VideoGame_Discussion

To those returning, welcome back! This year will go like last year, but there are a couple tweaks. For one, a few badges have been altered to be a bit more forgiving (looking at you, Days Gone By). I also added a badge for delisted games, since digital stores are disappearing left and right these days.

To those who have not returned yet, we're happy to have you. Just reach out with a console list and I'll do the rest. If you see an error in the OP, please speak up! It's always rocky in January, so I may need to work out a few kinks.

Let the games begin!

Can I join? I have a PS5 with access to PS4 games, a Series X with its’ backward compatible stuff, and a GBA.

BucketofJustice wrote:
Welcome aboard! Remember to read the rules and ask if you have any questions.

Hi @SupremeSarna! Could you please remove Stadia (since it’s dead now) from my console list and add Anbernic 35xx, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Steam Deck? Thanks!

Also, how do we go about finding games for the Delisted badge? I have a big collection, but, so far, I've only been able to come up with two games that I bought before they were digitally delisted and which don't have physical copies that you can buy second-hand. Are a lot of the games for this badge available via emulation or something?

#1 down: Resident Evil: Village on PSVR2. I would like to count this toward the Raccoon City badge. I just finished this up, and it’s easily the best VR experience I’ve ever had. It’s just a phenomenal game all around.

#1 TMNT via Cowabunga Collection

Thank goodness for rewind functionality and save states or else I would’ve tossed this one in the trash like I did when I was 5 years old haha. It’s a very tough old school game with constant annoyances such as respawning enemies if you happen to back step then go forward again, inconsistent platforming and knock backs when you get hit. But I oddly enjoyed my few hours trekking thru this game with the quality of life improvements like rewinding up to 10 seconds and save states. Plus the music was pretty catchy and it was cool playing as each ninja turtle although Leo and Donny are by far the best of the 4 since their weapons have severely long range and that is most needed in this game to ease the brutal difficulty it ensues. The boss fights were somewhat annoying in the latter half of the game with the exception of Shredder who can be cheesed with Donny’s staff. Overall it was a classic tough as nails old school action platformer and if anyone hasn’t finished it in the last 34 years thanks to its difficulty the Cowabunga collection can make it possible thankfully.

Thought I'd be the first one to clear, but a couple people beat me. Oh well. So I'm starting out the year trying to beat some favorites for various old systems. I mean games I already have roms for all ready to play on my portables. But was "saving them". No longer! Gonna play some of my old favs! Maybe even a few for the first time! System is not yet on my list since I am using my retroid.

#1 - Dynamite Cop -

This is one of the best 3d at home arcade conversions of a beat em up game. Just so silly and over the top. You can whack people with large tuna, shake pepper in their face, throw eggs, lol. Finding funny stuff to attack with is part of the fun.

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Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:


Have you tried RE4 in VR? I've seen people from both sides saying one is better than the other, kinda making it difficult for me to decide which one I should play first.

I haven’t yet, but I plan to this year. I’ve heard RE4 is less immersive (all cut scenes are flat, and some things are less interactive), but the gunplay is better. If it makes any difference, Village is pretty quick. It only took me about 8 hours to beat in VR without rushing (although I played it before flat).

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

Can do! As for your second question, yes, emulation is ideal for that badge. It’s stunning how many lost games have been preserved via emulation.

Im in for 2024 same console list

Thanks!

SupremeSarna wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:


Damn, one of my biggest pet peeves with VR games is when cutscenes are flat. I remember buying DOOM 3 VR on PSVR1 day one when it released and being excited to play it, but once I read the cutscenes were flat I suddenly was less interested (still to this day haven't played it yet). tbh I don't know why it bothers me so much, and I know it was a flat game to begin with so it would probably take a lot of work to redo all the cutscenes in 360°. I really hope they're not flat in the VR remake of Bulletstorm that releases later this month.

Some of the cutscenes are flat in Village too, but many aren’t.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Atari 2600
Atari 5200
NES
SNES
N64
NGC
Wii
WiiU
Switch
Gameboy
GBA
Master Sytem
Genesis
Sega CD
32X
Saturn
Dreamcast
Nomad
PS1
PS2
PS3
PS4
PSVR
PSP
PSVita
Xbox
Xbox 360
Xbox One
PC
MAME
Oculus

I'm in the last few hours of Aliens: Dark Descent. It's very good.

Can you put me on this years as well? Same systems as last year?

Thanks for doing this!

#2 down: Bust-a-Move on the Anbernic 35xx. This is the North American version of the classic arcade game Puzzle Bobble. I would like to count it towards the Quarter Muncher badge. There are 100 levels, some of which are really easy and others of which leave little room for error. Weirdly, I struggled with a couple of the levels in the upper 90s but found the final level really easy.

It doesn't have it's own icon still because Bill hates VR with a passion (allegedly), but I just got my PSVR2 today, so add that to my list.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Gotcha covered!

Mighty Goose for Switch is my first clear of 2024. Very short, but fun, Contra-like game.

I suppose this should count as my first clear of '24
Asura's Wrath DLC for the

I beat and certainly enjoyed this game last year enough to buy the full slate of DLC episodes and played 1 last year but got to the rest tonight and overall the 4 extra chapters were enjoyable and added a decent amount of content (there were 18 chapters in the main game, so this added basically 22% more). I still sort of stink at the combat here and that was evident in the next to last episode/chapter but slightly less so in the final episode which I did better at. Game is still crazy, but the story line that continued into the DLC really was the true ending and it felt like it properly wrapped things up.
Since this is DLC, I won't bother claiming for any badges. I do think I'm done with the game and won't replay any episodes to improve my ratings. Some episodes I did pretty decent, but a few too many I did poorly at, eh oh well.

@sailorneorune You're in! Is there any chance @benstylus will be rejoining this year? We're always happy to have you both.

#2 Mario Party 2 -

Definitely my favorite Mario Party. Probably because this was the one that I grew up on, playing against my best friend hundreds of times. So I have the most familiarity with it. I genuinely like the mini games in this the most. And one thing I enjoyed as a solo player that you could unlock the mini games as you played. Sort of a nice light RPG element, a reward system so to speak. Earning coins that you could spend to outright buy the mini games you just haven't had the luck to "land on" yet.

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@SupremeSarna Please add Octopath Traveler 2 to my list. Just fully wrapped up all the odds and ends today. Actually beat the final boss and the crazy optional boss awhile ago but had some side quests and stuff not finished. And like 3 areas I had to find for that particular trophy (finding all areas).

Gypsy wrote:

Which system?

@Yoshi You're in!

Can y'all believe I haven't beaten a game yet? I'm close, though.

#3 Twisted! -

This is one game that really clicked with me. If you could ask me for one game that summed up my love for the 3DO, it would be this game. Really summed up the mid to end of 90s PS1, 3DO, Saturn era of crazy FMV games. This was really corny, but it's actually good. It's a fun roll and move, race to the end game. With picture and sound puzzles, and lots of funny reactions from the contensant and hosts, mixed with old footage.

My favorite contenstant reaction, and my favorite guy to play as.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUqb0nNONds

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I think I am down to do this again.

I have:

PS5
PS4
Switch
PC

#2 - TMNT: The Manhattan Project via

The next game in my Cowabunga Collection trek thru finds me at the hands of I want to say a poor man’s TMNT Turtles in Time or The Arcade TMNT because the quality was definitely lacking even though it was playable for the most part. The enhancements were nice though to remove sprite flicker and grant infinite continues. It also came out in 1992 I see right after the Secret of the Ooze movie came out so it was piggybacking off of that having Tokka, Razar and Super Shredder in it alongside some comic book characters such as Krang. Overall while a bit bland I still found some enjoyment with it. Its not my go-to TMNT beat em up entry that’s for sure but it’s worth a peek for a playthrough and may be more fun in coop as most TMNT games are.

Finn wrote:

Welcome back!

Thanks.

I beat my first game of 2024: Shantae (originally GBC, enhanced with GBA tech).
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDBdcN3aAAAIUxl?format...[/imgt]
It's a charming 2D platformer with a Simon's Quest-esque world map. It oozes personality and is full of cute character interactions. You get different transformations to further exploration, especially in the fun dungeons--Zelda's got nothing on these labyrinths. The music is decent, too. In true WayForward fashion, the sprite work and animations are excellent, and the women are certainly... drawn in a remarkable way. This has definitely placed on my GB/GBC top ten list.

If I have any gripes about it, you always start a life with three hearts regardless of your max HP. Hitboxes can be a little wonky, and your hair attack is very limited range--it's very easy to take hits when fighting. The corridors are extremely long, so when you combine those two things, you're likely to die just moving from one end of the room to the other. I wish the expensive fighter's gear you buy was more useful, but the attacks it offers are situational and have poor hitboxes. It would also be nice to have a map in dungeons, too.

So it's a great game with room to grow. Here's hoping Risky Revolution releases soon--it's chronologically the second game in series, so it'd be nice to play that next.

Game #1 of 2024
The Dark Pictures - Switchback VR on PSVR2

I beat my high score on Pacman and Dig Dug both on xbox1 (beating both gets me the quarter muncher badge)

#4 Bad News Baseball -

Definitely one of my favorite baseball games. Up there with Major League Baseball for and MLB Power Pros 2008 . Very fun arcade style baseball game. I generally don't like the realistic stuff, because I can never quite get good enough of a feel of hitting. But this game just works for me. Once the pitcher's fast ball wears down after a couple of innings it's pretty easy to rack up hits!

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#3 TMNT: Fall of The Foot Clan via Cowabunga Collection

It doesn't get much more simple than this. 5 stages of simple side scrolling coupled with lite platforming that felt very stiff at times but granted this game came out over 30 years ago when the Game Boy was first created, with hack and slashing, one punching enemies to death with a boss at the end of each stage. The game literally took me a little over 1 hour to finish all 5 stages. It was also a treat to have a TMNT game that wasn't too difficult for a change. I guess after the NES TMNT game, everything feels easy though!

I beat Warbirds , so now I can put the Lynx away for another year.
[imgt w=2048 h=1536]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDIOr_jXYAAyl7I?format...[/imgt]
It's the best game I own for the Lynx, which is a darn shame. I swear this dogfight simulator doesn't work right. Sometimes pressing up or down moves you in its respective direction, other times they both move you upward. When you respawn, you can fly upward for a few seconds before the game abruptly makes you nosedive. So you end up waiting 30 seconds for the enemy fighters to fly down to your level, leaving you vulnerable to their assault. The fighters also love crashing into you if they're low on health. It's very irritating.

At least the only song in the game is catchy. That's a silver lining.

Number 1 TMNT Shredder’s Revenge PS5

OP updated. Well done, @legendrko25 , for getting the first badge of the year!

#4 Dead Island 2

Man I adored this game way more than I thought I was going to. It’s easily the best zombie FPS/brawler I’ve played in years. Probably since the first Dead Island over a decade ago. If completely blows the likes of Dying Light out of the water too in regards to quality within not only the fluidity in gameplay mechanics but the visuals as well. I’m not sure what graphics engine Dead Island 2 uses, but it’s very pretty looking. And I almost experienced no frame dips at all as it ran in 60fps overall. The story was pretty entertaining to boot as was the dialogue and acting commentary from not only other characters but the character you choose too. I picked the Irish goth chick Dani and she was a pip and as sarcastic as they come which was gnarly. The weapon customization was very accessible and addictive to undertake as well. As you level up your character you’re constantly finding new weapons of various qualities from common to superior and you’re able to add elemental mods from Lightning to Fire to even corrosive damage. Some zombies have weaknesses and immunities to certain elemental types like firefighter zombies are immune to fire but weak to water, etc. I also loved messing around with environmental hazards too. Pour or toss a can of water on a live wire cable and watch a pack of zombies get fried and so on and so forth. And in regards to boss fights, while there was some stronger enemies they paraded as bosses that’s really the only area I felt that could have been improved upon. Even the final boss fight was a little bit weak. And if anyone is wondering if this is a sandbox like game, rest assured because it is not. There are open zones you can explore and fast travel maps to connect and transport you around between each zones but no objective was further than a couple of hundred meters within each mapped zone. And there’s no new game plus mode which I felt it could have benefited from too. Overall I loved my time with this one and I may go back to mop up any remaining side quests and such and I can highly recommend this zombie title over the Dying Light series without hesitation by far.

2nd of the month and year, 1st
The Last Case of Benedict Fox
Counting towards the Metroidvania badge or the puzzle one - depending on what I beat later in the year it could be either.

Gave this a review yesterday in the 'recent titles' thread and then a slightly lower score in the 'Last game beat' thread - have a read of either of those if you care, but the game was overall enjoyable.

#3 down: Assassin's Creed: Mirage on PS5. I'd like to count this toward the Hyrulian Hero badge. This was pretty decent. Compared to the last AC game I played (Origins), this is much more like the OG AC games (e.g., emphasis on stealth and assassinations rather than hack n' slash gameplay/RPG elements). The story was just OK, but the ending was somewhat interesting, and the setting was cool. I still don't love how these games handle platforming and climbing (which feel almost like you're on rails at times), but, otherwise, the controls were OK. The graphics are pretty decent, and the voice acting was good. This got a 76 on Metacritic, and I think that makes sense.

Thanks for the first update Surpeme Sarna! Continuing on my variety goal this early part of the year. Beat my first GBA game.

#5 Super Dodgeball Advance -

moving on from my beautiful famicom style game boy micro (sniff). I knew there was a GBA and DS Dodgeball game. And I remember not liking one, like I remember the movement being very slow! I think the DS dodgeball must have been the slow one, because this one was actually pretty good. Played through the championship and became #1. It's a great game. And if I still had a physical GBA I'd probably seek to own it. But I moved on from GBA, considering how hard it would be to get pristine games still with the plastic around every one of them. Unless I wanted to pay 2-4 times the value on every single game to buy them sealed just to open them. Nah ah. No thanks.

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I just finished Aliens: Dark Descent on . Great experience overall. 8.5. I'm definitely hoping they release a sequel and tweak it a little more. It was atmospheric, intense, and definitely difficult. I may new game plus this one.

#5 TMNT II: Radical Rescue via

This Game Boy Ninja Turtles sequel had a slight graphical sprite remodel than the first game that made it look less stiff. It also played a little more fluently too but was still limited by the hardware of its time and relied on the same simplistic punch kick and jump punch and kick offensive style. The bosses were pretty much recycling the last game’s bosses with an inclusion of some weird army looking dude that shot some type of bullets at you that you had to fight a couple of times. It also felt a bit longer than the last Game Boy entry, adding an extra stage but I still managed to finish it within under 2 hours. Next stop, Radical Rescue, the last installment of the Ninja Turtle games on Game Boy.

I beat Gunman Clive 2 .
[imgt w=2048 h=1536]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDWbVpoW8AA1aT_?format...[/imgt]
This one's a bit harder than the original. I admire the things it added, like Chieftain Bob, but I preferred the challenge of GC1. Still a good game, though.

First clear of the year on 1/8

#1 Close to the Sun
Recently got a new PC and it came with a free subscription to GamePass for PC. This was recently added to it and I knew I wanted to play it. Come to find out I had already picked it up on Steam at some point, oh well.
Took about 7 hours to play through it with 100% collectibles. It does a good job of nailing the Bioshock steampunk vibe. It is advertised as a horror game, and it's fairly creepy at first. It feels a bit more like a point and click adventure by the end though.

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and right behind my first clear was

#2 Braveland Wizard
The third and final game I needed to beat of the short/charming Braveland strat/rpg series (I played them out of order). This one might be the shortest as it took less than 4 and a half hours to beat.

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3 down, 1st on
Yono and the Celestial Elephants
Can I count this towards Girl Power - its 100% aimed a young audience

A personal goal of mine is to complete another Alpha set this year with a full 27 games (also have numbers/symbols) and then I want to get another set after combining some of the rarer letters together, but that's the main reason I decided to play this as I need a Y - Q, Y and Z are pretty much the lowest represented letters I have. This was free via Amazon games and for a kids focused game it had an oddly adult like story to a game where you play as a once in a thousand years elephant that mainly solves simple puzzles but also slams into foes to defeat them and fetches crap AND is the savior the the kingdom. The story was dumb but it was only in 4-5 hours and that was enough. Oh well, Y is done, and I'm nearly done with a Z title as well.

4 down, 1st on
Zen: Intergalactic Ninja

I beat the NES version of this game last year and don't recall seeing this GB version, so when I spotted it in LaunchBox library I decided to give it a go to see how it was different. Well it's a side-scroller vs. the other had 2 or 3 modes and 1 was sort of isometric. Game wasn't too bad and it had 4 themed stages plus the final boss stage, with only like 3-4 different enemy types but eh. After each of the 4 stage bosses there were some save the planet type things like the oil-slicked seagulls or knocking cans into a recycling bin. I was good at 3/4, the 4th that stunk was like a duck hunt with the d-pad and that was bad.
I don't think I really could/should claim this for You're Winner even though it wasn't great, but it wasn't that horrible either, really, especially considering the platform and lack of power of the system - I did get a few spots with pretty bad slow-down, even though I emulated it.

This is my 360th game since I started counting them shortly before joining this thread in '20 - crazy to think I beat that many... with a few duplicated across different years, still over 345-350 completely unique games beat in around 4 years+

#6 - TMNT The Arcade Game via Cowabunga Collection

Now this one takes me back to when I was 5 years old at my birthday party in an arcade and spent a good $20 in my mother's quarters to plow thru this game in a few hours. Ah, those were the days. It hasn't aged too bad also. Animations were fluid. The tunes were still catchy. Those one liners were as cheesy as ever. And the last set of boss fights, Krang and those duo Shredders were such a pain in the butt. You can tell now all grown up those fights were clearly made to drain your funds too as every time you knocked off Shredder's helmet on one of the Shredder's and he turned red, a couple of seconds later he respawned with his helmet back on. Only after about 5 rounds of this did the 2 Shredder's finally fuse into one and then he could be toppled. Overall though, this was a nice trip down memory lane and shall continue next with possibly my all time favorite TMNT game, Turtles in Time.

Game #2 of 2024
LEGO 2K Drive on

I would like this to count towards Race Drivin' badge.
The first game I cleared is quite literally an on-rails shooter, so it'd count towards Destroy the Core.

I'm a bit out of the loop. Can a single game count towards multiple badges? Now that I have PSVR2 I plan to play through both RE8 and RE4 at some point. Both would qualify for the Raccoon City and the 2nd Amendment badges.

edit: Looking at posts beneath this I think I have my answer and each game can only go towards one badge.

I beat Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo on the xbox1

#7 TMNT Turtles in Time Arcade version via Cowabunga collection

This is my penultimate Ninja Turtles experience to date. Even the very good Shredder’s Revenge still can’t top this one for me. It just holds such a dear piece of history for me and not only that but it aged like fine wine to boot. It’s still as simple and effective as it was when it came out over 30 years ago. A short, sweet and to the point beat ‘em up that doesn’t waste your time. It gets you in, off and out in under 2 hours and leaves you coming back for more and then some. I adore it right down to its cheesy one liners and oddly placed sound effects that make still me giggle. And this emulated version comes with a turbo mode so you can play it like you were if you took an ample amount of amphetamines prior to pressing start. Good times indeed!

My #1 is Assassin's Creed Valhalla: All DLC

https://photos.app.goo.gl/x8coyqfDRFz1jpJ39

I beat Lego Batman on the xbox 360

#8 TMNT Turtles in Time version via Cowabunga Collection

While I felt the arcade version was a bit superior with more audio tracks and a lot faster framerate (especially turbo mode on emulation), the SNES version was still fun as heck complete with cool bonus stages not found in the arcade version. Also the final boss was Super Shredder instead of just Shredder and they mixed it up a lot with bosses that weren’t a complete 1 for 1 from the arcade version. But the SNES version took me right back to me being 8-10 yrs old and visiting my cousin’s house on weekends and having us tear thru it in coop mode. Good times indeed!

Game #3 of 2024
Songs For A Hero - Definitive Edition on

This will count towards Hop 'n' Bop badge.

#9 TMNT Tournament Fighters via Cowabunga Collection

I had no idea this one even had a story mode and it was basically an intro to the VS mode like most fighting games but very, very short. I was finished in about 7 fights. It was just like Street Fighter II Turbo. Heavy emphasis on the turbo too with its turbo mode feeling like I was moving in super fast motion. I almost had to lower it to normal speed. It was pretty ok while it lasted though but nothing to really write home about other than pretty much mimicking the Street Fighter series in the way you block and perform special moves. I recall having more fun with the VS mode with this one as a kid but again it didn’t last more than a couple of weekends before moving on to the next game. Fighting games within most generations to me are a good rental at best or a deep, deep sale unless you’re a major league gamer and compete.

5 in the books, 1st on
Ittle Dew
Might claim for Girl Power, Puzzler or Hyrulian since it could fit any of those - though maybe a touch short for Hyrulian.

Game's been on my Wishlist for a long while, saw a recent deal for it, and its sequel (that I didn't know existed), for like $1, so I snagged it and opted to play it. I also chose it for I in my alpha set. Game was decent if minorly annoying at times. I got stumped a few times and found it a touch annoying that you can reach certain puzzles, especially the optional ones in the 'over world map' that you really can't complete until after you've acquired at least 1 other tool - so you might try it a few times only to simply not have the tools available yet to beat it. Outside of that it was more/less a decent puzzle game with a little adventuring - it gets compared to the OG Zelda and it surely took some inspiration from there, but it's more puzzle focused and has maybe a quarter to a third of the content. I ended up with basically 1 room in the castle that I could've reached via a different door that I didn't figure out (and I believe I just realized the step I missed and could've done to open that door - eh, already uninstalled it). There's also a 'master puzzle' cave that I visited after beating the final boss fight and after resorting to looking for some help and clearing only like 3-4 puzzles I gave up b/c the 1's solution you needed to be really fast, at least in the solution I found, and I couldn't get my brain/fingers to cooperate swiftly enough. I then watched this same guy's solutions to a few more puzzles later and I'm glad I gave up, just not worth the time and effort to bother.

My #2 is Assassin's Creed Valhalla

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2X1aoVVvQK15XHyD6

After 114 hours I can say I beat this game. Acquired all regions and assassinated all targets. I reached level 475. Starting off the game was great. I beat the first DLC and acquired the OP spear reward for finishing it and used it for the rest of the game. I paired it with the Spear of Leonidas to become a duel wielding spear Viking who just mowed down anything in my path. Combat became much easier and I am thankful because it would have added another 10-20 hours to my playtime. This is by far the biggest game in terms of real estate. A giant map you need to conquer with several slightly smaller maps that reveal themselves as you progress through the story. I enjoyed most of this and am glad to NOT have attempted to collect all the things. That would take another 100 hours because of just how many there are. 7.5/10

My #3 is Aperture Desk Job.

I got a Steam Deck OLED and this is the first game I beat on it. Quick little demo of the steam deck's controls and some fun dialog makes this a treat to breeze through in less than 30 minutes.
No rating

I’d like to switch my clear of Assassin’s Creed: Mirage from the Hyrulian Hero badge to the Days Gone By badge please. I finished up the platinum, and it ended up taking me 58 hours to 100% the game. Here’s my proof :):

https://imgur.com/a/Xw7EEWQ

Was playing FFII on my PSP 3000 and started getting screeching sounds and I could tell it was during disc access. I bought it brand new and used it less than 1000 hours, so this is more about age than usage.

Not sure what to do now. Take a break and try to fix/buy a new one later. Or just move on and emulate PSP games from here on out. A real bummer.

I've played through the first level of the Retro Talkshop Thread's Game of the Month dozens of times over the years but rarely progressed much further than that. I finally had an excuse to see it through.

Number: 1
Full Title: Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut
Platform Played: GameCube
Collection: N/A
Native Platform: GameCube
Original Platforms: Dreamcast
Applicable Badge: Bear & Bird (1/2)

Sonic Adventure has been an omnipresent part of my Dreamcast obsession for a while, being a launch title and one of the first games I ever played on the platform (alongside Soulcalibur). The game gets off to a strong start - the intro is peak 90s attitude and deserves a Grammy, and the opening beach level is one of the most iconic scenes of early sixth-generation gaming - but the drunken camera and obscure progression objectives prevented me from making much progress after that. Armed with a walkthrough and playing through the game on my Ashida, the remainder of Sonic's quest plays out similarly: moments of brilliance and high octane platforming, hindered by a wonky 3D engine, uneven pacing, and awful forced drama and voice acting.

Like so many Sonic games before and since, Sonic Adventure is at its best when we let Sonic be Sonic: run fast, insult Eggman, run fast some more. Everything else is like pouring steak sauce on a birthday cake.

Despite my mixed feelings about the game, I don't think I'm done with it yet. I've started another playthrough on my Steam Deck just to see how it compares to the GameCube version, and after all this time, it'd be a shame not to explore the original Dreamcast version, which will probably be the subject of one of my first videos of 2024. All this before the long-awaited arrival of Tekken 8 at the end of the month.

#10 TMNT The Hyperstone Heist via Cowabunga Collection

My last game in the collection takes me to what is probably considered the poor man’s Turtles in Time coming out on the Sega Genesis back in 1992 and felt like a rushed port of Turtles in Time consisting of only 5 stages as opposed to Turtles in Time’s 8 stages. But for what it was worth I enjoyed it. I definitely prefer the SNES version and especially the Arcade version as the penultimate version of Turtles in Time though. The Genesis version did feel a bit stiffer though gameplay wise. Attacking felt sluggish and even stuttered a bit at times. The bosses also felt a lot easier than the other versions, all having 1or 2 main moves that are easily telegraphed and they all felt like they were moving in slow motion, but I guess that can be chocked up to this game likely being rushed out to coincide with the SNES counterpart. Overall, it’s more of the same beat em up TMNT action but not my choice delicacy in the selection of turtle titles from back in the day.

Game #4 of 2024
Ven VR Adventure on PSVR2

Being a 3D platformer this will count towards Bear & Bird badge.

OP updated!

Please remove from my list. Unfortunately, it started loud screeching 10 hours into Final Fantasy II. It still reads discs. But if I can get it fixed by the end of the year, great. But for now, it's Out of Order. Not one of my "owned" working systems, is how I put it.

I forgot to post this, but I beat Mega Man X8 . This is the boxart that the seller sent me, and it makes the purchase that much better:
[imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GD10bghX0AApS5Z?format...[/imgt]

It’s a good game with some compelling new mechanics and enjoyable characters. It’s a real step-up from Mega Man X7, that’s for darn sure. The final boss gauntlet is a pain, with the final boss himself having several dirty tactics and no checkpoint. But overall, it’s a worthy adventure.

But the best part is easily this box. Seriously, why did the seller include it instead of a blank box or a printout of the original? You know the artist knew he messed up, because he didn’t bother to draw Zero or Axl. Which is your favorite feature: the mismatched eyes? The goofy mouth? The corndog arm? The massive leg? I can’t get enough of it!

My #4 is Alan Wake Remastered

https://photos.app.goo.gl/AiqE4qchrBBsrAt7A

6th on the year, 2nd on
Horizon Chase Turbo: Senna Forever (DLC)

The base game here is an homage to the Top Gear SNES title that I adored as a kid and they even got the same composer to redo some of his audio tracks for this. I have the base game on my phone and beat it a long while ago, then Epic gave the PC port away from free and I beat that not long after acquiring it. The devs are from Brazil and thus they opted to do this Senna tribute DLC and I purchased it a while back and finally devoted some time to it over the last week or so. It covers 5 phases of the racer's career with 7 to almost a dozen races per phase. I waited to claim this until I not only completed each of the 3 'Senna helmet' tasks per race, but also actually beat all ~50 races. Technically you don't need to win every race to progress through each phase, but I generally would win and opted to go back and beat or focus on those side tasks for the races which I didn't do so initially. The 3 Senna helmet tasks were a variety of things from getting a perfectly timed start (also earning you a boost) or collecting all of these tokens on the track (also a core tenant of the base game) to using or collecting boosts or fuel on certain laps. Some of the side things were generally easy to get, but a few were annoying. Thankfully you didn't have to do them all on 1 race.

As stated, I really liked the original SNES version of this game and the mobile and base PC versions were pretty good as well, but this DLC felt like a slog, I actually took a few more sessions to get through it b/c I found it sort of boring at times. I did like how it loosely followed Senna's career, which as a semi-former fan of F1, I know about the driver and tragedy of his passing. But this style of racing with F1 cars just didn't resonate, I don't know exactly why since it really shouldn't have been any different than the base game. But for the DLC they used the general track layouts of the real life F1 circuits from the 80's and 90's when Senna drove and even had liveries and tweaked named opponents from the time, so from an 'artistic' perspective, they did pretty well. But maybe b/c of the nature of the cars being able to drive and corner so much better I got too easily frustrated by some of the driving mechanics and especially slamming into other cars.
If you hit a car from behind it'll slow you down and give them a boost forward, which is just a basic element of this game, but I guess with the wider cars and sometimes narrower tracks it felt like I was at times slamming into cars a TON. Then you'd come into a fast corner and were about to pass a car, yet it was parked dead center of the track, so you could try to slide under them, taking the corner tighter, but could risk sliding out and bumping them, or you could open up and try to go around the outside which too often resulted in you going wide into the grass and getting slowed (especially in the frequently linked corners). Or you could try to let off the gas to avoid ramming them, only to lose momentum and watch them speed away or even get passed. It was just pretty annoying, especially on some tracks like Monaco where the final bit is totally bonkers with L-R switchbacks such that it gets nuts even trying to stay on track, let alone hope to avoid hitting a car. Oh well, I beat all of the races and will step away from the game for a while.

I also beat some Rookie series thing that I seemingly skipped before that was meant to ease you into the game with 26 rather easy tracks that I simply dominated the competition. They also added a 5-race challenge mode for each of the around 35 cars, where you can unlock a final unique color for said car. I did 1 of those and that was enough, I don't want to race around 175 more events just for some meh paint schemes.

First game of 2024 beat. Jedi Survivor - PS5. Now working on plat before I fire up the next one.

Man, I fear I might be burning out on gaming... after my heavy focus on a big remodel last year that largely pulled me away from gaming from Sept til at least Dec, I sort of didn't want to jump back into gaming even though I was more than tired of the remodel and the disruption to my life. Since ending it, I have cleared 10 games in Dec and 6 so far this year, but it feels different. It feels less like I'm making any 'progression' through my backlog and am almost just spinning my wheels. Surely the fact that I've got LaunchBox setup on my PC and have not only my 1500+ PC games from Steam, Epic, Amazon, GoG and others all imported in there (yes with several duplicates) but I also have a MAME set of games that crests 3000 and then a huge ROM set from most of the cart based handhelds and some 12 consoles ranging from the NES to GC.
All told, I've got nearly 13k games imported into my LaunchBox and if I factor out all of the duplicates, the 300+ I've got marked as completed and even simply toss out the 3k worth of arcade MAME titles, I'd surmise I've still got a good 8k of unbeaten games in there. That of course doesn't count the several hundred I own digitally on the Xbox from purchases and GwG, and then GamePass as well as smaller collections of physical copies for the PS2 to PS4 mainly (but also others). I guess my backlog is just wearing me down lately. This thread surely drove me to beat a lot more games over the last 4 years, such that I've cleared over 360 in that time (with a few repeats), but in some ways it feels like a teacup tossed into the sea.

I created that alpha challenge thing for myself last year, initially to try to go through my libraries and list out the games from my backlogs that I generally wanted to get to, since clearly a huge amount of the games in there are just junk or not for me, etc. But I suppose I have a bit of decision fatigue in deciding what to play next and can at times get stuck playing less enjoyable titles or pushing to find/beat a specific letter for that set.
I know this is a bit whiney and dumb, so I'll stop now, might need to take a break from this thread and find some other hobbies or something. I definitely have some winter blues and feel blah overall.

Slickriven wrote:

Do what you have to do. I’ll keep you on the spreadsheet, and don’t forget to pop in once in a while.

Might I recommend trying to perfect your French fry recipe? That might be a worthy hobby.

Slickriven wrote:

My advice is to trim down your want to play list. I've done that a few times over the last few years and now I feel my backlog is much more managable. And I actually enjoy each new game. Time is something we have a limited resource of. Might as well use it to enjoy life, and not overburden ourselves with insanely large backlogs.

Once you delete several games off of your want to play list, you will feel better. Also, taking a break and doing whatever, or just doing nothing and being lazy and completely relaxing. Whatever makes you feel better.

My #5 is Alan Wake Remastered: All DLC

https://photos.app.goo.gl/tJrFzvhaN3M8eNyL8

ErickRPG wrote:

Yeah that's a decent idea. After I created the list of 'want to play' and broke it into that alpha setup I had way more S, R, M, D titles than others and then got that idea to try for a full alpha-set (or several sets) and that caused me to go back and add more games, especially into lower rep'd characters like Q, J, etc.
So that spreadsheet now surely has more games than I really do want to play and more just to give me options for all characters. Plus I've set myself around 10 goals each year and that results in me pushing to beat games that I might not want to otherwise as well. Surely beating games on all consoles was the goal of this thread and I still like to try for that, but enjoying gaming still needs to be a priority or focus.

I've felt that I was just pushing to beat goals or get all consoles or go for badges, etc each Nov/Dec as I often tried to finish out those goals/badges/etc. This past year, since I wasn't gaming as much in the lead up to then, that feeling didn't really occur, but it was surely why I didn't get too excited to game again in Dec. That said, I have pushed more to complete my latest alpha-set this month, knocking out I, Y and Z, so that's not helped with some of my choices, but even my latest completion, Horizon Chase Turbo, just didn't feel the same as how I enjoyed it in years past.

I also think at times GP can be a curse as it gives me a lot more games to potentially play and thus more decisions to make and there's the thought of 'this could leave soon, so I should seek to get to it soon' - but in reality a few games left in the Sept-Nov timeframe when I didn't even have my XSX connected to a TV and could even try to play them and the world didn't end, and for a few, I don't even recall their names to think 'I should/could look them up and maybe get them now'. So I really need to just lower my expectations on how many I can possibly play and beat.

#1 Silent Hope

I have a feeling this one flew under the radar because there are a lot of dungeon crawlers and roguelikes out there right now. As I mentioned on the Last Game You Beat thread - it's Diablo meets Rune Factory with none of the baggage. The characters are fun to play as and level up, getting loot to make better equipment is rewarding, and you even get to pet the cow.

Level Up! 1 of 2