VideoGame_Discussion

DemonAlcohol wrote:

What system?

SupremeSarna wrote:

sorry

It took a while, but I finally beat Electroplankton (originally DSiware). It started as a DS game, but they eventually split it up into parts and sold them for $2 apiece on the DSi Shop and the 3DS eShop. I bought them as the eShop closed since the DS original is pretty pricey these days.

Electroplankton is a self-proclaimed pointless game in which you experiment with music creation. You use the stylus to interact with strange-looking lifeforms called Electroplankton. These produce different sounds, and each minigame has you producing sounds in different ways--tapping them, spinning them in circles, dotting them around the screen, recording your own voice, and more. You can't save your creations, hence why the game is a little pointless... but it can be amusing to make music in the moment.

I will now rank the minigames:
1. Hanenbow - Position the leaves on the bushes with the stylus and the plankton will bounce off them, producing tones. You may know this as a weak Smash Bros. stage, and there's a reason it was chosen over the others: It's by far the most interesting, with different plant arrangements you can choose. I like tilting the leaves so they can hold up as many plankton as possible.
2. Rec-Rec - Tap one of four plankton to record a short snippet of your voice. Each plankton moves at a different speed, so you can get backing tracks in there and write your own short song.
3. Luminarrow - Four plankton that produce different tones move from arrow to arrow, and you can change their directions to make different tunes. Holding an arrow causes it to spin continuously, resulting in random results!
4. Marine Crystals - Plankton make different sounds wen you tap or drag them, and the last two you tapped switch places. Dragging your stylus all over the screen creates a ton of graceful piano music. Very pleasant.
5. Trapy - Draw lines with your stylus and the plankton will run along them, producing notes as they do. You can conduct as well as possible or just draw a jumble of lines for fun.
6. Beatnes - Five plankton made of numerous segments inhabit the screen, and tapping each chunk produces a repeating sound. They're NES sounds from Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, Ice Climber, and more! That alone boosts its score.
7. Sun-Animalcule - Tap the screen to place tiny plankton that gradually grow and make sounds, then vanish. As time passes, it goes from day to night, and the plankton change from suns into moons. This changes their sounds. Novel, but not much too it.
8. Nanocarp - Plankton hover on screen and every tap creates shockwaves, which cause the plankton to react. It's kinda fun, but more forgettable than the others.
9. Lumiloop - Spin the circular plankton at different speeds and in different directions to get them to change colors and make different frequencies. There's not much variety to speak of here.
10. Varvoice - You record a voice snippet and can then tap different plankton to distort the clip in predetermined ways. It feels pretty limiting and isn't very musical.

This was a waste of time, but a neat one. Can't say I'll play any of these again, though.

#66 - Aqua GT - 1st (23rd console +1)
Badge: 1st towards Race Drivin' (originally had Wreckfest towards but changed that to Mass Destruction)

Wanted a Dreamcast game, this was listed as shorter and it looked decent - a few hours later and it mostly held up for a PS1 game that was ported over. I played via a ROM and it looked pretty sharp and overall played well. The controls were annoying at times but it's a speedboat game so cornering required some finesse and maybe some level of understanding that I didn't fully nail down? I was pretty good with the Bronze, Silver and Gold championships of 3, 6 and 9 races each, but the final Champ tier (11 races), with the fastest boats and mostly narrower courses, was a challenge. I ended up taking the slowest boat of that last group b/c it handled better and I wanted less speed (it's a 2000 release, when rubber-banding ruled racing games, so I didn't need outright speed). There were only like 7 courses and you didn't even get to see the last 3 or so until like the Gold championship - which was lame. The 3 of the final 4 events (of the top Champ tier series) were all on the 7th unlocked course from Japan, which was just a strange choice and dumb to race that many times nearly back-to-back-to-back.
There were 2 variants to the courses - low and high tide. With high tide you had generally a wider and more forgiving body of water, but some of the tighter courses, on low tide, especially with the fastest boats, were frustrating as touching a wall would slow you a good bit and cornering didn't feel too consistent. All things considered though, most courses felt 80-90% the same on low vs high tide, that 'trick' fell really flat in terms of trying to show variety or bump the number of courses.
That said I largely enjoyed it and placed first in all championships (which was required to unlock the next one) and won 85-90% of the races. I didn't lose a race until Gold tier, but they were competitive throughout (surely rubber-banding). The music got annoying as there were only like 4 tracks. They did have day and night races, but no courses in reverse which seemed like a miss. I ended up skipping the single qualifying lap before each race if I was familiar with the course, but did a few and grabbed pole just once.

#67 - Lady Killer - 8th Mame

Yesterday I purchased the license to Launchbox finally (it is on sale) because I wanted to support them and gain access to BigBox (similar to 's Big Picture mode). While checking out BigBox I was looking at my Mame library and I had decided to import the 'mature' titles that came in the set I acquired and ended up trying this game out. It was a bit funny, but also juvenile with it's mature pixel-art content. But the main gameplay was actually kind of cool, so I ended up sticking with it and cleared all levels. Basically you play a snorkeler on a 6x8 grid of water tiles and you need to dive down through or pop-up out of all 48 tiles to reveal the image beneath and complete the level. Once a tile is flipped you can't pass through it again (you'll bang your head under water, or get a 'dive onto concrete'-like animation when above. When you flip it, it will spin for about a second and take out any of the enemies that are added to the board as the levels get more challenging. The enemies came in mainly 3 types, either just things to avoid running into (water skiers, mines, fishermen?), or people that would do melee type attacks (samurai?), or projectile spewing folks (ladies with guns, guys tossing bombs).

There were 8 sets of progressively unclothed ladies to reveal with each of the 8 having 5 phases, basically times you needed to clear the board. You could also get some power ups that would appear on a flipped tile after it stopped spinning and you'd need to grab. Power ups included flippers to make you move faster, especially under water, or row, column or cross pickups that would expose the full row/column/both of the next tile that you dove into. It got really frantic in the last level of each set and especially so in the 8th and final set. When you took out enemies by flipping the tile they were on above you, or if they were chasing you and you dove under before they reached you, they would be eliminated and early on if the board started with say 2-4 foes, eliminating some wouldn't lead them to respawning, or not immediately. However later levels they would return and swiftly as you progressed. Also later levels started to add mines that moved along rows or cols, at first above the water, but later under as well - those underwater ones were harder to see but thankfully didn't seem to respawn as much. Also b/c it was water, you couldn't stay where it was relatively safer underwater for too long as you would drown.
Additionally, I think twice in each of the 8 sets, between boards you'd get a different mini puzzle to do, that added some variety but I'm not sure what else - I won maybe 75% of them and outside of a different pointless comment from the lady, I don't know if they had any effect. All in all, it was a cool concept that really didn't benefit from the mature angle and content, especially not some of the odd stuff that I won't comment about. I looked in BigBox to see if there were other games similar, since I liked the gameplay and BigBox has a listing of such games, but I only found 1 other and it was basically just a reskinning of this one.

Steel Assault -
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Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals -
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And this is my first PC clear. Dusted off the 'ol GPD Micro PC. Why do I have to play even PC games on a "gimmick", because it's fun.

Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction -
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Switched over to component mode and sent it through the upscaler. As you can see there is just a tint of a CRT shader there. I think the image quality improves slightly. So I might upscale xbox 360 games in the future, too.

Nice. I think you’ll be passing me soon on the overall board. I’m not even finished with Act 1 of Baldur’s Gate 3 yet and am planning on playing Starfield too.

Slickriven wrote:

I doubt that a little @Bleed_DukeBlue, in the middle of next month I'm starting a 2 room remodel in my house that is going to consume about all of my time for several weeks. I'll be taking down my main gaming TV and likely be blocked from using my PC as well at least for 4+ days.
Since I knew that was coming up, I maybe pushed a little to get some games in this month, plus the arcade focus from the RTT thread played into that as well. The first year I participated in this thread was in '20 and I beat 66 games that year, so I had a goal to beat that this year and am glad I reached that already.

I closed out Arcade August by visiting an actual arcade, sticky floors and all. I went in with the humble hope that they would have Time Crisis 5 available to play, which I'd seen at Dave & Buster's but couldn't play because of the toddler in tow, and shockingly, my prayers were answered.

Number: 57
Full Title: Time Crisis 5
Platform Played: Arcade
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Arcade
Original Platforms: Arcade
Applicable Badge: Now You're Playing with Plastic (1/2)

Time Crisis 5 is every bit as over-the-top as the other games in the series from Time Crisis II onward, lumping in the "attitude era" protagonists and weapon switching from Time Crisis 4. The villains are nuts, the scenery is explosive, and the orange ninjas are every bit as frustrating as the original. The game's biggest change, however, is the addition of a second cover pedal, which lets your character move to the side to attack from a different angle. It slows down the game play, and the sequences where you have to use it in rapid succession - say, to hit a weak spot on a boss' back that keeps circling - are especially frustrating, particularly when your target ends up out of view for both cover positions.

While the rest of my co-workers circulated to try the different games and activities, most were surprised to see me camped at this one machine for what felt like 45 minutes. In the end, I finished the game and got the credits to roll... only to have the game crash to the Windows desktop. Isn't modern technology grand?

Number: 58
Full Title: The Walking Dead
Platform Played: Arcade
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Arcade
Original Platforms: Arcade
Applicable Badge: Now You're Playing with Plastic (2/2)

Not to be satisfied with my one light gun marathon, I joined my teammate inside The Walking Dead cabinet, which sports two crossbow weapons inside. Pull the trigger to shoot, and pull back on the crossbow's arm to reload. Being a zombie game, only headshots count, which resulted in a handful of enemies looking like pincushions as the two of us frantically tried to target a tiny power-up or explosive that stood behind them. The game is short, repetitive, and ends fairly abruptly, but I'll be totally honest... The crossbow headshot mechanics are really satisfying. The game must have some aim assist active, without which the precise aiming would probably disrupt the flow of the game too much, but mowing down a row of walkers one skull at a time was a blast.

Number: 59
Full Title: The Punisher
Platform Played: Arcade
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: Arcade
Original Platforms: Arcade
Applicable Badge: Pile Drivin' (already earned)

With the little bit of arcade energy I had left, I drove home and booted up The Punisher on my MiSTer. I'd been vaguely aware of this game's existence, but my interest was piqued after watching a content creator rave about the game in a video about the Capcom CPS-1. I ended up echoing the sentiment. I'm sure there's a hardcore beat 'em up fan out there who could clarify why the game doesn't have the following of Final Fight and Captain Commando, but damn if this wasn't a blast to play. The Punisher hits hard and fast, the enemies don't feel like sponges (except for those weird Terminator knock-off) enemies, and the classic Marvel license is used to good effect. And damn, I love having access to a special attack that doesn't knock off your health bar, even if it can only be used a limited number of times.

More Final Fantasy XVI. More Shining in the Darkness. More of whatever September brings on the Game of the Month front.

I'm really lacking in beaten games recently. Working on Oracle of Seasons though.

Same. Diablo IV has owned my soul for the past month but I’m almost done. On act 5 now.

Yep, keep beating stuff, everyone! 20 games would be a pretty good goal, I should think…

Beat

MGSV Ground Zeroes: Nice intro to the main game, and the extra missions are really interesting. The one where you have to provide fire support from the helicopter almost made me throw the controller though, lol. It might be short, but it has some extra juice if you try to go for everything and the plat.

MGSV The Phantom Pain: I tried to play this some years ago and abandoned it after what felt like 20 hours. It just didn't click with me. Decided to give it another chance and this time it worked. I got a story trophy after like 2 hours of playing, so those initial 20 weren't really that, lol. Some cool stuff during the missions, and a crazy plot as you would expect from Kojima.

ErickRPG wrote:

I just got Crash JP in, listed as "good" and honestly other than a crease in the spine in the manual, it's in pristine shape.

Best1989 wrote:

Which systems?

I beat south park the fractured but whole on the xbox1 also beat from dusk til casa bonita (DLC)

SupremeSarna wrote:

Ah, sorry. PS4.

August is up, folks! We've had a turbulent month, and the games just keep rolling in. Here are some stats to entertain you at 1 in the morning:
-Our top game clearer this month was @Renaissance2K with a whopping 30 games beaten! This is no doubt a result of his incredible devotion to his Game of the Month thread. Well played, sir! You bested my record this year.
-Our top badge earner, coincidentally, was also Renaissance2K. This is because those arcade games come in all different genres.
-Both @legendrko25 and Renaissance2K earned their bacon badges for 50+ clears. Congrats, guys! I finally made it to the big 100, earning our first doughnut badge. I knew Pikmin 4 would be a solid game for such an achievement.
-@Slickriven managed to wrestle the cake badge away from me. Well, he can have it! Everyone knows pie is better than cake, anyway! Hmph.

So now September beckons. Let's play video games at home while children everywhere have to go to school.

My #34 is Mafia II: Definitive Edition

https://imgbox.com/tNobNDyC

#16 Talos Principle on PC. Phenomenal puzzle game.

I beat Sonic CD on the Nintendo Switch on the 31st.

Frank wrote:

What did you think of it?

Gypsy wrote:

It wasn't bad at all, I had fun! I'm not the biggest Sonic fan, but I do enjoy the 2D side-scrollers. This felt a lot like Sonic 1-3, but maybe a bit more polished overall.

That damned pinball level was infuriating though. I was able to get through it after countless incorrect bumps causing me to repeat the same thing over and over again.

I found the bosses to be overall on the easier side, in comparison to Sonic 3 for example, but I wasn't opposed to that. Especially since this was meant to just be a quick playthrough.

I beat Blue Lightning, effectively freeing me from my limited and lousy library for another full year.
[imgt w=2048 h=1536]https://i.imgur.com/noAeA9w.jpg[/imgt]

It's a dogfighting shooter game with nine tedious, drawn-out missions to complete. I'm sure there's a lot worse on the system, but it wasn't super fun, either. It is sadly touted as one of the Lynx's best games. I preferred Warbirds last year, which is similar but played from a first-person perspective and utilizes 3D polygons.

I was going to beat Chip's Challenge, but that game apparently has 149 friggin' stages and is glitched out on my system. Sometimes the D-pad works just fine for it, other times it will make you run up and down repeatedly just by holding one direction. No thanks.

Chip's Challenge...that brings back some good memories! I got pretty far in that game, but never beat it. There are some levels that are just insanely difficult. I remember the one I got stuck on was very long and tedious, with a tight time limit.

My #35 is Mafia III: Definitive Edition

https://imgbox.com/MHKUWUx1

Managed to finish this right before Starfield is released. Going to play that next then come back for the DLC.

Just beat Jedi: Fallen Order. Combat and exploring were pretty fun and satisfying. Story was also enjoyable and kept the tone of the franchise for the most part. Weaknesses were the camera, the map, and the

Any of you agree or disagree? Also if any of you have played Jedi: Survivor let me know what you think. I’m hoping it comes to Game Pass at some point.

I also just started the Titanfall 2 campaign. Must be on a Respawn kick, ha. Let me know if it’s worth playing through.

Staraang wrote:

Were those related to Dathomir, by chance? I haven't played the game, but I've watched more than my fair share of Clone Wars, and m____ z______ did happen in one episode: Season 4's "Massacre."

What system did you beat it on?

SupremeSarna wrote:

Yes, Dathomir. Never watched Clone Wars so I guess that’s why I didn’t understand the inclusion. That makes more sense though still a bit odd to me honestly. My criticisms don’t take away from the game as a whole though. It’s still a very good game and worth a playthrough. The combat is a lot of fun. Respawn did a great job of capturing the feeling of being a powerful Jedi especially once you’ve earned a bunch of skills. The controls are pretty intuitive once you get a bit of practice in. The camera is the only thing that is lacking during combat and will hopefully improve in the sequel.


Xbox Series S.

@Staraang I rather enjoyed J:FO when I beat it last year and am waiting for Survivor to come to GP/EAplay as well.
I played a good bit of the first Titanfall which, being all online MP, is rare for me as I'm generally not into that. When TF2 dropped I bought it early on b/c I liked the first so much and I played the campaign and really enjoyed it, it had a pretty solid story. I played some MP as well, but since MP isn't my thing and I got my $$ worth from the campaign, I moved on. I was thinking about replaying the campaign recently.

Slickriven wrote:

Right on, man. My favorite FPS back in the day was COD: MW2 which was made by Zampella and West. I was bummed they left Infinity Ward and created Respawn (since it meant they would no longer be making COD games) but was curious at the time to see what they would come up with. However I fell out of gaming for a while so never really got to play the TFs. Now that I'm getting back into it I wanted to see if they were still working their magic. I also didn't bother with TF1 because of the lack of single-player campaign and no backstory to worry about.

You haven't played Star Wars: Squadrons by any chance, have you? I used to play a lot of TIE Fighter and Wing Commander as a kid so I'm curious to see a modern take on space fighters. Wish I could try it with a VR headset but unfortunately don't have one. I installed it last night but haven't played it yet.

@Staraang I think you'll appreciate the story of TF2 then as I think those 2 devs has a positive impact. I just read that the game is also experiencing a bump on Steam after a recent sale or something.

I have not tried that Squadrons game yet but think I have it from the Epic store, no VR either. I'm actually not big into Star Wars so it's not too high on my list, but my massive backlog doesn't help that either.

I'll be curious to see how you like TF2

#32

Diablo IV

8.5/10

After about 45-50 hours I’m finally watching the credits roll and man what an addictive journey. Diablo games never fail to disappoint in the hooking you in functionality for sure and if I didn’t have about 12 other games in my backlog I’d def start up again on a new class. I went Druid just to see how it fared and I enjoyed shapeshifting and using Thor like lightning and wind powers alike. I also loved the sense of wanderlust the overworld map gave you to discover all areas and do all those “!” Side quests that popped up. I wasn’t as compelled to finish every single dungeon though as there’s just so damn many of them so I just stuck to doing dungeons that suited my class towards the latter half of the game. But in regards to the story it probably has the most engaging and interesting tale to date. Lilith the Daughter of hatred is as eerie as she is terrifying and it only makes it more so as she speaks mostly in a calm, mothering like yet sinister tone. And I can definitely see this continuing on as a TV series somewhere after witnessing the epilogue. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this sequel and my only complaint would be that sometimes it’s a bit too big and dense for its own good and can overwhelm at times and not in a good way. Like I said the vast amount of dungeons do overstay their welcome towards the latter half of the game and become too similar to each other and offer not enough to warrant doing them all unless you change the world tier to a higher difficulty to pump out those rarer rewards and item drops. Other than that though it’s a groovy experience. While Diablo 3 still holds the crown for me in regards to both addictive gameplay and a nice balancing decently paced and not too overwhelmingly lengthy experience, Diablo 4 is still a very rich game in its own right that if it’s the only game you play can offer you countless hours of enjoyment and replay-ability if you wish to experience each of the 5 unique classes.

Slickriven wrote:

Just played a couple of missions of TF2 and it is INTENSE. The action is considerably more frenetic than COD. I just got through the factory mission and I can't imagine playing it if you suffered from vertigo, haha. The controls are just as good as COD and I'm especially impressed with the way they pulled off wallrunning, double jumping, etc. That had the potential to be clunky af but they did a really good job with it. Fighting with Titans is awesome - very immersive. I felt the mercenary bosses were a bit easy but maybe that's because I'm only playing on normal difficulty. Will comment as the story unfolds more.

I beat Dead Rising 2 Off The Record for the xbox1

My #36 is Mafia III: All DLC

Took me about 8 hours to get through the 3 DLC. In addition to playing Starfield. And I just picked up Baldur's gate 3 so I don't plan on playing anything else for awhile.

@DemonAlcohol How did you like Mafia III compared with the previous two? I really like the first two but never played the third.

Updated! That didn't take long. I want you guys to drown me in beaten games this week!

I've been really busy preparing for a significant two room remodel and some other stuff. That remodel starts for me later this week. I have been doing 1 mission in TimeSplitters 2 each play session, which has been less than once/day. I'm hopefully going to get that one finished before I start since I'm going to be taking down most of my gaming and PC setups to prevent possibly damaging that stuff, or sucking too much dust into those electronics.

I might bring my PS2 back down to a smaller TV in my basement and try to get some progress on Jak2, but I'm not sure. The faster I get through the remodel work, the sooner I can get back to normal life, but I don't think I'll be working sunrise to sunset everyday on it (I'm taking 2 weeks of vacation). So I think I'm going to squeeze in a little gaming but exactly where/how isn't clear. I should have bought that Ayn Odin so I could use it. But with the Odin 2 announced maybe I'll get that eventually.

@Slickriven Then I guess I'll be taking that cake back when I get around to playing my Virtual Boy. In all seriousness, I hope your rennovation goes well. And I hope you'll be able to assist with that thing when you have the freedom.

Some anonymous user randomly set me a few weeks of sub time since mine expired days ago. Thanks, anon! It makes editing this thread a little easier without all the pop-up ads.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Thanks dude! Can you please move Diablo IV as beaten for me under PS5? It’s currently showing under XBSX.

@TalonJedi87 Gotcha covered.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Ask and ye shall receive! I just beat Titanfall 2. Superb campaign even if it's a bit short. I found this game more fun than the Modern Warfare II (2022) campaign. Respawn did not disappoint. I think they could've added a couple more missions. Final boss was a bit more difficult than the previous ones though not super difficult. I played on regular difficulty but this should've been a bit harder for regular. Extremely creative level design and big Titan battles are an absolute blast. I find it baffling that this series has gone this long without a sequel. I haven't played multiplayer but the campaign can hang with any top-tier FPS.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Thanks man!

Staraang wrote:

The first two were more story driven with set missions within an open world where your limited to doing the task at hand. Mafia III is more similar to GTA where it's a sandbox world where you drive from mission to mission. The graphics and combat are better. It takes place in the 60's which is much different decade than the original two. It's also nearly triple the length of either of the first two. As a fan of GTA and Saint's Row games I enjoyed it.

It's also $8 at Eneba so it might be worth a shot.

@Staraang What system?

@Staraang sadly Apex Legends effectively ended the chance of TF3, at least any time soon, from what I've read. If you've ever tried AL, the parkour like movement from TF is fairly evident, though other games have added that as well.
AL's success and continued income stream has keep that team busy and the publisher happy with the $$, but who knows, maybe someday.

DemonAlcohol wrote:

Hmm, I’m skeptical I’d like that but I’d give it a try. I find that the longer games are the less likely I am to finish them. At least usually unless I really enjoy the game.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Xbox Series S. Sorry, I need to remember to mention which system.


Slickriven wrote:

That’s a shame. Can’t blame them if focusing resources on AL is keeping the lights on though. I feel like TF has so much potential if it was fleshed out into a big, ambitious universe. I really think it could compete with Halo or COD. I feel like the time is ripe too. Halo and COD have been around forever; I don’t really play Halo but COD for sure feels like it’s getting stale.
TF also looks like it could easily be branched out into a strategy RPG like Front Mission. Or a huge action RPG like Starfield. Seems like there are so many possibilities.

SoaB, TimeSplitters 2's final mission (I think) against the robots sucks... especially with the terrible aiming mechanic. I've been largely able to compensate for that with moving and around and the semi-auto-aim feature, but I just tried that level for the 4th time, and thanks to very far apart checkpoints, I really didn't like it. I might consider restarting the entire level since health is a premium that I lost too much of, possibly early on.

I'm not sure I'll be finishing this one before the remodel stuff starts, which stinks b/c I made it to, I believe, the final boss with zero shield left and maybe 20% health and not too surprisingly died. But the dang checkpoint is a good 15+ mins back and getting through a lot of the worst enemies of the whole game, just to get back there. The trashcan like robots can sod off, terrible bullet sponges if you don't hit them in the head, but the again terrible aiming doesn't help here... at all.
Maybe a fresh start with it after a few weeks will help, bah.

I beat Clive 'N Wrench on Switch. Honestly a pretty fun game, despite how janky it is. Lots of technical issues for sure. My favorite was during the ancient China stage when my character randomly learned how to fly. He would just keep floating upwards when I jumped and not come down until I let go of the button. It was actually a pretty fun glitch and helped me find some collectibles I was missing, lol.

I beat Tabé-O-Ja . Thanks to @Gypsy for the trade!
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F589G8sagAADpuT?format...[/imgt]
This quirky game was an import, as you can likely tell from the title. It makes use of a variety of random knick-knacks and peripherals that could be purchased through blindbags, which may have contributed to its Japanese exclusivity. So I couldn't understand the story on offer, sadly.

From what I gathered, three teens who work in a restaurant district unlock their food personas, essentially, then team up with them to fight evil. There's a band of food-themed villains who have to pacify a demon baby, and (SPOILER ALERT!) he eats them to transform into some grand villain. There's a tournament arc where each teen must triumph over the challenger, then give an impassioned speech about what cooking has meant to them. It was the joy of serving others/reaching culinary perfection/discipline of being a great chef that brought them victory. There are food monks, a pig who looks like a harlequin, a guy with insane eyebrows, a dude who looks like Fire Emblem's Corrin, and much more! I wish I could've gotten more out of the plot, but that's the language barrier for you.

The gameplay is interesting. You start by unlocking food monsters by wining them in-game or scanning a plastic book with the Joy-Con's IR Camera. This makes you play a motion-controlled minigame, and when it's done, you've got a playable creature for your team. It could be a hamburger cat, a rice & curry dog, a pizza lizard, or something else. Each creature has a different type that plays into your strategy. Once you've assembled your team of six, you engage in a battle. You have five minutes to deploy creatures strategically and destroy at least one of the foe's defensive pillars, then obliterate the enemy kitchen, all while defending your own side.

You have a maximum of ten energy slots on your dashboard, and each monster you make costs some amount of it. Energy gradually fills over time, so you can wait to make a strong monster later or settle for some weaker ones now. When you select your recipe, you play a motion-controlled minigame to quickly cook up the creature--shake the Joy-Con to grate cheese onto a pizza, tilt it to pour soy sauce into a bowl, mash a button to top a cake with frosting, etc. Take too long and the resulting creature will be weaker or an embarrassing mutant. Each unit you make can be deployed onto the field, but you can only deploy it on a space that isn't occupied by an enemy or structure.

Three tables with dome plate covers block the center of the arena. You should destroy them as quickly as possible, because doing so will let you deploy units beyond them and even reward you with some kind of buff. Enemies will attempt to destroy them to get the same perks, so you'd better act fast! From there, you have to destroy one of the two pillars shielding the enemy kitchen. These automatically fire on your troops like turrets, and they take damage differently than monsters do. Send your structure attackers to deal with the turrets/kitchen, and send your crowd control monsters to fight off enemies that interrupt you. If combatants are causing too much mayhem, you can soften them directly by using a limited number of chili pepper fireballs, raining down pain on a few targets. Don't rely on thart move too much, since it's limited in quantity and has cooldown time.

You fill a flame gauge by using special moves, losing a lot of units, or getting powerups. Once filled, it becomes much easier/quicker to prepare a bunch of troops. This adds another novel wrinkle to the strategy: Do you hold off on tougher-to-make units until the flame rush starts? Or would it be better to release them now and accept the risk that they'll come out worse? Judge that for yourself based on the enemies currently roaming the field, their positions, and the remaining time.

You can also power up your creatures with equipment and bonus EXP. This feature was a lifesaver toward the end of the game. The game expected me to start using the steak cowboy they just gave me, which was a level 1 creature surrounded by level 50 foes. That particular moment is strange because even with the bonus EXP system, it would take an insane amount of grinding to beat those lategame challenges without the steak cowboy... but add him to your team and he annihilates all incoming foes, making each challenge a pushover more or less. Maybe you'll lose if you're not playing intelligently or you slack off mid-fight, but he kinda snaps the game in half.

Now for the game's faults. The game gets a little repetitive. There aren't any other battle types beyond what I described, so you play these same fights against the same cooks over and over until you see the credits. The competition's EXP levels also escalate too quickly, so I had to go back and replay stages on a slightly higher difficulty to get a matching level of EXP to keep up. I beat every stage in the Story Mode and Side Story, on both normal and hard difficulties, and I think the game wants you to do that in order to stand a legit chance. This can get tedious.

Further, there were moments where the game couldn't handle all the on-screen movement and just gave up. The timer stopped, all troops just stood there with their idle animations, the music kept playing, and all control was wrenched away from me. Sometimes it would get back to normal, other times it would stick, forcing me to close the software from the Switch menu. In fact, it happened to freeze up on the one match I showed a friend. Kinda embarrassing.

[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F5YpB-6bkAATm-_?format...[/imgt]
Last but not least, the presentation. Almost every character, whether human or food, has an inspired design. The burger cat and his catgirl chef were my favorites, and the ones I'd go for at every opportunity. The anime portraits are high quality and a joy to look at. The anime cutscenes are even better, with snappy animation and bright colors. The in-game 3D models are professional but could look a little nicer; they come off plasticky sometimes. Particle effects are extremely heavy, possibly as a way to mask them. But I think the overall aesthetic and world design make up for any visual shortcoming.

Thanks for the game, Gypsy! It may have gone on a little long for its own good--35 hours--but it was an awesome experience. I'd gladly buy a sequel if Bandai released one and you then found it for a decent price. And the big cardboard box does indeed look good on my shelf.

Sounds like about what I thought. A much more dressed up Ore No Ryouri with a story mode. Which, is awesome for sure. Glad you enjoyed it.

My #38 is Starfield.

https://imgbox.com/QeHYWiHD

Another Bethesda game with all it's charm. They took Fallout 4 and added spaceships. The characters are still stiff as hell and do funny things unintentionally. The gunplay isn't bad but the AI is terrible, at least on Hard difficulty. Very hard turns all enemies into bullet sponges. I did about 6 full faction quest lines and got the rewards for them before buying the best and most expensive ship in the game. Ship combat was a joke after that. Finished up the main quest and am now in new game+. I've only explored about 5% of the planets and made it to level 34. I'll probably still pick it up for a couple hours every once in awhile. 8/10

I beat LocoRoco 2 , and Imgur has done everything in its power to prevent me from posting my picture of it. This is the best I can do for now:
[imgt w=435 h=326]https://i.imgur.com/c6yaLIj_d.jpg?maxwidth=520&sha...[/imgt]

It's a real step up from LocoRoco 1. More minigames, more music, a worthwhile Loco House that you expand and decorate with in-stage materials, postcards to fill in with stamps, and more. Many stages i=have mechanics that make them memorable, like an afro you take control of and then use to rampage through the stage. There are boss fights and a shmup section, too. I liked it!

#33

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords via

9/10

It has been far too long since I replayed this one. It’s about my 3rd time finishing this wonderful game and while not as perfect as the first, it’s still a blast to play. The gameplay is dated sure but the experience is all there from the engaging dialogue options and choices to the depth of lore to the amount of memorable characters and events that transpire. My only complaint about the sequel, that remains from years past, is that the whole Kreia story felt not as fleshed out as I would have like for my tastes. But alas other than that if anyone out there has yet to experience this damn near masterpiece I beg of you to play it for you will find and encounter a smart, deep role playing adventure that doesn’t pull it’s punches in the gameplay and story department that’s for sure. Choose to become either a Jedi master of the light or Dark Sith bringer of darkness. The choice is yours and yours alone.

Never got around to finishing the first KOTOR. Really need to do that sometime.

Please do. It’s my all time favorite video game and Star Wars game. Such a great story.

F-Zero 99

@SupremeSarna, weren't you the one counting your battle royal victories as game clears? If so, I can count this one. I've won 6 individual races (5 as Wild Goose and once as Golden Fox) and got a victory in the 5 race Grand Prix. Fun game!

BloodPuppetX wrote:

Correct. One victory in a 99 game constitutes a clear. The best I've done is 2nd place (though I'd have gotten 1st a different time if that racer hadn't crashed me out in the home stretch).

SupremeSarna wrote:

I messed myself up once by forgetting to boost at the very end when there were no cars in front of me. I was playing it safe because my energy was low, but that didn't matter since I wouldn't have hit anything. That allowed two other racers to fly in from out of nowhere to pass me right before the finish line. Would have been my first victory with the Stingray if I had just pushed A!

And yeah, all but one of my 1st place finishes were against 98 other players. The other was the 4th race in a previous GP. The field is narrowed down to 40 players max at that point.

Oh and don't forget to use your tickets for the Prix events. As I mentioned in the Switch thread, I won the Knight League without grabbing any 1st place wins. I had two 3rds, 7th on Silence and two other times just outside the top 10 I believe. That was enough points to win the Grand Prix, which was more satisfying than any of the individual wins.

Got a win with the Stingray now on Big Blue. (Most of my wins have been on this track.) Just need one with the Falcon now! I've gotten 2nd place with it, but that's the car I struggle with most.

A few races after I post that and I've now won with the Blue Falcon! Lol, I'll stop talking about F-Zero 99 in this thread now. Most fun I've had with a racing game in a while.

OP Updated! Hit me with some clears, everybody.

I did it! I beat F-ZERO 99 !
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6W_f8paEAABfrm?format...[/imgt]
So there I am, holding first for multiple laps. As I cross the checkers to begin the final lap, I see more and more explosive machines dropping down before me. I weave through them gracefully, heal up in the pit, and then collide with one! Smoke pours off my Wild Goose. More explosive vehicles descend in front of me, and I have no idea where the second-place racer is. I hit a boost pad and rush down the track toward the finish line. And in spite of my initial doubts, I win! And on Death Wind I, no less.

Footage: https://twitter.com/i/status/1703983591938773364

Nice. I can't stay in first more than 10 seconds, so I just have to steal wins at the end lol.

BloodPuppetX wrote:
I'm usually the same way, minus the winning part. I'm impressed with this achievement, needless to say.

Turns out I can stay in 1st place - on Death Wind with Golden Fox, at least in team battles. You only have to worry about lucky bumpers in that mode and not the gray and red cars. Just keep running over the boost pads and try not to hit anything, while using your own boost when necessary. Got two more wins there and another on Sand Ocean in regular mode, also with Golden Fox. You have to stay out in front with Fox. Once you make a mistake, man it gets hectic lol.

BloodPuppetX wrote:

I respect your dedication to F-ZERO 99, BloodPuppetX. It’ll definitely appear on your qu—uh, I mean, never mind.

My #38 is Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered.

https://imgbox.com/zJ7W4cie

Playing through these in anticipation for the new one in October.

I beat Starfield over the weekend on Series X.

I enjoyed it and will be casually playing NG+. I wasn't expecting a 10/10 so I was pleasantly surprised that I liked most of the game. Space combat and the maps were dookie, but otherwise great.

If you like Bethesda's style of RPG, I recommend it.

Continuing to enjoy my

Criminal Girls: Invite Only -
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Virtua Tennis World Tour -
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Rayman Origins -
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#34
Persona 4 Golden

It took me about 60 hours to finally watch the credits roll, but it was such a great journey to get there. Persona games really rarely disappoint and while it isn’t as robust to me as Persona 5, it’s still almost as good with the usual rag tag group of memorable characters with the focus on immense character development through establishing and maxing out your social links and bonds with them. Also, mixing and fusing various persona spiritual beings I thought was kinda fun and unique too. The only thing that really annoyed me was the Teddie character. I just wanted him to go away most of the time. Between that and I wish the turn based combat was a little more polished like P5 was but alas this game is 12 years old at this stage and a tad dated on that front. I got the secret ending doing after completing all of the main and bonus dungeons, which were pretty cool and one or two dungeons offered some variety in tackling certain areas and boss fights such as finding keys located on different floors to progress or using different battle tactics by digging into your attained items to topple bosses that force you to think outside the normal status quo combat. I’m also looking forward to playing Persona 3 Reload when it drops early next year too since I never played the original.

I beat Pikmin 1 . No picture, you'll just have to trust me. I beat the same game (Wii version) twice in January, so it's not my first rodeo.

My #39 is Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered: All DLC

https://imgbox.com/BV453Hd2

I beat nickelodeon all star brawl on the xbox1 (beating this and super smash bros melee gets me the cross the streams badge)

#35

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory via

8.5/10

So I’ve been on a nostalgic kick lately, polishing off some older games in my digital library, and I came across Chaos Theory in my Xbox library and I never managed to finish it back in 2005 for some reason but I’m glad I got around to it 18 years later. Some parts were a little rough around the edges and dated, sure but the old school stealth like gameplay remains constantly strong throughout. Minus some uneven gameplay pacing in the last couple of missions, where the flip the switch from stealth to full blown action that leaves you somewhat unprepared and being a heavily focused stealth game a full on assault is not recommended with some of the more wonky aiming and weapon controls, the game was highly immersive as you strategically plotted on how to coordinate your cunning stealth patterns to navigate each level. Most missions were pretty linear and that’s just fine by me with today’s sandbox open world standard. It was quite rejuvenating to play an older title where there was just a straight line path for the most part from a point A to B to C and D. Also bless Michael Ironside for doing such a great job voicing Sam Fisher. He brought such a dry, menacing tone with black humor to the role. I lived for his interrogations of enemies as you grabbed them and put that knife to their throats. And even though the game gives you a decent amount of weapons and gadgets to play with, from silenced pistols and assault rifles to sticky cameras and shockers and stun grenades mostly I just had a blast sneaking around grabbing fools, questioning them and making them go night night. Overall it was a great game and probably one of the best Splinter Cell titles to date minus some unsteady difficulty spikes here and there but thank the maker for a quick save option. A save scummer I became by the 2nd to last mission and have no shame in using it as some of the level design in those last couple of missions were a bit questionable and left a bit to be desired.

OP updated. Hat's off to legendrko25 for earning out 100th total badge this year! Well done, dude!

My #40 is Resident Evil 4 Remake: Separate Ways DLC

https://imgbox.com/WNy3Tsdk

Mixed feelings on this one. It was free in the OG RE4 but it's only $10 now instead of $30 like cyberpunk. A lot of it is just revisiting places you've seen before in the main game. Took me 7 hours on hardcore.

Man, haven't beat anything 6-7 weeks. Here it is:

#18 - Pokemon Scarlet
Took 77 hours, completed 355/400 of the Pokedex. Final team was Mew, Tyranitar, Hydreigon, Gholdengo, Volcarona, and Dragonite.
I've had my fill of Pokemon catching. Hoping to beat FFXIV soon, but it's been a slog. It's just not very captivating...

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