VideoGame_Discussion

OP updated! I hope I get more time to beat games soon. Year's been pretty busy for me so far.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Lost Odyssey

@SupremeSarna For my list of consoles, can you switch PS4 to PS5?

@Scott Gotcha covered.

@Gypsy I'll include it in next week's update. Thanks!

#13 Trials of Mana -

#13 overall. Trails of Mana for switch. Played Hawkeye, Riese, and Angela. This game is amazing. The way they did this remake, and Star Ocean 2. THIS is how to do proper remakes of old RPGs. And I still love FFVII remake. But these are great too. This game still "feels" like secret of mana. The music, the battling, the world, how you explore, how the towns and areas are separated. It really feels like playing a proper sequel to the SNES classic Secret of Mana. Loved about everything about this game. Not too long, class changing system, replayability due to there being 6 heroes. They nailed this one. Hope squareenix continues this trend. And I know we have a new mana game coming too. So that's great!

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Number: 4
Full Title: Kyuukyoku Tiger
Platform Played:
Collection: M2 ShotTriggers: Kyuukyoku Tiger Heli
Native Platform:
Original Platform:
Applicable Badge: Shoot the Core (1/2)

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I took Toaplan games seriously way too late. I always thought space ships were cooler than planes and helicopters, which is still true, and that horizontal shooters were better than vertical, which is still debatable. However, now I realize how special of a develop this was and am enjoying going back through their catalog now that they are getting both the M2 treatment on Switch and PS4 and the (unfortunately inferior) Bitwave Games treatment on Steam and GOG.

@SupremeSarna Hoa was on PS5, not Switch.

Number: 5
Full Title: Alien Crush
Platform Played: Mini
Collection: N/A
Native Platform:
Original Platform:
Applicable Badge: Quarter Muncher (1/2)

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This game has an ending, but it's really the result of a limitation. The scoring caps at just under a billion points. Needless to say, I didn't get there, as that purportedly takes about 10-hours of not screwing up. I figured filling up the leader board was good enough. The "ACE" initials are an homage to my middle and high school buddy Chris, who used to use that back in the late 80s and early 90s.

I beat Grimace's Birthday .
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It's not as magical when played on a PC almost a full year after release. It was definitely made for GBC hardware and for the year of its promotion. But it's a decent little game regardless. Though I swear you can't jump of a grind rail when you're moving left--the second stage is mildly annoying as a result.

Number: 6
Full Title: Blaster Master
Platform Played:
Collection: Nintendo Switch Online
Native Platform:
Original Platform:
Applicable Badge: Metroidvania (1/2)

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This is one of the few games I owned as a kid that I had never finished and maybe my favorite game that I had never finished. I have to say it feels good to knock it off the bucket list after all of these years. Maybe someday I'll revisit Fester's Quest...

I beat Super Mario Wonder last year but it was a co-op run with my son. I played through it again, solo, and completed it 100% today.

NES - Super Mario Bros.
SNES -
N64 -
GC -
Wii -
Wii U -
Switch - Super Mario Wonder
GB -
GBC -
GBA -
DS -
3DS -
360 -
XB1 -
PS1 -
PS2 -
PS5 -
PSP -
GEN -

2/19 - Unique systems

2 - Total games

Badges
Hop 'n' Bop (Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Wonder)

@Yoshi Nicely done Blaster Master is great. How far did you make it as a kid? Before I finally beat it, the Area 6 boss was usually the one to get me, and if I did make it past him, then the Area 7 boss was the next hold up, or just trying to get through Area 8!

I beat Fallout 3 and Fallout 3 Mothership Zeda (DLC) both on the xbox 360

Scott wrote:

I want to say it was also the Area 6 boss.

I forgot about badges. Looks like my 2 games got me the Hop 'n' Bop badge! I updated my previous post.

3rd in Feb, 1st on LUNA, 12th overall
Inertial Drift Twilight Rivals Edition

Badge - first towards Race Drivin' I suppose

I did this largely as my Luna clear and for a semi-twitchy race/drifting game, the streaming was really solid. There's a story mode that I beat to claim this with a 'story' of some sort told by dialog btwn 2 stills of you and random folks before each event - I mainly skipped all of that crap and just did the events. Luna is strange that they sell a dedicated controller like did and they want you to use it, and when I first tried this game it didn't seem to recognize my X1 controller plugged into my machine so I went with the KB controls that were interesting: A/D for L/R, then the left and right arrows for 'drift' left and right and spacebar for throttle. At speed, turning with A/D does virtually nothing and you need those drift keys to actually get around corners, which makes sense based on the title and premise of the game. The story car is super easy to drive and I handled all events until the final one pretty easily across a few gaming sessions. I got used to the dual handed controls over time and went and looked up if there was a brake key and it's S, so then I started to use that for the last few events, which helped with some corners getting pretty sharp and forgetting to let off the throttle spacebar at times caused me to hit the guardrails/walls and slowed me down. Most of the story is more about racing, either a ghost, the clock or another car (which you can't hit, explained with some totally BS story quip that I read) which was a strange since you'd think a drifting game would be more about the stylized driving - which eventually they got to near the end.

After failing the final race I took a break last night and then was reading the info page in Luna after closing the game and noticed it touting it's dual-stick controls and figured I would try the controller again. So this last session I got my controller working and after a practice run on the final track with the new controls I crushed the final event by over 20 seconds - so yeah the controller was a better setup. Beating that event triggered some credits so I'm claiming it, but there are several other things to do. An Arcade mode, Championship mode, Twilight Rivals additional 'story' mode and some Challenges. I did a few events and got to drive some other cars that handled very differently. The Challenge mode lets you unlock other cars for the Arcade and Champ modes it seems, so I did a few of those, but man some of the cars handle very strangely on how to trigger a drift or how to even get them to turn much at all, so I failed on 2 b/c their characteristics didn't gel with me - I only gave each 1 attempt. Some new cars I actually liked how they controlled differently.

I did start up the Twilight Rivals story mode and can see me playing a little more of that, yet still skipping all of the lame dialog btwn the many characters introduced in the main story that seem to be making appearances in this story as well - plus a host of new folks.
With only around a month to try out and beat something on Luna before it cycles out of the free access for me as a Prime sub, I prioritize smaller games like this, so I'm glad to have knocked off Luna and really the game isn't too bad if you ignore the attempt at a story. It's clearly neon 90's inspired and has a ho-hum cell-shaded look but it was worth my few hours of time so far.

And 4th in Feb, 1st on , 13th overall
Mario vs. Donkey Kong
Badge - 1st toward Hop n Bop, right?

Beat this as it was Frank's pick for his GotM and I hadn't got 'round to beating any of his picks in a little while and figured it was time to give one a go. I don't like too many Mario games anymore, likely b/c when I use ROMs to go back and play them, I focus too much on being nearly perfect and will just use save states to gloss over mistakes and that's messed with how I play some older games period, but it seems really bad with Mario titles as they just get too frustrating for me after a little while - that happened here for sure. There are 6 worlds with 6 stages each and then a toybox and DK 'fight' stage per and by the mid-point of world 2 I was starting to see the meh creep in. World 5 and 6 weren't great with that and I was all to happy to have it beat. I unlocked access to all 6 worlds having a + mode now... yeah this is not a game I'll be putting more time into, I got the credits, I'm done.

#11 down: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League on PS5. I would like to count this toward the Mustache-Twirlin' badge.

This game was a lot more fun than I had expected. I agree with another poster who said elsewhere in the forum that the last third gets tedious. The last three boss fights are pretty annoying, whereas the previous ones were pretty fun. I’d give the game a 7 overall. Definitely worth playing but with a few annoyances along the way.

#12 down: FoxyLand on PS4. I would like to count this toward the Hop n' Bop badge. This was an annoying 2-D platformer with lots of ways to instantly die, but at least it was short. I wouldn't recommend it.

Slickriven wrote:

I'd call that a puzzle game, personally.

#13 down: FoxyLand 2. Alongside my previous clear of FoxyLand, this gets me the Hop n’ Bop badge.

This, like its predecessor, was not very good, but it did introduce some new mechanics. The wolf boss in world one was rough.

SupremeSarna wrote:

I need to load that up on my Analogue Pocket.

SupremeSarna wrote:

That's fine, classify as puzzler then.

5th in Feb, 14th overall, 1st on
Shaq-Fu
Badge - 1st towards Street Fight'n

Played this b/c of Ren2k's RTT GotM and it was pretty rubbish. I tried the SNES ROM first and did terrible, but on the Gen version I used cheap tactics to beat the first island of like 5 fights pretty easily. The 2nd island had 3 fights and 1 was the toughest of the game for me, where my tactics didn't work great, but I got it after a number of attempts and some help from save states. The final island had just 2 fights and the first was a little cheap, taking a few attempts, but the final story mode boss was relatively easy.
Game lives up to the earned rep as a pretty crappy title and certainly wasn't a good fighter with so few attack buttons but I'm glad to have finally tried it out.

After 45 hours in two weeks, I finished Pikmin 3 Deluxe and platinum’d its DLC. (Technically, it’s DLC from the Wii U version that was bundled in, but that hasn’t stopped anyone before.)
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Pikmin 3 Deluxe is the best version of Pikmin 3, and an easy contender for best Pikmin game. You get the full story mode, all missions with previous DLC, and two additional (easy) mission campaigns. Certain QOL changes were made to buff certain Pikmin, and certain actions are much easier to perform on the Pro Controller than they were on the GamePad. There are even three save files, different difficulty settings, and unlockable badges! They didn’t hold back with this game, and it is 100% worth the $50 price tag.

The cruelest missions are Silver Lake Remix and the 2D cavern one. There’s so much gold to retrieve and enemies to beat. Even with three captains to command, it’s too much. But perseverance is key. Fortress of Festivity is a really fun one, with a daunting number of giant fruits to grab.

I beat Persona 5 Tactica and Sonic Superstars on Switch, both of which I got on sale for $19.99 recently. I liked both more than I thought I would, especially Tactica.

#13

Hogwarts Legacy

Well this was a game I didn’t think I was going to enjoy as much as I did due to the fact I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan but man this was such a delightfully refreshing experience through and through. From the immense attention to detail in all of the little nuances and caveats within the wizarding world and plethora of spells you can obtain to the sheer sense of wanderlust and exploration within Hogwarts castle itself, this game is truly immersive from start to finish. The combat takes cues from that of the Batman Arkham series and Spider-Man games and you can counter most spells and enemy attacks by pressing one of a couple of counter buttons and feels really fluid to execute. The graphics too powered by the Unreal 4 engine I think, were pretty darn good as well with minimal hiccups here and there in the framerate I noticed which did stutter and dip during explosive action segments. Upgrading and pumping out your fashionable character was fun as heck too. You could even breed and nurture animals to obtain upgrade materials from them to upgrade your gear and such. The story itself was of course a touch of the theatrics, having you take a deep dive into the underground seedy world of goblins and how the main goblin antagonist wants to end wizardkind. The side quests too are pretty detailed. I enjoyed some of the side quests more so than some story missions. And exploring the castle and neighboring villages and hamlets was a breeze one you unlock a series of mounts from a broomstick to a hippogriff and even a land mount which makes you travel quicker on the ground vs being airborne. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my 38ish hour journey within the world of witchcraft and wizardry and will stick around a bit more for some post game goodies.

I’ll go ahead and call that I beat Tekken 8 on PS5. I did the story mode, beat the five fight mode to get the endings with all the characters and cleared the avatar arcade quest thing. I also beat all the AI ghosts I could to get all the unlockables I could find, and beat my own ghost. If that doesn’t qualify, let me know what does and I’ll knock it out real quick.

I beat Monopoly Plus on the xbox 1

2/15
#5) Donkey Kong Country 2 Diddy's Kong Quest

By the time I "beat" the game I was about 9 Coins short of unlocking the last bonus level, and had collected all of the DK coins. I remember finding some of these to be a whole lot harder as a kid! So I finished every level with all secrets and DK coins, and got the special ending in around 6 hours.

Oh, also, I think every song in this game is an absolute banger. A top tier retro soundtrack for sure.

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BloodPuppetX wrote:

yeah I got tactica on sale too. Looking forward to it for sure, gotta beat Star Ocean first, and heck, Unicorn Overlord comes out March 9th babiii!

incubus421 wrote:

Which stages gave you the toughest time? There are no wrong answers here, aside from some early stages.

Well I won't be playing the additional or DLC-like story from Inertial Drift Twilight Rivals. It is structured like the main game's story with 4 chapters with 5 linear events within, all filled with pointless dialog before said events. I tried and beat the very first event after beating the main game a few days ago and jumped back into this last night with the intention of completing most of that.
The main story you use 1 car at least 95% of the time, maybe 100, and it's crazy easy to use, it'll drift just by turning the right analog stick and using it so much got me used to that as the defacto control mechanics. Well there are other cars in the game that you faced off against in that main campaign that you're now forced to use and for some reason as the car and driver basically changes nearly every event in this new story. All the cars handle rather uniquely, especially in how they enter and exit drifts and a few I really didn't like nor could get used to.

Since I couldn't select the car I preferred and simply don't wish to spend the time to get a bit better with especially 2 of the cars they've selected - I'm done. I ended up trying at least 1 event from each chapter and beat a few, largely those with cars that I got to grips controlling, but some are just terrible to control. I could practice with them or do other events and what not but 1- I don't like this game enough to bother, 2- I'm already skipping the dumb story, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on something I care about and 3- this is a rotating free Luna streaming game that I'll lose access to before to long and I'm for sure not going to buy it nor pay for Luna to keep access.

No biggie since there are tons waiting on me in the backlog, but I had at least intended to give this one some more time before bailing.

My #13 is Yakuza 0.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/TdscdWVNYp4PaqZz5

My first Yakuza game (except Like a Dragon with Ichiban). This is the prequel that came out after the original Yakuza. Like Resident Evil 0, you control two protagonists. One is trying to exit the Yakuza and one is trying to get in. It's all in Japanese so really it's a visual novel with some beat-em up action on the side. This starts my quest to play through all the main series Yakuza games this year. 8/10

Yakuza 0 was my first Yakuza game and man what a journey it was. I did the same as you were doing too. Back a few years ago I started when Yakuza 0 came out and then continued with Kiwami 1 and 2 then 3-6. Took up a good couple of quarters of the year to accomplish such a feat but it was well worth it. Enjoy!

TalonJedi87 wrote:

Which game was your favorite?

That’s a tough one. I think it would have to be between Kiwami 2 and 0. They’re both neck and neck for me. If I had a gun to my head though I think I’d probably choose Kiwami 2. All because the final set of missions had me on the edge of my seat.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Haunted Hall and the Squawks portion of Animal Antics.

Haunted Hall is so cool, I love the DKC mine cart levels so much.

I beat Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl on the xbox 1

incubus421 wrote:

Animal Antics is a doozy, alright. I always struggled on Windy Well, Toxic Tower, and Klobber Karnage. Zingers can be a real nuisance, especially when you have to line up a jump or barrel shot just right.