Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

@Bunkerneath It really is beautiful! Also do not forget Opposing Force!

@Zuljaras Forgot about that one, can but dream really, as I doubt that will ever happen.

Just finished Bayonetta 3 Storyline, that will do me, don't really get why people didn't understand the ending, pretty obvious to me.
Anyways, not a bad game really, I hardly used any upgrades and once I got the Spider/YoYo weapon that's all I really used
Going back to Lego Star Wars to do the original trilogy as I did the prequels a while ago then gave myself a break, then got distracted by other games coming out.

Untitled Goose Game
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Time to Completion: 1 - 2 hours

Here we are, the first game I've completed in 2023! I wanted to start out with something a bit light, and that I've been curious about, so I opted for Untitled Goose Game (UGG henceforth). Released in 2019, it quickly became one of those games that would get everyone repeating the same ridiculous jokes and phrases whenever it was mentioned, which quickly grew old for me. Now that the fad has faded, though, and one isn't suffered to wade through a small ocean of goose jokes and memes, the question becomes how the game has held up since its release, and especially for someone who isn't necessarily transfixed by the idea of playing as a goose.

While the marketing heavily emphasizes the chaotic or mischievous element of playing a game where a wild bird terrorizes people throughout a small town, UGG is actually a much more structured experience than one might expect. There's no plot or larger context to the events. The player is given a (vaguely sociopathic) checklist of goals to accomplish within each area, which ranges from the absurdly simple (drag a rake into a nearby pond) into more involved activities (one of the more interesting ones involves figuring out how to lure a shopkeeper out into the street so that you can record yourself on the store's security feed). UGG feels a bit like a Hitman game insofar as stealth is heavily required throughout the game, but also because the tasks you need to perform are structured like puzzles, and the bulk of the gameplay involves carefully manipulating factors in the world to achieve your goal.

This is all achieved, mind, via a limited number of player inputs. You can waddle around (slightly faster if you hold the B button), duck your head, honk, spread your wings (which seems to exist purely to play into the simulation aspect of the experience), and interact with objects via your beak. That's it. But there's a lot of things you can accomplish with a beak and an endless sense of malice, whether it's luring people into traps and then knocking pots onto their heads, tripping and terrifying children, or snatching random articles of clothing from peoples' bodies and tossing them in the creek.

Once you complete a set of tasks in an area, you'll gain access to the next area of the game. And... this is it. Unlike most modern video games. UGG's scope is very focused and limited. You won't be heading to waypoints or unlocking new skills for your goose to use. You repeat the same gameplay pattern four or five times, complete one final task that takes you back to the beginning of the game, and the credits roll. There's actually more to do afterward: completing a few post-game task lists will reward the player with a meaningless trinket for their trouble. There's nothing else to unlock or progress in, though. The entire game can be comfortably completed in a single afternoon.

It's a simple experience, then, and not a deeply fulfilling one. In a way, this feels more like the skeleton of a larger experience. Nevertheless, the game does what it does well: levels are designed to encourage stealth and player creativity; most of the puzzle solutions make sense once you realize the steps needed to achieve them, and hints can be gleaned from how the townsfolk react to various player actions; the world itself is fully interconnected once shortcuts are opened to connect the areas, like in a Souls game; and it's clear that plenty of love and attention was poured into the simulation aspect of controlling the goose, from how it adorably waddles around to the ways in which it reacts to environmental stimuli. Less attention, unfortunately, was paid to the townsfolk, whose walking animations frequently broke throughout the game. Nevertheless, if you're in the mood for a short, unique puzzle/stealth game, you could certainly do worse than Untitled Goose Game.

Ys Origin (Switch) - Technically I've finished this three times now since I've played all three routes. In the Switch version and most other versions, the player is required to beat the first two routes before the third canon route/character unlocks. While Darm Tower has the same layout each run, it's worth it to play through as all three characters; the characters' playstyles all greatly differ, and there are some different plot beats, changed dialogue, and shuffled around/different bosses help keep things fresh. The Napishtim engine gameplay is fun, fluid, and intuitive, though it can be a bit grind-y sometimes since levels DO matter. Falcom's music studio made some of their best in this game too.

It's often advised by long-time series fans to play this game either right before Ys I & II (since it's a prequel to the series) or right after (since it can spoil a few elements in I/II).

Ty the Tasmanian tiger on the switch.
The game itself is pretty good but it was a bit hard finding the critters (can’t remember their name) and some rangs were blatantly better then others and the lest said about getting the pictures the better.
I recently started playing the sequel and it was alot better besides a certain puzzle in the lava area.
Also it looks more like they just took the game from the GameCube and put it on the switch (though adding in the little wheel to quickly switch between rangs was a neat little addition to the first game and I didn’t know that you couldn’t keep the doomerang in the original game so at least they added in neat little features. Also I’m not saying that the game is bad just felt more like a port then a remaster)

And I have just finished Half-Life 2 Episode Two ... that ending ... damn too bad we will never see Half-Life 3

Dragon Quest Treasures and Cave Story+, both on switch and both excellent games IMO.

I finished Megamind : Ultimate Showdown PS3 just now.

I didn't expect it will be pretty short game.
I finished the game in total 4 - 5 hours.
Not bad for a game from franchise I didn't have interest before.
I gave the score 6 / 10 because the game was too short but I prefer shorter games than too long games for some reason.

@Fizza I still haven't finished Ristar yet, but I did make it a bit further last time I played. I first played it on Sonic Mega Collection - I used to have a lot of trouble with the fourth boss, but I beat it and the fifth boss recently on NSO+EP's Sega Genesis app. So I think I'm more than halfway there.

Also, random question, when you look at my Switch play activity, is the Genesis app called Mega Drive for you? Last I knew, it said Genesis when I looked at yours, presumably because I'm in the US. I wonder if it shows the European SNES icon for you on my play activity, as well.

@kkslider5552000 Yeah, the first Mega Man Zero is a bit rough around the edges. The sequels are much closer to traditional Mega Man games in terms of their gameplay structure, with them having level selects for example, and there aren't any big overworlds to explore like in the first MMZ. They wouldn't have those again until the ZX series.

I've been trying to clear out my backlogue due to Fire Emblem Engage releasing soon along with Persona 3.

So far I've just completed the Bayonetta trilogy and Astral Chain. I was blown away by Bayonetta and honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy myself as much as I did (mostly due to the fact that I'm not very talented at these types of games). Out of the trilogy, I have to say the second was my favorite as it hit the perfect flow for combat, level design, unlockables and just plain fun. The first was interesting but I found the environments and graphics to be a bit too drab and uninspiring to look at, the difficulty was brutal as hell too. I really couldn't stand that the player is penalized for using healing items. The third was a great game but the pacing is awful, and I found the enemy design to be a bit uninspired but I must credit it for having so many great moments, fun weapons and insane replay value as there's so much to unlock and revisit.

Astral Chain might actually be my favorite Switch game. It has everything from the soundtrack, character design, the world, the anime influence, the interesting story. It blew me away and I'm definitely going to put in a couple more replays. I truly hope Nintendo and Platinum team up together again to make a sequel as has been suspected.

INSIDE
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Time to Completion: 4 - 6 hours

The aesthetic and gameplay of developer Playdead's INSIDE will be immediately familiar to anyone who played their previous seventh gen indie hit Limbo, which this game acts as a sort of spiritual successor to. In both games, you play as young, unnamed male children traversing dark and creepy locales, although the discerning player will notice a progression in the style of horror that is drawn upon: Limbo was about a fear of the dark, of monsters, whereas INSIDE occupies itself with, if not more realistic, at least more distressingly humanistic fears. The monsters it traffics in are explicitly of the human variety; less Lovecraftian, and more Orwellian. It wouldn't do to spoil the exact nature of the game's emergent plot, but much of the experience draws on the inherent horror of structural dehumanization, and the fear of being controlled by others.

As with their previous game in this style, INSIDE is heavy on stylization; an ominous atmosphere is cloaked in film grain, long shadows, and bizarre imagery give it an aesthetic not unlike that of German expressionism. This goes a long way to lending a sense of personality to the game, which, as an ostensibly simplistic 2D puzzle-platformer with little in the way of music and virtually no dialogue, is already working with an extremely limited set of design elements. How effective all of this is, I imagine, is highly contingent on how immersed the player allows themselves to become in the world. One could presumably play this in the chipper height of a spring afternoon, but that would seem wholly uncharitable to the sort of experience the developer is attempting to share. For my part, as I've begun waking up increasingly early in recent months, I made this my go-to middle of the night game for a few evenings. Finding myself unable to descend back into a peaceful slumber, I'd curl up in my bed and play this with a pair of headphones plugged in, going from more organic nightmares to INSIDE's more artificially constructed one.

I nabbed this hoping it'd be a showcase for my Switch OLED, and while I'm not entirely sure that turned out to be the case, the screen's ability to showcase true blacks definitely helped the game to fully actualize its stark visual aesthetic. The game itself runs adequately on the hybrid system (the game's finer details are actually a touch soft looking, like it's running at a lower resolution, but the visual design of the game minimizes the impact of this), and is an equally good fit for handheld and TV play, although I stuck entirely to playing on the tablet.

INSIDE is, at heart, a puzzle game, where you have to interact with level elements in order to progress through various eerie environments. Your young protagonist is only really capable of pushing and pulling, but the game makes ingenious use of environmental physics and creative fictional tools to add layers of depth to the puzzles. It's not always immediately apparent what needs to be done in order to progress, since the game never actually provides tutorials or explanations for how to engage with new mechanics, which can be a difficult style of game design to properly realize, since you run the risk of confusing and alienating the player, but INSIDE does a good job of making it readily apparent which details in its stark environments can be interacted with, and stealthily introducing basic examples of new puzzle mechanics that'll go on to be explored in more depth as the game progresses.

If INSIDE has any major failing, as with Limbo, its in the unsatisfying narrative arc that the game adopts. Its art school commitment to suggestion and innuendo is neat, but it doesn't do enough with that to build up any sense of investment in the character or his situation. This failing is most keenly illustrated during the game's anti-climactic final hour, which gets increasingly weird, and then just sort of... stops. No explanation, no resolution. What's the sense in building up so many mysteries, only to do so little with them in the end? Even the character you play as remains a mystery in the end, with no real conclusion to whatever journey he was on. While I mostly enjoyed my time with INSIDE, and appreciated its expert approach to puzzle design, it did end up leaving me feeling a bit cold in the end. It's highly possible that was intentional, but that knowledge wouldn't improve my experience with the work at all. There is also a secret ending, but it's a pain in the butt to get, and it actually left me feeling more empty than I did during the default ending, since it amounted to little more than a cheap gimmick.

Ultimately, INSIDE is an interesting and expertly crafted little experience, but, unfortunately, not one that becomes more than the sum of its parts.

I just beat One Piece Unlimited World Red on switch, and as expected it was just a decent game, story wasn’t anything too special, the action got repetitive quick, but inoffensive as a whole. The fact that enemies constantly get knocked down into a state where no attacks will hit them until they get back up really made the action a slog to get through sometimes, and special moves would often feel rather weak and they’d miss far more often than I was comfortable with.

What’s funniest to me though is that the newly released one piece odyssey is pretty much the same plot that this game has, but with a new original character and an rpg system. Probably is a better game for it, with more cinematic grandeur and less fiddly fight mechanics.

DBZ Kakarot!

When this game came out I hada trouble starting it. I strongly disliked the controls and I couldnt get into it at all, but I am feeling a Dragon Ball Hype at the moment for some reason and I am playing through all of them again, so I chose to start with the newest one of them. After 38 hours, I am happy to say I beat the Main Game and Trunks DLC Story and just started the new Bardock DLC.

Kakarot itself is a good game, its the definition of a 7/10. Its biggest issue is, that its not telling the story of Kakarot. The game has so much content that you can drown yourself in it, but most of the things Kakarot experienced.... are missing. Then, I really dislike the encounters in the open world. I would love to explore the landscapes, but every 5 meteres of flying I am getting charged by 5 nameless enemies -.-

Other than that it is the most detailed retelling of the Story, watching the Anime feels obsolete, because... its exactly the same experience and it even goes so far that it tells you about alot of the fillers and back stories not included in the manga.

The Trunks DLC was fantastic. It felt like what Kakarot should have been. Best Arc in the Franchise and it got the best treatment it probably could have gotten. I am very happy to have experienced this. Happy to play Bardock's Story next and I really hope the next one is the 23rd World Tournament Arc like they teased in the Season Pass 2 Trailer, it would be a dream come true.

I am starting a podcast talking about video game franchises, and for my research I will replay most of the dragon ball games. I am waiting for Budokai HD Collection for my PS3 while others like the Tenkaichi Series on Wii and the Legacy games on GBA are my next ones to go through. I love Dragon Ball.

Resident Evil 3 Remake. Tbh, I actually liked it more than RE2R.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Time to Completion: 44 hours

DISCLAIMER: While I usually post screenshots of the games I discuss, I thought it would be better to post a few tracks from the game's gorgeous and deeply emotional soundtrack instead

I've been sitting on particular game for a while.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Echoes henceforth) released in 2017, months after the launch of the Switch. Nintendo apparently wanted to ease the transition process for 3DS owners with a few years of support, but the console immediately became the only game in town for Nintendo fans, who were eager to move on from this handheld. As a result, sales for this entry were pretty bad compared to multi-million sellers like Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates. Which is a shame, since this might just be one of the best first-party releases on Nintendo's charming little 3D handheld.

Echoes is a remake of a Nintendo Entertainment System release from 1992, called Fire Emblem Gaiden, which was actually the second entry in the series at that point. Following on from a tradition of experimental sequels at that time like Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Gaiden mixed up the more traditional SRPG gameplay of the original Fire Emblem with the inclusion of more traditional JRPG elements. Elements introduced in this entry included a world map that gradually unlocked as players advanced the game, town exploration, dungeon exploration, branching promotion trees for units, the removal of durability limitations for weapons and spells, and the beginnings of a support system that would be expanded on dramatically in later games. While almost all of this would subsequently be stripped out of the series with the next entry, various aspects of Gaiden have resurfaced in various entries over time, and while long considered the black sheep of the franchise for how different it was, Gaiden's innovations have made the game seem increasingly ahead of its time in recent years.

Echoes is the chronicle of a war that engulfs the antagonistic nations of Rigel and Zofia on the continent of Valentia, and how the game's two protagonists, Alm and Celica, who fell in love as children, only to be separated by forces beyond their control, independently decide to participate in the struggle. The two nations' antagonism stems from a long-standing ideological conflict between the gods Duma and Mila, who helped to mold the two civilizations to reflect their respective beliefs. Alm, alongside a cohort of childhood friends, leaves the simple peasant village he was raised in as he seeks to push back an invasion by the Rigelian Empire, while Celica embarks on a pilgrimage to the Temple of Mila in an effort to help stop the war. Alm and Celica's lives will soon become entangled again in ways the two never expected. In terms of how the game progresses, this is reinforced by the fact that both characters, who have their own independent armies that you'll jump back-and-forth between, frequently affect one-another in interesting ways, creating a larger core campaign as you follow their respective stories.

As far as remakes go, Echoes is on the more faithful side, maintaining the general structure, mechanics, and map design of the NES original. This last part actually serves as a detriment, as Gaiden's map design was... pretty much non-existent, and the same remains true here. Granted, there's a reason for this: most of the battles in this game are roadside or dungeon skirmishes, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be complex geological formations in caves and fields. Nevertheless, it serves to make the tactical aspect of Echoes less engaging than it would otherwise have been.

Echoes does actually add a number of new elements to the game, though: including a few new characters (such as a new villain named Berkut, the heir presumptive to the Regelian throne), support conversations and improved dialogue for existing characters, and, staying true to the spirit of Gaiden's experimental nature, a new time-rewinding mechanic known as Mila's Turnwheel, which allows players to re-do botched turns that lead to the death of a character. If this last mechanic sounds familiar, it's because it was adopted wholesale in newer series entries such as Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Engage, which actually literally just released today. Players will find cogs throughout the world that give the turnwheel more 'charges,' allowing them more freedom to rewind and try out different strategies.

It's also worth mentioning that while Echoes maintains Gaiden's innovations, it does so in a unique fashion. For example, town exploration is now rendered in a point-and-click adventure game format, while dungeon exploration has been revamped in such a way that you're actually able to maneuver a 3D model of your character around dungeons in real time in order to solve puzzles, destroy environments, and ambush enemies. I believe this was also the first game in the series to give the player full 3D control of the player character, prior to Three Houses. Like Gaiden, Echoes is also a game of several 'first's.

While Echoes doesn't shine with regard to its maps, it does do almost everything else extremely well. The RPG-like format where you progress across a world map and complete side-quests is still compelling. The orchestrated score, while mostly faithful to the original NES chiptunes, still impresses today, showing off the strength of the NES-era compositions. The game's art-style is lovely as well: developer Intelligent Systems hired popular Japanese light novel illustrator Hidari to bring the game's characters to life, and his illustrations bring a distinctiveness and warmth to the cast. Major plot points are also accompanied by gorgeous full-screen artworks, often accentuated with subtle 3D effects. These choices help to keep the game aesthetic pleasing, despite the inherent limitations of the platform it's on.

The real star of the show with Echoes is the cast and narrative, however. Admittedly, these elements are comparatively simple when put up against more convoluted recent mainline entries in the series, but Echoes does more with less, crafting a tragic, moving, and almost fairytale-like experience from the basic components of the plot. Effective brevity is also used to flesh out the cast: support conversations in this game are incredibly short compared to the rambling dialogues found in a game like Three Houses, but they always cut to the core of who the character is. Moreso than most games in the series, Echoes' cast is grounded and likeable, and over the course of the war, we'll learn their fears, watch them grapple with feelings of grief and loss, and, oftentimes, observe the buds of both friendship and love blossom. This is particularly true of protagonists Alm and Celica: while the romance between them isn't rubbed in the player's face, their love for and desire to help one-another is persistently in the background of their respective stories, and this all becomes especially difficult as their feelings and duties begin to collide, creating conflict and uncertainty between them.

Just as an ending note, I wanted to mention that I miss when JRPG campaigns weren't quite as bloated as they are today. Fire Emblem Echoes sits at a breezy 30+ hours for players who just want to experience the story, and goes up into the 40s if you complete most of the side-quests, grind for special loot, and tackle the game's post-game gauntlet of a dungeon. Another (arguably) nice aspect of the game is that it doesn't require you to replay it to see everything. Some people won't like this, since it means there's less incentive to return over time, but for those of us who tend to be 'one and done' gamers, it's great knowing I was able to experience the best parts of the game on my first run.

Like many other Nintendo fans at the time, I didn't play this when it first released, which is a decision I now somewhat regret, as it has quickly become one of my favorite entries in the series. Fire Emblem Echoes updates the original in almost all of the right ways, emphasizing its strengths and downplaying most of its weaknesses. Like the other best entries in this series, Echoes maintains a serious but measured tone throughout, making room for levity even as tragedy looms in the background of the story. This really made for a memorable experience, and, in retrospect, I have to say it's YET ANOTHER notch to add to 2017's belt, which was filled to overflowing with amazing games.

I just beat Miles Edgeworth: Investigations on my DS Lite. While I wouldn't say the game is bad, I would say it has a ton of issues holding it back from being truly great. The story and writing, arguably the two most important parts of any Ace Attorney game, are severely lacking here. Every returning character practically feels like a shell of who they were in the previous games, and it really shows that Shu Takumi had no involvement in this one. Overall, I thought the story was pretty boring, and even toward the end when all the twists and turns came crashing down, I found myself uninterested.

The fact that I finished the game at least says something, though. I liked the ability to fully move around the crime scene, I thought logic mode was a cool new mechanic that maybe needed a bit of work, and I thought the artwork was fantastic. The majority of the music felt a bit too generic for me, save for a few tracks. Although, Lying Coldy is an absolute banger.

5/10

I beat Gotham knights about a week ago. I still don’t get why people do not really like the game. I’m about halfway through paper Mario. Hopefully I can beat super paper Mario soon. It’s my favorite paper Mario game yet I have never actually beat it.

I wrapped up Paper Mario: The Origami King a couple days ago. A fairly decent game all told, with a serviceable plot, some amazing and entertaining writing, and some very memorable characters. Olivia's child-like innocence is definitely endearing, and she's part of many of the game's best moments. A beautiful environment with plenty of variety, and exploration is rewarded via hard-to-find items and holes in the world to fill with confetti for those obsessed with doing so (like me). There are plenty of Toads to rescue too, and how to do so lends to some interesting puzzles.

Perhaps the biggest letdown for me was - drum roll - the combat. This game had so many great elements going for it, but bog standard combat was a huge letdown with the wheel system. It was either too easy or difficult enough to finish within the time limit (if the enemies weren't already jumbled up in an uneven hodgepodge). You can't dodge, only block. The battle system shines a LOT more in boss battles when the mechanics are turned on their head by putting the boss in the center, but a couple of these fights were also quite gimmicky and annoying (The Fire Vellumental was particularly frustrating....). Any weapons outside of Mario's standard boots and hammer will also break after a limited amount of uses, so I'd avoid combat in later parts of the game just to conserve some of the best stuff. Some of these issues are alleviated with accessories, and I appreciate Nintendo/IS trying something different. But in the grand scheme of things, I feel that they should've further fine-tuned combat in this game. That said, it beats out Color Splash's combat system, which was my biggest issue there too in an otherwise fairly decent game.

This is recommended to those who like Mario, don't come in expecting standard RPG fare, and can deal with some of its quirks. Outside of not caring for the combat system a lot of the time, I really did like this game.

Arietta of Spirits

It takes a lot of inspiration from Zelda. Top-down action adventure. But where Zelda is a bit more of an open world, with a bit of exploration, AoS is much more of a linear experience. It only took three hours to play through. But the music is quite nice and the boss fights are mechanically good fun.

7/10 - Nothing award-worthy, but considering the size of development team, a well made game.

Mario and Luigi: Dream Team

While BIS is still my favorite game in the series, this is a close second. While the tutorial’s, (specifically at the beginning) can be annoying, everything else is amazing.