Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2018 Edition (topic #2)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Heavy Rain (PS4) - Platinum'd

Decided to give Heavy Rain a shot since it was free for PS+ sometime this year. Enjoyed the game a lot actually, and despite the game being almost a decade old, it didn't really feel like an eight year old game aside from the fact that you had to hold R2 to move, which honestly isn't a good interface. The story was pretty good and the characters were alright too. Probably gonna give the other Quantic Dream games a try now.

And with that I've also obtained my 40th platinum trophy, hurray.
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Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (PS1)

Played this via PS3.
The first game in the series.
It was pretty interesting to see how it all started and how each game got better with each installment.

I thought it was neat on how ES (EX) moves are performed by filling out the special meter and you're able to use them before the meter runs out. The following games in the series did a good improvement by letting you do a motion at the cost of 1 (or 2 meters sometimes) with any 2 buttons for ES Moves.

The 4 Star Normal AI setting was pretty tough. As you get further, the AI does the thing where they start to read your movements which I did not expect.

Pyron, the last boss of the game, is on a whole level of ridiculous.
You hear stories of Level 8 M. Bison from Street Fighter 2, Akuma in Super Turbo, Magneto from X-Men: Children of the Atom, Cyber Akuma from Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter, Onslaught from Marvel Vs. Capcom and Gill from Street Fighter 3 on how tough they can be. I don't think you hear much talk about Pyron from the first Darkstalkers game.

Pyron...is just...wow. His normal attacks do chip damage (I guess that's where they got the idea of Sentinel doing chip damage to you in the Vs. series with his normal attacks), can teleport all over the place and can even command grab you when his teleport animation ends. His anti airs were on point and his projectiles were too much to deal with. Pyron is all over the place. I had to time him out twice in both rounds with my boy Talbain.
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Teslagrad for PS4

First impressions were not great and while some significant issues never went away, I was glad I took the time to play it by the game's conclusion.
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KCF0107 posted...

Teslagrad for PS4

First impressions were not great and while some significant issues never went away, I was glad I took the time to play it by the game's conclusion.

When does it get better? I kinda gave up around the 2nd boss (the mechanical bird thing)
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Relatively soon depending on what your issues were. There will still be plenty of cheap deaths and the boss fights will still suck, but the puzzles will improve tremendously.
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Moon Diver (PS3)

I put this game off for 7 years and finally managed to finish it with 2 of my friends online.
I remember being relatively hyped for this game cause it was created by the same team that did the Strider series.

Pretty cool you can do Strider things and you find spells along the way to use different powers like extra attacks/attack all enemies/heal/more offense/defense/freeze time/etc. You can even do combination attacks that are possible in multiplayer.

I ended up not liking the game in the long run and put it off for so long. Finally managed to beat it but I was very annoyed by A LOT of things and it didn't helped that the ending sucked.

1. Lasers. Those friggin' lasers. It's like they force you to bring the freeze spell so that you don't get messed up by those damn lasers. So many of them in the later levels.

2. Bombermen explosions. These aren't too bad but they can be a little excessive.

3. Giant Wasp enemies with hitboxes that are ridiculous.

But really though. The lasers are the absolute worst part of the entire game and unless you don't bring the freeze spell you're pretty much boned.

Playing the game by yourself is bland but the multiplayer is probably the strongest part about the game where you can have fun (and suffer) together. Some of the level design choices involving the lasers is just pure trash.
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Devil May Cry 1 HD (PC)

This is my first time playing this game. My only exposure was the 3rd game and I totally no idea going into this what to expect. That said, I had no idea the graphics were this horrendous. I actually thought it was a PS1 game for awhile. I don't know what to feel. Lots of early episode weirdness to be sure. An underwater first person portion and then an airplane escape finale? It definitely fits what I heard that it was originally going to be RE4.

I'm just glad it's over. I hated every second that wasn't a fight. The bosses were kind of dicks, and the platforming was hellish not helped by the really clunky controls. I forget now if the third game was like this.
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bump
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Lara Croft GO for PS4

I own and have beaten this for mobile, but I never played the extra chapters. Mirror of Spirits might be my favorite in the game.
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Chime Sharp for PS4

I loved the first game, so much so that I bought it twice! This feels like a step down, if only because I did not like the 3D-ish graphic style and felt like either it was hindering me or I was allowing it to. Apparently you can change it, but that might be only for the PC version because I saw nothing in any of the menus for the PS4 version.

Anyway, I had given up all hope of "beating" each song on standard mode. I had many in the 30-40% coverage range and just assumed that I was doomed. For reference, you need 60+% to "beat" a level. I was actually planning to play a different game tonight but when I was forced to download a patch for it, I played this to kill the time, and I was in the zone. I will probably come back to it in the future to see how I fare in the more challenging modes.
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Simoun posted...

KCF0107 posted...

Rusty Lake: Roots for PC

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. I sort of liked my time with it, but I have no intention of playing any more games from this series.

Is it because nothing makes sense? I hate that about some games too.

The plot was straightforward, and the objects and puzzle integration were largely logical. I guess that it never really hooked me at any point. It was a consistently above-average experience.
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Wacky Races (NES)

I played this long ago as a kid.

It was nice to revisit it again.

Surprisingly, this game is an action/platformer instead of a racing game. It was made by Atlus as well.

You play as Muttley and he can bite, jump, hover with his tail, throw bombs and use a sonic bark projectile. The bosses in the game are all the racers from the show.

Game is fun. Kinda easy with some nice tunes.

Also, just like in true fashion for those that watched the cartoon. The ending: Dastardly & Muttley end up losing the race by crashing into a pole.
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Beat God of War (PS4)
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The Messenger (Switch)
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Nancy Drew 6: Secret of the Scarlet Hand (PC)

Game series is getting more elaborate now. On the one hand, my head fucking hurts from all the stupid puzzles (and by that I mean, literally badly designed stupid puzzles). On the other, I get to brush up on my Mayan history, which doubles as edutainment I suppose. It's the first game to actually step out of a fixed location and gave you ample freedom to explore.

The bad guy here wasn't all that obvious on deduction but was pretty obvious on process of elimination. Also, we never really get to trap the guy surprisingly. He just manages to get away with a counterfeit of whatever he was stealing. And what exactly was he trying to accomplish was not clear to me so he's more of an idiot in that sense.
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Dead or Alive Xtreme 3: Venus (Vita)

Finished Vacation mode with Marie Rose. Got an A rank so now I have to go do it again to see the full ending (requires S+).
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U)
I didn't actually mean to walk into the final boss room. That's Hyrule Castle for you. But anyway, what a long, memorable journey that was.
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Spyro the Dragon for PS3

Went through this again for its 20th anniversary, and I think that I liked it more than last time.
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Until Dawn (PS4)

I have A LOT to say.

The non-spoilery stuff:
-I did not get the best ending. I will DEFINITELY be replaying this at some point and try to get as close as possible, at least better than I did. (need to play LiS:BtS first though)
-Man it got more and more nerve-racking the further I got and the more and more afraid I got of getting people killed
-Ashley >= Chris > Mike > Josh > Emily > Sam > Matt > Jessica

The spoilery stuff:
I absolutely LOVED the horror elements to the game, and not just with the survival and the Wendigo and shit, and not even just with the screamers, but how they tailored it all to your specific fears, that was just nuts. The stuff with Dr. Hill was great. It added a lot to the personalized experience and at first reminded me of the narrator in the Rocky Horror Picture Show; imagine how surprised I was to see him actually be a part of the narrative.

Sam, Chris* and Matt survived. Mike, Ashley, Emily and Jessica died. Josh survived but began transforming into a Wendigo; not sure if there's a way to prevent that fate or if it is his best ending. I did hit a Chris death at one point (right after Flamethrower Guy died), but I hit reset with enough time to replay the scene ONLY because he was so high on my favorites list; if it were anybody else but him or Ashley I probably would have just let out some expletives and cut my losses and kept going. Also it was because I panicked and hit R1 instead of R2 to shoot, then when I got out of the status menu I was disoriented and didn't pull the trigger in time, so it was an innocent button mistake instead of poor decision-making or genuine incompetence. Mike, Ashley and Emily died in the fire. Fuck Emily for killing Ashley, I ought to bump her down on my list for that. Not sure how I could have saved Mike or Emily without getting Sam and Chris killed though. Jessica died because I was an imbecile and chose to run from the Wendigo in the mine.

A few of my Butterfly Effect things never came into play. I never got the conclusion to Sam and the baseball bat, and "Whose Side Are You On" never showed up at all.

-Ashley & Chris was by far the best and most developed relationship here, and the story I was most invested in. I really saw a lot of myself in Chris, and him having to constantly choose between Ashley's life and others', including his own, even if they were all psychs, added so much drama and really made the bond between them strong. Ashley was whiny but for some reason it worked. Her innocent curiosity and fear of pretty much everything made her the most fun character to play as and a great foil to the calm and methodical Chris, who she shared 90% of her screen time with. I was really rooting for them and my #1 priority was getting them both out alive if I possibly could. When I hit the aforementioned Chris death I actually hit the PS button, put my face in my hands for a solid two minutes and then said "let's see if resetting helps..." As I said before, if it were anyone but those two I would've just begrudgingly gone on (see - I could have done that with Jessica and didn't). In the ending inferno I was so upset to lose Ashley. I wanted to see them have a happy ending together.

-I hated Mike in the beginning for all the macho stuff with Matt and Emily and Jessica, but he actually became a sweetheart and the bravest of the bunch. He was also an extremely fun character to play as because he got himself into so much danger.

-Josh was naturally the most unique character in the game and his scenes often had me losing my shit with mindblownness. I actually in the back of my mind suspected him of surviving the sawmill scene though against all reasonable expectations. That just seemed way too fishy and I couldn't believe the game was actually going to make me choose between two people at that point. Never suspected him of being the psycho though.
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CONTINUED Until Dawn SPOILERS

-Emily was a bitch and I hated her; when Dr. Hill asked me to rank everybody I said I hated her the most. I also NEVER got her name right. She was Kelly to me the entire time for some reason, and whenever someone referred to Em or Emily, I was like "Who's that? Oh, right, Kelly." But as the game went on and she became more involved in the story I began to appreciate her attitude, especially compared to...

-Sam, every horror movie female lead stereotype in one package. Though I will say this, I kinda liked her snarkiness, and Hayden Panettiere did a good job playing this kind of role, which is more than I can say for...

-Matt and Jessica.... who are these people? They were okay but hardly even in the game. Matt was absent for two very long stretches, with a couple of scenes in the middle before disappearing again. Jessica was even worse because she had ONE big long absence the same length as Matt's two, during the entire bulk of the story when all the action was really happening and I was getting attached to everyone. And neither really had too much personality.

I totally, TOTALLY called Hannah being a Wendigo.

Overall, I enjoyed this. It certainly wasn't one of my favorite games of all time, but it really sucked me in, I stayed up through all hours of the night two nights in a row playing the first 80% of the game, and it was a perfect "play by yourself with the lights out in the middle of the night" game. I enjoyed several of the characters. It seems like it's got decent replay value and as I said before, I will definitely be giving this another go and try to get a better ending, maybe even before the year is out (I don't think I've ever played through a game more than once in a single calendar year, at least not a game lasting more than an hour).
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Underleveled posted...

It seems like it's got decent replay value

ehhhhh

It's not nonexistent replay value, but the speed that the game goes on a second playthrough is hard to deal with. Characters walk really slow, you kinda know a lot of the scares, no surprises. I hated going for the platinum because having to replay some sections once or twice was so boring.
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Nancy Drew 7: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake (PC)

Straight up Scooby Doo plot. It's a shame though that you only get to encounter the dogs once. This is the first game to get rid of the annoying clock mechanic which in previous games served only to annoy you by making it so that certain NPCs were only available at certain times. Oh also I forgot to mention in my last post that ND6 would be the first ND where Nancy would hint about her succeeding adventure. Let's see, this is also the first game where Nancy gets a Smartpho---I mean PDA device. This is after 2002 so who needs a journal to keep your notes. No more going back to my hotel room to check it when I can just deduce on the go.

Minor annoyances. There was a forest with thankfully a map to follow, but it still gave me Return to Zork flashbacks. There was a cemetery but thankfully no scares. There was actually an option to enter a mausoleum and nothing came of it so, it was pretty clever a red herring I suppose. The bad guy this time was kind of obvious made only less suspicious by the fact that she would have to defy the laws of teleportation to be able to pull off half the stuff she does and that she was the nicest suspect; a common element I've been told will be very frequent. It's never the asshole giving Nancy a hard time. Except for 1 incident I recall.
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Solioxrz362 posted...

Underleveled posted...

It seems like it's got decent replay value

ehhhhh

It's not nonexistent replay value, but the speed that the game goes on a second playthrough is hard to deal with. Characters walk really slow, you kinda know a lot of the scares, no surprises. I hated going for the platinum because having to replay some sections once or twice was so boring.

I might just replay chapter 10 then and see how much better I can do. If I restart from there does it keep my progress and choices from prologue through 9?
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Underleveled posted...

Solioxrz362 posted...

Underleveled posted...

It seems like it's got decent replay value

ehhhhh

It's not nonexistent replay value, but the speed that the game goes on a second playthrough is hard to deal with. Characters walk really slow, you kinda know a lot of the scares, no surprises. I hated going for the platinum because having to replay some sections once or twice was so boring.

I might just replay chapter 10 then and see how much better I can do. If I restart from there does it keep my progress and choices from prologue through 9?

yes, it will keep your initial playthrough from where you go to on chapter select. only way to change everything is to start a new playthrough
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Been a while, had to force myself to do another.

Beat Skyborn (Steam).

Short turn-based RPG, though it's so short it forgets to actually develop more you could do. There were like 3 total side-quests and you have to spend you money precisely/create gear precisely to ever finish the toughest stuff because of the lack of sidequesting. It was nice, but kind of annoying when I realized I couldn't beat what was intended because of the difficulty spike.
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Bump
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Nancy Drew 8: The Haunted Carousel (PC)

Another one down! And I thought the last title was lulzy because you only meet the ghost dogs once. The Carousel in this game isn't even haunted. You find out early on how it's activated, and the rest of the game is spent unraveling another unrelated mystery. To be fair, it was quite the engaging set of events and it didn't feel like it was an excuse for Nancy to do some chores around the park. More interestingly, the crappy attempt to scare people was not a Scooby Plot either. Turns out it was to drive the prices up for the carousel's designer-made horses so that the bad guy---a forger could make a better killing when he sold them.

New things in this game are mainly two things: Nancy has a checklist now to determine her objectives, so the game doesn't rely on unseen triggers to move the plot forward. And she has a celphone with speed-dial! No more manually dialling numbers although charmingly enough the option still exists. I miss the 90s Nokias and this brought back some nostalgia. I think this is also the first game that has multiple locations on a map seeing as the setting is an amusement park. There's also this extremely terrible real-time portion where you have to grab something while riding the carousel. It's as stupid as it sounds.

All in all, a very fun and intriguing mystery.
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Virtue's Last Reward for PS4

I have beaten this three times now. I'm not really even a fan of the game (pales in comparison to 999 in just about every way). The only reasons why I went through it a third time were to re-experience K's ending path, the bad ending where Alice votes betray at the last second to kill Sigma, and above all else, all the escape rooms (Pantry kind of sucks though).
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Yeah I've seen you playing Zero Escape lately lol
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Bump
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Dragon Ball: Revival of the Demon King(NES)
I'll give it this: it's not a pain to play through like the previous game. It sort of covers the King Piccolo saga by way of text adventure segments interspersed with RPG card battles. But the card battles are really basic and don't require any strategy whatsoever. Also you fight the demon Ukelele as the only random encounter for so long that the game should be titled Yooka-Laylee.
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Disney's TaleSpin (NES)

This game was alright for a shoot em' up. Nothing spectacular but it was ok.

You can collect cargo/money to get upgrades for the Sea Duck. I thought it was neat you can press the A Button to go in the opposite direction (go backwards and scrolling the screen to the left) to either go back if you missed something or to avoid getting crushed via screen scroll from an obstacle.

Most of the levels were reasonably short and the boss fights were really easy except for Don Karnage. He was the only remotely challenging part in the entire game.
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Muv-Luv Alternative (Vita)

Going through the different endings now. Should have the platinum topic up soon
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Dying Light: The Following (PC)

Was not expecting either of those endings.
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Plants vs. Zombies (PC)
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Thimbleweed Park (PC)
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Spyro: Year of the Dragon for PS3

My completion run of Spyro 2 was going nowhere, but despite some hiccups with skateboard racing, this was smooth sailing.
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The Smurfs (Game Gear)

You play as Hefty Smurf and have to go rescue Brainy, Jokey and Smurfette from Gargamel.

Simple action platformer with some nice variety of levels to go through.

The last boss fight against Gargamel is so unbalanced. There is little to no room for error. You either got to do it correctly or lose a life.
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Cultist Simulator (PC)

Intriguing game concept, but a bit repetitive in the beginning. Progression is geared towards trial and error and extreme micromanagement late game.
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Nancy Drew 9: Danger on Deception Island (PC)

Eh. It was okay I guess. The mystery kind of solved itself halfway, but decided to pad itself by turning the plot into a treasure hunt. And of course the bad guys are smugglers. And of course there's a hidden cove full of treasure. There are alot of ways to die in this game which is mighty annoying. I mean, legit death is fine but going off a trail for not wearing your helmet? And you have to wear your helmet everytime you fast travel. Ugh. It feels like a Sierra game.
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Spider-Man (PS4)
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Guacamelee 2(PC)
More or less the same idea, but new mechanics and platforming challenges plus some goofy writing make for an enjoyable time.
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BlazeRush for PC

I was having a blast early on, but the blatant fake difficulty that was present later in the game made it a slog to finish.
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Juanito Arcade Mayhem for PC

So I have had a system in place for years regarding my massive Steam library. I download about 50-100 games at a time, play each title for around 15 minutes, and decide if I intend to beat it, should give it another 15 minutes before deciding it's fate, or put in the scrapheap and delete it from my laptop.

I fully expected to give Juanito its 15 minutes and bail (I think that I got it as a toss-in for a bundle), but it surprised me. I only wish that you could free aim, but I understand why they made this vertical shooter.
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Nakawak for PC

A short Metroidvania meant to mimic a GBC game. Dodging became a pain at times due to level design, but other than that, this was $0.50 well spent.
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SteamWorld Dig for PC

5:17 game time
$17,360 earned
187 orbs found
16 deaths

I hadn't played this game in about four years, but with the sequel having come out within the last year I think, I decided to put in the extra two hours to finally say that I've beaten this.
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