VideoGame_Discussion

My set thus far in '23
# - 8 Doors
A - Aces Of The Luftwaffe
B - Bugsnax
C - CupHead
D - Doom 2016
E -
F -
G - God of War 3
H - High on Life
I - Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
J -
K - Kentucky Route Zero
L - (The) Legend of TianDing
M - My Friend Pedro
N -
O -
P - Planet of Lana
Q - Quake ('22 remake)
R - Ryse: Son of Rome
S - Strider 2014
T - Tinykin
U - Uncharted 3
V - Virtua Fighter
W - Wreckfest
X -
Y -
Z -

I decided to exclude from above some E and F titles that were dumb, DLC or mobile games as personally I'm not sure they're worthy of counting. Plus I wanted to use this as another tool to help me pick new games to play and I want to find E&F titles to play. So I've got 8 letters to focus on next and after more time than I should've spent just now, I think I've picked some good candidates for those 8 letters.

@SupremeSarna and others - yeah I didn't want to replace the nature of this Beat a Game thread with 'Beat the Alphabet' or anything. I mainly came up with the idea after having WAY too many games in my LaunchBox, mainly my PC library. I think it can/should be a tool or mini-game/challenge for those who are interested, to simply have more ways to help pick their next or upcoming titles via.
Personally I was struggling a touch to for example find a title to play this year, so the Alphabet challenge helps me potentially narrow it down, but only b/c I have the full ROMset of that platform. So this isn't for everyone. Like Talon, I don't plan on posting my full list like I just did on every new game I beat. I will likely mention when I beat something that 'noted game checks off my letter whatever'. And once (if) I complete my set I might list them all.

OP updated! Keep up the gaming, chaps!

SupremeSarna wrote:

Not sure when your cutoff was, but you missed my #41 of Uncharted 3 - post #338

Slickriven wrote:
[imgt w=245 h=230]https://i.gifer.com/MldC.gif[/imgt]

#28 belongs to Immortals Fenyx Rising

8/10

This game was way too much fun to be put out by Ubisoft of all folks. It’s how I felt about the Mario+Rabbids titles in the sense of man how are these Ubi made games? Immortals is pretty much a Greek Zelda BOTW without such annoyances as breakable weapons. While it’s not perfect and has a lot of the usual open world tiresome tropes such as ticking off a million boxes of things to do, it’s just so much fun to engage in for the most part. The vaults (like shrines in Zelda) offer creative puzzle like challenges to overcome which rewards you with stamina upgrades and it’s pretty much the basis of the game. It’s one half hack and slash action game and one half puzzle platformer with some really unique puzzles to solve which aren’t going to stump most folks but offer just enough of a brain tease to feel rewarding and adds that sense of accomplishment once you figure them out by using objects in the environment as well as your godly powers which ranges from being able to lift up light and heavy objects or slow down time by shooting arrows in first person. The combat is fun the more you unlock abilities and godly powers but by the end of the 25ish hour journey rhe combat can become and feel a bit on the tedious side. And lastly the story is quirky as heck somewhat cheesy dialogue at times but overall it makes me feel like they were at least trying to give us a decent Greek mythology story and this version of Zeus in a video game has to be the most charismatic yet flawed version of the god that almost made me feel like he wasn’t a complete butt munch at times. Overall if you’re looking for a similar experience to Zelda BOTW without those darn breakable weapons with a story length about 1/3 of its size then this game may be worth your time.

Hi @SupremeSarna

Thanks for the update. Looks like I'm just missing one clear and one badge: #48: Barbie: The Prince and the Pauper on Game Boy Advance (emulated on Anbernic). That + my previous clear of Avenging Spirit should get me the Hop 'n Bop badge. Thanks!

#49 down: Alex Kidd in Miracle World on Sega Master System (emulated on Anbernic). I would like to count this towards the Facelift badge, as I'm planning on beating the remake.

@Bleed_DukeBlue Ah, I see it now. I think the Alphabet sub-challenge distracted me from that clear, same as Slickriven’s Uncharted 3. I’ll update all of this again on Sunday night when I return from the wedding I’m attending.

No worries at all! Have fun at the wedding.

SupremeSarna wrote:

8th of June, 42nd overall, 1st
X-Men Reign of Apocalypse
Already have badge
Gets me an X title in the Alpha challenge, need 7 more for set

With the 8 letters I had to go, X, Y, Z didn't exactly excite me for choices but I wanted a GBA title and after looking at HL2B I didn't think this would take long and I beat it in well under an hour. You pick 1 of 4 X-Men, of which the options are interesting: Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm and Rogue - I went with Logan and the game was very easy. It's a belt-scrolling beat-em-up and it was pretty easy to keep hammering A for the quick swipe and do a 5-6 hit combo that would knock down any foe, even bosses. B button was a stronger, slower attack that with Logan knocked down foes and you got a 'mutant power' that required a bar to be full to trigger that seemingly refilled over time, but also refill icons would drop periodically, health dropped this way too. Logan's power was a maybe 8-10 hit combo from his claws and against a boss, if landed, would take over 50% health.

Story sends you to an alt dimension and you fight through like a dozen stages and all have 1 or 2 bosses facing notable characters like Beast, Gambit, Magneto, Blob, Cable, etc. With only the boss to fight, it was pretty easy to keep them hit and knocked down off screen which generally meant they couldn't fight back. A few times I had to actually back off and allow the boss to get onto the screen to get a good idea of whom I was fighting - when I did they would fight back more, so that's mediocre design IMO. Normal enemies numbered around 5 sprite models (of which 1 amusingly looked like Pepsi-man), each sprite had 2-3 color variants and some levels had obstacles like spikes, falling boxes and such. With 3-6 or so foes to fight at a time, they could pose more of a challenge against nearly all of the bosses outside of Nightcrawler really. I set the game to 9 continues (the max) but after starting with 2 lives, I finished with 4 but did die like twice - so they gave me bonus lives several times, and obviously I didn't use any continues.

Oddly my ROM had no audio, so I might seek out a replacement and try it again with all/some of the 3 other characters since while it was surely easy, it was short and could be interesting to play as those 3 as I would hope they fight differently.

Ridge Racer for the PSP was the first game in the series that really made me pay attention, and it was the game that made me fall in love with the PSP as a platform. The flawless 3D graphics, earwormy soundtrack, and overflow of content was the perfect introduction to the new platform and its capabilities. I revisited it last year to collect footage for my 2022 30-Day Game Music Challenge video but got far enough long with it that it was worth finishing out the main campaign; something that I'd been wanting to do for a few years now.

Number: 21
Full Title: Ridge Racer
Platform Played: PSP
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: PSP
Original Platforms: PSP
Applicable Badge: Race Drivin' (1/2)

I'm about to start the final boss fight of Golden Sun, so I'll be back to add that game to my hit list as well as soon as I find a chunk of time to finish it. Final Fantasy XVI has me sucked in, though, and will be monopolizing my playtime for the new few months, at least aside from whatever portable games I pick up.

No picture this time, but I beat The Mummy Demastered on the car ride to the wedding/at the motel room after.

I’ve said it before, but I like this game better than Hollow Knight. It’s a short, concise Metroidvania by WayForward that sports beautiful sprite art, frantic gunplay, and five boss fights. The best thing to come from The Mummy (2017), no doubt, and probably the best thing to come the entire Dark Universe that Universal failed to fully establish. The game’s biggest flaw is how twitchy the aiming is. They want you to move and aim with the Analog Stick, but running forward will sometimes make your gun aim diagonally up, just because the stick has greater range of motion than a +Control Pad. (I confirmed that it wasn’t my Joy-Con drifting.) It isn’t a constant nuisance, but I know it isn’t supposed to happen whenever it does.

The Mummy Demastered usually goes on sale around Halloween, so I recommend buying it then. You won’t regret it!

14th clear on 6/23 - Might and Magic book II

Book ii is much more forgiving in that there are some pretty easy super level cheeses that can buff your party. Even so, some monsters/fights are just down right unfair. Even at max level and high stats there are monsters you can come across that can wipe your party in one swipe. The improved visuals and automapper were things I was truly appreciative of over the first game. The puzzles and cryptograms were still incredibly difficult to figure out on your own and I highly recommend a guide. I can now say I've officially beat each and every Might & Magic. I've enjoyed these first two games enough to continue the journey and perhaps start into my favorites in the series, 3 through 7.

image

@SupremeSarna that Mummy game has been on my Steam Wishlist for a few years now. It landed in a few 'Top Metroidvania' lists and thus why I added to my list. Nice to hear it's solid from someone actually playing it. I keep hoping some service I have access to will just give it away free (like Epic or Amazon or whatever) since I'm cheap.

#50 down: Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX on PS4. This (alongside my previous clear of Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Sega Master System, emulated on Anbernic) gets me the Facelift badge. Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX is a remake of Alex Kidd in Miracle World. The graphics are noticeably better. The controls are still not great, but they feel a little bit better to me, and the remake adds some new areas (that, according to Timetobeat, add about an hour to the average completion time). Even so, it felt like it took me less time to beat the remake, because I knew the game so much better after having beaten the original. (For example, the last puzzle takes awhile to figure out if you don't realize that you have a clue with you all along.) Also, the remake has fairly generous checkpoints which are very helpful. The Alex Kidd games are fairly unique. You die from one hit and have a very small range of motion to punch. You can get items to attack more effectively (like a ring that shoots stuff), but I mostly forgot about the items. What helped me the most was practice.

I was going to edit this tonight, but the power just got knocked out. It’ll be back tomorrow or Tuesday, probably, so I can edit things around then. Hang tight, everyone!

Sorry your power went out!

SupremeSarna wrote:

My power came back, so here's an update. Man, we really cleared 8 games in two days, didn't we?

Thanks for the update. Glad you got your power back. Just one small thing: I’m up to 21 badges. (You gave me the icons for all of them. It just says 20 in the badge count up top.)

SupremeSarna wrote:

SupremeSarna wrote:

hangin tight and hangin ten duuuude!

9th of June, 43rd overall, 13th
Hi-Fi Rush
I want to count this toward the Rhythmic badge since there is a rhythm aspect, even if you really don't have to follow that.
Alpha Challenge: I already had H, so I will save it for my next set I suppose.

This looked simply alright when it surprise dropped a few months back and I was more looking forward to games like Redfall and The Last Case of Benedict Fox from prior coverage on them. But those both came out a bit or very flat so I decided to give Hi-Fi a shot and found it to be rather enjoyable. The story/writing/jokes were great with some clever pop culture nods (hello Left Shark) and the cell shaded art really popped. I didn't love the music generally and landed attacks and interactions on the beat only around 55% of the time I'd say, but the combat was rather good and the variety of nearly 100% robot foes kept adding new ones throughout.
The final multi-stage 2x bosses were a bit much as I failed like 7 times to beat the final boss phase, which got annoying, but I also was doing what I too often do in melee games like this and was too aggressive and was way off the beat. Most of the game I was better with that, but 1 phase of the final boss you really had to be patient and the final phase was more about dodging and/or parrying and I didn't do too well with that, sort of obvious with that many retries. I had gotten better with the parry-dodge mini-interaction thing against some of the stronger enemies, but yeah that final boss phase was a challenge for me.
One bit I royally sucked at was the QTE style interactions that were around a fair amount - unlike better QTE design (sort of an oxymoron there) they were randomly all over the screen with ABXY vs. what the God of War series got right with them by putting Triangle always in the top, X at bottom, etc. Also you had to break some walls with the 1 support character and called them in via holding in the Right Trigger. With him, you lined him up and needed to release the RT on beat... well holy &^@$ did I suck at that... but really using an analog trigger for that was completely stupid.

I see I've unlocked some endgame stuff like challenges, a rhythm tower (endless enemy mode) or revisiting levels to access around 8 locked doors and collecting the last 15-20% of things I missed. I'm not sure if I will do that, I might at least seek out the first door to get an idea on what that's about... or maybe I'll just look that up online.

10th of June, 44th overall, 1st
Zen: Intergalactic Ninja
Alpha Challenge: Earns me Z, which is a main reason I tried it, down to 6 remaining

As stated I was seeking out a Z title and finding one on the NES was an added bonus since I didn't have a game for that console yet this year. Unlike years past I have been focused on my more recent consoles when I'm not just playing a GP or other Xbox game, so my older consoles and ROMs haven't had as much focus. The Alpha Challenge, in part, helps with that since older systems tended to have shorter titles.

This game sort of sucked though. I thought for a moment about applying it towards You're Winner, but it's not that bad, I just didn't like it. Technically it looks vibrant and good, the music and sound were solid and the 4 levels plus boss-rush at the end were all pretty varied, impressively. I mainly didn't like the controls b/c I wasn't 100% sure on how they worked, plus I am so used to A on the Xbox controller being jump that when it's B, that messes with me (yes I could/should have looked into switching that). Additionally, I didn't like the isometric opening level with it's fall to death platforming and would not have put up with it without save states. The next to last boss, your clone, was also crummy until I learned my own technique on how to deal with him after looking up a few others, my technique was actually better IMO.

Update on that X-Men game I played recently without sound... it was better without it.
I grabbed a couple more ROM versions and each one still lacked sound, so looked into it and found that I didn't have a GBA bios setup, oops. Got that and got sound, but unlike good games the sound is odd and bad. You get a music track starting from the initial logo screens for Marvel, Activision, etc and it doesn't change once the title screen comes up, nor if you let the idle screen saving video start. Then if you hit Start to enter into the menu, all sound goes away and there's none for navigating/interacting in/with the menus which caused me to think the audio died again. Still no sound selecting a character or the few pages of background info about the story. Finally music comes back for the opening in-level dialog btwn the characters, but no sound for them talking... then you get control of your character and the only sounds I heard was the robots going 'ah' when you defeat them, no cues for punches thrown nor landed, no cue for the 'Go' icon pushing you to advance, nor if you get hit, it's strangely just the music (which I noted the options let you turn off, ditto the sound). Rogue cried out when I let her die, but that was it, very odd, low budget feeling to it.
This felt so odd that I checked it some more and played briefly as all 4 characters. I could hear Storm's electricity and Wolverine's claws landing some of the time but nothing for grabs and barely anything from Cyclops. So I finally turned off the loud, overpowering and garbage music and as Rogue I could hear hits landed from her and on her (very quiet), but confirmed no sound for jumps, throws, the dash or even some of the hits. I reached the Blob with Storm and he had like 1 unique sound, but that was it, pretty lame.

@SupremeSarna I want to count this for You're Winner - the sound design is terrible and trying Rogue for 3 just screens was bad. I didn't notice it as much with Wolverine, maybe b/c he's a melee fighter or the missing sound, but as Rogue the controls are bad, the movement is rigid and slow and the game just feels like you're wadding through a bucket of crap. Rogue's strutting animation as she moves around was funny, saucy maybe, but her punching animation was rough. It felt like her arms were like a foot long as I couldn't seem to hit enemies and took a lot more damage vs. my full run with Logan. Storm was decent with her 4-5 hit combo making noise and seemingly doing well, but too often it was apparently weak enough that the robots weren't getting stunned and would get off a hit on her before her last strike that normally is an uppercut wind thing that knocks them down. Cyclops was almost hilariously bad, his arms/punches just might be shorter than Rogues and his heavy attack is a blast from his eyes that looked lame and was short ranged. Lastly his jump attack was the worst and he does a split and looks like a clown - reminded me of some of the Battletoads attacks.

I had initially thought of replaying this with the other 3 characters but after 'fixing' the sound and trying them for around a min each, complete pass. I see Metacritic has the game at a 61, but that feel generous. I pulled up a lets play video to see if they had better sound and to check some things deeper into the game and they kept the opening music into the menu, unlike me, so with that music on I couldn't hear any menu interaction sounds. Then I jumped further into levels and noticed that the 'ah' sound upon death that the initial robots would let out... was exactly the same for The Blob, Juggernaut, Gambit and just about any other foe - that's so lame and lazy. And the music tracks on later levels also sounded crummy and overpowering.

I beat spongebob truth or square on the xbox360

Golden Sun was April's Retro Game of the Month. Throwing yet another long game onto the 2023 pile, it took almost three months to finish. While I'm happy to have another non-Square RPG under my belt, the slow pacing and clunky puzzle system weren't my favorite, save for a couple of really well-crafted set pieces.

Number: 22
Full Title: Golden Sun
Platform Played: Game Boy Advance
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Game Boy Advance
Original Platforms: Game Boy Advance
Applicable Badge: Level Up! (2/2)

With my portable queue clear, I picked SaGa Frontier back up after experimenting with it at the end of last year. I'm still having a hard time making sense of it and seem to either be ridiculously overpowered or underpowered, regardless of what I'm fighting. I'll continue to attempt to crack it, but we'll see.

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XVI continues to rock my socks. These boss battles are top notch.

I have two more clears (#51 and #52) that get me the Pile Drivin badge: The Death and Return of Superman and Final Fight on SNES (emulated on my Anbernic). This Anbernic has been great. I got it for just over $40 and paid another $12 for a higher quality card to hold my games and saves. It handles everything through PS1 in full color with no problems, is really lightweight, and fits in my pocket. Using the Garlic OS, everything is automatically sorted under graphical icons for each system. Also, I don’t have to select BIOS files separately each time I switch. I just select a system and a game and can play right away. Shortcut button presses for things like save states are easy to use on the fly. It’s the easiest emulation set-up I’ve ever used. The portability and ease of use have me using this more than my Steam deck and Switch for older games.

#53: Final Fight 2 (SNES, emulated on Anbernic), beaten using Maki (the only female character)
#54: Final Fight 3 (SNES, emulated on Anbernic), beaten using Lucia (the only female character)

These two get me the Girl Power badge.

11th of June, 45th overall, 14th
Ravenlok
Badge: earns me Girl Power, with Planet of Lana and Ravenlok
Alpha: already had, so 'for later'

Watched the review of this from ACG a while back and thought meh, looks kiddy but he liked so I figured I would at least try it. It was a fetch quester with some okay fighting that took me just over 4 hrs to 'platinum' as I found, bought and did all that the game asked me to. 6/10 would be my score, moving on to something else.

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

I def wanna play these this year.

It was fun coming back to them. It had been awhile, and they’re still a blast.

ErickRPG wrote:

This one game is SO DIFFICULT… It really caught me off guard. I’ll probably beat it tonight, but hot dang is this a departure from what came before.

Updating... Please wait to post...

Update complete! With June now finished, we're halfway through the year. I hope it's been kind to you thus far. In that time, we've cleared a whopping 440 games! That's impressive, y'all. Here are a few stats and shoutouts:
-We cleared 66 games this month. That's not outstanding by any means, but it is better than May (58) and February (59).
-We earned 12 badges this month. Not shabby! That's less than March (16) and April (15), but still nothing to scoff at.
-@Bleed_DukeBlue passed 50 clears, getting him the second bacon badge on this forum. Congrats, sir!
-I beat 19 games in one month, with my first DLC clear of the year being one of them. What can I say, Pikmin 3 is worth playing the DLC for.
-@Slickriven has caught up to me in terms of systems beaten. Have at you, mate! I didn't adjust the cake badges, though, since I'm very close to finishing another system.

Let's keep the games going for the rest of the year!

@SupremeSarna I started a game on my 17th console tonight, I likely won't finish it for a few weeks, but it will be a target of mine in July, so I hope to get 17 complete soonish and now I might have to push to find another title on yet another system
Otherwise keep up the good work and thanks for the mid-year report.

Yikes. Been a while. I haven't played a game since early March.

razeak wrote:
Go ahead and play something. I’m always curious what people want to play at any given time.

1st of July, 46th overall, 2nd MAME
FInal Fight
Badge: Already have
Alpha: Earns me F, 5 left

I was actually looking to see if I had Bionic Commando in a few places for the RTT GotM and lastly looked at the Capcom Arcade Stadium on my XSX and while BC is in that package, I didn't have access to it. I did notice that they give you 1943 for free and I had apparently acquired Final Fight as well, but it wasn't downloaded... so I downloaded it and fired it up. I beat it back in '21 on the SNES but just got sucked in and beat it here. Since it's the arcade port and you literally play it on an arcade cabinet in the CAS application, I'm claiming as MAME vs. XSX or anything else. The arcade port seemed different as I didn't remember a few parts, but that's not really surprising as it's designed to eat quarters and well I used several. Game is cheap as a few times I revived, dropped into the fight, which knocks everyone down, and was out of health in like 5 seconds.
Oh well, it was still pretty fun and fast and earning F for my Alpha challenge was an unintended added bonus.

I beat Toy Story 3 on the xbox360 (beating this and spongebob truth or square gets me the bear and bird badge)

I toldya, @Slickriven : I beat my 17th console, and it was a real doozy. It turned out to be a twofer, as I had no idea some of the stages on the select screen were DLC in the original version. So here it is: LocoRoco Midnight Carnival and LocoRoco Midnight Carnival DLC .
[imgt w=2048 h=1536]https://i.imgur.com/q7hzVgk.jpg[/imgt]
[imgt w=2048 h=1536]https://i.imgur.com/Ot5PgHI.jpg[/imgt]

Have I got something to talk about here! This was a Halloween-themed (apparently) spin-off to LocoRoco 2 that was the last new release in the series. I quite enjoyed LocoRoco 1 a few months ago--the gameplay was a little unremarkable and lasted too long, but the rest of the experience was brilliant. Vivid colors, happy little characters, a seriously upbeat OST, and an alien language that just makes the world so memorable! So while I took a break from the series, I saw this one on the PS4 Days of Play sale for $7. How could I stay away?

One night, as the LocoRoco slept outside, the diabolical monsters mischievous pranksters known as the BuiBui rolled into town. They built their own extremely hazardous wacky theme park underground and abducted the LocoRoco! Now the LocoRoco must survive their tricks and traps in order to escape, all for their captors' sick amusement. But hey, at least the heroes will have a miserable fun time escaping!

I like that this game has a theme to it. We don't often get entire games that are going for a specific motif or holiday-feeling, so that's neat. This game also puts an emphasis on a new move, Boinging. If you keep bouncing consecutively, you'll maintain a colored trail, which gives you increased jump height and maneuverability. You need it to wall-jump, which is crucial in later stages, for example. That's a cool gameplay change.

I expected this to be a short romp through the LocoRoco world with a night backdrop. The PS Store only advertised 16 stages, so how long could it be? Initially, I was right: The stages were breezy and only occasionally tripped me up. But as it went on, the stage difficulty ratings started increasing dramatically. The game becomes like a Kaizo hack, littering spikes everywhere and forcing you to keep your balance atop tiny, spinning platforms. Want to use a checkpoint? Hope you have deep pockets, because every three attempts cost money, with the price rising if you need more attempts. I spent almost the entirety of today playing two stages! Dolangomeri 2 (final story stage) and BuiBui Fort 3 (final DLC stage) were agonizingly tough, rarely offering any health pickups and demanding precise wall-jumps around spiked corridors. Somehow three DLC stages lasted somewhere in the ballpark of 7 hours, with 6 of them going toward one stage.

I'm no stranger to challenge, but these two levels were so brutal that I nearly gave up. I ended up using the PS4's rewind feature to get through them, though I did go back and beat Dolangomeri 2 legitimately, and I only started rewinding in the second half of BuiBui Fort 3. Fun fact: The PS4 version of Dolangomeri 2 removes the checkpoint present in the delisted PSP version, so I had to start from the beginning almost 200 times. Simply maddening!
You can see these horrorshows for yourself here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RSViHPJnXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwFF071_0wI

The first game might've been a little shallow in terms of gameplay, but at least everything came together to make a cozy game. This one is more a super game for super players, but loses a lot of the charm the series had as a result. After this, it's not surprising the franchise went dormant for 8ish years. I don't plan to replay this one.

I'm so excited I bought a new OEM PSP charger bc I lost mine. Has been a couple years at least since I last played PSP. Gonna play Final Fantasy I and try to actually beat it this time. It's all because of this thread and your hard work supremesama, thank you.