There's one puzzle in case 3 that you can miss if you are not careful. It appears for a limited time and it's out of the way. It appears in the bar after you leave to show a photo to your mom and you are not required to return there before it's too late. Literally nothing else changes in that room. K.C. stands there as usual and has the same dialog options but suddenly you can investigate there even though you couldn't earlier.

I replayed the case as soon as I finished it because I wanted to see the memory you can unlock by getting an S rank in a case before moving onto the next case. The problem in replaying a case is that there's no skip dialog button and you have to replay all the puzzles since the score starts from 0. Worse yet, the only button to advance dialog is A so that means you'll be tapping it as fast as you can and what you end up doing is selecting the same dialog option over and over. Luckily I'm very fast when it comes to picross so replaying puzzles wasn't a problem for me. It still took me an hour or two to replay the case though.

The game is well worth playing. And the way the game ends suggests there's a chance for a sequel which I'm all for.

Last time I posted, I talked about Kirby Triple Deluxe and Spirit of Justice. I said I'd go and complete Kirby and play the DLC in SoJ. Well I did and just wanted to mention them quickly. Kirby was fun to complete though the Smash like mode is not my favorite. And the DLC in Spirit of Justice was great. The two half hour joke scenarios were fun but I don't know if I can fully recommend them. You can just watch them on YouTube or something. As for the actual case, Turnabout Time Traveler, that was great. Much better than the DLC case in Dual Destinies. It also includes the main trio from the first game: Maya, Miles and Larry.

I've also beaten both Samurai Shodown (the new one) and Samurai Shodown! 2 (pre-order bonus). Or at the very least seen credits in both games. I don't think I got the true ending in the new game though so I don't know if it counts as beaten or not. Each character seems to have a special ending tied to them from what I've seen when browsing the movies menu. I beat both games as Shiki. I'd never played as her before since she originates from Samurai Shodown 64 (which despite its name isn't for N64). I've watched a movie in which she was one of the main characters though so I knew her on some level. Plus I like her design so I chose her in !2. The next day I played story mode in the new game and chose random which picked her again so I decided to see how similarly she plays. I beat the final boss in the new game on my first try and was surprised by how easy it was. Then I played as Basara a week later and gave up after half an hour of losing against the boss. Fun.

Next up I'll be playing Miles Edgeworth Investigations. The last localized Ace Attoney game I haven't finished yet. As I've mentioned here before, I think I was in case 3 when I stopped playing years ago so it's about halfway done already. I'll also be playing Animal Crossing but that's not a game I plan on ever beating.

Expand

I recently completed Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (Switch), an HD remaster of a Wii era title.

Ready to go on adventure!

Gameplay:

• A marble maze/obstacle style platformer, most levels see you tilting the stage around with the right analogue stick in order to guide a monkey (within a ball) to the end goal, avoiding obstacles & collecting bananas while trying not to fall off, all under a strict time limit. While simply getting through a level is one thing (and even this can become a challenge starting in the second half), real masochists can try to beat their high scores by shaving seconds off their best times & trying to collect all the bananas in a level (bundles of them are often just off the beaten path on perilous detours), the latter of which I wouldn't even dream of doing outside of the first few worlds.
  
  An example of the kind of level you'll have to tightrope your way through in the post game.
• There are two other types of levels, bonus levels (of which one exists in all 10 worlds, about halfway through), and boss levels (one of which caps off each of the 8 main game worlds). Bonus levels aren't all that much different from regular types, and see you trying to collect all bananas within them before time runs out or you fall off (there's no end goal other than collecting all the bananas, and you move on to the next level no matter whether or not you succeed).
• Next up are the boss levels which see you fighting bosses most often in arena style showdowns. Your goal in these is to avoid their attacks as to not be knocked off the platform (make sure you don't fall off on your own as well!), until you get the chance to hit their telegraphed weak point. These can be really tough for a variety of reasons, such as the fact that they often eschew the "3 hit rule" most other 3D platformer bosses live or die by (instead usually taking 4-6 hits to beat, usually changing their tactics either halfway through or after each hit they take), combined with the fact one good hit is all it can take to knock you out (and make you start over), and the fact that the game isn't really designed around such fights at all. You don't have any control over the camera, and while this isn't much of an issue in the rest of the game where you're mostly moving forward all the time (the camera is set to turn towards whatever direction you're moving), it can be an issue with these arena style fights (though a couple regular levels in the first world have a similar setup, seemingly as a bit of a tutorial to help you get to grips with them). One exception is the 4th world boss, which takes on the form of the level itself (you just need to survive a gauntlet and reach it's weak point on it's head) and gameplay wise fits the rest of the game much better. Needless to say, these are very hit & miss in terms of their difficulty.
  
  
  A couple of cutscene images of the thematically appropriate 4th world boss (while they appear mostly barren here, there are obstacles on each of it's segments you must clear/avoid during gameplay itself to reach it's head).
• Outside of the main game there are 10 minigames to try out. The only ones I tried out are "Monkey Target", which sees you trying to glide as far as you can and land in the middle of a bull's eye, and one that was a scrolling shmup. They are decent enough, and although you may get more out of them if you have others to play with, you won't last more than 2 or 3 rounds by yourself.
• There are six different monkeys to play as (they each have different stats for speed, weight, etc.), as well as Sonic the Hedgehog, who is new for this release and is unlocked after clearing the 8 main worlds (bananas are replaced with rings when playing as him), though he can't be used in the minigames.
• The biggest change compared to the Wii release (other than the addition of Sonic & the HD resolution), is the fact that it now controls with an analogue stick rather than motion controls (I haven't played the original, but from what I've heard this makes this the better playing version, although much easier than other entries because levels were designed with the looser motion controls in mind, though I personally still found it to be one of the toughest platformers I've played on Switch, and gave up about halfway through the second post game world). Other than that the two post game worlds now simply unlock consecutively after clearing the world before them (in the Wii version they were unlocked after the seemingly impossible task of clearing all the main worlds without using a continue), and it lacks 40 extra minigames the Wii version had (probably were designed around Wii waggle and couldn't be translated well or meaningfully without them).

Audio/Visual:

• It has many different world themes, from jungles, ghost ships, outer space, and more, and it's mix of a bright & colorful pallet, and catchy arcade style tunes, means that you can't get too upset with it, even if your on your 40th or 50th attempt to clear a level.
  
  
  
  Various shots of levels, I even included a Sonic shot.
• The theme song (I think BANANA~NA Love) is upbeat & irresistibly catchy (more than once I lingered on the title screen to give it a listen).
• Being a remaster of a Wii game, it's not a surprise to say I noticed no performance issues whatsoever. It's a great port.

Story:

• These sorts of games usually don't have much story, and that's the same here. It starts out with a pirate gorilla stealing a bundle of golden bananas, and while you take one back with each boss you defeat (with the aforementioned ape being the final one), there isn't any sort of theming tying them together, with few of them being monkeys/apes (half, if a yeti counts), and even less being pirates. It's really not an issue, though, though strong theming always makes these things better.

Conclusion:

• This was a pretty fun, albeit tough experience. It may be easier compared to the rest of the series (as many claim, though I can't confirm), but taken on it's own it can still be a stiff challenge, and one of the toughest I've had on Switch. And even though it has it's rough edges (such as the bosses), a bucketload of charm keeps it from feeling too irritating.
  
  The end to an exciting journey.

Expand

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)

The original Link's Awakening (Well, the DX version on the GBC) is one of my favorite handheld Zelda games, so how could I NOT play this gorgeous remaster? Everyone lately has been gushing about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and rightfully so from all the feedback, but I've been on an island adventure on Koholint instead. Such a mysterious place, all topped off by a massive egg stuck on Mt. Tamaranch....

Positives

• First thing's first: This game is absolutely beautiful. I was one who didn't like the clay figure-like art style in the original reveal trailer, but 1. it has definitely been cleaned up and 2. it has grown on me. All the character models, the environment, monsters, items, et al are so detailed and really pop out to the viewer. It's almost like playing with a vibrant diorama.
• The fully orchestrated music in this game is a treat to the ears and has improved on the already fantastic MIDI soundtrack in nearly every way. I didn't think it was possible to improve on the Ballad of the Wind Fish track, but I was wrong.
• The fully animated scene before reaching the title screen is fun to watch. I'll admit that I didn't skip past it very often. They improved on an iconic intro scene from the original game in literally every way. The end-game animation is fun and captures the essence of the original well, too.
• The QoL improvements to how inventory items in this game are handled are VERY welcome. For those who haven't played the original, the limited buttons on the Game Boy ensured that you were pausing the game almost constantly at times to switch items. They've also mapped some items (such as the sword and shield) to their own buttons automatically, so you don't have to bother putting them on the X/Y buttons at all.
• Many of the characters in the game are just as fun and whimsical as I remember. Marin and Tarin are my favorites, but other characters are pretty great too.
• Mabe Village has more to do in it this time around. There are reasons to keep revisiting the Trendy Game, the town shop, and the fishing hole, for example.
• I never thought I'd have a reason to enjoy the River Rapids mini-game, but it's a fun (and useful) pastime! They've definitely overhauled it this time around.
• Many of the dungeon designs are pretty decent, though they're carryovers from the original game. The later levels aren't anything to sneeze at and can take some time to work through.
• Hero Mode can be unlocked from the start. In many ways, this adds to the challenge; enemies do double damage, and hearts don't drop. You have to rely on fairies, heart piece pickups, and magic medicine.
• More heart containers are added in this game, upping the count from the original maximum of 14 to the normal 20 hearts found in more recent series entries.
• They kept in all of those wonderful cutscenes and moments with Marin. Those moments still feel special and look even better with a HD coat of paint.
• Totaka's Song can still be found here. 'Nuff said.
• Bow Wow has a new use: it can detect secret seashells. This becomes less useful once the seashell sensor is obtained, but it's a nice improvement nonetheless.

Neutral

• Both arranging and adventuring in Chamber Dungeons is simultaneously interesting and mundane for me. Arranging is fun for the first few tries, but past that I'd rather just storm through the dungeons. It's an interesting mechanic for those who want it as it's the closest thing that the Zelda series has to Super Mario Maker right now. I didn't dislike it per se, but it unfortunately has some items tied into it for 100% completion. I probably wouldn't have bothered with it as long as I have been otherwise. Some of the amiibo unlocks for it are fun to mess around with. I feel like there could have been more to this feature.
• That shopkeeper is an extortionist. I didn't steal from him, but with some of those prices...he's almost asking for it.

Negatives/Nitpicks

• The dungeon bosses (barring the final boss fight with Dethl, which is still somewhat challenging, especially since they removed the boomerang cheat) are pretty easy. I would find this passable on normal mode, especially for younger players or those who are new to the series, but this ease was present even in hero mode. I think that bosses in hero mode should be harder to take down. Part of this could admittedly be the advantage (or in this case, disadvantage) of knowing what to do for most of the bosses, however.
• There's a bit of frame rate slowdown sometimes, typically in areas with a lot of assets (like Mabe Village) or when transitioning from a cave or dungeon into the overworld. This wasn't more than a minor annoyance and did very little to kill my enjoyment of the game, but I did notice it on occasion.

Link's Awakening is a much-needed fresh coat of paint on one of the more classic Zelda titles. The adventure is still fun, whimsical, emotional, and unique. A few minor issues aside, this is a must-play for fans of the Zelda series and is easy to recommend for newcomers.