What Games Have You Completed? (2023 EDITION!)
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Finally started Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury back in January having let it sit unplayed on my backlog pile for over a year.
Never had a WiiU so it was all new to me. Ploughed through 3D World until I got to the last world before trying Bowser's Fury.
I loved their take on open world Mario. Short and sweet to grab all 100 moons. Would definitely have played more, looking forward to how the series develops from here.
After that I decided to go back to 1-1 and have the other 4 characters catch up to Mario. That was a bit of a slog at times and I questioned why I was even bothering when I've other games to play.
I found the last two levels were quite challenging and frustrating. Finished Mystery House Marathon with all characters before moving on to Champion's Road. The slight difference between characters added to the challenge but the levels certainly got easier once memorised.
55 hours all in according to the Switch.
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- Sonic Frontiers (PC)
- Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
- Aladdin (SNES)
- Crash Bandicoot 2 (PC)
- Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped (PC)
- Deus Ex: Invisible War (PC)
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero
The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero
After the excellent Trails in the Sky trilogy Falcom have yet again produced another stellar JRPG with Trails from Zero. Zero leaves behind Liberl for the tiny city state of Crossbell. Crossbell lies in a strategically important area between the Erbonian Empire and the Calvard Republic, two countries with a violent past against one another with Crossbell getting caught in the crossfire. Both countries claim dominion over the city state but due to a peace treaty the city state has been allowed to act autonomously as long as it does not have it's own standing army.
Despite the more compact size compared to the Trails in the Skies' setting of Liberl, Crossbell makes a great location for a game. There's tension due to it's position politically but also due to it's free state nature a lot of trade goes through Crossbell which has made it extremely wealthy. However with all that money comes consequences. There's a massive gap in quality of life between the haves and have nots. Politics are rife with corruption. Add to that the local Mafiosa smugglers are now having to deal with a triad style crime syndicate muscling into Crossbell. On top of that Crossbell is trialing the 'Orbal Network', basically the prototype for this universe's internet.
To combat these new threats the local police force have created the SSS (special support section), a team of four removed from the police force. The aim is to have them removed from the political corruption rife within the police force while also being able to interfere with the government and prosecute them unlike the civilian Bracers Guild. There's something strange happening in Crossbell and it's up to the SSS to discover what it is.
You take control of the SSS consisting of 4 party members, all of which you'll grow to love. There's the mysterious Tio with he high tech get up, rich girl Ellie, rambunctious ladies man Randy and then squad leader Lloyd who loves a cheesy pep talk or friendship speech and gets called out for how bad they are. The entire cast is excellent, as usual for a Falcom game. The setting also lends itself well to a RPG. Crossbell city is the central hub with roads branching out leading to places of interest and villages. Despite the smaller scale compared to Trails in the Sky there's a huge amount of attention to detail in the setting. As always each NPC has their own little story which changes as the game progresses.
The game is broken in to 4 chapters, each one a separate case for the SSS to solve before culminating in a finale that brings all the narrative threads together in a satisfying conclusion. The writing here is excellent and complimented by an excellent localisation job by the Geofront team. The battle system hasn't changed much from previous entries which is no bad thing as the Trails battle system is excellent. However it's a little jarring going from the third Trails game to this one as the combat is way less complicated. In it's defense this is a brand new story arc meant to bring new players on board whereas the third Trails game was an epilogue to two other games so anyone playing with it would be familiar with the battle system already and would want more challenge and complexity.
For me Trails from Zero is the best Trails has been from the games I've played. The more compact and focused world suits the game better, the story is great with some really tense finales to each chapter. I like how the writing went all in with the SSS team being detectives that do actual police work. Side quests are all worth doing and bring some fun flavour to the world and characters. If you like the Trails games this is a must play. As the start of a new arc this is a good jumping in point for people interested in the series however there's some references to the previous arc that will please fans (and I admit to getting a bit misty eyed at the resolution to one characters story arc that took four games to resolve).
While I love these games it's hard to recommend as they aren't for people with not much patience. They can be a bit wordy and move slowly but they are games you stick with as the pay offs are more than worth your time invested into them.
Post edited by Retr0gamer on
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Sonic Frontiers (PC)
- Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
- Aladdin (SNES)
- Crash Bandicoot 2 (PC)
- Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped (PC)
- Deus Ex: Invisible War (PC)
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero (PC)
- Thief: Deadly Shadows (PC)
Thief: Deadly Shadows
The third game in the excellent Thief trilogy. While the first two games dealt with the Pagan and Hammerite factions, this third game concerns itself with Garrett's former guild, the secretive Keepers. Garrett once again reluctantly gets himself involved in a conspiracy. Something isn't right on the streets of the city and there's rumours of a terrifying Hag wandering the streets terrorising its inhabitants. But Garrett being the master thief that he is might as well steal and pick a pocket while he is helping out.
I absolutely adore the first two thief games. They are masterclasses in level design and have some of the best sound design of any game. While I found Deadly Shadows disappointing, it's still an great game and a good bookend to the series. Like the other two games I played this on the highest difficulty level. this doesn't make the game harder but adds more objectives for Garrett to complete, doesn't allow you to kill human enemies and gives you a loot threshold to cross for each mission.
If you've not played Thief, it's very different from any other game or even stealth game you've played. The most terrifying thing you can come across is a electric light with no way to turn it off or a marble or metal floor and knowing there's no way to cross it without causing a massive racket. Your havens are soft ground like carpets and shadows. The biggest change Deadly Shadows brings to the series is technology, although it's a double edged sword here.
The first two thief games weren't lookers when they came out but they had a very advanced for the time lighting and sound engine that allowed for its unique stealth mechanics. Technology had come along was in six years. Deadly Shadows came out on PC and XBox and this allowed for it to have a fully dynamic lighting system which really enhances how the game plays. Lights and shadows move and cast realistically and some guards even carry torches to give away your position. It's also a real looker for its time. The game makes heavy use of stencil shadows and pixel shaders which were very advanced for the time. It looks old now but the art is still effective and it has a striking unique look and feel.
On the other hand the game suffers slightly from having to ship on the XBox. The original Thief games were known for their huge labyrinthian missions. Deadly Shadows missions are quite large but broken up by loading screens. This is thankfully fixed in a fan patch on PC but the mission locations do seem a little basic compared to the missions of the old games. New to the series is how the game lets you explore the city between missions. The city opens up more as you play the game so it doesn't become too confusing and there's some fun side missions to take part in. Unfortunately you'll be seeing a lot of the City while playing the game and it does get tiresome knocking out the same guard yet again when returning from a mission. Mission design and locations are quite high quality but special mention must be made to the Shalebridge Cradle which is one of the all time great videogame levels.
It would be remiss not to mention the excellent music and soundscape from Eric Brosius. The dynamic music works brilliantly to set the mood but Shalebridge Cradle takes the sound design to another plane of excellence. Just like the other Thief games, the world building is probably the best you'll find in a videogame.
While I really enjoyed the game despite it not living up to the originals (which is a tall order when they are two of the all time greats) I had some issues. I had a few crashes and every so often the game would bug on geometry and put you in a state where you could move but not perform an action until you fell off a ledge of some kind. The highest difficulty level expert is a bit too demanding when it comes to loot. Missions require you to steal 90% of the loot in the level and every mission I would end with 75-80% loot and I'd have to scour the mission to reach that limit (once or twice looking up a walkthrough if I had major trouble tracking down the well hidden loot).
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Fight Night Round 2
total $h1t, with very akward controls.
Bioshock Infinite: Buried at sea
This was so dissapointing. for such a plot heavy game, it compleatly contradicts the ending of infinite, as well as itself by the end. it's like it was made by a different development team. I also hate the cliche of having the new favorite darling character bieng retroactivly inserted into previous games and be the most important person in the universe. The only real saving grace was seeing Rapture in it's prime before the collapse.
Motocross Mania 3
A fun little racing game, the combat sortof reminded me of Road Rash a bit. A light breeze will make you crash, which can be frustrating but i found myself always going back for one more race, so they must be on to something.
Resonance of Fate
This one was pretty out there. i still don't really know if i liked it or not. a drab steampunk inspired world set on a giant clocktower thing assured liberal use of the piss-fitler. the quasi-relgous overtones and utter lack of coherance in the "story" of a game that stubbornly refuses to explain anything will always make for a disconnected esperience. Whenever i got a cutscene, i'd have to go online because i thought i missed some other vital information, like if some of the main story was hidden away in a sidequest i missed. Speaking of which, the game is broken into various chapters, each with their own sidequests. if you do the main mission first, any unfinished side content gets locked out and replaced with chapter specific new ones. Why?
The real meat is the combat, infamous for it's complexity. In truth, it's more convoluted than complex, with scratsh damage and direct damage that need to be used together (in reality, it's just the stagger bar from FFXIII but less flashy). Once you understand how movement works, you're sorted. still a hard game though, and the need to farm hexes to unlock more of the map was unnecessary. Even now as i'm writing this, i think i liked it, but just about. it's 70-75 or so rating seems fair enough, maybe a bit too generous even. it's a wierd, oddball game, but definetly not a hidden gem.
Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption
Another strange RPG. You start off as a crusader-era knight who gets turned into a vampire after the first dungeon. the story is complex and deep, even if most of the characters are not. the plethora of vampire powers you get can be a little overwhelming and having to micromanage your four character party is a bit unwieldy, but otherwise a good romp. It is kind of funny where about two thirds of the way through, a pillar falls on you in 1141 and you wake up in 1999, still talking in ye olden speak. I played the vanilla version so there were a couple of bugs but there's plenty of patches for it. it can be a little hard to get into, but thoroughly enjoyable and doesn't take a million hours to beat like so many modern RPG's.
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I actually liked episode 2 of Burial at Sea despite hating Infinite. The stealth gameplay was really fun. But yeah the retcons were awful especially Ken Levine trying to heavy handedly retcon one of the worst and most racist scenes in the base game.
I thought you meant the excellent point and click game. Still Resonance of fate is a game I really want to give a go at some point. I heard the tutorial actively tells you the wrong way to play the game which is a big issue to learning the combat system.
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Yep, wrote about it in this thread. Basically thought it was heavily compromised compared to the original game but overall a decent entry in the series and taken on it's own merits it was a pretty great game despite not living up to one of the best games ever made.
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
- Sonic Frontiers (PC)
- Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
- Aladdin (SNES)
- Crash Bandicoot 2 (PC)
- Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped (PC)
- Deus Ex: Invisible War (PC)
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero (PC)
- Thief: Deadly Shadows (PC)
- The Firemen (SNES)
The Firemen
I've always really wanted some good firefighting games and been disappointed with the lack of them. Firefighter FD18 on the PS2 was decent enough. The SNES got two firefighting games both of which are worth playing. Ignition Factor got a US release but never made it to Europe. However the Firemen is a much better game. It's also one of those rare games that came out in Japan and Europe but not the US. So I guess European SNES owners won when it came to firefighting based games and lost in almost every other genre.
The Firemen comes from Human Entertainment who made some of the SNES's weirder titles (Clock Tower, Fire Pro Wrestling, SOS). While The Firemen isn't your typical action game due to the subject matter, it's probably Human's most approachable SNES game, it's very easy to pick up and start having fun with it. Set in the far distant future of 2010, an office Christmas party goes awry in a chemical plant when a fire gets out of control in the kitchen. Soon the entire building is up in flames. It's up to Pete and his second in command to enter the building, rescue civilians, dispose of the MDL explosive compound in the building and ultimately try and get the blaze under control.
You take control of Pete who carried a fire hose capable of creating infinite amounts of water. Pete is also joined by his AI companion Danny. Unfortunately there's no two player mode but Danny will run up to fires and try to put them out with his axe, open doors and rescue civilians. While AI companions usually don't work very well (see the annoying AI in secret of mana that managed to soft lock the game on me many times) Danny's AI is excellent and never becomes a hindrance or gets caught up in scenery.
Pete's hose has two firing modes. He can shoot out a long range stream of water. As well as that he can aim at the ground which reduces the range greatly but is required to extinguish floor level fires. You can lock Danny's aim in position with the shoulder buttons. There's a risk reward dynamic as Danny is a lot slower when using the hose. On top of that you have a limited stock of water bombs and can duck to avoid hazards and crawl under obstacles.
The star of the show here are the fire effects. The game starts with relatively simple fires that teach the player how to use both firing modes. The challenge soon ramps up with more interesting fire patterns, berserk robots, flying explosive canisters and even backdrafts that cause massive explosions if you open the wrong door. The flame effects are excellent. They will propagate if left unchecked and leave scorch marks behind on the ground. This level of background destruction is rarely seen in SNES games. The game uses the SNES hardware to really sell the fire effects. There's gorgeous smoke and rain effects as well as the use of mode 7 for the backdraft explosions. Each of the game's 6 stages is punctuated with a boss fight which are well designed and challenging. There's also civilians to be rescued that will give you a health refill.
The Firemen is a top tier SNES action game. The firefighting is fun and the visuals really sell the destructive force of the fire . The soundtrack is pretty good. There's a fun little story here told through interactions between the firefighters and their support crew (even if it's a big rip off of the Towering Inferno but, hey, I love that movie). It's challenging but shouldn't be so tough that you won't see the end credits with practice.
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