Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2023 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

KCF0107 posted...

Kirby's Dream Land 2 (Switch)

There were a lot more relentless enemy types and auto-scrolling segments than I remembered

You just summed up why I hate this game.

Treasures of the Aegean (PC)

I've been playing this off-and-on for several months now, but I finally got through this. This is a time-looping, fast and fluid puzzle-platformer whose game structure will definitely remind people of Outer Wilds. It wasn't until I was well into the game that I realized that the game doesn't track treasures (which increase the time for each loop) and key objects on the map, and the marker system isn't very good. It was a bit of struggle to finish late game stuff as a result. As a whole though, this was a great time. I may return to it to finish off the treasures of remains of the game's prophecies.

Underleveled posted...

It's seen multiple official releases now, actually.

Thank you for the UM AHKSHUALLY. Unreleased on its intended hardware, available only decades later on what, the SNES mini if you really wanted to pay money for ROMs?

Anyway the game is still pretty dope, though I don't see myself actually playing it dozens of times for the scores now that I'm two runs in. It's neat that its almost kinda-sorta like a 1990s roguelite in a way.

Accel_R8 posted...

Thank you for the UM AHKSHUALLY.

Well fuck me then huh. I was just trying to be helpful

Imagine if Nintendo actually did something with all those cancelled N64 as some kind of retro revival.

WhiteLens posted...

Imagine if Nintendo actually did something with all those cancelled N64 as some kind of retro revival.

The difference is that Star Fox 2 was literally finished. It was release-ready. That's not the case for the cancelled N64 stuff AFAIK

Castlevania Judgment

Technically a replay yadda yadda, I honestly would've been content to never touch this game again but I forced myself to suffer through it some more mostly for personal research reasons (trying to concretely find out where all the songs play). I'm also like a month late to actually do this writeup but might as well get it out of the way.

The music's still very good. It's really the only big draw of the game. I'm not into fighting games at all really but even I can tell how lackluster this whole experience is. The graphics and character design are w/e, I'm not big into that either so I don't really care (though I'm definitely aware of how bizarre some of them are like Carmilla the goth-punk hooker, Death the dentist, and Grant the... whatever the hell he's supposed to be), though as someone who is very familiar with CV it is pretty jarring seeing the monster models which are recycled from Curse of Darkness, a game from the previous generation. The fighting, from my self-admitted noob standpoint, is clunky as shit, but at least they let you use a gamecube controller. Some of it might be blamed on the unique playstyle it has, which is freely controlling characters on a 3D plane rather than the traditional 2D/2.5D perspective that's been polished with many titles over the years, but then again the original Dissidia FF came out around the same time and did a much better job of it.

The game modes are, to my understanding, pretty standard stuff for a fighting game. Story, Arcade, VS, and a couple gimmick modes that I never even touched before this run, Survival and Castle. Survival is just as it name implies, win as many battles as possible in a row. The trouble with this mode is that the opponent AI is piss easy compared to every other mode in the game, so you can just find a spammable move that works and do that for a couple hours if you really want to, though the expected performance seems to be about 20 rounds since that's about how high the preset high score table goes. You regain about a third of your health bar every time you win so the risk factor is even lower. I think you fight Dracula every 20 rounds or so and he's a smidge more challenging but if you survive you're set to just keep going if you're not sick of it already.

Castle mode is probably the most unique part of the game, you move through a grid of rooms where instead of just going through normal battles you have to complete special challenges like survive waves of monsters as you try to collect a certain number of heart drops from breaking the destructible objects on the map. Once each room is cleared you can just pass through it, but you keep your HP level between them and have to go back to a save room to refill it, you can also get "random encounters" while moving through cleared rooms to frustrate that. As you might imagine if you lose all your health you have to start over from your last save, but thankfully there's no limit to saving as long as you can get to the save room. The maps are unique to each playable character, though you still always have to fight Dracula at the end and unlike in Survival mode he can bat you around like a motherfucker. Pun totally intended.

There's also extra unlocks like artwork and accessories you can put on the characters if you play these gimmick modes, but by the time you've got those extras you'll probably be fed up with the game already. Overall would not recommend unless you're obsessed with Castlevania like me and you have to be able to say you at least experienced it.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves (360)

I know these 80s/90s arcade fighters are notoriously for being unfair to get players to keep popping in coins, but this one seemed relatively tame on that front?

While not the case with every 2D fighter in this mold, I did do my usual approach of:
1. Get a few moves down pat since I'm not going to get a good enough feel to memorize every move for a character
2. Move and jump while flailing around
3. Intersperse my wild antics with genuine knowledge of the character (aka #1).

I ended up losing just two rounds, in separate matches, the entire game, so I am a little proud of not needing to continue.

A.W. : Phoenix Festa (Vita)

This Vita game was available on the English PSN for a very brief time before being delisted, though physical Asian copies also have the English translation on them. I am told that the game covers the events of the series' first two seasons, but ends before it reveals anything - so it's mainly an advertisement for the anime/light novel series, as the game itself isn't much. Basically you spend a number of weeks in a simulation game to train in stats, learn skills, and do jobs for money with various battles taking place throughout the months the game goes through. The battle system in-game is a very simple action RPG, you have your character (and a partner sometimes) battle another two characters. You basically have two attacks and two special attacks, plus a partner special if you have both characters at certain points. None of the story battles were very challenging though, and I eliminated the need for the ranking early on as the #1 character challenged me within the first week of my playthrough and I won easily.

The platinum takes ten separate playthroughs and a lot of skill farming so I'm not sure I will even bother. You do keep skills between playthroughs once you unlock them, so subsequent playthroughs are easier, but I don't think it's really that big of a difference.

Process of Elimination
Not a good game, don't play it.

Zero Escape: The Nonary Games - Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (PS4)

As someone who has no maths in his brain, some of the puzzles really had me struggling...there was some really good writing in it, and I was quite surprised to find myself enjoying the English voice actors more than the Japanese ones. The ending did leave me completely befuddled at pretty much everything though. Still a very recommendable experience.

The Super Spy (PC)

The novelty wore off after awhile, especially once I realized that enemies will infinitely respawn. I'm glad that I had the foresight to lower the difficulty before beginning or I probably wouldn't have had the patience to see it through.

DragonGargoyle posted...

With how mid-low I usually see this game ranked

I thought Dual Destinies was loved almost universally, especially on this board?

Final Fantasy VII Remake
My PS5 died when I was at the point of no return. Finally got it taken care of and took down the final boss gauntlet.

Pokemon Pinball (GBC)

Man, here's a game from my childhood that doesn't hold up. This game is wonky. The hit detection is super broken so sometimes the ball and your flippers phase into or through each other. The ball can also phase through other objects on the board sometimes. It feels like in-game events triggered by hitting certain board elements are meant to happen in a specific order, and therefore your ball is magnetized towards/away from them no matter how you shoot it depending on if you're following the order or not -- I can't really prove that but it's what it feels like.

There are only two boards and the Red board is insanely harder in every way than the Blue board, but you have to play both to catch every Pokemon. The mechanics for catching rare Pokemon or moving to advanced locations aren't explained or obvious. It's kinda just a mess! On the bright side, the sprite work for the Pokemon's portraits goes unbelievably hard.

Getting 151 Pokemon is an insane grind so eventually I just started using save states. On top of the grind, this game is fucking impossible, so I'm not sure I'd have ever finished it otherwise. The victory does feel pretty hollow as a result, but whatever. This game's been in my backlog for like two fuckin decades, time to call it good enough and put it to rest.

En Garde Demo
I enjoyed the Spanish-y setting, and will probably buy the full game.

Killer Instinct (SNES)

So I normally would not count it as beating a fighting game just by beating the arcade mode once, but here I am doing that because I don't like this game or understand how to play it. I mainly just used Orchid's upward swing over and over and eventually won through attrition. I'll probably never play this one again.

Kenri posted...

Killer Instinct (SNES)

So I normally would not count it as beating a fighting game just by beating the arcade mode once, but here I am doing that because I don't like this game or understand how to play it. I mainly just used Orchid's upward swing over and over and eventually won through attrition. I'll probably never play this one again.

Cinders forward-forward-Y is probably the easiest way to get through it

Guardians of the Galaxy (PC)
Pretty good action title, though not exactly the best. Really needed you to watch the movies beforehand to really understand it, even though it's not canon to them.

Battletoads & Double Dragon (Gen)

So when I started this game my initial reaction was "oh no" because I had a lot of trouble with it as a kid but now it seemed brain dead easy. No worries, though -- the difficulty ratchets up fast. After a trivial Turbo Tunnel knock off in stage 2, there's a fairly tricky stage 3 -- and after that, a shitty Asteroids knock off level that drained my lives like crazy. And after that, basically every enemy and boss can combo you to death from full HP because you have no invincibility frames, and lots of hazards are instant kills.

It's not the hardest game I've ever played but getting through without save states would have been tricky. Anyway, I'm officially checking this one off my childhood backlog.

Disney's Aladdin (Gen)

Honestly I should have put more effort into this game as a kid. It doesn't feel nearly as unbeatable as e.g. Lion King did, and it's gorgeous, and, uh, kinda fun I guess. Not high praise but I definitely played worse games when I was younger!

Anagram posted...

Guardians of the Galaxy (PC)
Pretty good action title, though not exactly the best. Really needed you to watch the movies beforehand to really understand it, even though it's not canon to them.

Hmm, yeah I can agree with this. Since the newest slew of Marvel games skip the origin stories and jump right into the characters as established heroes, familiarity with the material is much more necessary. Of course, this is likely a bigger issue for something like Guardians that's a little niche, than it is for Spider-Man.

Underleveled posted...

Hmm, yeah I can agree with this. Since the newest slew of Marvel games skip the origin stories and jump right into the characters as established heroes, familiarity with the material is much more necessary. Of course, this is likely a bigger issue for something like Guardians that's a little niche, than it is for Spider-Man.

Agreed 100%

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (SNES)

Not actually a game from my childhood since I only got an SNES after the GCN, maybe even the Wii, was out. I did play some Mickey Mouse game on a friend's SNES and loved it but it wasn't this one, and honestly it was probably pretty mid. This one definitely is!

Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)

I am really terrible at this game. But I finally beat it. I beat TR Legend a couple of years ago and honestly started this game directly after, but I gave up after getting lost. Getting back into it, it was alot tougher than I remembered but at least it didn't hold your hand like Legend did. I never played the original TRs and would never dream of doing so; they're just way too oldschool for me. But even in this rendition where fans complained that it was "too easy" I find myself struggling to beat. But it was definitely great playing it.

Well Anniversary is a faithful remake of the original, so you effectively played one of the "old-school" ones

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2
I didn't actually beat this, but I decided to stop after finishing the prologue. It's just not very good. I remember enjoying the original, and now I'm wondering if it was just nostalgia.

Anagram posted...

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2
I didn't actually beat this, but I decided to stop after finishing the prologue.

I actually laughed out loud.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole (XB1)

A little uneven, and my gut feeling is that it isn't as funny as the first game (it has been a long time since I played it), but the wide variety of abilities and the mix-and-match of them plus allies makes this the superior game. I did encounter a gamebreaking bug about 5 hours in that forced me to start over.

Underleveled posted...

I actually laughed out loud.

Honestly? Mad respect to the idea that a game is beaten whenever you're done with it, whether you actually hit the credits/final boss/etc or not.

I'm not laughing at him, I'm more so laughing at the game, being bad enough for someone to just abruptly stop playing and consider it beaten.

Kid Chameleon (Gen)

I played almost all of this during downtime at work today. Here's a question: why was I so so so bad at games as a kid? Like yeah this game gets kinda hard eventually and it is pretty long, but the first couple levels are a cakewalk. How did I never make it past the first, like, 5 levels? I played this all the time as a kid. It would be like playing SMB1 and getting stuck on 1-4 forever. Incidentally, I could beat SMB as a kid, not that that counts for much.

Anyway this game rocks (it desperately needs some QOL improvements though). I played it pretty much straight through - some detours to alternate levels and elsewheres, but no major warps and I killed all four bosses.

Underleveled posted...

I'm not laughing at him, I'm more so laughing at the game, being bad enough for someone to just abruptly stop playing and consider it beaten.

Oh yeah I didn't mean to imply you were laughing at him, I didn't get that sense from your post. Was just continuing the conversation. My bad!

Agent 64: Spies Never Die Beta Demo
This was basically what I expected, in the sense of being a Goldeneye 64 indie knockoff, but the level I beat took me 11 minutes, and while I'm sure I could improve on that by a lot, the screen right afterward said "unlock more stuff by beating the par time of everyone who's played this, which is 1:20 lol." Clearly, this is designed for insane speedrunners, and I have no interest in that, so I'm probably going to not buy the full game unless it's very, very cheap.

MythForce Demo
I didn't actually beat this demo, but whatever. Very odd idea for a game: first-person roguelike with fantasy classes set in a "Saturday Morning Cartoon" world (but really just a He-Man knockoff). Absolutely nails the He-Man aesthetics, but the movement of the characters is extremely slow and awkward, making the game much more plodding than I feel like was intended?

Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road
Didnt realize how close to the end I was or I wouldve finished this ages ago.

Inscryption (PS5)

I love card games and I also love games with interesting atmosphere and stories, so Inscryption was the perfect game for me. The card game itself is easily breakable and is fairly RNG heavy, so it's not super great, but it was good enough that it was fun to play. Also fun once you learn how to break the game with Mantis Gods.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)
I had wrapped up completion to an extent that I was satisfied and finally got around to going and fighting the final boss. To keep it short, this is a way better game than BotW, which I already liked, and possibly the best this year so far.

Dunk Lords (XB1)

Very unbalanced, unfair at times, and it was a mess discerning everything on the screen at certain times, but goddamn did I want something to scratch that NBA Ballers itch, albeit in a 2v2 format.

Mortal Kombat 11
Still need to do Aftermath though

Robo Army (PC)

I'm glad that these SNK re-releases have included game customization so that you can counter some game designs that plagued some older games, especially arcade titles that were built on the consumer continuously popping in coins.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands (XB1)

This map is humongous, and it is also quite detailed. I'm impressed on that front, but I wish that they had helicopters and fast offroad vehicles everywhere. I wish this game scaled back in terms of content though. It seems bloated and unfocused, so I left almost half of the story missions untouched when I went to beat the game.

Supraland: Six Inches Under (XS/X)

While it still has no business for existing, combat is much improved this time, especially since enemies are fixed and finite. It's been a few years, but I want to say that I preferred the puzzles from the original game over these, but overall they are still solid. The games are of comparable quality, but I think that I do slightly prefer the original due to the more open-endedness vs the linearity of this one.

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer (XS/X)

This isn't a great game by any means, but for a joke spin-off game, it is a solid retro-style FPS.

Overboard! (PC)

For such a condensed game, there are a lot of variables in it. I thought multiple times that my plans and efforts were solid to evade being charged for murder, but I failed each of my first few attempts before getting a decent conclusion. Soon after, I finally got the best. I might still play it some more as there some things that I'd like to accomplish regardless of the outcome out of curiosity.

Detective Conan & Kindaichi Case Files: Chance Encounter of 2 Great Detectives (DS)

As a fan of both of these series, I was excited to play this knowing that there's an English fan translation of it. It's a pretty solid mystery game that felt pretty fast-paced for these kind of games, with me finishing the game with less than 20 hours for 7 chapters, each with their own murder cases that tie in to the big mystery of the game revolving a tragedy from 25 years ago (Get used to that phrase. Kinda fitting since it's developed by Spike). On top of that, that's also with me replaying the 7th chapter since you get some differences depending on a choice you make at the beginning of it. I do wish the cases were a bit more complicated considering the licenses involved but they're fine. Besides the typical mystery game gameplay like finding evidence in crime scenes and picking the correct answers for questions, there are a couple of mini-games/puzzles that use the touch screen, with some of them making you write numbers/letters like in a Professor Layton game.

Pretty fun game even if it doesn't reach the heights of other mystery games.

Gibbon: Beyond the Trees (Switch)

When everything clicked, it was exhilarating. Too often though, the finicky physics and uncertainty surrounding grabbable objects derailed momentum.

RIP gibbon dad