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REPO Man
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by REPO Man Sun Mar 19, 2023 11:13 pm

Sonic Mania Plus for Android (unofficial port) as Knuckles with all Chaos Emeralds.

I used the Knuckles Plus mod, which makes some slight alterations to the layouts with Knuckles' abilities in mind.
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REPO Man
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by REPO Man Mon Mar 20, 2023 12:00 am

AM2R for Android, though not with 100% of the items.
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Ack
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by Ack Mon Mar 20, 2023 11:23 pm

1. Northern Journey (PC)(FPS)
2. Hatchpunk (PC)(FPS)
3. Might and Magic IX (PC)(RPG)
4. Star Wars: Empire at War (PC)(RTS)
5. Chasm: The Rift (PC)(FPS)
6. Real Heroes: Firefighter HD (PC)(FPS)
7. CULTIC (PC)(FPS)
8. Consortium (PC)(FPS)

9. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (PC)(FPS)
10. Forgive Me, Father (PC)(FPS)

11. Teomim Island (PC)(FPS)
12. Regions of Ruin (PC)(Action RPG)
13. Void Bastards (PC)(FPS)

14. Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad - Single Player (PC)(FPS)
15. Quake: Scourge of Armagon (PC)(FPS)
16. Quake: Dissolution of Eternity (PC)(FPS)

17. Bioshock Infinite (PC)(FPS)
18. Chop Goblins (PC)(FPS)

New, from the maker of DUSK, it's Chop Goblins!

David Szymanski has a passion for the horrific, having released multiple short horror games on Steam. However, his Blood-inspired FPS DUSK is what really caught people's attention, as it popped off right as the boomer shooter trend was getting big in indie PC gaming. While he has continued working with horror games, later releasing the disturbing Iron Lung submarine simulator, he's also not stopped experimenting with FPS. Chop Goblins is the latest in this line, and it's what we get while we wait for his next big project, Gloomwood, to leave Early Access.

You're a guy. You decide it's a good idea to break into a museum and check out the artifacts hidden in the basement. You accidentally open a box and release the Chop Goblins into the world, nasty little monsters armed with meat cleavers and a love of destruction and cheese. While you try to escape the museum and stop them, you learn they've stolen an Aztec tablet of time travel. So now you must travel from the distant past to the far future to try and destroy the evil Chop Goblins in alternate timelines.

Chop Goblins is advertised bite-sized, with an emphasis on going for score and replayability. The game is only five levels long, though they do feel sufficiently sized the first time you run through, with some well hidden secrets that are fun and rewarding to uncover. There are only a handful of enemy types in the game and five weapons, and you can't jump or crouch. It's like if Rise of the Triad was about shooting goblins instead of faux-Nazis: collect coins, shoot things, chuckle at the little jokes the game makes. While you won't get turned into a dog, you will have goblins in dresses hurt you by shouting Karen-esque phrases at you and take down Dracula while he sings. Poorly.

The game isn't any kind of masterpiece. It's more like a little joke for laughs. But it's also like $5, and it occasionally goes on sale. I liked DUSK, I'm looking forward to Gloomwood, and I was curious to try another of Szymanski's projects. Chop Goblins did not disappoint, and I had fun with it. For fans of the seedy underbelly of obscure and retro FPS on Steam, like me, this is what we live for.
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Note
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by Note Tue Mar 21, 2023 11:06 am

1. Kirby's Dream Land (GB)
2. River City Girls (Switch)
3. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES)
4. The Simpsons (Arcade)
5. Illusion of Gaia (SNES)

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6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (Switch)

Once I heard that Shredder's Revenge was being released last year, I knew I wanted to try it, as the brief trailers I saw for the game looked awesome. However, it was put on the back burner, as for a while a physical copy of the US version for the Switch seemed to have been delayed. Thanks to Flake, as I was able to purchase a Switch copy from him last week, my partner and I sat down to play the game couch co-op this weekend.

Shredder's Revenge is a 2D beat 'em up in the style of previous Turtles games we know and love from Konami. The game includes two main modes, which are Story and Arcade. In the story mode, the player can save their progress and continue at a later time. There are challenges in each level in this mode, so the game just doesn't consist of destroying every enemy. There are also a few different types of collectables hidden in most of the levels, and once completed, the player is rewarded with a bonus. The arcade mode is more straight forward but probably more challenging, as the player must traverse through the sixteen stages on a set amount of lives. One thing you'll notice off the bat is that April O'Neil and Splinter are included here as well, so it's awesome to see them as playable characters. Also, unlike the older games, each character here has a different rating for speed, range, and power. For our playthrough, we played the story mode. I chose Raph which was my go to character when playing Turtles in Time when I was younger. My partner, who isn't very familiar with TMNT and didn't grow up watching it chose Splinter. For whatever reason, I thought it was funny she chose him.

The developers included an extensive move list, which is explained in a How to Play section. One unique move that I particularly appreciated was the taunt, which helps you bump up your power meter, which you can use to do your special, and the second move that I think was even more helpful, was in co-op mode, you can walk near the other player and tap a button to high five them. When the initiating player high fives the other, that player transfers a bit of life to the other, which is really useful if perhaps there's just one pizza on the screen and you want to split it evenly. This feature was also super useful to help another player out of a jam. A similar inclusion is the ability to revive players, within a 10 second period of them being knocked out. You simply have to hold down a button in their vicinity, and as long as you don't get hit, you can bring them back with about a quarter of their health. I had to save my partner a lot! Lol. This feature is similar to the revive mechanic in River City Girls. I also appreciate the game can be played with up to six people in either couch co-op or online.

The 2D sprite work is pretty great in this game, and both the characters are well designed and animated, and the backgrounds are very detailed and colorful. The developers did a great job with the look of the game, representing the Turtles' environment, while drawing from previous games. I also really like how they included some specific nods to New York City in regards to the levels. It's really cool to see both Coney Island (a favorite summer time hang out of mine) and the Natural History Museum as playable levels! The music in the game is also very well done, and I feel like the right artists were rounded up to put together tunes that suit the style of game and the TMNT universe. I was also pretty surprised to hear a Ghostface and Raekwon song in a video game, but it was cool to hear their music during a pivotal moment in the game. My partner even enjoyed the soundtrack, complimenting the tunes multiple times throughout our first playthrough.

Overall, Shredder's Revenge has a lot to offer to fans of the 2D beat 'em up genre and especially to those who grew up with the franchise. I'm looking forward to playing this with three or four people together, and trying out some of the other characters! Definitely check this one out if you haven't had a chance to yet.
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Markies
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by Markies Tue Mar 21, 2023 11:25 pm

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2023!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

***1. Dragon Valor (PS1)***
2. Breath Of Fire (GBA)
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (NS)
4. World Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse And Donald Duck (GEN)
5. XIII (GCN)
6. NES Remix Pack (WiiU)
7. Dr. Mario (GBC)
***8. Bully (PS2)***
9. Dragon's Crown (PS3)
10. Bangai-O (SDC)

11. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

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I beat Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii this evening!

During college and afterwards for a few years, I would constantly play the original Smash Bros. The amount of hours and kills that I had in that game was utterly insane. It took me quite a while for me to get a GameCube, but I did the same thing with Melee once I had gotten it. I had also played Melee a ton with my friends, so I was quite familiar with it. Obviously, I didn't play it as much as the original, but there was a short time where I loved play Melee. Unfortunately, Brawl was kind of forgotten rather quickly. Neither my friends and I played it all that much compared to the previous two entries. So, when I finally picked up a Wii, I was excited to play through the hidden Smash Bros. game in my mind.

A little precursor, I only got a little taste of Brawl. There was no way for me to experience everything and I didn't want to do matches over and over again. So, most of my time in Brawl was spent playing the Subspace Emissary Mode. I played a few multi man matches and I did go through Classic mode and Home Run Contest once, but I will admit that I only scratched the surface. And I have to say, Subspace Emissary was really pretty fun. One of my favorite aspects about Smash Bros. are the little videos that they release, especially when new characters are announced. The humor is fantastic and they always get me excited. The cutscenes in Subspace are very much of the same vein. In fact, a couple of them made me chuckle. The platforming is mostly passable, though once you realize you can just run past everything, the game loses a bit of challenge. But, the boss fights are really fun and it is great way to unlock all of the characters. The final boss can be very cheap, but you get many characters, so it is a bit fair. You know, for a tact on mode that nobody seemed to like when it came out, I rather enjoyed playing through it. It isn't the main reason to own Brawl, but it was fun.

Overall, I enjoyed Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Once again, I barely scratched the surface of the game as there is just so much to do. One day, I would love to dive deeper into the game and have fun with all of the modes. But, for a quick romp through a single player Adventure Mode, I thought it was enjoyable and well done. If you own Brawl and have never gone through it, I would suggest giving it a shot as it might surprise you. It's an extra ingredient on a wonderful cake!
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Markies
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by Markies Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:18 pm

Wow! Back to back posts. I feel like ElkinFencer! :lol:

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2023!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

***1. Dragon Valor (PS1)***
2. Breath Of Fire (GBA)
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (NS)
4. World Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse And Donald Duck (GEN)
5. XIII (GCN)
6. NES Remix Pack (WiiU)
7. Dr. Mario (GBC)
***8. Bully (PS2)***
9. Dragon's Crown (PS3)
10. Bangai-O (SDC)
11. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

12. Destruction Derby (PS1)

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I completed Destruction Derby on the Sony Playstation 1 this evening!

Destruction Derby is one of the few Playstation games that I play with a friend of mine. He is not a big fan of either PS1 or PS2, but I remember playing a few games with him. Destruction Derby is a game that we both enjoy because of our love for destructive racing games and I remember Destruction Derby being one of the first games of that genre. It's an early PS1 game, so he has the long box edition. So, while shopping around after I beat my Backlog, I found one in the jewel case. I could never find that version and since it was only a few bucks, I decided to give it a try for the Single Player Mode.

Destruction Derby is a very simple game. There is your Championship mode, your single race mode and then your Destruction Derby mode. Despite all of that, the game is very fun to play. Each of the tracks and the large Destruction Derby bowl offer opportunities to hit your opponents with simple races or crossing intersections. With twenty different racers, it is very easy to bump into your opponents. And when you do hit your opponent for that nice 360, it feels fantastic. Along with damaging your opponents, you also take damage yourself and it affects the way your car handles. You bust up your left side and then your car leans to one side and makes it incredibly hard to turn.

Granted, turning in the game is a bit difficult to do in the first place. There is this weird floaty controls to your car that makes it feel like you are not in control at all times. You kind of have to go with the car instead of steering it. Also, there are only about 6 tracks and they begin to repeat themselves rather quickly, so the game can feel very repetitive in a short amount of time. For you to win races, you need to place high, but you also get points for wrecking other cars. Those points never made any sense to me as I will ram a car to get no points, but then I barely touch one and I get a bunch of points.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Destruction even though it has its issues. I would say the game is best in short spurts. If you play the game longer than an hour, then you begin to see its flaws and it begins to drag down the experience. But, if you play it at quick bursts, then you will get all the enjoyment out of it. If you like destructive racers, this is a good one to check out, but there are much better ones out there for you to play instead!
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prfsnl_gmr
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by prfsnl_gmr Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:25 pm

Great review! Have you played Destruction Derby 2? I always liked it much better than the first game. The draw in is horrendous, but the crashes are amazing.
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MrPopo
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by MrPopo Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:48 am

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

1. Void Destroyer - PC
2. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights - Switch
3. Raging Blasters - Switch
4. Citizen Sleeper - Switch
5. GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon
6. Hands of Necromancy - PC
7. Project Downfall - PC
8. Chasm: The Rift - PC
9. Cultic - PC
10. Kirby Super Star - SNES
11. Kirby's Dream Land 2 - GB
12. Kirby's Dream Land 3 - SNES
13. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - N64
14. Fire Emblem Engage - Switch
15. Mechwarrior 5: Rise of Rasalhague - PC
16. Kirby's Epic Yarn - Wii
17. Kirby's Return to Dreamland - Wii
18. Mega Man 7 - SNES
19. Mega Man 8 - PS1
20. Conquest: Frontier Wars - PC
21. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line - Switch
22. Octopath Traveler II - Switch
23. Last Call BBS - PC

Last Call BBS is the latest and purported to be last game from Zachtronics, makers of various puzzle games (usually involving programming). The game is presented through the interface of an early 90s PC that you use to connect to an old BBS and grab warez. Thus, rather than a single game you have eight small games to play with. There's a variety of gameplay here, and at least one thing should appeal to you.

The first two games are solitaire games. One is a Klondike variant that just has some minor rules changes to make it more consistently beatable. The other is a more unusual variant that uses a special deck (10 suits of four cards) and you need to combine all the like suits into piles and lock them onto the table. The next is a Gunpla builder; you snip apart the pieces from their sprue, clip them together, discover that the instructions are balls awful, and if you really want you can airbrush paint them.

Next comes the game that was my personal favorite, a picross variant where instead of constructing a picture you are constructing a D&D style dungeon. There are certain rules that must be followed that help you out with placing walls aside from the numbers in the rows and columns that give the wall count. They start to get quite tricky as you progress, and you need to really start to educate your guessing to try out a progression and see if it works. Another seemingly simple yet maddening puzzle game is a game about manipulating cells. You build up a series of rules for the cells to follow, such as split to the right, or specialize into a more specific cell (e.g. seed into flesh, flesh into muscle). You need to have your cells build a predefined pattern on the playfield. You also only have a certain number of cycles for this to accomplish. The first few are straightforward, but afterwards you really need to think hard about the implications of the rules you give, and the order can sometimes matter greatly (e.g. create a rule early in the chain because it gets checked first before any cells might match it so you get the right order of operations). This minigame didn't have an in game manual I could find, which led to some stumbling in the dark before I figured things out.

Finally, we move on to the ones that didn't land with me. The first is an arcade version of a minigame from Exapunks. It's a Puyo Puyo variant that requires you to get through four boss fights, with the high difficulty you would expect from a quarter muncher. Frankly, it feels utterly out of place with everything else, given it's a reflex based puzzle game with a large RNG factor. The second one is a circuit building game on a very limited play space. You lay down metal traces in one layer, silicon traces in a second layer (to build transistors and bridge as necessary), and can add capacitors to delay signal propagation and must use these tools to take a set of high-low inputs and generate the correct output. I found it too low level to be enjoyable, but EE majors will probably enjoy it.

The final game is an assembly line game where you create automated food lines for cafeterias. So you'll trigger sending out the tray and all the food items, matching whatever the order is, and manipulate them as needed (e.g. slice up a chicken into parts and route the correct part to the tray and the rest to the trash). All of the logic occurs through a series of blocks on a board that are connected with wires, and once you're beyond the initial few introductory levels this quickly turns into a massive rats nets. It's all signal driven, without any real instructions, and feels very cumbersome overall. It was the game I enjoyed the least.

Overall, it felt like this was the studio realizing they had essentially exhausted the well of ideas they had. Each game is the seed of an idea, but without enough meat to turn into a full length game. On several of them the lack of puzzle space shows; it's clear that easing some of the constraints by even a hair would push most of the puzzles into trivial territory, which is not a great place to be. You want the limitations to feel like you're keeping people from brute forcing, rather than requiring them to come up with solutions worthy of the Obfuscated C Contest. If you've enjoyed other Zachtronics games in the past you might give this a try, but don't expect it to measure up to the previous entries.
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Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
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Markies
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by Markies Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:13 am

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Great review! Have you played Destruction Derby 2? I always liked it much better than the first game. The draw in is horrendous, but the crashes are amazing.


I may have played it for a few minutes many years ago, but I don't remember it at all.

I am still interested in the series, so I hope to pick it up someday!
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Re: Games Beaten 2023

by ElkinFencer10 Sat Mar 25, 2023 2:53 pm

Games Beaten in 2023 - 19
* denotes a replay

January (5 Games Beaten)
1. Banner of the Maid - Switch - January 2
2. Silver Falls: 3 Down Stars - 3DS - January 8
3. Silver Falls: Episode Prelude - Switch - January 8
4. The Pathless - PlayStation 5 - January 12
5. Modern Combat: Blackout - Switch - January 14


February (7 Games Beaten)
6. Fire Emblem: Engage - Switch - February 2
7. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - PlayStation 4 - February 15
8. Silver Falls: Undertakers - Wii U - February 16
9. Silver Falls: White Inside Its Umbra - Wii U - February 18
10. Silver Falls: Guardians and Metal Exterminators - 3DS - February 22
11. Silver Falls: Frontier Fighters Mini - Browser - February 22
12. Silver Falls: Ghoul Busters - Switch - February 24


March (7 Games Beaten)
13. Red Colony - Switch - March 5
14. Hentai World - Switch - March 5
15. Silver Falls Gaiden: Deathly Delusion Destroyers - 3DS - March 9
16. Silver Falls: Galaxy Bound Curse - Game Boy Color - March 12
17. Vs. Super Mario Bros - Switch - March 13
18. Dead Space - PlayStation 5 - March 17
19. Neptunia X Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars - Switch - March 24


19. Neptunia X Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars - Switch - March 24

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Senran Kagura is known for two things - enormous anime tiddies and clothes that tear as you take damage. Neptunia is known for two things - Nep and shallow fanservice. This is an almost perfect crossover of the two series that brings to the table three of those four things. Unfortunately, all clothes remain fully intact for the duration of the game.

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Unlike most Neptunia games, this game doesn't take place in the world of Gamindustri; the setting for this game is Gamninjustri. The word play is utterly stupid and utterly fantastic. The two major nations in Gamninjustri are Heartland, home to the 4 Ninja Goddesses of the Compa Style, and Marveland, home to the 4 Honeypa Style ninjas. These two great nations have fought along conflict over share energy in which no side has ever managed to win a significant victory over the other despite the two quartets' frequent clashes. When a mysterious faction of robot ninjas called the Steeme Legion shows up and starts attacking nations indiscriminately, the two former enemies must team up to face this threat to Gamninjustri together.

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As you play through the game, you unlock a total of ten playable characters. From Neptunia, you get Neptune/Purple Heart, Noire/Black Heart, Blanc/White Heart, and Vert/Green Heart. From Senran Kagura, you get Asuka, Homura, Yuki, and Miyabi. There are also two original characters, the cat girl, Yuuki, and the edgelord amnesiac, Goh. You can choose two of these characters to play as at a time in a tag-team set up. The game itself is a pretty fair length - 9 chapters, I think, although the last chapter is really two. In addition to the main chapters, there are several dozen side missions that you can complete for challenge, bonus rewards, or xp grinding. The game has five difficulty settings from stupid easy to brutally difficult, so you can tailor the experience to your preferences.

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Gameplay is pretty standard beat 'em up. If you've played another Neptunia game, then imagine a beat 'em up that feels like when you're exploring the overworld in most Neptunia RPGs. Mix that with the high tempo combat of Senran Kagura, and you've got Ninja Wars. It really is a solid blend of the feel of the two games rather than being overly heavy on one or the other (think the Fire Emblem X Shin Megami Tensei game that was literally just Persona with a Fire Emblem skin; this isn't that). The story is as typically shallow as most Neptunia stories, but no one plays Neptunia (or Senran Kagura, for that matter) for the deep and well-developed narrative; you play it for big titties (except Blanc) and fan service; this game delivers both in spades.

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Neptunia X Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars isn't an amazing game, but it is a solidly fun one. It does an excellent job of blending the two series it's crossing, and while it gets a little monotonous if you play it for more than a couple hours at a time, it's a fun game to play for an hour or two a night. If you're a fan of either Neptunia or Senran Kagura, I definitely recommend checking this one out.
Exhuminator wrote:Ecchi lords must unite for great justice.

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