Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Paper Mario the thousand year door, Switch version.

Finally beat Shadow of the Erdtree! It was a phenomenal DLC packed with more content than some standalone whole games!

Loved every part of it just like the main game!

@Zuljaras Well done! I finished a few days ago, found it very challenging in parts - but overall a great experience... another feather in FromSoft's cap.

I must admit though I needed to summon in support from other players for the final boss..... just unbelievably difficult for me, even at +18 Scadutree level

@CJD87 Actually he was so easy with Bloody Helice + Fingerprint Stone Shield at 80 Arcane. I had to respec before him to avoid headache and at +18 fragments and +8 Spirit Ash Mimic I destroyed him with bleed

It was satisfying!

For the DLC I started to play with shields btw! I never knew that guard counter was such a fun playstyle, especially with The Hand of Malenia

@Zuljaras Good job! I would have initially gone the re-spec route, but had just run out of larvel tears and couldn't be bothered to find/farm anymore... so summoning seemed like a quicker option!

Well played mate

Sifu (Switch). This game was on the backlog list for the longest time. So grateful to finally get through it. It took a lot of effort but I finally got the true ending by sparing all the bosses. Love the game so much I can see myself doing runs over and over again because it's so addicting. Not a fan though of the 'Arenas'. Tried them out but all the modifiers, etc. just turned me off. Kinda disappointing but I can still just play through the campaigns to keep it fun.

Now I believe I'm moving onto Zelda Skyward Sword. I'm no Zelda guy (only really played and beat OoT 3DS) so I'm curious to see if this one will grab me. Most I've heard is it's a great game if you're not a Zelda person but just looking for a fun adventure. Which I am

@Ganner enjoy Skyward Sword. Didn’t gravitate towards it much. The characters were cool but I don’t want another motion controlled Zelda in my lifetime if it’s within my power. Hope you like it though.

Just finished Metroid Fusion Re-mastered, found the Elite Pirate was harder than the final boss. Only 88% complete on Normal mode, that will do for me.
Hoping they remaster the other two before 4 comes out as I quite enjoyed it (never played it before)

Now to go through my backlog, might give CaveBlazers https://www.nintendolife.com/games/switch-eshop/caveblazers a go

Kirby's Dream Land 3 on Switch/NSO. This is a serviceable Kirby game. The visuals are great for their time, the animal companions and ability combos they can be combined with make for some fun experimentation, and a few of the heart stars are challenging to get for the true boss/ending. And yes, Zero is definitely out of place in the Kirby series, but really well done too. Even with these positives, other Kirby titles have done better. Normally this is true of newer entries, but I think the earlier Kirby Super Star trumps this one. Definitely worth a play, but not for a first Kirby game.

@Tyranexx Nice work on finishing Kirby's Dream Land 3. I did beat the game back when I was a kid, but I didn't get all the heart stars. Later on I've tried going for all of them... but I remember some of the heart stars being a pain to get. It's a game I'd like to fully complete sometime. Love the pastel art style and I even love the music.

@MarioVillager92 Thanks! Due to past experiences with previous Kirby titles, I did use a guide for the heart stars to save time. Some are very straightforward, but a few are intricate. Probably my favorite of these was Samus from the Metroid franchise rewarding one.

The pastel art style didn't sit too well with me at first, but it got a lot better and more varied after the first world. As usual, the music is a treat.

Yosh...!
I finished Tail Concerto PS1 just now.
Despite I played the Japanese version, I still able to follow the game.
It was pretty short game, I accumulated around 7 hours gameplay to finish the storyline.
Too bad, the game design is very linear.
Some of the places were not revisitable after finished the game.
I have ever played Tail Concerto before when I was teenager so I could replay again the same game when I got the original copy.

Picked up the Apollo Justice Trilogy after enjoying the originals, so I of course started out with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.
I was really prepared to hate it, because I knew the fact that it was a reboot going in, and I felt like they were leaving too many stories on the table as it was, buy I honestly really enjoyed it.
The overarching story is something that genuinely gave me some thought, and I didn’t mind at all what they did with Phoenix. I was preparing for a Last Jedi-style character assassination, and ended up getting one of the better examples of how to do a reboot.
Some negatives:
The witnesses/culprits are some of the weaker ones in the franchise. The second and third cases in particular were just too long, with seemingly every witness getting and hour and a half of game time, with very few people being interesting enough to carry that time.
The investigation tools are mostly a great addition, but it’s used in all the worst ways in Turnabout Serenade.
My biggest criticism of the game, however, is the general lack of accomplishment you feel at the end of it. The game never really takes the time to establish Apollo as a character, and that really takes me out of some really surprising moments, because I don’t care as much as I should. Additionally, Apollo never really gets a chance to achieve anything substantial in this game, so all the great things they do with Phoenix don’t amount to but so much.
Despite all of those issues, I still really enjoy it.
Trucy, Klavier, and Ema are all entertaining enough on their own to stand toe-to-toe with their original counterparts while still feeling like new characters, and even with the somewhat flat ending, the last case still is expansive enough to make it compare favorably to the previous two games’ endings. And the music is great, too, but that’s pretty much a given.

Sonic Origins is all done! Every game has been completed by yours truly, including all the special stages. I've played in the anniversary mode. I liked playing through Sonic's original adventures, especially Sonic 3 & Knuckles, that game is still as fantastic as ever... even though the "new" music for a few of the zones weren't super great. (I already miss Ice Cap Zone's music from the Genesis/Mega Drive version.) I have a soft spot for Sonic CD as well. Sonic 2 was also an old favorite of mine.

Those in-game coins really came in handy... some of those special stages were a pain to finish. Particularly Sonic 1's rotating mazes, and the instances of Tails running into bombs in Sonic 2's half-pipes. Sega may have made some... weird decisions with Sonic Origins, but I did like that coin feature. I thought it was a decent set of remasters overall, too. It kind of got me into a Sonic mood, and it's been a long time since I played Sonic Superstars, so I'll be playing that next. I'm almost done with that game, actually. I also did play a few of Origins' challenges, but those didn't hold me over for too long.

@Tyranexx Anytime. Ah gotcha... I can't blame you for using a guide, since some of those heart stars can be a bit ridiculous. I remember that Samus one, that was a cool little cameo that they threw in. Yeah... one great music track after another. The beach theme is one of my favorites in the game.

Just finished Sonic Superstars today. Hmm... not sure how I feel about this game. The controls are actually pretty good, the art style is really nice to look at, and I do like a lot of the game's ideas. Though... it can drag on at times. Some of the music is decent, but not too memorable, and those Genesis-styled music tracks don't sound very good. They clash with the other songs in the game, too.

The Switch version has some pretty bad loading times too, especially when booting it up from the home menu. But the game does run smoothly most of the time when you're playing.

(Spoilers for the end of the game.)

Sonic The Hedgehog CD in Sonic Origins. Now , I have to beat it, and get the good outcome. Before that, Star Wars: KOTOR for the umpteenth time. Before that (months ago), Super Mario Wonder, though in the past few days I picked up from where I took a break trying to find all the stages, being pleasantly surprised I only missed 2 stages.

I finally beat Titanfall 2. I think its confirmation that this type of FPS is just not something I'm especially into. I did enjoy the game, at times quite a bit, and I appreciate how interesting and varied it is, but the linear military shooter feels like it just inherently undermines how good it could be. Everyone is all serious and boring, even when they try to do their best to bring some personality to it, and the parts of the game that still feel COD-like make the game less fun than all its great ideas should be. Also its a reminder that COD is probably right along with Assassin's Creed as a game series I'm probably never going back to. On top of that, the ending turns the game into a sort of Apex Legends advertisement, which considering how it did so well its effectively killed a 3rd game coming out, was just a sad, awkward way to end things.

THAT BEING SAID, there was a lot to this game that was quite fun. The character interaction between the main duo and to some extent the villains do still add some charm to the game, if not as much as many other stories could pull off. Both the parkour and mecha parts of the gameplay are fun, and varied and just really cool and interesting. It's an FPS with good bosses, so it probably deserves a gold star for that alone. But my favorite part was this one level with a certain time travel mechanic, and I'd play a whole game based on it. It allowed for such cool puzzles and unique ideas in combat even compared to everything else that I'd genuinely would love to see someone expand that one level with more and more ideas and make a new game out of it. I felt the same way about the last overhyped linear military shooter I played, Resistance, which had a gun that shot through walls that also added a ton of fun just on its own and I'd love to see focused on for a whole game.

So I'm not sure how to feel about the game. I liked it, I'm not sure I loved it, despite any cool, fun ideas it had. It just makes me think classic Halo is the closest to this type of linear FPS I'll ever fully get into, especially since Titanfall has been the go to example of this type of FPS done well since its release, so I can assume there's not a lot coming out that's gonna do the same but as good or better.

Dark Souls Remastered is beaten again This is my second time beating the game. It still feels good!

Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy - Deluxe Edition (Switch) - I'm glad I didn't pay attention to common internet consensus regarding this game and gave it a shot. Sure, it doesn't quite hold a candle to most of the main six Layton titles, but it's still an enjoyable game. Kat, Sherl, and Ernest have a great group dynamic, and some (though not all) of the writing is decent. The game is very much slice of life and is presented on a case-by-case basis, with almost no overarching plot. That said, a plot device introduced earlier is never really solved or revisited. For the most part, there isn't much of a sense of danger, but I actually liked the change of pace. Without Akira Tago, the puzzles...are a mixed bag. Some are great, some not so much. There are some trick questions, some of whose solutions make little to no sense. In terms of visuals and music, I think this entry is on par with other series titles.

Definitely worth a look if one likes puzzle games, doesn't mind a more leisurely game, and if they need something to tide them over until New World of Steam eventually releases.

Finished my second playthrough of Conker’s Bad Fur Day earlier.

I had already played this back in September to October of last year, and I hadn’t really done a second playthrough of the game and only really played it in short sessions, but a game club I’m apart of on Pure Xbox chose this game as their game for August, which gave me the motivation to fully play it again. Now that I’ve replayed it again, I think my opinions have sort of changed on some aspects of the game.

I still absolutely love the colorful and vibrant cartoony Disney art style, the characters still were very charming, and the writing was crass and stupid but in a good way that’ll probably make you laugh. The movie parodies the game does are a good mix of goofy and cool, and it absolutely enhances the memorability of it for me. 90s-00s Rare was able to put in so much charm into almost every single game they made, and it just makes me so happy. Plus, I do relate with the theme the game teaches right at the end with materialism and realizing that some things that seem appealing might not be worth it or great stuck with me a lot, given I do have a lot of issues relating to those things.

Regarding the technical aspects, I love the voice acting and find it so well done, given that only three people did all of the voicing and they had so much range. The music was amazing, and the composer did a splendid job with doing different song genres and achieving different moods and feelings with them. The cartoony facial animations were super great, and it added a lot of charm with the characters, especially Conker, who is the most expressive out of all the characters.

The game however, is so hit or miss with the gameplay. I didn’t realize how much of a mixed bag it is, and I’m now seeing how poorly designed the game can get. It’s not the worst, there are probably other games like this that do this worser, but comparing the gameplay to Rare’s other platformer games like Banjo-Kazooie, Conker’s gameplay is more inferior but also more frustrating. The gameplay is more simplified and context sensitive (meaning that the actions and items the player uses shifts depending on the situation at hand), which does make the game easier and is something a lot of games do not do, and I could tell that the developers had a lot of creative and fun ideas for the gameplay. But, some other aspects of the gameplay, like the parts with projectiles and gunplay, can either be good or terrible, as some parts lack aiming reticles but then other parts do have aiming reticles, and the camera does refuse to move at times and it’s pretty hard to see sometimes.

A few of the levels aren’t done well either. A majority of them were great and passable, but there was at least two that I think weren’t done the best; there was a prehistoric level called Uga Buga that is crammed with poor objectives that are either slow or upsetting, and I think that one has only one good part, and another level called Spooky suffers from being a bit too big and repetitive, and you have to go back and forth inside of a huge haunted mansion, especially during this part where you have to grab three keys around the mansion and keep going back at a door and then leaving. There was a third one, called Its War, which wasn’t badly designed and it’s maybe my favorite from how cool it is, but it’s super hard and full of a ton of lasers that you need to avoid in order to retain a good amount of health for some of the harder parts, plus you need to be very fast and alert when enemies show up.

It’s still one of my favorite games of all time, really good writing, humor and characters in my opinion, but it has gameplay that is such a mixed bag and it sometimes feels like the gameplay was thought of afterward. Banjo does both characters and gameplay well, while I think Conker only does the character aspect well and sort of messes up a bit with the gameplay at times. Still a favorite of mine, but its not a masterpiece…