Finished Any Games Lately?

Jonman wrote:
Budo wrote:

Meh, I was close to getting a new one anyway. The annoying part is the cash I have to drop for data recovery on the hard drive.

You're really selling that $50 I give to Backblaze annually.

Wait, what? Why is mine $70? Is it because I back up an external hard drive to Backblaze instead of my internal SSD?

(Backblaze is great, btw. Everyone should have it. It's dirt cheap and wonderful.)

Vrikk wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Budo wrote:

Meh, I was close to getting a new one anyway. The annoying part is the cash I have to drop for data recovery on the hard drive.

You're really selling that $50 I give to Backblaze annually.

Wait, what? Why is mine $70? Is it because I back up an external hard drive to Backblaze instead of my internal SSD?

(Backblaze is great, btw. Everyone should have it. It's dirt cheap and wonderful.)

Data backup thread

Vrikk wrote:
Jonman wrote:

You're really selling that $50 I give to Backblaze annually.

Wait, what? Why is mine $70? Is it because I back up an external hard drive to Backblaze instead of my internal SSD?

Probably because i have no idea of the precise price i pay them annually?

Here's an odd question: I wanted to tackle a few classic old games, and I thought I'd play what I could on GOG since they used to have mods and informal patches you could apply. Clearly all of that is gone and maybe has for a while. So if I wanted to play the original Fallout, I guess I could play it on Steam or GOG since the platform doesn't make a difference?

Does this count?

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/dMbluUI.png)

Natus wrote:

Here's an odd question: I wanted to tackle a few classic old games, and I thought I'd play what I could on GOG since they used to have mods and informal patches you could apply. Clearly all of that is gone and maybe has for a while. So if I wanted to play the original Fallout, I guess I could play it on Steam or GOG since the platform doesn't make a difference?

You may have better luck asking here.

I finished Horizon: Forbidden West the other week, at a total play time of 72 hours. I was going into this one with high hopes that Guerilla could build upon the foundations of Zero Dawn & really make this a must play, game of the year caliber title. Get ready for a long post.

Firstly, I did enjoy the main story quite a bit, the tribe stuff apart. I find that the main story set around GAIA, the machines, what's happening with the rot spreading around the land etc is pretty damn compelling at times.

All the politics with the tribes - the tenakth, oseram, utaru etc I find mostly boring. There are some great mainline quests that are connected in with a couple of them but on the whole it's something I'd be happy if they left out of the game completely. Its like the Abstergo Industries stuff in Assassin's Creed games, it just falls flat.

Onto the gameplay improvements over Zero Dawn. The climbable terrain has hugely increased, in that there's much more choice of what you climb, different routes up mountain faces etc. It does feel better to navigate the world in that sense.

You can can use your focus Death Stranding style which highlights all the climbable routes (signified by yellow lines) but there are still enough rock faces that are conspicuously absent of these climbing routes that look no different from the tons of other ones you've seen around the environment. There are still times when you get stuck on a ledge even though there's climbable spots just above you or to the side. On the whole though it's a step in the right direction.

Swimming underwater was very well animated & felt good in general. There was a very cool section in Las Vegas that was the high point of the underwater sections. The accompanying story was also one of the more enjoyable of the game.

The biggest jump Guerilla have made is in the facial animations & the general movement of characters when engaged in conversation. Characters are way more life-like & dynamic either in cut scenes or even just talking to a character that sends you on a side quest. This makes the wooden character expressions from ZD look like they were from the PS3 era. I'd say this definitely helps engagement of what's happening onscreen, giving characters more personality.

I still think the moment to moment dialogue doesn't grab you in the way it should. There are rarely any insightful pieces of information (outside of the main story) or interesting deep dives into a characters backstory, I don't think I laughed at any funny quips or attempts at comedy within the conversations either.

I think they underuse Sylen's & the main antagonists of the game

Spoiler:

the Zenith's

Sylen's just doesn't get enough screen time & he's one of the most interesting characters in that world. The initial encounter with the

Spoiler:

Zenith's, with their futuristic suits, their shields & how they can fly is a superb moment

has things set up beautifully but they aren't explored anywhere near as much as they should have been, IMO anyways.

Aloy is probably a bit more likeable in FW than ZD but she's still someone I'm not enamoured with as a character. She didn't bring any emotions out of me in situations that were intended to do just that. Most character performances are well done though, even if they rarely veer from that comfortable middle ground between no emotion & high stakes drama. In situations were a person dies, there's a looming threat, someone is seriously injured etc you rarely feel that danger, excitement or sense of loss in their spoken words.

Gameplay wise I still dislike the rolling & jumping, it feels loose & lacks the tightness of countless other open world or action games. This is amplified by playing Elden Ring earlier this year.

Onto the combat, the melee is as weak as ever, one dimensional & unsatisfying. The valor surges do very little to change that. This makes encampments vs human enemies a slog.

The ranged combat still feels fantastic although I did feel like I got stuck in a rut of just constantly using concentration mode to slow down time to take shots at specific parts of the machines. I wish they'd created more gameplay reasons to stay in real time, rather than constantly having use of the slow motion. Still the reaction of the machines big & small is so dynamic that it feels thrilling to hit them with the various types of arrow at your disposal.

The dismantling of machines is as gratifying as the original, taking off chunks of armour to reveal weak spots, waiting for an enemy to go up onto its back legs so that you can finally get the fragile area on its belly exposed. Firing off arrows into these weak spots, taking off antlers, hitting fire or frost bellowbacks in the yellow sacks to see the respective elemental explosion is a sight to behold. Another enemy that has an exploding acid canister, that once I hit it with a couple of arrows rained acid all around onto other enemies, was my first wow moment of the game.

I don't think I used the rope caster more than twice the whole game, there's a lot of the other weapons that fell by the wayside that I probably should have give a fair go but didn't really feel the need to. I almost wish there was specific enemies that required certain tools/weapons to defeat & that I didn't just go with the same tactics 90% of the time.

The skill tree wasn't that interesting, I felt it was very run of the mill & I tried putting lots of points into the melee tree which didn't make the combat any more enjoyable. I eventually had everything nearly maxed out & was powerful enough to dispatch most normal & even some elite ones in quick enough fashion.

I dabbled in traps which are fun in certain scenarios when the environment allows for the right amount of patches of tall grass to hide in. They can be devastating & a worthwhile investment in upgrading.

The environments in Forbidden West are beautiful but the bonfires are so frequent & the map filled with so many icons that exploration feels stunted. I was expecting to be able to go way off course, find cool little spots, characters living alone in the wild, mountains that had almost a puzzle like element to get to the top of them. There are a few really great landmarks but on the whole I felt the open world was a bit of a letdown.

The unclimbable terrain, the shieldwing (the tool that lets you glide through the air) descends far too quickly. I never felt that there were any locations that I could jump off a tower, mountain, sky village etc that looked unreachable before but could be reached through gliding over from a higher spot.

There also didn't seem like much downtime between enemies. Your never far off running into the various machines that populate the world. If there were more areas were you could appreciate the environment by just walking through the space without having to engage in combat, I'd love that.

The puzzle buildings were a nice change of pace. They did focus too much on pushing boxes about to grab onto a higher ledge, to get where you ultimately needed to go but still they were something different.

The grapple hook was useful but the last part of the animation takes too long that it feels a bit slower than I was expecting. This is amplified by many grappling points being in some sections that also have a climbable route, were your actually thinking I could have climbed that almost as quick as using the grapple hook.

There are also far too much weapons, armour & loot (machine parts, valuables, dyes) in general. To the point that it's desensitizing you from feeling any type of excitement or engagement from trying out your new shiny gear or equipment. This sentiment also rings true for buying weapons from vendors. You run into so many merchant's in the world who are selling slightly different bows than the truckload I already have in my inventory that the act of getting new stuff losses its lustre.

What I thought probably hurt FW too was that the freshness or newness wasn't there because I'd played Zero Dawn. The enemies are very similar bar a couple of exceptions. Fighting machines for the first time in ZD was an experience, in FW it was 'ah cool this feels a little more refined'.

In finishing I thought Forbidden West was a good sequel & better game overall than Zero Dawn but it feels bloated & turns into a bit of slog if you do lots of the side content. It lacks that magic feeling that the best games of the genre have. I'd probably put this up there as one of my biggest disappointments of the last couple of years. Still it's worth giving FW a shot if you like open world action rpg's with a good mainline story.

Made a big post on reddit about Live a Live and I can't believe I forgot to post it here too!

Absolutely love this game.

However, I was unsure for the first 10-or-so hours. I enjoy the feeling of growth and strategy involved in developing a JRPG party. With the short chapters, Live A Live wasn't giving me time to experience either of those things. However, this lets the game experiment with so many fun ideas that wouldn't be viable in a 30+ hour game. Releasing at a time when JRPGs were really hitting their stride, along with myriad other massive developments in the gaming scene, Live A Live pulls on a lot of familiar tropes and dances around what could be if the genre pushed itself outside of the confines of a typical JRPG.

There are some shockingly good ideas in this game, and the short chapters let the designers go all-out with their unique approach JRPG mechanics. These chapters can be a little inconsistent in terms of "fun", but they each present something worth experiencing. In fact, I think that summarises how I mostly felt throughout the last 20 hours with this game. While not always the most fun I've had playing a JRPG, it was an enriching, interesting, and worthwhile experience. Even if a particular chapter bored me a little, it was over within 2-3 hours, and I could start fresh on a new one. This kept me coming back day after day. There's something to be said about a game with a lot of micro goals like this!

Very minor structure spoilers: I will not spoil any story, dialogue etc. I'm simply talking about how the chapters in the late game are structured after you beat 7 of them. I'm just being particularly careful because my spoiler threshold may differ from others here.

After finishing the 7 initial chapters, 2 final chapters are revealed. The first of which is structured much closer to a typical JRPG. It is about 3-4 hours in length and has a more standard fantasy/medieval setting. In many ways, I felt it was mimicking Dragon Quest, and I started to really enjoy myself! The battle system started to really come together and the difficulty ramped up nicely. I had to spend some time leveling up and managing equipment, which wasn't really needed in prior chapters. The game really "clicked" for me here.!

Spoiler:

Following this chapter, the true final chapter is revealed where you get to recruit/play with the entire roster. It is so amazingly satisfying to see them all come together, and to have control over who you bring into the final fight. Discovering each character, delving into their unique dungeons and putting all of their different abilities together is such an incredible experience. I've settled on a fun team that has a mix of positional abilities, AOEs, and solid range that use every aspect of the tactical battle system. It's just an amazing finale to an already great game.

...Which leads me to question why I haven't seen this battle system implemented in more JRPGs. I can't quite think of any right now that have the mix of active battle system (i.e Final Fantasy ATB) and light grid-based tactical movement. It's a pleasant mix that allows for a good level of strategy without being overwhelming when it comes to random/frequent battles.

Highly suggest you pick up this game if you're at all interested in JRPGs. While the chapter-to-chapter gameplay may feel uneven, it's all so worth experiencing if you are interested in cool game design and JRPG history. Honestly, I kept forgetting this is a 20+ year old game, it feels that fresh!

Finished Stray earlier today. I loved it, and it's currently my GOTY. I liked the exploration and the puzzle solving, the action sequences were pretty good, the environments and the story they tell were great and impressive, the music matched the game perfectly, and the cat was adorable.

My favorite feature: the controller gently shakes and makes a purring sound when the cat sleeps.

I think my only problem with the game is that the cat's appearance is not customizable.

I missed a bunch of collectibles. I will go back and try to get the platinum trophy (although I am worried about having to beat the game in under 2 hours, this will require plenty of planning).

Even my cat Socrates seemed to like it:
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/LhtV1Em.jpg)

Adorable photo

Our cats enjoyed watching us play, too. Funnily enough, it was our ginger (Eli) who loved it the most.

Love the write-up Spikeout. Sounds good but not great, which is why I've still been waiting to get it. Someday...

At last, I have something to report.

I finished Disco Elysium this weekend.

Overall, it was... fine. I felt that more time had been spent on background and lore, than on the story that I experienced as a player. The final element of the central murder mystery in particular felt very thin, and came and went very quickly.

Spoiler:

It was some old soldier, on a previously unseen island, who did it... because he was jealous... or something.

Given the nature of the game, it may be that there was more content that I didn't get to see. But I can't imagine that there is enough there for me to want to playthrough the entire game again, making different dialogue choices.

Stele wrote:

Love the write-up Spikeout. Sounds good but not great, which is why I've still been waiting to get it. Someday...

Thanks Stele, I put high expectations on FW, this felt like their time to really blow me away after a very good first effort. I think there's still a lot of systems that need work + the game needs to be leaner imo.

Did you play the original? When you eventually get around to FW it will be interesting to hear your perspective on it. Yep good but not great is sort of were I fall on it.

Vrikk wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Budo wrote:

Meh, I was close to getting a new one anyway. The annoying part is the cash I have to drop for data recovery on the hard drive.

You're really selling that $50 I give to Backblaze annually.

Wait, what? Why is mine $70? Is it because I back up an external hard drive to Backblaze instead of my internal SSD?

(Backblaze is great, btw. Everyone should have it. It's dirt cheap and wonderful.)

Update (because I'm sure everyone was waiting): Microsoft OneDrive had all my files already, so whew! My new laptop arrives today, and I was able to repair the old one. So...woohoo I guess?

23 years later - almost - I have finally finished Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn for the cRPG gaming club.

I enjoyed it. Mostly. It shows it's age a little though, and despite the genuinely great characters and NPCs there are some very dated design mechanics left in (you spend a lot of time just walking around from point A to point B, repeatedly, and lets not talk about how some spells are so much more important than others and yet not that easy to acquire or cast in sufficient numbers) and the pacing is all over the place.

Greatest RPG ever? I'm no longer so sure. I've certainly played other RPGs over the years I've enjoyed more - Dragon Age: Origins, Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity - I'm not sure they are better games though.

Spikeout wrote:
Stele wrote:

Love the write-up Spikeout. Sounds good but not great, which is why I've still been waiting to get it. Someday...

Thanks Stele, I put high expectations on FW, this felt like their time to really blow me away after a very good first effort. I think there's still a lot of systems that need work + the game needs to be leaner imo.

Did you play the original? When you eventually get around to FW it will be interesting to hear your perspective on it. Yep good but not great is sort of were I fall on it.

Yeah back in Jan-Feb finally. My thoughts are in the last few pages of the thread

We just finished both the main campaign and DLC prequel campaign of Aliens: Colonial Marines in co-op and holy hellfire if that wasn't a great time. Once they fixed the game, we had a blast. Amazing sound design, great voice acting, fantastic story with really well-done set pieces. Just a terrific time.

Sorbicol wrote:

23 years later - almost - I have finally finished Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn for the cRPG gaming club.

I enjoyed it. Mostly. It shows it's age a little though, and despite the genuinely great characters and NPCs there are some very dated design mechanics left in (you spend a lot of time just walking around from point A to point B, repeatedly, and lets not talk about how some spells are so much more important than others and yet not that easy to acquire or cast in sufficient numbers) and the pacing is all over the place.

Greatest RPG ever? I'm no longer so sure. I've certainly played other RPGs over the years I've enjoyed more - Dragon Age: Origins, Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity - I'm not sure they are better games though.

That's great to hear! Agree with everything above. I'd recommend jumping right into Throne of Bhaal expansion to finish up the adventure. Don't wait another 23 years!

Stele wrote:
Spikeout wrote:
Stele wrote:

Love the write-up Spikeout. Sounds good but not great, which is why I've still been waiting to get it. Someday...

Thanks Stele, I put high expectations on FW, this felt like their time to really blow me away after a very good first effort. I think there's still a lot of systems that need work + the game needs to be leaner imo.

Did you play the original? When you eventually get around to FW it will be interesting to hear your perspective on it. Yep good but not great is sort of were I fall on it.

Yeah back in Jan-Feb finally. My thoughts are in the last few pages of the thread

I actually think I did read most of your impressions on it after going back & checking the thread. If FW goes on sale you should pick it up, you could potentially like it a lot more than me.

Tinykin

A 3D platformer / collectathon. I loved every minute, and this will be a contender for my GOTY.

The game puts you in the shoes of Milo, an astronaut who lands on a planet (implied to be Earth), where he is bug-sized in comparison to everything around him. Levels take place in the rooms of a house, and Milo goes around collecting "Tinykin" - little creatures with special powers (blowing up objects, joining together to create ladders, etc.) that help you negotiate the spaces.

So far, so Pikmin. But... not really. Gameplay-wise, Pikmin has elements of real-time strategy, plus enemies to fight or avoid, and the very real danger of your little friends dying. Tinykin has none of that. There are no enemies and no danger, and the whole experience is enormously chill. Even the platforming is stress-free, and I say that as someone who loathes platformers with a passion and has no patience for them. The worst that happens is Milo falling from a high place and "dying" - whereupon he respawns immediately on the ledge from which he fell, with no penalty.

The lack of challenge might sound boring, but the movement is so satisfying, the collecting so fun and the levels so adorably and intricately designed that the game was never dull during its eight-ish hours.

Big recommend from me.

I also finished and thoroughly enjoyed Tinykin, and I usually fall right off this style of game. I’ve been in a super casual game kick lately and it fit perfectly. A game where if you only have 15 minutes to play you still make progress. I felt the overall length was good too, and it’s cute!

Finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider, played all of them I think since the first one and do enjoy a good Lara story. This was pretty good and had everything you would expect from a TR game.

I tend not to bother with getting 100% on these games, and the poor map was part of that, but there was plenty more content to go at.

Beacon Pines

Here is a game in which you play as Luka, a 12-year-old anthropomorphic deer (I think), living in the titular town in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Beacon Pines looks like a point-and-click adventure, with the player controlling Luka as he moves around town with his friends, talking to NPCs and interacting with various objects. The big gameplay gimmick is that you collect "Charms" as you go through the story - basically verb words like "Fight" and "Hide". Every so often, you'll come to a "Turning Point" in the narrative and will have to make a choice between two or more Charms that you have collected. For example, a confrontation in which you must decide whether Luka should Fight or Hide. Depending on what you pick, the narrative branches in that direction.

However, this is not a Quantic Dreams-type game, where the outcome will be different depending on your choices. It's more along the lines of Zero Escape or AI: The Somnium Files; the game is designed to route you to numerous bad endings, then has you go back to previous Turning Points and choose differently. You eventually see everything there is to see in a single playthrough, as there is no other way to get the proper ending than going through all possible branches of the narrative.

Earlier, I said Beacon Pines looks like a point-and-click. It's not one, though. It's basically a visual novel, where you never truly fail or get stuck. Fortunately, the story and setting (Stranger Things and Stephen King would be fair comparisons) kept me engaged, so I ultimately didn't mind that I did not have as much agency as I expected to have when I started out. Things can get pretty dark, but there is an underlying wholesomeness regarding the power of love and friendship that I really enjoyed.

Tunic is probably my GOTY 2022.

When Tunic originally came out on PC I saw a review that said it was a "souls-like" and I didn't give it a second thought. I've tried to like Souls games and bounced off of all of them. Then Tunic came out on Playstation and I caught a review that explained it takes a lot of inspiration from the old Zelda games. Since those were some of my favorite games of all time I grabbed it on PS5 and spent my free time over the past week completing it.

I don't complete a lot of games and I zoomed through this one. I think the difficulty was overstated a bit. I've never gotten far in a Souls game and I only ran into a few challenging sections that had me dying more than a couple times. The one exception was the final boss. I actually turned on "no fail mode" to defeat it. Another cool note: Achievements are still obtainable when using "no fail mode".

After defeating the final boss you're presented with a screen telling you that you didn't get the "good" ending because you're missing some of the manual pages and it gives you the opportunity to go back to just before the final boss.

Spoilers about the "good" and "bad" endings:

Spoiler:

The "bad" ending has you fighting an end boss that's far more difficult than anything else in the game. Then when you defeat her your character is imprisoned where she was suggesting a repeating cycle of heroes that are imprisoned.

After completing the final two pages of the manual which were a slog but ultimately worth it you go to the final boss and present them the manual. Instead of fighting them they are freed from their bondage and the credits roll showing the both of you having fun in a sort of Mother and Child relationship. So if you find all the pages you don't have to fight the really hard end-boss and there was no need for me to use "no fail mode".

Collecting the last two pages of the game manual:

Spoiler:

The back cover of the manual is collected by finding at least 10 of the hidden fairies. I ended up looking this up and just running from puzzle to puzzle. By this time I had experienced enough of the struggle and just wanted the good ending. I went ahead and found all 20 fairies and there's a lot of them I'd never would have found even if I knew what to look for.

Then I looked up how to find the final page - the cover page. This one required solving a puzzle within the rest of the manual. Once I read that on the walkthrough online I decided to figure this out for myself and closed the website. It was the final puzzle and I'm glad I didn't just spoil this one. I had to make a grid on a piece of paper and trace the hints in the manual to know the correct pattern. Then use that pattern on the one door that was still locked.

The clever use of the manual pages in game was a good idea that was executed brilliantly. You discover there are powers you always had and that a lot of the secrets are hinted at just before you go to that area. Instead of narrative or hints being told to you the map design leads you on. It's one of those things where once you get the way the world is being presented you start to see the hidden cracks everywhere. Hidden merchants, patterns on floors, spots between walls and passages hidden by foreground all start to stick out. Solving the puzzles and fighting you way through a dungeon always feels satisfying.

My only complaint would be that there could be more monster designs and along with that more patterns for their combat. All of your opponents are unique and the game never does that pallet swap trick of just making the same enemy harder. I would have liked to see more of them which I guess just indicates how great I felt the combat was.

I'm now on to New Game + and will try to complete all the Achievements. I doubt I'll get there though. I'm not one to finish a game let alone complete all the Achievements. In my 500+ Steam games I've completed all of the achievements for exactly one game: Hades. On Playstation 4/5 I've completed all the achievements for exactly one game as well: DriveClub. It's rare that I even think about going for achievements which again shows how much I love Tunic.

Just finished The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, a really good spooky point-and-click adventure game. It is definitely more story-heavy than puzzle-heavy (the puzzles are quite easy). The story builds up really well and I definitely did not expect the way it ended. The final part also cranks up the goryness and spookyness but there's no jumpscares and nothing cheap. The art is also top-notch, with some nice pixel art and really good voice acting. Definitely a great game for this season.

I have Beacon Pines next on my list so I'm glad to read good things about it here.

Finished Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. It was fine, but I think preferred the first game. The shooting and dog fighting's fun enough but it runs out of new things to show you around the halfway point.

Last Tuesday I picked up Hot Wheels Unleashed for free via PS+, and last night I came as close to finishing it as I'm likely to get - there are three uncompleted time trials that I can't see myself ever finishing with my Jurassic-age reflexes. But, wow, that was almost a week of addictive obsession - I haven't had that much fun with an arcade racing game since the old Burnout games (loved the first four, they lost me when they went open world).

There are some annoying negatives, primarily 1) a constant stream of reminders that you can buy cars, tracks, and expansions with real-world money, 2) a limited number of environments (which can of course be alleviated by buying expansions), and 3) being rewarded with new cars via randomly generated loot boxes, so you're going to wind up getting duplicates of the same car. But, once you take that all in stride, that structure of short (1–5 minutes) intense races - I doubt I blink more than five times throughout an entire race - with instant reloading, coupled with arcadey, drift-to-boost physics and branching route choices really makes for a compulsion that few other games can evoke. It's the kind of game where every race either makes me reflexively try it again to perfect that line if I don't get first, or immediately go on to the next if I do to see what crazy twists, turns, and giant plastic web-throwing spiders await. And then suddenly it's two in the morning and I've been playing continuously for six hours.

Even with its intentional negatives, there's more fun than you'd expect from its $40 asking price; at the cost of free, it's some of the most - and most white-knuckle, twist-and-turn in your chair until you almost fall out of it - fun I've had all year.

Thanks for the reminder re Hot Wheels! You're making it sound like that F-Zero game on the Gamecube, a high I've been chasing ever since... anyway, added to the pile of PS+ freebies I need to play.

I very rarely finish games, but there are some games in which finishing them felt like a tremendous achievement. Before today my biggest achievements in gaming, to me, were finishing both Starflight games and TIE Fighter.

Well today, after hundreds of hours, I finished Star Fleet II, and my god it felt like an amazing achievement. As you go to the ranks you gain skills, knowledge and new toys. First you gain escorts, then you gain planetary invasions, then you gain the ability to give orders to any friendly unit in the sector. The missions get more complex as your ranks go up.

The final mission in the game involved conquering every planet on the map, destroying every enemy ship and starbase, and taking out the massive fleet headquarters of the enemy. It took a lot of hours but I did it, and my god did it feel amazing.

Now I'm gonna start a new career and try to do every mission in only one attempt (i.e. no deaths). I love this game.

Haven't been reporting but I've been completing games this year (in order of completion):

1. Pokemon Legends: Arceus -

Spoiler:

restored my faith in the Pokemon franchise

2. Horizon Forbidden West -

Spoiler:

A little long in the tooth, but I still enjoyed most of the gameplay and the story

3. Granblue Fantasy Versus (RPG Mode) -

Spoiler:

I think i just did this because it was there...it was odd. played like a beat em up

4. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands -

Spoiler:

It was fun and also a bit disappointing. Disappointing due to the lack of replayability more than anything else. The guns felt really good though. A great game if you can get some friends to join.

5. It Takes Two -

Spoiler:

What can I say about this that everyone hasn't already said?

6. Cyberpunk 2077 -

Spoiler:

Replayed after PS5 edition + some patches released. Game was still a blast. I know it's easy to hate on, but I enjoyed my SECOND playthrough of this

7. Destiny 2 Witch Queen -

Spoiler:

Not a full on game, but that campaign was long and tough, and some of the best Destiny content

8. The Legend of Heroes: Cold Steel 1 -

Spoiler:

Started off slow-ish with a TON of talking, but really got into the story of this

9. Triangle Strategy -

Spoiler:

Ups and downs...started off slow because I'm not used to SRPGs with a ton of lonnngg cutscenes. Eventually it gets to the "conspiracy" parts and it gets more interesting. I just have a BIG beef with the hidden Triangle/Morality system that has a heavy effect on the way the story plays out. In Triangle Strategy, there are multiple points in the game where you talk to folks or just make a random decision, and your answers have heavy effect on choices made later in the game. These choices are very big and can drastically change the story and who you align/fight with - and yes there is a "perfect" ending that allegedly is nearly impossible to get on your first playthrough since these "triangle points" are hidden until new game + and I read you don't get enough for one of the choices necessary early on. I still enjoyed what was there and I might watch a video of the other endings. I was actually MOSTLY satisfied with the outcome of my ending.

10. The Legend of Heroes: Cold Steel 2 -

Spoiler:

I was so intrigued by the ending of Cold Steel 1 that I went straight into 2. Perfect cliffhanger into this game makes you really want to know what was going to happen. It plays almost exactly like the first with some slight QoL changes. The one thing that really sets this apart from other JRPGS for me, is how they will let you sit for HOURS and think, "why the hell is this person doing what they do?" and then in a random conversation (sometimes not even with that person) they just drop some heavy stuff that explains their thoughts and ambitions. You really get to know and love the characters, like in Persona games. The game also ends with a great lead into the next game. Not as much of a cliffhanger as the first, but clearly things are happening. I hope some youtube does a whole breakdown of the story if they don't turn this into an actual anime because, in my opinion, it's top tier in JRPG storytelling.

11. Ghost Recon Breakpoint Extra Campaigns -

Spoiler:

I already finished the main campaign after they removed the gear level requirement that turned this game into "Division 3". There has been so much added since, including AI buddies so I went back and played the other 2 campaigns and the side stories. I can't say I cared too much for any of the stories in particular, but I enjoyed the gameplay and I switched back to gear level because it made the game a bit more interesting later on (it also allowed me to amass currency and weapon parts since you can hold multiple in gear score mode). The Operation Motherland storyline is what Ghost Recon games need to be from now on. It was great clearing the map and then using that to make openings for resistance and actually seeing a change in how the world operates in the areas that were liberated.

12. Mass Effect 1 (Legendary Edition) -

Spoiler:

15 years later, I finally finished this game! Even with the remaster, only the story aged well. Looked good though. I do remember throughout the game saying to myself, "they don't make stories like this anymore in this genre. They try, but Mass Effect is still leading the way.

13. Tales of Arise -

Spoiler:

I waited quite some time before I played this (didn't want it competing with Cold Steel). The gameplay is super flashy and highly based on combos, almost like a fighting game. You could spend a ton of time getting extremely good and combos and switching between characters to maximize these combos, but...completely unnecessary to complete the main story. The story was pretty interesting from beginning to end with a lot of characters slowly opening up and explaining why they are where they are - I like when games fill in the plot holes properly. Very bright and colorful - beautiful game.

14. Mass Effect 2 (Legendary Edition)-

Spoiler:

I started with this game the day it released on PS3. Legendary edition brings it back and makes it look like I THOUGHT it looked back then. Had to watch comparison videos. I was able to save everyone this time. Still enjoying the story and I hope they bring this back proper. This game was truly ahead of its time. You really get the sense of how Andromeda dropped the ball trying to go open world when this game was clearly the pinnacle and did not need to be changed much.

Well, my goal is usually to finish 1 per month and i'm ahead of that so I'm being a bit more lax now. Playing whatever, but currently on my plate is Mass Effect 3, Xenoblade 3, and possibly Cold Steel 3, though i might finish ME3 first. Depending on how long that takes, Gotham Knights, Tactics Ogre, and God of War Ragnarok will come into play and they may take priority. Cold Steel 3 may get pushed to 2023.

I finally completed the Yars Recharged missions on Xbone. The Hard Boiled mission was, to put it mildly, annoying and impossible. That is until I watched a video on how to do it. The solution was so simple, it still boggles my mind.

Now on to complete Yars Recharged arcade mode...