Finished Any Games Lately?

Pokemon Violet last night along with my daughter. We are now doing the post-game content in hopes of having at least one mon ready for 7 Star Tera Raids this weekend.

A_Unicycle wrote:

A short Hike

Played this over a few nights, tucked into bed before going to sleep. It was a perfectly cozy little experience and I loved it so much. <3

Yay! What a game, right?

Tunic.

This was really fun, for the first 3/4. Enjoyed the combat and exploration and finding the pages of the manual and figuring out the game from the inside… right up until the enemies that drain your maximum health appeared, and the bosses that came after, and

Spoiler:

we broke the world so none of the paths you memorised work now, just at the time when you need to revisit a whole lot of places

at which point I turned on “no fail” mode to see the ending.

Maybe the bad ending, but I was done by that point.

Castle Crashers

I finished it way back when too, but its been that many years since. My wife and brother joined me on the couch as our main holiday activity for 3 sessions to battle through the campaign. We wanted to play with some of the other characters but it's unfortunate that there's not much to do with them, and you typically only unlock them by beating the game again, so the sequence is to just play through the whole game a bunch of times. It's too long and samey to do that.

All that said, it's still a great game and the most-fun beat-em-up I've played.

gewy wrote:

Alan Wake is done. Why did I play this one? Mainly because I wanted to play Control and I'm a terrible completionist.

I found the setting, atmosphere and general plot to be solid. Some of the secondary antagonists had me rolling my eyes with how one dimensionally tropey they were... the manipulative, narcissistic psychiatrist... the alcoholic, trigger-happy FBI man. But turns out there was a satisfactory explanation for this.

The gameplay though. Ugh. Basically just a linear shooter where your character is weak and there's this flashlight mechanic. Flashlights don't work like this though! I've never seen one that requires you to slam a new battery in every 15 seconds or so to keep it shining brightly.

There really wasn't enough variety to justify the length, especially if you do the two bonus scenarios as well. So repetitive. I'd have preferred this to be an immersive sim, with a lot more exploration and problem-solving. Or a Telltale type adventure game. Or a walking simulator. Anything but this.

Will I play American Nightmare? Yes, I will. Terrible completionist.

I will say as a fan of Alan Wake I really enjoyed American Nightmare. Better game-play and a fun quick little story. Actually beat it twice for kicks. Which I can't say for the original. And to be very contrarian I enjoyed the gameplay of Alan Wake more then Control....

Also, just to make your completionism worse. There's optional Alan Wake DLC that leads into American Nightmare...

The Pedestrian is a clever little puzzle game that just appeared on PS plus. I won’t say much because it’s fun to discover its tricks on your own - suffice to say there are a couple of brain benders but nothing too demanding. I guess it took about 3 to 4 hours all up, well worth your time if you have access to it.

I finished Spiritfarer just before Xmas.

I really enjoyed it. Some of the spirits' closing monologues (as I/Stella was rowing them to the Everdoor) were deeply affecting and thought-provoking. It's a game that will live long in my memory.

Shameless plug incoming!
Enjoyed any of those games you finished? Then head on over to the 2022 Community GOTY thread and post the list of the top ten games you played in 2022! There's still time, I've given an extra few days for stragglers (and I have no leg to stand on, I just posted my half a day ago).

Finished a couple of puzzle games over the holiday period:

Taiji - The Witness, but in 2D pixel art. Satisfying puzzles, and a lot of clever variations on the core idea.

The Case of the Golden Idol - Return of the Obra Dinn, but in 2D pixel art. A cool art style and a weird ass story. Definitely worth checking out if you liked Obra Dinn.

Ender Lilies: A brilliant 2d Metroidvania that does all sorts of great things right.

I just beat Shining Force. Fun little bit of nostalgia.

I finished off Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Pretty happy to have wiped something off the backlog so early in the year. It's a pretty fun game too! Basically you play as a young girl who helps troubled spirits move on to the spirit world. And you do this by doing some Gamecube/PS2-esque platforming and combat. I was kind of reminded of Star Fox Adventures and Beyond Good & Evil. There probably isn't anything you've not seen already in this game, but it is good at what it does, so whether it's worth you checking out is up to how much fondness you have for that era. Absolutely gorgeous game though. Looks great in stills, even better in motion.

Abridged cross post from the Hades thread. A Brilliant game that shouldn't have taken me three years to get to and even after finishing the main story I will probably play more!

I played The Looker, a short parody of The Witness. A hilarious and free bite-sized piece of comedy. People who haven't played The Witness will probably not get all the jokes but otherwise you should definitely check it out.

halfwaywrong wrote:

I finished off Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Pretty happy to have wiped something off the backlog so early in the year. It's a pretty fun game too! Basically you play as a young girl who helps troubled spirits move on to the spirit world. And you do this by doing some Gamecube/PS2-esque platforming and combat. I was kind of reminded of Star Fox Adventures and Beyond Good & Evil. There probably isn't anything you've not seen already in this game, but it is good at what it does, so whether it's worth you checking out is up to how much fondness you have for that era. Absolutely gorgeous game though. Looks great in stills, even better in motion.

Having finished Kena just before the end of the year, I'd add that not only is visual style fantastic, but to further emphasize its impressiveness, the game has you restoring environments so they go from a corrupted, dingy look, to a lush restored, vibrant aesthetic. This sort of thing pulls me in pretty good. Similar to Okami, De Blob, and 2021's The Gunk (this one doesn't do it as well as the others) in that regard. And there's also with light Pikmin style elements of having the minions you collect perform tasks for you in and out of combat, which could have frankly been used more often.

I’m so mad… I’ve been going back and replaying old games that I never managed to finish. I JUST got past the point in Golden Sun that I was at before, and was very exited to start seeing new parts of the game.

Well, it turns out that the game is already over! It ends on a cliff hanger. If I could go back and tell my 12 year old self to just play another 30 min and save me all this trouble…

Thing is, I’ve already had this same experience. In Pokémon Yellow I stopped at the last gym, and in FF8 I stopped at the last dungeon. Same with FF6. Why couldn’t I have just finished those games back when I was playing them in the first place? Oh well.

Guardians of the Galaxy.

Wonderful game, yes I lost patience with the shooty bits near the end, I could just walk around with these characters in this world and listen to them talk to each other and do silly things, and that would be fine.

jamos5 wrote:

I’m so mad… I’ve been going back and replaying old games that I never managed to finish. I JUST got past the point in Golden Sun that I was at before, and was very exited to start seeing new parts of the game.

Well, it turns out that the game is already over! It ends on a cliff hanger. If I could go back and tell my 12 year old self to just play another 30 min and save me all this trouble…

Thing is, I’ve already had this same experience. In Pokémon Yellow I stopped at the last gym, and in FF8 I stopped at the last dungeon. Same with FF6. Why couldn’t I have just finished those games back when I was playing them in the first place? Oh well.

That sort of thing used to happen to me all the time with JRPGs. It was like I had some sort of internal self-sabotage. I think I would know the end was coming up, decide "well I can't do the last dungeon until I do all these side quests," then get burned out on the side quests or distracted by the next shiny game to come around.

Redherring wrote:

Guardians of the Galaxy.

Wonderful game, yes I lost patience with the shooty bits near the end, I could just walk around with these characters in this world and listen to them talk to each other and do silly things, and that would be fine.

I felt the same way at the end of 'Guardians...'

I finished the visual novel Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth this weekend. One of the things I particularly enjoyed was not having to play the many combat sequences, which were pretty repetitive. I wonder whether 'Guardians...' might have been a more enjoyable game if had been a visual novel or - perhaps - a very light adventure game like Telltale's 'The Walking Dead'.

jamos5 wrote:

I’m so mad… I’ve been going back and replaying old games that I never managed to finish. I JUST got past the point in Golden Sun that I was at before, and was very exited to start seeing new parts of the game.

Well, it turns out that the game is already over! It ends on a cliff hanger. If I could go back and tell my 12 year old self to just play another 30 min and save me all this trouble…

The good news is now you can start Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Totally worth it if you enjoyed the first.

I finished Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix this weekend. This was my first time playing it, and compared to Kingdom Hearts 1 and Chain of Memories, I enjoyed this one significantly more. Not so much for the story, which was merely fine, but for the satisfying combat.

The game starts out rough, considering you have no abilities, exacerbated by a slow beginning with an unfamiliar character. But after a few hours you can zip to enemies that are out of reach, guard, and start to string together longer combos. It's just fun to wade into a group of enemies and start knocking them around. I also enjoyed the fact that not every Disney world you visit had the exact same structure of meet the characters -> play through a shortened version of the movie -> fight a boss. There was a nice amount of variety in the game's overall structure.

Due to my completionist tendencies, I also watched the "movie" they made out of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, a DS game they elected not to remaster/remake for the collection I'm playing through. It was better than I expected, but I perhaps could have spent that three hours on better things.

halfwaywrong wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

I’m so mad… I’ve been going back and replaying old games that I never managed to finish. I JUST got past the point in Golden Sun that I was at before, and was very exited to start seeing new parts of the game.

Well, it turns out that the game is already over! It ends on a cliff hanger. If I could go back and tell my 12 year old self to just play another 30 min and save me all this trouble…

The good news is now you can start Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Totally worth it if you enjoyed the first.

Actually I was curious about this. Does it end on another cliff hanger? I hate getting my heart invested in a series that never gets a proper conclusion...

jamos5 wrote:
halfwaywrong wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

I’m so mad… I’ve been going back and replaying old games that I never managed to finish. I JUST got past the point in Golden Sun that I was at before, and was very exited to start seeing new parts of the game.

Well, it turns out that the game is already over! It ends on a cliff hanger. If I could go back and tell my 12 year old self to just play another 30 min and save me all this trouble…

The good news is now you can start Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Totally worth it if you enjoyed the first.

Actually I was curious about this. Does it end on another cliff hanger? I hate getting my heart invested in a series that never gets a proper conclusion...

The Lost Age closes the story fairly well, iirc, so not much danger of feeling like you're left hanging.

Yeah it's quite a satisfying ending, not a cliff hanger at all.

Whew well that is a relief! I'll definitely have to try it out then. Luckily I already spent the 20+ minutes it took to enter my SIX PAGE-LONG PASSWORD to import my save from the first game to the second. That was quite a feat I have to say myself.

Now I just have to play it.

Midnight Suns. 83hrs to finish that but really enjoyed it.

You spent a lot of time building up relationships with the supes and I actually ended up enjoying that quite a bit - particularly the two main supes I played with most of the time (Maigik and Nico). The dialogue was well written and well acted so that helped quite a bit.

Of course there's a few characters that you just don't want to speak with. I mean Robbie Reyes is a total whiney Female Doggo you have to constantly coddle and give reassurance too - but well acted all the same.

The combat was simple but pretty fun. There does need to be some work done on that. I had a few missions that were unwinnable. And it always sucked to take along characters you haven't improved any. You also get rated on each mission completion. The faster you finish it and the less you suffer any of your supes getting KOed (they can't be killed) the more stars you get. The last few missions I was getting 1-2 stars. Things got difficult and they kept wanting you to raise the difficulty level.

And the final mission was pretty epic. You're basically fighting for the fate of the entire world (surprise!). Then what happens after you save everyone? A 1-star rating. "Hey you win but you kinda sucked at the whole saving the world thing. But yeah I guess you got the job done and saved everyone. Here's a gold star sticker for your efforts."

Those little issues aside I enjoyed the game thoroughly. I'm hoping the DLC is just more than additional characters as I can't see playing this game through again for another few years.

Finished a couple of games from my backlog over the last few days. First, I wrapped up Resident Evil 3 Remake and even did a second run with some bonus weapons. The game was typical RE fun, although somewhat underwhelming in the end. I never tire of the beautiful RE Engine, with their creature modeling and gore effects, but it just didn't satisfy as the RE2 Remake did. It seems like they rushed the final product to market without the missing features from the original.

Next, I wrapped up Space Megaforce (SNES). Everytime I say that title, I desparately want to stretch it out with a booming voice... SPAAAACE MMMMEGAFOOOOOORCE!!! Anyway, I've been getting back into shmups recently, and while I didn't 1CC the game, I did push through each level with save states only at the beginning of the level. I've always stunk at these games, but recent binges of Shmup Junkie videos on YouTube has revived my interest. Sadly, acceptance that my reaction times remain firmly in the age 50+ group has led me to some shmup instruction online and what do you know... I've basically been playing these games incorrectly forever. What, I SHOULDN'T go after every single powerup onscreen, no matter where it is located or what weapon it's for? But.... it's RIGHT THERE... (next to the boss's superweapon...)

Thinking about a deep dive into R-Type next.

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow

Speaking about The Darkside Detective a few weeks ago, I admitted that point-and-click adventures - very much my "jam" back in the day - don't have the same appeal anymore. I don't like getting stuck for any period of time, and I have little tolerance for wandering back and forth through different locations, trying to figure out what I might have missed.

And yet, here I found myself: not only playing Hob's Barrow but actually buying it. With money. In spite of my existing backlog!

Truth be told, this game piqued my interest from the moment it was release, and the positive reception on here (especially in the GotY thread) persuaded me to pull the trigger. And thank goodness I followed both my intuition and the voices, because this is a bloody good game indeed.

Set in Victorian times, you play Thomasina Batemen, an antiquarian who arrives in the isolated Yorkshire village of Bewlay to excavate the titular barrow, despite opposition and ominous warnings from the insular locals. The tone is folk horror, and I initially wondered how a pixel-art point-and-click could possibly work as a horror. I mean, it's not exactly Resident Evil, is it? No, it's not, but the game does a cracking job of being highly unsettling at times, and it ratchets up the tension and dread as it goes along.

The final third of the game had me slack-jawed at where it took me - both literally and thematically.

Visuals work really well (I'm typically not a fan of the retro-pixel thing), soundtrack is eerie, and the voice acting is on-point. As for the puzzles, they are generally logical and straightforward (although they do take a left turn into the "riddle-y" toward the end), and only once did I have to consult a guide when I had failed to properly pay attention to a clue.

Took me seven hours to complete, and this is a game I'll be thinking about for some time to come.

As Eleima shared elsewhere, there is currently a Wadjet Eye Humble Bundle of 14 games for $10, and I'm highly tempted. They can't all be this good, can they?

I knocked out a few games since Christmas.

I got a Steam Deck for Christmas and NieR Automata was my game of choice for a while. It ran fantastic on the deck. Light spoilers if you don't know the basic structure of NieR:

Spoiler:

This gave me a chance to complete the rest of the main endings, after completing just the A ending so long ago. I'm still not entirely sure how I like the structure.

Going through the B ending was too close to A, in my opinion. It was too much of the same, despite the hacking mechanic, at least after the first few scenes. I dig the different perspectives, though, and wish I hadn't lost so much of the story due to the time gap. Thankfully, my son, who was playing it too, filled in some of the gaps.

I also didn't know that the third ending (/set of endings, depending on how you look at it), was entirely new material. If I had known that, I would have soldiered on instead of abandoning it long ago.

In any case, I'm quite glad I finished it (and lost my save!). I think more of it now that when I "finished" it before.

--

I ran through High on Life in about a week. I was happy to play something new on Game Pass and beat it before it left the service (I'm looking at you Dragon Quest 11). It's solid and inventive but not amazing. If you like Rick & Morty, you'll like the humor, although it does wear a bit thin at times. I did like the constant chatter to keep me company.

I really appreciate that it was a relatively tight little package. It explored the ideas it had, had some fun with them, and ended. My favorite thing is that things accelerated at the end, something many games just don't do.

--

Finally, I wrapped up the campaign Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War. I did like the investigation stuff here. It's nothing too fancy but having a mission unlock due to the tiniest bit of investigation on your part, is a neat idea. I'd like an open world game that does more with the concept.

Spoiler:

I rolled my eyes a bit at the end repeat Vietnam ending. I played a little bit with the alternatives with the story but, entering the last mission, I was ready to go. I didn't feel like spending time messing around the edges. I think it's more about where that type of thing was placed. In contrast to High on Life, it didn't accelerate until the very end. That big switch right before the finale hit the brakes instead. Also, the initial Vietnam wasn't fun enough to play 3 times.

I'm not sure if I'll play around with any of the multiplayer (Zombies, for example) for Cold War. Does anyone still fart with this? I think I'm much too late to the party.

Tasty Pudding wrote:

As Eleima shared elsewhere, there is currently a Wadjet Eye Humble Bundle of 14 games for $10, and I'm highly tempted. They can't all be this good, can they?

I haven’t played Hob’s Barrow, but yes. They absolutely can. The Blackwell games are amazing (though I will admit, the first one shows its age a bit). Gemini Rue is the oldest but it has stayed with me in a way few games have. Shard light is solid, Technobabylon is super good… the bundle is worth every penny.