Games NOT Beaten: 2016

[hashiriya1]

This will make 7 years in a row that I still haven't been able to beat Demon's Souls...

I just beat it a couple months ago. It was so satisfying to finally beat it. Now I'm going to punish myself with Dark Souls.

[Xeogred]

Real punishment is called Zelda 2.

[BoneSnapDeez]

^ I have the Famicom Disk System original on the way. Looking forward to it.

[PartridgeSenpai]

^ I have the Famicom Disk System original on the way. Looking forward to it.

Does that version have better saving capabilities in terms of your respawn location? Having to walk back to the really hard dungeons was one of the biggest challenges for me, even though I did eventually just give up at Ganon's palace because that place is HUJ. Even with a map I just couldn't not die because of all of the crazy crap they throw at you Xp

[ElkinFencer10]

Real punishment is called Zelda 2.

I managed to make myself put on my big boy britches and finish that one. I guess it's because I'm already so heavily emotionally invested in the Legend of Zelda series, idk. I just can't make myself tolerate the punishment that the Souls series dishes out. I have Dark Souls downloaded on my 360 via Games with Gold from like a year ago, and I have Dark Souls on my Steam account (probably a Humble Bundle, hell if I remember), but I doubt I'll ever play either, let alone beat them. I just don't have the balls for it.

[marurun]

I found Zelda 2 hard, but not deadly hard. I actually found Mega Man 1 harder.

[BoneSnapDeez]

^ I have the Famicom Disk System original on the way. Looking forward to it.

Does that version have better saving capabilities in terms of your respawn location?

I'm not sure. I'll play the game soon after it arrives.

I will agree that the save/continue system is one of the most irritating things about early Zelda games.

[Exhuminator]

Well guys here's two that I was playing off and on last year, but am not bothering to continue on with this year. And why.

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Starting out in the lower floor of an abandoned hospital, you are an amnesiac girl trying to escape the ward while uncovering your past along the way. There's surely more to the story than that, but I didn't play long enough to find out. In some ways Theresia reminds me a lot of the classic Shadowgate, in that you are exploring a creepy environment while also solving puzzles and avoiding traps.

Theresia won't outright murder you all the time like Shadowgate however, Theresia rather enjoys seeing you bleed and attacks with spring loaded needles most often. You have a help item that you must squeeze to get help from, but it's covered in barbed wire. Indeed, sadism against the protagonist is a strong theme in this game, disturbingly so really. All of this sadism and loneliness is rendered convincingly by excruciatingly detailed macabre backgrounds, haunting music, and a pervasive sense of isolation. Theresia's strongest asset is absolutely its robust atmosphere, and the game accomplishes it convincingly amazingly well given the limited platform. For what Theresia so thoroughly accomplishes in mood however, it utterly loses in any sense of fun whatsoever.

Theresia is a maddeningly slow paced and plodding game to play. Pixel hunts are the order of the day, made all the more cumbersome by rampant traps. Doing something as simple as moving a chair the wrong way will get you skewered in this game. Some puzzles are absolutely illogical and require pure luck to solve due to badly hidden elements. Navigating Theresia's world requires grid based movement that is at once lethargic and inconvenient. Theresia's plot is drip-fed at such a slim rate that it makes it hard for the player to feel invested in the experience at all. The designers should have made you care about Theresia first, and then maybe you'd care that she's slowly turned into a human pin cushion.

Well, Theresia is still a very unique experience though on the DS, due to its rampant sadism and general creepiness. I can honestly say I've never played a game quite like this one. And with a faster pace, more involving story, puzzles that made sense, and less pixel hunts with needle traps, Theresia could have been something truly special. Unfortunately Theresia's nice graphics, convincing audio, and strong atmosphere just don't make up for its lackluster and frankly bad game design.

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You're just an average every day Japanese school boy, then one day you wake up to find your parents gone. Instead, you now find yourself in a new reality where your uncle is your sole parent. And to make things even weirder, someone has left a pen behind that allows you to draw wormholes in the fabric of time... letting you alter the past as you see fit. What happened to your parents, and who gave you this time pen? Well if you can endure incredibly banal dialogue, glacial pacing, and a near absence of any sort of actual gameplay, you might just find out.

Yes it's true that Time Hollow starts off interesting. But it quickly careens into writing that borders on teen fiction at best. And honestly, this game feels like that was the target market. Maybe if I was in 7th grade the writing would be more interesting. But even that wouldn't help how incredibly linear and non-interactive the "gameplay" actually is. You want to draw a hole in time? Only where and when the game says you can, and not a moment sooner. You want to interact with something in that time hole? Only exactly what the game says you can, and not until. I felt less like I was playing a game here, and more like I was slowly watching a low rate shōnen anime by clicking through it one frame at a time. It doesn't help matters that I found none of the characters endearing or interesting, rather like cardboard caricatures of various personality tropes. Worst of all, Time Hollow attempts to artificially lengthen its experience by simply lacking in direction on a whim. Sometimes you have to just randomly visit locations throughout the game's world, and randomly talk to everyone in it, just to finally trigger that-one-next-event that keeps the plot moving. That busy work method is a total contrivance and doesn't feel organic at all in execution.

I can find something positive to say here however; Time Hollow has well produced colorful graphics, and a standout OST. Its OST in particular really sets the tone with contemplative electronica. I also like the concept of using the DS' stylus as a chrono slicing device, this core idea could have lead to something truly innovative. Unfortunately, Time Hollow was not such an innovative experience for me. With its boring characters and vapid dialogue, flaccid plot with zero sense of urgency, and utterly linear game design coupled with unintuitive navigation... I just cannot recommend Time Hollow. There are far more interesting and fun adventure games on the DS to fill your hollow time with than this.

[Markies]

Re-Volt (Dreamcast)

This game is quite Brutal! It took me at least 10 times to beat the very first race in the game. Then I got continually screwed later on in the cup. Since you are racing RC cars, the handling is so finicky. You'll hit the smallest thing and then you'll go careening off the track in a complete 180. Since there is no rubber band for you or the other cars, you have almost instantly lost the race. I like the idea, but it is too precise and impossible for its own good. I think a game like Micro Machines did it way better. It's interesting and I can see why people enjoy it in short bursts, but the actual process of sitting down and playing it for long periods of time is painful. No thanks.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Puyo Puyo Tetris (PS3)

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, and it's a little weird even saying I "won't" beat it, given that it's primarily a party-puzzle game, but it has a 70-stage adventure mode, so I'm counting that. Once you get into 50's, the puyo-stages (I am not very good at Puyo Puyo, fyi, so I fully expected this) get pretty darn hard and take multiple tries to get past more often than not. Once you get to the 60's though, that's when the game has you playing ONLY Vs. mode Puyo-Tet-mix, the Puyo Puyo-Tetris fusion game, and HOLY F*CK is that game hard.

If you thought Puyo Puyo didn't have a high enough skill ceiling, then you should really try Puyo-Tet-mix, because the AI will pummel you into the dirt. It's basically Puyo Puyo, but because tetrominos are also dropping onto the field which shove the puyos they land on to the top of them, your board, and thus your chains, are constantly being messed with. AND the Tetris blocks permanently destroy any of the white, junk-blocks you opponent throws at you, making a OH-KO basically the most common way to win a match. I couldn't even get past stage 64, and that was trying for an hour only for the AI to OH-KO me every 10 minutes. Granted you unlock an extra 2 characters for non-story mode play on clearing stages 40, 50, 60, and 70, but I can live without those last two as long as I can keep my sanity XP

Again, I love the game to death: The graphics are super cute and the music is hella boss. I caaaannot wait to play it with friends as opposed to getting crushed by the AI ;p